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*
The truth is this: he wasn’t going to apply to Harvard at all.
His chemistry teacher mentions it in passing in class one day. It’s between battles, and Mamoru is able to keep his concentration, so he takes note of it. For those of you interested in taking a year before university, the teacher says as everyone is gathering their books, the chairs scraping on the floor. It will count towards your studies if you are accepted to university here, it looks excellent on an application—
And then, as Mamoru gathers his books and his notes (he always waits until the teachers are done speaking, it’s only polite, and a leftover of years in an orphanage where discipline is everything), his teacher stops at his desk. Think about it, Chiba-san. You have promise, more than I’ve seen in a student in quite a while. I would like to recommend you personally.
The praise flatters, but Mamoru thinks nothing of it at the time. He has a future mapped out for himself, he knows his outcome. A year away from Tokyo, from Usagi—it’s an odd sort of sensation, even considering the idea. It leaves him a little queasy. It isn’t that she would ask him not to apply, not to go; she wouldn’t. She never would. He thinks that’s the worst part; she would send him off with a smile and tears, and he’d never forget the look on her face. She is always stronger than him, no matter what the situation.
Besides, the girls would kill him. Future ruler of Earth aside, he knows that as a certainty.
*
He can’t stop thinking about it, though.
The Dead Moon Circus takes up the girls’ time and energy. The beginnings of an ache settle in his chest; he thinks it’s a summer cold. Chibi-Usa is in her own little world most of the time, a distant look in her gaze that unsettles him. Between attacks and the growing rattle of his cough, he goes to class and researches Massachusetts, and Boston, and the political science and pre-med courses at Harvard. He can’t help it; there’s an urge in his fingertips, a yearning for a road not taken.
“Something’s wrong,” Usagi says over a milkshake for her and a hot tea for him at the arcade, her mouth drawn into a small frown.
He looks up from his books. His fingers curl at the hard edges of the table as a cough nestles at the base of his throat. “An attack?”
“No,” she says, tilting her head curiously. She drags her straw through her half-full milkshake. The afternoon light is shadowed and dim, just as it had been every day since the eclipse. “With you.”
Taking a long swallow of tea, he glances back down at his textbook, the even scrawl of his notes on ethics in political policy. He had switched into these classes after their trip into the future, once he knew what lay before him; he wants to be prepared for it. “I’m fine, Usako,” he says softly. His hand moves to his chest, the tender ache under his ribs, an unconscious touch.
“You can tell me,” she says after a moment, her smile tired but bright. “I know we haven’t had a lot of time, just us. What with the girls not able to transform, and Chibi-Usa and I switching bodies—“ she shudders, nose wrinkling at that. “What I’m saying is that you can tell me.”
He slips his reading glasses off with an easy flick of his wrist. The air between them has shifted from the usual tension and worry that accompanies every moment under a new enemy’s attack into something softer, deeper; their past present and future weigh on his shoulders. “I know,” he says.
“I know you know, but—“ she stops, taking a deep breath and shutting her eyes for a moment. “You’re drinking tea,” she says finally.
Wetting his lips, he glances down at his half-full cup. “I like tea.”
“You like coffee,” she retorts gently, a softness in her gaze that cuts him to the quick. Guilt unfurls and rests on his shoulders, rising in his throat. “Are you feeling all right?”
He thinks of the black blood he sometimes finds on his sheets, and on his gloves after a youma attack, the irresistible sensation of death settling in his chest. Behind him, he hears the girls enter, hushed and somber as they move closer to their table. Usagi’s eyes stray behind him to her friends, an odd and unfamiliar insecurity in her gaze.
“It’s just a cold,” he tells her finally, gathering his notes and textbooks and his glasses and placing them in his satchel. “Really, just a summer cold.”
She rises as he does, brow still lined with worry. The girls slide into the now-empty booth, waiting and watching. He feels each of their gazes on him, a hard sort of assessment; he wonders what Usagi has said to them, how he can make this right once more.
“You don’t have to go, Mamo-chan,” Usagi says as she walks with him to the doors, her fingertips catching at the sleeve of his jacket. The weather is oppressively warm and yet, he is always cold under the dark foreign sun.
Wetting his lips, he takes her hand in his, pulling her into his chest for a brief moment. The back of his neck flushes, as it always does when she’s so close to him in public; but with the eyes of her best friends and her warriors on him, and the worry ever present in her gaze, he pushes away the stoicism ingrained in every nerve of his body.
“You all need time for yourselves right now,” he says quietly, skimming his thumb along the line of her knuckles. “And I don’t want to give anyone else my cold. It’s all right.”
Her arm curls around his waist, her fingers tightening in his. Her cheek is warm through the thin fabric of his shirt. “I love you,” she murmurs into his chest. She’s said it before, in private and surrounded by her friends, and yet today it reverberates through his every limb, adding to the dark ache between his lungs.
Swallowing, he leans down and kisses her, gentle and brief. “I’ll see you later,” he murmurs against her mouth, his hair brushing against his cheek as she shifts in his arms, her mouth opening for a moment under his.
Then, with a squeeze of her hand and a wave, he moves out into the harsh summer afternoon, a hard cough rattling his throat. He can feel her eyes on his back as he turns the corner towards his section of town. Guilt crowds at every corner of his mind, his hand like a vise on the handle of his satchel. His research on the year abroad sits at the bottom of his satchel, a weight he can’t escape.
*
Hours later, he hits a brick wall with a sickening thud, his mask falling from his face. Tendrils of dark energy lick at his every nerve as a cough explodes from his chest, racking at his throat. He grits his teeth and straightens from his slump, pain radiating from his back and around.
He takes the hit more often than not, now. The Senshi are in crisis, with three of them unable to transform. It leaves Sailor Moon, Chibi-Moon, and Mercury to deal with the youma and the attacks while Rei fixes curses and Makoto and Minako fan out to secure each battle area and push back innocent bystanders. There are always bystanders now; the attacks are always centered at the Dead Moon Circus. Every time it feels more and more like a trap.
So, he uses what power and what attacks he has to give the Senshi time. If that doesn’t work, he will take the hits and the surges of power directed at them. It’s his part to play; his body is a weapon and a shield, and he doesn’t begrudge it to them.
Temples throbbing, he bends at the waist as a cough rips through his chest. He presses his gloved hands to his mouth, shutting his eyes.
“Mamo-chan,” Sailor Moon whispers anxiously as she appears at his side, her hands falling to the broad expanse of his back. He can feel the warmth of her, the energy radiating from her hands even through his cloak. “We got it. We got it.”
Pain ripples through his limbs. He curls away from her as the coughing fit passes, glancing down at his gloves. The white is flecked with blood, black as the circus tents beyond. The air is stifling, thick and hot even with the sun low on the horizon.
“Are you all right?” Sailor Moon murmurs at his side, her fingers curling at the crook of his elbow.
“Fine,” he grits out, voice hoarse. She can’t know, he thinks desperately, his hands balling into fists.
“Sailor Moon! Let’s get out of here!” Mercury calls as bystanders creep into the smoky area, whispers and starts and excited squeals rising and falling with the thick humid breeze.
“Go,” he says roughly, finally meeting her wide too-blue gaze. Worry lines every curve and angle of her face, her brow heavy from the tiara. “I’ll go across the roofs this way. You go with the girls.”
“Mamo-chan, what—“
Rei slips up to them, her eyes dark and unreadable on his face. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she says quietly, her hand hooking at Moon’s gloved elbow.
He forces a small smile, his chest rattling with every breath. He grazes her fingertips with his before slipping away from Sailor Moon and Rei. It takes him longer to get back to the safety of his apartment, with the agony of the ache in his chest and the pain settling into his bones working his body at every angle. He feels it more, with this enemy; he knows there must be a reason why, but he can’t put it together.
Alone in his apartment, he lays down alone in his bedroom and shudders through coughing fit after fit. He keeps a dark washcloth by his bed, to catch the blood. It’s in the silence and the darkness, with sleep gone and just the weight of pain to keep him company, that he thinks of America, of the escape of studies.
He shuts his eyes then and sighs, a rattling lonely sound in his empty room. He can’t be the selfish creature he used to be, before Usagi, before everything. She needs him; they all need him, to take the blows they can’t. He wonders how he can think of leaving; it then becomes all he thinks about, battle after battle.
*
The application sits underneath his physics textbook, blank and smooth. He hides it in the bottom drawer of his desk and forgets about it. There are more important concerns, such as the dying land and priest connected to his planet and his soul, and the death nestled in his chest, what he’s passed onto Usagi. The guilt of his coldness to her, passing the plague on his planet and his soul onto her, it cuts at him, makes him feel less deserving of her than he usually does. He knows the Senshi, while worried of their powers and transformations, blame him for Usagi’s weakness just that little amount.
It’s only after they’ve won, and he’s held the Golden Crystal in his hands and placed it on his staff, and the weight of coronation settles on their shoulders that he remembers the application, the window on that path nearly shut.
He sits with it mere days after the Dead Moon Circus and Nephrenia have been defeated. In his quiet empty living room, purple-orange summer nights starting to wane into fall, he stares at the blank page. He rolls his pen between his fingertips, elbows resting on his knees. Usagi rustles in the bedroom, humming tunelessly; it’s so domestic, so normal, resonant of the future he’s guaranteed that it catches at his chest.
“Whatcha looking at?”
He looks up at the doorway at the sound of her voice. She leans against the doorframe, skirt rippling at her knees and one of his white button-down shirts swallowing her whole. Her hair is loose and long down her back, damp from a shower. Skin flushed, eyes bright and incredibly blue, she looks happier than she has in weeks.
His heart clenches in his chest, an odd sort of warmth radiating out. His knuckles whiten around the pen in his hand. He thinks for a moment of pushing it away, of taking her in his arms and never moving on. The future was coming; he could sit here, and wait for it.
But she is at his side before he can decide, sitting next to him on the sofa. She takes the application in slim fingers, bringing it close to her face. “What is this? Harvard?” she asks, all confusion and concern. It lines her brow, the corners of her mouth.
She’s small and warm next to him, her knees tucked under her and her hair pooling in every nook and cranny between them. He looks down at his knees, an odd sort of burn rising behind his eyes. It’s impossible to look at her now. “My teacher recommended me for a study abroad program at Harvard. In America,” he says after a moment, the words like gravel in the soft air, sweet-smelling like her hair.
It’s quiet, too quiet between them for a long time, the air thickening. Every part of her is still; it feels wrong, to have her so unmoving. Usagi is bright and energetic, always touching him, practically vibrating with life. He’s muted that, just briefly, and it wounds. He links his fingers together in front of him, knuckles white.
Finally, she lays the application back down on the coffee table, her moves gentle and measured. “That’s amazing, Mamo-chan,” she says softly. Pride seeps into her words, as well as a catch, a hitch of her breath. She still does not touch him. “It must be such an honor.”
He nods shortly, a queasy sensation in his middle. It is, and there’s a part of him that wants to enjoy it. He came from nothing, and now, because of her and her affect on his life, he has achieved more than he’d thought possible.
Her fingers, cool and slight, steal over the crook of his elbow, light on his skin. The cuff of his shirt falls past her hands, brushing his arm. “How long would it be for?”
Glancing at her, he sets his jaw. Her face is guarded, a sheltered sort of pride curling at her mouth. He’s hurt her, he knows. “A year. Maybe a little longer,” he says at last.
“Oh, wow,” she says, the smile on her mouth shaking. “That’s—that’s a long time.”
He sits back against the sofa and takes her hand in both of his. “I haven’t decided to apply.”
She tilts her head, her fingers curving into his. “Haven’t you? You had it out for me to see, Mamo-chan.”
She has him there. He sighs and watches as her shoulders slowly slump, all of the energy seemingly seeping into his sofa cushions as she curls against his side. “I might not even get in.”
“Of course you will,” she says immediately, in a tone that brooked no sort of argument. He recognized it from battle, from arguments with Chibi-Usa, from dinner dates. “They’ll take you. You’re so smart, and you—you deserve it.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” he says quietly, color rising on his face. She has opened him up so widely after all this time, but sometimes, the words get caught in his throat and he doesn’t think he can speak them, even in the privacy of his own apartment, with just her. “Usako, I don’t want to leave you.”
“Hey,” she says softly, shifting into his lap. Her knees fall to either side of his hips, their hands still linked between them. “I don’t want you to leave. But this—this is something you want. I would never stop you from doing something you wanted.”
“I want you,” he says seriously, voice dropping low in his chest. His free hand settles on her thigh, curling into the thin cotton of her skirt.
She leans in close, her hair falling across them as a curtain. Their foreheads touch; he feels that same white-hot heat in his chest, the crystal dormant inside him flaring. “I’m not going anywhere. You’ll always have me. But this—this is an opportunity you won’t have again.”
His fingers curl against her thigh. He lifts his chin, his mouth grazing hers. “I don’t deserve you,” he says after a long moment.
He can feel her smile against his mouth. Her free hand slides up his chest to his jaw, her fingers curving to its shape. “The girls will be glad to hear you’re admitting it.”
“I’ve always known it,” he says roughly. It’s a truth, one he will never dispute.
She shakes her head, strands of gold hair falling every which way, and kisses him, her teeth grazing his bottom lip. There’s something sad and longing in the shape of her mouth on his, the taste of her on his tongue. He slips his hand from hers to tangle in the damp lengths of her hair, his other hand skimming up her thigh, under her skirt to bare smooth skin.
The application lays forgotten, for the moment.
“They might not accept me,” he says later, cocooned in the darkness of his bedroom. He watches her as he lays on his back, his fingers trailing down her spine as she sits up in bed.
She stops in the midst of braiding her hair, a slim pale shadow in the faint light from the city and the stars. His shirt slides off her shoulders, rucked up at her thighs. It reminds him of her future self, strangely enough. He has never seen Usagi in that time, at that age; he only has the stories Chibi-Usa is willing to provide, and the vague descriptions from the other Senshi and Usagi herself. But there’s something ineffably mature and fierce in the line of her body in the darkness, the arch of her back as she finishes her braids. As she looks at him, and curls her body up to his, he feels the weight of their lives catch up to them; it leaves him breathless, and wondering.
“They will,” she says, a touch of sadness curling through her voice. “Of course they will, Mamo-chan.”
*
She doesn’t tell the girls about the application. He likes it that way. Already they can sense something is off between the two of them; Minako and Rei in particular eye him strangely every time he sees them. He knows if he is accepted, if he goes, that they will be confused and most likely angry. Some of them violently so, in Makoto and Haruka’s cases. So, he’d rather not bring that on himself until it’s a certainty.
He tells Usagi that, and she smiles, and agrees.
In the time between submitting his application and hearing from Harvard, he finds himself with her more often than not. He talks to Chibi-Usa, asks her to give them space without defining why; the girl, who has Hotaru back in her life, is easy to comply, a sign of her maturing. So he and Usagi spend time in his apartment, or in the parks; sometimes they are quiet together, something she is loud and bright. There is a brittleness to her he cannot fix, an expectation of distance.
You don’t know that I’ll get in, he tells her, over and over, his mouth on hers, his hands on her skin.
She just shakes her head and keeps him close, her face always guarded. The look in her eyes will haunt him for months; less than abandonment, less than pleasure. She is caught in the same battle he is; the longing to be selfish and the desire to do right by the other.
It takes less than a month to hear back. The same night, he takes Usagi out for a nice dinner, quiet and soft and just the two of them. He wants to tell her, wants her to be excited, because he is; he is excited for a change, for a chance to be more than just an empty-handed man, useless to the one he loves. There’s more of a future for the both of them now; when he is more, he can be more for her.
In the end, he doesn’t have to say a word; she smiles and kisses him through the shine of tears she blinks away. She says how proud she is, how excited she is over and over. It hurts, deep in the center of his chest. He knows it’s her pain he’s feeling. He’ll carry it as his burden, his guilt.
My dream is to protect this star, with you. He had told her that, and he’d meant it. This was just his way of making sure he was worthy of it.
He hopes she knows that, as hollow as it seems.
*