Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Often, Ami dreamed of Galaxia, and the Cauldron at the heart of the universe. 

She would dream that she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her sisters, staring down Eternal Sailor Moon. Ami dreamt that she called upon the Aqua Rhapsody with her Mercury Harp. In the dream, Ami was ready to kill Sailor Moon, who wasn’t even fighting back.

It had been two months since their most recent resurrection; two months and Ami still could not look her own reflection in the eyes. Two months of these dreams.

It was as though her mind was telling her, “ Never forget. This is what you did. This is what you are capable of. ” 

Sometimes Ami thought of her Mercury Harp; she yearned for the living instrument that seemed to be another part of her soul, the last artifact of her planet from the days of Silver Millennium. But she didn’t dare to summon it. She dreaded the music it would draw from her fingers. 

September dawned, but the heat of summer was slow to break. Ami’s birthday loomed on the horizon. For the sake of her friends, Ami agreed to a night out. Really, for the sake of Usagi (who needed this joy, she had spent her last birthday alone, how could her Guardians let her down so badly?) It just so happened that Ami’s was the next birthday after Galaxia’s surrender. Just a matter of luck. Usagi wanted the celebration so badly. Ami could stand it. 

Ami could stand it. 

But how? 

How could Ami look her sisters in the eye, after what she had done? How could she smile so hollowly and act like everything was fine? 

The fact that she could manifestly look her sisters in the eye, the fact that life did go on, only baffled her further. The facts seemed to seethe in Ami Mizuno; her failure, life’s continuance, Usagi’s forgiveness. Even her brain couldn’t reconcile them all. 

Evening on September ninth found Ami curled up in front of her computer. She couldn’t go on like this: she needed help of some kind. And rather than turn to her sisters (she couldn’t face them, and that was another source of shame), Ami took refuge in the Internet, that vast anonymous ocean of information. On the Internet, people only knew what you told them.

With her signal scrambled, Ami surfed— a forum here, a study there. She rose and fell among currents of Japanese, French, English, whatever language she could read, even just a little. 

It was past midnight on September tenth, her birthday, and she was rubbing at her eyes when she idly clicked a video on a francophone blog. An original composition, said the caption, based on an eighteenth-century French lament. 

The tinned sound of a mandolin filled Ami’s headphones. There was a beat, like the sound of feet hitting a pavement. The melody gave a sense of disconnect: going through the motions of your life while your inside is tearing apart. Your mind might scream, but still you have to hit the sidewalk and buy your daily bread. 

Ami opened her eyes. 

The screen focused on a mandolin, held in a pair of slim, pale hands. Ami glimpsed a sharp chin, and a fall of coppery-blond hair. 

She began the video over again, this time listening more intently. The song seemed like a reflection of her own inner anguish. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she played the song a third time. 

“I should go to bed,” Ami thought, but she clicked a new video posted by “Zed.” 

Hmm, his username was “Zed,” like the letter. Odd. 

Zed opened the next video by saying, “This next song is rather more high-spirited. I like to think of myself as a pirate when I sing it. I yearn for the sea— the horizon— new worlds. Of course, you can travel far away, but you always bring along your own demons.” He sang, “ In the port of Amsterdam , where the sailors all meet …” 

This song by Jacques Brel conjured up a seaside port, a miserable meeting-place of souls that had given up their light. The way Zed sang— Ami felt a strange kinship. She heard the questions she had asked herself so often. What was the point of pretending? What use were vows, beauty, honor? What did it mean, in the face of such a world as this? 

It wasn’t cheerful. It didn’t assure Ami that things would be all right. But it drew out her pain like venom from a wound. She found herself crying, and she was a little shocked, but she was relieved to know she could still weep, that the terrible emptiness that had taken hold of her had not erased her capacity to feel.

She took off her headphones and heard rain falling outside. The summer heat had broken at last. 

Ami washed her face, and returned to her computer. She was a disciplined soul, and she would not lose all night in music— such was the folly she afforded herself at the age of fifteen, but she was wiser now.

She stayed up until two-thirty. 

When she did drive herself to sleep, her dreams were cyber-drunk with different alphabets. Right when her alarm went off, Ami had been dreaming of the high seas and the port of Amsterdam. 

It was a marked improvement. 

Ami went about on her birthday humming in the rain. Sure, she was humming old French laments, but she still felt better than she had in weeks. She even managed to enjoy the celebration her friends held that night. For the first time, Ami felt that her salvation had perhaps been worthwhile. 

Three days later, Ami plugged in her electronic keyboard and picked away at the keys until a song emerged— a little bit Mozart, a little bit Yoko Kanno. Inspired, she realized, by Zed.

She decided to write to him. Her email opened courteously: she said that she enjoyed his blog and his music. He hadn’t posted in a few weeks, was he doing alright? And she added, please forgive her errors— French wasn’t her first language. 

Ami expected nothing. Maybe a cursory thank-you; probably not even that. She fiddled with her song and gave it a title— “A Thousand Snows.” 

Twelve hours later, Zed wrote back. 

He was immensely gratified to hear that his little blog had helped someone out. He had just fallen behind in posting, but thank you for asking. What was her first language, if she didn’t mind his asking?  A bientot — until next time! 

Ami found herself wanting to keep the conversation going. She had always found socializing online to be easier than face-to-face interactions. So she composed a reply and informed Zed that she was Japanese. She considered, then attached an audio recording of “A Thousand Snows.”

She signed the message MA.

Zed’s next email was practically an explosion. He thought her song was terrific— she expressed her feelings with such clarity (Ami was bemused to read that, thinking “ If only I could feel my feelings with such clarity ,”) and if it wasn’t too much, could he ask about life in Japan? He intended to study abroad in Tokyo in a couple of years— he must be coming off as a total boor, but it was really so interesting! He had a lot of questions! 

Ami emailed back, and so began their correspondence.

***

Three months passed. Autumn arrived like a gray cat stretching out on the bed of Tokyo. “MA” and “Zed” exchanged emails at a brisk pace.

They kept their secrets. Ami did not explain where her nightmares came from, and Zander covered his anxiety with a scarf of wit. But between questions and answers, context and creativity, it wasn’t long before their conversation expanded to encompass all manner of subjects, although the music and drawings they shared with each other always contained a shadow, a minor key… something.

In late November, Ami’s anxiety began to climb once more. It was almost Makoto’s birthday, and Ami still could not look her best friend in the eye. Not after the way that Ami had failed them. But she had to do something. She had to tell someone. Ami spent an hour composing an email to Zed about this— using no real names, no clear allusions as to why she might feel like a failure. No whisper of her life as a Sailor Guardian. But enough for Zed to understand. 

It took him two days to reply, and his reply was unusually brief. He said, “ I don’t know much about your life, but I don’t think you’re a failure in any way. From the way you talk about your friends, they’re good people. Maybe you can trust them ,” with a cherry blossom emoji as a final note of comfort.

Maybe you can trust them, he said. 

And it was suddenly so… so logical. 

Of course Ami could trust them. She had been so confused lately—like that had been Galaxia’s last curse, the fog that left even the Soldier of Wisdom scrabbling and scrambling, forgetting the most fundamental fact: that they were her sisters. 

They gathered at Makoto’s place for a grand birthday dinner— there was nothing Mako liked better than gathering her friends close and feeding them— and after dinner, Ami went to the bathroom to compose herself. She had to say something. She had to trust them. 

When she came out—

“Ami! What is it?” 

Usagi immediately noticed that something was wrong, just by looking at Ami’s face. The question broke all other conversational threads; everyone turned to Ami.

Ami sat down, and Usagi took one hand and Makoto took the other. Ami said, “I need to get something off my chest. I think— I mean, I feel— I know how lucky I am to be alive, but Usagi, after how I let you down—” 

“Ami—” 

“Please let me finish,” Ami said to Usagi, “I’m not sure that I deserve your forgiveness. After attacking you— just knowing I’m capable of it, I’ve felt so—” Empty and Guilty warred in Ami’s brain, and neither won; to her mortification, she found her eyes filling with tears. Usagi caught Ami in a tight hug.

Ami composed herself enough to say, “Mako, I’m sorry for spoiling your party—” but she lost her track when she looked over and saw Mako was holding back tears. 

It was like a dam broke: when Ami began to cry, her fellow Guardians opened up, too, first Mako, then Rei, and finally Minako. Usagi drew them all in until they were all kneeling or sitting on the floor, weeping together, admitting to the burdens they had carried all summer and autumn. And they loved each other, and in loving each other were able to forgive themselves.

In the future, when Ami thought of that night, an old phrase came back to her: “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.” 

She had been adrift in an ocean, but her sisters and her Princess brought her back to shore. And she had rescued them, in her way, she realized. 

***

Ami’s next email to Zed contained a brief line: “Thank you for your advice. It helped my friends and me.” There was nothing more on the subject: nothing more needed to be said. 

She added, “When will you come to Tokyo? I look forward to meeting you.” 

For Ami had decided, Zed was her friend. And she would somehow repay him for a good bit of counsel. 

Chapter Text

Two years later:

Zander Hervieux dreamed of ice. 

He dreamed of a shifting sea, teeming with ice floes. The waves rose up and tried to capsize him as he swam; he had to keep his head above water, or else he knew he would sink below the surface and ice would clot above him, sealing away the sky, the air, life. Part of him wanted to sink below, to give up, to fade into the numbness of absolute zero, zed. But there was a voice calling him, calling him by his true name. It was—

Zander woke up with a jolt. He was in a cramped seat, beside a tiny window. Change was in the air.

“We are now beginning our descent into Tokyo…” 

Right. He had left Geneva twenty hours ago. He was on an airplane. Soon he would be in Tokyo. The ocean, the ice, the call.

His long legs were cramped and his skin was all gooseflesh. He rubbed his face and took out his smallest sketchbook to take notes on the dream he’d just had. Zander couldn’t suppress a smile as he took down the details: of course, even his subconscious mind had a flair for the drama .

Hadn’t he had this sort of dream before? Zander frowned. There was an uncomfortable—familiarity. Yes, perhaps since New Year’s…

The clouds in the window parted, and Zander’s thoughts were derailed by the sight of Tokyo, gleaming softly in the morning dim. 

Already, Geneva felt like a dream…

He bit the inside of his cheek. Wake up. He would not slip into a suffocating daydream: he’d promised himself. Ever since early January—New Year’s Eve, in fact—Zander was subject to a most vexing fugue state that fogged his head. His dreams would linger, and brighten, until daylight itself seemed to flicker and lie on the walls of an impossible palace, wrought of living cedar trees. The dreams were so engrossing— 

“Focus, Zander,” he said to himself. “We’re not indulging those daydreams anymore.” 

Tokyo. Tokyo was real, and getting closer all the time. Zander watched the city as the plane descended. A new semester awaited him there. A new beginning. And… a friend.

MA.

He must be able to call her MA if that was her preference, but in his heart, he thought of her as Ami. Ami Mizuno— a name like rainfall.

Mon amie, Ami — Ami, my friend— and it still struck him, how quickly they had become friends. They had started out talking about art, and it turned into a talk about… everything. Only two years, and Zander trusted Ami as much as anyone else he’d ever known. 

Though perhaps that spoke to his inability to make deep connections without royally screwing it up, somehow…

But back to Ami. Of course she was a wonderful friend. But—Zander rather wished he could call her mon Ami , my Ami. 

But… if she wanted, he would call her nothing but MA. He respected boundaries. And he would much rather have MA as a friend for a good long while, than have her in his arms for a time, only to break her with the terrible luck that dogged his every relationship. Well, some of it was luck. Some of it was Zander’s marvelous talent for self-sabotage.

Ami Mizuno. MA. He was going to meet her in person soon.

When Zander could not hide behind “Zed,” would Ami Mizuno still like what she saw?

Zander realized he was wringing and un-wringing his hands. 

Breathe. He knew Ami— MA— Ami from her emails. She was wise and kind and brilliant and insightful. And besides, she was only one aspect of his new upcoming life in Japan. Keep a little perspective, Zed.

And yet… 

The plane landed and taxied for a while. Zander took up his two carryons— a backpack and the case for his mandolin— and left the plane. As he set foot on Japanese soil, he smiled to himself. Here it all began. Dive into the ocean. Welcome to the new life. 

***

“... and so,” Ami concluded, “now that Zed has moved into his dorm, we’ll get coffee tomorrow and finally, officially meet each other.” 

“Do you know his real name?” Makoto asked. They were walking up the hill towards Hikawa Shrine.  

“Yes, he told me in February.” 

Makoto narrowed her eyes. “When in February?”

“Oh-h? The… the fourteenth.” 

“As in Valentine’s Day?” 

“Oh, how did you know?” Ami’s ears turned red. “I don’t know if he meant anything by it, but once or twice, he’s said things that make me think— Mako, you know how much I think!” 

“Is he making unwelcome advances?” Makoto started to sort of puff up, like a bear that had just spotted a threat to one of its cubs.

“No,” Ami shook her head firmly. “He just kind of… drops hints. They’re few and far between.”

“Hm. How do you feel about him?” Makoto asked.

“He’s a good friend. You know me, my ideas can get rather discursive and, well, complicated. Some people choose not to try and understand me; Zed always tries to keep up, and most of the time, he can. He’s an excellent correspondent. He, well, he makes me laugh.” Ami smiled into the setting sun. 

“ I like to talk to him ,” she thought. “ I like to share my thoughts, and hear his .” 

“That’s very nice,” said Makoto, giving Ami a furtive glance. “What’s he studying, here in Japan?” 

“Art and music. He’s training to be a therapist, and he believes in the power of the arts to purify and heal. Wait…” 

“What is it?” 

“I need to remember…” Those words, purify and heal, they rang a bell deep in her memory. Her intuition sounded a chime of warning. Those words mean something, her intuition said, it means something that you used them now… 

“Hey, good evening,” sounded from below them. 

“Nate!” Makoto said. 

He took the steps two at a time while Mako tripped down, until they met in the middle and clasped hands. Ami watched them: she observed how they stayed in contact as they ascended the stairs. They were newly reconciled, Mako and Nate. Ami so rarely had the opportunity to observe young love up close. And she was happy for Makoto, because Mako deserved happiness, but Ami knew she would miss the days when Makoto hadn’t had a boyfriend to eat into her talk and time. 

And how have you managed to forgive him ? Ami wanted to quiz Makoto on that. But that question… too many silken threads and complications. Too soon. 

If Nate, once-upon-a-time Nephrite, had managed to find his way back to his Prince, the others were bound to be out there too… Ami frowned. Another complication to prepare for. 

Purify and heal. The words’ significance came back to her. Behind her eyes there was a fall of cherry blossom petals. A cold laugh echoed. 

That was… Ami thought quickly. 

That was nothing. An idle thought, easily explained thus: 

In response to the idea that Zed liked her, Ami’s subconscious mind conjured a ghost as an age-old reminder: Love is for others . You cannot trust your heart. Ami did not need such a reminder. She had learned her lesson well. 

But even with that lesson in place… when Ami thought about meeting Zed in person, a warm blossom of anticipation began to grow inside her. She hoped with all her might that they “clicked” as well in person as they did online. If they did, they would have an excellent friendship to enjoy while he stayed in Japan. 

Friendship was exactly the word of Ami’s choosing. 

Right up until—

Two p.m. the next day. Rain.

Ami reached their rendezvous point— a bridge in Ueno Park—and there was already a man standing there. Zed, in the green waistcoat that he had promised.  

Good heavens—his hair. She’d never seen such a color, or such a delicate wave. She drew closer under her umbrella. He was taller than she had imagined. Leaner. Grumbling to himself.

Oh—oh. There were the hands she knew so well from all the video screens. 

“Zed?” she asked. 

He turned to her, and Ami thought, “ Oh no, he’s beautiful.”

***

Zander turned and saw her and he knew her. 

He knew it because her clothes were both practical and sweet, and she was carrying an umbrella with little hydrangea blossoms on it, and she held herself like she was asking a question of the universe, and the whole of her spelled Ami, mon amie . 

“Zed,” she repeated, with greater confidence. “Get under the umbrella, you’re getting soaked!” 

Practical and sweet. She held up the umbrella as he ducked under. She looked up—and their eyes met. He’d never seen such a blue. And the expression—bright with curiosity and humor, mellow with gentleness and thought. His heart gave a loud thump and said “ This is it, I trust her completely .” 

Was his jaw hanging open? 

Zander recalled himself and ran a hand over his hair, beaded with rain. “Hello.” 

“Hello. Alexander… Hervieux?” she asked, her phrasing careful and perfect. 

“Zander,” he said with a nod. “Ami… Mizuno?” 

“Yes. It’s good to meet you at last.” She smiled up at him. 

He couldn’t help it, he smiled back. “It’s great to meet you, too, yeah. Well—” he gestured around. “I know you like the rain, but do you think we could find a more sheltered place?”

“Absolutely,” Ami said with a solemn nod. “There is a cafe nearby, and according to the Yelp reviews, their coffee is superb. Shall we?” 

“Lead the way, Miss Mizuno.” 

“Ami, please,” she told him, and Zander’s heart leapt. “Now, did you have a good flight in?” 

Thus, their conversation easily turned into a continuation of their email correspondence: Zander answered in a long, chattering stream, but he clammed up if Ami held up a hand. She would halt his conversation just long enough to point out something interesting—the way the sun broke through the clouds, for example, or a particularly fine bit of music floating out from a shop. They reached the cafe, and Zander held the door open for Ami. He asked her then about her family, and how was her new class load? She wasn’t working herself too hard, was she?

Ami shrugged. “But it’s such interesting, challenging work,” she said. “I like pushing myself and working hard.” 

“But I don’t want you overdoing it,” Zander said. A waitress came by and put down their coffee and their cakes (opera for Ami, Victoria sandwich for Zander). He went on, “Don’t burn out and leave me without my jam session partner. Not that I would know about burnout,” he added, “having never applied myself to honest labor a day in my  life…” 

“Zander.” 

“Now, now! I know my Aesop, I know I’m a feckless Grasshopper doomed to die in the winter. I’ve made my peace with it.” 

“No, you haven’t,” she told him. “And you’re not.” 

He fell silent. For a moment his green eyes lingered on her blue ones. “The point is,” he said, “now that I’m here, you’ll indulge in a healthy amount of playing hooky and courting scandal.”

“Will I, now? What about your studies, Monsieur Hervieux?” 

“Very good pronunciation!” He lifted his espresso cup in a tiny toast. “Everyone knows you study abroad for the life experience , not the grades.” 

“Is that so?” Her voice was very dry indeed.

“We-e-ell,” he drawled, “what if I say it’s about broadening the mind? You believe in mind-broadening, don’t you? I want to make friends, visit the Pacific, paint a masterpiece. All that stuff broadens the mind.” Now he didn’t quite meet her gaze. “I don’t mean to toss aside my classes, I will apply myself—it’s just that, well, the French have a saying, Profitez de la vie —”

“Zander.” 

“Yes?” 

“You’re yammering,” she said. “Is something on your mind?” 

He grinned and hung his head. “I forgot, I can’t hide anything from you,” he said. “You know me too well, Miss Mizuno. Okay.” He took a bite of his Victoria sandwich, washed it down with a swig of coffee, and said, “The truth is, I’m worried about my music classes.”

“Why?” 

“Because I’ve had— well, I don’t want you to worry…” 

“Why would I worry?” 

Zander peered up at the ceiling. “I’ve been… hearing bells,” he admitted. “And no one else can hear them. The sound drifts in and out.” 

“Bells?” she repeated. 

“It was really bad at New Year’s,” he added. 

Ami sat up a little straighter. “Do you mean New Year’s Eve,” she asked carefully, “Or New Year’s Day?” 

“Eve, Eve,” he clarified. “I mean, in Geneva, all the city and church bells ring at midnight to welcome the New Year. But I heard bells at seventeen hours—just as I was getting ready for the party.” 

“Seventeen hours? You mean five p.m.?” She sounded calm. A little too calm. 

“Yeah. I was just getting my outfit ready for the party, then I thought— the city clocks had gone haywire. I thought I was losing my mind for a while there. Started… imagining things…” He buried his confusion with a sip of coffee. He hadn’t meant for this conversation to turn medical . This was going into territory that snared his mind like briar roses.

He almost spat his coffee out when Ami asked, “What sort of things did you imagine?” 

“Oh, you don’t want to hear that nonsense…” Zander looked up and met her eyes. Her gaze was steely. Cool. 

“Humor me,” she said. 

“I—well—it’s not really interesting,” he said. “I must have slept very badly, because it seemed like my dreams were bleeding into my waking life. On New Year’s, I mean.” “ And on the following days ,” he thought, but decided to keep that thought to himself. “The one really clear image… I was asleep in bed, January second… I dreamed I was in this space like a temple. Big, holy, airy, that sort of thing. But I was looking at the floor. The floor had a, what’s the word, image made up of little tiny pieces, little stones…?” 

“Mosaic?” Ami supplied. 

“Thank you, a mosaic! And the mosaic had all the symbols of the planets, in different colors.” His voice slowed. “And I was standing at the symbol of Mercury , which was set in lapis lazuli.”

He paused a long time before speaking again. “I… I spat on it. And I don’t know why I did it. Only that I felt the most awful surge of sheer hatred. I mean, part of me did,” he added. “The part of me that was dreaming was… horrified. And I keep having these dreams, and daydreams… wait, that’s not appropriate,” he blurted, interrupting himself. “You don’t want to hear this—” for the first time in a few minutes, he looked at her. “Wait, Ami, are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

Ami started. Her expression was shocked, cold, deeply interior, but it began to fade.

“I’m sorry, Zed—I mean, Zander—I—that’s a very strange dream.” 

He hesitated. “Most of the dreams are much nicer… In one, I was in a sort of—what’s the word? Pavillion ,” he said in French, “it was afternoon in a garden of yellow flowers, and I was playing music. There were four other boys there. That was a nice dream,” he admitted, before remembering himself. “I’m yammering again. Other people’s dreams are always so boring…” 

“Zander. You said you heard bells at five in the evening, in Geneva?” 

“Yes,” he said. “It was nothing—probably the stress of the semester getting to me—” 

“I don’t think it was nothing,” she said. “Geneva’s time zone is Central European Time, correct?” 

“Of course you’ve got all the time zones memorized. I mean, yes,” he said. He could feel an awed smile stretching over his face. She was brilliant .

“Seven hours behind Tokyo,” she murmured, looking off into the distance. 

She started, and came back to the present. She leaned in closer to Zander, who mirrored her. For a wordless moment, she looked deep into his eyes, as if trying to search for something. Zander’s heart thundered. Was she—?

She sat back abruptly. “My phone…” She picked it up and checked it. There was a flicker behind her eyes—an expression too quick for Zander to read—and then she said, “Zander, I’m sorry, but my friend Usagi is having an emergency. Is it alright if I—”

“Of course! Go to her aid.” 

“I really am sorry.” 

“Oh, no worries, go ahead,” he told her, even as his heart sank. 

“Goodbye, Zander, it really is so good to meet you in person. I’m sorry—” she composed herself again with a visible effort, “I’m sorry to leave you so fast. Until we meet again.” 

“Goodbye,” he called after her, “Text me!” 

But she was already gone, with her hydrangea umbrella and everything. 

Bells were ringing in Zander’s head again. 

“Oh, god,” he asked himself, “how did I mess this up?”

Chapter Text

“Emergency meeting,” Ami said through her communicator. “If you can, meet me at Fruits Parlor at once.” 

***

Minako’s teacup hit the saucer with a clatter. “Another King?” 

“That is my surmise, yes.” There. Ami had gotten out the most important part. 

“Oh…” Usagi’s hands flew to her mouth. 

Rei’s hands made fists on the table. “Evidence?” 

“He heard the bells of Hikawa Shrine at the exact same moment that Nate did, on the other side of the world. That must have broken the seal on their memories. But while Nate’s memory returned in a full rush…” She took a deep breath, “Zander’s memory is still hazy and incomplete. He thinks of the Silver Millennium as a dream.”

“Like Nate did,” Makoto said softly.

“And you… put a wire on him, or something,” Rei said, “you didn’t just leave him there. Right?”

“Until more of his memory returns,” Ami’s gaze remained fixed on the table, “I think he poses little threat.” 

“So you’re saying… for now,” Minako rephrased it. 

Ami inclined her head. “For now.” 

Silence fell. Ami had discharged her duty as the Soldier of Wisdom. So why did she feel cold? And hollow as a celadon vase? 

Makoto cleared her throat. “Ami,” she began, “you were really looking forward to meeting this guy.” 

Usagi went “Oh. Ami-chan…” And suddenly, in a flood of warmth, her hand clasped Ami’s. “Are you alright?” 

Ami swallowed hard. “I am fine,” she said. “I’ll keep a boundary between me and him. The risk to your life is too high.” 

“Oh, Ami,” Usagi’s voice was equal parts petulant and frustrated and kindly. “Look at Nate! He’s not evil!” 

“Nate,” said Rei, “turned out decent,” in a tone that made “decent” a scanty virtue indeed.

“I mean, he’s Canadian,” Minako pointed out, “everyone knows Canadians are the nicest people on the planet. Ami— look at me, honey.” When their eyes were locked, Minako asked, “Can you guess which of the Heavenly Kings he was?”

There was no hiding from her gaze, not as the commander, not as the goddess of love. “ She’s probably guessed already, ” Ami thought. 

“Zoisite,” she said. 

***

What had he done? 

Yes, Zander had a list of failed relationships as long as your arm (romantic, platonic, familial, pick a card, any card) but what had he done or said to drive Ami away?

He stared at the door. He tapped his fingers on the table, and fiddled with his ponytail. Restlessness overcame him, and he found himself abandoning his tepid coffee. The rain was good and loud by this point, so he ducked into a nearby Family Mart and bought himself a flowered umbrella. 

He was just unwrapping the thing when he saw a poster just inside the door: it advertised some bygone festival with an artist’s rendition of the Sailor Guardians, all in kick-ass poses. 

For no reason, a shiver went down Zander’s spine. The Sailor Guardians. Of course he’d heard of them before coming to Tokyo. He respected the work they did, even if the Journal de Genève was skeptical of their “magic.” He just hoped never to meet one. 

“ Where should I go now ?” he thought. 

“ Home ,” he reasoned, “ but the scenic route .” 

As he walked, Zander found himself thinking of Ami. Rain was her favorite weather, for the music of water and the charming grey tint it added to the world, though she admitted its impractical qualities—damn it, he was thinking of rain in her voice. 

Disappointment whined, It isn’t fair, why did she leave, what did he do wrong? 

Pride sneered, Who needed her? If she couldn’t recognize a legit snack when she saw it, that was her problem. 

Disappointment countered, saying, But I never get what I want! I want her to admire me!

Logic said, Maybe Usagi really did have an emergency?

His inner Don Quixote asked, Is there any way we can get her back? 

Something Else just kept twisting over and over in his heart. And that Something Else was concerned for the look he’d seen in her eyes… The thought of Ami Mizuno out there, upset over something he had said— it obliterated all his perfectly honest self-pity. 

And her eyes… 

“ Maybe ,” he thought, looking towards the horizon, “ maybe I should never have met her in person. Now I’ve seen her eyes, and I know I’ll never forget them .” 

***

Ami kept her eyes fixed on the computer screen. She was alone in her apartment, talking on the phone.

“I was ready for this,” Ami said. “At least, I thought I was ready for this.” 

Setsuna hmm’ed in encouragement. 

“I have developed strategies in case of several dozen emergencies— Minako joked about a zombie apocalypse and I stayed up all night working— and as regards the Four Heavenly Kings, I’ve been working on a flowchart to determine our course of action. But today— after meeting with Zoisite— the questions just fell out of my head entirely.”

“Well, you were surprised. You aren’t a machine, Ami.” Setsuna’s voice was kind. 

“Meeting Zander was supposed to be a break ,” Ami said, and sighed. 

There was something about Setsuna that brought out this side of Ami: Ami would have called herself childish, vulnerable. Setsuna herself brooked no such opinion: she thought very highly of the younger Soldier. 

“And now Minako and Rei are ready to fight him, and Usagi and Mako are going to tell Mamoru and Nate, and everyone’s emotions are running high and I’m—” Ami took a deep breath, “I have to be the steady one.” 

“That sounds like a hard role to keep up,” Setsuna offered.

“There’s a line in a kaiju movie I really love… ‘ The fixed point. The last man standing ,’” she said in a thick British accent. Then Ami added, “Really, our fixed point is Usagi. And she’s… always the last one standing.” She was very still. “I can’t risk any harm coming to her. I can’t let her down again.” 

“Usagi would want you to be happy,” Setsuna said. 

Ami was silent. 

“The princess,” Setsuna tried again, “would want you to follow your heart. What does your heart say?” 

“My… heart?” Ami considered. “Well… I’m glad I know that Zander is Zoisite. Honestly. It’s always better to remember, rather than to forget.” 

“I agree.” 

“And—you know, before I met Usagi, I was very lonely. I hated to think of Zoi—of the Four Generals reborn, wandering the world with a hole in their hearts. But it would be so much simpler if the two courts were separate again.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“ I would not begrudge them the chance to meet Mamoru… Please don’t think that I’m weak…” 

“Ami…” 

“... But to meet Mamoru, of necessity, brings them close to Usagi. And they are dangerous .” 

“Ami, I want to make something clear. I don’t think you’re weak.” 

“Oh?” 

“Your feelings for them come from a place of compassion, rather than fear. I think that’s admirable.”

“I’m cautious,” Ami reminded her. 

“Yes. Caution is well due. But Ami, what do you want? Really want?” 

Ami blinked. A long time ago, a dancer had asked that very question. His blue scales had twinkled as he ensnared Ami deeper and deeper in a riptide of her loneliness. 

“ What is your dream ?” Fish’s Eye had asked. And Ami had replied, with her heart in her mouth, “ My dream is to be loved by someone— anyone !” 

And Zander… he might have been…

Her heart sped up. Her skin grew hot in patches. The cold, the heat, her cardigan with little rain clouds on it, it was suddenly so lucid —

“What I want doesn’t matter,” Ami said in a rush. “Anyway, I have to go,” Ami said, “I can hear Mom coming home.” 

“All right. Just remember—”

“Yes?” 

“I’m here for you.” 

“Thank you. Really,” and Ami was able to hang up before the itching got really bad. 

She spent twenty minutes applying lotion to her inflamed skin. She recited the digits of pi in a steady murmur. So what if her hands trembled? So what if her breathing shuddered? She would not lose control. 

In time, the spell passed. Ami checked her phone again and found messages of hearts and daisy emojis from her sister Guardians. She had to be strong for them, she remembered. She mustn’t burden anyone with her feelings. 

But… she had to take stock somehow. Suddenly, her hand craved to hold a pen. And a certain notebook… 

She used a towel to open the cupboard under her bed. She pulled out a battered old notebook of powder blue, with “A” on it. Ami flipped through the pages. This had been a perfectly flat, crisp new diary when she enrolled in a cram school, back in eighth grade. She’d had it with her the first time she transformed into Sailor Mercury, for which her only word had been, “MAGIC.” 

Ami had kept records with remarkable diligence and clarity for a girl of fourteen. She’d written about her new friends, their spells, their schoolwork, and their enemies, the Dark Kingdom. She’d written about the copper-haired General, Zoisite, and how he was obviously their most dangerous foe yet.

Ami had written a lot about Zoisite. 

Until the abrupt day when Sailor V—their apparent Princess—had arrived, and Ami had written “Zoisite—Dead,” in a spiky, strained hand. And barely a word about Kunzite, afterwards. 

After Kunzite’s appearance, Ami had started an entirely new notebook, one with geometric constellations on it, dedicated exclusively to the record of her Silver Millennium memories as they returned, in their thin, sparkling stream. And the powder-blue notebook was abandoned for a time. With the arrival of the Black Moon, Ami had realized that her career as a Sailor Guardian had not ended, rather, it had barely begun. 

In these latter, quieter years, the powder-blue notebook received new entries rarely. But these entries were the purest distillation of Ami’s heart. 

A day like today had certainly earned its place there. 

Ami flipped to the last entry, and paused. That entry was from the day that Nate was invested as Mamoru’s General. At the entry’s end, a note: “ Zed got his visa to live in Japan. We celebrated by finishing the flamboyant Gothic abbey we built in Minecraft. 

“I hope that when he visits, we can play music together, have a ‘jam session.’” Followed by a doodled eighth note. 

Three months of silence represented by one blank line. 

Ami wrote the day’s date. And she wrote down: “Zed = Zander = Zoisite.”

Her hand grew steady as she wrote, making a river of blue ink down the page. 

***

Not for the first time, Zander thanked any God that was listening that he didn’t have a roommate. Tiny his room might be, but it was private. 

He had changed out of his day outfit, then he’d taken out his precious mandolin. He had tuned it, and in tuning it remembered a poem about a man tuning a guitar, and he had to turn on his computer to look that up— had it been in English? Or a Spanish poem? —but in looking it up he had come across Ami—no, MA’s—last message to him. He had stared at the screen for a moment, then closed his laptop again, put away the mandolin, and taken out his art supplies.

Sitting down, he turned on one lamp. He sketched a broad horizon, a place he could run to, with an all-graphite pencil. He filled in streetlamps down a boulevard, leading towards… something. A huge Moon floated in the sky. And the lamps poured with light… 

Wait. 

Zander sat up straighter and looked at what he had drawn. The lamps were pouring with what looked like water. They were tall, thin fountains, not lamps at all. 

And in the sky… since when did the Moon have those continents? 

“It’s Earth,” Zander said to himself. “The boulevard is set on the Moon.” 

He stared at the picture, and picked up his pencil again, but now that he was observing himself, his frenzied energy of earlier was harder to re-capture. 

He could try, though. His pencil flew over the paper, filling in the clouds at the edge of the horizon. The clouds turned into a vast dome, flanked by minaret-like towers. The higher clouds developed a pointed shape, turned into a chin, then a smile, then—

Crap, he was drawing her . 

He flipped to the other side of the page. 

Draw, man, draw for your life. Before long, Zander had simple sketches of four men. Portraits. One of them was drawn with a gentler hand and better detail than the others. He found himself regarding that central portrait, a man with short, dark hair. Zander had gotten the mouth right, but the eyes— they should be warmer. Brighter.

He sketched the beginnings of a uniform, and rather a dapper one if he said so himself, but a chime from his phone interrupted him, and broke his flow. 

Abruptly Zander realized the late hour— and how exhausted he was. He showered, then crawled into his bed with the sketched pictures still thick in his mind. The fountains, shaped like roses. The vast dome. The Prince…

The Prince and Zander were walking down a road in a windswept, wintery landscape. Zander was shorter. Or else the Prince was staggeringly tall. Snow poured from a sky the color of cream. Zander recognized a road by the lake, back home in Geneva, but it was like a landscape rendered in imbalanced black and white. Even the Prince was little more than the sketch that Zander had drawn, shaded with crude pencil. But the Prince didn’t seem to mind. He sounded cheery as he said to Zander, 

“What’s olive multiplied by guitar?” asked the Prince. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t know,” said Zander, after giving the question due thought. 

“Nice girl you met today,” the Prince added. “She seem familiar?” 

“Well, I know her, we’re pen pals.” 

“Of course you know her. Hey, which way to the water?” the Prince asked. 

Zander was happy to show the way. Something about this Prince brought with him a wave of reassurance. Overhead, Zander’s mandolin played itself, plucking a primal melody. 

“The dreams are all real, you know,” the Prince said conversationally. 

“Really?” 

“The dreams, the bells, the visions. All very real.” 

“Oh. Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.” 

“You will be.”

They reached the shore of Lake Geneva, and there was a little boy, brown-haired and blue-eyed, wrapped in the same white as the landscape. He waded through the snow to them, and gave Zander a suspicious sort of look. 

“The other two aren’t here yet,” said the little boy. 

“Oh well,” said the Prince. Then he looked up at Zander and said something —some proper name that didn’t sink into Zander’s mind. “—The rest of the way you’ll have to go alone,” he said. “I want to find you! I hope to meet you,” he added, and then pointed across the vast, desolate plain that was the Lake. 

“Bye,” said Zander, and set a ginger foot on the lake’s icy surface. It held.

Zander got both feet on the ice and started to walk. He turned back after twenty feet to wave to the Prince and his funny little attendant. Then he made a mistake. He looked down. 

Under the ice, the lake was glowing blue. Fathoms of blue.

“Freaky,” Zander said. He forced his feet to move again. The shore disappeared behind him. He walked… and he walked… and all was white and the blue light from underfoot… 

And then he heard it again. A name no sooner spoken than swallowed by the wind. A name that slipped off his mind even as it hooked his heart. 

“Zander!” 

He looked down again. Through the ice he could see—a man below the ice’s surface, pressing up his gloved hands. His face was white as snow, his lips frozen into sapphires. And yet—Zander knew him. The coppery hair afloat in the dark water, the green eyes fixed in a furious gaze. 

Zander knelt and touched his hands to the ice’s surface. He had been getting along fine in the wintery dream, but when he touched the ice, cold radiated through his fingers and up his arm.

“What do you want?” he asked the man in the ice. 

“It’s not what I want,” said the man, his voice muffled, his tongue clumsy with the cold. “It’s what you choose. —ite, do you want to remember? Or forget?”” 

“Remember what?” 

“Everything.” 

His breath hitched.

“I want to remember,” he managed to say. “It’s always better to remember, than to for— merde ”

The ice broke, and Zander fell through, into a cold so severe that it pierced his skin and sank into his bones. As he began to sink, he heard bells ringing. And finally, finally he could make out the called name, his true name:

Zoisite .

Chapter Text

The Thaw

A new day was sunny and clear. Winter’s last hurrah was already giving way to sweet spring. Usagi woke up in Mamoru’s bed—an exquisitely pleasant way to wake up—and followed her nose to the kitchen. 

“Mm, that coffee smells amazing! French press today?” She went to Mamoru at the stove and hugged him from behind. “You got up early today.” 

“I had the most amazing dream,” he said to her, “but it ended early, and I couldn’t go back to sleep.”

“Tell me all about it,” Usagi said. “Wait—are you making pancakes? Pancakes, Mamo-chan!” Her entire face lit up with delight. 

“It’s a celebration,” Mamoru said. “Just for the two of us.” 

“Inspired by that dream?” Usagi went to get out the silverware. 

“Sort of.” Mamoru smiled. “I dreamed about one of the Generals. Nate and I were walking in this pure white landscape, like blank paper, and we were climbing and descending hills, until we came to the shore of a lake—and Usagi, he was there , and I knew him. One of my Generals, waiting for me.”

“Aw, that’s wonderful, Mamo! Maybe you’ll meet him today!” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mamoru said, plating Usagi’s breakfast. “He didn’t know me. There’s so much that’s up to chance…” 

“I’m sure it’ll work out,” Usagi assured him. It was hard to take her seriously the way she kept dancing in her chair at the prospect of fresh pancakes with whipped cream, but Mamoru had the knack. “You’d be surprised how much things can change in two days!” 

At that moment, Mamoru’s phone buzzed. 

It was a text message from Nate, with a somewhat delirious air of happiness about it: “I had the craziest dream last night and Mako says I should tell YOU because you were IN it, and there was another guy there, and I felt like I KNEW him, and Mamoru, does this mean that guy Ami met is the real deal?” 

*** 

The real deal sneezed three times in rapid succession. “Bleurgh,” said Zander. 

His head cleared, and he realized he was sitting on his balcony, staring at the horizon. How long had he been sitting there? What time was it? Zander checked his phone, blanched, and staggered back into his apartment. He blessed the sneezes that had woken him from whatever trance he’d been in. He ran the water in the bathroom sink for a minute, then splashed his face when the water was hot. Good and hot.

Merde , that cold just would not leave him. 

He pulled out his jacket (still wrinkled from the hours on the plane) and wrapped it tight around himself. Gloves, too— nevermind what the weather report said. He grabbed his decorated satchel and swung it onto his back as he hurried out the door.

“ How am I possibly going to focus after remembering everything ?” he asked himself. 

“ School will be good ,” thought a part of him that had the air of a very wise older brother. “O therwise I’d just be in my room drowning in memories —” 

One word had been terribly wrong. Zander stumbled on his way down the stairs; he leaned against the wall and tried to remember he was breathing air, not water; his fingers were NOT freezing together; he was not drowning, not drowning.

His satchel came off— it was constricting his breathing. Zander held the satchel and studied the delicate cherry blossoms painted on its black surface. Exquisite things— Zander’s favorite flower. His last lover, a tall and disciplined Spaniard named Julio, had painted the flowers himself. A going away present, a conciliatory gift after their less-than-amicable breakup. Zander counted the flowers, then the petals, until his breathing eased. 

“I’m real,” he muttered to himself. “I’m real, I’m real, I’m real.” 

When he was calmed, he resumed his march downstairs. He looked around the damp street and his fellow pedestrians with more than an artist’s interest. At all costs, he had to stay rooted in the present moment. Tokyo, early twentieth-first century, not Ur in the Silver Millennium. (Make that, the site where the city of Ur would eventually be built . All the more reason to stay in the present.)

“School will be good,” he said to himself. “School will be good.” 

Zander reached his classroom early and set up his things. He watched his fellow students arrive. Friends chatted to each other, and suddenly Zander felt a stab of homesickness, and not for Geneva. Suddenly he was missing his brothers—from a thousand years ago— men that he had never met, but their names rang in his soul: 

Kunzite. Jadeite. Nephrite. 

Endymion.

Had they been reborn, too? What if they hadn’t? … no, no, if Zoisite had been reborn, of course the others were, too. There was nowhere his soul could go that was not bound to theirs. 

But… why? Why give them a second chance, after what they had done? They had broken their vows. That Endymion would be reborn, why, that only made sense, if anyone was handing out reincarnations. Give the Prince a second chance at happiness. But why give that chance to the Four Generals, when they had made such a disaster of their first chance? 

The Moon… the goddess of the Moon… was it her will? Who else would have the power? 

Zander got out his sketchbook and a pencil. He flipped to a fresh page and began to draw. A third of his fellow students were similarly engaged. For some reason that grounded Zander a little further in the present moment. He drew… as the teacher entered and started the class properly… and he drew…

Zander drew a monster. The thing looked to be wrought of twisting cherry boughs and knives. A great gashing wound had torn out its heart; under a snarl of copper wires, its eyes were green and insane. 

When the monster was complete, about ready to dance off the page, only then did Zander really exhale.

When the art class ended, Zander emerged, blinking, into a brilliant day. His head spun; when was the last time he had eaten? Long ago and far away, a package of instant noodles danced in his head. He asked a fellow student the way to the cafeteria. He was passing under a cherry tree, whose boughs were just beginning to show their creamy blooms, when a glint of azure caught his eye. He knew her: her stature, her fashion, her hair —

“Ami?” Zander called out, before he could think better of it. 

She stopped, and turned to him. “Zander!” Her posture went rigid and a flush bloomed on her face. 

“Ami, I—I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said. “Whatever it was I said, I didn’t mean any offense.”

She glanced up at him. He could almost see the light going out, politeness standing in for feeling. It wrenched his heart. “I know you didn’t,” she said. 

“If I can be of any help—just ask for me, okay?” 

She nodded, her eyes scanning his face—he must look a fright. “Okay.” 

Zander made up his mind. “Well, I’m off to the cafeteria!” he said brightly. 

“Have a good meal!” Ami said with a fixed smile. 

He bowed to her and turned deliberately towards the cafeteria. She didn’t want him around. That much was clear. If his hand snuck up to grip his jacket tightly, above his heart, there was no one to observe. The bell inside his head kept tolling: “ Love is not for the likes of you. Ami’s sweet and brilliant and pure, and you? After how you betrayed your Prince? Betrayed your lover? You lost the right to that kind of happiness .” 

***

Ami hurried through the crowds. Zander’s face was clear in her recent memory. He looked haunted—that was the word for it, haunted. Had he remembered? Had the seal on his memory cracked further, now that he was in Japan? 

Had meeting her had something to do with it? 

Ami was letting down the entire field of quantum mechanics. Of course the act of observing changes the thing observed. She should have thought of that before.

On the other hand, this wasn’t exactly confirmation. Zander Hervieux could have just had a really ( really ) bad night. 

On the first hand, if he was Zoisite, then this was another tick of proof.

“I need more data,” she said to herself. 

“ You can’t hide behind data-compiling forever ,” Mercury warned her. 

“I am not stalling, I am thinking it through —” 

She jumped at the buzz of her cell phone. It was a relief to check her messages: it stopped her arguing with herself. Not only arguing with herself, but losing. 

“Ami-chan,” came a message from Usagi, “Mamoru and Nate have talked it over and they want to meet your Swiss friend. Like, the boys had the exact same dream last night—THAT’S A SIGN! M & N want to meet [Swiss flag emoji]; Mamo wants to talk to you, says he knows there’s History there, he just wants advice. Call Mamo-chan, & have a great day! [sunshine emoji] [cherry blossom emoji] [bunny emoji]”

Despite herself, Ami smiled as she crossed out of campus. “ There’s History there,” yes, “History” with a capital H was the most tactful way to say “ he murdered you in cold blood after stealing your heart and breaking his vows .” 

It could have been worse. Mamoru could have blithely asked Ami to be a go-between. 

Wait, how had Mamoru found out that they had History? Had Endymion known of his generals’ love affairs? Or had Usagi told him in this lifetime?

Unbidden, there came the image of Mamoru and Nate at a 90’s-tastic slumber party, trading gossip over pints of quality ice cream.

Ami knew she was stalling again. She had a new piece of datum: Mamoru and Nate had psychically shared a dream. That was indeed a strong argument in favor of the idea that another general had made his appearance. Under the name Alexander, pen name Zed, a musician who painted—or perhaps an artist who sang—

Ami’s feet started to stride, and then to run. Originally she had set out for home, but she changed her direction and made for the Command Center, under Game Center Crown.

***

Evening fell over Tokyo, and Zander watched the sky. When the sun fully set, he let out a deep sigh of relief. 

It had been one lousy day. 

He wandered the streets in search of a karaoke bar. He had a tightness of grief in his chest, and it wanted expression. Maybe an hour or two of belting out tragic songs would ease him. 

From a skyscraper’s edge, the moon appeared. Zander stopped in his tracks. A memory stirred: a dim, flickering recollection of the Moon Princess, who had seemed as gossamer as moonlight itself. She came to mind like a silhouette in reverse, a white figure against shadows; pearls, lace, tulle. Her hair had been tied in two buns at her crown, like bunny ears—but with long tails falling past her knees. A distinctive hairstyle.  

Zander choked on his own spit. Sailor Moon . How could he not have realized sooner… she was only the mascot superhero of the city …

With her team. 

With Sailor Mercury…

The one armored in blue, always hanging back a little, with that observing look in her eyes. “ She’s alive ,” Zander thought. The thought awoke neither joy nor anger—surprise, and a certain exhaustion. This day was only getting lousier.

“ How do I feel about this ?” he wondered. 

He looked up, and the karaoke bar was just ahead. 

Zander hurried towards the red awning. “ How do I feel about this? I have two hours to figure that out .” 

***

Ami didn’t stop until she was sitting at the supercomputer, beneath Game Center Crown. Only when her objective was complete and the pounding of her pulse could fill her ears could she let in the mantra that every beat of her heart sent out: 

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. 

Ami inhaled deeply, and unlatched a metal gate in her head, and the floodwaters came pouring in. The thoughts and memories of Mercury. 

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him . 

For once, Ami did not ask why. She knew. Ami clenched her hands and froze her blood with hatred. 

He had broken his vows to his Prince. 

He had broken his vows to her. 

He had murdered her. 

“ But I had my revenge .” Ami was suddenly sure of that. A grim ribbon of satisfaction would through her. 

“ All that hate is a lot to carry around ,” came a small, sad observation. 

The floodwaters receded. Ami exhaled and relaxed her tense muscles. She sent an inquiry into the depths of her mind. The supercomputer did not have much information about the end of the Silver Millennium— but Mercury remembered. 

“Tell me.”

Ami had tapped this question once, a long time ago. That was how she had learned that there are some things it is truly better not to know. 

Ten thousand years ago …

She had been skimming over the ice on the Sea of Serenity. Gathering intelligence on the Enemy. Her quiet wrath had frozen over the water’s surface as far as the eye could see. 

He had snuck up on her.

He had shown himself for a coward, at the last: a thrown knife, coated with poison, in the back. Until that moment she’d always had an iota of hope. Not for him , no, he was dead to her; but hope that she and her sisters might make it out alive. But the knife sank into her back and she fell hard against the ice and she felt the venom entering her bloodstream and she thought “ Their first strike is against the brains. Of course, ” and “ I should have been smarter.” 

And Zoisite had approached her with a spring in his step. Her blood spread over the ice, and her legs were completely numb, and he wanted to gloat.

He began to talk.

Silently, she cast a spell…

Under Zoisite’s feet, the ice shattered. He fell into the water with a small splash. As he struggled, a wave of blistering cold water surged up and dragged him down, and Mercury did not close her eyes until the ice forming over his head was as solid as a true love’s vow, and the pounding at the bottom of the ice had ceased. Only then did Mercury permit herself to die.

She screamed. Through clenched jaws, her scream forced its way out. She fell to her hands and knees on the floor of the Guardians’ headquarters, and tears blocked her vision. 

“I hate him,” she blurted. 

The wave began to subside. Ami returned to herself: as she inhaled (to the count of eight) and exhaled (to the count of eight) she had the feeling of being a raincloud that fell, cold and drizzling, on a seething lake. She did not try to stand, not yet. “Hatred is a waste of energy. Mercury and I are different people. And Usagi wants her Guardians to forgive.” 

“ Easy for the Princess to say ,” came a voice from the lake’s depths. The otherworldly one, ancient beyond calendars, she who bestowed the weapons of Mercury. “ She doesn’t understand. Her lover didn’t betray her. Incidentally, it’s impossible to live up to the Princess’s standard of goodness .”

But— “I don’t want to hate eternally,” Ami said. She stood up; ran her hands over her face. “I knew that this day was coming. I told myself I would be smart, I would handle it rationally. I’m not going to be distracted—” she began to pace. “I will… keep my distance. I will observe. I will study him, and—my enemy. He is my enemy.” 

Ami’s pacing ended by a hallway niche holding a white statue of Queen Serenity. 

Ami stared at the piece, about two feet in height, and idly contemplated smearing it with mustard. It… wasn’t… fair . Zoisite would return, yes, she had reconciled herself to that murderer ending up in her life again. But for him to come back like this? To waltz in and steal her friend? Her pen pal? Her Zander?

And yet…

Now that Silver Millennium memories were dancing in her head like northern lights, she could see… parallels. An impish sense of humor, a curious, observant mind, a love for beauty. Moody, playful, insolent, and yes, callow. 

Oh, this was worse. 

Zoisite had not stolen anyone. Zoisite had become . 

This was so much worse.

When she thought of what she had told him…

Ami turned back to the computer. She was going to enter it into the official historical record: Queen Serenity had a twisted sense of humor.

Ami had even told Zander about Galaxia…

No, no, she could not afford to think about her now, her discipline—her mind—her emotions were out of control. Ami breathed in to a count of eight and out to a count of eight and tried to save the raincloud of her thoughts from the freak asteroid—the meteor impact—the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that was Sailor Galaxia. 

“How could I have done that?” she asked out loud. “How could I betray Usagi?” 

“ I hate myself, ” she thought, “ I hate myself .” 

The Lunar Computer did not offer any answers. The only ones who had truly helped her had been her sisters—because of Zander’s email from so long ago— god damn it!  

Her feelings crescendoed inside her; an ice storm of emotion pelting through her frame. She had to go home. Ami stood up and commanded the computer, “Sleep mode” and when the screens went black there was her reflection staring at her.

And her reflection— the same haunted look she’d seen on Zander’s face not two hours ago.

Ami chuckled, before she could think better of it, and when tears overcame the laughter she let them fall. She took up her coat and her scarf and headed out. She walked along the streets in a vaguely homeward direction. 

What if Zoisite…

What if Zander… 

What would Usagi do? 

Ami smiled. Some questions had clear answers. She stopped into a bubble tea shop and ordered a Thai iced tea with bubbles of tapioca, and a fish-shaped pastry filled with red beans. 

Now, what would Usagi really do?

“I know what she would do,” Ami said to her dwindling Thai tea. 

Ami made up her mind gradually, like a harpist bringing her instrument into tune. But when she had the notes in mind, she acted.

Chapter Text

“ What do you want? Cause you’ve been keeping me awake ,” Zander pushed his hair out of his eyes. His world had narrowed down to the black walls and the technicolor screen, pulsing out lyrics. “ Are you here to distract me, so I make a big mistake?”  

He took a deep breath and plunged further into the high notes, “ Or are you someone out there who’s a little bit like me? Who knows deep down, I’m not where I’m meant to be? Every day’s a little harder, as I feel your power grow —” Merde , if he was such a mess after one day, what would he be like after five days with this burden, the memory of Zoisite? 

“ Don’t you know there’s part of me that longs to go—into the unknown !” 

When the baroque pop song ended, Zander checked his phone. He’d been singing for two hours. No wonder he felt completely drained—not to mention sweaty and gross. And his rental was almost up, anyway. He stood up shakily, re-donned his jacket, and left the karaoke room. 

He intended to take his phone’s way home, but somewhere along the way a boulevard of cherry trees, silver in the moonlight, caught his eyes. He wandered underneath the thin black boughs. 

If they lived again… if they all lived again… where could they be?

In all the wide world…

He watched a cherry blossom fall from its branch, and five petals separated, scattered and twirled in five disparate directions. That made him halt in his tracks. 

“ Where are you going, don’t leave me alone …” 

The petals picked up speed and the wind grew chill. Zander heard a light crackling, and looked down. Black ice was spreading over the cement at his feet. Silvery frost ferns shivered their way up the cherry trees around him.

“ How do I follow you …” 

A snowflake drifted past his face. He let out a foggy breath, and turned around. 

“ Into the unknown …” 

She stood in the fork of a cherry tree some fifteen feet behind him. She watched him from behind a blue visor that obscured her eyes. The sailor uniform was unmistakable—he found himself approving of the sensible boots. The wind tossed her hair, rendered ink-dark in the night. Snowflakes swirled around her like devoted dervishes. 

“Sailor Mercury,” he said. He brought his feet together and bowed as deeply as he could manage. 

Sailor Mercury inclined her head and continued watching him. The silence strained his nerves.

“I remember you,” he blurted, “From before. You make a terrifying enemy.” 

The frost ferns stopped their conquest of the cherry trees. Somehow Zander knew the frost would not harm them. Sailor Mercury was not one for collateral damage.

Still she didn’t talk. He went on, nervousness sending his Japanese into a stumbling rush. “I remember living as Zoisite,” he said, “And I remember my betrayal. I mean, before that—I remember you , and I—I remember my brothers. My Prince,” and god help him, why did his voice have to break then ? “But none of it matters, because I betrayed him. And you. And Mercury—” He would never get another chance. He sank to one knee—carefully, on the black ice—“I’m sorry. Truly, I am so sorry.” 

There was a beat; then he heard a little huff, as if of exasperation. He looked up; Sailor Mercury wore a faint frown and gestured for him to stand. He obeyed. 

“Do you know if the Prince is alive? Or my brothers?” He rubbed his arms: it had gotten cold. “If it means anything, I’ll find you and Sailor Moon—I guess she’s the Princess—and you guys live um, on the moon? Rebuilding Silver Millennium?” He glanced up as the moon (waxing gibbous). “I would offer my service. Try to make amends. For what my service is worth…” 

The Sailor Guardian tilted her head a little to the side. The gesture reminded him of Ami, and ooooh he didn’t need another gut punch, to remember her and the chance he’d lost. She continued to watch him, and Zander had the feeling of being scanned, down to his very atoms. There was a long pause. The snowflakes stilled and fell to the ground. 

With an inhuman lightness, Sailor Mercury leapt from the cherry and landed on its sister tree, thirty feet to the north. She glanced at Zander, and vaulted again—to the lamp at the end of the boulevard. 

She glanced back. 

“You want me to follow you?” asked Zander. His feet were already moving. 

Leap, rest, wait for him to catch up. Carry on. He moved onto a street of light, and could only make her out as a kind of shimmer in the air above the streetlamps. After about a half-mile she halted, somewhere on a third-story balcony. Zander tried to catch up with her, but was waylaid by a herd of bumbling American tourists. 

“Please, please, don’t leave—” Zander reached the railing below the balcony and looked up.

Sailor Mercury was gone, but fluttering down from the sky was a little white rectangle.

It spiraled in a tight gyre down to Zander’s hand. It was a business card: The Jazz Crystal, it read in English. Zander lifted his eyes and looked around him. “Jazz Crystal,” proclaimed a sign from before his very eyes. Basement level. 

He descended the stairs. Then—“Here goes nothing”—he pushed open the heavy, soundproofed door. 

***

Sailor Mercury reached the top of the building. When she looked down again and zoomed in with her visor, Zander was still looking skyward. Looking for directions she was not going to give.

She leaned back. Well. She’d heard his confession to being Zoisite; she’d received his apology; she’d led him here. The rest was out of her hands.

Something he had said kept floating in Sailor Mercury’s head, like a bubble, reflecting back something distorted. 

“ You make a terrifying enemy .” 

“What if it had been us? What if Beryl had corrupted us in this lifetime?” Sailor Mercury asked herself.

“What if it had been us?” She whispered, as Zander disappeared down the stairs to Jazz Crystal.

She readied her communicator. If Mamoru radioed for help, she would be ready. 

“ If it had been us …” 

Her imagination began at the most important point: Usagi. If Usagi’s Guardians had been the ones to fall…

Usagi would be a Sailor Guardian all alone, one soul against the forces of evil. Obviously she and Mamoru would have found each other. Mamoru would solace her; but she would always be trailing after him a little, wouldn’t she? And oh, the tears she would shed, trying to befriend the Sailor Guardians who kept taunting her. Even without the memory of their true bond, Sailor Moon would try to save them. 

The tears she would shed.

And the Guardians themselves would be… 

“ What would we be ?”

A brute with a sadistic streak, a witch of infernal magics, an adrenaline-junkie diva. All piloted by… a hacker-oracle, lit only by computer screens, a woman who used all of Mercury’s power to corrupt, to ensnare, and when all else failed, to fight. 

And Usagi would have to fight them all alone. 

Sailor Mercury rubbed her hands over her face. A terrible vision. Yet her heart had calmed somewhat. That’s what her brain needed, to think through every permutation. That was her processing, and it comforted her. A little.

“Zander,” she whispered, “don’t let me down…”

***

The interior of the Jazz Crystal was reminiscent of smokey quartz. Vinyl records glittered on the walls. The shine from glasses and the instruments on-stage offset the darkness of walls, ceiling, and floor. The bar itself was paneled in dark wood.

Zander went to the bar and ordered a glass of white wine, calm as you please. He watched the bartender (a big burly fella) open a bottle and pour out the glass. Quite suddenly, Zander’s encounter with Sailor Mercury took its toll on him: his knees began to knock together and his hair stood on end. He sank into a nearby barstool and lowered his satchel to the ground. At least he had the presence of mind to sip his wine when the bartender handed it over. 

“If you don’t mind my asking,” came a voice to his right, “do you feel better now?” 

Zander looked over. A man about Zander’s own age sat there, with a kindly expression in his blue eyes. He wore a button-down shirt and a suit jacket, and he had a kind of vocational exhaustion that Zander had learned to associate with his medical-student friends.

“I do feel better, yeah,” Zander said. “I must have looked pretty bad.” 

“We all have those days,” said the man. 

“And that’s the truth.” Zander held up his wineglass. “Cheers.” 

“Cheers,” he held up his glass and they toasted.

“So, this bar…” Zander said to the man with the suit jacket, “That is, if you don’t mind, I’m new in town.” 

“Well then, welcome to Tokyo.” 

“Thanks. So this place… what’s, um, special about it?”

Suit shrugged. “Well, the jazz is pretty special… it’s in the name. The really great music starts after midnight, when the professionals come to play. Do you play an instrument? There’s a sign-up sheet over there—you can put down your name and the instrument you play, and then get up on stage for the next set and jam.” 

“You’re kidding. Just like that? Jam?” He couldn’t help it—he wished Ami were here to see this. 

“Jam!” Suit agreed. “The owner might do a saxophone solo, if we’re lucky. Do you play an instrument?” 

“Piano, mandolin… but I’m not up to playing tonight,” Zander admitted. 

“Fair enough. Gotta conserve your strength,” said Suit, taking a nice, appreciative sip of his honey-colored wine. 

Zander glanced around but saw no sign of Guardians, sailor-suited or otherwise. Time to bite the bullet. “Have you ever met a Sailor Guardian?” 

Suit almost spat out his drink. “Well! If you live in Tokyo long enough, you’ll run into them.”

“I just saw Sailor Mercury, jumping between two buildings. How do they do that?” 

“Lots of jumping jacks, I suppose,” Suit replied. 

At that moment, the bartender kind of staggered back, as if just realizing something. He glanced between Suit and Zander.  

“Nate, what is it?” asked Suit. 

The bartender spoke in slow Japanese. “Do you guys hear yourselves?” he asked. “You’re speaking different languages.” 

“What do you mean?” asked Suit. 

“French,” he pointed to Zander, “Japanese,” at Suit. “Took me a while to cotton on.” 

Zander sat up. “My god,” he said, running over the prior conversation in his head.  “I’ve been speaking French this whole time? I must be wiped.” 

“You—” the bartender looked Zander in the eye, and spoke in French. “What’s your name?” 

“Zander Hervieux?” Another name rang deep inside him—why did he want to share that? 

Could it be—?

“Are you from Switzerland?” the bartender asked. His fingers beat a rapid tattoo on the bar’s top.

“How do you know?” Zander asked. 

“Because…” Suit began in Japanese. Zander looked at him. In the tourmaline light, his suit seemed to become the armor of a king. Suit finished, “… because Sailor Moon told us.” 

“The… princess,” Zander said, very softly (it was as loud as he dared). 

“That’s right,” said Suit. 

Zander’s hands pressed over his heart, which was fluttering like a sparrow. “And you’re… Endymion,” he said. 

Suit smiled. 

Zander couldn’t breathe. He got to his feet, even though he felt unsteady as a newborn kitten. “You’re real. You’re alive. You’re here.” 

“I am,” said Endymion, standing. “And you’re Zoisite.” 

Like a child, Zander drew his hands to his face, as if trying to hide. “I—I am so sorry, your Majesty.” He tried to bow—

“None of that,” and Suit was pulling Zander’s hands away from his face. He brushed away a tear and set his hands on Zander’s shoulders, so the general would stand a little taller. “Call me Mamoru,” said Suit, “and I think this calls for all of the good stuff.” 

Zander followed his gaze to the bartender—who had vanished. Footsteps, and then from behind, Nephrite caught him in a bone-crushing hug. 

“Nate—” said Mamoru. 

“It’s fine, he’s European, Europeans are huggers!” Nephrite replied in a rush. But he let Zander go anyway. 

“Nephrite—” said Zander once he’d caught his breath. He stopped. Nephrite . That name had come as easily as his own. As Zoisite. Zoisite .

“Call me Nate,” he said, grinning hugely. “You ever have umeshu?” 

“No,” said Zander. 

“Good, prepare yourself.” 

“Sit down, sit down,” said Mamoru-Endymion. That smile again. It radiated such warmth and comfort. “I want to hear all about you.” 

Nate nodded as he poured out a measure of umeshu and added a splash of water. 

And it occurred to Zander that his two hours’ jag of wild singing at karaoke had completely hollowed him out, so that he could be filled with the love and acceptance that radiated from his brothers, here in this moment, in the smoky quartz bar. And Zander thought, “ I am found. ”

Chapter Text

Sailor Mercury reached her apartment balcony and shed her magic, becoming Ami Mizuno once again. She had a communicator message from Mamoru—it read “Zoisite is with us.” And there was a text message from Usagi: “Call me! [double heart emoji] [blue heart emoji] [bunny emoji]”

Ami changed into her pyjamas. On her balcony, overlooking the city, she called her princess. 

“Hello, Usagi… I’m doing fine, how are you? … Yes, well, I helped him find his way. That’s all … Yes, well, I suppose I have. I don’t know, I feel a little strange. No, no, I’m fine on my own… I might call Makoto later. Yes, I will, Usagi… I’m very lucky to have you looking out for me.” Ami smiled into the phone. “Goodnight, sweet dreams.” 

She hung up and watched the night; Tokyo lights below and starlight muddled by clouds up above. 

Tomorrow, she thought, or the day after, Mamoru and Nate would probably want to introduce Zoisite to everyone. So she would meet Zander again. Ami observed the nervousness this inspired, the not-unpleasant flutter in her stomach. 

Well, there was a right way and a wrong way to go about this… 

Ami opened her computer. It would take her some time, she thought, to compose the appropriate message. But it would do well to begin this as it had begun long ago. With an email. 

***

It was four in the morning and Mamoru, Nate, and Zander were crammed into a booth at an American chain restaurant that served pancakes and bacon ‘round the clock. After the amount of alcohol they’d drunk (umeshu and whiskey and they did finish off that white wine after all), Mamoru had insisted on something greasy to fill them up and stave off hangovers. This was not the kind of night made for sleeping. Mamoru and Zander were leaning in close over a diagram that Nate was constructing with care, using straws, the salt, pepper, and sugar dispensers, and the packets of fake sugar arranged in a little circle. 

“—and over here, they live like, up the coast, there’s three Outer Guardians. They give off this vibe of, like, chill, but also very dangerous. Still waters running deep; a sleeping tiger that will eat your face. I’ve only met them once so far and.” Nate shook his head. “Dude.”

“Dude?” Zander asked.

“ Dude ,” Nate confirmed. 

Mamoru just looked between the two of them. “They’re nice,” he put in. “They’re hosting a cherry blossom party later this month.”  

“Oh,” Nate added, “And they have a kid. She’s a little shy.” 

Mamoru coughed and they looked at him. “‘The kid’ is also a Sailor Guardian,”  

“Wait,” Nate said, “You mean this little girl was hanging around in Silver Millennium, being an Outer Guardian?” 

“She wasn’t a ‘kid’ then, but yes,” Mamoru said. 

“Wait,” said Zander. 

They both looked at him. “What… other… guardians?” he asked slowly. “I know there were Uranus and Neptune, the sentinels of the system… but Nate said there were three?” 

“Four,” Mamoru said. “Let me explain. Queen Serenity—” he lifted his mug of coffee in a silent toast, and the others followed suit, “she kept secrets. Usagi herself didn’t know until a few years back. The elder is Sailor Pluto, Guardian of Time—yes, Pluto is a planet—” 

“I didn’t say anything—” Zander said.

 “—And the kid is Sailor Saturn, Guardian of Revolution.” His voice was very soft.

“That’s a huge responsibility to put on a kiddo,” Nate said. 

“She’s older than she looks. She got a second chance,” and again Mamoru lifted his mug, “thanks to Usagi.” 

Silence fell, broken only by the music pumped in over the speakers. “ Country roads, take me home to the place I belooooong, West Virginiaaaaa …” 

“How are we alive?” Zander asked. 

“I don’t know ,” Nate said. He used italics a lot, Zander had noticed. 

“Mamoru,” Zander turned to his Prince, “how are we alive?”

Mamoru looked him in the eye and intoned, “When a man and a woman love each other very much—it’s four in the morning,” he said by way of defense as they pelted him with little packets of sugar. “I’m not sure why we’re alive, except for the grace of the Queen and we’re here to make the world better! They will throw us out of this Denny’s, cut that out!” The shower of sugar packets ceased. 

The three young men looked at each other and grinned. “I love you guys,” Nate admitted. 

Mamoru looked a little sheepish, and Zander said “It’s okay, he’s Canadian, Canadians are sweethearts.” 

“You take that back.” Nate glowered.

“No,” Zander took a sip of coffee.

“Three and a half months since New Year’s,” Mamoru said thoughtfully. “And Zander—”

“Yes?” 

“You remembered more of your past life over the last three months.”

“Well, yes, but I thought my imagination was going out of control. It was kind of scary.” 

“I wonder if…” a name was on the tip of Mamoru’s tongue, but he held back from speaking it (or them) out loud. “…I wonder how much they’ll remember by the time they reach us.”

“You sound sure of it,” Nate observed. 

Mamoru’s smile was slow and easeful. It was not the kind of smile you’d associate with a man who was into his third cup of coffee. It was the smile of a King in his garden. “I’m pretty certain,” he said. 

***

She slept, and dreamed.

She dreamed that she made her descent through a dim cave, where the walls were carved of pale blue stone. Mariner Castle, she realized. The Silver Millennium. Mercury.

“What is my name?” Ami wondered, within the dream. 

An answer didn’t come to that query. But the setting grew clearer, the time and place: Ami was underground, among the splendid inverted cities of the Mercurians. She stepped lightly, so as not to be overheard. The court of Mariner Castle was composed of aristocrats and spies, forever watching one another and weaving intricate, tangling plots. Ami-in-the-dream was young—terribly young—but already she had learned the value of a secret.

At the cave’s end there stood a rough wall of ice. Ami put her hand on it (a child’s hand, she observed) and sang a simple melody, which the dreamer tried to remember for later. 

The ice shimmered and slid aside in panels as thick as pottery, to reveal a high-vaulted chamber where vapor curled over the floor. High in the walls were thin windows that admitted slips of desert-bright sunlight. Fountains filled the air with water’s music. Ami walked between beds of crocus, camellia, and snowdrop, until she reached the garden’s center, where sat a woman in stately robes. 

“Teacher!” Ami forgot decorum and ran towards her. 

The woman was very old, with clouds of hair so white it was almost blue. She sat in a bower of roses, most of them white, but a few bloomed green. 

“Ah, Hermia!” said Teacher. Her smile cast wrinkles over her face, the creases of a well-loved map. “Have you finished packing for your journey?” 

“No,” Ami replied. Hermia, she rolled the name over in her mind. Hermia. 

“Good. My gift for you is ready.” Teacher sat up and rolled up her sleeves. With deliberation, she wove her hands through the air. A curl of vapor became a column, and strings formed like frost on a windowpane. She snapped her fingers to form silver pegs, and in a matter of moments,  the Mercury Harp rested, complete, in her hands. She held it out to Ami. “May she be worthy of you, my girl.” 

“May I be worthy of her,” Ami replied, with a tone so serious that the woman—her teacher— laughed. 

“I did not misspeak,” she said. “Hermia, your grandmother the Queen has spoken. I will not go with you to the heart of Silver Millennium.” 

“But Teacher! I asked her to—”

“The Queen has her logic. There is erratic behavior on the Sun; I should be here. I must protect our home, in the worst case. If I could go with you—for your sake, and to meet the Queen who was able to unite our fractious planets... but enough of ‘ifs.’ 

“I don’t want to leave Mariner,” the girl replied in a small voice. “The Solar System is so big. I don’t want to leave you behind.” 

“You think I won’t be with you?” Teacher’s voice was gentle. “Besides, you were not made for this court. All of us with our cold pride of intellect, and spirits as flimsy as snowflakes. Your mind, and your heart, are meant for greater horizons.  And there will be new loves. Such loves waiting for you, Hermia, little dear-as-sapphires.” 

“Do you have proof?” Ami asked. 

Teacher’s smile was contended and a touch wry. “You’ll see,” she replied, and she handed the Mercury Harp to her student. 

Alhena. That had been Teacher’s name. 

Ami woke up, and knew: the Mercury Harp was hers again. 

She lay back—soon she would reach for a notebook to record this—but for the moment, she quietly basked in a pool of gratitude.

***

Of course, even a night of adventures cannot last forever. It was six in the morning when Zander stumbled into his own apartment—tiny and cramped, but his alone. He looked over the sketches he had made and smiled blearily. He took a very, very hot shower and fell into bed. 

It was ten in the morning when the sun, that traitorous bastard, insisted on boring into his eyes and annoying him into wakefulness. Zander stretched and combed his fingers through his long hair before he checked his phone, where a message waited, a message that promised that sometimes, nights of adventures turn into days of miracles.

“Hello Zander,” wrote Ami, “I feel badly about how our last meeting ended so abruptly, would you like to start over? Let’s meet at noon, at the bridge. If you’d rather not, I understand.” 

She finished with a hibiscus emoji.

He texted back “Yes!”  

***

Ami had dressed carefully. After some deliberation, she decided on black trousers and a peach-colored turtleneck, under a long coat of dove-grey. A freshwater pearl gleamed at her collarbone.

She walked to the bridge with a steady pace that did not match her nerves. To calm the flutters in her stomach, Ami studied the trees. The cherry blossoms were beginning to bloom, shy little knuckles of white and pink along black boughs. Ami realized she was humming an old song, "Sakura, Sakura," one she hadn't thought of since she was very, very young. 

"I'm not old," she said to herself. She smiled at the thought.

Ami reached the bridge and stood on its center. The sky, she thought, looked like a late Renaissance painting—she'd have to point that out to him.

For the first time in years, Ami felt an itch: to summon her Mercury Harp. To feel its heft and vibrations. To pluck out a melody for the sheer pleasure of it. Streams began to flow, that had been dammed up with regret.

She hummed with greater vigor, regarding the sky, until she heard him say, behind her, “Ami?” 

Ami stood very still. 

“ When I turn around ,” she thought, “ my life is going to change .” 

She took a deep breath, and turned around. 

Zander stood behind her, in the middle of the bridge. He looked peaky and pale, but his hair and clothes were impeccable. His eyes were a clear, brilliant green. “Hello.” 

“Zander—you look well,” spilled out before she could hold it back. 

“Thank you,” he said with some surprise. “I was glad to hear from you.” 

“Good.” Enough small talk. Ami said, “There’s something I want to tell you.” 

“Yes?”

She stepped closer to him, and closed the gap by putting her hand on his shoulder. The touch startled them both. She lifted onto her tiptoes and said, mostly to herself, “I’ve never told this to anyone before.” Then she whispered. 

“ I am Sailor Mercury .”

Four words and she was back on her heels, withdrawing her hand. Now he was staring at her. 

“Are you upset?” she asked. 

“No, not at all,” he said. His expression was dazed. “You were the one…” he said slowly. “You showed me how to reach the Jazz Crystal. Endymion. Nephrite.”

Ami nodded. 

“Because…” Zander ran a hand through his hair. He looked up, across the water, back at Ami. “Sailor Mercury did that because Mercury is you. All this time?” 

“All this time,” she nodded again. 

After a pause, he asked, “Why?”

“I didn’t want you to be alone,” she said. 

“Even after what I did?” Another question followed on its heels: “Did you know—from the very first? When we met?” 

“Not at the first,” Ami replied. “When you mentioned hearing bells…”

“That’s why you left in a hurry!” 

“And I am so sorry—”

“Don’t apologize,” he said, “It’s fine, I understand now, I understand.”

Ami chuckled, despite herself.

“What is it?” he asked.  

“I just realized,” she said, “we both love to say ‘I understand.’” 

“Oh my god, you’re absolutely right,” Zander said in dazed French. He shook his head and said “You’re right,” in Japanese, and then he said, “I have so many questions.” 

“Can we… walk and talk?” 

Zander stood up straight again. “I brought an umbrella,” he said, “just in case it rains.” 

“ Très bien ,” said Ami. She led the way down the bridge and began to talk. “So, you know my friend Usagi? Well…” 

***

Much later… 

Zander was completely lost geographically, but it was more important that he follow and understand every nuance of what Ami was saying. He must not be distracted, not even by the world-shaking idea that Ami and Mercury were one and the same. 

They had walked a long way, through the park and through crowded boulevards. Now they were climbing up a flight of stone steps to a Shinto shrine, and Ami was saying, “So you see, I could say that because Usagi forgave me, after Galaxia, I can forgive you. But that’s not it. That’s a little too neat, too tit-for-tat. The fact is, forgiveness is irrational. And I’m not… good with irrationality, but it will have to do.” A little line appeared between her eyebrows, and Zander felt an urge to smooth it away with his thumb. “And… oh. I tried to be brief, but my thoughts are so scattered.”

“I don’t mind,” Zander said. 

He didn’t. He could look at her forever. The steadiness in her eyes, offset by the changing ripples of her expressions. The dark smudges under her eyes…

He halted on the steps. Ami halted, too, when she was two steps above him. They were closer to eye-to-eye, now. Zander swallowed hard. “You’ve had a rough couple of days, haven’t you?” he asked. 

After considering, Ami nodded. “Yes. A lot of bad memories.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was soft.

She turned to him. “Zander,” she said. 

She reached forward and brushed his fringe back into place. Then she brushed his temple—and then she cupped the side of his face in one cool hand. Her eyes (blue as lapis lazuli, as the icon of a goddess) rested on his. “I am going to trust the future,” she said, in soft, perfect French. 

“The future,” he echoed.

She continued, in the same language, “What is between us—I’m interested, but I want to take it slow.” 

“Slow. Yes. I understand. It’s better than I deserve,” and he was trying to agree with her, but she just lifted an eyebrow. “Shutting up now,” he added. 

Ami shook her head. Then, she darted forward like a minnow and kissed Zander’s lips, quick and cool, before pulling back. 

He blinked, and saw only Ami’s smile, contented and a touch wry. “Finally speechless?” she said in French. Then, in Japanese, “Come on,” she said. “The princess is waiting.” 

She held out a hand, and Zander took it. Together they ascended the steps to Hikawa Shrine.

Chapter Text

Four months later.

In Ami’s apartment. Her bags were packed and she was dressed, ready to walk out the door. She’d even applied sunscreen. 

But Zander wasn’t due to arrive for forty minutes. 

Ami took a seat by her window and shut her eyes in concentration. She focused, she summoned… 

It began as a shimmer on the air, and in a rush of cold vapor the Mercury Harp came to rest in Ami’s hands. She smiled. She carefully tuned the pegs, plucking here and there, making sure the Harp was in working order. Perhaps this weekend, perhaps tonight, she would summon the Harp for Zander, and play for him. 

He had better be appreciative of the concert, thought a snarky little voice in Ami’s head. 

He will be, Ami thought.

“Sail away, sail away… from the deep sea of clouds to the islands of the moon…” she hummed, picking out an easeful counterpoint. “It was here the river brought you, it was here the river meant…” 

Some people collected songs about first love. Ami collected songs about water. 

“Shattered glass pieces reflect something new…” 

Three days, they would spend in the mountains. Up at a hot springs resort, old-fashioned and luxurious. In addition to the communal pools, there would be private bathing…

Ah…

Ami brought a hand to her mouth, a gesture of stilling. Then her hand lowered, coolness against the feverish beat of her heart. “Don’t suppress this feeling,” she whispered to herself. “Observe it… welcome it.” 

That was a bit of wisdom she’d gotten not from the internet, but from Usagi. Not for the first time, Ami blessed her princess’s candor. The two of them had been at Mako’s place, watching her make Thai curry (and mango sticky rice for dessert) when the topic of this trip to the mountains came up. And what it meant. And Ami had gone very red, and then she had flipped her notebook to a new page, and said in a rush “If you don’t mind I would appreciate any counsel you have to give.”

That evening had been most instructive.

In the present day, in the window seat, Ami’s fingers moved faster over the strings. “Greensleeves” took shape on the strings. Yes, this was written by a king in love. Perfect for her. 

Perfect for Zander. 

She laughed abruptly: wouldn’t he just love to hear that! 

Wait, Greensleeves was written by Henry the VIII… oh dear, that really rather killed the mood. 

Her fingers slowed as they picked out the melody, but a smile lingered. Yes, plenty of water up in the mountain. Just the thing, nothing like hot water for a bad case of nerves…

Because she was nervous, yes, more nervous than she could even tell Usagi and Makoto, although probably they guessed. 

Ami had never taken anyone to bed; even kisses were a rarity, before Zander. Besides, when you looked at it logically the whole process appeared… painful. Ami had a feeling she was rather tightly wound. There was a lot to be nervous about. 

But the water… the water would help. It had always been her friend, her element. What water could express… how it clings to a body, and traces paths, how it caresses and holds, and softens and floods. Ami could be like water. 

She sat up in the window seat. She dismissed the Mercury Harp back into its storage within her Transformation Pen. Checked her phone. Twenty minutes until Zander’s estimated time of arrival. 

Zander. He could manage a rare feat: he could surprise her. 

She had thought she could predict him, on the strength of their Silver Millennium memories. But, just as Ami was not the same as Mercury, Zander was not the same as Zoisite. The memories of Zoisite faded into watercolors, while Zander brought the world into brighter color and focus. And Ami… she just wanted to drink in the world that he made. She wanted to drink it in, and drink it in, and drink him in. 

Ami found herself licking her lips. Yes, yes, this physical reaction he inspired… 

Her mind raced ahead. When Zander was vulnerable in front of her, Ami would learn about herself. She would learn about him. 

Now her hand was cold against her fevered brow. Ah…

She had a plan. A persuasive argument with words like “symmetrical” and “manual.” She also had a pound of quality Swiss chocolate stashed in her luggage. Just in case. 

What if she needed the plan? 

What if she didn’t need the plan?

Ami reminded herself that the plan did not involve extracurricular activity minutes before Zander was due to arrive. She stood up, hurried to the refrigerator, and took out an ice cube. She pressed it to the back of her neck and things came clear. 

Three days. In the mountains. 

With Ami driving. 

It would be an excellent weekend. They needed to get out of Tokyo. A little time, just for themselves. And the water… yes, and Ami smiled at her thoughts coming full circle. The water would help. 

Her phone beeped. Zander was in the lobby of her building. She tossed the ice cube into the sink and texted him “I’ll be right down.” 

Purse, overnight bag with sunscreen, hat, shoes. And the keys to her mother’s Toyota, an unobtrusive but efficient little machine. 

Ami took the elevator down. As she walked up to Zander she savored the expression on his face. His eyes were dark as he took her rolling overnight bag. “Where to?” 

The keys jangled, making beautiful music in Ami’s hand. “Follow me,” she said.