[thread: notinuniform] a regrettable moment.

[bluebookworm]

"... Mako-chan?" There's a knock on the door to Makoto's bedroom, carefully, before Ami reaches for the handle, then pulls back, then reaches for it again, swallowing.

This is her fault.

... it usually is that way. She's been trying to fix things but she has to accept that nothing is going to change unless she actually does something about

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[notinuniform]

Jupiter pauses at the knock, watching the last of the cuts on her cheek seal itself before wiping the blood away with an alcohol wipe. She drops it in the trashcan and settles down on her bed, detransforming as she does so. "Sure. C'mon in, Ami-chan."

The slight smell of rain and roses might just tell Ami what she'd been doing beforehand, if the pink-tinged wipes in the trash didn't.

[bluebookworm]

The matters of business take priority, regardless; Ami's first question is, "How'd it go out there tonight?" and none of the actual questions on her mind because this is a comfortable place for her to hide in when it's necessary.

"I'm no closer to tracking down who might be trying to purchase American tanks in Japan than I was last night," she adds, since they're on the topic of their individual adventures in breaking the law for all the right (and sometimes wrong) reasons.

[notinuniform]

She smiles and holds out a hand for Ami to take. Sit in her lap? :3? "It went fine. Nothing eventful happened. Rescued a cat from a tree and that's it." Thus, scratches. Cats are magic, of course.

"That's an annoying thing. Usually you'd have them by now, which means someone pretty big's going at it, huh?" Makoto frowns. If she had any of the right connections, she'd break a few heads to figure it all out. Fortunately for the military, she doesn't.

[bluebookworm]

It's probably the first sign that something's gone wrong when Ami elects to stay by the door, instead; there's a brief internal struggle that becomes visible on her face long enough to darken her expression before it resolves itself, for the moment. "What was the cat's name? Was it cute?" She's smiling, even if it doesn't ... entirely reach where it should.

"Someone very big or someone just trying to distract me from something else I ought to be noticing already. I can't shake the feeling that the tanks aren't what they're really after. It's just too obvious a target for someone who's being so troublesome to locate." Ami really has nothing better to do than sit and think about this sort of thing for hours at a time. Someone should tell her to get a life - if only she had the time for it.

[notinuniform]

"Tama-chan." She smiles, but it fades upon seeing Ami's expression. She's known Ami long enough to know what a smile is, and what a smile isn't. This isn't a smile, it's hurt. "It was cute." What's wrong? Why's she not coming?

"If you want, we can go down and throw some questions around?" It's a typical answer for Makoto when she's too concerned about something else to think things through.

Maybe they both need to get a life.

[bluebookworm]

"That is cute!" That's a little bit closer, because she's being honest. "At least they didn't name it Artemis or something awful like that." Sometimes Ami is petty, yes. It's easier than thinking about what's really on her mind.

"... let's not do that, Mako-chan. For once." There's something earnest in the way she says it, something hurt. And at least we get closer to the topics she's been avoiding for far too long. Too long to be any use in doing anything about them, she thinks.

It would be easier to believe that if either of them knew how.

[notinuniform]

"That would be sad, yeah." She's not the only one.

"...Ami-chan." Just a hint of warning there. Warning of what? She's going to stand up and move closer, to hugging range. "Love. Is there something wrong?" She knows what strings to pull, Makoto does, and she does them shamelessly.

[bluebookworm]

They never really recovered the way anyone hoped they would; maybe it's time they learned how. This isn't the right way to do it but it's a start, if Ami can figure out how to do it right.

"... I don't know," she says, stalling for time because she does know, and that's the problem; she hugs back, loosely, and rests her head on Makoto's shoulder. "The world isn't as easy as it looked like it was when we first earned these abilities, is it?"

[notinuniform]

Makoto wraps her arms around Ami and buries her face in the smaller girl's hair. "We were innocent back then. We never thought we'd have to go at it alone." A squeeze. "I wish I could look at the world the way everyone else does. They never seem to worry about things."

[bluebookworm]

"We don't, anymore." Maybe neither one of them's yet realized it; maybe they're just - let's be honest - afraid to. She says the rest of her dialogue into Makoto's shoulder: "I wish you could, too."

[notinuniform]

It's that, or they're too stuck in the old ways to change anymore. Or, rather, Makoto is.

She blinks and frowns down at Ami's head, giving it a little stroke with her hand. "...What was that?" She probably heard that wrong, because... Well. Ami.

[bluebookworm]

"I'm not strong enough," she says, and it's a little whisper because she can't bring herself to say it any louder

[notinuniform]

Makoto doesn't speak for a long while, just staring as Ami speaks and breaks down the walls the other girl'd apparently been hiding in herself. She hadn't even known, and that fact makes her furious. Not at Ami, but at herself for being wrapped up so much in her destructiveness and anger that she couldn't notice the most important person in the world was hurting.

She reaches out and grabs Ami's shoulders, giving them a squeeze while she tries to come up with the right words. "Ami... You've never done anything wrong." She kisses the other girl's temple and offers a watery smile. "There can't be anything wrong with you. You're not the one that goes out and makes people bleed in the streets, I am." You're not the one who wants it all to stop.

She shifts her feet, trying to find words. "Ami-chan... I'm." How to say it? "I'm not unhappy with you. Being with you is one of the few times I actually feel safe. All right?" She brushes a lock of hair behind Ami's ear and nods. "You're perfect, okay? I'm the one that's fucking up. I can't make

[bluebookworm]

"I don't want you to."

It's a simple confession, but it's something hard to admit for both of them. And it's gone on too long this way and it's time they stopped being broken and maybe tried to be okay, again.

They don't notice things the way they should. Maybe they're too disconnected. These are all things that she knows are true and that she doesn't know how to fix on her own, but there's too much going on to leave it like that.

She keeps hearing about strange noises underground and ghostly laughter, and she's not sure what it is. Maybe it's just overactive imaginations going to town - after the subway attacks some people never learned how to not be paranoid - but maybe it's not.

It used to be love letters that she was allergic to; now it's almost like uncertainty.

"I don't want you to make things perfect. Nabu - Nabu wanted things perfect. I just want you to be Mako-chan. And I want to have friends again, like we almost had before things went wrong

[notinuniform]

Makoto blinks. What?

It would help, maybe, if they'd admit to themselves that they were broken, and it wasn't the world around them. Just maybe.

Makoto's stayed far away from the underground since that day. Jumping around the city may be slower than the subway, but she doesn't have to be trapped down there again.

"Ami-chan..." I want things to be perfect for you. But. If that was Nabu's wish, and Ami... ...Maybe I've been overcompensating.

...Which was more important? Love? Or the world? People needed help, the world was chaotic. Crime, disasters, corruption... But were they really as big a problem as Makoto's mind made them seem?

What was a better world without Ami?

Makoto opens her eyes and lets out a breath, feeling a little something leave as she does so. "...You'll never lose me again, Ami." She tugs the other girl into another hug, burying her face in her hair again. "I'll always stand by the side of my princess."

[bluebookworm]

"We both will, now." And that's a choice, too. One she's comfortable making, for a change; maybe that's how this whole idea of 'getting better' works, really. "We have friends, Mako-chan. It's time we remembered how to treat them."

Not like tools, not like allies, not like ... worrisome appendages to trip over, but - friends. Maybe even family, in a way; they shared more similarities than differences.

"They were worried about us, too," she says, after several moments of letting Makoto hold her. "It ... frightened me to realize how far you'd gone - how far we both had gone. This isn't why we were given these powers, Makoto."

She swallows, turns herself around so she can press into the curves of the other girl. "We were given these abilities to protect people, not frighten them." She closes her eyes. "I've spent so long being afraid I let myself forget there were other kinds of protection."