#curseofroses fanfic

[curseofroses]

as an honest man should do

A bit of an alternate version of the conversation in episode 74: Defeat Rubeus! The Battle in Space. You know that one where Usagi turns herself over to Rubeus like a badass? That episode always gives me big Usamamo feelings even though they barely speak in it, and I needed a version where he was the one talking to her instead of Artemis and Luna.  Setting: Episode 74: Defeat Rubeus! The Battle in Space Summary: Mamoru’s capacity for hurting Usagi - for lying to her - is nearly at it’s limit. 

“Do you question me as an honest man should do, for my simple true judgment? Or would you have me speak after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex? ”

-Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare He only meant to comfort her.

 He has tried not to confuse her since the breakup, tried to keep his hands to himself, and aside from the one time she nearly died, he’s been mostly successful, much to his own misery. When he saw her there standing on the balcony, though, shoulders hunched and shaking, he couldn’t help himself. He knew he shouldn’t, but the guttural cry that had torn through her earlier had torn through him, too.

“Usa?” 

It is not Usako, but it is not Usagi, either. She always winces when he calls her Usagi, and he has to admit it feels strange on his tongue. He has never called her that. 

It seems to work, because she doesn’t jerk away from him like she had half an hour earlier. Instead, she leans into his touch, and he’s reminded why he doesn’t do this. It would be so, so easy just to pull her into his arms, take some of the pain away. He could put an end to at least some of both their heartache, right now, if he wanted to. When she turns to him and he can see the shine of tears on her cheeks, he almost does. He is so, so tired of seeing her hurt. 

“I can’t do this,” she says quietly. 

“I’m not sure I know of anything you can’t do.” 

Her answering look says liar. She holds it for a long minute, wary of him, and then turns her head back to the Tokyo nightscape. 

 “I can’t keep losing everyone again and again,” she says. “It’s too much.” 

Her shoulders droop, but she doesn’t start to cry again. Instead, she fixes her eyes on the full moon, high in the sky. 

“I have to save them,” she says. Her mouth is set in a hard line, her brow furrowed. 

“We will.” 

“I won’t let it happen again.” 

“I know you won’t.” 

For a moment she looks at him with such a soft look of adoration that he can’t bear it. He doesn’t deserve that look. There is so much strength in those little hands she’ll reach for her friends and save the whole world instead. All he’s done is say the quiet part out loud. 

Then, a look of shame crosses her face -  she looks down and packs the expression away, brushing some imaginary dust from her skirt. He opens his mouth to say something, and she winces a little, as though she’s waiting for him to scold her for letting him see, just for a moment, that she loves him. 

Oh, Usako. “Usa-” 

“Please don’t,” she cuts in. Her voice is shaking. “There’s...there’s so much happening. I can’t hear how much you don’t love me anymore. Please.” 

“.. I wasn’t, Usa. I didn’t come out here to hurt you.” 

“Then why did you? I thought...I thought -” 

She slams her eyes closed, pressing her lips tightly together. “I thought you’d be mad at me, because I yelled at Chibi-usa.” 

He takes a deep breath, turns around and closes the sliding door behind him to stall for time to think of what to say. He isn’t...angry with her. He knows why it happened. He knows that Chibi-usa appeared and then he left her, he knows that her friends went to save Chibi-usa and she lost them too. He’s seen the anguish building up in her for weeks, with each time she tries to reach out to him and fails, and he uses spending time with Chibi-usa as an easy alternative to saying something harsh to her again.

It’s really just as much his fault as it is hers. 

“I don’t think you should have,” he says carefully, and she flinches. “But I understand why you did.” 

Her expression becomes unreadable then, and he watches as her fists ball at her side. She stares at the spot in the sky where the UFO disappeared, eyes hardening, and draws a wet breath. 

“I almost...I almost feel like turning over the ginzuishou and Chibiusa just to get them back. If she...if she hadn’t come here...this place would have stayed peaceful. We were finally living normal lives, just like - But no, she had to fall out of the sky and take everything!”  

The last word is ragged and thick, and her voice breaks on it.  A few more tears slide hot down her face, and her knuckles are white where they’ve come up to grip his balcony railing. She’s squeezing it so hard it has to hurt. 

The worst part, though, is the bitter edge to her voice. Through more than one lifetime she’s always been an infinite well of hope, that mythical thing that he sometimes only believes in because of her. The well seems dried up now, and it makes his insides feel hollow. 

“You don’t mean that.” 

“Of course I don’t!” she cries, wheeling around to face him. 

“She’s so little and she needs me and of course I’m not going to do anything that would hurt her. I know she hates me. I even understand why. She came all the way here to ask for my help and I’m just...not strong enough. I’m not the hero she thought I was.  I lost all of them. But that isn’t her fault. It’s mine.”

“Usa-” 

“I failed as a guardian, as a friend, as a princess. Somehow I failed the person I love the most so badly that I -”

Usako dissolves before she can finish the sentence, and that is the end of his ability to not hold her. He doesn’t remember reaching for her, but the next thing he’s aware of is Usagi sobbing against his chest. He rubs her back automatically, presses a kiss to the top of her head without even thinking. 

“I’m sorry, Mamo-chan,” she gasps. “I’m so sorry. Whatever I did I never...I never meant to. I love you. I would never hurt you on purpose.” 

I love you. I would never hurt you on purpose. 

He has to slam his eyes shut and swallow down the cry of grief that nearly tears itself from his throat. After a moment, when he’s sure he can talk again without giving himself away, he opens his eyes to her wide, sorrowful ones. 

“Usa, you didn’t...you didn’t do anything.” 

“I must have.”

“You didn’t,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair, looking off into the night instead of at her, because every nerve in his body is screaming out to just tell her. It’s a stupid, selfish thing to even think of, because she doesn’t have time to be distracted by him. The girls’ lives depend on it.  

“You didn’t fail,” he says quietly instead, letting his arms fall away from her. She doesn’t move away. “You are so astonishingly powerful that a little girl from the future traveled through time to ask for your help. Do you understand what that says about you?”

“But-” 

“No. No buts. Just because ...some bad people with access to monsters and a shitty... ex boyfriend have breathtakingly bad timing doesn’t mean you’re a failure. You’re the most powerful woman on the planet. Maybe in the universe. If you decide you’re getting your friends back, then you will.” 

He knows it’s a mixed message. I don’t like weak girls is ringing in his ears and he knows it’s ringing in Usa’s, too, by the way she’s begun to look at him like he’s a puzzle she can’t quite figure out. He’s given something important away that’s going to make everything more difficult later. 

That, he decides, is future Mamoru’s problem. 

“Usako,” he begins, carefully, deliberately.  “All you need to know right now is that I believe in you, and nothing that has happened means I don’t care.” 

“...Mamo-chan?” 

For a minute the words hang between them.  He lets himself live in the way her breath catches and her fingers curl into his shirt, in the way her eyes drop to his lips and his stomach twists with want. This could be the moment, if he let it. This could be the instant his willpower collapses, and he falls back into the arms of his princess to beg forgiveness against her lips. 

It could be, but it isn’t. 

Instead, as gently as he can, he takes a step back from her. 

 “You should get some rest. I’ll talk with Luna and Artemis, see if we can come up with a plan.” 

Usako offers him a smile. It’s a shadow of her usual one, but it still makes his heart feel a little lighter. They can do this. They’re going to get the girls back, and then - then maybe...well. Maybe he can make this better than it has been, at the very least. 

“I think...I’m gonna stay out here for a minute. If that’s okay.”

There is an odd look in her eyes. Later - just a few minutes later, in fact - he’d realize she already had a plan, but he was too distracted at the moment to notice. Instead, he nods, squeezes her shoulder, and turns to go back inside.

“Mamo-chan?”

He turns.

“You weren’t a shitty boyfriend.”

A huff of disdain escapes him.

“You weren’t. Every...every second of it was my favorite thing in the world.” 

The soft look is back, and this time, he allows himself to return it. She’s only had him, only ever him, in this life and the last. Literally anyone would be better. He’s broken her heart again, and again, and again. 

“You’ve never had anything else, Usa.” 

“Doesn’t matter. It was perfect.” 

And despite what he says, she’s right. It was.

Maybe, if he finds some answers, some day it can be again.   *** Have you ever stared at something so long that it started to lose meaning? I really hope this was worth reading, because I have lost all perspective on it. I really wanted to write some good old fashioned breakup arc angst in an episode that I could read a dozen fics about. Please let me know if you liked it! Loves to you all! 

[usamamoweek2024]

Meet the Creators - Curseofroses

What username(s) and platform(s) can folx find you on? (Please include links!)

@curseofroses is my Sailor Moon sideblog! (Link to AO3 )

You can find me on @andrastesgrace for my main blog, which is mostly Marvel related things and various other interests.

I am on Twitch , Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram

(Fun Fact) What is your favorite kind of potato?

Tater tots!

How long have you been creating works in fandom spaces? How long have you been active in the SM fandom?

Oh gosh. I've been writing fanfic since 1999, so 23 years? And been active on and off in the SM fandom for that entire time.

What type(s) of creative works do you usually make? (fanfics, digital art, cosplay)

I usually write fanfic and make cosplay, although I'm trying to learn digital art!

What do you enjoy about creating for the SM fandom?

UsaMamo was my very first OTP. It's like the comfort food of fandoms

Are you strictly UsaMamo or do you create for other pairings as well?

In Sailor Moon, just UsaMamo! But outside SM I write a lot of different ones for Marvel - mostly Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers and Thor/Sif. There's also an entire expanded universe called Family Assembled that my best friend and I have been working on for almost a decade now, and it contains a TON of Marvel pairings along with some OC pairings that I'm really fond of.

I've also been in Star Wars for as long as I've been in Sailor Moon, and create stories for Luke Skywalker/Mara Jade and Anakin/Padme.

What inspires you to create works for Usagi and Mamoru?

As a person with ADHD, I really, really relate to Usagi and how she messes up a lot, but loves all her friends so much, and I love how much he believes in her. It can be hard, when you're the person who is always messing up, to find that kind of support.

Do you tend to work on multiple projects (WIPs) simultaneously or try to finish one at a time?

Oh I'm an ADHD disaster so I have like ten documents going at all times. I wrote like 30% of eight UsaMamo fics last year that are just sitting in my drive. There are some docs with only one or two sentences. I'm a menace.

Do you prefer large projects (chaptered fics, webtoons/zines, highly detailed art) or small projects (one-shots or simple art)?

I LIKE large projects, I am abysmal at finishing them. That's why I only have two current Sailor Moon fics - those are the ones I was able to finish and polish. I don't like posting things before they're finished, so one shots tend to make it out more often, but I have a ton of IDEAS for chaptered fics.

Are there any common themes, situations, tropes, or mediums in your work?

It's not terribly evident in my current published Sailor Moon works, but I tend to write situations where Usagi's family finds out she is Sailor Moon a whole lot? Those are the chaptered ones that never see the light of day because I can't figure out how they should go, but they always have her two worlds colliding. There's probably something in there my therapist would have a field day with.

I also just adore Chibiusa to pieces, so she makes it into a lot of my fics.

Is there anything you haven’t explored artistically and would like to try?

Hmmm, as I said earlier, I'm trying to learn how to do digital art. I'd really like to get passably decent at that, because I feel like some of the ~dramatic~ situations in my head would be better served through art than words.

Oh! Re: cosplay, I'd love to do an armor build of some kind. Most of my cosplays are gowns or dresses (I did Princess Serenity last year!) and I'd like to try my hand at maybe Commander Shepard from Mass Effect or Lady Sif from Thor: The Dark World.

[curseofroses]

a star danced

Just a bit of unadulterated mother/daughter fluff sprinkled with usamamo love.  Setting: any time post R season Summary: Usagi helps Chibi-usa with a problem, and tells her something no-one has told her before. 

“There was a star danced, and under that was I born”

-Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare

“You don’t have this much hair. Why do I have this much hair?!” 

Usagi is going to be nice, she tells herself. She is going to start being kinder, wiser, more...motherly towards Chibi-usa. She is absolutely not going to laugh as her future daughter struggles to get a hairbrush unstuck from her mass of pink hair, gets it more tangled, and then snorts in frustration. 

The little snort does her in, and she cackles, rocking forward with the force of it.

To be fair, I will be nicer to Chibi-usa is practically a mantra for Usagi. She makes the vow to herself at least once a week, and her personal best is four hours and thirty-one minutes. 

She’s doing so good this time. She’s going to call on every bit of her that is going to be Neo-Queen Serenity one day, and she is not going to laugh. She’s going to beat her streak, she is!  Chibi-usa gives her a look of annoyance that is pure Mamo-chan, and it sends Usagi into a fit of giggles all over again. This kid. 

“Why are you the worst?” Chibi-usa shrieks. “I’m struggling over here!” 

“No, I’m sorry, I’ll stop,” she says, covering her mouth, trying to corral her expression into something less...gleeful. The hairbrush is now completely lodged in Chibi-usa’s left pigtail, and the little cone-shaped odango is starting to come undone. “C’mere, I’ll help you get it out.”

Chibi-usa glares. Usagi stares back, doing her absolute best to not stare at the bunny hairbrush that is hopelessly stuck in Chibi-usa’s hair. Think motherly thoughts, she tells herself. Finally, small eyes still narrowed, small arms still crossed over her chest, Chibi-usa takes a few stiff steps forward and unceremoniously deposits herself cross-legged in front of Usagi with a small hmph.

To be fair, she has a lot of hair. Like a lot. Usagi has a lot of hair too, but hers is finer and more prone to tangling. The knots in Chibi-usa’s hair aren’t actually all that bad, just too high for her little arms to reach, and Usagi is able to free the hairbrush with practiced ease. That left odango is done for, though, so without really thinking about it, she removes the pins, lets Chibi-usa’s hair down, and starts the process of getting all the tangles out for good.

“I knoooow,” Usagi sing-songs a few minutes later, a smile on her lips. “Why you have so much haaaaair.” 

“...you do?” 

“I do,” She hums a little as she runs the brush through Chibi-usa’s thick hair, brushing the ends over the palm of her hand and watching them curl. The curl comes from her, no doubt, and she has no idea where the color comes from, but she has run her hands through hair just like this many, many times.  

“You,” she says, reaching around to boop the little girl’s nose, “have Mamo-chan’s hair.”

“Really?” 

She turns around eyes wide,  as though no-one has ever told her she looks like her papa before. 

“Mmmhmm. His is really heavy like this, too. That’s probably why your mama puts your hair in the bunny odangos. If we put it in regular ones they would be the size of your head and you might fall over.”

Chibi-usa falls dramatically backwards into her lap, sticking her tongue out at Usagi from below. They spend a few minutes making faces at each other before Usagi props her back up and continues brushing out her long hair. 

“Nobody ever tells you that, huh?” 

“Most of the time people say I look just like you.” 

You. Not Mama. She doesn’t usually do that, usually they’re very careful to distinguish between big sister Usagi and Mama, but sometimes she slips when she’s tired and it always makes Usagi feel something very big that it’s hard to name. 

“Mmm, well, yes, unfortunately I have cursed you with my beauty, but you make a lot of Mamo-chan’s faces.” 

“I do?” 

Chibi-usa  turns around again, and that is one of them. The wide, slightly disbelieving eyes and thoughtful frown. The way he always looks when she’s done something as revolutionary as remembering his favorite ice cream flavor (chocolate chip mint) or remembering which vegetables not to put in the curry (green peas), or when she brings home a book he said he’d been meaning to read along with her stack of manga. 

The “you see me?” look. 

It makes her drop a quick kiss on the little girl’s forehead. “You absolutely do. And let’s not forget the way you fell out of the sky and immediately knew how to get on my nerves. I should have known whose kid you were from the drop.” 

“Wait, what do you mean?” 

It occurs to Usagi that Chibi-usa is so young with parents so busy that she might not even know yet that they had started out this lifetime as...well. 

“Once upon a time,” she says, separating Chibi-usa’s hair into pigtails for braiding. “There was a very pretty girl who had to take the world’s hardest test,  and a baka in a stupid green coat who flirted like a seven year old.”  

It’s almost bedtime, so instead of odangos she carefully brushes and braids each pigtail as she tells her future daughter about the time she’d hit her father in the head with a test, and then another test, and then a shoe, and then another shoe, entirely by accident. Chibi-usa bursts into adorable giggles when Usagi gets to the part where Mamo-chan told her she needed to be careful or her bun head was going to turn into a bun body (“Traitor!”) and gets quiet when she gets to the part about the Starlight Tower. 

She skips over the sad stuff (she’s not sure Mamo-chan will ever be okay with Chibi-usa knowing about his time with the Dark Kingdom, and she doesn’t need the mental image of all of the senshi dying, one by one) with an abbreviated version of Beryl’s defeat, and instead moves on to happier, sillier things, like Snow White plays and babysitting adventures. 

By the time she reaches the revelation that Tsukikage no Knight had been Mamo-chan all along, Chibi-usa has fallen back against Usagi again, but this time, she’s fast asleep. 

She looks like her papa when she’s asleep, too. 

“And then, a few months later,” Usagi says to her sleeping daughter and an empty room, reaching for her phone. “A little brat nearly broke my neck, and nothing has ever been the same.” 

She unlocks the phone, and holds it up, smiling sweetly, snapping a picture with Chibi-usa asleep in her lap. Mamo-chan is probably at work - he’s got a new job lately and the hours are stupid long, but he checks his phone on breaks. 

Cute when she’s asleep like somebody else I know, she types. We love you! 

As she hits send, she thinks she might not be too bad at this mom stuff, after all. *** There we have it. My first completed Sailor Moon fic in what feels like a lifetime, and it is the most spun sugar cotton candy kind of fluff I have ever written, probably. That seems in character for me, lol.  Anyway, if you like it, let me know! I haven’t actively participated in this fandom for some time, but I’ve been scribbling out bits of fanfic for two months now whenever I get the chance so I figured it was time to start getting some of it out there. Enjoy! 

[curseofroses]

Have something I scribbled today during work for WIP Wednesday.