Under a Funeral Moon
This was who she was, wasn't it? This was who she had always been. Of course, it was not, she understood that, she knew that she had lived an entire life before this, a life that had ended abruptly and tragically, but at the same time that girl was not her, that girl had never been her—and neither had the child she had been prior to this moment, her awakening, her apotheosis.
Through her gloves she felt the thorns of the black rose she held. She did nothing to alleviate the pressure, to avoid the discomfort, instead, she held on tighter, feeling the sharpness push further into the softness of the material, probing the skin beneath. There was reassurance in this, she thought, it was something she could relate to, something that felt like it was hers, something that wouldn't excite the confusion that recollection did.
In her memory, there were two versions of herself, neither of them being who she considered herself to be now. First, there was the child, Mizuno Ami, awkward to a fault, gentle and kind, uncertain of others. Then there was the Sailor Scout, awakened after years of slumber deep within her soul, a warrior whose power stemmed from the distant world of Mercury, her aim unwavering, her sense of justice unfaltering, a past life, if such a thing could be believed.
She tightened her grasp about the stem of the rose, her lips quivering with displeasure, and then she tossed it to the wind, allowing it to be swept up and carried away from where she stood on the rooftop overlooking the city.
It could not be believed, she told herself, that was not who she had been. Doubt remained, however, and she knew there was more than she had been told by both her former feline guardian, Luna, and by her present mentor, Kunzite of the Dark Kingdom.
Unable to contain it, she let out a roar of frustration, turning on her heel, throwing her arm out, summoning her blade of ice to her grasp, its edge tearing through the air. Why was nothing clear? Why was everything so complicated? She did not feel like Mizuno Ami, nor did she feel like Sailor Mercury, so who was she then?
In the distance, she thought she heard the sound of helicopters, the whir of blades cutting through the air. She held her blade steady, the twilight sun catching the frozen water, illuminating the length of the weapon, the suggestion of the moon in the midsummer sky beyond.
In her memories of the life she had not lived, she recalled dimly talk of the fall of the old gods, the sundering of the cosmos in the era that had sputtered out and fallen into silence before the lineages of the Moon Kingdom and the monarchy of Earth had been established. There had been a story then about a god who had bartered with evil, who had become the messenger of a dark empire; was that her fate also? Was she nothing but the echo now of that forgotten god?
She turned again, and in frustration, she tossed the blade out as readily as she had let go of the black rose. In the air, its form dissolved, an arc of water splashing across the edge of the rooftop.
She hated it, she wanted it all to disappear. Her lips twisted once more, she tightened her gloved hand into a fist, feeling the cold reminder of the sword's former presence in her grasp.
Soon, she told herself; soon they would all fall, the Sailor Scouts and the pitiful knights of the Dark Kingdom—soon the world would be plunged into chaos once more, and this time, there would be no old gods to barter with the darkness in hopes of some momentary grace.
She looked impassively over the city, imagined the buildings reduced to ash, the voices of its inhabitants silent, the Earth as cold and dead as the moon now was.
Yes, she thought to herself; yes, she would like to see that.
