Growing Up Fast Is Hard To Do: An Unhappy Outers Family Fic

Part Three (Part One/Part Two) (Ko-fi)

This part is about 1500 words, and pretty angsty.

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There had to be something wrong with her, Hotaru knew.
Haruka never took her to the same park twice, unless she was particularly wound
up, and then she was greeted at home with stern whispers. Grocery stores were
on a specific rotation. Hotaru got to go where she’d been before sometimes, but
only with a different mother. She was encouraged not to talk to other children.
They couldn’t stop her from observing. So she saw—there was a little girl who
passed by the front yard every Saturday morning in her stroller. The little
girl looked the same every week. The boys who shoved their parents’ quarters
into the kiddie ride horse outside the grocery stores looked the same, too.
Hotaru did not look the same. She grew every few days, pajama pants getting too
short overnight. She saw children she’d resembled just days before struggle
with tasks she could now do easily. Hotaru twirled a pen in her hand. She
wanted to do something with the knowledge she was different.  

But that was where her knowledge ended. She’d asked Haruka
first, knowing she was easiest to crack. They’d gone out toy shopping, Haruka
promising to buy Hotaru anything she wanted.

“How about this?” she’s asked, pulling out an extravagant
Play-Doh set in vibrant neon colors.

“It doesn’t look like much fun.” Hotaru took a breath. “Papa,
should I find that more interesting than I do?”

“Of course not, sweetheart, you can like whatever you like.”
Haruka picked her up, struggling some as Hotaru was too lanky to fit against
her hip as she once had. “You don’t let anyone tell you what you like is wrong,
whether it’s girl things or boy things or little kid things or adult th—well,
not too adult now, but we can get you video games if you like, or—“

There was no one besides her mothers to tell Hotaru
anything. Expressing that, though, would be a pointless diversion. “That’s not
what I mean. A week ago, I might have liked that. This would have been the
right aisle to take me to.” Another parent and child wheeled their cart into
the aisle. The child bounced between shelves while their father looked on with
resignation.

“I looked like that recently,” Hotaru whispered.

Haruka gave a wry chuckle. “You’ve never been that excited,
sweetheart.”

“You’re missing the point!” Hotaru balled her fist and
stomped her foot. “I was that size, and most kids stay that size awhile. Why
don’t I?”

Haruka’s eyes went wide. She looked from Hotaru to the other
family and back again. “Uh. Well. Um. Ah. Kids grow at different paces, I always
grew faster than my moth—we shouldn’t talk about this here.” Haruka took her
hand and led her out to the parking lot. “There’s nothing wrong with you,
Hotaru. Don’t let anyone make you think there is.”

Hotaru had never felt such rage. How could Haruka-papa miss
the point so badly?  How could she not
see Hotaru’s problem at all? She seethed in silence all the way home.

Setsuna had fared no better.

“People age differently. I have been the same for longer
than anyone, and I know a little girl who did not grow for a very long time,
and then grew several years’ worth all at once.”

“But is that normal?”

“Who’s to say what’s normal, little one? We’re all
different. That’s the beauty of life.”

“Some people are much less different.”

“That may be true.”

Setsuna-mama prided herself on knowledge, and on sharing
that knowledge, but she would not share what Hotaru wanted.

“Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?”

Setsuna had the decency to look remorseful. “You will find
out in time. We love you, Hotaru, and part of loving someone in protecting
them.”

It was a true statement and a false one, and Hotaru wanted
to rail against it but the dark suspicion that it was she herself that she was
being protect from ate her into acceptance.

It was precisely why she could not ask Michiru. If there was
some secret that made Hotaru horrible, Michiru would tell her. No dodging, no
sugar coating.

Well, Hotaru, the
Michiru in her head said, hands in her lap and uncaring placid smile on her lips.
The truth is you’re not a child at all.
You’re a monster. You’re too dangerous to be alone so we keep you here and
suffer.

Hotaru scribbled thick angry lines into the paper on her
desk. She could write and draw quite well now, but there was no satisfaction in
it. She wanted the truth, she wanted to destroy the lie, or destroy everything,
she wanted to tear down the world and make another, a better world, where she
was normal and could meet other kids and had a family that loved her in a way
she understood, and—

“Do you really want to know?”

Hotaru froze. The voice behind her was familiar yet foreign.
It was not from any of her mothers, yet she felt she heard it often.

“You had some of that, once,” the voice said. “Though you
were never quite normal.”

Hotaru braced herself and turned around. She saw not a
stranger, but herself, older and taller, dressed in a strange sailor suit and
holding something resembling a scythe.

“You were me,” the other said. “And we were sick, and we
were violated, and we were reborn.” She knelt so they were eye to eye. “You can
remember, but the truth can be hard. The happy parts as much as the sad parts.”

“I need to know. I need to know what’s wrong with me.”

The other smiled sadly. “There’s nothing wrong with you. All
there is now is you, and me. And I can’t exist unless you let me. You get a
choice this time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. If you want to remember, you will. Now, are you
sure?”

Hotaru squared her shoulders. “I’m sure.”

The other touched her hand to Hotaru’s forehead. A wall in
her mind crumbled and the memories behind it surged forward in a wave. Her
father, the accident, the parasite that had grown inside her. The fragility,
the fear, the pain, the blossom of hope when she’d met Chibiusa. Her triumph
with Saturn. Her rebirth. The decision to rest, to try for a normal life. Her
father’s love, confusion, resolve to do better than the things he could no
longer quite remember. And—

Hotaru’s eyes shot open. She stood in her room alone. Her
pants were too short again, her sweater too snug, but this was no time to
bother adjusting to her new height. She stormed out of her room to find Setsuna
in the kitchen.

“You stole me.”

Setsuna stopped, dishrag in hand. “Hotaru—“

“You tried to kill me and then you stole me.”

Their eyes met. Setsuna was brave enough to not look away.

“I have only done what was necessary for the circumstances.”

“You said you loved me.”

“And I do.” Setsuna dropped her dish into the water and
faced Hotaru properly. “We were made for the good of the world, not ourselves.
As Saturn, you know that.”

“You want me to be Saturn, but I get to choose. It’s my choice, even if you try to take it
away.”

“I know what you will choose. That is why I took you.”

Hotaru wanted to hit her, to scream, to become Saturn then
and there and destroy the world. Worse still, she wanted these things because
Setsuna was not wrong. Pluto was not wrong. Pluto did do what she saw to be
right in the time stream, and how could Hotaru argue even as she hurt? She turned
to leave the kitchen, and there was Haruka.

“I know what you did.”

Haruka froze, fear settling in behind her eyes.

“I will not give you absolution. You will not find it in me.”

“Hotaru, please—“

“How can you ask anything of me?” Hotaru did scream, now.
Haruka was wrong, Haruka was human, Haruka had no right to understand her so
little. “You would have killed me, and nothing you do will erase that. Nothing.”

“Hotaru, sweetheart, I—“

“Don’t call me that!”

“That’s enough.” Michiru came up behind Haruka, the
terrifying picture of calm Hotaru knew she would be. “You can be angry, you can
be hurt. We did what we had to, and so did you.”

“I want my real family.”

“Then go.”

“Michiru!”

She held a hand to silence Haruka’s protest. “You may go, if
you’d like to explain all this to your father. If not, we will continue to
provide for you.”

“I…” Hotaru thought of her father, barely recovered from all
that had happened. He knew her now as a baby. Would he recognize her? Would she
make him remember all mercy had let him forget? “I hate you!” She ran to her
room, ignoring Haruka’s sobs behind her.