It seemed to me then that I must have been simply caught in some godforsaken nightmare.

However, my tears were genuine. The pain gnawing at my heart was real enough... though I wish it wasn't. It's not that I want the pain to stop -- I would feel nothing but guilt if I did not feel some agony over the death of a brother.

No, I want the pain to stop by having that what caused the anguish to never happen... I want Saffir here beside me, I want my brilliant, paranoid, occasionally annoyingly right little brother back...

However, it seems as if that would be an impossibility.

I can look at him now, frozen under glass, trapped in the eternal sleep of death... if only I could wake him! To tell him I am sorry, to tell him that he was right and I was wrong, to tell him that I loved him beyond belief, and that I have never been prouder to be his brother...

The light is this room is dim, dusky... like his eyes were. It's appropriate, however, given I have chosen this room in which to place my brother. For some reason, I cannot bear to leave my brother alone in the cold hard ground of Nemesis... the cold, barren ground which the sunlight never reaches, the unfertile ground from which few flowers have ever sprouted...

Of this unweeded garden that is my family, only one true flower has ever grown to raise its petals to the sun. Yet, there was no sun here on Nemesis for my brother... and without the sunlight, my brother died.

Still, I cannot bear to leave him alone, to sleep in that grasping, grappling ground, the dirt that threatens to consume his body and steal his beauty, to take from him his innocent smile...

I kneel beside the bier, and place my pale, long fingers over the cold, hard crystal in which I have placed my younger brother's lifeless body. Like the sleeping empress in Crystal Tokyo, my sleeping brother slumbers in a quartz coffin. Both of those I love the most are slumbering... though one shall never awaken to my love for her, and the other shall never awaken.

Saffir's dusky, shadowed blue eyes are closed, his face pale and peaceful underneath the quartz shell. He once again wears the blue jacket that was his Savant's uniform -- I never discovered what happened to the other one that he was surely wearing before he died.

His brow is free of the insignia of our house.

The surface of the quartz is wet again -- I am crying, crying without realising, though I can still feel the agony of my soul well enough. My brother, my younger brother, the only one who always saw through my faults, always believed in me, died trying to protect me...

"It's not fair," I whisper as I softly pound my fists on the coffin, as if the gentle pitter-patter could possibly awaken him. "It's just not fair... why did you have to be the one to die?"

Saffir is silent. His ashen visage holds no more answers, no more wisdom to give to his adored older brother. What a wretched creature I am, that innocence should admire me so much...

Maybe he wasn't that innocent, but he was good-hearted, my younger brother. He was always much quieter, more introspective than I, and in his knowledge, he knew what was right and what was wrong... though it was too late before he tried to object to my definitions of the phrases.

"If only I had known," I whisper, my eyes dulled and blurred as I stare at my silent brother, my sleeping brother, my dead brother... "If I had only listened to you... why was I so blind?"

Blind, I am blind! Why couldn't I see? I lay my cheek against the cool crystal, feeling the tears roll down my cheeks. I rarely cry, if ever.

Saffir is dead.

I cry.

"My brother," I weep, feeling as if my heart will break. He was the only person I loved who loved me in return, the only one who trusted me, never questioned me... and the day he finally did question me, he died.

Now he sleeps. Peaceful, like the entranced empress of Earth, my brother sleeps. What I wouldnât give to awaken him from that slumber... I once thought that I would sacrifice anything to see my goal of taking earth back.

But I won't sacrifice my brother.

Too late, too late... but I never expected my brother to get caught in the crossfire, he had always been far from the fighting, the danger... but it was Nemesian cut-throat politics... why didnât I see?

And because I was blind my brother died. For me. To make me see.

My dear beloved brother, who died before he was even born.

I stop crying.

There is something... something I have forgotten; there is something to my trail of thought...

Of course! But of course!

Time has not lost its hold on Saffir. It has not lost its hold on any of us... and I have not lost my hold on time.

I turn one last time to gaze upon my brother, once again falling to my knees beside him. However, my eyes are now dry -- the hope sparkling within has evaporated my tears, my smile is wide though watery, but I know I am right. "Saffir-otootochan! I know how to stop this! Brother, listen to me! I can help you live again..."

Saffir is silent.

I smile again, brushing my thin fingers over the crystalline surface again, as if I could touch Saffir by doing so. "I promise you that everything will be all right," I say fervently, meaning every word.

The flower lying at the head of the coffin reminds me of an old promise, a childhood desire. I had promised my adoring little brother the earth, but to have that, he must first have his life.

And with my brother at my side, nothing shall prevent me from awakening that sleeping empress to be my queen.

Because, after all, time is never time at all.

There's the prologue for y'all! I hope you liked it, and that you plan to go onto the next part... otherwise, I'm going to feel very very rejected... :P