keyofjetwolf:

This is not good, and I apologize for that. But it is DONE, and I accept whatever small victory there is in that.

Anonymous said:
22 for Rei and Minako please!

#22: things you said after it was over

It had been nearly a year since they stood together in the ice and snow. Nearly a year since they’d fallen one by one, pegs hammered into a thick glacial wall and left there, sacrificing everything for the sake of one lone climber. They’d hadn’t talked about it much. At least Rei hadn’t. A few whispered reassurances to Usagi, a knowing nod to the others, and that was enough.

Yet here they were. It was completely unplanned (but not having a plan was its hallmark, really). Ami had made one of her slips, forgetting for a moment that her mouth and her brain were connected, and the room was filled with embarrassment and laughter. Nothing like it should have been. Rei couldn’t have said HOW it should’ve been, but she knew it wasn’t this.

The laughter petered out, and Mako adjusted her pillow and rolled on to her back. “You know, I’ve always wondered what happened next.” She peered at them from upside down, her ponytail draping across the white fabric. She hadn’t done it on purpose, Rei was sure of that, but it was too familiar, and she had to look away. “After, you know…” Mako struggled to find the words to cushion it somehow, to keep from bruising them with the bluntness of it. “After I died.”

Well she’d tried, kind of.

Rei caught sight of Ami first. The crimson flush of embarrassment had drained from her face, leaving her pale and haunted. Ghosts floated before Rei’s eyes, endless imaginings from endless nightmares of how Ami might have looked in her final moments with only Mako’s cold body dangling nearby for company. Rei rarely cursed how right she was, but this time, she was willing to make a special exception.

Usagi was no better, did Rei really think she might be? Tears of laughter, still wet on her cheeks, would be overrun in moments. Cold rarely bothered Rei (except that cold, that cold she would always feel), so she hadn’t realized how much it had settled in her bones until she felt her temper spark and then flare. Mako should’ve just brought this to HER. Rei had lived long enough to be the caretaker. She’d done it for Usagi, of course she had, but dammit, she’d lived long enough to remember for all of them. What was the point if Mako was going to stomp in and start shoving new memories in all the dark corners?

Her mouth opened to tell Mako she was being bullheaded and thoughtless. (Part of Rei was, in fact, looking forward to being on the giving end for a change, not that she’d admit it.) “Ma–” was as far as she got.

“MY theory,” Minako interrupted in a voice that was both too bright and too loud, “is that we found the secret of youth.” Then she left it. No explanation, no reasoning, kami forbid she lead everyone else there without dramatics. Minako answered the expectant silence with a long draw from her soda can, not even a little successful at hiding her appraisal of her attentive audience. With a loud smack of her lips, she slammed the can down. “Look, we came back more gorgeous and powerful than ever–” Did the wave of Minako’s hand skip over Rei when she said that? “–and seriously, did the time pass? Did we miss a year? Are we repeating the time again? NOBODY KNOWS.”

They all exchanged glances, too confused for tears and ghosts. Ami’s eyebrows knitted together as her brain tried to parse it into something that made sense to normal people who were not Minako. It wasn’t working. “That doesn’t–”

“I know, right? So unfair. How do you even bottle that? All those billions of yen we’ll never see!”

Minako sighed with high-pitched longing, then asked Usagi what she’d do with her billions. Like that, the conversation had been quickly and efficiently derailed. Rei still wanted to yell, honestly, but was forced to admit this was probably a better solution.

Less satisfying, but better.

And okay really, she could do SO MUCH with that kind of money, Usagi please, let the professionals handle this.