from the wings

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/50474269.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/F
Fandom: 少女☆歌劇 レヴュー・スタァライト | Shoujo Kageki Revue
Starlight (Anime)
Relationships: Aijou Karen/Kagura Hikari, MaHiKaren but only like alluded to and not
the point
Character: Aijou Karen
Additional Tags: Introspection, Pining, but like. theyre already together actually, Aijou
Karen Yearning Extraordinaire, actually just me writing karen going on a
walk tbh, Just. a very small bit of a post-movie study of karen and her
relationship with hikari
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-10-03 Words: 1,271 Chapters: 1/1
 from the wings
by CharredLog

Summary

Karen always manages to love Hikari most when she’s not actually there.

Notes

ive been wanting to write a little hikaren study thing for forever now. i simply love them so
much. will probably write mahikaren and mahikari as well at some point. I Simply Love
Them So Much

See the end of the work for more notes

It is a mysterious, illogical thing, the love Karen and Hikari have found for themselves.

Karen grabs the towel from around her neck, folds it neatly in quarters, and shoves it in a
well-worn duffel bag as she exchanges goodbyes with her cast members, a few of them
making plans to get food to celebrate a successful end to their play’s run. She excuses herself
with a smile and a wave, the cold air of nighttime Tokyo wrapping itself around the bare skin
of her nape. She shivers, the sweat soaked into her shirt leaving her raw and chilled as she
pulls a heavy coat over her shoulders. Still, she fights past the cold nipping at her fingertips,
grabs her phone from a pocket on her bag, unlocks it, and through the rapidly growing
numbness in her hands, types out a message to Hikari.

‘Done for the day. Good luck in rehearsals!’

Karen stares for a moment.

‘I love yo-’ Backspace.

‘Hope you’re doing we-’ Backspace.

‘I-’ Backspace.

‘I miss you.’

She stares for a moment more. Backspaces again. Deletes the whole thing. Rewrites it.
Bumps into a tall man bundled in coats and scarves, bows a rushed apology, and stares again.

Karen always manages to love Hikari most when she’s not actually there.
Maybe it’s habit, Karen muses, shoving her phone back in her pocket and slipping into an
evening-rain-soaked alleyway. Maybe ten years turned loving Hikari from afar into safety.
Normalcy. Still, things are different now. The two of them are different, now. They’re
supposed to be, at least.

Karen lets the roar of the Roppongi Station crowds wash over her. The droning beep of the
pass scanners and clatter-clank of the turnstiles are a welcome, near-metronomic rhythm. It
sends something of a jolt through her to realize that maybe this, too, has become habit.

Beep. Karen takes her phone back out of her pocket. Clatter-clank. Her screensaver is an old
picture of Hikari and her kissing a blushing Mahiru on each cheek. Beep. A thought strikes
her, and she types out a message to Mahiru. Clatter-clank.

‘Taking a detour. Will be home a little later.’

Beep. Three dots flash on the screen. Clatter-clank.

Beep. A Suzdal Cat thumbs up sticker. Adorable. Clatter-clank.

All of a sudden, it’s Karen’s turn at the gate. She pulls her train pass from the shadowy depths
of a too-big coat pocket, slaps it against the sensor with a beep, and makes her way past the
cold metal of the turnstile with a noisy clatter-clank. Smugly, she pictures herself a cog in the
great machine of Roppongi Station’s washed-out-white halls, her duty fulfilled. She doesn’t
know why the thought strikes her as satisfying, but it does. She walks past a car display,
backlit much too brightly for Karen’s tired eyes, and winces. She turns her head up, basking
in the gentle waning moon light shining through the station’s rain-speckled glass ceiling,
before it turns to the flaked-off paint of the underground tunnel’s popcorn ceilings.

She pulls her phone from her pocket. A faulty overhead light flickers in time with the
blinking text cursor.

‘I wish you were here.’

‘I wish I was there.’

‘Why did you-’

‘Why did I let you-’

The train arrives with a squeal of rusty metal brakes. Karen rushes forward, managing to find
a seat by the doors, and lets herself sway limply against the smudged metal railing at her side
as the train starts moving. She watches a couple step out of the train at Azabu-Juban Station.
Lets the doors close again. Rests her head against the train window, closes her eyes. Jolts
awake three minutes later, breathless, Hikari’s contact still open on her phone and a string of
gibberish typed into the message box.

“Akabanebashi Station,” the PA system overhead blares. “Now arriving at Akabanebashi

Station.”

Karen bundles her jacket tighter around herself, backspaces the gibberish away, and races out
of the train right before the doors close on her.

Karen always seems to love Hikari the most when she’s not actually there, and it’s always
been her biggest weakness. It is the ugliest of her vices, the desire to drown herself in a
quagmire of Hikari’s brilliance.

The narrow Minato City streets push in around her. Karen feels small, all of a sudden. It is,
strangely enough, a comforting feeling. Her problems melt away, just for a moment, and she
lets herself sink into the flow of bustling nightlife. She walks past that little hole-in-the-wall
pizza place Hikari and her had tried the last time she’d visited. Past the boxing gym Mahiru
likes going to every now and then. Slips into a side alley, the yawning mouth of an
underground parking garage causing her steps to echo for all of half a street length, loud
cracks of polished leather on concrete. She passes by the old, metal-barred windows of a
wine sales office and the polished metal gate of a bike parking lot.

She climbs the stairs to Shiba Park, takes a seat on a damp wooden bench, and stares up at
the beacon-bright lights of Tokyo Tower. Her breath mists in front of her as she sighs, closing
her eyes and letting the sounds of the city wash over her. The rustle of spindly, winter-barren
branches whispering against each other. The late-night crowds visiting Tokyo Tower
humming and buzzing in the distance. The occasional rumble of a car, or the clatter of a bike
chain. Karen slips her phone from her pocket with shaky fingers and opens Hikari’s contact
again. She shifts on the bench, so that Tokyo Tower looms behind her, and taps on the option
to take a picture. She holds her arm at a dozen different awkward angles, trying to fit the
entire tower in-frame while keeping herself somewhere in a corner.

She shoots a toothy grin at the camera, blinks tears from her eyes as the flash momentarily
blinds her, and hits send before she can allow herself to regret it.

And then, she waits. She stares at the faded green paint of the cage at the top of the slide, and
waits. She stares at the slow blink of an airplane light as it crawls across the sky, far above
Tokyo Tower, and waits. She rifles through her mental checklist of upcoming auditions, and
waits. She tells herself, over and over, like a mantra, that she will not lose herself again, and
waits.

Barely two minutes pass, and Karen’s phone chimes.

‘I wish I was there,’ reads Hikari’s reply.

And for a single, golden moment, all Karen can do is laugh.

Karen and Hikari have always managed to love each other most when they’re apart, and it’s
always been their biggest strength—a fire in their hearts that refuses to be banked. And she
supposes that this moment, here, is the truest indication that they really have changed. That
even though they may still feel it, suffer from it, fall to it, weakness is not what defines them
or their love anymore.

‘I love you,’ Karen types, fingers numb and fast and sure. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

‘It’s a promise,’ Hikari replies.

Karen’s breath mists in front of her as she laughs again, closing her eyes and letting the
sounds of the city wash over her. The rustle of spindly, winter-barren branches whispering
against each other. The late-night crowds visiting Tokyo Tower humming and buzzing in the
distance. The occasional rumble of a car, or the clatter of a bike chain.

Another promise under Tokyo Tower brands itself into Karen’s heart, and she feels herself, in
this moment, reborn once again.
End Notes

fun fact, i literally made the theoretical walk from akabanebashi station to shiba park on
google street view so like. hope that little section read nice. LMFAO

Bird site!

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