716/Freed From the Lies

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Freed From the Lies
Date of Scene: 13 December 2015
Location: Dark Kingdom
Synopsis: Content warning: AWFUL Wherein Mamoru breaks, and so, too, does a tethered mind.

Dark Endymion arc begins; concurrent with When You Are Lost and I Am Gone.

Cast of Characters: Mamoru Chiba, Kunzite
Tinyplot: Consign Me Not to Darkness


Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Empty.

There's mild surprise when Mamoru begins to come around, because at the very end of the fight, he thought he must have been dying. Does it mean he won?

No: he's empty. A quick self-analysis, done by a vastly more detached version of himself than the one that takes over in emergencies, reveals that he cannot feel where Usagi is, has no awareness of the one person--

"For eleven years I've dreamt of her. She was there for me, she played with me or held me if I was hurt, she told me stories I don't remember, she listened. She kept me company for all the years I was alone, and if not for her, I'd be as much of a mess as most kids my age who grew up the way I did."

"Your smile isn't a dream, a ghost from dreams I thought were the only real thing in my life. You found me and woke me up. And I don't want to go back to sleep, Usako. You make me feel real, care more than I've ever cared before. It's wonderful to be with you."

--the two people who have ever made him feel real. There's nothing to remind him of who he is now. He's who he was three years ago. He's who he was eleven years ago. He has a name that was told to him, and--

That's not true. She helped him open his eyes. He can't feel her, but she's still out there. And so are all the friends he was able to make because of her. They'll find him, somehow. They'll figure out he's gone, even if-- even if that thing that looks like him--

And he's not alone, is he? There's a ghost of a link there, isn't there? And there's a hand on his arm, solid, real, heavy. Everything hurts, everything is chilly and wrong and he can't feel her and he can't feel the Earth's heartbeat, but he's not alone, and there's a connection to someone...

...he opens his eyes, Earth-blue and exhausted and dull and unsettlingly canny despite it, and he has no magic and no defenses. And he sees

"Kunzite."

Confirmation: he didn't win.

Kunzite has posed:
Chilly and wrong, but not frozen. The ice that bound him before is gone; there's not so much as damp patches on his clothing. Whatever happened to it, it didn't do anything so mundane as melt.

But the stone is cold beneath him, and not in the reassuring way it should be; and the air is touched with a subtle strangeness, even to feel and to breathe, even before the sight of the walls that are never quite still.

Kunzite himself sits silently and straight, gray and white and that out-of-place band of black, and even the voicing of his name does not make him so much as turn his head. There's a disconcerting sense in which he might be part of the dais, as much stone as the surface Mamoru lies upon. A sculpted outcropping of it. In which case, his hand on Mamoru's arm might be as effective as a restraint as the ice ever was.

He doesn't answer. It's not entirely clear that he's bothering to do anything so mundane as breathe.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
He has no magic left: only enough to breathe, to live. Nephrite had seen it before. Kunzite has seen it before. Dr. Iris Shelby took note: the boy has less magic in his linker core than the average citizen of Tokyo. He has precious little strength, energy; even if Kunzite weren't holding his arm, odds are not in his favor for being able to get up, nevermind attack or attempt to escape.

Though-- it's almost certain he'd find a way if Usagi were here.

But the hearth is cold and the house dark, there in the bleak midwinter.

There is a different kind of strength he owns, older than he is by far. Ancient and unyielding as mountains, something that was there before he ever met her in either life-- that which initially drew her to him. That's what he finds when he sifts listlessly through the ashes, that's what warms his hands with something that could burn anything it touched, if it wanted to. It never wants to, not on its own.

"Kunzite," he says, and it's sharp. "Look at me."

Kunzite has posed:
To that there's an answer. It's just not one that breaks the silence; Mamoru's words are the only ones spoken, still. Kunzite turns his head. Not much. Enough to let grey eyes shift, regard Mamoru sidelong. No expression on his face. No emotion behind his eyes. Nothing but that calm, and the sense that what lies behind the calm might be as distant and as blank as what he's showing. Whether that's condition or policy -- is never easy to tell.

But there's this: there was no delay between the spoken sentence and its response. No moment of consideration, no lingering sense of amusement or scorn. Heard and answered. Nothing else.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's a start.

It's a horrifying start, but it's a start.

"Tell me what you're going to do to her with that thing. And then tell me what you're going to do to me," Mamoru says, and it's no longer sharp, but there's no question that he's expecting Kunzite to answer. He's running on fumes and leaning on-- something-- and it's not with his power that he wraps himself around that ghost of a link next to the raw gaping wound that was Usagi's. It's with his life.

And he's thinking. He's thinking, ceaselessly. It's the one weapon he has left, his mind. He's not actually capable of dealing with any of the emotion involved in any of this, not right now. He's too tired, and if he let any of it creep in, he'd panic again. That's not useful. There's only will.

There are people who depend on him.

They need him.

One of them is right here.

Kunzite has posed:
The blink comes first, and too long after the words were spoken. Not as a sign that Kunzite is taking too long to interpret the sentences; that was made plain already. No, it's something almost reptilian - a delay in granting that words spoken addressed to him actually have anything to do with him, actually need to or should be acknowledged.

With the second blink, the flavor of that calm changes. Mamoru can't feel it, there's no skin-to-skin contact, but he can see it: personality seeping back into Kunzite's expression, one emotion at a time, as if he'd had to recall who he was the way an actor recalls a role.

"You can do better than that." Almost neutral. The faintest touch of reproof, not quite contempt, but threatening it. "Obviously we have gone to some trouble to acquire you. Obviously we do not intend your residence to be transient. What steps are necessary to ensure that?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
There's actual reproach in Mamoru's expression--

(he is not letting himself react to the physical, the nonverbal conversation, the visual cues)

--and there's irritation creeping into his tone. "Obviously you intend to try and kill her. Obviously you intend to do to me whatever was done to Kyouko, to Scorn." To you. "I'm actually clinically curious as to the exact steps you've planned, since neither of them remembered, and I don't expect I will, either. In fact, I doubt I'll remember this conversation, but I'd like to know whether I'll lose everything I am having won bets, or lost them."

He doesn't turn away from Kunzite; his eyes aren't dull anymore. They're sharp as knives, and their blue is as dark as the death of the gloaming. The introspective and self-aware Mamoru is hanging on to this persona he uses when he's overwhelmed, and this persona is what made Mamoru seem horribly familiar in the first place. Reproach, irritation, expectation.

"Or do you think that I can use the information to resist? You're afraid of me."

It might seem a ridiculous assertion, given their positions and conditions, but it's made with something that's beyond confidence, beyond certain knowledge.

"You know I don't give up. How do you know that?"

Kunzite has posed:
"Try," Kunzite acknowledges. "Success would be preferred, of course, but is unlikely. A failure will do nearly as well for our purposes." His other hand lifts, fingers flickering dismissively. "As for what our Queen intends to do with you once she has you, I have no information. She ordered your capture alive. I obey, with the addition of preventing your existence from leading Sailor Moon to our doorstep. What follows after is her business, not mine."

The accusation of fear prompts Kunzite's eyebrows to lift slightly. "You overrate yourself. I merely think it would have been wiser to kill you. Ideally without preliminaries." And, conversationally, in stark contrast to the words from the teenager trapped between Tuxedo Kamen and Sailor Mercury: "We still haven't found Nephrite, you understand. You do considerable damage in your way."

The last question --

The last question is not addressed, not acknowledged, not at all.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"'In my way'," scoffs the teenager, actually unconcerned at the backhanded sort-of-compliment. He explains, clearly and patiently, "I don't overrate myself. You're afraid of what you think I did to Nephrite, of what we both know I did to Jadeite, of what I could do to you. Of what I might be doing to you even now."

Mamoru shifts a little, and it takes herculean effort. His free hand doesn't move. He's just been lying in the same position for what feels like it must have been a long time, and it's uncomfortable. His breathing's a little labored.

"You think I'm at least dangerous enough to kill, and you thought so even before that fight. There's something she thinks I'm useful for, and you don't know what it is. You profess you don't care, that it's not your business, but it very much is. She's already killed me once."

where gold and red intercepted grey and let him see the bright warm glow of his Princess

"You let her do it then, too."

a feeling of mixed despair and triumph as a blank-faced, red-haired figure that seems a mile high drives a sword toward his chest; a broken shriek from behind as it slices through armor and skin and muscle and bone

"But looking at you now, sorting through what I can remember of your reactions as you were torturing me a bit ago," the seventeen-year-old's completely matter-of-fact, "I understand it wasn't your fault, not really. And even if it had been, I forgive you. You understand you can't actually kill Sailor Moon. I don't think you actually understand that even if you break her, even if you make her think that's me, she'll come save me anyway. Even if Beryl kills me again, Sailor Moon will save me."

Kunzite has posed:
Afraid of what Mamoru might be doing to him. Certainly, not long ago, that was true. certainly, that's been true for weeks, for months. But -- "Stabbing in the dark is only a good tactic if you're reasonably certain that whatever you hit won't stab back."

More than conversational, now. He's remembered how to sound amused.

"I believed you were dangerous," Kunzite says, "because I believed that that was a weapon you wielded with intent. I understand better, now. It's more ... a condition that prevails around you, let us say. And you are in fact dangerous. But it's not a blade in your hand, not something that you target with malice. You're dangerous after the fashion of a natural disaster - a volcano, or an earthquake fault. To be treated with respect, yes. But one can learn to take the proper precautions, for that kind of danger, and live within the threat of it, and thrive."

One can, not necessarily one does. If Jadeite were there, he might be less sanguine. If he could afford to understand himself better, he might be much less so ... or much more.

Hand on Mamoru's arm. But not where skin can touch skin. The bright flickers of memory, of red that saves and red that kills, don't touch Kunzite right now. Increasing traces of movement do: the angle his head takes when Mamoru touches on his ancient history with Beryl. He lets the boy finish speaking before he answers.

"If she's already killed you once," he says, "Sailor Moon can't have done much of a job of saving you."

There is a single trace of an edge to the words, at last, a single drop of venom. Somewhere, Mamoru finally got something through, finally won a little more reaction.

It was probably with the word forgive.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"It's a reasonable tactic if you're certain you're going to be stabbed regardless of what you do," Mamoru says tiredly, eyes half-lidding. His hair's still brushed up away from his face where Jadeite had his hand earlier, where Jadeite tried to comfort him even as he helped orchestrate his undoing.

There's a moment's pause, and something flashes behind the boy's blue eyes. Something bright, gold, clever and true, a shared joke in the face of ruin.

"Sailor Moon wasn't there last time."

Kunzite has posed:
"Mn. Half-right. It's true that there's no anesthetic I can give for this; but there is also no cause at present to be - excessive. And even this will make some of what comes after easier to bear." And it's hard to tell which of the ways that could be read is more awful: that what Beryl's made of Kunzite is so divorced from humanity that he can see all of this as fundamentally undamaging ... or that he knows exactly how much he's hurting Mamoru, and is correct about what's still to come.

But there's that brightness, and it calls to something, and for an instant there's something brighter behind grey eyes in turn.

For an instant.

Then it's drowned.

"She won't be here this time, either," he says. "Orders aside, I doubt we truly need to put effort into killing her. Delay will be enough."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
And that instant-- that instant is what Mamoru Chiba won't forget, so long as he exists. He holds on to it like a small brown hand held on to a much larger one, when dirt and pebbles rained down around them; he holds on to it like they're dreams of silver in the light of the Earth above; he holds on to it like a small golden-haired girl in a thunderstorm; he holds on to it like he held on to the knowledge that some day he'd find out what he was for.

It doesn't matter that it's gone, drowned. It doesn't matter.

"You should have more faith than that," the teenager chides gently. "Don't worry. She promised."

Finally, finally, he closes his eyes rather than turning his view from Kunzite-- as distressing, as disturbing as the white-haired man is to see, he's still less unbalancing a sight than looking at the walls or thinking about the various levels of disconnection and dissociation already in play.

"And once your choices are your own again, she'll forgive you too."

Kunzite has posed:
With his eyes closed, he can even pretend, if he likes, that the quiet amused sound that Kunzite makes is for the right reasons, or comes with the right expression. The sound itself is right. It just - should have been paired with that look in his eyes.

With his eyes closed, there are a lot of things he can pretend.

He can pretend that he's the one thinking of thumbing out the four characters of the text message, if he likes. help would be a good message to be able to send.

He can pretend that he can't see Homura in his mind's eye, standing perfectly straight as always, waiting with papers in hand.

He can pretend that he can't see someone else joining her, brighter to look upon, all colors against Homura's stark white and black.

And then someone who's not him says I'm feeling a lot better, and pretending is suddenly so much harder.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru's eyes fly open, but it doesn't help. He's not seeing Kunzite anymore. He's not seeing the cave with the moving walls and ceiling. He's not seeing anything but Usagi's beautiful face as he's turning it up to look at him--

--he can taste strawberry lipgloss.

"No, don't," he tries to say, but it only comes out in the room he can't see, where he can't hear it.

Homura's chiding him; Suzuki shows up and her Device greets them, she asks him what's going on and he doesn't answer, he hears Hannah. 'Hat guy'. Proposing-- no, can't they see something's wrong? Can't they see it's not him? When is he ever that demonstrative where everyone can see? Tadase... what's going on? What is he going to do?

He feels his gloved hands sliding on the fabric of Moon's uniform. I just wanted, he says against her lips, and Mamoru's gut is clenching; he knows of a certainty in a split second what his hand is doing on Moon's neck. "No, don't, it's not me-- no, don't let him do that-- everyone, that's not--"

I just wanted witnesses.

He can feel the attack building even as he's talking, and his unseeing eyes are wide in abject horror. He's silent. They can't hear him. He can't stop seeing it. He tries to block it off like he'd block off someone else's thoughts or memories, but -- that's his blood, his power, a piece of his soul. He doesn't know how to block off his own soul.

That's Kunzite's specialty.

It's a slow-motion trainwreck as the perspective shifts, as he tries with everything he has left -- not bloody much -- to try and influence the youma, to make it stop, to make it loosen its hand on his love's throat or drop her or anything. He hears Mercury. He hears Mars. He sees Kyouko. His friends are screaming, furious, terrified. His love is dying. He knows exactly how hard he's holding her, because he can feel it. The attacks begin: they're not pain, it doesn't feel pain. They're impacts, kinetic things, destruction of what feels like pieces of him, and that makes the dissociation even more disorienting--

He reaches out to the youma to will it to stop, to give up, but every reach only strengthens its connection to him. Homura asks him a question, and unbidden, the answer comes to mind; it's stolen from him like the power, like the link with Usagi, like the pieces of him it has sealed in its cold and fragile facsimile of a heart.

You called me the gentle, sensitive type! And I've been, haven't I?

The teenager's heart lurches. He can see Homura. All he can do is pray her soul gem doesn't darken. He can see her cry. Don't--

They're taking pieces off it; he loses a hand to Suzuki and doesn't care because that means Moon will be all right, she'll live, that part didn't work. He loses an arm, and that's good, because it won't hurt anyone else. Kyouko rockets through him and he disintegrates some more, and he's not feeling anything at all anymore, and Rei and Hannah take more pieces away, and maybe they'll kill it and they'll figure it out--

But he can see Usagi's face. Can see her neck where the bruises will form, where her delicate skin is an angry mottled red. He can hear his friends.

He stabs out with roses; what's even left of him? Why can he still hurt them? What's even left? There are so many of them -- but most of them are trying not to kill him, monstrous as he's become. He can hear himself calling to them, pleading with them, and he sees their faces warring between belief and doubt, and he sees Usagi's face, and it's nothing but belief. How could she think that? How could she think it's him?

But no: no. He told Kunzite. He told him. That's what Mamoru hangs on to. He told Kunzite that even if they made her believe this thing was him, she'd come save him anyway. He has faith. But he's hurting her so badly--

He starts losing track of where he is, of who he is; he loses pieces of himself even as the youma loses pieces of its physical form into the air. Rei throws an ofuda and he's solid again, real again -- that's the worst.

He feels real.

Grounded.

When it shifts down, chained, to Mamoru's own face, and Mamoru's seeing through his glasses, the pain hits like an exclamation point. That feels real too. And Venus pointing her deadly attack at him-- it's sheer relief on the face in the cave, because this will be over. She'll kill it and they'll come find him because this can't be him, she knows it can't be him. She's brilliant, she knows so many things none of them do, even Kunzite is afraid of her--

But then Usagi's bringing up the Crescent Moon Wand and suddenly he knows

he knows what this will do

Too late, it's his own raw voice that rips through the Tokyo skyline and the small disconnected cave with the writhing walls, in unison.

"USAKOOOOOO!"

He shatters, the youma's destruction snapping his link with Usagi back to him just as she feels it happen, just as he feels the blinding pain of physical and spiritual destruction, just as they hit a perfect feedback loop of agony. He shatters, and his mind shuts down.

He doesn't see what happens to her. He felt the blade rip through him and she was safe, but he had no idea how much time it bought her, how long her safety would last. He doesn't see how she reacts. He didn't see her pick up his sword. He's not there anymore, Earth-blue eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, no life behind them. He didn't see her turn it around, grab it by the blade despite the damage to her beautiful hands. He doesn't notice the sword clattering out of his hand. He doesn't hear her scream that explodes windows up and down the street, echoing off buildings.

He doesn't hear her scream his name.

Her fuku shifts, shimmering, and so does his school uniform, replaced by navy blue leather armor, fitted to his young frame. He doesn't hear her scream, but something in him must, somewhere.

Unseeing eyes wide and face blank, Prince Endymion breathes, "Serenity..."

Kunzite has posed:
"No, don't."

The words out of Mamoru's mouth are the cue; Kunzite opens his far hand, turns his attention to the sending. His spy went with the youma, this time, dormant, placed down when the creature knew the attack was imminent. This one has almost no power remaining to it; he sacrificed all but the absolutely necessary, drew it back into himself, but he needs to see a few seconds after the youma's destruction. He needs to be able to gauge the result, to know how the Senshi and their allies react, which direction they're most likely to move in. Seconds will be enough.

All of these people, swarming so quickly to what they believe is Mamoru's aid. He doesn't even recognize all of them; perhaps that boy was half-seen through the hurricane of flowers at the orphanage, perhaps that girl was at the bridge, but there's at least one he's never seen, not in all of his surveillance. They came so fast. They sound so shocked. They love so much, and he cannot bring himself to understand, only to acknowledge the patterns of their reactions. Patterns he can recognize. Understanding is Jadeite's, and Jadeite has fled the field. That's good. They might still be able to salvage him.

Kunzite knows that if his brother saw this, they would lose him for ever; and he kills that knowledge before it can take root, so that he will never have to kill his brother first.

He concentrates on the fight instead. His sister, once-his-sister, is glorious. Venus is burning paler and hotter than the stars. And there. There is Moon. There is --

His own lesser link with the youma evanesces under the purifying power she brings to bear, boiling away with his blood. There will be, can be, no trace of him or of Jadeite's magic for the Senshi or their technological ally to find. The Escalation destroys them, gentle and bright and merciless.

He hears the boy beside him screaming. The power in play won't kill him, won't maim him permanently; therefore Kunzite does not permit himself to care. The howled name is noted, set down coldly and clinically on the list of assets. Something to check against an area whose general location they already have. They'll find her, soon, and be able to finish this.

He is never consciously aware of the way his hand tightens on Mamoru's arm, giving one single, tiny piece of sensory input to ground him in his own body, one thread that might someday be followed back through the broken maze of his broken self. Someday. When the pain he's feeling now eventually dulls and heals.

He is only consciously aware of victory.

Victory does not taste of blood and ashes; it tastes of attar and bile, of a young girl's scream, of the blankness in a broken boy's eyes. It feels like a cauterized wound. And yet even in his exhausted, battered state Kunzite finds a pleasure in it, a tainted pride that straightens his spine. Vengeance for their losses, for the losses that might be yet to come. A prize for his Queen that may yet redeem his life or his brothers'. And the intellectual reward of a plan finding its completion. For once against the Senshi and their allies, no matter how much they lost along the way, the ending went right. Even Sailor Moon's screams echoing into his awareness, half blinding him with the physical pain their overtones induce, can't dampen that.

The shattering sound closes itself off at last, and he shakes his head to banish the red-tinged blackness from his sight, embraces the pain in his wounds as he starts to turn toward Mamoru Chiba's body once more. Best to make sure he's still breathing --

She screams again.

It's not the pitch that snaps Kunzite's head back, that makes him flinch so hard and so fast that the bleeding from Kyouko's spear begins again.

Exhaustion weakened him. Mamoru primed him. And in this moment, he can no longer forget fast enough not to understand.

Almost. He almost came close enough. He felt the terrible smile, and it warmed him, knowing what it meant. He saw the boy fighting his way through the crowd and the fires and the ruins, and he was close, and their Leader was pleased. He saw the girl's brightness, not more than a few seconds away, and their Leader was still more pleased, and therefore so was he. He would -- he would take her, and the boy would follow them, and -- and they would be safe, and the Kingdom would fall. And their Leader was pleased.

Brightness splashed in front of him, brilliant gold that hid the steel beneath, and he lost sight of the boy; it was focus on the foe in front of him or die.

It didn't matter. Beryl would be there. She would take care of them. He caught sight of her hair, more brilliant than any pennant, bloodier than any blade, as she made her charge up toward the boy's side --

Not his side.

"ENDYMION!"

The boy drops to his knees, and the silver girl behind him is screaming, and the agony in Kunzite's heart can't match that in either of theirs, but it's enough to burn away the black fog that has him, just for an instant. Just for long enough for shock to drop his defenses.

He cannot imagine being more grateful for anything than he is that his opponent does not waste her opportunity.

He can see her. Not just in memory. In the portion of his awareness watching over the rose-youma's dust. He can see her. He can see both of them, one whose glow is by itself eating away what little's left of his spell, one whose power flares too late, and the last he has from the spy are three words that bring his heart back to life just in time to break it. "I got him."

And he can hear the whisper from the broken, catatonic boy beside him, changing under his fingertips, from one truth to another one. "Serenity..."

Somehow he finds the strength to meet blank blue eyes.

He stands within the court at the center of the world, dressed in the uniform of their guards. It's perfectly tailored to his body; it had to be, they had nothing on hand that would fit him. The clothing feels alien on his skin. The patterns are wrong, the weights are wrong. The sword at his side is the wrong shape; he does not know how to use it properly, even if he had the strength he's been seeking these last years. It does not matter. It is a weapon. He can learn. For now, he stands still and tall and silent, and listens to the words being spoken in the language of the court. It's much like the language he grew up with, but there are sounds he has trouble with. It does not matter. That he can learn, too. He has nothing else to do that matters.

He has nothing to do that matters at all. He is hollow at heart, emptied out by loss and rage, ice and vengeance, justice and betrayal. But Elysion thinks that he can still be useful to them, and that takes him away from the ones who want to trap him, make him into a figurehead, make him into a pawn. Let him be a knight instead, then. Let him watch their prince. Why not? It's a joke, but it might be a good gambit. No-one will take him seriously as a threat. Not when he's ten years old.

The rhythm of the ceremony stutters, slows, stops, and he focuses on the moment to see why. The prince, of course. At three, he does not yet have an understanding of these things. He's gotten bored, and pushed himself from his place; he moves quickly, almost deft despite his age, and dodges his mother's attendants to come to a halt at Kunzite's feet. Small arms are extended. The gesture is imperious. The voice is not: "Up?" is as polite as a child his age can manage.

Why not. They chose to make him the prince's, not the queen's. Kunzite stoops, takes the boy from the ground, settles the little royal on his shoulders. The prince laughs, and wraps his arms around Kunzite's forehead.

The power latent in that touch surges. Floods into him. Fills the cold silence in him with the sense that he is seen, completely; accepted, completely; trusted, absolutely.

In that moment, in that alien court, he finds himself ... not less broken, perhaps. But if not whole, then no longer hollow. And, at last, home.

He draws a ragged breath.

He is fifteen, and alive by the grace and stubbornness of a child, and trapped in the darkness, following the faint hope in the motion of the air. If they live, he swears to himself, he will see to it that there are others. That his prince won't have to rely on his limited knowledge, his limited skills, to guard him alone.

He is no longer a teenager, but his prince is; he is no longer alone -- neither of them are, and afternoons like this one, when three out of five of them are drunk and all of them are laughing, it seems as if they've reached the pinnacle of the world; as if nothing will ever be better than this, and nothing will dare to make anything much worse, and none of them will ever have to be alone again.

Six months after that afternoon, he watches his prince reach out a hand tentatively to the silver-glowing girl beside him, and watches that glow reflect itself in his prince's face; and he knows that if he was terribly wrong about the worse, he was at least also wrong about the better.

And too soon after that afternoon, far too soon, -- the boy drops to his knees, and the silver girl behind him is screaming, and the agony in Kunzite's heart can't match that in either of theirs, but it's enough to burn away the black fog that has him, just for an instant. Just for long enough for shock to drop his defenses.

Something in him has never stopped hearing that scream. Has been waiting, all the endless time that he has spent in Beryl's shadowed court, for the deathblow afterward to come and free him again.

And this time -- this time he caused it.

Memories flood in. Understanding comes with them, a terrible and merciless clarity. He knows what Beryl has made him; he knows the degree to which he has been complicit in his own corruption. He knows that his prince's forgiveness is true, and real, sealed by the flash of golden laughter in Earth-blue eyes. He knows it, and it is so little deserved that it nearly shatters him. It nearly breaks him as completely as he has done to his prince. Nearly. But there are two things that prevent it.

His prince is breathing.

And the princess -- her hands are clasped over her chest. But there is no blade in them.

They live. They both live. And as long as they live ... however broken he is, however tainted, however short a time he may have to think clearly, as long as those two live, Kunzite has a vow to keep.

His first impulse is to catch Endymion up, to sweep him from the cavern and set him in his princess's arms. He nearly does it; he is turning to carry that out when he checks himself. He wants to save his prince more than he wants to live. He is certain that, if the other three of Endymion's guard could think clearly, if they were consulted, they would agree without hesitation.

But Endymion would not.

"We will save all of you from her."

"-- you belong with me! With ME! And I won't let go of you, of that, I'll never let go --"

He can see the moves in his mind, the sequences not certain but all too likely. On the one hand, Venus simply killing them both the instant they appeared, taking them for a second try at her Princess. On the other, his rescue of Endymion succeeding; Beryl's taking notice of his treachery; Beryl's considering how best to retaliate, with the idea of using one person to hurt another so fresh in her mind. Even if he could somehow keep free of her control --

Zoisite.

She could find him in an instant. Kunzite would take days, or weeks. They might rescue Jadeite. Nephrite might be beyond Beryl's reach already. But Beryl has Zoisite in her clawed hand, and she is already impatient. Has already taken the field. The only question, really, would be whether she'd destroy him herself, or whether she'd retake control of Kunzite and force him to make the kill. Either way, Zoisite would die.

-- "NO! I need you," eight-year-old Endymion says through his teeth. There's no fear in his blue eyes, only that same stubbornness that's been his curse and his blessing through all his short life. "I'm not letting go. I won't let go of you!"

-- Maybe teenaged Endymion doesn't need to say something, but he has the others just for occasions where the Prince shouldn't have to act. So Jadeite says something, his tone a little wounded, evidence of the child still inside this boy pretending to be a man. "You aren't replaceable, don't even say things like that!"

Gray eyes stare down at blank blue ones. He runs over alternatives, chases down chains of consequence to their end, finds -- none. Not one acceptable course of action.

He's taking too long. Perhaps Beryl knows nothing of what's happening. Or perhaps Serenity's scream echoed even into the Dark Kingdom. If it did -- he's running out of time.

But Serenity is breathing. Is alive. Is stronger, this time, than she was the last. His prince is stronger, too, strong enough to have found a way to forge his anger into a weapon at last. And whatever else happened - when she screamed Endymion's name, no matter how damaged and disrupted the connection between the two was, he heard her. He answered. He changed.

There are no acceptable courses of action. But there is one that offers just the slightest chance of all of them coming out alive. It's a terrible risk. It depends on Mars' purifying fire, on Mercury's brilliance and preparation, on the force of Jupiter's will to find the best. It depends on whether Venus is still the woman he knew, the woman he thought he saw the shadow of -- tonight, and at the orphanage when she greeted him with an attack that was also a message, and in her guise as Sailor V when her jokes fell to silence. It depends on whether the girl bearing that woman's weight can find the strength not to make the mistakes he himself did. Most of all, it depends on the Princess's strength of heart, and on whether she and her guardians can hold together where his prince's guardians failed.

They moved to each other, tonight, not away. They converged on their princess. They have a chance.

Kunzite breathes out, finally, and consigns himself to the path that even he finds unforgiveable. He exerts a little of will, spends a little more of his reserves; the shadows holding his tattered side together draw inward to let the ragged tear in his jacket reweave itself. To make himself presentable for the court. (Not perfectly so; but it was never worth it to Queen Beryl to remove that faint trace of defiance. Besides. The futility of it probably amused her as much as the lack of formality annoyed. A puppet demanding a particular knot tied in its strings.) And then he completes the motion he began long seconds ago, and -- despite the agony where Kyouko's spear tore into him -- takes Endymion's empty body up into his arms.

He wants to touch the boy. To give him what comfort that royal power over emotion might grant. But that mercy would destroy any chance they have; so he whispers, instead, never mind that there's no sign of the boy seeing or hearing -- anything at all. "You won't be alone."

That one moment of something true, before he buries the breaking of his heart, buries still deeper where it can never be found the name that his prince called out, and takes up the familiar mood he's shown for years: cool reserve a formal layer over something vicious, savage, deadly, and in this moment, filled with a black and tainted joy.

Shadows wrap around them, and when the darkness dissipates, it leaves them in the only slightly less dark cavern that is Beryl's throne room. With the boy's body in his arms and his own power binding his wounds, he cannot bow properly. He bends his head to her instead, deep, almost abject. "Queen Beryl," he says, and cannot be sure if it is practice that makes the words flow or her power; cannot be sure whether the decision he made to bring the boy here was ever his own, or whether it only amused her to ease up on the leash a little, to let him believe there was ever the chance to run. "Please, permit Jadeite and myself to offer you at last a gift truly worthy of your glory. As you commanded: the boy Mamoru Chiba, Tuxedo Kamen..."

He is walking forward as he speaks. He never intended to. But it was, in the end, the only thing he could do.

He kneels with the body still in his arms, so that the boy's face may be clearly visible.

"... Prince Endymion."