So Doc has been talking a lot about episode 111, and that led me to this. AU where being brought back to life entails a season 1- style memory wipe. ~1200 words. ETA: AO3 link, for those who prefer reading on there since this is more fic-length than yesterday’s.
There was a girl she saw sometimes that made her feel nostalgic. Haruka didn’t know why. She was sure they’d never met; she’d remember someone with such big gestures and a hairstyle like that. But sometimes their eyes would meet, and the girl would stop smiling, and Haruka would feel her own contentedness cave in, like it was suspended over a gaping hole inside her with fabric all too ready to tear.
She’d had enough of it, she decided one day.
Haruka marched up to her, ignoring her dark-haired friend. “Do I know you?”
The girl’s eyes went wide. She opened her mouth, closed it, grabbed her pigtails for support. “No.” She shook her head. “No. I have to go, I’m um, meeting Mamoru to study. Bye!”
I doubt that’s true, Haruka thought, though she couldn’t place why.
The girl’s friend stayed put. Her violet eyes raked over Haruka’s face. “You remember her.”
Haruka wasn’t sure how to answer.
“Usagi thinks it’s better if you stay how you are. That’s what she’d want. But you have a choice, if you want it.”
“A choice for what?”
The dark haired girl pursed her lips. “Do you know where Hikawa shrine is?”
“I think so, but that doesn’t answer—“
“Come there tonight. We’ll tell you everything then.”
“What? Who’s we? Why are you—“
“Save your questions. I don’t have time for the answers right now.” The girl turned and left.
—-
Logic would say not to go to the shrine. Logic would say when a mysterious girl lures you somewhere after dark without telling you anything, even her name, nothing good was going to happen.
But logic, Haruka mused as she climbed the stairs, had never really been her strong point.
Two girls waited for her at the top, the dark haired one, now in miko robes, and a blonde with a white cat in her lap.
“This is weird.”
“You have no idea,” the blonde said. “I’m Minako, the one with a stick up her butt is Rei—“
“Hey!”
“And this is Artemis.” The cat turned, and, Haruka swore, smiled. He had a crescent moon on his forehead. What the hell was going on?
“Um,” she fumbled to find a response. “I’m Har—“
“Haruka, we know.”
“Tone it down, Rei, we’re trying not to freak her out.”
It definitely wasn’t working. “You know, I think I’m actually just going to go. I think I… left the oven on.” She winced. Brilliant excuse, that was.
“Wait!” Minako stood up. “There’s an ache, deep down in your soul where you can’t seem to reach, like someone cut something out of you and left the wound open.”
“How—“
“It happened to us, once,” Rei said. “Months of dreaming of things we wanted but couldn’t remember, always waking up mourning a loss we couldn’t identify.”
“How did you make it stop?”
Minako wrapped her arms around herself. “You have to give up being an ordinary girl. Spend your life fighting.”
There was something familiar about her, the two of them. “You’re… “ Venus. Mars. The sailor soldiers that made the news every so often, though Haruka felt the pull of a deeper connection. “Am I one of you?”
“You could be, if that’s a life you want to take on.” Minako put a hand on her shoulder. “Either choice is a sacrifice. We can never truly forget what we are. But it’s not an easy life.”
“My life already isn’t easy.” She should slow down, think it through, but it had always been more her style to run into things head on. “If there’s something I’m supposed to be, I want to be it.”
“Are you sure?” the cat asked. Haruka found herself unsurprised that he could speak. “Once you remember, you can’t turn back.”
“I only know how to run forward anyway.”
“Well then.” Artemis looked up at her with big, sad eyes. “If that is what you choose.” His crescent moon glowed. The light hit her like a bullet. A gun shot—she’d died. The pain she’d forgotten ripped through her. Usagi’s sad eyes as she shot, and Michiru cold body next to her.
Michiru.
Pain and love and a thousand other sensations pushed Haruka to her knees. She’d died, they’d died, and Haruka had been such an ass. And she’d forgotten, how had she forgotten, Michiru had died for her, and now… and now…
“Hey, buddy, it’s okay.” Minako was there, suddenly, rubbing her back. “You’re both alive. Everything is okay. But I know it hurts.”
Haruka wiped the tears off her face, but they kept coming. “Is she… has she remembered?”
“Only if she broke through on her own,” Rei said. “It’s quite hard to be deemed worthy of talking to Ms. Kaioh.”
“I’m going to see her.”
“Haruka, no—“
“Not tonight.” She was a mess tonight, did Mina really think she’d seek out Michiru like this? “Tomorrow.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“She… it just isn’t.”
Haruka’s stomach sank. Mina wouldn’t lie. But still… “I’ve wasted so much time. I don’t want to waste anymore.”
Mina bit her lip. “Then at least let me go with you.”
—-
The morning was sunny and clear. For the first time in recent memory, Haruka woke up feeling whole and hopeful. She’d make things right with Michiru. They hadn’t had to kill anyone, they deserved some happiness, didn’t they?
Mina led the way to a high-end tea shop.
“I can’t afford anything here.”
“Good, let’s leave.”
Mina tugged at her arm, but Haruka froze in place. There she was. Her hair was pulled back today. Haruka had always liked that, yet another thing she should have told her. She would, now. She could just go in, and say how nice Michiru looked, and then Michiru would remember. Of course she would. She loved Haruka, didn’t she? Even as Haruka pretended she felt nothing back. But that was over, and—
And someone sat down across from Michiru. A tall girl, with short brown hair and big muscular arms.
Michiru smiled.
Haruka felt a new wound rip open in her heart. Michiru had never wanted the life they’d had. She’d tried to stop Haruka from joining her, hadn’t she? Haruka thought it was to protect her, but maybe it was something else. Maybe Michiru had never wanted her. Maybe she’d died for guilt, not love.
Mina grabbed Haruka’s hand and squeezed. “I’m sorry, buddy.”
“No. She’s happy now. She should get to be happy. That’s what matters.” She turned away. “Let’s go.”
—-
Her date was talking. Michiru should listen, but listening only made it too clear who she wasn’t with. She looked up through the window.
There she was.
Haruka walked around the corner, holding Minako’s hand. Michiru’s breath caught. Perhaps she had remembered, and chose someone better. Perhaps she hadn’t, and was drawn to Mina on her merits alone. After all, why would she choose Michiru without fate to bind them?
She swallowed her tea, and her feelings with it. Hopefully, Haruka was happy now. That was the important thing. Michiru’s date reached for her hand. She took it.
SittingOverHereDreaming 