Author's Note: Again, thank you for reading. Hopefully you haven't been disappointed and there isn't much disparity between this season and the last. (P.S. Where's Mercury? She's somewhere. So is Venus. And…well, we'll wait until Season 2 really begins, okay?)

Last chapter of the Fiore arc. More to come soon!

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Part Three: Waking Up

L

The trip took longer than Fiore had expected. The Makaiju was not where it had been when he left; it had moved. He followed the constant trail of pain it left inside him and finally, came to a dark corner of space that had been ravaged by the Senshi Wars.

He barely recognized the Makaiju when he saw it. It had shrunk to half its old size, and its bark was gray and brittle. No leaves hung from it; it was naked and bare. Patches of rot stained its trunk. It was like coming home from vacation to find your mother missing her arms and covered in bruises.

He cried out and sped toward it – then something stepped into his path. He slammed into it.

"Fiore," said a contemptuous voice.

He looked up. "Alin?"

"And Anne!" His older sister appeared beside his brother. They both crossed their arms and glared down at him. "So the deserter's finally come back."

"What's wrong with Makaiju?" he pleaded.

"It got deserted by all its children but us, that's what happened!" snapped Anne. "What's that in your hand?"

Fiore's fingers tightened. He would share the energy with Makaiju, but these two didn't deserve one drop of Darien's beautiful power! He hadn't given it to them!

"Calm down, Anne," said Alin, ever the pacifier of his malicious sister. "If that's for the Makaiju, Fiore, don't bother. Any energy given to it just makes it sicker."

"What kind of energy have you been giving it?" Fiore demanded, looking at it again. Over the past weeks, its call had been growing fainter in his brain, and he could see now why. It was dying.

"Every kind there is," Alin answered. "We've taken from every species, from Senshi, even. None of it works!"

"Of course it doesn't it you take it!" Fiore cried. "The Makaiju has to be given energy, freely!"

"Shut up!" Anne slapped him. "What do you know, anyway? You haven't been here! You don't know what it's been like! No one GIVES their energy anymore. Everyone's too scared and selfish – like YOU."

"Anne." Alin placed a hand on his sister's shoulder. "You're going to wake – "

"Too late." A pink smoke wisped over Anne's mouth, binding it shut. Fiore stared and took a step back. Through his mind raced all the stories he'd heard of the Chaos creatures that seeped out of cracks in the fabric of the universe.

"What is all this noise?" The pink smoke undulated in time with the soft voice.

"Kisenian Blossom." Alin went to his knees and bowed his head. "We apologize. Our brother arrived, and we – "

"Another tree brat?" The pink smoke expanded, stretched toward Fiore. He blinked, and suddenly there were arms around his neck and a chest pressed against his back. A mouth at his ear. An intense perfume overwhelming him… "Oh, my…what's this energy you've got in your hand?"

Fiore clenched it harder, but the smoke snaked between his fingers. The arms around his neck tightened. "Oooh…I've been waiting for someone like you."

Fiore threw a glance at his siblings, but they seemed as frightened and confused as he was. Anne stood close to Alin, clutching his arm.

"You see…Fiore, is it? Oh, what a delicious name." The perfume was practically blasting him; he felt his senses failing. "You see, Fiore…I'm an assassin. And I work for someone called Chaos…" His body stiffened. "Oh, yes, you know that name, don't you? Then you know that I can help you. You want to make all those people pay for how they treated…Darien, is it? Don't you? You want to make them hurt like he did? Make them…lonely." She leaned closer to his ear and breathed, "I can do that for you."

When you receive, you must give. Enlightenment spread through Fiore's soul. This was how he could do it – this was how he could repay Darien! Make all the beings who ignored him pay!

A flower materialized in his palm, pink and delicate and seductive. The perfume was heavenly. Heavenly and powerful, just like Darien…

I will give you everything, it whisperd to him. All you have to do is give me to him. I am the most beautiful flower…

L

Suddenly, one day, he was alive.

He woke up with no one around him. He woke up in an empty room, in a white bed. He knew he was alive because, well, he simply knew, didn't he?

He had fallen back asleep. He had dreamed of screams and blood, hands grasping for him. He had woken up screaming. There were more people around him, all in white holding him down, and he screamed even more. He didn't know how long his screams had lasted; long enough that when finally one of the people held up a needle, his voice was too hoarse to express the fresh terror erupting within him. A sharp, short pain, and he slid into the reaching hands and blood again.

There is no time in dreams.

Dreams warp time, stretching it or squeezing it. He was trapped in the world of rattling almost-corpses and thickening fog for as long as the tranquilizer lasted, and that was eternity.

He forced his way free early, and when he woke, there was enough tranquilizer still left in his blood that he could only lie and stare, eyes red rimmed, at the clock on the wall. There were strange colors reflected on it.

His heart had begun to thump. The colors were moving, swirling. His heart began to beat so fast it was skipping. The colors formed a face; the clock's hands were reaching for him, and blood was streaming down the wall beneath the clock –

The door slammed open. Tears were streaming from his eyes, but he could not move, still gripped in the tranquilizer's paralysis. The people who had held him down and paralyzed him before were streaming in again now, shouting and yelling, and the hand was closer to him, inching closer, blood dripping from its closed fist to his skin, hot and burning –

Electric pain buckled his body. A shriek rose and died in his throat, its soul emerging as a puff of air from his parted mouth. His body buckled again – he burst into loud, wailing tears. He tried to pull them off of him, but his hands were like flowers flopping uselessly in a wind.

They ran more tubes and wires all through him, then, and one of them stayed to sit beside his bed. They tried to talk to him, but he cringed away, avoiding their gaze as if it was the most important thing in the world. His eyes flicked to that clock, again and again, checking. But it was again only a clock, its only face that of twelve numbers.

The person beside his bed noticed his eyes' fearful flicking toward the clock, and he called someone in to take it away. He relaxed a little bit.

It was a bad idea.

He was drowsing, suspended in that halfway hammock between sleep and awake. The hands could not get him if he did not sleep.

It was dark. The light from the machines, and a crack of light from the hallway were the only exceptions.

Something made his spine stiffen. His breathing, made audible by the tube beneath his nose, quickened, roughened. He stared at his covers very hard; if you could not see the monsters, they were not there.

Wake up. Wake up!

There was a hand inside him, squeezing a rib. His eyes were impossibly wide with the terror that flooded him. The hand reached through him and into his hand as though it were a glove it was pulling on. It pushed him up from the mattress and turned him around.

A shadow stared at him, crouched on the floor in front of the window.

He screamed. The hand inside his hand squeezed. There was bright light.

The people rushed in.

"What's wrong?"

Arms seized him and slid him back to the pillow, pressing at his wrists, his throat. "Darien, what's wrong?"

He fought away from them, pointing at the shadow now lying crumpled on the floor. They looked where he was pointing, but turned back to them.

"Shhh," they said. "There's nothing there. Nothing's there."

And then they gave him another tranquilizer.

Tears streaked his face when he woke up the next day. He pushed back the bile in his throat and looked at his hand. No one else's hand was in it now. He concentrated and squeezed it into a fist.

Nothing happened. No flash of light. Despair flooded him, darkness crowding in around his eyes. He uncurled his fingers.

A flower sat within it. Small, ragged at its petal edges, as though someone had torn it and then squeezed it together.

The first apparition he saw that didn't try to kill him was Fiore.

He found him in the rain one day and dragged him back to the hospital, planning to make him tell why all these things had happened to him. He had learned to make flowers that had very sharp stems and could make people bleed. He had tried it on himself, and on a nurse he really didn't like. They had both bled, though his blood had disappeared in a sparkle of light, and the nurse's hadn't.

When the strange boy he'd picked up woke up, however, he was crying. Tears were leaking from his strange red eyes, and he was making quiet noises.

He glanced at the spot on the wall where the clock had been, but nothing was happening. He looked at the flowers he kept under his bed, and they shrugged at him.

It was raining outside, and he padded in his hospital slippers to the window. He stared very hard at the clouds. A fork of lightning carved the shape of a tree in the shadows of a cloud.

He returned to stand beside the bed. "What's wrong?" he said. "You miss a tree?"

They became friends after that.

The people in the hospital never noticed Fiore, just as they had never noticed the shadow on the floor. He had been too afraid to move it, but fear that paralyses one person turns into laughter between two people. Together, he and Fiore dragged the light black heap out of his room and down onto a landing in one of the stairwells. They waited until someone came through to watch and see if they would trip over it, but they walked through it as if it wasn't there.

When he dreamed, Fiore woke him up before he started screaming. The doctors stopped giving him sleeping medication. They played outside in the hospital gardens, and he laughed when the other children could not see Fiore. Before, they had been the ones to shun him; now, he could shun them. With Fiore, he grew stronger, braver, tougher. When one is alone, one does not hide one's weaknesses. When one is with others, one hides one's weaknesses. In that alone, Fiore was the one who made it possible for him to survive.

Fiore was his first anchor. The first rope he found to tie himself down to an identity. The first person with whom he felt alive. He had melted the ice hiding the soil so that someday Darien's life could become a garden instead of remaining a barren tundra.

L

In the middle of the comet was a bare patch of rock in the middle of a solid pink field of flowers. Fiore stood in the middle of it, hair the same shade as the flowers as it fell down his back. Behind him floated a huge crystal, dark and at least ten feet tall. It was apparently filled with liquid, for Darien floated within it, suspended. Around the both of them were dozens, perhaps hundreds of the flower-spiders like the ones on Earth.

"GO!" Helios shouted, and bucked.

Sailor Moon, ready, pushed off from his back even as his buck thrust her up. She drew her tiara from her forehead as she somersaulted, stretching it with her mind into a sword and deflecting all the attacks – mainly root limbs – hurled at her as she hurtled down toward Darien. She could smell the ozone as Jupiter cocooned herself in lightning to shield her own body. That meant this comet had some small atmosphere, then. She congratulated herself on that realization. So Earth Space did come in handy, after all, as Darien had promised her it would.

In that small moment of distraction, a single root penetrated her defense, and it whipped her into the field of flowers.

"Darn it," she muttered, rolling and leaping to her feet once more. She held her elongated tiara before her again, like a bo staff on guard.

Roots flashed out like tendrils once more. She batted them away, each stroke chopping off several and leaving them to writhe on the ground before her. To her shocked dismay, new roots zoomed out of them like pimples on a teenager's face, and grabbed her ankles. Then they slithered up her like electrified snakes at lightning speed, pinning her arms to her torso and her legs together.

A flick of her wrist cut through the roots – but they sprouted new growth again and merely wrapped around her again – and again and again and again as she repeated the process.

"Tiara Stardust!" she grunted, arching her neck to keep it out of the stranglehold of a particularly eager root. Sparkles showered down, and the vines crumbled to ash. Moon launched into a power jump again before all the remnants had even fallen from her, eager to escape the new roots that were sure to follow.

This was no good. She needed a spare second to tug on the rope, to find Darien. She couldn't do that while she had to focus on the Victoria's Secret Models From Space.

"Jupiter!" she shouted, dropping down to the ground again and calling 'Tiara Stardust!" at the same time to shoot stardust from the edge of the tiara sword's blade.

"Coming!" Jupiter hollered, and four aliens later she was in front of Serena. "Hey, let me show you a new attack I learned – COCONUT CYCLONE!"

Sailor Moon smiled at her, but her eyes were already sliding out of focus as she reached for the rope.

Darien's sense was nearly hidden from her, like a statue completely grown over with moss. She began to claw at it. It was like shoveling water; it just poured back in.

"STOP IT!" Sailor Moon screamed at last, perspiration flung from her forehead as she spun around to face Fiore with Kisenian on his lapel.

Her sword pulsed gold, and sparkles pulsed outward in a huge ripple. Every flowerwoman shrieked and fluttered to the ground as a limp pink flower.

There was a horrible, multi-voiced laugh, and Kisenian unfurled on Fiore's lapel. "Stop what, my dear?"

"Let him BE!" Moon's voice cracked in the middle; she was breathless from the exertion of digging so hard. She glared at Kisenian. She had not felt kindly disposed toward the flower-being the first time she had seen it, but if she had felt dislike then, that was nothing to the nauseating anger that swept over her now. To take someone's dream and use it to destroy them, to destroy what they loved…it was the cruelest, most evil action she had ever heard of. Even Beryl, and what she had done to Zoicite and to Mina did not seem to compare to this.

Kisenian flashed fangs at Sailor Moon in a smile.

"Don't worry, child." Her laugh had the sound of a giggle but the derision of a cackle. "The prince still hasn't let me reach him under all that. He's still in that little hideout of his." She laughed again. "But don't worry, I haven't given up."

Sailor Moon flicked a glance at Helios. A bright red cut stood out garishly on his white front flank, but he returned her gaze quite steadily. He blurred from sight.

"What is it doing?" demanded Kisenian sharply.

Sailor Moon smiled. "Don't worry."

Kisenian returned her grin with a look of poison. "About a disfigured little thing like you, I wouldn't. Would you, Fiore?" She tilted her tiny, delicate head up toward the alien.

"The only way an ugly girl like you could have caught Darien is through witchery." Fiore glared at Sailor Moon through red eyes.

His gaze was like fire on her face, and she knew that somehow they knew she was the scarred girl from the arcade. And their words hurt, hurt like salt in a wound. Her eyes stung despite herself. It seemed ridiculous for someone as high up as a Chaos assassin to insult her looks, and that made it hurt even more.

"What should we do to her, Fiore, darling?"

Fiore's eyes stayed on Sailor Moon's. "Kill her."

The next events happened in rather quick succession.

Fiore gasped and fell to the ground. Pink smoke gushed out of him, and the flower on his lapel fluttered to the ground. Gold light flashed, and crystal shattered outward.

Sailor Moon crouched and shielded her eyes with an arm. The rest of her face she left uncovered because what difference would more scars make?

No shards reached her, however; she heard them clatter to the ground. She opened her eyes.

Tuxedo Mask stood dripping on the stone, his mask and hat gone but a spiky green and pink weed gripped in his gloved hand.

"Darien!" The gasp came from Fiore. The clothing he wore was blue now, no longer scarlet, without the flower on his chest.

Something nudged Moon's shoulder. She looked. Helios was at her shoulder, his horse jaw brushing hers, watching Darien and Fiore intently.

Sailor Moon looked around. She found Sailor Jupiter a few meters away. Their eyes met, but both girls wordlessly agreed not to move.

"Darien," said Fiore again.

Tuxedo Mask took a step forward, but he did not move closer to Fiore. He looked like a lost dog, wet hair dripping in his glowing eyes.

"You fear me." Fiore's voice held the sadness that Sailor Venus's had held when she spoke to Jupiter.

"Can you blame me?" said Darien.

His voice, too, held sadness. It was a voice Serena had never heard him use before. In Darien's voice she had heard wryness, amusement, anger, rage, irritation, weariness, fear. But not sadness. It was like turning around at the grocery store one day and finding a brand-new flavor of ice cream sitting in the freezer. A very simple flavor, like chocolate. A flavor you couldn't believe you'd never tasted before.

Perhaps Fiore thought the same thing. He began to cry. Soft, tearing sounds with slow, trickling tears. Serena realized he was only their age, perhaps even younger than she was. She thought of the distant look on Darien's face when he had talked about being in the hospital. She thought of how lonely he must have been, though he hadn't said it aloud, and she thought of how she had felt, months ago, crying alone in her bed because she didn't have friends anymore. She pictured a young Darien, smiling his first smile ever as he played with a young Fiore.

With Serena there, Fiore's got a chance.

She looked at Fiore. Tears were trickling down his face.

"I went home…" He inhaled shakily. His words were punctuated by shuddering, drags of breath. "…and she was there. Makaiju was dying, and Kisenian Blossom saw your rose, Darien. She found you because of me, and I'm sorry – I came here and you didn't remember me, you were so happy and you had people and I was still alone – !"

His voice broke again. "I wanted to protect you like you took care of me, but it was my fault – it was my fault – "

Serena never believed that Fiore made this heartbreaking speech to distract them. From the very bottom of her heart, she believed Fiore's sincerity, and nothing ever convinced her otherwise.

But whether he intended it or not, Fiore's speech did distract Darien from the weed wriggling slowly out of his fist. And Darien's lapse in attention haunted him for the rest of life.

The weed hit the ground and disappeared. Pink light shot from Fiore's crying eyes. His back went rigid, spine straining against his skin like a ridge of mountains. Pink tendrils entwined with his limbs like a lover's embrace, and Kisenian's head, in full size, propped itself on his shoulder, hair spilling around his neck.

"Hello," she purred.

Helios took a step forward, in front of Sailor Moon.

Fiore, veins corded in his neck, let out a strangled howl. Kisenian laughed, the mirthful sound mixing with the anguished in an unholy blend.

"Struggle all you want, little flower," she said. "You don't have the power to escape me. I'll make you kill the girls in front of him, and then you can torture him yourself until we get the information we need." She glanced up, lashes long. "Unless you'd like to just tell us where the princess is now, Your Majesty?"

Darien's teeth were clenched. Fiore made another noise, and Darien took a half-step forward.

"Let him go!"

"Tell me where she is," said Kisenian, perfectly unintimidated.

Sailor Moon stepped forward; Helios took another to stay in front of her. "We're just reincarnations! We don't know where she is!"

"Close your mouth, little peasant." Kisenian's lip curled in disdain. "Of course you don't. All you are is an extra wall to protect the princess. The human sacrifices are given orders, not information." She frowned suddenly. "Stop!"

Fiore, during this little exchange, had been lurching, wobbling drunkenly closer to Sailor Moon.

"Stop!" commanded Kisenian again. More voices were in her voice, as though the extra voices added pressure and power.

"I'm…going to…kill her," Fiore rasped. A string of saliva swung from his lower lip.

Kisenian relaxed slightly. "See what a willing pet?" she said to Darien, stroking Fiore's cheek with a finger as she spoke. "You should select your friends more carefully, Prince."

Fiore was stumbling closer and closer. Sailor Moon had her tiara drawn, but her inides roiled. She couldn't kill him! He was a victim! He was Darien's friend! He was trying to kill her for God's sake! That didn't matter! It did! She didn't have to kill him, just incapacitate him! She didn't know how to just incapacitate people!

She blinked sweat from her eyes and realized that during her internal debate Helios had moved in front of her, a solid wall of muscle and feathers. His horn was lowered threateningly. No, she couldn't allow Helios to be hurt –

Her tiara! She gripped her tiara.

"Twilight Flash!" she shouted.

Light burst out, but nothing happened.

Kisenian laughed at her. Her laugh was many laughs. "That may have worked against Beryl's magic," she said. "But I am twentyfold what that whore was."

Sailor Moon's hands were slick with sweat around her sword. She looked at Darien; he stared at nothing, eyes golden and blank.

Fiore suddenly let out a choked roar and charged.

Helios's wings shot outward, throwing Sailor Moon backward as she darted forward.

Then a wet, pulpy noise filled her ears – lasting only a second, but her shellshocked mind played it over and over again for her.

Helios's wings lowered to his sides. Sailor Moon was able to see what she had heard.

Kisenian Blossom inhaled a long, rattling breath, blood a small trickle from the side of her rosebud mouth. Her face was pure shock and rage.

Fiore's was pure relief relief; though blood splashed from his mouth with each exhalation, he was smiling. Helios's horn protruded from his back.

Fiore had impaled himself on Helios's horn.

"…Darien…" he croaked out. "Sorry…"

His eyes dropped closed.

Helios reared suddenly, Fiore's body swinging like a pendulum from his horn. "Catch her – !"

His voice emerged in a piercing horse's neigh. Pink smoke had begun to curl from Fiore's body.

"What's happening?" Jupiter demanded.

"Helios?" Tuxedo Mask was moving toward them quickly, cane in front of him. "Fiore? Fiore!" He ran forward. "Sailor Moon?"

"Stay away from her!" Helios snapped.

He shook the prone body from his horn, flinging it to the ground, and lowered his blood-slick horn at Sailor Moon.

Sailor Moon stared at him, her tiara drawn into sword form and pointing at him.

"What the eff are you doing?" Jupiter thundered. She bolted forward, hands outspread and crackling with energy to protect Moon.

Sailor Moon swept her arm out in a rapid motion. It hit Jupiter's stomach and sent her flying.

"Back!" Helios ordered sharply again.

Jupiter rolled to her feet, swiping the side of her mouth with a fist. Her eyes burned bright green. "What's happening?"

"Kisenian has taken over Sailor Moon."

"Oh!" Kisenian's multi-voiced voice spilled from Sailor Moon's lips. Triumph rang in her voices like a carillon of bells. "I – "

Her voice cut off. Sailor Moon's eyes swirled, white chasing black chasing blue. The gem in her tiara glowed like a searchlight.

"What's happening?" Jupiter had moved back to Helios. For all her bravado in battle, she hung back when things were no longer physical. Her face was pale. "What's happening to her?"

"I do not know." Helios, too, hung back. "I have never seen Kisenian before. She may be having to fight Serena-dono, or she may be savoring the experience."

"Damnit," Jupiter whispered. 'Damnit." She looked around. "Where's Shields?!"

Helios had sensed his prince enter Elysion several seconds ago. It had been hard not to; his prince's enraged presence had been spewing rage like a volcano. He had never felt his prince with such an aura before, and it unsettled him. Lack of control was what that fury revealed to him; not strength but weakness. Endymion-sama's reincarnation was not strong enough for power he contained.

Sailor Moon screamed, sinking to her knees. Her hands were buried deep in her hair, palms dug into her eyeballs. Pink hands slid up her arms to cover her gloved hands.

"Oooohhhh," Kisenian's multi-voice sighed.

"STOP IT!" Jupiter roared. Electricity crackled all around her body, but she dared not release it for fear of hurting Moon.

"What is all of this?" Kisenian languorously rubbed her face against Sailor Moon, against her cheeks, her hair. Her eyes glowed beneath half-closed lids. "All these walls, darling…oh…"

She stiffened suddenly, and another scream erupted from Sailor Moon. It cut off as suddenly as it began; Kisenian cupped a pink hand around Moon's jaw.

"Oh…" breathed the chorus of voices, and Kisenian's eyes fluttered shut. Sailor Moon's eyes opened, and they flashed crimson.

"So you spoke truth." The chorus spoke, but this time it came from Sailor Moon's mouth, with her voice woven into the unison. "This is – "

Pink smoke exploded.

Sailor Moon was hidden in the billowing cloud of pink. Sailor Jupiter shouted out and ran forward, but Helios extended a wing in the same method of prevention eh had used on Serena. Jupiter hit his wing and bounced backward.

She snarled at Helios, lightning crackling alive in her fist, but then a huge gale of wind whipped up. It slapped her hair into her face and directed her attention back to the cloud of smoke.

The smoke was gone. The sudden hurricance-force wind had whipped it all away. All the pink flowers had vanished, too. Only the fragments of the giant crystal Darien had burst out of remained.

Sailor Moon was a heap on the craggy rock, a tiny hill of white limbs and golden hair. There was no hint of pink anywhere around her body; Jupiter could not see her face; her eyes, whether they were their usual blue or not, could not be seen.

Jupiter rushed forward. Something grabbed her ankle and yanked her backward; she toppled to the ground. Immediately her eyes flew to her leg, and there was a green vine wrapped around it. Kisenian was still alive, then…

Then another presence pressed against her mind, and she turned. Tuxedo Mask stood a few meters away from her, his eyes blazing gold out of his face and the green vine's other end gripped in one of his hands. And in his other hand…

It dawned on her, in the receding tide of adrenaline. The wind had come from Shields. She saw the black ash that coated his white glove.

"Kisenian Blossom," said Helios softly.

Jupiter thought back to how Shields had made a tree nod and water jump. If she had not see that, she probably would not have believed Shields had turned into ash the flower that had been able to control Serena, but she had seen it, and so she could believe it. Found it very easy to believe, in fact. Scarily easy to believe.

It edged the rage she felt toward him for stopping her from reaching Serena with something almost like fear.

Sailor Moon did not move. Jupiter stood. The vine fell away like a dead hand.

No, not Sailor Moon, she realized, walking toward the crumpled girl. Serena. Her detransformation had faded into her frilly pink pajamas.

Shuffling and tapping sounds reached her ears. She glanced toward Tuxedo Mask and found him shambling clumsily across the uneven rocky ground, his cane sweeping and bumping back and forth in front of him. It was an incredible juxtaposition: the tremendous display of power he had just shown, and now he hobbled along like a helpless old man.

She did not move to help him.

He reached them at last and knelt. Jupiter, despite the vine trick, hung back and let him wordlessly lift Serena and cradle her against his chest.

"Is she okay?" she said roughly.

Tuxedo Mask's transformation faded as he stood and began stumbling again, this time toward Helios. Serena's unbunned hair dragged over the ground behind him like a wedding dress's train.

"Kisenian's dead," was all he said.

Helios took a step forward, then another. Jupiter mechanically followed, her eyes flicking to the still body of Fiore a few meters away.

Tuxedo Mask's steps were shambling, his feet brushing over the ground to check every step before he made it. Helios met him halfway, and he lifted Sailor Moon onto the unicorn's back, then stepped back.

Helios turned very still suddenly, as though carved from stone. "Endymion-sama, are you certain you wish to – "

But Shields had already stepped back. His look was apparently answer enough, for Helios silenced.

Jupiter did not see what that answering look was, though, she was gripping Serena's clammy hands and staring up at her.

"Look," she said, spinning around to growl at Shields. "Is she okay?"

Shields moved his arm; the Golden Crystal fell into his hand. He took a step away –

"Endym - Darien-sama," said Helios again. "The comet will impact the planet."

Darien stopped in his path, his shoulders stiff.

He lifted the hand not holding the crystal and clenched his fist, not turning around.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the ground shook. Jupiter grabbed a handful of Helios's mane, gripping Sailor Moon's hand with the other.

"Please climb on, Sailor Jupiter," said Helios before her heart had even started beating again.

She swallowed, obeying. "What did he- ?"

Then they were already in flight, swooping below the comet and she did not need to ask the question anymore.

A long, slender column of ice extended from within Earth's atmosphere and cupped the bottom of the comet in a a spiky bowl of ice.

Jupiter licked her lips. "Did…did that come out of the ocean?"

Helios did not look back at her. "Darien-sama summoned it from the Pacific. It froze in the vacuum of space."

Jupiter nodded slowly. She remembered Serena sitting in front of her and propped her up against her, holding her limp body carefully.

"Well," she said, as if Serena were awake and she was trying to make her laugh. "Guess we don't have to worry about the polar ice caps melting and drowning us all anymore, right?"

L

Sailor Mars saw the explosion of dark gold energy incinerate the tree and the humanoids in it. Over that explosion in her mind's eye was superimposed the image of two women appearing behind her. She turned, and a split second later, they landed in crouches on the ground below her tree branch.

They wore fukus, both of a dark blue. They differed only in the color of their ribbons: one sea blue and the other dull gold.

Rei leapt down from her tree branch. She stood and regarded them guardedly.

They, too, rose to their feet.

"A destructive attack," said the Senshi with the lighter bow. Her hair was a peculiar shade of honey blonde. It curled down her back in soft waves. "Does it burn your hands as well?"

Rei stared harder at them, her fingers curling. How did they know of the burns her attacks seared on the skin of her fingertips?

"Fire is the most double-edged of swords," said the woman. "You are lucky not to have been consumed by it yet."

"She looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth." The other Senshi spoke for the first time. "Are we too uncivilized for you, Senator's daughter?"

Rei's eyes widened just a fraction.

"Ah, a reaction at last." The second Senshi smiled and stood. She took a step forward and cupped Rei's cheek in a large hand. "Are we, Miss Hino?"

There was a magnetic voice clamping Rei in place. She could not move. She stared past the Senshi's eyes at her hair. It was the same dull buff color as the other Senshi's, spiky at the ends where it had been cropped short at her neck. She saw, in her mind's eye, Asananuma's bright blonde hair and tight curls.

"Do not scare her, Haruka." The honey Senshi came up beside them and slid a hand over Rei's other cheek. "See her, trembling like a rabbit."

"I'm not trembling," Rei said.

"Your eyes are tearing," replied the woman. "I can feel the water beading there. Will you cry, little one?"

"I'll spit," said Rei, and she did, nabbing the taller Senshi in the ear with a glob of saliva.

Grimacing, the Senshi lifted a gloved hand and swiped it away. "Spirit, eh, Michiru?"

"Indeed, Haruka." The long-haired Senshi's hand slipped from Rei's face and twined through her arm. "You will get along with us just fine, Rei Hino. Just fine."

L

Asanuma glanced up, a shiver tingling down his spine.

"What is it?" Motoki stopped cleaning the windows.

Asanuma rubbed his neck, massaging the goosebumps away. "Just cold, I guess."

Motoki knit his eyebrows but said nothing. The rag made squeeging noises as it chafed the glass.

"What are you planning to do about Dare, Toki?" Asanuma kept his eyes on the dirt pile he was sweeping up. He heard Motoki get down from the stepstool and move it over a few feet.

"What can I do about him?" said Motoki, polishing again. "He's a big boy, Asanuma."

Asanuma emptied the dustpan into the trashcan. "So are you. But don't you like peple to help you out when you have a problem?"

Motoki sighed. "You know Darien's different."

"How different?" said Asanuma. He closed the broom closet with a slam. "Don't you think he and Serena are mixed up in something?"

"Him, Serena and Lita," said Motoki. There was a note of sadness in his voice.

Asanuma looked down at his palms, and there was perspiration glimmering there, like a reminder of the crystal he knew he would wake up to find poking from his skin.

"Has anything…weird…been happening to you, Toki?" he said, not bothering to hide the strange tone of his voice.

"Strange like stalkers bursting into my arcade?" Motoki laughed wearily. "Sure."

"No, like…you. Have you felt different lately?"

"Apparently you have." Motoki stepped down from the stepstool. "What's going on, Numa?"

Asanuma sighed. "Nothing." Stupid of him to think it had been happening to Toki too.

L

Serena woke only two minutes into the flight, with a long, gasping breath and a convulsive jerk.

Jupiter jumped, her grip on Serena turning into a vice. Serena's trembling quickly loosened her grip again, but she held her close as she stared down at the wide, watering blue eyes.

"Serena?" she said, the one word quivering with hope and fear.

Serena stared back at her. One tear pulled suddenly free of her eye, and then a whole monsoon burst out, all racing down her face. Serena squeezed her eyes shut tight and made a small sound. She pulled away from Lita.

"Serena," said Lita. Horror blanched the tone she had meant to be soothing. She wrapped her arms again around Serena's resisting form and rocked back and forth on Helios's back. "Serena…what's wrong? Are you okay?"

Serena continued to shake, her back rigid against Jupiter. She did not speak but jammed her hands against her eyes, into her hair.

Eventually, her trembling ceased. But the silence did not. It silence grew heavier and heavier with each flap of Helios's wings. Jupiter could not bear it.

"You…want to sleep over at my house tonight?" she asked finally. She did not really expect an answer, but she hoped for one.

For a pregnant moment, Serena did not reply. Then she moved, sitting up out of her hunch.

"Thank you," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. It sounded as though she were afraid to speak, as though she were letting only the smallest bit of sound escape her. For the umpteenth time that night, Jupiter felt fear trickle through her. "But I have to go home tonight. My parents are having a surprise birthday party."

Now horror cracked into Jupiter like a whip. Oh my God.

She had totally forgotten that today was Serena's birthday. Serena's sweet sixteen, and she'd been mind-raped by a mutant flower. Oh God. Oh God.

"Oh my God," she said at last. "Serena – I'm so sorry..."

"I'm the one who should be sorry," said Serena, and at last she was crying. Her shoulders shook, her words were torn like Kleenex into little shreds. "Lita…I've messed everything up…"

"Shhh…no, no you haven't!" Jupiter hugged the blonde to her, patting her back. "Serena, Kisenian possessed you. You didn't have any control over that!" She pulled away, looking down at her wet face. "And you didn't even do anything when you were under her control!"

Serena didn't look at Lita, she just kept shaking her head and crying. Jupiter bit her lip and hugged Serena to her again, but the blonde was stiffer this time, and she felt that she had closed herself off to her.

That was it. She wasn't letting Serena out of her sight.

"Can I come to this party tonight?" she said, because she knew no way would Serena hurt anyone's feelings by skipping a party they had thrown for her, no matter what the circumstances.

Serena swiped her face clean. Her eyes were still like puffy red mushrooms, her nose the same, but she smiled. "Of course."

It was a fake smile, but Jupiter wanted to keep it on her face. "So…got any hot cousins?"

L

Helios dropped them off at the corner without speaking – at least, to Lita. He murmured something in Serena's ear, but it looked to Lita as though the blonde cringed away. She resolved, for the umpteenth time that night, not to let Serena out of her sight.

Lita looked down at herself as they entered the front yard. She was wearing the same tank top and shorts over a swimsuit she'd worn to Serena's other birthday party. "Talk about a birthday suit," she said to Serena out of the corner of her mouth as she unlocked the front door.

Serena's reaction, if she had one, was lost in the din of "SURPRISE!" that burst out from the darkened living room. People popped up from behind every piece of furniture like shooting range targets, laughing and squealing.

Lita felt a surge of hatred for them, though, because there was a noticeable lull in enthusiasm for a moment, a split second of shocked silence that screamed "Oh my God, look at her scars!" They were Serena's aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, but they had not seen her since before the scars. It was not as though they reacted that way on purpose, it was just…it just happened.

Lita hated them even more, though, because of the huge smile Serena pasted on for them.

"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed. "You guys! I had NO IDEA!"

Their shock gone, their certainty that Serena was still Serena restored, good-natured laughter rumbled throughout the room of family members at her fond teasing. Lita soon found herself aloen in a corner of the room as Serena was swallowed up by family members – none of whom, she noted, shared her height or hair color.

"Hey." A hand tugged at her shorts. She looked down.

"Buji!"

"So you still remember my name." Buji gave her a frown. "I guess you got selective amnesia when it came to sending out invitations to onee-chan's other birthday party."

Lita, unsure of whether to burst out laughing or drop to her knees and beg his royal highness's forgiveness, grimaced instead. "I don't think you would have enjoyed it much. It was a total teenager party. Kissing games and all that."

"Darien-baka let Onee-chan play a kissing game?" Buji's mouth was open wide.

"Well…" Lita smirked a little, thinking of how Darien had cleared his throat and it had magically been Cake Time. Then her smile faded, the image replaced by that of a crying Serena. "No."

"Hmph." Buji crossed his arm with an approving sound. He looked up at Lita with his sharp, brown-eyed gaze. "Was this party a kegger?"

Lita gave him a Look. "We'll pass over where you learned that word and settle for saying NO."

"Hmph," Buji said again, and looked around. "Where IS Darien-baka?"

Lita's stomach tightened. "I don't think he's coming."

"Some boyfriend," said Buji.

Lita patted his head, which caused him to scowl, but said nothing.

"You should go get some cake," he said. "It's really good. Onee-chan's mom is a way better cook than she is."

"I can see that," said Lita, looking pointedly at the frosting on Buji's cheek. "And how would you know how Serena's cooking is?"

"She made lunch for us, one time. At Darien-baka's apartment." Buji grinned. "Darien had to buy a new frying pan."

"She's not that bad," said Lita, a little absently. "I will go get some cake. What are you going to do?"

"Oh, play with the young whippersnappers," said Buji vaguely.

Lita gave him a weird look but moved away. It was Serena she was worried about.

L

When he could no longer hear Helios's gentle wingbeats, Darien crouched to the ground.

He did not allow himself to think about Serena. Did not allow himself. She was only unconscious. If he'd paid more attention to Fiore in the first place, instead of fixating so closely on Serena, Fiore might still be alive right now. If he'd believed in Fiore in the first place and not tried to interrogate him while Kisenian was still alive in his hand, Fiore would still be alive. If he, if he, if he, if he.

He shoved back the what-if's. The effort was like pushing the Great Wall of China back with his hands.

There was a slight pressure on the corner of his mind, and that was where Fiore's body lay. Brushing his hands across the rocky floor of the comet, he made his way toward that slight pressure he felt being exerted on the ground until his fingers touched feathery hair.

He touched the Golden Crystal and focused.

In Elysion, the hole in Fiore's chest was like a gaping mouth. Rage hammered at Darien, and when he felt Helios's presence materialize behind him, minutes or hours later, he clenched his teeth.

"Leave, Helios."

"P-P-Prince…" Helios's voice was barely audible. "My deepest apologies – "

"LEAVE, HELIOS!" he thundered.

Helios's presence vanished.

Darien dug his hand into his hair and stared down at the body. That was what it was now, just a body. No more. He dug his fist into his mouth. His mind waded through the swamp – Fiore had been possessed because Kisenian wanted him, Kisenian wanted him because she wanted to find the moon princess, Fiore died because he was possessed, Fiore died because of the moon princess, Fiore died because of him. What if this happened to Serena, too –

No! His fingers dug deeper into his scalp, and he stared down into Fiore's glazed eyes without seeing them. Fiore had been his first friend! The first person he had ever smiled with, ever laughed with – and he couldn't even devote a moment solely to him, couldn't even give him a single second of thought without thinking of Serena, what sortof friend was he? He hadn't been, he'd let Fiore die, even more than that, had believed him to have betrayed him so easily, no even more than that, he'd dismissed him as a figment of his imagination, another of those hallucinations!

And would he have these hallucinations – would he have had them ever – if not for the princess? The dreams of blood, the shadows trying to kill him, the mosters that came after he and his friends, all because of the princess. He hated her. He hated her.

The depths inside him stirred. That deep, dark place he went to when he lifted the ocean, when he sometimes used the crystal; the being within it stirred like a leviathan as his rage at the princess roiled its depths.

Darien gritted his teeth. Let out a breath.

"Helios," he said aloud. "Return, please."

The white unicorn materialized slowly, tentatively, before him. Darien looked at him this time, and saw that Fiore's bluish blood had dried and caked on Helios's golden horn.

"My deepest apologies, Darien-sama" said Helios, his head bowed low, low to the ground. "I should have found a different way…"

Darien motioned the unicorn closer, tearing the hem of his tuxedo shirt off. He used it to rub the blood from the horn.

Then he allowed the being deep inside to speak.

"You did what I would have done, Helios," it said through his mouth. Was it true? Would he have killed Fiore before allowing him to approach Serena?

The being used his fingers to beckon Helios closer and lay a hand atop his head. "The princess is most important. Most important."

Darien went rigid, and that was all it took to send the leviathan back to its depths. He floated down, away, but the power of his presence lingered like a scream echoing in a well.

"Endymion-sama."

"What, Helios?" Darien snapped, his head whipping up. He glared daggers into the unicorn's colorless eyes.

"Fiore, En- Darien-sama," Helios whispered.

Darien looked. Fiore's body had begun to disintegrate – breaking into red ptals that floated away.

"No," he said hoarsely. "No! Fiore!"

"Look, Darien-sama," said Helios softly.

"No," said Darien again, for he was looking, and in the spot where the hole in Fiore's chest had been, there was a single red, red rose.

"He quested to find you the most precious flower in the universe." Helios's wings whispered against each other as the unicorn took a step closer.

What Darien wanted to yell out was that he hated roses.

Instead, he said, "Where are Serena and Lita?"

Helios's feathers whispered again as he stepped back. "Apparently Serena-dono had a celebration to attend. Jupiter-san attended it with her."

Darien hissed. Damn damn DAMN! It was Serena's birthday… He buried his hand in his hair once more.

"Helios."

"Yes, Darien-sama."

"What happened while I was here? When Kisenian possessed Serena."

"She did not take any action, sire." A thoughtful tone colored Helios's voice that Darien found to be on the border of sacrilegious. They were speaking of Serena being possessed. There should be only horror in his voice, nothing but horror.

"The closest emotion I could compate Kisenian's reaction to would be…ecstasy," Helios continued. "She seemed on the verge of a discovery, just before you destroyed her."

Feeling Helios watching him closely, Darien looked up and met his stare. Helios seemed to take this as a cue to continue.

"You realize, Darien-sama, what this means," he said, taking a step forward. "You have singlehandedly killed ne of Chaos's right hand creatures, a Senshi slayer. Not to mention that you have physically entered Elysion – "

"I don't realize, and I don't care," said Darien sharply. He was being childish, and he didn't care. "When Kisenian possesses a person, they're aware of it."

Helios fumbled, clearly unsure if this was a question or a statement. "It…appeared so, Darien-sama. From how Fiore acted."

Darien stood abruptly. "I'm going." He glanced one last time at the red rose and left.

L

Uncle Mori had given her a giant Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask pillow set. They came up to her hip and were cuter than buttons.

But Serena had hidden them both in her closet, and now she was lying in her bed with her arms and legs wrapped around one of her pillows and her blankets up to her chin. It was sweltering, but she didn't want to pull the blankets down. As a child, the rule had always been that if the monster couldn't see you, it couldn't get you. Hence covering almost her whole self with blankets.

But the monster had not been outside this time. This monster had been inside her.

She dug her cheek deeper into the pillow. She had headphones on, playing bubbly pop music to keep the silence from totally prying her nerves away, but the sound didn't even make a dent in her anxiety. Sleep was as far from her as Finland.

Only three nights ago, she would have reached for the rope to soothe her to sleep.

She would never do that again.

She felt dirty. One time, very early in her Senshi career, soon after she had found Mercury, a youma had attacked a seedy bar. That had been an awkward situation in a lot of ways, but right after the youma had been dusted and the people began regaining reconsciousness, one of the men had pinched her bottom. She had felt violated, as though someone had reached inside her and scrambled their calloused, dirty fingernailed hands deep inside her, and it had taken months for that feeling to sink low enough that she didn't think about it everyday.

She felt like that again now. Dirty and open. Kisenian had wriggled under and into places inside her she hadn't even known existed. There wasn't a single part of her now that was hers, and hers alone. Every single cell, every single memory, thought, hope had been touched by Kisenian, had her fingerprints smearing them.

Every. Single. One.

On the floor beside her, Lita let out a long, rattling snore, and Serena jumped under her blanket. Then, realizing that it was only Lita, she smiled. The tall brunette had casually said something about not having any groceries at home, but Serena knew Lita was worried about her and didn't want to let her out of her sight. She was pretty obvious about things like that. Just like –

Another sound reached her ears suddenly – scratching. Serena froze under her blanket. Lita was still snoring peacefully. Her headphones continued to wail about blue-eyed boys. She had just imagined it –

Scritch-scratch – no she hadn't. Her heart froze along with her body this time. She had known it was too easy. Someone more powerful than Beryl being gotten rid of so easily, no, she'd come back –

The window squeaked. Night wind spilled inside and pulled at Serena's blanket, like fingers trying to pull it off. She'd told herself she wouldn't, that she didn't have the right to anymore after what she'd found out from Kisenian, but her fingers scrabbled for the rope, for Darien –

It was slack.

She bolted up in bed.

A shadow crouched on her windowsill. Two gold circles burned out of the blackness at her. Gold like moons glowing in the sky.

She had always, ever since they found out who he was, tried not to think about Darien's relationship to the moon princess. There had never been cause to think too hard about it; he had always spoken of the princess as an annoyance he would like to be rid of. It was difficult to reconcile Darien's irritation with the princess with Luna's portrayal of her as an angel with Serena's own confused thoughts as they all risked their lives for a princess they didn't even know. Despite all this confusion, one thing had seemed starkly certain: Darien did not even like the princess, much less love her.

But Serena had merged as completely with Kisenian's being as Kisenian had merged with hers, and Kisenian had known as well as 2 + 2 4 that the relationship between the Earth Prince and the Moon Princess had not been just a passing fling or even a simple love but the bond of soulmates. Serena had read novels about soulmates, watched movies about them, but the weight the word held in Kisenian's mind was so much heavier. It called for italics and bold letters in all caps and underlined, not just 'soulmates' but SOULMATES.

The prophecy that Helios had spoken of was in Kisenian's mind. Not all of it, but more of it. The Moon Princess was indeed the being prophecized as the only one with the potential to defeat Chaos. But the only chance she had of living through the encounter, the prophecy said, was if her SOULMATE, the bearer of the Golden Crystal, fought with her.

This information had universal implications. But to Serena, all that she could wrap her mind around was that Darien, no matter what he said now, had someone out there that he was going to find and love more than he'd ever loved anyone before.

And he was going to help her save the world.

And she, Serena…?

She would be here doing nothing just like she always did. Getting possessed. Having to be rescued.

Yet perhaps this was her chance to do something. Maybe the reason that they hadn't found the princess yet was because of Serena's bond with Darien. Maybe the strange rope was somehow blocking their soulmate bond. Maybe she was, as the suspicion had floated in Kisenian's mind, someone sent to keep Darien and the princess apart. Maybe she had amnesia, like Darien had; maybe she was somehow being possessed like Fiore had been; maybe she wasn't Serena Tsukino at all.

Maybe she was actually the enemy.

That was why now, as Tuxedo Mask crouched on her windowseat and stared at her with the eyes she knew he couldn't really see her with, she said, "You should go home."

He pulled back. The small movement let moonlight fall across his face so that it was not just shadow with golden circles glowing out of it.

Memory hit Serena. There was something she owed him.

"I…" Why was he looking at her like that? Why was he perched on her windowsill, wordless, like a bird of prey? He hated her. he must hate her; she had let Fiore die. "I'm sorry about Fiore."

It wasn't enough. It wasn't near enough, she knew. But this was something she had to get out, or it would haunt her for the rest of her life and keep her from keeping away from him to keep him safe. "You trusted me to save him, and I didn't do anything. I'm sorry."

She hugged her knees, staring determinedly at them and not him, and hoped that he would go away. He needed to go away.

But he took a step down off the windowseat, into her room. "Serena, that wasn't your fault – "

One of Lita's snores exploded suddenly into a mangled "Huah!" She bolted up in her nest of blankets, hair mussed but eyes alert. "Serena!"

Serena leaned down to pat Lita's hand and do something – reassure her, tell her to go back to sleep, she wasn't quite sure what – when she felt hands grab her waist and sling her into the familiar cradled position she knew so well. She opened her mouth to do something - yell, reproach, reassure, scream, she didn't know what – but Darien muffled her face in the blanket he'd grabbed her up in.

She stiffened to fight him, elbow him in the stomach, and that surprised her – and, if his replying rigidity was any indication, surprised him too – but then she felt them sailing through empty air, and she didn't dare. He was blind and leaping across rooftops – she felt a surge of anger at his risking both their lives like that – she was young and didn't want to die yet.

He leapt off the next building in a millisecond, too fast for her to make a move, but she tensed her muscles to be ready as soon as they touched down the next time. And when she felt his feet impact solid floor again, she bucked, twisting out of his grasp and landing in a roll on the ground that brought her back to her feet. Lita had taught her well. Except… she blinked her tangled, unbraided, unbunned hair out of her eyes and stared at the landscape around her.

Elysion. He had brought her to Elysion.

"Shields!" she shouted,whirling on him. The best first step to distance, she had decided during the long hours of sleeplessness, would be to address him the way she used to, by his last name. "You're going to give Lita a heart attack! She won't know we're here!"

"She knew it was me," said Darien, detransforming out of Tuxedo Mask. He still wore the swimming trunks and t-shirt from days before. There was reddish blood – his blood – on his shirt, surrounding neat little holes in the cloth. "She won't get that worried."

"She will, and you know it!" She had to stay angry, that was the best way to stay in control. Kisenian had been able to impale Darien through Fiore; what would someone be able to do to him with her tiara?

"Well, she won't be as worried as I am!" Darien shouted back. He took a quick, blurring step, and he was right in front of her. "What did Kisenian do to you?"

Serena forced herself to meet his eyes.

"I don't want to talk about that right now." And it was true, she didn't. She was still untangling everything from Kisenian in her own mind, trying to figure out what was new information and what was hers, and what all the new information meant. She couldn't share it, not right now. "Right now I want to go to sleep."

Darien gazed at her. Anger boiled on his features for a full minute before he finally spoke. "Fine." He held our his arms. "Come here, and I'll take you back."

He was self-conscious, and Serena knew that. She aimed at that tender spot. "Is it really necessary for you to hold me like that to take me back?"

Fire flared in his cheeks. He dropped his arms and grabbed her hand. She felt a warm sensation, like sunlight…

And then they stood on a rooftop again. Or rather, Darien stood. She was, for some reason, lying on the ground looking up at him…

Realization hit her.

"We just left my body here!"

He had moved a hand to steady her, but she scuttled backward from it like a crab, then scrambled hastily to her feet. She felt angry at him again, that he had been so furious with her that he'd actually gone so far as to take her to Elysion when he knew her body would be left behind –

"Serena, I forgot!" He was coming toward her again, and in her agitation she barely registered his words. "I go there physically now, I forgot that you wouldn't – "

"Stop." She threw a hand out in front of her, staring at him. "Just stop, Dari – Shields." She mentally beat herself for slipping up so soon. "I'm going home. You're going home, too. You are not following me or camping out in my tree. Got it?"

She had planned to wait for an answer, but abruptly all her courage fled her, and she turned instead, jumping over the lip of the roof and transforming as she fell. Then she raced home, scrambling in through her window as though hell's hounds were at her heels.

Lita grabbed her shoulders she she came in. "You okay?"

"Fine." Sailor Moon panted as she detransformed. "Sorry about that."

Lita watched her. "What did he do?"

Serena glanced down at her as she crawled under her sheets. Her blanket, her beloved, decade-old bunny and moon blanket, she realized, was gone – in Elysion, probably, smothering some poor dream flowers. Another reason to be angry at Darien; she latched onto it like a drowning man to a lifesaver.

"Just talked," she told Lita. "I told him I was tired. And I am," she said, cutting off any questions Lita might have had.

Lita either got the message or hadn't planned on asking anything, anyway. She held up her blanket. "You can have this. It's too hot for it anyway."

There was a pink petal at the foot of her bed. It must have gotten under her blanket somehow while the petals were falling from the comet and been revealed now that her blanket was gone. She looked at it and felt a wave of nausea wash over her; a piece of Kisenian had been right next to her foot and she hadn't even known it.

"Um, actually," she said, swallowing back the bile in her throat and looking at Lita. "Could I sleep down there with you?"

L

This time Lita stayed awake until Serena's breathing finally smoothed into the steady, slow breaths of slumber. It didn't take that long, only about twenty minutes. But the little blonde twitched and tossed and let out little cries in her sleep.

Still…Lita crossed her arms, looking down at her friend. She had sat up and leaned her back against the bed to keep an eye on her.

Serena whimpered and curled into an even tighter ball. Lita leaned over awkwardly and rubbed her back. The last time she had seen Serena like this, Darien had been the one rubbing her back, murmuring to her. She tried to think of something soothing to murmur.

The rustle she heard behind detoured that train of thought. Her head snapped around.

"She's angry with me." Darien's voice was blank.

This was a bit of a conundrum. Lita didn't know exactly what Serena's sudden problem with Shields was, and she was the one who usually gave him a hard time, but he looked so desolate…

"She got possessed by a flower," Lita said instead. "Cut her some slack, Shields." She turned back to Serena. "And cut yourself some, too."

She heard him walk closer, then he crouched down beside her. As if on cue, Serena let out a little hiss.

"Did she tell you what Kisenian did?"

"No!" Lita whipped around to face him. "What happened?

"Just that – I don't know." His fists were clenched. "She didn't tell you, then? Hate to say it, but that's a little relieving to hear."

Lita looked at him, then shook her head. "Yeah," she said and paused. "Look, I don't think she's mad at you, per se. It has something to do with Kisenian Blossom."

Shields shifted but didn't say anything.

They both watched Serena – or rather, in Shields's case, she supposed, listened to – for a few minutes. Not a single whole minute passed that she did not roll over, whimper, or flinch.

"How do you know?" said Shields abruptly.

"Huh?" She shook away the thoughts she had sunken into. "How do I know?"

"Yeah. What…evidence do you have to support the conclusion that her anger with me is caused by Kisenian?"

She smiled a little at how he sounded so much like a scientist conducting an experiment and an anxious little boy at the same time. "Has Serena ever been mad at you before?"

"Obviously you haven't heard the stories about the time she gored a hole in my foot."

"I meant since you two found out who each other were," said Lita dryly. She still found it a little unbelievable that the two had fought together for nearly a year and never realized their civilian identities.

"Well, yeah. That whole week before we fought Beryl. And the time – "

"And when she was mad at you, she didn't just push you away, did she?"

"Well…" Shields paused. "Not really. More like she argued with me, kept trying to win me over to her point of view with sometimes bizarre metaphors."

"Yeah," said Lita. "I've noticed that too. Serena doesn't give people the cold shoulder when she's mad at them. She tries to fix us. You thought she was mad at you. Has she tried to fix you?"

"No," said Shields. He reached a hand forward, hovering over Serena's cheek. "But in that case I'd rather she was angry with me."

"Yeah. I guess." Lita watched him move his hand away without touching her. Was that strange feeling she felt washing over her déjà vu? "How are you holding up? With Fiore and all."

Darien's face went smooth, as though ice had coated it. "Fine." He stood up. "I'll leave now. Serena'll have an aneurysm if she wakes up and I'm here."

He leapt to the tree branch. "Will you get Serena to come to the arcade tomorrow?"

Lita's grimace was not confident. "I can try."

"I'll be waiting." He leapt away.

L

Serena went down to breakfast early the next morning, determined to make up her long absences the past few days to her parents. They didn't say anything, but her mother gave her a hug as she handed her a plate of chocolate chip pancakes, her favorite breakfast food.

"How's your first day as a sixteen-year-old?" her father asked, passing her the butter.

"Too sunny!" Serena joked, shielding her eyes from the eight o'clock sun that streamed in the dining room windows.

They laughed, and then Lita came in, rubbing her eyes. "Too early for cheerfulness," she groaned, and that made them all laugh harder.

"Pancakes, Lita?" asked Ikuko.

"Yes, please." Lita smiled. She and Serena's mother had become kindred spirits, trading recipes.

"So, Serena," said Sammy, shooting a sly glance at their father. "I didn't see Darien at the party last night."

Serena's father's spewing of his coffee distracted everyone but Lita from Serena's reaction. That was enough time for Serena to school her face back into a big-sister-I'm-going-to-torture-you-little-bro expression.

"Well would you look at the time you're going to be late for work Kenji!" Ikuko hastily hauled Serena's faher up out of his chair by his lapel, planting a kiss on his lips and dragging him out of the room. "Have a good day work hard love you bye!"

They heard the front door shut.

"Way to give your dad a heart attack, Sammy," said Lita, smiling at him. "You trying to get his insurance policy or what?"

Sammy grinned. He had a crush on Lita, a fact Serena had not disclosed to her friend but that she was now mouthing behind Lita's back to Sammy that she would do so if he didn't behave. "Something like that."

"So, um, Serena," Lita began casually, as though they hadn't traveled into outer space on a talking, flying unicorn and Serena hadn't been possessed by an alien flower being yesterday. "Buji wanted to see you at the party last night, but he had to go home. He said he'd be at the arcade today, though, so I said we'd go see him."

"Buji?" Sammy interrupted. "Serena's other boyfriend?"

"The eight-year-old one." Lita drizzled syrup on her pancakes, watching Serena surreptitiously.

But Serena nodded. "Yeah, we can go. Just let me get dressed."

Whew. Lita mentally patted herself on the back. That had gone more easily than she'd expected…

L

Logic dictated that the best way for Serena to keep from endangering the princess's relationship with Darien and thus risking the fate of the whole universe was to keep away from Darien altogether. And she planned to do that. But she had to tell either him or Helios about the rest of the prophecy first, and since it would be too cowardly to tell Helios so he could tell Darien (and plus, she couldn't talk to Helios without the Golden Crystal), she had to go talk to Darien. The arcade seemed as good a place as any, especially since she would have Buji as an excuse to leave.

He was waiting for her in the corner booth where they had first talked with each other after finding out each others' identities. She knew he was waiting for her because, well, she just knew.

Sometimes realization blossoms slowly, unfurling so gradually that it takes years. Sometimes it bursts into bloom suddenly, exploding in color and perfume. And sometimes it never blossoms at all. Sometimes it is crushed before it gets a chance to bloom.

Serena felt a wet little trickle below her collarbone. She swiped at it, dismissing it as a trickle of sweat, but what it really was was the nectar seeping from that crushed bud.

Darien held up a paper grocery bag as she approached.

"Your blanket," he said, his voice unreadable.

Serena took the bag, staring at him. Her eyes darted toward the counter. Lita merely lifted her brows at her.

She took a deep breath.

"I'm not going to eat you." Darien's voice was bland.

She sat down. "There's something you need to know."

Darien did not move from his ramrod straight sitting position, but she felt as though he had leaned forward.

His first friend was dead. She didn't have to do this – tell him. She could keep the prophecy to herself. She didn't have to tell him.

No. She did. She did have to. Because if she was, by some small, infinitesimal chance here, on this planet, in this galaxy, to harm Darien, she had to change that NOW.

She told him. Spilled it out like a sack of stolen jewels: that she hadn't existed a thousand years ago with everyone else as a Senshi, how he was the moon princess's SOULMATE, the rest of the prophecy. That without him, the moon princess would die in the fight against Chaos.

He stared at her, with his sightless but penetrating eyes after she finished, and his napkin was crumpled like a dead bouquet in his hand.

Somewhere, deep inside her where she did not acknowledge consciousness, Serena had hoped for – no, expected – comfort. For Darien to say, no, of course none of that bull could be true, it's absurd, in his logical, sarcastic way, and give her a whole parade of reasons why it was dumb.

Instead, he sat there like a statue, and not for her life could Serena tell what he was thinking. Nor dared she even brush the rope. It was not her right. Not her right at all.

"Hey." Lita had been conquered by her curiosity at last. She leaned a hand on the tabletop between them. "What's up?"

Serena looked at Darien. Her lips parted, but she did not want to ask the question.

Darien jerked his head. "You can tell her." He stood up, his cane hitting the chair of the neighboring table. "I'm going to go. Talk to Helios."

Serena made to speak again, but courage failed her, as it had last night, like a tide retreating at the last moment.

Lita slid into the seat he had vacated and regarded Serena intently. "What's wrong?" she asked quietly.

Serena tore her eyes from Darien's back and made them meet Lita's.

"Nothing," she said quietly, shaking her head. She didn't want Lita to know she hadn't been in the past. Because if more people knew about it, the truer it felt, and if it was true, then maybe she really was working for the other side.

She realized that a whole minute had passed and she was still shaking her head. She stilled herself and said again, "Nothing. It wasn't anything."

L

"Something's wrong."

Motoki tore his eyes from Lita and Serena to look at Asanuma, who was now looking at him. The blonde boy, like Motoki himself, had been watching the tense group in the corner booth.

"You think?" he said, but his sarcasm was wilted like a flower. He sighed and rubbed at his watch. A spark leapt out, then another. He clapped his hand over it, his eyes flicking up like a hunted animal's.

"Something has been happening to you!" Asanuam stared at him. He leaned forward. "You've felt it, too! Haven't you?"

Motoki stared at Asanuma, his jaw slack. Asanuma too…?

"They've been hiding something from us." Asanuma leaned forward, his voice low. He cupped his hand and opened it.

Motoki stared at the shard of crystal that was suddenly sticking out of Asanuma's calloused palm. His eyes moved up to Asanuma's.

"But we're part of it now." Asanuma closed his palm. He did not release Motoki's gaze.

Motoki touched his palm to Asanuma's closed fist. He watched the hair shoot up along Asanuma's arm as the electricity traveled up it.

Their eyes met. Eagerness burned in Asanuma's face, anxiety in Motoki's. They were part of something now, alright – but what was it?

(To be continued)