Sorry this took so long - I wasn't quite sure what Minako's revelation was going to be, and now that I've got it I want to be very sure I don't trivialise it. I'm still not entirely happy with this chapter, but I know it's been FOREVER since I updated, so here it is. :) Thanks to everyone who left a review since the last chapter - I'd really appreciate some constructive feedback here as well! Or just let me know if you like it (or not) that's always cool. :P
EDITED: This chapter bugged me so much I cannot even explain it. The end is now longer and more fleshed out, hope it works better now! Hoping to update this periodically.
"She'd better be back soon," Rei growled, scowling as she paced across the room once more. "Her mother's going to insist on a visit sooner rather than later." Makoto did not reply. She had learnt that when Rei paced, you left her to it for the sake of sanity.
"I can't believe that jumped up tramp sent me back here," she was muttering to herself. "Thinks she's so high and mighty just because her planet was the first in the Alliance, hah! What a joke." Makoto fidgeted uncomfortably, wishing that Serenity would hurry up and return. It was late, and the party that followed the ceremony was in full swing not too far away. They were waiting in the lounge of Serenity's suite, a large room of white stone and silver furnishings.
Rei was just about to launch into another tirade when there was a flash of silver light, heralding the return of Serenity, Venus and Mercury. Makoto saw a vein begin to throb in Rei's forehead as she realised that the three of them were laughing, but had no time to intervene.
"About time!" Rei nearly shouted. "Have you any idea how much grief they've been giving us?" she jabbed her thumb over her shoulder and towards the balcony, indicating the party that had now spread to the garden. "Every thirty seconds it's 'Is Serenity ready for the ball yet?' or 'Serenity should really come and join us, it's getting late.'"
"I'm here now," Serenity said, holding her hands up in a gesture of surrender. "We can be down in minutes," she yawned, and covered her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Serenity, you're exhausted," Ami said quietly, "You should rest – ask to speak with your mother and beg absence from the party. If she thinks you're not quite well, it will give you good reason to have been avoiding the celebrations."
"That sounds like a really good idea." She yawned again, and moved to the corner, where a delicate golden rope hung down from the ceiling. She pulled on the bell and then settled down upon the nearest settee.
Ami and Minako allowed their transformations to drop just before the door opened and a maid entered. "Yes, Princess Serenity?" she asked, bowing.
"Could you please tell my mother that I am indisposed," she yawned widely as she spoke, making a valiant effort to keep going. "I find myself too ill to attend the party tonight."
"I will pass the message on, your highness." Serenity nodded her thanks and waited until the girl had left the room before leaning back.
"I'm going to retire for the night."
"As you will, Princess," Minako said, smiling. "I will stay and guard your chambers."
"You don't need to do that!" Serenity exclaimed with a laugh.
"It's our job, Serenity," she reminded the young Princess. "One of us must be with you and on guard at all times."
"Oh," Serenity seemed unsure of what to say, and glanced at each of their faces in turn. When she looked towards Makoto, the tall girl blushed and looked down at her feet. "You've been guarding me for hours now," she said after a while, "I would prefer if you rested."
"Very well then, highness," Minako replied, "Then may I suggest Guardian Jupiter takes the watch?"
"I suppose," Serenity said sullenly. Minako turned to smile at Makoto, who appeared stunned. "Mercury will relieve you in a few hours," she said, before turning and heading out of the room.
As they were now full time Guardians, they could only train together if Serenity was present. As such, an arrangement was made for Serenity to take her lessons in the grand crystal chamber at the top of the palace. They trained for five or six hours every day, and Minako set up a rota which had either herself, Makoto or Ami simply observing and sitting with the Princess while the remaining three trained with Setsuna.
From the beginning Rei was clearly unhappy with this arrangement, but she said nothing and Setsuna made no comment. She did as she always had done, and continued to train them with ruthless and unforgiving efficiency. Every session left them exhausted, but they kept at it relentlessly, determined to do their jobs properly.
The camaraderie between Ami, Makoto and Minako grew with surprising speed over the following weeks. Ami was still quiet, and always the last to give her opinion, but the others had begun to turn to her first when devising strategies or if they needed the solution to a particularly difficult problem. Makoto was surprised when Minako turned to her for advice on how to handle more low key jobs, tasks that would require them to go into public places discreetly.
"You've seen a lot more of that side of the alliance than the rest of us," Minako explained, smiling brightly. It was evening on the moon, and Ami was guarding the Princess. The two of them were in the gardens, enjoying the soft breeze. "I mean, even if Ami isn't technically a Princess, she was still on Mercury and they don't really have anything in the way of a class system there, so she's about as clueless as I am."
Makoto nodded thoughtfully. "I think discreet could be more of a problem for some of us than others," she said, gesturing to the markings that ran up the side of her face.
"Hmm, it's true," Minako replied thoughtfully. "I mean, mine are easy enough to hide, and all Ami has to do is wear a high collar. We'll need to think about it, anyway." She grinned, "Maybe Ami can think of something."
Of course, while they grew closer, Rei grew further and further away from them. Every day she grew more incensed that Minako refused to include her in the rota, and her ire spread to Ami and Makoto as well, angry that they should be involved where she was not. She had proven herself stronger than Ami long ago, so why was it she was the one left out?
It all came back to Minako, Rei knew. The bitch was enjoying every moment of this, she was quite sure. Still, she kept quiet and trained. There would be a moment, she was sure, when she could stand up to Minako, and she would be ready when it came.
Three weeks after their inadvertent visit to Earth, the four of them were in Princess Serenity's chambers. Serenity and Makoto were sitting on the bed, the newly appointed Princess of Jupiter quietly brushing Serenity's long silver tresses. Minako, on duty, was standing by the wall in her uniform, but she was joining in with the discussion at hand. Even Rei, who was sat a little further away than the rest, was listening as Ami spoke.
"Normal make-up doesn't cover the marks," she said, "But I formulated this for exactly that purpose. It's quite thick, but more importantly it's made using some of my own power – water that I produced from the air. It covers my own marks quite well, although I'm not sure how well it will work for the rest of you – perhaps your own variation would require some of your own power?"
"That's a really interesting idea," Minako said thoughtfully. "Why don't we try some of that on one of us, see what happens?"
"I'll do it," Makoto volunteered, setting down Serenity's brush and standing, holding a hand out for the pot. Ami passed it to her, and she took a small amount, rubbing it over the green vine that crawled down her face.
The mark was gone for a second, but very quickly began to fade into sight, almost as if it were dissolving the cream she'd just wiped over it. "I'll work on creating something for all three of you then," Ami said, smiling at each of them in turn.
Serenity, beaming, exclaimed, "You're amazing Ami!"
Ami blushed scarlet, and stammered out her next sentence. "Makoto, do you have something I could mix with the base pot, something of your power?"
"How about this?" Makoto said, curling her hand into a fist and then opening it to produce a single oak leaf.
"That should do," Ami replied thoughtfully, taking the leaf and moving with it to Serenity's vanity table, where her mortar and pestle sat. Carefully, she crushed the leaf and mixed it in with the base of the concealer.
"Try it now." She handed to the pot to Makoto, who spread it over her tattoo. They waited to see if it reappeared, but it did not.
"Brilliant!" Serenity squealed, clapping her hands together. "Now we can go outside the palace occasionally without the whole fanfare."
"Not too often please, Princess," Minako said, "It would still be a safety concern."
"Hmmph."
They chatted in a circular fashion for an hour or so, before Serenity decided she was tired, and wished to sleep. Ami took over from Minako, so the other three left, heading back to their chambers.
As they reached Rei's room, the first they came to as they left Serenity's, Minako stopped. "You go on ahead, Makoto," she said. "Rei and I need to talk."
Makoto glanced at the Princess of Mars, nodded, and hurried away as quickly as she could without being impolite.
"Can I come in?" Minako asked Rei, indicating her bedroom door. Rei simply shrugged and headed inside, leaving the door open. Minako closed it after herself.
She'd let her uniform fade when Ami had taken over as guard, so she wore the plain clothes most of the Guardian Senshi now wore when off duty – the plain grey shirt of a guard, paired with simple black shoes and a black skirt.
"You're angry that I haven't included you on the rota," Minako stated, looking directly at Rei.
"Well, no shit," came the angry reply. "I'm stronger than Ami, and easily as strong as Makoto and you know it!"
"Ami is the most defensively capable of all of us," Minako replied calmly, "And is therefore the most qualified to guard the Princess."
"Are you saying I'm not qualified?!"
"No. I'm saying I don't trust you in that position."
"What?!" Rei spluttered. "I've done nothing…"
"Since you got to the moon except isolate yourself from the others and do your best to undermine me as leader. Just because you don't like me, doesn't mean you get to choose what orders to obey, like you did on Earth." She was silent for a while, and then she sighed. "I never told any of you where my tattoo was, did I?"
"What?" Rei asked flatly.
"I never related the story of how I discovered I was a Guardian Senshi. I'll admit, it's not as sensational as Makoto's, but then what is."
"Is this going somewhere?"
"My mother… our mother, I should say, has certain standards that those around her should live up to. I'm guessing you've come into contact with more than a few of them, over the years." She paused again, but this time Rei didn't interrupt.
"As heir to the Venusian throne, I had to live up to all my mother's expectations of me – how I should look, how I should dress, how I should wear my hair, even the people I was allowed to be seen with in public were all dictated by her." Minako seemed to be steeling herself, working up the courage to say the next part of the story.
"Even… even the people I took to my bed were approved by my mother. On Venus, physical love is something we don't view with shame, and not something we traditionally keep to ourselves."
Rei shifted slightly on her feet – she had the uncomfortable feeling she knew where this story was headed.
"Don't get me wrong," Minako said hurriedly, seeing Rei's expression. "The mindset is different on Mars... well it's different everywhere but Venus. Sex isn't something taboo there, it's just another recreational habit. It's an open expression of love and trust, ya-da-ya-da-ya-da."
"But your mother..." Rei began.
"Mostly it was her telling me who couldn't go in my room," Minako said ruefully. "But occasionally she would strongly suggest individuals. Those of high rank, or important political figures she wanted leverage with."
"That's..." Rei struggled to find the words. "Despicable," she said finally.
"She never forced me," Minako said firmly. "That's a rule that's enforced very strongly on Venus, for reasons I'm sure I don't need to go into."
"Then why are you telling me this?" Rei asked.
"Have you ever bedded anyone, Rei?" Minako asked bluntly.
"I... well..." Rei blushed a shade of scarlet that put the skirt of her uniform to shame.
"I thought so. See, it's an amazing thing. It's love and trust and all those things people say it is, but it's also vulnerability. You don't get much more vulnerable than that. That night, it was a Venusian nobleman. Mama said he was very important and I should get to know him. That meant bed him."
"That doesn't sound much like you had a choice. The Venusian Queen... our mother... she can be..."
"Overbearing? Obnoxious? Yeah, I guess. I always felt like I had to please her, and she knew that. I guess she used it against me. That's why I played the game. I wore the skimpy dresses, I over did my make up. I wanted her to love me the way she loved everyone else, but I never felt that she did. Venus is meant to celebrate love, but to me it always felt like they worship a fascimile of it more than the actual thing itself. Sleeping with anything that moves isn't love, it's lust."
She moved over to the window, looking out at the planet in the sky above them. "The marks burned as they appeared. Physically it hurt, and I was screaming and he didn't care. I'm fairly certain he enjoyed it." Minako turned to face Rei, who only realised that Minako had unbuttoned her shirt moments before it fell to the floor. Golden marks trailed down her left breast, cupping it. They were small hearts, linked by golden swirls and spirals. Minako turned again, and Rei saw a second mark that ran down her spine, connected to the first only tenuously by a single golden thread.
Minako stood silently for a while, her eyes examining Rei as she traced the marks with her own purple ones. Eventually she bent down to pick up her shirt. Rei wasn't sure how she was supposed to respond to this. What did it have to do with anything? And yet, at the same time, guilt clawed at her stomach even as she tried to squash it down.
"You're the first person I've told about this," Minako said, laughing slightly, nervously. "Setsuna said if I told any of you, I should tell everyone, so I'll do that soon. I don't resent my mother… at least, I don't think I do. It's just the way things are on Venus, and she's as much a product of that as I am. You hate me because I'm her daughter, I know. You hate me, because you think I'm just the same as she is – but remember, you can't hate me as much as I hate myself."
She moved to the door without another word, leaving a dumbfounded Rei behind. Seconds passed before Rei hurried to the door, throwing it open and running down the hall.
She barrelled into Minako, holding her tight, crushing her. The word family had never meant much to Rei outside of her father's wife, the woman she viewed as her true mother, but at that moment as she whispered a single word to Minako over and over again, she made a vow to herself – she would make it mean more.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I'm so, so sorry I didn't understand sooner."