Title: Glue Girls
Author: SecretAgentSmutGirl
Summary: It's hard to be yourself, when you're really two people.
Disclaimer: I don't even own the computer this was typed on yet.
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At the Crown Motoki slides her a shake without waiting for her order. It is strawberry and tastes the way first kisses ought to and that only makes her hate it. She craves coffee, dark and tart and just made for the brooding that is brewing around her likes a storm cloud but instead she gets pink and frothy. She should like it so she drinks it, regretting every sip.
Faking, faking, faking.
Rei talks about voluntary chastity, of fidelity and of fire but between the words she says Serena can hear all the things she doesn't dare to say about abandonment, about expectations and about men who can never measure up to the father who doesn't love her. Two years ago she would have felt bad for Yuichiro but instead she understands that her senshi never asked for any of this either.
No one ever feels bad for the hero.
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Every day she drags her feet going home, it gets harder every day to look her Mama in the eye. Bad test scores and air-headed dashes for class are all her parents see of her, which is probably for the best but there is no comfort in the covert. So she smiles and simpers and her mother shakes her head and life goes on.
Things are worse once she makes it up the stairs. Censure is all she ever gets from Chibiusa, censure and disgust that is so thick it could smother but she doesn't blame her. She's a disappointment to everyone.
When she cries in the shower, small and defeated and wretched, no one can hear.
Sometimes she visits Makoto just to escape. Visits just to watch her bake, watch her move through the motions of creating something amazing out of raw ingredients with no doubt in her ability. Measure, mix, cut, knead. She reads the recipe like it's a sutra, like it holds the secrets to more than the edible.
This is how she gets by, how she keeps going, how she balances her strength with her vulnerability. She creates something out of nothing, a place for herself out of an empty apartment. It seems they are all wearing masks, playing carefree all while buckling under the strain.
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It isn't the full moon, or the beat of the drum or that fickle thing called destiny. She gets it now. She finally understands that this endless existence is purgatory. She finally understands that there is no way out for her, for Usagi, no way for her to get out alive. She has to become someone else.
Sometimes he looks at her with those eyes gone dark and she feels as though she's plunging headlong into open ocean, she feels the salt in her mouth and the gooseflesh rises in response to cold that only exists in her fancy. She looks away, holds him close and makes an idle comment about the weather to fend off any questions, to distract from her quirks. How did she get into this?
Sometimes she forgets that she's only sixteen. She knows the world forgets.
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Of them, Usagi thinks that Ami is the most natural. She is what you see, her only doubt stemming from pangs for more but she's so smart. If she wanted more, she'd get it, do it, achieve it and that's how it goes. Smarts count for a lot in this world and because of that there is no duel role for Ami. She's the heart of their little operation, the smarts and the stability.
She can't know how helpless Ami feels, how she crawls into books to keep the monsters in her head at bay. Leather, paper and binding should not a family make because too easily they are set aflame. How daunting to know that the experience, beyond the written word, could be so harsh.
She wears her naiveté like a shield.
Not Minako.
Minako reads manga, loves chocolate and wear girlish bows in her hair. She dreams, waking and while asleep, about being an idol and about winning the love of idols in the magazines. She plays sports and wears dresses. At night she weakens youma with a wicked chain she wears around her waist, as though it were the latest fad in Tokyo fashion. There is no secret identity, there is only Minako who is Sailor Venus.
She doesn't know it, but she's already and idol to Usagi.
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Together they all play soldiers, night after night, for love, justice and all the things they desperately cling to. Despite it all Usagi still believes all her speeches, believes in the past they are trying to avenge. Believes she can be better than Usagi and Serenity both. Maybe becoming someone new, someone better, won't be so bad. She's grown up over the year, learned to be princess, learned to be strong. There is nothing she can't do.
At the end of the day it is enough.