A/N: Written for the WIXOSS bingo, the non-flash version, #090 – forgiveness.

Forget or Forgive

You can make them all forget, or you can forgive. But you can't have both. They're not the same, and it'll only be a lie you embrace.

But that's fine, isn't it? You embrace lies so easily. At the start anyway. Until they crumble.

You like that idea. At the beginning, anyway. Because you know it's going to crumble and, by this point, you've gone through enough things and become wise enough to remember those words of wisdom. It's going to crumble. Worlds built on lies will crumble just like Mayu's world crumbled, and you don't really want to end up like Mayu, lost in a corrupted dream until someone comes along to rip it apart, do you?

No, of course you don't. But you let yourself be ripped apart anyway. You were just lucky it was Kuro and not Ulith or Remember or some of the more brutal LRIGs that would never have let you patch yourself together. They wouldn't have even let you not fight, or fight so poorly that you lost and almost lost your dream forever.

But there was no forever in the game, was there? Hitoe showed that. Akira showed that. Second chances for the both of them – and Hitoe even managed to rewrite the subversion of her wish.

But if you fall as deep as Mayu fell, there'll be no second chance for you and you know it. Because it'll mean your opponent is as shredded as you are now, standing there with clothes barely clinging to your grey skin and even greyer form.

And the choice is in your hands. You won against Mayu. You won the game and her throne, and now the game is yours to command, to change or keep as you see fit.

And you've long ago decided you won't keep it as it is.

So it will change.

But what will you change about it? Let it spiral from this point? Rewrite the past entirely so only you recall? Those are the options available to you, and both of those depend on whether you can forgive or not.

Because it's a very cruel thing to wipe people out of memory, as you know. You saw it with Hitoe. You saw how horrific it was – and yet you stand and contemplate doing that very thing, wiping Mayu from their minds, wiping yourself from their minds… Do you think it will work out that way? Who will Ayumu come home to tease and ruffle hair and buy little trinkets for? Who will granny Haru make lots of cakes and cookies for? Who will be the girl who keeps Hitoe and Yuzuki together – or brings them together, because that's another thing, isn't it? You could wipe out all the memories of WIXOSS, and then they will not have met at all. Only you'll remember, and the rest will remember a lie you created, a lie with holes, a lie that'll eventually break apart and show the stage once more…

Or you can be the example, and forgive the world. Because you've already taken that first step. You've already forgiven Mayu.

But the world isn't Mayu. The world has no reason for you to pity it. Weren't you so very tired of it, once? Didn't you hate it, once? This is your chance for revenge and, knowing that, can you really turn it all aside and forgive?

It's your choice, in the end, to make. The power's in your hands – and it always was too much power for a person left alone, but that's how it's happened…again.

Or you can take the third option, like Mayu did, but that's the most unlikely. You would have never done. Though the old you would have chosen the lie in a heartbeat. Now, maybe, you're strong and wise enough to take things as they are and let it all go.