Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon or the Arthurian Legends. I do, however, own Akebono and the creation of Avalon as a world in itself.

my immortal

my immortal
i'm so tired of being here
suppressed by all of my childish fears
and if you have to leave
i wish that you would just leave
because your presence still lingers here
and it won't leave me alone

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase

when you cried i'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream i'd fight away all of your fears
and i've held your hand through all of these years
but you still have all of me

you used to captivate me
by your resonating light
but now i'm bound by the life you left behind
your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
your voice it chased away all the sanity in me

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase

when you cried i'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream i'd fight away all of your fears
and i've held your hand through all of these years
but you still have all of me

i've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
and though you're still with me
i've been alone all along

~Evanescence









A/N:

I would just like to say that it's been nice knowing you guys, seeing as you're going to kill me once you finish reading this chapter. But good news... the next chapter is done, so no long agonizing wait... all together now... YAY!!!!


This is dedicated to Miki Chen, my best and truest friend. May we one day meet again.

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Chapter 12:

Flawed Perfection

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The room was bathed in flickering tongues of fire and shadows, one side burning with golden flames that consumed the carefully woven tapestries of the room, and the other sunken in wavering shadows, the light gradually eating away the dark.

Akebono was winning, that much was obvious. His opponents were on the ground, pinned by dragon breath and his claws. But Makoto could only watch horrified as Akebono stood unmercifully over his fallen victims, mocking their defeat with a toothy sneer.

She heard him yelling, crying out in anger at the people who had come to harm his mother, and Makoto felt her heart clench as she saw the pain in his eyes, at the same time her soul tugged more urgently for Serenity's well-being.

Another piece of cloth in the room caught fire, blazing gold in the darkened room, the Core of the mountain, and bathing Akebono in its gold light. Makoto stood frozen, staring at the gold that dyed his scales, painted them a false color, and the swirling depths of torrid emotions in his pale blue eyes, eyes that she would know anywhere, despite the gold light of the fire coloring his silver scales.

His mother, a red dragon with flicking patterns of gold dancing along her scales, stood behind him, eyes dead from the past loss of her mate. The blue guards stood protectively by, wreathed in the same golden light.

Everything was awash in gold, a beautiful glowing color, and Makoto felt like sobbing. Sobbing in terror for the enemies of her soulmate. Crying out at the injustice simply because his enemies were not her own nor would they ever be.

With a strangled cry, Makoto leapt in the room, bounding easily over the crouched forms of the blue dragons and falling to her feet. "Oh, Kami, I'm so sorry. So very, very sorry. I didn't- I didn't know. Kami, this is all my fault. I'm so sorry..." Tears were still streaming down her face, as she collapsed next to her soulmate's enemies.

Next to the one person she never want to see in pain, next to her princess.

Burns from the flaming cloth marring her once smooth skin, but Sailor Moon looked up with understanding in her eyes, never condemnation, and it made Makoto hate herself all the more. The other senshi looked on with disappoint, a few betrayal dulling their eyes. Those emotions Makoto could understand, could cope and deal with because they were expected, deserved even. Her princess's calm, loving gaze, however, ate at her soul.

"So another, warrior has decided to join us... I'm sure-"

"That is enough!" A voice gave a cry from behind Makoto, and she turned to see the queen of Kochi struggling to stand. "Stop this now, Dragon Prince! It is me you wish to take out your anger on, not these people sheltered in my kingdom."

Akebono gave a snarl, teeth bared, completely ignoring Makoto. He had not recognized her, she realized. The glamour, the magic inherent in their senshi forms, prevented him from connecting Sailor Jupiter with Makoto, prevented him from recognizing his own soulmate.

"You have no right!" Akebono cried. "No right to tell me what I and my clan can and cannot do. You gave up that right the second you gave up your heritage."

"I gave up this heritage you so proudly preach because I no longer wished to be the monster it made me. I had no wish to be demon spawn!"

"How dare you." He said, voice low and dangerous, barely above a pained whisper. "How dare you even imply that humans are above us. How dare you condemn our god, *your* god with your words. You are nothing more than a lowly human now. What right have you to say these things?!"

"I have every right! Humans killed my father too, you know. They killed *our* father! But you seem to forget, brother," spitting out the last word mockingly. "That he was killed while attacking their families. Our family was destroyed in exchange for theirs."

A rage so profound and so deep passed across Akebono's face, that even the intensity of his flame forged breath paled in comparison, a rage that burned deeper than fire. When he spoke, it was with a low rumbling, like the distant thunder of an encroaching storm. "You would defend them? Those that are less than us. Those who killed us for centuries. The humans may have forgotten their own deeds with the passage of time, but not the dragons. Never the dragons. Many died then. Families were lost never to be recovered. Children died without ever having children of their own, and countless generations of dragons were lost before they were ever born. Our kind cannot afford that needless killing. Most only have one child, and to loose that child before they can continue their line, is the highest crime. And this," he said, taloned foot sweeping the room in an effort to describe that intangible horror, the fear that your very race might not survive, "all this was done by humans. Caused by those inferior beings in the hopes of destroying us all. How precious these humans must be to you. These destroyers of my kind."

"*Our* kind-" She began to emphasize, but Akebono reared back in horror, drawing himself up to full height at the mere suggestion.

"No!" He roared, voice smelling of sulfur. "Not *our* kind," he said, tone mocking her words, "Not any more. Not since you gave yourself over. Not since your betrayal killed your soulmate. You are no better than them, Chouka. No better than the people who killed my father, and countless families of dragons."

"Stop!" She cried out, hands over her ears and tears streaming anguished trails down her face. "Just, please," she said, begging with a pained keen, "Stop. Don't you think that I see his face every day, see it as I fall to sleep, see it in my dreams and as I wake. Do you not think he haunts me, both his memory and the future that we could have shared? I see him all the time, whether waking or wandering Elysian's crystal fields.

"I could hear his cries, dying with my dragon self, and I still hear them in the wind or in my dreams, or in the silence. And kami, how I wanted him..."

"You had him, Chouka. You had him, and then you killed him."

Then Kochi's queen gave a short, bitter laugh. "Oh no, no. I never had him, not as you now have this new soulmate of yours, wherever the pretty little thing has gone.

"He never loved *me*," she said, emphasizing the pronoun. "He loved my dragon soul, not my humanoid mind and heart. And though it seemed my soul was as much a part of me as my wings, though it seemed permanent..." She trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished. "But do you now see how easy it was to loose? How easily I lost my draconic side. I see you now, brother. I see how you will never change, not your heart or your mind, or your soul, and in those ways you are much like my draconic soulmate. But in many ways, you are like my human mate. He either loves part of me, or none of me. But never, never like my old dragon mate, does he pretend to love that which he does not, or cannot.

"You, however, brother... I have seen your lover, and I have seen your love. It is a wondrous thing, brother, a miracle in itself. You love her completely, without question, and you do not pretend that she is something she is not, and yet, you love her still." She turned from him then, the first time since they had begun, that she had halted the heated glares and words spoken between them. A silence descended on the room. Oppressive in its stillness, with only the distant crackle of dying flames filling the quiet. And then Makoto watched-a terrible fatigue settling about her limbs even as they were freed of their burden, and Saturn healed Serenity until she could kneel beside the broken Sailor of Strength and Protection-watched as Chouka, Kochi's queen turned her dark, roiling eyes on Makoto. The night descending on the forest. She began to speak, never once allowing her black eyes to leave Makoto's, though her words were directed at the bright dragon looming above the two.

"You, brother dear, have condemned this family to ruin far more eloquently and decisively than I ever did. You and your mate shall bring doom to both dragons and humans alike. And most horrible of all... it will be because of the great love shared between you two."

Akebono drew back as though struck a physical blow, an anguished fear haunting his eyes until that emotion morphed into a far more deep-set tone of burning feeling, of anger. A horrible, scratching sound filled the room as Akebono clenched his clawed fists, gouging deep grooves into the stone, muscles bunching as he strained against attacking in a rage.

Beside him a flame leapt into life, moving through the dark with the quiet elegance of a shadowed form. The red dragon queen was suddenly in their midst, giant foot caged around her human daughter until the black talons formed bars. Chouka had given a pained cry as one had torn through her shoulder. Jupiter stayed on the ground, a torrent of emotions flooding her, too quickly and too tangled to be distinguishable from the other. The other senshi leapt backwards, dragging their princess and Kochi's king with them. Jupiter thought she might have heard them calling out to her, but whatever was said was drowned by the angry roar from the red dragon queen, Akebono's mother.

"Murderer!" She cried, her voice a condemning whisper. "You've not only killed your own soulmate, but mine as well!" Then her anger seemed to deflate her, her sides caving with sunken breaths and back bending under some great weight, age appearing in every joint and line as her head dropped level with that her daughter's. "Why?" She asked her daughter, age transmuting into pain, "Why did you betray us... your clan, your family?" The last spoken in a whisper that bore all the intensity of a shouted word.

The seemingly age-less queen of Kochi looked up into her mother's draconic eyes, jaded green locking with midnight's depths. "I could not stay as I was. I could not spend an eternity like that. Not with you who were so righteous about human slaying, as though they were mere cattle with no consciousness, no soul of their own."

"And they didn't treat us as such?" Her mother asked pained, her long face drawn into an expression of pity, pity and deadly calmness, human emotions strangely identifiable on the inhuman features. "No daughter, you delude yourself, allowing your heart to dictate matters that would be better left to your ageless soul. Hearts can die and grieve and change and be broken, but our souls are immortal and imbued with the ageless wisdom of Enmu. And does your soul not speak of your old superiority, of the old truth you felt as a dragon that we alone are god's children, and that we alone have the power to dictate that which those pitiful humans took so forcibly from us. We are the immortals! Have we not the power and right to dictate when we should die, when our mighty race should fall into the mist?"

"You talk of humans as inferior, as beneath you. Well then, tell me, mother. Tell me o' wise and glorious Queen Owari, o' beautiful and deadly queen of Avalon's first and oldest and greatest clan-tell me *mother* why should I find it so easy to become human, if dragons are so much better, so much more than the simplistic humans. Why then, should we even be burdened with a human-like form? What is the purpose of you great creatures possessing the flawed body of imperfection, the body of a lesser being?"

Her mother's claw clenched reflexively around her, until Owari visibly forced herself to relax. Her voice came out in the same deadly, sibilant hiss as before, a threatening promise lurking beneath its calm veneer, a subtle poison. "Don't you *dare* insult what you can no longer understand. You who now possess an immortal human body. You who flaunt among those creatures what is impossible for them to achieve. Do not mock those who are now your betters, and do not dare compare us to your pestilence."

"*My* pestilence... oh no mother, *our* pestilence, our filth and flaws and faults and imperfections. We who now share a body of scales and skin... We-"

"No, Chouka." The silver dragon stepped forward, rage muted with darker swirls of righteousness. "It is you, I'm afraid, who does not understand. Who refuses to see what so often stared you in a mirror."

A silver light began to glow around his form, and Jupiter knew what was occurring. She had seen the transformation once before, and yet it still left her in slight awe. The senshi looked on with similar gazes, some with a glint of lust in their eyes, but Jupiter felt too numb even for jealousy to take root. A sob caught in her throat as she saw the gold embroidered green tunic, the same balled material she had pillowed her head on scant hours ago, while outside a storm raged and all was still right in the world, while Akebono was still nothing more than a mysterious soulmate, nothing more, and certainly nothing less.

She watched as he strolled past her prone form, pale blue eyes burning with the intensity of Avalon's sun as he approached his still confined sister. He bent low, a mockingly friendly smile and encouraging tilt of the head prodding her into her next words, a whispered heat that Jupiter could not hear, despite her acuteness of senses in her senshi form. Akebono stood suddenly, all mock kindness gone to be replaced by anger, a smouldering anger that lit his silver dusted features in an otherworldly glow.

He turned rapidly from his sister, but it was obvious from his anger and his words that what he was saying was for the pain and torment it would cause her.

"Do you see this face!" He cried out, addressing the loose circle of senshi grouped around him, and yet trapped by the larger circle of dragons. "Do you see my human face?" A sneer carved itself into his features, splitting perfectly molded, smooth skin into a mocking countenance. His features a parody of human life in their grotesque perfectness. Smooth, unblemished human skin, dotted with the sparkle of his dragon scales; a human handsomeness in his angular cheeks that was otherworldly; all his human features made perfect because of his nonhuman qualities. The perfect mockery of humanity, its flaws fixed with draconic features. "Do you see, Chouka?" He said, finally facing his sister, "Do you see *now* what perfection you once had?"

"No," she cried out, some ancient anguish haunting her eyes. "It is you, brother, who blinds himself from the truth. You who refuses to see what is staring you in the mirror. Can you not see the demon hiding within the so-called human perfection?"

"The demon, sister? Dragons are no more demon than humans. It was not we who started needless killing, it was not we who threatened an entire race."

"And what are you trying to do now? Kill off an entire race? What makes you any different, any different at all?"

"What makes us different, dear sister, is that we kill in defense of our people, we kill those who began the killing, who would kill us first. We kill with a *god* behind us."

Chouka remained silent, watching her brother through half-lidded eyes, still trapped beneath her mother's claws. When she spoke, it was with the calm knowledge of one speaking to the uninitiated. "You kill humans, brother, and do you know what amazes me? That you can just stand there and decry and hate humans, when you yourself have and, most importantly, love a human soulmate. How can you say that they are the basest, foulest of creatures when you cannot say the same of her?"

"Because I know her soul," he said simply, as though that resolved everything, "Because I am learning of her heart and mind as well."

"And yet... is she not as human as the rest of us?" Akebono froze, a myriad of emotions swirling in the blue depths of his eyes, before, finally, his mother found her voice.

"You have a *human* mate?!" His mother asked aghast, claw retreating from its position over Chouka as her steps stumbled backwards. "A human, after what they did to your father?"

"Mother, no... you don't understand..."

"I don't understand? I don't understand that a human killed my soulmate... and now you've mated with one of them... one of your own father's murderers?"

"No, Mother, it is you who doesn't seem to understand... She is my soulmate; there was no option, and after meeting her I would choose no other option."

"Do you see now, brother? Do you understand why I gave up everything for them? Your soulmate is human... you should know them far better than I."

Then his mother stood, body shimmering brightly in the dying red embers of the fire, smoke rising around her and wreathing her until she appeared to rise from the flaming depths. "Your traitor sister is right, my son. You will bring ruin on us all for your transgressions... for now humans will have dominion within our clan, they have become a part of our clan with one of them binding to one of our own." She hung her head then, dead eyes and glittering head sinking into the smoke rising from burnt out fires, wings falling listlessly to her side in defeat and stirring the smouldering embers until the smoke rose thick around her form. "They shall go unpunished for their crimes against our kind." Her voice rose from the gray depths like the smoke around her.

"No!" It was a desperate cry, the heartfelt denial of one struggling against all odds. "No," he said again, quieter this time. "It doesn't have to end this way. My soulmate... she's not from Avalon... she must have been brought along with the senshi... Our revenge need not be against her home, just those that challenge us here in Avalon." His voice was despairing, needing to latch onto a tangible way for avenging his father's death, words and anger and grief no longer enough to sooth his impassioned thirst.

"You can't!" His sister begged, the same desperate need coloring her voice as well. "We are just as human as she... do you not think it would hurt her just as much to watch as you killed her own people!"

"I will not be denied my peace... My father will not be robbed of his deserved justice! She will understand, I'm sure. She is, after all, just as much my soulmate as I am hers." His voice was gaining in intensity, human voice calling with dragon-like roars as his body was outlined in silver power, stretching and growing into his most powerful form, until he stood, tail curving around the edges of the senshi and jaw lined with razor teeth level with his sister's head.

Jupiter sat with her head still bowed, anguished tears creating grooves as they ran down her face. She knew that just by standing and revealing herself that she could stop him, but she could also just as easily do nothing. To her, the pain radiating from his powerful form was just as palpable as the silver glow of energy surrounding him. She looked at the pain, anger, and need swirling in the depths of his eyes, pale, expressive orbs that stared straight into his sister's own murky depths, fangs dangerously close to her soft, pliable flesh. And Jupiter knew, as soon as she saw him pause, as she saw the pain and quiet acceptance in his sister's face, that she could not deny him this. She could not stop him and create from his pain an even larger anguish with her actions, for to cause affliction on his soul would be to kill her own.

Then, with the abruptness of a startled movement, Akebono jerked his head up, teeth bared in a snarl as he surveyed the room. "Father suffered for your treason, Chouka. Now... now those you unwillingly forced into this will suffer in your stead... Will suffer before your eyes Chouka, as father suffered before mine. You shall feel their pain tenfold." Jupiter's eyes widened, knowing immediately what was going to occur, and watching in daunted horror as movement turned into slow motion. Sailor Moon, healed by Saturn's gentle hands, was pushed behind the senshi who now turned to face the advancing blue dragons. She stumbled to her knees, her body overbalancing from the force of the push as the senshi grouped together in a tight semicircle to guard their princess. Makoto watched the slow movements, time at a standstill as the blue dragons began to slowly draw in mighty gusts of air, the senshi and the three male companions planning on using their bodies as shields. Akebono, in the same moment, bent low to the ground, mouth gaping as flames heated his teeth with carefully dancing tongues until they would slide through skin and bones as though it were only butter.

The red queen, a new light shining in her eyes, once again ensnared her daughter in her cage-like grip, the claws closing slowly around her with the motion of a doomed man waiting for his execution, forcing her to watch the unfolding horror.

An animalistic roar filled the cavern, its noise stretched long and taunt in the oppressive silence born of the pounding blood with Jupiter's ears. The stifling heat grew with the intensity of the flames trailing from Akebono's lunging maw, waving like streamers behind his form as though a gentle breeze stirred the undulating tails. Time sped up to its regular pattern as a human cry of pain rent the air, silence falling to blanket the fighters in the same suffocating cloak as the heat and smoke.

Akebono stood back, a look of curious surprise drawing his face into a smooth countenance without the wrinkles of anger. With an unconcerned gesture, he licked the thick blood coating his fangs, savoring the indescribable sweetness, an enticement in the blood he had never before tasted.

The soldier fell first to her knees, eyes wide and mouth open as she struggled to draw in air through her punctured lungs, blood running freely from the large gash in her shoulder and chest where teeth had shorn clear through the muscle and flesh. She choked out a whisper of her lover's name with the blood bubbling up from her lungs, and then she laboriously closed her eyes, still swaying dangerously in a pool of rapidly growing crimson. The lights danced along her body, sparking and licking with tongues of powerful, ancient magic along her bloodied form as the magic receded to the depths of her flickering soul, taking with it her senshi uniform and replacing it with the dress she had worn before. Blood quickly soaked through the fabric at a frightening pace. With the fading light, the young woman pitched forward, mouth still open as though trying to communicate one last need, one last desire. "... sorry..." And the whisper faded with the light, no one sure to whom her last word was directed.

Movement froze as time once again stood still. Chouka watched on with a detached air, remembered woe filling her eyes as the remaining senshi cried in anguish and anger.

An inhuman wail filled the room, stretching until it ran along the walls, filled the mountain with its shattering pain and mind numbing agony until all dragons within hearing were picking up the haunting note of grief in answering howls. Mist flooded the room, drawn in through every orifice in the mountain stronghold as the very earth heaved in echoed misery, fire belching from its depths and silver falling down through the stone tunnels like molten flames.

Akebono collapsed in his human form to his knees, wings shaking with ill-suppressed emotion as he fell into the rapidly cooling pool of blood, drawing his broken soulmate into his draconic arms, her body draped lifelessly in the cradle of his embrace.





Author's Notes:



Death threats now accepted.

But truthfully, I loved this chapter, and I don't think I could have ended it any other way. But fear not. All will be... cleaned up in the next chapter. Swept away, I guess you could say. But for now, you can entertain visions of my tortured death, and I'll be happy... as long as you leave a review... otherwise, you're on your own for chapter number 13 (ooh, look, an unlucky number to end this series on, couldn't have planned it better if I tried).

And I'm happy to say that no one guessed the true enemies of the senshi and Akebono (EACH OTHER!). Man, I must have done my job well then. I guess no one realized how sadistic and utterly evil I could be. So, how *was* the big shocker? Hoped it was as much fun to read as it was to write... tehe... though I doubt it...

Like I said before... bring on the horrible, gruesome deaths you've envisioned for me.