Rain. Pain. Cold. Dark.
He lay on some hard surface, eyes shuttered against the aches in his body.
Rain. Pain. Cold. Dark.
His whole body hurt. Drops of water sprinkled the gooseflesh of his arms as he realised the icy surface beneath his face was stone of some sort.
Rain. Pain. Cold. Fog?
Sirius Black had finally opened his eyes. Yes he thought dizzily. Fog. He pushed his hands against the hard stone beneath him, staring at the swirling white mass around him as he haltingly raised himself to all fours. Even that hurt, he realised with some confusion. What the hell was wrong with him? And where the hell was he?
"Do not try to remember." The voice was low, and strangely soothing. For a brief moment, he wondered how a disembodied voice could be comforting. Slowly, he rose until he was kneeling, the pain nearly knocking him back to the ground. Sirius stared. The moisture he'd taken for rain was merely his own perspiration and the dense fog surrounding him. He tried desperately to gather his wits, but another wave of pain hit him and he winced. What curse had Bella hit him with? Bella! Harry!
"The boy is fine. Your cousin escaped." Vaguely he wondered if she could read his mind. It was a she, he knew now. Though low, the tone was distinctly feminine and warm. He knelt in the darkness, searching through the mist for her face.
"Who are you?" he wondered aloud.
She laughed. "I suppose you may call me Setsuna. It is a name I have used before, and will probably use again, and it will suit our purposes more than what I am called now." The enigmatic response angered him. Why was this woman being so vague? Memories started to come back. The battle, the veil. The veil!
"Yes, you fell through it - it is the only explanation for why you are here." She was reading his mind!
"Are you a goddess?" he asked hesitantly. One didn't normally address a goddess in the insolent tone he was using, but he was tired, and in pain.
She merely laughed again. "Once I was. Perhaps, someday, I shall be again. For now, I am merely here." Sirius was really starting to get annoyed.
"And where is here, if you don't mind me asking?" he snapped. Former goddess or not, he wanted answers.
"This place has been called many things by those like yourself who have stumbled into it. It is the Space-Time Portal, and I am the guardian of it," she answered. He was soothed by her directness, though he'd never heard of such a thing; had never, in fact, thought that such a thing could possibly exist. He knew time and space travel were possible, wizards had been doing both for many long ages, but he had never considered that there might be a doorway that led to any time you wanted to visit.
"And I wasn't reading your mind, incidentally. You were speaking aloud." There was a slightly mocking note in her voice that, coming from anyone else, would have meant instant and painful curses from him. Perhaps it was because she was once a goddess, so she claimed, and Sirius had no wish to upset the deities that had, thus fur, had far too much fun at his expense. Or, perhaps it was simply the fact that he couldn't seem to find his wand in the mist. Either way, Setsuna had escaped from his wrath. Coming to that conclusion, he took in her words, having disregarded them in his offense at her tone. Aloud? he groaned to himself.
"I believe you dropped this," she said, moving out of the mist to stand before him, holding something towards him. His eyes lit; it was his wand! Taking it gratefully, he looked up into her face. His jaw dropped. Her hair was green! It hung to her waist and it was green! He blinked, hard, but her hair color remained the same.
"Thank you," said, pocketing the wand and struggling to stand. The woman must be half-giant, he decided irritably, for she was almost as tall as he. Her eyes were - red? And her clothes! She wore a body-hugging white get-up of some kind, and a pleated skirt of black. That wasn't all that unusual, though the goddesses he'd seen pictures of were always loosely-robed in white. It was the black sailor collar with the garnet bows on both her chest and butt that arrested his attention. What grown woman would wear bows? Still in all, he had to admit that she looked rather spectacular, and though her clothing wasn't exactly what he would have imagined a former goddess choosing, her bearing and regal tone certainly had him convinced. Now came the true question; if he'd fallen through the veil into this space, then there must be a way to go through her Space-Time Portal and return.
"As pleasant as this little experience has been," he began, stopping when he realised it had, indeed, been rather better than he could have expected, given the circumstances. He tried again. "Er, Setsuna, it was a pleasure to meet you, but I really need to get back now..." his voice dropped off at the hard glare that suddenly entered her eyes.
"You cannot go back. From here, you may only go on." Her voice was resolute and a long silver staff, shaped like a key, had appeared in her hands. Sirius looked at the red orb on the top of it rather suspiciously.
"But Harry needs me!" He knew he shouldn't shout at the goddess, but it just made no sense. If she guarded the door, then there must be a way to use it.
"Your life there has ended." Her tone was final. He couldn't go back. He silently acknowledged that he'd suspected that from the moment he realised he was falling through the veil. Now, with his worst fears confirmed, he was at a loss.
"What do I do now?" he asked, recognising the defeat in his own voice with a bitter smile. The Dementors had not beaten him, Azkaban had not beaten him, and having his entire world believe him a murderer had not beaten him, but a little piece of cloth hanging from a crumbling stone arch had knocked him on his ass. He nearly laughed at the irony of it. Perhaps he had finally gone mad, he mused. He'd been accused of it so often that he actually wondered if it might now be true.
"You have several options open to you," Setsuna said, not unkindly, but with a knowledge in her eyes, a dark knowledge, and he found himself stepping backwards slightly before he could stop himself. "You can become a ghost, if you so wish, or you can go on."
It was the second time she'd used that phrase. "Go on to what?" he wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he had to ask.
"To eternity," was her only answer. But he noticed she didn't meet his eyes.
"Setsuna, let me be frank with you - evading the questions isn't a good way to keep from being cursed." He thought he saw a smile cross her face before she whispered something he couldn't make out. She spun round and waved her long, key-shaped staff before a large ball of purple energy hit him in the chest.
"You were saying?" There was no mistaking the mockery in her tone now. Sirius stood, feeling but an inch from death itself, and raised his wand, pointing it at her face. She gave a resigned sigh.
"Dammit, woman, whether you like it or not, I'm going to get a straight answer out of you! If I can’t go back, then I'm forget what is and isn’t forgivable and kill you!" He screamed the words, knowing they weren't true – he didnt’ care. He had to know what there was for him. Becoming a ghost was inconceivable to him - he wouldn't haunt his loved ones with his prolonged presence in their lives that way. But going on 'to eternity' whatever that might mean - well, he had to confess to himself, if not to her, that the thought frightened him. For twelve years, he'd lived for revenge - and for three, to protect Harry. Now both of those options were lost to him. A wave of hopelessness overcame him and he fell back to his knees.
"Despair is futile," Setsuna warned, coming to sit on the ground next to him. He looked into her garnet eyes and smiled.
"And what else do I have left then?" he growled bitterly, the smile still in place.
"Would you really like to know?" she asked, quietly, and continued when he nodded. "Some years ago, the galaxy as we knew it didn't exist. There was nothing but a vast black hole, and from it came crystals called Star Seeds, which grew into the planets and stars around us." Seeing his look of surprise, she laughed.
"Yes, I saw it happen from the Space-Time Portal. There was a long period of peace, broken occasionally by evil, but on the whole, the world was at peace. And then mankind constructed that archway, through which you fell. They built it as a doorway to this place, intending to harness the power of time-travel and change the course of destiny. That is impossible, of course." She looked grim as she said this, and Sirius had to wonder what had happened to make her so sad.
She told him of wars, of battles to stop the wizarding community of hundreds of years ago from taking control of the Space-Time Portal and creating a paradox which could destroy the Universe. Finally, the archway was shattered and she was alone once more.
"For I am not a goddess any longer. I'm merely a guardian warrior, one who must stay in this place for eternity to protect it from those who would use it carelessly. Since the reconstruction of that archway, in your Department of Mysteries, there have been three others who have passed this way," she concluded.
"Three?" he whispered, wondering why he'd never heard of anything like it happening.
"Two men and a woman. They chose to go on. They were returned to the place of the galaxy's birth, the Galaxy Cauldron; their Star Seeds melted into the cauldron and were reformed into new ones, and they were reborn. That can be your fate if you choose to go on." Her voice was sad, and for one wild moment, Sirius wanted to ask her if he could stay with her and keep the loneliness out of her eyes. It was a possibility, perhaps. As he looked at her, he envisioned a future with her strangely low voice, telling him how the world began. He shook his head. He would like to offer to be her companion, but he couldn’t.
Instead, a wild, shining hope flared in his breast. As mellow as she was now, and with her staff completely vanished, he might be able to steal one of the keys around her waist and get through the doorway behind her before she could hit him with that energy again.
He had to try. Harry needed him, and no amount of consoling from the beautiful woman with the sad garnet eyes could change the fact that he needed to protect his godson.
He reached for her, as though to offer a comforting hug, and snatched one of the keys from around her waist. She looked up, and Sirius knew he'd never make it, as the key-staff appeared in her hands. Her face appeared pained, as though he had hurt her, and for a moment, he considered holding the key out to her, letting her take it back. But no, that was folly. He had to try. He ran, ignoring the pain in his limbs as he pushed the key into the hole in the doorway.
"Dead Scream," came the voice of the woman, and before he could turn to face the attack, the lavender light flowed over him once more, and he was gone. As quickly as he’d fallen from the veil into the corridor, he was obliterated from existence.
Sailor Pluto stared at the place where Sirius Black had stood just a moment before, tears hovering in her eyes. If only he hadn't done that. There were still two options available to him, one of which he had chosen without realizing it. The other, she thought with a sob, the other was to stay here as her companion in eternity, a guardian of the Space-Time Portal, immortal. Eternity with the reckless stranger would have been too wonderful to be true, she knew, but she couldn't help but wish for it, as she'd told him the history of the Earth he'd come from. He’d had to do it, though, she knew, and she’d known he would. By not offering him the choice this time, she’d hoped to change the course of destiny, as those who came before her often wished to do.
A terrible, fated romance, she'd known it from the time he'd appeared. And she sobbed, for Sirius, for her loneliness, and for herself.
