Orokid: Okay, I got interested in this series mainly because I was looking for some yuri to watch since it has become a new fascination for me to watch. Sad, I know, but I still like it. Lol. Guess I'm just like that, so you'll have to live with it.

Moral of this story is: never eat a thing of Tic-Tacs before writing a fanfic.

PS- that's not really the moral. Personally, I often wonder if hald of my stories even HAVE a moral…

Disclaimer: I do not own anything that has to do with Maria-sama Ga Miteru. In fact, I don't even own the series on DVD (but it IS on my birthday wishlist!). Still, if I owned anything, I would like to have Sei to myself because she's just an awesome character. Lol.

Maria-sama Was Watching

The wind whistled almost silently through the trees that day, when her life seemed to be crashing all around her. It was almost as if she were being blessed, or, in her thoughts, the mourn filled sighs of those who had once passed from this world to the next, who watched the daily lives of each and every student who walked through these halls, or these gardens, for their enjoyment.

Those spirits who seemed only to pity her now.

She felt foolish to be standing there at the front gates of a school she had once tried to run away from for fear of forgetting her goals in life. Out of all of the things that she had once tried to be stubborn about, whether it had been about her dream to be a nun or to keep her body and heart pure enough so that Maria-sama would be happy to have her join the ranks of nunnery, it had turned out that her heart was more so than she. While she went through her day learning as a student should in the place she had run to, in her moments of pause between each of her classes, she couldn't force away the memories of that girl with whom she had sinned with. Her mind often retreated back to those kisses that she knew she shouldn't have enjoyed, to the secret smiles that she and the other young girl had shared.

With a sigh, she leaned against the plastered and cemented towers that were only two heads taller than she was, trying to force those strange yet ever present emotions away. If they returned to her now while she remained unsure of herself and her future actions, she doubted that she could act so calm, feminine and moral. If she could help it, this was only going to be a friendly hello after two years of not seeing her face, touching her without feeling tat sudden thunder of heartache overtake her being…

She was just kidding herself, and she was beginning to understand that better more than anyone else ever could. What had she been thinking when she had told her convent mother that she was going off to meet with an old friend? How would Mother Hikari look at her if she had known just how she had sinned in the past with the one she was off to see?

Slowly, the dark haired young woman gazed up towards the school that she had once tried to flee from not so long ago, not really sure if this had been that good an idea after all. Although the serene nature seemed to calm her in a way that she hadn't been ever since her first year as a student, there was an anxiousness that kept her from being totally at ease. Fear only blanketed her when all she wanted to be was collected and in control of herself and the emotions that seemed to rage ever onward inside her very being.

As if a bell had rung through the silent halls of the college portion of the Lillian's Christian School for Young Women, a throng of cheerful souls exited the double-doors into the outside world, obviously glad to have been awake (even alive) after the lectures had been gone through. Just like a magnet seemed to attract it's polar opposite, her serious eyes seemed to know just where she could find the on she had come to see, the young woman whose golden hair (now shortened in a way that she looked to be more like a man) glimmered in the sunlight like gold in a stream of crystal water. A part of her seemed to be breaking from within her, although she doubted that she could really admit that to anyone other than herself right then.

For so long, she had hoped and prayed that those feelings that are thought of as sins in the eyes of God had gone away, but, as she watched whom her heart seemed to beat so wildly for now, she knew that they hadn't. And, even after two years of separation, she knew that there was no way that absence had made her heart forget the love she had felt for her. It was too hard to, and she could remember clearly how she had cried her way back to the convent after she had left the station.

But here Sei was, laughing like she always did whenever she hid the emotions that raged inside her, looking as though she were fitting into her life better than she used to. It almost made her jealous, but… she knew that she shouldn't be. After all, wasn't it she who had said that it was better for them to separate, for her to go to another school and take hold of the dreams that she had once placed in her mind? Why in the world should she be jealous over the fact that the one she had spent missing (whether knowledgeable by others or just to herself) was acting as though she didn't miss her at all?

Maybe it was the fact that a part of her still yearned to have a piece of her that had so obviously gone away by now. Maybe.

Sighing, the newly graduated young woman slipped back behind the barriers that she herself had mentally placed on this school, not wanting to be seen by the one that still made her heart race as it did. Why was it that she had to hide from the eyes of the one she had come to see? Because she was ashamed of herself and what she had done two years before, when she had tried to pretend that she wasn't in love with the woman in question, that she truly did want to be a nun and live a life without her. She was ashamed that she had left her side when she herself knew she shouldn't have, and more so for disappearing the way she had without giving an explanation or even so much as a goodbye.

With another sigh, she closed her eyes and turned back, looking down the road she had come from. It was either go home and regret leaving this place without a hello or goodbye, just like the last time, or she was to face her fears and meet with Sei.

Well… To tell the truth, she had never been so good with facing her fears. It was because of that that she had left the woman in question at the train station, standing there way past the time they had agreed upon, waiting patiently for someone that would obviously not show.

Her first steps back down the road she had come from were slow and lethargic, making her remember all the pain filled memories that she had wanted to leave behind back when she had left the school. Slowly but surely, they had started to get easier to get through, becoming faster and faster until she got to a normal pace of walking- one that she herself could be proud of. Although she wouldn't be able to meet with she whom she still secretly loved as she did, she could still walk away with her head held high, and that was all she truly had.

She really was pathetic, wasn't she?

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Sei's eyes looked over to where she had once felt the stare of someone she remembered, and her heart seemed to break once more at the memory of the feeling that had returned to her. Moments ago, she could have felt Shiori's eyes upon her…

Even if it had been short and more than likely a game her mind had been playing upon her, she could still remember how it had felt to have those eyes upon her like she once had. That had been burned into her memories for the rest of her life.

"Satou-san?" a voice called to her, breaking her from the trance she had seemed to have gotten into with the pillars at the front gate. A smile of knowledge seemed to cross the other girl's features, and the blonde only looked at the other woman- Kei- with a cheeky grin. "Someone wrong?"

Looking back over to the place she had felt the burning stare from, she tried to determine if she had really felt it. Had it been a dream- a sad and dreadful nightmare that would haunt her for the rest of her life- or a reality that she would want to treasure until her mind would get lost on her. Turning back to the girl who had caught her attention, she threw her arm about her neck and grin largely. "Nope! Everything's a-okay!"

With a laugh at her childish antics, the women took her answer for what it was and ignored the feeling that she was really lying.

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Orokid: So… what do you think? I just finished watching the second season (Spring) on Sunday, and I started watching this around the first (and last) showing of the character of Shiori in the first season. Took me a while, eh? Lol.

Read and review me!!!