Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Secrets and Things Not Well Hidden ❯ Serena ( Chapter 1 )

"Secrets and Things Not Well Hidden"

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Disclaimer: Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi, not me. I'm just borrowing the characters for a little while.

For K, who upon seeing episode 92 for the first time ran into the kitchen yelling, "Mommy, they put a boy in a sailor dress!"

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1. Serena

Serena sat at her desk, pen in hand, staring at the paper in front of her. The date was written neatly in the top corner of the page, but so far that was all she had been able to set down. She just didn't know how to start her diary entry this time. Lately, it was becoming harder and harder to express just how complicated her life had become.

It had been almost a week since the incident at the Marine Cathedral. So much had happened that day. The mystery of the unidentified Sailor Scouts had been solved, and two people she had begun to think of as friends were suddenly her enemies. She had seen one lying dead when she got to the cathedral. The other might just as well have been for the dead look in her eyes.

That look was what was bothering Serena tonight. She gnawed on the end of her pen and glanced over at the magazine she had taken from Sammy's room earlier. It was open to a photo spread of a charity race from back in February. Serena didn't recognize any of the drivers and very few of the big name sports gurus in attendance. But one picture had caught her eye, and now she stared at it still in shock and disbelief.

Serena closed her eyes and shook her head, as if that could clear the image from her brain. For several seconds she held her breath, then exhaled dramatically. A moment later, pen met paper as the blonde tried to work out her jumbled thoughts.

When I got there, Neptune - no, Michelle - was dead. Or at least I thought she was. And Uranus did too, judging by the look in her eyes. I've seen her eyes cold before, but never like this. They were dead, soulless. It scared me.

Amara is Uranus. Part of me knew that even before the whole thing with Mina, but it still surprises me to actually see it. And everything happened so fast. She was holding on to the gun. For a second I really thought she would give it to me and we could find a way to make things right. But she pushed me away and put it to her chest. She didn't hesitate at all. And she pulled the trigger…

Serena stopped writing for a second to rub at her eyes. She would never forget that suicidal moment in the other Scout's life. She was still having nightmares about it.

How could she do that? How could anyone just end their life that way? Don't get me wrong. Michelle is her only family as far as I know, and it must have crushed her to see her die, but still…

I love my brother, honest I do. I may want him to go away and stop being a brat sometimes, but if he died I would be upset. I'd even cry. But would I be so devastated that I would kill myself right then and there to end the grief? No. The same goes for my friends. Molly, Raye, all of them. As much as I love them, my life is important to me. There isn't anything I can think of -

Serena hesitated. The end of her pen went back into her mouth as a thought began to form. She stared at the magazine picture. Double-paned, the left side was Amara standing and cheering in the stands with Michelle sitting next to her. On the right, they were both standing, and Amara had pulled Michelle into a kiss that was very definitely not of cousinly affection. In fact, it was almost just like when…

Serena's eyes got wide as it finally hit her. The idea was crazy; these two were cousins after all. But it was making more and more sense.

After jotting down one last thing in her diary, Serena grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair and headed for the front door. She yelled to her parents that she was going out for awhile and left without waiting for a reply. She hoped Raye wouldn't mind her stopping by this late, but she needed to talk to someone about this now.

The diary sat open on Serena's desk, the magazine half on top of it. The last word she had written was visible in the weak light from her desk light. "Darien."