Chapter Thirteen - Last Day
***
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"*Last* day." Masaya sighed heavily as he seated himself on the couch that morning. The house was completely quiet, not a child in sight...even Aiyana was still asleep. He had the morning to himself, thanks to him being an early riser. Masaya sighed blissfully and sat back, relaxing.
The sound of a child-sized footstep made him groan, and he raised one eye towards the staircase. It was Izumi, staring back at him with soft blue eyes, wrapped in a blanket.
"Izumi..." He almost affixed the affectionate suffix to the end before realizing that Izumi would become angry. Kami-sama, he even addressed Princess Usagi Small Lady Serenity with -chan! "Izumi-kouhai, what are you doing up so early?"
She seemed satisfied with the new honorific. "I would ask the same of you, Masaya-senpai."
He smiled gently. Izumi's speech was very mature for her age. "Just enjoying it being quiet for once, that's all."
"What, you mean without Aiyana screaming for help while the twins turn circles around your ankles?" Izumi grinned widely and made her way to the couch, sitting down and curling up in her blanket. It was springtime now, the very beginning of May, but it was still a bit chilly in the mornings before the humidity came in. It was hard to believe time had passed so quickly since that fateful February night that Aiyana had blown in.
"You don't seem to be quite too quiet yourself at times, Izumi-kouhai." He smiled affectionately and ruffled her short hair.
"I can be quiet," Izumi said solemnly, and for a few moments the room was silent, neither of them talking. Finally the teenage girl's face broke into a grin. "But not for long."
Masaya laughed and Izumi smiled adoringly up at the older man. "Masaya-senpai..." Izumi had never had a problem with being shy or afraid to ask questions. "How do you feel about Aiyana?"
Masaya's laughter stopped and he stared down at Izumi. "What do you mean by that question?"
"I meant what I said. How do you feel about her?"
"Like, how I think she's going to do with her pregnancy? I think she'll do fine. She's coming along okay now, as a matter of fact--"
"No, Masaya." Izumi's eyes were urgent as she looked up at Masaya, and he realized that she had left the honorific from his name. He tried to ignore it. "I mean, do you like her? *Like* her?"
"Of course I like her," Masaya said defensively, deliberately eluding the purpose of her question. "She's my patient and I've been taking care of her these past five months. I should like her. Besides, what does it matter to you?"
"It does matter to me," Izumi said, and that was the closest she had ever gotten to straight-out telling Masaya she had a crush on him. She didn't know why she didn't just tell him...she'd never had a problem with being blunt before. But it would be nice if he could just watch her long enough to figure it out himself. The hints she'd been leaving had been pretty damn big.
"Why?"
"You're my...you're close to me and my family. Besides, Aiyana-san isn't your patient. She's my mother's."
Masaya's eyes looked hurt at the accusation, and Izumi was almost sorry she said it. "I'm your mother's intern."
"Not any longer, Masaya-senpai...you're on the payroll at the hospital and you're a pediatrician."
"Pediatrics and adolescent care. I'm working alongside Ami with Aiyana. What are you all up in my paycheck for?" he teased, sticking his tongue out at Izumi.
She chuckled a bit, but only because she couldn't help it. "Why does it bother you so much to know that you're not Aiyana's doctor?"
"Because...I've done a lot for her," he said, looking wistfully at the stairwell where Aiyana would be up, sleeping. "I wouldn't want anyone to write it off as just me nosing around. I really wanted to do everything that I've done."
"Well," Izumi started out slowly, "wouldn't it be more practical for you not to stress that you're Aiyana-san's doctor? Then, people would know that you wanted to do it because you're not getting paid for it."
"Yeah...hey, you're right!" Masaya smiled down at Izumi. "You think a lot like your mother."
"Arigatou gozaimasu," said Izumi, pleased. She saw that as a compliment, seeing how much Masaya admired her mother.
"She's really quite useless," Izumi said, chuckling.
"What?" Masaya looked sharply down at Izumi.
Aiyana froze on the stairs. 'I'm *what*?!'
"I *said*, she's really quite useless, isn't she?" Izumi smiled charmingly at Masaya. "Masaya-senpai, she spills everything all over the floor, she can't cook, and she got into a fight with me the first day. Don't you remember that? What was she over here for, if she didn't watch anyone? She was more of a hindrance than a help. Why did you bring her over here?"
For a moment Masaya couldn't answer, but a moment was all Aiyana needed to hear Izumi's hurtful words and believe that Masaya's silence was an unwitting agreement with them. 'Useless! I'm just useless to him...he's probably wondering the same, thing, why the hell he invited me to come with him anyway. I just caused more trouble for him than...than Izumi-san herself!' She turned and quietly ascended the staircase again, only beginning to run once she reached the top and couldn't be heard.
"She's not. Yesterday she helped a lot." Now Masaya's voice took on a defensive tone for Aiyana. "She helped at breakfast, answered the phone, and even though she had to run upstairs for a bit--"
"To hide from your mother," Izumi added. "Why was she hiding, Masaya-senpai? Your mother doesn't like her?"
"She wouldn't approve of her being over here with me, and I'd rather hide than explain, that's all, Izumi-kouhai," said Masaya, annoyed at Izumi's turn of conversation. "You are a nosy little thing, aren't you?"
"Just inquisitive."
"You've inquired enough," Masaya said. "Now either hush or go back to bed!"
Izumi sat back in the couch, struggling not to smile. For she, unlike Masaya, had heard the footsteps on the staircase, and they were much too heavy to be either of the twins'.
***
"Aiyana?"
Aiyana clutched the comforter closer to her body and tried her hardest to ignore the urge to sniffle back the tears as she heard Masaya's voice at the doorway. She'd just noticed that Masaya often left off all use of an honorific with her name. Hearing Izumi's argument with Masaya earlier about the use of an honorific, she realized they must indicate some sort of relationship with the bearer...she'd just called Masaya '-sensei'- because that was the name she'd heard given to professionals. Learning Japanese in the Empire, she realized, she must have forgotten a lot.
"Yes."
"Are you getting up anytime soon, sleepyhead?" he teased softly, smiling at her hunched figure on the bed. His smile faded when she didn't stir, and he heard a muffled sound from beneath the light blue comforter.
"No."
"No?" Masaya frowned. "You're supposed to be helping me, not curled underneath your bedspread all warm while I'm up here with the children."
"I don't *feel* well." Aiyana enuciated each word sharply and tried to burrow even deeper into the bed. A fresh tear was making it's way steadily down her cheek.
"Oh." Masaya sighed. "Well, I'm sorry. I hope you feel better, Aiyana...I'm going downstairs. Please call me if you need anything."
Aiyana called something back that Masaya assumed was a yes, and he left the room.
'Is it a full moon out tonight or something?' Masaya thought, scratching his head as he stared back at the closed door. What was it with all the females in the house acting strangely? Aiyana he could forgive; she was pregnant, after all. But even pregnant women weren't this moody...or were they? He was twenty-one when Ami had been pregnant with the twins, twenty-two when Rei became pregnant with Yuriko. Ami was complaisant and very gentle. Rei...was not. He supposed it varied in women, and with someone who had been through as much as Aiyana had been through...it would probably good that she cried and became bitchy sometimes. She needed to vent her feelings somehow.
But Izumi...the girl had always been rather blunt, but generally likeable. In the same night as she had met someone new, she'd gotten into an argument with her. For the life of him Masaya couldn't understand why Izumi didn't like Aiyana. Perhaps it was female clashing or something like that, but *what* were they clashing over? They didn't have anything in common, of course...but he'd hoped that Izumi would like Aiyana and look up to her. That way he'd have testimony if Aiyana...were ever to apply for asylum on Earth.
Masaya was embarrassed to admit, even to himself, that he had often daydreamed about Aiyana living on Earth. He had no idea why the idea seemed so tantalizing to him...there was nothing he could have to do with Aiyana if she chose to stay. She'd live on her own, be on her own...but perhaps the thrill was being able to look over a child that he'd known since his mother's womb. Although Aiyana had started calling the child a her, Masaya insisted on calling it a him and secretly hoped it would be a male child, although he had no idea why.
In his deepest heart of hearts, he supposed he wished he could grow closer to Aiyana and her child...as if he weren't already close enough already, and it weren't bringing him a world of trouble! Truthfully, he had felt his heart jump like a child on Christmas Eve with anticipation when Aiyana said she could feel her baby move inside her. And when Nanami-chan had attested to the fact that it was perceptible outside...it took all his willpower to stop himself from laying his hand on Aiyana's stomach and feeling it himself.
The truth was, he couldn't imagine why he was so excited about this seventeen-year-old girl's baby. She was not related to him; she wasn't one of his surrogate cousins or aunts. And he wasn't...he wasn't...he wasn't falling...falling for her, was he?
"No, that's silly." His own voice startled and him and scorned him. Baka. He didn't even sound convincing to his own ears.
'It must just be my love for children, though, he insisted to himself. There's no way...I mean, Aiyana has been here for almost five months...and yet, that still doesn't seem long enough. Yes, I care for her, but not quite in that way...
I don't...'
***
Aiyana stared into the bathroom mirror and rubbed her eyes. The whites looked white again, not bloodshot red, and with a little washing she had washed the reminder that she had been crying from her face carefully. She shook her head a little, mimicking a gesture she'd often seen Masaya doing.
Useless, was she? She'd show Masaya--and Izumi--that she could be of some use. She'd help Masaya make a meal while Izumi watched her younger sisters--not the other way around, for once. After all, that was what she was here for, right? If Izumi could watch the children and cook at the same time Ami would not have asked Masaya and she to come over.
She smiled as she thought of it. She was no chef, that was quite clear. But she could at least try to put something together to help him. Perhaps she would make the dessert this time...at the thought of replicating the delicious cake Masaya had made Friday night, Aiyana wet her lips. Yummy. Could she do something like that?
She struggled to smile at her reflection. The only way to find out was to try!
She pulled at the cute overalls and pink shirt she wore underneath and bounded down the stairs as energetically as a four-and-a-half-months-pregnant woman could. It was a little after lunchtime--she'd fallen asleep earlier and slept for longer than expected--and Masaya started dinner early, especially since Ami and her husband would be returning that evening.
Sure enough, there he was, in the kitchen preparing the food. Izumi was alongside, looking like a little kitchen hand, dashing about and getting things for him and occasionally peeking at the preoccupied twins.
"May I help?" Aiyana asked, smiling a little. "I know I bumbled along last time, but I can try again. Please?"
Izumi and Masaya looked up at her. Izumi's face took on a nasty twist as she turned away, but Masaya's eyes softened as he looked at Aiyana. Even pregnant as she was, she appeared so innocent! "Of course you can help, Aiyana. Izumi can watch the kids fully now, so it's a good thing you woke up."
Izumi grudgingly wiped her hands and stalked out of the kitchen to where the twins were at.
"Here, you can..." Masaya looked down at the tools in his hand. He was about to tell Aiyana she could peel the potatoes, but he thought better of it and set the sharp paring knife and potatoes aside. "You can make the lasagna. Here, I'll show you."
He took her through the instructions of the lasagna, telling her exactly how much ricotta and mozzerella cheese to put on top of the shells so it would melt to cheesy perfection. Aiyana smiled as he described the steps. 'Cooking is the only thing that I've seen him so passionate about--besides being a doctor, of course.'
His hands flew as he described more. "And you can do all that sitting down, you know," said Masaya. "Which is what I want you to do. Sit down so that you don't hurt yourself."
Aiyana made a face. 'Does he still think I'm some sort of danger--even to my own self?'
Masaya saw the face she made and laughed. "I'm not trying to say that you're incompetant of doing things yourself," he said, chuckling. "I just don't want you to hurt yourself--or the baby inside you. Remember, you've got two people to worry about now, okay?"
Aiyana nodded, but she wasn't completely satisfied.
The two of them worked quietly in the kitchen for a while, not speaking to each other. Aiyana let the tip of her tongue hang from her mouth as she concentrated. 'How much ricotta did he say to add ...one or two cups? How could I have forgotten so quickly...oh, I remember,' she thought ruefully. "Placenta brains".'
***
"Michiru..." Haruka looked up at her brooding lover as she stared through the window of the small apartment they chose to share, instead of living in a large home as the Senshi had chosen. "What are you thinking about?"
"Hotaru," she admitted, turning back to Haruka with misty dark eyes. Haruka raised her eyebrows and turned away. She didn't want to hear the hurt in Michiru's voice again.
But she continued. "Haruka, I still don't believe that she would just leave on her own will like that," she said, shaking her head. "There must have been something that made her leave. Remember she aged? She had just aged to her teenage years. She wouldn't have left us on her own, Haruka..."
"She disappeared after the fights," Haruka said, conceding to join the conversation. "Directly after we were finished fighting this new enemy and Crystal Tokyo came to rising. She didn't even stay to see the king and queen inaugurated and crowned, the christening of Chibi-usa..."
"Who was she with?" Michiru asked suddenly.
"What do you mean, who was she with?"
"During the fights. Remember we ended up breaking up into groups of two? It was you and the moon brat..." Haruka smiled at the affectionate name the two Outers had assigned Sailormoon. "And Sailormercury and I. I don't know who Setsuna was with..."
"None of us were with any other of us," Haruka said, meaning the Outers as a group. Michiru nodded.
"So that means that Hotaru, as Sailorsaturn during the battles, was with either Sailorvenus or Sailorjupiter."
"Or Tuxedo Kamen," Haruka added.
Suddenly Michiru sat up straight, her eyes flying open. "Tuxedo Kamen!" She turned and looked at Haruka. "I need to see that assassin at the hospital as *soon* as possible. She may hold the key..." Michiru's eyes filled with tears. "She may hold the key to finding Hotaru again, Haruka."
***
Aiyana steadied her shaking hand and mixed the batter vehemently. Since she started the lasagna and had the food in the oven now, she wanted to make a sweet cake for the girls--and she and Masaya--to eat for dessert...and she wanted to make it all on her own.
She had painstakingly taken down Masaya's recipe for something called a "red velvet" cake, him having said that she along with everyone else would definitely enjoy the sweet confection. After checking to make sure Ami had all the ingredients, she had combined them and was now mixing the batter. She smiled, very happy at the way things had turned out. This cake would be perfect...and that would be step one to proving how helpful and self-sufficient she could truly be.
She hummed a little tune as she worked. She had no idea where she had heard it from, but it was a cute little tune, tinkling and melodious. She'd known that little tune ever since she was a young girl, and she'd often hummed it to get herself to sleep in the barracks back in the Empire, especially if she were feeling alone or hurt. The tune held some sort of warm security for Aiyana, made her try to push away her troubles. And whenever she listened to it, winding itself from her own lips, it made her dream sweet dreams even after the most brutal attacks.
She nearly smiled as she remembered that she was once a military denizen, a trained assassin. At least, back then she hadn't had to prove to anyone she was capable of things. If she did, there was never a doubt when she was finished that First Delta Aiyana Khalidah was no innocuous little machine.
First Delta...hearing the words in her mind, Aiyana grimaced. She probably wasn't First Delta any longer; after an almost four-month (or 2.8 ikkagetsu, she thought after quickly converting) absence without reporting back she had probably lost her position to the Second Delta, and an Epsilon had been moved up. She was almost sure of this fact.
And yet, she was surprised to realize that she didn't care. Instead of a worried, stressed, devastated reaction, she found only peace--soft peace in the pit of her stomach. She was free...she was finally free of the hell the other men had given her, free of the endless training and missions, free of the stress of keeping secrets...free from seeing things that no one, especially not a seventeen-year-old girl, should ever have to see.
"Aiyana...are you okay in there?" Masaya peeked his head around the kitchen doorway. He had done so several times, since he was in the living room with the twins and Izumi and she was working alone in the kitchen.
"Absolutely fine," said Aiyana, and she smiled joyously to herself.
***
"Mmmm, it smells goooooood, Masaya-san!" Manami yelled, jumping up and down. "Can I help you take it out?"
"It's very hot," Masaya said. "I don't want you to get hurt or anything. Perhaps you'd better just wait till I call you in."
"Do you need any help, Masaya-senpai?" Izumi asked, peering up at Masaya's face.
He shot a look at Aiyana. She was smiling dreamily as she checked the oven's contents. "No, Izumi-chan, I think Aiyana and I can handle it," he said. He went to the kitchen, oblivious to the fact that he'd once again accidentally addressed Izumi with '-chan.'
Izumi fumed.
In the kitchen, Aiyana was gleefully surveying her efforts with the microwave. She'd successfully removed the heated mashed potatoes from the microwave oven. Masaya smiled as he watched her carefully place it on a trivet on the table.
"Almost done," she said. "The only thing we need to get out is the lasagna and the cake."
Masaya smiled. "Your cake is finished?"
"Hai, it's on the bottom rack."
Masaya went over to the oven and checked the lasagna. He pulled two more oven mitts from Ami's drawer under the stove (and wondered why she had more than two, seeing as Ami and Mitsuru didn't do much cooking together) and pulled the lasagna out of the oven.
Aiyana moved behind him, reaching in towards the bottom rack and grasped the cake, pulling it out. Her arm grazed the hot oven surface, causing her to jerk back her arms in pain.
Unfortunately, the cake did not move back with her.
The scene almost seemed to be slow motion. Aiyana watched in horror as the cake--the cake she had labored hard over to make all on her own--went crashing to the floor, top-first. Being hot, it didn't hold well, but rather crumbled to pieces on contact.
Masaya almost dropped his own dish when he heard the clatter of the cake pan on the floor. Quickly he put the lasagna down on two more trivets and rushed over to do damage control.
However, it seemed that the spilled cake was the lesser of the two problems...the one most damaged at that particular moment was Aiyana. Her eyes had dilated so drastically that only a thin ring of blue could be seen around the pupil, and she had gone white as a sheet. Masaya spotted the burn forming on her arm.
"Aiyana," said Masaya gently, taking hold of her hand, "you've burned yourself! Come on, you've got to get this under cold water--"
Aiyana took the hand Masaya was holding and used it cover her face, then burst into sobs.
Oh, no..."Aiyana, please don't cry...Aiyana, we can make another cake! Please, stop crying. It's okay...it's okay..."
"It's not the cake!" she sobbed. "I never do anything right! That's the reason I'm even here in the first place, because I never do anything right! I couldn't carry out my mission, couldn't see the truth behind the Omegas' lies, couldn't make macaroni and cheese yesterday, couldn't take care of the children. I try for just one day to try and do something right...make a cake...and I dropped it!" Her sobs turned into a wail. "Why can't I ever do anything right?!"
Masaya took Aiyana's hand and gently led her over to a chair, then pulled up one across from hers. "Aiyana..." He was about to tell her to stop crying, until he realized it was probably good for her to cry...good for her to let out all those bottled emotions. He merely held her hand and looked at her.
For some reason, that only seemed to make her anguish worse. "And you know it," she said miserably. "You think I'm useless and stupid too. That's why you wouldn't say anything...you don't want to deny the truth."
"What?!" Masaya snapped his head down to look at Aiyana. "That's not true at all! Where did you ever get that idea from?"
"You don't," said Aiyana. "You didn't say anything...and you were here all weekend. You watched me make a stupid fool of myself."
"Aiyana," Masaya said, "I never thought you were a 'stupid fool', not for one moment!" Masaya shook his head vehemently and brought Aiyana's chin up to look at him. "Not for a second. It doesn't matter to me; it's just a cake, and everyone makes mistakes. I'd rather you drop that cake than you get burned even worse than you had!"
Aiyana, who had dropped her eyes from Masaya's stare, looked up again. She had the sudden urge to say "Really?" like all the clichéd movie star females...just to see if what she thought would happen next...
But it turned out she didn't even have to say anything at all, because in the next moment, Masaya's lips were on hers, and she forgot everything about movies and dropped cakes and failed missions...just the knowledge of what it felt like to have her first real, true kiss.
It was short, very short, because Masaya pulled back, embarrassed at his hasty actions. Before he could pull back too far, though, Aiyana's clutch on his sleeves tightened, and she let out a soft, pleading whimper.
Chuckling softly, he finished what he had started.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: All right, you guys, I'm a horrible cook. I don't know anything about cooking. I'm telling you, have you ever heard that Jay-Z song called "Girls, Girls, Girls"? My friends labeled me "that model chick who don't cook or clean". I can't cook. Well, a little bit, but not enough to know how to make everything I said. I have a vague idea about these things, but I surely don't know how to make a vanilla cake from scratch, much less a red velvet one, so if anything seems really out of order, e-mail me and I'll change it...maybe.
Now, again I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence in here...but in case you don't know, a trivet is one of those little things that you put a hot pan on so it doesn't burn your table or countertop or whatever. There was something else in here I wasn't sure you'd know, but I can't remember it right now...
Oh, I want to apologize a million times over for something...one of my readers complained that it was hard to keep the Senshi's husbands straight. That's partly my own fault. The Senshi had some really generic names until I changed them all, but when I transferred the chapters over from my upload files, I forgot to change the names on some. *ooops* I'm really sorry if I caused a lot of confusion, but for your better knowledge:
Mitsuru is Ami's husband, Sadayoshi is Minako's husband, Ieyasu is Makoto's husband, and Sanetoki is Rei's husband.
Sorry.
Oh! I remembered! More with the honorifics. The honorifics "-senpai," "-kouhai," and "-sensei" are actually also words. A senpai ("-sempai" is actually more correct) is a social senior--you'd use it for someone older than you, usually in a school or mentor-mentee setting. The opposite is a kouhai. A kouhai is a social junior--someone younger than you. A senpai is sort of like a mentor; upperclassmen (senpai) in Japan are expected to help out their underclassmen (kouhai), even after they've graduated from school. Your senpai will always be your senpai and vice versa. By Izumi and Masaya addressing each other with senpai and kouhai, it implies a mentor-mentee relationship, and makes Izumi sound a bit more equal to Masaya than "-chan" will.
Sensei is most often translated to "teacher" but that's such a simplified view...a sensei actually can be any professional who works for the betterment of people. It originated with dojo masters, and implicates a sort of reverence for the one addressed as such. Sensei is not to be taken lightly. Like kouhai and senpai, sensei is for life...your sensei will always be addressed as sensei, even if you see them years after you graduate from that sensei's class. Lawyers, policemen, physicians (^_^) can also be addressed as a sensei...it's basically a professional term. It literally translates to "before life" so I suppose you can get the basic idea.
Any more questions or comments, send 'em my way at julymoonbunny@hotmail.com
***
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"*Last* day." Masaya sighed heavily as he seated himself on the couch that morning. The house was completely quiet, not a child in sight...even Aiyana was still asleep. He had the morning to himself, thanks to him being an early riser. Masaya sighed blissfully and sat back, relaxing.
The sound of a child-sized footstep made him groan, and he raised one eye towards the staircase. It was Izumi, staring back at him with soft blue eyes, wrapped in a blanket.
"Izumi..." He almost affixed the affectionate suffix to the end before realizing that Izumi would become angry. Kami-sama, he even addressed Princess Usagi Small Lady Serenity with -chan! "Izumi-kouhai, what are you doing up so early?"
She seemed satisfied with the new honorific. "I would ask the same of you, Masaya-senpai."
He smiled gently. Izumi's speech was very mature for her age. "Just enjoying it being quiet for once, that's all."
"What, you mean without Aiyana screaming for help while the twins turn circles around your ankles?" Izumi grinned widely and made her way to the couch, sitting down and curling up in her blanket. It was springtime now, the very beginning of May, but it was still a bit chilly in the mornings before the humidity came in. It was hard to believe time had passed so quickly since that fateful February night that Aiyana had blown in.
"You don't seem to be quite too quiet yourself at times, Izumi-kouhai." He smiled affectionately and ruffled her short hair.
"I can be quiet," Izumi said solemnly, and for a few moments the room was silent, neither of them talking. Finally the teenage girl's face broke into a grin. "But not for long."
Masaya laughed and Izumi smiled adoringly up at the older man. "Masaya-senpai..." Izumi had never had a problem with being shy or afraid to ask questions. "How do you feel about Aiyana?"
Masaya's laughter stopped and he stared down at Izumi. "What do you mean by that question?"
"I meant what I said. How do you feel about her?"
"Like, how I think she's going to do with her pregnancy? I think she'll do fine. She's coming along okay now, as a matter of fact--"
"No, Masaya." Izumi's eyes were urgent as she looked up at Masaya, and he realized that she had left the honorific from his name. He tried to ignore it. "I mean, do you like her? *Like* her?"
"Of course I like her," Masaya said defensively, deliberately eluding the purpose of her question. "She's my patient and I've been taking care of her these past five months. I should like her. Besides, what does it matter to you?"
"It does matter to me," Izumi said, and that was the closest she had ever gotten to straight-out telling Masaya she had a crush on him. She didn't know why she didn't just tell him...she'd never had a problem with being blunt before. But it would be nice if he could just watch her long enough to figure it out himself. The hints she'd been leaving had been pretty damn big.
"Why?"
"You're my...you're close to me and my family. Besides, Aiyana-san isn't your patient. She's my mother's."
Masaya's eyes looked hurt at the accusation, and Izumi was almost sorry she said it. "I'm your mother's intern."
"Not any longer, Masaya-senpai...you're on the payroll at the hospital and you're a pediatrician."
"Pediatrics and adolescent care. I'm working alongside Ami with Aiyana. What are you all up in my paycheck for?" he teased, sticking his tongue out at Izumi.
She chuckled a bit, but only because she couldn't help it. "Why does it bother you so much to know that you're not Aiyana's doctor?"
"Because...I've done a lot for her," he said, looking wistfully at the stairwell where Aiyana would be up, sleeping. "I wouldn't want anyone to write it off as just me nosing around. I really wanted to do everything that I've done."
"Well," Izumi started out slowly, "wouldn't it be more practical for you not to stress that you're Aiyana-san's doctor? Then, people would know that you wanted to do it because you're not getting paid for it."
"Yeah...hey, you're right!" Masaya smiled down at Izumi. "You think a lot like your mother."
"Arigatou gozaimasu," said Izumi, pleased. She saw that as a compliment, seeing how much Masaya admired her mother.
"She's really quite useless," Izumi said, chuckling.
"What?" Masaya looked sharply down at Izumi.
Aiyana froze on the stairs. 'I'm *what*?!'
"I *said*, she's really quite useless, isn't she?" Izumi smiled charmingly at Masaya. "Masaya-senpai, she spills everything all over the floor, she can't cook, and she got into a fight with me the first day. Don't you remember that? What was she over here for, if she didn't watch anyone? She was more of a hindrance than a help. Why did you bring her over here?"
For a moment Masaya couldn't answer, but a moment was all Aiyana needed to hear Izumi's hurtful words and believe that Masaya's silence was an unwitting agreement with them. 'Useless! I'm just useless to him...he's probably wondering the same, thing, why the hell he invited me to come with him anyway. I just caused more trouble for him than...than Izumi-san herself!' She turned and quietly ascended the staircase again, only beginning to run once she reached the top and couldn't be heard.
"She's not. Yesterday she helped a lot." Now Masaya's voice took on a defensive tone for Aiyana. "She helped at breakfast, answered the phone, and even though she had to run upstairs for a bit--"
"To hide from your mother," Izumi added. "Why was she hiding, Masaya-senpai? Your mother doesn't like her?"
"She wouldn't approve of her being over here with me, and I'd rather hide than explain, that's all, Izumi-kouhai," said Masaya, annoyed at Izumi's turn of conversation. "You are a nosy little thing, aren't you?"
"Just inquisitive."
"You've inquired enough," Masaya said. "Now either hush or go back to bed!"
Izumi sat back in the couch, struggling not to smile. For she, unlike Masaya, had heard the footsteps on the staircase, and they were much too heavy to be either of the twins'.
***
"Aiyana?"
Aiyana clutched the comforter closer to her body and tried her hardest to ignore the urge to sniffle back the tears as she heard Masaya's voice at the doorway. She'd just noticed that Masaya often left off all use of an honorific with her name. Hearing Izumi's argument with Masaya earlier about the use of an honorific, she realized they must indicate some sort of relationship with the bearer...she'd just called Masaya '-sensei'- because that was the name she'd heard given to professionals. Learning Japanese in the Empire, she realized, she must have forgotten a lot.
"Yes."
"Are you getting up anytime soon, sleepyhead?" he teased softly, smiling at her hunched figure on the bed. His smile faded when she didn't stir, and he heard a muffled sound from beneath the light blue comforter.
"No."
"No?" Masaya frowned. "You're supposed to be helping me, not curled underneath your bedspread all warm while I'm up here with the children."
"I don't *feel* well." Aiyana enuciated each word sharply and tried to burrow even deeper into the bed. A fresh tear was making it's way steadily down her cheek.
"Oh." Masaya sighed. "Well, I'm sorry. I hope you feel better, Aiyana...I'm going downstairs. Please call me if you need anything."
Aiyana called something back that Masaya assumed was a yes, and he left the room.
'Is it a full moon out tonight or something?' Masaya thought, scratching his head as he stared back at the closed door. What was it with all the females in the house acting strangely? Aiyana he could forgive; she was pregnant, after all. But even pregnant women weren't this moody...or were they? He was twenty-one when Ami had been pregnant with the twins, twenty-two when Rei became pregnant with Yuriko. Ami was complaisant and very gentle. Rei...was not. He supposed it varied in women, and with someone who had been through as much as Aiyana had been through...it would probably good that she cried and became bitchy sometimes. She needed to vent her feelings somehow.
But Izumi...the girl had always been rather blunt, but generally likeable. In the same night as she had met someone new, she'd gotten into an argument with her. For the life of him Masaya couldn't understand why Izumi didn't like Aiyana. Perhaps it was female clashing or something like that, but *what* were they clashing over? They didn't have anything in common, of course...but he'd hoped that Izumi would like Aiyana and look up to her. That way he'd have testimony if Aiyana...were ever to apply for asylum on Earth.
Masaya was embarrassed to admit, even to himself, that he had often daydreamed about Aiyana living on Earth. He had no idea why the idea seemed so tantalizing to him...there was nothing he could have to do with Aiyana if she chose to stay. She'd live on her own, be on her own...but perhaps the thrill was being able to look over a child that he'd known since his mother's womb. Although Aiyana had started calling the child a her, Masaya insisted on calling it a him and secretly hoped it would be a male child, although he had no idea why.
In his deepest heart of hearts, he supposed he wished he could grow closer to Aiyana and her child...as if he weren't already close enough already, and it weren't bringing him a world of trouble! Truthfully, he had felt his heart jump like a child on Christmas Eve with anticipation when Aiyana said she could feel her baby move inside her. And when Nanami-chan had attested to the fact that it was perceptible outside...it took all his willpower to stop himself from laying his hand on Aiyana's stomach and feeling it himself.
The truth was, he couldn't imagine why he was so excited about this seventeen-year-old girl's baby. She was not related to him; she wasn't one of his surrogate cousins or aunts. And he wasn't...he wasn't...he wasn't falling...falling for her, was he?
"No, that's silly." His own voice startled and him and scorned him. Baka. He didn't even sound convincing to his own ears.
'It must just be my love for children, though, he insisted to himself. There's no way...I mean, Aiyana has been here for almost five months...and yet, that still doesn't seem long enough. Yes, I care for her, but not quite in that way...
I don't...'
***
Aiyana stared into the bathroom mirror and rubbed her eyes. The whites looked white again, not bloodshot red, and with a little washing she had washed the reminder that she had been crying from her face carefully. She shook her head a little, mimicking a gesture she'd often seen Masaya doing.
Useless, was she? She'd show Masaya--and Izumi--that she could be of some use. She'd help Masaya make a meal while Izumi watched her younger sisters--not the other way around, for once. After all, that was what she was here for, right? If Izumi could watch the children and cook at the same time Ami would not have asked Masaya and she to come over.
She smiled as she thought of it. She was no chef, that was quite clear. But she could at least try to put something together to help him. Perhaps she would make the dessert this time...at the thought of replicating the delicious cake Masaya had made Friday night, Aiyana wet her lips. Yummy. Could she do something like that?
She struggled to smile at her reflection. The only way to find out was to try!
She pulled at the cute overalls and pink shirt she wore underneath and bounded down the stairs as energetically as a four-and-a-half-months-pregnant woman could. It was a little after lunchtime--she'd fallen asleep earlier and slept for longer than expected--and Masaya started dinner early, especially since Ami and her husband would be returning that evening.
Sure enough, there he was, in the kitchen preparing the food. Izumi was alongside, looking like a little kitchen hand, dashing about and getting things for him and occasionally peeking at the preoccupied twins.
"May I help?" Aiyana asked, smiling a little. "I know I bumbled along last time, but I can try again. Please?"
Izumi and Masaya looked up at her. Izumi's face took on a nasty twist as she turned away, but Masaya's eyes softened as he looked at Aiyana. Even pregnant as she was, she appeared so innocent! "Of course you can help, Aiyana. Izumi can watch the kids fully now, so it's a good thing you woke up."
Izumi grudgingly wiped her hands and stalked out of the kitchen to where the twins were at.
"Here, you can..." Masaya looked down at the tools in his hand. He was about to tell Aiyana she could peel the potatoes, but he thought better of it and set the sharp paring knife and potatoes aside. "You can make the lasagna. Here, I'll show you."
He took her through the instructions of the lasagna, telling her exactly how much ricotta and mozzerella cheese to put on top of the shells so it would melt to cheesy perfection. Aiyana smiled as he described the steps. 'Cooking is the only thing that I've seen him so passionate about--besides being a doctor, of course.'
His hands flew as he described more. "And you can do all that sitting down, you know," said Masaya. "Which is what I want you to do. Sit down so that you don't hurt yourself."
Aiyana made a face. 'Does he still think I'm some sort of danger--even to my own self?'
Masaya saw the face she made and laughed. "I'm not trying to say that you're incompetant of doing things yourself," he said, chuckling. "I just don't want you to hurt yourself--or the baby inside you. Remember, you've got two people to worry about now, okay?"
Aiyana nodded, but she wasn't completely satisfied.
The two of them worked quietly in the kitchen for a while, not speaking to each other. Aiyana let the tip of her tongue hang from her mouth as she concentrated. 'How much ricotta did he say to add ...one or two cups? How could I have forgotten so quickly...oh, I remember,' she thought ruefully. "Placenta brains".'
***
"Michiru..." Haruka looked up at her brooding lover as she stared through the window of the small apartment they chose to share, instead of living in a large home as the Senshi had chosen. "What are you thinking about?"
"Hotaru," she admitted, turning back to Haruka with misty dark eyes. Haruka raised her eyebrows and turned away. She didn't want to hear the hurt in Michiru's voice again.
But she continued. "Haruka, I still don't believe that she would just leave on her own will like that," she said, shaking her head. "There must have been something that made her leave. Remember she aged? She had just aged to her teenage years. She wouldn't have left us on her own, Haruka..."
"She disappeared after the fights," Haruka said, conceding to join the conversation. "Directly after we were finished fighting this new enemy and Crystal Tokyo came to rising. She didn't even stay to see the king and queen inaugurated and crowned, the christening of Chibi-usa..."
"Who was she with?" Michiru asked suddenly.
"What do you mean, who was she with?"
"During the fights. Remember we ended up breaking up into groups of two? It was you and the moon brat..." Haruka smiled at the affectionate name the two Outers had assigned Sailormoon. "And Sailormercury and I. I don't know who Setsuna was with..."
"None of us were with any other of us," Haruka said, meaning the Outers as a group. Michiru nodded.
"So that means that Hotaru, as Sailorsaturn during the battles, was with either Sailorvenus or Sailorjupiter."
"Or Tuxedo Kamen," Haruka added.
Suddenly Michiru sat up straight, her eyes flying open. "Tuxedo Kamen!" She turned and looked at Haruka. "I need to see that assassin at the hospital as *soon* as possible. She may hold the key..." Michiru's eyes filled with tears. "She may hold the key to finding Hotaru again, Haruka."
***
Aiyana steadied her shaking hand and mixed the batter vehemently. Since she started the lasagna and had the food in the oven now, she wanted to make a sweet cake for the girls--and she and Masaya--to eat for dessert...and she wanted to make it all on her own.
She had painstakingly taken down Masaya's recipe for something called a "red velvet" cake, him having said that she along with everyone else would definitely enjoy the sweet confection. After checking to make sure Ami had all the ingredients, she had combined them and was now mixing the batter. She smiled, very happy at the way things had turned out. This cake would be perfect...and that would be step one to proving how helpful and self-sufficient she could truly be.
She hummed a little tune as she worked. She had no idea where she had heard it from, but it was a cute little tune, tinkling and melodious. She'd known that little tune ever since she was a young girl, and she'd often hummed it to get herself to sleep in the barracks back in the Empire, especially if she were feeling alone or hurt. The tune held some sort of warm security for Aiyana, made her try to push away her troubles. And whenever she listened to it, winding itself from her own lips, it made her dream sweet dreams even after the most brutal attacks.
She nearly smiled as she remembered that she was once a military denizen, a trained assassin. At least, back then she hadn't had to prove to anyone she was capable of things. If she did, there was never a doubt when she was finished that First Delta Aiyana Khalidah was no innocuous little machine.
First Delta...hearing the words in her mind, Aiyana grimaced. She probably wasn't First Delta any longer; after an almost four-month (or 2.8 ikkagetsu, she thought after quickly converting) absence without reporting back she had probably lost her position to the Second Delta, and an Epsilon had been moved up. She was almost sure of this fact.
And yet, she was surprised to realize that she didn't care. Instead of a worried, stressed, devastated reaction, she found only peace--soft peace in the pit of her stomach. She was free...she was finally free of the hell the other men had given her, free of the endless training and missions, free of the stress of keeping secrets...free from seeing things that no one, especially not a seventeen-year-old girl, should ever have to see.
"Aiyana...are you okay in there?" Masaya peeked his head around the kitchen doorway. He had done so several times, since he was in the living room with the twins and Izumi and she was working alone in the kitchen.
"Absolutely fine," said Aiyana, and she smiled joyously to herself.
***
"Mmmm, it smells goooooood, Masaya-san!" Manami yelled, jumping up and down. "Can I help you take it out?"
"It's very hot," Masaya said. "I don't want you to get hurt or anything. Perhaps you'd better just wait till I call you in."
"Do you need any help, Masaya-senpai?" Izumi asked, peering up at Masaya's face.
He shot a look at Aiyana. She was smiling dreamily as she checked the oven's contents. "No, Izumi-chan, I think Aiyana and I can handle it," he said. He went to the kitchen, oblivious to the fact that he'd once again accidentally addressed Izumi with '-chan.'
Izumi fumed.
In the kitchen, Aiyana was gleefully surveying her efforts with the microwave. She'd successfully removed the heated mashed potatoes from the microwave oven. Masaya smiled as he watched her carefully place it on a trivet on the table.
"Almost done," she said. "The only thing we need to get out is the lasagna and the cake."
Masaya smiled. "Your cake is finished?"
"Hai, it's on the bottom rack."
Masaya went over to the oven and checked the lasagna. He pulled two more oven mitts from Ami's drawer under the stove (and wondered why she had more than two, seeing as Ami and Mitsuru didn't do much cooking together) and pulled the lasagna out of the oven.
Aiyana moved behind him, reaching in towards the bottom rack and grasped the cake, pulling it out. Her arm grazed the hot oven surface, causing her to jerk back her arms in pain.
Unfortunately, the cake did not move back with her.
The scene almost seemed to be slow motion. Aiyana watched in horror as the cake--the cake she had labored hard over to make all on her own--went crashing to the floor, top-first. Being hot, it didn't hold well, but rather crumbled to pieces on contact.
Masaya almost dropped his own dish when he heard the clatter of the cake pan on the floor. Quickly he put the lasagna down on two more trivets and rushed over to do damage control.
However, it seemed that the spilled cake was the lesser of the two problems...the one most damaged at that particular moment was Aiyana. Her eyes had dilated so drastically that only a thin ring of blue could be seen around the pupil, and she had gone white as a sheet. Masaya spotted the burn forming on her arm.
"Aiyana," said Masaya gently, taking hold of her hand, "you've burned yourself! Come on, you've got to get this under cold water--"
Aiyana took the hand Masaya was holding and used it cover her face, then burst into sobs.
Oh, no..."Aiyana, please don't cry...Aiyana, we can make another cake! Please, stop crying. It's okay...it's okay..."
"It's not the cake!" she sobbed. "I never do anything right! That's the reason I'm even here in the first place, because I never do anything right! I couldn't carry out my mission, couldn't see the truth behind the Omegas' lies, couldn't make macaroni and cheese yesterday, couldn't take care of the children. I try for just one day to try and do something right...make a cake...and I dropped it!" Her sobs turned into a wail. "Why can't I ever do anything right?!"
Masaya took Aiyana's hand and gently led her over to a chair, then pulled up one across from hers. "Aiyana..." He was about to tell her to stop crying, until he realized it was probably good for her to cry...good for her to let out all those bottled emotions. He merely held her hand and looked at her.
For some reason, that only seemed to make her anguish worse. "And you know it," she said miserably. "You think I'm useless and stupid too. That's why you wouldn't say anything...you don't want to deny the truth."
"What?!" Masaya snapped his head down to look at Aiyana. "That's not true at all! Where did you ever get that idea from?"
"You don't," said Aiyana. "You didn't say anything...and you were here all weekend. You watched me make a stupid fool of myself."
"Aiyana," Masaya said, "I never thought you were a 'stupid fool', not for one moment!" Masaya shook his head vehemently and brought Aiyana's chin up to look at him. "Not for a second. It doesn't matter to me; it's just a cake, and everyone makes mistakes. I'd rather you drop that cake than you get burned even worse than you had!"
Aiyana, who had dropped her eyes from Masaya's stare, looked up again. She had the sudden urge to say "Really?" like all the clichéd movie star females...just to see if what she thought would happen next...
But it turned out she didn't even have to say anything at all, because in the next moment, Masaya's lips were on hers, and she forgot everything about movies and dropped cakes and failed missions...just the knowledge of what it felt like to have her first real, true kiss.
It was short, very short, because Masaya pulled back, embarrassed at his hasty actions. Before he could pull back too far, though, Aiyana's clutch on his sleeves tightened, and she let out a soft, pleading whimper.
Chuckling softly, he finished what he had started.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: All right, you guys, I'm a horrible cook. I don't know anything about cooking. I'm telling you, have you ever heard that Jay-Z song called "Girls, Girls, Girls"? My friends labeled me "that model chick who don't cook or clean". I can't cook. Well, a little bit, but not enough to know how to make everything I said. I have a vague idea about these things, but I surely don't know how to make a vanilla cake from scratch, much less a red velvet one, so if anything seems really out of order, e-mail me and I'll change it...maybe.
Now, again I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence in here...but in case you don't know, a trivet is one of those little things that you put a hot pan on so it doesn't burn your table or countertop or whatever. There was something else in here I wasn't sure you'd know, but I can't remember it right now...
Oh, I want to apologize a million times over for something...one of my readers complained that it was hard to keep the Senshi's husbands straight. That's partly my own fault. The Senshi had some really generic names until I changed them all, but when I transferred the chapters over from my upload files, I forgot to change the names on some. *ooops* I'm really sorry if I caused a lot of confusion, but for your better knowledge:
Mitsuru is Ami's husband, Sadayoshi is Minako's husband, Ieyasu is Makoto's husband, and Sanetoki is Rei's husband.
Sorry.
Oh! I remembered! More with the honorifics. The honorifics "-senpai," "-kouhai," and "-sensei" are actually also words. A senpai ("-sempai" is actually more correct) is a social senior--you'd use it for someone older than you, usually in a school or mentor-mentee setting. The opposite is a kouhai. A kouhai is a social junior--someone younger than you. A senpai is sort of like a mentor; upperclassmen (senpai) in Japan are expected to help out their underclassmen (kouhai), even after they've graduated from school. Your senpai will always be your senpai and vice versa. By Izumi and Masaya addressing each other with senpai and kouhai, it implies a mentor-mentee relationship, and makes Izumi sound a bit more equal to Masaya than "-chan" will.
Sensei is most often translated to "teacher" but that's such a simplified view...a sensei actually can be any professional who works for the betterment of people. It originated with dojo masters, and implicates a sort of reverence for the one addressed as such. Sensei is not to be taken lightly. Like kouhai and senpai, sensei is for life...your sensei will always be addressed as sensei, even if you see them years after you graduate from that sensei's class. Lawyers, policemen, physicians (^_^) can also be addressed as a sensei...it's basically a professional term. It literally translates to "before life" so I suppose you can get the basic idea.
Any more questions or comments, send 'em my way at julymoonbunny@hotmail.com