Nephrite - Napoleon ('Leo') Graham-Asquith
Jadeite - Jacinto ('Jace') Skallen
Kunzite - Cairo Roth
Zoisite - Daniel ('Danny' / 'Zeph') Zephyr
Neo Queen Serenity ('Nitty')
King Endymion ('Dimi')

"How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me."
The More Loving One, W.H. Auden

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance."
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Work Text:

Napoleon walked in and, as expected, he found his friend sitting at his desk, but with his gaze fixed on the horizon instead of the screen in front of him. "Why so melancholy?"

Jacinto looked away from the view through his window, a lazy smile on his features at the intrusion. "A man can't enjoy the approach of dusk in his own city without being accused of being sad?"

Napoleon wouldn't be fooled, but it was far too early in the conversation to directly address the real reason - and, in his opinion, a ridiculously, overly-romantic one - as to why Jacinto tended to find the time of twilight and dusk so lugubrious. "Not on his own he can't." He sat himself on the couch against the crystalline wall. "Sunsets make people feel wistful, unless you're with a woman. In that case you're too busy to notice the skyline because you're either otherwise occupied or you're busy planning how to get yourselves there."

Jacinto looked at his friend with scepticism. "Those are really the only two options? If I'm watching the sun go down on my own I'm depressed-"

"I said melancholic," Napoleon interrupted, grinning. "I think it's important to note here that you're the one who brought up depression."

"Fine," Jacinto said, correcting himself for the sake of argument. "If I'm watching the sunset on my own it's because I'm sad about something, but if I'm watching it with someone else it's because I want to have sex with them?"

Napoleon shrugged. "Common sense if you think about it. It's the end of a day, the sun is dying for the night, the colours are romantic. It's normally a thing you do in couples, right? People can't help feeling wistful if they don't have someone to share it with."

"Do you even think about the things that come out of your mouth before you say them?"

"Of course I do."

"I don't know if that makes it better or worse." He looked down at his screen and switched it off, deciding that his work was done for the rest of the day. "So if you're here with me, waiting for the sun to go down, what does that say about our relationship?"

"I don't know. What do you think it says?" Napoleon looked down at his own crotch. "Do you want this?" he asked, pointing at it.

Jacinto's face darkened unexpectedly. "As tempting as the offer is, you're married man," he said with biting sarcasm, "and from experience I can tell you that such scandalous behaviour within the Royal Guard is apparently on par with... what was it? Ah yes, bloody fucking murder. Your words, if I recall correctly."

Napoleon was unable to respond to the comment, taken completely by surprise. While it had happened a decade ago, to the very day, that event had never been mentioned at all by Jacinto, let alone discussed openly.

"Sorry," Jacinto offered when he noticed the expression on the other man's face. "I couldn't help it. I've had a few things on my mind, lately."

"So I was right, then?"

"About what?"

"My theory about sunsets. You are upset, and judging by the uh… mood you're in, the comment you just made and by the fact that the colour of the sky at this particular time of day matches her eyes almost perfectly-"

"Don't," Jacinto warned.

"-I have a feeling it has less to do with what happened ten years ago, and more to do with its catalyst-"

"I'm sorry I even brought it up," Jacinto tried in a vain attempt to get Napoleon to stop. But the broader man would not be deterred, especially considering he'd just had his own (completely justifiable) words thrown in his face.

"-a certain Senshi of Fire, maybe? One whose childish vow of celibacy has prevented you from regularly achieving pure carnal satisfaction with her for the past, what? Forty seven years? Well, five hundred and forty seven if you really want to get technical, and that's not including the time you knew her before the Freeze."

Jacinto shook his head in disgust, resenting Napoleon's brashness. "Fuck you."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Napoleon said, not taking Jacinto's venom to heart, "because you certainly aren't getting any from her."

Jacinto sighed with a sense of heavy resignation. Once Napoleon was given an inch, he'd bash through the proverbial door with absolutely no filter in place. There was no use becoming upset at what he said, he'd only use it as fuel. He looked out of the window instead.

After a moment Napoleon threw his hands into the air. "Well, that was pathetic."

The blond turned his head again. "What do you mean?"

"I came here for banter. I was expecting some kind of witty repartee and all I get is a floppy sigh?"

"I did not sigh." Jacinto could not help the small smile which appeared on his face. "I was trying to stop myself from yawning. You're boring."

"Right now you're the one who's fucking boring."

"I'm not a trained seal, I don't entertain on cue."

"Only boring people say that sort of thing. Ones who are out-bantered by their amazing friends."

"You're pulling at straws there," Jacinto got up from his chair and moved around to the front of the desk, where he leaned against it, "and we're not eighteen any more. Insults and flirtatious bullshit aren't going to make me forget my problems."

Napoleon scoffed, offering no sympathy whatsoever. "What problems do you have? You're Overseer of the Interior. Nothing fucking happens in Crys-T, it's practically Utopia. I'm the one who drew the short straw."

"You do realise people stopped using the word 'fuck' about as soon as they woke up from the Freeze, right?"

"I'm old school, and you still use 'fuck' too."

Jacinto briefly gave it some thought. "I suppose I do. You know what they say nowadays?"

Napoleon rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I've heard a few of them. None of them carry the same weight, though. Back in our day, we really knew how to curse."

Jacinto smirked. "Do you realise how old you just sounded?"

"We are old." Napoleon shrugged. "Just because we don't look it, doesn't mean that we aren't. We're the dinosaur exhibition at the museum…except we're still breathing."

"That's bleak, Leo. I wasn't depressed before, but now thanks to your helpful input, I just might get there."

"It certainly hasn't diminished your predilection for sarcasm."

"It's the most charming part of my personality."

"Well, at least you aren't sitting in a corner moping over the twilight because it's the same colour as her eyes any more, you sad fuck. Now you've got a legitimate fear to brood over."

Jacinto shook his head and laughed. "If this is your way of trying to cheer me up, you're doing a shit job."

Napoleon grinned. "I don't know what you were expecting from me, I only came down to let you know that Serenity had to cancel the dinner with all of us tonight."

"I saw the message."

"And you didn't respond to it? You never miss a chance to make Nitty feel guilty for having to fulfil her queenly duties."

"As I am sure you were able to deduce, I wasn't in the right frame of mind to reply."

"Well, snap out of it because I need you to help me get her to remorse-gift us free stuff. There's an antique leather sofa couch in the exhibit hall I want moved to my personal quarters."

"I'm sure whatever Danny said was good enough. He's never one to hold back."

"Yeah, right," Napoleon said, dismissing the dig at their fellow Shitennou. "You know Zeph has always had a soft spot for Her Majesty. He's an angel around her. And if I'm the only one who's mercilessly teasing her, then I'm just an arsehole trying to bully the most compassionate and benevolent sovereign to have ever lived. It's not funny if you're not doing it, too."

"You could just ask her for the couch."

"Where's the fun in that?" He looked at Jacinto discreetly, watching him for his reaction. "Besides, you know she loves it. And she's sensitive about these things. You don't want her to worry."

With that Jacinto made the connection, the hidden reason for the surprising and rare visit suddenly becoming plainly obvious. The ever dutiful Nephrite, he thought. "Cairo or Dimi?" he asked, referring to the two people who would have sent Napoleon to come and check up on him when he didn't respond to the group message. He guessed it was the former, since Dimi wouldn't have attempted to manipulate him into answering the Queen in order to put her at ease. His motivations would have been more altruistic than that.

"Neither," Napoleon admitted. "I came myself."

Jacinto shook his head. "It's just a message, you're overreacting. The Queen isn't going to be sitting there fretting about me not sending her a witty reply to 'Sorry, sorry, sorry guys we have to reschedule tonight's dinner '."

"Who ever said your replies were witty?"

"Our Lord and Master did, on numerous occasions. And I have it on record in a message from Nitty, too, if you want to see that."

Napoleon scoffed. "What does she know?"

"She's the reason you came to see me, isn't she?"

Napoleon shook his head in denial. "She didn't ask me to, but she does have a lot on her plate."

"Well, Leo, Nitty is queen of the entire planet. It's not exactly a surprise that she's busy."

"She'd still expect a reply from you."

"She's a big girl. And it's nearly the agreed meeting time anyway, she knows I'll have figured it out soon enough, or that someone will have told me," he said, gesturing to Napoleon and proving himself correct.

"That's not the point. It might be a good idea to acknowledge that you received it, to show that her that you're alright. You're never one not to answer a message, not unless there's something wrong."

"You're making me sound needy."

"Not needy, sociable."

Jacinto staggered and made a show of being shocked. "Was that- did you just pay me a compliment?"

"Just message her."

Jacinto waved the suggestion away. "Leave it, there's really no need. You're thinking about it too much."

Napoleon huffed, persevering despite Jacinto's reluctant attitude. "The last thing she needs is to feel the strain of our issues. She'll know what today means for you and then when she talks to Dimi about it, he'll get all-"

"Fine." Jacinto leaned backwards against the front of his oak desk and pulled up his screen again behind him, giving in and taking the easy way out of the conversation. "I'll send her a damn message."

"Good. But make it funny. And tell her I want the couch, she'll listen to you."

"No, do it yourself." He glared at him for being forced into doing something he didn't feel like doing. "Asshole."

Napoleon snorted involuntarily. "Sunsets. They bring out the worst in people."

"It's a stupid, unfounded theory." Jacinto began to type quickly on the holographic keyboard. "And for the record," he said, mid-message, "your other analogy didn't make any sense, either."

"The live dinosaur exhibition one?" Napoleon looked at Jacinto for a moment, as if he saw through his comment. "Yes it did. You know what I meant."

We're obsolete… Jacinto thought to himself, but he didn't like it. "We're not dinosaurs yet." He pressed 'send'. "There. Happy now?"

"Did you mention the couch?"

"No."

"Then what the hell did I come here for?"

Jacinto made a face like it was an obvious answer. "For my supply of alcohol and scintillating conversation."

"Just the first one," Napoleon grinned as he scratched the thick stubble along his jawline.

"Scotch, rum, port or beer?" Jacinto asked, making his way to a small cupboard in the corner of the room.

"Whisky, please." He frowned when he noticed that the large bottle Jacinto pulled out was only a third full. "You're running low. I can order another one for you, but it'll take a good few weeks, even for me. I'd give you one of mine, but I was just forced to hand over my last spare."

Jacinto nodded. "Thanks, that would be appreciated. For this evening, though, I suppose we can polish this one off." He held up two crystal glasses in his large hand. "Who took your booze?"

Just the thought of what he had lost irritated Napoleon. "Some disgusting foreign fucking diplomat who probably wouldn't be able to tell a bottle of piss from a glass of whisky, let alone a sublime twenty three year old single malt from Osaka." His face quickly turned to one of disgust at the memory of the people he had been forced to interact with the day before. "I don't want to talk about it. They're all the same, anyway. Brainless, greedy, idiot shits."

The corner of Jacinto's mouth lifted in a closed-lipped smile, a combination of disapproval and amusement. "For a man who has the most delicate job in the world, your lack of enthusiasm and political correctness is not exactly reassuring."

"They're cowards, the lot of them. They don't want our help, but they're jealous of us all the same. I can't stand these people."

Jacinto's smile turned to a chuckle at his friend's frustration. "I'm surprised that no-one's gone to war with us yet with you and your winning personality in charge," he said as he poured them both glasses of the amber beverage.

"Don't joke." Apparently, Napoleon was surprised too. "Although having an all-powerful, magic super-couple as our state leaders certainly gives them pause for thought." He was practically sneering. "We're better than them, and they know it. It's not my fault they can't handle that truth. And until they figure out how to live with us without resentment, then nothing I say will ever make an iota of difference to them. So what the hell is the point?" He took the proffered glass. "Thanks. The sooner we take over this planet, the happier I'll be."

Jacinto sipped the drink, savouring the fire it spread across his tongue. "That's not going to happen any time soon if you keep making us sound like dictators," he paused, a thought occurring to him. "Although I suppose technically we are dictators."

Napoleon tutted. "I obviously don't use the actual phrase 'take over this planet' when I'm negotiating."

"But you do tell 'didgeridoo-fucking' Australian trade ministers to go 'ride a kangaroo into their croc-infested rivers and get eaten slowly' because they disagreed with a few provisions in the draft energy trade agreement?"

Napoleon grimaced. "You heard about that?"

"Who didn't? It was not your finest hour. It even beats what you said to the Finnish last year."

"Yeah well, it wasn't just a few provisions, they were refusing to sanction the general quota reduction of the temporary power allocation we've allotted them during cases of emergency in other member states," he explained, as if it excused his behaviour. "Crys-T is fucking struggling to power East Asia by itself until it can be assimilated fully, and now we've got to send temporary power to Australasia too? And they won't agree to a reduction in power during the minute likelihood of a disaster somewhere else?" He shook his head, riled at just the memory of the last international trade session. He gulped down a large sip of his drink for good measure.

Jacinto tried to play devil's advocate for the sake of rationality. "They have a right to be scared. They're switching from fossil fuels, which have powered the world for a long time, to something which is still relatively new and terrifying, I might add, given the past experience the world has had with Crystal-Energy."

Napoleon shook his head, disagreeing. "The Freeze was a completely different set of events."

"The Freeze involved magic and the annihilation of everything they ever knew. Crystals, and the energy we now harvest from them, were the cause of it all. Not everyone is comfortable with that."

"Do you know how many people oil killed? Not even quickly, either, but slowly, sucking away the life and health of everything."

"It wasn't eighty percent of the total world population, and it certainly didn't all happen at once. People don't remember the horrors they live with when there's something unknown to be more afraid of."

Napoleon looked at him skeptically. "You think this is about them being afraid of change? That's just being naïve."

"Enlighten me, then."

"It's the complete opposite. They want to be bumped up the List of Conversion. They want change faster than anybody."

Jacinto's bright blue eyes crinkled with thought. "They're right behind the South American countries, aren't they? That means they're in the upper twenties?"

"Seventeenth now," Napoleon corrected. "Which means we'll be ready to start converting the continent fully to Crystal-Energy in about a quarter of a century. That's even before Sudan and the other countries on the African East-Coast."

Jacinto frowned. "Sudan is a lower priority for full crystal assimilation than Australia is? Wasn't it a developing country before the Freeze? I thought we prioritised through necessity, the poorer first?"

"We're officially scrapping that idea, that's what the meeting was about last week. It's more viable to do it by geographical location."

"Shit," Jacinto blinked and then took another sip of his drink. "That's a big change of plan."

"Tell me about it. Dimi's the one who's brewing that storm, but it makes sense… ask Danny to explain it to you. Or don't. It's a long, complicated and uninteresting tale of crystal growth patterns, fibre-optics and frequency waves."

"So Australia isn't satisfied with being higher up than in the original plan?"

"Yeah, which is ridiculous. Last time I checked, they didn't have starving Congolese children or Nigerian oil-shortage wars," he threw his hand up like he was tossing something away, "but they don't fucking care, they're trying to sabotage the energy trade agreement so that we can't give them a temporary source of power at all. If we leave them the way they are, they think we're going to have to fully assimilate them sooner or they'll run out of fossil fuel completely. They were being greedy and stubborn and I lost my temper." He sighed. "Remember when Australia was the cool country? With all the cricket and shrimp barbecues and cork hats and sexually attractive women?"

Jacinto ignored the urge to remind Napoleon that use of the word 'cool' had not actually been cool since the early nineteen nineties, and nodded instead.

"I used to have the patience for this kind of thing."

"No you didn't." Jacinto laughed. "I still think Cairo was on drugs when he was delegating roles."

"You're telling me. How the hell he thought I would suit this job, I'll never know. I think he chose it to spite me. Bastard." Napoleon shook his head with disbelief. "Me, watching over dealings with fucking foreigners."

"You definitely do the last part well enough." It was a deliberate barb against Napoleon for having brought up Rei at the beginning of the night. "Perks of the job?" Jacinto gave his friend a wry smile. "I hear tell that Argentinian ambassador's assistant was exceptionally pleased when she left last week."

"What?"

Jacinto swirled the liquid in his glass lightly. "Don't try it," he said without looking up. "My source is too reliable to be questioned."

Napoleon looked away, staring out of the window. "It was nothing," he stated. "We didn't-" he stopped himself, not quite able to go through with the lie. "It was nothing," he repeated instead.

"You were trying to be discreet?" Jacinto's tone was mocking.

Napoleon did not smile at the comment. "Evidently I didn't try hard enough. Shit." The last word was said in a whisper as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. Both hands clutching the glass.

"Feeling guilty about it?" Jacinto raised his blonde eyebrows.

Napoleon's face darkened as he looked back at his friend, his temper changing suddenly. "You're not my fucking priest."

Jacinto hadn't quite expected Napoleon to take the comment so personally and tried to salvage the mood. "I wasn't criticising-"

"Yes you were." He knew his friend too well to not see the hidden reproach. "I needed a fuck. She was there. That's all it was," he stated, defending his actions.

Jacinto raised his hands in peace. "You have needs, we all do. I understand that." He was quickly realising that there were a number of reasons why Napoleon had sought him out that evening, some of them more self-serving than others. He didn't need to relax his emotional shields to understand that.

Napoleon looked up. "You're not the only one with problems, alright?"

"Never said I was, but then I don't have the same obligations as you." Jacinto wasn't trying to hurt his friend, but he deliberately brought the matter to the surface, only partly because it was evident that, despite Napoleon's reluctance to show it, it was something he wanted to talk about.

The man in question risked getting fully angry. "Makoto isn't an obligation," he snapped. "You don't understand what it's like. You don't have a wife refusing all fucking forms of intimacy with you just because she's terrified of having kids that you'll outlive."

The revelation as to the root cause of Makoto's current state of introversion was not completely surprising to Jacinto, but it had never been confirmed before. It seemed the evening was fast becoming a night of confessions. "At least you have a wife," he said as he pulled out a wooden box and a lighter from his desk drawer, sensing that their conversation was going to be a long one.

Napoleon calmed down quickly at the comment, remembering that his purpose in coming was to cheer up his friend and not to air out his own grievances.

But the subject had already been brought to the surface, and since they had started opening doors usually so tightly locked up, Jacinto didn't shy away from the matter. "She's still not talking to you?" he asked.

Napoleon shook his head. "We were supposed to have dinner together last night but she didn't show, I suppose she thought it would be a bit much seeing me two days in a row. By now I shouldn't be so disappointed."

From the fact that Napoleon did not appear surprised that Jacinto didn't react to his explanation of why his relationship with Makoto was crumbling, Jacinto assumed that Napoleon must have thought it was already common knowledge. A swift pang of guilt made itself felt at not having approached his friend sooner to see if he'd needed to talk. "It's not your fault, Leo," he said, offering sympathy. "You're doing the best you can, given the circumstances."

"Yeah, well, it's not how we thought forever would be," he said as he sat back into the couch and taking another sip.

"No, it definitely isn't." Jacinto tossed his friend a cigar along with the cutter. "She's never heard of contraception?" he asked as he lit up and then passed the lighter on as well.

Napoleon took it and lit his own cigar. "It's not just the risk of pregnancy that's gotten her like this." He drew in deeply and then exhaled the white smoke before speaking again. "She's generally depressed about it, you know? We made all these plans, for years even. How many we were going to have, how many boys, girls. We'd even picked out names." He took in another deep drag, the words rushing out as smoothly as the clouded air from his lungs. "She can't even look at me if we're in the same room. I think there are times when she feels like the whole world is to blame and then sometimes she feels like it's all her fault."

Everyone knew that there had been a rift between the first couple to have been married amongst the Shitennou and Senshi. But it had been so gradual to crack and spread, and with all of their lives having changed so drastically, no one had really noticed it until it had become an unbridgeable gulf between the pair. No one had even been certain what had been the chief cause, until now at least, although most had suspected. "Has she talked to any of the others in the same situation?"

Napoleon raised his eyebrows in mock amusement. "And just who would these others be? Dimi and Nitty? Luna and Artemis? Their kids are going to live longer than we are."

"Not them." Jacinto took another drag.

"Then who? The Outers? They have Hotaru, one of their own to raise. You know who that leaves?" He left the rest of the list unsaid, knowing that he did not need to mention the obvious.

Jacinto gave his friend a sour look, acknowledging his point: Rei was going to be celibate for the rest of her unnaturally long life, the last thing on her ridiculously stubborn mind was children. Ami already had them, millions of them: they were her life's work. They took up more time than there were hours in the day for and she had little, if any time, for anything else. As for Minako... children were not brought up. Ever. Not after what the Freeze had done to her and her family.

Napoleon looked out of the window, watching the last rays of the vibrant orange sunlight as it faded into deep violet. "I don't know what to do."

"But she can conceive, can't she?" Jacinto asked. "I mean, her plumbing's ok?"

"Yeah, it's fine."

"Then maybe one day she'll be ready."

"The situation's never going to change. Our offspring are going to be mortal, that's just the way it's going to be. How can you ever be ready for something like that? Look at Cairo and Minako." Napoleon shook his head lightly. "She's lost Jace, and I don't know how to reach her."

Jacinto gave him a sympathetic smile. "I'm sorry, friend, I don't know what to tell you."

They sat in silence for a while, watching as the sky darkened to evening.

"Fucking Ami and her big mouth," Napoleon said finally.

"Come on," Jacinto said, frowning. "Tell me that you're not still angry at her."

"Always will be."

"How can you even try and blame Ami? It's not like she had any other choice. They made her check the twins the second they were born. Was she supposed to lie to all of us? To Cairo, of all people? How long would that have lasted?"

"It was the hopelessness of it all. They way she-"

"Stop." Jacinto took a puff of his own cigar. "It would have been far worse to find out after you guys had kids. And let's not forget that they would have been obliterated along with everyone else during the Freeze anyway, even if she hadn't said anything. That might have been a big clue."

Napoleon scoffed. "Trust you to jump in and defend the bitch. It wouldn't surprise me if you were still fucking her."

Despite how blatantly obvious it was that the comment was said purely to spite him, Jacinto had to hold in a breath to prevent himself from giving in to it. "It was once, you know that."

Napoleon looked at him incredulously. "You were caught once. That's not the same thing."

Jacinto he let the remark drop, unable to defend against it. "Look what losing Airi and Owain did to those two. You think Makoto is bad now, imagine how she'd have been if she'd actually had children to metaphorically bury - because you know full well what happened to those who didn't survive the transition."

"Ami could be wrong," Napoleon said, still unwilling to accept the rationality of Jacinto's argument. "Just because she spends her whole life staring at fucking computers doesn't mean that she's right about everything." Napoleon angrily stubbed out the end of his cigar in the pre-Crys-T glass ashtray on the table next to him. Even as he said it, he knew in his heart that she hadn't made a mistake, Minako and Cairo had provided them with irrefutable evidence. "How could she be so sure that every single one of our progeny would be born human?" he asked anyway, unable to settle with the rational part of himself.

"Our power comes from the past, to even have a chance for anyone else to inherit our abiliti-"

"I know, I know." Napoleon's gaze became fierce. "I get what Nitty would have to do, but come on, if she knew anything about Makoto, Ami should have told us as a couple before the others. The way she went about it was all wrong. Makoto should have been given time to process it before hitting us all with the news about the Freeze approaching."

Jacinto shook his head, unwilling to let the blame be shifted so unjustly. "You don't think she was scared, too? She found out billions of people were going to die, Minako's newborns among them. Fine," he conceded, "she didn't deliver the news in the best way possible and because of that Makoto took it far too hard, but how can you be angry at her for that? Can you really blame her for not immediately and correctly predicting the future, for not considering the aftermath in the face of approaching Armageddon? Really?"

"We lost them all anyway, didn't we? It wasn't like her rush to reveal all changed anything." Jacinto tried to speak but Napoleon wouldn't let him. "I could have helped her through it!" The blond could feel Napoleon's helplessness seep out as the pretext was dropped and the true reason for his frustrated anger revealed itself. "But she wouldn't let me… All those years of watching Makoto fall apart... Of her saying nothing while she suffered in her own stupid, tormented thoughts." Napoleon looked at Jacinto, his face sympathetic. "I love Ami, I really do, she's a sister in all but blood and I would die for her any day. But I'll never forgive her."

"You're shooting the messenger. You're looking for someone to blame when it's no-one's fault, Leo."

Napoleon shrugged, giving up the fight. "Maybe I am." He reached his hand out. "Another cigar would make me feel a hell of a lot better about it, though."

Jacinto smiled and tossed him another.

"You need to get away from here," Napoleon said after a long pause.

"What do you mean?" Jacinto picked up another cigar for himself.

"What I said. Away, as in not staying in Crys-T. A change of scenery would do you some good, maybe somewhere like Barbados, with the sunshine, or Hawaii, somewhere where you can surf again, you used to be into all that ocean-hippie bullshit." He put the cigar to his lips and lit it.

Jacinto raised his eyebrows. "It's been a long time since I've done anything like that."

Napoleon rolled his eyes. "Whatever. My point is that sitting there sighing isn't going to help your situation. You need to forget about it." He tossed back the lighter. "You and Rei, it isn't going to happen. Maybe you should try moving on."

Jacinto smiled at both the sudden switch of topic and at the impossibility of the suggestion. "I could offer you the same advice."

Napoleon blew out a puff of smoke and waved the cigar in his hand from side to side. "Can't do that. There's a difference with me. Like you said before, I'm already committed. I made that promise to stick with her, you know? Through everything."

Jacinto decided to avoid mentioning that Napoleon had also vowed to stay faithful.

"But you," Napoleon pointed with his cigar hand, "you're free and single. You can keep looking."

"For what? The love of my life?" Jacinto's lips curled with sarcasm.

Napoleon titled his head slightly and rubbed his forehead with his index and middle finger. "Maybe you'll find another, if you try hard enough."

"I don't think that's how it's meant to work."

"Says who?"

Jacinto huffed. "And then what? Get married? Outlive her and the kids?"

Napoleon didn't rise to the bait. "Then don't settle. Fuck a girl a night if you really want, just stop weighing yourself down when you don't have to."

"The way I feel isn't exactly a choice."

Napoleon gave a sigh of his own. "Maybe love isn't designed to be forever." He stood up and moved towards the window. "You mind if I..."

"Sure." Jacinto reached into one of the other desk drawers and pulled out a key. "Here." he said as he tossed it over.

Napoleon gave a small laugh. "You still keep your window locked? You think someone's stupid enough to break into the main palace of Crystal Tokyo?"

Jacinto took in a puff of his cigar, leaving it hanging in his mouth as he spoke. "Old habits, I suppose."

Once he'd turned the lock and opened the window as wide as it would go, Napoleon leaned out, resting his elbows on the ledge and taking in a deep breath. "I love the night air."

"I'm not loving the view of your ass."

"Like fuck you aren't," Napoleon replied without looking back, or changing his position. "Look at our city. If there's one thing to make the heart of a man swell, it's her." He drew in another deep puff of his cigar, exhaling slowly and watching as the air currents played with it, twisting it away. "Millions and millions of little lights flashing from here to beyond the horizon - all those bright colours, like stars." He looked up. "Just like up there." He turned back to look at Jacinto, a smile on his face. "Heaven and Earth, perfect mirrors of each other."

Jacinto joined him by the window and took a glance up at the black abyss, the lights from the city blocking out the starlight. "We can't see what you see."

"More's the pity for you, friend."

They stopped talking for a while as they took in Crystal Tokyo by night. It was moving, alive and sprawled to beyond the line of sight. People walked and ran, worked and slept, created a pulse, an energy just like any other city from before the Freeze, except the difference here was that the two men could no longer consider themselves a part of it. Instead they stood a step back, watching, ruling from on high, their unnatural life spans separating them from their own people.

"So you're getting divorced at some point?" Jacinto finally asked, breaking their reverie.

"What?"

"Love isn't eternal according to you."

Napoleon shoved him. "Marriage is. Till death do us part, and since we're living forever..."

"A hundred thousand years isn't forever," Jacinto corrected.

"Danny says that's a conservative figure, actually. He says it could be up to five hundred thousand, maybe more."

The thought didn't sit well with Jacinto at all. "What does he know?"

"As much as Ami, definitely. Probably more."

Jacinto smirked. "Care to bet on that?"

Napoleon frowned. "How do you expect to measure it?"

"See how many places have been named after them," Jacinto suggested, pulling out a handheld device from his pocket.

"Even I know that's a shitty way of gathering evidence."

Jacinto didn't care. "Loser gets to be the one to tell Cairo that Minako totalled his Rolls two nights ago."

"Fuck off!" Napoleon's eyes were wide with shock at the revelation. "The two thousand and three Phantom?"

"Yes."

"Are you fucking serious?!"

Jacinto was laughing as he nodded his head.

"How hasn't he noticed yet?"

"She covered it with a dust shield," he said as he took in another puff, "and he's been busy."

"How the hell did she manage to crash it?" Napoleon was still in disbelief. "We have fucking auto-pilot and invisible shields dividing lanes! We have com-stoppers and auto-speed reds and monitors on every corner! For fuck's sake, blind people drive! Crashing a car nowadays is almost impossible. Did something break down?"

"She was coming out of a club completely shit-faced, apparently," Jacinto said, still smiling.

"What's new?"

"I've got the surveillance video if you want to look at it later. Once she told me what happened I had to see it for myself."

"Is it hilarious?"

"Of course it is. She indicated left to change lanes, the invis opened up to let her through, and for no reason whatsoever, she swerved right instead. Drove right into the invis that separated the road from the pavement. The force was so strong part of the car crashed through and knocked over a lightpost."

Napoleon shook his head. "She couldn't drive a car back then, she definitely can't drive one now. What was she doing setting it to manual? That's for emergencies only. She should have auto-piloted."

"That's what I told her."

"And what did she say?"

"That we have privileges and she felt like using them."

Napoleon had to laugh at that. "Fucking Minako. That girl's got balls."

"Bullshit she does. She's forcing me to tell Cairo that his antique, pre-CT, luxury, petrol engine Rolls Royce, is now a pile of shitty scrap metal and burnt leather."

"Ah, fuck! The real fucking leather!" Napoleon had forgotten about that. Killing animals for food or their hides had been banned as soon as cloning technology had advanced enough to make suitable meat and hide substitutes. Neither were ever quite as good as the originals though, and any products leftover from before the Freeze which contained the latter tended to skyrocket in value. "Let's change the subject before I actually get depressed."

Jacinto smiled and flicked through his handheld device. "There are..." he tapped a few things before he came up with an answer, "seventy eight thousand, five hundred and sixty three locations, buildings, institutions and businesses named after either 'Daniel Zephyr' or 'Zoisite'."

"Is that global?"

"What do you think? And now," he tapped on his handheld again and then suddenly smiled. "Yes!" he said, shoving the mini-computer into Napoleon's face. "One hundred and sixty four thousand nine hundred and ninety eight for Ami Zephyr, and that's not even looking at the name 'Mercury'."

"All it shows is that she's more popular than he is." Napoleon was pissed off now that he had lost. "It doesn't make her smarter."

"You're telling Cairo about his car."

"Fuck no. It was a shitty bet and I still think I'm right."

Jacinto was not going to let him back out, not when the task at stake was so unpleasant. "Maybe you are, but you agreed to the rules. You're not getting out of it, you're honour bound."

"Fuck you," Napoleon muttered before throwing his head back and silently cursing his own stupidity. Cairo was going to be beyond furious when he told him, and he was going to have to bear the brunt of the initial wrath. He considered telling him in a public place so he couldn't destroy anything, but then abandoned the idea, deciding that it wouldn't matter anyway. Cairo could be an unusually patient man. He had an uncanny ability to contain his rage until he felt it was appropriate to release it, waiting, letting it build until he decided it was the right time to let loose on some poor, unsuspecting victim - and that poor, unsuspecting victim would inevitably be the messenger, i.e. him, since there was no way Cairo would go near Minako, especially not to yell at her. He started contemplating how he could convince Endymion to do it instead.

"So love isn't eternal?" Jacinto asked, going back to their previous topic of conversation. "How does that work? It lasts for long enough to help the average person procreate and then what? It dies when they do? How long do you think that is? Fifty years? A century? And if we live longer than the average lifespan, what does it do then? Disappear? You think love can do that? Just disappear because it's time has run out?"

"I fucking hope so, between your constant pining and my wife's descent into becoming an emotionless and completely unreachable ghost of a person, I don't see the point. It's just suffering. I'm sick of suffering, aren't you?"

"We all are."

"Yeah, no joke. Cairo may look like he's a fucking machine, but he feels the exact same way. I can see it in his eyes. I don't need your power to see that. He wishes he could stop loving her more than anything else on this Earth."

The corners of Jacinto's mouth lifted slightly. "Well, now we know she's not as over him as she makes people think she is. As if that wasn't obvious anyway."

"She didn't have to crash the fucking Phantom to do it, though."

"No."

"Fucking Minako and her driving." Napoleon shook his head. "What a waste."

"Her or the car?"

"Both, I suppose. The kicker is he'd probably take her back. No matter what she does to him, if he thought she was serious, he'd accept her back, no questions."

"And you wouldn't?" Jacinto asked, not believing for a second that Napoleon would have had any more of an ability than their Kunzite to resist the Senshi of Love and Duty if he had been in their leader's shoes.

"Not a chance." Napoleon laughed mockingly at the very idea. He stopped when he saw that Jacinto was looking at him like a crazy person. "Ok, maybe I would. She is the most fuckable woman I have ever laid eyes on."

"Oh you noticed that, did you?"

"Well yeah, there's no denying that, but she's the worst kind of woman."

"We all have our opinions."

"I mean it as a fact."

Jacinto was curious how Napoleon was going to explain his ludicrous statement. "How do you figure?"

"She believes that has more problems than anyone else, for one, and she carries them around with her."

"But doesn't she?"

Napoleon explained it to him. "Was what happened to her tragic? Yes, epically so. No one deserved the pain she went through, especially not one of us, but she was not the only one to lose people in the Freeze."

"I don't understand how that makes her such a terrible person to date."

"Well, secondly, she thinks she's better than us for what she does but at the same time she doesn't think she's good enough for anything, and that's a breeding ground for unhealthy head space. The weight on her shoulders has destroyed her. She's broken goods, Jace."

Jacinto let out a laugh. "Who isn't?" He wasn't learning anything he didn't already know.

"Yeah well, this particular woman intentionally fucks with you just to push you away, but she's always hoping that you'll come back for more. In fact, she's counting on it, and did you notice that any time Cairo has gone back to her, he's come out of it a little bit closer to being the cold bastard he was back in the Silver Millennium. That woman's not worth the mental anguish she causes, I don't care how bendy she is or how wonderful a person she used to be."

Jacinto looked at his friend with a sort of amused amazement. "Some girl seriously pulled a number on you."

"Pot calling the kettle black there, friend."

Jacinto raised his blond eyebrows and tilted his head slightly once. "The difference is, Rei is worth the mental anguish she causes." He paused for a second as he thought about it. "At least she would be if she would just let me slip it into her once in a while. I could fucking rock her world."

Napoleon started laughing out loud and shaking his head. "Usually you're so poetic when it comes to your supposed soul mate."

"You try going half a century not getting laid by the woman you want."

"Looks like I'm heading in that direction with the way things are going."

"So tell me about the one before. The woman that gave you all this insight, the one that wasn't worth the mental anxiety."

Napoleon smiled. "I barely remember her." He laughed, looking down at his feet as he shifted his weight from his right to his left leg. "But she was crazy. An absolute wreck of a person, poor thing."

"Was she amazing in bed?"

"The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice, as Danny used to say." Napoleon's mood suddenly deflated. "Makoto was the sweetest thing I'd ever met, nothing like anyone I'd ever been with, you know? Kind, whole, strong willed... When I found out she wanted to try, to see if we could make it work this time around, I felt blessed. She was good for me."

Jacinto smirked. "Yes, I remember. She was all you talked about for months. You were irritating, to say the least. We often discussed duck-taping your mouth shut while you slept and other such things when you weren't around. Some were pretty creative."

"Nice." Napoleon's lip had curled up with a look of annoyance. "It's wonderful to see how my closest friends celebrated my happiness."

"We could have abandoned you completely," Jacinto pointed out. "Zephyr seriously tried to convince Dimi to do it, you know."

"I almost wish you had. Up until the Freeze we were blissful. I never expected for her to have even considered being with me, you know? Much less marry me, I mean, especially after Rei- you know..." he was reluctant to continue his sentence.

Jacinto was not, the memory of those days still stung vividly and when he spoke, his voice was peppered with bitterness. "What? After she tore my heart out when I told her that I loved her? After I lost all dignity begging and crying for forgiveness she wouldn't give? After she ruined me, body, mind and soul, so that no-one else will ever compare?"

"You're painting a pretty pathetic picture of yourself."

"You should take a look in a mirror."

Napoleon took in a deep breath. "I suppose I should be thankful for the years I've had with her." He hung his head and closed his eyes.

"She's not dead, you know."

"I've seen her for about two weeks this year if you add it all up." Napoleon threw his cigar butt out into the night, knowing that a cleanerbot would probably find it and dispose of it properly in less than a minute. "She deliberately avoids me. I try to talk to her and she won't listen. She doesn't pick up her com when I call, she doesn't even come to meetings if I'm on the attendance list. I'm lucky if I go to bed and she's in there, even then, I can barely touch her. She won't let me help her." He looked helpless. "She's stopped cooking and training completely; she doesn't do her hospital runs; she's not even working properly anymore. Apparently Rei, Nitty and Michi have been covering most of it."

"What does she do all day?"

"I've heard she spends her time in the Royal Botanical Gardens. She just... wanders around. All day. Staring at flowers or the glass ceiling or ants and shit. I don't know."

Jacinto nodded. "Have you considered talking to her there? Somewhere where she's comfortable?"

"I don't want to chase her away from the one place she seems to be happy in. If I started going there, she'd stop." His fist clenched. "It's like she's punishing me."

"She'll accept it one day." Jacinto patted him on the back. "She'll forget what could have been or should have been and she'll remember what she has." Napoleon looked at him like he didn't believe a word of what he was saying. He kept talking anyway. "She'll come back to you, she just needs time," he put his glass down on the desk and picked up the bottle, twisting it open and offering it to Napoleon, "which, fortunately for us, is something we have a lot of. Another drink?"

"Yes! Fill the fucking glass." Jacinto did as he was asked and Napoleon waited until he had finished before continuing on. "Why does she need children so badly, anyway? Was I not enough for her? Was what we had so unimportant?"

"Hell if I know, you're asking the wrong person. I'm the last man to figure that one out."

"Why are women like that?" Napoleon asked, continuing his soliloquy. "They need so much! What more can I give her? She has all of me!"

"Like you said, these particular women are all broken goods. Sometimes you just can't fix them." He took a small sip of his own drink.

"This is a ridiculous reason for her to be like this, you know." Jacinto was quiet, letting his friend rant. "I mean seriously, every other person we've cared for has died, and yet we move on. We don't even have fucking kids and already she's mourning them." Napoleon let out a sigh. "She always thought they were the meaning of life, you know? That's what you're meant to do, raise children. I see it in her, she feels useless, like there's nothing left for her in this world."

"Women all think differently, they have each have different priorities. I don't think you can really tell her if what she thinks is right or wrong."

"What's the good news?"

"I suppose in the end, they need us just as much as we do them. She'll come around."

"I'll believe it when I see it happen. Women can hang on to a lot of shit."

"That's true. Rei still thinks it's a good idea to be celibate." Jacinto swirled the amber liquid in his glass. "There's no reason for it, really, other than the fact that she's the most stubborn person I've ever met."

Napoleon eyed him up. "It was a vow, you know. Those things are meant to be kept. She doesn't have much else of her past to hold onto."

Jacinto frowned, he knew it was true but he was annoyed that Napoleon was sympathising with her. "You called it childish earlier."

"I still think it is, but she made it. It's been done and you can't blame her for sticking to it, no matter the reason."

"You haven't exactly kept up all of your vows, either."

"Hey, my heart's never wandered."

"Your dick has, though." Jacinto let the remark slip out of spite.

Napoleon knew why his friend was suddenly on edge but he let out a comment of his own, anyway. "At least I didn't fuck another Senshi. That was a line you weren't supposed to cross."

"Back off with that, already!" He couldn't help the outburst, despite the transparency of Napoleon's intention. "You don't know what happened! Ami was having trouble dealing with Zephyr," he explained, "and Rei… she just has this ability to… to twist the knife into you so fucking deep." He looked down into his drink, as if the memories hurt him. "You're a lucky son of a bitch, you know that?" he said eventually. "No, you couldn't know. You have no idea. You got the best one out of them all." He laughed and corrected himself. "Well, the most normal anyway."

Napoleon took a good look at Jacinto's face, his temper having dissipated at his friend's pitiful state. "We were all normal at some point. Minako was great until she cracked and decided to pull a permanent Lindsey Lohan."

"Lindsey who?"

Napoleon didn't say anything for a moment as he assessed whether Jacinto was kidding.

Jacinto couldn't understand what he'd said to be stared at. "What?"

"Are you telling me you don't remember her?"

"I gather she was also a former child-actress turned superhero who ruined herself through excessive drinking and partying after she helped establish a world-changing city and watched her loved ones die in front of her as a result?"

"How the hell do you not remember her?" Napoleon looked at his friend with sheer disbelief. "You used to make fun of her every time you saw her on the news."

Jacinto was still drawing a blank. "It was over half a millennium ago, I can't remember every person I mocked."

"You're useless."

"I remember Al Pacino, the Marx Brothers and Beyoncé, they're the important ones… and Willem Dafoe. He was cool."

"Willem who?"

Jacinto smiled. "Now who's useless?"

"Fuck off, I didn't spend my university years sitting around all day complaining about how everyone else's knowledge of the film industry was woefully inadequate."

Jacinto laughed. "I wasted a lot of time watching a lot of shit," he admitted.

"It made you interesting," Napoleon said. "And you enjoyed it. There's nothing wrong with that."

"We've changed, Leo. I don't think I'd recognise myself if I went back to before the Freeze."

"That's meant to be part of life, isn't that what they say? Change is good, right?"

"Makoto was happy back then," Jacinto noted. "Not all change is good."

"No, it isn't," Napoleon said quietly.

"Rei wasn't so malicious," Jacinto added after a moment's contemplation.

"Really?" The tone in Napoleon's voice was dubious.

Jacinto gave out a small grunt. "Maybe she was, at least she was after she figured out who we really were; before that she was great around me."

"I was nicer. Remember that?" Napoleon nudged him. "Remember when I could actually tolerate people for longer than a minute?"

"I have noticed that you've gotten a little testy in your 'old age'." Jacinto used his fingers for quotation marks.

Napoleon nodded. "I fear I'm becoming the Howard Hughes of Crys-T."

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you about that. I got your memo a few weeks back, you've made it official policy now that you don't shake hands with people?"

Napoleon didn't deny it. "It's just becoming difficult. It's an odd sensation, you know? Making physical contact with a person and not feeling the same kind of energy flowing through them as you have."

Jacinto frowned. "You find that weird? That reciprocal energy isn't supposed to feel normal, that's what distinguishes us."

"Well to me it feels strange not sensing it. It's like they're all dead. I can't smell their energy, I can barely feel anything with them."

"But you'll fuck them?" Jacinto reminded him, still not understanding.

"That's different." Napoleon was serious. "That's to satisfy an urge and even then I keep it to a bare minimum. I don't make a connection with any of those women, I don't feel the same way as I do when I'm with Makoto."

"You feel that way because you love her," Jacinto tried.

"That's not the only thing. Humans are fundamentally different from us, don't you sense it? Don't you feel like something is missing with them?"

"I do feel that they're different than us, but it doesn't upset me."

"Well it does me."

"We're all human. Other people aren't lesser beings just because they don't have the same powers as we do," Jacinto was beginning to wonder if he should become concerned.

"I didn't say that."

"No, but you sound like you're becoming xenophobic of your own people."

"They're not my people," Napoleon stated firmly. "The Shitennou and Senshi, Dimi and Nitty, you're my people. This place…this-" he gestured to the surrounding city, "this magnificence that we're creating, it's not for us, we're just the architects. It's our labour of love but we can't live in it. We're not a part of it and I suppose I'm feeling that drift away from them already. It's depressing, I don't like it, so the less physical contact with them, the better."

Napoleon was not the only one to feel that way, but no-one had dared say it out loud before. Jacinto swallowed heavily, deeply unsettled by the truth of it, his own deep, hidden thoughts just as dark.

"Give us a few more centuries. Once this planet is fully assimilated, this palace will be nothing more than a museum to them, maybe a temple if we're lucky," Napoleon said. "They're not going to need us anymore, they'll want real elections, people just like them to rule. People who will be able to 'understand' who they are and what they want. We'll lose touch with them, hell, they might even fear us."

Jacinto deliberately relaxed his guard in order to channel what his friend was feeling, dismissing his own discomfort in favour of mirroring Napoleon's conviction. "Until they'll need us to save them from something," he admitted when he felt more comfortable.

Napoleon agreed. "A deus ex machina, that's all we'll be."

"That's all we've ever been, if you think about it. We come in and save the Earth in its most desolate hours."

"Or destroy it," Napoleon dared to say and then wondered if the alcohol was affecting him enough to make him loose-lipped, or if he'd just been desperately looking for an excuse to to talk to someone about it.

"Even then," since Napoleon was in the mood to make daring statements, Jacinto felt he could air his own as well, "I wonder if that wasn't what we were put there for."

Napoleon gave him a side-long glance. "Don't ever try telling Cairo that."

"I'm not suicidal," Jacinto said. "Not yet, anyway," he added as an afterthought.

"Look what happens to us though, in between all the saving we're meant to do. We wait and we self-destruct." Napoleon smirked. "Remember Cairo before the Freeze? When he wasn't such a shit-scary terror."

Jacinto nodded. "And Zeph wasn't so obsessive about his work," he laughed. "Isn't that something? I miss him being such an asshole."

"Oh, in a way Danny's still the same arrogant little shit, you just don't see enough of him to notice."

"Yeah well, I burnt that bridge pretty thoroughly."

"You did fuck his wife."

Jacinto stood up from leaning on the window ledge. "Third time's enough!" he exclaimed, although by that point the anger had all but dissipated.

Napoleon even chuckled. "You brought it up this time."

"Well you didn't need to continue." Jacinto downed the remainder of his glass in a large gulp. "They were separating!" he burst out after a brief moment of silence. "He didn't have the right to get so ridiculous over it."

Napoleon repeated his point, hoping it would help his friend understand. "Jace, you fucked his wife. Do you get it?"

"So? How many other men's wives was he fucking when he was with Ami?" he brought his cigar to his lips, but stopped in favour of adding another point to his argument. "Why did he get to be the victim?"

"Because he didn't cheat on her with one of our own."

Jacinto dismissed the idea as stupid with a grunt and a wave of his hand.

"Those people out there, they're not us, they come and they'll go just as easily."

"Is that what you tell yourself to feel better about what you do?" Jacinto asked as he took a long drag from his cigar.

"Don't even try and compare the two. You messed with his soul mate, you know that. You really don't need me to tell you the difference."

"Cheating is cheating."

"Agreed, but cheating with one of us is…" he was momentarily lost for the right word, "it's a fucking betrayal."

"Why?!" Jacinto demanded. "Why is it so unreasonable? Who else understands us better than our own?"

Napoleon sighed. "That's what makes it so terrible. You should have known better."

Jacinto went quiet. He looked out into the night as if he was debating whether or not it was a good idea to tell Napoleon something. Eventually he turned to his friend, his blue eyes slightly glassy from the alcohol and the smoke. "I don't regret it, you know. I mean, I know it was a mistake," he added the last part to stop Napoleon from interrupting, "but I don't regret what happened."

That made Napoleon angry. "Well, you fucking should. You ruined a lot of good shit."

Jacinto shrugged. "Zephyr deserved it. You don't know how he hurt Ami when she found out he was fucking around. And Rei?" He shook his head. "At least I got her to feel some of the pain she'd been inflicting."

"It fucked up any chances you had with her."

Jacinto looked at him incredulously. "Like I had a shot in hell with her before? The only difference now is that it's actually sunken in that I don't have a chance, and she's stopped being so vindictive over the past."

Napoleon scoffed. "You think what you did helped the relationship between you two?"

The anger was beginning to return. "What fucking relationship?! At least now she's civil. At least now…" he stopped himself for a moment, controlling his temper. "At least now when she looks me in the eye, she understands the pain that she puts me through every fucking day."

Napoleon sipped his whisky and watched Jacinto for a few seconds. "You can be just as malicious as she can."

"I didn't mean it earlier." Jacinto put his glass on the window ledge and used his hand to rub the tiredness from his face. "She's not malicious."

Napoleon laughed. "She can be very-"

"She's not," Jacinto interrupted. "She's stubborn and hurt. It's not malice. She doesn't forgive, that's all it is. You could count the people she really trusts on one hand." He looked at Napoleon. "And you're one of them, you lucky son of a bitch." He smiled. "I think I've called you that once already tonight."

"You have."

"I love her, Leo, and she knows it more than anything else on Earth," he took in a deep lungful of the air, "and it doesn't make a damned difference to her."

Napoleon couldn't help feeling a little guilty. "I'm sorry I get along with Rei and you don't. If I could help, I would."

"Yeah, I know."

"She does love you," he tried.

Jacinto gave him a smile and a pat on the back in thanks. "She hates me more," he said.

The two stopped talking for a while, both contemplating their own issues, each leaning on either side of the window and staring out into the cool night air.

"I almost feel like we were back in time right now, you know? Before the Freeze."

Jacinto looked at his friend and took another careful sip of his whisky. "Yeah?"

"Yeah, except for one thing."

"The noise?"

Napoleon pointed at Jacinto, acknowledging that he'd gotten the right answer. "The noise," he repeated, "or rather, the lack of it. The city's a great, silent light show. No rush of engines, no honking, no yelling, no sirens. Civil people and quiet hums." He looked down at his glass and took another gulp, swallowing it down slowly. "This goes down very smooth," he said, "doesn't burn at all." The thought of having no more bottles of his own making him resent the diplomat who took it all the more.

"Do you miss it?"

"The noise?" Napoleon questioned. At Jacinto's nod he continued. "No, why would I do that?"

"Some people think it's boring."

"I've been to places which still use fossil fuels, the ones that haven't been able to convert yet." Napoleon sneered. "The air chokes you, you can feel the filth coating your skin and it's horrible. You breathe in sickness and the whole city tastes vile. I don't know how we managed to live on a world like that, where thousands of people died every second for no reason other than our own senseless stupidity." He took another sip. "Let them think this city is boring. They're the idiots who don't deserve to be here anyway."

"Isn't it your job to convince them otherwise?"

Napoleon shrugged. "Do you miss it?"

"A world of destruction? Are you kidding?" Jacinto shook his head. "I believe in what we're doing, even if it means that we have to sacrifice for it."

"As sacrifices go, we're getting off pretty damn lightly, to be honest." Napoleon had had enough of their depressing conversation and sought to turn it around; the original plan, after all, had been to cheer up his friend on the anniversary of one of the worst days he'd ever had. "I mean, sure, we've outlived everyone we've ever loved and cared for, with the exception of a select few, of course."

"Oh, of course."

"And yes, granted, those that are with us seem to be drifting away and are becoming cold shells of their former selves."

Jacinto watched as Napoleon carefully took the last sip of his drink. "I fail to see how we've 'gotten off lightly'."

"Well," Napoleon paused for a moment, savouring the aftertaste. "We're technically kings of the fucking planet for one. At least, in name we are. That's not nothing, right? We get to drink for free, eat for free, live in a giant crystal palace... We're invited to all the best venues, we basically have free run of the whole world..."

Jacinto chimed in for good measure. "We get to serve one of the best men creation has ever offered, we get superpowers, we're devilishly good-looking and we have our health."

Napoleon smiled broadly. "Hell, we're going to live forever."

"Five hundred thous-"

"It might as well be." Napoleon cut Jacinto off quickly before he could repeat his correction about their lifespan. "We're practically invincible. Do you realise the last time I had a cold was back in nineteen ninety nine?"

Jacinto lifted his eyebrows. "Are you serious?"

"What?"

"You remember the year you last got a cold?"

"Of course I do, my aunt thought it had something to do with the Millennium Bug. She thought it was some sort of virus sent from the Soviet Union to destroy the west." At Jacinto's look and confusion, he clarified. "She'd taken a lot of LSD in the sixties. I missed a great Christmas party because of that stupid cold. She locked me in the spare room for a week and refused to let me eat anything but her bone-marrow soup, except that buying bones like that had become illegal because of mad cow disease, so it was just hot water with vegetables."

Jacinto shook his head with a smirk on his face. "You rich people were nuts."

"She was one cracker of a lady, though." Napoleon took a sip of his drink.

"You know David Cone threw a perfect game for the Yankees in nineteen ninety nine."

Napoleon rolled his eyes. "You don't remember the slutty redhead who was in the tabloids practically every day but you remember baseball stats, you can't call Danny boring."

Jacinto laughed at his audacity. "You realise that you watch cricket, right? A sport that makes watching Cairo as he signs documents look exciting?"

"You shut up with your blasphemous talking right now."

"Me not getting to say it out loud changes nothing." He went to retrieve the whisky bottle from the desk. "Shall we finish this off?" he asked.

Napoleon handed over his glass. "What do I do, Jace?"

"About what?"

Napoleon threw him a look that told him to be serious.

Jacinto shrugged as he poured the remained of the whisky out into both their glasses in even amounts. "There isn't much you can do, really. Except wait, and hope she comes to her senses."

Napoleon shook his head. "It fucking hurts."

"Tell me about it."

"How do you handle it?" Napoleon raked a hand through his dark hair. "How can you just sit there and let yourself burn away for her?"

Jacinto thought about his answer as he gave Napoleon back his glass. "She may think she's enough without me, but I know that I need her." This time it was Jacinto's turn to take a large swig from his drink. "I'd rather sit here pining after her like a pathetic loser than live my whole life without having loved her."

Napoleon looked at him seriously for a moment. "That doesn't help my situation at all. I was looking for something more constructive."

"It's been over five hundred and forty seven years and I still have yet to take my desired woman down to pleasure town. I've not gotten very far."

"To be fair, we were sleeping for about five of those centuries."

"It's still a shitty record. The best method I've found so far is this: you live with the pain and you bitch about it to your friends every year or so."

"Let's not forget the frequent fucking of inferior copies."

"No, we can't forget that."

"Don't you wish you didn't have to?"

"What? Fuck inferior copies? Yes, fucking the original would be nice once in a while."

Napoleon ignored the joke. "I meant caring. Don't you just wish that you could just switch it off and you could stop caring about her?"

Jacinto shook his head. "You really believe that whole 'love isn't meant to last for more than the lifespan of the average human' bullshit you spluttered out earlier?"

Napoleon smiled. "No."

"We're all suckers for pain, every last one of us." Jacinto raised his glass.

Napoleon clinked it with his. "Fucking women and their wily, womanly ways."

"Not to mention the perpetual state of anguish they leave us in."

"Fuck yes, friend." At Napoleon's statement, both men took long swigs of their drinks.

"Fuck yes, friend." Jacinto repeated and smiled contentedly. "Fuck yes."

They leant against the window in silence again, enjoying their rare night of companionship and shared angst. Below them, the silent city moved on.