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*
It’s only by the gentle press of Mamoru’s hand at the small of her back that Usagi makes it back down the familiar sidewalks to her home. Chibi-Usa skips ahead and between them, laughing and smiling brightly. She had been home in Crystal Tokyo for a week, she says as they make their way along, the sun harsh on their shoulders. Her parents wanted her to receive the best training possible; they thought the best solution for that was real-life training with the Senshi of the past.
How convenient, Usagi thinks, tasting the bitterness at the tip of her tongue. She bites at her lip, words tangling in her throat. A headache presses at her temple. She adjusts her grip on the handle of her satchel, shoulders slumping. Mamoru, nodding and responding attentively to Chibi-Usa, curls his fingers at her hip, brushing the skin at the gap between her blouse and skirt.
“Aren’t you glad, Usagi?” Chibi-Usa asks abruptly.
Mamoru stops ahead of them, his long hands settled on the gate to her walkway. She meets his eyes just for a moment over the pigtails of their daughter, and has to look away. A flush curls along her throat towards her face.
“I am,” she says finally with a wide smile. There’s a stretch to her smile that cuts at her heart, an odd sort of loss she can’t pinpoint yet. But Chibi-Usa is young, and she is a help, and Usagi loves her, in a way she doesn’t understand. So, she smiles and reaches out to squeeze the young girl’s hand for a moment. “I really am.”
Chibi-Usa grins and races past Mamoru towards the front door of the house, calling for Ikuko and Kenji. Usagi shuts her eyes against the sunlight and sighs softly. She holds the note from her future self in her fingers. It crumples in her grip.
“Hey,” Mamoru says softly after a moment.
“Yeah,” she murmurs, mouth curling slightly.
His fingers settle at her wrist in a loose grip. She opens her eyes and tilts her face up towards his. The line of his mouth is set and worried, hair falling across his brow. “You all right?”
She laughs faintly, because she’s at a loss of what else to say or do. How she has become the standard by which all Senshi and leaders are held to, she has no idea. “I’m glad she’s back,” she says finally.
Mouth twisting slightly, he bows his head towards hers, his other hand resting at her hip. He is not so bold as to kiss her in full view of her house, and her parents; she likes that, the sheepish, old-fashioned notes to him. “Are you?”
“Stop it, Mamo-chan,” she mutters, wrinkling her nose.
His thumb brushes the curve of her hip. A warm breeze curls between them, sifting through the long tails of her hair. “I have to go. You’ll be okay?” he asks, voice low near her ear.
She turns her face, mouth grazing the line of his jaw faintly. It’s the little moments they have now, she thinks sadly. All they’ve had for months is quick small moments, and now, just when she thought they would have time, and space to breathe—
“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m meeting the girls at the arcade later. Will you stop by?”
“Maybe. I’ll try,” he says, something apologetic in his voice.
“Okay,” she murmurs. She glances over his shoulder to the empty windows of her house before she kisses his cheek, feeling brave, and slightly possessive.
He waits to leave until she’s safely in the house. Through the side glass panes of the front door, she watches him walk away, until he turns the corner out of sight; even then, she lingers near the front door, listening to the squeals and laughter echoing from the kitchen. Chibi-Usa fills the house with warmth and joy; Usagi tries to pull that into the cold chill in her belly, tries to use it to push away the faint sense of loss.
In her room, she smoothes out the note from her future self, and pours over it. Why now? she asks it, over and over.
The tiny smiling sketch of her future self provides no answers.
*
Usagi’s chocolate-chocolate milkshake melts untouched before her. She can feel the eyes of her friends on her; the stares chafe at her skin, make her want to crawl under the table and hide. At the counter, Chibi-Usa giggles with her friend Momo; Usagi can’t stop herself from looking over every few moments, to make sure Chibi-Usa is still there. It’s instinctual now, but it stretches too heavy on her shoulders, a mantle she isn’t quite ready to wear.
“So. Why did she come back, again?” Rei asks after a moment.
Usagi wets her lips and pulls a smile across her mouth. “We’re supposed to train her. We really are the best, huh?” she says brightly.
Ami bites her lip on a grin, as Rei rolls her eyes and Makoto snorts. Minako nudges Usagi’s foot under the table with her own, mouth set seriously. “Which means there’s going to be a reason for us to fight again,” she says.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Usagi murmurs.
“We can train her without an enemy,” Makoto says quickly.
Ami taps the end of her pen on her open notebook, adjusting her glasses. “I could certainly mock up a diagnostic program to simulate battle situations.”
“And we do have a sword,” Rei says dryly, glancing at Minako.
“It’s weird, though. Right?” Minako asks Usagi, mouth softening.
Leaning back in the booth, Usagi drags her straw through the soupy remains of her milkshake. Her books lay untouched before her. She has not been able to focus all day, since the events of the morning. “I thought it would go back to normal,” she says quietly. “Or, as normal as we all are, considering,” she amends.
Makoto props her chin in her hand. “But now you have your daughter running around.”
Color creeps over Usagi’s cheeks. “It’s—it’s weird,” she says finally. “And I feel—bad? Guilty? I don’t know.”
“It’s totally weird,” Minako says.
“And she doesn’t—I mean, I’m glad she’s close to us—her parents—whatever,” Usagi mutters, her fingers sliding through the condensation on her glass. “But—I just—“
“You never had time alone,” Rei finishes for her.
Usagi glances at all four of them, warmth cresting in her chest. “I’m a bad mom,” she mumbles at last, dropping her forehead to the table and shutting her eyes.
Immediately, four separate hands cling at her shoulders, steady and firm. Fingers curl into the smooth lines of her hair, stroking soothingly. “You are not,” Makoto says sharply.
“You’re not even really a mother yet, Usagi,” Ami adds gently.
“Aren’t I?” Usagi groans into her hands, voice muffling into the table. “She’s here. And Mamoru—he’s so good with her, you’ve seen him!” Resentment sours at the back of her throat, worry climbing up through her chest.
“Well, maybe it’s an orphan thing,” Rei says after a moment.
“An orphan thing?” Ami repeats.
“Well, look at the puppet!” Rei exclaims. “He had a puppet, and apparently he was good with the show he put on for her when she was sad.”
Makoto snorts. “Luna was impressed, I’ll give him that.”
Usagi rolls her eyes and sits up once more. Their hands retreat, fall back to their sides of the table. “He’s just going to be better at this than me,” she says, hands resting in her lap.
Minako sighs. “Okay, you have to talk to him about this.”
“I know that,” Usagi murmurs, curling her fingers into loose fists. “I just don’t know when we’ll be alone again, really. You remember what it was like, before—“
“We’ll take her tomorrow night,” Minako says with a smile. “Mako-chan can make dinner.”
“Eventually one of you guys should learn to cook too. I’m just saying,” Makoto murmurs under her breath.
Pressing her hands to her mouth, Usagi hides a smile. Her girls, her family; they lean in towards her, eyes focused. Late afternoon sunlight glances off their hair. Despite the weird queasiness roiling in her stomach, she can’t help but smile behind her fingers. “Okay, okay, okay,” she says.
“Seriously, we’ll take her to the movies, and then make dinner. Maybe she can bring her little friend too,” Minako says with a soft smile.
“You don’t have to,” Usagi says, glancing over at Chibi-Usa. She and Momo are poured over the Sailor V game, laughing and smiling; something in her heart gives, a faint ache. “Maybe she’ll leave us alone for a while, if I ask her.”
The girls glance at each other. Makoto raises her brows. “Ask her… by locking her in her room?”
Usagi shoots her a look. “No!”
“Just checking,” Makoto murmurs.
With a glance at her watch, Usagi slips from the booth and stuffs her notebook and books into her satchel. “I should get her home for dinner. Mom’s thrilled to have her back,” she says a little wistfully. Her eyes linger at the glass doors. The last battle is still raw in her chest and her nerves; it leaves a sour taste in her mouth. He had only said maybe this morning, but she still wants him to walk through the doors, to slide into the booth and sit in semi-comfortable silence as the girls ramble on.
“If you change your mind about tomorrow—“
Usagi waves her hand at Ami, smiling at all four of them. “I appreciate it. More than you know,” she murmurs, fingers grazing her brooch lightly.
With a last smile and a wave, she collects Chibi-Usa and Momo and leaves her girls in the booth. The air is still thick with the day’s warmth. Chibi-Usa and Momo run ahead, laughing and shrieking. Usagi keeps a safe distance, to allow for the soft secrets of childhood friendship. There’s a softness in her middle, something more mature settling over her.
She wonders, briefly, how her future self could want to miss these moments.
Maybe I don’t have a choice, she thinks then, as they approach her house. She doesn’t know what makes her sadder.
*
Later, in the soft warm light of her bedroom, Usagi brushes her hair and stares at the crinkled note sitting on the flat top of her vanity until the scrawl blurs, and she can barely make out the outline of the small sketch of herself, bunny ears and all. Moonlight creeps along the windowsill, edging her bed. Luna is fast asleep at the foot of the bed. Her mother tucked Chibi-Usa in hours ago.
Mamoru had called, earlier. He is not one for the phone; whenever he does call, he is stilted and odd, which never ceases to amuse her. But, after a moment of speaking to Chibi-Usa, he asked for Usagi and told her to come over for dinner tomorrow evening. It smacks of interference, from either her friends or her cat, but Usagi isn’t going to fight that battle, not anymore. She should be happy everyone’s getting along, after the beginnings they had and the memories of the past lives that sometimes creep into their everyday moments.
“Hi.”
Usagi stops mid-stroke, glancing at her open doorway. Chibi-Usa, her curiously pink hair hanging long at her back, rocks back and forth on her heels in the doorway, her fingers latched in front of her stomach. Her pajamas are white with pink bunnies; Ikuko had bought them just a week ago, as a present.
“Hi,” Usagi says after a moment, setting her brush down on the vanity and turning on her stool to face the young girl completely. “Is everything okay?”
Glancing down, Chibi-Usa digs her toes into the carpet. “Everything’s great. I’m happy to be here, you know,” she says.
“Okay,” Usagi murmurs after a moment, sifting her fingers through her hair. A cool breeze shifts through the room from the open window; Tokyo smells of summer and salt, familiar and real. “I’m happy you’re here, too.”
“Really?” Chibi-Usa asks, voice pitching up.
Something heavy settles in Usagi’s stomach; it smacks of guilt. She folds her fingers into the loose fabric of her pajamas, wetting her lips. “Of course I am. I cried when you were leaving, remember?” she asks with a small smile.
“I just—I know, I’m sure it’s really weird—“
Usagi pushes up to her feet and goes to the young girl, her hands settling gently on her arms as she kneels in front of her. “You think this is weird? Please,” she teases with a smile. “It was weird when you pointed a gun at me.”
“But you’re happy I’m here?” Chibi-Usa whispers.
Her fingers tighten on her daughter’s arms. There is a mirror of a moment in her mind, of both the childhood of her recent life and from long ago, when she was silver-haired and something more grounded. She has been the young one before, unsure and scared.
She swallows thickly and smiles at the young girl. “Yes,” she says, sure and firm. “But—can you maybe let Mamoru and I have a little bit of alone time every once in a while?”
“He already asked me that too. All you had to do was ask,” Chibi-Usa says, rolling her eyes. “You never just ask¸ Usagi.”
It’s all Usagi can do not to roll her eyes in return. Instead, she just pulls her daughter into a brief hug, kissing her cheek on impulse. “Well, now I know,” she mutters.
Chibi-Usa, after a brief moment, hugs her back. She is soft in Usagi’s arms, a rare moment. There is so much resilience and strength in this child; Usagi can see Mamoru in her, in those moments. She slides her hands over her daughter’s small thin back and wonders what good of her this child has, apart from the power to wield a crystal.
“I missed you,” Chibi-Usa murmurs near her ear.
Usagi shuts her eyes. The weight of a motherhood she hasn’t earned rests on her, heavy as the darkness she has battled time and again. “I missed you too,” she says, and means it. She thinks of dissolving into tears on the park bench, Mamoru’s warm hand on her back and his voice at her ear.
“Will you tuck me back in?”
Pulling back, Usagi smoothes Chibi-Usa’s hair from her face, nodding. It is strangely parental, and fits strangely as she does it; she is reminded strongly of her mother, parroting her actions as she leads Chibi-Usa down the hall, pulls the sheets and blankets snug over her shoulders. Is this how I do this in the future? she thinks as she watches Chibi-Usa for a moment, the moonlight curving across the small bed in the guest room that is now her daughter’s.
These are the thoughts that keep her up, as the moon travels from horizon to horizon and her stare remains glued to the ceiling for much of the night.
*
“Chibi-Usa had some nice things to say about you today when I picked her up from school.”
Usagi slants a glance at Mamoru, dragging her spoon through the melting remains of her ice cream. She sits with her legs tucked under her skirt, the lace of the hem catching against the tops of her knees, nestled into the corner of his couch. He stands in the open doorway between his living room and the kitchen, a dish towel in his hands. Night falls across Tokyo, the skyline lights drowning out the faint moonlight. The past few hours have been lovely and quiet; they had ordered in, eaten at the kitchen table, talked of nothing serious; but the conversation has edged towards the shadow of their daughter hanging between them. She’s spent all day parsing her words, sifting through her knot of feelings, trying to settle the strange roil in her middle.
“That’s one for the history books,” she says after a moment.
He smiles slightly, a half-twist of his mouth. “She was worried you were… less than okay with her being here again.”
“I wish everyone would stop assuming that,” she mutters, shoving a spoonful of chocolate ice cream in her mouth.
“I didn’t assume that.”
She looks at him again, frowning. Sometimes, he’s so transparent that she just wants to laugh, and other times—other times, it takes all of her to read him. “Mamo-chan, I’m just—I’m just going to say this, once,” she says after a moment, setting her bowl on the coffee table.
His gaze darkens, mouth setting into a serious line. He leans against the doorframe, a sharp angle of shadow across the floor. Sighing, she rests her chin on her hand, her elbow propped on the arm of the couch. “I’m not… I’m not ready to be her mother yet,” she says slowly, her tongue thick in her mouth. “I love her, and I’ll watch out for her, and care for her, and train her. But—I don’t know how to be her mother. I barely know how to be me sometimes.”
“You don’t have to be her mother,” he says after a moment, pushing off the doorframe and moving towards her. He sets the dishtowel on the coffee table and sits near her on the couch. “No one expects that of us, to be her parents. She has parents.”
She tilts her head towards him, her hair falling across her face and throat. A lump settles hard in her throat, a faint tremble in her fingertips. “But they’re us.”
“We’re not them,” Mamoru says. His hand falls to her knee, fingers ghosting over skirt and skin. “Not yet, anyway.”
“And now my head hurts,” she mumbles, shutting her eyes. The air thickens between them, heavy and warm. She rubs at her temple with a sigh. “You’re—you’re so good with her,” she blurts out after a beat, her heart pressed hard against her ribs. “She sees her father when she looks at you, and you live up to it. Me, I’m just—I don’t know.”
He cups her knee, thumb stroking the jut of bone there soothingly. “She was alone when she first came here,” he says after a quiet moment. “I understand that.”
She opens her eyes to watch him. He looks out across the bookshelf-filled room, gaze distant. Her heart lurches into her throat, a terrible ache settling in her chest. She can’t be sure what pain is his and what she feels for him, but it is loss.
“It was hard for me not to reach out to her. Take away whatever instinct of who she was to us; she was just a lonely kid, and I know what that means,” he adds after a beat, his profile sharp in the faint light from the kitchen. Tension radiates from every inch of his body, shoulders a tight line. His fingers curl into her knee, biting gently at her skin.
In no time at all, she pushes off from the arm of the couch and slides into his lap, her knees bracketing his hips. His hands fall to her thighs, warm through her skirt. She puts her hands to his chest, biting the inside of her lip. “I know,” she murmurs, voice thick.
His mouth twists faintly, his hands spanning her thighs. “I know you do,” he says quietly; the earnestness in each word fills her with immense security. There is trust here, of past lives and recent pasts and a future still stretching out before them.
What she wants, though, is the middle, the time in-between.
“Sometimes I want to be selfish,” she says softly, flushing with every word. It has to be said, she knows; but it doesn’t stop her from feeling young, and silly. She bites at her lip, her fingers curving to the fine line of his jaw. “I want the past to be the past, and the future to stay there, and for us to have our time together now.”
His palms skirt her bare skin as her skirt hitches up towards her hips. He leans in, his mouth ghosting her cheek, her temple. “I want that too. I want that all the time,” he says. She can feel his flush, the warmth from his skin against her fingers.
She turns her mouth towards his. Her hair falls between them and around them as she shifts in his lap. “Do you think we’ll get it?” she asks, a hard burn rising behind her eyes unbidden.
Mouth curving against hers, he curls his fingers under the hem of her skirt. A shiver shudders through her, her nerves set afire. “Usako, I promise we will,” he says hoarsely, the words reverberating against her lips.
Shutting her eyes, she kisses him, mouth opening to his. His tongue slides against hers; she tastes chocolate and something dark in him, familiar. It leaves an ache low in her belly, a craving. She slides her hands down the line of his throat to his chest, fingers plucking at the buttons of his shirt. Her breath catches in her throat as his hands seek out smooth bare skin at the inside of her thighs; she breathes his name into his mouth, warmth curling through every crevice of her skin.
“Not here,” he murmurs against her mouth, as her teeth catch around his bottom lip.
“You’re too noble for your own good sometimes, Mamo-chan,” she laughs out thickly, sighing at the graze of his fingers between her thighs. Her fingers curl into his chest as she works button-by-button down towards his hips.
It takes nothing for him to gather her up against his chest and stand, his hands heavy on her thighs. She hangs an arm around the nape of his neck and mouths along the line of his throat and the exposed expanse of his collarbones as he carries her to his bedroom. He stretches her out along the freshly-made lines of his bed. The first time, they had stumbled into it on the sofa; then again in the guest room, and the kitchen. She knows it should be momentous every time, something sacred, and it is; but it also just feels like the natural progression, where their past lives and future lives catch up with them.
This, though; the way he pulls the pins from her hair, loosening her buns, the feel and push of his shirt against her fingers as she peels it from his chest; it’s their own movement, their own time and care. She sits in his lap, her skirt hitched up at her hips. He lingers at her throat as her hair cascades around them in cool smooth clouds; it reflects silver in the city lights. Her hand is a steady grip on his length, hot and hard; if her fingers still tremble as she touches him, or if his movements stutter as he tugs her blouse over her head and slides her panties off, they embrace it. Sometimes, there is nothing sure about the moment, but it’s all they have.
In the sheer darkness, she opens her eyes to watch the lines of his face, the darkening of his gaze. His fingers curl between her thighs into slick heat, his thumb at her clit. Teeth grazing the pulse at her throat, he whispers her name as two fingers twist and crest inside her. She slides the fingers of her free hand into his hair, her mouth falling near his brow.
“I love you,” she murmurs near his hair as he thumbs her clit, shocks settling through her spine as warmth sweeps through her limbs. Her fingers twist around his cock, damp and warm.
Every muscle in his body seems to soften with a sigh, hoarse in the thick and heavy air. His mouth rests at the base of her throat, tongue sweeping at the sweat there. There is a stutter in his chest, as if the words rest there and he’s trying to breathe them out. With a soft little moan, she pushes him flat to the bed and leans into kiss him quiet. His fingers slide from her, replaced by the smooth thick slide of his length. Still, his hand, sticky and warm, palms her lower belly, his thumb hovering and circling her clit.
This is the time she wants; there is so little of it, she thinks, and it will go too quickly for words. Pieces of their future haunt them in their present, a constant reminder that there are absolutes without adjustment. This is all under their thumb, though; the feel of her breaking apart under his fingers and mouth, the way his mouth curls through her name, the press of his body on hers. And in the quiet heavy moments after, his hands catching on her bare skin and her fingers in his hair, she feels the warmth in her chest, right at her heart, and she smiles.
“You’ll be good,” Mamoru says after a time, his fingers following the trail of her bare back as she tucks into his side. The air has settled and cooled. Later, she will pluck his shirt from the floor and wear it, as has become her habit. For now, she likes the press of his bare skin to hers.
“At what?” she murmurs, propping her chin on his shoulder.
“You’ll be a good mother, when it’s time,” he says, a flush coloring his cheeks. She can see it in the weak light from the cityscape, feel the heat of it. “And a good queen.”
She smiles, biting the inside of her lip. “God, let’s not even think about all that,” she mutters, rolling onto her back with a sigh. “One big life event at a time, Mamo-chan.”
He follows her, propping himself up on an elbow. “I’m serious,” he says, his fingers smoothing and sifting through her hair.
“You’re always serious,” she teases, the unsettling queasiness in her middle finally dissipated.
“I’m working on that,” he says, leaning over her and pressing his mouth to hers.
She curls a hand at the nape of his neck, shutting her eyes and sighing. “You could always do a puppet show for me.”
At that, he groans and lays back. “Luna told you,” he says slowly, brow furrowed.
“Yes, she did,” she says, mouth curling.
He shuts his eyes, passing a hand over his face. “She wasn’t supposed to tell,” he mutters. “Did she tell the girls too?”
Her face brightens into a full-blown smile. “You bet she did.”
Sighing, he smoothes a hand through his hair. “Oh, damn it.”
Looking at him, all flustered and sheepish, Usagi laughs, soft and sweet, and kisses him once again. She will hold these moments with him close to her in times of danger and unfamiliarity, as well as the time with her friends, with the daughter she still doesn’t entirely know. They are reminders of all she has to live for now, and the life she has to look forward to in the future.
*