a girl stands in the middle of slaughtered bodies, crying. her hair is stained red from blood and her eyes are a shade of crimson.

when footsteps approach her, she looks up. a man with cold eyes leans down and pulls her up.

"i'm cyrus."

mars wakes up on the freezing mountain floor and regrets ever following the man with strange ideals.

.

.

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the stars, the moon; they have all been blown out-

[ GALAXIES AWAY. ]

-you left me in the dark.

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The red headed woman stands on the top of Mount Coronet. Around her, the dimensions extend and stretch, suffocating her and squeezing out all sanity from her delicate mind.

Mars, the portal to the distortion world whispers to her, come here. A childish, demented giggle bubbles up in her throat, and the single sound breaks the voice into splinters.

"No!" She screams when she realizes the figment of her imagination is gone, "Come back!" She twirls around giddily, heart lurching, trying to grasp the pieces of soundwaves that don't exist anywhere but inside her head.

Frowning, she reaches out to to the portal. Something in her brain screeches not to, but the rest of the woman's mind is convinced that the voice (my only friend, my only friend) lies beyond the swirling of the rift.

Mars's hand slips in, is tugged in by the powerful force, and she yelps. Somewhere in her, a spark of sanity ignites, and she pulls and pulls until she falls on the ground in a heap.

Ruby eyes blink, once, twice -

"Where are you?" She murmurs, as the air above her swallows her words and provides no answer.

.

.

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What seems like hours later, a hand is extended, and she carefully grasps it.

When she raises her gaze, she meets blue eyes that she has seen too often for her liking.

"Are you alright, Mars?" Saturn asks with a constructed tone that radiates worry. In the depths of her brain, she remembers falling in love with that voice.

"That's not my name," She mumbles in reply. When he looks at her as if he didn't hear her, the redhead repeats herself. "That's not my name!" She screams, voice growing louder as every letter passes her lips.

Sapphire eyes stare. "Then what is your name?" Saturn asks his lone companion, his mathematical brain already knowing the answer.

"I...I don't know." Mars whispers, and a single tear falls."I don't know, I don't know, I don't kn..." Her mantra is cut off when his hand comes up to cup her face.

The skin is rough from Pokemon battles, but warm and comforting. She closes her eyes and starts to smile, all thought broken by the contact.

But when her eyelids snap open, she is met with harsh, calculating blue orbs and reminds herself, bitterly, that this Saturn is not a person who feels. This Saturn is an act.

This Saturn is not the one who she fell in love with.

"What happened to you?" She whispers into his fingers as they trace her lips. "Why did you change?"

He frowns. "I did not change," his voice reassures her, words she has heard over and over again. "I'm the same person you've always known." She looks up at him with angry red eyes, the rim of her skirt touching his pant leg.

"You liar." She says, unspoken words dangling off her lips and falling to the hard mountain ground, shattering on impact, the pieces covering their feet.

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.

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They stand in silence, and then, instead of responding, he leans down and kisses her.

His lips are the same as the ones in her memory; soft and hot and they leave her own tingling from cold-heat.

But he tastes like steel and blood and she hates it.

When he tries to embrace her, she pushes him off, not wanting to believe that this is the man she loved.

"Get away from me," She says, and he falls back into the hole in space.

Mars watches him torn apart by the dimensions, and the voice in her head reminds her desperately that this is not the Saturn I knew.

A giggle is ripped from her, and another and another, until the empty rift where he had been is filled up with her crazed laughs.

She goes back to insane, darling Mars, but the whole time she is crying.

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fin.

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So this is for Music Intuition's "Breaking Free" contest. It's the first contest on FF.N that I've taken part in, so I'm not sure how I'll do, ahaha.

Well, I liked writing it. And Mars/Saturn is nothing I've written before. I like it, but it's, um, always been something I struggled with writing. Plus this is a lot different than my earlier writing style, wouldn't you say? I guess I am "breaking free," hm?

Also this is only 700 or so words, gah fanfiction is stupid.