A/N: Written for the Sailor Moon Flash Bingo, #000 – (early august) genre: family. And the last of the numbers, which means this card is done and dusted. :D

Chibiusa and Usagi

Chibiusa, for a while, had both hated and loved Tsukino Usagi. She'd been the one most likely to be her mother's teenage self after all, but she was so different from the mother Chibiusa knew, and loved.

Neo-Queen Serenity wasn't clumsy like that, or cruel, or stupid. Neo-Queen Serenity had raised her, Chibiusa, after all, into a fine young princess of Crystal Tokyo, and she loved her very much. She wasn't a foolish girl who didn't care what happened to a little guest and never studied or did her homework but instead wasted time and money on shopping and the arcade.

Or wasn't grateful to her mother for making sweet goodies for her to come home to, or her brother for helping with the chores, or her father for picking out a new brooch for her. She didn't deserve them. Usagi didn't deserve that wonderful family of hers that was still all right. Or those equally wonderful friends, friends that Chibiusa did not have.

But Chibiusa was stuck there because her family was not all right: her sweet mother locked in sleep, her father injured but still holding the castle's defences, sending her here in the hopes that she could recover the one thing she needed to save their future.

But try as she might, she couldn't deny the parts of Usagi that did remind her of her mother: the way she'd come to protect her, those little things she did: slipped one of Makoto's cookies into her bag, or Rei's mangas for her to read. The way she could smile sometimes, when she really meant it. The way she looked, fighting for what was right.

But it hadn't been enough for Chibiusa to ask her for help like she had meant to: plead with her mother's former self to save the future. Usagi wouldn't do it; she'd been oh so falsely sure.

She'd stolen the silver crystal instead. And almost cost Usagi a family that went deeper than blood.