Haruka and Minako, anywhere but here.

docholligay:

There’s still beauty in ruins, Mina had once heard a history teacher say, or thought she had heard her say. She decided it was true, anyway. She decided it was how she was going to live the rest of her very free and unburdened life, the mantle of senshi off of her now, off of all of them. The ones that were left.

She walked down the street to the tiny apartment, a grocery bag in hand. It wasn’t exactly fine dining, how they’d been living lately, but Mina would change that, or try, once she and Haruka got out.

She hadn’t told Usagi yet. How could she? So many people had left already, one way or the other.

They were moving across the country, where Haruka had gotten a little job working in a fish market. It was physical work, and she would like it, and she would be good at it, and in time, she would come to love chatting with the little old ladies doing their shopping. Someday, the scent of salt under her nails would be a thing of joy for her.

Mina would work in a bar–there was always a bar with a place for people like Mina–where the sound of the music and the clinking of the glasses would drown out every thought which had wandered through her mind since that day, the day when freedom had come, but with a price, always with a price.

Maybe in a small town like that, they could actually afford two bedrooms.

Not that Mina resisted, much. There was a comfort in waking up in the dark, and being able to call out, or simply hear Haruka’s slow, easy breathing of a dreamless slumber and know that someone was still here with her. She wasn’t alone. On the hard nights, they simply gave up the idea of their own beds entirely, one piling in with the other, just touching, just enough to know help was there, if you needed it.

They had fought on, her and Haruka, and they were going to get a nice apartment, and decorate it themselves, and she was going to make Haruka laugh more often. They would spend days off on the beach, or maybe in the parks, and lie in the sunshine, and just soak up the incredible luxury of being alive.

They would make it. They’d already made it so far.

But Usagi had to be told, and Mina it would be. Haruka was fighting but fragile, Mina was tougher, and Usagi could cry all she wanted, and would, probably, but there was the strength of steel girders underneath all that. Usagi would be fine. She still had Ami, after all. Ami should take her to Germany, if she still wanted to go. Maybe she’d suggest that. Both of them should go.

The city held too much, the pigeons cooing Michiru’s name, the honked horns like Rei’s irritated barks at some foolish thing Usagi did, the high tower bearing Michiru’s name too much for Haruka. She just stared at the ground, when she passed. Did Usagi see those things too? Did she notice the koi, in the tea garden, with the black tail? How its fins moved through the water like Rei’s hair spread out over silk? Or was it just Mina, and just Haruka, who cuddled on the couch together, eating spaghettios and praying for the morning to come because the nights were just so long.

At least they were going where Usagi could visit. It wasn’t a goodbye forever. They just needed space to breathe. Space to let go of the ways it would never make sense.

Above the apartment entrance, a dove cooed, and a crow cawed, and Mina counted the days.