Standard Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine. This should come as no surprise. I am simply a teller of stories that occasionally claw their way desperately out of my head.
Notes: This is my Tuxecret Santa 2014 gift written for Napoleon Bonerfart (crunchbuttsteak on Tumblr), who wanted something dabbling in Rei/Minako and preferred things more on the dark side. I did my best to provide on these fronts.
(27 December 2014)
Make it to New Year's
Rei wanted to leave her there.
It wasn't because of orders. Rei hadn't cared much about orders before, and she sure as hell didn't after. Minako could shout orders until the end of the world, and Rei would march happily to her grave ignoring every last one if she wanted. The only orders Rei Hino followed came from Rei Hino.
But what orders were those? Her heart was screaming to keep going and not look back. A voice in Rei's head tried to talk her into it.
How much longer can you keep this up anyway?
Someone has to survive.
She's already hurt and slowing you down.
It's what she deserves.
The last one did it. Rei shook her head, as much to clear it as to deny it, and then she was at Minako's side again. It had only been moments, and it aggravated her how, even now, she felt more comfortable there.
"I told you to run," Minako panted. Her breathing was laboured, a stained glove pressed into her ribs.
Rei didn't respond. She said nothing at all. Words took energy, and they were a luxury she could rarely afford. How many times had Usagi wondered what it would take to make Rei stop talking? They never realized there'd be an answer.
No words, then. No gestures, no cries, no dramatics. Only Rei, an intense stare, and the will to make it happen.
The forest floor erupted before them into a ten-foot high wall of flames, so violent that for a moment it seemed all the air was sucked out of the world. Their hair danced in the searing breeze, straining and desperate to throw itself onto the pyre.
Rei and Minako took a few precious seconds to watch it burn, welcoming the feeling of power it gave them. Minako pointed. A golden chain materialized and flew as she gestured, wrapping around trees, embedding into the ground, and forming a crisscross barrier in the heart of the flames. The fire welcomed the chain, fed off it. The links superheated to white-hot but never melted. The barrier would be temporary, but perhaps enough to buy them a little more time.
"The forest may burn," said Minako.
"Let it," Rei replied. She'd commanded the fire to not follow them as they pressed forward. Beyond that, it could do what it liked.
Minako nodded, and the action caused her face to contort into a grimace of pain. "Help me up," she hissed.
Another command. Rei wrapped an arm around Minako's waist and lifted.
... ... ...
Minako didn't look up as Rei pushed her way into the clearing. Rei's lips hardened into a tight line and she shot Minako glares over her shoulder as she rearranged the foliage to better hide their temporary refuge.
"I could've been them." Her tone was loaded with accusation.
Still Minako didn't open her eyes. She shrugged, her shoulders making a soft rustling sounds against the snow dusted pine needles and other debris that made up her bed. "You were too quiet. They're not exactly subtle."
Which was true, but Rei wasn't in the mood to be placated. "They could be evolving." She sat next to Minako and drew her legs up to her chest, but stayed facing the forest wall so she didn't have to look at her.
Minako sighed, recognizing only too well when Rei was about to clamp her jaws around something and not let it go until she'd shaken every last bit of stuffing out of it. "I knew it was you," she said, lolling her head to the side to look at Rei. "If the enemy's evolving into you, we're truly fucked."
Rei snorted a laugh and rested her chin on her knees. "Flatterer."
"Charming to the end, that's me."
"They're not stopping tonight." Rei hadn't exactly meant to barrel directly through the mood, but she'd long passed the point of caring about subtleties. "They're still on the move a few miles from here. The fire earlier must've made them nervous."
"Or angry."
"Or angry."
Rei stretched her legs out, crossing her ankles and leaning back on her hands. The moon wasn't full, but it was bright enough. She tried to ignore how she could feel Minako's stare, how much she knew Minako wanted her meet it, and how she absolutely would not.
A cloud passed over the moon, cutting off even the dim light. Rei heard Minako grunt a little at the effort of shifting positions. "It'll be dawn soon. We'll get going then."
Despite the pain, Minako's voice was strong and comforting in the darkness. Rei felt aggravation once again bubbling within her. "You're hurt," she snapped, and immediately felt foolish for stating the obvious. As always, uncomfortable emotions only made Rei angrier.
Minako didn't play into it though. "Eh, it should be okay by then."
"You said that three nights ago."
"If I keep saying it, eventually I'll be right."
"You need rest! You need help!"
"When, Rei?" Minako sounded tired. "Where?"
The cloud passed, and the weak light of the moon once again touched them.
Rei wanted to fight back. Everything she was demanded it. She felt the outburst trembling at her lips, she felt her hands clench and release as they did before every battle. But the cloud had passed, Minako was still staring at her, and Rei looked away first.
"We're not healing well anymore," Rei said, mostly to herself. "Our heart's gone."
A hand laid over hers. "Not all of it."
The worst part was that it had to be Minako. It was absurd to say that this was the worst part, Rei knew, when there was literally no end to "worst parts". If it were Ami, though, Rei could focus. Ami would need her in uncomplicated ways, and they could support each other and not be … this.
Rei sometimes wished it was Mako. She wouldn't have survived very long, of course. Mako would have given in to her grief, and Rei couldn't swear she wouldn't have followed. They wouldn't be running away from those bastards, they'd have tried to plow right through them.
And of course if it were Usagi, they wouldn't be in this damned mess in the first place. Typical.
But no, it had to be Minako. Rei slid her hand free.
Once, Minako would've commented on that. Not today. "You should meditate," she suggested instead. "Try to reenergize."
Rei shook her head. "They're too active out there, we can't risk the fire."
"Yeah, light? Warmth? Can't have that." Minako's laugh was bitter. "You should've left me, Rei."
You should've left me.
... ... ...
Rei was forced to admit that she and Minako were dating now, and it was all Usagi's fault. Holding out against Minako had been the easy part. She approached everything with that ridiculous attitude of hers that made her impossible to ignore, but easy to resist. "Look at us!" she'd say, when Rei had brushed her off yet again. "Look at the hotness of us! We owe it to the world to be together." And Rei would roll her eyes, and close the door in Minako's face, and pretend to not hear as Minako began to sing love songs at full volume in the apartment hallway.
"But you haven't told her no," Usagi pointed out one afternoon when she was taking up space on Rei's couch. "And if you haven't told her no, then I think maybe you really want to tell her yes, and you're just being stupid and Rei about it."
Holding out against Usagi was another matter. They'd fought then, and Rei confidently would've told anyone who asked that she'd won that fight. And yet that Friday, she was fussing over her outfit and meeting Minako for dinner and dammit how did that even happen?
Rei was asking herself the same thing the next Friday, and the Saturday after that, and then at some point she stopped asking without ever really getting an answer.
It was a terrible idea. She told Minako exactly what she thought about all this one night when the dancing had been hot and she hadn't closed the door in Minako's face. They had responsibilities, she'd said, they couldn't afford distractions. Minako argued that life was a distraction, but that didn't mean they stopped living. Her words were smooth, her lips were soft, and so they lived.
They lived, right up to the very second the world ended.
They'd been together when half the city exploded. The immediate death count was impossible to estimate, and of course soon nobody would bother to try. They'd been as fast as they could, but the panic and chaos were thick and the enemy was already everywhere. Rei felt Mako die just seconds before Minako did, and they'd both been staggered by the sudden pain and loss.
They were still too far away.
They were also too far away to see Ami die, and Rei hated that part of her was grateful for that.
Usagi, however, died before Rei's eyes, and in a way she was grateful for that as well. She'd watched as Sailor Moon, the glowing beacon of light and hope she had always been, hovered over the rubble and death and destruction that surrounded her. Mako, Ami, and Mamoru's bodies were recognizable only by the shreds of clothing that still clung to them, but Sailor Moon was whole and untouched.
There was a barrier, a shimmering off-white dome keeping the enemies contained, but also keeping Sailor Mars from being by her Princess's side. How many attacks Rei flung at the barrier, she didn't know. Whether that barrier was erected by the enemy to keep Mars out or by Usagi to keep Rei safe, she didn't know that either.
All Rei knew was that when Usagi fell in a shower of blood, crystal, and ribbons, she'd been there to see.
And scream.
Rei would have stayed there, screaming and throwing fire until she was allowed to follow, had Minako not dragged her away.
They ran. They left Tokyo behind and ran, as far as they possibly could. That first night, Minako cried and Rei cried, but they didn't cry together. Rei couldn't even look Minako in the eye and wasn't sure she ever could again. Every time she did, she saw herself reflected back.
"You should've left me!" Rei snarled, the only words she'd spoken since screaming Usagi's name. "You should've left me!"
Minako only cried harder.
... ... ...
"You should've left me, Rei."
When? Rei wondered silently.
But then did it matter? She could've run without Minako, she'd had plenty of opportunities. Rei chose every time to walk with her.
"No." Rei reached out and took Minako's hand. Minako was so startled by the contact that she jumped. "No, I couldn't."
It was impossible to see clearly in the wavering moonlight, but Minako's watery sniff said everything. She cleared her throat and squeezed Rei's hand. "Sucks, doesn't it?"
"Really does," Rei agreed, her own voice thick.
"Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Senshi."
Minako had said it in English, so Rei didn't get the phrase. She nearly asked, but decided against it. It was Minako, and so probably filthy.
Minako gave Rei's hand another squeeze then released it to try and push herself up into a sitting position. Rei helped brace her, but it was a worrying struggle. "It'll be light soon and we'll need to move," Minako ground out between her teeth. "Better start limbering up now."
Despite being on the edge of exhaustion, Rei began to pace and work the winter chill out of her aching muscles. She didn't want to admit this, she really didn't. But it seemed she was making unexpected choices today, so why stop now. "I'm not sure how much further we can run."
"I'm not sure how much running we've actually been doing lately." Minako spoke in fits and starts, the pain shooting through her as she tried to straighten her back.
Frost crunched under Rei's high heels as she strode across the narrow clearing. "No, I mean literally. Do you know where we are?"
"Hell?"
It was difficult to argue, but Rei shot Minako a glare anyway. A glare which went completely unnoticed in the pre-dawn light. "I'm pretty sure we're in Iwate."
Minako froze in mid-rotational stretch and slowly lowered her arm. "I didn't realize we were that far east."
"We already know we can't go back, their patrol line is too long." Rei stopped and faced Minako with her arms folded across her chest. "They're herding us."
"How long before we hit the ocean?" Minako's voice was eerily calm.
Rei shook her head. "I don't know. Three days? Two?" Today? she didn't add.
In the silence, Rei wasn't surprised to discover that mixed in with the jumble of emotions she felt, there was relief.
"Well!" Minako exclaimed with a clap of her hands. "Running hasn't been working so well. Maybe swimming will do better for us. It's low impact, you know."
"And me without my suit," Rei replied.
Minako extended her hand, and Rei took it immediately, bracing herself to help haul the injured Senshi to her feet. Minako cried out and a fresh patch of red began to seep through her fuku. She couldn't stand without help anymore and her complexion was ashen, but still she favoured Rei with a grin. "If you wanted to go skinny dipping with me, you could've just asked, we didn't have to go through all this."
"I didn't—"
The feeling struck Rei and she suddenly shot upright, jarring Minako, who gasped in pain. They were close. They were everywhere and they were close. All the relief Rei had observed earlier vanished, leaving behind only cold dread. She thought she was ready.
She wasn't close to ready.
In the light of the new dawn and for the first time since they'd left the haven of Rei's apartment the night the world ended, Rei looked Minako in the eye. Once again, she saw herself reflected there. The pain, yes. Also the fear. The determination. The love.
"Today's Christmas, you know," Minako whispered.
"Yeah?" Rei's voice was low and hoarse. Her psychic sense was clawing at her spine, screaming the danger, but she shoved it away, unwilling to break the moment.
"Yeah. I've been counting. It was Mako's birthday the night before she … before. Twenty-four birthdays, twenty-four candles, twenty-four hours later and nothing at all. I'm pretty sure today's Christmas." Minako laughed softly. "Who's gonna tell me I'm wrong?"
Christmas. Rei remembered the presents she had already picked out and wrapped. Although not a huge holiday in Japan, years with the others (Usagi especially, who was a huge proponent of any day that revolved around food and presents) had turned it into an event, and like all things, Rei took it very seriously. She'd shopped for months for the perfect gifts, and wrapped each one herself. Her eyes prickled with tears as she was flooded with sudden grief. Her friends would never open their gifts.
Arms wrapped around Rei's neck, and she looked up to see tears pouring down Minako's cheeks too. Look at the hotness of us. Rei laughed despite everything.
That made Minako smile too. "Think we'll make it to New Year's?"
Rei wasn't sure what to say. She'd never lied, not about anything important, and you really didn't get much more important than this. Minako was searching her eyes, desperate for something to hold on to, to give Rei something to hold on to in return. It was how they'd always worked, Rei realized. Minako didn't need much, and kami knew Rei had worked her whole life to not need anything at all. Still they had fallen so easily into this natural rhythm of support, of give and take. So that was what Rei did.
The kiss was brief and desperate. Rei wound her fingers in Minako's hair, and felt Minako do the same. Their hearts pounded, their tears mingled, and when they parted, maybe they didn't feel better, but they felt something, and that was enough.
Rei pressed her forehead against Minako's. Did she think they'd make it to New Year's? "I think we're going to give it a hell of try."
Minako nodded, grateful, and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. "So glad cameras are a thing of the past now. You look a mess."
"I've seen you without make-up," Rei said with a glare. "Don't push me."
Slowly, Minako hissing with every step, they made their way to the barely concealed clearing entrance. The forest rumbled with the sounds of the enemy. So close.
Shifting the arm across her shoulders, Rei tried to adjust her hold on Minako's waist to avoid the worst of the wounds. "You ready?"
Minako flashed a V-for-victory. "Merry Christmas, Rei."
The first of the enemies towered into view. A small flame burst into existence in the center of Rei's palm and she grinned. "Merry Christmas, Minako."