((Author's Note: By the way, all of my Sailor Moon fanfics (including, naturally, this one) deal with the mangaverse.))

And before Rei knew it, she was part of the family. Looking back on it, it had happened the first night she had stayed with Setsuna. Rei had slipped down to the kitchen for a drink of water. The four A.M. light cast a blue glow on the kitchen tile. She had only been there a few times, and even then only in the light. Everything looked unfamiliar in the earliest part of the morning, from the mahogany furniture to Michiru's Royal Copenhagen plates in the china cabinet. She felt small and naked in Setsuna's borrowed nightclothes, and the thought of daylight was already starting to intimidate her. She would have to face beautiful Setsuna, who she was ready to love totally and completely, and ask her if she was ready to do the same.

Setsuna wouldn't hurt her. Rei would never have been with her if she suspected otherwise. But still, in this alien light, in this shadow, even this was possible.

Before she could finish the thought, Haruka surprised her in the kitchen and her doubts flitted away like a scared shadow. Rei's thoughts turned to standing up straight and trying to look dignified, or as dignified as one can look tripping over the hem of a nightshirt six inches too long for them. She couldn't help but be a little embarrased. Surely Haruka knew what they had done that night.

Haruka understood the sanctity of dawn and hadn't let the lights on. She whispered, very gently, if Rei wouldn't like to stay for breakfast.

It never occured to Rei how unconventional it was. They were a family first, two lesbian couples and an orphan girl second, five soldiers thrown together by fate last.

And then, Michiru asked Setsuna if Rei couldn't come an hour early for their date that Friday, so she could help her with the class on postwar Japan she was having trouble with. And then, Rei was there taking lessons in the kitchen for three days each week, smiling over a cup of white tea at Michiru's maternal - but never patronizing - explanations.

Not long later, Rei and Setsuna came home early, not long after the movie they had gone to see had ended. Rei had pretended not to like it - she had convinced herself that she was far too sensible and far too cynical to enjoy that kind of maudlin claptrap - but she had teared up a little, and Setsuna knew it. She teased her a little as they walked through the door. Michiru and Haruka were still up. A cup of coffee later, Haruka learned that Rei played piano, and she all but forbid her to leave before they had played a few duets together. They stayed up nights like this, the four of them (and sometimes Hotaru if Michiru was feeling benevolent), making music. Setsuna, who didn't play anything, was content to sit on the couch with her hands folded in her lap, listening attentively. Rei threw glances over her shoulder during the easy parts of the score and smiled.

The mornings were the best for Rei, because the mornings were how it all started. They were all early risers, and some days, after a near-silent breakfast and if the weather was good, they'd hike to a lake that Haruka knew. Haruka would run laps and Hotaru would play by the edge of the water beneath Michiru's watchful eye. Setsuna and Rei walked together, whispering in one another's ears. If they were quiet they would see deer sometimes, and rabbits, and every day as the sun rose, they would see dragonflies and birds rise from of the trees out of nowhere. They'd turn back home when the perfect cool of the morning twilight began to disappate, but, no matter how early they headed for the road home, in the middle of the summer they never made it back to the house before the sun was blazing and the five of them were dripping with sweat.

The first morning Rei walked together with them was the first morning she knew she had truly left. She had spent more and more nights with Setsuna, with Haruka driving her to school in the mornings, and more and more afternoons and evenings with the whole family. First she had brought a few outfits to keep at Setsuna's, then a few books, then half her possessions, then, finally, her grandfather shrugged and had all of them moved to the mansion out of practicality.

That day she wondered, idly, if her father even knew she had left, and that was when she realized that it didn't matter anymore.