#look me in my nearsighted eyes and tell me they don’t pull a friendship is magic every time the world goes to shit | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

docholligay · 7 years ago

Text

The Grand Complication

Hey everyone! This is the Sequel to We Know The Devil, commissioned on Patreon! It’s 7,600 words, and I hope y’all enjoy it--I HAVE BEEN STARING AT IT A LONG TIME.

Dying was like getting on a ship, unsteady and awkward, unfamiliar and strange. She drifted further and further from the dock in dips and waves, and the faces she knew so well grew more faded and harder to define, the sounds of their voices blending into the white noise of whatever came after, brighter and brighter white surrounding her, the wobble giving way to a gentle soothing, rock, until the pain itself left her, an unwanted rope tying her to shore.

She gave one last look at the distant, dim line that made up her life, let the last gust fill the sails of whatever came after, pointed her eyes to that steadfast star, and died.

_______

“I could promise her again and again, hour after hour, that I would never do such a thing again.” She looked out the window, where a pair of birds fluttered together, mockingly in love, “But it would be a lie, I am very nearly sure of it. Even if I did not wish it to be.”

Rei fiddled uncomfortably with her cup of tea, the loose splinters of the leaves whirling like smoke in the bottom of her mug, and she begged the fire and the tea leaves and every method of divination she knew to give her an answer to her own feelings. She hated Michiru. She loved Michiru. Michiru could have killed Usagi. Michiru was a victim of her own loves, just as Usagi. Michiru didn’t care about her duty. Michiru had nearly died saving the commander she loathed. She wanted Haruka to continue to spurn Michiru. She wanted Michiru to know the light of Haruka’s love.

Michiru seemed smaller, somehow--she was never, in truth, large, but her bearing had filled a space as such that one barely noticed the delicacy of her features, the brevity of her height--as if when Haruka had withdrawn from her, she had shrunk into herself, a vast universe imploding. As she sat up weakly in her bed, she looked every inch the small and sorrowful society princess she must always have been.

Michiru leaving Haruka had made them friends, years ago, when they were young and Michiru had tried to spit in the eye of fate the only way she knew how. But they were no longer young, and anger, not love, had separated Haruka and Michiru, and their friendship, if it could be called that anymore, felt as fragile as it had in that cautious beginning.

Michiru looked at the ring on her finger. “She hasn’t been by to see me.”

She doesn’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say.

Michiru gave a half-smile. “It was easier, when I was simply the villain of the tale, was it not?”

“She just doesn’t know what to say.” Rei admitted to the easier half of the thought.

Michiru shook her head. “She will never forgive me. She is a woman of some principle.” She took a sip of her tea. “You will never forgive me.”

Rei wrinkled her nose, insulted. She wasn’t even certain what Michiru had said was wrong, but she didn’t appreciate being told her own mind.

“Usagi forgives you.” She said, scowling at Michiru, as if that settled the question entirely.

“Ever my consolation,” Michiru laughed bitterly, looking back to Rei, “I still dream of her, you know. Small things, sometimes. Still with the gift, if we may call it that. MInako’s disapproval could not take that from me even if she’d wished it.”

Rei tried to tell her that she saw things too, though her gift was so much tighter in, so much closer than Michiru’s. Mina had once joked that Rei was nearsighted and Michiru was farsighted, and neither of them were that useful.

She saw Haruka thinking about buying flowers and coming to the house, she saw Haruka thinking about moving to the other end of the country, she saw Haruka putting her ring back on, she saw Haruka setting up a dating profile. She was a soup of emotion whose ingredients changed daily, and every night since Michiru had saved Mina in the woods Rei had tasted it on her tongue, Haruka’s soul crying out to know her own heart.

She opened her mouth to say something, but Michiru interrupted her.

“Yes, she is rather a melange of emotion and action lately, isn’t she?” She picked at her silk robe. “I see it too. I see her with some other girl, pinker in the cheek and quicker with a smile than I have ever been. I see her lying cold on the rocks of a battlefield. I see her broken and healed, with our children, laughing. We’re happy in odd circumstances. That, I am not ashamed to note, is my favorite.” She turned away from Rei. “It is the rarest, of course.”

“She just doesn’t know what to say.” Is all Rei replied.

______

“There are monsters in the deep,” her nanny said, though she did not mean it to be threatening, the smile on her face betrayed. She was only teasing in the way she often teased Michiru gently, knelt by her side at the edge of the yacht.

She wrinkled her nose at her nanny as she giggled, holding her doll a little tighter and coming in for a hug, her arms wrapped tightly, the candy-warm scent of her filling every space in her mind.

There was a tear from the ocean, spray rising up as a darkness slipped into the sun, the sheer size of it blocking the sun and casting Michiru into shadow. Its tentacles, formless and coiling as smoke, wrapped around her nanny and threw her into its gaping maw as Michiru screamed and cried, it’s only response to take her doll and cast it into the sea.

She ran, screaming, around the yacht, but there was no one, and nothing, only her, and as she tripped she skinned her knee on the ground, just peeling away that first terrible layer of skin. Just enough to cause the most pain.

Her eyes widened as the creature’s tentacles surrounded her, whirling into a tornado around her, and then a tendril landed on her shoulder, fire deep from the sea branding into her, and felt the skin blister under its hot unending burn.

The salt was from the sea, and the sea was her, and she felt the salt of her own spray trickle past her lips, and a cheerful smiling crescent moon rise in angered red on her back.

______

“You look like shit,” Mina scoffed, ignoring that she could barely sit up half the time, “Maybe try sleeping more than three hours.”

Haruka shrugged. “How am I supposed to sleep when I’m taking care of you?”

Mina scoffed. “Don’t blame me for the bags under your stupid gay eyes. You fell asleep next to me yesterday afternoon.”

“So? A nap is--”

“While lunch was on the stove.”

Haruka sighed and sat down on the side of the bed in a defeated flop and shrugged again. “Sorry.”

Haruka was one of the simplest and most complicated creatures Mina had ever known, a woman of contradictions. It was easy to tell how she felt, but hard to respond to it. She craved love and comfort and rejected it the instant it was given, pulling herself back in her too-small shell. Mina had, over the years, gained some manner of trust with her, but still felt as if she were moving slowly toward a deer about to bolt, emotionally creeping inch by inch.

And so, she could not simply say what she meant, that she hadn’t woken Haruka up because she cared if the ramen burned for hours. That she’d wanted to let her rest and sleep, and let it burn. That she’d woken Haruka up because she was crying, and that she’d pretended not to notice when Haruka turned away quickly.

“I’m not mad, Haruka, I’m…” she carefully selected the word, her voice soft and cautious in a way it rarely was, “worried, about you. You’ve had a tough year.”

“Yeah.” She looked at her hand, the scarred line of bright white where her ring used to be faded now, nearly blended into the skin, but let the word stand as her only reply.

Haruka flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, as Mina patted her temple with the edge of her toe.

“I had a dream last night,” Haruka said to the white open possibility of the ceiling, “I mean I know my dreams don’t mean anything, I’m not Mi--Rei. I’m not like Rei.”

“What was it?” MIna said cautiously.

It was true that Haruka was no Seer, but it was also true that Michiru was a traitor who had saved Mina’s life, and it was also true the Usagi was a Queen who could not rule, so Haruka having a glimpse of what the world might be would no longer surprise her.

“I dreamed I died,” she continued to stare up at the ceiling, her eyes hazily following the long crack in the old plaster, “but it didn’t help.”

“Why the fuck would you dying ever help anything?” Mina snapped like a turtle, annoyed and surprisingly hurt at Haruka’s surprise that her death would not be largely beneficial. The jerk of it made a wild sting run through her body that mellowed into an ache, like the whip of a lash, and she laid back on the pillow.

Haruka sighed. “Like…” she struggled to articulate, struggled to decide if she wanted to articulate at all, and closed her eyes, sighing and turning her head away from Mina, “everyone was still the same.”

Mina sat for a moment with her thoughts, trying to figure out how to tell Haruka what she knew. Michiru. You mean Michiru. You mean that you being dead didn’t make her any more loyal to the crown. She was conscripted, and she’ll never really be a believer.

“I don’t think you dying is the answer.” She offered. “I think people are just people.”

“Then what’s the answer?” Haruka asked, as if her death had been the only sure thing that she could count on to repair the world.

“Maybe there is none. Sometimes there’s not.” Mina shook her head. “People are just the way they are,” her voice grated with a touch of anger, like a match against the side of the box, “you can’t change a bad person.”

“Yeah.” Haruka nodded, her head bobbing like a boat on the sea, “Yeah.”

____

There was fire everywhere, different colors twisting and burning, the scents and smokes surrounding her. All of it was ash and smoke, consumed.

Mina fell to her knees, trying to find the entrance, feeling along the too-hot floor desperately, hoping for any escape from the heat that oppressed her and entered her lungs, burning her from the inside.

There had to be a way. Had to be.

Glass shattered against the rising temperatures, and a photograph came fluttering down, catching fire as it did so, the edges of the photograph blackened and beginning to eat toward the people in the picture, who waited with smiles on their faces to be destroyed.

An old wedding picture. With all of them there. Usagi’s tears still dripping down her face, even as the ceremony was over. Mina’s bright turquoise bow, changed for the occasion. Rei still clutching the bouquet she had certainly not meant to catch.

She heard a crunch and looked up, hoping the door had given way, but saw only a leg in front of her, stepping forward and crushing the photograph into ash.

She looked up and saw her own smiling face, a lit match held in her hand.

____

It was a place far away from everyone, and for that reason, Rei never told anyone about it. It was a secret part of her heart and her story and most of all, in this moment, her mind. It whirled and twisted, smoke in a glass globe writing words and erasing them immediately, a language impossible to translate.

She had always looked for clarity up here, where the world seemed more readable, further at a distance. Sometimes her powers were too close, like pressing your nose into a book, only the world in front of you visible, and whether the view from the cliff aided her in seeing a more full picture or not, it certainly made her feel better, and that, at least, was something.

You could see the senshi from here, Rei thought, as the wind came up behind her, whirling her hair into long ribbons around her face. It was an odd thought, even as it sprung from her own mind, and yet she could not help but continue to see it. The dark blue and black of the oncoming night, the red and orange and purple and pink of the sun setting below the horizon, the green of the grass edging around the cliff, tiny light blue flowers clinging around it.

The teal of the ocean below, together with the rest, an entire other world resting beneath its skin.

She sat back from the edge, on a bench conveniently placed, roses climbing up through the wrought iron of it, looking as the sun set into the sea.

“Life is a game of chess.” Rei said it boldly, sure of her own poetry and force.

Michiru laughed her playful laugh, the one Rei only heard from time to time, the one that felt warm and real. “What lovely utter nonsense.”

Rei scowled. “It’s like a battle, and you have to think and plan.”

Michiru cocked her eyebrow. “Chess has rules, Rei, and the squares are laid for all to see. Should tragedy befall a knight, it is quite easily known how it happened,” she closed her eyes a moment as she sipped her wine across the table from Rei, “Life is not so explicable or so kind. The queen may despair when she is not carved of bone, and the other end of the table cares not for turns. ”

Rei sat back against the chair, trying to come up with a response.

“No one ever accused a pawn of treason, for it is never given the choice to retreat.”

Rei watched as a rose petal drifted out toward the sea. She shouldn’t have lied.

She should have told Michiru she didn’t know how to play chess.

______

She’s back at the cliff again, but it’s night, and the only colors she can see are black and navy and deep purple and all those colors that make up one night. The wind is high tonight, and it howls and keens past her ears, bringing her hair around her neck, tight as a noose.

There’s someone at the cliff, but she can only see them in shadow, a barely-visible line around them from the dim sliver of the moon, its sharp edge digging into the figure at the throat.

She tries to call out, but her words are swallowed by the dark, and the darkness fills her as she opens her mouth, and all the colors that still existed in this world fade into blackness, the only thing visible that thin shadow.

The wind lies down, and they jump.

The eyes of the stars turn to her, and stare, stare, stare.

______

Rei shut the door behind her, the echo of it closing too loud in the space, a contained explosion against the blank walls of the room.

“We have to fix this.” She put her hands on her hips, annoyed, staring at Minako, who opened one eye to look at her before closing it again.

“How’d you get past my defense squad?” She muttered.

“Mina, this is serious, and--”

“So you decided you forgive Michiru for trying to kill Usagi?” She lay with her eyes closed, unimpressed.

Rei seethed. No, was the answer, and yet she could not escape the image from the cliff, could not stop thinking about the way her hair felt at her neck. Could not stop thinking about chess.

“She wasn’t trying to kill Usagi.” She was surprised to find that she believed it. That she was not angry at what Michiru had meant to do, but for the fact that Michiru was simply, as she herself would admit, incapable of not saving Haruka.

She was surprised again to discover that somehow made her angrier, though at who she could not say.

“Okay,” Mina winced as she sat up, “So you decided for forgive her for not doing her fucking job?”

Rei scowled at Mina. “It’s not about the job!”

Rei did not always mean to tell the truth, though she very often did. She felt it in her soul that she and Mina were angry about the same very different thing. Michiru had put Usagi in danger. Usagi was her friend. Usagi was Mina’s princess. Michiru had nearly caused Rei a world of pain. Michiru had failed to do what she was ordered.

Mina looked at her, in that way that saw everything, that way that was too much like Michiru “So--”

“You’re not supposed to be in here!” Haruka burst through the door, hanging onto the doorframe, shirt rumpled and hair licked into mountains and waves by sleep. “She’s supposed to rest.”

“You’re doing great, bud.” Mina rolled her eyes.

Rei turned on her heel, not even paying attention to what Haruka had said, and stepped into her space, pointing at Haruka’s nose.

“You need to go see Michiru.” She hissed and popped like a fire, a log about split with the heat.

“No!” It burst out of Haruka like a toddler’s stomp.

“Yes!” Rei leaned further into her, and Haruka took a step back, quite against her own will. “You’re going to go talk to Michiru, and--”

“Why should she?” Mina interjected, as they both turned to look at her. “What the fuck does she owe Michiru?’

Mina saw herself, the match in her hand.

“I forgive her.” Rei looked at Haruka with a perfectly squared jaw, as if she dared Haruka to oppose her. “I forgive Michiru. And so does Usagi.”

“Oh, bullshit.” Mina called across the room, even as she saw herself drop the match against the too flammable floor, even as she saw the smile creep across her face, “You don’t forgive jack, Rei, you know it and I know it.”

Mina was surprised that so much later and after owing Michiru so much, she could still find the sharp edge of her own anger. Maybe it was that Michiru had put Usagi in danger, but maybe it was also that Michiru had saved Mina. That Mina owed her something, now.

Rei looked over at her.

“It’s not her fault.”

Rei said it, though she was not sure if she meant it, and Mina knew it was true, though she was not sure what it changed.

Rei dropped from Mina’s gaze. There was nothing but fire there, and Rei had no water to give her, and so she turned to Haruka, who needed the heat of it, who needed to melt the ice inside her and let it give way to the water that let things grow again.

“You have to go see her,” She pointed in Haruka’s face, “You have to try. You have to make this better.”

“I--”

“Usagi wants it, and you’re supposed to help her.”

It felt wrong, using Usagi like this. But it was no lie--Usagi’’s most ardent wish was for Michiru to be forgiven, for the Senshi to come together again, stronger than before, for the family that bickered and rolled their eyes but stuck together to be whole again. It was not using, she reasoned, and it was not a lie, because if Usagi could give a command, this is the command she would give.

Haruka was backed against the wall in the most literal sense, not even quite understanding why someone so much smaller than her intimidated her so much.

But it echoed in her head, and it echoed in her heart, and she heard Rei’s voice in a constant refrain, like the beat of a heart, like the ticking of a watch.

You’re supposed to help her.

______

The watch is broken. The watch is broken, and she should know how to fix it.

It’s a watch but so much bigger than she is, she moved with it when the gears tick tick ticked into place, though how she knows that she doesn’t know. The watch is still and silent now, and she knows that’s wrong, that it should be moving.

There’s a panic that rises in her as she examines every unmoving gear. What will happen if they can’t keep time? It seems so wrong to think of, the watch keeps time, and they need the watch, and why can’t she fix it? Why can’t she do what she’s supposed to?

Her tiny wrenches wrest against the gold and silver of the gears, but still they sit unmoving, and this watch is so complicated, the watch that sits on the wrist of the world, that watch that she stands on, on the wrist of the world, the one she’s meant to fix and can’t.

Her frustration melts to terror now, knowing that the watch needs to move, feeling the eyes she can’t see on her, wanting her to fix it. She’s responsible, she’s the one who should be able to fix it, and she can hear the doubtful muttering lapping at the edges of the watch as she crawls desperately around it.

She tucks her body in next to one of the quiet gears, and looks over.

There’s a part missing.

______

“They are lovely.” Michiru looked over at the bouquet of roses and jasmine, set to the side of her bed in a cut crystal vase, and smiled. “Thank you.”

Haruka stood awkwardly at the end of the bed that had been theirs, and was now simply Michiru’s, and yet she kept to her side of it, and the comforter was still the soft lilac one Haruka had liked, and by the other side of the bed there was still a tube of chapstick and a cartoon mug.

Haruka shrugged. “Rei made me come see you.”

“Ah.” Michiru’s face dropped.

“No--” Haruka hated talking, sometimes. It was easy when all she had to do was be bold, be brave, but the smaller and more delicate emotions, and the words that came with them, often eluded and frustrated her. “I--I picked out the flowers. I wanted to. It’s just--”

“I remember you holding my hand, you know,” She looked at Haruka, an aching hope in her eyes, “and there must be something within you even still, that, that cares for me?”

She did not mean it to come out a question, but her heart would not let it simply be fact, whatever her mind said.

“I…” Haruka looked at her and there was such sadness, such longing in her eyes that Michiru felt every rough thing within herself might break. “Michiru, it’s really--”

Michiru shrugged, disappointed. “Let us dispense with the pleasantries, Haruka. You are angry with me. You clearly still care for me. Both of these things can be true, and clearly are, and I cannot tell you how to reconcile the two.”

The delicate emotions dropped away like petals from a dying flower. “Why did you have to do that, Michiru?!” Her voice broke with the raw pain of it, the question she had asked herself over and over again, the one she had wanted to scream at Michiru as she knelt on the ground in front of Mina that day. “I--I can’t--”

Michiru shook her head, her eyes hazy with the misty truth of her own nature. “I am weak. I cannot watch you die.”

Haruka bit her lip and swallowed, her jaw hard and sharp as a cliff face. “I can’t be with you.”

MIchiru took in a breath, and nodded, letting it out slowly. “That is your right, and I respect it. Understand it, even. However,” She paused, her own face resolutely pointed toward Haruka’s, demanding she make eye contact, “it does little to move me on my course of action. I said precisely what I intended. I cannot watch you die, and that will be true even if you spend the whole of your life hating me.”

Harka turned away, wincing in pain, the agony of being unable even now to make things right, to do the right thing, to fix Michiru and make her loyal. She pulled back on her bangs, and whirled around, trying to keep her voice steady.

“If I die, can you protect Usagi?” She wanted to add please, she wanted to add that she would be happy to die, she wanted to add anything that would make Michiru good.

Michiru sat at the bed for a moment, her expression unnaturally puzzled by the question, her eyes drifting as if referencing an encyclopedia.

She looked down into her lap. “I fear I would move from a soft sort of acquaintance to hatred.” Haruka gave a sound that was somewhere between a scoff and a whimper, biting her lip. Michiru continued, annoyed, “Haruka, to be a Senshi is my cross to bear, and I am yours, and I suppose that is the heart of the matter.”

“Michiru!” She stomped her foot, angry and hurt and desperate and lost. “I--you’re--I don’t want it!”

“Well,” she snapped, “I am not entirely certain it is a cross if one enjoys it, Haruka. I most assuredly did not ask to be conscripted into someone else’s holy war.”

Haruka shook her head. “Don’t you want to do something good? We’re doing the right thing. We’re helping. We’re useful.”

“I suppose that would be presuming that we believe the Moon Kingdom did not deserve to be lost in the first, and that it deserves another chance.” She said matter of factly, crossing her arms.

“Do you not think--”

“I think it is very easy to be the hero of the story when you are the one doing the telling. I think entire planets do not rebel simply for a weekend activity. I think,” She paused for a moment, the pain a distraction from her irritation, and she continued softly, looking at Haruka, “I think not everyone longs so badly to have a reason to be.”

“What the--” Haruka snorted and tossed her head back dramatically.

“Haruka, are you happy?”

It was so plainly said that for a moment, Haruka was not entirely certain it had been Michiru at all, but a call from the back of her own mind.

“I--”

“Has this endless pursuit of heroism granted you any peace?”

Haruka said nothing.

“So I thought.”

Haruka, sometimes, tried to identify exactly what it was she was feeling. She’d read somewhere that it could help, when you were dumb like she was, when everything just became anger, when she just exploded to make whatever it was stop.

She didn’t know how people did it. There was never just one thing. She was sad, she was in love, she was hurt, she was confused, but these emotions all whispered, and her anger, it sang and screamed and yelled and--

“Fucking stop it, Michiru!”

And it popped.

“You’re always playing fucking mind games with me!” The tears receded as the rage within her smiled, showing a touch of fang.

Michiru shook her head “I--”

“No! Don’t talk to me! Don’t--don’t tell me how I feel!” She thundered the side of her fist into the dresser. “I’m tired of it! I don’t want this! I don’t want you to--”

“Haru--”

“I’M SAD!” She hated it as soon as it leapt out of her mouth, as soon as it escaped in the air, not to be recaptured, and she felt the anger within her frown deeply.

Michiru looked at her softly. “I know. I--”

Haruka turned, escaping from the room as the feeling had escaped from her heart, out the front door and down the street, past the subway, back toward Mina’s apartment, just running, running, running.

Usagi looked far above her head, at the loose ribbons that dangled from the walls, drooping onto the floor sadly. She stood in her dress--no, not her dress, Serenity’s--alone in the large room, empty and quiet and too still and sad.

“Hello?” she called out softly, hoping anyone could hear her. The room was made out for a party, cakes and wine and flowers all over the tables, and those sad, sad ribbons dangling. It was a party for one. Everything just for Usagi.

Music played softly, echoing off the walls and filling the space with even more melancholy, reminding Usagi that there should be people here, there should be a party, there should be a reason to celebrate, but there was no one. Just all the food and decoration and music she could ever want, but no one to share it with.

The crown felt heavy on her head.

“Hello?” She called out again, her voice wobbling this time with the tears of her loneliness, the cakes and appetizer bites sitting untouched. Unwanted.

Her words simply echoed off the walls.

Usagi furrowed her brow, angry that she was alone, angry it had come to this.

She tore Serenity’s dress off her body, scattering the scraps of insubstantial moonlight that wove it to the ground, and stood in her underwear, bright pink with little butterflies in foiled glitter.

No one was coming because the party wasn’t ready. She had to fix it.

She stood on a chair, and began to tie the ribbons together, the room beginning to light as the decorations rounded the room.

“So then I yelled at her, but now…” Haruka sighed and held her head in her hands. “I don’t know.”

“I’m not gonna tell you what to do, Bud. Your life is yours,” Mina shrugged and looked over at Usagi, who sat looking at Haruka, eyes wobbly and brimming with tears at the idea that Haruka and Michiru, the couple she had put the most faith in, could still be apart, could yell, could be angry, “Thanks for the cookies, Usagi, it was nice of you to--”

Usagi grabbed her arm. “Haruka! Don’t you miss her?”

Usagi had a certain artless way of disarming Haruka, sometimes, the way she believed in not only Haruka’s goodness, which Haruka herself rarely believed in, but also in Haruka’s happiness. The way she considered what might bring Haruka joy, whether that compromised Usagi’s safety or not.

“She did save me.” Mina added, a note of guilt and anger in her voice, “She nearly died doing it.”

“She was really brave!” Usagi nodded, “She’s a great soldier, really, and--”

Haruka gave a mirthless chuckle and shook her head. “I,” she sighed and shrugged, “ I can’t, Usagi.”

“Haruka,” Usagi looked at her sadly, “If I ask you to do it as your princess, will you? Instead of your friend? No,” She shook her head and scowled, trying to steel her voice, “If I command you as your princess.” Her face softened again. “Will you then?”

Haruka winced at Usagi calling her something so near, at the thought of Usagi commanding her to give in to the complicated love she felt, even when it put her in danger of Michiru’s twisted loyalties.

Haruka looked over at Mina, hoping that she had the resolve, that she could help Haruka hold to her anger.

“Mina?”

But Mina took the match in her hand, and closed her palm around the flame. Let it burn her. Let her save the rest.

She sighed. “Haruka, I--” the truth came up with the sour taste of vomit in her mouth, “We’ve all fucked up. She really fucked up,” There it was, ready to come out, the acid of honesty, “but I--”

“We all make mistakes!” Usagi rushed to complete her sentence, wanting the healing to come, wanting the happy ending.

“But I’m punishing her because I don’t like her.” She whispered.

“What?” Haruka looked at her. She had said it too softly for Haruka to hear, and Haruka turned her head, cocking her better ear toward Mina..

Mina sighed at having to repeat the hateful truth of her own perverse joy in finally having a reason.

“But I’m punishing her because I don’t like her.” Mina did not look at Haruka when she said it. “She was wrong, and it WAS dereliction of duty and--” she shook her head, “and I never should have put her in that position.”

Usagi looked at Mina with true sadness, and touched her on the thigh. “Michiru is a nice person, Mina, and I bet she would be your friend if you tried.”

Mina snorted. “No. But, I’m not either.”

“I think you’re nice, Mina! And you’re funny, and--”

Mina raised her hand. “It’s okay, Usagi, I’m not hating on myself here.” Her eyes flicked to Haruka. “Michiru and I are just a little alike, sometimes.”

Haruka stood up. “I don’t know.” She walked to the window and gave a stretch and a deep sigh.

Usagi looked over at her. “Haruka? I just want you to be happy.”

Haruka rested her head against the window. She wanted to do the right thing, she wanted to be a hero. If only she had died that day. If she could have sacrificed for Usagi. But she didn’t and so she gave the next best thing she knew to her life. Her love.

“Haruka?” Usagi interrupted her thoughts. “I want you to tell Michiru how you feel.”

“But I don’t know.”

Haruka did not dream that night, no answer coming to her in the dark.

____

“I forgive you.” She wanted to offer it with the same sense of anger she had Haruka, but found she could not, that she could only offer softness, the flame that burned in her heart contained by the iron of Usagi’s capacity to forgive, making it just warm.

Michiru looked at her as if expecting the scorpion to sting her, never imagining that the offer might be genuine. “What, pray, brought you to this moment?”

Rei sat across from her at the small bistro set. ‘I’ve been with you since the forest.”

“That is very true, but in no way, since the forest, have you found any cause to forgive me,” Michiru sipped at her tea, “You are here because Usagi wishes someone to be, and you still have some small affection for me left in the cobwebs.”

“That’s not true” Rei scowled.

But it isn’t a lie either, the flame whispered.

Rei had seen Michiru dance at society parties, when she had shown up because her father was Senator Hino, because the food was free, because Usagi wanted to go and needed Rei’s invite. No matter the partner, it seemed, her feet moved with a quick grace around the floor, edging around her partner’s as if she were perfectly threading a needle.

“Yes, of course, we all know you do things only of your own volition and never as an expression of Usagi’s influence.”

She knew how to move around someone else at any moment, and she was doing it to Rei, now.

Rei was tired of it.

She slapped her hand against the table. “I forgive you because if I don’t, things are only going to get worse. Michiru.” She looked at her with a fierce stare, and noticed the surprise in the arch of Michiru’s eyebrow. “I’ve had dreams.”

“Did you See it?” It came from her mouth like smoke from a snuffed candle.

“I think so.” Only with Michiru could she offer this uncertainty, only Michiru would know that grand complication of where your thoughts ended and Seeing began.

“And--” Rei stopped herself.

“Yes?” Michiru looked at her, and Rei noticed just a tiny bit of sadness and fear in her eyes.

This feeling had come over her slowly, incense filling the room, small at first, but eventually crowding it with the heaviness of amber and resin, choking her, until she had to throw open the door, to let out the perfume of her own truth.

“And I’m tired of being mad at you. I’m tired of punishing you.” It sounded foreign to Rei, and Michiru seemed just as surprised. “I don’t like it.”

Michiru gave a cautious smile. “Next you will tell me Usagi has rather lost her interest in sweets.”

Rei chuckled. “Too much of a good thing.” She looked off for a moment. “When there’s a fire, they tell you to go back to where it already burned. Fire can’t burn the same thing twice. It needs the fuel,” She considered carefully, the fire something she understood so much more than chess, “I think I’ve burned enough. I don’t think I have more to burn.”

“That’s quite poetic,”Michiru looked at her with a mix of pride and sadness “I will spend the next years of my life attempting to prove myself to a group of people who will never trust me. Who are right not to, for rest assured, Rei, I am just as terrible as they say on this subject.”

“Yeah well, Usagi cries in every battle so I guess we all have our faults.” She said it dryly, but as her mind waved over the Senshi, she realized it was true. They all had a flaw that could lose the day. The arrow had simply hit Michiru’s heel, instead of another’s.

“That is rather generous.”

Rei reached across, without thinking, and took her hand.

“Michiru,” She looked directly into the sea of Michiru’s eyes, waving and moving and impossible to catch, to know, “let people forgive you.”

Michiru said nothing, the air quite gone from her body in the moment. Rei, of all people, asking Michiru to be forgiven. Reality was strange and her dreams were strange and now the two seemed mixed.

“Michiru?” Rei nodded at her, and the softness left, and all became a command again in Rei’s eyes, “I’m going to tell Haruka to come over and you should be ready because you’re going to solve this. Usagi and me will get everyone to fall in line.” Rei crossed her arms. “And that’s just the way it is.”

Michiru looked out at the sunset.

“We’ll see what the stars bring tonight, I suppose.”

____

She followed the star through the night and the underworld, whatever those things were now. Definition had no meaning, things were whatever they twisted and molded themselves into. The sea was the rocks was the path was the shadow, and whatever it was, she swayed upon it, following that star, following that tiny point of light.

Her body was disconnected from everything, and though she was alone, she felt no loneliness, only the assurance of the baby in the womb, that we may not not know where we are going, but we know we are going somewhere.

There were sketches like pictographs in the sky. Or constellations. Wouldn’t that be more right? But the sky was a ceiling was a cave, and so pictograph became the correct word, and Haruka looked up at them, at her body lying on the ground, and then the stars that were paints that were a borealis shifted and painted again, and there would be Usagi, crying. And there would be Mina, looking off into the distance.

And there would be Michiru, throwing down her transformation ring. Grinding it into the dirt.

She followed the star, she followed the dot, she followed the light, and it grew larger and larger as she wore through the night, until it was the sun, rising on the horizon, and she felt the cool flow of air in her lungs, the shattering thud of her own heart beating, and the sun held her close in pinks and yellows as it whispered to her.

“Your life has value beyond its ability to be lost.”

It was Michiru’s voice that was Mina’s that was her grandmother’s that was Usagi’s.

_____

Haruka awoke with a start, sat on the edge of the bed, and wept.

“Ruka?” Mina spoke quietly from the other side of the bed.

Haruka sniffled, trying to cover that she’d been crying, trying to cover that the gentleness in Mina’s voice was almost too much to bear, trying to hide everything she felt about Michiru and the pictographs in the sky and the watch and Usagi and her own soft center.

Mina stirred and sat up, looking over to the wall.

“Bud?”

“Yeah?”

“You should go.” She nodded to herself. “To Michiru. This is the right thing.”

“Yeah.” She ruffled her hair. “Will you be okay?”

“I think we all will.”

Between sleep and waking, Mina looked at the smoke, at the dark burnt wood of the building, and picked up a hammer.

___

“This has to be a dream.” Haruka sat down next to Michiru, not daring to look at her, not daring to breathe, because if she breathed in she might inhale Michiru’s perfume, might be taken by her again, might know again what it was like to be so near her, and be unable to resist.

But she wasn’t supposed to resist, was she? Usagi, her princess, wanted them together. She wanted Michiru to be brought into the fold again, for their senshi family to made whole. That was what her princess asked for.

“Dreams are sweeter and stranger, I believe, than this moment.” Michiru gave no indication of whether Usagi had sent her or not, but her face was so terribly resigned, so doubtful that this was going to end any different than every conversation they had tried since that day.

“I’m sorry I yelled.” She pressed her thumb into the meat of her other hand, rubbing it, “I was upset.”

“It was not my intention to play games with you,” Michiru sat with her arms crossed, “In fact, I felt as if I were being rather plain, however it might have felt to you. That you hate my honesty most of all does not mean I was being manipulative.” She looked over to Haruka. “And I can be manipulative, Haruka, deceptive, too, terribly so. But I was not, with you, on that day. I told you the truth, as much as I know it.”

“I love you. I can’t stop.” It spilled out of her mouth like a toddler carrying milk, immediate and messy.

You idiot, the rage and hate within her whispered, you are so stupid, to give a woman like her that kind of ammo. She’ll turn you into a traitor, too, she’ll never be like you--

“I will never be like you,” Michiru touched her hand gently, “I love you more than life, than anyone’s life.”

Michiru was beautiful, Michiru was a marble statue in the garden of the world, Michiru was strong and resolute as the flowers around her bent and broke in the storm, but not Michiru, no, stone did not move, it did not change.

But in dreams, anything can happen, and so Michiru began to cry.

“And for that,” she sniffled, “I am sorry.”

Those small feelings, the ones that whispered, drew together, and they fell upon her anger, and they drowned it in the pit of her stomach, and they bloomed in the softness of its death and decay.

She rested her forehead on Michiru’s shoulder, and there it was, the perfume she was afraid of, and Haruka joined her in her tears.

“I don't know what to do.” She sounded like a child, even to her own ears.

“Oh Haruka,” Michiru drew her arms around her and kissed the top of her head, ”I’m afraid I have no answers. I--I am rather at a loss, myself.”

“I just,” she sniffled, “I want to--”

“You want to be good, to be noble,” She rocked Haruka, “and with me, all at the same time. That’s difficult, isn’t it?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She sat up and took Michiru’s hands. “Mina wants you to come back.”

Michiru laughed. “She most certainly does not.”

“No, I think she does.” Haruka nodded. “She sent me.”

Michiru looked surprised, but allowed herself a smile.

Haruka returned it. “Let’s start again.”

Michiru shook her head. “No. It would be foolish to take nothing from this.” she touched Haruka’s cheek lovingly. “Let us continue on.”

They kissed under the rolling clouds, writing new futures into the sky.

___

When the Senshi laughed together, it was like a chorus--tones all blending together in perfect concert, into one sustained note streaming across the grass of the park, a rare and spiritual music.

The sun was warm but soft, painting golden rays across their skin, the leaves from the trees dappling them in happy dots. The smell of Mako’s well-packed bentos perfumed the air around their blankets, Mina popping an Onigiri in her mouth as she waggled her eyebrows at Rei, the end of some jokey come on that was not a joke at all dripping off her lips like the last drops of soy sauce. Rei scowled in that familiar way that almost felt a smile. Ami picked at the cold chicken, looking out over the park, her brow wrinkled in thought more exploratory than worrisome. Hotaru drew dark flecks of ink across the sketchpad, not minding that Michiru had taught her how, as Pluto pointed out everything there was to love of each line. Haruka half dozed happily in Michiru’s lap, Michiru gently stroking her hair as she rested quietly.

Haruka blinked her eyes open and reached over to the last slice of strawberry cake.

Usagi jumped up in front of everyone, bun in her hand, and pointed at Haruka playfully. ‘In the name of the Moon, I demand you leave that for your princess!”

Michiru looked at her slyly. “Careful, Usagi. You’ve no idea what I might do in her interests.”

The Senshi laughed in that joyful Hallelujah chorus with the smoothness of a healed scar, and Usagi smiled so brightly the sun itself seemed to dim.

#a holligay joint

18 notes · View notes