In which Zoisite's awakening results in large glazier's bills/a prince is revealed/a princess remains hidden/Beryl muses on replacements while Kunzite wonders on changes/a locket starts a civil conversation over groceries and/a truce is called between prince and fire II.
It was three knocks before anyone would answer the door.
"Took you long enough," Usagi announced as Mako finally pulled open the door a crack, and then frowned at the way that Mako continued to hold it open only slightly. "Hey, Mako-chan, let us in!"
"Look, it's…" Mako winced at the sound of a crash that sounded suspiciously like someone kicking the coffee table. "…complicated," she then finished, obviously fighting the urge to turn around and stare at the carnage behind her.
Ami, realising that her previous feeling that the awakening had been a rude one was entirely correct, sighed. "What's going on in there?" she asked calmly, even though internally she was beginning to feel anything but. Luna, whom they'd met just outside of the apartment, pressed against her leg in an oddly feline movement, and Ami couldn't blame her; if she was as small and defenceless as the little cat, she'd be loathe to walk in on a wild Zoisite either.
Mako leaned on the doorjamb, effectively opening the front door to the apartment more. The reason she did this probably had more to do with the fact that Ami's hand was on Usagi's arm than her own distraction by the commotion behind. "They're trying to calm him down," she attempted to explain, the defeat in the slump of her shoulders indicating the degree of success that "they" were obviously having. "He's got a little bit freaked out. His…memories are a little…um…scrambled."
"Scrambled?" Usagi asked, peering around Mako and not managing to see anything down the narrow corridor. However, another crash made both her and Mako wince again.
"…look, you can come in, but just…don't say anything dumb, okay?" the brunette said at last, letting the door go completely so that it swung open. With this barrier removed, further sound spilled out of the living room; clearly some sort of argument was going on between Rei and Zoisite. Neither Ami nor Usagi could hear Mamoru's voice above the light alto of Zoisite's voice, or the frustrated tone Rei had adopted, but they figured he could not be far away.
"What could I say that was dumb?" Usagi wondered aloud as she entered the apartment, swinging her school case at her side.
Ami was tempted to make a suggestion, which surprised her; then again, she supposed she had every right to feel a bit tense at this particular moment. "Just let someone else talk for a bit, okay?" she managed to say eventually, diplomatic and calm on the exterior even though inside she was in turmoil. For reasons she could not quite understand, meeting this version of Zoisite had her feeling far more nervous than she would have liked.
There was no room for Usagi to reply to this, because when they entered the living room Zoisite was already shouting loud enough to drown out the rest of the entire world "—all I am asking is for you to tell exactly what you did – who the hell is this?" He turned the direction of his attention to Usagi as he said the latter words, even though he was apparently asking them of Rei still.
Rei, standing only inches away from the shitennou who stood only slightly taller than herself, snorted. Unlike Mako, she did not show any outward signs of tiredness; in fact the events of the day, whatever they were, seemed to have energised her beyond all understanding. "You should know! You're the one who called her a princess last night."
"I did what?" Scorn entered the lovely voice as he stared at the girl in the school uniform watching him with an open mouth. Tossing his loose mane of honey-blond hair, Zoisite looked first at Rei, then at the silent Mamoru watching the proceedings from where he leaned against the ranch slider. "I called that little girl a princess?"
"Hey! I'm not a little girl!" Usagi blurted out, finding her tongue and some words to go with it quite abruptly. Without a second thought she was yanking the moon-stick out of her school-case and waving it rather erratically in his general direction. "I healed you, didn't I?"
The dark green eyes widened at the sight of the lunar artefact, and he took several strong steps in Usagi's direction; this had her backing right off and looking rather alarmed about it. Zoisite may have physically been not much taller or broader than she, but there was a concealed strength about his form that would make any remotely sensible individual think twice about tangling with him. "You're the one who did this?" he snapped, backing Usagi straight into the nearest wall. Before anyone could think to stop him, he grabbed the wrist of the hand with the moon-stick and raised it to wave the object in her face. "Tell me what you did to me!"
"All right, back off, Zoisite." Mamoru's tone was quiet and deadly serious. Moving as silently as an assassin to the side of the terrified girl and the furious shitennou, he placed one hand on Zoisite's shoulder and tightened it considerably.
The shitennou shook the hand off, punctuating each word he directed at Usagi with a wave of the stick. "What. Did. You. Do. To. ME?!"
"I said back off."
The sharp words, as regal and commanding as those of any king, sent tremors through the hearts of all those listening, as well as sharp little questions into the parts of their minds that dealt in memory. The effect they had on Usagi – a thrill she felt through her entire body – paled in comparison when she realised what they had done to Zoisite.
Bowing his head, the loosened hair falling across his narrow features, Zoisite obediently retreated from Usagi. Elegant fingers picked at the fine silk of the shirt he had been wearing last night after his final transformation; when he spoke his tone was resigned, quiescent. "…yes, Endymion-sama."
"…what?" Usagi asked in amazement, not knowing what to react to first – the familiarity of Mamoru's regal tone, the name which resounded in her heart at a frequency that threatened to shake her all to pieces, or the way that Zoisite had seemed compelled by some strong internal voice to obey the man she now knew was Tuxedo Kamen.
Rei was shaking her head, stepping up to stand beside Mamoru with her arms folded across her chest; the look she gave Zoisite seemed to explain explicitly that it was she and Mamoru who had been keeping the disoriented shitennou in check. The breeze that blew lightly through the two broken windows did undermine their apparent success at this task, however. "He's been calling him that ever since he woke up. Claims he doesn't know why."
A hand migrated promptly to his head, his slim fingers tangling in the unordered hair at his temple. "I know why," and from the impatience of the words it appeared that he'd said them many a time before this one. "I call him that because it's his name."
"You just don't remember where you got it from," Rei pointed out impatiently, also sounding like this was an old reply misused many times before now.
Everyone, however, was startled by the fact that it was Luna who chose to speak with words that shocked them all deeply. "Endymion-sama was the Prince of Earth, long ago," she explained in a voice that sounded half like it was from a dream, the sharp feline eyes staring into somewhere far distant from the room in which they all stood.
"What?" asked both Zoisite and Mamoru; the former was nearly resigned, the latter disbelieving.
Luna rose up from where she was seated beside Ami's slender ankles, jumped to a better speaking-point upon the back of the low-slung couches. With the eyes of all present upon her, she made to attempt to clarify her own vague understanding at least a little more. "He was the Prince of Earth during the Silver Millennium."
Usagi sat down heavily, back sliding down the wall as her school-case clattering to the floor. "…what…when Queen Serenity was alive?"
"Yes." Luna's gaze was oddly sympathetic as she looked to Usagi, who had enough trouble coping with being Sailor Moon now, let alone potentially in the past.
"How much do you remember?" That was Zoisite, the shitennou's passionate fury seeming to have completely disappeared. In fact now he seemed a limp rag doll, standing only with the support of the couch beside him.
Luna met his eyes and his question evenly with another one of her own. "How much do you?"
"Practically nothing." His disgust and frustration burned in his eyes, stained his cheeks with high colour. "My memories…my memories don't work the way they should." Skirting around the end of it, he sat down heavily upon the couch and scowled deeply. "I have…some recollection of things that have happened to me, but then I have all these memories of things that never happened!" His jamais vu was obviously part of what had fuelled his earlier outbursts, reflected by the next words he shot directly at the blonde girl crumpled against the far wall. "Hence why I want to know what THAT girl thought she was doing to me – holy hell, are you Sailor Moon?"
Even though she thought maybe she should be offended by the patent doubt in the truth of that, Usagi just looked at the others for reassurance. Understanding that they would not stop her from confessing it – and she did wonder why, eventually deciding that one way or another they'd already told him their own identities – she said quietly: "…yeah…"
"How embarrassing." He hung his head again, cradled it in his hands as he shook it in his own private mire of disbelief. "I ever lost to you?"
"So what do you remember?" Ami asked suddenly, ignoring the looks of surprise the others gave her at her impulsive display of curiosity. "And what do you mean, you remember things that never happened?"
"If you asked me my name," he said in a voice muffled by both his hands and his hair, "I would say it was Zoisite. But if you are to believe my driver's license, it is Kawasa Kensuke."
"Driver's license?" Mako blinked at this, then looked rather taken aback by its full nimplication. "You can drive?"
Mamoru snorted at this, looked at his windows with dark irony. "I sure wouldn't let him drive my car."
"Your support means so much, Endymion-sama." The words were as dry as a desert that had not seen rain for centuries. However he did not dwell upon this, instead raising his eyes to meet Ami's with a politeness that had the others frowning. "I have memories of living on earth as a normal human for the last twenty-three years."
"Oh, wow," Usagi breathed, looking down at the moon-stick that was presumably responsible for this interesting little development.
"That doesn't explain why I also have memories of spending the last dozen years in the Dark Kingdom, however," Zoisite pointed out with a sharp viciousness that had Usagi wondering if the moon-stick had done such a good job after all. "Or why I have flashes of a life lived a thousand years ago." Shaking his head again, he leaned back into the couch and crossed long legs impatiently. "It doesn't make any logical sense!"
"Hey. Usagi's involved. Nothing makes any logical sense where Usagi's involved."
"HEY!" Usagi protested, directing this both at Rei, who had voiced the thought, and Mamoru, who was attempting and failing to hide the amusement he had found in it.
Zoisite expelled a long breath that had all of the gathered group looking back to him. He openly took in and evaluated his surrounding, looking at each in turn: the girls, the talking cat, the man. "What exactly is going on here?" he asked eventually, voice indicating that he wanted to know, and know now.
"I think the most important question right now," Luna pointed out as she tried to hide her unease at the man's ill-tempered question, "is how much of a danger to us you're likely to be." A pointed look at the broken windows showed easily that she suspected those windows could have been any of them, had Zoisite felt so inclined for it to be so.
Snorting, Zoisite leaned forward and balanced his elbows on his knees. Resting a sharply pointed chin on his laced fingers, he smiled rather severely at the little black feline. "If I was going to run, little moon-cat, I would have done it hours ago. The fact that I haven't should tell you something, no?"
"Like maybe you don't have any powers any longer?" she asked sharply.
Zoisite opened his mouth and his eyes glinted for a moment in a fashion that was all too disconcertingly familiar. Before he could say anything, however, he seemed to draw some restraint up from deep within himself and closed it. His eyes now just held hard green fire, not the furious blaze that had threatened to erupt only seconds before. "How did you know that?" he asked quietly, the words only partly a warning.
"Your aura is muted."
Rei was shaking her head where she stood beside Mamoru, one hand absently about the silver and ruby necklace she wore at the base of her throat. "It doesn't matter, Luna," she said carefully, earning herself stares from everybody in the room. "He's not evil, anyway. Not any more."
Usagi was slowly climbing back her feet, moon-stick firmly in hand. "How can you be so sure?" she asked, giving both stick and shitennou looks that indicated she wasn't so inclined to believe in the power of the object any more.
A scornful look from Rei told Usagi exactly what the raven-haired Senshi thought of that little comment. "I know evil, Usagi. Look." A ward paper was pulled out of one pocket – Usagi did wonder sometimes if Rei would ever be caught without one of them on hand – and quickly moved through the gestures and brief syllables that charged the symbols with undeniable power. Swiftly she flung it towards the shitennou with a sharp: "Akuryou taisan!"
Easily Zoisite batted the paper away, with a flavour of annoyance that seemed to indicate he'd been doing it most of the day. "Would you quit doing that?" he complained, only cementing that particular impression further.
"See? No reaction," Rei said with audible satisfaction as she crossed her arms over her chest again. The paper fluttered to the floor and disappeared, and she paid it little heed. "He wouldn't be able to do that if he was actually still a Dark Kingdom flunky."
Dubious, Usagi looked at where the paper had been, and then again at her own moon-stick. "Are you sure you're doing that right?"
The laugh Rei gave then was partly unkind, but not totally. "Could say the same for you and the moon-stick, you know. But then again, if my ward doesn't work, then maybe you did do something better than a half-assed job."
"Hey!"
"Besides, if he tries anything funny, he's got four Senshi and Tuxedo Kamen on his case in four seconds flat." Rei paused to give these words some additional thought, soon augmenting them with: "…possibly one second flat, if you decide to trip and fall on him first."
"REI-CHAN!"
Holding his temple, it was Zoisite who actually broke up the burgeoning argument between Moon and Mars. "I'm actually beginning to wish I could still undertake my homicidal urges without this…conscience in my way."
"I know how you feel," Mamoru said quietly, earning annoyed looks from both girls and something approaching empathetic amusement from the others. Scowling, Usagi moved to change the subject.
"But we're still going to keep an eye on him, right?" she asked, ignoring the way Zoisite then proceeded to roll his eyes at her.
"I know I am," Rei said despite her little experiment.
"Hey." Zoisite's word got their attention, as did the fact that he stood off and brushed up the elegant trousers that he wore beneath the expensive shirt. "I think I want to go home now."
"Yeah, go and break someone else's windows and not mine," Mamoru muttered, looking again to the mess on the floor anyone had yet to attempt to clean up.
Usagi blinked at this, and then frowned. "You have a home?"
One hand reached into a pocket and brought out a slim wallet; Zoisite's quick fingers then released from it a small piece of paper that he held between two fingers like a playing card. "According to this, I live in an apartment on the other side of Juuban."
"That's right." Ami spoke up for the first time. Looking up from her computer, she flushed slightly at the odd look Zoisite was giving her and cleared her throat to speak in a rather lecturing tone. "Kawasa Kensuke. Second-year organic chemistry masters student. Currently on study leave. Lives about two miles east. Attends the University of Tokyo. Flawless academic record. Participates in varsity gymnastics and swimming." Ami withered slightly under the scrutiny of all around her, muttering in a low voice: "The picture matches."
"Let me see that," Zoisite said, flinging himself down upon the couch beside Ami. Ignoring the blush that continued to crawl up her neck to bloom across her cheeks, he leaned over her and then swore under his breath. "…this picture is even worse than the one on my license. My eyes are NOT that close together!"
"You're worried about your driver's license picture?" Incredulous, Mako gave Rei and Mamoru a sideways glance that resulted in her shaking her head and him shrugging.
"It's awful, look at it," Zoisite announced, making to hold out the licence to the brunette. Before she could grab it, however, he pulled it back only to stuff it into the appropriate compartment in his wallet. "On second thought, no, don't look at it, it doesn't do me any justice at all!"
Mamoru clapped his hands together soundly; when everyone was looking at him in surprise, he said: "All right, time out. We need to talk about this."
Zoisite snorted, flopped back further into the couch which he shared with Ami (who was by now, oddly, all but glowing from her blush). "Look. I've already promised to be a good boy and not try to kill any of you, all right?"
Mamoru snorted, looked again at the broken glass. "What about my windows?"
"Hey, you'd break a few windows if you had two different memories of what you were doing yesterday, too. And all that mixed up with the conviction that YOU'RE a long-lost prince of Earth. If that doesn't warrant a temper tantrum. I don't know what does. I mean, it was YOUR damned fault and not mine anyway." That last comment was directed at Usagi, who winced and stuffed the moon-stick back into her school-case at last.
"…I'm…sorry?"
Zoisite closed his eyes at this; when he opened them again they were tired. Rubbing at the bridge of his nose, he said quietly: "But seriously? I'm not going to hurt any of you. I just…I don't feel like it anymore."
"What do you mean, you don't…feel like it?" asked Usagi.
"Whatever you did to me sure did something…what is your name?"
"Tsukino Usagi."
"…Tsukino-san, right."
"Usagi," she said promptly without thinking; she'd never liked the formality of being addressed by her last name, and even though this was a Dark Kingdom shitennou, she just couldn't help herself.
"Whatever you did, it…well, as much as I can remember everything that went on in my lives before now, what I used to be in the Dark Kingdom just…doesn't seem relevant anymore." He paused a moment, and then screwed up his face like his thoughts physically hurt his mind. "I…" Frowning as he made to say something else, then snapped his mouth shut with an audible click.
"What aren't you telling us?"
The single word was as even as the gaze he levelled at Mamoru. "Nothing."
Rei's snort was disbelieving. "I think that's the problem."
"You want proof that I'm on your side?" To the accompaniment of deep gasps from most watching, Zoisite took out the nijizuishou from one pocket. "Take it." With a flick of one elegant wrist it fell into the waiting hands of Mamoru. "I don't think it's much good to me."
Only Mamoru didn't seem surprised by the sudden gift, turning the crystal over in his hands and determining that it was in fact the genuine article. "Have you got the other one?"
Rolling his eyes, Zoisite shook his head in apparent disbelief at Mamoru's idiocy. "You'd be lucky."
"Why did you do that?" The question came from Ami, whose voice was slightly hoarse as she looked at the man beside her.
Zoisite blinked at the question, then gave Ami a wide smile that only encouraged her blush to return. For reasons no-one seemed to be able to grasp, Zoisite seemed to have actually taken to the Senshi who spoke least. "Well, he's the prince, isn't he?"
"This prince thing is really getting weird," Usagi said suddenly. "You're sure about this?"
"That's about the only thing I remember from the Silver Millennium," Zoisite said with a quiet dignity that made Ami swallow with difficulty, made Mamoru's spine stiffen. "He was my prince. My lord. My liege. Whatever. Hence why I'm kind of stuck. Even if I still wanted to strangle him with his own stupid cape, I don't think I'd be able to go through with it." The laugh he gave then was oddly kind, and nothing like the mocking chuckle they had already heard far too many times before. "More's the pity. It's a terrible cape, but it'd probably make a fine garrotte."
Toeing some of the broken glass at his feet with a slippered foot, Mamoru said: "Thanks, Zoisite. And your fashion sense was always so much more attractive than mine."
"At least I had an excuse! Damn that Beryl and her lack of haute-couture knowledge anyhow."
"Beryl's the Queen of the Dark Kingdom?" Luna asked, unconsciously baring her claws and sinking them into the soft material of the couch. The query was urgent, like the single name had set off dozens of alarm bells in her mind.
"Yes," Zoisite said, looking rather disarmed by Luna's frantic question. "Didn't you…well, guess you didn't. Nice to know you guys knew even less about us than we did about you. I feel almost vindicated."
"Do you?" The unspoken accusation in Rei's words was like a blade held at his throat, ready to be drawn across it at the slightest provocation.
"As vindicated as one can feel when they don't care anymore." The smile that crossed his face was as even as his tone; the only thing that belied any uneasiness on his part was the way he raised one hand to twirl a strand of his lovely hair about his fingers so that it bound them tightly together. "So, giving you the crystal wasn't enough? Now you want information?"
Luna was the one to answer that question. "Yes."
Narrowing his eyes, Zoisite gave the moon-cat a speculative look. "It'll cost you."
"I thought you were on our side!" That unexpected outburst came from Ami, who promptly covered her mouth and tried to sink through the couch and then the floor when Zoisite raised an amused eyebrow at her.
"…that doesn't mean that I don't have to eat."
"…oh…" Ami continued to rue the fact that floors and couches are not permeable to human beings.
Into the uncomfortable silence, Mako finally said slowly: "I could whip you up something. I'm a good cook."
"A great one!" Usagi enthused, her mood exponentially brightening at the thought of being fed with Mako's culinary delights.
"If Mamoru-san doesn't mind…?"
Mamoru blinked, and then looked with doubt at his kitchen. "I could go and get something for us to eat."
"Oh, no. I'll cook it if you don't mind me in your kitchen, and trust me – you'd rather have my cooking than any take-away junk." With this said she gave Mamoru a rather beseeching look; the thought of getting back onto familiar ground by busying herself in a kitchen was an attractive thought to her overwrought mind indeed.
"Not a problem. There's a store just on the corner…I'll go and get something you can work with, if you guys don't mind keeping an eye on Zoisite here."
"I'm sure they know how to baby-sit an old enemy, Endymion-sama. Give them some credit."
Mamoru looked like he was opening his mouth to tell Zoisite to shut his when Usagi leapt to her feet and announced broadly: "I'm coming with you!"
"Really?" And no one could really fault Mamoru for looking somewhat taken aback. "You want to come shopping with me?"
"Hey, don't get me wrong – I'd rather eat slime than spend time with you." Usagi's face then broke into a sunny grin as she poked him in the arm with no small amount of delight. "I just have to make sure you buy the GOOD stuff."
"Hope you have a sky-high limit on your credit card, Mamoru-san," Luna observed wryly from where she still perched on the back of one couch.
"…damn. I forgot she's a bottomless pit."
"I am NOT!"
The argument seemed only to be beginning as the two walked out, Usagi already in enough of a state to try shoving Mamoru into the nearest wall.
How nice to know that some things never change, Luna couldn't help but observe with the beginnings of a little cat-smile.
Zoisite, on the other hand, didn't seem so amused by their little performance. After watching Usagi and Mamoru exit, he looked at the girls watching him on the edges of their seat. Leaning back elegantly in his own and throwing an arm over the back of the couch, he remarked wryly: "I'm never actually going to get anything to eat, am I?"
The address was correct. His disguise – little more than simple civilian garb – firmly in place, Kunzite surveyed the artist's home and frowned internally, even though externally his expression was as unreadable as an ancient text composed in invisible ink.
There were traces of Zoisite everywhere, to the trained eye – and Kunzite's gaze was very hard to fool. It was also not as if Zoisite was not in the habit of using extraordinary amounts of energy in his little missions; Kunzite had tried to explain the concept of restraint to Zoisite many a time before with varying degrees of success. Admittedly there were times where he preferred Zoisite's compulsion to undertake everything with passionate fervour, but when on a mission for Beryl…it was far better to conserve energy than throw it about without thought. Frankly, that was the reason why Beryl had never even considered sending Zoisite on a mission similar to those Jadeite had once undertaken; they all understood perfectly well that Zoisite's stubbornness might get the job done, but the balance of energy at the end of it was likely to be far from desirable.
So indeed, he could see Zoisite's movements everywhere, from where he had entered the house – somewhere around the side, through a window from the look of it – and where he had exited. The trace energies indicated not only had he had the youma at his side, but that he had been followed.
Smart little Senshi, to find Zoisite so soon. How do you do it? And though he did wonder what the answer to that particular puzzler was, he let it go. First things first, after all; there was a living energy in the house this moment, and the vague taint of it assured him that not only was it the carrier of a nijizuishou, but that said nijizuishou was long since extracted and claimed.
A sharp knock to the door was his only prior announcement of his arrival. From where he stood on the stoop, he could hear her come to the door, then check who it was through the small peephole. A sharp intake of breath was the next audible sound, tinged with two distinct flavours of surprise. My word, he's handsome! was liberally mixed in with …did I ask a model to come over tonight?
"Oh," she said carefully to him as she began to open the door, though not fully – the chain was still firmly engaged. A small mental impulse on his part over-rode the woman's need for it, and a second later she was opening the door to him with a furrowed brow. It was obvious to even the most dim-witted individual that she had no real idea of why she was letting him in without complaint, but Kunzite saw no point in wasting energy on making her as compliant as a doll. In this half-dazed state she was already as useful to him as she was ever likely to become.
"Good evening," he said, voice like velvet. Smoothly he bowed his head to her, met her eyes directly; one second of this and she was flushing deeply, looking away. Kunzite might have grinned if he had been the type – or if it weren't so damned easy. "You're the artist, aren't you?"
She didn't reply for a long moment, squinting through thick glasses as she took in his appearance carefully, with the sharp delineating eye of a painter. Already she was recovering from the original shock of his handsome form, looking with a more critical tilt at what was before her. The scrutiny certainly did not bother Kunzite, who not only knew that he was gorgeous, but simply did not care. "…I'm sorry. Did I ask you to model for me?"
"No." Stepping past her, he moved several steps down the hallway as he gained his bearings in both a physical and a sorcerous sense. It was already obvious to him that Zoisite had entered the woman's studio when he had attacked her; he cast a look back to her and said evenly: "You didn't."
"I see." Looked up at him again, and laughed suddenly, nervously as she stepped closer, following him. "Can I? Ask you to model for me?"
"Perhaps later. May I see your studio?"
"…of…of course…" The confusion was creeping back into her words as he pushed at her mind to make her allow him through without complaint. "Would you like some tea?" It was clear that she was struggling to make sense of illogical action with the familiar. Kunzite had seen it a thousand times before, and it had never been particularly amusing to him.
"Tea would be nice." Already he was striding forward again, feeling the artist's eyes following every movement of his body and cataloguing it away for future reference. That amused him, though only in the sense that he himself had done similar things as a tutor. After all, not only was Kunzite an aesthete, there was no better way to perfect a warrior's skill than by watching them. Kunzite had studied the movements of others with exquisite concentration, partly to correct the mistakes to create to a flawless performance, partly to simply enjoy the visual feast that it could be.
The thought led near-immediately to an image of Zoisite emblazoning itself across his mental fields; he could so clearly see the slight but strong shitennou twisting and near-dancing in combat, using speed and stealth to make up for the nearly too-delicate form he had been cursed with, blessed with.
Yes, for there is no-one in heaven, hell or earth who could match the beauty of the sharp little sakura that we crafted of him…
"How do you like it?"
The question startled him, though he scarcely showed it. "Black." Having entered the studio while consumed with the distracting image of his lover in his mind, Kunzite pushed the green-eyed memory aside in order to actually examine at his surroundings. The boarded-up windows showed exactly where Zoisite had entered, but he was more interested in what canvases lay within. Sketchbooks were scattered about the studio; one had been hastily half-closed and left with two pencils crossed over it rather precariously. That drew him in, the thought of half-completed pictures; Zoisite had something of a knack for simple sketching even though he rarely bothered with it. Still the rough and chaotic sketches that he never finished had a vibrancy about them that set Kunzite's mind spinning in a manner he never would have thought he would appreciate, and he wondered if all artists were capable of drawing in such a fashion.
Flipping through the book from the beginning, he found dozens of sketches of a pretty girl; a glance upward showed him that they were studies that the artist had then used in the paintings of a beautiful woman with similar features. She was a popular subject, starring often with a dark-haired man upon the stage of many canvasses. He might had dwelt longer on the odd familiarity, the flash of recognition that he felt while looking at them, if it wasn't for the picture he found on the last used page of the sketch book. It was one he had obviously distracted her from working on when he had knocked upon the door.
The lean and beautiful figure depicted upon the smooth page in smooth lines was Zoisite.
"…oh, he's very pretty, isn't he?" That was the artist, setting down a tray of tea on the small table behind him. "I…I only saw him in passing, but I couldn't get him out of my head. If only I could remember where I saw him."
Kunzite turned about, still holding the sketch book firmly in one hand. He did not notice it, but he would have been shocked to know that his hand was faintly trembling "You can."
"Can I?" The artist laughed, the sound still nervous; even with her artist's detachment she was still obviously ill at ease with this beautiful man in her home. "That would be wonderful. I have a picture in my head that is crying out for his presence, but I need to see him again--"
Her tea-cup clattered to the floor, shattered into a dozen and more pieces at her slippered feet.
Kunzite pressed his fingers harder against her temples, felt her body stiffen beneath his touch as he sent another jolt of energy through her, felt his mind expand as he threw out dark tendrils into her brain.
There was no way to accurately describe the sensations that he did and did not feel as he sifted through her memories as a child sifts through sand while building castles. Still, her mind was organised enough that it made it easier than he thought it would be to locate her hidden memories of Zoisite. The moon-stick had not erased them, far from it in fact; it had merely squirreled them away to a place where the artist would not think to look for them.
Kunzite, however, was very good at finding exactly what he looked for.
Yumeno Yumemi collapsed to the ground; Kunzite scarcely heard her fall. Before she even hit the floor he was gone, reappearing scarce seconds later in the deserted construction site where she had last seen the devious form of the shitennou who had stolen her nijizuishou.
He followed Zoisite's trail easily from the entrance to one of the beams upon the outer reaches of the half-constructed building, but it all stopped there. The trace energies told him exactly who had been there only the night before, even while not one of them remained now. It was not unusual for the trail of the senshi to cut off abruptly – they obviously changed into their civilian forms after completing their battles, which left no such clues – but Zoisite could not mask himself in such a fashion. It made no sense, but it was simple fact all the same: the trail was gone.
Zoisite had fought the senshi, had fought Kamen…and then had simply disappeared.
Usagi stopped suddenly, holding the bag before her with both hands. When Mamoru gave her a questioning look, she frowned a little, looked away.
"What is it?"
With a sigh, she took one hand and rummaged around in one of her pockets. To his surprise, she almost promptly held out a small golden object, managing to look both apologetic and rebellious. "You know, I think I should give this back to you."
Mamoru felt the world contract about him, as if all of a sudden it was only made of him, Usagi, and the street lamp that they stood beneath. "…the star locket. I…I thought I'd lost it…"
"You dropped it, at the cemetery. I picked it up, I just…." Embarrassed, obviously because she had kept it without saying anything, Usagi found it impossible to meet his eyes. The way she stared at the ground, shuffling her feet in her flat school shoes, only muffled a voice that was already very quiet. "Where did you get it from?"
He took it from her, the weight and shape of it deeply familiar in his palm. He didn't realise his hand was shaking until he tightened his fingers about the golden locket. "I don't know."
"The princess, maybe?" Usagi looked up then, her smile bright even though her voice sounded like it was cracking the way support beams do when placed under too much stress. "That's why I thought I should give it back to you. Because…if you're a prince…maybe you were her prince, you know?"
Mamoru held up the locket to the streetlight, as if he were trying to get a better look at it; it caught the moonlight instead as he popped the catch and started the little music box inside tinkling away. "You think that?" he asked, thoughtful and distant as the mournful little tune swept over him.
"Yeah, I guess." It hurt to watch Mamoru so entranced by the music of the locket; Usagi couldn't help but wonder why it hurt so much to see him like this, why it made her ache all over. After all, even though he was Tuxedo Kamen, he was still Chiba Mamoru, and she'd only had a crush on one of them…and the other drove her bonkers! "Isn't that the way things work in fairytales?" she said quietly, trying to shove all the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings into a hole deep inside her heart. "The prince saves the princess, marries her, and they all live happily ever after?"
The laugh Mamoru gave at this was wry, but his eyes were kind as he snapped the locket shut, looked back at Usagi. "It would help if I knew where she was, of course."
Usagi swallowed at the kindness that washed over her like a warm wave, made her entire skin feel like it was warmly, fuzzily alive. She wondered if Mamoru knew how handsome he could be when he was actually acting something like Tuxedo Kamen. "We'll find her," she said, the deep conviction in her voice surprising even herself as she tried to shove all thoughts as to Mamoru's attractiveness firmly aside.
"Yes. We will." Mamoru smiled back at her, shifted under the street-lamp so that it gave his dark hair highlights of blue and silver. "I have to say, odan…Usagi-san, that I think what you did was pretty crazy, but maybe it'll do us some good after all. And if it helps us find the princess, it'll be doing a LOT of good."
"I hope so," and she kicked a nearby stone with one foot. It skittered away, scarcely avoiding a rather expensive car parked at the curb. "I didn't mean to do anything dumb."
"I'm sure you didn't," he replied even as he thanked whatever gods out there protected expensive cars from stones kicked by moody little Senshi. He couldn't resist adding a kind: "You've got a good heart, you know that?"
Usagi wrinkled her nose a little, but then smiled broadly bare seconds later. "I think so."
"You should know so," and the words were entirely affectionate. If that didn't make Usagi's already addled mind more confused, what certainly did was the next move he made. "Keep the locket."
She stared down at the golden locket he was pressing into her small palm, the gold of the necklace cool against skin that felt entirely too warm. "What?"
"You look like you'd look after it better than me – I've already lost it once right?" With a laugh, he then added wryly: "Besides, it's a girl's locket. A girl should have it." She ducked away as he ruffled her hair suddenly, but he still got a decent handful of her hair for a fleeting moment. "And you're certainly a little girl, senshi or not."
"Don't!" she complained, but she didn't let go of the locket, or try to push it back into his hand.
"Hey, I meant that kindly," he told her, laughing outright at the poked out tongue he got for this comment.
"Could have fooled me!" she huffed, though looking down at the locket – which had popped open again to start playing the pretty tune – made her smile almost wistfully. The expression seemed too old for her altogether, made Mamoru's mind wonder something that he could not quite pin down. "But…thank-you."
He sounded more nonchalant than he really felt when he said: "Well, we're all allies now, right?"
Usagi closed the locket, gave Mamoru a questioning look. "Including Zoisite?"
"As long as he leaves my windows alone from now on," he answered wryly, trying to ruffle her hair again; she was oddly too quick for him, being such a klutz generally. The missed attempt at touching her hair again bothered him far more than he knew it should. Even when he tried to ignore it, he still looked at the way her golden hair caught the moonlight and remembered the silken feel of it beneath his fingers.
He was making to start walking again when Usagi interrupted the action with a quiet: "You ever like just looking at the stars, Mamoru-san?"
"Sometimes," he said slowly, trying to gauge what she meant by the question. "But they…no. Only sometimes."
Usagi met his eyes as she dropped her own from the sky, flipped him a little peace sign that made her look very young indeed, and almost unbearably cute. "Hey, you can say what you were going to say. I won't laugh."
"I wasn't afraid you were going to laugh, odango atama." The reply was light but his eyes were heavy as he came to stand beside her just outside of the light circle cast by the street-lamp. Even with the ambient lighting of the night-time city, they could still seem what seemed like the entire universe of stars as they looked up at the sky together. "It's just that…they make me sad. I think it's because they make me think of her, and I can't stand the thought of not knowing that she is all right, that someone's looking out for her, protecting her…loving her."
"I like looking at the stars," Usagi said very softly, "because it makes me feel like someone is doing all of those things for me."
The silence between them was electric as their eyes met and Mamoru realised he could see not only the moon, but every single star reflected in the deep blue of Usagi's wide eyes.
"…you know, you didn't correct me," he said breathlessly as he looked away, tried to get the vision of all of those stars out of his head.
"What?" she asked, sounding as dazed as he did.
Mamoru looked at the ground, and then at the shopping bag he carried, loaded with meat and vegetables and rice. It was so blessedly familiar that he was surprised he didn't hug it for all his was worth and thank it for merely existing. "I called you odango atama and you didn't squawk like you usually do."
"Oh!" Usagi looked at her own shopping bag, and Mamoru began to question the sense of giving her the bag that had the sweets in it. "Guess I just figure that you're just never going to stop."
When she met his eyes again, he felt the return of that odd feeling, could not help his words. "I would if you really wanted me to, you know."
This time it was Usagi who looked away, back up to the apartment block they were only metres away from. Skipping lightly, she said: "Come on, let's go inside. I bet the others are hungry."
For a moment he only watched her skip away from him; he then shook his head and followed her inside. Falling in love with a moon princess from a dream was one thing – finding a fourteen year old part-time super-heroine unbearably adorable was quite another.
"…so Beryl wants the ginzuishou to awaken Metallia…who is her master?" Usagi asked around a mouthful of rice, earning a rather disgusted look from Zoisite. The shitennou had already proved that not only was he a rather finicky eater, but he ate what he felt like in a fashion so formal that he probably could have attended a royal reception and fooled everyone into thinking he was a gentleman indeed.
"She was the master of us all. Hence why I've got no power anymore. You shut that off." Setting aside a barely touched plate of nigiri sushi, Zoisite leaned back on the couch, turned his attention out the window. "Which is probably why I no longer feel the urge to rip out those little blonde pigtails and beat you to death with them. Metallia – whose entire presence animates the Dark Kingdom even as she lies dormant – amplifies negative emotion."
Usagi at least swallowed her next monster mouthful before speaking again. "That must have been so horrible to live with," she said in a low voice, eyes very wide.
"On the contrary." Wryly Zoisite smoothed his hair and raised an eyebrow at the baffled blonde. "It was glorious."
"What?" Rei asked, her own plate hardly touched either. Already her fingers were fingering a ward paper, as if she had to throw one at Zoisite every hour on the hour to make sure that the moon-stick's cleansing influence wasn't wearing off already.
"You wouldn't understand," and his frustration was rich and thick. "You don't…you just wouldn't understand. There's…a beauty in darkness." The words obviously weren't exactly the ones he wanted, but he seemed unable to locate the ones that would lead the Senshi to understand what he tried to express. Luna frankly doubted that those words existed at all.
Mako took a sip of the green tea she held in her hands and gave Zoisite a doubtful look. "So how do we know you won't want it back?"
"Because that healing stick of yours wiped away whatever vulnerability I possessed that Metallia used to draw me in. I don't remember much, I told you. But isn't it obvious, what happened?"
Luna was the one who spoke, her voice thoughtful as she traced out her hypothesis aloud. "You lived in the Silver Millennium, and were a part of Endymion-sama's realm, one way or another. Beryl and Metallia exploited some seed of darkness in you and that then elevated you to the level of a shitennou."
Mamoru's voice was flat from where he leaned against one of the non-broken windows. "Corruption."
"I'd assume it was willing," Zoisite said almost without discernible shame, meeting the eyes of the "prince" he had presumably betrayed back in a time no-one could really remember, for reasons that none of them would ever possibly understand. "I didn't hate living there. I loved it. Of course, there were reasons–" He abruptly stopped speaking, his cheeks burning with sudden high colour. "It doesn't matter," he muttered under his breath rapidly, looking for the cup that held his own tea.
"What doesn't matter?" Usagi asked curiously, only to be met with stony silence from the shitennou.
Ami coughed, forcing Zoisite to turn around and look at her. "So someone will start looking for the nijizuishou in your absence?" she asked, already looking slightly embarrassed to be under that green-eyes scrutiny again.
"Oh, yes. I imagine Beryl will have already thrown her tantrum over my disappearance and found someone a hell of a lot more reliable to get the job done." This didn't seem to bother him terribly much, at least not in the way that any of them thought it should. Still there was something askew in his eyes that was difficult to define, even more difficult to actually prove as being there.
"…but she's looking for you?" asked Mako doubtfully.
"Of course."
Ami coughed up a little of her tea, looked even more embarrassed as she wiped her mouth with a napkin. "But aren't you worried she'll find you?"
"If she could have, she already would have." Zoisite took a long draught from his own cup, and then set the empty porcelain aside. "I may not have liked her much even when I was on her payroll, but she knows what she is doing." His eyes flared with sudden withheld emotion, but he seemed to get in back in check quickly as he shook his head. "Besides, he would have found me already if he was able to…"
"He?" Usagi asked, looking up from demolishing the last of the odango.
The sigh he gave was more tellingly melancholy than he might have preferred. "The one you're likely to run into next time a nijizuishou turns up. The strongest of us."
"Another shitennou?" Mamoru asked, stepping forward so that he might examine every word Zoisite gave up more closely.
"The last of us." The name was said quietly, reverently. "Kunzite-sama."
Ami let out a long breath she hadn't been quite aware she was holding. "He's more powerful than you?"
Zoisite laughed, a short sharp bark that made her jump. "By far, Ami-san. And more so than Nephrite, before you ask."
"Jadeite?" Rei added even as Mamoru echoed the sentiment.
"Jadeite was…well, he wasn't a weakling, to be fair to him. But he was not in Kunzite-sama's league."
Ami, who was by now holding the little Mercury computer open on her lap, frowned at what she saw written there; she was actually monitoring the conversation with a voice-activated lie detector and while Zoisite was telling the truth, the other emotions it was beginning to pick up were mildly disturbing. "Whatever happened to him?"
"Jadeite?" Zoisite blinked in surprise that they should care, and then shrugged as he released the information. "Beryl locked him in Hard Thought for being useless. Hell of a demotion, I'll tell you."
Usagi looked shocked, even though she had seen Zoisite become indirectly responsible for the death of Nephrite. "He's dead?"
"I bet he wishes he was," he said, but shook his head when Usagi opened her mouth to ask more questions. "He won't be bothering you. Beryl doesn't recycle."
"You know," Rei said quietly as she met Zoisite's cool gaze, "you don't seem to care much."
"Are you sure you'd be able to tell even if I did?"
"Ami-chan?"
The blue-haired Senshi flushed under the look Zoisite gave her. "I'm not sure."
Usagi was frowning, playing with her chopsticks as she watched Rei, Ami and Zoisite apparently decide on whether or not to get into an argument or not. "…Zoisite?"
The shitennou stopped staring at Ami and moved the unerring gaze to Usagi. "Ye-es?"
"Can you find the crystals still?"
He laughed outright at that, shook his head. "I doubt it. Without a link to Metallia, my trying to use the kurozuishou would be about as effective as going fishing with a paperweight and no line."
"…rats." Mournfully she poked at the carpet until Mamoru reached down to remove the chopsticks from her grip. Zoisite just shook his head.
"Kunzite-sama will find the nijizuishou. You'll just have to challenge him." With a smirk on his face that nobody really appreciated much, he curled his legs underneath him and said: "Good luck with that."
"But can you help us?"
"Probably not."
Rei's voice was ice-cold. "Why not?"
Zoisite looked like he had any number of smart-ass replies to that, but the one he gave was quietly sensible. "He'll still be looking for me."
"What, to have you punished? We won't let him!" Usagi declared, standing up to strike something approaching one of her Sailor Moon poses. "If you're on our side, you're one of us – and Senshi never let friends be taken by the enemy!"
"You don't understand," he muttered, standing up again. "Excuse me. I need to use the bathroom."
Usagi, her pose wilting as the shitennou stepped smartly out of the room, looked slightly baffled. "…so shitennou need the bathroom, too?"
Rei resisted the temptation to start banging her head against the nearest wall. From the looks of it, Luna and Mamoru were about as close as she was to doing it themselves, too.
"And where is my wayward shitennou, Kunzite?"
"I do not know, my Queen." He bowed his head, and waited for the tirade to begin, for his ears to ring with her screamed displeasure, for his body to tremble under the weight inordinate amounts of energy she was capable of flinging around in her worse moods.
She surprised him with her calm acceptance of this intelligence. "I don't like this. Even he should not be foolish enough to defy me in this way." The low voice expressed extreme ire, but the tap of her fingers on the globe before her was oddly restrained as she spoke in a deceptively conversational tone. "Tell me, Kunzite, did you ever teach him to shield from me?"
"No, my Queen."
Beryl smiled, and it was not at all pleasant to see the fangs show prominently over her too-red lips. "Do you lie to me?"
"I do not. To be frank, I doubt Zoisite has the…patience to learn such a complicated sorcerous manoeuvre." And it was true, much as he didn't want to admit that even he couldn't teach Zoisite some tricks. "He will focus on a task to the exclusion of all else when he wishes, but that would have taxed even his limits as one of your shitennou."
"Perhaps. I wonder, however." With that, she waved a hand in dismissal. "Forget him, and forget his mission. You have greater work to be doing."
He blinked silver-blue eyes, but that was the only external expression of his deep surprise. "Surely there is no work greater than the location of the ginzuishou?"
"Do you forget it is in pieces? Your appointed task was to calculate how to restore the facets, blend them into one. Is this not correct?"
"It is correct," he agreed, lowering his eyes to floor in fear that they might betray him.
"I thought so." And even though he was not directly looking at her, he could hear her twisted smile. "This does make things more complicated. I have no wish to take you away from your responsibilities, and yet I have no other – wait."
"Yes?" he asked, looking up again to see Beryl apparently fishing a wild idea out of thin air and finding it rather intriguing indeed.
She waved another hand imperiously. "I will give more thought to this. Continue your work on the amalgamation of the nijizuishou, and report in the morning."
"But who will locate—"
"Report in the morning." Beryl's words were oddly patient, but the flashing of her eyes indicated that that patience was swiftly running out. "I will have something to tell you then."
And so, that was how Kunzite found himself returning to his libraries, to the histories of the ginzuishou written sketchily in tomes as old as the Kingdom itself. Still, so much of it was missing, like Beryl had torn great chunks of undesirable history from the tomes and tossed it into oblivion.
She manipulates us.
And even though he knew that perhaps best of all her shitennou, he could not help but muse upon the great extent of the power this world gave him…and to lose that, surely, would be a fate worse than eternal damnation.
"Can't sleep?"
Zoisite looked up from where he was perched on the edge of the balcony, raised at eyebrow at the half-dressed Mamoru. "Would you be able to, in my position?"
"I don't think I can even imagine what it would be like to be in your position," he said wryly, in a voice low enough not to awaken the sleeping Mako inside; while Rei had had to return home at last, the Jovan Senshi had stayed again, this time with Luna curled up at her feet on the borrowed futon. Pushing his sleep-mussed hair out of tired eyes, Mamoru then remarked quietly: "Which is possibly why I'm out here."
Zoisite laughed, wrapped his arms more tightly about the knees he had drawn up to his chin. Admittedly Mamoru had no clue how Zoisite was balancing up there like that without his telekinetic powers, but then he just assumed some people were not only unafraid of heights, but completely disrespectful of them. "You want to know when I'm going to turn on you and ruin your lives, yes?"
"Yes." No point in beating around the bush, after all. "Rei-san thinks you're hiding something."
Snorting, Zoisite then proceeded to dangle one long leg over the side of the balcony. Tracing odd patterns on the concrete with one bare toe, he said idly: "Big talk coming from a bunch of people who've been hiding things for who knows how long."
"We had to."
Zoisite stopped the nervous movement, narrowed his eyes at Mamoru. "You think I don't have to?"
"I wouldn't know. But what I do need to know is this – are you going to turn on us for your own purposes?"
"You think I wouldn't lie about it if I were going to?" Zoisite asked, looking rather taken aback by the patent absurdity of the question presented to him.
"It wouldn't surprise me." Stepping closer to the shitennou on his balcony, he leaned back on the cool concrete and raised an eyebrow at him. "I just don't think you will."
"Why do you want to trust me?" The question was baffled but suspicious as Zoisite adjusted his long hair again, a hint of outright annoyance in his voice.
Mamoru looked back inside, to the dark-haired girl sleeping on the second futon. "I trust Sailor Moon."
"I would say maybe you're a little misguided after meeting her Terran identity, but…I think I know what you mean."
The quiet confusion in his voice spoke volumes to Mamoru, who said in a low voice: "You're not what you were. Even I can tell that."
Hopping down from the ledge, Zoisite stretched his lithe body, silk moving easily over the slender limbs. "Looked long and hard, have you?"
Vaguely uncomfortable at the show Zoisite was apparently putting on for him, he couldn't help but look away. Several times he had garnered the impression that Zoisite had…an affection for men, but he admittedly didn't want to know about it if he really did. "…there's just something about you….like this."
"Like what?" Zoisite asked, reaching back to begin braiding his loose hair for sleep.
"Like a human." Mamoru looked at Zoisite carefully, and then shook his head in defeat. "I feel like I've known and trusted you before."
"You probably have. I think I have to point out, however, that you were obviously wrong once. What makes you think you won't be wrong again?"
"The fact you can't stop calling me Endymion-sama?"
That made Zoisite pause, even though he quickly finished braiding his hair seconds later. "Thin hope, my prince."
"It's still a hope." Watching the smaller man stride across the little balcony to the door, he found himself saying in a voice near-desperate: "Zoisite, we can help you."
That stopped him, made him turn back with a frown. "Help me?"
"If you need our help, we'll give it. We can protect you from the Dark Kingdom, if you'll help us find the princess and her crystal, and bring it down."
"You're going to bring down the Dark Kingdom?" A flash of unexpected pain darkened his eyes, but the mocking smile that crossed his face next made it hard to believe it had ever been there. "Good luck with that."
"Will you help us?" He knew that maybe he was pressing too hard on the displaced shitennou, but the thought of the princess…safe…protected…at his side with the knowledge he needed in one hand and his heart in the other…and he did not care if he pushed Zoisite hard enough to make him fall. "You…you'll be able to live free, you know. Liberation. Isn't that worth it?"
The way Zoisite held his head as he cocked it at Mamoru seemed to indicate that it hurt. "Perhaps I cannot risk becoming involved."
"I think you already are." He let a heavy hand fall on a slim shoulder, and he could feel Zoisite trembling beneath it. "Think about it. We could help each other."
Mamoru then pushed past him, disappeared inside. Left alone on the balcony, Zoisite tightened his hands into fists and willed himself not to scream. Rather, he just looked to the sky, to the moon, and cursed the bright light that made his eyes water.
Yes, I could help you…perhaps, if I ever work out who I am, what I used to be. He slammed his fist down onto the concrete, wished for the old power with which he could have shattered stone with a thought. But what I am to do with this life you offer me, if I cannot share it with the only one I'd ever throw it away for…?