Five nights later, Nephrite awoke, thinking he had heard a voice. But the house was quiet and dark, except for the starlight coming through the skylight over the bed. Molly slept peacefully beside him.

She was so beautiful, so perfect, despite the scars that marred her wrists. He ran his fingers across her hip, her back, her arm, marveling at the silkiness of her skin. He wondered if she had put on a little weight in the month and a half since their marriage; her breasts looked fuller, and her belly had developed a small, perfect rounding. That was good. He didn't understand why women in this place and time were so obsessed with being thin. A woman should look like a woman, not a like misshapen boy.

She looked so young, though, almost too young. Maybe he shouldn't have rushed things. Maybe they should have dated for a while, and had a long engagement and a big wedding with a fancy reception. But it had seemed foolish to waste time when he knew what he wanted and Molly seemed to want the same thing. He whispered to her, "I would have worn a tux for you if you had wanted me to." Then he wrapped himself around her, and slept, and dreamed....

....Or maybe not. He was looking up at the stars. They mocked him, calling him a liar and a coward. He looked for answers and saw only his own damnation. You haven't told her yet. It was the voice that had told him he could come back. How long do you intend to go on living a lie?

I don't have the courage. She'll hate me.

She'll hate you more the longer the lie goes on. You must tell her soon, before the choice is taken out of your hands. You will lose your one chance of forgiveness.

All right, then, I'll tell her, he said bitterly. I'll tell her that I killed her.

Is that all?

Isn't that bad enough? What else could there possibly be?

You must not have seen it, when I gave you back the memory. Look again.

He saw, again, the young woman's terror as he raised his sword above her; heard the scream that was horribly cut off when the sword made contact. Again and again, and he didn't understand what he was supposed to be looking for. I killed her, he cried. Isn't that bad enough? Please stop!

The memory stopped, replaced by another one. He was striding through the halls of the Moon Palace at midnight. His heart, his mind, his body were filled with an agony that he never could have imagined. Beryl's assault on him had been relentless. He was horrified at what was happening to him, at the desires, which once would have sickened him, that now were all he thought about: the power to crush all those idle, stupid, weak cowards for whom he had such contempt; the perfect knowledge he could gain from the stars if only it was sought in complete darkness. Worse, Beryl herself had come to him one night and shown him that the instincts of love and passion were only weak, pathetic manifestations of the desire to force one's will upon another person, to make the weaker person one's slave, to have power over anyone one chose. He felt sickened, filthy, and disgusted from her touch, but at the same time he craved the power she had taught him about. There was no love, no right and wrong, no mercy or justice. There was only power, which belonged only to those who were strong enough, brave enough, wise enough to take it and use it.

Once, he had vowed to take his own life before he let the darkness overcome him. Earlier that night, before his hasty, solitary Transport to the Moon, he had sat in his chambers for an hour, pressing the edge of a dagger against the veins of his neck. One simple, swift motion was all it would have taken, but he couldn't do it. Death now held a terror for him that it never had before. He was forsworn, the darkness was overwhelming him, and there was only one escape left to him, only one way for him to be saved.

He reached his destination, a door near the private apartments of the Queen and the Princess. "Maira," he groaned, leaning against the door frame.

She opened the door. She was so lovely, in her white lace-trimmed nightgown, her red hair rippling loose over her shoulders and down her back. "General Nephre'im!" she exclaimed softly. She let him in and closed the door. "What's wrong?"

He tried to speak, but couldn't. He fell to his knees in front of her. She put her arms around him and pressed his head against her belly. He wrapped his arms tightly around her hips, clutching at handfuls of white linen. "I -- I can't do it anymore. I can't -- The darkness -- I can't fight it any more," he wept. She stroked his long hair, and let him cry. "It took Mallory and Zoyan and Jederin, and it's going to take me. I can't fight it alone any more, Maira. Please help me. Please save me from the darkness. Help me."

"Nephre'im." Gently, she made him stand, then took his hands and led him to her bed. She pushed his uniform jacket off of his shoulders, and unbuttoned his shirt. Then she untied the bow at the neck of her nightgown and let the gown slide over her shoulders to the floor. She gave herself to him freely, without hesitation or question, and for a time he was able to escape his agony. Afterwards, she slept in his arms while he tried to think of a place where they would be safe from Beryl and the darkness. Surely, somewhere in all the galaxy, there must be a corner somewhere where they could hide, where evil would never find them....

....Well done, Nephrite. The hated voice came into his mind. You have learned well. You've used her for your own purposes, as I taught you. You've taken from her that which can never be replaced -- her purity -- and left in its stead the seeds of shame and despair. You've destroyed that which you love most in serving your own desires. You are truly worthy to be my servant.

He sat up, knowing with cold certainty the truth of Beryl's words. It was too late for him; the darkness had claimed him before he sought Maira's help. He was lost. He pulled on his pants, shirt, and boots, leaving his jacket on the floor with Maira's nightgown. He was no longer an Imperial General of the Realm of Earth. Without a word to the sleeping girl -- what words could ever make up for what he had done to her? -- he strode out of the room, leaving the door open. As he walked down the corridor, darkness veiled his mind and throbbed through his veins. He heard Maira's voice, crying out his name, far behind him. It meant nothing to him. When the dark power was strong enough, he put up a hand and said the words Beryl had taught him.

A black doorway opened before him. He walked through and it closed. It would never open again. He walked through dim, cold, echoing corridors until he reached the vast throne room he had been shown in visions. The other three were already there. Mallory and Zoyan -- Malachite and the female Zoisite, now -- had looks of malicious satisfaction on their faces, but he thought he saw a shade of dismay in Jederin's -- Jadeite's -- eyes. The look meant nothing to Nephre'im.

Beryl sat on her throne on a dais high above the floor. Nephre'im knelt to her on one knee. "I am yours, my Queen. The humans are weak, stupid, contemptible creatures, who stand in the way of the domination of the Universe by the strong. They must be destroyed."

Beryl smiled coldly. "I knew you would come, sooner or later." She walked down the steps of the dais and took his hand. She bit deeply into his wrist, and stepped back while his blood flowed freely. He remained kneeling in the spreading pool of blood, until the flow changed from red to green. With a touch, Beryl closed the wound. "You are mine now, Nephrite."

He bowed his head to her, then stood and walked over to join the other three Generals of the Dark Kingdom. Beryl returned to her throne. "So," she said, "now that all my generals are here, we may begin."

* * * * * * * *

See what you left behind....

....He heard the sound of heartbroken sobbing, which did not end when the vision began. Maira sat up in her bed, crying helplessly, the sheet clutched in front of her body, her hair flowing over her shoulders. Queen Serenity and Princess Serena, wearing long white dressing gowns, hurried into the handmaid's room. "Maira! What's wrong?" the Queen asked. Then she saw the nightgown and the General's coat, discarded on the floor, the state of the bed, the girl's nakedness. "Has a man been in here, Maira?"

The crying girl nodded, and tried to wipe the tears off of her face with her fist. Princess Serena sat beside her and put her arms around her.

"Nephre'im," the Queen stated. The girl nodded again, breaking into fresh sobs. "Did he force you, Maira?"

"N -- no. I tried to help him." The words came out shaky, almost unintelligible, between sobs. "He asked me to help him fight the darkness. I tried, but it was too late. He's lost. I couldn't help him, and now he's gone. Into the darkness. Like the others."

"No!" the Queen gasped. "Dear gods, no! He was the last one. How will the Earth stand against the evil now? How will any of us survive?"

"I'm sorry, my Queen," Maira wept. "I tried to help him, and I failed. I'm so sorry."

"Oh, Maira." The Queen sat on Maira's other side, and put her arms around both girls; Serena was also crying now. "Oh, my poor girls. I don't know what's going to happen to us."

* * * * * * * *

Months passed, Beryl's plans were finalized, the Earth fell to the Negaverse, and the attack on the Moon began. Then came the final assault, on the Moon Palace. The Generals and their troops had been ordered to kill every living thing within the palace, old and young, weak and strong, male and female. Nephrite stood over his next victim, a young woman who had slipped in a pool of blood while trying to hurry some children to safety. Her long, wavy, flame-colored hair fell across her face and shoulders, her blood-soaked blue dress was tangled about her legs. She looked up, saw the sword poised to strike her, saw the face of the man holding the sword. "Nephre'im, no!" she cried.

Look, the voice ordered Nephrite. Look at what you did.

The scene seemed frozen. He looked, but didn't know what he was looking for. I don't see anything! he cried, and then he did see....

The girl was not holding an arm up in front of her, in the usual instinctive gesture to ward off a blow. Rather, both her arms were wrapped protectively around something held close against her breast. Whatever it was, it was veiled by her hair and obscured by the dreadful purplish-orange light. Then the scene shifted slightly. Her hair and the light moved just enough that he could see a small head of fuzzy dark red hair, a crumpled newborn face, a tiny fist curled around a lock of the mother's hair. A son, the voice said. One day old.

The Nephrite in the memory saw, understood, hesitated briefly, then brought the sword down --

* * * * * * * *

"Noooo!"

The unearthly scream made Molly sit up suddenly, her heart pounding painfully. Nephrite was sitting up beside her, shaking badly, tears on his face as he stared at some horrible, heartbreaking scene that only he could see. She touched his shoulder gently. "Nephrite, it's ok. It was just a dream."

His hair flew as he whipped his head around to stare at her. The wild look in his eyes made her shrink away. Abruptly, he pulled on the boxer shorts and jeans he'd been wearing earlier, then went downstairs. Molly longed to follow him, but that look on his face, the sound of his scream, had truly frightened her. She heard him downstairs, shouting out counts and the names of patterns as he went through half a dozen Kharandha'i routines. Then she heard the swishing, clanking sounds of the weight machine. She thought she should go downstairs and remind him that he shouldn't be lifting weights so soon after his wrist surgery, but she was afraid. "What's happened to you, Nephrite?" she whispered into the darkness.

After a while, silence returned to the house. Molly waited for him to come back upstairs, but he didn't. Eventually, she grew more afraid for him than of him. She had to go see if he was all right. She felt around on the floor beside the bed for the clothing that had been discarded there earlier that night, and came up with her bra and underpants and his shirt. After putting these on, she went downstairs.

He wasn't in the main room, or the exercise room, or the kitchen. The doors to the patio and the front door were still locked. She ventured over to the doorway to the chapel, where, she realized, she had not yet been since she had lived in this house.

The chapel was dusty and empty of furnishings, and very dimly lit by what little starlight was able to make its way through the stained glass windows. Her eyes adjusted, and she saw Nephrite sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall opposite the doorway. She walked over to him; he looked up and saw her, and with a gesture made a small, glowing, fuzzy ball of light appear. His knees were pulled up, with his forearms resting on them. He held a glass of whiskey and ice in his left hand. The whiskey bottle was on the floor between his bare feet. This was bad; he rarely drank, and never more than one or two drinks at a time. She wondered how much he had drunk tonight.

"Nephrite," she said softly, as gently as she could. "Please tell me."

"Don't look at me like that." With the fingers of his braced right hand, he was turning his wedding ring around and around on his finger.

"Like what?"

"Like you're afraid of me."

"I'm sorry." She sat down next to him and tried to take the glass from him, but he tightened his grip on it.

"Molly, what are you the most afraid of me saying to you?"

"I don't know." What a strange question. "I guess, that you aren't able to stay, that you have to go back. Or, that you don't love me anymore and there's someone else."

He chuckled a little, joylessly. "I've got a normal life expectancy, another forty, fifty, sixty years. As for there being someone else..." He finally met her eyes. "Molly, there could never be anyone else for me. You are my other self, my better self. Without you, I'm only a pitiful shadow of the man that I can be when you're with me. You are my dearest love, my best friend, the queen of my heart and the treasure of my soul."

Molly couldn't speak. This declaration of love was the last thing she had expected.

"Do you know what I'm most afraid of you saying to me, Molly?"

"What?"

"That you hate me."

"Oh, Nephrite!" she cried. "How could I ever hate you?"

He was silent for a while. He emptied his glass, poured another generous serving of whiskey, and drank it slowly. "I'm a murderer, Molly," he finally said.

"I know you're a soldier, and soldiers have to kill. It's their duty. No matter what side they're on, they can't really be called murderers because of it."

"No, Molly, I'm a deliberate, cold-blooded murderer of innocent, helpless people."

"Who, Nephrite? Tell me."

Another long silence. "You," he whispered. "And our child."

"Oh my --" she said hoarsely. "What do you mean?"

In a quiet, flat voice, he told her the ending of the story of Maira the handmaid and General Nephre'im, starting with Beryl's assault on him, going through the night he had come to Maira's room, begging her to help him, and how they had lain together. He told her Beryl's words to him afterwards, and how, convinced that he was lost, he had given himself to the Negaverse. He told her of the battles to conquer Earth and the final battle for the Moon Kingdom, and how Maira the handmaid and her newborn infant had fallen, literally, across his path of bloodshed. "I looked at you, Molly, and I knew who you were. I remembered that I had loved you, and I knew you had borne my child, you were holding him in your arms, trying to protect him. And knowing those things, I killed you both."

She stared straight ahead, weeping silently, while fragments of memory danced in her head, dreadful things that she didn't want to look at. She knew that every word he had said was true. But how could that be? She also knew that Nephrite, her husband, the man sitting beside her now, would never do anything to harm her or the children they might have.

She looked at him. The empty look in his face frightened her more than anything else had this night. "I'm lost, Molly. The price I had to pay to come back was to tell you the truth of what I did, to you and our baby, and face your judgement. I don't see any way that you could or should forgive me, and therefore I am damned. Just, please don't hate me, if you can find a way not to."

"Have you know about this all along? The whole time we've been married?"

"I knew that I had killed you. I regained that memory the night I came back. I never had the courage to tell you. The rest, about the night I fell, and our baby, I only remembered tonight. I didn't want to tell you, but there was no way I could go on living with you without telling you. It would have been the biggest lie of my life, to let you go on thinking there was anything good about me."

A sob escaped Molly's mouth. She covered her face with her hands, and tried to think. After a while, she got up and left the chapel. She went into the exercise room and picked up Nephrite's greatsword. He had used it to rescue her, once upon a time, and in so doing had signed his own death warrant.

He looked up at her in genuine surprise when she came back into the chapel. He had refilled his glass. She held the sword towards him, hilt first. "What you did a thousand years ago, would you do it again?"

"Molly! No, of course not!"

"I know." She set the sword down, after thanking it for its help, and knelt beside Nephrite. "You are not that evil man any more. I am not Maira the handmaid any more. Once we were those people, but now we are different. Perhaps the soul of that baby will be reborn to us sometime. I know that the man you are now would never harm him or me."

"You can't absolve me that easily, Molly. I knew what I was doing when I did it. I knew I had loved you, and that you were holding my child in your arms, and I made a deliberate choice to kill you both."

"Nephrite." She held out her arms, the palms of her hands facing up, so that he could see the scars across her wrists. "When I did this, I knew what I was doing. I meant to take my own life, and I did everything I could to make sure I would die. You died to save my life, that night in the park, and I deliberately chose to throw away that gift." He brushed a finger along the scars on the wrist that was closer to him. It was the first time he had touched her since he had left their bed, how long ago? She continued speaking. "I would never, ever consider killing myself now. I am not the girl I was a year ago. Life is so precious to me, now. I've changed. And so have you." She briefly contemplated telling him about the appointment she had made for the next day, but decided not to. She didn't want to tell him anything until she was sure. "Forgiveness seems like such a hard thing to fit around a war. I mean, there's no reason why my death, or our baby's death, was any more tragic than all the other deaths in that war. It's like, if there's forgiveness for one or two of the deaths, there has to be forgiveness for all of them. I can't do that. But I do forgive you, for the two deaths out of so many that are mine to forgive. Am I making any sense?"

"Just say you don't hate me, Molly."

"Nephrite." She laughed and cried as she pressed his braced and bandaged right hand to her cheek. "Nephrite, my beloved husband, I don't hate you. Now, please, take me back upstairs to bed."

He looked at her, wide-eyed with surprise, then crushed her against him. Then, though he was slightly unsteady from the whiskey, he picked her up in his arms and did as she had asked.

* * * * * * * *