Prompt #2

Word of Earth's tumultuous feelings towards the Moon Kingdom have reached lunar ears, and Venus goes to Endymion to break things off between him and her beloved Princess.

The study was a relatively small room, and generally dark, and very cluttered. There was no point in ever attempting organization or straightening, since every few days one of the four kings would stomp in and sweep everything off the table and toss down a new map, unfold a new plan over the old, or simply pile papers and books on one side of the room to make room for new ones. Keeping everything in its place was a waste of time. It was a place for brainstorming, thinking, arguing and discussing.

Or, in this case, brooding. Prince Endymion stood over his desk with intense concentration, but not really seeing the papers scattered over it.

"So you are back from the north."

When Venus spoke, it startled him so much he jumped up and put his hand on his sword hilt instinctively.

At the gesture, she narrowed her eyes as if insulted and raised one perfect eyebrow. She didn't lift her hand from her uniformed waist. The blonde senshi stood framed in the room's one window, brilliant against the bruised evening sky.

"How the hell-" the prince sputtered.

The room had one window, one door, and it opened off of Endymion's private chambers – there was no need for security. At least, not usually.

"Let's leave the questions to me. Shall we?"

Sailor Venus spoke to Endymion rarely, and usually not unkindly. She usually saved the frustrated scolding to be hissed into her princess's ear, as she ferried the younger girl off, hand on her elbow, golden hair mingling with silver in the Earth's wind.

But now the senshi's voice was hard as steel, smooth as gold and Endymion realized this was how she must sound when sent on official business from the Queen of the Silver Millennium, not as a princess's friend and co-conspirator, but as an ambassador of worlds.

Endymion was no stranger to politics, and knew with a sick feeling that news given in secret was hardly ever good.

You went north," Venus said, again, almost conversationally. She ran gloved finger along the window sill. "You were in talks."

He didn't ask how she knew. The Silver Millennium always knew.

They always knew everything.

"Of course I talked with them. They are still my people," he answered sharply.

"They want war," she snapped.

"Their lives are hard," Endymion said, "they look for someone to blame-"

"Somehow their blame shifted from you," Venus' voice was almost studiously ponderous, as she turned cornflower blue eyes out the window, to the rising half-moon and its bright, twinkling companion on the horizon. "To us."

"It wasn't my doing," Endymion answered, but Venus held up her hand to silence him.

"It doesn't matter," she said, and for a moment her veneer cracked and her eyes looked sympathetic. "Prince Endymion, they want to attack our kingdom and you were in talks with them."

It was the like the room was being slowly drained of air, Endymion was finding it hard to gather his breath, to explain himself. "How else am I –"

"Don't you realize the Moon Kingdom sees this as a near declaration of war?"

Her words cut through straight through him, and he was shocked into silence for a few moments. "How is that possible?" he said, but Venus just shook her head.

"Chalk it up to cultural differences. Fear. We don't fully trust you, Prince, nobody knows which side you are on-"

"The princess-"

"Is fifteen years old." Venus shook her head, "nobody listens to her, and if they did, what would she say that wouldn't make it worse for you?"

And the air was gone, the room was tilting and Endymion struggled to maintain his gaze on Venus, on the bow in her hair, the piping on her glove, something to anchor himself before he was swept away in what she was implying.

"Are you saying they will declare war because I was in peace talks during a civil war on my own planet?" he managed to say. War with Serenity's kingdom was a nightmare he couldn't face, had spent every waking moment trying to avoid since going north to calm the rage of the people screaming for lunar blood. And Venus was here telling him it was too late, that everyone on the moon believed him to be a war monger, believed him to desire their deaths as much as Beryl, the loudest and scariest dissent voice among the people he was trying to dissuade.

Venus' hand on his shoulder brought him back to reality, and she looked right into his eyes. Tried to smile. "No. We would never."

But the smile didn't reach her eyes. "But we are not allies, Prince. There is a tension between the kingdoms I have never felt before." She looked away, shuddered. "I can feel it. I shouldn't even be here."

He shut his eyes. Tried to breathe, to find air in the airless room.

"But I did come for a reason." Venus was speaking and the words refused to resonate, to coalesce into reason.

Something cold and heavy pressed into his palm, a metal that shimmered a golden silvery hue unlike what he'd seen before, a locket in the shape of a star. "It's Princess Serenity's, obviously," Venus was saying, her words fading in and out in Endymion's ears. "She doesn't know I'm here, and I'm loathe to know what I have to deal with when I get back. But I know she'd want you to have this."

He didn't look up, didn't look at her at all.

The sympathy was back in the senshi's eyes, "Endymion, I'm sorry I couldn't bring her here one last time to say goodbye."

Slowly he forced himself to realize what Venus was saying, before it was too late. "You can't take her from me," he managed to choke out.

"She's the heir to the entire Silver Millennium. It's far too dangerous for her to be in enemy territory."

"I'm doing everything I can-"

"It's not enough." Her words weren't harsh, just simple statement of fact.

"Then let me go there, let me talk to the queen-"

"Are you crazy?" Venus shook her head and turned to leave. She knew there would be hell to pay with Serenity, but she expected Endymion to be more reasonable. "Goodbye, Prince Endymion." You have a broken kingdom to contend with and I have a princess to deal with, she thought. And you and I may yet meet on the battlefield.

"Sailor Venus."

She turned and faced him, politely ignoring the brightness of his eyes, and white knuckles where he grasped the locket.

"I would never let anyone hurt Serenity. I would die first."

She nodded. "I know." Turned away. "But that doesn't change anything."

The last rays of the sun disappeared over the horizon as she left, the moon and the evening star blooming over the horizon in silent witness to the emptiness she left behind.