onepassingnight | Finding Comfort In The Waves

Ah... Paradise.

Princess Mercury sat on a rock, shoes resting in the sand nearby, yet safely away from water. Skirt was raised to her knees, the water-attuned senshi letting the crashing waves lap at her feet and ankles. There was even a seagull or two, the only sound aside from the natural sound of water ebbing and flowing. The water was perfect, crystalline and blue, the sky clear and the sand warm. Few things were on Earth that Mercury found rivaled her own planet, but the beach was definitely one of them.

Blue eyes closed as the sea breeze tousled her curled hair, one hand resting gingerly atop her Crystal, the other on the rock. Even the light mist that splashed onto her arm, her dress brought her comfort, some sense of peace. A break deeply needed, from planning and explaining and negotiating a new kingdom. She had averted something truly disastrous with her own two hands. Even now, nobody save her friends knew what truly happened, why the Ginzuishou was no more. And it would stay that way. To change thinking, to assure everyone the new rule was not something to be protected, but something to protect everyone.

She may complain, but as her eyes opened and she looked out at the scenery, she would smile. She was content, busy or no.

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Dark eyes look back at blue ones. She feels something inside her that she isn't sure how to name. It's an anticipation. It's a meeting that she never thought would happen. Things like that don't happen, for her. Fortunate miracles are for the safe and blessed.

But there is only one person, in any world she's ever seen or been to or heard of, that calls her that.

"I didn't think to see you, after Econtra," she says levelly.

As much as she knows her darker half will not appreciate it, her body moves before her mind can react, soft sand between her toes as she walks to her twin, taking her into a hug. Her eyes close, holding Mercury close even if the motion isn't reciprocated.

So much had happened. Much she wished her twin could be there for, even if it was impossible. There was little to miss from Econtra, but her twin, most definitely, was one of them, if not the only thing.

The princess allowed herself this selfish moment. Just this once.

Edited 2012-11-27 08:13 (UTC)

It had been years since they'd last seen each other, and yet Mercury still couldn't bring herself to return the gesture. Her body tensed, unused to familiar touch.

Yet she didn't pull away, either.

Her next thought was much easier for her to focus on. "How long has it been since then?" Time has not always moved the same between the worlds she's seen.

Mercury pulled away, a small smile on her lips. "Too long. Though I admit, I usually don't count." That was true enough, given the nearly immortal status of the princesses in that time. A hundred years could pass, and to them, it would feel like mere days. "How have things been, in your world? I do hope they have improved." Her feelings were genuine, her words heartfelt. It was hard for her to be otherwise, around her twin.

"For the time being, my world is calm." The words say nothing of the battles that led to that calm: wresting control from Beryl, driving off the Death Busters, combating Princess Snow Kaguya, the Dead Moon, and even the Shadow Galactica. It had ended in defeat, once; they owe their current world and lives to the hope of a senshi from across the galaxy, Sailor Kakyuu.

She finds she isn't sure what to think of that. Hope has never been easy for her.

To her double, Mercury adds aloud, "I continued studying." Her proof that her life is her own.

At the mention of her continuing her studies, Mercury smiled and nodded. "That's wonderful. I had hoped your joy of learning stayed with you." It was easy to lose, when one was busy risking everything and fighting; the princess knew first hand. "Come; enjoy the waves with me." She walked back to the rock, sitting back down on the rock so it left plenty of room for her twin.

"I still have goals I want to achieve," was her answer. She wasn't sure it was joy or a dream anymore; it was just something she kept doing anyway, something she had her own reasons for, something she can use as proof she has a life outside of battle still.

Something she decided when her mother was ill.

Mercury seats herself somewhat primly on the rock, as if it were a chair for a formal visit somewhere back home.

There was nothing but the sound of waves for a few moments. When Mercury speaks again, it's soft. "When I went back, the Ginzuishou began to react again. Unnoticed, the disaster would have happened again. None of the other senshi were as clean of the influence as I was." Something she would thank her twin for, again. "So I did what needed to be done."

Mercury knows all the arguments: the past would have been destroyed, the planet lost, the war that cut past from present would have broken out. She believes those things.

But she knows they weren't the only thoughts in her mind. Not when the moment came, and probably not afterward, either.

"Is that what you were thinking all that time?" she asks her double. Looking into her own face - or slightly away from it, as she does now - makes it easier to question herself, and her own thoughts, without seeming to do so.

"Yes. To save millions of lives, I stabbed Serenity, destroying the Ginzuishou in the process. She lives, but only just, thanks to Pluto's slumber." The wind ruffled her hair, obscuring the sign on her forehead somewhat. "To have taken a life when I never have before... I thought I would feel... something."

It's that certainty she envies.

"If she's your enemy," Mercury observes, "there's no need to feel something over it." She's no longer the softer heart that might have argued for another chance, or another way.

But she also said 'if'.

Finding Comfort In The Waves

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