Sailor Moon does not belong to me.  
I wish it was so but keep on dreaming. Sailor Moon belongs to 
Naoki Takeuchi/Kodansha, TOEI Animation.  I want to say thank 
you to all those people who encourages me to write to continue writing.  
Especially to Jade and Mako-chan.  

Many thanks to my pre-reader who helped edit it for me.
I am grateful for many people's condolences when I came back
from my absense.  Thank you.

Remember to visit my page at 
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Pagoda/9613/
I usually add my fanfiction there before I submit it.

The character Annie 
belongs to me and only me.  The rest belongs to 
Naoki Takeuchi/Kodansha, TOEI Animation.
Tamohome is the name of a main character in Fushigi Yuugi.  
His character in this fanfic is not the one he had in Fushigi Yuugi.  
I am just using his name for the baby.

It is a romance if you are looking for action this is not the 
right place for you.  This is an alternate reality.  If you have 
any questions about this storyline, please email me and I'll try 
to explain it the best I can.
 
Visions of Sugarplums is a copyright of Serena Chiba@1998. 
Now on with the story.  

** means thinking

Vision of Sugarplums
by Serena Chiba  

Chapter Three

	Annie wouldn't stop crying.
	She didn't want her bottle.  She didn't want her pacifier.  She didn't want 
to rock, but was unhappy sitting still.  She didn't want to be put down, but also didn't 
want to be carried.  Red-faced, tears streaming from her drowed woe-begone violent eyes, 
she creamed in a frenzy of nerves while she threw herself back and forth in Usagi's arms.
	The sound was driving Usagi frantic.  Pacing the floor, trying to hold the sobbing 
child, she felt her own tears gathering with acid heat against her burning eyelids.
	"What's wrong with her?"  Mamoru's voice held doubt and concern as he came to stand 
in the door of the bedroom where Usagi strode up and down with the crying baby.
	"Heavens, I don't know what's wrong!" Usagi shouted above the din.  "She's in a 
strange house, in strange pajamas, with strange people who ask stupid questions.  What on 
earth could possibly be the matter with her!"
	"Let me have her."  He moved forward, reaching as if he meant to take Annie out of 
her arms.
	Usagi twisted away from him.  "You think you can do better with he than I can?"
	"I'm not likely to do any worse."  This time he closed his hands on Usagi's upper 
arm, swinging her around to face him.  "Look," he went on in tones of firm reason, "it's late.  
You're dead-tired.  Both you and Annie have gone about as far as you can go.  So give it a 
rest. Get a hot bath and try to relax while I see what I can do with the kid."
	It was perfectly reasonable.  Unfortunately, that wasn't how she felt.  "You think she 
likes you better."
	"Little girls tend to go for men," he said with a crooked smile.  "They respond to the 
size and authority.  Sometimes big girls do the same."
	Usagi could imagine.  But she wasn't one of them.  Refusing to meet his gaze, she said, 
"She's bound to cry herself to sleep in a few minutes."
	"Probably," he agreed, his lips thinning with tested patience.  "But can you stand to 
hear it?"
	It was disconcerting to be understood so well.  She could feel the tears gathering in 
warm, salty wetness along her lower lashes.
	"I thought so," he said.  "Even if you could stand it, I don't think I can.  Come on, 
now.  Let me have her."
	She gave up the baby.  What else could she do?  Still it felt like a failure on her 
part.  It was even worse when, a few minutes later, while she lay soaking in the tub, she 
realized that Annie was no longer crying.
	She couldn't do this; she just couldn't.  Yet what other choice did she have?  She 
had started it, and now she couldn't get out of it.  If she tried, Chiba Mamoru would think 
she was heartless and cruel.  Which was ironic when the problem was too much heart and 
tenderness instead of too little.  Not that she cared what he thought.  He was a stranger 
to her, after all.
	A stranger in her house in the middle of the night.  And she had not only invited 
him in, but insisted he stay when he tried to leave.
	Annie liked the man, drooled all over him, in fact.  Not surprising, when she herself 
was ready to do the same.  Usagi wasn't ready to accept the judgement of a nine-month-old girl 
over her own, of course, but wasn't there supposed to be something special about the 
instincts of dogs and children?
	She didn't think Mamoru would try anything.  He wasn't the type, as far as she
could see.  She sensed he was solid, dependable, highly trustworthy.  He was also outrageously 
sexy and knock-you-dead gorgeous, not that the last mattered.  He was there for Annie's sake.  
Nothing more.  Which was just a tiny bit depressing, or would be if she let herself think
about it.
	When Usagi emerged from the connecting bath a short time later, Mamoru was lying on 
the king-size bed in her darkened bedroom.  She stopped, skimming her gaze along his lean 
form.  He had removed his boots and thrown the conforter that served as a bedspread back 
out of the way.  He had, in fact, made himself quite at home, so comfortable and at home 
that he had fallen asleep with his dark head cushioned on her spare pillow.
	As she took a step into the room, however, the light from behind her fell across 
his body.  She saw at once he had only lain down on the bed with Annie.  The baby was 
sleeping peacefully, supported in the crook of his arm, her thumb in her mouth and her 
musical rag doll held against her.
	Mamoru roused as the light spilled across his face.  He opened his eyes and turned 
his toward it.  What he saw was an angel.
	Usagi was standing near the bed with her body backlit perfectly by the glow from 
inside the bathroom.  The sight of her lovely, slender curves seen through white silk took 
his breath and jarred his heart into a hard, unnatural rhythm.  The scent of her drifting 
toward him, warm and womanly and overlaid by the fresh clean fragrance of lavender soap, 
made his stomach muscles tighten.
	He wrenched upward in abrupt, involuntary self-protection.  Annie tumbled from his 
shoulder, and promptly set up a wail.
	"Stay where you are," Usagi commanded in a low hiss.
	"No, it's all right," he whispered, even as he rolled Annie to her stomach and began 
to pat her between the shoulder blades, urging her back to sleep.  "I've got to go."
	But as he tried to slide away from Annie, the baby flopped over toward him again, 
burrowing into his side with small grunting, whimpering noises.
	"I don't think so," usagi said in dry humor.  Swinging around, she moved back to 
the bathroom to flip off the light switch.
	Mamoru watched every swaying step she made; he couldn't help himself.  Even after 
the room was plunged into darkness again, he could see her graceful progess in shadow as 
she moved around the foot of the bed and climbed in on the other side.
	He knew he should get up.  Should go.  He would, too, just as soon as he regained 
his self-control.
	In the meantime, he settled back down, trying to relax as he felt the shift of the 
mattress under Usagi's slight weight.  Lying perfectly still with every nerve in his body 
tingling, he heard the soft rustling of the covers as she settled herself, her quiet sigh 
of tiredness as she stretched full length.
	He closed his eyes, concentrating on keeping his breathing somewhere in the 
neighborhood of steady.  With determination, he switched his attention to the rain still 
murmuring on the rood and pecking on the sill of the bedroom window.  The wind.  The faint 
click of a digital clock turning over its numbers on the table beside the bed.  Anything.  
Everything.
	As he listened, he tried to be sensible.  This was not good strategy, staying here, 
sleeping in Tsukino Usagi's bed; he knew that beyond a doubt.  Somehow, it didn't matter.  
It felt right.
	It was too right, that was the main trouble with it.  He closed his eyes, savoring 
the comfort, the pleasure, the rightness.  He could stay here forever, and would with just 
a little encouragement.  Only a little.
	He came awake abruptly, every sense zinging with razor-sharp alertness.  Something was 
wrong.
	The rain had stopped.  The heating system for the apartment was running, a steady 
drone that suggested it had turned much colder outside.  Annie had squirmed around in her 
sleep to lie across the mattress with her head toward him and her feet toward Usagi.  Moving 
quietly, he tucked the down comforter that covered the bed more closely around the baby's 
small, warm body.  It must have been some sound or movement she had made that disturbed him.
	Then he felt it again, the slight quiveer of the mattress.  At the same time, he 
heard Usagi draw a strangled, difficult breath.  Another shaking movement and choked-off gasp.  
She swallowed, an audible sound caused by tight throat muscles.
	She was crying.  Weeping silently in the dark, she was trying not to let him hear.
	"Usagi-chan?  What is it?"  Without thinking, he reached across the bed as he spoke.
	His fingertips brushed a smooth, warm shape.  Silky soft yet resilient, it was the 
rounded side of her hip he touched as she lay with her back to him.
	She flinched away at the same instant that he jerked his hand back.  
Voice thick, she said, "Nothing.  It's-nothing."
	His fingers tingled all the way to his elbow.  Doing his best to ignore the 
sensation, he whispered, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."  He abandoned explanations, 
started again.  "There must be something wrong if you're crying."
	"It doesn't concern you.  Go back...to sleep."
	"I can't," he said simply as he heard the catch in her voice.  Levering up on 
one elbow, he lay staring at her slight shape across the width of the mattress.  
He could just barely make it out in the faint beam of the complex secruity lights 
glowing beyond the bedroom curtains.
	She turned to her back and lifted an arm, using it to cover her eyes.  
"It's Christmas Eve," she said thickly, stumbling a little over the words.  "I told you 
I don't like Christmas."
	"Why?"
	"It's something I have to...get through every year, something I have to get over.  
I.....my husband was killed on Christmas Eve four years ago.
	"I'm sorry."  Such an inadequate response, but better than nothing.  "What happened?  
Tell me."
	For long moments, he thought she wasn't going to answer.  Then the night and the 
darkness, and perhaps the odd bond caused by Annie lying between them, seemed to force 
the words from her.
	"I was working leate, as usual.  I know my husband's name will sound wierd but 
don't you critizie it.  Demando, my husband, picked up my little boy-ours-at day care.  
There was an accident.  The other driver had been drinking, celebrating early.  He was 
going to fast, crossed the center line.  All three-died instantly."
	"Your little boy."  It was not a question.  He knew what was coming, knew it with 
a sick, aching dread because it explained so much that had not been quite right.  He knew, 
too, there was not way to stop it.
	"Tamahome.  He was only a baby, eight months old."  She gasped, a harsh sound of 
anguish.  "Just like, almost like, Annie."  Her voice broke and the tears came in a hard, 
rough torrent.
	Mamoru didn't stop to think.  Easing Annie out of the way, he slid over on the 
mattress, then reached to drag Usagi into his arms.  She resisted for an instant, her muscles 
stiff with reluctance.  "Easy.  Take it esy," he whispered in low compassion.  "Just hold on to 
me."
	Resistance left her in a rush.  Body jerking with tremors, sobs shaking her, she 
rolled against his chest, melting into him, fitting curves to hollows with perfect fidelity 
before she pressed her wet face into his shoulder.
	*Forget it!  Forget she's a beautiful woman.  Forget the rightness.  Forget her 
softness.  Don't think.  Forget it!*
	He chanted the words to himself in admonishment even as he inhaled with hoarse 
difficulty, dragging breath deep into his lungs.  He closed his eyes tight as he tried 
to think of her as a larger version of Annie, just another tender female creature who sought 
comfort and a broad bulwark between herself and the pain of living.
	Usagi only accpted what he offered because it was all that was available; he knew 
that without question.  He was glad to provide it.  It was the least he could do.  
No matter how much it might cost him.
	The price was going to be high.  That much, too, he knew all too well.
	He made a mistake, a bad one.  He had fallen head-long, no holds barred, in love 
with Tsukino Usagi the minute he saw her with Annie.  The decision to get close to her, 
to worm his way into her heart and home and stay there a lifetime was immediate.  
The only question had been how to go about making her see how necessary it was, how 
necessary he could become to her.
	It had seemed natural, abit of perfect timing, that Annie was on the scene.  
He had used the baby to get to the lady. 
	It was wrong of him to do so.  He ached inside as he saw what a mistake it was, 
and how terribly wrong it could turn out.
	Little Annie was too sweet, too adorable, and Usagi was half-crazy about her 
already.  To lose her was going to be a blow, like losing her own baby all over again.  
He and Annie, between them, were going to hurt Usagi more than she could bear.  If they 
hadn't already.
	It had to happen, because in just one week little Anne Kathryn Hino's mother and 
father would be coming home from their ski trip in the mountains, coming back to claim their 
darling Annie who had not been abandoned at all.  And they might not take it too kindly if 
their only child had been handed over to another woman, given away by the brother of Annie's 
mother, the uncle who was supposed to be taking such good care of her.
	Annie's doting uncle who had left her sleeping under a Christmas tree while he made 
up his mind whether she would like having a Sugarplum Fairy Tree on Christmas morning.
	Her Uncle Mamoru.

Author's Note
	I know that some of you are confused about Usagi being married to Demando and having 
a baby, who's name is Tamahome. Demando's occupation will be revealed in the 
next chapter, maybe.  It is the profession that I hope he would be if he was 
reality.  If you have ever watched Fushigi Yuugi, you would now who Tamahome is.  
He is one of my favorite anime character.  I couldn't think of a better name for 
Usagi's baby boy's name.  
	Now, the idea of Annie's parent going skiing is from an episode in Sailor Moon.  
I don't remember what it was called but I do remember that Raye and Chad was a 
major part of the episode.  You might have guessed by now, who is Mamoru's sister.  
That fictionous part is something I made up.  It did not happen in the anime and manga.  
Hino is not Chad's/Yuuchirou's last name.  
I do not know his last name.  I used his wife's last name in the anime and manga 
for him.  I wanted her to keep her actual full name.
	So how do you like this??  Is it good, bad, or I could have done better??  
Please send your comments, flames, and critisism to me at 
serena_chiba@hotmail.com
Ja ne.

Character List

Tsukino Usagi			Serena Moon
Chiba Mamoru			Darien Shields