She's not sure when or where it comes from, perhaps it's snuck in on her like a fog on the chilliest autumn morning. Her life has been chaos lately and she wonders if it's always been there waiting for her in the darkest corners of her days and nights. She finds her skin creeping with goosebumps in the middle of the day when she's sitting at the park talking to her friends. It's warm out and there is no reason for it. She finds herself looking behind her on the crowded sidewalks of Tokyo on her way to work only to make eyes at the annoyed business man who is late for a meeting and she's walking too slow. She always shrugs it off because it's not an enemy and thinks maybe all the hardships her life has dealt her is finally catching up with her. She wants so badly for it to be her, but the cold pit in her stomach tells her it isn't so.
Mamoru is acting strange too. He leaves for Harvard soon and he frowns when she tells him not to go. Not to leave Usagi because of how hard it will be for her. He leaves anyway and doesn't call or write and it infuriates her because Usagi is inconsolable, and she knows there is something horribly wrong. Usagi confesses later, that he hid things from them all including her. It doesn't do much else but infuriate her further but it's easier to ignore the chill crawling up her spine and making her hair stand on end. Mamoru has always been a private person but when Usagi tells her that he's been hiding a box with four stones in it, she feels like she might throw up.
That night she clenches her eyes shut, knowing her door is locked and Artemis is staying with Usagi she knows she's alone but knows there's someone there. Standing just in the threshold of her bedroom and livingroom of her tiny apartment. She finally throws the covers back, sitting up and ready to blast someone into the next life because she's no coward to find the room empty. She almost laughs hysterically to herself and lays back down. The feeling doesn't go away.
She can count on one hand the number of nights it's been since she's dreamed of the past. The harder memories are easier to swallow because they don't come frequently anymore but she cherishes the happy ones and tells no one she still thinks about him. She's not a superstitious person even if she still has a pouch in her drawer containing a gold ring of the symbol of Venus, an ace of hearts card that could slice through steel, and a dirty white glove with a heart cut out in decoration. A pouch she doesn't dare open because it only reminds her of curses and death. She doesn't know why she keeps these things but understands a little why Mamoru would keep the four stones said to glow with a faint light. It doesn't make her less angry at him. Usagi confirms later that he took them with him because she has a key to his apartment and she's quite sure Usagi stays there as much as she can. She's not one to speak ill of the dead, and she hasn't uttered either of their names in years. There's only one name she cares to remember, and it's the hardest one for her to say.
Their enemy is strong. The strongest they've ever had to face and she finds herself too tired to think most nights but can't sleep because she can feel eyes on her even when all the curtains of her apartment are tightly drawn. She doesn't know how she knows these eyes are pale but only one set of pale eyes ever held this much weight and it frightens her. She can almost feel him looming over her bed though she sees nothing when she goes to confront him. The enemy doesn't care if she can't sleep and it makes her feel afraid of being so tired that she fails Usagi again. The enemy certainly doesn't sleep either.
She encourages Usagi to date again. One of their newest allies is interested and he looks an awful lot like Mamoru but more fun so she knows Usagi is interested too. Yaten, the youngest of the three brothers is mildly interested in her body but that's about it. It thrills her that he and his brothers can transform into women because she's had it with men but will enjoy both sides of her lover equally. It's later after he finally agrees to go on a date with her that she is chattering happily with the girls and the chill comes over her like a warning and she stops talking about her new potential lover. It gathers fear in the pit of her stomach and she feels that urge to run.
She grows quiet and her eyes dart around the wooded path they're walking down. Her knees begin to shake and give because she thinks she sees a slip of silver drift through the trees and despite the bright and sunny afternoon she feels terror. Rei says something about her palor and she's hardly able to get out an excuse to leave because her teeth are chattering. She says she doesn't feel well and walks quickly away in the other direction. Usagi looks sad because she knows it has to do with a pink stone and the others have always thought she was strange so they don't really question her. She can almost smell something spicy on the breeze and she runs all the way home.
Her dreams are vivid tonight. She can almost feel his warm hands on her body and taste his kisses on her lips. They taste like blood suddenly and when she shoots awake she can almost see his pale outline disappear in the darkness through the doorframe of her bedroom. She shakes and doesn't want to see so she hides beneath her covers the rest of the night cowering like a child. It begins to get worse.
She's with at least one of her friends and soldiers nearly at all times and she knows they all worry even when they whisper to each other that she's finally cracked beneath the pressure. She works, takes a few hours to get dinner with Yaten and insists they go to her place to make love instead of her apartment. Last time she swore she felt him watching. There's a battle later and between the sex and fighting it's the only time of the day she feels normal.
She starts to blame the enemy for messing with her head though even they spit acid at her and tell her she haunts herself, they send no ghosts. It doesn't stop her from seeing him walk in front of her down the street, or drifting through the trees at the park, or smiling affectionately down at her while she sleeps- or tries to. All she can ask herself is why? Why now does he haunt her more than he did in the days after she killed him? Why is it HIM and not Ace of who she had personal belongings of his hidden carefully away in a drawer? The girls think she's losing her mind and thinks that she would prefer that explanation.
She feels like she's drowning tonight. The pressure of the ocean is smothering her and she can't break free because the long skirts of the dress she wears are too heavy. It's terrifying and dark so far beneath the frigid foaming sea and yet the familiar Elysian castle is huge and sprawling before her like a ghost ship in the dark forgotten depths of the ocean. She's staring into the emptiness of a grinning skull where there should have been grey eyes. His hair still floats around him too stark white against the surrounding blackness where it should have been silver. The familiar cape clasps are still shining against a faint light she notes she's radiating, still attached to a rotted uniform with the first three buttons undone revealing the top of an empty ribcage. He's held beneath the waves by rusted chains more empty and desolate than the ruins around her. She coughs up water when she wakes up screaming and notices it's salty.
Usagi's in love again, it's been months since anyone has heard from Mamoru and she's mostly proud that her Princess has branched out to such a magical person as Seiya who is more sexually ambiguous than Haruka mostly because he can be a woman whenever he wants to. He can be an ass at times but mostly she likes him, and Usagi seems happy. It's a shock that Ami dates the middle brother though she's always expected her blue haired friend had a thing for girls too the way she's always reacted to her own flirtations so she feels nothing but pride that the studious girl lets go a little.
No one is shocked that she's been seeing Yaten though no one wants to point out the obvious. She's watching him perform, biting her lip because she's been in denial until now and realizes why she's preferred him as a female. He looks like Ace mostly, young and vibrant with his wide green eyes that are only just slightly darker than her old lover turned enemy. Her first kill. Yet his hair is long, and silver even if it's a bit darker than her first love's Yaten is the perfect mix of the two because he often seems bored at her antics and yet supports her own talents as a model and singer. The sex is better than good so Yaten puts up with her. She swallows a lump in her throat and cheers with the crowd, pretending that she isn't chilled in the humid little venue where everyone else is sweating.
She thinks trying to move on would make the eerie feelings go away and she is wrong. It's made worse tonight because she's curled up against Yaten's chest in her place with her brothers, inhaling the light fresh scent of her perfume and enjoying the feminine curves that make her think she's not trying to substitute another silver haired man. She feels his eyes peering at her from some dark corner of the room and clenches her eyes shut, trying to bury between Yaten's breasts. She's pushed away with an annoyed groan and can feel the weight of his stare and feels terrified. She begins to shake her lover who growls and opens her eyes just long enough to glare at her before she turns to her side, turning her back on her. She silently wishes Yaten was a man currently so she could hit him where it counts.
She feels alone and not alone at the same time. She's faced monsters before but not ghosts and is more scared than she's ever been in her life. She wants to cry but that's never really been her style if she can help it and begins to dress quickly. She probably woke Yaten up the way she flew from the house, unapologetically she makes a lot of noise and doesn't care. Her feet thud against the pavement, it's very early in the morning and still dark but she runs toward home because there's nowhere else to go.
She flies through the door, calling for Artemis, her hair like sunshine in the dark is messy and her clothes are only half thrown on and inside out but she's frantic, frozen when she feels his eyes again. She swallows hard, hoping the lump of fear would go away as she inches into her apartment, blue eyes darting back and forth until she hears a whisper.
"I am fading." She hasn't heard his voice in thousands of years. Not his true voice, but an arrogant and poor excuse for his puppet that sounded like him, and didn't at the same time. His true voice- one that used to whisper such pretty and loving words as he made love to her, and spoke of duties and foreign lands that he was never able to show her, this is what she hears now. She hears him, genuine and tired. She can see him flickering, standing by her windows in the Moonlight like a faded motion picture. He is faded and his features are just barely discernable as the faint glow of his ghost.
She pads slowly over toward him so slowly as if his spectre might bolt but he stand firm as he always has. She sees there is no definition to his eyes, they glow faintly but are only white. Her heart leaps into her throat, not scared anymore really but the air around him is spicy and cool and much colder than the mild air of her apartment. She feels like weeping, she's missed him.
"Where will you go?" She hears her voice, it's as old as the way she bites her lip now, noting how his head shifts slightly to look at her. He seems to become a little clearer to see at the sound of it.
"I don't know where I am now." His voice is but a whisper on the gentle hum of her air conditioner but she wants to keep hearing it. It's been distorted in even her dreams she realizes, it's much smoother than rough as she seems to recall.
"Why are you haunting me?" She feels her bottom lip quiver and she's unable to stop it. She can only fight the tears that prick at her eyes for so long before she manages to weep for him again. She's proud she can keep them at bay.
"I think that would be obvious." He speaks crytically and she can almost see him frown. She wants to pull him to bed with her and envelop herself in warmth he hasn't possessed in probably a million years.
"I wish I could touch you." She whispers, hanging her head just slightly and it becomes harder to contain her emotions. There's no harm in confessing to a ghost. Dead men tell no tales. "I miss you." Her voice cracks and a tear does fall now as his spectre seems to gain more strength at her words. She can better see his face and wishes her feelings could bring him home to her.
"Mina..." Is all he can say. She can now see the scar in his brow, the light downturn of his lips and the silver shade of his hair but his eyes are still plainly white. She wants them to be grey.
"Dammit why did you do this? Why did you leave me the way you did?" She wipes the first tear away, another is quick to replace it. She wants to beat on his chest and demand answers. "Please say something..."
"I need to see you smile." Her eyes widen and she realizes the ghost is smiling now, he's beautiful but it's an impossible feat for her to smile right now. "Please Mina."
She wants to break and yet she smiles. It's practiced by now and he knows it. His hand tries to touch her and it's nothing but a cool breeze that floats through her arm. His spectre flickers and she knows there isn't much time.
"You promised me... you promised me this life." She sobs now, her practiced smile crumbling under the weight of her sorrow, she can't help it. She never mourned for him when she killed him in this life. He was nothing more than catatonic dreams created by trauma. She screamed, she hated, she didn't sleep or eat but she never shed a tear until now.
"I have had this life." He answers and she wants to scream at him. She wants to throw things at him and cry because it's not fair. It was supposed to be HIM in this life. It was supposed to be their chance. HE was supposed to save her from the curse Ace lay over her heart because only HE could do it. "I'm so sorry..."
"Fuck you." She bites, glaring up at him. He frowns but nods. She doesn't want him to be understanding. She wants him to be real, and angry with her for sharing someone else's bed with someone that looks something like himself and Adonis. It was only ever supposed to be him.
"I'm fading Mina." He says softly again. She sobs again, wanting to kiss him, smell him, feel warmth instead of the chilled air that raises every hair on her body.
"I need you Kunzite." Her voice is desperate, pleading and she hates herself, but who would he tell? She'd never seen him cry before and yet his face looked like he wanted to if he could. "I want you with me." Her voice is broken between sobs, still pleading as though is hope where there isn't.
"I need you to be the strong one again. I need you to say goodbye." He's doing it again, forcing her hand and she hates him. But she doesn't.
"I'll never say goodbye." She's determined like that even when it's for the best. Closure that she needs and refuses to accept because she's stubborn. She's frantically wiping tears away, smiling through them because she thinks that's what he needs to see.
"I don't know what will become of me now. But I needed to see you one last time." He flickers and she's afraid he's gone. She doesn't see him anymore. "Goodbye... my Goddess. My Mina..."
She crumbles when she feels him go. The air no longer smells like a cool desert night and the cold spot has passed. She falls to her knees, her hand grasping the window ledge because the room begins to spin. All she knows is she is crying, sobbing, and mourning a love she'd never have. Perhaps they would always be forbidden to each other.
Yaten is there, she didn't hear him come in but he finds her curled on the floor barely breathing through the tears. She thinks he understands her a little better now, noting that only Artemis has ever seen her this broken but she can't pull the pieces together enough to care. He's not heartless so he allows her to cling to the t-shirt he managed to pull on in his rush to follow her out the door, saturating the shoulder with tears. He holds her, green eyes lifted to the darkness. He doesn't say so but she thinks he saw it too. She's glad he's shifted into a man now, she needs stronger arms to hold her even if she finds it harder to look at him this way. He stays, they say nothing but she makes him stay this way when he strips her down and brings her to bed. It's simply an action at this point when he takes her and wrong as it is she needs this. It's the first time in a very long time she pretends its someone else. She pretends it's a ghost.
He doesn't speak of it the next morning and she's grateful. Yaten kept to his snide attitude even as they talked over breakfast and he tells her she really needs to enter the competition he's judging because she'd totally win. It was a chance to become an idol- a dream she'd long forgotten since her days in London. Since she found Usagi and the girls. She agrees reluctantly and it's one of the few times Yaten seems excited, claiming he'll get her a spot toward the end to save one of the best for last. It's adorable and she remembers why she likes him. He encourages her dreams.
She gives the perfomance of her life. She's radiant though the green sequined dress doesn't feel like her color it almost matches Yaten's eyes so she goes with it. She sang an old light hearted love song that Saito had written for her ages ago along with an original, more angsty song she'd written herself with a little backup from Seiya. It was his voice reverberating in her head to 'keep smiling' that kept her face bright during the performance and the crowd was enchanted.
As she is announced the winner, and the venue burst into cheers, her blue eyes flittered over the crowd. Her heart deflated in realization that there was more to that phrase 'keep smiling' wasn't there?
'Keep smiling because your Princess needs your strength not your tears. Keep smiling because they need you. Because I need you to the most.'
She declines her prize with a tearful smile. She knows it's not missed by her friends in the crowd who know that this is all she's ever wanted. Perhaps Usagi would understand that she couldn't do it in the face of this enemy that was so powerful she wasn't sure how they'd win. That she couldn't do it because his face wasn't in this crowd to cheer her on. Yaten's eyes look angry and betrayed when she turns down the offer, but she can only apologize and hand him the mic before she walks briskly from the stage leaving Seiya to shrug at Usagi in the audience and give his angry brother a confused look.
She doesn't wait for anyone, only pushes out the doors before any of her friends can find her. Where she once felt terror she feels longing, searching the forest lined path in the park for a slip of silver, or a chill on the warm evening breeze. She walks the park, still in her lime green sequined dress that she thinks looks awful on her and shoes that hurt her feet but she's desperate to see him. Yaten doesn't call, her girls of course blow up her phone and she has to avoid her apartment because she knows they'll all be there waiting for her. She only longs with all her soul to see one person. One person that will never come again. She sits on a swing and prays for a battle, or for the Earth to open beneath her feet and swallow her because it's a low she's never felt before.
Losing Ace was hard enough but all hope of ever seeing HIM again was gone and she doesn't know what's left but Usagi and she decides that it has to be enough. It always has been. It's late and when she drags herself through the door to her apartment she soaks her feet in the tub. Artemis doesn't say a word to her, only curls up beside her once she's slipped into worn comfy sweats and begins to pur because he loves her, and it's one more reason she decides to keep moving forward. She can begin to count the reasons to keep fighting- promises to him have alway been a strong motivator. Usagi has always been the key.
Time flitters by and a new age of awkward tensions arise when they die and the enemy is snuffed out by Usagi's overwhelmingly bright heart. Death was a small price to pay and she wishes it was a permanent situation sometimes because it's the only way she'll be reunited with him but she knows she must carry on. Mamoru had died in a plane crash and she feels like an idiot that he is resurrected back into a world where Usagi has all but moved on. She knows he is hurting, but she also knows that the love Mamoru and Usagi share is more than enough to overcome all that's happened. Seiya is the only one broken hearted here which works because The Three Lights will all be moving on as well. Yaten doesn't even say goodbye.
More years pass and Mamoru goes to Harvard for real this time. He writes and calls all the time so she doesn't worry about Usagi's well being and life seems good. Ami gets into the top medical school of course, She gives Makoto her scholarship money to open her dream cafe thankfully down the street from her apartment, Rei gets into law school and Usagi even goes to the local college for Political Science. She knows it's preparation for the future and is insanely proud at how well she does.
The atmosphere seems to shift and she's suspicious that Usagi doesn't tell her that Mamoru has arrived home after four years. There's something tense about their group and of course Rei feels it too but claims she thinks someone is blocking her from gaining more information on the source. It's made known rather quickly when Usagi and Mamoru arrange to meet them.
He's more beautiful than she remembers but there's something so bitter in her that she can only walk away. He looks younger, happier, and healthier and she knows he's done well for himself in this life. A big part of her feels as she did standing in front of his spectre but mostly she's hurt. No one understands it but no one is quick to forgive but time heals all wounds and it's not long before Makoto and Nigel become a thing. Ami studies with Zaki and Rei at least tolerates Jeison. She can barely even look at him.
They have a band and it's his voice that makes her realize he was Saito. He's written songs about them and each lyric open an old scab. Years later and they have never been allowed to scar over. His guitar and leather jacket are familiar too and she's infuriated by it so she takes home another man right in front of him. He can't haunt her if he's alive. The fact that he is still so calm and collected makes her want to combust.
It's at Usagi and Mamoru's wedding that she has to walk the aisle with him. Both are accustomed to faking a smile. The ceremony and reception are magical and she feels happy for her future King and Queen but she's stuck to his side all night in ceremony and when they dance it's like a memory. She's glad she wore gold instead of red.
"It's good to see you." He says while they dance. She scoffs and keeps her eyes level with the buttons of his tuxedo.
"You look well." It's the weakest thing she's ever said to him and he thinks he's amused.
"I think my well being is limited to the end of this song." She tries not to feel guilty and if she does she refuses to let him know.
"You seem to hold high expectations of one dance." She feels his fingers tighten through the fabric of her gown and they pause with fake smiles for a photo.
"You seem to shoot those expectations down before you know them." He responds when they can go back to quiet conversation and stoic faces.
"Forgive my lack of care for your expectations Kunzite." She makes the mistake of looking in his eyes for the first time in the months he's been back. They are grey, and hard. She's angry they dare to attempt to command her.
"You said you knew my name." She deflates and stops dancing, pulling her hand from his and crossing her arm defiantly over her chest.
"I think you know you have one name to me." He frowns and neither pretend to look happy. The photographer passes them by without taking a photo.
"It's Khai now." His hands slip into his pockets, she knows they're balled into fists.
"I can't see you as anyone else." Her nails dig into her arm and she barely notices. She certainly doesn't know how people are staring.
"Well I see you Mina." His grey eyes shift around them and she sees the anger flare behind his eyes. The rest of him stays collected as the stone wall she knew he wasn't anymore. That wall had crumbled centuries ago. "I see now that I'll never be more than a ghost to you."
He only brushes by her, leaving her bewildered and angry because he has the audacity to expect anything of her. She's left to watch him leave her with nothing but the trail of his spicy musk on the air.