"…they asked me to break it to you because they couldn't figure out how to tell you."
"I see." His voice was cold and measured, as if his whole foundation hadn't been rocked by the news. "Domo arigato, Haruka. Send them in, please."
"Hai."
He waited, hands clasped behind his back as the three young women filed into the room to stand before him, their eyes wide and lovely faces pale as a bouquet of paperwhites but nonetheless composed. Hidden behind the outward masks of calm, though, stomachs churned sickeningly.
He forced himself to be civil, to keep his face impassive and ask only the most important questions. "Is what Haruka-san tells me correct?"
They could not answer, not entirely sure of what he had been told, but the tallest of them abruptly flushed a dull red and stared at her shoes intently.
"Have the Shitennou returned?"
They glanced guiltily amongst themselves and chewed nervously on their lips. Finally the one with the midnight dark hair stepped forward to speak, though her voice wavered faintly with the strain. Her eyes, however, burned bright as she answered. "They have."
"Bring them to me." It was a royal command that was not to be denied. "All of them."
"Hai," they replied, hearts quailing.
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The air was heavy with a suffocating sense of foreboding as they sat and waited in grim silence. Hot tears had already been shed privately and fears exchanged. Everyone, however, knew to what duties they were bound. There could be no running, no avoidance and no solace.
The rattle of the doorknob made everyone in the room jerk like puppets on strings, eyes darting toward the door. The men, four in all, caught a flash of incredibly familiar intense marine blue eyes and tousled midnight hair and that single glance had them, to a man, dropping to their knees, heads bowed, humbled before their reborn lord.
Under any other circumstances, Makoto would have laughed at seeing the four men in casual jeans, sweatshirts and sneakers on bended knee in an attitude of complete and utter formal obeisance. However she found nothing whatsoever humorous today. None of them did.
If they had been pale before, the women's faces were now completely ashen. Mamoru, however, could not even see them for his entire attention was focused on the four men kneeling respectfully at his feet. They were heartbreakingly familiar.
Kunzite. All formidable silver and sleekness and stoicism. But for his slightly ragged breathing, he gave no outward sign of his internal turmoil. His head was bowed lowest of all.
Zoisite. Strangely but attractively androgynous and whipcord lean, with a mind as quick and dangerous as any ever known on Terra.
Nephrite. The dark one. The seer. Possessed of both a temper and a talent to rival a certain senshi of fire, though his heart had once sought another.
Jadeite. Tuxedo Kamen's first true opponent. A dichotomy. Golden laughter and lethal intensity. Light and shadow. Capable of greatest good and greatest evil.
They all were.
Mamoru's eyes darkened almost to black and his hands bunched in fists at his sides. "Why are you alive?" he demanded hoarsely.
"We…do not know the answer to that, your majesty," answered Kunzite, somehow managing to duck his head still further, feeling he had no right to look upon the liege he had betrayed, "but only that we are."
"You betrayed your vows to me and to Terra itself, committing treason. You let…no, aided that evil witch and demon in destroying an innocent kingdom…the other planets in an unjust war! You murdered the senshi, interplanetary royalty, in cold blood! They who loved you best!" They were not questions but accusations.
The Shitennou visibly recoiled, assailed by inexpressible guilt. Their master had spoken nothing more than the truth and everyone present knew it.
"We did, Prince Endymion-sama," agreed Kunzite, again speaking for all. "Please know, however, that we deplore ourselves for our failures. Though we cannot purge or deny our sins, we do regret them. Deeply."
The dark prince's slit-eyed gaze flickered toward each of the young women in turn. "To your princess," he finally ordered them icily. He was not their monarch, however, and they turned for confirmation as one to the tiny, gentle-eyed woman who stood in the doorway. When she nodded, they went, Ami and Makoto flanking her on either side while Rei stood before her, a wall of perfumed and devoted protection.
"My lord," Nephrite, head still bowed, began nervously. He was cut off in an instant.
"Be silent!" thundered Mamoru in ringing, stentorian tones. He looked capable of cutting the brunette king down in a trice. Makoto's anxious gasp was loud in the room. Her heart bleeding for her friend, Usagi's comfortingly warm hand stole into Makoto's grasp, squeezing softly.
"You four constitute a threat to all of us. You have confessed your guilt and the rightful penalty for those actions is death."
The words cut through the room like knives, slashing brutally.
Rei staggered as if she'd taken a body blow, while Ami let out a soft cry and buried her face in Usagi's shoulder, sobbing brokenly. A sickened Makoto wrapped an arm around her queasy middle while she clapped her other hand over her mouth. Her face had gone from white to being tinged a delicate pea green color.
Coldly, Mamoru peered down at his Shitennou. "Have you anything to say for yourselves?"
Nephrite looked up as he again spoke, but this time he was not tentative, though his voice was raspy with barely contained, anguished emotion. "We are thrice condemned, my prince, as you have said. I can only ask that you not take your justifiable anger toward us out on the senshi, because they are wholly innocent."
"Hai. Do as you will with us, majesty," Jadeite agreed, his normally laughing face now weighed down by a mask of anguished contrition and self-loathing. He continued, his voice heavy with regret, "It is your right. But know that they had no part in our sins, either past or present."
"And they have never once betrayed their oaths to their princess," Zoisite said, lifting his head and smiling sadly at the odango-coiffed princess who was whispering comforting words in Ami's ear. He held up a hand, studying it as if he expected to see it irretrievably stained with blood. Indeed, in his mind's eye it was and always would be. "Their hands are clean."
The prince's laser-sharp gaze leveled on the silent, silver-haired man. "Have you nothing to say, Kunzite?"
"My brothers have said it all." He bit his lip, naked emotions warring on his usually sober face. Finally he turned his intense silver-grey gaze toward Usagi, whose eyes widened when she realized he was staring at her. "Princess," he said quietly, "I know I of all people have no right to ask anything of you, but I beg of you to tell Princess Venus one thing when I am gone. Please tell her that no matter what…for whatever it is worth and whatever she may think, I truly love her."
Shining tears filled the cerulean eyes that were so like Kunzite's beloved's and she nodded slowly. "H…hai. I will."
Content in her answer, he met his master's gaze. Mamoru could see a certain peace in the man's eyes when Kunzite next spoke. "Then judge us, my lord, and may your will be done for the good of Terra."
"So may it ever be," muttered the four Shitennou ritualistically, but with true feeling behind the formal words.
"Do you still love them so much, that your only wishes are for them?" Mamoru's eyes were still glued to Kunzite's face, but the question was directed at the others.
"I love her with all my heart," breathed Jadeite, his blue-green gaze sliding to lock with Rei's burning violet one.
"With all my soul," Nephrite grated out, twisting his fingers helplessly in the rug as he heard a choked sob from Makoto.
"With every breath in my body," Zoisite concurred, bottle green eyes dampening as he witnessed the anguish of his weeping water nymph.
"Who could not love such women?" The rhetorical question came, unexpectedly, from Kunzite. "Even when everything and everyone says not to."
Mamoru's severe and forbidding expressing slowly softened as he turned toward Usagi, who slipped over to stand beside him, whispering urgently in his ear.
"I think, then, old comrades," the ebony-haired man said, "you finally begin to understand."
A brilliant golden glow burst forth from Mamoru, followed by an answering silver light from Usagi. The sheer luminescence of the pair was blinding and everyone was forced to turn his eyes away. When the glow finally faded away it revealed Endymion in his princely armor, Princess Serenity by his side, her crescent moon sigil blazing.
He strode forward, unsheathing his sword and the Shitennou again bowed their heads, closing their eyes, tensed and waiting for the blows as the prince raised his blade above a blond head. Rei swayed unsteadily on her feet, her breath bursting forth in a breathy little sigh as she slumped forward. Only a lightning fast movement on Makoto's part kept the fire senshi from hitting the floor.
When the flat of the blade rather that the edge came to rest on Kunzite's shoulder with a soft thud, the normally stoic warrior blinked in obvious confusion and risked a glance upward. "My lord?"
"Rise, Shitennou, and take up your oaths once more. Prove your mettle by again becoming the protectors of Terra."
Seeing the warm familiar smile that spread across Endymion's face as he sheathed his sword was like watching the sun come up over the sea…a glorious sight. "Terra needs you," said the prince. "And, I think," he said gesturing to the tear-stained senshi, "so do they…"
Jadeite was the first across the room, snatching his dazed Firebird from Makoto's arms and kissing her passionately until she regained full consciousness, twining her fingers heatedly in his golden curls as they embraced.
Zoisite was there almost as fast, sweeping Ami into his arms and raining kisses on her salty, tear-streaked face.
Makoto stood frozen for a moment, her mind spinning as she tried to process the fact that they had been reprieved. "Arigato," she murmured, perhaps to Endymion, but also to all the deities that might have been present, especially Selene. Then her gaze locked with a sapphire one that looked on her with such tenderness she felt her heart might just burst. She let out a giddy cry, flinging herself into Nephrite's arms with such force she knocked them both to the ground. When their lips met, he found he didn't mind her initial slowness a bit.
A beaming, teary-eyed Serenity pressed a kiss to Endymion's cheek only to squeal as he bent her backward and kissed her passionately. The gleam of silver and gold engulfed the pair as they reverted back to Mamoru and Usagi, still lip-locked.
Kunzite knelt alone, feeling a bit dizzy and strange, as if he'd been taken apart, juggled, and then put together again not quite in the same order as before. It was only when Mamoru reached down to offer him a hand up, that he finally rose. Mamoru smiled, clapping him on the back and suddenly Kunzite could see Endymion in the man before him. "Welcome back, old friend."
"Endymion!" The taciturn silver-haired man abruptly broke with protocol and engulfed his lord in an embrace that nearly cracked Mamoru's ribs and wept unashamedly.
Much later that day, after all the Shitennou had, at their own insistence, formally reprised their vows of allegiance to Terra and Endymion, the group of nine sat around Mamoru's apartment sharing the shiso, mushroom and nori pizzas that Makoto whipped up in his kitchen, needing to do something constructive after the emotionally wrenching morning. The others, needing sustenance, eagerly dug into the gooey pies.
"So why wasn't Mina-chan at this little get-together?" asked Mamoru.
Ami choked on her soda, sputtering and coughing as the fizzy drink threatened to come out her nose.
At the mention of the absent woman's name, Kunzite visibly seemed to shrink, hunching in on himself and holding his head. Claiming a headache, he quietly excused himself from the room, retreating to the balcony where he stared out blindly at the Tokyo skyline. Bewildered, Mamoru looked around at his other Shitennou, whose faces were screwed up in various expressions of pained sympathy for the silver-haired man's plight.
"Was it something I said?"
"Mamoru no baka," Rei muttered under her breath, swatting him repeatedly on the shoulder until Jadeite bodily hauled her away before she could permanently damage their prince's sword arm. Usagi smacked her forehead, once again forcefully reminded that while her fiancé was a good and loving man, he was most sorely lacking in emotional intelligence at times.
Finally a blushing Makoto muttered, "Um…yeah. About that…"
(Author's note: Heh…now the Senshi and Shitennou can really get down to the business of meddling. They have royal approval. And you know Usagi will move mountains to help in the cause.)