Wishes
By: Mizuno Herena
Disclaimer: (To the tune of Jingle Bells) Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon
Own you- I do not
I really, really wish I did
But Naoko Takeuchi does!
(To quote a good friend, "Okay, it's a lousy song; But it's MY lousy song.")
Rating: PG for mild language (If you can watch TV, you can read the fic)
Warning: This is my first FanFic, so please be kind. Also, I know it's a VERY used plot line. But I couldn't help it!!!! Okay, I'm beginning to sound like DiC's sadly dubbed version of our beloved Usagi. Meaning: I'll quit whining and start writing.
It was springtime in Tokyo, when pink cherry blossoms covered the once-skeleton trees in the parks and the grass was so thick and green that you'd swear it was carpet. The multicolored buds on the flowers were just waking to the sun's gentle rays in their garden, next to the playgrounds. Children laughed as they plummeted down the slides and flew in the swings. Little girls giggled as they kissed their first crush on the cheek and ran away, embarrassed. Little boys gave an adorable look of (mock) disgust whenever the "L" word was mentioned and denied any interest in the opposite sex. Couples held hands and kissed respectfully under pagodas covered in dark emerald ivy. Yes, indeed the signs of spring-love were everywhere.
It was at this time, when everyone should have been happiest, that a small, raven-haired girl sat. Lonely and depressed on the rim of a fountain in the center of the Shibuya Area Park, she seemed to stare at the sun without blinking. Her striking violet eyes cast down at the water. A passer-by might have guessed her age to be about fourteen, and her life to have been a dull one. In reality she had just turned eighteen and her life was anything but dull.
Tomoe Hotaru suffered through a life that the normal teenager would crumble before. While any other seventeen-year-old girl would be shopping on a beautiful Sunday, Hotaru was probably fighting a youma. The common girl would be hanging out with friends. She was waiting for her best friend to be born in a few centuries. Ordinary girls think about what shoes would go best with their purse. Hotaru thought about how long she had left to live in her present body. Being the Senshi of Saturn, Death, Destruction, Silence, and Rebirth was very time consuming, not to mention hard to say. Who had time to think of pleasant things when there was always some dark force to overcome?
But the thing that worried her most wasn't her weak nature, it wasn't even that she had a mad scientist for a father somewhere, that her Setsuna-mama was always busy guarding the Gates of Time, or that her Michiru-mama and Haruka-papa were constantly on concert tours. The thing that bothered Hotaru the most was love or rather the lack of it.
Often, on Saturday nights she would have dinner at the Chiba's residence. She would glance across the table at Mamoru and see his eyes lovingly transfixed on his wife, Usagi. He would do anything for her. After supper they would sit by their fireplace and Usagi would read stories to her captive audience. No matter how old Hotaru got, her favorite stories were always the faery tales. Every time the odangoed girl would reach the description of the handsome prince she would always describe Mamoru instead, and then add with a look toward her prince, "Just like you."
How badly she wanted that... That love that could survive through every trial, every obstacle, and every test. Especially the worst test of all....Time. It seemed that everyone had it but her.
After romantic and short engagement, Ami was to be married to Urawa in a few weeks. Makoto was (not so) secretly seeing her cooking professor, Usami Saori. Rei had fallen for an American named Geoffrey Foster who dated her through the technology of the holo-net. Surprisingly, Minako gave up stardom and settled down with a rising computer programmer, Matsumiya Kyoko. Of course, Michiru and Haruka were still an item and even Setsuna had been seen hanging around the Gates of Time with a mysterious significant other. Was Hotaru the only one in the universe doomed to a lonely existence?
The late-afternoon sun was beginning to beat down on the pale girl sitting on the fountain. Her cup of ice cream had already melted into a mush of melted goop. Hotaru picked a chocolate-chip out of the soup and threw the styrofoam cup away. She had better get home soon. The previous day's homework was not yet finished and she was already utterly fatigued.
What she didn't know was that as she walked from the park's center to the parking lot a pair of dark green eyes followed her every step.
Tsukino Shingo watched his classmate (she had skipped a grade) quietly walk over the pebbled walkway and step into her small black car. He had been watching her since the first time he saw her throw a yen into the clear water at the feet of the marble angel that stood the fountain's center. That was three months ago.
The sight of a seventeen-year-old girl making a wish like a little girl entranced him and he couldn't get his mind off her since. What did she wish for? Why did she come to the same place in the same park every day? Did she ever see him watching her? Why was she so sad? What ever it was, he wanted more than any thing to make her smile. He wanted to make everything better, so she'd always smile- for him.
Every day since then Shingo had come to see her make her wish and sit in the warm sun. He had seen her try to sit under a magnificent willow tree once; only to be cast out of her shade by a horde of angry ants. He had watched her kiss a little boy's skinned knee after he had fallen in a game of chase. He had been there to see her eat four chocolate-chip ice creams by herself and run home with a stomachache. What made him come there every day, he didn't know. But he knew if he didn't get to see her that day, then the sun wouldn't rise in the morning and the moon's glow would grow dull.
Silently he watched her drive away. When he was sure that she wasn't coming back, Shingo walked over to the fountain and tossed his own yen in the pool. "Let her like me.." he sighed under his breath, "Just let her like me."
***
Ding-dong!!
"Shingo," Mamoru said as he opened the door, though it took him a moment. He could never get over the resemblance of his old friend, Motoki that the boy had grown into. "We're so glad you could come. Usagi's been preparing food all day!"
"Shingo!! Shingo, Shingo, SHINGO!!!" Usagi bound into the room, tackling her little brother in a bear hug. Ever since she had moved in with Mamo-chan she had become closer to her sibling than ever before. "Where were you? We were worried sick! Oh, it doesn't matter 'cause we really weren't. How's Mom? How's Dad? How's school? Do you have a girlfriend, yet? Where did you get those shoes? Do you think they carry them in my size? Do you like take-out? We're not having take-out. Do you want something to drink? Mamo-chan, get him something to drink, would you? What do you want to drink? Well?.?.?.?."
At this Mamoru and Shingo exchanged glances and fell over, laughing hysterically, while Usagi continued questioning them on their behavior. Eventually the three calmed and sat down for an early dinner on the back patio. But Usagi, smelling a burning dessert ran back into the kitchen to save what she could of the apple pie.
"We'll wait on you, Usako!" Mamoru called from the table.
"Don't bother! It'll take a while to fix this; I don't want the meal to get cold!" She called back. Usagi was very new at the role of being a housewife, but in Mamoru's eyes she couldn't have made a better one. The couple, however, had become used to the taste of take-out since it saved them from the chance of food poisoning. On this day she had decided to try to cook one thing for her little brother and she was determined that it would not be ruined.
The one thing she didn't realize was that Mamoru and Shingo would be left at the table feeling unusually uncomfortable and quiet. Usagi was skilled in the art of conversation. If she were sitting at a table with a cat and a mouse she could find a good topic of conversation. With her in the kitchen the two men sat uneasily trying to think of something to say.
"So, Shingo. It's been a while since I've seen you. Tell me, what's up." Mamoru asked at his young brother-in-law sensing a change in him that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Then again it was probably just the nervousness.
"Oh, nothing. Just the usual: study till two a.m., get three hours of sleep, school, school, school, work, work, work, and oh yeah, then there's school." The teenager thought about telling this man about her. Hotaru. Tomoe Hotaru. The very name ran chills up his spine.
Mamoru could keep his secret; he was sure. His sister had trusted this man enough to marry him. Yes, that meant he could trust him, too. Then again, what would he say? Would he laugh at a schoolboy's crush? Would he give him a long lecture on dating and how to treat her? Would he tell her? Would she laugh? No.. It's just not worth taking the risk.
"Heheh.." Mamoru chuckled. Yep, he was hiding something all right. What if it was something dangerous? What if something happened to him? Mamoru didn't know the boy very well, but there was no way he'd ever let something bad happen to someone Usagi loved. Nah. He was over-reacting. Shingo probably got a bad grade on a test. But... If there was something and he said something. No.. Shingo would probably think he was crazy. And then he'd never come to visit and they'd never get to be real family. No.. Don't ask. It's just not worth taking the risk.
"Apple Pie!" Usagi's voice broke the silence as she entered the room with the perfect fruit delicacy in her hands.
***
At the same time, out side of the city in a small farmhouse, Hotaru sat alone doing her homework at her kitchen table with a bowl of Nihon Soba.
"Let's see," she worked her problem aloud. "If we take away the square root of pi and divide by nine the answer will have to be... Impossible To Find!!!
"This is crazy." She threw her calculator across the room and flinched when it hit the wall.
"You have to promise to take extra-special care of this calculator! Do you know how much it costs?!" Haruka-papa's voice rang clearly in her head as if she were in the room.
Reluctantly, Hotaru got up to check the small, black machine. Her thumb gently touched the ON button. Nothing. She pressed it again, harder this time. Still nothing. Her eyes widened. She pressed it again. Tears began to fill up. And again. Her head began to throb. And again. Until finally her thumb was red and almost bruised from pressing the damn button.
"UUuuurRRrrrAAAgggGGHHHhhhh!!!!!!" No! This was not happening! She could not do Advanced AP Calculus with only a pencil and notebook paper! Well, she had to now. Her day had been like this since she woke up. She had burnt her breakfast. On the way to her daily ritual at the park she had had a flat tire. When she had returned home the answering machine announced that Michiru-mama and Haruka-papa where going to be in England for a few more days. Why did everything have to happen to her?
Slowly the raven haired girl shrugged back over to the table, removed her purple binder from her backpack, and began tearing out every used sheet of paper in search of a clean one. Eventually she got to one. She forced her hand to pick up her no.2 pencil and touch the paper. But as suddenly as her pencil made contact with the sheet the lead broke. The small woman collapsed in a fit of tears.
Hotaru cried for her endless amount of life and for the life that she'd never have, for her father, for her duty as a senshi, for the love that she'd never know. Finally, the girl fell asleep on top of her tear-soaked couch and, for the first time in her life, wished that she had never been Sailor Saturn.
By: Mizuno Herena
Disclaimer: (To the tune of Jingle Bells) Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon
Own you- I do not
I really, really wish I did
But Naoko Takeuchi does!
(To quote a good friend, "Okay, it's a lousy song; But it's MY lousy song.")
Rating: PG for mild language (If you can watch TV, you can read the fic)
Warning: This is my first FanFic, so please be kind. Also, I know it's a VERY used plot line. But I couldn't help it!!!! Okay, I'm beginning to sound like DiC's sadly dubbed version of our beloved Usagi. Meaning: I'll quit whining and start writing.
It was springtime in Tokyo, when pink cherry blossoms covered the once-skeleton trees in the parks and the grass was so thick and green that you'd swear it was carpet. The multicolored buds on the flowers were just waking to the sun's gentle rays in their garden, next to the playgrounds. Children laughed as they plummeted down the slides and flew in the swings. Little girls giggled as they kissed their first crush on the cheek and ran away, embarrassed. Little boys gave an adorable look of (mock) disgust whenever the "L" word was mentioned and denied any interest in the opposite sex. Couples held hands and kissed respectfully under pagodas covered in dark emerald ivy. Yes, indeed the signs of spring-love were everywhere.
It was at this time, when everyone should have been happiest, that a small, raven-haired girl sat. Lonely and depressed on the rim of a fountain in the center of the Shibuya Area Park, she seemed to stare at the sun without blinking. Her striking violet eyes cast down at the water. A passer-by might have guessed her age to be about fourteen, and her life to have been a dull one. In reality she had just turned eighteen and her life was anything but dull.
Tomoe Hotaru suffered through a life that the normal teenager would crumble before. While any other seventeen-year-old girl would be shopping on a beautiful Sunday, Hotaru was probably fighting a youma. The common girl would be hanging out with friends. She was waiting for her best friend to be born in a few centuries. Ordinary girls think about what shoes would go best with their purse. Hotaru thought about how long she had left to live in her present body. Being the Senshi of Saturn, Death, Destruction, Silence, and Rebirth was very time consuming, not to mention hard to say. Who had time to think of pleasant things when there was always some dark force to overcome?
But the thing that worried her most wasn't her weak nature, it wasn't even that she had a mad scientist for a father somewhere, that her Setsuna-mama was always busy guarding the Gates of Time, or that her Michiru-mama and Haruka-papa were constantly on concert tours. The thing that bothered Hotaru the most was love or rather the lack of it.
Often, on Saturday nights she would have dinner at the Chiba's residence. She would glance across the table at Mamoru and see his eyes lovingly transfixed on his wife, Usagi. He would do anything for her. After supper they would sit by their fireplace and Usagi would read stories to her captive audience. No matter how old Hotaru got, her favorite stories were always the faery tales. Every time the odangoed girl would reach the description of the handsome prince she would always describe Mamoru instead, and then add with a look toward her prince, "Just like you."
How badly she wanted that... That love that could survive through every trial, every obstacle, and every test. Especially the worst test of all....Time. It seemed that everyone had it but her.
After romantic and short engagement, Ami was to be married to Urawa in a few weeks. Makoto was (not so) secretly seeing her cooking professor, Usami Saori. Rei had fallen for an American named Geoffrey Foster who dated her through the technology of the holo-net. Surprisingly, Minako gave up stardom and settled down with a rising computer programmer, Matsumiya Kyoko. Of course, Michiru and Haruka were still an item and even Setsuna had been seen hanging around the Gates of Time with a mysterious significant other. Was Hotaru the only one in the universe doomed to a lonely existence?
The late-afternoon sun was beginning to beat down on the pale girl sitting on the fountain. Her cup of ice cream had already melted into a mush of melted goop. Hotaru picked a chocolate-chip out of the soup and threw the styrofoam cup away. She had better get home soon. The previous day's homework was not yet finished and she was already utterly fatigued.
What she didn't know was that as she walked from the park's center to the parking lot a pair of dark green eyes followed her every step.
Tsukino Shingo watched his classmate (she had skipped a grade) quietly walk over the pebbled walkway and step into her small black car. He had been watching her since the first time he saw her throw a yen into the clear water at the feet of the marble angel that stood the fountain's center. That was three months ago.
The sight of a seventeen-year-old girl making a wish like a little girl entranced him and he couldn't get his mind off her since. What did she wish for? Why did she come to the same place in the same park every day? Did she ever see him watching her? Why was she so sad? What ever it was, he wanted more than any thing to make her smile. He wanted to make everything better, so she'd always smile- for him.
Every day since then Shingo had come to see her make her wish and sit in the warm sun. He had seen her try to sit under a magnificent willow tree once; only to be cast out of her shade by a horde of angry ants. He had watched her kiss a little boy's skinned knee after he had fallen in a game of chase. He had been there to see her eat four chocolate-chip ice creams by herself and run home with a stomachache. What made him come there every day, he didn't know. But he knew if he didn't get to see her that day, then the sun wouldn't rise in the morning and the moon's glow would grow dull.
Silently he watched her drive away. When he was sure that she wasn't coming back, Shingo walked over to the fountain and tossed his own yen in the pool. "Let her like me.." he sighed under his breath, "Just let her like me."
***
Ding-dong!!
"Shingo," Mamoru said as he opened the door, though it took him a moment. He could never get over the resemblance of his old friend, Motoki that the boy had grown into. "We're so glad you could come. Usagi's been preparing food all day!"
"Shingo!! Shingo, Shingo, SHINGO!!!" Usagi bound into the room, tackling her little brother in a bear hug. Ever since she had moved in with Mamo-chan she had become closer to her sibling than ever before. "Where were you? We were worried sick! Oh, it doesn't matter 'cause we really weren't. How's Mom? How's Dad? How's school? Do you have a girlfriend, yet? Where did you get those shoes? Do you think they carry them in my size? Do you like take-out? We're not having take-out. Do you want something to drink? Mamo-chan, get him something to drink, would you? What do you want to drink? Well?.?.?.?."
At this Mamoru and Shingo exchanged glances and fell over, laughing hysterically, while Usagi continued questioning them on their behavior. Eventually the three calmed and sat down for an early dinner on the back patio. But Usagi, smelling a burning dessert ran back into the kitchen to save what she could of the apple pie.
"We'll wait on you, Usako!" Mamoru called from the table.
"Don't bother! It'll take a while to fix this; I don't want the meal to get cold!" She called back. Usagi was very new at the role of being a housewife, but in Mamoru's eyes she couldn't have made a better one. The couple, however, had become used to the taste of take-out since it saved them from the chance of food poisoning. On this day she had decided to try to cook one thing for her little brother and she was determined that it would not be ruined.
The one thing she didn't realize was that Mamoru and Shingo would be left at the table feeling unusually uncomfortable and quiet. Usagi was skilled in the art of conversation. If she were sitting at a table with a cat and a mouse she could find a good topic of conversation. With her in the kitchen the two men sat uneasily trying to think of something to say.
"So, Shingo. It's been a while since I've seen you. Tell me, what's up." Mamoru asked at his young brother-in-law sensing a change in him that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Then again it was probably just the nervousness.
"Oh, nothing. Just the usual: study till two a.m., get three hours of sleep, school, school, school, work, work, work, and oh yeah, then there's school." The teenager thought about telling this man about her. Hotaru. Tomoe Hotaru. The very name ran chills up his spine.
Mamoru could keep his secret; he was sure. His sister had trusted this man enough to marry him. Yes, that meant he could trust him, too. Then again, what would he say? Would he laugh at a schoolboy's crush? Would he give him a long lecture on dating and how to treat her? Would he tell her? Would she laugh? No.. It's just not worth taking the risk.
"Heheh.." Mamoru chuckled. Yep, he was hiding something all right. What if it was something dangerous? What if something happened to him? Mamoru didn't know the boy very well, but there was no way he'd ever let something bad happen to someone Usagi loved. Nah. He was over-reacting. Shingo probably got a bad grade on a test. But... If there was something and he said something. No.. Shingo would probably think he was crazy. And then he'd never come to visit and they'd never get to be real family. No.. Don't ask. It's just not worth taking the risk.
"Apple Pie!" Usagi's voice broke the silence as she entered the room with the perfect fruit delicacy in her hands.
***
At the same time, out side of the city in a small farmhouse, Hotaru sat alone doing her homework at her kitchen table with a bowl of Nihon Soba.
"Let's see," she worked her problem aloud. "If we take away the square root of pi and divide by nine the answer will have to be... Impossible To Find!!!
"This is crazy." She threw her calculator across the room and flinched when it hit the wall.
"You have to promise to take extra-special care of this calculator! Do you know how much it costs?!" Haruka-papa's voice rang clearly in her head as if she were in the room.
Reluctantly, Hotaru got up to check the small, black machine. Her thumb gently touched the ON button. Nothing. She pressed it again, harder this time. Still nothing. Her eyes widened. She pressed it again. Tears began to fill up. And again. Her head began to throb. And again. Until finally her thumb was red and almost bruised from pressing the damn button.
"UUuuurRRrrrAAAgggGGHHHhhhh!!!!!!" No! This was not happening! She could not do Advanced AP Calculus with only a pencil and notebook paper! Well, she had to now. Her day had been like this since she woke up. She had burnt her breakfast. On the way to her daily ritual at the park she had had a flat tire. When she had returned home the answering machine announced that Michiru-mama and Haruka-papa where going to be in England for a few more days. Why did everything have to happen to her?
Slowly the raven haired girl shrugged back over to the table, removed her purple binder from her backpack, and began tearing out every used sheet of paper in search of a clean one. Eventually she got to one. She forced her hand to pick up her no.2 pencil and touch the paper. But as suddenly as her pencil made contact with the sheet the lead broke. The small woman collapsed in a fit of tears.
Hotaru cried for her endless amount of life and for the life that she'd never have, for her father, for her duty as a senshi, for the love that she'd never know. Finally, the girl fell asleep on top of her tear-soaked couch and, for the first time in her life, wished that she had never been Sailor Saturn.