Mamoru was stiff. The couch hadn't felt too hard when he initially settled in last night, but now his entire back ached as if he had been sleeping on raw earth. Worse, as if he had been sleeping on an unforgiving rock. He groaned and rolled to his side, confusion rousing him further when the couch gave no allowance for his shoulder. No dip in the cushions. No creaking springs. Just a cold, unrelenting surface beneath him. Very cold, actually. Where was his blanket?

Mamoru opened his eyes. He was on the floor, staring at the green plaid skirt of the couch.

Before he could even begin to wonder what had happened that resulted in him sleeping on the floor (and not even noticing), something smacked him in the face. Hard.

"GAH!"

Mamoru clutched his nose as he rolled to face the opposite direction despite his protesting muscles. He checked his fingers–no blood. But what the hell!?

A contented sigh sounded behind him and his eyes bulged. Like a character in a horror movie that's just heard the chilling sound of footsteps behind him, Mamoru turned, his rigid body rotating ever so slowly to face whatever nightmare awaited him.

The monster on the couch stirred, two golden odangos popping out from beneath the faded quilt from which one slender arm dangled. The faint sound of smacking lips tethered his insides to the sleeping form and drew him in, inching forward on his knees for a closer look. With timid fingers and all kinds of errant thoughts sprinting through his mind, he slid back the quilt to reveal the visage of the sleeping assailant.

Usagi was asleep atop the cushions, her blonde tresses knotted around her soft body. The gentle flush of sleep had kissed each of her cheeks and thick, black lashes rested against them. The warm, morning sun snuck in from behind the curtains and danced on her skin, her lashes casting long crosswise shadows against her cheeks. Her bangs were mussed, revealing the whole of her face to the entranced boy above her. Her breast, barely covered in a baby pink camisole, rose and fell as sweet puffs of air escaped her plush lips. She looked precious.

All at once, something welled up inside of Mamoru. It was that same swollen balloon feeling that filled him that night at the Embassy Ball when he kissed the sleeping Princess Usagi on the balcony. Something from deep down inside was reaching out for its other half. Maybe it was Endymion reaching for Serenity. Maybe it was his own longing for the woman who now lay before him.

Instinctively, his hand moved toward her. His fingers trailed across her cheekbone, down her jaw, under her chin. The faintest of smiles twitched on her lips as he touched her and he longed to bend down and kiss the upturned corner of her mouth, to capture her innocent pleasure and happiness and tuck it away forever to keep as his own memento of this silently perfect moment.

But he had ruined everything. Spectacularly. And he couldn't even imagine the wrath that would befall him were he to do something as idiotic as kiss her without consent after destroying his one chance to make everything right with Usagi. His fingers moved to her lips, tracing their outline with feather-soft pressure, reminiscing on their velvety feel and sweet taste. Could she ever forgive him for being the world's most incompetent idiot? Hot shame flushed beneath his skin and he withdrew his hand from her, letting it fall limp at his side. It would pain him to take her home today with no understanding reached.

He shivered. It was freezing in the room, raising the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck. The fire had long since died out, but the cabin clearly had central heat, because it wasn't cold when they arrived yesterday. Mamoru cast his eyes about the room, confirming the existence of air vents, but noting the distinct silence of the whole cabin. No whisper of rushing air, no hum of a heating unit. In fact, the only sounds present were the sighs of Usagi's sleeping breath and the chorus of morning birds.

Careful not to disturb the slumbering angel, Mamoru stood and ventured to the bathroom. He was sure of the result before he flipped on the light, but he tried it anyway, flicking the switch upward and registering no surprise at the lack of light above him. The clouds he had spied yesterday must have brought a winter storm with them. And if the storm had been bad enough to knock out the power…what had it done to the roads?

He flew to the front door and tore it open, bracing himself against the gust of frigid wind that was sucked into the cabin like a vortex. Snow was blown up against the outside walls, forming miniature mountains beneath the windows. The road they had taken up to the cabin had entirely disappeared, a blanket of snow at least as high as Mamoru's knees covering everything in sight. And as for his car…Mamoru's beautiful Alfa Romeo SZ was barely visible, just the roof protruding from the icy mound, and an additional three feet of frozen abomination piled on top.

There was no way he could dig his way out. They would have to wait for a snow plow to come, which would probably take hours–if it even came at all. He had no way of knowing what kinds of services were available this far up the mountain. And, judging by the state of things, he doubted he would be able to make a phone call to find out, either.

He was snowed in. They were snowed in.

"Wh-what-t-t are you d-d-doing?" chattered behind him. "C-c-closse the d-door, it'sss f-f-freezing!"

Mamoru practically jumped out of his skin.

"Usagi! What the hell are you doing?" He forced the door closed before turning on her, arms crossed over his chest.

Her head was just barely visible above the back of the couch, her fingers curled over the top. When she caught a glimpse of his expression, she squealed and dropped out of view.

"Usagi…" Mamoru called in a reprimanding tone as he strode around to the inside of the couch.

An Usagi-sized bundle was hidden under the old quilt, only a set of tiny toes peeking out from the border of the fabric. He had the tiniest fleeting thought to tickle them, but shoved it away, quick to remind himself of just how much of a creep he was.

Mamoru cleared his throat in his best attempt to keep his voice even.

"Usagi, what were you doing on the couch?" he demanded.

Unintelligible syllables mumbled beneath the quilt.

"I can't hear you."

"I was cold!" The complaint was muffled, but agitated.

"You had the bed," he countered.

"Yeah, but I was alone in there!" she whined, whipping back the quilt to reveal a rather accusatory glare.

She was angry about that? Hadn't it been the proper, respectful thing to do, to give her space after such an egregious outburst? It would have been...weird...for him to try to sleep with her in the first place, and then after the events of last night… Had Usagi…wanted him there? In bed? With her?

Usagi took advantage of Mamoru's reeling and dove beneath the cover of the quilt again, shielding her all to expressive features from his discerning stare.

But truthfully, Mamoru was clueless when it came to this girl.

"Well, I hope you were warm on my couch with my blanket while I slept on the floor." (And the bed went to absolute waste.)

Usagi revealed just her eyes, hiding the rest of her features behind the quilt as she murmured, "You didn't have to sleep on the floor, you know."

"It appears I didn't exactly have a choice." He must have fallen to the floor at some point in the night, no doubt due to Usagi's wild antics, surely present even in sleep. It only made sense that she would be as unpredictable in sleep as she was awake.

"It's not my fault if you fell off," she snapped, the blanket slipping from her face like a stage curtain exposing the next gut-wrenching twist of the play to the unsuspecting audience.

Mamoru shook his head at her sour expression. "I don't understand. Why are you mad?" What had he done this time?

"Whatever!" she snapped, surprisingly offended, flinging the quilt to the opposite side of the couch and standing to her full (puny) height in front of Mamoru. "You obviously don't want to be around me, so let's just go home!" She stormed away in the direction of the bedroom, but Mamoru caught her by the wrist.

"Usagi, wait!"

"What!?" Mamoru debated which point to address first.

"We can't," he managed.

"We can't, what?" She was blazing mad, flames lapping at her words, but some other emotion was glistening in her wet eyes.

"We can't go home. We're…snowed in."

Realization clicked into place on Usagi's face. She pushed past him, shouldering him as she crossed to the window where she peeked through the blinds. Groaning, she fell back against the wall and dropped her face to her hands. Mamoru watched stupidly, not sure of the right course of action in this moment. He settled on doing nothing. Eventually, Usagi lowered her hands but kept her gaze down, pushing off the wall and sulking back to the bedroom door.

"Just…tell me when it's time to leave," she mumbled defeatedly before latching the door shut behind her.

Though he couldn't be certain as to what, exactly, he had done wrong this time, he had a sneaking suspicion that it had to do with his recent self-diagnosis of a acute case of Foot-In-Mouth Disease.

—

Usagi was still self-sequestered in the bedroom, not even emerging at the smell of bacon and eggs (thank goodness for gas stoves) that Mamoru produced in the miniature kitchen. He had left her a plate on the counter before locating a snow shovel in the coat closet and heading out. Starting with the porch, he began to dig, happy for the physical distraction from his mental torment.

With nothing else to do, Mamoru had bundled up in his (now dry) coat and gloves and set to work carving out a road in the arctic tundra outside the cabin. With the clouds having moved on, the crisp air stung his nostrils and the sun shone warm overhead, glittering off the sea of tiny ice particles. It was blinding–what he wouldn't give for a pair of sunglasses right now. But he had left them in the car, and it was going to take quite a bit of elbow grease just to create a traversable path to the vehicle.

Mamoru had a tendency to get antsy–or "anxious," as one crackpot doctor had called it many years before. When situations were tense, it was impossible for him to sit idle and do nothing. A nervous sense of restlessness would tingle in his legs and, if he couldn't find anywhere to channel it, his thoughts would end up racing and growing darker with every passing minute. That was one thing he loved about being Tuxedo Mask: he could be of use. Whether it was offering words of encouragement, battling a foe in hand to hand combat, or simply being a meat shield for his favorite senshi, serving Sailor Moon gave him a sense of purpose. And now, with Usagi wishing to go home and get as far away from him as possible, the only thing Mamoru could do to help her was speed up the process. And so he cleared the porch and the stairs, ignoring the screaming muscles in his back from an uncomfortable night's sleep, before digging down to what he hoped was the foot-trodden path from porch to car.

This whole trip had just been one mistake after another. Why couldn't he do anything right? Why did it always take some emotional blow up or (literal) near death experience for him to come to his senses? Why couldn't he function like a normal human being and know how he felt before he made a giant ass of himself? Or, at the very least, why couldn't he just be a man and tell Usagi how he felt? Even right now, when he knew he should be talking to her, he was shoveling snow like a total moron and couldn't will his feet to return to the cabin.

Mamoru loved Usagi. He was in love with her. Not just as Endymion, but as Mamoru. And he was an imbecile not to have admitted it to himself (or her) sooner. He loved her impish grin, her silly antics, her stubborn personality. He loved her endless kindness and warm heart. He loved catching her when she fell and holding her up when she needed strength. He loved her limitless eyes and her crazy hairstyle. He loved the footprints left in the snow by her tiny feet…

"Usagi?" Mamoru called, noting the suspicious existence of footprints much smaller than his own leading away from the back of the cabin.

He had made it halfway to the car by now. She must have slipped out while he was working, the crunching of her steps muffled by his shovel scraping against the slush.

There was no answer to his call. Driving down his shovel so that it stood upright in the snowbank he had just created, he trudged through the frozen precipitation to the back porch. No returning footsteps, either. Wherever Usagi had wandered off to, she had yet to come back. Hopefully she had managed to at least put on some decent clothing this time.

"Usagi?" he repeated, but again received no answer.

(Actual) anxiety began to prick at his heart like pins in a sewing cushion and the muscle beat against it, his pulse climbing rapidly. His eyes followed the trail from the back door, down the steps, and away to the west where it disappeared down the slope of the hill. He began to follow her path as quickly as he could, bogged down by the uneven fluff, his brain hellbent on imagining every insidious harm that could have befallen Usagi.

It couldn't be a youma–he would have sensed its aura. Or rather, sensed Usagi transform into Sailor Moon. He had felt neither. And it couldn't be another human; there was only one set of footprints. Usagi must have gone off on her own somewhere, most likely completely oblivious to the danger of the situation. She didn't know the first thing about snow, as evidenced by her making a snow angel yesterday without even wearing a jacket. He doubted she even owned the proper shoes for trouncing around in three feet of utter peril.

Mamoru's frantic calls for Usagi continued to go unanswered. What if she had tripped? It certainly wouldn't be the first time. But in these treacherous conditions, a simple, clumsy slip could result in a serious injury; Usagi could be lying somewhere in the snow with a sprained ankle or a broken foot or a compound fracture. What if she fell on a rock that was concealed by the snow and hit her head and was now unconscious or bleeding out while her body temperature dropped rapidly with frostbite and hypothermia setting in and all this time Mamoru had been shoveling snow like a waste of human instead of watching her and protecting her from the many dangers of the outside world?

As Mamoru reached the crest of the hill, the footsteps he was following became a butt-shaped smoosh that slid down the length of the opposite side to where it dumped out onto the frozen pond. The sight shook him to his core, the snow seeming to claw its way up through his trembling feet and snake through his body until it wrapped around his heart with its chilling clutches. There, in a red coat that stood out like blood seeping from the one, long vein that ran across the crystalline ice was–

"Usako!"

She was still, as if she had become a sculpture made of the same ice she now sat upon, but she answered him in a breathy half-yell.

"Ma-mamo-chan!"

"Don't move! I'm coming!" Mamoru ordered, the precarious nature of Usagi's position at the forefront of his mind.

With careful precision, Mamoru stepped off the path made by Usagi's (perfect) behind so as not to slip on the packed snow and began picking his way down the hill, his eyes constantly flitting between his feet and his girl.

"Mamo-chan…" It was more of a nervous whimper now.

"I'm almost there. Just hold still."

As he approached, it became evident that Usagi had followed his orders, not one inch of her so much as shivering. Even her eyes were fixed on some point on the mountainside. In fact, her eyelids were glued open, her blue orbs so wide that her lashes clung to her brows. Something was definitely wrong.

"Usagi? What is it?" He crept towards her, carefully testing the ground as he closed in on the water's frozen edge. "Are you hurt?"

"No…it's…"

One trembling hand lifted from Usagi's side, her finger extended in the path of her locked gaze.

"Mamo-chan," she whispered in terror, "what is that?"

Mamoru immediately assumed the worst: a wild boar or perhaps a snake, some evil creature determined to tear his Usako away from him again. A fresh wave of adrenaline surged in his veins as he prepared for a fight. His gaze trailed the length of her arm, down her finger, and into the shrubs peppering the base of the opposite hill.

He could have smacked her.

"It's just a goat, Usagi!" A completely innocent, undeserving goat that had most likely been interrupted from it's grazing by a wild lunatic.

"But it's scary! Look at its horns!" She was peeking through her fingers now.

"It's just a silly mountain goat! It's more afraid of you than you are of it!"

Usagi shook her head furiously, her golden streamers skating across the ice.

"No way. It's totally evil. LOOK AT ITS EYES!"

"Usako!"

The goat, which had been frozen in mirrored terror across from the wailing blonde, finally came to its senses and took off, scaling the mountain with its expert, cloven hooves, keen to escape before it received the death penalty at the hands of a biased judge.

"Oh, look...it left…" Usagi appeared to be dumbfounded.

Mamoru was half-debating whether or not he should just leave her to fend for herself when a sickening crack brought his attention back to the ice where Usagi was now attempting to stand, smaller, thinner veins now branching out from the main artery in a full cardiac system that threatened to stop the beating of his heart.

"Stop! Hold still!" Mamoru ordered, and she obeyed after returning to the ice on all fours.

He dug through the dusty filing cabinets of his mind, searching frantically for useful survival tips amongst drawers filled with first aid tips and fire-starting techniques. Finally it came to him, and the needles of anxiety began to retreat as he switched into crisis management mode.

"Get on your belly," he instructed. "You're going to try to scoot to me."

"Okay," Usagi replied, slowly lowering herself to lay out on the ice and wincing at the small snapping sounds it made beneath her weight.

"Try to evenly distribute your weight. See if you can slide over."

One inch at a time, Usagi began to slide across the ice like a crocodile, awkwardly maneuvering her limbs while she kept her stomach low. Mamoru got to his knees and pressed his own gloved hands to the frozen surface to test his weight against its strength. Perhaps he could meet her halfway and to put less stress on the thin ice in the center. It held the weight of his upper half. He tested a knee. It held. The other knee.

Crack!

Usagi's blood curdling scream echoed against the mountain walls and amplified in Mamoru's ears as the ice opened it's jagged maw and swallowed her legs with a terrifying splash.

"Usako!"

Before her name had left his lips, Mamoru was back on solid ground. He threw his arm out to the side where a fluttering satin cape materialized behind it, the rest of his tuxedo shimmering into existence as his top hat landed on his thick locks. From his other hand extended his cane and he prayed it would be long enough to reach her. He dropped to his knees once more, the frozen earth rough and unforgiving through his tuxedo pants, and extended his arms as far as he could toward where Usagi was clinging to the lip of the ice, shivering so violently that her chin bounced against the surface.

"Grab on!"

She shuddered against the cold, her arm shaking as she reached for the cane with one hand, the other arm desperately fighting to support her full weight on the fragile ice. Mamoru heard her sharp intake of breath as a trickle of blood began to run from her sleeve along the sharp edge. Her trembling fingers clasped around the end of the cane, but they slipped, and she cried out as she plunged a fore more inches into the dangerous pool.

Mamoru sucked his teeth, but held his ground, keeping the cane steady. She tried again, this time bringing her second hand to join the first the instant it made contact. Her knuckles strained against her translucent skin as she gripped with all her might and Mamoru began to inch backwards, slowly pulling her from the water.

"I've got you," he half-whispered, determination flexing in his muscles as he dragged her to safety.

Finally, the whole of her body was out of the water, and he slid her along the ice as quickly as he dared amongst the foreboding cracking that echoed around her. The moment her hands reached solid ground, his arms were around her, lifting her into the air and cradling her to his chest.

She was more than shivering; she was convulsing, her muscles spasming beneath her drenched clothes that were already beginning to freeze in the winter air and her teeth smashing together so fiercely that he worried for her tongue. In a matter of minutes, her life would be in serious danger, if it wasn't already. He held her tighter and wrapped his cape around her tiny frame, taking care to be gentle with her injured arm. Resting his cheek against one crunchy odango, he bounded toward the cabin at superhuman speed, determined to keep Usagi alive.

"I've got you, Usako. Don't worry. I've got you."