Snow fell lightly over the city of Tokyo, dressing the streets and the buildings into a white coat. By the looks of things and, judging by the weather reports, the inhabitants of Tokyo were going to enjoy one of those white Christmases which songs had been made about. For now, that was the last worry on their mind, though. With Christmas drawing ever so closer, the city streets more crowded than ever. As soon as people got out of work, they all moved into the shops, in search of the perfect gifts for the ones they loved or of the most beautiful decorations to display their Christmas spirit. Plenty of passerby-s seemed to be lost in thought over some trivial, holiday-related detail. One of them, though, looked far more serious, as if heavier problems weighed down his shoulders.

With his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat, Kunzite made his way along the sidewalk, his step slightly rushed. While he could appreciate the beauty of the snow falling down upon the city, winter wasn't really his favorite season of the year. Because of his silvery-white hair and of his eyes, Kunzite had often been compared with an ice king. The truth was that, having been born into a desert climate in his past existence, he appreciated warm weather above anything else. In fact, his tolerance to heat was slightly above the one of an average person. As for cold weather, it wasn't a matter of not tolerating it, but more of a matter of him disliking it. That dislike wasn't enough to keep him from going outside in the snow, specially not when he was very aware of the fact that Christmas was so close and that he didn't have anything to offer Zoisite.

Passing by a small coffee shop, Kunzite decided to go inside and warm himself up before visiting a couple of more stores. Taking a seat at a table next to the window, he waited for the waitress to come tend to him, ordering a cup of hot chocolate once she gave him her attention. Waiting for his order to come, Kunzite absently gazed outside the window. He never pictured himself being busy searching for the perfect gift to give that certain someone. He had made gifts to Aphrodite in the past but things had seemed much simple then, when there weren't so many shops and so many things to chose from – or when he could conjure a white rose to surprise her with at any moment. The waitress bringing his hot chocolate brought him out of his musings. Thanking her, Kunzite wrapped his hands around the cup, enjoying the feeling of his palms warming up again.

"I'm taking my break!" Ginga called out after checking the time, the shop owner calling back at her to go ahead. It was the slow hour that came almost daily. She liked that. The simplicity of schedules, even if they were somewhat accidental. After everything it was nice to have something that wasn't insane and crazy. Hopping off her stool, she grabbed her coat, hat, gloves and a book, shoving her wallet into her coat pocket. Tightening the belt and pulling on her gloves and hat,she stepped out of the warm book shoppe and into the cold December weather. The sidewalk was lightly dusted with fresh fallen snow, and Gin paused for a minute to turn her face up toward the winter wind.

"Mmm!" she hummed out as she stepped among the street goers heading toward a little cafe just up from the bookshop. While the holiday everyone was rushing about buying gifts for loved ones wsa not one she originally celebrated, she couldn't help but smile at the excitement of it. Reaching up she pulled her collar up around her neck as she neared the cafe, greeting those that greeted her with a simple nod of the head. Shivering she rushed into the cafe heading for the counter. "The normal, Ginga-san?" the little waitress behind the counter asked her having served the same thing daily to the regular customer. "Yes, please. Make the hot cocoa a large though? Its getting colder outside." she replied, the girl nodding to her as she rushed to fill the order.

Once she got and paid for her order of cocoa and cinnamon roll she backed away from the counter slightly and turned around to find a table to enjoy her book and snack. Her eyes fell on a man she hadn't seen in a year. Kunzite. How could anyone not know him once they've meet him? That silver hair stood out bright among a sea of black. Looking around once more she gripped her cup and plate, book tucked under her arm as she approached the table shyly. She still felt remorse over what happened back in California, Even when it came to the four men she forced under her power. She was in the believe that she would always feel remorse for it. Forcing a soft smile on her lips she stood next to the empty chair at the table he sat at. speaking out to get his attention, "Mind if I join you, Kunzite-sama?" If he turned her away she would understand it perfectly, but she wished somewhat that he wouldn't.

A young man, in search of a Christmas present for the person he loved, taking a brief break to enjoy a hot chocolate and watch the winter scenery outside the window.... Such a simple and normal scene. Almost too simple and too normal for someone whose life – or lives – has been anything but normal. No further than an year before, he had been brought back from the dead and his mind had been controlled by Galaxia; he had fought against the ones which she should have helped and he had stained his hands with the blood of more innocents. The situation was so... Kunzite wasn't sure how to feel about it. In a far away past, Queen Serenity had made it possible for him to be born again, along with the Senshi and the other Shitennou, with the Princess and the Prince. She had wanted them all to have normal lives but, unfortunately, they all got pulled away from that normality. Kunzite had gone from being a normal human to being evil, being dead, being evil once again, being good and to being just a normal human being once again. Technically, he had returned just where he had started from. Practically, that was very far from the truth. He had all the memories of the things he had done under Beryl's and Galaxia's control and he was perfectly aware that he was more than just a normal human, in spite of the loss of his powers. All in all, he felt completely out of place into the world.

Moe often than not, Kunzite asked himself if it would have been better if he hadn't survived the Hellmouth battle. He realized that it was an impossible thought, as even the ones that perished were brought back, but still... Dying while protecting Mamoru-sama would have been a very honorable death. For the first time, he would have died doing the right thing, so he would have went away in slight peace – slight as he would have left behind the younger Shitennou which he had opened his heart to. It was complicated coping with the consequences of so many bad deeds. Kunzite never imagined it to be an easy task but that didn't mean that he liked it. It would have been all too easy if he could have just forgotten everything he had been through and just enjoyed life – too easy but, oh, so pleasant. He sighed softly. They said that time healed everything so he had to try and be optimistic of the fact that he would manage to adjust. He used to be a very good learner so he could learn to life a normal life and come to terms with his conscience.

The silver-haired man didn't pay too much attention to the other people in the cafe until he heard a woman asking if she could join him. That voice... Kunzite looked up at her, a frown on his face. ”You?” She looked very different than she did the last time they met and... there was something strange about the fact that she was using such a polite honorific to address him – he used to call her Galaxia-sama and he was simply Kunzite to her. He gestured towards the chair in front of him, his stern expression concealing his confusion at the fact that she was in Tokyo, that she was looking so normal and that she wanted to join him at the table.

Ginga hadn't expected him to recognize her, however she should have. He did only serve under her evil counterpart for a short time. Huffing a laugh under her breath, she bit and tugged at her lower lip with her teeth. Well this wasn't awkward at all ... pfft, yea right. Clenching her newly purchased goods in her gloved hands, she blushed sheepishly. "Yeah, it's me" she replied to him, muttering a thanks when he finally did wave for her to take the other seat. She had wanted to add more that, but saying something along the lines of 'though just not the chaos obsessed psychotic tacky gold wearing bitch that tried to kill every single human being a year ago'. Not exactly the best form of communication in a public place. And quite frankly she lived with the memory of every bad deed she bloodied her hands with every night. Gently she placed down her goods, her small hardback book alongside of them before tucking herself in under the table. Once she was settled comfortably in the chair, her amber colored eyes fell on him to study him quickly.

While the outer shell of him was that person she once considered her less, his eyes held change. This was not the man who's wrist her possessed self had slapped bracelets on. Was he like her? Surviving in a world that was barely his own? Struggling with every pass evil he did to it and its people? Waking up only to repeat the same tasks as the day before? After her resurrection in Sunnydale she hadn't known what to do with herself other than to just survive. Survival was nothing new to her. Her whole life, from the start, had been one form of survival after another. Well except for fighting off Chaos' control, sealing It in her was a good idea at the time... but it proved to be an error that caused so much destruction. She often wondered if her hands would be clean of the blood she spilled under It's control. "How do you cope with everything?" she blurted out in a faint whisper, her eyes darting away to another point in the room. The worlds echoed in her ears as she shook her head.

"How does one move pass being what we were ... to coffee shops and books and normalcy? Acting as if every evil deed that was done did not happen?" Her words were a bit louder this time as her hands folded in her lap. Her drink and food remaining untouched. It was a question that she asked the woman in the mirror more often that she would ever admit. That and living in slight fear that a civilian would recognize her as the evil Galaxia that terrorized Tokyo over a year ago. Then she laughed shortly under her breath, reaching up to tuck a stray curl back into its proper place. "I am so sorry. I ... of all people ... should not be asking you that after everything I did to everyone." She laughed again shaking her head again, apologizing once more. "I'll let you be in peace, Kunzite. I don't even know what possessed me to interrupt you in the first place."

Kunzite could have never mistaken the woman in front of him. It was a little hard to forget someone that brainwashed you and turned you into their personal puppet, making you into an enemy of the ones you were supposed to help, for the third time in the course of history. Her face still haunted him at night, although Beryl's was, by far, the most present in his nightmares. One of the nightmares was that, one day, he might walk past her on the street and then end find himself, once again, with two golden bracelets strapped around his wrist and a semblance of a free will that was, in reality, bound to her. It didn't look to Kunzite like this might happen now. He didn't have his powers any more, to be able to sense if the energetic aura surrounding someone was a good or an evil one, but his instinct told him that the woman in front of him had not, somehow, become evil again. The silver-haired man could see it in her eyes, the look of someone that wasn't quite at place. Someone like him, his equal, for a change.

His eyes, the colour of quicksilver, studied Ginga as she took a seat opposite to him and set her items next to her – normal items, that didn't hint towards what she used to be an year before. She also looked normal, no trace of golden in her clothing, no trace of arrogance and thirst for power in her eyes. Who would have guessed, by looking at them, how majestic they had been at certain times in their lives and how much power they had in their hands? Would humans still pass by them with so much ease if they knew that the world could have ended because of the two of them? Would they shun them, point accusatory fingers at them? Would they be terrified at the thought that these two persons were only humans by force? The series of these questions stopped when Kunzite heard Ginga's whisper, his brows furrowing slightly. She was asking questions which also tormented him and, unfortunately, he didn't have all the answers she seemed to seek as well.

Kunzite lifted a hand in a gesture meant to stop her from leaving. ”Wait, you don't have to go. You did not interrupt anything”, he reassured her and then lowered his gaze towards the mug in front of him, while he tried to put a little order into his thoughts. ”You might have found the wrong person to answer those questions, I am afraid. I don't consider myself to be too good at coping with what has happened, in spite of the fact that it is the third time that I have been turned into an evil being... or... perhaps because of it?” he mused as an afterthought. ”I am trying to remember those days when I didn't know what I had been or that I could be more than a simple human and matching my actions to those memories. But forgetting the bad deeds... I fear that might not be possible. We could only try to make amends for what we did but I am not sure that the memories will ever go away.”

“I was young, and I let my arrogance interfere with my good thinking. At the time I was dubbed the greatest of this galaxy’s senshi. It’s most powerful. I thought by taking it in me, and sealing it away, I could control it. That I was strong enough to keep it and its influences at bay.” She said, with a bittersweet tone her attention turning to the people that passed by the coffee shop’s window. Her mind easing back to a bygone era before this entire solar system was even created. “I guess that saying is true.” she spoke again, before smiling and elaborating “That the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Her intentions all those centuries ago had been done out of the goodness of her soul. To seal Chaos away would benefit the whole of the Galaxy. And there had been no better vessel herself. That was the plan. However her arrogance had made her naive. The war had made her exhausted. As had losing almost everyone she knew, her comrades. Her sisters in arms had fallen in the war that raged, their star seeds returning back to the cauldron for rebirth. It found weaknesses in her and that’s how it won in the end. “There was no way for me to stop it, when it finally took control. I could feel it little by little, and nothing I did paused it. I was losing myself so I sent my star seed out into the galaxy. One day, it was like I looked in a mirror and I no longer saw the reflection of Sailor Galaxia, nor the shadow of the girl that came before her. What I saw wasn’t me, and no matter how much I struggled against it, I never could resurface. It exploited my character flaws and my weaknesses. And I believe you know the ending results.”

Oh yes, the end results. Sunnydale. Her as a vampire, if not soulless before - at that time, completely so. Turned by a blond vampire that favored the name of Spike. Kunzite and his team under her control. Reeking as much havoc on that small California town as she had on Tokyo. Chaos might have been in control, but the blood of the innocent was on her hands. And she simply could not scrub it off. Not to mention, she was unsure if there had been a small part of her own self that enjoyed the power being possessed gave her. “It’s been so long, I don’t remember what life was like before my possession. I expected to be shunned by these people, that they would recognize me. Almost none of them do. They act like it never happened. Yet it repeats in my mind, every waking and sleeping hour.” She had abandoned her drink as she spilled all of her pent up thoughts. She didn’t know why the words came easily. Probably because he had his own demons, similar to hers, to face every time he starred in the mirror. “I’m not sure if I’m worthy of the redemption only they can give just yet. Or that I will ever be. I don’t fear repenting, or whatever they might throw at me in return. I fear they will open the door and the monster that nearly destroyed everything will come back. That this short time since then and now was nothing more than Chaos being injured and laying dormant until it find it’s way back.”

So she stayed away, she blended in as best she could keep from seeing the senshi and shitennou. Bound to a planet not her own, desiring to see that small rocky place she called home lifetimes ago. Apologies long overdue dead on her tongue. How can one apologize for doing their worst to someone else, and then continue to do so long after they've broken? I'm sorry was cold and empty words when it came to what she had done. "Forgive me, for everything." the words, sincere in their tone, were spoken as amber eyes met and searched his silver ones. Kinder spirits they might have been, the facts were still the same. She owed him as much as an apology as she did the others. Perhaps fate had sent them here to show her the first step along a route she had desperately tried to avoid over the last year. And if it was, she wasn't about to ignore it. The powers the be didn't have to beat her over the head. Well, not much. They could still get a few whacks against her old and stubborn soul.