It's even cold when you dream;

[marsmakeup]

When Rei wakes up, it's not a real awakening. She can just tell that she's stepped from her usual sleep into a dream. It also helps that she steps from her bed dressed in her Senshi uniform, bright red heels contrasting sharply with the stark white of a snow field laid out before her. She shivers. How familiar. She tends to dream about the Arctic; it's a sticking point in her mind, especially when she's uncomfortable. Probably something to do with her death; that kind of thing leaves a mark on your psyche.

She takes a few more steps out into the whiteness. Usually she wakes up recalling nothing more than being cold, but this is different. More solid. More real than it has been before. So she walks out into the empty field of snow and ice, wind rustling past her with biting cold.

"Why can't I dream about something nice for a change?" Rei asks aloud, turning around to look back--and instead of the cold arctic, there's a sandy beach, sunshine beating down and water lapping upwards in the ever-rolling tide. She looks back. Snow and cold.

"Dreams are weird."

Comments

[waterfell]

"I've become used to it."

Suddenly she finds herself echoing the old, old rationalization. And yet it's also true. After these years, she's become used to the darkness, to the cold. She's even found glimmers of warmth inside it, that she hardly dared think about lest they prove too fragile.

And there's the part of her that wants to force the senshi to come to her, force them to go out of their way.

"So, let's have that friendly visit here." There's still something unnatural about the voice that makes the words too flippant for a girl who'd done anything for her friends.

[marsmakeup]

"If you really want to. . ." Rei crosses her arms and steps further into the ice, shivering. She doesn't care for the cold all that much and it's not fun, having to deal with it. She rolls a shoulder, steps up to Ami.

"This is going to be an interesting dream to talk about tomorrow. I wonder what you'll say then." She smiles, teasing her (supposed) dream!Ami.

[waterfell]

For a second, she thinks of deceiving Rei. Of taking the comfort and warmth of the senshi she thinks of as ignorant, by pretending to be one of them again.

How pathetic.

It's because Rei actually walked into the ice, she tells herself, and the very act of thinking of her as Rei again is telling. And she tries to tell herself it's meaningless, but ... doesn't any snow and ice start to melt when the fire comes closer?

"I was telling you the truth before," she says instead. "This is where I belong. You'll understand when you wake up." When you wake up, and 'Ami' has no idea what to make of the weird dream where she insists on rejecting the senshi ties.

"Until then, don't lump me together with that useless girl."

[marsmakeup]

"Ami-chan!" Rei's voice is a sharp crack, almost a rebuke of this strange dream.

"You shouldn't say that kind of thing about yourself. You know you're not useless." This feel so strange, reassuring a dream-version of her friend. What will it matter? It feels right to do so, though. As if she's really helping.

"We need you."

[waterfell]

Ami's insecurities, in any world, are not exactly unknown, though she often hides them well. Perhaps this is just a manifestation of them.

Perhaps.

And of course, Mars - yes, Mars - is talking about the Mercury of her own world. (So why say 'you'?) She can end this easily.

"I'll tell you something good," she offers, still too practiced in her tone. "if you want."

[marsmakeup]

"What's that?" Rei tilts her head, curious to hear what her friend has to say. She wants to reach out and touch Ami. But she hesitates. Something about this feels off.

[waterfell]

How to say it to make her point, what words to use to make it clear?

"I have nothing to do with your world." This, she'd know anywhere; she herself possesses Mars' transformation bracelet in her world.

"I'm not that girl you know."

[marsmakeup]

". . .But you're in my dream." That's the only response she can offer. It's automatic, a bit silly really. How can someone in her dreams not be from her world? Then again, there's plenty of weird stuff that happens in her life anyway.

"Then who are you?"

[waterfell]

It's such a simple question, and yet it's one she spent years asking herself, on rooftops in the city or stolen quiet moments to be alone with her thoughts in the damp tunnels surrounding the Dark Kingdom castle: Just who am I?

And: Who is she meant to be?

And, perhaps the most important: Who does she want to become?

She lifts her head, always prideful. "I am Mizuno Ami," she says clearly. "I am Mercury, who left the sailor senshi behind. And my body right now is far away, asleep in the castle."

"It's another world parallel to yours."

[marsmakeup]

"So. . .you're Ami-chan. But not the Ami-chan I know." That's strange, but it makes sense.

"And we're sharing a dream? And you left us behind? Why?" It hurts a little, to think that Ami would ever abandon her friends for some reason. But she doesn't know this Mercury's reasoning.

[waterfell]

Why?

"Because," she starts, and she thinks of what to say. "Because I could no longer support them or their princess."

Guiltily, Kunzite's own words telling her not to delude herself, that those were never the first reasons she was swayed to his side, come to her; but she pushes them away.

[marsmakeup]

That's a shock. One she can't hide. Unable to support Usagi-chan? Unable to support their beloved princess? Their friend? She gasps, then tightens her jaw.

"You couldn't help defend the world? Why?"

[waterfell]

Her eyes narrow. That assumption... She doesn't particularly feel like being fair enough to recognize the already-obvious difference in Rei's world. After all, until they learned the truth, they would have said the same things in hers.

She should brush it off, laugh, tell Mars she just got tired of it and felt like leaving them. It was boring. They held her back. She became better: stronger, more powerful, able to reach her potential without having to worry about them.

Instead, she answers bluntly. "It's the opposite. We won't allow the planet to be destroyed again."

[marsmakeup]

That didn't make sense. Why would she leave the senshi to stop the planet from being destroyed? It's rather a confusing thought to wrap her head around. And this Ami scared her a little bit. Cold, distant.

"I don't understand."

[waterfell]

She couldn't make the next words more horrible if she tried. "The one who destroyed the planet in the past was your princess."

"When the prince died in the war, everything else, including you, was worth so little to her that she destroyed them with her own hands, with the ginzuishou."

[marsmakeup]

"What--? No!" There's a flash of anger and denial.

"I won't believe that Usagi would do such a thing!"

[waterfell]

[Even she would have questioned something so enormous, if it weren't for one thing.]

She said it with her own mouth. There's no doubt.

However... [She decides to take the plunge into deeper truth.] Before that, I was already sick of the sailor senshi.

[Slightly deeper truth. More truthfully still, she'd been worn down from trying to wait, trying to hope they'd come together, when each day brought them all further apart, alone at Crown, alone in battle, alone always.]

[marsmakeup]

"Your world sounds. . . very different from mine." Rei looks conflicted, turning away from Mercury for a moment. None of this makes sense. Usagi destroying the world, Ami leaving them. They were friends.

"But that doesn't matter! I won't let that stop me from being your friend, Ami-chan." She turns back towards the other girl, her jaw clenched.

"Even if you're not my Ami-chan, it doesn't change how I feel about you."

[waterfell]

For a moment, it's her turn to be conflicted, and quiet. She remembers the way Rei is trying to tell her things can be. But with everything else that happened, it was all too easy to decide those memories were the lies.

And yet Rei is here. Rei is here, and even stepped into the cold and darkness just because she said so, to talk to her. She doesn't forget it. It's too confusing, and abruptly, she steps away. But in her hurry to move away, she's neglected to notice she's crossed into the sun.

Just a little bit.

oh geeze, I missed this D:

[marsmakeup]

Rei follows her, grabbing Ami's hands in her own.

"I don't care what it's like on your world, we're still your friends and we care about you, no matter where you are or what's happening. Just remember that when you wake up!" She smiles.

"We'd have been lost so many times without you, Ami-chan."

no worries! <3

[waterfell]

That's right: Everything she thinks she's won, is only a dream. She stays angled away from the dream-Mars. She needs to think.

"If this is a dream," she says finally, neutral, "and you're in another world, dreaming; then, we'll see each other again some day." If you look for me.

Re: no worries! <3

[marsmakeup]

"I hope so, Ami-chan. Because I think you need your friends." She smiles.

"Because I know we need you." She lets her hands drop from Ami's, looking at the strange girl who looks so familiar and yet. Strange.

"Don't give up on us, okay?"

[waterfell]

Going had been giving up. An end to the waiting, an end to the hoping they'd come back together. And then- escape. Kunzite had stripped everything away from her in those simple words of truth: Your friends won't come.

She'd never stopped to wonder just why he was so sure.

Can someone 'not give up' after 'giving up'? (Mars called her needed, she notes. But of course they'd say it now, when she has the power to defeat them; now, in a dream.)

"I'll do what I think is best," she says finally, neither a yes nor a no.