"All that he had of her was his memory, where he held every moment, every single
moment that she had been his. That was all he had, to keep out the loneliness."
Daughter of the Forest, Juliet Marillier
"No."
The door slammed in his face. He didn't bother keeping count anymore. At first it had been somewhat entertaining. How many times could she possibly reject him? How long was it going to take before the next creak of the hinges and snap of the lock was accompanied by a chorus of sirens delivering a restraining order? It never came to that. It probably never would. Despite her reticence to accept any part of him she wasn't that cruel.
Some part of her, the part that deep down inside was struggling against the layers of social insulation and years of pent-up frustration with men in general, that veritable emotional needle in her bleak haystack of a soul still yearned to be near him. Somewhere behind those dark, expressionless eyes was that old spark that, given the opportunity, would explode and consume her wholly. Like the perfect diamond hidden deep within the earth all it would take was time; time to dig and time to peel back the layers.
Jadeite left the way he had come. He focused his thoughts on another part of Crystal Tokyo, a smaller, darker, somehow less savory part far away from the palace where she lived with the rest of the guardian Senshi. The molecules of his body lost cohesion and he literally fell into a pile, then a cloud, and then nothing. The world sprawled around him as he travelled unnoticed through the air and soil. The surf pounded the shore; cars filled the streets; the lights reflected off of every crystalline facet throughout the city threatened to blind him even in such an incorporeal state. He was back at his home moments later, solid and striding through the door. He tossed his coat aside, sat down on the rather plain couch in his rather plain apartment and stared at his hands.
He could conjure illusions; he always could. In the Dark Kingdom his illusions were dark and sinister. The thought sent a shiver through his body, but he quickly refocused. These days he rarely had use for the skill, but there was no harm in keeping his craft well-honed. The empty space between his palms filled with color, then a figure, then pale skin, eyes like the cloudy stretch of the Milky Way hanging in the night sky above, then hair that blended so perfectly with the darkness of the room that it enveloped him completely.
This figure in his hand, however, was no illusion. She was as real as real could be. The image was flawless not because of a practiced magical mind, but because Jadeite truly required no magic to call forth her image in his mind. Memories and faces could fade with time, but not hers. When he awoke from his long sleep he even had difficulty recalling the face of Endymion, but still fresh and clear in his mind was her face.
Unfortunately whenever he thought of her face she would be screaming. At him. Pain would pour from her lips and tears of rage, hate, and sorrow would stream from her violet eyes. The image would burn away in moments leaving only ashes and it happened every time.
He closed his hands together and rubbed his palms. The image was gone, but his mind was not clear. The memory surfaced again. The alabaster surface of the Moon had become flush with bloodshed. He stared into her eyes as silent screams and curses drifted off a tongue that cleaved to her dying jaws. The blade had pierced her heart, but she would not be stopped so easily. Didn't she once say something about Martians having two hearts? One for love and one for passion, perhaps. Her heart of love had been broken long ago, but the heart of passion that Jadeite's sword had split in half was still beating furiously and that passion became a boiling hate in which she was just about to lose herself completely. He couldn't let that happen. He had to show her some measure of mercy… so he twisted the blade and the flame died.
He started crying again. An hour, a headache, and a bottle of gin later he passed out on the floor with the red sash of a priestess' kimono clutched like a baby's security blanket tightly in his fists.
Jadeite waited. And waited.
Nephrite drilled his lips into Sailor Jupiter's. Her hands were tangled in that ridiculous lion's mane of wood-colored hair he refused to trim for the last few millennia. When they finally parted they were both panting like a pair of Labradors after a tussle over a bit of rope.
"See you tonight." She cooed at him.
Nephrite, always the chivalrous paladin of the Shitennou, gave her a hearty swat on her backside and a sophomoric grin that should have enraged the den mother of the Senshi, but only served to degenerate her further into a giggling schoolgirl. Any other man on the planet to even suggest placing a hand near her ample rear end would have been charred around the edges in a burst of her elemental fury.
"Is there a particular reason you've been so moody and boring lately?" Nephrite asked immediately upon seeing Jadeite staring disapprovingly from the opposite side of the crystal foyer.
"Boring?" Jadeite asked.
"You don't come out to dinner when we invite you." Nephrite started, "You don't come out drinking with us anymore. You barely have any input at all at these state meetings."
"The East is pretty stable right now." Jadeite reminded him of the relative peace the majority of the world had been enjoying for, oh, the last hundred years or so since the founding of Crystal Tokyo.
"You know what I mean." Nephrite admonished him.
"I've been busy." Jadeite lied, "With other stuff."
"I know for a fact that Endymion doesn't have you working on any special projects." Nephrite cut right through the thin veil, "And you don't have any hobbies."
"Yes I do!" Jadeite snapped back, offended.
"Rejection isn't a hobby, Jed." Nephrite told him. His younger companion halted dead in his tracks.
"Go fuck yourself." He suggested.
"Excuse me?" Nephrite balked. The Shitennou were men; they drank together, fought together, and spoke rather roughly with each other, but that outburst wasn't meant for a chuckle. That one cut deep. Jadeite meant it.
"I have to watch this shit every day." Jadeite growled in barely constrained fury, "Endymion and Serenity is one thing, but when I have to watch the rest of you flaunting it across the whole city, day in, day out, every fucking hour…"
"Jadeite, what the hell are you going on about?" Nephrite demanded.
"Every morning I report to Kunzite first thing and half the time he's still got a certain half-naked Senshi perched on his lap, hanging off his neck like a spoiled child." Jadeite related, "I have to sit in conferences and watch Zoisite and Mercury mentally undress each other over and over and over again." Jadeite's eyes narrowed at his oldest companion, "And then there's you, Nephrite."
"Me?"
"Sucking on whatever part of Sailor Jupiter's face you can get your lips to first."
Nephrite threw his fist at Jadeite's mouth with all the force he could muster, which considering he was always the raw muscle of their cadre, was considerable. Jadeite blocked the punch with his forearm, which went numb for the effort. He danced backward as Nephrite came at him again and the two ended up grappling, gritting teeth at each other, and growling.
"Maybe she doesn't want you because you've become an introverted, moody little prick." Nephrite shouted as he tried desperately to twist Jadeite's arm behind his back.
"Shut up!" his partner thundered and threw a wild haymaker at the elder King.
Unfortunately Nephrite was faster. He had always been faster, stronger, taller and in most ways better than Jadeite. They were all better than Jadeite in some ways, but the Shitennou had to be equal and Jadeite was quite a bit better than the rest of them in certain ways of his own. Like the rest, he had his uses, but as Kunzite had confided in Nephrite more often than not those uses were becoming fewer and fewer these days. Nephrite felt a twinge of remorse as he caught Jadeite's arm, redirected his momentum, and threw the younger King head-over-heels into the opposite crystalline wall of the hallway. The smooth, glassy surface cracked in a body-sized spider web pattern and Jadeite slumped head-first to the floor.
"Damn it." Nephrite cursed to himself. Endymion was going to feel that. He could feel the most infinitesimal vibrations on the opposite side of the world, so a smashed chunk of wall in his own palace would feel like a bookcase falling on top of him.
The elder king walked over and hoisted Jadeite to his feet through the sharp, settling mass of mirror crystal. The blonde king looked no worse for wear aside from a few cuts and bruises, but his face had gone blank. His usually intense, wide-wondering eyes were dark and threatened tears. In all their long years Nephrite couldn't remember Jadeite openly crying, but it's something he'd been doing fairly often now.
"I'm sorry." Nephrite mumbled.
"When is it going to be enough?" Jadeite cryptically murmured back.
He turned in the direction they had come and started walking. Nephrite didn't chase after him. He just stood there for a long moment watching his colleague drift back towards the thing that was slowly killing him.
She answered the door on the second knock. Jadeite's clothes were dirty and torn and he had several obvious bruises on his face and seemed to be clutching his right arm. His eyes stared through the ends of scraggly blonde hair as intently as they ever had, but the light had gone out of them. There was no passion here; he was just going through the motions.
"Jadeite…" Sailor Mars sighed in frustration.
He didn't respond. What did he have to say that his condition couldn't communicate?
"This might be the most pathetic attempt yet." She slammed him.
That got his blood flowing again. He blinked several times at her and his lip trembled angrily.
"Pathetic?" he spat back.
"Are you seriously seeking physical punishment now?" She asked him, "I assume this was Nephrite's work. What's next? Are you going to get into a brawl with Kunzite? Do you want to see how many concussions it will take to finally force all the stupidity out of your head?"
"I did this for you, Rei!" Jadeite screamed at her and threw his hands forward to catch her shoulders.
"Get off me, Jadeite." She hissed.
"Doesn't this feel wrong to you?" He pleaded, "Everyone else says it is! Everyone else is living their lives happily together." Jadeite dropped to his knees. He had never begged, cowered, or in any way shown himself to be subservient to her, but the youngest Shitennou had reached the end of his rope, "Everything else is just like it was, Rei, all those centuries ago… Why not… why not…"
He couldn't finish his sentence. She wasn't registering an emotion as usual. She certainly didn't show any signs of pity or sorrow, neither did she appear to agree or disagree. Rei was blank, as she so often could become. Nothing frustrated Jadeite more than being unable to read her, but when she wanted to shut people out she was masterful.
She took a step back and began to close the door when she heard Jadeite whimper.
"Are you ever going to forgive me?" he asked for possibly the thousandth time.
There was no hesitation in her voice. No regret or remorse as usual.
"No."
Jadeite sat listening to the music. Normally it would calm him and offer clarity, but today it was just noise. He fidgeted in his chair, crossed his arms and grumbled aloud. After a few repetitions of that behavior the music reached a dramatic crescendo and his eyes flew open.
"You need to clear your mind or this won't work, Jadeite." The haunting, lyrical, and oftentimes sarcastically abrasive voice of Zoisite spoke to him.
"Just play your stupid piano." Jadeite ordered from within his dreamlike trance.
The music flowed through him again from seemingly a world away. The environment was hazy and indistinct, but he could recognize it easily enough: the crystal-clear streams, the flowers, the emerald fields, and the crisp, clear air. He was home again; his true home.
Elysion.
His body moved forward of its own volition and the world smeared passed him like running paint on a canvas. It stretched and skewed to odd angles before pulling together and reforming into recognizable shapes as he walked. The dream world wasn't perfect. It seemed to lag behind his perception ever so slightly, but it was real enough to get the job done.
He spied the gazebo at the crest of the hill and made his way up the spiraling, swirling Van Gogh landscape toward it. There was a woman within sitting on a stone bench. Her long red gown was gathered around her and in this indistinct world looked like melted wax collected at the base of a candle. Her porcelain skin was unnaturally bright and her long, elegant hair was as a deep chasm and Jadeite felt as though he could fall into it. Her face, like the rest of this internal universe, was somewhat blurry, but her eyes were as sharp and clear as if she were standing right in front of him. Those eyes were like another universe; gateways to a place where he didn't have do things like this.
He focused all of his concentration on this dream world and shut out the music. Zoisite's piano was replaced by a dull hum and Jadeite seized control of his body. His hands came to rest on her shoulders and without hesitation he pulled the straps of her dress down over her arms and let the long garment fall off of her and onto the floor. The memory of her body was strong and Jadeite let himself remember every supple contour and curve; the weight and shape of her breasts, the taste of her skin. If he had entered this realm clothed he certainly wasn't now. Without much care he laid the Martian princess down on the stone bench and moved on top of her, tracing his lips from her neck down further and further…
A supremely dissonant musical chord cut through his private fantasy and the misty memory of Elysion was replaced by the sterile crystal of the modern world. He was sprawled out on the floor beside Zoisite's white grand piano and when he looked up he was met by the disapproving, sour glance of the Shitennou's master of mysticism.
"Are you serious?" Zoisite demanded of his younger companion.
"Don't even start, Zoi." Jadeite warned him and grabbed his jacket from a nearby chair.
"I don't take this kind of thing lightly." Zoisite reminded him, "Pulling our oldest memories to the surface is difficult, draining, and potentially dangerous."
"Yeah, well I got what I needed." Jadeite insisted and moved for the door.
Zoisite glanced and the door slammed shut, locked, and magically barred itself. It would never open again unless the enigmatic Shitennou willed it so.
"Jadiete…" Zoisite sighed, "The only reason I'm not going to tell Kunzite about this is because I respect that you're still powerful enough to seize a memory I've pulled forth and twist it around into a perverse fantasy world."
"That seems like the sort of thing you should be telling him about." Jadeite scoffed.
"Don't be indignant." Zoisite admonished him.
"I'll be whatever the fuck I want." Jadeite replied defiantly.
"Stop pushing us away!" Zoisite suddenly roared in fury and slammed his hands down on the keyboard. He was normally quiet, reserved, and as Sailor Venus was keen to observe, creepy, but when Zoisite's anger got the better of him he could be positively horrifying, "Can't you see we want to help you?"
Jadeite responded by kicking the door which didn't move a centimeter; he was stuck here until the elder King would allow him to leave. Teleporting out was no use, Zoisite's room was magically insulated to prevent unwanted visitors from "interrupting his genius." He slung his coat over the back of a chair again and sat down grumpily.
"I hear Nephrite threw you into a wall yesterday." Zoisite spoke.
"We had a frank difference of opinion."
"You and Nephrite have fought like brothers for centuries, but he's never thrown you into a wall." Zoisite reminded him.
"I insulted his girlfriend."
"Wife."
Jadiete clenched a fist and shook slightly in his chair. Zoisite's eyebrow shifted upward ever so slightly.
"Don't give me that look." Jadeite groaned and turned away from his gaze.
"There is a possibility that Sailor Mars…" Zoisite slowed down and reached for the right wards, "She might not be… meant for you."
Jadeite turned back with an amused grin in place of his scowl, "Look at me and say that again with a straight face."
"Jadeite, it is possible."
"Can you even hope to believe that?" Jadeite countered, "There are four Shitennou and four Guardian Senshi. We have memories of our romances during the Silver Millennium. Three of those four couples are together again; some of them are already married."
"There is nothing to say that these relationships are the result of—"
"Destiny?" Jadeite cut him off, "Fate? Prophesy? The god-damned ever-spinning wheel of karma?" Jadeite laughed, "No, it's perfectly fine when our Master is destined to marry his Moon Princess, but for us it's still just the luck of the draw?"
"There is no luck involved in love, Jadeite." Zoisite told him in a somewhat disappointed tone, "Love doesn't happen by chance and it isn't something that destiny alone can carry."
"Zoisite, you know as well as I do that we should be together." Jadeite pleaded with his spiritual advisor, "We were the first to fall in love in the Silver Millennium; I remember that clearly! I was drawn to her even when we were in the Dark Kingdom, when none of the rest of the Shitennou could even recognize beauty!"
"Since we arrived here I have been a better man that I've ever been." Jadeite continued, "I've rededicated my life to our Master's service. I've watched over the East, I've averted wars and natural disasters. I've helped to eradicate hunger and poverty and sickness. I've done everything I can think of to be different from the man I was and to atone for the past."
"But?" Zoisite asked.
"She still won't forgive me!" Jadeite screamed and put his fist into the crystalline wall. That was the second one he'd shattered in two days. At least this time it was of his own volition.
He sat back down in his chair and a moment later felt the presence of Zoisite sitting next to him. When he looked over he saw, possibly for the first time, how old Zoisite actually looked. The Shitennou were ageless beings and the bodies they inhabited now would look the same in several billion years when the universe finally came to an end, but that didn't mean they weren't affected by the long wearing of time. Zoisite didn't look tired or ravaged, but he looked somehow aged, like fine wine.
"How often do you think about what happened?" Zoisite asked him slowly.
"Which 'what' do you mean?" Jadeite returned.
"You know."
"About killing the woman I loved in cold blood on the Moon?" Jadeite immediately replied, "Not too often."
Zoisite smiled, an odd sentiment, and offered, "Are the memories of Rei more powerful than the feelings you have for her right now?"
"Memories are all I have of Rei. She wants nothing to do with me." Jadeite sulked.
"Because you treat her like a memory." Zoisite told him.
"What?"
"She's already forgiven you, Jadeite." The elder Shitennou told him warmly, "She forgave you the moment it happened. She had still forgiven you when you arrived in Crystal Tokyo. Every bit of her body and soul has been screaming, "Jadeite I forgive you!" for years."
"Just yesterday she said she would never forgive me for what I did." Jadeite told him.
"Maybe she's tired of repeating herself." Zoisite told him, "Maybe for Rei the memory of what you did pales against the power of what you are now."
"If that's the case then why is she being so impossible to reach?" Jadeite asked more to himself than to the man sitting next to him.
Zoisite slapped Jadeite firmly in the back of the head and laughed, "If your memory of Rei is so strong then you should remember how difficult she can be."
Jadeite grimaced, rubbed the back of his head and then smiled. It was the first time he had smiled outside of decorum in what felt like weeks. Zoisite stood up and reclaimed his seat at the piano and started tinkering away with a new melody he had been working on. Jadeite sat and listened for a while, but when the maestro began playing the same four-note passage over and over and over again looking for the perfect dynamic phrasing Jadeite excused himself. Zoisite scribbled on his manuscript paper, lost in his art and didn't even notice his exit.
Jadeite had never had to psych himself up for anything before, but standing in front of her door once again he found himself pacing, ramming his fist into his palm, and quietly reassuring himself that everything was going to be fine. He knocked on the door for almost a full minute before there was an answer.
"I love you." He blurted out as soon as he saw her appear in the doorway.
Rei didn't let herself laugh, but the urge was there. Jadeite wasn't crying on his knees, he wasn't bruised or beaten, and he didn't look nearly as worn-down as he had these past few months. There was a gleam in his eyes again, that same youthful, irrepressible energy that she had fallen in love with. He wasn't begging for forgiveness and he wasn't grasping at the stray memories of their past life. That in and of itself felt wonderful.
Unfortunately he just stood there, eyes wide and glaring at her. Jadeite could be the most ruthless warrior on the battlefield. He was a masterful tactician and supreme conjurer of magic, but sometimes she had to remind herself that he was just a man, a boy in many ways. He could be unswervingly loyal and chivalrous and the sweetest, most thoughtful lover a woman could ask for. He could also be this: Jadeite of the Vacant Stare.
"Is that it?" She prodded him.
For a moment she thought that Jadeite could lapse into pitiful sobbing again or explode into a rage that would dwarf even her own volatile temper, but he maintained the state of his emotions and looked straight into her eyes. When he did that, more to the point, when he meant it he could melt her. She could hide her feelings behind years of practice and she could be as callous as she wanted towards him, but Jadeite could get inside her head like no one else could. He was seeing her clearly now. It certainly took him long enough.
"Does there need to be anything else?" He asked. His child-like innocence was gone; replaced by boldness, confidence and that wonderful, enveloping emotion that no one else could draw out of him.
The only answer to such a ridiculous question was,
"No."