Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Lead me not into Temptation ❯ Chapter 8

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Hello all! I guess the last chapter was enjoyable for all the Minako addicts out there and I'm glad. I agree that her plans are approaching lunacy and Minako's story will come out, I might write that as a follow up to this one, but I'm not certain yet, as the character I identify with the most is Usagi and I can write her better than anyone else. Anyway, here we go again! Sorry about the delay in getting this chapter out. Standard disclaimers apply, I do not own Sailor Moon, however if I find a four leaf clover and make a wish then I might...



Usagi ran blindly through Juuban, trying to get away from the memory of his penetrating eyes, his eyes that haunted her. She had always loved his eyes more than any other part of him, claiming they were as deep and fathomless as the ocean. She knew before he had said it that he was the only other one who could understand and share in her pain, because he had felt pain himself. The other senshi lived in a world that seemed cotton- batted in Usagi's opinion. They had been hurt and known pain, but had they ever known torture of this magnitude. She remembered Haruka saying that Mamoru was not allowed to have hurt feelings. How she wished that was true! Her feelings were hidden so deep inside in a place where no one could find. Staring up at the dark grey sky, she felt something change in her. She was lonely, horribly so. A gust of wind blew her hair out behind her like a golden cape as she collapsed under a tree, rocking herself. Opening herself up to her deepest emotions, she allowed herself to FEEL for the first time in a long time, instead of shutting it off and suppressing the emotions. She didn't shove them far away from her as she normally did, but let herself purge the feelings from inside her. His words had affected her deeper than he'd know…not the words of understanding, for she had long known that he would understand and comfort her without judgement, the one thing the senshi couldn't offer. No, it was the fact that he did still love her and was willing to admit it, the one thing she couldn't do. "What kind of man can hang on this long? What kind of love must this be?" the wondered aloud.

"A love that you have shared before time."

Usagi looked up to see Setsuna. "What are you doing here?"

"Do you know how hard I had to hit him with my Time Staff to convince him to get out of bed and come chasing after you?" Setsuna demanded, her hands on her hips. "You are truly the most stubborn girl I have ever met, and that is saying something!"

"Are you here to yell at me?" Usagi asked her, dejected.

"Why did you run?" Setsuna asked gently, knowing full well that her running lay at the root of her problems.

"Why shouldn't I?" Usagi protested. "I've been running for so long. I'm not used to talking to people about my problems. I never have before, and the odd time that I have tried, no one's bothered to listen to me. I have little to no credibility, or I did until recently when suddenly people realized I might have more problems and thoughts then they thought."

"Your writing is so dark Princess." Setsuna sighed. "It has led me to understand more about you than words ever can. I can't believe how you hate yourself, how hateful you feel or how much you love him."

"I didn't mean to fall in love with him!" Usagi burst out. "I tried so hard to hate him and stop loving him, but I couldn't! When it all came down to it, he's just a guy, I'm just a girl and I love him so much that there are times when I think I'll burst of it. I can't let myself feel that, especially for him. I'm dead inside Setsuna, don't you understand? Feeling anything hurts me now. My heart has frozen like the coldest winter night, my soul flown away on the wings of depression, my emotions locked away. All I have are thoughts that haunt me everywhere."

Setsuna sat back on her heels. "Usagi, why couldn't you have at least told us Outers?"

"What would you have said or done?" Usagi scoffed. "Haruka and Michiru might understand sacrifice and letting people die, you might understand loneliness, but can any of you understand that I live with the ghost of Mamoru and me." Usagi smiled bitterly. "I hear his voice call me, I hear footsteps down the hall, while I try to save what's left of my heart and soul. And now there is nothing. He left me Setsuna. HE LEFT ME!" she screamed. "I could forgive him anything at all, I could forgive him cold blooded murder if that's what it took, but I can't forgive him for ignoring me, for leaving me to die!"

"I didn't leave you to die!" Mamoru's harsh voice said behind them.

Usagi whirled around to face a livid Tuxedo Kamen. "How did you find me?"

"It wasn't easy." He said grimly. "Now by god Usagi we are going to talk and you aren't going to walk away from me!"

Usagi shook her head. "I've already told you more than I ever would have thought. Be content with what you know and leave me alone."

Setsuna shook her head, sighing. "Princess, you know I'd rather poke my eyes out with an icepick than agree with Mamoru here, but this time he's right. You two need to talk, and you have to be chained in place so you don't run away."

"Setsuna I thought you had a strict non-intervention policy when it came to things like this." Usagi protested.

"In normal circumstances I do," Setsuna began. "But I am also under direct orders from your mother who's authority supersedes yours."

"So what do you have planned?" Mamoru questioned, letting his transformation go.

"Give me a few minutes to think."

Usagi began backing away. "I have to go."

Setsuna grabbed Usagi in a firm grip. "You stay put."

"Setsuna!" Usagi protested. "Let me go!" However when Usagi looked up into Setsuna's eyes she saw that the Time Guardian's patience was at an end with her princess and she was going to give no quarter.



"Shimatta!" Minako cursed "Setsuna beat me to them!"

"Good timing Setsuna." Rei muttered, then winced as Minako smacked her upside the head.

"I still think having them locked in the basement was a good idea. They reconnected."

"And she ran like a bat out of hell." Rei retorted.

"Well it works with normal people." Minako mumbled.

"And you are not normal, so how do you know what normal people do?" Rei arched an eyebrow at a subdued Goddess of Love.

Minako's eyes lit up. "I have to go find Motoki."

"Why?" Rei asked, not trusting that gleam in her eyes.

"Because I have an idea and I need my cohorts advice."

"Partner not cohort." Rei sighed. "Go, flee. Just shoo from me."

Minako was already galloping down the road like a Motoki seeking missile.

"Maybe thing will work out despite Minako." Rei commented.



Motoki glanced up from his studies, taking a much needed break from the arcade. Closing his eyes he paused from his medical studies for a moment only to be shoved off his stool. He opened his eyes to see Minako standing over him and a smile broke out on his face. "Now you are a sight for sore eyes, although I don't appreciate your approach."

Minako hmmphed at him. "Usagi used to barrel into Mamoru with all the force of a 10 ton truck."

"And look where it got them. In love yet both unable to admit it."

"Not true!" Minako protested. "Whatever you said to Mamoru did the trick, because he's not lying about his feelings anymore."

"So it's only Usagi who's in denial."

"And getting worse by the moment." Minako confirmed. "But I have an idea."

"Oh Minako," Motoki groaned. "No more ideas! Just leave them to work it out on their own!"

"We've been waiting for two years and they are no further ahead! I already told you that!" Minako snapped. "It's time for drastic measures and I am the one to carry them out. Being the incarnation of the goddess of love has given me special gifts the senshi don't know about, and one of them is the ability to conjure up a love and truth potion."

Motoki's eyes widened. "No Minako! You can't drug them into telling each other how they feel!"

"I can and I will! It's still their emotions, but without their pride standing in the way to messy things up." Minako persisted. "I am a genius!"

"You can't do this hon!"

Minako leaned forward and planted a firm kiss on his lips. "My darling," she sighed. "You have much to learn about the innerworkings of the heart. When it comes to love, I do not question nor do I doubt. Trust me!"

"Riiiiiiiight." Motoki drawled. "Some of the greatest disasters of humanity resulted in someone saying 'trust me'."

"No faith in his girlfriend! How horrible!" Minako wailed, her voice rising.

"You have spend WAY too much time around Usagi." Motoki muttered.

"You diss my friends!" Minako shrieked. "Oh how could you!?"

"Minako, people are staring." Motoki hissed.

"Let them stare! See the fallen woman that Motoki won't listen to or love!" she waved her arms in wide circles. "Oh woe is me!"

Motoki buried his face in his hands and wondered just what he had gotten himself into.



"So this is a time bubble." Usagi commented looking at the blank nothingness surrounding them. "The décor sucks."

"I'm sure Setsuna doesn't care at this point." Mamoru sighed. "Usako listen…"

"I told you not to call me that!" Usagi snapped.

"U-S-A-G-I," Mamoru taunted. "She stuck us here to work out our differences."

"Hell will freeze first." She retorted. "I have nothing to say to you."

"I have something to say to you." He began. "Come what may."

Usagi froze. "Come what may?" she repeated.

"I will love you until my dying day."

"No," Usagi shook her head. "You can't tell me that. You can't do that to me!"

"Why not? I lived with a pain and emptiness all my life. When I met you it faded, it went away back to the oblivion that created it. When we broke up I thought the nothingness would consume me, but I got over it and kept my shields down hoping to get you back."

"Well it didn't work. My emptiness is just fine and doesn't need or want you."

"You lie."

"You bastard!" she cried out. "What do you want from me?"

"When I'm with you, suddenly the world seems such a perfect place." He sighed. "I didn't want you to be beaten nearly to death. I couldn't have predicted it."

"Oh really psychic boy?" Usagi snapped. "You the one who claimed you saw the future and knew the truth, the one who says his dreams always come true? You couldn't have predicted or seen what was going to happen to me? Mamoru who had the most to gain from us being apart? Your future self? I think not." She scoffed. "Ah but the enemy and every degenerate who lives in the area gains because we are both weak. We are strong when we are together, when there was faith, hope and love. Now there is none of that."

"I love you." Mamoru said softly.

"I don't care." Usagi yanked her locket off her chest and opened it. "See the ginzuishou? See it?" she asked, at his nod she barrelled forward. "It feeds off my emotions and my heart. My love keeps it glowing bright and strong and in return it keeps me alive."

Mamoru narrowed his eyes at the faded and worn looking gem. "You finally found a way to kill yourself. You'll let all the emotions drain from your heart and then there will be nothing to support the ginzuishou or yourself."

"Precisely." Usagi nodded. "You can give it to Chibi Usa," she said. "It's all she ever really wanted out of me anyway."

"Usagi you can't do this. The ginzuishou is meant to protect you, it won't let you do this." Mamoru protested.

Usagi laughed shortly. "That is where you are wrong Mamoru." She drew in a breath. "The ginzuishou won't harm me to a point, but to use it causes certain death in most cases. I have complete mastery over it now, something I've never told anyone, and we almost symbionts." She paused. "The ginzuishou works on emotion and will. My will is stronger than the desire of the ginzuishou to keep me alive, and therefore it has no choice but to bow to my wishes."

"So you will die."

"At last." Usagi nodded. "And nothing can stop it this time. All I have to do is keep shunning feelings and love and soon I will know the peaceful oblivion I long for."

"And what about me?" he asked softly.

"What about you?" Usagi asked scornfully. "You have no place in my decision."

"You are my soul-mate, my other half. I can't live without you, and if I find out you are dead then I will just lay on your grave and die myself."

"Maybe you should have thought of all this back when you could have repaired it." Usagi retorted. "I can't do this with you again Mamoru."

"It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to love." Mamoru said gently. "Didn't you tell me that back when we first started going out?"

"I was a foolish child then." Usagi crossed her arms.

"And you are a knowledgeable woman now?" He arched an eyebrow.

"I am more than I seem." Usagi replied enigmatically.

"Or perhaps you are less." Mamoru shook his head. "You are less because we have switched roles. I am the one with the feelings and the love and you are the one who won't let herself feel a thing. Who is the hypocrite here Usako?"

"I am not yours!" Usagi stamped her foot. "Stop calling me that."

"You have been mine since the day you were born," He murmured. "And you will always be mine, like I will always be yours. I love you until the end of time. Remember our secret? Come what may?"

"It was a foolish thing." Usagi whispered, fighting tears. He was breaking through and she couldn't let him ever again.

"So you deny that there was ever anything real between us?"

"Yes." She nodded firmly. "It was all foolishness of a childish girl. Our love ended a thousand years ago."

Mamoru said nothing but drew her chin up and lowered his lips to hers. "Deny this." He murmured just before he kissed her.

Usagi forgot all her protestations and all her emptiness. The minute his lips touched hers, her soul yearned for his and her end of the bond reached out for him and found him. For a moment they were one, until Usagi pushed him away. "Don't touch me again."

"Do you deny that there is love?"

"There was nothing." She said. "Just residual effects."

"For a moment I felt your emptiness fade. I am the only one who can make you feel normal again, so why won't you let me in?"

Usagi turned her back on him, her silence speaking volumes.





Motoki groaned when he realized his break was long over. The only way he had been able to make Minako shut up was by kissing the daylights out of her very firmly. She was currently so happy about him still wanting her that she was doing a little dance as she mixed up the love and truth potion she had convinced him Usagi and Mamoru needed. Motoki had to agree, they needed all the help they could get, because as long as they had breath, Usagi in particular, this fight would never end. "I am the new goddess of love and I will succeed with these two or else I sacrifice Motoki to the gods!" Minako burst out.

Motoki groaned and wondered if he had time to make out a will.



And that is the end of that! After almost 2 days of writers block, I hope my neighbours will forgive me for pulling out the big guns and blasting my specially created writing cd's, to be used only when I have massive writers block. So with the volume at 50, in a townhouse with shaking walls and me partially deaf, I'll tell them sorry. To all those who told me the name of the short story I mentioned last chapter, thank you! And to those who emailed me and mentioned that I made a reference to the Borg last chapter, I did, I wanted to see if anyone would notice. Remember I write based on reviews so review but be kind! No flames! Next chapter - Minako and her love potion, Setsuna, Haruka and Michiru come up with a plan of their own as Usagi attacks Mamoru!

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Later!