[011 ☿] Silent Planet Mercury

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Unearthly quiet falls over everything. This place is empty and barren; nothing grows in its desolate grey soil. It's a void without atmosphere, but those who arrive here find themselves able breathe normally and withstand the incredible heat of planet Mercury's sun-turned side.

To the daughter of this planet, it's breathing the nostalgic air of thousands of years ago. Here, she is at her strongest and her best. She thrives in the sun that appears several times larger than it would on Earth, she basks in its intense rays despite the dark sky of space.

Without turning around, Mercury speaks with her eyes fixed on the sky. "Watch," she insists. She nods to where the sun travels towards its highest point - and stops for several long moments before beginning to unwind its arc backwards. It's a sight only seen here, and only now while it's been sped up enough to be observable.

Before she can say more, a second brightness flares so strongly that it almost overshadows anything else. Mercury suddenly lets out a pained whimper and shields her eyes from the holy light of Venus. She has that flesh-crawling feeling of a nightmare somehow.

(ooc: artist conceptions of Mercury sunrise. The effect described with the sun's path is due to Mercury's orbit and happens over the course of a Mercury day - about two months of our time.)

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[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

As long as she doesn't expect him to run, or do anything else drastic, Cloud can keep up. He can't stay much longer but he doesn't want to leave her here, all alone, in the middle of the ruins of her own dreams, thinking about killing children. If he was one of the others, he'd have words to say to make it better, to clear everything up - but he's just himself and words have never been his strength. All he can do is be here for her and hope that somehow that makes a difference.

"They're still yours," he says and that means it's still important.

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

Being there is all she's ever asked of anyone. It means so much more than arguments or agreements, so much more than the right words. Cloud is there.

Kunzite finds it so amusing in her, and easy to use. He's always right behind her.

"They're still mine," Mercury echoes as she keeps stepping forward. She goes at a pace that's easy enough to follow; there's no rush to reach a place that won't change.

"And when we arrive, the easiest way to Mariner Castle will be open." She'll take him to see the one place she has left, orbiting this planet.

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

"Mariner Castle?"

He keeps pace with her, boots falling heavy on the sand and broken rock. Everywhere he looks it's barren and his imagination isn't good enough to envision what this place must have looked like when it was a water planet.

He has a hard time imagining anyone ever living here, much less a thriving culture. It makes the loss somehow even deeper, because there aren't even any ghosts left.

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"My Castle. Despite the destruction of this planet, it still exists. It orbits here." It's not even visible in the sky; but she has the power to take them there. After all, it belongs to her.

She turns to Cloud, and almost as if it's a challenge of its own, she asks the obvious question: "Want to see it?"

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And Cloud, with an almost little boy light passing through his eyes, answers the obvious:

"Hell, yeah."

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The enthusiasm is entirely contagious. Spurred on by Cloud's encouragement, Mercury acts quickly, decisively, the slight heaviness to her movements suddenly gone.

"Let's go, then!" Black wings sprout from her back, feathery and soft; she treats this as normal. It is (http://3.p.s.mfcdn.net/store/manga/203/17-002.0/compressed/s17.2.017.jpg), inside a senshi (http://2.p.s.mfcdn.net/store/manga/203/17-002.0/compressed/s17.2.018.jpg) and with their forms (http://4.p.s.mfcdn.net/store/manga/203/17-002.0/compressed/s17.2.019.jpg). She looks Cloud up and down and, as though realizing finally that he is not precisely the same as her, she pauses.

"Take my hand," she finally offers, and she stretches it out as her invitation. "If you want to come farther." She won't let him drop, of course; even she wouldn't let go of someone out here, on a mischievous whim.

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

He rocks back a little on his heels when the wings sprout.

Wings don't exactly have the best connotation for him.

But it's a set, not a single or several layers of them and more importantly, it's Ami. If Ami's got wings, he's all right with that. Her wings at least. He's still going to reserve his judgement on wings in general. So he takes her hand when she offers it, wrapping the fingers of his good hand around hers, but look he gives her is dubious.

"I'm not exactly light." Between muscle mass and a possibly thicker bone density, he's kind of heavy to lug around.

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Wings are just wings, to her. They flare out beautifully as she ignores Cloud's protest about his weight. Despite her appearance, she has the enhanced strength of the Dark Kingdom behind her, and the lightness of the dream.

"If you're worried about that," she smirks quietly, "Just wait until I've carried you there before you decide about complaining."

Though she only keeps hold of Cloud by the hand, he's brought along without knocking or bumping or jolting. Within moments, a castle comes into view, with classical lines and a domed roof. The clean, fluid architecture suits the Grecian aesthetic somehow. The entire structure orbits the planet.

"Mariner Castle," Mercury announces, "Is there." Her wings bring her onward, towards the platform just outside the castle proper.

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

He knows it's a dream but he still has to remind himself not to hold his breath when they break what little atmosphere there probably was. He's glad he doesn't have to cling to Ami though or her to him to get him here. So far he's kept her away from his infected arm and he intends to keep it that way.

Who knows what transmits through dreams?

It's strange to see a building, much less a castle, floating in the sky but - why not? She said her castle was here. And before they land, he turns his head, looking back at the desert planet blurring into kinder, softer colors under him against the rim of star touched darkness.

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

She lands gracefully. The heels of her boots tap noiselessly against the ground, and she lets go of Cloud's hand.

That silence is the odd part. Like her planet, though they can speak here, there's a pervading quiet as the airless vacuum fails to move the sound adequately.

Mercury goes inside first. The doors respond to her presence as she places a hand on them. They slide open to reveal a sense of space. The ceilings are high enough to be dizzying, the columns and pillars - all still that same Grecian style - are elaborately carved and sculpted with designs of fruit and fountains.

The antechamber is empty, save for this; here, there must be an artificial atmosphere, because the sounds echo faintly.

"I'm back," Mercury announces quietly, as if to someone here to hear it and welcome here.

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

He's glad when there's solid ground under his feet again and he lets go of Ami when she lets go of him. While she moves forward, he hangs back just a moment longer, taking in the huge building in front of him before following her inside. There's no doubt it's beautiful but it's a hollow kind of beauty and when he tries to fill it with people in his admitted limited imagination all he can conquer up are another one or two and even then he can't make them solid in his mind's eye.

The interior is just as beautiful, just as empty and Cloud, who's used to small buildings and people living close together, feels a little overwhelmed. By the sheer emptiness of it all. At her voice, he turns his head to look at her and he wonders if she sees this place the way he does or if her memories still fill it with life and light. Either way he doesn't offer anything, content, for the moment to simply follow her lead. Lost princess in a sleeping castle.

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

Not even the guardian of this castle (http://5.p.s.mfcdn.net/store/manga/203/12-002.0/compressed/smile_1_2_66_sailor_moon.jpg), her own guardian, comes to greet her. She does not seem to have expected it; perhaps there is truly no one else here in this dream.

She moves purposefully, as though she's heading somewhere. She passes through an archway into another room, this one with an ornamental pool of fish in its center. They crowd together along the side she passes by, as though eager and expectant.

Past them, into another room. This time, the far wall is taken up entirely by a computer system and viewscreen. At present, it shows the vastness of space, points of light against a dark background of void.

"This is the center of this castle. This place has power of its own. That power, too, belongs to me."

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

Seeing the fish help. Not that fish are great company, at least as far as Cloud's concerned, but they're alive. At least something else is alive in this place. It keeps it from feeling quite as barren as it had before. As the planet below it does. He's reminded of Wutai before he follows Ami into the next room.

The computer screen gets his attention. Tifa would like that. The stars. It was hard to see the stars in Edge.

He'd wished on a star once...

Which reminded him -

"You kept your promise. You said one day you'd show me your castle in space."

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

"You remember that." The words are spoken neutrally, with her back still to Cloud as she leans over the console to reach a few of the controls, but she's pleased.

The view shifts - and a different castle (http://www.wikimoon.org/index.php?title=Magellan_Castle) fills the screen. It seems much like Mercury's own, except for its shape and design: a floating castle in orbit in space. No anomaly, despite that bright light. It's so hard to be sure of anything, and she needs to be sure.

She turns around. "For something to stay in your mind like that, you must have wanted to see it."

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

"Yeah."

He doesn't elaborate. It's the answer for both of her statements really. He does look curiously at the castle on the screen though. He's got a suspicion of whose it must be if Ami has one and he saw bits of what was probably one when he was dreaming of Usagi's future while still in his ex-SOLDIER memories. He can't imagine a baby being born into a barren castle like this though. Babies belonged with their mom and dad, happy and loved and safe. Ami has mentioned her mother enough that he suspects it isn't any different for the other girls like her.

"How old were you? When you first realized you were Mercury?"

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

These castles were given to them at their birth, as a place tied to their power, the homes of their guardian selves, and a gift from Queen Serenity, the princess' mother; they aren't the castles of their kingdoms. Mercury has since decided not to resent the gift for its giver, but to consider the power - always the important thing - her fair due, and scant recompense for what's been suffered at the moon dynasty's hands.

How old she was is another of those questions that's so much harder than it seems.

"When I went to the Moon Castle, I was seven years old. This time, I awakened my powers when I was fourteen." Again, the power is what she focuses on now. Yet she remembers it, the bright and smiling face of Tsukino Usagi: that's why we should be senshi together. She'd only wanted that, nothing else, never wanted her. And so Mizuno Ami had refused, only to finally speak the words that sealed her fate once the two were cornered by a youma and might have died otherwise. She'd become Mercury.

It's her turn for the question. "Why are you asking this?"

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

"I was fourteen when I joined the army." His gaze drifts from the screen to the woman in front of him. "I was sixteen when they started turning me into what I am now."

He leaves off whether that was a good thing, whether it was voluntary, how long it went on for. He has vague recollections of her in one of his nightmares, struggling to free him from one of the tubes, losing herself in mako as well... he doesn't know if she remembers it and if she does he doesn't know that she'd connect it to how he ended up with his eyes or the strength he has.

It doesn't matter really. She saw his nightmare and she's still willing to stand in the same room as him. Though - maybe that's why she's suddenly unwelcoming of his touch. His hand rubs absently at the pain in his covered arm and he frowns.

"Why not?"

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

The first words to her mind are but it was your choice. Pride forbids speaking them. She pretends she was never the girl who didn't want to, never the girl who changed her mind only for the chance to have a friend, and never, never the girl taken from among them and made into a simple tool of the war between the senshi and Dark Kingdom.

She doesn't make all the connections, but she remembers the dreams and that's enough to tell her what she tried to break him out of had a part in it. Yet again, she's interfered. She will keep interfering. She wants his touch, the simple touch of a... well, she never says 'friend' without so many heaps of sarcasm. But right now, they'll both settle for the same room. Despite all that's happened.

Despite all that's happened, do you still rely on me over him?

"Because," she says simply, "There's no reason for you to get to know me."

She doesn't say 'no reason to want to'. She still doesn't understand why he has, why he's here as often as he is, why he's willing to be a support. But she'll never forget, couldn't forget, that first mad ride on Fenrir when they met. It started something that baffles her.

"We are just a part of a dream to each other. Isn't that so?"

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

His shoulders shrug. It doesn't bother him.

"Maybe. But you're a dream I keep coming back to."

There's not a lot in his life that Cloud can come back to and even less that he wants to. But friends -- and that's what he considers her -- friends he'll always come back for. For as long as he's able to. Time's suddenly limited in that area though.

"Most of the people I see regularly in my dreams are dead friends."

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

She dreams about that girl. And it's a measure of her own obsession that this is her first thought, and not the other people she's found in dreams. But she thinks of them next. She thinks of the tantalizing feeling that she could be accepted, and the frustration of the fact that it can only be in the dream world.

He's a dream she keeps coming back to anyway.

"Even if they're gone, your mind goes back to them," she reflects. "So they appear here in your dreams."

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

"I owe them both. It's my fault they're dead."

Not exactly a light subject and not something he'd usually talk about. He's at the end of things though and what used to be a mild gnawing inside him has taken over a lot more of his life now.

"Now I see them in my dreams more than I see the people I know that are still alive." He's no shrink but even he thinks that's probably a bad sign. With a quiet exhale, he shakes his head, running fingers through the hair at the back of it. "Even in my dreams, Zack won't let me apologize to him though."

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

"If you're giving yourself the burden of that sort of guilt, it's not strange that you'd keep seeing them." She'd say, of course, that this does not reflect on her own situation at all. She sees the princess time and time again simply because that is the nature of the nexus, just as she's seen Beryl.

Then she finds advice to give, advice that might well be stirred up from what she wants to happen.

"However, apologies won't change anything. If you have regrets, make something different."

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

Blue eyes come up and for a minute, just a minute, they hold all the torture he's slowly been letting himself sink into since he realized he's dying. That the second chance (third chance? fourth?) he'd hoped for isn't coming for him. There's a quiet fervency in his voice as he asks:

"You know how to do that?"

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

She might not be the best person to take advice from in this area. It's been known to warp and twist worlds other than her own, all spreading out from the taint that started with her.

"I changed my world completely," she says, no reassurance but a simple proof of her words.

[findmyownreason.livejournal.com]

His brows sink and his face tips down too. He's not interested in changing his world. He's already done that. For good or for bad. It's something simpler - and more complex - that he needs the key for.

"How do you find forgiveness for past sins?"