Dimande

I was not sure what to expect when I arrived at her home, but, to be fair, I did not know much of the world in which she occupied.

Nothing about this Tokyo was like the one I knew a thousand years into the future. In my time, the city was glistening in perfection, artisan crafted from the finest of crystals and smelling of only the sweetest of air. The city laid before me was much dirtier and darker, like the rubbery sole of a boot worn for just a bit too long.

Not to say I didn't like this Tokyo. When we walked back to her home—her sheepishly casting glances my way and me all too eager to return them—I noticed something this Tokyo had that mine did not: The vibrancy of a city marred by both good and bad. No one group had been cast aside for their difference, instead each was embraced for their individuality.

I wondered what a Crystal Tokyo like that would look like.

All of the lights were off in the house. She clicked on the light and I let my eyes rove over the entryway and the living room. It was a small house, simply decorated and extremely clean, and it smelled of fresh pine. For some reason, it seemed oddly strange and perfect at the same time. Usagi—the woman, not the queen—was a gentle soul. She was not one for flash or ostentation. Despite the precarious positions I had her in while lying in my bed, I knew deep down she was much more modest and discreet than she had led me to believe. Her home was a reflection of that.

"My family isn't home," she said softly. "Trip up to the temples. I found their note when I arrived back from…"

She trailed off and anxiously looked around before staring back at me, her eyes desperately seeking my approval.

"I know it's not anything like what you're used to—"

"No," I cut her off, smiling. "I love seeing where you live—where you come from."

She grinned and tucked a piece of hair behind her ears.

"It's just funny, I guess," she scanned the room again. "Because I feel like I kind of live in two worlds."

"I know what you mean," I said. And I meant it. She stripped me of the man I was trying to be, the strong prince who did not mind crushing people to get what I wanted. She exposed me for who I truly was: A man in search of acceptance. Lately it was all I could do to not convince Usagi to run away with me, away from both of our worlds to start something special the two of us could share so freely.

"Well," she clicked her heels together awkwardly. "Do you...Do you want to go up to my room?"

I nodded and followed her up the neat staircase. Pictures hung along the wall detailing every major milestone in her life. There was one when she was a baby, one on her first day of school. A graduation photo and a slew of family pictures amid different backdrops: Stunning mountain peaks, glittering cherry blossoms, a steaming hot spring carved beside a lake.

I should not have been surprised at the normalcy of it all. This world was, as I very well knew, so different from mine. Seeing all these scenes pulled at my heart, though. While this wouldn't have been the style of home on Nemesis, this could've been our family. It could've been me and mother and father and Saphir sitting together, enjoying one another's company. What would we have been like if we had just been allowed to be?

Evilness takes a toll on a man. Vengeance only feels so good for so long. It had been many years since I felt a familial love like that but I still remembered its warmth. I missed it.

"Dimande?" Usagi's voice brought me back to reality. I had not realized I was standing and staring for so long.

"Sorry," I forced a wry smile to hide my heartache. "I was just enjoying seeing you in all these pictures."

She blushed and looked away. "Oh, yeah, my family loves taking photos."

"I think it's lovely." I meant it. She smiled.

She reached for my hand and led me down the hallway to her room. It was small and organized, brimming with color on every surface. Maybe at one point I might've thought it juvenile, but on that day, all I could see was her. Her laugh echoing against the walls, her painting her nails at her mirror, or reading a book in bed.

I knew I wanted her body, that I was certain, but there is something so much more heart shattering when you want someone's soul. Love like that is all consuming. For years I had desired her, worshipped her even, but standing in her childhood bedroom, seeing the trinkets of her life, the stories the photographs told on the wall, I knew I did not just want her searing flesh on top of mine. What I really wanted was for her to be mine and for me to be hers, and for our lives to collide into this: Normalcy.

Every moment she spent with me was a reminder that the man I had become was not the man I started out as. It reminded me that hope was possible and that redemption was so much closer than I could've ever imagined. The thought burned me through and through.

"What are you thinking about?" She said softly, watching my face.

"I was thinking about you," I said. My heart was pounding in my chest. "And how I want you to never leave my side."

Slowly, she closed the gap between us. She brought herself into me and wrapped her arms around my waist, reaching them up my back so her hands rested right on my shoulder blades. Her head nuzzled into me and I wrapped around her, too, pressing my nose against her hair and inhaling her deliciously warm scent.

I pictured us doing this every morning. Her walking through the door from a busy day of doing whatever her heart desired, me reading a book next to a crackling fire. Maybe we get a dog and he would curl up at my feet, his eyes closed but his ears pressed to the ground so that the moment she crested over the threshold of our home that he could gallop to meet her. And I would follow him and hug her just like this. Just like now.

She pulled back from me and brought her gaze to mine. Swimming in her blue eyes was the look of acceptance and understanding, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I felt safe.

"What are you smiling at?" She teased. I hadn't realized I was.

"You," I fought back tears. A grown man crying. "I'm smiling at you."

She leaned her head toward me and brought her lips to mine. Whereas our previous lovemaking had been brutally passionate, this was chaste and loving: the way a woman who loved a man might comfort him when he revealed to her his flaws.

Our kiss was gentle. Her lips parted, allowing me to deepen our kiss, and she tugged on my shirt to bring me to her bed. All of those times I had been with her in the past few days seemed like nothing compared to this. This was different. The energy humming in the air was charged but not with the electricity of passion. Instead, it beat like the soft rhythm of a heart, the comforting hum of the wind rustling through trees on a breezy summer day.

She removed her shirt and I did the same. Bit by bit our clothes fell to the floor, our lips leaving each other for just a few moments at a time. When we were finally naked, we laid together, our legs tangled. My finger traced a line from her sternum to her belly button. As she shivered, she broke out into a smile.

"That tickles," she laughed.

I looked up at her and smiled.

"I've never seen you this sweet, Dimande," she whispered, her eyes locked onto mine. And I just kept smiling. My face hurt I was smiling so much.

"I don't think I've ever been this happy." I kissed her shoulder.

She shifted her weight so she was now on top of me. Throwing her hips over mine, she straddled me. Her hand reached between her legs and she found me there wanting, growing larger in her hand as I watched her bite her lip.

What was I going to do without her?

I sat up and grazed my hands against her back. Slowly, she pressed me into her. Warmth filled my core and I leaned back so I could see her face. At that moment, there was no one else in the world except us. As we writhed together with so much purpose and a gentleness I had never known, I reached my hands up and cupped her face.

Fire erupted across me. Feeling her body close like this, it was a euphoria. Her lips parted and she sucked in air, but her gaze never broke from mine. Up and down her hips circled and it took everything in me not to reach my peak right there.

When her nails dug into my shoulder, I knew she was close. The look in her eyes as her desire built was the most thrilling sight I had ever seen, and when she released, her face was filled with unbridled joy. The moment I saw it, I came undone.

After, we laid there for a while not saying anything, instead just tracing invisible lines over each of our skin. Undoubtedly, we would be awake for a while longer, exploring each other's bodies with our hands and our mouths and with our…

"Tell me a story." She was propped up on her side, her hand balancing her face as she used her other to swirl drawings across my abdomen.

"What kind of story?" I asked.

"Something only I will know," she said sweetly.

I thought for a moment. There were so many things that only she would know—that only she could know. She didn't want just any piece of information, she wanted a sliver of my soul that she could take. Unlike the others who wanted bits and pieces to bend and break me, she wanted to see the fragments so she might stick them back together. To mend me, to love me.

"Before we were sent to Nemesis, back when I was a child, we used to live in a grand estate that sat at the top of a hill. Saphir and I used to run as fast as we could down it and jump in the air, pretending we could fly. We would beat our arms against the wind and picture taking off like birds.

"I wanted to feel the weightlessness of flying and I wanted to feel the cool air from the clouds on my face. In my heart, I thought that maybe if I wanted it badly enough that I could manifest wings and fly away.

"One time, Saphir jumped too hard and he crashed on the hill." I laughed remembering it. "I swear to you, Usagi, he flew at least 10 feet into the air and I honestly believed he was about to take off. I was screaming I was so excited. And then he plummeted to the ground and had this gash on his leg.

"All our crying led our mother to the yard and she soothed Saphir with this beautiful song." I cocked my head to look at her briefly, her eyes still so intense. "She was a beautiful singer, you know. Mother had a wonderful voice."

My eyes bore into the ceiling and a lump formed in my throat. Thinking of her even after she had been dead all these years made my bones rattle. She died not long after we arrived on Nemesis, not long after our entire lives changed because of the careless decisions of a few lost souls.

"I don't remember the Black Moon Clan beginning, I just remember one day we were forced to leave and my mother was frantic. And she was angry. The rage that seethed through her was so heavy you could feel it oozing through the walls. I can't remember if it was her being angry at the situation or her being angry at father. I learned later on that it was he who was our undoing."

My father had been unraveling in more ways than one. Greed and hate can only fuel a man so long before it crystallizes in his skin and makes his blood run cold. I swore I'd never be like him but we were alike in so many unfortunate ways.

"Was that when you were banished by Queen Serenity?" Usagi's voice was so small.

"Yes." I tried to stifle the indignation. "I was just a boy."

Silence hung in the air. It was a long while—or at least, it felt like it—before I could find the will to speak again.

"Sometimes when I'm feeling lonely, I can hear my mother's voice soothing Saphir that day as she tended to his leg. And sometimes I dream about running down that hill and I feel unspeakably happy and content. But that only happens every so often."

"When was the last time you had a dream like that?"

Honesty is such a cruel thing, because I wanted to lie and tell her it had not been some time, but that wasn't true. For days, my heart had been lighter and the chains of my circumstances seemed brittle underneath the power of her love. If I didn't tell her now, I might never get the chance again.

I wanted that big house on a hill. I wanted to see my children race to the bottom and bathe in the lake. I wanted them to run to me with scraped knees and cry out to me in their sleep when their nightmares became too big a burden to bear. And through it all, I wanted someone beside me who was warm and loving, just like my mother had been: The only form of respite I had ever truly known until now.

"I had a dream I was flying the first night we made love."

And it wasn't a lie. God, how I wanted it to be a trick or a ploy, part of an evil plot to pull her closer to me and farther away from him. But it was the truth. I wanted her to know that it was so desperately true.

She kissed me softly and pulled me under the sheets.