Note to readers: This is an alternate universe, and characters will be different than they are in the series. I see Haruka and Michiru more as they are in the manga, but I am also using a more vulnerable Haruka. Michiru is much the same, but you will see more of them both as the story progresses. They are also not "cousins" or "friends" in this story, the way they've been portrayed in the english anime, so you have been warned.
I took the title from Regina Spektor's beautiful song "Samson".. It will relate to this story as it progresses, so please give it a listen!
The plot will eventually explain itself, so please be patient. I hope you keep reading, because I have thought this story out well and I think you will enjoy it if you love Haruka and Michiru even half as much as I do. :)
I Loved You First
Introduction: My Suspension
When I was a child, everything was very black and white. There were princes and princesses, heroes and villains, but no mixture of the two. Nothing close to gray.
I first experienced gray in the afternoons after second grade classes. My friend and I would slip to the quiet of my backyard to run races, fight dragons, and watch the fairies have picnics in the treetops. We liked to play games of make-believe, especially princes and princesses. But since there were no boys, I was the voted prince. I was named the rescuer.
I remember running... running like the small expanse of wet grass stretched on forever. I remember the fight with the dragon not being easy. I was thrown onto my back, and then had to crawl back up the hill, doing anything to reach her. My princess. I had been struck by this beast, and with my last dying breath I demanded a kiss.
That was my first memory of true rejection.
In that moment of gray I felt a tinge of shame amongst it all. Why would I ask such a thing, let alone expect to get it? And why would I share such a deep desire? I quickly convinced myself that pretending to be a prince was imaginary, the way fairies and dragons were. Still, that afternoon in my backyard made the pretend feel very real.
She dismissed it as make-believe, and we went back to being aliens. I used my swing-set as a space ship, and we went far away together. She came back down to earth, but I didn't. No, I only watched as she landed, feet firmly on the ground while I remained trapped in the gray area.
I was –I am– suspended here.
----
Things change. People change.
I made myself fall in love with a young boy who was into the same stuff as me. To keep myself grounded I bonded with him over... ground. Dirt, to be more precise. I took up dirtbiking, and he was there on the track. Someone knowledgeable, he helped me break out of newbie status.
He became my best friend, my young boyfriend... and the brother of one of the most gorgeous girls I ever met. Yes, I fell in... like with his sister.
I don't think she liked me the same way. We kissed once, on a dare, but it was so quick that she probably doesn't remember, even if I harbour the memory the same way I harbour all memories of kisses. That's the main difference between me and most other girls: to them kisses with other girls "don't count".
Everything ends the same. The girls went back to being grounded, to come back down to earth, but they still got to see the view from the gray area if only for a brief moment. They saw what I see every day, marvelled at its beauty, then took the mile-long trip back.
They can afford round trips.
My second memory of true rejection was when that boyfriend dumped me and his sister never talked to me again. Sure, there were the awkward moments when we'd strike up conversation and lie to ourselves–we'd play pretend that it was old times again– but at the end of the day we were no more friends than I was with the fairies in my backyard. She went to join the other figments of my imagination.
----
Those may have been memories of my first rejection, but they weren't my first memories of love. No, my first love was long before those, when I thought that love only existed between princes and princesses.
Her name is Michiru, and she has been everything, and nothing, at the same time.
Any sane person would call her my imaginary friend.
----
Every day that I can remember, Michiru has been around. Sometimes only in spirit, but most times in a physical manifestation that can somehow leave me both breathless and gasping for air. We grew up together, her being a child alongside me that would keep me from crying–whether it was in a crib or from a scraped knee.
I recognized her solely as beauty, apparent as the salty breeze off an ocean or frost covering my window. She watched, kept guard, but was stealthy and silent, her eyes penetrating the mirror through my own with the ability to knock my heart into my stomach.
I would whisper to her in the dark, under the comforter of my bed. I told her how the dark scared me, and she held the hand that once grasped for a flashlight. She told me that there were worse things to be afraid of than spirits in the darkness. It was with the sadness, the reverence of a true ghost, so I knew not to ask her about it again. The next night I wasn't afraid of the spirits: I used the time to pray that Michiru would be sent to heaven.
She would come in pieces, eyes one day and hands the next. She was never whole, though she tried desperately to be complete for me. She retained a hollow face one afternoon, glimmering silver though no more there than she'd ever been. It was enough. It was beautiful. I knew I couldn't have invented the skin that was nothing more than a breath of air, the hair hanging to where her shoulders would have been before disappearing into wisps of thin smoke. I wasn't an inventor of what could be perceived as perfection.
But in her efforts to make herself into something more tangible, she lost her voice. It remained only when she laughed, the eerie echoing of church bells that kept me up late at night. I secretly longed for her to tell me I was safe before I slept–she had become my security blanket.
Years after the other children grew out of their imaginary friends, mine continued to follow me like some doomed phantom, expression forlorn and eyes downcast. The only time she would smile is if I took her to the beach, where she stared into the waves as if they held promises. Inches of her translucent dress would be submersed as the tide came in. And then, after hours of waiting and watching, I would see her mouth turn upwards slightly. This was barely even a glimpse of a smile, but my eyes would flood at the hope of her happiness.
The summer before I turned seventeen faded slowly, along with my prayers that she would go back to being content. I waited with her by the ocean from morning to night, until I was freezing cold, even if it was pouring rain. She was distant, sorrowful, eyes always looking through me. It was the brief moment her limpid eyes turned turquoise that I realized that she had never been happy here–only lovely.
----
The night before my birthday I remember her acting strangely–less distant. When I went to turn off the light she made eye contact with me, her eyes the most aquamarine they'd ever been. The most human. Her hand went for the light switch, the struggle evident in her eyes as she stared hopelessly at her fingers. They were reaching, growing more solid as they neared the point of touching it. She pulled them back for a moment, examining, and just as she was about to give up, to let her hand fall, it was solid and had a hint of colour below the surface. It held just a slight beige tone. It was strange seeing that –the hand floating while attached to the ghost body– but when she turned on the light the feeling of joy had overwhelmed me.
Here I had thought that my Michiru was doomed to never feel anything again. I had feared more than anything that she would never feel the waves lapping against her legs when she went to the beach, but here she was turning off the light. She had touched it; she'd felt it. She'd learned to feel.
I felt that hand on my arm guiding me to my bed, and although it wasn't the warmest hand, it was certainly comforting. I felt it smooth the hair away from my face, my cheek being cupped in her palm. My guardian may have been voiceless but now I knew she was here. If I could feel her hand, and if she could feel me, than we were either both real or neither of us were. And I couldn't have cared less which way it was.
I started, jolting upright as I heard her whisper –actually say– something I thought I would never hear from her lips. "Haru..ka," she breathed, the three syllables an utmost struggle, "Hap..py.. Birth..day."
----
Chapter One: Guardian
I was so stunned that for a moment I imagined the air evaporating between us, until I was also lost for words. I needed air to speak, but my lungs weren't working the way they always had. I just stared at her tangible form, the paper-thin skin and hair that mirrored waves. The eyes that now seemed more of this earth, less of her distant solar system.
She was impatient, didn't wait for the response that I hadn't even been forming. "It took.. so much practice, Haruka." –I loved how she repeated my name the way I would repeat hers if she wasn't invisible to eyes other than mine– "but now.. now I've made this form, this voice, so I can say the things I couldn't when you were younger... Why I'm here."
When she said it like that.. It was almost as if I hadn't created her. That she wasn't a fantasy or illusion, but a person if you could call her that. It made me wonder if she was thinking this, or if she was telling me I wasn't crazy because my unconscious had told her so.
The true test of whether or not I was crazy would be if I could invent someone like Michiru. She was so complex, so beautiful, so encompassed with raw emotion. Using just the power of her eyes she spoke volumes, when I had always been socially inept. Could I create someone so superior to mankind? The answer was a plain, obvious, no. I was not that creative, and could not believe that I was capable, so I chose to believe her instead.
"What you couldn't say..," I paused longer than she had, "when I was younger?"
She nodded, the turquoise mane of curls turning into the briefest of waterfalls. "It was a long story, not the kind that seven, ten, or even twelve year olds can comprehend. I'm not entirely sure that you won't run senseless.. But I've had faith in you, Haruka."
Faith. I shivered as she murmured my name, the breath of it sounding like a god's prayer. What did she have to pray for? Her freedom from the confines of my company?
She waited, but I was still slightly breathless. Dizzy. It was a sunless hour of the morning, and my imaginary friend was telling me she was all too real. With conviction.
"There were no spirits that scared you when we were children, Haruka, you held the hand of one. A very real one." She smiled, for the first time since the summer on the beach, and I mirrored her.
"A spirit of waves? A ghost of Christmas past? A what exactly?" I was shocked at the light quality of my voice, a tone I hadn't heard myself use since I was.. well a child.
She laughed, but it wasn't an echo. It sounded like a captured recording of fairies singing. "A ghost of a little girl. One who died before she could meet you."
We both fell silent, me staring at her while she sat like a stone on the edge of my bed. The distance seemed both small and large, and I found myself fighting to embrace her. That was what I usually did when a girl was upset, right? Hold her? Except Michiru had usually been doing the holding, and this didn't seem like the right moment. There were things I still didn't understand.
"I always wondered why you looked so desolate," I began, stuttering slightly on the last word. "But I guess it's because you're...dead?" that really hadn't come out quite the way I'd intended, and I instantly regretted it.
She shook her head slightly. "I was never born, Haruka. I don't know what it's like to be alive. And I've never desired anything other than to protect you. I felt that without my voice, I couldn't tell you that you were safe, loved, alive. You were always fine, though, even without me." The sadness in her eyes returned, starting to hang onto her entire face until she became the piece of driftwood she had been for the past few years.
"Not true. Not at all –" My heart was overwhelmed as I spoke her name aloud "–Michiru. You were all I could hang onto, sometimes, that piece of childhood. Even if I loved a boyfriend.. A girl.. I still hung onto you. Did you think that I took you to the beach every day to watch the waves myself? No, I went there to see you smile. That was how I enjoyed myself."
She looked reverent, the sadness fading but the distance returning. "Perhaps it wasn't so much of a loss for them to bring me back, then, for you. Your happiness is worth it to me. No matter what," she swore, and the intensity was what broke through my veil, the tears falling free of my eyelashes.
I felt her protective grasp, the thin arms that still seemed to surround me. Despite the inches I had on her, that it was her head under my chin, I felt like I was the one being protected. Though she looked more like the princess, the one to be kept hidden from monsters, I felt like she was really my prince. Now, with her eyes closed, cheek turned into my chest, she looked less like a princess and more like an angel. But I supposed that was what she was, my guardian. And I had to try to let her rescue me, because it was her role. Maybe if she rescued me, she could keep herself together.
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AN: there it is, the first chapter. There will be much more to come, I think, as I can't stop writing this story! I'm not entirely sure where I see it going, but I know it will be much the same as this, the tragic element with the fairy tale and romantic aspects as well.
Please review. I want to know that someone is reading this, and enjoying it. Constructive criticism is also appreciated. What do you think of it so far, good or bad?
