Gundam Moon

by Raye Johnsen
raye_j@yahoo.com

******
"Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon" is copyright Takeuchi
Naoko, Kodansha, Mixx Communications, DiC and
associated parties. "Kidou Senki Gundam Wing" is
copyright Sunrise, Bandai, and associated parties. I
have no rights to any of these properties.
******

Chapter Six: Twilight Waltz 


She stood at the window, gazing out though the
night-darkened glass. 

/I can never let go, can I? You used to laugh about
it./ Her eyes closed and she leaned against the pane,
feeling the cool of the glass against her forehead,
remembering the silvery laughter, and the last time
she had heard it....

She had left her post, stepping through the Gate into
Terra Castle. She had judged her time well; it was
full dark and only one person had been in the Throne
Room. 

Sunken deep in the Obsidian Throne, Beryl's coppery
hair curled in a fiery waterfall down, over her
shoulder and across the armrest, onto the floor. She
did not look up as her visitor walked over towards
her.

"You shouldn't be here, Persephone," Beryl had said,
without looking up. Her words fell in the silence as
though they were cast from lead. "Aren't you loyal to
the Queen of the Moon?"

"I don't know," Persephone, Lady Pluto, had replied
into the stillness. "I guard the future, not the
present. And... and even I have heard the cries of the
people, and I can't deny the truth... And I love you."
She dropped her own eyes. "I don't know who I serve
anymore, not since I met you."

Beryl lifted red-rimmed brown eyes to Persephone's
face. "Do you hate me?" she asked softly. "For what
I'm doing, what I'm about to do - do you hate me?"

Persephone took the final few steps to the Throne.
"No," she murmured, reaching out to gently brush away
a few red threads of hair that clung to Beryl's cheek.
"I could never hate you."

Beryl's hand reached up, firmly trapping Persephone's
against her cheek. "This time tomorrow, I'll have
taken Endymion to my bed," she whispered. "Can you
forgive me that?"

"I can forgive you anything," Persephone returned, her
own garnet eyes trapped by Beryl's. "Ask it of me and
I can't deny you anything."

Beryl stood up quickly, forcing Persephone to take a
step back. Persephone's hand still rested on her
cheek. Beryl reached up and pulled her head down,
kissing her gently. "I will give you a daughter," she
said firmly, the words echoing with the strength of a
vow. "I take Endymion only to secure the throne away
from that tyrant on the Moon and to gain our
daughter." She had kissed Persephone again, and the
Lady of Pluto had let herself be distracted....

Another, more recent memory surfaced. Treize, his
coppery hair cropped short against his head, looking
at her through a vidscreen. "How many have died in
this battle, Lady?.... Give me their names later...."

But there had been no 'later' - no mutual mourning
away from the prying eyes of their followers. Instead,
only she had grieved for the fallen, a grief unfairly
overshadowed by a more personal mourning. 

Anne sighed softly, sunk deep in the memories of two
lifetimes. Which reminded her. She slipped from her
own room, to the one next door.

Marimeia lay, fast asleep, in the warm bed. She
wriggled under the covers, humming in her sleep as
Anne pushed the hair away from her face, as bright and
silky as her father's had been in his previous life.

"Oh, Treize," she whispered into the silent air of the
sleeping girl's room, her hand still gently stroking
her love's daughter's hair. "It took you ten thousand
years to keep your first promise. Don't take another
ten thousand to keep this one. Please..."

******

"Were you *trying* to kill youself?!" Quatre was
demanding, at volume, when Duo and Hilde entered the
dining room where breakfast was laid.

Trowa, who was sitting at the table sipping a cup of
tea, said nothing. He seemed completely at ease and
nonchalantly nodded in greeting to the two newcomers
as his husband demanded an explanation for the
unspecified suicidal activity.

"What did he do?" Duo asked.

Quatre threw a sheaf of traffic violation notices at
him.

"I see that *somebody*," Hilde said meaningfully, as
she reached over for the poached eggs, "is *also* a
speed freak."

"And *what*," Duo demanded as he loaded his own plate,
"is that supposed to mean?"

"That you have a lead foot, Maxwell. As apparently
Barton does also," Wu Fei commented from the doorway.

Sally did not comment, but instead fixed Hilde with a
penetrating stare. Hilde blinked under the scrutiny.

"How do you feel this morning, Hilde?" Sally asked.

"I'm fine. HEY!" as Duo filched one of her eggs.

"You weren't eating it," Duo declared, after
swallowing.

Breakfast resumed, and no other comments were made
about the previous night. However, all the attendees
kept a covert eye on the American girl as she ate.

******

The operatives were failing.

Below Him, the planet swam in its blue and emerald and
ochre beauty. Scarred, yes, but beautiful and perfect
for His purposes.  It wouldn't be like it had been on
their homeworld. This time, His people had learned
from their mistakes. No selfishness, no exploitation,
no war. There was room enough for everyone here....

...If they could just get past these Sailor guardians.

Who would have thought that such a magically-backward
world would have such a sophisticated defence system?
All the analyses had indicated a world familiar with
the use and practices of the physical sciences, but
woefully unfamiliar with the less tangible aspects of
the laws of physics.

On the whole, it seemed that the planet was just as
Baratte and her associates had informed Him - the
majority indeed had no idea of what magic was, and
these Sailors had been activated only in defence.

He blinked. There was something about that phrase... 

The Sailors were not proactive, only reactive. They
had activated in stages - more as the threat had
increased, but not any more than the threat required.

So, He needed to force them to see Him as He was - a
leader who would lead their planet to peace and
greatness.

To do that, however, He would need to expose Himself
to them. Walking up to them and introducing Himself,
though direct and with a minimum of destruction, would
likely not work. Previous experience showed that
leaders in power rarely chose to give up that power -
even when it was proven that the replacing leader was
superior.

So He would have to confront them and *take* their
power. Distasteful, but apparently necessary.

|Baratte,| he called her mind. |Attend Me.|

After all her poor choices, she had to do *something*
to redeem herself.

******

Hilde felt the eyes on her as she finished her
breakfast. Although she chose to ignore the stares, it
was a close thing. She sincerely felt like jumping up
and screaming "Yes! Yes, I *am* the embodyment of
Death and Destruction, GOT A PROBLEM WITH IT?!"

However, her French wasn't up to that. Which was
probably a good thing....

/And I'm not the 'embodyment of Death and Destruction'
anyway,/ she thought, with a smile. On one level, the
cynical self that had broken into Libra - /and
assisted the Moon's suicide,/ her newly awakened
memories assured her - was grimly amused by everybody
else's pussyfooting around her.

Well, *almost* everybody. Duo was as he had always
been....

/He hasn't been quite *this* chirpy since he was
Baldur,/ she thought inconsequentially.

But then, her Consort had never been afraid of her. It
was one of the things that charmed her about him.

/They believed Pluto,/ she thought sadly, her thoughts
returning to the subject at hand. /Never mind that
Pluto doesn't *know* me and never did. 'Her only power
is to destroy worlds' - as *if*./ She shook her head.
/But then, when did any of them ever get close enough
to see what I *really* am?/

Duo elbowed her, none too gently. "Want to see a movie
later?"

"Yes... later," Hilde agreed. /Away from these eyes./

******

But breakfast ended before the local cinema opened for
the day, so there was some time to kill before they
left. Everyone else had decided to come along as well.
Marimeia had been very insistent, as soon as she heard
that the new Valdemar film was playing. 

"Isn't she a bit young for the infatuation with
horses?" Quatre had asked, as Marimeia headed off for
her luggage - which had been delivered from the hotel
the night before - and her Rolan t-shirt.

Anne had shrugged. "Marimeia has always been
precocious. I'm not looking forward to what comes
after horses." 

"What *does* come after horses?" Zechs asked the
table. 

"Boys," Anne and Noin had replied in unison, with
equally dreamy, reminiscing expressions. Noin had shot
him a nostalgic glance, and Zechs had flushed bright
red and kept quiet for the rest of the meal.

So now they were walking in the gardens, full of
bright flowers and well away from the rosebushes.

Neither Hilde nor Duo liked them much. Bad memories do
that.

However, they were not alone.

"I spy with my little eye," Duo murmured, "...*five*
chaperones aaand *two* stickybeaks."

"They're not chaperones too?" Hilde asked with mock
surprise.

"You honestly think Heero or Marimeia would stop us?"

"Perhaps not," Hilde conceded.

******

Relena was not avoiding the rosebushes, and so was
standing in front of a beautiful double-bloomed
sugar-pink variety.

However, its magnificence was lost on her. She was
busy trying to remember.

It seemed terribly unfair that, while everybody else
had at least a measure of memory from the Silver
Millenium, she had nothing. Nada. Zero.

Anne had smiled at her ruefully when she had tried to
broach the subject and had said, "Perhaps you should
not try. It is not like you need to remember, and
there is much pain in the past."

She'd frowned. "But it's *my* pain! Don't I deserve to
remember?"

Anne's face had frozen, in the way it did when she
didn't want to display any emotion. "Some things
nobody deserves," she had said quietly, as if
convincing herself, and had left the room.

Relena had let her go, recognising that she'd gain
nothing more from her. But it left her trying to climb
the Everest of amnesia alone.

>From what little she'd gleaned from the words the
others said, an image was starting to form - one she
was finding she disliked more and more as she thought
about it. A powerful aristocracy, living in luxury,
supported by a laboring peasantry and vassal states -
but the aristocracy was above the laws and behaved
that way, while the poor were caught but a step above
starvation with no recourse to justice, while the
vassal states slowly drew nearer and nearer to open
rebellion....

Relena shivered as she remembered the last Tsar.
Perhaps his fate would have been different if he'd
been able to remember the last Queen of the Moon.

Or perhaps not. /We're all convinced 'it won't happen
to me'... until it *does*./

She was very deliberately avoiding a subject she was
trying not to think about - that of Heero Yuy.

She had let him go. What he did now was no concern of
hers. If he cared to come back she would welcome him,
but if he didn't....

And that was the rub, as she told herself. Because, to
all appearances, he *didn't* want to come back. He was
happy the way he was, and she had no right to demand
anything of him. The Sanq Kingdom didn't exist anymore
(*thank you*, Romefeller), so she couldn't demand the
attendance of Lord Yuy, her courtier. He wasn't even
one of her Senshi.

She sighed. /Maybe he'll come back to me,/ she thought
forlornly. /Maybe he'll come up to me and ask me how I
am and we'll have a conversation./

/And maybe I'll grow a set of wings and fly to the
Moon./

Just then, Marimeia screamed.

******

When Zechs heard the scream from the garden, he didn't
stop to think. He just came charging out of the villa,
intent on....

Stopping dead.

The thing was huge. It was as large across as the
house was wide, the colour of sandstone brick dust, a
kind of beige that isn't quite yellow. It blinked down
at them, almost placidly.

"Hello," it rumbled. "The Sailor Senshi, I presume?"

Relena was standing in front of it. "You presume
correctly," she said, with regal hauteur. "And may we
ask what you wish?"

The creature smiled - that is, the ends of its mouth
turned up and you could see its fangs. It had a lot of
fangs. "I wish," it replied, "for you and your little
friends to hand over all your power, both magical and
temporal, to Me."

"And why should we do that?" Wu Fei demanded.

"Because," the creature rumbled, "I require it. I and
My people have travelled for a very long time, looking
for a place that can sustain Us. Here will do nicely.
And I was thinking that you might be nice and give up
your hopeless battle. As I'm going to take your power
anyway."

Dorothy smirked, and transformed, inciting instant
wonder and envy in all witnesses as to how she did it
without the inane magical phrase. "You may *attempt*
to!"

"Oh boy," Trowa said.

******

Author's Notes:

   1. Since so many people missed the yuri in Chapter
Three, here's the much-expanded version. Please enjoy.
This is my first try at yuri, so feel free to rip it
apart.

   2. Sailor Saturn is (in my opinion) the Senshi most
misunderstood by the other Senshi. They believe that
she is the Senshi of Destruction, but she *herself*
(and she ought to know) calls herself 'the Senshi of
*Renewal*'.
   Tomoe Hotaru demonstrated a range of powers, even
before her manifestation as Sailor Saturn - healing,
shielding, and defensive retaliation to a controlled
level. It is made clear in the canon Sailor Moon
universe that ordinary people don't have powers. If
you do, you were connected to the Silver Millenium or
its enemies in some way. So these powers cannot come
from the Hotaru incarnation; they *must* be
manifestations of Saturn's power.
   I believe the misunderstanding stems from the fact
that all the Senshi's memories of the Silver Millenium
are incomplete, and during that time period Saturn was
distanced from them, so they saw only her most obvious
power, and assumed it was the complete picture -
which, of course, it wasn't. 

   3. Baldur was a Norse demigod. The son of Odin, the
head of the Norse gods, and Frigg, the goddess of
Earth and mothers, he doesn't appear to have been the
particular god of anything, although he was very
bright and cheerful, so almost everybody liked him.
When his only enemy managed to kill him, Hel, the
goddess of those who did *not* die in battle, honoured
him highly and did not want to release him from her
realm.
   Although Hel did set conditions that were not met,
there seems little doubt that if Baldur himself had
sought freedom, Hel would have (eventually) released
him. Therefore (at least in this fic), I assume that
Baldur did not wish to leave Hel.

=====
raye_j@yahoo.com
http://www.thejohnsens.com/index.html

"'I run, therefore I am'; more accurately, 
'I run, therefore with any luck I'll still *be*'."
   - Rincewind's philosophy, as explained in "Interesting Times"

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