Eclipse - Ch1: The Death of Hope

Emily Dickinson once wrote, "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all."

No truer words could describe the quiet light that burned deep in the very depths of Tsukino Usagi’s soul, singing tirelessly to fill the cracks in her heart with the sweet notes of its song like putty glue. She closed her eyes as she bowed her head, biting down on the inside of her cheek as she reminded herself not to cry, not here at her desk, not in front of people who couldn’t possibly understand . . . or help. Those cracks she felt, the ones that only seemed to grow bigger, spreading out like wildfire – growing in every direction like the roots of a weed – they had been put there intentionally, by the one person she never would have believed could ever do such a thing. From the moment, the very second, of that dark day Mamo-chan had broken up with her – out of the blue – when only moments before, she could have sworn that they were both perfectly – blissfully – happy, she had felt her heart tear. The things she thought she knew, the security she had felt that he would always be there next to her, it was nothing but shattered dreams now.

As much as it hurt, she was also completely baffled as to how Mamoru could have gone from the sweet and thoughtful boyfriend, to the acerbic stranger. The things he said to her now were so hateful, so much worse than anything he could have even thought of saying back in the days when they quarreled like cats and dogs . . . Back before they knew of their past lives . . . Before they learned of their alter egos . . . Before they fell in love.

She sighed as her eyes fell closed, her brow furrowing as her heart burned within her chest with an ache so deep, so dark, she feared she would never feel love – his love – again. Every word he spoke now, she thought as she shook her head, was designed to chisel away at what remained of her heart. She knew – she knew – that he was only trying to drive her away. Knowing it or not, it didn’t make it hurt any less. She opened her eyes, looked up at nothing as she tried to blink away the sting of tears, a heavy exhalation falling from her lips.

Thus far, despite the pain that his words and rejection had levied on her, Usagi could not give up on the hope that still burned within her. It just was not in her nature to give up on someone she cared about, and not when paired with their history and love that had survived over lifetimes. She had fallen in love with Mamoru during the Silver Millennium when he had been known as Prince Endymion of Earth and she had been Princess Serenity of the Moon. Theirs was a love that had been so great that he had shielded her from a sword blow meant to take her life but took his instead. Death had separated them only for as long as the moment that it took for her to comprehend his death, feel the inconsolable pain of a life without him before she picked up his sword and plunged it into her body so that death would take her, too.

Then too, there had been those half-remembered dreams that began fading the moment her demonically possessed alarm clock woke her up. Dreams that she was certain were memories of other lifetimes, because those bits and pieces that she was able to hang onto after she woke up were just too vivid and detailed to just be just dreams. After the first few times she had had one of those dreams, Usagi had taken to writing down all the details she could remember as soon as she could and then later Googling the details to figure out what era or place the dreams had taken place. From what she had learned, she had concluded that she had at least one life in either ancient Greece or Rome, there hadn’t been enough details for her to figure it out and the fashion styles of both looked the same to her, and another during Regency England. There were a few others, but she hadn’t yet had the time or energy to do any research with a new enemy appearing.

In every lifetime she had dreamed of, the one thing she was always able to recall was that she and Mamoru were never able to get their happy ending. It was as if fate kept conspiring against them. Or maybe they simply weren’t meant to be together until they had dealt with the reason why they hadn’t gotten their happy ending in their first lives. After all, it wasn't until this lifetime that the Dark Kingdom, the ones responsible for their deaths that first time and the end of the Silver Millennium, had been able to break free of the seal, created by the Queens of the Silver Millennium, which imprisoned them.

There had been no balance… no justice for them in the Silver Millennium because the Dark Kingdom had not been defeated and punished for their crimes against the Silver Millennium Alliance, merely locked away to nurture its anger and hate until it was released once more. Usagi couldn’t blame the Silver Millennium Queens for that. They had done what they could at the time to deal with the Dark Kingdom and she knew that their actions were hampered by the grief that they suffered from the loss of their children and destruction of their kingdoms and people. In any case, it just made sense that there had never been a chance for a happy ending in those other lives because the circle of destiny couldn’t be complete until they had dealt with the Dark Kingdom once and for all.

And like every other lifetime before, since their first as Serenity and Endymion, their beginning as Usagi and Mamoru had been tempestuous. It seemed like they always managed to rub each other the wrong way at that first meeting and would probably do so again for every lifetime after this one. She attributed part of the problem to the strong simmering sexual tension that had always burned between them. Even at that first meeting, when Mamoru had irritated the hell out of her and she had contemplated whether it would be worth it to beat him in the head with her school bag, a part of her had also been tempted to jump the man. And, while she had by that point had her fair share of crushes, her daydreams had never gone beyond the point of kissing, yet in that moment she had been thinking of something far more scintillating. It probably hadn’t helped that certain memories of the past had flashed in her mind, although she hadn’t truly ‘awakened’ until months later and gained access to the memories of her life during the Silver Millennium.

Usagi remembered being mortified by her thoughts and that had increased her ire at him since it was easier to blame him for causing them than to examine her own thoughts. Silly really, since she had no reason to be embarrassed since she was the only one who knew she had envisioned the man naked in bed, but there you had it. While he had never confirmed it, she suspected that Mamoru had the same thing happen to him and while it wasn’t a really big deal for her to have those thoughts, the same couldn’t be same for him since she was four years his junior in this life, and jailbait to boot. The combination of lust and embarrassment caused by the vividly sexual thoughts, that were actually memories resurfacing, had done nothing to help their first meeting. In fact, those memories had only served to set the tone for their future interactions. She had taken a rather perverse sense of pleasure from their daily verbal sparring. It had been an outlet to reduce the stress from fighting the Dark Kingdom, because even if Mamoru had irritated her and she kept getting disturbing sexual visions of him, the man was total eye candy.

Over time, they had begun to fall in love, as they had every life before, so by the time they had awakened and unlocked their memories of the Silver Millennium, it had only served to explain that those random sexual thoughts were memories. The past had given even more depth to their feelings for each other, but it wasn’t because of remembering their past that they had fallen in love, although the flashes of memories had served to stimulate their passions. The only thing remembering their past lives, as Endymion and Serenity, would have done was make them put to words what they felt now. Not that it had turned out that way when Kunzite has kidnapped Mamoru from her and then that bitch Beryl had brainwashed him and turned him into the enemy. But they had eventually overcome that, and the subsequent memory loss that came after the final battle with the Dark Kingdom and fallen in love again.  A love, she had thought, was even stronger and more powerful than what they had shared during the Silver Millennium, or any other lifetime, because of everything they had been through.

Suffice it say, Usagi thought she had some pretty damn good reasons to believe that she and her Mamo-chan would get back together again. All she had to do was find out the true reason that had caused Mamoru to break up with her in the first place and fix it. She had to believe in that because if she didn’t… well, she truly didn’t think she could survive and continue on living if all hope was lost. Maybe that sounded overly dramatic, but when you considered the gods-only-knew-how-many lifetimes they had met and fallen in love with each other, then one would realize the depth of their feelings – that had been built on life after life –  was so much stronger than some other relationships she knew of. And besides, there was no other explanation for why they kept being drawn to each other time after time except that they were soulmates. So, she had to keep the hope alive.

But… if she was completely honest with herself… that light of hope inside her was burning smaller and flickering just to stay alive. It was becoming harder and harder to patch up the cracks inside. It had been months since Mamoru had broken up with her and, combined with the stress of fighting the new enemy – the Black Moon clan – it was taking a toll on her in more ways than one. It was only a few rare moments in the past several months where she thought she saw something in Mamoru's eyes. Something that told her he still cared, and it was that something which kept her going and holding on, kept feeding fuel to that faltering light burning alive inside,when in a less tenacious soul, it would have died already.

It was those precious few moments that she relived in her mind when she had time to herself, which was about as rare as an animal on the endangered species list. With the arrival of the Black Moon, a great deal of her time was devoted to dealing with the enemy and protecting Chibi-Usa who the enemy was hell-bent on capturing. The rest of her time was spent on school and her family and friends. Honestly, if it wasn't for school and living at home, Usagi doubted she'd even have that much time with her family and the friends who weren't Senshi, which gave her some guilt that she hadn’t been able to spend as much time with Naru-chan, who’d been her best friend since they had met all those years ago in PreK. Naru-chan, bless her heart, wasn’t angry with her for not being around as much, although she was certain the redhead was more than a bit confused

It was perhaps a bit of a blessing that she had overslept that morning, thus making her late to school and earning a detention. Of course, at the time that said detention had been assigned to her by the once again dumped Haruna-sensei, Usagi hadn't been particularly thrilled as it made the chances of her being late to the Senshi meeting after school all the more likely. A detention with Haruna-sensei could be ten minutes to well past supper time depending on the woman's moods. And if she was late again, Rei and Luna would get on her case again; while she could understand the value of promptness, sometimes the way they acted about it, you would think that her tardiness would single-handedly destroy the world as they knew it. It’s not like she had ever been late for a battle, in fact, she was usually the first one to stumble on to whatever new plot their enemies tossed at them.

Thankfully Haruna-sensei didn't hold her and the rest of the poor unfortunate souls detained with her for very long. Fifteen minutes after detention had started, the ex-boyfriend called to kiss and make up. None of the students had stayed long after they were dismissed; one never knew when their teacher's change of heart could be swayed to the opposite direction again, particularly since the men that Haruna-sensei dated all usually turned out to be major jerks. The students were beginning to not-so-jokingly talk about forming a committee to investigate and vet the men in their teacher’s life so she could avoid heartache and they could avoid her ire when she was suffering from said heartache.

Usagi set off in the direction towards home with a brisk pace, anticipating that she had enough time to change her clothes and indulge in a snack, while she read the newest manga that she had bought with what was left of last week's allowance, before she had to go to Rei's for the meeting. She was nearly halfway home when she realized the blessing in her short and abbreviated detention when she spied her beloved running to her. Well not to her, she mentally corrected, but rather towards her.

It was a blessing, as it was rare that she ran into Mamoru anymore; the man avoided her like she was the Black Plague. Though he hadn't meant to let it slip, she knew from Motoki-onii-chan. that Mamoru now only came to the arcade when she was in school or when he knew she wasn't able to. If it wasn't for the Black Moon's attacks, she doubted she would be able to see him at all.

However, while it was a blessing, Usagi also found it quite telling of his state of mind to see him running at this time of day. Mamoru ran for the benefits to his health and to keep in shape so he could be at his best to fight their enemies; however, he also ran when he was troubled or had a lot on his mind. He was also a creature of habit that preferred to run in the mornings during the warmer seasons because of the cooler temperatures. To see him running in the afternoon was a clear indication that all was not in the world of Chiba Mamoru.

“Hello Mamo-chan," she greeted him, trying to remain positive even though it was clear he was less thrilled that their paths had crossed.

Mamoru narrowed his eyes as he stared at her, his expression turning cold. “Don’t call me that anymore,” he bit out, his tone never rising above what was needed for her to hear him.

She swallowed hard as she stared into his cobalt gaze, a depth of blue that once shined with so much warmth, now chilled her to the bone. It was worse than being hit by one of Mercury’s attacks, when she hadn’t been able to dodge out of the way fast enough during one of Luna’s evil-Senshi training sessions. Actually, she thought, curling her hand into a fist behind her back, Mercury’s attacks usually left her feeling a lot warmer than her beloved’s voice did at the moment. 

“What do you want?” he asked her, dismissing her with barely a glance.

"I was just greeting you," the blonde retorted, the tone of her voice containing a bit of the sassy bite that it once had held during their verbal sparring in the days of the Dark Kingdom and before the revelations of their alter egos and past.

Things had been so much easier back then because she knew exactly where she stood with him and while his words had bite back then, they had never been cruel or caused her emotional bleeding when they parted. She didn’t think it could be possible that it just hurt more because they now had their feelings out in the open and had had a romantic relationship. It was more than that.

Nor to mention, he hadn’t confused her back then as he did with the continuous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde behavior, with Hyde being the dominant personality. Back then he had been an annoying jerk, but one she could count on to lend a hand. Not that he didn't now, but only when it came to fighting the Black Moon or helping with Chibi-Usa. Outside of that… well, she was certain that if he came across her on the ground with a broken leg and bleeding profusely, he would walk around her and make some malicious comment. One would think that would discourage her, yet she knew she saw something in his eyes in those rare moments when Dr. Jekyll would appear. He still cared, despite how much all evidence except for that 'something' that said otherwise.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

“Why did you break up with me,” she demanded quietly, needing the answer, but still afraid of it.“I want to know the real reason.”

“I already told you.”

“No, you didn’t,” she countered as months of frustration and heartache bubbled up inside and forced her to push at him, when in the past she had held back from pushing too much because a part of her had feared the answer as much as she wanted it. “And I refuse to let you walk away without telling me the truth. You said you didn’t love me anymore and I don’t believe that. People just don’t fall out of love. Not like that. No one falls out of love in a matter of hours.”

“They do when they were never in love to begin with.”

Her lips parted as she gasped, the breath getting caught somewhere between her throat and her lungs as her eyes widened ever so slightly. She felt her heart still in her chest, skipping one beat, then two, before beating so furiously that the rhythm hurt. Her lips parted over and over again, her jaw moving as she tried to speak, but no sound would come.

“Wh – What are you talking about?” she asked slowly, woodenly, as she stood frozen in place. 

She could feel the earth moving beneath her feet, the rotation of the planet spinning faster and faster until she was certain that she was no longer standing but floating instead. The few times she had worked up the nerve to try and get him to talk to her about the breakup, he had never said such a thing. He had said he no longer loved her, but never that there hadn't been any love, to begin with. And that couldn’t be true. She could be innocent and a little naïve at times, but there was no way she could have not noticed if his feelings and actions were less than genuine. It couldn’t be true, but even as she denied the words in her mind, she couldn’t block them completely from hammering away at the bandaged cracks in her heart.

“I mean that I never loved you in this life,” he replied. “Think about it, Usagi, before we remembered our past lives, we argued and fought. We hated each other.”

Mamoru glanced away to stare at a storefront, as if it was more interesting than looking at her, when he noticed how she kept blinking. It was a one of her tells, one that hadn’t changed since she was Serenity, that the blonde was fighting to hold back her tears. If she hadn't been trying so hard to keep from crying, Usagi would have noticed the pain and regret that flickered through his eyes before he had looked away.

“The only reason I asked you out after the Dark Kingdom was defeated was because of the feelings I had for the Princess of the Moon.”

“But I am the Princess of the Moon!”

“No, you’re not. Not really. You look like her and have her powers, but you’re not her. You’re nothing like her. Me... the other Senshi, we're all like our past selves, but you're the polar opposite of who Princess Serenity was. I’m tired of trying to pretend that you are. You're not the woman that I loved during the Silver Millennium. And why should I let the past affect my present anymore? The Dark Kingdom's been dealt with so our past lives can be laid to rest."

“But-”

“I don’t love you!” he yelled, although in his heart he denied it vehemently. "Get it through your stupid head. Why would I love someone who can't keep up her grades or walk five steps without tripping over her own feet? It's a miracle that you've even managed to save the world, although that's probably thanks to Rei and the rest of them being there than anything else. I'm going places, Tsukino, and I need to be with someone who's my equal and won't be holding me back because I have to baby her every step of the way. So just stop bugging me like a stalker and find some boy at your level."

He could feel her pain as surely as if he had been punched in the chest. The worst part of it was – the words were all lies. Lies that preyed on every single insecurity he knew she had. Lies that burned in the back of his throat even as he forced them out with seemingly no trouble at all. Forget studying to be a doctor, he should just go into theater because he had no business being a person who helped to heal people – not when he just had successfully hurt the one person he was supposed to protect and cherish with his lies.

Because he did love her; he loved her more than life itself and he would die again for her if he had to. It was because he loved her that he had to push her away and be an absolute bastard about it, although to a bystander that made little sense. He was doing this to save her life because there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she would die if they stayed together. His dreams had shown him that and Mamoru knew from experience not to discount the things he dreamed, particularly one that kept recurring every time he closed his eyes.

It was always the same dream, at least at the beginning. It always began with all of his family gathered, the friends he had let into his heart to replace the family he had lost as a child, to celebrate what should have been one of the best days of his life, the day he made Usagi his wife as she should have become long ago when they were Endymion and Serenity. It should have filled him with a deep sense of verity and peace, but after the first few times the dream had come to, he was only was filled with a sense of cold trepidation at a scene that should have evoked positive and joyful emotions. Perhaps that was what made the dream even crueler because it tormented him of a future he wanted before it was ripped away. The ending of the dream varied in execution, but the end goal was always the same. The destruction of the planet and Usagi dying in pain and fear while he couldn’t do a fucking thing about it but watch and listen to some voice tell him that this was his future if he continued to be with the girl he loved.

At first, he tried to ignore the dreams, thinking them the result of stress from the appearance of Chibi-Usa and a new enemy. However, the more he tried to ignore them, the more vividly gruesome and graphic they became. It was as if the dreams were punishing him for ignoring their message, until he came to the point where he had to give in and consider that they weren’t just dreams but a premonition of what was to come. And if they were a glimpse into the future, then who was he to tempt fate when he knew damn well the power of dreams? Hadn’t he dreamed of Usagi as Princess Serenity his earliest memories from childhood?

And while it made him an asshole to admit it, he didn’t give a damn if the world burned down as long as Usagi was alive and with him. But he could not and would not risk Usagi’s life on a gamble that this time his dreams were nothing more than that.

“Not…love me,” she whispered, the words coming out in strangled gasps because she suddenly couldn’t get any air to her lungs

It wasn’t that she had stopped trying to breathe. She was trying to suck in oxygen, but an enormous lump had manifested inside her chest. It made it damn near impossible to get more than a wisp or two of air past it each time she inhaled. There was a burning sensation behind her eyes and she curled her left hand into a fist, pushing her nails into the tender and soft flesh of her palm, focusing on the pain to hold back the tears because she couldn’t cry now. It didn’t matter if he knew her well enough to know that the tears were there waiting to stream free. She couldn’t let him see… refused to let him see the physical proof of what his words had wrought on her.

“Crybaby’s going to cry now,” he scoffed, as he turned and walked away from her, torn between wanting her to forgive him for treating her like shit while the other half hoped that this would be enough to keep her away from him.

He’d rather have her hate his guts and move on, even if that meant seeing her with another guy, knowing that she was alive and safe then watch her die like she did in his dreams. He didn’t dare look back, knowing that he might not be able to keep up the bastard routine if he saw the tears that were sure to come now. He wouldn’t be surprised if the heavens struck him down with lightning for making an angel cry.

Usagi watched as he walked away, not bothering to push away the strands of hair that had been blown into her face by the afternoon breeze. She watched until she could no longer see him and then slowly began to walk home, each step a constant struggle to hold everything inside. Halfway to her destination, she slipped into a dark alley and leaned against the brick wall, cool to the touch from having been in the shade and out of the blazing rays of the sun. She finally let go of the iron will of control, letting herself break down and cry. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she let out heart-wrenching sobs.

“I never hated you!” she cried. “Even when we were fighting… I wondered what it would be like to be your girl. To feel your arms around me… your lips on mine. Why couldn’t you love me? Why wasn’t I good enough for you to love? Why am I never good enough?”

She pushed away from the brick wall, turned around, and punched it with all her might. She relished the brief pain that it caused her, because for that moment it pushed aside the overwhelming pain inside of having her heart shatter completely. Looking down at her hand, she saw that her fingers were slightly swollen and the knuckles were scrapped and beginning to bleed. A normal person would have broken the bones in their hand, possibly to the point of never healing back to normal, however, her Senshi powers had allowed her to come away from the situation with relatively minor injuries. The wall was not so lucky as it now sported a dent the size of her fist. It was fortunate that she was Lunarian and not Jovian like Makoto was.

Giving herself a few more minutes to cry, Usagi grasped the strands of her control once more and pulled herself together. Focusing her attention on her hand, she called the power of the Maboroshi no Ginzuishou to heal herself, so she wouldn’t have to explain her injury to anyone. Particularly the rest of the Senshi since they were well aware of the force it would take for her to injure herself. She then pulled out a mirror and made sure her eyes were no longer red, calling upon the crystal’s power once more to cast a simple glamour so that there was no evidence of her crying before continuing home.

“Tadima,” she said, her voice flat and lacking any of the vibrancy that was there when she was upset or wary of returning home with a less then pleasing test score.

“Hey baka,” Shingo greeted her. “You’re late. Did you get detention again today?”

“Shingo, be nice,” his mother reprimanded him. “How was your day, Usagi?”

“Fine,” was her answer.

Ikuko frowned. Something was terribly wrong. There had been such a lifeless look in her daughter’s eyes just now. Even when she had been depressed or unhappy in the past, there had always been a faint sparkle of something… a je ne sais quois, in Usagi’s eyes, but not today.

‘Something’s not right,’Ikuko thought. ‘I’ve never seen her look that way before. What in the world could have happened make her look as if the world has ended and she has nothing to live for?’

Usagi leaned against the back of her bedroom door as she let her eyes gaze around the room, bile rising in her throat as she looked at all the details that either reminded her of Mamoru or what he saw as foolishness that she indulged in that made him think less of her. This morning this room had been a sanctuary to her, a place to hide from the world when she needed to lick her wounds or center herself, but now it was just a torture chamber, pouring acid into the shattered fragments of her heart. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, pushing back the negative emotions that threatened to spill out again, because she didn’t think she could shove them into their box until she was ready to purge them from her system, if that was even possible.

However, she knew that no matter how broken she was inside, she had to present a strong and positive attitude. Her friends counted on her to be unfailingly optimistic and cheerful to boost team morale all the time, well except for the moments when she whined about having to fight in the first place. Usagi flinched as if she had been physically struck, thinking how much that must have made her sound like the crybaby that Mamoru had accused her of being. It was true that she hated fighting and sometimes she dragged her feet, but that was usually when faced with a scary situation. For Selene’s sake, she watched horror movies from behind a pillow or the spaces between her fingers because she had her hands over her eyes. She liked horror movies, maybe not as much as Makoto or Rei, but that didn’t mean it was easy to watch the scary stuff head on.

In any case, she couldn’t fall apart right now. Later, tonight when she could lock herself away in her room, she could let herself go but not a moment sooner. She knew she already failed at fooling her mother, and that was on her for not taking another moment to pull herself together before walking into the house. She’d have to think of a believable excuse, because there was no way Tsukino Ikuko would let this day end without putting her eldest child through an interrogation to find out what was wrong and her mother would never understand how Mamoru had hurt her unless Usagi told her about the Silver Millennium and all the other past lives and revealed that she was Sailor Moon to make her mother believe it. 

Sighing, her eyes opened and she was reminded once more of her pain. Maybe she couldn’t let herself fall apart and cry again, but she could damn well do something about the inanimate objects that were taunting her.

Darting across the room with inhuman speed, she began ripping down the posters of her favorite idols and video games, not stopping until each poster was in miniscule shreds. She didn't even stop to think about the time, money and effort spent to acquire each one. Next went the manga. Pages were torn out and crumpled until every single one had met the same fate and there was a small mountain of trash on her floor. Her nostrils flared as she turned, her brow furrowing as she moved to attack the stuffed animals lying helpless on her bed. No wonder Mamoru thought she was silly. What fourteen-year girl still had stuffed animals like a little child? She grabbed the scissors off her desk and used them to help her tear into the dolls, ripping off their heads and yanking out their stuffing to join the trash pile growing on the floor.

Panting, she reached out to grab the last victim, sitting in a place of honor on her pillow. She stopped in mid-reach, her hand trembling and then curling back into a fist. She dug her nails into her skin, using the pain to push back the burning need to cry again. The stuffed animal was a pale pink rabbit with tiny little cherub wings, mischievous red eyes and a matching red bow tied around its neck. It had been the big prize of a rigged darts game at the Dreamland Amusement Park that Mamoru had won for her. The dart game had been child's play to win at for a man who tossed around steel-tipped roses while he moonlighted as the city's masked hero. There was another moment of hesitation before she forced herself to pick up the rabbit and mete out the same fate as the stuffed animals.

The next victim of her purge was the custom-made silver photo frame that Mamoru had gotten her for their one-month anniversary. The bottom right corner of the frame featured an entwined rose and crescent moon to symbolize the love between her and Mamoru. The frame itself contained a photo of them, standing in front of the Crown Game Center, on the first day as an 'official' couple. The blonde picked it up and flung it in the direction of the pile of trash, figuring all the paper and stuffing would cushion it’s landing. Her aim was off and it hit the side of her desk instead, shattering the glass.

Usagi breathed in deep, holding it in a moment, before releasing it slowly on a sigh. She bent down, sitting on her knees, and began to pick up the broken pieces of glass. A sharp flash of heat seared her index finger, as she picked up a shard the wrong way and cut herself. It dropped from her grasp, landing on the pink rug. She stared at the cut, the blood already seeping out from the wound and trailing down her finger. Her eyes drifted back to the glass and then back to her bleeding finger...

Usagi shook her head, grabbing a band-aid from the First Aid kit in her desk, and doctored her finger. She grabbed some of the torn and crumped up manga pages from the trash pile, using it to protect her hands as she gathered up the rest of the broken glass shards and tossed them into the trash can. Glancing around her room, she saw the jewelry box sitting on the white dresser. She swallowed hard, pushing down the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat, as she made herself walk across the room. With unsteady hands, she released the clasp of the box and opened it, pulling out the gold star locked by the gold chain it hung from.

It was the locket that she, as Princess Serenity, had given to Prince Endymion a thousand years ago on the night before the Dark Kingdom had attacked the Moon Kingdom. It was the same night that he had openly declared his intentions to fight with the Moon Kingdom’s army, essentially abdicating his position as the heir to the Earth throne, since at that point his father, the King, and most of the people of Earth had either been brainwashed or seduced into following the Dark Kingdom. The people who had stood up against the Dark Kingdom were either dead or had to flee and seek asylum on other planets. His choice had put him against his own people, something she knew that had hurt him because he cared about them, but his honor would not let him stand with them when he knew they were wrong. It was also the only way that her people would accept him amongst them.  

The locket was – no had been – a symbol of their love. It had helped her reach Mamoru when Beryl had hidden his memories behind a barrier and infected him with the tainted energy of the Dark Kingdom to turn him into an enemy. Something inside him had responded to the sight of it, probably because Beryl had not known of its existence or the importance of it to know she had to twist the memory of it as she had done with his memories of Usagi. The locket had stopped him from attacking her and touching it had cleansed him of the Dark Kingdom’s evil.

Now it was just more acid on a shattered heart. There was nothing left. Perhaps some would consider her to be over-dramatic to be so devastated by a man. Other women had had their hearts broken before; she certainly wasn't the first. However, the difference was that it wasn’t just some man who had broken her heart. He was her other half – her soulmate – and to be rejected by him so completely was as much of a blow to her soul as it was to her heart. She was hanging by a thread and she knew with absolute clarity that if the Black Moon hadn’t been threatening the Earth, she would have had a hard time continuing to find the will to live after the soul wound she had suffered.

She clutched the locket against her chest. The locket was a source of pain, thus it needed to be purged. Yet her limbs were stiff and frozen, refusing to do her bidding, like she had looked upon the face of the Gorgon Medusa and been turned to stone.

“Usagi,” Chibi-Usa chirped, knocking on the door three times to announce her presence before bouncing into the room. She had suffered enough pillows to the face to know better than to barge into Usagi’s room without warning. “The Senshi meeting is in thirty minutes. Luna adjusted the time, since she figured you'd get detention again.”

“Hai,” Usagi replied softly, breathing out the word and letting it end with a heavy sigh.

There was a part of her that wanted to hate Chibi-Usa. The cotton-candy pink-haired child’s arrival had started a chain reaction of negative events in her life. The hard won peace that she and the Senshi had won taking down the Dark Kingdom and then dealing with An and Ail had vanished the moment the child had dropped down from the sky and brought the Black Moon Clan with her. Not to mention the mother of all headaches that Usagi had suffered from having the child use her head as a landing cushion. Then her parents had given Chib-Usa the spacious attic bedroom that was nearly twice the size of her bedroom. She had been campaigning for over a year trying to get permission to switch rooms; it wasn’t like she was a little kid any more who needed to be on the same floor as her parents and it would have made it so much easier to hold Senshi meetings at her house or be able to talk to Luna freely without worrying about somebody walking by her room and wondering who she was talking to. Of course, the worst thing to happen was the breakup that had happened a few days after Chibi-Usa had come into their lives. It was hard not to assume that the child’s presence had caused one of the worst events of this life.  

“Wow! That’s a pretty locket,” Chibi-Usa exclaimed, noticing the shiny gold piece of jewelry in the older girl’s hands.

Usagi glanced down at the locket still clutched in her hands. She couldn’t just destroy it or toss it in the garbage. Somehow despite what had happened, it seemed blasphemous to treat something that had survived over one thousand years with such disregard. Keeping it was out of the question, yet maybe… giving it away to someone who would appreciate it?

“Do you want it,” Usagi asked. “You can have it if you want.”

“But it’s sooooooo nice,” the little girl protested, good manners warring with a child’s desire to possess a shiny new bauble. “This locket has to be very special to you.”

“Really, it’s not,” Usagi replied. Maybe it had once been a very precious possession to her, but now it had become a source of pain and a symbol of all that she had lost. “It’s just a trinket.”

Usagi handed the star locket to Chibi-Usa, who gave her a sweet smile and thanked her.

“Come on Usagi,” Chibi-Usa said. “We should probably leave now if we want to get to Rei’s house in time for the meeting.”

“You go on ahead Chibi-Usa,” Usagi replied, stepping to the side to block the child's view of the small mountain of trash. She was lucky Chibi-Usa had been distracted by the locket to not have noticed it; if she saw it now she would ask questions or bring it up at the meeting and it wasn't a topic that Usagi relished having. “I just need to finish cleaning up before I can leave. Mama will be mad if she comes in here and see the mess.”

“Okay,” Chibi-Usa replied and then added as she ran out. “But Rei-chan’s going to kill you if you’re late.”

As soon as she was alone again, Usagi dug out a large trash bag that had been in her closet, leftover from her last spring cleaning. She shoved all the trash into the bag and then grabbed anything in view that had a connection to Mamoru. It left the room very bare by the time she was done. A quick check of the clock on her nightstand told her she had less than ten minutes to get to the temple.

The only way she'd be able to get there in time was if she took a shortcut through the park because there were so few people there that she could make use of her Senshi speed without any civilians raising questions. The last thing she needed was to deal with was Rei yelling at her again for being late again, but it would be worse if a rumor popped up about someone spying a blonde school girl running in the park at a freakishly fast speed. Halfway through the park, she heard a familiar scream.

Usagi picked up speed and ran towards the direction that she had heard the scream, until she came across Chibi-Usa fleeing from a Droid. The Droid had long blood-red hair, pulled back into a braid, entwined with green leafy vine, that stopped at her knees and pine green eyes. The porcelain complexion of the Droid’s skin was an oddity as most of the Droids that the Black Moon had sent tended to have odd-colored skin that no human could have unless they were in cosplay. However like its predecessors, this monster of the week was dressed provocatively to entice men, which made her question if the final boss for the Black Moon was perverted and horny male. Then again they had had previous enemies who were female who sent slut monsters out to do their dirty work.  Although she had to admit this particular Droid looked more like the star of a snuff film than any other Droid, Cardian or youma that she had ever seen before.

The Droid’s coloring and her outfit reminded her of the DC character, Poison Ivy although a much sluttier version, which was saying something considering the character was well-known for her skin-bearing sexy outfits. The top of the outfit was little more than a string bikini made up of vines and two strategically placed miniature red roses – and of course it would be red roses – that covered the nipples, but nothing else. The bottom half of the outfit was a mini-skirt made out layers of different types of leaves that Usagi doubted barely covered the monster’s ass. She sincerely hoped that Droids wore undies, even if it was just a damn thong, because her life had been fucked up enough today without having to add mental scarring and the need for eye bleach.

“What is it with bad guys and their porn queen monsters,” Usagi muttered, glancing around quickly to make sure no one was around before she threw her hand up in the air to call out her transformation spell.

“Moon…Crystal... Power! Makeup!”

A white light bathed her body, dissolving her school uniform and leaving her naked as the day she was born. Glowing pink ribbons appeared out of thin air and wrapped themselves around her body, fusing together into her Senshi fuku. A familiar burst of adrenaline coursed through her body, a side effect that happened every time she transformed into Sailor Moon, which made sense considering more than half the time she was called to save the world in the middle of the damn night and obviously the bad guys weren’t going to wait until she had a damn cup of coffee to wake up and find the energy to give them the ass-whooping they were asking for.

The soothing boost of warm energy suddenly dissolved under the wave of prickly ice-cold tingles. She didn’t know the how or why of it, but every time she transformed into Sailor Moon, Mamoru got a psychic bat signal to let him know she was about to possibly be in danger. He had once told her that until he had gotten his hands on the orange Nijizuishou, he had had neither control nor memory of being Tuxedo Kamen instead being bound by the whims of his subconscious or the invisible thread that bound him to her and forced his transformations when hers occurred. The Nijizushiou had given him back control of his body, but had he still been unable to block the siren’s song that called to him whenever she became Sailor Moon. However, Mamoru had learned over time to glean information through their link to know when she was in one of Luna’s diabolical training sessions or if she was battling the enemy. He had, in fact, fine-tuned the skill that as soon as a Droid looked at her the wrong way he knew to come so she didn’t have to even raise a finger in battle.

While the link would be tugging at him, because she had transformed into Sailor Moon, he wouldn’t because he knew that the Senshi were having a meeting today (thanks to chatty Artemis) so he would assume that she was training. Yet, the moment the Droid noticed her presence and started to have homicidal intentions toward her, Mamoru would know she was in danger and he would come. He would come even though he didn’t love her – had never loved her – in this life, despite the complete and utter disappointment that she was the owner of the Ginzuishou, and thus had to be protected since none of them were sure what would happen to it should she die. Plus, chances were that if there was a battle, the Black Moon was targeting Chibi-Usa again and Mamoru would never let anything happen to the child.

There was no way she could handle seeing him again this soon. She wasn’t sure how she’d manage to later, but there would no avoiding him. Even though she didn’t matter to him, there was no way that Mamoru would stop becoming Tuxedo Kamen to help the Senshi. He was still the Crown Prince of Earth, even if the kingdom he had once been destined to rule was divided into hundreds of different countries and his people were horribly divided, and that meant there was no way that he could look the other way and do nothing. And of course, again, he wouldn’t turn his back on Chibi-Usa…

She raised her right hand up and touched the Crystal Star Compact that rested in the middle of the red bow on her chest. Breathing in deeply, she focused her thoughts on the Ginzuishou and mentally blocked out the world around her. It was rather risky considering the Droid could notice her – doubtful, as it was focused on the pink-haired munchkin, but considering how her life was at the moment anything was possible. But even still she knew she had to center herself when using the Ginzuishou to do something more intricate then a little healing and a simple glamour spell. She tapped the crystal’s power and temporarily blocked the invisible thread that linked her to Mamoru, so he wouldn’t be able to sense that she was in a battle. It might be possible to block it for a longer period of time or more permanently, but it would take more time and focus than what she could spare at the moment

Sailor Moon pulled her tiara from her forehead, watching it float above her hand and transform into a glowing white discus. She glanced up and located the Droid, who was closing in on Chibi-Usa. While the child was quick, she couldn’t sustain a continuous chase as the Droid could, and was tiring in her efforts to escape. The Senshi of the Moon narrowed her eyes, estimating the distance and the probable position the Droid would be in the moments it took for her to use her attack. She aimed and threw the discus, hitting the Droid’s arm and getting its attention.

“Who’s there,” the Droid demanded, slapping a hand against the cut on her arm that was oozing out thick green blood as she glanced around for her opponent.

Sailor Moon stepped out of the shadows, pointing her finger at the Droid in a dramatic fashion. “How dare you terrorize small children! I am Sailor Moon, the Champion of Justice and innocent children. On behalf of the Moon, I will right all wrongs and triumph over evil. And that means you, you X-rated botanical nightmare!”

“Die, Sailor Moon,” the Droid cried flicking her fingers towards Sailor Moon and sending dozens of razor-sharp flower petals – and of course, they were rose petals – at the Senshi

“You have got to be kidding me,” Sailor Moon cried, skipping backwards out of the way of the danger. “You call that an attack? A kindergartener with a peashooter is more dangerous!” She glanced at Chibi-Usa in her peripheral vision. “Chibi-Usa! Run away now!”

“But-” the little girl protested.

“Do it,” snapped the golden-haired heroine. “You’re the one she’s after! Go get the other Senshi!” The little girl hesitated for another second before nodding and then fleeing as instructed.

“Come back here,” the Droid cried, realizing that her original prey was going to get away.

“Hey, Slut Queen! I’m the one you should be worried about,” Sailor Moon yelled, as she took a running leap and kicked the Droid in the back of the head, sending it head first into the sidewalk that cracked into pieces from the impact. If Sailor Jupiter had kicked the Droid, there would have been a Droid-shaped crater.

If you had asked her that morning, Sailor Moon would have told you that she could happily have lived without ever having to fight another Droid this week. Especially, since the Black Moon kept sending them with more frequency lately. There had been days where she had been forced to fight two or three of the porn star abominations. It had been draining on her to fight and maintain her responsibilities of her civilian identity. Yet at this moment she was grateful and eager for this unexpected attack because it gave her the perfect target to vent some of the black emotions swirling inside her.

Mercilessly, she attacked the Droid with her hands and feet, making full use of the karate training that Makoto had given her. She dodged the few attacks that it managed to throw when it wasn't on the defense until finally, she decided that it wasn’t worth her time to fight with it anymore. She pulled out the Moon Rod out of her subspace pocket and aimed it at the Droid.

“Moon… Princess…Halation!”

She watched as it turned into a pile of sparkling dust, oddly feeling short-changed. The battles usually took longer and required the efforts of the whole team to defeat a Droid, but this had been rather anticlimactic. Laughter filled the air, sending a chill a down her back, before something whacked her in the back of her head. The pain seared white-hot through her brain, blinding her, as it spread through her body like liquid fire. Her legs buckled as she lost her balance, the air rushing past her as she fell face first towards the ground and under the pain she wondered if this was how the Droid felt when she had kicked it before.

Seconds felt like hours, and she gasped as an arm snaked around her waist, catching her only a heartbeat after she’d begun to fall and before she’d even had a chance to hit the ground, she was yanked back, her back pressed against a hard, male chest. The blinding white light began to fade, pinpricks of light swimming around her as her vision began to clear. She didn’t think as she turned her head just enough to glance up, curious about her savior. Oh no, she thought with aching despair, as she made out the hauntingly familiar pair of dark cerulean eyes. The man they belonged to, he shouldn’t be here. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could a cloth covered her mouth and nose, a sickly-sweet smell invading her senses. She tried to raise her hand to knock away the cloth, but he held her arms down against her body and not even her Senshi strength could free her. Still she struggled, refusing to give up, but it was all in vain.

Everything went black.

Final Thought from Usagi:

Mamo-chan...?