Just Something Stupid
8.12.2015
Summary: "I'll Never Do Something Stupid That Hurts You Intentionally, Though I Still Might" were words he once said to her when his memories finally came back. He would hold to that promise. He had to protect her and the dreams told him exactly what he had to do. Not the typical R-breakup story.
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AN: I know you'll all be mad at me for starting not one, but count them, 2 new stories in 1 day but these ideas have been kicking around in the back of my mind for a week now and as soon as I start getting them on paper I'll probably forget about them and won't go back to them any time soon and that will give me more time for the other ones. That's good, right? In fact, already the other story is now out of my head for the moment.
AN2: The reason "I'll Never Do Something Stupid That Hurts You Intentionally, Though I Still Might" is in caps is because I had that as the original title but then looking at my chapter titles, I realized a better story title though I still liked the words, it's what inspired the story and I came up with them all on my own when reading a lot from Ellourah and Antigone. Oh and I didn't feel like going through and making them lower-case.
AN3: So I can promise with some degree of certainty that this one will be finished in a timely manner. I know it looks like I've only just started it and I have in a way though I have been thinking it through for over a week now and I've gotten quite far in writing it, I've mapped out exactly where this is going. Also while this might appear somewhat light for the content of the story, it does get pretty dark when you start thinking about it too hard. It also gets darker as it progresses. So you've been warned.
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Chapter 1:
Just Breaking Up
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She was attacked from all directions and was unable to defend herself. She looked around helplessly for someone to protect her, to rescue her, to save her from what he already knew was coming. No one came. She was torn to pieces in front of him. Her body fell, listlessly to the ground, her outfit unrecognizable, hell she was unrecognizable after all those attacks sliced through her, taking parts of her away with it.
His body felt imprisoned and it was only after her death that he was able to move. He ran up to her and his fingers barely graced one intact piece of her before the scene changed. He knew this part just as well as the first.
Her friends hung around her, his body slammed up against a mirror, just like theirs. The enemy was torturing them and taunting her. Telling her to just give up here and now and like always, she did. Instead of just capturing her as well, the enemy attacked an unarmed soldier, cutting her into ribbons, into pieces and then her body fell in a lump of detached limbs and body parts.
He always threw up at this stage of the night, it was hard enough to see her die once but to see it twice? He had calmed himself the first night and told himself to go back to sleep 3 hours after he'd woken up but new dreams had assaulted him.
This time it was his hands that were choking the life out of her. He remembered this from before, from his first go-round with missing memories and his body acting like a puppet. This time though his mouth was his own, even if it wouldn't open, his thoughts were his own. The first time he was almost inhabited by another person and it was only at the end then, when it was too late, had he broken free and released her. This time there was no mercy, it didn't matter if he put all his strength into it because his body was being externally controlled rather than internally.
One more nightmare later and his body felt controlled like it was in the dreams, only this time he was aware that it wasn't in the dream and someone was speaking to him.
"You make her weak, vulnerable to attack" The voice was his own but older sounding, tired. "You will get her killed and you need to do something to stop it. You need to make her stronger so she can face this enemy, do what needs to be done. She is unsure because of you and right now she needs more than anything to be sure, to be confident in her actions, to know, without a doubt that she is right and loved and nothing she does will make her lose what she has. For if she falters once, she will lose her life, we will lose everything."
So after a month of these dreams, sometimes the dreams all came in 1 night, sometimes the first two and then the second two because he didn't go back to sleep and they all needed to play out before repeating. He was throwing up nightly at the image's contents, not eating, not sleeping, getting further and further behind in his studies and he worried about Usagi constantly, his stomach churned and ate away at itself and he knew something had to change, especially when Usagi looked at him so sweetly one day and asked him what was wrong.
At least she'd seen that there was a change, so it wouldn't seem as out of the blue though it hadn't been a solution he even thought of until just then. "We need to break up." The words felt foreign and alien on his tongue and he wanted to pull them back instantly. He did not want to spend even a moment away from her which he could with her but those dreams played on repeat during the day now on the back of his eyelids, even if he didn't blink, he could see her deaths clearly.
She gaped at him and eventually she found her voice and was able to work her jaw again. "I thought you were just sick." She paused. "Is that the reason why? Because you should know that I would be with you every step of the way if this was a serious illness." She put a hand on his cheek and his hand curled over hers, feeling the warmth and wanting to sink into it but his mind had formed a solution and he'd follow through with it.
So he reluctantly pulled her hand away. "I'm not sick." That was a lie,but not in the way she meant it, he was heart sick. "I don't think we should be together just because of destiny anymore. I'm not going to come to the battles anymore either. It's time you stood on your own two feet. You're senshi have been coddling you."
He hated himself and he saw the tears well up in her eyes and the shattered heart he had just broken and he wanted to pretend that it was all a joke, but that would be even crueler to her. She pulled completely away from him with a shake of her head. "Seriously Mamoru, I'm not finding this amusing at all, call me when you've gotten your head straightened out."
He almost called her every hour for the next week but he managed to put the phone down or turn it off before he dialed even one number, clicked on her name.
It had been a hard week, thankfully there weren't any attacks and his dreams kept coming, reminding him. There was a knock on his door that following Saturday, it wasn't Usagi's insistent knock, so he figured it was probably Motoki or someone going up to the wrong door so he answered it and saw Usagi standing there with a curious expression on her face that he could never place.
It might have been disbelief but he wasn't sure that was it."What are you doing here?"
"We had standing reservations for the theater tonight. You never called to cancel." She wasn't dressed for the theater. "So I canceled them tickets, the refund should be on your credit card in about a week. We need to talk."
"I'm not sure what else there is to say." Truthfully he had never thought up any viable reasons to give her and didn't want to press too hard into it in case it gave her hope.
"There's plenty." She pressed her way in and he gave her the room, afraid of what would happen if he touched her. For starters she would know that he was lying. "I can't believe after all the crap you've put me through over the last 2 years that you would just break up with me without any indication."
"I feel out of love with you." Mamoru shrugged, cringing at his own words but not letting her see it.
"That doesn't just happen overnight."
"Actually, it does." He shook his head. "I admit it is a weird phenomenon but love happens instantly, it can end just as instantly, we just ignore the signs until it smacks us in the face. Which it did, I was just going through the motions for awhile without realizing that there were no longer any feelings behind it."
"Not all love appears overnight." Usagi was grasping at straws with that one because theirs had and they weren't in some kind of arranged marriage and their love had started millenniums ago, also overnight, no even more instant than that, at first sight, perhaps even before that.
"I'll just be easier for you Usagi to accept that I'm over you and to move on. Find someone new to fawn over and give all that gushy feeling to."
Usagi's bottom lip trembled and his heart squeezed painfully tight in his chest, he didn't want to hurt her to make her tougher. It was a given that he would have to, to break up with her. Though he could have probably made himself so disgusting in her eyes that she broke up with him but there would never be any going back from that once those sights were seen. He wished he could find some way just to make her tougher but he wasn't the solution, he was the problem, he was the poison she kept taking thinking it was medicine and he was slowly killing her.
He hoped her love for him was weak enough that she'd get over this soon, a month at most, when they hadn't spent any time together. And he would avoid her for that entire month.
"No!" She pleaded. "Whatever I did wrong, I will change."
"You didn't do anything wrong Usagi. I just don't love you anymore. Nothing you do will change that."
"It's not fair." Usagi whispered and he had to strain to her hear, her voice was breaking but she was doing a remarkable job not throwing her usual waterworks into this. He knew now that it was real heartbreak, not just drama over her boyfriend breaking up with her, hell she threw more of those tantrums when he didn't remember who she was because it was easier and expected. Hardly anyone saw these truly deep feelings emerge.
"It never is." He agreed, unsure of her words.
She shook her head. "I'll forever be in love with you while you just walk away as if I were nothing in your life."
He wanted to tell her that even if what he said were true, he'd never forget the love that they'd shared, that she would always have a place in his heart and life and memories, an incredibly large part but he firmed himself and shook his head. There were more words he could say, to nail this coffin shut and would need a pry-bar to get them out but he couldn't say them, couldn't hurt her that much. Instead he stuck with the line that he was already on, there was no denying what they had in the past, and he didn't want to diminish her sacrifices in this lifetime. It had given him a precious few memories that would sustain him for the rest of his life.
"I'm sorry Usagi but it's not fair to remain in a relationship with you any longer now that I'm not feeling anything for you, I was just confusing my feelings with Endymion's."
She'd gasped and recoiled from him, and out of his apartment but seemed frozen on the threshold and then she gave a choked nod and goodbye and left. He was sad that she hadn't fought more but relieved so much more that he hadn't had to hurt her further to protect her.
It was worth the black eye he got the next day and the crown that he had to put in when another senshi knocked one of his teeth out. The crown and tooth being replaced wasn't the problem, it was when his body fixed the damage itself and shucked out the crown that was terrible unimaginable pain and he was grateful for it because it distracted momentarily from the pain in his chest from not seeing her, for hurting her. It also reminded him that he could feel pain, feel something other than the numbness filling everything in his life but the pain in his heart and gut. It felt so wrong to him to do this but he knew it needed to be done.
On a positive note, his grades were never better.
While hers were never worse, Ami informed him when she came back to check on her handiwork a week later and nodded with a scowl when she saw that his tooth was back to normal. "I hope it hurt." More than she would ever know and he wasn't talking about the tooth
Once the danger passed, he'd be able to grovel, and beg for her forgiveness and try to explain. It was after-all just a breakup, it was only going to be temporary until she could get stronger. He had been holding her back and as long as she depended on him, she would never grow, he stifled her growth.