I Have Seen the Same

I Have Seen the Same
Date of Scene:	28 February 2016
Location:	Zoisite's Palace
Synopsis:	CONTENT WARNING: Kunzite is made of corruption and wasps. SUMMARY: Nephrite goes to find Mamoru, since he hasn't seen him and he's been acting super skittish and kind of weird. He finds him doing something commendably devoted and apparently hideously dangerous, and calls him out on it. Turns out it's way more unpleasant than he thought, but, uh, still commendably devoted? Then they have more bonding time. (lol i sux @ sumarys pls r&r!)
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Nephrite, Kunzite
Tinyplot:	Power's Out

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Nephrite has posed:
Nephrite doesn't know what he's so concerned about. It's not as though he's Mamoru's mother. He doesn't need to fret about how he's doing every day, whether he's eating his vegetables and getting to bed at a reasonable time. He also knows that Mamoru cannot exactly wander off into traffic or the hands of an evil queen, being that he currently remains restricted to moving within the palaces of his guardians. He could not possibly be any safer than he is now.

And yet. The boy prince has been distant since Zoisite came back. Vague and elusive and touchy. And he can be excused for being less than social given the pressures he is under and the worries pressing on him, but there is a limit to how long he can let Mamoru suffer in silence before he feels the need to take steps.

Anyway, Nephrite has had nothing to occupy him other than stargazing for days, and even he needs a break.

He tries Jadeite's palace first. It's the logical first step. When no black-haired teenager turns up, Nephrite steps into Zoisite's rose garden. Ornate and delicate, it could not be more different from the uncultivated forest that Nephrite left behind. Picking a direction at random, he begins wandering the castle ruins, seeking a prince.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's funny about the fiery changeling guardian's palace, too: sometimes it's more ruined than others, depending on Zoisite's mood and whether Zoisite cares more about its structure or its feeling that day. The fact that today it's less of a castle and more of a garden, with flowers of so many kinds -- wisteria and morning glory and roses, so many roses, climbing the crumbling and mossy walls rather than bracing the restored edifices -- may say something, give something to read into, about Zoisite's state of mind.

The doors to all their palaces from here fit their destinations, as they do in all the others: the one to Nephrite's own, a dark and starry room at the end of a hallway, framed by carved timber and alight with tiny holes and prisms and mirrors reflecting pieces of sky everywhere; the one to Jadeite's a calm white room with dark-stained wood and calming designs on the stone floor...

...Nephrite will find his prince at the door to Kunzite's, a white-sandstone and steel thing in a room decked with blue and gold, clean and breathtakingly beautiful with its contrasts of light and dark, shimmering stillness and a sense of mountainous and steady time.

Zoisite has to know he's here. After all, Nephrite can tell when anyone enters his own place, his forest out of time and reality, its living grandeur and its connection to him announcing the presence of any trespass or welcome arrival with unerring surety. Zoisite has to know Endymion is here, Mamoru is here, sitting in front of the open door to Kunzite's sand-and-stone-and-light castle out of time, with his hand on the steel and the white stone.

The prince's eyes are closed, and across the threshold, an enormous desert cat lies across the sandy floor, watching him with unblinking gold eyes and the swift and biting intelligence of any of the palaces' guardian spirits.

Mamoru remains still, a look of intense concentration on his face, but the caracal's gaze flickers up to Nephrite. "Don't touch him yet. He knows you're here. The idiot will be with you in a moment. Make sure he remembers to close the door when he's done."

That said, the Clydesdale-sized cat gets to his feet with a luxuriously irritated stretch, then pads off into the shadows.

Nephrite has posed:
Mamoru did mention that Kunzite's guardian is a caracal. He did not mention the level of feline snark. It is a good thing, however, that the giant cat cautioned Nephrite, because his first instinct is to race forward and take him by the shoulders. With Kunzite what he is right now, whatever Mamoru is doing cannot possibly be safe.

Instead he hovers behind Mamoru, fretting precisely like the overbearing mother that he only just told himself he did not resemble in the least.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
'Whatever Mamoru is doing cannot possibly be safe'. Back when Nephrite was telling himself he was nothing like an overbearing mother, he was also assuming that his prince could not possibly be safer where he was.

He's glad to have Endymion back, though, right? This is just what he wanted-- right? Endymion! Stubborn and frustrating and so determined to find the electrical socket in the tent to stick a fork in it that an electrical socket appears in the tent for him to stick a fork in.

While Nephrite frets, Mamoru's withdrawing himself painstakingly from where he'd been. It's definitely a where, too, because his eyes open before he's quite all the way back, and while they're not the horrifying blank blue that nothing lived behind -- the blank blue that Nephrite's lucky never to have seen; that horror belongs solely to Kunzite -- he's definitely not quite home for a second.

Then his hand falls from the door and he sags and looks at Nephrite.

He doesn't even say anything. His face says almost everything he could possibly articulate. Guilt at being caught. Defiance, make me stop, fight me. The underlying obsessive worry he's been trying to mask. Smugness, if it's somewhat bleak: whatever he's doing is obviously working to some degree, as he's only ever gotten that particular brand of self-satisfied if there's a not-quite-justifiable risk involved in getting positive results.

Finally the guilt and defiance win out over everything else, and they're too equal for one to manage banishing the other. One of his long-fingered hands curls into a fist over his denim-clad knee, and he looks resolutely up at his guardian. "I can't let him be alone."

Nephrite has posed:
If Mamoru wanted a fight, he certainly picked the right guardian for the job. The vaguest understanding of what he is doing and why he is doing it fills Nephrite with immediate pained guilt and sadness over the what Kunzite's state must be, about how much distress it is causing Mamoru, about how lucky he is to have ever escaped the horror he is experiencing now. That he should get to lay around in the grass looking at stars all day while Kunzite continues to exist in the worst kind of prison. That this has obviously been a primary source of all of Mamoru's anguish.

But what drowns out all the rest is anger. Because he kept it secret. Because he is risking himself now when they are so close to fixing it all. Because anger is so much easier to deal with than all the rest.

So Nephrite crosses his arms over his chest, red-brown eyes meeting defiant blue ones. "What the hell Endy?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Here's where Mamoru gets to his feet-- it's not a scramble, it's a set jaw and a slow rise, using the doorframe to brace himself. Once he's upright he shakes his foot out, still leaning with a hand on the jamb, because the damnthing fell asleep while he was sitting there like that.

He scowls at Nephrite, abruptly possessed of a sense of immense deja-vu -- and that just makes the prince more angry, because if this is a pattern (he knows this is a pattern) and it's a behavior he had back when he was a prince with an actual crown (Nephrite's reaction is so instinctive, so gut level, that it must be), then it's more evidence of exactly what he and Mako and Ami and Usagi and everyone have been trying to prevent. The same mistakes as the past. Not retelling the same story. Isn't it?

His goals were the same at the very end as they've been all these months: get them back and protect Her, or protect Her and get them back, in any order he could manage it. His goals are not something he's willing to change. He doesn't have them all back yet. They have a plan, they have a plan to get Kunzite back, and it'll be all of them contributing to something provided by the Senshi of Wisdom, evidence of the Earth and Moon able to work together, symbolic in all its aspects.

Though his personality is frequently different on the surface -- though he's no extrovert like Endymion was, and though his humor is understated and sharp and wicked, and his manner tends toward the serious -- he is the same boy, just as stubborn and just as giving, just as desperate in his devotion, just as well-meaning, just as protective... just as selfish, sometimes.

"That thing from out of the sun can't see me. That disgusting witch can't see me. Not even Kunzite can see me, not the way I'm doing it!" Endymion finally says, his voice rising toward the end. Then he flings his arms out to his sides. "You know how I yanked at your soul, right, you noticed that! Even the way you were, you noticed! I'm not stupid, god damn it."

Breathe. SCOWL. Shut eyes. No: he's still going. He gestures impatiently, both hands, as if rolling his own sentences on ahead of him. "I don't want to get noticed, here. That would be dangerous, if I were. He'd shut me out or rat me out if he noticed me doing this while his conscious mind's completely twisted, while he's being watched, while he's a fuckin' wholly-owned and operated subsidary of the Dark goddamn Kingdom. That's why I'm doing it from here, routing through his palace. I'm just-- I'm just--"

Through that, Endymion's voice gets louder and more frantic-- this is not the reserve or the composure Mamoru shows the world, but Mamoru was never close enough to anyone to react like this. This isn't quite Endymion, either: broken and cut off and still holding the memories so raw and recent of being cut off almost completely, he still tries to keep a handle on it, but the desperation's clawing at him, clawing at his throat, and he finally just lets go.

He said he'd show them if he had to. He said. The anger on his pale face melts away to a look of grim resolve. He holds out his hand firmly. "I'm just trying to hold his hand. To give him hope, keep him company in the dark, somewhere he can't see it and blot it out again. Let me show you. Then you can judge me for not telling you."

Nephrite has posed:
Patterns. Habits so old and automatic that they play out without thought. Even when the context, the reasoning for it, no longer makes sense. Nephrite has no reason to be so familiar with Mamoru as to believe he has any right to call him out, to act like he is owed an explanation. But Mamoru has a defense prepared just the same, as though he expected to have to explain himself, as though he anticipated that disapproving look on Nephrite's face.

It throws him a bit, that tirade. The protest is part of the script, but not the explosiveness of it, the frantic desperation. A small shift in the foundations of this relationship to remind him how unstable they are. His expression wavers briefly, and while Nephrite has rarely hesitated to speak his mind, any lecture is not forthcoming just yet. But if Mamoru is stubborn, so is Nephrite. Anger is hard to diffuse so easily.

He regards the offered hand silently for a moment. "Alright," he says. "Show me." No hesitation. He takes Mamoru's hand.

Kunzite has posed:
In each of them, even in the worst of times, there was some faint spark. Something that reacted, far below the conscious level, to what they should have remembered; something that drew attention in one direction or another for no reason they knew, never mind the ways they rationalized it later. Brightest in Jadeite, who half-surfaced over and over again; perhaps dimmest in Zoisite, but still present. Somewhere, where they couldn't think about it, buried fragments of them /remembered/.

That's the part of Kunzite that the steel and the sand let Mamoru reach. The stifled place in the back of his mind that holds the things he cannot remember, but cannot lose. There's not enough of it there for thought. There's not enough of it there to really recognize Endymion's contact; Metallia's influence, Beryl's spells, Kunzite's own reflexive struggle to maintain some semblance of sanity, all fence it in, choke it down, hold it strangled and chained. But lack of recognition doesn't mean lack of awareness. There's something there, some faint reaction. A trace of renewed calm. A fraction less pain. A glimmer of -- something.

Some of the things that part of Kunzite knows are familiar. The matter-of-fact, day-to-day horrors of life in the Dark Kingdom; the contrast between that and what they should have been doing, what they were for. The way that Metallia's power coiled around them, twined into their minds, when they first pledged themselves to Beryl. The sound (or was Nephrite spared hearing that?) of the moon's princess shrieking their prince's name as he fell.

Some of them are not.

The weight of Endymion's unconscious body as he bore their prince from Beryl's court. That same weight borne /into/ Beryl's court, blank-eyed and empty, before Metallia ever touched him.

The weight that settled on him as he named the girl that Beryl's apprentice had taken hostage, and Moon's sudden screaming told him that what he'd thought an almost inconsequential matter, an ethics problem to be worked through and adhered to in defiance of his own nature, was anything but. Was something that the life of their prince and the fate of this world depended on ... and he'd come within a breath of missing it.

The understanding of his own nature. He doesn't notice it consciously. Every shred of regained memory about what it was like to be a living, breathing human in this world is buried here. The feel of clothing against skin, the hard pressure of a pen held in the fingers, the lightness of turning pages. The rhythmic shocks of running; the greater rhythm of it, the slow swing between pain and endorphin-release and the worse agony when the body's fuel stores begin to fail. The subtle rhythms of heartbeat and breathing. The low and lingering ache of healing bruises; the sharp adrenaline spike and breathless clarity of inflicting the same on others. The constant unnoticed warmth of one's own blood spreading through the body. Everything that drew Nephrite to the surface, that anchored him so firmly to the physical world, Kunzite has forced himself to forget. If he hadn't -- he'd know what Beryl made of him. And this part of him does.

The body that Beryl gave him is made of mingled fragments of stolen lives and stolen souls.

Some parts of it are gentler thefts. He can steal heat, light, electricity. Tasteless things, with no great power to them, but better than nothing. He can lay a light shadow over a crowd, and pull a little light from their days. Take this one's hope for having the strength to stay awake after work and draw for a while, that one's ability to fend off the illness beseiging her immune system, this other one's calm in the face of a crowd, that other one's patience with his girlfriend's job consuming her weekends. Small, subtle destructions, that they might have the chance to recover from, or that might make their victims spiral down into slow private hells. Those are enough to forge into power, into blood, into skin.

The deeper parts of him, the parts that sustain him, the analogues for vital organs, the constructs that pass for bones? Those are made from human agony and terror and despair, from lives torn away all at once in a burst of energy, or consumed more slowly in the hope of leeching still more from the dying soul.

They did not lose their nature when they became part of him. Every step, every breath (when he bothers to breathe), every blink of an eye, is an expression of small destructions and greater atrocities.

The king is the land. His prince /is/ this world. Kunzite himself is a blight on it, a parasite, a infection. It is as physically perceptible to him as the sensations of being in a living body are to a normal human -- that is to say, perceptible only when given a contrast to wake awareness.

The part of Kunzite that Mamoru can reach safely is the part that is aware of that. Of his failures, past and present. Of the way that victory and defeat hang on the smallest details, the least likely mercies. Of his nature, now, and how even if he were drawn out of the Dark Kingdom it would drive him down again in time into corruption as fierce and burning as Beryl's own.

Of the reason that Beryl gave him that poisoned gift: because it melds so well with his own powers, amplifies their potential. Because it turns him from something merely lethal into something that can devour lives more swiftly and efficiently than any youma, any trap, any of their schemes.

Because even while Mamoru was in contact with that buried and helpless portion of Kunzite's mind, it was in some sense aware that the conscious part of him was calmly working out the best day, the most efficient time, to harvest the energy of the city's millions on millions of human lives for Metallia.

All at once.

His horror at what he's going to be used for can't break through the control to stop himself. Can't even break through the nature of the body he's wearing to make himself remember that there might be a reason to doubt. And it's not even as if this is new. He's known for years that this would, ultimately, be what she'd use him for. He's seen his part in the end of the world for that long.

And the part of him that remembers the end of the last one has never, even for the handfuls of weeks and minutes when in his blindness he thought of his mind as free, quite broken out of its endless frozen scream.

Endymion's contacts with him can't give him the strength to break the control. Must not do that; it would be noticed, it would call down Beryl's or Metallia's power on Kunzite, and perhaps use him as a channel to attack Endymion himself. What Endymion can do is fight the despair and the horror that Kunzite's embodied in, push them back enough to give that buried fragment some sliver of hope: if he can't stop himself, there are still those out there who will stop /him/. And those brief intervals of hope /might/ have had some faint, unpredictable echo effect into his consciousness.

The first time Endymion was able to take that indirect route to reach him -- in the wake of Zoisite's loss, Kunzite had been considering taking the city /that day/.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
That. That is what Endymion has been swimming upstream into, twice daily, since Zoisite was healed of his dark energy by Sailor Moon's attack and the combined force of will of Moon and the three boys. That is what's had him preoccupied, distant, elusive. Skittish. Secretive. That is what's been keeping him silent and apart, not seeking out company but nonetheless granted it when he goes back to Jadeite's to sleep; Usagi's been keeping his nightmares at bay.

The surfacing from just the memory of what he's seen is disjointed and it scratches and tears, digs hooks in -- and that the memory is that crystal clear means that it's residing in Endymion's mind, refreshed on a regular basis. It's what Kunzite is living, but the prince, determined that Kunzite should not have to suffer it alone, has been alongside him.

And it's not pointless. It is buying the heroes time to recover themselves, time to heal, time to prepare. Granted, it's also digging its claws into his heart -- it's hurting him, but the one look was enough to do that, and repeated contact won't make that worse. The prince is an empath in the truest sense of the word.

It's not pointless. It's having the effect Endymion intended. It's giving Kunzite that sliver of hope, bleak as it is; it's reinforcing the promise he made the first time he was eight, which echoes in and around their exit from the memory:

"I WON'T let go!"

Around them, the tranquility of Zoisite's palace is undisturbed, beautiful. The door to Kunzite's palace stands open and unassuming in front of them.

Nephrite has posed:
The sheer compressed atomic bomb of agony that Mamoru hands Nephrite hits him like a physical punch to the gut. All those layers of wrongness, years of torture via Kunzite's own physical existence, the guilt and horror of multiple lifetimes run through the filter of Mamoru's own unfettered desperate determination to hang onto that contained hurricane, to hold what is left of Kunzite even when the toll is so great. Nephrite's months of imprisonment in the witch's labyrinth and his time spent in the Dark Kingdom as a tainted yet fully human being were a faint shadow of Kunzite's lifelong imprisonment in his false body, making the memory all the more recognizable, all the more horrific.

As soon as they begin to surface enough that he can feel anything other than that overwhelming slice of nightmarish horror, he stumbles back from Mamoru, wrenching his hand away as though burned. It's a panic response, not a deliberate movement, not an intentional pulling away from his prince. That the instinctual drive for self-preservation kicks in so strongly is a testament to how strong Mamoru's resolve is, that he has been enduring it willingly.

He heaves deep breaths, in and out, hands on his knees. A brief reminder that he can breathe, that the pounding in his ears is his own blood, that his feet still stand upon the floor of Zoisite's palace. Hopefully he will not take a page from Mamoru's book and start hurling; he somehow doubts Zoisite will appreciate it very much if he does.

He looks at Mamoru as he slowly straightens, horror and understanding mingled on his face. The prince's determination still as plainly felt as all the rest. He can't help but understand what Mamoru is doing, why he is doing it. He still may not approve, but he understands.

"Twice a day?" Is what he says, still a bit breathless. He knows the answer already, but he needs to vocalize the matter somehow. "You do that twice a day?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
What's left in the face of that, when it's Mamoru's turn to hover, concerned, but not touch (pulling away didn't hurt him, but he still doesn't want to see a flinch)?

It would be gallows humor, maybe with a friend not as fundamentally nice as Nephrite-- maybe if it weren't Kunzite. Maybe if it were over with.

Instead, Mamoru looks away. "Yeah. You see why his plan is to die. And why I'm accepting it. We'll bring him back without-- that. And it's not dying when you're already a soul in a jar in hell, right? It's just taking the jar out of the fire."

So calm, now. But Nephrite already saw his frantic desperation. He saw it in red eyes, too, as an empty, wordless prince strove to communicate.

Endymion doesn't cope well with 'helpless'.

"I'm sorry," he finally says. "I didn't want you to--" he trails off. Know? Obviously. Why not? "I don't think I was afraid you'd stop me."

Finally he does reach down and put a warm hand on Nephrite's shoulder. "If he remembers, he won't want to talk about it. You know him. And what I'm doing is not his fault; please don't get mad at him. Save that for the monsters responsible for all of this."

Nephrite has posed:
The sharp exhale from Nephrite as he closes his eyes almost passes for a laugh. "In addition to everything else, you want to protect him from me?"

He should have known already, the extent to which Mamoru would go for them. Should have known it ever since that day in Beryl's throne room, when he shielded them from Beryl's wrath. Zoisite certainly knew. That is why he is not here now, barreling in to stop him like Nephrite is. But here it is presented in stark relief. Agony accepted in exchange for imperceptible comfort.

He straightens his shirt, finding an excuse to run his hands over some physical reminder of his own reality. "I couldn't possibly blame him. Not after being so close to where he is now." A breath. The wind has well and truly been sucked out of Nephrite's sails. He could not string together a lecture now if he tried.

"I obviously can't stop you. I won't ask you to. I just wish you weren't hiding. And I wish you weren't doing this alone."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Only for crap he didn't do," insists Mamoru with the shadow of a smile. "You can punch him for whatever else, obviously. He deserves a lot of them probably. Like I'm sure he rolls his toothpaste from the bottom of the tube, and that's on him."

He draws back a little, sticking his hands in his pockets, at something of a loss. He still expected a lecture, after all that. Even just about not telling, or not doing this alone-- but instead he's getting wishes. Maybe Nephrite knows how much more devastating those are. And-- despite it literally being a tactic he's used on other people, the prince can't actually prevent the guilt from resurfacing stronger than before.

"I really am sorry," Mamoru says quietly, looking away again. "It's a bad habit."

But then Endymion looks up at Nephrite's eyes, squaring his shoulders, no matter that he's tired. "And it's one I need to break, I don't need it anymore and it's detrimental to pretty much everything. Can you help me with it? Come find me if you don't see me for a day. I promise I'm not always up to something, and sometimes I really do just need quiet, but-- come find me. Or call me. And--"

Now his hands are out of his pockets, and he gestures a little uselessly. "I didn't even want to subject you to the memory of it. And I'd like help. But-- how could I ask for help with--"

The prince's eyes widen, and he reaches forward and grips Nephrite's arms. "You don't have to go in to help me. Just be my anchor! Give me a hand to hang on to while I hang on to his-- I won't drag you in, I can keep it separated; it'd be like-- biting a bullet. I won't bite you though!"

Nephrite has posed:
If Mamoru wanted a lecture, he should not have filled Nephrite's head with his emotions. They're impossible to untangle from his own, now. Even as he still feels uneasy about this, even though he doesn't really approve, he cannot just shut down that desperate desire to keep doing it. Maybe one of the others could compartmentalize the emotion from the logic more easily, but for Nephrite, thinking and feeling go hand-in-hand.

Nephrite stares down at him. "Can I do that? Would it work? I mean--I'm in, whatever you need me to do. But only if it's not one more thing to add to your stress level. Let me do it."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
In a lot of ways, it's something he has in common with Mamoru. It's just that Mamoru will go all around Robin Hood's barn to create the logic to justify his emotion-based actions if he has to. (He hasn't had to in a while.)

"You can," the prince says earnestly, blue eyes no longer calm, instead being possessed of an immense relief and a shining hope. "And it won't. It'll help. You'll be grounding me." His hands slide off Nephrite's arms and he looks a little wry. "Giving me a frame of reference outside that. I honestly didn't think of it before, because I wasn't looking. And it won't be a stress on me to keep you from getting dragged in-- and you'll be able to pull me out if I start looking too bad. I've been managing an hour mostly by dint of Zoi bringing me coffee toward the end of it, otherwise I lose track of time."

There's a pause. "And it's really good coffee. And I bet he'd bring two."

Nephrite has posed:
Nephrite nods, his eyes bright and serious. "Good. Then let's do that. The thought of you doing this without a safety net freaks me the hell out." Now it's Nephrite's turn to take Mamoru by the arms. "You don't have to do this by yourself. That's the point of me being here. None of it is worth it if you're still doing it all on your own. And--yeah, of course I'll help you with that bad habit. I know what it's like. Shutting yourself away all the time. It's easy to start losing perspective. I may need you to return the favor sometimes."

At the mention of coffee, Nephrite relaxes, lets Mamoru go, the ghost of a grin beginning to appear. "You think so? Trust Zoisite to have good coffee."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"He probably tells Usa what kind of coffee to get," Mamoru says with all the deadpan humor of 'it's actually only funny because it's undoubtedly true'-- and his answer to everything else Nephrite just said isn't in words at all. It's in the shine of his eyes (maybe he's having trouble believing this is real, even unfinished as they all are; maybe he needs reminding of this, too), and just for a silent moment in between levity and gravity, in the leaning of his tired forehead against the front of Neph's shoulder.

Then the moment's over, and he's clapped his hand against his guardian's back."But I'm not going back in to finish up the hour, not right this minute. I've got the wherewithal to do it twice a day, not three times. We'll come back later. Let's go find Zoi."

Nephrite has posed:
Nephrite slings a heavy arm over Mamoru's shoulders. This almost feels right. It's not quite there yet--they're still missing people, still feeling out how they fit together, still trying to build up something that isn't founded only on distant memories. But it's getting there.

"After how much he trolls her, he gets to make special coffee requests? I swear, that kid gets away with anything." They turn their backs on the the door leading into the land of sand and sun, and go in search of the trickster guardian.