Love Story

He didn't notice her when they first met. His thoughts were completely elsewhere, he was a man with a mission and he wasn't interested in anything unrelated to it - which she was. She would later tell him she fell in love at first sight, and he'd wish he was paying more attention. In his defense, he was being introduced as a transfer student so of course all eyes were on him and he couldn't be persuaded to care to remember anyone except for the person he was looking for - which she wasn't.

They were more or less properly introduced during a paired assignment, the stupidest thing in educational process; they were off to a rough start, as she wasn't tolerating his offhand insults. They managed to sneak the test answers to their friends right under the teacher's nose by working together, but overall it's not like they clicked instantly with them getting kicked out of the class to wash the floors.

She chose the worst day to fall asleep at school doing her clubwork duties; she almost got caught up in the fight. His fight. The fight he lost. He sat there while she was learning of the existence of his world - the world all of her friends were a part of with her being none the wiser until that evening. She didn't look the type to keep buying the awkward charade after witnessing this mess. He wonders if that day could've gone differently.

He started noticing her afterwards; her reflexes were inhuman, and it sparked a kind of scientific curiosity in him.

But scientific curiosity could not explain the anger he felt when seeing her eating lunch together with a very sleazy-looking purplehead guy. They were acting so sweet and borderline lovey-dovey and hugging it out - it made him want to throw up a little each time he'd seen them together, which, to his dismay, happened way too often. Sure, they called each other "brother" and "sister" and both vehemently denied everything whenever asked if they're dating - but it was only making things just a bit easier.

Hiding in a tiny closet room with her (and her friend, but, sure) could've been a tolerable experience, but that purplehead twerp - the topic of their discussion, actually - was there and he hogged her all for himself again, with his arms around her. He's overheard her friends mention that she's "very huggable" before (there's this one guy from her friend circle who hugs her every morning and calls her "sunshine" and it's not annoying at all), and it wouldn't be one hundred percent true to say he didn't want to check. But now he just stared down the purplehead, who kept talking nonsense and grinning a very stupid cat-with-a-sausage grin as if his purple eyes knew something that he didn't.

He approved of her decision to learn some offensive skills after all this new information about the dangerous world around them, but he couldn't really approve her choice of a tutor. Sure, that guy - his colleague - is great at teaching people how to throw things, and it's way better than training by herself, but that guy's also too chatty, too friendly, too... affectionate. He watched her training sometimes when he caught sight of her out of the school window, or when he passed by the field after classes, but said nothing.

When he ends up in the future, she's one of the first people he sees when they're sitting in the hideout. Her older self. She doesn't seem too happy to see him, and generally looks... broken. And straight out of the medbay, apparently. That guy - also older self of that guy - helps her calm down, but when she runs out of the room, he feels like he has to follow. And damn, she runs fast.

When he confronts her, she tells him about her latest run-in with enemy soldiers - the one she just barely recovered from and where most of the damage was done by his own older self. Not intentionally, never intentionally, he was helping her out and she got caught in the collateral because she dodged in the wrong direction, but do intentions matter when he harmed her?

She acts kind of weird around him. And, after overhearing her talking to their mutual acquaintance in the kitchen, he now acts weird around her, too. He doesn't remember ever bringing someone else a cup of hot chocolate in his entire life. She seems touched.

She once visits the training room floor when he's alone inside and shows off her butterfly - which can change size at will. She gives him a ride, but slips away when he tries to hold onto her - he's panicking, as they are pretty high up, but the insect catches her with its limbs, somehow. She gives him tips on his posture from the ground (the damn thing drops him a couple times), and he picks it up quicker than the thing he should currently be training with.

That purplehead is also there, and he's only gone crazier over the years (and he shares a room with her. he sleeps on the floor, apparently, but the thought itself is enraging). But at least he's helping him to dispose of poisonous treats in the medbay. And then that purplehead says something that he really doesn't expect to hear.

"You two are engaged."

He is out searching for her as soon as he can think again, hoping for... something. He has no idea what he's hoping for, he blames himself for blowing it - his older self ruined it, he hurt her, of course she's angry now. They see each other in the corridor. She listens.

He's too stunned to even think of violently killing the purplehead with as many explosions as he can when she smiles and tells him that no, it's not true. He's been played for a fool. It was only for a few minutes, but the whirlwind of messy thoughts in his mind at the time was worse than when he just appeared in this timeline. He feels his hopes shattering so loudly it deafens him. He doesn't hear the sad notes in her voice.

After her night out on the enemy base and after she demands he take her to her room before he gets the chance to yell at her about it, they train some more - and they're having a time of their life, even though it's mostly him attacking her and her jumping all over the place, which, while an excellent exercise in aiming, didn't go so well last time, which is why he's reluctant at first until the adrenaline kicks in. Time flies, she signals that it's time to stop, and she pecks him on the nose before running out the door - as if she never walks like a normal person, honestly.

He's flabbergasted, to put it mildly, when he comes back from a big outside operation and sees that she also has been hit by the time travel device - so now it's her younger self with him again. He's not really surprised, since it also happened to most of his friends and associates, but he's annoyed because at least her older self knew what she was doing. Knew the dangers, knew how to defend herself.

When he hears that she's out of the hideout to buy some goddamn groceries, he swears up a storm as he bolts up to search for her - her purple-haired friend conveniently nowhere to be found.

She's heading for the market, he catches up to her, and they... mostly they just walk around, him gripping her hand so she doesn't run off, as if the war isn't happening and they're just there to buy chocolate.

The purplehead appears out of thin air when she isn't looking, drops a chocolate bar on the ground - "her favorite," he says - and disappears back into nothingness, waving a hand. He doesn't have time to react before she comes back and gets excited at the sight of her favorite chocolate - nevermind that the packaging is all messy now. They share.

They talk on the way back. The topic of discussion is their animals; he begrudgingly admits he's proud of his cat, and she tells him about her current progress with her butterfly. He offers to train her on that, as someone with a smidge of experience.

He meets her in the training room at the appointed time, but now it's him giving her pointers on how to sit and where to hold on. She tests out the shrinking power, becoming about four inches tall, he holds out his hand for her to land on. She doesn't look very imposing on her best days, but when she's this small, she looks downright fragile. He ignores the voice in his head that tells him to hide her somewhere safe and keep her like this.

Next few weeks are a blur, but they're back in their timeline again and the wartime future is hopefully the one they're not getting this time around, which hopefully means that the purplehead won't get the chance to joke about engagements again.

When the new wave of transfer students arrives, he becomes fixated on the alien-looking one. He doesn't notice that she becomes more irritable and eyes him sadly whenever he dashes off after class to do his research.

People are searching for her. He's told she jumped from the school rooftop - and flown away on her butterfly. He learns the direction she took, and runs like a madman, which he might as well be at this point.

She's sitting on the ground on the town outskirts, on the edge of the road, shoulders slumped. Her ankle looks swollen. She's looks like she's been there a while, staring at some caterpillar with empty eyes.

He starts talking to her as he comes near, and soon enough they start screaming at each other because what's he doing here if he doesn't have time go away you have your research - but the research is important - so marry that research if you love it so much.

"I don't love it as much as you, you idiot!"

As soon as he realises what he's said, she goes quiet. He mulls over on the silence for a few seconds - did she even register his words? - before she tries to stand and he picks her up - she needs help with that foot anyway.

He looks in the direction of the town, when he suddenly hears the words in his native language - the one he hasn't heard in forever now (expletives nonwithstanding) and the one she probably wasn't learning in her spare time, unless she picked it up as a hobby while he wasn't looking.

"I love you," she says quietly.

He freezes for a few seconds, processing the new information - not entirely new, he's been suspecting (almost hoping for) it for a while, but the confirmation was nice - then hugs ter tighter and starts walking, heading to the hospital.

Now it's gonna be different.

Now he meets up with her whenever they're both free - which isn't too often as they both hang out with their friends a lot - and they take walks and talk and not talk and they hold hands and it's quite nice. She really is as huggable as they were saying - he's glad it's her casual greeting, and he finds it as adorable as the rest of her. She listens apprehensively to him talking about aliens and supernatural, and he learns about her passion for flowers. They end up discussing possible extraterrestial flora, and time passes all too quickly.

One day he finds her in tears sobbing in the company of the purplehead and the other guy from her company, a blonde kid - the kid is crying with her, and the purplehead looks very agitated. He doesn't get the full picture until he gets her home and hugs her at the floor in her living room. Alone, she tells him she has been an idiot and she kissed a guy. Voluntarily. For reasons she seems to have but doesn't have the words for. He's angry, he wants to go and throw hands with that bastard this minute, but she doesn't let him go. She asks for a kiss, a true first kiss. And he can't say no.

He does meet that bastard in a wide open empty field later, and he uses the opportunity to blow him up into the next friday. The fight isn't too easy, but even if his opponent has a bit more street-fighting experience, he curbstomps him with raw power even without his full array of nifty toys. The deal is that that guy won't lay a hand on her again. He sees him later, and to his great displeasure he's hanging around her and her friends - one of them now, and she seems to be trying to act nice to him anyway. Is she some sort of a bad-boy magnet? Both the purplehead and the bastard are society's outcasts, and he himself is not an image of a proper goddamn gentleman. She looks happier now, so he leaves it at that.

He learns about at the same time that she's now officially part of his world - she's accepted the offer of a rival family. Alright, not a rival family, an ally family; an ally that's clearly not in the condition to stand against his family, too, so that was somewhat of a relief. Still, it's a different family, and a stupid decision overall, putting them on the different sides of a metaphoric fence. He could've thought she's suicidal if he didn't know better. It's not like it wasn't going to happen after the whole future ordeal. She had her last chance to opt out of this life, but chose to dive in. Not having a say in the matter, in the end he decides to respect that.

They do not celebrate New Year together - they go to different parties, but they meet up at the shrine in the afternoon to exchange presents - a telescope and a tiny jack-in-the-box alien. Then she takes a trip home, and he meets her at the train station when she comes back. They keep talking long into the evening. He promises to come more often in the upcoming year.

He keeps his promise.