AN: And here we are…the final chapter. Gosh, I've spend 9 months working on this fic. And it's the longest thing I've ever completed. I'm quite proud of it. I hope you've enjoyed reading it.

I'll be posting an epilogue soon that will contain some announcements about my upcoming fics. But here I just want to say thank you thank you so so so much for reading Pax Lunae through to the final word.

Disclaimer: Sadly I don't own this. But I dream of the day that I will own something I've written.

Last Time on Pax: Serenity Selen banished the Snow Princess Kaguya, revived the frozen planets, and used her own Sailor Crystal to awaken all the star seeds of the nine world's simultaneously. And then she perished in Hippolyte's arms…

The Naming of Mare Serenitatis

The whole population of The Moon bore witness to the great flash of light overhead, the comet being forced back into the distance, and then the pulse of magic that melted every bit of snow and ice on The Moon's surface. Zinea and Asha stand at the head of the crowd who rushed out of the compound and down to the beach to watch as soon as the comet had been noticed looming above them. She clutches Asha's arm close as they stare up towards the dark sky. They're amid an Earth-less night on this side of the moon and the absence of the light above makes the darkness look even thicker. They stare up towards stars thinking the same thought as every other denizen of their small world.

Where is Serenity. She had left nigh on a week ago and the snow had gotten worse each day she was gone until the moment the explosion of Sol's energy had banished it.

And surely, she'd had something to do with that. And surely, she'd be home soon.

"Look there," Zinea said, pointing her finger up towards the dark sky. Asha squints, trying to find whatever it is, but it's long minutes before she-too catches the wink of gold and then the bright blue of familiar beasts' manes as the descent through the atmosphere.

Zinea's grip on Asha's arm only tightens further when the silhouette within the chariot is close enough to distinguish. It is just one person hunched over the front of the craft (for they can see the curve of her golden helmet bowed low as she approaches land. The Queen of Jupiter, it seems, has come to see them alone.

"She's just resting," Asha assures them all. "She's on some battleship somewhere too tired to move. And Hippolyte's come to tell us so."

They just about believe her as the two unicorns pulling the chariot make landfall. They just about believe her as the beasts slow to a halt in the calm surf. They believe her right up until Hippolyte stumbles from the craft with something balanced in her arms. Asha is even about to assure them that it is Hippolyte's own sword the Queen holds until she sees the distinctive red jewel at the pommel and the distinctive golden hilt flash in the light of the torches they've brought down to the beach. Whispers begin to rush through the congregated people as the Queen of Jupiter stumbles into the surf. And all of them fall silent once again as the Queen's anguished cry echoes over the water as she plunges the blade into the sand.

In the silence that follows, Asha can hear Hippolyte mumbling something, and with Zinea still clutched to her arm in disbelieve, Asha makes her way down the beach, wincing as she bends weary knees to kneel beside the Juper Queen.

"Moonlight Healing Purge," Hippolyte is muttering, hands still grasping tightly to the sword's hilt. "Moonlight Healing Purge… Moonlight Healing Purge."

"Hippolyte," Asha murmurs, heart heavy in her chest as she reaches out to put her free hand on the Queen's shoulder. Zinea has redoubled her grasp on the other. "Why,"

"I have to bring her back." Hippolyte chokes. "She uses this…to bring everyone back…it can work for her too."

Zinea lets out a sob beside her. Asha barely hold's hers back. She squeezes the shaking Queen's shoulder.

"My dear," she tells the young Monarch. "I am sorry, but it was never the sword that made those words work."

"Shut up!" Hippolyte snaps. Shrugging off her hand and glaring at Asha. "It can bring her back! It can!"

~paxlunae~

It will bring her back. Hippolyte thinks, directing her glare away from Asha and back towards the sword. She stares deep into the red jewel in the hilt and thinks of every time Serenity has ever used it: To heal her own people from the horde and again for the countless innocents of Earth. And to heal her…after Mytilene and on Nyx…and though she cannot remember it on Eris as well. Serenity has always saving her.

And this can save her too. she thinks. "Moonlight Healing Purge!" It has to. "Moonlight Healing Purge!"

"Hippolyte," the other priestess whispers. "Please…it won't work!"

"You're wrong!" she lashes out at them, curling her hands even tighter around the sword as it sinks even more into the sand. The water of the sea soaks into her leggings – icy cold against her knees. She shivers, but shouts again. "Moonlight Healing Purge!" nothing. "Moonlight Healing Purge," no magic of any kind. "Moonlight Hea-" She coughs as her voice cracks, shaking as she draws her next breath.

"Please," Asha's voice whispers beside her once again, "Let us help you,"

"I don't want help!" The Queen snaps. "I needed to tell her," her voice cracks again. She swallows the sob that threatens to spill past her lips. I am not going to cry. Crying would mean… "This will work." She insists. "I have the sword…and the will…and the words."

"But magic," Zinea protests.

"What else is there to magic?" Hippolyte yells, refocusing her attention on the sword. "MOONLIGHT HEALING PURGE!" she shouts, her voice raw. "MOONLIGHT HEALI –" Her voice fails her on that attempt and as she tries to swallow, tries to get the words past her lips again, she sobs. It shakes her entire frame and causes her grip on the sword to falter. She scrambles to replace her trembling hands. She can't let it go.

"Only The Guardian could make that sword work," Zinea tells her.

Hippolyte shakes her head. "M-mage," she stutters.

"Even if a mage of a Veneficii could, you're neither." Asha says, voice impossibly calm.

But Hippolyte only shakes her head once more, eyes still on the sword. "M-moonlight," but she coughs again, and sobs, her voice broken.

She waits for the platitudes of consolment from the women beside her but both have fallen silent. One more time. "Moonlight H-healing," but this time her voice trails off in the middle. Her shoulders sag.

The words aren't enough. She thinks as another sob shakes her.

The water lapping at her knees is ice cold. She can see the outline of herself in to dark sea, and the gleam of the sword as well. There as to be a way. She sniffs. "Moonlight…" but she trails off. shaking her head. "Moon," she begs. "Please, Moon" As if this rock could do anything, she thinks. Though it can't hurt to appeal to it, this unseeming satellite that had become Serenity's home. "Moon…" I've just got to keep trying. "Healing," but not with those words…new words… stronger ones. "Moon Healing," she chokes on another sob.

"Those aren't even the right words," another voice mumbles from further up the beach and is quickly shushed by other onlookers. She flushes and sniffs. No, they aren't the right words, she thinks. But if the old ones don't work. She feels the anger and the grief as coursing through her, hot and desperate. I need new words, she thinks. Stronger words. "Moon Healing…" my words. "ESCALATION!"

As she shouts, the first of her tears spills forth from her eyes and begins to shine as it leaves her face. She closes her eyes against the blinding light. Her body is rigid, paralyzed as the hot grief and anger within her surge forth from her heart, up through her arms and hands, into the sword. She hears gasps as the sword begins to glow with the same light as her tear, which still hovers freely in the air.

Her tear shines steadily in the darkness as the water around the sword ripples outwards and the ground beneath the blade trembles. She is thrown away from the sword bay the shaking of the ground and crashes on her elbows into the cool sand, eyes never leaving the shining tear drop that still floats over the sword. She watches as it grows, as the light within the sword glows, and then as the water beneath the sword pulls fully away and the sand splits apart, making room for a column of light to pierce through to the surface. It rises up into the atmosphere turning the whole night into daylight.

"By Ra," Asha murmurs across the sand from her. She and Zinea have both gone to their knees, as have the hundred other onlookers further up the beach. But Hippolyte notices none of them. She stares at the column of light that's engulfed the sword and at the even brighter light of her tear shining in the darkness. She gapes as it glows. All the while the ground beneath her rumbles on, water sloshing to-and-fro as new land rises up at the edge of the beach.

And as it does, the sword is pushed out of the sand, falling to the sand though the column of light persists. Something bursts forth from the sea's edge where the sword had been – crystalline in texture. It grows above the water in a tall, perfect column, until it stands above them – a silvery-white, crystal obelisk.

"My Guardian," a low voice addresses her, echoing forth from the crystal. She gasps. It is the same low voice Sailor Sol had spoken with during the battle.

"Y-you're the Goddess," she stutters. Not even noticing when the earthquake stops, or when the water rushes back around the obelisk and covers her to the waist. She sits unmoving in the cold water in awe, for Ra has never appeared to anyone before.

"Indeed you have come to call me that," the voice says. "Though truly there was a day when I was just another mortal like you, My Guardian."

"I am not The Guardian," she protests in a hoarse whisper.

"I hardly think that so," the figure says, observing her with ancient, pure-white eyes "Many have the power to become Guardians though few are allowed the opportunity. But there are other futures…other lives, where you and your Serenity are not so different from each other."

Hippolyte gapes.

"And it was this capacity in your soul – the strength of your will and the power of your heart – that have allowed the impossible to happen today."

All around her, the sand begins to shine, then the ocean spreading out from the obelisk, off towards the horizon, until the entire Moon shines with its own silver glow. "Your Serenity was close to understanding for so long. And yet only Tana ever managed to unlock the secret."

"W-what secret,"

"That all this," the figure of Ra gestures to their surroundings. "This world, this star system, this universe: they are nothing on their own – nothing with out us to give them life and love – to make them beautiful, purposeful, magnificent." Ra smiles down at her. "What's more: your Serenity discovered a different truth that not even Tana, in all her research, could uncover. Power shared is not power divided – it is power with the opportunity to grow. It is how you were restored through the Earth's soul. It is how, indeed, you have created a new world."

Hippolyte looks around at the glowing sand and her eyes widen at the vast expanses of flowers poking up through the ground, then out at the pristine sea, and over towards the Selen compound which has undergone the most drastic change of all – having grown into a sparkling citadel.

"This was once a piece of a young Earth…it ached for a soul of its own. And you have provided it." Ra gestures to the shining light before her – Hippolyte's tear drop – which has grown into a fine, round crystal. "A Silver Crystal to mirror gold for this Kingdom of The Moon." She holds the crystal in her left hand, conjuring a pink staff and affixing the crystal to it, settling it in a large crescent shapped jewel setting that caps the end of the staff. "Stay strong," Ra says. She nods towards Hippolyte as she speaks, then to the two Priestesses who still kneel further down the beach, and then the whole Lunar populace who stares, slack jawed, from high up upon the dunes. "This one has upset the order of all things. And she shall need you to usher in the new millennium."

New Millennium? Hippolyte wonders, unable to speak as she watches the light around Ra begin to fade, pulling inwards and adding opacity to the spectral figure.

"It shall be known as The Pax Lunae. And The Moon shall be in a unique position to defend it, sharing the longest of lifespans with its Guardian. Indeed they'll be needed – for it shall be quite a few centuries before the planetary crystals have fully awoken. As well... It is my turn again to set foot within the living world, and as I prepare once more to set foot in the Mortal Realm, I shall no longer be able to advise you. It is not easy…being the fulcrums upon which the future tilts. Lead well," Ra commands, now more solid than ever. The light is gathering into a flaring white gown with a crescent adorning the bow…just as a similar crescent mark is peeking into existence on the spectre's forehead. "And someday, many futures from now, there may come a day when you guard this galaxy by her side."

"Galaxy?" she murmurs aloud.

"One life at a time my dear…after all. Power and time are tricky things. Even with love, they are painstaking to keep on track."

And with a clap, the column of light disappears entirely and then the light fades from the figures eyes, which roll back in her head. Hippolyte launches forwards, barely catching the figure as she collapses into the sand.

Her hand comes up to cup the familiar face before seeking out the reassuring beat of her pulse. When she does find it she sobs and laughs, stroking Serenity's now silver hair and glancing towards the pink staff that is still clutched in her left hand. How is this possible? She wonders, but dismisses the thought as Serenity stirs.

"Hippolyte," Serenity murmurs, blinking, and Hippolyte stares.

"Your eyes…" she murmurs

"What's wrong with them," Serenity queries frowning. Her eyes are no longer amber. Instead they have been remade in a bright blue – the same hue as this new world's great ocean.

"They're open," Hippolyte murmurs. She pulls Serenity in close, curling her hand into The Guardian's newly silver hair as she kisses her at last.

~Le Fin~

ANII: If you've read all the way through to the end. Would you mind leaving a review? It can just be a "Hello" or "Goodbye" if you'd prefer. But I'll respond to them all with my thanks. I'd really just like the opportunity to see whom all of you are who have read this with such dedication.

Cheers,

~TEitPP