Through The Looking Glass

A/N: Should be writing my contest submission right now, and finishing my homeworks (and also a few other fics), but…well, sitting for a flash fiction won't hurt…I think.

They were supposed to be friends. Just friends. Okay, maybe closer than that, but it wasn't supposed to be more than platonic. But why he had her in his embrace now, gently stroking her silky, messy hair, murmuring tender words to her ears to stop her sobbings?

He tried-numerous times-to pretend that it was okay. That it was because she looked at him as her brother, just as Seles and him. But no, flashes of thoughts in his mind betray him most of the time. He knew.

He hated himself for secretly being happy although she was in her worst shape. For a certain glint of joy in his heart that she chose him, of all people, to talk with, to see her vulnerable side.

She didn't know about the raging war taking place in his head, burying herself into his arms, to get a small comfort from him, trying to erase her mind of that nightmare.

He was too late to back down when he realized what he felt.

He fell for her. Zelos Wilder, the Chosen, fell for a woman. Wasn't he supposed to prevent that from happening? To distance himself from whoever near him? He mentally laughed. Look what happened now. He carelessly let himself following her rhyme, forgetting everything in 'Chosen personae' plan.

Yet he admitted that he treasured every moment he spent with her. Every moment he felt himself human, just as another ordinary people in Tethe'alla. He had the right to laugh, to smile, to feel happy and sad, to choose. Come to think of it, only three persons he loved in Tethe'alla. Sheena, Sebastian, and Seles (Years after in the Journey of Regeneration he thought that as an irony compared to Colette).

No, he didn't hate her. In fact, he couldn't think how he would be without her. Seles was confined in the abbey. Sebastian cared for him, of course, but having a friend of his age was a great pleasure. No, what he hated was the fact that he couldn't take this too long, no matter how much he desired for it. No, he knew, one day, as cruel as it could be, he must cast her away from his world.