From Sailor Moon Flash!
| Featuring: | Chikara |
| IC Date: | April 2002 |
| Status: | Completed |
| Summary: | Chaos reemerging brings nightmares to the holders of dormant starseeds; Chikara's fear of failure is so crippling that it makes her an easy target. |
She knelt, weeping silently, in a field of flowers as the empty shell of a warrior ravaged the plain like wildfire.
"You did this," the flowers whispered, and she buried her face in hands and knew it to be truth.
Later, she looked up hesitantly and she realized that they weren't flowers: they were faceted crystals, and as the soulless juggernaut passed through them they exploded into fragments. Lives shattered into dust with every step.
"This is your fault," they whispered again, crowding around her so that she tried to pull herself into a smaller and smaller target. It was her fault. She didn't know how and she didn't know why, but they were right: it was her fault. It was all her fault.
The golem came ever closer, and she knew, knew without a doubt, that it was coming for her.
"You failed us," the crystals cried at her as they crumbled into nothingness. "You failed us." She knew then that there were faces attached to each of the blossom-like gems, the faces of all the people that she had failed. There were so many of them that she couldn't even catalog the images properly in her mind; they just kept coming, flying at her as she wept and tried to hide herself anew.
Then the whispers stilled, and what few of the crystals remained drew away from her and left an aching pain of nothingness where they had been. She felt the shadow pass over her before she saw it, but she knew that it was too late to run. She had failed them all, and she deserved whatever punishment befit one such as her.
She drew her shaking hands away to look up at her executioner, and she screamed.
The enemy, the destroyer of wishes, wore her face.
When Chikara woke from the nightmare, the vast curtain of her failure still wrapped around her like a shroud. She shivered, and was torn over whether or not to be pleased that her movement hadn't roused Kenrou; had he woken, he could have comforted her back to sleep, but had he woken she would have felt compelled to explain the cause of her distress.
She curled in close against his side, sure that the warmth of his presence would keep the whispers of her failure at bay.
Nevertheless, she stayed still and awake for a long time.
