A/N: Hugs go out to every one of you beautiful reviewers! I was overwhelmed in the most delicious way by all your reactions. Please keep overwhelming me!
Special thanks to Sue for all her help. Another of her jaw-dropping sketches is up on the site; check it out RIGHT NOW. And, lots of "urv" to Jade, who has listened to (and participated in) all my Darien angsting and Sapphire fan-girling.
This chapter has Gore, Language, and Situational Warnings. Also, a You-probably-will-not-like-what-happens-in-this-chapter-but-I-promise-I-have-been-planning-it-for-some-time-and-there-is-a-reason-for-it Warning.
Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.
L
Subject to Change
Season 2
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Number Pi
L
"Sweetheart, you fell asleep in your clothes again?" Ikuko had her hands on her hips. "Maybe all this track is too much for you. It's not right that they put so much pressure on you that you can't even stay up long enough to change into your pajamas
Serena pushed herself up on her elbows and blinked blearily down at her bed. The comforter and sheets hadn't been pulled down, and her English dictionary and a notebook lay under her cheek, as though she had fallen asleep on them. But she couldn't remember…
"No, Mom," she mumbled mechanically. "I'm fine."
Ikuko clucked but went back downstairs. Serena slid slowly out of bed and stood up. But as she bent to pull her spare uniform out of its drawer, every muscle in her body seemed to scream. She collapsed back against her bed, gasping.
After a few minutes, she managed to push herself back onto her feet. Her muscles trembled too badly when she tried again to bend for her spare uniform, so she eased out her Luna Pen.
When she made her way downstairs, feeling grungy and gritty but looking like her normal self thanks to the pen's magic, her father was waiting to drive her to school.
"Oh, she looks fine, Ikuko," he exclaimed when he saw her. "You're just trying to guilt me into giving her a drive to school. Well, let's get going, kiddo, and if you're good, maybe we'll grab some doughnuts on the way."
Serena mustered a smile for her father. On the way to school, she tried to finish the jelly-filled doughnut he bought for her but couldn't. She kept feeling like she was going to throw up.
Kenji noticed this as they stopped at the last intersection before Infinity. "Uh-oh," he said. "Maybe your mother was right. You must be sick if you can't finish a doughnut."
Serena forced another smile. "I'm just saving some for later, Dad. You know how hungry I get halfway through the morning."
"Sure, kiddo," he said, but his eyes were worried as he dropped her off.
L
"There haven't been any youma attacks these past few days," Asanuma said at lunch that day. "Does that bother anyone else?"
"If by 'bother,' you mean 'makes me perfectly happy', then yeah," Lita said.
"I'm worried about other people being happy," Asanuma said with a dirty look at her. "If they've stopped attacking, isn't that bad for us? It means they've gotten whatever it is they wanted when they pulled that all-out attack?"
"Serena, aren't you hungry?"
At the sound of Motoki's voice, Lita glanced down at the blonde girl sitting next to her. There was a bowl of beef stew in front of Serena and there was a spoon in her hand, but that appeared to be as far as she had gotten. She was just staring at the silver metal spoon, her eyes glazed over.
"Serena?" said Motoki again.
Lita bit her lip. Her eyes went over Serena's head, to the salad bar, where Darien was talking to a group of people and had been for nearly fifteen minutes now. Of the group, three were girls, two of whom had been forward enough to playfully swat him in the arm, one of whom had had the nerve to ruffle his hair, and zero of whom had been glared off by Darien's knock-it-off-and-get-away-from-me glare. He just stood there, conversing with them, allowing himself to be flirted with, and occasionally flirting back, if the brief smirks he flashed were any indication. To Lita, they sure as hell were. This was how Shields had been acting all week – i.e., like a normal adolescent boy (probably for the first time in his life, Lita thought venomously) to everyone but them and Serena.
And this, Lita thought, meeting Motoki's eyes, in whose hazel depths she read the same conclusion, was undoubtedly the reason for Serena's current state.
"Oi!" Asanuma drummed his fork against the table. "Earth to Serena!"
Serena jolted against Lita's arm. Some of her soup sloshed onto her blouse. Lita glared daggers at Asanuma and grabbed a napkin to help Serena clean up.
"Oops," said Asanuma. "Sorry, Serena-chan. Don't worry, this ugly Infinity stuff is stain-proof. See, you can't even tell where I bled on it after Lita punched me in the nose."
Serena turned reproachful eyes on Lita. "Lita, you punched him again?"
"I did not!" Lita said indignantly, feeling supremely guilty under the weight of those exhaustion-smudged blue eyes but also injusticed, for she had only punched Asanuma in the eye, and only once. "He's lying!"
"I prefer the term exaggerating." Asanuma fingered his eye where Lita had punched it. "So, Serena-chan, we were talking about why there haven't been any youma these past few days. You have any ideas?"
Lita felt Serena stiffen. She whipped around to look down at her.
"Damn it," she said, reading the expression on Serena's face. "Serena, there was an attack and you didn't tell us?"
Serena bit her lip. "I know. I'm sorry. I should have called you guys."
Something about her voice put Lita on her guard, and the way her lower lip had begun to tremble even as she bit down on it made Lita's mind race immediately to a thought she'd had earlier. She'd had it as soon as Darien's silent treatment had begun, in fact – if Darien had cut off the rope, how would he come to help Serena during youma battles?
"You called Shields, didn't you," Lita's voice was low. "And he didn't come."
For a minute, Serena didn't move. Then she nodded.
A loud thump came from the end of the table. Lita looked down the table to see that Darien had dropped his textbook of the day onto the table and was sitting down, finally away from his fan club.
She hated him at that moment. She hated him so much that she would have let Jupiter's flash-form take over her body if it meant she would be powerful enough to kick his ass from here to Pluto.
It made her even angrier that he was sitting at the table watching Serena. Staring at her intently again, like she was some freaking lab specimen, even though he had ignored her for a week!
A growl rippled out of her throat. "I should break every bone in your damn body," she said.
He didn't even take his eyes from Serena to meet hers. "You could try."
There were sparks burning the insides of her clenched fists. They were milli-amps away from exploding out when Serena stood up, sharply. She picked up her tray and walked away from the table.
Lita shoved away from the table and followed her.
Smoke curled up from the wooden table where her fists had rested.
L
Although Asanuma and Darien currently didn't seem to be speaking, they had somehow worked out some truce in which Asanuma picked Rini and Buji up from school and got them fed before they went to train in Elysion. It was an uneasy truce, just like the current interaction – or lack thereof – between Serena and Darien was uneasy, and it felt like nothing to Rini so much as a case of two divorced parents with joint custody exchanging their kids silently at a randomly selected fast-food restaurant.
All this bothered Rini immensely, but she didn't realize that Buji had even noticed it, much less been just as bothered by it, until Tuesday afternoon, when they were waiting outside a small pizzeria for Asanuma to emerge with that day's not-so-balanced meal.
"Geeze!" Buji stamped a foot as the door closed behind Asanuma. "Why are they all being so stupid?"
He glared angrily at his reflection in the pizza shop window, forehead scrunched up and eyes squinting. It was a rather ridiculous expression, especially under the winter hat his mother had made him wear, a knit thing with pom-poms dangling from its long earflaps. Rini might have laughed, had she not felt so tired. Instead, she sighed.
Buji peered over at her reflection. "Do YOU know why Darien's giving everyone the silent treatment?" he demanded. He kicked the slippery sidewalk, not waiting for an answer. "It's not fair that no one'll tell me! I'm a Shittenou, too!" He pulled a grubby little stone out his pocket. "See? It's just like Numa's!"
Rini pushed her mittened hands deeper into her pockets, not even feeling curious about where Buji had gotten his Shittenou stone. A longing for Serena was sweeping through her, as happened rather frequently these days, longing so strong she felt her eyes filling up with it.
Maybe, a month ago, just being able to talk to Asanuma again would have been enough. She would have thought that as long as she had him, everything would be alright. But this time's Asanuma was still not quite her Asanuma, for all that he was just as funny and could tell just as well when she was starting to think unhappy thoughts. Sometimes, listening to the funny stories he told her and Buji made her feel more sad than amused because all she could think was that she would never, ever see him again when she went back to the future. And that thought inevitably led to remembering that Serena, too, was dead in the future.
All Rini wanted to do was go to Serena and hang on to her leg the way she had seen other children do to their moms and not let her out of her sight. She had wanted so badly when she got back from Elysion last night to wake up Serena and talk to her, but Serena had looked so pale, so tired and in need of sleep as she lay there, that Rini had felt too guilty to wake her up.
Guilty, because it was almost certainly her fault that Darien was angry and not talking to Serena. The way that he had looked at her in Elysion had made her feel as if he blamed her, and Serena seemed so distracted – to Rini, these facts seemed proof that Darien and Serena had found out that she had taken control of Motoki. They had probably fought over what to do about it, probably Darien had wanted to punish her and Serena wouldn't let him. It was just the sort of thing that would happen. After all, Darien had never trusted her, not from that first night in the park, and Serena always had, even when Rini was such a brat to her…
"Rini, look!" Buji grabbed the girl's arm, snapping her out of her thoughts. "There's Gurio. Hey, Gurio!" He waved.
Gurio, a boy who was in their second-grade class and wore his brown hair in the most unfortunate bowl-cut Rini had ever seen – as she had told him on her first day at school, prompting Buji to jump to his friend's defense and call her a glue-eater – turned from where he was standing two stores away. He saw them and trotted over, nearly tripping over a passing man whose hair was so dark a black it almost looked blue. The color made Rini think of Mikai, who had been wondering aloud lately if he should go with blue the next time he got his hair dyed.
"Oooh, are you looking for a valentine, Buji?" Gurio taunted as he reached them. "Too bad Emi-chan's gonna like mine better!"
This comment made no sense to Rini until she looked behind them and realized that they had drifted from standing in front of the pizzeria to in front of the patisserie that was beside it. Its display window was full of Valentine's Day items, from towering red cakes to tiny, dainty chocolates.
She glanced beside her and saw that Buji had turned pink at the mention of Emi Ogata, the prettiest girl in their class. He recovered quickly, though, leering at the heart-covered red teddy bear that Gurio was shaking in his face, and jeering, "Did you get it, or did your mom buy it for you?"
When Gurio turned just as red as the teddy bear, Buji let out a triumphant, "Ha! So then it's like your MOM's giving Emi a Valentine!"
"Shut up!" Gurio launched himself at Buji. They tussled for a minute, jabbing their elbows into each others' stomachs and trying to pull each others' hats off. Rini rolled her eyes and watched until Gurio's mother came over and hissed at them to behave. She dragged Gurio off by his ear as he shouted to Buji to remember to bring his Mewtwo card to trade for the holographic Charizard he'd promised him.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that," Buji said a little bemusedly, tugging his earflaps back over his ears. One of the pom-poms had gotten yanked so that it now dangled to his waist by a wisp of thread. "I was supposed to go to his house yesterday for a Poké-battle." There was a note of unhappiness in his voice, like he was mad himself for forgetting.
"You've been busy," Rini said diplomatically. It occurred to her then that she had just tired to comfort Buji so he wouldn't feel bad for a Poke-battle. Before she could feel properly disgusted with herself, Buji made a sound of agreement and wheeled around, plastering his face and hands against the patisserie's display window.
"Aw, these aren't so great," he said, voice slightly muffled as he talked against the glass. "Toki-nii made a cake that was way prettier than this last year for his girlfriend."
Rini frowned. "I thought boys were supposed to wait until White Day to give things." They didn't have White Day in her future, but she had gleaned this much just from overhearing conversations at school. She remembered what she had done to Toki and wondered if she could make him some chocolate. Did he like chocolate? Should she tell him what she'd done and apologize? Would that make Darien and Serena stop fighting?
"Yeah, but it's Toki," said Buji, as though this explained things. "Wow, can you believe Valentine's is this Sunday? That's only five days away!"
Rini considered this. "That means your mom's supposed to have the baby in seven days."
"I know!" Buji turned around to flash a bright, proud smile. "Wouldn't it be cool if she was born ON Valentine's Day?"
Rini wrinkled her nose. "Not really."
"Thbbb!" Buji stuck out his tongue at her. "It would too!" He turned back to the shop window again. "Hey, when are you making your Valentines? You better not be buying them. I want a home-made one. White chocolate's my favorite, so maybe you could make it dragon-shaped – "
Rini's mind screeched to a halt. "Excuse me?"
"A dragon-shaped one," Buji repeated. "You know, since I turn into a white dragon – "
"I heard that part," Rini said hotly. "What I'm trying to figure out is what YOUR chocolate cravings have to do with me."
Buji blinked at her. "Because you're making me a Valentine's Day chocolate." Before Rini could begin to sputter at this, he added, "Girls always do, for the boys they want to thank."
Behind them, the pizzeria door swung open. "Guys!" Asanuma called. "Come on!"
Buji flashed Rini a grin. "Don't forget. White chocolate, okay?"
Then he was gone, catching up with Asanuma, and Rini was sputtering to thin air.
L
That night, Emerald appeared on the mother ship's bridge, her hair in a disarray and her eyes underlined with dark circles despite the makeup she had slathered on to cover them.
"Where's Diamond?" she demanded hoarsely.
Sapphire continued to type commands into the inertial compensator's mainframe. He did not look up from the data pad of command codes beside the keyboard. "His Highness has not deigned to share his whereabouts with me."
Emerald made a sound of frustration and stumbled back out of the room. As the door hissed shut behind her, Sapphire stopped typing. He slumped over the console, his elbows braced against it and his hands tight in his hair.
He had lied to Emerald. He did know where his brother was.
He wished he didn't.
L
Wednesday night was the first time since the Thursday before that all the Tsukino family members were home for dinner together. But Ikuko's smiles were tight, her conversation forced, and that only happened when she was displeased about something and planning to give a lecture. Serena, who, with her grades, was usually the target of these lectures, bit her lip all the way through dinner, trying tiredly to think of what she could have done in the past few days to provoke her mother's anger.
But, when dessert was done and it was time to start clearing off the table, the person Ikuko turned toward was Rini, at the other end of the table.
"Rini, I'd like to speak to you in the kitchen for a few minutes."
Rini shot Serena an uncertain, slightly alarmed look. For a stab of a second, Serena wanted to say sharply, Oh, now you pay attention to me? But the feeling faded in a wash of weariness, and she sidled to the kitchen doorway to eavesdrop and step in if necessary.
" –an art assignment about what you wanted for Christmas. Nakahara-sensei said that you didn't turn it in," Ikuko was saying.
Even though she couldn't see it, Serena could imagine Rini's expression exactly, just from the stubborn silence that answered Ikuko's words. But eventually, no doubt glared down by Ikuko's Mom Stare, Rini mumbled, "She's wrong. I did turn it in."
If Serena had been able to interpret Rini's silence, she could interpret her voice even more easily. That defensive mumble was definitely a lie.
"I know a lie when I hear it, young lady," Ikuko said. "What really happened?"
"That is what happened!" Rini's voice was angry now, not just defensive.
But so was Ikuko's. "Don't use that tone with me, Rini Tsukino. I know your mother taught you better than to lie – "'
"No you don't!" Rini's voice was so loud, almost a shriek, that even Kenji and Sammy turned around in their chairs at the table.
Serena looked back at them, her face flushed, her back flattened to the wall. She was full to bursting with so many emotions right then that she couldn't even begin to sort them out. Curiosity because this mysterious assignment had Rini so upset that she was lying about it; anger because Rini was yelling at her mother and because her mom was being cruel to Rini by bringing up her mother even if she didn't know it; embarrassment because somehow she felt that Rini's disrespectful behavior reflected on her, because Rini was hers, her to teach and guide; guilt because that wasn't true; more anger because she wanted it to be true and because if Rini hadn't been with Darien so much lately, pulling away, pulling away, pulling away, this confrontation wouldn't have happened, Serena would have found out beforehand what had made Rini upset about this assignment and fixed it –
"Serena?" came Kenji's voice.
But Serena was pushing away from the kitchen wall, walking through the doorway to where Ikuko and Rini stood, one looking disappointed and hurt and the other flushed and angry, and she put her hands on her hips.
"Go to your room," she said. "Now."
Rini looked back at her. There was something simultaneously pleading and challenging in her gaze. "What?"
"Go," Serena enunciated clearly and coolly, "to your room. You need to think about what you've done wrong just now." She moved aside and pointed at the doorway. "When you're ready to apologize, you can come back downstairs."
Rini stared at her. Both the plea and the challenge were still in her eyes, but the latter was engulfing the former. She clenched her jaw and strode past Serena.
It only took until her feet were thundering up the stairs, followed by the sound of the door slamming, for Serena to feel horrible. She turned around and saw that even her mother was looking at her with wide eyes, which made her feel worse.
The worse she felt, the more she tried to convince herself that she hadn't done anything wrong. "She was being disrespectful to you," she told Ikuko. "She knows better."
"Yes," Ikuko said slowly, "she does."
"She does," Serena echoed, nodding.
As long as Rini was grounded, she couldn't go off to train with Darien in Elysion. She would have to stay here, and if Serena just took up some ice cream and let her read some manga from her second shelf, Serena was sure Rini would forgive her, and everything would go back to normal. Yes, she nodded to herself, that would work.
She waited ten minutes, helping her mother clean up dinner, then sneaked a carton of Neapolitan ice cream and two spoons upstairs. She knocked before she let herself into her room. "Rini, I – "
Her room was empty. The plastic unicorn stood on her nightstand.
Serena threw the ice cream onto the nightstand. The unicorn toppled to the floor as she dropped onto her bed, digging her hands into her face.
L
"Serenity…" Diamond exhaled out her name as he materialized in her bedchamber and saw her slender silhouette on the bed. Her head turned immediately toward him, and her perfect lips parted, her eyes widening –
Then he was on the bed beside her, his eyes in hers, and her lips were closing, her eyelids fluttering lower over her swirling eyes. Diamond leaned close before her lips could close entirely and caught them with his, tasting the remnants of refined sugar and chocolate.
He pulled back, his eyes almost as heavily lidded as hers. Now, he thought, focusing his power to his Third Eye, he wanted her to say his name…to breathe it out against his skin. He closed his eyes in exquisite expectation.
But several moments passed, and no sound fell from her lips. Only her breathing, shallow and harsh, touched his skin. Diamond opened his eyes and saw that hers were still swirling that stubborn blue.
He would have to have been a fool not to have expected resistance from her mind. She was the Moon Princess, so tremendously powerful that even Chaos coveted her abilities. Diamond was not so blinded by his obsession with her that he had believed his Third Eye hypnosis would immediately succeed in trying her mind to his. But three nights had passed now since he had finally found her and took her into his arms on that city street. Three uninterrupted nights of his strongest hypnosis. In all that time, he had managed little more than to make her a limp puppet to his desires. Her body was his, but her mind was not. She did not stop his whims as he laid kiss after kiss along her body, but she did not participate in them either, did not give him the kisses he wanted in return. He had not been able to make her want to obey and please him the way he had been able to do to all others under his hypnosis. Even though she, more than any other he had hypnotized, should want to please him, for he was the only one who would have her. The only who could.
Deep in her mind, he could taste the mind that he wanted, a thrashing resistance, hot and salty like sweating sheets and moving bodies. But it was like making love fully clothed; nothing of him could reach her, he could not penetrate to that part of her mind to compel her to use that power for him instead of against him.
"Serenity," he whispered again, against her throat. She did not twitch. Even her mind, stitched tightly to his by his Third Eye, did not react. His face darkened – he would make her acknowledge him.
His fingers clenched as he forced himself to calm down. He had come up with a possible reason, after following her these past few days, for her extraordinary resistance to his hypnosis. He had noticed, from the very first moment he found her kneeling before Emerald's escaped youma in the alley, that her aura was not that of the Moon Princess from his time. The aura that he had sensed on the mother ship's bridge almost three weeks ago had been her aura. But the aura that belonged to this girl, with her Terran-gold hair and Terran-blue eyes, was different.
It was similar to Serenity's, yes: it had the same feeling of being thick with power. And, setting aside the fact that her body was clearly Terran and not Lunarian, this girl was almost identical to his Moon Princess, from her tiny hands and thick eyelashes to her slender limbs and large, uncertain eyes staring up into his. Her hair was even in the royal Lunarian buns.
The only thing that was different were the scars that ravaged her face and shoulders. Diamond's hands trembled with rage as he traced one, following its ugly silver length from her bottom lip to the valley of her breasts. That some filthy creature had been able to mark his princess so, and that all his best efforts to use the Black Crystal to erase them had failed…
He sucked in a breath, once again forcing himself to clear his mind of anger. This girl was his Serenity, he was sure of it, but her aura was undeniably different from the Serenity of his future. That difference was why he had never sensed her until Serenity's aura flashed out for an instant. Somehow, she was both the Lunarian Serenity and the Terran Serena. And the presence of the Terran was making it impossible for him to hypnotize Serenity.
No… His hands caressed her waist, remembering the holograph Serenity's tearful lavender eyes gazing up at him. Not impossible. He would bend her mind to his. It was just going to take some time.
Time was something he did not have enough of. Diamond did not know how much longer he could conceal his absences – and the fact that he knew the Moon Princess and her daughter's location – from the Wiseman. In theory, once they had the girl-child and took her back to the future, Chaos would grant Diamond Serenity's hand, but Diamond no longer trusted the Wiseman. Sapphire had sensed traces of treachery in the Chaos minion's mind, and Diamond felt, now, that if Wiseman found out where the child Rini was, he would whisk her back to the future and present her to Chaos himself, without giving Diamond any credit at all. Then all of Diamond's efforts for Serenity would have been for nothing.
A bit of hot moisture against his fingertips pulled Diamond from his thoughts. He looked down and saw tears welling in the girl's blank, Terran-blue eyes. As they broke free of her eyelashes, they rolled down the silver scars. Ever so gently, Diamond slipped one earring from his ear and traced its point down her face, cutting a small shape into the delicate skin beside her eyes so that a tiny bead of red blood welled up there. He watched the red trickle down and mix with the clear tears, and swept his thumb across her cheek, feeling the power of the Silver Crystal pulsing in the rough scar tissue beneath his touch, as though trying to repel him. Or, he thought, his eyes darkening as her breath against his face quickened, like the excited pump of her heart in her chest as it strained to meet his... He swallowed his pulse and searched her eyes for some sign that his Eye had reached her, that she wanted the same thing he did. But her eyes were still blank with no trace of lavender, his own reflection clear in the glassy Terran blue.
"A little longer, Serenity," he murmured against her lips, tasting again the fading sugar. "I will find a way to free you."
L
When dawn was beginning to streak the horizon, Rini returned from Elysion. She reached, with trembling fingers, to touch Serena's shoulder to wake her and tell her that she was sorry.
Serena, still trapped in dreams of metal and blood, made a sound of anger and pain. She jerked away, covering herself with her blankets.
To Rini, it seemed like rejection.
L
Serena was getting tomato sauce for her spaghetti in the cafeteria when she remembered that she had dreamed of something red and salty. It had been trickling into her mouth, not out of it the way it usually did in her dreams. She stared down at the red sauce on her plate, trying to remember what had happened in the dream.
"Serena, why are you tracing your mouth?"
Startled, Serena's eyes snapped up. She met Asanuma's expectant gaze and dropped her hand as though she had been caught picking her nose.
"They feel chapped," she said quickly.
Lita clucked and handed her a tube of lip balm. Serena took it and looked past her friends, lest they see through her lie, as she dragged the tube across her lower lip. Her eyes ended up snagging on a pair of gold ones several feet away, where Darien stood speaking to Kobayashi.
She froze. Something in his expression, in the metallic heat of his eyes on hers, had made her insides go deathly still.
Then he looked away.
Suddenly she was on her feet. "Excuse me," she heard herself say, and then she was walking, half running, out of the cafeteria, to the bathroom, crouching over a toilet, heaving up the contents of her stomach until her eyes burned.
"Shhh. Shhh, it's okay." Lita was next to her, her hands cool against Serena's hot face. "Get it out of your system. That spaghetti was no good, I could tell straight off that sauce was too dark – "
Serena retched again. A string of yellowish liquid splashed into the toilet bowl.
"There we go," said Lita with maternal satisfaction. "Stomach juice. That means there's nothing left to come up now. Do you want to get up?"
Serena choked on a deep breath and heaved over the bowl again. But nothing came up, just as Lita had said. Lita helped her stand on her wobbling legs and walk to one of the sinks. She leaned heavily against it as Lita put a wad of paper towels under the faucet. In the mirror over the sink, she saw that her hair was a nest of blonde tangles. The Luna Pen glamour that she had been using for the past few days because she never woke up in time to fix her hair had dissolved while she was throwing up. Her eyes were red from the force of her vomiting, and at the corner of her eye, a drop of blood was welling from one of her scars.
Her insides lurched, not with nausea. She leaned closer to the mirror, her hands gripping the sink. "Lita," she whispered.
Lita was pressing the moist paper towel against Serena's forehead. "Hmm?"
Serena stared at the tiny shape at the corner of her eye, the silver scar tissue as thin and faint as the thread of a spider web. It was the shape of a diamond, the bead of blood welling up at one of the corners, right where it left her eye.
"This scar," she said hoarsely, lifting a finger to it. "Was it always here?"
Lita leaned closer to squint at it. "It's so small. I never noticed it before." She straightened, looking at Serena. "Why? What happened?"
The sense of being ridiculous, paranoid, wisped back into her again, building up, piling upon itself like cumulus clouds into a mountain of cumulonimbus. She leaned her head against Lita's shoulder tiredly, feeling Asanuma and Motoki's anxious presences outside and not Darien's.
She mumbled, "Nothing."
L
"You know what Lita said to you the other day?"
Darien, walking toward the back entrance of his apartment building, stopped. His face was impassive as he turned to glance over his shoulder at the blond boy stalking across the parking lot toward him.
"About breaking every bone in your body?" Asanuma continued. His light eyes were like little bits of ice in the dusky light. "If she tries it, I'll help her. You need a seriously good ass-kicking right now."
Darien merely lifted an eyebrow and turned back around, walking again.
Asanuma seized his shoulder and spun him around. "I'm SERIOUS!" he snarled. "What the hell is wrong with you? Did you see what Serena looked like today?" He was so angry that he didn't even stop to see what Darien's reaction was, or if he even had one. "Lita told us what happened. Serena needed your help with a youma, and you ignored her!"
Darien's impassive façade faltered just long enough for his eyes to widen. Then his face closed down again.
"I didn't sense her," he said, as though that was a reasonable excuse.
"I know you didn't!" Asanuma hissed, his grip tightening. "Because you cut her off!"
Darien's face hardened. "Let it go, Asanuma. I know what I'm doing."
Asanuma made a sound of disgust. " 'I know what I'm doing,' " he mimicked in a high-pitched voice. Then he took a step closer. "Look, Darien, I don't care what you THINK you're doing. Whatever it is, it's making Serena look half-dead. So I'm stepping in to punch you in the face so you'll wake up from whatever funk that goddamn binder put you in."
He maintained eye contact with Darien for a moment longer. Then he let go of his shoulder. The fact that Darien hadn't broken eye contact meant that he was getting through to him, he was pretty sure. He dug a hand into his hair and closed his eyes in relief –
"It's not your concern."
Asanuma's eyes shot back open. So much for relief. "Yeah, it is! Because it was MY idea to give you that stupid folder! Because I had this crazy idea like maybe you would be HAPPY to find out you're actually meant to be with the girl you love – "
Darien exploded. "You don't get it! Endymion loves the princess! So if Serena's the princess, then who loves her? Me? Or Endymion?"
He glared at Asanuma, his breath coming in quick, ragged pants. Asanuma was quiet, just staring back at him. He felt a fierce cold from the night wind whooshing past his hot face, and his insides were beginning to turn just as cold as he realized that Motoki had been right.
"Serena was the one thing I thought was mine." Darien's voice was harsh. "Loving her, not the Moon Princess, was the only way that I knew I was…that I wasn't Endymion. That there was a Darien, and I was still him." He stopped. "But if Serena's the Moon Princess...if all along, she's been…then I'm just…"
He trailed off and did not say anything more.
Asanuma gazed at Darien. He understood, suddenly. Darien's conflict went deeper even than what Motoki had said, deeper than just Serena. Wondering whether he loved Serena because of himself or because of Endymion was making Darien question his own existence. It was making him question whether everything he had ever done or been was because of him or whether all his motivations, his actions, and feelings, had been Endymion's all along.
Could he blame Darien for going bonkers after a curveball like that?
He couldn't think of anything to say, and yet, at the same time, there were so many things he wanted to know. After a few minutes of silence, he asked the question whose answer had the most immediate importance.
"But why are you ignoring Serena?" he said. "I understand why you're upset, but…it's not Serena's fault who she is, if she is the princess. She would have told you if she knew. You know she would have."
A raw laugh escaped Darien. "Do I?"
Asanuma's knee-jerk reaction was to say, "Of course you do," but he swallowed the words. The Darien Shields before him wasn't the angsty bastard to whom he had come to give a black eye. Instead, he was someone that Asanuma had never met before, a dark-haired boy with dull eyes and slumped shoulders and hands that trembled as he dug them into his hair.
After another long moment of silence, that boy let out a long breath. "I thought I could watch." His words were halting. "Experiment. Talk to other girls, and then – then if I felt anything for one of them…if I could prove that it was possible for me to be attracted to someone else…"
The desolation in his voice made it clear that this attraction hadn't happened. He took another deep breath and began again. "And then I thought, if I could just figure out why – if I could identify the reasons I like her, and then – then filter them. Find reasons for loving her that would only belong to a personality like Darien Shields's and wouldn't conceivably appeal to Endymion's nature…"
He broke off once more and said nothing for some time. Asanuma tried to ignore the goose bumps that had begun to travel up his arms as he listened to his friend talk about himself as though Darien Shields was a separate being. Instead, he tried to focus on what to say.
"I know what you're saying, but…it doesn't work that way, does it?"
The black-haired boy, who had lowered himself to sit on the cold pavement, looked tiredly up at him.
"I mean," Asanuma sat carefully beside him, "love's not math. Breaking it down into pieces like that, it doesn't work. You can say, oh, I love her because she always laughs at my jokes, or, because she never laughs at my jokes but she always gets this little tilt at the corner of her mouth, or because you both like the same TV shows or because she can finish your sentences, or whatever. But then when you try to add all those pieces up, it's not like there's some magic number they add up to that tells you, 'Ka-ching! Congratulations, you love her!'" He paused, staring into the night sky that wasn't quite as black as Rei's hair, trying to put his feelings into words. "When you love someone, it's like…it's like the number pi, you never get to an exact number. The reasons you love them just keep going and going and...sometimes they even change."
He pulled his eyes from the distance and looked over at Darien. What he saw on Darien's face made his breath freeze in his lungs.
For that single, endless, terrifying moment, it looked like Darien was about to cry.
Asanuma looked hastily down at his shoes. "Well, anyway! That's just my estrogen talking! The important thing is – is, um – " He scrambled his brains for what to say, "is, have you asked Helios about all this?"
Darien laughed. It was a strangled laugh, and sounded wet, but it wasn't a sob, and that was all Asanuma cared about. "I haven't talked to anyone about this."
"Maybe you should. If anyone would know, Helios would. And, I mean," Asanuma's voice grew louder and more confident as the thought occurred to him, and he felt so relieved by it that he did not even notice the irony of him trying to convince Darien that Serena wasn't the princess when he had been so gung-ho a week ago to tell him that she was, "if he'd thought it was even remotely possible she was the Moon Princess, wouldn't he have told you already?"
Darien didn't say anything. His silence made Asanuma, his relief fading, realize something.
Darien didn't want to find out the truth.
As long as he didn't know for sure that Serena was the Moon Princess, he still had a thread of hope. There was still a chance that all his identity-questioning had been for nothing. But if he found out that Serena was the princess, then that hope was lost. And so, maybe, was Darien Shields.
No. Asanuma didn't believe that. Darien was Darien. He was too stubborn to be anything or anyone else.
But he didn't know how to make Darien believe that.
So he just watched silently as Darien got to his feet, unlocked his building's back door, and climbed the empty steps to his dark apartment.
L
Haruka burst into the house. Her aura howled and tore around her like a blizzard wind.
Michiru lifted her chin immediately from her violin. "What is it?"
There was no reply. Only the sound of Haruka pounding up the stairs.
Her insides tightening, Michiru followed her. There was no trace of Uranus's aura in the agitation buckling around Haruka, so Michiru told herself there was no reason to be scared. But the manic sense of…betrayal that swirled through her aura caught at Michiru like torn fingernails.
She stopped in front of Haruka's open doorway. Haruka stood in front of her dresser, her hands braced on the dresser top as she looked at herself in the mirror. Her transformation wand was gripped in one white-knuckled hand.
Her reflection's eyes flicked to Michiru. Michiru took a step into the room. "What is it?"
Haruka's face twisted into a smile. Mixed with the betrayal still roiling through her aura, it was as much a smile as a sob was a laugh. She pushed away from her dresser and came striding toward Michiru. "Guess what I just heard."
She reached for Michiru's shoulders. Michiru flinched away at the last minute, and Haruka's manic smile brittled further. She shoved past Michiru, clattering back down the stairs to the kitchen.
Already regretting pulling away, Michiru hurried after her. She stopped when Haruka halted at the bottom of the stairs and spun around.
Her dark blue eyes gleamed up at Michiru. "Serena's the Moon Princess."
Michiru's knees buckled. She grabbed the banister.
"Yeah." Haruka laughed hollowly. "That was my reaction, too." Her eyes burned into Michiru's and then dipped down, tracing her body, before rising back to her face. "But now we finally know what to do."
"She…Haruka, she can't possibly be…" Michiru's fingers clenched in her skirt. "How did you hear this?"
"From Ittou." Haruka turned and headed for the kitchen. Her voice was too light, her movements too casual as she opened the refrigerator and took out a slice of left-over pizza. "Apparently he found out some time ago and told Shields. Remember that night I followed Ittou to the park and I had to run because Shields sensed me?" She paused, her burning eyes boring into space as she remembered. "That must be when he told him." Her lips curled up into a smile. "And now Shields is avoiding her."
The need to say something was swelling in Michiru's throat. But it went the wrong way, swelling around her throat and constricting it. She could only watch quietly, the same way she had with her parents. Quietly, weakly. Only murmuring a near-inaudible protest: "But Haruka…Haruka, you like Serena…"
Haruka bit into the pizza. She chewed without closing her mouth and directed her feral smile at Michiru. "She sure made me think I did."
L
Between throwing up at lunch and dragging herself through yet another grueling track practice, Serena was operating on a bleary autopilot by the time she encountered a youma on her way home, just after dusk. By some stroke of luck, it was a non-human youma, just one of the black faceless ones. It should have been easy to handle, but Sailor Moon tripped over one of the unconscious bodies in the road, and she went sprawling. In that moment, as she was unable to control her motion, one of the youma's arms stretched out and seized her, hurling her high into the air.
This was going to hurt, very badly. Moon dully prepared herself for it, and had the fleeting, fuzzy wish that she had called Lita for help.
She was so out of it that she felt the arm wrapping around her waist before she sensed the aura that accompanied it. At the familiar touch, overwhelming relief swept through her: Darien was here, he wasn't mad at her anymore, he had come to help her.
Then she lifted her eyes and took in light hair, blueberry eyes, and an Infinity uniform.
The man carrying her through the air was Haruka.
Her shock was so great that she didn't even feel the impact as they landed on the street, a full four blocks away from the youma and its victims. Haruka's hands held her, hard, by her waist, and he was looking down at her with a smile like a knife blade.
"Yes, it's me," he said, and she realized that she had been stammering his name. "Haruka-nii-san, remember?"
His voice was high-pitched like he was mimicking her. She put her hands to his soft chest and tried to push away from him. Neither of them moved an inch. Haruka smiled down at her and seized her face between his hands. For a minute, Moon thought that he was going to kiss her. But he just tilted her head downward, so that she was looking at his chest.
Then, his breath hot against her hair, he said, "Uranus Planet Power, Make-Up."
His clothes faded away, leaving his body glowing faintly beneath.
Except it wasn't his body.
But it wasn't just a girl's body either. At least, it wasn't until the glow brightened, and Haruka's waist began to shrunk, chest swelling even larger, as a white and blue Senshi fuku materialized over it.
Then the transformation was over, and Haruka's hands were gone from Moon's face, and Moon was on her knees on the ground, staring blindly at dark blue boots.
Haruka's voice came from above her. "Surprise." He crouched down in front of Moon, at her eye level. There was a tiara beneath his light bangs, and pale pink lipstick glistened on his lips.
"I don't…" Moon's coherence returned slowly, trickling like lukewarm water. "You're…a Senshi?"
"Yep. In other words – " Haruka lowered his voice dramatically, still smiling, "I'm not a guy."
Moon stared at him. At her.
"You look like all those Terrans getting their energy sucked. Stunned speechless." Haruka laughed, dark eyes gleaming, and leaned closer, hands braced against the sidewalk on either side of Moon.
Moon put a hand to Haruka's chest, now as soft as her own, and shoved. "You were there?"
Haruka smirked a snake's smile at her and caught her hand. "I thought so," she said. Fierce vindication burned in his – no, her eyes.
Moon stared into them, into the blueberry color that had once seemed so magnetic and now felt only venomous and unfamiliar.
"You're not Haruka," she said. "You're not."
Haruka was smiling humorlessly again. "That's the problem. I am."
"You're not," Moon said. Haruka had spoken of the youma's victims so callously, so contemptuously, called them Terrans…and had taken Moon away from the attack, letting the youma get away with all those people's energy. "You're the flash-form. You're Uranus."
Haruka's smile grew simultaneously wider and more acidic. "Isn't that nice? You two are both enjoying that little fantasy of thinking we're all lucky enough to be completely separate from our past selves." She raised her voice. "Come out, Michiru-ko. I know you're there."
Moon twisted between Haruka's arms to see a column of water twisting out of a storm drain at the curb. A Senshi, this one with greenish-blue hair, stepped out of it.
"Miss Kaioh?" Moon whispered. Her voice was shocked, but her mind, abruptly, was not. She remembered how, when she had drawn Sailor Neptune and then met Miss Kaioh, she had wondered if Miss Lanai's powers had brought her drawing to life.
But she had drawn Miss Kaioh as Sailor Neptune because she was Sailor Neptune.
And, Moon realized, Miss Kaioh had probably been at the youma attack, too, with Haruka, and not helped to save those people.
The substitute teacher's eyes were on Haruka as she came closer. "Haruka," she said. "Haruka, you never said anything – "
"Like you would have wanted to know," Haruka said in disgust. "It was already bad enough that you thought you'd fallen for another woman." She snorted contemptuously. "On second thought, maybe it would have been comforting for you to know that you'd fallen in love with half of a man, at least."
"I don't understand," Miss Kaioh whispered.
But it was clear that she did. That, like Serena, she was only asking in the hope of having the truth denied.
Haruka didn't give her the pleasure. "We couldn't all be lucky enough to be the same gender as the flash-forms that decided to take over our bodies." She looked away from Miss Kaioh and toward Moon, her lips twisting. "Sailor Uranus latched onto a baby boy."
Sailor Moon stared at her. Distantly, she felt hot tears burning her eyes. Then, almost as distantly, she saw Haruka's lips twist even higher, into another venomous smirk, and she felt her seize her shoulders, lips pressing to hers –
Steel-gray energy exploded.
When it cleared, smoke was rising from the ground, and Moon was in the air. Holding her was a man who looked down at her with metallic grey eyes beneath a black crescent tattoo.
Memory exploded in her the same way that his energy had exploded on the ground. Him!
Recollections of clinking coins and trailing fingers and whispered endearments and trickling blood chased down her nerves. Diamond, her mind supplied as she lifted trembling fingers to her face, feeling the scars beneath her Senshi glamour. His name is Diamond. Prince Diamond, who had traced tiny pointed black crystals down her scars, cutting them open and tracing his lips along them, drinking her silver energy as they re-healed.
Darien, she thought faintly as the black moon on the Black Moon prince's forehead widened and became a yellow-gray eye. The feeling began to melt from her arms and legs, leaving her limp as a doll. She tried to reach for Darien's mind again, to work past the mental fog rolling in across her own, but the rope lay uselessly in her weak hold, as slack and nerveless as her own limbs.
"That's right, my love," Diamond murmured against her ear. "You first, and then we'll go get the little princess."
The little princess. His words shivered though her mind, lifting the hairs at the back of her neck, beading, tiny and bright red and unignorable at the corner of her eyes. She had thought, that first time he called her princess, that he had mistaken her for Rini.
But he hadn't.
He was after Rini as well, and if he had known where to come to her bedroom each night, then he knew where to find Rini –
She felt herself beginning to hyperventilate. Clawing, clawing at the static that suffocated her mind. Silver power began to build and burn at her forehead, swirling like a hurricane. Her mind howled –
Blinding silver light surged out of her tiara. There was a scream, Diamond's arms tightening around her. Then vanishing.
The silver Twilight Flash hurtled away into the gray sky like a shooting star. Sailor Moon, without Diamond holding her up, crashed to the ground. Her teeth rattled in her skull, but she barely noticed. She was on autopilot again, lurching to her feet, senses lunging out to find Rini's aura and make sure she was safe. She found it a mile away, with Lita's presence, both of them alarmed and heading toward her.
She looked around and found the gouges that Haruka and Miss Kaioh's bodies had made through the pavement when Prince Diamond's energy hit them. Miss Kaioh looked to be merely unconscious, breathing steadily where she lay splayed across the sidewalk. But Haruka, slumped against the crumpled metal of a post office box on the curb, had blood running down her face from a deep cut above her tiara.
Hurriedly, splashing through a puddle of water, Moon ripped the bow from the back of her fuku and pressed it to the wound on Haruka's head, trying to staunch the blood.
Haruka's eyelids fluttered open, her long lashes casting longer shadows on her face. "What are you…doing?" she rasped.
"Stay awake," said Moon, who, from her own various head injuries, had memories of Darien making her stay awake. She didn't have a way to reach into Haruka's mind and make her, though, the way Darien had for her, so she would have to use a different way. "Say something. Talk."
Beneath the drying blood, Haruka's lips tilted up into a weak parody of the venomous smile she had worn before. "Aren't you too disgusted to come near me?"
Moon's eyes slid from the bloody wound to Haruka's eyes. It was more than she could imagine, to be in Haruka's shoes, half man and half woman. She thought of Lita's situation, nearly killing Motoki because of her flash-form, and of Ami's, being taken over by her flash-form and losing awareness of her own existence. They were both horrendous. But they seemed like nothing compared to this. It was very hard for Serena not to feel anger, sick and hot inside her, at the princess for whose sake this had been done.
But the princess wasn't the only one at fault here.
"I'm not disgusted. I'm…" Moon struggled, trying to find the right word. She thought of what Darien would say, and it came to her tongue immediately. "Disillusioned."
Haruka's smile turned more bitter.
"I didn't think you were the sort of person who would leave innocent people to youma when you had the power to save them." Moon's voice was quiet, her hands gentle against Haruka's wound, but her eyes burned. "I must not have known you as well as I thought I did."
Haruka's smile had disappeared. She was staring at Serena now, her mouth parted despite the blood dripping slowly into it.
Moon touched her chin to shut her mouth, wiping the blood from Haruka's lips with a bit of her skirt. As soon as her hand moved back again, Haruka opened her mouth. "That wasn't what I was talking about. I mean the kiss." Her voice was agitated. "I kissed you!"
"Yes." Moon's eyes flashed. "I noticed."
"And I'm…" Haruka struggled, her voice becoming a shout, "…not a guy!"
"And I'm really sorry about that!" Moon shouted back. Her voice was thick with tears. "But it's not an excuse! You talked like you hate Sailor Uranus so much, but the flash-forms are the ones who don't care about saving the people here on Earth! If you're not using your powers to save people from youma, that's what's keeping you from being separate from your flash-form more than being part guy and part girl is!"
Haruka stared at her.
Moon stared back, glaring and sniffling, and then suddenly Haruka reached up and pulled her head down with a hand behind her neck. A kiss was pressed to her forehead and then hot words whispered in her hair: "You're not a princess, Muffin Head, you're an angel."
Then Haruka was gone. Moon whipped around just in time to see the blur of Haruka's white fuku as she picked up Michiru and then a faster blur as they both disappeared.
Moon sank back down onto the ground. Dimly, she felt the icy cold of the sidewalk seeping through the fabric of her skirt, but that was the only sensation that reached her. Her mind was so fevered and full, her heart pounding so hard and fast, that she did not even hear Sailor Jupiter land on the ground behind her and shout her name.
Instead, she only suddenly felt someone seizing her shoulder, shaking her. She blinked, sucking in a sudden breath, and saw Jupiter and Rini looking down at her, the little girl on the Senshi's back.
Moon looked at them. Then she looked past them, her eyes searching the dark street behind them, looking for a darker shadow. A flash of red, or white. Any sign that Darien had come with them and would be there any minute, shouldering Lita out of the way and furiously telling Serena off for fighting alone while taking her chin firmly in his hand and tilting her head every which way to check her for injuries.
But there was no sign. He hadn't come.
"Moon! Moon, are you alright?" Jupiter crouched in front of her. She had already torn the bow from the back of her fuku and held it, hovering, as though waiting to see where it was needed. "Serena, look at me!"
Diamond would come back. She could feel it the same way she could feel the blood gluing her gloves to her fingertips, the same way she could sense Lita's aura, crackling and powerful, right in front of her.
She wouldn't let him hurt them.
"Yes," she said distantly, forcing her eyes down to meet Jupiter's. "I'm here. What is it?"
"What do you mean, what is it?" Jupiter's hand tightened on her shoulder. "You're all bloody! Where'd the youma get you?"
"Nowhere. It's not mine. I'm fine." Moon smiled and pushed to her feet. "Just tired. I'm going to go home."
Jupiter's eyes narrowed suspiciously, but she stood as well. "I'll walk you– "
"No," Moon said, too sharply. Both Jupiter and Rini looked at her, the former with a flash of confusion almost sharp enough to be hurt. Moon forced herself to ignore it. "I need some time to myself. I need you to take care of Rini for me tonight."
This time, Rini was the one whose expression flashed hurt. But Moon was too tired, too scared, too distracted by what lay ahead for her that night, to notice.
"No problem," Jupiter said, crouching down to Rini could climb on her back. "Look…call me if you need me, all right?"
Moon nodded numbly, a little surprise seeping through. She had expected much more resistance from Jupiter. But then, as Jupiter adjusted Rini on her back, swept a hard, searching glance around into the darkness, and directed another almost approving glance at Moon, understanding flashed through Moon. Lita thought she was planning some confrontation with Darien that she didn't want Rini to have to hear.
The thought made a hysterical laugh bubble up in her throat as she took to the rooftops herself. She was planning a confrontation alright…but not with Darien.
Nothing attacked her on the way home except a sudden, uncontrollable case of the shivers. Shock, she recognized, struggling to climb over her window sill with her trembling limbs. She needed food, or at least something sugary to drink, but she didn't dare to go downstairs even long enough for that. Rini was as safe as Moon could make her now: with Lita, instead of here, where Diamond knew to come for her. But Mom, Dad, Sammy – she released a deep, shaky breath and pressed her hands to her eyes – they were still here. If Moon left, and Diamond came to find her and couldn't, he might take it out on them, might torture them to find out where she was. She had to stay here and somehow take care of him before he could go after anyone.
It probably wouldn't do much to slow him down, but she used the Luna Pen to make herself look invisible. It might at least give her an element of surprise. She stuffed pillows under her blankets to make it look like she was asleep in her bed, then opened her closet doors and pushed aside the old uniforms and dresses to make a space for herself. She crouched there, her back pressed against the wall, with her sword balanced across her knees. She did not transform her tiara into a shield: a shield was useless against an enemy like this. Her only hope was to hurt – possibly kill – him before he could use that hypnosis again.
The minutes inched by. Her legs began to cramp and her eyelids to droop, until she had to clench her teeth and press her thumb against her sword's sharp blade to wake herself up.
Somewhere in the bleary hours between three o'clock and four o'clock, her brain latched onto the idea that if she just make it to dawn, she would be safe. Perhaps she had dozed off without realizing and dreamt of vampires who would turn to ash in the sunlight. Whatever the reason, when she looked muzzily up at her window and saw gray light touching the horizon, relief gushed through her. A disbelieving, teary smile split her face, and she looked at her clock to reassure herself that it was really morning, that she hadn't just imagined it, and then looked back at the window –
And he was there.
L
"Ahh…" Helios fondly regarded the dream-flowers around him. "It looks as though we may finally have some peace and quiet tonight, my friends."
According to the small, strange "fone" device Darien-sama had given him, it was now long past three o'clock in the morning in the world outside Elysion. Usually, when Darien-sama, Bujiro, or Rini-hime came to train in Elysion, they came by one or two at the latest. But none of them had appeared thus far tonight, leading Helios to the pleasant conclusion that he would have a relaxing night of meditation by himself for once.
Of course, as soon as he came to this conclusion, the air shimmered in front of him. Darien-sama appeared, stepping onto the grass. His clothes were rumpled as though he had been lying down, and his hair was mussed as though he had been running his hands through it again and again.
Helios sighed at this latest evidence of an angst-episode (phrasing courtesy of Bujiro) and wondered what had set off his prince this time. "Darien-sama – "
"Is Serena the Moon Princess?"
Helios blinked. And suddenly found himself sitting on the grass, looking up at Darien-sama, his knees having given out with shock. "Serena…the princess?" he echoed. "That…well, that would, er…explain a great deal…"
"So she is?" Darien-sama's hoarse voice was a rusty knife.
"I…I do not..." began Helios faintly. Then his brow furrowed, his eyes sharpened, and he said, firmly, "I have no idea. But allow me to say, Darien-sama, what while it is true that such a thing would explain the bond yourself and Serena-sama, Serena-sama is not at all like the Moon Princess that Endymion described to me."
Darien gazed at Helios without speaking. Helios cleared his throat uncomfortably and elaborated. "Endymion-sama gloried in Hime-sama's grace, in her timid voice and shy demeanor. He loved that she was nothing like her battle-hardened Senshi or the bold noblewomen of Terra's courts." Helios shook his head. "The Serena-sama I know does not fit any of those descriptions. She is Senshi to the bone, and neither timid nor shy are words that come to mind when I think of her." He paused, eyeing Darien-sama to see if the youth was offended by his words. "And, forgive me, Darien-sama, but she is anything but graceful."
Darien-sama did not say anything. He did not seem offended, exactly. He was still looking at Helios intently, his brows drawn down over his dark, bloodshot eyes, and – to Helios's surprise, for he had never seen such a youthful expression on either of his princes' faces – he seemed to be biting his lip.
"Frankly, Darien-sama," Helios offered carefully, "knowing Serena-sama and having known Endymion-sama, I do not think that Endymion-sama would even like her very much, much less love her."
Still Darien-sama did not speak. Helios waited another moment, watching him, and then asked, "Darien-sama, who told you that Serena might be the Moon Princess's reincarnation?"
"Mikai."
"Well." Helios could not prevent a slight note of disdain from entering his voice. "I do not feel that it is bragging to say that I think I am better-qualified to identify Endymion-sama's princess than a newly initiated Shittenou is." He paused. "In fact, it now occurs to me that I may have actual proof that Serena could not be the princess. Do you remember when Serena-sama opened her dream-flower?"
Darien-sama was very still. "Yes."
"During the Silver Millennium, Endymion-sama knew where both his and the princess's dream-flowers were. He also opened both of them."
Darien-sama's eyes narrowed. "You told me it was forbidden for us to open any dream-flowers but our own."
"Endymion-sama believed it was no sin for him to open hers, since he was her soul-mate." Helios could not keep a little embarrassment from leaking into his tone. Endymion had always been quite uncontrollable when it came the Moon Princess, even when it involved sacred Elysian matters. "The point of the story is that both his dream-flower and the princess's led to wherever the other was. Endymion-sama often opened his so that he could go to see the princess on the moon."
Realization was unfurling on his prince's shadowed face. "But Serena's dream-flower didn't lead to me or Endymion. We weren't her dream – her dream was to be able to protect everyone."
"And thus, within her dream-flower was a new transformation brooch." Helios inclined his head, watching the understanding dawn slowly in Darien-sama's golden eyes.
He jumped to his feet. "Then she's not – I mean, she's almost definitely not – "
"The princess," finished Helios.
Darien-sama looked ten years younger than he had when he had arrived. "Thank you," he breathed. "Thank you, Helios."
And then he was gone.
L
Moon scrambled up with her sword. Her legs, half-numb, stumbled. She pitched forward and crashed into Diamond's chest; he was suddenly somehow inside her room, stepping down from her window seat.
His arms closed around her. "Look at me, my love."
Moon gritted her teeth in concentration. The beginning of a Twilight Flash began to glow in her tiara. She struggled against his grip, trying to lift her head to direct the attack straight at him.
But the attempt brought her eyes into contact with his.
The Twilight Flash sputtered and died. Her vision began to swirl and warp at the edges, as did her hearing, Diamond's murmurs in her ear deepening and rippling like chords on a harp. Her thoughts – of saving her family, of protecting Rini and Lita – fell away.
"That's right," Diamond whispered. "You don't have to fight. I'm here to protect you." His cold hand traced down her collarbone to just above her brooch. Then he leaned in closer, his mouth to her ear. "I'll kill that filthy hermaphrodite for touching you."
Moon's eyes swirled blankly, her pupils fading as silver chased blue. Paralyzed, all her eyes could see was the golden embroidery on Diamond's collar as he leaned in closer to exhale hot breath into her ear. Superimposed over it in her mind's eye was the image of a pink flower petal at the foot of her bed…
"Relax, Serenity." Diamond brushed his lips down her neck. Her body slumped against his. Cold fingers touched the side of her face and then traced once more down her skin to where her brooch nestled against her chest. He made a sound of pleasure. Then his hand closed around the circle of metal.
Moon's fuku burst into ribbons. Diamond seized them and used them to wrench her closer. When her school uniform rematerialized around her, his hands were on her bare back beneath her shirt, sliding around to her front until they spanned her ribcage, gripping as though he could crack it open with a single wrench of his hands. In her mind's eye, a flash of pink arms wrapped around her, and Serena's fingers twitched against his tunic.
"Still you fight me," Diamond mumbled against her skin. "Why, when I will give you everything? Even Chaos will not touch you when you are my queen."
Her fingers stilled.
"Oh? Do I have your attention now?" Diamond laughed softly. "It's true. Chaos promised to let you live safely in my custody once I have brought the little princess to him."
All at once, several things happened.
Serena's hands clenched into fists.
A black shadow and dozens of red blurs hurtled through the open window.
Diamond whirled around, and the puppet strings he had stitched into Serena's mind dissolved from his loss of concentration.
But Serena had already torn free of them. She stood now with her crystal sword held in front of her, panting raggedly. As Diamond growled and shot pure power from his fingertips, slamming Tuxedo Mask and most of his roses back out through the open window, the sword's edge began to glitter with silver light.
Diamond twisted back around to face her, his teeth bared and his Third Eye wide with silver-yellow power. Energy flashed out from it to grab her –
"I'll never let you touch her," Serena rasped, her eyes burning straight up into his. A beam of silver light tore from her sword and hurtled toward him.
Diamond's enraged, frustrated cry filled the air. Then it was gone, and so was he. The Twilight Flash burned out through the window's fluttering curtains, dissipating in the gray dawn.
Serena's knees buckled. She slumped toward the ground and caught herself with one hand. Something sharp bit into it. She hissed, tears springing to her eyes, and she could not believe, could not believe that after all that had happened tonight, this was when her tears had to burst out.
She forced herself back to her feet and pulled the rose thorn out of her palm.
"Serena," came a low voice. She looked up and saw Tuxedo Mask hoisting himself over the window sill. His gold eyes burned behind his white mask. "Are you all right?"
She dropped the thorn onto the carpet next to the razor-tipped rose it had come from. Then she stepped on them both, crushing them beneath the heel of her Mary Jane.
Mask had scrambled back into the room. He grabbed her arm, trying with his other hand to take her chin and tilt her head this way and that to make sure she wasn't hurt. "Serena – "
She wrenched away from him. "Don't touch me."
He stared at her. The rope connection had dwindled to a thread in the time that he had cut it off, and now he could only sense little trickles from her: shaking terror, blistering anger. But he could have read those emotions in the clench of her fists, the jut of her trembling shoulder blades.
He reached for her again.
There was a blur, and she was suddenly at the other end of the room, at the window in her Senshi fuku. She stood there for a moment, completely still in the gray light, and then jumped down to the ground and broke into a run.
Within seconds, she was gone.
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A/N: Reactions, please? Darien, Diamond, Rini, and Haruka need as much feedback as you can give me.