hieroglyphics | | psl — dark kingdom arc redux, electric boogaloo.

Perhaps if he hadn't regained the memories of their past life, he would've already fled and left tending to her to someone else, but he feels responsible. Unaware of Sailor Venus having already awakened, Mamoru assumes that he's the only one who remembers their past lives. Mercury and Mars don't seem to have a clue, and neither does Luna, who ought to have recognized him. She caught him sneaking around with Serenity as often as Venus and Kunzite did.

Luna at least seems to clue in to Usagi's bad drunken directions and bounds ahead, meowing at them in attempt to get him to steer her in the right direction. It works, and Mamoru prides himself on not blurting out that he knows Luna can talk and instead just playing around with her faux meowing. And while the Mautian (Mauling??) walks to the front door and sits on the mat, waiting for him to follow, he instead sweeps Usagi into his arms and leaps up to her window in a single bound.

How he knew her room was on the second story is beyond him, but he knows, somehow, this is her room. And that she always forgets to latch her window, so it will slide open easily. Enough for him to step inside with her still in his arms.

"I didn't want you to get in trouble for coming home drunk," he explains, setting her back on her feet.

In all honesty, it would serve Usagi right if he did blurt out her knew about Luna -- they weren't exactly subtle about communicating in public. She had talked to her cat on the bus in front of him before. Not that she realizes that the Tuxedo Mask who is escorting her home is the Mamoru Chiba who had overheard her and her cat but still.

The point is, the ability to keep a low profile was clearly locked out of their memories too.

But soon she's not thinking of Luna or anything other than the way it feels to be swept up in his arms. He feels warm, again, and she can feel her heart beating wildly in her chest.

"That's probably good, Mama gets on my case enough as it is." And it's a sign she's sobering up a little that she can string together a coherent and relevant sentence.

"Thank you."

Her sobering up is also a sign that he should leave. There are too many things on the tip of his tongue that shouldn't be said until he's had time to analyze whether they should be said at all, and her feline companion is now perched on the bed, glaring at him disapprovingly in a manner he's certain she doesn't know is reminiscent of before.

Of long, long ago.

"Drink more water and sleep," he tells her, patting her awkwardly on the arm as he takes a step back and climbs back up onto the windowsill. "And watch out for the punch."

And then he's gone, darting off in the direction of his apartment so he can discard the rented tuxedo he stuffed himself into (since he didn't attend the ball as Tuxedo Kamen, not technically) and stand in the shower with cold water beating down on him as he tries to get his thoughts to properly realign. Remembering his past life is a revelation like no other, and when he gives his name as 'Endymion' at Starbucks the next morning, he decides that going out right now isn't the best of ideas.

So he feigns being sick for the first time in his life and skips a week's worth of classes. He does the work from home, turning in assignments virtually so he doesn't fall behind, taking time to adjust to his new reality.

By the time he finally leaves his apartment and heads to the game center to ~~see if the princess is there~~ see Motoki, he knows why he's never been sick. He knows why he's always been able to sense lingering danger. Why he had those dreams of Princess Serenity, but not why he was reincarnated alongside the girl he was forbidden to see and her court.

She watches with a mixture of amazement and disappointment as he races off. Vaguely, in the background, she can make out Luna's warnings. That she needs to be careful. That they don't know if Tuxedo Mask is an enemy or not. They don't know if they can trust him. And yet, why would he make sure she got home safely if he was an enemy?

Never mind that he seems to know she's Sailor Moon.

But she goes to sleep, and things get busy as there's a new transfer student in the school, Makoto, and a new scout as well, Sailor Jupiter. Luna says she has to be their leader now, to lead them to find the princess and the crystal and it just seems like...such a heavy burden. She doesn't know how to be any sort of leader. She can barely keep her grades up.

The meeting with the others is over by now but she doesn't want to head home just yet -- so she's engrossed in playing the Sailor V game, thinking about how drawn she feels to the other hero. Is she one of them too? Luna said they could look into it. Needless to say she's so lost in her own thoughts (and her game) that she doesn't realize who's just walked in.

He almost calls her Serenity. Almost.

But he has a better handle on himself now, doesn't feel the iron grip on his head that threatens to send him tumbling thousands of years back. It's now more like a cold ache somewhere in the back of his subconsciousness. A sad reminder of what was and the threats that they're having to face all over again.

Memories that keep him awake at night wondering if the Dark Kingdom would've gained a foothold on Earth and attacked the Moon regardless of if he fell for Serenity. Surely he didn't start a war because he fell in love with a girl, right?

"Odango," he greets, looking up from the Pac-Man game he's playing nearby. As if nothing has changed. (Everything has changed.) "Looks like you're on your way to beating the high score."

Edited 2022-06-21 03:56 (UTC)

"You."

Except it's not said with venom so much as surprise. She and Mamoru weren't exactly friends or anything but she had noticed his disappearance all the same -- had found herself wondering if he was okay.

(She's noticed Tuxedo Mask's absence since the night of the masquerade too, but she hasn't put the two and two together.)

She's distracted long enough that the enemy in the game gets the best of her and "GAME OVER" flashes across her screen.

"I was so close!" She's pouting and sticking her tongue out but she's never been able to beat the high score, she probably wouldn't have this time either.

"Here, let me try."

Without warning, he moves from his game and sits down on the bench beside her in front of the old school style Sailor V game.

Having never taken a good look at this game before, he freezes with his hands upon the controls when his eyes land on the sprite he'll be manipulating. Sailor Venus. He'd recognize her anywhere, even in a fuku that wasn't the orange one she donned while leader of Princess Serenity's guard thousands of years ago. (Perhaps he wasn't meant to look too closely at this game, perhaps no one was. Maybe that was inherent in it's design, as he can feel power flowing through this machine that's almost alive. An aura that wasn't bad, but not something that should be associated with an arcade game.)

"This is jump, right?" He taps his fingers lightly over the button, feigning getting used to the controls before making his attempt at beating one of the levels.

She's still teasing him for ruining her run when he suddenly offers to take a chance himself -- sitting down next to her. He's not usually so friendly with her -- he's not rude necessarily, but she wouldn't call them friends. And yet she finds herself not minding so much.

(She's glad the others left, Makoto would tease her endlessly if she found them playing together like this).

"It is. And then the other one is the attack button." Her finger brush briefly against his as she shows him, a familiar warmth accompanying the touch.

A jolt of electricity sits through him when she touches him, and it's all he can do to keep himself from flinching in response to how powerful it is. Memories of the princess showing him how to use the communications system in her rooms so he could contact Elysion flash through his mind. Her melodic voice like a bell as she laughed as he punched in the wrong patterns.

"Okay," he says, clearing his throat. "Let's see if this is as hard as it looks."

...it's not, actually. It's quite easy. Mamoru finds himself blowing through the first few sets of levels with ease, and it's only the later ones that give him any sort of challenge. When he hits the end, it asks for him to enter his name into the high score panel. Instead of typing in his own, he puts hers.

"For ruining your run," he says.

It's almost frustrating, how quickly he takes to the game. It's taken her weeks to get as good as she is at it -- feeling as drawn to the game as she did the other scouts and Tuxedo Mask (little does she realize that's because one of the other scouts is communicating with her through the game).

It surprises her when he puts her name in. It's nice -- and again not that they're enemies but they weren't exactly friends either.

"Thank you."

It's not the same as beating the game herself, but it's still nice to see her name at top.

There's a reason she was drawn to him, but the reason is locked to her while her memories of the distant, ancient past are still locked away. He wonders if that has something to do with the missing silver crystal, if she won't awakened until the powerful gem her mother once wielded is found.

He wishes he knew where it was.

"You're welcome." Mamoru turns to smile at her and catches the time on the wall. He jumps up. "Shit! I have class in ten minutes. Sorry, Usagi. I have to go."

But in his hurry, he leaves his bag behind. Full of all his books and notebooks and pens, all kept neatly within organized compartments. If she tries to hand it to him outside, she'll find that he's nowhere in sight.

(Using his abilities to parkour across Tokyo to get to class on time? Absolutely.)

Wait did he actually use her real name?

He also left behind his stuff. Like....all of his stuff. Part of her has to resist the urge to be nosey and poke around it. It's probably just stuffy text books anyways.

She would have went to his fancy school to return it after classes -- but life as a soldier of justice is never over. One of their enemies begins to spread negative energy waves across the televisions and it begins to wipe out people in mass, herself included. But Tuxedo Mask finds her and encourages her to transform and save everyone. She manages to do it --

But she passes out afterwards. She doesn't remember much after that except a familiar warmth carrying her. She began to feel healthier, not just physically but spiritually as well. But she still needs sleep after all that. When she wakes up she's still in her fuku....and in someplace she doesn't recognize. She finds a broken watch in her lap. It has lunar phases on it.

Tuxedo Mask's?

She transforms back into her regular self. She had transformed in front of him -- again. He seems to know everything about her. But he's always helping her. There's no way he could be the enemy.

—she's awake.

He felt her stir into consciousness before she actually opened her eyes, and he has half a mind to put the mask back on. To keep up the illusion that he's someone she doesn't know. Perhaps that's the thing he should have done, but he made the mistake of leaving his mask, cape, and top hat on his desk chair in the bedroom. He'd shrugged the pieces of costume (battle tuxedo?) off haphazardly after bringing her here, immediately heading to the bathroom to see to her wounds.

Except they'd healed, and he'd sat on his bed beside her dumbfounded until he realized he must have done it. That possessing the ability to heal was something he had in common with his past self. So instead, he'd seen to cleaning the blood from her skin and making sure she was comfortable and left her to sleep it off.

And now she was awake and likely confused and alarmed about being in some stranger's apartment, leaving him with little choice but to reveal himself to her.

Gathering his courage, he steps into the bedroom from the hall. "How are you feeling? You were out for a while. I'm sorry about bringing you here, but you were still transformed and I didn't want your parents to see you. I assume they don't know you're Sailor Moon."

....Mamoru?

Why is she in his apartment? And how does he know she's Sailor Moon? She's almost about to say she tried to tell her dad once and he thought she was joking but then she spots it -- the discarded cape, hat, and mask. Why didn't she notice it before. His soft voice? Those blue eyes that feel like they look right through her? She gently rises to her feet, grabbing the mask. She holds it up to his face to see it for herself -- but that's not all she sees.

Maybe it's being this close to him when he's already awakened. It's hard to say -- but flashes of old memories flood her mind. A golden crescent moon glows on her forehead as her clothes change again -- not into her fuku but instead into the flowing dresses she had worn as the princess, centuries ago. She remembers it now -- how awfully things ended before. Him dying. Her taking her own life.

Maybe this time, their story could have a happier ending. There's a warmth and glow in her chest and between them the crystal is drawn out of her body, where it had been lying dormant. It seems to be emboldened by the power of their connection.

"Endymion?"

Whatever he was expecting her reaction to be, it wasn't this. Not him triggering an awakening in her, something that brings him both unbridled joy and a deep sense of regret. He had wanted her to just live as close to a normal life as she could, to be the sort of carefree she hadn't had the opportunity to be in their previous life with all the pressures of being a princess bearing down upon her shoulders.

And now that very princess is before his eyes once more, Usagi taking on the form of his long lost love. It makes him wonder how he ever managed to be so blind, for she looks the same as she did then. How did he not realize the girl in his dreams was the one he kept bumping into on the streets?

Mamoru takes a step towards her and in a flash, he's in his princely form. "Serenity."

It's not what any of them expected. Eventually, when Minako comes on the scene, her attempts to a decoy will be harder. Somewhere in the back of her mind she already knows she has to tell her feline companion the truth -- assuming Luna's memories haven't been awakened too. It occurs to her now that they must have been sealed off as well.

Her life stopped being carefree the moment she became Sailor Moon -- being the princess adds to that burden, certainly, but she can't find it in her to care, not when faced with the overwhelming joy at seeing her long lost love again. She doesn't hesitate to close the gap between them, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist.

"It all makes sense. How it felt like I already knew you. And kept running into you -- both of you."

Endymion holds her tightly to him with one arm, the other outstretched to catch the silver crystal in his palm. The warmth of its energy is like a soothing balm as it hovers above his hand.

"I've known since the masquerade," he confesses to her. "I awakened then, but I could not force you to remember."

"That must of been hard, having to keep it all to yourself."

But admirable too. He could have tried to force her to remember, confessed everything, but he had kept it to himself, for her sake she imagines. She's grateful for it, but she's even more grateful she remembers.

"It was," he admits, "but I didn't want to burden you. As much as I wanted you to remember, I also wanted you to be able to just live, free from the tethers of our previous existence. You have more freedom here than you ever did back then. I wasn't going to be the one to take that away from you."

The crystal shines, as if to accept responsibility for doing that. For making her remember, for drawing the Dark Kingdom out of hiding in a quest to seize it.

"I started having tethers as soon as I awakened as Sailor Moon. It was only a matter of time."

But she doesn't care, because it led her back to him, and how can that be anything but good? She couldn't stop smiling if she tried.

Leave it to her to find a positive in all this, a positive he can't argue with. Endymion ought to be more cross with the crystal he carelessly drops onto his bed so he can fully envelop her in his embrace, but how can he truly be mad about this when he has her back? She remembers him, as he was long ago. It's not the set of memories he'd been after, but they're memories he welcomes all the same. Memories that tell him so much about himself that had been a mystery before that fateful night at the masquerade.

"I've missed you, Serenity."

Because of how everything played out, she doesn't even know yet that he doesn't have the memories of his childhood as Mamoru. It'll still be upsetting once she does find out, no matter what version of her she is she has a bleeding heart. But there's time for them to learn things about the new versions of themselves, right now, she's just basking in the memory of the old ones. They're finally reunited.

Maybe this time, their story could have a happier ending.

"I've missed you too."

"The last thing I remember, before—"

Before they were reborn. That battle on the moon, Beryl's attempts at striking the princess down and the steps he took to prevent it. His own generals turned against him, his people labeling him a traitor.

Endymion doesn't know what became of his parents or what happened after he was struck down. (He's not sure if he wants to.)

In some ways she doesn't want to tell him. She doesn't want him to know how she took her own life after losing him. She wants to spare him that sorrow.

"Before we died?"

Not exactly a lie, but not the whole truth either.

The knowledge will horrify him, but it will also serve to strengthen his resolve to prevent the past from repeating itself. To keep them from suffering the same fate. Surely they weren't reborn just to do that all over again. Surely they're meant for something different this time.

"Yes," the prince answers. "I remember your tears and then— Then there was nothing. Not until I was reborn in this life."

And even then, his current incarnation was missing his childhood memories. Whoever that child was prior to that car accident, it's still lost to him.

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