What Could Have Been
"It's kind of ironic."
"What?" Yuuno asked absently as he scribbled corrections into the margins as he proof-read Hayate's latest attempt at summarizing the Cranagan City Defence Forces' activities in the last year.
Hayate smiled, and although she seemed decently amused there was also a tired edge in her face. "I spent most of my life getting out of a chair, only to make my career sitting in one."
Blinking, Yuuno pushed his glasses up and sat back. The statement was unexpected, and so while he waited for Hayate to elaborate he helped himself to another cup of coffee from the pot on her desk. Way past working hours, both of them had changed to comfortable sweats and had crashed on the couch in Hayate's office as they struggled to finish writing the military grant proposals due the next day.
Seeming to read his mind, Hayate said, "I'm so sorry Yuuno-kun, for making you stay up so late helping me. It's my fault, Rein's always after me to be better organized…"
Patiently, Yuuno repeated his previous answers to that same apology. "It's never any trouble to help an old friend. Besides," he teased lightly, "I'm prepared this year. Notice how I brought a change of clothes to work today?"
That got the grin he had been hoping for. Hayate sighed and shuffled through her statistics print-outs. "I hate how writing these grants always gets shoved to the back of my To Do list. I swear, Yuuno-kun, that I keep adding days at the end for buffer room but somehow emergencies always eat up that time."
Since she didn't seem to be opening up, Yuuno tried to fish gently. "That's to be expected though, from having a command position, right?"
"They don't warn you about juggling long-term priorities in cadet school. So I learned which armed opponent to shoot first in a firefight, but not whether socializing with the Mayor is more important than approving surveillance of drug bars or writing family documents for people."
Yuuno chuckled and passed the corrected sheet back to her. "Take a look at that; I tried to keep most of it the same. It's a different kind of responsibility, being in command. Unlike Nanoha, you can't Starlight Breaker people who don't agree with you." The thought made him wince and grin at the same time.
"No, I can't." Hayate hesitated, looking down. She opened her mouth, then closed it again and quickly called up a screen to start transcribing furiously.
Yuuno just hummed and began sorting through the piles of paper, clipping together the graphs that Hayate would need soon and laying them on the table. One thing he had learned about his childhood friends early on was that their determination not to "trouble" anyone with their problems made it hard to get them to open up at all. For Nanoha, he had to just jump in and do things for her without her consent to eventually hear her troubles; counter-intuitively, Fate was more talkative, probably as a result of her childhood therapy. But with Hayate, Yuuno had to pretend not to notice anything until she decided to confide in him.
Sometimes waiting for an archaeological site to be fully excavated took less time.
They continued working in silence for a few more minutes before Hayate's fingers stopped their movement.
"Yuuno-kun?" She asked quietly.
"Yes?"
"Do you ever get…angry? At yourself, when you can't go out and fight alongside Nanoha-chan or Fate-chan or any of our other friends?"
He sipped some cold coffee to give himself time to think. Lots of time, since he then had to spit the terrible gloop back into his cup and get up to drink a needed glass of water. "Not really. I admit, I do miss the times when I went out and fought beside all of you when we were kids. I like protecting the people I love. But now, I'm not strong enough to handle the kind of fights Nanoha and Fate get into." Yuuno shrugged, swirling the last mouthful of water in the bottom of the glass. "There are too many people in their teams for me to protect at once, while also keeping myself safe. So I do what I can in other ways—I'm okay with that."
"That's the thing," Hayate said softly. Her hands dropped into her lap and she sighed, the sound wavering on dejection. "I am strong enough."
He was starting to understand. Gently, Yuuno said for her, "You've got the highest mage rank out of everyone."
"After the Book of Darkness incident, I worked really hard to walk again," Hayate whispered, looking up at him. "I really wanted to protect the people I love too—I wanted to be like Nanoha-chan and Fate-chan. So I worked, and even if it hurt, even if some days it felt like I could never heal…I told myself that it would be worth it when I saved people like you guys saved me."
Yuuno didn't say anything, but he sat back down and took one of her hands in his, squeezing to show his support.
She gave him a quivering smile. "I hate watching my friends get hurt, fighting enemies I know I could beat."
"Could beat, if you had chosen to be a fighter instead of a commander?" Yuuno filled in for her astutely.
The brunette nodded. "All this magical potential inside me," Hayate said, stretching her arms out. "And I'm wasting it by doing nothing useful."
Yuuno frowned, trying to work out all that Hayate was saying. "You're wondering what you worked hard for, since you're not on the front lines?"
"Well, you make it sound like I'm being hard on myself," Hayate protested. "Everyone should use what talents they're gifted with to help others. I'm lucky enough to be blessed with so much power, but what do I do with it?" She slapped a hand down on the documents and gestured around her office. "I fight paperwork with the tip of my pen and my keyboards." Her joking tone fell a little flat when her self-deprecating tone came through her words.
Yuuno took his glasses off and polished them with a handkerchief, stifling his urge to sigh in exasperation. "Hayate, why did you join command school?"
"Huh?" She blinked owlishly at him. Then her face turned thoughtful. "I wanted to help people."
It never ceased to touch Yuuno at how sincere Hayate was when she used that phrase. "You could have done that as an Enforcer, or as an investigator. Why command?"
An embarrassed look spread over Hayate's face as she guessed where this line of interrogation was going. Yuuno raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to answer.
Finally, she mumbled, "Because I was pretty good at it during training."
Pretty good? Yuuno scoffed silently. She had been top of her class—the accelerated class. "It takes talent to know who does best where, and to come up with strategies and tactics on the fly. It's not stuff that any SS-rank mage can do." Yuuno smiled. "Being able to command others is a rare gift too, one that you happen to have in spades. You're using it to help people."
"That's sweet Yuuno, but it's not true. Remember the JS Incident?"
"Hayate," he groaned. God, would none of his friends ever graciously accept a compliment? And geez, they all had incredibly selective memories. "That was nearly eight years ago. It was your first command position. You kept everyone alive and stopped the bad guys. How many successful missions have you had since?" He wagged a finger at her. "And before you answer, remember, I read all the mission reports and I have an eidetic memory!"
Prudently she chose not to answer, only sticking out her tongue at him and blushing harder. Then her eyes saddened. "Still…there's so much I could have done as a frontline mage. I had the power to do it."
"That's true," Yuuno agreed quietly. "You can say the same thing about me."
"Yuuno-kun!" Hayate objected, looking shocked.
He only smiled solemnly at her. "I could have gone into medicine, or magical research. But instead, I'm just a librarian."
Instead of continuing to dispute the point, Hayate just looked at him intently. "Yuuno-kun, so many different branches of the TSAB rely on the quick and accurate information that you give them. You help thousands of people every day, and you've managed to organize the information flow of the Infinity Library in a way no one ever has before. Your work is indispensible."
Yuuno never had any insecurities about his work, but hearing someone finally thank him so earnestly made him happy, never having been aware before that he had felt disheartened at all. It was his turn to blush slightly. "Thanks. I guess sometimes you really aren't aware just how much good you're doing, huh?"
A grin tugged at Hayate's lips. She picked up her proposal again, her body posture more cheerful. "I get it, Yuuno-kun."
"Of course you do," he chuckled, pushing his glasses up. "Good commanders have to be clever that way, don't they?"
Author's Note: This story came about when I thought "Wouldn't it be cool if Hayate was a standard frontline fighter, instead of a command mage?" and immediately got lots of cool action scenes and explosions in mind. However, as I'm swamped with other stories and don't have the time to do another story, an alternative thought occurred to me: "What does Hayate think about her choice not to physically fight?" And so this fic came to life.
As far as I know, I made up the Fate childhood therapy thing, but in my opinion it's not too far off the mark since I could see Fate getting some help for that after Precia did such a number on her.
I realized that I've never really written Yuuno before, since the poor guy gets put on a bus in most of my other stories! I made up the part about him having an eidetic memory, but it would be pretty cool and fitting if he did =D.