21: No Rainbow
I realize that all of these things which have been spoken have been very heavy-handed and sad. The revelations that had been taught, and the ones which were to come, were very difficult to handle. Somehow, I feel obliged to make you feel happier for me. Therefore, I am fortunate that fate smiled down on me the minute Dyka forbade me to see Tsukinousagi, for otherwise, I would have nothing but what you humans call a greieat tragedy*.
I was filled with a great desire. I knew, I KNEW, that I had to make myself presentable to Tsukinousagi, whom, for some reason not yet known to me, was called just Usagi by Brutus. But I was not good with apologies, especially when I was not allowed to see the person in question. So, I realized I had to find other ways. Somehow, of course.
-
I slept on a makeshift bed on the main floor that night. Varuna took me old room, and though Tsukinousagi had been resurrected, her room was destroyed. She wasn't there, of course - she was in the hospital, being treated for a certain wound. But I digress.
I did not get sleep that night. I could not get anything off of my mind. Nothing of the past several days would leave me. It was simply as if my mind refused to let go of everything.
Scandal. Blood. Anger. Murder. Death. Life....Love?
Why was I feeling love? All of a sudden, I felt the feeling come up within me, as if some distant thing had touched my chest. As if I was loved by someone. But I didn't really deserve love. Not after what I had done, did I deserve sympathy?
Yet I somehow felt that someone out there felt the same sadness I did, and I could not understand who could want to do that.
I stood up, unable to sleep. Perhaps the solution lay in my coocor. At the moment, eating them seemed to be the only dependable solution. So I went to get myself my snacks, and I started to fish through my special hiding place.
Since it was my special hiding place, I wasn't expecting anything else hidden within it, since, after all, everything in there was mine. Yet, as I started fishing my goods out, I felt my appendages hit something hard near the bottom of the shelf.
-Huh?
I said it aloud, as opposed to thinking it, since I couldn't recall putting anything other than my coocor in there. So, as quickly as I could, I managed to uncover the hard object.
When I finally took it out, I know that I must have given a frown. It was a book, and one of the older types at that - the kind which still had natural writing sleeves, and hard, scratchy, ugly covers. This particular cover was covered with strange tiny images, of little Tsukinousagi-like people with large heads and big eyes. It scared me a little, and I almost didn't look in it.
Yet, as I turned it over to put it back into the pile of coocors, I found a note attached to it. It was written somehwhat shakily, and in the faint light, it was hard read. But read it I did:
A FAVOR FOR A FAVOR. From a friend.
I only knew one person who had wanted a favor. I could only imagine that he knew about my secret hiding place from Dyka's (for she was no long mine) client. Which left me to wonder what kind of importance the book had for him to want me - of all people - to read it. Perhaps he felt that I could sway Dyka. Or maybe it was something else? But I digress.
So, a quietly as I could, I tiptoed down into the basement of the house. Our basement was two stairways down, and was an unlikable place - completely bare, and cold, and uncomfortable. But down there, I could put the lights on at their full power, and no one would have been awoken by it. Plus, to my luck, there was a table for me, old as it was, to sit at.
So, I quietly opened up the book and began to read it. It was of a strange language I had not encountered before, at least not physically. Fortunately, all sailors have the ability to learn and understand any language - since all soldiers are related, all soldiers have the languages of their sisters imbedded into them.
(Perhaps, in hindsight, I should have explained that that is how Tsukinousagi understood me, and Dyka, and just about everyone else. I'm sure that it has made no sense to anyone as to how she even knew how to speak our languages until now. But I digress.)
The first page composed of a rather simple drawing; there were two figures, similar to those on the cover. One was male, dressed in black; the other was dressed in white. On top, in the strange language, were the words -WEDDING PUNCH!-
Then, I turned the page to the words:
September 28.
It was a bit cool today, and it just started raining, but it doesn't matter. Today was the day!!!!! It was today!!!!!!
It was beautiful. I wore a tiara that was becoming of my post for the first time. Of course, I had to attach it to my veil, which was a bit uncomfortable. And I was having trouble with my dress, because it didn't arrive with the right adjustments until almost the last minute. And Haruka-san's flowers were almost dead!
Of course, it didn't really matter. It went off wonderfully. Mamo-chan, he looked so beautiful today. He truly looked like a prince in his suit. Though he almost choked on the sake during the sansankudo, and a drop of it squirted out of his nose and onto the floor! I almost laughed - it was so funny!!! XD
We had a traditional wedding, with Rei and her grandfather (H!!) presiding at the church. Everyone was there - Naru, Alex, even dad was there. He hasn't been doing well with the cancer, and I could tell that he lost a lot of weight since I had last seen him. But he was so happy to see me again, after the past couple of months - almost a year! - since the Chrysantheum was passed to us. Oh, before I forget - the official coronation has been set for December 31st. How traditional!
I stopped at this. I realized whose words I was reading. Could it have been? I looked at the book, horrified. Did I really have the right to read what I was reading? I knew that some people were very fiercely protective of their private recollections, and I pondered if Brutus was possibly breaking some kind of accord with her in doing this.
Yet, the book was so happy. The entry had intrigued me. Coronation? Marriage? Cancer? It was as if Tsukinousagi was some kind of noble? It mystified me.
I decided to read on, but I turned the page, as most of the rest of the entry was simply about the reception, and people throwing cake at each other or something of that sort. It didn't interest me.
I turned the page:
October 1.
My fifth day as a blissful bride. I haven't really been keeping up with this diary, though I really should!
Mamo-chan and I are really hoping that a certain little rabbit will soon come out of our wild escapades at night (teehee :p), since I felt her power on our wedding, but I have the feeling we are pressing a little bit close. I took a test this morning and it was negative. Even so, Luna and even Ami-chan says its common for a pregnant woman to have a negative one day, and then the next day have a positive. If its so, then I may be five days pregnant already! Ack! Come Christmas, my stomach will be like Santa's! Woah!
At this, I stopped momentarily. I looked at the passage, then back up, then back at the passage. I felt slightly sick. Her baby was in her stomach?
As I knew so little of your kind's bodies, forgive me when I say I felt slightly repulsed when I found that your babies grow in your stomachs*. It just seems unseemly, given that my people have our thirteenth tentacle to grow our unborn in. And then, the piece that the unborn baby grows in detaches and then grows back for the next baby. I don't see your stomachs detaching from your bodies, I suppose, since I thought you needed those to live, though stranger things have happened. But I digress.
I kept reading:
But I'm a little worried. There's been talk of a strange group having appeared in the Chinese/Korean peninsula, and they seem to be coming this way. They are supposedly sailors in a dress that denotes aliens, but I thought we had already fought sailor soldiers from other worlds....
Sailor soldiers?
I then remembered Brutus' words - how Kepe's soldiers had practically appeared out of nowhere, causing battles and destruction. I realized that these entries were before they had confronted the pirate fighter.
Yet the planet of Earth did not seem at all like some kind of barbaric place, from what Tsukinousagi was describing. There were institutions, there were countries. There was the consummation of marriage. There seemed to be knowledge, to some extent, of soldiers from other worlds.
I feared to read on, for I knew what would happen after this. Yet I decided to read some more. What I read was a quick, systematic descent into madness as her diary entries almost abruptly stopped.
October 5.
I don't know what's going on. I've been taken. I don't know where. I don't know why. I'm just...here.....I'm bleeding badly...I've been bound in spikes......but.....Mamo-chan....they hurt Mamo-chan.....he......They hurt him badly......
I'm really scared....I'm in a dark cell.....there's no light.....this is supposed to be a happy time.....but people come to this place and they laugh.....I don't know why.....I'm so scared.......
October 8.
I don't even know if....this is the right day.........I'm.....I'm bleeding all over my legs. They hit me with some kind of....of....weapon......they kept hitting me again and again....I....I'm scared. It hurt....I can only understand....they want me to talk.....but I don't know of what.....I don't know of what....I can't....I won't.....
The days are different......they go by different.
My legs are full of welts. They took me again and bled my arms. They bled me until I fainted. They sent me someplace else, tougher people, to get what they want out of me. But I don't....know what they want......this is all I have left.......all I could take......I look at the first two entries........Mamo-chan....what if you're dead.......where is everyone......
Oh no. No. I'm pregnant. I can't be. I can't be.
They'll kill me.......they'll kill me now....I don't deserve this.......I'm lost......I'm gone.......I keep hearing screams, and I wonder if they're mine.....
After the storm there is no rainbow.
after the storm there is no rainbow. after the storm there is no rainbow. after the storm there is no rainbow.
And that was her last entry for a great many weeks. That was almost three months ago in Earth time, that last entry. Her most recent entry had been a mere couple of days ago - two days ago, before my confrontation with her.
I read it, dreading what more the tormented mind of the girl had to say. Fortunately, her mind had been calmed in some way, and the more I read the last entry, the more I became chilled.
-January 4.
I was with Bruto-san today, after the trial. The soldiers don't get home before I do, since they have to talk to those giant figure judge things. He brought me to his place again, and fed me.
I don't know how I got through, how I'm getting through, without Bruto-san. They call him "brainless" but thats not true. He's like a father to me. He's the only person who even cares that I exist. I'm supposed to hate him, since he is my guard and has been since I was taken out of Veldanis. But I feel like he understands what I am going through, that in some ways he is bound to an existance similar to mine. I'm not sure what type of existance it is, but he never mistreated me, not for a moment, not even before he learned I was pregnant. He even lets me call him Bruto-san.
Today was a big day for me. I finally felt a movement! Brutus has been feeding me like an ox since I got out of Veldanis. His wife, or daughter, but the doctor who examined me on Veldanis, she is related to him, and he is the head guard of Veldanis. Once he heard of my treatment, he was supposedly enraged. Everyone is afraid of him, which is probably why he is protecting me. I was very undernourished, as was Chibi, so all I've been doing outside the courtroom is eating.
I think its finally paid off, and I almost cried, even though I felt her moving in the middle of the night. Kedamonoko (the brute one in the house that always hurts me) can't hear me in the night. I can hear her snore from the room. I was happy that Kedamonoko hasn't gotten me in the stomach yet, but I know it won't be long before she and Odosuko (the other one that does the talking) starts to figure out that there's more in my tum than food. :x
And that was what I wanted to talk to Bruto-san about. He seems very knowledgeable about the goings-on with this whole sailor government thing. I still can't get over it. Here, I have little right because I am not 'in' with these people. I know if I told my side, I would be reviled and cursed unless I could prove it. And I cannot.
But I talked to Bruto-san, and I am afraid, a little afraid now. Not as much as I was before, but I am getting there. I talked to him about Chibi, and I explained how I knew it was a girl even before his wife or daughter or whichever told me, and all of that.
"Hmm." That was all he said for a moment. Then, he said. "You have a very serious problem in your hand. I figured it would only be a manner of time before they found out."
I informed him that no one knew for dead certain, not even my two so-called guardians. I joked that Odosuko, if she knew, would be fighting with that Sailor Kepe over whether I had slept with my husband or him. He did not laugh at this. I realized he had more to say.
"I understand, you have problems with your counsel." He gave a pause. "This trial is no more than a mockery. Without the right evidence, you will never have a chance."
"What about my baby?" I asked. "I know the future I saw....what I told you, I know that may not be concrete. But the Crystal Palace has already been built, at least its foundations."
"And this future is somewhat validated by the fact that you now know your child is, in fact, a girl."
I became worried at the ensuing silence. We did not speak for some time. I simply finished my food, more and more worried about what he would say next.
"Yes, a girl." he finally told me. "Eat that, and I will tell you how it will go now, if nothing is done in the here and now."
I inhaled the rest of my food at this. He then took my things away, and looked me in the eyes.
"I will not be so...veiled in what I am telling you," he said. "Yes, they will inevitably learn you are gestating. Everyone will. One day, you will awaken and learn that this fact is becoming known throughout the civilized galaxies. They will make comments about the father, of course, and about you. The things they said in the prisons, and much more."
I looked down at this. I thought about my one dear wish for Chibi - that she could be born on Earth. I can see that dream, right now, slipping from me, just as I saw it slipping away then. Then Bruto-chan continued.
"And when they sentence you - as they inevitably will, because the prosecution would never let you testify, and your council wouldn't believe you, and for that matter you're not allowed to - they will not throw you into the void. No, they wouldn't do that because you might have a valuable asset to them inside your body. You child could be a sailor soldier."
I could feel the room become cold as he said this. For I KNEW that Chibi would grow up to be a soldier. I'd seen it myself. I looked at Bruto-san, wondering what things they could possibly do to me.
"So they wait, very patiently. They will confine you with one of their doctors, who will ceaselessly run tests on you and on your child. And they will inevitably learn whether or not your child possesses a sailor crystal. These tests do not stop, ever. Your increasingly large but fragile body will by hooked up with hooks and threads to thousands of monitors that will ensure you give birth and that the baby you birth will be healthy. Even when you protest by ceasing to eat, or sleep, they will run more tubes into you and your unborn baby. They will be sure that they will have what they want. And what can you do about it?"
I became scared, and I shook. But that wasn't the end. Bruto-san began to speak again.
"And then you finally have your child. But they will never let you see it. The only contact you will have had will be when she was inside of you. The moment it comes out of you, they will pick you up from your bed and immediately take you to the Edges, where you will be cast out forever. Your name will be left out of her records; a guilty verdict by Seemarin law to such extreme charges voids you from even being thought of as her true mother. It goes even for ordinary citizens who have sailors as children. For, to them, better that she not have a mother, than to have such a mother as you!
"And so, while you languish in Apollyon, she will be placed in a compulsory school for sailor soldiers. She will be raised from birth to obey and love the Seemarin, and to loathe and hate those who defy it. And there will come that day when she learns of you, ever unknowing that she is your child, and she will spit on your name and call you traitor. And that is all she will ever know you as."
I don't know how long I cried at that. It was too much for me to bear, it is too much knowing all of this will happen. He took me home after that, and I went into my room and I've been here ever since.
What did I ever do to deserve this? Why can't I be allowed to tell them what happened? But I know why. The real last hope I may have had to save myself died by the Cauldron. She won't be back to save me.....not even my friends......I can only just wait for my doom....there is no rainbow....
I almost dropped the book once I read that. Never did I know such things; I was almost unwilling to think them as being true. It seemed too horrible to be true. It was almost sadistic, how he described what would happen to her. I couldn't believe a civilized government such as the Seemarin to do that.
Yet as I closed my book, I realized it was real. I couldn't push those thoughts back into my head, and dismiss them as rubbish from some barbaric girl seething against the just, even if half of her book was simply nonsensical to read. Perhaps it was the way her shaky handwriting seemed to suggest fright and worry, not defiance at all. Perhaps it was the fact I had been on the other side of the tale - when I had been the one to be sent away to be a good sailor - and I got to see what it was like for a parent. And her child was not even out yet.
But maybe part of the real reason....was She.
Tsukinousagi, I figured, must have not written this for others to see. A diary was some kind of private book of thoughts, and writings, and I realized that no one was meant to read this. Yet I did, and by the fact that this was private, I realized that what was being said was no joke, but rather the only way she could speak truthfully - at all. I ashamedly realized that Brutus spoke the truth when he said we would not believe her; up until that moment, I never would have. But I digress.
But She. Mentioned in Zra's scribblings. But who was She? The way that Tsukinousagi described her, at least in talking about She saving her, She was a real person. She was with Tsukinousagi at the Cauldron, if this was the truth and not just some vague talk of some sort. But She was dead......but who was She? Perhaps........She was a.......
It still seemed strange to me, though, that nothing in anything mentioned She at all. Such was what we still didn't know then. Such was what we would learn.
I wish, now, that I had been able to look into the book further - I had skipped a lot, and I had not really gotten into the more violent details of Usagi's imprisonment and brief madness. I was only starting become intrigued, because of She. Whoever She was.
But then I heard a noise. I heard it, and jumped up. For sure, I thought that Dyka had perhaps awoken, and that she saw the faint light in the basement. Was she coming down to reprimand me? But what if she saw whose writings I was reading!
I turned around as I heard the sound of a grunt behind me. I expected Dyka to be behind me, dressed in her nightgowns, frowning at me, her effects all down and mussed up. Surely, the first words out her mouth would be what are you doing?!
But then I looked, and screamed.
-............he..........................lp.....................
It was the cleaner! What was he doing? Why was he here? And why did it seem like I could look through him to the wall?! I gave a scream.
-WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?
He looked at me, not replying. Or was he looking at me? I couldn't be sure. But I saw his pale face, his ragged clothing, and the blood. He was bleeding from his head and his body.
I gave another scream, for I could only think of one thing that he could be. The cleaner was a ghost! He was dead! And he was haunting me!
-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.............
I remember feeling faint when I came to the realization that I was haunted. Yet, even as I felt faint, I felt ashamed. After all, what reason could there be that I should be haunted by spirits of the dead other than by virtue of the fact that they must know my crime from the night before?
To a sailor soldier, some do not simply vanish with death; some spirits live on even in death. Those who continue existence as ghosts try to haunt you as pale spectres of their former selves. And they do not stop until they have exacted their business from you.
I was so scared, so scared of the cleaner's ghost, and as soon as I felt faint everything went black. I knew nothing else.
*Themis is mixing up "Greek" and "great". Not that the two words are not interchangeable unto themselves, with the exception of "Andromache". But, as Themis would say, "we digress".
**Themis still doesn't know human anatomy very well, as an unborn human baby grows in the uterus and into the abdominal cavity as opposed to simply in the stomach.
