1807/I Still Feel Alive

I Still Feel Alive
Date of Scene:	19 July 2024
Location:	Tsukino-Osaka Dorm
Synopsis:	Usagi and Mamoru, after Paris, after midterms. What's changed cannot be unchanged, but they'll keep moving forward, into a newer, brighter, tomorrow. A world with them, and without Beryl.
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Usagi Tsukino

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Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's the Friday after they killed Beryl, it's the late afternoon after their last finals, it's the day after Mamoru spent last night essentially having both quiet time and crying time with Kazuo and eventually sleeping, and he's continued to be subdued--

--but now he's come into Usagi's shared room with Naru, and she's out with Adrien, and Luna is out with Ami, and Anko the bakeneko is asleep on Mamoru's bed over in Mamoru and Koji's room.

He's come in and the first thing he does is fold Usagi into an encompassing hug, practically curled over her, side of his face against the top of her head, and she can feel how his breath shudders and she can feel how brittle he is through the contact of skin against skin -- but he's better than yesterday, at least, and he's not trying hold up a face in front of her like he's been doing for almost everybody else since the hotel in Paris.

He obviously did stop in his room first because he's not in his school uniform, he's in a black t-shirt and jeans and his dress shoes are by the door, and his glasses are right now dangling from one hand behind Usagi.

He doesn't say anything, everything is still too big for real words. The brittleness is informed by grief and a little bit of something related to guilt but not quite it, and mixed in with difficulty staying grounded in the moment.

But he's trying.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
It's the Friday after they killed Beryl, and the fact that they'd had finals at all could only be described as bullshit. Usagi had spent last night the same way she had Wednesday night - curled over her desk with Luna on her shoulder, panic studying for finals because if she failed and her parents yelled at her she would cry. More than usual.

She's been worried about Mamoru. She's been sad. She's been mad. (Not quite smad.) And now he's here, and the first thing he does is fold her into a hug, and she wraps her arms around him, tight squeeze and all, face buried against his chest, and she's always enjoyed that he was taller than her, but especially now, because she can feel how brittle he is, and he can feel how much she worries, how much she loves him, how much -

How much she grieves, too.

She's out of her school uniform too, changed into a yellow-and-orange checker patterned sun dress for lounging around in, and she pats his back, soothingly. There's no effort made to get them to sit - she doesn't have any place better than this to be.

"I'm here," she murmurs, "I've got you."

Not it's okay. It's not. It will be, but not yet.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The top of Usagi's head might get a little damp, maybe. And the silence might hold a jerk of Mamoru's body, another, the feeling of a sob without the sound of it. And that brittleness is tense, but Usagi holding him is gradually relieving that tension.

Mamoru murmurs against her head, voice wavering, "I'm sorry. I know you're hurting too. I don't want to be a burden but I know you already know I'm a mess, and I don't want to keep secrets anyway--"

He's trying to keep the images out of their contact, but there's a sick feeling and it's associated with the moment he handed Usagi the rose, and that hand-over, Mamoru's pale dirty unblemished skin to Usagi's white glove.

"I know we had to, and I didn't think I could hit hard enough--"

There's so much more swirling around in there, but that's where the almost-guilt lives, in that moment.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Maybe the top of her head is damp, and maybe there's a shudder and shake, as she holds Mamoru, as she lets him hide the sobs in her hair, and when he apologizes, she thumps him on the back, very lightly, not enough to sting or hurt or ache at all -

"You're not a burden. You're never a burden," this, this is the first part, not the most important part, because it's all important, but this part, this part she has to make known. Because he's not a burden, and she wants him to share these moments, these hurts, these aches and because she does feel it too -

Because she feels that sick feeling too, for a very different reason.

"I'd have killed her a dozen times over," Usagi says, very quiet, very soft, "If it meant she didn't get to do the same to any of you."

That was what she'd learned about herself, deep underground, in the depths of the Dark Kingdom, staring into a girl's widening eyes as her life bled out of her - that she really would kill to keep what was hers, to keep what she loved. That she would regret the circumstances and feel sick and awful and hate every second of it, but that she would do it.

The feelings probably bleed through where they touch, that sickness, that surety, that grim awareness.

"You helped me do it, Mamochan. I'm not - I don't blame you. Because it would have had to happen no matter what, and Makochan's electricity -"

She remembers the scent of burning fur and flesh, the shrieks of dying rats -

"That would have been awful. And my tiara - that might have been slower."

Cutting through flesh, severing, the way it had cut through Jadeite's head, once upon a time -

She shudders. She holds him.

"We had to. It was her or us, and you made it kinder. It wasn't your rose that made it so," there's the image, passing through her thoughts and feelings to his, of the instant light burst from Fem's chest, the way her body spun, the blood and mess that spilled into the air -

It was Usagi's power, that had caused that. Mamoru's rose had broken her henshin. Usagi's incantation had broken the girl.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
He can stop the thought of what she looked like, afterwards, from even surfacing. Instead, he feels it coming and blocks it off with the precious feeling of Rashmi's energy blast bottled up in that canister he carried. A feeling like horrible responsibility and holding precious sunshine in his arms in the dark.

It's not better, the feelings around that, but it's better because it's not gore--

It's almost gore but he shies away from remembering looking at Jadeite in his arms, Jadeite with open eyes and a frozen wound--

--it's worse in a different way because that run, running away from Jadeite's body and from Rashmi and Chrono stopping the flood with their lives and telling him to run, that run is conflated in his head with a different one.

One Usagi saw part of, in a burning city, bringing something precious out and leaving precious people behind to die--

--and Mamoru folds with sudden yawning grief over Demeter, and it mingles with the grief interrupted over the people who died and came back, and it mingles with grief over who they were and what they've lost, and the hurt of his loss of autonomy and agency and physical history that Beryl and Thetis took, and it's too much.

It's all too much, and Mamoru can't keep his mind from spinning out on black ice when he thought the road would be safer after last night crying on Kazuo.

But grief doesn't work that way, it doesn't just go away.

He reins it in as best he can, the images going fuzzy and unreal, pulling himself back from the whirlpool, the sinkhole. Pulling himself back out of his own feelings.

She can feel him concentrate on breathing, in for four and hold, out for four and hold. The awareness of her centers him a little, and from her everything that's connected to them, threads of awareness to everyone they love, awareness of the floor under their feet and the ground under the building, the trees and the heat outside...

Finally he says softly, "I don't regret her death, or the deaths of the others. I'm glad you know-- we know we can do that if we have to. But I'm-- I don't know if regret is the right wordk, but I regret that it was necessary, that they were kids like us and made whatever mistakes they made to get where they were, and that it came down to kill or be killed. I hate the whole thing, except that there's no danger anymore. I don't hate that."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
It's a rush of images, feelings, split-second after split-second stitched together, Jadeite and Demeter and Rashmi and the burning city and Chrono and the civilians clashing in the street and Demeter and Jadeite and running, eyes looking back and voices calling to run and the opening of a chasm in the chest as something irreplaceable vanishes into the emptiness.

Mamoru shies away from the remembrance, but it's still there, on display, her skin to his, her mind to his, her heart to his -

Her eyes sting. The front of his shirt might be damp, too, the hands clutching his back might be fisting in his shirt.

The grief is like a sinkhole, a crater, that opens unexpectedly, catches at her when she least expects it, and she can feel it in Mamoru too, that yawning chasm.

They had been different people, once. Two optimistic children, bright-eyed and hopeful, with smiles so easily shared, growing under the protection of their mothers, the weight of the future on their shoulders a promise instead of a burden.

And it burned.

And now - now, here they are, and there's the thought, fleeting but inescapable, that Usagi is not and never will be Serenity, ever again, that even the ghost of her that lives in Usagi's flesh isn't that same girl, because her mother is gone and she will never come back and she will never see her again -

The whole world gone, and Beryl is dead and Thetis is dead and Metallia is dead and she could bring Chiyo-chan back, why couldn't she bring her mother -

It's a punched, gasping little noise, as she presses against him and tries to push through it.

He's real and solid and alive and it's true, that she would do it all over again, to have this result, but it still hurts.

Just as his awareness of her centers him, her awareness of him soothes her, calms the ragged edge of it all, that threatens to swarm. There's Mamoru, there's the rug under her feet, there's the floor of her dorm, the sunlight through the window, the scent of air freshener and muffins and a half-open box of treats for Luna, and they're here.

It sucks a little, right now, but they're here.

"I don't hate it either," she breathes, tucked against him. "We're still here. I know what you mean though. I wish it wasn't necessary. I wish there'd been another way. I wish there could have been any other way, and I wish it didn't have to be us who made the call."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It sucks a little, it sucks a lot, right now, just for right now. Time will make it easier.

Time always makes grief easier, even if the love that turned into grief never goes away. Time will make easier the losses of Serenity and Endymion's mothers, of two whole worlds, of the deaths that after all did not stick. It sucks right now that it's hit, but time will make it better.

There are things time won't heal, though, that need more than time to heal, and in the middle of the recovery from spinning out there's a core of exhausted determination.

And a flickering of tired anger, when the memory of Jadeite leaps out unbidden again, the punch to his soul that happened when all that was Jadeite left the icy clay of his body--

Mamoru takes a deep, shuddering breath, and they're still standing in the middle of Usagi's dorm room, normal and smelling of normal things, the sun warm through the window. His breath is hot across the top of Usagi's head as he exhales that breath.

"I can't-- I can't even touch what they did to me yet, it's -- I need to talk to Bow, to do some reading maybe, to see how to get past it. I'm not thinking about it, Usako, it's different and that's going to bite me again, like it did in the catacombs--"

He's not thinking about it, he thinks about it, about pain pain pain and weakness, then freezing cold water on his body like ice cream on a broken tooth and weakness and trying to breathe through the whole ocean... and his hand, and his shoulder, new, and a sense of inexplicable loss...

It's violently that he shoves that away from his mind.

"Is it bad. That I don't regret a single moment of killing Thetis, of running Beryl through. Is it bad?" he asks, and his voice is weightless, that sound it was when she saw him come in the room from after Jadeite and Rashmi and Chrono, from after Chiyo and Bow.

"I wish it didn't have to be that way for the girls, but Thetis and Beryl, Metallia... I'll never be anything but glad they can't hurt us anymore."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
A year and a month ago, Usagi Tsukino was a normal girl. Things changed, though. First the world, and then life, and then, finally, forever - Usagi.

She changed. She's different. She'll never again be who she was. He'll never be who he was, either.

But at least it's over.

There are parts of him, ragged and torn. There are flashes of memory that she doesn't try to hold to, that she doesn't try to grasp, because they hurt, not just her, but him, so much more importantly, him, and there's a spark of anger they'll have to address, that will have to be seen and heard before it can ignite into a blaze, but there is also -

What is she going to say? Not that it's okay, not that it won't bite him, not that -

Pain and freezing and all the water in the ocean, flooding through and stinging and -

"I wish we had a real counselor," she admits, and her hands are moving in little circles over his back, fingers tracing the fabric, blinking away tears, "I love Kyouka-sensei but sometimes I think it'd be good to talk to somebody who wasn't..."

Just like them, but more. Jaded and ready and intense, and Kyouka has taught her so much, has in so many ways helped shape her into the person she is, has helped catch her in freefall, but Kyouka is also committed to this, to the very end.

This is her life, all of it. Usagi, still, maybe always, wishes it wasn't.

She'd never go back. She's in too deep. But that doesn't mean a part of her won't always wish this wasn't anyone's life, that the world was as kind and safe as it had once seemed.

"No," and her voice is steady, strong, steadier than the earth and the moon, prone to quakes, because there is no quaking, here. "It's not bad. I don't regret it either. I'm so, so, so, glad they're dead."

And she hates to admit it. She hates to feel it.

"We were never going to be safe, as long as they were ever in the world, we were never going to be safe while they were alive, and now they're gone, and the only thing I wish, is that we didn't have to do it."

She wishes, in some distant part of herself, that her parents could have protected her. That her mother could have protected her. That his mother could have protected him.

They tried. It's not their fault. She'll never blame them.

But maybe that was the last, true, death of childhood, for Serenity, for Usagi, for Endymion -

Knowing that they were going to have to do it themselves. And yes, she will always be grateful for their friends, for everyone who came together, for everyone who made sure it happened, but at the end of the day they'd had to step up.

At the end of the day, it was their burden, and it's put down.

"I've never," she starts, and stops, and closes her eyes against him, "I've never been so glad as when that light faded and she was still dead. No more chances, for any of them. They're gone. They're really gone, and we're still here."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
For so long, Mamoru didn't know who he was-- had no idea who he was, whether his name was even real, whether his parents had ever been real. Then he didn't even remember that name, he had a different one given to him, told it was the real one, and he believed it, he had nothing proving otherwise, and he didn't remember being the boy who didn't remember. Then pieces of an impossible life bubbled up, and so did pieces of this one.

Finally it was all real, and the deepest part of that thanks to Usagi, to Serenity, to the Silver Crystal--

But Mamoru is real too, and it's a hell of a time to figure out you finally know who you are, just in time for such a fundamental part of it to change.

This has, in a way, always been Mamoru's life, and always been Endymion's. Part of this. The magic part, the monsters in the dark, the cruelties and kindnesses of human beings in all their wondering glory and wretched depths.

But Endymion had had to kill, once upon a time, six months ago, more than ten thousand years ago. And Mamoru hadn't yet, not until this weekend--

They won't be the same. They can move forward, changed, but the loss is real.

But they can move forward, because they're still here.

Mamoru finally unfolds a little bit, and his face is a little puffy, a little blotchy, and his glasses are still in his hand that's loosely around Usagi's waist. His other hand comes up to cup the side of her face, and he bends down again, further, to kiss her lightly.

"We're still here," he murmurs in agreement after a second, his forehead against hers.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
They share a kiss, light and brief, and Mamoru unfolds from her, still close but not borne up by her frame, by her touch.

She has to rise on her tiptoes, for the kiss to be comfortable, to help press their foreheads together, but she could never mind that.

"Still here, and done with exams," she continues, tone a little lighter, not trying to change the subject, but bringing in just a touch of what else is happening, in their lives. "We saved the world and all we got was coming home in time for midterms."

A heaved sigh, and she kisses him again, her hand rising to match his, cupping his cheek. Her own face tilts to his head, letting the baseline of her feelings through - love.