Work Text:
It was Motoki that made him realize that his role in life was to be the Princess Zelda to Usagi’s Link.
He’d had inklings along those lines before, really. In Japan, as the other scouts often complained, woman’s liberation was behind a lot of the developed world due to the declining population (he understood the sociological and biological factors involved better than Ami: the difference between being wisdom and being life) and it was still the male role to go out into the world and be the breadwinner, keep their wife and child safe from the world and its killing stress.
He loved Usagi, so he wanted to keep her safe, her and their daughter (a daughter: as an orphan he’d craved family and he understood why his future self had sent her back) and he couldn’t.
He wasn’t weak, he had one of the strongest sailor crystals in the universe. The problem was that he was a he. The power of a sailor crystal, much less the Golden Crystal, planetary crystal of Earth and the galaxy’s greatest healing power as the Silver Crystal was its greatest power source and the Sapphire Crystal its greatest offensive power, worked better for women.
The number of male crystal-holders in the galaxy could be counted on one hand. A male couldn’t be a Sailor Scout. Mamoru had taken so long to just figure out how to do an attack: he was doomed to be the white mage of the group, really. He could heal, he could make plants grow, he remembered his martial skills now thanks to his rock-bound bodyguards, but he couldn’t fight all that well since he couldn’t pull off the “DBZ moves,” as Motoki called them, very well. He still fought, but it hurt that he most he could do all too often was buy her time.
He wasn’t alone among the sailor scouts in feeling that, but he didn’t point out to Rei that he had it worse than her, just like he didn’t let the doctor-dreaming Ami know that he understood life and the human body in ways she never would, even with all her brains, scanners, and supercomputers.
He’d dressed up in a tuxedo like some sort of phantom thief and gone gem hunting to find her. He’d died trying to protect her.
He’d be stronger if he was a woman.
He’d be Sailor Gaia then.
A sex change, with his powers? That was nothing.
After all, he’d done it already. Twice.
There were four male sailor crystal-bearers in the galaxy because they were naturally female. Life-bearing worlds manifested as the life-bearing gender. The Amazon Quartet had gone to sleep until their asteroids were finally colonized. Haruka might contemplate getting a sex change every time she looked at him (the outers understood what was going on, especially the healer Saturn, although they didn’t know he knew they knew), but even though she’d copied his outfit once and often felt like a male in a woman’s body she wasn’t quite ‘liberated’ enough for that. Also, Michiru was very gay even if her ‘husband’ sometimes felt like a straight man in a woman’s body.
Usagi would love him no matter what the form, but a female couldn’t have children with her.
It was amazing how much remained part of earth’s culture out of what had been lost. The sacred marriage, for one thing. Only someone who loved earth could rule it justly. The Golden King had been the one chosen by the manifestation of Gaia. The kings of the four quarters, the children of her last incarnation, had raised her as a male because otherwise, well. She would have been swamped with suitors and if they were trying to impress her it was hard to get an accurate impression of them. They’d let everyone think he was the future king, their choice for their mother’s future husband as soon as she was found.
Like Zelda had spent seven years as a male defending Hyrule until the real hero of Hyrule awoke.
Then ‘he’d’ seen Serenity.
In the great dance of the stars… the moon had been born from earth. It had been wrong, she’d known it was wrong, she craved children. Earth was the only world in the system to evolve sentient life on its own for a reason, she’d put so much work into them because they were her children. Not to mention that if she married Serenity then the next Queen of the White Moon Kingdom would also be the rightful High King of Earth, and she was supposed to choose a husband the same way Gaia was, since she had a family line to carry on.
Her sons, her guardians, had wondered what in Gaia’s name Gaia was thinking, and she’d wondered just as much. Sure, there was parthenogenesis, magic, all sorts of ways for two women to have each other’s children. But that was artificial, that wasn’t what she or Serenity would have wanted.
So he stopped being a crossdresser.
This incarnation, waiting, remembering, knowing in his heart if not his mind, he’d changed while dreaming in the womb, before even ultrasound could have told the difference. He’d never remembered being female, but gender identity was more complex than his teachers thought. Once he was a doctor, then he could do research papers and correct them. Or when he was king. He stayed silent until then.
Still, he’d been the weird kid, the one that would rather play with plants than soccer balls. The one that cleaned his room willingly (wanting everything to be perfect for the one that would come for him someday, his princess), the one that was always neatly dressed… Motoki hadn’t cared, but Mamoru could tell that Motoki was only just on the straight side of bi. He was straight because the person he loved was female, the same reason that Mamoru was a lesbian.
As he remembered, as his Four Kings explained things to him since their memories were intact now even if Luna’s and Artemis’ weren’t, he’d wondered. He’d wondered often.
Because she kept getting hurt, various bastards kept trying to get their hands on her, Beryl failed to understand that she’d never had a chance in any way shape or form, and it just made him want to scream “Genesis Guard!” and create something to sic on them. Raptors appealed, that was what she’d made them for. They’d been great guard dogs. It had irritated her and the rest of the Golden Kingdom that the White Moon Kingdom seemed to feel she needed their protection. In a galaxy with so many energy-stealing pirates a planet didn’t have life unless she was able to protect them. Where had they been the first time she’d thrown that idiot Kaguya out of the solar system for not taking no for an answer, huh? They hadn’t even evolved on their own planet yet, let alone come to this galaxy.
The moon was young, created around when Guardian Gaia had been getting to work, and since she was born from her it had seemed more than a bit wrong. Although Uranus had hooked up with Neptune, so that really wasn’t an issue.
She’d… that Beryl…
Their Chibiusa.
If it hadn’t been for the knowledge that it would be worth it, if it hadn’t been for holding their daughter in his arms he might have switched back as soon as he’d figured out how. He’d woken up in the middle of the night and wondered why on earth he’d just had a dream in which his past life had breasts. Then he’d remembered.
Knowing that she’d be the result of this helped him endure the frustration. His baby, their daughter, their brilliant shining star of a child.
He knew he was a sap for children. If he hadn’t made earth so crawling with life this system would have attracted only a fraction of the attention. If earth hadn’t had humans it was doubtful Queen Serenity would even have detected that this system had a powerful crystal and come here, even though she’d gotten the wrong one.
He was so weak in this form that the curse on Elysium made him physically sick, and then Usagi caught it, and…
But Usagi wanted to protect him. Wanted to be the savior. And that was how it had usually been, hadn’t it. Gaia had rarely fought, she had children who loved her and wanted to defend her. She’d done things that they couldn’t handle. Usagi wanted to share his pain, wanted to help protect his planet by his side, and he wondered who was the knight errant here.
Motoki was a clever one, and if this was the old days he and Asuma were people who would have been strong contenders for kingship. Poor Asuma: between Mamoru’s femininity and the fact he was interested in Makoto for her strength as much or more than her cooking he’d been wondering if he was gay.
Usagi, Usagi would always be the most beautiful shining star. And if letting her have him and letting him have his children at the same time involved hiding most of his own light under a bushel basket then so be it.
Having children had put earth in danger in the first place: predators came for prey and if she’d stayed barren she would have been safe.
Safe and alone.
She would let her human children hurt her because she loved them too much to, as Motoki had put it once, “make with the smiting.” A little weakness was nothing for Usagi’s and Chibiusa’s smiles. And she’d always liked watching her men fight for her, and Usagi looked even more appealing in a short skirt than they had in loincloths.
So he’d take on a false gender identity and fight with a near-crippling handicap and get killed in the knowledge that she would bring him back even though he was the healer, it should be the other way around, and be dragged around the city for hours helping her shop and babysit as much as Usagi let him. Chibiusa had crushed on him before she knew he was her father and he had always been insanely in love with his children. Yes, she had sometimes married her children from the previous life in the next one. She’d raised them right, after all. Still, it was good that Chibiusa was interested in Helios: he didn’t have a sailor crystal since who would live on the sun but he was a decent person and powerful enough to not be any more a burden than Mamoru was.
He’d accept this weakness gladly for the one that danced around him, and their daughter, and their future, and the same sort of love that had Uranus grimacing when Neptune mourned the fact that Hotaru was grown up again now and sadly didn’t need mothering and looked at little girls’ clothes and wondered aloud about adopting even though the child wouldn’t be family the way Saturn was.
Hint hint.
He should probably find a discreet way of telling Uranus that she could be switched for a few days and then switch back. Saturn could perhaps put her in a male form (with a few decades of practice) but she couldn’t pull off fertility.
Venus might control falling in love, but making it was Gaia’s department.