Ok, finally, here we go. I am so sorry about how late it is, i thought now that summer was here i'd be quicker at uploading but it seems the exact opposite! I knew what i wanted but it was just getting there that was so difficult. Again, sorry, i will try to be quicker next time and . . . yeah. And yes, i know it's short!

Thanks to all of you who reviewed; you guys are really helping to keep me sane right now. Lots of upset on my end of things at present and it's kinda crazy. It's nice to hear how much you're enjoying it and everything.

And so, without further ado, i give to you my gift of the 12th chapter of Ethereal Destiny. I'm tired now. Goodnight ~Eb~

Seiya sat on his balcony again, but this time he had his guitar in hand. He was gently strumming the chords and humming a wordless song in time with the music he was creating. The dark-haired young man had many things on his mind, not the least of them Serena.

She had been a lot better lately, her smiles more genuine. At least the ones he had seen had been so. It made him happy to see her smile again, and her latest scheme, in which he had a part to play, seemed to be helping her heal as much as he was. That plan would be acted out tomorrow.

And that thought led on to his brothers. Serena's plan to play matchmaker and put them with two of her senshi was risky; the Outer Senshi wouldn't like it one bit. She risked the wrath of not only Amara, but also of Trista and possibly of Michelle and Hotaru too. Any such warning was met with the same response; "I am their princess and their leader. They may think they are protecting me, but in some ways it will do more harm than good. It's about time they began to see that. Besides, it is my job to create alliances, not theirs. What better way to create an alliance than through love?"

Just picturing the way she had looked when she said that made him smile.

Which led his thoughts now to Kakyuu. On some level he felt he was betraying her, that as her senshi his place was by her side alone. But even she seemed to be encouraging him to spend time with the Moon Princess, which he couldn't quite figure out. And she seemed so close to Serena, they were like sisters. It made him think that he was missing something.

This in turn led his thoughts to the newcomer in their midst; Feryal Makana. He knew her; she was Sailor Celestia, one of the guards of the Siriun Empress Thuraya. He knew this and he recognised her. But why was she here? Both times so far she had turned up when Darien was near Serena, when he was being manipulative. What was her purpose on this world? And if she were here, then were her comrade and her queen here too?

Seiya shook his head. Too many maybes. Too many ifs. Too many mysteries. This was as bad as when they were fighting Chaos and Galaxia; things had been just as confusing then too.

Taiki looked a little bewildered as Seiya led him up the steps to the Hikawa Shrine. The shorter young man had said only that it was important that he follow, and that was why Seiya practically dragged him by the wrist now as they climbed the stair.

"Seiya, surely this can wait?" he said, wishing he had never agreed to this.

Seiya, of course, wouldn't hear it. "No, it can't. I told you it's important. More important than . . . than astronomy homework. More important than our careers!"

This announcement caused a raised eyebrow. The only other time he could recall at the moment of Seiya saying that something was more important than music was concerning their Princess. And later, of course, Serena Tsukino. The thought almost made the brown-haired Starlight smile.

Finally they reach the top of the steps and Taiki yanked his sleeve from Seiya's grasp as the Starlight leader was catching his breath.

"I can walk, you know. I am not a rag doll." Taiki snapped half-heartedly.

Seiya looked at him, the expression in his dark indigo eyes unreadable for the most part. Taiki suspected that they contained an element of mischief. He suddenly had a slightly bad feeling about this whole venture.

"Sorry, Taiki, I know you can, it's just that this is so important that . . ." Seiya trailed off, his eyes looking at Taiki but not seeing him. He knew it was an act. Honestly, sometimes Taiki didn't know who was the bigger drama queen; Seiya or Yaten.

With a sigh, Taiki said what he thought he was going to regret. "Alright, if it's that important to you I suppose I'll do this."

Seiya broke out into a grin. "I knew you'd agree Taiki." he gave a thumbs up and then looked around before pointing him in the right direction. "Just head over there and wait under the cherry tree. You can't miss it; it's the big ancient-looking one with the red ribbon tied around the trunk and ribbons tied to the branches."

"Wait a minute!" Taiki called after him, suddenly wondering if he should have agreed at all when Seiya began to head for the Shrine rather than the meeting place he had just described.

"No worries, I'll be there in a minute! I've jut got some business to take care of first."

"What business?"

Seiya gave him a scandalised look. "Taiki, who are you? My mother? I didn't think you'd want to know. But if you must know I'm going to the-"

"Forget it! I don't want to know." Taiki waved him off with a sigh and headed over to the tree. Because of this manoeuvre he didn't notice the pleased smirk that graced Seiya's face.

Taiki was so busy trying to puzzle out Seiya's actions that he didn't notice the person sitting on the stone bench beneath the ancient cherry blossom until he was only a foot away from her.

"Oh, Amy I'm . . . please forgive me I wasn't paying attention."

The bluenette merely smiled at him sweetly as always. "It's no problem, really, I was just waiting for Serena to get back." her sapphire eyes turned from his face to the blossoms above them. "What brings you here Taiki?"

"Actually, Seiya said he had something important that he had to show me, but he's disappeared for some reason. He told me to wait for him here." and now Taiki was beginning to get more suspicious of his leader's innocence. "But I'll leave now and leave you some peace."

"No," Amy's voice appeared light but he detected a certain strain beneath the casual tone, "no, it's quite alright, and if Seiya told you to wait here for him then wouldn't it be better to stay?" she smiled at him again. "Besides, I'd like the company; Serena's been gone for five minutes now."

Taiki said nothing, though by now he had a feeling that their leaders' disappearance wasn't coincidence. He sat beside her and they spent a minute or two watching the clouds and the trees.

Occasionally he stole a sly glance at her. Amy had tilted her head to the sky and closed her eyes, a small and peaceful smile gracing her lips. Today she wore a pair of light blue jeans with a t-shirt as light a colour as the blossoms above them. A pink that was only a few shades darker than the lip gloss she wore . . .

Taiki very nearly hit himself. She had never shown any interest in him, at least . . . none that he'd been aware of. He stole another look from the corner of his eye, noticing how in the dappled light filtering through the branches her lips seemed to shimmer and -

'Bad Taiki! No more thinking of that!' He pinched himself on his thigh and winced from the pain. It didn't help that, his original form being that of a woman's, he knew about things like make-up and how to enhance one's appearance with that and the right clothes, among . . . other things.

Grudgingly, he admitted that Seiya and Yaten had been right about one thing at least; it really was the quiet ones you had to watch out for!

"So why did you return?"

Her voice startled him from his thoughts and he turned to look at her again. She wasn't watching him, instead she was staring at the sky, but he had the feeling that she was paying very close attention to him all the same.

Just like he was becoming more and more certain that Seiya had some plan up his sleeve, even if he couldn't figure out quite what it was.

"To help Seiya." he replied simply, following her gaze. "He was becoming depressed on Kinmoku," had she noticed the slight hesitation over that word? "We decided that we'd bring him back here and allow your Princess to heal him. So far it is working. He's still down, but he's nowhere near as bad as he was."

"And how bad was he?" Amy asked quietly. She hid the disappointment that she felt at his words. A part of her, that more childish part that drew to fantasy like moth to flame, had hoped that he had returned for her. But of course, Mina had told her that Seiya had been very ill and that they had brought him back to heal. Even with that knowledge she had chosen to hope for the fantasy, something that she rarely did. And as the more logical and clinical part of her had predicted, she had fallen.

Taiki's only response was a quiet "Only he could tell you."

This puzzled her, but some part of her was aggravated by his ambiguity. "So that's all you came back for?" she asked, hoping her tone was light, "For a vacation?"

As soon as the words had left her mouth she cringed. Anybody could tell from those words what she had hoped, and Taiki was a certified genius. She sounded like a desperate teenage girl and she hated it. Her eyes dropped from sky to ground as she silently chastised herself for her stupidity.

The young man, on the other hand, was watching her with something akin to shock.

But she took his silence for something else.

"I am sorry to have bothered you." she got up, eyes closed, and made a small bow to him. "I shall leave now, I have to find out what has happened to my Princess."

And that was it. She was the Senshi of Mercury again; all business and duty and none of the heart she had gained in this life.

She got a mere step away when she heard his soft-spoken voice call her name and she froze.

"Do you want the other half of the truth?" he asked. He hadn't moved from his seat on the bench, and she didn't think she'd be unfrozen from her spot for a while.

After a long pause, she drew both feet together. Not daring to look at him, staring at the ground, she swallowed and nodded.

Taiki observed this with mixed emotions. He had obviously upset her in some way and this hurt him, as did her assumption that he felt nothing for her, as though she didn't think him capable of it. He was also amused to see her struck speechless. At the same time he couldn't help but think that she simply looked so cute standing there like that.

Slowly and with a sigh – not to mention a mental punch for his thoughts – he stood up from his seat and tucked his hands securely in his pockets. He picked something in the scenery – a statue of some kind – and stared at it with a soft intensity as he prepared himself for something that, a few years ago at least, he would never have thought he would do. Ever.

"We returned to help Seiya, our comrade and sis . . . brother," he smiled a little over the mistake, "And because we found that, after a while, we had begun to miss the Earth. Kakyuu-hime also wished to return here, after all she hadn't seen much of it last time. At first we, that is myself and Yaten, had no wish to return, for we had finally managed to close old wounds and did not want to reopen them so suddenly. But then Seiya got worse."

He was aware that his tone had changed in some way, become gentler and softer, more tender, regretful.

"We decided that if we did not return soon then things would go drastically wrong. I believe Mina will have told you something of the matter." He turned to watch her briefly, and when she nodded he continued.

"At first, we thought we could handle it, I thought I could handle it. And with Seiya suddenly happy again I didn't want to complain. But the wound opened again. Kakyuu could feel the pain we felt, and she decided to do something about it."

Taiki gave a small laugh, but neither he nor Amy – not even the eavesdroppers the pair hadn't noticed yet – could tell whether there was humour in it or not.

Amy was watching him, seemingly transfixed by his words. There was some quality to his words and to his voice that compelled her to stay and listen. She resisted the urge to step nearer and comfort him in some way. But she wasn't sure what else to do. It was an unusual situation for her. So instead she listened to his words.

"It's funny, really. I think she knew from the beginning why we threw ourselves into the work on Kinmoku. Why Seiya stayed out from dawn to dusk and sometimes even longer, why Yaten was either more irritable or more quiet, why I was melancholy even by my own standards." a humourless smile made it's way to his lips. "She knows the choice that we will face in time. She faced a similar choice when she allowed us to return. Keep us or lose us. Seems simple, doesn't it. But it's not, it's really not."

Amy realised that she had been holding her breath and she let it out slowly. "What do you mean?" she asked quietly. "You are her senshi; there is no way she could lose you except through death." a fact that she was personally acquainted with herself.

The tall man's head turned sideways to look over her shoulder. "She has told us things that indicate that she could lose us by allowing us to return to this planet, but at the same time she would gain something from the loss."

Sensing that this was all he would say on the matter – in fact he didn't know much more than that – she nodded for him to carry on, her big blue eyes sombre.

"I am sorry to burden you with all of this, Amy." he said, turning to her. He looked for all the world like a person who had lost the will to fight any more. "It was not my intention, and I am beginning to have some suspicions about why I was brought here, so if you would excuse me and forget what I said -"

"What wound?" she asked. At his blank stare she added; "Why do you feel wounded?"

Taiki opened and closed his mouth several times before he was coherent enough to reply. When he did his eyes took on that wounded tenderness from before. And suddenly he felt much braver. "Because I left something here when we departed and I have no wish of leaving without it, one way or another."

She was about to ask what when she thought she recognised the intensity of his stare. He had only given her that particular look once before.

When they had stood on the school rooftop and said goodbye.

Amy couldn't speak, and then Mina's words that morning over the phone sprung into her mind; "You know, I feel as though this is going to be a very good day for you Amy. I think you're going to get something you've wanted for a long time. And you're going to love them."

Them. Not it, but them. Something you've wanted for a very long time . . .

Her mind was a wild torrent of emotions and strangled bits of thought. She couldn't think straight, not while she was trapped by his gaze. It wasn't possible. She was aware of things; she was aware that he had moved closer, and that he was still gazing down at her with that violet-blue intensity, and that he was suddenly so terribly close, and that her face was flushing and she was frozen again.

"I should be going." he whispered. His voice was thick, as though he was fighting something back. The words didn't make sense to her startled mind until he began to move again. And suddenly her body moved of its own accord while her mind was still paralysed and trying to catch up.

Taiki stood shocked as he felt her kiss him suddenly. Now he was the one trying to make sense of things. He had been walking – yes, that was it, he had been leaving – and she had grabbed him, turned him and brought his head down to hers in one fluid movement and then . . . and then . . .

For someone who claimed to be lacking in experience in this department she was a pretty good kisser.

He felt rather than saw her eyes open, her long lashes brushing against his skin ever so lightly, and she uttered a little gasp and began to pull away as though realising what she had done and was embarrassed. In fact she probably was, but he didn't care. Instead he looped one arm around her slim waist and with his other hand he tilted her chin up so that he could kiss her back.

She melted into the embrace, and they only parted when they needed to breathe again.

Gently he rested his forehead against hers and took a deep breath. "So," he began quietly. He opened his eyes and was met with twin sapphires that were usually alert but right now were misty, "Do I get my heart back, or have you taken it forever?"

Her reply was another kiss.

Slinking away much quieter than anybody would have ever given them credit for, the eavesdroppers congratulated themselves on a mission well done.

Now if only the next would go as well.