I don't own the story or the characters. This is the end of it all. I may do something of a sequel, but for now this is the end of the matter. On to other stuff when I can.

06:Heroes and Villains

Shingo and Saeko sat at a restaurant. It was the first whole evening Saeko had off in a few months. All around them the cheerful talk lilted. None stared at the couple, none marked the difference in age because they could easily be taken for mother and son. The waiter came up and offered a choice of a fine merlot or a burgundy.

Neither talked, just studied their drinks and looked at the plates, the candlelights, and in the other's face when the other was looking away.

"We need to stop."
Shingo felt an inward sigh of relief. He had experienced with this woman the first and likely best carnal experiences of his life, but there was the restlessness. Breaking Ami's mind so as to free the baggage of two women at once was not pleasant, but mixed with the shame of sending her to bed was the relief of being shut of it. He was like a murderer who has finished planning and has done the deed, and whether he rots in prison for the rest of his days or remains a wanted man on the lam, at least he has the agony in retrospect rather than waiting and anticipation. And how was the sapphire maiden now? Last he knew – Rei and Makoto had driven him away and blacked both his eyes and bloodied his nose, and he just took it as some penance – she was like Randle Patrick McMurphy at the end of the movie, dressed as for school but sitting motionless on the couch, staring straight ahead, some book by Einstein or Feynman in her lap, unread. Saeko had left for work at some point. Perhaps, hopefully, she had gotten better. He wondered if he really could. And that spoiled his relationship with Saeko, haunted him.
"We need to stop. I could be your mother."
"Yeah. It is kind of. Out there."
"Plus…" but Saeko didn't need to finish. Shingo knew it.
We never see each other. My relationship with Ami, my relationship with Saeko, it never works because I never care. Either I can't put the time in or she can't or something. Anyway it sucks when it has to end messy, like what happened with Ami. He briefly thought if he ever had loved Ami, or could again. There was nothing there. He was sorry, no question there. But what was there to do about it? She was broken. Anything he could have done, he should have done before casting her away and returning just long enough to mention it was her overbearing mother who had always provided for her.

"I know. I'll always think of you." Shingo once again recognized the dull thud of something great dying. The sort of thud that came about when he finally went out with Ami, the girl he had gazed at on the beach, the girl he had always yearned to be with.

He had felt that way when he got into Mugen High School, with its rigorous entrance exam. The thrill of being one of the first classes to try out for an institution that had only recently begun to let people in midway through their education – Tomoe and his Mugen powerhouse had lost none of their acclaim through this liberal step. I just walked into class the first day and it was gone. It wasn't Valhalla, just another classroom. He idly wondered as he toyed with his pasta, some dish with an inconceivable name that he forgot as soon as he handed the menu over, whether his whole life would be like this. His parents, his sister, his friends and contemporaries all remarked on his brooding, his seriousness. He certainly had never encouraged or tolerated his sister's vapidity like Ikuko and Kenji had.

"Yes, I'll always think of you, too," Saeko returned, and sighed, head resting in her hand.
They ate in silence and headed out afterwards, a spring drizzle making everything soggy and grim. A goodbye kiss, and Shingo walked out of Saeko's life.
Saeko sighed.

Rei and Makoto sat up with Ami every day. They had really taken up living at her apartment; any spare time they spent with her. Come home from school to the Mizuno's apartment mansion. Ikuko kept the same hours, often at home as if by afterthought. She was not above using uppers.
Ami had gone to bed for more than a week. No eating, nothing, just sleep, fitful tossing and turning. Obviously nightmares permeated her taxed brain. When she began to go about she was just there. She was not unconscious, just composed as if every moment were just after some sobering disappointment. As if her mother's perfidy had been on a lesser scale and exposed to her every instant. She was broken, with a sort of routhousand-yard-stare.

"Ami, Lord, please, please come out of this," Makoto said again and again, to no avail. Rei sat on the couch as well. The pair's schoolwork lay in a mingled pile on the coffee table, along with innumerable cups of tea at varying degrees of depletion. They slept irregularly, watching over Ami. When school time came they would rise, collect the requisite work, and go. They kept regular baths but were unkempt with general shortness of sleep and deep depression. Makoto would coax Ami constantly, stroking her blue tresses and hugging her and tenderly kissing her as a mother does to her feverish child, and the poor girl sat there still. Occasionally she would seem on the verge of a smile – the verge of a smile – just enough to give Makoto and Rei hope.

Rei sniffed and sobbed constantly. Life indeed had sank. Ami seemed between life and death, and they were the only ones to pick up the pieces. Their friends were nowhere to be found. Usagi had initially come around now and then, and even intimated her jealousy of Makoto's caresses for Ami, but quickly she stopped turning up. Minako came by now and then, but her career was flying, and she was already discovered. Huge crowds turned up to her shows and nearly demolished the places. Virgin Records had given her a contract, and she would work on her album over the summer, and that fall she would appear on Snooki in the Morning, a big American talk show. Mamoru was busy as always. Shingo or Saeko certainly never came around really. Ami, Rei, and Makoto were one world.

"Mako?"
"Yes, Rei?"
"How. Why does all this happen? Why does life go this way?"
"I don't know, Rei. Does your faith say anything?"
"The Church? It can't even give a straight answer. Not a single line in a missal or the Catechism, not a single bit in a textbook, 'Bad things happen to good people because of a, b, and c…,' nothing like that. It just goes bad."
Rei is a psychic, a miko, and she has a God in Heaven and she can't even explain this. It was the undoing of another legend for Makoto. Somewhere after any real love, which had worn especially well observing Ami and Shingo, then Shingo and Saeko. Even Ami and Saeko. Herself and Usagi. No need for a list, it was for everyone.

Makoto laughed hollowly. "You know? I heard Usagi is spending time with Umino now. Naru is nowhere."
"Oh God," Rei spat.
"I guess us three will always be on the outside looking in," Makoto said, and it was a relief, the coming of a true identity. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Ami grasped Makoto's and Rei's hands, each in each.
"Ami!" both in one breath.
Ami's face told the tale of the past crazy season. She had seen Hell and come back, it seemed.

"Yes, things just happen that way I guess."
"Ami, are you," Rei was about to say alright? but as she spoke she realized that she wouldn't be alright, and Sakeo and Usagi and Mina and nobody would never be alright.

"I'll be fine. I'll live. I'll see you around, I've got school tomorrow, I'd better hit the books a bit." And Ami got up and tottered a bit, collapsing.
"Ami!"
Ami grinned, but it was a hard grin, like she had just had a tooth pulled. "I need some food first."
The three had a sprawling dinner, they emptied six containers of Instant Ramen and had a big cake that Makoto had made in a Sunday morning's daze three days before, but there was no mirth or talk at all. It was nothing like Crown Parlor had been the last spring, when Usagi had still been with Mamoru, really before everything had gotten complicated. A place for everything and everything in its place.

And not a word about Saeko. Or Shingo. Or anyone.

And with a flash all three schoolgirls recognized that not only were the teenage years gone for them, in spirit if not in chronology. They would go alone through this world, they must surely. All the world prospered but them. Ami had been wrong just once in her life. She had thought herself out of the perceived Magical Girl Team complex. They were in truth as gunslingers going through a barren time and land, and all but the strength they had barely given each other, really hunted desperately, had deserted them and would never come back.

And none of them wept.

It was an identity, at least.