The rooftop of a middling apartment building, random and unmemorable, under the bright and swollen supermoon above. The eclipse began half an hour ago, and already the full moon has a bite taken out of it, red-orange dimness creeping over it as the shadow of the Earth falls steadily across its surface.
Two depressed teenagers sit on the ledge overlooking the street, high above the light of the street lamps, and they have alcohol, and one of them has a pretty bag of home-baked muffins which he's set on the bit of ledge between them.
"Mercury is retrograde," Mamoru says with something resembling hope, the ugly green hipster grandpa-cardigan he's wearing over his t-shirt not lending him any credibility at all. "That's supposedly the astrological event that generates communication problems like scientists used to believe rotten meat generated flies."
Either tanking his cred further or building it back up a little, he passes the younger teenager the bottle of sake.
Kyouko looks awful. Like seriously, Mamoru has seen her injured, near-death, covered in cake, half-burned, and beat to hell, and this is still probably the worst she's ever looked in his presence. She's wearing her normal getup, but her face is red and her eyes are a bit puffy, and it's clear she's been crying. Her hair is tied back as usual, but its not done neatly, strands of it escaping to wisp over her face until she flicks them away.
She accepts the bottle of sake from her companion and takes a swig from it, not even bothering with cups or anything civilized like that. "Ain't no way that's the source of my problems," She says, her voice slightly raspy, another indication she was doing some serious crying not very long ago. "Unless Mercury can be in retrograde for like, four straight years." She stares morosely out over the city, her booted feet kicking in the air high above the street down below.
Nobody's bothering with civilization tonight. Mamoru's listening, but he's primarily obsessively watching the growing eclipse with morbid fascination, his own face not puffy or red, but pale and pinched. "Yeah granted," he breathes out, then reaches up to press his knuckles into his sinus pressure points. "And the stupid, stupid problem I got myself into is my own stupid, stupid problem. I just-- if she does like someone else... but my head hurts every time I try to think about it. What's the point of fate?"
He lets his hands drop into his lap and looks down and away from the moon, but he can practically feel the light dimming. "I can't even quantify this nonsense. Look, what the hell even happened, Kyou-chan? You were so happy..."
Kyouko passes the bottle back after her swig, so that Mamoru can have equal opportunity to drown his sorrow. "What happened? What the hell always happens? I forget that I'm not allowed to be happy, I open my big damned mouth, and I ruin everything." Her voice hitches at the end of the sentance, and she draws a deep breath to calm herself again.
"I.. well, I was out with Sayaka-chan and we got attacked. It must have been cause I was there because she's.. well, she's just normal. We both almost died because I'm useless. And then.. I told her that she shouldn't hang around me anymore because it was too dangerous. I didn't.. I mean, I guess I did mean it, but.. but I didn't want to mean it. But she took me seriously, and now.."
She grunts and hits her fist against the side of the building, hard. "Now I don't think I can see her anymore, because it really /is/ too dangerous but.." She sighs. "But I still want to."
Mamoru takes the sake back, and takes a swig. They are both treating the sake horribly. It's so delicious. It should be savored. It's not being savored.
The warmth burns through him, and its sweetness is sour in his stomach, and he averts his eyes from the moon once more. The shadow steadily covers the brightness, minute by minute. He could be-- he should be, he reasons-- watching it on his balcony with his telescope. But maybe he's afraid of what he'll see: the bunny of the moon swallowed by darkness.
"Of course you do," he says quietly. "She's the first person you asked for. You weren't even making any sense, but you asked for her. You think about her all the time, don't you? You feel better when she's near, you feel lighter. Just seeing her makes the troublesome parts of life seem to vanish, even if you know you should stay away, even if there's a clamor of reasons to stay away..."
He looks at the bottle of sake, and passes it back to Kyouko without comment on it.
"Bad things happen all the time in this city," he says after a moment. "You've made peace with your enemies, and your magic is quiet. There's no reason to think you were the target of the attack. Nothing's attacked the conbenie, has it?"
Kyouko takes the bottle, but she doesn't swig from it again.. instead just turning it over and over in her hands and looking at it, lost in thought for a few moments. "Yeah." is her response to Mamoru's litany of assertations, all of which are obviously true. She doesn't even question why he knows so much about the way she's feeling- it's obvious that he's had similar experiences, and he doesn't really need to explain it for her to feel that.
"Of course it's my fault." She says, twisting the words with her own meaning, although she doesn't even seem to realize it. "My whole life has been one big clustereff, there's no reason to think it's any different now. It's better this way anyway.. everybody I get close to ends up worse off for it." She does take another swig now, then places the bottle down on the ledge near Mamoru. "Even if I wasn't the target this time, I probably would be next time. Saya-chan doesn't deserve that risk, she hasn't done anything. She's just a normal girl. I can play pretend, but I'll never be that."
She glances over at Mamoru then. "What's got you so gloomy anyway?" She finally thinks to ask, having thus far been wrapped up in her own issues. Hey, at least she eventually remembered to feel concern for the obviously depressed guy beside her.
"Don't you think that's up to her to decide? Did she decide it was too dangerous, or did you, and she's just going along with it because she thinks you don't WANT to see her?" Mamoru asks, and it's not accusing, but it's got some salt behind it that's probably just more projection. "You know-- me and Homura, we're looking for ways to get Madoka-chan powers from someplace else. You and me, we could look for that for Sayaka-san, too."
Getting all fired up with Kyouko's problems actually seems to be distracting Mamoru from his own, and the declarative statements he's making sound like they might have had their vehemence enhanced by sake. But then she asks about what's got him gloomy, and he automatically looks at the moon, and his lips thin.
"Okay. I'm going to see if I can tell you without getting a migraine. Don't ask me any questions about it or trying to explain might set it off," he says after a second. "Sailor Moon-- who I see most often when I'm Tuxedo Kamen-- she's everything to me. I'd do anything for her. She doesn't know it's me behind the mask. But she came and brought me cake once when I was feeling really low-- she knew me, she liked me. She came to my apartment. That's a secret don't tell."
One finger is up. Then he lifts another, hand held in the air between them. "The Moon Princess-- I've been dreaming about her as long as I can remember. Every night. We used to talk, when I was little. She was literally my only friend. I'd do anything for her. This whole thing for me, it started because she stopped talking and started crying, asking me to help her, asking me to find the Phantom Silver Crystal. I started doing all this to find her, to give her anything she wanted, to make her stop crying, to make her happy. I'd do anything for her, she's everything."
He holds up a third finger. "Usagi Tsukino. She's a silly and beautiful girl who's a disaster on wheels and she gives and gives and gives, and her heart is so open, and she's the first normal person I've ever felt any kind of attachment to, and she's funny and kind, and she makes me feel better just by being around her, and she's so important, she's so bright and real it makes my heart hurt. And she cares about me. She can tell when something's wrong even if I'm hiding everything. She's insistent. And everything just-- stops--" He trails off, he shuts his eyes tight. His voice is quieter. "When she's looking at me. Because without even trying, she can see me behind everything. I wasn't even sure, before I met her, that there was a me to see."
Much quieter. "She's everything. I'd risk my life over and over to keep her safe."
Then he's looking at his hands in his lap, held tight and twisting. "She's friends with the senshi. For some reason they're invested in the idea of the Moon Princess looking for me. They've told me it would be a catastrophe if I fell for Usagi-chan. I told them more or less it's too late. They said she liked someone else."
Kyouko opens her mouth to respond to Mamoru's initial statements.. but then as he proceeds to go into his own woes, she shuts it again, and just listens. She talks too much sometimes, and she knows it, so maybe this time she'll just keep her mouth shut and actually lend a sympathetic ear for once. She absorbs the whole situation, or at least Mamoru's explanation of it. Then she just says, with a slightly wry tone to her voice, "Sounds complicated." She doesn't ask any questions, because he told her not to.
Then she goes back to what he said about Sayaka before that. "Of course I decided it! And no, it's not up to her to decide. She doesn't /know/ anything." She looks away back out over the city. "And I ain't calling her stupid, and I ain't saying she's a kid or anything like that. Nobody should know this kinda stuff, you know? We're the unlucky ones. We're the stupid idiots for getting involved in all this stuff."
She hesitates, then says, "Well, I am anyway. I dunno about you." She doesn't know how Mamoru ended up in the magical biz. "Saya-chan thinks it's all some game.. or.. maybe not, but she doesn't /understand/. Nobody who hasn't lived it can. And she shouldn't have to, I don't /want/ her to. I want her to live a happy, normal life. She has a loving family, she has friends, she has a /future/. There's no future for me, for a lot of us. I just want her to be happy, and all I've ever gotten out of the magical world is misery and loneliness."
She chews on her lower lip. "I think it's all a curse, Mamoru, I don't care where the powers come from. I just want her to stay out of it, because getting involved means throwing away any chance she has at living a normal life, no matter where the powers come from."
Weird lunar love polygons are eminently complicated. Mamoru looks relieved to have actually just laid all that out, and then he reaches over and plucks the sake bottle from Kyouko's hands and has some more of it. He'll hold it now until she actually wants some. And now he listens.
(And resists looking at the deep growing red darkness of the beautifully large moon.)
When Kyouko finishes, he's silent for a moment, thinking.
"What if," he says softly, "you make her as happy as she makes you? Don't you think she'll follow you anyway? Don't you think she'll be unhappy if she can't see you either? You say this is to give her a happy, normal life... but she's already been touched by this. And she'll be touched by it again, whether or not you're involved in her life. I've seen how that weird-looking rat-cat-rabbit-thing follows Madoka-chan around, and she's friends with Madoka too, isn't she? From before. That thing keeps trying to get Madoka to make a contract. Sooner or later, she'll accept-- unless we can work something else out for her. She's been attacked over and over, and it did nothing but terrify and confuse her and make her think she was insane, or grasping around in the dark. Telling her about this world made it easier for her to be happy again, because she didn't have to doubt her sanity, didn't have to think everything everywhere was misery -- because it's not. I promise it's not. Not everything."
He looks away, idly turning the bottle of sake around in his own hands, and his eyes are cast toward the street but he isn't seeing it. "She hasn't come to me with questions yet, but she will. And if you're fighting this, I can't watch someone else who's been drawn into this start to fall apart from feeling isolated."
Kyouko is looking at that moon too. She doesn't have the visceral connection to it that Mamoru does, but how can she not? It hangs there, huge and red and half obscured. It attracts her eyes, red as well, reflecting that same color as it floods the sky.
"I don't.. you have to choose the lesser evil, right?" She says, when he finishes, looking over at him. "I know she wants to be involved. She already told me. She said she'd fight with me, and that she wanted to protect /me/, too. And.. that made me really happy."
"But she just doesn't understand. She doesn't really know what that means. She /thinks/ she knows, but she doesn't. She can't, and that's no fault of hers." She looks at Mamoru for a moment, then looks away again. "She.. can see Kyubey too. The rat-cat-rabbit thing. I know he's already been talking to her. To Saya-chan, I mean." She doesn't mention how she herself was part of Madoka's magical terrorizing- she almost feels like she was a different person then, even though it was only a few months ago. Like it was somebody else doing those things.
"But Sayaka isn't Madoka. Yes, they're friends, but.. Saya-chan doesn't get scared, not like that. It's one of the thins I like about her. She's /brave/, a lot braver than me even, though I talk a big game. She won't make a contract out of fear. But she will do it if she thinks she can protect somebody." She doesn't say who- perhaps not wanting to sound egotistical and say 'me', or perhaps acknowledging that Sayaka would want to protect /everyone/, not just her.
"I've warned her away from trusting Kyubey. And look, maybe she'll get into it on her own. If she does, things change. But I don't want to be responsible, Mamoru." She looks back to him, and there's real fear in her eyes now. "I don't want it to be /my fault./"
Kyouko adds, a moment later, in a near-whisper, "But what I hate most is.. part of me does. Because I'm selfish and it would be easier."
Mamoru's quiet for a long time after that.
They're both finally looking again. It's a circle with a circle smudged onto it, and it finally looks like a sphere hanging in the sky, not a bright shining silver coin, not a disc. It has depth, it's three-dimensional, and it looks beautiful and deathly ill all at once. It's like a painting from the cover of a science fiction novel from the seventies.
He passes the sake over. "If she asks me," he says finally, "I'm telling her. If she's attacked and I'm anywhere near, I'll keep her safe. If you're attacked and she sees it and you try to keep her away, yes, she'll make a contract. Because you know he'll keep offering. You know how convincing he can sound, even if you've warned her off."
His voice is lower still. "Her decisions are her own. Her choices are her own. It will happen, if she's anything like the picture you've painted of her. And it will happen because she makes a choice, and that choice will be influenced by caring about you, which isn't something you can stop, or even have the right to."
The words are heavy and final, but the next ones are gentler. "You have the chance to make sure she doesn't go into it blind. You have the chance to make sure she's careful, that she knows what to expect, that it should be a last resort. You have the chance to protect her by opening her eyes. Trying to keep them closed will only ensure that she's less safe, less protected. I'll tell her if she asks me, Kyouko. But she should hear it from you."
The weight of Mamoru's words seems to crush Kyouko. As he talks, she hunches more and more, seeming to draw in on herself, her shoulders pulling up and her head lowering, her face hiding behind unkempt strands of red hair. As if all that responsibility that she never asked for, but has ended up on her anyway, is pushing her down. A tear leaks from the corner of one eye and rolls down her flushed cheek despite her attempts to control herself.
"It's just not fucking fair." She finally says, in a small voice. "Why am I not allowed to be happy? Why do the things that make me happy, that would make me happy, always have to cost other people so much?"
She falls silent for a few long moments, visibly getting herself back under control. "You're right, though. It's my responsibility, whether or not I want it to be. I should have known better.. I shouldn't have gotten involved. But I did. I let myself be her friend, even though I knew what it meant. Not.. not entirely. But you can't be touched by all this and not be drawn in. I knew that, and I did it anyway. God, I'm such a selfish asshole."
She looks up then, a wry little smile on her face. "But that's the irony, isn't it? As it is now, I can't do anything for her. I can't guide her, or show her the way. I already lost my chance. If I try, I'll just get /both/ of us killed. All I'd do is hold her back."
Mamoru looks bleakly away from Kyouko as she crumples and withdraws, and the sake, unfinished, gets put down on the roof behind them. He slouches, elbows on his knees, and stares at nothing. He listens, but he has nothing to say. There's nothing he CAN say. Everyone he's met and made friends with since he started making friends, who he's thought was normal, wasn't normal at all. Not even Usagi. She's involved. He has no idea how, but she's involved, and that was proven.
The last of what Kyouko says, though, that makes him look back at her, and there's just so much resonance. Pale and thin and oddly lit by the strange light of the vanishing moon, he looks like he gets what Kyouko's saying on a gut level. "Shitty to be someone who wants to protect, who always has to be protected. Gets yelled at for taking risks, has to be rescued or dragged to safety. Isn't it. Likewise being a liability to the people who mean the world to you."
He looks away again, lifting his hands to scrub at his face. "I don't think it's selfish to hope, to pursue happiness. It's only selfish to try and make decisions for someone else so that you can feel like 'well even if she's unhappy, she's safe'. Just talk to her. And if you get past the other night, let her make her choices with open eyes. And if she chooses to brave this crap, tell her everything. So she knows what to look out for. What to avoid. What to call for help over. And stop feeling guilty about what she chooses, because man, life happens."
Kyouko seems to have gained control of herself, more or less- she isn't crying, anyway, and she's raised a hand to wipe away the one tear which did make it's way down her face. Although she's upset about what's happened with Sayaka, there's the sense that that was really just the straw that broke the camel's back- that it's a culmination of a lifetime of having things she loves taken away.
"A few months ago, I wouldn't have even know what you meant. Or I wouldn't have admitted it anyway." She says, her tone a bit ragged, but with a contemplative edge. "Then again.. maybe I'm just proving old-me right. Y'know? What did I always say- better to be on your own, to take care of yourself, because getting close to people just gets you, and them, hurt. And look what happened. I let down my guard, I let people in.. and now I'm miserable."
The bag of muffins has gone mostly ignored (a testament to Kyouko's mood), but now she grabs one and takes a big, ragged bite out of it, chewing for a moment. "Hey, these are good." She mumbles, as she swallows, before going on.
"I don't.. want to tell her everything. About the type of person I've been. About the things I've done. I'm not sorry for who I am, Mamoru, but.. I'm also not proud of my past." She takes another bite, chewing for a moment, her eyes on the city below and not on her companion. "She's a good person and I'm.. well. I hope I can be, but I haven't always been. I'm not sure she'd understand that, at least not yet."
"They're super good, yeah. Mako-chan made them. Kino-san. The girl who came into the conbenie with me," Mamoru says absently, now just rubbing the side of his nose. "I have a lot more at home, but I'm not hungry right now, so if you want the rest of those you can have them. I just need to give her the bag back later."
He sighs, and it sounds so tired. "Just tell her what kind of things you've fought, what kind of people might target you, what kind of things you've seen. You can tell her details about you later. Just tell her you don't like who you were, but you're trying to do better now."
Then he looks at Kyouko again, and this time he gives her a faint smile. "And I used to be the same. I was fine on my own. But-- I really wasn't. I just didn't know better. Even with all the horrible baggage that comes with getting attached to people... I wouldn't go back. I can't go back to who I was and I really don't want to. Because the good parts, even if they're small and fleeting, are so very good. I actually feel real."
Kyouko has finished the first muffin and is now working on her second. She must be feeling at least a little better; no doubt talking about stuff helps, even if it doesn't really change the situation at all. She swallows the bite she's been chewing, and says, "Let her know I said they were good. I can't bake for shit."
Kyouko falls silent again, listening to Mamoru's advice. "You're right but.. I dunno. I just don't feel like that stuff is as important. I don't know why, because you're right, it is. That's the sort of stuff that'll keep her alive."
A small, crooked smile comes to Kyouko's face at Mamoru's last statement, single fang peeking over the corner of her lip. "I know exactly what you mean. When you're all on your own, it's safe, but.. you feel like you're drifting, like nothing you do has any permenance. If I had died back then, nobody would have cared. Well, some people might have thrown a party, but even they would have forgotten about me in real short order. If nothing you do effects anyone, are you even really alive?" She shrugs. "I dunno that I'm qualified to answer questions like that. Shit, I must be drunk.. thinking about philosophical dilemmas makes my head hurt. But I do know what you mean."
"Yeah," Mamoru agrees, the faint smile solidifying a little further, going crooked with self-amusement and with affection. "That's it exactly. I don't think anyone would have partied if I died, but there'd probably have been some sort of sad newspaper story of wasted potential or something, and that'd be it. Forgotten in a month or less until the next entertaining tragedy."
He looks down and fiddles with the cuffs of his shirt. "And yet, now that there are people who would mourn-- I'm taking dumber and dumber risks. They're all right about it, I need to be more careful. Because I don't want anyone to have to mourn. If I can make the people I care about happy, I'd rather do that, always."
Then the older teenager laughs a little and reaches back to pick up the sake again, lifting the bottle. "Here's to making a mark on the world, right?"
He takes a swig, and the bottle's almost done. He offers it over. Maybe it'll go with the muffins. It's not a big bottle, but that stuff's potent. "If you want, you tell her what you feel is the important stuff, and I'll fill her in on the details of what to be cautious of."
"Well, for what it's worth," Kyouko says, her little smile almost a smirk, "I'd be pretty bummed out if you got yourself killed. I ain't gonna yell at you over it, cause hell, I'm not exactly known for my sense of self-preservation, but I'd be bummed." She shrugs a bit, and accepts the bottle as he hands it to her. "To making a mark.. and not getting killed." She drains the last of the sake, then puts the bottle down on the roof.
"No, I'll talk to her. I don't want her to think that I run to someone else every time something is hard. She thinks I'm strong, and I don't want to disappoint her." She sighs. "But.. look out for her, okay? I know you would anyway, but I'm asking you as a friend. Do what I can't right now. I know you have enough to worry about, but when you can. And hell.. maybe it wouldn't hurt for you to talk to her too. Can't hurt to be a little redundant with something so important."
She grins slightly. "And maybe talk me up a little bit, huh?"
"I will talk you up like you're the Queen of Amazing," Mamoru promises, hand over his heart, this huge Shipper On Deck grin all over his face. He swings his legs around so he can get up to stand on the roof properly, then brushes off his jeans. "And I'll absolutely look out for her, don't worry. You said she has my number, right? Let her know she can call or text me anytime, and if I can't bail her out that very minute I'll find someone who can. And I'll talk to her whenever she wants me to. I'll let you tackle the magic stuff first, though. If she tags me before you get a chance, I'll let her know you'll fill her in on stuff and I can answer questions later."
Then there's a gust of blink-or-you'll-get-grit-in-your-eyes wind, and when Kyouko opens hers again, Tuxedo Kamen's holding out a white-gloved hand. "Lemme get you back off the roof. Or give you a lift home if you're that drunk."
Kyouko shakes her head slightly, her red ponytail swaying behind her a little bit. "Just don't overdo it, alright? I like Saya-chan.. a lot. And I know she cares about me too, as a friend but.. I don't want to push her. Not towards me, or away from me, or anywhere. You said it best.. she can make her own decisions."
She stands up after a moment, brushing herself off. "I'm not that much of a lightweight, dude. I can get myself home without passing out in the gutter. You ain't /seen/ me drunk yet. Maybe someday." She returns the grin, obviously feeling better now, although to say she's 'back to normal' would be a little bit of an exaggeration. She takes that gloved hand, squeezing it.
"And y'know.. I'm not totally selfish. Or I'm trying not to be. I dunno if I could do anything to help you with your.. issues. But if there's anything I can do, don't hesitate to ask, alright?"
"I feel better for having just dumped the ridiculous mess out in front of you. You can even laugh at me if you want, I mean this is the kind of dumb thing that's had songs written about it for ages," the boy in the mask says with a laugh, meaning it. "But if I can think of anything, I'll definitely let you know."
The hand's clasped, he squeezes back, and then he smirks. "I'm not gonna lie to her about you. I'll just tell her everything I like."
Then Kyouko's hand is tugged, and Tuxedo Kamen unceremoniously scoops her up-- if she left the muffin bag, it'll just fridge-logic him later and he'll come back for it-- then leaps them off the roof and lightly down to the street below. Soundless landing and she's on her feet again without so much as a by-your-leave.
"Talk to you soon, Kyou-chan!" he says cheerfully, and then he's off to drunk-Mario across rooftops and tall objects.
"Man, the reason they keep writing songs about it is because it keeps happening. As ridiculous as you think it is, you're obviously not the first, and I guess it worked out for most of those other people, one way or the other, if they got to write songs about it." Kyouko gives a crooked smile.
She doesn't act afraid or startled as they leap down to the ground- this is the girl who once leapt off of his penthouse balcony. She lightly regains her feet when he releases her, and she has indeed remembered the muffins. She'd hardly be Kyou-chan if she forgot the snacks.
"You can leave out the part about punching the vending machine.." She says, just before Tuxedo Kamen leaps off into the night. "See you later! And.. thanks!" She calls after him, before turning to walk down the sidewalk towards home, stuffing her hands in her pockets.