"You know this doesn't bode well for the future, right?" Haruka asks, leaning against the doorway to the salon.
"I know exactly what you mean, but it's just hair, Ruka. It can grow back," Michiru reasons, sneaking a peak around the taller blonde towards their princess as she runs her fingers through her hair.
"Yeah, but we're supposed to prevent any disruptions to the future timeline. That is the task we have taken up with Set's," Haruka mumbles before turning back towards the girl, still staring at herself in the large mirror.
Michiru frowns at Haruka for a moment before looking towards the girl with her and lets out a small sigh seeing the awe on their princess's face. She furrows her brows once more and turns to look at her companion.
"Who will tell her that she must give up her happiness? Have we even thought about what it is that she wants? All this destiny this and destiny that. Why doesn't she have a choice? Is she even happy? How many times now that her supposed Prince has left her? What type of love is that exactly, Ruka?"
The questions catch the woman off guard. She had always wondered if the young girl was happy but never really thought as she was always smiling and seemed to be enjoying the life she had been handed. After hearing the princess's quiet words about not knowing what a panic attack was, she thought that maybe life wasn't as good for the princess as the Senshi of Wind once thought.
"What do we do?" Haruka questions the other woman pursing her lips together in thought.
"We support her. You know that her guardian will not like what she is doing, and as for Mamoru, well, we'll see how that plays out," Michiru answers, running her fingers through her long Aquamarine hair.
"And Setsuna?" Haruka questions, moving away from the salon window and over to her car to get ready for the princess to come out.
"We'll handle her as it comes up, but do you think that if the Princess had changed the timeline with a simple haircut, she wouldn't be here right now saying something?" Michiru questions, sliding into the passenger seat after her partner opens the door for her.
"That's a good point, honestly. I'm going to get the princess so we can go," Haruka informs her girlfriend before kissing her cheek and closing the door to grab the blond princess.
Haruka walks back into the salon and places a hand on Usagi's shoulder, who turns and smiles at her friend. The older blonde smiles back at her, seeing the sparkle in her eyes for the first time in the two months since Mamoru left the girl for America to finish his studies, thus breaking off their relationship for the second time.
He was dead the last time he didn't contact her while he was in America, but that's beside the point. The first time he called off their relationship was because of some stupid dream he had that ended up coming true anyway. Haruka didn't understand how this relationship was supposed to be the love that transcended life and death when it seemed this man continuously hurt her princess.
Shaking her head from her thought, she gives the more petite blonde a warm smile and wraps an arm around her shoulders.
"You ready to go, Princess?" She asks her companion, who nods before she's led back outside to the car where Michiru is waiting for them. "Did you want to go home?"
Usagi shakes her no to Haruka's question, and with a nod, the sandy-haired woman pulls away from the curb and into traffic.
"Where would you like to go then, Usa?" Haruka asks while maneuvering through the traffic on the road around them.
"I think I'd rather go to the park, Ruka. A lot is going on in my mind, and I'm just not ready to return to the dorm apartment. The thoughts would plague me while I was alone, and as fun as that sounds right now, I'm just going to have to decline that idea," Usagi answers, leaning her head against the window and watching the other vehicles zip past.
Haruka nodded and steered the car into the correct lane so they could go to the park that Usagi had mentioned, knowing it was the one from when she was a younger teenager in junior high school that she wanted to go to.
Usagi scrambles out of the car while it's still moving, not allowing Haruka to come to a complete stop. She hurries over to the swing set to sit down and calm her racing heart again by leaning her forehead against the sun-warmed chain, grasping it tightly like a lifeline.
She looks up, startled when she feels the pressure of a hand on her shoulder. She scrunches her face when she sees Haruka's concerned face looking back down at her.
"Are you okay, Bunny?" The older blonde questions, only for her to step back when Usagi pops off the swing and begins to pace the hard-packed sand.
"Am I okay? That's a question of the century, isn't it, Haruka? I have been basing how many years of my life off the fact that in my past life, I was a princess, and for what? So that I can have some destinies dictate my life? Why? I'm not a princess! I'm Usagi. That's who I ever should have been. I have these memories that aren't even fully complete. I have been told all my life what I want, but what exactly do I want? I sure as hell don't want to rule a freaking planet! I never asked for that. I can't even walk down the street half the time without tripping over invisible cracks," she scoffs, kicking the empty swing she had gotten up from.
"Not to mention I'm supposed to marry someone from the past that I have been TOLD that I'm in love with when on most days I feel like he's a good friend when I ignore this stupid bond we have together, which let me tell you, isn't all it's cracked up to be. If it were so great, he wouldn't have hurt me again and again and again. All my memories show me running away from him, not to him till the end, and that's mostly jumbled too. I have been going through the motions for a destiny I do not want!" She exclaims, throwing her head back, and screams the last word.
Haruka and Michiru look at each other with concerned expressions before rushing over to the young princess as she collapses onto her knees with her head in her hands. Michiru engulfs the distraught girl into a tight embrace while Haruka looks on in shock at the girl's revelation.
Usagi wraps her arms around Michiru as she feels her chest loosen from the tight feeling it had been in when she was in the car after revealing the darkest secret she had been carrying for the last few years. This isn't what she wanted anymore. Maybe when she was younger and more naïve, she had wanted nothing more than to be a princess with a dashing prince to marry before having a child together, but now.
Now, she's 19 and doesn't want what her 14-year-old self wanted. In a few years, she will be married to Mamoru and pregnant with Chibi Usa. The thought of having the child didn't scare her, but the thought of her life. The life she had been building would be over, and for what exactly?
The major she has worked so hard on would be useless when she became queen of Crystal Tokyo, which would become a worldwide kingdom again. She was proud of what she had been working on. She was proud that she wasn't failing all her classes, and for once, she was paying attention to her lessons. All of that would be taken away once she became Neo-Queen Serenity.
Yes, she understood there would be peace in the world, but how? How could there be absolute peace? There was no such thing, and if Chibi Usa coming to the past was any indication, it was that there wasn't going to be ever-lasting peace like what she had been told all her life. So, why did she give up everything she had worked for? Why can't she have a simple moment of selfishness?
She hadn't wanted this destiny since she turned 16, and it hit her that she no longer got excited about the thought of marrying Mamoru, and she was putting on a face for those around her, going through the motions of what was expected of her day after day.
It didn't hit her hard until one night when Mamoru commented about her increasing muscle mass from the cross-country she had signed up for in school and the Track team that had recruited her recently after seeing how well she ran.
He had said it was unbecoming for a princess to be so muscular as it was too masculine for her to be such a way. This dissolved into an argument when she used Makoto's training as an example that there was no excuse for princesses not being in shape.
The argument ended abruptly when he said that while Makoto might be a princess, she had no real kingdom to govern, and since she was a bodyguard to the Usagi, that was her place in life. She had never been so mad; pulling on her clothes, she walked out with him calling after her to return to bed, only to become furious when she told him to go to hell, slamming the door behind her.
She knows now that it was the beginning of the end to the farce of a relationship she had been in. Pretending, all the time, that she was happy. She was never letting on to anyone, even her parents, just how miserable she was.
When he went to America and didn't contact her, she went through the motions of being upset about the supposed break up, but honestly, it felt like the first time since she found out who she once was that she could breathe freely once more. Even with the threat of Galaxia looming over her shoulder, she never felt this free since becoming Sailor Moon.
While she didn't appreciate Saiya hitting on her with every step she took, she was relieved that she was just Usagi and Sailor Moon. Not Usagi, Sailor Moon, and the reincarnated Princess of the Moon Kingdom destined to marry the Prince of Earth for once. Because without Mamoru around constantly, she could forget about that little thing called destiny that had thrown a wrench into her plans.
No one treated her differently apart from Rei, but that was the fire Senshi's whole personality. Firey in everything she did in her life caused the two to become closer with Mamoru's absence to the point where the blonde was suddenly confused about things.
When she lost her friends in the battle with Galaxia, it was the hardest thing she had to endure. This was the second time she watched them die before her, but it was watching Rei, holding Rei as she died, that had the most effect upon her.
She watched as, one by one; her friends were struck down, not knowing that Haruka, Michiru, Setsuna, and Hotaru had already been gone before them. Star seeds stolen from her friends, comrades, and family faded into nothing, but Rei held on.
Reassuring and apologizing to her all in the same breath, only for her to fade away before the blonde could fully understand what she was feeling, watching the Senshi of Fire leave her behind once again.
To say that she was devastated was very much an understatement. The young princess had always been kind and caring towards the enemies, not enjoying vanquishing the Youma but understanding that it had to be done for innocent lives.
Her rage was unlike what she had ever felt, and she couldn't understand where it came from. She didn't feel this way when Mamoru was brainwashed by Queen Beryl all those years ago, but in this instant, she wanted to lash out at Galaxia and make her rue the day she came to earth.
The rage inside her was still there when she picked up the sword of sealing. She wanted nothing more than to do exactly what she was told and run it through the monster that had taken her friends away and caused her so much pain. However, before she could, an echo of Rei's words about her being sweet and brave ran through her mind at the last moment.
Because of those words, she healed Galaxia instead of killing her, but then Mamoru was back, and her destiny was thrust upon her shoulders once more. Thrown once again into the role of the naïve princess once more. That night after the battle was over, the now named Panic Attacks manifested for her.
It was the first of many, but that night it was the worse. Her parents had gone out for the night and took Shingo with them, and Luna was off with Artemis and Diana. So she was all alone when it had begun. She didn't have a name for it. Her chest was tight, it was hard to breathe, and her body was starting to numb. She was dizzy, and walking anywhere in her room without it spinning was hard.
She heard a knock on her window while she was sitting on her knees, trying to draw in a breath. She turned her head slowly at the time, thinking it was probably Mamoru having felt through their connection that something was wrong, another reminder of the shackles that locked her into her destiny.
It made the attack worse with each strangled breath, causing her to gasp audibly, but be it from the attack or because of the amethyst eyes framed by long raven-black hair she saw looking back at her, she couldn't tell you. Her eyes were wide in a panic, looking at Rei before she passed out due to hyperventilating that night.
These thoughts ran through her head as she sobbed against Michiru's shoulder, wishing for any deities listening to take away her predestined life. She didn't want it. She wanted to be more than a pawn of destiny because this wasn't her destiny.
