Beautiful.

That’s what I’d always thought of my kingdom, my home as. The beautiful silver white moon, with it’s gleaming marble and pearl palace, sparkling crystal and quartz fountains, flawless gardens, eternally star-kissed sky…

But now, as I see my beautiful world crumble around me, it is no longer beautiful. The only beautiful thing is your eyes…your deep, deep midnight blue eyes…the same color as that sapphire orb that hangs in the sky…the Earth. How fitting, for you are the Prince of Earth. But before that, you are first and foremost Prince of my heart…

You look up at me with those beautiful eyes, trying to smile even as blood stains your lips. You touch my cheek…I place my hand over yours. You smile. You whisper your love…even though the roar of a crumbling kingdom and demons and battle and death rage around us, I can hear your gentle words, almost as if they were speaking directly to my heart.

You slip away. No tears, none that anyone can see….

Every time I close my eyes I can feel you, see you, that is how I know you go on…deep in my soul…I know you are alive…deep inside my heart.

Your sword lays beside you, still loosely in your grip, forever a symbol of your desire to protect me. And although your spirit is far, far away, an another plane, in heaven I believe with all my being, I know that despite this distance between us, this distance that is really no distance, I know that you are still with me. Will always be with my, my prince of my heart.

As I gaze at that sword, a thought flitters through my mind. I want to join you, my prince… But then I remember, you are not truly gone… Yet, even knowing this, I am selfish. It is not enough. Death is too far a distance for it to be breached by a heart and be enough. I want you with me. I want you to hold me, my prince of my heart.

I reach for the sword…

Even as I reach for it, it becomes engulfed in a golden glow.

It vanishes, and I smile sadly.

Even in death, you protect me, showing me you go on, continuing to exist, to guard me, even from myself.

And so I resolve, whether you are with me in spirit, mind, and body or not, I know that one thing will always be with me… So as your heart does go on, so too will it always be with me, with mine, for you are the prince of my heart.

My beautiful kingdom…

There is hardly anyone left alive now. The demons have begun to partake of the spoils. My prince and I, somehow, remain unseen.

I hear a scream…

Mercury…

I close my eyes, and a tear runs down my face. I can hear them…my guardians, my friends…I can hear, see, smell, taste, feel them dying…

As if you were right beside me whispering knowledge into my ear, I know what I must do. It is as if you have opened a gateway to the powers locked inside me…the powers my mother had always promised would arise when I needed them the most…

I feel your love and devotion fill me, surround me, concentrating inside my heart, where you have always been, where you belong, my prince of my heart… At that moment our hearts become one, become eternal, never letting go. No matter how many times we die, our hearts will go on…as one…your heart, my heart…one mind, one soul….one heart…for I am your heart, and you are mine.

I suddenly realize that I can’t die. Not yet. My body can die, but my spirit cannot. I can’t let it. Because we are one, now…I love you too much to ever do anything to break what we have. I loved you once, and I haven’t stopped since.

The intense sensation of forever being with me intensifies, concentrating on one point, one pinprick of eternal hope and love and light…

"Our heart will go on…." I whisper.

In a flash I see my friends, my guardians, dying and broken bodies, littered across the battle field. They will not live. Neither will I. This power, this energy, is tearing my body apart from the inside…I can feel it…but I do not fight it. My body can die; it is mere flesh and blood. But the spirit…the one heart that is you and I, beloved, that is eternal. All of us…all our hearts shall go on…

"All of us…"

The light surrounds me like your love, and I feel the pinprick of power slowly solidify inside me. I do not bring it out. To bring it out would kill me before I had completed my task. I open my eyes; I was floating above my kingdom…my once beautiful kingdom… I see my mother down below, surrounded by the dead bodies of her own guardians, the mothers of my best friends, my Senshi. She mourns just as I do. I see the Wand in her hand…a family heirloom, and I know that she had been planning on calling on this power…this energy that I know held within me… I knew my mother had planned on sacrificing herself…

I love my mother, I love everything she stands for. And I know that I must keep her separate from what I was about to bring forth. My mother had to stay. She was Selene, the goddess of all things pure, of the Moon. She was it’s eternal guardian. She smiled up at me, tears in her eyes…

I raised my arms…gasping as light and silver power slipped into my veins…the power solidified in the very center of my heart…our heart, my prince.

A sphere of silver light twinkles into existence between my upraised hands. I am not calling out my power…no…I am not ready for that…I am not strong enough…I am not even strong enough to keep myself alive while I do this… But I feel your golden power wash over me, helping me. You guide my spirit and mind, opening the door, the gateway to our hope, our future…

A bit of my power separates from me…it touches every single being on the Moon that has even the slightest bit of life left in them.

I feel you surround me, your mind, your soul, your spirit, your heart joined with mine. I am not afraid of the death that begins to grasp at me. You are with me…I know that my heart, our heart will go on, that we’ll always be together like this. Joined together as one mind, one soul…one heart…

The gateway opens.

The bit of magic that was left behind with every still-living being on the Moon surrounds the orphans of the Moon Kingdom with it’s ethereal silver-golden glow. I see the bodies of my guardians encased in the silver gold sphere, floating, hair dancing around them as though asleep on a gentle wind.

The door, the gateway between my hands summons them…the power, the small stone in the center of our one heart flashes. Death gripes at me… I hold on, fighting off the pain and blackness until every single child of the Moon has been tucked safely away in the future, in a loving family, inside the mind of a child, waiting to be awakened when my beautiful kingdom rises again…

At last it is done.

I can let go… As I let myself slip into the arms of Death, I see her smiling face, tears in her eyes. I feel you, wrapped around me, pull my spirit from my body, using our heart, our single, joined, one heart as a link. You pull us both through the gateway, the silver gateway that is fading. I feel my power within me, still. It is hidden, deep within the one heart that we share.

You smile at me, my prince of my heart…I smile back…you embrace me…I can see the spirit of our one heart beating between us as we slip into the gateway…into the future…and our one heart goes on…