Mirrorspace was empty then, except the throne room. Princess Ares was perched as she usually was -- heeled feet planted firmly on the ground, arms gripping the carved rests of her throne, eyes half-lidded and brooding. Her staff sat upright in its holster. Currents of dark energy licked across the glowing crystal housed in a golden cage. She thought of Helios, a smile pricked her lips. Nehelenia had been so clever.

Minutes faded into hours which bled into days, then weeks. Time was different in mirrorspace. There was no day, no night. Just the churning smoke that could form anything a Dark Mirror senshi's mind could dream up. Objects were easy, rooms were a challenge -- but for the Princess, this world was like clay to be molded.

Her gray eyes flickered shut for a moment. She called to mind the form of someone who she had shared solitude with -- not the Queen that she loved and served, but the sailor whose arms had once wrapped around her. The smoke wavered, thickened. It rose from the floor like a geyser in slow motion, but the rising veil did not dissipate. It took shape.

First, two long spindly branches broke free, swelled, and became arms. Next the legs -- long, lean -- and then the swish of a skirt, the papery edges of a kite. At a distance it might have appeared that Ares was holding a meeting, but a closer glance would show only a phantom. Nose, mouth, lips -- they all formed. Yet they remained colorless. It was as if the girl before her was cut from stone.

"Ouranos," she whispered, an involuntary gasp. But the smoke figure did not respond. It couldn't. Ares could conjure a thousand shapes of the lost parallel senshi, but she could never give her life.

In a mirror to her left, a teenage girl slumped hard against the surface of her mirror prison. Ares got to her feet slowly, crossed the floor with click after click after click. The mirage of Ouranos floated along with her. The Princess of the Dark Mirror placed one clawed hand on the mirror, just above the girl's head and tapped. At first softly, as if not to disturb her. And then, when the girl did not respond, she began to bang, fist falling against the surface until it threatened to crack.

The blond teen in the mirror was too zapped, too drained of energy to protest. Her cheek was flat against the mirror. Without opening her eyes, she mouthed the words: Kill me. Ares stood there, staring at her, the ghost of a girl who had once comforted her hanging over her shoulder. She waited. In her heart, she tried to will the Ouranos mirage to stop her, to steady her, just like she once had. But there was nothing.

Coldness hung in the senshi's eyes. She leveled her face to the trapped girl's and hissed, "No." In a flash, her hand pierced the mirror, yanked her through its surface, and then tossed her back through mirrorspace. Ares had no idea where the girl would end up. A park bench? A school? A parking lot? Her mind was a blur when she sent her. But wherever she went, she would arrive alive, even if barely.

Ares spun on Ouranos. She lifted her hand, clawed tips inching toward the cheek of the phantom. Her fingertips hovered on the spot, and she made tiny strokes. In the darkness, Ares could feel her heart clenching and unclenching. She squeezed her eyes shut, caught in the swell of the emotions she fought so hard to keep at bay.

When she opened them, Ouranos had taken a new shape. Ares blinked. Longer hair, shorter, a little less bust, a little more hip. Her hand froze. It was Albali, called up from her consciousness in a desperate act of self-preservation. Ares stared into the unblinking, gray, pupil-less eyes for a time. She walked back to her throne, took a seat. After a moment, she called the mirage to follow her, made it sit at her feet. Made it rest a smokey hand on her wrist.

For a time, it soothed her loneliness.