"What do you want? Cause you've been keeping me awake," Zander pushed his hair out of his eyes. His world had narrowed down to the black walls and the technicolor screen, pulsing out lyrics. "Are you here to distract me, so I make a big mistake?"
He took a deep breath and plunged further into the high notes, "Or are you someone out there who's a little bit like me? Who knows deep down, I'm not where I'm meant to be? Every day's a little harder, as I feel your power grow—" Merde, if he was such a mess after one day, what would he be like after five days with this burden, the memory of Zoisite?
"Don't you know there's part of me that longs to go—into the unknown!"
When the baroque pop song ended, Zander checked his phone. He'd been singing for two hours. No wonder he felt completely drained—not to mention sweaty and gross. And his rental was almost up, anyway. He stood up shakily, re-donned his jacket, and left the karaoke room.
He intended to take his phone's way home, but somewhere along the way a boulevard of cherry trees, silver in the moonlight, caught his eyes. He wandered underneath the thin black boughs.
If they lived again… if they all lived again… where could they be?
In all the wide world…
He watched a cherry blossom fall from its branch, and five petals separated, scattered and twirled in five disparate directions. That made him halt in his tracks.
"Where are you going, don't leave me alone…"
The petals picked up speed and the wind grew chill. Zander heard a light crackling, and looked down. Black ice was spreading over the cement at his feet. Silvery frost ferns shivered their way up the cherry trees around him.
"How do I follow you…"
A snowflake drifted past his face. He let out a foggy breath, and turned around.
"Into the unknown…"
She stood in the fork of a cherry tree some fifteen feet behind him. She watched him from behind a blue visor that obscured her eyes. The sailor uniform was unmistakable—he found himself approving of the sensible boots. The wind tossed her hair, rendered ink-dark in the night. Snowflakes swirled around her like devoted dervishes.
"Sailor Mercury," he said. He brought his feet together and bowed as deeply as he could manage.
Sailor Mercury inclined her head and continued watching him. The silence strained his nerves.
"I remember you," he blurted, "From before. You make a terrifying enemy."
The frost ferns stopped their conquest of the cherry trees. Somehow Zander knew the frost would not harm them. Sailor Mercury was not one for collateral damage.
Still she didn't talk. He went on, nervousness sending his Japanese into a stumbling rush. "I remember living as Zoisite," he said, "And I remember my betrayal. I mean, before that—I remember you, and I—I remember my brothers. My Prince," and god help him, why did his voice have to break then? "But none of it matters, because I betrayed him. And you. And Mercury—" He would never get another chance. He sank to one knee—carefully, on the black ice—"I'm sorry. Truly, I am so sorry."
There was a beat; then he heard a little huff, as if of exasperation. He looked up; Sailor Mercury wore a faint frown and gestured for him to stand. He obeyed.
"Do you know if the Prince is alive? Or my brothers?" He rubbed his arms: it had gotten cold. "If it means anything, I'll find you and Sailor Moon—I guess she's the Princess—and you guys live um, on the moon? Rebuilding Silver Millennium?" He glanced up as the moon (waxing gibbous). "I would offer my service. Try to make amends. For what my service is worth…"
The Sailor Guardian tilted her head a little to the side. The gesture reminded him of Ami, and ooooh he didn't need another gut punch, to remember her and the chance he'd lost. She continued to watch him, and Zander had the feeling of being scanned, down to his very atoms. There was a long pause. The snowflakes stilled and fell to the ground.
With an inhuman lightness, Sailor Mercury leapt from the cherry and landed on its sister tree, thirty feet to the north. She glanced at Zander, and vaulted again—to the lamp at the end of the boulevard.
She glanced back.
"You want me to follow you?" asked Zander. His feet were already moving.
Leap, rest, wait for him to catch up. Carry on. He moved onto a street of light, and could only make her out as a kind of shimmer in the air above the streetlamps. After about a half-mile she halted, somewhere on a third-story balcony. Zander tried to catch up with her, but was waylaid by a herd of bumbling American tourists.
"Please, please, don't leave—" Zander reached the railing below the balcony and looked up.
Sailor Mercury was gone, but fluttering down from the sky was a little white rectangle.
It spiraled in a tight gyre down to Zander's hand. It was a business card: The Jazz Crystal, it read in English. Zander lifted his eyes and looked around him. "Jazz Crystal," proclaimed a sign from before his very eyes. Basement level.
He descended the stairs. Then—"Here goes nothing"—he pushed open the heavy, soundproofed door.
Sailor Mercury reached the top of the building. When she looked down again and zoomed in with her visor, Zander was still looking skyward. Looking for directions she was not going to give.
She leaned back. Well. She'd heard his confession to being Zoisite; she'd received his apology; she'd led him here. The rest was out of her hands.
Something he had said kept floating in Sailor Mercury's head, like a bubble, reflecting back something distorted.
"You make a terrifying enemy."
"What if it had been us? What if Beryl had corrupted us in this lifetime?" Sailor Mercury asked herself.
"What if it had been us?" She whispered, as Zander disappeared down the stairs to Jazz Crystal.
She readied her communicator. If Mamoru radioed for help, she would be ready.
"If it had been us…"
Her imagination began at the most important point: Usagi. If Usagi's Guardians had been the ones to fall…
Usagi would be a Sailor Guardian all alone, one soul against the forces of evil. Obviously she and Mamoru would have found each other. Mamoru would solace her; but she would always be trailing after him a little, wouldn't she? And oh, the tears she would shed, trying to befriend the Sailor Guardians who kept taunting her. Even without the memory of their true bond, Sailor Moon would try to save them.
The tears she would shed.
And the Guardians themselves would be…
"What would we be?"
A brute with a sadistic streak, a witch of infernal magics, an adrenaline-junkie diva. All piloted by… a hacker-oracle, lit only by computer screens, a woman who used all of Mercury's power to corrupt, to ensnare, and when all else failed, to fight.
And Usagi would have to fight them all alone.
Sailor Mercury rubbed her hands over her face. A terrible vision. Yet her heart had calmed somewhat. That's what her brain needed, to think through every permutation. That was her processing, and it comforted her. A little.
"Zander," she whispered, "don't let me down…"
The interior of the Jazz Crystal was reminiscent of smokey quartz. Vinyl records glittered on the walls. The shine from glasses and the instruments on-stage offset the darkness of walls, ceiling, and floor. The bar itself was paneled in dark wood.
Zander went to the bar and ordered a glass of white wine, calm as you please. He watched the bartender (a big burly fella) open a bottle and pour out the glass. Quite suddenly, Zander's encounter with Sailor Mercury took its toll on him: his knees began to knock together and his hair stood on end. He sank into a nearby barstool and lowered his satchel to the ground. At least he had the presence of mind to sip his wine when the bartender handed it over.
"If you don't mind my asking," came a voice to his right, "do you feel better now?"
Zander looked over. A man about Zander's own age sat there, with a kindly expression in his blue eyes. He wore a button-down shirt and a suit jacket, and he had a kind of vocational exhaustion that Zander had learned to associate with his medical-student friends.
"I do feel better, yeah," Zander said. "I must have looked pretty bad."
"We all have those days," said the man.
"And that's the truth." Zander held up his wineglass. "Cheers."
"Cheers," he held up his glass and they toasted.
"So, this bar…" Zander said to the man with the suit jacket, "That is, if you don't mind, I'm new in town."
"Well then, welcome to Tokyo."
"Thanks. So this place… what's, um, special about it?"
Suit shrugged. "Well, the jazz is pretty special… it's in the name. The really great music starts after midnight, when the professionals come to play. Do you play an instrument? There's a sign-up sheet over there—you can put down your name and the instrument you play, and then get up on stage for the next set and jam."
"You're kidding. Just like that? Jam?" He couldn't help it—he wished Ami were here to see this.
"Jam!" Suit agreed. "The owner might do a saxophone solo, if we're lucky. Do you play an instrument?"
"Piano, mandolin… but I'm not up to playing tonight," Zander admitted.
"Fair enough. Gotta conserve your strength," said Suit, taking a nice, appreciative sip of his honey-colored wine.
Zander glanced around but saw no sign of Guardians, sailor-suited or otherwise. Time to bite the bullet. "Have you ever met a Sailor Guardian?"
Suit almost spat out his drink. "Well! If you live in Tokyo long enough, you'll run into them."
"I just saw Sailor Mercury, jumping between two buildings. How do they do that?"
"Lots of jumping jacks, I suppose," Suit replied.
At that moment, the bartender kind of staggered back, as if just realizing something. He glanced between Suit and Zander.
"Nate, what is it?" asked Suit.
The bartender spoke in slow Japanese. "Do you guys hear yourselves?" he asked. "You're speaking different languages."
"What do you mean?" asked Suit.
"French," he pointed to Zander, "Japanese," at Suit. "Took me a while to cotton on."
Zander sat up. "My god," he said, running over the prior conversation in his head. "I've been speaking French this whole time? I must be wiped."
"You—" the bartender looked Zander in the eye, and spoke in French. "What's your name?"
"Zander Hervieux?" Another name rang deep inside him—why did he want to share that?
Could it be—?
"Are you from Switzerland?" the bartender asked. His fingers beat a rapid tattoo on the bar's top.
"How do you know?" Zander asked.
"Because…" Suit began in Japanese. Zander looked at him. In the tourmaline light, his suit seemed to become the armor of a king. Suit finished, "… because Sailor Moon told us."
"The… princess," Zander said, very softly (it was as loud as he dared).
"That's right," said Suit.
Zander's hands pressed over his heart, which was fluttering like a sparrow. "And you're… Endymion," he said.
Suit smiled.
Zander couldn't breathe. He got to his feet, even though he felt unsteady as a newborn kitten. "You're real. You're alive. You're here."
"I am," said Endymion, standing. "And you're Zoisite."
Like a child, Zander drew his hands to his face, as if trying to hide. "I—I am so sorry, your Majesty." He tried to bow—
"None of that," and Suit was pulling Zander's hands away from his face. He brushed away a tear and set his hands on Zander's shoulders, so the general would stand a little taller. "Call me Mamoru," said Suit, "and I think this calls for all of the good stuff."
Zander followed his gaze to the bartender—who had vanished. Footsteps, and then from behind, Nephrite caught him in a bone-crushing hug.
"Nate—" said Mamoru.
"It's fine, he's European, Europeans are huggers!" Nephrite replied in a rush. But he let Zander go anyway.
"Nephrite—" said Zander once he'd caught his breath. He stopped. Nephrite. That name had come as easily as his own. As Zoisite. Zoisite.
"Call me Nate," he said, grinning hugely. "You ever have umeshu?"
"No," said Zander.
"Good, prepare yourself."
"Sit down, sit down," said Mamoru-Endymion. That smile again. It radiated such warmth and comfort. "I want to hear all about you."
Nate nodded as he poured out a measure of umeshu and added a splash of water.
And it occurred to Zander that his two hours' jag of wild singing at karaoke had completely hollowed him out, so that he could be filled with the love and acceptance that radiated from his brothers, here in this moment, in the smoky quartz bar. And Zander thought, "I am found."
