Not for the first time, Kohaku woke to the sound of whimpering. Next to him, Hotaru was twitching in her sleep. She had been having night terrors ever since they returned from the underworld, but tonight seemed particularly bad. She was thrashing around as if fighting against some invisible tormentor. Kohaku nudged her in an attempt to wake her up.

"Hotaru?" He whispered. Her face was contorted in pain, and her head jerked from one side to another. "Hotaru, wake up, you're having a nightmare..." When she still didn't stir, he shook her a little more forcefully. "Hotaru, wake up."

Suddenly, her eyes shot open and she grabbed his arm. The second their skin touched, Kohaku was jolted from the quiet forest.

He saw a strange, desolate landscape surrounded by ruins of big stone buildings. The ground was red from blood. He was surrounded by bodies. Clearly a battle had just taken place. Only a few people were left alive. He looked up to see them. He couldn't make out any distinguishing characteristics of most of them, but he would recognize Hotaru anywhere. Her weapon and clothes were both stained with blood. She was crying. Kohaku had never seen her cry before.

"Please, don't make me!" He could hear her scream.

The women around her looked away. Hotaru tried to run but one of the women grabbed her.

Three bright lights resonated and blinded him.

When he could see again, he saw Hotaru rise into the air. Her face was completely void of all emotions. She usually guarded her feelings well. Kohaku could never figure out what was going on in her head, but he always knew she was thinking. She was taking in the information and processing it before she acted.

This was different. Her eyes were dull, there was no life behind them. Kohaku was reminded of Naraku's incarnation, Kanna. Her face was just as empty. She wasn't even a human anymore, just a vessel. She swung down her glaive.

A wave of darkness exploded from Hotaru's body. A terrible pain ripped through Kohaku's body. It was as if all of his body was being torn to shreds, his bones were splintering apart, his skin was burning. The screams of countless other people filled his ears before they were silenced.

Kohaku pulled away. The second his hands slipped from Hotaru's grasp, he was back in the moonlit forest.

"What was that?!" He demanded. The vision had lasted no more than half a minute, but in that time centuries had passed between them.

Hotaru seemed to have pulled herself fully from the nightmare, but now there was a new terror in her eyes as she realized what she had unwittingly showed Kohaku. She sat frozen in fear, like an animal helpless in a trap, knowing it was going to be killed and seeing no way to escape.

She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. Silence hung in the air until she finally managed to say, "You shouldn't have seen that."

He didn't answer, he couldn't answer. How could he respond to that? He didn't even understand what he had seen. Her, obviously, but he knew it wasn't just a nightmare. It was a memory. He didn't know how he knew, but he was absolutely certain. Whatever it was he had seen, it had really happened.

How long they sat there staring at each other in silence, Kohaku could not say. It could have been seconds, it could have been lifetimes. The world seemed to freeze, the fireflies flickering around them were the only proof that time hadn't stopped all together.

Finally Hotaru broke the spell when she lifted her hand. Afraid she was going to touch him and induce another vision, Kohaku pulled away from her reflexively. Her eyes filled with shame. He was abhorrent, he knew that, but his mind was too frantic to be anything else right now.

"What was that?" He repeated forcefully.

"I..." She still didn't seem able to respond. Rin turned over in her sleep, drawing Hotaru's attention. Kohaku suddenly remembered the younger girl was still there. Jaken was sleeping not too far away with A-Un. Lord Sesshomaru was in a tree, though from this distance it was impossible to tell if he was awake or not.

"Let's go for a walk." Kohaku suggested. He stood up and offered Hotaru his hand, bracing himself in case her touch invoked another vision. She clearly noticed how tense he was. His face grew hot in shame. How could he be afraid of her? Her! Out of all people.

She gently took his hand and allowed him to pull her up. This time her touch didn't trigger anything, though he noticed she was trembling. This wasn't like her. It wasn't like her at all. She was normally fearless. Nothing ever seemed to phase her. Now she suddenly seemed like any ordinary, frightened child.

She was a child, he realized with a shock. They both were. They were children, forced to fight battles that would make hardened warriors quake in fear.

It probably wasn't safe to go walking through an unfamiliar forest alone at night, but it didn't matter. There was no monster dwelling in the darkness that could possibly be worse than the vision Kohaku had just seen. When they had traveled far enough away from the others, he stopped and turned to her.

"Why did I see that? How did I see that?"

"I don't know." admitted Hotaru. "Sometimes when I'm not careful...when I'm feeling strong emotions...I can show people what's in my mind. My parents and I used to work on controlling it, but when I'm sleeping it's hard for me to stop."

"What was going on? In that vision, what happened?"

Again, she didn't answer. She wouldn't even look him in the eye. Her eyes were trained on the ground. Whatever her secret was, she wasn't going to give it up easily.

"You won't even tell me?" He asked, feeling irrationally offended. She didn't owe him any explanation. He had always known she had a past. He had always known it had been dark. He wasn't entitled to her secrets. Yet he couldn't help but feel betrayed by her silence. He knew he had just experienced her pain, felt her death. He deserved to know what he had witnessed.

"I've told you everything about my past. Naraku, my father...all of it. Yet you don't trust me with yours?"

"It's not that I won't tell you." She said, still looking down. "I'm just trying to figure out how to say it." There was another long silence before she added in a voice almost too quiet for him to hear. "You think your sins are irredeemable, but you can't even imagine mine."

Kohaku felt a chill go through his body. He had killed hundreds of innocent people. He had killed his own father in cold blood. What could she have possibly done that was worse than that?

"Whatever it is, you can trust me. You've stood by me all this time. You're my best friend. Nothing you say can change that."

She finally turned to look at him. The moon reflected in her eyes, making her tears sparkle. He couldn't get used to the sight of her crying. It seemed so unnatural.

"Most people have the luxury of forgetting their past lives when they die. But I guess my sins were too great to deserve such absolution, even after being reborn. Or maybe the memories are a warning to remind me of my own power...I'm not sure." she seemed to be rambling more to herself now than talking to him. "I don't even know where to begin."

"Maybe you could start by telling me who Sailor Saturn is." Kohaku finally prompted.

Did she flinch at the name or did I imagine it?

"In the underworld, they called you 'princess' and you told them you were 'Sailor Saturn'. Afterwards, when you were unconscious, Lord Sesshomaru's mother said she was surprised to see Sailor Saturn."

"That's why she wanted me to stay with her..." Hotaru said. "What else did she tell you?"

"Nothing." Kohaku lied. He wouldn't believe the story from anyone else but Hotaru.

She looked upwards.

"What do you know about space?" she asked.

Kohaku was suddenly confused.

"What do you mean?"

"If I tell you this story, I want to know you understand it. Where I come from, it's common knowledge that there are other planets that orbit the sun. Every school child learns them. Even though they look like stars from here, people know they're much closer and more similar to the Earth."

"I don't know what you're talking about." He admitted. "There are other worlds in the sky like this one?"

Hotaru nodded, "Nine, if you count Earth."

Kohaku thought about what Lord Sesshomaru's mother said 'Beings who live among the stars'. A chill went down his spine.

"And people live there?"

"They used to." Hotaru replied. "The moon as well. Many people lived on the moon."

Kohaku's heart sped up. 'They ruled the world from their home on the moon.'

"Are you from the moon?"

She shook her head.

"My home was a planet a long ways away from here, called Saturn. It was the most beautiful place in the universe. The planet itself is more massive than you could ever even imagine. At least 30 times larger than this world. Huge rings made of ice and dust that go on for hundreds of thousands of miles surround the planet."

Despite the seriousness of their conversation, she seemed to be unable to keep herself from smiling when describing her old home. Her eyes glistened with memories as she gazed up at the stars.

Can she see her old world from here?

"We lived on the rings." Hotaru continued, "They're only about a foot thick, but there was so little gravity, we weighed practically nothing. If you can imagine, sitting on the edge of the world, with sky both above you and below you, being held up by dust; that was our reality. We could barely see the sun, but we didn't need to, the planet itself bathed us in constant light. There are over 60 moons in the sky. Not just at night, but all the time, coming and going at their own pace. All of them shined different colors, blue, orange, red, gray..."

"It sounds beautiful."

"It was..." her smile faded, the darkness returned to her eyes. She looked back down, turning her back to the section of sky she had been gazing at.

"It was mine to protect. I was the princess, but that doesn't mean the same as being a princess here and now does. Back then, princesses weren't just for sitting around and looking pretty like here on Earth. The royal family didn't just rule their home, it was their job to defend it. If a battle came, they were expected to lead the charge from the frontlines. They were given powers from their planet in order to do so. They were called Sailor Guardians. I was born to become Sailor Saturn after my mother. The ability to heal quickly, to heal others, to walk into the underworld and give commands, to construct a barrier nothing can penetrate...Those are just a handful of the powers I was granted.

"I started training when I was three. I was eight when the war started. My parents both died within the first year, leaving me as the sole protector of my planet, but I couldn't do it. No one could. We fought so hard against the enemy, but it was no use. They had a way of corrupting and controlling our people. Their influence spread throughout our troops and slowly our own soldiers turned against us. Before we knew it, we were outnumbered 100 to 1.

"Soon we realized there was no hope left, we couldn't win. Even if we could, the war had left our kingdom in complete devastation. The only way we could possibly stop the enemy..."

She broke off again. It took her a few seconds before she was ready to continue.

"The only way we could possibly stop the enemy was to completely destroy the kingdom, taking everyone with; soldiers and civilians.

"Only one Sailor Guardian has the ability to do something like that."

"Sailor Saturn." Kohaku whispered. The most powerful of all. The forbidden guardian. She could destroy worlds in seconds if she wanted, feared even among the gods.

Hotaru nodded.

"I was the only one who could end the war. I wasn't even ten-years-old. I begged the others to find a better way, but there wasn't one. So I followed my orders. Everyone died. Enemies, allies, adults, children, it didn't matter. Once I unleashed my power, I had no way of controlling it. No way of differentiating between friend or foe, adult or child. Nine planets. Over 11 billion people. Nobody survived. Not even me."

The air around them felt still and silent after she finished her story.

He didn't know what to say to her. She wouldn't look up at him. He had to say something, but he couldn't move.

Hotaru, his Hotaru...She was so kind, so gentle. How could she even be capable of such a thing? His mind almost couldn't handle it.

How many people had he killed? He had never stopped to count. One hundred? Two hundred? Surely no more than three. He compared that to 11 billion. He couldn't even fathom that many people existing.

"You're frightened." She finally said. He wanted to deny it, but he couldn't. "I understand. A lot of people try to kill me when they figure out what I am. I can't blame them. Even I don't understand the full extent of my power."

"But..." He started, trying to remember what she had said to him when he revealed to her he killed his father. "You didn't want to do it right? You didn't have a choice."

"I wasn't possessed. I did a lot of horrible things when I was possessed, but that wasn't one of them. I don't deserve to use that excuse. I may not have wanted to do it, but I acted on my own free will."

Again, silence fell between them. It lasted longer this time. He needed to say something. Anything. He desperately wished he had never asked. He had never seen...but he couldn't go back. He thought of the vision: Hotaru covered in blood, crying and pleading with the faceless women surrounding her. Then the flash of light, and a dead eyed stare. She was wrong. That wasn't her. She may not have been possessed, but that girl had not been her. That girl had been cold and empty. Hotaru, the real Hotaru, must have died in the flash of light, leaving behind a soulless shell.

"You can leave if you want." She told him. "Go back to Rin and Lord Sesshomaru. I'll go off tonight and you can forget about me. I won't blame you if you do."

The sudden horror at the idea of losing her forced Kohaku to move. He lunged forward and threw his arms around her, holding her tightly to him.

"No!"

She seemed surprised for a few moments, before hugging him back and allowing herself to relax in his arms. He buried his face in her hair.

It didn't matter. He decided. Maybe she hadn't been possessed. She still didn't have a choice. Whatever she had done in the past, she had done for what she thought was the right reason. It didn't matter how many lives she had taken, he knew she wouldn't have taken a single one of them lightly. He thought of his own guilt, his own fears, his own hatred for himself. He knew now that she must have those same feelings. And she would have had to carry them even longer all alone, but not anymore.

"Promise not to leave. Not now. Not like this."

"Kohaku..." She whispered, then she gave a small nod. "I promise."

Author's Note: I hope you're all still doing okay. I'm going on week 7 of quarantine, i think, time lost all meaning. Please review. Thank you all for reading this far!

Update: It's been over six month since the plague started. A new normal has been established. This new normal is strange and uncomfortable, but it is normal, so that's something at least. Hoping you're all doing well.