Reservations

One thing's for sure: Chiba-senpai getting met after school by girls every single day will be seriously stepping up the rumors about his love life. And probably also be creating problems in the 'overly enthusiastic non-magical girl volunteers to do the same' department.

Mamoru's at least looking much better physically than he did yesterday, and it's extremely likely that it has a lot to do with A Lot Of Sleep on Makoto's very comfortable futon and almost no nightmares, no lingering dark energy, and a thoroughly mundane day at school. He stands back to give Mako room to open her door, books held loosely over his shoulder and glasses slung over his shirt collar, then follows Mako and Ami in, trailing a little.

Immediately upon getting inside-- well, his tension wasn't really noticeable until it's suddenly gone, but at least it's gone. "I love," he says, "your plants. So much. Can I bring one over? I just have one, but I don't want to neglect it..."

Makoto... well, Mako spent the trip back to her apartment carefully avoiding the subject of a certain ex-tennis coach, which probably wasn't actually that difficult between the three of them, and if she's been slightly preoccupied, it's not so much as to be alarming. She's in the midst of taking off her shoes when Mamoru comments on her plants, and her eyebrows lift in faint momentary surprise.

Then she smiles. "Sure," she says as she steps into her house slippers. "I don't mind. I have so many already that one more would hardly make much of a difference."

Ami spent the trip in silent isolation; a book in her hands, and reading glasses on her nose. When engaged, she would gladly join the conversation, but she didn't seem to have much to offer on her own. As they reach Makoto's home, she takes the glasses from her nose and places them--along with her book--back into her bag. All of these are placed by the door, along with her shoes.

Plants? These are growing things, and certainly something she appreciates, but they fall more in the taken-for-granted category of appreciations, from Ami. Now that they've been pointed out, however, Ami looks around Makoto's home, as if seeing all of the plants for the first time. Thoughtfully, she agrees, "They are very lovely."

"Thank you!" Mamoru says cheerfully, but for him that kind of exclamation point is a slow, slight smile and a very small tilt of his head. He unslings his books and leaves them next to his shoes, then reaches up to lightly touch the leaves of one of the plants nearest the door. "It's roses. Somehow I've managed to keep them blooming..."

He glances aside to Ami, and the smile goes a little crooked. "Again, I'm sorry to put you to so much trouble. If you want to kick me out at any point, I can probably couch-surf for a bit, or ask Tsukasa-sensei if I can use another one of Virtue's safehouses."

Makoto was not kidding about one more plant not making much of a different. Practically anywhere you look in her apartment, there's some kind of green growing thing in a pot, from the tall dracaena by the door to the row of little herb pots along the windowsill in the kitchenette. A quick, pleased smile to Ami at the compliment, and then Mako starts across the apartment toward the kitchen area, making a drawn-out sound of interested upward inflection as she goes. "A potted rose? Those aren't easy to keep healthy."

Moving almost as though on autopilot, she picks up a ceramic cookie jar from the counter and sets it on the kitchen island, then reaches for the teapot, only to stop and make an amused face at Mamoru. "Who said you were causing any trouble? It's fine, really."

In the next moment, though, her smile slips a little. "...well," Mako amends, turning to pick up the teapot again. "I am worried, but it's not about anything related to you staying here."

Ami trails along behind Makoto by just a few steps. She dips her fingers in the cookie jar and pulls a cookie out for herself, then curls up on one end of the couch while Makoto makes tea. "Chiba-san," she says with a little hint of disapproval in her tone, "If Mako-chan decides having you here is too much trouble, there are four other senshi who will do what we can to make sure you are safe.

"Last I checked," Ami continues, "being a senshi didn't mean protecting people when it is *convenient*; we're all of us dedicated to defending the people of earth from evil, and right now you seem to be a lightning rod for the Generals and their ill will. Moreover, you may hold the key to finding the Princess we are searching for, and whom we have all agreed to protect. So please, for the sake of all of our sanity, dispense with promising us you will do your best not to be a burden, or making contingency plans in case we consider you one. Really, it's okay."

Mamoru turns and holds his hands up in front of him, laughing. "Yikes! Okay, okay, sorry." The laughter turns into a much more subdued smile, and he shakes his head. "I'm used to not relying on anyone. Forgive me, it's an unsettling transition."

Finally wandering in further, he picks up his books again and folds himself up on one of the cushions on the floor next to the low table. Homework, at least, is a comforting routine, and something best done as soon as possible. He does look up at Makoto, across the room in the kitchenette, and his brow furrows slightly.

"What's up, Mako-chan? What you're worried about, that is. I mean-- unless it's private."

Little by little, Makoto's expression brightens from pensive to pleased to downright impressed as she listens to Ami calmly and politely, in that way that she has, laying down the law. By the time the other girl is done, Mako is nodding firmly in agreement - Ami's said it all far better than she could, and when Mamoru capitulates, there's nothing more to be said on the matter.

She does crack a wry, lopsided smile at Mamoru's question, though. "It's not," Makoto replies. "Just... some things I've been thinking about since the other night."

She busies herself with the tea, but keeps on talking as she does. It's something to do with her hands, mostly. "Jadeite," she says, after a brief pause. "You said he thought you did something to Nephrite... because he didn't know where Nephrite was. I hadn't really noticed since there's been so much other stuff going on, but thinking back, I don't think we've seen him turn up anywhere since that night I ran him off from you, have we?"

Ami smiles at Mamoru's laughter, then smoothes out her skirt primly before putting the cookie in her mouth. During his time, Nephrite and Sailor Mercury didn't interract much, so she doesn't have a particular lot to say on the topic. Thanfully, there are cookies, and cookies are a great excuse not to talk. Briefly she glances longingly towards her bag--and presumably books--by the door, but she decides to remain strong; to remain on the couch and not be rude. For now.

Mamoru, spreading his own books out on the table shamelessly, slows in his task as Makoto explains a little. His long-fingered hands still atop the open pages of his calculus, and his face is serious. (Usagi told Ami, not long ago, that Mamoru's eyes are always sad: this may have been what she was talking about. There's something always in them that this conversation's brought to the surface. It's still subtle, but to these girls--? No, it's visible.)

"We haven't," he agrees. "We haven't seen him. And, apparently, neither have the other Shitennou. At first I was worried he might've been planning something big, but that was months ago, and surely Jadeite would've known something if it were the case."

Makoto nods slowly, distractedly minding the teapot as the water heats. "And we really don't know how long he'd been interested in you before he decided to get in your face. I can't help wondering if it could be connected to what you guys were saying earlier... about how they might've been friends of yours before."

Looking down, she lets out a sigh. "There's no way to know what he's up to until something happens, I guess. I don't even know why it's bothering me so much. It's like--"

("--like an itch on the skin, that I can't reach to scratch it," the princess of Jupiter told Mercury a lifetime ago, working her hands into rich dark soil. She'd never been afraid to get dirty; the Terran rose needed repotting, and Jupiter badly needed something to occupy her hands. "If I were there I could get him to tell me what's wrong, I know that I could. But I can't just go when my place is here."

She patted the last of the soil into place in the rose's new home and straightened up a little, leaving a dark smudge across her brow as she reached up to push stray curls back from her face and sighed. "I just...")

"...I don't like not knowing," Makoto concludes unhappily. "Especially if we don't get any of it figured out before we have to fight them again."

Ami reaches up to scratch an itch on her nose, thoughtfully, as Makoto explains how she's feeling. "I don't like it, either," she agrees softly, "which is part of why figuring out just how Chiba-san is connected to all of this is so important to me."

She glances at Mamoru, then shrugs a little before nibbling on her cookie, little mouse-nibbles. After another thoughtful moment, she admits, "I don't even know if I'm right, about them being friends of yours. It's just a theory, and not really any better than any other theory. The only thing I know for certain is that I don't know nearly enough about what happened during the Silver Millenium, and it scares me how important that incomplete history seems to be."

"It could have been," Mamoru says slowly, idly twirling his pen, "but he definitely said 'to us', not 'with us' like Jadeite. But-- Jadeite also protected me. Nephrite only didn't hurt me. But-- Nephrite's also, you know. Nephrite. Made of bombastic posturing and all the subtlety of a brick to the face."

He falls silent for a moment, looking at the pen in his once-more stilled hands, then adds, "You can't hesitate in fighting them. They'll kill you if you falter. But you can argue while you fight. You can try to appeal to them. You can make them question themselves. If they hesitate, keep going, watch them carefully, and argue harder. It's possible to fight with everything you have and hold back enough to avoid killing them."

The upperclassman glances to Ami, then, and frowns. He shakes his head. "It feels right. Other theories feel wrong. I know that's not very scientific, but what happened with Jadeite wasn't, either. I'm very sure he belongs with me."

"I don't know how to fight somebody I want to save."

The words leave Makoto in a bit of a rush, not quite blurted, a rock tossed into the center of a pond. She glances from Ami to Mamoru before fixing her attention firmly on the tea.

"I thought about this when we were dealing with Haruna-chan and Corvus, too. I mostly managed to get around it that time, but I don't think it'll be that easy with the Dark Kingdom. Just like you said, Mamoru-san, they won't leave us any room to hesitate."

Ami quietly sighs just faintly at the topic, but is too busy chewing on her cookie to offer immediate response. Eventually, though, she knows she has to offer input. So input she offers, in the quiet form of, "You disable them."

"Put them to sleep," she suggests, "knock them unconscious. Poison their chi. Anything that won't kill them. Because we can fix their injuries, but we can't fix death."

"I'm sorry, Mako-chan," Mamoru says quietly.

Once upon a time,

Between himself and the princess, he sees icy silvery-grey eyes that used to be human, that used to hold warmth, that used to hold affection. They're looking at him. And they're in a face that rarely smiled, but when it did, it was a real thing, a private thing, for him and his brothers and maybe a few others, maybe. The smile that accompanies those eyes now is nothing like that.

His own eyes are burning hot, stinging; it could be blood or sweat, and so could the wetness on his face. A raw sound escapes his throat and he pushes through; there's a flash of yellow and red and the cold eyes and the awful smile aren't an obstacle anymore, but the broken ache rattling in his chest doesn't go away, won't ever go away, not across lifetimes.

He can feel them, still. They're still there, somehow. They're not themselves. They can't be themselves. A bear of a man with chestnut hair that matches that of the girl he'd once loved, the girl he'd asked to come with him, stabs at her with his glaive, and she cries as she fights, tears born of fury and despair--

"But Ami-san is correct. Fight, fight with everything, but fight to disable. And in the meantime, pray, and keep searching for something to drive the darkness away." Mamoru's hands are gripping the pen, knuckles white.

Makoto doesn't seem much reassured, but she smiles as she pours out tea into three cups, even if the smile doesn't quite take the worry out of her eyes. "I know I don't need to tell you," she says lightly, "but my abilities don't really run to things like poisoning someone's chi."

Leaving two of the cups on the kitchen island near the cookie jar, she brings the third, and a napkin with several cookies on it, over to the coffee table and sets them down carefully in a space of the tabletop that's not occupied by calculus. "I've been used to it being simple," Mako admits quietly. "There were people who needed to be protected, and people who needed to be stopped in order to protect others, and there was a line between them that wasn't supposed to be crossed. But now it's getting blurry."

She draws in a breath as she straightens up and drifts back over toward the island and her own waiting cuppa. "It's not something that can be helped, though. I'll just have to do my best."

"Maybe," Ami thinks quietly, "Maybe we shouldn't ... think of it that way. I know this is foolishly idealistic of me, but maybe everyone is worth protecting. Not their ideals, per se, but their person. Maybe we just need to start thinking about how to save people who are stubbornly refusing to be saved."

She lets out a sigh, then shakes her head. "I know that's what Usagi would want, anyways. Maybe it's too naive, though. Trying to force everyone to agree with our ideals will only lead to us being the villains." She scrunches up her nose, then says, "Still, we can figure out ways to stop them that aren't ... permanent. I'm sure we can."

Mamoru sits quietly, holding his pen; he looks at his calculus problems, then sets the pen down and picks up the cup Makoto brought him. He holds it in both hands, a ritual in itself, then looks up. "Your best won't just be good enough, it'll be exactly what's needed. I'm sure of it," he says firmly, and that weight of belief is in his eyes, in the set of his shoulders, and it's focused on Mako along with his presence, his attention. "It's all right to worry, because I know worrying won't stop you-- but don't do it too long, or it'll only make you tired and unhappy. We'll save them, and we'll find the princess, and she'll help us all to do what's best for everyone."

He looks to Ami again, and his smile's slight, but definitely there. "I'm pretty sure just hitting them until they fall down will work. Like you said -- we can fix injuries."

Then he finally reaches and picks up a cookie, cup only in the one hand, and he lifts it up. "All I know right this second is that Usagi-chan would be boiling with jealousy if she knew I had Mako-chan cookies."

Makoto is silent for a while, holding her teacup cradled between her hands as she listens to Ami, and to Mamoru. From the intent focus with which she watches each of them in turn, it's clear that she's paying close attention.

At last she smiles - laughs a little, even, at Mamoru's quip, which was probably the point. "Usagi-chan knows she can have cookies any time she asks. I think she'll forgive you."

Mako takes a moment to sip her tea, and something in the set of her shoulders seems to relax a little. "Thanks... both of you." There may not be any answers yet, but nevertheless, she feels a little better.

Ami smiles at Makoto warmly, then seems to remember something important. "Actually, speaking of saving people whom we're fighting," she notes quietly, "Princess Runealy contacted me, and Usagi, recently. She wanted to apologise. I promised I'd give her number to you, Rei, and Minako so that she can try and do that. I also need to try and track down Tuxedo Kamen, as well; she said she wants to speak with him again."

"Runealy? I'll have to give her a call, she'd been dealing with me-- I have no idea what she needs from Tuxedo Kamen, but maybe I can help her get in touch with him." Mamoru sips his tea, unhurried and unworried, and looks a little wry. "After all-- that is why I joined Virtue. Knowing everyone can be pretty useful. Her number'd be useful, though, since up until now it's mostly been her just dropping by my place when she needed to talk to me or try and broker a deal or something."

And he denied he was anything like a prince. Yeah, okay.

He grins crookedly at Makoto -- but that's the only answer she'll get to the thanks. A wordless 'of COURSE'. Suddenly he winces and puts his tea down. "Actually-- I'll be right back, I have to make a call. I'll be just outside the door, I promise."

He stands up and does just that, moving stupidly gracefully as he navigates the small apartment and takes out his phone, then steps out and closes the door behind him. The thump of his back against the door is as much of a reassurance as anything else, and his voice is muffled, but the tone is slightly annoyed. They'll definitely know he's there!

Too hard to make out the words, but for our viewers at home, on the other side of the door the conversation's going a little like this: "Usagi, what are you doing at my place?!"