It's Michiru's turn now. I didn't know the theme of this chapter until around half way through, but I like the way this one is. Michiru's so much more introspective then Haruka. Haruka may brood, but Michiru's always thinking about something so...It was interesting to say the least. But this one was just as easy to write, but it changed quite a bit from how I had originally planned the chapter. Originally, Michiru was going to be painting Haruka-but that ended up not happening at all. Ah well, some other time I suppose it'll show up.

As always, I've editted, but whatever slipped past me ignore-or shoot it, it shouldn't be there. And the same disclaimer as always.

Chapter 3-Push and Pull


Michiru wanted to scream. She wanted to let loose a sound that would surely startle any animal within a mile radius. She wanted to throw a temper tantrum and throw something expensive at a wall, preferably the horrid looking vase that the Saturn delegation had sent her for her 13th birthday. She wanted to complain until her throat was raw and her voice hoarse. But of course the one person she could ever complain to was away.

Oh curses on Haruka and her stupid dust storms on Uranus! She dragged a hand through a handful of wavy tresses and released a frustrated grunt. She could not go losing her cool and exploding in the palace. No. She was a princess. A Sailor Senshi. One of Serenity's trusted guardians.

But oh how those thick headed council men frustrated her! Why couldn't they understand the need for the two soldiers to spend more time together?

"They'll regret it when a major threat finally appears," she muttered hotly under her breath, briskly exiting the palace's echoing halls to make her way to somewhere more intimate. Granted, all the problems on the outer edges of the Solar System had been easily taken care of by the duo, but Michiru just had this itch at the back of her mind that told her that something very deadly was coming soon and they needed to be ready.

"I doubt that Haruka's even talked to her council…" That was another issue with the matter. Uranus's cocky attitude and ability to brush any concern Michiru may have about their mission aside without a thought in the world. Haruka was probably out in the vast plains of her planet, dancing with the winds she loved so much. Michiru huffed a sigh and her shoulders sagged. "I did tell her to go didn't I?" she shook her head, aquamarine tresses tumbling about her face, "So I'm really acting petty, aren't I?"

She remembered the look on her friend's face when a sentry had told the two soldiers of the dust devils that were brewing on Uranus. The way her eyes had gotten this strange light to them, and her lips twitched in a grin she had never seen before. She had seen how she wanted to go. But then she had flicked her eyes to Michiru and the look faded into something she was more accustomed to-the sly smirk and the light chuckle as she thanked the soldier for the information, but informed him that she would stay on Neptune.

Michiru wrung her hands together and frowned, hardly even registering the marble hallways fading past her and melting into open corridors where the sea breezes were free to pass through and the ocean was in clear view. What really bothered her was that Haruka did not jump at the chance to go right away. She had waited for Michiru's insistence to hem and haw over it and then finally go and take the trip. Why did it bother her so much?

"Haruka shouldn't need my permission," she told herself firmly, shaking her head again. There were other that people did need her permission for. Like touching her instrument, touching anything in her chambers for that matter, or deciding what she would do for a day. People who had to let her make choices for them, as a delegate, or as a leader. But Haruka.

A strong breeze caught Michiru's attention and she stared out at the sea from beside a large marble column with unease. The wind. She reached out a hand and could have sworn the breezes were running fingers down the sensitive underside of her arm, a similar trick Haruka had become fond of pulling when Michiru would ignore her. It made her even more uneasy and her stomach clenched at the thought.

The wind was supposed to be free. The sea was stuck in one place, for sure, but the breezes above it were free to travel anywhere they wished. They shouldn't need the sea's permission to go as they please. Michiru pulled her arm back to her side and shook her head. "How hypocritical of you Michiru," she scolded herself, "You claim she is free, and yet you beg the council for more time with her?" She felt like hitting herself, for being so double faced.

She continued walking. Trying to escape the winds by making it to where she wanted to be. Her studio. The spacious room where light always seemed to flood in, even on gloomy days. A room that had recently acquired the piano that had been put up in the ballroom before. That was before Haruka however. Before…"Drat. Drat, drat, drat," she muttered, vexed at herself. How she wished she could swear so freely as her friend did! Haruka who spewed words she had never heard before and had taught her curses she had never imagined saying before. It was a shame she actually knew what the enlisted men were saying now. Her ears could have gone without it. But the problem was the piano.

How far into Michiru's life had Haruka gone? "All I wanted was for her to talk to me," Michiru bemoaned, sitting at the bench of the piano, "Perhaps slight friends, but this," she waved a hand about the room, and briefly considered her sanity for talking to herself, "How did this happen?" Oh she knew how. It was Haruka's smile, and the way she tilted her head when she thought of something amusing, and the way her fingers twitched when she watched Michiru play violin, and the way she fought and oh gods.

"Why couldn't Haruka be someone boring?" she lamented, pressing her face into her palms, leaning on the closed piano with shame. If Haruka were boring it would be so much easier to deal with her. To push her aside. "But then that wouldn't be Haruka," she reminded herself. Haruka, who came and went with the breezes, who always had something to say, and who was so different from the first time she had met her, solemn and stone faced. How she had changed. But the change was the problem.

"Is Haruka being chained to me?" Michiru whispered, fear edging into her voice. Could her carefree, go with the flow friend stop being so free because of her? Was that why she had declined going to play in her dust and wind? Because she was afraid of what Michiru would say? "Haruka doesn't need me," Michiru reminded herself furiously, but the very thought made her heart ache.

Push and pull. That's all she seemed to be doing in her head.

Pulling Haruka closer and worrying that she would leave, but then pushing her away when she realized that she was getting too close. It made her sick to think of how happy she'd been when Haruka had declined to go to her home, and then realize how angry she'd been when she had to almost force Haruka to go. "Double edged sword…How fitting for Haruka," Michiru's sarcasm surfaced miserably and she looked wearily at the cover on the keys of ivory beneath her elbows.

"I want Haruka to need me," Michiru whispered to the keys, "So badly…" It was something that she couldn't explain to herself. This need to have Haruka need her, and this paranoia that Haruka really did need her. But the inverse was so terribly scary as well. Michiru needed Haruka just as badly. The piano was proof enough, and the wind soldier had even started to infect her music, as she found herself composing spots where she knew Haruka could fill them with sweet notes of compliment. There was how she was feeling earlier, frustrated that she couldn't be frustrated to somebody. She had never had the need to vent to someone before Haruka came along. She had always been able to handle anger just fine. But oh no, Haruka had caused changes in her that she could only think of as bad.

It had been so easy just watching Haruka be carefree in court before! Now that she knew the teenager, she was expected to also accompany her on her jaunts around the grounds, and enjoy gossiping about the useless things that the wind told Haruka, and say nasty things about the court members behind their backs. Things Michiru had never indulged in. Haruka had tugged and insisted until finally she had started to enjoy these things. Began to loosen up.

But was it terrifying. To need someone so badly to have fun. What a notion! "I shouldn't be so needy. Haruka is free to please herself and I am free to please myself. I don't need Haruka to enjoy my free time," and yet she frowned and sighed because she had never quite remembered solitude to be so lonely before. Since the fellow senshi had taken residence in the palace, she had never been alone, even when Haruka kept her distance. But now, with no Haruka two corridors down, or a hop and a skip away at the beach running, she found herself hating the solitude she had once welcomed freely.

"Terrible. Simply terrible," she groaned, and stood from the piano bench in disgust. Pull and push. What would it mean to try to push Haruka away so things could go back to how they had been before? Where solitude was the norm, nightmares were unshared, and music was empty with no companion. Where her sketch book held only the sea and scenery instead of portraits and motion. How stagnant life had been back then.

Haruka had ripped up a hurricane in her waters and she wasn't sure if she truly wanted it to calm. Another sigh, this time softer and more resigned. There was no stopping the storm now that it had started, was there? She was stuck and she only had herself to blame. She was the one who wanted more from Haruka. "Would I have pressed it so much if I had known what this would do to my mind?" she questioned, walking over to her violin case and running a hand down its side. There was no telling where her feelings would go if she let them. There was no way of knowing how far this would go. How deep Haruka could cut. Still…

"To hell with it then," She cursed, stumbling over the foreign word despite herself. Cursing wasn't something she was good at, but if Haruka could do it when she was upset, then she could too.

A low whistle startled Michiru from her thoughts and she spun around startled to gape. "Michiru swore? What strange calamity did I miss in four days?" Haruka's voice was amused, and the grin on her face wide and happy. Dirt was smudged everywhere and her clothing was a mess, as if she hadn't changed in the four days she'd been spinning with the dirt and winds. "I thought ladies didn't swear?" she taunted, leaning forward with her hands on her hips, posing as a know-it-all.

"Haruka," Michiru's mood lifted, and her voice brightened as she finally comprehended her friend's presence. "Haruka!" She wasn't even sure why she flung herself at something so terribly dirty, and she was sure she would regret it later when she looked at her dress, but it didn't matter because Haruka was standing in front of her and smiling at her.

"Well, someone's glad to see me," Haruka's voice was bemused now, and strong arms wrapped around lithe shoulders, "You'd be the first I suppose-the poor soldiers in front of the warp gate nearly had heart attacks when I appeared like this," a low laugh echoed in Michiru's bones through Haruka's chest.

"I thought you were going for two weeks-the dust storms were they-" Michiru couldn't quite choose what she wanted to ask first and when she glanced at Haruka's face and the amused expression there she couldn't' help but blush at her child like excitement.

"I'll tell you about them later, I promise, I've got some interesting stories to tell you," Haruka promised, and stepped out of Michiru's embrace, "But I want to play something for you first. That's why I came back early. The dust devils were amazing but I got this nagging in my head that made me want to play piano for you," she made long strides to the piano, "I haven't wanted to play this badly in so long I knew I needed to come back and play it for you," Michiru noticed the twitch in the soldier's fingers and blinked in surprise.

"You cut off your trip home to come play for me?" her voice was incredulous and Haruka blinked, all too innocently surprised and confused.

"Yeah?" came the hesitant reply.

"Haruka you were at home doing something that you may not get to do for ages and you wanted to stop it short to come and play piano for me?" Michiru's voice rose and she flung her arms out in frustration, "Why?"

Haruka blinked, and tilted her head the way Michiru had come to appreciate and grow fond of, and there was that grin, so very roguish and so very Haruka, "Because you're my friend, and I knewyou'd want to listen. The dust devils will come again, and honestly, the storms here are better to dance and walk in. The winds get so much more fierce when there's the ocean involved," she explained, "So stop being such a princess and sit down will you?" Michiru didn't even try to protest and did so and Haruka laughed, "Good girl, now listen."

And Michiru did. The music was rowdy and wild and the tempo allegro through and through. Haruka's feelings in the dust storm no doubt, the euphoria of being surrounded completely in a storm and pulling winds from everywhere at once to play with. High trilling notes in a march that Haruka marched to so well. Music that was so purely Haruka that Michiru knew there was no place in the composition for her to even try to fit in a violin accompaniment. Yet Michiru found the music slowing to a pace she knew as familiar. This was not the wild dust devils of Uranus, but the slow and easy breezes of the Neptunian seas. The waxing and waning of the waves and the hollow blow of the wind and Michiru knew there was a place for her in that music. That music that was so very Haruka, but had something of hers in it as well. And she knew.

Michiru had managed to find her way into Haruka's heart too.

Michiru couldn't fight the smile that grew on her lips, nor the tears she felt forming in her eyes. There was no stopping this storm. No stopping them now. As the music finally waned into mezzo piano she felt herself laugh impossibly, a watery sort of sound and she could barely see Haruka's smile beaming at her through the tears.

"It's you, you know Michiru. I wish I could share everything with you. The wind, and the dust and the air, but I know that's not you. That's why I came back here. At least here, the wind and sea meet and I can be able to share the wind with you, with music," Haruka leaned forward, all at once solemn and cheerful, "I've never wanted to share the wind with anyone before,"

"I've never wanted to share the sea," Michiru answered in a whisper. Her music had always been lonely, always so distant and far away. The ocean was her mystery alone.

But the wind found its way in and suddenly the ocean wasn't just hers, it was theirs. The wind was as well. The wind Michiru used to think of with disdain was now welcome into her world.

"Then I suppose we're in luck my friend," came the jaunty reply, a grin plastered to Haruka's face, "It's mutual then. I'm glad," Haruka laughed and the cover went over the keys and she stood, dust billowing off of her garb as she did so, "But enough of this deep stuff right now. I've got stories Michiru, and you won't believe how big these things were!" and Haruka's hand found hers with ease and the two were already on their way to the beach before Michiru could even think about it. Yet she held firm to Haruka's hand and gave it a tug, pulling the soldier back to slow down. She smiled, and Haruka grinned.

Michiru was never pushing Haruka away again.


Something I think that's interesting about these two is the fact the two of them continue to tell themselves they don't need each other-even going so far to promise each other to leave the other behind if things get rough-but the reality is that they need each other and they can't help themselves. I mean-I think when I was 8 or something and watched Neptune and Uranus's death for the first time I was yelling at the screen about Neptune breaking her promise and being mean to Uranus. Or something like that. My father caught me rewatching the episode a week or so ago and told me he hated the episode simply because I woke him up too early that Saturday morning with my yelling. I'm surprised he could even remember to be honest.

But back on topic-The two of them are completely dishonest with themselves, and it's honestly frustrating at times. But once they accept how stupid they are, they become happier people. Which is quite the nice thing, isn't it?

But anyways. I have a vague idea of what I want the next chapter to be about, but I'm not sure quite yet whether it'll work. I suppose I'll find out soon enough though, once I start writing. xD So until then, reviews are lovely. And I thank whoever has left me one in the past two chapters, they were very encouraging and made me very, VERY happy. You have no idea. So help a poor fanfiction writer feel happy and good? Leave a review in the hat. -places review hat on teh ground- Until next time though, thank you for reading!

~konaxookami