Archive of Our Own

There is a bookstore between their apartments.

She sees him everyday before nine. He buys coffee. She lingers and gets distracted by the flower shop next door. They need a lot of help on their roses.

This isn't the real story. Then comes the after part.

(No one really knows.)

It's still a little more than strange to her, breaking her leg in two, no, three different places and recovering in hours. Makoto doesn't understand that stuff. She has been in enough fights to stand, accept, filter, and soldier on the best that she can with broken legs, arms, an ankle that can't twist back, and too many bruises to connect the dots. She also isn't Ami, or Rei, or even Minako, who seems to teeter the line between rationality and whatever magical science the other two girls seem to accept blindly.

Two days later, she is still in a lot of pain. She can smell the wind. She skips school, or is skipping school, and knows that the girls will cover for her. She needs silence because there is no other way to ask for help.

The door to the flower shop is open when she passes. She limps. She stops. The roses are dim. She tries not to focus on the smell and pushes herself into walking into the bookstore. There was no time when she actually discovered it. There was rain. You need to shelter yourself from rain.

It was a good idea at the time.

Makoto finds comfort easily though. It's not so much the sight of the books, it's the low walls and the weird fixtures. Light comes through cracks and corners. There are a few tables, someone at the counter, and she feels dizzy from trying to fit everywhere. She smiles shyly at the girl behind the counter.

"Tea, Makoto-chan?"

"Yeah sure," she greets the girl again and picks a corner by the largest shelves. She doesn't remember knowing the girl but doesn't pay too much attention. There are books about romance and relationships, astrology, cosmology, things that make her head spin and girls their age get lost.

She forgets about the tea and shuffles her fingers against the spines of each book. Stars, planets, and science, more science. She is drawn to each book, but only to the spines and the spaces between the spines. She feels distracted and tired. She feels guilty because she should be thinking of Usagi, checking on the princess, and making sure the aftermath is just as good as bruising. She picks up a book and flips through the pages.

"It won't read itself."

She freezes.

"The book."

Her face starts to warm. The book in her hands is abrupt and shuts. Her fingers tremble. He's close and she doesn't smell the wind anymore, or the cold, or the sharpness from laying too long on the ground. Over his shoulder, she sees the tea at the counter but she doesn't know how to look at him.

Makoto closes her mouth. This is not a hello.

There once was a time when she believed in boys, then men, or was it men and boys -- she is not entirely sure if that memory is hers. Jupiter believes in men. She believed in men. They fought for her. They killed for her. They told her she was the greatest and she gave back victories and violence and never looked back.

"You're alive," she says, her eyes wide, and Jupiter is gone. Makoto is the girl and she flushes again, her back hitting the shelves. She doesn't make a noise.

His fingers touch her face. They slide under her jaw. Her head tilts up and she sees him again, for real, for the first time. Her head explodes into he's handsome, no, no, no, he's a university student with a girlfriend and why, why is he smiling just at me with apologies. Her lips part.

"But," she murmurs. "You're --"

"I was here before." He shrugs. "I don't really understand it either. It's as much of my punishment as everything else."

Makoto grips the book against her chest. She looks over his shoulder to her tea again.

"I don't understand."

"There isn't much," he says. "I'm here."

Makoto is frustrated. Her back scrapes against the shelves. "That doesn't mean anything," she replies. "I don't -- you're not even you."

Now she sees him clearly: tall, dark, handsome, there's a smile, a shy smile, even though he isn't a shy man but he's a man all the same and later, if there's later, he'll tell her what he does now because they do have something in come in this life. He is going to be alone like she was.

Jupiter remembers his smile the most.

"No," he agrees. "I'm not."

Let Jupiter explain this one. Nephrite wasn't just a man. She doesn't bore Makoto with the details (Ami lies there, no, Mercury lies there dying next to her, talking into the cold and they all know, Makoto, Rei, Minako, that it's not about Usagi and there is a ghost of a man) because she spent a lot of time keeping her alive in some kind of arctic hell. She keeps everything short and sparse. He was one of the four, but he was the recluse. He speaks to the stars and that's what makes this different.

So she walks in with Makoto to the bookstore a second time, bypassing any sort of tea and boredom because she went to school and they are meeting at Rei's later to pretend to do homework and discuss the sudden, strange appears of that little pink-haired kid that came out of nowhere. She sits at table and waits and stares at the door. Makoto pushes Jupiter out of mind as she recites the memory: he is handsome, he is an exchange student, and he is always late.

Nephrite buys himself coffee before he sits. It's still nine.

"I'm Nathan here."

She ignores the comment. Her hand reaches into her school bag and she pulls the pouch out. She doesn't mean to throw it, but she throws it and it skids across the table into his waiting hand. He looks at her, then looks down, and then looks at her again.

"This is --" his fingers pick open the bag and it's silly, she thinks, but the ties are jade. He's opening it before she can even say something -- what are you going to do, warn him, Jupiter is only amused.

The broken pieces stumble onto the table.

He stares blankly.

"Senpai," she hears herself. Then: "Nephrite-san, I mean Nathan-san --"

He leans forward and pushes the pouch back to her.

"Why are you giving me this?"

"You're here," she breathes. "Just you."

His eyes are dark. "It doesn't mean anything, Makoto-san."

"But you have memories --"

"This is dangerous," he says to himself. "What --" his hand rises to his face and covers his eyes. "You shouldn't have done this."

Makoto's words are not her own. "You shouldn't be here. But I'm not throwing that around, you know?" Her hand claps over her mouth. "I'm sorry," she says, and she's a girl again. "I'm sorry."

He doesn't move his hand.

"No," he says, after awhile. "I deserved that, you know?"

"I killed you," he tells her. "I killed you and I remember killing you. Not now, I guess, since there's this block in my head and it refuses to let go. It's like when I get to see the stars clearly. There's too many stories and I feel really out of my element."

He shakes his head and she can only keep watching.

"I don't even deserve to be called a man."

It's a sequence. He follows her out after paying for his coffee and buying a book on modern astrology and some weird tie to numbers that go beyond the blurbs in magazines. He's good with math, he tells her, accidentally tells her, because all in all this the biggest kind of accident.

She stops at the flower shop though, just outside the door. She won't bring him inside and he doesn't step in; Nathan, Nephrite just relaxes and leans against a parallel wall, an island that holds an arrangement of trees. His hands shove into his pocket.

"I want a cigarette."

Makoto frowns. "It's bad for you."

He laughs sharply. "Sometimes that's the best thing."

She's quiet. Then she straightens against the window. The rose smell is pungent at night. Or after six, she tells herself. Her wrist turns and she remembers, oh god, she's due at Rei's again and Mamoru is coming along.

"I don't remember," she murmurs, her gaze drops, and her fingers curl in her jacket sleeves. "She's keeping it from me. I don't even remember how I died," she confesses. "The others, I know they do. But me? It's like everything is just inside of me, deep inside me, and it's just ..."

"You're keeping it from yourself."

Her eyes narrow. Her mouth flares and she bites. "And what would you know, considering --"

This isn't a memory.

He kisses her with his teeth.

She shoves him away, hard, with both her fists. It pounds against his chest once, twice, then once more because she's hurt and she doesn't even know why. Her rage is coiled tightly, carefully crafted back because Jupiter doesn't want to break through. She's a teacher, a solider, and all the more wiser for it.

"I don't know you," she says. She is still trembling. Makoto is the girl. "And this isn't fair."

"It isn't supposed to be," he says.

She almost sees a man.

There are a lot of pieces. There are even more missing pieces. Makoto keeps her hands to her knees as they gather outside the temple, waiting for Usagi, then Mamoru, and maybe the small girl that now comes along with them under the pretense of all these secrets.

"You need lip stuff?"

Makoto blinks. Then she flushes. Minako is leaning against the wall by her. She doesn't answer and Minako laughs to herself and there's something soft and sad and lonely to the sound; she's only lied once.

But she doesn't know what to say to the leader, or to Usagi who will come up the stairs and smile and it'll be like Nathan is really Nathan and not Nephrite.

"I don't need it," Makoto shakes her head. She rubs her eyes and pulls at her jacket again. "But -- nah," she murmurs. She bites her lip and swallows. "I'll be okay."

Minako shrugs. "There's no such thing as a secret anymore."

Then comes another truth.

The pouch was nearly empty anyway.