He easily spotted but barely managed to follow her hurried steps among the scarce guests on the corridor. Luckily, the lanky figure soon turned and entered a door - following her, he found himself in the palace's tropical glass house, home to foreign plants, humid air and high tempreature keeping most people away from the place. Perhaps that's why the former windenshi chose this room to be.

He ignored the hint and, alone at last, he called out to her.

"Princess," he said catching up; "I hear your magnificent aerial palace takes astounding tolls on those who wish to visit."

"Not now," she responded several long steps ahead, without looking back.

Seiya took but a breath's time to contemplate the - to his judgement - uncharacteristic reaction.

"Forgive me for interrupting," he insisted, keeping a polite distance when he saw her stop near a stone bench under an aged, crooked tree. "There is just something I've been wondering about-"

He faltered mid-sentence at the thumping sound, his gaze silently following her clenched fist as it hit the tree trunk repeatedly, in a slow pace, as if every punch had been the result of renewed contemplation; smooth muscles on her exposed back moved in unison with her arm's work.

Dripping water, sleepy mumbling of birds filled the silence when her fist stopped and pressed against the cortex in an attempt to drill a hole in it. Seiya felt irritation rise in himself at the sight of that marble skin being aimlessly bruised on the crusty surface. Meanwhile, faint relief stole through his chest at the understanding, at the sight of her pride broken, at the sight of her pride that wasn't gone. And this inner contradiction baffled him.

The blonde's other hand supported her body against the tree, arm bending as she leaned her forehead closer to it. He observed the skin enveloping her spine, running uncovered down to her waist. That spine was supposed to stand straight and tall, yet now it was bent; its owner was sitting down on the bench, hunching over her knees.

"Stop that," he found himself command, some foreign dismay hardening his voice.

She didn't hear or wouldn't obey; slender fingers tangled into her sandy locks and clenched in fists around them. The shaking of her bare shoulders, so thin now, unnerved him.

"Don't," he snapped, walking closer with the senseless intention for his voice to reach through better. "You're embarrassing yourself. Don't be such a broken mess in this-" (elegant, sensual, majestic, beautiful) "lofty attire."

There was no response, though her strained figure indicated anything but composure in her motionlessness. He snorted softly.

"They rumour about you as the most rigid protector of your stand, and yet here you are, justifying your friends' unsaid condolence."

Maybe because of the last word used, it worked.

"What do you know?" she breathed; it was but a throaty whisper in her deep voice. She raised slightly, her fists were pressed against her eyes while the Starlight answered.

"Well, I do see you're on good terms with someone I guessed to be your arch enemy."

Impulse moved her body then, and a breath later, she stood facing him, venom green eyes, a hint of red on the skin around them, interlocking with his midnight blue orbs shaded by thin, dark eyebrows.

"What do you know?" she repeated slowly, each word urging his senses to prepare for a fight, which he suppressed for now, as something else occupied his interest. He pointed it out plainly.

"I know what everyone else, that you're revolting," he said. "That you're holding on to yourself with claws and teeth against the tide. That you'd neither yield nor escape, seeking a third option that isn't there."

He had but a faint guess about this, but he felt an irresistible longing to face her like at the old times when she had been powerful and intimidating; to draw out her anger, her zeal, her face that he used to know. It wasn't really thinking that had made him utter these words, and neither was that a strange content washed over him as her eyes darkened further.

"You know nothing," she spat.

"I know that you're standing firm against the world, so you believe," he added, the grim words rolling off his tongue with pleasing smoothness. "That in truth, you're suffocating, merely postponing your failure that comes either way."

"You don't have the right, not you," she hissed, her hands in fists beside her, nothing but her look showing an intention to ravage him.

He felt the corner of his lips tremble as he attempted a mild voice.

"Who does then? Who am I that I can't tell you what someone else already has?"

"Your conceit is far too great if you think you'll get away with insulting me," she pointed out while moving closer, forcing him to take an involuntary step back.

He marvelled inwardly at his suspicion of where this conversation was going, and how easy it was to guide. Realisation made his tone unexpectedly lighter, stars playing around in his eyes as they made a fake attempt at acting surprised.

"I take it you expect an apology?" he inquired.

"I'll make you beg on your knees," she bit back, walking after him.

His lips curved into an appeasing smile for a moment as he backed up slowly.

"There are ways you can try. How about doing it in the traditional means of this planet?"

Her eyes widened slightly, the intention of threat and mockery in her voice.

"You didn't just challenge me in a swordfight."

His back hit a wall of bushes at the road bend, and he stopped. There was purposefully overacted alarm in his eyes.

"I did?"

"Of course not," she scorned stepping up to him.

His eyebrows furrowed in deep brooding.

"Why, yes, I think I just did."

A short chuckle left her lips, a daunting kind, and she stepped back. A few seconds passed in silence, perhaps she waited for him to correct himself, admit it was a joke, though they both knew he wouldn't.

"So be it," she said then softly, unsmiling.

"Not in that dress," he said when she moved along the path, indicating him to follow. "It would be a shame."

"In an hour then," she answered without stopping. "In the eastern backyard."

"I'll be there."

She turned back for a moment before the distance would have separated them; the pity in her look at his face could be heard in her voice as well.

"I'll kill you," she announced, and a moment later she was leaving through the entrance door.

He had to suppress an urge to gulp at the sincerity in her words. He felt blood slowly steal out of his limbs: a much familiar sensation he had whenever he braved challenges that he knew would surpass his current abilities.

After all, the windsenshi's affinity with swords was widely known, and he himself wasn't experienced with the indicated weapon. But he didn't exactly agree on this duel to win, not this time. He merely hoped that his ludicrous jump into public humiliation (or mutilation or execution) would distract her from the things that made her look this... annoying.

Yes, she annoyed him, he hated her bowing her head to someone else while looking, moving, smiling, breathing like a queen. Not like it wouldn't have been less aggravating in any other clothes; the Haruka Tenou he knew wasn't supposed to bow to anyone except the one she was devoted to, Queen Serenity.

-v-V-v-V-v-V-v-

Their instinctual connection still existed - this was what came to Haruka's mind first when she saw the daughter of the seas walk slowly out of another corridor, mint colored silk embracing her body in elegant folds, and she leaned to the corner near the blonde's suite, not looking at her, just waiting for her to come closer. And with a throbbing knot in her throat, she did.

"Tired of the clambake?" she inquired.

Neptune didn't move, she observed the ground below the opposite wall.

"I know I'm not in the position to apologise," she said. "so I won't. I just came to-"

"To do what then? To let me know you're not sorry?"

There she was again. It was not her speaking. These were her lips, her voice, but not her words. Who was this?

The blue eyes, dimming light like the ocean's varying depths, turned towards her now with an unfaltering, neutral gaze that ceased the last bit of doubt in Uranus about her disinterest. She tried convincing herself to be grateful for that.

"I am," Michiru said in her ever-soft voice. "I'm sorry for the way this happened between us. But an apology is only valid with the resolution never to repeat the same thing again. And I'll keep avoiding you in the future, too. That's the only defence against rumours."

"Rumours," the windsenshi repeated softly, unable to ignore the comical simplicity of her past lover's reasoning.

"They're dangerous in this world," the violinist argued. "They can harm you and me, my nation, my family, my child. I can't afford to be involved in them any more. That's what I came to tell you. And to thank you for your concern. I'm fine. Move on to saving yourself now, and please don't seek me out any more."

Uranus only heard the sounds of her fading steps; her eyes had closed on their own, so she wouldn't see her walk away again. At one point, she took a breath to say something refined about the child she expected, to congratulate her or wish her well, but she grew frightened halfway that something foreign would leave her mouth again, so she stayed quiet. It didn't matter any more, wasn't worth the risk.

As Neptune's last echoing steps died down, she remembered her appointment coming up shortly, and she headed inside to take off the formal garb of hypocrisy, renewed impatience growing in her to hurt

humiliate?

someone.

him?

Anyone.

The one she was allowed to?

She stood motionlessly for a long time after closing the door, recalling in her mind that she was duelling to put him in his place. Not to pleasure in someone else's misery, and especially not to end a life. She had only said that to him as a taunt. She was ruffled from seeing the girl she still cared for, she was fed up with this world that attempted to rob her of everything, she was flustered from fighting her battles every day, she simply had no time left for niceties, that was all. And that was fine, that's how it was supposed to be, that's how the world apparently wanted her to be.

And if it wanted so, she would give it to them alright.