A Chase in the Garden

“Don’t forget, I’ll be around to collect you in the early morning, John!” Moira called to him as he moved the car into drive. He just waved again at her, having already reassured her no less than four times that he was aware and would be ready. The engine gave a small roar as he pulled away from the redhead who stood atop the stairs, and headed for the front gate.

“So… What does your dad want to do again? I don’t think I quite got it,” John said to Velvet, giving her a sideways glance as he focused on the road, pulling into mostly empty roads, past the lunch rush and before the school and work kickout. She seemed preoccupied with something, in her head.

Almost absently, she replied, “I think he wants to do some kind of barrier stuff or some such with you, since it’s one of the basics of the Abyss you won’t cover otherwise.” She suddenly leaned forward, placing her hands on the dashboard as she looked at something only she could see. “Where are we right now?”

John raised his eyebrow in confusion. “Er… 32nd street, I think? Why?”

Decisively nodding, as if she had just made up her mind on some unknowable inner matter, she said, “Good. Take the next left, and stop at the row of houses with scaffolding in front of them.”

“Er…” John made a dissenting noise, unsure what she was planning. Despite his best efforts, there was a part of his mind that whispered at the chance of another **** happening if they stopped somewhere unknown.

“Please, John?” Then he looked at her, and found that he wanted to say yes and fulfil the hope etched on her face, wanted to ignore that itch at the base of his skull which filled him with indecision and anxiety and fear.

So he did.

“Velvet, are you sure we can go here?” John asked, looking fearfully at the rare sight of bare brick which made up the facade of an old-built townhouse.

The blind brunette sighed, clearly beginning to find his repeated questions tiresome. “John, for the fourth time now, I’ve been through here dozens of times in the past few months, and no one has yet to stop me, okay?”

John flushed red, and was slightly glad for a moment that she was unable to see it, then realised it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, with how dusty and dim it was inside the building, due to the ongoing unfinished renovation.

He would admit to being entirely confused as to why they had stopped here, of all places. When he’d asked to that end, all Velvet had told him was that he should-

“I told you, just wait and see! It’s a surprise.”

Yeah. That. She said it with a smile on her face though, and try though he might, John had found a shocking weakness in himself today. It turned out that he was shockingly weak-willed when it came to refusing attractive women who smiled at him.

Not that surprising, really, and definitely not shocking. Especially when he considered that his only social interaction with a girl that hadn’t been filled with ridicule was when he spoke to his mom, or failing that, with visual novels of questionable quality, or the occasional female teammate he encountered online, before she was ambushed by the waiting asshole stereotypes who **** her out of the chat.

John shook his head slightly as he walked into another cobweb, pulling him back to the present.

“Alright, w-well, I’m waiting, but right now all I’m seeing are cobwebs and brick walls. Speaking of, how on earth are you avoiding even the webs?” John’s tone was slightly incredulous as he swiped the whispering touch of web off his face.

“Oh, nevermind that, it’s just a knack,” she told him, adroitly skipping under what John then discovered to be a very large, dust-coated web spanning the upper part of a doorframe, as it **** him to rake a hand across his face to remove it.

“Well, could you tell me what the damn knack is, pleassssss…” The irritation in his tone faded totally as he trailed off, a notification barely noticed as it flashed into view.

Entering Barrier: The Lost Garden.

Velvet was quite literally skipping like a stereotypical anime girl as she moved away from the exterior doorway John had stopped in.

It was, in a word, peaceful. Surrounded on all sides by the homes under construction, with only two or three doors facing onto it, was a garden. It reminded John of the Japanese stone gardens that one found in just about every anime mentor’s home, but mixed with a western tone. All of it was set onto the slight natural hill, with a gazebo made of painted wood at the top of the rise. From the stone foundation the gazebo was built on, a small grate was letting through water, which cascaded down to form a small waterfall that splashed into a crystal clear pool. From there, the pool fed into several small streams that naturally wove their way through the landscape without rhyme or reason to his eye. Throughout the garden, small arching bridges of wood and stone stretched across the streams, and stone paths curved their way through from bridge to bridge, each eventually leading to the gazebo.

And more than anything else, there was plantlife. Everywhere he looked, there were flower patches that had grown beyond their kept boundaries, grass had crept onto the edges and into the cracks of the stone paths, trees had spread their branches widely and wildly to shade swathes of the garden, hedges grew past their neatly trimmed lines to obscure sight. Everything seemed to flourish, and the air itself seemed sweet and fresh.

Amidst it all was Velvet, happiness radiating from her like an almost physical aura as she crossed the nearest bridge. She joyfully called out over her shoulder, “Catch me if you can, John!” and then ran off into the minor maze of overgrown shrubbery.

It took a moment for his brain to catch up, but when it did, a wide grin spread across his face and he ran after her whilst praying that his body would be able to hold up to the exercise.

His feet pounded on the carefully laid cobblestones as he ran up the path after the banner of hair that streamed out behind the blind girl. He slowed down unconsciously as he reached the bridge, and then looked around for where to chase, just in time to hear a musical giggle and see a whip of deep chocolate hair streaked with blood red disappear around the corner. His grin returning in full ****, he let out the carefree laugh that was building in his chest, and gave chase.

Corner after corner, he chased after that gleeful giggling that echoed through the garden, harmonising to his own unashamed joyful laughter. It wasn’t a real hunt of the blind brunette. She seemed to want him to catch her too much for it to be a true chase. At each intersection, she would wait just long enough for him to catch a glimpse of which turn she went down, and then disappeared again in a flash of hair and a fresh line of audible happiness.

Further and further they rose up the hill, racing through overgrown hedges, down sprawling mossy pathways, under reaching branches of old oaks, and over slowly rotting bridges of wood and stone. Eventually John came to the pavilion atop the rise, where all the paths intersected, breathing heavily from his chase, his face aching slightly from how much he had been smiling.

He looked around, having lost Velvet - he still didn’t quite understand how she was so fleet of foot considering her limitations - and spotted her sitting on the grass beside one of the streams a short distance away. Still catching his breath, he walked over there and sat next to her, an ‘oomph’ escaping him as he relaxed on the ground. With one arm, he reached over to touch her, tiredly saying, “Got you,” as he did so.

Velvet chuckled slightly at that. “Only because I let you.”

John groaned slightly and let himself finish falling backwards to lie on the grass. For a little while, the two of them simply enjoyed the quiet, and it wasn’t until Velvet spoke again that John realised how comfortable he was being quiet around her. It didn’t feel uncomfortable, or like he couldn’t speak for fear of embarrassment, but rather, the silence was simply… natural.

“I’m sorry, you know.”

John raised himself slightly from the spongy moss and looked incredulously at the blind beauty that sat beside the gentle stream, face turned away towards the water. “You’re sorry?” He levered himself upright again and moved over to her and spoke gently, “Velvet, what on earth are you saying sorry for?”

Now that he was closer, he could see her slender form shaking slightly, although it was plenty warm in the supernatural pocket space. “I know it’s stupid to think, and that you made the choice to help, but I can’t help it. I just keep thinking that it was my fault that you got pulled into all this.” John kept moving around her as she spoke. “It was my fault for that, and then it was because of me that you-” She cut herself off.

John had moved in front of her now, and with being able to see her expression, he could notice other details. The way her shoulders had slumped, the way her hands fiddled nervously, yet slowly - she was upset. John could even go so far as to say she seemed somewhat depressed.

“H-hey… Velvet, I’m fine. It wasn’t your fault.”

There was a pause before she then said, “John… Don’t lie to me.” Well, that was a more than a little alarming way to start that statement. “Did… did you have the berserker thing before? Like, you woke up with it? O-or, did-”

“I chose it, yeah.” John said, catching onto part of what she was trying to ask.

Velvet’s eyes were closed as she spoke again. She knew the answer to the question before she asked it. “When did you choose that?”

John’s breath hitched slightly as he remembered the near-**** and near-****. “Just before I… stopped Toby.”

She swung to face him suddenly, her expression melancholy. “John, I know it sounds so stupid, and I know you’re going to tell me-”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. And, it’s not your fault for getting kidnapped either. Both of those, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, exactly. But it doesn’t matter what logic I think, or you give me, I just keep thinking that you’re suffering and it’s my fault.”

He didn’t say anything at first, his mind trying to work a way out of the situation logically. Then, he **** himself to ignore that and listen to what his heart was saying to do. With a soft swoosh of air, he leant into her and hugged her slight frame tightly. Almost immediately, her body shifted to match his frame as much as possible. He held her, gently rubbing circles on her back with his thumbs. Eventually, he pulled back. “Velvet… I don’t blame you for a second of what happened.” Now that the moment of contact had passed, his mind was trying to reassert itself and apply logic to everything once again. “If anything, I blame myself for letting it get that far, as unreasonable as that is. Really, if you look at it like that way, we’re both in the same boat- Woah!

As he pulled back, Velvet turned her face up to his, her eyes wide. She paused for a moment whilst he spoke, as if considering something, and then slowly nodded, a very slight cast coming to her features that John couldn’t identify. Before he could consider it properly, she suddenly leaped at him mid-sentence, pulling him to the ground with an undignified yelp.

The pair of them rolled a few times, and when they stopped, time seemed to stop with them for a moment, just to allow John to etch the scene into memory.

Soft summer grass crushed slightly under their weight, yet he hadn’t felt so light in years. John was simply enchanted by Velvet in that moment. The way her smile reached her eyes, the way her button nose scrunched slightly as she laughed. The wind lifting her hair wildly and the sun catching it in a way that made the red in her hair seem to glow. How her body was flush to his, her chest pressed against his own and her slender legs tangled with inelegant ones. And the unbridled happiness he could see in her pearly eyes, entirely natural. If he’d thought about it more, or had a little more bravery to trust his heart to lead him, he might have kissed her then and there.

The moment passed, and the sound of their joint laughter carried on the wind as they rolled together down the hill,