Originally posted: 2010-06-06

Content: NanoFate

It's strange how sometimes something that should be simple ends up being unusually hard. Fate-chan doesn't ask much of me, yet I find myself unable to grant her small wish.

Ever since she and I got together, she never missed a chance to let me know how much she loved me, and how I meant the world to her. She'd tell me how I had saved her life, freed her from her abusive mother, and granted her the life she has now. She says she most likely fell in love with me then, but she only realised what her feelings for me were during the later years of grade school. She would always think of me, want to be with me, and dreamed of the day when she would confess her love. She tells me that she loves my kindness, my straight forwardness, my smile, my laugh, my beauty, and much more.

When she tells me these things, she always has this expectant look in her eyes. I can guess what she wants: she wants me to say the same things back to her, to tell her when I fell in love with her, when I knew she was the one I wanted to be with, what exactly I loved about her and so on. I never came through, though, and I can see the flash of hurt go across her face. In that moment she becomes the same lonely girl I met so many years ago.

I can understand why Fate-chan can be so dependant like this at times. The last person she had devoted her heart to cruelly betrayed her feelings and cast her aside. She's probably afraid that one day I may treat her the same way, so she needs me to elaborate on my feelings so she can be reassured.

I want to provide her with that sense of security by answering those unasked questions, but the problem is I just don't know. When I fell in love with her, when I knew she was the one for me… I just don't know when it happened. Fate-chan was a dear friend and I always treated her as such. The thought of becoming more than that hadn't factored into anything, so I just acted as I normally did around her.

But at some point I guess something just clicked and I couldn't imagine myself being away from her. I realised that I was happiest when I was with her, but I don't know when it all began or what specifically it is about her that I was drawn to, I just… was.

… Maybe it is really just that simple in the end? I may not know the specifics, but I can tell her the most important thing:

"Fate-chan, I may not know when it all began, but I do know for sure that I love you more than anything. That's all there is to it."

I've always had trouble seeing NanoFate from Nanoha's end of things. I can do Fate well enough (see Nothing's Wrong and Suffering in Silence), but for Nanoha I draw a blank. The way I see things, in canon she just treats Fate the same way she does all her other friends and just doesn't give off the vibe that she sees Fate any more than just a really close friend, or even a sister. On top of that, my logical mind fails to see why Nanoha would ever view Fate as more than just a friend anyways. When I use NanoFate as a background pairing, I have to use the "they just do" mentality and not elaborate on it.

It's one of the things stopping me from doing more NanoFate, however with this short I tried to take this weakness and turn it into something usable. I hope it's somewhat decent.

I've noticed that this fic collection has gotten a lot of hits. It beats all my other fics monthy by several thousand! I'd like to take this as a sign that people have stopped just writing me off as a troll and actually want to read my works so they have been checking each chapter to see if the content is something they'll like. So here's some NanoFate that hopefully you'll like ^^"