If there had ever before been a time that she desperately did not want to wake up, she couldn't remember it. Even if there was a time, surely it hadn't been nearly as hellish as this moment right now.
It felt like literally every muscle, every bone, every blood vessel in her body hurt. It felt there was fire burning inside her in ways that should never, ever be possible. It made her want to sink back down into that black abyss and try to wait the pain out.
But now that she wanted that abyss, it was stubbornly not coming back to her. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out why...
No, wait, yes, she could. Trunks-kun... She had to know if he was all right.
Sounds were already starting to flow back to her, and it wasn't surprising at all that the first thing she heard was Duo-kun's voice. "I swear: the first Reaper I see, I'm punching it right in the face."
The only thing even vaguely surprising there was that the murmur of voices that came after his pronouncement didn't seem to be Heero-kun or Sylphiel-san. She did remember the two of them being the only ones in the room when she passed out, aside from her and Trunks-kun.
Wrestling her eyes open was harder than it should have been, but somehow she managed to succeed at that. She didn't recognize where she was, but honestly that didn't mean much of anything. In the last week, she had had varying degrees of that same feeling every morning.
The whole room was a level of neat and tidy that definitely said it wasn't the place she shared with Trunks-kun, Duo-kun, and Heero-kun. In fact, if it spoke of anyone she knew, it would be Sylphiel-san. So she hadn't dreamed the part where they had made it to the older woman's home. That was good. If anyone could take care of them right now, it would be Sylphiel-san.
Glancing off to her right, she could see a closed door separating this room from where other people were clearly still talking. To her left...
"Welcome back." Heero-kun looked pretty rough and sounded even worse than he felt. If she had to venture a guess, she would say he looked ragged. "We were really starting to worry about you, Usagi."
She offered a tired smile of reassurance, the best she could summon up at the moment. "How long have been I been out for, Heero-kun?"
"The better part of a day."
Is that all? she thought inanely to herself. It felt like so very much longer. Days at least, if not weeks.
"Trunks-kun?"
He let out a quiet sigh, and she felt her stomach drop in record time, a tight fist squeezing around her heart. Had... Had they been too late getting here?
The sigh turned into a yawn. And wow, she felt a little dumb and panicky right now. "Trunks woke up once a few hours ago then again maybe twenty or thirty minutes ago. It's kind of crazy, but it looks like he's almost completely better already."
"Saiyajin heal fast," she repeated, mostly to herself. Trunks-kun had mentioned that to her once. "That's... That's good." And it was weird, but she was already fighting to keep her eyes open again.
This time it felt... better. Perhaps 'more natural' was more accurate. She wasn't going under because the Reapers had seen fit to try to poison her and Trunks-kun. Instead it was more like she was just going to rest, to try to sleep away the remaining exhaustion and any remaining hints of the poison.
"Usagi." Heero-kun's voice dragged her back awake again, and she blinked back open eyes that she couldn't remember ever closing.
"Yeah?"
"Do you think you can stay awake long enough for Duo and Trunks to see you okay?" He sighed. She almost got the feeling--no, scratch that, because she was most definitely getting the feeling--that he was copying Duo-kun. "Trunks has been hovering ever since he woke up. Duo dragged him to the meeting out there before he lost his mind."
"Meeting?" This was news to her. She certainly hadn't heard of any meetings. They were having meetings now?
"Apparently Sylphiel's spell made some waves or something. People started showing up not too long after she finished it. Duo says most of them were people you managed to help." Wow... Now that was a pleasing turn of events. She had begged them all to fight on their side against the Reapers, but she hadn't counted on this kind of support. "Apparently, they're getting ready to take the fight to the Reapers sooner than we had anticipated. It seems we've sparked a revolution here."
"That's a good thing, right?" And she was getting sleepy again already. If she hadn't heard that Trunks-kun had fallen back asleep after the first time he woke up, she would have accused herself of being weak. "We wanted them fighting with us, didn't we?"
He nodded. "We did. We do. I'm not sure that the machine is ready. Or well, the machine is ready--Duo finished the electrical work on it the day before yesterday--but I'm not so sure on my coding."
And that didn't sound like Heero-kun. This whole thing must have thrown him for a real loop. "It'll work." She tried to push herself to a more upright position and failed. Wordlessly, Heero-kun moved her to be sitting up. "And if it doesn't, maybe the Ginzuishou..."
"I don't want to think of you using that thing again so soon." And that had come out with surprisingly vehemence for Heero-kun. "Duo and Trunks mentioned in some detail how much using it drains you. Don't you dare even think about using it, Usagi."
She blinked once then again. It was on the tip of her tongue to argue the point, but looking at the determination in Heero-kun's eyes, if she tried this battle, then it would be one that she would lose. Still, though... "If it comes down to life or death?"
He sighed. "Use it then. But only then. You've created a small army already, Usagi. To a man, they're loyal to you for giving them back what the Reapers took. I don't think you need much more than that."
Maybe not. She would have preferred to try a few more times. Maybe see if she couldn't give powers back to the people she hadn't been able to before. But even she had to admit that she wasn't in the best of shapes at the moment--far from it, in fact--and pushing herself too much right now could end up being a very bad thing.
While it wouldn't be the first time using the Ginzuishou had killed her--that time with Fiore and the flower asteroid came to mind for some reason--she didn't think any of her boys was ready for that. And frankly, she wasn't ready to lose her boys to anything, let alone something as permanent as death could be.
"Can I see Trunks-kun and Duo-kun now?" she asked, more than a hint of whine in her voice. She was tired, beyond ready to go to sleep, and she still needed to know they were all okay. She definitely believed Heero-kun when he said they were, but knowing it and knowing it were two different things. It turned out her heart was a lot less likely to take things on someone else's word than her mind was. "I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to manage to stay awake."
Heero-kun eyed her a second or so longer then nodded. He looked as weary as she felt as he pushed himself to his feet, treading on silent feet over to the door. She could hear a faint whispered conversation as he opened it a slit.
Not much after that, the door flew open wide, and Duo-kun rushed in, dropping to his knees and wrapping both arms around her before the door could even finish banging against the wall. Past him, she could see Trunks-kun coming in as well. Beyond Trunks-kun, there were quite a number of assembled people. She could see Tenchi-san, Ranma-san, Ryoga-san, Ginji-chan, and what might have been the back of Ban-san's hair.
That was all she had time to see before Trunks-kun pushed the door closed behind himself. "Welcome back, Usagi-san," he commented quietly.
"Thanks," she returned around Duo-kun's near chokehold. She wrapped shaky arms around the longhaired man, giving him a light squeeze before holding a hand out to Trunks.
By the time Trunks-kun had crossed the room to drop down next to the two of them, to her surprise, Heero-kun had also sat back down beside her, his solid presence warm against her back, keeping her steady when that didn't seem too likely at all. That was a pleasing thought, thinking of Heero-kun having her back.
She didn't even think of stopping first Trunks-kun then Duo-kun from swooping in to steal a kiss from her. They had all almost lost each other. In a way, this was very much about reassurance: that she was back, that she and Trunks-kun were okay, that no one had lost anyone else today.
With Heero-kun right here, however, maybe she should have thought of stopping this before it got too far. But he didn't seem bothered in the least.
In fact, he leaned just past her to press a brief kiss to her other two boys: on the cheek for Trunks-kun and chastely on the mouth for Duo-kun. There was a brief hesitation on his part before he offered her a kiss on her cheek as well.
So this is all of us then, came the inane thought, completely apropos to nothing. This is all four of us together. I like it. Too bad it took me and Trunks-kun nearly dying for it to happen, but still, it's good. It's really, really good.
She heard the door open and close once, and reluctantly she lifted her head from Duo-kun's shoulder to see who was in here.
Meeting Sylphiel-san's eyes when she was sitting here like she was should have been harder than it was. It should have been hard at all, but instead it was one of the easiest things she had ever done. This was her relationship, as unconventional as it was, and she was not ashamed of it. She refused to be ashamed of it.
Sylphiel-san's only reaction really, however, was to raise one eyebrow slightly, a silent question that Usagi was not going to answer. Some things weren't other people's business, after all. If Minako-chan was here, then maybe she would talk to her about this, but in the absence of her best girl friend, she would just hold this wonderful revelation in.
That single eyebrow still raised, Sylphiel-san dropped down to a knee beside them. Quickly and quietly, she took Usagi's pulse and gave her a quick check over. "You look like you're feeling a lot better, Usagi-san," she commented quietly. "I got the poisons out of you and Trunks-san--and to a lesser extent, Heero-san and Duo-san--but I want the two of you to take it easy the rest of the day."
She nodded her agreement. Taking it easy would not be difficult today. Staying awake was proving to be a good deal more difficult. "So we're all okay then?" she had to ask.
"Barely. It was this close for you and Trunks-san," she commented, holding two fingers a bare smidgen apart. "If you guys hadn't gotten here when you did, I'm not sure I could have saved you." She pushed herself to her feet, quickly heading back over to the door, where she hesitated. "I want all four of you to stay the rest of the day--at least--here. There's no need for you to try to get all the way home when most of you were clearly exhausted as it is."
She got pretty good sense that it wasn't 'most of them' in this case. No, she rather had the feeling that it was an 'all of them' situation. Heero-kun had looked exhausted when he got up to get the door earlier, and Duo-kun didn't look any better to say the least. After all, they had both also been poisoned, though thankfully it had managed to stay in lesser quantities in the two of them.
"We'll stay," Heero-kun declared, a bald pronouncement of intentions. This time she was certainly in agreement with that statement, though. They were all too tired to do enough moving to get back to their place. Maybe once they had all got some rest, but she definitely didn't want to think of moving right now.
"Good," the older woman returned. "People have said they'll be dropping off what they can spare food-wise until we're all out of here, so you don't need to worry about that. Just, all of you, get some rest. Anything else there is do deal with, we can all deal with in the morning."
As quietly as she had come in, Sylphiel-san in turn slipped out. Also without a word, Heero-kun and Trunks-kun helped her and Duo-kun maneuver back to laying down, all without them dropping the four-way embrace they were wrapped up in.
Feeling as safe and secure as she had felt since she came to be in this weird world, she fell back asleep.
31 October 2012
And here is the first of today's two chapters. Go, Team Me.
See you in the next chapter!
Apollymi