Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Mended Wing ❯ Mended Wing - Chapter Twelve ( Chapter 12 )

Authors Notes: Weyll, peeps, I think that now that I'm out of college (for now) I've kinda run out of steam for just about anything and everything. All I want to do is laze around and do… well, nothing. But don't worry, I won't let it last for long. As long as I don't have a job, I'll force myself to write in my spare time. And I'll force myself to write in my spare time even after I get a job. Enjoy!

 

Thankies: Oh, just everyone. I'm too tired right now to name names, but you all know who you are.

 

Disclaimers: Sailormoon does not belong to me. Gundam Wing does not belong to me either.

 

Other: Who needs war? Who needs death and destruction on a massive scale when our own petty hatreds are choking us anyway? I am anti-war and PROUD OF IT.

 

 

Mended Wing

Chapter Twelve

 

 

The Moon remained as frigid and uninviting as their last sojourn there. Only that time, Usagi had been with them. She made it seem lighter, brighter, like it could be salvaged. Without her there were only the stark pillars of a desecrated and forgotten holy city. Without her there could be no hope of healing. For the Moon. For them all.

Mamoru felt strange standing on the white Moon plain. He was dressed like Prince Endymion, but still felt like Chiba Mamoru. He knew that once his feet-- in a different body--, had traversed here, but he only remembered the last days. How many times had he touched this ground, that pillar, or that window before the day he'd died? How many times had Serenity brought him to the palace to meet with the Queen, to speak with the Inner Planet Court, or simply to be together? He couldn't remember. As he watched the other Senshi he could see the light of remembrance dawn on their faces, but felt none of it himself. Perhaps all of his old memories were to be found on Earth. Perhaps it was that he had never been to the Moon before that fateful time. He didn't know. He couldn't remember.

“Did anything in that old myth tell you where to find the Eye of Hecate?” he asked Mercury. She looked at him with blue-black eyes filled with tears from some memory returned. She stared at him blankly for a moment before seeming to realize what he'd said. Her eyes blinked, chasing away the last of those tears and she grabbed her computer.

“No, nothing. But I do have a map of the way the Moon looked before its destruction. We can use that and our memories to confirm which parts were used and which parts were abandoned.” Her fingers slid over the keys with her usual practiced ease. “Then we can search each of the abandoned areas until we find the right one.”

“How will we know the right one?” Venus slipped up behind Ami and looked over her shoulder. The blonde's face soon scrunched into a confused mask.

“Trust me, Venus,” Mercury said shortly, “when we find it, we'll know.”

Soon she had a map of the old Moon Kingdom showing on her computer screen. The Senshi all huddled around the small thing in order to see and contribute their own memories. Mamoru watched Venus point to a certain place on the map and insist that it had never been used, only to have Mercury confirm that it had been the Queen's bedchambers. From then on Venus kept quiet, but stayed in the midst of the action. Mamoru kept away, like the former Gundam pilots.

“Why do you not help them?”

Mamoru looked to his left to see Wufei standing there, appraising black eyes locked on the prince. He cleared his throat and moved his gaze away from the Chinese man.

“I wouldn't be of any help to them. I don't remember.”

“Don't remember what?” It was Quatre, who'd sneaked up on Mamoru's right side. Mamoru turned to see all of the pilots circling around him, even shy Duo. All gaze nervous glances to the girls and looked to him to give some comfort in the middle of the confusion.

“This place. The Moon Kingdom. I don't remember it as well as they do. I didn't live here.” He wrapped his cape around him. “All I remember is trying to warn the Queen and princess, and then the last battle and dying.” He shrugged and the other men didn't push him. He wondered if the strangeness he'd been feeling crept through his voice. It was strange to be here, but more than that it was strange to be here, with the Senshi, without Usagi. It was strange to think of her lying back on Earth, locked in a Time bubble, dead.

Bright red blossomed in slow motion before his mind's eyes, as it had over and over again since he first saw it happen. Gods, could she really be . . . but he'd asked himself that before. So many times. And every time the answer was the same. Yes, Usagi was dead. Mamoru closed his eyes, but the red only became brighter, only taunted him more.

“Was she an angel?”

The words made Mamoru open his eyes, blink, and look at the priest. An angel? But violet eyes gazed back at him with pure questioning and no malice. Mamoru sighed and looked up into the vast expanse of space reaching all around their cold world and smiled a little.

“I guess she was. An angel on Earth.” A tear trekked from his eye down his cheek. For a moment he wanted to reach up and wipe it away, but finally he just didn't want to; perhaps somewhere Usagi could see this one tear shed for her and know it was the only one he could allow himself. “If you ask anyone who ever met her, they'll all tell you the same thing.”

“What?” Duo asked when Mamoru paused.

“She was the kindest, gentlest, most loving person you could ever meet.”

 

 

~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~

 

 

Duo watched Mamoru. The man truly grieved. The pain in those eyes or evident in every gesture Mamoru made could not be false. His wife had been killed and he grieved like no man Duo had ever seen. But then, where he came from, most men died before their wives and it was the wives who grieved for the loss of the comforting, protective presence of their husbands. The wives grieved for the stability the husbands gave, and the link to God. For women were the first sinners and needed men to guide them.

Didn't they?

Duo wondered at the lost look in Mamoru's gaze. Among all the stars in the Heavens, without his wife, Mamoru felt lost. The woman he grieved for had to be untouched for him to feel incomplete without her.

Father Duo felt his eyes watering. He blinked and turned to watch the women working together to find this artifact they hoped would return Mamoru's wife, their friend. But weren't women lazy, and vain, and concerned only with themselves?

Duo looked at his bible and wondered, as he never had before, how much inside had been interpreted correctly.

 

 

~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~

 

 

Quatre crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. He often found that this stance made him look more formidable and less approachable, which was exactly how he wanted to look. Something inside of him shuddered to see all of the effort these people were putting into saving one girl, and to see how much Mamoru missed her. No one back home would work this hard to save him if he were already dead. No one cared enough. No one would miss him. What kind of person could inspire such caring and loyalty out of so many?

Better question, what kind of person was he that he didn't?

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked to see the tall, green-eyed boy standing at his side. Triton, that was his name. Quatre still found himself uneasy around Triton, for reasons he could name and some he couldn't. The reason he could name had to do with the undeniable way that Triton looked at him: filled with attraction and desire.

The reason he couldn't, or perhaps didn't want to name, had to do with the way he felt when Triton looked at him that way.

“Okay,” Mercury said, and Quatre saw her look up from her computer, grinning, “I think we've got it narrowed down to three places.”

 

 

~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~

 

 

Triton held back, as did the other men who were in his situation, as the women who called themselves Senshi entered the ruins of what once had been a magnificent building. He could see the past beauty in the intricate designs that curled over the surface of the white walls lying over the ground. He wasn't an architect, but he recognized beauty when he saw it.

His eyes drifted again to Quatre.

Triton had never been in love before, but that was why he could so easily identify this feeling. He'd never felt it, or anything like it, before laying eyes on the petite blonde boy who seemed to hate everyone around him. Triton's arms twitched every time he came close to Quatre, trying to lift and wrap around that small frame. To comfort, to heal. He wanted to heal Quatre. He wanted to love the boy and be loved by him. Triton wanted to be everything for Quatre, though Quatre didn't want anything from him. Yet he did. Triton felt the longing, the calling from within the blonde's form. Triton was not an HMWeapon, he never had been, so he should not be able to sense the desires of this other boy. Yet he could. He could think of only one explanation.

They had to be soulmates.

“This isn't it.” Mercury shook her head as she and Mars, the designated Senshi for that search, emerged. “We weren't challenged, and we searched the entire length of what was left. Looks like it was only an old storage facility.”

“Next,” said Mars, less enthusiastically than Triton would have expected. Then again, he realized, the closer they came to finding the Eye, the closer they came to the challenges. None of them knew what to expect from those, or whether they would survive them.

 

 

~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~

 

 

Masurao found it difficult to focus on the happenings around him, despite their extraordinary nature. He knew the manner in which they had come to the Moon should have fascinated him, or at least frightened him, and the state of the Moon itself should be a shock. But knowing what he knew, that a killer resided somewhere not so deeply inside of him, kept him from experiencing the wonder fully.

He kept wondering who those men had been.

Who were their mothers? Did they have childhood nicknames? Had they been jocks or nerds in high school? Brains or bullies? Did they have wives who would miss them, or children? The fact that they had been bent on killing him eventually had nothing to do with Masurao's line of thought. They may have been killers, but they had also been men. Living. Alive.

Now they were dead.

His eyes followed Wufei and the Senshi as they entered another building, and he noticed that this one was actually intact, but that was all he noticed. Did Rel miss him? Hardly. She barely knew him. She couldn't possibly miss him. And if she did, how would she feel about his new status as a murderer? She may be a rebel, but she still came from a peace-loving family. She would despise him.

“Missing someone?”

Masurao looked up to see the tall man standing beside him, the one who wasted no time in letting everyone around him know he was interested in dating only other tall, dark and handsome men and was single enough to do so.

“Uh, yeah,” Masurao admitted. He shrugged. “Someone.

“Me too.” Triton looked towards Mamoru, who still had his eyes turned up to the stars, and then to Quatre, whose eyes were bent to the ground. Masurao followed Triton's gaze as he watched Father Duo, and then the emerging Senshi and Wufei. “I think we're all missing someone. I just don't know exactly who I'm missing yet.”

 

 

~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~

 

 

Wufei growled inwardly as the second search yielded no more than the first. He'd wanted to help them search this place, convinced they must have missed something in the first. But these women were constantly proving themselves to him, much as Meiran had done after their marriage. He had searched this building as thoroughly as they and found no more. It seemed this place had once been a bank, long ago before the Silver Millennium had rid themselves of the need for currency. Mercury had filled him in on that piece of information.

He looked up to the others and shook his head. He saw nervousness blossom in all their eyes. Everyone knew that if this had not been the place, there was only one place left. If it did not pan out, they would have to start over again or give up. And something told him it would take much more than this failure to make the women give up.

Wufei sighed and steeled himself internally for what was to come. He was here for a reason, his bones spoke that fact to him. He was not merely here to follow the Senshi around and watch them. No, he would be acting, not waiting.

“All that's left is the cave,” Mercury announced. “It's just outside the limits of the royal city.”

Wufei nodded.

“Then let us go.”

 

 

~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~

 

 

Mamoru looked at the white stone doors. They confused him. Doors on a cave?

The group stood in from of one of the few mountains on the Moon. More precisely, they stood inside one of the craters, at the rim, in front of what might be considered a mountain, but really was the wall of the crater reaching up to become the level ground of the rest of the small planet. And in front of them, leading into a cave in the side of the crater, were a pair of white stone doors.

The doors were carved. Mamoru saw scenes of a woman leading an army. The woman wore the characteristic twin buns of the Lunar Royal House. To further prove her identity, she had on her forehead a crescent moon depicted with rays of lighting flowing from it. She rode a gracefully stylized war steed and held aloft a scepter with a crescent moon on the top. Within the cradle of that moon there came another source of light rays that could only be the Silver Crystal. Venus voiced aloud Mamoru's thought.

“Queen Hecate.”

“I told you we'd know when we found it.” Mercury smiled and looked through her visor at the doorway.

“Now what?” Uranus stepped forward and inspected the carvings. Mamoru did the same, reading the script that graced the top of the doorway. His eyes settled on the handles, and his throat constricted.

“I'm not sure,” Mercury replied, fingers practically glued to her computer keys. “I'll have to translate the writing in order to find out how to proceed without getting anyone killed.”

Mamoru blinked.

“What are you talking about?” He stepped forward, eyes going over the writing again to make sure he wasn't mistaken. No, the meaning was as clear as it had been the first time he read them. “If I can read that, surely you can.”

All of the Senshi stared at him. Uranus and Neptune shared a glance. Venus blinked blankly at him, and Mars and Jupiter stared open-mouthed. Mamoru felt uncomfortable and fidgeted. Finally, Mercury stepped towards him and spoke.

“We can't read it. It's ancient Lunarian, long before our time. Only the Lunarian heirs were taught to read it.” She stopped, and Mamoru could tell by the expressions on their faces that they all had figured out what must have happened. Serenity, young and full of dreams and rebellion, must have taught him to read the language in a defiant gesture. He remembered snippets of times on Earth, sitting under a tree, sounding out odd syllables at Serenity's instruction. She seemed to think it important for some reason other than rebellion, however.

“Well?” Uranus put her hands on her hips, looking oddly very much like Minako, and lifted an eyebrow. “Since you can read it, what does it say?”

Mamoru sighed, and read over the words one more time. They remained the same eight words as before.

“It says `Only true love's blood may part the way.'”

Again the stares. He saw that they knew as well as he what the words meant, and none of them liked it any more than he did. He saw Mercury's lips parting and knew she was about to say they should retreat until they could find a better way, a less dangerous way. But he shook his head.

“No, that's the payment required. We all knew there would be challenges. We just didn't expect this one.” He turned his eyes to them all, letting them take what they needed from his gaze alone. The only one he gave words to was Father Duo. Mamoru laid his hand on the priest's shoulder. “When she returns, and everything is back to normal, she's going to need you. If you remember nothing else, remember this: Take care of her.”

Before the small man could protest or wonder aloud, Mamoru turned from him and walked up to the two forbidding doors. He saw the golden handles, the only splash of color against the white. Nearing closer, he saw that the doors were actually set a few inches into the wall of the crater, leaving room for a vertical line of holes. Well, he'd expected something of the sort. Painful, but necessary.

Mamoru took a deep breath as he approached, kept his eyes on the door as his hands reached for the handles, and never looked to his side again.

He heard the swoosh! of metal against rock, but never felt the glinting spikes that embedded themselves in his body.

 

 

End Chapter Twelve.