I can haz Sailormoon?

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Twilight Bastille: Chapter #9 – Bittersweet Paper Things

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Move.

Rei stared grimly down at her feet, encased in a pair of graying slippers that had gone unused for more than a week now. She'd already spent about five minutes hauling herself into a sitting position on her bed; it had been no easy task.

The girl wiggled a toe, willing the pins and needles away. I am going to walk into the mess hall and get myself tea if it kills me. Rei was going to need some kind of liquid encouragement for when Jacen arrived and found her out of bed.

She nibbled her lower lip nervously. Today, Rei was going to have to tell him she didn't need his assistance anymore.

Rei didn't want to be alone with him. Not when I know how…how he feels about me. I can't put him through that. She sighed. Be honest with yourself. You can't put yourself through that, either. If he ever – acted on it – Rei tried very hard to quash her graphic imaginings – do you really think you would stop him?

Rei was not decorously afraid of lust, as her Catholic classmates had been – on the surface, at least. She'd dealt with the reality of it since she'd matured into adolescence, since she'd first understood that she was beautiful. Exotic, at least. American boys were infinitely more demonstrative than were Japanese classmates back home, and when she had come here, she had just begun to blossom. Lewd suggestions to "the Jap girly" were easily put down, though. And from the moment she had met Jacen, she'd guessed he might be attracted to her, intrigued by her odd eyes, her lithe shape.

All was mayhem with Jacen. Sometimes he teased her with nothing more than companionable affection; other times, when he thought she couldn't see, he watched her with such masculine hunger that Rei could feel his need inked into her skin. He played the parts of the friend, the tyrant, the lover, the professional, all with such ease that Rei never knew where she stood. Jacen had a thousand masks to hide behind, but she knew she'd seen his true face last night. That kind of suffering was inimitable, even for the most consummate actor.

What she had seen in written plainly in his anguish was clearly more than just desire. It was hauntingly familiar, something Rei could remember shining between her parents long, long, long ago, a vague impression more elusive than memory.

"What are you doing up, Rei?" The doctor's familiar voice shook her from her musings, bland but tinged with annoyance. Rei could sense his mercurial shifts in mood as easily as she could discern her own. In some ways, I know him better than I know myself.

"I was hungry," Rei answered, caught off guard by his arrival. She didn't want to look at him, but her face turned to the door anyway, unwillingly, as though he was the sun. Jacen stood haloed in light, completely filling the narrow doorway. Rei couldn't quite make out his shadowed features, but she guessed, quite accurately, that he was displeased.

Too bad. Nothing I do makes him happy.

She braced herself and stood in a quick burst of energy. Rei's knees wobbled, but she began to walk anyway, praying that she looked well enough to convince his trained eye.

Jacen's lips compressed into a thin line, and he covered the room in two strides, reaching out to steady Rei, turning her to face him. "Have you lost your mind? I told you to stay in bed – "

This wasn't what she had planned – this wasn't the cool little speech that she had prepared to recite from her corner. In light of her earlier anxiety, his firm, warm grip around her slender wrist completely unbalanced her. She attempted to yank herself from the doctor's grasp. When Jacen didn't let go, she pried at his fingers with her other hand, her breathing shallowing out. Rei knew – knew – she was behaving strangely, but unreasonable terror chased away rational thought. She tugged harder.

Jacen didn't release her, instead reaching out and plucking her other wrist from the air. He frowned at the tension he felt there; the girl trembled like a butterfly. "Rei," the doctor spoke her name firmly. "Look at me."

Her eyes jumped to meet his, instinctively responding to the command. Jacen read the apprehension there, so unlike his unflinching Rei. His irritation fell away like an old skin.

"Hey…hey, pigeon," the doctor's voice gentled, hoping he didn't sound too ragged at her nearness – it was beginning to unravel him – "what is it?"

One look into those silverblue eyes and Rei forgot she'd ever thought up a speech for him.

"I – I don't want your help anymore," she faltered. Regaining her some of her customary aplomb, Rei added more normally, "I mean, I don't need it." I sound weak, she thought disgustedly. Like I don't mean a word of it.

He cocked a pale eyebrow, and Rei felt her hard-won composure crumble at his familiar expression. "You can't walk from one end of this puny-ass room to another and you're telling me you don't need my help?" Jacen saw the flash of fear in her eyes. She's scared – why?

"That's right," Rei said brusquely. "And – "

"Hold up," the doctor interrupted. "What is this really about, Rei? What are you afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid – "

"Bullshit. Don't lie to me – Christ, you're shaking like a leaf…" Jacen caught her swift glance at his hands wrapped around her wrists, and then back up again. There it was. That look, spectral in her violet eye, gone in a split second, and he knew. That's all it took, he marveled. A moment of indecision, an unsighed sigh, a twitch of muscle and I understood. How well I know her, my Rei…

She knows I love her.

"So…that's it," Jacen exhaled. "You don't want me…" he paused, "…around, then."

That weighty pause spoke volumes, and they both understood its import. Rei shook her head almost imperceptibly, hanging onto her restraint by a single thread. "I don't," she managed, almost choking on the lie, yes, you know it is.

It was hard to watch his face change, like staring into a dying sun. She hurt to see him hurt, now, after everything that had passed between them. Her nails dug into her palms until she couldn't feel the dull sting anymore. Rei waited for him to drop her wrists, to step back.

To walk away.

"Then before I go, Rei, you've got to answer me," the sound of his husky voice surprised Rei.

"What is it that you're afraid of?"

Her lips parted instinctively, ready to give their answer before Rei realized she had nothing to say. She thought of how her father had once looked at her mother, how Jacen had looked at her last night. An emotion so transient that suffering its loss far outlived savoring its beauty. How could she explain? What if I said yes to you today? You'll leave me. When I look for you, you'll be gone.

The doctor smiled sadly at the sudden turmoil in her twilit eyes. He'd never thought to touch the thousands of secrets hanging from those black lashes before, but today, Jacen knew he held just one of them. He leaned in, whispering against the edge of one sea-salt eyelid. The space between their bodies was as thin as silver thread, but still perceptible, an insurmountable divide.

"When you know, Rei, come and tell me. I'll be waiting." Jacen's voice gained strength. "I'm not going anywhere."

His mouth brushed against hers, tenderly painting her lips the color of longing, of mourning, of patience. So light against her skin, his touch felt like grasping at handfuls of the dawn. Rei's hands feathered hesitantly against his chest, and he covered them with his own, cupping his heartbeat in her palms, a silent appeal. The kiss was as chaste as prayer, but he stepped back quickly. Drinking in like triumphant wine the sight of her closed eyes, her parted lips, her quickened breath, Jacen left.

The girl opened her eyes, bright sunlight glinting off her wet lashes. She touched her lips wonderingly, as though they were mysteriously changed, their surface gilded by alchemy. There was nothing different there that she could feel, yet Rei knew that she was irrevocably changed.

She shut the door with a weak hand.

Would she ever see him haloed there again?

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For the first time in weeks, Rei realized that she was starving; she fell upon the below-average food in the mess hall with a vengeance. After eating something, she felt considerably better, but she was no closer to resolving her mental tangle than she had been before. With nothing else to do, and for the first time not the least bit interested in cleaning, she tried to distract herself by going through their older possessions, their most precious relics. A smudged photo album caught her attention, and Rei spent the next few hours watching herself grow up on thin, glossy vellum. She hurriedly flipped past the early ones her father had snapped of her mother – laughing, nose buried in cherry blossoms, kissing the top of Rei's infant head, standing primly next to Grandfather with mirth in her gaze, directly upon the photographer. Grandfather was so old, even then, she thought ruefully as she closed the album. I never noticed; he was so full of energy, so full of love that it made him seem young to me.

It was time to check on Grandfather, whom she hadn't seen for several days….but the last thing she wanted right now was to run into Jacen again. He won't show today of all days, you coward.

Eventually, she knew, she would have to sort through the bewildering mess of her emotions. Rei did not like to think of herself as someone who ran from her demons, but since she had met the doctor and Grandfather's health had begun to fail, she knew she had searched for every opportunity to avoid thinking about her problems. Now, she was paying for it.

Sometimes, I think…I don't even know who I am anymore.

By this time, she had reached the hospital and was walking inside without any conscious thought as to her location. At her grandfather's door, Rei halted at the sound within, the words indistinct, but the voice altogether familiar. She moved to the window, eyes wide.

Jacen.

What is he doing here – today – after what happened…?

He was sitting in his usual spot, stretching and rubbing his eyes as though he'd been asleep, speaking to Grandfather. Rei realized with a start that the doctor been there for a few hours, at least.

Why?

She touched her fingertips to the windowpane, tracing the golden cap of hair, unaware of how closely she imitated Jacen's gesture of only a week or so before.

"Speaking," Jacen had told her ages ago, when Grandfather had first fallen ill, "is often therapeutic for comatose patients. They can recognize and respond to familiar voices, so talk to him as much as you can. Tell him anything – but be careful," he winked. "He might remember what you say when he wakes up."

So he came in during his off-duty hours and spoke to the elderly man like he was his friend, or his son. I never knew… Rei wondered what he confessed to her grandfather, if he told him what he did not tell her. Something in Jacen's features told her that he needed this exercise, perhaps even more than she did.

Her train of thought was cut short as Jacen rose, resting a gentle palm upon the old man's forehead before he made his way to the door.

Rei hurriedly backed away, rounding the corner just as Jacen walked out of Grandfather's room and in the opposite direction. She sighed in relief as he turned and vanished from sight, and Rei crept back around, ignoring the odd glance a passing nurse gave her.

Shutting the door carefully behind her, Rei turned to face Grandfather, inhaling the lingering scent of Jacen's musky cologne. She paused a moment, enjoying the sensory pleasure – one she wasn't sure she would have again – and strode briskly to his bedside.

"Grandfather," she began, relishing the familiar sight of his face after a week apart. "Grandfather, I'm so sorry I haven't been here all week, I've been sick, but I need to talk to you, need to know – "

Rei broke off sharply. Was her tired mind playing tricks on her? In her happiness at seeing her grandfather in at least the same condition, if not better, she'd placed her hands over his, squeezed gently.

She could have sworn she felt his fingers moving beneath hers.

"Gr – Grandfather?"

Again that slight movement, and Rei felt a wild surge of…of something she couldn't even begin to describe rising in her chest, a feverish dizziness. Oh, God, after all this time, all her prayer and work and worry – was it real?

"Grandfather? Can you hear me? Do you know who I am?"

Another tiny twitch, and she could hear the faintest wheezing in the elderly man's rusted throat, like an ancient engine forced back into use, a creature rising from a long hibernation. Rei took his hands in hers, chafing the cool fingers with her own, standing and leaning over him in her excitement.

"Grandfather?"

There it was again, that flexing of the fingers between her palms, and before she could say another hushed, thrilling word, his eyes shifted, blinked once, and then opened slowly, as simply and clearly as an infant first brought into the light.

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