Recap 106

This one's all about Haruka and Michiru's past. Very interesting, but irrelevant to this fic. It's memorable, I think, so I recommend watching it.

That's kind of all.

Episode 107

Recap: Chibiusa has a crush on Masanori-kun, a fellow student at her art class which Michiru teaches. She bakes him an apple pie, but Usagi unwittingly serves it to her friends. Chibiusa is jealous of Michiru, to whom Masanori declares his "passionate love." Then his pure heart is targeted, and in the haze of the moment, Masanori sees Chibiusa running off to transform, and calls her his angel! Oh the romance! And then Uranus/Neptune/Moon/(Chibi Moon who doesn't do anything oh did I say that I mean what) whoop up on a weird half-naked Daimohn who makes clay monsters out of dirt. The end.

Warning: Major fluff awaits you. As in, not an overlook-able amount. Just warning you.

"Ma-mo-chan." Each syllable was accompanied with a knock.

Rather peevishly, Mamoru slunk over to the door and returned the knocks. "U-sa-ko."

"Let me in," she whined, clearly not amused.

He complied wordlessly; he wasn't much in the mood for her capricious fancies and whims after less than two hours' sleep last night, with even those precious moments plagued by dreams of destruction and silence. Damn college to hell. Damn premonitions to hell. If his alternate-universe-with-alternate-outcomes theory was correct, and Crystal Tokyo was simply one possibility that the multifaceted future could potentially contain, then there very well could be death steadily approaching Earth, and all he was doing about it was studying for his summer courses. If said theory was complete bullshit, then he frankly had no idea how he was going to manage keeping up his scholarship and saving the world simultaneously. Either way, he couldn't really see himself coming out on top.

He realized Usagi was staring at him, and he refocused blearily. "Sorry, Usako – what did you say?"

"I said you look terrible." Her lips formed an unintentional pout. "Do you want me to leave?"

He was on the verge of begging her to get out and let him get some sleep, but then he caught her eye and there was absolutely no question. "No, of course not. What do you need?"

She giggled. "Silly Mamo-chan. I don't just come over because I need things, you know. I'm not that selfish." Leaning up on her toes, she kissed his lower lip gently. "Well, maybe a little selfish. But that's all I'll demand of you, I swear."

She was teasing him, flirting shamelessly, complete with twinkling eyes and pert little smile, but the quickening of his heart seemed distant and remote through the vague shield of exhaustion. "Then you came over…?" he prompted her.

Her shoulders drooped. "Well, Chibiusa likes this boy Masanori-kun in her art class, so she baked him an apple pie, but I thought it was for everyone, so we ate it, and I promised her I'd make her a new one, and then I thought why not make one for Mamo-chan while I'm at it?" She perked up, her eyes shining hopefully. "So would you mind? I brought all the ingredients." Her arm appeared from behind her back, revealing a plastic bag he hadn't noticed before.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "Look, Usako, I've got a ton of work to do…"

"I won't bother you!" she said, straightening before him as if she were reporting for duty. Mamoru could have sworn she saluted him, but that was probably his half-awake brain playing tricks on him.

"Alright," he said half-heartedly. "Alright, come in…"

Quietly, she pattered after him and paused by the wall as he went to plop down heavily by his work again. "You've been dreaming about it again, haven't you?" she said at length.

Distractedly, he massaged his eyelids with a finger. "Yeah." He stared down at the pages in front of him, trying to concentrate, but the numbers blurred together before his eyes. Focus, dammit, Chiba. This isn't that hard, this part is just basic calculus. You know how to do this.

"Rei hasn't," said Usagi, still hovering at the corner of the wall.

He grunted in response, without having really heard her.

"Mamo-chan," she said in what seemed to be half reprimand, half concern. Suddenly she was kneeling by him, raking back his hair to feel at his forehead. "You're not sick, are you?"

He batted her away with his pen. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine, you look like a corpse!"

"I'm talking, aren't I?" he replied sourly.

She clucked her tongue loudly, impatiently. "Why do you always have to do that?"

He groaned and leaned his head against his hands. "Not now, Usako…"

"You have to pretend that everything's alright, all the time, because it would be so horrible if somehow you acted human and betrayed some sort of weakness!"

Grimacing, he pressed the heels of his hands deeper into his eyes. He didn't want to offend her, but if she kept yelling at him like that – his head was killing him – "I said not now, Usako."

"God, Mamo-chan!" she screeched, her voice cracking; she stamped her foot on the ground, tears spilling from her eyes. "You always do this! Is it so horrible for me to – to want to take care of you?"

Yes, he thought blandly. Yes. It is a terrible, horrible thing to care that much.

"What would you do if it was me?" she demanded shrilly. "If I kept having nightmares about the end of the world, and it was hurting me so badly, and I told you it was nothing? If I walked around like I was dead and wouldn't let you even… If there was clearly something wrong and I just said, oh no, it's nothing you need to know about, or… or… eurgh! It's just so frustrating!"

"I think you're overreacting." His voice was rather dull.

"I think you're under-reacting."

"Maybe you should leave, Usako."

"Maybe I will!" She stormed toward the door, but reeled around last minute. "You might be good at saving people, Tuxedo Kamen, but in the end you're just human, and someday that's going to catch up with you, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in ten years, but someday, and then where will you be?"

The door slammed shut.

He sat there with his back against the base of the couch, his pen dangling numb from two fingers. Usako sure was eloquent when she was ticked off. Clearly, she had taken his refusal to spill his guts personally, as if she weren't… important enough, or something ridiculous like that. He simply didn't want to give her any reason to worry about him – he knew his limits, and he knew they had been stretched, rather against their will, by twelve or so years of complete withdrawal from emotional exchanges with other human beings. When he hadn't had anyone to run to, he'd learned not to need to run. He'd made himself stronger than that. And now that he had Usagi, she expected him to – to what, knock down those barriers in the bat of an eyelash and pour out his heart? He'd gotten better, since knowing her, at recognizing her intense desire to read into his thoughts, and so he had grown, bit by bit, to accommodate her shared sympathies and joys and grievances; but show weakness when he knew he was stronger than that?

Was that something he was willing to do just to make her feel wanted?

Briefly, the consideration that he was flailing hit him – but if he did need help, it wasn't like Usako could make him suddenly understand everything his exhausted mind had been too bleary to pick up during his classes. She hardly understood her 9th grade Geometry!

Immediately, a wave of guilt smacked him upside the head. He was being an ass, and he knew it. But no sense of shame, however profound, could make him stand and run after her. He was just too goddamn tired.

Faintly, he felt something poking his shoulder. A whisper floated through the nebulous mist of his mind: "Mamo-chan?"

At first, he disregarded it, but then remembered: Oh right. That's me.

And so, with distinctive difficulty, he woke up.

Before he managed to fully open his eyes, he felt something soft and precious graze his forehead, and the world focused to reveal Usako kneeling in front of him. An ominous, rich golden light scorched through the windows, and he jolted involuntarily.

"Whatimzit?"

"About five," Usagi said.

Internally, he tried to calculate how long he'd been asleep, but he couldn't think, so he stopped. "When's my next class?" he asked, more comprehensibly, running a hand over his face.

She checked the schedule buried under his notes. "Half an hour."

"Shit." He pulled desperately at his blurred eyes, trying to clear his vision, and therefore to vicariously disperse the murkiness out of his head.

"You're not going," said Usagi firmly. "You wouldn't…" She paused on a brief quest for the right word. "You wouldn't retain anything, anyway."

"Usako," he sighed. He wasn't really geared up to fight her in order to get out the door. Plus his ass hurt like hell from crouching on the floor for so long. So clearly, it was a lost cause.

"I mean it, Mamoru." Oh, well. The full name. "You are going back to sleep and I'm making you a goddamn apple pie, whether you like it or not."

"You are so difficult," he grumbled.

"Just a few hours," she pleaded, grabbing his elbow. "Then you'll have the rest of the night to go over things you don't understand and be ready for tomorrow. Please, Mamoru."

Unfortunately for him, it made sense, and sounded downright tempting at that. "Mmh," he said as a means of responding.

She seemed satisfied with that; the hand gripping his elbow yanked him up on rather unsteady knees. All five feet of Usagi towered menacingly a foot below him. She pointed down. "Couch."

He rolled his eyes and collapsed obediently, curling up on his side. "You're kind of scary, Usako," he mumbled.

"Some bakas are very stubborn," she countered pleasantly, pulling the blanket off the back of the couch and wrapping it around him. "I have to be scary."

It still made him excessively uncomfortable, to be half asleep in someone's presence, while said someone was stroking his hair and pressing another soft and precious kiss to his cheek. But as long as it was Usako, he supposed he could get used to it.

"Sorry I'm a jerk," he muttered indistinctly.

"Sorry I yelled," she replied. Her hand touched his chest in the place where Earth's heart lay within him. "Now you leave him alone," she whispered. "He's had enough of you."

A single chuckle leaked out of him. "Think that'll work?"

"I'll know if it doesn't," she said, once more adopting her threatening tones. "I'm not leaving."

Somehow that made everything seem ten shades lighter; he had a hunch that if Usako was there, he wouldn't dream quite as vividly.

And anyhow, he had apple pie to look forward to once he woke up – providing, of course, that Usagi didn't burn down the entire apartment building in the process of making it.

Dear holy God, I love getting in Mamoru's head. Sorry for fluffiness. At least I posted. :P

Thank you thank you thanks for reading! (That was kind of a song, if you were wondering.)