#ladyflare

ladyflare submitted: Would you like some friendship feels?

OH BOY WOULD I

“Michiru, have you seen anything in the waves lately?” 

Even at only seven years old, she knew to fold her hands and demurely shake her head. “No, that’s only imaginary. Of course.” 

When was older, she would grow to find anger and resentment for this moment, that she was so small and had already learned that to tell the truth was to be made ridiculous. It was sitting here in this office that Michiru began to build the woman she would become, who could say one thing and know another, who could be a perfect polished box set with pave diamonds, the rotting fruit of what she might have been on the inside, hidden in all the perfection. 

At first, her parents had thought shockingly little of the matter. She had always been a dreamlike child, a flowing watercolor of a girl in the way her parents had hoped her sister Naoko might have been, but never quite managed. If she screamed and saw things that day at the beach, well she was four, and already painting, and wouldn’t she be a lovely composer one day? The great artistic minds were often overwhelmed by their own creativity. 

But when her eyes grew wide one too many times in the wake of a gushing fountain, or when she declared that she had seen the end of all things, that she had seen her own death and destruction, people began to whisper. There was something not quite right about the youngest Kaioh. What a tragedy, they said, licking their fangs, anxious for a taste of the Kaiohs’ fall from grace. Their shame. 

And so, it had been off to the psychologist, another adult who said they could be trusted but looked into Michiru’s strange eyes and saw madness in them. It never occurred to them that she could be telling the truth. 

She learned never to tell it. People never wanted the truth, they wanted a comfortable and cultivated lie that fit their understanding of life. 

The strange Michiru Kaioh became stranger, but was pruned in the way of artists and debutantes, and as seven became eight, and eight nine, she perfected that closed mouth smile, where no one could hear her screaming behind it. She was quite the little empress, Michiru, nose high, eyes straight, and she found that the more she locked herself in an ivory tower, the more people refused to oppose her. If she could be intimidating, if she could be the princess and others only ever her subjects, than people would stop asking probing questions about the state of her mind. 

One day, that small and perfectly poised little princess, her violin nearly as big as she is in its case, walked through the park from a lesson. It was a day that would change everything, thought she could not have known it then. 

A gangly blonde girl with a loose, dirty t-shirt and a long braid down her back rounded a corner and threw right into her, knocking them both to the ground with the force of such a life-altering hit. 

“Oh geez, I’m sorry.” The girl dusted herself off and offered a hand.

Michiru took it, not understanding how many times she would take it again and again and again. 

In an instant, something flashed through her, flipping through the thoughts like a TV with all the channels going by much too fast. My hand going out toward a teal light, and it’s mine but it isn’t and something inside of my rips forward oh there’s a monster and a church and a knife in my hand and I’m kissing a girl and there’s flowers but then the monsters again, and a princess in front of me there’s blood everywhere and I’m screaming I’m screaming I’m screaming HARUKA!!

“Haruka.” MIchiru forgets, for a moment, to be the right kind of strange, “Your name is Haruka.” 

The girl backs away from Michiru, who realizes in that moment that she has said too much, and wishes she could recapture the words. The girl looks at her, brows furrowed, and Michiru knows she was not wrong. 

OOF I … HONESTLY HOPE SHE DOES… because Mike being strung along like this is really bad for him and i want him to be able to move on. it’d be a bad time but… u kno. 

Kill: Sailor Cosmos. I barely get what the hell this was supposed to be, because I’m pretty sure Takeuchi had no real fucking idea either. I don’t find anything about Sailor Cosmos to be interesting or inspiring, just more ass-pull horseshit I came to expect from the manga by that point, so off into the sun it goes!

Canon: Miracle Romance. I GUESS. I’ve come this far with it and manage to enjoy Sailor Moon anyway, so.

Fuck: R Break-Up Arc, which -- if done to my personal tastes -- could go a long way to making the above canon Miracle Romance work better for me, too. I’d completely axe the “visions from the future” nonsense trash fire that goes nowhere and does nothing, and instead make it a legitimate set of concerns for **BOTH** Usagi and Mamoru about the nature of fate and destiny and how much of their Miracle Romance is them versus Serenity and Endymion.

Now, I don’t think Usagi would start with that, I think she’d still be heavily into the idea of it being ~so romantic~, so the break-up itself I’d still have be Mamoru’s thing. But after the sting dies away, she and Mamoru ACTUALLY TALK, Usagi discusses it with her friends, etc., she agrees it’s important for both of them to figure out what THEY want, rather than continue under the cloud of who they were or who they may become. Fuck, keep them apart until S or SuperS! Let Mamoru keep working with the team, he and Usagi can figure out how to be friends and what they want, let me actually get invested in them FOR them, instead of being told this is what it is because it’s what it was.

The back alleyways were dank and dark, yellow lights humming over the bars and seats where meat skewers and rice mixed with cheap beer and there general scent of humanity. This wasn’t the bar alley in town where they led the tour groups, this was just where everyone who didn’t want to be seen drank and ate, alone together. 

She was tired of it. It was ridiculous in a way that Mina was generally not ridiculous, and still it pricked at her heart over and over again. She generally solved this problem by slipping into the bed of another person, sometimes from these same alleyways, men and women and whichever else this grand cornucopia of life had to offer. On that mark, she wasn’t picky. 

But tonight, the idea didn’t bring her any comfort. She didn’t want to find release in another person, didn’t want to try to wipe her mind of Rei Hino with the sweat of another. 

She wanted to pout, mostly. 

This was somewhat interrupted by the feel of a hand on her shoulder, and she knew who it was before she even turned around. 

“You okay?” 

She was angry at Haruka for finding her, and she wanted to see her, and she wanted to tell her to go the fuck away, and she wanted to hug her, and all of these things could be true. 

Pictured above: Doc talking to Haruka

I suppose I shall replace Mako with her

Michiru Kaioh is rarely surprised at the inconveniences thrown at her, and yet, sometimes, life still manages to find a way, and so she finds herself thrown into the middle of a group of children for no paarticular reason, told that they must find the moon princess. 

She asks if anyone has considered the fact that the Sailor of the Moon, whose name is Bunny Moon, might not have some connection. 

She is ignored. 

Rei takes a certain amount of umbrage to the fact that Michiru also has a certain amount of Sight, and while Michiru tries to allay her fears of being replaced by, she thinks quite sensibly, explaining that their powers work differently, Rei still rushes in eagerness to answer anything before she does. 

Michiru, at first, thought this might come out of some lack of self-esteem, only to realize that quite the opposite is true and it is simply that Rei only wants everyone else to know she is as good as she thinks she is. 

Michiru never really much thought herself a master strategist, but combined with these girls she feels as if she might be the second coming of Sun Tzu. 

Rei is half-belligerent to the idea of needing a plan when she can shoot her way through anything. 

Usagi may not actually know the word “plan”. 

 Ami seems utterly disinterested in doing anything that might come from Michiru’s mouth. 

She finds a certain amount of solace when a rather telegenic and strategic young woman steps onto the scene, claiming to have fought herself in London. 

“Ah what a gift,” Michiru things, “to have space to oneself, ever.” 

THis is particularly relevant, as Usagi is currently giving Michiru the biggest hug she can muster, and introducing her as one of her best friends. 

Her solace is short-lived however. Mina sees something in her, and she sees something in Mina, and it is that same sharp cleverness. It sets them against each other, Michiru’s dispassionate obedience, Mina’s barking orders. Both manipulative. 

Michiru briefly manages to set Rei against Mina, and she can think of no reason she did this but to prove to Mina who was the greater. 

There is a reason she thinks herself a monster, the kind not even Usagi can heal. 

There are two soldiers, out there, they say. Looking for the Talismans. 

Michiru could not have been prepared for what they came across. Uranus is tall and lanky, with close cropped hair the color of dried wheat and eyes grey as a thundering sky. She moves with grace but hesitation, yelling the things she cannot convince herself to know. There is an unnatural hardness in her, opal trying to play as diamond. 

She is beautiful, and for a moment Michiru can only stare. 

She and Jupiter, a similarly tall but bulkier girl, seem unconcerned with the rest of them, content to look for talismans, and leave when the sufferer does not contain one. 

They both care deeply, and Michiru can see the guilt in their eyes. 

Haruka, is her name, and Michiru feels it melt in her mouth. She lives with Mako who is Jupiter, in a some budget apartment in a district Michiru has never set foot in, and they eat dinner together and Mako makes Haruka smile, and they seem to have a perfectly chummy home together, however haunted they are by the MIssion of which they rarely speak. 

She rarely speaks to Michiru, waving off any advance with the excuse that she has a job to do. 

Michiru knows the truth. No one so lovely and honest could cultivate any sort of affection for someone like her, unless it was the only choice left in the world, a baby monkey forced to cling to a stuffed animal and imagine its emotions and warmth. 

Haruka dies, in the cathedral. She dies and the talisman lives, and Michiru is not there to save her. She should have known. She should have been there. 

“She didn’t want you,” a little voice says as she watches Mako tenderly cradle Haruka’s head, crying, murmuring that it isn’t fair, and not again, “She never did.” 

She picks up the sword, and feels something inside her chest vibrate. They were a pair, she and Haruka, at least somewhere. 

Kill: Utopia Crystal Tokyo, at least within the bounds of fairness. There are ways I could tease it that I could live with it (basically what I do in MaS) but I think it’s being unfair to the soul of the question.

Fuck: Uranus and Neptune being a couple in SilMil. I can make this work. They were a couple, but they were one of those couples who is set on fire by their own flame, you know what I mean? Fighting, screaming, unahppily bound together forever because they don’t know where love starts and hate begins. I CAN LIVE WITH THIS, because it still gives haruka and Michiru a chance to do better.