His lordship Chaos - Now We Are Young Rated PG Oh, I've found the other side of my future lies Beyond the yellow brick road -Elton John, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" -NOW WE ARE YOUNG- We build our lives upon stories. We tell them to our children at night. We tell them to our friends during the day. Sometimes the stories we tell are real. Sometimes they're lies. Most often, they fall somewhere in between. They cut into us like knives, making us bleed and cry. They sneak into our hearts, giving us laughter and joy. They give us something to believe in. The one he loves is asleep in the bed, her slender body tangled up with the white sheets. Pink hair is draped over the sheets and frames her face. She doesn't toss and turn in her sleep; she tends to snuggle the closest thing to her. Right now she's curled up with his pillow, gripping it tightly. He may not be able to retrieve it for himself until she wakes in a few hours. It's better to let her sleep. She gets worried whenever she finds him awake, as if it's somehow her fault. It never is. He sits and leans against the frame of an open pair of doors that look out into the city. The glow of the buildings that stand beyond the vast royal gardens is his only source of light. His shadow stretches out across the floor beside him. Her room is open and spacious, adorned in pillows and hanging curtains. There's easily half a dozen chairs scattered across the floor, mostly used by her Asteroid Quartet. They're still learning, all of them. Watching them all interact, half-friends and half- soldiers protecting their princess, reminds him a lot of her mother. The other day they'd stood in the Arena for the first time. He watched from the sidelines as his maiden and her soldiers fought the demi-youma created by Mercury's biotechnology. Training constructs, nothing more. The beasts were no more a threat to Crystal Tokyo than he was. One all too closely resembled a lemures from the Dead Moon Circus. It made him remember more than he cared to. He'd turned and walked away before seeing how the battle ended. Chibiusa told him about it later: how everything was fine until Ves and Jun started arguing in the middle of the melee. The demi-youma trounced them both before picking everyone else off, one by one. As the last soldier standing, Chibiusa endured the least amount of scolding from Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Uranus. It was only a training construct, nothing more. That's what he tells himself, but it's hard not to dwell on the creature's face. The absurd shape of its body was laughable, but not its eyes. Those were the eyes of the monsters who had breached the dreamworld and hunted him down. He suppresses the shiver traipsing down his spine. Sometimes Mercury makes things too right, too precise. Only a construct. Idly he considers contacting the palace kitchen. There is always someone on standby, someone working on the meals for the small contingent of people who work the night hours--guards, cleaners, various seers and dignitaries. The day shift far outnumbers the night shift, but the queen has always been mindful of giving both an equal standing. They know him quite well down in the night kitchens. He spends a lot of time there, watching and helping and listening to the others talk. In the beginning, when Chibiusa would sleep her deepest, he'd wander the palace, exploring whatever strange and undiscovered chambers he could. The kitchens are better for him: they brim with life and activity and laughter. It's easier to ignore and forget about the dreams. He can always feel them in the back of his mind, stirring and rumbling and rising up. He becomes the most restless just after the sun goes down and the children are being put to bed. He senses the other woman's presence before he hears the soft clicking of her boot heels upon the marble floor. He doesn't jump in surprise or stammer in alarm; he simply glances over his shoulder and acknowledges her presence. No one knows he's in the princess' bedroom. No one should know. "Hello, Setsuna," he says to the unexpected guest. It's rare to see her outside her post at the Hundred Gate, forever unravelling the skein of time. Rarer still to see her out of uniform. She's not dressed in nightclothes. Despite the darkened skies outside, it might as well be mid-afternoon for her. He understands how she feels. She sits down next to him, stares out at the vast sprawling city that lies beyond the balcony. There are so many lights burning in the darkness: hundreds of crystalline structures jutting out between gardens and roads and waterways. It's hard for him to see the stars. If he squints hard enough, he can make out some of the brighter constellations. On nights like this, he misses the stars the most. "Can't sleep?" Setsuna asks. He shakes his head. "Not really." "You never do." He turns his gaze towards her. There is no surprise in his expression. "You try to hide it," she tells him, "and for the most part you hide it well, but you never sleep. You close your eyes and pretend, but your mind is always somewhere else." He releases a long and weary sigh. "It's not for a lack of wanting." "I know." There is melancholy in her voice as she speaks. She knows he hasn't told Chibiusa everything yet, and she wonders how long he will wait before he dares to reveal the depth of the scar he now carries. In a quiet voice he says, "I believe in the choice I made. Besides," he adds, "she likes hearing the stories. She insists on hearing a new tale of the dreamworld as she falls asleep. Most of the time, she's out cold before I get halfway through the story." Setsuna laughs. "That sounds like her. Think you'll ever run out of tales to tell her?" "Every dreamer has at least one story to tell," he says. "At least one. I think I'll be safe for a good, long time yet, even if she still wants a story a day, a hundred years from now." "A modern-day Scheherazade." "At least I don't have to play storyteller under threat of death." "Someone walks in on you in Small Lady's bed," Setsuna states, "and that might change." At that, he smirks. "You haven't objected." "Yet." It's a playful threat at best, he knows. He trusts Setsuna with many of his secrets, not the least of which are his trysts with the princess. For a moment he recalls the first time Setsuna had walked in on them together; she was the only one who showed no signs of surprise. That had happened four months after Neo Queen Serenity gave him a private chamber inside the palace. He'd spent another six months before that wandering the earth in bewilderment, his memories still a confusing blur from the transition. For a time he'd been unable to remember who he even was, taken in by a kindly innkeeper's family to work in exchange for food and shelter. They'd commented on his strange clothes, and his curious white hair, and the uncanny way he understood a person's hopes and aspirations after a single glance. At first he didn't speak, and they assumed him mute. The guests always seemed immediately taken by him, intrigued by the enigma of his past and entranced by the beauty he possessed. Apparently, the innkeeper had been forced to turn away more than one proposal. The innkeeper seemed to understand more than he'd ever let on. But perhaps it wasn't an entire mystery as to why: the man had seen the sketches he would do in the early hours of the morning, sitting atop the roof of the ryokan and drawing the smiling face that always danced in the corners of his vision. Even with his memories a jumbled mess, he'd known his reason for coming to Crystal Tokyo. As the sketches had become more detailed, it was the innkeeper who finally recognized the girl's face. It was the innkeeper who brought him before the royal family and presented him to the princess. He owes the innkeeper so much. He closes his eyes and holds on tight to that moment. He can still recall the warmth of her embrace as she practically tumbled down the dais stairs to greet him; the way she spoke his name as if she'd lost him for centuries; the taste of hear tears as everything flooded back into his mind and he'd kissed her cheek. Setsuna is glancing back at the bed: his maiden is shifting beneath the covers, tightening her grip on his pillow. She can smell him on the pillowcase, and is probably mistaking it for him. "Small Lady will be waking up soon," Setsuna says. "Better she finds you next to her than sitting out here again. She sometimes wonders if it's her fault that you can't sleep." He almost laughs, rueful of the secrets she holds. If she lorded everything she knew over him, it would be easier to ignore her. Not so when she makes those few, subtle proddings, the ones that remind him of how much she truly knows. Of how much she really cares for them. It's a task easier said than done. "I used to sleep a lot in Elysian," he says, and he stares out at the city. "I'd find a lone oak tree someone placed in the middle of a field, sit under its shadow and dream for the afternoon. And when I'd wake up, there would be an enormous and beautiful mountain range off in the distance. As a dreamworld, Elysian has no borders. Its limits are what we imagine. Every night, millions of dreamers roam within it, creating new kingdoms and new places for others to stumble across and explore. It is a sacred realm, ever expanding and ever changing." "And yet the realms created by your dreams are what everyone remembers when they wake up." "I've been dreaming for so long, Setsuna," he says, and shakes his head. "Sometimes I catch myself wondering if all this is just a dream, and unexpectedly I'll wake up beneath another tree, and off in the distance will be a crystal palace that looks exactly like this." "Would you regret it, if this was all a dream?" Her question gives him pause, but there is no wavering or doubt in his voice as he answers, "Yes." She's looking back at the sleeping princess. "You care for her very much." It's not a question, nor an observation spoken in surprise. His eyes close for a moment, and he's taken back to countless moments when he's holding her in empty corridors and burying himself in the scent of her hair. "More than words can describe sometimes." There's a small, metal bucket mostly filled with ice sitting next to her. It wasn't there a moment ago, and he knows she didn't bring it into the room with her. Setsuna reaches in, draws out a glass bottle recently uncorked. "I don't like drinking alone," Setsuna tells him, and reaches down for one of two wine glasses next to the ice bucket. "And I've been saving this for a special occasion." He laughs, "I would hardly call this moment 'special.' A little wistful, a little melancholy, but not special." "Any time I can leave my post is a special occasion," she says. "More so if I can spend those few hours with a friend." She fills half the glass with merlot and sets it down next to him. And though he's trying not to be obtrusive, she catches him trying to read the writing on the wine bottle. With a smirk, she hands him the bottle. The first thing he says is: "This is older than the city." He studies the label a little more closely; after having travelled so many dreams in so many different languages, he finds himself with an unusual knack for translating. "I thought this vintage was lost entirely." "Living out of time has a few perks," Setsuna says. She picks up the other wine glasses, holds it up to the neck of the bottle. He tips the bottle over and begins to pour. "You should open a winery," he tells her. "If you can gather even two dozen bottles of wine this rare or extinct, you'd be obscenely popular." Setsuna begins to laugh, almost spilling the merlot as it flows into her glass. "And that's how you see me once I eventually retire? A wine connoisseur?" He laughs too, tipping the wine bottle back up. As Setsuna takes her first drink, he sets the bottle back into the ice bucket. "We're out of place, aren't we?" he says to her. "Older than perhaps we should be, with two different worlds to call home, and somehow we're divided between them, unable to wholly belong in one without feeling the pull of the other." She lowers her glass and stares into the thick, burgundy liquid inside it. "We build our lives upon stories," she tells him. "And a story is simply a dream expressed with words, whether it's one we lived yesterday or will visit tonight as we sleep." He takes a drink from his glass. It's good merlot. Damn good. "Yours would be an interesting story to hear one day, Setsuna. From what I gather, it's as old and complicated as mine." "One day," she agrees. "But not today. I have a different story to tell." "Do you?" She waits for his acknowledgement, and he gestures for her to begin as he lifts his wine glass to his lips. "Once, a long time ago," she begins, "there was a king who ruled over the people's dreams. One day, he fell in love with a princess from the other world. For many days and many nights they met together in their dreams, sharing laughter and tears and memories. But there always came a time when they had to part, for no one within the dream kingdom was allowed to cross over into the people's world. The king of dreams sought a way to be with his beloved, and in time he found a way, but it was not without a terrible cost. He could relinquish his power as the guardian of dreams, but never again could he return to the dreamworld. He could cross the boundaries to be with her, but never sleep again. It was a painful decision for the king to make: he could still be a protector of beautiful dreams, but he could never again walk among them." He says nothing, choosing to look out at the city and take a deep drink from the merlot. It doesn't surprise him that she knows, but it's unnerving never the less to hear her speak it. "If you could go back to that day," Setsuna asks him, "would you still be willing to make so many sacrifices just to be with her?" "It took me all of five seconds to choose where I wanted to be," he answers. "Were I to go back, it would take even less time, and we would still be here now having this conversation." "I know, but I am not the one you need to be saying that to." She's rising to her feet, taking her leave. The ice bucket is gone, but she still has her wine glass in hand. "A scar can only be carried by one person, Helios. But a burden is not a scar, and it can be carried by whomever is willing to share its weight." She leaves without saying goodbye or until next time. A brief sliver of bright light is left in her wake, as the doors to the princess' chambers swing shut. He's silent for a long time, taking another sip of the merlot every now and again. The city beyond the balcony continues to shimmer like diamonds in the dark. If he closes his eyes, he can almost believe the world is tranquil and perfect. He remembers their first time together. It had been awkward for both of them. Chibiusa had been nervous of how it would be, of how he might judge her by her inexperience. And he had walked through many a lover's dreams, seen so many possibilities, and he'd wondered if she would find him too knowledgeable, or if everything he'd seen was somehow wrong. Now she can move with a skill that astonishes him sometimes, yesterday's fumbling hands transforming into feather touches that erotically tease his body. Slowly he draws himself up, rising to his feet. He turns his back to the open doors and moves towards the bed. The wine glass is set upon one of the tables. His maiden shifts beneath the covers and mutters something in her sleep as he sits down on the edge of the bed. His hand caresses the side of her face. She rolls over and blinks a few times and snuggles into him. "Oh, there you are." "I have a story," he says in a quiet voice, "one I should have told you a long time ago." Groggy, Chibiusa rubs her eyes and mumbles, "Does it have a happy ending?" He begins to smile. ** ** Sailormoon, its characters, struggles and story, are the copyright and children of Naoko Takeuchi. No recognition to this tale can be given without properly paying honour to her first. They rightfully belong to her, and I make no claim on them. This fanfic was inspired by Heavenly Pearl's "Caught," which can be found here: www.dotmoon.net/library_view.php?storyid+893 Sincere thanks to Dejana and www.dotmoon.net for giving this story a place to belong. Over the past month, many unrelated things came together to create this tale: a song, a story, an unexpected tragedy. And like a patch- work quilt, what at first looked like a jumbled mess came together in a surprising way. We build our lives upon stories. I'm sure you would have enjoyed this one, Hugh... --His lordship Chaos (November 30,2007)