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Sunlight, the soft smell of ever-present flowers, the laughter of those you loved all around you. They were the things that Blanche saw behind her eyes every time she closed them, the memories she relived in her mind every chance she got at solitude. Even sometimes when Ray was caught up in one of his many sitcoms, the young woman would sit at the window and look at the lights of the city, dreaming of her home. None of these faraway, tightly-gripped memories were ever as vivid as the one she was currently living in her sleep tonight however. Sun shone through crystal down onto the almost pastoral tableaux below, almost like a scene from a fairytale or an epilogue in a particularly fantastical movie. Eight women were arrayed in elegant gowns that almost entirely consumed the blankets they'd seated themselves upon, none wearing the same style or color so that they overlapped in beautiful rainbows. Something happened between the Princess of Mars and the crowned and regal woman in white causing them all to burst into peals of laughter. Not even the sober Princess of Saturn could keep her lips from curving and her gentle laughter joined the cacophony. Over the shoulders of them all, the queen looked straight at Blanche and beamed with love in her eyes. "Small Lady, there you are! We've been waiting for you."

Startled, she looked down at herself and saw only pink. Pastel pink that flowed from her shoulders, down over her now-adult body and blew in the gently fragrant wind. She could even feel the weight of the small tiara on her head, and reaching up cautiously, there it was. The bright and golden sign of the Silver Millennium stamped clearly on her forehead for everyone to see. Red eyes flashed with confusion, quickly banished as she gathered the familiar gown in her hands and dashed down the steps to throw herself into the warm and waiting arms of Neo-Queen Serenity. Nothing mattered but this, and after all, it was only a dream wasn't it? It didn't matter who she was in this dream, so long as she was back home where she belonged. Where she wanted to be. All around her, beloved faces. All but one, the faithful Princess of Pluto who always kept her watch deep below the Palace at the Gateway of Time. As this thought crossed her mind, a cloud fell over the sun. First one, then another and then a roll of thunder, a bright flash of lightning. A flash so bright it hurt her eyes, and then she was alone. Nothing in her arms but cold, empty air. Nothing but loneliness. Nothing but emptiness. Nobody but her.

Nothing.

Gripping arms around herself, even in her dreams she felt the ripping sense of loss and grief and screamed at the betrayal of her mind. The sigil on her forehead flared and the telltale beam that had betrayed her so often as a child flared to life and shot out a quick beam before again darkening to the black crescent she was used to. Power flared with a dark wind and she was again the Black Lady of Darkness, Lady of the Wiseman. Everything was hushed and silenced, as if time had stopped completely in her mind. The trees were still ever-so-lightly rustled from where the wind was lightly blowing but had stopped as she had hit the arms of her mother. What was going on? What sort of twisted nightmare was this?! Putting her face in her hands she simply sat there and wept with confusion and sorrow.

When her mind shattered like this, it was sometimes all but impossible to call back any shred of sanity from the brink it was hanging over. A single word, a strange look, anything could send her careening over the edge into a catatonic state, a murderous rampage, or back into the shell of the fourteen year old girl she'd been. Alone, scared, so very confused about what had happened and without answers to so many questions. At the voice, at that unmistakable word that had represented her for so long now, hands dropped and eyes shot open.

"W-what?" A tear-ravaged face raised to look dead into oh-so-familiar eyes of molten gold, but in the wrong face. The voice that came from the wrong chest. The wrong body, for this one was absolutely female! Rising slowly, she warily voiced the question forming in her mind and springing suspiciously from her lips. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

She didn't acknowledge the title of 'maiden' whatsoever, except for that first moment of shock and recognition on her face. What good would that do, for this stranger using a name that so far only one ever had. Was this her mind, cruelly taunting her again? Why would it do such a thing? What purpose would it serve? Like it needed a purpose to shatter her broken psyche over and over for its sick amusement.

Fate was doing it, why couldn't her own mind join in on the fun?

No. Oh no no no. This was too cruel, there was no way her mind could have done this. They were dead, every single one of them, including the boy she had dreamed one would day be her Prince. The boy that had given her a true identity as a senshi, had helped her form that Pink Moon Crystal. Her starseed! But the voice was so similar, albeit coming from a smaller chest and a female voice box. The last statement pulled her back from that horror and a cruel and ironic laugh echoed from inside her newly matured chest.

"Maiden? Small Lady Serenity, Princess of Crystal Tokyo, Tsukino Usagi Serenity? That Maiden?" Bitterness wound through the timbre of her voice as she took a few steps closer, eyes scanning over the new body of the Dream Priest. Reincarnation? Perhaps. "Why would you be looking for her? Her parents are dead, aren't they? Tsukino Usagi was wiped off the face of this planet. No mother, no child. No queen, no princess. No Maiden. And yet....here I am." Stopping, she wasn't more than six feet away from Helios, spreading her arms wide, the pink glimmer of her wrap extending like a banner.

"As much a Maiden as I ever was, at least. Did you miss me, Helios?" Vulnerability flashed through in a voice that was so much Chibiusa that even she looked surprised, and put hands to her lips. What in the world?

"Thought I'd died? I wish I had." There was no bitterness, nothing to that statement but the horrible emptiness of utter truth. "Were you watching my dream? Did you see what happened? I was there, right there. Everything was wonderful and beautiful and the fighting was finally over. We were finally a family again!" How long had it taken her after she'd gotten back from the 20th century to reconcile Usagi and Mamoru as Serenity and Endymion? Her child's mind had never been able to combine the two into who they were now, but as she'd matured, she had seen. They'd never changed at all, not really. They'd just grown up.

"But like before, I was spared. I lived, and they all died. You died! I was waiting for you and..." Hollow eyes looked deep into the familiar ones she had loved so much for those few years. How she'd gone into her dreams every night, thinking of him, wishing for him. Trying to make herself into the Princess and Maiden he'd seen in her. Wanting to win his love when he came for her again like he'd promised when he left on Pegasus. Shaking her head sadly, she lifted and hand and it hovered over the other girl's cheek. It was a change now, to be older than the Dream Priest. Taller even! "What happened Helios? How did you become like this? I'm trying so hard to find answers, and all I find are more and more questions."

The hand stayed where it was hovering, and her eyes flashed with repressed anger. "All I know is that in this town, there are many senshi, and even two princesses. Princesses that lived when ours died. Why did they survive when my mother did not? Did they betray her? Nehelenia would in an instant, that b*****d queen who thinks she has changed. Evil never truly changes." More irony, considering her current state of affairs.

Dropping her hand before allowing herself the weakness of a life she could no longer afford, the Lady simply smiled and it was not a very nice smile. It was the sort of smile that someone who did very bad things gave right before they did something almost worse. "I haven't stolen a thing. Not like she stole my dream mirror, not like she tried to steal you, or Mamo-chan's crystal. She really is one to harp on about thieves, don't you think? Are you sure she even has a crystal? She might be lying you know. She's awful good at lying." Turning away, she walked to the edge of the glade and looked down at the quiet city of Crystal Tokyo. It was ghostly and asleep, much like it was when she'd first brought Sailor Moon here, during the Black Moon Clan's invasion.

"If anything, I've been the one robbed here. I've lost my home, my family, my friends, my future. I don't even have a legitimate claim to the throne of the Moon Kingdom, since how can I be descended from a fifteen year old girl?!" That bitter laugh again as pink pigtails shook along with her head. It was almost a habitual gesture now, the denial of all her feelings, the denial of her past. "Charonite, I've heard of him. Incredibly serious, incredibly full of himself. Thinks he knows everything." She smiled again. "I bet he has no idea about me, what do you think?" Hands clasped behind her back almost childishly, Black Lady spun again on her heels to face Helios.

"So you died. But you're here now, albeit in this unrecognizable form. Who else survived? V-chan? Rei-chan? Puu?" Her voice became lightly plaintive on this last name, her oldest friend. The woman who'd been a surrogate mother for her when her own could not afford her the affection she had so craved. Puu had made her strong, and then...and then.

Breath hitched and eyes burned at Helios' words, before the tears spilled one after another in slow tracks down her cheeks. In contrast, long fingers were balling themselves into fists, her nails biting into her palms as hard as they could to try and stop the impending flood. Really, she was so weak. Crying at every mention of her lost utopia was not something a proud Lady did, and she could almost feel the patronizing and pitying glances Wiseman would be giving her. Patience, after all, only went so far. It had never occurred to Black Lady to doubt the words of the Dream Priest, for after all, how quickly had she been found? One errant dream, a cry echoing from her very soul, and there he - no she, was. If there had been other souls to find, they would have been found. Lifting fingers to shove the drying, salty liquid away the Lady smiled again. "Not entirely alone. I have the Wiseman to look after me now, don't I? But what about you? Will look after me too? Or are you going to champion those now-fallen princesses instead of your own?" Steady, tearless, fearless, and yet oddly vulnerable red eyes held the beloved gold ones as she asked the question that made her poor child's heart tighten in her chest.

Having found Helios again, she wasn't entirely sure it would be bearable to lose that part of her past. But lines had to be drawn clearly, from the beginning. Mistakes would not be tolerated when she had a mission to complete, and a family to avenge. Old loyalties and weak feelings couldn't be allowed to consume you, that was the first thing he had taught her when pulled back from the edge so slowly. It had taken time to repair the pieces of her broken little mind as over time she'd been re-fed the power that had contorted her flesh into the lush form it now took. If you could find a way to mix the two, it was best but not at the cost of your goal, at the cost of your power. Thinking of the wizard who had saved her from black obscurity her form softened oh-so-slightly and the Lady waited for her answer.

No, Helios was right. She wasn't alone.

For one glorious moment, Black Lady's face reflected wholly the sleeping princess inside herself and it was almost like the four years of her life and almost twenty of Helios' own slumbering ones, had fallen away. Small Lady beamed at the Dream Priest and even the clouds over the sun cleared as mauve-encased arms wrapped around Helios for a warm hug. "Thank you...thank you so much Helios." There was gratitude in her tone indeed, but also a tinge of sadness, for just as the clouds rolled back over in her dream landscape the Lady knew this couldn't last.

Suddenly, she was truly exhausted in both mind and heart and had to escape now before she betrayed herself and her Wiseman by telling Helios things she did not at all need to know. Pulling away, she started to head for the massive archway leading out of the artificial garden before hesitating and halfway looking back over her shoulder, profile tragic as a Greek play. "I can only assume that the Zodiacs told you of me, and as such, I can't imagine you won't tell them what you've learned here. I have no objections." Without waiting for anything further, she all but flew out of the garden and out of sleep, abandoning the Dream Priest to whatever aims she saw fit to pursue.

Across the city, in the suburbs, Blanche opened her eyes and two tears ran from them before they were banished and she rubbed her face in the blanket spread across both her and the pullout mattress of Ray Gordon's living room couch. Notable was the fact that in her sleep, she'd somehow phased into this truer form, perhaps to exercise the control over her dream somehow? It was unknown. Throwing the covers off her body, the Lady padded on stocking feet and hesitated in front of the closed door of the bedroom. She'd never been in there before after Ray'd shut it for the night, but had never had reason to before.

Shaking her head at this child's foolishness, face lined with severity, she opened the door and crossed to the bed, shaking the man in it awake with a light touch. It didn't take much, for power was transferred through touch, and it wasn't hard to differentiate her cold hands from those of Blanche. Blue eyes looked up into red and she frowned. "We might have a problem."

She smiled a bit at the nickname, as she usually did, but it was nervous and strung tight with energy. If she had any more power, it might have been discharging off her like static, Black Lady felt like her bones would explode from the tension inside of her body. "The Dream Priest lives, and came in my dream tonight." Her voice was soft and low, as if saying the young woman's name would summon her into the room. It was perhaps not the emergency he was thinking of, Wiseman was probably thinking at this point that every senshi in the city was circling the house.

But no, it was just a minor problem for him. For the princess, however, this was a much more personally huge problem. Not only had her mind been easily penetrated by 'the enemy', it was also wearing a familiar set of eyes and wielded a sword of memories that cut straight through her. It was incredibly troubling, and her eyes reflected this terror and a myriad of other emotions, a few of them even positive.