Serenity floated in an endless, black void.
“It hurts.” She whispered. Hands that she knew she had but couldn’t see pressed against her ears to muffle the thousands of screams that threatened to deafen her, or worse, steal her sanity. It was so cold and… where were her clothes? She curled her body into a fetal position and whimpered weakly, fighting the pull of drowsiness. She was so tired…
’Who am I? What am I? Have I always felt so tired? So frightened? So angry and hopeless?’
Her eyes shot open.
“No.” She declared. 'Metallia wants me to fall victim to this. I know who I am!’ Floating in the vast amount of dark nothingness, Serenity forced her body to stand tall. “I am Serenity, Princess of the Moon, and I’m here to help you, Metallia!”
A guttural laugh echoed within the confines of the multitude of voices and Serenity tried to filter through the thousands of screams that filled her ears.
’No.’ She realized. ’It’s not thousands of screams, but a single voice!’
She turned her body, and was undeterred when she was met with more darkness. “You’re in pain, aren’t you?” She asked. “This voice is yours!”
Metallia’s laugh paused for a brief moment. ’What of it, little girl?’
“I don’t know what you’ve seen or what you’ve done to make you into who you are now, but I want to help you.”
’Help me?’ That laugh rang out above the screaming again, but Metallia’s voice teetered in the slightest. ’You can’t help me. I don’t need help.’
“Then why am I still here?” Serenity demanded.
’My attempts at dissolving you and consuming your energy have failed,’ Metallia spat, ’and I don’t know why.’
“You lie,” Serenity touched her hand to her breast. She felt it again, that warm, bright, resonating power, the power that had saved her lover, brought him back from the brink of the very darkness that Metallia could not dissolve her with.
“This is why you can’t kill me, isn’t it? This light. It’s what you’re frightened of.”
’I am not frightened. It is you who should be trembling before me.’
“And yet here I am, standing solidly. Why should I tremble when you seem to be doing it for me?” Serenity took the lengthy pause as an indication to continue. “Tell me, what is this?” Her hand clenched over the warmth in the center of her chest. “Is this the ancient weapon you were frightened of?”
After an almost reverent pause, Metallia answered softly, “The Ginzuishou. Yes.”
Serenity frowned. “Whatever you call it, I don’t want to hurt you with it. I only want to help you.”
The terrible screaming stopped abruptly and Serenity was nearly deafened by the sudden silence. Feeling eyes on her, Serenity turned and was surprised to find not the burning, red, bodiless eyes she had expected, but the soft, hazel eyes of a small child. No older than Saturn’s last incarnation had been, the child tugged at the end of a knee length skirt with one hand and tossed long, blonde hair over her shoulder with another.
“Metallia?”
’I was of this age when I became the entity that you know now.’
Serenity’s expression softened. “Shh.” She said. “You don’t have to explain. It’s all right.” She dropped to one knee and extended her arms to the child. “Let me help you.”
The young girl trapped her bottom lip with her teeth and looked away momentarily.
“It’s okay, I promise I won’t hurt you.”
The child took a tentative step forward, and then another, and then she was running into the open arms of the Princess of the Moon. Serenity closed her arms around the child and soothed her back with long strokes of her hand, allowing the girl to cry on her shoulder.
“It’s warm,” the child said between sobs, “so warm.”
Serenity chuckled quietly. “It is, isn’t it? It feels good to release all that hatred and fear, doesn’t it?”
“Un!” The girl said happily.
But as the child tightened her hold around the Princess’ shoulders, Serenity felt the warmth being pulled from her body, even as the darkness around them slowly lightened, fading into softer shades of grays. The child in her arms became warm to the touch, even as she felt waves of coldness crash against her.
“Is this…”
“Hmm?” Serenity asked, her teeth chattering slightly.
“Is this love?”
“It is.” Serenity replied softly, even as she felt the child in her arms begin to lose her form and substance.
The ghostly body pulled away from her then, and the child possessed a bright smile. “Thank you.” Metallia said. “Thank you for sharing your love with me. You were the first to ever do so.”
The Princess smiled sweetly. “And I won’t be the last. I promise.”
The darkness faded completely, and along with it, the child as well. Serenity’s body began to tremble as her hold on the warm power deep within her began to falter, and her eyes slowly slid closed to the brightness that threatened to blind her. Even here, in this magical place of her own creation, even behind closed eyelids, there was light.
And in that endless light, a single voice cried out.
“Everyone, where are you?”
And then, her body freezing, and her breath slowing, Serenity slipped into a light-filled unconsciousness.
Serenity was still alone, floating in the bright void.
It was so comfortable here, so easy. She felt like she had awoken from a long sleep, but was still groggy and weak as though recovering from an exhausting trauma. She wasn’t cold anymore, but she couldn’t feel herself or anything else either, and as her body drifted, she wondered if that was a good thing or not.
The white nothing that surrounded her was eerily similar in its intensity to Metallia’s darkness, and had that same sense of awesome power that shouldn’t have been tampered with. Was she being punished for using that power? Had it sucked everything out of her until she had nothing left to give?
Somehow, she didn’t think so.
She felt something familiar then, a tingle at the edge of her consciousness and Serenity reached out with her thoughts weakly.
“Mother?” She called, surprised to find her voice so hoarse as though with misuse. “Mother? Is that you?“ Her breath hitched in her throat. “Are you… are you dead, too?”
“No, my child. You saved me, and many, many others.” She chuckled quietly. “And you are not dead, either.”
This small bit of knowledge that the Princess guessed but was now confirmed came as a relief, and she felt a smile tug at her lips. “You were right, Mother. I did have a power of my own.”
“You did. But this is not where you want to be, my daughter. Many of us lived, but so many more died.”
There was a silence as Serenity pondered her mother’s gentle words. “Mother-“
“Yes. You have seen that you have a power within you that surpasses that of all your guardians.” Queen Serenity’s voice was soft and soothing. “You have the power to set it all back, if you so chose.”
“But it hurts, Mother. My senshi… my friends… I saw… I saw…” A sob racked her body as the terrible memories played over and over before her. Could she use that power again? Did she have the strength to do what her mother asked of her?
“You’ve extinguished the evil, Serenity. You have nothing to fear.”
“But another evil could arise.”
“You’re right. Evil always lurks, my daughter.”
The Princess’ own small whimpers and sniffles were all she could hear for some time, until her Mother’s gentle voice reminded her of her strong presence. “Listen, Serenity. Do you hear that? The Queen asked.
“Hear what?” The Princess asked with a pointed sniffle.
“His voice.”
“His voice?” Serenity repeated slowly. “His voice?”
“Shh,” the Queen soothed, “Listen.”
“Serenity? Serenity?”
The Princess caught another sob in her throat. Her heart stopped beating for the fraction of a second it took her to place the voice and the familiar, warm aura that she had so longed for. “Endymion,” she whispered.
“Serenity,” His bodiless voice was gentle and hushed, as though he were holding back tears of his own, “If we encounter any other evil, we can fight it together. Hotaru-chan and I, we’re waiting for you, here.”
“Endymion…”
“You know what you need to do.”
Her body drifting in the light, Serenity thought of all the pain and suffering, the near death of her Kingdom and her lover, the horrible deaths many of her people and most of her senshi had faced. Could she live through it all again if need be? History could very well repeat itself.
“You told me,” he said, “That we’d see each other on the other side.” He paused, and tried to send every last bit of himself through the connection he had forged with her. “Are you ready to come back now?”
Suddenly, the terrible images in Serenity’s mind faded, and she saw the image of her lover, kneeling on the paver ground of the broken courtyard, amid the ruin and destruction of her Palace, Endymion held an infant to his chest with one arm, and his other arm he held out wide, beckoning her to him.
She could live through it. And she would fight the darkness again, if need be.
“Endymion.” She whispered, and she became real again.
They felt the inexorable pull of something warm and bright tugging at them. The golden-red glow of two merged souls slowly separated into two distinct auras as Minako and Rei once again found their separate identities.
“Looks like we’re being summoned.”
“She can’t do anything on her own, can she?”
A green-blue glow also materialized beside them, their colors mingled so that it was impossible to tell where one started and where one stopped before they then separated into the two beings known as Makoto and Ami.
”It’s why we love her so.”
“She’ll need protectors in this restored world.”
A golden-blue aura appeared next, closely followed by a lone one of the deepest green.
“New world, new evils.”
“Trouble finds that girl, you know.”
“This time, she’ll need our love, more than our guidance.”
The bright, golden aura rallied her troops. “Come on, we can’t leave little Hotaru-chan as Serenity’s only senshi. Lets go!”
Scattered about the destruction of the courtyard battlefield, the colorful fuku that had been torn, bloodied, charred, and crushed, began to shimmer in the rapidly clearing sky.
Mars pulled herself from the sooty wreckage that surrounded her. She stood on shaky legs, no longer unsteady as they had once been from the high-heeled shoes she wore, but for the sight that greeted her.
Venus was about to tackle her.
The golden warrior jumped, seemed to fly, and she soared over the rubble and debris right into the Martian’s waiting arms. The two women held onto each other as tightly as possible, each of their wide smiles pressed into the long hair of the other.
Someone snickered, and the two turned, each sporting light blushes. Jupiter aided Mercury over a large chunk of a Palace wall and Neptune and Uranus, closely followed by Pluto, skirted around the large piece of limestone.
Mars turned to look behind her. The others followed her line of sight and all of the senshi breathed a collective sigh of relief, for the black veil that had covered the Earth had vanished.
No words were needed. Instinct called to them. Together, they turned and made their way to the person that had brought them back, to the one woman who had saved not only the forces of good, but who had purified the darkness of evil.
Along the way, the senshi watched as the soldiers of the Moon Kingdom’s army began to rise, pulling their unmarred bodies from pools of their own blood. Shocked and bewildered, the weapons they had held were dropped to the ground and they offered the senshi no small amount of wonder as they passed.
It was a sentiment shared by the civilians, streaming out of their underground shelters, they turned blinking eyes to the clearing sky and surveyed the war zone that their homes had become. There were tears, but many of them were of happiness as they reunited with one another and expressed their joy at simply being alive. As they sifted through the rubble of their homes, businesses and city buildings, they knew they would have to rebuild so much of their lives, but the chance to begin anew seemed to be a refreshing opportunity to all of them.
Venus saw her first, and tugging Mars by the hand, she broke into a run, knowing the others were following close on her heels, for the three figures that huddled close together at the base of an old, charred oak tree were none other than their Princess, her Prince, and the baby Hotaru.
And the embrace that those three shared was soon interrupted, but only for the better, as it became an embrace between ten people - the Princess, her Prince, and the senshi; all of them, laughing, crying, questioning, teasing, and loving.
And above the din of the intertwined bodies, a single voice cried out,
“We can try again, together, right?”
Author’s Notes:
I hope everyone enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I promised an AU where the Moon Kingdom wouldn’t meet the same end as the one we all know. Even though the Moon Kingdom almost fell to Metallia’s power, Serenity was strong enough to save them in this time line, not unlike the way she’s saved the world in other time lines. I think this ending most closely reflects the Sailor Stars ending.
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