Word Count: 2065

Ganymede hadn’t bothered to visit his moon in months.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, though more recently he’d come to acquire a certain bitterness in regards to the past, and the apparent inability or unwillingness of certain individuals to let it go and shift their focus to a future that Ganymede thought was far more important. He wondered if, because of that, he’d grown just as stubborn as they were, and perhaps avoided his moon in favor of giving his current life on Earth his undivided attention, like some sort of silent rebellion. He didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing, as Earth was his home and his primary concern, but even he could not quell the curiosity that would sometimes rise within him when he chanced a look up at the stars.

He still knew so little—about himself, about who he used to be, about this war he wanted so much to end.

If he could somehow come across the answers while exploring a world that once contained life but now seemed as dead as the people who had once inhabited it, Ganymede supposed it was worth the brief trips in the hopes that a memory might provide him with a solution to all of the problems they found themselves faced with, however unlikely he thought that to be.

He stuck to the rooms he was already familiar with—a courtyard, a conference room, a ballroom, a hall of mirrors, a sitting room and a bedroom. He’d yet to build up the courage to explore other parts of the castle or leave it to search through the decimated town beyond. He preferred the places he was used to, the ones he’d visited before, the places he’d seen flashes of memory, not only because he knew he wouldn’t become lost among them, but because he felt a certain attachment to these places. He knew them somehow. He knew they were important.

At some point, he came to think that these rooms and halls must have been where the boy he’d been long ago—and the man that boy had grown into—had spent most of his time.

The vision that came to him when he returned to the bedroom was the most distinct he had yet to experience. It was the strangest sensation. He knew he stood by the bed, gently gripping a rotting bedpost, but he was out on the balcony as well, or rather Liesel, the Ganymede of the past, was out there. At present, Ganymede knew the balcony to be crumbling and broken and no safe place for anyone to stand, but Liesel leaned against the stone railing, looking out over the gardens below and the bonfires that burned in the distance on a cool, dark night.

“The Senshi of Lust, barred from taking part in his own people’s Fertility Festival?”

The voice, low and somewhat derisive, came from behind. Liesel turned suddenly and Ganymede saw a figure he had first seen on his previous visit months ago, though both he and Liesel had been younger then. Now they were more clearly adults, young enough still to make mistakes, but old enough to know better. The games and laughter of their youth had been shed and left behind, replaced with responsibility and severity, and a certain tense air that caused Ganymede to experience a mix of discomfort and wonder.

He knew that Liesel felt it, too. His past self swallowed and did his best to stand straight and rigid, impassive, but there was conflict in his eyes. Ganymede was sure they were both aware of it.

“It seems a bit ironic, doesn’t it?” the second man asked.

Liesel moved quickly, crossing back into the room. He shut and locked the balcony doors, and pulled a set of sheer curtains over the glass. “What are you doing in here?” he demanded. He sounded anxious, harried, as if at any moment he expected someone else to come in and catch them doing something wrong. “How did you get in?”

“The secret passage,” the other man replied. He gave a careless shrug and smiled in smug satisfaction.

“How do you know where the secret passages are?”

“Careful observation.”

Liesel took a few steps forward, perhaps to send the other man away, but he stopped in his tracks when his companion closed the distance between them. Then there was a hand in his hair. Ganymede thought he could almost feel it, though it was faint and could have easily been his imagination. Fingers traveled through it, gentle but certain, and Liesel looked up at the man with desperate eyes. Ganymede saw that they were light in color, a blue-ish lavender, like periwinkle.

He focused on his past self for a moment but couldn’t see too much of himself in him, not enough for the bitterness that had grown within him to ease. Liesel’s hair was a similar pale shade of blond, but it was longer and hung down his back, and Ganymede was sure the color was nothing more than a coincidence. Liesel’s face was set with delicate, fine features, too, but he wore them with more maturity. His beauty was elegant and stately, sophisticated. His frame beneath his robe and nightclothes—which he’d come to hold securely around himself—was graceful and willowy, and he stood taller than Ganymede was now.

Yet the man he faced still managed to tower over him—much like he did at present, Ganymede thought.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” Liesel said. It seemed that he was trying to keep the tone of his voice firm, but it was obvious that he was having a difficult time of it.

“You always say that,” the other man replied.

“I mean it this time! You can’t just use the secret passages to get into my room! What if someone saw you?!”

“The thing about secret passages, Liesel, is that they’re secret. I assume only those that need to know about them.”

“And it’s those people who’ll put up a fuss when they know you’ve been in here!”

“You act like they’ll come in to check on you at any moment.”

“They could,” Liesel insisted. It was a weak argument. Even he didn’t sound as if he believed it.

“They won’t. Have they before?”

“No, but you’ve never been here during the festival before.”

“So because I’m here, they’ll suddenly decide that your security’s been compromised and come to make sure you’re still in solitary confinement, even though there’s no way for anyone without the proper authority to see you when you’ve been locked in here since last night and there are guards standing outside your sitting room door?”

“Yes,” Liesel said. His face took on a frustrated look. Ganymede could tell he knew it was unlikely and hated having it pointed out to him like an adult explaining something simple to a small child. He remained stubborn in his resistance, frowning and forcing himself to be unresponsive to the hand that stopped stroking his hair to settle on the side of his face.

“I think you’re paranoid, Liesel.”

“I think you should leave.”

“When will you stop allowing these people to control you?”

“When will you finally get it into your head that this is impossible?”

“It’s not impossible,” the other man said, and he was frowning now, too. His hand left Liesel’s face to grip one of his arms. “If it is, it’s only because you insist on being your government’s puppet.”

“I am not a puppet,” Liesel hissed. He lifted a hand to push the taller man away, but the effort was weakly executed and not as insistent as he might have intended. His wrist was quickly caught in a firm grip. “There are laws,” he reminded his guest. He didn’t bother to struggle yet. “I am not a puppet simply because I choose to abide by my people’s laws.”

“Your people wouldn’t care. They didn’t make the laws. Your government did. They want to control you.”

“It has nothing to do with me. It’s been this way for centuries.”

“I serve Jupiter,” the other man said. “Your laws don’t apply to me.”

Liesel looked furious and ripped his hand away. “The laws of Ganymede applied to you the moment you set foot here. They may be more lenient with you because of your position, but you can’t come here and act against the government’s interests and expect that there won’t be any repercussions.”

“What about your interests?”

“The government’s interests are my interests. I am Sailor Ganymede. I serve my government and my people.”

The other man glared at him, just as furious, and released the hold he had on his arm a bit more roughly than he’d handled him only moments ago. “Fine,” he snapped. He turned on his heel and stalked toward the opposite side of the large bedroom, presumably where the secret passage was sequestered away.

Liesel stood there helplessly, his look of fury soon replaced with doubt and sadness. He took a few steps toward the man who Ganymede knew to be one of his dearest friends—again, he could almost feel it, the ghost of an emotion from far away—despite their differences in opinion.

“Wait,” he said. He could have been begging, though he did his best to seem as distant and guarded as he’d tried to be all along. “I’m sorry. You know I can’t…”

His companion stopped and turned to face him again. He looked to be struggling to keep his frown in place, but the doleful, tender look in his eyes gave him away. “You’ll be on Jupiter within the month,” he replied. “Your laws don’t apply there.”

Liesel opened his mouth to speak, but Ganymede couldn’t hear what he said. His lips moved around a single word before they were still again. A name? Ganymede didn’t know. He wished he did. He would have liked a name to put to the face—something more than the place he knew the man had adopted as his own. The memory was beginning to grow hazy. There was no more sound, and the vision faded entirely as the other man turned to disappear.

Ganymede stood where he’d been all along—by the bed—though it took him a few moments to recover his bearings after the strange sensations the memory had caused. None of the visions he’d had before had ever seemed quite so… tactile. This time it had been as if he were living it himself, not just seeing it, though he knew that he’d remained as nothing more than a spectator the entire time. He was not Liesel and Liesel was not him.

Confused and somewhat disoriented, Ganymede left the bed to move toward the balcony doors. The sheer curtains from the memory were no longer there to cover the two doors of mullioned glass, which stood closed on a balcony of split and broken stone. The gardens that used to bloom below were also present no longer, and no bonfires lit the horizon in traditional celebration. Everything was dark and desolate. It was a gloomy place. He’d always thought it was, since his first arrival. None of that changed with the memories. If anything, they only made it sadder.

Staring through the glass, Ganymede’s eyes lifted up to the skies, where Jupiter hung, large and red. He thought that whatever story had taken place all those years ago had only partially occurred here. The rest of it had most likely been scattered across the universe, and if the memories he had here would ever show him a solution or the means to an end, it wasn’t going to be so easy to find, not when there was so much else to wade through. There was too much to see, too much to discover, too much to turn over and inspect—people, places, actions, emotions—and how was he to know that some of it wouldn’t remain lost to time and space?

It seemed impossible that he alone could figure it all out.

Somewhere there, on the planet that held his moon in thrall, Ganymede was sure there was more, awaiting the arrival of someone else, who he’d known then as surely as he knew him now. If only he could convince Chris to go find it.

He wondered… what kind of secrets did Valhalla hold?