'I Show not your Face but your Heart's Desire'

Disclaimer: I do not own Tokyo Mew Mew, Kish, Ichigo, Lettuce or the Mirror of Erised.

A/N: This bunny came and clunked me over the head one night, and I just had to write it. If you can make it through all the misery there is fluff at the end. Probably too much fluff. Ah well, go read.

'This Mirror will give us neither knowledge nor truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.' ~ Dumbledore

'Only Ichigo is like a piercing thorn to me, a continuing pain in my chest that will never end.' ~ Kish

It's just a room. There are many like it in Tokyo, and in any city: disused office blocks and empty warehouses, locked and dusty, slipping slowly down the road towards dereliction. In the city centre people fall over one another and scrabble for room; here, whole streets and blocks are empty. The humans are fond of wasting space.

Kish could have wandered into any such room, but fate has been playing a slow, cruel game with him for a long time now, and now she has decided to lead him here. This is the stage she has chosen for the killing blow.

This room is not empty. It contains a mirror.

The mirror is free-standing, gilt framed, magnificently crafted and as high as the ceiling. It couldn't look more out of place, but Kish doesn't need anyone to tell him why it is here. It has been hidden, and with good reason. Nobody would want any worker or friend or relation of theirs to look into this mirror.

Writing is etched around the frame. Erised stra oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. 'I show not your face but your heart's desire.' He can see himself in the mirror, handsome enough, granted, pale and wiry and overtly savage, reflected with perfect clarity. Next to him is Ichigo.

He inhales sharply and leans forward, even as he tastes the poison in the image before him. It is the most beautiful vision he has ever seen. Ichigo's face is glowing, and it is clear, as she twines her fingers through his and rests her head on his shoulder, that there is no place in the world she would rather be. Kish presses a hand to the glass, as though he is hoping to fall right through and reach her, but he knows that this time he cannot teleport to where she is. He stares hungrily, and she smiles at him and caresses his reflection's hand, but she does not speak. Her skin is cold, slippery glass. His mind screams at the cruel lie, the twist of fate that led him to this room. He wants to raise his fists and smash and smash until there is nothing left of the cursed mirror with its twisted reflection, but he cannot. Her face is too beautiful. Instead he stands and gazes, gazes until his eyes are heavy, until his legs ache and his extremities are numb with cold, and still he does not know where he will find the will to leave, nor what will sustain him until he can return.

He supposes he always knew deep down, but now the fact is out in the open, solid and real. The knowledge that, without raising a hand, Ichigo will destroy him.

Lettuce walked briskly along the street with Masha bobbing above her. Ryou had sent her out to perform a scan of the area; if the Cyniclons planted another slow-maturing Chimera it would be good to have advance warning. She walked with her hands in her pockets to protect them from the chill October air, head bowed meekly as always but happy and relaxed. There were few people about, and Masha was flying high enough that no-body would notice him unless they looked up, which they wouldn't do unless it rained. Which it wouldn't. Lettuce took a deep breath. It was a bright, crispy-blue afternoon, with a little bracing snap in the air, and the street she was walking along was wide and pleasant. She paused, allowing her gaze to drift longingly to a wispy concoction of blue organza in a boutique window – much strappier than she would have dared to wear, but she could dream – when Masha cried:

'Alien, alien!'

Lettuce's head snapped up. 'Where, Masha, where?'

'This way, this way!'

She followed the little robot as it flew to the end of the road and plunged down a side street. Windowless walls pressed together either side of her, and then the cut-through opened out onto another shopping street, more mainstream, with traffic streaming along it and gum sticking to the pavements. Masha swerved left and Lettuce followed. She kept up the chase for several blocks until her normal body was sweaty and gasping for breath. She leaned over and put her hands on her knees.

'Wait a minute, Masha. Mew Mew Lettuce, Metamorpho-SIS!' she cried. A moment later she was among the rooftops, leaping tirelessly after Masha's lead.

They continued for a good two miles or more, and then Masha stopped, seeming for all the world to peer over the edge of the roof they were on, and said more quietly:

'Alien here, Lettuce. Alien.'

Lettuce swung herself down to the ground and looked about her. They had left the shops and people far behind. She was standing in a dank, high-walled road, lined with grimy office blocks. Windscreen glass glittered in the light of the sun, which was now beginning to sink. Despite her run, Lettuce shivered. It was much colder and darker here, with the walls blocking out most of the sun; already it seemed like evening, not late afternoon. She wished she hadn't had to come here alone. Of course, as Mew Lettuce she ought to be able to fight off any humans she might meet, but the instinct of caution remained.

'Alien,' Masha called brightly, calling her back to herself. Quickly she muted him and hopped through the broken window of the building he was indicating.

Inside it was all shadows and dust. Masha flew immediately to the stairs, flapping and blinking since he couldn't speak, and Lettuce ran after him. Three flights of stairs...four...five...she tried to quiet her rasping breathing as Masha halted on a landing, indicating the right-hand door with a swish and a flash of lights.

'In here, Masha?' she whispered. He gave a blink of confirmation and disappeared inside her pocket.

Heart hammering, Lettuce reached for the door. It was standing half-open, and she was able to slide part of the way through without moving it at all.

The scene that met her eyes was one of the most outwardly ordinary, puzzling and surreal she had ever seen.

A boy, sitting cross-legged in front of a mirror in an office block.

All perfectly mundane things. But a boy with long, pointed ears? A gilt mirror taller than she was? And in a derelict city room, glittering like the last sane thought in a mind gone mad? Or like the first ripple of insanity in a mundane head.

Lettuce leaned forward, and the door creaked.

Kish – for that was who he was, she would have known him anywhere – rose and turned his head towards her in one smooth, unhurried, blindingly swift motion. His golden eyes were full of tears, resignation, and a sort of 'well here I am, what are you going to do about it' mockery, like a son caught taking drugs. Around these emotions, his face was twisted, as though for form's sake, into a savage mask of hatred. For a moment they stared at each other, and Lettuce swayed on the spot, like a person teetering on the edge of an endless abyss, too stunned to even think of her castanets. For a moment she forgot the war, forgot everything, and made to stretch out her hand towards him.

Then he was gone.

Lettuce found that she was shaking. She hung onto the door-frame, trying to control the sudden gush of hysteria that was trying to engulf her. Some might have called her weak, or melodramatic, but she had felt his pain so clearly, and it had left her shocked and weak. She stood still for a couple of minutes, breathing deeply in and out, while Masha hovered around her head, blinking and flashing his concern.

' 'M'OK, Masha,' she said at last. 'Emergency warning terminated.' Masha had been primed to send a distress signal back to the café, but at her words he powered down and floated off towards the mirror. Lettuce slowly raised her head, like a wounded animal, watching after him. Kish had been staring into that mirror; had it been the cause of his distress. Before she became a Mew she wouldn't have worried. She would have assumed that he had gone mad, and was despairing over his own reflection. But she was more experienced and more cautious now. She didn't want to approach the mirror, but she had to. She was a superhero, after all.

She ignored the glass as she tipped it forwards to examine the frame, though the images within it flickered temptingly in the corners of her eyes. She paid minute attention to the frame, running her fingers over the letters etched into the gilt. They were mirror writing, and it didn't take her quick mind long to work out what they said. I show not your face but you're heart's desire.

A boast, she wondered, about the quality of the reflection having the power to beautify your face? Or is there really something more? Well, only one way to find out...

She gripped the mirror frame in her hands, stood squarely in front of it, and then opened her eyes and looked, long and hard.

She saw herself, not wary and dishevelled as she knew she must be, but relaxed and smiling. She was standing in the middle of what looked like a lush green park, and there were many people, though not enough to be called a crowd, moving around behind her, or lazing in the sunshine that was pouring down. And then she gasped and leaned in closer. Many of the people were Cyniclons, with pale skin and long ears, flying, teleporting and...here her jaw fell in amazement...conversing easily with the humans they passed. She was seeing a world where Cyniclons and humans were living in harmony.

There was something else, in the foreground of the picture. A man, not touching her but making it quite clear from his body language that they were together. His face was in shadow, not definite, but she knew who it was. Not Ryou, object of her fantasies and triggerer of her easy blushes, but Pai. Pai, her enemy. Pai, cold, indomitable, and stunningly beautiful. And now Lettuce saw the full power of the mirror. It dug up one's most hopeless dreams from the corners of the mind where they had been buried and thrust them into the world of cold, acknowledged fact. It generated despair.

Her first instinct was to gaze, but she remembered Kish and turned away, hiding her face in her arm while the tears came. She could imagine what he had seen, and how much he must have suffered because of it.

As she stood, a thought became quite clear in her head. She had to go to Ichigo, and tell her what she had seen. She had to persuade Ichigo to make it right. She straightened up and turned away from the mirror, surprised by the relief swelling inside her. For so long now she hadn't known what she should do. She had to fight the Cyniclons to prevent them from destroying all that was dear to her, but everything in her nature went against it. But now she knew what she had to do.

Tell Ichigo.

'Ichigo-san!'

Ichigo looked up in surprise from the table where she was sitting for her lunch break. Lettuce was hurrying towards her, hailing her with a steely tone which she'd never used in Ichigo's hearing before.

'What is it, Lettuce?' she asked, turning to face her with a slight frown.

'I n-need to talk to you...' She was stammering now, but she still sounded steely. 'it's about Aoyama-san and K-kisshu.'

'I don't understand you.'

'Then let me explain.' Lettuce sat down in the chair next to hers and made a firm gesture with her hands. 'I...you see...I think that...' She began to falter, then shook her head, running a hand over her face.

'Lettuce? What is it?' Ichigo said, increasingly puzzled.

'Oh, it's no good, I can't argue this point.' Lettuce looked her straight in the eye. 'I think...that you should break up with Masaya.'

'And get together with Kish instead?' Ichigo demanded, actually getting to her feet. 'Lettuce, what are you talking about? I love Aoyama-kun, you know that, and Kish is...is the enemy...'

Lettuce sat where she was, her eyes focussed meekly on her lap, and Ichigo felt her anger ebb away, to be replaced with shame. The shy green Mew didn't deserve to be shouted at. Whatever her reason was, it was bound to be well-meant, but she wouldn't be certain enough in it to stand up to any amount of shouting. In all their acquaintance Ichigo should have learnt that.

'G-gomen, Ichigo-san,' Lettuce said timidly when Ichigo had fallen silent, 'but you see, Aoyama-san...he's perfect.'

'I know,' Ichigo nodded.

'Don't go all gooey on me!' Lettuce shouted, banging her fist on the table. Ichigo jerked backwards in her chair, eyes wide with shock and not a little fear. She had never seen Lettuce like this before. 'I'm trying to have a serious conversation with you, Ichigo,' Lettuce continued. 'Now please, promise me that you'll listen to me with an open mind, just for a moment, because this is really, really important.'

'H-hai, Lettuce-san.'

'Aoyama is perfect,' Lettuce repeated, 'but is he perfect for you?'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean that there could be various cracks in your relationship, various incompatibilities, and they would just get covered up because he's so kind and so sweet. I'm sure that if you stayed with him you'd be very happy, but sometimes...' Lettuce thought back to the mirror, to her safe, sweet dream of Ryou being swept away and replaced with Pai in all his unattainable glory. '...sometimes you have to take risks. When you're with Aoyama-san you always seem to be worrying about not making him think you're weird, or just being amazed at your own luck, and he...he's always trying to protect you; it's like he thinks you can't look after yourself. But Kish loves you. Ichigo, you must see that.'

'He's got a funny way of showing it,' Ichigo said petulantly.

'Because you never give him a chance!' Lettuce burst out. She could see what this must look like to Ichigo: like she was trying to ruin her friend's relationship with Masaya for some inexplicable reason, but she had to go on. The memory of Kish's face would haunt her like a ghost until she could persuade Ichigo to love him. 'Ichigo-san, did you ever honestly weigh them up and choose Aoyama-san, or were you just determined to stick with Aoyama from the start?'

'Lettuce,' Ichigo whispered, 'why this? Why now, all of a sudden?'

'Because,' Lettuce replied, 'I've seen a mirror. A mirror that shows you your heart's desire. And I looked into it, and I saw the humans and the Cyniclons at peace. You have no idea what it was like, Ichigo, it felt like I would never look away again, and it hurt, down here...' Lettuce laid a hand on her chest, and Ichigo saw to her astonishment that there were tears sparkling on her cheeks. 'And,' Lettuce ploughed on, though her voice was shaking now, 'I saw Kisshu looking into the mirror, and I can guess what he saw, and he looked...he looked...'

'Unhappy?' Ichigo suggested quietly.

'Oh God, Ichigo, you don't know what it was like!' Lettuce cried, and broke down entirely. Ichigo stared at her in amazement. What must Kish have looked like, that his expression could reduce Lettuce to this. She felt sudden admiration for her friend's unthinking compassion, and reached out to embrace her, shedding a tear or two herself as she did so. Grief like this could not be observed without sympathy.

'What do you want me to do?' she asked quietly.

'I can take you to the room,' Lettuce answered, her tears still flowing but her voice quite steady. 'I know you can't just stop loving Aoyama and start loving him instead, but you have to try and make it right. You can't just leave him like that...' Her voice broke and she buried her face in Ichigo's shoulder.

'Oh, Lettuce,' Ichigo murmured.

'Please just give him a chance,' Lettuce whispered, her voice little more than a breath on Ichigo's ear.

'Yes,' Ichigo said, hesitant at first, then clearer and stronger. 'Yes, Lettuce. I will.'

Kish sits cross-legged in front of the mirror and rests his fingertips against the glass. Ichigo reaches forward, a sad, compassionate smile on her face, but her hand cannot reach his. She turns and kisses his reflection's neck, and Kish touches the same spot on himself, trying to imagine the feel of her lips. A tear drops down his cheek and hangs, sparkling, from his jaw. It swells slowly, fed by the tributary his eye has become, until the weight is enough to break the surface tension. Then it falls, landing on his cold hand. Another follows it. Kish looks up at his weeping reflection, shaking his head slowly.

'Reflection, why are you crying? You live in paradise. Be glad.'

The Ichigo in the mirror reaches up, wiping the reflection-tears away, pressing her lips to his cheek. The action sends a barb through Kish's heart, and yet he smiles. Even in the midst of the pain, even with despair like a stalking jackal at his shoulder, the image is beautiful. He tastes the salt tears at the corner of his mouth, feels the sweet sorrow constricting in his breast, gazes up through the prisming tears, the deep, deep water, to find her face.

He wonders if this is what it feels like to die.

'Kisshu?'

A voice. He looks first to the mirror-Ichigo, but she is lost in his reflection, not even looking at him anymore, as though she knows his time is almost up. This is a real voice, a voice belonging to the solid, daylight world outside.

'Ichigo,' he replies, and stands.

Ichigo is a little out of breath from climbing up the stairs. She bends over for a moment, catching her breath, then peers forwards into the room. At the far end she can make out Kish, standing in front of an ornate mirror with his back turned towards her.

'Hiyah, Koneko-chan,' he says, his tone jaunty and yet oddly hollow, oddly thick. She steps closer, calling again.

'Kisshu, I...the others said I'd find you up here...'

'Why were you looking?' he demands, then answers his own question. 'Fate.'

'Kish...?'

'Just to wring out a few more drops of pain.' He takes a deep breath. 'But I warn you, Koneko-chan, I don't think I can bear much more and live.' He knows he's being melodramatic, and he doesn't care. But he also knows that the misery can't really kill him. His heart will keep resolutely beating. He will be forced to feel every second.

He turns, and Ichigo gasps:

'Kisshu!'

His face is a mask of shining tears. His golden eyes are swimming with them. Instinctively she rushes forward to comfort him, but he staggers backwards, fending her off.

'Don't touch me!'

'Kisshu...' She can't bear to see that much suffering, not on any face.

'Don't touch me!' he repeats. If it wasn't for that infernal mirror he wouldn't know what he wants anymore, but he is certain that it is not her pity. He doesn't want her hands holding him, soothing him, but not loving him. Tormenting him with the closeness of his goal, still an impossibility away. 'Please, Ichigo, just stay away.'

She drops her hands and stares, then whispers:

'Kisshu, what's wrong? What is this?'

'I show not your face but your heart's desire,' he intones dully. 'Look into it, Ichigo.'

'I see –'

'I know what you see. Please don't force me to hear it too.' She is right beside him, but he is staring into the mirror still. He would rather look at the reflection-Ichigo than the real one, and the thought terrifies him, but still he cannot look away. He sees himself, pale, tear-stained, trembling, and the mirror-Ichigo soothing him as one sooths a dying child, and every gentle touch is another stab wound, and all the while the real Ichigo stands beside him, silent, unreachable as the moon. He can feel what little self-control remains to him slipping away.

'Kisshu...I see...'

He buries his face in his hands as an unbearable pain lances through his body. It's consuming him, it's tearing him apart, burning away thought, reason and every good memory, leaving nothing but this horrible, cursed love, and he knows that at last he has found something that he wants more than Ichigo.

He wants to die.

'...I see you not crying.'

A stunned silence.

And he looks up, and the reflection hasn't changed. There is no empty space where he stands, marking his sudden suicidal urge. The mirror-Ichigo still smiles up at him, her hands in his hair.

As though he would ever be free.

And with that thought, he falls.

Ichigo stares at him in horror as he crumples to his knees at her feet, one hand covering his face, shoulders shaking with sobs. He looks so pitiful, so utterly defeated. She wanted to get him away from her; she wanted him to leave her alone. But she never meant to break him.

She drops to the ground too, and takes his face in her hands, clumsy in her haste. She doesn't know what she's doing. She only knows that she can't bear to watch another moment of this.

'Please don't cry, Kisshu. Please.'

He no longer has the strength to fight her off.

'Ichigo,' he whispers, raising his hands to thread them into her hair. It tumbles around his fingers, smooth and glossy and fragrant. He can feel her breath on his cheeks. 'I love you, Ichigo.' He no longer looks to the mirror. For a moment he had lost sight of how much he loved her, but now he has remembered again. Remembered all the things the mirror couldn't convey: her sweet scent, her warmth, her touch, her changing expressions. Not until the mirror can create a reflection that will step out of the glass, speak with her voice and hold him in her arms...no, not even then will he turn from his Ichigo. No matter how much it hurts him, his love for her is good. It's the one strong and whole thing left in him, and he will hang onto it, as it is hanging on to him. Even if it kills him.

'Ichigo,' he whispers once more, and bows his head, and weeps.

'I'm so sorry,' she breathes, pushing his hair back from his tear-stained face.

'I'm wholly yours, Ichigo. Even if you don't want me, even if you hate me. And I'll take any small thing you offer me; I just forgot that for a moment. Even the dogs can gather up the crumbs from under a neko's table, ne?'

'Don't talk that way!' She shakes him, her face suddenly hard, furious. She cups his cheek in one hand. 'I've hurt you so much. Lettuce is right. I never gave you a chance.'

'Oh God, Ichigo, it hurts. There's no way out.'

She looks at him long and steadily. It's quite possible his heart is broken beyond repair, but she knows she has to try. The time when she had a choice is long past. The mirror knows. It shows her her heart's desire, that smiling Kisshu, and the knowledge gives her strength.

'Kisshu...' She raises her other hand to his face, holding him still, wiping away the tears with her thumbs. His eyes are like golden pools.

'Please.' He makes no move to pull away, just gazes pleadingly into her eyes. 'Please don't. If you kiss me, and then leave...I can't...I won't...'

'I love you.'

In that dusty room in a skyscraper above Tokyo, time stands still.

'You love Masaya,' Kish states.

'Not the way you love me,' she replies. 'Nothing like the way you love me. And maybe, if I just give you a chance, you'll teach me to love you too. I know that I care for you, Kisshu. I know that I can bear to never see Masaya again, and I can't bear to see you crying like this.' Ichigo closes her eyes, searching deep inside herself. 'I understand why you don't trust me now, but I...' she stammers over the words, but carries on, '...I'm willing to spend as long as it takes regaining your trust. Because I love you.'

And she presses her lips to his.

Agony cleaves his heart in two. It burns until he nearly faints.

Ichigo holds him tight.

The pain fades, but the kiss doesn't. Her warm lips, full of vitality and life, press to his own chilled ones, and slowly they begin to respond.

It feels foolhardy to kiss her this way, like setting himself up for disappointment. She's stitching up the wounds in his heart with every touch, but she can rip those stitches out again if she chooses. All she has to do is pull away.

But she doesn't pull away. She wraps her arms around him, chafing his cold hands, pressing her face into his neck and kissing and kissing until all the tension is gone, all the sorrow melted away. He hadn't realised he had got so cold, sitting in front of the mirror in the unheated building, but suddenly he is shivering, clutching her to him, burrowing against her shoulder in search of warmth, and the kiss is starting to feel more like a snow rescue.

'Oh, Kisshu...' Ichigo whispers his name yet again, and he can hear the dismay in her tone as she realises his chilled state, the stiffness of his limbs. 'Kisshu, you...how long have you been here?'

'That doesn't matter now, Koneko-chan. I love you.'

'Enough to sit for hours looking at just a reflection of me?' she cries, her voice rising. 'Kish, I don't deserve to be loved that much. You should never have to –'

'Don't cry, Ichigo, please don't cry.'

She gives a watery smile, holding his face in both her hands as he rests his on her shoulders. 'Okay, Kish, I won't. But...I'll never...never hurt you this way again. Because I realise now that you...'

'Ichigo-chan.'

'...you love me. And I love you.'

Kish moans softly, a single tear trickling down his cheek, as she pulls him into another kiss. Her lips are indescribably gentle, her fingers move in his hair, and at last he dares to wrap his arms around her, to pull her close and bow her body backwards against his, confident that another kiss will follow this one, and another, and another. His head is full of her sweet smell, of the warm, delicious texture of her skin, of her taste as her mouth moves willingly with his, at long, long last.

Finally they pull apart and, holding each other close, turn to look one last time into the mirror.

This perfect contentment will not last forever. Soon other small desires will make themselves known; maybe one of them will see a meal, or a hot bath, or one of the other dozens of things that even lovers need to survive. And eventually they will have to face their comrades, and try to find some way to resolve the conflict that will tear them apart if it can.

But for now the mirror has nothing to add, no improvement to make. And they know that this undercurrent of perfect contentment will always be with them, as long as they can be in each other's arms and know that they are loved.

The happiest man on Earth would look into the Mirror and see himself, exactly as he is.' ~ Dumbledore