Title: A Shell of Waiting
Author: Hitsuji Kinno
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama
Part: 2 - The Price of Denial
Created: 1/18/06
Updated: 1/19/06
E-mail: Hitsuji Kinno hitsuji at takeuchi-naoko dot com

All you need to know is that the Galaxy Cauldron is where stars are born and reborn.

Forever waiting. King Endymion could do nothing but wait. The Galaxy Cauldron was where stars were born and reborn. Neo-Queen Serenity would be back. He just had to wait. It was not a matter of if, to him, but when.

In the meantime a lie had to be constructed--a lie like no other. They had to say that the Queen of Crystal Tokyo was alive. They had to make it look like this was so, feed false reports to the media and to the press, they had to make it so people believed it so thoroughly that they would not forget her, dismiss her.

Perhaps what King Endymion really wanted was for them not to forget the vividness that this woman brought him. She would be back, he would only have to wait.

So Princess Mercury made an advanced hologram projector. It floated, and it had a voice projector. She had to do it, because if she did not her kingdom, fledgling as it was, could not have the Queen be dead on a lie.

Appearances were made and excuses of headaches and made up misfortune were made. No one was to see through the lie. No one wanted to see through the lie. Even if exposure of the lie meant anger, the peace that had been won, must be kept. The peace now, she had won and died so many times over. But she would be back. The stars always returned to their rightful place. Eternal, never leaving.

Usagi--back when the Queen was called such a name, had wished to stay with her friends and family when she was at the Cauldron. She did not want to become a pure star. She did not want to quit this life that was given her. She would choose the same again. Everyone knew that. There was no question against it.

But time passed and the week of lies became a month. The month became a year. Always the same lie. The lie that she was around, was there for meetings and treaties. The lie that she was off in another country doing her duty.

King Endymion waited.

Then the time came. It crept up slowly on the second year of her temporary passing. Lady Serenity was ready to take the throne. It was time.

Lady Serenity went to her father, smiling, yet reluctant to smile. Her father who had been warm and friendly was now distant and cold. She knew when he looked at her, each passing day he saw her mother. Everyday that her hair turned more and more white, the more she looked like her mother. Perhaps he blamed her for not changing the crystal.

"Lady Serenity," he said greeting her with a stiff small smile.

"Isn't it great Papa? I get to take the throne! Mama would have been proud of me."

King Endymion's face grew cold at the use of past tense. She was going to be back. The Galaxy Cauldron and the little guardian there said that all stars have a right to be reborn if they want to. She would be back.

"Don't talk about your mother that way," he snapped.

"Papa--I don't think she's coming back" Lady Serenity said.

"She will be back. The Galaxy Cauldron is the place where stars are born and reborn," he said calmly to his daughter.

Lady Serenity looked so much like his wife, that it pained him. Though her hair was pink, and her eyes were brown, she still looked like Neo-Queen Serenity. But King Endymion could wait for his wife. She would be back. All he had to do was wait. He did not need another to take her place.

King Endymion waited.

But another year passed, and Neo-Queen Serenity did not come back from the Galaxy Cauldron. And though Lady Serenity took the throne he would not let her take Neo-Queen Serenity's place. Their daughter could not take his wife's place as queen of the throne. The Queen had not fulfilled all of her reign.

When they did not come back, he went to the time door to visit the old guardian of the Time Door. Princess Pluto. In her place, he approached it and took audience with the black-dressed former Sailor Soldier of the Time Door.

She offered him a seat at her table and they talked about the old days, free of her duty, she smiled more, though she was still reserved. She knew of the trouble. She still knew enough about the flow of time, to understand his predicament.

"Pluto," he said curtly, bowing before the Princess.

She nodded her head and said, "I know the thing that you ask me, and I cannot tell you the answer," she said before he asked.

"Can you not convince the time to flow more quickly so I may have her back?" King Endymion implored her.

"It is not my place. I cannot control time outside of this solar system. I watch only for this one. The Galaxy Cauldron can only answer you if you are willing to listen to that answer," she said cryptically.

The large halls of her castle looked very shadowed. They grew darker to Endymion in that moment. He would wait.

Endymion went to the Sailor Soldier that had taken Pluto's place, and after getting the wrong response, he had the door welded shut.

When Lady Serenity found out about this command, she had it unwelded, and confronted her father, "You welded the door? It is not your right, papa! Yes, believe that mama will come back, but do not punish others for their belief too."

The King, haggard and worn, losing weight, did not listen to his daughter. From that day on she never called him papa again. She only called him father. The more she spoke the word "father" the less affectionate it got.

King Endymion waited.

King Endymion still waited. He waited 5 more years. In those 5 years he was forced to give up the crown and his rule. For each of those five years, he lost the friendship of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Jupiter, and Mercury. As they let go and accepted her death, he hung onto the image of his queen longer. He had her painted, and put her where he would see it in the morning, hung on it's side so he would not have to turn his head. She would return. He would wait. She's made him a promise.

In those five years, Queen Lady Serenity cemented her rule and took a husband--Elios. King Elios and Queen Lady Serenity were a happy couple. They made the kingdom prosper anew. Queen Lady Serenity soon gave birth to a daughter. A daughter that looked like her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother before her--an incarnation of the goddess Selene.

The new guardians of the Palace, were prospering in their own right. Everyone around King Endymion was happy. But he was left waiting.

In the next year, the tenth year of Neo-Queen Serenity's collapse, it was revealed what had been done. A reporter had dug up the documents. It was a scandal, but it did not seem to matter to anyone outside of Serenity Palace, except King Endymion. King Endymion waited. When Princess Mars visited the King, and told him, he had to let go of her memory, he cast her out of his sight.

King Endymion still slept on the left side of the bed, and kept the right side clear. She would be back, he just had to wait. It was only a matter of time.

When the story broke out, that's when Diana announced to the king that he should take a wife. He needed to keep up appearances.

"King Endymion-sama, I sympathize, but it reflects badly on the family right now when you have not remarried."

King Endymion refused. He refused over and over again, until the cat implored him and he started to get offers from other solar systems. Princess Venus was the last of the nine Sailor Soldiers that understood. As former leader, she offered an arrangement. She would be his wife until Neo-Queen Serenity got back. She would sleep in a separate bed and not try to take her place. He took it.

King Endymion waited.

Princess Venus woke from her sleep. From her tiny bed away from the main bed she looked at the former King of Crystal Tokyo. He was awake, silent as usual. He was sitting in the main bed staring emptily into space. Venus knew that he was waiting. He'd been waiting a long time. He was always waiting.

She yawned and said, "C'mon, let's go to breakfast."

He forced a smile and then nodded. He slowly got out of the bed and then looked at the portrait of Neo-Queen Serenity. Every morning he looked at her portrait on the wall.

King Endymion absently reached his hand up towards the portrait. The soft blue eyes, and secret smile comforted him. He could still hear her voice coax him out of their bed into the day. That voice always begging him to start his day, that voice always asking him, "You will stay by my side always, right?"

He snapped out of his daydream. She was only gone for a little while. She would return to him soon. He just had to wait. It would only be a little longer. Only tomorrow.

He went into the bathroom, as it was his usual custom to dress in his formal clothes. He never could dress in front of Venus. It always felt wrong to do so.

"Ready?" Venus's voice called through the door.

"Yes," he said, and left with her out of the doors.

Venus never wore the Moon dress. She always wore yellow. He knew it was to appease him. She was always trying to cheer him up, make him laugh. But she never dared make him forget. It was not her place as a temporary wife.

Venus was kind. She stood as wife, so that no other could take Neo-Queen Serenity's place.

King Endymion waited.

The world around King Endymion changed, and when he woke up one day 25 years after her death and saw the gray overtake his hair, he decided not to wait. He would get her back.

He told Venus this, and she nodded as if she understood. In the years they'd been married and falsely arranged, they had grown to know each other well. It was on his anniversary with Princess Venus he left. He traveled across the stars.

Zero Star Sagittarius. That was where she was. He would embrace her again. He would see her again. It was only a matter of time. The slow progress over the kilometers of land stretched before him, until he saw a massive container of light. Stars spilled out of it, lighting everything around him. He would talk to the Guardian there. It was his right to know what was taking so long.

At the edge of the cliff, he looked into the chasm, filled with light instead of darkness. The vat of light blinded him, but he reminded himself, long ago he'd been here before. It was only a matter of jumping. He closed his eyes and let himself fall.

He felt his body disintegrate in the cauldron. He faced a small guardian. She carried a staff, and in her gray eyes was the knowledge of existence of all things in this galaxy. The Guardian of the Galaxy Cauldron, Guardian Cosmos.

Endymion faced the guardian. She seemed to be shocked to see him at all. If Pluto's sadness followed her, Guardian Cosmos's sadness was deeper.

"You are not supposed to be here, it is before your time. I will send you back," the little guardian said raising her staff.

"Wait!" Endymion said, "I have a question."

"I do not know if you want to know the answer," Guardian Cosmos said lowering her staff.

"I will listen if you will allow me to speak."

"Very well. She is not coming back," the Guardian of the Cauldron said, "You yearn for her, yes? And she gave you a daughter. I have watched you, King Endymion. She gave you all that she wanted to give you, friends, a daughter, and a kingdom to cherish. Have you led the life she wanted you to lead?"

"But, you talked about Lambda power! You talked about stars being reborn--you said that the last time I was here! Was it a lie? I waited and waited for her--my wife," King Endymion cried, "Guardian Cosmos, why can't I have her back? Why does she have to go before me?"

The sad little guardian of the Galaxy Cauldron held up her staff and said, "It is because you cannot let go that she cannot come back. You hang onto her, and her starseed cannot be reborn from this Cauldron. You tie her to this place by not seeing the truth. Perhaps someday you may meet in another life, perhaps not. Nothing is certain, but this--she is not coming back, not yet. The one that was Princess Serenity, Usagi Tsukino, Sailor Moon, and Neo-Queen Serenity is waiting for you too."

--END--

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