A/N: For Aristotle-koneko-chan, who warms my feet when the heater is broken down.

Blue Eyes

When I was younger, still flushed with the arrogance of youth, I was a fool: a good-looking, intelligent, eloquently-spoken fool, but a fool nonetheless.

I was my own master, I believed, though I had been unable to call myself in control of my life ever since that fateful night when a princess of gossamer had appeared to me ever-so-gently, soothing the loss of memory and parents.

I would lay my head on her lap, she would stroke my hair gently and we would speak of many things, she never failing to inquire after my wellbeing and my day. I would be charmed by her wittiness, her kindness and beauty, her voice…

By everything, even her dusk-tinted lavender-blue eyes.

As I grew, my awareness of her did as well, and I was soon aware that with my aging, she became more and more agitated, and would later refuse to meet my gaze. The dreams became less a sanctuary and more an invasion; she could not have meant to hurt me, but she did, with her desperate pleas and broken whispers for a crystal of illusions.

Again, I had been seventeen – a year, I believe, of arrogance. Perhaps some might call it self-confidence, but that was exactly what it was; even to the point of hubris! But I digress. All that need be known is that my gossamer princess had demanded a crystal, and a crystal she would receive.

It was on one of these jewel-hunting quests that I encountered an unbelievably real girl when her abysmal test mark encountered my unbelievably thick head.

I had rejected her from the start, ever since I had witnessed the two bizarrely-familiar buns on her head, ponytails of butter-gold undulating gracefully as she whirled to meet me and the air caught in my chest.

Her eyes…

They were a clear, crystal blue.

There was neither deception nor deceit in her gaze, though plenty of anger, embarrassment and chagrin at the time. The insistent sparkle that one might mistake to be a vapid determination to be happy was in reality, as I discovered later, a depth that held the understanding to life.

Again, I find myself carried away with memories… they can be fond memories, though I must say that my tendency to preen and strut during them often make me cringe in remembrance.

Though I discovered the strange girl's name, she had always been Dumpling Head to me, and I remembered her as such. The reason for the name-calling was not that I had a ridiculous wish to anger her needlessly, though it happened often and oftener, but that I seemed incapable of opening my mind to her:

I looked at her and remembered the red-riddled English test, the large 'thirty-percent' glaring out with mocking cheerfulness; I angered her and saw that 'vapid twinkle' deepen into a faintly-veiled hurt; I saddened her and she walked away, tall in spite of the fat crocodile tears crocodile tears they had to be crocodile tears you see splashing down her cheeks…

She brought out my shadows; the qualities I was not so proud of were most evident about her –

And all that time, the princess seldom appeared to me, but I could hear her wandering my dreams, crying an unfamiliar name with what even my seldom-feeling heart recognised as love and desperation.

The princess had left me for another. I was furious. I was jealous.

I blamed it all on that Dumpling Head.

If I hadn't met her, I would be more focused on my quest! If I hadn't met her, there would not be these strange, tumbling sensations in my gut! If I hadn't met her, I would not close my eyes and try to remember the princess, but see those stupid, idiotic… stupid clear-blue eyes gazing at me as though she had the right to smile at me!

There was nothing deep about her stupid eyes.

There was nothing special about her idiotic hairstyle.

There was nothing charming about the clumsy way she would fail to walk half a block without tripping.

There was nothing beautiful about… her.

Within time, my carefully cultivated contempt grew. I believed the clenching in my heart when I encountered her to be immense dislike, and often acted accordingly…

And so it went, until I fell in battle to protect her, and she shed tears over me as my life bled away with the passing moments.

Even then I was fool enough to want to sneer, crying even now, Dumpling Head.

And then…

And then…

Princess.

Here my beliefs crumbled to dust, and I was left very lonely. When I returned to myself, healed from dead and deathless slavery to the Dark Kingdom by Her, Dumpling-Senshi-Princess, I smiled and didn't let on that I was shattered inside, and how her sweet face, so innocently-tilted towards me, beckoned for a kiss that I could not refuse, though I cursed myself for it later.

How fickle was I?

What right did she have to waltz into my life and smile at me with those damn. Blue. Eyes and destroy my illusions? What right did those damn. Blue. Eyes have, to destroy the aforementioned illusions before mocking me as they became lilac and lavender-tinted sky?

What right?

What right?

What right!

Endymion set down the quill and rubbed at his eyes with inkstained hands, heaving a tired sigh.Writing his memoirs involved a lot of revisiting to the past, and soul-searching was always difficult for a man like him; he was so full of shadows and darkness that when he emerged, he sometimes felt ashamed, and often tired enough to sleep for centuries…

"Mamo-chan?"

And he smiled as he felt Serenity's arms encircle him gently, a tender kiss pressed to his temple. Turning abruptly in his chair, Endymion yanked her close; he wanted her to be near now, near enough so he might believe that, for a beautiful, hopeful moment, he deserved her.

Burying his face in tresses of crystal, he felt alarm, then her love and empathy seep through him and his breath hitched in his chest; just like it had those countless years ago when he had first seen her for the second time…

He would be that little boy again, he thought determinedly; soothing fingers combing his hair as he drank in her kiss. He would be the boy who was lonely amidst friends and needy amidst plenty; he would be the boy with his blue-eyed princess.

A/N: Review? Begbegbegplease? Here I am batting my eyelashes... aren't I pretty? Pretty enough to leave a review for?