Disclaimer: No, they don't belong t'me, or a happier lass I would so be. *curtsies* (eek! poetic disclaimers! The end is nigh!)

Distorted by Kye

My mirror broke this morning.

I didn't mean to break it. I dropped the soap, and didn't mop up when I picked it up. So I started to walk out of the bath and I slipped. My hands waved for something to keep my balance; instead they crashed right through the mirror.

It didn't really hurt that much. That is, not as much as being dragged out of a car wreck in three peices. It wasn't as bad as, say, cutting my wrists and dumping salt on top. It wasn't that bad.

Basically, it hurt like hell.

But that wasn't what bothered me. What bothered me, as soon as I stopped grimacing over the blood and pain (and possibly several broken bones), was the face I saw in the mirror. A distorted, broken face, one that could never exist in the real world. It was sick and sharp and made of shards, and it was more like me than any reflection had ever been. Somehow I recognized it. Somehow it made me think of myself. And I was terrified at it.

No one should see something so surreal and know it as themself. Yet I did. I looked at those unfriendly edges, the pain-filled expression covering enough eyes and mouths and noses to furnish three people. And I knew it to be me.

I was that thing.

I was broken.

I was distorted.

I was wrong.

I wondered if she ever felt this way. Then I realized who I was thinking about. Miaka Yuuki had never been the 'wrong' one. She was the girl everyone loved. She was the brain, the teacher's pet, the mother's angel, the perfect friend. Even now, she played the confused and betrayed but loyal soulmate. As though she'd been the one ignored in a strange place, left for the nearest rapists. As though her beloved had dismissed her for her ex-best friend. Yet at the same time, she was doted on by an emperor and a hero. Her other followers were loyal (and gorgeous). She was treated well everywhere she went. Still she played the tragic heroine. Still people believed the act.

Once upon a time, I had wanted to be around Miaka Yuuki forever. She was my best friend, my confidante, my kindred spirit. She was that for years, and I thought she would always be. Until my epiphany, that is. It came to me one day in shocking color: the discovery that, while I had been screaming for her, losing my innocence in an impossible world, she had been necking with the village boys. The village boys for whom she had come back. Because "Friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love." And she was already sitting on his desk.

I didn't ever want to be with her again.

I couldn't bear the hate she brought out in me. It was seething, snakey, consuming hatred. I hadn't known I could loathe someone as much as I did Miaka. It choked me, consumed me, threw my reason from me. It took away my control and tossed me into the throes of rage. Alone I had to stay, or be eaten alive by my passionate revulsion.

I knew all of this, when my mirror broke this morning. I knew it in seconds, in moments, in an incoceivably small point in time and space. I knew it before my blood stopped flowing, before the attendents rushed to my side, before anyone could call to me. And I knew something else.

I could only be with my self, alone in my solitude. Alone with my cares and my hate and my scars and my mirror. Wretched and hated and never forgiving. Forever distorted.

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A.N.: Yeah, Marc! You gettin' good, man! Marc: You are a very bitter person. -_-;; kye: well, it's all your inspiration. marc: hn. kye: hn to you too. This is the first FY fic I've ever done. I don't even know what the fandom *likes*, for goodness sake! So I hope this is acceptable to the veterans of the series/fandom. *bows*