Kerberos, the planet, was….quiet. Peaceful.

Sailor Kerberos was not sure what he had expected, when he finally tapped the app that whisked him off to space, but this was...not it, really. Part of him, he supposed, had feared a dark, shadowy world, twisted and consumed by monstrosities.

(Part of him, he knew, had feared he would find the blackened plains and cracking crystals that he had known when he was Ascended. That somehow the planet would be as scorched and dead as it was then. But somehow, miraculously, it wasn’t.)

There was a field, expanding out in front of him, and in the distance, what looked like the ruins of buildings.

For a moment, Kerberos saw the field as it was. Blooming with asphodel flowers that glowed faintly in the Kerberan ever-night, and with the buildings whole in the distance, built all out of shining marble, graceful and elegant and lit with lanterns to break the darkness.

He turned, and smiled at the person next to him - a stranger, looking tired and sad.

“You have many burdens,” Kerberos said, “but we will help you learn to relieve them. By the time you leave, you will breathe easier.”

“I’ll be better?” The stranger asked, voice as tired as his look. “It won’t hurt anymore?”

“It will hurt less,” Kerberos said, “and you’ll know how to manage the pain.”

“And what if it never hurts less?”

“Then,” Kerbeos said gently, “you never have to leave. Or you don’t have to stay. Leave when you are ready, and only then.”

Kerberos took a breath, and then, almost inexplicably even to himself, he smiled.

He had always feared his sphere, and feared his magic - or if not feared it, he certainly hadn’t relished it. He was asphodel. Funeral flowers. Grief. As Hvergelmir had once told him, “my regrets follow you to the grave.”

But she had also reminded him that regret was not all awfulness. That regret was the thing that made people change, that made them grow, that made them confront everything they had done wrong and learn to be better than their worst moments.

He walked forward, letting his feet carry him across the dead field and towards the buildings. It was a little eerie, but ultimately it was all reassuring, because it wasn’t cracked and broken and burnt and crystallized. It did not belong to Metallia. It never would.

As he walked, there were brief flashes of other memories - of laughing with familiar faces, of helping those that came into his care.

By the time he stepped from the field onto the overgrown tiled road of what must once have been a city, or a commune, or...whatever his planet had, he felt like he...didn’t quite know, but was beginning to understand.

Hvergelmir had been right, that he wasn’t just the worst parts of his magic. He hadn’t been in the past, he didn’t have to be today.

He had helped people, once. A thousand years ago, yes, but...once. He’d helped them see, helped them understand that they were more than what they'd lost or what they’d done.

Briefly, he smiled. It was good to know he’d been able to do that for others, once.

It was a shame, really, that he’d never been able to grant himself that kind of forgiveness.

But the things he had done...only the people he’d harmed could forgive him, and most of them were dead. The rest, he was sure, had no desire to. So there was no absolution for him.

There was, however, for a moment, when he took a seat on a crumbling bench and let himself take in the view of his planet - his planet - at least a moment of peace.