Chapter Fourteen: Where Angels Lie
Rei had been stung by love. Her heart had once been so constructed that nothing was able to get to her and threaten to shake her up. She was resolved – unable to be shaken by the deeds of men and she had always been weary of letting a man near to her heart. Many things in the past had made her this way but she had always been able to brush off the idea of the dependence of love. Everyone adored her and looked up to her and she was the essence of beauty and grace. This was all without the love of a man. Her mind was pure and her heart beat strong while her unconquerable soul tamed the fire into her service. This was all without the love of a man. She felt that she could do anything as long as she had her friends, her duty and her commitment to perfection.
Her perfection was shattered when Yamito came into her life. From the moment she laid eyes upon this progeny of the fire, she had found herself battling herself to control him. At first, she had been critical of him. His silent misgivings about the threat placed on her Earth had irked her into a place where she nearly hated him. She lived her life being able to read people's souls, but this young man was like no other she had ever met. For many weeks, not a moment went by where she did not think about him. She was obsessed if only by how easily he infuriated her and how revolted she was by his presence. She could always rationalize how she dwelt on him by merely remarking how much she did not trust him. Then came another emotion. Soon she found herself attracted to him by the very things which made her resent him. He was dark, mysterious and hiding something which consumed her dreams. The very thought of him made her blood burn like acid and her body would battle her mind for dominance over how to hold him. Her soul longed for his cohesion with the fire; the mind longed for the clarity which he seemed to command; the body longed for his touch and his whispers filling her ears at night, even if they disgusted her. More times than she cared to admit, she found parts of her body yearning for him.
Her dreams had once drifted through the mists of her need for him. Reason and image were lost in the fires of the sensations which had rippled her body at the thoughts of being with him. In the darkness of a cool night, her breath had changed to whimpers with the hazy dreams of a dark figure over her. She felt hands pushing across her body and her back would arch across her bed in sheer yearning for more. The most basic elements of her womanhood were burning as if her own attack had been turned on them. All of this came only from her dreams. Had he come to her room on a night filled with such dreams, she would have given him everything, if only to hear him speak her name.
It was the moment she saw Yamito and Usagi together that her heart had taken its revenge on her. Love became jealousy in the fiercest form, causing Rei to resent the Moon Princess for her birthright. Tears had pressed coldly when she considered the fact that love had forsaken her and given all blessings on Usagi. Even as she cried, her own love would never end for her princess. It seemed Rei was destined for a bitter life of shadow and solitaire, but the fates were far from shunning her.
When Yamito first sought a place at the Hikawa Jinja, she was mortified. She loved him and she hated him. She could not stop thinking of him but she could not be in the same place with him either. It was a new level of suffering for her, but she slowly began to understand more and more about love. It was his presence alone that intoxicated her. Whatever terrible power that was sleeping under his composed expression peaked her curiosity to the realm of madness. Even the act of being obsessed with him consumed to the point where sleep came only when she heard the door of his room slide shut and the throes of some terrible nightmare caused him to moan in the night – to prove that he was as ragged inside as she was. In the end, she only wanted to be near him. Nothing else mattered. She cherished the day he had come into her life and thrown things into chaos.
On one cool night, she threw off her doubts and confronted him, not caring he might spurn her or even spite her. She had to risk it all for him or continue suffering. In that small room, shrouded by a welcoming mask of darkness, she risked everything for love. Her kiss had been shaky and weak, but it contained everything which had built up around him since the moment they had met. It had been quick but lasted forever, consuming her until she simply fell away from his lips. For the same eternity, she knelt before him, her head fallen and her eyes barely awake. Nothing happened for ten lifetimes and even a reborn princess felt the cruelly of time contained in the movement of the second-hand. She was before him, open completely and vulnerable as she had never been before. His silence was more brutal than any knife to her heart. She would have rather died than listened to his silence. As an ending, this was a bitter taste in her mouth.
However, his hand sliding over hers had awakened her, freeing her broken heart to flutter at his touch. From that moment on, she had loved him entirely.
Despite all attempts and desires, Kiga could not be Yamito. It was a cosmic joke that plagued him and forced him to be a moot reflection of a greater power; a power which should have welcomed him as a servant of a great evil. This fueled his assault on the human girl who had seemed to find an impossible place inside the great, dark Scion. Rei's face was burning and bruised as she knelt before Kiga furiously. If she had been able to transform, she would have killed him to take the superior smirk off his beautiful face but in her human form, she simply had no power over him – no matter how hard she tried. With a loathing glare, she held her hand across her sore cheek and tried to control her anger. She was as helpless as she was angry.
Kiga was seething. Every aspect of his being was demented by the existence of his greater side – his unreachable status. It drove him to disregard all of his thoughts and sensations, even to the point of ignoring the loss of the other priests. All he wanted was to be more than he was. It drove him to act like an inferior substance. "Tell me the secret! I want to know why Yamito has so much power and I was denied my right to that power!" he wailed in his stupor of childish need.
Rei almost felt sorry for him, but almost was a far cry from salvation. The things he wanted to know were simple, at least to her, but she refused to give him anything he wanted. All she wanted at that moment was to have her own power back and to send this pale copy into the void. "You're nothing like Yamito. You may look like him and even sound like him, but you're just an empty shell. I pity you," she snarled and lifted her chin defiantly at him.
The limitations of Kiga's sanity were being stretched thin and the knowledge that Yamito was in the temple fueled his dissention into the raving fields of obsession. Her will had caused him to clench in frustration, slapping a hand across her cheek one more time to illustrate his desire to know. Rei's yelp resounded from the walls of the temple and a few Gangers dared to look back into the room against Kiga's orders. Raven hair was covering most of Rei's face now and her eyes burned with tears, but she remained strong in her defiance of him. She would not weep for his pleasure.
"You stupid bitch! You'll tell me or I'll burn your shrine to the ground! I will make sure your grandfather is in the last room so he can watch everything burn before his own horrible death! There's no escape for you now so tell me what I want to know!" Kiga bellowed in a blind rage, grabbing her by the collar of her robes and jerking her to him. Rei was still committed, turning her face away from him slightly to show just how repulsive he was to her. She would not give him an ounce of relief at his fate. His words were poisonous, for the entire hall leading to the room they were in was populated with the remaining number of Anubis's Gangers. Two dozen of them were ordered to do anything it took to stop the leader of the Scion and an order from the Priest was nothing less than doctrine. Each one longed for the chance to serve their god in the most extreme form and waited anxiously for the appearance of a single, exhausted Scion.
Inside of her chest, Rei's heart was beating uncontrollably, causing her chest to heave against her wishes to show no fear to Kiga. It was surreal to stare at the face of someone who was going to torture you and your family and see the face that you had fallen in love with. Deep inside, hidden by all her strength and courage, she fought down a deep fear that cared little for petty human defiance. Nested next to that deep fear that was causing her clenched fists to shake was the horrible desire to kill this Priest, for not only did he mirror the one that had broken her cool assembly of perfection, but she knew he was capable of doing the terrible things to her loved ones just as he said he would. Her teeth were clenched in hatred and in a bitter voice she hissed, "I have nothing to say to you, Priest."
Kiga was beside himself with anger and reared back his hand to punish her once more. At the apex of his threat, something rippled through the temple which caused them both to gasp slightly. A shockwave of heat was snaking through the hallway, blasting each Ganger with a painful impact of searing air and causing a thousand voices to call out into the realm. What followed was fire. Moving like water, the flame lined the walls, the floor and ceiling as it came, incinerating everything it touched and causing the last soldiers of Anubis to return to dust. Every Ganger that had been waiting for glory had been turned to ashes and the palace itself seemed to moan with the blood of fire coursing through its innards. The flames soon bellowed into the room, casting red and orange light across the two figures that held an immunity to the cause. Then, there were footsteps in the hallway.
Kiga was twisting inside as his fear began to break the mask of dominance on his face and make him into someone who did not resemble Yamito. He was trembling, unable to control the fear in his eyes and chest and his hands were nearly broken upon themselves. In a last effort to survive, he slipped around Rei quickly and gripped her throat, staring cautiously at the entrance to the room for the hallowed entrance of the Scion. Rei's eyes were also glazed as she stared, reflecting an image which seemed to walk right out of her dream.
Yamito was like no other Scion ever to grace existence. No other could have entered with the effect which he did or cause this much fear into his worst enemy, but also his most loved treasure. An unholy being loomed inside the room now, staring out past heat and flesh to terrify the only two people who could threaten him. On his back, spread as two great wings, fire obeyed his every desire and fanned out, expanding to fill the entire half of the room which did not hold his purpose. With these wings of fire, he even resembled a very dark imitation of the epitome of the Sailor senshi's being. As if calling upon the bounds of hell itself, the dark Scion raised his arms up into the air and sent a pulse through the wings, letting out a laughter that even penetrated into the heart of the temple itself. In Rei's eyes, and perhaps the thing that scared her most, he seemed to love this power more than all other things. It made it hard to leave her eyes on him.
"Behold your angel of the flame! I am the power of Mars itself! See what power you have inside of you, Sailor Mars!" he called out to her, calling to the deepest parts of her soul. A part of her was intoxicated by this being, enchanted by his control of the flame and the authority he simply pulsed with.
Yet, she was still afraid of him. Lowering his arms, he kept his defiant smile on his face and was glowing with sweat, lust and purpose. His eyes moved to Kiga and a smile defiled his face. "See what you can never become. Know it before you die," he said gleefully.
Kiga snarled from behind Rei, tightening his hand around her throat and trying to control the tremors running through his body. "Shut up! I will know the secret and be more powerful than you! Tell me, or I crush her scrawny neck!" he seethed and caused Rei to whimper slightly. However, there was no change on the face of the Scion, which caused the Priest to fume even worse and the girl to stare in disbelief.
A moment passed when she questioned him with her eyes, praying that the darkness had not taken Yamito completely. Somewhere, deep inside of him, there had to be a part of his human side which she could touch and would never let her be harmed. Despite the fact that he seemed content in watching her die, she closed her eyes and shook her head lightly, thinking so strongly that the words broke through her strained throat.
"What do you think you're doing, intern?" she muttered as she struggled to contain all of the emotions running through her, "Stop acting all high-and-mighty and do something about this guy!" The orders caught Yamito by surprise and time stumbled a moment. For her to look down on him at this moment was something only Rei could do. Despite the fact he had attained some godly power over the flame and was purely consumed by it, Rei still treated him as the lowly boy serving her grandfather at the Hikawa Shrine. For a moment, Yamito looked very small.
The words were a catalyst for both Yamito and Kiga. Finally pushed over the edge, Kiga roared insanely and twisted his hand around her neck with the intent to take away something precious to his superior. As gratifying as her neck snapping was going to be, he was suddenly disappointed by a shooting pain in his hand. Every bone in his hand shattered instantly, as did the bones in his arm and shoulder, cascading up his arm until there was no structure left. This sent Kiga into a mind spin which he could not diffuse.
As Rei fell forward a bit, she spun to stare at him, lost on what just happened. Only a soft laugh from the person behind her broke her senses. "You're pathetic, Kiga. You don't understand that you are only a shard of me; a fragment which is unable to possess a will of your own and is forever destined to be nothing but a piece. You see," Yamito gloated darkly and stepped right behind Rei, raising an arm past her and into the air. At the same time, Kiga gasped stiffened, becoming something controlled and lifting into the air as a reflection of the Scion's arm. The Priest stared up helplessly, unable to breathe and destroyed by the fact that Yamito possessed him. Yamito was looming close to Rei and spoke deftly, causing chills to run over her skin as she watched Kiga in pain, "You're simply a reflection of me. It is time for this reflection to fade away." Suddenly, everything in Kiga's body was burning; every bone and every muscle began to twist and break at the will of the whole. Kiga's destruction was, perhaps, the most painful of them all, but Yamito watched each moment with a lust that could have destroyed Rei as well.
Soon, Kiga was nothing but a swirl of energy, floating before them both and remaining as the only thing left of the nightmare. Rei watched the energy but shivered when she felt a body close to her from behind, draining her of reason and blocking everything but the way she felt about him. Yamito was right against her, his head canted to the side and his eyes staring gleefully at the energy. He spoke with a voice that blew across her damp skin like a lover's whisper of love, his lips so close to her skin that her fists clenched in the pleasure of it. "When a Priest is killed, the Scion will die from the energy. Kurai, Suteki and even Kage have all fallen because of this. Now…" he said and closed his eyes, smiling widely as her breathing was shallow against him. She stared and denied, longing for his words to be false. Not only would the deaths of the others destroy her closest friends, but now her own lover was going to die. Yet, she could not protest it. She simply watched as the energy snaked through her body and back into Yamito.
For a moment, all was calm. It felt like a cold dagger had been thrust through her heart. Even still, she felt her chest seize like crystals were consuming her, though it was her environment which dominated her attention. The temple became cold and dark again as eroding fire died from every wall around her. Time could have stopped for Rei and she would have died a thousand times in that moment. She stopped breathing and turned her head, bitterly wishing against seeing her love die this close to her.
What she found was a hand gripping her throat again and a smile that eclipsed Kiga's in cruelty and sin. "Not even the Fates can control me! I am beyond their power now. I am the most powerful being alive!" Yamito suddenly roared, intoxicated by his power. Not even the same rules applied to him. Every other Scion had perished, yet he only gained strength – growing and consuming everything he touched. Nothing could stop him. Even the most powerful of the Sailor senshi were destined to fall before him. In the final Scion, the whole of the entire race lived on through greed, power and the desire to extend his burning wings to every corner of the universe.
The voice stabbed Rei like a knife and her eyes widened in the pressure on her throat. Yamito was now taking the place of Kiga, but his reasoning was far from evil. It was downright malevolent. She could barely believe this was the same Yamito and tried to cry out his name, yet her breath failed to come forward and she merely looked to him with heartbroken, pleading eyes.
Yamito seemed fueled by it. "I know everything now, Rei. I know what I am and I know why this happened," he said to her, almost tenderly, and suddenly lost his smile. He appeared only as an enemy now, glaring darkly and drunk in his power. His fingers began to tighten around her throat and consciousness began to fade. The most frightening thing was he showed no remorse as he took life from her. "Since you have nothing more to teach me now, I'm afraid you have to die. I cannot allow another to come as far as I have," he said. His hand closing on her throat sent her body numb and void, as if the very will she once commanded was a plaything for him to tease. This was worse than death; this was death from someone she loved. For any other, she would have fought with her last breath. For Yamito, she let a tear run down her cheek and leaned against him, feeling a red haze start to fill her mind. Death was a ruthless carrier, but she found some kind of serenity in his hand being her noose. In the instant before she passed out, her lips parted in a void of breath and used her last bit of strength for a purpose other than fighting.
"Yami…" she gasped, her voice indicating just how close death was.
Perhaps it was the reality of the choking breath on which his name was whispered, but her life was quickly returned. Blood suddenly started to rush to her brain again and she fell forward, holding on her hands and knees and struggling to catch her breath. She could barely believe that air was filling her lungs again but she greedy gulped each breath, her mind desperately trying to catch up with reality. Only after a moment, did the true meaning of the act hit her. An enveloped gasp caught her ears and she twirled on her knees for him. What she saw was love in its pure form. Icons and martyrs would turn the world over as the atonement of the young man was at hand. In his right and his grandeur, the Chosen Scion would find himself burning in fire which he could not control.
Yamito was crucified in the air, standing in sheer pain as he stared up into the darkness above him like the answers to all things were just a grasp away. His body was shaking, threatening to destroy itself by the massive wings which spread into the room once more. It was as if some unknown force was judging him for his actions and the depths of the pain were only evident by the way his face was crushed in agony. But she was stricken by his eyes, which stared so disdainfully that she instantly knew why they shined so. She suddenly felt her lover's true form and leaned forward, forcing air out of her injured throat. "Yamito?" she asked with a coughing heave.
Across the mirror's surface, red tears streamed from his eyes and his teeth were in battle against each other. Inside of this great soldier was a war which set one human boy against the fury and power of the darkest side of Mars. His Scion side was aghast, finding it impossible to control the boy and unable to keep the darkness from killing the soul. The temptation of infinite power pulled on him, yet it was something more powerful than that which balanced the scales to the opposite. There was a howling of the beast inside, yet every ounce of Yamito's strength was going into drowning that power and returning it to the depth of his soul – a place where all men's darkness resides. This struggle was forever, yet only lasted a few moments as power succumbed to power. Yamito shined through the eyes and forced a last breath to burst from him, then silence was his sermon. With her love as his only weapon, Yamito bested his greatest fear and severed his own life force.
Rei's body was weak and beaten, but the weight of him was carried as he fell forward into her. In holding his head against her chest, she found that there was no strength left in him – only the last moments of his life. The shock had come so quickly that she soon kicked herself for wasting some of his last moments, staring out into the temple and holding his head firmly against her. Eternities passed as she held him, with time and tale being told in a thousand other places, but not to be spoken around her. Even then everything about him made her love him so, from the long strands of hair which pressed against her cheek to the taste of her tears spilled over his pain. It scared her just how frail Yamito was when the bounds of his power did not surround him like armor. Now, he felt like a piece of glass to her, something that would break if handled carelessly. But in her wild desires to keep him and touch him forever, she could feel his breath weakening. It drove her mad with grief.
"Yamito-kun…" she whimpered, rocking slightly as if it would revive him.
Amidst her weeping and her unwillingness to loosen her grip on him, a soft, shaky voice came to her ear. It was barely audible, but it silenced her sobbing as she strained to catch every resonance of his voice. "My reincarnation," he said weakly. The subject settled on her the finality of this moment, but she gathered her courage and looked him in the face. His eyes were barely open, offering so little insight to his soul. She was so frightened of him dying that she could not even find a word to fight him with. All she could do was listen as he looked at her, using the last of his energy to do the only two things he wanted; to look at her and to speak her name. "I wish to be a reflection…your reflection, Hino Rei," he said and managed to give her a look which broke her heart. She had nothing to say which could have fully expressed what was happening inside of her, but her will barely kept her from breaking down around him.
Seeing that level of love, he had the strength to finish his last thoughts. "I want to be able to see you when you're at your purest, Rei-sama. I want to see you when you are only looking at yourself, not changed by anyone or anything. Do you think that would be possible?" he asked with the last few breaths in his lungs, and then closed his eyes in the form of the sun rising into the sky and scaring the darkness away.
"What are you talking about? Stop trying to be so cool! If you die now, I'll never forgive you!" she demanded through her own choking voice and pulled violently at his scorched clothing. By now, she was choking on her breaths and holding him tighter than she had ever held anything in her life. All else was damned as she cradled him, rambling in wild tones as she rocked slightly with him. Nothing she said made sense, but she did not care. Without her even knowing, Kurobashi Yamito's flame was extinguished and left cold, leaving nothing but a body in her arms. No matter how dearly she wanted to hold him, that body began to fade away, leaving nothing but tears and cries with her. Soon, she was alone and hugging herself, forced to cry alone for the one she had loved and lost. Whatever he had become, it was lost now. As a scared and lonely girl, she was a gray form where she knelt, sobbing without desire to move.
For her soul, Rei had found something which had completed her and made her happier than she had ever been. Because of a cruel and lethal design, her lover had fulfilled his task in destroying the final element which had kept a great evil in the living realm. If she could have weighed his life for the safety of the universe, Rei would have found it impossible to stay balanced. In the end, love sometimes outweighed righteousness, even the point of making the heart the most evil thing in existence. But it was the heart that had brought her so much joy, even though now she wished to be rid of it entirely. Infallible Rei had been broken into a pitiful, crying girl holding nothing but her own empty arms.
It was all for the love of one man.