It was a full ten minutes before Minako finally remembered whose chest she was weeping into, whose arms had closed around her, and whose voice was trying to soothe her. When she did realize what she was doing, she pulled away abruptly, turning her back on him and brushing away the remainder of her tears. She knew she wasn’t done crying and that stopping like this probably wasn’t going to help her, but that wasn’t her concern at the moment. Her concern was putting distance between the two of them. At least that she could control.
“I’m sorry,” Minako said, feeling very small. “I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have let you see that.”
Takehiko didn’t speak immediately, carefully figuring out what the best thing to say in this situation was. “I didn’t do much to diffuse the situation,” he said evenly.
Minako laughed, sounding and feeling quite lost. “Not even you could have done that. Logan is…” she trailed off, thinking how to put it. “Volatile.”
“Clearly,” Takehiko responded, somewhat distastefully.
Minako winced a bit at the sound of his disapproval. She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter, that he didn’t matter. They’d never even been involved in this lifetime. He should expect nothing from her, and she should not have been affected by him.
It didn’t change the fact that she winced.
“He hasn’t had an easy time,” Minako said. “And he’s right. He can’t really shut the jackass off.”
“I don’t think you’ve had an easy time either,” Takehiko said, turning the conversation away from Logan.
Minako turned back to him, wiping at her right eye again even though there wasn’t anything there. “Exactly how much does Ami know?”
“She knows that you’ve spent time in London, France, New York, and now here,” Takehiko said, only answering the question he had been asked.
“How does that tell you what sort of life I’ve had?” Minako responded, almost wanting to get angry, but she lacked the energy and the reasons.
“Your eyes say enough,” Takehiko responded.
Minako shut them self-consciously. “Stop reading me like that. You know I can’t stand it.”
“No, I don’t,” Takehiko reminded her. “And I’m not looking for anything. I’m just seeing.”
Minako laughed a bit, running a hand through her hair. “Now I see why Logan gets pissed when I go psychoanalytical. He’s right. It is annoying.”
Takehiko was about to say something, probably to try to placate her, when she waved her hands to stop him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.” She paused. “I would like it to be, but it isn’t.”
He smiled a bit, though she could tell he wasn’t particularly happy with her assessment. “How conscious of you to think that.”
“Oh, I’m all about the self-awareness,” Minako grumbled, sitting back down on the couch. “It’s a surprising result of going into hiding.”
Takehiko looked at her for awhile, not joining her. “Why did you run, Minako?”
It was the first time he said her name, and she found that she had to remind herself to breathe for awhile afterwards. “Didn’t they tell you what happened?”
He merely nodded.
She looked over at him, perhaps expecting him to go into more detail about it. After a moment, she gestured at one of the chairs, taking care to select one far enough away for her comfort. “Sit. You’re making me nervous.”
He sat, only because he was asked. She waited until he was settled to continue her inquiry. “What did they tell you?”
“They told me that you’d lost your powers,” Takehiko said plainly. “They didn’t say how. And they told me that things got ugly between you after awhile, and that one day they went to your flat, and you were gone.”
Minako nodded. They would have told him that much. “They put it mildly.”
“Rei attempted to be more explicit,” Takehiko admitted.
Minako snorted a bit, remembering that her most vicious fights had been with Rei. “I’ll bet she did. Who stopped her?”
“No one actually,” Takehiko said. “Isamu merely… distracted her.”
“Isamu?” Minako questioned. It only took her a moment to realize there was only one person who could have managed to make Rei angry enough to make her forget how angry she must have been with Minako. She blinked, a bit surprised, and then felt foolish for being surprised. If one was back, it only made sense that all of them were back. “Oh,” she said finally. “So he still has that talent.”
“She could kill him thirteen times over and he’d still have that talent,” Takehiko said.
“All that means is she’d try for fourteen,” Minako sighed, rubbing her temple.
Takehiko nodded a bit, giving them another chance to lapse into silence. As usual, Minako couldn’t abide it, so she was the one to break it. Silences allowed her mind to be too loud, and the last thing she wanted to hear was herself.
“Are you going to ask how it happened?” she asked.
“No,” Takehiko said. “If you want to tell me, you will. If you don’t, it isn’t any of my business anyway.”
“Good, because I couldn’t tell you myself,” Minako said, shutting her eyes. “It was another fight in another war and I took another hit… And then everything was gone.”
Takehiko frowned, apparently trying to think of what could have possibly done that. He proved just about as successful as any of the others, saying, “I’ve never heard of that before.”
Minako nodded. “No. It shouldn’t have happened. There’s no precedent for it. But it did, and I… was rather unpleasant afterwards.”
“So you left,” Takehiko said, not needing to ask, but still confirming.
“So I left,” Minako echoed. “I was useless in the fight, and I couldn’t stand watching everyone else get hurt and not being able to do anything. Then I couldn’t stand watching everyone or being around them period. It was too much, and I ran.” She paused. “I’m not proud of it.”
“You could go back,” Takehiko offered. “It’s been five years.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Minako said somewhat harshly.
“It hasn’t been an easy five years,” Takehiko observed, looking at her eyes again.
“It wasn’t an easy eighteen years before that,” Minako countered. “It’s never easy anywhere. But I prefer things not being easy by myself.”
Takehiko narrowed his eyes. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“You don’t know me,” Minako countered, almost shouting.
Takehiko stared at her for a moment, still holding eye contact with her. She wanted to look away, but he had an arresting quality, and she found that she couldn’t. Finally, he said something again, before the silence got to be too much.
“No. But I remember you.”
