A/N: I've been into a writer's block with many stories lately. With this one, what we'd need at this point would be the girls making sense of things, taking action, something. But I can't make it work. So in order not to get stuck forever with this story, I'll skip this part. I'm sorry about it, and I think it should be there, but for now, I have to do without.

I'm glad I can submit some more chapters now, you've been awesome with reviews, hope you like the new stuff too. I have so many ideas for this!

The senshi were all waiting for Ami's return in their room at Crown. They were worried already when she was late, but almost scared when she finally came in, slowly, pale, her eyes tearless and dull. She didn't look anyone in the eye, just let herself hesitantly down on her chair.

"I'm a horrible person," she said meekly, her gaze on the table.

"Ami-chan!"

"Am I really so selfish?" she asked. "Is it my fault he is like that? Do I manipulate others? Just for attention?"

Usagi and Makoto quickly reassured Ami of how wrong that was, how ridiculous, but she didn't seem to hear them.

"Come on, Ami," said Minako. "You can't believe a word of what Kunzite says. He just wants to make you feel bad about yourself so he can shove you around."

Ami shook her head.

"It wasn't Kunzite who said that. It was Jadeite."

(Here belongs the part that got skipped - sorry again.)

Rei had half expected Jadeite not to turn up the next day, but he sat on his favourite bench at the cemetary, in the Shitennou outfit even, waiting for her. He looked quite grumpy.

"Jadeite, have you been mean to Ami?" asked Rei sternly.

"Yeah," he answered without hesitating and shot her a grim look.

"Why? She hasn't done anything to you."

Jadeite jerked his head to the side. "She'd better be prepared to have a lot of shit coming her way if she tries to crack Kunzite."

"What are you talking about? Why would she want to crack anyone? She only wants to clear things between her and Kunzite. Don't you think that's a good thing?"

"A good thing for her, huh? 'Give me Nephrite or I'll bring the old times down on you so hard', yeah, isn't that a good thing? Because we all know how likely it is that Kunzite will back down? Why would it ever be bad to have Kunzite fight Nephrite again?"

"What the hell is wrong with you guys? She came to offer peace and a fresh start. She didn't come to pick a fight."

"Oh, she didn't? Yeah, it must be a coincidence she comes and brings up the past now that Kunzite and Nephrite have started yelling at each other again because of her. Must be goodwill to stir up the times when they were duelling each other over her all the time. Don't give me the innocent sweet Ami-chan shit. I know what she's really like. She's pitted them against each other before, and she's doing it again."

"Jadeite!" Rei wasn't going to take this kind of talk from a guy who had told Ami to go to hell. "You're wrong! Ami is only trying to sort out things."

"She's not! And stop yelling at me!"

"Who's the one who's yelling here?" yelled Rei.

"You!" yelled Jadeite.

"But that's your fault!" yelled Rei back. "For your information, I've known Ami for a long time, and I know her a lot better than you do, and if I say she's not intending any harm to anyone you can well believe it!"

"Ha! I've known Mercury longer than you do, and you might think you know her because she gives you a lot of smiles, but I've shared a subspace dimension with her and her damn smiles, and I'm telling you, it wasn't pretty. And I've known Kunzite for thousands of years, and I'm not going to watch anyone messing him up again just for the fun of it!"

"Seriously, Jadeite, what the hell? What the hell is the problem with you guys that you can't take an outstretched hand that offers peace?"

"I don't like this kind of peace. I don't want her around."

"Did anything happen between you and Ami? What is it with the two of you?"

"Nothing. I just don't want her around Kunzite."

"Why don't xou leave th..." started Rei off to set a few things right at the top of her voice, when a sudden realization hit her, and she could only add a lame "...oh..."

"What is 'oh'?" asked Jadeite suspiciously.

"Just oh," said Rei, still somewhat surprised.

Jadeite made a face, and the mixture of guilt, pouting, suspicion and disgust on his face made Rei laugh.

"Come on, Jadeite," she grinned. "Smile for me, will you? I need to apologize to you, but I can't do that if you make such a face."

"Err... what?"

His look of confusion made Rei laugh again.

"Smile!"

He looked like he had bitten into a lemon.

"No!"

"Smile!"

"No!"

"Aw, Jadeite, come on... please!"

Jadeite frowned. "So you suddenly don't have a problem with it that I don't like your best friend?"

"I would if I was thinking this was about Ami. But it's all about Kunzite, right?"

Jadeite looked away and made another face. "What else?"

"Okay, Jadeite, listen, noone is interested to see Kunzite snap and detonate all over the place, so your attempts at babysitting him are well appreciated. Only tune it down with Ami, please, okay?"

"Hm."

"Or some angry senshi are going to teach you manners."

"Hm!"

"The first of them being me."

That at least gave him some first doubts, judging from the side-glance he threw gave him a cold look back.

"I wouldn't push my luck if I were in your place. You and Kunzite are going to hear from Usagi about this anway."

Jadeite jerked his head to the side without commenting on that.

"Hm. And Kunzite is not going to snap... I just..."

Rei sat next to him and smiled at him warmly.

"You're just worried about him?"

"Yeah."

Rei's smile grew wider. "Kunzite would be so embarassed if he could hear you."

Now Jadeite grinned slightly. "Perhaps..."

"Still it's kind of surprising that between you two, you're the mother hen and Kunzite is the little chick."

That made Jadeite chuckle to himself. "I told you. He's our little piece of fluff."

"You guys are nuts," said Rei and shook her head. She leaned back against the back of the bench and enjoyed the sunlight. This really was a place to leave all worries behind. After screaming at everyone who gave you worries.

"We need to find a better place to yell at each other," she sighed. "This yelling around on cemetaries has to stop, or we get thrown out of the place."

Jadeite shot her a side glance, but said nothing. For a while, they did their favourite thing, which was doing nothing and enjoying sun was shining, flowers were around, trees rustled in the wind, the faint sound of traffic hummed. Everything was like it always Jadeite cleared his voice.

"Ahm, thank you, by the way, for not bringing up a discussion about what Kunzite said to Mercury."

"Wouldn't dream of it," replied Rei coolly. "Didn't hear of anything worth discussing anyway. A pretty lame excuse, if you ask me. And I don't like guilt trip scenes, as you should know by now."

Jadeite smiled for a moment, but then his face turned serious again, and he looked to the ground again in the way that Rei had come to dislike.

"Please don't feel bad about the Dark Kingdom, Rei," he said. " I wouldn't have depended on you girls to leave if I had wanted to. I made a choice to stay there. It was selfish, and stupid. But I stand by it. I'm glad I made it. This new life wouldn't be possible if I had unfinished business from over there following me."

"I... I think I get the general idea," said Rei hesitating. "But it's asked a lot that we should be happy that we left you behind, no matter the personal importance. There's still a hundred things wrong with it."

"It's the Dark Kingdom. Things being wrong was the whole point of it really, or why else would we have been there?" He didn't take his eyes off the ground, and sighed deeply. Rei was a bit worried he might be heading into another flashback, but couldn't think of something to distract him.

"We failed," said Jadeite gravely. "We had sworn to fight to protect Earth. I don't know what happened back in those times. My head hurts like hell when I try to remember, and the others tell me I am better off not knowing, and that I can't change what happened anyway. But I can't help thinking that we must have botched it. That's why we got a new life of separation and misery in the Dark Kingdom."

Rei sighed very deeply. "Jadeite, could it be you're reading too much into it? You, and Kunzite, too? You could just say that bad thing happened, and you were in the middle of them. You don't have to find reasons for them to be justified. Maybe the Dark Kingdom wasn't meant to be punishment for you, maybe you didn't deserve it at all."

"Only I think I do," said Jadeite. "The prince I should have protected died. The planet I should have guarded was destroyed."

Rei frowned. "I have enough of this, Jadeite! If you are saying that the whole Dark Kingdom was meant to be, then you are saying that all the people you hurt were meant to be hurt as well, and you would lose your most important reason to be sulking, and what would you do then?"

Jadeite smiled the tiniest smile. Very well, thought Rei, at least he's listening.

"And listen, Jadeite, it was the senshi's duty, too, to guard Earth. If you say we failed, then why wasn't I there to keep you company in the Dark Kingdom? Why would the blame only be on you guys, not on us as well?"

Jadeite surfaced from the gloom of his self-accusations long enough to shoot her a side glance. "You must have done better," he said.

Rei shook her head. "The planet we should have guarded was destroyed. Twice. My princess died alone. Twice. If that's not failing my job, then I don't know what is. But suffering for it won't change a thing. What good would that do to anyone? Do you think the Earth of the past will be any happier about being destroyed from you having an unhappy next life in the Dark Kingdom?"

"It wasn't unhappy," murmured Jadeite. "Just... difficult."

"Difficult," said Rei dryly. "You called it a life of misery. But not quite unhappy, and perhaps a bit difficult?"

"Something like that."

"Jadeite, you're not making sense."

"I know. But I can't help thinking we had to go through this so we would learn from it."

"In case the destruction of Earth wouldn't be significant enough to trigger some insight?"

Jadeite smiled his tiniest smile."I'm a slow learner. I need lots of repetitions."

"Well, in that case you got at least one more destruction of Earth to learn from. I hope another one won't be necessary," said Rei.

"I hope so too."

"Well, at least we senshi are a bit faster and I think we got the message by now, so if you guys need to be taught some lessons, you only need to say the word."

"Thanks," said Jadeite gloomily.

"Please make sure to tell the other Shitennou."

"Can't wait."

Not unhappy? Jadeite, what made you happy in the Dark Kingdom?

Rei wanted to ask him, but she couldn't bring herself to say it.

She looked at him, at his profile that was so familiar to her now. The sun was making his horrible hair shine like gold. My goodness, he still hangs his head for things other people have botched. It was unbelievable how dense this boy was. In a very weird way, it was cute...

"Althouuugh..." she said slowly, in a way that made Jadeite quite suspicious. Rei ignored his questioning side glance and continued: "I kind of wonder what it would have been like, you know. Just imagine we would have done it... pulled you out from there and made you one of us... got ourselves our own little elf of goodness while Ami was doing the death fairy thing... hmmm... Sailor Blondie?"

Now every square inch on Jadeite's face tried to frown at once.

"Eew... and that's Sailor Eastern Earth if you don't mind..."

"Aw, just imagine, some daily dose of silver crystal shower..."

"Hey, that hurts!"

"... and of course a new haircut..."

"Noone. Touches. My. Hair."

"...and some changes on your outfit to make it more interesting..."

"What's there that can be made even more interesting?" gargled Jadeite horrified.

Rei was having a great time. Payback for Ami, she thought.

"Oh, I think Venus has a hand for cute outfits..."

"Aaargh no!" Jadeite gripped his head with both hands.

"... we definitely would have made you open some clasps of that damn jacket..."

"The hell you would!"

"... and of course that undershirt had to go first thing..."

Jadeite let go of his head and crossed his arms in front of his chest, shooting Rei a grim look.

"I don't think so! Shitennou garb is all or nothing!"

"Hm, now that would have made things very easy, of course... very easy indeed..."

"What?"

"These are the modern times, Jadeite. Girls have needs, too, and these days we're allowed to say so. If we had made you one of us, and good on top of it, I'm sure you would have been a lot more cooperative. To match our Sailor outfit, you would have had to go more physical. A lot. Yes."

"Hrmph! Definitely, dying in the Dark Kingdom has been the better fashion choice."

"I heard you look smashing in green."

"I look smashing in everything."

Rei grinned and opened her bag to take out the two cans of not-for-dating soft drinks she had brought.

"Haven't seen you in everything yet, so I can't confirm that really."

She handed Jadeite his drink, and he accepted it, and the silent peace agreement that came with it. He still was sulking though.

Like you hadn't brought this upon yourself, thought Rei merciless, took a sip of her ice tea and smiled at him.

"Say, Jadeite... speaking of fashion choices... Why pink? Is it because of Hanako...?"

Jadeite shook his head.

"Roses," he said. "Our personal colors are the colors of roses. Yellow, White, Red, and Pink."

"Oh..." said Rei astonished. "That's nice. I didn't know that. So roses have a special meaning for you."

Jadeite nodded, smiling proudly, something she hadn't seen on him before."It's a symbol of life, and love, and strength. Roses have amazing magical powers. Healing and Transfigurations. Kunzite is very good at it. But we all know some. And we all have the rose leaf in our sashes. We chose the rose for us because she stands for everything that we fight for, and for everything that a demon is not."

"Then why had Beryl the same rose patterns?"

"Same Earth magic as us, and same armorer. Or perhaps just going with the style of the times. It became very popular because it looked so good on Endymion."

"So you say this petals were a fashion trend on Earth in your times?"

"Yeah."

"But you hardly have any."

Jadeite grinned. "I wasn't the fashion victim that certain people were. I went for the thorn theme. A classic, plus you can catch fish with it."

Rei stared at him, not certain if he was making fun of her.

He shrugged. "I like fish. I'm good at fishing. You wouldn't believe the stuff they expect you to eat on a field mission sometimes."

Rei was almost certain he was making fun of her. Almost.

"Okay, Jadeite," she said, "One more question. I have no idea why I'm always dragged into the worst gossiping when I'm with you, and I swear I never even talk fashion with the girls, but I need to know: Your Shitennou outfit - why is it still the same as in the Dark Kingdom? Shouldn't it have changed back by now?"

Jadeite shook his head.

"It's never changed. It's the same today as in the old days and the Dark Kingdom. I don't know why."

"I can't help it, the only conclusion I can come to is that Dark Energy or not, you guys just couldn't get any worse than you already were..." teased him Rei.

"I've been thinking the same thing," he replied.

Rei didn't like that tone on him at all.

"It was a joke, Jadeite. From what I've seen, everyone has changed a lot. Especially Ami and Kunzite."

"I don't know... I'm still the same."

Now Rei had enough and rolled her eyes. "Oh please, Jadeite, not everyone is as slow as you are! And may I point out the lack of a crystal dagger aiming at my bra, and the decrease in numbers of ugly youmas sneaking around with you? I call that a change for the better."

Against his will, Jadeite had to smile.

"Oh, I see. It's dagger jokes again. Run out of tentacle jokes, have we?"

"What?"

"I guess there's only one kind of jokes a senshi of passion knows."

"What?"

Jadeite smirked. "Come on, you know what these jokes are about."

Cemetary or not, Rei shoved him off the bench.