'Like Clockwork'
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~REQUESTED BY "C.p.f syndrome" (anon review)
Words: 2480
Category: Mystery/Horror/Sci-fi/AU-ish/Angst/Romance (one-sided, obviously)
Characters: Dimande, Saphir, Neo-Queen Serenity, Sailor Moon, Sailor Pluto
Type: oneshot
Kate-Le-Contrary
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PG for thematic elements, mention of drug use, and character death. Sailor Moon is not in any way mine.
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The new boy they found wandering the streets last week is staring in the crib again. He is thinking that something is oddly familiar, strangely familiar about that hair. The way it falls, maybe. He tells himself it is nothing. Nevertheless, the shrill cries of the sick baby awaken him every night, and he stares and stares.
Your little brother, his mind supplies, but something isn't right that isn't about his brother. Well, not really his brother. Brother is just a label because neither of them seems to belong to anyone, and the Momma has taken the both of them in.
The Momma likes his looks, she says. And the baby is her dead sister's, so it is by all rights hers now. He doesn't mind this.
At least, not until the child in the crib starts keening. It is awful. It sounds like someone dying, which he has never heard before—but he still thinks it sounds like someone dying.
And there is a rusty screw in his brain, struggling against the rest of him as all the rest of the clockwork that is him moves about its business. No matter how many times the rest of his thoughts struggle and grind against it, there is that one motionless part of him he can't change, can't feel, can't get past. But he only feels that sensation when he looks at the baby every night, when hears that repetitive clicking in his brain, when he knows that something is horribly, irreversibly, terribly wrong.
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"But my coat has nothing but holes in it!" his little brother protested petulantly. The Momma gave Saphir a smack on the bum, pushing the two young brothers out onto the dawn-time streets of Neo-Tokyo.
The Momma's harsh, stilted accent rung out onto the silent street, the white-blonde hair of an albino curling around her soft cheekbones and pooling in her brocaded scarf as she surveyed the alley coldly.
"Don't be seen. Be back soon, but not too soon," she said in her too-thick voice, and the door took two bangs to close properly.
The two boys stared out at the cold sky above them, because one always needs to look out for the weather first in the red-light district. Neither boy wanted to be caught in a downpour.
Saphir pushed both clammy cheeks, pale in the cold, against Dimande's side so that only his uncovered hair was visible.
He thought that Saphir's brother's tight black curls fell too long. The boy needed a haircut, and soon so as not to be mistaken for a girl.
Girls were kidnapped more often, as the Momma often reminded the pair.
They rambled along the alleyway together, staying close for warmth and protection and sticking into the shadows. There wasn't much of them to be seen—Saphir's mass was mostly caused by his coat; Dimande was gangly and thin, thin from not enough food and the weather and feeding Moko, Saphir's kitten.
The Momma didn't know about Moko. She would have drowned him. But there were a lot of things the Momma didn't know about, that Dimande had to intention of revealing. Like Dimande's little side trips to the fishmongers and along the swaying aisles of docks, easy to sneak along and easier to run away from when someone spotted him snatching a fish. He was very secretive to achieve his ends.
But they were hungry, and Dimande had a sinking feeling Saphir was going to become sick if he didn't keep him better fed.
"Hey, you two!" a thuggish-looking man across the road started to zig-zag towards them, doped beyond reason. The two young boys froze in their tracks, and it was only urgent Dimande's tugging that pulled Saphir from where his feet had stopped.
The two ran into another alley, but clumping bootsteps followed.
Dimande's heart was a deer's quick pulse as he moved closer to the fusion-crystal fence that divided the red-light district from Neo-Tokyo Proper.
There—a hole, small enough for him to push through. The rough grating scraped his ribs, and he yanked his brother after him mercilessly. The coat wouldn't budge. It was too thick—too rich. That druggie had assumed they were rich kids, easy prey. Dimande's icy fingers scrambled for the buttons and ripped the heavy material off Saphir.
Saphir came through the hole, shivering but somehow not chafed by the sharp edges of the hole. On the other side, back in red-light, the puffy blue coat lay under gathering snow.
Dimande pulled Saphir away from the fence and the stoned, wheedling cries of the man behind.
It was snowing, and they were in Neo-Tokyo. Two impossible things—although snowing was slightly less impossible. The Earth's weather had been acting up for a while.
Dimande spat a warning to his brother. "Next time, listen to the Momma and don't wear some pity-present your Benefactor got you."
His brother, who almost never spoke very loud, whispered back something.
"If I had time to change, I would."
For some reason, the words stuck Dimande, hard. Something felt very wrong about all this, and it wasn't just Neo-Tokyo or the snow. He bit his lip, and there it fell, a drop of blood on the snow.
"C'mon. Let's see what Neo-Tokyo has to offer."
And the first corner he rounded, the first store window he came to, the first time he had been in Neo-Tokyo, was the first time he saw her face. He saw her on the silver news-screen, which played a recording of the Neo-Queen Serenity making a speech.
But he didn't know who or what at the time, just that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He was so mesmerized with her face that it was only the surprise of his younger brother's voice that made him look away.
"That's not very nice," Saphir piped up, pointing a little further above his head.
There, taped to the window—a propaganda poster with the heading ALIENS MUST NOT REIN. Below the words, her face stared back in dead ink, a large red X through it.
It seemed to Dimande that a phantom whisper went through his head. And this time, it was harder for him to turn away.
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When he was seventeen and the Momma had made enough money to move, Neo-Queen Serenity came knocking on the Momma's apartment door, sans guards and with a sudden hush.
He was quickly rushed into the kitchen and locked there by the Momma. There was a crack in the wall, so he and Saphir peered out of it and at their monarch, who seemed to be wearing some sort of half-hearted disguise. She looked no older than him, due to the influence of the Silver Crystal. Some sort of glow seemed to surround her…inhuman and silvery.
"Senora Gem," came a lilting, issued from those pink lips. Dimande was mesmerized—he had never seen her in person. "I have heard that you know most of all about the planet Nemesis, if I am informed correctly."
The Momma nodded her head quickly, and ushered the Neo-Queen to a half-rotted chair.
"I lived there, once," the Momma sighed in her heavy accent, "it was beautiful, at one point in time. It was alive."
Serenity pursed her lips, and Dimande watched the movement with awe at how anyone could be so lovely. "We at the court were told recently that it has been used as a banishment point."
The Momma gave a grimace and an affirmative.
Dimande didn't pay attention to anything else until Serenity took her final step out of the door. He was, from that moment, infatuated.
But something inside him besides his heartstrings jolted painfully.
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He joined the Resistance at twenty, once he had seen enough of corrupt local governments and couldn't believe that Neo-Queen Serenity had any notion of what was going on around the Earth. Otherwise, The Momma wouldn't have been killed that night. And the Neo-Queen, the beautiful Neo-Queen wouldn't have married…him. Dimande hated him, because surely he couldn't teach Serenity anything about how real life worked or the street or what it's like to have the closest thing you have to a mother murdered just because of a one-time association with the government.
When Dimande thought about it, killing the Neo-King would be a favor to her.
Still, Saphir gave him grief about it, whining quietly—if it could be called that—that 'the Momma wouldn't want this'.
Dimande's voice was cold and hard, just like Momma's when she had been alive—but without the accent. "I have done this for us, Saphir. Surely you understand. "
A cold chill of fear shot strangely through a part of Saphir's mind, and he suddenly felt dizzy. "Yes, this is the best for us," he muttered in reply.
And still, Saphir followed him. They did everything together, after all.
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An angel stood before him on the slip of paper, condemning him to hell.
Never again, living in Crystal Tokyo (that was what it was called now, no longer Neo-Tokyo). Never again, seeing her accusatory face.
He stared at the newspaper clipping in his hand, clenched it and crushed it into a tiny ball. Then he unfolded it again to stare at her features.
Banished. A planet called Nemesis, of all things. Her fault. All hers. Cruel, cruel face. Though she had nothing to do with the sentencing, though she knew nothing of him, the government was hers.
The one-way teleport echoed hollowly around him, and his brother stared hopelessly ahead at it.
At the last second, they clutched hands together, because they would always, always be brothers. Then the guards pushed and Saphir went first, not for the last time.
Dimande watched with brother dissolve away from Earth. He could feel himself tensing up as he walked forward, choosing to walk ahead. The guards didn't seem to care. If he went easy, good for them.
He held the newspaper clipping up again, and because it couldn't come with him it was the last he saw of planet earth; her face staring up at him from as he was banished away forever.
But Dimande remembered he had secret plans like always and would build this planet up. He would become a leader there for the Resistance like he was on Earth, and make Nemesis a planet to be reckoned with.
He did just that.
It was not so much Dimande's prodding and taunts that sent the inhabitants of Nemesis so against Earth. The acidic atmosphere and unholy stones that clattered without reason and lack of vegetation or life or the non-light of the Black Moon was what did them in.
So that was what he called them, his followers. Black Moon Clan. He individually named them, each like the Momma had for him and Saphir, in some twisted form of remembrance. Then, out of the very void blackness of Nemesis or perhaps the black space beyond came his greatest helper, a Wiseman who addressed him rightfully as Prince, for that was what he was.
The time was drawing near; Dimande could feel it.
His brother didn't sink into either the widespread depression of the passive or enraged frenzy of the vengeful Clan, but rather tinkered with what little the early settlers here had left behind when they succumbed to the slow death brought by starvation or whatever had done them in on this god-forsaken rock.
And soon, a time ship was built.
Dimande had always known Saphir was a genius, even when he muttered about timeloops and repercussions and generating time anomalies and who-knows-what…
"We could even get you that Queen, with the power I give to you... and a time-ship. We can attack from both the present time and the past," Wiseman said, measuring each word carefully.
And with those words, Dimande felt that familiar disjointed hitch in the ticking mechanism of his mind. And he ignored it.
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"If I had time to change, I would." He choked as the dark energy spread within him. He managed a few more words but blacked out, Sailor Moon staring down at him as he died.
An explosion. Silence. Then, the dark weight lifted from him. Clean. Alive. He gave a breath, and his eyes opened.
Double take. There in front of him sat a much older woman—though she hardly looked a day aged. Neo-Queen Serenity. And Sailor Pluto. Their eyebrows were both knit with worry. "I thought I could save him. Somehow, like it did with those four sisters. But I never had the chance too…" the Queen trailed off.
"I can make his body regress to childhood, if I do this right," the holographic Pluto said, "his memories, gone with the age-compression and travel through space-time. The only problem is that I can't predict when or where he will be thrown in time or space to have his new life."
"Do it, if it is the only way. I will give him that time he wanted to change, a second chance. I was gifted with so many second chances, after all..." Neo-Queen Serenity whispered, her voice a little strange and painful.
The ticking began, and it was Serenity pacing the floor. Such a familiar sound—like the one he heard in the back of his mind sometimes…
Then Sailor Pluto lifted a strange orb, and it all blurred…
The clockwork piece of blankness, snapping and twingeing into renewed existence.
Wait a minute. That part of himself had already been there.
Since always.
No, he wanted to scream. Not again.
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The day is November fifth, the universal day for revolutions, and Dimande, "the Prince" of the Resistance, wonders about how best this whole thing should be carried out. Then he sees a poster of her, and his mind is sidetracked.
There is one legend in particular that he, as the new leader of the Resistance, scoffs at regularly… about Neo-Queen Serenity. That her life now is not her second reincarnation as everyone claims. That she died and died and died over and over in a pattern, a wheel, a clockwork machine, throughout all history—until finally she forced all the pieces to snap together perfectly and she broke free from her own fate, and that this utopia was the result of that. He could imagine Serenity beating on the walls of fate like Athena on Zeus' head, gorgeous blue eyes flaring and ready to finally spring free with a Silver Crystal in one hand and the scales of Lady Justice in the other. Justice, indeed. And breaking free of fate! What a notion. There is no such thing as fate. There is only control, manipulation, and desires. Like how he desires Serenity… Nope, no fate for him.
Something catches in the back of his mind at that thought, like a little piece of something, jamming the mechanism.
He shrugs it off and walks onwards.
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It's been such a while since I saw Sailor Moon R (or read that part of the manga) that I spent the weekend refreshing a little bit and trying to remember how the heck Dimande died. Still haven't got formatting on this site down pat, and I think I might have a tense error in there I missed since I messed with them so much. Wow! So much serious fic recently! (I wanted this to be a comedy piece at first...but, well.) Maybe some fluffy Usagi/Mamoru next? Maybe? Or maybe I'll make good on that promise of a 'western' in the summary. Perhaps I'll even finish the title drabble! (Le gasp). Hint: reviews influence me.
Anyway, thanks to C.p.f syndrome for requesting (I hope this is satisfactory/what you were looking for) and James Birdsong for the comment. It really makes my day to see a review notice. ;D
As always, don't be a stranger-review! And if you don't want to/can't be bothered, have fun reading anyway.
-Kate