Lonely Fire
Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon or Codename: Sailor V, Naoko Takeuchi and Toei do. I do not profit from this story.
It isn't until the morning sun stabs its way through the blinds that Rei wakes, and remembers who she is. If Rei were an ordinary human being, right now she would be terrified and gasping for breath. But Rei is not an ordinary person. Rei is Sailor Mars, Rei was once Princess Mars, and she has experienced far more death and destruction than an average woman her age will in a lifetime. It takes more than a nightmare to break Rei Hino. Even if that nightmare is more memory than dream, and involves her gruesome death at the hands of her former lover. Rei contemplates curling back up and going back to sleep, but a glance at the clock proves that idea unwise. She sighs, stretches, and reluctantly leaves her warm bed to be attacked by the cold, sterile winter air.
"I wonder... do the others dream about them like I do?"
Rei knows that memories of death and betrayal are unlikely to reside within the dreams of Usagi, but her fellow senshi? She's suspected, for a long time now, that Minako remembers more about their past lives than she lets on.
"It's only fair, I suppose. It's not like I tell any of them about my dreams."
No, Usagi definitely doesn't remember, Rei thinks. Usagi would be horrified if she knew, and she isn't the most tactful of the senshi. Rei chuckles at that, remembering Usagi's antics. She still manages to be as troublesome as she was when she was Serenity, sneaking down to Earth to see Endymion. It might not seem like it sometimes, but Rei's devotion to Usagi is absolute. She only gets angry because she cares.
Sometimes Rei thinks that her fellow inner senshi, Ami and Makoto, do remember, at least subconsciously. Sometimes, when Makoto talks about her old sempai, Rei sees something in her eyes that suggests something older than Makoto's years. And Ami? Well, Ami isn't very good at dealing with the idea of love. Scars like the ones left by their past lives never really fade. Even Ami doesn't know the real reason she's allergic to love letters. Rei remembers. It's silly, really. Ami was allergic to the pollen of some Earth flowers that grew in the courtyard of the Earth Palace where Zoisite would compose his letters to her. Ami never told him because she liked the scent of the flowers, for the short time before they robbed her of her sense of smell.
The girls' past lives are just another unspoken forbidden topic, like the year Minako spent alone as Sailor V. The ones who do remember don't want to talk about it, as if doing so would bring the past back to life before their eyes and hurt them afresh, resurrecting old feelings of love, sorrow and betrayal.
Now dressed, Rei sweeps the temple courtyard and allows her thoughts to continue down their dark path. She thinks about the stones Mamoru keeps in his apartment.
"Can they think, inside those stones? Do they ever think of us? How did Beryl get her claws into them again? Were they reborn, like we were? I wish I knew."
Rei doesn't think the others know about the stones, besides Usagi, who doesn't understand their significance to the inner senshi. Rei found out about them by accident. One day, when they were all studying at Mamoru's house, She went to ask him a question, but before she could get a word out, she saw them. Mamoru didn't realize she was there, but he did. He looked right at her, with a small, sad smile. She saw something in his eyes that reached to her deepest core and said "Here is one just like me." Now, they exist on different planes, seeing each other but being unable to touch.
Rei wants to be angry, she wants to hate him, it would be so much easier if she hated him. But when she remembers the look in his eyes, the spark that they had, she can't feel anything but loneliness. She can't summon that fire, that loathing she should feel at his betrayal. Even now, she can't bear to think his name. She wishes she could just bundle her feeling up in a black or white box and be done with it but she is finding that it's not that simple. She doesn't need a man to be happy. She's said it, many times, and it's still true. She doesn't need him, she wants him. Rei feels guilty for this selfish desire, in a way she never did when she was Princess Mars. She used to own her desires, her passions, like the little box of matches she always carried with her back then. She always has enjoyed living dangerously, and she used to own up to that with pride, but in twentieth-century Japan a young woman simply does not admit such things. Not even to herself.
"Rei-chaaaaaaaan!"
It's Usagi. As Rei turns around, she banishes all traces of her thoughts from her face and prepares to greet her precious, cheerful, oblivious princess.
She leaves her morose musings in the back of her mind, to revisit another day.