**DISCLAIMER: Sailor Moon and other characters belong to Naoko Takeuchi, the queen of all that is manga. None of these characters belong to me. **

 

Author's Notes: Konnichiwa, minna-chan. I've always thought that Sailor Cosmos is one of the most mysterious, poignant, beautiful characters ever created. If you haven't read a translation of her appearance, do it. She's incredible. Because we don't get to find out much about Sailor Cosmos, I decided to write about her myself. Please send some feedback or review! I love getting your comments, and I will consider any suggestions that you have. After all, I am writing this for you, and I do want you to like it. Enjoy reading!

 

Rating: PG

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"What is to give light must endure the burning."

~ Viktor E. Frankl ~

When Stars Cry

by: The Silver Princess

The quill scratched across the heavy cream paper, the feather bobbing lightly from the movement, tickling against her soft skin. Her slim hand traced the graceful cursive of her letters, delighting in the feel of the old-fashioned writing tool. Absently adjust her cape with one hand, she blotted the nub on a spare piece of paper with her other and began to write again, the scritch scratch sound loud in the heavy silence that only her breathing also occupied.

'The heart is filled with many nuances that even after all my years I have yet to fathom. Can I distinguish the difference between delicacy and vulnerability, hardness and fortitude? What is the feeling heart? Mine is a paradox molded in beating flesh, fragile and strong. Sometimes I know not whether I hate or love myself for those complexities; they cause such pain, and yet I do not fully understand it. I still do not know who I am despite the length of time I have had to learn and discover…Then again, at other times, I am grateful, and I do not want to know myself too intimately for fear of greater pain.'

She paused as her quill ran out of ink. As she moved to dip her pen into the pot of ink, she looked up from her journal. Her violet eyes stared wistfully into blank space, blind to the bare crystal wall in front of her. Smiling faintly, she remembered the animated debates she had had with her husband over a similar subject: her name and his. She was Serenity, but she was also Usagi, his Usako. She had always been the rabbit, the bouncing bunny, yet now she was Queen, and surely, Serenity was far more appropriate to go by.

She remembered how they would tease each other, calling the other by the name currently disfavored. One month, she had vowed to always be Tsukino Usagi as her current incarnation had originally been named, and he had quirked a familiar grin and had murmured in that deep, husky voice traced with mischief, "Of course, my dear, darling Serenity." It had been an ongoing joke between them. Serenity, Usako. Endymion, Mamo-chan.

A tear slipped down her cheek, slow and salty, a small diamond glimmering on her smooth, white face. She reluctantly wiped the tear away, the moisture clinging to her fingertips. That good-natured teasing was gone, vanished like a wisp of swirling dust dispersed on the heartless wind. She closed her eyes wearily before returning to her journal with a sigh.

'So many memories have blurred together. If the question were ever posed about a specific event with him, I probably could not answer. There was just happiness; I did not bother to separate it with details. Yet, if asked about him, I could talk for hours. I remember every detail of him. I remember the way he would kiss the breath out of me and the way his eyebrow would arch at me when I said something amusingly unexpected. I can still feel the scruffiness of his unshaved face during those busy first years. The warmth of his breath as he pressed his face into my hair and moved against me and inside me.

'I remember the way we would lie in bed together, content just to be breathing in rhythm with each other. And then his arm would snake around my waist, and I would giggle, snuggling closer. He would kiss the nape of my neck with tiny butterfly pecks, and his fingers would twine in my long silken hair. I could feel his smile even though I could not see him, and then he would tease me, playfully asking if I were planning on a new color for the next day.

'That was near the end, when our daughter was nearly of age and preparing to assume the throne and when my hair was changing color for a second time. I had begun my long life with sunbright tresses, golden and riotous. When I became Queen, my appearance claimed my birthright, and my hair changed into regal silver, the same exquisite color as moonshine. However, as Small Lady was preparing to accept her birthright, I was the one changing. All agreed in some confusion that my hair was becoming more white than silver. He, of course, pounced on the opportunity this afforded him.

'Our marriage was full of loving banter, reminiscent of our first meetings. The emotion that had characterized our verbal barbs had not been hatred but excitement. It had been thrilling to devise clever retorts in their spoken battle, knowing that there would never be a victor only a fun-loving bond that would continue to grow between us. That entertaining pastime had continued through our lives, often lifting royal pressures from shoulders, especially mine.

'I love him so much.'

She laid the quill down as she stared desolately at her words. Another tear ran down her face, her nose this time. It hung at the tip, dangling uncertainly, before falling with a faint plop. The moisture blurred the ink, distorting the word 'lives' into a circle of fuzzy black.

She leaned back in her chair as she closed the book with a muffled thump. In her life that seemed so long ago, she'd never written journals. She was too gregarious a creature to bother spilling herself to something unresponsive and seemingly pointless, but now…she had to release her heavy thoughts somewhere lest they drive her mad in her solitude.

She waved her hand over the book, vanishing it to a place that could only be termed to a magical pocket. It was the same place she kept her weapons and her other valuables, mostly pictures and the old memories they evoked. She kept it all there except her crystal. That she set aside inside herself, dissolved in her blood and heart. It ran through her veins and lived in her muscle, impossible to steal yet ready to crystallize into a more potent form at her slightest thought. It had gone by many names the Silver Imperium Crystal, Imperial Millennium Crystal, the Silver Crystal, and more recently but less famously called the Cosmos Crystal. It was her lifeblood and her power, her blessing and her curse.

She stood up, and the sound of her shoes on the crystalline floor echoed loudly in the deserted palace. Here she was, the most powerful being in all the universe and the protectress of it all, and yet she was completely alone, unable to be with those she loved more than anything.

The light of the rising sun slanted in through the window, setting the faceted crystal walls ablaze with radiance. The light lit blazes in her hair, turning it into a white-hot waterfall of fire. She squinted through the window, watching the rose and peach tendrils creep into the dark night blue, lightening it into daytime azure. She turned her head away. She had held her baby daughter for the first time during a sunrise much like this so long ago.

She refused to look again at the window, knowing that the sun would no longer blind her eyes to the barren destruction surrounding the palace. Memories, closer to the present this time, welled inside her like bile. The ravaged wasteland had once been a utopia, but now, it was nothing more than crumbling, skeletal buildings with their empty, dark windows like accusing eyes and gaping holes pitted in the land like deep wounds in the earth itself. The once pure air hung heavy and acrid with smoke and rotting flesh, and the wind no longer wished to blow over the shattered remains. Silence and blood reigned where once love had.

Her hair floated around her face as she shook her head forcefully, banishing those useless thoughts. With a thought, she used her magic to materialize in a small room. She could have walked, but she didn't think that she could bear the oppressive silence she would invade if she used the halls.

It was a simple room, lacking the ornate beauty of the other parts of the palace. It was paneled with polished wood, and the thick carpets concealed the crystal floor. It was incongruous with the majesty on the other side of its walls, but it was meant to be more cozy and homelike. This is where she laid her loved ones, to sleep in comfort without the trappings of royal duty.

The coffins were carved in shimmering glass like the fairy-tale tomb of Snow-White, an image that perhaps she had chosen unconsciously, secretly believing they would one day wake as the enchanted princess had. There were too many for the small room to hold comfortably, but she was the only one who ever visited so she managed, not wishing to disturb their rest.

She drifted among the forest of coffins, her fingers brushing over the glass. Her face was outwardly serene. She no longer cried or tried to speak to them; she had shed her heartbroken tears long ago until her eyes had burned, and she had said all the fruitless words her lips could bear. She had wailed and screamed until the entire city had reverberated with her grief, but when her voice had finally broken with hoarseness, nothing was changed. Her heart had died not long after they had, and now she was a bleached white ghost among the departed dead. White hair, white skin, white clothes. A remnant of happier times.

Only her eyes betrayed her; those wide-eyed pools that showed emotion in a way that she still could not contain. Every tear she had ever cried reflected in those brokenhearted eyes, and still her face was calm. Her grief was a hidden web woven inextricably around her soul, binding and paining her with every moment of consciousness.

Her senshi: her wonderful, beloved senshi who were more like sisters than just friends to her. Each face slept calm and motionless, unresponsive to her presence as they had always been since they had fallen. But no matter how much she thought of them in sleep and rest, they were still just as dead. Dead. They had died because of her.

She paused at Sailor Mars's coffin and shook her head as she gazed down at her mystical friend. She sent a small flicker of power out, tidying the tousled raven locks. Even in death, the spiritual winds moved by Hino Rei, the psychic priestess and the Fire Senshi.

She approached the two coffins slightly raised at the back of the room. Her heart spasmed as she gazed down lovingly at the two faces. Her arms longed to hold them. She ached to shatter the flimsy glass barrier and to gather them into her arms and never let go. But she knew from thoughtless experience that their bodies would be cold and unresponsive and that her memories would grow too merciless and poignant to allow herself to continue holding what may as well be ragdolls. So she contented herself to gaze and wish.

Her reflection gleamed in the glass, making it appear as though she were beside them both, daughter and husband on each side. Her expression softened into an observable sorrow.

"I wonder if you would recognize me if you could see me now," she whispered mournfully. Her reflection only mouthed the words with her, and nothing else moved. She reached up with one hand to touch her odango—now heart-shaped to commemorate her lost loves.

But it was her eyes that most disturbed her. All through her life—her lives, actually—she had had sparkling blue eyes, the color of a warm and cloudless summer sky. Princess Serenity, Usagi, Neo-Queen Serenity. Those bright sapphire eyes had been one of the few things that had remained consistent through it all. But now, they were violet. It was as though all the blood she had since seen had somehow seeped into her irises, staining the clear blue with redness. It scared her a little to see different eyes stare back at her.

Violet.

Would the blood ever wash from her soul?

She shook her head, turning away from her reflection. "It is time to go," she announced solemnly. "The battle must be resumed." She hesitated, turning back to face her darling daughter, her hair still bright cotton-candy pink. She had not lived to claim her silver-haired birthright. Suddenly, her mother found new words to say to the impassive bodies. "I have been a coward too long. I have shamed your sacrifices. I do not deserve you, but I will no longer fail you. I will fight again though my heart yearns for peace. Eternal Sailor Moon will again live anew inside me, inside her new form. Her lessons to me shall not go unheeded, and with that matchless strength, I shall fight what must be fought."

She turned her gaze to Endymion. His black hair fell over his forehead, and she wished she could see his blue-gray eyes smile at her one more time. Then she turned to her senshi, the colored coffins bright like rainbowed gems. "I, Sailor Cosmos, swear this to you," she pledged, her voice echoing throughout the room before being swallowed by the carpets.

Her white hair swept over her cheeks as she bowed her head, conjuring a silver rose in her hands. Solemnly, she placed it in a half-filled vase, and the metal clinked against the crystal. She gazed at the masses of eternal roses scattered throughout the room in overcrowded vases, a veritable garden of undying flowers. Some were silvery buds; others were fully opened blooms that shone white-silver. It was a tradition that had lasted too long.

 She pressed her fingertips to her lips and then touched the cold petals of her most recent rose. "The final battle approaches," she whispered as she stepped away. Then the star-shaped sigil on her forehead glowed, and she was gone, leaving only a falling twinkle of stardust.

**Well, that's all for now. Let me know if you think it's worth continuing. Ja ne!**