Author's Note:

Yes, another fanfiction. As before, the disclaimers go as follows:

My email address is Guardian4@atlantic.net. If you want to email me about my story, please put fanfiction in the subject line. Sailor Moon was made by Naoko Tacheuchi, I don't own it.

Also, Rei and Mamoru never went out, k? And Kunzite and Zoisite are not lovers. I also used the relationship between the Shitennou from the manga, not the anime, which means they don't hate each other. I also use only the manga attacks for the Senshi. (Since in the Manga, Mars doesn't have Fire Soul and only talismans in the first season, I'm going to borrow a second season one, even though she doesn't have her Star Power transformation.)

Hidden Truths

Chapter 12

The Senshi had never been more nervous in her entire life; not once, even before extremely tough battles, had she been more filled with butterflies in her stomach. Her red dress, which she constantly waged war against wrinkles in it, exemplified her hair. But even as she knew this, she worried that perhaps Jason had meant something a little less formal. He hadn't even specified a time he was going to pick her up.

Her grandfather came into the room, looking unusually serious. "Rei, who is this man that you are going to dinner with?"

"He is a friend of mine. There is nothing between us."

"I never heard of him before."

"I never told you about Jason?" She acted surprised, but she knew she hadn't told him; for the same reason she hadn't told him she was Sailor Mars. It was for his safety as well as for theirs. Up until that point, though, she hadn't been quite sure she could trust this man to her grandfather.

"No, you haven't."

"He's nice and…he's himself." She couldn't think of any other way to describe Jason. She couldn't say, 'He's Jadeite' because that didn't describe him at all. Jason wasn't just Jadeite much the same way Jadeite wasn't just Jason. They both had distinctive traits that only surfaced in one of those forms and not the other. Such as in Jadeite's case, he had a habit of fidgeting with things in his hands to release some battle energy. Jason had a habit of making Rei laugh more with his silly jokes.

But there was something happening to the Shitennou that the Senshi and Mamoru were noticing more and more often. They seemed to take being their civilian forms so naturally that it made them wonder if they hadn't been human before they starting fighting them. Had they been born human and Beryl found them?

Her grandfather took her hand and her attention was brought back to where she was. One look in the mirror and she knew what her face had been like: pensive, thinking deeply about something very serious.

She attempted to smile at him, but it faltered as it crossed her lips. "I can feel him coming up the steps now, Rei. He has a power about him that I recognize but can't pinpoint. Promise me you will be careful around him."

Rei hoped her grandfather didn't remember the man that had helped out at the temple a year ago when she had become Sailor Mars. It would be so awkward to explain to him about what had been happening.

"Thank you, Grandfather. I promise I will."

When she left her room, she ran into Yuuichirou. He smiled when he saw her. "Hi, Rei-chan. You look really fantastic. Are you going somewhere tonight?"

"I have a date."

She watched as his face flashed into shock then sadness. "Oh. I understand."

"What's wrong, Yuuichirou?"

"Nothing."

Well Rei wasn't going to ask again. If he didn't say it the first time, it couldn't be that important, could it? "Okay, then. See you when I get back."

When she left the temple, she felt the gazes of her grandfather and Yuuichirou boring into her back, but she walked straight. Jason stood at the top of the stairs, in a black tuxedo which could have been a carbon copy of Tuxedo Kamen's. She smothered a smile and linked her arm through his.


The motorcycle wasn't there; instead, it was Nate's car. "I didn't think you would have the motorcycle anyway," she quipped.

He smiled and laughed. "I didn't think you would appreciate it messing up your hair and clothes tonight."

"You could have specified a time and the kind of place we were going, you know."

"I could have," he agreed blandly.

She nearly laughed. Being around Jason was as much fun as being around the girls; perhaps more so, since it was a different kind of…thing between them.

"So where are we going?"

"You'll see."

Rei made herself not question him to within an inch; it wasn't an inquisition. It was a date.

And that phrase set the butterflies going again. If she was going on a date with Jason, that meant he felt something for her other than friendship, right? Did she feel something more than friendship for him?

A week ago, she would have answered no, but now she was not so sure. When she had seen him in that tuxedo and the way he had treated her, it made her wonder. Did she feel something special for him? By the way the butterflies were going, the answer would be yes.

"You can't mean here!" she gasped when he pulled up to the restaurant. "It's the most expensive one in town! You have to have reservations in advance to get in!"

"Normally, yes," Jason answered, smiling at her shock, "but Nathaniel Hawkin can pull a few strings for his friends and their dates."

Rei's car door opened and Jason held out his hand to her like she was a princess. Which she knew was true in another life, but in this one she was simply a priestess-in-training for a small temple that wasn't renowned except to the small part of town it was in.

She took his hand and he led her inside. A whispered word and they were led to a table near a window. Candles were lit and the waiter brought menus for them; he excused himself quietly.

"What is all this?"

"Rei, this is Jason here, not Jadeite, though he has his things to say to Mars." Jason smiled, a little forlornly. "I've wanted to go on a date with you for the longest time, but now that we are friends, it seemed the only feasible time in which to ask you."

Did that statement mean he felt something for her, or just as friends? But he had said he had wanted to go on a date with her for the longest time. "What is all this?" she repeated.

He took her hand in his own. "Rei, would you dance with me?"

She looked at the dance floor, populated sparsely with couples. "Okay."

When Jason took her in his arms, she admitted she did feel something more than friendship for him. The way he held her said the same thing and a warm feeling ignited her heart. No one had ever held her that way before; she had never held something like this before.

He touched her heart in a way no one ever could and in a way that she couldn't describe to anyone else.

"Jason?"

"Yes?" he murmured, holding her closer and swaying gently to the slow music.

"Were you once human before you were brainwashed into working for Beryl?"

He paused in his dancing a second and then resumed, but it was with tense shoulders. "Of course. I was an earthling and you were a Martian goddess."

"No, I meant…I meant after the Moon Kingdom fell."

This is a really good way to wreck an entire date, she thought as he became stiffer in her touch. "I don't remember."

"Do…do you ever feel like you want to know?" Rei risked a glance at his face and it was closed off. He looked away from her.

"I'm…not sure. It never occurred to me that I was anything but Jadeite, protector of the prince. I always will be, no matter what name I go under."

"And as I will always be the protector of the princess, no matter what name I go under," she agreed and rested her head on his shoulder.

After that small conversation, Jason loosened up again. As the music became a more loving song, the dancing between the two became a tad more sensual. Jason dipped her often, but Rei didn't object. Every moment she spent on that dance floor, the more she loved him. She closed her eyes and let the feelings wash over her.

The music seemed to go on forever and they dancing like it. He twirled her a few times, but most of the time kept her as close to him as he could. It was as timeless a moment that Rei never had had before and one that she was afraid would never happen again. Now she understood the need of Usagi to be around Mamoru; dimly how she must have felt to know that Mamoru had been badly injured and held captive in the Dark Kingdom for eight months, worried to death about him.

When the music finally drew to a close, there was applause, startling Rei to opening her eyes. All the couples had stopped dancing to watch them; all the people at the tables had watched them. She could see it in their eyes; how she saw Usagi and Mamoru, eternally and wonderfully beautiful in love, they saw her and Jason. She blushed.

Jason smiled and led her back to the table. The rest of the evening was a perfect joy to Rei. He was as a prince and she was a princess, back in the Silver Millennium. Everything around her conspired to remind her of a fallen time long ago, one that she missed as much as she loved living in this time.

But as much as she didn't want to end the evening, the end came. Not even she could stop time for them. There had been a Soldier in the Silver Millennium who could, but she couldn't remember meeting her that much. And she doubted the woman would have stopped time for her anyway. Her memory painted an image of a stern and aloof woman, completely devoted to her duty at the Time Gate as the other Senshi were to the princess.

Jason escorted her to the temple door and she invited him in for tea. Her grandfather seemed to be asleep and Yuuichirou was nowhere to be found. Hesitantly, her date agreed.

It was a simple offer of a drink, but it turned into something else entirely. After a drink of tea, a simple kiss had come, but developed into something far more than a chaste touching of lips.

Rei had never felt anything like it in her entire life, especially when Jason's hands ran down her bare sides. If the nun knew….but there in that cocoon of love, age held no sway. The woman had sworn celibacy, but in doing so she had sworn off love. True, Rei acknowledged that love was not restricted to physical intimacy, but it was the ultimate way to express love. By saying she was celibate, wasn't she saying she was denying love?

She gasped as his lips kissed her neck tenderly. He leaned down and into her and Rei didn't feel like a 16 year old with a 21 year old. She felt ageless in his expert hands. He may have been older, but he was wiser in…this area than she was.

When they joined, Rei could not think of any other moment that held the most exquisite amount of love and pleasure. Jason, his breathing heavy, lay down beside her, caressing her stomach and kissing her neck. She gasped a few times in the after-emotions, those cacophony of emotions that she wanted to live with the rest of her life. She wanted to live her entire life with Jason. And Mars wanted to live her entire life with Jadeite.

Finally, Rei and Mars wanted the same thing for themselves: the love of this one man.

End Chapter 12