Yeah. I wanted a Diamond/Usagi fic. I'm growing sick and tired of not finding many really good ones, so I wrote my own. Completely AU, and completely screwing with things. Just warning you now. I've probably screwed with the natural balance, but who cares? Extreme OOC-ness, time-lines are completely fucked, and no moon-princess. Oh, and dragons are an everyday occurrence in this fic.

DISCLAIMER: Sailor Moon, as far as I'm aware, will never belong to me, not matter how hard I wish it.

By: Ceris Malfoy

She was never quite sure whether it was the cold that brought the ice-dragon or the ice-dragon that brought the cold. That was the sort of question that often troubled her brothers Shingo and Motoki (1), who were three and four years older (2) than her respectively and insatiably curious, but Usagi did not care about such things. So long as the cold and the snow and the ice-dragon all arrived on schedule, she was content.

She always knew when they were due because of her birthday. Usagi was a Winter Child, born during the most horrible freeze that anyone could remember. Even Old Hino-sama, who lived on the next farm and remembered such things that had happened before anyone else was born, said that it had been the worst. People still talked about that freeze. Usagi often heard them.

They talked about other things as well. They said it was the chill of that terrible freeze that killed her mother; stealing in during the long night of labor past the great fire that Usagi's father had built. They said that the chill slithered under the layer of blankets that covered the birthing bed. And they said that the cold had entered Usagi in the womb, that her skin had been pale blue and icy to the touch when she came forth, and that she had never warmed in all the years since. The winter had touched her, left its mark upon her, and made her its own.

It was true that Usagi had always been a child apart. She was a very somber little girl who seldom cared to play with others. She was beautiful, people said, but in a strange, distant sort of way, with her pale skin and white-silver hair and wide silver-blue eyes. She smiled, but not often. No one had ever seen her cry. Once when she was five, she had stepped upon a nail imbedded in a board that lay concealed beneath a snow-bank. It had gone clear through her foot. But Usagi had not wept or screamed even then. She had pulled her foot loose and walked back to the house, leaving a trail of blood in the snow, and when she had gotten there she had said only, "Father, I hurt myself." The sulks and tempers and tears of ordinary children were not for her. (3)

Even her family knew that Usagi was different. Her father was a huge, gruff bear of a man (4) who had little use for people in general, but a smile always broke across his face when Motoki or Shingo pestered him with questions, and he was full of hugs and laughter for Minako (5), Usagi's older sister by five years, who was golden and warm, and flirted shamelessly with all the local boys. Every so often he would hug Usagi as well, especially when he was drunk, which was frequent during the long winters. But there would be no smiles then. He would only wrap his arms around her, and pull her small body tight against him with all his massive strength, sob deep in his chest, and fat wet tears would run down his ruddy cheeks. He never hugged her at all during the summers. During the summers he was too busy.

Everyone was busy during the summers except Usagi. Motoki and Shingo would work with their father in the fields and ask endless questions about this and that, learning everything a farmer had to know. When they were not working they would run with their friends to the river, and have adventures. Minako ran the house and did the cooking, and worked a bit at the inn by the crossroads during the busy season. The innkeeper's daughters, Ami, Michiru, and Setsuna, were her friends, and his only son, Mamoru, was much more than a friend, and she would always come back giggly and full of gossip and news from travelers and soldiers and the Emperor's messengers. For Minako, Motoki, and Shingo the summers were the best time, and all three of them were too busy for Usagi.

Their father was busiest of all. A thousand things needed to be done each day, and he did them, and found a thousand more. He worked from dawn to dusk. His muscles grew hard and lean in the summer, and he stank from sweat each night when he came in from the fields. But he always came in smiling. After supper, he would sit with his sons and tell them stories and answer their seemingly endless supply of questions, or teach Minako things she did not know about cooking or stroll down to the inn. He was a summer man, truly.

He never drank in the summer, except for a cup of wine now and again to celebrate his brother's visits.

That was the main reason why Usagi's older siblings loved the summers, when the world was green and hot and bursting with life. It was only in summer that Uncle Jin (6), their father's younger brother, came to call. Uncle Jin was a dragonrider in service to the Emperor, a tall, slender man with a face like a noble. Dragons cannot stand the cold, so when winter fell, Uncle Jin and his wing would fly south. But each summer he returned, radiant in the Emperor's green-and-gold uniform, en route to the battlegrounds to the north and west of them. The war had been going on for all of Usagi's life.

Whenever Uncle Jin came north, he would bring presents; toys from the Emperor's city, crystal and gold jewelry, candies, and always a bottle of some expensive wine that he and his brother could share. He would grin at Minako and make her blush with his compliments, and amuse Motoki and Shingo with tales of war and castles and dragons. As for Usagi, he often tried to coax a smile out of her, with gifts and jests and hugs. He hardly ever succeeded.

For all his good nature, Usagi did not like Uncle Jin; when Uncle Jin was there, it meant that winter was far away.

Besides, there had been a night when she was only six, and they thought her long asleep, that she overheard them talking over wine.

"A solemn little thing," Uncle Jin said. "You ought to be kinder to her, Kenji. You cannot blame her for what happened."

"Can't I?" he father replied, his voice thick with wine. "No, I suppose not. But it is hard. She looks like Tsuki, but she has none of Tsuki's warmth. The winter is in her, you know. Whenever I touch her I feel the chill, and I remember that it was for her that Tsuki had to die."

"You are cold to her. You do not love her as you do the others."

Usagi remembered the way her father had laughed then. "Love her? Ah, Jin. I loved her best of all, my little baby-girl. But she has never loved me back. There is nothing in her for me, or you, any of us. She is such a cold little girl." And then he began to weep, even though it was summer and Uncle Jin was with him. In her bed, Usagi had listened and wished that Uncle Jin would fly away. She did not quite comprehend all that she had heard, not then, but she remembered it, and the understanding came later.

She did not cry; not at six, when she heard, or ten, when she finally understood. Uncle Jin left a few days later, and her older siblings waved to him excitedly when his wing passed overhead, thirty great dragons in proud formation against the summer sky. Usagi watched with her small hands by her sides.

There were other visits in other summers, but Uncle Jin never made her smile, no matter what he brought her.

Usagi's smiles were a secret hoard, and she used them only in winter. She could hardly wait for her birthday to come, and with it the cold. For in winter she was a special child.

She had known it since she was very little, playing with the others in the snow. The cold had never bothered her the way it did Motoki, Shingo, and Minako and their friends. Often Usagi stayed outside alone for hours after the others had fled in search of warmth, or run off to Old Hino-sama's to eat the hot vegetable soup he liked to make for all the children.

Usagi would find a secret place in the far corner of the fields, a different place each winter. There she would build a tall white castle, patting the snow in place with small bare hands, shaping it into towers and battlements like those Uncle Jin often talked about on the Emperor's castle in the city. She would snap icicles off from the lower branches of trees, and use them for spires and spikes and guardposts, ranging them all about her castle. And often in the dead of winter would come a brief thaw and a sudden freeze, and overnight her snow castle would turn to ice, as hard and strong as she imagined real castles to be. All through the winters she would build on her castles, and no one ever knew. But always the spring would come, and a thaw not followed by a freeze; then all the ramparts and walls would melt away, and Usagi would begin to count the days until her birthday came again.

Her winter castles were seldom vacant. At the first frost each year, the ice-lizards would come wriggling out of their burrows, and the fields would be infested with the tiny bluish-white creatures, darting this way and that, hardly seeming to touch the snow as they skimmed across it. All the children played with the ice-lizards. But the others were clumsy and cruel, and they would snap the fragile little animals in two, breaking them between their fingers as they might break an icicle hanging from a roof. Even her brothers, who were too kind to ever do something like that cruel, sometimes grew curious, and held the lizards too long in their efforts to examine them. The heat of their hands would make them melt and burn and finally die.

Usagi's hands were cool and gentle, and she could hold the lizards as long as she liked without harming them, which always made Motoki and Shingo pout and ask angry questions. Sometimes she would lie in the cold, damp snow and let the lizards crawl all over her, delighting in the light touch of their feet as they skittered across her face. Sometimes she would wear ice lizards hidden in her hair as she went about her chores, though she took care never to take them inside where the heat of the fire would kill them. Always she would gather up leftovers after the family ate, and bring them to the secret place where her castle was a-building, and there she would scatter them.

So the castles she erected were full of kings and courtiers every winter; small furry creatures that snuck out from the woods, winter birds with pale white plumage, and hundreds and hundreds of squirming, struggling ice-lizards, cold and quick and fat. Usagi like the ice-lizards better than any of the pets the family had kept over the years.

But it was the ice-dragon that she loved.

She did not know when she had first seen it. It seemed to her that it had always been a part of her life, a vision glimpsed during the deep of winter, sweeping across the frigid sky on wings serene and blue. Ice-dragons were rare, even in those days, and whenever it was seen the children would all point and wonder, while the old folks muttered and shook their heads. It was a sign of a long and bitter winter when ice-dragons were abroad in the land. An ice-dragon had been seen flying across the moon on the night Usagi had been born, people said, and each winter it had been seen again, and those winters had been bad indeed, the spring coming later every year. So the people would set fires and pray and hope to keep the ice-dragon away, and Usagi would be filled with fear.

But it never worked. Every year the ice-dragon returned. Usagi knew it came for her.

The ice dragon was large, half again the size of the scaled green war dragons that Uncle Jin and his fellows flew. Usagi had heard legends of wild dragons larger than mountains, but she had never seen any. Uncle Jin's dragon was big enough, to be sure, five times the size of a horse, but it was small compared to the ice-dragon, and ugly besides.

The ice-dragon was a crystalline-white, that shade of white that is so hard and cold that it was almost blue. It was covered in hoarfrost, so when it moved its skin broke and crackled as the crust on the snow crackles beneath a man's boots, and flakes of rime fell off.

Its eyes were deep and clear and icy.

Its wings were vast and bat-like, colored all a faint translucent blue. Usagi could see the clouds through them, and often the moon and stars as well, when the beast wheeled in icy circles through the skies.

Its teeth were icicles, a triple row of them, jagged spears of unequal length, white against its deep blue maw.

When the ice-dragon beat its wings, the cold winds blew and the snow swirled and scurried and the world seemed to shrink and shiver. Sometimes when a door flew open in the cold of winter, driven by a sudden gust of wind, the householder would run to bolt it and say, "An ice-dragon flies nearby."

And when the ice-dragon opened its great mouth, and exhaled, it was not the fire that came streaming out, the burning sulfurous stink of lesser dragons.

The ice-dragon breathed cold.

Ice formed when it breathed. Warmth fled. Fires guttered and went out, shriven by the chill. Trees froze through to their slow, secret souls, and their limbs turned brittle and crackled from their own weight. Animals turned blue and whimpered and died; their eyes bulging and their skin covered with frost.

The ice-dragon breathed death into the world; death and quiet and cold. But Usagi was not afraid. She was a Winter Child, and the ice-dragon was her secret.

She had seen it in the sky a thousand times. When she was four, she saw it on the ground.

She was out building on her snow castle, and it came and landed close to her, in the emptiness of the snow-covered fields. All the ice-lizards ran away. Usagi simply stood. The ice-dragon looked at her for ten long heartbeats, before it took to the air again. The wind shrieked around her and through her as it beat its wings to rise, but Usagi felt strangely glorious.

Later that winter it returned, and Usagi touched it. Its skin was very cold. She took off her glove nonetheless. It would not be right otherwise. She was half afraid it would burn and melt at her touch, but it did not. It was even more sensitive to heat than even the ice-lizards, Usagi knew somehow. But she was special, the Winter Child, cold. She stroked it, and finally gave its wings a kiss that hurt her lips. That was the winter of her fourth birthday. The year she touched the ice-dragon.

The winter of her sixth birthday was the year she rode upon it for the first time.

It found her again, working on a different castle at a different place in the fields, alone as ever. She watched it come, and ran to it when it landed, and pressed herself against it. That had been the summer when she had heard her father talking to Uncle Jin.

They stood together for long minutes until finally Usagi, remembering Uncle Jin, reached out and tugged at the dragon's wing with a small hand. And the dragon beat its great wings once, and then extended them flat against the snow, and Usagi scrambled up to wrap her arms about its cold white neck.

Together, for the first time, they flew.

She had no harness or whip, as the Emperor's dragon riders used. At times the beating of the wings threatened to shake her loose from where she clung, and the coldness of the dragon's flesh crept through her clothing and numbed her child's flesh. But Usagi was not afraid.

They flew over her father's farm, and she saw Motoki looking very small below, startled and afraid, and knew he could not see her. It made her laugh an icy, tinkling laugh; a laugh as bright and crisp as the winter air.

They flew over the crossroads inn, where crowds of people came out to watch them pass.

They flew above the forest, all white and green and silent.

They flew high into the sky, so high Usagi could not even see the ground below, and she thought she glimpsed another ice-dragon, a long way off in the distance, but it was not half so grand as hers.

They flew for most of the day, and finally the dragon swept around in a great circle, and spiraled down, gliding on its own stiff and glittering wings. It let her off in the field where it had found her, just after dusk.

Her father found her there, and wept to see her, and hugged her savagely. Usagi did not understand that, nor why he beat her after he had gotten her back to the house. But when she and Shingo had been put to sleep, she heard him slide out of his own bed and come padding over to hers. "You missed it all," he said. "There was an ice-dragon, and it scared everybody. Father was afraid it had eaten you."

Usagi smiled to herself in the darkness, but said nothing.

She flew on the ice-dragon four more times that winter, and every winter after that. Each year she flew farther and more often than the year before, and the ice-dragon was seen more frequently in the skies above their farm.

Each winter was longer and colder than the one before.

Each year the thaw came later.

And sometimes there were patches of land, where the ice-dragon had lain to rest, that never seemed to thaw properly at all.

There was much talk in the village during her fifteenth year, and a message was sent to the Emperor. No answer ever came.

"A bad business, ice-dragons," Uncle Jin said that summer when he visited the farm. "They're not like real dragons, you know. You can't break them in or train them. We have tales of those that tried, found frozen with their whip and harness in hand. I've heard about people that have lost hands or fingers just by touching one of them. Frostbite. Yes, a bad business."

"Then why doesn't the Emperor do something?" her father demanded. "We sent a message. Unless we can kill the beast or drive away, in a year or two we won't have any planting season at all."

Uncle Jin smiled grimly. "The Emperor has other concerns. The war is going badly, you know. They advance every summer, and they have twice as many dragonriders as we do. I tell you, Kenji, it's hell up there. Some year I'm not going to come back. The Emperor can hardly spare men to go chasing an ice-dragon." He laughed. "Besides, I don't think anybody's ever killed one of the things. Maybe we should just let the enemy take this whole province. Then it'd be his ice-dragon."

But it wouldn't be, Usagi thought as she listened. No matter what king, lord, or Emperor ruled the land, it would always be her ice-dragon.

Uncle Jin departed and summer waxed and waned. Usagi counted the days until her birthday. Uncle Jin passed through again before the first chill, taking his ugly dragon south for the winter. His wing seemed smaller when it came flying over the forest that fall, though, and his visit was briefer than usual, and ended with a loud quarrel between him and her father.

'They won't move during the winter," Uncle Jin said. "The winter terrain is too treacherous, and they won't risk an advance without dragonriders to cover them from above. But come spring, we aren't going to be able to hold them. The Emperor may not even try. Sell the farm now, while you can still get a good price. You can buy another piece of land in the south."

"This is my land," her father said. "I was born here. You too, though you seem to have forgotten it. Our parents are buried here. And Tsuki too. I want to lie beside her when I go."

"You'll go a lot sooner than you'd like if you don't listen to me," Uncle Jin said angrily. "Don't be stupid, Kenji. I know what the land means to you, but it isn't worth your life." He went on and on, but her father would not be moved. They ended the evening swearing at each other, and Uncle Jin left in the dead of the night, slamming the door behind him as he went.

Usagi, listening, had made a decision. It did not matter what her father did or did not do. She would stay. If she moved, the ice-dragon would not know where to find her when winter came, and if she went too far south it would never be able to come to her at all.

It did come to her, though, just after her sixteenth birthday. That winter was the coldest one of all. She flew so often and so far that she scarcely had time to work on her ice castle.

Uncle Jin came again in the spring. There were only a dozen dragonriders in his wing, and he brought no presents that year. He and her father argued once again. Uncle Jin raged and pleaded and threatened, but her father was stone. Finally Uncle Jin left, off to the battlefields.

That was the year the Emperor's line broke, up north near some town with a long name that Usagi could not pronounce.

Minako heard about it first. She returned from the inn one night flushed and excited. "A messenger came through, on his way to the Emperor," she told them. "The enemy won some big battle, and he's to ask for reinforcements. He said our army was retreating."

Their father frowned, and worry lines creased his brow. "Did he say anything of the Emperor's dragonriders?" Arguments or no, Uncle Jin was family.

"I asked," Minako said. "He said the dragonriders are the rear guard. They're supposed to raid and burn, delay the enemy while our army pulls back safely. Oh, I hope Uncle Jin is safe!"

"Uncle Jin will show them," Shingo said. "Him and Brimstone will burn 'em up."

Their father smiled. "Jin could always take care of himself. At any rate, there is nothing we can do. Minako, if any more messengers come through, ask them how it goes."

She nodded, her concern not quite covering her excitement. It was all quite thrilling.

In the weeks that followed, the thrill wore off, as the people of the area began to comprehend the magnitude of the disaster. The Emperor's highway grew busier and busier, and all the traffic flowed from north to south, and all the travelers wore green-and-gold. At first the soldiers marched in disciplined columns, led by officers wearing plumed golden helmets, but even then they were less than stirring. The columns marched wearily, and the uniforms were filthy and torn, and the swords and pikes and axes the soldiers carried were nicked and ofttimes stained. Some men had lost their weapons; they limped along blindly, empty-handed. And the trains of wounded that followed the columns were often longer than the columns themselves.

Usagi stood in the grass by the side of the road and watched them pass. She saw a man with no eyes supporting a man with only one leg, as the two of them walked together. She saw men with no legs, or no arms, or both. She saw a man with his head split open by an axe, and many men covered with caked blood and filth, men who moaned low in their throats as they walked. She smelled men with bodies that were horribly greenish and puffed-up. One of them died and was left abandoned by the side of the road. Usagi told her father and he and some of the men from the village came out and buried him.

Most of all, Usagi saw the burned men. There were dozens of them in every column that passed, men whose skin was black and seared and falling off, who had lost an arm or a leg or half a face to the hot breath of a dragon. Minako told them what the officers said, when they stopped at the inn to drink or rest; the enemy had many, many dragons.

For almost a month the columns flowed past, more every day. Even Old Hino-sama admitted that he had never seen so much traffic on the road. From time to time a lone messenger on horseback rode against the tide, galloping north, but always alone. After a time everyone knew there would be no reinforcements.

An officer in one of the last columns advised the people of the area to pack up whatever they could carry, and move south. "They are coming," he warned. A few listened to him, and indeed for a week the road was full of refugees from towns farther north. Some of them told frightful stories. When they left, more of the local people went with them.

But most stayed. They were people like her father, and the land was in their blood.

The last organized force to come down the road was a ragged troop of cavalry, men as gaunt as skeletons riding horses with skin pulled tight around their ribs. They thundered past in the night, their mounts heaving and foaming, and the only one to pause was a pale young officer, who reined his mount up briefly and shouted, "Go, go. They are burning everything!" Then he was after his men.

The few soldiers who came after were alone or in small groups. They did not always use the road, and they did not pay for the things they took. One swordsman killed a farmer on the other side of town, raped his wife, stole his money, and ran. His rags were green-and-gold.

Then no one came at all. The road was deserted.

The innkeeper claimed he could smell the ashes when the wind blew from the north. He packed up his family and went south. Minako was distraught. Motoki and Shingo were wide-eyed and anxious and only a bit frightened. They asked a thousand questions about the enemy, and practiced at being warriors. Their father went about his labors, busy as ever. War or no war, he had crops in the field. He smiled less than usual, however, and he began to drink, and Usagi often saw him glancing up at the sky while he worked.

Usagi wandered the fields alone, played by herself in the damp summer heat, and tried to think of where she would hide if her father tried to take them away.

Last of all, the Emperor's dragonriders came, and with them Uncle Jin.

There were only four of them. Usagi saw the first one, and went and told her father, and he put his hand on her shoulder and together they watched it pass, a solitary green dragon with a vaguely tattered look. It did not pause for them.

Two days later, three dragons flying together came into view, and one of them detached itself from the others and circled down to their farm while the other two headed south.

Uncle Jin was thin and grim and sallow-looking. His dragon looked sick. Its eyes ran, and one of its wings had been partially burned, so it flew in an awkward, heavy manner, with much difficulty. "Now will you go?" Uncle Jin said to his brother, in front of all the children.

"No. Nothing has changed."

Uncle Jin swore. "They will be here within three days," he said. "Their dragonriders may be here even sooner."

"Father, I'm scared," Minako said.

He looked at her, saw her fear, hesitated, and finally turned back to his brother. "I am staying. But if you would, I would have you take the children."

Now it was Uncle Jin's turn to pause. He thought for a moment, and finally shook his head. "I can't Kenji. I would, willingly, joyfully, if it were possible. But it isn't. Brimstone is wounded. He can barely carry me. If I took on any extra weight, we might never make it."

Minako began to weep.

"I'm sorry, love," Uncle Jin said to her. "Truly I am." His fists clenched helplessly.

"Minako is full-grown," their father said. "If her weight is too much, then take one of the others."

Brother looked at brother, with despair in their eyes. Uncle Jin trembled. "Usagi," he said finally. "She's small and light." He forced a laugh. "She hardly weighs anything at all. I'll take Usagi. The rest of you take horses, or a wagon, or go on foot. But go, damn you, go."

"We will see," their father said noncommittally. "You take Usagi, and keep her safe for us."

"Yes," Uncle Jin agreed. He turned and smiled at her. "Come, child. Uncle Jin is going to take you for a ride on Brimstone."

Usagi looked at him very seriously, her sixteen-year-old face lifted up proudly. "No," she said. She turned and slipped through the door, and began to run.

They came after her, of course. Uncle Jin and her father and even Motoki. But her father wasted time standing in the door, shouting at her to come back, and when he began to run he was ponderous and clumsy, while Usagi was indeed small and light and fleet of foot. Uncle Jin and Motoki stayed with her longer, but Uncle Jin was weak, and Motoki soon winded himself, though he sprinted hard at her heels for a few moments. By the time Usagi reached the nearest wheat field, the three of them were well behind her. She quickly lost herself amid the grain, and they searched for hours in vain while she made her way carefully toward the woods.

When dusk fell, they brought out lanterns and torches and continued their search. From time to time she heard her father swearing, or Uncle Jin calling her name. She stayed high in the branches of the oak she had climbed, and smiled down at their lights as they combed back and forth through the fields. Finally she drifted off to sleep, dreaming about the coming of winter and of a strange male, a Winter Child like her with white-silver hair and silver-violet eyes, and wondering how she would live until her birthday. It was still a long time away.

Dawn awoke her; dawn and a noise in the sky.

Usagi yawned and blinked, and heard it again. She shinnied to the uppermost limb of the tree, as high as it would bear her, and pushed aside the leaves.

There were dragons in the sky.

She had never seen beasts quite like these. Their scales were dark and sooty, not green like the dragon Uncle Jin rode. One was a rust color and one was the shade of dried blood and one was black as coal. All of them had eyes like glowing embers, and steam rose from their nostrils, and their tails flicked back and forth as their dark, leathery wings beat the air. The rust-colored one opened his mouth and roared, and the forest shook to its challenge, and even the branch that held Usagi trembled just a little. The black one made a noise too, and when it opened its maw a spear of flame lanced out, all orange and blue, and touched the trees below. Leaves withered and blackened, and smoke began to rise from where the dragon's breath had fallen. The one the color of blood flew close overhead, its wings creaking and straining, its mouth half-open. Between its yellow teeth Usagi saw soot and cinders, and the wind stirred by its passage was fire and sandpaper, raw and chafing against her skin. She cringed.

On the backs of the dragons rode men with whip and lance, in uniforms of black and orange, their faces hidden behind dark helmets. The one on the rust dragon gestured with his lance, pointing at the farm buildings on the fields. Usagi looked.

Uncle Jin came up to meet them.

His green dragon was as large as their own, but somehow it seemed small to Usagi as she watched it climb upward from the farm. With its wings fully extended, it was plain to see how badly injured it was; the right wing was charred, and it leaned heavily to one side as it flew. On its back, Uncle Jin looked like one of the tiny toy soldiers he had brought them as a present years before.

The enemy dragonriders split up and came at him from three sides. Uncle Jin saw what they were doing. He tried to turn, to throw himself at the black dragon head-on, and flee the other two. His whip flailed angrily, desperately. His green dragon opened its mouth, and roared a weak challenge, but its flame was pale and short and did not reach the oncoming enemy.

The others held their fire. Then, on a signal, their dragons all breathed as one. Uncle Jin was wreathed in flames.

His dragon gave a high, keening wail, and Usagi saw that it was burning, he was burning, they were all burning, beast and master both. They fell heavily to the ground, and lay smoking amidst her father's wheat.

The air was full of ashes.

Usagi craned her head around in the other direction, and saw a column of smoke rising from beyond the forest and the river. That was the farm where Old Hino-sama lived with his only grandchild, Rei and her child, Meian.

When she looked back, the three dark dragons were circling lower and lower above her own farm. One by one they landed. She watched the first of the riders dismount and saunter toward their door.

She was frightened and confused. And the heavy air of summer was a weight upon her, and it filled her with helplessness and thickened all her fears. So Usagi did the only thing she knew, without thinking, a thing that came to her naturally. She climbed down from the tree and ran.

She ran across the fields and through the woods, away from the farm and her family and the dragons, away from all of it. She ran down in the direction of the river until her legs throbbed with pain. She ran to the coldest place she knew, to the deep caves underneath the river bluffs, to chill shelter and darkness and safety.

And there in the cold she hid. Usagi was a Winter Child, and cold did not bother her.

Day turned into night. Usagi did not leave her cave.

She tried to sleep, but her dreams alternated between burning dragons and a strange Winter Child, like her, but male...

She made herself very small as she lay in the darkness, and tried to count how many days remained until her birthday. The caves were nicely cool; Usagi could almost imagine that it was not summer after all, that it was winter, or near to winter. Soon her ice-dragon would come for her, and she would ride on its back to the land of always-winter, where great ice-castles and cathedrals of snow stood eternally in endless fields of white, and the stillness and silence were all.

It almost felt like winter as she lay there. The cave grew colder and colder, it seemed. It made her feel safe.

She napped briefly, and dreamed of that strange male Winter-Child and flying with him as if he was an ice-dragon, her ice-dragon. When she woke, it was colder still. A white coating of frost covered the cave walls, and she was sitting on a bed of ice. Usagi jumped to her feet and looked up toward the mouth of the cave, filled with a wan dawn light. A cold wind caressed her. But it was coming from outside, from the world of summer, not from the depths of the cave at all.

She gave a small shout of joy, and climbed and scrambled up the ice-covered rocks.

Outside, the male Winter Child was staring at her.

NOTES: (alot of these, huh?)

1. Yeah, Motoki's her brother. They looked enough alike, and I needed another male from the Sailor Moon universe.

2. Told you I was playing with time here. Usagi is the baby in this fic, meaning that Shingo is older than her. I hope you don't mind, but if you do, yell at me in a review.

3. I know, I know. 'Usagi is supposed to be a care-free, happy-go-lucky-ditz of a child, not some somber little thing.' No, I did not deliberately ignore...wait. Yes I did. I told you this was AU. And in this story, to be a Winter Child is to be somber. Yes, I suppose I could have used Ami, as her senshi powers fit this fic better, as does her character, but I really don't like Ami, and I certainly would not be so cruel as to pair my beloved Diamond with that...(breathes hard) Sooooo not going there.

4. I'm screwing with the balance remember? The Kenji of the Sailor Moon universe would never make it as a farmer, as he lacks some serious muscle. So I changed that.

5. And just to piss off my ex, I made Minako Usagi's sister. So blame his ass if you don't like it.

6. Jin is not anyone of great importance, my own character, also used in my fic The Fallen Labyrinth (check it out!)

7. There isn't really a specific note for this one, but rather something I wanted to clear up. Ikuku isn't mentioned in this fic (as of yet). Tsuki is actually Queen Serenity (or Selenity, depending on who you ask). Ikuku will appear in Part 3, which is the second ending. She will not appear in Part 2, the first (and my favorite) ending.