Every Cloud

Title: Every Cloud

Author: kazeko

Show: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon

Rating: PG

Timeline:

Series: prequel to "Crystal Shards"

Multipart: yes

Chapters: 6

Couples: Usagi/Mamoru, Neptune/Uranus (future)

Time: Sailor Moon R, after Mamoru broke up with Usagi, during Emerald's reign

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon, duh.

AN: There's a couple of things that won't make sense in "Crystal Shards" if you don't read this fic. Also, while you're here, you could review . . .

Title: "Kurushimi" means "pain/anguish (physical or emotional)"


Chapter 2: Kurushimi


Doctor Mizuno Kae was not expecting anything strange to happen that day. She hummed softly to herself as she filed her daily paperwork, wondering what her daughter was up to on a Friday afternoon. In the past, she could always be found studying, but now that she had friends, real friends, she could be found with them more often than not. Sometimes they would all study together, but sometimes they just talked. Or fought.

Kae paused in her work and leaned back as she thought about her daughter, absently chewing on the end of the pen she had been using to sign forms. Sailor Mercury. It wasn't the safest after school activity, but her daughter was one of the five protectors of Tokyo and Japan. If Ami had never become Sailor Mercury, there was a good chance that there would be no more Tokyo. Kae was proud of her daughter, though she worried that the little blue-haired girl would come home with something broken one day. Or worse, not come home at all. Recently, Ami had confided in her mother that all of the Senshi had died once, fighting Galaxia and protecting their princess, Usagi, and ever since then Kae could never stop worrying about Ami and her friends whenever the senshi were seen fighting on the news.

There was a sudden commotion in the lobby, and Kae dashed out to see what had caused so many people to begin talking at once. She stopped still, eyes wide, at the sight of four senshi, all moving as if injured, Mars's blood covering her white uniform and gloves, Jupiter carrying a limp burden. Kae gasped when she realized that the blonde in Jupiter's arms was Usagi, Ami's friend, Sailor Moon. She dashed forward, easily taking control of the situation, catching her daughter's eye. "What happened?"

"We were fighting a youma in the park," Mercury answered, knowing that her friends were too upset to speak. "This girl was injured. We took out the spines and cleaned her wounds as well as possible, but I think the spines were poisoned."

Kae snapped orders at three of the nurses hovering in the lobby, and the rest of the people scattered. Kae led the senshi to the closest operating room, calling for fluid as she glanced at Usagi. "She's pale. How much blood did she lose?"

"A lot," Mercury whispered. "Two of the seven spines went all the way through. I think one of them punctured her right lung."

Kae and the senshi were alone for a moment in the operating room, and Kae moved closer to her daughter as Jupiter carefully placed the injured girl on the operating table. Her blood stained the white cloth. "What's her blood type, Ami?"

"She's O. Same as Makoto."

"We'll need blood during the operation, and senshi blood is better than normal. Besides, we're running low on blood now because of the recent earthquakes in southern Honshu, and I'm afraid that . . . if there was a lot of poison . . ."

Mercury whispered something to Jupiter, and the senshi left, Mars and Venus at her heels. Minutes later, Makoto, Rei, and Minako returned. No one had seen them and no one could see through their glamours. Makoto sat on the empty bed beside Usagi as nurses entered and began prepping the unconscious girl for surgery. Kae glanced at Rei and told one of the nurses that the miko had also been injured in the battle and needed to have her wounds bandaged. Rei wouldn't leave until she was sure Usagi would live, so Kae made sure that she would be the next one looked after.

"Mizuno-san! The senshi left!" One of the other doctors entered, glancing at Mercury. "Well, except her."

"They returned to their senshi duties," Mercury answered, pulling out five poisoned spines and showing them to her mother. "These two were in the girl, and these two missed."

Kae passed the spines onto one of her colleagues as she readied for surgery. "Makoto-san is going to be giving blood. They're the same type." Mercury pulled out her little computer and began scanning Usagi, showing the results to her mother. The second doctor glanced at the girl lying on the white blankets, wincing as he examined the wounds. "Both lungs are hurt, though two of the spines hit her ribs."

Kae nodded as she joined the doctor beside Usagi, glancing at her daughter's computer. She waited until a nurse had prepared Makoto before she turned to her patient. "Let's fix those holes, shall we?"


"Ikuko-mama, where's Usagi?"

"I don't know, Chibiusa. She said she'd be home for supper." Ikuko finished setting the table as her husband entered the dining room and looked around. "Kenji, have you seen Usagi?"

"No. How long is she going to stay out with her friends, anyway? She'd better not be with that Chiba boy."

A knock on the door interrupted the conversations, and Ikuko walked over to let the guest in. When she saw Usagi's best friend Hino Rei standing before her, tears in her dark amethyst eyes, Ikuko trembled. Usagi's blonde friend Minako rested a steady hand on Rei's shoulder, sympathy in her blue eyes. "Tsukino-san," Rei began, her voice trembling, "we have to tell you something."

"Come in."

Rei and Minako entered the Tsukino house, taking a seat on the couch in the living room across from Ikuko and Kenji. When Chibiusa spotted the two grim senshi, she knew that something horrible had happened to Usagi, and she began to cry. Rei scooped the pink-haired girl into her arms and held her close, ignoring the pain from her wounds for the sake of the child. "Tsukino-san, Usagi is Sailor Moon." After discussing the best way to break the news for the past hour, Rei and Minako had decided that the blunt approach would be the easiest.

Ikuko nodded. "I suspected as much. After all, Luna is identical to the little black kitty that follows Sailor Moon around, and my daughter had that hair style since she was just a little girl." Kenji was too shocked to say anything, and Rei took the opportunity to continue before she lost her nerve.

"I'm Sailor Mars, Ami-chan is Sailor Mercury, Mako-chan is Sailor Jupiter, and Minako-chan is Sailor Venus. We were having our meeting this afternoon when Ami-chan sensed a youma in the park."

"What happened to Usagi?" Luna, her secret out, leapt down the stairs, her white partner just behind her. She looked at Chibiusa crying, and tears filled her eyes. "What?"

"It was really strong," Rei whispered. She lifted her shirt a little so the Tsukinos could see the bandages crossing her belly. Minako turned her arm so the two could see the healing cut on the side of her arm. "I was hit the worst in the first attack, though Usagi actually managed to escape that time. It cracked two of my ribs, and I was bleeding, though the pinpricks were shallow. I had trouble standing, and Usagi got really mad at the youma. She's a really good leader, and she's very powerful when one of her senshi is hurt. She hurt it with her tiara, and it attacked back while she was still standing with me. It threw twelve of its poisoned spines right at her. She could have gotten away easily, but she . . . she protected me."

"Oh no . . ."

"She's in the hospital," Minako whispered. "Ami-chan's mother had her in surgery for more than an hour, and Mako-chan's still there. She gave a lot of blood for Usagi."

"Is she going to be okay?" Ikuko's eyes were filled with tears, but she knew that her daughter was alive.

"A normal person would be dead," Rei whispered. "But she's a senshi and Mako-chan's blood helped. Ami-chan says that the only danger now is the poison. We came to take you to the hospital. You should be there if . . . when she wakes up."

Luna jumped into Rei's lap with Chibiusa while Artemis took his mistress's lap. "Rei-chan, it's not your fault," Luna whispered. "You couldn't have saved her."

"Tuxedo Kamen could have," Rei whispered, her voice dark with hatred. "How dare he not be there? His cape has stopped worse than a dozen spines. She's hurt because he never showed up. If I ever get my hands on him . . ."

"You won't have to," Luna whispered ominously, "not if I get there first."


Mamoru gasped as a pair of glowing eyes entered his living room from the balcony, fury in that gaze. Two red eyes sparked as Luna attacked him, claws leaving lines of fire down his chest. He rolled away, wondering what he had done, as he stared at the cat in his room. "Luna!"

"How dare you? I don't care if you don't want to be with her, but you have a duty as Tuxedo Kamen to protect Sailor Moon! How dare you NOT SHOW UP?" Luna leapt again, sinking her teeth into Mamoru's arm, kicking with her back legs as she scratched with her front. Mamoru managed to shake her off and dash into his bedroom, slamming the door and leaving the cat outside.

"I didn't do anything! She can fight perfectly well on her own!"

"Fight, yes," the cat hissed from the other side of the door, scratching at the wooden paneling. "But she has too soft a heart and when one of her senshi is in danger she'll sacrifice herself to save them! That's why you always have to save her because she worries too much about her friends. If left to her own devices, she'll die saving those girls. She doesn't understand that she has to live and that they are here to protect her. You are there to protect her from herself, but today you were not there."

Mamoru stiffened, and pain shot through him. He gasped, doubled over, as his shields cracked, just enough, and Usagi's feelings leaked through. He had blocked off their link for weeks, but now . . . her pain was like a fire in every vein in his body, and he fell to the floor, his head cracking against the door. "Fire," he whispered. "I feel like I'm on fire. What happened, Luna?"

"Why do you care? You didn't care enough to be at the battle. You were always there, even after you stopped dating her, why did you choose TODAY of all days to give up your duty to your princess?"

"Please, Luna. What happened?"

"You will have to go see for yourself, though Rei-chan tells me that she isn't awake. The doctors fear that she won't ever wake up again."

"No," Mamoru whispered, trying to block off the link again as he sat up. He was only partly successful.


Usagi's breathing was shallow, and her skin incredibly pale under the tubes and wires that were helping to keep her alive. Her parents sat beside her, not saying a thing, and Chibiusa held Usagi's limp hand, lending her all the strength she had. In her mind she could see her own mother lying just like that, and she felt tears fill her eyes as she realized that Usagi was her mother, just much younger. "Please wake up, mommy," Chibiusa whispered. "You have to wake up."

Luna, who had returned from her mission with blood on her claws and murder in her eyes, sat on the bed with her mistress. No one asked her what she had done; nobody cared. Rei slipped into the room, sitting beside Usagi and touching her forehead. "Usagi, thank you. You saved my life. If Tuxedo Kamen was there, he could have saved you. I'll never forgive him for this."

Usagi moaned and rolled toward Rei's voice, but she was hopelessly lost in her dreams. Chibiusa began to cry again.


Makoto heard the commotion in the hall, and she slipped out of Usagi's room to see what the problem was. She automatically moved into a fighting stance when she recognized the visitor as Mamoru, and the orderly who had been questioning the black-haired man quickly moved away from the two. "What are you doing here?"

Mamoru's eyes widened at the hostility Makoto was displaying. "I came to see her."

"You can't go in there. You're the reason she was hurt in the first place."

"I don't even know what happened!"

"What do you care? Go away, Chiba."

"I won't leave until I see her."

"You'll leave now," Ami whispered, coming up from behind him, one arm bandaged but perfectly fit. Rei was behind her, purple eyes glowing like two coals. Minako crossed her arms over her chest as she stepped up beside Makoto, one homicidal cat on either shoulder. "Get away from Usagi and out of this hospital."

Having never seen Ami angry at anyone and unwilling to face the threat of four very pissed senshi, Mamoru decided to leave and try again later. "I will see her."

"If you come back here, you'll have need of a doctor," Rei whispered, her voice full of dark power and fury. As Mamoru vanished, she ushered the senshi back into Usagi's room as Doctor Mizuno entered the room with the test results from the poison.

Ami took the sheets and pulled out her computer as Makoto closed the door. "I see. My computer is having about the same luck. This poison is sophisticated and very dangerous. She's running a temperature . . . I don't think any of us can do anything. The ginzuishou might be able to help, but she's the only one who can wield it. I would suggest more senshi blood, but Mako-chan's the only one with O-type blood, and she can't give any more for a while."

"We can try normal blood transfusions for a while. We're trying to flush the poison out of her system with a lot of fluids, but we don't know how successful we'll be."

Ami smiled. "Thank-you, Mother, for everything. We can only hope."

"And we can help her by keeping that baka Chiba away from her," Rei hissed, fists clenched.

Minako glanced at the window, taking charge as leader of the senshi in Usagi's absence. "Since tomorrow is Saturday, we can each take a shift tonight to guard her from outside. The hospital will be closed to visitors, so he won't get in that way. Tomorrow we or her family will be here all day, and her father's homicidal attitude toward any man who would dare date his girl will help. Her mother knows what happened between Usagi and Chiba, and she'll get rid of him if he shows up. Also, I want Chibiusa to sleep with us until Usagi's better."

"She can stay with me tonight," Rei whispered. "It's my fault her protector was hurt, so I have to make it better." The other senshi glanced at her, but they knew that no one could cheer the miko up except her princess.

"Okay. Then you won't have a shift until tomorrow morning when you can bring her with you. Mako-chan, you take her tomorrow night and walk her to school in the morning. I have already talked to the Tsukinos, and they agree that Chibiusa has to be protected. And that means from Mamoru-san, too. He's not allowed to see either of them, and if he tries to talk to one of you, ignore him."

"What about in a battle?"

Minako turned to Ami and thought for a moment. "If Tuxedo Kamen wants to fight, let him. But we aren't responsible for his safety and we won't depend on him for ours or Chibiusa's. Everyone understand?"

"Hai!"


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