1 Faces from the past

Cold. Ice cold. Freezing. Usagi grimaced as she searched inside the huge freezer room for the box with chicken breasts that her chef had asked her to get. There!

"Ohmigoshit'scold!" she squealed and all but flew from the room with the box, crossed the kitchen and put the box in the refrigerator so that the chicken breasts would unfreeze over the night without getting ruined.

"Arigatou, Usagi", said Michi from the office doorway.

Usagi beamed at the older woman.

"I don't need you to do anything else tonight, so you can leave early", Michi went on and then her cellphone rang for the tenth time in an hour and the boss squeaked and hurried to answer.

Usagi waved her goodbye, collected her things and left the small restaurant. The summer evening was still warm although it was quite late, and Usagi happily strolled along the street to take the bus home; her parent's only request for her taking the summer job was that she ALWAYS had to take the bus home.

#

The house was silent and dark, except for the kitchen; the room was dimly lit up and there was a note on the table that told Usagi she had a plate in the refrigerator if she was hungry.
Smiling as her mom's thoughtfulness, Usagi put out the kitchen light and crept upstairs into her room. A small lamp beside her bed was lit, just the way she had left it. But the black bundle on top of the thick turquoise cover was NOT something she had left before going to work.

"Luna? I thought you had... left", Usagi said lowly, as not to wake her sleeping parents and brother.

The black feline uncurled and sniffed annoyed into the air.

"Well, I DID leave, just not permanently. I went with Artemis to the Moon."

"Why did you come back?" Usagi asked, suddenly just as tired as she used to be back when there was magic, monsters and souls reborn in her life.

"I... I missed you. And the Moon grew silent."

"Of course it did - we ended the cycle", Usagi pointed out and Luna snorted.

"That you did. And thanks to that action, the Moon Palace no longer stands!"

Usagi rubbed her neck, shrugged and sat down on the bed and leaned against her many pillows.

"I know, Luna. I know what the consequences of breaking free would be. And I don't regret it. Now, what do you want, now, after three years?" Usagi said aloud

"As I said, I missed you and could no longer stay on the Moon because of your actions. I have been back for half a year, looking after you from the shadows. You seem... happy."

"You have been stalking me? Again?"

Usagi could not believe her ears. She opened the window and pointed into the now much darker night.

"Leave. I don't want to see you, Luna. And don't stalk me", she said tiredly and sadly.

The feline's eyes grew large.

"But... you can't just throw me out!"

"I can. If you've lived by yourself for half a year, I'm sure you can manage."

Luna hissed, annoyed, then looked smug, for a cat, and flicked her long tail.

"Don't you want to know how I can still talk, even after you broke the magic?"

Usagi shook her head. "No. It's obvious. You are a living being of the Light Side; I could never kill someone Light, not even as Serenity took me over. Now, please leave, Luna, and live your life and leave mine alone."

"And what will we do, hm? Two cats with crescent moons on their foreheads, walking about freely? People will notice", said a gruff voice from the window.

Usagi rose from the bed.

"Hello, Artemis. You managed to roam the streets before, you've managed now, I'm sure you'll do good. And do NOT visit Minako or the others! Leave us all alone!"

The room grew chill, not from the air that wafted into the room, but from something Usagi still recognized as easily as she recognized the smell of food; Darkness. It sipped from the two cats, which fell into a heap on the bed, and hung in the air, a black mass of evil. Usagi swallowed and thought quickly. How was it possible? She no longer had magic - possessed no Light that could draw forth the Dark. How?

In the mass of Darkness, shapes began to form. Every foe she had met, every minion she had taken down, on display one by one before her, until the last was Chaos. Unless...

Usagi almost face palmed as the realization hit her.

"I shun you! Disperse - you have nothing to find in this world. Go back to the shadows and fall into abyss, memories of Darkness", she mumbled, softly and kindly, with love for all in her heart, sending a silent thank you to the now gone Moon Queen Selene; during the Ending, Usagi had heard the Moon Queen whisper those exact words, tell Usagi that should she one day be faced by Darkness again, those words would set her free. It had been the Queen's final gift, a sort of thank you.

The Darkness began to slowly clear in color and lessen in shape, until finally a breeze of jasmine smelling summer air found its way into the room and blew the last shreds away.

"Well, fuck", Usagi muttered and rubbed her neck again, and then she turned to the cats on the bed who still lay unmoving.

"Luna? Artemis?"

No reaction. Usagi knelt on the floor and slowly, dreading, touched Luna's head.
The cat was ice cold.

"Ohmigosh... Luna, Artemis..."

Usagi understood what must have happened. When the Moon finally fell silent after her ending the cycle, the Darkness that still lingered had been drawn to Luna and Artemis since the two felines were magical. But without the protection of the Moon Palace, the cats probably had had no change. So, the Luna that had talked to her had been a fake, a vessel for the Darkness.

Usagi found an unused velvet dress she had bought but never worn, softly covered the cats with it, then put the velvet wrapped animals in a bag and sneaked out into the night. She found a spade leaning against the wall of the house and took it. She took a bus to the hill where she had ended things.

There, in the light of a new full moon, Usagi dug a grave, first peeling of a layer of earth with grass stuck to it, carefully lowered the bodies of Luna and Artemis, still draped in velvet, into the earth, covered them with earth and then put the piece of grass back on top, sealing it as tightly as she could.

Looking up into the sky, to the moon, Usagi cried for the fates of the two cats. No one should be ripped apart by pure Darkness. She hoped for their sake, that Luna's and Artemis's passing had been quick.

An hour later she took a shower, changed the bed clothes and fell into a slightly disturbed sleep, filled with cats and magic.