A/N: Several things to cover: first, apologies for not posting in so long and leaving that cliffhanger. The backspace key came off my keyboard (any other key, I could have lived without!), so we sent it back to the manufacturer, and then there was a bunch of drama and delay, and I still don't have it back, so I've been typing on me mam's laptop when I can. This chapter would be a lot longer if not for THAT, because I have a lot more typed but not enough, and – well, suffice to say that this is the only part that I can post because if I posted the rest without having EVERYTHING done, things would be ruined for you all. Not to be cryptic, or anything.

Disclaimer: If I owned Sailor Moon, the Sailor Scouts would wear shorts under their skirts. But I might have used this disclaimer before.

Subject to Change

Chapter Thirty:

Blood + Tiramisu Bittersweet

"Go! I'll hold 'em off!"

"No!" Tuxedo Mask growled, spearing Jupiter with a sapphire glare. His grip tightened around the cape-wrapped bundle he had snatched into his arms. "You're coming with us. We'll deal with them if they follow us!"

Jupiter's fists clenched – oh, how she wanted to bash that witch's teeth in for whipping Serena – she cast one last look over her shoulder at the clearing. Venus was merely standing there, that bloodied whip-chain still clenched in her fists. She seemed to be watching them. As Jupiter's eyes locked on hers, the blonde lifted a hand. She extended it towards Jupiter, as though beseeching her to come back.

Jupiter spat at her. Then she turned and blurred into pursuit of Tuxedo Mask and the precious bundle he carried.

Several minutes later, they paused atop the roof of one of the building bordering the park. Panting hard, Jupiter shoved her sweaty bangs out of her eyes and looked at Tuxedo Mask. He panted only slightly, his attention focused inward.

A patch of the cape wrapped around Serena was darker than the rest. As Lita watched, it spread. She gulped, looking up at Shields.

"What do we do?" she heard herself ask hoarsely.

"My apartment," he answered, then, as though assuring himself, repeated, "My apartment."

Lita frowned, swiping her wrist across the busted lip Mina had given her to wipe away some of the blood. Her eyes fell again to the spreading dark patch on his cape. "I think we need to take her to the hospital –"

Darien's residual mistrust of hospitals reared up like a roaring lion. "MY APARTMENT!" he thundered, eyes flashing.

Even Lita quailed before this outburst. She shut up and followed him docilely.

Within moments, Tuxedo Mask landed on his balcony. He jerked his head at Lita to open the glass door. She complied, and he swept in, kicking aside his desk hair to clear the path to the bed. Kino hurried to yank down the bed covers before he laid Serena down.

As he set Serena gently down on the sheets, he noticed suddenly that she wore not her fuku but her favorite frilly pink pajamas. She had detransformed some time on the journey here – not good.

"Is she bleeding?" Jupiter wanted to know.

"Yes," said Tuxedo Mask shortly. He turned Serena's head with his gloved fingers gently, ever so gently, to its uninjured side so he could examine her hemorrhaged temple.

"Lita." Anxiety devoured his insides; he tried to keep his breathing from tangling. "There…there's a black case in the upper left cabinet of my kitchen, I need it."

Lita ran.

Like a razor slicing through skin, a memory sliced through his concentration.

"So I have my sparks," he said to the blonde walking beside him. "What about Senshi? How do you heal from battle injuries?"

Serena rubbed her forehead with a palm. "Well, we don't really get life-threatening injuries all that often."

The hesitance in her voice made him dig deeper. "But if you did?" he persisted. "How do you heal?"

"Well…we don't."

"Odango, Odango, Odango," he whispered. His thumb rubbed circles on her cheek, trying to wake her up. He dared not do anything else lest he adversely affect her condition. "C'mon, Odango, wake up…please…"
She did not stir, and his breath grew more shallow. His words from the day before floated back to him…'red badge of courage,' and that was exactly what that clump of red oozing slowly from her temple was and bile was rising in his throat and he hated himself and he hated that blonde witch and –

Lita burst into the room with his black first-aid kit. He tore it open like a lion ripping into a gazelle and set to work.

Sweat beaded on his forehead as he mopped the crusting blood from around the head wound opened up by the Senshi's heavy chain. Breath hissed from between his teeth when shreds of skin came off with the blood.

Lita helped as much as she could, cleaning the gunk from Serena's hair as tenderly as she could.

Eventually, Tuxedo Mask dressed the wound in soft white gauze. He leaned back, swiping the perspiration from his forehead and knocking the mask from his face. But as he watched, crimson blossomed on the pristine white. It was soon soaked.

Darien replaced it with a new bandage, this time keeping his hands pressed on it to apply pressure. But he received the same result.
He grew more and more frantic by the second. God, God, God, God, God – if only he were older and in medical school! Then he would know what to do, how to treat head trauma like this – well, he knew what he should do, and that was take her to the hospital – but the questions that would be asked – and she'd be taken out of his sight, vulnerable to the Senshi –

"No way!" Lita's astonished voice broke through his thoughts.

"What?" he bit out tensely.

Lita had frozen in front of his mirror. Her eyes flicked to him, abashment crossing her face at distracting him.

"Nothing," she said quickly. "Just – my lip was split wide open like ten minutes ago!" She pointed at her mouth, which looked totally uninjured now. "And now it's…gone!"

Darien stared at her. Actually, now that he noticed, Lita's face had been bruised black and blue a while ago, too, but now it was its usual rosy tan –

No, not Lita's face – Sailor Jupiter's face!

He bit his lip. Surely it wasn't so simple…

But there was no other explanation for how quickly Sailor Jupiter had healed. The girls' Senshi forms must accelerate healing.

Serena needed to transform.

He spun back to her, grabbing her forearms and gripping them tightly.

"Wake up, Serena! Wake up!" No response. "Serena, I need you to wake up!"

The bandage was soaked again. He replaced it, speaking to her in a quickly breaking voice, promising milkshakes, tiramisu, to do her homework for the rest of her educational career. He uncorked smelling salts, Lita made pancakes and passed the steaming stack under Serena's nose; they tickled her, they placed an ice cube against her skin!

But nothing was working, God, God, God, nothing was working!

The sun was falling into its bed when the idea hit him.

He could sense her emotions when she was transformed, and vice versa. So if emotions could be passed along the link, logically, he should be able to communicate with her, however rudimentarily – somehow make her wake up to transform– it was their last chance –

Darien let his eyes fall shut, willing his breathing to calm. Lifted his arms shakily before him, closed his fingers around the familiar string that linked them –

No, not a string. It was thicker than it used to be. More like a rope now.

As he clutched it tightly, he was alarmed by the absence of emotion that he found. Usually, upon contact with the string/rope, he felt Serena's emotions amplified.

That he could sense nothing now meant that there was nothing in her to sense.

Not good.

Well…so now that he held the rope, what did he do to communicate with Serena?

Pull it?

It seemed like the only reasonable option.

Bracing himself for backlash, he tugged a little. He felt something give, like roots loosening in soil.

He took a deep breath and yanked.

It was like a floodgate bursting open. But instead of water, Serena crashed down on him. Not her body. Her self. Images and sounds and thoughts and laughter and colors and tears and tastes and smells and light. Her mommy's hair was so soft in her chubby fingers cats scared her silver flashing Mommy had wanted to name her Crystal cold metal she had a bunny named Bubbles when she was six Kai in math in eight grade was so handsome Odango Atama a wild cat killed Bubbles Tuxedo Mask smelled like roses when he caught her a girl crying Tuxedo Mask's cape was her favorite thing in the world after Motoki's French fries Daddy chased away the wild cat with a baseball bat black and red Sammy thought her alter ego was cool there was a boy in the hospital when Sammy was born Lita's fried shrimp Mommy always craved dumplings when she was expecting her stomach grumbling Bubbles was buried in the backyard next to Sammy's turtle she had decided during story time that that boy in the hospital was going to be her magic prince like in the storybook a golden locket Daddy made fun of Mommy by putting her hair up in odangoes sapphires watched her masks and goggles salty fog –

'Odango!' Darien shouted, voice gurgling as he struggled to keep his had above the deluge. 'Odango! Wake up! You have to wake up and transform, Odango Atama!'

'E…endy…'

'Wake up, Odango Atama!' he yelled as loudly as he could. "Wake up and TRANSFORM!'

He dropped the rope, blinking sweat from his eyes. Looked up.

"Odango!"

"Wha'…" she licked her dry lips, blue eyes still very hazy. Only one was moving, struggling to focus on him; her right eye, closest to her wound, seemed paralyzed. "Wha're you wakin' me up for, Shielz?"

Her voice slurred like a drunk truck driver's, but he thought he'd never heard anything so wonderful in his life.

"Odango," he enunciated slowly and clearly, gripping her hands very tightly in his to keep her from falling back to sleep. "You have to transform. Okay?"

"Shure…" mumbled Serena, her eyelids drooping back down. "Wha'eva you shay…"

"Serena!" he dug his fingers into her waist – her most ticklish spot. She jerked awake again, her startled eyes locking onto his. Her pupils were HUGE, as big as nickels, swallowing her blue irises. "I need you to do it now."

Dizzily, her arm weaving crazily through the air as she held the brooch in the air, she garbled as though with a mouth full of molasses. "Moo'…Prizhm…Powa'…"

Darien had never before been witness to one of Sailor Moon's transformations. He raptly watched the dazzling lights that exploded around him. Lita, coming into the room, recognized from her own transformation what was coming next, and lunged at him.

"DON'T WATCH THAT!" she yelled, yanking an oven mitt over his skull. "HENTAI!"

Darien 'mrghmple'd something, wrestling crazily with the oven mitt. Lita waited until the ribbons had appeared around Serena's form, then yanked the mitt from his head. He was left with crazily uplifted tufts of hair.

Lita chuckled. "I've seen hat hair, even helmet hair," she said. "But mitt hair, that's something new, Shields."

"Glad you're so proud of your handiwork," said Darien, disgruntled, running his fingers through his hair like combs. He looked at Sailor Moon; her eyes had closed again. "Wha'd you do that for, anyways?"

"Believe me, you'll thank me for it someday," Lita told him. "I probably just saved your life. Serena would have killed you if you saw that."

Darien gave her a weird look. "Whatever." He moved back to the bedside, sifting some of Serena's bangs through his fingers. She was sleeping again, her tiara heavy on her brow.

"What did you do?" Lita asked, sticking a straw in her mouth like a pipe and staring at him.

"Woke her up and made her transform." Darien gave her the concise version; he wasn't sure how he felt about other people knowing about his and Serena's mental connection. "I think that when you guys are in your Senshi forms, you heal faster. Hence the disappearance of your split lip."

"That makes sense." Lita chewed the straw tensely, then sighed and folded herself down to sit against the bed. "What now?"

"Now," said Darien tiredly, "we wait."

Two o'clock.

Darien pressed the button for the thirty-first floor and sighed, letting his back hit the elevator wall. A grocery bag nestled in his grip, bulging with junk food. The cashier at the grocery store – a young woman who somehow always managed to have an empty aisle when Darien was ready to check out – had wondered aloud if he was having a party.

He had given her a weary smile and shaken his head. She had noted that, well, he usually only bought a bunch of healthy stuff and coffee, and too bad he wasn't having a party cause she though it would be one she'd really like to go to. Exhausted Darien endured it all with his polite smile, and thought that Serena better appreciate what he was going through just because he had bought all her favorite calorie-rich, artery-choking foods – including tiramisu.

Misgiving chewed away at him as he watched the floor numbers slowly light up. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one… She still hadn't woken up. The wound, magically enough, had almost completely vanished – it was now only a rather large scab – but that meant nothing if she didn't wake up. Even if the wound had healed on the outside, there could be shards of skull that had penetrated her brain or cut off its blood flow. Darien wasn't in medical school yet, but he had read enough medical texts and watched enough episodes of ER to know that such an outcome was a common result of head trauma.

What if she didn't wake up?

Swallowing, Darien modified the horror of that question by adding 'today.' What if she didn't wake up today? Should he take her to the hospital, consequences be damned?

Twenty-nine, thirty…

Thirty-one.

He stepped out. Walked to his door. Fished out his key.

Then paused. He stared at the door unseeingly.

He licked his lips.

He shifted from foot to foot.

He gripped the key so tightly within his hand that it bit into his palm.

Finally, when the elevator pinged behind him, and footsteps emerged, and it would have been too strange for the footsteps' owners to see him waiting outside his own apartment – he clumsily stuffed the key into the lock and turned the knob.

And heard laughter.

He froze, not daring to believe it.

But then a throatier, deeper laugh joined the first, and that was when he knew.

She was awake.

"Oh, God," he breathed in abject thanks, the grocery bag slipping from his arms. As it slid down his chest, he started and caught it. No, he had promised Odango tiramisu if she woke up, and tiramisu she would get, dammit!

One-handed, he yanked open the silverware drawer, retrieved a handful of forks; opened a cupboard and grabbed paper plates; then he turned and marched down the hall.

Serena was already looking at the doorway when he appeared at it, as though expecting him. For a moment, he wondered if she had somehow sensed him; then, when Lita said, "Geez, we thought there were elephants stampeding out there!" he realized that his plate and fork snatching had been rather audible.

His face reddened; to hide it, he plunked the grocery bag down on the foot of the bed.

"You keep an eye on that and make sure it doesn't fall," he said crossly to Lita. She grunted and lifted a besocked foot to prop it up.

Darien crossed to the head of the bed, where Serena sat up propped by pillows. She watched him approach, her blue eyes tired but bright. "Hi."

"Hey." He perched on the edge of the bed. "Head down."

"It's fine, Lita looked at it – " Her protest died as he looked fiercely at her, and she bowed her head, stubbornly tilting it so that he couldn't see the temple Mina's chain had hit.

"Odango…" he trailed off expectantly, but she didn't move her head, so he moved it for her. Of course he couldn't help but notice that her hair was very, very soft, and that even though she still wore her Senshi fuku, she or Lita had uncoiled her hair from its buns, and now it hung loose and rippled.

He dismissed these thoughts in favor of examining her temple, and only the smallest scar was evident. Finished with her temple, he now turned her head towards him to examine her eyes. During the long eternity of a night, he had researched head trauma on the internet and pinpointed that she had probably suffered from a hematoma. Two symptoms were pupil dilation and eye paralysis on the side of the hematoma.

Her pupils appeared to have returned to normal size; there was certainly enough blue left in her eyes to drown in. He cleared his throat and turned her face slightly away from him so that the injured temple faced him. Watching her eye closely, he ordered, "Look at me."

Her head moved, and he rolled his eyes, turning it gently back. "No moving," he said. "Just with your eyes, I want to check something."

And he breathed a sigh of relief when both eyes moved to their corners without trouble to peer curiously at him.

He let his hands fall then. "Looks good," he said, and she grinned. "Can I detransform now?"

Darien grimaced. If he had his way, she'd stay in her Senshi form for another week… "I guess."

"Yes!" Serena pumped a fist in the air, then clasped it about her brooch. A flash of light and some rippling ribbons later, she was in her ruffly pink pajamas again. "Aw, much comfier. Hmm…now what's in this bag from my favorite store in the world?" she said, crawling out from under the covers and kneeling next to the grocery bag. She peered into it. "Ooh! Tiramisu!"

"Right," said Darien, and handed out plates and forks. "But wait, Serena, before you have dessert, first you need some carbohydrates. Here, I got this pasta, and here's chicken, and drink this glass of…"

"Aw, lay off, Shields." Lita yawned. "Let the kid eat what she wants."

"She can eat what she wants after she eats what she needs," replied Darien. He turned back to Serena with the mountain of green, leafy stuff, and was met by her quivering lips and watering eyes. "Oh, for God's sake, Serena!"

Serena just kept staring mournfully at him.

"Oh, fine…" he muttered. He relinquished the tiramisu to her and then stomped out of the room, muttering, to put the groceries away.

Lita winked at Serena. "He's glad you're up."

The three spent that night at Serena's house. Lita camped out next to Serena's bed while Darien took the couch downstairs. Serena had wanted to go home and not inconvenience Darien further, but he didn't want to let her out of his sight, so Serena's house was the result of a compromise.

Lita, this being her second night at Serena's house, easily found all the cooking implements to concoct a mild but delicious meal. While she worked her magic in the kitchen, Darien walked Serena through her homework – luckily, there wasn't much.

Darien insisted on an early bedtime for Serena, and Lita was only too glad to follow suit, since she'd barely slept the night before. By seven-thirty, the two girls were snoring away.

The Sandman was not as merciful to Darien, however. The eleventh-grader's exhaustion from earlier that afternoon had been burned away by anxiety, and he sat motionless on the couch, staring at CNN on the TV screen. He paid not one whit of attention to whatever Christiane Amanpour was saying about blizzards in the north. Instead, his brain toiled over their situation.

This new Senshi, Venus, appeared to hate Serena just as much as – if not more than – Luna and Rei did. And worse, her attacks had been ten times more powerful and vicious than any of Mars' had ever been.

Furthermore, youma attacks had quadrupled. Four had attacked simultaneously today – one Serena had taken care of, one Jupiter had taken care of, one he had taken care of at the park. But the last one, across town – at a golf course, of all place! – had gotten away unscathed and left two senior citizens dead from its energy suckage, according to CNN .

During the attack at the arcade, there had also been multiple youma attacks, and before that, on the day of the movies. This had to mean something. That the Dark Kingdom was powering up for a large-scale attack?

But on how large a scale? Neighborhood-wide, city-wide, country-wide? World-wide?

There was no way to be sure.

And there was no way to stop them if that was what they were planning.

Anything larger than a city-wide attack would decimate the Senshi. And there was nothing they could do to change that,

Impatience writhed like a squid within his stomach. Why was he sitting here in front of the television and doing NOTHING while the Dark Kingdom powered up to swallow the whole planet?

The answer was clear as healthy mucus. Because there was nothing else he COULDdo. There were no youma about, and he had no way of locating the Dark Kingdom. It was located in a whole different dimension, for God's sake!

Basically, all he could do was wait to die.

Huzzah.

Pit-pat.

His ears perked, and he turned his head towards the stairs, glancing at the Tsukinos' grandfather clock as he did so. One-thirty.

The footsteps, too quiet and close together to be Lita's, entered the kitchen. They were accompanied by a small rustling sound that Darien puzzled over as he listened.

He heard the fridge open and close, then a crunching sound. Odango appeared a moment later, shuffling towards him and drowsily rubbing her eyes with a balled-up fist. Her hair was down, and it dragged on the floor, obviously the source of the rustling noise.

"You're still up?" she yawned, reaching a spot a few steps away from him and standing there.

"Yes." Darien frowned at her in the dark. "Why aren't you in bed?"

She smiled, slowly growing more and more awake. "Oh, I always come down for a midnight snack."

"You're late even for midnight snacks, I see." He tilted his head towards the clock, with the slightest stress on 'midnight.'

She grinned a little and settled down on the carpet, her back against the couch he sat on. She had a blanket wrapped around her.

Another crunch.

"What are you eating?"

"Celery," she said, and he heard another crunch. "Aren't you proud of me? I'm eating green stuff."

"Yeah…good job," said Darien, grimacing a little. Celery was the one vegetable he absolutely couldn't stand the taste of. What irony. "You eat that every night?"

"Yup." He heard her chewing – celery was a very loud vegetable. Almost as loud as the Odango herself. More irony. "It's probably why I always wake up late," she reflected suddenly. "I should probably stop."

"Yeah. Maybe." A little pause. "I always had you pegged as the sort of person

who'd never leave bed at night for fear of things that go bump in the night."

"Yeah, well…I kinda had to get over that when I started sneaking out to fight youma." Another pause. "Celery's good for getting the taste of blood out of your mouth."

If Darien thought this was a strange thing to say, he didn't show it. "You do bite your lip a lot."

"And my tongue." Her blonde hair bobbed up and down before his eyes. "I should probably stop."

"Yeah. Probably."

"Darien…" The crunching was silent. "What… happened yesterday?"

He licked his lips. Took a deep breath against the rage still boiling in his veins. "That chain thing of hers whipped you in the head – "

"No, not to me." He could barely hear her quiet voice. "What happened to you? When I got there, you were – you were – "

"Screaming like a girl?" he suggested bitterly. "Yeah. She'd just flogged me with that whip, too."

His hand rose unconsciously to his throat, where he could still remember the screaming agony of dirt and leaves and pine needles digging into raw flesh.

"Why?" whispered Serena. She had turned around now, her eyes intent on his and her fingers clenching tightly the material of his sweatpants.

He lowered his hand. "Well…" he said, thinking back. "She introduced herself as Sailor Venus, the Senshi's leader. I mentioned that was supposedly your job, she pulled out the whip, said I was an enemy, and walloped me."

He frowned; in his anxiety over Serena's condition, he had not reviewed this memory until now, and he was remembering things he hadn't noticed before.

"It threw me into a tree, and my sparks started working…and then she started shrieking." His eyes bored into space as he thought. "She was hissing mad – something about killing me – or maybe about killing someone else? She was talking about an En – Endu – Endymion?" he faltered, frowning at himself. "It sounded familiar…"

"She said Endymion?" Serena breathed, eyes wide.

"Yeah." He shook his head to clear it and stared at her. "Yes. Why? Have you heard it?"

"Yes." She exhaled. "I told you – remember? Didn't I? In my dreams – in those dreams where the man wants me to find the crystal – I call him Endymion."

"Well, if Venus wants to kill him, he can't be that bad," Darien muttered.

"But who is he?" murmured Serena. "If he wants the crystal…does that make him bad or good?"

Darien stared at her for a long moment. Serena stared back uneasily.

"It's…unsettling," Darien said at last, sounding as uneasy as Serena looked, "to contemplate someone evil being in your dreams. Not so much unsettling as extremely disturbing, actually – tell me about your dreams again?"

Serena – remembering that the first time she had told Darien about her dreams, she had left out the bit about always tasting blood flowing out of her mouth – decided reluctantly that perhaps she ought to mention that now. Suppose there was a member of the Dark Kingdom influencing her dreams?

But the man in her dreams – she had always wanted to badly to reach out and help him –

But was that persuasive magic, perhaps? Like the sort Nephrite had used on Molly?

"There was something I didn't tell you the first time," Serena admitted wretchedly.

It was dark, so she couldn't see his expression, but she saw his shadowy outline stiffen.

"I think – I think I'm dying in the dreams," Serena blurted out all in once breath. As though that would make it easier.

"Th-there's blood in my mouth when I'm calling out to Endymion. It's like – it's like – " She struggled, trying to find words to make him understand. "Like when you're about to throw up, and all that hot spit comes rushing into your mouth. The blood's like that, like's I've been…stabbed. Like…"

Her voice, if it had been quiet before, was now barely loud enough to be called a whisper. "Like Miss Lanai's picture."

Her voice cracked, and she yelled internally at herself. If he knew that she was upset, he'd be even angrier!

"Darien?" she whispered after minutes had passed and he had not spoken. "Darien, please say something? I'm sorry for not telling you…"

The silence was prying cold fingers into her soul and freezing every good thought, leaving only the old terrors that slept within her – invisible phantoms smirking silently in the corners, skeletons waiting in the closet, snakes lurking beneath the furniture, arms reaching from the yawning doorways, death feasting in the bedrooms –

"Darien!" she cried, lurching to her feet and scrambling for the lamp. Something grabbed her wrist, she screamed, the lamp clicked on, but it still had her, weren't they supposed to vanish in the light –

"Calm down. Calm down," he said, and it was his hand on her arm, and his voice in her ears, and his shoulder she huddled against when she couldn't help it any more and burst out crying.

Darien rubbed a hand mechanically in hopefully soothing circles on Serena's shoulder blade. Here was yet another illustration of how hopeless the situation was. A Dark Kingdom agent was very likely influencing Serena's dreams and perhaps even invading her mind, but there was nothing they could do about it.

Not a single thing.

He hated this. He hated this feeling of being so helpless, so handicapped. This was why he needed to become a doctor – so he could do something. Make a difference! What was there for him here? Homicidal adolescent girls and talking cats and energy-sucking creatures from another dimension. All served with a generous helping of stress.

But it would be selfish to leave, whispered his conscience.

Of course it would be selfish. But people had to do selfish things, hadn't he told Serena just that? People had to do selfish things – and leaving would only be one selfish thing. One single selfish decision couldn't make that big a difference.

It does when you're flying to the other side of the world for a minimum four years. And leaving a teenage girl in the midst of a throng of bloodthirsty monsters.

Here's what's selfish, injected a new, more caustic voice. Pondering the finer points of egocentricity when Serena's scared to death that she's going to be murdered.

Slowly, he surfaced from his musings. Became aware of Serena's hiccoughs and tears beside him. Felt her hair in his fingers.

"Shh…" he whispered. "It's okay. We won't let anything happen to you, Serena. We won't."

"But you can't do anything." Her voice shook and cracked and broke. "And I can't do anything either, we're all just stuck, and nothing's going right! You almost died today and I couldn't do anything…"

"I almost died today?" Darien's hands tightened in her hair. "Serena, I had my sparks! You almost died today! Do you even know what happened?"

She sniffled. "I…I just remember everything going black."

"Yeah, well that's because Sailor Venus nailed you in the HEAD with that damned chain! You were bleeding like crazy, Serena, I didn't know whether to take you to the hospital or keep everything secret, and you kept BLEEDING and you wouldn't wake up and – " He shoved a hand through his hair. "I was sure you were going to die."

Serena's face was so pale it glowed in the dim light. Her widened eyes told him that she had indeed been unaware of these happenings while languishing in her unconscious state. "Why didn't I?"

He smiled half-heartedly. "You've got Kino to thank for it. She noticed her lip – Venus busted it all up in that fight – was suddenly gone. And I looked, and all her bruises were gone, too – it didn't make any sense, until I realized that she was still in her fuku. I thought maybe your Senshi forms accelerated healing, so we needed you to wake up and transform. I…" he paused. Would Serena feel violated by the taste he'd had of her mind? "Used our bond thing."

"That was you?" she gasped. "I thought it was just my life flashing before my eyes!"

"No, that was me," he admitted. "That was interesting, though. How you got your hairstyle."

"Well," she said, flushing. "Now I can't yell at you for calling me Odango anymore, because you know it's the truth."

"You haven't yelled at me for calling you Odango in ages anyway. I think it doesn't bother you anymore."

She quirked a small smile. "I guess." Then she hesitated. "Could you…I mean, I…would you…?"

"Sure." Darien dragged himself off the couch and took her hand, leading the way upstairs. He felt her hair brushing against his arm as she glanced this way and that, straining her eyes to pierce the shadows. "Corny as it sounds, it's easier if you imagine the darkness as a friend. Shadows aren't bad; they couldn't exist without light."

"It's not the shadows that scare me, it's what hides in them." Her grip tightened as they passed the open doorway of her brother's room. Almost there…

"Darien?"

"Hmm?"

"You…do you think that Miss Lanai's painting was real?" Her voice was the whisper of a child who asks a parent a question they want answered in a negative. He could feel, in her wrist against his skin, that her pulse thrummed wildly.

"No," he said, helping her gently into bed and pulling the covers to her shoulders. He looked down at her and smoothed her bangs back. "No."

Her chest deflated in a huge sigh, and he knew that lying had been the right choice.

"Go to sleep," he said. "Your moon's right outside your window, Jupiter's sleeping right beside you, and – well, some weird guy with roses and no apparent celestial body to claim as his own is downstairs." She smiled a little. "You're safe."

"But are you safe?" she whispered.

"Me?" he laughed softly. "Like I said, I'm just some guy in a top hat and cape. No one's after me. Now sleep." He passed his hand over her pillow, and star-shaped white flowers appeared there. A soothing, jasmine-like fragrance wafted from them, and instinctively he knew that they would draw her into slumber.

A/N: May I be so bold as to ask what you thought of the healing scene and Darien's venture into Serena's mind?