Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Gorgeous Carat. "Fools Like Me" is the title of a song by Vanessa Carlton, which had a hand in inspiring this story.

Fools Like Me

"I love you."

She had spent weeks preparing for this moment, rehearsing every possible variation of it in her mind. The paste jewel in her turban had been polished to as bright a sheen as it would ever hold, and graced her head in stark contrast to the rest of her worn, everyday clothing. More importantly, though, she had steeled her heart to the inevitability of his refusal, and taught herself, as best she could, that she had to hear it if she was ever going to be able to exorcise, and thus survive, her feelings for him.

And yet, despite all of these preparations, she was nowhere near ready. She wasn't prepared for the deafening silence that followed her admission, and when his gaze slid up, so slowly, from the pages of the book in his hands, it was all she could do not to retract her statement, to recant like a heretic faced with the stake. As a brother, I mean! As a dear friend! Oh, wow, that came out so wrong… And of course, he would believe her, or at least pretend to, either of which would be enough for them to lay her foolishness to rest with an uneasy laugh and an implicit pact to never mention it again.

It would be so easy, and so wrong.

She waited the eternity that it took him to close and set aside his book without flinching. By the time their eyes finally met, the initial desire to flee had given way to a fatalistic dread, and she forced herself to breathe, to swallow, to continue functioning until, finally, he spoke.

"I know," he said.

The ease with which he spoke these two obviously-deliberated words testified not only to the fact that he had misunderstood, but that he had done so consciously, in order to give her one last chance to back out. It's what he wants, the part of her which wanted nothing more than escape nearly shouted, but she stood fast, clinging to the honesty of her feelings as though it would be some sort of talisman against the gathering storm.

She loved him too much to betray him, even if he himself had asked it of her.

"No, you don't," she pressed, and as weak as they were, the words shattered the thin veil of delusion he had offered them. She watched this loss pass over his face, watched his good humour fade into hardness, and felt like crying.

In that moment, she absolutely loathed herself.

"Why?" His intonation was midway between that of a question and a demand.

"I wish I knew," was her only reply.

He looked away, and his face twisted into a grimace as he rose from his chair and turned away from her. The swirl of his robes tore through her like a desert sandstorm. "What do want me to say?"

"Nothing." It was true; she hadn't gotten that far in her fantasies.

His robes spun again as he turned back to her. "What do you expect from me?"

"Nothing," she repeated.

"I can't…" His inhalation was nearly a gasp, and when he met her eyes, she could see the storm in his eyes, the mirror image of that which raged within her. "You know nothing can ever come of this."

"Yes." And she did, under the infinitely powerful and perfectly useless burden of her hope.

"Then why mention it? Why not keep your mouth shut?" He shuddered, so shallowly that she could barely catch the gesture. "Why did you have to… change everything?"

"Nothing has to change." She caught herself taking a half-step forward, and took a full step backward to compensate. "I just…" Something sparked inside her, very briefly, just long enough for her to say, "I was sick of hiding. I was sick of lying to you."

The full darkness set into his eyes then, and she wondered how he lived with such a beast raging inside him. It was, she decided in the next instant, evidence of his inner fortitude, and her respect and admiration for him surged, bolstering the calmer waves of her love exponentially. "How selfish of you," he all but snarled, and yet she remained unmoved.

Even if he struck her next, she knew, her feelings would not falter.

But, of course, he did not; the darkness began to recede, and he turned away from her again. "Leave me."

"But--"

"Leave me," he said, in the same perfectly modulated tone. "I can never return your feelings, and if you continue to nurture them, you will only be hurting yourself… and I care too much about you to let you do that." She let the apparent contradiction pass, and waited the few seconds it took for him to speak again. "We never had this conversation. As soon as you leave, it will be forgotten… erased."

"You know that's impossible." She did take a step forward then, but only one. "Even if I leave, and never mention it again… I can't change the way I feel. I can't just forget that I--"

"Don't say it again." His voice was quiet, but she had never been able to ignore his commands. It was in that moment that she consciously knew that he would never want her as a woman, and she fought to snatch as many precious minutes of composure as she could from the despair that threatened to engulf her. It would not do to break down in front of him, to give him any excuse to categorize her as just another simpering woman, valuing his power and protection over his heart.

Fool though she was, she could not stand the thought of him believing her that stupid.

"Alright," she said, embracing the capitulation that, she was now aware, would be the defining response of whatever relationship they had left tomorrow. "I'll do as you say; I'll leave you alone, and I won't mention it again." When he did not react, she continued, a bit shakily, "But don't think for a moment that I feel any differently. Don't think, even for a second, that I could ever stop loving you."

"Get out," he whispered, his voice nearly broken.

She did, and as soon as the door was closed between them, she slumped back against it and waited for the tears to overtake her. Surprisingly, however, all she could manage were a few heaving, almost forced sobs; her eyes were as dry as the desolate wasteland of her heart, and the numbness that came with this realization terrified her.

Then, he locked the door behind her, and the finality of that simple click shocked her almost to the point of devastation. She could not imagine ever breaking free of the paralysis that followed in the wake of the numbness, and she stood frozen there until she knew that one more minute in her personal purgatory would drive her insane.

Only then did she shuffle forward, and then only because she could do nothing else.