Disclaimer: Sailor Moon and all related characters belong to those who created them.

Keep in mind:
'Ginzuishou'---> Silver Crystal.

'Great Sleep'---> After the battle with the Black Moon Clan, the Earth was put into deep sleep thanks to Usagi and the Crystal. For more fanon info on that matter, read Meara's excellent 'Full Circle' chronicles.

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I knew I'd never die in the battlefield. How could I, being (only second to Usagi) the Senshi everyone protects? New enemy arrives and wham, Haruka/Mako/Mina/pick-your-favorite-Senshi stands in front of me like a dog looking after its owner. I guess I should be flattered, but sometimes it gets downright annoying.

Be it because without me the Senshi would lack a tactical advisor, or maybe because the enemies can see that my attacks cannot do them harm (being of the defensive type), I do tend to get blasted around a lot. Either way, whenever I begin scanning a new enemy, I lose track of everything else around me--- I *know* that without my words of advice the Senshi would attack endlessly until by chance they found the monster's weak spot.

I do not mind being the 'weak link'. Fighting has never been in my nature, and I never expected it to be. I prefer to be on the sidelines, analyzing, learning--- and if push comes to shove, I know I can hold my own against most of the enemy lines.

But fighting was never my way of going down. It's rather easy to picture Haruka and the rest of the girls giving their lives taking the brunt of an attack... me, well, I always thought I'd react a second too late or perhaps not react at all. Casualties of war, if you will.

And so, here I am, about to become a casualty in a war we never expected, to a being we never expected to fight. A war against one of our own--- the Ginzuishou.

I'm dying. I know it. I can feel my life force leaving me, slowly--- with each passing second I get a little weaker, my vision a little blurrier... and there's nothing I can do to stop it. With every minute that passes by, I grow dimmer and dimmer, until I'm just not going to wake up.

It's funny, you know. I always thought we would live forever (three times dead and three times reborn pretty much screws the 'third one's the charm' theory. Even my scientist mind cannot grasp the logic of our many reincarnations and rebirths...) but it seems my definition of 'eternal' is different than the Crystal's. Yes, believe it or not, all of this is the Silver Crystal's fault. But that doesn't matter now. I'm dying, and that's all I can say. I'm not blaming anyone for my misfortune, just myself.

Let me rephrase that.

I'm not blaming anyone for this situation--- there is no one to blame. No one but fate, perhaps... humanity always longs for something to place the guilt on. That way, the weight of guilt becomes lighter. Spreading the weight on many shoulders makes the burden easier to bear.

*I* was the one who caused this illness, through my own choice. It was my duty, my life's purpose to protect Usagi from any harm, (Although even if I hadn't been born a Senshi, I have a nagging feeling in the back of my head that tells me I, all of us, would've ended up protecting her either way) and that is what I did.

How could I let her die like that? Not after what I discovered.

I saw my opportunity and I seized it--- not questions asked, no doubts.

Okay, so that's not entirely true.

I *did* doubt. Who wouldn't when faced with death? Who wouldn't wish in their heart of hearts to avoid death at any cost, even after living as long as I have? It's a natural thing for mankind to do-- fear death. And I do too, as much as I know about the afterlife thanks to my Senshi duty. Every living thing fears death, simply because it opposes them in every way possible. Death ends life, and this is one case where opposites do not attract.

Or maybe they do-- humanity has always been drawn to death. Painting, sculptures, writing and songs... they have all grasped the idea of death and toyed with it, trying to explain what cannot be explained.

Maybe there's a scientist in all of us who demands answers, who wants to know why death exists... after all, couldn't everyone live forever?

But I digress.

I can hear them muffled and hazy around me, as if they were talking through a curtain and I was listening to a walkman--- I can barely pick up what they're saying, and it's getting worse by the minute.

I need to talk to them--- I need to make them understand!

I've listened to them scream, cry and beg in denial--- I can't talk and it hurts to even think. But I need to let them know--- they're considering the idea of destroying the Crystal! That would mean all of this would've been for nothing! The Ginzuishou must go on, I don't matter!

"Minna...".

My voice is so low none of them hear it. They don't know. They haven't seen what I have, they don't know what's coming--- you can't defeat what can't be destroyed. You just can't win a battle against the Crystal.

Our enemies learned that lesson the hard way. So did I. I smile weakly at the irony of it. One of the Senshi, defeated and vanquished just like any other villain we faced in the past.

What happened? You may be asking yourself. Well, first let me introduce myself. I am Princess Ami of Mercury, Chosen Keeper of the Wisdom and Strength of the Messenger, Soldier of Ice and Water, and Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Mercury. Now that you know who I am, let me tell you the story of my suffering... perhaps in doing so, I will alleviate the pain of those that are to come, and spare the grief to whomever may be reading this---

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

::Year 3007, Crystal Tokyo, Neo Silver Millennium::

{It can't be. It just can't be}.

Ami's small and trembling hands held a manuscript before her wide eyes.

She had read the words several times now, and still, they horrified her every time she read them again.

The writing was old, as old as the ancient Silver Millennium. Her beautiful face was a mask of terror; her eyes were wide in amazement, her features were stiff in fear. No other threat had ever made her feel such terror.

What she held in her hands was the end of the Neo Silver Millennium. What she was staring at was the future, what would happen just a few weeks later, when the Crystal would unleash its true power. Wasn't there a way to stop this? Wasn't there something she could do?

Feeling strangely calm, she closed her eyes, and breathed deeply.

{Remember, Ami, remember. There's always a way out. Always. There's always a chance... there's always hope. Everything's not lost... not yet. You can find a way to stop this catastrophe. Now, focus. Think of this as a new medical discovery.)

She slowly opened her eyes, and they concentrated on the paper in front of her. Line by line, she kept reading... the fateful prophecy of destruction--- the end of Serenity.

She had had her difficulties translating it in the first place; no one remembered the dialect it used, and the metaphors and it used so many hyperboles that she had a hard time separating reality from fiction.

But what she came up with froze her blood and stopped her heart.

It talked about a danger coming from within. From within a circle of Warriors so tightly held together, that no evil could ever defeat them. Only something held inside their circle could destroy them, and that something was the Silver Crystal.

It rambled for paragraphs to no end about how the Jewel the circle held would consume the Light (the capital letter was stressed several times). The Feasting, it was called. It wasn't very hard to realize the Light was Usagi, and the Jewel, the Ginzuishou. I mean, how many almighty indestructible gems can there be, right?

It spoke about Princesses being crowned, and children being born. About darkness falling over a perfect Kingdom, and warriors fighting and failing. About a Royal family which was born and reborn, and the mark of a crescent moon as their symbol.

Her eyes skimmed over lines and lines of sorrow and horror, of death and destruction, reading the last few lines one more time.

'Darkness is drawn to light. Death is drawn to life. The End will come from Within, silent and deadly and unstoppable'.

As she finished reading, her hands began trembling again.

{No...}

But it was going to happen. The prophecy said nothing about dates and specific time periods, but Ami knew--- for centuries, she had examined the Ginzuishou and she knew when it changed. For the past few weeks, it had been slowly but steadily losing it's glow.

When told about this, the Senshi had blamed it on the times of peace, on lack of use if you will--- she had been tempted to believe it too, but her logical mind refused to accept facts without proof.

Who knew how long it would be before the Crystal would consume Usagi? For almost a century, they had faced no enemies, fought no battles--- had they really thought the days of War were over?

Ami sighed and rubbed her temples, realizing just how silly that whole theory was. In the last battle against Chaos, the entity had revealed something that they had suspected for a long time: as long as the Ginzuishou existed, enemies would come for it. It was the natural flow of things, the most basic law of Physics--- for every reaction, there's an equal but opposite reaction.

With all-too-powerful good, there's bound to be all-too-powerful-evil.

The entire Universe worked based on Balance, and the time of that balance to tilt into one direction was coming near. That didn't mean it helped her deal one little bit.

What the manuscripts said was so preposterous she still couldn't believe it. The Silver Crystal, the glimmering stone that had saved their lives countless of times before; the symbol of Serenity's power... was it really going to kill its own owner? The prophecy said it would drain her life away, pretty much in the same way Queen Serenity of the Old Millennium had died. But there would be no monumental battle, no Apocalypse to be thwarted--- it would simply happen, and unleash a sequence of events that would end life as they knew it.

The scrolls never mentioned Evil. They simply said it was the course of events, the turning of the Great Wheel, they called it. Go figure what the Ancients meant with such metaphors, but they got their point across. One day, the Crystal would wake up and decide it had been owned by the same person long enough. And that would be the day Usagi would die.

Desperation was starting to get her. And that was when her communicator beeped.

She jumped on her chair, startled by its sound. She had completely forgotten about it on the last days... so worried she had been by her discoveries.

She picked it up and looked at it. She didn't need to look at the screen to know who the caller was--- their link allowed her to feel what Zoisite was feeling, and well, lately she had had to shut him off, the doubt and loneliness creeping into her heart too much for her to bear, much less unconsciously passing it on to her beloved.

The last thing she wanted right now was for one of her close friends to find out about this--- she had hardly had the time to come to terms with it herself. Maybe, if she had enough time she would be able to avert the Armageddon hovering dangerously close to home.

That was her job as a Senshi--- and her duty to the one person who had not feared her intelligence and had simply accepted her for herself, breaking the vicious cycle of mockery and awe that had surrounded her life back in the late days of the XXth century.

Taking a deep breath and collecting her thoughts as best as she could, she pressed the small button to open the connection and sent a prayer to whoever was listening that she would be able to deceive her two-lifetime soul mate.

"Hi, sweetie."

Zoisite's voice had changed over the years--- gone was the teenage quality, replaced by wisdom and knowledge gained after years upon years of compiling data and doing research. But no matter how much they changed (she was hardly the shy, mousy girl Usagi had befriended back in high school) there was one thing that remained the same: the love they had for one another.

They had met under stressful circumstances, back in the Old Silver Millennium. He had saved her from a lecherous Prince and helped her discover herself in the process. She had killed him when the Dark Kingdom had purged the Moon, only to die a few hours later defending her Princess. They had been reborn in twentieth century Tokyo, where they had re-met, but not before his evil clone had tormented them long and hard, playing with their phantom memories and bringing sadness upon the Senshi circle.

Those times were long gone, and they were still together.

They challenged each other every day, their agile minds working at full speed trying to catch up with the newest inventions and discoveries--- they both loved science to death, and perhaps it was this love that helped to keep their own kindled, whereas other relationships withered and died under the pressure of eternal life.

And now, for the first time since she could remember, she was going to lie to him. She *had* to, otherwise he might take this burden upon his own shoulders and do something stupid like try and keep *her* away from it--- that was the one thing Ami found annoying about him: the fact that no matter how powerful she got, no matter how self-secure she became, Zoisite would always see her as a sobbing Princess escaping the clutches of a lusty Prince.

He suffered from the Knight in Shinning Armor Syndrome. But then again, all the Generals did, with Endymion being the textbook case from which it all stemmed from.

"Hi, love".

Her heart reached out to him as she noticed the slight darkening of his eyes--- signs that she had grown to recognize as his Worry Face. And even if Zoisite's voice remained nonchalant, Ami could read him better than she could herself. She had aroused questions in him... his mind was as quick as her own, and she could count with her right hand the number of times she had actually managed to slip something by Zoisite.

"What are you doing up this late? I've told you not to do this. It can't be good for your health."

And even if she knew he was on to her, she thanked him silently for not pressing the issue. Ami knew that Zoisite knew, and Zoisite knew Ami knew he knew--- a ghost of a smile danced across Ami's lips as she realized that being around Minako had messed with her grammar much more than she would let anyone know.

"I know."

{Please, Zoi, let it *go*!}

"You seem a little tired. Have you been sleeping well lately?"

No such luck. To ask him to let matters rest undisturbed would be like asking Haruka to stop worrying over Usagi. Simply impossible. And it didn't matter that said girl had grown into one of the most powerful (if not *the* most powerful) women on the Milky Way. It was simply in their genes...

"No."

This time, the storm gathering behind Zoisite's pupils brewed to a climax, and even the most clue-less of people wouldn't have had any trouble noticing that he was onto Ami. And still, the blue-haired Senshi kept her guards up.

"You sure you're all right?"

Ami took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart and trembling hands. One wrong word out of her mouth and Zoisite would teleport to where she was, ruining her chances of ever finding out a solution for the prophecy that she kept clasped in her fingers.

She just thanked the fact that she had never taught Zoisite how to read the ancient dialects... I mean, what would've been the use of that? Nobody used them anymore. She herself was able to read them only because after the Great Sleep their past lives' memories had returned, allowing her access to the knowledge that had been dead and buried for over a thousand years.

Thank God her former self had been as studious as she was.

"Yes, Zoi, I'm fine. I'm just excited about some new scrolls I found. You know how I can get!"

Sadly, Zoisite knew *exactly* how Ami could get when something new landed on her awaiting hands. Obsessed pretty much described it, with a tad bit of glee. As much as he loved his wife, Zoisite *knew* that she threw self-preservation to the wind when it came to the pursue of knowledge... Ami rarely got sick (might have to do with her affinity with ice. How could she ever get a cold when she spent half the time throwing around ice-based attacks in nothing but a mini-skirt and boots?), but when she did, it was usually because of lack of sleep due to continuous researching.

That led to a feeling of failure and impatience for not being able to continue her work, which led her to midnight escapades from bed to try and get some work done, which of course, led to her condition worsening---- it was a cycle, up until Zoisite threatened to tie her down and keep her away from her books for good if she did not stop.

Funny how the doctor within her was always overpowered by the scientist.

"Need any help? Things are pretty slow here, and we could use some time alone..."

He let the end of his sentence hang, knowing full well that Ami would get the meaning of it. His heart melted when he saw her blushing slightly--- even after a lifetime of being together, the timid Ami surfaced sometimes, especially when matters of the bedroom where concerned. Besides, he liked making her blush-- it was a good look on her.

In the back of his mind, a distant memory stirred. He had fallen for Princess Mercury because of that same blush, by a waterfall on the Northern Side of the Moon Gardens, while she tended to his wounds.

He was brought back to the present as she answered.

"No! Don't worry about it. I'll be done soon--- I might even get home sooner than I expected to."

Although surprised by the passion behind her declining of his offer, Zoisite did not press her further. In time, Ami would tell him what was wrong. He could wait.

"Okay then. I love you."

The way Ami's eyes shone at those three small words was enough to dispel any and all suspicions from Zoisite's mind. This was the woman he loved (had loved and would love until his dying day), and he trusted her implicitly.

Besides, what could be so wrong to have her keeping secrets from him?

Famous last words.

"I love you too, Zoi. I'll see you soon."

Blowing him a kiss, Ami broke the connection.

And wondered if she hadn't made the worst mistake of her life by shutting him off. Alone inside the library, her heart wept silently, feeling that she was distancing herself from the one man able to help her.

But she couldn't tell him. Not until she knew more.

She *knew* that fear led to irrational actions, and she had been witness to how said irrational behavior had gotten them into messes they had barely made it out of--- Mamoru had pushed Usagi away afraid his love for her would kill her. Usagi had pushed the *Senshi* away after Mamoru had died at the hands of Galaxia, afraid to remember what had actually happened that day at the airport, and had almost gotten eaten by Chaos' darkness. It had been out of Ami's own fear of loneliness that Fish Eye's illusion had taken such a hold of her, almost sending her into Death Sleep because of it.

And the list went on and on.

Knowledge was power, and he who knows it all will rule it all.

She had read that somewhere and even if the second part of the sentence made her break into a grin (Usagi barely knew green from blue when she had first become Queen. Although not the case now, there had been some times in which Ami had wondered if Usagi's pure heart would be enough to rule an entire Kingdom. In the end, it had been *more* than enough), it had stuck with her. And she knew the first three words to be so painfully true that it hurt to remember them sometimes.

Because if knowledge is power, with power comes responsibility--- and she had been holding the weight of the Universe on her tiny shoulders ever since she had read those scrolls.

She thought about burning them and casting a Memory Spell on herself to forget. And then realized her foolishness. Just because nobody knew about it wouldn't keep it from happening. The fact that she had discovered the prophecy meant that she was supposed to do something about it. And do something she would.

Even if it killed her in the process.

**********************

Hour after hour, Ami sat amidst endless rows of ancient books and old manuscripts, her eyes scanning through the words quickly, reading prophecy after prophecy, trying to come up with something.

So far, she had found three different versions of how the Silver Millennium came to be, two rusty scrolls recounting the beauty and bravery of Serenity I and one recipe for Duck a' la Saturn.

{I must be missing something. There must be a way to stop this}.

That had become her motto lately--- she *was* going to find something. But with every book she closed, with every page she turned and still remained blank as to what to do, her resolve diminished.

To her despair there was no indication of anyway to prevent it. The Feasting would occur, and she was running out of options. Telling Usagi seemed even outrageous now--- she would surely do something drastic like destroying the Crystal, and with that, her life. Mamoru wasn't an option either, seeing as he always lost his head when it came to anything that endangered his wife's welfare.

Maybe Setsuna could help--- but Ami decided against it.

The Senshi of Time probably knew about it anyway, and was already tearing her hair out for not being able to do anything. Although sometimes the rules could be bent, Time could not be broken. And Setsuna had helped her a lot already, starting from that first time back in the Moon Kingdom, where she had given a scared Princess some confidence in herself, pushing her into a whirlwind of events that almost destroyed her.

Almost.

That which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, went the saying. And how true it could be! Ami had changed after her encounter with Ren... she became a woman, found her soul mate and gained the true heirloom of the Mercury Princess... and all because a certain green haired Senshi had a soft spot for her, and had moved Heaven and Hell to help her in what little ways she could.

No, she would not go to Setsuna with this. The rest of the Senshi wouldn't be of much help either. What could they say that she hadn't already thought about?

She knew she was being arrogant, and maybe even a little selfish--- but she was sure that there was a powerful reason as to why she had found the scrolls in the first place (timeless palimpsests did *not* just fall out of their hiding places just when a genius Queen was walking past that particular shelf), and she even suspected Setsuna had something to do with it: the mysterious woman's touch was evident in the amount of 'coincidences' that had lead to her discovery.

Maybe Setsuna couldn't do anything about it, but who could blame her for trying?

She thanked and feared the vote of trust given to her. Ami knew the older woman trusted her, and she was eternally grateful for it--- but hadn't Setsuna overestimated her? Hadn't she overrated her intelligence, simply assuming the blue haired Queen could somehow solve this?

Ami sighed and took a deep breath.

She was losing it and she knew it. The doctor in her recognized the first signs of shock crawling under her skin, and she couldn't let herself snap. Not now. Rubbing her temples and closing her eyes, she pressed the heel of her hands against her closed eyelids, trying to sort the mess in her mind.

What could she possibly do? She didn't have a clue.

As she rested her back on the chair, feeling drained and tired, her eyes scanned the library. Maybe taking her mind off of it would help--- a breath of fresh air would clear her head.

She rose from her sitting place and walked down to the window, pushing it open with nimble fingers. As the crisp breeze of Mercury brushed against her cheeks, she sat on the windowsill, letting her light blue dress hang lightly on the outside.

What to do, what to do? Her fingers tapped a soft rhythm against the stone of the castle, absently humming words she no longer remembered. Drawing out her mini computer, she began typing absently, letting her subconscious speak to her through Emotional Writing.

A few minutes went by as she stared taciturnly at the Sun. It was enormous, and the one thing keeping it from burning the Mercurian Cities to the ground was the Magical Dome covering most of the planet. She had had to rebuild her home planet from scratch, as in the battle against the Dark Kingdom it had been completely and utterly destroyed.

The Dome had been the first thing she had rebuilt, allowing life to grow on Mercurian soil for the first time in thousands of years.

Her planet... Mercury.

Although she had never spent more than a few days on the planet (past life not counting), it still felt familiar--- as a forgotten household she had returned to after years of being away.

A soft 'beep' coming from her computer awoke her. As her eyes landed on the screen sitting on her lap, she wondered just what buttons had she been pushing--- her mini computer had been scanning the library, it seemed.

Her tired eyes skimmed over the screen lazily, making calculations almost absently... until something caught her eyes. What was this?

She pressed another button on her computer, and waited impatiently for the information to pop up. The Castle's blueprints... why were they even here? She had thought that after an entire millennia of owning the little thing, she and her computer shared all the secrets buried in its hard drive. Apparently she was mistaken, as click after click showed her the Castle as it was originally built, back in the old days when the Solar System was still deep into chaos and wars ran rampage through the now peaceful Kingdoms.

She read about how a Covenant of the most powerful Magicians of the time hid the precious knowledge of the Book of Truth, afraid of it falling in the wrong hands. She read about how Mercury was the safest place to hide it in, being so close to the Sun and such a small planet no one would think to keep the Forbidden Knowledge in the otherwise unimportant almost-asteroid.

Her eyes widened as she kept reading, realizing for the first time how intelligence and wisdom ran in her family for generation after generation--- she read how Queen Elondra the First vowed to keep the knowledge safe to the expense of her own life and her own eyes watered as she read of the Ruler's untimely demise defending the Book she had promised to protect.

And she dropped the computer when she read the last line.

'Look behind the last shelf, Ami.'

Heart racing and breath quickening, Ami bent and picked the small computer from its spot on the floor. She had certainly read wrong--- her computer, as powerful as it was, was not sentient. Why would it be talking to her, then?

Her left eyebrow rose a few notches when her eyes landed on the blackened screen. Uh? Her computer never crashed! Powered both by Moon Magic and her own power, it solved equations of unthinkable difficulty with ease... her mini computer just *didn't* crash!

Pressing every conceivable key combination on her keyboard, she tried in vain to bring the blue prints and old documents back. The computer remained blank until she rebooted it, and then the records vanished. She had no way of knowing what file she had been reading, and much less if they had even existed in the first place.

She knew hackers could not hack into her computer--- it protected itself. That meant the file had been on her hard drive--- but since when?

Frustrated, she closed the small computer and put it beside her. She eyed it for long minutes, half expecting it to open itself and reload the file if she wished it hard enough. As expected, nothing on the like happened and she was left with stinging eyes and a headache.

Great. Just great. Here she was, being contacted by some superior entity and she reacted like a high-school girl, shrieking and throwing said connection to the floor. It was in times like these that she questioned her own intelligence. Closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, she sorted out the jumble of thoughts inside her mind--- or at least tried to.

And that's when her tired eyes landed on the last bookshelf.

More out of curiosity than belief, she stood up from her spot by the window and walked up to the last row of shelves, in the back of the humongous library she had grown to call a second home. She stopped a few feet short from the last shelf before turning on her heel and going the other way.

She stopped after a few steps and cast a backwards glance at the beckoning piles of books.

{Oh, please Ami! You're not seriously thinking this?}

She swayed, hesitant, on the marble floor. To go or not to go---

{For heaven's sake, Ami! You're actually considering trusting a cryptic message on your computer screen?}

That did it. She had always prided herself of her analytical mind--- and said analytical mind was telling her she needed sleep and nourishment, not crazy midnight hunting in the dusty old library.

Putting her foot down, Ami purposefully strode *away* from the bookshelves, picking up her computer and notes in the process. She was going to bed, and she was going to sleep and the Feasting and every other apocalyptic prophecy were waiting till tomorrow.

As she closed the library door behind her, she couldn't help but feel anxious about something. When the loud, creaking doors closed, the bolts falling back into place had such a finality to them, she shivered unconsciously.

Bed and dinner it was, then. Or was it bed and breakfast? She still had trouble discerning night from day in the quick Mercurian circadian cycle... thoughts of ancient prophecies and murderous crystals fled into her subconscious as she forced herself not to think about them--- after all, she always got her best ideas when she slept.