Gundam Moon
Part Six: Twilight Waltz
By Raye Johnsen

"Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon" is copyright Takeuchi Naoko, Kodansha, Mixx Communications, DiC and associated parties. "Kidou Senki Gundam Wing" is copyright Sunrise, Bandai, and associated parties. I have no rights to any of these properties.

She stood at the window, gazing out though the night-darkened glass.

I can never let go, can I? You used to laugh about it. Her eyes closed and she leaned against the pane, feeling the cool of the glass against her forehead, remembering the silvery laughter, and the last time she had heard it....

She had left her post, stepping through the Gate into Terra Castle. She had judged her time well; it was full dark and only one person had been in the Throne Room.

Sunken deep in the Obsidian Throne, Beryl's coppery hair curled in a fiery waterfall down, over her shoulder and across the armrest, onto the floor. She did not look up as her visitor walked over towards her.

"You shouldn't be here, Persephone," Beryl had said, without looking up. Her words fell in the silence as though they were cast from lead. "Aren't you loyal to the Queen of the Moon?"

"I don't know," Persephone, Lady Pluto, had replied into the stillness. "I guard the future, not the present. And... and even I have heard the cries of the people, and I can't deny the truth... And I love you." She dropped her own eyes. "I don't know who I serve anymore, not since I met you."

Beryl lifted red-rimmed brown eyes to Persephone's face. "Do you hate me?" she asked softly. "For what I'm doing, what I'm about to do - do you hate me?"

Persephone took the final few steps to the Throne. "No," she murmured, reaching out to gently brush away a few red threads of hair that clung to Beryl's cheek. "I could never hate you."

Beryl's hand reached up, firmly trapping Persephone's against her cheek. "This time tomorrow, I'll have taken Endymion to my bed," she whispered. "Can you forgive me that?"

"I can forgive you anything," Persephone returned, her own garnet eyes trapped by Beryl's. "Ask it of me and I can't deny you anything."

Beryl stood up quickly, forcing Persephone to take a step back. Persephone's hand still rested on her cheek. Beryl reached up and pulled her head down, kissing her gently. "I will give you a daughter," she said firmly, the words echoing with the strength of a vow. "I take Endymion only to secure the throne away from that tyrant on the Moon and to gain our daughter." She had kissed Persephone again, and the Lady of Pluto had let herself be distracted....

Another, more recent memory surfaced. Treize, his coppery hair cropped short against his head, looking at her through a vidscreen. "How many have died in this battle, Lady?.... Give me their names later...."

But there had been no 'later' - no mutual mourning away from the prying eyes of their followers. Instead, only she had grieved for the fallen, a grief unfairly overshadowed by a more personal mourning.

Anne sighed softly, sunk deep in the memories of two lifetimes. Which reminded her. She slipped from her own room, to the one next door.

Marimeia lay, fast asleep, in the warm bed. She wriggled under the covers, humming in her sleep as Anne pushed the hair away from her face, as bright and silky as her father's had been in his previous life.

"Oh, Treize," she whispered into the silent air of the sleeping girl's room, her hand still gently stroking her love's daughter's hair. "It took you ten thousand years to keep your first promise. Don't take another ten thousand to keep this one. Please..."

"Were you trying to kill youself?!" Quatre was demanding, at volume, when Duo and Hilde entered the dining room where breakfast was laid.

Trowa, who was sitting at the table sipping a cup of tea, said nothing. He seemed completely at ease and nonchalantly nodded in greeting to the two newcomers as his husband demanded an explanation for the unspecified suicidal activity.

"What did he do?" Duo asked.

Quatre threw a sheaf of traffic violation notices at him.

"I see that somebody," Hilde said meaningfully, as she reached over for the poached eggs, "is also a speed freak."

"And what," Duo demanded as he loaded his own plate, "is that supposed to mean?"

"That you have a lead foot, Maxwell. As apparently Barton does also," Wu Fei commented from the doorway.

Sally did not comment, but instead fixed Hilde with a penetrating stare. Hilde blinked under the scrutiny.

"How do you feel this morning, Hilde?" Sally asked.

"I'm fine. HEY!" as Duo filched one of her eggs.

"You weren't eating it," Duo declared, after swallowing.

Breakfast resumed, and no other comments were made about the previous night. However, all the attendees kept a covert eye on the American girl as she ate.

The operatives were failing.

Below Him, the planet swam in its blue and emerald and ochre beauty. Scarred, yes, but beautiful and perfect for His purposes. It wouldn't be like it had been on their homeworld. This time, His people had learned from their mistakes. No selfishness, no exploitation, no war. There was room enough for everyone here....

...If they could just get past these Sailor guardians.

Who would have thought that such a magically-backward world would have such a sophisticated defence system? All the analyses had indicated a world familiar with the use and practices of the physical sciences, but woefully unfamiliar with the less tangible aspects of the laws of physics.

On the whole, it seemed that the planet was just as Baratte and her associates had informed Him - the majority indeed had no idea of what magic was, and these Sailors had been activated only in defence.

He blinked. There was something about that phrase...

The Sailors were not proactive, only reactive. They had activated in stages - more as the threat had increased, but not any more than the threat required.

So, He needed to force them to see Him as He was - a leader who would lead their planet to peace and greatness.

To do that, however, He would need to expose Himself to them. Walking up to them and introducing Himself, though direct and with a minimum of destruction, would likely not work. Previous experience showed that leaders in power rarely chose to give up that power - even when it was proven that the replacing leader was superior.

So He would have to confront them and take their power. Distasteful, but apparently necessary.

|Baratte,| he called her mind. |Attend Me.|

After all her poor choices, she had to do something to redeem herself.

Hilde felt the eyes on her as she finished her breakfast. Although she chose to ignore the stares, it was a close thing. She sincerely felt like jumping up and screaming "Yes! Yes, I am the embodyment of Death and Destruction, GOT A PROBLEM WITH IT?!"

However, her French wasn't up to that. Which was probably a good thing....

And I'm not the 'embodyment of Death and Destruction' anyway, she thought, with a smile. On one level, the cynical self that had broken into Libra - and assisted the Moon's suicide, her newly awakened memories assured her - was grimly amused by everybody else's pussyfooting around her.

Well, almost everybody. Duo was as he had always been....

He hasn't been quite this chirpy since he was Baldur, she thought inconsequentially.

But then, her Consort had never been afraid of her. It was one of the things that charmed her about him.

They believed Pluto, she thought sadly, her thoughts returning to the subject at hand. Never mind that Pluto doesn't know me and never did. 'Her only power is to destroy worlds' - as if. She shook her head. But then, when did any of them ever get close enough to see what I really am?

Duo elbowed her, none too gently. "Want to see a movie later?"

"Yes... later," Hilde agreed. Away from these eyes.

But breakfast ended before the local cinema opened for the day, so there was some time to kill before they left. Everyone else had decided to come along as well. Marimeia had been very insistent, as soon as she heard that the new Valdemar film was playing.

"Isn't she a bit young for the infatuation with horses?" Quatre had asked, as Marimeia headed off for her luggage - which had been delivered from the hotel the night before - and her Rolan t-shirt.

Anne had shrugged. "Marimeia has always been precocious. I'm not looking forward to what comes after horses."

"What does come after horses?" Zechs asked the table.

"Boys," Anne and Noin had replied in unison, with equally dreamy, reminiscing expressions. Noin had shot him a nostalgic glance, and Zechs had flushed bright red and kept quiet for the rest of the meal.

So now they were walking in the gardens, full of bright flowers and well away from the rosebushes.

Neither Hilde nor Duo liked them much. Bad memories do that.

However, they were not alone.

"I spy with my little eye," Duo murmured, "...five chaperones aaand two stickybeaks."

"They're not chaperones too?" Hilde asked with mock surprise.

"You honestly think Heero or Marimeia would stop us?"

"Perhaps not," Hilde conceded.

Relena was not avoiding the rosebushes, and so was standing in front of a beautiful double-bloomed sugar-pink variety.

However, its magnificence was lost on her. She was busy trying to remember.

It seemed terribly unfair that, while everybody else had at least a measure of memory from the Silver Millenium, she had nothing. Nada. Zero.

Anne had smiled at her ruefully when she had tried to broach the subject and had said, "Perhaps you should not try. It is not like you need to remember, and there is much pain in the past."

She'd frowned. "But it's my pain! Don't I deserve to remember?"

Anne's face had frozen, in the way it did when she didn't want to display any emotion. "Some things nobody deserves," she had said quietly, as if convincing herself, and had left the room.

Relena had let her go, recognising that she'd gain nothing more from her. But it left her trying to climb the Everest of amnesia alone.

From what little she'd gleaned from the words the others said, an image was starting to form - one she was finding she disliked more and more as she thought about it. A powerful aristocracy, living in luxury, supported by a laboring peasantry and vassal states - but the aristocracy was above the laws and behaved that way, while the poor were caught but a step above starvation with no recourse to justice, while the vassal states slowly drew nearer and nearer to open rebellion....

Relena shivered as she remembered the last Tsar. Perhaps his fate would have been different if he'd been able to remember the last Queen of the Moon.

Or perhaps not. We're all convinced 'it won't happen to me'... until it does.

She was very deliberately avoiding a subject she was trying not to think about - that of Heero Yuy.

She had let him go. What he did now was no concern of hers. If he cared to come back she would welcome him, but if he didn't....

And that was the rub, as she told herself. Because, to all appearances, he didn't want to come back. He was happy the way he was, and she had no right to demand anything of him. The Sanq Kingdom didn't exist anymore (thank you, Romefeller), so she couldn't demand the attendance of Lord Yuy, her courtier. He wasn't even one of her Senshi.

She sighed. Maybe he'll come back to me, she thought forlornly. Maybe he'll come up to me and ask me how I am and we'll have a conversation.

And maybe I'll grow a set of wings and fly to the Moon.

Just then, Marimeia screamed.

When Zechs heard the scream from the garden, he didn't stop to think. He just came charging out of the villa, intent on....

Stopping dead.

The thing was huge. It was as large across as the house was wide, the colour of sandstone brick dust, a kind of beige that isn't quite yellow. It blinked down at them, almost placidly.

"Hello," it rumbled. "The Sailor Senshi, I presume?"

Relena was standing in front of it. "You presume correctly," she said, with regal hauteur. "And may we ask what you wish?"

The creature smiled - that is, the ends of its mouth turned up and you could see its fangs. It had a lot of fangs. "I wish," it replied, "for you and your little friends to hand over all your power, both magical and temporal, to Me."

"And why should we do that?" Wu Fei demanded.

"Because," the creature rumbled, "I require it. I and My people have travelled for a very long time, looking for a place that can sustain Us. Here will do nicely. And I was thinking that you might be nice and give up your hopeless battle. As I'm going to take your power anyway."

Dorothy smirked, and transformed, inciting instant wonder and envy in all witnesses as to how she did it without the inane magical phrase. "You may attempt to!"

"Oh boy," Trowa said.

Author's Notes:

1. Since so many people missed the yuri in Chapter Three, here's the much-expanded version. Please enjoy. This is my first try at yuri, so feel free to rip it apart.

2. Sailor Saturn is (in my opinion) the Senshi most misunderstood by the other Senshi. They believe that she is the Senshi of Destruction, but she *herself* (and she ought to know) calls herself 'the Senshi of *Renewal*'.

Tomoe Hotaru demonstrated a range of powers, even before her manifestation as Sailor Saturn - healing, shielding, and defensive retaliation to a controlled level. It is made clear in the canon Sailor Moon universe that ordinary people don't have powers. If you do, you were connected to the Silver Millenium or its enemies in some way. So these powers cannot come from the Hotaru incarnation; they *must* be manifestations of Saturn's power.

I believe the misunderstanding stems from the fact that all the Senshi's memories of the Silver Millenium are incomplete, and during that time period Saturn was distanced from them, so they saw only her most obvious power, and assumed it was the complete picture - which, of course, it wasn't.

3. Baldur was a Norse demigod. The son of Odin, the head of the Norse gods, and Frigg, the goddess of Earth and mothers, he doesn't appear to have been the particular god of anything, although he was very bright and cheerful, so almost everybody liked him. When his only enemy managed to kill him, Hel, the goddess of those who did *not* die in battle, honoured him highly and did not want to release him from her realm.

Although Hel did set conditions that were not met, there seems little doubt that if Baldur himself had sought freedom, Hel would have (eventually) released him. Therefore (at least in this fic), I assume that Baldur did not wish to leave Hel.