Character study again. I love doing these, and they're about all I'm good for, but I hope it's enjoyed.
Disclaimer: None of it's mine, I'm just playing.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The small alarm clock by the bed kept up its vigil, alerting anyone awake to the passage of the seconds, and by implication, the slipping away of their lives. Joining it on its lonely nighttime watch was a young woman, blonde and pensive, seated at the moonlit window. Her shadow cast darkness over the sleeping form of another young woman, this one curled up loosely in bed.
Haruka turned her head, watching the slow rise and fall of Michiru's breathing, the careless way her hair scattered around her head in sleep. One hand curled against the hollow of her throat, fingers poised as though to play some dream-harp.
She envied Michiru that pleasant rest, and hoped her dreams were sweet, but she also felt a little guilty. She was stealing this time together, time that only she would remember. They were close in the darkness, breathing the same air, sharing the same space, and sometimes, it was comforting. It was enough.
Haruka glanced out the window again, where colors had been smoothed over by the silvery highlights of the moon's glow. She needed to stay awake. To keep watch, for a while, against the whole world.
Michiru did so much in life, played so many roles, and there were so many of those roles that Haruka could never hope to mimic. She was a mirror, reflecting without judging the world around her. People were drawn to that – that when they were around Michiru, they would become aware not only of their flaws, but of their good qualities too. She let them realize the details of the wonderful things they brought to people's lives. As for the bad, they might become aware of it when she was around, but her patience, her smile, made it seem like she did not use it to value a person. Rather, it felt like she was trying to show them that whatever they had done that they regretted could be forgotten and forgiven if they only wanted it enough and worked hard enough for it. And she made them, by her kindness, WANT to work for it.
At least, she did for Haruka. And Michiru was kind, so very kind, that Haruka could not imagine she would withhold this sort of positivity from anyone. That she, Haruka, was a good or special enough person to be the only one drawing out this feeling.
Michiru made a small, sleepy sound and rolled over restlessly in the bed. Haruka closed her eyes a moment and just listened to the small sound, made beautiful by Michiru's voice, as it for a moment blotted out the sound of the clock.
There was no way to live up to that – to Michiru's kindness, her talent, her way with people. When she tried, Haruka would only feel like a poor imitation, a pretender to the world her partner inhabited so naturally.
She was not so strong a person as that. She was not a mirror. She was only a sword. Something which can, depending on its use, attack or defend. A strength, her own strength. Michiru was more than able to take care of herself, but that didn't matter. That was another level of security – knowing that if she, the sword failed, then whoever had defeated her would have an equal fight on their hands.
No, she didn't protect because Michiru needed protecting. She protected because it was her gift, something tangible that she could offer to Michiru when she was unaware, when she was sleeping, when she was sharing her music with the world, in the hundred other normal moments she was sometimes able to steal in a day. Something given in the same unconscious way Michiru gave so much.
Something given because to try to put name or thought to what else they offered one another – that one word encompassing a gulf of emotion so deep and endless it defied true description – was too much to face. Just feeling it, trying to contain it within herself, sometimes seemed like it would overwhelm her. In a way, she feared it, but she also embraced it. And the only way she could consciously think to try to explain it was through action… through protecting her.
The woman she loved.
So she stayed awake, at least a while longer each night. Sometimes she sat up until a voice, murmuring and sleepy, asked her in that half-awake drawl common to awoken sleepers, if she was coming to bed. She would watch, so that for a little while, Michiru could dream in peace.
No, there was no such thing as peaceful sleep, not anymore, likely not ever. But there could, for a time, be safety. Her gift.
Her love.