Notes: Episode 168, "Saturn Awakens! The Ten Sailor Senshi Gather" (Or, "The one where Hotaru gets a big level up.")

Episode 168

"Almost there."

"I CAN walk, Haruka."

"Sure, sure."

A few moments later the knob rattled but didn't turn, and a muffled curse came from behind the door. "Who had time to lock this thing?"

"Setsuna-mama likes locked doors. I'll get it."

The door swung open and Hotaru ducked back under Michiru's right arm. Coming up to about the woman's waist, she was exactly zero help in supporting her weight at all, but Michiru smiled at her gratefully just the same.

Haruka pushed the door the rest of the way open with her foot and the three of them shuffled into the house. Her arm was wrapped firmly around Michiru's waist as she stepped inside, painfully aware of the slow pace Michiru was setting. It had only been a short distance from the driveway, but Haruka had been half tempted to just pick Michiru up and carry her. Luckily, she was more tempted by the idea of not hearing about it for the rest of her very long life. Michiru was bristling enough under needing this much help.

Not for the first time, Haruka thought they'd been too charitable to Nehellenia. Dead was dead, true, but …

They'd arrived at the couch, and that shook Haruka out of her reverie. With Hotaru holding Michiru's hand all the way, they gently lowered her down into the soft cushions. Haruka caught Michiru's wince and her sharp hiss of pain. She opened her mouth to suggest – again – that they should visit the hospital.

But Michiru was faster, and Haruka frowned. Who was the Senshi of Speed again?

In a pained voice that was trying very hard to sound casual, Michiru said to Hotaru, "I'm surprised you let Chibi-Usa-chan out of your sight."

Hotaru flushed and looked away, giving Michiru time to shoot Haruka a warning look. No hospitals.

Haruka had no equally compelling look, only a series of frustrated frowns. She really needed more looks.

"We've spent time," Hotaru said, playing with the end of her cardigan. "She won't be going back to the thirtieth century for another few days yet. And she needs time with Mamoru-san. It's tough when your parents …"

Trailing off, Hotaru's eyes found the carpet, but not before Haruka caught the flash of painful memories. Her stomach twisted into a knot and she glanced to Michiru, but didn't find the reassurance she was hoping for. Saturn had changed Hotaru, that much was obvious, but they hadn't had time to figure out all the hows yet.

Haruka was suddenly very certain she didn't want to know.

This silence was unbearable. "Hey, how about you go get ready for bed?" she said in a voice that sounded too loud, even to her own ears. "We'll come tuck you in and read you a bedtime story."

That did it. Hotaru broke out of her brood and glared angrily at Haruka. Her eyebrows knitted together and her lower lip jutted out so far it nearly touched her chin. It was all Haruka could do to not go find a camera immediately. "Haruka-papa!" she growled in the most adorable growl known to all of human kind. "I'm not a kid!"

"Right, sorry!" Haruka wasn't sorry at all. Haruka didn't sound even remotely sorry. Haruka felt her world tilting back to normal again under the power of how not sorry she was.

Hotaru curled her little hands into little fists. "Geez, Papa!" she grumbled, and all but stomped to her room.

"I think you made her angry," Michiru said behind a light laugh.

"It's not my fault she looks so cute." Her tone and body language were entirely nonchalant, but Haruka sat next to Michiru with the utmost care not to jostle her.

"She went through a lot."

Haruka didn't need to look to know Michiru was staring at her, watching for her every tiny reaction. She wondered when that had become comforting. "We all did," she said.

"We didn't all nearly blow ourselves up to defeat the enemy."

Haruka had been watching the hallway toward Hotaru's room, but she turned from it now and considered her partner. Michiru's expression was, as ever, a practiced, unreadable neutral to the average person. Haruka was far from average. "You're proud of her."

Michiru lifted one eyebrow and tilted her head to the side. "Aren't you?"

She was. She was so damned proud of Hotaru that she thought her heart would burst with it. She wanted to pick up the little girl and run down the street yelling her accomplishments to the world. "My daughter would do anything to accomplish her mission!" she'd cry. "My daughter looked evil in the eye and said 'I will sacrifice myself to stop you'!"

Haruka felt like the proudest parent to have ever walked on any planet in the scope of the universe's existence.

Haruka felt like shit.

As usually happened when confronted with things she didn't like, Haruka's temper bubbled over. "She's a child!" she snapped.

Michiru didn't flinch and her voice allowed no argument. "She's a Senshi."

"I'm Saturn," Hotaru said from the doorway.

Neither Haruka nor Michiru had realized she was there and their heads snapped toward her. Hotaru hovered on the edge of the room, and Haruka was forcibly reminded of that night just a few days ago (had it really been only days?) when Hotaru had come to them, years older and full of dire warnings.

"And I'm Hotaru," she said, her frown returning. "It's … a little confusing."

Haruka searched for something to say. Words weren't her thing. Haruka believed strongly in actions, but couldn't think of what to do there, either. "Hotaru …" she heard Michiru say behind her.

Then came the words Haruka hoped to never hear.

"I remember everything."

The guilt slammed into Haruka with a force she couldn't possibly have prepared for. Like a fool, she thought she had. She, Michiru, and Setsuna had spent how many hours talking about it? Anxious hours around tea that went cold, worrying about unnatural growth spurts and mental development and the possibility that Hotaru would one day remember how very, very hard they'd tried to kill her.

All the things Haruka had told herself she'd say shriveled to dust in her mouth. The reasons. The justifications. She'd said them hundreds of times before to Sailor Moon and to herself, but never to Hotaru.

Michiru's hand was like a vice on her shoulder but she didn't have words either. She wasn't alone, but that made it no easier.

Hotaru hadn't moved. She stood in the doorway with her hands clasped in front of her, wearing the faded blue t-shirt Haruka had given her to sleep in. They hadn't had time to shop for more than a few basic outfits after her last growth spurt. The shirt was almost comically large and seemed to swallow her tiny frame. She looked like a little girl playing dress-up.

Her eyes were neither a child's, nor playing.

"We had to." The words tumbled out of Haruka's mouth without her permission. "You were the Messiah of Silence."

"You would have destroyed everything," Michiru said, her voice taut like a string wound too tight. "Everything."

Still Hotaru said nothing. Haruka heard an awful scraping sound in her ears and realized it was her teeth grinding together. She hated this, HATED it. She hated that destiny had turned to her, hated that she'd had to answer, and hated how she wouldn't have changed a goddamn thing.

It left her drained, and she sagged on the couch. "I'm sorry."

Haruka rarely apologized. What was done was done. Apologies meant regret, and Haruka made it a point to never look back. So why was she apologizing, exactly? That she'd argued the loudest to kill a sweet innocent girl? That she'd tried? That she would do it again, if she had to? If she didn't even know what she was apologizing for, there was no way Hotaru could understand and accept.

She'd only had this family for a few weeks, and yet Haruka could feel her heart shatter at its loss. A tiny whimper, almost inaudible, came from behind her, and she knew Michiru felt it too.

It was what they deserved, but that only made the bitterness rise faster.

"It's okay."

What she was hearing was impossible. A trick of her mind. The opening salvo in a new war against herself that Haruka was sure would never end.

Something stirred behind her, and she heard Michiru's voice, strained and thick. "Hotaru?"

Only then did Haruka dare to look.

Their eyes met, and Haruka's concentration was so great that for a few seconds, she forgot to breathe. She was on a quest ("a mission," the cynical part of her mind corrected) to find every scrap of hate and condemnation Hotaru had for her.

She found none. Pain, yes. A hurt she longed to erase, even if she didn't know where to start. But no hate. No fear.

There was no fear, and that became only the third time in her life that Haruka had thanked the gods.

Hotaru gave a sad, self-depreciating smile. "Well not really okay, but I understand. After Nehellenia, I …" She took a deep breath and blinked rapidly at the ceiling, composing herself. "I understand a lot of things."

Michiru's fingers sunk deeper into Haruka's shoulder, and she was grateful for the pain reminding her that this was real. Reaching up, she covered Michiru's hand with her own.

Hotaru gazed at them both. Still in the doorway, she filled the room, towering over them in her ill-fitting t-shirt that came to her knees. Haruka could feel herself falling into the impossible depths of Hotaru's eyes, drowning there.

"I forgive you."

Words Haruka had never expected to hear. Words that washed over her and took something with them when they'd gone.

When she looked again, Hotaru didn't seem big at all. She wasn't the Senshi of Destruction, she wasn't the Messiah of Silence. She was a little girl – her daughter – who'd had a long day and was up well past her bedtime.

A sentiment punctuated by Hotaru's wide yawn.

Immediately, the tension was sucked out of the room. Michiru began to laugh, with Hotaru and Haruka soon following. They fed on each other, and Michiru's high-pitched breathless pleas for them all to stop only made it worse. As Haruka doubled over on the couch, she wondered if Setsuna had intentionally picked tonight to check on the time stream, and hoped that wherever she was right then, she was laughing with them.

Their laughter eventually tapered off into long, contented sighs, and Haruka grinned as she dried her eyes. "So, you about ready for that bedtime story, then?" she asked Hotaru.

"Papa, honestly!"

But as Haruka got to her feet and helped Michiru rise from the couch, she noted that Hotaru waited for them, and when she extended her hand, Hotaru grabbed it, and demanded that they read the story with voices this time.