The roses were particularly vibrant. They stuck out of the misty halo of atmosphere that she seemed to be surrounded in. Where she was, she didn't know. All she could keep her eyes on was those flame-red petals and the tingling aroma.
Rei walked forward, and reached her hand up to touch one. It seemed like such a forbidden thing, to touch these roses, sort of dark and foreboding. A slight hesitation roused itself inside of her, screaming at her not to touch the rose, but there was no reason for her to be afraid of a flower.
She picked one off the thick traveling vine and held it in the palm of her hand, studying it. She turned it to the side and held its stem, and a thorn pricked her finger, droplets of ruby blood escaping from her finger. Rei dropped the rose, which shattered into a million fragments of crystal. Rei turned, and suddenly she was face to face with Usagi, who was blank, staring and emotionless.
"I'm broken. You need to fix it."
Her words echoed, off into that deep expanse, and her eyes continued to burn into Rei's, her expression (or lack of one) unnerving and eerily scary.
Rei awoke in a cold sweat, gasping for air. Angry red numbers on her clock across the room glared 1:30 AM. She looked down at herself dressed in pajamas and tangled up in her bed sheets, and realized that she'd had a dream.
A dream.
She sighed deeply and slid her damp head back onto her pillow. Broken? What did that mean?
What did anything mean anymore?
Her thoughts were interrupted by her telephone. She groaned, reached over and picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" She yawned and stretched, relishing in the wonderful softness of her warm bed. She really needed sleep. Ever since….it happened, she hadn't had so much as an hour of sleep.
"Oh, God….no! You have to be joking….oh please, no….I'll be right over!" Rei leapt out of bed, slamming the phone shakily back into its cradle, and shivering at the biting coldness of the floor in her room. Her knees trembled as she pulled on a jacket and shoes hurriedly.
Minako was in danger.
Minako was being pulled down the stairs of her house. Hushed voices moved quickly around her as she was slid to the front door.
She could feel her body being pushed, but she couldn't respond. She felt heavy, like she had been sleeping forever. It was so hard to breathe. There didn't seem to be enough air around her.
Gradually, she slid her eyes closed again and fell into a turntable of uncertainty.
Ami stared down at her friend. Minako was pale. So pale. She looked like Usagi on her funeral day. Ami quickly tried to push this thought out of her head but it lingered a bit, making Ami feel uneasy.
She couldn't loose another friend like this. She just couldn't. None of them could. They still weren't over Usagi. Their beloved princess wasn't even buried a day ago. This would break everything, any last string of sanity that she held, would be severed, cut forever, if the unthinkable happened.
The unthinkable.
Makoto sat on the other side of Minako's bed, opposite Ami. She stared blankly down at Minako's still form, sort of contemplating something. Her auburn ponytail was messily pulled back and falling down. Dark circles framed her emerald eyes. It seemed that she was on her last glimmer of hope too, just like the rest of them. Slowly, but surely, it was slipping away, no matter how hard she held onto it.
"She took a whole bottle of sleeping pills." Makoto's frail voice broke the silence in the room.
Ami murmured a response.
Makoto broke into a small sob.
"Why would she do this? It can't be that…painful…" Makoto hugged herself, searching for comfort, for something inside herself to make this disappear. This unending nightmare.
Ami simply looked down at her hands, closing her deep aqua eyes.
"But it is. So painful. I can't…..I can't get to sleep at night….when I close my eyes, all I see is Miya, and the blood….and the gun…and myself, lying on the floor, helpless….helpless…" Ami's voice dissolved into the air, evaporating on the last word.
The door behind them opened quickly and Rei bustled in, taking in the scene of Minako on the hospital bed. She took a seat beside Makoto and simply stared at Minako.
Rei's body ached for sleep. Her soul screamed out, her whole body screamed for peace. Her silvery voice chilled the air as her eyes rested on Minako.
"She…she tried to commit suicide, didn't she?"
Makoto nodded slowly and sullenly.
The room seemed so empty. The cool reality of just the four of them was setting in, as each of them seemed loss and helpless in their own way. The air seemed so thick lately; so hard to breathe, yet, so much extra space now that there were only four of them…
Monitors beside Minako began to screech mechanically, and the Senshi's faces each held a look of panic as a doctor and a nurse rushed in. Minako's pale look had gone gray, a sickening color that was unnatural for a human. Ami stood in horror, gasping at the scene.
They wheeled Minako out swiftly into a hallway, the Senshi in tow. A few nurses pulled them back, but Makoto struggled.
She began to cry out, but was held down as Minako disappeared with the doctor down a hallway and into an operating room. She broke free and collapsed to her knees, sobs wrenching her body, and buried her head in her hands. Ami rushed to her side and began to comfort her.
Rei took in all of it, simply stood there, rigid and straight.
Things had shattered.
-------------
A/N: Not many notes for this chapter, but more chapters to come soon. These are much longer than the chapters in High Velocity, so I hope you like the length a lot more ^_^
