Naru didn't know how long she had been dozing in a corner, huddled against a splintery wall, when she awoke, starving, sore, and groggy. The sun was coming in through the window on the other side of the shed from where it had been before. A shadow filled the doorway. The figure of a man stood silhouetted against the light outside; a familiar figure.

She gasped. "Nephrite!"

"Naru-chan," he said, his voice rough with emotion. In three strides he was kneeling in front of her and gathering her into his arms. "Naru-chan," he whispered harshly against her hair. "I'm sorry. They took my memories without asking me. Without my permission."

"They purified you without asking you first?" Even after everything she had been through, Naru wouldn't have imagined Serenity capable of such a thing. "Why would they do that?"

"Before we joined the Dark Kingdom, the other Generals and I were Endymion's Guardians. The King and Queen wanted to ensure our loyalty to them by removing our memories of the Dark Kingdom. I don't care about those memories, but Endymion and Serenity stole you from me. I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive them for that."

With those words, everything was all right again. Naru hung onto him and sobbed, joy and exhaustion overwhelming her all at once. He held her tightly, and for the first time since before the taxi crash she felt safe. For the first time since that moment beneath the tree, before the attack that had killed him, the world was as it should be.

Finally she got control of herself and pulled away from him. "I'm sorry." She rubbed at her tear-dampened cheeks and runny nose with the back of one dirty hand. "I just--It's--"

"It's all right. Everything's all right now. Come with me." He stood and reached down a hand to help her up.

Suddenly it seemed too easy, too right. She shrank back. "I'm not going back there. You can't make me."

He looked confused for a moment. "Ah," he said. He squatted down in front of her. "You're going to stay with me. I won't let them take you back to that Institute. You don't belong in a place like that."

She studied his face and saw only Nephrite there--the real Nephrite, the one she had glimpsed when they sat beneath the tree together and as he died in her arms.

"Come on, let's find a better place to talk." He stood up, and this time she took his hand and stood up with him.

Naru let him carry her through the warehouse block to a place where the chain link fence had been cut from top to bottom and pulled aside. A sleek red car was parked near the opening in the fence. Nephrite set Naru down on the sidewalk and opened the passenger door for her.

Naru climbed in and sank back into the plush leather seat. Nephrite got in the other side and started the car. The engine roared smoothly to life. They tore away from the curb in a squeal of tires. Her eyes squeezed shut, Naru dug her fingers into the upholstery and held her breath, her mind filled with the dizzying sensation of flipping end over end, down and down...

"Are you all right?" Nephrite's voice pulled her back into the here and now.

"I was in a bad car accident. That was what put me in the hospital in the first place. I can't help flashing back to it."

The car slowed noticably. "I'm sorry. I didn't know," Nephrite said.

Naru finally dared to open her eyes and look around. Though they were some distance away from the Crystal Palace, the towers still rose above everything else around them. They were now in what had been a fashionable shopping district. There was little sign of the wear and tear of the freeze and thaw here; things had been repaired and rebuilt until the area shone with its old glamor.

Nephrite stopped the car in front of a narrow marble and glass building squeezed in between two department stores. Naru recognized the name on the sign; it had been a trendy new hotel, back before everything changed. A valet in a green uniform trimmed with gold braid stepped forward from the doorway. Nephrite got out of the car as the valet opened the door for Naru, then he tossed the valet the keys. "When will you want the car back, Lord Nephrite?" the valet asked.

"I'm not sure. I'll phone downstairs when I'm ready for it."

As the valet drove off, Naru wondered how often Nephrite had come to this hotel with a woman. Not that it mattered what he had done while his memories of her had been buried. A doorman in the same uniform as the valet opened the front door for them. As they walked in, he greeted Naru as politely as if she were wearing a couture designer outfit rather than a ripped and filthy green fleece track suit. She tried not to cringe back as they walked through the small, gleaming lobby. Nephrite clearly belonged here, but she was more fit for the streets or an institution.

The clerk at the front desk greeted Nephrite. "Welcome, Lord Nephrite. We're glad to have you here. And your lovely guest." Nephrite and the desk clerk exchanged a few words, then the clerk handed Nephrite a card key.

Their suite was on the top floor of the twelve-story hotel. The windows gave a magnificent view of Crystal Tokyo spread out below them, the Palace glittering in the distance, dominating everything around it. The windows had no bars. Of course they didn't, Naru reminded herself. People weren't locked in here. The unbarred view was dizzying and far too open, and a wave of vertigo overcame her and she sat down hard on the bed. Nephrite sat down beside her. "What's wrong?"

"I'm tired and hungry. I had a bit of vertigo from looking out the window."

They sat in silence for a moment. The fact that they were together for the first time since his death had torn them apart, and alone in the luxurious room, hung heavily around them. There was really only one thing to do. Naru put her hands on Nephrite's shoulders and kissed him.

For a moment he seemed stunned. Then he pulled her into his arms and pressed himself into the kiss. Her hands tangled themselves in his hair as his hands moved over her back and hips. They tumbled back onto the bed, allowing themselves to be carried along by the wave of desire.

* * * * * * * *

They lay amid the tangled bedding, taking in the feel and warmth of each other. Naru had never imagined being so swept up in pleasure and passion, had never imagined longing to be so close to the man she was with. With Umino, she had mostly just gone along with it for his sake, while smiling and trying to find it enjoyable. A small splinter of guilt pricked at her heart. She hadn't been a good wife to Umino, and now it didn't seem fair that Umino was dead and here she was, in bed with the man she had dreamed of and longed for.

Nephrite groaned and stretched, and her guilt and regret retreated. "The room service menu should be on the table on your side," he said.

How did he know that? "So, how many women have you spent the afternoon with here like this?"

He raised an eyebrow at her, and for a second she felt embarrassed about asking. But she wasn't that love-struck schoolgirl any more. She was an adult now, she had been married and widowed and was the same age that he appeared to be. She had the right to know how things stood between them. So she kept looking him in the eyes, waiting for his answer.

"More than one," he finally said. "But you're the last."

She smiled and kissed him, then reached for the leather-bound menu.

"I want to take a shower," Naru said after Nephrite finished placing their order. She got up and padded into the bathroom. Showers had been a rare treat at the Institute, short, not particularly warm, and closely supervised by an orderly of the appropriate gender. Naru felt like it had been months or years since she had been properly clean. Nephrite joined her in the black marble shower stall and helped her wash with the rich, herbal scented soap and shampoo provided by the hotel. The touch of his strong hands made all the aches and fatigue seem to melt away. His fingers traced the faint stretch marks on her belly, but he didn't say anything about them.

When they were done in the shower, he wrapped her in a huge, fluffy white towel and put on the white terrycloth bathrobe provided by the hotel, and carried her back to the bed. The room service waiter brought their food. They ate, then made love again.

"Will you tell me now?" he asked.

Naru lay across Nephrite's chest, his hand working through the tousled waves of her hair. "Yeah," she said. "It's just hard to know where to begin."

"Begin with your name. Why did the alert from the Institute have your name as Umino Naru?"

"I was married."

"Was? You aren't now?"

"He's dead. It was someone I knew in school, I started hanging out with him and dating him after you...after you..." She couldn't say the word died. Like saying it would make it real again. "Anyway. He was there when I needed someone, and he just became a...a habit, I suppose. We got married about...I guess it would be two years ago now. I never loved him the way he deserved. I never got over you. But I guess we were mostly pretty happy. I hope he was, anyway."

"What happened to him?"

"He died in the car accident." She explained about the monsters that were causing the world to turn to ice. "The driver of the taxi we were in was driving too fast down one of the cliff roads by the bay, then he turned into a monster and abandoned the taxi, and we went off the road over the cliff. My mother was with us, and she and Umino both died. I was six months pregnant when it happened, and I lost the baby too."

She told him how she had tried to set the record straight on how the accident had happened, but no one believed her. The taxi driver's body had been found in the wreckage, so how could he have disappeared from the car? And anyway, those monsters were nothing more than an urban myth. Her traumatized mind only made them seem real to her. "Usagi could have told them I wasn't lying. She could have convinced them I wasn't crazy. But she didn't, I guess because the Senshi were in the middle of this battle and she didn't want to reveal her identity. So that was when they transferred me from the regular hospital to the mental institution."

She told him about her time in the Institute, including the long night of the Freeze. She skimmed over most of the small discomforts and petty humiliations, but described the day when she had been taken to see Neo-Queen Serenity, and the horrible pink velour track suit with the word CHICK appliqued in silver fabric on the backside. That part seemed almost funny now. "It was so embarrassing. Usagi--Serenity--looked so beautiful and regal, exactly like a queen, and here I was with my bad hair and that stupid outfit."

"Why didn't you let her purify you?"

"I just couldn't. Having only happy memories and feelings about you and Umino and my mom would have been a lie. It wouldn't have been right, to only have happy memories and feelings about people I loved who were dead because of me, and of a baby who I never even got to hold."

He held her more tightly, and they were silent for a moment.

"That was the day I met Mumeishi," she went on.

"No one. The one in charge of the resistance? I thought you meant no one was in charge, that it was leaderless."

"No. Mumeishi. I think he must have been some sort of criminal. Maybe a yakuza boss, but never getting blood on his own hands. I believe the violent criminals were kept in the Protective Custody section. I was moved to the Independent Living Section some time after the purification day. We could come and go from our rooms and there was a TV lounge and a dining hall. He was there too." She told him how Mumeishi had gone among all the residents in the Independent Living section of the Institute, talking about the injustice of the purification law, and how he had sources on the outside and also an orderly as an ally. "He was planning something. Some people had managed to break the purification, and were refusing to be re-purified, and he wanted to find out from them how the purification had broken. I did everything I could to get him to trust me, and told him if he could get me out of there, I would help him. I don't know exactly what he's planning. Like I said, I think he's involved with some kind of criminal organization and also that he has powers of some kind, like you or Sailor Moon." Then she described her escape from the Institute, her capture by Mumeishi's henchmen, and her escape from them. Had all that only happened last night?

"Whatever he's planning to do, it sounds like trouble," Nephrite said. "Assuming he's able to do anything at all; it might all be just talk."

"He managed to get me out of the Institute and have me kidnapped. I don't think we should underestimate what he can do."

"You're right. That was always my downfall when I was with the Dark Kingdom, underestimating my adversaries."

"What do you think we should do about Mumeishi?" she asked.

"At the moment, I'm not particularly inclined to defend Endymion and Serenity's methods."

"Neither am I. I don't like what they did to me, putting me back in that place just because I wouldn't let them take away my memories and emotions. She should have known I'm not dangerous, she should have known she could trust me. And I don't like what they did to you. I can't believe Serenity would purify someone without their consent. But if we don't do anything to stop Mumeishi, I'm afraid people might get hurt."

At that moment, Nephrite's cell phone rang. Grumbling a curse, Nephrite leaned over the edge of the bed, groped through his clothing, and came back up with his phone. Looking at the display, he frowned. "What?" he said into the phone. A pause while he listened. "I'm busy." Another pause. "Very funny. Look, I need to talk to the three of you. Not at the Palace, though. You know that fenced-off warehouse block, about five or six kilometers north of the Palace? Meet us on the north side of the block tomorrow morning. Seven o'clock." Another pause. "No, I won't. I think Crystal Tokyo can survive without my presence for another twelve hours or so." He put the phone on the nightstand. "I want to talk about this with the other Guardians," he said to Naru. "And I want you there with me when I meet with them."

"But they'll know I escaped from the Institute. Won't they report me?"

"They won't, not after I explain the situation. They were purified too, and I don't think they're going to be any happier about it than I was."

"Okay, but all I've got to wear is that stupid green track suit and it's all ruined. I can't go out anywhere."

"No problem." He picked up the hotel phone and pushed the button to reach the concierge desk. "Yes. I'd like you to send someone to buy several women's outfits, size--" He looked Naru up and down. "What size?"

She tried to remember her clothing size. It had been so long since she had bought anything new, and with the weight she had lost, she was probably down at least a size. "Um, nine? Maybe seven."

"Get duplicates in sizes seven and nine, we'll return the ones that don't fit. Several outfits, nice but practical. And underclothes. And shoes. Several sizes, we'll return the ones that don't fit. Bill it all to my room." He hung up the phone. "Problem solved. Now, we probably have at least an hour until someone comes by with your clothes. Do you want to eat again, or do something else?"

She raised herself over him on her elbows, and smiled. "Guess."