Amor Omnia vincit.
A fanfic about the animated series "Saint Seiya" and written by Druuna.
Those days, she asked him if it was true that Love could everything, as it is said by songs. – It's true – he answered – but for your own good you shouldn't believe in it.-
[Gabriel García Márquez, On Love and other Demons]
Author's note: this fic has been totally written again respect of an old version of some years ago. If you have already read the old version, I hope the new one doesn't displease you; if you have never read it before… well, I hope it won't displease you as well.
Devoted to Jean Genie, wonderful writer and person.
1.
Coldness. Shivers. And the skin damp, damper and damper.
One of the sensations he hated more. The cold sweat. It seems a contradiction in terms, yet anyone has felt it knows that it isn't, knows that it's possible that your body can seize up for some brief moments, moments in which the fluids don't go out from your skin to cool, and the breath is difficult, unnatural, maddening.
It wasn't the first time Shun had felt that sensation, the body fully rigid, the fear he wasn't able to make a single movement any more, and the skin soaked, totally bathed while his brain was saying that everything around him was cold, that he was cold.
He opened his eyes… it wasn't completely dark, it was possible to see something beyond the window behind the bedhead, the pale light of the Moon managed to weakly lighten the room. He turned his neck --- he could still move, after all. It was already something.
Just another nightmare, not the worst one since when… well, since when "that thing" had happened. As Hyoga usually said, as everyone said, he was only a victim of "that thing", he didn't have to be full of scruples if "that thing" had happened.
People like to gill the pill, people like to try not to hurt other people with politically correct words. If you die, you don't die but you "pass away". If you have sex, you have a relationship, you date with someone. If you are possessed by a God of the Underworld – all that, too, could happen to fellows like him, who in their life adorned themselves with the title of defenders of Athena and the created Universe, which meant, as a matter of fact, to fight against everyone didn't think like Pallas – you undergo "that thing".
What he hated wasn't the fact that the others tried, with those euphemisms, not to remind him of what he had gone through. Theirs could be tact.
What he really hated was that to call what had happened to him "that thing" made it seem like shoddy stuff.
And it wasn't shoddy stuff, not at all: it couldn't be shoddy stuff, since that possession had changed him, and Athena, and everyone of them. All the rest, nice words or words with no tact, didn't mind.
He looked at Hyoga's figure, he was regularly breathing in the near bed.
Since when Hades had been defeated, since when they had come winner back from the Underworld, Hyoga too had changed. He didn't manage to say the way Hyoga had changed… yet he realised day by day that the Cygnus was becoming a common man, sure that the worst had passed.
He stretched out one of his hand, caressing softly a lock of blonde hair.
While you are thinking you can relax now, I think that the worst is still to come. God knows if I will be able to find again my composure…
Sometimes he thought that his was a sort of madness. It wasn't the first time he had felt that something was going wrong, that a danger could get near and maybe it was getting near for real. It was about a ten nights since that fact had happened to him. He woke up bathed in sweat and anguish while Hyoga went on sleeping, seeming not to feel anything.
Perhaps by giving hospitality to Hades in his own body he didn't refine his sensibility as a Saint, perhaps he just had become a neurotic visionary.
"It will pass" Hyoga said to him whenever he felt one of those moments of anguish. "Relax, and you'll see it will pass… now we can be really serene".
I need something to drink..."I could wake Hyoga" he thought, but he decided to let it go. It would have been completely useless. As he wanted to behave like a neurotic, he had better stay alone. He simply couldn't tell Hyoga something like: "I had another nightmare, please protect me in your strong arms till Sandman leaves me alone." Neither something like: "Wake up, Hyoga, there is an enemy within these sacred walls, but I don't know where or when it is gonna hit us. But I'm not outta my head, believe me, so stay alert all night long ready for I don't know what…"
He knew it would be better wear his trousers, --- Saori would have never allowed one of her knight to stroll along the corridors of her house in pants. But he wasn't able to find them, he would have needed a more vivid light.So he courageously made for the kitchen, thinking that he didn't have to wear the High Uniform to drink some milk. Probably.
This is a real he-man, ladies and gents, an iron saviour of whole mankind – he thought as he was walking down the corridor – where could you find anyone else like me, able to strike from his bed and to brave the nastiest weather, the cold, the darkness and as well a big storm that's incoming on Saori's house?
As a matter of fact, being so worried, Shun hadn't paid attention before to the little hurricane that roared all around the house. All in all, nasty weather is such an useful thing: because of it people stay closed in their houses, enjoying the warm, possibly in their bed. A glass of milk and back to his bed again…
But next time I will wake up Hyoga… so I will behave like a spoilt child and he's gonna bring me my milk. Thinking back, I might stop with my healthy way of life and start drinking something stronger, might not I…
He decided that ha was so distant from his bedroom that he could turn on the light without troubling Hyoga's sleep. He found the socket and he pressed the switch. Nothing. Another socket, and nothing happened again.
Good. A black-out. Definitely, my lucky day today.
At that point, it might be better to get back to his bed and stop thinking about all this. On the other hand, he had someway recovered.
But the distress was still inside him. It was milder now, but he could still feel it. It was laying a snare, about to raise again.
The best thing to do wasn't actually to get back to his bedroom neither to continue to the kitchen in the complete darkness. He didn't want to run the risk to find a very angry Tatsumi. And Tatsumi was always angry, by the way, especially when he couldn't follow his favourite TV programmes, which God knows why – even if Shun was quite certain to get the deepest reason of that - were often broadcast in the heart of the night, when the inhabitants of Kido house were sleeping or had something better to do.
The wisest thing to do, anyway, was to knock on Saori's bedroom door, to make himself sure that she was O.K., to check that the darkened strengths that were living in his own dreams were only actually living in his own dreams, to help her light a candle if her Majesty didn't sleep and she didn't remember anymore how to strike a match, to salute her politely, to come back to his bedroom with a joyful heart and with new prospective about the future on Mankind and the World.
…and I might even sleep again if this is my lucky day…
Saori's room was just few steps ahead, and Shun firmly believed in being a really wise guy. So he decided to head toward his divinity's room.
There was a time when Kido house had been the sanctuary for all the Saints, their point of reference, their operations' base.
But since their coming homeward after their most difficult war, the war against Hades, very few Saints had wanted to stay there. It was like they would have thought "If we move to another place we will certainly live a normal life." But someone gotta stay with Saori, Saori who didn't seem willing to leave that house. Sometimes she spoke about wrinkles that began to show themselves on the surface of her china skin, (Shun truly couldn't see them, but on the other hand he had been giving up of understanding women and their mind since he was six, more or less) and about the need of a possible marriage now or then, maybe with Julian Solo as the chosen one, if no one else appeared.
It seemed to Shun that a dozen, more or less, of those "Mr. No-one-else" knocked every day Saori's door to date her, but as it was about twenty years since he had given up of understanding women, and as he boasted in his life of being coherent as well as wise, he just didn't ask questions and threw the most bother ones out if ordered by his Lady.
He wondered about the reason why he had chosen to stay in that mansion. He hadn't did that just to play the bouncer, obviously. He knew he was there to prevent Saori from being attacked again. And he was glad to be the one that had to do that, because he had sinned so much in the past, not being able to protect her. Becoming he himself a danger to his Lady. And all because of "that thing".
He didn't ask Hyoga to stay with him, he knew that he hadn't the right to do that, to ask him to stay with him unless he obtained forgiveness for his sins. But Hyoga was still on his side and he might have never regretted his own decision.
He was in front of Saori's door now.
He knocked.
Silence.
He knocked again, and then he thought that she may have been sleeping, it was normal in the heat of the night.
I'm an idiot. If I wake her, she'll kick my ass till morning comes. And I hate to admit I would deserve that.
He decided to turn on his heels, but he heard Saori's voice behind. Her voice was firm, her door slightly swung open, the candle light opened the crack.
"Shun… tell me".
There was coldness in her voice. Be quick or be …
Now she may think I'm a paranoid, because there wasn't really any reason for me to come here.
He resolved himself to talk.
"Milady, I…"
He didn't have to go on.
"Get back, Shun. I was reading when the power went out, but I have lit some candles. Don't worry about anything, if the power system doesn't work we will fix it tomorrow. Good night."
"All right..." he whispered just an instant before the door closed. He could be quiet. Mission accomplished.
He walked down the corridor back, without focusing on anything. The route was shorter now, because he was relaxing.
If he succeeded in doing that.
He was turning in a paranoid. No way. He wasn't able to send that bad sensation away. He had better sleep, the wisest thing to do, the best thing to do was trying to sleep.
He entered his room. He wasn't gonna tell Hyoga anything.
"So?"
He had probably underestimated the intensity of his friend's sleep, he was amazed in hearing Hyoga's voice.
"How long do you…"
"Since you searched for your trousers." The blonde haired boy answered and he cast the cloth to him. "It was too much fun letting you go around just with your underpants. Ten to one the odds, if Tatsumi had seen you, his yell would have broken some windows." He knuckled.
"Oh, thank you very much. And I didn't want to trouble you."
The moon was shining pale out of the window, revealing Cygnus' giggle.
I'm a fool…he understands me, I should have told him all that.
"You know, Hyo…" Shun explained, lying in his bed and tucking himself under the blanket "I have gone to Milady, just to make sure she was alright… and I had another vision." He trembled mildly. He hoped Hyoga hadn't noticed that. "She was… so to say, weird. Strange."
"You'll see…" Hyoga bent himself toward the lying comrade, to give a him a caress with his stretched out arm. To protect him. A gesture full of affection. Shun felt his lips with his fingertips. They were raw and warm and wet.
"Her behaviour is quite normal. It wouldn't be normal is she was pleased by being waked up at four o'clock in the morning."
"Yes, but… I didn't mean… she seemed just like". Shun paused a little, trying to find a way to describe better the situation he had lived there, in that corridor. "She seemed like she wanted me far from there as soon as possible. And the door, she scarcely opened it. You know, I thought that there was someone else with her."
"Now listen to me" said Hyoga, almost whispering in his ear. "She had better mess around with someone, considering her age. If we are lucky, this time she's finally managed to take somebody in her room. And now, you're thinking I'm an awfully immoral person, aren't you? Well, that's absolutely true. I'm like that and even much more than that, and the rest of the world can fuck."
"Shun" he added then, softly "you know what it's said, don't you? If you have the solution, don't worry; if don't have it, why do you worry?"
Hyoga liked to repeat that motto. And it was a clear sign that the conversation, as for the Cygnus, finished there.
He closed his eyes shut.
If you have the solution, don't worry; if don't have it, why do you worry?
He didn't have many solutions that moment --- maybe because there was nothing real needing to be fix. Besides, so to speak in the style of Hyoga, that night Saori, the Mankind, and the created Universe had better fuck.
That night. At least.
I hope you're liking the story so far: every comment is welcome, and sorry for mistakes, if you eventually find them could you tell me, please?
Thanks to my boyfriend Lloyd for translating the story from Italian into English.
D.