Tag: Haruka Tenoh

~ sittingoverheredreaming ~ Leave a comment

I intended to write something fluffy and Outers Family-Oriented for Michiru’s birthday, but somehow I ended up writing this instead.

We Could Pretend

1219 Words

On Michiru’s birthday, Haruka makes a suggestion Michiru knows she should refuse.

Set during or a little before S. Not a particularly happy fic.

Read on AO3 here or under the cut.

Sunlight streamed through the curtains as she opened her eyes. She lie still for a long while, feeling the bruises still forming from the battle the night before.

There was a knock on her door.  “Michiru? Are you awake?”

“Yes, what’s wrong?” She sat up quickly. “Do you sense a Daimon?” She didn’t feel anything, but maybe sleep was clinging to her mind and keeping her from noticing what Haruka sensed. That was why they’d decided to live together, anyway. Easier to keep constant vigilance.

“No, no, don’t worry. Nothing’s happening. Er, nothing bad.” She heard Haruka shuffle her feet against the carpet. “Do you want to come out?”

“One moment.”

She made her bed and padded out to the living room. Haruka stood fidgety paper banner that read “Happy Birthday, Michiru” in big sloppy letters. Haruka’s marker had clearly started to die by the time she’d gotten to the “iru.” A large vase of roses sat next to a modest gift bag on the coffee table.

“It’s, uh, it’s not much, but—“

“Oh, you shouldn’t have done anything.”

“What just because we’re going to… just because of what we are, we can’t have birthdays?” Haruka’s tone started off joking but ended in a real question. Her smile faltered. The sadness in her eyes hurt worse than any Daimon punch.

“No, I only meant… I don’t really celebrate my birthday. And we didn’t do anything for yours. I didn’t, I mean.”

Haruka laughed. “That doesn’t matter. And I already got you something, so you can celebrate it at least this once, right?”

“I suppose,” she said, as if she could ever really say no. Haruka was still easily disappointed, she still knew how to be happy. Michiru was robbing her of that piece by piece, with every battle and every assurance that they would kill whoever they needed to, but she refused to take another piece now.

They sat together on the couch, a little closer than they should have been; Michiru feeling obligated no to move away and Haruka, perhaps, feeling like closeness was another gift Michiru wanted. Michiru longed to regain plausible deniability on that. Every time Haruka did something to oblige her feelings, she cursed herself for confessing. She’d known better. She’d always known better.

“Like I said,” Haruka started, setting the gift bag between them, “It’s not much, but I did my best.”

Michiru pulled apart the tissue paper slowly, ready to fake delight. She’d rarely gotten real gifts over the past several years, but none of them had particularly pleased her. Expensive brushes, a new violin, whatever else her parents bought all were very nice, very useful, but very predictable. Haruka hadn’t gotten her anything like that, but she still expected the worst. She felt almost validated when she unearthed a slender box that surely contained jewelry. A cold gift, and hardly a thoughtful one.

But then she opened it.

It was a silver bracelet, a little clunky and a little gaudy, with four charms clipped on—a seashell, a paintbrush, a music note, and a horse. Michiru stared down at it for a long moment.

“I know it’s not really your style, but you have everything and I… I tried to make it something special.” Haruka’s checks flushed red.

Michiru should have assured her she loved it, she should have immediately plastered a smile on her face like she was trained to do. But she stared for another moment and then asked, “Why the horse?”

Haruka cleared her throat and fixed her eyes somewhere over Michiru’s head. “Well, I heard this story, that Poseidon, ruler of the sea, created horses, and so that’s very you. But horses also race, so.” She let her eyes meet Michiru’s for a split second. “So.”

Michiru felt her chest crest over itself and crash down into her stomach. “Will you put it on me?”

Haruka’s unsteady fingers fidgeted with the clasp for longer than it would have taken Michiru to put it on with one hand. But Michiru didn’t comment. “I forgot to say thank you.”

Haruka looked up at her through her bangs. She dropped one end of the bracelet. “Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

Haruka got the loops to hook together, but she kept looking down. “Michiru?”

“Hm?”

“I know…” She cleared her throat. Her voice stayed rough anyway. “I know we can’t, and I know we don’t deserve anything, with what we’re going to do. But maybe… It’s your birthday. One day.” She traced Michiru’s skin around the bracelet with her finger. “We could pretend.”

“Haruka…” You deserve everything. I’m the one who dragged you into this, I’m the one… But Haruka looked up just then, still so open, still absolutely raw. If Michiru had been a better person, she would have endured hurting Haruka now to save her later. She would have thought about what would happen come tomorrow, how much more it would hurt Haruka, how much more it would chip away at her, how much harder, too, it would be if she needed to abandon Neptune to pain or death to complete their mission.

But Michiru hadn’t been a good enough person to keep Haruka from being a senshi.

And she wasn’t good enough to say no to her now.

Michiru kissed Haruka, both of them soft and hesitant. Haruka laced the fingers of one hand with hers, and put the other on the back of her neck, thumb brushing into her hair. For the first time in years, Michiru felt a real urge to cry.

She broke away and pressed her face into Haruka’s shoulder. She wouldn’t cry, Michiru Kaioh did not cry. And how would Haruka feel, if kissing her made her cry? She shut her eyes tight against the tears and breathed in deep breaths tinged with Haruka’s cologne.

“Are you okay?”

“You…” Michiru stopped. The truth would unravel everything. You’re amazing, and I love you. I will do everything I can to keep the blood on my hands, not yours. But she couldn’t promise anything, and Haruka had to be prepared. Hope was the worst thing she could give her. “You’re my first kiss.” A different truth, easier than a lie.

“Oh. You’re mine, too.” Haruka’s hand moved further into her hair and rubbed gently against the base of her skull. Michiru had had a nanny who did that when she was very young to put her to sleep. “Was I very bad?”

“No. Quite the opposite.” Michiru felt herself smile before she recognized there was a part of her that was happy. She closed her eyes again and let herself pretend that was all there was. Haruka rested her head on top of hers. Michiru hoped she was pretending, too. “We could go somewhere for breakfast.”

“And then we could walk through the park. Like a real date.”

“Something like that,” Michiru said, and already she saw it falling apart.

—-

She slipped the bracelet into her jewelry box before she went to bed, and in the morning she saw Haruka’s eyes fall on her naked wrist. “I have a premonition there will be a Daimon attack today,” Michiru said without a good morning. She fixed her eyes on the ground. She couldn’t watch as she broke Haruka that little bit more. “Today might be the day.”

The Way She Is

~ sittingoverheredreaming ~ Leave a comment

I’m supposed to be writing for school, but this came out of nowhere instead.

A young Haruka tries wearing the girls’ uniform to school. It doesn’t go well.
~1000 words, vaguely sad backstory fic/drabble.

Haruka is twelve, and girls are pretty.

More than pretty, really;her mother grudgingly gave her the birds and the bees talk two months ago—yet another joy of puberty—and Haruka knows, sheknows that she doesn’t feel the things her mother described, or not the way she
described them, at least.

She looks in the mirror
now. Everyone had always said it would happen. With a haircut like that, you’ll be lucky if your daughter doesn’t end
up a d–… Why don’t you wear the girl’s uniform, Haruka, people are going to
think… They were wrong, it was just what she felt comfortable in, but now… now
they aren’t wrong.

She rummages through her
mother’s drawers to find a headband. With it and the school uniform, she can’t
see any difference between herself and the rest of the girls at school, even
with her hair so short. She looks like them. She looks normal.

Haruka wears it to
school, to see if it makes a difference.

“Haruka!” her friend Yuko
calls when she gets to class. “You look so nice today!”

It is all she can do to not
to run back out the door.

Yuko and Kaori fawn over
her headband, and her skirt, and why doesn’t she wear this every day? She can’t
explain the lump that has formed in the pit of her stomach to them. She’s used
to everyone’s eyes being on her—she’s the prince of the first years, after all—but
now it feels wrong. And Kaori is still pretty, even with the transformative
powers of the skirt.

She finds herself
wondering if the skirt harms or improves her chances.

If it improves them,
she’s not sure it’s worth it.

That was the opposite of
the point, anyway.

Kaori asks if she’s going
to grow her hair out now. Haruka’s no
is harsher than she intended, but also it isn’t. These are her friends, not her parents, didn’t they
choose her as she really is? Didn’t they choose the Haruka Tennoh who wore
pants and loved racing the way they loved idols?

Kaori pouts. “But you’d
look like an actual girl with long hair.”

She leaves. Class hasn’t
even started, but she’s done. She can’t do a full day of this. Outside, she
hides under the bleachers to watch the gym classes run. It’s calming, not as
calming as running herself would be, but it’s the best she can do in this skirt
and these shoes. Her legs start to scream from crouching, but she can’t bring
herself to move. She’d get caught if she moved now, and the last thing she
needed was to be stuck in detention today. In the break between classes, she
lets herself sit down in the dirt. It’s good no one can see her; she can’t figure
out how to sit without exposing her boxers.

Her finger draws
nonsensical patterns in the dirt and she wonders what she really wanted today.
Her reaction to Kaori proved she didn’t really want to change, didn’t it? An
alternate scene pops into her mind. Yuko and Kaori see her and are horrified. “But
Haruka,” Kaori says, “we like you the way you are. I like you the way you are.”

Haruka draws stick
figures in the dirt to represent this. Then she draws herself and Kaori in a
car, riding towards the sunset. The car looks more like a box on lopsided
wheels. Never mind that there’s a twelve year old behind the wheel. She wipes
the foolish fantasy away with her foot.

Haruka sneaks away at
midday and walks home. Her stomach sinks when she sees her mother is there,
waiting. Of course the school let her know she was skipping. Of course she
would leave work for this. Haruka isn’t sure if she dreads punishment or her
mother’s reaction to the girl’s uniform more.

The yelling comes first.
She is a delinquent, she is ruining her mother’s life. She’s heard it all
before. But before the “No phone, no running, no television for a week,” before
the normal threats of being kicked out or sent away, her mother stops. “At
least you’re finally dressing normal.”

“This’ll never happen
again.”

“You have a
choice anymore. If I’m going to get called out of work because you’ve skipped
class or failed a test every few days, you’re going to at least look like the daughter I wanted.”

Haruka doesn’t bother to
fight the exaggeration. She had the sneaking suspicion that she’d find most of
her clothes gone from her closet when she looked. But she’d been resourceful
before, she could be resourceful again. Make a deal with a boy at school to
pretend to be slower than him in exchange for a spare uniform, steal a pair of
safety scissors to cut her hair in the school bathroom, she’d make it work.

But she thinks of Yuko
and Kaori. Does everyone want her this way?

She retreats to her room
and lies on her bed. The only exception she can think of is her aunt, her aunt
who lives in Tokyo and said on her last visit that really, these small town
people are so behind, there are plenty of girls in the city like Haruka. It has
been years since then, probably because Haruka’s mother took that as an insult,
but it stuck with Haruka.

Is it just this place?

Is there somewhere that
would feel right?

Yes, says a voice inside her, quiet but as strong as the sea.

Haruka packs right then
and there. There isn’t much to take— a pair of pajamas, the one pair of pants
left in her closet, the souvenir toy car from the first race her father took
her to. She makes herself include a photo of her and Yuko and Kaori, because
maybe someday, they’ll feel right again. The contents of her piggy bank are
dismal, but it should be enough for a bus ticket and some food. Hopefully her
aunt in Tokyo will want a roommate for a little while. Hopefully, the city will
be different.

Haruka is twelve, and she
is running.