Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to anything.

A/N: Wow! I didn't think I'd be able to do it, but here is Part III! Did anyone get any valentines today? I sort-of did. My crazy friends were my valentines. And, by the way, I keep trying to put a heart in this message, but it always comes out as just a three and doesn't show the other sign...grrr...Unfortunately, Part III is a lot shorter than the rest. This is mainly because I've been writing the other two since like the start of the month, and I wrote the majority of this all today. And so now my eyes hurt, but it was so worth it! Can't believe I finished!
But anyways, I wish you ALL a wonderful Valentine's Day (or just a wonderful day. Depending upon when you read this)
Rant over! Read on! 3
-Silvia

Part III: Of Strongholds and Snowballs

Wednesday, February 12th
First period
7:18 A.M.

Wally Mukaido came stumbling into the room, spluttering and panting desperately. He supported himself on the desk of Sapphire Birch and held up a single paper from the school newspaper.

Sapphire scanned the paper and her heart skipped a beat in withheld elation, but almost instantly afterwards she was flooded with apprehension and thought, Oh crap. Wally found out. He saw it and found out. EVERYTHING IS OVER.. But she had panicked for nothing.

"Sapph, look!" Wally exclaimed in a hushed tone. "Those Greene Girls are having a poetry contest!"

Sapphire breathed out in relief. So he hadn't noticed.

For a moment she didn't register what he had said, but once she did, her eyebrows shot into her bangs. "Poetry contest?"

"Yeah." Wally slid into his seat beside her, still breathless. He needed to take his inhaler more. "It's for Valentine's Day. You should enter it."

"Enter something for the newspaper? Not me." She inwardly cringed at her hypocrisy. "And Valentine's Day? Isn't that, like, two weeks away?"

Wally stared at her as if she had ridden into the classroom on an asteroid all the way from Saturn. "It's on Friday."

"And today is…?"

"Wednesday."

"Oh. I see. So that's why people are being so especially lovey-dovey and annoying about who-likes-who or I-like-them-and-they-don't-like-me and all that useless shit."

"Pretty much."

Sapphire tapped her chin. "I wonder why people never mistake us for a couple."

"I guess we just don't give off that type of vibe," Wally replied sheepishly (but then again everything he said sounded sheepish.) "We seem more like cousins."

"I'd rather you to be my cousin," Sapphire agreed. "I hate my cousins. May and Max. And everyone always mistakes me for May when I'm nothing like that irritating sissy!"

Wally laughed lightly, used to Sapphire's moody behaviour. But the smile slipped from his face as he watched her leaf through her algebra-two notebook and noticed that a large clump of pages had been savagely ripped out. He pointed it out. "What are all those missing pages?"

Sapphire flushed. "A letter," she answered in a very disgruntled manner.

"Must have been one heck of a letter," Wally remarked, not sold by the act. He figured it was just another poem—an excessively long one, though, or maybe multiple poems.

"Mukaido! Birch!" barked the teacher and they snapped to attention as class began.

But Sapphire didn't pay much heed to the lesson. She flipped absent-mindedly through her notebook (which, okay, didn't have all that much notes in it) and stopped on one of her poems. Nobody really knew this about Sapphire—other than Wally, who she probably trusted most—but she really did enjoy poetry. She had a whole book of famous poets and their works when she was younger, and she supposed that was what had influenced her.

She had felt like such a nerd when she had written the poem she'd stopped on. She had little inspiration—her life was particularly uneventful—so often times her poems were based off of stories or things she made up.

But in this case, she'd based a poem off her favourite manga, chapter two-hundred-fifty-nine, where her favourite characters—a tsundere fighter and a sensitive lover—finally confessed to one another on a place called "Mirage Island". But to her dismay, the shounen had further prolonged her frustration over their slow-moving relationship by making one of the characters forget about it. Despite being annoyed, Sapphire had still wished silently to herself that she might have a love like that one day. Her eyes scrolled through the messily-scrawled poem again:

A merciless mirage,
Gave hope where there was fear.
Gave love where there once was hatred,
All through the days of drear.

But all along I suspected,
Nay—I knew we would return,
To disadvantaged theatre,
Where dragons swiftly burned.

A call resounded mine
Away into the sea—
the greatest of fights erupted
Nowhere near me.

For I was sheltered greatly,
Blazed nevertheless,
So when he called for aid,
I broke right through the glass.

Struck, the dance went along.
Our saviour, powerful but ill.
Roars of beasts sounded out,
Thunder rolled the hills.

After rivalry and ruin,
I stood, holding death.
And gazed at the distant past,
Beamed when I heard breath.

Confrontation cluttered to a close,
But I would soon find,
It was only I who remembered;
The scene slipped from his mind.

Only then the isle's name concurred—
we were safe, but I detained tears.
For the merciless mirage I created,
Caused love to disappear.

The teacher snapped a yardstick on her desk. "Pay attention, Miss Birch," she snapped. Sapphire nodded and pretended to take notes. Algebra-two was insistently irritating. Sure, she could get the formulas and all, but did her damned teacher have to explain them all so weirdly?

She glanced out the window at the fields outside, wishing they weren't so snow-dusted so that her gym class had no excuse to stay inside. But alas, indoors it was, and indoors wasn't so bad. The bad part was waiting through sedentary classes, waiting until gym when she could actually move and run and do something.

She sighed quietly—and rather wistfully—at the snowcapped trees in the distance and the pristine white field before turning back to her notebook.

She turned a page and decided notes were overrated. Instead, she would do a little "assignment" she had taken up.

See, Sapphire was in the Manga Club—another thing, amongst her poetry, that she was reluctant to admit—at her school. Their activities included, critiquing, reading, and creating manga. However, when it came to drawing, Sapphire, in a word, sucked. Her drawings sucked so much that the Suck Creatures of Planet Suck wouldn't have even accepted them. Even her stick figures sucked. If that were possible. And it was.

Therefore, Sapphire wrote for the stories and got paired up with a freshman called Platinum Berlitz, who couldn't write a story for her life, but could draw a masterpiece, and spent her Tuesdays and Thursdays in Sciences Club.

One of the dynamic duo's favourite things to focus manga on was music. Neither of them particularly knew much about it, but both enjoyed listening to it and writing about it. Since it was an outlet that attracted so many people, the duo figured they could incorporate it in their works as well. Platinum was enthralled with getting to draw so many musical instruments—each one was a new challenge, after all—and so many glittering scenes where notes flew through the air along with sparkles and other random pretty accents that flitted through the pages of manga. Correspondingly, Sapphire indulged herself in writing about such a passionate topic that both had begun a manga together pertaining to music.

So Sapphire brushed off her page, flattened out the creases, took up her pen, and began writing a verse to use in her manga. She had no idea how a melody was supposed to work out; she was just in charge of writing the words. In reality, it was really just like writing a poem. She had her virtuoso sempai, Gold Okami, come up with the melodies and actual music anyways. She didn't particularly need actual music, but Gold claimed to enjoy it. And he had recently made a request for a topic of a song.

Sapphire took up her pen and started out by writing "starlight"…

Woodshop
10:13 A.M.

Ruby liked to call his fifth period class "The Woodshop Council".

Woodshop was initially an elective he was concerned about choosing—so much sawdust!—but in actuality, it turned out to be great fun. Ruby was able to quickly grasp the concepts of it. It really was similar to sewing; he just had to learn how to use the machines involved and the way to piece things together and it was simple. Plus, his two friends, Wally Mukaido and Emerald Kusheida, were both in the class with him and so they could talk as they worked, hence The Woodshop Council.

Emerald would start out by trying to have a conversation about something like sports, but Wally and Ruby would get off topic onto something else in which Emerald would interject:

"WOULD YA TWO STOP GOSSIPING LIKE A PAIR OF SCHOOLGIRLS?!"

In which Wally and Ruby would sigh and return to a safer conversation.

But on that particular February day, Wally asked out of the blue, "So Ruby, have you got a valentine?"

Emerald groaned, muttering something about "putrid gossip" and "ears are bleeding" and "chattering goats".

Ruby furrowed his eyebrows. "Why would you ask that?"

Wally shrugged. "I was just talking about it with Sapphire."

Sapphire. She was a jock, strangely, and Wally's good friend. Ruby had known her since freshman year, when she'd been in his art class. It hadn't really ended well. She had accidentally spilled red paint upon Ruby, then tried to laugh it off by saying red was his colour. Of course, being a hardcore neat freak, Ruby got angry at all the pain on himself, and therefore spilled blue paint on her.

Needless to say, they weren't the best at getting along. But Ruby talked with her often and played nice, for the sake of poor Wally.

"Wait, what were you talking about with her?" Ruby asked, misunderstanding and wondering for a moment if Sapphire and Wally were talking about him.

Wally shrugged. "Just that Valentine's Day is coming up."

Emerald turned to them and held up what he had been working on proudly; a piece of wood curved elegantly to look like a heart, then sawed haphazardly in half, so it was a broken heart. "Like it?" he asked.

Wally laughed nervously and returned to his work, while Ruby just sort of stared and shook his head, a tad frightened. Emerald laughed maniacally.

School gymnasium
1:42 P.M.

Ruby hated gym class.

"Oi! Look out!"

He had time just to hear the warning before a football slammed into the back of his head. So of course he plummeted onto the gym floor and half the gym class laughed at him. He wasn't not sure there was a way to fall after getting hit by a football hurtling towards you that wasn't even slightly amusing. But if there was one thing Ruby hated, it was to be laughed at.

With a venomous look he rose and turned around to see a girl with shoulder-length caramel locks and deep navy eyes bolting towards him. He sighed and handed her the football.

"You hit me."

"It was an accident!" she claimed as the other students began going back to their current activity; passing footballs between one another because the physical education teacher couldn't think of anything better to do with them.

Ruby rolled his eyes. "Right. Because you 'accidentally' hit me from the other side of the gym."

Sapphire returned his glare. "Why do you think that every time I accidentally do something wrong that it was on purpose?"

Ruby pretended to be thinking of a comeback for a moment, before he asked, "Hey, do you know how to spell accidentally?" Ruby didn't realize just how sore a subject that was—Sapphire often struggled with grades—and so he didn't expect to have blown such a fuse.

"OF COURSE I KNOW HOW TO SPELL IT! AND STOP CHANGING THE SUBJECT!" she fumed.

"Aisaka! Birch!" called the gym teacher, "Go back to passing!"

Sapphire gave Ruby one last defiant stare before she turned and promptly marched away. Ruby turned back to his own partner in passing, Wally, who did not exactly excel in gym class (Ruby, on the other hand, could have excelled greatly if he tried, and he did not, because of course that would make him all sweaty by the end of the period.) Wally's troubles mostly pertained to his asthma, which wasn't really something he could help. He also had a real talent for catching sicknesses, so flu season was not a very happy time for a guy like him.

As Ruby was passing the ball with Wally—well, Ruby was passing; Wally missing the catch, retrieving it, then throwing it feebly back (not that Ruby minded)—Ruby noticed the smuggest little smile on his friend's face.

"Oh, what is it you feel the need to giggle like a schoolgirl?" Ruby asked, a bit too sharply. I need to stop being so prickly, he decided.

Wally shrugged it off. "Nothing." Ruby stared at him until he laughed and finally answered, "It's you and Sapph. You act like you hate each other but you don't." He missed the ball when Ruby tossed it.

"What are you talking about?" Ruby asked. "We do hate each other." A small part of him knew that that was a lie. He had known Sapphire for almost as long as he'd known Wally; after all, Wally and Sapph were good friends.

"There isn't just a little, tiny, near-impossibly small part inside of you that likes her, even at all?" Wally flung the ball back, but it landed just before Ruby's feet. "So close…" Ruby heard him mumble to himself.

Ruby compared different things to say that could describe how he felt towards Sapphire, and finally settled upon, "She's just frustrating. We disagree so much."

Wally shrugged again and let it slide as Ruby tossed the ball again.

Forest
2:27 P.M.

It wasn't even really a decision—more like an instinct, some sort of unspoken tradition—that Ruby went to the stronghold after school when he wanted to clear his head (which hurt quite a lot after Sapphire Birch—a starting player on the boys' football team for whatever crazy reason—had hit him in the head with a football.)

"The stronghold" wasn't so much a fortified fort rather than a rickety old tree house in the middle of the forest edging the city on one side. The nature of it contrasted greatly with the buildings so nearby. Ruby had liked to explore the forests when he was young, and even though his interests changed as he got older, his fondness for the forest never did. When he was ten, he'd found an amazingly-formed tree; sturdy, with low branches cupping an alcove. It was in the middle of a clearing, just begging to be built on. And so Ruby built a tree house with his father (one of the few activities his gruff father actually participated in with him.)

Not many people even knew it was there, but he'd given directions to Wally, Emerald, and, mistakenly, Sapphire (mostly because the barbaric girl already treaded his forest paths enough, and he was sort of forced to show it to her one weekend when she wanted to race him in the middle of the woods. He told her the directions only once, but damn, that girl could remember anything.)

Of course, Wally was a tad intimidated by the forest, and Emerald continuously demanded indifference towards Ruby or any of his other friends, meaning that the only one to really make use of the hideout was, unfortunately, Sapphire the wild child.

"So you're here today?" Sapphire asked, swinging out from the house, anchoring herself by the frame of the cut-out-window as Ruby approached.

"Yes." He rolled his eyes when he saw her appearance. "You need to wear a heavier jacket. Look all around you. It's snowing for Bill's sake! And you'll be warmer if you wear one that isn't so…tattered."

"But that would only weigh me down," Sapphire replied and crossed her arms.

Thankfully, the two didn't usually cross paths like this. Ruby used the stronghold when he just wanted to clear his mind or stop by. Sapphire used it as a base when she went swinging through the forest like a female Tarzan (as Ruby mused.)

Of course, when they did happen to stumble upon each other, they bickered as usual. Ruby sighed, climbing up the tree past her into the stronghold and sitting down—on a stool! He'd never sit on the dirty wooden floor in his uniform pants!—with a sigh. He just wasn't in the mood for an argument.

Sapphire sat down on the ground without a second thought. Ruby inwardly cringed at how much dirt she was getting all over her clothes, but didn't want to start an entire war over it. She began trailing a hand through the dust. Ruby watched her confusedly. "What are you doing? Drawing a picture or something?"

"I am the worst artist you could ever come across," Sapphire stated assuredly.

Ruby rolled his eyes. "You're just being melodramatic. And I would know. I'm in the Drama Club."

"Right. I forgot you were a theatre sissy, Aisaka. Gimme some paper and I'll prove it to you."

Ruby fished his notebook out of his backpack along with a pencil. Sapphire ignored the lines of the paper or really any form of consideration and drew a circle (even her circles were bad. Squiggly and uneven) with three small stick figures standing on it. They were faceless, and she topped them off with antennae.

"There." She passed it to him.

Ruby stared at the notebook for a full ten seconds before he asked, "Okay, I give up. What is this?"

"It's Planet Suck," Sapphire explained, "where all of my drawings come from because they suck so much. Only, they come from the planet because the Suck Creatures," here she pointed to the crudely drawn stick figures, "rejected them. And now the drawings cannot return to their homeland. Ergo, they suck so much that they were banished from a whole planet of things that suck." She gazed up when she noticed he was staring, perplexed. "That enough of an explanation for you, Aisaka?"

Ruby blinked. "I take it back. Your drawings do suck." His eyebrows. "And you don't have to address me so formally. I've known you since last year and we both have Wally as a friend. It's not as if we're strangers. You can call me by my first name."

Sapphire flushed. "No way."

"Am I embarrassing you?" He grinned, amused at having the upper-hand this time.

"No," she objected, "it's just weird." She wrinkled her nose in a very disgruntled manner (and Ruby realized with a jolt that he found this habit of hers to be absolutely adorable, and he decided for a moment to push that thought to the side. Far to the side.)

So, Ruby changed the subject. "So I hear you're good friends with Gold Okami."

"Jealous much?" She grinned toothily, baring her fangs.

Ruby rolled his eyes. "As if." Though a part of him wondered if he needed to be jealous. "I'm just wondering. I know him from orchestra. He sits in with the string players and plays piano for us." Ruby had played violin since he could figure out how to hold it.

Sapphire raised her eyebrows. "Huh. Yeah, we're friends. And he's good at piano, which at least isn't a prissy instrument like the violin."

"How is violin 'prissy'?" Ruby questioned. "And that's not the only string instrument in the world. There are plenty that aren't prestigious." He lifted a tarp from an old table sitting in the little house to reveal a very old electric guitar.

Sapphire's eyebrows shot into her bangs. "You keep that out here?"

He shrugged. "It's not acoustic so the tuning won't get messed up by changes in the weather. And the electronics are broken so it's not as if I can plug it in anywhere. And besides, I have another one." He picked it up and then regarded her curiously. "Do you play an instrument?"

"Not for my life. And Gold told me I sing like a dying chicken."

"Wow. Guess you really do hail from Planet Suck."

"You have no idea."

Ruby strummed a few chords out experimentally, and then played a riff. The tuning wasn't horrible. Suddenly, though, Sapphire cursed. "What?" Ruby asked her.

She gave him a deflated look. "I know a song…but I don't remember the chords."

"What song?"

"Nothing you've heard of. Never mind."

Ruby shrugged. "Well, figure out the chords and I can play it next time."

Sapphire felt herself flush. They so rarely crossed paths at the stronghold. And he just said there would be a next time…It already made her excited.

They parted ways soon after, and she knew one thing for certain.

Thursday, February 13th
Forest
5:19 P.M.

Sapphire found Ruby at the stronghold, repairing a loose floorboard. Silently thanking fate, she raced over, waving a sheet of notepaper. "Aisaka!" she called but he didn't appear to hear. "Aisaka! Are you deaf? AISAKA!"

She swung herself up into the wooden structure and shouted right in his ear, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

He flinched and asked, "Have you been taking shouting lessons from Emerald or something? And I'm not answering you if you're going to call me Aisaka."

Sapphire sighed and flopped down onto the floor lazily, handing him the piece of paper.

"What's this?" he asked, glancing at the hastily-written letters.

"Chords to the song. I got Gold to write them down for me."

Ruby set them down carefully and whipped out the guitar. He tried strumming in a simple four-beat pattern, but Sapphire had to correct him and shot him the beat. Sapphire smiled as she listened to the old guitar play the familiar chords to her song. She was so into the music that she didn't even notice when she began to sing the bridge:

"And all I have wished for
Is my heart;
Hidden among the stars.
But you are brighter than they ever will be,
So save me
Now."

Ruby glanced over at the normally-wild girl, surprised. Sapphire blushed, realizing she'd been singing, and wondered if somewhere within him, Ruby could tell that the song was for him. He probably can't, she told herself. He probably just thinks I'm a weirdo singing in a tree.

Ruby held out a note and smiled. "You know, when you're not shouting all the time you have a decent voice."

"Um…thanks?" Sapphire glanced out at the clearing. "Hey Ruby, look! It's started to snow!"

And so it had. Flurries of twinkling snowflakes tumbled down ever-so-gently, landing softly on the already-fallen blankets of white. Sapphire hopped out of the stronghold (Ruby opted to climb down "like a civilized person," as he'd shouted to his wild companion.)

In retort, Sapphire jokingly tossed a fluffy snowball at him. Ruby tossed one back.

And thus began war.

Mini golf course
5:31 P.M.

Wally glanced up from his putt at the drifting snow. "I wonder what Ruby and Sapphire are doing right now."

Emerald grunted, rolled his sharp jade eyes, and sunk his shot. "Oho! I'm totally creaming you, Mukaido!"

Wally smiled and putt his golf ball gently down a slope.

Forest
5:32 P.M.

Ruby ducked behind a tree and simultaneously scooped up a wad of snow, dodging shots from Sapphire. Quick as a cat he darted between trees, firing snowballs at her, wind whirring all about.

Finally, though, as he jumped and was arcing midair, a snowball caught him square in the face. When it cleared from his eyes, he could see Sapphire standing a distance away at the center of the clearing, covering her mouth with both hands. "I didn't mean to…"

"Oh, you're going to pay for that one, Birch!"

Sapphire half-screamed, half-squealed and whirled around to speed away, but Ruby charged at her and caught her, tumbling downwards with the momentum. They rolled onto the ground and finally came to a stop by the stronghold. Ruby shoved himself up and realized he was on top of her.

For a moment, he just sort of stared down into her entrancing navy eyes, and she stared right back up at him, not saying a word. He didn't get up right away because he didn't necessarily want to, but eventually he rolled off and cleared his throat. She sat up and did the same.

And awkward silence ensued. Sapphire said sheepishly, "I should probably go. Good luck fixing that floorboard." And she proceeded to walk from the clearing.

Friday, February 14th
School hallway
9:52 A.M.

It was the morning of Valentine's Day. Sapphire couldn't help but give herself false hope, even though she knew nothing would happen.

Of course, that didn't mean that nothing happened. Two seniors apparently had a very dramatic confession scene that morning (which Sapphire missed. She was in another part of the school, sadly.) One thing she did witness was her friend Platinum's boyfriend, Diamond, bring her a rose. Platinum gave him a look so full of love—one which Sapphire had not thought Platinum to be capable of making.

"Happy Forever Alone Day!" Emerald greeted her cheerfully during fourth period, as if he were wishing her a happy new year instead of something so dismal.

"You seem to be having way too much fun saying stuff like that," she noted.

"I enjoy such a day when the people who aren't being happy are being depressed."

"You are one weird little dude."

"DON'T CALL ME LITTLE!"

Sapphire had eventually distracted herself and managed to stop thinking about a certain garnet-eyed boy, when all of the sudden, he appeared by her locker, smiling at her. "Hey Sapph, I have a question for you."

Sapphire gazed up at him, perplexed. "Shoot. But not literally. That would hurt."

He rolled his eyes. He seemed to do that a lot. "So, you and I are pretty different right? Total opposites?"

"Yeah, why?" She was very unsure of where this conversation was leading.

As they started off walking down the hallway, he went on, "I was just thinking about what would happen if two opposites combined. Like, what do you think they would call it if they combined a lion with a dove?"

Sapphire's eyes widened, getting what he implicated. We're opposites. Lions and doves are opposites. I'm wild; the lion. He's refined; the dove. He means us. She tried to ignore the obvious combination of the two names: "love".

And suddenly Sapphire was terrified. Terrified that Ruby would find out about her feelings and not feel the same, and that maybe right now he was just joking. Terrified that maybe he would like her, but then somehow it would all fall apart and leave her brokenhearted. Terrified of how strongly she felt.

"I-I don't really know," she stuttered out, and then sped off through the crowd of students crawling along to their classes.

Ruby stared after her, perplexed.

Throughout school…

Sapphire avoided him all day.

Coffee shop
2:35 P.M.

Ruby entered the coffee shop and heard the bell tinkling overhead. It taunted him with its cheerful jingle when he was so dismal. He glanced around to see some upperclassmen from his school there; a quartet of seniors at the counter, and a quartet of juniors at a table. Both groups laughing jovially. Mocking his depression.

Why did she run away like that? Ruby wondered. He needed coffee or something to clear his thoughts.

One of the seniors trotted over to him when she saw him standing in the doorway. "Ruby-pyon!" she squealed, clasping his hands in hers.

"Hi, Blue-sempai," he greeted, not really in the mood to communicate with someone as eccentric as his Blue.

But Blue dragged him over to sit with her senior friends, and introduced him in her bubbling manner. The seniors laughed at her behaviour—all except the grumpy-looking one, though he smiled lovingly at Blue—and tried to have a conversation with a sophomore, as strange as that was.

But then one of the seniors looked at him strangely. "Wait…you're Ruby Aisaka?"

"Yes." Ruby blinked, a little confused.

"Damn…I forgot to deliver a message," the senior replied, shoving his hand through his spiky raven hair. "Sapph sent me a text. She wanted me to tell you that she's sorry. And for some reason, she wanted me to show you something in the newspaper." He glanced at Blue, who perplexedly pulled the most recent paper out from her notebook (which was stuffed with them) and handed it to Red, who in turn flipped to a certain page and pointed at a certain sentence.

"S.B. wrote a letter to us concerning how she has come to realize that she has feelings for a friend of hers, and she does not know how to deal with them, especially so very close to Valentine's Day."

Ruby was well aware of the column. After all, mostly everyone knew about The Greene Girls. But he was staring at the initials.

S.B.

Sapphire Birch.

Following that revelation, he slowly processed the rest of the sentence until he was standing there in that coffee shop with a bunch of seniors who were looking bemusedly at him (except for the grumpy one. Now he was just back to looking grumpy.)

And then he knew what had to be done.

"I have to go." Ruby handed the newspaper back to the seniors and raced out of the coffee shop, stopping only to grab his bike and mount. He peddled at a furious pace, thinking of the once place Sapphire might be.

Sapphire…has feelings for me?

Ruby let that sink in. It had to be about him. Why else would the seniors show that paper to him? Why else would Sapphire want him to see that she'd written a letter to The Greene Girls, unless it was about him?

He rode straight through the snow, straight through the woods on the trail he knew so well. Come on…please be here, Sapph…He needed her to be there. He skidded to a stop before the stronghold.

The clearing was empty.

Ruby breathed out a sigh. Of course. Of course. She just told Red to tell me she was sorry because she is sorry that she doesn't want to be with me.

But then he heard the distant creaking of wood, and glanced up to see that in the doorway of the stronghold stood Sapphire, her cheeks and nose bright red. He wondered how long she'd stood in the cold, waiting for him.

"I-I wrote a poem," she blurted suddenly and he drew closer. She hopped down, wringing her gloved hands together.

It took Ruby a moment to register that he was supposed to respond. He was temporarily distracted by the brutish beauty before him, the snow slowly falling and glittering all around her, piling on her head and shoulders, making her shine brighter than any star.

"Can I hear it?" he asked. He felt as though the moment was glass; if he stepped too close it might shatter before his eyes, but it was too incredible for him to walk away from.

Sapphire averted her eyes and nodded silently, looking uncharacteristically like an introvert. Time seemed suspended as she began to speak, mesmerizing him with her words.

"Peculiar things occur all around,
And I am left to wonder why
It is that I simply cannot breathe
Looking at the luminescent sky.

Stars—I see them now for sure,
Though they are blocked by city lights.
They appear to me when I simply glance
At your bright eyes.

And though words never mean much,
Simply sounds strung together,
I hope the message carries through—
During even stormy weather.

If hope is the thing with feathers,
Then heart is the thing with wings,
We barrel down these treacherous paths,
Not knowing what the future brings.

But one thing is for certain, now,
One thing is the truth.
Despite logic or reasons, and no matter what,
I love you, Ruby-kun."

Ruby stared at her. "You called me by my first name."

"That I did," was all she got out before Ruby closed the distance between them and swept her into his arms.

"Sapph, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize how you felt all this time. I didn't realize how much I hurt you."

Sapphire leaned into his chest, for some reason elated when she heard him say her name. He smelled of pine needles, like the forest all around.

He held her slightly away and gazed down at her. "I think I love you too."

Sapphire laughed and pushed her hands into his hair. "Don't think." And then she pressed her lips against his and kissed him.

It was blissful and wonderful and heart-racing…

Up until Ruby was hit in the back with a snowball and heard a voice shout, "KEEP IT PG GUYS!"

Another voice scolded the first, "Gold! Stay out of this."

Ruby and Sapphire broke apart and turned round to see the upperclassmen from the café whooping and cheering. Blue stepped forward from them. With a smile she said, "We didn't mean to snoop—"

"Yes we did," interrupted her grumpy boyfriend.

"—but we happened to overhear that poem," Blue went on, "and it was absolutely breathtaking. So much better than any of the poems that have been sent in to us."

Sapphire's eyes grew to the size of dish plates. "You're…"

Blue beamed, enjoying this particular predicament greatly. "I'm Aoi." She pointed to the petite blonde behind her. "This is Kohaku."

"You…you answered my letter," she marveled. "But it's too late for me to submit a poem."

"Valentine's Day hasn't ended yet," small senior Yellow piped up. "And you're the clear winner."

Sapphire couldn't keep the grin from her face. "Thank you. Thank you so much!"

"That's great!" one of the juniors, Lyra, squealed. "But can we go back to the café?" She rubbed her arms. "I'm freezing out here!" Her redheaded, steel-eyed companion wrapped an arm around her, and the whole clump of high schoolers turned round and trailed back to the coffee shop for cocoa. Snow glittered and crunched under their feet. The sun set behind the forest, staining the sky an array of awe-striking colours.

And a quite vibrant Valentine's Day cluttered to a close.

A/N: Roses are red, here's something new, violets are violet, NOT FREAKING BLUE.
Here are some notes 'bout the chapter!
Oh, what? You guys think teachers don't snap yardsticks anymore? Some do. Sometimes. My old history teacher did, if someone wasn't paying attention. And now my new history teacher throws ducks at people...
Okay. I think I used the word "adorable" way too many times. I was just going for a sweet, simple tone, and I think that word just expresses aspects of the story nicely. Ergo, "adorable".
And um...yeah, I'm not really a poet. So if Sapph's poems were horrible, that's my fault...
AND THAT'S ALL FOR THIS STORY!
RANT OVER! THANK YOU FOR READING! ^-^