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Bad Habits by Through Darkness

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          “It was as though all of a sudden the past didn’t matter, but that the uncertainty of the future was much scarier, and finding juts a moment’s reprieve was worth any price.”  -Nephrite, Hoshi Kenji
 
-x-
          Rei bolted awake, sweat rolling off her and coating her skin as she gasped for breath. It had been a vivid nightmare, and finally a relief of dreams about the Silver Millennium. She slowly tugged herself upright and moved over to the pitcher of water she kept on the table at the side of the room.
          Her hand shook as she poured a glass of water for herself. She sipped at it slowly, trying to get her breath back. She settled down and crossed her legs, preparing to meditate herself to a calmer state so she would be able to return to sleep.
          The priestess caught a drop of water sliding down the outside of her glass and wiped it off. She inhaled slowly, and closed her eyes.
          Pain. Minako being stabbed, a knife sticking out of her stomach. Haruka in a crash of metal and flames as her motorcycle went down on the road. Ami, drowning. Makoto, struck by lightning. Michiru, being dragged down by the tide.
          Herself, burning in the flames.
          Could their own elements really turn on them like this?
          Rei was desperate to convince herself to put this dream in the ‘nightmare’ category and as far away from the ‘vision’ category as possible. As long as it was a single occurrence, she wouldn’t worry.
          At least, that’s what she’d tell herself.
-x-
          Mina ducked her head out of the kitchen to look over the booths. And she spotted the telltale silver head of hair, bent over the daily newspaper, waiting to order. She sighed.
          Every single day for the last three weeks he’d come in on his lunch hour, sit at that table and order lunch from her. Like clockwork, he walked in the door every single day – even weekends, when he wasn’t working (she assumed – she hadn’t actually asked) between noon and one thirty. It was infuriating.
          They didn’t speak. She took his order, brought him his food and his bill at the same time (she’d learned by now that he never order dessert). They didn’t converse like friends, and she loathed every minute of his presence.
          He even came on her days off.
          And today, after three weeks of this nonsense, Mina was sick of it. She was tired of him haunting her waking and sleeping hours – and so it was time she was going to do something about him during the hours she had control of.
          So she marched up to his table and glared at him, hands on her hips. She slid his daily cup of coffee (completely black) on the table and prepared her speech.
          “I’d like an order of dumplings and your minestrone soup, please.” He quickly ordered, not bothering to look up at her.
          She scribbled it on the pad and opened her mouth to speak and finally tell him to stop bothering him everyday, but he still didn’t bother to look up.
          She lost her nerve and walked away from the table.
          On her way back out of the kitchen, as she past the counter, Motoki stopped her. “Mina-chan,” he said. “Do you know that guy over there?” He asked, gesturing to Riku. She shook her head, her ponytail swaying behind her.
          “No,” she answered. “I really don’t.” She brought his food over to his table, slid it in front of him and moved on to the table two down from his. The blonde kicked herself for not having the guts to yell at him for invading her private life.
          But one of these days, she was going to give that man a piece of her mind.
-x-
          Hoshi Kenji, formerly known as Nephrite, stood outside the Callisto bakery, owned by Kino Makoto, and inhaled slowly. He had a bouquet of colourful flowers in his hand, but he didn’t have much faith in the gesture. After all, flowers don’t really make up for, you know, stabbing someone.
          He ran a hand nervously through his recently much shorter hair- it was more of a layered shaggy look now that stopped just below his chin. With a deep breath, he entered the bakery, smiling at the soft ‘ding’ of the bell attached to the door.
          Makoto was happily mixing cookie dough with her hands when she heard the door and the bell as she spun to greet her customer.
          “Welcome to Callisto baker-” she stopped, her jaw open as soon as she laid eyes on the man standing in her shop clutching flowers with an almost defeated look on his face.
          “Get out.” It came out as nearly a growl, and she wasn’t sure she had ever heard her own voice sound like that before. Then again, she wasn’t sure she’d ever been this angry before.
          “Makoto-san, I came to explain,” he started.
          “Don’t call me that!” She snapped, furious. Makoto pushed her hair out of her face and spun back to her batter, attacking it much more furiously.
          “Just hear me out, my love,” he whispered softly, as he moved to the counter and laid the flowers down. She whipped back to face him, her eyes flashing, much like the lightning she wielded.
          “Your love? Your love? Your love? Let me tell you about your love,” she bit out in sarcasm. “Your love died because you betrayed her,” she grabbed a large hunk of the dough and hurled it at him. He stood there as it hit his arm, staining his suit. He didn’t really care. “You betrayed your home, your prince, your duty,” with each she whipped another handful of dough at him, most of which landed on its target. “And you left me you asshole! So tell me, what was so important, what was so precious, what did she offer you that you were willing to give all that up?” She screamed, hurling the last bit of dough and hitting him smack in the face.
          He wiped the dough away from his face and sighed as he started to brush the dough off of the rest of him. “You.” He answered softly. Glancing up at her shocked reaction, he assumed that she had heard him.
          “What?” Makoto asked, her voice shaking a little.
          “She told me that after she destroyed Earth, she’d go on to destroy the outer planets, the inner planets and finally the moon. And that if I defected to her side, that she would spare you and I could keep you with me, keep you safe. So I did.”
          Makoto watched him with shock written all over her face, barely processing what he was saying.
          “And at that point, after she’d tortured us for the better part of a year, I said yes. I said if I could keep you alive, safe and with me that I’d do anything. And so she took us and…I don’t know how, but it was like she stole all the feelings I’d ever had. I knew who you were and that I’d loved you enough to defect, but not what that felt like. I didn’t understand love anymore so it didn’t matter. She made us forget what love was, how to love or what it meant. I just understood that I was loyal to Metalia. And then I killed you to prove it.”
          He sighed and turned, opening the door and preparing to leave. “But one thing I never did, Kino Makoto, was stop loving you.” And with that statement, he walked out of the door, leaving the bell to chime softly again.
          Makoto crumpled to the ground and buried her hands in her hair, not sure what to think anymore.
-x-
          Tenoh Haruka sat in the stands of the race track, smoking a cigarette. Michiru would scream ‘til she was blue in the face when she found out, but Haruka found that it helped her think.
          And so she was when Setsuna found her.
          “Michi-chan is going to kill you when you get home,” the time priestess said as she took a seat next to her friend.
          “I know.” The racer answered as she exhaled.
          “What’s on your mind?”
          “The past.” Her answer was calm – it took a lot, normally, for her to become agitated. Unless someone was flirting with Michiru, in which case jealousy took her over easily.
          “Anything specific?” Setsuna inquired, pushing Haruka for information. She sighed – she knew full well that Setsuna would always learn whatever she wanted to know.
          “Just thinking about the fall,” she didn’t bother to add “of the Moon Kingdom”, Setsuna was smart enough to know what she meant.
          “I think about it a lot,” Setsuna admitted. Haruka offered her the pack of cigarettes, but the jade haired woman shook her head.
          “Did you know, then?” Haruka asked. Understanding Setsuna’s lives was incredibly difficult – she seemed to understand the past, present and future and have lived in all of them with conscious knowledge of the others. Haruka considered herself an intellectual individual, and even then it made her head hurt.
          “Yes.”
          “And you didn’t try to stop it?”
          “I think about it every time I live through it again. I think that maybe if I just tell her Majesty, none of it would’ve happened.” She leaned back and looked out at the race track.
          “So why don’t you?” Haruka asked, curious.
          “For the same reason I don’t stop Mamoru-sama’s parents from dying, or Ami-chan’s father from leaving or even stopping the Senshi from rediscovering their memories.”
          “Because you die every time you interfere with the timeline?” Haruka asked, throwing down the butt of her cigarette and squishing it with her boot.
          Setsuna smiled. “Because then you and I would not be sitting here. And no one has the right to control time that way.”
          The two sat in comfortable silence, each pondering their own courses of action from there.
-x-
          Jadeite let himself into Zoisite’s apartment after testing the door and finding it unlocked.           “Yasa-kun?” He called out, hoping to find his friend was free to go out for lunch, or would at the very least had leftovers that he’d be oh so willing to spare to his friend of multiple lifetimes. He made a mental note to finally go grocery shopping as he sauntered towards his friend’s bedroom.
          He found the blonde lying on his bed, fully dressed with his feet on his pillows and his head towards the end, staring up at the ceiling.           “What on earth are you doing Yasa-kun? I expect Ken-kun to stare at ceilings, not you.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame, raising an eyebrow.
          “Thinking. I realize you never do, Dai-kun, but it is in fact a past time many people indulge in. You might try it,” he suggested sarcastically.
          Jadeite snorted. “You do make it look oh so appealing, oh wise one.” He countered before spinning and walking back to the kitchen, digging through the fridge until he found cold sushi rolls and a bottle of soy and dropping them on the counter. He dug a pair of chopsticks out of one of the drawers and a bowl. Pouring the soy sauce into the bowl, he opened the sushi and started eating.
          As predicted, Zoisite followed him to the kitchen so he could wine. “Ami-chan hates me,” he moaned.
          Jadeite laughed. “Let me guess. You’ve been so caught up in moping that you haven’t done anything in three days,” he popped another roll into his mouth.
“She came over looking for a DNA sample,” the younger Shitennou sighed desperately. “And it was cold and formal and she hates me.”           “Just a hint, but it might be because you murdered her.” Jadeite shrugged when Zoi glared at him. “Girls tend to be angry about that.”
“My life has no meaning without her,” he sighed, leaning his elbows on the island Jadeite was eating off of.
His friend rolled his eyes at his mellow dramatic antics.
Zoisite stopped and stood up straight. “Wait, why aren’t you freaking out? Surely Rei can’t be taking this well. I imagine she’s tried to murder you at least twice by now,” he concluded.
Jadeite shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since we got our memories back.”
Zoisite raised his eyebrows. “You’re not going through withdrawal from the arguments or anything?”
“I miss her but I’m not about to throw myself in front of a train,” he snorted again.
“I can’t believe you’re being so calm about this.” Zoicite pulled his hair out of his ponytail and started straightening it with his fingers before fixing it back into its low tail.
“Clearly I know something you don’t, Yasa-kun,” he grinned.
          Zoisite glared. “And what’s that?”
          “That sometimes, you have to let fate make everything work out,” Daisuke leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms, pointing his chop sticks at his friend. “And that an apology is a brilliant place to start.”
-x-
          Usagi sat on the steps outside of Mamoru’s apartment, waiting for her fiancé to arrive home. She bounced her legs up and down while she fiddled with her hair.
          Hearing the sounds of a motorcycle perked her up and she looked up, waving at Mamoru as he passed by, driving into the parking garage of his building. She waited for a minute and he appeared with a smile, moving over to greet her.
          “Sorry I’m late, Usako,” he whispered before kissing her softly.
          She smiled. “I’ve only been here a minute,” she shrugged and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, leading her into his building and into the elevator.
          In his apartment, as he shuffled around his kitchen putting together something for them to eat, she stared out the window. Wrapping an arm around herself, she shivered. “Looks like it’s going to rain,” she said.
          “They’re calling for thunderstorms,” he said. She whimpered lightly and felt his arms wrap around her.
          “You can stay here for the night, you know,” he whispered in her ear.
          She nodded. “Thank you,” she answered, turning to bury her face in his chest. He swayed softly, rocking her gently.
          “Mamo-chan?”
          “Yes, Usako?” She leaned back from his embrace to look at him, with a small frown.
          “Do you think we did the right thing? Giving the Shitennou and the Senshi their memories back?”
          He sighed and rubbed her back gently. “We gave them the choice, Usagi. They wanted to know.”
          “I just hate that they’re going through so much pain right now,” she answered.
          He ran his hand through one strand of her hair. “That’s one of the reasons I love you. You care so much about everyone. And it’ll get better,”
          She moved away from his embrace, sitting on the couch. He followed her and wrapped an arm around her, and she leaned against him. “Not for a long while, Mamo-chan. I still have nightmares about what I remember.”
          He nodded and kissed the side of her head. “I do too,” he admitted. She looked up.
          “That’s the part that bothers me the most. I have you and you have me but the girls don’t have anybody. I worry about the Shitennou, too.” She flipped a pigtail over her shoulder. “And it’s so stupid, too, because if they could just get over the past and see that they belong with each other than they wouldn’t have to be alone and they wouldn’t have to hurt anymore!”
          Mamoru chuckled. “It doesn’t work like that, though.”
          She glanced at him and he ran a hand through her hair. “No, but I wish it would. I understand why the girls are angry. It’s horrible to watch your lover turn against you,” she whispered. He winced. She noticed and immediately reached out, “I didn’t mean you Mamo-chan,” she started, but he interrupted her to with a hand help up to her lips.
          “I know. It just hurts me to remember those days, remember trying to hurt you.”
          She snuggled against his chest. “I just wanted the girls to be happy.”
          He rubbed her back. “Well Usako, we knew this would be hard when we decided to do it, but I really didn’t think the Senshi would accept the Shitennou into their lives without knowing what kind of men they could be. Can be,” he corrected himself.
          “It just sucks,” she whined.
          He laughed. “That it does.”
-x-
          Makoto lifted her umbrella a bit higher as lightning cracked through the sky. She walked faster, moving down the street towards her apartment.
          Normally Makoto loved storms. In her first life, she’d commanded thunder and lightning on a whim – she was more powerful then. Now, she could summon her attacks, but had no influence over nature. Now, storms excited her, awoke some kind of primal fierce energy inside her – like her element was calling to her. She was often tempted to go walking through storms and dance in the rain, the way she had when she was Princess of Jovia.
          However, she didn’t really enjoy carrying a paper bag of groceries home in a storm where the wind kept threatening to take her umbrella away from her.
          A loud crack of thunder was heard and she spun, surprised by how close it seemed. Shrugging it off – she hardly shared Usagi’s fear of thunder storms – she resumed hurrying home.
          Then everything went black.
-x-
          Chase Abrams had not been having a very good day when he saw a young woman struck by lightning. She dropped to the ground, unconscious. Dodging traffic, he rushed across the street to help her.
          Tomatoes, potatoes and peppers rolled around the street from the grocery bag that was crushed underneath her. He grabbed his cell phone and dialled 1-1-9 quickly, demanding an ambulance to come and get them.
          He listened to the operator and told her he could perform CPR, so he slowly rolled the woman over. Her chestnut curls clung to her, soaking wet. He examined her for burn marks and leaned his head down her to hers, tilting to try and feel if she was still breathing.
          She wasn’t.
-x-
          Rei glared at the pounding on the side door to the shrine and tightened the wrap she was wearing. She slid the door open to reveal a rain soaked Jadeite and her mood immediately worsened.
          “Jade-”
          He interrupted her, holding a hand up to her lips. “Daisuke,” he hissed. “Would you let me in?”
          She glared and blocked the door with a hand. “I don’t think I will,” she shot back.
          “It’s insane outside,” he grumbled. “Have you really become that much of a bitch, Hino-san?” He asked coldly. He turned on his heel and walked away.
          She bit her lip, hurt by what he said. She looked up and saw lightning streak across the sky and called out, “Wait!”
          He turned and looked at her, his bangs plastered to his forehead and covering the tops of his eyes.           “Just until the storm passes,” she called and he nodded, trudging back to the shrine and following her inside.
 
-x-
          “Being incomplete without someone else really sucks.” –Kino Makoto
 
/|x|
 
So that’s Chapter 3 folks! I know it’s been this side of an eternity waiting for this, but there are a million excuses that I won’t bother with, I’ll just say this – I have a life, it’s called University and it tries to eat me on a regular basis. Don’t worry, I’m notifying the government.
 
A few notes to go with this chapter:
-119 is the Japanese equivalent of 9-1-1. The number you phone for emergency services changes from country to country. In Japan, 119 is for Medical and Fire emergencies.
-If you see someone struck by lightning, call an ambulance, then check to see if they are breathing. If not, perform CPR – don’t worry, they can’t shock you. You should also check for burn marks on their body.
 
I expect Chapter 4 to be written by the end of the summer. Yes, that’s not soon, but I have several other fics that require updating (my Dark Angel stuff and my Supernatural/Firefly crossover work) – and when I get reviews it makes me work faster, because it makes me think about the work you reviewed.
 
And I have every intention of starting Chapter 4 of solving the cliffhanger I left off with for Makoto, since I know you’ll all want to know.
 
Thanks for reading!
 
Through Darkness and Light /|x|


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