A/N: Not my characters, sorry guys. Typical disclaimer. Shoujo Ai story, run away now if you're offended. Probably going to be 2 Chapters long, maybe more... Angsty at the moment, hope you can stomach it....

Raindrops

          Part One: Water in the sky

"Take the log, base 10 of 100…" Ami muttered over the math problem, the equations whizzing through her brain. She tapped her pencil against the hard, dark wood of Rei's table. Just keep looking down, look at the paper. She thought, willing herself to stay focused. 

          "Ami-chan?" Oh no. Not today, Makoto spoke up from across the room. She was sprawled on the floor, her English homework inside the curl of her long, elegant body. "Can you help me with translation?" she asked, peering at the blue haired genius with wide eyes.

          "Sure, Makoto." Ami said, and though her personal opinion was that her voice wavered as the name crossed her lips, nothing seemed amiss. The other Senshi barely looked up, immersed in their work.

          "Can you remember the word for run?" Makoto talked around the long yellow pencil gripped in her mouth, obscuring her words a bit. Ami wiped that dream from her head. It's a perfectly normal thing to dream about your friends, she thought. Dreams, after all, were only one's brain digesting thoughts and events of the day. Being around friends would prompt them to be in your dreams, naturally.

          "It's hashiru." She smiled, and went back to scribbling on her homework. The other girls nodded a bit; they were used to intelligence flowing from Ami.  The log of 100 was 2. "Ah, minna-san? I have to get home early today…" Ami said, rising from her sitting position, and feeling a blush creep upon her. She was determined to escape view before she turned scarlet.

          Slipping the last paper into a shoulder bag, and turning her back on the room, Ami prepared to go. The other girls, still battling the homework, mumbled protests, "Stay longer, Ami-chan..." But she stepped out the paper-doors, onto the porch anyway.

          Outside, rain was cascading down from the eaves, forming a thick curtain from the rest of the world. The water had started falling since the study session began, Ami concluded. Will it never end? She slipped her feet into the small brown school loafers, and hopped out into the rain. She realized, as she walked away, that she could have waited and saved herself the walk in rain. Hard, springtime rains never lasted long. But that would have meant going back in, facing those green eyes, and seeing that dream played back in its every detail.

          The rain was coming down cold on her head, slicking blue locks tightly down.  Shading her bag with an arm, Ami walked down the long steps, and then made a left turn at the road. All that kept repeating inside her eyes was the dream. Long brown hair, flowing loose in some unfelt breeze. Cream colored hands. That was the image that had followed Ami around all day. Our hands intertwined, hers sweeping down my neck. My hands running through her hair.

          "Get home, kid!" someone yelled, their car screaming by in the darkness. Ami ignored them and kept walking, eyes downcast, mind spinning turbulently. No matter how she reasoned with herself, there was never a satisfactory explanation for why this had to happen. Why do I have to imagine kissing her every time I see her face? Ami knew she had never asked for this. The pavement was tracking by under her feet, and she thought bitterly that at least her feet knew where to go. Her heart didn't. It only seemed to know how to break. 

          The Temple walls were long past when she looked up. The rain beat hard, and Ami was drenched to the bone. What made everything change? Remembering fondly the time when she could talk to her Mako-chan, smile with her and laugh, and there was no pain. Times when touching her skin didn't leave an electric, sickened feeling in the pit of Ami's stomach. And now I have to go and spoil it, with stupid feelings I'm not even stupid supposed to have.

          There was water trailing down her cheeks. Hot water, not the rain then. Tears, not that they were foreign.  She stopped walking, seeing a set of swings looming up out of the rainy fog. The storm wasn't even a bother any more.  Tired, Ami collapsed onto the wet, rubber seats of the children's play swings. Gripping the chains, she started to rock back and forth slowly. The rain was still pummeling down, and her book bag lay lonely forgotten on the woodchips.

          A hot shaking filled her. Why did this have to happen? Wasn't she already coming to terms with being so different? Too smart, a genius girl no one would talk to. It had always been hard for her, even when she was little. No one liked the kid in class who got the best grades and broke the curve, even in Kindergarten. It had been simple then, Ami mused. Back before she started to have these strange yearnings in the pit of her stomach. Inklings that the girls who mooned over boys in her classes were somehow getting it wrong.  She found a name for it when she was thirteen. Lesbians, a boy in her class had said, referring to a pair of women walking by on the street. The word sounded strange at first, so alien. Is that me, little Ami had wondered.

          Then, as if that wasn't enough, fate had to step in, and Sailor Mercury was revived. Ami was usually grateful that she'd been given another lifetime, but once in every long while, she was bitter; no one else had to study and save the world, apart from her small group. No one else had this many secrets piled on layer after layer.

          "A...Ami?" came a question out of the rainy darkness. Ami lifted her head, surprised. There was Makoto, standing under an umbrella, her feet bare and muddy. "Are you okay?"