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“Goodbye,” Akko murmured.
Her eyes glittered as they took in the scene around them. The Shiny Rod had just vanished, having performed its ultimate role as the Grand Triskelion. Now, all that remained of it was the shining green stars of the Big Dipper, the brightest thing in the sky. The beautiful blue world gently turned below them, now forever changed, thanks to her.
And the girl standing beside her.
“So… we really just did that, huh?” Diana asked softly, as if she couldn’t fully comprehend it herself.
“Yeah,” Akko said. She couldn’t stop smiling. “We really did.”
“It’s honestly a little bit unbelievable,” Diana said with a laugh.
Akko gave her a teasing look. “Aw, c’mon. We just caught up to a speeding missile powered by the hatred in peoples’ hearts, had a fight with it in midair, then we both fell until this thing -” she gestured to the legendary Shooting Star broom beneath their feet “- caught us, and then we shot a giant arrow into the missile, making it explode, and changing the world forever.”
She gave Diana a grin, gesturing outwards. “And now, we’re sitting here way up in space. What’s so unbelievable about that?”
Diana rolled her eyes with a good-natured smile. “Well, when you put it like that, you’re right - it sounds perfectly believable.”
Akko laughed, despite herself. She carefully sat down on the haft of the broom, gently swinging her legs back and forth, just gazing out at the stars. After a moment, she felt Diana do the same, their hands almost touching.
“It’s so beautiful up here,” Akko murmured.
Diana’s voice was impossibly soft.
“Not as beautiful as you.”
Akko froze, her heart suddenly pounding in her ears despite the picture-perfect serenity of the view in front of her. She felt a fierce blush in her cheeks almost immediately, her head whipping to Diana with such speed that she almost fell off the broom.
“W-what?” She stammered in disbelief. “Y-you think I’m -”
“Yes,” Diana said softly, a slight blush on her own face. Akko swallowed thickly as she felt Diana’s hand gently cover her own on the haft of the broom. They’d had a bit of physical contact like this before in their miraculous adventure, just out of necessity due to the absurd things that they’d done in the past few hours. But this time, it was completely different, and they both knew it.
Because Diana had interlaced their fingers.
“D-Diana,” Akko began. She swallowed again, trying to desperately to slow her racing heart. “I… I had no idea you thought that about me.”
Diana rolled her eyes with a smile. “I know. You’re rather oblivious - especially when it comes to things like this, apparently.”
Akko frowned, momentarily forgetting everything else that had happened and falling into the indignant routine she usually had whenever Diana criticized her. “Hey! I’m not oblivious!”
A laugh fell out of Diana’s lips. “Akko, I’m not saying this to be mean, I’m simply stating a fact. If you weren’t so oblivious, I think you probably would have noticed that I’m interested in you by now.”
“Well I - wait.” Akko’s crimson eyes met Diana’s blue ones. “You’re… you’re interested in me? Y-you like me?” Her gaze darted from place to place, eyebrows furrowed. “Is there another one of those annoying cupid bees around here or something?”
“Akko,” Diana said gently, leaning in. “It’s not because of a cupid bee. At least… not this time.” She let out a nervous laugh, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I… I’ve actually, truly fallen for you, Akko. I want to be with you.” Her eyes flitted down towards the gorgeous planet below, her face tinting red. She tightened her grip on Akko’s hand a little, meeting her eyes. “That is… if you’ll have me?”
Akko blinked about six times in a row.
Diana Cavendish - the Diana Cavendish, the most popular, talented, smart, famous, respected, and gorgeous girl at Luna Nova wanted to be with her??? The first-ever student to not come from a witch’s family, the boneheaded girl who was such a screw-up that she still couldn’t even fly a broom?
Akko looked back down at the Shooting Star, still faithfully holding her and Diana aloft in this endless sea of stars.
Well, okay - maybe she could fly one broom.
“Akko?” Diana asked. She sounded so timid, so vulnerable - in a way that Akko suddenly realized she’d actually been permitted to see a few times in the past already. “Did…” she sighed in frustration. “Did you hear me?”
Akko blinked again.
Oh, right.
“Y-yeah,” she said, putting a nervous hand on the back of her neck. “I… sorry, I just… had no idea you felt that way about me.” She smiled as wide as she could. “I guess you just sorta surprised me, is all.”
Diana nodded slowly, just a little crestfallen. “You don’t feel the same.”
It wasn’t a question.
Diana sighed, looking away and gently removing her hand from Akko’s. “It’s all right. I’m sorry if I made you uncomf--- mmf!”
Diana’s eyes went wide with utter shock and disbelief at the sensation of Akko’s lips on her own. It took her nearly two seconds to recover from her flabbergasted state before she allowed her eyes to gently slip shut, putting her hand on Akko’s cheek. Their lips timidly danced together - despite her rather bold initiation, Akko’s movements were still very unsure. Diana gently guided her intense, almost frenetic pace to one that was gentler, slower, and more serene. She felt Akko’s muscles relax in time, and the hasty, frenzied kiss fell into a soft, sweet, comfortable one.
Even before their lips began to part, Diana’s smile was nearly a mile wide.
“I… wow…” Akko managed. “That was… wow.”
Diana giggled like a schoolgirl, which she supposed was fair, considering that she technically was one. “So I take it that you do feel the same way, after all.”
Akko’s face somehow got redder, and she looked away. Her hand went to cover Diana’s, the inverse of how they’d been sitting previously.
“That’s… an understatement.”
Their fingers interlaced once more.
“You know,” Akko said out into the universe, gently wrapping her arm around Diana’s waist. “I’m pretty sure that among all of the things I’ve done today…” she leaned in for another kiss, which Diana was absolutely delighted to give her. “I think that that is the most unbelievable one.”
Diana laughed. “Well, I’m afraid that you’ll just have to believe it.” She rested her head on Akko’s shoulder, sighing with contentment as she looked down upon the beautiful blue planet still softly turning beneath their dangling feet. “Because now that I’ve done that with you once, I have every intention of repeating the experience.”
Akko smiled. “I think I’m all right with that.” She hummed, content to feel the weight of Diana’s head on her shoulder, and her warmth as she pressed back into Akko’s side. A question found its way to her lips. “How long have you been… interested in me?”
“Honestly?”
Akko nodded, making Diana nervously laugh.
“I think after that whole thing with the cupid bee, it was something that I’d at least started to wonder about,” she said. “I could tell that the love I felt for you then wasn’t real, even in the midst of it - but once the feeling left, I just found my mind drifting back to it sometimes. I guess I started to wonder what it would be like to feel that way for real.” She let out a little chuckle. “But the moment that I really fell for you was during that whole thing with my family.”
Akko raised an eyebrow. “Really? Why’s that?”
Diana looked up at her with a little smile, which seemed to kindly ask, “are you serious?”
“Akko, when you heard I was leaving Luna Nova, you followed me home with the intent to request that I stay. And then, when you learned how important the entire ceremony was, you didn’t just leave to allow me to undertake it myself - no, you came along and went to help me with it. And even after accepting that I wasn’t returning to Luna Nova with you, you still decided to help me. Just because you cared. No one else would have done that, Akko. Not Hannah or Barbara, none of the professors, or any of the witches I’ve ever met. But you did.”
Akko blushed, looking away. “Well, yeah! I knew your aunt was gonna try and cheat or whatever, so I had to warn you! I couldn’t just let you face all of that alone!”
Diana gave her a patient smile. “And why did you do that? Because, again… you had no real reason to help me. If we had succeeded that night, and I’d become head of the family, you would have gone back to Luna Nova without me. I doubt that we would have seen each other again - you had absolutely nothing to gain from it, and yet you still did everything you could to help me.”
“Of course I did!” Akko said, indignant. “I didn’t care about what I could have ‘gained’ from it or whatever, I did it because I liked you and - ohhhhhh…” she stopped, finally realizing. “I liked you.”
“I had a feeling that you did,” Diana said with a little laugh. “I just wasn’t certain. I was so nervous, because you didn’t notice any of my subtle attempts to court you in the slightest, so…” she smiled, gesturing out to the scene around them. “Once everything was over, and I realized that I was up here, alone with you…” she blushed. “I figured I’d never get a better opportunity to tell you how I feel.”
Akko shrugged, admitting that that was probably fair. Sitting together on a legendary broom at the very edge of the atmosphere, looking down over the peaceful world surrounded by a brilliant blanket of stars…
When it came to romantic locations, this one seemed pretty impossible to beat.
“Hey, wait a second!” Akko nearly shouted.
Diana jumped - she probably would have fallen off the broom if Akko hadn’t been holding her waist.
“W-what is it?”
Akko looked down at her, accusatory. “If you’ve liked me this whole time, then…” she blushed. “When we swapped places on the broom, right before I changed the smaller missiles into stuffed animals… you smacked my butt on purpose, didn’t you?”
Diana went as red as a tomato.
“I-I, u-um, well… it wasn’t exactly premeditated or anything, I just k-knew that you needed to stand at the front to t-transform them, a-and…”
The rest of the sentence died on Diana’s lips, and she went to meet Akko’s eyes, silently begging her for an apology.
But when she did, there was a teasing smile on Akko’s lips.
Diana was totally lost. “Akko…?”
She just smirked, giving Diana a little wink. “Gotcha!” she giggled.
Diana’s jaw fell open before she crossed her arms with a huff.
“Atsuko Kagari! That’s a terribly cruel prank to play on me!”
“It was also very funny,” Akko giggled. She gently wrapped her arm around Diana’s waist once more, and to her relief, Diana leaned back into her shoulder. “Sorry, but I couldn’t resist.”
Diana just rolled her eyes. “Yes, well, we both know that you had your arms wrapped around my waist when you just as easily could have held onto the handle of the broom, so…”
Diana looked up at her with a snide grin that would have looked completely natural on Amanda’s face, and now suddenly Akko was the one who was blushing.
“Akko?”
“Mm?”
Diana blushed heavily, causing Akko to meet her eyes once more.
“As much as I’m absolutely thrilled to be sitting here with you…” she gave her a sheepish smile. “Do you think we should be heading back down? The others might start to get worried about us.”
Akko briefly considered that, but the beautiful girl beside her was just a little bit too tempting to ignore. She gently cupped Diana’s cheek, staring into the starlight that was reflected in her eyes. They briefly widened, but soon fell soft as Diana’s expression returned to utter contentment. Akko felt a little thrill at watching Diana’s eyelids flutter shut before pulling her in for their third kiss - easily the most amazing one so far.
Akko pulled away once more, but only by a few inches.
“I think they can wait just a bit longer, don’t you?”
Diana laughed, reaching up to cover the hand that Akko had on her cheek.
“You know, now that you mention it…”
Diana leaned in once more - it was entirely possible that she would never get tired of kissing Atsuko Kagari.
“... I think we can take our time.”