Theme: Four - Curse
Genre: Angst/Drama
Version: Animanga/AU-ish
Rating: PG-13

And if I only could/ Make a deal with God/ And get him to swap our places/ Be running up that road/ Be running up that hill/ With no problems - "Running Up That Hill" by Placebo

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Make a Deal With God
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Makoto would have given anything to cry again, to squeeze an ounce of what she was feeling out through her tear ducts and onto the white, hospital tile beneath her. She was too hurt, too angry, too something. It was building in her chest like a volcanic eruption, and she was sure her heart would explode out her ribcage at any moment from the force of it.

But it didn't. It just kept thumping, thumping, thumping like God was laughing at her. Each heartbeat was a chuckle of the Almighty Himself, low and loud in her ears. If she was lucky, it'd just stop.

"Can I get you anything, Kino-san?" Ami's mother was a tall, dignified woman, made even more reserved through grief. Her face was white and her lips pale, but she was the perfect picture of calm under pressure. Well, that's if no one was looking at her hands. A surgeon's hands should have been still and conditioned for anxiety, but Mizuno-san's shook fiercely.

Makoto swallowed another mouthful of guilt, seeing those hands. "No thank you, Mizuno-san," she whispered. "I'm fine. Can I get you anything, though?"

"No, thank you," replied Mizuno-san as she sunk down into the chair opposite Makoto. Her mouth was pursed tight suddenly, as if trying to hold something vile and dangerous in behind her teeth. Slowly, she let out a tiny sigh, and her lips opened. "You're a very good friend, Kino-san." Makoto flinched. "I know you care a great deal for our Ami-chan."

I know it was you, Mizuno-san's eyes seem to say as her mouth spoke those kind words. Makoto found those blue, narrowed eyes disturbingly similar to Ami's, and she had to look away. They said much more than Mizuno-san ever would. I know it was you, and it's your fault. If you had really cared for her, you would have kept your distance. It was you, it was you, it was you.

Makoto took a deep, ragged breath, and stood up. She had to escape the waiting room and Ami's mother, even though her accusing eyes were closed now, and pressed firmly into her shaking palm. Makoto went to the only place she had ever felt comfortable and accepted, drunkenly dodging nurses and wobbling patients until she was standing inside a hospital room, with the door shut tightly against her back.

There was something masochistic about the way Makoto felt better allowing the grief and guilt raise to the brim of her soul as she pulled up a chair beside the sterile, hospital bed. She tried again to squeeze some tears from her burning eyes, but still found herself unable to manage it and took the small, dainty hand in front of her instead, and peppered it with tiny kisses.

At least Ami's fingers were warm. Makoto rubbed them carefully against her cheek, trying to be careful of the tubes and needles. There seemed to be wires and gauze everywhere. It was almost surprising Ami's tiny body had enough area to use that many bandages and machines. But maybe it was that exactly that made her look so small. Against all the tubing and fresh, white, bulky wrappings, Ami's bones and veins stood out painfully. Even her dark hair had been cropped shorter, tighter to her body, to get all the blood out of it.

Makoto entwined her fingers with Ami's, and clamped her eyes shut until she could see stars dancing in the blackness. It had been her fault. Mizuno-san, in her silence, had been right. If only Ami and her had never met. If only they had never moved in together, as friends (and then later as something entirely different). If only Makoto hadn't spent every moment, of every day, dreaming of blue eyes and a sweet smile.

If only, if only, if only.

If only she had listened to Ami, while they were walking the length of her college block. Makoto had wanted her hand, and when they parted for Ami to go to class, and Makoto to head towards her night job, she had demanded a kiss. They'd always been so careful in public, but Makoto had been promoted. They were celebrating. She was being careless.

Makoto was sure that if Ami had been awake, she would have told her it wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault that there was hate in the world, and people feared what they didn't understand. It wasn't her fault that Makoto just wanted a kiss from her girlfriend, before she departed for a job she was enjoying, and was good at. She had been happy. They had been happy. Was that so unreasonable? Ami would have said it wasn't, but that you can't blame people for their cruelty. They, after all, are often just the product of their environment. Ami could never truly blame anyone.

But Makoto was not Ami. She could blame, and she gladly did so. Firstly, she blamed the men that had followed Ami from her lecture, and attacked her with the viciousness that comes from hunting a hated and feared animal. She blamed them for every bruise and broken bone. She blamed them for ruining the first impression Ami's mother would ever have of their relationship.

She blamed them for her own inability to cry.

And then, of course, she blamed herself. Makoto hadn't been there when Ami needed her the most. She'd been garnishing a fish dish when she'd gotten the phone call. The police had, of course, contacted her first. She was the top number on Ami's cell phone. They really shouldn't have had to call her at all.

Makoto couldn't understand how someone could harm her best friend, her partner, without her knowing. Shouldn't she have sensed when they dragged Ami into the back alley like a lamb to be slaughtered? Shouldn't she have known when the only person she'd ever truly loved was trying to crawl her way back to civilization, broken and bleeding?

And why hadn't Ami defended herself? That got Makoto more than anything. Ami wasn't weak. Ami wasn't incapable. Her henshin pen had been in her bag the whole time, though they had thrown it back against the side of a building. There must have been a moment where... Well, maybe it was useless to think of the "what ifs." There would be things that only Ami would know, that only Ami would have to fight though.

Sometimes, Makoto wondered if maybe this deep, unaccepted love was more of a curse than a discovered miracle as she looked at Ami's broken baby bird figure, laying so still.

And that's when she finally began to cry.