warning: intense kaguhate.
all is fair in love and war
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single girl in possession of great beauty who refuses every offer of marriage she's received in a thousand years must actually steer the punt from the Cambridge end.
This being the case, Kaguya didn't really need to keep it hushed, but it quite comforted her to think perhaps no one knew her secret. It had never been in the newspapers, as most people's secrets had been at least once or twice (Aya had never needed to investigate the matter when it was as clear as day in front of them all) and she'd never snogged a girl or even eyed one up, so technically no one did have any proof. What she failed to see, however, was that they didn't need it; all of Gensokyo knew what her sexual orientation was, and worse, they had figured out quite easily who the object of her... rather twisted form of affection was.
Keine had been the first outside the princess' circle to figure it out, and though she was decent enough not to speak of it, Kaguya was not.
Their first and last confrontation on the subject had been less than pleasant. It had consisted massively (almost entirely, really) of Kaguya (who always has been and always will be acknowledged not only as the only closet lesbian in all of Gensokyo but also as a total psycho bitch) rubbing an inevitable death into the history teacher's face.
"I don't really understand what you're trying to get at," Keine had said calmly after a time. One grows awfully tired of others stating the fucking obvious, and Keine may have been considerably more patient than your average person but she was no less inclined to feel quite as irritated at the same things that they do.
"Don't you?" the princess spat, "Don't you know she loves you?"
"Of course I do."
It didn't need to be asserted, the name of the individual of whom they spoke. It was a silent and sacred pact between them, never to say her name.
"She won't when you die, you know. Once you're gone, I have no doubt she'll be mine."
"Oh, I think you doubt that completely," Keine returned strongly. "I don't care that she may not love me for long after I die, but it's very unlikely that simply because you're both bound to live forever she'll ever love you. Death has nothing to do with love or hate, Kaguya; it never will."
The lunatic princess had stood very much frozen in her spot, as though the truth that had never dared pass her lips had penetrated her skull truly for the first time only then. Keine almost took pity on her; key word being almost, as the self-righteous other spun sharply on her heel and stalked away, leaving behind her only a soft resonating whisper of "we'll see".
Four hundred and eighty seven years later, on the day Keine was murdered, they did see. Kaguya didn't care enough who had murdered the half-beast or how, or that blood stained sheets were beginning to pile up into a mountain, or that she was dying slowly and painfully. It rang vaguely in the back of her mind that she was dying in Mokou's arms, jealousy stung its vicious sting a little, but she went on telling herself that with her death it would be over, and she would be proven right.
Mokou had never been known to cry, but that day she sobbed for hours, and was sobbing still when Kaguya found a note clutched so tightly in Keine's frigid hand the fickle piece of parchment needed to be forced out.
"It is only by fate," she read softly aloud, "that any life ends, and only by chance that it is mine... not yours."
And she wept.