12:30pm

        Ami’s eyes fluttered open in a confused state, she looked around the room and felt her eyes rest on a pair of eyes which had not strayed from her side for the past hour and fifteen minutes.  She felt his warm gaze on her and smiled at him, and said weakly, “I must have over exhausted myself when I…”
        Her eyes immediately widened when she remembered why she was here, and what had caused her collapse.  He stood up at her side, concerned and fearful of the possibility of her once again fainting.  His concern was not enough, for once she thought of the blood on her hands, the blood of her youngest childhood friend, her eyes once again gazed over and her eyelids fluttered shut.

        His first instinct in awakening was to sit up and assess exactly where he was, he completely disregarded the electric cords that ran out of the patches stuck on his skin as he sat up.  Then, he felt the tugging of the cords and hastened to rip the patches off his skin so that they would not restrict his movements.  Within several seconds, the door of the room he had been lying burst open to reveal several nurses and young doctors, then, he knew the answer to where he was, a hospital.
        The people at the doorway stared at him like they would an alien exhibition, which made him immensely annoyed, “I am alive, I just don’t like those things on my skin.”
        Their medical training must have kicked in at just that point because they began to fuss over him like a child and reprimanded him for having taken off the heart beat and breathing monitor, to which he replied that it irritated him.  His own tone of voice surprised him, he had never remembered himself with such a tone of voice, his increasing irritability was not a part of the Tsuzuki Asano that he knew.
        He sat there, while being fussed over by these people as his confusion grew, the fact that he felt a trained pair of unseen eyes guarding over him did not help either.  As the medical staff finally retreated from his room, he closed his eyes to take a deep breath before scanning the room once again.  Until his eyes finally rested on a woman sitting behind him in the corner, her legs crossed and she had leant back into a comfortable chair, but her eyes remained transfixed on his form.
        “You’re awake now.”
        “You are the woman who came to see me earlier, in the skating rink.”
        “That is correct.” She replied - her lips pursed.
        “You are also someone long ago, from the Silver Millennium, the Lady of Mercury.”
        “That is also correct.”  She looked at him with interest, it had been a long time since she had been addressed as that name, but that was because the younger generation had only heard of Someieichi-kou as a myth, only the other Queens of other planets of her generation knew that she was in fact the Queen of Mercury, and Someieichi-kou, and he was part of the ‘younger generation’.
        “You were Princess Mercury’s step mother, she was my love from the past, where is she now, Lady of Mercury?”
        “What do you remember of the Silver Millennium?”
        “I remember the people, but not the events, I remember having been in love with your stepdaughter.”
        “And the outcome?”
        “Unfortunately no I do not remember it.  But we were friends, weren’t we?”
        “We were friends, General, and perhaps we may be again.”
        “I have always enjoyed our conversations, you were friends to everyone, I remember you and your daughter best of all, and of course, Neflite, Kunzite and Jaedite, they were the other generals of Prince Endymion.”
        “I’ll leave you to rest now, you have made excellent progress today.”  She clasped his hand in a royal-like fashion and left his room.
        He stared after her and winced even as the door softly touched the frame of the doorway, he whispered softly as though there might be eavesdroppers outside the room, “I am General Zoisite.”

        Ami felt like she was swimming in a sea of memories, the memories of this life and her past life, the memories of joy and sadness.  She saw each face flash before her eyes as she remembered the most memorable event that she had passed with them.  However, she feared that the memories were not as accurate as she had hoped them to be, for example, when she saw her mother’s face, Mewagi Mizuno, she somehow saw her as the Queen of Mercury, and another mythical figure during the Silver Millennium, Someieichi-kou.  She remembered having once had this conversation with the other girls in their past life, she was only a legend…  But somehow, she had a memory of sitting with her mother while she was writing with a feather quill, on a scroll of paper, she had a memory of taking long walks and conversations with her mother, reading large volumes of books and having her mother sometimes explain it to her.  Her fondest memory was, however, when her mother would sit at her bedside, her large feathered mattress bed, in her pale blue court dress, and read her bedtime stories.
        Then there was her mother in her present form, the sophisticated, elegant, professional woman whom she looked up to as her idol.  She remembered when she used to sleep on her mother’s examining table that would be wheeled into her back room, and listen in to her mother discuss patient’s status with her colleagues.  Sometimes, she would be allowed to help her mother record results after she had seen some patient’s slides, and help with the research that she would sometimes need to do if a patient came down with a rare disease that her mother needed confirmation from large volumes of medical journals and textbooks.
        Then, there was Kunki’s face that floated in her mind, his face when he was ten years old and he had stood towering over him when she was only five, the last time they had ever seen each other.  It had been about three months after her parents had divorced and her mother had just been accepted a rise in another hospital that they had decided to leave Tokyo for Nagasaki.  His mother had invited the two of them for a farewell luncheon, she remembered sitting in the garden alcove with Kunki as he handed her a printed sheet of his address for her to stick onto her envelops when she wrote to him, and reminded her to call.  He had tried to stifle in the tears and brighten the atmosphere by joking that the sheet of address stickers was because he wasn’t too sure whether or not she was smart enough to remember his address correctly.  And she had in turn asked jokingly if she would be free from the dreaded chore of writing to him once the sheet was finished.  She remembered those tears that finally spilled over their eyes as they hugged each other their goodbyes as they went back in the house from the garden, and his meek reminder for her to be a good girl with the touch and tweek on the nose…
       The next face that came to her was Asuka’s, the first time that they had ever spoken to each other…  She remembered when he had been unable to attend the Grade one exams, their teachers had allowed him to sit it further towards the end of the holidays since the exams had not been considered too important.  Although the exams were not all that important, yet passing them was considered a must in the Japan schooling system.  The problem was; he had been away from school for such long periods at one go, he needed help to pass those exams desperately.  His mother had been a sports physician in the same hospital, and her mother had offered for some help.
        He had been in the next class from her, and they had never spoken, probably since he was always surrounded by other girls, while she had surrounded herself with books.  When she had first really met him at her doorstep, he had been extremely shy and tried to hide behind his mother, something that she had not expected from a superstar skater.  She had helped him with his studies for approximately two weeks, during that time, even though their mothers had been anxious for them to become friends, they had exchanged few words out of studying.  This had all changed when it was her birthday, the misunderstanding which had occurred when he had tried to give her birthday present to her.  His mother had never lived to see the friendship that grew between them, she had died several weeks after they had started talking in school…  She would never forget that kindly stern face that was Asuka’s mother whom was replaced by his skating manager… he had the credits for sternness, but there was not kindness in him.
        As she tried to conjure up more memories from the past, she felt herself struggling against her consciousness, her mind was ready to wake, yet her will still wanted to continue in the dream-like state.  She remembered the last time she had been in her dream-state, her Princess Mercury form inside her had reminded her of her determination and motivation to protect her friends, now, she had at least one friend to save from Kuriverse, and she was not about to let Asuka down.
        She began to drift into consciousness, but her body would not cooperate, finally, she began to start hearing the sounds in the room but she still could not communicate that she was awake…
 

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