Note: Promptfic for docholligay's Tumblr HaruMichi Circle Same Prompt Fic Party - Fluffvember edition.
Prompt: Being loved and warm and happy on a fall afternoon made it very difficult to not be thankful.
By the time Saturn arrived on the scene, Uranus was dangling upside down from the attacking ooze monster's slimy yet sure grip, ineffectually flailing around and trying to hit the thing with her sword; Neptune was sitting, dazed and slightly concussed, awkwardly propped up against what used to be a newspaper stand, nursing an ankle that was badly sprained, if not broken, and Pluto was out of sight, having been thrown through two doors and a concrete wall.
All in all, it was not the brightest moment of the mighty guardians of the outer Solar System.
It was also starting to rain, the unpleasantly chilly autumn drizzle making a miserable day even worse. Saturn sighed, and drew closer. The monster ignored her, as usual – deadly-looking glaive or no, she was still a slight girl, small even for her age and deceptively frail-looking. She was quite used to being underestimated – in fact, she often counted on it.
With a single careful slice of the Silence Glaive, Uranus was a heap on the ground, together with the lump of slime that had been the arm holding her. The monster was thrashing and howling and had apparently changed its mind about Saturn not being a threat. Any chance it had to attack was lost, however, as it was soon obliterated by an obviously very overcharged and very angry World Shaking.
Saturn turned to see her papa had managed to (mostly) extract herself from the purplish goo and was making a valiant effort to calm herself somewhat after the attack she had just unleashed. Their eyes met, and Uranus stood up, making her way to her daughter and reaching over to ruffle her hair.
"Well done, Princess. Where would we be without you? Let's go take care of your mamas."
—
It was never warm at the Time Gate. Nor was it cold, precisely. It was… nothing. A grand, featureless nothing, stretching into infinity – or perhaps simply looping into itself; she had never managed to figure out which.
Around her, everything happened. The entirety of history at her perusal, but only to look and never, ever to touch, bound by stringent rules she had long given up on understanding. She was a constant when nothing else ever was, no matter how hard she tried to make it last. She had been forced to watch her Queen die and her kingdom fall, first into ruin, then into oblivion - what more was there to understand?
So she haunted the Gates, more a phantom than a proud guardian dutifully keeping her assigned watch, and the pale mists swirled, as they always had and always would.
—
Setsuna sat on her bed, freshly showered, outfitted in her favourite fluffy bathrobe, an icepack held to her head. Hotaru had insisted on helping both of her mamas by at least partially healing their injuries, and was now continuing her caretaking efforts by cuddling up next to Setsuna and reading out loud to her from one of her favourite books. The familiar words carefully enunciated in Hotaru's voice were part of an almost-nightly ritual – a bit more hushed than usual, tonight, as a concession to her mama's aching head.
"Setsuna-mama?" the reading had come to a close with Setsuna barely noticing, and Hotaru was looking up at her, almost expectantly.
"Yes, Princess?"
"How old are you?"
Setsuna Meioh had a birth date - of course she did, just like she had a blood type and a favourite drink and a least favourite school subject and a fascination with fashion design none of her acquaintances truly understood. But that was not was Hotaru was asking. The look on her face was more thoughtful than curious, her wide, wise eyes belying her age.
"Very, very old."
"Older than Haruka-papa and Michiru-mama?"
"Yes, by much."
Hotaru seemed to be contemplating this intently, before piping up again. "Are you older than Shintaro-from-class-B's grandma?"
"Oh, quite probably," Setsuna answered almost absentmindedly, quickly putting on a smile and adding, "but don't tell anyone I admitted that, I'd never heard the end of it."
The past cast a long shadow, even – or perhaps especially - for an immortal demigod. For all that she had been on Earth for several years now, she still found herself strangely adrift at times, disconnected, questioning the reality of her every interaction with her surroundings. The quiet, nagging disbelief at her situation after nothing but centuries of isolation would creep up on her and fill her with doubt and a kind of fear, almost - a fear that it could all be taken away from her, all too easily. That she could be dragged kicking and screaming back to the Gates at a moment's notice.
That wasn't how it worked - as far as Setsuna knew, at least - but it still scared her that one day she might have to go back to not existing.
But right now…
There was a very real pounding in her head, two small hands tangled in the loose sleeve of her robe, and a warm ball of Hotaru pressed into her side.
It was good, being anchored.
—
The big, bright, violet eyes were staring up at her intently. The girl was tiny, and sickly-looking, and trembling - and she was not begging for mercy, but offering herself up like a lamb to the slaughter.
Haruka pushed down the bile rising to the back of her throat and looked down at the shining Sword grasped tightly in her shaking right hand. All she had to do to save the world was lift that arm and swing down. The Sword was sharp; it would be over in an instant.
But when she looked back up, the eyes were a familiar blue, the gaze being cast her way eerily reminiscent of the desperate look Neptune - Michiru - had borne, just before she'd died that horrible day in the Cathedral.
Died for Haruka.
She blinked, and the eyes were now a deep garnet; everything around them was perfectly, unnaturally frozen, and there was Pluto, dying for her, too.
She tried to blink away the tears burning in her eyes, but Michiru was lying on the cold stone floor before her, utterly still, while her pained screams still echoed in Haruka's ears, and a helicopter was exploding, and Mistress 9 was laughing at them all, and…
Haruka scrambled off the couch she'd dozed off on, her breathing ragged and sweat beading on her forehead. Ignoring the piercing sound of an infant crying – they were taking the baby back tomorrow, what good would it do to get attached? - she got up, pulled on her shoes, went outside, and ran.
It was all she was good for, anyway.
—
She was woken up by a whimpering – not all that loud, but a familiar sound, and one Haruka had trained herself to be very sensitive to. She blinked away any remaining sleep and looked over to see Michiru curled into herself, a grimace on her face. A nightmare again – and a bad one, from the looks of it.
"Hey," she murmured, gently, placing a hand on Michiru's bare shoulder and giving it a light squeeze, "Hey, it's me. Wake up, Michiru."
I didn't work.
There wasn't much that could rip Michiru out of the grip of the worst of her dreams - oh, how Haruka had tried. But over the years, even the peaceful ones, she'd learned how to help. It was something she'd practiced night after night after night, an unfortunately necessary almost-agreement between them, but never discussed in the daylight hours. Unspoken did not mean unacknowledged - Michiru's gratefulness and appreciation of Haruka's presence were made evident every day of their lives together.
Mindful of her injuries, she curled herself around Michiru, trying to envelop her as completely as she could, and murmured in her ear
I'm here, I'm here, I'm here
until Michiru finally stilled, and slept on.
Haruka lay awake for some time after, watching the light in their room slowly turn dawn-grey, idly stroking Michiru's back and listening to her breathe.
It was nice, being needed.
—
At four years old she stopped colouring within the lines, as the boring, simple shapes of the kittens, flowers and rabbits were never the ones she really wanted to see.
At five she decided it was best to disregard what was on the page entirely, and instead drew lines of her own to colour in.
Some months before her sixth birthday, she woke up screaming and shaking. The tremors stopped only once she'd grabbed a navy crayon and covered half a page in the calming, soothing colour.
All her seventh year she drew waves and storms, and after turning eight she added sea monsters.
She turned nine and drew cities destroyed and sinking under the waves, and at ten the monsters started looking more like people.
At eleven she first painted death and the end of a world.
—
Her favourite subject had very helpfully chosen to fall asleep on the sofa directly across from where she was sitting. Michiru smiled at the light snores coming from an almost comically sprawled Haruka – sounds she would, if asked, vehemently deny making – and reached over, somewhat less gracefully than was her usual, to grab her sketchpad and charcoal. Trying not to jostle her injured leg too much, she quietly arranged the drawing supplies in her lap, and began.
Her sketching session didn't last long, however. The dim, orange-tinted late autumn afternoon got the better of her, combined with the rather exhausting battle of the previous day and the nightmares that had ruined her night's rest, and she dozed off.
Judging by the darkness outside when she opened her eyes again, her head filled with sleep-hazed cotton, her "brief nap" had ended up lasting several hours. Someone had placed a blanket over her, she noticed, and a pillow under her wrapped-up leg – which was itself feeling much better. The reason for this seemed clear once Michiru became aware of Hotaru, snuggled under the blanket with her, fast asleep. The sketchpad was gone from Michiru's lap, and in its place lay a tousled blonde head – the very one she had been busy trying to capture on paper before tiredness had overwhelmed her.
And then Setsuna glided into her field of view, calmly raising a camera to her eye and, with a small smile that read as both content and mischievous, snapping a photo of the cuddly pile that was her family. Michiru wasn't sure quite how she felt about being used as a human pillow and there being readily available photographic evidence of this, but she was too warm and comfortable to truly care.
It was wonderful, being loved.