Part One/ Chapters 1 & 2
ETA: Link to Part Two, Part Three
The first part of my entry for the June 2015 HaruMichi Same Prompt Fic Party, Senshi Civil War. Big warning for character death. I’m posting the first two chapters together because I think they constitute the beginning, so to speak. I will hopefully have at least the next chunk up by the due date.
Summary: When Minako saves Usagi instead of Chibiusa, history threatens to repeat itself in Crystal Tokyo. Tensions run high as the senshi grieve and threaten to destroy the kingdom they want to save.
Part One Word count: 4150
Read on AO3, or behind the cut.
Chapter One: Fallout
“Goddamn it Rei, what was I supposed to do?”
Rei shut that door behind them instead of looking at Mina. “What were you supposed to do? Oh, I don’t know, maybe you shouldn’t have let her die.” She wiped at her face.
Mina dug her fingers into her palm. “I made a choice. If you wanted a different one, you should have acted quicker. You and everyone else weren’t doing anything, and I wasn’t about to let Usagi die.”
“And what a saint you are for that, I’m sure she’s so grateful she’s alive right now.”
Mina could still hear Usagi’s screams in her head. “Right now isn’t all there is. She’ll move on, get better, maybe have another kid–” She stopped.
“So that’s what it comes down to,” Rei said, her voice even and quiet. Mina knew at once she should have never said it out loud. A shouting Rei was a Rei she could fight. A Rei focused into calmness was a much more dangerous creature. “Chibiusa is replaceable to you.”
“Not… not like that. But in the grand scheme of things–”
“In the grand scheme of things she is a child.” Rei gritted her teeth. “Was a child. Usagi’s been alive for nearly a thousand years now–”
“So that makes it alright to let her die?”
“We’re old, Mina. Older than anyone has a right to be. The world should be moving onto new things.”
She disappeared into their bedroom. Mina leaned against the back of the couch and shoved down her self doubt. It wouldn’t do her any good to question herself. Push forward, not back, that was how she always got through things.
Rei came out with a bag over her shoulder. “I’m going to her, but you should stay here.”
Mina nodded. Usagi surely hated her right now. But her hatred would always be better than her death.
Rei stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “I have one question, Mina. Did you do this out of love for Usagi? Or for Serenity?”
She left without an answer. Mina cursed and kicked the sofa. Her toes punched straight through the vinyl. She kicked again, properly this time, crunching into one of the wood support beams. The side of the couch crumpled. Mina didn’t feel any better.
It had been a battle with too many variables. Years had passed since Usagi had been involved in fights at all, and more and more they’d been letting Chibiusa and her quartet handle the monsters that cropped up. But this one, somehow, whether it was because of its own strength or a fault it their security and patrols, had managed to kidnap queen and princess in one swoop. Thirteen senshi went to fight, a group that hadn’t properly fought together, a group two thirds of which had half retired. Venus had trained Ceres for command. Ceres deferred with Venus present. It was the first mistake. The quartet respected Venus, but their trust was in the leader they knew. There was always that split second of hesitation at Venus’s orders, split seconds that added up. And while Venus would never say her own senshi were off their game, they’d fallen out of practice fighting all together. At their best they had been one mass of energy, fighting with many parts. Now they were eight individuals.
So it had ended up that Venus saw three options: Save only Usagi, save only Chibiusa, or let all of them and god knew how many civilians die.
Mina couldn’t let go of Usagi.
Venus couldn’t let go of Serenity.
It was one thing the dissonants parts of her could agree on. The others would say she must not love Chibiusa, but that wasn’t true. She did, how could she not, but it was a different kind of love. Usagi was the reason they all were born. Usagi was the reason the course of Mina’s life had meaning. She couldn’t be expected to throw that away.
There was a knock at the door. Mina took a deep breath and braced herself for whoever had come to fight it out with her. She was sure it was only Usagi’s grief that had kept the fight from happening on the scene. Mako had carried her back to the palace, Ami and Mamoru close behind, and Minako had slipped away before the others could say anything. It was probably Mako now, come to punch her in the face for what she’d done. That would be better than yelling, really. Direct, simple. Relatively painless.
But it was Ami, not Mako, at the door.
“Whatever you’ve come to say, Rei’s already said it, so–”
“No, that’s not…” Ami looked down to the bag in her hands. “Mako kicked me out, so I–”
“She what?”
Ami’s hands were shaking. “I said I understood why you saved Usagi. And I might have done the same thing.”
Michiru stroked Haruka’s hair as she cried in her lap, ignoring the ache in her own chest. “They’ll come back. They didn’t mean it.”
“They only said the truth. We are child killers.”
“And Setsuna was just as on board with killing Hotaru as we were.”
“But we actually killed both of them.”
“We had to.”
“Did we?” Haruka turned her face further away from Michiru. “It didn’t work. I made you do such a horrible thing, and it didn’t even work.”
“You didn’t make me do anything. And that was a very long time ago.”
“Apparently it’s still fresh in some minds.”
“We’re all grieving. Old wounds get reopened.” She turned Haruka’s face up to look her in the eyes. “I know you loved Chibiusa. I know you loved our children, and love Hotaru. You’re not a bad person, Haruka.” Michiru brushed tears from her cheek with her thumb. “And neither is Mina.” Michiru couldn’t say she’d have stood up for Mina herself, but had it been Haruka the demon had taken, she might have made the same choice. Hotaru’s relationship with the princess would have been her only hesitation. And Mina had no stake in that.
Michiru laced her fingers into Haruka’s. “We’ll give them tonight. They’ll sleep off the worst of it, and then we can talk.”
There would be no sleeping tonight. Setsuna watched from the doorway as Usagi pleaded with the Silver Crystal for Chibiusa’s resurrection. It was too familiar a scene. Thousands upon thousands of years, and the sight of her queen doing the same was still fresh in her heart. This was somehow worse, a grief she somehow had not yet experienced in all her lives. It should have been Small Lady that she comforted through this loss. It took all her knowledge and respect not to plead with the crystal herself. She’d trade her life if it meant Small Lady would no longer be cold and still. But that wasn’t how these things worked.
Endymion held her, her hands still so tiny compared to his. Setsuna had promised her she’d grow into a lady as lovely as her mother. She turned away to hide her tears. Hotaru could cry openly with the royal family, she was the fifth member of the quartet in all but name, but Setsuna had no right. She could hear her queen echo from the past, What good is the dominion of time if you couldn’t even see this and stop it? She could not bear to hear Usagi ask her the same.
She dried her face as Rei and Mako approached. They slipped inside without a word to her, their grief and Usagi’s overshadowing her. Pluto belonged at the edges, after all. She stepped to the side of the doorway, out of sight, and sank to the floor. She should have stayed with Haruka and Michiru, nevermind that Haruka had to defend Minako’s honor, they were her family. And they knew Small Lady was, too.
“Pluto?”
Her heart turned to ice. Usagi had been Queen for hundreds of years, but to Setsuna she had never been Serenity. But she knew as she walked into that room, that was who she faced now. Usagi’s eyes were lightless. Her face and heart had gone hard. “Yes, my queen?”
“There is one way to bring her back.”
Another kingdom crumbled. Another eon without the silver crystal. Another smattering of planets dead without the light of the universe to draw chaos’s eyes. It had never been Metalia’s doing. “I would not advise that.”
“I am not asking if it is a good idea. I am asking how to do it.”
“I will not tell you.” Queen Serenity had not needed to be told. She’d given Saturn the order without hesitation, and the crystal sealed the souls she wanted to save. Setsuna could only hope the crystal would keep that secret.
“I am ordering you.”
“Order me again in a few days, but I will not tell you now.”
She exited, but this time Rei followed. “She means to do as Queen Serenity did, doesn’t she?”
Setsuna nodded. “I want Small Lady back as much as anyone, but that cannot happen. I would have stopped it then if I could. I will not let it happen now.”
“It will take more than a few days for her to even start to move on.”
“Yes, but it gives us a little time to find some other solution. And if he can keep her otherwise calm, she may at least realize all she has left.”
Rei looked back in. “Mina said she should have another child,” Rei whispered.
“It would be unwise to suggest that.” She should, for the sake of the world. But Venus should have saved Small Lady, for the same. But after spending one life drilled to protect one person and one person only, she couldn’t be blamed for doing the same in her next, however much Setsuna wanted to blame her, hate her, for it.
“It would be best, then, if Minako doesn’t see her.” She frowned. “And Ami. Mako said… well, she might make it worse.”
Dread settled into Setsuna’s stomach. The divide was too perfect, too clean. But before she could say anything to Rei, they joined in the hall by the quartet.
“Where are you going?”
“We have no beef with your girlfriend, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Juno spat.
Ceres put a hand on her shoulder. “If the queen hits the reset button, we don’t want to be a part of it. Our princess may be dead, but there’s a whole world to fight for.” She looked to Setsuna. “Can we outrun it?”
“Get out of Crystal Tokyo. It will only be the kingdom that is destroyed. I will find you if it is safe to return.”
Ceres nodded. They walked down the hall, but Vesta turned back. “We should have been faster. We should have saved her. I’m sorry.”
The same is true for me.
Chapter Two: Coming to Blows
“I want to go try and talk to her,” Mina said the next morning. “Haruka’s meeting me there for support. You’re welcome to come.”
Ami’s fingers traced the handle of her coffee cup up and down. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“If there’s going to be any chance of her not hating me forever, I’d better talk to her sooner than later.”
“Hm.” She looked less than convinced, but nodded. “I’ll go with you. Maybe if I talk to Usagi first…”
It was a perversely beautiful day. The sun shone in a clear azure sky, and the lightest breeze kept the heat at bay. The palace sparkled as they approached. Mina caught herself wondering if Mako would take Chibiusa on a picnic with the weather so nice. She bit down on her tongue to keep from crying. She didn’t deserve to grieve.
Haruka must have noticed, though, as she put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. She looked like she’d had a trainwreck of a night herself, but neither of them were in a mood for talking. Ami and Michiru trailed silently behind them.
Mina’s heart sank as they came in sight of the gate. The other senshi were waiting there, transformed. Pluto stepped forward. “You are not welcome here right now.”
“I need to see her.”
“Minako. Things are delicate right now, we’re on the edge of facing a repeat of the Silver Millenium’s fall.”
“And that’s my fault.”
“That’s not what I said.” But Mina noticed she didn’t deny it either.
“If she’s to that point, I need to help. If I talk to her–”
“There’s no guarantee it won’t make things worse.” She shifted her grip on her staff. “Please leave, Mina.”
Tears of frustration, and emotions far worse, threatened to gob up in Mina’s eyes, but she instinctively widened her stance. “Are you threatening me?”
“I don’t want to fight you.”
“But you will, is what you’re saying.” She eyed the rest of them. Hotaru looked ready to outright kill her, Mako was certainly rearing for a punch. Rei looked sad, but resolute. If she could get it out of their system, they’d be able to talk, maybe.
“Fine, if it’s a fight you want, it’s a fight you’ll get.”
“Mina–” Haruka started, but she had already transformed. She whipped her chain around Pluto’s staff and yanked it into her own hands.
“But you’ll have to catch me first.”
Mina, it seemed, couldn’t make any right decisions lately. Pluto ran after her, though Mina chained onto a building and propelled herself up, so Rei was unsure if she could be caught.
Uranus transformed, but Rei conjured her flame sniper arrow and aimed. “Let them fight this out.”
“They’ll hurt each other!”
“Pluto is prepared for that.” Back down, she willed Haruka. The only way to keep this from spiraling into something even worse is if we keep this all on Mina. She caught Michiru’s eye. She nodded and moved towards Haruka.
But Rei’s arrow sputtered out, her hands suddenly covered in slush. She looked to Ami. Her face was embarrassed but stern. “I’m sorry. It won’t help anyone if Minako dies for this.”
“That’s not–”
But Uranus took off, and Jupiter tore after her. Michiru, now Neptune, stepped in to keep Saturn from following.
“We were trying to keep this under control, Ami.”
“Uranus is right. They’ll get hurt.”
“Mina can more than handle herself, you know that.”
“And how’s Usagi going to feel if her best friend is dead alongside her daughter?”
“No one was going to die, that’s why Pluto was handling it alone.” Rei shook off her hands. “Did you turn off your brain for a day or what?”
“I think we’re all acting on emotions rather than logic right now.” She squared her shoulders.
“Some of us more than others.” She glanced towards the disappearing figures. So long as Mako didn’t catch Haruka, it might be alright. “I’m going after them.” She turned, stepped, and all but fell flat on her face. Her left foot was encased in a block of ice. “Goddamn it Ami, you said you didn’t want any of them hurt.”
“All of you were out here and ready to fight. How can I trust you?”
Rei seethed. “I think your trust issues have a lot more to do with Mako than me.” If Ami was going to play dirty, so was she. “Now unless you want your wife– ex wife?– to tumble this all out of control, you’ll let me go.”
Ami’s eyes were wide and hurt. But it was all the opportunity Rei needed.
Mina was fast. If the staff wasn’t there to hinder her, Setsuna would have been left in the dust. Minako shot up the sides of buildings with her chain, jettisoned from roof to roof, while Setsuna had to leap from foothold to foothold. Tree, windowsill, firescape, roof. Far too precarious for her liking, but she had to catch Mina before she doubled back towards the palace. Rei thought Hotaru and Makoto were the ones to worry about with Mina, but Setsuna had an increasing dread that Neo Queen Serenity. She was too raw, her power too ready. It wouldn’t bring Small Lady back no matter how much she begged, but it would lash out at her killer easily. No, not her killer. Mina only killed the monster, it was the monster who killed Small Lady. The difference was important. If she couldn’t keep ahold of it, there was no hope the others could.
She found Mina waiting on the next roof, facing away. What was a gentle breeze on the ground blew her hair out all around her. The sunlight dances across the strands like a flame. Pluto’s staff hung loosely in her left hand, the garnet orb resting against the rooftop. “Are you tired yet?”
“Minako, I am exhausted. Please stop this.”
“I hurt her, didn’t I?” Her voice was choked. “That’s why you don’t want me to see her. I hurt her beyond repair.”
“I don’t believe anything is beyond repair.” She took a slow step forward.
“Are you going to go back in time and fix it then?”
Another step. “You know I can’t do that. Some things are set as soon as they happen.”
Mina was quiet for a long moment. “This is my real curse, isn’t it? I let her be happy, and the kingdom falls. I choose her life above all else, and the kingdom falls.”
Setsuna shut her eyes and drew a deep breath. “Minako. We can still fix this. She lacks the singular focus Queen Serenity had, she can’t destroy everything so easily.”
She turned then, her eyes red and wet. “You can fix this. I fucked up too badly this time.” The staff clattered against the rooftop as it dropped from her hand. “I’ll leave. That’s what’s best, isn’t it? Maybe that always would have been best for her.”
Our crime is loving our queens too dearly. “She needs you. She will need you, when she’s ready to face the world.”
“For what? More bad decisions and cold-heartedness? The others can cover those bases.” She swatted tears off her cheek with the back of her hand. “If she triggers our rebirth, I’ll try to be a better guardian in that life. I’ll stay the distant Sailor V.”
Next time I won’t stay distant when things go wrong. I won’t follow orders unto her destruction. Setsuna swallowed hard. There was never a right choice. Stay obedient, and everything you knew and loved crumbled. Rebell, fight, die for the little girl you love, she dies anyway and history threatens to repeat itself. She took another cautious step. “We can’t tell how our decisions will turn out.” She meant to say it wasn’t Minako’s fault, but she couldn’t make the words come out. It was her fault, she let the enemy kill Setsuna’s precious friend so that she could save her own. “I understand.”
“Then you’ll let me go.” She turned to run and leap to another roof.
Her foot caught on the staff.
Setsuna saw it as though in slow motion, but she would never make it in time to keep Mina from tumbling off the rooftop.
Part of her wanted to leave it at that. There was nothing she could reasonably do.
The rest of her, though, had already dove for her staff.
“Setsuna has it wrong. She’s not the only one who remembers every detail of the fall.” Hotaru kept her glaive pointed at Michiru.
She would have laughed, if uncried tears weren’t blocking the way. If Hotaru remembered every detail, then she knew Neptune was there too. The good soldier who patrolled for external threats until only ashes remained within, who finally broke protocol to die with the glaive’s decent. “Are you going to tell Usagi then?”
Hotaru’s eyes narrowed. “I might. What good is this world without Chibiusa?”
“I’d say you take after me too much for your own good, but if that were true, you’d have done it already.” Michiru nodded towards the palace. “What’s keeping you from walking in there and doing it now?”
“You would stop me.”
“Perhaps.” It amazed her, sometimes, how much they all stayed the same as so much time passed. There had been a time, when Hotaru had been in middle school, when Hotaru had used the same excuse for not telling her mothers when she’d been invited to parties. “You wouldn’t let me go anyway,” she’d say. “Their parents aren’t going to be home.” There was always something else, Hotaru’s feelings about her erratic aging, her experiences as Saturn causing a disconnect, even occasionally ordinary bullying. The cover never worked, but she used it even now. “I imagine, though, you could kill me if you really wanted.”
Hotaru’s already red eyes welled up with tears. “I could. And it wouldn’t matter because everyone be dead in minutes anyway.” Her hands shook. “Even if Setsuna’s right, and it’s just Crystal Tokyo and not the whole planet, that’s millions of people.”
Michiru ached to hug her, to stroke her hair the way she had when she’d been younger and had nightmares, but she knew Hotaru would find no comfort in that now. “So what will you do?”
“I don’t know!” Her whole body heaved with the shout. “I want her back now, not in a lifetime, not after another thousand years of time travel and mismatched ages. I want things the way they were!”
“Oh Hotaru…”
“I don’t want your pity! I don’t want you at all!” She lashed out with the blunt end of the glaive, catching Michiru hard in the stomach.
She gasped for air, and by the time she could breathe again Hotaru was gone.
It had been too long since Haruka had seen a flash of gold to guide her. She stopped. It was possible Setsuna had caught Mina on a building. Haruka had stayed on the ground where she could run fastest, but she’d have to climb now to find and help Mina.
There was one problem, she found as she moved to make the first jump.
She’d stopped just long enough for Mako to catch up. She tackled her to the ground, breathing hard. Her fist mashed into Haruka’s jaw once, hard. “How can you take her side?” Mako’s voice was a rough croak, she’d clearly been crying most of the night. “Chibiusa was supposed to be the one kid who watched us grow old instead of the other way around.” She drove her fist into the pavement this time. Haruka imagined the ground cracking, but she didn’t dare turn her head to look. “I thought you of all people would understand that.”
Haruka thought of their children’s playdates, the parenting magazine swaps, the laughter over Haruka being the first to buy a minivan even though she’d had to sell one of her racers to fit it in the garage. It was nice that Makoto had held onto that image of her. But she thought of Hotaru and knew it was false. “I’ve always been heartless, don’t you remember? You were right about me from the start.”
That earned her another hit. Spots swam in her vision. She’d taken hits from Mako before, but Mako had never hit this hard. “You don’t get to act like this. Chibiusa is dead.” The third hit came with a sob. “How could Minako do it? How could you stand up for her?”
Haruka didn’t say anything. There was nothing she could say. Maybe it really did mean she’d loved Mina more than Chibs. Maybe it meant that nothing really had changed, maybe it meant she really never had good priorities with children. She wanted to believe she’d at least been a good parent to her own, but Hotaru was the only one left to ask, and that answer was definitive. She deserved everything Mako gave her and more.
Something gold flashed behind Mako’s head– Minako’s hair, there and gone so fast that for a moment Haruka was sure that the last punch had merely rattled her brain into hallucinations. But then she processed. Minako had been falling. Minako had been falling and then was no longer falling in the blink of an eye. No, please let me be wrong. She caught Mako off guard, shoving her off and scaling the building. Makoto followed, but Haruka couldn’t care. All that mattered was what she would find at the top of the building.
Minako sat on her knees, chest heaving with short breaths, head moving back and forth as though the no motion might convince her brain her eyes were wrong. Setsuna lay before her. Her hands still gripped her staff, and her face looked at peace. Haruka recognized too easily what had happened. Setsuna couldn’t let another senshi die, no matter how she felt about them.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t as obvious to everyone. Makoto gasped as she pulled herself onto the roof. “What have you done?”
SittingOverHereDreaming 