"I was much too far out all my life, and not waving but drowning."

It bit me. I claim no responsibility, except if it is any good. In which case I take hekatombs in chocolate or reading materials.

Smiles
Challenge: Kaho.
Canon: Manga.
Time: 1 hour, while doing other stuff. So call it 30 minutes.
Genre: Angstish/Romancish/Stuffish.
Rating: G.
Words: 1044.
Notes: I discovered today that a)present tense is fun, b)I can write Kaho for pages, and c)I like Kaho very much. Contains miscellaneous pairings of a canonical nature.


She smiles as she walks into her new homeroom, one of a hundred she remembers from the years of her life. The students fall into seats as she walks to the teacher’s desk, her desk now and for the next few months. Standing there, by her throne, Kaho reviews her class. They are young, full of energy; she can already tell that they will be a joy to teach. Many of them are returning her smile already. She likes the girl with glasses who looks back at her, a dreamer by her eyes. She will go far if she learns to use her dreams.

The girl she is most interested in is looking at her by now, too. A happier, more cheerful girl than most of the others, she is surprised to see Kaho there, of course. A few words were all it took to make her wonder, which is just as well. She will need that wonder for later. The boy behind her, though, is glaring at Kaho with all the force he can muster. He must be the Li boy, the young one. It’s too bad that he won’t like her; she would like all her students to be fond of her. Sometimes Kaho has a suspicion she’s becoming maternal.

By the end of the week, she knows all her students by heart. She likes to think they like her as much as she likes them. Some of them confide in her; Yanagisawa-san asks her to read her newest story, Satou-kun shows her the kata he’s learned recently, Sasaki-san…tells her what she’d half-suspected from watching her colleague. That girl reminds Kaho so much of herself sometimes it’s frightening. She can’t offer reassurance, not yet, when she still isn’t sure if the one she loves will stay with her, but she tries her best, and maybe it will all work out somehow. Sasaki-san is the sort of person who really deserves someone to make her happy.

Li-kun still dislikes her. Looking up and seeing him looking daggers at her hurts more than it ought to. Even though he’s the only one, of all her classes, who truly doesn’t like her, or the only one who shows it, anyway, that simple fact grates on her every time she teaches his class. She can reach even Daidouji-san, miniature enigma that she is, and Li-san trusts her despite her fiancé’s hatred, but this one boy refuses to be touched. Kaho has always suspected that her magic had something to do with people liking her, and when she sees him she can’t help believing it. There has never been anyone who really hated her before. It would be too much of a coincidence for the only person to do so to possess a kind of magic she has never had to cope with before. Eriol, she supposes, must have the same thing, but he does not hate her. She clings to that. Eriol, so much her elder in years if not in looks, who can see through any illusion ever made, likes her. At least, and she hopes he more than likes her.

She clings to the memory of his affection like a drowning woman to a raft, but it doesn’t always protect her. Sometimes she thinks she’s drowning anyway, despite the memories, the sheets of paper that are his letters in her briefcase are too small and too thin and too far away, and she can feel herself sinking beneath the ocean of Li-kun’s sheer defiant hate. Then she feels certain it’s always been the magic. She tries to forget, to block out the feeling of magic thrumming in her veins. She wants to rip the perfect moon from the sky and throw it far away, until she can’t see it or feel its power to remind her of what she is, of what she has become.

It isn’t only Li-kun, though he’s the worst because she can’t hope to avoid him. Seeing Touya every day is a torture of memory, of what she can’t forget and isn’t sure of any more. She wants to believe that he saw through her magic, that the Kaho he loved was just herself, but she isn’t sure. The way he looks at Tsukishiro-kun, her replacement though she tries to be fair and not think of him that way, is so close to the way he looked once at her that it tears her inside to see them together. Their powers are so similar it can’t help but make her wonder things she wishes she never imagined. She wants to believe Touya could love him, could have loved her, in spite and not because of magic. She needs to believe that, because it’s that or nothing at all. If even magic can’t guard against her, there’s nothing she can count on to be true, no one she can hope to care for her. Sometimes she’s relieved to be around Li-kun, the only one to remind her that it isn’t, or isn’t only, her magic that makes her likable. If he can see through it, maybe Touya, maybe Eriol can too. Maybe. Kaho can’t be certain anymore.

She tries to talk to Li-kun, to make him like her, though talking to someone who hates her so burns like breathing water and she has to struggle to meet his eyes. She tries to resist the sensation of complete powerlessness that sweeps over her sometimes, when she feels sure that everything she ever thought she knew about the present is a lie. She tries not to think of Cassandra, and the thousands of seers since who have been unable to exist except in snatches of someone else’s future. She tries not to be afraid, she tries to be kind, she tries to smile.

Sometimes she can’t stand it any longer. Sometimes she cries, hunched up on a chair in a house that no longer feels like home, sobbing for her hurts where no one can see. She smiles at her students, the children she feels like the mother of, and takes care of them as best she can. She pretends she knows and controls everything, as she smiles to hide the fears and worries.

The world sees Kaho only while she smiles.