Archive of Our Own

It sneaks up on her.

Minako's slowed down since that night, you know the night, but it doesn't mean that she hasn't stopped thinking about what's next. She's learned her way around survival like this, between being an incredibly precocious kid and jumping back into her memories all too fast.

Then Mamoru calls her for coffee.

"What does he want?" she asks Usagi, irritably.

The younger girl has a smile in her voice. "I don't know," she tells her. Minako thinks she sounds exhausted too. "He just asked me for your number for coffee. So I gave it to him."

Apparently that's all she gets.

So she finds herself walking the two blocks from her house and into the city. She doesn't have a favorite coffee shop just yet. She hasn't been in Tokyo long enough to have things like favorite coffee shops and neighborhood corners. It would be nice though. She won't lie.

When she gets there, she picks the first table. She doesn't usually pick the first table; her hands smooth down her skirt over her knees and she is a little nervous, maybe a lot nervous, and she hates herself a little more for it. She wonders if he wants to talk about Usagi (she isn't sleeping) or maybe a little more about what happened when he wasn't himself (it's kind of awkward, she guesses) because these are the first and only things she can think about too.

He is ten minutes late and wearing his uniform when he arrives.

"Class," he greets.

She rolls her eyes. "I gathered that much."

"It took longer than expected," he murmurs, and somehow, she thinks, he may or may not be a little shy. He does not look at her directly. His bangs are skittish and messy across his forehead. He fumbles with his glasses. "I almost called Usagi to wait with you," he says absently.

Her mouth opens and closes.

"She's worried," he adds.

Then there is something on the table. It's the first time she notices. She doesn't know when he took it out. It's a pouch, she thinks. It looks like an envelope. There's red thread and her palms feel sweaty. The red thread weaves into the front and somehow, her heart slips into her throat. She can only think of herself as startled.

"What--"

He shakes his head and she cannot find the words.

"Take it," he says.

So she does.

Artemis leaves her alone. It takes her a minute to realize that he already knows what this is about.

She dumps her bag on her bed. Then it's her jacket. She locks her door and stops to listen; her mother's voice filters in and out. She is on the phone. Her father will be home in another hour or so; he will go straight to his bedroom and she'll remember to check the time like an old habit. This isn't England.

She starts her homework but doesn't take the pouch out.

It's been about a week.

She keeps herself busy then. She stares at her homework. She gets up and pushes into her closet; there are a couple box that hasn't unpacked. What's the point? They are just books. She has an old uniform and some letters, old classmates that she won't call back, but maybe see in a couple of years.

But Minako doesn't touch the boxes and moves to go and sit on her bed. Her hands curl around her jacket and she digs through the pocket. The pouch drops into her palm.

"I don't know what this is," she says out loud. Or tells herself. She isn't sure.

It's like her brain is already working though, too fast, and it's the pouch back in her hand, centered on her palm, that makes this feel a little too much like something she's done before. The lip of the pouch snaps when she opens it.

Her heart starts to pound.

Nails catch in the fabric. She pulls, then tugs, and when she turns it upside down, the pouch spills pieces of a stone into her hand. Her brow furrows. They're cool against her skin. She slides her thumb over each one, of what's left. What's left, she thinks. She doesn't know why she thinks that.

She drops the pieces into the bed. It's a contrast. The light, almost rosy purple is an odd contrast against her sheets. Her fingertips graze each piece. Her eyes begin to burn.

There is no glow. There is no ah-ha! moment. She can guess what they are from. She tries and remembers why she knows this; she is nearly sixteen. But then he's there, here, in her room and she can smell him. It's not a particular smell, or a peculiar smell, but it's him and she knows it's him. She starts to tremble. She starts to feel angry and something towards desperate because she wasn't ready for this and she doesn't know how to be ready for this.

"I don't understand," she manages, and there's no bite to her voice. She hates herself for it.

There is a sigh.

"Nor do I."

When she looks up, Kunzite is at the window. He leans against it. His uniform jacket is folded neatly at his side. He stares at his hands.

"You're gone," she says.

"Not completely," he answers, laughs, but still doesn't look at her. She remembers liking his laugh. She remembers hating it; an angry flush crawls against her throat. "I can come and go."

"What does that even mean?"

Then he looks at her. His eyes don't completely meet hers. Trust is strange.

"I'm not sure yet," he says.

"Well that's good," she mutters. She glares and can't help it. "I mean, for you," she says too. "You can come and go as you please. You get to rest easy now, since, you know Beryl and all that --" she shrugs and looks away; there is that bitter taste in her mouth, "but what do I know, right? What do I know because I'm not really me and you're not really you so let's move on, right, yeah?"

His eyes are on her again. She squirms. Her fingers curl into fists on the bed, her nails scraping into the sheets.

"Stop looking at me."

"You're angry," he murmurs. His gaze feels heavy.

Memories are a little harder.

They met and it was spring on Earth. Venus remembers smells. Minako hates a lot of flowers. The bits of Serenity and Endymoin that fall into this sequence don't belong to her. She doesn't touch it.

"I feel like a child," she tells him, like really tells him, because words aren't just words anymore. She has been alone for so long. There are newer boundaries; they just don't belong here. "The first time I saw you I felt like a child and it made me so angry, you know."

He stands. She doesn't watch him. The bed sinks under his weight.

"I know," he says. "I could tell."

"We weren't given a second chance for this."

"This isn't my punishment," he tells her, gently. He is talking to her like she's a child and that just makes her angry all over again.

She can't stop herself: her fist connects with his arm, then again, then once more only to stop mid-air because her mouth screws shut and she can hear her mother walk up the stairs. Tears are prickling at the corner of her eyes. The footsteps pass.

Minako hears a door shut. "This isn't about you," she nearly snarls. "Your choice, my choice was over the moment you decided to do what you did and I stayed behind. You were supposed to be stronger. You, you, Kunzite --" she hits his arm again and he turns, her fist connecting with his chest. The next words are suspicious and almost a sob. "One of the four kings."

"And a man," he says, quietly.

He catches her fist. She doesn't pull away. Then one by one, his fingers slide underneath her own. He uncurls the first softly. The next follows and she thinks he's a little braver but the thought doesn't feel like her own.

His mouth presses against her palm. It feels hot. It feels wet. Her stomach churns but she doesn't know how to pull her hand back. It's my hand, she doesn't say.

"That sounds like an excuse."

"Maybe it is," he says. "I don't know," he says too. His mouth touches the heel of her palm. "We never got to talk this way."

This is almost perfect.

There are no dreams. There are no clusters of memories. Mamoru doesn't ask; Usagi sometimes holds her hand a little tighter.

Venus had courage. This is something Minako had to realize early one. It's why she started alone. It's why there was Ace and England and she somehow had to be the one to come back to everyone else. Minako feels like a coward most days and on her worst, she feels too much to even think about any of this straight.

The pouch sits on her desk.

"You will have to give me back."

Artemis has left. Space is the best he can do. She half suspects it's a little more than that and that Usagi is involved, asserting authority like a strange, strange ghost. The pouch stays on her desk though between her homework and letters from old friends; there are loose ends in England, after all. There are days that they talk though. There are days that they don't. She thinks about him constantly, then she forgets and hates herself, then it's really not constantly after all.

"It's like puberty," she mutters, and then he perks up. They are trying to have a serious conversation. He smiles fondly, sadly. "You don't get it," she waves her hand and then buries her homework elsewhere.

There are clothes everywhere in her room today. There are books. Her uniform is by the window. He is sitting around there again.

"He'll need me more," he says and then slowly, "for awhile."

He tries to gauge her response. She feels it. She feels nervous and jittery. Her fingers fold the pages of her book. She'll ask Ami tomorrow, she remembers absently.

"He needs me."

"I know," she snaps. Her hand pushes into her hair. He's right; duty is duty. Mamoru didn't have to do this. She is ready to be spiteful and push everything out of the way. In her head, there's some kind of truth: he was never yours to begin with.

She reaches for the pouch. She opens it and the pieces of the gem drop into her palm. They're cold. She wishes they weren't.

She rubs her eyes.

"Duty is duty."

He's standing in front of her. He takes the gem, or the pieces that are left, and they roll into his palm. She thinks he looks tired. She doesn't know why she thinks that but she does and she almost reaches for him.

"Could you kiss me?" she ask, and she sounds like herself, like Minako asking. There is a slight comfort in that. Her hands tremble. "That sounds stupid, right? Me asking -- could you kiss me, please kiss me so that something in this could make sense? I'm not asking to be Usagi-chan or even, ugh, Mamoru but I just --"

His mouth slides over hers.

He kisses her and somewhere inside of her, it's Venus who says this feels like a goodbye and that just makes Minako angry again, the feeling peeking and tumbling out between the two of them. He never says this is it and maybe she is too desperate for something she doesn't understand just yet. Her fingers clench into fists and she's grabbed his jacket. This is real, she thinks. But his mouth is there and wet and hot and his teeth skip, slide and pull at hers. She kisses him and he kisses her and it feels like they've just become two people.

Even that doesn't make any sense.

All she knows is this: he is kissing her and she is kissing him back and she feels smaller and wiser and angrier still; they are meant to be or they have missed that moment where they are meant to be because there are moments about that and she picked duty and he picked duty and together they have made the worst kind of choice. When he pulls away, she breathes. His forehead is resting against hers. She isn't crying but her eyes are wet.

"Your choices are your own," he says to her. "Don't forget that."

There is a shard in her uniform pocket. She finds one in the morning.

No one needs to know.