I do not own Sailor Moon. I didn't when I first wrote this and I do not now that I've rewritten it somewhat.
The Magic of the Moon
by Draegyn
She slipped away from her ebon-haired lover like mist in the breeze. He murmured and rolled into the space she had vacated before quieting once more. Her scent was a balm to him, he needed no more to be content, but she… she could not shake the aching loneliness from her soul even at the heights of passion. Graceful, silent steps brought her to the glass door of the balcony and, without a sound, she slipped into the velvet night.
No stars graced the sweep of the night sky, no moon lit the heavens. Even Tokyo no longer seemed to exist, as if the storm had stolen it away, much as it had already done to the city's power. There was simply darkness.
Her silver locks, golden no longer as her true self stepped out from beneath the veils of illusion, swept around her nearly naked form. Silver silk over white over ivory, hair, slip and skin all caressed by the damp wind that howled into the night. The cool touch of the breeze, the warm touch of her lover, it made no difference. She felt empty.
Sapphire blue eyes, renowned for their mischief, were at that moment burnished with silver and wisdom instead. They blazed with the power that she, in that wisdom, kept concealed from even her senshi… her protectors… her sisters. Not even they who possessed the power of entire planets could understand that which slept within her. It was magic, raw and unadulterated, untouched by humanity and its mortal imperfections.
Suddenly, it was too much to bear, the chasm between her and the rest of the world. The disguises, the deceptions, the falsehoods and masks… the alienation that must never be revealed, else it wound all those she loved to their very souls. She was different, so different, and there was nothing, nothing, that could be done to change that. Yet, at that moment, she wanted nothing else but to escape the cage of her earthly identity, the role that destiny had cast her amongst oblivious humans, and to be fly free of her chains.
It was not about being a princess. It was not about being a warrior. It was about something she would never be. It was about being normal. It was about being the last of her kind. It was about being a creature of the moon and of magic and having no one to share either with. Not fully and not the way she needed to share.
Lightning streaked across the sky, but she did not fear. She had never truly feared. It was but another aspect to the mask she endured every moment she breathed, a mask she now discarded as feathered wings of pure white erupted from her back and snapped down in a rush of air.
The mortal man in the bed murmured once more but the clap of magnificent wings, the sole pair of their kind, was drowned out by thunder and the sleeping prince did not stir as his love made her frantic escape. She loved him with all of her heart and yet her soul cried out for something that he, human as he was, could never give her. So she left him to sleep, breathing her scent, dreaming of her, while she succumbed, this once, to the roiling emotions within her.
She cried out her agony to the elements, for there was no one else to hear her keening song or to witness an aerial ballet fuelled by purest emotion. No one, she was the last, the only. She climbed ever higher in the sky, the very air around her empathising with her pain in the only manner it could. The wind shrieked, the lightning screamed, the rain whipped around her. Touching her, soothing her, emphasising the emptiness she could feel within her.
Was this what she had been reborn for? To forever feel this ache? To know friends, love, family, and, one day still to come, even motherhood and yet, to never know what it was to look into the eyes of another being and be able to say, 'that person is like me, we are the same.' It was something beyond love, a deep rooted need that pierced her very soul.
Magic existed to protect and to heal and she did both with the magic that she was created from. Yet, magic also existed to be shared and she could not. The hidden moon, her moon, was forced to dance alone through the heavens.
She knew that if anyone were to glance at the storm-torn sky then, they would have seen her, a beacon of silver and white against black that she was, and she could not care. In truth, she dared them to look and to find her. She dared her friends, the wise Mercury, the loving Venus, the perceptive Mars or the loyal Jupiter to finally know what she hid from them beneath the ever-happy child they knew. She dared her mortal family to look and to find the truth of their undependable daughter. She dared her lover of two lifetimes to see what he had let into his heart. She dared them all to look and to find because she could not hide it any longer.
She was magic.
She was the moon.
She was Serenity.
He watched his little mistress as she celebrated with her friends. As she should, for she had faced him and been judged worthy. She had proven herself in her own mind and to those that clustered around her. The boy that teemed with his own magic, a girl that shone with loyalty and the other guardian, the one that was the sun to his moon… it was strange, but they looked so comfortable together. They resonated in synch with each other, like the children of the moon had, once upon a time. Was it possible that he could join that closeness? A void in his newly awakened soul was becoming harder and harder to ignore; could he find ease with this small group?
No, he could not. Not as he was now. It would mean the creation of a mask that would defeat the purpose of joining them. He might as well return to hiding within his human shell, for all the good that would do him. One mask or another, was there any difference?
So he watched them and envied them. They were so vivid in their triumph. His mistress' eyes shone with emerald light, the other guardian was as brilliantly golden as his empowering sun, even the boy who stood with his mistress was rich and alive in his brown. He could not be a part of them. Not he, who was washed out, silver and white and lavender. In truth, not even his other self, his human self, truly belonged with them. Not when the very core of his soul was comprised of a magic that even his past master had been unable to comprehend.
They felt so happy and content in each others company and it only impressed upon him the aching void into which he had been awakened. While he had slept within the boy, he had been unaware of the emptiness that was only now all too apparent to him. He was not, could not, truly be a part of them and he was not, could not be, truly a part of anything in this mundane world.
His had been a time of magic, a time of mystery, a time when, even completely alone, he had never been lonely. How could he, being what he was? A child of the moon and of magic? With one above him no matter where he was and the other permeating every little thing, how could he ever be alone? That was no longer true and only now, when he could do nothing to alter his circumstances, did he realise the depth of his loss.
The children that celebrated so unreservedly would never be able to understand that. Ceroberos would never be able to understand that. Child of humanity or child of the sun, neither could possibly comprehend what it was to be a child of the moon and to know that it was dead. While he had slept, his home had died and now that he was awake he was the last remnant of his kind. The passion that should have existed within him had been destroyed, never to return.
It was more than enough to leech from him any hope of joy. He had just been awoken from a thousand years and more of dormancy and all he truly wanted to do was to go back to sleep, to sleep and to once more block out the aching pain that grew, second by second. Yet, duty bound him and duty drove him. He had a new mistress and he was bound to stand at her side. There was no escape from this solitude for him. Not even in humanity could he seek oblivion. Clothed in the flesh of mortality, insulated in the mind of his human shell, he would still experience that yearning, that aching cavity within himself that would never again be silenced.
He was alone and he had no recourse but to bear it.
The clouds loomed ever more ominously above them. The lion-like guardian began to herd his charges to shelter, even going so far as to look towards him, belatedly enquiring without words if he wished to join them. He could not explain that he wished for nothing more than the endless darkness that had been stolen from him. So he did nothing, concealing the weeping of his soul behind eyes of palest ice. So they left him, as the sky shed the tears that he was unable to, and, alone in body as he was in soul, he turned his face towards the sky.
Those heavenly tears ran down his face and he welcomed them. He could not give in to such weakness himself, duty would not allow him, and rain is all that the moisture on his cheeks was. His searching gaze could not find his homeland, his moon, behind the dark clouds. Perhaps it hid its face from its last child who had outlived his time. Perhaps its absence was symbolic of his fate, to forever be denied that which he truly needed. It was not human magic or human companionship. It was not magical cards or their master of old or their mistress of new.
He needed his own kind and there were none left for him to seek. Strange to think that he who had once found his place amongst humans, far from his kindred, now found himself so adrift without the very thing he had spurned. Or not so strange, for even on a completely different world, he had felt them. Through the power of his master, through the power of the cards he watched, even through the brilliant sun that was his fellow guardian, he had felt it, tasted it and lived it. The magic that was the moon.
It was only rain that rolled down his ivory cheeks. It was only rain that weighed down his silver mane. It was only rain.
The wings that he had been so proud of, stretched out and began to beat powerfully. This earth was like a trap for him and he had to escape. This once, only this once, he would forget duty, forget his oath and live…no, mourn for himself. He would mourn for all that he had lost and for the life… the lonely, empty life that he must endure in the future. Perhaps if he flew high enough, he would be able to see the moon again, the single, solitary moon in the icy recesses of space.
The wind buffeted him and lightning seared the air around him but that did not stop him in his desperate climb. Emotions that he had never known before spurred him on harder, faster. The loss of all that he had been weighed upon him more and more with every moment.
What was he supposed to be when the world had forgotten the moon and its pure, untouched magic? When he was a creature of such magic with no one to share that essence with?
He felt so cold, so empty… so isolated.
He was a guardian of the Clow Cards; it was a burden he had willingly accepted aeons before and now he was coming to know the price of that acceptance. He must walk among humans as one, hiding the truth of himself. He must fight beside humans, unable to share the glory that he knew. Why had this never seemed a burden when he served Clow? He should not have been awoken. His kind was not meant to be alone, he knew that now and in the rawness of that knowledge, he screamed his rage and pain to the world. He shared his aching alienation with the unknowing Earth.
He was magic.
He was the Moon.
He was Yue.
Two being with wings of light and flesh danced in the storm, searching for something that neither had any hope of finding. Two beings of silver and white, cried out their pain to an uncaring world. They reached for a home that had been reft from them and a people that had long since been forgotten by all others. They reached out, hopelessly, despairingly, across a void created by their own isolation. They reached out and, in a miracle of mercy, they found each other.
Eyes of dead ice met eyes of silver pain.
Magic and Magic.
Moon and Moon.
Angel and Angel.
They were the same.
Slender fingers, ivory pale, extended and were taken by a hand that differed only in size.
Contact.
Two souls touched incredulously, disbelieving of the truth before them. Each, who had survived the extinction of their kind, was not alone? In a heedless moment of abandon, one mind reached out, caressed and then joined the other. Confirmation of their wordless recognition came in a rapture of dizzying truth. Speech was unneeded between them, as superfluous now as it had been for their kind in the past.
They knew.
They knew and yet it held no bearing on their rejoicing. Their pasts, the circumstances by which they met at that moment, it was unimportant. All that mattered was that they existed. Together.
Destiny had demanded the one sojourn through death and life. It had demanded that the other be kept as some precious object throughout the ages. Time and times had passed. One minded by the greater death and the other preserved by the lesser. Awoken to find nothing familiar and they, themselves the aliens, fleeing to numb themselves behind human masks and, now, to learn that their despair had been unneeded.
The power of one licked at the other, incandescent flames of magic. No tentative touch was this in the bedlam of union and reunion. Yearning, searching and, in a moment awaited for eons, completion.
The emptiness burned away in the joy of magic shared. Tears cleansed as the old, familiar pain of loss, was replaced with the pain of life returning. The greatest gift either could imagine was found in the other.
That night was the worst storm in Tokyo's history. It was the night that the world itself wept for two orphaned souls.
It was the night two angels danced.
She shut the glass door and leaned against it with a sigh. She was drenched, her entire being was saturated and it was not in water. She smiled in bliss and, with another sigh of perfect contentment, began to wring her hair out. So she was saturated in water as well, she did not care. She did not care one whit, she could feel him there, at the centre of her soul.
"Usako?!"
Her lover's shocked voice roused her from her distraction and, mask in place, she turned to face him. She could love him happily and without inhibition now, regardless of her hidden self.
"I was just watching the storm Mamo-chan," she giggled, her sapphire eyes shining with love for the man with her.
"You could have caught pneumonia Usako!" he scolded her as he hurriedly extracted himself form their bed and caught her up in his arms. Her soaked, silken night-slip was discarded and he rushed her back into the warmth of their blankets.
"I thought you were afraid of storms," he grumbled as he rubbed her icy limbs.
She smiled dreamily as she welcomed his attentions. "Oh," she whispered almost unheard by him in his distraction, "I think I've changed my mind…"
"Ah?" he prompted.
Her smile became as mysterious as her beloved moon. "Yes," she whispered and moved closer to him. Startled, his midnight gaze met her sapphire and somehow caught a hint of silver fire. "I think storms are a time of magic." Always and forever they would be a time for her to seek out the moon where it hid behind the clouds.
Moments later, he managed to mumble, "I agree," and then there was silence.
He turned away from the now clear sky. He did not need to look to see the benevolent silver face of the moon above him. He merely needed to feel the glowing core that now burned in his soul.
Quietly, he looked through the window at the sleeping girl. Sakura, the new card mistress… his new mistress. Even she would require a mask from him but that no longer bothered him. As Yukito or Yue, he could be what she needed of him, just as there was one who could be what he needed of her. With that one, there was no need for masks, for illusions and deceptions.
"Yue?"
He turned to face the tiny other-form of Ceroberos. So innocuous in that form and yet so very perceptive.
"All is well," he assured the other guardian and it was. Sooner or later the storms would return and once more he would be able to seek out the moon.