"Devotion"
By Dark Cyradis
Edited: 05.16.11
Disclaimer: Saint Seiya and all its lovely characters, trademarks, etc, do not belong to me. This is just a fanwork for fun.
Notes: Written after I read Pisces Albafica's heroic last stand in the Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas manga. Not really a spoiler since we hear in the original series that all the previous generation of Gold Saints died in the war against Hades except for Shion and Dohko. Enjoy:D
One of the first things Shion had done upon becoming Pope was to bring a famed chemist to Sanctuary to devise an antidote for the poison of the Demon Rose. Dohko had been incredulous when his friend had told him so over dinner one evening.
"What on earth are you thinking?" he'd exclaimed. "The Demon Rose Path is the final defense to the Pope's Temple—your final defense! Why would you ever want an antidote created for it?"
"It's just as you say, Dohko," Shion had replied calmly. "It would be disastrous in the hands of an enemy, but I intend to guard it closely once it's created. As the new Pope of Sanctuary, I'll be living just above this poisonous pathway and will have to pass through it every time I want to descend to the other houses or training grounds. While the Demon Roses won't kill on contact without the Pisces Saint's cosmo bidding them so, consider how few of us Saints are left now. Especially with you leaving to guard the specters' seal, my life and strength will be needed at Sanctuary for many years to come, my friend, so I cannot afford to succumb to this poison."
He had said it all perfectly detachedly, rationally, but Dohko had suddenly understood, and when Shion turned back to look at him, he had found his friend regarding him with a sympathetic look that had nothing to do with slow decay from toxic fumes. He'd nodded his shaggy head at last and said, "All right, all right, do it, as long as you know that chemist is trustworthy."
Shion had smiled. "I know. That's why I called an old friend from Jamir. The Jamirians are as loyal a people to Athena as there are."
Neither had said it, but both knew—even more than safety and bodily resistance for Shion, who would live above the poisonous roses, this antidote meant safety for the one who would live directly among them: the next Pisces Saint.
No one but he could know or imagine it, but Dohko knew that Shion had been deeply moved by the lately deceased Pisces Saint, Albafica. For all his otherworldly mystique and immense supernatural powers, Shion was a man who lived among men, and if he wasn't the most demonstrative or sociable of the brotherhood, he was a keen observer of others. His heart had gone out to the beautiful and solitary Pisces Albafica, whose cold, detached front turned his many would-be friends and suitors away from him and earned him a reputation of being a narcissistic ice queen. Dohko, himself, had thought as much, though he wasn't one to draw lines or hold grudges. But Shion had seen through it, through Albafica's façade, when few others would have cared to: it was all a front created by Albafica to keep people away from his poisonous body, rendered toxic after years of living amongst the roses that were his weapon and the fail-safe last defense of the Pope and Athena herself.
"What a fate that must be," he had said to Shion, the night after the first skirmish at Sanctuary, the night they'd sat up and kept vigil for Albafica. "To take on not only the immense burdens and responsibilities of being a Gold Saint, but to take the sacrificial fate of the Pisces Saint, knowing that to don that Cloth, to guard that temple, was to write your own death sentence."
"We are all of us consigned to die from the day of our births, Dohko," Shion had replied. "You and I and Albafica as much as any man, if sooner; but we Saints take the Cloth knowing that our lives are to end well before they might have naturally. What I lament for Albafica is that he had to spend these final and prime years of his life so alone. It is the voluntary sacrifice of even the warmth of human companionship, of the bond of camaraderie that is every Saint's only earthly delight, that saddens me."
And Dohko had nodded, feeling at last the undoing tragedy of Albafica's fate and understanding why Shion had mourned it so.
He recalled even now, the scene, the moment: Shion had been in the process of lighting the last of the tall, white tallow candles they had placed around the altar in Pisces Temple, where Albafica's cleaned and still form laid. How beautiful he was, even with death's pallor upon him; rather than making him appear dead, it seemed but to highlight the sculpted, porcelain-like perfection of his face. His cheeks and lips remained faintly flushed, which Shion had explained was a residual effect of the red roses' poison that had flowed through his veins and remained there even now.
"Well, this vow I make," Shion had said, standing back to take in the candlelit form, "your death will not have been in vain, Albafica. And should I live to see this war end, I will ensure that no Saint of the Pisces Cloth shall ever suffer the solitude you suffered again."
And with that, with the gravity of the vow still on his breath, he had leaned over the still form and pressed a soft kiss on Albafica's pink lips.
Moved, Dohko had stood from his chair and gone to join the other. Laying a large, callused hand over Albafica's, which laid clasped upon his breast, he had said with tears standing in his eyes, "I vow as well, you will not have died in vain."
But as he had leaned in to seal his vow as Shion had, his friend had placed a hand over Albafica's lips and gently turned the head so that a pale cheek lay upturned to receive the kiss. Dohko had obliged, though he'd glanced up curiously at his friend, who had had his face turned away.
It was only tonight, as the newly anointed Pope poured him a glass of after-dinner wine in his breezy sitting room—open at one end to the balmy, starlit night—that the mystery of that action finally unlocked itself to Dohko.
"You've intended to do this since that night," he said as his friend handed him his glass and seated himself beside him. "Since the wake we held for Albafica together—you intended to have this antidote created, didn't you?"
Giving him a sidelong glance as he took a sip from the burnished glass, Shion's eyes seemed to smile a bit sheepishly. "Yes," he said at last, setting the glass down. "How did you know?"
"That kiss," Dohko said, "his lips—they were still poisonous, weren't they? That's why you wouldn't let me kiss them. You poisoned yourself on his lips, to show that you would never go back on your word."
Shion smiled wanly. "Yes," he admitted after a moment, eyes turned aside. "After all, if I didn't live to see the end of the war and couldn't keep my promise, the poison would have made little difference anyway. But on the off-chance I did live, I wanted to remember his pain, to ensure that I would not forget his sacrifice in the strife and sorrows that were bound to come as the war progressed."
There was a pause in which Shion continued to study the colorful patterns on the thick, woven rug beneath his feet. Then Dohko said, "Shion, my friend, I am very glad that Athena chose you to be the new Pope of Sanctuary."
Surprised, Shion raised his face to look at his companion and found Dohko's eyes aglow with his old heartfelt smile, the one he hadn't seen since the war had begun.
"And why is that?" Shion asked, touched, if slightly thrown by the abrupt statement.
"That much devotion to the memory of a single soldier in a war with a nine of ten fatality rate—I think that's rather admirable in a Pope, isn't it?"
Shion chuckled a bit. "Admirable, perhaps, but I'm sure there are more important things that will determine whether I'll be a good Pope or not."
"Not to me," Dohko said, grinning, "because now I know that you'll think of me, at least, while I'm away for however long it will be." He paused, giving Shion a half-petulant, teasing glance. "You will, won't you?"
At that, Shion had to smile as well. "Every day, my friend," he said softly. "Every day."
After that, they lapsed into silence, enjoying the quiet breeze and the twinkling of the stars high above.
-Owari-
Hope you all liked that—my first completed StS fic (and it's not about my beloved Shaka?), though I've got some longer ones in the works. Written in an unusual style for me (more abrupt and fast-paced than usual)…did it work? *sweatdrop* Please review and let me know what you thought!