[Background Music: Sanctuary by Secret Garden]
[Author's Note: This takes place after Episode 7, but the spoilers are very vague.]
The willow-whisps of dusk swept by Himeno as the darkness of evening approached. She sat alone, staring at the sprinkling patterns of water from one of the many fountains in the expansive gardens on which her family's estate sat. One hand was balled into a fist and clutched to her heart.
"I wasn't able to return her feelings," Hayate's voice echoed in her mind as she recalled the most devastating part of the story he had told her long ago. She blinked slowly, and, lowering her hand, gently opened it, to reveal a crimson tube of lipstick. A memento from the previous one to hold her position.
She could feel the warmth of magic permeating her soul and being diffused through each limb, as the tendrils cavorted with the life force of each living thing. It was good. It was whole. It was pure. Young though she was, understanding how the power was so easily corrupted, was not even knowledge someone three times her age could ever begin to know.
But for the previous vessel to fall so easily because the man could not return her love? Himeno did not understand it herself.
She could understand loving him. Loving them. There were seven knights, not only to help in the battle, but to help increase her magic. They were all charming and attractive in their own way. They each had wonderful qualities, along with their obvious flaws.
"And when he gave one of his infrequent smiles, it radiated," the twisted girl's speech tugged on Himeno's memory.
She sighed as she shook her head of strawberry-blonde hair and stood, placing the lipstick in a pocket.
"You're still holding on to that?" a male voice called gently from the darkness of the forest behind the garden.
She smiled softly. "Is it your turn to guard me tonight, Hayate?"
The man walked up, his long, dark hair swaying softly to and fro, and his piercing dark blue eyes, now just black stones, softly nodding to her question with a touch of coolness in the night.
And then her eyes widened as it struck her. Perhaps it was his nearness, perhaps it was the moon beginning to peak over the trees, or perhaps it was just the magic stirring stronger within her, but she now knew.
"I wasn't able to return her feelings," she said out loud, repeating what had been in her mind earlier, but also what he had spoken to her once before.
He looked away for a moment. "Why are you bringing that up?"
She smiled sadly. "Hayate, you weren't able to return her feelings. It's because you're a knight, right? But you did love her, didn't you?"
He blinked and looked back at her. "I did," he said plainly. "Besides myself, no one else has been able to figure that out." He gave her a soft smile. "I guess you are the Chosen one after all."
Himeno's eyes welled up with tears. "So if she had just figured out...."
He shook his head. "It doesn't matter anymore. The past is done. Now all we can do is live in the present and protect the future."
Her tears fell. "Hayate?"
"Part of me will always love her, but I do not love her as she is now. She is not what she once was."
"Hayate?"
"You will not ever become like that. Because where she is the Princess of Disaster, you are the Princess of Light. What you have in overabundance that she did not -- and perhaps it was a flaw in her I should have scrutinized more deeply -- was selflessness."
A soft whisper of his magically-generated breeze, touched her cheeks and dried her tears.
"Now go get some rest," he chided softly as he turned and walked back into the forest.
"Thank you," is all she said....