"Against All Odds"

Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon and its associated characters and canon belong to Naoko Takeuchi and Kodansha. The text of this creative work was written by Dejana Talis and is her exclusive property. Not to be used without permission.

It was evening. Pale moonlight shone through the windows of the Tokyo apartment, filling its rooms with a silvery glow. The apartment was modestly furnished, impeccably clean, and quite empty.

The lock clicked and the door swung open. A tall young man with short dark hair walked inside, a lumpy bundle of cloth in his arms. One hand reached toward the light switch, hesitated, then fell away again. Chiba Mamoru strolled into the dark living room and kicked the door shut behind him.

The dark-haired man tossed a top hat and white eye-mask on a chair and held a red-lined cape up to the moonlight. It had been slashed to ribbons, beyond repair. Sometimes he envied the girls' short skirts; at least their uniforms mended themselves. He'd put in an order to his usual supplier in the morning.

Crossing the room, Mamoru sank down on his couch and leaned his elbows on his knees. The events of the afternoon flickered through his mind for what felt like the hundredth time. The daimon "Nekonell." The shimmering image of the ancient Moon Castle. The appearance of the Spiral Heart Moon Rod. Usagi's wondering expression as she held it for the first time. Mamoru buried his face in his hands. He finally had his answer.

Now what would he do with the knowledge?

"Endymion."

Mamoru leapt to his feet. Outlined in the silvery moonlight pouring through the front window was a translucent figure, pale and clothed in a white dress. The window was plainly visible through her body, but every detail of the ghostly image was clear, down to the sad expression on its face. Mamoru's fists clenched at his sides. This was the last person he wanted to see at the moment.

"What do you want?" he demanded roughly.

"Come, now." A faint smile appeared on the transparent face. "Is that any way to treat the woman who was once your Queen?"

A fierce glare darkened Mamoru's face. He strolled to the side of the front window, and reached out for the string that would pull the curtains closed and cut off the moonlight. The spectre's face changed, then, to genuine fear.

"Wait, please!" Queen Serenity cried, reaching out a pale hand in supplication. "I apologize - Prince Endymion."

Mamoru's hand paused in the act of grasping the cord.

"So that, at least, is true then," he said without looking at the image of the dead Queen.

"Did you ever really doubt it?" Serenity said gently. "Your power is beyond that of any human's, and the Golden Kingdom's armor comes to you as easily as your tuxedo and mask. You are the true Prince of Earth."

An angry retort came to Mamoru's mind, but he bit it back. He considered asking why the Queen was here, but he suspected he already knew the answer to that question.

"Why should I listen to you?" he asked instead.

"Because I could have spent this time with my daughter, when she came to the Moon, but I saved my energy to speak to you," Queen Serenity replied. "Because, were it not for me, you would not be here at all," she added a bit reproachfully.

"And I should be grateful for that, should I?" Mamoru said in a low voice, the anger rising in him. "What, exactly, have you given me?"

"I chose you for reincarnation, not the man I had intended Serenity to marry," the ancient Moon Queen replied, her ghostly eyes narrowed. "I have given you my daughter-"

"No, you have taken her from me!" Mamoru snapped. He whirled around to face the former Queen, his dark eyes flashing. The silvery ghost stood stiffly, straightening to its fullest height.

"So, you do know, then," she said calmly.

"How could I not?" Mamoru demanded. "From the beginning, I suspected, from the moment I remembered who I was. Her eyes were so empty... and she would get so upset whenever I tried to call her 'Sere'... but I always had hope that I was mistaken, that she simply preferred to be Usagi and forget about the old days. But today... you know what happened."

"Of course." Queen Serenity nodded. "I sent the rod to you."

"The Spiral Heart Moon Rod," Mamoru murmured, his memory returning to the shining stick that had appeared during the battle with Nekonell. "Even I, a stable hand, could not fail to recognize the legendary magic weapon the Moon Queen used in the wars that forged her kingdom. As soon as it appeared, I knew what it was - what you meant it to be, anyway - the blessing of the Moon on our union." His lips twisted in a wry smile. "A bit overdue, I think." The ghost of the Queen did not argue. "But, to Usagi, it was an alien thing; unknown to her, when she must have seen it personally at least once. It was then that I knew for certain."

"She is still Princess Serenity," the Queen said quietly.

"She is not my Sere," Mamoru countered. "What have you done to her? It cannot have happened naturally; I remember everything, but no one else does. It is the same with the girls, is it not?"

"Yes." Queen Serenity's eyes were clear and calm. Mamoru could almost see a shadow of lavender in them. "The soldiers pledged their eternal allegiance to me, above their other rulers. You, on the other hand, were never truly mine to command. I could not modify your memory."

"You would have," said Mamoru after a moment.

"Yes. I admit it was cruel to leave the truth with you alone. I considered abandoning that piece of the plan when I found you could not be tampered with, but I had to proceed."

"Why?" Mamoru's fists trembled at his sides. How could she speak so calmly of the tainting of five lives?

"Because I failed the first time." The transparent eyes began to sparkle with intangible tears. "It ended in death, and would have again had I allowed the full memories of the events to influence the second chance." An unexpected jolt of sympathy struck Mamoru's stomach, ebbing the edge of the fury away.

"You blame yourself?" It wasn't really a question; the answer was clear on the dead Queen's face.

"I built the society that destroyed them," she said quietly. "I created a world that valued duty over love; a world where the elite were separated from the people they served. It took the death of my beloved daughter to show me I was wrong, about everything."

The anger of years was still bubbling within Mamoru, aching to be released, but he fought it back. There would never be another chance to have his questions answered, and he had many of them.

"What happened, that day?" he asked, anticipation quickening his pulse. "I've heard the story you fed the girls, but we both know that's unreliable." Mamoru's lips twisted with bitterness, but he fought the urge to chastise the dead Queen further.

"Yes," was the response. "You remember things differently than they do. Did you know, Endymion, that the war was over long before the battle even began? From the moment Metalia fell to Earth, it was already too late to save the Silver Millennium. Fate had been changed." Mamoru was confused by this declaration, but he did not interrupt as Queen Serenity turned to gaze up at the dead Moon hanging in the sky.

"The Silver Crystal could have turned it all around, even at the end," she said faintly, "but when I retrieved it from the Crystal Tower, it would not respond to me. There was only one wish it would grant, the wish of its new mistress." The Queen glanced sideways at the tall dark-haired man standing beside her. "Serenity's wish that she could live happily with you."

Mamoru blinked, startled. He had known that Princess Serenity had been learning to commune with the Silver Crystal, but she had never confided in him about this. Now he learned she had loved him so deeply that she had asked the most powerful object in the Solar System for a happy life with him... even over the safety of her own kingdom...

"You understand the implications," the Moon Queen said, recognizing the change that came over Mamoru's expression. "In the world I had created, Serenity's wish could never come true. You had to be reborn on the same planet, in an era when you could live as equals. The destruction of the Silver Millennium came about for that purpose."

Everything seemed to grow cold. A sudden nausea churned within Mamoru's stomach, and he sank down on the couch, speechless. Images of the Moon in ruins surfaced from the shadows of his memories of the past. Because of Serenity's love for him, entire civilizations had come to an end? Miss Amaris, Prien, Misa, Talma... had they all died because the Moon Princess had fallen in love with a stable hand? Mamoru's head was spinning. It could not be true... but the memories of the strange dreams he and Serenity had experienced were as vivid as those of actual events, sometimes even more so. They had been premonitions, signs that their reincarnation was already fated to happen.

And it had all come about from a wish. The same object that had built and protected the Moon Kingdom had destroyed it utterly. Truly, the Silver Crystal was as terrible as it was wonderful, like the computers of the modern age that would just as soon steady a heart rate as pilot a bomb. It all depended on the will of the wielder.

"Serenity did not know what she was doing," the ghost of the Queen said as Mamoru gripped the arm of the couch with a shaking hand. "Her wish was innocent; the fault was mine for building a world where it could not come true. I was part of the wish as well... only by witnessing my daughter's suicide would I accept that I could not change her heart, and realize what needed to be done."

"So it is true," Mamoru murmured. "She..."

He could not bring himself to say the words, to speak of his beloved Sere piercing her own heart with his sword. It had nearly killed him to hear of it, when Usagi told him what she had learned on her visit to the Moon and laughed - laughed! - in embarrassment when she explained what her past self had done. Usagi believed the past was equally as distant and intangible to Mamoru as it was to her, but to the reincarnation of Endymion, it was as if it had happened yesterday. It had pained him nearly to tears to learn his precious love had died by her own hand when he had sacrificed himself to save her, and a part of him had always hoped that detail was part of the lie.

"She would not live without you," the Moon Queen said gently. "Her heart was stronger than mine. It took her death to show me the power of her love for you. Her love might have saved our world, had I not tried to prevent it. It was a dear lesson for the Sailor Soldiers as well. They died protecting you both, although you were already gone. They, too, learned of the strength of love by witnessing your end, and it gave them the power to defeat Beryl and call great force from their elements. But it was too late; Metalia was too strong. The world I had created was destroyed."

"So you sent us to be reborn, in a time and place where we would all be equals," Mamoru reasoned. The ghost of the Queen nodded.

"I finally accepted that you and Serenity belonged together," she admitted with a kind smile. "I chose you for reincarnation instead of the man I believed to be the Earth Prince. I made the Sailor Soldiers ordinary girls, so they would experience love, friendship, and the value of normal lives. They are young, but they have already surpassed their former selves; they have a deep understanding of the people they protect, and a close bond with their Princess that would never have been possible during the Silver Millennium."

"Too close," Mamoru muttered. A sudden flash of suppressed anger surfaced. "You made them the same; you made Sere a Sailor Soldier!"

"Without the Crystal Tower, there is no other way for her to wield the power of the Silver Crystal safely," Queen Serenity explained. "Until she becomes Queen, being a soldier is the best way for her to protect her people-"

"That's easy enough for you to say," Mamoru snapped. "You're not the one who has to support her in a destiny she doesn't want. You're not the one who has to hold her when she cries after the battles, exhausted from the endless wars! She isn't like the other girls; she wasn't cut out for this!"

"She wished for it herself." Queen Serenity's voice was like stone, but her eyes were sorrowful. "She may not remember, but she never wanted to be idle while others fought. You saw the proof of that today, in her frustration at being unable to transform. She desires peace, but if her friends must fight, she will do all she can to help them."

"And whose fault is it that she can't remember why she feels that way?" Mamoru growled. Now that the anger was back, it would not go away. The Moon Queen was right about one thing: she was at fault. Queen Serenity was responsible for all the pain Mamoru had suffered as Endymion, and now she was responsible for the agony of his new life without Sere as he remembered her. He had been a loyal subject of the Moon, and his reward was to have everything taken from him.

"What could I have done?" the ghost of the Queen argued defensively. "Serenity all but hated me; the Sailor Soldiers were at each other's throats. There was no trust, no love. If I had allowed them to remember all the ugliness of their past lives, it would all have fallen apart! Without their faith in me, without their belief in the goodness of the Moon Kingdom, the soldiers would never have stood against the enemy. Metalia would have won!"

"So you rewrote history?" Mamoru shot back. "You erased all the experiences that made them who they were?"

"I had to!" Queen Serenity wrung her ghostly hands, clearly finding her task more difficult than she had anticipated. "The Sailor Soldiers have to trust each other. They have to work as a team. Serenity could not rely on them as they were. Besides, you heard what I told you. Could Serenity live with herself if she knew her wish brought about the fall of the Silver Millennium?"

"She is not Serenity," Mamoru snapped, but in his heart he knew the Queen was right. It was dreadful enough knowing the truth himself, and he was innocent of the crime. If Usagi knew what her past self had done, the burden of it would destroy her.

"Is she really so different?" the Moon Queen asked. "I altered the past, but I did not destroy it. My daughter remembers one Prince of Earth, a man she loved dearly but was kept away from. She remembers that you loved her, and that you died for her. Is that not enough?"

"She doesn't remember what created that love," the reincarnated stable hand responded. "She doesn't remember the trials that forged that bond, the obstacles we overcame to hold it together, or the reason behind the roses I throw. The Sailor Soldiers may not remember what I suffered at their hands, but I do, and it keeps me distant from them. Usagi may not remember the promise I made never to take another life, but I am still bound by it, and it makes her battles all the harder! Because of what you've done, we will never be as close as we once were..."

"Can you not let go of the past?" the Queen said quietly. "You are the Prince now; the soldiers respect you, the Princess cares for you even without her memories of the Moon. There have been new trials to bind you together. The old days are long gone; you could forget them as well and move on."

"Someone must remember what you erased," Mamoru said bitterly. "Even if no one else remembers my promise to preserve life, it is no less real, no less meaningful. I slaughtered my own brother. Someone should remember that he lived."

There was a moment of silence as the dark-haired man stared off into a shadowy corner of the room.

"You didn't know," Queen Serenity said after a while.

"That doesn't make it any better. I sometimes wonder if this is my punishment for that crime," Mamoru confessed, indicating the empty apartment with a sweep of his arm. "No parents, no siblings... another life with no family of my own."

"Not forever," the Moon Queen reminded him. "You will have a wife who loves you, my Serenity-"

"She is not Serenity!" Mamoru barked again.

"Usagi, then," the Queen challenged. "Do you not love her?"

The reborn stable hand shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

"Of course I do," he admitted after a moment. "More than anything or anyone, except Sere."

"Because she was once Serenity?" the Queen asked.

Another uncomfortable silence.

"No," Mamoru finally responded. "I loved her before I knew who we were, and I never stopped loving her for a moment, not even when I realized she would never call me 'Endy'. She shines brightly enough on her own, even without Serenity's light within her."

"You have been given a second chance to be happy," the ghost of Queen Serenity said gently. "Do not waste it in regret."

"I try, you must know I do," the dark-haired man replied. "It is hard, to see Sere in her face but not find her in her eyes. I love Usagi, I would not want to lose her either, but I can't forget the echo of our hearts beating as one..." Mamoru's voice cracked. He stopped, and cleared his throat. "Is there... is there any chance she might remember?"

"No."

There was a long pause. Mamoru did not move, and seemed barely even to breathe, but inside him something was breaking, crumbling, crying. Only he would ever know what had been lost. Only he would carry the memory of the miracle romance that had been shattered by the ravages of fate and time. He felt soured, bitter, chained to a light that was a pale imitation of the flame that once had been... but it was not Usagi who was to blame; she was as vibrant and shining as ever. It was Mamoru who was broken, unable to let go of the ghost that haunted his past.

"Why are you here?" he finally asked the spectre in his living room. It was good to know the truth, but these were all things he could have guessed on his own.

"To apologize, firstly." Mamoru snorted, but the voice of the Queen continued on. "I told myself I was treating you with kindness, but that does not excuse my actions, nor those of the people who served me. Prince or not, you were a citizen of the Moon, and I failed as your ruler when I did not protect you. You deserved an explanation, and my sincere regrets." The reincarnated stable hand did not speak. Nothing Queen Serenity could ever say would erase two lifetimes of strife. She had once been his Queen, who he had feared and revered, but now she was nothing more than a shadow of the past projected onto his world.

"Secondly... I have come to ask you not to tell her." The monarch's voice suddenly sounded faint and muffled. Mamoru looked up. The image of Queen Serenity was fading, the power source of the data she had stored on the Moon finally reaching the end of its life.

"Promise me you will keep the secrets of the past to yourself," the ghost pleaded urgently, its fading hands clasped together. "The illusion is kinder than the truth - please!"

Mamoru watched silently as the hologram blended into the stream of moonlight. The image faded smoothly away, dress and hair dissolving into nothingness. Queen Serenity's silver lips moved desperately until the end, even when she could no longer make a sound. In moments, the spectre was gone, and only clear moonlight flowed through the window.

The reincarnation of Endymion, raised a stable hand but rightly Crown Prince of the Golden Kingdom, stood up and walked to the window. He gazed out, not at the Moon, but at the city of Tokyo spreading out below him. In the end, it was the Earth that had won, the only planet that had endured to host the survivors of the others. His planet, thought to be inferior, would be the site of the new Silver Millennium.

Of course, there was no question that Mamoru would keep the secret of what Queen Serenity had done. He had been unwilling to give the ancient Queen the satisfaction of once again manipulating him, but he knew he would take the truth to his grave no matter how long he lived. He loved Usagi, and the fact that she was not the soulmate he had died for would torture her until the end of time if she knew. Mamoru could never do that to a sweet girl who loved him with her entire self, even if he could not respond in kind.

His eyes roamed the patchwork of streets and structures that made up the city his current incarnation called home. The moonlight illuminated Tokyo like Tsukino Usagi illuminated his life. No matter how difficult it was, Mamoru owed it to her to move forward until he could give himself to her as completely as she gave herself to him. She deserved better than the half-heart she held.

The white mask on the chair shone silver in the moonlight, symbol of one of the few events they both remembered. From the very first day in the long-lost garden to the battle of that afternoon, no love was as dearly won as that between Endymion and Serenity. Even cracked, it was a jewel too precious to be abandoned. No matter how many times she was reborn, no matter what form she assumed, Mamoru would always love Princess Serenity. Even if his heart ached until he could feel nothing else, or the world came to ruin and she could no longer recognize his face, Endymion would always protect her.

The End