Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Lost Boys and Golden Girls ❯ Echoes ( Chapter 4 )

Disclaimer: Uh... yeah, right.

AN: I knew I'd get around to Makoto eventually. Yay me.

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Late afternoon - swirling and drowsy and humid, familiar and sweet as the warm crackle of her power when it trembles in her fingertips. The storm is coming.

She can taste it, feel it, and she revels in the brush of cool air against her face. Head up and eyes closed, she stands still and quiet while the weight and heat of summer grow thick and wet and heavy around her and settle over her skin like a caress.

A caress...

Beside her is nothing, yet he smiles quietly while the clouds billow in and taps his booted foot against the wall, making not a sound. She knows he's sitting there - leaning against the frame of the open window, legs dangling above a seven-story drop, arms folded and eyes glinting beneath the bright light of her kitchen and the soft tumble of unruly curls that he's always been so vaing about...

She wishes she could see him, but every time she turns to look, only that empty nothingness greets her.

Rain?

She shrugs off her apron and leans next to him, resting her elbows on the sill. "A storm," she murmurs agreeably, "Coming from the west and ready to scream."

He laughs to see the slight hunger in her smile. It's been too long, hasn't it?

Long still days, waiting and waiting for the warm rushing thrum of her lightning - waiting for its familiar brilliant crackle that slides through her skin and laughs to feel her touch - yes, it's been far too long since the skies have obliged her. "Much," she grins, and licks her lips impatiently, ready to run and search and laugh and dance and fight and fly.

You used to dance for me, he whispers, and if she strains she can nearly make out the softness in his gaze.

"You used to complain that you had two left feet - and you never danced without looking like you'd eaten one of Usagi's pork buns."

Stillness. Warm expectation hangs in the air and slips through her hair - so close to tenderness... and how sad it is that she has forgotten, even for a single terrifying instant, how much he fascinates her.

Though I admire and worship her highness, he says after a moment of considering silence, I'd sooner gut myself than eat anything she created.

She laughs as the first drops fall - a soft scattering, and she whispers a silent hello to Ami, wherever she is - and to everyone else, just because.

Do you love them that much? he murmurs wonderingly, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear while she thinks of her reply.

"Don't you?"

He flinches - she cannot see it, but she knows how he looks away and curls in on himself - a childhood habit yet to be broken a millenia after the child has grown. Old wounds that would never heal - and she raises a careful hand to the side he once pierced in the blackest midnight of their lives.

Remembered tears and aching, and she seeks his gaze and knows she will not see.

I loved you enough to betray you all... he says it unwillingly - forces the words out and she knows how much it still hurts him to say.

The memory of death never leaves the dead - and they, every last one of them, had been dead for a very long time until their rebirth. So many centuries wasted in a dreamless sleep - and now to make up for that lost time, they dream all the more.

The rain comes harder now, falling in a steady sheet, and it catches and clings to the soft curves of her hands - should they be truly so soft? She is a fighter, yet her hands are elegant and pale - and none can see their callouses, though by heart she knows they were there, earned in a million scrapes and a thousand battles, to youma and strangers and nonsense.

You are beautiful, he murmurs, and if he were truly there the soft touch on her lips would be far more than merely the soft fall of rain.

"...you're distracting me, aren't you?"

A soft sigh - it could just be the wind, but she knows better.

Can you blame me?

She shakes her head - who would want to dwell on it? Who would manage to survive even the memory? Sweetest agony and blackest adoration - she'd seen the love in his eyes when he perished at her feet, when her grasping hand sought his - when she died in his arms with his blood spilling over her skin.

I loved you even then, he says, so softly it is nearly lost to the storm, and she knows how much the words cost him.

Her silent one - she'd always been so brash, so impulsive, and he'd caught her eye as the quietest one, eyes to the stars and a billion miles away - how had she managed to catch him?

He smiles and shrugs when she turns questioning eyes to where he would be were he there, and laughs, quietly, when she shakes her head in frustration.

Must I have a reason for everything I do? his voice is teasing, now, light and expectant, and she knows she's dragged him into the daylight again.

"...not really, I guess," she replies, and tosses her hair just to splash him.

He squaks in protest though he cannot get wet - after all, he has those so-strong principles to maintain. Don't tell, don't let anyone but the beloved see your discomfort... Strong... fragile... maybe she's getting bitter? A thousand years is a very long time to be alone - and once awake, what had they done but been torn apart again?

It isn't right, he hisses, and the words are old but the centuries have not tarnished the bright gleam of their venom.

"No, it isn't," she answers him as she had a thousand and more lost summers ago, gazing at the storm, but not looking in his eyes - not the way she used to, for then is not today, no matter how much it feels that way.

If he could, he would fold his arms and glare stubbornly out into the city. They had no right to steal our choices from us - they had no right to make us stay.

Thunder rumbles in the distance and her soul aches in reply. "It was our duty," she says harshly, "Are you one to shirk your responsibilities?"

He is silent. For a long time, she curls her fingers into the sill, and ignores the cracks that splinter the frail wood. This kind is not her own - false and thin and foreign to her touch. It does not warm her fingertips - though it might those of another.

He knows she waits for his reply, so finally, when she is ready to spring and fly, he sighs and tucks himself against her side - a soft pressure change in the air, but nothing more, even when he buries his face against her skin and tightens his arms around her waist.

Have I not paid for my crimes already? I ache as much as you do... you should not suffer the same fate.

She smiles, tinged with sadness now, and rests herself where he would be if he were truly in her arms. "Nobody ever said this was fair."

It never was. But his words have lost their sting, and he thinks of other things.

She knows the feeling well. "You loved him once."

I love him still.

It hurts.

It always hurts.

To admit failure to those beloved - the lover and the one to whom you bent your knee - it hurts so much to lose the beauty of that trust...

"...I wish you were here."

He closes his not-eyes to hide the tears he cannot cry.

And she unfolds herself from his ghostly embrace and springs off into the storm, over rooftops and alleyways, not bothering to change her form - the storm that birthed her, the mother that she loves so much could never bring her favorite child harm.

He follows her - and in the silvery embrace of the rain, highlighted by the flash of her light and the ferocity of her passion, they can almost, almost see and touch and laugh and kiss and cry and know and remember and discover anew - but almost is never enough.

And the blessed rain disguises the tears in a veil of wildness - but can never hide the beauty of their smiles.

And it is enough... for now.

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This series is... more or less finished! Go me!

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