"Survivor Guilt" by Devin de Gruyl (The I-can't-think-of-anything-cute-this-time Kid) --- There were, Lita decided, certain advantages to living on one's own. Like right now, for instance. Had an older person been sharing this apartment with her, she would almost certainly have been banned from using the kicthen utensils, especially the knives. (, she often wondered. ) As it was, however, Lita had total freedom to make whatever she desired, *however* she desired, in this kitchen. It gave her an odd sense of empowerment, of control over her environment. Lord knew, she could use that sort of feeling right around now. It seemed odd that someone, *anyone*, would be preparing for the biggest battle of their lives this way. Perhaps by rigorous training sessions, or by mentally psyching themselves up... or even, pessimistically, taking the time to put all their worldy affairs in order, just in case. But... cooking a meal? Never. Yet that was precisely what Lita was doing, and why she was doing it. She stood alone in her kitchen, chopping carrots for her "world-famous" curry - she laughed ruefully - and humming a little song to herself (the theme to an old American TV show, she believed - something about how a single woman "might just make it after all" or something like that). The stylized, almost ritualistic motions of food preparation were Lita's chosen form of relaxation, of meditation. Even if she herself would never eat as much as she was making - indeed, the curry she was preparing was enough for a family of four - the simple action of making it allowed Lita to relax her mind, to focus on the task at hand, rather than the looming darkness she could see before her. It wouldn't be long before she, as well as her still-new friends, would be standing on a piece of some godforsaken Arctic wasteland, fighting what was perhaps the greatest evil this world had ever known. They were going to battle Queen Beryl and her minions on their own turf... and Lita had no illusions about what could happen. It was entirely possible, even likely, that one or more of her friends would not make it through this one alive - and that included Lita herself. A knock at the door suddenly grabbed her attention, breaking her concentration... and causing her to miss a carrot with the knife, slicing her finger open. "Damn!" Lita yelped, immediately sticking her cut finger in her mouth. "Sonofab... OWWWW!!!" Whoever was at her door knocked again. "Yeah, yeah, I hear ya!" Lita called, running to the bathroom for a Band-Aid. "Keep your pants on; I'll be right there!" A minute later, after the knocking had grown somewhat more insistent, Lita finally got to the door, and looked through the peephole to see who had caused her to slip like that... "...Ames?" She quickly unlocked the door to let her friend in. "Ami! Hi! Come on in... what brings you all the way out here?" Ami stepped into the apartment, with a smile on her face but uncertainity in her eyes. "Well, Serena and I were both worried when you didn't show up at school today... I thought I'd see if you were OK; Serena would've come too, but she said there was something she needed to take care of at home, before... well, before." She happened to notice the pink bandage covering the tip of Lita's finger. "...ARE you all right?" "Huh? Oh, this," Lita said with a little dismissive laugh. "It's nothing - my finger just suddenly decided it wanted to be a carrot, is all." "A... carrot?" Ami looked confused for a moment, but grinned when the realization hit her. "Oh, I see, you were cooking dinner for yourself, weren't you?" "Well... not dinner as *such*, but... yeah, I guess I was. ...Hey, care to join me, as long as you're here? I made way too much for just myself, and... well, quite frankly, I could use the company." Ami sniffed the air. "I smell curry." She smiled. "For anyone to turn down an offer of the famous Kino curry, they'd have to be clinically dead - and I was still alive, last I checked!" Lita laughed. "Flattery, Ames, will get you *everywhere!*" --- "It's amazing, isn't it?" Ami looked up from her plate. "What's amazing, Lita?" "Oh, just thinking out loud..." Lita, who had long ago polished off her serving, got up and crossed over to the window, her expression thoughtful. "I just realized... six months ago, when I first got here, I didn't have any friends at all, y'know? Between getting booted from one school after another, and the fact that I kept getting into fights... I don't think anybody wanted anything to do with me. I mean, it's not like it's hard to understand *why*, but..." She sighed. "Funny how things can change just like that, isn't it? I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have *real* friends... but between you, Serena, Rei, and now Mina... now, I can't imagine a life without all of you." "I know exactly how you feel," Ami nodded sagely. "It was the same way with me, when *I* first came here. Everyone thought, since I was so quiet, thatI was going to be a real snob... one of those 'She thinks she's too good for the rest of us' things, right?" "I can't *imagine* that," Lita said. "You're too sweet to be stuck-up." "That's what Serena thought, too. She was really the first person to ever stick up for me, here or anywhere else. I'll never forget that, if I live to be a hundred." "Tell me about it," Lita agreed, remembering her own first meeting with Serena. "It's like she hears all the hearsay and rumors about a person, then completely ignores it all, and tries to get to the real *person* behind all the gossip. That's... really amazing, how she can do that - I know I couldn't." "I'm not sure I could, either," Ami replied. "Her heart's bigger than her whole body is." Maybe it was the sudden shadow that had fallen over their conversation, but Lita just couldn't resist. "Well... there's a *lot* of things bigger than that..." Ami laughed. "Yes, that's true." "Hey, Ames," Lita suddenly said, hoping to change the subject a bit, "why *did* you come here? Really?" "I was worried about you, and..." "I'm sure you were... but that wasn't the only reason, was it?" Ami's expression suddenly went blank. "Um... er, I... I wanted to discuss some strategy with you. I'd been doing some research, and I think I can predict what Queen Beryl is going to throw at us tonight..." Lita could not help but smile. "Ames?" she teased. "...What?" "Your eyes are turning brown." "They are?" Ami frowned and got up, intently scanning the walls for a mirror. "No, no, no," Lita laughed. "That's just an expression! It means you're full of" -- she caught herself in time -- "It means I don't believe you." "..." "You didn't come here to talk about tonight... in fact, you don't even want to *think* about it, do you?" Ami said nothing, but her eyes told Lita she'd just hit the bullseye. "You're scared, aren't you." It was a statement, not a question. "...Scared? Me? No! I'm not!" "Ames... Ami..." Lita came over to her friend and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I'm your friend, remember? If you just admit it, you'll feel a whole lot better... and there's no shame in admitting you're scared. Not now, not over something like this." Ami looked at Lita, her eyes glistening with the reflected light in the room. "That... that's easy for *you* to say... you're not scared of *anything*..." Lita had thought she was prepared for just about any response. That wasn't one of them. "*What?*" "Ever since I've known you, I've never seen you scared - not about a single thing," Ami continued. "I don't think you even *know* what fear is..." Lita suddenly drew back as if she'd been slapped. Certainly, she knew Ami would never intentionally hurt her... but she could feel those words pierce her heart nonetheless. "...that's... not true..." "Oh, isn't it?" Ami was unable to keep a faint accusatory tone from her voice, despite her best efforts. "When have you *ever* been scared of something? ANYthing?" Lita sighed. "If you really want to know... OK, I'll tell you." Comprehension suddenly appeared in Ami's face, as she realized what she'd just done. "Lita, no... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." "No, it's all right. I *want* to tell you... but you have to promise, what I'm about to say is NOT to leave this apartment. If it does, I'll kill you. I mean it." Ami nodded. "I understand." "All right..." Lita took a deep breath. "...You know, of course, that I... lost... my parents in a plane crash just about two years ago, right?" "Yes... I remember you telling us that. I'm so sorry..." "No, don't be - I've had plenty of time to get over it." (Which wasn't exactly true, of course, but Lita wanted to reassure Ami.) "But, you see... there's something about that I've never told anyone else." Ami looked intrigued now. "What?" Lita took another breath, this one far less steady than the one before. "What nobody else but me knows about my parents' death... is that, had things gone according to plan... "...*I* would have been on that plane too..." --- Years ago, a much younger Lita Kino was a far cry from the independent and easygoing girl her friends knew her to be today. She was tomboyish, willful, and to put not so fine a point on it, shamelessly destructive. Even at this early stage, she had developed something of a "rep" for being a troublemaker at school. She started fights with alarming regularity, often with boys much larger than her (and she was already quite big for a girl her age). No one ever quite understood why; perhaps Lita felt a need to constantly prove her worth in a predominantly male-oriented environment. Whatever the reason, her teachers and principals simply did not know what to do with her. The other students, as children can often be, were rather cruel to her, tagging her with nicknames like "Denise the Menace" - for, like the comic-strip character of a similar name, she was always in trouble. This, naturally, only made Lita an even angrier person than she already was. Even at home, Lita was a hell-raiser. Her rather bewildered parents were at a total loss for what to do to get her to settle down. They tried everything; enrolling her in martial-arts classes, lessons in the piano, in swimming, anything at all that they felt could channel her anger and pent-up frustrations into something more positive. At one point, Lita's mother even gave her some instruction on how to prepare meals. ("Matter of fact," the modern-day Lita told Ami, "that's where I got my love for cooking - Mom taught me just about everything she knew. She always found it very relaxing, very soothing to the nerves... and, you know, she was exactly right.") However, nothing seemed to work. No matter what was tried, somebody or something would eventually rub her the wrong way - and Lita would revert right back to her old instincts, putting her right back on the proverbial Square One. Eventually, it got so bad that the school system told the Kinos, basically, that their daughter was simply too much for them to handle. "About the best thing we can think of," they said, "is to recommend that you find some other means of giving her a proper education - we can't do that here." This was a crippling blow. In Japan, where education is all-important, especially for females, being told that Lita was, essentially, "unteachable" was tantamount to recieving a death sentence. And given what generally happened to Japanese women who did not recieve an education... how they were forced to earn their living... suffice to say, Lita's future didn't look very bright. "But I got very lucky," said the Lita of today. "Dad was an expert in what they call 'lateral thinking'. The way he saw it, if I didn't have a future in Japan... there was always emigration!" He had heard of a (then) new special-educational program being tested in the United States. It was called the "Severe Behavioral Handicaps" program, and it was geared towards giving students who, like Lita, were prone to chronic misbehavior, a chance at not only proper schooling, but for their particular behavioral problems to be identified and - it was hoped - corrected. The program had seen a rather large success rate in its first five years of existence; a great many of its "graduates" had gone on to higher education, while most others were generally finished with the program inside of two school years. When word of this reached the Kino household, Lita's parents were ecstatic at the chances for their daughter to finally break out of this mold. Lita herself, although naturally not thrilled at the prospect of leaving her home country, understood the reasons why it would have to happen, and that once she was out of this program, she would return home as soon as was possible. Calls were made, old favors phoned in, arrangements drawn up, and finally, everything was set for Lita's family to make the move that summer. It never happened that way. About two weeks before the flight, Lita suddenly began complaining of severe earaches. No matter what pain relievers or other remedies her parents tried, the pain simply would not go away. The last straw came when Lita, packing one of the larger boxes in preparation for the move, suddenly lost her equilibrium and collapsed, spilling clothes and trinkets all over on her way down. She was rushed to the hospital, where a doctor gave them the bad news: Lita had developed a middle-ear infection, commonly called "swimmer's ear," probably from her aborted swimming lessons. What it amounted to was a tiny bit of water trapped in her ear canal, with no place to go; it was not only excruciatingly painful, but it played havoc with her sense of balance. Fortunately, it was not serious at all - with proper care, she would be over it in less than a month - but the cure came with one very serious caveat. Under no circumstances was Lita to get in an airplane until the infection had gone away. "But we're moving to America next week - and it's too late to change our travel plans!" her parents protested. "Then you'll have to go *without* her for now," the doctor explained. "I'm sorry, I don't like it any more than you do - but she simply can't fly in this condition, the cabin pressure'd be too much for her to handle." With this rather sizable monkey wrench thrown into the works, some hasty decision-making was made. Since Lita obviously couldn't travel with them, her parents would go on ahead on their own, while Lita stayed with a friend of the family in Tokyo, waiting for her infection to clear up. When the doctors had given her the OK to travel, she would hop on the next connection flight out of Tokyo, to eventually join her parents in the States. Lita was, naturally, disappointed. She'd wanted to see America. But, she understood the reason why she wasn't going along, and accepted her temporary relocation to Tokyo without so much as a word of protest. They dropped her off outside the apartment building where she would be staying. With a few "See you next month" goodbyes, Lita watched as her parents got back in their car, and watched them drive away until she could no longer see the car in the distance. It would be the last time she ever saw them... --- "My aunt got me out of bed very early the next morning - about 4 AM or so," Lita continued. Her voice was starting to quiver, just a little. "She didn't say anything at first; she just took me in her arms and started crying, saying things like 'Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry...' "I asked her what she was talking about. She... she told me that the plane my parents were in had... developed engine problems... and crashed, just after takeoff." Her voice caught; she took another deep, unsteady breath. "The... the rescue workers... they did what they could to save as many passengers and crew as possible... but m-my mom and dad... they were..." She broke off, the emotion of the memory overwhelming her for the moment. She felt a tear roll down her cheek, and she angrily wiped it away. It immediately came back, with reinforcements from the other eye. "Damn." "Lita..." Ami wanted to embrace her friend, but she knew that Lita would only shrug off any such attempt to make her feel better. She settled for simply taking her hand in both of hers. "I - I never knew..." "An ear infection." Lita's voice was barely a whisper. "A stupid... little... ear infection. And if it wasn't for that... I wouldn't be here today. I would've died on that plane, with my parents." She faced Ami, her eyes still literally swimming in tears that remained stubbornly unshed. "Sometimes... sometimes, even now, I'll wake up in the middle of the night... I'll see their faces - they're floating in front of me, and sort of motioning me to come with them to Heaven, or oblivion, or wherever you believe dead people go... and - and I'll jump out of bed, screaming..." "Survivor guilt," Ami muttered. "Wha...?" "It's something I read about once, in one of my mom's medical journals... it's when somebody who survives, or avoids entirely, a situation where one or more of their loved ones are killed... they just... they feel as if they should have died too - or sometimes, even believe they're somehow *responsible* for what happened." Lita chuckled softly, to herself. "Y'know, Dad would have called that 'shrinkologist mumbo-jumbo'... but then, now that you mention it... yeah, I think you may have something there. I mean, I just can't get over thinking that, if I just hadn't gotten sick..." "If you hadn't gotten sick," Ami said gently, "who's to say what would have happened? Maybe the plane still would have crashed, maybe not." "Yeah... yeah... I know. 'The future isn't set in stone,' and all that junk - but still, knowing that sure as hell don't make it any easier." She let out a long, deep sigh, and once again composed herself. "...But anyway... at least now you understand that I do indeed know what being scared is all about." Ami nodded. "That would do it for *anyone*, I don't care who..." "And what about you? ...Are you gonna be OK?" "I... I think so," Ami said after a moment's thought. "I guess... I guess I am a little bit... uneasy... but I think I can handle it." "You sure?" "Actually... no, I'm not *absolutely* sure... I won't be, until we get this job done." "Hey, c'mere," Lita said, pulling her friend into a tight hug. "Thanks for listening to my story, Ames... guess I just needed somebody to tell all that to... to just listen while I got it all off my chest." "No, thank *you*, Lita," Ami said, returning the embrace. "I don't feel so bad about being scared, not now." "Hey, if there's ever anything you want to talk about... my door's always open for you." "Ditto for you." They remained in the hug for almost a full minute... Yin and Yang, the strongest and the weakest, supporting and protecting one another. Finally, Lita glanced at the clock on the wall. She sighed deeply. "Well... this is it... time to go." Ami nodded. "Ready?" "As I'll ever be - you?" "I... guess so." Lita decided to leave the dishes until she got back - she resolved - then, together with Ami, headed out the door. Their conversation could still be heard echoing back down the hall as they exited the building: "Lita? Just one question..." "What's up?" "That expression... 'your eyes are turning brown'... what *exactly* does that mean?" "Uhm... er, why don't we save that for another time..." FINIS. Author's Notes: This "quickie" story - I wrote it inside of three hours, from blank page to finished product - has an interesting history. It started out as one element of a series of stories I had planned to do. It would have shown how each of the girls was preparing themselves for that infamous final battle against Queen Beryl at the North Pole, each knowing full well that they might not live to tell the tale. Over time, however, I sort of lost sight of the two stories I had planned for Mina and Rei, and instead combined the threads I had planned for Lita and Ami into one story, thinking those two showed the most promise. That idea lay dormant in the back of my mind for almost two full years. Finally, one day on IRC, I got into a discussion about character relationships. I won't go into the details, but to make a long story short, the person I was talking to was convinced that Ami and Rei would probably have a tight friendship. I disagreed, saying instead that it was Lita/Makoto who would probably interact best with Ami. This discussion went back and forth for a while, and I took it as a personal challenge to write a story that proved my side of the "argument". I found the latent story idea lurking in the back of my mind, polished it up a bit, and opened a text editor and began to type. I got very lucky - this story had been gestating for so long that it practically wrote itself. I do have to admit, however, that I am indebted to several other, older, fanfics in coming up with this one. For instance, Ken Wolfe wrote an outstanding scene between Ami and Makoto in his fic "Frozen Time" that I loved so much, I tried to emulate the feel of it in this story. Also, one specific line - the "Your eyes are turning brown" line - was borrowed from the Chris Davies series "Serena and Luna: The New Adventures of Sailor Moon". (Unfortunately, I cannot now remember which chapter of that story it was used in.) I mention this here, so nobody will accuse me of "stealing" another's ideas. That is certainly not the case. The dub names are used in this fic. I make no apologies for that, and the SM purists can flame me from now till Doomsday for it. I've been around this track so many times now, it doesn't bother me (much) anymore. For some indescribable, unfathomable reason, I just felt more... *right*... to have this happen to "Lita" instead of "Makoto". Don't ask me why. It's author's perogative as to which set of names to use, and when in doubt, I *always* go with my gut feelings. One of these days, I'll explain why I refuse to use "Amy" for Ami. It's a complicated story, and one I don't feel like explaining right now... 8^) There's more to come soon. Stay tuned... Sailor Moon is TM and Copyright (C) 1992 Naoko Takeuchi / Kodansha / Toei Animation / Bandai. English Language Adaptation is Copyright (C) 1997 DIC Productions, L.P., a division of the Walt Disney Corporation. Any other trademarks used herein are Copyright (C) their respective owners. All rights reserved. No claim of ownership, expressed or implied, is made in the use of these trademarked names, characters, or likenesses. This story itself, however, is my own creation. - Devin de Gruyl January 1999