onepassingnight | [008 ☿] Cliff-Diving

Slowly. A damaged planet isn't so easy to recover.

[They don't have - or trust - the dangerous power of the princess, which could heal it in a moment but which has such horrible consequences and has already damaged the planet itself.]

[he nods. His own planet is still recovering from its first wound centuries ago. It's second... they're still finding out how deep it went this time. Absent, his hand shifts to knead his other arm, down where the muscles ache.]

Where there's life, there's hope.

[remembering her claim to not believe in hope, he adds:]

As long as there's someone there to defend it.

The years it will take are a long time to a human.

[She states this neutrally; she might be including herself or might not. The senshi have longer lifespans she should be able to expect - and yet a senshi had died of some illness, this time. They aren't what they were.]

[he makes a soft sound, understanding. He's done his part for the planet. Already played its hero and he's glad it's over. Sephiroth is dead, Meteor is gone, the planet can get back to healing. He doesn't want to be a hero and he doesn't need the planet's attention. He'll be happy to grow old next to Tifa and die when it's time.

Or die before his time in a fight or accident...

The fingers of his left hand flex, trying to shake feeling back into them and he shakes his head the smallest bit.]

Defenders have a way of showing up. There's always a next generation of heroes waiting to have the chance.

[and boy did he feel sorry for them]

Wasn't there someone before you?

[It's different for her. Very different, in this respect, and although she doesn't put it in the same terms, it speaks of the frustration of infinity, the other side of immortality.]

I was the one before me. In my past life, I watched over this planet. When Mizuno Ami disappears, Mercury will still live on in a next time.

[They're words any of the senshi could speak, would speak; but they're words that speak of a certain futility to their human lives, even without the additional struggles she's gone through in the darkness.]

[it's not the first time he's heard about reincarnation from a young girl and his head turns to look at her, eyes curious. Little pieces of puzzles from other dreams click into place a little more for him. But first, he has to ask:]

Do you remember each life, when you move on to the next?

[She shakes her head.]

Not at first. Even now, some of the ones who lived back then remember it more than others. I didn't know about the past life at all until I was fourteen.

[he makes a low noise to show he's following what she's saying, brows down as he looks back at the horizon. It's still death than, losing all you are, all you've worked so hard to be. A second chance too though... except if you don't remember what you did wrong the last time how were you supposed to do it right the next round?]

I met a Princess Mercury.

You met me.

[It's natural to say it, when he already knows so much.]

I was the Princess Mercury in the past. [She seems to consider this, and corrects herself.] No, I am the Princess Mercury. All the power of my planet is still mine. I'm still the heiress to Mercury.

[She's half talking to herself, by now.]

[it makes sense, he thinks, that the princess he met was from the past. It would explain why she didn't remember him or being Ami. It would explain the differences between the two women as well, because he noticed those and is still sorting through them in his head. Guessing, but fairly sure of the answer given the conversation he'd had with the younger princess, he says:]

We're not on Mercury though, are we?

No.

[For a long while, it seems like it might be all she says. She struggles with emotion, held back as she schools herself to calm.]

The Mercury Kingdom was also destroyed. This is Earth, where I was reborn.

[Everywhere, everywhere, the reminders of the past and her nature, the story of the Princess Mercury tied to the story of where they are now, tied by an inexorable cord to the destruction and the moon princess who hated the ones who should have been closest to her.]

[his eyes flicker and for a long time, he doesn't say anything at all. It's a strange echo blow against the inside of his soul and his own eyes find and focus on the sky as he lets it reverberate. A step outside of that, his mind careful adds more pieces to the growing puzzle she's given him, fitting them to ragged half finished parts from previous.]

I'm sorry.

[it's not apology or conciliatory. He knows from experience that there are no words that can ever encompass or soothe losing your home, your entire world at the time. And, unlike him, he thinks the wound is still raw for her - will always be raw for her. Voice low, he asks:]

Was it the same thing that almost destroyed this world?

No. What ruined this planet this time was Kaguya.

The one to destroy the planet in the past was the moon princess. Sailor Moon. Tsukino Usagi.

[Her hand tightens into a fist as she says the names, as though the anger is that strong that even calling them up calls it up as well. Princess Mercury had served at the court of the Moon Kingdom. Mizuno Ami had called Tsukino Usagi 'friend' - what a worthless word.

She has no shame in naming the other girl's identities; why should she leave her with all those lying protections? Why guard her safety, now?]

Edited 2011-07-24 10:09 (UTC)

[his eyebrows twitch down a little at that and a frown hits the edges of his lips as he continues to look at the sky in front of them. He knows those names. Or two of them at least. And they both belong to the same guileless girl with the huge heart and vulnerable eyes. While he's been wrong about people before, Cloud's always had a hard time getting over his first impression of someone. And Usagi... Ami's too sure of herself, too steady in her hatred for Cloud to think she's lying. More pieces to a puzzle that's suddenly so much larger than it had been a minute ago. Like a child at a school desk, concentrating very hard to make sure he understands the explanation, he looks at the woman next to him.]

How did it happen? Your planet being destroyed -

[It's a surprising reaction, to her. She's used to either sympathy - not the reason she tells the tale - or the infuriating insistence that Usagi would never have done it, it was a lie.

It was no lie.]

War came between Earth and the Moon. The prince of Earth betrayed his own men to defend the moon princess against them. He died for it. When he died, she destroyed everything.

['prince of Earth'? He thinks he might even know the name that matches that title if he remembers Usagi's stories right. He silently digests what Ami tells him, believing her because, as far as he knows she hasn't lied to him yet but more importantly, she has no reason to lie to him. He knows that Usagi and her prince were in love. She'd told him so - and he'd seen it in her sad eyes. What would he do if someone killed the ones he loved most?

Sephiroth...

But what if it wasn't something that obviously evil? What if one of his friends - what if he lost Denzel? Or Marlene? Or... Tifa?

How far would he go - how mad would he go - in response?

He gives it serious consideration. Every SOLDIER but one had turned into a monster at the end. He might not be SOLDIER but he has all that madness, all that mako, all that monster inside himself too. How mad would he go if his family was taken away from him forever...?

Not that mad, he realizes. Destroying the one that had done it, the ones that had done it... yes. Obsessively. But a world? Innocents that happened to share the same space as the monsters...?

No.

He'd had that happen to him. He won't repeat it.

Maybe he doesn't love strongly enough.

Tifa would be so disappointed in him if he ever became the monster they'd almost lost everything destroying...

Low, he asks:]

Then what happened?

[He knows the rest, without knowing it. She's told him too much of her story, and now the way it connects to Usagi unfolds.

It's a very direct connection.]

We were reborn, without remembering that past. We were lied to and just told to serve and protect her again. She had a substitute pretend to be her, to take the danger away from herself.

We discovered the true princess. She was already approaching the prince. And, surely, in the end, if it hadn't been stopped, that fate would have repeated. It was already beginning to.

I took her life instead this time.

[again, he stands silently for a long time and simply digests what she tells him. It fits so many of the little puzzle pieces into place for him, things that both of the girls have told him. And he's not so fast to rush to judgement on Ami.

Because... if he had the chance to stop Sephiroth before the man ever went mad... would he?

Would he kill one temporarily innocent man to save all the lives he'd cost in the end?

To save Aerith...?

He... doesn't know. A part of him says 'yes'. A part of him says 'no'. He's never been given the choice before. Would he sacrifice one questionable life to protect all the ones he cared for? Cut it short instead of giving it the chance to change because the risk was too high? Absent he rubs at his left arm, frowning.

Usagi's not dead. In fact, the one he knows best is probably about Ami's age. And he's met the one that's older, thousands and thousands of years older.

Somehow, even though he's not consciously aware he's dreaming, his mind provides dreaming logic, glosses over the fact that they can't exist at the same point in his life is one is already dead.]

She'll be reborn again, won't she?

[It's Ami's own endless internal struggle: She did it and it's done. She did it from hatred and jealousy. She did what was necessary. That wasn't her first reason.

And she'd certainly do it again, given the same forces at work, the same situations.

And, for good or ill, the Soldier of Knowledge will not stop at half-measures.]

No. There are ways to destroy even a sailor senshi.

[She does not specify what they may be, leaving it to Cloud's imagination and as a testament of her own caution and careful stepping. She says 'destroy' and not 'kill'; it is a true end and there will be no next time, this time.

Even the other senshi who have been allowed to live in her world, will probably have only this lifetime left to them. She alone suffered with the Dark Kingdom and now triumphs with her fellow sufferers. ]

[it makes him pause because... he feels very protective of Usagi. She's... she's so many of the things that he treasures in people with her open, ready heart and her brave sad eyes. He thinks... he thinks she would change her future if she knew what she was capable of doing. He thinks... he thinks her heart may be too huge for her to condemn a world to death, even if it cost her what was most precious in it to her. Whoever it is that Ami killed... the Usagi he knows is still alive? Or is she like Aerith and only here in this strange place that fits alongside his own world but doesn't always seem to match it?

He's getting used to seeing Aerith. Seeing people he didn't know were dead though is something new to him.

Yet he doesn't question Ami about her choice either. She seems sure that it was necessary and until he has the whole story, he can't judge. Again - he can't say he wouldn't do the same thing if faced with a younger Sephiroth. Instead he just asks:]

Was it worth it?

[He's so wrong. That Usagi has already destroyed her own world's future, too, condemning her entire galaxy to a final death, not caring - again - about the ones who should have been most precious to her. Not even enough to leave them a world. Not even enough to leave them alive.

Or perhaps she'd leave Cloud alive. Ami, she most certainly wouldn't. Ami had never mattered to her at all, any more than Ami had ever mattered to any Usagi anywhere.]

It was worth it. It was necessary. That girl will repeat the same fate again if she's given any chance. It's happened, in one way or another, in too many worlds, again and again in each world.

Her alternates, too.

[that makes him blink and he looks over at Ami, pale brows rising slightly. The world she lives in seems to get more complicated each time she tells him something new. And he'll take the distraction while he lets what she's already said, settle, giving him time to mull it over.]

Alternates?

Edited 2011-07-30 09:27 (UTC)

[She bears the marks, if pride would allow her to show them: the scars from the horrible burns the last time she encountered the princess, surrounded by fire and heading for a nearby residential area.]

The barriers between worlds were already weakening. Different dimensions. Because of that, I've met her again and again; others, too. I've seen what she's done again and again.

She's the same everywhere. Nothing has changed.

[She's still the same girl who'll never look at Ami. She's still the same girl who only cares for the prince. She's still the same girl who could throw away everything for him, not even thinking of the people she claims to love.]

In the end, it remains the same, too. She'll be forgiven, no matter what she's done, without her even giving her crimes a second thought.

I won't.

Edited 2011-07-30 09:37 (UTC)

[perhaps the Usagi he knows is one of those alternates then. Listening to Ami talk though... he thinks he understands. Just - a little. Because he's been the one no one praised, the one that everyone ignored at best and looked down on and blamed at worse. Not that it's the same - but he can understand, a little, the open wound that doesn't go away just because you're an adult. Looking back out at the horizon, he makes a soft noise. To show he's heard, that he's hearing, but other than that he doesn't offer anything else for a long time. AVALANCHE did a lot of things in their time that were crimes and unforgivable - and yet they did them with the best intentions. Better than him. He was just doing it for the money. For the sense of purpose when he was so lost. For Tifa. Sins of the past, even necessary ones, always weigh heavy and his sins are less excusable than trying to save a world.

One of his sins almost destroyed his world.

He comes back to the same thing he comes back to in his own mind when that particular sin crops up in his head.]

But you still saved the world.

[She was the one taken for granted: they just thought she'd always be there. Then one day, she wasn't. One day, there was a man who wanted her to be there with him. And she went to him.

It's not that simple, of course, though she could tell that part of the story as if it is, forgetting that she'd fought him as hard as she could until that very moment his spell made everything dark, forgetting even the struggle he put her through as her mind tried not to give in to the evil energies of Metalia he exposed her to, as her body hurt, as she lay sick and weak before the spell was finally fully set.]

That planet is ours. We won't hand it over or let it be destroyed.

[Possessive and clinging, and yet saving.]

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