2792/Relationship Counseling

Relationship Counseling
Date of Scene:	17 October 2025
Location:	Mamoru's Apartment
Synopsis:	Usagi gently calls Mamoru out on 'maybe Riventon will forgive me'. It's a rough time.
Cast of Characters:	Usagi Tsukino, Mamoru Chiba
Tinyplot:	Brotherfight

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Usagi Tsukino has posed:
It's a little after Usagi bailed on the others to go find Mamoru, relying on her familiarity with him to guide her way to his hideout. When she does find him, she's looks him over and dryly says, "Sailor Moon's in trouble?"

It's honest amusement, but it's also a mood check on how embarrassed he is or isn't.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru, who isn't quite exactly" where Usagi expected him to be-- but that's because he's already out of the ballpit, Diana has gone off to sleep on top of Anko, and Mamoru has a book.

Since Chibiusa's moved out of the walk-through closet and into a proper bedroom on the other side of Kazuo's, Mamoru has stuck his desk in there with the ballpit and the balcony and his clothes. Right now he's in there sprawled half-sideways in his cushy desk chair, glasses on, brow slightly furrowed as he reads in the semidark, the light on a nighttime setting.

When Usagi comes in, he has the grace to look slightly sheepish, but only slightly. "Pretty sure saying that was more embarrassing than getting called out about a heist date," he says with a laugh. Ah, momentary, then. "I was just also done peopleing."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"I figured you were done peopleing," she assures him, and comes and flops down into the ballpit, trying and failing to float in a sea of balls. "Minako-chan thought she was being kind of subtle and poor Amy-chan still didn't get what boy time meant for like another whole minute. She walked right out the door for a little bit."

So at least he knows he wasn't the only one being awkward.

"...Mamochan, what did you mean about Riventon forgiving you?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"A huge part of the fight was over the fact that I was gonna give you his ID," Mamoru says, closing the book and rolling his chair over to lean on the side of the ballpit, arms crossed, chin on them. "The reasons he was shrieking out that it was unfair were invalid, because telling you his ID is in no way the same as his potentially having told Beryl I was Tuxedo Mask. But his feelings aren't invalid, and it still felt like a betrayal to him, because he's got his head so far up his own..."

He shakes his head and sighs through his teeth. "I can find him, you know. Almost like I can find you and Chibiusa and the boys. And I used to be his beacon when he got lost in the Dusk Zone as a kid." But then fingers wave even if he doesn't lift his head or his arms, dismissing that. "Anyway what I meant was, I'm glad that if he holds it-- AND all the shitty things I said to push his buttons-- against me, it'll just be a pissy grudge, and things can be okay if we get him off the dark energy."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Usagi stares at him in silence for a long moment, weighing these thoughts, considering his perspective. He and Takashi had grown up together, orphans found by Obsidian, by Beryl, given a chance together even if it was poisonous and rotten, meant to sink them both into the dark. Of course he wants them to stay close, of course he's seeing Takashi's perspective, and feeling how - scared he must have been, even if he covered it up with anger, about having his identity revealed, but, at the same time, she's worried.

"Are you going to ask him to apologize? For any of it? I don't know if you apologized - I hope you didn't - but I know he didn't."

It's not meant to be combative, or antagonizing, just a genuine and sincere hope that he will ask that, that he will be thinking about it, because it worries her that Mamoru is thinking about it this way, even though she knows it's fair, because... it occurs to her, that if he'll forgive the Shitennou or everything they did, of course he'll forgive Riventon for breaking his word and Mamoru's bones.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Usagi stares at him in silence for a long moment, weighing these thoughts, considering his perspective. He and Takashi had grown up together, orphans found by Obsidian, by Beryl, given a chance together even if it was poisonous and rotten, meant to sink them both into the dark. Of course he wants them to stay close, of course he's seeing Takashi's perspective, and feeling how - scared he must have been, even if he covered it up with anger, about having his identity revealed, but, at the same time, she's worried.

"Are you going to ask him to apologize? For any of it? I don't know if you apologized - I hope you didn't - but I know he didn't."

It's not meant to be combative, or antagonizing, just a genuine and sincere hope that he will ask that, that he will be thinking about it, because it worries her that Mamoru is thinking about it this way, even though she knows it's fair, because... it occurs to her, that if he'll forgive the Shitennou or everything they did, of course he'll forgive Riventon for breaking his word and Mamoru's bones.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Usagi Tsukino says, "You know you didn't say anything that shitty, don't you?""

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"I didn't," says Mamoru, but it's not reassuringly; he almost looks away, but doesn't. "I'm thinking about apologizing. Even if what he did was way worse, I want to own what I did do. But I can wait until he apologizes first," he says slowly.

Now he does look down, examining the seam on one of the plastic balls. "Even if he didn't mean for it to happen, it did, and you apologize for mistakes if they hurt people. He didn't mean for it to happen, he didn't henshin. He handed off his Device to Lacrima. He's just got considerably more power than Hematite now..."

He looks up now, smiling, but it's tense and apologetic. "I almost took Koji's face off with dark energy when they ditched us at Korma. I wasn't in henshin."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"What did you do?" It's a blunt question, far more blunt than usual - usually, Usagi is the one with the social graces, with the thoughtful understanding of what to say and when, who pushes but with care and grace and the awareness that some things are not for her to push and touch. This is different. They're married now, sure, but it's really because they're family too, family in a way different from Takashi and Mamoru, but family nonetheless. It is her business here. "Mamochan, what did you do that you need to apologize for? What did you say that's shitty?"

She could offer him her hand, but she doesn't. She's not withholding - if he reaches for her, she will go to him - but she thinks, she would like, she hopes, that he can say it, out loud, and hear his voice, and know he's judging himself far more harshly than he's ever judged Riventon.

"He did mean it, though. He picked you up, and he threw you, and he blasted that crystal and made it explode, and if Saturn hadn't of taken over Hotaru-chan, you and Masato-kun might have been worse off than she could heal."

There's an urgency in her voice, a plea.

"You didn't do that though. You wanted to, and you didn't. He wanted to do that and he did. That's not the same."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"He meant it as much as we meant to punch each other. We were both trying to hurt the other. We were both playing around with temper. And halfway through the fight I gave up trying to understand what he was saying and just started telling him he was jealous -- jealous of me, of you, of you getting to pull my attention away from him -- I was just reducing all his arguments to jealousy, and then-- then I told him I'd thought he was wrong for years and just not told him, and that was shitty. Lying to people you care about over things that matter, that's really shitty. But it was true. But I didn't have to tell him like that."

Mamoru rests his forehead against his forearms, now, glasses fogging a little, and talks to the floor and through the mesh side of the ballpit. "No, it's not the same, because I didn't have enough dark energy in me to override my judgement. He does. He's dangerous as fuck, and knows it, and if he had less dark energy in him he wouldn't have done it. I am smarter than him because I know I'm not infallible. But the more of this--"

He looks up at Usagi, and now he's the one who's pleading. "He's an addict who's been addicted since before he was born. I don't even know what he's like without it."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
They agreed to punch each other. They made each other angry. Riventon, feeling disrespected because Mamoru demanded Beryl's orb, and Mamoru upset because his brother was throwing around his torturer and murderer's energy. Of course she's biased and of course she thinks that Mamoru's position is more valid, but even if she tries to think of it any other way, it's just not comparable.

And sure, it's Riventon's identity. But if he was going to use Beryl's energy they deserved to know if he was bringing a source of it into their homes, while they didn't even know.

But those are arguments to make at Takashi, some day, maybe. Not arguments for Mamoru.

"You reduced his arguments to jealousy because you thought he was jealous," she stresses, "You showed me your memory of that fight, I know you thought he was jealous. It's not like you were trying to minimize him or anything, and Mamochan -"

Deep breath. She emerges from the ballpit, little plastic balls bouncing around and rolling across the floor of the walkthrough closet.

"Mamochan, you were only keeping what you thought from him because your relationship with Takashi is abusive."

There. She said it.

"It's abusive and twisted around, and you never told him any of this because you always knew he'd be angry and fly off the handle. It's not his fault that he was born with Dark Energy, but it's not your fault either."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
He doesn't shut down, but Mamoru does go quiet, and he sits up a little, hands resting on the padded rail of the ballpit. He looks at his hands for a long moment, thinking, sitting with it.

"I know it's not my fault," he says first, looking up, meeting Usagi's eyes. He reaches over to touch her where she stands in the ballpit, just to let her know he's chewing on it still, a riot of tangled emotion and a cold feeling in his gut as he turns it over and over and over. He lets his hand fall away, and then he sort of crosses his arms, sort of folds in a little bit, unconsciously defensive.

Mamoru makes himself relax, and he takes his glasses off to rub at his eyes, and he's grimacing. And then he's grimacing with a crumpled chin and still rubbing his eyes, and then he looks down again, examining... blurry nothing in the dim light without his glasses on, but his eyes are much shinier than they were a minute ago, as the light reflects off them.

"Of course you're right," he says finally, quietly. He can't meet her eyes anymore.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
He doesn't shut down, and that's such a good sign that Usagi is relieved and quiet, letting him think, while she herself thinks of finding out if she can mail Natsuki Takaya a thank you gift, because she knows very well who to credit for opening her eyes to the many ways that a familial relationship could go wrong, ways that she'd been fortunately, blessed spared from experiencing in life.

"I'm glad," she says, honest, and when he reaches for her, she reaches for him, offering her hand and making it clear in body language and through touch that she would hold him if he wanted.

There's the sense of her worry, her concern. She's frustrated with Riventon, with Takashi, but she shares with Mamoru that that isn't what drives her. She's worried purely for Mamoru, and the lack of value he replaces on himself, the blame he takes so readily, how willing he is to forgive damage to himself. He can tell that the Shitennou aren't exempt from that - he can see that though she's forgiven them herself, now, she worries over how quick he was to forgive them, to want old relationships back, and how there's a part of her that wonders now, if his dynamic with Takashi is a part of that.

Not blaming him entirely - there's her pity for him, that he's so twisted up inside that he'd hurt Mamoru rather than accept that he isn't perfect, sympathy that this is what life has given him, Takashi's burden to struggle with, but a firm resolve that Mamoru shouldn't just let go of things, all because Takashi says he means well, and because he was born sick.

"I don't want you to blame yourself, for everything."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
He didn't, right then at touching her, want to be held-- he's closer to wanting to be held now, but he still feels raw and claustrophobic all at the same time. Hands alone is okay though. Hands is all right, and Mamoru meets the offered hand, taking it. He's not shut down but he hurts, and the memory of Takashi's face twisted with darkness as well as rage, pointed at him directly, and then being airborne and pain, everywhere, and not being able to think straight, and the ringing in his ears, and the pain was just pain, fleeting. It got fixed. It was okay.

He looks at Usagi's hand, and he acknowledges in the tight, bleeding core of his heart that he didn't forgive Hinoiri faster because she took away his ability to heal himself. He was in pain for a long time, and she hadn't intended him to stop, she'd thrown him away. It wasn't personal, she dehumanized him, she took his agency and his dignity, and she threw him away. At least this is personal. It's reactions that can be prompted or avoided, rather than random cruelty. Takashi has to feel bad he hurt Mamoru-- doesn't he?

That's when Mamoru's hand tightens on Usagi, and he pulls his chair closer to the netting and he pulls Usagi by the hand closer to him, and he hugs her around the waist with his glasses in one hand, loose, and he hides his face in her shirt.

If, if, if. If he'd tried harder. If he'd been truthful sooner. If he'd managed to keep his temper, if he'd been able to keep his mouth shut, if, if, if. He used to protect Takashi-- in the orphanage, in Obsidian-- and Takashi had his back too, and in the dark of night when they were growing up, sharing a room, if Mamoru had nightmares that woke him up Takashi was the one who helped him calm down... they were special, they were special together, they were different from everyone else, they had magic, and they had each other, and they had nothing else.

And Mamoru does keep getting nice things, his life keeps improving-- and Takashi does keep losing. Which is good, but, also frustrating-- and he helped Rashmi mod Luminous Titan for Chibiusa-- but... Mamoru should be able to have nice things without Takashi holding them against him!

Pieces keep trickling into place where Usagi can see, even if she can't see his face as Mamoru silently grieves. And it's grief, and it's betrayal, and there's too much hurt for there to be anger anymore.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Communication through touch, hand in hand and heart to heart, and with them both open to each other, nothing withheld, she can feel the raw claustrophobia of his emotional realization, and the breaking through of what had been a mask he'd forgotten he was wearing and that she'd hoped he was wearing -

Because Mamoru separating himself from the pain and betrayal is so much better than Mamoru not having any.

She clutches his hand, but she doesn't crowd him, because she knows him, and she knows that more than anything else, after so many years, what Mamoru values the most is agency, is mattering, is choice, and that includes her.

That includes her.

There is the knowledge that he didn't forgive Hinoiri sooner because she made him hurt and he had to sit in it, and there is the knowledge floating from her to him and between them that Beryl had made him hurt too, Beryl and Thetis, and that especially for Mamoru, pain is so often fleeting, because he can take it away, and that makes it different -

But it isn't really, and her own heart is full of how deep her conviction is that it's only meant that Mamoru has let go when people are doing things that might otherwise have made him reconsider. His pain matters even if it's fleeting. His injuries are important even if he makes them vanish. His suffering has meaning because he felt it even if it didn't take him out of commission for as long as it would have taken other people out of commission.

Instead of words, she offers a memory, back in their early days, back when he was Darien, back when she was still new, the two of them holding manga in their hands, she with the English copy, he with the Japanese. Fruits Basket, one of her favorite series, and they were in it now, they were past the point where the story was laying out its premise, it's softer start, animals and curses and hijinks, and well into the true meat of the story:

Grief, and loss, and pain felt and dished out, and promises made and kept and regretted and clung to beyond reason.

And - specifically -

"I always felt bad for Rin," Usagi had said. "I mean of course I did! Who wouldn't! It's awful! Her parents were awful, they were so mean, they were so - it wasn't fair, of course I felt bad, but it was also... they made her think it was all her fault, when it was just a simple question."

The chapter had been about Rin Sohma's backstory - about how her family fell apart with a single, innocent question, as she asked her oh so happy parents, who loved her so much and laughed with every day, if they ever felt sad, and they responded with their vitriol . With their hatred. As they revealed that they'd hated their child for their whole lives, that they'd lied for her , and that by questioning it she'd brought it all on them.

"It wasn't her fault," Usagi had said in the memory. "She was just asking and they were just looking for an excuse!"

In the present, she shares the wider context of the memory, as Mamoru sinks and clings, as she brings her free hand up and wraps her arm around him, not pressing him into her abdomen but holding him. There are no ifs here that make it okay for the people you trust and love to treat you that way. There is no 'if' here, that could have avoided this, because Mamoru lied because he didn't want to cause trouble, but he'd never thought his brother would hurt him, and he wasn't wrong to think that, he hadn't brought it on himself that his brother had almost killed him. That if he couldn't be healed, he might have died from that.

She doesn't hate Takashi. She doesn't want him to hate Takashi. She doesn't even want him to be mad - she just wants him to know he deserves to be treated better.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
They had had nothing else, but Mamoru is no longer starved for affection. He had had no one else, a boy whose power is based in connections -- connections to the Earth, to other people, skin to skin and mind to mind, heart tethered to heart. Growing up, he had only had Takashi, and no memory of any healthy relationships.

Is it any wonder that the second he ran into a solid, ringing connection, someone he could feel a connection to right away, he recruited Nephrite into Obsidian? Any wonder that the moment he remembered having been Endymion, and his all his closeness to his Shitennou who'd been stolen from him, twice, he doubled down on his urge to steal them back... there's some overlap with the idea that he was quick to forgive them, but, they learned. They won't do it again.

Takashi probably will, though.

That's another thing to grieve over, just the building knowledge that he may be connected to his brother still, but that the golden thread is, as Usagi said, twisted around. And Mamoru has to wonder, in the coldest part of his gut, if that connection was always corrupted since Takashi himself has always been corrupted. 'I can't guarantee your safety no matter how much I'd like to.' Well. He had told his friends and allies not to pull their punches, either.

Usagi can see him trying to find a way to squirm back to comfort, back to not being upset; she can see him forcing himself not to. Forcing himself to sit in this pain. She can feel him fighting the urge to hide, to withdraw, to lick his wounds, to build up his fortifications again, to keep his pain from hurting her.

She's so worried, so concerned for him, so warm and loving, and he's hurting her by being in pain, just like any time he gets hurt, and he's been so much more careful in trying not to get injured, or fixing it before it becomes a worry. But he can't make this go away, and Usagi's so earnest about the fact that making it go away doesn't work anyway...

And there's Usagi's conviction flooding him to the point that he doesn't know if he'll drown or float, the conviction that his suffering has meaning, the conviction that if a tree falls in the forest, the tree goddamn well knows about it. He lets other people protect him! Isn't that enough? He lets people risk themselves for him-- he doesn't jump to tank lethals with his chest anymore-- he never had a death wish like Zoisite was positive he had. He never did! It's just that other people needed protecting more than he did.

Even in Obsidian.

Mamoru's mind keeps shying away from it, that he deserves to be treated better. He knows she doesn't just mean Takashi, but he can't, he can't. So he focuses on just that: he deserves to be treated better than someone he loves and trusted almost killing him. That's safe enough to agree with. He's apologetic again that it's so hard for him to accept, and he's wincing because he knows he's not supposed to be apologetic, and he's twisted up inside, and he cries silently and hidden in Usagi's shirt because his brother tried to kill him, and it wasn't his fault.

There is no 'if' here. There is no excuse. Takashi broke his word and Mamoru's bones, and very nearly took his life.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Usagi had been born to be happy - that was what her mother wanted, twice over, on the moon, on Earth. She had been born cheerful and she had been welcomed into a loving family, one that spoiled her until she cried at any bit of fear or discomfort, because it was so alien in her soft world of love and comforts. She had been and is the most impressive kind of lucky: the kind that was born lucky.

Truly, it was only fair that she'd become a Senshi too, because the kind of grief and loss that Mamoru and so many of their friends have experienced, had never touched her. Even deaths had been gentle things, anticipated, expected.

Things have been easy for her, and so it's easy to open her heart, to share and give, to want people to have what she has. To want her husband to have what she has, and she offers it freely, her love and affection, her warmth. Even as Mamoru's tears soak her shirt, her hand gently strokes his head, with all the comfort her mother and mama both had offered when she was small, and which Mamoru, who was Endymion but not, could not remember receiving.

Usagi doesn't shush or hum, just presses gently against that feeling of grief, that desire to hide. Or course she's sad that Mamoru is sad. She loves him. She doesn't want him to hurt, ever. She doesn't want him to cry.

But crying is important, and she'd rather share his pain than watch him bury it, and with it himself. Every part of him, she wants to know and cradle and kiss. There is no part of Mamoru too painful to know.

His pain isn't just normal, it's necessary, because if he doesn't hurt when his loved ones hurt him, when will he hurt? If he can't trust his own loved ones to hold him gently, who can he trust?

There's a feeling in her heart, one she doesn't hide from him, though there's wordless reassurance threaded through - this is her feeling, not his. This is how she feels, and he doesn't have too.

The feeling is disgust.

The feeling us unrelenting disgust for Riventon, for being so ready to trade in on love for pride, for power. For failing to understand Mamoru's character, for failing to know him, for thinking he was, could be, the kind of person who'd lord over Takashi out of bullish pride instead of seeing that he was hurt and scared. It's disgust at Takashi for thinking of himself as righteous and right, for imagining that he was the Buddha's own gift handed down to bring the world to the next plane, even while he broke his own brother's bones and almost killed him over words.

There's a part of her that can tell that the loss of control was involuntary, but that part of her is all the more disgusted, because it's been days with no apology, no regret, no trying to dig himself out of the Dark Energy.

There's pity, too, a feeling that would burn Takashi up if he felt it, but there's pity for him, for being born with Dark Energy twisting his veins and unwilling to walk away from it. There's pity, that he's arrogant and proud he fails to see how little he has, how close he is to losing everyone he claims to love, if he'll crack and burst over being wrong.

But those are her feelings. Not Mamoru's.

She doesn't expect him to feel as she does. She doesn't even need him to stop apologizing, she doesn't need him to stop tanking, that's his power, that's his tactic, but she wants him to know that he's not secondary. That his pain matters. That she knows he doesn't have a death wish, he just has an ego the size of a peanut compared to the coconut that is his brother's.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It takes... a lot, it takes a lot, to disgust Mamoru. It certainly takes more than being betrayed, or being injured-- it takes being Beryl, explicitly. He wasn't even disgusted by Thetis: she was a youma, it was in her nature, her loyalty to Beryl was absolute, and he pissed her off. Of course she would take it out of his flesh. But Beryl used to be human. And she traded everything for power, even what she used to profess to love. She got a second chance and went willingly to sell her soul again.

To sell her soul and burn everything she valued except power.

Oh, he thinks, and he doesn't have the energy for it to be any more than that. Directors. Obsidian's board of directors. Inhuman monster people even if they're still nominally human--

The loss of control was involuntary, but Takashi blamed it on agreeing to Mamoru's stipulation that neither of them should be able to henshin, it's not the dark energy or his control that's the problem according to him, it was that he didn't have enough external safeguards to keep from, well, almost killing Mamoru. Your brother, no matter how mad you make him, should not need external safeguards to keep from killing you.

'I don't need a brother who says I'm wrong--'

He feels so cold, his face is red and damp and splotchy, and he finally, finally sits up. He's still touching, they're still touching, he tilts his head into her hand and just looks miserable, and maybe a little amused at the peanut-to-coconut ego ratio, but it's a faint tug at one side of his mouth and a softening of his expression, just a little.

Mamoru sighs, and it's deep, and it hitches a bit. "Can we go to bed? Or do you have to go to the dorm tonight? I just-- I just want to be quiet. With you. I don't have any feelings left. I don't-- I--"

He trails off helplessly, then reaches up to scrub at his face again. "I'm sorry. I can't words either."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Usagi isn't easily disgusted either - it had taken the likes of Beryl, Demande, and Wiseman to meet the threshold of her personal disgust before, and it does not speak well of Takashi that he's accomplished it.

It doesn't bode well, that Mamoru's mind went to Beryl first, Beryl and her thirst for power.

There's still hope for Takashi in her, a small light amidst the doubts, but it's a hope guarded by the knowledge that change has to come from within, that no one but Takashi can make the decision for him to turn away from Dark Energy.

Mamoru's exhaustion tugs, and and reaches for him, cups his face with her hands.

"Let's go to bed," she agrees. "Chibiusa-chan and Naru-chan will be fine without me."

There have been enough words.