Paths Crossed

Summary: Hotaru has a choice between destruction of the world she hates and herself whom she loathes or to spare the world and herself and choose life. Only Koan knows this decision from when Rebeus offered her a time bomb to destroy the world and herself or to live. She chose life. Can she convince Hotaru to make the same choice?

Author\'s Notes-Warning-graphic abuse scenes. Very angsty. Sailor Moon is, of course, by Naoko Takeuchi, and I make no claim on it.
Copyright Lost Voice August 2005

Paths Crossed by Lost Voice
\"NOOOOOOOOO,\" Koan screamed, pushing through the hoarseness in her voice. \"You\'re wrong,\" she said. Her eyes were wide before, but now they were filling with tears as her eyebrows furrowed in concern. \"It doesn\'t have to end this way. There\'s another choice.\"
Hotaru froze, hand still holding the transformation wand. \"Another choice?\"
\"Don\'t transform Hotaru,\" Usagi said, her eyes also full of tears. \"Don\'t become Sailor Saturn. She is the one of destruction. Not you. You don\'t want this.\"
Hotaru\'s jaw clenched, set tight. Her eyes narrowed as she swung around full circle to face Usagi. The glare that sweeped over her face dared Usagi to speak again. Dared her to make another statement like that one. \"You know nothing,\" the words came out tightly and low, yet with the force of a scream. \"Nothing of what I want,\" she ended. Usagi didn\'t dare speak, but her hands reached out for Hotaru as she stepped forward. \"One more step, and I do it,\" she promised.
Usagi stopped. \"She\'s serious. She\'s lost it,\" Minako said quietly but with dead earnest. An amused smile spread over Hotaru\'s mouth.
\"What do we do?\" Ami asked. \"We can\'t let her do it,\" she added, her mind recoiling in horror.
\"We have to stop her,\" Rei emphasized the word have.
\"We can\'t. She\'s made up her mind,\" Minako cried out, the gravity of the situation sinking in.
\"Mars...\" A hand stopped her, gently but firmly holding her hand. Makoto\'s eyes deadlocked with Rei\'s, and Makoto shook her head in resolution. \"But we have to stop this,\" Rei cried out in desparation, fear, and anger.
Then she followed Makoto\'s eyes to Koan who was moving towards Hotaru. \"She\'s got it,\" Makoto said with an eerie sense of calm. Rei\'s shoulders slumped and she nodded sadly, her transformation wand returning to its usual place.

This is the man who held her close when she came into the world. The one who rocked her as an infant in his arms. The same one who came for her that night. Too young to ask \"daddy what\'s going on?\" Too young to verbalize with only little sounds of confusion coming out of her mouth. He paid no heed as he pulled her by the wrist to the place shrouded in darkness. The place where it all began.

\"I had to make the same choice Hotaru,\" Koan\'s eyes met hers. \"I know the difficulty of the decision. When Rebeus put that time bomb in my hand I thought I too could end everything for me and get rid of all my enemies too. It was so perfect. Except some part of me wanted to live.\"
Hotaru\'s eyes were downcast, staring intently at the wand. \"Then you and I are different,\" she finally responded. \"Because no part of me wants to live.\"
\"What? Why?\" Usagi asked quietly from the background.
\"You wouldn\'t understand,\" her voice said tightly and eyes narrowed at the sound of Usagi\'s voice.

The blood streaming down the little child\'s head. The blank stare of the child looking directly at her. She was shaking, standing right in front of the altar. They were supposed to sacrifice her that day, but her father had brought someone else.

\"Do you think I forgive you?\" Hotaru cried out, her voice catching in her throat as if she were about to bawl, but not a single tear emerged. \"Do you think I forgive you for saving me that day?\" she screamed. \"I WANTED YOU TO LET THEM KILL ME,\" she screamed even louder, the temple shaking. Her breathing erratic, she fell to the floor, clutching her chest.
\"Hotaru,\" the five senshi cried out, stepping forward. Koan\'s hand shot up to stop them. They moved back. Koan kneeled gently, but Hotaru didn\'t see her. She spoke so quietly that even Koan, right in front of her, could barely catch the words she uttered. \"More than anything I just wanted you to have let them kill me. You think you redeemed yourself that day? You could only have redeemed yourself if you had let me die.\"
Koan\'s eyes widened in shock. No words could come. What words were there for this?
Hotaru stood up, deadly composed. The senshi stared at her in confusion and fear. \"He could have ended all of this then, but he was too much of a coward even then. He could live with what they did, what he did. But he couldn\'t live with the guilt of ending his child\'s life. As if it would have been worse. Death would have been a relief. Even then he could let himself go, but he could never let me go.\"
\"Hotaru,\" Ami said quietly.
Hotaru\'s eyes were dead when they looked at Ami\'s. \"I\'ve made my choice.\"

Just as each of the members, especially her parents, had made his or her choice. She was too tiny for the instruments they put inside her. She could still see their dicks showing, bulging and pulsing in front of her eyes. The women\'s breasts smashed into her face, hard with anticipation. There were no words for this. No words for a four year old trying to comprehend a world no adult would even want a part of.
Trying to make sense of the images thrown at her. The shiny, gleaming knives, reflecting the fire in the middle of the room. Trying to make sense of the sounds echoing through the caverns of her undeveloped mind. The fire crackling in the dim background. The moaning of the men and women\'s sickening, naseous pleasure mingling with the children\'s screaming and crying and begging. Her own pleading voice drowned out in the sea of other sounds. She too felt some pleasure which made her naseous with shame. Their breathing louder and more rapid. She couldn\'t block it out though she tried with all her might. Trying to make sense of the smells assaulting her delicate nose. The incense burning created a pleasant odor that she would forever associate with degradation. The smell of the hot, sweaty bodies almost made her hurl. Trying to make sense of the tastes smearing in her mouth. The cum exploding from the men\'s dicks and the women\'s vaginas. The sticky ooze gluing her mouth shut and dripping down her throat as they jammed their genitals far into the recesses of her mouth. A mouth that would never be clean again. Trying to make sense of the touches that killed her. The hands roaming her body hungrily, a primitive hunger that derived great pleasure and satisfication from her shame and pain and fear. Feeding off that look on her face, they pushed her tired little body to reaches it was never meant to achieve. Their lips on her lips and on her neck. She felt their breath hot against her neck. She felt their grips tighten as someone pushed in her anus, someone in her vagina, and someone in her mouth. Was that the day she died?

\"It\'s not your time yet. You\'re meant to live longer,\" Mamoru, silent all this time, finally spoke up.
\"You think because you have known the reaches of depression you have any tiny grain of comprehension of this choice I\'m making?\" Hotaru asked, anger lining her voice though she remained composed. \"I died a long time ago Mamoru. Today I make it final for everyone else.\"
\"Why take everyone with you?\" Rei shouted out angrily. \"If you want to die, that may be your choice, but who are you to decide the fate of the world?\"
\"It was a power given to me a long time ago.\"
\"It wasn\'t meant to be used in that way,\" Minako spoke up. \"It was for emergency times. When no other option existed to stop the evil forces from overtaking the world.\"
\"They have overtaken,\" Hotaru shot back.
\"Your pain is blinding you,\" Koan said quietly. \"I know pain. I know how it does that.\"
\"You know pain?\" Hotaru sneered. \"You know pain?? You know NOTHING about pain. A man you loved dumped you. Get over it,\" she ordered icily.
\"We could say the same to you Hotaru. Get over this,\" Rei shot back coldly.
Everyone braced for the attack. Hotaru\'s usual soft voice broke through the silence, \"Get over it?\"

Get over it. Three words that made her blood boil. And three words that froze her with fear. Three words that choked her with the silence she was always surrounded by.
Their voices were rising and falling in rhythm, a rhythm that almost lulled the little child to sleep. A rhythm that almost gave her a sense of false tranquility. But the tranquility was shattered as the fire exploded with energy. The dying voice of the dog haunting her now fragile mind. The chanting stopped as the robed figures descended into the crowd of children, whips appearing. They whipped frantically, claiming a divine power was filling them with its frantic energy. She made a move to hide underneath the pew, but a slightly older child was thrown on top of her. She attempted to squirm out from underneath his body, but he held onto her tightly. \"If I\'m going to get it, so are you,\" his angry voice cut through her movement.

\"So you\'re so much better than everyone else?\" Rei\'s words lashed out, stinging Hotaru in places unseen but deeper than any mere physical wound.
\"Yeah, what makes you think you\'re above it all and get to make judgement calls like that?\" Minako asked, also angry at this point.

\"Cut through its skin,\" the voice demanded.
She dared not flinch at the request or the horrifying look in his face.
\"Go on,\" the woman next to him prompted. She would learn later, when she left this place, that the woman was a enrolled in a law enforcement program at the local college. A college student had asked her to do this. Her father, the holy man, had put her in this. Her mother, the doctor, had participated too. And the man asking her to now become a participant was, she found out later, a dancer.
Of course they couldn\'t settle for abusing her. Of course they couldn\'t stop at making her watch others be abused and killed. Of course the suffering had to be carried on for future generations. So, of course, she would have to become a participant too.
She closed her eyes tightly so she couldn\'t see the face of the little kitten looking at her when she cut through its fur and skin. She wished she could close her ears so tight she could drown out the pitiful cries of the tiny, helpless animal.
\"Open your eyes,\" her mother said, forcing her eyes open with her hands. The whimper was shorter and quieter than she expected. The blood was different from human blood. But the guilt was the same. Death forever stained her hands. Not Mistress Nine\'s hands. Not even Saturn\'s hands. But the little girl, Hotaru\'s, hands.

\"I\'m not above anything,\" she said in defeat.
The senshi breathed a deep sigh of relief. Mamoru and Koan watched her more closely. \"Saturn Planet Power,\" she shouted with conviction. The ribbons surrounded her as she transformed, and when she finished she stood before them in conviction.
\"You said you\'re not above anything,\" Usagi screamed. \"I can\'t let you destroy this world!\" she screamed, reaching for her broach.
Mamoru\'s pain-filled eyes reached Usagi\'s. \"Let her go,\" he requested.
\"What? Let her go where? Let her bring about the end of the world and all of us and the good people on it?\"
\"She\'s not destroying the world Usagi,\" Makoto said, her eyes dull from the same pain Mamoru\'s held.
\"What do you mean?\" Usagi asked in confusion.
\"She\'s killing herself and only herself,\" Koan answered, a sadness written all over her face.
\"NO,\" Usagi screamed as Saturn\'s glaive punctured her own heart, and the senshi collapsed to the ground. Not senshi-girl. Only a girl.
\"She\'s so small,\" Ami whispered as they all stared in a mixture of horror and sorrow.
\"Only 12,\" Makoto said, as if that was an answer to a question Ami had not even asked but that had been written in the air between her breaths.

\"Why did you tell me to let her go?\" Usagi screamed, tears streaming down her face in despair as she dropped beside the limp, fallen girl.
\"She needed relief,\" Mamoru answered. As if the answer were that simple.
Usagi wanted to touch her, but she was scared to. She didn\'t know where to put her hands. It seemed so inappropriate to keep them at her side. She settled for putting them right next to the girl\'s cheek. Never quite touching Hotaru. As she sobbed uncontrollably, Mamoru dropped by her side and held her close to him in a vain, lame attempt at comfort.
\"You couldn\'t have saved her,\" Makoto said in another attempt at comfort.
\"That doesn\'t help Makoto,\" Koan said gently.
\"But it\'s true,\" Ami agreed. \"She had made her decision.\"
\"I am the leader, the princess, and the one who is supposed to save everyone,\" Usagi said flatly.
\"Don\'t take on this burden Usagi,\" Makoto answered with a wisdom no one had known she possesed.
\"How could she be so selfish?\" Rei asked angrily. Her anger masking the hurt she was feeling.
\"Don\'t judge her,\" Koan asked, almost pleaded. \"Don\'t blame her. Please don\'t blame her.\"
\"I don\'t understand,\" Minako admitted.
\"I don\'t think any of us possibly can,\" Makoto\'s wisdom shone through again. \"So we have to accept that she made the choice she saw as right at the time. She chose to end her pain. Maybe it was right, and she ended up in a better place. Or maybe it was wrong, and she ended up in a place where her flesh melts off. But I don\'t think it\'s so simply black and white either way. I think her decision has to be taken into context.\"
\"She did her best,\" Koan agreed. \"We\'ll never know if she\'s at peace now or not, but we can only be aware that it was her life and her choice.\"
\"Her choice affects others,\" Rei pointed out.
\"Don\'t you think she knew that?\" Makoto yelled.
\"She knew,\" Mamoru spoke quietly. \"But she chose this way out for herself.\"
\"I\'m angry at her,\" Usagi said honestly.
Makoto nodded. \"Be angry then, but forgive her.\"
\"Forgive?\" Minako asked in surprise. \"You, the mighty Jupiter, who never lets anyone off. You, the brave Makoto, who says she will never forgive those who mess up.\"
\"This is different,\" Makoto said softly. \"This-this-I can forgive.\"
\"Then I can forgive,\" Usagi said quietly, still sobbing gently.
The others nodded.

Usagi lingered behind a little longer than the others as she placed one special flower on the grave. A flower from the picnic she and Hotaru and Chibiusa had enjoyed a little after they had all first met. How was she going to break this to Chibiusa?
\"Rest in peace, Hotaru-chan, little girl who felt too much,\" Usagi whispered into the evening air. The wind blew past her face as she slowly but surely turned and walked away.

More Notes-I toyed with the ending. I couldn\'t let her live and the world survive. That would have been far too optimistic an ending for the pain Hotaru experienced. I didn\'t want it to be so hopeless that it ended up with the world destroyed though and her dead. Still, letting the world survive almost felt wrong because Hotaru had every right to want vengeance on a world that had destroyed her soul and turned its back on her when she needed it. As you can see, I let the world survive but I tried to convey that the ones present were affected permanently and deeply. As were those not present, such as Chibiusa. But more importantly, the ripples of her death led them to all speak out about ritual abuse and effect changes in the world. Some part of me was tempted to have Saturn destroy the world too because it would have saved every child from ever experiencing this again. I think that temptation lived in Hotaru too. But her guilt resigned her to only killing herself. A death that did end up saving some children through her friend\'s efforts. (I left the part about her death spurring the others to effect change out of the story because it didn\'t fit with the tone, but I wanted to add it here to give everyone some sense of hope).
Information about ritual abuse:
Although I don\'t agree with everything in these articles, they have some good information. Some of which I\'ve quoted. I did include the third quote which mentions extreme forms of abuse. To me that is a society imposed standard. I\'ve never liked the way society defines extreme abuse which is by the act itself rather than the feelings the child feels. I know many people who have reacted just as strongly to abuse considered less severe by society\'s standards. And their feelings are just as valid because it is not the act itself but the shame, the violation, and the betrayal that wounds our souls.
Quotes:
\"Ritual Abuse has been defined as psychological, sexual, spiritual, and/or physical assault on an unwilling human victim, committed by one or more people whose primary motive is to fulfill a prescribed ritual in order to achieve a specific goal or satisfy the perceived needs of their deity.
Children are most frequently victims of all types of ritual abuse, largely because of their vulnerability and lack of power.\"
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_intro.htm

\"Some of the symptoms included frequent night terrors, night sweats, extreme separation anxiety, uncontrolled vomiting, 3,4, and 5 year olds acting out sexually in bizarre, sadistic manners...all indicators of significant trauma. As Hudson continued to work with the children, the Satanic ritual abuse stories started to surface: the children reported being locked in cages, buried for short periods in coffins, injected with drugs, defecated and urinated on, sexually abused, forced to watch animal and human sacrifice...\"
\"As with the case in California, the children talked of extreme forms of abuse: being threatened with guns, being buried alive, forced to make pornographic movies, watch an infant sacrifice...\"
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/ritual_abuse/80394/8

\"Satanic cult members aren\'t, by any means, always tattooed teen bikers who have listened to one too many Metallica albums, Often, Satanic ritual abuse survivors report their cult perpetrators are respected members of the community: doctors, law enforcement officials, PTA members, little league coaches...This all, apparently, is part of the facade.\"
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/ritual_abuse/80394/3

Although these quotes refer to Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA), a specific type of ritual abuse, they should apply to all forms of ritual abuse. Ritual abuse almost always uses some kind of religious or cult like behavior to enforce their conditioning of the participants as well as the victims. Most people know more about Satanic Ritual Abuse because it\'s probably easier to recognize those who claim to work for satan as ritualistic child abusers. But members of other spiritual and religious beliefs, including christianity, can and do use ritualistic abuse methods as well, and it is just as damaging.

If you have experienced ritual abuse, please reach out for help. Many people will shun you or silence you for speaking out, but there are those who will understand and listen and care. Search them out. Here\'s some support sites. Some of them are for abuse survivors in general, but some abuse survivors can understand this form of abuse to a certain extent even without going through it.
http://dmoz.org/Society/Support_Groups/Ritual_Abuse/
http://www.healthcyclopedia.com/general-support-groups/ritual-abuse.html

As always I\'m only an email away at lost-voice@care2.com for anyone who needs someone to talk to.
If you were involved in ritual abuse as a child and forced or coerced into hurting, killing, torturing, or otherwise abusing another person or animal please know that you are not at fault. If you were like the ones who put you up to this, you wouldn\'t be feeling this extreme guilt and remorse about it. That alone sets you apart. As does the fact that you were under a group of conditioning, brainwashing, and authority pressure.