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She likes the rain. Rain makes sense. Water evaporates from the ground, grows heavy in clouds, and falls once again.
It is the rainy season and the rain is starting to grate on her nerves.
Hino Rei stands staring out the window of the shrine, homework and university examination applications long-forgotten. Her fingers fold and refold the worn piece of paper in her hands, the one she pretends, most of the time, that she destroyed long ago.
She had found it, after the dead heat of summer had claimed their lives and Usagi had brought them back, tucked where she'd left it, with Minako's new album. She had hidden them away in her hurt, afraid of what she might do if she could see it whenever she wanted. The pain had been too acute, too real. She could not stomach it.
She'd killed so many youma on that day, yearning with every ounce of her mortal being to follow Minako into death. She had been so young, so stupid. She had been everything that Minako had always wanted her to be in that one moment, her free will passing through fleeting fingers as she fell into the depths of her sorrow and the anger of a memory long dead.
She hates herself for doing it, for caving into the deadly path of emotions, and yet she knows that if she had to face those circumstances again, she would follow the same course of action. Her technique would be better now, or at least she hopes it is. She can close her eyes and make the flames rise and lower at her will.
Minako says they'll grow into it eventually. She's been abusing her power for years though - and Rei likes to pretend they both don't know full-well what she's up to.
Her phone rings, and Rei is pulled away from the rain on the windowpanes. She digs her phone out of her pocket and raises it to her ear. "Hino."
"You answer the phone like a politician, Mars Reiko," Minako's voice purrs in her ear. Rei feels the heat rise and blossom across her cheeks, despite the fact that Minako is far away from her (a fact that she would very much like to correct -- Minako has an unfortunate habit of sneaking up on unsuspecting victims).
She bites back a retort and settles on, "You speak without preamble." It sounds ... she sighs, even more like a politician.
Rei hates politicians, and Minako knows it. She's well on her way to becoming one, if her father has any say in the matter.
"I do," Minako sounds as though she's laughing to herself. Rei knows Minako well enough to know when she's being teased, but she plays along because she knows that it makes Minako happy. And, Rei glances down at the letter in her hands once more; she will do a lot to make Minako happy. She, more than anyone else, deserves it.
Minako's next question throws her, and Rei has to ask her to repeat it, "Do you want to come out and walk in the rain with me?"
Rei pauses, thinking of the school work she has yet to do, weighing it against the fact that she hasn't seen Minako in months, and pulls on her rain boots. "Where did you want to meet?" She asks, pulling open her dresser and searching for a sweater to keep out the chill under her jacket.
They'd probably share an umbrella - Minako likes the outrageously big ones.
"Well, if you let me in..." There's a tapping on her window, and Rei looks up, phone cradled against her shoulder.
Of course Minako is waiting there to be let in, Rei finds herself annoyed and she can't think of why. She doesn't like unpredictability, she doesn’t like so many aspects of Minako's personality that she has trouble articulating why, exactly, she can't quite describe her feelings towards Minako in anything other than the unsettled pit that lingers at the bottom of her stomach when she thinks too hard about it.
She crosses the room in three strides and pulls open her window all while flipping her phone shut and tossing it on her unmade futon. "You should have said," she begins, as Minako clambers through the small opening and stands, slightly damp, before her.
"Now where is the fun in that?" Minako asks, tapping her chin and looking decidedly not at Rei. She shrugs off her coat and boots and drapes them carefully so that they won't drip on Rei's tatami. She stands there in stocking feet for a minute before she looks up, meeting Rei's eyes and smiling slyly. "Or... you know, we could stay in."
Rei's half-way to being bundled up to go outside in the pouring rain and doesn't understand. "Which do you want?" she asks, pulling off her sweater and starting to fold it.
Minako moves to sit on her futon and Rei scowls, annoyed at the encroachment on her personal space. "I don't know."
Decisions have never really been Minako's strong suit, except in battle. Rei knows this and knows it well. She lets Minako sit on her futon because it's what Minako wants to do and Rei can't very well stop her without a reason. They're just two people, trapped in this dance for eternity - bound to a destiny that they can't ever seem to escape. "You shouldn't be so indecisive," Rei replies, and crosses back to her desk and collects her homework. It's not good to sit on a bed and do homework, her kanji will be sloppy and she'll get marks off as the teachers at her school will not approve. But she has to make it look like she's doing something or else Minako will settle in for her afternoon off and then Rei will be stuck.
Maybe it's the act of bringing the papers over that makes Minako smile wanly up at her and extend a hand. Rei knows the etiquette, that she's supposed to bend and kiss it. This isn't Venus, though, and she's hardly a prince. She grasps Minako's soft hand and squeezes it contentedly. "I missed you," Rei confesses quietly as she settles down next to Minako. It's not the usual admission that she allows herself - because admitting weakness to Minako is suicide and she'll never hear the end of it. "You should call more."
"You could call as well, Reiko," Minako replies, and their hands are still touching, next to each other on Rei's futon. It's just the brush of a single pinky finger, but it settles Rei far more than hours of meditation. It scares her how much she craves this sort of attention from Minako, and she wants to pull away. She knows she can't though. She can't pull away because Minako is here and she's real. She's not some fleeting memory that Rei only catches fragments of in her most horrible of dreams. "But I'm not keeping score."
Rei's lips twitch upwards and she nudges Minako with her shoulder.
Minako nudges back and for a second it's so easy that Rei could cry. Minako is her one and her only - the one who makes the stars fall at down. Rei's known this her entire life, she's stared at the morning and the evening star, one of the few that shines brightly enough to be seen in the sky over Tokyo. She's felt kindred to this person that by all rights she should hate, she's felt so much, for so long, she can't stand it.
It's easy to dissolve the situation with giggles then, and they do laugh, let it fall away like the rain outside. Minako's been gone half a year and Rei has missed her. Maybe they're lying to themselves to think that they could possibly go this long alone.
"Why are you here?" Rei asks as the silence stretches out into eternity. She knows the answer to the question before she asks, because some part of her knows Minako better than she knows herself. It still is not her place to assume.
Minako threads a lock of hair back behind her ear and stares out towards the window and the grim streaks of water that trail down towards the ground and into little rivers that look almost like tears. Rei hates it when she gets quiet like this. Those sorts of silences are the worst. "When Usagi remade the world..." she trails off and sighs. Her shoulders roll in on themselves and Rei wonders if this is the guilt of surviving that she's read about in her history classes. "I had never given much thought to the future."
"Because you thought you were going to die," Rei says evenly. She doesn't like to think about it, like to think about how she was the one who convinced Minako to march like a soldier to die a coward's death on an operating table and not in battle.
"Because I did die," Minako clarifies and Rei wants to pull away from her then. She can't think of that time, of who she had become in that moment and in the subsequent days. Usagi had said she was terrifying in her grief, afterwards, and Rei knew she could never experience it again. She couldn't lose any of them again, Minako most of all.
The rain hit the window in a steady pitter-patter that made the whole room seem to echo with the emptiness of the statement. Rei knows it's because Minako cannot die and still be here, still be alive, without a miracle.
"Usagi will be queen one day," Minako whispers quietly. "None of you remember Queen Serenity's promise - but it will be a reality, it is the will of the gods."
Rei doesn't say that Minako's Catholic, that she believes in one god and one god only. She doesn’t point out that there's no kingdom for Usagi to ever be queen of, and that they won't life forever. She sits there in stubborn silence and contemplates screaming. Forget the past, she wants to say, forget who they were and just be you. You are... the first and best of all of us.
"Those gods are dead, ruins of antiquity," Rei knows her words will cut deep, but she lets them cut. "How can they still impose their will?"
Minako gives a half-shrug. "As long as those who still have faith walk this Earth, I do not think they can truly die."
This is a strangely existential conversation for them. Usually by now they've dissolved into glaring at each other and purposefully not speaking. But the rain outside and the humidity keep them still and keep them talking. "How can you be so sure?" Rei asks after the rain falling down around them seems to fill her closed bedroom. "That Usagi will be queen?"
She's not inclined to believe it, but Minako puts her faith in very little. She speaks with conviction about this, and Rei's not above admitting that she's stared off into the flames of the sacred fire and seen a similar vision of the future.
Minako chews her lip. "I met a woman once," she explains. "I was about to go into surgery - not the last one, but a diagnostic one when I was thirteen. One of the doctors was this tall woman - she wasn't like the others. She was kind to me. She sat on the edge of my bed as I woke up from the anesthesia and asked me if I remembered who I was."
Rei can see the scene clearly unfolding before her eyes. Minako, so young, just barely Sailor V, plagued with all those memories and a duty fit to burst her to pieces. A kind ear was all she ever really needed, at least at first. Artemis had been her only friend for so long - and Rei doesn’t even know where Minako's parents are. Her father, at least, made some semblance of an effort to be a part of her life, even if she did not wish it so.
"I don't know why I told her - but I did. I think she's one of us - the forbidden senshi that we're not allowed to speak of. I told her that I was Aino Minako, and that I was someone else entirely. That I could remember a past and a future that seemed to go on forever and that I would not live to see it so," Minako's expression turns wistful and she stares out the rain-streaked window. "She told me that these things have a way of working themselves out, and that I shouldn't worry because the future was bright."
It is easy to say nothing, because there is a large part of her that wants to call Minako an idiot and a terrible leader for even daring to mention their mission to an outsider. She doesn't remember the forbidden senshi - but there are other planets than just the ones closest to earth. She's not an idiot, she supposes.
"Is the future really bright?" Rei asks.
Minako smiles then, bright and true. It's not a smirk like it usually is, but a full and brilliant smile. The kind she usually reserves just for Rei. "I think so."
Rei clambers to her feet and pulls Minako up as well. She finds a dirty pair of sneakers and pulls them and a windbreaker on. "Let's go out into the rain," she says, holding her hand out to Minako.
Rain purifies all souls. Rei's been taught this since before she can remember. She stands tall and proud. Martian in all but name, and she takes the Princess of Venus out into the rain. They're just children, really. They dance there. Two souls forever intertwined.
"I never thought I'd be able to do this again," Minako laughs. Her bangs are sticking to her forehead and her shirt is clinging to her. She looks like a vision from Rei's dreams.
She's beautiful.
"I'm glad," Rei says, and it's full of meaning she doesn't dare articulate. It's been years since Usagi remade the earth, but still the wound lingers. They indulge in moments like this simply because they don't know any better.
It's easy then, to reach forward and pull Minako in close, for them to stand practically on top of each other, not daring to articulate what exists between them for fear of losing it all. This is a peace that can't be shattered, and Rei knows it well. She leans forward and presses her lips to Minako's knowing full well that this cannot be.
Someday, maybe.
Not now.
It is a stolen moment from destiny and very little else.
When Minako pulls away, eyes shining with a light that is not of this world her denial is that of the past and the future all at once. "We can't," she whispers. It is not their destiny. They have no time for such entanglements.
In that moment, Rei hates destiny more than other cosmic force. She makes her own destiny.
And so she kisses Minako once more and whispers a confession she doesn't dare articulate.
"You said it... back then too."
And Minako, for all her resistance and misguided sense of duty, does not protest. This is advance started long ago, written into the very fabric of time and space.
Perhaps, this too, is destiny.