Author's Notes: Yes! After many, many moons, my triumphant return to the fanfiction community is finally upon us! Woot!Blargh, now I feel like I've set this up far too much, and I'll never be able to live up to all the commotion. Ah well.
Still a Jadeite fan after all these years!

Relationships: Mild one-sided Jadeite/Beryl. And a microscopic dash of Jadeite/Rei. Blink and you'll miss it.

Disclaimer: Hmmm, I should probably add one of these. Copyright laws and whatnot being what they are. Yes.

Something was different today.
Couldn't sense what, but things were not the same as yesterday.
Oh.
There was blood dripping from the ceiling.
That might be a good place to start.

With a jolt, he pulled himself from the confines of his sleep, glaring at the offending liquid. Rivulets fell on his bed rhythmically, the red staining his dark sheets with an even darker stain. Bloody mess, he thought, not completely without irony.

Now, it was not that blood was such an uncommon occurrence in the Dark Kingdom-no, in fact it was quite everyday, there were always betrayals in the darkest corners-the only question lay as to how it got to be in his bedchamber, into which only he himself had entered in the past several months.
Months.

He paused slightly. A shadow passed beneath his brain and then was gone.

Climbing up to stand on the bed, his joints popping and muscles aching with the effort, he ran his fingers across the cold stone.
Sticky red mess clung to his hand.
No crack in the stone, no sign of where it came from.
Perhaps, then…someone's trick?

It seemed like an odd joke to play, unless it was someone's idea of a warning. It seemed a little too…pointless for it to be a message from any of his fellow Kings. They rarely bothered with him anyway. Any youma who dared to toy with him would meet a swift end, they all knew better. Queen Beryl did not play such games…
Why…?
Why does my head hurt when I think of that?

He attempted to gather his thoughts together, but the pieces only shattered into smaller bits when he attempted to chase after them. His memories became more fragmented with every attempt and his head swam with the effort.
Tired…
Why can't I remember?

Slowly, he sat down again, slowly stretching out his tired body. When before had the King ever felt so weak, he couldn't remember. The shards of memories danced in his mind's eye, taunting him over his sad state and inability to glue them together.
He growled in frustration.
They giggled and fled him.
Silence.

He wished they'd return. The quiet was almost too much to bear.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, placing his feet firmly on the floor.
Pain greeted him, he recoiled sharply. Shards now embedded in his feet stuck out of the flesh just barely. Blood poured freely from the new wounds. He yanked the pieces out; pressed his feet flat on the bed to ebb the flow. Glancing around now, he could see it.

Crystal bits lay on the floor all around him.
His whole body shook, locked up. Muscles cried out in agony, bones shuddered violently. In his mind, pain shot through.
Seared.
Burned.
White-hot.
Remember.

Only he couldn't. His mind was as weak as his body.

Boots sat faithfully on the floor, he pulled them on, carefully treading around the crystal just the same. The door rested before him now, he placed his hand on it and pushed.

Empty. Empty? Empty.

No.
Not empty.
No.
There was blood.
Corridors streaked with the stuff. Red decay.
He had never seen so much of it in his existence. Not for lack of viciousness, of course, but Queen Beryl was quite fastidious.
Pain shot through his skull at the thought of her Highness. The open gashes on his feet pulsed with it.
Remember.

I can't.

Pieces fell apart.
Something had happened. There were no youma to attend him as usual. The dark presence of Queen Metallia that had always hung in the halls-even in her weakness-was gone, replaced by something else that he still couldn't quite put his finger on.

How long had he been sleeping? There were huge gaps in time in his head that he simply couldn't account for.
Where were the others? They were always there before, even if they were more enemy than ally.
Why can't I remember?
His feet carried him through the gore to a set of double doors; huge, gothic, and garish.
The throne room.
He had never entered this way before, it had always more suited him to teleport. Most denizens of the Dark Kingdom could not teleport on their own, it had given him great satisfaction to remind them of his superiority on every possible occasion.
Pushing these thoughts aside; he did not have the energy within himself to transport, nor did he care for the pretense; he pushed the large black doors inward.

He had never seen such emptiness, not in here. There always creatures present; ready and willing to bow, paw, and scrape at the feet of the Queen for recognition and praise.

Creatures like me, he thought dully. Almost as quickly as the thought had come, shock numbed his mind. He had never thought ill of his queen before, why now?
Why such disloyalty now?

Maybe it didn't matter. Blood stained the great throne of Beryl, the streaks swirling across the polished stone in long, disgusting trails.
Maybe she had been assassinated. There were certainly enough who wanted her dead. He was shocked only in that it had actually been carried out; who, besides Metallia, would have had the power to accomplish that?
His boots clicked on the floor as he strode forward, looking about for any remaining signs of danger.
No, this place was dead. Even the great skull that hung menacingly above the throne room was devoid of its glow. Now blood dripped from its empty eye sockets.

In some ways, that was worse than the unearthly glow of Beryl's power.

Finally, he came to the place where he always stood before his queen. Where she had…
Had?
Had what?
It was right there.
Remember.
His hand flew to the side of his head, his brow twisted in the only acknowledgement of pain.
Crystal.
Queen Beryl.
Sleep. Sleep?

Oh yes. That.

It all flooded back. Like a vicious nightmare, the scene played over and over again on the back of his eyelids. The rage painted on his goddess' face, the horror that had numbed his whole body, otherwise wracked with pain from the fight. The feeling of sheer helplessness as the tendrils of solid crystal snaked up his convulsing form, freezing him in place. Freezing him forever.

He fell to the floor in the same spot where he had been frozen, ruined and broken, his whole being sent into almost-seizures by the tide of memories. The soles of his feet bled within the tight confines of his shoes; the crystals, before removed, now throbbed in his feet.
Laughing, he heard laughing.
Like she.
Like she did then.
His body was weak, his mind was weak, his powers crumbled into non-existence. All aftereffects of his punishment.

Eternal.
Not so eternal.

He laid on the floor. He remembered it now. All of it. Whether he wanted to or not. Sometimes, it was better in the darkness.
He couldn't move anymore. His strength was gone. His powers were gone.
He raised his hand to teleport, maybe if he just went back to bed, got some real sleep…
No use. His powers were gone.
His arm fell to the ground, limp.

Had their disappearance too been Beryl's doing?
No, the powers were Metallia's gifts.
No Metallia. No power.

Damn Senshi. Damn them. This is all their fault.
Kill them. I'll just kill them.
Kill them when I can't even move. Kill them with my thoughts.
What now. What now what now what now what now? There had to be something, something, something he could do, say, something.
No, no good. He was alone now.

His eyelids fluttered closed. There was nothing now, only weakness and death. He did not consider himself a fatalist. But…
He was going to die here.
Here in an empty throne room destroyed by failure and civil war.
Yes, yes, no doubt between the youma. Petty creatures, slaves of death.
Destroyed their brothers and sisters for control of a kingdom that was already beyond salvation. Beyond power or influence. They'd all died. Except for him.
He was the last remaining denizen of the Dark Kingdom.
Last one.
As such, it was his. His empty kingdom. And he was king of the silence, king of the stones, king of the blood.
He felt himself die.
Breathing was hard. He hadn't had to do it for so long, now he struggled in, out. In, out. In, out.
He had to think about it, concentrate on it, or he wouldn't do it. The air wouldn't enter his lungs by itself, and then it would burn, burn like the ofuda on his back had burned that time.
That last time.

Would they take pity on him now?
The Sailor Senshi.
Would they come for him, to kill him? Maybe they had sensed the surge of darkness when he had awakened, maybe they were coming to fight him right now, and then maybe…
They would find a bloody, broken heap on the floor.
And that priestess would turn him to ash.
It would be her, too, full of venom, hate, and revenge. Revenge for marring the reputation of her temple.
Her friends would stand by and watch.

He wished they'd get here so he could stop thinking.

His eyes opened slowly, looking, but they were not there.
Not here.
Just a skull watching over him with bloody eyes.

He could see her there, in the empty throne. The dark goddess, Beryl. Evil wench. Nightmare, his nightmare.
There was no hate in her eyes now, no anger, no malevolence.

Pity.
He saw only pity.

He stumbled to his feet. No, no, don't look at me like that, my queen.
He hated the sad look in her eyes, the light creasing of her forehead.
Pity, more than anger, meant that he was a failure.
A pathetic failure.
For someone without a heart to feel pity…
Failure. Failure. Failure.

One foot in front of the other.
Fall.
Get up again.
Stop looking at me, stop it. But she didn't, the sad look in her red eyes only deepened.
Stop. Looking. At. Me. Like. That.
She never listened to him. Why should she, she was Queen.
From her eyes flowed forth tears of crystal.
Crystal for him.

A raw, guttural scream tore from his throat.
Damn her pity! Why now, why now, when it was completely useless?
When he was already useless?
He fell against the throne, bracing his body above hers, staring down into the red eyes wet with the crystal, the same she used to kill him so long ago.
Sealed by solid anger, drowned in liquid pity.

He grabbed that face in his hands, pressed the tears back into her eyes with his thumbs, pushed them back, but the tears kept spilling only now they were red as her eyes were and she wouldn't stop crying blood for him it was too late too late too late to fix her mistakes and his mistakes they'd never be together

Jadeite fell backwards, his body landing with a sick thump against the stone.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Author's Notes Part Deux: Okay….well, that was fun, wasn't it?

Ahem.

Anyway, this is my first story in several years. I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to be, it just kind of happened.
Honestly, when I started writing, it was supposed to be a parody.
My hands fly of their own accord, they don't listen to my head.
And I know this kind of veered from third person to first on kind of random notes. I apologize for that. The fic was so internal it just kind of happened and I rather like the residual effects of it.

Okay, well, one last thing. I'm not sure whether this is a one-shot or not. I know, I know, I just pretty much killed my character, but still. Come on. I do have a way of continuing it in my head already if people would like that. I don't know. I have vague ideas all the time.
I also read too many Silent Hill stories. As if that fact isn't blatantly obvious.
Yes.
Chipmunks are happy friends.