disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to the senshi, for always and for ever.
notes: don't look at me
title: but home in nowhere
summary: The old will always eat up the new. — Usagi, the senshi.
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(five)
the girls don't wake up
the girls don't wake up and
nothing matters anymore
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(four)
It wasn't supposed to be like this. She wasn't supposed to be sitting here in a white dress made for a princess while her best friends lay cold and unmoving around her. It wasn't supposed to be tears down her cheeks; it wasn't supposed to be Mamo-chan's silence, or his sad eyes. It wasn't supposed to be any of this.
Usagi sat amongst them: they in their school uniforms and her in her dress. The dichotomy of it reminded her that she wasn't really herself anymore—not now, when she wore the face and the garb of a princess from a dead kingdom that once thrived on the moon.
She wasn't Tsukino Usagi, now.
Not really, anyway.
Because Princess Serenity was in her head, in her hands, in her heart. The memories were there—they were there, and they were so real and so heady that she could almost taste them. She was Princess Serenity, last of the Moon-blooded, heir apparent to the throne of the Silver Millennium.
She'd never really belonged on Terra.
Usagi bowed her golden head, touched each of the girls in turn. They were her sisters—and she knew that now, maybe knew it always. There were only so many battles a person could fight before they realized that there are some people that you're just meant to be with.
And she knew, suddenly, deep in her bones, that she couldn't leave them like this.
Mamo-chan watched her. He was always watching her, and now he watched the cogs of her mind go. He knew her. He knew that she couldn't leave her friends like this.
The decision must have been plain on her face, because his eyes turned sad. That deep, deep blue: that ocean-blue, the colour of Serenity's beloved Terra, it was glazed over with a grief that bit at her heart.
"I can't leave," he said.
Usagi wanted to trace her fingers over his lips. She wanted to feel the words as they came out of his mouth and answer them with her own, but now was not the time.
"I can't stay," she replied. Her hands slid unconsciously into Minako's long yellow hair. Her friend didn't shift to recognize her presence. Usagi couldn't swallow the lump in her throat. It was too big for this. "I can't leave them like this, Mamo-chan."
His knees cracked as he settled down in front of her. Usagi let him take her face in his hands—those warm, warm hands—and tried not to let her heart break. She could feel the crackling like a physical thing, jagged-sharp in the center of her chest. Tears burnt hot and wet in the corners of her eyes.
"I love you," Mamo-chan said.
Usagi would never know who kissed who first. She just knew that suddenly she was breathing his air, and everything—everything hurt. Her chest hurt, heaving with the pain of it, and this, this she didn't want to give up.
But she had to.
"I'll come back," Usagi murmured against his mouth. "I will."
He didn't answer that.
Usagi was almost glad that he didn't. She thought that maybe she would have broken, if he had. But he didn't. He kissed her again and again, mouth sweet but desperate. It said please don't leave me again, Usako, please. It hung in the hairsbreadth between their faces, heavy with its own inability to be strong.
I have to, she didn't say.
Mamo-chan held onto her for a little while longer. She would have returned it, would have clung to him until the universe ended if she could have. They'd spent so much time fighting. How could they have spent so much time fighting? How could they have wasted so much time—?
Minako's soft hair in her hands brought them both back.
"You have to let me go, Mamo-chan," Usagi said.
"I know," he said into the crook of her shoulder. "Come back."
"As soon as they wake up, we will. I promise, Mamo-chan. I promise."
It would have to be enough. The moon's white light was cool on her shoulders, a indulgent pale wash that filled her with the courage to do exactly as she needed.
Usagi remembered that once her mother had told her a story about an ethereal princess from the moon called Kaguya. She'd been left in a bamboo shoot, waiting to be found by an old wood-cutter who took her home to his wife. As she grew, she became so beautiful that the Emperor himself wanted to marry her.
But in the end, Kaguya went back to the moon and never returned.
Usagi swiped her arm across her eyes.
This was going to be nothing like that.
She was going to come back.
She was.
—
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(three)
The Moon Palace was silent.
It was beautiful in a sad way, too, but mostly it was silent as a grave, because it was an empty place. Usagi held her friends aloft via sheer will—she was lighter on the moon than she'd ever been on Earth, less substantial, but her Silver Crystal gave her power that she'd never had in her life. The columns of the palace were impossible graceful arcs of stone, white and still.
The memory of Jupiter with her hands out pouring power into the vines that crawled along those columns hit her like a physical blow.
"Mako-chan, look! There used to be flowers here. Pink ones, remember? They were your favourite, and you were always braiding them into your hair—!" Usagi's heart clenched when there was no answer.
Makoto didn't even breathe.
Usagi's breath came ragged for a moment.
No, no crying.
Luna wasn't there to make things better.
She needed to do this on her own. The darkness of the universe was a curvature, Earth—Terra—Earth a line of blue chalk pale as the veins beneath her skin. Usagi set her jaw, and decided that it was time to start putting the Silver Millennium back together.
She would never really know how she did what she did. Usagi wondered if Serenity would have done anything different.
Probably not, she thought.
Power was a strange thing. It worked in strange ways. Sometimes she could level buildings. Sometimes, she could make things explode. Sometimes, she couldn't do anything at all.
(These days, she couldn't do anything at all a lot.)
Time passed. She was never sure how much, because time was different on the moon than it had been on Earth—Terra. The sun lingered longer than it ever had, and Usagi watched her shadow stretch and warp across the silver-white surface of the moon. The craters that once held Mare Serenitas seemed especially empty during those long noiseless days, the warm shallow waters having long dried into space's vast abyss. The salt crystals had formed into flowers as it had gone, though, and Usagi spent days and days standing among them. There was always salt ground into her fingers and lips and the hem of her dress. Sometimes she braided the delicate things into her hair, and it was good.
But still, her sisters slumbered.
Ami moved, sometimes, though. A twitch of her lips, a tiny little toss of the head so that the blue of her hair scattered across the marble-diamond in tiny wavy wisps.
The first time it happened, Serenity cried so hard that she couldn't see.
—
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(two)
Serenity didn't think about Mamo-chan anymore.
It hurt too much.
—
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(one)
Ami woke up first.
Serenity wasn't even surprised when her friend's eyelids fluttered, power flickering behind her eyelids strong enough to push herself away from where she'd lain for longer than anyone wanted to think about.
There was something karmic about it: she'd found Ami first, and now Ami did the same. It was the reciprocation of it—and that word, Ami had taught her that word, re-ci-pro-ca-tion, the syllables clumsy in her fourteen-year-old mouth—that made Serenity the happiest.
They would find their ways back to her, even if it took them an age.
(Though with Ami awake again, Serenity had a feeling—bright-edged and bubbling with possibility—that it was going to be a much smoother process from then on.)
They stood out on a balcony, arms folded exactly the same over the railing; they are two blue-eyed girls in a hollow place, all alone. If this were a fairy tale or a manga, Serenity knew that something would happen next. Maybe bad, maybe good, but still something.
But nothing happens.
Nothing at all.
(But three days later, Ami lashed out with a power that neither of them knew she had. Mare Serenitas rose as a perfect, never-ending layer of ice. They went skating, the pair of them, and they laughed in the fury of the sun.)
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(zero)
Rei was next.
Rei was so angry that neither Serenity nor Ami saw her for a month.
Rei was so angry, and gone for so long, that Makoto woke up while she'd disappeared into the bowels of the castle.
Makoto grew flowers, the pink ones that she'd loved so much in another lifetime, and when Rei came back, she burned them all to naught but ash and memory. Serenity watched the flames eat up the soft pink petals, and didn't say a word.
No one was angry after that, though.
They held hands, the four of them, and held vigil at Minako's side.
They didn't have anything left, just each other.
Serenity watched Terra—Earth—Terra. It was a beautiful blue ball, hung in space, whirling through the universe all alone. Mamoru was still down there, though as far as Serenity knew, he might have died with how long it had been. She wanted to care. Really, she did. There was a part of her that was still, still human and young and so in love with him, but—
Minako's breath came shaky, just then, and Serenity forgot all about it.
"Mina-P," she murmured. "Hey, you woke up."
Minako coughed once, twice, the sound grating out of her throat like gravel across asphalt. She shook a little, too, and Serenity remembered it, remembered the memory shock. Mercury had had it. Mars and Jupiter, too, they all shook just a little after they woke up, and a whole other person had shaken out their limbs inside.
But Minako was not the leader of Serenity's guard for nothing.
She flung out her hair, golden as sunshine, as sunflowers, as the skirt of her uniform, and she stood on steady feet. Serenity thought that everything, everything was different now. They were stronger and better and faster and smarter, and Terra was just a tiny blue planet in a very big universe. The Silver Alliance would breathe again, she had no doubt.
"Hello, Serenity," Venus said.
"Look at you!" Jupiter laughed.
"We were worried, Venus," Mercury offered shyly. "We didn't think you'd wake up."
"About time, Blondie," Mars huffed.
"Aphrodite give me strength, you guys are dumb," sighed Venus. She wrapped her fingers around Serenity's wrist. She was strong and unbreakable, the gold chain at her waist carved with runes no one had ever seen before.
"We missed you," Serenity reached to lace her fingers through her golden guardian's to complete their circle. "We missed you so much."
And they had.
Oh, they had.
And so they stood together, five girls; four guardians and their princess, united at last after a thousand years and just as many heartaches. They looked out towards the cosmos and waited, calm, for what would come next.
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fin.
notes2: hahahahaha I thought this was gonna be UsaMamo but nOPE