Angels
by Apple-chan

Disclaimer: <insert witty disclaimer remark here>

Songfic. AnnaXYoh. Pointless. This is my first SK fic so...um.

Spoilers: For episode 40+ of the anime (I think)

Warning: none, very much PG

Others: OOC-ish. Sort of.

I sit and wait
Does an angel contemplate my fate
And do they know
The places where we go
When we're grey and old

I've never told anyone this. No one knows how I really feel. No one knows what is really hidden behind that easygoing smile I always have on my face.

Absolutely no one--but her. She knows who I am. She knows how I think, and how I feel. She knows me too well. Even sometimes, too much.

I remember, quite clearly, the first time we met. How much of her I had longed to see. How much of her I liked. How much of her seemed...unreal. Like she wasn't quite something from this earth. Like maybe...she was part of the great spirits.

Or something more.

When I had looked into her eyes, that day...I saw something I never thought I would actually see in a child's eyes. Granted, we were both mere children at that time, but her eyes...held in them something I could not quite comprehend then. Something that only someone a hundred times older, if they were alive, would know.

Wisdom.

And underneath all that wisdom, I saw something else--her pain. She had kept it well-veiled beneath her cold eyes and sharp tongue. But I saw it. And I knew it. I felt it. I felt her. I felt her soul.

And right then, and there, at that first meeting, she knew me--and I knew her.

In the ultimate sense of the word.

'cos I have been told
That salvation lets their wings unfold
So when I'm lying in my bed
Thoughts running through my head
And I feel the love is dead
I'm loving angels instead

When it comes to me, she's harsh, I can say that much. Harsh to the point of obsession, if I were to quote one of my friends. She's obsessed with training me, and making me strong. And I appreciate that. It's because she wants me to have the best future possible, as the Shaman King. And she wants me to have that best future possible as the Shaman King because she is to become my queen and I was supposed to give her an easy life.

Her reasons are selfish. Or so she says.

She would never, ever admit to my face or to anyone else's that she cares for me. She would never ever let anyone, me included, to see her beautiful, soft, almost ethereal smile. A smile that needed no explanations. A smile that spoke volumes, yet only conveyed one single solitary message.

Love.

The only time she ever lets that smile out was when she thought she was alone, or when she thought I wasn't looking.

Or every night, when she comes to my room to watch me sleep. Thinking I was asleep, she sits beside my futon, softly runs her fingers across my hair, and sighs.

And then she smiles.

After a long, hard day of training that could only be given to me by none other than her, it doesn't surprise me the least that I felt like I could still take more of her training.

More running. More laps. More exercises. Heavier weights on my hands and feet.

I would climb a million mountains...

Run a million distances...

Do a million push-ups...

Carry a million tons of weight on my hands and feet...

Just to see her smile like that, a million times.

Just to see her smile for me.

The smile of an angel.

And through it all she offers me protection
A lot of love and affection
Whether I'm right or wrong
And down the waterfall
Wherever it may take me
I know that life won't break me
When I come to call she won't forsake me
I'm loving angels instead

"Everything will be alright." For as long as I can remember, this has always been my mantra. Even during trouble, I repeated that thought to myself, and sometimes out loud, over and over again. I've heard somewhere that when you think that something is someway somehow, even though it's not, one way or another, it will be.

That didn't make sense at all. Well, nobody ever said I made sense. Even her. She always claims that she doesn't understand me, but I know she does. And I know she knows she does.

She probably understands me even more than I do.

And for the life of me, I can never understand how she manages to do it. How she can manage to give me god-awful training. How she can manage to boss my best friend around. How she can manage to make me give in to whatever she says. How she can manage to make people cringe and cower at her very gaze.

And how she can manage to save my life when I thought it was all over for me.

Like that time.

Not even my repeated chanting of "everything will be alright" could deny the inevitable. As I struggled to keep my OverSoul intact, acting as my shield against the repeated blows the Hana-gumi kept pummeling at me, I--somehow barely--managed to keep my wits in check. In a situation like this, with everyone down and I was the only one left standing, there was only one conclusion: I was the only hope, and if I failed to win this, everyone was going to die.

"Everything will be alright, everything will be alright..." My mind chanted repeatedly.

But to no avail. My Oversoul was breaking. Any second now...

Was it just going to end like this...?

All of a sudden, my mind shifted. From chanting my previous mantra, it had now moved on to something else.

Chanting...something else...

Her name.

I gave a resigned sigh. Maybe I really -was- going to die.

And then my Oversoul shattered. I closed my eyes and waited for death to hit...

It never came. Instead, a voice reached my ears.

A voice that my mind...my heart...and my soul...knew instantly.

Her.

When I'm feeling weak
And my pain walks down a one way street
I look above
And I know I'll always be blessed with love
And as the feeling grows
She breathes flesh to my bones
And when love is dead
I'm loving angels instead

Life.

If my mother had given birth to me, and my father had helped out in creating me, and my grandfather had raised me and trained me to be a shaman, -she- has...well...

There are really no words to describe what she was, what she has been, and what she is to me. Of course, the word "fiancée'" is always an option, but I think she's...something more than that to me.

If my mother and father had given life to me, and my grandfather had trained me so I would live on, -she- had...it's hard to explain, really. She was always there. Constantly there. I knew one of the reasons for that was the fact that we were engaged to be married. The other reason was that she had to guide me so that I would be strong enough to be the Shaman King and give her an easy life (I wonder how many times I've said that). But she had other reasons, reasons that were difficult to voice out.

But I knew.

If my life had been a story, then my parents would have been the introduction, my grandfather, the outline, and her...the plot.

There would be no story without a plot. It wouldn't be a story then. It would be something half-baked, with no sense at all.

She completed me. It was she who gave me reasons to live.

There are no words for that. Something like that surpasses words.

Something like that was unspoken.

And through it all she offers me protection
A lot of love and affection
Whether I'm right or wrong
And down the waterfall
Wherever it may take me
I know that life won't break me
When I come to call she won't forsake me
I'm loving angels instead

OWARIMASHITA.

End Notes:

Updated July 2, 2003. Had to fix a few spelling and typo errors. ^_^;;;;

I don't own the song Angels. Robbie Williams does. It's a nice song. You guys should listen to it.=)

There may be an "Anna" answer to this. I'm not sure.

Reviews will be very much appreciated.