seemingly unrelated interconnected drabbles, at least one for each season (maybe?) and I want to jump around in time we'll see if I do it.
ps. I'm aware silver millennium isn't a season. meh.
Silver Millennium
Each time Princess Serenity went to Earth and returned home to the Moon Kingdom unscathed, undetected and not missed by her guardians, she promised herself that was the last time. Because eventually someone would notice she'd be missing, and she'd be scolded or, if they actually deduced where she had gone, punished. And heaven forbid her someone would catch her on Earth - then the punishment could be much more severe.
She had no sovereignty there.
It was the sixth or maybe seventh time - she stopped keeping track- she'd been to Earth that she was finally confronted. She'd been careless, maybe, or let her guard down a little bit, or perhaps just been unlucky - caught in a beam of moonlight for one second too many when a pair of well-trained eyes managed to catch the movement between the trees.
"You are intruding." It was a hand on her shoulder spinning her against the rough bark of a tree, and a sword at her belly and a voice at her ear as smooth and hard as the blade shining in the moonlight. "I know where you are from, little girl. And you are not supposed to be here."
She gulped, and prayed the dark cloak covered her hair and the insignia on her forehead. She thought quickly to the dagger she had thought to hide in her bodice. A dagger was no match against a sword, but perhaps if she distracted him... "What are you going to do?"
"I won't hurt you."
The sword was pulled back from her and the man stepped into the light. Serenity took surprised note of his silver hair and ice-blue eyes. Earth people all looked so different from one another, she knew from her observations back home, but silver hair was very rare here - though common as dust back on her satellite home. He looked familiar, but she couldn't quite place him.
"But you need to leave and not come back. What would your royals say, if they knew you were here? Breaking the most sacred taboo." His words almost sounded kind, but his voice was not.
Serenity swallowed hard. She knew what her mother would say, and was almost more afraid of what words Venus would have for her.
"The Lunar royals made the rule," a new voice came from her left, and seemed to surprise the man in front of her as well. Serenity shut her eyes miserably and felt her whole body want to shrink into itself, as her hood was gently lifted from her face, "and yet a royal breaks it."
She didn't need to open her eyes to know who stood before her, since the voice itself was achingly familiar. She knew Prince Endymion since she was a child, if only from watching him from above.
If she admitted it to herself, part of the inexplicable draw she felt to the blue and green planet was due to him. Her fascination with him had remained a guarded secret, although Serenity knew Venus probably suspected. Of course, she had hoped one of these times to see him - catch a glimpse maybe, but to be captured by his guard and then revealed as a trespasser was more than she could bear.
"And continues to break it," Endymion continued. "What has it been, Princess? Seven times now?"
Serenity's eyes snapped open in surprise, and she met Endymion's gaze unexpectedly. For one breathless moment, she forgot she was essentially a captured criminal and just let herself look at him, almost wistfully. He was so beautiful, this close. He was looking at her with fascination and warmth, hardly the way he should be staring down an intruder from an unfriendly kingdom. She found herself aching to touch him, brush her fingertips along his forehead, and she cringed and looked away.
The prince's words seemed to surprise his companion as well, and the man raised his eyebrows in an expression that was half questioning, and half suspicious. Serenity had seen a similar expression on her own senshi's faces before, directed at her. She realized now why the man was so familiar.
"You think I don't make it my business to know what happens on my own lands, Kunzite?" Endymion said.
"I was unaware I was being watched," Serenity interjected. She cursed her fair skin for the revealing flush creeping over her face and shoulders, and squeezed her fists closed in a flare of embarrassment and anger.
"I was only making sure nothing happened to you," Endymion answered.
Of course, anything danger befalling her here would have dire consequences for Earth, why didn't she think of that? Serenity flexed her fingers underneath her cloak, lowing her eyes and chiding herself for her thoughtlessness.
Kunzite narrowed his eyes at her. "So, Princess, I'm going to assume these visits have no, shall we say, official capacity?"
She could still feel Endymion's eyes on her and she avoided looking at him - he took her breath away, and she needed it now.
"No," she murmured, painfully aware of how silly she sounded, "I just wanted to see it here. It was so beautiful that I kept coming back. I obviously did not think this through. I'm sorry."
There was a long moment of silence, while the two men before her seemed to have an entire conversation - or argument- with their eyes alone.
"If you wish me to leave, I will," Serenity finally said, proud that her voice did not catch, proud that her chin was raised and that she met Kunzite's eyes with all the confidence of a princess.
She still could not bring herself to look at Endymion, though. If she met his eyes, again, she could never leave.
"That would be best." It was Kunzite who spoke.
The rough bark of the tree was beginning to itch the tender skin on the back of her head, where her hair was parted. The grass brushed against her bare feet, the weight of the cloak pulled at her shoulders in the higher gravity, a cool breeze lifted the fine hairs on her arm in goosebumps - she carefully filed every sensation away like a precious jewel to be pulled out and mulled over later in the airless artificial light of her bedroom a hundred thousand miles away. Serenity forced the tears from her eyes.
"Then, by morning I will leave and never return," she said.
Kunzite's knuckles were white as he led Endymion away by the arm.
When they left, Serenity bent her head in defeat and swallowed the burning sensation in her throat. Tears would be for later, when she was alone and could celebrate the chance she had and mourn its end at the same time. For now she let the night settle its darkness deeper around her.
She almost didn't even startle when fingertips pressed into her palm, and a hand tugged at her elbow. It was like somehow she knew Endymion would come back, and that she wouldn't keep her promise to Kunzite and neither would he.
"You don't have to leave," he whispered to her, in the dark she could barely make out his eyes but she felt the brush of his hair against her forehead.
It wasn't weakness that made her stay. It wasn't weakness that made her fingers thread through his, and brought a breathless question to her lips that he was quick to answer in the shielding darkness.
As the morning damp brought shivers to her skin, realization dawned as unrelentingly as the cool light of morning that this decision would bring her more pain than she could imagine for more time than even a daughter of the moon could think possible.
So, it wasn't weakness that brought her back to him, again and again. It was strength. Strength and the indelible, unshakeable belief that they'd find this happiness again, even as fate conspired to rip them apart for the first time but not for the last.
a.n: thanks to everyone who added this to alerts or favorites. :) I appreciate it.
next is season R - I think...
but before that I promise.. repercussions! cross my heart
