A Place For Only Them

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Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, they don't like me, characters respectfully borrowed without permission, story isn't making any money, good because it has approximately no merit.

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Summary: When she thinks about it now, Nancy knows the very first moment that she fell in love with books. Post-OVA, pre-TV.

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When she thinks about it now, Nancy knows the very first moment that she fell in love with books.

It was back in the hospital, a long, long time ago, before they came here where she had all the books she could ever want, and the only person she really needs.

She couldn't remember anything before the hospital, and stopped trying a long time ago, because when she tried she remembered things that didn't make any sense and made her head hurt, and the orderlies who brushed her hair and took her for walks scolded her to stop crying.

The hospital wasn't so bad at first; it was almost nice sometimes, when they let her play in the gardens and daydream by the lake, but it was the kind of not so bad that just didn't know any better.

The first time Yomiko came to see her, messy hair and wrinkled clothes unlike the starched blouses and immaculately fastened ties of the girls that took care of her, Nancy started to know better, and stopped liking the hospital so much.

The second time Yomiko came to see her, with more paper butterflies and stories about her big sister just like she promised last time, Nancy stopped liking the hospital at all.

The third time Yomiko came to see her, loaded down with dozens and dozens of her favourite books for them to read together, Nancy started to hate the hospital, but she fell in love with books.

Books meant that the little bits of things in the back of her mind that she can't quite grasp, things that happened when she tried to remember what was before the hospital, wispy little bits of sounds and names and smells and pain like someone else's memories, would go back to sleep for a while so she could concentrate on the story.

Books meant more things to daydream about by the lake and turn over in her mind when she woke up from a nightmare to find the world still dark and hours to go before someone would come for her.

Books meant Yomiko.

And books and Yomiko were the only things that made her feel even a little bit happy after they took her baby away.

That was the only time that the orderlies didn't scold her to stop crying. One of them, a different lady that she had never seen before, was crying too, and looked very, very angry with the man who took Nancy's baby away and gave it to her.

Nancy doesn't understand, even now, why someone would be so angry when she had such a cute little baby to cuddle and feed and take care of, but there are lots of things that she doesn't understand.

And now it's just Nancy and Yomiko and the books and very, very sometimes the man who comes to bring them food.

When they first got here, a few weeks after they got settled in, Yomiko told her, crying almost as hard as the lady who was with the man who took her baby, that the child was at peace now, sleeping for always and would never be cold or hungry or lonely again.

And then she cried too, forgot all about all the new books she'd never read before and just clung to Yomiko and cried and cried.

But a little bit more each day, she started loving books again, almost as much as she's loved Yomiko since her third visit.

And now when she looks at the shelves and shelves of books on every side, it feels like Yomiko is holding her and kissing her forehead and singing tunelessly to her until the nightmares and headaches stop, even if Yomiko can't hear her right now because she found a really good book.

And it's nice; it's nice when Yomiko really does it, and it's nice when the books all around her just make her feel like Yomiko is doing it.

But it's a little bit like the hospital: brushing Yomiko's hair, and Yomiko brushing her hair, and snuggling up together to read is nice, but she thinks it's only enough because she doesn't know any better.

Except that it's not enough, and she does know better, through the half-eroded flashes of memory that might as well be someone else's for all the sense she can make of them.

This, though, she understands.

Yomiko came and took her away from the hospital in a big boat made out of her brand-new book that she hadn't even finished yet, but Nancy thinks that if she wants something different to happen this time, she'll have to make it happen herself.

It isn't that she can't do things for herself, it's just that no one's ever let her, that she can remember.

But even if she does something without Yomiko's permission, Yomiko won't be angry with her. She's never seen Yomiko get angry. It seems like Yomiko's afraid to get too angry.

And even if Yomiko does get angry, Nancy doesn't care--much. She's doing this for their own good.

Yomiko is making it very easy. She's curled up on the floor, eyes fixed firmly on the page, with her head tilted to the side in thought over something she's reading.

Nancy isn't sure what it is, or why it is, this almost magnetic force drawing her to the smooth pale side of Yomiko's neck, just in the place that Yomiko sometimes rubs lightly with that lonely, faraway look in her eyes when she thinks Nancy isn't looking.

But she's better at discerning what she wants than why she wants it, and brushes her lips, lightly, barely perceptible pressure, nipping just a little bit when she tastes Yomiko's sharp gasp and soft sigh and the other girl's hand threads back into her hair to pull her closer.

She winds her arms gently around Yomiko from behind, and the sweetsalt taste of friend--lover--friend's skin thrills her beyond the words she knows to describe it. But when Yomiko starts trembling in her arms, shuddering uncontrollably against her, she tastes something other than shocked, half-guilty pleasure in those soft cries that makes her pull away.

The tears streaking her Yomiko's cheeks are a little bit like someone peeling back the skin and striking at the flesh with a dull blade, and her own eyes almost fill with tears, but she gulps them back and pulls the crying girl into a hug.

"I'm sorry, Nancy," Yomiko sniffles into her shoulder.

"You and my big sister...were lovers?"

"No."

And Yomiko cries harder, and Nancy hugs her harder, and rocks her a little, and kisses her on the forehead and tries to chase away the nightmares.

After a long time, after Yomiko has quieted, Nancy keeps stroking her hair and asks softly,

"But you loved her?"

"Yes."

Nancy's expression hardens, and Yomiko shifts nervously.

"Even though she gave up on her life just when she found you, and left you alone to go die with the man who created us to hate each other?"

Yomiko sits bolt upright, and narrowly escapes breaking Nancy's nose with glasses.

"Nancy! How much do you remember?"

A pause.

"Enough."

And without waiting for a reply, she crawls nearly into Yomiko's lap and kisses her again, but not in that spot, because she doesn't want Yomiko to cry anymore. The tears are still there, wet against her cheeks and in her hair and against her lips when she brushes them away, but when she's finished drying them, Yomiko smiles, shakily, and pulls her gently closer to kiss her again.

But that spot, still pink and a little damp from her kisses, draws her again, because she doesn't want like the idea that there are parts of Yomiko that she'll never be able to have.

Yomiko already has that thing about her glasses, and she's more flushed with pleasure when she's reading Nenene Sumiregawa's books than any others; Nancy just doesn't think it's fair that part of Yomiko should belong always and only to her big sister, too.

And she can taste pleasure melting into sadness and tears again, and pulls away to press warm kisses to the back of her Yomiko's neck through thick tangles of dark hair. Yomiko twists around in her arms and cups her cheeks briefly, and then brushes her hair back and kisses her temples lightly.

It isn't until much later, almost and hour and many, many kisses later, when they're curled up together, without books for once, that Nancy remembers to feel despondent again.

It isn't that she doesn't want Yomiko to remember the other people she loves, but she doesn't understand why, if Yomiko loves her too - and Nancy is sure now that she does, almost the same way she loved Nancy's big sister - she can't remember those people with a smile instead of tears.

Yomiko says that she's happy here. Why doesn't she just enjoy it, and enjoy being with someone that she loves, instead of being sad whenever she thinks about the people that she isn't with?

The more Nancy thinks about it, the more cconfusing it seems to get.

And the worst thing is, she doesn't think that books can make things nice and simple again, because books are what confused everything in the first place.

But even if it's confusing here now, with the books and with Yomiko, Nancy wouldn't trade it for anything, and she hopes that it can be like this forever.

Maybe, then, she can make Yomiko understand that loving someone doesn't always have to be a big, tangled up mess.

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End Notes: Whooooooooo, that was a big trip down rambly confusion! Would you believe that I planned this one out as a 200-word ficlet? Yeesh. Concision, thy name is not Rhianwen.

Anyway, this was just a little bit of femmeslashy fluff in honour of Valentine's Day. I like the idea of Nancy remembering her life before the near-drowning thing gradually, in little flashes, through the series, so I tried to play a bit with the idea that maybe things were coming back even before that. And I hope I didn't make her too fluffycutesy.

Humm, what else? Well, I tried to play up Nancy's (understandable) dislike of everything that might complicate her happiness with Yomiko, but I'm not sure if I took that too far, too.

Oog. I think there's a reason there's not a lot of fic on this pairing. Canon or no, it's really frickin' hard to write. XP