Bleed (Just to Know You're Alive)
Chapter 7
// anything between these slashes are thoughts //
-------
Neff limped down the empty hallway, rubbing at his auburn hair with an already-damp towel. Not having his face and chest covered in sticky gook certainly made him feel better, though the steam had made it difficult to breathe, and he had been forced to sit down before he could even put some clothes on. Stupid lungs. He hadn't been so banged up since that drunken brawl on the front lawn last New Years.
Grumbling, he draped the towel around his neck and pushed Malachi's bedroom door open. He found Jed draped over the couch, hands massaging his eyesockets as though it were the only thing keeping them in. It was his turn for the shower next, but he looked remarkably good for someone who'd just had his ass severely kicked not half an hour before.
"Your turn." Neff plopped heavily into a nearby chair, wiping a little bit of shampoo out of his ear. Jed groaned, tucking his hands behind his head.
"Not unless you want to pick me up and hold me while I shower. I'm in no shape to do anything under my own power right now."
"Sorry, buddy. You're great, but I ain't showering with ya."
"Oh, you know you'd like it. Perv."
"I could hit you for that remark, but I might break something important. Like one of your ribs. You look like shit, Jed."
"You're no beauty queen yourself, buddy. It looks like someone tried to run you over with Old Bertha." Bertha was Jed's favorite pet name for the Oldsmobile, ranking right up there with Neff's own favored nickname--"Piece of Shit".
"Yeah, but at least I have the decency to put on a freaking shirt. Here." He reached across to Malachi's dresser and pulled out the first t-shirt he grabbed, tossing at at Jed. "For the sake of all that is decent in the world, not to mention my appetite."
The t-shirt flopped right on top of Jed's face. Wearily, he pulled it away, eyeing it with distaste. "Gee, thanks. I'll look like I'm wearing a dress." He unfolded the oversized shirt, revealing the front logo. "A Budwiser dress."
"Hey, if you're gonna look like a pansy, might as well look like a drunken pansy. Not that you need help in that department."
"Screw you."
A soft groan caught Neff's attention. He cast a glance towards the bed, where a tangle of black hair could barely be seen beneath the thick pile of blankets. Somewhere amidst all that bedding, Mamoru lay in his little cocoon, gradually recovering from nearly being gored by a weapon that, for all intents and purposes, looked as though it had been designed by Fisher Price. Neff pulled the covers back a bit, revealing the face of his sleeping prince. It was pale, but not as pale as it had been. "He's looking better."
Jed pulled the Budwiser t-shirt over his head. "Yeah, resilient bugger, ain't he? I think he must be getting stronger; he didn't used to heal that fast."
"He didn't used to be able to do a lot of things." Neff had his hand wrapped around Mamoru's wrist, though his callused fingers were unaccustomed to the relatively delicate task of feeling a pulse. "His pulse is stronger than before, too. Weird as it sounds, I think he can regenerate blood cells the way he regenerates skin cells."
Jed blanched. "...Ew. He's like... an amoebae or something. I hope he doesn't start dividing."
Neff chuckled. "Or a starfish."
"Hey, maybe he'll grow another arm! That would be so cool!"
"The world's first three-armed doctor. He'd be a medical miracle."
"Man, he's already a medical miracle. Any other guy would have died within seconds of that..." Jed bit his lip. "Anyway. How do you think Malachi's making out? His shoulder looked like shit."
"I imagine the doctors at the hospital will patch him up right quick. Especially with Zory the Holy Terror on his side," Neff chuckled. "Remember when you had to have your appendix out?"
Jed sighed, shaking his head. Did he remember? Why, he doubted he could ever forget. "I'm sure some of the nurses are still trying to get Zory's scream erased from their memories."
"Scream? 'Feminine squeal,' more like." Neff bent down toward his prince, brushing some sweaty strands of hair away from his eyes. His face was twisted in confusion and grief, even in his sleep, and he continued to groan softly every now and then. His body may have been doing better, but his psyche was another story altogether.
The brunette sighed, vaguely wishing that Malachi was here, rather than at the hospital. He dearly wanted to give his prince some comfort right now, even in his sleep, but when it came right down to it, Neff did not have the faintest idea of what he was doing. Malachi was actually good at making people feel better at times like this. It was a sort of gift, like how Mamoru could heal things without a second thought. He was a calming presence--sometimes, just being near him was enough to ease anxieties. If only Malachi was the one sitting here in this chair, resting his cool hand on Mamoru's face, Neff was pretty certain that his unconscious prince would not be ready to jump out of his skin right now.
Zory's abilities were something similar, but not quite the same. Zory was the warm-hearted one. He was the one who reminded you that you're still loved, no matter how much you have come to despise yourself. He was the one who would not only comfort you when you cried, but would more likely than not end up crying right along with you. He was an incredibly empathetic creature and, Neff mused, the exact opposite of himself.
Neff was about as empathetic as a shoe lace.
Neff never knew what to do about emotional people. For Malachi, the usual response involved "hug, say something inspirational, then leave on a high note, such as telling a really lame joke." The formula seemed to work well enough, but Neff wasn't into the whole hugging thing, and the likelihood of him saying something inspirational were pretty close to nil. Besides, the last time he had tried that was on his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, and the only thing that had got him was a slap in the face.
Truth be told, he and Jed were the two least likely candidates to be at all helpful in this situation.
"The best thing we can do right now is wait." It was as though Jed had read his mind, but seeing as how he was about as telepathic as Neff was empathetic, it was rather unlikely. The blonde smoothed out the enormous Budweiser shirt, just to keep his jittery hands occupied. "He's doing better, and there isn't much we can do until he wakes up. With any luck, Zory and Malachi will be back before that happens, and they can and hug each other and cry and all that other shit."
"Yeah." Neff sat down gingerly at the edge of the bed, not taking his eyes away from Mamoru for a splitsecond.
The black-haired prince visibly shuddered, despite the sweat that soaked his face. "Usa..." he mumbled almost imperceptibly.
"Shit," Neff sighed. "He's gonna be one miserable prince when he wakes up, isn't he?"
------
For having the empathetic ability of a shoe lace, Neff was awfully astute. Because at that very moment, Chiba Mamoru was locked in the depths of what was very likely the worst nightmare of his life. A nightmare where he hurt his best friends. A nightmare where he blindly kissed a woman other than his Usako. A nightmare where everything that he deemed precious in this life was shattered by his own hand.
Parts of the bloodbath drifted in and out of his consciousness - unconsciousness, rather.
"Aren't you going to feel silly if you faint later because of this?"
"You're all so bloody eager to protect me in this battle, there won't be any of you left for the next one."
"Mamochan, you dense idiot, turn the hell around already and look at me!"
Mamoru cried out, throwing his hands in front of his face, desperately trying to block out the images. It had all gone so well - they'd -won-, the clones were dead, he'd even tripped Jed out of a rare moment of humor!
"Would you die for me, Mamochan?"
"I mean this with the utmost respect when I say 'fuck you, Prince.'"
They'd won! It was supposed to be over! Oh, but it was so far from over.
"...Zory's gonna die after all, isn't he?"
"You know that isn't true, Prince. Even if she leaves you, we never will. We will never, ever let you be lonely."
But he was all alone, in this dark place, with only the memory of his actions and the blood on his hands. Mamoru sobbed, falling to his knees, trying to push everything away. He didn't want to remember, he didn't want to feel, he didn't want -anything-!
"I have a secret for you, Mamochan. Would you like to hear it?"
No, no, he never wanted to hear that voice again! He never wanted to hear -anything- ever again! Why wouldn't they just leave him alone?
"It doesn't matter, Prince. What matters is that we all come away from this alive, and that's not gonna happen if you don't hurry up and take care of yourself."
But they weren't all alive, no, not anymore. He had killed them. Hadn't he? He wasn't sure. He was seeing so many things, so much blood...
"I'm going to hold on until one of you kills me. You'll have to blow my brains out before I'll let go."
"If you don't stop it, you're going to die."
He wished he had. It should have been him and not them. It should have been him getting blasted across the yard! It should have been him! Why did they have to protect him like that? Why did they have to let him hurt them?
"Do you want me to hurt you? Because I could really hurt you right now."
"I'm sorry!" Mamoru sobbed. He was sorry. He was sorry for hurting them, sorry for being so weak. He was sorry for coming into their lives and ruining everything. He was sorry that they ever met him. "They would have been better off without me. They would've been better off if we'd never met."
"Even if the entire world abandons you, we never will."
But he had abandoned them. Over and over again they had put their lives on the line for him, and at a moment's notice, he had dropped them like they were nothing. It was his fault. They were gone, and it was his fault. He had never deserved guardians like them. He had never deserved friends like them.
And suddenly, over the voices and the crying that echoed in his own head, there came the sound of a slap. It cracked like a whip, silencing every other noise that had been pelting him for what had seemed like an eternity.
"Don't you ever say that again!"
Usako...that was Usako's voice! But what did one have to do with the other?
Through the haze of guilt and regret that seemed to cover everything, he could see someone-eventually revealed to be Haruka-touching her cheek; she had obviously been the recipient of that slap. But was Usagi the one who had given it to her?
"I don't care what you may think of Mamochan, or his behavior! He is still your Prince, Haruka-san, and I am still your Princess! He could very well be dying, and all you can think to talk about is how he may or may not have cheated on me!"
"Usako, don't..." Mamoru's voice was hoarse, choking on tears as he watched his fiancé, his Odango, stand up to Haruka with all the passion and furor she had. And for him. Why for him? He didn't deserve it. He'd killed his four friends, and for the sake of what?
For Lunette. Because he was too blind to see the truth, to see that she wasn't the one he loved. They had tried to warn him, tried to show him. But he wouldn't listen. And now all he had was himself and those gut-wrenching memories that would haunt him to the end of time.
His Usako was crying. His Usako was defending him from her own friends.
"Usako... please don't. Don't stand up for me, Usa. Don't cry for me. I don't deserve it. I've never deserved your tears."
Somewhere in the conscious world, one of the black-haired prince's guardians uncomfortably turned away, trying not to see the tears that were rolling freely down Mamoru's cheeks.
"It... it doesn't matter anyway, does it? He'll be okay, won't he? He's so strong. He's always been so strong."
How could she say that? How could she possibly believe in him after all he had done? He wasn't strong. He had killed his best friends. He had fallen into a trap like the weakling that he was, and he had hurt the people who tried to help him. He had betrayed them and betrayed Usa and even, in some abstract way, betrayed the other senshi. And now what? Now he was alone, without any of them, just as he feared would happen. And he deserved every bit of it.
He crumpled onto the ground, his knees drawn up to his face. "Please, just let me die. Someone, please, let me die."
"No, Prince. We're not going to let you give up on yourself. Not now, not ever."
That voice...that wasn't part of his nightmare. That was real. Quiet, heartbreakingly real. But who could it be? Everyone was dead. Weren't they? They had given him all their strength so he would heal himself, and then one by one they collapsed, giving him one last smile...and then what?
"Prince, c'mon, wake up. You need to snap out of this, okay?"
A gentle shake from a calloused hand, and the nightmare began to dissolve. He found himself no longer on his knees, but sprawled on his back, tangled up in fresh, sweet smelling sheets. And there above him was a strange, lumpy brunette that he couldn't quite make out past the tears.
"Thank God, he's coming around. I don't think I could have taken any more of that." Another voice, hoarse with emotion. Did that mean it had been a nightmare after all? He hadn't killed them?
"Prince, can you hear me?" Neff shook Mamoru gently, trying to bump him out of his half-conscious state. He'd worked himself to his emotional ends, and if he'd gone on much longer, the brunette probably would have imploded.
It was supposed to be Kunzite who could feel their Prince's pain. That's how it always worked. Kunzite always knew when something was happening. And they would just follow his lead. But if he, Nephrite the Constipated Empath, could feel what was going on, it was serious.
"Neff?" Mamoru's voice was so soft, it could barely qualify as a whisper. "Is that really you?"
He sounded so disbelieving, so scared, which surprised Jed more than anything. He'd seen them all before he passed out. They had all been fine - well, okay, not really "fine," but something that passed for it. They had all made it out alive. So why wouldn't it really be them?
"It was last time I checked," the brunette answered, slightly confused. No sooner had those words escaped his lips, then a very large black-haired blur vaulted up from the bed and planted itself in Neff's chest, latching onto him like a neurotic lobster. Neff stared wide-eyed down at Mamoru, too stunned to even feel the pain of having his already bruised chest and ribs squeezed. He gave Jed a desperate look, one that clearly read "what the hell am I supposed to do now?"
Jed would have laughed, if it were not for how clearly upset his prince was. He moved around to the edge of the bed, sitting down behind Mamoru. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay, Prince." He rubbed Mamoru's trembling shoulders. "We're right here, Prince. We're not going anywhere."
At a loss for anything else to do, Neff resigned himself to being the obligatory teddy bear. //Dammit, Zory, get your pansy ass back here. I'm about as useful right now as a condom in a convent.//
The absence of Zory and Malachi was certainly not lost on a certain clingy Prince, either. Malachi and Zory hadn't spoken up yet. That was entirely unlike them, especially after such a battle. That could only mean that they weren't here. And that could only mean...
No. They couldn't be dead. Neff and Jed were here; that meant that everything was okay. Everyone had survived. It had all been a nightmare.
//But...but they'd -be- here. They're too overprotective -not- to be!//
Neff craned his head over Mamoru's, giving Jed another desperate look. They were going to have to explain the lack of two very important people, and fast, before the Prince decided to come up with his own, unecessarily morbid explaination.
"Prince--"
"Where are Zory and Malachi?" Too late. The question would have sounded like a demand, if not for the hoarseness in his voice. He lifted his face from Neff's shirt, eyes darting frantically around the room as though his missing friends may be hiding beneath a desk somewhere. When neither a head of silver hair nor a blonde ponytail were forthcoming, he began to panic.
The image of Zory, beaten and bleeding and laying cradled in his arms came back to him. //Oh no no, they can't be gone. They can't be, not now.//
"Prince--"
"Where are they? What happened to them?"
"Prince, listen to me!" Neff put a firm hand on Mamoru's shoulder. His prince was certainly hard of hearing today. "They're fine--"
"How can they be fine if they aren't here?"
"Listen," the brunette continued sternly, his lack of patience getting the better of him. "They went to get Malachi's shoulder checked out. They're -fine-. I'm sure they're terrorizing hospital staff even as we speak."
"Zory's a holy terror. Last time we were in there - my appendix and I had a small disagreement - at least four nurses had to take paid leave to regain their facilities." Jed's was obviously trying to lighten the mood, but as valiant as his efforts were, he wasn't really succeeding. Fringes of Mamoru's pain were still hovering on the edge of his consciousness - it had taken all of his mental capabilities to keep from passing out near the end of his nightmare. He'd never thought it possible that one person could feel so much self-loathing, but if anyone could, it was probably his prince. No, it was -definitely- his prince.
"How bad was it? His shoulder?" As quickly as Mamoru had looked around the room, his eyes dropped to the floor.
//"I mean this with the utmost respect when I say 'fuck you, Prince.'"//
Mamoru was certainly glad that his guardians were still alive, there were no two ways about that. But the fact remained that while they weren't pushing up daisies, he -had- kicked them to the curb. Well, from the way that Neff and Jed looked, he'd kicked them across the street and to the -other- curb. Even after what passed for frat boy hygiene, they still looked, to put it nicely, like shit. And he had done that. Lunette hadn't helped, sure, but the damage she dealt was far smaller than what he'd done by his own hand.
"Prince, I mean this with the utmost respect when I say 'stop that shit right this very second.' You're not going to start guilting yourself again, not after -that- miserable mind-fuck you just put yourself through," Jed said, voice carrying a lot more authority than he was sure he even had. But as soon as Mamoru's eyes drooped, he felt the tiniest hint of nausea creep up on him. Stupid damn Mam-O-Meter; this was Malachi's job, not his. "Okay? Promise me you're not going to start that again."
"Start what again?" The black-haired man asked innocently, though he had a pretty good idea of what Jed was talking about. "Miserable mind-fuck" was certainly an adequate description of what he had been putting himself through recently, though he had no clue as to how Jed could know how thoroughly he had been mentally bashing his head in with a brick labeled "guilt".
"Exactly what you're doing right now. You're not doing anyone any favors by torturing yourself over this, you got that? All you're doing is hurting yourself and making the rest of us feel sick."
//Yeah, but it makes me feel better. I guess. In a twisted, masochistic sort of way.// He appreciated that Jed was trying to make him feel better in his own less-than-polished manner, but the fact that he and Neff were being so nice to him after he had beaten them both to a bloody pulp only served to fuel his guilt. Of course, he wasn't entirely sure what he would prefer instead. Maybe if they'd yell at him a bit? He would even be willing to let them hit him--he deserved far worse, after all. Or at the very least, if they wouldn't sit so close, in that obnoxiously reassuring manner.
It was obvious to Mamoru that they had no other intention besides sitting there and keeping him company, exchanging concerned looks that they thought he couldn't see. He wanted to jump up and say, "What's wrong with you? I blasted you ten feet in the air and practically killed you! Why aren't you mad at me?"
But he knew it wouldn't get him anywhere. They were so blinded by their joy at having him back that they he could probably lock them all in a closet with a rabid wildebeast and they'd still come out wanting to protect him at cost of life or limb.
//They just don't get it.//
"Get what, Prince?"
Oh no. He'd said that out loud. Now what should he do? Should he just pass it off as the ramblings of some guy who was still recovering from having a wand shoved through his abdomen? Or should he explain what he'd meant?
It would have been so easy to plead insanity. Considering how he had been acting lately, it probably would have been completely believable, too. That is, of course, if he had not happened to glance up at Jed's face, and see the sincere look of concern written beneath the cuts and bruises. He really didn't get it.
"How can you just sit there?" He blurted suddenly, a bit louder than he had intended.
"Prince?"
"I just beat the shit out of you! I nearly killed you! How can you sit there and act like nothing happened? Get mad at me, yell at me, hit me, for God's sakes, do SOMETHING! Don't pretend that everything's okay just because I'm supposed to be your Prince or something stupid like that!"
Jed stared at the black-haired man, caught off-guard by the sudden outburst. "Prince, no one blames you for what happened--"
"Which is exactly my point! I wanted to KILL you, Jed. Don't you understand that? I wanted to kill my best friends. And you could have saved yourselves. You could have, but you didn't. Why didn't you get the hell away? Why didn't you try to protect yourselves?"
"You know why, Prince. Because we're your guardians, and--"
"Oh, don't fucking give me that guardian crap! I'm sick of hearing about that every time you throw yourselves in the path of an attack, just to keep me from getting a little hurt! If having guardians means that I can beat them to a bloody pulp and they come crawling back for more, then I sure as hell don't want them!"
"Shut up, Prince." Neff's voice came booming somewhere just above Mamoru's ear, so unexpectedly that he was immediately silenced. The brunette was glaring down at him, his reddish-brown eyes more filled with fury than Mamoru had ever seen them. It suddenly occured to Mamoru just how frightening Neff must be when he loses his temper. "Just shut up now. You're the one who doesn't get it." He was not yelling. His voice was quiet. Frighteningly quiet.
"It's all well and good for you to sit there and complain about everything. But while you're doing that, you're cheapening everything we've done for you."
"I didn't mean--"
"Yes, you did, Prince. You're cheapening what we've done and you're cheapening who we are as your guardians."
"I..." Mamoru looked stricken. Terrified. And confounded beyond belief. "That's not it at all! I'm not saying I don't appreciate--"
"That's exactly what you just said. In case you missed the memo, Prince, being your guardian means we're supposed to -guard- you. Or was your head too far up your ass when you were in Japan to figure that out when you were watching the Princess and her Senshi?" Neff was obviously having a hard time keeping the physical manifestations of his anger in check. Though his face was impassive, his hands were clenched at his sides, shaking ever so slightly. "I'm sorry this business can't be all light and fucking flowers, okay? But if you're going to be so goddamn suicidal every five seconds, we're -going- to step in whether you like it or not. And we are -going- to protect you. Even if you don't seem to want it."
It seemed to Mamoru as though his entire frame of mind had slipped out of reality, and he was watching the scene as a fly on the ceiling. Every one of Neff's words was a slap to the face, but he was disconnected from it, as though his consciousness was hovering above him, like a balloon on a string.
"Neff, don't you think--"
"Zip it, Jed." Neff's tone left no room for dissention, and Jed's mouth shut with an audible "clack." The brunette was obviously itching to let out whatever rage he was so precariously keeping to himself, and Jed was already hurting plenty enough for this lifetime, thanks.
"Prince, you won't remember this, but a long time ago, we pledged our allegiance to you. We gave our -lives- to you, Prince. That means something. It may not mean shit to you, but it means a lot to us. We broke that oath once, and I'll be damned if we do again. We're not going anywhere, you hear me? If you don't like it, you can finish what you were doing earlier and kill us off. There's no other way you'll ever make us stop protecting you."
Mamoru did not know what to say. "I'm sorry" just did not seem to cover it. He had never considered what being a guardian meant to them. He knew they were devoted, of course, but not like this. He really had no idea.
Neff took a breath, still shaking ever so slightly from his pent-up anger. The storm seemed to be fading from his eyes, though his hands continued to clench and unclench in painful-looking fists. After a moment he continued, in a much more even voice, "Prince, Malachi almost made a really big sacrifice for you today."
Jed looked up in alarm. "Neff, don't." Malachi would kill them if they told Mamoru how much his memories were making him suffer. And not without reason, either. If their prince was guilting himself now, how much more would he torture himself if he knew what his head guardian had been going through?
"He has to know, Jed." The two glared around Mamoru at each other, a silent argument playing out between them.
"Know what?" Mamoru looked confusedly from one to the other, obviously not privvy to their non-verbal conversation. Of course he knew that Malachi had almost made a big sacrifice for him. He had almost died, hadn't he? They all had. So what else could there possibly be?
"Neff, my vocabulary isn't big enough to adequately describe to you how shitty an idea this is. It's not like I can persuade you and your concrete-thick skull to change your mind, but could you get off your damn soapbox for a minute and just -think- about what you're about to say? For -once?-" Jed stood his ground. He'd been okay with the verbal lashing up to a point - yes, Mamoru was acting like an idiot. But this went beyond knocking him back to his senses. This was downright cruel. "He doesn't have to know."
Neff stayed silent, glaring at Jed as he tried to wrestle with the idea that had seemed so good about a minute ago. Maybe it would be excessive to tell Mamoru what nearly happened. It -hadn't-, and that was the important thing. And his prince was already looking an unhealthy shade of pale. How much more damage would this revelation cause? And was there the possibility that it could push his self-loathing over the edge?
Jed would have smiled, were the situation not quite so serious. He'd gotten through. Neff was just going to let it go. He let out a silent stream of air through his lips, unaware that he'd been holding his breath that whole time.
"Prince...do you recall what Kunzite was like in the Dark Kingdom?"
Almost instantaneously, Jed's stomach hit his feet. "Neff, for God's sake, let it go!" he shrilled, eyes wide with panic. No, no, this wasn't going to get them anywhere! Mamoru was understanding just fine; this wasn't the answer!
The brunette remained solid as a rock, and equally as stubborn. "If I don't tell him, who will? Malachi? He's too much of a fucking saint to let anyone know what he's going through. He'll take this to his grave, and you know it."
"It's not our place to talk about it, Neff. If Malachi doesn't want anyone to know, that's his decision, not ours!"
Mamoru was definitely beginning to worry, now. Jed was not the kind of person to baby him. He had made that discovery clearly enough right around the time he had his arm pinned behind his back. So how bad could this piece of information be, that even he was trying to protect Mamoru from it?
Neff was not backing down. He glared at Jed a moment longer, daring the blonde to stop him. Jed stood, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Fine, do whatever the hell you want. It's not like I can fucking stop you, anyway." He leaned up against the nearby desk, glaring daggers at the floor.
The matter settled, Neff returned his attention to the prince sitting next to him. "You never answered my question."
"Yes," Mamoru answered slowly, hesitatingly. He was not sure he wanted to know where this was going.
"And you remember how he was like a completely different person? How he wasn't just 'Kunzite with different loyalties' or 'Kunzite with different powers,' but he was actually like an entirely different guy with the same name? How even his eyes were different?"
Mamoru nodded, surpressing a slight shudder. He remembered those haunting, colorless eyes very clearly--far more clearly than he wished to. His Malachi was not supposed to look like that, with those empty, soulless eyes that contained only malice and a cold lust for power. The two people--the Kunzite of the Dark Kingdom and the real Kunzite, the one he had now--were about as similar as a wrench to a tsetse fly.
"Malachi was going to bring him back." No sense beating around the bush, Neff thought. He'd gotten this far, after all. "He's been struggling to keep those memories from haunting him since he got them back. But he thought -that- Kunzite was the only way we could save you from that clone. We were all on the ground, about as useful as rag dolls, and he said, 'He... he doesn't feel pain like we do. He wouldn't be so weak. He could still do it.'"
Neff looked straight at Mamoru then, but closed his eyes before he really got a good look at his prince. If he had, he probably would have just stopped the story where it was. Mamoru had begun to grip the bed with white knuckle fear, afraid of what his friend was telling him. If someone had touched him with a feather, he probably would have fainted.
"The memories nealy killed him earlier, while you were still recovering." Neff swallowed hard. "He couldn't take them, Prince, not all at once. It hurt him so terribly. But he was willing to bring them back, to essentially surrender his body to that madman - for -your- sake. He knew we'd probably have to kill him afterwards. He knew we couldn't trust that Kunzite, and if he made a move to kill you, we'd have to act first. And he would have done it, if we hadn't talked him out of it."
The silence stretched out as the full impact of Neff words slowly sank in. Jed's eyes were still fixed on the carpet, though he was no longer glaring at it furiously. It must have been a mighty interesting carpet, because Neff had taken to watching it, as well. Mamoru was not interested in carpets, though. He was still staring at Neff, still trying to comprehend just what his friend was getting at. "I... I don't understand. What are you telling me, that there's two Kunzites? That the one from the Dark Kingdom is... is still in him?"
"That's exactly what I'm telling you."
"And you would have killed him." Mamoru was finding it difficult to breathe. It felt as though the room was closing in on him. "He would have let that... thing take over, and you would have killed him."
"To save you, yes." Neff's brown eyes were no longer flooded with anger when he looked up at Mamoru. "You have to understand, Prince, that for Malachi to become that other Kunzite, to become that thing that he once was... it would be becoming his greatest fear. Becoming the thing that he most despises. For Malachi, that would be a fate worse than death. He would be in tremendous agony, Prince. To kill him at that point would be an act of mercy."
"He would have...for me..." Mamoru's vision dropped out of focus as he looked down at his hands, still clutching at the sheets as though they were the only thing keeping him in the room. In fact, they were. Every other nerve in his body was telling him to run, to get out of this house and find Malachi, or just run until he had no strength left and just pass out wherever he ended up.
But first, he was really tempted to make a run for the bathroom, because what remained of his breakfast was slowly making its way back up from his stomach. The relevation, that Malachi would have succumbed to his worst fear, just to save him from that clone, was almost too much for him. He could have taken the lashing from Neff, and whatever he'd intended to do with his fists that he'd avoided by a hair's breadth. But not this. This, he could not take. Malachi probably intended to keep this secret from him forever, what he'd intended to do when everything was at its darkest.
"Prince?" Jed broke the painful silence, moving away from the desk and towards Mamoru. He was looking even more sickly than before - not that he was particularly surprised - and it almost looked like he'd stopped breathing. The blonde reached out to touch his prince, to make sure he wasn't about to die or anything.
"Get away from me, Jed. Please." Mamoru's voice was not much above a whisper, and he never took his eyes away from his hands.
"Prince, I know this is a lot to take in. And I wish you'd never had to hear it." Jed nearly spat the last few words out, resuming the sour expression he'd given Neff before. It was only momentary, however, and while he pulled his hand away, he bent down to look at Mamoru's face. "But that's over with now. We just need to relax, regroup, stop thinking about what happened for now. We'll have plenty of time to strategize in the future. Right now, I think what you need is some comfort--"
"I said get away from me!" Mamoru barked, jumping to his feet and taking a few unsteady steps toward the bedroom door. All the blood drained from his skin, blue eyes darting back and forth from Neff and Jed, he looked more like a zombie than a youthful med student. "Leave me alone! I don't deserve your comforting, okay, so just back the hell off!"
Neff stood, taking a few wary steps towards Mamoru. "Prince, calm down. I didn't intend to scare you like this--"
"I said back off, Neff! Just leave me the fuck alone, okay?" He had to get out of here. He had to be alone. Mamoru took a few more more steps towards the door, but staggered, making a very ungraceful descent onto the floor. Almost immediately, two guardians were standing near him, trying to help him up.
"Please, just take it easy, okay Prince? It'll be alright--"
"I said, get away from me!" Mamoru tried to wrench out of their grasp, but was doing a poor job of it, namely because they were the only thing holding him up. He needed to get out of here. It didn't matter where, he just needed out. He just needed to be alone, away from overprotective guardians.
Jed felt the sudden burst of power before it happened. "Prince, wait!" He shouted, grabbing onto Mamoru's arm as though that could make him stay. The last he saw of his prince was a flash of blue eyes as they glanced up at him, filled with indescribable pain.
The two Shitennou collapsed onto each other, grasping at thin air, as the object between them vanished. Their Prince was gone.
"...Oh shit." Neff muttered, staring at the empty space between his arms.
"You're fucking right, oh shit! We just lost our prince!"
"Well then, go after him!"
"Go after him? Neff, he just fucking teleported! He could be anywhere in the world right now! He could be back in fucking Japan, for all we know!"
"Well, can't -we- do that? Teleport, I mean?" Neff knew he was grasping at straws. He knew he'd screwed this up royal, no pun intended. And he had no idea how he was going to fix it.
"Not unless your dick just happens to be a Sailor crystal, you thickheaded moron!" Jed seethed, tangling his fingers into his short mess of hair. "God, I told you not to do that! I told you it was a fucking bad idea! But no, you always have the solution to everything, -don't- you, Neff? Your damned testosterone clogs up your logic!"
Neff didn't respond to that, though he was tempted. After all, Jed wasn't exactly one to talk about hormone-influenced courses of action. But he deserved that. He'd crossed a line that shouldn't have been crossed, and all it had done was created a mountain out of a quite respectable little mole hill.
"What are we going to tell Malachi and Zory when they get home?" The brunette massaged his temple with two fingers, trying to alleviate the inevitable throbbing that had begun to build there.
"Besides the fact that you're an idiot?"
"Yes, thank you, besides that."
"We'll tell them... oh hell, I don't know!" Jed thumped down on the couch in a huff. "There's really no gentle way to say 'oh, by the way, we made Mamoru into an even -bigger- emotional wreck, then proceeded to lose him. He's probably somewhere in the vicinity of the planet. Oops.'"
"...Malachi's gonna kill us, isn't he?"
"No, he's going to kill -you.- He's going to break your neck with his good arm and then proceed to stomp you into a bloody pulp. And while he's at it, Zory will probably be ripping your hair out."
"Well gee, thank you for that."
"Any time."
The two were silent for a moment, Jed seething on the couch while Neff stood awkwardly, trying to come up with some sort of solution. When nothing was forthcoming, he finally asked, "So what do we do now?"
"Well, we can either start searching for him at random and maybe we'll run across him in the next decade or so. Or we can sit here and wait for Malachi and Zory to come back, bringing with them their inevitable wrath."
Given the choice, Neff would have probably preferred the former. Unfortunately, the decision was not up to him, as at that moment he could hear the very distinct sound of two fratboys walking down the hallway outside their door.
Malachi sighed, rubbing his sling unhappily as Zory led him carefully down the hall. "Must you do that, Zory? It's just a broken shoulder. That doesn't mean I can't -walk-."
"I don't care. You had plenty of time to be macho all afternoon, Malachi, and now I'm going to baby you whether you like it or not." Zory meant it, too. They walked down the hall silently for awhile, the only noise the rattling of pills in the blonde's back pocket.
//That's odd.// Malachi scanned the quiet hallways, white bangs flopping into his eyes. //Prince is awake, I can feel it, but the house is totally silent. Neff and Jed should be teasing each other mercilessly by this point. Maybe they opted for a nap?//
"Dammit, Neff, you are such a fucking idiot."
"You're going to get a lot of mileage out of that word today, aren't you?"
"After -that-? Damn fucking straight."
Zory glanced apprehensively up at his injured companion. He had managed to wash most of the blood off of his face and hands at the hospital, and convinced a concerned orderly that the red splatters on his clothes were the result of a ketchup incident. He had lost his beloved hair tie, however, and his dirty blonde hair now hung in thick waves around his shoulders.
"You are a fucking idiot, Neff. Just a big fucking idiot."
"I don't like the sound of that," the blonde said lowly.
Malachi had to agree--something was not right here, and the raised voices coming from his bedroom were only serving to confirm that fact. Mamoru's darker emotions had climaxed right around the time Zory was leading him across the hospital parking lot. It had taken an awful lot of effort on Zory's part, both to talk him out of teleporting back to the frat house then and there, and to keep him from from dropping to his knees on the pavement. Things had settled down after that, but he even now he could feel the icy lump lingering in his stomach.
Zory reached past Malachi and turned the knob to his bedroom door. As it swung open, Neff and Jed were revealed, sitting awkwardly on the floor, and looking...well, Neff looked like a kicked puppy. Jed looked like he was itching to put his fists through some walls. This would have been startling enough, except that Mamoru was nowhere to be seen. It was as though he'd just...disappeared.
"Where's the Prince?" Malachi finally asked, trying to ignore the dread that was slowly swallowing up the lump in his stomach. "He's just in the bathroom, or something, right?"
"I only wish," Neff muttered, slapping his palm on the carpet. Dammit, he should have listened to Jed. What kind of crazy-ass idea was that, anyway? How would that have helped anything?
"I only wish," Neff muttered, slapping his palm on the carpet. Dammit, he should have listened to Jed. What kind of crazy-ass idea was that, anyway? How would that have helped anything?
"Where is he?" Malachi asked again, more firmly this time. He was not panicking. Not yet, anyway.
"Yeah, Neff, how about you tell them where he is." Jed gave his brunette friend a vicious look.
Neff ran a hand through his long hair, looking uncharacteristically hesitant. "He's... well, uh, we... sort of... lost him."
"You -lost- him?!" Zory positively shrieked. Malachi hurriedly shut the door behind them. No sense in alerting whoever else might be home right now. "Your job was to get him from the back yard to the bedroom in one piece and keep him safe until we got back! How the hell could you lose him?"
Jed leaned back against the couch, crossing his arms and continuing to glare pointedly at Neff. Evidently, he was not going to offer any assistance in this situation.
"We..." Neff glanced at Jed. "Okay, I... sort of told him about how Malachi was going to, you know, let the other Kunzite out."
Zory could actually see the muscles tighten in Malachi's back, could see the way his jaw set and his eyes focused on Neff with that sharp intensity that would have made any lesser man shrivel within seconds. "You told him... what?" Zory didn't like the tone that had crept into his leader's voice. It was the sort of tone that usually set off warning bells in his mind, the one that said that his white-haired friend was treading in dangerous territory.
"Are you insane?" Zory snapped at the brunette.
"If I answer yes, will that save me from a sound beating?"
"No."
"Then no. No, I'm not."
Zory inched slowly, incrementally away from Malachi. It wasn't that he didn't trust his leader, or was afraid that Malachi intended to come after -him-. But he didn't like the way he was looming over Neff, looking like he could have taken him apart limb by limb and then stomped on them. And all without breaking a sweat.
"And why," Malachi said quietly, "would you do something like that, Neff?"
"Because--"
"He's a fucking idiot."
"Yes, -thank you-, Jed!" Neff snapped, turning sharply on his friend. "We've firmly established that fact, okay? I'm the world's biggest fucking idiot! Stab, twist, I got it!"
Malachi seemed to ignore their brief cat fight. He bent down at the waist, silver hair tumbling down and on top of Neff's head, as though he intended to say something. Neff looked up at him hesitantly, looking almost afraid of whatever was coming next. He'd expected an angry leader, but his precognitive skills weren't really reassuring and he still wanted to wet his pants.
With lightning quick speed, Malachi wrapped his free hand around Neff's throat and yanked him to his feet. He spun on his heels and slammed the brunette roughly against the wall, abruptly shoving all the air out of his lungs. The action was so startling that as soon as Neff hit the wall, Zory let out a high-pitch shriek and fell on top of Jed, whimpering. This was most assuredly -not- good.
Neff's eyes were huge with surprise. He struggled for breath, though none was forthcoming, both of his hands clawing at Malachi's good one in an attempt to pry it away. He had expected the white-haired man to be angry, of course, but never, ever, had he expected -this-. But when he looked into his friend's sharp green eyes, he saw a razor-like fury unlike anything he had seen in his lifetime, least of all in Malachi's. Centuries upon centuries of pain, torment, despair, hate, all rolled up into one single ball of wrath that was shooting like the strongest laser directly at -him- because how -dare- he share such a thing and how -dare- he treat it so lightly when he never ever knew what it was like to have to go through that and have to live with that day in and day out, night after deepest, darkest night, knowing all along that his worst fear and his worst enemy and the worst evil that has ever lived was himself.
"Malachi, please let him go," Jed said timidly, looking almost as frightened as Zory. "Please, he didn't mean anything by it."
Malachi was not listening. His body remained rigid, his hand still clamped firmly around the brunette's neck, unmoving despite Neff's frantic kicking and writhing.
"Malachi, for God's sakes, let him go!" Zory shrilled. "Do you see what you're doing? I know you're angry, but this is what the old Kunzite did! He punished people who made him angry! You aren't like that! -You're no better than him when you act like this!-"
The blonde's last comment echoed in the room, as nothing else could be heard but Neff's desperate labored breathing.
"He's right." Neff barely choked out the words. "I know you're mad at me, Malachi, but please, don't do this. It's not what the Prince would want. You promised you wouldn't--"
And then his words stopped abruptly, because it seemed he'd run out of air. Malachi didn't seem to give any indication of letting him go. The brunette continued to struggle under the powerful grip, but soon found darkness edging in on his vision, and his motions began to slow.
It must be noted that Zory considered himself about as chickenshit as they come. If there was a fight to be fought, an argument to be argued, he'd just assume turn around and run to the nearest safe place. He was not phsyically intimidating, and wasn't the best at debates, anyway. But he saw Neff's face turn from red to purple, saw that Malachi was too embedded in his anger to understand or even care, and he had to take the chance. He was the only one who could.
"Malachi, you're going to kill him! Let him go!" The petite blonde launched himself at his leader, ignoring Jed's indignant "oof" as he found a small foot in his gut. Zory did the only thing he could to get Malachi's attention when he hit the carpet - he slugged the white-haired man in the jaw as hard as he could.
Being that he was strong enough to be holding a very heavy frat boy up for an extended period of time--using only one arm yet--not even Zory's strongest punch was enough to make Malachi lose his grip. But it did serve its intended purpose--it got his attention.
For the first time, the white-haired man averted his gaze from the object of his wrath, staring at the small blonde next to him as if noticing him for the first time.
"Stop it, Malachi!" Zory shouted, barely inches from his face. "You're hurting him, just stop it!"
Green eyes flicked from the man screaming at him to the man quickly losing consciousness in his hand, then back again. Suddenly all the color drained from Malachi's face, taking with it the raw fury that had flooded his eyes. He released Neff, so abruptly that the brunette dropped to the floor, coughing and gasping for air.
Malachi stumbled back, looking pale and shaky and not at all like the person who had been strangling one of his best friends ten seconds ago.
Jed scrambled to his feet, ducking quickly past Malachi to help Neff to his feet. The brunette still couldn't get enough oxygen to satiate his starving lungs, and he was heaving as though he'd just run a marathon.
"This just isn't your day, is it?" Jed said quietly, helping his friend to his feet and carefully propping him up on the bed. Neff just coughed, shaking his head as the purple flush slowly left his face. He kind of hoped someone - a fairy, God, even a purple elephant with wings - would pop in and offer him a do-over for the day. Or the last hour, anyway.
A few feet away, Malachi was having his own trouble with breathing. He slumped against the wall, sucking in deep breath after deep breath in a futile attempt to steady himself. He rubbed the spot where his sling met his chest, which happened to be right over his heart, as though he were trying to push it back in or squash it altogether. His eyes were squeezed shut, in some combination of pain and self-anger.
"Malachi, it's okay now. Take it easy." Zory leaned up against the wall Malachi also occupied, brushing some of the hair from his face. He let his hand linger on Malachi's cheek, feeling the smallest of tears under his small fingers. "It's okay now. Neff's going to be okay. Just take it easy."
The blonde gingerly flexed his other hand, hoping that he had not broken it on Malachi's rather solid jaw. He was pretty sure he could move it alright, though he was certain that it was swelling up already. He did not dare inspect it right now, not while Malachi was on the verge of hyperventilating right in front of him. "It's alright, Malachi. It's alright."
Despite his comforting words, Malachi did not look the least bit alright. He was gulping in air as desperately as Neff was, and having even less success at it. Eventually even the act of standing up became too much effort. He crumpled against the wall, saved from dropping to the floor only by Zory's outstretched arm. "Easy, Malachi. Take it easy, buddy." Unable to hold him up, the blonde eased him onto the carpet, trying to lean him against the wall in such a way that his injured shoulder would not be hurt.
"Malachi, can you open your eyes for me? I need you to look at me." Zory knew that he needed to get his friend to listen to him enough to calm down. He also knew that he needed to make sure that his eyes were the right color.
"I...can't," Malachi whispered hoarsely. "I'm afraid to. I'm afraid of what I've done..."
Zory harshly swallowed an exasperated sigh before it got to his lips. Hadn't they already been over this? "Malachi, please, for me? I know this is difficult. But you need to stay calm. We still need to find the Prince, remember? I'm not saying to squash you feelings entirely, but we need to pull together for him. Okay?"
Slowly, tentatively, Malachi's eyelids fluttered and opened. Again, Zory had to swallow a sigh - this time of relief - when he found watery green eyes looking back at him. Well, the watery part was a little disconcerting, he admitted, but they were -green- and that was what mattered. That had just been an extraordinarily angry Malachi, not evil bastard Kunzite. It was a small reassurence, but it was all Zory needed.
"Neff did a stupid thing, Malachi, I won't deny it. And you have a right to get angry. Maybe just...not -that- angry," Zory said carefully, knowing full well how shaky this territory was. "But you stopped, okay? He'll have a bruised windpipe, not to mention pride. But it's okay now. Can you trust me on that?"
"You'd better trust him," Neff croaked, revealing that his windpipes were indeed a bit bruised. Now they joined the elite club that the rest of his body had fallen into earlier in the day. "Otherwise, he's going to hug you to death, and really, what a way to go, huh?"
That should have been funny, but no one was laughing. Malachi's chest was still heaving, though his ragged gasps were slowing to a slightly more normal level. He closed his eyes for a moment, mostly to fight back the sharp pain in his chest. "Don't close your eyes," Zory softly commanded, gently touching Malachi's face. "Just keep your eyes on me, alright? Just keep listening to my voice, Malachi. I'm not going to let you give in to this. You're too strong to let this beat you. We just need to calm down so we can go find Mamoru."
Neff looked on from his position on the bed, idly rubbing at his throat. That was twice today that he had nearly been killed by a close friend. As the old saying went, he sure as heck did not need enemies as long as these guys were around.
Not that he could blame Malachi for what had happened. He had known that this was causing his friend a lot of pain--no one could have seen the way he looked after his little bathroom incident and not known that--but he had no idea just how deeply that pain was tormenting him until he saw that furious look in his eyes. It was as though, at that moment when he was being strangled, he had looked right into the core of Malachi's suffering, had seen first-hand how it was eating him inside. What amazed Neff more than anything was not that the white-haired man had lost it just now, but that he did not lose it more often.
"You're sure Neff's okay?" Malachi asked hesitantly, sounding in no small part as though he wasn't entirely awake. Zory figured that he'd finally hit his breaking point - the white-haired man was notorious for all-nighters when he had to, and could go multiple days on an hour's sleep if need be. But the last few days had been more physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausting than any the blonde could imagine encountering anywhere before, not even in the worst of melodramas.
"I'll be honest," Neff croaked again, slipping his hand around the side of his neck, feeling it throb. "I'm not particularly enjoying this, but I'm okay, Malachi. I'm a tough fucking idiot, okay? Someone would have to bash my head in to really do a lot of damage, and I know what you're thinking, Jed, so you can just stop it."
Jed managed a weak smile - he'd actually been thinking about where Mamoru could have disappeared to, and how they would go about finding him, but he knew Neff was trying hard to lighten the mood, and draw the attention away from Malachi's rage and back to his ineptitude. Really, the blonde knew he had tried has best, had been so desperate to show Mamoru how much they cared that he lost all sense of what was appropriate, and what could cause serious blows to their Prince's genetically faulty self-esteem.
"I'd never think such a thing," he said quietly, lightly bumping his friend's shoulder with his own.
The brunette gave him a small, friendly smirk. "Like hell you wouldn't."
Malachi knew it was true. Neff was probably the toughest person he knew--always had been, even without Nephrite's added strength. He had seen him bounce back after being on the painful end of a ten-man dogpile, had seen him wave off sprained ankles and broken fingers like they were nothing. Once, a cooking accident had sent him to the emergency room with a severe grease burn spanning his entire left arm, and while everyone else was panicking about getting him to the hospital, Neff's only real concern had been whether his arm would be functioning enough for him to pass his International Cuisine 100 exam on Monday. He knew his friend was a tough fucking idiot, but that did not make him feel much better.
The white-haired man swallowed, feeling a little more stable now. Yeah, he had reached his breaking point, and then proceeded to bash it to pieces with a baseball bat, but this was not the time to be having a nervous breakdown, regardless of how nice it would be to have such a luxury. He had a prince to find, people to protect, clones to kill, and all that other important super hero-y stuff. And even though he felt like shit, was ready to declare himself the scum of the earth and curl up in a fetal position in the corner and cry and rock himself to sleep like the pathetic loser that he was, he had far more important things to be doing right now. So he was going to do what he always did--he was going to get a grip, push all these self-destructive emotions aside for now, and get back to doing what he was supposed to be doing, which was protecting his prince first and leading the Shitennou second. He would get right on that, just as soon as he could stand up again.
Zory craned his neck around to view as much of Neff as he could, without taking his eyes off Malachi in the process. "Do you have -any- idea where Mamoru could have gone?"
The brief flare of humor on Neff's face died pretty quickly with that thought. "None at all. He just said he had to get out of here and, well, he did just that. He could be down the block, in Sacremento, back home in Japan, or on Neptune for all we know. And don't count that last one out, considering how...accurate his teleporting skills are. He's getting better, but you really think he meant to end up on your bed when he teleported out of Harmony's way?"
"Knowing him, he may have ended up in the broom closet in the Biological Sciences department." This thought comforted Jed little, even as he spoke it aloud. If Mamoru -had- ended up somewhere nearby, accidentally or otherwise, he sure wouldn't stay there long. He imagined his Prince wanted to be as far away from his mess as he could, and the blonde didn't blame him.
Zory sighed. "Well he couldn't have gone far. He's not exactly in the best of health right now, even if he is completely healed."
"He didn't go far," Malachi affirmed softly, resting his arm on his knee and watching it as though it were of great importance. "He's pretty close."
The blonde turned back to his leader, watching him. "You know where he is?"
Malachi shook his head. "Not exactly, no. I know that he's pretty close by, but I can't pinpoint him. He's not hurt, so I don't think we have to worry about him being in any danger, yet."
"Well that's a start, anyway," Jed said, fighting the urge to sigh wearily. This day did not look like it would be ending any time soon.
"I think the best way would be to start looking for him on foot. Teleporting at random won't help much and, to be honest, I'd rather not catch him by surprise like that. I think I've got an idea of what direction he's in." As he spoke, Malachi pushed himself to his feet, leaning on the wall for support. Good thing he was on so many pain killers right now; otherwise he probably would have jarred his shoulder from the effort.
"And just where do you think you're going?" Zory asked, reverting to his beloved role as the Mother Hen.
The white-haired man, now in decent enough shape to cross the room without stumbling too much, paused to grab his leather jacket off the back of the chair. "To find my Prince, of course."
The blonde only barely managed to fight back the urge to complain about his leader's stubbornness. The guy had, after all, only recently been released from the hospital for a broken shoulder, and was just now recovering from his second mental breakdown in as many days. If it were up to Zory, he would be confined to his bed for the next week, not wandering the streets aimlessly in search of a lost Mamoru.
He sighed, taking the jacket out of Malachi's arm and helping him into it. "I know I can't talk you out of going, so I'm not even going to try. You're just going to keep right on being the stubborn jackass that you are."
Malachi turned from adjusting his jacket to give the blonde a faint smile. "Thanks, Zory. I love you too."
"But that doesn't mean we're not going with you. I'll let you go, Malachi, but I sure as hell won't let you go walking around by yourself."
Malachi wearily ran his fingers through his silky white hair, as though he had been expecting this. "Thing is, I'd sort of like to talk to him alone. It's all well and good to find him, but once we do that, we sort of need to convince him to come back."
"You can talk to him alone when we find him. Until then, you're stuck with us for company."
"And don't think you can talk us out of it," Neff warned, a little more loudly than he intended. He winced, touching his sore throat. He'd just relegate himself to silence for this outing, he decided, lest he keep wincing through the entire thing and guilt Malachi even further.
Noticing Neff's discomfort, Jed picked up the slack. "What the idiot said. We're coming with you to search, but as soon as we find him, at least Neff and I should make ourselves scarce. Since we did kind of make a mess of things in the first place."
"Well, I obviously have no room to argue." Malachi sighed, in his own long-suffering kind of way. Four sets of eyes were better than one, he had to admit, even if he had wanted to go out on his own, not only to search but to...think. About various things, not the leat of which was what he was going to say to Mamoru when they found him.
He opened the door with his good arm, and then gestured outward. "Come on, then. We're wasting daylight. Sunset's in an hour, and I think we broke the flashlights when the fusebox blew out last May."
"Is there anything in this house we haven't managed to break?" Zory muttered ruefully, shaking his head as he walked past.
Neff touched his throat gingerly as he stood. //Between everything animate and -in-animate in this house? Unfortunately, there's very little left.//
As they headed outside, Malachi was more than a little relieved that they did not encounter anyone. It would be rather difficult to explain why the four of them looked broken and bruised and generally like they had had the crap beaten out of them, which, unfortunately, was true. At some point they would probably have to come up with some logical explanation for it, though at the moment his mind was far too focused on other matters to bother with it.
"Which way, Malachi?" Jed asked, stepping onto the sidewalk.
The white-haired man paused, reaching out with his senses for the familiar golden warmth that he knew to be his prince.
"He's south," Malachi finally said, trying to feel around and pick up any other familiar landmarks in Mamoru's area. "Like he's in the vicinity of the mall [1], or the soccer field."
"Should we take the car?" Jed considered whether or not they'd be able to make it that far on foot. It wasn't more than a couple of miles from the house, but while they could have done it easily on a normal day, this was hardly a normal day.
"I'll get it," Neff volunteered, a little too eagerly. When he saw Malachi wince, he wished he hadn't jumped at the opportunity. He wanted to stay away from his friend to ease his guilt, not add to it. Besides, if he stayed in the car, Mamoru wouldn't be as likely to see him and take off.
"I just meant in case we got tired. Or for the trip back. I'm not trying to run away, I promise," the brunette added carefully.
Malachi rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly becoming rather interested in the pavement at his feet. "Yeah. Okay. We'll meet you there, then."
Before the brunette could give him response, the silver-haired man had already turned his back on him and started down the street, leaving three slightly perplexed friends behind.
"He pretty much hates me right now, doesn't he?" Neff muttered.
"He's having a really bad day, Neff. Just give him a while to deal with all this, alright?" Zory pushed his blonde hair out of his face, watching his leader's back gradually receeding down the street. "It's not even really about you." In a sudden energetic movement, he grabbed the keys out of his back pocket and deposited them in the taller man's hand. "The shitmobile needs gas. You might want to think about throwing out some of those old Big Mac containers while you're at it. They're starting to smell like some furry creature climbed inside them and died. And I don't want to think about whether that really is what I'm smelling."
"Oh, sure. I'll even splurge get one of those pine-scented car fresheners while I'm at it. All fancy-like."
With a half-hearted salute, Neff turned in the opposite direction and headed for the parking lot, where their aforementinoed shitmobile was parked. Jed stood for a moment, watching as his friend continued down the sidewalk and disappeaered around a corner. If they all didn't spontaneously combust in the next few days, it would be a major achievement.
"C'mon." Zory touched Jed's shoulder, which nearly made him jump out of his shirt. (Well, it was Malachi's shirt, but no one was concerned about technicalities.) "Our esteemed leader is getting away."
The small blonde looked down the sidewalk at Malachi's retreating backside; he'd almost walked two blocks in as many minutes. "And I don't want him to be alone now. Malachi's great when he's level-headed, but he's just as much of a loose cannon as Mamoru is right now. And the last thing we need is -two- suicidal manaics in our midst."
"Oh, wouldn't that be fun. I think I'm gonna collapse from exhaustion just from dealing with one of them." The two blondes started after their fearless leader, picking up their pace to catch up with him.
Zory shook his head, watching the bobbing head of silver hair closely to make sure it would not jump into oncoming traffic or anything. "I tell you, those are two guys who really don't need evil clones attacking them to make them feel like shit. Mamoru is so determined to beat himself up over every little thing, it's a wonder he can get out of bed in the morning. And Malachi doesn't have time to stress over little things, because he's too busy trying to carry the whole freaking universe on his back. With one arm in a sling."
Jed chuckled. "They were made for each other, weren't they?"
"Don't let Malachi hear you say that. He's still all worried about that rumor."
"You can't honestly tell me that, even in some capacity, Malachi doesn't want in his pants."
Zory snorted, somewhere between a choke and a laugh. "You can take it up with him some time -other- than now, okay? Unless I can add your name to the list of people with a death wish."
"No, no, I'm perfectly content to stay alive right now." Jed kicked a Pepsi can out of his path. "I'm just saying. It's not like I'm saying they're going to run off and get married. I doubt the Princess would take kindly to that, anyway. But, you know, they have a lot in common."
"Sparkly powers and floofy costumes with capes notwithstanding?"
"Yes, sparkly powers and floofy capes notwithstanding."
"Well they are awfully close, even by Malachi's huggy standards. I don't know how the hell he got a guy who is nervous about kissing his own girlfriend in public to snuggle on the same bed with him, but I suppose if anyone can swing it, it's Malachi." Zory grinned. "He's like a giant teddy bear."
"Yeah, a giant teddy bear who can put your head in the wall if you cross him. He'd be the sort of stuffed animal to come equipped with claws. Or, you know, a machine gun."
"If the enemy could be neutralized by a hug, I'm sure we'd never have to fight again. He'd defeat the whole lot of 'em."
It was Jed's turn to snort. "Well honestly, I think the guy's more gender confused than you--no offense. I've yet to see him even look at a member of the female species, let alone even consider dating one."
"Not everyone can be a chick magnet like you, Jed."
The blue-eyed man sighed nobly. "Yes, it's difficult, but someone's gotta be me."
"Otherwise, we'd have two Neffs."
"And one is more than enough," Jed agreed. He watched as Malachi turned the corner on to the El Camino, and as the pair of blondes came up behind him, they both sighed quietly in relief that the silver-haired man hadn't taken one look at the rush hour traffic and decided to go play in it. All kidding aside, he -was- still in a great deal of pain, and they did need to keep an eye on him.
From behind, they could hear Old Bertha the Shitmobile piling down the street, coming to a screeching halt at the intersection. Neff rolled the window down by hand - with a crank, as it wasn't electric - and stuck his head out. "You two pretty boys want a ride?"
"Who you calling pretty?" Jed crossed his arms in what should have been a very manly gesture, if not for the immense dress-like Budweiser shirt.
"I was talking about Zory and Malachi," Neff clarified, turning to Zory. "You can leave your drunken sister at home, blondie. She whines too much, anyway."
"Oh, you're hilarious," Jed grumbled, wrenching open the passenger door.
Zory grabbed his arm. "Uh-uh, there's no way I'm sitting in the back. Who knows what lives back there."
"Aww, is widdle Zowy afwaid of a few moldy fwench fwies?"
The blonde wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I'm afraid they'll start crawling up my leg and suck my blood."
"Look, I don't care if one of you rides in the trunk, or what. But you'd better work it out before we lose Malachi." Neff leaned on the steering wheel, watching the white-haired man through the bug-smeared windshield.
"Tell you what. I'll protect you from the fast food leeches, you little wuss; get in front already. But don't complain to me when you have to be downwind of Neff's righteously awful BO." Jed fiddled with the back door of the car, having to wrench it in about four directions and then practically pull it out of the frame before the door opened. A few Coke cans hit the pavement with weak "clanks," followed by what looked to be a plastic bag with condom wrappers.
"Okay, now I -definitely- want to be in the front, righteously awful BO or no." Zory skittered around the front of the car as Jed picked up the newly deposited mess. He had to perform an equally awkward hand dance to get the door open, but finally he too managed to get it open. "Do you guys -ever- clean out this dumpster?"
"About every six weeks."
"I think I speak for every sane, right-minded man in the world when I say, 'eew.'"
Now situated in the aforementioned dumpster, Zory hastily buckled his seatbelt as they pulled away from the curb. Malachi was a good two blocks away by now, and steadily widening the gap, as though he fully intended to diminish his troubles by out-walking them.
"I thought you said you'd take care of the smell," Zory grumbled.
"I did. See?" The brunette flicked the cheerful little pine tree hanging from the rear-view mirror.
"Apparently that piece of cardboard is no match for the Shitmobile's overpowering aroma."
"Maybe we should get a real pine tree. It couldn't possibly be any worse." Jed struggled with his seatbelt for a while before finally giving up. The back ones never worked, anyway.
The Oldsmobile continued to chug away as Neff pulled up beside Malachi. Despite the distinctive clatter of everyone's favorite car, the white-haired man continued pacing forward, his eyes on the sidewalk immediately below him, as though he did not even notice.
"Someone call him," Neff said, both hoping to save his vocal chords and his life.
"Hey, sexy!" Jed called, rolling down the window. "Need a lift?"
Startled out of his own thoughts, the white-haired man regarded Jed's beaming face with a sober look. "I can walk just fine, thanks. The Oldsmobile looks like it's gonna croak, anyway."
"Bertha misses you, man! You don't visit her enough. You gotta give the girl some loving."
Malachi didn't seem too concerned about it - or much of anything that didn't involve his likely overwrought self-disgust, or staring at his shoes. Jed resisted the urge to sigh, and simply kept a smile plastered to his face as the decrepit car lurched and jerked its way down the busy thoroughfare.
Neff tried to drive at a speed with which Malachi could keep up, now that they weren't playing a game of "catch up," but there was a giant red Hummer bearing down on his back, which was making him not the least bit nervous. Fortunately, it was only so many blocks until they reached the mall, and the Hummer eventually changed lanes and zoomed off toward downtown Atherton.
"Jerk," the brunette muttered sourly, resisting the urge to roll his eyes (as he did need to keep them on the road). "Bet he was on his cellphone, too. Damn California drivers."
"C'mon, man!" Jed rested his arms on the window, leaning farther out. "The party's no fun without your pretty self!"
Not feeling particularly enthusiastic about the "party," the white-haired man continued to watch his feet steadily hitting the pavement one after the other. He no longer seemed quite as interested in finding Mamoru as he was in the act of getting there.
The grin faded from Jed's face. "Malachi, don't do this, alright? You're not gonna accomplish anything by wearing yourself out even more. Just get in the car, and we'll go see Mamoru."
Malachi finally came to a halt, his head still turned downward so that his hair hung in a silver curtain around his face. Neff pulled over to the curb, relieved that he could finally get out of the dangerous traffic.
Jed played around with the door handle until the rusting piece of metal swung open, nearly hitting Malachi in the leg when he didn't bother to move. The blonde scooted across the litter encrusted seat to give his friend room, disentangling his foot from a string of chili-shaped party lights.
Malachi climbed into the Oldsmobile slowly, landing with a heavy plop as he pulled the rusty door in after him. Normally, this would have been the time he made a comment about its general state of disrepair, and some crude refuse artifact to go along with it. But as Neff clicked his right signal and merged back into the bustling traffic, he was silent, watching the neatly pruned trees, brick buildings and restaurants blur by.
By the time Neff pulled out of traffic again and parked across from the soccer field, Jed was on the verge of shouting something just to break the tense silence. Neff had stared at the road as though he were expecting something to jump in front of him any second. Zory kept himself occupied by trying to pick off a strange, unidentifiable yellow mass from his seatbelt. And Malachi did what he'd -been- doing: staring, and little else.
//What's that one Great Big Sea song? "Let it go, let it go / this is smaller than you know / it's no bigger than a pebble lying on a gravel road?" Though I doubt he'd appreciate the reference now.//
"C'mon, gents. The sun's going to set in an hour, and we have a Prince to find."
Three men fought their way out of the battered shitmobile, Neff apparently making good on his decision to stay with the car.
"Should we check the mall?" Zory wondered, eyeing the crowded parking lot. He did not particularly relish the notion of wading through crowds of people to find the Japanese man.
Malachi vaguely shook his head, scanning the soccer field across the busy street. Mamoru was looking to be alone; he would stay as far away from crowds as he could.
It was not long before he spotted a dark-haired figure slumped by the edges of the field, sitting in a dreary heap on the damp grass. Even from here he could see the dark streaks of red that stained his Prince's bloodied t-shirt in a sort of grotesque form of tie-dye.
"Stay here." It was not so much of an order as a request that Malachi gave them. He gave both blondes a beseeching look, one that neither man could have disobeyed if they'd wanted to. When neither moved from their position by the car, the silver-haired man turned and began to walk across the field, long shadows occasionally obscuring him entirely from view.
"They'll be okay," Zory whispered, though whether he was trying to reassure himself or Jed he did not know. He leaned up against his friend, lines of exhaustion clearly visible on his face.
The white-haired man approached Mamoru slowly, whether out of respect for his Prince or due to his own exhaustion, even he could not tell. The black-haired man made no movement as Malachi drew up behind him, did not even acknowledge that he was there. But he knew. Malachi was not altogether sure what told him this, whether by their mental connection or some subtle change in the way he was sitting or something else altogether, but neither had to say anything to know that they were both aware of each other's presence.
The white-haired man watched Mamoru's unmoving back, both gathering his own thoughts and debating on whether he would actually be welcome to intrude on his Prince's reverie. After a moment he gave a slight sigh, removed his leather jacket, and proceeded to drop it unceremoniously somewhere in the vicinity of his Prince's head. "You shouldn't be walking around looking like that. You look like the victim of some car crash."
Mamoru jumped slightly at the unexpected heavy weight crashing down on his head. Normally this would be the point where he either shot Malachi a good-natured dirty look, or made a snappy comment about how he was one to talk, but he felt inclined to do neither. Besides, a quick glance down at himself told him that the white-haired man was right--his shirt, especially, was so ripped and blood-soaked that it was now impossible to determine what it used to say. It was a wonder he had not been picked up by a passing police officer.
He pulled Malachi's jacket around him, surrounding himself with his friend's trademark smells of leather, of mint, and, inexplicably, of fresh snow. The white-haired man awkwardly settled down next to him, folding himself into a position that did not involve too much pain.
"You okay?" Mamoru asked after a moment, his eyes watching the deserted field like an avid spectator of growing grass. His voice was thick and ragged. He had obviously been crying.
"I'm just fine. Doctors said I'll be good in a few weeks, long as I don't try to lift anything heavy, like maybe a paper clip."
"Didn't expect you to be out of there so quick."
"I had Zory The Holy Terror on my side. He threatened to maim a unit clerk with a pencil."
"Does it hurt much?"
"Nope. I honestly can't feel anything at this point."
Mamoru threw him a sidelong glance. "How many painkillers have they got you on?"
"Oh, far too many." Malachi gave him a glassy smile.
"Are they all necessary?"
"Probably not. But Zory's going to force me to take them, one way or the other, because he secretly has a thing for bossing me around. I imagine he'll insist on opening every door I need to get through, and picking up every thing I need to use for the next 48 hours, just so I don't overdo it." The silver-haired man chuckled, though it wasn't particularly convincing. "He's still mad about the time I sprained my ankle and proceeded to spend the next day and a half on my feet, working on a study for Statistics."
Mamoru made a noncomittal noise, for lack of anything to say. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He had plenty to say, plenty to ask and demand and cry out about, but he couldn't. There was something strange in the atmosphere, something he'd missed after he'd left the frat house. Whatever had taken place, it seemed to have jarred all four of them, to the point where their discomfort was almost palpable, even from across the field. The black-haired prince reached out to his guardian, trying to discern what was causing him to look and feel so miserable.
He almost winced when his mental shields rubbed sharply against one very powerful mess of emotions, the strongest being one that he was not altogether unfamiliar with. //Guilt. Malachi, what on Earth could -you- be feeling guilty about? I'm not mad that you probably never would have told me about the stupid thing you almost did for me. The others aren't mad; they'd be worried, but not upset. Do you...regret the decision? Do you wish you hadn't considered facing your fear for me? Do you wish you'd followed through?//
"Little bastard wouldn't even let me come get you on my own. He's got it in his head that I need babysitting now." He made another forced attempt at chuckling. "Apparently having a broken shoulder means that I no longer have the ability to walk."
"How long did you intend to keep up this act?" There. He had said it. The formalities having been dropped, the white-haired man went silent, unsure of how to proceed without releasing a torrent of emotions that he would just rather keep bottled up for now. He was here to comfort Mamoru, not the other way around, and the last thing he wanted right now was to subject his prince to all the pain he was going through.
When no answer was forthcoming, Mamoru turned to his guardian, watching him as he stared at the neatly cut grass. He was immediately stricken with the same notion that had struck Zory the day before--that Malachi looked a lot older than he should have looked right now. His face was creased with exhaustion, with worry, and even... pain? It seemed to reflect the many centuries his mind had traversed, as though physically bringing him up to speed on all that he had experienced mentally. His white hair had always made him appear a little older than he really was, but right now if Mamoru had to hazard a guess, he would have placed his friend's age right up there with some of his professors'.
"As long as I had to, I suppose," Malachi said quietly, choosing the most neutral answer that came to mind. "You have every right to be mad at me..."
"I'm not mad at you, alright? Let's just get that straight." //So stop feeling so guilty. We only need one of me, Malachi.//
//Well, he was certainly forthcoming about -that-. Whether or not he means it...No. He's not the type to lie. Make himself phsyically ill with depression, yes, but not lie.// "So, what has you all worked up, then, if not what I di--almost did?"
"What -I- did. Malachi..." Mamoru paused, having to put a tremendous amount of effort into keeping his eyes locked on his guardian.
"No. Don't even start, Prince. You were concussed. You were hallucinating. I'm not exactly happy about my shoulder, but I'd sooner have it chopped clean off by Ne--...sooner have it taken clean off than start hating you for it."
Malachi hoped his prince didn't notice the sudden falter, the crack in his voice, but he would have had to be entirely deaf to miss it. //Damn. That was incredibly -smooth-, Malachi. Way to keep him from worrying.//
Mamoru hardly missed the slip, and indeed it only increased his concern. //What -is- going on? Did he and Neff have a falling out? Over what Neff told me?// Whatever it was, Malachi did not seem inclined to share. The only thing was to keep going with this topic, wherever it was leading.
"I know you won't hate me for it. I know none of you will hate me for it. Neff..." he noticed his guardian's wince, wondering whether that confirmed his suspicians, "he and Jed made that point clearly enough. But that doesn't change the fact that I nearly killed you. And it doesn't change the fact that you... you nearly..." Mamoru took a breath, turning back to watch the empty field. Heavy clouds were moving in above them, the setting sun glowing through the gap between them and the horizon in brilliant shades of orange and pink. It looked like it might rain tonight. "A lot of things happened today that should never have happened, and I can't tell you how sorry I am for it."
"You forget who you're talking to, Prince. Do you think I don't know what it's like being controlled by the enemy?"
Mamoru glanced at his friend. "Yeah, I guess you do," he said softly, keeping his hands occupied by ripping bits of grass out of the ground and piling the blades in a small heap.
Malachi sighed, watching the sky. "Well you're right about one thing. A lot of things did happen today that never should have happened. But you have no reason to be blaming yourself for all of it. If anything, I'm far more responsible for all of this than you are."
"I don't see the logic in that. My memory's a little fuzzy, Malachi, but I'm pretty damn sure that was me blasting you across the yard."
"Then I guess you didn't notice how many times this whole mess could have been averted if I had been on top of things like I was supposed to be. I should have sent Neff to fight Sanura and stayed near you. I should have interfered when you went to kiss Lunette. I should have been the one to help you when you got the concussion, and let the others take care of the bad guy. I shouldn't have thrown Zory the Tier."
"Malachi, hindsight is 20/20. You know that."
"Yeah? So why don't -you-?" Malachi retorted. "I'm most definitely -not- letting you take all the blame for this, Prince. Giving Zory the Tier was probably the singularly -most- stupid thing I did all afternoon; I could have gotten it back to Neff, or held onto it, or something. Anything would have been more effective than that. I can live through a broken shoulder, but Zory is about as as capable of protecting himself as a teacup poodle."
Mamoru continued to pull viciously on the grass under his fingers. "I've heard poodles can be extremely vicious, you know."
Malachi bit back a frustrated growl - but just barely. "I'm making a -point-, Prince; one that you seem to be intent on ignoring. We made just as many mistakes as you did. None of them involved doing you physical harm, admittedly, but we weren't exactly well-coordinated. That was my fault. I wasn't thinking. If I'd just taken the time for a plan of action, instead of the first thought that came to my mind - 'protect the Prince at all costs and worry about everything else later' - I could have saved everyone a -lot- of unecessary pain. Including you."
He slid his hand through his silver hair, resisting the urge to sigh. This was not going at all how he had intended, and talking about all of his own failures certainly was not helping his own mood at all.
Mamoru stared hard at the ground in front of him. He spoke slowly, as though carefully choosing his words, his voice sounding a little thick. "That's different, though. Those are all just mistakes. Mistakes happen all the time in battles, Malachi. There's no avoiding that. But this wasn't just some accident or misjudgement. I intentionally hurt and nearly killed all of you. Sure, you threw Zory the Tier. But I was the one who beat him into a bloody pulp because of it."
The patch of ground in front of Mamoru was quickly growing bare as he continued to rip at the grass, not caring whether he pulled the tiny blades up by the roots. "And I know what you're going to say, that it was all because of Lunette and because I used my head to put a dent in a brick wall. But I... can't help but wonder if some part of that really was me. If I really would be willing to hurt or even kill all of you for... for -her- sake. I love Usako with all my heart, but... I don't want to think about what I would be willing to do for that love. I guess some people would find it romantic. But as much as I love her, I love you guys too, Malachi. I don't ever want to choose one or the other. I'm selfish like that. I want all of you. But it scares me to think of how easily I would have abandoned you."
"Well, if we're lucky, you won't ever -have- to choose," Malachi said quietly. He shifted his position on the grass, folding his hands in his lap. "But there's something you have to take into consideration. We were hurting someone who, for all you knew, was your Usako. Am I correct in assuming that, no matter -who- it is, if they were hurting the Princess, you'd take them out faster than you could say 'Tuxedo Mirage?'"
"Well, yes, but--"
"'But' nothing. You have a protective streak a mile long, Prince. In your mind, Usako was getting hurt, and it didn't matter who was causing it. Had you been in complete control of your facilities, I'm sure you -still- would have punched first, asked second. It probably wouldn't have involved blasting me into the air and breaking my shoulder, you're right. But your concussion made the situation worse. You'll fight for your Princess, and you'll kill for your Princess. And that's just the kind of loyalty she deserves. But you -won't- kill your -friends- for your Princess, this I know. Not unless you're not in control of yourself, or...-they- aren't."
Malachi tried to push the memory away, keep himself focused in the moment, but it was hard. Bits and pieces flashed by, obscuring Mamoru and the soccer field with images of crumbling palaces, tattered corpses, white light exploding from everywhere at once...
//You took us down, Prince. All of us. You knew if you didn't, we'd do it first, and you were right. Our mission was to destroy the Moon Kingdom, and take you with it. And you stood your ground. You'd never been that angry, before or since. But the look on your face, as you sliced us to pieces with your father's sword, took us apart on that immaculate marble...I won't ever forget it. And I won't ever let it happen again.//
"You wouldn't do that, Prince. Trust me." Now Malachi's attention was focused in his lap, watching his hands as they began to shake. //Not now, not -now-, dammit. Comfort him first, then have your breakdown.//
It was easier said than done. As much as he tried to push the memories away, tried to lock them back up in that corner of his mind where he kept everything that was attempting to drive him insane, they just kept on pushing back into the surface of his mind, bringing with them several equally horrifying images, bound together by neither time nor space, but only by the feelings of grief that accompanied them. Millions of horrified screams resounding as a ballroom collapses upon the party guests. Zoisite's pained yelp as his own knuckles crack across the blonde's face. A horrible, fanged mouth as it leans in for a kiss. His prince pinned against a wall, Malachi's fingers around his throat, crushing his windpipe, strangling him with only one hand, watching with a mixture of his past self's amusement and his present self's disgust and self-loathing as his prince's face goes from red to purple.
And suddenly it was not Endymion who was struggling in his grasp but Neff, and he could not remember which event it was that he was seeing--the one from thousands of years ago, or the one from twenty minutes ago--or who it was that he was really trying to kill.
"Malachi?!" Mamoru's voice sounded, alarmed, when the white-haired man reflexively grabbed at his head with his good hand. That same blinding headache was threatening to come back; the one which had decided to take over when his memories had first returned.
"I'm okay, Prince," Malachi muttered, sounding completely unconvincing through his gritted teeth.
"The point is, you're willing to go great lengths to protect the people you love. Not many people can say that. The problem is, your ability to be entirely unselfish and to take great risks is just as dangerous as it is admirable." The silver-haired man focused intently on Mamoru's shoe - it was within his line of sight, and it was something simple he could concentrate on without passing out. Or trying to kill someone. "It's a trait that's easy to manipulate. Not like I have to tell you, after today. It's something you have to be careful of. This probably won't be the last time someone - clones included - tries to take advantage of you, make you a weapon against yourself. You have to--"
//fireburnpainexplosionsfiredeathburning//
Malachi cried out in pain, made all the worse when he instinctively tried to move his immobile arm to clutch his head. He closed his eyes, hoping it would keep the memories at bay, but to no success. The fall of the Moon Kingdom seemed to be everywhere around him, and -in- him. It was almost more than his body could stand, his brain desperately trying to reject the images that continued to pound him, like waves on a beach during the most violent of hurricanes. Buildings toppled, engulfed in orange and white and blue flames. People screamed as they were trapped in the burning wreackage, as they were attacked by armies of youma, struck down and killed, animals for the slaugther. He stood above it all, laughing, laughing at the civilazation burning around his ankles...
"Malachi!" Mamoru grabbed his friend's wrist, trying, in some way, to pull him away from whatever was hurting him.
//What's going on? What's wrong with him? I can feel his pain, but I can't get any closer than that! He keeps pushing me back! Dammit, what's going on?!//
The white-haired man merely continued to hold his head, his breathing labored and constricted, as his mind made every effort to block out the horrible images that refused to give in. They pounded against his mind, keeping in time with the throbbing pain that felt as though it would soon split his head in two.
Neff's words from earlier that day returned to Mamoru, and suddenly he understood what was happening. //"The memories nealy killed him earlier, while you were still recovering." Oh, God, Malachi, how could you have been hiding so much pain from me all this time? While I've been selfishly thinking of myself, you were the one who was suffering.// "Malachi! Please, answer me!"
Malachi could not hear Mamoru anymore, could not feel his hand on his wrist. He was immersed in his memories, was drowning in them. There was no more past or present to him. Everything was real, everything was happening -right now-, and no matter how many times the same events recurred over and over, he still felt the raw pain of it as keenly as if it were the first time, only with twice the dread, because he always knew what would happen next, and always was just as incapable of stopping it.
"Something's wrong." This may have been the understatement of the year, but as Zory was all the way across the field, he wasn't entirely sure what was going on. Malachi was definitely in pain, that he knew. Mamoru looked on the verge of a panic attack - of course, that was nothing new. But it was the combination thereof that was making him jumpy.
"You going to intervene?" Jed asked, shifting from foot to foot as though there was a small furry animal in his pants. He was anxious, and when Jed got anxious, he was as opaque as a window. But he was no good when it came to consoling people - the events in Malachi's room were proof of that - and that made him -more- anxious. What was taking Zory so long, anyway? Normally, at the first sign of discomfort, he dropped everything and started making It's Going To Be Okay cooing noises.
Zory sighed, pounding a small fist on his hip in frustration. "I -want- to, but..."
"'But?'"
"I don't -know-," Zory snapped, and then sighed again. "Sorry. I'm PMSing, I know. It's just...Mamoru didn't see what happened earlier, when he passed out in the bathroom. He needs to know how much this is hurting Malachi, needs to know that even if he can't do anything to fix it, he can just be there -physically-. But right now, being their physically won't do Malachi any good. And Mamoru, bless him, is not equipped for this kind of burden right now."
The blonde sighed, irritatedly flicking his hair out of his face. What he would not give for a hair tie right now. "Besides, I don't think there's much we -can- do. So far, every time this has hit Malachi all we've been able to do to help him was talk him through it. It seems to help, but I don't know whether it would be worth intruding on them just to do that. Mamoru should be able to handle that, I think." After a moment, he added, "I hope."
"Yeah, but they're both in pretty bad shape, Zory. You know it's bad when even I can sense it."
"I know, I know." He banged on the hood of the car out of frustration. It already had so many dents that Zory was hardly concerned about adding to them. "Maybe we should just wait a bit longer. If Malachi gets any worse..." he trailed off. At this point, "any worse" would likely force the white-haired man to lose consciousness, which, after his little bathroom fiasco yesterday, would -not- be a good thing. Maybe he had better intervene, after all. There would be plenty of other opportunities for those two to talk it over, wouldn't there?
"Zory," Neff croaked from inside the car. The blonde leaned down to peek through the open window. "Just let them be, alright? They need to do this."
"You sure about that?" Jed raised an eyebrow at the brunette.
"I know my track record isn't exactly impeccable today, but just trust me on this, alright?"
"Malachi! Please, say something!" By this time, Mamoru was feeling desperate, and more than slightly panicked. He was on his knees now, one hand firmly placed on Malachi's good shoulder, and the other on his hip (as it would have been incredibly unwise to put any pressure on his already strained limb). His head was ducked, trying to get a good view of his guardian's face, but he couldn't see for all the silver hair blocking the way.
For awhile, he tried shaking Malachi, calling his name and asking him to respond. But there was no response, save the occasional terrified whimper. Then, something occured to the prince, appearing like a flash of divine inspiration. Malachi wasn't responding because -Malachi- wasn't there. Well, it was Malachi's body, but mentally, he had probably retreated into some far corner of his mind, away from whatever memory was scaring him.
He had a pretty good idea what memory it was, too.
"Kunzite?" Mamoru tried softly, gently shaking Malachi's shoulder. "Can you hear me?"
"Prince, please..." The voice was not more than a murmur, but somehow Mamoru managed to pick it up. It was pleading, helpless, thousands of years of terror and desperation packed densely into one whisper. "Please, make it stop..."
Never in his life--or, he was certain, in any life--had Mamoru heard his guardian talk that way. Never had he heard his voice thick with such fear, such despair. Kunzite had lived on his nightstand for two full years, and had not made the slightest hint as to how deeply haunted he was by his past. Now when Mamoru heard him, heard the absolute misery in his voice, he realized that this was not just Malachi struggling with his newfound memories or Kunzite struggling with his more recent past, but centuries of abjection and self-loathing welling up within the mind of a man who was not equipped to handle it. Kunzite had never once stopped hating what he had done thousands of years ago, had never once stopped being tortured by the memory of it, because Kunzite did not forget. He could not forget. His pain would not be dulled, his wounds would not heal over, because no matter how many millenia he existed, every one of the most terrifying and horrible moments in his life would remain as clear in his memory as they were the very first time.
//"For Malachi, that would be a fate worse than death. He would be in tremendous agony, Prince. To kill him at that point would be an act of mercy."//
"It's okay, Kunzite," he whispered thickly. "I'll help you." He slid a hand beneath the curtain of silver hair, trying to bring some sense of comfort by touching his guardian's face, but he did not like the way the muscles beneath his skin were drawn up tight, or the way his jaw was set so hard that touching it was like touching concrete. And he did not like that his cheek felt damp.
"I'll help you," Mamoru whispered again, though he had no idea what to do. But calling upon Kunzite seemed to have been the right move, because now when he put his hands on his head Shitennou, he could no longer feel that wall of resistance that had been intently pushing him away. Kunzite needed his prince to be there, needed his help. He did not want to push Mamoru away anymore, because try as he might, he could not make his new, human mind adjust to the immense burden that he had placed upon it.
No longer being pushed back, the black-haired man could not only feel Malachi's - Kunzite's - pain, but could feel exactly where and how it was hurting him. And if there was one thing Mamoru knew how to do, it was heal pain.
Jed's head snapped up, and he turned to stare straight at the two shadowed figures across the field. He did not see any golden glow, as he had expected, but that hardly mattered. He could feel it, just the same. "Aw, shit," he muttered, taking a step towards the pair.
"Jed," Neff wheezed as loud as his injured voice would allow him. "Just stay here."
"Neff, he's--"
"I know."
"He's in no shape to be healing anyone. He's going to hurt himself, and you want me to just stand here and watch?" The brunette nodded, watching the steering wheel contemplatively. "And why the hell would you want that?"
"Because Malachi needs this, alright? They both need this. Besides, at this point I think it's the only thing that'll do any good."
Mamoru circled an arm around his guardian's waist, holding it just below his sling, so as not to hurt the injured shoulder. The other snaked up beneath Malachi's good arm, his hand resting upon the white-haired man's chest. He was kneeling behind Malachi, if only for the purpose of keeping him propped up in the event that he lost consciousness altogether, which was a very real possibility at the moment. Kunzite did not seem aware of any of this, or if he was, it made little difference. His muscles remained as rigid as ever, his breathing just as constricted. He was so stiff that it seemed like he might snap.
"Kunzite?" The black-haired man whispered, close to his friend's ear.
"Prince..." the leader of the Shitennou muttered between struggled breaths, "please... I can't..."
"Shh, I know. Just hold on for a bit longer, Kunzite. I'll make this better." Even as he spoke, he could feel an unseen light passing from his hands into his guardian. He closed his eyes, burrowing his face in a silky nest of silver hair.
//If I had only known...I should have. I should have known how badly this would hurt him. Kunzite had no concept of a physical body for more than two years, and a stone doesn't have limits for emotional stress. I should have helped him with this sooner. I should have been there for him! Dammit, how did I let this happen?!//
At first, Kunzite couldn't sense any change at all. The memory kept pounding, twisting like a serpent and lunging for him, utterly defenseless. When he felt the warm burst in his chest, he thought he might have stopped breathing, and it was his lungs' ache for oxygen. But no, it was something different. It wasn't so much like fire as it was...well, there wasn't really a word for it. It was warm, like a fire, but it wasn't burning anything. The visions of destruction and devastation began to fade, a hazy golden veil thrown over it.
Golden. But that meant...
//He can't! He's not strong enough yet!//
//Oh, I can, and I -will-, thank you very much.// This was followed by an awkward, startled pause. And then, //...Did I just do what I think I just did?//
//Prince, are you... in my head?//
//Well, I guess that answers my question. But I'll worry about it later.//
The visions began to slow down, burning buildings and explosions fading away into the golden mist that seemed to cover everything. As though someone had lifted an anvil out of his chest, he took a deep breath, and was relieved to find that he could do so without choking.
"What did he -do-?" Zory's eyes could not have possibly been any bigger. If he were any more shocked, they could have fallen out of their sockets altogether. "It's...it feels like they're the same person! I can't tell where Mamoru ends and Malachi begins!"
"It's giving me the goddamn wiggies, that's for sure," Jed groused, watching in a sort of frightened awe. "Whatever it is, I don't want to know how he did it. Just so long as it works, and it doesn't royally fuck them -both- over in the head. No pun intended."
"Jed, with all respect to the both of them, they've been royally fucked over in the head from the start. And after this gigantic mess, it couldn't possibly get any worse."
"Well, you know how I hate it when people say that, but for once, I'll have to agree." Zory knotted his small fingers in his ponytail, twisting it around until it almost looked like it could snap off. "But -damn-, that's creepy."
//Prince, you can't be doing this. Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?//
//Oh, I'm sure I'm taking all sorts of horrible risks right now, but it's too late to stop me. Besides, you were the one who asked for help.//
//I didn't...// Kunzite was not sure exactly -what- he had been hoping for when he begged his prince to make his memories stop torturing him, but he was almost certain that this was not what he had had in mind. He tried to move away from his prince, to sever the mental connection that held them together, but try as he might, he could not make his body obey. The golden mist seemed to hold him paralyzed.
//Stop struggling. You're making this more difficult, and you don't want to make me strain myself right now, do you?//
//You've done what you intended to do, Prince. Now get out of my head before you do yourself serious damage.//
//I'm not going anywhere until I fix this. The fog is only temporary, to keep you calm while I work. Guess we could say it's like a mental anesthetic. Sort of. Anyway, I'll need a little more time.//
//Time? What exactly are you doing?//
//I'm... well, I'm not sure how to describe it, exactly. I don't think my knowledge of the English language is extensive enough to explain it properly.//
//Prince, I am fluent in five languages and partially fluent in at least nine. Pick one and tell me what the hell you're doing to my brain.//
//Nine? Really?//
//Prince!//
//Alright, alright.// Mamoru switched over to his native Japanese. It was easier to work while he was thinking in his mother tongue, anyway. //You could call it healing, but it's not quite like that. In simple terms, your brain is physically unable to handle all the information you've been trying to cram into it, especially since most of that so-called information is extremely traumatic and would have probably sent the average person to the nearest psych ward. So I'm making a few... adjustments, you might say. Giving your mind the tools it needs to deal with the incredible amount of stress it's under. Does that make any sense?//
//I guess so,// Kunzite replied grudgingly, though he would much rather deal with his own mental problems, thank you very much.
//Kunzite, I should tell you that this won't cure you. I can't ever take away the pain that these memories put you through; not without taking away the memories themselves. I can ease it a little, and I can make sure this sort of breakdown won't happen again, but I can't ever heal it completely. That's the sort of thing that only you could do.//
//In other words, you'd like nothing more than to make those memories go away, but doing so would probably kill you, or at minimum, leave you comatose.//
//You know, just because I'm rooting around in -your- head doesn't mean you have to root around in mine.//
//I have to do -something- to keep myself from going apenuts, don't I?//
//..."Apenuts?"//
//Sorry. I think Malachi may have picked it up from Jed.//
//Speaking of him. Malachi, that is, not Jed.// Mamoru paused for a moment, muttered something strange about synapses, and then remembered he was supposed to be talking. //Is he okay? I don't know what happened between the time I was talking to him and when you...uh...'took over.'//
//Well, I -could- tell you, if you hadn't thrown me into the mental equivalent of a windowless closet.// Kunzite could almost -feel- Mamoru wince, and he cursed under his breath (in a manner of speaking). What right did he have to be cranky at a time like this? //I'm sorry, Prince. I know I sound ungrateful, and I shouldn't be. If you hadn't stepped in--//
//I would have stepped in. I wouldn't have let it keep hurting you. I would have found a way.//
//Well, thank you for that. I'm sorry you had to put yourself in such a potentially dangerous position for my sake. If I had just worked this out myself--//
//Kunzite, you couldn't have possibly worked this out yourself, so don't go adding that to your guilt list. Besides, if you're willing to do... what you almost did for me today, the least I can do is take away some of the pain it caused. Speaking of that...//
//Oh, don't go bothering with him, please. If removing my memories could kill you, I'm pretty sure that messing with the lurker in my head would drive you insane and -then- kill you.//
//Yeah, I'm realizing that. Being that I don't want to send us -both- into a comatose state, I think it would be best not to touch that part of your brain just now. I don't at all like the idea of you having that evil creature inside you, though. I wish there was something I could do about it.//
//Hey, as much as I despise him, he is a part of me, and he is my responsibility. Most of the time I can keep him under control, anyway. Though admittedly, I have been losing control a few too many times lately.//
//That's not your fault. It's all this memory stuff, and-- oops.//
//Oops? That's really not a word I'd like to hear while you're digging around in my head.//
//Oh, it's... nothing. You didn't need that anyway.//
//...Why does that not reassure me?//
//Look at it this way. What's your name?//
//What?//
//Just go with it.//
//...Kunzite.//
//What's -my- name?//
//Which one?//
//See? You're fine.//
//Again, not reassured.//
//Well, my apologies, then. But fortunately for you, I'm almost done.// And fortunately for Mamoru, too, although he didn't dare think it, lest it get broadcast loud and clear across their collective brain. He hadn't quite been sure what he intended to do when he'd linked them in the first place, and as everyone had predicted, it was exhausting. But he refused to let on. And he refused to let on exactly how worried he was about pulling out. If he -could- pull out.
//Hey, look who I found!//
//Malachi?//
//Well, yeah. Don't tell me you have anyone -else- living in this incredibly huge brain of yours.//
//I hope not, but you never can be sure. Let me know if you find any.//
//I really hope you're joking.// There was a moment's pause, while Mamoru muttered something in English, probably trying to reassure Kunzite's other half.
It was odd thinking of himself as two people, Kunzite had to admit. While he and Malachi were essentially the same person, and were identical in so many ways that it was nearly impossible to tell where one ended and the other began, they were distinct in other ways. Malachi, it seemed, was the most human of the pair. He was far more warm-hearted than Kunzite had ever been, and was much less inclined to act cold and aloof, at least around his friends. (While Kunzite had always been especially close to his Prince, he was pretty darn sure that he had never tackled him off of a bed. At least not when they were over the age of, say, twelve.) Half the time this made Kunzite just plain uncomfortable, and he much preferred to check out for a while when Malachi decided to get all mushy on him. Even so, while he would never admit it out loud, he felt rather... grateful for what Malachi's gentler side had been doing for their prince. He had not seen Mamoru so relaxed around anyone, save the Princess.
Of course, the trade-off was that Malachi was the weaker of the two, and both were very much aware of that fact. He was a tough guy, this Kunzite knew, but he lacked the cold-hearted, razor-sharp attitude that Kunzite had become accustomed to. It was easy to forget sometimes that Malachi was still young, that he did not know what it was to be a cold-blooded killer. Kunzite sort of liked that about his mortal half. He liked his innocence.
//Is he okay?// Kunzite did not like how long this was taking. He was growing more and more concerned about Mamoru's safety.
//He's... well, a little distraught. And not entirely conscious.//
//I'll take care of him. You need to hurry up and finish.// Kunzite felt the familiar bump of his other half on the edge of his consciousness, as Mamoru deposited him in what they had dubbed the "windowless closet." "Distraught" was not a strong enough word for the state that Malachi was in right now. He was exhausted and confused and carrying with him a whole mess of emotions that immediately decided to entangle them both, like wicked, thorny vines.
//I think I'm done. Just one more...// A pause, and then a soft grunt. //There. That's the last of it.//
//'It?'//
//I don't really think you want to know.//
//You're probably right. Now, Prince, as much as I've loved this more than intimate time together, would you mind getting out of my brain?//
There was a pause, and Kunzite saw the golden mist dissipate. It took the remains of the memory with it, and though he could still sense it somewhere, it felt like it was tucked away, not immediately accesible.
//It's the spiritual equivalent of a file cabinet,// Mamoru spoke up. //Try not to go picking around in there for awhile. They're locked in there pretty good, but only from me. You could get them out far more easily.//
//Which I most definitely don't want. Understood. Now, about vacating my head?//
//I'm working on it, Kunzite. It's not like I can just pick up my toolbag and hop out. If I did that, I'd probably take half your brain with me. Which would lead to quick, excruciating deaths for the both of us.//
//...Well, in that case, feel free to take your time.//
//Thank you.// Then, Mamoru cleared his 'throat.' //...Uh oh.//
//You're going to force me to parrot back important phrases, aren't you? -What- 'uh oh?'//
//I think... I may be stuck.//
//...By 'stuck,' you mean...//
//Yeah. Stuck.//
//Stay where you are. I'm coming to get you.// He left Malachi where he was--he would recover soon, once he calmed down a bit and got some rest--and proceeded to wade through the thick snarl of emotions that his other half had tangled him in. Once he had escaped their strangling grasp, he was by Mamoru's "side" in less than a second.
"Stuck" was a pretty good word for it. Their minds had sort of tangled around one another, intertwining into a tremendous mental knot that continued to grow larger and more confused by the second. Mamoru was frantically trying to free himself, but the more intently he worked, the faster their minds grew together, so that any attempt to pull them apart without destroying both would soon be next to impossible. //...Oh.//
//Yeah, 'oh.' That's about all I can say about it, too. Do you and Malachi have this problem?//
//Well, yeah, but we're sort of -supposed- to be tied together. And it shouldn't be knotting up that way.//
//I don't care if it's supposed to be dancing the Macarena! Do something!//
//Prince, calm down. Panicking will only make it worse. And stay still.// He watched as the mental tendrils slowed to an only slightly more manageable state, sort of oozing around one another.
"I can't stand it anymore!" Zory shrieked, suddenly lunging toward the other end of the field and breaking into a run. "If this goes on any longer, they'll never be able to fix it!"
"Fix -what-? Zory!" Jed threw his hands up, taking off after the smaller blonde. "Zory, don't do anything stupid!"
Despite his lungs aching every time he took a stride, Jed managed to cross the field in a manner of seconds. When Zory came to an abrupt halt in front of the clinging pair, Jed had no time to stop. He plowed rudely into the smaller blonde's back and, fortunately for the both of them, fell backwards instead of forwards. He hit the ground with an indignant "oof!"
"Zory, the fuck was that for?"
"Oh God..."
"Zory? What's--oh shit." Jed had gotten to his feet, brushing halfheartedly at the grass stains on his butt. What he saw when he came around to Zory's side was more sobering than a cold shower after a Friday night party.
Neither Mamoru nor Malachi had changed position since the prince had started his healing process; Mamoru was still wrapped around Malachi, trying to keep him upright, arms around him as though he were comforting a small child. Both sets of eyes were closed, and their faces looked as though they had just simply fallen asleep, smiling pleasantly.
But that was where the pleasantries ended, and end abruptly they did. In simple terms, they'd begun to melt together. Everywhere their bodies touched, they had fused together, becoming a giant mass of cloth and skin. Mamoru's fingers, still spread across his friend's chest, had practically melted altogether, becoming a flesh-colored, throbbing mass right over his heart. And the process wasn't stopping. Every few seconds, their "body" would shudder, ripple a bit, and then ooze closer.
"What...what did they -do-?" Jed asked, swallowing a scream with no small amount of effort.
"I don't -know-." Zory fell to his knees, and desperately tried to pry them apart. His efforts were unsuccessful, and when the mass of flesh tried to suck his hand in, he screeched and frantically pulled it back.
"...I think I'm going to be sick."
That croaking voice could only belong to one person. Jed turned to Neff, who, by the sound of his wheezing, had sprinted across the field no less than ten secnods ago.
//Prince?//
//Yeah?//
//I hate to say this, but I think we have another problem.//
//...What?//
//Your hand has melted into my chest.//
//My hand WHAT?!//
//Ow!// Kunzite 'winced.' //Not so loud, please.//
//Sorry.// Mamoru didn't sound particularly sorry. //What do you mean, my hand melted into your chest?//
//I mean exactly what I said. And that's not the only part of you that's melted. Prince, if we don't figure this out soon, we're essentially going to collapse into each other. Either we die, or we'll be looking for sideshow careers.//
//I don't think I quite follow what you're getting at, and I really really don't think I want to. What do we do now?//
//Alright, just calm down. I think I have an idea.// Suddenly an incredible calm washed over Mamoru, so intensely that he had to fight to keep his fatigue from overwhelming him and knocking him out cold. Through his sudden exhaustion, it took him a few moments to realize that this was Kunzite's doing.
//Kunzite? What...// Mamoru fought to stay awake, his thoughts becoming disjointed. The knot he had been trying to struggle out of was beginning to feel very distant from himself.
//I can't get you out of here while you're fully conscious, Prince. It'll only be for a few minutes.// Even as he 'spoke,' the snakelike tendrils that belonged to Mamoru's consciousness began to backtrack, retreating into themselves.
//But...// The last thing Mamoru wanted to do right now was sleep. Somewhere in the corner of his fatigued mind, he wondered whether he would ever wake up again.
//Just trust me, Prince. I'll get you out of here.// As Mamoru slowly slipped into a light sleep, the vines of his mind delicately unwound themselves from Kunzite's. Kunzite's mind, of course, was still intent on enclosing Mamoru's, as though planning to devour it completely, and only when he was certain that Mamoru was mentally sedated did he focus every ounce of his strength on holding it back.
"Look!" Zory gasped, watching Mamoru's hand. It seemed to be slowly, gradually returning to its normal shape.
As though in slow motion, the skin around his hand pulled back to the bone, and once it was severed from Malachi's chest completely, it fell into his lap like a rag doll. Once the process started, it began to pick up speed. The rest of Mamoru's body began to pull away from Malachi's, his flesh making hideous slurping sounds as it met open air and then came back to its rightful shape.
Kunzite opened one of Malachi's eyes hesitantly, looking around at three grim, green-tinged faces. "Don't worry. I'm fixing it."
"You know, leave it to Mamoru to need saving from his own help," Neff muttered sourly, finally having to look away as Mamoru's other arm oozed like melted butter and flopped to his side, solidified. "This is -gross-. He is never, ever doing this again."
"You can say that again." Kunzite closed his eye again and sighed. Like vines clamoring for sunlight, strands of Mamoru's mind shrunk away from his own. He 'flexed' his own mind, feeling around for tendrils, and was incredibly relieved when only a few remained. Finally, with only a little snag, the last one pulled away, and all traces of Mamoru's consciousness disappeared from his own. With a satisfying "THUNK," the wall between them came back down. Now all Kunzite could sense was that Mamoru was snoring lightly, something he was sure Malachi would tease him about later.
//Well, now that I've averted one more death experience today...// He began to rummage around, shifting his focus to the 'closet' where Malachi's consciousness was still hiding. When Kunzite gently tried to pull, he whimpered desperately and pulled back in, shutting the 'door' behind him.
//Okay. Looks like I'm flying solo for now.//
The three remaining frat boys let out a tremendous breath when the last of Mamoru's flesh returned to his body, and he fell face first into the grass, gently sleeping. Feeling it was probably safe to come out, Kunzite opened his eyes, and tried to flex his arms. He cursed sharply under his breath when he remembered that oh, yes, one of his shoulders was broken.
"You okay, Malachi?" Jed was the first to speak, mostly because he was the only one who didn't look like they were about to vomit on themselves.
"Malachi's taking a little...nap right now," Kunzite said, trying to be diplomatic. "He'll come back once he stops shivering."
"So then, if it's not Malachi I'm talking to...Don't tell me you're the Queen of England."
"No, you'll have to settle for Kunzite."
Jed felt a tingle of relief up and down his spine. "I can live with that."
Kunzite glanced up at Zory, who was still kneeling directly in front of him, looking exceptionally green. After a minor epic struggle between the blonde and the urge to gag, he finally choked, "that... was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life. I will be haunted by that image for the rest of my days. I will have nightmares for the next month." He stared wide-eyed at Malachi's chest, as though half expecting it to start oozing towards him.
Kunzite was tempted to mention how much worse it was experiencing such a thing, but decided to keep his mouth shut at the moment.
"Is... he alright?" Neff bent over Mamoru, who actually seemed to be snoring quite pleasantly into the grass.
"He should be." The white-haired man reached out to take Mamoru's wrist, feeling his pulse. "I may have gone a little overboard in putting him to sleep."
"What exactly happened just now?" Jed eyed both Malachi and Mamoru carefully, just to make sure they were not going to dissolve into liquid form any time soon.
"Trust me when I say that you really don't want to know."
"While I'm sure that I'll definitely regret saying this later, I think I really do want to know." Zory was speaking awfully boldly for someone who looked like he might puke, or faint, or both. "What I'd really like to know is how the two of you got into such a compromising position in the first place." He shot a glare up at Neff. "'Stay here,' you said. 'It couldn't get any worse,' you said. They almost fucking died! Again!"
"Zory..." He did not need Neff to be taking the rap for this. He had been getting the brunt end of the deal far too many times today.
"What, Kunzite? Tell me what happened! You knew how dangerous this could be! You should have known better than to let him do something so stupid!"
"I couldn't tell what he was doing!" Kunzite snapped, glaring sharply at Zory, who had no intention of backing down. "He basically threw a towel over my head and shuffled me away while he played neurosurgeon with the Golden Crystal! By the time I -knew- what he was doing, I couldn't stop him. No, that's a lie - I could have just pushed him out of my head. And then he would have been a drooling vegetable for the rest of his life! Somehow, that didn't seem like an option!"
Zory fumed silently for a moment, his head of steam lost. But his anger most certainly wasn't. He really wanted to be angry at Mamoru, but he was just sleeping away, obliviou to the fact that he really felt like tossing his cookies all over the grass.
He pounded his fists in the grass, for lack of anything constructive to vocalize. He was sick of this. He was sick of nearly losing his prince, again and again. That was, what, the third time today? And if he wasn't getting kicked around by clones, he was crying his eyes out, or running away, or all sorts of terribly unintelligent things.
And Malachi! Malachi was entirely incapable of functioning now, which terrified him. Malachi was always in control. He was always cool-headed, always in control of himself. But no longer. Now, the slightest thing could possibly set him off. What would happen when they met the guy (or girl, or formless entity) in charge of this mess? If they pushed the right button, he'd snap. It was that simple.
In other words, the rug had been pulled out from under Zory, and he was not happy. So he did the only thing that seemed appropriate.
He started to cry.
"Dammit," he whispered. Then again, much louder. "Dammit! Dammit, I hate this, I hate it! I hate fighting, and I hate death, and I hate all the shit we're being put through! And I hate that I can't stop it!"
He scrubbed at his face, tears flowing unbashedly. Zory had never worried about crying in public, and he wouldn't start now. "Dammit, Malachi, I can't lose you."
Kunzite immediately regretted snapping at him. He should have known better than to yell at Zory; especially over something like this. Now he -really- wished Malachi was awake, because he definitely was not equipped to deal with a crying Zory. "You're not going to lose him. He's fine. He's unconscious, but he's fine. What the Prince did was incredibly stupid, I'll agree with you there, but it seems that he -did- do some good. Those memories are under control now, and they'll -stay- under control, if I have anything to do with it."
Both Jed and Neff looked like deer in the headlights. They were used to the blonde's occasional outbursts, but they normally depended on Malachi to handle it. Now that Malachi was not around, and his substitute was not leaping up to throw his arms--well, arm--around the green-eyed man, they were quite lost. And after their failed efforts at comforting Mamoru today, both were rather wary about making any attempts this time around, lest they make things worse. Neff occupied himself by watching Mamoru rather intently, while Jed just stared at the ground.
"Well, forgive me if I'm not reassured!" Zory snapped, his voice cracking at least two octives as he warbled over tears. "You may think you have it under control, Kunzite, but let me tell you something. As long as those memories exist, Malachi won't be okay. You can try to protect him from your memories, but it won't help. Because they'll come back."
He sobbed quietly, and then picked back up as though nothing had happened, tears still pouring. "You know he hurt Neff earlier? He got so angry, he was seconds away from choking him to death."
Neff winced at the mention of it, trying to distract himself by picking loose grass out of Mamoru's hair.
"And it's just going to trigger things," Zory continued, obviously losing his fervor. "He'll just keep thinking about it, again and again, and none of us can stop it. Mamoru tried, and we nearly lost both of you. And as much as I don't want to lose Malachi, Zoisite doesn't want to lose you. And it could happen. It could happen, and I'm so scared...of...of..."
As hard as Zory had tried, he couldn't keep himself together. The dam broke, the walls came down, and Zory collapsed in on himself. He dug his hands deep in the grass, ripping through tufts of grass and rocking back and forth, sobbing desperately all the while.
That was it. Malachi couldn't take it any more. He was still a nervous wreck, and he was probably safer in Mamoru's happy little golden tent, but he couldn't stand to hear Zory cry like that. He knew Kunzite was incapable of consoling him; that was most definitely not his strong suit. So he practically ripped Kunzite away from the front of his consciousness and scrambled forward on his knees. With his one arm, he swept Zory into a hug, pressing him close into his chest and rubbing his large hand up and down the boy's back.
"Zory, it's okay," he cooed softly, holding him as close as a one-armed hug would allow. "It's okay now. Shh, Zory, it's okay. It's okay to be scared. But I'm here now. Zory, come on, it's okay..."
"Malachi, I can't lose you!" Zory wailed, clinging to him as though he might slip out of his fingers at any moment. "But we can't help you - not even Mamoru can help you - and you're hurting so badly, and..."
His words were lost in another round of frantic sobbing. Malachi hated being unable to make this all go away, like a monster hiding under a child's bed that you could scare away with flashlights and a few good hugs. This monster was real, and it was inside of him, and it would -always- be inside of him. And the worst part was: Zory was right. No one could help him.
//'I can ease it a little, and I can make sure this sort of breakdown won't happen again, but I can't ever heal it completely. That's the sort of thing that only you could do.'//
//That's right. No one can fix this but me.// Malachi shifted Zory's weight against him - not much, all things considered - and got them both in a more comfortable position. //I don't know how, but I'll keep this from happening again. If not for my sake, for Zory. And for Mamoru. I have to be strong for them, because they can't fight on their own. We were meant to be a team. Not just a team, but a team of five. I can't let these memories win. I can't!//
----
[1] That would be "mall" as in the Stanford Shopping Center. Yes, Stanford has its own shopping center. (Anne: God, I love my state.)
Well, wasn't that fun, everybody? Stay tuned for the next installment, where people will cry, get hurt, angst a lot, and maybe even eat something!
And yes, before you say it, we know you hate us. That's part of the fun, donchaknow.
~Spirit-hime and AngelAnne
Chapter 7
// anything between these slashes are thoughts //
-------
Neff limped down the empty hallway, rubbing at his auburn hair with an already-damp towel. Not having his face and chest covered in sticky gook certainly made him feel better, though the steam had made it difficult to breathe, and he had been forced to sit down before he could even put some clothes on. Stupid lungs. He hadn't been so banged up since that drunken brawl on the front lawn last New Years.
Grumbling, he draped the towel around his neck and pushed Malachi's bedroom door open. He found Jed draped over the couch, hands massaging his eyesockets as though it were the only thing keeping them in. It was his turn for the shower next, but he looked remarkably good for someone who'd just had his ass severely kicked not half an hour before.
"Your turn." Neff plopped heavily into a nearby chair, wiping a little bit of shampoo out of his ear. Jed groaned, tucking his hands behind his head.
"Not unless you want to pick me up and hold me while I shower. I'm in no shape to do anything under my own power right now."
"Sorry, buddy. You're great, but I ain't showering with ya."
"Oh, you know you'd like it. Perv."
"I could hit you for that remark, but I might break something important. Like one of your ribs. You look like shit, Jed."
"You're no beauty queen yourself, buddy. It looks like someone tried to run you over with Old Bertha." Bertha was Jed's favorite pet name for the Oldsmobile, ranking right up there with Neff's own favored nickname--"Piece of Shit".
"Yeah, but at least I have the decency to put on a freaking shirt. Here." He reached across to Malachi's dresser and pulled out the first t-shirt he grabbed, tossing at at Jed. "For the sake of all that is decent in the world, not to mention my appetite."
The t-shirt flopped right on top of Jed's face. Wearily, he pulled it away, eyeing it with distaste. "Gee, thanks. I'll look like I'm wearing a dress." He unfolded the oversized shirt, revealing the front logo. "A Budwiser dress."
"Hey, if you're gonna look like a pansy, might as well look like a drunken pansy. Not that you need help in that department."
"Screw you."
A soft groan caught Neff's attention. He cast a glance towards the bed, where a tangle of black hair could barely be seen beneath the thick pile of blankets. Somewhere amidst all that bedding, Mamoru lay in his little cocoon, gradually recovering from nearly being gored by a weapon that, for all intents and purposes, looked as though it had been designed by Fisher Price. Neff pulled the covers back a bit, revealing the face of his sleeping prince. It was pale, but not as pale as it had been. "He's looking better."
Jed pulled the Budwiser t-shirt over his head. "Yeah, resilient bugger, ain't he? I think he must be getting stronger; he didn't used to heal that fast."
"He didn't used to be able to do a lot of things." Neff had his hand wrapped around Mamoru's wrist, though his callused fingers were unaccustomed to the relatively delicate task of feeling a pulse. "His pulse is stronger than before, too. Weird as it sounds, I think he can regenerate blood cells the way he regenerates skin cells."
Jed blanched. "...Ew. He's like... an amoebae or something. I hope he doesn't start dividing."
Neff chuckled. "Or a starfish."
"Hey, maybe he'll grow another arm! That would be so cool!"
"The world's first three-armed doctor. He'd be a medical miracle."
"Man, he's already a medical miracle. Any other guy would have died within seconds of that..." Jed bit his lip. "Anyway. How do you think Malachi's making out? His shoulder looked like shit."
"I imagine the doctors at the hospital will patch him up right quick. Especially with Zory the Holy Terror on his side," Neff chuckled. "Remember when you had to have your appendix out?"
Jed sighed, shaking his head. Did he remember? Why, he doubted he could ever forget. "I'm sure some of the nurses are still trying to get Zory's scream erased from their memories."
"Scream? 'Feminine squeal,' more like." Neff bent down toward his prince, brushing some sweaty strands of hair away from his eyes. His face was twisted in confusion and grief, even in his sleep, and he continued to groan softly every now and then. His body may have been doing better, but his psyche was another story altogether.
The brunette sighed, vaguely wishing that Malachi was here, rather than at the hospital. He dearly wanted to give his prince some comfort right now, even in his sleep, but when it came right down to it, Neff did not have the faintest idea of what he was doing. Malachi was actually good at making people feel better at times like this. It was a sort of gift, like how Mamoru could heal things without a second thought. He was a calming presence--sometimes, just being near him was enough to ease anxieties. If only Malachi was the one sitting here in this chair, resting his cool hand on Mamoru's face, Neff was pretty certain that his unconscious prince would not be ready to jump out of his skin right now.
Zory's abilities were something similar, but not quite the same. Zory was the warm-hearted one. He was the one who reminded you that you're still loved, no matter how much you have come to despise yourself. He was the one who would not only comfort you when you cried, but would more likely than not end up crying right along with you. He was an incredibly empathetic creature and, Neff mused, the exact opposite of himself.
Neff was about as empathetic as a shoe lace.
Neff never knew what to do about emotional people. For Malachi, the usual response involved "hug, say something inspirational, then leave on a high note, such as telling a really lame joke." The formula seemed to work well enough, but Neff wasn't into the whole hugging thing, and the likelihood of him saying something inspirational were pretty close to nil. Besides, the last time he had tried that was on his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, and the only thing that had got him was a slap in the face.
Truth be told, he and Jed were the two least likely candidates to be at all helpful in this situation.
"The best thing we can do right now is wait." It was as though Jed had read his mind, but seeing as how he was about as telepathic as Neff was empathetic, it was rather unlikely. The blonde smoothed out the enormous Budweiser shirt, just to keep his jittery hands occupied. "He's doing better, and there isn't much we can do until he wakes up. With any luck, Zory and Malachi will be back before that happens, and they can and hug each other and cry and all that other shit."
"Yeah." Neff sat down gingerly at the edge of the bed, not taking his eyes away from Mamoru for a splitsecond.
The black-haired prince visibly shuddered, despite the sweat that soaked his face. "Usa..." he mumbled almost imperceptibly.
"Shit," Neff sighed. "He's gonna be one miserable prince when he wakes up, isn't he?"
------
For having the empathetic ability of a shoe lace, Neff was awfully astute. Because at that very moment, Chiba Mamoru was locked in the depths of what was very likely the worst nightmare of his life. A nightmare where he hurt his best friends. A nightmare where he blindly kissed a woman other than his Usako. A nightmare where everything that he deemed precious in this life was shattered by his own hand.
Parts of the bloodbath drifted in and out of his consciousness - unconsciousness, rather.
"Aren't you going to feel silly if you faint later because of this?"
"You're all so bloody eager to protect me in this battle, there won't be any of you left for the next one."
"Mamochan, you dense idiot, turn the hell around already and look at me!"
Mamoru cried out, throwing his hands in front of his face, desperately trying to block out the images. It had all gone so well - they'd -won-, the clones were dead, he'd even tripped Jed out of a rare moment of humor!
"Would you die for me, Mamochan?"
"I mean this with the utmost respect when I say 'fuck you, Prince.'"
They'd won! It was supposed to be over! Oh, but it was so far from over.
"...Zory's gonna die after all, isn't he?"
"You know that isn't true, Prince. Even if she leaves you, we never will. We will never, ever let you be lonely."
But he was all alone, in this dark place, with only the memory of his actions and the blood on his hands. Mamoru sobbed, falling to his knees, trying to push everything away. He didn't want to remember, he didn't want to feel, he didn't want -anything-!
"I have a secret for you, Mamochan. Would you like to hear it?"
No, no, he never wanted to hear that voice again! He never wanted to hear -anything- ever again! Why wouldn't they just leave him alone?
"It doesn't matter, Prince. What matters is that we all come away from this alive, and that's not gonna happen if you don't hurry up and take care of yourself."
But they weren't all alive, no, not anymore. He had killed them. Hadn't he? He wasn't sure. He was seeing so many things, so much blood...
"I'm going to hold on until one of you kills me. You'll have to blow my brains out before I'll let go."
"If you don't stop it, you're going to die."
He wished he had. It should have been him and not them. It should have been him getting blasted across the yard! It should have been him! Why did they have to protect him like that? Why did they have to let him hurt them?
"Do you want me to hurt you? Because I could really hurt you right now."
"I'm sorry!" Mamoru sobbed. He was sorry. He was sorry for hurting them, sorry for being so weak. He was sorry for coming into their lives and ruining everything. He was sorry that they ever met him. "They would have been better off without me. They would've been better off if we'd never met."
"Even if the entire world abandons you, we never will."
But he had abandoned them. Over and over again they had put their lives on the line for him, and at a moment's notice, he had dropped them like they were nothing. It was his fault. They were gone, and it was his fault. He had never deserved guardians like them. He had never deserved friends like them.
And suddenly, over the voices and the crying that echoed in his own head, there came the sound of a slap. It cracked like a whip, silencing every other noise that had been pelting him for what had seemed like an eternity.
"Don't you ever say that again!"
Usako...that was Usako's voice! But what did one have to do with the other?
Through the haze of guilt and regret that seemed to cover everything, he could see someone-eventually revealed to be Haruka-touching her cheek; she had obviously been the recipient of that slap. But was Usagi the one who had given it to her?
"I don't care what you may think of Mamochan, or his behavior! He is still your Prince, Haruka-san, and I am still your Princess! He could very well be dying, and all you can think to talk about is how he may or may not have cheated on me!"
"Usako, don't..." Mamoru's voice was hoarse, choking on tears as he watched his fiancé, his Odango, stand up to Haruka with all the passion and furor she had. And for him. Why for him? He didn't deserve it. He'd killed his four friends, and for the sake of what?
For Lunette. Because he was too blind to see the truth, to see that she wasn't the one he loved. They had tried to warn him, tried to show him. But he wouldn't listen. And now all he had was himself and those gut-wrenching memories that would haunt him to the end of time.
His Usako was crying. His Usako was defending him from her own friends.
"Usako... please don't. Don't stand up for me, Usa. Don't cry for me. I don't deserve it. I've never deserved your tears."
Somewhere in the conscious world, one of the black-haired prince's guardians uncomfortably turned away, trying not to see the tears that were rolling freely down Mamoru's cheeks.
"It... it doesn't matter anyway, does it? He'll be okay, won't he? He's so strong. He's always been so strong."
How could she say that? How could she possibly believe in him after all he had done? He wasn't strong. He had killed his best friends. He had fallen into a trap like the weakling that he was, and he had hurt the people who tried to help him. He had betrayed them and betrayed Usa and even, in some abstract way, betrayed the other senshi. And now what? Now he was alone, without any of them, just as he feared would happen. And he deserved every bit of it.
He crumpled onto the ground, his knees drawn up to his face. "Please, just let me die. Someone, please, let me die."
"No, Prince. We're not going to let you give up on yourself. Not now, not ever."
That voice...that wasn't part of his nightmare. That was real. Quiet, heartbreakingly real. But who could it be? Everyone was dead. Weren't they? They had given him all their strength so he would heal himself, and then one by one they collapsed, giving him one last smile...and then what?
"Prince, c'mon, wake up. You need to snap out of this, okay?"
A gentle shake from a calloused hand, and the nightmare began to dissolve. He found himself no longer on his knees, but sprawled on his back, tangled up in fresh, sweet smelling sheets. And there above him was a strange, lumpy brunette that he couldn't quite make out past the tears.
"Thank God, he's coming around. I don't think I could have taken any more of that." Another voice, hoarse with emotion. Did that mean it had been a nightmare after all? He hadn't killed them?
"Prince, can you hear me?" Neff shook Mamoru gently, trying to bump him out of his half-conscious state. He'd worked himself to his emotional ends, and if he'd gone on much longer, the brunette probably would have imploded.
It was supposed to be Kunzite who could feel their Prince's pain. That's how it always worked. Kunzite always knew when something was happening. And they would just follow his lead. But if he, Nephrite the Constipated Empath, could feel what was going on, it was serious.
"Neff?" Mamoru's voice was so soft, it could barely qualify as a whisper. "Is that really you?"
He sounded so disbelieving, so scared, which surprised Jed more than anything. He'd seen them all before he passed out. They had all been fine - well, okay, not really "fine," but something that passed for it. They had all made it out alive. So why wouldn't it really be them?
"It was last time I checked," the brunette answered, slightly confused. No sooner had those words escaped his lips, then a very large black-haired blur vaulted up from the bed and planted itself in Neff's chest, latching onto him like a neurotic lobster. Neff stared wide-eyed down at Mamoru, too stunned to even feel the pain of having his already bruised chest and ribs squeezed. He gave Jed a desperate look, one that clearly read "what the hell am I supposed to do now?"
Jed would have laughed, if it were not for how clearly upset his prince was. He moved around to the edge of the bed, sitting down behind Mamoru. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay, Prince." He rubbed Mamoru's trembling shoulders. "We're right here, Prince. We're not going anywhere."
At a loss for anything else to do, Neff resigned himself to being the obligatory teddy bear. //Dammit, Zory, get your pansy ass back here. I'm about as useful right now as a condom in a convent.//
The absence of Zory and Malachi was certainly not lost on a certain clingy Prince, either. Malachi and Zory hadn't spoken up yet. That was entirely unlike them, especially after such a battle. That could only mean that they weren't here. And that could only mean...
No. They couldn't be dead. Neff and Jed were here; that meant that everything was okay. Everyone had survived. It had all been a nightmare.
//But...but they'd -be- here. They're too overprotective -not- to be!//
Neff craned his head over Mamoru's, giving Jed another desperate look. They were going to have to explain the lack of two very important people, and fast, before the Prince decided to come up with his own, unecessarily morbid explaination.
"Prince--"
"Where are Zory and Malachi?" Too late. The question would have sounded like a demand, if not for the hoarseness in his voice. He lifted his face from Neff's shirt, eyes darting frantically around the room as though his missing friends may be hiding beneath a desk somewhere. When neither a head of silver hair nor a blonde ponytail were forthcoming, he began to panic.
The image of Zory, beaten and bleeding and laying cradled in his arms came back to him. //Oh no no, they can't be gone. They can't be, not now.//
"Prince--"
"Where are they? What happened to them?"
"Prince, listen to me!" Neff put a firm hand on Mamoru's shoulder. His prince was certainly hard of hearing today. "They're fine--"
"How can they be fine if they aren't here?"
"Listen," the brunette continued sternly, his lack of patience getting the better of him. "They went to get Malachi's shoulder checked out. They're -fine-. I'm sure they're terrorizing hospital staff even as we speak."
"Zory's a holy terror. Last time we were in there - my appendix and I had a small disagreement - at least four nurses had to take paid leave to regain their facilities." Jed's was obviously trying to lighten the mood, but as valiant as his efforts were, he wasn't really succeeding. Fringes of Mamoru's pain were still hovering on the edge of his consciousness - it had taken all of his mental capabilities to keep from passing out near the end of his nightmare. He'd never thought it possible that one person could feel so much self-loathing, but if anyone could, it was probably his prince. No, it was -definitely- his prince.
"How bad was it? His shoulder?" As quickly as Mamoru had looked around the room, his eyes dropped to the floor.
//"I mean this with the utmost respect when I say 'fuck you, Prince.'"//
Mamoru was certainly glad that his guardians were still alive, there were no two ways about that. But the fact remained that while they weren't pushing up daisies, he -had- kicked them to the curb. Well, from the way that Neff and Jed looked, he'd kicked them across the street and to the -other- curb. Even after what passed for frat boy hygiene, they still looked, to put it nicely, like shit. And he had done that. Lunette hadn't helped, sure, but the damage she dealt was far smaller than what he'd done by his own hand.
"Prince, I mean this with the utmost respect when I say 'stop that shit right this very second.' You're not going to start guilting yourself again, not after -that- miserable mind-fuck you just put yourself through," Jed said, voice carrying a lot more authority than he was sure he even had. But as soon as Mamoru's eyes drooped, he felt the tiniest hint of nausea creep up on him. Stupid damn Mam-O-Meter; this was Malachi's job, not his. "Okay? Promise me you're not going to start that again."
"Start what again?" The black-haired man asked innocently, though he had a pretty good idea of what Jed was talking about. "Miserable mind-fuck" was certainly an adequate description of what he had been putting himself through recently, though he had no clue as to how Jed could know how thoroughly he had been mentally bashing his head in with a brick labeled "guilt".
"Exactly what you're doing right now. You're not doing anyone any favors by torturing yourself over this, you got that? All you're doing is hurting yourself and making the rest of us feel sick."
//Yeah, but it makes me feel better. I guess. In a twisted, masochistic sort of way.// He appreciated that Jed was trying to make him feel better in his own less-than-polished manner, but the fact that he and Neff were being so nice to him after he had beaten them both to a bloody pulp only served to fuel his guilt. Of course, he wasn't entirely sure what he would prefer instead. Maybe if they'd yell at him a bit? He would even be willing to let them hit him--he deserved far worse, after all. Or at the very least, if they wouldn't sit so close, in that obnoxiously reassuring manner.
It was obvious to Mamoru that they had no other intention besides sitting there and keeping him company, exchanging concerned looks that they thought he couldn't see. He wanted to jump up and say, "What's wrong with you? I blasted you ten feet in the air and practically killed you! Why aren't you mad at me?"
But he knew it wouldn't get him anywhere. They were so blinded by their joy at having him back that they he could probably lock them all in a closet with a rabid wildebeast and they'd still come out wanting to protect him at cost of life or limb.
//They just don't get it.//
"Get what, Prince?"
Oh no. He'd said that out loud. Now what should he do? Should he just pass it off as the ramblings of some guy who was still recovering from having a wand shoved through his abdomen? Or should he explain what he'd meant?
It would have been so easy to plead insanity. Considering how he had been acting lately, it probably would have been completely believable, too. That is, of course, if he had not happened to glance up at Jed's face, and see the sincere look of concern written beneath the cuts and bruises. He really didn't get it.
"How can you just sit there?" He blurted suddenly, a bit louder than he had intended.
"Prince?"
"I just beat the shit out of you! I nearly killed you! How can you sit there and act like nothing happened? Get mad at me, yell at me, hit me, for God's sakes, do SOMETHING! Don't pretend that everything's okay just because I'm supposed to be your Prince or something stupid like that!"
Jed stared at the black-haired man, caught off-guard by the sudden outburst. "Prince, no one blames you for what happened--"
"Which is exactly my point! I wanted to KILL you, Jed. Don't you understand that? I wanted to kill my best friends. And you could have saved yourselves. You could have, but you didn't. Why didn't you get the hell away? Why didn't you try to protect yourselves?"
"You know why, Prince. Because we're your guardians, and--"
"Oh, don't fucking give me that guardian crap! I'm sick of hearing about that every time you throw yourselves in the path of an attack, just to keep me from getting a little hurt! If having guardians means that I can beat them to a bloody pulp and they come crawling back for more, then I sure as hell don't want them!"
"Shut up, Prince." Neff's voice came booming somewhere just above Mamoru's ear, so unexpectedly that he was immediately silenced. The brunette was glaring down at him, his reddish-brown eyes more filled with fury than Mamoru had ever seen them. It suddenly occured to Mamoru just how frightening Neff must be when he loses his temper. "Just shut up now. You're the one who doesn't get it." He was not yelling. His voice was quiet. Frighteningly quiet.
"It's all well and good for you to sit there and complain about everything. But while you're doing that, you're cheapening everything we've done for you."
"I didn't mean--"
"Yes, you did, Prince. You're cheapening what we've done and you're cheapening who we are as your guardians."
"I..." Mamoru looked stricken. Terrified. And confounded beyond belief. "That's not it at all! I'm not saying I don't appreciate--"
"That's exactly what you just said. In case you missed the memo, Prince, being your guardian means we're supposed to -guard- you. Or was your head too far up your ass when you were in Japan to figure that out when you were watching the Princess and her Senshi?" Neff was obviously having a hard time keeping the physical manifestations of his anger in check. Though his face was impassive, his hands were clenched at his sides, shaking ever so slightly. "I'm sorry this business can't be all light and fucking flowers, okay? But if you're going to be so goddamn suicidal every five seconds, we're -going- to step in whether you like it or not. And we are -going- to protect you. Even if you don't seem to want it."
It seemed to Mamoru as though his entire frame of mind had slipped out of reality, and he was watching the scene as a fly on the ceiling. Every one of Neff's words was a slap to the face, but he was disconnected from it, as though his consciousness was hovering above him, like a balloon on a string.
"Neff, don't you think--"
"Zip it, Jed." Neff's tone left no room for dissention, and Jed's mouth shut with an audible "clack." The brunette was obviously itching to let out whatever rage he was so precariously keeping to himself, and Jed was already hurting plenty enough for this lifetime, thanks.
"Prince, you won't remember this, but a long time ago, we pledged our allegiance to you. We gave our -lives- to you, Prince. That means something. It may not mean shit to you, but it means a lot to us. We broke that oath once, and I'll be damned if we do again. We're not going anywhere, you hear me? If you don't like it, you can finish what you were doing earlier and kill us off. There's no other way you'll ever make us stop protecting you."
Mamoru did not know what to say. "I'm sorry" just did not seem to cover it. He had never considered what being a guardian meant to them. He knew they were devoted, of course, but not like this. He really had no idea.
Neff took a breath, still shaking ever so slightly from his pent-up anger. The storm seemed to be fading from his eyes, though his hands continued to clench and unclench in painful-looking fists. After a moment he continued, in a much more even voice, "Prince, Malachi almost made a really big sacrifice for you today."
Jed looked up in alarm. "Neff, don't." Malachi would kill them if they told Mamoru how much his memories were making him suffer. And not without reason, either. If their prince was guilting himself now, how much more would he torture himself if he knew what his head guardian had been going through?
"He has to know, Jed." The two glared around Mamoru at each other, a silent argument playing out between them.
"Know what?" Mamoru looked confusedly from one to the other, obviously not privvy to their non-verbal conversation. Of course he knew that Malachi had almost made a big sacrifice for him. He had almost died, hadn't he? They all had. So what else could there possibly be?
"Neff, my vocabulary isn't big enough to adequately describe to you how shitty an idea this is. It's not like I can persuade you and your concrete-thick skull to change your mind, but could you get off your damn soapbox for a minute and just -think- about what you're about to say? For -once?-" Jed stood his ground. He'd been okay with the verbal lashing up to a point - yes, Mamoru was acting like an idiot. But this went beyond knocking him back to his senses. This was downright cruel. "He doesn't have to know."
Neff stayed silent, glaring at Jed as he tried to wrestle with the idea that had seemed so good about a minute ago. Maybe it would be excessive to tell Mamoru what nearly happened. It -hadn't-, and that was the important thing. And his prince was already looking an unhealthy shade of pale. How much more damage would this revelation cause? And was there the possibility that it could push his self-loathing over the edge?
Jed would have smiled, were the situation not quite so serious. He'd gotten through. Neff was just going to let it go. He let out a silent stream of air through his lips, unaware that he'd been holding his breath that whole time.
"Prince...do you recall what Kunzite was like in the Dark Kingdom?"
Almost instantaneously, Jed's stomach hit his feet. "Neff, for God's sake, let it go!" he shrilled, eyes wide with panic. No, no, this wasn't going to get them anywhere! Mamoru was understanding just fine; this wasn't the answer!
The brunette remained solid as a rock, and equally as stubborn. "If I don't tell him, who will? Malachi? He's too much of a fucking saint to let anyone know what he's going through. He'll take this to his grave, and you know it."
"It's not our place to talk about it, Neff. If Malachi doesn't want anyone to know, that's his decision, not ours!"
Mamoru was definitely beginning to worry, now. Jed was not the kind of person to baby him. He had made that discovery clearly enough right around the time he had his arm pinned behind his back. So how bad could this piece of information be, that even he was trying to protect Mamoru from it?
Neff was not backing down. He glared at Jed a moment longer, daring the blonde to stop him. Jed stood, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Fine, do whatever the hell you want. It's not like I can fucking stop you, anyway." He leaned up against the nearby desk, glaring daggers at the floor.
The matter settled, Neff returned his attention to the prince sitting next to him. "You never answered my question."
"Yes," Mamoru answered slowly, hesitatingly. He was not sure he wanted to know where this was going.
"And you remember how he was like a completely different person? How he wasn't just 'Kunzite with different loyalties' or 'Kunzite with different powers,' but he was actually like an entirely different guy with the same name? How even his eyes were different?"
Mamoru nodded, surpressing a slight shudder. He remembered those haunting, colorless eyes very clearly--far more clearly than he wished to. His Malachi was not supposed to look like that, with those empty, soulless eyes that contained only malice and a cold lust for power. The two people--the Kunzite of the Dark Kingdom and the real Kunzite, the one he had now--were about as similar as a wrench to a tsetse fly.
"Malachi was going to bring him back." No sense beating around the bush, Neff thought. He'd gotten this far, after all. "He's been struggling to keep those memories from haunting him since he got them back. But he thought -that- Kunzite was the only way we could save you from that clone. We were all on the ground, about as useful as rag dolls, and he said, 'He... he doesn't feel pain like we do. He wouldn't be so weak. He could still do it.'"
Neff looked straight at Mamoru then, but closed his eyes before he really got a good look at his prince. If he had, he probably would have just stopped the story where it was. Mamoru had begun to grip the bed with white knuckle fear, afraid of what his friend was telling him. If someone had touched him with a feather, he probably would have fainted.
"The memories nealy killed him earlier, while you were still recovering." Neff swallowed hard. "He couldn't take them, Prince, not all at once. It hurt him so terribly. But he was willing to bring them back, to essentially surrender his body to that madman - for -your- sake. He knew we'd probably have to kill him afterwards. He knew we couldn't trust that Kunzite, and if he made a move to kill you, we'd have to act first. And he would have done it, if we hadn't talked him out of it."
The silence stretched out as the full impact of Neff words slowly sank in. Jed's eyes were still fixed on the carpet, though he was no longer glaring at it furiously. It must have been a mighty interesting carpet, because Neff had taken to watching it, as well. Mamoru was not interested in carpets, though. He was still staring at Neff, still trying to comprehend just what his friend was getting at. "I... I don't understand. What are you telling me, that there's two Kunzites? That the one from the Dark Kingdom is... is still in him?"
"That's exactly what I'm telling you."
"And you would have killed him." Mamoru was finding it difficult to breathe. It felt as though the room was closing in on him. "He would have let that... thing take over, and you would have killed him."
"To save you, yes." Neff's brown eyes were no longer flooded with anger when he looked up at Mamoru. "You have to understand, Prince, that for Malachi to become that other Kunzite, to become that thing that he once was... it would be becoming his greatest fear. Becoming the thing that he most despises. For Malachi, that would be a fate worse than death. He would be in tremendous agony, Prince. To kill him at that point would be an act of mercy."
"He would have...for me..." Mamoru's vision dropped out of focus as he looked down at his hands, still clutching at the sheets as though they were the only thing keeping him in the room. In fact, they were. Every other nerve in his body was telling him to run, to get out of this house and find Malachi, or just run until he had no strength left and just pass out wherever he ended up.
But first, he was really tempted to make a run for the bathroom, because what remained of his breakfast was slowly making its way back up from his stomach. The relevation, that Malachi would have succumbed to his worst fear, just to save him from that clone, was almost too much for him. He could have taken the lashing from Neff, and whatever he'd intended to do with his fists that he'd avoided by a hair's breadth. But not this. This, he could not take. Malachi probably intended to keep this secret from him forever, what he'd intended to do when everything was at its darkest.
"Prince?" Jed broke the painful silence, moving away from the desk and towards Mamoru. He was looking even more sickly than before - not that he was particularly surprised - and it almost looked like he'd stopped breathing. The blonde reached out to touch his prince, to make sure he wasn't about to die or anything.
"Get away from me, Jed. Please." Mamoru's voice was not much above a whisper, and he never took his eyes away from his hands.
"Prince, I know this is a lot to take in. And I wish you'd never had to hear it." Jed nearly spat the last few words out, resuming the sour expression he'd given Neff before. It was only momentary, however, and while he pulled his hand away, he bent down to look at Mamoru's face. "But that's over with now. We just need to relax, regroup, stop thinking about what happened for now. We'll have plenty of time to strategize in the future. Right now, I think what you need is some comfort--"
"I said get away from me!" Mamoru barked, jumping to his feet and taking a few unsteady steps toward the bedroom door. All the blood drained from his skin, blue eyes darting back and forth from Neff and Jed, he looked more like a zombie than a youthful med student. "Leave me alone! I don't deserve your comforting, okay, so just back the hell off!"
Neff stood, taking a few wary steps towards Mamoru. "Prince, calm down. I didn't intend to scare you like this--"
"I said back off, Neff! Just leave me the fuck alone, okay?" He had to get out of here. He had to be alone. Mamoru took a few more more steps towards the door, but staggered, making a very ungraceful descent onto the floor. Almost immediately, two guardians were standing near him, trying to help him up.
"Please, just take it easy, okay Prince? It'll be alright--"
"I said, get away from me!" Mamoru tried to wrench out of their grasp, but was doing a poor job of it, namely because they were the only thing holding him up. He needed to get out of here. It didn't matter where, he just needed out. He just needed to be alone, away from overprotective guardians.
Jed felt the sudden burst of power before it happened. "Prince, wait!" He shouted, grabbing onto Mamoru's arm as though that could make him stay. The last he saw of his prince was a flash of blue eyes as they glanced up at him, filled with indescribable pain.
The two Shitennou collapsed onto each other, grasping at thin air, as the object between them vanished. Their Prince was gone.
"...Oh shit." Neff muttered, staring at the empty space between his arms.
"You're fucking right, oh shit! We just lost our prince!"
"Well then, go after him!"
"Go after him? Neff, he just fucking teleported! He could be anywhere in the world right now! He could be back in fucking Japan, for all we know!"
"Well, can't -we- do that? Teleport, I mean?" Neff knew he was grasping at straws. He knew he'd screwed this up royal, no pun intended. And he had no idea how he was going to fix it.
"Not unless your dick just happens to be a Sailor crystal, you thickheaded moron!" Jed seethed, tangling his fingers into his short mess of hair. "God, I told you not to do that! I told you it was a fucking bad idea! But no, you always have the solution to everything, -don't- you, Neff? Your damned testosterone clogs up your logic!"
Neff didn't respond to that, though he was tempted. After all, Jed wasn't exactly one to talk about hormone-influenced courses of action. But he deserved that. He'd crossed a line that shouldn't have been crossed, and all it had done was created a mountain out of a quite respectable little mole hill.
"What are we going to tell Malachi and Zory when they get home?" The brunette massaged his temple with two fingers, trying to alleviate the inevitable throbbing that had begun to build there.
"Besides the fact that you're an idiot?"
"Yes, thank you, besides that."
"We'll tell them... oh hell, I don't know!" Jed thumped down on the couch in a huff. "There's really no gentle way to say 'oh, by the way, we made Mamoru into an even -bigger- emotional wreck, then proceeded to lose him. He's probably somewhere in the vicinity of the planet. Oops.'"
"...Malachi's gonna kill us, isn't he?"
"No, he's going to kill -you.- He's going to break your neck with his good arm and then proceed to stomp you into a bloody pulp. And while he's at it, Zory will probably be ripping your hair out."
"Well gee, thank you for that."
"Any time."
The two were silent for a moment, Jed seething on the couch while Neff stood awkwardly, trying to come up with some sort of solution. When nothing was forthcoming, he finally asked, "So what do we do now?"
"Well, we can either start searching for him at random and maybe we'll run across him in the next decade or so. Or we can sit here and wait for Malachi and Zory to come back, bringing with them their inevitable wrath."
Given the choice, Neff would have probably preferred the former. Unfortunately, the decision was not up to him, as at that moment he could hear the very distinct sound of two fratboys walking down the hallway outside their door.
Malachi sighed, rubbing his sling unhappily as Zory led him carefully down the hall. "Must you do that, Zory? It's just a broken shoulder. That doesn't mean I can't -walk-."
"I don't care. You had plenty of time to be macho all afternoon, Malachi, and now I'm going to baby you whether you like it or not." Zory meant it, too. They walked down the hall silently for awhile, the only noise the rattling of pills in the blonde's back pocket.
//That's odd.// Malachi scanned the quiet hallways, white bangs flopping into his eyes. //Prince is awake, I can feel it, but the house is totally silent. Neff and Jed should be teasing each other mercilessly by this point. Maybe they opted for a nap?//
"Dammit, Neff, you are such a fucking idiot."
"You're going to get a lot of mileage out of that word today, aren't you?"
"After -that-? Damn fucking straight."
Zory glanced apprehensively up at his injured companion. He had managed to wash most of the blood off of his face and hands at the hospital, and convinced a concerned orderly that the red splatters on his clothes were the result of a ketchup incident. He had lost his beloved hair tie, however, and his dirty blonde hair now hung in thick waves around his shoulders.
"You are a fucking idiot, Neff. Just a big fucking idiot."
"I don't like the sound of that," the blonde said lowly.
Malachi had to agree--something was not right here, and the raised voices coming from his bedroom were only serving to confirm that fact. Mamoru's darker emotions had climaxed right around the time Zory was leading him across the hospital parking lot. It had taken an awful lot of effort on Zory's part, both to talk him out of teleporting back to the frat house then and there, and to keep him from from dropping to his knees on the pavement. Things had settled down after that, but he even now he could feel the icy lump lingering in his stomach.
Zory reached past Malachi and turned the knob to his bedroom door. As it swung open, Neff and Jed were revealed, sitting awkwardly on the floor, and looking...well, Neff looked like a kicked puppy. Jed looked like he was itching to put his fists through some walls. This would have been startling enough, except that Mamoru was nowhere to be seen. It was as though he'd just...disappeared.
"Where's the Prince?" Malachi finally asked, trying to ignore the dread that was slowly swallowing up the lump in his stomach. "He's just in the bathroom, or something, right?"
"I only wish," Neff muttered, slapping his palm on the carpet. Dammit, he should have listened to Jed. What kind of crazy-ass idea was that, anyway? How would that have helped anything?
"I only wish," Neff muttered, slapping his palm on the carpet. Dammit, he should have listened to Jed. What kind of crazy-ass idea was that, anyway? How would that have helped anything?
"Where is he?" Malachi asked again, more firmly this time. He was not panicking. Not yet, anyway.
"Yeah, Neff, how about you tell them where he is." Jed gave his brunette friend a vicious look.
Neff ran a hand through his long hair, looking uncharacteristically hesitant. "He's... well, uh, we... sort of... lost him."
"You -lost- him?!" Zory positively shrieked. Malachi hurriedly shut the door behind them. No sense in alerting whoever else might be home right now. "Your job was to get him from the back yard to the bedroom in one piece and keep him safe until we got back! How the hell could you lose him?"
Jed leaned back against the couch, crossing his arms and continuing to glare pointedly at Neff. Evidently, he was not going to offer any assistance in this situation.
"We..." Neff glanced at Jed. "Okay, I... sort of told him about how Malachi was going to, you know, let the other Kunzite out."
Zory could actually see the muscles tighten in Malachi's back, could see the way his jaw set and his eyes focused on Neff with that sharp intensity that would have made any lesser man shrivel within seconds. "You told him... what?" Zory didn't like the tone that had crept into his leader's voice. It was the sort of tone that usually set off warning bells in his mind, the one that said that his white-haired friend was treading in dangerous territory.
"Are you insane?" Zory snapped at the brunette.
"If I answer yes, will that save me from a sound beating?"
"No."
"Then no. No, I'm not."
Zory inched slowly, incrementally away from Malachi. It wasn't that he didn't trust his leader, or was afraid that Malachi intended to come after -him-. But he didn't like the way he was looming over Neff, looking like he could have taken him apart limb by limb and then stomped on them. And all without breaking a sweat.
"And why," Malachi said quietly, "would you do something like that, Neff?"
"Because--"
"He's a fucking idiot."
"Yes, -thank you-, Jed!" Neff snapped, turning sharply on his friend. "We've firmly established that fact, okay? I'm the world's biggest fucking idiot! Stab, twist, I got it!"
Malachi seemed to ignore their brief cat fight. He bent down at the waist, silver hair tumbling down and on top of Neff's head, as though he intended to say something. Neff looked up at him hesitantly, looking almost afraid of whatever was coming next. He'd expected an angry leader, but his precognitive skills weren't really reassuring and he still wanted to wet his pants.
With lightning quick speed, Malachi wrapped his free hand around Neff's throat and yanked him to his feet. He spun on his heels and slammed the brunette roughly against the wall, abruptly shoving all the air out of his lungs. The action was so startling that as soon as Neff hit the wall, Zory let out a high-pitch shriek and fell on top of Jed, whimpering. This was most assuredly -not- good.
Neff's eyes were huge with surprise. He struggled for breath, though none was forthcoming, both of his hands clawing at Malachi's good one in an attempt to pry it away. He had expected the white-haired man to be angry, of course, but never, ever, had he expected -this-. But when he looked into his friend's sharp green eyes, he saw a razor-like fury unlike anything he had seen in his lifetime, least of all in Malachi's. Centuries upon centuries of pain, torment, despair, hate, all rolled up into one single ball of wrath that was shooting like the strongest laser directly at -him- because how -dare- he share such a thing and how -dare- he treat it so lightly when he never ever knew what it was like to have to go through that and have to live with that day in and day out, night after deepest, darkest night, knowing all along that his worst fear and his worst enemy and the worst evil that has ever lived was himself.
"Malachi, please let him go," Jed said timidly, looking almost as frightened as Zory. "Please, he didn't mean anything by it."
Malachi was not listening. His body remained rigid, his hand still clamped firmly around the brunette's neck, unmoving despite Neff's frantic kicking and writhing.
"Malachi, for God's sakes, let him go!" Zory shrilled. "Do you see what you're doing? I know you're angry, but this is what the old Kunzite did! He punished people who made him angry! You aren't like that! -You're no better than him when you act like this!-"
The blonde's last comment echoed in the room, as nothing else could be heard but Neff's desperate labored breathing.
"He's right." Neff barely choked out the words. "I know you're mad at me, Malachi, but please, don't do this. It's not what the Prince would want. You promised you wouldn't--"
And then his words stopped abruptly, because it seemed he'd run out of air. Malachi didn't seem to give any indication of letting him go. The brunette continued to struggle under the powerful grip, but soon found darkness edging in on his vision, and his motions began to slow.
It must be noted that Zory considered himself about as chickenshit as they come. If there was a fight to be fought, an argument to be argued, he'd just assume turn around and run to the nearest safe place. He was not phsyically intimidating, and wasn't the best at debates, anyway. But he saw Neff's face turn from red to purple, saw that Malachi was too embedded in his anger to understand or even care, and he had to take the chance. He was the only one who could.
"Malachi, you're going to kill him! Let him go!" The petite blonde launched himself at his leader, ignoring Jed's indignant "oof" as he found a small foot in his gut. Zory did the only thing he could to get Malachi's attention when he hit the carpet - he slugged the white-haired man in the jaw as hard as he could.
Being that he was strong enough to be holding a very heavy frat boy up for an extended period of time--using only one arm yet--not even Zory's strongest punch was enough to make Malachi lose his grip. But it did serve its intended purpose--it got his attention.
For the first time, the white-haired man averted his gaze from the object of his wrath, staring at the small blonde next to him as if noticing him for the first time.
"Stop it, Malachi!" Zory shouted, barely inches from his face. "You're hurting him, just stop it!"
Green eyes flicked from the man screaming at him to the man quickly losing consciousness in his hand, then back again. Suddenly all the color drained from Malachi's face, taking with it the raw fury that had flooded his eyes. He released Neff, so abruptly that the brunette dropped to the floor, coughing and gasping for air.
Malachi stumbled back, looking pale and shaky and not at all like the person who had been strangling one of his best friends ten seconds ago.
Jed scrambled to his feet, ducking quickly past Malachi to help Neff to his feet. The brunette still couldn't get enough oxygen to satiate his starving lungs, and he was heaving as though he'd just run a marathon.
"This just isn't your day, is it?" Jed said quietly, helping his friend to his feet and carefully propping him up on the bed. Neff just coughed, shaking his head as the purple flush slowly left his face. He kind of hoped someone - a fairy, God, even a purple elephant with wings - would pop in and offer him a do-over for the day. Or the last hour, anyway.
A few feet away, Malachi was having his own trouble with breathing. He slumped against the wall, sucking in deep breath after deep breath in a futile attempt to steady himself. He rubbed the spot where his sling met his chest, which happened to be right over his heart, as though he were trying to push it back in or squash it altogether. His eyes were squeezed shut, in some combination of pain and self-anger.
"Malachi, it's okay now. Take it easy." Zory leaned up against the wall Malachi also occupied, brushing some of the hair from his face. He let his hand linger on Malachi's cheek, feeling the smallest of tears under his small fingers. "It's okay now. Neff's going to be okay. Just take it easy."
The blonde gingerly flexed his other hand, hoping that he had not broken it on Malachi's rather solid jaw. He was pretty sure he could move it alright, though he was certain that it was swelling up already. He did not dare inspect it right now, not while Malachi was on the verge of hyperventilating right in front of him. "It's alright, Malachi. It's alright."
Despite his comforting words, Malachi did not look the least bit alright. He was gulping in air as desperately as Neff was, and having even less success at it. Eventually even the act of standing up became too much effort. He crumpled against the wall, saved from dropping to the floor only by Zory's outstretched arm. "Easy, Malachi. Take it easy, buddy." Unable to hold him up, the blonde eased him onto the carpet, trying to lean him against the wall in such a way that his injured shoulder would not be hurt.
"Malachi, can you open your eyes for me? I need you to look at me." Zory knew that he needed to get his friend to listen to him enough to calm down. He also knew that he needed to make sure that his eyes were the right color.
"I...can't," Malachi whispered hoarsely. "I'm afraid to. I'm afraid of what I've done..."
Zory harshly swallowed an exasperated sigh before it got to his lips. Hadn't they already been over this? "Malachi, please, for me? I know this is difficult. But you need to stay calm. We still need to find the Prince, remember? I'm not saying to squash you feelings entirely, but we need to pull together for him. Okay?"
Slowly, tentatively, Malachi's eyelids fluttered and opened. Again, Zory had to swallow a sigh - this time of relief - when he found watery green eyes looking back at him. Well, the watery part was a little disconcerting, he admitted, but they were -green- and that was what mattered. That had just been an extraordinarily angry Malachi, not evil bastard Kunzite. It was a small reassurence, but it was all Zory needed.
"Neff did a stupid thing, Malachi, I won't deny it. And you have a right to get angry. Maybe just...not -that- angry," Zory said carefully, knowing full well how shaky this territory was. "But you stopped, okay? He'll have a bruised windpipe, not to mention pride. But it's okay now. Can you trust me on that?"
"You'd better trust him," Neff croaked, revealing that his windpipes were indeed a bit bruised. Now they joined the elite club that the rest of his body had fallen into earlier in the day. "Otherwise, he's going to hug you to death, and really, what a way to go, huh?"
That should have been funny, but no one was laughing. Malachi's chest was still heaving, though his ragged gasps were slowing to a slightly more normal level. He closed his eyes for a moment, mostly to fight back the sharp pain in his chest. "Don't close your eyes," Zory softly commanded, gently touching Malachi's face. "Just keep your eyes on me, alright? Just keep listening to my voice, Malachi. I'm not going to let you give in to this. You're too strong to let this beat you. We just need to calm down so we can go find Mamoru."
Neff looked on from his position on the bed, idly rubbing at his throat. That was twice today that he had nearly been killed by a close friend. As the old saying went, he sure as heck did not need enemies as long as these guys were around.
Not that he could blame Malachi for what had happened. He had known that this was causing his friend a lot of pain--no one could have seen the way he looked after his little bathroom incident and not known that--but he had no idea just how deeply that pain was tormenting him until he saw that furious look in his eyes. It was as though, at that moment when he was being strangled, he had looked right into the core of Malachi's suffering, had seen first-hand how it was eating him inside. What amazed Neff more than anything was not that the white-haired man had lost it just now, but that he did not lose it more often.
"You're sure Neff's okay?" Malachi asked hesitantly, sounding in no small part as though he wasn't entirely awake. Zory figured that he'd finally hit his breaking point - the white-haired man was notorious for all-nighters when he had to, and could go multiple days on an hour's sleep if need be. But the last few days had been more physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausting than any the blonde could imagine encountering anywhere before, not even in the worst of melodramas.
"I'll be honest," Neff croaked again, slipping his hand around the side of his neck, feeling it throb. "I'm not particularly enjoying this, but I'm okay, Malachi. I'm a tough fucking idiot, okay? Someone would have to bash my head in to really do a lot of damage, and I know what you're thinking, Jed, so you can just stop it."
Jed managed a weak smile - he'd actually been thinking about where Mamoru could have disappeared to, and how they would go about finding him, but he knew Neff was trying hard to lighten the mood, and draw the attention away from Malachi's rage and back to his ineptitude. Really, the blonde knew he had tried has best, had been so desperate to show Mamoru how much they cared that he lost all sense of what was appropriate, and what could cause serious blows to their Prince's genetically faulty self-esteem.
"I'd never think such a thing," he said quietly, lightly bumping his friend's shoulder with his own.
The brunette gave him a small, friendly smirk. "Like hell you wouldn't."
Malachi knew it was true. Neff was probably the toughest person he knew--always had been, even without Nephrite's added strength. He had seen him bounce back after being on the painful end of a ten-man dogpile, had seen him wave off sprained ankles and broken fingers like they were nothing. Once, a cooking accident had sent him to the emergency room with a severe grease burn spanning his entire left arm, and while everyone else was panicking about getting him to the hospital, Neff's only real concern had been whether his arm would be functioning enough for him to pass his International Cuisine 100 exam on Monday. He knew his friend was a tough fucking idiot, but that did not make him feel much better.
The white-haired man swallowed, feeling a little more stable now. Yeah, he had reached his breaking point, and then proceeded to bash it to pieces with a baseball bat, but this was not the time to be having a nervous breakdown, regardless of how nice it would be to have such a luxury. He had a prince to find, people to protect, clones to kill, and all that other important super hero-y stuff. And even though he felt like shit, was ready to declare himself the scum of the earth and curl up in a fetal position in the corner and cry and rock himself to sleep like the pathetic loser that he was, he had far more important things to be doing right now. So he was going to do what he always did--he was going to get a grip, push all these self-destructive emotions aside for now, and get back to doing what he was supposed to be doing, which was protecting his prince first and leading the Shitennou second. He would get right on that, just as soon as he could stand up again.
Zory craned his neck around to view as much of Neff as he could, without taking his eyes off Malachi in the process. "Do you have -any- idea where Mamoru could have gone?"
The brief flare of humor on Neff's face died pretty quickly with that thought. "None at all. He just said he had to get out of here and, well, he did just that. He could be down the block, in Sacremento, back home in Japan, or on Neptune for all we know. And don't count that last one out, considering how...accurate his teleporting skills are. He's getting better, but you really think he meant to end up on your bed when he teleported out of Harmony's way?"
"Knowing him, he may have ended up in the broom closet in the Biological Sciences department." This thought comforted Jed little, even as he spoke it aloud. If Mamoru -had- ended up somewhere nearby, accidentally or otherwise, he sure wouldn't stay there long. He imagined his Prince wanted to be as far away from his mess as he could, and the blonde didn't blame him.
Zory sighed. "Well he couldn't have gone far. He's not exactly in the best of health right now, even if he is completely healed."
"He didn't go far," Malachi affirmed softly, resting his arm on his knee and watching it as though it were of great importance. "He's pretty close."
The blonde turned back to his leader, watching him. "You know where he is?"
Malachi shook his head. "Not exactly, no. I know that he's pretty close by, but I can't pinpoint him. He's not hurt, so I don't think we have to worry about him being in any danger, yet."
"Well that's a start, anyway," Jed said, fighting the urge to sigh wearily. This day did not look like it would be ending any time soon.
"I think the best way would be to start looking for him on foot. Teleporting at random won't help much and, to be honest, I'd rather not catch him by surprise like that. I think I've got an idea of what direction he's in." As he spoke, Malachi pushed himself to his feet, leaning on the wall for support. Good thing he was on so many pain killers right now; otherwise he probably would have jarred his shoulder from the effort.
"And just where do you think you're going?" Zory asked, reverting to his beloved role as the Mother Hen.
The white-haired man, now in decent enough shape to cross the room without stumbling too much, paused to grab his leather jacket off the back of the chair. "To find my Prince, of course."
The blonde only barely managed to fight back the urge to complain about his leader's stubbornness. The guy had, after all, only recently been released from the hospital for a broken shoulder, and was just now recovering from his second mental breakdown in as many days. If it were up to Zory, he would be confined to his bed for the next week, not wandering the streets aimlessly in search of a lost Mamoru.
He sighed, taking the jacket out of Malachi's arm and helping him into it. "I know I can't talk you out of going, so I'm not even going to try. You're just going to keep right on being the stubborn jackass that you are."
Malachi turned from adjusting his jacket to give the blonde a faint smile. "Thanks, Zory. I love you too."
"But that doesn't mean we're not going with you. I'll let you go, Malachi, but I sure as hell won't let you go walking around by yourself."
Malachi wearily ran his fingers through his silky white hair, as though he had been expecting this. "Thing is, I'd sort of like to talk to him alone. It's all well and good to find him, but once we do that, we sort of need to convince him to come back."
"You can talk to him alone when we find him. Until then, you're stuck with us for company."
"And don't think you can talk us out of it," Neff warned, a little more loudly than he intended. He winced, touching his sore throat. He'd just relegate himself to silence for this outing, he decided, lest he keep wincing through the entire thing and guilt Malachi even further.
Noticing Neff's discomfort, Jed picked up the slack. "What the idiot said. We're coming with you to search, but as soon as we find him, at least Neff and I should make ourselves scarce. Since we did kind of make a mess of things in the first place."
"Well, I obviously have no room to argue." Malachi sighed, in his own long-suffering kind of way. Four sets of eyes were better than one, he had to admit, even if he had wanted to go out on his own, not only to search but to...think. About various things, not the leat of which was what he was going to say to Mamoru when they found him.
He opened the door with his good arm, and then gestured outward. "Come on, then. We're wasting daylight. Sunset's in an hour, and I think we broke the flashlights when the fusebox blew out last May."
"Is there anything in this house we haven't managed to break?" Zory muttered ruefully, shaking his head as he walked past.
Neff touched his throat gingerly as he stood. //Between everything animate and -in-animate in this house? Unfortunately, there's very little left.//
As they headed outside, Malachi was more than a little relieved that they did not encounter anyone. It would be rather difficult to explain why the four of them looked broken and bruised and generally like they had had the crap beaten out of them, which, unfortunately, was true. At some point they would probably have to come up with some logical explanation for it, though at the moment his mind was far too focused on other matters to bother with it.
"Which way, Malachi?" Jed asked, stepping onto the sidewalk.
The white-haired man paused, reaching out with his senses for the familiar golden warmth that he knew to be his prince.
"He's south," Malachi finally said, trying to feel around and pick up any other familiar landmarks in Mamoru's area. "Like he's in the vicinity of the mall [1], or the soccer field."
"Should we take the car?" Jed considered whether or not they'd be able to make it that far on foot. It wasn't more than a couple of miles from the house, but while they could have done it easily on a normal day, this was hardly a normal day.
"I'll get it," Neff volunteered, a little too eagerly. When he saw Malachi wince, he wished he hadn't jumped at the opportunity. He wanted to stay away from his friend to ease his guilt, not add to it. Besides, if he stayed in the car, Mamoru wouldn't be as likely to see him and take off.
"I just meant in case we got tired. Or for the trip back. I'm not trying to run away, I promise," the brunette added carefully.
Malachi rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly becoming rather interested in the pavement at his feet. "Yeah. Okay. We'll meet you there, then."
Before the brunette could give him response, the silver-haired man had already turned his back on him and started down the street, leaving three slightly perplexed friends behind.
"He pretty much hates me right now, doesn't he?" Neff muttered.
"He's having a really bad day, Neff. Just give him a while to deal with all this, alright?" Zory pushed his blonde hair out of his face, watching his leader's back gradually receeding down the street. "It's not even really about you." In a sudden energetic movement, he grabbed the keys out of his back pocket and deposited them in the taller man's hand. "The shitmobile needs gas. You might want to think about throwing out some of those old Big Mac containers while you're at it. They're starting to smell like some furry creature climbed inside them and died. And I don't want to think about whether that really is what I'm smelling."
"Oh, sure. I'll even splurge get one of those pine-scented car fresheners while I'm at it. All fancy-like."
With a half-hearted salute, Neff turned in the opposite direction and headed for the parking lot, where their aforementinoed shitmobile was parked. Jed stood for a moment, watching as his friend continued down the sidewalk and disappeaered around a corner. If they all didn't spontaneously combust in the next few days, it would be a major achievement.
"C'mon." Zory touched Jed's shoulder, which nearly made him jump out of his shirt. (Well, it was Malachi's shirt, but no one was concerned about technicalities.) "Our esteemed leader is getting away."
The small blonde looked down the sidewalk at Malachi's retreating backside; he'd almost walked two blocks in as many minutes. "And I don't want him to be alone now. Malachi's great when he's level-headed, but he's just as much of a loose cannon as Mamoru is right now. And the last thing we need is -two- suicidal manaics in our midst."
"Oh, wouldn't that be fun. I think I'm gonna collapse from exhaustion just from dealing with one of them." The two blondes started after their fearless leader, picking up their pace to catch up with him.
Zory shook his head, watching the bobbing head of silver hair closely to make sure it would not jump into oncoming traffic or anything. "I tell you, those are two guys who really don't need evil clones attacking them to make them feel like shit. Mamoru is so determined to beat himself up over every little thing, it's a wonder he can get out of bed in the morning. And Malachi doesn't have time to stress over little things, because he's too busy trying to carry the whole freaking universe on his back. With one arm in a sling."
Jed chuckled. "They were made for each other, weren't they?"
"Don't let Malachi hear you say that. He's still all worried about that rumor."
"You can't honestly tell me that, even in some capacity, Malachi doesn't want in his pants."
Zory snorted, somewhere between a choke and a laugh. "You can take it up with him some time -other- than now, okay? Unless I can add your name to the list of people with a death wish."
"No, no, I'm perfectly content to stay alive right now." Jed kicked a Pepsi can out of his path. "I'm just saying. It's not like I'm saying they're going to run off and get married. I doubt the Princess would take kindly to that, anyway. But, you know, they have a lot in common."
"Sparkly powers and floofy costumes with capes notwithstanding?"
"Yes, sparkly powers and floofy capes notwithstanding."
"Well they are awfully close, even by Malachi's huggy standards. I don't know how the hell he got a guy who is nervous about kissing his own girlfriend in public to snuggle on the same bed with him, but I suppose if anyone can swing it, it's Malachi." Zory grinned. "He's like a giant teddy bear."
"Yeah, a giant teddy bear who can put your head in the wall if you cross him. He'd be the sort of stuffed animal to come equipped with claws. Or, you know, a machine gun."
"If the enemy could be neutralized by a hug, I'm sure we'd never have to fight again. He'd defeat the whole lot of 'em."
It was Jed's turn to snort. "Well honestly, I think the guy's more gender confused than you--no offense. I've yet to see him even look at a member of the female species, let alone even consider dating one."
"Not everyone can be a chick magnet like you, Jed."
The blue-eyed man sighed nobly. "Yes, it's difficult, but someone's gotta be me."
"Otherwise, we'd have two Neffs."
"And one is more than enough," Jed agreed. He watched as Malachi turned the corner on to the El Camino, and as the pair of blondes came up behind him, they both sighed quietly in relief that the silver-haired man hadn't taken one look at the rush hour traffic and decided to go play in it. All kidding aside, he -was- still in a great deal of pain, and they did need to keep an eye on him.
From behind, they could hear Old Bertha the Shitmobile piling down the street, coming to a screeching halt at the intersection. Neff rolled the window down by hand - with a crank, as it wasn't electric - and stuck his head out. "You two pretty boys want a ride?"
"Who you calling pretty?" Jed crossed his arms in what should have been a very manly gesture, if not for the immense dress-like Budweiser shirt.
"I was talking about Zory and Malachi," Neff clarified, turning to Zory. "You can leave your drunken sister at home, blondie. She whines too much, anyway."
"Oh, you're hilarious," Jed grumbled, wrenching open the passenger door.
Zory grabbed his arm. "Uh-uh, there's no way I'm sitting in the back. Who knows what lives back there."
"Aww, is widdle Zowy afwaid of a few moldy fwench fwies?"
The blonde wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I'm afraid they'll start crawling up my leg and suck my blood."
"Look, I don't care if one of you rides in the trunk, or what. But you'd better work it out before we lose Malachi." Neff leaned on the steering wheel, watching the white-haired man through the bug-smeared windshield.
"Tell you what. I'll protect you from the fast food leeches, you little wuss; get in front already. But don't complain to me when you have to be downwind of Neff's righteously awful BO." Jed fiddled with the back door of the car, having to wrench it in about four directions and then practically pull it out of the frame before the door opened. A few Coke cans hit the pavement with weak "clanks," followed by what looked to be a plastic bag with condom wrappers.
"Okay, now I -definitely- want to be in the front, righteously awful BO or no." Zory skittered around the front of the car as Jed picked up the newly deposited mess. He had to perform an equally awkward hand dance to get the door open, but finally he too managed to get it open. "Do you guys -ever- clean out this dumpster?"
"About every six weeks."
"I think I speak for every sane, right-minded man in the world when I say, 'eew.'"
Now situated in the aforementioned dumpster, Zory hastily buckled his seatbelt as they pulled away from the curb. Malachi was a good two blocks away by now, and steadily widening the gap, as though he fully intended to diminish his troubles by out-walking them.
"I thought you said you'd take care of the smell," Zory grumbled.
"I did. See?" The brunette flicked the cheerful little pine tree hanging from the rear-view mirror.
"Apparently that piece of cardboard is no match for the Shitmobile's overpowering aroma."
"Maybe we should get a real pine tree. It couldn't possibly be any worse." Jed struggled with his seatbelt for a while before finally giving up. The back ones never worked, anyway.
The Oldsmobile continued to chug away as Neff pulled up beside Malachi. Despite the distinctive clatter of everyone's favorite car, the white-haired man continued pacing forward, his eyes on the sidewalk immediately below him, as though he did not even notice.
"Someone call him," Neff said, both hoping to save his vocal chords and his life.
"Hey, sexy!" Jed called, rolling down the window. "Need a lift?"
Startled out of his own thoughts, the white-haired man regarded Jed's beaming face with a sober look. "I can walk just fine, thanks. The Oldsmobile looks like it's gonna croak, anyway."
"Bertha misses you, man! You don't visit her enough. You gotta give the girl some loving."
Malachi didn't seem too concerned about it - or much of anything that didn't involve his likely overwrought self-disgust, or staring at his shoes. Jed resisted the urge to sigh, and simply kept a smile plastered to his face as the decrepit car lurched and jerked its way down the busy thoroughfare.
Neff tried to drive at a speed with which Malachi could keep up, now that they weren't playing a game of "catch up," but there was a giant red Hummer bearing down on his back, which was making him not the least bit nervous. Fortunately, it was only so many blocks until they reached the mall, and the Hummer eventually changed lanes and zoomed off toward downtown Atherton.
"Jerk," the brunette muttered sourly, resisting the urge to roll his eyes (as he did need to keep them on the road). "Bet he was on his cellphone, too. Damn California drivers."
"C'mon, man!" Jed rested his arms on the window, leaning farther out. "The party's no fun without your pretty self!"
Not feeling particularly enthusiastic about the "party," the white-haired man continued to watch his feet steadily hitting the pavement one after the other. He no longer seemed quite as interested in finding Mamoru as he was in the act of getting there.
The grin faded from Jed's face. "Malachi, don't do this, alright? You're not gonna accomplish anything by wearing yourself out even more. Just get in the car, and we'll go see Mamoru."
Malachi finally came to a halt, his head still turned downward so that his hair hung in a silver curtain around his face. Neff pulled over to the curb, relieved that he could finally get out of the dangerous traffic.
Jed played around with the door handle until the rusting piece of metal swung open, nearly hitting Malachi in the leg when he didn't bother to move. The blonde scooted across the litter encrusted seat to give his friend room, disentangling his foot from a string of chili-shaped party lights.
Malachi climbed into the Oldsmobile slowly, landing with a heavy plop as he pulled the rusty door in after him. Normally, this would have been the time he made a comment about its general state of disrepair, and some crude refuse artifact to go along with it. But as Neff clicked his right signal and merged back into the bustling traffic, he was silent, watching the neatly pruned trees, brick buildings and restaurants blur by.
By the time Neff pulled out of traffic again and parked across from the soccer field, Jed was on the verge of shouting something just to break the tense silence. Neff had stared at the road as though he were expecting something to jump in front of him any second. Zory kept himself occupied by trying to pick off a strange, unidentifiable yellow mass from his seatbelt. And Malachi did what he'd -been- doing: staring, and little else.
//What's that one Great Big Sea song? "Let it go, let it go / this is smaller than you know / it's no bigger than a pebble lying on a gravel road?" Though I doubt he'd appreciate the reference now.//
"C'mon, gents. The sun's going to set in an hour, and we have a Prince to find."
Three men fought their way out of the battered shitmobile, Neff apparently making good on his decision to stay with the car.
"Should we check the mall?" Zory wondered, eyeing the crowded parking lot. He did not particularly relish the notion of wading through crowds of people to find the Japanese man.
Malachi vaguely shook his head, scanning the soccer field across the busy street. Mamoru was looking to be alone; he would stay as far away from crowds as he could.
It was not long before he spotted a dark-haired figure slumped by the edges of the field, sitting in a dreary heap on the damp grass. Even from here he could see the dark streaks of red that stained his Prince's bloodied t-shirt in a sort of grotesque form of tie-dye.
"Stay here." It was not so much of an order as a request that Malachi gave them. He gave both blondes a beseeching look, one that neither man could have disobeyed if they'd wanted to. When neither moved from their position by the car, the silver-haired man turned and began to walk across the field, long shadows occasionally obscuring him entirely from view.
"They'll be okay," Zory whispered, though whether he was trying to reassure himself or Jed he did not know. He leaned up against his friend, lines of exhaustion clearly visible on his face.
The white-haired man approached Mamoru slowly, whether out of respect for his Prince or due to his own exhaustion, even he could not tell. The black-haired man made no movement as Malachi drew up behind him, did not even acknowledge that he was there. But he knew. Malachi was not altogether sure what told him this, whether by their mental connection or some subtle change in the way he was sitting or something else altogether, but neither had to say anything to know that they were both aware of each other's presence.
The white-haired man watched Mamoru's unmoving back, both gathering his own thoughts and debating on whether he would actually be welcome to intrude on his Prince's reverie. After a moment he gave a slight sigh, removed his leather jacket, and proceeded to drop it unceremoniously somewhere in the vicinity of his Prince's head. "You shouldn't be walking around looking like that. You look like the victim of some car crash."
Mamoru jumped slightly at the unexpected heavy weight crashing down on his head. Normally this would be the point where he either shot Malachi a good-natured dirty look, or made a snappy comment about how he was one to talk, but he felt inclined to do neither. Besides, a quick glance down at himself told him that the white-haired man was right--his shirt, especially, was so ripped and blood-soaked that it was now impossible to determine what it used to say. It was a wonder he had not been picked up by a passing police officer.
He pulled Malachi's jacket around him, surrounding himself with his friend's trademark smells of leather, of mint, and, inexplicably, of fresh snow. The white-haired man awkwardly settled down next to him, folding himself into a position that did not involve too much pain.
"You okay?" Mamoru asked after a moment, his eyes watching the deserted field like an avid spectator of growing grass. His voice was thick and ragged. He had obviously been crying.
"I'm just fine. Doctors said I'll be good in a few weeks, long as I don't try to lift anything heavy, like maybe a paper clip."
"Didn't expect you to be out of there so quick."
"I had Zory The Holy Terror on my side. He threatened to maim a unit clerk with a pencil."
"Does it hurt much?"
"Nope. I honestly can't feel anything at this point."
Mamoru threw him a sidelong glance. "How many painkillers have they got you on?"
"Oh, far too many." Malachi gave him a glassy smile.
"Are they all necessary?"
"Probably not. But Zory's going to force me to take them, one way or the other, because he secretly has a thing for bossing me around. I imagine he'll insist on opening every door I need to get through, and picking up every thing I need to use for the next 48 hours, just so I don't overdo it." The silver-haired man chuckled, though it wasn't particularly convincing. "He's still mad about the time I sprained my ankle and proceeded to spend the next day and a half on my feet, working on a study for Statistics."
Mamoru made a noncomittal noise, for lack of anything to say. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He had plenty to say, plenty to ask and demand and cry out about, but he couldn't. There was something strange in the atmosphere, something he'd missed after he'd left the frat house. Whatever had taken place, it seemed to have jarred all four of them, to the point where their discomfort was almost palpable, even from across the field. The black-haired prince reached out to his guardian, trying to discern what was causing him to look and feel so miserable.
He almost winced when his mental shields rubbed sharply against one very powerful mess of emotions, the strongest being one that he was not altogether unfamiliar with. //Guilt. Malachi, what on Earth could -you- be feeling guilty about? I'm not mad that you probably never would have told me about the stupid thing you almost did for me. The others aren't mad; they'd be worried, but not upset. Do you...regret the decision? Do you wish you hadn't considered facing your fear for me? Do you wish you'd followed through?//
"Little bastard wouldn't even let me come get you on my own. He's got it in his head that I need babysitting now." He made another forced attempt at chuckling. "Apparently having a broken shoulder means that I no longer have the ability to walk."
"How long did you intend to keep up this act?" There. He had said it. The formalities having been dropped, the white-haired man went silent, unsure of how to proceed without releasing a torrent of emotions that he would just rather keep bottled up for now. He was here to comfort Mamoru, not the other way around, and the last thing he wanted right now was to subject his prince to all the pain he was going through.
When no answer was forthcoming, Mamoru turned to his guardian, watching him as he stared at the neatly cut grass. He was immediately stricken with the same notion that had struck Zory the day before--that Malachi looked a lot older than he should have looked right now. His face was creased with exhaustion, with worry, and even... pain? It seemed to reflect the many centuries his mind had traversed, as though physically bringing him up to speed on all that he had experienced mentally. His white hair had always made him appear a little older than he really was, but right now if Mamoru had to hazard a guess, he would have placed his friend's age right up there with some of his professors'.
"As long as I had to, I suppose," Malachi said quietly, choosing the most neutral answer that came to mind. "You have every right to be mad at me..."
"I'm not mad at you, alright? Let's just get that straight." //So stop feeling so guilty. We only need one of me, Malachi.//
//Well, he was certainly forthcoming about -that-. Whether or not he means it...No. He's not the type to lie. Make himself phsyically ill with depression, yes, but not lie.// "So, what has you all worked up, then, if not what I di--almost did?"
"What -I- did. Malachi..." Mamoru paused, having to put a tremendous amount of effort into keeping his eyes locked on his guardian.
"No. Don't even start, Prince. You were concussed. You were hallucinating. I'm not exactly happy about my shoulder, but I'd sooner have it chopped clean off by Ne--...sooner have it taken clean off than start hating you for it."
Malachi hoped his prince didn't notice the sudden falter, the crack in his voice, but he would have had to be entirely deaf to miss it. //Damn. That was incredibly -smooth-, Malachi. Way to keep him from worrying.//
Mamoru hardly missed the slip, and indeed it only increased his concern. //What -is- going on? Did he and Neff have a falling out? Over what Neff told me?// Whatever it was, Malachi did not seem inclined to share. The only thing was to keep going with this topic, wherever it was leading.
"I know you won't hate me for it. I know none of you will hate me for it. Neff..." he noticed his guardian's wince, wondering whether that confirmed his suspicians, "he and Jed made that point clearly enough. But that doesn't change the fact that I nearly killed you. And it doesn't change the fact that you... you nearly..." Mamoru took a breath, turning back to watch the empty field. Heavy clouds were moving in above them, the setting sun glowing through the gap between them and the horizon in brilliant shades of orange and pink. It looked like it might rain tonight. "A lot of things happened today that should never have happened, and I can't tell you how sorry I am for it."
"You forget who you're talking to, Prince. Do you think I don't know what it's like being controlled by the enemy?"
Mamoru glanced at his friend. "Yeah, I guess you do," he said softly, keeping his hands occupied by ripping bits of grass out of the ground and piling the blades in a small heap.
Malachi sighed, watching the sky. "Well you're right about one thing. A lot of things did happen today that never should have happened. But you have no reason to be blaming yourself for all of it. If anything, I'm far more responsible for all of this than you are."
"I don't see the logic in that. My memory's a little fuzzy, Malachi, but I'm pretty damn sure that was me blasting you across the yard."
"Then I guess you didn't notice how many times this whole mess could have been averted if I had been on top of things like I was supposed to be. I should have sent Neff to fight Sanura and stayed near you. I should have interfered when you went to kiss Lunette. I should have been the one to help you when you got the concussion, and let the others take care of the bad guy. I shouldn't have thrown Zory the Tier."
"Malachi, hindsight is 20/20. You know that."
"Yeah? So why don't -you-?" Malachi retorted. "I'm most definitely -not- letting you take all the blame for this, Prince. Giving Zory the Tier was probably the singularly -most- stupid thing I did all afternoon; I could have gotten it back to Neff, or held onto it, or something. Anything would have been more effective than that. I can live through a broken shoulder, but Zory is about as as capable of protecting himself as a teacup poodle."
Mamoru continued to pull viciously on the grass under his fingers. "I've heard poodles can be extremely vicious, you know."
Malachi bit back a frustrated growl - but just barely. "I'm making a -point-, Prince; one that you seem to be intent on ignoring. We made just as many mistakes as you did. None of them involved doing you physical harm, admittedly, but we weren't exactly well-coordinated. That was my fault. I wasn't thinking. If I'd just taken the time for a plan of action, instead of the first thought that came to my mind - 'protect the Prince at all costs and worry about everything else later' - I could have saved everyone a -lot- of unecessary pain. Including you."
He slid his hand through his silver hair, resisting the urge to sigh. This was not going at all how he had intended, and talking about all of his own failures certainly was not helping his own mood at all.
Mamoru stared hard at the ground in front of him. He spoke slowly, as though carefully choosing his words, his voice sounding a little thick. "That's different, though. Those are all just mistakes. Mistakes happen all the time in battles, Malachi. There's no avoiding that. But this wasn't just some accident or misjudgement. I intentionally hurt and nearly killed all of you. Sure, you threw Zory the Tier. But I was the one who beat him into a bloody pulp because of it."
The patch of ground in front of Mamoru was quickly growing bare as he continued to rip at the grass, not caring whether he pulled the tiny blades up by the roots. "And I know what you're going to say, that it was all because of Lunette and because I used my head to put a dent in a brick wall. But I... can't help but wonder if some part of that really was me. If I really would be willing to hurt or even kill all of you for... for -her- sake. I love Usako with all my heart, but... I don't want to think about what I would be willing to do for that love. I guess some people would find it romantic. But as much as I love her, I love you guys too, Malachi. I don't ever want to choose one or the other. I'm selfish like that. I want all of you. But it scares me to think of how easily I would have abandoned you."
"Well, if we're lucky, you won't ever -have- to choose," Malachi said quietly. He shifted his position on the grass, folding his hands in his lap. "But there's something you have to take into consideration. We were hurting someone who, for all you knew, was your Usako. Am I correct in assuming that, no matter -who- it is, if they were hurting the Princess, you'd take them out faster than you could say 'Tuxedo Mirage?'"
"Well, yes, but--"
"'But' nothing. You have a protective streak a mile long, Prince. In your mind, Usako was getting hurt, and it didn't matter who was causing it. Had you been in complete control of your facilities, I'm sure you -still- would have punched first, asked second. It probably wouldn't have involved blasting me into the air and breaking my shoulder, you're right. But your concussion made the situation worse. You'll fight for your Princess, and you'll kill for your Princess. And that's just the kind of loyalty she deserves. But you -won't- kill your -friends- for your Princess, this I know. Not unless you're not in control of yourself, or...-they- aren't."
Malachi tried to push the memory away, keep himself focused in the moment, but it was hard. Bits and pieces flashed by, obscuring Mamoru and the soccer field with images of crumbling palaces, tattered corpses, white light exploding from everywhere at once...
//You took us down, Prince. All of us. You knew if you didn't, we'd do it first, and you were right. Our mission was to destroy the Moon Kingdom, and take you with it. And you stood your ground. You'd never been that angry, before or since. But the look on your face, as you sliced us to pieces with your father's sword, took us apart on that immaculate marble...I won't ever forget it. And I won't ever let it happen again.//
"You wouldn't do that, Prince. Trust me." Now Malachi's attention was focused in his lap, watching his hands as they began to shake. //Not now, not -now-, dammit. Comfort him first, then have your breakdown.//
It was easier said than done. As much as he tried to push the memories away, tried to lock them back up in that corner of his mind where he kept everything that was attempting to drive him insane, they just kept on pushing back into the surface of his mind, bringing with them several equally horrifying images, bound together by neither time nor space, but only by the feelings of grief that accompanied them. Millions of horrified screams resounding as a ballroom collapses upon the party guests. Zoisite's pained yelp as his own knuckles crack across the blonde's face. A horrible, fanged mouth as it leans in for a kiss. His prince pinned against a wall, Malachi's fingers around his throat, crushing his windpipe, strangling him with only one hand, watching with a mixture of his past self's amusement and his present self's disgust and self-loathing as his prince's face goes from red to purple.
And suddenly it was not Endymion who was struggling in his grasp but Neff, and he could not remember which event it was that he was seeing--the one from thousands of years ago, or the one from twenty minutes ago--or who it was that he was really trying to kill.
"Malachi?!" Mamoru's voice sounded, alarmed, when the white-haired man reflexively grabbed at his head with his good hand. That same blinding headache was threatening to come back; the one which had decided to take over when his memories had first returned.
"I'm okay, Prince," Malachi muttered, sounding completely unconvincing through his gritted teeth.
"The point is, you're willing to go great lengths to protect the people you love. Not many people can say that. The problem is, your ability to be entirely unselfish and to take great risks is just as dangerous as it is admirable." The silver-haired man focused intently on Mamoru's shoe - it was within his line of sight, and it was something simple he could concentrate on without passing out. Or trying to kill someone. "It's a trait that's easy to manipulate. Not like I have to tell you, after today. It's something you have to be careful of. This probably won't be the last time someone - clones included - tries to take advantage of you, make you a weapon against yourself. You have to--"
//fireburnpainexplosionsfiredeathburning//
Malachi cried out in pain, made all the worse when he instinctively tried to move his immobile arm to clutch his head. He closed his eyes, hoping it would keep the memories at bay, but to no success. The fall of the Moon Kingdom seemed to be everywhere around him, and -in- him. It was almost more than his body could stand, his brain desperately trying to reject the images that continued to pound him, like waves on a beach during the most violent of hurricanes. Buildings toppled, engulfed in orange and white and blue flames. People screamed as they were trapped in the burning wreackage, as they were attacked by armies of youma, struck down and killed, animals for the slaugther. He stood above it all, laughing, laughing at the civilazation burning around his ankles...
"Malachi!" Mamoru grabbed his friend's wrist, trying, in some way, to pull him away from whatever was hurting him.
//What's going on? What's wrong with him? I can feel his pain, but I can't get any closer than that! He keeps pushing me back! Dammit, what's going on?!//
The white-haired man merely continued to hold his head, his breathing labored and constricted, as his mind made every effort to block out the horrible images that refused to give in. They pounded against his mind, keeping in time with the throbbing pain that felt as though it would soon split his head in two.
Neff's words from earlier that day returned to Mamoru, and suddenly he understood what was happening. //"The memories nealy killed him earlier, while you were still recovering." Oh, God, Malachi, how could you have been hiding so much pain from me all this time? While I've been selfishly thinking of myself, you were the one who was suffering.// "Malachi! Please, answer me!"
Malachi could not hear Mamoru anymore, could not feel his hand on his wrist. He was immersed in his memories, was drowning in them. There was no more past or present to him. Everything was real, everything was happening -right now-, and no matter how many times the same events recurred over and over, he still felt the raw pain of it as keenly as if it were the first time, only with twice the dread, because he always knew what would happen next, and always was just as incapable of stopping it.
"Something's wrong." This may have been the understatement of the year, but as Zory was all the way across the field, he wasn't entirely sure what was going on. Malachi was definitely in pain, that he knew. Mamoru looked on the verge of a panic attack - of course, that was nothing new. But it was the combination thereof that was making him jumpy.
"You going to intervene?" Jed asked, shifting from foot to foot as though there was a small furry animal in his pants. He was anxious, and when Jed got anxious, he was as opaque as a window. But he was no good when it came to consoling people - the events in Malachi's room were proof of that - and that made him -more- anxious. What was taking Zory so long, anyway? Normally, at the first sign of discomfort, he dropped everything and started making It's Going To Be Okay cooing noises.
Zory sighed, pounding a small fist on his hip in frustration. "I -want- to, but..."
"'But?'"
"I don't -know-," Zory snapped, and then sighed again. "Sorry. I'm PMSing, I know. It's just...Mamoru didn't see what happened earlier, when he passed out in the bathroom. He needs to know how much this is hurting Malachi, needs to know that even if he can't do anything to fix it, he can just be there -physically-. But right now, being their physically won't do Malachi any good. And Mamoru, bless him, is not equipped for this kind of burden right now."
The blonde sighed, irritatedly flicking his hair out of his face. What he would not give for a hair tie right now. "Besides, I don't think there's much we -can- do. So far, every time this has hit Malachi all we've been able to do to help him was talk him through it. It seems to help, but I don't know whether it would be worth intruding on them just to do that. Mamoru should be able to handle that, I think." After a moment, he added, "I hope."
"Yeah, but they're both in pretty bad shape, Zory. You know it's bad when even I can sense it."
"I know, I know." He banged on the hood of the car out of frustration. It already had so many dents that Zory was hardly concerned about adding to them. "Maybe we should just wait a bit longer. If Malachi gets any worse..." he trailed off. At this point, "any worse" would likely force the white-haired man to lose consciousness, which, after his little bathroom fiasco yesterday, would -not- be a good thing. Maybe he had better intervene, after all. There would be plenty of other opportunities for those two to talk it over, wouldn't there?
"Zory," Neff croaked from inside the car. The blonde leaned down to peek through the open window. "Just let them be, alright? They need to do this."
"You sure about that?" Jed raised an eyebrow at the brunette.
"I know my track record isn't exactly impeccable today, but just trust me on this, alright?"
"Malachi! Please, say something!" By this time, Mamoru was feeling desperate, and more than slightly panicked. He was on his knees now, one hand firmly placed on Malachi's good shoulder, and the other on his hip (as it would have been incredibly unwise to put any pressure on his already strained limb). His head was ducked, trying to get a good view of his guardian's face, but he couldn't see for all the silver hair blocking the way.
For awhile, he tried shaking Malachi, calling his name and asking him to respond. But there was no response, save the occasional terrified whimper. Then, something occured to the prince, appearing like a flash of divine inspiration. Malachi wasn't responding because -Malachi- wasn't there. Well, it was Malachi's body, but mentally, he had probably retreated into some far corner of his mind, away from whatever memory was scaring him.
He had a pretty good idea what memory it was, too.
"Kunzite?" Mamoru tried softly, gently shaking Malachi's shoulder. "Can you hear me?"
"Prince, please..." The voice was not more than a murmur, but somehow Mamoru managed to pick it up. It was pleading, helpless, thousands of years of terror and desperation packed densely into one whisper. "Please, make it stop..."
Never in his life--or, he was certain, in any life--had Mamoru heard his guardian talk that way. Never had he heard his voice thick with such fear, such despair. Kunzite had lived on his nightstand for two full years, and had not made the slightest hint as to how deeply haunted he was by his past. Now when Mamoru heard him, heard the absolute misery in his voice, he realized that this was not just Malachi struggling with his newfound memories or Kunzite struggling with his more recent past, but centuries of abjection and self-loathing welling up within the mind of a man who was not equipped to handle it. Kunzite had never once stopped hating what he had done thousands of years ago, had never once stopped being tortured by the memory of it, because Kunzite did not forget. He could not forget. His pain would not be dulled, his wounds would not heal over, because no matter how many millenia he existed, every one of the most terrifying and horrible moments in his life would remain as clear in his memory as they were the very first time.
//"For Malachi, that would be a fate worse than death. He would be in tremendous agony, Prince. To kill him at that point would be an act of mercy."//
"It's okay, Kunzite," he whispered thickly. "I'll help you." He slid a hand beneath the curtain of silver hair, trying to bring some sense of comfort by touching his guardian's face, but he did not like the way the muscles beneath his skin were drawn up tight, or the way his jaw was set so hard that touching it was like touching concrete. And he did not like that his cheek felt damp.
"I'll help you," Mamoru whispered again, though he had no idea what to do. But calling upon Kunzite seemed to have been the right move, because now when he put his hands on his head Shitennou, he could no longer feel that wall of resistance that had been intently pushing him away. Kunzite needed his prince to be there, needed his help. He did not want to push Mamoru away anymore, because try as he might, he could not make his new, human mind adjust to the immense burden that he had placed upon it.
No longer being pushed back, the black-haired man could not only feel Malachi's - Kunzite's - pain, but could feel exactly where and how it was hurting him. And if there was one thing Mamoru knew how to do, it was heal pain.
Jed's head snapped up, and he turned to stare straight at the two shadowed figures across the field. He did not see any golden glow, as he had expected, but that hardly mattered. He could feel it, just the same. "Aw, shit," he muttered, taking a step towards the pair.
"Jed," Neff wheezed as loud as his injured voice would allow him. "Just stay here."
"Neff, he's--"
"I know."
"He's in no shape to be healing anyone. He's going to hurt himself, and you want me to just stand here and watch?" The brunette nodded, watching the steering wheel contemplatively. "And why the hell would you want that?"
"Because Malachi needs this, alright? They both need this. Besides, at this point I think it's the only thing that'll do any good."
Mamoru circled an arm around his guardian's waist, holding it just below his sling, so as not to hurt the injured shoulder. The other snaked up beneath Malachi's good arm, his hand resting upon the white-haired man's chest. He was kneeling behind Malachi, if only for the purpose of keeping him propped up in the event that he lost consciousness altogether, which was a very real possibility at the moment. Kunzite did not seem aware of any of this, or if he was, it made little difference. His muscles remained as rigid as ever, his breathing just as constricted. He was so stiff that it seemed like he might snap.
"Kunzite?" The black-haired man whispered, close to his friend's ear.
"Prince..." the leader of the Shitennou muttered between struggled breaths, "please... I can't..."
"Shh, I know. Just hold on for a bit longer, Kunzite. I'll make this better." Even as he spoke, he could feel an unseen light passing from his hands into his guardian. He closed his eyes, burrowing his face in a silky nest of silver hair.
//If I had only known...I should have. I should have known how badly this would hurt him. Kunzite had no concept of a physical body for more than two years, and a stone doesn't have limits for emotional stress. I should have helped him with this sooner. I should have been there for him! Dammit, how did I let this happen?!//
At first, Kunzite couldn't sense any change at all. The memory kept pounding, twisting like a serpent and lunging for him, utterly defenseless. When he felt the warm burst in his chest, he thought he might have stopped breathing, and it was his lungs' ache for oxygen. But no, it was something different. It wasn't so much like fire as it was...well, there wasn't really a word for it. It was warm, like a fire, but it wasn't burning anything. The visions of destruction and devastation began to fade, a hazy golden veil thrown over it.
Golden. But that meant...
//He can't! He's not strong enough yet!//
//Oh, I can, and I -will-, thank you very much.// This was followed by an awkward, startled pause. And then, //...Did I just do what I think I just did?//
//Prince, are you... in my head?//
//Well, I guess that answers my question. But I'll worry about it later.//
The visions began to slow down, burning buildings and explosions fading away into the golden mist that seemed to cover everything. As though someone had lifted an anvil out of his chest, he took a deep breath, and was relieved to find that he could do so without choking.
"What did he -do-?" Zory's eyes could not have possibly been any bigger. If he were any more shocked, they could have fallen out of their sockets altogether. "It's...it feels like they're the same person! I can't tell where Mamoru ends and Malachi begins!"
"It's giving me the goddamn wiggies, that's for sure," Jed groused, watching in a sort of frightened awe. "Whatever it is, I don't want to know how he did it. Just so long as it works, and it doesn't royally fuck them -both- over in the head. No pun intended."
"Jed, with all respect to the both of them, they've been royally fucked over in the head from the start. And after this gigantic mess, it couldn't possibly get any worse."
"Well, you know how I hate it when people say that, but for once, I'll have to agree." Zory knotted his small fingers in his ponytail, twisting it around until it almost looked like it could snap off. "But -damn-, that's creepy."
//Prince, you can't be doing this. Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?//
//Oh, I'm sure I'm taking all sorts of horrible risks right now, but it's too late to stop me. Besides, you were the one who asked for help.//
//I didn't...// Kunzite was not sure exactly -what- he had been hoping for when he begged his prince to make his memories stop torturing him, but he was almost certain that this was not what he had had in mind. He tried to move away from his prince, to sever the mental connection that held them together, but try as he might, he could not make his body obey. The golden mist seemed to hold him paralyzed.
//Stop struggling. You're making this more difficult, and you don't want to make me strain myself right now, do you?//
//You've done what you intended to do, Prince. Now get out of my head before you do yourself serious damage.//
//I'm not going anywhere until I fix this. The fog is only temporary, to keep you calm while I work. Guess we could say it's like a mental anesthetic. Sort of. Anyway, I'll need a little more time.//
//Time? What exactly are you doing?//
//I'm... well, I'm not sure how to describe it, exactly. I don't think my knowledge of the English language is extensive enough to explain it properly.//
//Prince, I am fluent in five languages and partially fluent in at least nine. Pick one and tell me what the hell you're doing to my brain.//
//Nine? Really?//
//Prince!//
//Alright, alright.// Mamoru switched over to his native Japanese. It was easier to work while he was thinking in his mother tongue, anyway. //You could call it healing, but it's not quite like that. In simple terms, your brain is physically unable to handle all the information you've been trying to cram into it, especially since most of that so-called information is extremely traumatic and would have probably sent the average person to the nearest psych ward. So I'm making a few... adjustments, you might say. Giving your mind the tools it needs to deal with the incredible amount of stress it's under. Does that make any sense?//
//I guess so,// Kunzite replied grudgingly, though he would much rather deal with his own mental problems, thank you very much.
//Kunzite, I should tell you that this won't cure you. I can't ever take away the pain that these memories put you through; not without taking away the memories themselves. I can ease it a little, and I can make sure this sort of breakdown won't happen again, but I can't ever heal it completely. That's the sort of thing that only you could do.//
//In other words, you'd like nothing more than to make those memories go away, but doing so would probably kill you, or at minimum, leave you comatose.//
//You know, just because I'm rooting around in -your- head doesn't mean you have to root around in mine.//
//I have to do -something- to keep myself from going apenuts, don't I?//
//..."Apenuts?"//
//Sorry. I think Malachi may have picked it up from Jed.//
//Speaking of him. Malachi, that is, not Jed.// Mamoru paused for a moment, muttered something strange about synapses, and then remembered he was supposed to be talking. //Is he okay? I don't know what happened between the time I was talking to him and when you...uh...'took over.'//
//Well, I -could- tell you, if you hadn't thrown me into the mental equivalent of a windowless closet.// Kunzite could almost -feel- Mamoru wince, and he cursed under his breath (in a manner of speaking). What right did he have to be cranky at a time like this? //I'm sorry, Prince. I know I sound ungrateful, and I shouldn't be. If you hadn't stepped in--//
//I would have stepped in. I wouldn't have let it keep hurting you. I would have found a way.//
//Well, thank you for that. I'm sorry you had to put yourself in such a potentially dangerous position for my sake. If I had just worked this out myself--//
//Kunzite, you couldn't have possibly worked this out yourself, so don't go adding that to your guilt list. Besides, if you're willing to do... what you almost did for me today, the least I can do is take away some of the pain it caused. Speaking of that...//
//Oh, don't go bothering with him, please. If removing my memories could kill you, I'm pretty sure that messing with the lurker in my head would drive you insane and -then- kill you.//
//Yeah, I'm realizing that. Being that I don't want to send us -both- into a comatose state, I think it would be best not to touch that part of your brain just now. I don't at all like the idea of you having that evil creature inside you, though. I wish there was something I could do about it.//
//Hey, as much as I despise him, he is a part of me, and he is my responsibility. Most of the time I can keep him under control, anyway. Though admittedly, I have been losing control a few too many times lately.//
//That's not your fault. It's all this memory stuff, and-- oops.//
//Oops? That's really not a word I'd like to hear while you're digging around in my head.//
//Oh, it's... nothing. You didn't need that anyway.//
//...Why does that not reassure me?//
//Look at it this way. What's your name?//
//What?//
//Just go with it.//
//...Kunzite.//
//What's -my- name?//
//Which one?//
//See? You're fine.//
//Again, not reassured.//
//Well, my apologies, then. But fortunately for you, I'm almost done.// And fortunately for Mamoru, too, although he didn't dare think it, lest it get broadcast loud and clear across their collective brain. He hadn't quite been sure what he intended to do when he'd linked them in the first place, and as everyone had predicted, it was exhausting. But he refused to let on. And he refused to let on exactly how worried he was about pulling out. If he -could- pull out.
//Hey, look who I found!//
//Malachi?//
//Well, yeah. Don't tell me you have anyone -else- living in this incredibly huge brain of yours.//
//I hope not, but you never can be sure. Let me know if you find any.//
//I really hope you're joking.// There was a moment's pause, while Mamoru muttered something in English, probably trying to reassure Kunzite's other half.
It was odd thinking of himself as two people, Kunzite had to admit. While he and Malachi were essentially the same person, and were identical in so many ways that it was nearly impossible to tell where one ended and the other began, they were distinct in other ways. Malachi, it seemed, was the most human of the pair. He was far more warm-hearted than Kunzite had ever been, and was much less inclined to act cold and aloof, at least around his friends. (While Kunzite had always been especially close to his Prince, he was pretty darn sure that he had never tackled him off of a bed. At least not when they were over the age of, say, twelve.) Half the time this made Kunzite just plain uncomfortable, and he much preferred to check out for a while when Malachi decided to get all mushy on him. Even so, while he would never admit it out loud, he felt rather... grateful for what Malachi's gentler side had been doing for their prince. He had not seen Mamoru so relaxed around anyone, save the Princess.
Of course, the trade-off was that Malachi was the weaker of the two, and both were very much aware of that fact. He was a tough guy, this Kunzite knew, but he lacked the cold-hearted, razor-sharp attitude that Kunzite had become accustomed to. It was easy to forget sometimes that Malachi was still young, that he did not know what it was to be a cold-blooded killer. Kunzite sort of liked that about his mortal half. He liked his innocence.
//Is he okay?// Kunzite did not like how long this was taking. He was growing more and more concerned about Mamoru's safety.
//He's... well, a little distraught. And not entirely conscious.//
//I'll take care of him. You need to hurry up and finish.// Kunzite felt the familiar bump of his other half on the edge of his consciousness, as Mamoru deposited him in what they had dubbed the "windowless closet." "Distraught" was not a strong enough word for the state that Malachi was in right now. He was exhausted and confused and carrying with him a whole mess of emotions that immediately decided to entangle them both, like wicked, thorny vines.
//I think I'm done. Just one more...// A pause, and then a soft grunt. //There. That's the last of it.//
//'It?'//
//I don't really think you want to know.//
//You're probably right. Now, Prince, as much as I've loved this more than intimate time together, would you mind getting out of my brain?//
There was a pause, and Kunzite saw the golden mist dissipate. It took the remains of the memory with it, and though he could still sense it somewhere, it felt like it was tucked away, not immediately accesible.
//It's the spiritual equivalent of a file cabinet,// Mamoru spoke up. //Try not to go picking around in there for awhile. They're locked in there pretty good, but only from me. You could get them out far more easily.//
//Which I most definitely don't want. Understood. Now, about vacating my head?//
//I'm working on it, Kunzite. It's not like I can just pick up my toolbag and hop out. If I did that, I'd probably take half your brain with me. Which would lead to quick, excruciating deaths for the both of us.//
//...Well, in that case, feel free to take your time.//
//Thank you.// Then, Mamoru cleared his 'throat.' //...Uh oh.//
//You're going to force me to parrot back important phrases, aren't you? -What- 'uh oh?'//
//I think... I may be stuck.//
//...By 'stuck,' you mean...//
//Yeah. Stuck.//
//Stay where you are. I'm coming to get you.// He left Malachi where he was--he would recover soon, once he calmed down a bit and got some rest--and proceeded to wade through the thick snarl of emotions that his other half had tangled him in. Once he had escaped their strangling grasp, he was by Mamoru's "side" in less than a second.
"Stuck" was a pretty good word for it. Their minds had sort of tangled around one another, intertwining into a tremendous mental knot that continued to grow larger and more confused by the second. Mamoru was frantically trying to free himself, but the more intently he worked, the faster their minds grew together, so that any attempt to pull them apart without destroying both would soon be next to impossible. //...Oh.//
//Yeah, 'oh.' That's about all I can say about it, too. Do you and Malachi have this problem?//
//Well, yeah, but we're sort of -supposed- to be tied together. And it shouldn't be knotting up that way.//
//I don't care if it's supposed to be dancing the Macarena! Do something!//
//Prince, calm down. Panicking will only make it worse. And stay still.// He watched as the mental tendrils slowed to an only slightly more manageable state, sort of oozing around one another.
"I can't stand it anymore!" Zory shrieked, suddenly lunging toward the other end of the field and breaking into a run. "If this goes on any longer, they'll never be able to fix it!"
"Fix -what-? Zory!" Jed threw his hands up, taking off after the smaller blonde. "Zory, don't do anything stupid!"
Despite his lungs aching every time he took a stride, Jed managed to cross the field in a manner of seconds. When Zory came to an abrupt halt in front of the clinging pair, Jed had no time to stop. He plowed rudely into the smaller blonde's back and, fortunately for the both of them, fell backwards instead of forwards. He hit the ground with an indignant "oof!"
"Zory, the fuck was that for?"
"Oh God..."
"Zory? What's--oh shit." Jed had gotten to his feet, brushing halfheartedly at the grass stains on his butt. What he saw when he came around to Zory's side was more sobering than a cold shower after a Friday night party.
Neither Mamoru nor Malachi had changed position since the prince had started his healing process; Mamoru was still wrapped around Malachi, trying to keep him upright, arms around him as though he were comforting a small child. Both sets of eyes were closed, and their faces looked as though they had just simply fallen asleep, smiling pleasantly.
But that was where the pleasantries ended, and end abruptly they did. In simple terms, they'd begun to melt together. Everywhere their bodies touched, they had fused together, becoming a giant mass of cloth and skin. Mamoru's fingers, still spread across his friend's chest, had practically melted altogether, becoming a flesh-colored, throbbing mass right over his heart. And the process wasn't stopping. Every few seconds, their "body" would shudder, ripple a bit, and then ooze closer.
"What...what did they -do-?" Jed asked, swallowing a scream with no small amount of effort.
"I don't -know-." Zory fell to his knees, and desperately tried to pry them apart. His efforts were unsuccessful, and when the mass of flesh tried to suck his hand in, he screeched and frantically pulled it back.
"...I think I'm going to be sick."
That croaking voice could only belong to one person. Jed turned to Neff, who, by the sound of his wheezing, had sprinted across the field no less than ten secnods ago.
//Prince?//
//Yeah?//
//I hate to say this, but I think we have another problem.//
//...What?//
//Your hand has melted into my chest.//
//My hand WHAT?!//
//Ow!// Kunzite 'winced.' //Not so loud, please.//
//Sorry.// Mamoru didn't sound particularly sorry. //What do you mean, my hand melted into your chest?//
//I mean exactly what I said. And that's not the only part of you that's melted. Prince, if we don't figure this out soon, we're essentially going to collapse into each other. Either we die, or we'll be looking for sideshow careers.//
//I don't think I quite follow what you're getting at, and I really really don't think I want to. What do we do now?//
//Alright, just calm down. I think I have an idea.// Suddenly an incredible calm washed over Mamoru, so intensely that he had to fight to keep his fatigue from overwhelming him and knocking him out cold. Through his sudden exhaustion, it took him a few moments to realize that this was Kunzite's doing.
//Kunzite? What...// Mamoru fought to stay awake, his thoughts becoming disjointed. The knot he had been trying to struggle out of was beginning to feel very distant from himself.
//I can't get you out of here while you're fully conscious, Prince. It'll only be for a few minutes.// Even as he 'spoke,' the snakelike tendrils that belonged to Mamoru's consciousness began to backtrack, retreating into themselves.
//But...// The last thing Mamoru wanted to do right now was sleep. Somewhere in the corner of his fatigued mind, he wondered whether he would ever wake up again.
//Just trust me, Prince. I'll get you out of here.// As Mamoru slowly slipped into a light sleep, the vines of his mind delicately unwound themselves from Kunzite's. Kunzite's mind, of course, was still intent on enclosing Mamoru's, as though planning to devour it completely, and only when he was certain that Mamoru was mentally sedated did he focus every ounce of his strength on holding it back.
"Look!" Zory gasped, watching Mamoru's hand. It seemed to be slowly, gradually returning to its normal shape.
As though in slow motion, the skin around his hand pulled back to the bone, and once it was severed from Malachi's chest completely, it fell into his lap like a rag doll. Once the process started, it began to pick up speed. The rest of Mamoru's body began to pull away from Malachi's, his flesh making hideous slurping sounds as it met open air and then came back to its rightful shape.
Kunzite opened one of Malachi's eyes hesitantly, looking around at three grim, green-tinged faces. "Don't worry. I'm fixing it."
"You know, leave it to Mamoru to need saving from his own help," Neff muttered sourly, finally having to look away as Mamoru's other arm oozed like melted butter and flopped to his side, solidified. "This is -gross-. He is never, ever doing this again."
"You can say that again." Kunzite closed his eye again and sighed. Like vines clamoring for sunlight, strands of Mamoru's mind shrunk away from his own. He 'flexed' his own mind, feeling around for tendrils, and was incredibly relieved when only a few remained. Finally, with only a little snag, the last one pulled away, and all traces of Mamoru's consciousness disappeared from his own. With a satisfying "THUNK," the wall between them came back down. Now all Kunzite could sense was that Mamoru was snoring lightly, something he was sure Malachi would tease him about later.
//Well, now that I've averted one more death experience today...// He began to rummage around, shifting his focus to the 'closet' where Malachi's consciousness was still hiding. When Kunzite gently tried to pull, he whimpered desperately and pulled back in, shutting the 'door' behind him.
//Okay. Looks like I'm flying solo for now.//
The three remaining frat boys let out a tremendous breath when the last of Mamoru's flesh returned to his body, and he fell face first into the grass, gently sleeping. Feeling it was probably safe to come out, Kunzite opened his eyes, and tried to flex his arms. He cursed sharply under his breath when he remembered that oh, yes, one of his shoulders was broken.
"You okay, Malachi?" Jed was the first to speak, mostly because he was the only one who didn't look like they were about to vomit on themselves.
"Malachi's taking a little...nap right now," Kunzite said, trying to be diplomatic. "He'll come back once he stops shivering."
"So then, if it's not Malachi I'm talking to...Don't tell me you're the Queen of England."
"No, you'll have to settle for Kunzite."
Jed felt a tingle of relief up and down his spine. "I can live with that."
Kunzite glanced up at Zory, who was still kneeling directly in front of him, looking exceptionally green. After a minor epic struggle between the blonde and the urge to gag, he finally choked, "that... was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life. I will be haunted by that image for the rest of my days. I will have nightmares for the next month." He stared wide-eyed at Malachi's chest, as though half expecting it to start oozing towards him.
Kunzite was tempted to mention how much worse it was experiencing such a thing, but decided to keep his mouth shut at the moment.
"Is... he alright?" Neff bent over Mamoru, who actually seemed to be snoring quite pleasantly into the grass.
"He should be." The white-haired man reached out to take Mamoru's wrist, feeling his pulse. "I may have gone a little overboard in putting him to sleep."
"What exactly happened just now?" Jed eyed both Malachi and Mamoru carefully, just to make sure they were not going to dissolve into liquid form any time soon.
"Trust me when I say that you really don't want to know."
"While I'm sure that I'll definitely regret saying this later, I think I really do want to know." Zory was speaking awfully boldly for someone who looked like he might puke, or faint, or both. "What I'd really like to know is how the two of you got into such a compromising position in the first place." He shot a glare up at Neff. "'Stay here,' you said. 'It couldn't get any worse,' you said. They almost fucking died! Again!"
"Zory..." He did not need Neff to be taking the rap for this. He had been getting the brunt end of the deal far too many times today.
"What, Kunzite? Tell me what happened! You knew how dangerous this could be! You should have known better than to let him do something so stupid!"
"I couldn't tell what he was doing!" Kunzite snapped, glaring sharply at Zory, who had no intention of backing down. "He basically threw a towel over my head and shuffled me away while he played neurosurgeon with the Golden Crystal! By the time I -knew- what he was doing, I couldn't stop him. No, that's a lie - I could have just pushed him out of my head. And then he would have been a drooling vegetable for the rest of his life! Somehow, that didn't seem like an option!"
Zory fumed silently for a moment, his head of steam lost. But his anger most certainly wasn't. He really wanted to be angry at Mamoru, but he was just sleeping away, obliviou to the fact that he really felt like tossing his cookies all over the grass.
He pounded his fists in the grass, for lack of anything constructive to vocalize. He was sick of this. He was sick of nearly losing his prince, again and again. That was, what, the third time today? And if he wasn't getting kicked around by clones, he was crying his eyes out, or running away, or all sorts of terribly unintelligent things.
And Malachi! Malachi was entirely incapable of functioning now, which terrified him. Malachi was always in control. He was always cool-headed, always in control of himself. But no longer. Now, the slightest thing could possibly set him off. What would happen when they met the guy (or girl, or formless entity) in charge of this mess? If they pushed the right button, he'd snap. It was that simple.
In other words, the rug had been pulled out from under Zory, and he was not happy. So he did the only thing that seemed appropriate.
He started to cry.
"Dammit," he whispered. Then again, much louder. "Dammit! Dammit, I hate this, I hate it! I hate fighting, and I hate death, and I hate all the shit we're being put through! And I hate that I can't stop it!"
He scrubbed at his face, tears flowing unbashedly. Zory had never worried about crying in public, and he wouldn't start now. "Dammit, Malachi, I can't lose you."
Kunzite immediately regretted snapping at him. He should have known better than to yell at Zory; especially over something like this. Now he -really- wished Malachi was awake, because he definitely was not equipped to deal with a crying Zory. "You're not going to lose him. He's fine. He's unconscious, but he's fine. What the Prince did was incredibly stupid, I'll agree with you there, but it seems that he -did- do some good. Those memories are under control now, and they'll -stay- under control, if I have anything to do with it."
Both Jed and Neff looked like deer in the headlights. They were used to the blonde's occasional outbursts, but they normally depended on Malachi to handle it. Now that Malachi was not around, and his substitute was not leaping up to throw his arms--well, arm--around the green-eyed man, they were quite lost. And after their failed efforts at comforting Mamoru today, both were rather wary about making any attempts this time around, lest they make things worse. Neff occupied himself by watching Mamoru rather intently, while Jed just stared at the ground.
"Well, forgive me if I'm not reassured!" Zory snapped, his voice cracking at least two octives as he warbled over tears. "You may think you have it under control, Kunzite, but let me tell you something. As long as those memories exist, Malachi won't be okay. You can try to protect him from your memories, but it won't help. Because they'll come back."
He sobbed quietly, and then picked back up as though nothing had happened, tears still pouring. "You know he hurt Neff earlier? He got so angry, he was seconds away from choking him to death."
Neff winced at the mention of it, trying to distract himself by picking loose grass out of Mamoru's hair.
"And it's just going to trigger things," Zory continued, obviously losing his fervor. "He'll just keep thinking about it, again and again, and none of us can stop it. Mamoru tried, and we nearly lost both of you. And as much as I don't want to lose Malachi, Zoisite doesn't want to lose you. And it could happen. It could happen, and I'm so scared...of...of..."
As hard as Zory had tried, he couldn't keep himself together. The dam broke, the walls came down, and Zory collapsed in on himself. He dug his hands deep in the grass, ripping through tufts of grass and rocking back and forth, sobbing desperately all the while.
That was it. Malachi couldn't take it any more. He was still a nervous wreck, and he was probably safer in Mamoru's happy little golden tent, but he couldn't stand to hear Zory cry like that. He knew Kunzite was incapable of consoling him; that was most definitely not his strong suit. So he practically ripped Kunzite away from the front of his consciousness and scrambled forward on his knees. With his one arm, he swept Zory into a hug, pressing him close into his chest and rubbing his large hand up and down the boy's back.
"Zory, it's okay," he cooed softly, holding him as close as a one-armed hug would allow. "It's okay now. Shh, Zory, it's okay. It's okay to be scared. But I'm here now. Zory, come on, it's okay..."
"Malachi, I can't lose you!" Zory wailed, clinging to him as though he might slip out of his fingers at any moment. "But we can't help you - not even Mamoru can help you - and you're hurting so badly, and..."
His words were lost in another round of frantic sobbing. Malachi hated being unable to make this all go away, like a monster hiding under a child's bed that you could scare away with flashlights and a few good hugs. This monster was real, and it was inside of him, and it would -always- be inside of him. And the worst part was: Zory was right. No one could help him.
//'I can ease it a little, and I can make sure this sort of breakdown won't happen again, but I can't ever heal it completely. That's the sort of thing that only you could do.'//
//That's right. No one can fix this but me.// Malachi shifted Zory's weight against him - not much, all things considered - and got them both in a more comfortable position. //I don't know how, but I'll keep this from happening again. If not for my sake, for Zory. And for Mamoru. I have to be strong for them, because they can't fight on their own. We were meant to be a team. Not just a team, but a team of five. I can't let these memories win. I can't!//
----
[1] That would be "mall" as in the Stanford Shopping Center. Yes, Stanford has its own shopping center. (Anne: God, I love my state.)
Well, wasn't that fun, everybody? Stay tuned for the next installment, where people will cry, get hurt, angst a lot, and maybe even eat something!
And yes, before you say it, we know you hate us. That's part of the fun, donchaknow.
~Spirit-hime and AngelAnne
