Written by: Laura Hudson

Author's Notes:

This is the Ami story I talked about in previous notes. It's mostly done, so all that's left is really to write the last page or so and type the whole thing about. This is about a third, maybe a fourth of the story. This should go quickly.

I'll make this short and blunt. I was _really_ unhappy with Part 5 of THF. It was disjointed and much was lost in the time I left it alone. It would rather toss a story out than let it suffer again like that. This is not part of THF, nor is it even in the same universe. It stands alone.

This story is good. Read it.

This story is about Ami. This story is about me. This story was so personal and brought up so many emotional problems that I couldn't finish it because it overloaded my system. Sans the special powers, I _was_ Ami, at least the Ami I write about here.

I'm not anymore, and so I'm glad the beginning is already written and vivid with the things I felt, because I would no longer be able to write them. Maybe it's time for me to write the end. And maybe I'm finally living it.

Every light in the room was out, the door sealed like a jar, no light invading through the edges of the frame. The cool air reached in the window with an intangible hand and brushed the hair on the back of Ami's neck. She let her head roll back as the air surrounded her, cool, spicy and evocative.

Fall was coming. The leaves did not even know it, blithely lizard green on the branches, but _she_ knew. She could recognize autumn hanging on the air, like raindrops suspended off an edge, ready to fall.

She noticed details, distinctions in people and places that others might not perceive or remember. Everyone she had known, and every place she had been had its own defining scent, aura and nature that could all be bound into its undiluted essence.

Night, in all its multifariousness, volunteered itself to her, ever facet registering within her like a flavor on her palate. Ami stood, facing the window, half-closed venetian blinds casting shadowy stripes up and down her body. She peered out between the slats, the blinds offering a comforting anonymity. If anyone drifted along the sidewalk below her, if they looked up her at quiet window, they would only glimpse a broken image between the blinds. But who would ever care to look?

Who would ever care to look?

She pulled herself away from the window, the shadows following her as she backed away. She knelt on the floor for a moment, and then slid to a sitting position in front of her bookcase. She ran her eyes over the well-worn, broken spines, and then dragged her hand across them like she was playing a glissando. She took one newer book out of the voluminous stacks, and stroked the sheen of its cover. She pulled her thumb across the side, flipping through the pages with a soft hiss that blew a familiar, rich-tasting air over her face. She instantly recalled how she had curled up in her favorite chair to read it; she remembered every detail of the story and its characters.

How many worlds had she seen, adventures had she lived by way of those volumes? There had been a time...

There had been a time when they were her entire life. She slipped the book back on the shelf.

She felt very secure, very comfortable alone in her room. She stretched out on the pliancy of her powder blue carpet. Everything was ordered and sensical here, an environment that thrived on organization apparent from the way her clothes hung in her closet to the clean lines of her furniture. It was a place of her design, where she could contemplate and study. It was a place that she fit, a place without the necessity for secrets or pretension or acceptance. She didn't mind that she could only feel that alone.

Alone was easy to do. It was lonely that was difficult to live. Outside of this room and this house was an unordered, unpredictable world that was as random as raindrops. There was no equation that could simplify her social life, no scientific way to discern the right thing to say at the right time.

She had always been stigmatized, isolated by both her shyness and her intellect. She hadn't been a person or friend to anyone.... just some brainiac who continually wrecked the grade curve. She vividly recalled what it was like to walk down the hall every day, the way they watched her as they stood by their lockers. They had- resented her. The sideways glances, the contempt she saw in their eyes every day... The way they chuckled and giggled at her in their cliques from across the cafeteria. She just sat alone, her head hung down studying the artificial grain of her plastic orange lunch tray.

They hated her for outdoing them, yet she craved their acceptance with all her being. She had closed up inside herself, but yet was screaming with all her might to be let out. It was a defensive mechanism, really. She had only experienced ostracism from people her own age, so deep in the core of her soul, she had tried to hide herself. She did not know how to fight for herself, only how to erect a shield.

The first day she met Usagi, she was standing with her friends and gossiping with them... about her? Everything changed once they became friends, but Ami had never forgotten that, though she forgave it. Being with Usagi and becoming a Senshi were the best things to happen to her. Ever.

She had instantly gained lifetime friends... or past-lifetime friends if you wanted to see it that way. She had _belonged_ to something all along, and she was important. Nothing had felt as liberating or as strengthening as fighting alongside her closest friends for the sake of all the world.

But it was the everyday things that really changed for her. Usagi had insisted in including her and affirming her in all things. Usagi was one of the best people she had ever met. She was forgetful, capricious and plagued with academic problems... Ami loved her so much. She couldn't bear to think badly of her or be angry with her. Usagi's friendship had finally brought her out of her shell, allowed her to be herself.

But... if that was true, why was she up at midnight, something gnawing at her heart like a starving animal?

Could it be that inhibition and passivity still defined the way she lived? Deep inside her heart, was some part of herself tearing at the walls to be free?

Had she not become the Ami, the self that laid bound by heart-strings deep within herself? What was keeping her down? Was she too ingrained into a pattern and a personality? Was it because of who everyone expected her to be? Was it a fear of rejection that was still a driving force in her psyche and her decision?

Or was the only thing holding her back... herself? Ami's features wrinkled as she forced her eyes to shut tightly. Plunging her mind into nothingness, Ami fell asleep on the floor, wrapped in a ball with an arm tightly around her knees as sleep came in fits.

Ami was not certain where she was, but she had a definite feeling that it did not matter. A thick fog pervaded the air, obscuring details and vision. A group of figures stood in front of her, their forms slightly darker than the dense greyness that had become the world. She moved closer to the, colors and faces appearing as the distance between them diminished.

There were three figures... Ami saw that one had long, dark hair, another brown... and the other.... Ami saw the sharpening outline of meatballs! Within sudden clarity, the four Senshi were in front of her, in full uniform.

Ami's face lit up, and she ran to them. There must be Sailor business... She pulled out her transformation wand and lifted it into the air, shouting, "Mercury Prism Power, MAKE UP!" She stood for a moment, her arm raised high in the air.

Nothing happened.

Ami let her hand drop, and stared curiously at the wand. It crumbled as she watched, turning to dust and slipping through her fingers. Ami grasped at it frantically, trying to hold on to it, but it was gone. Laughter came from behind her.

She looked up. Her friends, the Senshi, seemed suddenly very far behind her. Mars' eyes looked pupiless as she spoke.

"You were a mistake... you should never have been one of the Senshi...."

"Or one of our friends!" said Jupiter flatly.

"We have better things to do than be with you!" Mars laughed, and they all began to turn and walk into the fog. Ami stood frozen, unable to speak.

"What did we see in you?" wondered Usagi icily. "You never really belonged..." the sound of voices and giggles faded slowly away.

"W-wait! NO!" Ami moved toward them, but they had already dissipated like water. Ami fell to her knees, hiding her face in her hands, unwilling to show it to anyone, ever again.

"It was too good to be true..." she sobbed, "They never loved me!"

"And what about me?" asked a different, familiar voice as a hand touched her shoulder. She let her eyes rise above the side of her palm. No- she couldn't believe it. Was it really him?

"Greg! What are you doing here? she said, standing up and happily hugging him. He was very stiff in her arms, and began to push her away. He seemed... angry.

"What are you doing?" he seethed. Then he suddenly became very cool. "Oh, I understand. You thought I CARED for you." he chuckled. "What a laugh! You were a novelty for a while, I suppose. I wanted to get under your skin, the touted genius of the school. I wanted to see if you were all they said. Too bad you were such a disappointment." Something crumbled inside Ami, and she felt tears on her cheeks she did not know she was crying. Greg continued.

"What, you were actually fooled? I guess the naive little genius isn't that smart after all. Apparently you don't know much about yourself. Why would _anyone_ want to go out with you? You're not very pretty. That's why you've never been kissed, you know. But of course you realize that." he laughed, disappearing as Ami watched grief-stricken.

They were all right, they were all right about her. How had she deceived herself into thinking...

Ami awoke on the floor, curled in the fetal position, genuine tears coating her face. The dream was still very real to her, and her eyes filled with water. How had she fooled herself into thinking they loved her?

The next morning came inevitably and unwelcomed by Ami, who was still in the masochistic thrall of her dream. It was time to be drowned by reality again, to be dropped into it like a heavy stone. When she reached the bottom, what would she see in the eyes of her friends? And her own?

Ami stood up and walked to the mirror of her vanity. Dark circle framed her blue eyes, tear trails dried and stiff on her skin. She leaned closer to the reflective glass, scrutinizing the lines of her irises, peering into the black emptiness of her pupils as through she could find herself somewhere inside them.

"Why is it," Ami asked herself later, stepping into the shower, "that the person I think I am is nothing like the person other people see?" She stood with her eyes shut, facing the shower head as the spray beat down on her face, matting her thick blue hair with the weight of the water. Why was it, she thought, that something inside her had to disappear whenever she stepped out her door?

Everyone had expectations of her. They expected her to get good grades, to know all the answers, to be dependable and serious, to always be good and always play by the rules.... there was no room for anger or failure or imperfection in the mold cast for her. She did not know how to let them down, so instead she let herself down every day... Even the ones that been cruel to her, she did not want to shatter the illusion they had of her.

They thought she was smart and quiet and goody-two-shoes and she had a perfect life. Ami ran the bar of soap down the line of her body. Perfect, was it.

She was such a liar. Janus-faced, she couldn't face herself. She was a snake hiding in its own dead skin. She was... afraid that if she came clean other people might not like what she had become. She still hungered for their approval, and she knew it.

"Sorry..." she thought to them in her mind, washing the lather from her skin under the spray of water. "you're just not worth it anymore."

"I'mlateI'mlateI'mlateI'mlate!" yelled Usagi as she barreled down the sidewalk. Burning concrete as she sped at top speed, she failed to notice the badly cracked patch of pavement in front of her. With her usual luck, her foot caught in the middle of the broken pieces, propelling her face toward the ground.

"Aiiiiiee!" she shrieked, flailing her arms to protect herself as she began to crash toward the pavement. Centimeters from the ground, she suddenly stopped. She peered between her fingers at the cement barely grazing her nose.

"Wha-?" she exclaimed, twisting her head to the side. There, his hand holding the back of her collar was Mamoru Chiba.

"Your coordination never fails to astound me, meatball head! It can be challenging to walk without tripping over your own feet, huh?" he said with a saccharin smirk.

Usagi still hung, suspending in mid-air, and opened her mouth to let loose a barrage of insults.

"Let me up RIGHT NOW! Listen, you-" Usagi was cut off as someone rushing by grabbed her hand, propelling her to her feet and forcing her to run top speed away from Mamoru.

As Usagi disappeared with a WHOOSH and sped comically down the street, Mamoru shook his head. What a weird girl. But then again, if she were a little older, a bit more mature... Nah, he thought, slipping on a pair of sunglasses and heading to class.

Usagi was being dragged unceremoniously down the street at a speed uncomfortable for even a veteran runner such as herself. When she finally looked up to see who had grabbed her, she could not believe it. The short blue haircut was unmistakable- it was Ami!

"Ami-chan!" gasped Usagi, "You're late today, too!?! But you're always on time!"

"Not always, at least not today!" said Ami, glancing back with a smile.

Miraculously, the two girls reached their classroom before the first bell. As they changed out of their outdoor shoes, Usagi brought up the subject again.

"Is something wrong, Ami-chan? You're acting strange today... are you OK?"

"No, everything is fine. Everything is finally... just fine." she walked into the classroom, leaving Usagi staring after her.

Queen Beryl sat impatiently on her throne, her long, dark fingernails clicking on the black metal of the sprawling chair. Finally her eyes narrowed to the point where they were almost closed.

Her frustration was almost tangible. She hated Sailor Moon. She hated her childish theatrics, her clumsiness, her giggles and her tears and her whining... and *damn* her, her ability to defeat her generals at their every battle! This child playing dress-up had proved unconquerable. She truly despised her, as she did all of the Senshi.

They were her only stumbling blocks, the only things that hindered her from accomplishing her dream!

She longed for the Earth, lusted for it. Everything about it tantalized her, but she could not own it. Since the first day she had seen it, a pure blue jewel in an empty, black universe, it had enticed her. She knew she must either possess it or die in pursuit of that goal.

So many years ago, she had finally held it in her hand, tasted of its richness, when it was wrenched away from her. The Moon Kingdom had stolen what she had fought so long to earn, plundered her prize and exiled her from its sweet blue waters.

If she ever found any of the citizens of the Moon who had survived, she would tear out their hearts with her own hands. and relish every moment. And the Princess... if she ever found the Princess, no death could be too slow or agonizing.

She had taken everything away from Beryl. Her conquest, her blessed Earth, her life and everything she had attained had fallen to Serenity and her daughter. The Princess had even bewitched the heart her beloved Prince Endymion. That had cut deeply; that witch had twisted him so that he would prefer _her_ to ruling the universe by Beryl's side! It was a memory of great bitterness and great regret. She still craved that man, dreamt of him...

But now the Silver Millennium was over, its Queen fallen, and the Earth hung like a bauble in its orbit for Beryl to take. She just had some annoyances to eradicate. She crushed her fingernails into her palm until it bled. The dark gore running down the arm of her throne, she snapped back like a tight line.

"MALACHITE!" she screamed, summoning him. He immediately took form at her feet and knelt respectfully to her, his long, silver hair draped around himself.

"Yes, my Queen?"

"I want the Senshi killed. Today. Here. Find then and bring them here, so I watch them die, one by one. There will be no failure. There will be no mistakes. Their broken bodies will be trophies to display in my new order on Earth. If they do not perish, _you_ will take their place. Leave my sight!: she commanded harshly.

Malachite vanished quickly, relieved to flee her wrath. Hatred had edged out any patience or compassion she might ever have possessed. She was now a vessel of revenge; there was no room for anything else inside her.

There would be no arguments or second chances today. Beryl's viciousness would not be placated without blood. he had no burning desire to murder those girls, though they had caused him plenty of annoyance. But then, if he was the sacrifice that would replace theirs, there was no choice. Today his hands would wring the life from their bodies.