Usagi leaned back on the examination table as instructed and braced herself for the cold the tech told her she would feel. As the gel-covered probe touched her skin, however, she barely felt a thing. Her eyes were transfixed on the blank, black screen next to her and the ultrasound tech as the explosion of white took over the darkness. The outline her baby was obvious almost immediately, as well as the tears that welled in her eyes as she listened to the woman point out the heartbeat, the profile, the feet and arms and head. A perfectly whole, healthy baby and it was hers.

"Do you want to know the gender?"

A girl, she almost said, but caught herself and shook her head. The tech helped her clean up before she wheeled her equipment out of the room. Her doctor appeared a short time later, smiling.

"Everything looks wonderful, Miss Tsukino. Your baby is the picture of health. You, however, could stand to gain a few more pounds. I want you to increase your calories so we can hopefully meet your goal weight for next visit, okay? You're pretty tiny to begin with but you need the extra weight to keep you and the baby healthy. Good muscle tone as well, do you work out?"

"I used to," Usagi nodded. I used to jump rooftops in the middle of the night. The doctor went over a few more things, including not doing any really strenuous exercise, while she listened. She was used to the blonde not talking much during their time together. The most she usually asked was could she have more books, please?

"You're almost 17 weeks now. You might start feeling some movement in there soon." The doctor gestured to her stomach, which had only just started to really show. Usagi had taken to wearing baggy sweaters so it wouldn't be so obvious. Her hand rested on her belly subconsciously as she wondered how it would feel to have Chibiusa kicking away inside her. Any day now.

Her doctor walked her to the desk and retrieved a short stack of books she had been saving there. Usagi had been devouring all the reading material she could get her hands on and still felt no more prepared than when she had started, but the doctor obligingly lent her more at each appointment and seemed to approve of her enthusiasm to learn.

The secretary was setting up her next appointment while the doctor stepped closer, and spoke in soft tones so only she would hear. "The redhead that comes with you," Usagi automatically looked to the waiting room where Aya was seated, waiting for her with his arms crossed and his eyes closed, "you know you can invite him back with you. I don't know all the details of your situation, but he seems to be your support system. If you want to include him, that's up to you and it is okay."

The doctor squeezed her shoulder, smiled, and said, "I'll see you next time, okay? Remember, eat more! Indulge a little, yeah? You're pregnant!"

Usagi gave a half smile as the doctor retreated, off to meet another patient who was pregnant just like her. She wondered if that patient had a husband sitting in the chair beside her. Her blue eyes found Aya in the waiting room again and she frowned, thinking about what the doctor had said.

"Have a good day, Miss Tsukino." The secretary smiled pleasantly up at her as she handed over her paperwork and the stack of books. "You're picture from the ultrasound is in there too."

Usagi moved through the door that separated the offices from the waiting room, and Aya opened his eyes almost immediately. She wondered if he had heard the door opening or if he could just sense her presence by now. The past two months had been quiet, uneventful, but the redhead had still become a shadow to her. She hardly left the flower shop and the rooms beneath it, but when she did he was with her.

Aya moved to open the door for her and they left the building together in silence. As they walked down the sidewalk, she slipped her cell phone from her pocket, the black one that Minako had given her, and switched the ringer back on. Her blonde friend had sent her a text message sometime during her appointment asking something random about whether knee-high or mid-calf boots would go better with a pair of skinny jeans.

The photo shoot that took her to America had only supposed to last a month, but after a great first week and a few meet and greet parties, Minako had been signed on to do a commercial campaign for a makeup line there that prolonged her stay by several months. Makoto had met a guy. Usagi thanked whatever gods she could that the circumstances had kept both of her friends away from Japan, but Minako still texted her every day. She knew both of them were worried. She hadn't told either of them about her pregnancy.

Her parents didn't know either. She called them nearly every day to chat for a few minutes so they would know that she was okay. She didn't want them getting suspicious or dropping by the shop unannounced. As long as Ikuko heard her voice fairly often, sounding as cheerful as possible, she was safe.

Usagi still called Detective Arashi at least twice a week, but he never had anything new to tell her. After she had confronted him about being a suspect, she went through the motions of filing her own statement, with Aya and the others as her alibi that she was at the shop working the whole day. Officially she was not a suspect, but she could tell by the way the detective and his colleagues looked at her sometimes that they weren't convinced of her innocence. That bothered her less and less every time she went to the station.

Rei had been moved from the hospital to an assisted living facility. It still left a bad taste in her mouth when she thought of it. The doctors had told her that her wounds had healed very well, but she had lost so much blood at the time of the injury that they though her brain had been deprived of oxygen for an unknown amount of time. They did a test called an EEG and said that she still showed signs of brain activity, but whether she would wake up or not they couldn't say for sure. It could be tomorrow or never again. It seemed like such a cruel extreme to her. She wondered if, in five or ten or twenty years from now the dark haired priestess had still not woken up if she would ever be able to let go of that hope.

More than that, she often wondered if she would still be alive to decide.

"Did it go well?" Aya's sudden question pulled her from her spiraling dark thoughts back into the sunlight and bustling of the sidewalk. Usagi focused her gaze on him and he elaborated, "You got the ultrasound today? Did it go well?"

"Oh," She studied him for a moment as he walked beside her, the sunlight playing off of his red locks of hair, his violet eyes still fixed on the sidewalk before them, and a stack of books cradled in his arms that he had relieved her of at some point since they left the doctor's office. She wasn't sure what Aya had become to her in the past two months, and the doctor had unwittingly set her on edge with her comment. At most instances he was just a silent reassurance that she was safe, that nothing was going to happen to her. At times he was the only thing still keeping her sane and functioning.

She couldn't puzzle him out. Why was he doing this for her? It was no simple task, following her around everywhere, making sure she didn't forget to eat a meal or that Yohji never smoked inside anymore after she told him about something she'd read on the dangers of third hand smoke for infants. In the beginning she would protest and try to deter him, but the fact of the matter was that she only felt safe when she was with someone, and that someone had defaulted to Aya.

"Do you want to see it?" He shifted his eyes toward her for a moment and nodded, so she changed their course for the park and found her favorite park bench, right across from the swings. Whenever she went for walks she stopped here to watch the children on the swings, laughing and trying to touch the sky. Sometimes she tried to imagine Chibiusa as one of them, but she was having a hard time picturing the girl's face these days.

Usagi sifted through the papers the doctor had given her for the envelope containing her ultrasound. She pulled it out and held it out to Aya, but instead of taking it he leaned over to look. "The doctor said that she's doing well but I haven't gained enough weight."

"She?" Usagi flushed when she realized her mistake but didn't respond, and Aya leaned away from her again, placing the stack of books on the bench between them. She put the picture away again. "You still haven't told your parents?"

"No." She breathed her answer, but she knew he heard her anyway, and he had known the answer before he even asked.

"Don't you think they will be upset?" If anyone else would have asked, Usagi probably would have responded defensively, or been overwhelmed with guilt, but Aya spoke without any inflection of judgment to her actions. She wondered if he understood why she was hesitating, but he said next, "How long are you planning to be afraid?"

Usagi's hands clenched into fists in her lap and she sucked in a breath. The words felt almost like a blow. The truth was that even though nothing had happened for the last two months now, she still could not fall into her normal routine without this terror looming over her mind and her heart. At night she tossed and turned, and even when she did sleep, she woke up in cold sweat a few hours later.

Yet she had been doing her best to hide that, from her friends overseas and her family just miles away, from Yohji, Ken, and Omi. And from Aya most of all, because he was there with her all the time and she had put so much effort into not slipping up and showing how she really felt. She should have known it wasn't working. Aya was one of the most perceptive people she knew.

When the fingers brushed against her clenched fist, Usagi flinched. Then she looked up at Aya. Her vision was blurred, and she realized that she had started to cry. Aya was frowning at her. She felt worse for putting him in this position, and she covered her face with her hands while she tried to stop the flow of tears, but it was a wasted effort. She hadn't cried in so long, and the dam had broken with a few simple words from the redhead beside her.

That was when she felt Aya's hand again. He was awkwardly trying to pat her on the back.

xXx

Aya sat silently and watched as Omi typed away at the computer in front of him, his eyebrows knitted together in concentration as his blue eyes moved across the screen. "There's just nothing. No evidence logs, no persons of interest, no updates. It's like the case has gone cold." The teenager sighed as he clicked through some other tabs, bringing up personnel files, case files, background checks, and other things that went by too fast for Aya to identify.

"I even started going through some of Usagi's background." When the redhead frowned, he added, "nothing that personal. I'm not trying to invade her privacy, just looking for something to jump out at me I guess. She's squeaky clean. Normal life, normal schools, friends, two parents and a sibling; I can understand why the cops aren't getting anywhere. The only things the victims have in common is that they all knew Usagi. The girl Rei didn't even go to the same high school as them."

Omi leaned back in his chair and massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, then pressed his eyelids together and rubbed them as well. Aya was sure that the boy's eyes must be burning from staring at the computer for too long.

"It's kind of odd, when you look at them." When they looked over at Yohji with confused expressions, he elaborated, "Usagi's friends, I mean. Kids in high school usually hang out with people like themselves, right? That group doesn't really fit together, though, you know?"

"Yeah, but that's just the Usagi effect." It was Ken who spoke up, then looked sheepish. "That sounded weird. I mean Usagi just befriends everyone, the four of us being the other prime example of that."

"Well there's her fiancé too." Yohji propped his head on his fist like he was bored. He reached for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket then sighed and shoved them back when Aya glared at him. "Usagi said they were together since she was fourteen. He was already in college at that time. How many college guys really go after girls in junior high?"

"Sounds like something you would do." Aya commented dryly.

"Was that said with affection or should I be offended?"

"I didn't know Yohji actually listened to people when they talked." Ken said from his seat next.

"Everyone's taking a shot. Did I do something to piss everybody off?" Yohji grinned while he peered over his sunglasses at Ken. "I only listen to certain people when they talk."

"The age difference isn't that unusual, especially these days. I think you're just grasping at straws," Omi spoke up as he went back to clicking through files. "There are a few weird medical records from back then though. Junior high and high school, injuries taken to the ER but never followed up on. I didn't look any deeper than that."

"You don't think it was some kind of abuse?" Ken sounded a bit more subdued than he had a moment ago when poking fun at Yohji.

Omi frowned. "It's hard to say without looking at the records or asking Usagi. But it wasn't reported as such and medical professionals are legally obligated to report suspected abuse."

"You're getting off track." Aya spoke up, and they all turned to look at him. "Probing into Usagi's past is getting us nowhere. It's been quiet for too long and Usagi is on edge. I'm afraid we will just have to wait for something to happen. In the mean time, I think it's better to respect her privacy."

"I agree," Omi said without pause, looking a bit sheepish after the speech from the redhead that felt more like a reprimand. "I was only probing to try and find a lead. We shouldn't have speculated so much."

After a stretch of silence between them, Ken rose to go, and then Omi as well. Before Aya could rise as well, Yohji shot him a look over his sunglasses and said, "You know you can switch off guard duty any time. You must be getting tired."

"It's not a problem." Aya responded tersely before rising to his feet. Yohji continued to watch him, a bemused smile on his face, as he walked out of the room.

xXx

Rage, black and twisting it crawled outward from his chest and up his throat, choking him until he couldn't breathe.

He saw her, the careful expression on her face that was neither smiling nor melancholy, the neutrality oddly more satisfying than her despair. It spoke to a greater struggle she was now going to great lengths to hide. He was absolutely gleeful until she shifted, turned to the side, and he saw if for the first time.

PREGNANT.

That's when the fury flooded through him, stretching it's tendrils out through every limb, gripping his organs until he felt sick, his heart racing, gasping for breath, ready to let loose on any nearby victim. HOW DARE SHE!

He stood there long after she had disappeared, drowning under the waves of his inner wrath, being pulled down into the darkness by the undercurrent. Perspiration had begun to bead on his forehead, his upper lip, slick on his skin and soaking into the fabric of his clothes. Passersby gave him odd glances and quickened their pace to get farther away from him. He ignored them.

NO RIGHT. NO. RIGHT.

The thoughts kept coming, slamming into him over and over like so many blows. This was not part of the plan. What good would it be?

There must be retribution. A penance for the crime.

And then he emerged, surfaced onto a calm sea just before his lungs burst. He came back into himself and remembered where he was: the middle of a street's sidewalk, trembling with anger and covered in sweat from the effort of it. But it mattered little, for he knew the fix.

She would pay.

xXx

I wanted to keep writing but I like ending with Farfie's crazy tangents so I will continue on into the next chapter, even though this is ending up pretty short now. I'm sure you noticed I'm switching up the pace a bit. It may become a bit awkward and rushed but I really want to make it to the end of this story, so I'm doing what it takes. Please review, I hope you enjoyed it!

-SachiNyoko