Author notes from previous time I posted the story at the bottom of the page. If you aren't confused about anything just go on to the following chapter :') sorry bout my former rambling nature. Enjoy

Redundant disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon.

Chapter 5

Fine vs. Not Fine

Darien's mind couldn't let go of the feeling of her in his arms. When she'd told him to let her go he almost ignored her. It took all this will power not to crush her in a strong embrace. And now she was charging back to the enemy.

As he watched her retreat from him he still couldn't help but marvel slightly at her. Her strength, beauty, courage, and power just radiated off of her as she charged back into battle. He knew she felt that she was nothing like her Moon Princess counterpart, but they were more alike than even she realized. Therefore his heart stopped for the second time in two days when the demon's arm came out and his Serena crumpled to the ground.

He was the first one to get to her even though he'd been the farthest away. Mars and Venus continued to battle the demon with their powers while Mercury and Jupiter and he looked over her. She was unconscious for only a few moments, but those were the scariest moments of his life. When she opened her eyes a look of intense pain crossed her face for a millisecond, but it had passed so quickly he didn't know if he'd actually seen it or imagined it.

She stood up and then in a low, commanding voice asked Mercury, "Where is the weak spot?"

He saw Mercury gulp under her angry gaze and only whispered, "Its left arm."

Jupiter then stood in front of her for only a moment, before backing down from the look Serena gave her.

'She sure could play the part of the leader when she wanted to!' Darien thought, his heart racing by what was happening.

Then she noticed he was next to her and a look of confusion and pain crossed her face, but she turned and marched off to the demon. Darien looked in time to see her cry, "Moon Scepter Elimination!" And then the demon was destroyed.

Darien picked himself up and walked away. After he leapt onto the nearest building he imagined that after the battle Serena had looked at the rest of the scouts with a proud smile on her face and her eyes dancing. He imagined her musical voice and it pretended it filled his ears saying to them,

"See? I told you I could do it!"

She sounded so happy in his head, his heart didn't think he could take that she didn't miss him any longer and he jumped building to building until he reached his apartment, knowing that her face would fill his mind as he tried to let sleep come to him.

Serena didn't think she could take the sight of him walking away from her for much longer. Seeing him standing over her when she'd awoken made her want to vomit at the thought of him realizing how weak and stupid she was. He must have really thought she was pathetic if she couldn't handle just a little bump on the head, which was threatening to give her a bad headache.

She felt weak, if she had only let the others handle this, she wouldn't have had to pass out in front of him. That was probably part of the reason he broke up with her, she wasn't strong enough for him. She'd never really understood why he'd started liking her in the first place a year and a half ago. Finally she stopped thinking altogether for a few moments. She just stared at the disappearing pile of demon ashes.

"Serena?" she heard Amy ask timidly.

When she didn't respond, she heard Amy walk closer and more forcefully cry, "Serena!"

Finally Serena lifted her gaze to meet her friends. She saw Amy's eyes widen in shock. She looked at Serena again, this time with a softer voice,

"Serena this has to stop. Tell us what you're feeling. Don't worry about being embarrassed, be sad or angry or hurt, just feel something! Please! I can't stand looking at you like this."

'She wants emotion,' Serena thought randomly, thoughts were getting harder to place in the correct order, but something in her mind was telling her it would be all over soon.

Serena closed her eyes and used an inhuman amount of strength and gave Amy a smile. By this time Lita, Raye, and Mina had walked up as well and were looking at her, worry clear on their faces. She knew she was scaring them, but at the moment she didn't care.

She made her voice appear calm and relaxed and said slowly, "Don't worry about me. I'm fine."

Lita walked in front of her and put her hands on her shoulders, looking her in the eye, "No, you're not. You need to deal with this before it destroys you, Serena. We're just here to help. Let us!"

She looked at Lita calmly in the eye; she didn't trust herself to speak. She needed them to understand without her telling them because if she didn't get away from them soon she felt she might crack. She firmly lifted Lita's hands from her shoulders and said,

"Thanks for the offer, but I really don't need your help. I can handle this on my own. Don't worry about me. I'm fine."

'I'm fine,' she repeated in her head. If she kept saying it she knew she would be able to convince herself it was true.

She flashed them the best smile she could manage and walked away, leaving her friends standing there in shock. None of them had ever seen Serena smile with less joy in their lives. It was almost like looking at a corpse, her pale skin shown in the moon light and her eyes looked dead inside. Amy's lip quivered as she turned to the others.

"I don't think I've ever seen her like this. It's worse than shock, at least with that the person isn't trying. I've never seen her try so hard to be happy."

Lita and Mina looked at each other and then at Luna.

"Luna, what should we do?" Lita asked, her voice lined with worry. Luna shook her head. She had no idea.

"This is more than not dealing with it. This is like watching your emotions thrash inside of you, trying to get out and locking them in tighter. If she continues on like this she's going to explode," Mina said solemnly.

Lita looked at her, "Well, what do you think that just was? She didn't call us; she didn't call anyone, if Amy and I hadn't been in the area who knows what might have happened!"

Amy's voice rang out after a few moments of silence, "And the way she was beating it to a pulp. That's not what we do. We destroy the demons, not use them as a punching bag!"

Mina looked up to the stars, her lovely face lined with worry, "I can only pray to Venus to give me the strength to help her. We've got to do something, but I have no idea what!"

Lita de-transformed and picked up her purse, "I say we let Artemis in on this. See if he has any ideas! If not, we could always have an intervention, but I'm not sure if that would help."

Luna sighed, "Let's just get home. Serena obviously isn't going to listen to us right now, but I'll try later tonight!" And the four of them slowly walked silently away.

Serena slowly walked home with a cup of coffee in her hand. She felt exhausted from not only the battle but the four hours of sleep she had gotten in the past two nights. She was nervous about what she was going to do when she got home. She had put so much effort into looking happy for her friends after the battle that she didn't know how much she had left for her uncle. With the small boost of energy from the coffee, she opened her front door. Her uncle was sitting in the living room with Jack reading a newspaper.

"Hey Sere, where've you been?"

Serena walked in and sat down. "Sorry, I guess I kind of lost track of time."

Her uncle put his newspaper down, "Spending time with this Darien Shields?"

He raised his eyebrows. Serena paused for a second then replied, "Yes, and Amy and my other friends. We went out for a coffee-thing."

He looked at her for another second, then smiled and said, "Alright. Well are you up for a card game or do you still have homework to do?"

Serena would have dearly loved to go to her room to not act happy, but then feared Amanda, or worse Luna, might say something so she just smiled and said, "Sure, Rummy; first one to five hundred?"

He laughed, "As usual. My, it's been a long time since we sat down for a card game. Hey Jack, you up for one?"

Jack kindly turned him down as did Amanda, but unfortunately Rini was more than willing to play.

"How do you play?" She asked brightly.

Serena couldn't conceal her groan of annoyance, of course she'd have to spend the evening teaching the annoying brat how to play her favorite card game! Her uncle winked at her and she gave him a small smile back. The evening passed a lot slower with just one other person besides Rini to talk to.

It wasn't that she hated Rini, it was just the brat did so many annoying things that Serena realized she herself did. She tried not to do them as much anymore, but Rini just reminded her of how annoying she'd been.

And it also didn't help that she always behaved for everyone except Serena. Now it even seemed as though she'd stolen Darien away from her. Serena tried very hard not to react when Rini brought up his name, yet again.

"And I'm going to see Darien tomorrow because he promised to take me to see the cherry blossoms and also I want him to buy me an ice cream. But I want it to be chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips…"

Serena tried hard to tune her out as she prattled on about Darien. Uncle Rick just found this extremely funny, so Serena said nothing. She just played with a smile on her face and pretended to get angry when her uncle would win a hand. She got more and more irritated with Rini as the evening went on.

This was her time with her uncle! Not the brat, who they already knew was from the future and had brainwashed Amanda, Jack, and now Uncle Rick. She'd just invaded her life and now she'd even managed to steel Darien. Serena knew how pathetic it was to be competing with a seven-year-old, but she couldn't help it! She excused herself to her room as soon as she could and changed into her pajamas. As soon as she turned off the lights she found Luna sitting on her bed with a sad-eyed expression on her face.

"Serena…" she began. Serena's eyes widened as she whispered swiftly,

"Luna, no!"

But Luna wasn't backing down, "No, you are not going to avoid this Serena, we need to talk!" Serena walked past her and lay down in her bed.

"Not now." Luna walked on her legs,

"Yes, now! If not now, then when?" Serena looked up at the night sky again.

"I don't know, but not right now!" Serena sighed. Her emotions were starting to come to the surface again. Luna's voice softened,

"Serena, please, don't shut me and your friends out. We can't protect you if you don't let us in." Serena sat up quickly and said, surprised how monotone her voice sounded,

"This isn't about defeating the Evil sisters and Rubeus so I really don't see how it involves you and the others as far as protecting me. Please, just leave me alone." She lay back down on her pillow and turned away. She heard Luna sigh and didn't feel her form on the bed, but saw her leap to the window sill. Luna turned back to her for a moment,

"This isn't about protecting you from an enemy, but you are endangering yourself. And if you think we're only worried about you because you're Sailor Moon, you're wrong. We care about you, Serena. If you finally decide you want to talk tonight, we're only a communicator call away."

With that she disappeared into the night leaving Serena feeling very worried about the 'tonight' part of what Luna said. She groaned into her pillow as she realized they had something planned for tomorrow. She began hyperventilating again as her pushed-back pain was given another boost of strength at the memory of Darien's retreating back.

FORMER AUTHORS NOTES from previous post of the story (feel free to ignore):

Okay, I feel really stupid. See, my mind sometimes has these little periods where it just does not work properly. I realize now that I'd put many references to things I'd just assumed people would just naturally know because they could naturally read my every thought and know all the stories I haven't even written yet. My apologies! This is why I should have written my version of the first season before I wrote this one, but I guess I was just so excited about this story I couldn't wait. By that I mean that when I get my prequel to this story written and on everything will make sooooo much more sense, but for now here are the facts so as to better understand this story. Thanks so much to SkylerKnight for bringing these questions to my attention.

SkylerKnight: 'SO Serena's parents are dead? How when? How old is she?
SO is Rini her "sister"?
Who's Jack and Amanda?'

First off Serena's parents died in a car accident almost half a year after she found out she was Sailor Moon back in the first season. Please don't worry about exactly when it happened because its not relevant to this story, but I PROMISE to explain in the next story! Serena is seventeen years old –she was sixteen when she became Sailor Moon- again don't ask why because there is a reason that will be explained in the other story. I'm getting tired of writing that, I REALLY SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN THAT ONE FIRST! Stupid stupid brain! I'm okay now. Rini's character stayed the same as in the anime-as in she's still considered Serena's 'cousin' by the other characters-; only instead of hypnotizing Serena's parents she hypnotized her cousin. Furthermore Amanda is Serena's father's niece and Serena's uncle's daughter (so she's Serena's first cousin). Serena's father originally only had one brother; Uncle Rick, but after Rini hypnotized everyone it was then accepted that Serena's father had two brothers and Rini's the daughter of the other one. Jack is Amanda's husband. Serena went to live with them after her parents died.

Complicated yet? Oh, don't worry there's worse stuff up here in my mind! I'm like a freakin' soap opera writer! But yeah, I hope you all will forgive me and continue to read my very AU Sailor Moon story and not be too disappointed. Again please REVIEW and thank you sooo much to all who have reviewed. Your comments give me the courage to go back into the creative side of my mind –it's scarily unorganized in there- and write more of the story. I hope it will get even better as it goes one. I'll try to get the next chapter up as soon as I can. I know this is a long author's note and for that I apologize. And now…on with the fanfic!