Seiya ran. His own steps were unsure and he had to be careful, watching where he was going with the threat of becoming lost a very real one. He wasn't very familiar with these woods, but that didn't stop him from running as fast as he possibly could as his blue eyes darted about, looking for any sign of Haruka as two sides of his mind warred with each other about what he might find.
No.
Haruka wouldn't so this. She just wouldn't. She had too much strength, and had definitely withstood enough pain in her life to know that she could endure this.
Right?
But Haruka had also endured more pain in her life than anyone should have had to by her age. She was only twenty, and she had already lost the person she loved more than anything, and then the child she had come to accept and see as her own. That was piled on top of all the worries, physical pain, and the stress from being a senshi. It was more than any normal person should have to endure.
No.
But Haruka was far from normal, far from ordinary. First off, she was a senshi. That in itself gave a certain amount of strength to be able to deal with pain. The training a senshi must go through, especially the extra lengths the outer senshi went to make sure they were stronger than the inner senshi. They held themselves as the protectors of the solar system, the first line of defense. As such, they had prepared themselves for that sort of pain, and prepared themselves for the possibility of heavy personal losses. According to the senshi, Haruka had taken her own life to find the talisman she held. That should mean she had enough strength to endure this.
Right?
But what if it didn't? All those times that Haruka had been prepared to die, she had died with the one she loved, and it must have pained her all this time not to have been able to follow Michiru. The longest they must have been separated in death is perhaps a few minutes, at the most an hour or so. Haruka had been made to endure this pain for far longer, and now a deeper pain was being heaped upon that. If it were him, he doubted he could have lasted this long. All that was keeping him going in the search for Kakyuu-hime was the thought that she was still alive somewhere.
No.
Haruka couldn't do this. She still had something to live for. She had to... She had to know that her friends would miss her dearly.
But was that enough? It might not be.
He came to a halt to catch his breath, looking around the forest in the slowly forming morning light. There was no sign to indicate that she was nearby. He cursed beneath his breath, then took off in a run once more.
Now his formally at war mind taunted him. Why did he truly care if Haruka lived or died? True, they had become friends over the past few months, despite a few fights and various differences to overcome. But he had lost friends before and had been able to move on and return to his life. Heaven knows that he had mourned when Michiru died. But he had survived, right? So other than trying to save a fellow senshi, what was making him be so determined to save her?
For that matter, why was he the one that Setsuna had sent to save her? Why hadn't she gone, or even send the inner senshi to find her. She had obviously known where she would be as much as he had, so she could have directed the inner senshi to teleport here. They would have had a much higher chance of getting there in time to stop her. So why him?
Then as cold water hit his ankles as he splashed into a brook that he hadn't noticed, reality sat in...
He loved her.
He stood frozen for several moments as the truth set in, and water splashed and flowed around his ankles. He fell to his knees, staring ahead in disbelief.
How had he let this happen? He had hated Haruka! It had taken such a huge effort for him to even go to try and cheer her up that day. It had taken even more effort to continue to go seeing her when he was still so wary of his decision to be her friend. So at what point had he stopped trying to hold off their friendship, and had instead fallen in love?
A bird chirped, announcing the beginning of a new day. Seiya shook himself back to the here and now, scrambling to his feet and looking around in the filtered sunlight. "Haruka?!" He left the brook, his pants pretty much soaked as he looked about, hoping against hope that he had been able to make it on time.
Then, from around a bush, he saw a hand. He ran forward and found Haruka lying on her back, eyes pointed toward the brightening sky, still as death.
He took a cautious step forward, and his voice shook. "Haruka?"
She was still.
Then she slowly turned her head and gave her best attempt at a smile before it faded away and she turned her gaze back to the sky. "The night Michiru died... I held her in my arms... and just before she died, she spoke of this angel that stood behind me, waiting to take her away..." She gave a wry smirk, her eyes closing against tears she could no longer cry. "I was hoping maybe that if I came here, that angel would come back and help me to understand why she had to die. Why Nina had to be taken away from me..."
Seiya let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding, then walked forward to settled down beside her. "I don't think anyone could really answer either of those questions, Haruka. Fate holds what it will for everyone, good or bad. You of all people should know that."
"Yes. But always, when I had Michiru by my side, what the future held didn't scare me. She had this blind belief that whatever fate may hold in store, fate was beautiful." She gave a wry smirk. "I guess you could say I was jaded. I knew that fate could be cruel, and that my job as a senshi meant suffering in ways I wouldn't have been able to endure as an ordinary person. I guess that's why I ran from it for so long. But no matter what I thought might lie in store, I wasn't scared with her by my side... From the moment I read that note, I haven't stopped being scared. Scared for her life, at first... then always scared that I might not be able to do what was right for Nina, scared that some day because of an enemy, I wouldn't be able to take care of her... And now... I'm not scared any more. But I've also never felt so empty. Not even when Michiru died did I feel so empty. I had Nina to care for."
"I know I can't honestly say that I understand what you're going through, Haruka... but I do know that you still have too much left in life to feel so empty. You have all your friends, your career... and you're still young. There's no telling what the future may hold." He gave a small smirk. "Though, speaking of being scared... I had my own scare coming to find you."
Haruka opened her eyes and quirked an eyebrow at him. "Don't tell me you thought that I was coming out here to kill myself..."
"To tell the truth... I don't really know. The thought had never entered my mind until Setsuna put it there. I was content to just let you have some time to yourself."
She let out a long sigh, finally sitting up. "Setsuna knows me better than that. Or at least, she should."
"She didn't truly think you would, Haruka, but...frankly, I was scared too. You've had to put up with a lot more recently than you've ever had to put up with. I don't think I would have lasted this long."
"Don't underestimate yourself, Seiya." Haruka stood, brushing herself off. "The strength of your soul and heart will amaze you at times when expect them to fail." She looked over at him. "And... What happened to your pants?"
He glanced down, just recalling how they had gotten soaked. "Eh... I had a small accident on my way to find you... Anyway, I should head home and change and get some rest... Oh, and... Hotaru's going to be fine. Usagi came and told us just after you left." He reached into his pocket to pull out the keys and tossed them to her. "Here. I left it a while back because the trees got to dense for me to navigate." With that, he turned and headed off.
She came up behind him and slung her arm about his shoulders. "Come on... I can at least give you a ride home on my way back to the hospital..."
He looked up at her as they headed toward the way they had both come from. "Haruka, you should really get some rest yourself. You've been through a lot, and it must have been a while since you really got a good night's rest."
"Yeah, well... I've gone longer without sleep. Besides, there's still a lot for me to do. I have to do something to prevent the press from getting a hold of this at least for a while... That's going to be near impossible, but I can't deal with those people now..." She gave a long sigh, her eyes closing briefly. It was one of her rare signs of weakness. "Nina's going to be buried next to her mother..."
Seiya looked up at her with a sad expression. He was still amazed that someone could put up with this sort of thing, and still manage to be able to think of keeping the press away to minimize the stress on everyone involved.
He loved her more and more with every passing second.
He shook away that thought, deciding to tackle that issue later...after he had had some rest and all of this was over.
But would it ever actually end?