So it turns out that you can't actually delete the Internet. But trying has intermittently given Mamoru something to do in the moments when the sheer mass of the dance, not to mention the cumulative weight of recent events that he hasn't had time to recover from, pushes him to the introvert side of the socializing pendulum. Those times have also given Usagi a chance to see people, and talk with people, and hug people, and dance with other people if she feels like it, and, importantly, raid the buffet.
Kunzite's old job skills have not entirely deserted him, new lifetime or not. He hasn't been following them that she's noticed, not in the dance itself. But every time Usagi's flitted back to Mamoru, whether for half-private time with the two of them or to coax him back into the main body of the dance for something, she's caught sight of Mamoru's white-haired shadow watching from a little distance. Not intruding on either their time together or on Mamoru's introvert-isolation; only being present to make certain that nobody's about to make off with Usagi's boyfriend on her birthday.
The old, familiar patterns, from gardens that were gone a thousand years before they were born. Close enough to intervene. Not so close as to interfere.
Usagi gets the idea on about her third trek back to Mamoru. It isn't until her fifth one back, after delivering pilfered buffet food and kisses, that she gets up the nerve.
By this time, the dance is almost over, and in all honesty, it's really now or never.
So, instead of going straight back, she goes over to where she's caught sight of Kunzite.
"It's my birthday." She sways a little in place, hands behind her back as she beams up at him. "Or it was until two hours ago."
She rocks a bit more, chewing on her lip a bit.
It's not that she's afraid of how he'll answer. Either way, she ends the night victorious in having tried. It's more how he'll react, either internally or in plain view.
"Oooooone dance?"
It's not that it's impossible to catch sight of him, yes. It's just the remembering that he's there to look for. And she's already had her idea, so --
He bows gravely to her address. "Happy birthday," he says. "I understand it still counts until you wake up." Not 'until you go to sleep.' There will be no discouraging her from sleeping eventually, not even tonight. But --
5rShe's chewing on her lip. The back of his mind translates this, automatically, into 'it is already far too late to run.' The next thing she says proves it right.
"I don't know how to dance to what they're playing," he says, straightforward. Never mind that neither do half the people there. The cue she's likely to seize on to is that he didn't actually say no.
Her eyes light up. "Then I'm never sleeping again!" Mischief is all over her face, because she knows who would likely end up chasing down a sleep deprived Usagi after Mamoru passes out from exhaustion.
She tries really hard not to beam at his response, but it's there in her eyes and barely restrained in her smile. "Well, Mamo-chan and I did waltz to 'Rock the Casbah.' That's not your usual ballroom dance song."
Eager eyes!
Forward scoot, just a touch! "I'm getting better! I didn't tromp on Rei-chan's feet!"
Never sleeping again? That mischief wins an arched eyebrow. "I don't think your parents would approve of your skipping class forever."
Was that a waltz? Was it even possible to waltz to that? Is he himself correctly remembering which of the sets of dance steps 'waltz' refers to? It's probably best not to try to ask any of those questions. Not of Usagi, whose reaction to technicalities is almost always to happily steer everyone not merely wrong, but into some enormous pileup of multiple kinds of wrong colliding with reality at high speed and a bad angle.
And there's only one way to avoid technicalities with this situation.
He exhales, and answers that forward scoot by offering her his hands. "What will you do if I tromp on your feet?" he inquires, just as grave.
Usagi sighs, woeful. "You're right. Pretty sure they'd stop humoring me after the weekend, too."
Her eyes widen with glee as she takes his hands. "Eeee!" It's a quiet squeal, and she's quick to try to put on her Serious Face.
Trying to be just as grave as he is, and likely failing spectacularly, she answers. "Then Mamo-chan will just have to carry us both home and heal our tromped toes."
This is, of course, ruined by a giggle as she tugs him along.
The music is still going, but there are very few people actually dancing. Fortunately, a well manicured lawn is just off of the ballroom's external exit, complete with a cobblestone patio that is spacious enough for dancing.
She's happy enough here, because she can hear the music through the open doors. It also gives Kunzite a modicum of privacy, away from spotlights and prying eyes.
Tugging him along means that he retrieves one of his hands, long enough to locate his phone and send a pre-prepared text. (Somewhere else, one of the others will shift what he's doing at least enough to have a view through a window. Tired hour, distracted Mamoru, predictable location -- after the lst few weeks, they're inclined to be careful.)
It's the cobblestone that worries him, in the end. Uneven surfaces, and the fashion for women's shoes is -- well. Mars fights in the things, and he hasn't seen her break an ankle yet. Maybe he'll have to trust Usagi's ability to navigate in heels, or maybe she was clever enough not to wear them. She's small enough, from his perspective, that it's a little difficult to tell from anything but the echoes of her steps.
Even when they make the transition from her drawing him after her to the patio to his drawing her into the figures of a dance, searching his highly limited modern repertoire for steps that suit the tempo, it's not a surprise that he keeps a little more distance than Mamoru did. Meticulous propriety. Meticulous care in other respects, too -- constant awareness of her weight and stance and momentum, and therefore of where she's most likely to have stepped. Jokes aside, he intends there to be no crushing of a princess this evening. Certainly not on her birthday.
It takes her an awkward moment to find the rhythm of the song, and a bit longer to get the steps.
Her small heels are somewhat similar to Sailor Moon's boots, a reason why she got them in the first place aside from their obvious perfection paired with the dress. So, for now, she's relatively safe from the risk of a face plant on cobblestone.
When she's finally out of danger of toe tromping and in a relative smooth(ish) dance, she feels safe enough to look up at him. She's grinning, of course, very, very happy that he's dancing with her!
She, too, keeps that distance between them. It's almost a muscle memory, though, and she's not overly aware of it.
Curiously, she tilts her head. "Do you remember dancing back then? Was it very different?"
No murmured reminders, no suggestions. He adapts to her, instead, picking up on what she's trying to do, making space for her to do it in. What they wind up with is not quite anything that anyone in the ballroom, or the instructors on the class he and Naru attend on Tuesday nights, would either recognize or approve of; but no-one, at the moment, is asking any outside opinions. It works well enough. It won't trip her over her own toes. And she's confident enough not to be staring at her feet. Good enough.
"Different from itself, let alone anything else," he says, and his voice shades a trifle distant as he tries to remember. "It shocked me when I first came to court. I'd never seen men and women dance in the same place, at the same time. Where I grew up -- women would dance at celebrations, alone or together. Men would dance to show their skill with weapons, or at certain ceremonies. Two or four or eight at a time. Sometimes women who fought would learn the fighting-dances too, but mostly not, and even those who did would take turns with the men. Never at the same time. Never together. Seeing men partnered with women, even in line dances, let alone in pairs... it was a good thing I had a few years before anyone expected me to know better."
There is, as he speaks, the beginnings of a slight change in his movements. A little more structured. A little more formal. That's not a formality that those outside opinions would recognize, either; but perhaps, on some level, not entirely unfamiliar.
Usagi listens with wide eyes as Kunzite describes the different dances of his first home. It's a long forgotten story told to brand new ears, but the memory of it is buried in there somewhere.
As they dance, her body reacts to his. The long forgotten story is whispered in the wind as her shoulders square just a little more, her wrists arch just so, and what had been the steps of a girl just learning not to tromp on toes two steps ago slowly turns into the steps of someone who had been raised on the dance floor.
Usagi sighs. "I need to figure out a way to remember more. I swear you've told me that before."
And then eager eyes! "Not that I didn't enjoy it! I did! I just...want to remember is all!"
Back and forth, echoing. Her shoulders square, her wrists arch; the placement of his hands shifts, the angle of his head. Even back then, he never had the perfect, almost languid grace that the most devoted of Elysion's courtiers mastered. (That Endymion, when dancing with her, surpassed -- devising steps, improvising, adapting at a whim, much the way that Usagi and Mamoru did earlier this evening.) Kunzite was always a season or two behind the fashion, scrupulously formal lest someone find some slight misstep a cause to take offense; but utterly and constantly aware of the position of every dancer nearby, not only the two of them. As if he found it only a matter of time before he'd be required to block a well-aimed dagger, turn to slaughter the assassin with his own blade, then lift his dance partner neatly over the body without staining her shoes or hem and resume without a blink.
Thousands of years behind the fashion, now. And assassins are far less likely. But the muscle memory is still there, layered into the body Mercury gave him when it was made, and the man himself might never change enough to blunt that degree of wariness.
"Those memories are half your inheritance," he says now. "They'll come in their own time. If you want to chase them sooner, that's your right; as long as you don't forget the other half. This life is the one that matters now."
Here the dance itself slowly starts to change. The rhythm is kept in time with, but the steps slowly change to something much older than the waltz itself.
"Oh, I won't!" She beams up at him. "I like this time around! So much! I get to be friends with my girls, and they get to be more than senshi, and I get to know you all better, too!"
She pulls out of his arms to do a spin before first touching one wrist to his, then the other, and back in his arms she is.
"It wouldn't be about 'finding myself.' I'm Usagi! I just wanna know more about me!"
And she can dance with Endymion without a thought, in the sight of half the city's elite and half their own extended social group, full in the moonlight, and there is not one whisper of curses or coup. Not one foretelling of disaster. They've moved past that, out and beyond.
It only took losing everything to do it. And she -- she hardly ever needs to think of that at all.
"If by knowing us all better you mean dancing," Kunzite says, as he catches her and draws her neatly back into the rhythm of the quietly elaborate steps, "it may take a while for you to get to know Nephrite. I suspect Makoto plans to monopolize him for the next few hundred chances. On the bright side, by the time she's done with him, he should be very good indeed."
He says nothing about more-about-her. As much of it may be grief that she gains as joy. But it's hers to gain or lay aside, her choice to pursue it or to let it go. And their pasts have come to pursue them twice now -- the odds that there won't be more seem low.