A/N: Humm humm hummm….
Disclaimer: Don't own anything, not me.
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Subject to Change
Season 2
Chapter Nine: Darien's Decision
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Serena progressed little in the power expulsion without a medium department. In fact, "little" was just a euphemism for "not at all." Several variations of the same result merely occurred: Lanai would stop the knives (or whatever projectiles she had decided on that day) just before they tore into Serena; Serena rolled out of the way at the last second; or Serena's tiara exploded in a "Twilight Flash" and vaporized all the projectiles before they could touch her. This latter only happened at the very end of their training sessions, when they were both tired and cranky (Serena on the inside, for of course she never acted disrespectfully toward Miss Lanai, to whom she was so grateful), and every time it happened Serena popped her eyes open, certain that she'd finally done it – only to be told by a tight-lipped Miss Lanai that her tiara had only gone off involuntarily again.
Serena began to dread training every day. It was like banging her head against a brick wall. She had not felt so hopeless even when she had first become a Senshi: then, even if her tiara attack had not been particularly strong or well-executed, she had defeated the monsters and saved the victims. Now, there was neither the satisfaction of success nor the warmth of knowing that she had saved someone's life. There was only the sour taste of failure and the dark room to go home to at night with only the next day's training for which to wake up.
The misery of training wormed it ways into her sleep; the harder she tried, the more spectacularly she seemed to fail, and the more frequently she had nightmares.
She dreamed of the fog again, and the awful taste of blood, voices screaming and arms reaching, grabbing. Each night, they grew stronger, clearer, like a stereo increasing in volume. Screams and explosions rocked her ears. She could smell flesh, charred and smoky, the acrid scent of pulverized rock, the salty odor of spilled blood, and the weight of all these things in her hair, dragging it down. She felt, separately and acutely, a bar of metal inside her, moving one way when she moved the other, like a gruesome parody of being pregnant and feeling a baby kick within her. Hands, fingernails, grabbed at her skin; something pulled at the sword, and she retched on her hands and knees, grabbing at it, but then it was pulled free, her spine jerking with it. Blood gushed forth from her like vomit, jerking her body with the force – and then, and then, the worst part, the worst part – the cold blade slid right back into her stomach again, like a sheath. More blood, more blood…and then, if she was lucky, she woke up.
At first she thought these hellish nightmares meant that Darien must have taken to camping in her tree again. Incongruously, she felt such a rush of relief and affection that it nearly erased the horror of the dreams – her whole dark world lit up for a whole day, because he still insisted on protecting her.
She knew it was wrong, she knew it was treacherous and evil, and for that reason, on the fourth night, she stayed up on her window seat to catch him and make him leave.
She wrestled all night, under the meager glow of the waning moon, with what to say, how to say it, without throwing herself into his arms and begging him to choose her instead. She tried to bribe herself, being logical, pointing out that once he left, she wouldn't dream these horrible dreams of mutilation anymore.
Yet it was all in vain. Because he didn't come.
She stayed up until one in the morning; she fell asleep into nightmares of cold metal jamming between her ribs, a tiny point of fire against her lungs as she began to exhale blood…and then she woke, blinking bloodshot eyes.
No. He must have come. Drunken with sleep loss, she staggered through the day, and she stayed up the next night, too, eyes burning and red, lips tight as Miss Lanai's. Then the sun came up and still he had not come. And realization spewed like a volcano upon her all over again. He didn't love her. The princess was more important. The universe was more important.
She, Serena, was a selfish witch.
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Serena threw herself all the more into training, into trying to push out energy, and the nightmares intensified. She thought of them as she pushed and hissed and sweated and bled, and they screamed inside her like air from shellfish that are being boiled alive, and when she went to bed she barely closed her eyes before they erupted on the inside of her eyelids again, and it was just a positive feedback loop, everything feeding on everything else and getting bigger, bigger, bigger…
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"It is an art show far away. In the United States. You shall not be able to reach me. Are you listening?"
Sailor Moon snapped her head up. Her awareness had blurred into a doze when Miss Lanai told her to stop trying to vaporize needles and sit down, her mind snatching for any crumbs of sleep it could get. She swiped a bit of saliva from the corner of her mouth with a wrist and tried to focus on Miss Lanai.
The Senshi was writing on the room's single white board with red Expo marker. "Cap those paints, please."
Sailor Moon's half-open eyes found the tubes of paint on the desk and her fingers fumbled them closed. "You're leaving?" Her voice was thick like a bramble of neglected bushes.
"Were you not listening? Yes. I would not, save for the fact that there have been no disturbances since Kisenian Blossom." She spoke quickly; Moon, forcing herself more awake, tried to follow. "There may also be Senshi there."
Moon's grip on the last paint tube tightened – red squirted onto her tennis shoe. She blinked down at it, then looked back up, eyes the most open they had been all week. "You mean High Senshi?"
Miss Lanai's cup of pencils fell over.
"What a pair we are today!" Lanai said, crouching to pick them up. "I believe some of your grace has rubbed off on me, Sailor Moon." She smiled distractedly, removing the sting from her words. "Why would you think that?"
"Well – " Sailor Moon tried to gather her thoughts, which had scattered to all corners of the globe in her detached state of the past week. "The Senshi are all in Japan, aren't they…because they come where the princess is." She rubbed her eyes. "Right?"
Lanai scrabbled under her desk for a rogue ballpoint. "Hypothetically," she said coolly. "But if the Senshi is a minor, made to move by her parents, or there for a short period, some other extreme circumstance…"
She trailed off, then stood. "My flight leaves in an hour. I must go. You - " She pinned Sailor Moon, who was mid-yawn, with a glare. "will be vigilant. Do not transform until I return. Do not speak to him."
Moon's pulse jumped. Her eyes prickled; her mouth turned hard.
Miss Lanai looked at her, seeming reluctant and awkward. "I am sorry, I had to say it. It is for your own good as well as the rest of the universe's, Serena Tsukino."
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Serena went home that day and, desperate for any way to keep from falling asleep, fell upon the giant stack of homework that had been piling up steadily for weeks.
She made a dent about the same proportion as a shovel might have made in the snow on Mount Everest before succumbing to slumber and screams.
She woke up the next morning, her English translation glued to her face by drool and a crick in her back.
The rest of the day followed much the same mold, her classes inching by as slowly and unpleasantly as slugs. At last, she bade Lita a hopefully-cheerful-enough goodbye and was halfway down the hall before she realized that she had not thought to ask what she would do in seventh period while Lanai was gone. She decided to go to the classroom first, just in case someone was there, then go to Mrs. Kamiya and ask if she could leave early.
A surprise met her eyes went she reached the classroom. Someone was indeed there, someone with soft honey blonde hair.
Someone who resembled very much the Sailor Neptune she had drawn.
The blonde woman sat at the desk reading a book and glanced up when Serena walked in. Her soft waves of hair seemed alive and breathing, rippling like water.
"Hello," she said in an alto voice. "You must be Serena."
Serena took a step out of the doorway inside. "Yes. Are you Miss Lanai's substitute?"
What she really wanted to ask was, 'Did Miss Lanai draw you?' It had never occurred to her, but perhaps Miss Lanai could draw living beings, and it certainly seemed like something she would do to allow Serena to continue training while she was gone…yet Serena found herself acutely disturbed by the idea that Miss Lanai would create a being from her sketchbook. It seemed wrong, somehow.
The substitute/possible drawing answered Serena. "Yes. I was told you have an independent project to work on?" She nodded toward a manila folder on the corner of the desk.
"Um…yes." Serena moved toward the desk like a mouse inching around a cat and slid the folder just as carefully away from the desk.
"Would like some music while you work?" The teacher inquired as Serena moved to the couch to read the folder's contents.
"S-sure," said Serena.
The strains of string music that filled the room was not the type of music that Serena had expected; the woman hardly seemed old enough to be into classical music yet. But if she was a drawing…Serena pushed away again that sense of wrongness and opened the folder. Perhaps Miss Lanai had explained in here…
Or not. Within the folder lay a single sheet of paper, written in Miss Lanai's overly curly manuscript that looked like flower vines. Draw a series of sketches of the prince, the princess, the palace, and the crystal.
For a moment, Serena traced the scrawl in pencil, fattening the letters and drawing shadows behind them.
"Do you understand the assignment?"
Serena looked up slowly. "Yes, sorry. It just took me a second to read her handwriting." She smiled.
The substitute smiled back. "Well, tell me if you have any questions."
Serena obediently pulled out her sketchbook and opened it. She was nearly halfway through the pages now. She gripped her pencil in her hand and stared at the blank page. In her mind's eye floated the image of the painting that Miss Lanai had done with Darien in armor and her in a gauzy gown – it kept bobbing back up to the surface of her thoughts like a beach ball that would not stay underwater.
She stroked the pencil down the page in imitation of the painting in her mind. But Darien never stood like that, or slung his arm so awkwardly. He didn't smirk like that, out into empty space, either, only down at her…
Forty minutes later the bell's ringing snapped her head up. She blinked dumbly at the substitute teacher snapping shut a slim silver cell phone and smiling at her.
"May I see what you've drawn?"
Serena's eyes flitted back down to her sketchbook, the smudged, detailed portrait of Darien in full body armor. She snapped the sketchbook shut.
"No!" she blurted out. Then, "I mean, it's not done."
"Ah. I see." The smile the teacher gave Serena seemed far too knowing – especially for a drawing. Serena couldn't help a blush. But it was an angry blush. She was stupid and idiotic to let herself think of him… She snatched up her bag and stalked from the classroom.
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During the time she spent drawing, a solid, determined idea had lodged itself firmly into Serena's mind. She would learn a new attack while Miss Lanai was gone. Then, when she returned, she would have something to be proud of in Serena.
Such an accomplishment would require a rigorous schedule, and a rigorous schedule required some lies. She went home first, to change and tell her parents she was staying with Lita overnight – it was a Friday, she had surmised from the calendar, so this would be okay.
It was in this way that five hours later, in the early dark of autumn, that Serena came to be in the hidden hollow in the park. She had waited until nearly everyone in the park had left, from laughing children to strolling couples, but now she stuffed her sandwich wrapper into her Sub-space pocket and withdrew her Luna Pen.
Asking the Luna Pen to turn her into Sailor Moon produced the same glamour and outfit but not the same powers and accelerated healing. However, it also did not produce the side affect of Darien sensing her. Serena had decided she would have to compromise with this until she came up with a better idea to transform without him knowing, and for now she would stick to physical exercises and trying to emit energy in this form. Lita could, after all, summon electricity without being transformed, and Asanuma had used fire, though of course he was a Shittenou and not a Senshi – why shouldn't Serena be able to use her power without transforming?
But first, exercises. Lanai had pounded into her again and again that she needed to learn backward flips, and Serena had thus far failed at them. Why not start there? Baby steps, baby steps, she told herself as discouragement and exhaustion sucked at her like quagmire.
Now wearing a Senshi fuku thanks to the Luna Pen, she moved to the very center of the leaf-carpeted clearing and bent her legs at the knees. Her toes flexed anxiously in her boots. Perspiration still dampened her choker, making the faux tiara on her forehead slippery.
She tensed her legs and pushed off.
When she came to, the glowing digital watch she had placed on the ground beside her showed it was twenty minutes later than it had been when she attempted the back flip. She ran a tentative hand through her hair, probing her scalp, and winced when it flared painfully. That was going to be a big bump, especially without accelerated healing. Perhaps she ought to try something else…
No! Rage poured through her. It was weakness like this, lack of self-discipline like this, that had gotten the princess killed!
She yanked her body to its feet. And while she waited for her head to clear a little bit more, she practiced kicks.
Lita had taught her the basic mechanism of a proper kick. She'd told her it could only be perfected on practice, preferably on a real person, but all Serena had was a tree, so she used that instead. Kick, breathe, kick, breathe, kick, breathe, over and over again. When the colorful sparkles exploding behind her eyes every time her leg impacted the tree trunk were not quite so bright, she decided to try the backflip again. She had just turned, smiling a little as a cooling wind whipped up –
Then fire agony erupted down the back of her leg.
Serena let out a gasp. The wind carried it away as it vanished.
"Oh my god," Serena whispered to herself, slightly unnerved as she twisted around, hands probing gingerly at the long, bleeding cut down her thigh. Had that been a leaf that cut her like that?
There was no warning again – the wind shot up, and another cut erupted, this time on Serena's torso. A hand shot over it, covering the quickly-spreading blood, and confusion and fear stampeded through her – was it a Shittenou, one that Darien didn't know about, there had been four after all and maybe they weren't all good, they'd let their guard down –
This time she heard the wind whistling up. In a blur, she transformed, and her tiara-sword shot up and out. Sailor Moon heard several things clang off of it in the darkness, though she could see nothing.
Perspiration rolled down her neck. She backed slowly toward a tree, eyes darting in the meager glow of the tiara-sword, one hand pressed over her abdomen. She was distracted by the flash of flavor she had received from Darien in that split-second window of transformation – panicked, infuriated, then coldly calculating and so startlingly resolute that her knees had ceased their tremors.
"Who is it?" she shouted, and her voice did not shake. But more because of the muffled awareness of her throbbing head than because she was confident. "Come out!"
Silence ticked by. Several times, Sailor Moon licked her lips and nearly called out again – then lost her nerve. She continued to stand, instead, sword held in front of her. Her heart seemed to pound as loud as a drum.
Then, suddenly, the wind whistled again. But this time it was different – it whooshed and snarled and roared. Something hissed through the air toward her sword –
But nothing ever hit. Sailor Moon waited with tensed muscles, but there was only a rustle in the leaves somewhere in front of her, and then a thud on the ground not a foot away from her.
She jerked backwards. Her back collided with solid tree, exploding stars in her still pyrotechnic eyes.
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A snarl escaped Tuxedo Mask as he felt the interloper spirit itself away. The wind tore at his grip as he tried to yank it from out of the other's control. He hissed his fury, roots ripping free of the ground and lashing like whips at the intruder. Something slapped them down, not wind but something else, something that he could not sense because suddenly he felt that there was a great quantity of warm liquid seeped into the top layer of earth before him, and his mind snapped totally and wholly onto Sailor Moon.
He rose from his crouch reaching for her.
"What happened?" he demanded hoarsely, fingers closing around her shoulders. He could hear her heartbeat, rapid and frightened.
Then she pushed at him. "I'm fine."
Her voice sounded slightly panicked. His first thought was that she was lying to him, she was mortally wounded somewhere, but he did not feel blood gushing from anywhere on her body; the blood on the ground had cooled; her Senshi form was healing her – and then he realized she was trying to escape out of his arms, and he tightened them.
She froze, hands still stiffly at her sides. "Let go."
"No." Tuxedo Mask was surprised by the quietness of his own voice. It was barely more than a movement of his lips. He tried again.
"Tuxedo Mask." Her voice broke and crumbled like bricks. She pushed away from him again, swaying, her gloved hands tense against his shoulder. "You have to stay away from me, I'm a danger to the princess – "
She sounded almost hysterical. Rage poured through him. Helios, Luna, Rei – all these people who had poisoned her mind and convinced her that she was a killer, as if Serena would ever hurt even a fly, they didn't know her, none of them knew her, and here they had mutilated her, she believed them, if he'd known she'd been thinking about it all this time, but of course she had, how could she not, Serena agonized over other people's feelings and opinions and her own behavior, he could stab himself for not noticing, not realizing – his fingers clenched and spasmed as all around them wind roared and the ground shook –
"Serena." He pressed his face to her soft hair. Fury boiled through his bones. "Serena – "
Her eyelashes were phantoms against his collarbone. She stammered something; distantly, he felt movement against his chest and a wet spot on his shirt heated by her breath.
The boiling began to subside; he became acutely aware of her soft hair against his cheek as she shook her head.
Darien pressed his face more tightly to that head. She wasn't pushing away this time though tears still trickled hot onto his skin; she was still as stone except for her heart, which pounded terribly. Her hands had risen and uncurled beneath his vest.
He spoke fiercely into her ear. "Serena, I don't love the princess." He held onto her tighter as she stiffened. "I love – "
Thunder crashed. Then something cracked against his skull. Hard.
He staggered, and lost his grip on Sailor Moon as a heavy weight wedged them apart.
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