It starts the day after Haruka picks up the pen.
Because of their mission, they'll both need to attend Mugen next year and as Haruka signs over the last of the transfer forms, Michiru feels the beginnings of a tickle in her throat.
She takes out her handkerchief and delicately coughs, feeling something pass out of her mouth.
Haruka turns to her and she quickly slips the handkerchief into her pocket.
“Almost done,” the blonde says with a sheepish grin and Michiru smiles at the thought that Haruka could ever think of herself as an inconvenience.
—
When she gets home, she nearly forgets about the incident but then she unwraps her handkerchief so that it can be washed.
And therein lies a single, delicate pink petal.
She is stunned for a moment before a bitter laugh escapes her.
Of course.
It is not enough that she be burdened with the weight of protecting the galaxy as one of its reluctant but destined soldiers. Her heart must betray her as well.
—
She spends the night researching the disease and by the time she meets Haruka to begin their training, her eyes are bloodshot.
She’d heard murmurs about it in school but she’d never concerned herself with it, feeling herself invulnerable to such a quixotic affliction.
Although not much is known about the disease, it is said to stem from unrequited love with no cure except to be loved.
Michiru wants to scream.
However, there is one silver lining to this ridiculous tragedy she finds herself in. By virtue of her Senshi healing abilities, she surmises she should be safe from the fatality of the disease. After all, even the marks on her back and arm from saving Haruka are already healed, just days after.
Months pass by and Michiru can almost forget about it. Her cough is infrequent and it is more just an inconvenience, having to spit out a petal here and there.
Flowers may be growing in her lungs but her healing abilities are keeping the disease at bay.
Michiru is returning from the restroom when she suddenly feels an itch in her throat. She coughs and a flurry of pink petals fall into her hands.
Haruka has spotted her now and it is too late for Michiru to go back into the restroom and throw away the damning evidence of her foolish heart.
She can see two younger blonde girls with Haruka at her favourite racing game and she takes the briefest of moments to recompose herself. Michiru pastes on a beatific smile as she walks towards them and surreptitiously drops the petals behind her.
In the background, one of the arcade employees turns on a fan and unbeknownst to her, the petals cascade around her.
Usagi and Minako stare at her in awe.
The presence of a Daimon is the only thing on their minds when they decide to enter a love contest and Michiru belatedly curses their godforsaken mission for putting her in this poetically ironic position.
Michiru listens to Haruka extol the value of true love and while she remains outwardly calm, her throat throbs with an unforgiving intensity. She demurely thanks the crowd before following Haruka off the stage and excusing herself to the restroom.
She can no longer contain her cough and she lets the paltry petals fall pitifully to the ground.
Michiru cries for Haruka to complete their mission (cries for her to run away and survive) and it is then that Kaorinite takes advantage of her lapse and throws her over a waterfall.
She hits the water violently, water flooding into her lungs and she wonders for a moment if this will be her end, consumed by the very element whose power she wielded.
It is not her end and Michiru pulls herself up against the raging tide onto a boulder.
Her chest heaves as her body tries to expel the excess water she’d swallowed and tears spring to her eyes at the sheer force.
However, when Michiru regains her senses and her body calms down from the shock of being thrown headfirst over a waterfall, she finds herself uselessly wishing she was back underwater.
For the rock is damp not only with salt water but with blood that seeps out from a viscous clump of dark red petals.
Michiru realises that she’d been foolish to think fate would be so kind to her. It seems that even despite her healing abilities, the disease has been progressing even further.
It shouldn’t surprise her.
After all, Haruka hasn’t come to help her. Even though Michiru is the one who created the pact to complete the mission without regard for each other, she knows that if their positions were switched, she would have followed Haruka without a second’s worth of hesitation.
Michiru hurriedly washes the damning remnants of her foolish heart away in the stream of water.
Later, when Haruka kneels in front of her after having defeated Kaorinite, she can’t help the question that escapes from her lips.
“Uranus… why did you risk your life to save me?”
“She was the one who rescued you,” Haruka admits, glancing toward the figure of Sailor Moon.
It shouldn’t surprise her but it does and it hurts.
Michiru has long since grown used to the casual flirting that happens between Haruka and herself. It is remarkably easy to throw out coy words and glances at the blonde and receive them in kind, knowing that despite what everyone else thinks, they mean nothing.
She receives a dozen roses from the young boy in her art school, Masanori-kun, and Haruka plays at being jealous.
“It’s just that I can’t allow you to look at anyone else, Michiru.”
—
When she finally returns to her apartment that day, she throws the roses into the garbage.
The sight of them makes her want to get sick. She has no love for flowers, no need for a bouquet in her hands when there is one sprouting inside her lungs.
It is by mistake that Ami catches her one day in the changing room of the swimming pool.
Michiru steps out of the shower and is suddenly wracked with an urge to cough. With no handkerchief nearby, several red petals escape past her hands and fall to the ground.
Ami walks in at this moment and sharp as she is, notices the petals immediately. Micihru’s hand futilely closes into a tight fist around the remaining petals.
Ami opens her mouth to speak and Michiru pushes past her, her face steely.
“Michiru-san,” the girl begins but Michiru is already out the door.
She already knows what the girl will say. Once contracting the disease, the recommended treatment is to tell the person of your feelings in the hope that they will return your affection, or at least reject you firmly enough that the feelings and flowers die on their own.
It is foolish of her to let the disease eat away at her, unimpeded, but it is even more foolish of her to have these feelings in the first place.
And the idea of telling Haruka about her feelings…
Michiru knows Haruka. She knows her inside and out and she knows that the woman would convince herself to fall in love with Michiru even if she had no such inclination, the moment she found out about Michiru’s disease.
And the idea of that feels far worse than the ache in her chest. With her healing abilities, she is sure this will not be the death of her. At any rate, she is more likely to be killed by a Daimon in the coming days than by this disease.
She would rather live with this pain than be faced with forced devotion.
The disease seems to progress exponentially over the next coming weeks as does their mission to find the holy grail. Their identities are revealed to the Inner Senshi and Michiru avoids the knowing, pitying gaze of Ami.
There is a constant burning ache in her chest as the flowers grow into the very tissue of her lungs and newly sprouted thorns scrape constantly against her insides. She doesn’t know the extent of her healing abilities but she surmises that her lungs are undergoing a constant cycle of regeneration, scars forming only to be torn apart by fresh thorns.
Gone are the days of coughing up single, pale pink petals. They come in bloody clumps now, staining the skin of her hands and countless handkerchiefs. Now, the cloying taste of iron is a constant companion as is the burning ache in her chest.
She spits a wad of bloody petals into a new handkerchief and promptly disposes of it. She looks at the petals lying in the bottom of the wastebasket with contempt. It is easier to focus on the distaste of it all than to worry about when this disease will break through her healing abilities.
She tells Haruka that her allergies are working up.
After all that they have been through, the day finally dawns upon them. Their mission will be completed and the Talismans will be found at the cost of people’s lives.
The air is heavy around them after Eudial’s voicemail and seeing the self-loathing so apparent in Haruka’s eyes, Michiru gives herself this one moment of weakness.
Her eyes are glassy at the effort required to restrain her coughs, but she doesn’t dare cough.
She takes hold of Haruka’s hand.
“Haruka. It’s alright…”
“I like your hands.”
—
When she goes to change, she is faced with the most violent of coughing spasms yet, falling to her knees.
She hacks and rasps and feels as if her throat is on fire. Her hands instinctively grasp at her throat, as if to rip it open so that she could take the offending object out.
Her efforts are rewarded with a single, fully formed rose that falls out of her mouth.
Blood drips from the scarlet rose and stains her hands.
Michiru dies and then Haruka follows.
A miracle occurs in the form of the young, blonde girl they’d dismissed and the first thing Michiru notices upon her awakening is the absence of any pain. There is no itch in her throat, no burn, no anything and she exhales in awe at the realisation of just how much pain she had grown accustomed to carrying.
She had died and paid the price, and now she is free.
When they return home, there is much to do.
Despite their resurrections via Sailor Moon’s powers, there is still the matter of the numerous bullets that are embedded in both of their bodies. They tend to each others’ wounds tenderly in heavy silence, weighed down by the events of the day.
If dying for someone wasn’t enough of a confession, what follows next undeniably is.
“Michiru,“ Haruka says, and there is so much emotion in her voice, so much anguish and affection twisting in her eyes, that Michiru wonders how she could have been so blind this whole time.