The pieces fell into place as slowly as time was occurring.
Theme: Flash (#49) – taken from 101_kisses
Genre: Drama/Angst
Rating: PG13
Jadeite paced to and fro, every note humming its way out of Zoisite's lips grating on the younger man's nerves and making him flinch with tension.
The worst part was its vague familiarity. Jadeite followed the rhythm unwillingly, anticipating the cadence of the next measure. Words danced lightly on the tip of his tongue, whirling teasingly in his mouth, perched on the verge of voice. The tip of his tongue pressed against gritted teeth, lest memory allow a lyric's escape.
He'd heard it on the bus. Those kids had been singing it, loudly, annoyingly, and with a considerable lack of consideration. Just the reminder of the last song he'd heard as a living man, as a man living on Earth made Jadeite want to strangle Zoisite with the other blonde's long girly hair.
It had been driving him crazy, was still driving him nuts, and finally Jadeite snapped.
"Shut. Up!" he hissed, twisting and breaking a stick he'd been fiddling with instead of using it to stab Zoisite in the eye.
Seconds later, after the briefest moment of perfect stunned silence, Elysion began to glow.
Not the sparkle of glitter it normally had, but like a god had turned a spotlight on them.
Everything: the waterfalls, the hills, the mountains, the temples, the trees, even Nephrite as he ran towards them yelling, "What did you do?"
Everything became awash with light. Jadeite felt his anger soothing even as his worry grew. A brief glance at the other two shitennou confirmed his personal state.
They were fading, growing translucent.
He didn't have time to ask a hopeful-faced, yet physically solid Helios what was happening, because Elysion and its winged annoyance had somehow blurred and solidified into a dark imposing room, the blank walls managing to cast shadows and hide secrets in the barrenness enclosed.
Apprehension crept into Jadeite's state of semi-consciousness. A halo of light bathed him, penetrating to the bone, but the hard unforgiving rock of a bed seeped coldness into his surprisingly substantial body. The contrast assured the blonde that he would emerge out of whatever was happening with a crick in his neck and a little worse for wear.
At the very least.
Kunzite squinted his eyes against the supernova occurring before him. 'It can't be,' he couldn't help thinking.
And yet, as he blinked through the brightness he saw it: the ginzuishou literally tear-dropping from Princess Serenity's eye.
The pieces fell into place as slowly as time was occurring.
Sailor Moon had caught Tuxedo Mask, and now Princess Serenity was holding him, crying over his prone form, weeping out crystals powerful enough to destroy the world. Sailor Moon wasthe princess, and the entire time, she'd had-
But his shield wouldn't hold with the loss of concentration. It shattered into nothingness, nearly dropping Kunzite out of the sky. He felt weakened by the sudden exposure to the light's full strength, and only Beryl's magical emergence from a sliver of darkness kept him from gravity's end.
But even as he uttered her name, in his mind's eye, he only saw three coffins standing side-by-side, full of wasted remnants waiting to be saved.
Waiting for him to save them.
Flesh crept back over the illuminated skeletal remains, filling in black eye sockets with the restful facade of dreamers. The glass coverings splintered away, as their eyes snapped open.
The darkened blue of stormy twilight. The olive green of shaded forests. The deep brown of crispy autumn leaves.
They gazed into nothingness, Kunzite's fog-tinted grey orbs lost in the past with them.
No words sounded, but intonations whispered through the darkened chasms of all their beings.
"What is this light?"
"How long have we slept?"
"What are we doing here?"
Blood pulsed strongly within their veins: their hearts renewing hard thumps, their minds reliving the past.
"We were reborn to find Endymion…"
Trance-like slumber eased away, leaving them feeling rested for the onslaught of memories that hammered upon their awakening, reverberating through the centuries.
Accusations and grievances, condemnation and betrayal, villain and friend mingled in planetary kingdoms, while barefooted senshi-princesses danced in bloodshed on the edges: fated, forbidden, forsaken.
"Our past lives…?"
"We were reborn…"
Smatterings of love and family and youth flitted briefly before their eyes.
"But before our memories returned…"
Zoisite sat straight up, the glassiness of his eyes making way for horrified clarity. Conscious though he was, he remained unaware of the leftover shards of glass that sliced straight through the uniform to embed into the flesh underneath.
The world dimmed with sorrow.
"We sold our souls."
An anguished whispered realization was all Kunzite received before his comrades' faces began melting into thick sludge, running together into bubbly bunches to glop into nothingness.
Three small stones clattered to the ground, sending sharp noises through their empty tomb, light fading as if chased away by the shame of their confession.
"They didn't make it…" Kunzite whispered to himself, distraught over everything he had lost in mere seconds. He reached for the stones, still not realizing he was not there: he could not help them.
"Now Kunzite!" Beryl ordered, her long-nailed fingers cupped as if she could summon the princess to herself with a mere twitch.
The part of Kunzite not disillusioned or confused, the part that was all instinct and survival and clear-minded, intentions be damned, the part that knew he was still in the present fighting the senshi and not in the Dark Kingdom with his long-dead shitennou – that part automatically raised a hand at Beryl's command and sent a strong blast towards the senshi, the energy powered almost purely by turmoil.
Reaching out to grab the princess, Tuxedo Mask fell into his arms instead. He backed away towards Beryl instinctively, holding the fallen man to his chest, watching the senshi deny their princess, watching the tears roll down her face.
As Beryl weaved the darkness around them, Kunzite could not help feeling a strong and fierce sense of satisfaction.
'Not this time, Lunarian.'
Helios hovered over the three prone bodies, his feathered wings fluttering with nervous energy and shifting him easily through the air. Anxiously, he waited for something to happen. They had reappeared suddenly, thrust back into the land solid and whole, but without any stirrings of breath.
Helios wasn't sure if that mattered in Elysion.
And if it did, he'd be damned if he knew any resuscitation methods for the previously dead gone dead once more.
Eventually, Jadeite's head jerked off the grass as he gasped out a mouthful of air and inhaled some more back down. Helios settled by him immediately, kneeling and running gentle hands over Jadeite's body, trying to soothe and ease him back into his Elysian state.
Jadeite gazed so deeply into Helios' sun-kissed eyes that he saw a reflection of himself, and all he could do was remember.
Fighting with Endymion. Warring with the moon. Kneeling before witches. And the devil solidified.
He stared unblinking into Helios' concern, straining to see so hard that his eyes watered.
Driving a bus straight into hell. With children. Singing a song.
He closed his eyes. A tear slipped out.
"The song that never ends."
He fell back into the earth, into a spiral of singing children and burning heels and useless minions, Nephrite's taunting and Zoisite's questions and Kunzite's silence whirling him about.
If he tried hard enough, maybe he'd forget the beautiful light and the damning darkness and the in-between that eluded him. Maybe he'd wake up without the memories of the kingdom he'd failed, of the prince he'd betrayed, of the love he'd lost.
Maybe his eyes would open and all he'd wonder was why he was in Elysion, why the winged little boy wouldn't let them go, why he was now powerless.
Maybe his biggest concern would be not knowing anything, instead of knowing everything.
Maybe it was all a dream, maybe it wasn't true, maybe it was a mistake.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…
'I didn't say it was heaven.' The reproachful words drifted into Jadeite's mind, remnants of days gone by.
Jadeite despaired.
'Then maybe it is hell.'
end