Author's Note: Well, here's another one-shot from me... Just my take on Haruka's/Amara's childhood. Set sometime after Sailor Stars.
Disclaimer: Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko-sama, and the song How Do You Love Someone belongs to Ashley Tisdale. I own only the plot.
She watched Michelle play with Hotaru, Trista a quiet and warm presence with the other two females. Silvery-green eyes were cold and dark with emotion, as she turned and walked away. She wanted to join them, but… She didn't know how. She climbed the stairs of the manor Outer Senshi called home, reaching the music room just off the bedroom she shared with her beloved more by memory than by actual sight. She was lost to her thoughts, seating herself at the piano and beginning to play out of pure instinct, as memories raced across her mind.
Mama never taught me how to love
She was six. They had just moved from Tokyo to Kyoto the year before. The other over-excited girls in her first grade class were talking about boys and feelings as if they were going out of style. She hadn't paid much attention, wanting to focus more on her reading. But, one word had caught her attention – love. It was perplexing to her; she didn't know what that was. And so, she had asked her mother when she arrived home from school. (Young as she was, she was already taking the school bus or walking to and from school by herself; Mother was sick, and Father worked so much she hardly ever saw him.)
Her mother, Kazeko, had simply looked at her as if she couldn't understand why the question had been asked.
Daddy never taught me how to feel
A few days after, she had posed the same question to her father, Arashiou, though in a different form. She had asked him if he loved her and her mother. He, there for one of the few times she would ever know, had simply looked at her blankly, coldly, and asked why such things as emotions – let alone love, of all the idiocy – should concern him. Then he had told her something she had relied upon for most of her following years.
He told her that emotions were weaknesses, and that weaknesses would only get you killed.
Mama never taught me how to touch
She was seven. She knew her mother was very sick, and didn't have much time left. When asked by her mother to go get her a glass of water – Kazeko was almost completely confined to her bed by then – she had refused. Despite what her father had told her, she cared for her mother, and wanted to be with her for as long as she could before she… couldn't anymore. The sound of flesh impacting upon flesh had the girl running from the room, desperately fighting the burning tears she could feel collecting and waiting to spill.
Father was right. Emotions were a weakness. Mother had just proved this.
Daddy never showed me how to heal
About a week later, she came home from school with a few nasty bruises on her face. Her mother was sleeping, but her father was, surprisingly, home when she arrived. He watched her as she got out the meterials she would need for her homework; she had math and reading that night, and even though the math problems weren't due for another two days, she would have them finished and turned in by tomorrow. She had always liked to excel in things, but her schoolwork was only done partially from that. In truth, it was mostly because she had nothing else to do when alone in the rather large house; she studied to pass the time. After a few moments of silence, her father asked what had happened to her face. She could tell he didn't care – it was clear in his voice, but she answered him anyways.
"One of the boys in my class got a hold of my braid at recess. Dragged me over to the basketball court, and had his friends hit me in the face a few times with the ball."
There was only the barest trace of hope for sympathy in her words. That hope was quickly crushed.
"And you say this as if I should care… Why?"
She started martial-arts classes, three times a week, two days later.
Mama never set a good example
She was five, two years before the previous events. They still lived in Tokyo, at the time. She watched from the crack her bedroom door was open, silent and scared. Her father was home for one rare night. He was shouting at her mother. When it became painfully apparent that Kazeko was doing nothing to fight back, simply taking the stinging words and cutting insults, she closed the door silently. Turning around, she leaned against the door, and slid down it into a sitting position. She listened to her father shout at her mother, and never once heard the woman say anything back.
She awoke the next morning, still seated against the door. No-one had come to see if she'd heard the shouting. No-one cared enough for that.
Daddy never held Mama's hand
She was seven again, just a few weeks shy of eight. She was advancing fast in the ranks for a child. As a reward for both that and her impeccable schoolwork – if her grades slipped, Sensei wouldn't allow her to come to class – she was allowed to invite anyone she liked to her next belt test. She knew of only two people she wanted to come, and hoped against hope that they would. And maybe, just maybe, they could act like a real family for once. Her hopes were dashed irreparably. Her parents did come, her mother in a wheelchair by this point when she wasn't in bed, and her father came about twenty minutes after her mother. They didn't stand close at all; her father didn't hold her mother's hand. Her father left soon after coming, clearly not interested, and her mother had to leave before everything was finished, as she was feeling worse than usual.
She received her belt rank promotion, and praise from her Sensei and Sempais, but victory had never tasted so much like defeat.
Mama found everything hard to handle
She was eight; it was the summer. Her mother was fading fast, and she would hear the woman crying every night. Other than this, the littlest things would set Kazeko's emotions to shatter; she hated seeing her mother like this, but knew the woman didn't really care about her.
She stopped talking to her mother when the fall began.
Daddy never stood up like a man
She was eight; it was December. Snow lay thick on the ground; it was deathly cold, and the funeral was eerily silent. Her mother hadn't had many friends, and few of the ones she had were even there. She supposed she had grandparents, but she had never met any of them. Her mother's parents certainly weren't there, that was for sure.
Her father wasn't there, either.
I walked alone, broken
She was nine. She watched her classmates and schoolmates form lasting friendships. She looked at the sparse group of acquaintances she had. She didn't know what a friend was, and so didn't bother to try and make any. Then, she met a redhead with startling green eyes. The girl had introduced herself; her name was Samantha Taylor, but she preferred to be called Sam. When she received no answer, only a blank stare, the girl had smiled a bit, an inexplicable sadness in her eyes.
"It's okay," Sam said. "I'm broken, too."
Emotionally frozen
She was ten. A girl in the lower grade asked her if she could help tutor her. She had merely looked at the girl.
"If you can't understand it, I see no reason to help you."
The girl was dumbfounded and hurt by her cold, emotionless words.
She didn't care.
Getting it on
She was eleven. She wanted, inexplicably, to join in a game during recess, rather than doing her homework. She spotted Sam and some other girls playing soccer, and walked over to them, her blond braid moving side-to-side with her movements. She waited for a break in the action before speaking.
"Might I please join your game?"
Getting it wrong
"Who the heck are you, freak?"
It seemed one of the girls didn't know her.
"That's Amara Tenou. She's best in sports in our entire class. She plays the piano, and has the highest grades in the entire school."
"She's cold and a snob and thinks everyone else is less than the dirt on her shoes."
And it seemed some did.
"Pardon me for disrupting your activities."
She made sure her voice was as icy as she could. She never knew why Sam followed her, instead of staying with the other girls.
How do you love someone,
Without getting hurt?
"Mother, I heard a few of my classmates talking about something, and I don't know what it is… Mother, what is love? What does that word mean?"
She received silence in return.
"Father, you love Mother and I, right?"
"Love… Of all the idiocy… Love is an emotion, and emotions are a weakness. Being weak and having weaknesses gets you killed. Remember that, kid."
How do you love someone,
Without crawling in the dirt?
She was twelve. Her father picked her up on the way home from school. She didn't ask why; she knew she would find out soon enough. She was informed that he would be gone for a month or two. She simply nodded. They arrived home, and he stayed only long enough to pack a bag and then leave.
That was when the last tiny bit of love she may have held for anyone or anything died.
So far in my life
Clouds have blocked the sun
How do you love, how do you love someone?
How do you love, how do you love someone?
Emotions… Love… Happiness… hat were these concepts? She didn't understand them. She didn't know how to understand them. She read about them, heard people talk about them, came close to feeling… something, when she was with Sam, but… Still nothing. She cut her hair during the time her father was away, and then burned the braid. She was done mourning for a woman she had never loved to begin with.
When her father saw what she had done, and didn't come back until her thirteenth birthday, she almost wished she could have felt something.
I was always the chosen child
She was fourteen. Second year of middle school, and already taking high school-level classes; straight-A student; the martial-arts and track prodigy, she had everything anyone could want. She had brains, beauty, she was tough as nails, and she was wealthy to top it all off. Her life was perfect. That was how others saw things.
They didn't know she couldn't feel emotions because she had never learned them.
They didn't know her mother had died when she was eight and that her father was hardly ever home.
They didn't know she had a secret that could and would shatter that perfect image of her.
The biggest scandal I became
She was fifteen. She came out, and found out why she should never speak of anything abnormal to her father. The physical pain she endured then made the slap her mother had dealt, being hit in the face repeatedly with a basketball, and even being backhanded for cutting her own hair seem like nothing.
Word got around fast, when she showed up in the boys' school uniform.
They told me I'd never survive
She was just shy of sixteen.
"I never wanted this to happen!"
"You deserve this, girl! You deserve this and so much more for what you are!"
"How could I possibly deserve to be raped, you crazy bitch?"
"You will not disrespect your mother like that, Amara."
"She isn't my mother and never will be! How the Hell could I deserve what happened!"
"You chose this, Amara. By choosing to be what you said you are – by choosing to be a filthy lesbian – you sealed your own fate."
His calm, cold voice, never once raised from the frigid monotone she had always known it to be, was what made the choice for her.
She ran away less than a week later; she lived on the streets for a time, before being taken in by Sam and her foster parents.
But survival's my middle name
She learned just two months later that she had been disowned completely. That just made her resolve stronger. She would show them. She had never needed anyone, and that wasn't going to start any time soon.
I walked alone, hoping
Just barely coping
Six months after she had run away from home and four after she had been disowned, she met and raced against Elza Grey. She vaguely knew the magenta-haired girl, and it seemed, after the race, that she would be meeting a friend of Elza's. Apparently this 'friend' had wanted to meet her for quite some time now.
And she still felt nothing.
Getting it on
Getting it wrong
Michelle Kaioh. What a strange girl. She knew too much, that was for sure; she wanted to change something she knew nothing about. That wouldn't be happening any time soon, pretty and captivating as she may have been.
She wouldn't be ripped from her life, not after she had worked so hard to get where she was.
How do you love someone,
Without getting hurt?
She looked at Sam, and put herself forth. She expressed herself as best she could.
"You… Are my best friend… I… Don't know… What I would do… Without you."
"Thanks, 'Mara."
Dismissive. Casual. So, Sam didn't really understand after all...
How do you love someone,
Without crawling in the dirt?
Her father simply stared at her. No, not at her, at her hair. It was summer; the nearly white blonde locks had been cut to just above her ears. It was a pretty good job, if she did say so herself.
"You cut your hair."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes. I did. D-Do you… like it?" She hated how she had to scrape for even a tiny amount of any indication that he cared. She hated it almost as much as she hated the stutter and hesitation in her words and in her voice.
When he hit her across the face, she tasted blood.
She wasn't surprised that it tasted like defeat.
So far in my life
Clouds have blocked the sun
How do you love, how do you love someone?
How do you love, how do you love someone?
How did one love? What was love, really? At sixteen, and though she had accepted her destiny, she wondered if she would ever know the answers to those questions.
It's hard to talk
About what's deep inside
She was seventeen. It was December. In fact, it was December 13th. She and Michelle had just rented a loft apartment in Osaka. She was quiet, much quieter than usual. Though they had only been working together – living together – for about half a year, the violinist picked up on her mood and asked what was wrong. She had wondered if she should say anything at all. Eventually, after struggling to say something, anything, she had opted for the simple truth.
"Today, nine years ago, my mother died."
"Oh, Amara… I'm so sorry…"
"Don't be."
Michelle took it as resignation about not being able to change the past.
She meant it as it sounded; the violinist shouldn't be sorry because she wasn't, either.
She never bothered to correct the smaller woman.
It's hard to tell the truth
When you've always lied
She was eighteen. It was December again. They were in Okinawa. Michelle asked her if she ever missed her family; it was implied that the violinist did. She said what her partner wanted to hear.
"Yes, I do miss them, very much."
She didn't think about how easy it was for her to lie; the words simply rolled off her tongue. Truth be told, it was second nature for her to lie by this point. In fact, it was almost pathological, but lacked any real malice.
She didn't know if she could tell the truth even if she wanted to – and, for some reason, she did want to.
She wanted to so very much.
How do you love someone,
Without getting hurt?
How do you love someone,
Without crawling in the dirt?
So far in my life
Clouds have blocked the sun
How do you love, how do you love someone?
How do you love someone,
And make it last?
She was nineteen. They were in Tokyo. Their mission was half complete – they had the Talismans, they had the Grail; now they just needed to find the Messiah of Light, and their duty would be fulfilled. At the moment, however, her mind was miles away from their mission, as she cleaned Michelle's wounds with surgical precision. The bullet wounds in both their bodies cleaned and dressed, they shared a moment of silence. Michelle made to speak, but she cut her off.
"You can say whatever you want when I'm finished, but… Please… Let me say this."
She took a deep breath, steadied herself as best she could, and then began in earnest.
"When I saw you, on the other side of that bridge… When you died… My life suddenly seemed completely worthless… As if it had absolutely no meaning, no purpose… Nothing without you in it… I… I don't know what I'm feeling, Michelle, or if… if I can feel anything at all… But I do know that I would rather die a thousand deaths than be without you."
She might have said more, but at that moment she found her mouth occupied with something much more enjoyable, as her partner kissed her for the first time.
How do you love someone,
Without tripping on the past?
She was twenty. She looked at the sleeping babe Michelle held. She didn't know what to feel – or, as she was still trying to figure out – if she really felt anything at all. She wondered what her parents had felt, when she was born, but quickly closed off that line of thought. She would view this as a new start; a chance to, hopefully, make up for her parents' mistakes. She just hoped she could one day love this little girl – Hotaru – how the child deserved to be loved.
The way she had never been loved until she met Michelle, and not even for a long time after that.
So far in my life
Clouds have blocked the sun
How do you love, how do you love someone
How do you love, how do you love someone?
She opened her eyes, as her fingers stilled over the keys. She felt soft hands on her shoulders, and looked up into equally soft sea-blue eyes. She allowed a small smile to touch her lips. She may not, at twenty-three, have yet found the answers to the questions that had plagued her since she was a small child, but she knew now, without a doubt, that she wouldn't be looking for those answers alone.
Because, even if she didn't yet really know what love was, instinctively she knew that was what she felt for Michelle.
Someone…?