"My Prince!"

Endymion's hand tightened around his sword reflexively. Of late, his title had been used more in mockery than in respect or love, and his reaction had been instinctual.

But it wasn't a rebel that he faced, only Helena, a priestess and mage of his Court. The sharp look he cast towards her, a moment before recognition set in, made her cower, but it was clear from her pleading eyes that she was not here to threaten him. "You must leave! Escape this madness and go before the traitors capture you. Or worse!"

His expression softened even further, though not his sword hand. He was out of breath from sprinting across his besieged palace, searching determinedly for anyone who was still loyal to him. As he flew from corridor to corridor, he'd found more foes than friends, and every blade he crossed was a blow to his heart. His guards had trusted him once. His servants used to be gladdened by his presence.

Now they clamored for his head after being whipped into a frenzy by a long campaign of misinformation and suspicion of the Moon Kingdom. Their misguidance was as much his fault as it was that of the rebellion leaders spreading their dangerous lies. He had failed to keep his people from being led astray, and this was the price—their faith in their Prince lost and his home burning.

But even in such a dark hour, he would not abandon them. It was his duty to restore reason, to save them from themselves, to keep trying no matter what the cost.

He took comfort in the fact that some were still loyal to him, like Helena and others of her Order. Even as the palace was overrun, he had seen the priestesses scrambling to save the sacred knowledge of Earth's power—his power—that was their duty to preserve. On a day that might well be the eve of war, they risked their lives to ensure the legacy of the Golden Kingdom was not lost forever in the fires of insurrection.

Endymion wondered if their dedication to something greater than themselves had somehow protected them from corruption. Their pledge to their Order was not unlike his oath of guardianship, and he too remained clear-eyed. Even the Shitennou, for all their fierce allegiance, had been swayed to the traitorous cause.

A fresh wave of grief constricted his throat as he recalled facing his own generals in the throne room, all of them with their swords drawn. Even if he called upon the Golden Crystal, it would not have been a fair fight, their four to his one. But he'd stood his ground, daring them to lay a hand on their Prince to whom they had sworn their very lives.

Before the stalemate could be broken, they were called away by the witch that had fomented this insanity, herself once a faithful subject of the Kingdom. The Shitennou declared it a mercy, but he saw the relief in their eyes that they would not be forced to kill their own Master.

After they departed, Endymion stood shaking on the dais, not far from where he had knighted them and unable to fathom their betrayal. Nor was he prepared for how deeply it wounded him. They had been his bodyguards, but also his confidants, pillars to lean upon when he was feeling the weight of the world, not quite metaphorically. In unguarded moments—and in his heart only, because decorum would never allow such a thing—he sometimes thought of them as brothers.

His staccato breaths seemed unnaturally loud in the vast chamber, but for once he wasn't concerned about showing weakness. The throne room, built for privacy as well as spectacle, was well-insulated. He was alone enough with the sound of his pain.

What finally spurred him to go was the thrum of footsteps, dozens, vibrating through the marble floor rather than heard. From the throne room, he ran towards the eastern wing, where an ambush led by palace guards forced him to make his first kill in self-defense. He slew four, and every one felt like a defilement of his duty, a precarious slip towards becoming irredeemable. How could he claim to want to save them if he struck them down instead?

He fought through the ambush with as little bloodshed as he could manage and dashed towards the rose garden where, for a fleeting moment, he considered escaping across those familiar grounds. Besides the libraries, the garden was his favorite refuge, and no one knew the labyrinths like he did, which he had changed at least once a year precisely so their paths remained secret.

But he dismissed the idea in the same breath. He could not give up so easily. He would continue on, find every supporter he could and prove that their faith was not misplaced.

It was near the archival library that he found Helena, or more truly, she found him and dragged him into one of the lesser-used drawing rooms. That afforded them a few moments' respite, for the guards could not search every place at once, but if they tarried too long, they risked being cornered.

As the priestess implored him to save himself, he looked around at the many fine things in the room—tapestries and carvings and family treasures—and wondered if he was imagining their sinister cast. The gilt in the porcelains and the mantel gleamed red as if reflecting blood, but he couldn't figure out where such a light was coming from.

Looking back at Helena, he said, "I will stay. For you and any others who have not forsaken me. I cannot just run from this mess." The shame of his failure burned him like a brand. "I must keep trying."

"The rebels who strike here today are the ones too cowardly to go to the Moon to face those they've deemed the enemy. If you must make a last stand, Your Highness, do it there. You would see our people saved whereas Queen Serenity would have no such imperative. Yours may be the only grace our people have left."

The thought of a mob marching on the Moon, the ramifications of such a thing…he went pale thinking of how he would answer for that, if he was even allowed the chance to. "Queen Serenity would not slaughter them."

"She will defend her people, same as you." Strangely, there was no judgment in the priestess's voice. "But remember who our real enemy is—the Darkness that has poisoned all of their minds. Your two kingdoms must stand together against it."

He was skeptical. After all, it was his refusal to sanction the Moon Kingdom that had caused his people to turn against him in the first place, and then the revelation of his love for the Princess Serenity ignited that unrest into a blood hunt. A show of unity now might only break his people's faith forever.

"Please, my Prince." Helena knelt at his feet and pressed his hand to her head beseechingly. Warm tears splashed his fingers, but she did not apologize. "You are our Hope, our Sovereign Guardian and Earth's most beloved Son. So long as you live, so shall our Kingdom. We will endure, for you and with you, sword and spirit. I am begging you, please do not try to fight this alone."

Her desperate, impassioned plea brought tears to his own eyes. For the first time, the full gravity of his situation struck him and he nearly bowed beneath its weight.

After generations of peace, led by his forebears who had also dedicated themselves to the guardianship of Earth, his people had summarily turned on him and each other. In the grip of a fevered paranoia, they cast stones and persecuted anyone who did not validate their fears, including their own Prince. Now they went to wage war with the perceived enemy—who may or may think their bewitchment warranted mercy—while he was here running for his life, hunted like a criminal in his own palace. Blood and fire were spreading across the very floors he had played on as a child, and even his sworn guardians, once loyal to the point of reverence, had deserted him.

Was this to be how the Golden Kingdom ended? Would he be its last scion?

He squeezed his eyes shut against the crushing guilt that threatened to break him. If he was his people's last hope, what was his?

Drawing in a slow, steadying breath, then another, he prayed for strength. He prayed for those who still stood by him, and for their love to sustain him. Though he carried in his hand a weapon of steel, in his heart he carried a far greater weapon, one of unity. He would place his hope there, in the Holy Stone of Earth and the true hearts that still resonated with it, and with his.

Gently, he drew Helena to her feet. "I will go to the Moon Kingdom," he said, and her tears turned to tears of relief.

"At last, some reason!"

He hoped her faith would not be in vain.

The voices beyond the door grew louder, and when someone rattled the knob, he exchanged a tense look with the priestess.

"Will you come with me?" he asked.

She shook her head and crossed the room to the fireplace, where she picked up the iron poker.

"I stand with my Order," she said gravely, her grip shaking but tight. "While your duty is to keep our hope, ours is to preserve your memory, even and if things go ill."

Her devotion likely meant her death, but he did not try to dissuade her.

"You are as brave as any soldier," he said, and she dipped her head modestly. The pounding on the doors grew more violent, and he motioned for her to get behind him. "Stay back. I will clear the way."

He raised his sword just in time as the doors splintered inward with a thunderous crack. The men who charged in were clearly not soldiers, and they actually hesitated when he snarled at them with all the preeminence of his station. Two of the three came forward to strike, but they were so clumsy in their fear that he deposed them with ease. The third man cowered at the last minute when he approached brandishing his sword, and he let the man be, choosing instead to tow Helena out the door with him before they lost the chance.

The guards roaming in the hallway were not as easily deterred. He did his best to defend the both of them, but in the confined space, Helena was forced to find marks with her poker alongside his sword. One of the downed guards spat at him, called him a disgraced alien lover, and he had to resist the urge to kick the man in the face.

They made it through to the main gallery, and there had only a moment to say farewell. Helena had a long cut on her arm, not serious but surely painful, and it aggrieved him that he could not take the time to heal it for her.

On impulse, he pulled the priestess towards him and touched a kiss to her forehead. "Thank you, Helena. You have given me hope as well."

Her face was red as she struggled to reply. "Whatever happens, my Prince, it was not you who failed. Please remember that."

She bowed low, and then she fled, skirts billowing and the iron held aloft as she ran deeper into the doomed palace.

Endymion knew in his heart they would not meet again.

The first time Mamoru ever woke up in a hospital bed, it had been the worst moment of his life. Stricken with amnesia after the accident that killed his parents, he literally knew nothing but pain, and not just that day, but for many years after, as he was coldly shuffled through a world that didn't seem to remember him either.

It was maybe for that reason that the first thing he was cognizant of as he came to was that he was in a hospital bed again. Something about the lights, the smells, and even the texture of the blanket covering him triggered a near-instant recognition—but he wasn't conscious enough yet to be able to move his body, and that made his panic redouble.

Frantically he thought of his name, that precious guarantor of self and sanity that most people took for granted, and when it came easily to mind, his terror abated. He knew his name. He even remembered he had an unusual abundance of them. Mamoru. Mamo-chan. Chiba. Mo. Endymion. Tuxedo Kamen. He had not forgotten his life again.

Also unlike that horrible first time, he wasn't alone. Stan's mother sat next to the bed on the right while Stan hovered at his other side. His friend was much more anxious than his mother as they conversed quietly over him. There were other voices somewhere nearby as well, but Mamoru couldn't make out any of their words.

The pull to go back to sleep was strong, but Stan's mother must have noticed his fight against his eyelids because she squeezed his hand urgently. He hadn't noticed she'd been holding it.

"Mamoru?"

Stan's attention snapped down towards him immediately. "Chiba?"

He was unable to answer them. Though the sensation from his body was improving, the dream of his former life kept intruding into his efforts to remember how he'd gotten here, and it was like watching two movies simultaneously in his head. Ringing steel flashed against a purple sky, ornate palatial doors stood dwarfed by soaring pine trees, and a feeling of unusual tranquility was abruptly torn apart by wrenching anguish. He remembered the scrape of blades against ice. Skating. He'd been skating with Helena in a peaceful place, a simpler place.

No, not Helena. Helena was before, the last person to see Endymion on Earth before he left to die on the Moon. She was Hallie now, Stan's sister, whom he'd met on a chance visit…

A mage of the Earth Court reborn in Bumfuck, Maine.

His shock must have showed on his face because Stan's mother leaned in closer.

"Mamoru? It's okay, we're here. You're all right. Can you hear us?"

"Maybe we should get the doctor," Stan said anxiously.

His mother nodded. "Go tell the nurse he's waking up. Remember, they warned us he might be a little disoriented."

Stan hurried from the room, and it was then Mamoru noticed that Stan's mother's hand felt very warm. That probably meant that his were cold, and his hands were never cold unless something was wrong. He supposed that drowning and almost freezing to death counted as wrong.

"Where is Hallie?" he rasped. The effort to speak triggered an acute coughing fit that left him curled on his side and nauseous, and he prayed he had nothing in his stomach to actually lose.

"She's fine," Stan's mother reassured him, but her composure slipped a little seeing his distress. She started to brush back his hair, then seemed to think better of it and retracted her hand after only a brief touch. "She woke up before you."

He sighed in relief. "I'm sorry," he whispered after the coughing subsided.

"Sorry? For what?"

"For not saving her."

Stan's mother looked at him in surprise. "Goodness. Mamoru, this is not your fault, do you hear me? It was an accident, no more and no less."

He wished it were that simple. His Crystal had behaved strangely ever since he arrived, reacting to perfectly ordinary things for no reason he could discern. And what were the odds that he and Hallie had met purely by chance, now that he knew who she had once been?

He should have looked closer, been more cautious. But even before his Crystal was unbound, he had always been able to sense when evil was near, and he trusted that instinct. It was difficult to see, even in hindsight, what he might have done differently. How he might have prevented the calamity that nearly cost him and Hallie their lives.

Stan returned with the doctor, and Mamoru knew he wouldn't have any peace for a while to sort out his thoughts. The doctor, a gray-bearded man with kind eyes, checked his vital signs with practiced efficiency, then began a neurological exam, which Mamoru had known to expect, but it still made him peevish anyway. It wasn't the doctor's fault he was sore, tired, and discomforted by all the attention, and besides which, Mamoru himself might one day be administering this same exam to some irritable patient back from the dead.

So he kept his mood in check and answered the doctor's questions obediently, hoping all the while he would be released soon.

His exam was clean, so after the required observation period ended with no sign of troubling symptoms, he was cleared to be discharged. It was three a.m. when he and Hallie were bundled into the car, swaddled in the spare clothes and blankets her father had brought from the house, the heater in the cab set to full blast. Stan chose to sit in the backseat with them, holding his sister securely in his arm as if she might disappear, and Mamoru, to his own surprise, felt more comfortable crowding with them there than taking the front seat for himself.

No one said much on the ride home. Stan's father asked three times whether everybody was warm enough, and only then did he seem reassured that they were. At this time of night, there wasn't a single other car or light outside, and Mamoru dozed against the doorframe, lulled by the strange coziness of the cab, the silence, and the steady rolling motion of the car.

Beneath their pool of blankets, Hallie reached for his hand, and they held on to each other the entire way home.

Mamoru was only too glad to be sent to bed immediately with a thermos of tea for his nightstand. Unfortunately, though the house fell silent almost right away, the air remained uneasy, and sleep simply wouldn't come. He tried his meditations, he tried counting, he tried reading, but nothing worked.

He turned over restlessly for what seemed like the hundredth time, gazing out the window and halfway seriously considering sneaking out of the house to see what he could learn down by the pond. He doubted his host family would allow him outside again, never mind anywhere near the water, before it was time to return to school, and he felt it was his responsibility to find out whether or not there was something dangerous on their property. No one here would be able to handle anything magical—

—or could she?

So the vision he'd seen when he first met Hallie turned out to be a memory of the last time they met. Could her own memories have awakened since? Did she know the connection between them, and did it have anything to do with whatever had tried to drag them to their watery deaths? Despite how bone-tired he was, he wished they had had a chance to speak.

The temptation to sneak outside persisted, but after weighing the idea for several minutes, he chose to abandon it. If there was anything malicious out in the woods, he was in no shape to fight it. It would foolish to face even just the cold in his weakened state. Plus, he'd already put Stan and Hallie's family through enough trouble. The last thing he wanted to do was invite more needlessly. Hadn't it only been earlier that evening that Stan's father commended him for having a sensible head?

At the same time, he was tired of tossing and turning in bed futilely. At a loss for what else to do, he sat up and reached for the tea. It was still steaming hot, and it soothed his body if not his mind. He delicately inhaled the curling steam, noting its floral fragrance, then carried the thermos and the blanket over to the window seat to settle in and watch the night for a while. There was no new snow, and a bright half-moon hung in a clear sky.

He let its luminance fill his mind, thinking of nothing else until he realized he had begun humming, some nameless tune he and Serenity shared in their memories, but neither of them could remember where it had come from or what it had meant.

Usa. His mind hummed her name like his throat hummed the notes. I'm okay. I love you and I miss you, and if you know at all what's happened, I'm safe now.

A sudden pang of homesickness ended his music, and he tried to chase away the pressure welling in his throat and behind his eyes with another sip of scalding tea. He turned away from the moon and was about to attempt another meditation when movement beneath the window caught his attention.

From the tree line, an enormous buck emerged, every lithe step exuding a quiet power and grace as it came to stand boldly in the open space between the house and the trees. Atop its proud head, a massive eight-point crown shone in the moonlight.

Its appearance was so dreamlike that Mamoru wondered if maybe he really was asleep after all.

Or maybe I never woke up at all, a terrified little voice in his head said. His hands clenched on the thermos and the queasy feeling in his gut returned.

As if it had heard his thought, the buck raised its head sharply and looked straight at him. He gasped, startled and a little frightened by the animal's awareness. There was no way it should have been able to detect him all the way up here on the second story, behind thick-paned glass. Yet its round black eyes held an unmistakable recognition, almost a challenge, that he was afraid to look away from.

With their gazes locked, the buck flicked one brown ear and a golden symbol came alight on its forehead, a circle inset with a cross, perfectly divided into four equal quadrants.

The symbol of Earth.

Mamoru's mouth fell open, and a powerful sense of communion filled him, warm and wild and bright. It burned away the knot of shadows that had lodged inside of him, and he sighed in relief when the tightness in his chest loosened. He hadn't even noticed it, or rather, he had grown so used to the doubt and worry that haunted him that he failed to recognize them as unnatural, and undeserved.

He touched a hand to the windowpane, wanting to be closer to that tiny hopeful light, but before he could throw sense to the wind and escape outdoors, the buck dipped its head and bounded back into the forest. Only the hoof prints it left behind convinced Mamoru it had not been a phantom.

He stayed watching the trees for several more minutes, but he knew the animal was not returning. Reluctantly he returned to the bed, the mundanity of his room helping to soften the wild feeling that had overcome him. Its humble comfort seeped in and felt oddly like an embrace, as if the room itself knew this was a fragile time.

How well Endymion had commanded the devotion of his subjects while Mamoru still struggled to accept the simple care of others.

But he was learning. When sleep came for him at last, the shadows thankfully did not return, and he crossed the veil of dreams with a lightness he hadn't known in a long time, secure in the care of his host family and his planet, both of which had assured him in no uncertain terms that he was not alone.