Darien followed Ami as she led him to the room that the strange woman from his visions was being treated. Once on the right hall, she snuck her friend in while the nurses were all occupied in other rooms. She couldn't believe that she'd allowed Darien to talk her into bringing him here. After all, in this section of the hospital visiting hours were strictly enforced and only immediate family members were allowed to visit at all. Still, she understood his need to connect the woman who had been brought in, to the woman in his visions.
"We'll only have a few minutes, Darien." Ami stood by the door to watch for anyone coming their way. Though to be honest, she wasn't sure what she'd do if anyone did.
Darien nodded his understanding before stepping closer to the bed. When he did the woman's eyes barely cracked open before he heard her whisper, "Your Highness."
Both Darien and Ami's heads snapped at the words.
"Did she just say what I think she said?" Ami asked in confusion.
Darien furled his brows before sitting next to the woman. "That's right. You've been hurt. Do you know where you are? Do you know how you got here?"
Hatsu's head felt as if it would explode. When she'd first woke up moments before her visitors had come in, she had been confused as to where she was. She had hoped to awaken and find herself in her rooms beneath the ancient palace. As her pain increased, she'd remembered being sent to the future with a mission regarding the man who was now in front of her.
"I came here to find you."
"Me?"
"You are in danger." Hatsu said with a bit of difficulty. She felt herself weaken from the conversation as well as trying to maintain it in the language what wasn't her natural tongue. Before slipping back into the darkness of unconsciousness she whispered one last word, "Benu."
Darien reached forward to try to wake the woman back up, but it was clearly not going to happen. Between her head injury as well as whatever medication she'd been given, she wasn't going to be able to share anymore just now.
"What are Benu?" Ami asked more to herself than Darien since he'd only been told what she had.
"My guess, those bird creatures." Darien stood as he thought about his visions.
Michael stared at the paper where he'd absently started to write down his dreams. He didn't know why but he felt that if he saw them down on paper then maybe he'd be able to make more sense of them. Not all of the dreams had been disturbing. In some of them he had seen himself as well as other men sparring much in the way he and Kyle would. He and the other men had laughed and cut up in a way that only lifelong friends do. Michael concentrated on those dreams. He did his best to ignore the dark visions of his own death alongside those of his companions.
In one dream, he'd even been surprised to see his old friend, Kyle, in it. It looked like he'd been sparring with another man. A friend of Michael's but clearly not Kyle's. Kyle had won which ordinarily he'd be proud of but in the dream, he'd felt upset by the fact. He'd felt for the other man, instead. The one who felt like a friend. Why would he not pull for Kyle in his dream?
The last thing that he wrote on the papers in front of him was an odd name. Zoisite. What kind of name was that? Call him strange but it felt familiar.
Dreams can sometimes be the memories of the soul trying to come to the surface.
Maybe the whole past lives thing wasn't as crazy as he'd always believed. Could that have been his name in another lifetime?
At the door Michael heard a knock that told him that Kyle had come to pick him up. The two were planning to go hiking up the snow-covered trails just like they use to do back when they were younger. He let the other man in and told him that he still had his gear in the other room and left to get it really quick. When he did Kyle made himself at home on the couch while he waited. As he did so he noticed the papers on the coffee table and reached over and picked them up. He was reading them when Michael returned.
"Kyle?"
"You wrote this?" Kyle skimmed through most of the small stories that his friend had written but two things caught his eye. One of them depicted one of his own memories fairly closely. It was when he'd accepted a challenge from Prince Darien during the Royal visit to Earth. The second thing that caught his attention was the simple name written as if it was a question.
Zoisite?
"Um, yes. I just figured that the dreams would go away if I got them out on paper. Weird, huh?"
Kyle ran his hand through his hair as he tried to sort out the newest bit of information on his friend. How was it possible for him to have been the general who had stood back and watched that sparring match? He supposed he'd have to figure it out later. Right now, though, it was getting hard to deny that he really had been one of the prince's generals.
"Not really." Kyle took a deep breath and took a chance, hoping he wasn't going to scare his friend. "You know how I told you about going with Serena to that fortune teller and doing a past life regression? Well, afterwards, I started having really weird dreams, too, so I started to write them down in a book. Sort of to keep track of them."
Kyle stood and took the papers in his hands over to Michael and pointed to the section of the sparring match and added, "And I have one just like this in it. Except I was the visiting guard."
Michael eyed his friend then after a moment he stated, "Show me."
Serena listened to Mina on the communicator as she told her of the latest goings on in Tokyo. From the mysterious dreams that Darien had been experiencing, the strange visits to the temple by an unknown woman and two of the generals, to the attacks on various men in the city. Mina told her that she didn't want her and Kyle to drop whatever they were doing just yet since they hadn't figured out just how to track the strange giant birds who were attacking the city, but Serena knew that their place was now with their friends.
Kyle couldn't disappear before his friend left without raising suspicions but the moment that he left at the end of the week Serena assured Mina that they'd be on their way to Tokyo. She may not be able to transform but that didn't mean that she planned to remain in her quiet resort town while her friends and husband were off fighting. She told Mina that she'd share the latest information with Kyle once he returned from his day out with his old friend.
Serena didn't expect Kyle back until late in the evening, so she was surprised when both men came into the apartment shortly after she'd finished speaking with her friend back in Tokyo. The looks on both of their faces made her wary.
"What's going on?"
"My notebook, the one with my memories written down, I need it."
Serena eyed her husband while holding her tongue. She didn't want to say too much in front of Michael but at the same time she couldn't figure out what he'd want the book where he'd written all of his memories from the Moon Kingdom in. She was also curious about why Kyle asked for it in front of his friend. Clearly Brutus was confused as well and was barely able to keep himself from commenting as well in front of Michael.
"Why?"
"Michael, show her," Kyle said as he ducked into the bedroom.
Reluctantly, Michael gave his pal's wife the papers with the damning dreams written on them. When she read through the descriptions of them, and most importantly the name written at the bottom, Serena's eyes widened.
"It can't be."
By this time Kyle returned to the main area with his notebook and hurriedly flipped through a few pages before handing it off to his friend to read.
"It's the same memory," Michael declared as he read through Kyle's detailed account of the mock battle between Prince Darien and himself while both were trying to impress Princess Serena. "How is this possible?"
"I'm still trying to figure that out," Kyle said as he tried to sort out just where he was going to go from here. Could he tell his friend about their past lives, somewhat together, without bringing up the Sailor Scouts, the Moon Kingdom, and everything else? Or did he have the right to know about all of it, too. And if he did tell him, just how much would be too much to tell him all at one time?
Hatsu sat through the doctor's interrogation of her as she explained that she couldn't remember how she had ended up injured and at the hospital. She knew that she couldn't tell him the truth about what she'd seen since that likely would only buy her a longer stay in the hospital. In reality, there was only one thing that kept her in her bed, other than the constant vertigo since she'd hit her head, and that was that she was certain that the prince had come here to see her. Could it be that after searching for more than a year he had actually come and sought her out?
Finally, alone in the room, she was about to attempt to use her magic to aid in her healing with the last remaining strength that she had from the day of testing when a young woman came into her room with a fresh pitcher of water. After a second she realized that she'd seen her before.
"You were in the room when he was here."
Ami was surprised at the woman's declaration; that meant that she remembered Darien's visit from the day before. Quietly, she closed the door quickly behind her before setting the pitcher of water on the table next to the bed. "Yes, I was. How are you feeling today?"
Hatsu studied the woman and used her magic to get a feel for her. She could tell that she was a kind and gentle woman but that there was something just below the surface that was much stronger than her meek demeanor would indicate. She also sensed that she was a wielder of quite a bit of light magic. Knowing that in her condition (especially while being given the medication that made it difficult to stay awake for long periods of time) she wasn't likely to be of much help to the prince now, she felt that she had no choice but to ask the woman before her for help in the completion of her mission.
"It doesn't matter. Where is the prince? Is he safe?"
Ami nodded before asking, "Why wouldn't he be safe? You mentioned the Benu when he was here. Who are they?"
"Dangerous." Hatsu felt the pull of sleep once more but knew that there was one thing that she had to say before the medication caused her to fall into unconsciousness once more, "Take the prince to the generals."
Malachite glanced around the room that he had been given in his friend's penthouse apartment and grinned. It may not have been the palace, but it was certainly a big step up from the psychiatric hospital. If he ever stepped foot in another hospital again it would be too soon.
One thing that did concern him, though, was the fact that Hatsu hadn't returned to Jed's before they'd had to leave it behind. He knew that she preferred her solitude, but he needed to let her know of the latest development regarding the living arrangements.
Stretching out his senses it didn't take long for the eldest general to locate the woman in question. He used his magic to transport himself to her and was surprised at what he found. He'd imagined that she had gone to meditate near a lake, river, or some other body of water. Instead, Malachite found his longtime companion unconscious in a hospital bed.
He stepped forward and saw that she'd been hooked up to an I.V. that was delivering some sort of medication to her. He had the suspicion that the medicine may have been the cause of her not reaching out to him or the other generals to let them know what had happened to her. Coming from a time so far removed from modern medicine, she couldn't have much of a tolerance for the drugs that the hospital would have used to treat any amount of pain. And judging by the abrasions and lump on her head, Malachite imagined that she had been given a healthy dose. Using his magic, he removed the needle from the woman's arm before bending over the bed to lift her out. He then returned to the penthouse with Hatsu in tow.
When he materialized in front of Nephrite the other man instantly asked what had happened to the palace oracle as he led the other man to the room that had already been decided would be set up for the woman once she decided to return.
"I don't know. I went to tell her about Jadeite being evicted and I found her like this in a hospital."
Malachite laid Hatsu down on the bed before covering her with the blanket. He knew that she had some healing abilities of her own and suspected that the reason that she hadn't healed from her current injuries was two-fold. One, the medication that she'd been given had likely affected her ability to concentrate on healing. Two, so far away from the rest of them, with less magic in this time period to call upon, there just hadn't been enough to use for her purposes. Now away from the hospital and here with him and the other men, he had no doubt that she'd be healed by morning.
For the second time in a week, Ami walked Darien toward the room of the mysterious woman who somehow knew of his past life. She'd told Darien of her message to get him to the generals and he had insisted that he should return to the hospital to hopefully speak once more with the unnamed woman. He had so many questions that only she could answer. Among them, of course, was just where were the generals?
As the two approached ward where she was being treated a code was announced overheard as the doors to that section of the hospital were closed automatically.
Code Walker, I.C.U. Room 458
Code Walker, I.C.U. Room 458
"What does that mean?" Darien asked as he saw that their way to the strange woman was now blocked.
"It means that a patient who shouldn't be up, for their own safety, has left their room. This section of the hospital will be locked down now until the patient can be found."
Darien saw Ami bite her lip as if she had something else on her mind, so he prodded for her to say what was on her mind.
"The patient that they are looking for, the one who has gone missing," Ami took a deep breath before she said, "It's the same woman that we're here to see. She's the one who has gone missing."
Darien exchanged a look with the scout before looking back toward the locked doors. He had to get in there and figure out just what she'd meant when she'd spoken with both Ami and him.