Title: The Lover On Your Shelf
Day/Theme: July 14 - forever was so many different things
Series: Tales of Symphonia
Character/Pairing: Sheena, Zelos
Rating: PG
Note: Erk, this is kinda weird - although I'm in a weird mood and can't think to begin with. Inspired by the song I'm listening to, really.


He had always been like a child to her. Someone who never grew up, never changed that stupid childish smile on his face. Even when he was young, when they were teens and had only just met, he had always been a strange source of sarcasm and childish humor.

So, when those eyes turned serious, when they changed so rapidly in front of her, she had no idea what to do. He could set her off with the most childish retorts, but he always shook her to the core when he would treat her with that edge of seriousness he could possess.

She wanted to avoid him when he was like that. To avoid the part of him behind the childish, eternally youthful charade he presented to the world. She didn't know how to handle him when he gave her one of those genuine smiles, or one of those laughs that didn't ring with a stifled bitterness. She almost longed for that forever childish side of him. It was what she was used to, and what she had grown to expect out of that insufferable man. And she had a feeling that was just what he wanted. That he was just as scared of that long standing connection to her as she was.

Even when he was changing right in front of her eyes - just like everyone was in that group - she didn't know what to say. Only just watch as the man she had always expected to be a child, a fourteen year old almost, forever, grow into something she didn't expect. She watched him change just like the world beneath their feet did.

Oh, she knew he would always be a child though - a goofy, insufferable child that would push her buttons to get what he wanted. But the inside, the side that would scare her and console her all at once, had grown into something a little more whole. Because, those broken hearted smiles he had flashed her were more genuine, more like the man she thought she had fallen for all those years ago.

It was as the years went on, and she grew closer to that man behind the forever child, she learned just how much she could love him. Even if he still pushed her buttons everyday, though it was more out of habit then anything else now. That child of forever really was so many different things, after all.