Author's Note:
I know I promised to work on The Last Journey, and it is being worked on, I promise! But you see, I was re-reading BBMH and I began thinking again (a dangerous thing) and thought some more. I have decided when I have time, to do three more each featuring Kunzite, Zoisite, and Nephrite's thoughts on Mamoru. Unfortunately, you might have to read BBMH, I don't know if I'll make it an ongoing series.
But anyway, for all you Kunzite lovers, here's a one-shot in his perspective!
Body and Soul
By
PsychicDreams
I can't help pacing. He isn't home yet.
Mamoru should have been here at least three hours ago. His classes must have ended and even with that inopportune battle, he should have been back. My friends I know are watching me covertly. They're afraid that I'll fret myself to flinders.
They may be right. But how can I not? The man will be the death of me yet. Then again, that would only apply if I was alive. But I'm not. I'm not dead either. I guess my best estimate would be that I'm in limbo and that hardly makes me feel any better, not when I know I'm needed.
Mamoru doesn't need to say it; I can see it in his eyes. He wants us around him, as real people, as much as I want him.
The slowly dying light coming in from the windows only illuminates my grief further. I'm transparent. I'm feeling it more than the others; it's becoming harder and harder to appear. The sleep those stones promise us…I've been fighting it for a long time, but my strength is waning.
They would tell me that I'm wasting away, my strength being sapped by my longing. And maybe my friends are right. But what can I do about that? I can no longer stop loving him anymore than I can just snap my fingers and have a real body.
"Kunzite?"
"Yes, Zoisite?"
He's the youngest of us, though very intelligent for his age. Glancing at him, I can see the worry evident on every line of his face. He is missing Endymion the same as I. But, again, what can I, a simple spirit, do?
"Where is he?"
"Agreed. It isn't like him to be out this late," Nephrite spoke from his constant position by the window. I'm not entirely sure if he is watching the stars or the street. Most likely both.
"Damn it, if only we were real!"
I turn to Jadeite. His questions earlier have made me think. I couldn't answer him in the way he wanted, but I think he understands now. How can any of us explain our love for Endymion with words? It is how you feel, plain and simple.
"There has to be a way to give us real bodies, if only for a short time!"
His blue eyes are fervent and angry. He has his hand clenched at his side, and I have seen that gesture often enough to know what it means. He is trying to control his emotions, to keep them from wreaking havoc with his sanity. It is the one thing that will tell lie to his poker face and the reason that he always seems to lose at it when he plays against us.
I can't keep that gods-forsaken smile off my face! Every time I consider just letting that eternal damnation of sleep take me, I think of one of those things about Endymion, the things we used to do.
We used to play poker whenever we had the time, back in the Silver Millennium. Barely half the time Jadeite would win because that clenched fist would give him away. Zoisite always had trouble with his 'poker face', hardly ever getting a chance to win. Nephrite…the man always had an uncanny ability to know when he was in over his head and I can only attribute that to his rather unwanted (at poker time) ability to read the stars. I think he only humors us when he lets us win.
But Endymion and I. Oh, sometimes it would come down to just the two of us, the rest having thrown their hands in. And the stakes would go higher and higher. Then one of us would win. I'd say we were even but Endy insists that he's won more.
"Are you talking about a Cinderella thing?" prompts Nephrite, with a somewhat derisive tone to Jadeite's last statement. "I'm sorry, Jed, but there isn't any fairy godmother going to grant us that."
If there's one thing that I remember more than anything else, it's that one night. It had come down to just me and him again. Now that I think about it, he had every reason to be cocky about his hand, but at the time, I couldn't believe what he said to me.
"He said, 'If I win this hand, you have to let me visit Princess Serenity'."
My friends turn to look at me and it only then that I realize that I spoke aloud.
Zoisite smiles. He has the best memory of us. "Then you asked what you would happen if you won."
"And he said," picked up Jadeite with a gentle smile, "that he swore he would do anything that he was supposed to do, such as those idiotic balls he so hated, for an entire month."
"He said that even five minutes with her would equate to a month of horror," Nephrite murmured.
My legs feel weak and I can't help but lean against the wall. "I didn't believe for a moment that he'd win."
"The look on your face was priceless."
But Jadeite's voice doesn't reach me as I delve back into that memory. He had laid down a royal flush, the one hand that could have beat mine. The highest hand. He had laughed in my face when I couldn't close my mouth. Oh, it had been more like half an hour than five minutes that he'd stayed with her. I was fretting myself to flinders about him, thinking and worrying that he'd be caught.
Worrying and fretting like I am now.
How does the man do this to me? Ever since I was born, even in the Silver Millennium, nobody ever got under my skin the way he could. I never lost my temper, never felt so strongly that I would yell, before I met him. He has me wrapped around his entire hand and the one thing that I love about him, yet despise, is that he doesn't even know it.
Never once has he realized the kind of hold he has on me, on all of us. But I know he often…regrets our undying devotion. He worries about us the way we worry about him, but no amount of reassurance will change that.
Zoisite is wandering around the room and looking at the things that I know he's memorized months ago. He knows every inch of Mamoru's apartment. Every inch and could maneuver it blindfolded, even better than Mamoru. He has nothing else to do with himself. He has energy to waste, just waiting here. I know he, nor Nephrite or Jadeite, will retire to their stones until Mamoru has returned.
Neither will I.
I try to pick up a picture of Mamoru with his Usako and friends, but my hand just slides through object. I can't help but feel frustrated. How I could be so powerful, and yet am now so helpless!
"They look so happy," comments Jadeite as he stands beside me.
That picture will always haunt me and I know exactly why. I am envious of those Senshi. They have the opportunity to be with my Prince, to touch him and be in the same space as him. They're smiling up at me, unaware of just what those smiles are doing to me. The four Senshi, the princess, and…my prince. Altogether, in the same space, and posing for someone holding the camera. Just behind them, in the background, I can see the others, those other four Senshi that guard the solar system from outside threats. Mamoru has told us of them often enough.
They mock me, the gods, by tempting me with this picture. Whenever I see it, I am tempted to pick it up and hurl it at the wall or drop down on my knees and weep. There is no higher pain that I can feel than when I see them there with Mamoru, and never knowing what a gift they have to be able to touch him and be touched by him.
As much as I want to hold him, I want him to hold me. When I feel all the weight of that stone clawing at me, I want him to hold me and tell me that one day when I sleep I won't have to worry whether I will wake or not.
"Do you feel that?"
I look up at Nephrite's question. "Feel what?" My voice is dull with emotion and I know they can hear it.
"Feel it," he commands us.
And it is then that I can. I know that feeling, I know it well. It is the Golden Crystal. It is faint, as if it is only being activated unconsciously. But I can feel its invisible rays all the way here. What could Mamoru do that involves the Golden Crystal? If he intended to increase my worries, then he has done it ten-fold.
I cry out in exasperation, a wordless appeal for answers. "What is he doing now?" My arms sweeps back, to the left in a frustrated gesture.
And knocks the picture frame to the floor.
End Body and Soul.
This is intended to be a four-part thing. It came about after I began thinking about BBMH, which was in Jadeite's perspective. I have moved on and decided to create a scene about what would happen if the Shitennou had corporeal form temporarily.