Anyone else would have quailed in the face of Hotaru's icy fury, but not Setsuna. "Hotaru, calm down."
"Calm down?" Not a hint of emotion showed in Hotaru's dark eyes, but there could be no mistaking the hint of hysteria that had crept into her voice. "I am calm."
The silence that filled the room after Hotaru's comment was so thick it was almost material. It spread on wings of violet light and the room seemed to throb with a deep, soundless hum. The hum became a roar, became a high-pitched shriek heard less with the ears and more with the heart. First Ami then Michiru dropped to their knees, hands clutching at their heads.
Haruka looked at Setsuna in panic. Do something, the blonde tried to say into the turbulent silence. Do something! So Setsuna did.
Setsuna crossed the room in several swift steps and slapped Hotaru. The blow snapped the other woman's head back and Hotaru stumbled backwards. The unnatural quiet lifted but none of the others said a word. None of them could quite believe what they'd just seen and more than one of them was afraid of just what Hotaru's response would be.
Setsuna tore her gaze from the slowly reddening handprint on Hotaru's cheek and turned to face the others. Her eyes, hard at the best of times, were now twin pools of bloodied adamant. "All of you need to leave. Now."
"Setsuna…" Michiru looked from her daughter to the woman she trusted with her life. "I don't think that we should…"
"Trust me." Something unreadable flickered briefly in Setsuna's eyes and her voice softened. "Please."
Michiru met Setsuna's gaze and held it. Finally she nodded, satisfied with what she'd seen in the older woman's eyes. "All right, Setsuna. But if you hurt her any more than you already have…"
The others followed Michiru out of the room but not before shooting her a variety of looks. Haruka looked very much like she wanted to tear her head off, while Mina seemed torn between wanting to stay (and find out the gossip) and getting well out of harm's way. And then there was Usagi. The look on her future queen's face was one of utter disappointment and it cut as deeply as any knife.
The instant the others were out of the room Hotaru rounded on Setsuna. Gone was the emotionless façade. In its place was a young woman with angry disbelief written across her features and white-hot fury in her veins. Under different circumstances Setsuna would have found the contrast to her usual behaviour quite amusing.
"You slapped me… I can't believe you actually slapped me!"
"I'm sorry, Hotaru, but it was necessary."
"Necessary?" Angry didn't begin to cover how she felt. Enraged was closer, if only a little. "What about it was necessary?"
"Would you rather I let you kill everyone in the room?" The moment the words left her mouth Setsuna wished she could take them back. "No, wait. That's not what I meant." She ran one hand through her hair. "Look, you didn't deserve that."
"No, Setsuna, I didn't." Shock warred with hurt on Hotaru's face. "And I don't deserve to have secrets kept from me, not when they're about my past!" A tear crept down her cheek. "Didn't you think that maybe, just maybe I might want to know?"
Setsuna flinched and looked away. She could deal with yelling but tears, she couldn't deal with tears, not when they were Hotaru's. "I thought it for the best. Saturn… her past was always something she regretted. When you were reborn I thought that maybe she'd, no," she corrected herself. "That maybe you would have the chance to leave it behind."
"Saturn? Is that who you see when you look at me? Is that why you're so afraid to tell me about my past? Are you afraid I'll turn out like her, like some kind of heartless monster?"
"Never say that!" Setsuna said sharply only dimly aware that her voice was trembling. "Never ever say that she was heartless!"
"Well what was she then? She killed a world, Setsuna. You said it yourself! What kind of person could do that?" Hotaru wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "Do you know how sick that makes me feel?"
"She wasn't heartless," Setsuna's voice was barely more than a whisper. "She wasn't. Perhaps if she had been then things would have been better for everyone."
"You know so much about who she was – who I was but you still haven't told me a thing! Maybe if you'd told me some of this earlier, maybe I… I wouldn't have had the dreams I've been having, wouldn't be seeing the things that I see!"
"Dreams? What kind of dreams?"
Hotaru laughed bitterly and scrubbed furiously at her cheeks. "Do you know what it's like to dream about killing a world, Setsuna? To watch a whole world wiped clean and marvel at the desolation? Can you have any idea about how terrifying that is when you know, you know, that you could do that if you wanted, that if one day you got the thought into your head you could kill every living thing on this planet?"
Setsuna shook her head.
"And that isn't the only thing I've dreamed about, Setsuna. I see things when I close my eyes, things I don't want to see, terrible things. I see a village in flames and a square littered with bodies. I see palaces of black stone cast down and a city left in ruins. I see the sun in an unfamiliar sky and it scares me because in that sky the sun is so small, so far away and I know I'm not on Earth."
"Hotaru…"
"I know the others dream about the old days, Setsuna, but they don't dream about the things I do. They dream about candles and ballrooms and gardens in full bloom. I don't. All that I dream of is death and I'm sick of it. I kept asking myself why I didn't dream about the things they did, why every time I closed my eyes I saw a planet left in ruins because of something I did. I thought I was going crazy. But you knew! You knew, Setsuna, and you didn't tell me!"
"Why didn't you say something before, Hotaru?"
"Say something?" Hotaru let loose an ugly laugh. "And would you have said anything, Setsuna?"
"I don't know," Setsuna admitted.
"Don't lie to me. You wouldn't have said a word about my past and you know it!"
"What can I say to you, Hotaru?" Setsuna said. How had things gotten so out of control? She hadn't wanted any of this. She'd only done what she thought was best and now… Something inside her clenched tight and she felt tears prickle at the corner of her eyes.
For a moment Hotaru wanted to stop, to draw the older woman into her arms and tell her that it was okay, that she accepted her apology. But her anger was still too hot, her hurt too raw. So she pressed on, a ruthless edge to her voice now, even as a small part of her screamed for her to stop.
"You were the one weren't you, Setsuna? Or should I say, Pluto? You were the one who managed to bring Saturn, to bring me out isolation and back into the loving arms of the Moon. How did you do it? What reward did you offer so that you could use her, use me as the Moon's weapon?"
And now the tears did come and Setsuna wondered how the conversation had been turned so dramatically on its head. "I didn't use her, Hotaru! She was my friend, I loved her!"
"You don't lie to your friends, Setsuna. You don't lie to the people you love." Hotaru took a ragged breath. "And you keep wondering about what would help her, or what she would want, but Setsuna, she's gone. There's just me now, just Hotaru and maybe you should worry about what would help me, about what I would want."
"Hotaru…" Setsuna reached for the younger woman. "Please…"
The look of utter desolation in Setsuna's eyes almost stopped Hotaru. Almost. But somehow she forced herself to walk past the older woman and to the door. "No," she said, shaking her head. "I just… I just can't."
"I'm sorry…"
Hotaru stopped at the door and turned, her heart heavy with hurt and sorrow. Her voice, when it finally came was barely more than a croak. "Just… just give me time, Setsuna…"
And then Hotaru was gone and Setsuna was alone in the room, with nothing but the silence and her own bitter regret for company.
X X X
Hotaru sat on the park bench with her head in her hands. She wanted to throw up, she just felt so very sick inside. She was vaguely aware of the other people in the park, an old couple, a few children, a young woman with a dog but her mind wasn't on them at all.
Setsuna hadn't deserved all the things she'd said. It was true the older woman had lied to her, had kept secrets and gone behind her back, but would she have done any differently if put in that position? She honestly couldn't say. And Setsuna did love her, she was sure of that, even if she wasn't always very good at showing it.
Gingerly, she rubbed her sore cheek. Setsuna might have hurt her, but she'd definitely hurt her back. Hurt her back and then some, to tell the truth. It was just, everything had happened so fast. The lies had hurt and she'd just lashed out without thinking, without trying to put herself in Setsuna's shoes.
But it was the lack of trust that had hurt the most. Couldn't Setsuna trust her? Couldn't she trust her not to go crazy and blow up the world? If someone who'd raised her couldn't trust her, what did that say about the person she'd been? If only Setsuna had just told her earlier then everything would have been all right, there wouldn't have been any lies or anything else to fight over.
Something wet landed on her hair and Hotaru looked up. The skies were wrought with turbulent grey clouds and it had begun to drizzle. The drizzle quickly became a downpour and she jogged for the cover of some nearby shops. Halfway there, she heard a polite cough and turned.
"You know, it isn't really healthy to be out in rain like this."
She laughed weakly. The young man in front of her was singularly unremarkable in appearance but there was something about him that was at once familiar yet vaguely unsettling.
"Come on," he tipped his umbrella in her direction. "I'll walk you over to those shops."
"Okay," she found herself saying, still trying to puzzle out exactly where she'd seen him before. "Thanks."
"My pleasure."
She'd probably seen him around school, she decided. Yes, that was it. Still, he seemed kind enough and the offer of an umbrella wasn't unappreciated.
"You seem a little troubled."
"Oh." She shrugged. "It's a long story."
"Long story, huh." He grinned and once again she felt a tingle of unease run up her spine. "Trust me, I know all about those."
X X X
Author's Notes and Disclaimer
Once again, I don't own Sailor Moon and I am not making a single cent off this story.
First off, let me apologise if this chapter is a little shorter than the others. I was originally going to post up one longer chapter, but thought better of it. I hope I haven't bored too many of you with the dialogue in the past two chapters, and I hope I haven't made too much of a mess of the argument in this chapter.
As always, tell me what you think. I'm always open to feedback.