“Sometimes it feels like your heart’s in another room.”
He hates that she does this. He hasn’t had much experience with women who aren’t blonde with legs to their neck and named Minako, but he’s heard enough to know that she is quite possibly the only person in existence who deals with issues quite like this. Other women will drop subtle hints. Other women will act awkward for a week before finally saying, “We need to talk.” Other women will ease themselves into the conversation because it’s as painful for them as it will be for their lover.
But not Minako. Minako gives him no indication that anything’s wrong; she simply waits for a lull in an otherwise normal conversation and then drops an atomic bomb reserved exclusively for them. One minute, he’s indulging her musing about whether or not Luna and Artemis can get married, and now his heart is in another room.
As far as he’s concerned, it doesn’t matter where it is. She can bruise it all the same.
He swallows his strong black coffee that suddenly isn’t strong enough and contemplates the liquor cabinet. “Go on.”
She frowns at him. She doesn’t like that he doesn’t challenge her; he might if he knew how. “You’re distant. You remove yourself.”
He sets the mug down a bit too hard. “I’m very internal.”
She exhales and blows a few stray hairs off her face. The message is clear enough. ‘I know it, but I don’t like it.’ “There’s a difference between being an introvert and retreating. You retreat.”
He wishes she’d picked another metaphor. “Example.”
Her eyes roll upward as if she’s trying to recall one, but he knows better. She’s simply sorting through the pre-prepared scenarios and selecting the most apt one for the situation. One that will make the point without cutting too deep.
“The last dinner with my parents,” she pronounces, deciding on something fairly recent.
He can’t help but smirk. “I don’t think you can blame me from retreating from your mother.”
The fact that she doesn’t even spare him one chuckle tells him this is more serious than he thought. “She wasn’t bad for once, and besides, it wasn’t even when she was talking. You were. I don’t remember what story you were telling – something silly I did probably – and I could tell down to the exact second when you checked out.” She swallows. “That’s what worries me. That you can pretend like that.”
He can’t remember what he was talking about either. This disturbs him.
“Is that all?”
Her eyes slide away. “I feel like it has to do with me. I feel like… Sometimes I wonder if you’d rather be somewhere else.”
“That’s not it,” he assures her, wishing that sincerity were something tangible she could hold in her hand.
She looks a little relieved. “I try to tell myself that, but…”
“But my heart is in another room,” he finishes where she falters.
“Yes.”
He shifts his weight indecisively. In war and strategy, he always knows exactly what to do, but he has learned that love is nothing like war. He can’t plan what she’s going to do, so he can’t decide if going to her will comfort her and make things worse. She’s too unpredictable – like a tropical storm that can’t decide if it wants to be a hurricane.
If she’d been more than a figurehead in the Silver Millennium, she might have been able to defeat him after all.
But she senses his distress and lifts her hand, beckoning. The knot in his throat loosens and he crosses to her, entwining his fingers with hers. She leans forward and rests her chin on his hip, sighing when his other hand gets lost in her hair.
“I like it better when you’re here,” she whispers. “Don’t you?”
If words could truly wound him, she’d have cut his throat.
He combs through her mile-long hair and wishes he could undo this and so much more. “Sometimes I… Sometimes it hurts to look at you.”
His fingertips brush against her spine in time to feel it stiffen. The fact that she doesn’t have to ask what he means either indicates that she knows him too well or that he’s turning her cynical.
He isn’t over fond of either prospect.
He can almost feel the weight of their past settling on to her shoulders. “Just once I’d like our problems to have something to do with this lifetime.”
The idea of making a joke about her cleaning habits crosses his mind, but just like before, he doesn’t know if that would soothe her or light her fuse. He opts for silence.
“You don’t remember as much as I do,” he reminds her. “And you didn’t do what I did.”
“So you pull away from me because of something you didn’t even do?” she murmurs, her tone dangerous.
Any hope he had of this ending well has gone out the window. “I did—"
“No, you didn’t,” she insists, rising to her feet. She pulls away from him now, but he’s reluctant to let go of her hand. Their fingertips wind up hooked and straining. “He was another man,” she hisses. “He wasn’t you.”
He shakes his head. “We used to be them.”
“They’re a part of us, yes. But that doesn’t mean that we are them. You’re no more Kunzite than I am a princess of Venus.”
His lips press together in a thin line, and for once, he knows for certain that his next move is deadly. He does it anyway.
“You loved Kunzite, and Kunzite loved you. How do you explain us if we’re not the same?”
She rips her hand away. He feels like he’s lost a limb.
“I don’t love you because of who you were!” Minako shouts. “How could I love Kunzite after that? I couldn’t. I didn’t when I first saw you again. There were ripples, yes, but it was a memory of what we had. It wasn’t love. I don’t love you because I did a thousand years ago. I love you for who you are now.
“I love Takehiko who has trouble slouching even when he comes home. I love Takehiko who’s responsible when I’m flighty – who’s too serious for his own good so that when he does make a joke, everyone takes notice. I love Takehiko who beats me at every video game but Sailor V. I love Takehiko who is so smart about everything but utterly clueless when it comes to shoes. I love Takehiko who my mother actually approves of and who my father only wants to kill a little bit. I love Takehiko who would die for Mamoru before he’d die for me because that’s the noble, right thing to do. And I love Takehiko who lets me talk about cat weddings, who holds me when I cry at stupid movies, who brings me breakfast in bed after I’ve had a nightmare, who would never, never do the things Kunzite did because he’s not Kunzite anymore and never will be again.
“I love you. When are you going to get that through your head?”
He stares at her, lost in a sea of affection – drowning in it. He can’t handle it. “Minako, I—"
“Just go.” She turns away from him, her head dipping forward so that her hair slides away, exposing the nape of her neck. “I can’t deal with this now.”
His lips itch to touch that spot on her neck. Now that she’s pulling away, his body aches for her, but he steps back. “All right.”
And so he goes into another room.
But his heart stays with her.
