Episode 100 (yay 100?)
Recap: Minako feels kind of alone and desolate since everyone in her grade is pairing off. She has a brief moment of crushing on an old fellow volleyball player, Asai, but then he gets a girlfriend (that kind of pissed me off). Then she saves his pure heart by pulling a kick-ass volleyball move and feels better. Okay, so that was a terrible summary, but this episode was really adorable. Definitely worth watching. YEESH I LOVE THIS SEASON.
Also – one of the best moments ever:
Kaolinite: What is your favorite sport, Professor?
Professor: Stair stepping.
*Awkward silence*
HAHAHAHA. That made my day.
So anyway… I ran through about 3 different beginnings for this chapter before deciding on something totally unrelated. It's late, I'm tired, I'm stressed. I write much more adeptly when my characters are in similar situations. Hence:
He knew, in the back of his mind, that it was a dream, but he couldn't quite grasp at the concept, and so it eluded him, taunted him, while things grew more and more frenzied. First there was Sailor Venus, writing a list, and she turned to him and said, "Usagi, what's the four hundredth and twenty-first way to make love?" And then he wasn't Usagi anymore, he was Kaolinite, and he was watching the Daimohn throw the pure heart across a gymnasium, only instead of Sailor Venus intercepting it, it was taken by Sailor Uranus, who looked him straight in the eye and said, "Silence is approaching," and Sailor Neptune's wide aqua eyes engulfed him as she murmured, "The sea is growing stormy," and then it reverted, as it always did, to that rumbling cloud of red dust, and Sailor Moon and the other Senshi were like red stone statues that crumbled in a nuclear wind, and then there was silence, even as he yelled and pled, and the place in his chest that was the welfare of the world pulsated and ached and -
Shattered.
He awoke screaming, but stopped abruptly when he realized he was on his couch and making a hell of a racket. Sheets were tangled and damp around his legs, and roughly he shoved them off; he stumbled into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. Glug, glug, glug, it poured down his throat, tasting of bile and germs and bad breath.
"Mamo-chan?"
He practically jumped out of his skin; he dropped his glass, and it shattered over the tiles of his kitchen. Usagi, a frail white ghost in the darkness, gasped and jumped back.
"I'm sorry!" she whispered. "I heard you yelling…"
A heavy and terrible noise ripped out of his throat, a sound that reeked of complete loss. The whole earth was reeling toward silence...
"Mamo-chan?"
He couldn't slow his heart; he couldn't tame his breath. Something hot and wet and foreign was coursing down his face, and his legs couldn't tell which way was down. He tried to step forward and landed on a piece of glass; swearing, he yanked it out of his foot and smeared off a trickle of blood, running black in the night. Realizing it was futile to move, he pressed his back against the cabinets and slid down into a crouch.
"Are you alright?" she hissed.
"Can you get the light?" he said through a cracked voice.
His eyes followed her silhouette, barely visible, to the wall, where she groped for the switch; light smacked him hard in the face, and he squeezed his eyes shut as they watered even more. He heard a quick intake of breath and a rummaging sort of sound, and when he managed to squint his eyes open, he saw Usagi carefully sweeping the glass into his dustpan.
"Sorry," he muttered. He couldn't quite remember what he was apologizing for, but he could feel the guilt.
Her eyes, bloodshot and exhausted, flickered up to meet his. "Dream?" she murmured.
He nodded.
She continued her work, and he hunched there, the sole of his foot oozing a small trail of blood, water rushing down his face, his breaths hitched and fast. Why did this dream affect him so much? It was the same as it had been before – yet previously, the squeezing of that place near his heart hadn't been quite so violent. And it certainly hadn't shattered that way – shattered like the glass that Usagi was pouring into the waste bin. Unconsciously, he clutched at his bare chest, trying to find that hollow inside to reassure himself that the earth was still alive and so was Usagi and so was he.
But the water from his eyes kept running.
He remained in a daze, half aware of what was happening, as Usagi pressed something wet to his foot, and then something sticky, and suddenly he was in her arms; she stroked his sleep-tangled hair, pressed her lips against his forehead, murmured things he couldn't understand, and gradually his eyes grew raw and dry and drooped.
"Sorry," he repeated, his voice grating.
"Was it the same dream?" she asked softly.
He nodded into her shoulder. "Worse," he grunted. "Gone. Everything…" His hand returned to his chest, searching, begging for reassurance from that connection to life. "Everything broke. For good. It never broke that way before." His arms wrapped around her waist and he pulled her tighter to him. "Don't leave," he whispered.
She didn't reply; she simply knelt there and held him, her long loose hair hanging tent-like over his face. She smelled of spring and vanilla and soap.
His mind wandered, began to melt into semi-consciousness; he remembered the beginning of the dream, and suddenly he chuckled – or more accurately, croaked – into her shirt.
"What?" she asked, sounding rather disconcerted.
"Venus was making a list," he mumbled, his words slurring together. "'Ways to Make Love'."
"Mamo-chan?" Definitely disconcerted.
"She didn't mean it that way," he explained, in an attempt to reassure her. "She meant to say, ways to inspire love in the world. But she was never too good with syntax, was she?" He snorted again. "Number four hundred and twenty was Godiva Chocolate."
"Alright," said Usagi patiently, in a tone that told him she doubted his sanity. "Come on." She stood, and took his wrist; he followed her blindly like a dog on a lead, and when she turned off the light he was as good as blinded anyway. He couldn't remember why she had decided to stay over in the first place – his brain was too murky – but he remembered that she was sleeping in his room, and it was with a tinge of surprise that he found himself back in there with her, with the stars pouring blankly through the open window.
His eyes were adjusted enough to see her pull back the blankets and climb into his bed, and wordlessly he followed suit; she shifted around and drew his head to her chest, soothing him with the rise and fall of her breath like the rhythm of waves. Just like when Chibiusa was around, he thought vaguely. Usagi had spent the night much more often then, just like this. He'd missed hearing her breath, feeling it stir through his hair. Her thumb gently moved across his cheek, feeling the stains beneath his eyes. It had been a long time since he'd grown so emotional over a dream; he reached once more to the hollow in his chest and pressed his hand there, silently praying that the burst he'd felt there was never fully realized.
"I won't let them destroy the world," Usagi whispered.
"But what if they do?" he replied mutedly.
"They won't, Mamoru." She kissed the top of his head. "I won't allow it."
"It was like bones," he mumbled. "Bones breaking." He felt as incoherent as he sounded, but it seemed very important to describe the sensation of shattering within him when the dream had culminated. "And people couldn't scream, Usako. That was the worst part. They couldn't scream. They had to be silent and watch and die."
"Shh," she ordered, perhaps more harshly than she intended. "It won't happen." And over and over again, a steady mantra: "It won't happen, I promise, it won't happen."
As he felt himself begin to drift again, a half-thought formed in his mind of Venus' list, and he thought he'd better remind her that Tsukino Usagi was the focal point of all love in the universe; but by that point, he was asleep, and so it was rather hard to concentrate after that.
Alright, let's face it: I'm running out of ideas. If there are any situations you'd like these two to be thrown in, for the episodes that aren't so inspirational, please let me know! I'd appreciate a nudge in some sort of direction, if you can spare it!
As always, I owe you a fraction of my soul for reading. (: