Also on AO3 under same author and title
Mako had no idea who her soulmate was. Sure, she had a hint, in the form of a general lack of phantom pain, but all that told her was that he was more cautious than she was. Which described most people. Back to square one. As many scrapes and bruises as she got, she hoped he'd have some idea how to find her.
She met him two years after her parents died, two years after she started venting her grief on bullies. He was older than her, by about a year, and willing to be a source of companionship and comfort to her. A few months after she met him, they started dating. A few more months after that, she slept with him. He dumped her the next day. She punched a wall, and cried.
A few months before her fourteenth birthday, for just a moment, she felt a hand tangled in her hair, nails digging into her scalp. A moment after that, she felt an instant of biting cold. She couldn't be sure what had happened, but her best guess was that he'd been shoved headlong into freezing water (she was wrong, but she couldn't begin to imagine the truth). When she felt thin straps of some sort digging into her palms the next week, she breathed a sigh of relief.
She was officially concerned at this point. Her soulmate had gone from barely any injuries at all, to frequent affliction of what she knew damn well to be combat injuries (plus biting cold or, almost as frequently, searing heat). She was pretty sure he'd been bound in barbed wire at one point! With any luck, this move to Azabu-Juuban would take her near enough to help him. She'd been hearing some odd rumors about Azabu-Juuban.
She was fourteen, a Senshi, and in the company of friends and sisters-in-arms. She was also in a narrow alley that made it slightly difficult to maneuver, a state of affairs not helped by Sailor Moon, Mercury, and her own attempts to address Zoisite all at once. Then, as Sailor Moon attempted to gesture for her usual speech, she hit Mercury in the face... and Jupiter felt it. Before she could even begin to consider the implications of this, Mercury fell forward, putting her lower assets right in Jupiter's face. If her own reaction to that was any indication, she'd have no problem adjusting to this new information.
“Uh, hey, uh,” Mako stammered.
Ami looked up from her book. “Hm, yes? What is it?”
“Um, in the alley, earlier,” Mako took a moment to wipe the sweat of her palms, then continued, “Usagi got you in the face?”
Ami raised an eyebrow, waiting for Mako to continue. Mako took a breath, and forged ahead to the important part, “I felt it.”
There was a pause, as Ami processed what Mako had said, then her eyes widened and her hands went to cover her mouth as it sank in.
“You- you started learning martial arts when we were six years old.”
Mako chuckled, “Heh, yeah.”
“You started getting into real fights at ten.”
Mako averted her eyes. “Ah... yeah.”
“When you were thirteen...” Ami trailed off, not wanting to say it.
“Wha-,” Mako furrowed her brow, then looked apologetic as she figured it out, “Oh! Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I thought he might be- he wasn't. And I'm sorry.”
Ami place a hand on Mako's arm, understanding in her eyes, “Don't apologize, I'm sure-” she cut off as her gaze hardened, then restarted, “I know he could have said something before it got that far.”
“He dumped me the next day,” Mako said, smiling wryly.
“Then he's an idiot as well as an asshole,” Ami said with conviction.
Mako barked a laugh, “Hah! Yeah.” She looked Ami in the eyes, affection in her own. “Yeah, he is.”
