Who: Lina & Usagi (with little Amelia, thinking she can get some tacos) What: Usagi vents about her first round of dreams When: Yesterday Where: Taco Bell, don't be a h8ter Rating/Warnings: Relatively low Status: Complete!
Usagi twisted the wrapper of her cinnabon delights. As soon as Lina got there, she’d order more--probably a couple tacos this time, too. She took a slurp of her freezee, glancing up, then down as she waited. What was with the dreams? Well, obviously it had to be that she got influenced by the others on the net, right? They mentioned it before. But she couldn’t shake it… She couldn’t get over this weird, nostalgic feeling that made her stomach clench.
Let it be known that according to the Business Insider (article dated November 2016) that Taco Bell was named one of the most healthy fast-food chains out there. Not that she ever needed the excuse to justify her tearing up their menu, anyway, but it was a nifty fact - and also, uh. Justified going there more often.
And arguably, their stuff was much better than the gas station burritos she had lived off of the two years she'd been on the road dodging the hefty price tacked on her pretty little head.
Lina agreed it'd be a fine choice of meeting, just had to get through Amelia's eleven month appointment (she'd be a year next month, damn does the time fly) and then the next stop would be food with a side of dream therapy Usagi sorely needed. It was a contagious affliction and, no, there really wasn't anything in the water that caused it.
With a little one attached to her hip - black hair, big blue eyes, tiny but chunky - she approached the table and pulled a high chair from the stack to set her spawn in. "Hey, just got out - this is my little demon, Amelia." A smiley demon at that with two bottom teeth in, and she loved showing them off. "I'm about to get my order. You can handle watching her for two seconds?"
“Yeah! Of course!” Usagi cried, smiling at the little one. “Hi there, squishy!” She beamed wide, excited. “This is your little baby? So cute! You can call me Auntie Usagi!”
Lina had already ordered anyway, she just had to get the damn tray - and that was hard to do with a kid (a lot of things were when you lugged one around). When she returned she sifted through the diaper bag and proceeded to keep her distracted with cheerios, a couple of them. Cheerios fascinated her.
"Anyway," she started, tucking coils of redhair behind her ears - she was in leggings and flannel shirt that swallowed her up, with short-heeled boots. "You got bit by the dream bug. Spill, kid, what'd you see?"
Usagi stared down at her wrapper before she took a large gulp of her drink. Woo, brain freeze. She rubbed her nose and let out a heavy sigh. She shifted, tucking her dress under her thighs more. “See… it wasn’t really all horrible. At first,” she sucked in a breath, “it was pretty scary. I was a little girl and my friends… my guardians?” She looked confused for a moment before shaking her head. “They said that a horrible dark monster lives in the mirrors and eats crybabies,” she frowned, deeply. “I--I’m a crybaby, and I was really little too! In, in my dream,” she stammered. “I was a little girl in my dream, and I went to my mother… I was a princess,” she mumbled, staring off for a moment. She shook her head furiously, black locks swinging. “That’s not all!”
Lina almost winced. Yeah, they really could be scary - she was a little more than jaded considering she was practically a veteran of this place, but no one usually dreamt of rainbows and kittens. If she met a person that did, she personally wanted to deliver a punch to their face.
This wasn't what she'd meant by having her expand her horizons. But, boy, were her horizons about to be expanded.
She pinched one of the dorito tacos with her fingers. "Princess, huh? That's not a terrible gig to start off with," she said. "But there's always more. Go on, I'm listening. I've been through this cycle one too many times."
Usagi hesitated for a long moment. This is where it’d get funny, right? Lina would laugh with her about how silly things were. But… Lina seemed so serious right now, like… like she really believed her. “I was a princess of the moon,” she mumbled, looking up and out the glass window, looking for the moon amongst the clouds. “It was really pretty,” she continued, “but at the same time… cold. I was born there, I lived there and I loved it, and we had our fields of flowers and the like but… There was no wind.” She closed her eyes, like she could feel a breeze. well she was in taco bell…
“I was able to sneak down to Earth, something that was against the rules. Moon citizens would live much longer, so there was worry it’d be like we were putting it in the faces of the shorter living humans on Earth. But, oh, Miss Lina… The wind felt so good on the Earth. It would pull my long hair and tickle my cheeks and I’d feel truly at peace. The smells the world brought, the happiness… I fell in love with the planet.
“And then I met him. Prince Endymion of Earth... “ She gripped her chest. “I’m in love--was in love--with him. And I’d continue to sneak to Earth just to see him. And then… and then the feeling was mutual.” Her mouth grew dry. “But we weren’t allowed to be in love.”
Oh.
That was one hell of an emotional sequence to dream about brand spankin' new to this.
Lina's mouth hung open a little (so attractive, right?), dorito-taco almost in her mouth but nope, she hadn't taken a single bite yet. Meanwhile her daughter's response was a drawn out bahhhhh, drooling over a particular piece of cheerio she'd been occupied with.
Usagi was either an alien or her dreamscape was some kind of whimsical mythology-inspired fairytale. Too early to tell, but time would reveal all like it usually did with this stuff. "A Romeo and Juliet situation between the Earth and Moon?" Hmm, okay. That was kinda interesting. "You know, it is okay. To feel weird, confused, overwhelmed. About the entire thing, and about the people you see there.”
Hell, Lina missed her people. Gourry, especially - three different lifetimes and he was still her partner, even if his brain was stuffed with seaweed and he couldn’t take his asshole from a hole in the ground. Instead? She got saddled with Xelloss. What kind of crap luck was that?
Usagi nodded, staring down at the table. “That’s the part that makes my stomach hurt… I think I know what’ll happen next.” She looked up at Lina. “How--is this what everyone was talking about?”
“It’s this place,” Lina explained with a dismissive hand wave - or more like she was motioning around, beyond the confines of this classy Taco Bell. “It’s like a hotspot where the lines between worlds are blurred, and things from other universes tend to either happen or we remember them like we lived them. And we probably did, once.” People could get blue in the face theorizing just what the hell made this place tick, but they were typically more distracted with the wave of shit the OC tossed their way. “But by what happens next, you don’t mean -”
Her brows furrowed. Romeo and Juliet ended in a double-suicide, and there’s no way things would end for her that quick - unless there was something else in store. “Do you think you’ll die?”
Damnit. She did not want to have the potential conversation of ‘oh, by the way, any wounds and deaths that occur can crossover sometimes, so good luck staying alive’ with someone barely out of high school in the middle of a fastfood restaurant. She did not.
Usagi pulled her pigtails, fretting. “I think so--isn’t that how Romeo and Juliet ended? This… this me from the moon thinks… Thinks he’s the most important thing. And I can feel that love too,” she touched her chest. “So if something were to happen--the two are challenging fate, right?” She chewed her bottom lip. “Miss Lina, is it me? Or is it a not me but I have her memories?”
Gahhh. It was like dealing with a kicked, adorable pig-tailed puppy. A couple years ago she would have felt infinitely awkward and would have tried looking for an exit route out of all this, but she was older - a mother with an increased instinct to protect people. Pete had told her once she was good at that, at the whole 'taking care of people' thing. Lina hadn't thought it all that true at the time but the all-knowing husband was onto something.
Damnit.
"It's you," she responded, smiling a little sheepishly. "A version of you. And you should defy fate, you know - defy it to hell. No cosmic pre-written page of destiny gets to dictate who you love. This princess version of you's got some clear guts, so maybe it won't end badly. And if it does…" Her shoulders lifted up to her ears in a shrug. "You deal with it. With some help. We've all dreamt of situations that ended badly, but trust me - we're tougher for it."
Usagi smiled wide at her, eyes twinkling. “Miss Lina… You are so cool!” She nodded. “I’m Usagi Tsukino, not Princess Serenity. I won’t be a Juliet even if it happens in the dreams!” She almost stood up, giggling as she lowered her voice. “It’s… It’s pretty interesting to think of yourself as someone else. What was your dream? If--if I could ask?”
"I've just been around the block," Lina tried to correct, but if Usagi wanted to see her that way - errr, guess she couldn't stop her. But she took the opportunity to practically inhale her dorito-taco, finally, before moving onto the next.
Amelia reached her chubby, grubby hands towards her mother's food but was ultimately rejected, and then pacified with more cheerios. Not old enough yet for the glory of tacos, child, know your place.
But it gave her a moment to figure out how to properly summarize her own dream clusterfuck. "Well," she sighed, but she was smirking a bit in her direction. "I'm on my third cycle of seeing another rendition of myself. Medieval era where I'm a sorceress, so the skills that come with that have carried over. My goals included finding treasure, researching lore, learning new spells - and then it all turned into an entire race of demons gunning to kill me. There's a lot of violence. And a lot of explosions."
Did she mention they were mostly caused by her? Noooope.
Usagi’s jaw drops, staring with wide eyes. “You know magic?!” she gasps, almost flailing her arms wildly. She lowers her voice, leaning over the table. “It was magic then that made that guy fall over?!”
"Keep it down," she hissed, refraining from giving her a whack on the head - usually she was the loud one, good gods. "And yeah, it was. Just a stomach ache spell, it wasn't anything major."
No fireballs out in public. Lina got arrested that last time.
Once eyes were off them, her shoulders relaxed. "A tip: if Princess Serenity has any cool tricks, expect to learn them here too. It's part of the package."
Usagi reached up to touch her forehead. “She had a moon mark on her forehead… Will I get that?”
“Yep,” Lina grinned, pulling down her bottom eyelid. “Lookit these - they’re not contacts, they turned red.” Crimson beyond blood that flowed, just like the dark lord Ruby Eye. It was a rare mutation, but it had no other meaning aside from that’s how genetics worked. “But that’s easier to bullshit. If you get a moon mark, you can always say it’s a tattoo or we can glamour it. I’m not an illusions person, but I know people who are.”
Smoke and mirrors were too subtle for her liking. The sorceress liked things flashy, liked things big, liked this destructive. It was a rush.
Usagi smiled, rubbing her forehead as she watched Lina. “You’re really so cool… You don’t even really know me but you keep helping me out. I want to do the same for you, if you ever need me!”
Nice people. Why did they have to exist? The kid was growing on her like a fungus. And these things, the dreams, they didn’t discriminate with people - especially the ones on the younger side of things - and who knows how much she’d have to hide from her parents. It’d be a lot to navigate through.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Lina winked. Every cycle had its similarities and stark differences, but she knew what hers were building up to at the moment - a third rodeo with Hellmaster, but who knew what lied in store after that. “You want more cinnabons? They’ll have to roll us out of here by the time we’re done, but at least we’ll have no regrets.”
She couldn’t stop the dreams for her but she could at least get her mind off them a little, and that’s what she had planned to do.
“Yes!” Usagi cried excitedly. Big ol’ smile, absolutely oblivious to the internal struggle Lina was having, the pigtailed girl leapt up and jogged to the counter to order enough for both--okay more than both.