Coping with the Aftermath (Usagi Tsukino)
| Coping with the Aftermath (Usagi Tsukino) | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 30 January 2025 |
| Location: | Juuban Ward |
| Synopsis: | In Scene Murder, She Wrote, Koan attempted to murder Junichi Nomura, a young boy with a great future in Crystal Tokyo's timeline. The mahoujin stopped her, but at a cost. This is the aftermath. |
| Cast of Characters: | Usagi Tsukino |
| Tinyplot: | Black Moon Clan |
It takes twenty minutes for Mamoru Chiba and Sailor Charon to heal Junichi Nomura enough to keep him stable, enough that he'll survive a trip to the hospital. It takes everything they have to give, and more besides - Jadeite pressing a hand to Mamoru's back, Amy gripping Sailor Charon's shoulder, Madoka's Labyrinth producing all the medical equipment that they could need -
Usagi Tsukino, standing above Mamoru, pressing the Silver Crystal to his head, pouring her energy into him without restraint, without hesitation - purification, order, clarity, focus, and all her love besides.
The terror, the dread, the fear, the seed of darkness that's found its way into the corner of her heart, the blood dripping from the head of the Spiral Heart Moon Rod - none of that passed to Mamoru. Her weakness and fear locked down, so she can give him her strength, so that he can save a boy who should have never been put in the middle of all this.
All the while, she ignored the buzzing of her phone, the tinkling of her ringtone, as she gets the calls, one after the other, as the minutes tick by.
When it's done - when they've done as much as they can, bones threaded pieced together with magic, flesh reknit, bruised and broken instead of mangled and crushed - that was when then became now, became a plan decided in hurried minutes and with a stern voice:
They can't all be there, when the ambulance arrives. There's too many of them, three tall teenaged boys, four teenaged girls, and only two of them injured - no one will buy that they were jumped like that, Usagi says firmly, not anywhere, but especially not in Juuban, where people might already find it hard to believe a violent crime happened, and especially when Koan is headless -
Sailor Charon is the easiest to convince, with Junichi as healed as they can get him, and her own secrets to hide. She's a missing child, after all. The last thing she needs is any kind of suspicion on her.
Madoka too is easy enough to convince - with her labyrinth's medical supplies no longer needed and her baby brother to get home, she's not exactly eager to talk to the hospital staff and explain to her parents why she and her brother were at the scene of a violent crime. Very helpfully, when her Labyrinth closes, Koan's body disappears, just as she said it would.
Tamaki and Amy are harder to convince, both of them wanting to help, both of them sure they can, and Usagi loves them both, but she doesn't mince words when she tells them that they could make it worse, that the best thing they can do is take their wallets and get to Mamoru's apartment and have it ready for when they get home, with hot food and drinks and no, no one needs you to run a hot bath Tamaki -
But when the ambulances arrive, Usagi, Mamoru, and Kazuo are the only ones still with Junichi. He's on the ground, body covered by Mamoru and Usagi's discarded jackets, wheezing for his breath through a straw in his throat, ashen and bruised and broken and nothing like a child should be, his hand clammy and cold in hers, but he's alive.
The EMTs have questions - plenty of them. What happened, is the main one, why is there a trach in his throat is another, did you do this with a broken shoulder is one demanded through a strangled shout, halfway through loading Junichi into the ambulance, when one of the two responding EMTs realizes Mamoru's jacket is off for more than just keeping Junichi warm.
"We were walking Junichi-kun home, and, and he heard that kitty crying, it was in the dumpster and it was stuck, and he ran ahead, and we went to get him, and they came out of the alley, and they grabbed him -"
"They were squeezing his throat so hard and we gave him our wallets and they wouldn't stop squeezing and they wouldn't stop so we tried to fight them -"
"Junichi-kun couldn't breathe and Mamochan said he thought his neck was broken and he wasn't moving and he wasn't breathing, and Mamochan's studying to be a doctor and he thought -"
It's the most she's ever lied in her life, and the best she's ever been at lying, the words flowing from her brain to her tongue, forced out between hiccups and tears, one of Kazuo's hands on her back and a kitten cupped to his chest with the other, and they believe her.
They bundle Junichi into a stretcher and she rides with him to the hospital, the door shutting as they load Mamoru into the other, and she knows Kazuo will be with him, won't let anything happen to him, and she answers as many questions as she can about Junichi the whole way through -
"He's allergic to latex -"
"His blood type is O positive -"
"He's nine years old and his birthday is in July -"
When they get to the hospital, there's nothing to do but wait while they rush him to tests, X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, shouting for nurses and help and she slumps into a chair in the emergency room, unable to do anything but wait.
Well.
Wait, and call his family.
"Usagi-chan! Usagi-chan, where are you? We've been trying to reach you -" It's Junichi's mother,
"Nomura-obasan," she says, and her voice breaks, and it's louder than she means and there's the tears, in her eyes and closing her throat -
(ha that's not true, she doesn't know anything about her throat closing up, how could she even think that, Koan's hand on Junichi's throat, squeezing so tight while he kicks and struggles and his bones snapping, that's a throat closing)
Usagi sobs.
She doesn't mean to. It just bursts on out of her, unbidden, and on the other end of the line, she hears Junichi's mother suck in a breath.
"Usagi-chan - please don't cry, I was just a little worried, I'm not angry with you -"
And that's too much. She can't let her say that. She can't let her say that.
"You should be," she forces the words out, and it's like a dam breaking, because the rest of the words just come flooding out of her, "Nomura-obasan, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm - I'm at Juuban Memorial Hospital, in the emergency room - they took Junichi in, they're - I think they said they have to do surgery -"
It's not comforting, not what Junichi's mother needs to hear.
It's all she has.
"They said he'll be okay."
Almost, all she has.
The doctors didn't say that. They didn't say anything to her, when they took Junichi away, but Mamoru did, Mamoru told her Junichi would be okay, and she knows he wouldn't have taken his hands off him if he was still touch and go, if there was still a chance they'd lose him -
There's a shaking breath from the other end of the line, a struggle for calm that breaks into high-pitched, terrified note, until the sobbing is coming from both ends of the line. They stumble through the conversation, both of them weeping, Usagi tucked in on herself in the emergency room chair, trying to get the words out, to answer the questions being thrown her way, can hear doors slamming through the other end of the line, the sounds of rushing, and Junichi's father picks up the line.
"Which hospital did they take you to, Usagi-chan?" there's strain in his voice, but he's holding it together, and she hiccups to clear her throat and tells him.
Less than fifteen minutes later, both of them are rushing towards the nurse's station, explaining who they are, demanding to know Junichi's condition, but there's no news yet. The doctors don't have the scan results, and it's a neck injury, so they don't want to act too fast, and she can take them to see him, but only one at a time - <br.
Junichi's mother goes with the nurse. His father sits in the chair next to Usagi, a tall man looking small and scared, hands fisted in his lap to stop them from shaking. Usagi remembers her hands, and the drying blood on them, and silently tucks them under her thighs.
"Nomura-san, I'm so -"
"Usagi-chan, can you -"
They speak at the same time, and she cuts herself off half a second before he cuts himself off, leaving them both staring at each other in heavy, awkward silence, and she forces herself to continue.
"I'm so sorry. It's all my fault, I was supposed to watch him, I said I would get him home safe, and I - I didn't -"
Junichi's father puts a hand on her shoulder. "Please, Usagi-chan. Tell me what happened to my son."
Answers spring to mind, instantly - Koan broke his neck to hurt me, she tried to kill him just to make me miserable, she hates me so much she'd kill an innocent little boy to hurt a me who isn't even here - and are swallowed back, the hands she's sitting on curling into fists, nails digging into the meat of her palms as she accepts, again, that she's going to have to lie to him.
That she's never, ever, going to be able to tell him what really happened.
That he'll never know why his son was attacked.
That he'll never know the person who did it is gone, and won't ever be coming back.
That he'll never, ever, know exactly why he should blame her for this.
"We - me and Mamochan and Kazuo-kun - were walking Junichi-kun to your house, when..."
