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Chapter Four: Darien's Quest
The phone rang.
Darien sat up quickly, trying to shake the cobwebs out of his brain. The dream had not had time to go all the way through before the phone had awoken him. He had not had to live through the death of his love again this night, at least. For a moment, he was grateful to the person on the other end of the phone that had woken him. Then he looked at the clock.
"Who would be calling at this time of the night?" he asked aloud. Then, all sleepiness was banished as his mind came up with one reason for a call in the middle of the night. *Something must have happened to Serena* he thought fearfully.
"Hello" he asked, almost timidly, as he picked up the phone. "Hey, Darien, I was starting to think you weren't there!" a cheery voice came over the line. "Why'd it take you so long to answer?"
Darien's mind was trying to come up with a name for the voice. Once he had realized nothing drastic was happening, all he wanted was sleep. Finally, the tone and accent combined into a face. "Michael" he said very quietly, "I really hope you have a good reason for calling me at three in the morning!" By the end of the sentence Darien was shouting.
"Three?" Michael gulped, "I'm sorry, I guess I got the time change mixed up. Oh well, now that you're up, don't you even want to know why I've called?"
Darien laughed, he never could stay mad at Michael. Michael had been an exchange student last year and the two boys had become friends. Both felt separated from everything around them, Michael from being so far away from everything he knew, and Darien because of the accident so long ago, that took away both his family and any memory he might have had of them. "I suppose so, now that I'm up."
"Well, you see, it's this way. My uncle, you know, the grouchy one with the ranch in Colorado, the relative I was always complaining about? Well, he died about three months ago and he left me his ranch! Can you believe it! Me! And I didn't even like the old geezer. Was that nice of him, or what?.
Anyway, I called Andrew to tell him about it and he said that you were thinking of taking a vacation. I find that very hard to believe, you were always working when I was there, could barely even find time to have fun.
You know how you were, either studying or working, or occasionally going for a jog in the morning. I mean you could be Marjory boring."
Darien had tuned most of this out and the constant chatter had almost lulled him back to sleep. Michael's chatter tended to have that effect on people. Michael's next words snapped him back to full wakefulness. "Could you repeat that? I was still half asleep."
"I said, do you want to come to the ranch for your vacation. We got forests, and mountains and horses and cows and even our own ghost." Michael was grinning to himself. It would be good to see Darien again and he knew how much Darien liked, what did he call it, oh yeah, Para psychic phenomenon.
"A ghost, huh? Sounds like fun, but I was planning on starting my vacation tomorrow." Almost before Darien stopped talking, Michael had started again.
"That's no problem. We can handle you tomorrow. Just get you a plane ticket, call me with the time you're gonna get in at the Denver airport, and I'll be waiting for you. There's not much I can do at the ranch at the moment, the Segundo handles everything, I just sign the bills. Come on, say you'll come. I promise you'll have a great time. This is a great place to get away from your troubles. Nothing ever happens here."
Darien was thinking about Michaels words. *A great place to get away from my troubles? I wonder if it would be a good place to get away from my dreams?* "Look," is what he said, "I'll think about it and call you tonight. If I do decide to come, I'll give you my flight information then. Okay?"
"Okay," Michael said. "I really hope you come, it'll be great to see you again. It'll be fun, you'll see. You do know how to ride, don't you? Well, even if you don't, you can learn. You always did pick up things fast. And you've got to see the Anasazi ruins. They're said to be haunted by a guardian spirit..."
"Michael," Darien interrupted firmly. "I'll give you my answer tonight. Now I need to get some sleep. I'll talk to you at seven." "Are you sure that will give you enough time?" Michael asked, faintly worried. He had been sure Darien would come, but he couldn't get everything done that quick. Darien soon put his worries to rest.
"Seven o'clock my time, not yours. I'm not doing anything for the next little while but sleeping. Good-bye."
"Bye. Waaiit a minute! Seven o'clock your time is" Michael finished his sentence into a dial tone, "three o'clock in the morning my time. Uh oh!"
Darien smiled slightly to himself as he settled back down to sleep. That hadn't been a nice thing to do to him, but Darien hadn't been able to resist. He had already decided to go. It would be nice to see Michael again. He always had been fun to be around. Darien decided he would call earlier as a thank you for waking him from the nightmare. Darien slid gently into sleep and right back into his nightmare.
When Darien awoke the next morning, he was grouchy. He usually was these days. Nights interrupted constantly by dreams of Serena's death, did not make for a pleasant sleep. Although his vacation didn't officially start until the next day, he never worked on Sundays and so decided to spend the day getting ready for his trip.
He went to a travel agents and made reservations to leave in the morning. However, he would not actually get to Denver, until Tuesday morning, Denver time. He stopped by the arcade to ask Andrew to water his plants while he was gone and they talked about the trip. Darien also asked Andrew not to tell Serena, or any of her gang, where he would be.
He knew that tomorrow would be the hard part. He would have to tell Serena he was leaving. He worried a little about leaving her and Reenie relatively unprotected, but with the decrease in Negaverse activity, he was sure that the Sailor Scouts could handle anything that came up.
At seven o'clock that night he called Michael. Michael didn't even bother with a greeting. "I'm going to kill you as soon as you get here," he snarled. "At least when I called you, it was an 'accident'!"
Darien laughed out loud. "I'm sorry, I just got the time change mixed up. Do you want the flight information or not?" After giving Michael the information, and making him read it back to make sure he had it right, Darien allowed Michael to go back to sleep while he started to pack.
The next morning.
Knowing Serena's habits well, Darien waited at the corner in front of the arcade. After another night of bad dreams, he just wanted to be out of here, but he couldn't leave without saying good-bye. *Surely it won't do any harm.*
Sure enough, Serena came barrelling around the corner less than five minutes after he got there. WHAM! Of course she ran right into him, she always did. Darien took a deep breath, and told her. Her response wasn't as bad as he was expecting, but in some ways it was worse. He was expecting the loud wail that announced to the world that she was hurt, instead he got quiet tears that she was obviously trying to stop. The wail he knew how to deal with, but watching her try to be mature about something that was tearing her apart, was tearing 'him' apart.
His heart was very heavy as he walked away and he turned around to watch her run, not seeming to care where she was going. *Good-bye Serena. Hopefully, by the time I return, I'll be able to come to a final decision. It 'cannot' go on this way. It's hurting us both too much.* And Darien walked on to finish getting ready to go.
Denver International Airport Tuesday morning
Darien walked off the plane. He looked terrible. He hadn't dared sleep on the plane in case the nightmare came back and he would wake everyone up by shouting in his sleep. Instead he had spent the flight thinking about Serena, worrying about Serena, worrying about Reenie, and reading up on the Anasazi people.
Not exactly a comforting flight. He looked around. It wasn't really necessary. It was very hard to miss Michael. He was standing in the lounge, jumping up and down like a kid Reenie's age, instead of a young man of twenty.
"Darien!" he shouted, "Hey Darien, you look awful man, didn't you get any sleep on the plane?" His voice settled down as he got closer. Their hands met in a hearty clasp, then Michael threw his arm around Darien's shoulder to guide him to the baggage claim. Michael was about an inch taller than Darien with blazing red hair, dancing hazel eyes and was very muscular.
Although he said he didn't do much work on the ranch, it obviously wasn't because he didn't have the strength. "I bet you spent the whole trip studying, didn't you? What's this? A book on the Anasazi? I knew it.
You couldn't have gotten an adventure book or an intrigue, could you? Noooo, you brought a 'text' book! We have a small cliff village on my property, I'll take you up to see it later this week. I thought we could go skiing for a couple days first. There's a ski lodge only an hour or so from my house that I've heard is really good.
I already got us reservations. Don't worry that you don't have the right clothes, you can always rent them. I was going to show you around the ranch today and then we would leave tomorrow for the lodge but you look like you would rather spend the day in a bed, don't worry I have one for you."
"That'll be fine, Michael," Darien smiled tiredly as they waited for his baggage. That's how the week passed, in skiing, reminiscing, laughter and chatter.
And no dreams. Darien could hardly believe waking up that morning after the first undisturbed night's sleep he'd had in over a month.
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