After months and months of nothing, I finally managed to write some fanfiction as opposed to original fiction. I actually really like this piece. Although now that I look at it, I kinda want to revise Itsuki's section, and Mikuru's ended up being more about her than Kyon… (sigh)

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this. If you can't figure out who the speakers are, you need to rewatch the series.

Sometimes he truly believes that Haruhi is God.

He believes in her with the simple, unquestioning faith that many others fall into madness trying to achieve. His world has been simplified to what a teenage girl wants out of life. True, she is not your average teenage girl, but it is nevertheless true that if Haruhi is entertained, the world exists; if Haruhi is bored, the world is destroyed.

His faith is not perfect. Occasionally he looks around him and wonders if this is really all there is. Was there another world, before this one? Did Haruhi copy this one accurately? What if the world used to be bigger, and the only things included in here were things she herself had experience of? If that was so, then would she not be bored all the time?

He chastises himself for such thoughts. The espers were not made to question God, quite literally. He can tell this by the sense in his soul, even now, that Haruhi made the world. But he cannot evade the questions completely.

Sometimes he truly believes that Haruhi is God. And sometimes he looks at Kyon and thinks how boring the world would be if it were created by only one force.

He is not unique.

She has been gathering data for some time. Humanity was brought to the attention of the Data Integration Thought Entity when Haruhi Suzumiya created a data spike. Since that time, she has gathered over 30 terabytes of data on human beings.

Humans are not nearly as unique as they think. There are 183 humanoid species that the Data Integration Thought Entity knows of, and 7 of those are nearly identical to humans. Even among themselves, trends persist from one race to another, from one human to another. There is no human that can be completely unique.

She has gathered data on him too. Physical stats are average. Grades are average. Family background is average. No irregularities in his data. She does not know why Haruhi Suzumiya chose him.

…"I'd say you look cuter without them," he says, holding her. "Besides, I'm not a glasses man."

"What is a glasses man?"

"Nothing. I'm babbling."

…She would not open the door. Haruhi's instructions were not to open the door for anyone.

"Nagato."

That voice.

"Please open up."

He looked cold, sleeping there.

…She does know why Haruhi Suzumiya chose him.

He is more than data.

He is unique.

She is nothing but a paper doll.

She has known this for a long time. An extra illustration in a storybook cannot change its words. The story will sweep on to its conclusion, regardless of whether she is there or not. All she provides is a little more color, a little more fun.

Haruhi seems to understand this implicitly. From Haruhi's point of view, she is simply there to be used as a dress-up toy or for blackmail purposes. She is not a real person, who feels humiliated in the bunny costumes and scared by Haruhi's attitude and ashamed when he sees her being undressed on the floor of the clubroom.

Sometimes she wants to shake the book until the pages come out, rewrite an ending of her own. She wants to make it so that Haruhi is satisfied for life, that the SOS Brigade is disbanded, that all of them are left to lead their separate lives again. Then he would pick her up and take her away from this cruel place, and they'd take long walks every day and laugh in the sunshine and eat ice cream together and-

And there her imagination stops, because he is a beautiful watercolor and she is merely a cheap mass-produced copy.

She does not have the courage to change anything, although she has the power. With a single phrase she could reveal to them things they were never meant to know, change the course of the future, make a fault in the time plane. But that would mean that they would take her away from here. They would take her away from him.

So she puts up with it all. She sits still while the person with the potential to destroy the world on a whim braids her hair, and changes into the too-revealing costumes she is provided, and plays a game she doesn't know the rules of while hard objects whistle past her face. Just so that, maybe, at the end of the day, he will smile at her.

She is nothing but a paper doll. But when he smiles at her, she feels like flesh and blood.

If you're feeling lost and confused, here are the episodes referenced for Yuki's part and Mikuru's part (in the non-chronological numbering).

Yuki:

Episode 10: After her fight with Asakura, Yuki forgets to reconstruct glasses and Kyon tells her she looks cuter without them.

Episode 8: Yuki refuses to open the door in the "closed-circle" episodes because Haruhi has told her not to, but eventually opens it for Kyon. I cut out a few lines in between the ones I used.

Episode 9: After bringing the space heater to the club room, Kyon falls asleep on the table. It is assumed that the second cardigan on him belongs to Yuki, since she was in the room with him when he fell asleep and is gone when he wakes up.

Mikuru:

Episode 5: Mikuru discusses her presence in their time as being like an extra illustration added in to a flip-book.

Episode 14: Haruhi gets pissed off at Kyon and Mikuru and, for some strange reason, decides to try out different hairstyles on Mikuru, who after seeing Haruhi's expression earlier is sure she's going to die.

Episode 4: Haruhi forces the Brigade to join a baseball competition and Mikuru is hopelessly ineffective.

Also, in the paragraph where she discusses telling "them" and "they" would take her away, the first "them" refers to the brigade while the second "them" refers to the organization or agency that sent her to Haruhi. (I wasn't able to find a name.)