Sailor Moon Reflections 03 : Mercury

Her room is neat, not because anyone asks her to keep it clean, but because that's the way she likes it, because that's the way she is. Neat. Everything has a place in her room, and everything has a purpose.

Her bed is a simple thing, because to her a bed is for sleeping in, no more, no less. The only indulgence she allows herself is in its colour. It is blue, her favourite shade, somewhere between cerulean and navy, the colour of the sea, just before dusk.

Her desk is immaculately arranged. Schoolbooks to one side, pens and paper to the other. She keeps her other books, the ones she likes to read downstairs. She had a bookshelf for them once. It broke under the strain of holding them up.

Even her clothes are neat. Her wardrobe is not lacking it is, for want of a better word simple, understated, elegantly unsophisticated. But it is never messy, every blouse, every skirts, every pair of jeans has a place, and nothing is ever amiss.

In fact the only thing in her room that doesn't have a set place, that doesn't get put away at the end of the day is the small trinket sitting on her windowpane. It is a small thing, a quartz crystal, clear, without colour. She moves it each day so that it catches the light, scattering it like a prism, beams of radiance scattered haphazardly through her ordered room.

Every now and then she picks it up. She looks at it, really looks at it. She knows exactly how it was formed, what it is made of, how hard it is, and much it is worth. It is worth in the vicinity of fifty US dollars, but to her its worth so much more. Because sometimes, when she looks, really looks, at the sparkling faces of the crystal, she doesn't see a girl with dark blue hair and bright blue eyes. She sees herself.

She sees a small, frail junior high school student walking briskly down the corridors of her school, ignoring the taunts, the jeers. She's always been smarter than them, probably always will be, but all she's ever wanted, all she's ever needed, was just to fit in.

She sees loneliness.

Other times, and there are other times, she looks into the quartz and she sees that same girl. Only this time she's cringing away from another upraised hand, another angry face. It's not her fault that the numbers make sense, or that words don't get mixed up in her head. But she never says any of that she simply kneels there, huddled by her locker with her eyes closed, hoping, praying that they'll all go away.

She sees a coward.

Sometimes, late at night, when her mother is asleep, and the only sound in the room is the ticking of her clock she'll rise, move to the window and look at the crystal. It catches the moonlight as easily as the sunlight, only now instead of gold, it is silver, silver streaking past her eyes, silver catching the deep blue of her hair and making her reflection in the window nearly beautiful.

It's later now, much later, and she's left for school. She walks down the street, the crystal in her hands, turning it over and over. She looks for someone in the clear, shifting planes of quartz. Most of the time she finds herself, and most of the time she's disappointed,

This day, however, her walk doesn't go as normal. She hears the screams, feels the tingling in the back of her head that means that something is coming. People are running past her, their faces reflected in the crystal's faces, afraid, panicked, weak. She doesn't move, instead she waits, sitting at the bus stop, the crystal in one hand, her eyes looking for something she's not sure she'll ever see.

It comes soon enough, something huge, something with burning red eyes and a mouth full of great dagger teeth. For a moment she is afraid, so hopelessly afraid that the crystal drops from her hands and lands, tinkling lightly as it falls, on the pavement. She looks down, and this time, this time, she doesn't see herself, she's sees something more.

She lifts her hand and whispers. For an instant time stops, and the day fades away, the sun, the sky, the street, all of it is gone. Instead all she can see, all she can feel is blue. Blue as the summer sky, blue as the turbulent sea, blue, blue, blue, wrapping all around her driving everything, the fear, the doubt, the sorrow, washing it all away.

Time starts again.

Everything is different now, everything has changed. The monster roars as it charges, tearing the pavement up. She moves quickly now, without hesitation, without fear. Even so, it manages to just clip her and pain spirals up her leg, as blood, her own, drips onto the ground. The monster smiles, the blood on her leg freezes, turns to ice. She smiles back.

Sometimes she wonders why she does this, why she fights. But as the power wells up inside of her, power enough to drag the very moisture from the air and turn it all to ice, as it builds and builds, screaming, absolutely screaming for release she remembers.

Because as it spills out of her, as the words leave her lips and everything around her freezes in a conflagration of cold, she smiles. Looking down at the small quartz crystal, staring hard into its many faces, she sees, just for a moment, a single fleeting image.

She sees strength.

She sees beauty.

She sees power.

She sees Sailor Mercury.

She sees herself.

Author's Note

Yay! Hmm… that said, I have to say that this one was a lot tougher to write than the previous two. Mercury has always been a deep character, because really, of all of them, she's the least likely, apart from arguably Usagi, that you'd see running around battling evil. You learn a lot about her, but it's only ever at the surface. You learn that she's smart, that she's calm. You don't learn why she fight, you don't learn how she feels about being smart. In fact, now that I think about it, you don't learn that much. Well, she deserves more than that, and hopefully I've managed that.

Well, anyways. What did you think? Drop me a line… I live off feedback hint, hint.

Inkie : I'm glad you liked it and it's nice to see that so many people like Saturn too. Stay tuned for more… heh, can you guess who I'm doing next, because I certainly can't ;.

Armageddonangel : Thanks for the comment, and I'm happy you enjoyed it. Saturn is by far my favourite of the senshi, so here's hoping I can keep it up when I get to the less popular members ;.