Going home was a mixed blessing.

In one way, it was a relief. The bandages came off, which was kind of like getting to take off a jacket after being forced to wear it for too long in a too mild environment. She had gotten used to them, until she thought about the fact that they were there, and that would get her tugging and rubbing at them as surreptitiously as possible until someone ultimately noticed and scolded her. Now at last she felt as though she could breathe again; it was an incredibly freeing sensation. Usagi also was looking forward to no longer having to deal with people constantly checking in on her. It was a little overwhelming, but also frustrating, because she could never seem to find a private moment. And what she wanted most right now was to be alone; to mope and feel badly about her current plight, and all it entailed - strained friendships, training with Mamoru... the list went on.

At least Ami was still in her court. The girl came by to visit Usagi on her last day in the hospital. It was under the guise of keeping her company for a bit while Usagi's mother ran some errands in preparation for her daughter's homecoming, but really Usagi was pretty sure it was just so the erudite could fill her in on all she had missed in school. As Ami prattled on excitedly about algebraic formulas and Usagi half-heartedly nodded along, deep down she wondered... Would she even be able to go to school anymore after this? Once, she might not have cared. Would have been overjoyed at the prospect of being allowed to skive on her studies. But now...

Usagi had also inquired on the girls only to receive a forlorn hand on the shoulder in response. She sighed. She knew the reasons behind their distance... but it still hurt.

"Please don't worry about it, Usagi-chan," Ami pleaded. "They're just feeling a little lost right now, but they'll find their way back. Promise."

Usagi tried to keep a positive attitude about the whole thing, but after Ami left the depression began to creep back in. She felt so alone. So ostracized by her friends; even her family. As they began the process of packing up and checking out, that was when Usagi noticed the way everyone just seemed to, well, tiptoe around her blindness. She felt like a child, a very incompetent child with their simpering voices and their hands all over her, Ikuko tightly gripping her hand and Kenji her back, guiding her along like she might go down at any moment. And then there was Shingo, stupid little brother Shingo who she could always rely on to blow her a raspberry and break the levity - or her sanity, it was often a toss up - of any situation, and even he didn't seem to know how to handle her. He spoke to her in stilted snippets of forced politeness, so awkward and hesitant that Usagi wanted to scream.

She wasn't suddenly a different person because she was blind. She was still Usagi, still the same inside even if a little changed outside, but as they sat in the car and surrounded her in the worst attempt at cheerful bravado she'd ever encountered, the girl found herself withdrawing.

She didn't want to pretend nothing was wrong. Didn't want fake smiles, didn't want to be led around everywhere like a helpless tot. She was beginning to feel painfully trapped inside this vehicle with her family blabbering banally around her, clearly wishing to involve her but so afraid of saying the wrong thing, and it only devolved the closer they got to home. Usagi finally had enough when she had both Ikuko and Kenji on either side of her, each holding an arm, each coaxing her down the front walk like one might an errant dog.

"You don't need to hold my hand - I know my own house!" Usagi snapped, wrenching herself free of them.

"Usagi..."

"I can find my way to my bedroom," she said haughtily, trying to retain as much dignity as possible as she brushed past them, achingly aware of the uneven layout of the path before her, yet somehow she managed to make it to the stoop without landing flat on her face. That was a small victory in and of itself, yes?

She could still sense that her parents were hovering annoyingly close, but at least they had given her this much - a long leash was better than nothing - and that cooled her down a bit. She yearned with a need so powerful it was almost palpable to be within the safety and solace of her bedroom, and so she reached out, feeling her way up the railing and to the handle, one step at a time; one obstacle at a time. She could do this. She could do this.

It was so important that she be able to do this; this one simple task that before would've involved no thought whatsoever.

The door pushed open under her urging and oh, the smell that crashed into her like a tidal wave off the Pacific was so beautiful and familiar and comforting that Usagi wanted to sob with relief. She was home. The girl breathed in deeply. She could detect hints of Papa's coffee and Mama's cooking still lingering in the air from breakfast. There was also a pleasant floral undertone that she recognized as the family's laundry detergent, and something else she couldn't quite identify but that was still uniquely them. Oh, she had missed this!

There was a loud meow at her feet. Usagi immediately brightened up, reaching down to let the feline leap into her arms.

"Luna!"

"I swear, I have never seen a cat so beside itself," Ikuko declared, and Usagi straightened, nuzzling her small friend close, rubbing her cheek against the silky soft fur. Luna's purring reverberated in her ear. "While you were at the hospital, she just paced around the house like a mother bear without its cub. She didn't seem to know what to do without you."

Luna made a noise that Usagi took as concurrence. She smiled, whispering more to the cat than anyone else, "I felt the same."

Luna's purring increased in volume. Usagi gave her one last squeeze before gently setting the creature back onto the floor. She made a motion to move toward the direction she knew the staircase to be, before Ikuko quickly intercepted her.

"Oh Usagi... I made cookies earlier. To celebrate your homecoming! Do... you think you'd like some or...?"

Usagi's lips twitched almost imperceptibly downward. "I'm really just tired right now, Mama... I think I'll head to bed."

"Right, right, of course, I'll just... Shingo, will you help your sister upstairs-"

"No! I mean... no," Usagi answered, trying to temper the belligerence out of her tone, because she didn't not want their help, it was just... Couldn't they let her be, just for an hour or two!?

It was all still so much. She needed to be alone so badly right now.

Usagi started again for the stairs with an inching gait, feeling Luna right at her feet like her guardian feline was trying to show her the way, and gratefully she followed the cues. They began the ascent very slowly, Usagi sure that her parents were huddled at the base of the stairs just waiting to catch her should she plummet. She tried very hard not to think about that possibility.

5...6...7... Usagi counted the steps, each one bringing her closer to the thirteenth and last, each one like a release in tension she didn't even know she'd been storing. When she finally arrived at her bedroom door, Luna curling around her legs murmuring "Very good job, Usagi-chan", the girl felt like she could collapse then and there. Apparently, it was exhausting work just laying around for a week. But she kept going, kept pushing onward, until her hands hit the bunny coverlet. She squeezed the fabric gently, smiling to herself. I did it. I really did it.

She would have to thank her mother for having made her bed, because she was certain it was nowhere near this neat before her absence. But she filed that thought away for another time; a time when she didn't crave sleep like it had been denied to her, when in reality she had done nothing but. Usagi didn't even take off her clothes; she just crawled right under the covers and let her bones sink into the sublime softness. No mattress could ever compare to her own, especially not the awful stiff hospital ones. She sighed, closing her eyes, then musing for the umpteenth time why she was even bothering to do so when there was no change in her vision. That brought Usagi's morose mood careening back, and she curled in on herself, hating this darkness, this separation from the world she so loved, and worse... the people she loved.

A warm body nudged its way into her cocoon, slipping under her arm with a dexterity of movement only a cat could possess. Usagi felt Luna's sandpaper scratchy tongue give her nose a little kiss.

"Hey you," the fourteen-year-old greeted, cuddling her smallest friend close. "You're gonna blow your cover worrying about me so obviously like that."

Luna let out an affronted huff in response to her charge's teasing. "No, blowing my cover would have been breaking into the intensive care unit after hours to come see my injured ward, and believe me, I was sorely tempted. But that place is locked up tighter than a castle under siege!"

"Does that mean you made an attempt?" Usagi gasped lightly.

"Let's just say it involved me, flat on my back, out in the middle of the street, sporting one very sore scruff."

"They didn't!"

"They did. And then had the audacity to call me a 'dirty alley cat'... me! An alley cat!" Luna scoffed in disgust.

"That. Is. It. I'm marching straight over there right now and kicking someone's ass!" Usagi exclaimed, which led to both of them dissolving into giggles. It was a brief moment of levity, of normalcy, but all too soon reality crept back in. "Or I would. If I wasn't a useless invalid incapable of protecting a fly."

Luna's voice was sober as she broached, "Ami-chan told me what happened with the girls. Usagi-chan, I am so sorry their reaction was... well, it wasn't fair or understanding of them at all."

"The situation had to be addressed either way," Usagi said evenly, in a rare display of insight for the odangoed blonde. "Rei-chan could have used a little more tact for sure, but... she's not wrong. They need to protect the city. And I am... unable to do that in my state."

She swallowed past a lump the size of a dumpling, but managed not to crumble, nor let any of the bitterness she felt leak through. A definite feat.

Luna's voice was more tender and gentle than it had ever been when speaking to the fourteen-year-old, like she knew full well the effort Usagi was putting into keeping up a brave front. "You showed great maturity, giving Ami-chan the moon wand, Usagi-chan. I know how hard that must have been. You did the right thing, and I'm so proud of you."

"Mm."

"The girls will come around too. No need to worry. They deal with things in their own way, but they would never intentionally hurt you. Even Rei-chan," Luna quipped with wry humor, unconsciously summoning the ghost of Ami's words from earlier. But Usagi didn't want to think about that anymore, so she turned her face into the pillow and murmured a muffled apology to the cat about needing to rest now. Luna's voice still carried that same warmth as she told Usagi to sleep well, promising to watch over her. And watch she did, keeping vigil from a perch by the window, Usagi somehow aware of her presence even though she couldn't quite explain how, but it comforted her nonetheless.

She slept for a very long time, past dinner and the timid knock from her brother calling her downstairs, not rousing again until sometime after midnight. She'd had a dream about dress shopping and eating kinoko no yama with Naru, so vivid she could still see the white lace and feel the sticky residue of chocolate on her fingers, but it was just memory... a wispy imagining that was slowly seeping away; away, into the black hole that was her mind, and everything was just dark dark dark...

Usagi whimpered. As a child, she could easily switch on a nightlight when nightmares got the best of her, but what could she do now to chase away her fears? When her waking life was the nightmare?

She felt the shift in weight when Luna leapt onto the mattress. "It's alright, Usagi-chan. It's alright. I'm here."

"Luna," Usagi sniffled, opening her arms. "Oh Luna, it's so dark. I'm scared... I hate it. I hate it, Luna!"

"I know," Luna whispered sadly, laying her head upon the girl's chest. Usagi's hand was trembling as she pet between the cat's ears, trying to distract herself from the overwhelming sense of helplessness; the sense like she was dangling on the precipice of some great gaping chasm, and if she were to topple she would just fall down and down and down... a never-ending darkness. But then, she was already there, wasn't she? Already in the clutches of darkness, so deep no light would ever be able to touch her again.

It was a terrible thought, but then an even more terrible one crossed her mind, and Usagi shivered with the awful yet enticing force of it. Later, she would look back with immeasurable sorrow on this moment; this weakest point in her whole journey, when she wondered whether a life without light was one even worth living at all.

It might have been better if that youma had just killed me instead.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Note: I know, I know... I said Mamoru's first lesson with Usagi would be in this chapter and it wasn't *dodges the tomatoes* It was supposed to be in the second half, but then this first half just kind of blew up and I decided to break it up. If you're still with me after this angstfest, I love you dearly, and I'm sorry for how BLEAK everything seems. But I promise, this is probably the most depressing it's going to be, because next chapter we see Usagi hit her 'breaking point' so to speak, and that catharsis is what will finally allow her to get on the path to recovery. That's when the real fun begins :) Also we will definitely see some resolution on the Senshi front so WORRY NOT! I too hate our girls not getting on like they usually do T_T It's just as painful for me to write as it is for you guys to read!

Big hugs for those who reviewed last chapter: Shadow Queen's Posts, Oreo596, cindermane, Ruk, Jenbunny, CassieRaven, haruka-usagi-forever, NikkiBC, missmartian369, Rufael, Guest, Astraearose-silvermoon, misako, Daire123, SaphireShimmer, Roxypockets1, jessielee14, Aya Faulkner, Pia Bartolini, and Asj Johnson. Your feedback was SO motivating for me, particularly when I had a couple rough patches of writer's block! So THANK YOU!

Until next time,

AngelMoon Girl