YES YES YES! I have a pulse & I'm breathing! And I have something new! I got inspired today in class since I did all my homework on break (Yes I'm a nerd but I like my home time to be all mine), so I wrote something on Ami since my field is medical & hers is too! 2 & a quarter handwritten pages! That's quite alot for a spur of the moment plot bunny. For now this is a one shot but I have a few ideas skating around in my head. No promises though but good reviews help! =D Also this Saturday (7/3/10) is my birthday so WOOHOO!
I'm in the United States & the whole world basically knows we got screwed out on A LOT of Sailor Moon stuff so even though this is an AU fic, don't flame me. Ami's family isn't discussed in detail even in Japan so I decided to write a small backstory on how *I* think they met. In the live action show, Ami's mother finally got a name, so I'm using it here but I made up a maiden name. I made up a name for Ami's dad. And don't tell me "that is NOT how Amy talks. The AU notice is there for a reason & she's still a teenager anyway so I doubt she's proper all the time. I wrote this in a way that Amy is speaking to you, much like in the story I wrote about a million years ago in high school. They're completely separate though so dont worry if you have read "As told by Amy".
Also, this part of the story is for my Twilight/Trek/talk on Aim for the longest buddy Morgan! =D! Thanks for betaing my story! Her author name is KD Skywalker! Go read her fics but nag her over "Lost & Found" because that was the first fic of hers I read & I've been patiently ::coughcough(nagging, begging, demanding)coughcough:: waiting over a year for it to be finished...
Disclaimer: I don't own Ami or the Sailor Moon franchise, but the story idea & the stuff I made up to go with it is MINE MINE MINE! And I've never been to Japan but I worship it so forgive me if locations aren't perfect. I took great care to be a good as possible but I'm human.
Secret Hearts
My parents are complete opposites of each other. My mother, Saeko Hasegawa was a pre-med student at Tokyo Medical University (TMU) when she met my bohemian artist father, Hiraku Mizuno, who got the bare essentials of education before leaving Hokkaido for Tokyo. Actually they are extreme opposites but they still attracted each other nonetheless.
Mom envied dad's free spirit, picking up & going at the spur of the moment. Being bound by lab & class schedules made dating difficult but dad persisted He was a simple cook but the midnight dinners & midmorning snacks eventually won my mother over.
When she completed her fall classes, she was ahead & decided to use the winter to get to know my father better. According to dad, there wasn't much to tell. Being born into a fishing family provided a comfortable living but left little for wants. So when dad discovered his passion for drawing in elementary school, he would take pieces of coal & sketch on any free space he could, even inside schoolbooks. Dad believes that art school teaches boring, restrictive standards so that was never in his future. He used to say that art school only teaches you to copy what great master artists learned on their own & he wanted to be the same way.
Instead he would "take to the streets", as he called it & find the inspiration there. All of my father's work is wonderful but I think he's at his best with portraits. I now have countless books filled with years of his artwork. Family members sketched in coal, rich strangers who financed dad's pencils when he got to be well known & then my absolute favorite. The two page family portrait he made soon after I was born. Dad made a small copy on canvas for my bedroom.
By the time he was 18 & graduated high school in early spring, he made enough money to buy fresh pencils, a new sketchbook & a ferry ticket to Tokyo. Already a self-made man & barely out of high school.
When he finished his new book, he had enough money to get his first apartment in the shopping district. Mom described it as a shoebox with a stove but at least it was his. She would go there during her school breaks & day's off since she still lived at home & neither of them had much 's why dad said he used his frozen north cooking skills to woo mom.
I'm not quite a shotgun wedding baby since dad said he proposed a week before mom got the test results a few days after Christmas, but it did move up the wedding date a few months. The only reason they found out so quick is because mom was assisting a fellow student in the phlebotomy class & gave a blood sample for testing. It was quite a surprise when mom got the results from the Professor, who gave his congratulations thinking mom knew already. Only dad's brother, who went to college in Osaka was able to make it. Love is all that matters in a relationship, not the size of the wedding. Dad said all that mattered to him was that mom showed up after the new year to get married at Cherry Hill Temple, where I met Rei 14 years later! Fate is funny, isn't it?
When I was born September 10th later that year, dad said his greatest inspiration entered the world. That always used to embarrass me when I was younger but now I miss hearing him say that out loud. Not that mom doesn't love me or anything! She's just not very...vocal with her feelings. Writing it on paper or dry erase boards is easy but not the same. I think because dad was mom's great love & when that ended (or so I thought), she retreated into herself but left a small part open to get through to me.
It wasn't that they got sick of each other, I think dad got tired of people talking badly about mom. People didn't exactly whisper their disproval of him & my parents relationship. Some girls my mother considered friends at school asked her outright once when I was about 3 why she "married down". We weren't rich at the time but we weren't scrapping the pavement either but to them, coming from an upper middle class background & marrying the son of a fisherman was considered a downgrade. My mother is not one to get snappy but her face turned into a scowl when she told them to mind their business & that she'd rather be low class than no class like they were. I study medicine now but I don't see anything about a human jaw dropping as low as those girls did! We didn't see them around after that.
When I was 7 dad said he was going to the woods to paint a new portrait & never came home. He left mother a note with a portrait of them from when the met. At first I hated my father. I thought it was selfish of him to just up & leave not caring about how this would make us look or how it would make me feel. I didn't understand the severity of it then. At first I thought my mother cried out of hurt believing that her friends & family were right about my father. It wasn't until I was 12 & putting away the laundry that afternoon I found the letter dad had written. But by then it was taped together, having been open & reread constantly, revered like a sacred treasure. It wasn't bitter & cold like I thought it to be. It was the sweetest, most tender letter I've ever seen, in the league of Shakespeare in my opinion. Dad wrote about how much mom & I meant to him & he wanted us to have a better life, even if it was without him. The 8 years with mom & I meant more to him than anything in this lifetime & even though he could never come back, he would have the memories to tide him over when the world got to be too much to bear alone.
I ended up falling to my knees crying too, much like my mother did 5 years ago, silently praying & mentally sending my father all the love that rushed back to me in that moment. Apologizing for not knowing & assuming the worst about him. This explained so much, like why my mother never spoke an ill word about him & would react in anger if I let a bitter statement about him slip from my tongue. Why she never took off her simple yet polished & well cared for wedding ring. They never really divorced as I led myself to believe! I now wish that I had done better with the postcards he sent for my birthday every year instead of pushing them into the back of the closet.
After I finished the laundry & carefully put the letter back as I found it, I went back to my room & pulled out everything I had of my father's. The books, the postcards, every scrap of paper I could find. I plastered the back wall & closet doors with everything. The portraits, landscape sketches, cartoon characters & symbols. It took hours, but I didn't stop until I heard my mother behind me. I had gotten so caught up in everything, I hadn't realized she even came home early. That was a rare but happy occurrence when she would bring home take out & we would eat dinner. The questioning look on her face made me laugh. I didn't want to tell her I inadvertently invaded her privacy so I told her I had merely been thinking about dad lately & I wanted him back home. Hearing that made mom break into a rare happy smile & she hugged me while looking over the wall. Seeing the memories flood back was a bittersweet pain but something we both needed. A reminder of her great love & one of my own inspirations.
So yeah, I'm in pre-med just like my mother was 18 years ago but I also do artwork on the weekends & my free time. I don't think my work is as good as my dad's but my landscape portraits aren't too bad. When I send dad scenes I created from the foreign places I visit from time to time with friends, it makes him happy. When I started doing that when I was 13, the postcards became letters & we spoke more often. Dad even began writing to mom. I haven't seen my mother reply to anything but I have a feeling she does but doesn't let me know. After all, a great love is like the embers of a fire. The hottest part that burns quietly but fiercely. It's near impossible to extinguish. It deserves to be treasured in secret hearts.