"Hand over all you have and no one gets hurt." The voice was gruff, only suited to a pirate of course. And what's a pirate and his threat without a hostage? The knife was so close to the woman's throat that you could see the line of blood being drawn. Makoto could only watch in horror from where she'd been trapped inside the cabin and the door jammed.

"That's all we have! Please, I beg you, let go of my wife…" The sadness and fear in her father's voice was too real, it was echoing the back of her skull.

Then there was the pure red and the loud thud that took ages to come around as a sound, as her mother fell to the ground, gasping for air, hand clutching at her throat as blood poured from the gash the pirate had caused.

"Whoops. My hand slipped."

"You BASTARD!" The rest was like slow motion. Her father pulled his pistol out to open fire only for the men behind the pirate that had slain her mother to open fire and fill his body with lead, leaving him to slump in front of the cabin door. Makoto made a small noise that couldn't be heard over the laughter came from the pirates as they left. She pushed on the door as hard as she could, trying to get out, trying to save them both.


Makoto awoke with a gasping breath, immediately putting her hand onto her chest. She looked over and realized Ami was asleep on her other arm, snuggled up close to her. A nightmare, a reliving of her parent's death. It was horrifying every time and she closed her eyes for a split second and had to open them back up, only able to see the blood pooling into the cabin she was stuck in for hours.

It was still late into the night and she knew she wouldn't get anymore rest. Slowly and carefully she untangled herself from Ami, giving her a pillow instead to cuddle up to, and walked out of their room and into the kitchen on the ship. She had to get her mind off the images, of what had happened. Maybe Ami was right months ago, maybe she did need help.

Letting out a breath she set to cooking things that would keep for a while. No one was up near this hour to be eating, she knew that. Bread it was. They needed some anyways. She poured flour into a bowl and then added the water and eggs and set to mixing it with her hands. It was then she realized something and yanked her hand out and stared at it. When did she even take the bandages off? What had happened to the bright red scar on her hand?

How many days had she actually been sleep and what the hell was going on? She felt the need to talk to Ami and wrapped the base mixture up carefully and cleaned her hands heading back towards the room when something in the hallway stood out to her. Something that should not have existed.


Ami was up within two seconds of hearing the scream and out into the hallway to see Makoto curled up against the wall of the ship and her face in her hands.

"Makoto!?" She ran over and went to grab her hands when she stared at the one that should have been wrapped up. "Love, look at me."

Makoto could only shake her head in fear as a small sob escaped the back of her throat and Ami realized she was crying. She tried her best to analyze the situation. She didn't think Makoto had been up for very long and had frown after recalling their discussion yesterday.

"Did you have a nightmare?" All she got was a nod in response. "Oh…" She pulled Makoto down into her arms who just sank into Ami's shoulder and clutched onto her sleeping shirt for dear life, shaking like she had seen a ghost. "Why did you scream? You need to talk to me. Does your hand hurt?"

Makoto shook her head no in response. "My….I…" A gasping breath as she clutched tighter. Much more and Ami was sure she was going to suffocate. "They were…at the stairs…"

"Your…parents?" She felt Makoto stiffen up and frowned, slowly pulling back to wipe the tears off Makoto's face. She looked so small, so terrified. "Can you walk? Perhaps it's best not to do this in the hallway where others may show up."

Thankfully that was convincing enough to get Makoto up and into their room, sitting on the edge of their bed, though Makoto looked ready to have another break down. They needed a change in conversation immediately. She picked up Makoto's hand to look at it.

"When did you unwrap your hand?"

"I..I don't know…Maybe in my sleep? I woke up with it like that…"

Ami frowned. "Let me go get my kit, okay? I think we can take your stitches out." She was swift to grab it, too afraid to leave Makoto unattended given recent circumstances. "It's going to hurt a little." And with that, she set to the task of removing the stitches.

She turned to toss the thread into the trash can she kept in their room and by the time she had turned around, the holes were nearly gone and she could only stare in silence.

"Ami.."

"Huh?"

"I'm sorry..I..I woke up I was trying not to and-"

"Shhh. It's okay, Mako. I'm here for you, nightmares and all." She raised her hand and gently stroked Makoto's cheek. "I think it might be best if you avoided the others today. I'm not needed so I can stay with you."

Makoto nodded hesitantly as she wrung her hands together like anything could go wrong at any time. Ami noted how pale and sick the girl looked and wanted her to rest, but asking her to do that now was not only impossible, but would be a ridiculous statement. She looked over at some knocking at their door and stood up to answer it.

"Is everything okay?" It was Rei, the scream had obviously woken her up too and she noted Minako not too far behind her.

"Just..she had a nightmare. We'll both be staying in today to be safe…I'm really worried about her after yesterday." Then she paused and raised her eyebrows. "You can hear already?"

Rei grumbled a little.

"No. She can hear bits and pieces." Minako leaned over to speak for her, clearly Rei was embarrassed by the situation. "But she really has to focus. I sort of woke her up when I heard the scream to ask what was going on. Didn't realize where it came from."

"Mm…" Ami nodded a little. "You two should go back to sleep for now."

Minako nodded and tugged on Rei's sleeve and they both left. Ami returned to address Makoto, sitting down next to her.

"Do you…want to talk about it?" There was no way around the situation and Ami wasn't sure what the best suited path was at this point. Makoto wasn't going to sleep any time soon for sure and she wouldn't recommend it so soon after the nightmares and hallucination to begin with.

"I.." Makoto swallowed hard and shut her eyes tight. "N-no."

"Lay down with me? Not to sleep."

Getting a nod in response, she laid down and let Makoto settle down into her arms, though it was normally the other way around. She gently ran her fingers through Makoto's hair and softly hummed, deciding that later they would move to the library for a distraction once Makoto had calmed down.


Much later in the afternoon found Rei at the desk in the Captain's actual quarters, separate from her room, with Minako leaned up against the wall. Rei was looking over some maps she had bought that were updated compared to one's she had marked on previously as old pirate locations. However, after a while, she was finding Minako irritating.

Within the past ten minutes, she had shifted her legs at least twelve times and kept crossing and uncrossing her arms. Something was making her entirely uncomfortable and all the movement was distracting Rei.

"What's bothering you." It was a statement rather than a question, she had no patience.

"Nothing is bothering me."

Rei cut her eyes up to meet Minako's before she sat the map down. She couldn't look and focus well enough to hear. Thankfully majority of her hearing had already returned, but it still took some effort on her part to pay attention. "Really?"

"Yes." Minako gave her an accusing look.

"You keep crossing and uncrossing your arms, shifting your legs, tensing your muscles. Those are clearly signs that something is bothering you."

Minako looked almost offended at being caught before she snapped her head away. "What's it matter to you?"

"Because you don't relax ever. Not even in your sleep."

"You're watching me sleep!? What are you, some creeper!?" Minako turned slightly red at the thought Rei watching her sleep.

"No! When I woke up yesterday on the ship and you were asleep at the foot of the bed! You were tense then too. Clenching your teeth and everything. Like something was going to go wrong."

Minako stiffened up and looked down at the ground, clenching her teeth just as she had done in her sleep. "Why should I tell you?"

Rei let out a noise of frustration followed by a sigh. "Forget I even asked. God you're impossible to talk to."

That seemed to hit a nerve as Minako tensed up hard and shut her eyes before opening them again. "We trade. I tell you this, you tell me something in return."

"And just what on earth could you want to know from me? You know nothing about me."

"…How come you became a pirate." Minako looked up at her. "How come your Father put a hit out on you."

Boy if looks could kill, Aino Minako was sure that Rei would set the world on fire with the look she got with the last of her words. "Mine is just as personal. But not here. One of our rooms. Anyone can walk in here, but they avoid your room more than mine."

Rei was skeptical at first, but sighed. "…Fine. But if I don't like where it goes, the conversation stops."

"It goes both ways."

With that, they both moved into Rei's room, where she locked the door and sat her hat down on the dresser in there and took her boots off, sitting on her bed. Minako followed suit.

"First you explain to me why you're so damn tense."

Minako seemed to think on it for a while, Rei assumed she was trying the best way to phrase whatever the issue was.

"How many female commander's have you known in the Navy? Ever?"

"Two or three, maybe. Personally that I've seen? You and one other."

"So how do you think we're treated when we get the rank that a man thinks they deserve." Minako looked over at her with such a hated look in her eyes. "Every turn I made, I had to watch my own back, even with my own men. They hated me for getting to this position, despite how hard I worked. Despite it being under orders."

"Orders?"

"…From.." Minako paused, unsure if it was good to say. "From the Queen herself."

"…Queen Serenity told you to become a commander of the Navy." Rei was of course, unable to believe this. It was way too specific.

"Yes…" She looked down at her hands and Rei noticed some slight scaring on them from holding a sword incorrectly. "Not in those specific terms, but…she personally reached out to my Mother and told them that I was required to join the Navy under orders of Queen Serenity herself and should it be ignored, well…it's the Queen. You don't ignore her orders. So I left and joined. I had to fight my way up through the ranks from a dishwasher, to cleaning the deck, everything. I had to teach myself combat and how to use a gun. I had no idea how to do any of it and none of the men would show me."

"Shocking…" Rei tried to mumble the words to herself.

"So when I had my back turned, they would..hit me, or fire off a gun near me to scare me. Some wanted to fight me. I got into a lot of fights, lost a lot of them at first. I had to work through it all to get my own ship just for some asshole second in command to mutiny me, which is just fitting to the whole situation."

"So..basically you're tense all the time because you're waiting for someone to jump you?" It was reasonable, Rei could understand it given all the information.

"Yes."

"Even though no men are on the ship?"

"Haruka…."

"Is still a female. And usually away from most of us."

"How did she wind up on your ship."

Rei opened her mouth and shut it, turning red in a touch of anger for a moment. "We ported and when we left, she was just on the ship. Said the ocean was calling to her and we got into a fight. She sort of…kicked my ass. Makoto had to put her into her place."

"…The drunk one kicked your ass?"

"She wasn't drunk when we fought okay! That's not even part of our deal!"

"Okay okay!" Minako backed off and tilted her head, watching Rei closely. "So…your Dad."

Immediately Rei tensed up and looked away, gripping her hands into fists onto the sheets of her bed. "Worthless."

"Even though he's one of the highest ranking Navy officers?"

"It's a stupid fucking title. He didn't always have it. He doesn't care about others."

"What happened?"

Rei went silent for a while. She hadn't spoke on this matter in several years, last to Makoto and Ami and even then it was awful to talk about.

"My…" Already a swallow. "My Mother and I were out on a trip. We stopped in a port to pick up supplies and pirates flooded the ship and stole it with several of us still on board. The Navy knew it, they were right there at the damn docks. My Dad was on that damn ship!" Her voice was raised and cracked just a notch.

"The men fought back, but were no match for the brutal tactics they were using. They didn't care who lived or died. They wanted money. If they knew someone was rich, they made a good hostage. They…They found out my Mom's name was Hino and instantly related it to my Dad." Rei lowered her head, the tears were starting to come and it was shameful to shed them. She didn't want to let them go but felt one hot tear streak down her cheek.

"So they held me still while they killed her in front of me. Stabbed her thirty-seven times before putting a bullet in her head right in front of me. Threw me overboard after, but I found some wood and managed to survive until I got found by another boat." The tears were pouring down her face now.

"Rei…" Minako's voice was soft and she wasn't sure what to do.

"So when I got to land I vowed to take care of every fucking pirate myself since the Navy wouldn't do it. They wouldn't help. My Dad never searched for me, didn't know I was alive until word got around that I was eliminating pirates and tarnishing his name by removing them myself rather than the Navy. So he decided making sure his daughter was dead too was a better option than admitting to his own faults of having his wife killed." Her voice really cracked at the end and she brought a hand up to try and wipe the non-stop tears away.

Minako hadn't expected such a dark story. Rei always seemed so bold and confident, strong, in her decisions. She never seemed to second guess herself, like she had no weakness from the time she had met her. Even back when Rei first saved her she didn't hesitate. Because Minako was an innocent, just like Rei's mother had been.

All she could do on instinct was to reach forward and pull Rei into her arms, meeting some resistance initially before Rei just gave in and let it all out, every bit of saved emotion from several years. Tears over her lost mother. Minako had to do something to soothe the situation and calm Rei down, so she sang.

Thankfully it seemed to be working and she shifted so Rei was laying down as she sang, trying to lull her into a sleep and succeeding after several minutes. It seemed everyone on Rei's ship had a terrible past, though Minako felt as though hers was nothing in comparison.


Chapter 12 is gonna bring in a lot of fun with something most people probably don't expect!

This is by far the darkest chapter I've done yet, but it was set up to go this way. :)