AN: So, my giftee wasn't extremely specific in her wish list, except that she likes her fluff with a smidge of angst, and that she likes rather more adult stories, so I stalked her blog, and saw that she's a Doctor Who fan, like me, likes her likes on the feminist side, like me, and judging from her own amazing writing, tends to not mind if it gets a little experimental.
So, I'm taking this opportunity to try something out that I haven't before, and I've actually said I'd never write because I'm so very picky about it being done right: Time Travel. But, you know, a very, very light version.
So, Sequencefairy, here's what I came up with for you. Post-Stars little one-shot. Usagi gets misplaced in time three times. I really hope you enjoy it.
Déjà vu
A One Shot written for the Valentine's Day UsaMamo Fanwork Exchange
The first time it happened, she hadn't even realized anything was out of the ordinary.
She'd woken up as she'd fallen asleep, in Mamoru's bed, the sheets curled completely around her, like a big Usagi-shaped burrito, and none left for him and her hand in his face, and he lay spooned around her, using her as an emergency blanket, instead.
He smelled like he always did, like home and sleep and Mamoru, and his chest rose as he breathed in that calm, sleepy rhythm, eyelids fluttering ever so slightly as he dreamt, illuminated by the golden, fresh, morning sunlight that filtered through the room.
It wasn't often at all, that she woke up before him, and so she turned in his embrace and freed the sheets around her to wrap him in them, and propped her face up on her elbow to watch him sleep.
She would never get tired of seeing his silky, soft, inky hair in such mussed, sleepy disarray, falling into his eyes, moving slightly across his forehead, as her breath stirred it.
His face looked smooth, peaceful even, and she let out a relieved sigh. No nightmares tonight, it seemed.
She smiled.
She hadn't noticed that the sheets were the wrong color. Different than those she'd fallen asleep in. She didn't notice the open closet to the side that didn't only house his clothes anymore, didn't notice that the curtains were no longer plain and grey, but a soft, light lace. Didn't notice her ring – his ring, pink, and sparkling, and her heart – was not the only ring on that finger any longer. Joined by a thin, delicate band.
It was much, much later, that she finally wriggled her other hand out of the sheets, and started to trace his brows with the lightest of touches, suppressing a giggle when his face scrunched up and his nose fell into wrinkles, and he looked so cute she would have liked to eat him all up.
It was a few moments until he woke up – in the way he only ever did, whenever he wasn't plagued by nightmares - not with a jolt, but by simply opening his eyes, focusing on her as if his eyes were drawn to her, as if he hadn't been asleep at all.
She threw him a slow smile, her fingers running along his cheeks.
"Good morning, Mamo-chan," she whispered.
He blinked a little, smile playing around his lips, and she couldn't help herself.
She leaned up, just a little, just enough to brush her lips against his. Softly, tenderly, and felt them move under hers when his smile pulled them taught, and he nipped at her lips. Playfully, gleefully, almost, and she gasped out loud when he sucked her bottom lip into his mouth, for just a tiny moment that nevertheless shot tingles straight down to her toes.
His answering smile turned wider, mischievous, even, one side quirking up more than the other, and he raised an eyebrow at her.
She blinked, as he pounced on her with a laugh, turning them around until she was pinned beneath him on the bed, and he was diving for her lips.
Her heart skipped a beat, and she took in a sharp, quick breath. He'd never been this forward before. This enthusiastic. This… carefree.
He stopped before his lips met hers, and he blinked back at her, surprise mirroring hers.
"Usako?" he asked with a frown.
She blinked again. What? Didn't he …?
But then the wrinkles on his forehead smoothed over and the slow, gentle smile returned, and he cupped her face with both hands.
"Hello, Usako," he said, stroking his thumbs along her cheeks, just the same way she had done to him only moments before, and looked at her in a way that was so peculiar, as if he recognized something in her eyes. As if he hadn't seen her in years. As if he understood something she didn't…
Eyes full of warmth, of love… of… openness, for a lack of better word.
He looked at her in a way that held nothing back. Nothing at all. Everything in his eyes was laid bare for her, in a way she'd never seen before.
His thumb moved lower, tenderly, slipping from her cheek to her mouth, and he brushed his thumb across her lower lip. It moved, pliant, with his touch in a way that made her whimper and arch her back to move closer to his hand, when he touched his own lips to her forehead for just a second. Just a flutter of a moment.
A kiss in the way that felt so out of place, here in his bed, but she knew what it meant. He'd pressed it to her forehead before, a handful of times, in moments of utter panic, whenever he'd been afraid. Accompanied by a litany of words she'd heard from him so many times before, but didn't know where they came from, why they were always the same, because she'd never asked.
He didn't need to say the words now. He didn't need to. She knew what it meant. I'm here. I'll protect you. You're safe. I'm here.
She blinked up at him, and it felt like slow motion in which her lashes flicked back up, but in that moment she felt that rip and jolt of the kind one felt when falling in a dream, and she jerked and woke up, and she was in the exact same scene except it wasn't the same at all, but still in Mamoru's bed.
But he wasn't awake, and the room seemed darker, and emptier, and her finger felt more naked.
She frowned. What a strange, but beautiful dream, she thought, as she turned to her side and toward Mamoru's sleeping form.
Even though it was no longer night, it was dark and gloomy outside, rain beating a soft rhythm against his tall windows, and his brow was creased and sweaty. His breath deep but labored, his eyes moving fast behind his lids.
Far from the peaceful face she'd just dreamed about. Plagued. Tormented.
Usagi swallowed with some difficulty, her throat constricting painfully. It was difficult seeing him like this, day after day.
It had been a couple months since they had beaten Galaxia. Since he'd come back. But he hadn't been the same.
And while it hadn't been the first time he'd died, far from it, it was nothing that anybody could ever get used to. She knew this, of course. Like she knew it wasn't the dying part he was despairing over in his dreams. It was leaving her behind to face the threat that killed him.
He had difficulties talking about it. He closed up, whenever she brought up the subject. It felt like pulling teeth, and it didn't help him. It wasn't easy for him, he'd said. That he'd never learned how to share what hurt. And she knew that was an understatement. Day after day, the mask was firmly in place, as he was trying to be what he deemed as 'strong', but was so, so lost. She saw it, of course. She didn't need to see him with his nightmares for that.
But she'd learned he dreamt a little better when he got to hold her in his arms. And so she'd snuck out ever since, and spent most nights at his place.
It was the least she could do.
She reached out her hand, the same way she'd done just a moment before in her dream, and touched trembling fingers to his brow, stroking across the small black hairs of his eyebrows with light pressure, trying to ease the tension in his face. The way her mother had used to do when she was little and had those awful headaches that sat between her eyes.
But his frown turned deeper and his jaw locked in that stubborn way of his. Always so stubborn. Always keeping everything in.
She wiggled further up, and replaced her fingers with her lips, kissing his brow ever so lightly, and he stirred.
It tasted salty. As if his very skin was crying.
He jerked awake with a startled, silent gasp. Frightened, haunted eyes flying open, as he twitched, meeting hers.
It was the only time of day his eyes weren't guarded. Where he forgot to hide the vulnerability. Where he grabbed at her arms to make sure she was there, and he was, too.
She appreciated and dreaded this moment in equal measure, every day.
She exhaled, slowly. Stroking her thumb across his cheek.
"Good morning, Mamo-chan," she said. But this time not with a smile, but with a sigh.
He blinked. His breath came fast, and within moments, his face seemed taut again, and the emotion vanished from his eyes when he smiled at her. Small, and for her benefit alone, she knew.
"Morning, Usako," he replied. His voice was hoarse and raspy. The smile didn't reach his eyes.
She sighed, but smiled back.
Her dream flitted away like a dream usually did, only bits and pieces remaining. An impression really, but one that left her with longing, even when she didn't remember what for, but when later that day she stopped on her way from school in front of the little, owner run store she'd passed by all her life but that suddenly called to her, and she bought white, soft, lace curtains on a whim, and she bowed and smiled and kept smiling to herself on the way out, she nearly jumped out of her skin when she found Setsuna standing in her path, looking at her intently.
Setsuna smiled that warm, but slightly detached smile of hers, and walked with her, then. Walked her to a little bistro around the corner that Usagi had never been to, and indulged her in the biggest fruit parfait on the menu, which Usagi gobbled down with happy sighs and eyes rolling back into her head that made the taller woman hide a chuckle.
It wasn't that out of the ordinary, Setsuna had said. Explaining about time and déjà vu, how it really wasn't linear at all, sometimes, especially when one had violated it as often as Usagi had done in her time. And how time had the tendency to protect itself, sew together any unusual wounds by ways of the fleeting, flimsy thing that was the human memory.
That dreams sometimes weren't dreams. That she had nothing to worry about.
And that it would happen to her again, two more times.
Usagi had frowned, the tall spoon clanking in her tall glass, but Setsuna hadn't said any more, how ever much she asked.
Usagi had gone home then, hadn't realized that it was the first time she had referred to Mamoru's place with that word, that the assignment was very, very new. But she'd gone home either way, and told Mamoru. About her dream. About what Setsuna had said. About not worrying. And he had frowned, and listened, and grabbed her hand a little harder, as if he would lose her through time at any moment.
It took him a minute, but then he smiled that smile without a smile, and promised to take good care of her if he ever found her where she wasn't supposed to be. And her heart fell, because she felt it was time he let go of the need to take care of her all the time, and to let her return the favor.
And then he'd frowned again, and gave her a peculiar look.
"Do you think it's happened before?" he asked.
The look she threw him was confused. Setsuna had said it was the first time...
He shook his head. "No, I mean, in the future... your next ones…"
She frowned again. Hadn't he just said 'before'?
He shook his head, once more, and then smiled, instead. "Nevermind," he said.
It was months later, when it happened again, that the conversation came back to her, and she looked at Mamoru in that ugly green jacket that suddenly looked newer and less worn out, and his features looked a little rounder, less pronounced, but the frown was so much deeper.
Has it ever happened before, he'd asked. As in, do you think you will ever jump into the past. Should he be able to remember if it ever has…
This time, she was herself. In the clothes she'd worn that day, not in those that she wore when she was 14.
It was dark, and the way Mamoru ducked and held his arm in an awkward way, keeping to the shadows on his way across Juuban, it was apparent that he'd just come from a fight.
And that he was alone meant that this was before they knew they were on the same side, and who they wore.
Her throat constricted. This was such a lonely time for Mamoru. All alone, searching for a crystal, only to be…
She shook her head. She didn't want to think of this. Instead, she quickened her steps. She didn't know how much time she had.
She was surprised he didn't hear her coming. But the low, painful groans he made indicated how very battered up he was. She wondered who it was they'd fought that night…
"Hello, Mamo –" She caught herself. "—ru-baka," she said with a wince, and in a whisper. It felt so utterly wrong.
He stiffened, before he turned. She could only just make out the painful flinch right as it disappeared from his face completely. As he willed on that playful smirk, the sardonic front, the mask he used to wear that hid him so much more than Tuxedo Mask's had ever done.
"Odango Atama. What are you doing here this late? Shouldn't you be home writing love letters to Motoki?" he said with a slight a half-smile. It didn't reach his eyes at all.
It made her start.
Right. She remembered this. All the times he used to tease her about her crush on Motoki. Telling her she'd never stand a chance. Every single time he reveled in calling out every ounce of childish behavior in front of Motoki. Or that time he went out of his way to tell her and Mako-chan that Motoki saw her as a little sister, the minute he'd heard it from Motoki.
She should have gotten this, sooner, shouldn't she?
But how could she have? She hadn't been able to read him behind the wall he put up around himself. Not back then, at least.
The look she gave him must have been intense, because he blinked, and looked away, a little flustered.
He'd always just been jealous. Who would have thought?
Usagi couldn't keep the giant smirk off her face, which made him fidget even more.
He cleared his throat. His voice was slightly unsure, when he started talking again. "Seriously, shouldn't you be—"
"What makes you think I'm not writing love letters to you?" she blabbered quickly, without blushing, interrupting him completely.
He stopped in his tracks. Threw her a startled look.
Her younger self, right then, would have started laughing embarrassedly. Would have started talking without thinking, to fill the awkward silence. Because Mamoru was unnerving. He'd always been unnerving. With those eyes that burned through her.
But she'd been with him long enough, by now.
Instead, she took a long, confident step, invading his personal space in one single movement. Felt his chest move against hers when he inhaled sharply.
She moved up on her tiptoes, and realized with a start that either she'd grown since this time – or that he had, as well, since she'd known him like this. They were closer in height. Closer in age.
She didn't kiss him, but felt his erratic breath on her lips when she brought up her hand, brought her hand to his mouth and felt the soft skin of his lips, in a way she knew he hadn't done to her before, and yet… somewhere, in the back of her mind...
She felt his lips tremble, when she ran her thumb across his lower lip, and it moved, soft and warm, under the pressure of her touch. Eerily familiar, yet totally new.
She flicked her eyes up to his, and his eyes were wide, but unreadable, until she felt him bend, slowly, leaning in…
Until something snapped in his eyes and he withdrew. Taking a step back and away from her, her hand hanging in the air in front of them.
She knew his heart was beating a mile a minute, matching hers – she'd felt the tremble in his very form, the warmth of his lips that was unnaturally heightened, the way he'd practically buzzed under her touch. And yet his outward appearance was completely controlled. Completely composed.
Of course, their moment didn't last long. The second he had straightened up, his lips had pursed and the mask was back in place, and he turned to face the red-cobbled street again, as if to dismiss her.
"You should go home. It's late," he said. His voice was clipped. Closed off. "It's not safe outside for you this late."
She sighed. Quickened her steps once more, to keep up with his lengthening stride.
It was peculiar, really. When she remembered these days right here, she remembered Tuxedo Mask most. Those rare moments he had opened up. Spoken from his heart. Shared.
Mamoru never had.
"It's strange," she said out loud, without thinking, without noticing. "You always were so much more hidden without the mask…"
He inhaled sharply at that, whipped around to her with shocked eyes and a wince, searching her eyes.
When she once again didn't react like he would have been used to her, he straightened up, turned slightly away, and ran a hand through his hair.
Only then did she notice the blood on the jacket, when he lifted his arm. The big, dark patch of blood on his shoulder.
She inhaled sharply.
The injury he'd gotten from Zoisite's attack. Which meant, tomorrow… Tomorrow he would die, and be taken, to be hurt and brainwashed, until…
Her eyes flew to his, and she grabbed his arm.
"Mamo-chan!" she exclaimed, and the look he gave her would have been priceless, if it weren't for…
She needed to warn him. Don't go to Starlight Tower. It's a trap. They'll kill you.
She opened her mouth, ready to scream it all at him in rapid succession, but it wouldn't come out, like screams that don't come out in nightmares, however hard you tried. And with her next, panicked intake of breath and violent shake, she was back where she'd been. At her coffee table – with her face on her pesky, annoying, senior year homework.
Her heart beat wildly, and she looked around the room, as if a youma would jump from behind her curtains any moment, but she couldn't place what had caused her to react that way, any longer.
She frowned, tried so hard to remember. Almost like fog she tried to catch. But faster than the last time, it was gone from her memory.
She fumbled to get to her phone, dropping it twice in her haste, before she'd had Mamoru's number dialed.
She almost cried when he answered, bewildered at her panicked tone, so worried he was almost out the door toward her. She had no idea why she'd needed the sudden reassurance that he was ok…
And after she'd managed to reassure him that everything was, in fact, ok – she'd only woken up from a nightmare, and didn't even know what it was (thus, the type of terror he could very much relate to), and he should just go back to what he'd been doing – he'd stayed on the phone and let her talk, until he'd slipped through her window, phone still at his ear, and she'd started crying in relief.
But of all the times she'd jumped, it was the time she would have given anything for to keep. The last one that she'd begged time to let her remember.
It had happened mere days after what she was sure had been the second jump, even when all that remained was a distinct feeling.
This time, she found herself standing in a playground. Bright and colorful and somehow sad, here in the setting sun.
It took her a moment to understand where she was. To understand why the noises coming from this playground were somehow … off. Even when one took into account how few kids were currently here.
There were no mothers around to yell instructions or shrill warnings in hushed tones.
It took her a moment longer to spot the mob of midnight black hair, hidden underneath a worn looking baseball cap.
He sat alone on the swing set. Little legs halfheartedly pushing into the sand – not even hard enough to bring him into motion, just to make him rock slightly back and forth.
Two groups of kids were playing in either direction of him, some of them shooting him wary, sad looks. And even though he sat technically in the middle of all the space available – he physically couldn't have been further away from any other child in this playground.
Almost as if they were shunning him and the very space around him.
Her throat constricted, even when her legs started moving in his direction on her own volition.
One or two kids shot her curious looks as she started into motion, but he didn't look up, when she settled into the swing beside his. Only a glance in her direction, out of the corner of her eye. But she saw the way his lips turned hard when he pressed them together. He still did that today, whenever she asked him about the nightmares.
She exhaled before she started talking.
"How come you're not playing with the other kids?" she asked softly.
He shrugged. The chain of his swing rattled a bit with the movement.
But he didn't supply an answer. Not that she'd expected one.
She glanced quickly at the group to her right. Four kids were chucking marbles at a battered, almost vintage looking action figure.
"Don't you like the game there are playing?" she tried again.
No answer.
"Don't they let you play?" she whispered, the thought making her shiver.
He pursed his lips, pressing them together even more tightly than before, into a thin, taut line.
"It's not that they're not playing with me," he said, finally. Tone annoyed, petulant. "I'm not playing with them."
Usagi sighed. In the grey building in front of him, a rather dim light sprang on, unsteady and flickering, and the marble group shot inside with loud whoops, and so did the two girls playing hopscotch.
Mamoru didn't move a muscle, except that he exhaled in a loud sigh. It sounded relieved, and caused Usagi to frown.
"They switched on the TV," he explained. "They're allowed to watch for an hour."
"Ah," Usagi made, nodding.
The swing creaked, as Mamoru's little feet pushed into the sand.
"Are you new?" he asked. Still that annoyed 'can't you leave me alone' tone in his voice.
She turned in her swing a bit, smiling down at him in a sheepish, apologetic way, one eye closed with half of a shrug. She couldn't quite tell him she came from the future, right?
Instead of answering, she sighed, looking at the grey building with a frown. "Why don't you want to play with them, then?"
He shrugged, and kicked the sand. She didn't think he would answer… until he did, with almost no sound to it. "I know they're only doing it to be nice to me. I make them uncomfortable. They think I'm weird."
His voice was so high. So adorable. So young. So sad.
She whirled around, causing the chains of her swing to rattle loudly. "You're not weird!" she exclaimed, and then blushed and covered her mouth with her hand, when he looked at her confused.
His little nose all wrinkled up in a way that made her feel the urge to pinch his cheek and take a photo. She did neither, of course, and the wrinkles in his forehead smoothed over, dismissing her comment for something a caretaker was supposed to say.
"I am, though," he whispered softly, barely audible. "Everyone thinks so."
Usagi pursed her lips and crossed her arms. "Then they don't know you."
And when she looked over, she saw his little face crinkle in a little smile, and turn into a sad sigh, and go back to a little smile. His eyes flew up to her then – noticing her surprise at what she found there, no doubt. And like a scared little kitten his features froze, and he withdrew into himself immediately.
It made Usagi stop in her tracks. For a second, his face had been open. Unguarded. Untrained to keep his emotions in check, yet.
The mask was firmly in place, but it was spotty. He didn't have it under control, here, yet. Or at least, not fully. Only traces of it were there, which she saw now, when he once again pulled his lips into a thin line and breathed heavily through his nose, glaring at the grey building in front of him.
Mamoru had told her once, how hard the orphanage had been for him. He'd said it in passing, and not in those words, with a shrug and a 'It's not a big deal' type of face she'd learned early on to dismiss and see what was beneath, but… this was when he was in a place where everyone around him grieved, or was angry with people that abandoned them. He'd said once, when she asked about his powers, how it was in the beginning. He'd said it had been hard to pretend he didn't know what others felt in the beginning. How he'd shut himself away, because he hadn't known how to deal with those powers that he didn't understand. That, sometimes, he hadn't been able to tell apart if it were his feelings or theirs. That he would get angry for no reason, throw tantrums that weren't his. Or started crying for more people he didn't know that weren't his parents, when someone grieving passed him by.
A time where all those feelings just had no way to go – in a world that didn't teach him how to talk about emotions. That taught him instead that emotion wasn't for him in the first place, that they were something to lock away and keep inside and never show. Taught him to be stoic and hard and resilient, that a boy should better not feel at all … when all he did was feel, and he couldn't tell a soul.
"It's hard, isn't it?" she asked softly, her voice hitching a little. "You can't let them know how much it hurts you to feel all the things they feel…"
Big, shocked, midnight blue eyes flew to hers. Then they turned wary.
"N-No…"
As if it was a test. Ever the sceptic, her Mamo-chan. Even back then.
But she just continued.
"And that they can't tell what you feel, like you can do with them. There's no one here who knows how you feel. And that there's no one here you can talk to about any of it…" she whispered, and he swallowed.
"It's very lonely, isn't it?" she said, voice breaking.
He stared at his feet. A stubborn glare on his face, but he was completely still.
Until his eyes were big on hers, and her heart broke. He wanted to, she saw it. He wanted to open his mouth and share it all, but he simply… couldn't. He was too afraid, and he didn't have the words.
She saw it, the glassy way his eyes shone, and she cocked her head. He hiccupped, but almost growled.
"It's ok," she whispered. "You can cry."
He threw her a watery glare. "I'm a boy. Boys don't cry," he hissed, anger flashing through shining eyes.
Usagi shook her head vehemently. "That's the most silly, crippling thing you'll ever believe…" she whispered, almost desperate. "If you keep it in it will just keep hurting you."
She said the last words calmly. She hadn't even finished them, when the first tear fell.
First one, then two, and then his little eyes bubbled over, and he started weeping. His hands immediately lifted to hide his face, sobs wracking his little, fragile form.
Usagi flew up from her seat on the swing set, to kneel in front of him with her knees in the sand. The swing he sat on moved erratically with his sobs, as he pushed angry fists at the tears.
Usagi's throat constricted, and she couldn't help it. This was not a strange child, this was her Mamo-chan, and so she wound her arms around his sobbing form, and pressed her lips to his little forehead, trying to soothe him.
The words she whispered came naturally, memorized by him even when she realized this must have been the first time he would ever hear them.
I'm here. I'll protect you. You're safe. I'm here.
Repeat. Over and over, and he cried, and clutched at her arms and dress in a way that made her heart break. She kept whispering when he broke free of her arms and the fists returned to his face.
She lowered her arms immediately, and knelt back. She would never force him into an embrace he wouldn't want.
Her legs started cramping from the kneeling position in the sand, but she barely noticed, every fibre of her focused on this little boy who would grow up to be the moody boy she would meet in front of Osa-P one day, who would eat her burnt cookies and cry in his sleep.
On this little boy who needed her right now.
"I just wish I weren't so alone. Or that I didn't mind. That I were as strong as they say I should be," he cried. "But it's so hard," he said. It was quiet, muffled by the crook of his arm into which he mumbled it, but he didn't try to stop the tears.
She sighed, noticed only then that her own face was wet, and lifted her hand to carefully run it over his hair. His arms lowered momentarily, to throw her that surprised, watery look again, with those big, big children's eyes that were still her Mamo-chan's.
"You're not always going to be this alone, Mamo-chan," she whispered. "I promise. And it's not weak to share emotion. To ignore it when people keep telling you that you can't. I promise that, too."
He nodded, still that wondrous, surprised look, and the sobs came harder, but he didn't hide the tears now anymore.
She smiled. "You're as strong now as I've ever seen you."
He frowned through his tears. And why wouldn't he, she knew that. To him, she was a stranger. No way she could know his name. No way she could know if he was ever strong or not. It didn't make sense.
But in that moment, it seemed he didn't care. He didn't care who she was or where she came from. He only cared that she cared.
And so she wasn't surprised when he practically fell off the swing and into her lap, and buried himself as far into her embrace as he could, and she could feel the dampness on her dress that his tears left behind, but all she could do was try not to sob herself as she wound her fingers through his hair, again and again.
Especially when this heartbroken, lonely, little version of her love begged her to stay.
She knew he wouldn't remember this. Neither would she. And so, like a fairy tale, to the soundtrack of his sobs, she told him of magic crystals and princes and princesses from a world long gone, and that he would find her one day, and she would never leave him alone again, and it would all make sense.
She knew he wouldn't remember this, just as she wouldn't, either. But she forgot that echoes still lingered, anyway. Forgot that he knew to say that litany of words with that kiss to the forehead, forgot that she knew in her heart he would be carefree one day,… forgot that those dreams he had had of the moon princess and the silver crystal he'd had as long as he could remember had to have come from somewhere… even when they couldn't place where it had all come from.
The sob came later, when suddenly the hair she ran her fingers through was still the same, but not at all. Like a jolt – and she realized she'd fallen forward and her eyes had drooped closed.
They were on his couch. He'd fallen asleep reading a book, and she'd apparently napped alongside. Her fingers were still buried in his hair.
She tried to hang on to the dream, but faster than the other ones, it was gone, even when she knew she needed to stay, she was needed there… and her heart clenched more painfully than ever before.
Her anguished sobs woke him up.
His arms wound around her, and she hiccupped salty tears into the crook of his trembling neck, and clawed her hands into his shirt, and whispered things into his skin that she didn't know why she was saying them.
You're not alone. I'm here. You're not alone.
Desperate, clinging, almost begging.
She didn't know what changed that night. Why, afterwards, he finally talked. Why the mask finally fell, and he explained to her how hard it was for him to know he had not been able to protect her when she needed him most. That is was so deep in him that it hurt, this profound need to protect – it was his very name, after all – and yet, he couldn't protect what was most dear to him. How hard it was to face the fact that he'd failed her so many times, by now, and would fail her again, because she was the one who protected him, and all of them. The one who outshone them all.
How much it all terrified him.
How he'd always been his worst enemy. Always crippling himself by expectations he had of himself he could never have been able to keep in the first place.
She didn't know why he finally let her in, finally let her hold him and let her try to kiss and chase and shoo it all away. She didn't know what had changed.
But he never ever said again, after that night, that he'd never learned how to let it all go.
AN: So… there you go. And if you recall, it did have a happy ending. Except, y'know, in true time travel linearity f***-uppery, the happy ending was in the very beginning ;)
Thank you, forever and always, to my wonderful beta, UglyGreenJacket, who is always so full of encouragement and praise for me 3
Let me know if you liked it, please!^^
And I hope you, Sequencefairy, liked it most of all!