Disclaimers

Category: Sailor Moon
Pairing: Michiru/Haruka
Copyright: "Sailor Moon" is copyrighted by DiC, Toei, Kodansha, and Naoko Takeuchi. The characters of Sailor Moon are used here without permission - for entertainment, not for profit.
The story and all its original characters are property of the author.
Fiction Rating: T
Author's Note: -chan, -kun, -san, -sensei are titles.

San - neutral, used in most situations
Kun - informal, used for boys and men younger than oneself
Chan - informal, used for young children and very close friends or family members
Sensei - used for teachers, doctors, people with a higher education

Author's E-Mail: kinkaze @ hotmail.com

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Mail

by Kin-Kaze

PART 1

Mail. Tenoh Haruka - fan mail, Tenoh Haruka - bank statement, Tenoh Hakaru - Hakaru? What kind of a name… ? Dozy sponsors. Meioh Setsuna - something official looking… Chemotech labs, hmm, advertising, advertising, and… Why do they still send that here? For a while I look blankly at the fat plastic sleeved 'Friends of the Orchestra' periodical, claiming a place on my coffee table. A weedy looking tuxedo-clad man grinning out from the cover. If I called to unsubscribe they'd only ask me for the current address of the subscriber Ms. Kaioh Michiru, and I haven't known that for three years now. I'll just remove the cover, just penetrate the plastic with my thumbs, pull until that neatly printed white label tears in two so that I can ball it up and throw away any evidence of it. I pick up the glossy pages, the eternally noxious simpering grin of the cover musician suddenly infuriating. And it is thrown down again knocked open on the table's edge. But that's not what it looks like… Crawling down to its level, unable to touch the charged text, I inspect it as a child will look over a dead butterfly.

It looks like the up and coming pianist will have his moment of glory after all. Photos portraying the black background of night, appearing to have been taken at some elitist launch, the cover guy displays his same self-satisfied expression as he stands beside her. Dressed in impeccable black, her arm grips the coveted violin. While his look is directed at the camera, her blue gaze looks beyond it. Her hair has grown, reaching further than her shoulders. Future concerts featuring a duet with celebrated violinist Kaioh Michiru set to be a success! Well of course. I am on my hands and knees watching this bizarre update, my heart pounding unreasonably. I am anxious. Not because there is some duet partner ready and able. Not because she is successful enough that I am surely no more than a far off memory. It's because an innocuous picture in a monotonous magazine can make me feel so much. She still gets to me.

It's not so hard as it once was. When it happened. Was happening. There was a letter in the mail then too. Funny thing, mail.

x
Flash back
x

"Haruka-papa!" The death grip on my legs was now practiced enough that it no longer posed a threat to my balance.

"Hime chan." I ruffled the head of hair pushed into my stomach."Good day at school?" I picked out the letters addressed to Michiru and I.

"Mmmhmm. We had a field trip to the museum, and Yuki chan thought the dinosaurs on display were actually real, but stuffed like toys…"

"Oh right! I almost forgot about your trip! Did you go through the Auto motor section..?"

"Yeah…your picture's in there…" She was rolling her eyes, I was only half listening. A colored envelope with adult handwriting addressed itself to Hotaru.

"Really… ?"

"Uh huh." Her pause caught my attention."Anything for me?"

"Actually, as it happens. Yes." I presented the letter to two excited hands.

"Hey cool!"

"And what's so 'cool' this evening?" Michiru stepped into the room still towel drying her hair, fresh from the shower.

"Michiru-mama, check it out!" The short fingers eagerly and clumsily tore at the opening, dashing towards her mother, who lay a hand on the tense shoulder, watching for the great unveiling.

"An invitation?"

"I… no… It's from… Tomoe Sou-i-chi… It's from my dad! Wow."

"That's nice. What does he have to say?" The scent of shampoo was engaging as Michiru disentangled herself from the excitement to kiss me 'hello.'

"Dear Hotaru. I hope you are well and trying hard at your studies. I'm sure you are." She paused to beam."I am actually! I am doing well. I have a pharmaceutical outlet that is running steadily. You would like it. We get to help people feel better everyday! Ha! Good job!" Again the girl's personal addition to the monologue. It made me smile, she was so much more confident these days."In fact you will hopefully be able to decide for yourself. I have a fairly big house with a brand new room built in and painted lilac. There is a large garden with white roses where doves visit in the mornings. I have everything I could ask for except my Firefly... Soon I will make be contacting Tenoh Haruka and Kaioh Michiru… It's time you were home, with me."

Michiru's grip on my arm told me everything she feared. I was stunned. We both stared at the little girl looking confusedly at the envelope as though she were missing some line that would make it all make sense. Make it all easy.

"What does… ?" She looked up; we must have shown the tension in our faces, as she seemed to recoil, unable to complete her question.

x

But these days I wasn't doing badly by any stretch of the imagination. The climb from Formula 2 to the F1 Renault team only to be quickly poached by McLaren had happened faster than I could have hoped for. Over the last few months as a collective the team had strengthened, more reliable structures, faster pit stops, not to mention Japan's finest talent with enviable handling in the wet and a solid input into design from fire suit to chassis. I smirk inadvertently. It was such that the upcoming season was highly anticipated with the promise of a renewed rivalry with Ferrari, and a solid competitor for Schumacher's title. The sponsors were loving it, the 'pretty boy' of racing bringing in a new league of interest and thus more money to the sport. Yeah, it really was going well, but this downtime off-season wasn't so easy. Of course I need it, I'd suffer a personal 'burnout' without a break from the track, but the silence of this place… it just seems to echo lost voices whenever I am left without Setsuna's company. And I am endlessly thankful for that last remaining housemate.

x

"-uka. Haruka!"

"Mmmm."

"What the hell?" Her voice was penetrative, garnet eyes blazing angrily, staring over me.

"… don't shout…" I groaned

"I damn well will shout! I can stand the late nights, the vacant expression, the random stream of women that pass through my house most nights… but not this. Not this drinking more and eating less. I know you think you're strong." Her voice softened at this point. At the time it seemed far to soon to have my own reality thrown in my face. "But you're body isn't strong enough to sustain this kind of poisoning… it is only weaker everyday… What about me? Do you know what I must go through without this sort of waste? The numbers of lives I must watch as they pass and draw to completion? Hotaru's gone to her father. Michiru… Yes Michiru," She repeated this to my pained expression"has left. Don't make me the one to return to a day when plain shouting won't bring you back." Tears. And she never cried."You're a fighter Haruka. You know that. Undoubtedly this is the worse fight you have faced. Don't believe I thought anything less of your relationship for what it was. Male, Female, whatever it was stronger than most I have known… I never predicted that you two…" She trailed off. I couldn't bear it. No, neither had I.

After so much time fighting. To be myself and successful, then for a destiny I couldn't truly be convinced of, fighting myself to allow love. I thought everything was perfect. Our house, careers, Hotaru, Setsuna for back up, babysitting and sanity. And Michiru. Mostly Michiru, it was all I could believe in. I had laughed in the face of the world, that it could throw it's worse, but nothing could destroy me. Not knowing she was there. I had wanted all those foolish things for us. To interrogate Setsuna over her dates. To see Hotaru graduate, threaten any boy who hung around too long. To keep her to me. Phone from bed in the morning with the pretence of illness. To forget work until the next day and never leave our room until the light of that day found us. And to give her a ring, with the option to consider it as whatever she deemed suitable. If it were to mean a full engagement, if it were to mean that she would keep it with her to match mine. I wouldn't care; in my mind we were more than married.

But ours was a stolen happiness. A family not related, child not truly ours, no legally secure male-female binding. So when Michiru demanded that I fight for that, resist legally, keep our daughter with every power we had, I knew I could not. As much as Michiru seemed Hotaru's primary mother figure, I was not her Father. She had a father, a good man, perhaps selfish. But what does love make us if not selfish? He loved our daughter, and we didn't have a leg to stand on and fight his legal rights as a biological parent. Michiru was livid, destroyed. Though not in front of Hotaru, every night since that letter arrived and until the last night I saw her, she cried into her pillow. Of course she would. Her daughter was being taken from her, and I didn't have the heart to try and fight it. I wasn't the father Hotaru deserved nor the husband Michiru must have needed. I could fool all the world, be stronger, faster, harder than any man, but in the end it was no use. And seeing Hotaru's face, I knew my last duty, as any sort of father figure was to relieve her of the possibility of a court case and the strain of outwardly feuding guardians. Her fate was her decision. Our lives to be determined by an eight year old's whim.

But I think she understood it all a bit. She knew her dad loved her, and was on his own, she his last surviving relation. My hime-chan had her own duty to her father and no reason beyond our selfish love, beyond our breaking hearts that she would never see, to make her stay. So, on an overcast Tokyo morning, she left. Her pink backpack bobbing on tiny shoulders towards the departure gates, tear-filled eyes glancing back to the broken trio of her second-hand family. I'm sorry that it must have been the last she remembered of us. That she won't find us together like that again. I'm sorry. Forgive me.

x

But this isn't a time to reminisce. The function tonight is pending. Akiko will be arriving soon as my charming date, and I still have to shower and change in order to be similarly charming. It's not a major, just an aren't we proud of our Japanese contenders in the international motor sports arena type function. As such Takuma Sato is expected to be in attendance as well as local members of F1 crews. Should be good to catch up with the guys. And see Akiko. Three months has been the longest sustained relationship since Michiru. It's been good, we have fun, I'm there for her fashion show opening nights, she's there for my functions. The press had again lapped that up, Top designer tames toy boy racer and the rest of it. I was half of a powerful couple again, and seemed right. Setsuna even seemed to warm to her albeit slowly. But I would have to agree, that somewhere in the gaze of those brown eyes was certainly a taming element, no doubt useful for potential back stage catastrophes. An artist again. Huh.

Not that our first encounter was so sweet as it had been with Michiru. Just as that aqua haired, fifteen year old girl had found me at the peak of my game, Akiko had found me at a seriously low point. In the alcohol tainted, smoke infused scenario of another gay bar, that glance of hers had attracted my interest quickly, which was kind of funny in retrospect with the knowledge that she was in attendance with some of her favorite models. The details are unsurprisingly hazy, but just as I had promised not to, I ended up in the charming position of kneeling drunkenly in front of her, in a sordid washroom cubicle. The air a fowl acrid atmosphere, thumping music still knocking mutely in the recesses of my brain. Just as I had never planned, I completely broke down afterwards. That I was still doing this, that I couldn't handle it and knew it, even the alcohol didn't hold back the tears. So I crumpled, expecting the sound of steps, a swinging shut of the door to signal her retreat from the bizarre situation. But it never came. After straightening her skirt, she knelt down to my level, forcing me to meet her eyes with my own, reddened and confused.

"What's her name?" I will always remember her saying that. Somehow she knew it already, she could handle the chaos of Tenoh Haruka, and that was admirable in itself.

Sometimes those catwalk debuts were less than comfortable when I recognized I knew some of the models more intimately than I could remember. But Akiko was never fazed by this. She was powerful professional … and experienced, and that was certainly an attractive quality. Knowing that I could be discarded, or she, and the other would be easily left standing with a life to return to. We tend not to interfere in each other's everyday lives, saving time for more… exciting encounters. In that way it sometimes seemed more like an affair than a relationship, but it worked and I was yet to be bored. Yet to be left without a keen anticipation of our next meeting.

I pick out a white sports jacket she had designed for me in particular, it is concealing without being bulky, tailored to the point where it can still be termed unisex. In payment I was coerced into modeling it for a few publicity shots. They certainly upped sales and spawned several articles on the something or other couple in women's magazines, but after the consequent harassment meeting me on the paddock from my ever supportive team mates… I politely ducked out of any future 'posing for the agency.' She likes the black and white prints, some of which became full-page advertisements and posters around town. Which is great for her, however the phrase 'The Tenoh Blazer from Kageki House of Design- style in the extreme' still makes me cringe. Tenoh Blazer? Seriously. In any case it is pulled on in time for the lightly determined knock on the door.

***

Index | Part 2