Title: "When It Rains It Pours Pt. 1"
Author: Rebecca Bradstreet
Rated: PG
Archive: Sure.
Summary: Darien rescues a stranger.
Warning: Dark memories.
Disclaimer/Notes:  I don't own most of these characters.  They belong to Naoko Takeuchi or Marvel Comics.  Of course the universe is my cobbled together mess, with some original characters in it so it will be different.  I am using  // as thoughts, and ** as emphasis.  It's not beta'd so all mistakes are my own.  ;)
 

"When It Rains It Pours Pt. 1"
Rebecca Bradstreet (c) 1999

"Amber," Darien moaned waking from the same old nightmare.  He hadn't found her.  It had now been 20 years since he first remembered his life in the courts of the Silver Millennium, and he was no closer to finding Amber, or Serena or any of the other missing.  Luna had found him, and Control had told them Sailor V was Mina.  Luna guessed Artemis had found her helped her remember who she was, but they didn't know that for certain.  They only guessed it.  He stretched, and yawned thinking, //I have to get out of here.  I can't sleep I might as well go on patrol.//

He magically donned the tuxedo and mask that made the papers call him the caped hero Tuxedo Mask.  Sometimes he felt a little silly in it, but mostly he knew it was the easiest thing for him to use magic in.  He stepped up on to the railing of his balcony, and balanced there.  It was a long way down falling would be fatal, but Darien hadn't been dependent on luck since he woke from the car crash that killed his parents when he was 6.  He was a mage, a sorcerer of great power, Prince Darien of Earth who had held seats on the inner councils of both the Moon Kingdom and the Dragon Kingdom.  On nights like to night he hated Queen Serenity for sending him to be her envoy to the Dragon Court.

//I can't change it.  I don't really want to.  I just want to find Amber,// Darien told himself leaping from his balcony to float to the roof top across the street.  He was moving slowly floating from roof top to roof top when he saw the flash.  It was a man falling out of the sky dressed in red and purple armor his long white hair obscuring his face.  Darien picked up his pace flying across distances longer than the ones he'd been merely floating across moments before.  The man was falling towards the park limp showing no sign of life.  Darien had to get there and make sure everything that could be done for the man was.  And he had to know who the man was, and where he came from.

*****

Erik was falling had been falling forever as far as he could tell.  He remembered very little of who he was, or where he was from he just knew he'd been falling forever.  Then suddenly he wasn't falling he was hitting water hard.  He thought about trying to put his feet down, trying to swim, but he couldn't seem to get his body to do what he wanted.  And he wasn't sure he could remember how to swim if he could get his body to obey.  He was floating face down in a body of water, and he was going to drown because he couldn't catch himself.  Then there were hands grabbing him, pulling him out of the water and even breathing for him.

"Shiro?"  He gasped wonderingly as he looked up at the young man who had rescued him.  He wasn't sure where he knew the name from, and wasn't surprised that the young man looked puzzled by the name.

"Shiro?  Is that your name?  Mine is Darien.  I think I could help you more if I could get you out of this armor," the young man, Darien, said as he tried to decide where to put the cape Erik was wearing.  Erik closed his eyes, reached out his powers with instinct more than memory and changed the armor into street clothes.  Darien looked surprised once more, shook his head, and helped Erik to stand.  Standing, looking at his surroundings, Erik was struck by the feeling that this didn't match with any of the memories he was missing.

"Come on...Shiro.  It will be safer for both of us if we dry you off somewhere else," Darien said hesitantly trying to encourage the stranger, but not sure he should take him home.  The white haired stranger shook his head, "My name's not Shiro...it's...it's Erik Magnus Lehnsherr."

Darien was puzzled by the wonder in the stranger's voice as he said his own name.

"Okay...Erik.  Lets get out of here," Darien said taking hold of Erik, and carrying them back to his apartment.

*****

Erik watched Darien fly, watched Darien carry them over a city Erik didn't recognize, felt he couldn't recognize.  Erik shook his head, wondering what he was going to do when Darien felt he'd offered all the help he could.  Erik was lost, amnesiac, but he had survival instincts that spoke even when they couldn't scream.  Something about the city felt wrong, but something about Darien felt right.  Erik held on tight to Darien.  Eventually they landed on the balcony of a rather anonymous apartment.

"Home again, home again," Darien smiled at Erik as they landed.  He stepped away from Erik and grinned, "Stay right there and I'll get you a towel."

Erik watched Darien's tall lean form slip in through the sliding door and disappear into the depths of the apartment.  Watching Darien move away from him triggered some dim memories in his head.  A tall brown haired man with red eyes shaking Erik's hand before leaving with a woman whose brown hair had a white streak in it.  That man coming to him in darkness telling him everything would be all right in time.  As he chased the memories he caught a name, "Remy" was that the man's name?  And what would be all right in time?

Darien came back with big plush towels.

"Get you all dried off then you can come on in, and sleep on the sofa," Darien said not even sure why he was so ready to let this stranger sleep on his sofa.

//It isn't just that he reminds me of Malachite before...before Beryl got to him with the Negaforce,// Darien thought setting his mouth in a hard line.

Erik was startled by the sudden change in Darien's expression, but said nothing, only taking the towel and drying his hair.  Darien shook his head against the sudden painful memory and repeated, "Come on in Eric."

                                                           *****

Erik sat on Darien's sofa.  This time Darien was out of sight trying to decide if he had any clothes that would fit Erik's wider frame.  Erik doubted it, but he wasn't about to discourage his young savior from looking.  Darien had said, "Feel free to watch some TV while you wait," before he'd dove into the back of his closet.

Erik wasn't sure but he had the feeling he shouldn't be able to watch TV.  He cautiously turned the TV on and stared at it.  It reported small pockets of warfare here and there on the globe, but as he listened he knew it wasn't the right description for his world.  His world had been shattered by a massive genocidal war.  What had it been about?  He searched the Swiss Cheese in his head and came up with three words -- mutant versus human.  But what was a mutant?

"No luck I'm afraid," Darien said from behind a pile of blankets.  He couldn't find a change of clothes for Erik, but he could get Erik to take off his wet outer layer, bundle himself in blankets, and have his wet clothes tumbled in the dryer.

//He looks so lost.  I don't even know where to begin asking him questions,// Darien thought setting the blankets down on the sofa.  He stood to one side of the TV while Erik studied the pile of blankets silently.  After a long silence Erik finally turned to Darien and asked, "Where are we?  I mean this is Earth isn't it?"

Darien was stunned silent.  Was Erik a dragon he'd never met, another survivor of the Silver Millennium?  Maybe Erik was an Outer Planet Prince he hadn't met.  Darien had gotten his memories of the Silver Millennium back without loosing his present, but what if Erik hadn't?  "Yes this is Earth.  10,000 years after the Fall of The Silver Millennium," Darien told him wondering if he'd just blown the deposit on his apartment by telling a dragon he'd lost everything in it.

*****

"Silver Millennium?  No, never mind.  Just...just...this isn't the Age of Apocalypse?"  Erik asked remembering suddenly whose name his world had been ravaged in.  //Apocalypse...this world has never known Apocalypse.  But Darien spoke of a fall.  How can he know of a fall 10,000 years ago?// Erik wondered looking at his savior anew.

"Age of Apocalypse?  I don't know the term.  Look whatever terror you were running from.  Whatever you've lost you can stay here.  I...I'm missing things too, and we...we can miss things together, okay?"  Darien said once more surprised at what he was willing to say, willing to do for this stranger.

"Missing things?"  Erik asked out loud immediately wishing he hadn't.  Whatever Darien was talking about it wasn't gaping memory gaps like his.  Darien knew the city, knew where his apartment was.  Darien wasn't lost, not lost like Erik anyway.

Darien let out a long sigh and sat on the floor between Erik and the TV, "Look I don't know exactly where your form, or even what you are, but I can tell your not from around here.  Can't you tell I'm not exactly normal to this place either?"

Erik swallowed and nodded, "You flew.  You carried us here.  I don't know what the Silver Millennium was, what it was to you, but it isn't part of here."

Darien laughed, "No it isn't part of here it only was."

Erik winced at how bitter Darien's laughter sounded.  Something about the Silver Millennium hurt Darien.  //Like the Age of Apocalypse hurts me both to remember and forget,// Erik swallowed shying away from the pain that the memories of Remy hinted at.

"Can you?  Do you really want to shelter me here?"  Erik asked facing what was here, and now rather than half remembered things.

"Yes I can, and I do.  I...I've been looking for someone...someone who's lost and in need.  I won't turn someone else who's lost and in need away," Darien said getting up off the floor.  He waved towards the blankets, "you can take off your wet clothes, wrap yourself in the blankets, and sleep on the sofa.  In the morning we'll dry your wet clothes, and then we'll go buy you some more clothes.  Good night Erik."

Erik looked at the blankets, shifted in his wet clothes on the sofa and said, "Good night Darien."

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