Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Under the Pale of a Vanishing World ❯ A Sign of Wavering Winds ( Chapter 1 )

Title: Under the Pale of a Vanishing World

Chapter 1: A Sign of Wavering Winds

Rating: PG-13

Sailor Moon and its characters do not belong to me. I am just borrowing.

Poetry is mine.

Shoujo-ai Warnings apply.

 

 

"You did it again," Mamoru said softly, reminding, "You just called me Endyminion."

 

"Did I?" Setsuna smiled in embarrassment. "Forgive me…I was thinking-"

 

"Of another me," he asked trying not to look concerned.

 

She nodded, picked up her cup of tea and sipped from it slowly, maroon eyes delving into the light green of the liquid and resting heavily on the patterns the leaves at the bottom of the cup made. She saw for an instant that one of the leaves looked vaguely like a crescent moon. Setsuna Meioh was no fortuneteller; she could not predict the future by the shape of the leaves. She did not need to. Somewhere, always deep inside, she already knew everything that was going to happen.

 

Sensing the young man's growing concern she placed the cup back on the table and gave a thin half-hearted smirk.

 

"You're worried," she questioned.

 

"It's not like you to call me by any other name but my own unless we're in a battle. I've known you for a long time Setsuna and you are a great friend, but in the past hour and a half you have called me Endyminion twice."

 

Setsuna moved her gaze across the street. From the café they were sitting at she could see the Crown Arcade and a few of the people inside. It was Wednesday, and it was not very busy. Everyone was at work, or at school.

 

She and Mamoru had taken to meeting for a quiet lunch once a week. They were always fast friends. Usagi said it was because they were both too serious for their own good, but Setsuna understood it was because they knew how to talk to each other.

 

Setsuna could talk to Mamoru when he was worrying about destiny and they way it always felt like a vice about his neck. She knew what to say to calm him down. And he in turn would sit quietly and wait patiently for her to tell him what was on her mind, because it took her a while to even admit that she needed to talk. He would listen very carefully to each thing she would say; because he knew just how wisely she chose her words for fear that she may at some point perhaps say too much. When she was through he could look at her and tell her exactly what she needed in order to calm down, or not worry.

 

So it was on that day and they were talking just as friends do about the weather and other things that people talk about at lunch. He was right though, twice now she had called him by his other name, a name from the past, and a name from the future.

 

Setsuna took a moment, a second so short no one would ever have realized she had done it, to look in at Time. She went from the present where she sat to the future, and then back into the past. In those spots she saw herself having lunch with Endyminion who was also Mamoru, and she also saw herself checking on Time at the same exact moment. Her other selves gave her a polite wink and she returned the sentiment before quickly returning.

 

Time moved back into its normal flow and the moment washed away as quick as the beat of a butterfly's wing.

 

She grinned mysteriously and her friend involuntarily tensed.

 

"It's nothing to worry about Mamoru," she paused and then said almost with a chuckle, "I can tell you this and it won't ruin any part of the timeline, but… right now at this very moment in the past on the Moon Kingdom and in the future in Crystal Tokyo I am having lunch with you and telling you this. Maybe not exactly word for word but nearly. "

 

It seemed to amuse him slightly, the thought of always having had lunch with Setsuna even as far back as the first Silver Millennium, but then he found a worry and had to ask, "What does it mean?"

 

"Nothing to you, all it is, is a place where Time overlaps upon itself, almost like deja vous."

 

It was enough to clear him of worry, but of course Setsuna did not say what it meant to her. Because what it meant to her was something that she could never express clearly in words. It was all Time, it was all a part of the swirl, the drift of colored fog, and of course it was a part of the great exception to the heavy rules with which Setsuna had guarded Time since the beginning.

 

Under the pale of a darkening sky

With the polite promise of nothing sacred

Is the whisper that you shall see me again

In this world lonely as I am

I find comfort in this moment

In this knowing

I shall see you again

 

Very distracted, everyone seemed to pick up on it immediately when Setsuna arrived home. There was a much mellower gait to the way she strode up to her room to put her things down, and in the corner of her mouth lay a smirk that refused to explain itself. The Outer Senshi, Michiru in particular, did not want to question the unusual sense of content and happiness that she was emitting. There were so many times when she was in affect too contemplative, quiet, serious, and distantly close. Seeing her with a smirk for no other reason than she had a reason to smirk was a welcomed change.

 

Never mistake, Setsuna was not a cold person, far from that, in fact she was very congenial, and if someone needed to talk to her she would always listen. And her unsurpassed rapport with Chibiusa and Hotaru (children in general) were quite a sight to watch. The thing was that as happy, content, and friendly as she was and tended to be around those she lived with and considered friends, there was a notable wall to her. It was fine and perhaps thinner than anyone thought it was, but it was there. And behind that wall were the things that she just could never give up or share about herself with other people.

 

She was in the deepest sense one of Time's greatest paradoxes. For she could tell you certainly that she had in fact died when she stopped Time and saved Sailor Uranus's and Sailor Neptune's lives. And she could tell you how strange it was to meet her self on a bus and pass along everything that she was. That she existed at every moment in Time at the front of Time's Gates, and yet she was in Tokyo sharing a house with the Outer Senshi.

 

It was all truth. It was all the complications of Time and how as its guardian, Setsuna, was allowed extreme leverage so that she might better perform her duty.

 

Setsuna was Time's Guardian.

 

She was Time's most beautiful paradox.

 

She was the saddest person you could meet with a smile and wink in her eye.

 

She was reborn, and yet had lived for such a long span that even she could not rightly recall what her actual beginning was.

 

She had many beginnings. She had many endings.

 

She would always return.

 

And she would always smirk for an unusual amount of time for no apparent reason after having had lunch with Mamoru and seeing her future and past selves doing the same.

 

The autumn was fading into winter. And Setsuna was just putting her things down when there was a knock at her bedroom door. She thought briefly how wonderful it was that Time should cycle so ceaselessly, that every season was eternal and yet had an end. It was wonderful because it meant as the winter slunk across the city she would be able to do, what Time would only allow her to do a total of ten times.

 

This would be the second.

 

Setsuna placed her palm on the doorknob and by all accounts she thought she knew what she would see when she opened it. But that was not entirely the case, as she turned the knob and pulled the door open. Her eyes meet with those of the same color, but sadder and lonelier than she ever remembered seeing herself. She stepped back but the doppelganger grabbed at her wrist and pulled her through the door, which no longer led to the hallway in the house but was filled with a thick fog colored in greens and maroons, silvers and blues.

 

"What has happened," Setsuna asked the stronger and sadder reflection of her self.

 

"It is what has not happened, Pluto that is the cause of our distress."

 

Time is never kind to me

But I have no fear of its grasp

I always pass through it like water

It is all I am

It is what it has made me

And it is fickle, and it is cruel

Though it wavers and threatens to move off its course

It has made me a promise

It gives me to you

 

The hand that had held her wrist so tightly to pull her into the domain of Time vanished like a whisper upon the fog. Setsuna was left alone to walk to where she instinctively knew she needed to be, and as she walked she noted that she had transformed, leaving her more domestic clothing behind for her uniform as a soldier of the Moon Kingdoms.

 

She walked slowly through the corridors that only she could navigate, for the space was not constructed of anything truly solid that could mark a persons place. There was only the resounding silence and swirl of color that presented itself as the essence of what Time should be if it were actually a place. But Time is never so concrete that it could ever be pegged as a place, or a thing. It was never meant to be solid.

 

She walked on and in the distance far back and approaching her from other entrances were three shadows that held her form. Three brushes of dark color that became clearer as she moved closer to her destination, the Center of Time.

 

The center was unlike any other part of her domain, for the center was the only part of Time not represented as a swirling colored mass of fog. The center was a large white marble circular floor with four towering marble columns that reached up into an endless oblivion of fog, light, and color. It was perhaps a mapping of the universe. It was perhaps just another doorway into the center. Only one knew what the oblivion truly was and where the columns reached, but she would never share that secret, not with anyone.

 

She finally came to the center and stood between two of the pillars, and watched expectantly as the three shadowy forms of her self did the same. She could tell by the look of each from which period in her life they had emerged from. There was an odd sense of foreboding among the three as they looked upon her, and she felt as if she had done something wrong. As if she, in her own place along the timeline, had made a grievous error.

 

The oldest in appearance arched an eyebrow and spoke first. She was from the far future and her voice held an echo of pain and loss beyond reproach, "You all, no doubt, are aware of why this meeting must occur." She paused and then shook her head, "Ah but I am wrong. You Setsuna, you of the most present moment are unaware of the damage that has been done."

 

The other two images of her self glared at her sharply.

 

Far future spoke again, "It wasn't you… it was… well, we think it was her, but we are uncertain."

 

"Her who," Setsuna finally asked for she could read nothing from those around her, and even Time seemed to shield itself from her view. She wanted to cheat and peer back to discover the mystery, but nothing would allow it. A greater force than she was well at work.

 

The self to her right grimaced and stated, "She whom we cherish."

 

"She, whom we most love," the self to the left replied in kind.

 

"She for who Time has allowed us the greatest of gifts. For before we met her you must remember-"

 

Setsuna interrupted the far future quickly, "We were not meant for a true loves calling."

 

And with the ending of the statement all four bowed their heads in memory of the beginning of things, and the complete exile of their hearts, as all the gods of Time stood before them warning of the cost of loving. Those made of time were not meant for such things, for being made of something with no real end and no true beginning they could never be truly tied to a destiny, or a fate. They existed for the ordering of chaos, and whatever emotions they might gain from keeping the play of the universe in motion were but torments of the things they could never truly keep… And there was no torture crueler than that of love. For what was love to Time but an odd occurrence of evolutionary necessity?

 

But Time was a strange thing, and while it was cruel never let it be said that it was not also kind. For it could feel in its shallowness, darkness, light and chilled order of chaos the weight that grew in the heart of its guardian, a deep and fervent longing that could not be ignored even by such an undefined thing as Time. And for that it was gifted to Time's Guardian alone a love that would be eternal and serve as a paradoxical shift in the rules granted but the number of ten times, and no more and no less. The number could not be explained. It had risen from the void of Time a strange and cherished bobble.

 

The memory passed and the four opened their eyes, each of them awash in lonesomeness and a hunger for the one they held so dear and true. Then Sailor Pluto from the far future stepped into the very center of Time abandoning her place between the columns and she spoke.

 

"What has been undone must be put right because as things are now the timeline suffers. The thing that is gone astray is small and minute, a detail so vexingly simple that it would seem trite."

 

"Nothing in Time is trite," Pluto to the left stated and stepped into the center completely replacing the form of the Sailor Pluto from the far future.

 

"Nothing we touch is ever trite," Pluto to the right echoed and then she too stepped into the center replacing the version that had previously stood in the same place.

 

There was a beckoning in her eyes that called out to Setsuna, something primal and all encompassing that could not be avoided. And so taking that call to heart, she mended the rules she had broken by appearing in Time's great halls as multiple versions of herself and stepped into the center of Time.

 

She took a deep breath.

 

She closed her eyes and tried not to brace herself for what was about to come.

 

A great and blinding light broke out up through the center of Time. It shot upward and out between the columns and when it finally dissipated into a calm darkness Sailor Pluto, the Guardian of Time vanished with it.

 

Under the pale of this sky

The vanishing current of one day to another

I look to the depths of the darkest void I know

I cry into to it and my heart becomes heavy with sorrow

Must I wait so long for you to return

I would that I could hold you forever

But the darkness echoes back

It comforts as it chides

For am I promised...

I shall see you again

 

To be continued...