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

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.

Much as she'd like to spare him the terrible truth, she can't get herself to lie to him. Not about something that important.

"I killed myself shortly after," She says in a quiet voice. "I couldn't stand the idea of living without you, of losing you. My mother must have done something for us to be reborn."

At least, it's the only theory that makes sense.

"You what?"

Endymion lurches back from her, putting space between them, even though his hands remain upon her shoulders. He stares at her with wide eyes, clearly shaken by the knowledge of her desperate act.

It feels like a sharp pain in her chest, the way he puts space between them. She doesn't blame him. She didn't like telling him. Her own eyes well up with tears as she bows her head.

"I didn't know what else to do. And I thought you deserved to know."

It's a blow like no other, to know that she sacrificed herself out of grief, unable to live without him when he had taken that sword in order to save her. To ensure she lived. But it seems no matter what he did, whatever choice he would have made back then, the result would have been the same. The heir to the Silver Millennium dead and his planet at fault for unleashing the forces of the Dark Kingdom. If not for the corruption born of his people, their darkness never would have festered and spread.

Endymion's hands lift from her shoulders so he can cradle her cheeks in his palm, tipping her face up so he can meet her gaze.

"Promise me, Serenity, that you won't do that again. Whatever happens in this life, don't do that again."

"I don't know that I can."

The idea of losing him again, even thinking about it, brings up those old feelings of desperation and panic. Could she really promise history wouldn't repeat itself?

Can she really imagine living on without him?

"You have to. This is yours now."

He leaves her so he can retrieve the discarded silver crystal from the bed. It feels warm in his hands as he holds it out to her.

"This world needs you."

Queen Serenity was no long around to take care of the darkness that threatened to overtake the Earth once more. If history repeated itself, who would stop Beryl and her forces from taking over the world? People would suffer; her family and friends, his classmates, the other senshi...

She takes the crystal from him. It is still warm and pulsating light, as if reacting to both of them.

"Then you better not die on me again, because I need you."

If she's going to make that kind of promise, he does too. Every step of the way he has helped her grow stronger as a scout, more sure and confident in her powers. She needs him by her side.

They're stronger together.

His parents never told him about the golden crystal, perhaps out of a need to protect him and ensure that no one would take an interest in it after seeing how much attention Queen Serenity received from having the silver crystal proudly on display. Had the forces of the Dark Kingdom been aware of it, they might have attacked Elysion before they stormed the Moon Kingdom.

"I don't plan on it," he tells her, "but if it came down to you or me... Serenity, you have a life here. You have a family, friends, the girls, and Luna. I don't— In this life, I don't—"

Oh. Wow. It was surprisingly harder to talk about, now that he knows what having a family is. Remembering his previously life paints a picture of what he's been missing, giving him a glimpse at what that hollow void in his life ought to have been filled with.

"I don't have that," he finally manages, head bowed. His hand grips the pommel of the sword at hip. "I'm an orphan. I dreamed of you, my princess, but I didn't realize that you were the key to my past life and not the memories that have been blocked since the car accident that took my family from me. No one would miss me, but so many people would miss you."

Her heart breaks at his words. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right that she was born with so much and he was born with so little in this life. He's been alone all these years. Her eyes well up with tears at the thought. No wonder he had been so determined to try to find the crystal for himself, he had just wanted the memories of the family he did have back -- and instead he got memories of another life.

"I would miss you. And --" She cuts herself off as something snaps into place. The generals they've been fighting, the enemies -- they had been his soldiers. Some of them are dead again already but two should still be around. Zoisite and Kunzite.

"We have to find a way to save your generals from the enemy." Because she believes whatever swayed them to the dark side could be undone. That ultimately, their loyalty to their prince would override everything, if they could just remember it.

"My—"

Long ago, they'd been caught up in the frenzy of the anti-moon extremism that had swept over his world like a sudden, unexpected tidal wave and had turned against him. They'd sided with the Dark Kingdom and it seems that while they were reborn alongside himself, his princess, and her senshi, they were still enthralled by darkness.

He'd been defending her against his own men.

History was already repeating itself.

"...I don't know how. I don't have the sort of power you and your senshi do."

(Just wait until Kunzite tells you about the Golden Crystal.)

"We'll figure it out, together."

Now that she has the idea of it in her head there is little he or anyone else will be able to change it. There has to be a way to break free of the Dark Kingdom's influence on them.

He deserves to have his soldiers as much as she deserves to have hers.

He wants to believe that's possible. Having his men back would be a (selfish) comfort like no other, but mostly he wants them free of Beryl's grasp. It's cruel and unfair that they're doomed to have their minds warped by her lies and deceptions in this life as much as their previous one. Did they even know who he was? Had Jadeite and Nephrite known before they perished? To think that only two of his generals were left standing, that two of them had already fallen while being used as pawns for the Dark Kingdom.

"First, we need to figure out how to uh..." He gestures to himself, with the gilded armor and sword hanging at his hip.

Try as he might, he can't get this princely visage to fade. He can step into and out of his masked superhero guise with relative ease; he'd only remained in that form out of a need to reassure her that she was safe when she awoke, otherwise he would have dropped the henshin and gone back to being Mamoru.

But he can't do that right now. Endymion can't go back to being Mamoru or Tuxedo Kamen. Almost like his past life has been suppressed for so long it's enjoying the freedom to be out and refuses to go back in again.

With a reluctant sigh, he gives up on trying and beings to unhook the sword belt from his waist. It's set aside as the cap is unclasped from his shoulders and pieces of armor are removed to leave him in just the dark tunic he wore beneath. There were many things he wore in his previous life, but he supposes the reappearing in what he'd been wearing when he died makes sense.

"Right."

It's about this time that she looks down and notices....how much more hair she has, suddenly. It's pooling all around her feet. Her eyes almost widen in panic at the realization.

"How am I supposed to explain this to my parents?"

Because as much as she might remember being Serenity now...she's still Usagi too. And Sailor Moon. It was hard enough hiding one secret from her parents...and now she has one more. But her mom is going to notice if she suddenly has more hair.

"I think you're going to have a harder time explaining this."

Endymion reaches out, brushing his fingers against the smooth surface of the golden crescent moon embedded in her forehead. Something that would likely look like some sort of crazed mashup of tattooing and body modification to those who didn't know that it was a natural feature of those born into (and sometimes in service of, as was the case with Luna and Artemis) the royal family of the Moon Kingdom.

Her eyes somehow become even wider at that. "I didn't even think of that! They already think Luna has a weird bald spot!"

To be fair, she had also thought that when she first met Luna but you know, details. But it brings her back to earth a little. As much as she had a past life...she has a present one. She may be the princess of the moon, but she's also Usagi.

And Sailor Moon.

Man and juggling two identities had been hard.

She's been thrown completely off-kilter by the revelation that she's the fabled Moon Princess they've been searching for, her life disrupted for a second time. He knows this, he can tell that it's getting to her, that in spite of all that she's glad to remember — him, the girls, the queen — that this is the last thing she wanted. That this life has suited her, and she's been allowed to live the freedom of normalcy and anonymity instead of standing in the spotlighted shadow of the throne she had been destined to inherit.

It's not the same for him.

For the first time in his life, he feels whole. He actually recognizes the sound of his own name and isn't questioning the merit of his existence. He may not understand why he was reborn alongside her and her court and still mourns the loss of the memories he's still missing, but he knows who is now. And after years of wondering who he was and feeling like Mamoru was the name of some stranger he was poor masquerading about as, it's a great comfort to finally feel at home in his own shoes.

Maybe Serenity was a completely different person in comparison to Usagi, but Mamoru and Endymion are one in the same.

He's always been Endymion.

"Bandage, maybe? Would they believe you if you told them you fell and hit your head?"

He feels whole and she feels like she's made up of two halves that don't quite fit together. And she hates the idea of the danger her identity could put her family in. Her parents, as much of parents to her as Queen Serenity, and her brother -- something she never had in her first life, a sibling.

Usagi and Serenity aren't completely the same but nor are they completely different either. Maybe it'd be easier if she could see none of herself in her past self. But she can. She remembers being lazy when it came to meetings with the senshi, sneaking off to see him, trying to encourage the girls to have fun when they had important things to do. She remembers feeling and loving intensely, not just for Endymion but for the queen, for the soldiers, for Luna her trusted advisor.

She makes a face at his suggestion, sticking her tongue out a little. "Maybe for a while but they don't think I'm that clumsy, that I'd keep on hitting it!" And besides -- "We'll draw the enemies attention too much if we're like this all the time. They're still looking for this --"

She indicates to where they had set her crystal aside and it was like it heard her -- and a bright light washes over them, transforming them back into their more modern clothes and selves. Her brooch transforms as well, creating a compact to put the crystal inside.

With awakening as his true self comes the outfit he pulled on manually to masquerade as Tuxedo Kamen becoming a true henshin, as he's left in the jeans and hoodie he'd been wearing prior to shedding those garments to pull on the tuxedo when the silver crystal's power washes over him.

It confuses him for a moment as he glances back and forth between his bare feet and the chair that his cape, hat, and mask had been sitting on.

"Are you going to tell them that you have it?"

"I have to."

It never for a moment occurred to her not to tell the girls -- besides they may have woken up themselves. Any moment now she might get a call from Luna or Ami asking where she is, is she okay, what happened, etc.

Not to mention said parents. Hopefully Makoto will let her say she fell asleep at her place....

"We still need to find Venus too."

Now that she's mentions it, it is considerably odd that her most loyal guardian is nowhere to be found. Nobody was devoted to Serenity like Venus was, up to the point that she begrudgingly kept their taboo rendezvous secret in spite of her obvious disapproval. She hadn't liked him — none of them had. Not her senshi or her feline advisors. The queen had been cordial to him out of practiced royal necessity as the heir to the Golden Kingdom of Elysion, but the Earth had been distant from the moon at best.

Enemies at worst.

It was his own people that invited in the darkness that overtook them, that allowed it to storm the moon.

Which brings him to—

"What about me?"

They hadn't liked Tuxedo Kamen, either. What would they say if they knew the vigilante ally they didn't trust was the prince they hadn't approved of?

She takes his hands into her own as he asks that -- reaching for him somehow feels more natural even if her heart beats wildly as she does so all the same. She knows Luna hadn't been sure they could trust Tuxedo Kamen but that's because she didn't know -- she'll make it work.

She's not going to lose him again.

"I'll talk to them, I'll explain it all to them, including you. That you're not any enemy of ours."

None of them knew. All he knew was that he had to protect her at all costs, that he had to find the crystal and the princess in his dreams in order to answer the questions that have plagued him since childhood. He had no way of knowing until now it was because he'd fallen in love with her in a past life; couldn't have predicted that they would meet again in this one and he'd become infatuated with her all over again.

They hadn't known they were the ill-fated heirs of ancient, fallen kingdoms when they crossed paths. Or even that they were both superhero vigilantes, originally. And she'd still managed to captivate him without trying.

"I was never your enemy, Usako," he tells her, squeezing her hands. "I'm sorry if I ever made it seem that way."

"I never thought you were. I could never convince myself of the possibility, even as much as Luna warned me that you could be....I knew you weren't, Mamo-chan. I knew somehow, deep inside of me that you were on our side."

On her side. She had just been a normal girl, thrust into being a soldier of justice and yet she kept being drawn to him as both Mamoru and Tuxedo Kamen. She couldn't help herself.

No matter how many times they are reborn she will always be drawn to him.

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