Take Me Away
A/N: Just a heads up before you all read this. This story is a Makoto/Ami companion piece to my Minako/Rei fic The Die is Cast. However, for all of you who have not read that fic, no worries. This story is written to stand on its own so you can understand the vast majority of it without reading the other one (though I do recommend it if you like the Rei/Minako pairing, I hear it's a good read ;).
Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon or any of its characters (as much as I might like to ;).
Chapter One: Back and Forth Inside My Head
Water.
It was fluid, encapsulating, unstoppable, sometimes inimical, uncontrollable, and the one life giving element on Earth. And for as long as she could freely walk on her own, Ami Mizuno had wanted to be in it.
And she knew why.
The cool waves surrounding her swimsuit clad body as she disappeared entirely beneath the surface whenever she went swimming formed for her a comfort blanket and a shield against the perils of the outside world and all the hurt they brought with them.
But the water and its comforts couldn't come with her everywhere. They couldn't come with her to school and enfold her in a translucent barrier against the insults of her classmates and their peers when they called her four eyes or bookworm. Nor could they follow her into her bedroom at night and shield her ears against he insults her parents were traded back and forth every evening when her mother would come home from work.
Ami was supposed to be asleep by the time her mother came home most nights, but she couldn't help it. She was too young yet to understand the concept of work at that age. All she knew was that her mother woke her up in the morning with a kiss goodbye and then was out the door before the breakfast her husband had cooked for her had even cooled to an edible temperature. Then she didn't return until long after the sun had gone down and the majority of the stars had become visible.
Ami missed her. She didn't care about this thing called work back in the days before she had learned to love it. All she had wanted then was her mother to herself. It was nice having Daddy home all day to play with, but her father's constant doting and playful antics couldn't replace her mommy's gentle laughter when Ami said something the adults found funny or her warm smile when she woke her daughter up in the morning.
Though Ami hadn't understood that her mother was busy with things as important or even more important than she was, it was still her only reality and therefore she accepted it without question, but her father had a hard time accepting the same thing.
Reality of any sort had never been Osamu Mizuno's forte and as a born artist, he tried to steer clear of it as much as was possible, but sooner or later it caught up with him as it had back then. He had never seen himself as a family man, but his obtaining one was a result of a young man's impulsive hormones and the heart of a hopeless romantic.
And it was a end result that was not working out very well.
Daddy yelled, Mommy yelled, every once in a while a door slammed and then there was the most frightening thing of all: the silence that stretched between the two when every last hurtful word had been uttered just before they turned their backs on one another.
Every night for the last four months was etched in Ami's memory within a similar format and she assumed it would be that way for a while, but one night it ended.
Daddy's voice had been the loudest, the most coarse, the most cold and even through the walls of the other rooms, Ami could tell that he was angrier than she had ever seen or heard him before.
He yelled, Mommy yelled back just as loudly. Then there was that scary silence again, the silence where Ami prayed for the water to come and wash her away from the place she found herself in, but it wasn't so. Daddy yelled again, Mommy yelled again, the door slammed and then Mommy did something she had never done before or since: she cried.
And nothing was ever the same again.
"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love."
-Washington Irving- (1783 - 1859)
A/N: I hope everyone enjoyed this beginning chapter. Stop by and drop me a review to tell me what you thought of it or what you think could be better. Thanks for reading and reviewing!