Chapter 5 – By The Dark Of The Temple
"Watch your step," Rei warned, as they climbed myriad stone steps toward the temple complex. "It's pretty steep and there aren't handrails."
"I think this place has more steps each time I come here these days," Makoto grumbled, refraining from mentioning the dim lighting which made the steps treacherous going.
Rei chortled behind her hand. "You're getting weak and flabby in that case, Mako-chan. You used to take these stairs like they were nothing. Maybe you need to step up your time in the dojo and taste less of your fabulous cuisine."
"Oh ha ha," Makoto growled, taking a gentle swat at Rei as she jogged lightly up the steps. "Probably, but my instructors keep saying we have taste test everything for quality control."
"I think they're…mocking us," Jed took a deep breath, trying to keep up with Rei's faster, experienced stride.
Neil, who tended to spend his free time in the gym wasn't breathing hard, but he was feeling the strain in his calves. "I think you could be right."
The entire group slowed down as they reached a section of the staircase where the dim lights gave way entirely to blackness. The tiny lantern that was supposed to illuminate that portion of the staircase had obviously suffered a burnt out bulb. "Oh drat," Rei muttered, "I'll have to get a flashlight and light bulb and change that out pronto. Otherwise it's a liability thing. The temple couldn't afford to get sued."
A soft moan issued from Jed as he realized that meant that he'd be climbing the temple steps not once but twice. Neil chuckled softly, while Makoto hid a smile behind her hand.
They crested the hill to the temple complex where both men's eyes widened. The shrine was always an impressive sight and being in shadow and moonlight only seemed to add to its mysterious impact. Once they'd looked their fill and she'd answered the standard Twenty Questions on how she lived there, yes her 'Jii-chan was a priest, yes she was a miko, explained what a kami was, etcetera, Rei got down to the business of business. That light still needed changing.
"Have fun," Neil said with a slight smirk as Rei dragged Jed off to find the supplies she was going to need. Jed's only response was a one-finger salute that made Neil's smirk even wider.
Phobos and Deimos, perched atop a Torii gate, screamed, drawing Makoto's attention. "That's odd," she mused, wondering why Rei's birds weren't asleep. She shrugged it off after a moment's thought. She'd never understood birds anyway.
After Neil made one last unsuccessful phone call to his friend, this time leaving a message to come directly to the Hikawa Jinja, Makoto led Neil back over to the steps and they sat down to chat. The view of Tokyo's skyline as seen from Sendai Hill was spectacular at night, yet it was also high enough up that you could see the stars without too much light interference. That impressed Neil more than the city lights view.
Without either of them being consciously aware of what they were doing, he put his arm around Makoto's shoulders and began pointing out the various constellations visible in the February sky. Makoto leaned against his shoulder, trying to keep her head close to his so she could figure out what it was he was looking at. Because it seemed to her like he could definitely see things in the night sky that she could not. It didn't bother her, though. She was just enjoying the warmth and quiet closeness and the sandalwood scent of his cologne. Together, they were content.
Rei and Jed slipped past them and headed back down toward the black hole which indicated the burnt-out light. One of the crows (Phobos? Or was it Deimos? Only Rei could tell) squawked again and flitted off after her mistress and Jed. They disappeared into the night, leaving only the faint murmur of their conversation to waft upward to where Makoto and Neil sat. The remaining crow fixed a beady eye on them, but remained still.
A flicker of light caught Neil's eye and he pointed out into the glittering velvet night. "Look! A falling star."
Makoto jerked her head off his shoulder to look, only to yelp in minor pain and set her head right back down. Her earring had somehow become snagged on his sweater and nearly getting it ripped out of her earlobe had hurt. Trying to get it unhooked, while hampered by the handcuffs wasn't exactly easy either. "Maybe it'll work better if we take it off me and then get it un-snagged."
"Let me get it," he offered. A bit awkwardly, Makoto unfastened the backing and carefully pulled back her head, letting the earring's post pull out. She gave a sigh of relief as she was able to bring her head back up once again. Neil then removed the tiny, rose-shaped piece of jewelry from his clothing.
He froze, however, when his hand closed fully over the delicate piece. A jolt of strange heat rolled through him that seemed to radiate from the earring itself.
"What's this made of?" he asked, eyeing the thing warily, rubbing his finger back and forth over the tiny green leaves at the edge of the pink gemstone rose. It was the leaves that called him. The rose was warm, but the leaves felt positively hot to his touch.
Well this was weird. Makoto couldn't understand why he should care, but she answered anyway. "They were a gift from my parents. They're carved jade."
'Jadeite' The word whispered through his brain, insubstantial as an echo, and then it was gone.
"I never knew jade was so dark," Neil murmured, sounding more than a little out of it as he continued holding the object and fingering the leaves like they were a talisman.
Makoto looked perplexed, not understanding his interest. "Well…there are two kinds of jade. You've probably seen jadeite. That's usually paler and comes in a wide range of colors, including pink. The rose is carved of that and it's the most common type for jewelry. But the leaves are the other kind, I think." She furrowed her brow, trying to recall the name of the stone from her high school geo-sci course. It had escaped her.
"Nephrite," Neil whispered softly, seemingly lost in his own world. He didn't even realize he'd spoken aloud. A quick sizzle of strange energy seemed to pulse from the top of his brain to the soles of his feet like lightning and just as quickly come and gone. The crow on the Torii gate screamed loudly.
'What the hell was that?!'
The bell went off as he spoke and Makoto grinned. "That's right. I think the leaves are made out of nephrite which is why they're such a dark olive green like the leaves on a real rose."
She nudged him with her elbow. "Um…could I get my earring back? Please?"
Just then another star fell and Makoto shut her eyes for a moment, childishly wishing on it that Neil would kiss her under the stars.
The tiny twinkle seemed to jolt Neil out of his strange stupor. He blushed, grateful that the dim light hid his embarrassment as he held out the earring toward her outstretched palm. Caught up in her wish, Makoto didn't close her hand fast enough and the tiny piece of jewelry slid from her palm and bounced down the stairs, clicking faintly as it disappeared into the night.
Neil stared in abject horror. He'd lost her earring, a legacy from her dead parents. This was beyond bad. This was a disaster. 'Oh crap!'
Her mouth dropped open in shock and her eyes widened like a doe's in the path of onrushing headlights, the pupils dilating. "My earring," she whimpered. "My earring."
'Oh crapcrapcrapcrapcrap!' Neil bit his lip. "Don't worry," he assured her. "We'll find it."
Makoto seemed to have dropped into the state of insensibility that had numbed Neil for a while. She simply couldn't comprehend that one of her earrings, the only pieces of jewelry that she always, ALWAYS wore and which were the last things she had ever gotten from her parents, was now gone. It was inconceivable.
"Um…Rei," Neil called out, deciding that what he needed was a search and retrieval team. Fast. "We've got a problem. I kind of dropped one of Makoto's earrings and it rolled away down the steps. Makoto-chan's pretty upset, I think. Do you see it anywhere? You've got a flashlight. Can you find it? Please?" He felt like wringing his hands and added mentally, 'before she decides that I'm evil for doing that to her and she writes me off completely.'
"Mako-chan's earring? The rose one?" Rei's voice drifted back up to Neil from the shadows, seeking clarification.
"Yes," he called back. Makoto looked completely stricken, he thought, as he risked a glance at her wide-eyed face. If she'd looked pale before when he'd accidentally mentioned her parents, this time she was positively ashen.
"Oh damn," Neil heard Rei swear. He also heard a sound like the tinkle of breaking glass.
Oh damn was right. He was in deep, deep shit.
In the dark farther down the hill, Rei swore under her breath again. She had a pretty good idea of what Neil was probably facing up there and it would be messy. She snapped on the flashlight and began searching industriously. "Help me look," she demanded imperiously of Jed, heedless of the shards from the broken burnt-out light bulb she'd dropped on hearing Neil's news. "We've got to find Mako's earring. It's a little rose shaped earring of pink and green jade. Watch your feet, though. I don't want it broken."
"What's the big deal about a single earring?" Jed asked, truly puzzled, though he obediently began scanning the ground. "Can't she just get a new pair tomorrow?"
"You don't understand," Rei replied, running the beam of light over each step in turn and searching feverishly.
"Mako-chan's parents went on a major overseas trip when she was just a kid and left her with some friends of theirs so they wouldn't have to pull her out of school. But on the first leg of their return flight, the plane crashed. Everyone was killed and Makoto was orphaned. A few days after their memorial service, a package arrived by airmail. Makoto's parents had bought her a present and mailed it to her before they left for home. It was those jade rose earrings. They were the last things her parents ever gave her and she's probably really messed up at the prospect of having lost one."
She paused for a moment, swiping her tangle of ebony hair back from her face since it was interfering with her search. She then continued, "So to answer your question, NO, she cannot just get a new pair. And she's not going to need to either. Look hard, dammit! We are going to find that earring if we have to search all night long."
"I'm looking. I'm looking."
A surge of feeling that was almost akin to pride went through Jed at that moment as he witnessed Rei's fierce loyalty to her friend. His father had once said that true friendship, the lasting kind, was stronger and more precious than diamonds and considerably rarer. Other than family Jed himself had never met another person he'd felt that way about, though he'd always wanted to. Seeing how Rei felt that kind of connection with her friend, Jed felt a sudden longing to have her have that passionately fierce and loyal tie with him.
They searched for what was, to Neil's way of thinking, the longest ten or fifteen minutes on the planet. In fact, he'd have personally sworn that time itself had frozen. But the gods must have been smiling on them because, despite the darkness and shadows and the probably infinite number of places it could have bounced away to hide in, Jed practically stumbled over the delicate piece of jewelry.
It had rolled off the edge of the rough granite step and lay just beyond it in the dirt, its pale pink color catching his eye at the outside edge of the flashlight's beam. "I found it!" he called out, reaching down to pick it up. He let out a stifled yell of shock and nearly dropped it again when the thing seemed to burn his palm.
'Jadeite.' The sound of the word was like a flash fire that rolled down his spine and crashed across his entire nervous system. He couldn't even move for a moment. Phobos dove for him, the irate bird leaving off only when Rei yelled out a sharp warning sound and waved it off.
"Jed?" Rei leaned over and pried the thing from his hand, letting out a cry of delight and pumping her fist in triumph. "You did it! You found it!" She looped her free arm around his shoulder and hugged him, doing a victory dance. "You did it."
When the burst of fire cleared his brain, Jed blinked like someone coming out of a long sleep and smiled the biggest smile his facial muscles were capable of. He was basically grinning like an idiot because Rei was hugging him…at least, as best she could given their cuffed wrists and pressing nearly every delectable bit of her soft frame against his hard one. There was something to be said for being a knight errant that could come through for a lady.
"My pleasure," he said softly, squeezing Rei. She flushed and stood there for a long moment, gazing into his crystal blue eyes before she pulled back and looked away.
"We found it!" she yelled up to Neil, willing the urgent pounding of her heart to stop.
'Oh thank god!' Patting at Makoto's cheek lightly with his hand, Neil attempted to bring her back around. "Hey…it's okay. They found it, alright? Can you hear me, honey? They found your earring and you're going to get it back. It's not lost anymore."
She blinked, and her eyes slowly regained their focus. "Really?" It was the voice of a child seeking confirmation that there really were not monsters under the bed and that her lost security blanket had been found, Neil thought. His heart bled for what had obviously been a staggering loss to her. He wished he could take away all the hurt and protect her from ever being injured like that again.
"Honest," he said brushing a quick comforting kiss across her cheek.
The kiss worked far better than his earlier patting to bring Makoto around. A surge of giddy delight rolled through her and before Neil realized what was happening, she was kissing him full on the mouth and rocking his world. And her own.
Completely lost in the wonder of their sudden passionate embrace, Neil and Makoto never heard the footsteps as Rei and Jadeite crested the hill top, Phobos perched on Rei's shoulder in between herself and Jed. Makoto and Neil never heard the uneasy shuffling of feet or the throat clearing. And it was only the screaming of both birds that brought them back from their own little world. They jerked apart like they'd touched pure flame. Both of them had their hair and clothes seriously mussed and with their lips sweetly bruised and bee-stung.
Rei kindly and discreetly chose to look away, though she was secretly amazed, having never in her life seen Makoto act so…wanton. Jed, on the other hand, was grinning crazily again, a very bad sign. Just in the split second that he opened his mouth to speak, which probably would have completely mortified the two brunettes, Rei contacted him on his ankle.
"Ow!" he barked in agony. "What the hell, Rei?" He shot her a quick glare that she pointedly ignored, busying herself with giving Makoto back her earring. The crimson-faced young woman replaced the precious earring and quickly pushed the backing tightly into place, feeling like a cape of protection, warm and comforting, had been draped around her shoulders. Jed, on the other hand was feeling unnerved as he was left face to face with a crow that seemed, at least to him, to have an evil look on its feathery face. It really didn't like him. But that was ridiculous, wasn't it? He had to be imagining it.
Not quite meeting Neil's gaze and looking anywhere but at Jed, Makoto whispered her thanks. The soft but intent tone of her voice was more than ample proof to Jed that Rei had been right. There was no question that it had needed to be that particular earring to the exclusion of any other. He was grateful he'd gotten the chance to help.
The hush of her voice also allowed each of them to hear each and every note of the agonized scream which rang out from the sidewalk far below. The two crows squawked one final time and took flight, disappearing into the darkness.
(Author's Note: This is AU in the sense that for this fic's purposes, the first season/second coming of the DK did not happen.)