Metallic
The cold, brittle air filled her lungs. The steely piquancy stung her nose and assaulted her senses. Desperately, though she was weakening, she fought. The battle had been hard on her and her strength barely matched that of her guardians. It was nowhere close to the power that her mother wielded, because it was the queen who held the Imperium Silver Crystal, the legacy of her kingdom – the kingdom that was falling into pandemonium's eager, grasping hands.
She found strength in her love for him, her prince, her protector, Endymion, and the connection between them fortified her spirit, eased her struggle, as she pushed forward against their enemies with him at her side.
And then he fell.
The world blurred around her in the instant that he hit the ground. She dropped to her knees and the Silver Millennium seemed to come crashing onto her shoulders, sending a shudder down along her spine, and she blinked away the tears and the cold knowledge of impending death. "I love you…Serenity…ad – ad infinitum."
She pulled his hand into both of hers and cried, "Don't leave me, Endymion, please, I love you!" And I don't know how to be alone.
A deep shuddering inhalation and she tried to be strong, in his final moments, but the tears escaped her slipping control. He breathed his last and her first tear fell, clearing a trail through the blood and dirt that covered her ivory visage. Her fingers trailed across his steel-plated armour (it hadn't saved him), to the place where his heart stood still, and along the rigid line of his jaw. He felt so warm, so alive, but he was not and that fact burned as the designs on his chest plate did, cutting into her fingers.
Dead. "Endymion…" A desperate plea for him to return, but it was in vain. He was dead.
A broken angel rose from a young woman's shattered spirit. Though once, not so long ago, she had known the true beauty of happiness it seemed, to her, dream-like in the burning reality. Slipping her lover's dagger from its scabbard and into her pale, trembling fingers, Serenity moved among the bodies, a slender, luminescent figure in the darkness of carnage, hatred, and war.
She moved slowly, shedding a tear for each person, for each familiar face. Purely untouchable and tragically lovely, crimson stains across the white-grey gown she wore, ashes clinging to her long, silvery hair.
The princess dropped to her knees, one of many lost, lonely souls on the battlefield of that crimson moon. Hypnotic screams drifted to a hazy mind, half lost to depression. Her crystal tears mirrored every fallen soldier, every fallen friend as they mingled with the hot blood on her face, falling into the metallic sting of loss.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon or any of the characters from the animanga. They belong to Naoko Takeuchi, et al.
A/N: 'Metallic' is the first part of the 'Silver Requiem' sequence. It did not turn out quite as I intended, but I suppose it could be worse. I am not in the habit of putting up pieces before they are finished, but in the case that I do not finish it, this can stand alone. Please read and review to let me know what you think. Thank you.