Author: Abigail
Email: abigail@makenai.org
Begun: 4-16-03 Ended: 6-7-03 ^^;;
Anime: Sailor Moon
Genre: Drama/Romance/Mystery/Shoujo-ai/Yuri
Rating: PG-13 – R
Pairing: Rei/Yaten
Title: Silver Sunset
~chapter 2~
There was no doubt now who her rescuer had been. Despite the now-softer curves of her face and the looser feminine hairstyle, she was the same boy Rei had come to know as an idol more than two years ago in Tokyo.
"Yaten? How… Why are you here?"
"I could ask the same thing of you," the silver-haired girl replied. "Is it customary for your senshi not to announce yourselves and lurk around our palace walls when you visit?" The sarcastic remark was meant to be lighthearted but came out harsher than she'd intended it to. In fact, Yaten had been more than startled to find her once-ally being held in custody of the palace guards, after she'd awakened and come into the gardens to find out what all the commotion was about.
"Visit?" Rei paled slightly. "Yaten, where… tell me, am I still on Earth?"
The other girl looked at her like she'd truly lost her mind. How could she possibly have traveled this far and still think she was on Earth? She'd heard of space travel on rare occasions turning people insane, but she'd never seen it really happen.
Rei quickly explained the strange circumstances that had brought her here as best she could, and how she'd suddenly found herself alone in the dark garden.
"Wormhole?" Yaten pondered. "I've never heard of such a thing happening. And to think that you'd end up here…"
Rei took the chance to glance quickly around the lavishly decorated room. "Then 'here' is… Kinmokusei?"
"No. This is my guardian planet, Chiyusei. It's one of Kinmokusei's three moons."
"I see." Rei winced suddenly. She'd forgotten about her wounded arm, and found fresh pain shot through it when she attempted to move it.
Yaten saw the senshi's expression change and her face go pale. She stepped forward and grabbed the girl's arm to find the small arrow still embedded in the back of it. Blood dripped off her elbow onto the pristine white carpet. "Damn it, why didn't you say you were injured?!"
"I guess… I forgot…" Rei felt a wave of dizziness strike her. After a long day, the wormhole, and the chase in the gardens she suddenly realized her body ached with tiredness, overwhelmed at all that had transpired. Added to that was the throbbing pain from her upper arm that she'd managed to ignore but was now acutely real. The room was going out of focus…
She threw an arm of support around the other girl's waist when she started to sway on her feet. "I need some help in here!" Yaten shouted to anyone who might be passing by. Strong as she was despite her small stature, Yaten wasn't sure she'd be able to carry Rei on her own should she pass out, and it certainly looked like the dark-haired girl was going to do just that.
"I'm okay," Rei spoke as the dizziness passed. "I'm not going to faint."
Yaten frowned, unsure. "Come on. I still don't know what's going on, but you need to have that wound bandaged." She led her by her good arm from the room and down the long, drapery-hung hall. She instructed a passing maid to fetch ointment and bandages, quickly. The girl bowed and scurried off to obey.
After a while Yaten stopped and pushed open an engraved cherrywood door to reveal a large parlor, no less luxurious then any of the rest of the palace Rei had seen. Another door led to an adjoining bedroom. She sat on the red embroidered sofa and bit her lip while Yaten pulled the arrow from her skin, quickly staunched the fresh blood that poured out, and treated the wound with the ointment the maid had brought with practiced efficiency. As she took her arm and wrapped it clean bandages, Yaten commented dryly, "You know, it would've been easier if you hadn't aroused the whole damn guard regiment when you dropped in."
"I'm sorry."
Yaten gave a small laugh. "Don't worry about it. But I can't believe your appearance could have caused such a stir. It's past midnight and it sounds like the whole palace is awake. I was going to bed when I came down to see what was going on and found you. There, how does that feel?" she finished securing the bandage on Rei's arm.
"Thank you," Rei replied. She was starting to feel the exhaustion hit her once again, and leaned back against the sofa, inviting the softness of the pillows.
A timid knock sounded from the door. A second maid with long rose-colored hair entered and bowed. "Forgive me, Healer-sama. I couldn't find you after you left your chambers, and I became worried, with all the commotion in the palace. I was told you had gone to this room."
"That's fine, Sari. You can go tell the captain there's nothing more to be concerned about. Mars is a friend of mine."
The maid looked with confused child-like eyes from Yaten to Rei and back to Yaten. "Forgive me, but… I thought you'd heard."
It was Yaten's turn to look confused. "Heard what?"
Sari clasped her hands and delivered the news with a solemn, frightened look. "What I've heard, ma'am, among the other staff is… that the Count Raison was found murdered in his bed."
"Murdered?" she echoed incredulously. The maid only nodded. Yaten looked toward Rei only to find she had fallen asleep on the pillows as soon as Sari had entered the room. Eyes shut, breath now soft and regular, she had heard none of the conversation between maid and mistress.
Yaten rose to her feet. "Sari, make up the bed for Rei-san and attend to her if she wakes up."
"Yes, ma'am." She bowed once again as Yaten marched from the room.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
This wing of the palace was a hive of confusion. Officers and detectives came and went, while wide-eyed and morbidly curious house staff milled about beside soldiers who weren't quite sure what their duties were supposed to be. The guard standing outside the door recognized her at once. "Healer-sama. The lieutenant has asked that no one be allowed…" Yaten didn't let him finish as she brushed past him into the room.
She saw the sight and it sickened her. The sheer bed curtains were half-closed but what was visible was enough. The count was still there, in his bedclothes; the sheets soaked with blood. Two stabs to the chest. She felt her throat tighten as she tried to fight the flashbacks that inevitably came. A bathtub drowned in blood…
"You're contaminating the crime scene."
She turned toward the lieutenant, a middle-aged man in a uniform that denoted his rank, now the lead investigator on this death that had roused half the palace into confusion in the middle of the night. Ignoring his comment, she asked flat-out, "Who did it?"
"Beats me," was the officer's reply. "His servant heard a noise, and came into the room to find his master dead. We figure whoever it was must have escaped through the gardens, and had the guards dispatched to make a full search of the perimeter. I'm waiting to hear back from the captain yet to see if his men turned up anything. Either way, it doesn't change this man's fate. Now scram, we have work to do here. And this isn't a sight young people like you need to see." He turned away, pulling on a pair of white gloves, and moved toward one of the other investigators working to peruse every inch of the room.
Yaten didn't bother to tell him she'd seen plenty of more horrifying sights in her short lifetime. That didn't mean this scene was any less disturbing. But she had seen enough. With a final disgusted glance toward the corpse she left the room.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Raison had been the governor of the southern province of Inekoku. A veteran of the military and long-time politician, he was also a member of the Interim Council which was set up as a temporary government while the planet rebuilt itself after the Sailor Wars. While not the most influential of men in Chiyusei politics, his position as head of the unstable southern state and often-controversial views put him in a prominent position. His sudden death was sure to cause a stir through the whole kingdom.
Yaten didn't know the man. She had only spoken with him once or twice to exchange pleasantries. For that reason she didn't need to feel any sorrow at his passing. She was, however, quite deeply unsettled when she finally crawled into bed at 3 AM that morning, after having awakened once to the sensation of a star being suddenly extinguished. Now that she knew whose star it had been, only a few questions had been answered, and many more had been raised. Was it really murder? Or suicide? And what was the motive? Raison had friends and he had enemies as well. But being away on Kinmokusei most of the year, Yaten wasn't deeply in touch with the politics of her birth planet. But who was to say the death was political at all? There was no way to tell at this point. All she knew was, the air tonight did not feel right.
Completely forgetting about Rei, Yaten slid into an uneasy sleep of bloodstained dreams.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
She awoke late, but that was nothing unusual. In the two days since she'd been back on Chiyusei, she'd fallen into the habit of sleeping in. The morning sun was peering persistently through the crack of the closed curtains when she threw off the covers and let her bare feet touch the carpeted floor. That's when last night's incidents came back to her – the count's brutal death, and Rei's mysterious disappearance. Picking up a silk robe off the bedpost, she made her way to the bathroom as per her morning routine.
Several minutes later she emerged to find the curtains pulled back to welcome the sunlight and Sari already bustling about the room. At the end of the bed she noticed a silver breakfast tray fresh with fruit, toast, and jam. It seemed it hadn't taken long for the maid to catch on to the way she liked things done.
"Good morning, ma'am."
"Good morning." Yaten took a strawberry from the tray and popped it into her mouth. "Sari, did Rei retire to the bed last night? I'm sorry, I forgot to return to check on her." She planned on dressing and going straight to Rei's suite to see how the Earth senshi was doing. Yaten recalled her story from the previous night and was still mildly troubled as to what strange forces might have brought her here.
"I made sure she comfortably in bed before I retired, ma'am. But…"
"But…?"
"But she is no longer there. Apparently the captain of the guards came to speak with her, and she left with him. When I came to the room to see if she was awake and needed anything, there was no one there. Another of the girls said there were at least three soldiers that showed up at the door. Almost like she was being taken under arrest, she said. I didn't know what to think of it. I – I know the girl is an acquaintance of yours. Forgive me, Healer-sama, I wasn't sure whether to wake you."
"When did this happen?" This couldn't be good news. But if they only needed to question her as a possible witness…
"It must have been quite early this morning."
Yaten was already digging clothes out of her closet to throw on. "Damn, she's probably at the mercy of Tange right now." Tange, the lieutenant whom Yaten had spoken to the previous night in the count's bedroom-turned-crime scene, was a fine officer, but a relentless investigator. Once he latched on to one angle of evidence he would beat it to the ground. And if he had decided to focus on the angle of Rei's presence in the gardens last night, Yaten feared she wouldn't have much to defend herself on alone. Things were already getting complicated.
She finished dressing and grabbed a ribbon and a second strawberry (which she popped into her mouth), then strode out the door tying her silver hair behind her neck. She descended to the ground story of the palace heading straight for the city guards' offices with determined steps. The lieutenant's normally bitchy secretary was absent from her desk (thank goodness), so Yaten simply let herself into the office.
Lieutenant Tange looked up from a mess of papers on his desk as she entered. "Ah, Healer. I'm sorry to say I'm busy right now, so I won't be able to help you with anything. The murder, you know. Terrible incident we had last night."
"Yes, a terrible shame," Yaten spoke deadly, giving the impression she didn't find it all that horrible or else she didn't care.
"Right, right. As I said, I'm busy…" He focused again on shuffling his papers.
"Where is Rei?"
"Eh?" Tange looked up again with half-interest. "You mean the Sailor Senshi that was found in the gardens? Yes, she was taken in for questioning this morning. It's odd if you ask me… she doesn't even have an alibi. Suspicious."
"Look, she had nothing to do with this," Yaten spoke. "Everything can be cleared up."
"That's right, you were a friend of hers, were you not? She mentioned that. Where were you when the murder took place?"
"Sleeping. And, yes, I was acquainted with Rei. Which is why I need to speak with someone to clear this misunderstanding. And if you're looking at her as a suspect, you're completely wrong."
"Yes…" the lieutenant said distractedly while he seemed to search through his paper mounds for certain sheet, finding it after a few seconds. "Now had Rei ever visited the Kinmoku system before?"
"I didn't come here to be interrogated, Tange. I don't doubt you've already asked her that question yourself so you know the answer. All I asked was to be told where Rei is; all you need to do is tell me and you can get back to your work you were so busy with."
The man's eyes wrinkled in a smile. "Forgive me, Healer. My detective instincts must have kicked in. As for Rei's location, you'll have to speak with Kuro about that. She is out of my hands."
Healer let her outer defense wall down when she realized Tange wouldn't help her. They weren't friends, but she at least considered Tange a trustworthy person, and he was probably telling the truth. She was still holding out hope that they only wanted to ask her a few questions, but if she'd already been passed on to Kuro… The thought hung in Yaten's mind with distaste.
This situation was becoming more of a pain in the ass by the minute.
"Fine. Where can I find Kuro right now?"
"Most likely in the Security annex." The lieutenant stopped and chuckled softly. "It's a shame I won't get to watch when you give the general a piece of your mind. But good luck, anyway."
"Ah," Yaten acknowledged. She certainly did plan on giving General Kuro an earful. She'd never liked the man in the first place, and the feeling tended to be mutual. She turned to leave the office, but stopped midway. "… You don't believe she's guilty, do you?"
The man leaned back in his chair, taking time to answer the question. "She was there, no questioning that, and without a reason. A lot of things don't add up. Though to tell you the truth, my gut feeling says it was someone or something else. The girl has no motive. But, Healer," he stopped her just before she reached the door. "I'm not as biased as others."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying… I wouldn't be surprised if she were charged with murder."