Thanks to Bluejello, wolfprincess09, Butterfly's Child, Sagishi, Falling Right Side-Up, and Sunshine Fia for reviewing.

This is Meilan's and a surprise person's back story. Those of you who know Wufei's Epizode Zero and Sailor Moon first season should recognize the characters. Oh yeah, by the way, SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!


If nothing else, Meilan remembers the pain, the heat of explosion, anger, conviction and I am Nataku!, and flash, suits blown up, pieces of the colony being destroyed, her people getting injured, getting killed, and she was going to repay it all to the Alliance - every life, each drop of blood, every bit of dishonor and betrayal.

Pain.

Blood.

The burning heat of internal damage and she knew, she knew she wasn't going to make it past this battle. Then he comes along, the stupid Scholar who told her justice was immaterial and not real, but there he was raising in that mix of white, red, blue and he was fighting, fighting with every fiber and ounce of skill he had.

He was magnificent, he was her husband.

In the end she who he thought immature, unwise, and too stubborn - she saved his meadow. The flowers were beautiful and the warm air relaxing. She was able to have done this for him if nothing else. She had been strong, had always been strong and had never doubted it until she challenged him, this man-boy who was quiet, who didn't believe in justice, didn't believe in fighting, and didn't believe in her. He might have beaten her in the duel but she was proving it to him here that she was still strong, she still believed. They hadn't gotten along as evidenced by their many arguments and shows of temperamental fits but they had respected each other, even if they had not known it, even if they would have not believed it.

But he was there fighting and she was here protecting, and maybe they hadn't been so badly suited after all except it was too late. The Alliance was demolishing the colony and killing their people and taking away all the reasons they had to marry in the first place. When it was over, when she is gone, she hopes he can be happy, and that he finds someone to be with that makes him happy.

"I... was strong, wasn't I? You weren't ashamed of me being your wife, were you?" she whispered to him, bleeding in his arms, lying in the groove he had never welcomed her in before.

He looked so strong when he replied, he looked like a man she was proud to call her husband. "Yeah... You're stronger than anyone."

She smiled lightly; he had never seen much of her smiles. "No... You are... stronger." She said, leaning into him because she had never sought his warmth before but now it was all she wanted and she felt herself float away.

She hoped he remembered her when he moved on, and that he recalled her admirably, that he was proud at some point to have had her as his wife.

She was moving, flying, floating and she felt no more pain, her injuries only phantoms, but she was sad and full of anguish. Her colony was broken, her people were dead, and she had left her husband behind right when he finally acknowledged her. She would never know now if they could have made it work. She wished there had been another way, that it hadn't needed to end like this. She hoped in the next life she would see him again, and this time, let him know what a fine warrior he made.

She floated through space, the sun shining on the Earth, the Earth she had never set foot upon and whom many had remarked of the beauty she would never see now: real rain, the shining moon, a sky, the oceans, large mountains, and the wonders she had lost because her chances were over. It wasn't so bad, feeling herself fade, space had its own beauty, and she had her life and lived it, she died young but at the very least, she had been married.

Then from the edge of the abyss, from the beginning of the tunnel, a light came, brilliant and warm in the place of no-feeling and cold. A voice: earnest, desperate, full of tears and hope, an acceptance.

Please make my wish come true...make everything right.

She felt the light envelope her, felt her body return, felt weight, breath, sight, touch, smell, skin, muscle, her, once more for a pure moment of happiness and astonishment before darkness consumed her.

She woke up choking and turning she spat and coughed up mouthful after mouthful of water. Pain laced her whole body and her lungs were on fire. She was on a simple stretch of beach and she struggled to her legs on the wet sand. Her clothes, her traditional gab, were plastered to her body and she felt chilled. She looked around and she recognized none of her surroundings, there were rocks and a wooden path lining the edge of the sand before it eroded into a city of tall square buildings and streets. If this was the heavens, then it looked very different to what she had thought.

Something on the upper half of her sight caught her attention, the blue landscape that was the backdrop of the buildings. She traced it back towards her until she had it tilt her head back. Then she turned and everywhere she looked in every direction the deep, endless blue was there. It was beautiful, depthless, and it made her feel so small because no matter how hard she tried she saw no end, no stopping of that distance as she stared upward into the heavens. There was only one answer: it was the sky.

She was amazed and disbelieving, the sky, the endless blue sky she had thought she would never see. But if that was the sky then this had to be Earth. How had she ended up on Earth when she had been in space?

The sudden sound of someone coughing violently made her jerk to her right, dropping into a fighting position. Some distance away from her down the side of the beach a man with long brown hair and purple clothes vomited the sea water just as she had done moments ago. After he could breathe again, he rolled to the side and lay collapsed on the sand.

She waited but he showed no other attempts at movement. Grudgingly, on weak, trembling knees she made her way over to him. He looked to be an older male of mid twenties, wavy brown hair sticking to his sides. His eyes were closed as he faced the sky but his face was square with a sharper chin, his shoulders were broad and he was would be much taller than her when he stood. His shirt was missing an arm, on the shoulder of the shirt just above the chest plate healthy skin showed through a ragged hole, as if someone had torn it.

She was almost upon before he snapped his eyes open at the sound of crunching sand. He sat up with a start and looked at her. She returned his gaze warily.

" Hello." She said.

He stared blankly at her then looked around his surroundings like a confused child. Then as his eyes widened, he started frantically patting himself down. When he was satisfied by the results, he sat, stunned, gaping to the world at large.

" I'm supposed to be dead." He said dazedly in English.

She laughed and replied in kind. " Yeah, me too." She fell back onto the sand; standing took too much energy from her. " Any idea how we're both alive."

He turned to her and furrowed his brow. " Do I know you?"

" No." She said tired. " I don't know you either, but here we are. And supposedly, we're both dead. But I don't think I am."

He shook his head slowly. " I don't think I am either, although I should be."

In the first few weeks Meilan had searched for ways to contact her Colony only to stare horrified and a bit numb at the news article that talked of her funeral. So she found proof she was supposed to be dead, instead of alive. She learned his name was Sanjouin Masato, a Japanese millionaire business man who owned his own company. He told her after a while to call him Nephrite instead, as it was his preferred name to the people he knew.

They moved in together because she had no where to go and although he had a place back in Japan, he constantly looked between lost and mystified. They searched together to find a possible reason to why they were both alive when they should have been died. One thing was they had both heard the voice, the one who made the wish and the light.

She, for all unknown purposes, was brought back to life but two weeks had elapsed since her death. He said he had died months ago, and he was brought back less then what he had been but more whole. She was confused but he did not elaborate. He said he had been working with an underground organization called the Negaverse but a fellow colleague had tried to eliminate him, and succeeded as he tried to protect a girl.

She told him briefly of her life and how she had died protecting the meadow her husband often read in. Nephrite had seemed so shock at the news she had a husband at the age of fifteen and she had laughed.

Nephrite had debated long and hard initially before selling his property and moving his belongings over to the States. He transferred all his accounts from the banks overseas and started a new business in jewelry; Nephrite had a very good eye for gems and crystals.

He paid for her necessities and financed her school in America. While she warily accepted it he explained that he had no family, no friends, and no one who knew him. She was in the same conditions except he had money, a lot of money, and that could help. He said to think of it as a good investment and to start treating him as an older brother because he would like to see her taken care of.

Since at least his idea of having her taken care of wasn't marrying her off to someone else and that he respected, encouraged, her independence and allowed her to argue him into the agreement that once she came out with a good career she would pay him back, she accepted. That had been six years ago and she and Nephrite had truly settled in to being comfortable with each other. They never looked on each other romantically, even if he was handsome and she had grown into a woman; she had promised herself to someone, even if he didn't know she was still alive, and those vows meant something to her. Honor and duty always had.

Nephrite occasionally went out with mature, beautiful, sophisticated women, but sometimes she caught him looking melancholy or gazing out the window sightlessly in the direction of Japan and whispered the girl's name, the girl he had died protecting: Naru.

It drove Nephrite insane when she spoke in Chinese because he did not understand a word of it but she was not going to give up her heritage. The temptation was always there, to buy a ticket back to space and visit her Colony, to see Wufei. But as much as he finally acknowledged her, he thought she was dead, and the ways of her Clan had been constricting to a girl of her independence. If he was happy and her friends and family had moved on, what right did she have to disrupt them? She didn't wish to tie him down to an unhappy marriage, she couldn't go back to the tightly ruled life she had before him, and so she never went back.

But the possibility was always there until one day watching the news; she had followed the mentions of the Gundam sightings avidly hungry for any news that he was alive, and possibly happier than when he was with her, and saw the broadcast that her Colony was destroyed. Demolished. Exploded into pieces of space scrap metal floating in the black.

After that she had truly accepted there was no way back, and while she had fallen in love with her husband in the line of honor and duty, it was not meant for them to be together. She immersed herself into her new life and went into graphic designing. Somewhere along the way Millennium Electronics picked her up and she had worked herself up the ladder until her current position of graphic designer to the Public Relations and Advertisement.

She stilled watched the news like a hawk for the Gundams until the war was over, and then the mentions of how the organization of the Preventers were made from the soldiers of the last war. She saw him once, in the back corner of the screen, talking on a radio, guarding the Vice Foreign Minister as she gave a speech. From then on she watched the news for movements from the Preventers Organization.

He looked happy. She hoped he was happy. He was content at the very least, without a weak, justice obsessed girl like her tying him down. She hoped he had time to read the books he liked and to practice the katana he carried.

Nephrite made no real remark on her viewing tendencies, just as she made no remark on how he watched the news for any information about the island nation of Japan. He often went to search online for current events, and was intensely interested in the fighters they called 'Sailor Scouts.' That nation underwent more national epidemics, evacuations, security lockdowns, and quarantines, than any other in the war times. Yet they were not involved in the Eve war at all.

Reading the happenings with Nephrite, she saw the classified information of monster sightings, weird invasions, terrorist bombings, that Japan never released to ESUN. Meilan never asked Nephrite how he got his sources and he never offered.

They had continued like that but as the war were over and peace time settled there were less and less reports on the major break through of the Preventers and the monsters from Japan lessened and stopped. Meilan and Nephrite both felt proud in a distant bittersweet way to the ones they had known and brought about the change.

Life went on until the day three weeks ago when Meilan had come home from work to see a cheerful, bright girl headed into the house of the famous reclusive Millennium Electronics' top computer security specialist. She had stared until the sunshine streamers turned in her direction and the smile from the petite face was brilliant.

" Would you like to come in?" Her new neighbor asked with a voice like chimes.

And Meilan knew. She knew that voice. It was light and love and warmth and miracles and second chances. It was the voice that made the wish six years ago.

. : count your blessings : .