When I was a kid I wondered what death would be like. I don't think I thought about it as much as some children do, but of course everyone wonders a little bit. Sometimes I thought it would be like falling asleep forever; other times I imagined waking up in a world like the one I'd left, only somehow . . . _more_. Now I've gone and died twice. The first time might not quite count, because they tell me that my heart was still beating. So maybe it was just practice for this time, when there's no doubt at all that I was dead. I wish I could remember what it was like. ------- "One song glory One song before I go glory One song to leave behind Find glory in a song that rings true Truth like a blazing fire An eternal flame One song to redeem this empty life Time flies and then--no need to endure anymore Time dies." --"One Song Glory" from _Rent_ by Jonathan Larson "Morning Song" a fanfic by Ysabet ------- I thought she'd never let go. I mean, _really_ never. And she wasn't even touching me yet. I could feel power flooding the air around us, so much ancient magic that it made my blood surge. Yet, I wasn't curious. I could feel the answers to all the questions resting in the back of my mind, where I could find them when I had time to look. Right then my princess was the only thing I could focus on; I was closer to crying than I've been in years. "We wanted to be with you," I told her. Somehow it was the most important thing that she knew that. The only memory I had of being dead was that feeling of failure. I'd died trying to protect Serenity, but she'd had to save herself. And us. And the world, and the universe . . . but for all that, she looked more like the girl I'd kissed a couple of times than the person who'd just saved everything. She cried, and cried, and her tears were tears of such horrible loneliness that I couldn't imagine it. The only way was to wonder what I'd be like if Michiru ever died, well, died without me, and I can't bring myself to think of such a thing. Living without her would be like . . . it's beyond words. Incomprehensible. Living without life, without breath, worse than having the skies my soul reflect torn away. I don't know if I could bear it as Usagi has. She's crying her heart out, but she's alive. She was strong enough to live for us, because we would have wanted her to, and because of _that_ we're here with her now. She tried as hard as she could to get her arms around all of us, but of course there was just no way; we did the next best thing and put all of our arms around _her_. We could barely see her then, because she's so small, but we could feel her. That was what was important. ------- It's been a long time since we were home. I can't believe how weary I am; I guess dying does that to a person. Usagi finally let us go, after making us promise we'll go see her tomorrow, after she and the others say goodbye to the Three Lights and _their_ princess. I don't feel any need to see them off; Seiya and I found our moment of understanding just before I died. We're not friends but we're not enemies, and that's good enough for me. There is something left unsaid between us, the soldiers of our solar system, and we have to talk it out before it festers. However good our secret reasons were, however understanding the others have seemed, the facts are still there: Michiru and I killed two fellow sailor soldiers in cold blood, and betrayed our princess. If the Inner senshi hadn't all been dead by that point, they would've had to fight us, and they wouldn't have known what Hotaru and Setsuna seemed to. _They_ didn't really fight. I don't think I'll ever forget the look on my daughter's face right before she closed her eyes and took the fatal bolt of energy I hurled at her. She accepted it. Somewhere in her eyes I saw the trust she's had in me for this brief period of time since I became her 'Haruka- papa'. She remembered that I tried as hard as I could to kill her once before, and she still trusted me. Things seem to be going in pairs; I almost died, and then did; I almost killed Hotaru, and then succeeded when I no longer wanted to. She trusted me to have a good enough reason to kill her. I can't figure out why they all seem to have such faith in me. Michiru followed my lead without hesitation when I agreed to give Galaxia my star seed. Hotaru let herself be sacrificed. Usagi believed in us to the end, even after we attacked her with all of our power. They had faith, and I was _wrong_. I betrayed them deliberately, in hopes of saving them, but it didn't work. That means that in the end their faith in me was misplaced. I try halfheartedly to hate myself, but I don't have the energy. It's a miracle that we all managed to get home safely with me at the wheel; I never thought I'd ever think something like that. I know I'm one of the best drivers alive, but right now I feel like a zombie. I couldn't bring myself to meet Hotaru's eyes as she went off to bed; Setsuna went and tucked her in without saying a word to us. I'm sitting on the bed in the room Michiru and I share, and she's looking out the window at the sunset. "Haruka." Michiru's voice jolts me back to reality. She's moved away from the window and is standing beside me, looking worried; not in the obvious way most people would, but I see the way she's watching me, a little bit wide-eyed, with a slight line creasing her forehead. She touches my hand. "It's late, and we should go to bed." For once I don't playfully try to read more into her words than she means. "I'm not tired," I say shortly. Something flickers in her eyes, but otherwise she doesn't look hurt, even though she knows I'm lying. How can I sleep? How can I just calmly act as if this is some normal night, as if it's some normal battle--whatever that might be--that we've come home from? The war is over. We've won. Serenity's won; I'm on the winning side; but I shouldn't be. I joined the losing side. I grit my teeth as yet another surge of anger washes over me. Does it matter how good my intentions were? I still sold out. And my memory keeps replaying the moment. It took me a second to conceive of the idea, and I somehow knew--or assumed, anyway--that Michiru would understand and go along with me. I look at her without meeting her eyes. I met her eyes then, though, when I asked her to trust me, soul to soul. *I don't mind selling my soul to the devil if I can be with you.* It brought back echoes of another conversation as we watched the sun set over the ocean, when we felt the first taint of Galaxia's presence in our solar system. Another failure: we failed to stop her, we let her and her anima-mates in. Those people who'd killed sailor soldiers from other worlds and taken their powers; those people who had _been_ sailor soldiers, who had done what I did. Who's to say that their motives weren't as good as mine, that they just couldn't break her control? My partner looked into my eyes, that day, and smiled. We both felt Galaxia's power burning around us and waiting for us to give in. And we did. We stood up, and we gave ourselves to her. We gave her our souls, arrogantly assuming we could break her power, could keep her from detecting our rebellion. Looking at Michiru tonight, not eye to eye, I wonder how much of our assumption was based on the idea that if we failed . . . if our solar system fell . . . we would indeed still be together forever. In hell. But then, we resigned ourselves to hell three years ago when we agreed to kill three innocent people, maybe more. Her hand on my shoulder catches me off-guard. I watch her fingers move as she reaches to gently nudge my face so that I will meet her gaze, and let myself be distracted by the glint of the ring on her finger instead of doing what I know she wants me to. The ring mesmerizes me, as it sparkles in the last light of the sun. My matching band is hidden from that light, lost between my fingers as my hands clench around each other. But it isn't until I see her head tilt, see that she's decided on something to say to me, that I move out from under her touch and back out the door. I hear Michiru following me; more importantly, I feel her worry in the back of my mind. I can get out of her presence if I try hard enough, but she'll always be there inside me somewhere. Usually that comforts me, but I'm trying so hard to forget betraying everything: my princess, my friends, my oath . . . my partner, because I took her with me. Sometimes there doesn't seem to be any doubt that she's the one in charge in this relationship, if either of us is, but she followed me when I walked away from everything we loved. She killed Setsuna, the woman who raised her for half of her life, because she trusted me. She doesn't seem to blame me. No one seems to blame me; and it's the worst accusation. I think I could deal with them yelling, angry, disappointed. The acceptance is too much. I can feel myself starting to run away, even though I'm keeping my actual movements as slow as possible. I feel as if nothing can make it worse. And then a little form in a nightgown comes flying down the hall and scrambles up onto me, arms and legs wrapping tightly around me. Hotaru's hair is rumpled from sleep, but her eyes staring up into mine as she clings to me are wide awake. "Don't go, Haruka-papa." I can't tell if she's in her 'child mode' or not. She's holding on so tightly that I can feel every heartbeat; her pulse is racing. There's an instant where it looks as if she's going to say something else, but then she buries her face into my shoulder and just holds on. She's very small, but she's strong; I try to dislodge her gently but she doesn't budge. I sense Michiru standing behind us and wonder if I can somehow get Hotaru off of me and onto her. "Hotaru," I say awkwardly. Usually I love hugging her, the only child I'll probably ever have. I adore this little girl with her thirst for life, her tactile expressions of affection, her fluid moods of thoughtfulness and bubbly wonder. After living with her for as long as I have, I'm still never sure how much she understands, or even if her level of maturity is constant. Sometimes she seems ageless, but when she acts her apparent age I'm never sure if she's playing at it or is really, in some way, younger. "Don't go," she mumbles into my neck. "I--" I want to glance helplessly at my partner, but I'm not sure that I can even look at her now. The darkness inside of me is growing noticeably. Hotaru looks up at me and I see the shift to her 'mature' state. "You're going to go driving, and you can't." This is something I feel capable of answering. "You know I'm a good driver, kitten." "You're a good enough driver to know you shouldn't be behind a wheel tonight." Her voice is quiet but unyielding. And she's _still_ holding on to me as if one of us will die if she ever lets go. I try to break her grip, but she's not having any of it. Little arms tighten even more. "Hotaru." Trying again, I conclude that there's not going to be a gentle way of getting her to let go. I want--I _need_--to get out of here before something inside me snaps. Maybe something has already snapped. I feel . . . empty, dead . . . none of these words are enough to describe the feeling. I've betrayed EVERYTHING. All at once I feel the need to scream . . . and cry, and run away . . . and vomit, and die. I have never not wanted to cuddle my daughter; I have never not wanted to feel my partner's mind in mine, part of me. I think I'm shaking, but I'm so dissociated from my body that I can't tell . . . and I have to escape, get away from these people I love more than anything, whose presence insists on reminding me . . . and she just _won't_ let go, she keeps staring up at me with those intense dark eyes. I can't make her let go . . . not without hurting her. And I can't hurt her. I can't hurt a child . . . and _this_ child is my daughter, even if I had no part in her birth! I'm supposed to love her and be gentle, and . . . and I . . . I run out of words. Only images and memories are left, pounding into me. Saturn's eyes meeting mine in silent acceptance and then closing, waiting for me to . . . oh God . . . the energy just flashed out of my bracelets, the ones Galaxia shackled me with, and I pulled some indefinable part of her soul out of her. I see this child of mine dying, her terrible Glaive with its power to destroy worlds falling without being raised against me. ---------- I don't actually remember leaving the house. I do remember Hotaru's eyes as my muscles spasmed under her desperate grip, rebelling against my motionlessness. She made an indescribable sound as she shifted back into her 'child' perception and Michiru rescued me, letting our daughter burrow into her instead of me. I think I fled. I am very sure that I didn't make anything like a dignified retreat, back into the newborn night, phantom tears burning my eyes. But I didn't take the car. ---------- Every morning I run to clear my head, and my feet know every step of an hour-long run without any help from my brain. The desperation I feel nips at my heels, making me push past my usual limits; the result is only that I wind up back outside my home, missing the memory of the run, in something more like forty-five minutes. Habit does more than guide my feet--my mind _is_ somewhat clearer. Sometimes, that's not such a good thing. It doesn't give me the strength to actually go inside the house, only more awareness of the night's deepening chill. Minutes tick by. Lots of minutes. My internal clock is unusually accurate, probably from years of timing myself. Standing relatively still--does pacing count as moving?-- the time drags, despite my being too depressed to be truly bored. I'm starting to think that spending the whole night outside is a more enticing prospect than going back in. Outside there are no accusing eyes watching me. Outside I have the freedom to run away again the moment I want to, and maybe never come back. Strangely, the cold settling into my bones doesn't inspire me to keep fidgeting for warmth. Instead it makes me feel heavy, too exhausted to stay on my feet. I am on the verge of sinking to the ground and either falling asleep or passing out when I see the glint of red eyes just out of arm's reach. I have this theory that Setsuna never sleeps. But even if she did usually, she's too much of a worrier for me to really expect her to be asleep now. When I look at her, her usually implacable face is showing signs of weariness. At least she's not blatantly concerned. Something that out of the ordinary might force me to be worried back, if her mask slipped that much. I think that I don't have the energy. Maybe she'll play the friend role, I think as we eye each other and I wait for her to speak. Or maybe the comrade- in-arms. I am not expecting what she presents me with: the frustrated mother-figure. But that's what I get. Her head tilts, shadowy green hair pours off of one shoulder, and she sighs audibly. "Haruka, I am taking a walk in hopes of being able to relax. A short walk around the house." She fixes me with her sternest look, which could probably win contests if they had them for things like 'best glower'. "When I get back, I am going inside, and you are going to be in there. In your room. Going to bed." Without another glance, she very deliberately moves away from me and heads into the garden. I am not going to obey her, I tell myself. This is foolish. By the time I've formed the rebellious thoughts in my head, though, my obedient feet have carried me inside. Sometimes, I would swear that Setsuna had hypnotic suggestions planted in our brains. Standing just inside the front door, looking at the staircase, I briefly consider nesting down in the basement. But Michiru is upstairs. And I wouldn't put it past Setsuna to actually perform a bed-check. I grit my teeth, swallow a few times, and head up the stairs. ---------- I try to catch my breath as I enter the bedroom again. Something in Setsuna's eyes as she left me put a bad taste in my mouth, a vague feeling of dread. I look around for Michiru, but the room is empty. One thing has changed since I left, though: there's a box open on the floor beside the bed. I walk over and kneel beside it, and the dread deepens even though minutes ago I would have sworn to myself that I was too emotionally drained to feel much of anything. The box is one of the ones--I don't know how many there are--that Michiru keeps her blade collection in. The collection is one of the things we don't discuss. Each blade in it has drawn her blood at least once, maybe more times. I look at the contents of this box: several razors, a throwing knife, two pocketknives, a switchblade . . . each one carefully sheathed or wrapped in silk. We don't discuss it because it's one of the things we silently trust each other with. I trust that she won't add any new pieces to the collection, that she won't injure herself, and she trusts that I won't check to see if there are newly-blooded blades among the old. I try unsuccessfully to swallow my fear as I wonder why the box is lying here on the floor, praying it's not the reason that leaps to mind . . . I can't seriously imagine my partner taking her own life, not now, not after we've come so far together. It's been so long since I've seen more than the faintest echo of that particular pain in her eyes, longer since I've found her bleeding. I've watched her go through the mood swings that I suspect will be part of her forever--the moments where she shines with brilliance and wonder, the times when she struggles to muster the energy to get up in the morning. I've watched her neatly store the darker emotions away behind her polite smile and facade of perfection that almost everyone who meets her believes to be real. In our years together I've seen her change from a frightened girl who once admitted that she could barely make it from day to day into a woman whose good days have finally been significantly outnumbering the bad. *As long as you're here,* she whispers to me sometimes, early in the morning when she thinks I'm still asleep, *as long as you're with me I can survive anything.* Those words tell me that in some ways I've saved her as surely as she's saved me. And tonight I left her. My partner, I understand though she has never said it, does not need me to say that I am coming back, that I'll see her soon. She doesn't rely on my touch to reassure her just before we separate. But she always looks into my eyes, for an instant, to see my love, to know that despite whatever it is that is parting us, I would rather be with her. I know that tonight she didn't see that. I remember seeing her look for it, and forcing myself not to notice. Tonight she saw my need to escape her gaze, and Hotaru's, and Setsuna's. I know that in her head she would have understood. But it's not her head that controls the dark moods that are a part of her nature. I stand up and look around the room again. The door to our bathroom is closed, and I can't tell if there's a light on inside or not. The last of the night's moonlight is streaming in through the window beside it. I go over and knock on the door, listening. The faintest sound of water running reaches my ears, but I can't be sure I'm not imagining it until I hear Michiru's voice, almost too soft to hear. "Come in, Haruka." I test the door, discover it's not locked, and push it open. The moon is illuminating this room as well, and my eyes don't need to adjust. Michiru is sitting on the edge of the bathtub, wearing only a long, mostly unbuttoned shirt, staring out through the window. Her hair is damp and the scents in the room tell me she's taken a bath recently. I start to relax, and then tense again when I see the glint of a razor in her hand. She senses me looking her over, searching for cuts or traces of blood-- I'm foolishly trying to be nonchalant about it--and turns to me. Calm as always, she meets my gaze, then glances down at the blade as if just noticing its presence. Her sweet voice is thoughtful and perfectly unruffled. "I didn't know when you'd be back. I was going to wash and shave my legs and go to bed." The utter normalcy of her tone almost throws me off . . . but in my mind's eye I see her at thirteen, sitting on the floor idly tracing her name onto her arm in impeccable kanji, using the tip of a knife. I remember the one time she miscalculated and I found her bleeding everywhere, from several little cuts as well as the terrible gouge in her leg that was pumping literal gouts of blood onto the floor; I watched her paling from the loss as she quietly stanched the flow with one hand and asked if I'd mind calling Setsuna. I still don't know why I didn't call a doctor, or how our mentor found one both willing to keep quiet and able to stitch Michiru up with only the faintest trace of a scar, that even I have trouble finding. I have learned not to believe that her steady tone means that everything is all right, because the only time it wavers is when I am the one in danger. I wait for her to continue. "I was just going to shave," she reiterates, gesturing with the razor as she justifies its presence. "And I thought, no one would notice if I got cut. It happens all the time. Such little nicks, only a drop of blood. It happens to everyone." She falls silent again, and I see a trace of fear flicker into her eyes as she stares at me. For a moment I don't see my partner, a confident woman who will never age, who will always look the way she does now. I see the seventeen year old she might have been, left alone . . . if she had lived this long. She takes a deep breath, her only concession to how difficult this is for her. "But I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to stop." Her voice doesn't falter, and her gaze never wavers, but I feel the sudden wave of anguish as she admits it to me-- and to herself--and it is staggering. I am almost comfortable with my own hurts, but when she completely bares hers it always overwhelms me, despite the fact that I live with the surface echoes of her pain every day. We look at each other in silence. Honestly, I can't think of anything to say. With utter precision, Michiru sets the razor aside and stands up. Wordless, she walks to me, and past me, turning in the doorway. Frozen, I watch the movement of her chin as she inclines her head in a questioning gesture. I can ignore it. She is being subtle enough that I really can. But I let my gaze travel up over her face. In a flash, sea-hued eyes leeched of color by the night fasten on mine. I make myself look back at her, instead of turning away, until she seems satisfied. A faint smile flickers across her mouth. "I'm going to bed now," she says softly, breaking the silence. She doesn't ask if I will follow; she doesn't ask if it will be all right, or tell me that it will be. She simply goes.