Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon. I'm just borrowing the characters J

Papa

By Kuraichocho1013

Well, here I am. I guess that maybe you were afraid that I wouldn't come because of the rain or something, but it's pouring sunshine all around me and almost through me as I look into your new face. It should be some storm later on, full of random flashes of lightning, booming thunder, the whole shebang. But I have a good driver, one of the best in Tokyo in fact, so we'll be ok. Actually, with the sun beating down on my back, I'm more worried about heat stroke than rain. I never was very strong. But then, I guess you know that, don't you? I'm standing here waiting, wanting to hear your voice, finally ready to listen to whatever excuses you have to throw in my face like a bucket of cold, stagnant tears.

But you can't speak, Dad.

The flowers are for you. I wanted to give you something a little more appropriate, like road kill, maybe. But I struck gold with my family this time around, so they insisted that, if I bring anything, I bring flowers. So I brought these lilies because they also asked me whether I would want a handful of dandelions covered with dirt clods showered unceremoniously over my grave. They're really amazing people, Dad, and it's kind of sad that you never got to meet them.

Oh wait, you did once. You tried to kill them.

Although it's probably not too apparent at the moment, I'm trying really hard not to be bitter. Because this conversation shouldn't really be about me and my emotions, although, granted, we are in a place dedicated to the whims of the living. This little chat is all about you, Dad. It should make you jump for joy. You lived your entire life admiring your own goddamn shadow and never even bothered to look further than mine. See, I don't even know why I have any feelings for you at all because you barely cared enough to get to know me. The problem is that, when it comes to you, I feel so many things inside of me at once, that it reminds me of this one time, a lifetime ago, when…

You know the story, Genius.

I'll admit that, prior to then, there were other spring days. Days before I knew who you really were. I can remember the rhythm of your feet against the grassy earth, their solidity, their confidence and subtle grace. Pum, pum, pum, pum, pum, pum. I was smaller then, so they were larger and closer to my face. We used to kick the soccer ball around when the sun was high and the world right on its axis. I can remember the sky being so blue it was almost cartoonish, the lack of clouds leaving it big and lonely, a world unto itself. But we were on top of a hill, closer than ever to that endless, lonely field of cornflowers. It was before you became such a zealot, before you got kicked out of the establishment for torturing things smaller than yourself. When your hands were long and slender, but warm and rough from handling so many tools. They would scoop me up so gently, then lay me down on your shoulders where I could reach up and try to grab a piece of that endless blue to smear across the walls of my room. Were you just faking then, Dad? Did you really care when I told you that my favorite color was purple and that I was a princess from ancient days? I can never be sure. All I know is that, back then, your hands were the safest and most reassuring things I knew.

Ironic, huh?

Those days were rare, Dad, so very rare. You spent so many hours in your lab doing work that normally you could only take the time to buy me another doll. In kindergarten, those expensive toys made me the most envied girl in school and I loved it with all of my spoiled, little heart. I actually despised dolls, disliked the fake color of their untextured skin, the frailness of their boneless, spineless bodies. But they made me your princess, your little girl whom you loved with all the strength of…

…your wallet.

Although I really did think it was your heart at the time, even if you did scream and curse so loudly at your assistants some days that I had to close my door and conduct my tea parties at a shout. I guess you didn't even think about whether I would hear some of the horrible things you said. Did you enjoy the sound of your own voice, Dad, the control you had? A small man, but not as small as some. It's odd the way that spoiled children have all the world in front of them and yet remain so naïve. All I saw were dresses and sleepovers and Daddy's grin when he handed me a new bribe.

That is, until reality knocked me upside the head.

Do you remember them, Dad, the soccer-ball days when the world seemed young and the wind blew in fresh and clean? You never smiled like that again, a pure smile, a happy smile. A smile that reached your eyes and didn't leave them all crazy and perpetually in motion. You were almost a different man some days, Dad, Papa.

My Papa.

We would stand on our hill quietly sometimes, letting the wind come in like the waves, and you would ask me to tell you when I heard the crickets chirp. "Firefly," you would say, "Firefly, when they start to sing, we've got to go, or else your mama will cook us for dinner." And I would stand there and stand there, and the sun would slowly sink, casting off its fiery mantle in favor of a darker cloak. In the gathering gloom I could barely see your face, but your hand, your gentle calloused hand, was always wrapped around mine, enveloping it so softly. First the wind would kick up, throwing the trees into a papery panic, the rustle of leaves solid yet somehow otherworldly, their color barely distinguishable from the sky. Then, without fail, there would be a quiet peep-peep to my right or left. And I would squinch my eyes shut tight, tight as I could make them, so that I wouldn't have to hear it. So that it would never have to end. 'Cause you were there, warm and sure, letting me stand alone against the wind, but not quite, your hand connecting me to you, anchoring us both to the earth.

For once, you remembered that I existed.

In those moments when my lids came down, all I knew was the leathery feel of your fingers on mine, the almost liquid caress of the wind, the breathy song of the trees, a tang of nature on my tongue. I trusted you then more than anyone I have ever known in my entire life. And as the darkening sky surrounded us and the first timid peeps became more forceful, you'd say "Come on, Firefly, there'll always be another day." And I'd make you promise over and over again, even as I allowed you to pick me up and carry me to the car. You said yes every time, "Yes, Baby, I promise. You're my little Firefly forever."

There should be a special circle in hell for people who lie to children.

Because I was in hell that day, Papa, that day when I woke up to the sun pouring in through some source above my head and could barely feel my body. I lied at the beginning because, yes, this "conversation" is about me and my gnawing rage. Otherwise, we would have had it while you could still defend yourself. Now I've got you just the way I want you: as still and silent as I was on that other spring day not long ago. My memories were clouded over with smoke, scorched by fire, the screams and explosions there, but far away. I could remember dying, a peace and serenity amidst the burning chaos. Maybe I would have mistaken it for heaven, the bright warmth of the sun, if my mind hadn't been so turbulent.

It should have been. Heaven, I mean.

I know what Saturn said, her articulate, final statement before she locked herself away. Everything that ever happens occurs because of a long chain of events, that destiny is absolute and it can't be changed. Which I guess would make you just as much a puppet as I was, as I still am. Only some far-off being called Fate holds the strings instead of a whacked-up maniac. But you know, Dad, something besides Mother died that day the lab burned down, and sadly, yes sadly, it wasn't me. My spirit wasn't broken until much later.

I'm talking about you, Papa.

I can't remember how your shoulders felt exactly, whether they were warm or cool through your shirt, bony or soft. All I remember is the strength, the way that you could run all the way up that hill with five-year-old me grasping your head for dear life. You wouldn't even break out in a sweat, and I could bury my face into your dry silky hair that smelled like bread. You said forever, but it was the forever of a flower: it fell beneath the first sign of frosty disaster. I thought that you would be strong, be my glowing champion in the new, confusing darkness.

But the truth is, Dad, you were weaker than an 8-year-old child with a hunk of metal in her chest.

You thought you'd failed, your laboratory and life's work mere ashes on the bitter wind, your wife dead, all control killed in the blaze. You had been expelled from your field in shame and dishonor. I told Chibi-usa not to blame you for your cruelty, that I loved you because you'd saved my life. But, Dad, you didn't save me for me, not so that I could live. Because if you'd really cared, you'd have let me die in peace, have left the world to its normal order. Even sick, stray cats get as much. Unfortunately, I can't believe that you cared only for the science either, that you'd completely lost sight of little Hotaru. It would make it easier. Than you'd just be a total monster, something completely inhuman that I could hate and hate unapologetically with all of my heart.

But that's not the truth, and I'm so sick of lies.

What I know is that, in that moment, you did remember the soccer-ball days, the rare moments of paternal caring. The wind played with your hair as you sat there contemplating my charred remains. And you remembered the ceaseless hours you'd spent in the lab, the cursing the screaming. Your daughter coming to call and your shame at her sad eyes. Your job was in ruins, Dad, so you clung to the only thing that you thought you had left.

Until you remembered that you didn't know my favorite color - that without Mom there you might forget my birthday.

Was my face disfigured then, Dad, as you sat and felt the guilt eating at your insides like acid? Those fateful moments when you realized that you'd failed in the worst way possible and had only a half-dead body left to tell the tale? You were a quack scientist and an unfit father to boot. I am the manifestation of your one shred of humanity. Your shame became my oxygen, because suddenly you realized that you had to win at something. There were too many loose ends. You had to know my favorite color, had to make up for those lost years.

But it was too late, Dad.

You can't ask a neglected 12-year-old girl if she likes red and expect it to mean anything. Babies are a fresh start, something new. I wanted real tea, real friends and silly conversations about boys; you wanted an innocent child to kick the soccer ball around with. Those awkward questions about my new parts were your attempts to start a conversation you didn't know how to end. Starting in the middle of a book and reading to the end never works; you'll only wind up frustrated and bitter when you don't understand the final chapters. And you did. End up that way, I mean. Like a child you gave up, turned your back on my feelings, those clear, cloudless days, and focused on your other possible conquest. You justified, justified, justified. Kaorinite was a new mother, your crying daughter indulged in endless selfishness, and planting an evil/seductive temptress inside of said daughter was simply science. I became a trophy.

As they say, the rest is history.

I don't hate you, Dad. Your crimes speak in words that even time cannot muffle, no matter how thick the cloth. But I can't completely hate you, no matter how much I want to. That would be too simple, too ideal. Because once you were Papa, and your façade of strength was so convincing. I'll admit, though, that the questioning comes pretty easy to me. Did you mean those sweet, immortal moments in the grass, the ones that refuse to leave my memory? Even then, was it only the hand of guilt that guided us there? I understand that you were weak, that you couldn't lose what you had to lose in order to gain. Gain perspective, walk through the fire and come out stronger, instead of ending up a shivering, self-indulgent, self-pitying basket case. But you chose to forgo all sense of responsibility, forgot that Mama died for me too, and that, with three warring entities inside my one frail body, I might need a papa. A rich bitterness still rides through my soul whenever I think of you, and it always will.

But I'll always love you, because that's what daughters do.

You dragged me through hell, allowed the steam to burn me and the smoke to sting my eyes instead of yours. I was a sacrifice and a suicidal 12-year-old, Papa; I don't think it gets much worse than that. You were supposed to want the world for me, but you settled for a decrepit half-existence. Memory saved you though, because even when the darkness would surround me, choking the air, filling my ears and nostrils, I could still imagine the feel of your leathery skin on mine. I've been trying to figure it out, why I can't forget you; now I know. It's the sky, Dad, and the sharp twilight wind. They were all there, buried inside of you heart, past the greed, the ambition, and the guilt. Maybe I was wrong before, maybe it was love twisted by and ensconced in guilt. I think perhaps you really cared, and because I'm a part of you, it's that hope that I cling to.

But the "think" part slammed the gates in front of my face.

I saw it once, a land all bright and engulfed in brilliant light. The day the world ended, I ascended the spectral stair and stayed long enough to see the salt reflect off of Mama's pearly cheeks. But something pulled me back. A new body gets a new soul, a clean slate, but they never exactly specify what happens to the old one. Soul, I mean.

They never talk about the fall.

You know who I am now, don't you, Papa? After all, how the hell would this Hotaru know anything about you? Why would she come here? Actually, it's really odd, but I still can't quite define a soul. An essence maybe, an intangible bundle of experiences and time. Me, I've arrived in a new shell, borrowed a body for a few days, but yeah, I'm that other her. The firefly, the one that should be sleeping.

Your little Hotaru.

Saturn's trip through darkness ended when Hotaru was reborn, because Saturn has a destiny to keep alongside Hotaru's new soul. But when that little senshi sealed her doom and ended the world, I died too, and fell from Paradise. Because something held me back, Dad, something pulled me down in an iron grip and left me floating among the flotsam of the galaxy.

Someone wouldn't let me go.

Guilt is more powerful than I ever thought, Dad, almost more powerful than love, although that's not saying much. Love is the most vulnerable of feelings: it can be mangled and used by almost any other emotion. But here I am, your child in another body, still waiting, Dad, waiting. I don't have that long. In fact, Setsuna-san's coming to collect me in a few minutes. We'll be separated again. So I'm begging you, please, Papa, please, let me go. Even in death you hold me close.

Even now you can't forget the girl you didn't know how to love.

Try, Dad, try as hard as you can. I know you can hear me: we're both dead. I know it's silly, but I thought that here, on the grass beside your grave, I might be closer to you somehow. All this ragged and defiled being wants is a little peace. I guess this is the only way for me to know, for me to have closure and find my real end. There is a sore scorched into my heart, an endless hollow, a silent question mark. I can say it now; at the final moment of reckoning I can announce that, yes, I love you, Papa. I firmly believe that entrenched inside your skittish and mostly-wicked heart, there was something left to love. And I give that piece my all, a daughter's due. Because that's what people do: they search underneath all the junk until they find something worth loving. Will you answer me, Papa, will you tell me what I think but can't believe?

Because, Papa, it's cold here. And fireflies can't glow forever.

***