[011 ☿] Silent Planet Mercury

[waterfell]

Unearthly quiet falls over everything. This place is empty and barren; nothing grows in its desolate grey soil. It's a void without atmosphere, but those who arrive here find themselves able breathe normally and withstand the incredible heat of planet Mercury's sun-turned side

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[findmyownreason]

He opens his eyes disorientated, greeted by a barren desert and a sun too large. For a minute the vertigo hits, linger traces of a fever spiking and he wonders if they failed. If Meteor did impact those two years ago and this is all that's left of what his world had once been. It takes him a minute to shake the feeling off and it's not until a voice speaks that it fully falls away from him.

Ami...

Her back is to him and he takes that moment of privacy to focus himself, re-orientating himself in the present. Wherever the present is. The sun slips backward and threatens his grasp on reality in this place so far from the familiar. But at her sound of distress, his mind focuses and he jerks forward, good hand out to catch her if she stumbles, his own eyes liding against the painful light to filter it through his lashes. His voice stays low though, calm.

"What is that?"

[waterfell]

Cloud.

She won't fall; she won't let herself sink or collapse. The struggle for mastery of herself is won, this time, and although the fist at her side stays strongly clenched as she pushes those emotions down, it makes her wild-eyed when she turns around to answer him.

"The light of planet Venus." She does not speculate about its meaning. She can't let herself, yet.

"Where we are now is planet Mercury." To first appearances, there aren't even ruins left to mark the thriving civilization once housed here; they're just a short distance away, and very hidden. "Near the Caloris Basin."

[findmyownreason]

Most of what she says doesn't make sense to him. He picks up on her distress but that's all. Planets though... it jars loose in his mind, picking through the mild fever and the subtle headache and he remembers another conversation what seems like a lifetime ago. With a girl with Ami's face who called herself Mercury and said she was the princess of a planet. His mind jogs further back to a final battle and an attack Sephiroth used that destroyed solar systems. Two of the planets wiped out in that attack had been Mercury and Venus.

He hadn't cared at the time because he hadn't recognized them. It hadn't connected to anything familiar until this moment.

He has to resist the sudden urge to sit down.

"Mercury's your home," he can show that he paid at least enough attention for that. "Who does Venus belong to?"

edit for some clarity

[waterfell]

"The soldier of planet Venus. Like this planet, like all the planets of this solar system, it was ruined by Tsukino Usagi and its future was destroyed by her." The words are deliberately chosen to be cold; he has chosen to love Usagi and defend and comfort her for the very acts of taking away her, Mercury's, future and so many others.

If she knew it, she'd walk away and refuse to let him even one inch closer. As it is, she can't forgive that friendship. Because just once, she wants Tsukino Usagi to pay for her crimes and to taste loneliness and pain; and she wants to have that comfort and understanding for herself instead. But those words, that second half, Mercury can never bring herself to say.

"If you intend to remain here, look at it while understanding that."

this could go so, so badly...

[findmyownreason]

"I know. I saw. A little."

It's said with his usual quiet tone and he deliberately turns his head to take the barren world in. Even the wasteland outside of Midgar boasts a little life in the form of monsters. Here, there's not even that. He's a bit confused by exactly what it means though. Usagi said that her warriors wouldn't be reborn. Ami says that she will. But he saw Ami and she was one of Usagi's soldiers in the dream the blond girl had. He thinks it has something to do with the alternates Ami spoke of with their cliff diving what feels like a lifetime ago. Close enough to each other's world and remembered person to be tangled but not quite an exact fit. This planet though... it's what a stolen future looks like in any dimension.

And it drives home the point that he's stolen two very precious futures himself.

Lifting his head he looks back at where that light in the sky appeared.

"So is Venus alive now? The soldier, not the planet."

yes yes it could XD >_<

[waterfell]

If he saw, he should hate Usagi. He should know it's wrong. He shouldn't be ignoring it, not even saying a word. He should have something to say, some comfort or at least sympathy. (Even if he did, she'd say she doesn't need it.)

Venus has even been reborn only because Usagi was killed before she could do worse.

But of course he doesn't hate Usagi, and that choice is the same as hating Mercury. He is ambivalent, callous to the sight in front of him because any crime is acceptable if it's committed by the princess. Mercury tells herself she didn't expect differently, and that this makes it fine. It makes it fine, and it makes her hate Usagi all over again, even if she is the only person who will, because she is the only person who will. She swears to herself that she will never forgive

[findmyownreason]

He looks at her, focuses on her face even though he can see her hand fisted at her side. He knows what she's doing. And he knows he shouldn't ask. But he does. And very softly, because he hopes it, he hopes it with everything in him, he says:

"So you won't be alone anymore?"

[waterfell]

"No," she corrects him, and she finds a cold smirk finally. "I have a new sailor senshi for my prey."

There is no end of loneliness here. There is no friendship; there never was. She's bothered by the sign in the sky because she doesn't want to hunt down some baby, some child. But they also cannot allow her to grow into the threat she would become.

And saying it this way was the quickest way to drive home the point to Cloud.

[findmyownreason]

His eyes flatten and the look he gives her is unimpressed. He's seen that smirk before and it always reminds him of the way a child will watch you as they tip a glass vase off a counter. Waiting for the reaction. He's never enjoyed theatrics but now he's just too tired to be patient with them. The look flashes over his face as he folds his arms.

"Is this the point where you monologue your evil plan? Or are you just going to go straight into the maniacal laughter and hand clawing?"

[waterfell]

She should have expected that, but she hadn't. It makes the backlash worse and, stubbornly, she hardens her heart against any desire for understanding. As so many others have, he has labeled her evil - his own words - for nothing but being ready to stop these events. Because the horrors of the princess must be permitted.

She'd thought he was different.

It's better to know it know.

"You'll find out when it happens," she says airily enough to pass for unconcerned. "Won't you?"

She shades her eyes against the sky and squints, but everything has returned to normal, there.

[findmyownreason]

He's tired and the headache probably isn't helping. She's so intent on drowning herself just to prove a point.

"No. I won't." His voice stays flat. "Because you won't."

[waterfell]

"Whatever happens, if you interfere," she says, just as flatly as him, and she turns to face him now, "you'll also be hurt." There will be no mercy if he makes himself her enemy.

[findmyownreason]

The look he gives her is surprised, blue eyes blinking wide for a minute. And then, of all things, the barest smile touches the edges of his lips. Very gently, he says:

"I wasn't talking about me, Ami. It's an innocent child." Reaching out he very gently touches a finger to where her mercury mark was when she was a princess before letting his hand fall to his side. "You'll stop yourself before you hurt a child."

[waterfell]

They've gone too far for that, the moment he said 'evil' (or was it the moment she greeted him so coldly?). Defensively, as though mistaking his own action for readiness to strike her, she raises her arm to deflect his before he can touch her.

She could almost laugh, a sharp and bitter laugh, at his words which bring back memories of the man who promised her he'd stop her, who promised she wouldn't be degraded by the sins she was forced to take as her burden any longer - and who stumbled and fell in his own path instead.

"I'll do whatever is necessary," she says bluntly. Even if a part of her doesn't want it to involve a child, she has no belief that she'd hold back if it did.

[findmyownreason]

He accepts her block of his touch but her rejection of something that simple flickers through his eyes. Hurt. Confusion. He doesn't force it though and he doesn't back up. Instead he looks at her.

He knows her. Not entirely but he's been around her long enough to know that telling Ami she won't do something is the surest way to get her to do it. It doesn't matter if it's sensible or even sane, she'll act on the denial just to prove herself.

So telling her she won't kill a child could easily backfire.

Except this isn't cliff diving or pushing robots in the water. It's an innocent life. Children are meant to be protected. Slow, he shakes his head without looking away.

"No. It's the life of a child. You're not a monster."

my apologies for the million edits. it's an illness. T_T XD

[waterfell]

He'll never know the pain of Nephrite looking her in the eye and asking her if it should bother him that children had been used in a plot by their enemies. She'd known, then, that they were all faltering blind.

Her, too.

Just like Nephrite, she may rage against those simple gestures and kindnesses, but she wants them, needs them, so much, the gentler touch of a hand that can mean so much more than so much else, that she's no longer used to. She's not even sure if she still silently hopes for someone to see through it or if she's given that up, too.

She longs for it even in the same moment she thrusts Cloud's hand away and tries to deny her need. It's the lack of these things that makes her hate the people blessed with them. Mercury stays silent a long moment.

It's the years of being treated as a monster, called one, that speak through her mouth. "Whatever happens here, you already know that I am."

You're better than this.
No, I'm not.

She pushes those words away. That person is nowhere, now, and she was right.