carpe babem
[1,026 words]
[1,026 words]
Asuka knew that she had a lot to think about.
The benefit of getting to power up and just...run around as a magical girl, really, was that it gave her lots of time and space to think about all the things that were crowding her head. Draining wasn't hard, after all; her mirrorwraith mostly took care of it, and she could just park on a rooftop and let it happen. There was plenty of time, then to consider all the things she wanted to consider.
Most of them surrounded Faeth.
It was ridiculous. she knew it was ridiculous. Her absurd crush on this beautiful, taken girl could not amount to anything. And yet....she wanted. So, so badly, she wanted. She wanted to get close to her, to hold more than her hand, to...to do all kinds of things that turned her cheeks bright red and made her feel more guilt than she had ever experienced in her life. She was thinking all of this about a girl that was in a relationship with someone else, and she was being so, so stupid, and she needed to...to chill out.
But she couldn't. She couldn't stop thinking about it. Couldn't stop wondering if maybe, just maybe, there was something that was...supposed to happen, between them. For them. For her and for Tristan and for Tristan's Emily, who was probably absurdly pretty, because Tristan was absurdly pretty and so of course she would have an absurdly pretty girlfriend. That was just how it worked, right?
Which made Asuka pause, in all her daydreaming. She....was not absurdly pretty, she was pretty sure. No one had ever called her "ethereally gorgeous," the way she caught herself thinking of Faeth when she let her mind wander too far. And she didn't get prettier when she powered up; she turned into a creepy murderous ghost girl that belonged at the bottom of a well, or creeping around an attic, or otherwise confined to the boundaries of a horror movie. Not exactly primo girlfriend material, and that wasn't even accounting for all her myriad personality flaws. She was weird, and sometimes a little creepy, and shy at all the wrong times and bold at even worse ones, and just generally not the sort of girl anyone was excited to take home, probably.
Not that she'd ever been in a position to find out.
But honestly, "friend that gets invited to theater shows" and "potential girlfriend"....there gulf between them was so wide as to practically be untraversible.
Ugh.
She wished she could go to Mirrorspace on her own; getting to wander around in there and see what it had to offer would undoubtedly make her feel a lot better about the whole predicament, because at least she would be doing something with her pointless pining.
She called her wraith back to her, and hopped off the roof she was on and onto the next one. Better to keep moving, even if none of the crowd below could see her; someone might come looking, and the less she stayed still, the harder it would be for some self-righteous Senshi to ruin her day.
She bounced to another roof, and then took a quick turn to go from the major street she'd been using as her draining ground to a side street--still close enough to Little Tokyo's center that there were plenty of people around, and still somewhere she knew well, since her apartment wasn't far away, but far enough away to hopefully confuse any pursuit, and she let her wraith out again to keep doing its little wraithy job.
She leaned over the edge, and wondered. What would happen if she did confess? If she admitted to Faeth that she had feelings for her, and Faeth's girlfriend was okay with sharing, and they....whatever they did? At least Reiko wouldn't have to explain anything to her family; they were still far away, in New York, and only checked in every once in a while to determine that she was still being a giant disappointment and hadn't signed up for university classes to get a real degree and a real job. So her telling them that she was dating a girl would just be another in the eternal series of ways that she was not the daughter they thought they raised. That was...fine and well and good, anyway. She didn't need their approval; her YouTube income paid the rent and paid for groceries, and if they thought it wasn't a "real" job because they couldn't imagine doing it, that was their problem. Similarly, if they got angry because she was dating a girl--or, god forbid, if things went exceptionally well and Faeth's Emily liked her too, and she liked Emily as much as she liked Faeth, two girls,--well, they were in New York City and she was in Destiny City, and they were definitely not going to fly down to berate her over her life choices. that wasn't their style. Just a sad sigh from kaa-san, and a weary groan from tou-san, and a passive aggressive reminder that her older sister was perfect and married and having kids and otherwise living the life they expected for Reiko.
But she didn't have to live the life they expected for her.
She already wasn't.
She was living a way, way better one--one that was all hers, and one that she wasn't going to compromise. After all, their plans for their daughter certainly didn't include her being some kind of mirror-hopping magical girl, and that was something she wasn't letting go of any time soon.
So, fine. She'd do it. She'd go to Faeth. Tell her how she felt. Ask her if Faeth's Emily was okay with sharing her. Maybe find out if she was okay with being shared.
She was going to take control of her life, one smooch with a pretty girl at a time. and if it didn't work out, that was okay. She would still have done something brave, and scary, and that had to be worth something. She would make it be worth something.
She was going to look forward--and she was going to be brave.
