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[Mood music. The lines at the bottom are taken from Lazy's translation of Ec Tisia ~Tarifa~.]

Megrez lay on the ground, feeling the blood seep from her wounds into the earth. Her left arm and right leg had been broken, there was a knife sticking out of her stomach, and it was very clear that soon, she would die. She would not die alone, however; not too far from her, the bodies of Corrupt Eternal Sailor Penthesilea and Dark Mirror Eternal Sailor Cybele laid prone, just as badly injured as she was. Cybele’s neck had been broken, and a knife stuck damningly out of Penthesilea’s chest. The henshin had yet to fade from either of them; for all Megrez knew, they might somehow still be clinging to their last flickers of life.

She tasted blood as she opened her mouth for her last words. “Let us… all… walk to the other side… together.” Yes, that was how it would be. The three of them would hold hands and walk the astral path to heaven, hell, the Space Cauldron, or whatever eternity had in store for them. It would be like nothing had ever happened to tear these two away from Megrez, like they were still the Order senshi that fought against Chaos five years ago. She would be in the middle, Cybele to her left and Penthesilea to her right, and she would squeeze their hands tightly so that they couldn’t get separated from her as they walked ever onward through the cosmos.

There were two missing pieces. Two pieces that had disappeared long ago and would not be found. Two sets of hands that Megrez longed to hold now but could not.

In that last moment, everything seemed to become brighter, clearer, more detailed. The sky was the bluest she had ever seen, the dampened grass below her a pleasant prickle. Then, as if they had heard Megrez’s dying wishes, two figures descended from the sky and landed on the ground gracefully.

Eternal Sailor Gunn had come to claim them, with Megiddo Squire by her side as always.

“I’ll take these two,” said Gunn, gesturing to Cybele and Megrez, and then added, “You go get her,” pointing to Penthesilea. Megiddo picked Penthesilea up in what was definitely not a safe carry; more of a hug than everything, and for a moment it looked like she would kiss the dead Corrupt. Following a sharp look from Gunn, she shifted Penthesilea into a more stable carrying position. Meanwhile, Gunn slung Cybele over her shoulders as though she was weightless, and she approached Megrez.

She stared at Megrez for a moment, then said, “You did alright.”

Megrez could not tell if Gunn was smiling when she said that. She was scooped up into the older senshi’s arms, and soon, she felt nothing.

Nothing till she woke up in the plain little bed in a communal housing building in the Order Headquarters, that is.

Megrez used to scream when she woke up from dreams like this one. Now, as soon as she gained control, she clapped a hand over her mouth to avoid that. The sights of the dream were remarkably fresh and clear in her mind, and before she knew it, she began to shake, shake like she was still the scared little basic senshi that had killed that lieutenant five years ago. She did everything she could to avoid it, but her vision began to blur as tears welled up in her eyes. She did not want to, but she blinked, and then the tears would not stop flowing. She was having a genuine cry, her first spell of grief in years.

She pressed her hand tighter over her mouth to avoid sobbing aloud. The others did not need to hear her pain. She had not felt pain like this in years. Why? Why now?

The words crept into her mind: I miss them. She missed them all horribly. She missed Cybele’s support, Megiddo’s cheerful encouragement, Gunn’s focus, Penthesilea’s raw power. It was all gone now. Gone or tainted beyond repair.

Curling up ever tighter, she kept thinking: I wish you were here. I wish you were still you. I wish I could have it all back, even for just one second.

No, that would not do. That one second would be meaningless. The world would fall back into disrepair right after that shining moment, and she would have nothing once again.

She squeezed her eyes shut and begged for sleep to take her once more. If she had nothing here, she would immerse herself in tranquil darkness for as long as she could, for at least in the drifting world of dreams, there was possibility.