( "looking for the missing piece but it was never here" )

Title: The Best Kind of Worst Mistake
Theme: Makoto/Sailor Jupiter/"Lost & Found" by Adrienne Pierce (song) – Day 3, sm_monthly
Prompt: Slow Going – 2007 July 3, 365wprompts
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13

Makoto clutched the sheet against her breast, fisting it with both hands. Next to her, he snored and sniffed quietly; she would have found it cute had she not been lying next to him in the aftermath of sex.

She knew he was getting ready to break up with her, could sense it with every automatic kiss, lips pressed against her cheek with no pressure or interest. Dwindling glances and broken dates, he shuffled her aside discreetly. Maybe he was hoping she would get the hint and leave herself. But Makoto was too stubborn.

Instead of breaking up on her terms, she flung herself at him even more. So hard, that she somehow ended up in his bed. She had been hesitant, and he had been persuasive. And now, she was lying next to him, wondering what the hell she had done.

Had she really gone through such lengths to please him? Had it been what she wanted? She was young enough to deny that she didn't know what she wanted, but she felt old enough to admit that she didn't. Especially after that.

Slipping out of bed, she wondered if he'd be relieved that she left. If he'd even worry that she'd run to the police. Feeling her 'older' self take over, she eventually deemed that her disappearance in the middle of the night wouldn't really faze him at all. That was his nature: to let things come as they will and to deal with them then; otherwise, what concern of it was to him; what concern was _she_?

Pulling on her clothes and padding silently to the door, Makoto looked around the rented room and wondered at how long it had taken her to get there. To a place where she would have sex with a boy who didn't want her for any more than that. To a point where she could finally leave him with no regret. To a belief that something better waited for her elsewhere.

Though aged with understanding, Makoto would not yet be strong enough to admit that her best decision was coming from her worst mistake – when she was older still, she wonder if the intertwinement had been fated or if she had brought that on herself. Eventually, it would be a question best answered with: "Everything happens for a reason," or "You can't live in the past."

But it did not matter at the moment. All that mattered now, was that Kino Makoto was going to Juuban.

end