Advent Drabblender, Day 23.
Written for my internet twin, venusorbit1 . I think this one caters to a very specific preference of yours, my dear.
And I know that there are a few doors still unwritten, and that I'm not following the right numerical order, but please bear with me. ^^°
Mamoru Chiba never thought about the children he had grown up with during the long and lonely years in the orphanage. Always knowing that he was different from the others, he had kept well away from them and their gleeful games, never fully realising that they could have been his friends. When they ran around in the snow, he hid inside with a book. When they looked at spring's first flowers, he did his homework. During the hot days of summer, the children played near the pond, shoving each other in the murky water, but little Mamoru climbed up a tree, disappeared behind the lush green leaves and wondered when he would be considered old enough to leave this dreary place behind.
Mamoru had forgotten their faces as soon as he opened the door to his own apartment aged 16.
His high school years progressed very much in the same lonesome vein; he was intent on being better than all the other pupils, hoping that academic excellence would allow him to fulfil his heart's one desire of becoming a surgeon. After school, he studied until it was time for sleep, more often than not foregoing decent dinner and having cereal instead. It wasn't an exciting life, it wasn't a happy life, but then Mamoru did not have high aspirations for happiness. Losing both of your parents did that to you.
He met Motoki in his last school year, and the blonde boy was the first friend he ever had. Motoki stuck around despite Mamoru's best efforts to put him off, and it wasn't even three weeks before Mamoru couldn't imagine returning to his hermit-like ways. The two boys lounged around in the Arcade, ate ice-cream while talking about girls and computer games, they went running together and since Motoki ate all of Mamoru's cereal, the black-haired boy finally learned to cook decent dinner. Motoki ate all of that, too.
But it was hard to remain friends with sweet, funny and terrifyingly mortal Motoki once Mamoru learned that he had a destiny that had nothing to with being a doctor and everything to do with being a king. Nobility meant protecting the ones you loved, and as long as Motoki was his friend, he was in danger. So slowly but steadily, Mamoru extricated himself from the friendship, reckoning that it would be better for both of them in the long run. It was the jogging he abandoned first, claiming a knee injury that made sports impossible. Ice-cream in the Arcade was next to go, didn't Motoki know how unhealthy all that sugar was? Finally, Mamoru stopped storing food in his flat, and it was then that Motoki realised he was being abandoned. Their last meeting was a memory Mamoru wished he didn't have; despite the golden crystal in his heart, he was unable to take Motoki's pain away. But if deserting him kept the blonde man alive, and that was all that mattered, wasn't it?
Usagi - far more perceptive than most people gave her credit for - tried her best to include her lover in her own circle of friends, but he was always on the periphery of their laughter, never quite able to join in. Before Motoki, his natural place on the outside wouldn't have bothered him, but something inside Mamoru had changed. The battle leading to Crystal Tokyo's creation distracted him from any feelings he might have had on the matter, and not for the first time in his life, all he could think about was keeping Usagi safe. However, with the combined power of the senshi and himself, they were once again victorious and he was once again all alone.
Aged twenty-seven, all he had in lieu of friends were four stones in a box and memories of Motoki. It was then that he began to travel to the gates of time, to the only person in the world who knew more about being lonely then he did.
Sailor Pluto was not an easy person to befriend; she was stand-offish and often downright rude, but Mamoru identified her behaviour as nothing more than a well practised tactic to keep people at bay. He himself had employed it often enough, after all.
With the years, friendship turned into something else, something dangerous. It started with looks that lingered too long, progressed to accidental touches that were anything but and culminated in stolen kisses in the swirling mists of time. Both knew that he could never leave the woman they now called Serenity, for the fate of the world depended on their eternal union. And yet, when he ran his fingers through Pluto's long hair and lost himself in her pink eyes, he felt whole. Beside Serenity, his loneliness was amplified. People flocked to the queen like bees to honey, and the queen loved them all, never shy to open her heart to strangers. When he was with her, he could feel the glow of her senshi's love on her skin and felt his own skin grow cold with desperation; his comrades were forever captured in their crystalline prisons and it wasn't in his power to set them free.
But lost in the folds of time, he never longed for his lost friends whose dim gemstones he kept in the pockets of his jacket, just within reach. He was content to be alone with the quiet ruler of time and space, revelling in the solitude of their forbidden connection and knowing deep down, that it was here he belonged.
And I know that there are a few doors still unwritten, and that I'm not following the right numerical order, but please bear with me. ^^°
Mamoru Chiba never thought about the children he had grown up with during the long and lonely years in the orphanage. Always knowing that he was different from the others, he had kept well away from them and their gleeful games, never fully realising that they could have been his friends. When they ran around in the snow, he hid inside with a book. When they looked at spring's first flowers, he did his homework. During the hot days of summer, the children played near the pond, shoving each other in the murky water, but little Mamoru climbed up a tree, disappeared behind the lush green leaves and wondered when he would be considered old enough to leave this dreary place behind.
Mamoru had forgotten their faces as soon as he opened the door to his own apartment aged 16.
His high school years progressed very much in the same lonesome vein; he was intent on being better than all the other pupils, hoping that academic excellence would allow him to fulfil his heart's one desire of becoming a surgeon. After school, he studied until it was time for sleep, more often than not foregoing decent dinner and having cereal instead. It wasn't an exciting life, it wasn't a happy life, but then Mamoru did not have high aspirations for happiness. Losing both of your parents did that to you.
He met Motoki in his last school year, and the blonde boy was the first friend he ever had. Motoki stuck around despite Mamoru's best efforts to put him off, and it wasn't even three weeks before Mamoru couldn't imagine returning to his hermit-like ways. The two boys lounged around in the Arcade, ate ice-cream while talking about girls and computer games, they went running together and since Motoki ate all of Mamoru's cereal, the black-haired boy finally learned to cook decent dinner. Motoki ate all of that, too.
But it was hard to remain friends with sweet, funny and terrifyingly mortal Motoki once Mamoru learned that he had a destiny that had nothing to with being a doctor and everything to do with being a king. Nobility meant protecting the ones you loved, and as long as Motoki was his friend, he was in danger. So slowly but steadily, Mamoru extricated himself from the friendship, reckoning that it would be better for both of them in the long run. It was the jogging he abandoned first, claiming a knee injury that made sports impossible. Ice-cream in the Arcade was next to go, didn't Motoki know how unhealthy all that sugar was? Finally, Mamoru stopped storing food in his flat, and it was then that Motoki realised he was being abandoned. Their last meeting was a memory Mamoru wished he didn't have; despite the golden crystal in his heart, he was unable to take Motoki's pain away. But if deserting him kept the blonde man alive, and that was all that mattered, wasn't it?
Usagi - far more perceptive than most people gave her credit for - tried her best to include her lover in her own circle of friends, but he was always on the periphery of their laughter, never quite able to join in. Before Motoki, his natural place on the outside wouldn't have bothered him, but something inside Mamoru had changed. The battle leading to Crystal Tokyo's creation distracted him from any feelings he might have had on the matter, and not for the first time in his life, all he could think about was keeping Usagi safe. However, with the combined power of the senshi and himself, they were once again victorious and he was once again all alone.
Aged twenty-seven, all he had in lieu of friends were four stones in a box and memories of Motoki. It was then that he began to travel to the gates of time, to the only person in the world who knew more about being lonely then he did.
Sailor Pluto was not an easy person to befriend; she was stand-offish and often downright rude, but Mamoru identified her behaviour as nothing more than a well practised tactic to keep people at bay. He himself had employed it often enough, after all.
With the years, friendship turned into something else, something dangerous. It started with looks that lingered too long, progressed to accidental touches that were anything but and culminated in stolen kisses in the swirling mists of time. Both knew that he could never leave the woman they now called Serenity, for the fate of the world depended on their eternal union. And yet, when he ran his fingers through Pluto's long hair and lost himself in her pink eyes, he felt whole. Beside Serenity, his loneliness was amplified. People flocked to the queen like bees to honey, and the queen loved them all, never shy to open her heart to strangers. When he was with her, he could feel the glow of her senshi's love on her skin and felt his own skin grow cold with desperation; his comrades were forever captured in their crystalline prisons and it wasn't in his power to set them free.
But lost in the folds of time, he never longed for his lost friends whose dim gemstones he kept in the pockets of his jacket, just within reach. He was content to be alone with the quiet ruler of time and space, revelling in the solitude of their forbidden connection and knowing deep down, that it was here he belonged.