A/N Damnit, I lost a bet and had to watch the entire first season of Sailor Moon. Now I can't get the crap out of my head. This is gonna be the Usagi/Sailor Moon Momoru/Tuxedo Kamen instead of Selena/Sailor Moon Darien/Tuxedo Mask, 'cause I like it better. All the other people's names I mostly forgot 'cept Ami-Amy and Rei/Raye. So....
Disclaimer: Sailor Moon ain't mine, fools.

I had known it before then. To anyone else, I suppose, it would have been devastating. Beyond devastating. Like someone stabbing you through the heart and scooping out your heart like a shish kabob. Like yanking it from the knife and throwing it in a vat of boiling lava.

For some reason, I didn't feel anything.

Maybe it was shock, seeing him on that salon chair, holding his rose out as though he were mocking me. Still, I didn't except it. He fought, and he crushed, and he killed. He killed without mercy. He killed as though it were what he'd been meant to do his whole life. The dark, yet warm, glow that had sparkled in his endless eyes had gone out like a dying fire. His mask, once a comforting sight, had filled my stomach with such dread I thought I would feint. After, while everyone mourned for his lost soul, I stayed bright, feigning optimisim like a well endowed lie. It wasn't, though, because I believed we could get him back. It was because I didn't believe we lost him.

For months, and months, I'd walked around, thinking about his half smirk, ignoring the creeping branches of sorrow that threatened to engulf me like a disease, pushing them into my core and blocking them out. I had no explanation why, had no reason to believe that he was still Mamo-chan. My Mamo-chan. Not this ruthless animal with a dead pan smile and cruel eyes. I believed that everything I loved was still there, waiting to push itself out.

But now, as the very rose that had saved my life swiveled across my heated cheeks, leaving gaunt driplets of blood on it's flawless stem, turned against me in a way that I couldn't have thought possible, it hit me. It hit me hard. Like then entire city of Tokyo crashing down on me. Tears in my eyes, I looked foreward, knowing what I would see. It was then that I finally realized. He was gone. He wasn't coming back.

An invisible wind flew around his cape, letting it flow around him like a snake. He stood, perfectly still, atop a crystal overhang, despite it's cracked and teetering edges. The inner scouts were nowhere to be seen, still battling Rubeus, I assumed.

My heart leapt and for a moment I was reminded of what he used to be.

For once, I'd kill to hear him call me odango atama.

I gently touch my cheek, feeling the warm blood seep through my clothes, stinging my skin like acid. Tears well from my eyes and blur out my vision, a sudden, inescapable hoplessness overwhelming me.

"Mamo-chan..." I whisper to myself. And then I know, destiny couldn't save him. What was meant to be cannot. And, some way or another, it will all be lost.

I hardly realize it when he flashes forward in a blue and red blur. I have almost no tie to get to my feet before his hands, strong and graceful, wrap around my neck like iron vices. My air stops beneath them, trapped mid-breath. I gasp, desperately clawing at his fingers in a futile attempt to pull them away. I note, with contempt, he has skip the introduction and the witty banter. In the instant, I could have missed that too.

And, so suddenly I couldn't register, the pain I had been so obviously forestalling breaks through the barrier like an angry bull, assaulting every fiber of my tendons. My hands shake, the hopelessness finally cracking away at my thick skull until all I can think about is the agony of it all.

I tremble under his grip and the tears makes it impossible to see anything but his alabastor blur of a face, and the sadistic line of his grin. I resort to the only tactic I could think of; begging.

"Mamo-chan!" I gasp, my lungs wailing and bursting through the hems like an overstuffed pillow, "Mamo-chan! Please!"
His grip does not falter, as I knew it wouldn't. I rack my memory for something, anything to break him. Anything.

"Mamoru!" I wail, black specks of darkness gathering at the corners of my vision, "You don't want this! You don't want this!"
His victorious smirk morphs into an irritable grimace, his eyes flashing, "You don't know what I want!"

I hold my gaze, pleading for his mind to find recognision in it, "Yes I do!" I cried, too late for anything. Everything. I leave my mouth hanging open mid breath as the cool steel finds my skin with a vicious tear, ripping through flesh, muscle, bone, until I can almost feel the tip of his blade cut through my heart, letting all that once filled it pour out through the punctured skin. All I can do is gasp.

My body trembles under his grip, until his fingers unclench, allowing me to fall beside his scarlet rose.

I can hear a scream, maybe Ami's, a vicious, "You bastard!" echoing through my ringing ears, and I want to cry. I don't want to cry for my friends, or for myself, or even for the universe. I cry for the heartbreak I can almost hear, somewhere inside the shell that was once Mamoru, somewhere where he could once reign free inside his own mind, now trapped inside the one piece of humanity that the negaverse couldn't hope of stealing.

No tears come, the old ones dry on my cheeks. It's over. Chibiusa, once so clearly embedded in my memory, now fades along with my clinging breath. The invisible future she had described to us now flickers until it is gone, a feathery wisp in the long stream of things that should have been.

"Usagi!" they cry, so far away. It's a whisper in my ears.

I fall to the ground, next to his feet, next to his rose.

His eyes, now soft, horrified, staring down at me. They are not black as they were. They're crying for what they have done, but he can not bring himself to touch me, to make a sound. He can, only with his eyes, speak louder then any of the chaos around them.

"... I'm sorry."

And then, it was all gone.