Deja Vu
by Meimi
meimi@time-stranger.net
6/17/01


----------------------------
until my eyes met yours
i never believed in miracles
like deja vu
the promise of our meeting makes me run
----------------------------


I didn't fall in love with you "at first sight".

I don't believe in love at first sight. It's really the way my parents fell in love, and while their "love at first sight" meeting makes for a lovely story...they parted. It wasn't till just now that they came back together. After knowing each other, and meeting again, they really began to love each other.

We met, I decided I'd sooner throttle you than date you, and that was that. Or it would have been, if you didn't happen to live next-door and have a tendency to never give up on anything.

...all the same, I used to wonder what it was that made me so special. Why did you bother with *me*? Why did *anyone* bother with me; what was it that made me so "popular"? Was it just being an active member of the gymnastics club, keeping up as class representative, and keeping a smile through the school day...?

I asked Minazuki-kun about it a little while ago- because he's close to me, but not too much so- and safely over the feelings he once had for me, while not leaving them forgotten. The ideal distance for a question like this.

"That's not it, Maron-san. It's not one or two things about you that attracts other peoples' gaze. It's *everything*. It's because you can smile through anything, because you see past what's on the outside of people, because you're a very honest person who anyone can trust. And because you're endlessly strong. Stronger than anyone else. The strength spills over to the people around you, and just by being near you and admiring you, they become stronger, too."

...I suppose some of it is true, but I think Minazuki-kun always saw me as a flawless person; and that was the picture he fell in love with. It's the image I created of myself to the world. I suppose it it's simple for the world to like someone that's perfect.

But you were the only person who saw the truth.


I am not really a strong person at all.


But lying to myself, and telling myself that I was...that was the only way I could live on my own.

When you saw my tears...you didn't hate me for it. You didn't abandon me to sink away into that depthless ocean of my own tears.

You didn't hate me for being a weak person inside.

I wonder now how you managed that, when I hated myself so much at the time.


----------------------------
ah, i don't want eternity
but i want to gaze into your eyes forever
i won't believe in destiny
i just want to believe in you
-----------------------------


The rain was coming down hard outside, shading the clouds of early-morning to cast grey shadows through the window. Inside the apartment, there were no lights on- simply allowing the faint light to slip in through the window, and reflect off the polished wood of the interior to color everything inside dirty-grey.

She shivered a little- more from the color than the cold- and moved closer to him; letting her hand drift to play with his hair. He looked adorable when asleep, she decided. Childlike, even. It was impossible to believe that peaceful, sleeping face could be so teasing when awake.

But that was the way people were. There were many sides to one person. The boyish calmness while asleep was just as much a part of him as his flirtatious self, which was as much a part of him as his ambitious, intelligent side that was studying to be a doctor.

They were all encompassed by his self that saw all the parts of her at once, and loved both the strong Maron and the weak Maron anyway.

Her fingers brushed his face a little harder than she'd meant to, and his eyes opened when she did so.

"I didn't mean to wake you."

He reached out to catch her hand lightly as it moved away. "I wouldn't be woken any other way."

She moved closer to him, both of them silent in the greyish-blue quiet of the pounding raindrops against the window.

"Chiaki?"

He tightened his embrace, the white cucoon of sheets enveloping them both. "Mm?"

"When did you know for the first time that you loved me?" It was suddenly important to know.

He was quiet for only a moment. "The night by the carousel."

"I was a sobbing, teary wreck. Why then?" Important to hear him say it.

"...when I felt you in my arms, I knew right at that moment that I wanted to protect you forever. I wanted to be your rosary so you would never vanish again." His eyes were serious and truthful- strangely fierce, but still gentle.

She went silent, and then let her hand drift back to his forehead to brush away the stray bangs again.

As the rain came down, the two slept on in the grey silence in a curtain of their own warmth.


-----------------------------
you have a mysterious charm
i feel as though we met somewhere, sometime
your prescence lures my heart
taking me captive
-----------------------------


...now that I think of it, I know the night at the carousel was the turning point as well. It showed me that side of you that you'd kept hidden until that point- the one with the deep, serious eyes that only look at me.

I realized then that I still trusted you; still believed in you despite the lies. Because you must have had some reason for all of it.

It was completely impossible for me not to love you after you looked at me that way. Even now, your eyes tell me everything that you don't say...they have a spark of love in them. It can lead me out of the deepest darkness of my sorrows, and it always has since that time.

Really, it was at that exact same moment that I knew I /could/ love you.

I didn't fall in love with you at that moment, like you say you did with me.

But after that, I thought that I felt a little of your light inside me...


-----------------------------
ah, i don't need eternity
but i don't want to shut you away in memories
i won't love an illusion
i just want to embrace you
-----------------------------


*I don't need anyone else, because I'm strong.*

*I need you more than anything, because I'm weak and afraid.*

Which is true?

She stared up at the moonlit sky quietly from her place on the balcony; the sliding door's glass cold against her back as she leaned against it.

Maybe...

Just maybe, both were lies.

No. She knew that certainly they were lies. She had already proven to herself that she couldn't be an endlessly strong person on her own, no matter how much she wished it...tonight at the carousel had proven that completely...but also knew instinctively that she was not capable of letting someone else take charge of her life.

Perhaps she was somewhere in the middle.

But where was she?

She stood, stretching a hand out to the stars; feeling the cool breeze brush her fingertips.

"Tell me where I am."

It was an urgent question, but she knew that she would only find the answer inside herself. So she looked at the stars searchingly for a little longer, and then slid the cold glass door shut for the night.


-----------------------------
ah, i can't commit to eternity
but i'll never let go of your hand
i can't rely on crosses
i just want to protect you
-----------------------------


"I thought I could be strong with the rosary. I thought I would be able to believe in myself more, by accepting that strange life as a kaitou. Invincible. Strong enough not to need anyone else at all."

His hand caught her own.

"And now what do you think?"

She leaned against him, the wind letting her hair fly freely.

"I finally realized that my true strength only came when I thought of you." Her hand drifted to the tiny pendant hanging from her necklace. "Ever since then, I was able to fight without being afraid at all..."

The waves crashed, the tide creeping closer to their shoes.

"You didn't become my rosary, Chiaki. I'm not the kind of person who can quietly break and let someone else pick up the pieces. Everything that happened up until now- it happened because I learned how to believe in myself."

"So you don't need me after all?" he teased.

She smiled.

"I thought at first that you gave me my light, but that was wrong, too. Remember when you told me that if I had died, you would have along with me?"

"It's still true."

She leaned against him. "Well...I wouldn't die if you did. I'm not the kind of person who can give up on life like that. I guess I'm stubborn."

He knew this. If it weren't for the fact that she could stand on her own if needed, he wouldn't have loved her so much in the first place.

"So...that was when I realized that you hadn't given it to me. But the one who taught me how to believe in myself, and rekindle my own light inside my heart...the one who taught me how to believe in my own strength was you."

The water brushed at her shoes, but she wasn't afraid of it.

She didn't need to be frightened of that sorrowful ocean beneath her anymore.

"So if I'm going to live, I want it to be with you."

If she ever was in danger of slipping beneath...she could spread her wings and soar with the wind, until there was no way to tell where she ended and the breeze began.

But if ever she was tired of flying, there would always be someone waiting with open arms to catch her.

That was all she needed.






*owari*
-----------------------------

*bangs head* I've wanted to write something with this song forever for those two- it's practically their theme song, I think...but! The lyrics sat in a file! For months! And months! And MONTHS! (Probably getting close to a year now, actually.) Because damned if I could think of a thing to write for it; despite my initial thought that the lyrics fit so well that a fic would write itself.

*hearts* But I did, finally~<3 Erin-chan he no purezento deeeesu. XD It reaaally ought to have been a tanjoubi gift, but it. Would. NOT. Behave. So it's a happy graduation present. Daaaisuki.