docholligay:

@rhiorhino YOU WERE MY SPARKLEE…and I’ve had this in my drafts since before my trip whoops, so I hope it serves, I used your “Haruka fucks up in an early days mission”

There were many things Michiru Kaioh quite enjoyed about her new partner. Partner, no, that perhaps seemed a bit intimate, considering the fact that they had been forced together by fate. Comrade…that seemed either a bit Communist or a bit jovial, and she couldn’t decide which she liked the least. Colleague. Yes, that seemed to fit the best, at the present moment, whether the relative distance of it pleased her or not. Her colleague had a number of very positive attributes, some of which, Michiru was pleased to say, she had noticed long before she’d realized Haruka Tenoh was Sailor Uranus.

Her raw athleticism, her keen sense of physicality, her kinesthetic grace–these things benefitted them in the field, and also, strangely, seemed to lower Michiru’s requirements for the heating bill, though this particular benefit she thought best kept to herself.

But for all of Haruka’s gifts, both practical and aesthetic, there were certain things that worried her.

For one, Haruka had a hero complex. Michiru recognized that this would not be seen by most as a negative for someone, who was, in fact, a superhero, if they could be called that. But Michiru saw things differently. Courage and impetuousness and commitment to duty were all very well in the storybooks,  but in the context of an intergalactic war, she simply saw it leading toward an even earlier grave.

Discretion is the better part of valor, she had told her once, after Haruka had charged unthinking toward an enemy, the shot from its arm digging deeply into her shoulder.

Haruka had simply shrugged, and mumbled something about how she knew that.

“You don’t understand a word, I don’t believe.” She had snapped it dismissively, and leaned forward. “I mean to say it’s more heroic to avoid danger than to run straight into it like some…foolish cowboy. Do you understand that?” Haruka’s brow had knitted in embarrassment, her shoulders riding up. In later years, Michiru would look on this moment of condescension with great shame, wondering how she ever ended up with Haruka lying beside her, but in this moment, all she felt was irritation.

Haruka pulled away from her ministrations, the edge of the bandage flopping with the movement of it.

Two inches, maybe? From her heart. We can die, Haruka, if we are injured too gravely, too quickly. Do you know that? Do you know that I have no wish to see you, pale and quiet, on the ground?

However, heeding her own advice, she thought it better not to ask Haruka what she did and did not know.

The tension of that moment had passed, replaced by new and constant tensions between them, and in several months it had developed into an uneasy partnership, bound together by the twin ropes around their necks, placed there long before birth, waiting together for the drop.

__

She’d been in the bathroom half an hour, which even she had to admit seemed excessive. She was meeting Michiru at a cafe downtown in…too soon. To discuss business. Official business. Official SENSHI business.

Her hair seemed unwilling to lay down and accept the meeting in either a business or an official capacity, however, and it this only added to her frustration. She tried, always, to give off some air of respectability when she met with Michiru, particularly after seeing the circles she ran in, and the girls who courted her.

She assessed herself in the mirror. Her jacket was clean and she had mended it reasonably well, and the vest, she thought, did not match, but it did go, and both looked like something she might have seen in a discarded GQ, and covered the thinness of her shirt. She tugged at the edge of it. It isn’t too much, with jeans, is it? No, there was a shoot that had something llike this, pretty sure. Maybe not. No. Yes? I mean yeah.

Her hair sprung up again, and she sighed heavily as she headed to the cafe.

For all of her concerns over her looks, Michiru did not seem to notice one way or the other, and Haruka felt an immediate disappointment and relief, looking at her elegance and beauty, a silver bracelet hanging from her delicate wrist, smelling softly of roses and jasmine.

“Haruka, I believe I’ve found our next target.” It was a difficult guess, always, but then again, Michiru had a way of relishing in the times that life was difficult, for, at the very least, they confirmed her suspicions about the larger world.

Haruka leaned forward over the picture of the girl and bit the inside of her cheek. Oh god, not her. Whoever they took the Talismans from would die. But many would live. You must sacrifice them for the greater good, Haruka. You must sacrifice yourself.

She was a sweet-looking girl, grinning brightly over her many cooking awards. Her name was Emi, and she had gone to school with Haruka before this whole talisman mess. She gave Haruka leftovers after school, a lot. Begged her to take them, said her family would never eat them. She did that for other people, too, and pretended like she didn’t spend her free period cooking for it.

She was kind. It made sense she would hold a pure heart.

“You’re sure?” Haruka mounted as a weak defense.

“Of little in life am I absolutely certain, but it seems a fair assessment.” She took a sip of her tea, and looked over at Haruka. “Is there any particular reason she seems a poor choice? Some scandal of which I am unaware?”

“No.” Haruka shook her head and touched the edge of the photograph. “Not at all.”

Michiru looked over at her kindly, a sudden sadness seizing her as she studied Haruka’s woebegone gaze.

__

If occasionally, life gives us gifts, today’s gift was that, as the pure heart was pulled from Emi’s body, it seemed clear to Haruka that it wasn’t a talisman.

She would have conceded the point that she wasn’t entirely sure what the talismans were supposed to look like, and Michiru had not seen fit to share that information, but she was fairly certain that it would at least look different, and Emi’s pure heart looked the same as all the others.

She threw a swing at the daimon, but it was quick, and dodged nimbly around her, catching her in the side. Michiru came around the back of it, her small fist drilled in behind its ear, and she took Haruka by the hand, leading her to the side for a moment’s breath.

“It isn’t a talisman, Uranus, we may as well leave the daimon to it.” She brushed a piece of imaginary dirt off her skirt and began to walk away, her earlier kindness forgotten amidst the realization of how tough this particular foe could be.

Haruka shook her head firmly, a tin foil covered dish appearing in her mind. “No.”

Michiru looked at her, annoyed to be directly disobeyed. “I beg your pardon? You are aware, I hope, that we are a finite resource.”

Haruka did not meet her gaze. “I can’t let Emi die. She’s nice.”

“This is madness.” She threw her hands in the air. “I will not back you.”

But she was ignored, denied even the dignity of a response, and Haruka headed back into the fray, silently wondering why the daimon couldn’t just return the heart crystal, and then Haruka would detransform and take Emi home, and no one would be the wiser. If it wasn’t a talisman, all of this was unnecessary.

She reflected on these things as she whirled around the daimon, but quickly realized why Michiru had been so reluctant to fight it–it was swifter and more agile than others they had fought, and as quick as Haruka was, she struggled to match the creature.

There was also the question of the spears it carried, which added an exciting tone of doom to the affair.

She was caught out, and she had overplayed her hand, and she was exceedingly aware of all of these things, and yet she could not compel herself to stop, could not join Michiru and forget about Emi lying there. She knew the world depended on their lives. She knew that someone would have to be sacrificed, and oh, how she wished she were strong enough to have it be someone who had showed her kindness. Michiru had that strength. She did not. She was nothing next to Michiru, in every sense.

The spear was coming.

Haruka closed her eyes, and prepared for the sharp blade into her ribcage.

Instead, there was a strong shove from the side, and Michiru snatched the spear out of the air, whirling it and stabbing it deep into the chest of the daimon. She did it with the elegance and grace with which she strolled down the sidewalk, and Haruka was not sure she had ever seen her fight with such ferocity. It was as terrifying as it was dramatic, and if Haruka knew as much about art then as she would come to know, she might have compared it to Judith slaying Holofernes, remembering how it felt to stand in that room with the huge painting and bask in its terrible beautiful violence.

Haruka tenderly scooped Emi’s pure heart up from the ground and placed it into her chest, ignoring the pain, just pleased to see her stir, even slightly.

Michiru turned to Haruka, her face dark.

“I hope you’re pleased.”

__

In later years, the seesaw of justice and discretion settled, and Michiru and Haruka read each other well enough that the arguments on matters of military strategy were rare. In those times, after a battle, they would gently bandage each other’s wounds, drink tea or hot cocoa, and wrap up together, gently adjusted into the most comfortable position for them both. It was warm and intimate and it almost made the battles themselves worthwhile, for Michiru.

But that time was still years off, and all Michiru felt right now was the sour mix of relief and anger in her mouth. She set her purse down on the table in the entrance, just hard enough that the chrome feet of her Hermes back cracked against the cool tile of the small table.

“I apologize the girl was your friend, but her life is only one, Haruka. We are the only ones who can stop what is going to happen. We two. If you throw that away for some–”

Haruka had limped in weakly behind Michiru, but the accusation found her with a renewed vigor, breaking through the exhaustion and fear into pure bellicose frustration.

“I KNOW YOU THINK I’M STUPID!”

Michiru whirled around and stared her in the eye. “I think you are foolhardy and impetuous and that you believe these things pass for gallantry, but they most certainly do not.”

“JUST SAY WHAT YOU MEAN FOR FUCK’S SAKE”

“I AM AFRAID YOU WILL DIE, HARUKA.” Her voice cracked, just the smallest, most fragile twitch, like the miniscule line in the glaze of an old pot, barely visible to the naked eye.

But there it was, laid just a little bare.

Haruka recoiled as if she’d been bitten, taking a step backwards, her eyebrows knit in confusion. Her mind flickered to the hopeless, terrible thoughts she had dreamed, that MIchiru could ever look on her with anything other than passing tolerance, that she might ever know what it was to really touch MIchiru, in the soft way that cherry blossoms caressed her cheek as they fell to the ground, unconscious of the gift they had been given.

And for a moment, just one lost moment, she thought she saw that hope reflected in Michiru’s eyes.

But of course, Michiru’s eyes were an unending sea, and she saw only herself, as Michiru shook her head.

Haruka cleared her throat. “The mission’d be harder with one.”

Michiru looked up and gave a soft huff.

“Yes. The mission.”