Chapter 4 Back when they were training on the Moon, Sailor Uranus would often have Serenity and the Sailor Quartet perform arduous, exhaustive training exercises, meant to build up their physical strength and endurance. Serenity took to calling them torture sessions, for she could not imagine experiencing a worse pain. Those exercises were almost fun in comparison to the real torture of sitting in the waiting room of Crystal Tokyo General Hospital, waiting for Dr. Mizuno Ami, the civilian guise of Sailor Mercury, to return with news on Helios’ condition. Serenity had managed to piece together a rough explanation of what had happened, based on things she had overheard. Evidently, the “ceremony” her parents and Aurora had spoken about earlier was not a wedding ceremony, as she assumed, but a ceremony meant to strip Helios of his powers and name a new priest of Elysion: the boy she had noticed earlier, crying into Eos’ dress. Something -- nobody seemed to know what exactly -- had gone wrong with the ceremony, however, and Helios had suffered the brunt of it, almost dying in the process. Fortunately, Mercury and her father, who had studied to become a doctor before ascending the throne of Earth, had managed to save him from that fate -- for the moment, at least -- but they had not heard anything new about Helios’ condition since her father had joined them in the waiting room, informing them that Mercury and the other doctors were still working to stabilize him. Helios had yet to regain consciousness. “I never should have made that stupid wish,” Serenity muttered to herself, thinking back to that morning when she had made her birthday wish. If only she hadn’t been so selfish… Ceres, who was sitting beside her on the couch, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Serenity-sama, this isn’t your fault,” she said softly. “You mustn’t blame yourself for what happened.” “Isn’t it, though?” she asked. “Helios knew how much I wanted us to be together. He never would have agreed to give up his priesthood if it wasn’t for me.” “You never asked him to do that.” “Only because I didn’t think it was possible! If I had known…” Serenity felt herself tearing up again, and she closed her eyes to compose herself before continuing, her hands clutching at the skirts of her ballgown. “I should have just listened to you and Diana. If I had ignored my feelings for Helios like you wanted me to and found somebody else to love, this never would have happened. It‘s all my fault.” “Serenity-sama, I --” Before Ceres could finish her thought, however, Mercury, dressed in a lab coat with the name Dr. Mizuno Ami on the ID card, entered the waiting room. Serenity was the first to jump up, followed shortly by her father. Soon, everybody had gathered around the doctor, anxious to hear the latest news. “Mer-- I mean, Mizuno-sensei, how is he?” her father inquired, asking the question Serenity was almost afraid to hear the answer to. “We were able to stabilize him,” Mercury announced, “but I’m afraid he is completely unresponsive to external stimuli.” The brief feeling of immense relief that had washed over Serenity at the first piece of news faded with the second. “Unresponsive? What does that mean?” Her father looked grim as her mother wrapped an arm around his waist. “It means Helios is still unconscious. He’s in a coma.” Mercury frowned, looking down at Helios’ chart. “Helios-sama’s Glasgow level is at a 3, indicating that he is, indeed, in a very deep coma, but there’s something unusual about his case that I can’t quite explain.” “Unusual?” Aurora repeated. Eos was leaning on her for support. “In what way?” “According to the tests we’ve run, there’s nothing physically or neurologically wrong with Helios-sama. In fact, scans show his brain activity is comparable to a healthy person at rest, and he is able to breathe on his own without the aid of machines. There’s no medical reason why he should not be regaining consciousness, yet he hasn’t. “In other words, the lights are off, but somebody’s home,” Juno quipped, twisting the colloquialism. Ceres, who was standing beside Juno, jabbed her in the side with her elbow. “Juno!” “Actually, Juno, that is an apt metaphor,” Mercury said. “We often tell the families of coma patients that their loved one is in a state similar to a very deep sleep, but in Helios’ case, that is literally true. He’s sleeping, but he is unable to wake up for some reason.” “He’s kind of like Sleeping Beauty, then,” Vesta said. “Or, I guess Sleeping Handsome would be more appropriate, huh?” Until then, Serenity had been in a bit of a daze, only vaguely understanding what Mercury and the others were talking about. Vesta’s comment snapped her out of it. “Sleeping Beauty?” Her eyes widened, and she grabbed Mercury’s arm. “Mercury, where is Helios?” she demanded to know. “I have to see him!” Her mother, letting go of her father, came up behind her, placing her hands on Serenity’s shoulders. “Usagi, I don’t think that’s such a good idea at the mo--” Serenity ignored her mother. “Mercury, please! Take me to him! It’s important!” “Visitation hours have already ended, but I suppose we can make an exception in this case,” Mercury consented, a sympathetic look in her eyes. Speaking to the others, she said, “The rest of you should return to the palace and try to get some sleep. It’s been a long night, and there’s nothing you can do for Helios-sama by staying here. I’ll contact you all the moment something changes in his condition.” “Eos and I would like to stay, if you don’t mind,” Aurora declared. “We don’t mind sleeping on the couches.” “What about Hyperion?” Serenity’s father asked. The new priest of Elysion had not come with them, having collapsed from exhaustion shortly after Mercury and the king had teleported Helios to Crystal Tokyo. His condition had not been serious, but Pallas had agreed to stay with him in Elysion, allowing Aurora and Eos to be there for Helios. “Shouldn’t one of you go back to the shrine and update him and Pallas on Helios’ condition? I know they must be worried.” Eos reluctantly let go of her hold on Aurora. “I’ll go.” “Are you sure?” Aurora asked. She nodded. “I’ll be fine, Aurora. The king is right. Somebody should be there for Hyperion. He’s been through a lot as well.” Diana, back in her human form, as cats were not allowed in the hospital, stepped forward. “If Serenity-sama is staying, then so am I.” “As the leader of the Sailor Quartet, the princess’ guardian soldiers, I will stay as well,” Ceres decided, joining Diana. “We all will,” Juno said. “No, that’s not necessary. You two go back to the palace with everybody else. I can handle things here on my own.” “But, Ceres…” Vesta protested. “That is an order.” It was decided that everybody save for Serenity, Aurora, Diana, and Ceres would return back to the palace. After the rest said their good-byes, Mercury showed Serenity the way to Helios’ room. The others had wanted to accompany her for moral support, but Serenity insisted on seeing Helios alone. When they finally reached his private room, she did a double-take at the name on the door. “Helios Nikolopoulos?” she read, stumbling over the unfamiliar surname. It appeared to be Greek, but Serenity wasn’t positive. “It was the identity he planned to assume once he left Elysion,” Mercury explained. “I helped him forge the required paperwork, which I must confess was not easy. My Greek was rusty, but Helios was apparently born in the area we now call Greece, so he knew some of the language, if a more archaic form of it.” Helios had been born in Greece? He had never told Serenity that. She had always assumed he had been born in Elysion and had always been priest of the holy land. “You knew what he was planning?” “We all did, your parents and us senshi -- at least, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and I did. Your senshi had no idea this was in the works, as we began planning this soon after you left for training,” Mercury answered before Serenity could ask. She opened the door, showing Serenity in. “I have other patients I should check on, so I will leave you here. If anything happens, press the blue button above his bed and I, or another doctor, will come as quick as we can.” “Thank you, Mercury.” Serenity entered the dimly lit room, Mercury closing the door behind her. Hesitantly, she stepped toward the bed where Helios lay. She had expected him to be hooked up to a multitude of machines, but save for a heart monitor and the IV in his arm, providing him nourishment, he looked like he was merely sleeping. “Helios…” She took a few more steps forward, perching herself on the edge of the bed. “Helios, it’s me.” She reached for his hand and pressed it against her cheek, taking comfort in how warm it felt against her skin. “Can you hear me? If you can hear me, give me a sign. Move your fingers, open your eyes…anything!” Though she was unsurprised when he failed to respond, her eyes watered with unshed tears. Serenity set his hand back down at his side and brushed the hair out of the way of his closed eyes. “Your jewel…” She placed a finger on the spot on his forehead where the jewel marking him as the priest of Elysion once was. “It’s gone. You really did it; you gave up your priesthood for me.” The tears began to fall. “Why did you have to go so far, Helios, knowing how dangerous it might be? We could have been happy the way things were before. It would have been difficult, but we could have made it work, somehow.” Wiping away the tears with the palm of her hand, she composed herself and managed a weak smile. “You know, when Eos-chan told me you were planning to make my most cherished dream come true tonight, I thought you were going to ask me to marry you,” she admitted. “I had this whole picture in my mind of what would happen: I’d come down the stairs, wearing this beautiful, custom- made white dress that looked almost like a wedding gown, and you would be standing there at the bottom, in absolute awe of my beauty. Then you would get down on one knee and present me with a beautiful, flawless pink diamond solitaire ring as you asked me to be your wife. I would be so excited, I wouldn’t even let you finish proposing before saying ‘yes’.” Serenity laughed a little at the thought. “After that, we’d decide we didn’t want to wait any longer, so we would grab a priest or a judge who you had cleverly invited to the party and get married right there on the spot, in front of all our family and friends. And later that night…” Her cheeks burned, and she was glad nobody was there to see her embarrassment. “I would have been happy with that, Helios,” she continued, pushing the image of their hypothetical wedding night out of her head. “Even if you couldn’t stay by my side, to know you were mine, and mine alone, would have been enough. Why did you have to go so far?” Serenity reached for the broach she had pinned to the front of her dress, feeling the power of her crystal inside. “Are you really Sleeping Beauty, waiting for the kiss of your one true love to awaken you?” she asked, her voice cracking as she tried to hold back another round of tears. “I was able to revive you once before with my kiss, remember? When you had used up all your powers to save Mama and Papa during the battle with the Dead Moon, everybody thought you were dead, but I knew it couldn’t be true. The power of my Pink Moon Crystal was able to awaken you, so maybe it can again.” She leaned over, pressing her lips against his. Helios remained unresponsive. The tears now freely flowed, and she made no attempt to stop them, tasting the salt on her lips. “Helios, kiss me!” she ordered, kissing him again. “Kiss me back! Please, Helios! Kiss me back! Kiss me --” It was no use. Realizing that fairy tales rarely happened in real life, Serenity lay down beside him on the bed and sobbed herself to sleep. ***** Darkness was all around him, a never-ending blackness that put the starless night to shame. He felt, rather than saw, that he was naked, bumps of gooseflesh dotting his skin. Drawing his legs up to his chest in an attempt to warm himself, he discovered he was floating, as there was no ground to speak of in the desolate nothingness. There was no sky, either, no blazing sun or glowing moon to remind him of his king and maiden. All there was…was emptiness. “Where am I?” Helios asked aloud, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet. He winced at the volume. Nobody answered him, but he could faintly hear a strange, incessant beeping sound and some other voices in the distance, muffled conversations he couldn’t quite understand. He turned his head in the direction he thought they might be coming from, yet the words did not become any clearer to him. He couldn’t even discern what language they were speaking. “I’m over here!” he yelled in Terran, the language he was most comfortable speaking. Again, the sound of his voice hurt his ears, but he did not know how far away the other voices were. “Can anybody hear me?” The voices continued speaking uninterrupted, and Helios sighed, realizing they could not hear him after all. Where were they? If only he had a source of light, he might be able to find and join them. As the situation stood, however, it was pointless to go off on his own, wandering aimlessly in a boundless world. His only hope was that they would eventually find him instead. Hugging his knees even more tightly to his chest to ward off the chill, Helios struggled to remember how he had ended up in such a world. His final memories were vague and incomplete. He remembered feeling pain -- such horrible, overwhelming pain -- and somebody had yelled his name: a man’s voice. Endymion? And somebody had been crying. 'One of the Maenads,' he thought. 'Eos, probably. She was always the more emotional one.' But why had Eos cried? Because of him? What had happened to him? “Am I dead?” he whispered. “Is this Heaven?” No, it couldn’t be. Heaven was supposed to be a place of forever bliss. There was nothing blissful about this cold, dark world. “Hell? But what sin have I committed, to deserve such a punishment?” As expected, nobody answered him. In fact, the voices were becoming fainter and fainter, until they soon disappeared altogether. Once again, it was quiet. “It’s freezing,” he said softly to himself, trying to fill the silence. Helios rubbed at his arms, but the friction did little good. What he wouldn’t give for some clothes, or even just a blanket! “If I’m not dead already, then I’m certain to freeze to death in this condition. I should probably move around some…” But that was easier said than done. Without a ground to set his feet on, he could neither run nor walk. Instead, Helios began flapping his arms and legs around in an imitation of swimming, finding himself able to “swim” through the blackness. The physical activity did him good, but he could only keep it up for a short distance before he grew too tired to continue. As Helios once again curled up in the fetal position, his thoughts turned to food. More specifically, why he didn’t feel hungry. It seemed as if hours had passed since he first arrived in this place, yet he felt no pangs of hunger or thirst. Indeed, he felt as if he had just finished eating a five- course dinner, his stomach full and satisfied. He wasn’t complaining, since there appeared to be no food around for him to eat, but it was disconcerting all the same. What was this place? The question echoed in his mind as Helios felt his eyes start to close. He knew it probably wasn’t a good idea to sleep, but his lids felt like they were made of lead, and he was too tired to struggle to keep awake. Just as he was about to surrender himself to the Sandman’s magic, however, he was jerked back awake by the sound of another voice. “Helios… It’s me… Can…hear me? If you can…me, give…sign. Move…fingers… Your eyes…anything!” His eyes widened, and he frantically looked around for the source of the voice, his beloved maiden. He would recognize her voice anywhere. “Serenity, I can hear you,” he called out. “Where are you? I can’t see anything in this darkness.” Her voice became clearer, yet like the others, she didn’t appear to be able to hear him. “Your jewel… It’s gone. You really did it; you gave up your priesthood for me. Why did you have to go so far, Helios, knowing how dangerous it might be? We could have been happy the way things were before. It would have been difficult, but we could have made it work, somehow.” “What are you talking about, Serenity?” Helios asked, his hand reaching up to touch his forehead where the jewel marking him as priest of Elysion sat. “My jewel? What did I --?” The skin was smooth. The jewel was gone. The memories came back to him in a rush. It had been Serenity’s birthday, and he and Hyperion had decided to go through the final ceremony, which would strip him of his priesthood and name Hyperion as the new priest of Elysion. But something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. He had collapsed, and the next thing he knew, he had appeared in this world of darkness. “So, I really must be dead,” he realized, only half-paying attention to Serenity’s words. She was talking about a wedding, or something, but it seemed unimportant in light of his revelation. He would never see Serenity again… “Maiden, I’m sorry,” he whispered, knowing she wouldn’t hear him anyway, even if he yelled the apology at the top of his lungs. “I’m so, so sorry. I only wanted to make your cherished dream come true. I never thought it would come to this. I just wanted to be by your side. Please, for--” “Are you really Sleeping Beauty, waiting for the kiss of your one true love to awaken you?” Serenity asked, her words catching his attention once again. Sleeping Beauty? Why was she talking about some children’s fairy tale? “I was able to revive you once before with my kiss, remember? When you had used up all your powers to save Mama and Papa during the battle with the Dead Moon, everybody thought you were dead, but I knew it couldn’t be true. The power of my Pink Moon Crystal was able to awaken you, so maybe it can again.” “Then I’m not…dead?” Helios murmured. “I’m asleep? Then that must mean…” At that moment, he was overcome by warmth, and his skin began to glow a soft pink. “Maiden…” It was the power of her crystal; he could feel it. There was no mistaking the sense of love and light filling him, so much like her mother’s Silver Crystal, yet distinctly her own. “Helios, kiss me!” she said. “Kiss me back! Please, Helios! Kiss me back! Kiss me --” He wanted nothing more than to do just that, but when he heard Serenity’s heart-wrenching sobs, Helios knew that whatever she had tried to do to awaken him had not worked. He was in a coma, and he now knew without a doubt where he was. Mu. The land between life and death. DISCLAIMER: Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takeuchi. AUTHOR'S NOTES: Any comments or criticisms can be sent to me at ElysionDream@aol.com. Special thanks to my editor Starsea.