Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon, but I'm way too stoked about finishing this story to let a little thing like that bother me!

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Night Of The Killer Bunny Slippers

By Jessyca Thornbrook

Chapter 10

He woke slowly, his consciousness emerging, bit by bit, through layers of fog and darkness, and strange dreams that vanished when he tried to grasp them. The sounds coming from outside his head gradually detached themselves from his imagination, and he spent a few minutes trying to identify the familiar hum and beep of machinery.

Hospital, his groggy brain finally suggested, and it was that thought that finally snapped his eyes open. He found himself, indeed, in a hospital bed, with an IV in the back of his hand (Ugh, I hate those things!) and a dull ache in his right shoulder. Exploring it gently with his left hand, he found bandages. Bandages. What happened? Monsters. . . tall purple psycho-woman with a sword. . . beautiful princess. . . but how did I get here? I don't remember. . . .

He sat bolt upright, clutching the blankets in sudden panic. "Okay, calm down," he told himself aloud. "Do I know who I am? I'm Chiba Mamoru. I'm twenty years old. I'm a pre-med student and part-time superhero. So far, so good. I'm in the hospital because. . . because I got stabbed by an alien with a big black sword, and then I turned into someone else and got punched through my armor. . . ." He paused, running a shaky hand through his hair. "Okay, we'll just leave that topic for the moment. Stick to the basics. My best friend's name is Motoki. I live on the fourteenth floor. I keep roses, I drink my coffee black, and my parents died in a car crash when I was six. And I'm in love with Tsukino Usagi."

As that last statement slipped out, he heard a soft gasp from somewhere to his left. He whipped around, ignoring the protests of his wounded shoulder, and came face to face with a young woman in a nurse's uniform. She had short blond hair and big blue eyes which seemed extremely familiar to him, though he couldn't place her. She also appeared to have frozen in the midst of eating his jell-o.

"Do I know you?" he asked hesitantly. Please don't let me have amnesia again, please oh please oh please. . . .

"Huh?" she blinked at him for a moment, then jumped to her feet, dropping her spoonful of jell-o on the floor. "Oh! Right! Sorry, I forgot about my disguise. . ." she trailed off as she fumbled in her pocket for something. A moment later, Mamoru found himself once again doubting his sanity as the nurse lost several centimeters of height and gained at least a meter of hair, and her scrubs morphed into a pink sweater and denim skirt.

"Um. . . surprise?"

"Usako! How did you do that?" Mamoru gaped.

"Oh, it's this disguise pen thingy that Luna gave—" she broke off suddenly, a deep blush spreading across her face. "U-Usako?" she asked in a slightly trembling voice.

"Um, well," Mamoru stammered, feeling his own face grow warm. "If you don't mind, I mean. . . ." He looked at her almost pleadingly.

"I don't mind. . . Mamo-chan," she answered shyly. Mamoru had a sneaking suspicion that he was now grinning like an idiot, but at the moment it didn't bother him too much. He reached for her hand, still a bit cautious, but she met him halfway. Their fingers entwined as if they'd been formed for exactly that purpose.

After several minutes of silence—during which Mamoru tried to wrap his brain around the incredible feelings of happiness and completeness that were threatening to burst his heart, and Usagi didn't even try to comprehend it but just stood there feeling—Mamoru finally spoke.

"So. . ." he was finding it hard to hold onto his train of thought, "how did I end up in the hospital, anyway? The last thing I remember was," he paused and thought for a moment, then smiled slowly, "promising a beautiful princess that I wouldn't die." Usagi smiled, but he thought he could see a hint of tears in her eyes. He squeezed her hand, as if to remind her that he had kept his promise.

"Well, I can only tell you what the girls told me. I checked out about the same time you did—I guess that whole princess thing takes a lot out of me. They said I slept for twenty hours straight, which is a record, even for me!" She grinned impishly, and Mamoru laughed. "They put me in Rei's house, and then called an ambulance for you. Well, and for Rei-chan, since she had a, um, a conclusion."

"A conclusion?" Mamoru blinked. "Oh, a concussion!"

"Right, one of those! From hitting her head—or having her head hit. She couldn't remember that part exactly. Oh, and did you see when she killed that Nitha guy? With that—that black sword." Her grip on his hand tightened. "I didn't notice at the time, because I was too worried about you. . . ."Mamoru raised her hand to his lips, and she shivered at his gentle kiss and forgot what she was trying to say.

"What happened to the bunny slippers?"

"Hm? Oh, they turned back into ordinary slippers. I guess because Nitha was controlling them, they went back to normal once he was gone. Mako-chan said the paramedics were really confused, though, when they showed up and found a pile of slippers, and one of those yucky dead monster things, and an eight foot tall alien, and you in the middle of it all."

"I'll bet. What did the Senshi say to explain it?"

"Ami-chan came up with a really good story, um. . . something about you and Rei-chan being innocent bystanders. I can't remember all of it, but it was really believable! You know how smart she is." Usagi stopped, looking suddenly thoughtful. "It's so weird, being able to talk to you about Senshi stuff."

"Would you rather go back to shouting and calling each other names?" he asked with a smile.

"No! This is good! Talking is good. Not being enemies is good. This. . . is good." She found herself getting lost in those dark blue eyes again.

"This is good," he echoed. "And you know, I seem to remember recently discovering something else that was good." He gave her arm a gentle tug, pulling her nearer, until she perched—a little self-consciously—on the edge of his bed. "Do you remember when we got to the shrine, after we left Luna and just before we found Rei-chan?" His voice had grown soft, caressing her ears like velvet.

Usagi nodded, since her vocal chords didn't appear to be functioning at the moment. Yes, she most definitely remembered being held and kissed like there was no tomorrow! But as memorable as it had been, he hadn't touched her face the way he was doing now, his fingers so warm and gentle. And in the dark, she hadn't been able to see the look in his eyes, longing and loving, gentle and hungry, scared and happy and lost and found all at the same time. It took her breath away!

"Usako," Mamoru whispered, once he managed to divert enough brainpower from simply marveling at the texture of her skin.

"Mmm?" She closed her eyes and turned her head slightly, nuzzling her face into his palm, and it took him several seconds to recall what he'd been about to say.

"Usako," he began again, "since I kept my promise to you, would you promise me something?"

She opened her eyes again at the serious undertone in his voice. "Of course," she answered automatically. "Anything. What do you want me to do?"

Mamoru took a deep breath. "It's asking a lot, I know." He leaned closer, till only a few inches separated them. "Would you. . . can you. . . love me? All of me?" Does she understand what I'm asking?

Usagi blinked, then smiled brilliantly. "Silly. I always have. All three of you."

That was all the answer he needed.

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Unbeknownst to the young lovers, a desperate and dangerous mission was taking place less than a hundred meters away at the nurse's station. A raven-haired girl with a bandage on her forehead was asking the scowling Head Nurse how to minimize scarring, while a few feet away a blue-eyed blond and a tall brunette chatted and smiled flirtatiously at two male interns. Behind them, a serious-looking girl with short black hair was politely grilling a middle-aged doctor on the finer points of neurosurgery. And in the background, unnoticed by any of the hospital staff, a shadowy figure slipped away down the forbidden corridor.

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Mamoru had discovered something amazing: the people who wrote all those sappy songs—the ones about birds suddenly appearing, and having sunshine on cloudy days, and love lifting us up where we belong—weren't just victims of childhood head trauma like he had always thought. They had actually known something he hadn't! (Granted, the song with the birds still sounded like a Hitchcock movie—but maybe love was like that for some people. Who was he to judge?) As he sat there in his hospital bed, with his mind in a pleasant fog, his heart seemed to beat true for the first time in nearly fifteen years. And every beat spoke the name of the golden creature in his arms.

Curled up on his lap, her head resting against his chest, her eyes closed, Usagi was perfectly and absolutely happy. The older part of her soul, with which she'd become much more familiar over the last forty-eight hours or so, suggested that beneath her current feelings was layer upon layer of deeper, more profound joy that she was still too young to understand. She didn't let that bother her, though. Her past self also whispered that she would have many, many years to explore all her feelings for this man, her love, her soulmate. Her prince.

They were finally roused from their daydream by the sound of approaching footsteps. "Oh no!" whispered Usagi, jumping up. "It's that evil nurse! I'm not supposed to be in here!" And without further ado, she dove under the bed.

Still a bit dazed, Mamoru scraped together enough wits to adjust his blankets to provide her (he hoped) adequate cover. He certainly wasn't going to let anyone throw her out!

There was a hesitant tap on the door, as if the person outside wasn't sure if knocking was appropriate in this situation. The door opened slowly, and then Motoki stuck his head through. When he saw Mamoru, he grinned, and stepped quickly inside, shutting the door behind him.

"Man, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to get in here! I think that head nurse is part pit-bull. 'Family only!'" he mimicked. "I tried to convince her I was your brother, but she asked for my ID." He stopped for breath, and took a good look at his friend. "So how are you feeling?"

"I feel great!" Mamoru replied sincerely, still smiling. Motoki's mouth dropped open.

"Great? You feel great?"

"Well, my shoulder's a little sore, but other than that, yeah. What's the problem?" Mamoru raised an eyebrow at his friend's baffled expression.

"Mamoru, we've known each other for years, and in all that time I've never heard you say you felt great. Not once. And," he peered closer, "you're smiling. A lot. What kind of painkillers do they have you on?" he exclaimed, grabbing the IV stand and examining the bag. As he stepped closer to the bed, his foot hit something.

"Ow!"

"Careful!" said Mamoru sharply.

"What the—?" Motoki leaned down and lifted up the edge of the blankets.

"Ohayo, Motoki-san!" Usagi chirped, smiling innocently up at Motoki's astonished face.

"Usagi-chan! What are you doing under there?" he demanded, utterly confused.

"Hiding," she replied as she scrambled out from under the bed. "I thought you were the evil nurse!"

"Well, I can understand wanting to hide from her, but what were you doing in here in the first place?" He looked from her to his injured friend.

"She came to visit me," said Mamoru calmly, though he still had that uncharacteristic smile across his face.

"Okay, yeah, but. . . why?" This made absolutely no sense to Motoki. Those two couldn't stand each other, right? Sure, Usagi had a warm heart and a forgiving nature, but would she really go to all the trouble of sneaking into the hospital to visit her worst enemy?

"Well," said Mamoru slowly, "if you were in the hospital, you would expect your girlfriend to come visit you, right?"

"Sure, but what does that have to do with. . . ." Motoki's question trailed off, and he looked from Mamoru to Usagi, then back to Mamoru, then Usagi again.

"No way. Uh-uh. You guys are just messing with my head, right?" He laughed, a bit nervously. "Ha ha, very funny. You really had me going—" Motoki stopped dead, mid-sentence, and just gaped as the eternally serious King of Cold Logic wrapped an arm around the waist of the careless, hyperactive, chronically cheerful teenager and pulled her close. Motoki's eyes threatened to leap from their sockets when the aforementioned teenager in turn twined her arms around the ultra-studious college guy's neck. And when their lips met in the sweetest of kisses, the only sound apart from the background noise of the hospital machines was the muffled thud of Mamoru's best friend hitting the linoleum.

"Mamo-chan," murmured Usagi, several long and pleasant moments later, "when you get out of the hospital, will you buy me a present?"

Mamoru chuckled against her hair. "We've been going out for twenty minutes, and already she wants presents!" He smiled and kissed the top of her head. "Of course I'll buy you anything you want—that I can afford," he tacked on hastily. "You'd better tell me about it quickly, though, since I think I'm going to have to call a nurse for poor Motoki-kun." He glanced over to where his friend had, fortunately, landed with an arm between his head and the floor.

"I'd like frog slippers."

"Frog slippers?" he raised an eyebrow. "Why? I mean, I can understand why you wouldn't want bunnies, but why frogs? I would have thought you'd want bears, or kittens. Something, you know, cute and furry."

"No way," said Usagi, shaking her head emphatically. "Kittens and bears are cute, sure, but frogs have one major advantage!"

"And that is?"

"No teeth!"

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The End