So this is a tiny little present for my friend, Brownsugarheartattack, in an impromptu ficlet exchange! (I CAN RECOMMEND THESE! SO QUICK AND SO SWEET! DO THEM MORE, PEOPLE! 10 of 10!)

Anyway. Love, your list read as follows: Heavy angst, Usagi and Kendy, Usagi and Evil!Endymion, confessions, identity reveals, pining and Usamamo. I tried to do something that encapsulates ALL of that, and wrap it into 1k words. I JUST SO failed at the 1k words lol, but I do hope you like it.

Anyway, remember when, in the end-ish of the break-up arc, Usagi shared Mamoru's nightmare? Let me make this a bit more atmospheric for you, here!

Oneiromancy = noun, from Greek. The practice of predicting the future through the interpretation of dreams.

As all of my shorty shorts, this isn't beta-ed, so please excuse me sounding like my own German self lol. Sugar, I hope you like this angsty-angst!


Oneiromancy

A ficlet written for Brownsugarheartattack


A crater black with her screams. Broken, leaded glass reflecting color like the eeriest kaleidoscope off of unnatural, greyest fog. A ripped wedding dress, hanging from her only in tatters.

Padding barefoot through someone else's nightmare wasn't the strangest thing she'd ever experienced, but wow, how weird was that?

Even weirder that she instinctively, directly knew whose it was. The bleeding colors in the grey like the grating sound of his voice when he told her he no longer loved her. A bruising hiss in her heart. She had no doubt whose nightmare she was invading, no. She just didn't know why, or how.

Barely visible through the thick fog, the black ground shone like a mirror. Broken glass crunched loud and wet beneath her bare feet, and yet she felt none of it. There was no pain in dreams.

At least not physical.

She found his reflection first, swimming in the shrouded black mirror all around her, and she jolted. The tuxedo blended in too well with the darkness, too familiar.

But the moment she did, his reflection broke like a spiderweb fissuring across the glass beneath her gaze, and her eyes ripped up to find his.

The fog cleared just enough to reveal him to her, but no more.

A thick, golden throne that tickled in the back of her mind. He sat in it as if he belonged in it, leaned back and comfortable. Arrogant.

One leg over the other, too elegant, too nonchalant, too beautiful. His mouth curved too much, smirking at her over his chin, black rose twirling in one hand.

She supposed she hadn't found Mamoru, after all.

"Are you looking for someone, little bunny?" his voice purred in a way it was all wrong, and yet all familiar.

She swallowed, but met his eyes steadily. Strongly.

"For you, yes," she said, and it echoed off the darkness, carrying her own voice back to her over and over again in a way it hadn't done with his.

With a flicker, he got up. One moment he was folding his body elegantly, the next he was an apparition directly in her face. Getting too close. (Not close enough, her traitor heart cried.)

She held her breath, but stood her ground, digging her feet against the smooth glass beneath her feet. She refused to be affected.

Which was hard, of course. It had always been hard. Back when he'd really been Endymion of the Dark Kingdom just as much as the memories of a life before that, when Endymion himself had been more reckless just the same and yet no one could know. And so, she held her breath and watched his too pretty face slant itself over hers, lips first. So close.

Above her, tapered fingers ghosted across her chin and up the apple of her cheek. Like tracing a tear in reverse.

He tilted his head.

"Hm," he hummed, and his dark, dark eyes bore insistent into hers, glinting a deep maroon in its midnight depths. "I really don't think so, my love."

A heartbeat, an exhale. And then his face twisted, and his hand wrapped strong and sharp around her throat.

She shook, terrified, even when she couldn't actually feel the press of his phantom hands against her skin. Fell just like one falls in dreams - a tug in her tummy, a jolt, but she didn't wake up. Something held her here, like it was not yet time to go. Like she had something left to learn, like something held her hostage.

Someone.

A blink, and Endymion was back in his throne, caged, one leg over the other, when her someone appeared behind her. Lavender fabric flapped softly against her bare leg as if he was real and not a dream, and Usagi shivered as he leaned in behind her, silk shifting against the length of her backside.

She shuddered, refused to look. "You're not Mamo-chan."

But Mamo-chan's soft, gentle baritone answered her. A trickle down her spine.

"I'm not, no."

Her breath stuttered when the fog fled like it was sucked away before her eyes. Endymion a smirking beast, his tuxedo shifting away to the armor of the Golden Kingdom. But as the fog cleared, what lay behind him was more startling. A sea of corpses by his feet, lying on the smooth black surface made from glass and mirror, reflecting dead eyes into the void.

Her senshi. Her mother, Queen Empress of the Silver Millenium. His Shitennou. A faceless, middle-aged couple she recognized too well from a dusty frame in Mamoru's shelf; his family. But it didn't stop. The fog receded but the horizon never came. Two ancient peoples fallen to their love, their shadows like an endless veil of death that trailed behind his throne.

Usagi refrained from crying out, her eyes swimming so much it made it hard to see.

"And he?" Her voice broke, nodding at Endymion. At his tilted head, at his intense, unblinking eyes that never left hers.

With a strike, another body collapsed fresh and cracking, directly at Endymion's feet.

Her.

Broken by the neck, wrapped in wire made of thorns and black roses, Sailor Moon's eyes devoid of life.

But it was not her. She was standing right here, barefoot in the shreds left of a white dress. (Yet, it was no longer a wedding dress at all, but fabric she knew from the whispers of a different life.)

"He," Mamo-chan's voice spoke too calmly, too soothingly, directly against the shell of her ear, a warm hand hesitant at the small of her back, "is Mamoru's deepest fear."

When she did turn - when she could no longer stand the stare of the dead - their dead, Not-Mamoru's eyes were full of warm concern. A lavender tuxedo, a white mask covering his eyes that didn't do the trick for her anymore.

These were - absolutely, wholly, unmistakably - Mamoru's gentle eyes.

Her mouth popped open on its own volition. "Who are you?" she heard her own voice gasp.

He tilted his head just as Endymion had. And yet the same, familiar movement could not be more different. "Someone who doesn't belong here," he said.

She frowned, licked her lips, and lavender fabric shifted.

"Someone misunderstood," he said, and turned to the oh-so-still and gruesome scene in front of them.

But this Mamoru, when she waited long enough, did not stay silent.

"Dreams are Mamoru's birthright," he told the dead, but Usagi refused to follow his gaze. "The power to predict the future through them, to connect through them, to communicate through them… it flows in Mamoru's veins."

He found her eyes. Too much emotion. Too much regret. She recoiled under his strong stare.

"He should have understood."

A blink. He never turned, and yet with a flicker not unlike the static of a broken screen or a bad scene-cut, his body had shifted, his gaze back on black mirror and unseeing eyes.

"But there's too much already here," he said. "He couldn't."

She shifted. "What... What did he misunderstand?"

She hadn't even noticed she'd grabbed Not-Mamoru's hand. Her bare one against pristine white gloves. But he had.

His smile was soft but oh-so-tragic when he turned to her and brought her hand to his mouth.

She almost jolted when she felt his lips against her knuckles although she shouldn't have felt a thing here. Brushing warm and tingling across her too-alert skin, a current in her hand.

She flushed too hard, too strong.

"You ask me who I am." His lips moved against her hand, his grip gentle and yet desperate.

He didn't move away.

"But I'd rather you know who you are."

She froze. "... Who am I?"

With a shift of fabric, this man knelt. Went down on one knee for her. Her hand still hostage in his. His eyes too full of devotion.

He didn't look like he was supposed to kneel for anyone, and yet he did for her almost with worship.

He didn't speak the words. They swam as echoes in her head, popping like ancient, cackling stereo sound that was misaligned. Some far away, some too close, some from the left, some from nowhere at all, some directly in her head.

In Mamoru's gentle voice. And this time, she knew, she knew it really was Mamoru's—

My salvation - salvation- Light. My savior. My heart.

My family. Salvation.

My soul.

My love.

My dream.

Another flicker; static on a screen, Not-Mamoru's hand on her cheeks, looming over her. Tracing her tears in reverse, leaning in.

"Wake up, Usako," he whispered against her eyes. "He needs you."

And this time, the jolt in her tummy did shake her awake. Wide-eyed in the darkness, Luna stirring beside her, shadows across her comforter, her heart a frightened hummingbird.

She'd been wrong. There was pain in dreams. A lot of it. Locked and terrified and needing to be kissed away for at least a thousand years until it's gone.

She ripped her blanket from her body, Luna screeching awake as the cool air of night threatened to invade her bones and chase away the warmth of sleep.

She climbed through her window as Usagi and through his as Sailor Moon. Climbed into his bed and woke him up from a nightmare that had gone silent for too long to a tortured shudder of his sleep-warm lips.


So yeah, here's a tiny gift that I hope all of you enjoy too! I hope you like my explanation of this R-nightmares mess! Mwah!