"Panpolemos" (Global War)
Author's warnings: This is a post-Hades fic, starting ten years after the Holy War in which Seiya and the Gold Saints died and based on both the manga and the anime. It's pretty neutral so far, but it will contain yaoi (though het will be there as well), so hit the back button if you don't know what that is or if you don't like it. Other than that, please just forgive any mistakes in grammar, English is not my mother language. On the other hand, please do not hesitate to point out any mistakes concerning timeline / characters / canon facts / etc. Thanks a lot to all who take the time to read this.
Disclaimer: If I owned them, I'd be called Athena!
Chapter 3. What the Night Brings
Shaina felt her patience thin out into nothing as she listened to the endless series of complaints and trivial problems Bear Saint Geki was exposing to her. Sure, the village within Sanctuary needed a more efficient well system to guarantee the supply water the Holy Temple required, and certainly it couldn't be ignored that the time for Panathenaia was approaching fast and that the arenas had to be ready in time by mid-summer to host the traditional games.
In the past, as far as she could remember, it had been Gigas to take care of that sort of problems. She wrinkled her nose under her mask at the thought of being the replacement of such a loathsome man. And yet, if he could get the job done, so could she, and since it had to be done anyway there was no point in complaining. After all, she was virtually supporting the Sanctuary on her own shoulders. Surely the Bronze Saints helped, but they always came to her when a decision had to be made. It was ironic that a woman who had to cover her face had in the end become the caretaker of such a strongly male-oriented place.
She smiled to herself as she caught a stray thought trying to tell her that she missed Marin. True, they had fought side to side with loyalty, and over many battles they had reached a sort of understanding, if not a real friendship. However, forgetting the old rivalry hadn't been so easy as they both had hoped, and after the war with Hades everything had fallen apart.
With the wound of Seiya's death fresh in their hearts, the two women had grown increasingly hostile to one another, arguing on daily basis about the most trivial things. Finally, Marin had left Sanctuary with Seika and had not returned in seven years. Shaina realized now that they had both been too proud, too stubborn to let one another see their mutual grief, and this had led them both to think that they each were those who had lost the most, that the other wouldn't and couldn't understand, nor care.
Later on, thinking about it with a clearer mind, Shaina had come to realize she was the one to be blamed the most. After all, while she had lost the man she loved, Marin had lost both her former student and her lover. Leo Aioria had been missed greatly in the last ten years. The silver saint remembered how, even before the battle between Gold and Bronze Saints at the Twelve Temples, he had always tried to bring back to Sanctuary the harmony that belonged there. He used to have a good word, a word of peace, for anyone. And, while not exactly secretive, his relationship with the Aquila Saint had always been discreet, but that didn't mean it had lacked passion or depth. Shaina cringed inwardly thinking of how much she had underestimated Marin's loss.
Seika was an entirely different matter. She had accepted the injury of fate quietly, never really complaining that she hadn't been given the chance to see Seiya before too late. The young woman had chosen to follow Marin not because there was a superior affinity between them, or because she thought that the Ophiuchus Saint had wronged the other priestess somehow. She had simply followed the one she felt to be the most in need of a friend at that moment. Seika, though quiet and soft-spoken where her brother would have been energetic and straight-forward, was much like Seiya in any other respect. Out of desire to help she had accompanied the Aquila Saint in her voluntary exile, without really caring that she hardly even knew the woman. To Seika, Marin was simply a person in need.
Shaina wanted to cry and curse the sky for the millionth time. Could it be that destiny had such a sick sense of humor, delivering the much-searched-for Seika directly to Sanctuary's door just when her younger brother was dying in Helisium? Sometimes the design of the stars was so puzzling it became hateful. A part of her almost resented Athena for allowing that to happen. After all, it wouldn't have been such a great effort for her to give Seiya his life back, so why hadn't she?
She shook her head unconsciously, trying to get rid of that nearly blasphemous thought. Why should only Seiya get his life back, after all? It was selfish to think so, and unfair to Athena. The Goddess could not upset the natural balance of the world by bringing the dead back to life, no matter the loss of those involved, including herself. After all, it was no mystery the woman in Athena, the mortal within the goddess, had felt attraction, possibly even love for the headstrong young saint.
"Shaina-san... did you hear anything I said so far?" asked Geki, breaking her musings with his rumbling voice.
"Huh?" was her unintelligent reply.
The sturdy warrior took that as his cue to leave the silver saint alone. Perhaps he had not come at the best of times to report about the various issues that needed her attention.
"You are tired, Shaina-san" he said, as gently as he could, rising from the chair he occupied. "We will talk later."
"It's not necessary..." she tried to protest weakly. Truth be told, being left alone sounded awfully appealing in that moment.
"Shaina-san" Geki interrupted her firmly "we all know that you work hard to keep Sanctuary going. It's ok for you to take a break once in a while, we can talk about all this later. It can wait. I'll see you in the morning."
"Alright... I'll see you then."
Shaina marvelled at the easy victory the bronze saint had obtained. She really must be tired, she mused, to let herself be ordered about by Geki. Watching him go, she wondered if maybe a trip to the temple's library wasn't in order. Better to keep her mind occupied with something, even if she was resting. Reminiscing as she had been doing lately could do her no good. The only bother was that the library was in the Pope's rooms, at the Thirteenth House, and that meant going through all the other twelve temples. Oh, well, she could use the walk anyway, it seemed all she did lately was sitting around to get boring paperwork done. Ah, why did a place like Sanctuary even need bureaucracy?
When she ventured outside her study, she was surprised to note that dusk had almost given in to the late spring night. Honestly, if asked, she could have sworn it couldn't have been later than five in the afternoon, while evidently it was very well past that time. As she slowly walked the path to the Aries Temple, darkness engulfed the Sanctuary and the stars twinkled into sight one by one. The moon, still below the horizon, couldn't obliterate their light, and the heavenly fires seemed to burn with peculiar fierceness that night.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs and taking the first step up, the Ophiuchus Saint was taken by a sudden chill in spite of the season's warm air. She briefly wondered if she wasn't perhaps letting her imagination run away with her, but when she lifted her eyes to the temple above she understood the reason of the cold that had overcome not only her body, but her heart as well.
From within the First House, a faint golden glow poured into the night air. Shaina's mind spun as she identified the cosmo that was the origin of that soft light. All the melancholic thoughts of short before were swept away as her warrior's instincts kicked in.
It wasn't possible. Or if it was, it meant something was wrong with the world. Not giving herself the time to hesitate, true to her duty to assess any possible threat to Sanctuary, she flew up the stairs, a green blur in motion. When she stood at the top of the first fly, the man in front of her open his eyes slowly, as if waking from deep slumber.
"Ophiuchus Shaina?" asked Aries Mu, puzzled.
The woman stood on guard, not ready to trust her eyes just yet. Last time someone had come back from the dead it had been bad news for everyone, and if that was the case again she would do all she could to send Mu back where he belonged, friend or not. However, even if the gold saint didn't wear his cloth, safely kept into Athena's sanctum at the top of the mountain, she didn't feel any less intimidated. If worse came to worse and she had to fight Mu, or whoever had taken his form, he would still be a formidable opponent. The cosmo she had sensed before was extremely powerful, regardless of whom it belonged to.
"I don't know who you are" she addressed him, trying to sound much calmer than she really felt "but you could have tried a better disguise. Aries Mu is dead, everybody in Sanctuary knows that. Show your true form and state your business, impostor!"
The man simply blinked, then looked down at his hands and touched his forearms, as if to assess the solidity of his own body, and subsequently palmed his chest, searching for the heartbeat that had to be within. His amethyst eyes widened visibly, and his features shaped into an expression of surprise and distress. It was much out of character for Mu to look so lost, yet Shaina couldn't bring herself to think that he was merely feigning surprise to throw her off balance. Could it be the real Aries Saint standing in front of her?
"Mu? Is that really you?" she asked tentatively, even as she kept alert.
"What happened? I remember... I remember I shouldn't be here. I remember dying as we tried to breach the Wall of Tears... what happened? How can I... ?"
Sensing no threat coming from the man, Shaina walked closer and stood a few steps away from him. Now that her suspicions about his identity were dissipating, she desperately wanted to believe that this would be a gratuitous miracle, with no strings attached. She also knew it wasn't possible.
"I don't know what's happening, Mu... but as much as I am happy to see you again, I think we should go see Athena immediately. I'm afraid something is about to happen."
Regaining his composure quickly, the gold saint nodded gravely and, with Shaina at his side, traversed the First House and started up the stairs to the following one. There, another surprise greeted them both. Running down the steps was none other than Taurus Aldebaran, also wearing no cloth, with a puzzled look on his face.
"Shaina, Mu!" he exclaimed, partially relieved to see that he was not alone. "What is going on? Mu, what are we doing here? Shouldn't we..."
"Be dead? Yes, my friend, we should" Mu confirmed.
He wished there was anything he could tell his fellow saint to ease the worry which so plainly showed through his troubled expression, but since any reassurance would have been hollow under the circumstances he merely exposed the course of action to be taken.
"That's why we have to go up to see Athena. Only she can unravel this mystery."
The colossal warrior nodded, following them back through the Taurus Temple.
"Shouldn't we hurry?" he asked after a while, while they climbed the stairs to Gemini, seeing that his two companions had considerably slowed down their pace.
"I am not at ease with what we may find in the next house, or in the following ones, Aldebaran" replied Mu seriously "and I want to make sure nobody is following us. You understand that our resurrection cannot be natural."
The other gold saint acknowledged the truth in those words with a small nod, then an eerie silence fell on them, and no one dared to break it. When they entered the Third Temple they were only partially surprised to see the prone figure laying on the stone floor. Shaina stopped Mu's hand before he could shake Gemini Saga awake.
"Are you sure it is a wise idea?" she asked, plainly worried.
The guardian of the First House nodded.
"Saga is no longer a threat to us" he said serenely, trying to convey to her how much he trusted the man laying before them.
Without any outside intervention, however, Saga slowly opened his eyes and blinked at the three saints looking down at him. He stood up and addressed them a questioning look.
"Something is wrong, Saga" explained Mu, right to the point. "So far it's sure that the three of us have been resurrected, and certainly not by Athena. I'm also afraid that more surprises await us as we go up to see the Goddess."
The Gemini Saint nodded silently and followed his companions out of the temple. As foreseen, in each temple they found the respective guardian. All of them had as last memory their desperate attempt to break down the Wall of Tears, and then they all had woken up to their restored temples, almost as if nothing had happened. When Shaka joined the others, not bothering to keep his eyes closed in the growing distress of the situation which managed to touch even him, he sought council with Death Mask, the saint that shared with him the power to open the gates of Hades for their opponents.
"Did you feel anything odd?" he enquired simply, knowing the other would understand.
The guardian of the Fourth House nodded.
"If you qualify nothing as odd, then I did. Because that's what I felt, and what I feel right now. Absolutely nothing. Either the power we had has been taken from us, or Hades simply doesn't exist anymore. I'd say the latter is more likely. After all, if the world is still here and the stars are shining outside, it must mean that those bronze brats got the job done and killed Hades."
"That's what happened" confirmed Shaina. "At the cost of Seiya's life."
A stunned silence fell on the protectors of Athena as they processed that piece of information. Only Death Mask seemed unaffected.
"And the big deal is...? It's not as if nobody else died during that war. A few even died as second time" he said pointedly.
Shaka saw Aioria open his mouth, probably with the intent to tell the Cancer Saint something about respect for their companions who had saved the world, so he quickly stepped in to save all of them the time. The last thing they needed was to start arguing. And in truth, though Death Mask had certainly a peculiar way to express his feelings, he really didn't look any happier than anyone among them.
"What you say about Hades confirms my perceptions, but we should hurry now. It is imperative that we talk to Athena as soon as possible."
At the door of the Libra Temple, Dokho was waiting for them to arrive. No one spoke, and they went on in silence. It came as a little surprise, at that point, when they found Milo in the Eighth House, but no one imagined or was prepared for what they found in the ninth.
Author's notes: Well, finally something seems to get moving, ne? I know, I know, it's been done before, but I'll try to make their resurrection plausible, k? Or as plausible as things can get in the StS universe anyway. Please bear with me, I want to involve as many characters as possible in this. Maybe it will backfire horribly, but I want to give it a try! Oh, don't worry about Poseidon, you will soon hear from him again, and same is for the Bronzies.
For Seri: Which character is not clear to you? I didn't involve any original character so far... and I probably won't, not as main heroes at least. As the head warning says, this fic is based on both the manga, which I have read, and the anime, which I have seen in its unedited version. In case you were referring to Hilda and Freya and all the other charas mentioned in the second part of second chapter, they are all from the Asgard Saga, which is only in the anime. If I guessed right, it would be too long to explain what that is about here. Try to look on the web, I'm sure you'll find some good StS sites which will have the info you seek.