gift: fic: four into one [sailor moon, g]
First of the Advent Calendar Gift Thing! For a gift that was supposed to be 300 words it grew out of my control to oh just 10x that, but what I can say these girls give me the feels.
four into one
sailor moon
g | inner senshi, usagi | 3,398
spoilers/warnings: general for the anime.
summary: the past lingers in their bones. the present builds itself in their hearts.
n: holiday gift meme gift for kristenell. Unbeated, all mistakes are mine.
four into one
the past lingers in their bones. the present builds itself in their hearts.
The first time Luna awakens the others memories that first time it's not like unlocking a door and letting the past flood through it. It's more delicate that. It has to be, they're not ready for what the past carries, and it has to uncurl slowly in their minds like flower. She asks them once to how it felt. It was different for her. Luna is meticulous, Ami says. She picks select places in their minds to stimulate, Rei describes. What Luna picks are places in their memories that hold things like:
friends, power, senshi, protect, princess, team, guardians, together, power, strength, friends, protect, princess.
They are items in a check list that will help them find their way. Words that trigger feelings, instincts and memories meant to inspire and bond.
She didn't have that luxury. That slow understanding.
Artemis woke her in different ways. It was like coming back from drowning, a punch in the chest and intake of breath.
Instead of air he gave her:
strength, leader, love, fight, power, guardian, solider, leader, strength, protect, princess.
And it was fun at first. She loved it. Being the girl, no being the hero in the papers, the one people looked up to, the one that gave them hope. It was fun. She felt special and right and magic. But slowly it changed to something more than just fun. It became bruises that wouldn't heal as fast because they were worse than anything gymnastics or volleyball gave to her. It turned into lying to her parents about why her grades were getting worse and why she would skip practices. Fun evolved into work and it was hard and sometimes she hurt but it was right. It felt right. Inside there had been something in that didn't question as to why.
Even the days she wanted to curl up in bed and cry she would get up and keep going because everything in her told her it was meant (to be).
It was right for her, she can never deny it, it's right for her -- it was who she was and became again -- because in the end when the princess, no, Usagi, when Usagi looks at her, eyes watering and wide, needing leader and strength and fight she can give them to her. Slowly, after she's no longer alone parts of her shifts and bend and the memories behind memories become stronger. Soon she has together and friends waking up in her, but they, like everything from the past she experiences, is remembered it in a haze of dreams and hidden instincts.
When Luna awakens them for a second time - after death and rebirth - and she's included in the gathering, Luna forgets that her memories from she has different triggers, different experiences, than the other girls. Things unsharable when alone on the streets with cops running after them. Her mind uncurls the folded past faster and brighter, and when she blinks she looks at the others, their eyes wide and understanding, and feels that once again she knows too much. When they call to their wands the power surges around, through, into them. The light that wraps around her encases her body like armour and shield. Once more she is
solider, guardians, protect, princess, leader, team
After, when they're tired and shocked and still buzzing with the adrenaline of the fight, she looks around. Watching as Rei and Usagi bicker over Usagi not reminding them earlier and Makoto is helping hold up Ami, who has twisted her ankle, she feels a familiar tension curl over her shoulders.
She's a girl, she loves manga, volleyball, she likes sleeping in, lemon cakes, but as the knowledge of who she is and used to be settles and moulds to her she feels filled. She is also a princess, a solider, a general.
To her surprise she realises she missed those forgotten pieces.
Missed the girls too, she smiles, stepping forward to help Makoto hold Ami up. There's a peace in the knowing in how they still work together just newly reunite. Knowing the way they always weave together is stronger than any loom could make, and how not even eons can pull at the threads of her and girl's connection apart. It is more than simple love her senses tell her. It is: forever.
Before she can take another step her arms are full.
"Mina-chan, I'm so happy to have you--you all!-- back!," Usagi laughs and weeps, her already healing arms wrapping around Mina's shoulders. She holds Usagi tight against her, part of her feeling she's left her -- her princess -- alone too long, and grins.
Across from her the other girls smile back at her. She feels the last piece of everything that is senshi slide into place and she goes back to being whole.
"Stop crying, Usa-chan," she say, wiping the other's girls tears with her thumbs, "You have us back." Usagi nods and swipes her nose with her gloves, her eyes wide, watery and hopeful.
Intellectually she understands the concept behind muscle memory (motor learning, a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory by repetition), but as she fights and her arms block strikes with an unlearned ease the concept for her changes. What she knows in battle it is not learned by her but her body still holds old lessons. She makes sure to record everything with her visor and her computer. She inputs the data and studies it as much for herself to understand as it is to help the others when they have training sessions. They didn't used to have them before Minako arrived even when Luna insisted, but they all had so many different schedules and she had night classes that she tried not to skip, youma emergency notwithstanding, and they just didn't think about it. Makoto was their best hand to hand fighter at any rate, enjoying the close hand to hand more than her long range attacks, and the rest of them tried not let themselves get close enough to the enemy to exchange blows. It would still happen.
When the weekend nights or afternoon train sessions started, just three weeks after Minako's arrival and she watched Minako and Usagi travel the fine line of leadership, Makoto was understandably the best fighter alongside Minako. Both girls sought to change this. Rei being the most receptive, never wanting to be a victim or rely too heavily on the others. To her the mechanics of the hand to hand combat intrigued her more than the application.
Usagi had been the least open to learn, but that hadn't surprised any of them, and to this day Usagi can block a strike better than she can throw it. Violence is a lesson that never sticks to their princess.
They, however, seem to have a knack for it.
(When a movement is repeated over time, a long term memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed without a conscious effort. This process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency with the motor and memory system.)
What Luna tells them is that they were princesses. What their bodies tell them is that they were warriors.
It should scare her, this aptitude for battle and war, but it doesn't. Knowing how to move in a battle is almost a reassurance and that's why she needs to understand it.
In the privacy of her bedroom she has books and notes scattered around about the Greek and Roman deities, as well as moodier and historical warfare. She has pages marked about Mercury and his tricks, Minerva and her wisdom (Greek equivalent Athena, both goddesses of wisdom, war, art, schools, etc. Born of the head of Jupiter, and she likes her more than she like Mercury and Hermes-she wonders what other histories the earth got wrong about her past- because she reads about Minerva and sees her mother in her mind's eyes), Jupiter and his power, Mars and his fire, Venus and her seduction. She understands what she reads about things that considered myths and sometimes she finds the counterparts of her friends to give her insight on who they used to be, but not enough. There is history and knowledge about what Earth thought them to be, not what they really were; not that they lived in Alliance as.
And above them all Selene would look over them, basking them in her brightness.
However there is not history on the Alliance. All of it is lost in the ruins of a kingdom the Earth does not know.
What she has is stories told as fiction. She has the story of Endymion (and she can't blame him for falling in love with the moon, even knowing what she does and what books don't) bookmarked under all the other texts she reads, but she can't bring herself to read it again. She doesn't need to anyway, her memory is alive with it as is her present.
Never has she told the others about her studies. They are her own private study into themselves. A coping mechanism would the clinical term for what she's doing and she's sure they have the others have their own. In the end they are not who the texts speak of anyway. But the knowledge that who they were continues on, that history believes in them, calms a part of her mind. Their past, their memories as thin and dreamlike as they are, unmake history and science. Her mind begs to understand why.
Why is their past so lost? To the world? To them?
Only fragments remain. And it's always there, just there under the surface of their lives. Tucked into small movements during fights when she meets Mars eyes and knows just what battle formation the other girl is going to charge with, knows how to relay the message to the others, and knows just how to cover them. It's there when they're sitting in the arcade and she hands Makoto the napkin before the other girl asks.
It's memory, built into their souls and bones.
It's who they are.
Holding together is the hardest thing she's found for a family to have do. It's so easy to break apart. It's so easy for the world to break you apart if you don't fight to keep it together, and even then sometimes the world is stronger.
The power from the youma is pushing at her, threatening to break her apart, but she can't let it. She will not let it get through her and to Usagi. She can hear the other girls yell behind her - "Mercury almost has Moon free, Jupiter!" "Mars, go give her some more back up!" "Come on, Mercury, faster!" "Mako-chan!!" - as the youma hurtles another of its attack forward. Her own power tingles down her arms and surges through her veins like lightening. It's building up, slowly, and she needs to push it out, but she can't let go of her ground. Her Supreme Thunder is only thing holding the youma back.
Her boots scrape against the ground as she's pushed back and her arms feel heavy, her power heavy in them. She's got one more push in her, she just needs the time.
And then she feels the heat at her back.
It is a blessing.
Mar's voice calls out her Burning Mandala and the fire swirls with her own lightening. Her arms drop for a second and she grins, it's just the second she needs. The power builds up in her again.
The electricity crackles through the bones and her arms move with an ease of a thousand years and a millions more fights.
Before her the attack glows brighter and deadlier with new power and Mar's flames. The youma screeches and the smell of its flesh fills the air.
Her nose is full of it as her knees hit the cement and her palms smack hard against the ground.
The youma breaks apart like ripping paper and fades into the wind.
"Jupiter!" she hears four other voices call out. Her head is too heavy to lift, and the cuts on her arm haven't stopped bleeding.
She smiles, "Gotcha." Laughs and feels tears on her face just as four pairs of arms surround her. The blue of Ami's visor fills her vision and there behind the glass there are tears in her eyes too. Usagi's face pushes against Ami's, eyes watery and sad, which means the arms holding her up have to be Rei and Minako's. All she can feel is relief. Her family is safe.
"I'm happy you're okay," she says, her vision blurring.
"Mako-chan," Usagi sobs out, her cheek is bleeding, "let me heal you." Soft hands cup her face. "Please."
She wants to shake her head and tell Usagi to heal herself first, but her vision is going dark at the edges and then it's gone.
When she wakes up she smells the familiar scent of Rei's green tea and the sweetness from the anpan she makes Usagi and Minako. Opening her eyes, she sees the familiar walls of the temple. Her body feels perfect, which means Usagi healed her, but there's a heaviness in her movements she knows are all hers. Sitting up, her hair falls around her shoulders and she sees Ami in the corner of the room, asleep, a book in her lap. Forcing herself to be quiet, she winds her hair up and frowns when she can't find a tie. Sighing, she lets the rope of her hair fall in a twisted strand down her back and makes her way out of the room, making sure to cover Ami up with a blanket as she slides shoji closed.
Her feet take her to the kitchen on instinct and she bites her lips at Rei's figure standing by the tea pot.
"Hey."
Rei's eye slide over her and she smiles. "Are you better?"
She shrugs, "Brand new."
Rei's lips fold into a flat line. "Usagi healed you and then we had to carry you here." If Rei was Minako there would be a joke slid in there, but Rei is Rei. "Minako took her home when she wanted to stay, but Ami-"
"I saw her." She moves forward and even in Rei's own kitchen the other girl lets her take up more space, folding herself into the corner, tea cup in hand. "She didn't have to stay."
"Always the doctor," Rei blows on her tea, lips curling.
She nods and pours herself a cup. Rei makes her tea too bitter, but she knows where they keep the honey and opens the cupboard by her head.
"Thank you for letting me rest here, Rei-chan," she says, staring at how the honey dissolves in the tea. Rei's hand fits itself on Makoto's shoulder blade.
"You're family, Mako-chan, where else would you stay."
Rei's footsteps pad out of the room and Makoto know she's going to check on Ami, shift her into the futon, then call Minako to let her know she's up, and then she'll call Usagi even though Rei knows Minako will call her too. Tomorrow, Usagi will rush over hug her and Makoto will make them all tea cakes because that's what you do for the people you love. You take care of them even as they take care of you.
She finds rituals important. They help keep her mind focused and clear. For her, rituals always have a strong foundation.
The foundation of her life has been built by the temple. In a different world it was built by marble and sand, but she was a different person then. But the temple, it is home, it is safety, it is guidance, it is life. All its rooms she knows like she knows herself. The room of the Sacred Fire, where the flame burns bright and strong, is her haven within haven. Even before she was reawakened as Mars, the fire always comforted and guided her. It speaks to her more clearly now, the visions clear and sharp like swinging blades shifting from past to future, but she's never not heard it.
When she asks it of her past and it gives her answers in shadows. Shadows that as years pass have had light shed on them, but there are still many more that she cannot see clearly. Some, she feels like she feels the licking heat of the flames, she might never fully see clearly. It is a past long gone and long dead. Threads of it linger in their power, but the details are hazy and ultimately unimportant. She knows all she needs to.
Binding rituals forged in blood and magic; Venus' crystal sword flashing in its master's hands; laughter through gardens she's never seen but remembers in her dreams; a different fire warning her of Dark; fingers twining with her and bright eyes smiling; the sands of Mars blowing through her hair as her veils press into her face; the sound of battle and the crackle of fire from her fingers; attacks her hands haven't fought with yet; eyes that loved her.
Long dead shadowed memories spin around her even as she's taught herself to move past them.
She honours them, but she will not let them define her.
When she asks the fire of the future it gives her answers too bright to see. Crystal Tokyo burns too brightly in the flames for the fire to hold it show the path to it clearly. The edges of her hair singe when she presses herself closer in an effort to see. What she knows of future never reaches that far. The fire is as cautious as it is protective of her.
It gives enough, never more.
It warns her, gives hope.
Lets her do with it's messages as she will.
She sees the faces of her friends alive and happy. Threads of the past that continue on and never fray, never unravel, never stop spinning their yarn into the future.
In the fire she looks and searches of questions, answers, and dreams. In the fire she finds all of them.
There are men and women in her past, lurking in her future, that she can, has, and will let go. They are people she loves and people she could have grown to love, people who have left and who will leave, but the knowledge does not hurt her. The fire shows her the past and the future, differently than the Gates show Sestuna the same things. She and the Time Keeper have their ways of keeping their eyes on time and without ever speaking to the other woman about it there is one thing within both fire and time that she knows is constant.
Rei's head snaps to the side and the vision blurs in the shape of the flames, cracking with laughter today. Her lips curve and she stands, licking the beads of sweat that have gathered on her upper lip. The wood under her creaks as moves and she feels collar of haori damp and sticking to her neck.
Laughter drifts through the walls of the temples and Rei turns from the fire with a curved smile.
Usagi laughs as she leads Minako and Makoto up the temple stairs. When she reaches the top she launches herself at Ami who is sitting quietly by the entrances, a book in her lap. As the fall over she can hear Ami's squeak of surprise in her ear and Minako and Makoto fall into giggles and then rush towards them.
Rei opens the shoji just as she feels Minako and Makoto's weight settle around her - "Oof!" she grunts as Ami squeaks again - and she looks up.
"Hiya, Rei-chan! We didn't interrupt you, did we?"
Rei bends and playfully pats her head.
"I'm used to it by now, Odango." Rei grins slyly.
"Rei-chan!" she pouts.
Next to her Minako laughs and Makoto grabs Ami from under her and then they're all laughing.
Sometimes she feels they've always been laughing together.
four into one
sailor moon
g | inner senshi, usagi | 3,398
spoilers/warnings: general for the anime.
summary: the past lingers in their bones. the present builds itself in their hearts.
n: holiday gift meme gift for kristenell. Unbeated, all mistakes are mine.
four into one
the past lingers in their bones. the present builds itself in their hearts.
The first time Luna awakens the others memories that first time it's not like unlocking a door and letting the past flood through it. It's more delicate that. It has to be, they're not ready for what the past carries, and it has to uncurl slowly in their minds like flower. She asks them once to how it felt. It was different for her. Luna is meticulous, Ami says. She picks select places in their minds to stimulate, Rei describes. What Luna picks are places in their memories that hold things like:
friends, power, senshi, protect, princess, team, guardians, together, power, strength, friends, protect, princess.
They are items in a check list that will help them find their way. Words that trigger feelings, instincts and memories meant to inspire and bond.
She didn't have that luxury. That slow understanding.
Artemis woke her in different ways. It was like coming back from drowning, a punch in the chest and intake of breath.
Instead of air he gave her:
strength, leader, love, fight, power, guardian, solider, leader, strength, protect, princess.
And it was fun at first. She loved it. Being the girl, no being the hero in the papers, the one people looked up to, the one that gave them hope. It was fun. She felt special and right and magic. But slowly it changed to something more than just fun. It became bruises that wouldn't heal as fast because they were worse than anything gymnastics or volleyball gave to her. It turned into lying to her parents about why her grades were getting worse and why she would skip practices. Fun evolved into work and it was hard and sometimes she hurt but it was right. It felt right. Inside there had been something in that didn't question as to why.
Even the days she wanted to curl up in bed and cry she would get up and keep going because everything in her told her it was meant (to be).
It was right for her, she can never deny it, it's right for her -- it was who she was and became again -- because in the end when the princess, no, Usagi, when Usagi looks at her, eyes watering and wide, needing leader and strength and fight she can give them to her. Slowly, after she's no longer alone parts of her shifts and bend and the memories behind memories become stronger. Soon she has together and friends waking up in her, but they, like everything from the past she experiences, is remembered it in a haze of dreams and hidden instincts.
When Luna awakens them for a second time - after death and rebirth - and she's included in the gathering, Luna forgets that her memories from she has different triggers, different experiences, than the other girls. Things unsharable when alone on the streets with cops running after them. Her mind uncurls the folded past faster and brighter, and when she blinks she looks at the others, their eyes wide and understanding, and feels that once again she knows too much. When they call to their wands the power surges around, through, into them. The light that wraps around her encases her body like armour and shield. Once more she is
solider, guardians, protect, princess, leader, team
After, when they're tired and shocked and still buzzing with the adrenaline of the fight, she looks around. Watching as Rei and Usagi bicker over Usagi not reminding them earlier and Makoto is helping hold up Ami, who has twisted her ankle, she feels a familiar tension curl over her shoulders.
She's a girl, she loves manga, volleyball, she likes sleeping in, lemon cakes, but as the knowledge of who she is and used to be settles and moulds to her she feels filled. She is also a princess, a solider, a general.
To her surprise she realises she missed those forgotten pieces.
Missed the girls too, she smiles, stepping forward to help Makoto hold Ami up. There's a peace in the knowing in how they still work together just newly reunite. Knowing the way they always weave together is stronger than any loom could make, and how not even eons can pull at the threads of her and girl's connection apart. It is more than simple love her senses tell her. It is: forever.
Before she can take another step her arms are full.
"Mina-chan, I'm so happy to have you--you all!-- back!," Usagi laughs and weeps, her already healing arms wrapping around Mina's shoulders. She holds Usagi tight against her, part of her feeling she's left her -- her princess -- alone too long, and grins.
Across from her the other girls smile back at her. She feels the last piece of everything that is senshi slide into place and she goes back to being whole.
"Stop crying, Usa-chan," she say, wiping the other's girls tears with her thumbs, "You have us back." Usagi nods and swipes her nose with her gloves, her eyes wide, watery and hopeful.
Intellectually she understands the concept behind muscle memory (motor learning, a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory by repetition), but as she fights and her arms block strikes with an unlearned ease the concept for her changes. What she knows in battle it is not learned by her but her body still holds old lessons. She makes sure to record everything with her visor and her computer. She inputs the data and studies it as much for herself to understand as it is to help the others when they have training sessions. They didn't used to have them before Minako arrived even when Luna insisted, but they all had so many different schedules and she had night classes that she tried not to skip, youma emergency notwithstanding, and they just didn't think about it. Makoto was their best hand to hand fighter at any rate, enjoying the close hand to hand more than her long range attacks, and the rest of them tried not let themselves get close enough to the enemy to exchange blows. It would still happen.
When the weekend nights or afternoon train sessions started, just three weeks after Minako's arrival and she watched Minako and Usagi travel the fine line of leadership, Makoto was understandably the best fighter alongside Minako. Both girls sought to change this. Rei being the most receptive, never wanting to be a victim or rely too heavily on the others. To her the mechanics of the hand to hand combat intrigued her more than the application.
Usagi had been the least open to learn, but that hadn't surprised any of them, and to this day Usagi can block a strike better than she can throw it. Violence is a lesson that never sticks to their princess.
They, however, seem to have a knack for it.
(When a movement is repeated over time, a long term memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed without a conscious effort. This process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency with the motor and memory system.)
What Luna tells them is that they were princesses. What their bodies tell them is that they were warriors.
It should scare her, this aptitude for battle and war, but it doesn't. Knowing how to move in a battle is almost a reassurance and that's why she needs to understand it.
In the privacy of her bedroom she has books and notes scattered around about the Greek and Roman deities, as well as moodier and historical warfare. She has pages marked about Mercury and his tricks, Minerva and her wisdom (Greek equivalent Athena, both goddesses of wisdom, war, art, schools, etc. Born of the head of Jupiter, and she likes her more than she like Mercury and Hermes-she wonders what other histories the earth got wrong about her past- because she reads about Minerva and sees her mother in her mind's eyes), Jupiter and his power, Mars and his fire, Venus and her seduction. She understands what she reads about things that considered myths and sometimes she finds the counterparts of her friends to give her insight on who they used to be, but not enough. There is history and knowledge about what Earth thought them to be, not what they really were; not that they lived in Alliance as.
And above them all Selene would look over them, basking them in her brightness.
However there is not history on the Alliance. All of it is lost in the ruins of a kingdom the Earth does not know.
What she has is stories told as fiction. She has the story of Endymion (and she can't blame him for falling in love with the moon, even knowing what she does and what books don't) bookmarked under all the other texts she reads, but she can't bring herself to read it again. She doesn't need to anyway, her memory is alive with it as is her present.
Never has she told the others about her studies. They are her own private study into themselves. A coping mechanism would the clinical term for what she's doing and she's sure they have the others have their own. In the end they are not who the texts speak of anyway. But the knowledge that who they were continues on, that history believes in them, calms a part of her mind. Their past, their memories as thin and dreamlike as they are, unmake history and science. Her mind begs to understand why.
Why is their past so lost? To the world? To them?
Only fragments remain. And it's always there, just there under the surface of their lives. Tucked into small movements during fights when she meets Mars eyes and knows just what battle formation the other girl is going to charge with, knows how to relay the message to the others, and knows just how to cover them. It's there when they're sitting in the arcade and she hands Makoto the napkin before the other girl asks.
It's memory, built into their souls and bones.
It's who they are.
Holding together is the hardest thing she's found for a family to have do. It's so easy to break apart. It's so easy for the world to break you apart if you don't fight to keep it together, and even then sometimes the world is stronger.
The power from the youma is pushing at her, threatening to break her apart, but she can't let it. She will not let it get through her and to Usagi. She can hear the other girls yell behind her - "Mercury almost has Moon free, Jupiter!" "Mars, go give her some more back up!" "Come on, Mercury, faster!" "Mako-chan!!" - as the youma hurtles another of its attack forward. Her own power tingles down her arms and surges through her veins like lightening. It's building up, slowly, and she needs to push it out, but she can't let go of her ground. Her Supreme Thunder is only thing holding the youma back.
Her boots scrape against the ground as she's pushed back and her arms feel heavy, her power heavy in them. She's got one more push in her, she just needs the time.
And then she feels the heat at her back.
It is a blessing.
Mar's voice calls out her Burning Mandala and the fire swirls with her own lightening. Her arms drop for a second and she grins, it's just the second she needs. The power builds up in her again.
The electricity crackles through the bones and her arms move with an ease of a thousand years and a millions more fights.
Before her the attack glows brighter and deadlier with new power and Mar's flames. The youma screeches and the smell of its flesh fills the air.
Her nose is full of it as her knees hit the cement and her palms smack hard against the ground.
The youma breaks apart like ripping paper and fades into the wind.
"Jupiter!" she hears four other voices call out. Her head is too heavy to lift, and the cuts on her arm haven't stopped bleeding.
She smiles, "Gotcha." Laughs and feels tears on her face just as four pairs of arms surround her. The blue of Ami's visor fills her vision and there behind the glass there are tears in her eyes too. Usagi's face pushes against Ami's, eyes watery and sad, which means the arms holding her up have to be Rei and Minako's. All she can feel is relief. Her family is safe.
"I'm happy you're okay," she says, her vision blurring.
"Mako-chan," Usagi sobs out, her cheek is bleeding, "let me heal you." Soft hands cup her face. "Please."
She wants to shake her head and tell Usagi to heal herself first, but her vision is going dark at the edges and then it's gone.
When she wakes up she smells the familiar scent of Rei's green tea and the sweetness from the anpan she makes Usagi and Minako. Opening her eyes, she sees the familiar walls of the temple. Her body feels perfect, which means Usagi healed her, but there's a heaviness in her movements she knows are all hers. Sitting up, her hair falls around her shoulders and she sees Ami in the corner of the room, asleep, a book in her lap. Forcing herself to be quiet, she winds her hair up and frowns when she can't find a tie. Sighing, she lets the rope of her hair fall in a twisted strand down her back and makes her way out of the room, making sure to cover Ami up with a blanket as she slides shoji closed.
Her feet take her to the kitchen on instinct and she bites her lips at Rei's figure standing by the tea pot.
"Hey."
Rei's eye slide over her and she smiles. "Are you better?"
She shrugs, "Brand new."
Rei's lips fold into a flat line. "Usagi healed you and then we had to carry you here." If Rei was Minako there would be a joke slid in there, but Rei is Rei. "Minako took her home when she wanted to stay, but Ami-"
"I saw her." She moves forward and even in Rei's own kitchen the other girl lets her take up more space, folding herself into the corner, tea cup in hand. "She didn't have to stay."
"Always the doctor," Rei blows on her tea, lips curling.
She nods and pours herself a cup. Rei makes her tea too bitter, but she knows where they keep the honey and opens the cupboard by her head.
"Thank you for letting me rest here, Rei-chan," she says, staring at how the honey dissolves in the tea. Rei's hand fits itself on Makoto's shoulder blade.
"You're family, Mako-chan, where else would you stay."
Rei's footsteps pad out of the room and Makoto know she's going to check on Ami, shift her into the futon, then call Minako to let her know she's up, and then she'll call Usagi even though Rei knows Minako will call her too. Tomorrow, Usagi will rush over hug her and Makoto will make them all tea cakes because that's what you do for the people you love. You take care of them even as they take care of you.
She finds rituals important. They help keep her mind focused and clear. For her, rituals always have a strong foundation.
The foundation of her life has been built by the temple. In a different world it was built by marble and sand, but she was a different person then. But the temple, it is home, it is safety, it is guidance, it is life. All its rooms she knows like she knows herself. The room of the Sacred Fire, where the flame burns bright and strong, is her haven within haven. Even before she was reawakened as Mars, the fire always comforted and guided her. It speaks to her more clearly now, the visions clear and sharp like swinging blades shifting from past to future, but she's never not heard it.
When she asks it of her past and it gives her answers in shadows. Shadows that as years pass have had light shed on them, but there are still many more that she cannot see clearly. Some, she feels like she feels the licking heat of the flames, she might never fully see clearly. It is a past long gone and long dead. Threads of it linger in their power, but the details are hazy and ultimately unimportant. She knows all she needs to.
Binding rituals forged in blood and magic; Venus' crystal sword flashing in its master's hands; laughter through gardens she's never seen but remembers in her dreams; a different fire warning her of Dark; fingers twining with her and bright eyes smiling; the sands of Mars blowing through her hair as her veils press into her face; the sound of battle and the crackle of fire from her fingers; attacks her hands haven't fought with yet; eyes that loved her.
Long dead shadowed memories spin around her even as she's taught herself to move past them.
She honours them, but she will not let them define her.
When she asks the fire of the future it gives her answers too bright to see. Crystal Tokyo burns too brightly in the flames for the fire to hold it show the path to it clearly. The edges of her hair singe when she presses herself closer in an effort to see. What she knows of future never reaches that far. The fire is as cautious as it is protective of her.
It gives enough, never more.
It warns her, gives hope.
Lets her do with it's messages as she will.
She sees the faces of her friends alive and happy. Threads of the past that continue on and never fray, never unravel, never stop spinning their yarn into the future.
In the fire she looks and searches of questions, answers, and dreams. In the fire she finds all of them.
There are men and women in her past, lurking in her future, that she can, has, and will let go. They are people she loves and people she could have grown to love, people who have left and who will leave, but the knowledge does not hurt her. The fire shows her the past and the future, differently than the Gates show Sestuna the same things. She and the Time Keeper have their ways of keeping their eyes on time and without ever speaking to the other woman about it there is one thing within both fire and time that she knows is constant.
Rei's head snaps to the side and the vision blurs in the shape of the flames, cracking with laughter today. Her lips curve and she stands, licking the beads of sweat that have gathered on her upper lip. The wood under her creaks as moves and she feels collar of haori damp and sticking to her neck.
Laughter drifts through the walls of the temples and Rei turns from the fire with a curved smile.
Usagi laughs as she leads Minako and Makoto up the temple stairs. When she reaches the top she launches herself at Ami who is sitting quietly by the entrances, a book in her lap. As the fall over she can hear Ami's squeak of surprise in her ear and Minako and Makoto fall into giggles and then rush towards them.
Rei opens the shoji just as she feels Minako and Makoto's weight settle around her - "Oof!" she grunts as Ami squeaks again - and she looks up.
"Hiya, Rei-chan! We didn't interrupt you, did we?"
Rei bends and playfully pats her head.
"I'm used to it by now, Odango." Rei grins slyly.
"Rei-chan!" she pouts.
Next to her Minako laughs and Makoto grabs Ami from under her and then they're all laughing.
Sometimes she feels they've always been laughing together.