It's twilight heading into early evening, and the boy who makes bargains with predators and friendships with the morally disappointing is sitting in the park, reading a book. It's something he does with a fair amount of regularity, picking a spot and parking there when he needs to be outside, or needs to see people but not interact-- just be aware of them. Sometimes if he just wants to be alone with a book but in the path of certain people he tends to see again and again.
Right now he's off the main path, not even on a bench: he's sitting with his back to a tree and his shoes off, toes dug into the grass; he's running out of light, so he won't be there much longer. A glance up from his book, and he shifts to fish in his pocket, take out his watch and eye the time.
With no wasted motion, he closes his book and starts pulling his socks on, clearly intending to leave.
Runealy is starting to become familiar with the park, and has been patrolling the general area where she had been instructed to leave Tuxedo Kamen a few weeks ago. She actually spots Mamoru - not quite the form of the person she was expecting, but since he has revealed both sides of herself to her this will suffice - off in the distance, and... waits. She waits in hiding, not wanting to be seen for a few minutes as she lurks behind a tree.
It's only when he begins to gather his things that she makes a move, emerging from hiding to walk up toward him. Her gaze is low, and her voice likewise. "We need to talk. About a few different things. I can't take 'no' for an answer unless stopping to talk to me will get someone hurt... we're going to speak, otherwise."
It might significantly surprise Runealy that Mamoru doesn't react defensively, doesn't seem angry or upset. In fact, his tone is friendly, even if his voice is quiet. "No, it's fine. I'm running out of light, I'm just on my way home. Do you want to walk with me? I wasn't thinking clearly, and would probably be better off at home where I can sleep it off."
If he concentrates, he can feel her light shining in the distance, whoever she is when she's not in her uniform. It informs his manner; it's a sense of the words Madoka gave him for his birthday, even if Madoka isn't the one on his mind-- even if Madoka isn't the one this conversation, he assumes, will be protecting.
"Are you okay, by the way? I saw you run, but my hands were full."
The alien princess, in full magical attire rather than any sort of school uniform, has no response to the question at first. It takes her a few seconds to figure out what to say, though she'll follow Mamoru if he does indeed start walking. Her wand is stowed behind back, attached to the side of her dress' ribbon. "Asking something like that... I doubt you'll have those kind of words for me soon."
"I'm here to tell you I can't live up to our agreement. I met Sailor Moon. She's going to force the issue and get in my way, because I... her words were that I 'spread misery.' She's right, and it'll be best for her if I'm not okay."
She realizes how that might be interpreted, and holds up a hand to try to stall any immediate reply; there is a little more to say. "I didn't attack her then. I will next time. I'm going to have to disappoint both of you, by being okay so I can hurt her to get what I need." That's a very odd sentence, but Runealy isn't sure how else to phrase it.
And here-- here is the flash she was expecting, the flash of anger, of betrayal, of furious singleminded protectiveness. Mamoru's knuckles are white, the book he's holding distorting from the pressure of his grip. His other hand is a fist, tight at his side. "No," he says flatly.
The boy's words are ice, ice so cold it burns, dry and deeply rooted. His energy is a living thing, vivid and ancient and fierce to eyes and instruments that know how to look. "No, there's something you don't understand. I'm selfish. She's the one I'd protect over everyone else, over everything else. She's the one who has the love and strength in her heart to protect everyone, selfless and true and forgiving, as young and as afraid as she is. She'd help you if you told her why. She'd help you find another way. But I don't want you to hurt her, so I'm willing to deal with the pain, if only you keep it from her. I'm not like her. If you have to hurt someone, hurt the one who's stupid enough to make bargains with people whose minds are closed but whose convictions are fluid. Hurt the one who trusts other selfish people to do the right thing because there's good somewhere inside them."
He insists he's not like her. He even believes it. And still he's talking with Runealy, not fighting her. Still he's trying to offer himself in the place of the Senshi of Love and Justice.
Mamoru forces his hands to relax, the one to open and the other to stop distressing his book. "I don't want to fight you, because I know you're trying to make sure there's a future for a lot of people. I know you're trying to do what you know you can do to protect something that means at least as much to you as she does to me. I want to help you-- but I will give everything I have to stop you if you try to harm her, to keep her from her duty, to cause her pain. You will literally have to go through me to get to her."
'No.' Runealy isn't surprised to hear this. She didn't expect anything else, really. One does not march up to someone and say 'I am going to hurt your friend' and have them shrug it off. Mamoru tells her a great deal of why he admires Sailor Moon and cares about her, and... her head shakes a few times, a slow gesture. "She probably would help me. And word would get out. Nobody can know why, because the wrong person will find out and someone I care about will get hurt even worse than Sailor Moon would. It sounds like you understand that, though. You just said as much... it means 'at least as much.'"
She goes tense, and very abruptly changes the topic. "Tell me something. I saw 'you' in the twisted festival. Was that really you, or just some corrupted illusion of you?"
Mamoru's teeth grind. He wants to yell. He wants to lose his temper. He wants so very badly to lose his temper, to shout at Runealy, to show her, to make her understand-- he can't. His anger burned so brightly the other night, so sharp and deadly, he came so close to losing control. His anger now is no less numbing, no less full, but it's a deeper and quieter thing, and he'll keep it that way. He can't lose his temper. He can't lose.
"You--" he starts, voice breaking with pent-up fury, but Runealy interrupts him, and he glares daggers at her. "What the hell are you talking about? What twisted festival? Was that what it was? The Witch that got me, that killed a bunch of kids before it could be stopped? I woke up in the illegal hospital. I don't remember any of it, and from what I understand, I won't. From what my-- she called it my linker core-- from what my readings looked like, you took enough of me with you last time that I didn't have enough to transform, didn't have enough to even resist."
He takes a step closer, so very tall, face darker. "And I would risk it again in a heartbeat."
Anger, that look in his eyes... Rune is still not entirely used to that sort of thing. Going from being adored by virtually everyone back home, to rightly being reviled here is a jarring shift, even if she knew it was going to happen. Her gaze lowers as she hears Mamoru's answers, even as he approaches. "...Sounds like she was even more right than either of us realized. I nearly got you killed, is that how it is? And even knowing that... you're standing here in front of me, saying 'no' and now you understand why you shouldn't be asking why I'm okay."
She doesn't move, even as he looms closer. "So with all that laid out, you still intend to fight me?" It's not an arrogant question, not some kind of mockery... she's directly asking.
"I ask if you're okay because even though you're being an idiot, you're protecting someone very dear to you. I'd be a complete hypocrite if I didn't sympathize with that. And the fight up there, and what it cost Miss White to do to save us all from that thing, was so awful and so great a price-- she tortured another person in pursuit of that power, and the power nearly killed her anyway, and she was doing it to protect someone very dear to her--"
The exasperation, at least, now holds a greater part of his voice than the anger. This is the impatient and too-smart and too-capable boy, the arrogant boy, the sought-after boy who hasn't the time of day for anyone trying too obviously to woo him; this is the prince of better-than-you and wasting-my-time who talks down when he lectures; this is the upperclassman at the end of his rope. He's a rare sight. He's pointed and speaking too deliberately patiently to be anything but bitingly sarcastic, even if there's no such tone in his voice.
"I'm asking if you're okay because I saw you have a breakdown, and I can't not feel sorry for you, and I can't not wish you well and whole. Your self-loathing sets my teeth on edge. Your determination to save what you love resonates, and your methods are terrible, and you KNOW they're terrible, and you're doing it anyway, and you're hating yourself for it, and it's INCREDIBLY counterproductive, and it gives me a headache just being near that kind of morass of tightly-wound misery. Obviously you're not okay. But if you can see how many people there are who may be blindingly angry with you but do not hate you then maybe you'll get okay enough to consider not being so dumb about this."
He is so lucky Runealy's guardians aren't here right now. SO LUCKY.
And then Mamoru throws down his book and takes his glasses off, takes the case out of his pocket, puts them in the case, puts the case away. All very deliberate gestures. "If you tell me you're going to try to do to Sailor Moon what you did to me, and possibly deprive this world of her light if she gets in as much trouble as I did, and put her through that god damned agony even if you don't indirectly end up killing her? Yes I'll fight you. OF COURSE I'll fight you. I'll fight you in front of her, I'll fight you beside her, I'll fight you watching her back. If you tell me you won't go after her after all, I won't fight you. You can take what you need from me again. I will keep our bargain, if you do."
"...Hn?" A questioning noise, as Runealy is startled by something Mamoru just revealed. "Tortured? What do you mean? She talked about that being 'real power' she earned, different from what I used. What do you know about that?" Her mind races with implications, trying to see if she can assemble the truth with what information she already has... and there is no stunned realization dawning upon her face; she's missing key information to reach any useful conclusion.
As her motives and actions are criticized, Rune meets biting remarks with cold-toned, eyes-narrowed anger. "I'm not being stupid about this. You think I didn't think this through? I know what I'm doing. If there was another answer, any other real solution, I'd be all over it. I didn't just wake up one morning deciding to hurt people out of convenience. My friends didn't just randomly choose to do this either. We're out of options. So..."
The anger fades, as she begins digging in her dress' bow for something. "You know just as well as I do that I can't be trusted. I might tell you I've changed my mind, then go after her as soon as you're not watching any more. I might go after her as soon as she forces a fight. I might do it before then. So once I hear your answer about what Miss White is doing..." A shaky hand pulls out a diamond-shaped gem, one small enough to fit in the princess' palm.
It has several jagged edges to it, and black-purple energy swirls within. She finishes the sentence: "...I'll get ready to fight. Here is fine. It's night, not many people watching, nobody to really get hurt if either of us miss."
It's not a sneer: it's worse. It's dismissive disbelief. "Yeah, OH-kay," says Mamoru when Runealy says she knows what she's doing, rolling his eyes. He'd be sipping tea at her if they were in a tea house. So much shade. He's angry still, he's frustrated beyond reason, he's so exasperated and there really isn't any better word for it.
And then she expects an answer from him, and his expression goes completely incredulous. "You can find that out yourself," he tells her peevishly as he takes a half-step back. "Ask the Puellae. I said I'd fight beside her. I'm not leaving her unguarded, you can take that idea right to hell."
Another half-step back, and the tall boy jumps up altogether too high, effortlessly shifting to black and red and white midmotion, hurling himself with a rustle of silk and a showering of leaves toward the darkening green canopy above. She'll have to shoot him out of the air, or follow him and shoot him in the back, or attack him in his home. His book is still on the ground by Runealy's feet: Xenophon's Memorabilia.
"No? You're going to leave me to guess, even after what we saw happened to her?" Runealy is surprised by this refusal. "I suppose I will have to ask them. Something like that, if I don't know what's going on... who knows what kind of mistakes could happen?"
Then he's moving. Runealy snaps her wand over-shoulder, readied in hand and aimed up at him. She's about to unleash a magic orb when she realizes in a near-whisper, talking to herself: "No, he's not trying to attack from up high. You're going somewhere, aren't you? That's pretty good, but..." She watches for several seconds as leaves fall. And finally, her wand is stowed behind-back again. "...but I'm not that stupid. She taught me about what almost happened the one time she ran after a demon like that." She fears an ambush if she just chases after him. That might not be why he fled, but it's what she /thinks/ is going on and opts to honor her mother's advice on not blindly rushing after an opponent.
Instead, the alien princess finds herself looking down at the book left behind. "I wonder if he needed this for class?"
She puts the twisted crystal away, silently grateful she won't be using it here and now. Then she picks up the book, thumbs through it for a moment. The names make no sense to her; Xenophon is an unknown to her, and the likes of Critias and Socrates are equally unknown; she's ignorant of much of Earth's history, after all. "...Well, just in case he does need it," Rune paces off to place the book at the spot where she left Tuxedo Mask after draining him a few weeks ago. Hopefully he'll find it there.
Then she begins to walk off, head low as she feels she's no closer to a solution, or perhaps further away from it, than before she had this conversation.