Dreams of Destruction
Disclaimer: I do not profit from this story, Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi and Toei
A/N: This takes place in the Lonely Fire universe. This is a one-shot for Sailor Saturn's birthday.
Warnings: Angst, non-graphic deaths
thwooom...
thwoooom...
"Is someone... calling me?" a lone, quiet voice echoes in the dark stillness of a palace long empty.
"Have I been... sleeping?"
A light grows from the origin of the voice, and a girl with short black hair and solemn purple eyes is revealed. As the light comes from the girl, she looks around wide-eyed, and staggers, as her blank slate is imbued with purpose. They are calling. She must answer. The light turns purple and the flash is blinding, but there is no one but the girl to see it. When the light fades, the girl is wearing a sailor fuku and holding a purple polearm. The fuku marks her as a senshi, the weapon as the senshi of destruction, Sailor Saturn. The light emanating from her allows her to see the dark, empty palace she had rested in. She remembers. She remembers who she was. She knows who she is now, and what it means that she was awakened from her slumber. An era of peace and prosperity, the Silver Millennium, has come to an end. Saturn has work to do.
Before she goes to the bearers of the talismans, she wanders the empty castle. She remembers when it was full of life. When she had been Holly, Princess Saturn. Sailor Saturn could not say how long she had slept. It could have been hours, it could have been centuries. All that matters is the before and after. Before, before her thirteenth birthday, the planet Saturn had been full of life. Now there is nothing left of the great world but an empty palace, memories, and untold secrets. Sailor Saturn passes by a portrait, and the part of her that is Holly makes her stop. It's a painting of the last King and Queen of Saturn. It still looks just as it had the day it was finished. A handsome man with dark violet hair and merry black eyes stares out at Sailor Saturn, his arm around the shoulder of his queen. The Queen was a delicate woman with heart-shaped cheek-bones, a bright smile, long black hair and deep purple eyes. Saturn looks helplessly at the portrait, riddled with grief.
"Mama... Papa..."
She shakes her head, and looks away. Another might blame herself, but Sailor Saturn knows that there was nothing she could have done to prevent it. On her thirteenth birthday her powers as Sailor Saturn manifested for the first time. Normally, a princess of Saturn would pass her thirteenth birthday alone on one of Saturn's moons, but her parents wanted to celebrate her birthday with her, and that old legend couldn't really be true... could it? It was true. Every living being on Saturn besides herself was destroyed. They didn't even have time to scream. Her parents and her people's only crime was that they loved her too much, and did not listen to the ancient warnings. She hadn't known how much time had passed then, either, lost in her despair, when Queen Serenity came. It was long before Princess Serenity was born, a light she sensed, even in her deep sleep.
The leaders of the other planets were terrified of her power, the Queen said. And by the will of the majority, the Queen was to put Sailor Saturn to sleep. The Queen didn't want to do it, but she was over-ruled, trapped in a tangled bureaucracy that had built up over centuries. So she came, and laid her hand upon Sailor Saturn's forehead, and told her to sleep. She would only awaken if the Silver Millennium was at its end.
Now, Sailor Saturn takes up her burden, the reason for her existence. She answers the call of the talismans. Sailors Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto look at her in disbelief. Saturn feels the thousands of years her body had ignored. They knew the legends of Sailor Saturn, senshi of destruction, but they didn't believe them. As she begins to lower her Silence Glaive, the star-crossed lovers Uranus and Neptune draw close to one another, meeting in person for the first time in centuries. Pluto looks on with grief, and then returns to her solitary post at the Space-Time door. The Silence Glaive touches the ground, and there was nothing more.
On Earth, numberless centuries later, Hotaru Tomoe gasps awake from a nightmare, a true nightmare from her past. She remembers where and when she is and calms; Haruka-papa and Michiru-mama are in the next room sleeping. Setsuna-mama is at her lab or in the Space-Time corridor. Hotaru knows that there is nothing to fear from those sad memories of the past. She thanks Queen Serenity and her Princess for her new chances at life. Then she goes back to sleep, and dreams about the life she had when she was Holly, Princess Saturn.