Chapter 6: Fate, Fortune, and Friendship
MarshAngel
watsonma@hotmail.com
http://www.crosswinds.net/~marshangel/angelmoon.htm

I don't do disclaimers anymore because 1.) I'm broke 2.) No one would dare sue me 3.) That 
would be a waste of energy.


It made me smile inside how well we worked together in the kitchen. She, of course, 
gave the greater responsibility of the preparation of the meal to me, something I knew I should 
be grateful for. I think it was the fact that she tried to use a rather enormous knife to murder a 
poor carrot. After we'd settled the issue of knives, our conversation developed further, mostly 
to provide me with as much information as possible about her.

"So, tell me about your mother," I all but demanded right after I made sure she wasn't 
going to lose any fingers to the knife she was using to chop vegetables into smaller pieces for a 
salad. I was busy working on a sauce for our pasta.

"My mother? Why my mother?" She was confused by my random question I supposed, 
as there was no preemptory discussion of her family all evening.

"You mentioned her earlier today, I'm just curious."

"Curiosity killed the human trying to find out why the cat died," she replied.

"What!"

"Never mind," she muttered.  "Well anyway, I suppose you saw the pictures of her at 
my place?"

"I did?" I questioned surprised. There had been quite a few people but none resembling 
a mother.

"If you saw my pictures, then you did. I'm not surprised you didn't recognize any of 
them as my mother. She was the perfect and beautiful blonde on the boat.

"That's your mother!" I was stunned. I remembered the picture easily. It was a rather 
posed black and white image of a young blonde woman on the stern of a boat, relaxing and 
laughing. She looked seductive and exotic, not unlike Serena had on our first date.

"I get that a lot," Usagi said. No one will believe that a woman who looks like that 
actually gave birth. She likes to go out and pretend she's my sister, and embarrassingly enough, 
people believe her. She is a rather unusual mother to say the least."

"Surely she doesn't look like that now? That was an old picture right?" She seemed 
amused by my questions.

"No. That picture is only about five years old. My father's hobby is photography and 
my mother is his muse. We were on a vacation of sorts, when he took that one. I liked it a lot 
so I kept it. 

"When I was younger I wanted to be just like her. She had this way about her that was 
just so charming, seductive I suppose; men would literally fall over themselves to do whatever 
she wanted. She adored the attention. Oddly enough my father isn't the jealous type so he 
never paid too much attention to her ways. I think somehow, he was confident in the fact that 
she loved him and I think she did, though not nearly as much as he loved her. 

I never understood how she and my father ever got together.  They're such different 
people. He was so quiet and unassuming and she's so flirtatious and lively.

"When I was a child she used to treat me as though I were some kind of doll she would 
play dress up with and all her friends found it quite amusing. I think I even liked it for a little 
while, the attention anyway. I was always on display, dressed up like a Dresden china doll.

"The older I got however, the more I realized she was trying to turn me into herself and 
I got annoyed at the whole thing. I guess I was a lot more like my father than she preferred. She 
wanted a daughter exactly like herself and the older I got the less I was what she wanted me to 
be. 

 She would give me all these hints about how to get men to do what you want and how 
to wrap my daddy around my little finger. That was not something I needed work with, believe 
me. I was Daddy's little girl from the moment I came into this world.

She interfered in every date I ever had, when I was younger. She wanted me to wear my 
makeup a certain way, act a certain way, and in essence be more like her. I learned quickly that 
when she turned on her charm and when I turned mine on we got two different results but 
sometimes I tried anyway. After all, who wouldn't want to have men tripping over themselves 
to fulfill your every wish?" She smiled wryly at that thought.

"What exactly was the effect you got that was so different from hers?" I asked curiously. 
Usagi grinned widely and chuckled softly.

"When my mother turned on her charms, she could flirt for hours endlessly, men flirted 
back, became enamored with her, but they always knew there were limits. At the end of the 
night she was naturally going home with her husband. When I tried to do as my mother did… 
I got every male in the room trying to look down my shirt, get up my skirt, and follow me 
home for less than innocent explorations."

 I had to smile and admire how calmly and amusingly she related what was obviously 
not a pleasurable tale at the time. I suppose many things, especially those that occurred when 
you were young, seem amusing in retrospect. 

"I take it that wasn't fun at the time?"

"It wasn't all that bad. In fact, it was amusing even then, hearing all the many ways guys 
came up with to try to get into a girl's pants; most of the time anyway." 

The tone of her last statement didn't reflect the same casual emotion she'd spoken with 
before. It bothered me.

"Did something happen with one of your more overzealous admirers?" I asked quietly.

"No. I learned quickly to shelf my charms." 

"Salad's done!" she announced, ending that path of conversation and mood, as she 
triumphantly gave the colorful mixture a final toss.

I wanted to pry further, but I suspected she'd purposefully ended that conversation. 

"The pasta's almost done, I announced."

"Well, while we're waiting," she suddenly spoke, "and because it seems only fair, why 
don't you tell me what you were doing in your younger years? I bet you were turning on your 
charms far more often than I dared to use mine. But I bet you enjoyed the results far more than 
I ever did." 

"I didn't do much charming when I was a teenager."

"No?" She asked, seemingly surprised. I was of course flattered that she thought me 
charming, but I'd really have preferred that she hadn't asked since I'd rather not to share the 
unpleasant details of my past with her or anyone else for that matter. Still, it was only fair.

"I didn't have as happy a childhood as you did. My parents died when I was young and 
I spent a couple years in foster care before I skipped out to make my own way. I succeeded and 
here I am," I concluded.

"That's it?" She asked skeptically, with a light touch of sarcasm and disbelief.

"Pretty much."

"I told you the dark secrets of my childhood and you sum yours up in three sentences?"

"Dark secrets?" I asked with sardonic amusement. 

She gave me a rather pointed glare that had me fighting to hide the smile that 
threatened to split my face.

"I don't think that's fair. I deserve much more than that!" She announced.

"Ok. What do you want to know?" I had no intention of telling her everything but it 
would satisfy her to ask.

"How did your parents die?  What was it like growing up without your parents? Who 
were your friends? When did you leave? How did you get to where you are now?"

"All that huh?" Not bad, I thought. Short answers.

"They died in a car accident when I was seven, and I don't remember too much about 
them. It sucked but it was my life, so I had to live it. Setsuna has been my best friend since I 
was sixteen; we met in school. 

"I left the group home I lived in when I was seventeen after seriously pissing off a 
couple foster parents and a two-month stint in juvenile hall for something I didn't do.  As for 
how I got here, that's…complicated."

"I like complicated," she stated simply and signaled for me to continue.

"Well if you must know... Working off collected information, I discovered, a couple 
weeks after I left the home that my parents had died with a lot of money in the bank. They'd 
never made a will and because of a lot of mix ups I was basically screwed out of money that 
should have been mine. I hired a lawyer who I promised to pay if we won and I sued the 
government and the banks for control of the money and I won. That's pretty much that"

"Wow! I would never have had the guts to do something like that at seventeen. "  

"I had to do something. The thought of spending the rest of my life as a waiter in a 
cheap restaurant made me cringe. Setsuna and I needed a place to live. We were both pretty 
much on our own and she was only fifteen. Horrible things happen to young girls on the 
street."

"You two must be really close." It wasn't a question, but a statement that requested an 
answer nonetheless.

"Yes, we are. We've shared a lot over the years." I looked up from the pot of quickly 
boiling pasta to find her staring at me rather searchingly. She looked reflective but she didn't 
say anything.  

"Now that I've told you my deep, dark secrets," I said, moving in for a kiss, her lips 
seem to be asking for, Why don't you tell me about this lost love of yours?"

Her eyes widened in surprise as she recovered from our kiss and my question. 

"Lost love?"

"You know, the one you mentioned earlier. The one you feel you betray when you're 
with me."

"Oh…. that one."

"So… ?"

"His name was Seiya," she began slowly. He was the first man I tried my charms on who 
didn't try to get into my pants the first time I met him. He waited a good long while for that, 
until we were married in fact."

I was stunned. She was still so young, no more than twenty-five. I never for a moment 
thought that she could have been married.

"You were married?" She nodded.

"I know." She said, indicating her understanding of my disbelief. My parents thought 
the same thing. Everyone told me I was too young to get married. They were right too. I was so 
foolish and so convinced that I was in love and well… I suppose I was."

"How did he die?" 

"Something incredibly silly. Less than a year after we got married he went up to the 
mountains to go skiing with his friends. He decided to try snowboarding and he broke his 
collarbone trying. Everything seemed ok, the bone was set and all was fine and then on his way 
home he had an embolism and he died. A clot developed and traveled through his blood 
stream to his heart."

She said it all in a very matter fact fashion but I could tell it still hurt to talk about it.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It's alright. I think what hurt the most was that we had this huge fight before he left 
and I never got the chance to say I was sorry, or to tell him goodbye and I was so angry at him 
and at myself. 

"He lied to me and I told him to get out of my life. I was just so angry and I had every 
right to be but I still feel so guilty sometimes."

I wanted to say something, but I didn't have a clue as to what I should say, so I said 
nothing. She didn't seem to notice however and continued with her story.

"Seven months after we got married he decided to break the news that he was gay. He'd 
used me, married me, all because he was afraid of his own sexuality. It hurt so much, I couldn't 
deal with even seeing his face so I told him to leave and that was the last time I saw him alive."
 
I pulled her in close to me for the comfort she needed and kissed her hair. I wished to 
God I could take her pain. I could almost feel her hurt within myself.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "This is supposed to be a date and here I am telling you all 
the depressing things in my life."

"Better you than me. My depressing stories would have us both laid out on the couch 
with a box of tissues. And quite frankly, there are much more pleasant things I would rather be 
doing on the couch."

"Really?" She asked playfully. "Do you do these things often? By yourself?"

"Touché," I replied. "I almost feel wounded."

"Almost?" She questioned, eyebrow raised.

Standing close to her gave me the opportunity and I took it. I pulled her up against the 
length of my body and kissed her with more passion than I had expected to feel. Her lips were 
so soft and the taste of her mouth was like honey on my tongue. I kissed the corner of her 
mouth, her jaw line, the curve of her neck, her soft hot skin like velvet against my mouth. 

I felt drunk with her intoxicating scent and sweet taste. She was like a high. I wanted to 
feel every inch of her beneath my hands and every sweet centimeter of her body.  

"I stand corrected," I whispered against her neck. "When I'm not kissing you I feel 
wounded, incomplete actually. You're becoming quite an addiction Usako."

"Oh God!" She breathed out. "I think the pasta's done!"

"What!" For a moment I was stunned senseless, my intoxicated thoughts suddenly 
brought back to reality with the speed and sensation of a train hitting a wall. "How can you 
think of pasta now?" I asked incredulously.

"Because if I don't stop us now we'll never make it to the couch or anywhere else for 
that matter and by then the apartment will be on fire and well I kind of want tonight to last a 
little longer than that."

 I kissed her lightly again and let her go, if somewhat unwillingly. I chuckled at the 
thought. I was already on fire. I turned the stove off.

"I suppose that would be a bad thing. Besides, we wouldn't want you to miss a meal 
now would we?" I teased. I received a swift elbow to the ribs.

The rest of the evening was perfect. The pasta was pretty decent and the salad was great, 
proving she wasn't completely inept in the kitchen. She was very proud of herself. 

Close to the end of out meal Serena popped yet another question. 

"Tell me about Setsuna," she demanded.

"What do you want to know?" I asked, surprised that she wanted to know anything at 
all. I guess you could say almost any questions about my personal life almost seems like and 
invasion to me. Personal questions put me on the defense. 

I wasn't used to being very personal with anyone besides Setsuna. Other women in my 
life had wanted to know more about me as well. Somehow I suspected it wouldn't be as easy to 
keep Serena at arms length as it had with them.

"Anything," she replied. "How did you two get to be friends?"

"Setsuna wasn't what you would call popular in school. She was that kid in the corner 
with the dark forbidding expression. I was kind of the same way I guess. I wasn't much of an 
extrovert and I guess identified with what I thought she felt.

She was a freshman and I was a sophomore. One day I noticed she was being picked on 
by some of the more popular girls in school and I figured I'd intervene." Serena smiled. "Yeah I 
know… knight in shining armor and all that. Actually Setsuna proved she could fight her own 
battles when she pretty much punched out both girls before I could even blink and then asked 
me if I needed anything. We've pretty much been friends ever since."

"How did you guys get to be so close though?" The woman just kept pushing didn't 
she? I sighed. 

"Setsu's father was a bastard. He needed to pay off some gambling debts so he sold his 
daughter to some other bastard who intended to use her as his personal whore." I heard Serena 
gasp in shock. I guess she never thought a parent could do that to his own child. 

"Well anyway, I found out and picked her up before he could lay a hand on her. I guess 
you could say we've been bonded ever since." I left out the part about killing her father. I 
didn't think that was something she needed to know.

"I never thought anyone could do that to their own child," she whispered almost 
disbelievingly.

"There are a lot of screwed up things in this world."

"Yeah, I suppose," she replied, obviously still thinking about the matter.

I was happy to be rid of the subject finally. It wasn't exactly the most uplifting of 
conversations and definitely not the most romantic. 

I was happy when she demanded to have a discussion about the paintings on my wall. 
Not having acquired them myself, she had a good laugh at my complete ignorance.  I could 
care less about a few uninteresting abstracts however, when there was a beautiful woman in the 
room who was so much more interesting. 

After two glasses of wine we did all those things I'd alluded to on the couch and in 
other more comfortable places. It was quite an experience to say the least, a rather pleasurable 
and exciting one to say the very least.

I think it occurred to me later when lying next to her in my bed both of us wide-awake 
but silent, that I was falling completely in love with this woman. When the sun rose on the 
approaching dawn I wouldn't want her to leave. I think I'd have been content to lay there 
forever by her side. 

I was still contemplating forever when the phone rang. I was tempted to answer it but 
my body was too languid to respond to any demands. By the fourth ring it was too late to 
make up my mind as the machine switched on.

"Mamoru?" The voice, I instantly recognized as Setsu's came over. "I guess you're not 
there, huh. I know I should probably should have waited to say this but I just couldn't contain 
myself, I have to tell someone and obviously you're the best choice," she continued rather 
hurriedly. "I'm pregnant! I guess you get to be the lucky father. Anyway, sorry you didn't hear 
it from me in person but thanks so much. I love you." 

I stared at the ceiling in shock. Setsu was pregnant…with my child. It was downright 
scary. She sounded so happy, more so than I could recall ever hearing. The excitement in her 
voice was so unfamiliar.

"What does she mean, you're the father?" Usagi asked, sitting up suddenly next to me. 
"I thought you were just friends!"

"Look it's not what you think." I stated as she rolled out of bed. I followed her. 

"So you're going to tell me you didn't sleep with her? That she lied and she really 
doesn't love you and she isn't having your child?" She snapped, each word like the flick of a 
whip. She was getting dressed hurriedly, obviously angry.

"It's not what you think," I repeated. "We're just friends…"

"Save it for someone who cares!" She retorted angrily. "I can't believe you! All this crap 
about wanting to have a relationship with me was just a load of bullshit! I can't believe I was so 
naïve. I guess you guys really bonded huh!" 

She wouldn't allow me a word in edgewise. She wasn't listening to a single word I tried 
to say and before I knew it my own door was being slammed in my face.

"Damnit!" I yelled at the closed door, slamming my fist hard into the wood.