Dream World Part 3: The Forgotten Guardian
A Sailor Moon fanfic by Mike Chenoweth [Ultrace@aol.com]
September, 1996
Darian was lying comfortably in his bed, feeling absolutely safe. It wasn't everyone who had several guards to look after and protect them. And even if they did, none of them had Laurana.
He knew she wasn't his mother; his mother died before Darian had ever known her. But Laurana was the next best thing: a mother, sister and best friend all rolled up into one.
She was quite pretty, with blond hair and very dark green eyes, and she always looked better in her royal uniform than any of the others. But all her beauty couldn't hide that she was very sad tonight.
Darian could feel it as she closed the shutters around his windows. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Why aren't you happy?"
She looked across to him with a reassuring smile that was blatantly false, even if he didn't notice. "I hope, young Prince, it's something you never have to understand."
Darian was puzzled. "What is it?"
Laurana looked out the last open window, toward the stars. "I am in love."
If Darian was puzzled before, it was nothing compared to this. "Isn't that good?"
"Only if whoever you love loves you back," she said. "If they don't, then love just becomes a hollow ache in your heart."
"Who doesn't love you?" Darian asked, almost as if he were going to have someone punished for such a crime.
"A tall, strong man, with the most wonderful face..." Each word was spoken with joy. Then she seemed to come back to harsh reality. She closed the last shutter.
"He said he doesn't love you?"
"No, he didn't say that to me," Laurana said.
"Then how do you know?" Darian asked, trying very hard to understand.
"I don't know that he doesn't. I just don't know that he does, that's all."
Darian had the solution. "Then why don't you ask him?" he suggested, proudly.
Laurana smiled, genuinely this time, at youthful innocence. "That wouldn't be proper of my position. If he cares for me, he will come to me and tell me so."
"That's silly."
"Yes, you're right, it is," she agreed, thinking to herself how unfortunate it was that most adults couldn't see what a ten-year-old boy could.
Darian was also thinking. "So, what will I do when I fall in love?" he asked.
One by one, Laurana was blowing out the candles that lit the room. She looked at him a little suspiciously, out of the corner of her eye. "You've got a few years before you need to worry about that," she said. "But when you find someone you love, give them a flower--a rose, because that's the greatest symbol of love."
A knock at the door prevented her from going on. When she opened it, she found Emery. "Is the Prince alright?" he asked.
"Yes, we were just talking, that's all," she told him.
"Did you want to postpone our practice until another night?"
"Oh, no, certainly not," Laurana said quickly. "I'll be out in a minute."
Suddenly, Darian knew. She must be talking about Emery! He was tall (well, everyone was tall to Darian, but Emery was taller than others) and she always acted kind of funny around him...
She closed the door and proceeded to extinguish the rest of the candles. Turning to Darian, "Now promise me you won't tell this to anyone," she said, fixing him with a stare that carried some sort of motherly control.
He couldn't resist it. "I promise."
"Good, and goodnight, Prince," she said, with her usual sweet smile. She closed the door and left him alone in the dark, with light coming in only from the cracks around the windows and door. It was barely enough for him to see by once his eyes had adjusted. He lay there for a while, thinking about how sad she had been earlier.
`If you give someone a rose when you love them... It's not really telling them...' he thought.
Emery's room was only a little way down the hall. Darian managed to make it there and back without ever being seen by Rand. He fell asleep imagining how happy Laurana would be.
------------------
"Well, Amy? Any luck?" Mina asked.
Prompted by the attack a day before, the five of them, along with with Luna and Artemis, called a meeting at the temple that afternoon.
Rei and Lita had told Amy what she need to know about the monster while Serena, strangely quiet, simply confirmed whether or not something was correct when the others asked her.
"No good," Amy said, after watching the computer evaluate its information. "Based on the monster's goals--which seemed to be robbing the stores--and the proximity of certain kinds of stores, we've narrowed the most likely locations for another attack down to 113, but that's too many for us to effectively cover, especially as they're scattered all about the city. There's still no way to tell where they're coming from, either." She stopped and yawned, something unusual for her.
"Stay up too late studying last night?" Lita asked, with a wry smile.
"Actually, no," Amy said, looking uneasy. "I didn't sleep very well because I... Had a nightmare..."
Rei looked at her, surprised. "You too?"
Suddenly, Serena's attention became focused. "I bumped into Darian jogging on the way to school this morning. He said he had a strange dream..." She paused, and then went on, clearly upset. "It was about him and another woman..."
For a moment, the other six were stunned. Rei snapped out of it first. "Come on, Serena... Just because another woman was in his dream doesn't mean anything. You know you're the one he loves." Then a pang of worry crossed Rei's mind as she thought the other woman might have been her--if she somehow showed up in Darian's dreams, Serena would be devastated. "Did he tell you who it was?" she cautiously asked.
"He just said it was someone from a real long time ago, but he didn't want to talk about it," Serena said, not at all cheered by Rei's attempt to dissuade her fears.
Luna stood up, stretching. "I'm beginning to think that Molly's dream may not have been a coincidence after all. Did any of the rest of you have any strange dreams or nightmares?" she asked. Serena, Lita and Mina couldn't remember any.
"In my dream, the temple exploded," Rei said, not wanting to go into any of the horrific details. "What was yours about?" she asked Amy.
"I was a surgeon, faced with a dying patient that I couldn't help at all..." Amy told her, shivering a little at the thought. She'd never experienced anything so terrible in her entire life. "I couldn't go back to sleep after that."
Rei shook her head. "Me neither."
"These could have something to do with the recent attacks, even if they don't seem related," Artemis said. "We should probably check them out."
"Could someone be trying to send us a message? Maybe a warning?" Lita asked, thinking of the dreams that Darian had only recently stopped having about the harm that would come to Serena if the two of them stayed together.
"You'd think they could be less confusing about it, if they are," Mina said.
"I was going to the library later on to return some books," Amy commented. "While I'm there, I'll pick up a few on dreams, and we can try to interpret them. If someone is trying to tell us something, we should be able to figure it out."
"If Molly and Darian are somehow connected to this, we need to find out everything we can about their dreams too," Luna said. She turned to Serena. "I don't think Darian would mind telling us what we need to know, but can you get Molly to give you more details about her dream?"
"I think so."
"I'm sure Darian would rather tell you than us about his dreams, too..." Amy began.
Serena didn't look at all pleased with the idea of knowing anything more about a woman from Darian's past. Rei quickly jumped in to spare her. "Well, why don't we save time. You and I can go talk to Darian, while Serena's with Molly," she told Amy. Serena looked uplifted.
"If you say so..." Amy said, sounding unconvinced.
Darian had considered ignoring whoever it was at the door. He wasn't really in the mood to talk to anyone at the moment, but it might be important so he answered it anyway. He only hoped it wasn't Serena; their run-in earlier had gone pretty badly.
"Uh, hi Rei, Amy," he said when he saw the two of them standing there. He tried to think of a way tell them he didn't want to see anyone.
"Can we come in?" Rei asked, before he could come up with one.
"Sure... Need help with something?" he asked.
Rei decided to get straight to the point. "Sort of. You see, Serena told us you had a pretty strange dream last night, and we think it might have something to do with monsters that have been attacking."
"Really?" Darian asked, moving aside to let Amy and Rei come in. He couldn't see any possible connection between the two events.
Rei explained about Molly's, Amy's and her own dreams over the past two days, and the two attacks that had taken place so far. Darian, in turn, recounted the entirety of his dream to them, explaining that it must have taken place while he was the Prince of the Earth Kingdom and Serena the Princess of the Moon. Rei was relieved that her assumption about his dream was way off the mark; despite the occasional misunderstanding, Darian and Serena were happy together. She did not want to come between them.
"But it's more than a dream," he said. "I knew when I woke up, it was something that really happened. It has to be part of my past that I haven't ever been able to remember--until now. I didn't mean to snap at Serena this morning. I've just been edgy ever since last night. I know I've seen her--Laurana--somewhere else."
"Where?" Rei asked, finally sitting down on Darian's couch; Amy did the same. They could be there a while.
Darian hesitated, as though concentrating. "That's just it, I don't know," he said, finally. "Every time I try to figure out where I've seen her, my mind goes blank, like I've forgotten her again."
Amy looked thoughtful, even more so than normal. What Darian was describing sounded a lot like a self-imposed memory block, not just a simple memory lapse, but in order for that to happen, something traumatic usually had to occur... Something Darian would have wanted to forget.
However, if that was the case, the fact that the memory was now returning indicated that Darian really did want to remember. If his dream did have something to do with all of this, they would need to find out why.
Without hypnosis or other complex techniques of the subconscious that none of them were qualified to perform, there was no way to definitely bring back whatever events he had forgotten. But perhaps there was a safe way to trigger his memory, and that might help him figure out why he'd forgotten Laurana.
Amy looked casually around Darian's living room and spotted what she was looking for: a notebook and several pens. "Darian, would you mind if I tried to help you remember where you might have seen her?" she asked.
"Sure," he gratefully said. Then, after a moment, "How?"
"Just trust me," she said.
At her request, Darian pulled up one of his chairs and sat down, facing the wall. He didn't see her pick up the notebook and pen.
This would be a crude attempt, but as long as Darian didn't know what she was doing, it might just work.
"Relax," Amy said. "Close your eyes. Trust me. Let all your cares melt away. All that you see is dark and empty..." She continued for a minute or so with similar remarks until she was confident that Darian's mind was relaxed, neither asleep nor in a subconscious state, but certainly less likely to question what she asked of him. Calmly, she spoke. "Do you remember your dream?"
"Yes."
"Describe Laurana to me."
Off to the side, Rei listened as Darian went into detail about one of his childhood guardians. Quietly and thoroughly, Amy was making a sketch on a sheet of paper. Rei was impressed. With some training, Amy could make a career as an artist instead of a doctor. `It must come from drawing all those equations or something,' she thought, jokingly.
Every once in a while, Amy would ask a question about a certain feature of Laurana's, or gently remind Darian to relax. By the time half an hour had passed, Darian was so calm that he wasn't even aware of what was happening. When he stopped talking and Amy didn't ask anything else, he simply sat there. They couldn't even tell whether he was still awake.
Amy added some details to the picture that Darian hadn't told her, but they weren't necessary for Rei to recognize the face. `He can't have remembered this,' she told herself. `It has to have been just a dream.'
Amy hesitated for a few moments before bringing Darian out of his trance. This hadn't been what she was expecting and might turn out to be a more painful memory--if that's what it was--to Darian than she predicted. But she decided that he really did want to know--and had that right. She shook him lightly, bringing him to almost immediately. After a minute of checking to make sure he was back to his senses, she handed him the notebook. "This is who Laurana was, isn't it?"
Darian looked at the sketch. His mind recoiled, trying to avoid what he was seeing, but this wasn't a memory it could blank out. The picture was there, right in front of him, for all his conscious to focus on.
Memories flooded back to him and brought tears to his eyes. He forgot all about Amy, Rei, and everything else but himself and the woman.
"Zoisite..."
