Title: Communication II: Listening
Description: Being willing to listen means being willing to hear something you don't want to hear.
A/N: The first part takes place before the events of Two Truths and a Lie, and I'm not entirely sure about the second part...except that it's all angsty. Fairly swamped until mid-May but the muse calls!

Communication

II. Listening

Lonely people are apt to fall in love with the sound of their own voice, as Narcissus fell in love with his reflection, not out of conceit but out of despair of finding another who will listen and respond.

-A Knight of Doleful Countenance, W.H. Auden

In the Silver Millennium, Nephrite had been a lucky man. He had the ear of the prince and the favor of the stars, and he was well-liked by his comrades-in-arms and even better liked by the women. Now, the others still thought he was the most fortunate of them all, but for somewhat different reasons.

Because of the duties she had chosen, Makoto was easy to find. In between training sessions, planning sessions, and the hours when everyone tried to sleep and did so with varying levels of success, she was either in the kitchens or the greenhouse and too stubborn to be rousted from them by a mere former Heavenly King. What the other Shitennou failed to consider was that she always had some piece of equipment with sharp edges in easy reach.

Today, her arm moved with dizzying speed as she whisked egg whites and sugar in a copper bowl, but she seemed willing to let him blather on, if not to listen.

"I was born in a very hot, very arid region of the Golden Kingdom. Mamoru says that a city called Phoenix stands there now. Not many people lived there, back then. I would have been the last Shitennou to be called if the stars hadn't told me to get myself to the palace. Even then, without their urging, I would probably have been lost forever in the streets of Elysion."

"Was it that dangerous?" Makoto asked, interested despite herself. Quickly, she turned her attention back to the bowl, and Nephrite didn't manage to entirely hide his triumphant grin.

"No, it wasn't dangerous at all, but it was filled with all sorts of sights and sounds that were beyond the imaginings of a desert boy like me. It was lucky I had empty pockets and the stars directing me, otherwise I would have happily spent weeks touring the Market Square alone."

He paused, savoring the memory of his younger self as well as the delectable smells wafting from the oven, then continued, "Of course, the others made fun of me for being a big desert barbarian who couldn't seem to drill any proper court manners into his thick skull. But I got my revenge on them."

She wanted to know what he was done – that much was clear, but it was equally obvious that she wasn't about to ask a second question.

Nephrite took his time looking over the pieces of the model airplane Mamoru had persuaded Setsuna to bring after he had revealed his interest in aerodynamics. Finally, he continued, "I took them for a two week trek in my homelands, starting out at the farthest point from the oasis."

He chuckled. "I've never seen anyone who burned as fast or as red as Zoisite did."

She smiled, but her concentration appeared to be entirely absorbed by the slow-forming peaks, and she said nothing more.

"I can't tell you how much I admire your cooking skills," he said, switching smoothly from past reminiscence. "You're making… a roux?"

"A meringue," she corrected.

He fiddled idly with the pen someone had left on the table, wishing it were a pencil. Those were one of his favorite inventions – much less messy than chalk and easy to erase one's errors.

He talked for awhile, dredging up the most amusing, most harmless anecdotes he could think of. But he didn't get so much as another look from her, and when she leaned over to study a recipe intently at the climax of a story, he realized that he didn't know when he had lost her attention, but he was desperate to get it back. Yet he had no true claim to her attention, unlike the other belongings he had lost, and if he did manage to recover it, he had even less chance of keeping it than the most careless child did his toys.

Finally, he said, "Mamoru tells me you have done a lot of fighting since your…first rebirth."

Both the senshi and the Shitennou trained regularly, but never together. Usagi and Mamoru had forbidden them to challenge each other, like feuding children sent to opposite corners. He had to admit it was probably for the best.

"That's right."

Once upon a time, he used to tell her the green of her eyes was the vibrant green of new leaves, the brilliant green of emeralds, the velvety green of moss. Moss could be resilient, emeralds hard, and new leaves tender, but none of them were wary. Her eyes were wary now, warier than the first time the princess of a planet eleven times the size of Earth met one of Terra's Four Heavenly Kings in a hostile land.

"I can tell you're in excellent shape," he told her, "without ever seeing you train, and even if I hadn't seen you kneading bread dough."

"How?"

Nephrite smiled humorlessly. "Because whenever I enter your territory, you brace yourself for battle."

To his surprise, her eyes suddenly filled with tears, and he floundered, much as he had done when Jadeite had pushed him into the lake, the first time Nephrite had ever encountered a body of water larger than a puddle. He added desperately, "It does wonders for your figure."

Scorn and anger were better than hurt and indifference. Weren't they?

Her movements resonated with finality as she dried her fingers on the dish towel, untied her apron, and walked out of the kitchen.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.

-The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

"Don't talk," she ordered. "You're supposed to be concentrating so you can get a better look at this purported gate of yours."

"I am concentrating," he said through gritted teeth. Beads of sweat rolled down his jaw, and his hair had been shaded from its usual sunny blond to dark blond by shadows and moisture.

Rei eyed him with grim disfavor. She still wasn't entirely convinced that this wasn't a clever ploy of his to force them to spend time together. But Mamoru had agreed that from what he could remember, the Shitennou did not access Elysion the way he did, using the Golden Crystal. They walked other paths, and each was different.

The Shitennou's present inability to access their portals was worrisome, and Rei had agreed to do a fire reading while Jadeite attempted to call up his path to the gates to see if any evil presence was keeping the gates closed to them. It had taken much of her self-restraint not to question whether the Shitennou were the evil presence.

"I thought you were supposed to be the disciplined one."

"Always putting such faith in the power of control. I see at least some things haven't changed since the Silver Millennium."

She stiffened, and was annoyed at herself. As often as those words had been thrown around in the past few weeks, she should be used to it.

He smiled mockingly. "I'm sorry, did I say the bad word? Is Silver Millennium the bogeyman in this day and age?"

Rei ignored him, resettling herself on the hard straw mat before the fire. The habitual position made her melancholy for the loss of the Sacred Fire, the temple, and her grandfather. She felt far from herself in this place, with this man who should never have returned to torment her.

"You can't run away from your memories forever."

She opened her eyes again. "Maybe not, but that time has passed. You Shitennou are forever digging in the ruins of a labyrinth that was collapsed to defeat a monster, not realizing that no treasures are to be found there, only the echoes of blood and pain and a tomb to fallen warriors."

"It was our blood, our pain, our tomb!"

"Since the Moon Kingdom fell, I have had many tombs, and I do not choose to revisit them," Rei said quietly, her hands folded in her lap. "Find someone else to tell your sad stories to, but do not tell them to me. I have the business of living to get on with, and I cannot do it mired in the past."

Raggedly, he said, "The Silver Millennium was not a means to an end, a trap conceived to weaken and hold Metallia until a time when she could be defeated. It is wrong that you should know of it only as a time of tragedy and nothing of what came before. These are not tales of warning and woe that you can put your hands over your ears and refuse to listen to. These things, the wonderful and the terrible and the mundane, are things that happened to you!"

She sprang to her feet as the fire crackled and roared and rushed towards the ceiling. "No, not me! Not anymore, and not ever again! Stop trying to make me into the person you want me to be. All my life, people have tried to force me into the mold of what they thought I should become. I've fought long and hard to become the person I choose to be, and if I didn't let any of them have their way, I'm certainly not going to let you make me forget who I am."

Jadeite regarded her steadily. "The Silver Millennium is part of who you are, and until you remember and accept it, you will never be whole."

As the firelight danced over his still, inscrutable features, she could suddenly hear her own voice in her head, begging him to come back to her. She sounded young and angry and frightened, but she could also hear that she had loved him deeply, and that frightened her even more.

"Well, I've learned one thing from the past, haven't I? I fell in love with you, and it was the wrong decision. I will never do so again."