11Disclaimer – If you recognize it, I don't own it.
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For as long as I can remember… For as long as we've been alive, we have always lived in our own world. Hikaru's and mine.
There was us. And then there was the rest of the World. We didn't need anyone else.
We didn't have friends. We had toys. There were two kinds of toys. The toy-toys and the human-toys. We preferred to play with the human-toys.
We could break those.
Oh, we never left marks. But we broke them just the same. Part of me knew that what we were doing was bad. And was cruel. But I didn't care. Because human-toys were toys. They didn't belong to us. But they were toys. They were more fun than toy-toys.
We could never predict what they were going to say or do. Apart from one thing… They would never get the two of us right.
We never broke our toy-toys. Because they were ours. We were selfish. We didn't break what was ours. But we'd break what belonged to other people. Toys. Hearts. It didn't matter.
There was us. And then there was the rest of the World. We weren't letting anyone else in.
In our eyes, everyone was stupid. Because they couldn't tell which of us was Hikaru and which of us was Kaoru. It was so clear to us. But no one else could see.
We wanted to let someone in. But we couldn't. Not until they could tell which of us was which.
So we continued to play games with the human-toys around us. And when we got bored… We found a new game.
Until he came along. The idiot to beat all idiots. The golden fool. The Boss. It was the first time that we had to continue a game after we had gotten bored. We wanted to stop the game. It wasn't fun anymore.
But he wouldn't stop. He wouldn't stop playing. And we were forced to play as well.
We thought he was just a fool. We thought he was just an idiot. Until he explained exactly what we wanted. He put into words what we had never dared to. We wanted to be told apart and we didn't want to be told apart. We wanted to be seen as separate people, who were one.
It was contradictory. But it was us.
He offered us a chance to make… Friends. We'd never had friends before. Only human-toys. And he told us, that he might not be able to tell us apart, but if we never let anyone else in… We'd never find someone who could.
We didn't make friends. The Guests were human-toys. But ones we weren't allowed to break in the manner we had gotten used to. However we could break them in other ways. We could overload them with our 'brotherly love'.
And the other Hosts? They were allies. Not friends. Not toys either. Just allies. We were close. The closest we'd ever been to anyone since The Nanny. But not friend-close.
When Haruhi turned up… We didn't really care at first. We knew he was smart. He had to be to get a scholarship. And to get a scholarship into A-rank? That meant he was really smart.
But he wasn't interesting. He dressed badly. He didn't talk up much. We didn't really care. He was boring. We were having far too much fun with the other human-toys to worry about something as boring as him.
Then he came to the Host Club. Oh, we could tell he'd made a mistake in entering the room. We knew he wasn't looking for us. But it was far too much fun watching the Boss fluster him.
Then the vase broke… And he became our toy. Human-toys had always belonged to other people before. So we weren't allowed to play some of our nastier tricks. But we had a human-toy that was ours.
Not just ours. The other Hosts owned him as well. But we were sure we could play a few good games before they realized what we were doing.
We had some planned… Right up until Haruhi threw us out of the changing area.
Then… Things changed. The change in gender was important. We knew the others wouldn't like us playing some of our games on a girl. But because she was a girl, she became more interesting. And we never discarded our interesting toys.
Anyway, watching the Boss' face when he found out… That was fun.
Haruhi became part of us. We had the same classes, and people thought we were friends. We drifted towards each other.
But we'd never had friends before. Even the other Hosts were still just allies.
She was just our toy. Admittedly a toy we would go out of our way to keep… The Physical Exams being an example of that.
But she was still just a toy. Just another idiot in an entire world of idiots. Where the only clever people were us…
We were arrogant, maybe. But when we could tell ourselves apart so easily… We couldn't understand why no-one else could.
Why couldn't they see what was so obvious?
Why was everyone so dumb?
We had toys. And we had a few allies… But the only people we could rely on, were each other.
That was how it had always been.
And we believed that would be how it would always be. Despite the Boss' comments.
Until that day… That day when Haruhi said five little words. And cracked our little world.
"No, I know I'm right."
Five words cracked our impenetrable barrier.
Five words made a flaw in what we had built our whole lives.
Our protection against the stupid people.
Our protection against the world.
Our protection against Them.
It didn't break. Not then.
The first time could have been a fluke.
The second a bluff… Or at least that's what we thought… What we decided when we talked about it later.
But what bought our world… Our protections crashing down… Was when she said:
"No it isn't. Today the pink one is Kaoru and the blue one is Hikaru. You swapped colours for the day, huh?"
She knew.
She knew which one of us is Hikaru and which one of us is Kaoru.
Almost by instinct we reached out and held each others hands. We were holding on so tightly, our knuckles must have gone white. But we didn't let go. We couldn't let go.
We watched as she walked away. But she wasn't walking out of our lives.
For the first time, someone had crossed into our world.
We were scared. But we were also excited.
Haruhi was no longer our toy… She was our friend… And we weren't going to let her get away.
We agreed that we would share her with the other Hosts… But no one else was allowed to get that close.
We were selfish… And it took us a while to realize that… Hikaru taking longer.
It took us a while to understand why no one else could get that close. To understand why it was so much fun to annoy the Boss by flirting with her… It only hurt the Boss, it never hurt her. She was too oblivious.
Somehow hurting Haruhi was not allowed… And we couldn't explain why, at first.
But we came to realize. And it was hard thing for Hikaru. He had never expected anyone outside of us to get close to us. He had always protected us from the world.
We had worked together, true. But Hikaru had always led. He had always been the one who tore up the love letters, when we used to break the hearts of human-toys.
He had always been the shield… I was the armour.
'I'… That word is so hard to say, sometimes. Hikaru can say it easily. Along with 'me'. And 'mine' and 'my'.
But that's because he's the dominant one out of the two of us.
Like Haruhi understands… We are different. Hikaru's more immature. He acts on his emotions, but… He doesn't understand them.
I do. People make sense. You just need to watch. We had had plenty of time to watch. Hikaru just hadn't bothered to understand what we saw.
I would like it stated for the record, that handing Haruhi over to Hikaru wasn't easy. Deciding not to fight Hikaru for Haruhi wasn't easy. There were complex emotions involved.
But when it came down to it, the love I had for Haruhi was less than the love I had for Hikaru… But it was also the same.
It's not love in the romantic sense. Its philia love. Love of a sibling. In this case a sister.
Spying on Hikaru's and Haruhi's date wasn't done just for the fun of it. Hikaru needed to learn how to interact with others when I wasn't around.
But Haruhi wasn't supposed to get hurt. She wasn't supposed to get scared. We didn't know about her fear.
Hikaru learnt his lesson though, and it was a harder lesson than I intended. But he learnt it.
And I learnt one too. I learnt that I would never let anything harm Haruhi.
She's my sister. And I intend to be the one person in her life she can always turn to. Like Hikaru can.
If mum could, she'd adopt Haruhi. Mum adores Haruhi. And not just because she looks so amazing in the outfits mum creates. But because she has changed us… Both of us.
And dad? He knows that she's special. And that she changed us.
We don't have toys anymore. Not human-toys. The Guests are just that… Guests.
The Hosts are our friends… Not allies anymore.
We've stepped out into a bigger and wider world. Because of Haruhi.
And because of Haruhi, we're meeting it head on.
Look out world. The Hitachiin twins are coming… And we're not just one person. We're two, who work together.
We can always rely on each other. But we can also rely on Haruhi and our other friends.
We are stronger united. And we shall not be parted… From any of them.
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I would like feed back, if anyone would care to give me pointers.
I think I may have gotten the characterisation wrong.
Thank you.
