Warning: Rei/Minako. Implications. Also, beware minor amounts of cursing.

Commentary: Hello all! Surprise! Here's another Inner-centric work from me. Expect two parts and an epilogue all told.

This is a sequel to Bookshelf. If you haven't read that, some things you see here might confuse you. While I'm not asking you to go read Bookshelf, or saying it exists as this story's foundation, I will be the first to tell you that giving it a look will shed some serious light on what's happening here.

As always, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

CURIOUS QUIVER

PART I

Evening at the Hikawa Shrine, just past six o'clock. In the courtyard the crows scratched expectantly at the freshly-swept earth. Soon the shrine's miko would deliver them their daily dinner of a few handfuls of seed and breadcrumbs. For now, though, they were still hungry, and they coughed their reproach into the steel-blue quiet of the fading twilight.

Within the shrine proper, Rei noted their grumblings and smiled. "Almost finished, you pigs," she muttered. She flexed her fingers over the broom handle and swept its bristles sidelong into the flue above the sacred fire, banked now to stacked smoldering embers. She sang under her breath, "Patience, patience."

The intensity of the crow-cries outside increased as though in answer—cut off abruptly next, lending the shrine's campus an uneasy quiet. Frowning, Rei tightened her grip on the broom and cocked her head. When the bird-chitter failed to resume, she stepped briskly to the door, slid it open, and hurried onto the porch. While rare in the city, foxes sometimes paid Hikawa curious visits and took snaps at the resident birds too. Had one chosen to attempt a meal again at her crows' expense, Rei intended to frighten it off.

It wasn't a fox in the courtyard.

It was Minako, backpack dangling in the crook of an elbow. Her face was a ruin of red blotches and wetness. Above her right temple, her hair spiked into discolored cowlicks. Her jaw looked swollen even at a distance.

She was crying.

Rei dropped the broom—took a stunned step forward.

"Hey," Minako offered, watery. She shivered, dropped the backpack. Bits of bright things fell from her hair. Rei squinted.

They were pieces of glass.

"It's not Thursday yet," Minako said. "I know. I'm ridiculously early. But I was wondering if I could stay here a while. You know, not long. Maybe forever. Maybe—"

She stopped. She turned her face skyward, squeezed her eyes shut. A few more glittery shards pattered down across the courtyard and Minako bit her lips, staggered, swayed. Rei leapt over the broom and down the three steps to the bottom of the porch.

She threw her arms open. She caught Minako as she fell.

"I'm sorry," the blonde offered into Rei's billowy sleeve. It was a whisper and they went down together, Rei's angle too awkward to keep Minako aloft. The miko's knees hit the courtyard, sending up small puffs of dust. The other soldier landed crossways in her lap. The crows watching the two girls' progress from the surrounding trees contributed startled caws, and Minako insisted over and over, thrusting herself into Rei as much as she was able, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" Her arms went around the shrinekeeper's waist and clenched there, tight enough to burn.

"Minako-chan, what—?" Rei wheezed. Prying one hand free, she ran it disbelievingly over her friend's skull. Fragments and liquid prickled under her palm. She lifted it away: looked at it, expecting to see glass and blood. She did find the former. The liquid, however, was too dark, too viscous. There were lumps in it—

"She hit me with a gravy boat," Minako seethed. Her voice cracked and she barked out hoarse, disbelieving laughter. "Her favorite fucking crystal gravy boat—"

Minako shook her head suddenly, wrenched herself away from the miko. Glass splinters bit into Rei's palm; globs of apparent gravy slid down the front of her ceremonial vestments. "Minako-chan," she attempted. She reached out again. Her friend hunkered away from her touch as though afraid it would scald.

"God," interrupted the blonde, "I'm so sorry, I… coming here like this, I didn't mean—" She reached up and dug her nails into her own cheeks: drew them down the tear-smeared curves. They left behind stark white lines. She giggled wetly, miserably—nigh maniacally.

Rei's hackles rose. Her chest clenched, all simmering anger. "Hey, no," she soothed her friend. Slipping upright, she cupped her hands over Minako's shoulders. "Come on, Minako-chan." She slid her fingers lower, folded them beneath Minako's arms, pulled. "Come on," she repeated, "let's go inside. Let's fix it."

The blonde wobbled to her feet, half-laughing and half-crying. "Fix it?" she echoed. "Fix it? How can anyone fix it?" The question went white, high, shrill. It scared off the crows. As the flock of birds took exasperated wing, Rei captured the other soldier's hands and squeezed them. Minako's knuckles popped.

"Minako-chan," she said quietly.

The other soldier's fingers stiffened—flexed. Relaxed again. Her shoulders drooping, Minako inhaled, nodded. She replied even as fresh wet flooded down her face, "Right. Rei-chan, I'm sorry, I am, I really am—"

"Stop apologizing," Rei threatened. "Just stop and come inside like I said, Minako-chan. I'll drag you. I honestly will. It's a promise." She tightened her grip a little more—softened the touch even so with an amended, "Please." She gave Minako an experimental tug. Shamefaced, Minako followed it.

They went together down the line of the porch to Rei's bedroom, into the chamber: they stepped silently past the low table whereupon they had both spent countless afternoons daydreaming, pseudo-studying, snatching naps. Rei took Minako to the bathroom. She pulled her inside. In the fluorescent glow of the sinklight, Minako's hair gleamed sea-green and the shards in it stood up too, the spires of an unwilling crown.

Releasing the other girl's hands, Rei knelt and rifled through the cabinet beneath the washbasin. She found a first-aid kit—she tucked it under an arm. Delving into the drawer's depths a second time yielded the cord of the hairdryer snagged around her fingers. Shaking them free, she told the blonde, "The towel on that bar's clean." She rolled her shoulder to show which one she meant. "Rinse off, but don't wash your hair yet," she instructed. "Come to me when you're finished—all right?"

Minako nodded. As Rei stood, Minako plucked at the hem of her shirt, pulled at it, and after several unsuccessful attempts on the blonde's part, the miko helped her peel it up and off. The fabric was cold against her flesh, covered in dark streaks and bits of telling sharpness. She and Minako, garbed now in just jeans and a bra, stared at the gravy-splotched blouse.

"You can burn it if you want," said the latter. She tried on a smile. It hung crookedly on her oft-grinning mouth, faded again. Rubbing the heel of her hand over her cheek, she whispered, "I guess I'm serious."

Folding the shirt, Rei returned gently, "Leave the rest in the sink, Minako-chan. I'll be just outside." With that said, she left the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

She ventured back outdoors and did throw the shirt into the small fire beneath the boiler. She retrieved her broom and Minako's backpack from the courtyard: she locked the shrine's gates. Lips pressed into a tight, severe line, she padded down the porch to her bedroom, stuck her head inside, listened. She could hear the shower running.

She stripped out of her robes, noting the sunset in the wink of the window, and replaced them with pajamas. She took a seat on her bed. She lifted Minako's backpack—hesitated only the briefest moment before opening it. She found within a hairbrush, three pairs of panties, a notebook covered in doodled hearts, a red sock with a hole in the toe, a mostly crushed packet of chocolate-glazed rice crackers, and an explicit manga.

Rei flicked curiously through the last despite the circumstances. She wondered several times during the perusal, quite skeptically, if such anatomical structures really could be that large.

Five minutes later the shower cut off. Minako opened the door slightly, peering out amidst clouds of steam and a sheaf of soaked golden hair. Spotting Rei on the bed still, she lifted her eyebrows and asked, "My bag…?" Her voice was steadier now, stronger.

"Mostly full of crap," Rei sighed. She tossed over a pair of panties and held up the manga in her other hand. "Seriously? You're into this?"

Minako caught the panties, dropped them to step into them, and rolled her eyes. "Believe it or not, the dialogue's really touching," she insisted as she rolled the undergarments up her legs. "Or did you fail to notice because you were too busy looking at the giant—"

"You didn't bring any real clothes," the miko cut in, mentally resolving to have another look at the manga later, preferably when Minako wasn't watching. She tipped her chin toward the chair next to the bathroom door. A stack of pale pajamas rested there. "Those are for you," she hedged. "They're—they're a little, uh, cutesy."

Minako's hand quested through the gap in the door to retrieve the nightwear. "Thank you, Rei-chan," she murmured. Drawing the bundle to her toweled chest, she defended, "I left in a hurry."

"And because of that," Rei said, providing her friend a reassuring smile, "you get to flounce around in cupcake-print pants. Consider it your lucky day."

The blonde shot her a grateful grin in turn. "I'm quite fortunate," she agreed solemnly. She drew back into the bathroom to finish dressing.

Rei snapped open the first-aid kit in the meantime. She took out a pair of tweezers: the bottle of peroxide too, just in case. She studied the latter wryly and called to Minako, "How's your cheek?"

"My what?" came the muffled query, followed by a heavy thud and a yelp. "Damnit! Rei-chan! Why is your towel rack so pointy?"

"Your cheek. The one you cut open on my steps three days ago," Rei volleyed back. She made a point, puns aside, not to answer the other question.

Minako opened the door and flounced into view. Tossing her hair over her shoulder—it made a wet smuck! against Rei's desk lamp—she struck a pose, wiggled her eyebrows too. "That was just a scratch," she reminded Rei. "How do I look?"

Rei studied the line of smiling ice cream cones and other various desserts marching up the fabric of Minako's calves. "Cutesy," she managed around a smirk.

Minako made a face. "Uh-huh. Operative word for hideous. Why did you buy these? They're a fashion atrocity."

"I," Rei denied, hooking her fingers into quotations, "committed no such atrocity, as you call it." She dropped her hands. "Blame Usagi. She gave them to me for my birthday last year. Do they fit okay?"

Tugging at the waistband of the pants, Minako admitted, "They're a little tight in places. And short." She gestured to her ankles, which were indeed vulnerably visible beneath grinning cupcaked cuffs. "They're fine, though," she told Rei. "I appreciate it."

"Sure." Rei smiled, then pointed to the floor between her feet with the tweezers. "Come sit?"

"What are you going to do with those?" Minako asked. She took the suggestion and folded herself down to lean shamelessly back into Rei's knees.

"There's probably still glass in your hair. Here, give me that towel—you're soaking me." Rei took the proffered stretch of fabric and positioned it over her lap. Tucking her hand beneath Minako's chin, she tipped the other girl's head onto the makeshift pad and continued, "I'm going to look through it. Try to get it out, you know." Picking up the comb she intended to use from the bedside table, she inquired, businesslike, "Does your head sting anywhere? Did you feel any cuts when you were rinsing it?"

"No." Minako looked at Rei through the wet smear of her bangs. "Did—uhm. Earlier. I didn't cut you, did I? When I—"

Lost it? Went to pieces? Turned inside out and took off my mask and showed you what really happens inside this head of mine? Minako's eyes asked these questions and more.

Rei answered them all in a single headshake. "Nothing broke the skin," she allowed. "I want to keep it that way, too. For both of us."

What Rei really meant was, You washed away more than just glass in the shower. Let me mop up the rest. Let me put you back together.

Tweaking Minako's ear with the tweezers, she requested, "Help me get your massive hair onto this towel, okay? All of it."

Minako smiled again, small this time, and obliged. Rei dug the comb into the metallic mass and ran it carefully from scalp to spine, flossing free bits that shimmered suspiciously. She made the task wordless, and Minako contributed nothing to the quiet at first but the sound of another person breathing.

"Aren't you going to ask what happened?" she ventured at last.

Rei paused. Flicking a bead-sized pebble of crystal into the wastebasket with the tweezers, she responded, "I won't ask. But I'll listen if you want to talk about it."

The unspoken if you need to talk about it drifted between them.

Minako fell silent again. The comb's teeth made low shh sounds in sopping tresses and Rei chewed the inside of her cheek, contemplative. The shrine creaked around the pair as night moved in, made itself comfortable. Shadows in the room slid out their swords. The shower's faucet dripped once, twice, and Minako sat up a little.

"They were fighting," she presented. Her voice sounded too loud and she dropped it, folding her arms over the pillars of her knees. "I came home today—from the gym. I spent all afternoon practicing my low spike because I could tell it was getting soft. I wasn't holding my elbows right. They weren't stiff enough—I kept letting them unhinge too early and my arc was all wobbly for it, and…"

She stopped. Rei felt her jaw clench.

"I can usually tell, you know," Minako said. "I have a sense about it. Like the doorknob tingles before I touch it, or there's something about the way the curtain looks in the front window, and I don't even have to go inside to know it's bad." She shrugged. Rei only just avoided jabbing the nape of her neck with the tweezers. "I missed it this time, I guess."

The seams of the borrowed pajama top creaked as Minako shifted. Rei found a final piece of glass behind her ear. Putting the tweezers aside, she picked it up with her bare fingertips, studied it—threw it away. After disposing of the comb too, she folded the towel over Minako's hair and began to squeegee it dry.

"I left my gym bag in the hall," Minako went on matter-of-factly. "The strap slid off my wrist and I heard her yell at him. He shouted back." She shrugged again, and this time her shoulders trembled. She muffled an angry, thready half-sob into her elbow, swallowed hard: her hair squeaked in the clasp of the towel. Rei felt an overbearing urge to embrace the blonde. Before she could decide whether it was the best idea, though, Minako muttered, "Their fights used to be about actual things—I used to listen too, and I took sides. In my head, I mean. Now it just sounds like static, Rei-chan, and I don't care anymore, and I just wish they'd stop—"

She broke off: not to cry, but to think about something. Rei wondered again if she should hug Minako. The other girl solved this dilemma by wrapping both arms about one of Rei's legs. Tucking her cheek to the inner hinge of the miko's knee, she closed her eyes.

"They've got some nerve," she opined. She tipped her head back a bit farther and there were specks of moisture in her lashes, Rei saw, tiny translucent droplets. From the shower? Tears? Rei couldn't tell.

The miko contributed, "What do you mean?"

"I mean… I mean, what right do they have to fight about nothing when I've spent the past four years," Minako hissed, "fighting for everything?"

She sawed her lip, her expression pained—painful too, for Rei to watch.

"How many times have we died now?" Minako wondered aloud. "Two times? Three? Tied up and torn apart and impaled and blown open and… and I walked into the kitchen, hoping they were watching a TV show or something. Maybe getting excited about it—making all that noise for a different reason, a good reason. I stepped to the edge of the counter and she threw the gravy boat. Not at me. Uh-uh," she clarified. She waggled a finger. "At him."

Minako's hair was as dry as it was going to get using just a towel. Tossing said towel the way of the bathroom, Rei set about brushing the other girl's golden mop free of snags and tangles. Horror made her fingers stiff.

"I saw it coming. I saw it coming for, I don't know, centuries. Her arm cocking forward, and the boat leaving her fingers—stupid gravy dripping all over the floor the whole time." Minako's mouth quirked in a hard, bitter smile. "I could have dodged it. Really. I've evaded enemy attacks going ten times faster and I've managed to miss rogue balls on the court too, but I just stared at it and I thought over and over, My own mother would not hit me with a glass bowl full of hot gravy, and I was still thinking that when it smashed into me."

Her arms tightened around Rei's leg. "Minako-chan," the miko started, but the blonde dug her nails into Rei's pantsleeve and opened her eyes. They were ferocious: they were bereft, brilliant wells of sky-screaming agony. Rei's words of reassurance cut themselves quiet.

"She shrieked at him, and he came around me," Minako said, "and they got into each other's faces and she started grabbing for something else to throw, and neither of them saw me. Neither of them saw me standing there, Rei-chan, or if they did see me neither of them cared enough to do anything about it, and it's never going to be enough, is it?"

Rei stared at her friend, and Minako asked again, desperate, "Is it?" Her chest hitched. Laughing sundaes and sundry confections bounced beneath the tight pajama collar. "Dying in the snow or sacrificing my dreams, or hitting the winning spike, or signing the star contract or getting an A on a math test, or even saving the world—none of it, none of it… It's never going to be enough for them, is it, Rei-chan?"

Rei shook the other girl free. Minako made a sound of pure protest and hurt, and Rei muffled it by sliding down from the edge of her mattress to the floor, where she rolled onto her knees and wrapped her arms around the blonde soldier. She squeezed: hard. Minako gasped, wriggled, and Rei squeezed harder. Holding Minako was like trying to hold sunlight: embarrassing and next to impossible. The miko gave it her best shot anyway.

"What isn't enough for the ungrateful leaves plenty for those who are truly appreciative," Rei permitted finally.

On the desk nearby, the clock ticked.

In her arms, Minako shivered, clung to Rei, and began to laugh.

It was real laughter, bright and blinding—it was loud, it was buoyant. The sound echoed through the chambers of the empty shrine. Minako thrust her face into Rei's throat, sucking in great gulps of air between helpless giggles. Her hands fisted in the miko's pajama top: her nails skittered down the dark-haired girl's spine. She kneed Rei in the kidney. Rei huffed but, because she was feeling charitable, decided not to say anything about it.

"You sound like a fortune cookie," Minako wheezed, delighted. "A bad one! A really, really bad one."

Rei made a great show of attempting to shove Minako away. She put little to no strength in her pushes, however. "Well," she sniffed, "if you're going to be elitist—"

"No, no," Minako denied. She grinned into Rei's collarbone. "Bad fortune cookies are the best." She tightened her grip on the miko until Rei was nearly certain she felt a rib snap. "They give," continued the blonde, "the stupidest and most sincere not-quite advice I've ever heard."

Loosening one arm, Rei lifted it and cupped Minako's citrine head in the palm of a coarse, careful hand. She pressed Minako as near as the other girl could come—tucked her chin protectively down into the damp locks. In the embrace there remained scant space for words, and in the interest of putting as little between them as possible, Rei said nothing.

They clutched one another a while: until Rei's knees crawled with needles and the wet, cold flag of Minako's hair prickled unpleasantly through both their sets of sleepwear. Neither wanted to let the other go, and eventually it was only the thunderous growling rumble of Minako's stomach that forced them apart.

"Sorry," the blonde apologized. She massaged her belly ruefully. "I guess it goes without saying that I didn't stick around for dinner, huh?"

"That," Rei agreed, "sounded and felt like an earthquake." She eased aside and stretched out her legs. Her knees popped like pistons. Her toes crackled. "I have rice," she offered gingerly. "And vegetables—radish, mostly. Some potatoes. I was going to make soup too. I didn't put out much since I'm the only one here, but…"

"Sounds great," Minako supplied. She clapped both hands over the taut drum of her middle and put on a pitiful face. "Feed me, Rei-chan," she begged. She hesitated. She tried out, the most meager of self-teases, "No gravy?"

Rei climbed to her feet. Pressing the pad of her thumb to the other girl's forehead, she rubbed it and consented, "Not in this house. It's gross anyway." She nudged, "Get comfortable, okay? You know where the spare futon is. If you'll get that arranged, I'll work out dinner."

"My hero," sighed the blonde. She embraced Rei's legs.

Stepping primly from the encircling clasp, Rei went to the door, made the moves of a model in its threshold, and asked, "You expected someone less than heroic?" She shot her fellow soldier a feigned haughty glance.

Minako shook her head and offered Rei a slow, simple smile. "No," she admitted. "It's why I came here in the first place."

Rei flushed. "Read your manga, Minako-chan," she muttered. She made to leave.

"Not too many radishes!" Minako called after her. She tacked on quietly, "Thank you, Rei-chan."

Waving dismissively over her shoulder, Rei stepped outside and closed the door against the cold. The night's new breezes swept to her and sent gooseflesh rippling up her arms.

They did nothing, though, to soothe her burning cheeks.