These Days Of Dust

These Days Of Dust
Date of Scene:	26 January 2016
Location:	Zoisite's Palace
Synopsis:	Zoisite and Kunzite actually have a conversation. Kunzite's been doing Zoisite's job as well as his own for weeks, and it's getting close to the time when his student may need to take them over. Or to betray him. For Kunzite, there's no way out of this but through. For Zoisite, there are more options, but the choices he has are almost as terrible as the things that he's learning...
Cast of Characters:	Kunzite, Zoisite

---

Kunzite has posed:
There are systems that develop over time. Small and practiced signals, some designed on purpose, some known unconsciously and out of habit. This one's a hybrid of both. Zoisite's fingers applied a subtle pressure just so when he straightened from leaning on Kunzite and laughing; therefore, later, when the two of them depart, the shadows that swallow Kunzite take their target from Zoisite's teleport. Sending the eldest General to a place of the youngest's choosing.

Usually it's the other way around. Kunzite drawing Zoisite aside for an unannounced private conference. But that's habit, not law. He's almost always willing to listen.

Or to be betrayed, of course. But Kunzite's known for weeks that he's been running out of time.

Zoisite has posed:
The teleport target is, possibly unsurprisingly to Kunzite, Zoisite's favorite place in Paris. To be quite frank, the strawberry blond now has incredibly mixed feelings about his garden beneath the City of the Dead, beneath the City of Light. None of it is growing on dark energy. None of it is malicious or poisonous or homicidal. None of it's spiteful, none of it plays with its food. The Senshi ruined it for him. But it was also here that a blue-eyed Prince didn't let fire and fury stop him from healing--

--and it's here that there's a gateway to something that is wholly his, that no one is connected to like he is, that no one can spoil but him, and that welcomes him.

But still, his flowers aren't cruel anymore, and Zoisite takes a moment of his precious stolen time with Kunzite to sulk moodily. "They ruined it," he says petulantly. "Everything's dull now. Pretty, but dull."

After a short, angry little sigh, he softens a little and glances up and back at Kunzite, and his smile is full-on mischief, just for a moment. He gestures at the half-crumbled formation at the center, surrounded by a copse of extinct trees and shrubbery and in full bloom, then pauses for a second and taps on his chin. "I want to see if you can get in as you are, before I go and invite you."

Kunzite has posed:
Kunzite's known that something happened here. Kunzite hasn't known what, beyond perhaps sour comments about death rays. Which might have happened anywhere.

But didn't.

His reaction doesn't show on his face. He turns half away from Zoisite, instead - only half - and takes the couple of steps necessary to bring him to a shrub with glossy, patterned broad leaves. One gloved hand reaches out to rest fingertips near the central vein of an unobtrusive one.

It stays still; it takes only a few seconds to begin to wilt at the edges. Kunzite lets his lips thin a little and draws back his hand.

"They did," he agrees, turning back to the lightly-built trickster. "But you're not as upset as I'd have -"

There's the mischief. Kunzite doesn't finish his sentence. He does let the slow, faintly dark smile show: Zoisite has something in mind.

Something that doesn't quite make sense. The two of them have been here often, have searched out every corner of the place. "Get in? To what?" He knows there won't be an answer; the excitement's too inward-turned for that. There's no waiting for one, then. He's already playing the game, following the gesture. Long unhurried strides and a brush of his fingertips against Zoisite's arm in passing. One flower that won't wilt at his touch.

Not yet, anyhow. Later. He takes advantage while he can.

Zoisite has posed:
The moment Kunzite hasn't any difficulty vanishing into the copse and beyond, Zoisite scrambles in after him--

--which means that he's also in time, since he bursts in at Kunzite's heels and careers past him, to skid backwards on his heels and see the older General's expression at the place.

The place: as he left it, as the girls left it, it's green and lush, damp with the remnants of early morning in late Spring before the sun's vanished the dew back into the sky. It smells right, it feels right-- secluded, cut off, but right-- and the sky is above and bluer than anything present on this modern Earth, and the air cleaner, and the colors all more vivid. Everything's in bloom, there are roses...

...there are roses of varieties not known on Earth at this time.

Just beyond what's apparently a courtyard and nestled between gentle hills, there's a palace built of stone, bright wrought metals, polished wood, brilliantly colored cut crystal and glass. There are few straight lines; everything is organic, grown, curved. Everything is decorated, form as precious as function -- and everything breathes. There's energy everywhere, magic everywhere. It's so familiar, and it's true and clean.

The only dark spots there are the Shitennou themselves.

And Zoisite-- Zoisite is taking Kunzite's hands, eyes shining bright and green and full, just for now, of a joy as clean as this place is.

"It's mine," he says, words catching on his breath, air catching in his throat. "It's mine."

Kunzite has posed:
Early morning. Bright enough to see. Not so bright that Kunzite's distaste for the light has a hope of interfering.

And the air.

And the scent of the roses on the breeze.

And beyond the flowers, the palace, which might as well be a garden in itself - only a garden of things less transient than leaves and stems and petals.

And the blue nearly, nearly as deep and rich and true as the one that looked back at him for an instant from a lost prince's eyes.

He's still stopped and staring when Zoisite takes his hands. The contact is enough to draw his attention down at last. The look in green eyes is almost enough to make it all worth it. And if he knew the alternative, their idiot prince might argue with the almost.

"It's yours," he says, low, and reclaims one hand to lay the back of two fingers against the side of Zoisite's face, slipping them between stray curls and skin. "There's no-one else who wouldn't be outshone by it."

Zoisite has posed:
Zoisite's head tilts into Kunzite's touch, away-facing as it is, and he smiles and closes his eyes for a moment; he draws in close to wrap his arms around Kunzite, and doesn't answer his words.

After a long moment he draws away a little, and keeps his eyes on the older General, but he starts tugging him bodily toward the immense, comfortably sprawling structure. "I also made it, I think. It listens to me. It reacts to me. But it didn't want me to kill the Senshi with it, or actually in general really, which was only somewhat less annoying than them ruining my garden-- and they stole something from here, but the flowers said it belonged to them, so whatever. They had a key, but I'm working on changing the locks."

They get to the archway leading in to the open doors, and the sun's just high enough in the sky to send light pouring in through the sea-colored windows, and the trees waving in the breeze outside the windows makes the shadow-play against them look like the floor's covered in rippling water.

And stopped in the first pool of light, Zoisite lifts off the ground so he's tall enough to whisper in Kunzite's ear without him having to lean down, "Endymion couldn't find me here."

Then the youngest General flits up like a pixie and gestures toward the planters halfway up the walls, and rose-vines curl out and down to meet his hands, and he surveys the blossoms that crawl up his arms as he continues. "He found me as soon as I stepped outside into the garden, and healed me from what Moon did. After I tried to kill him several times."

Zoisite looks at Kunzite again, hovering in the air, looking down. "His eyes were blue. This place is probably safe for you to tell me about it."

Kunzite has posed:
Drawing in close finds an answering gesture: Kunzite's left arm settles around Zoisite's shoulders, while his right hand is turned, fingers sliding into Zoisite's hair, palm settling against his cheek. Nothing's said, for that long moment. Words will wait.

Until they won't anymore. That's all right; they know this pattern, too. Kunzite follows the tugging, equal parts interested and indulgent. It's needless for him, here, to keep an eye out for anything Zoisite might walk into while distracted and not looking. He does it anyway, while he's listening. "It's yours," he repeats once, about the listening and the reacting. There's a twitch of an eyebrow when he describes the place as having an opinion about his treatment of the Senshi; some combination of that and Zoisite's saying he thought he made it, perhaps. The implications are interesting.

Zoisite in that tamed and changing light almost makes him forget, for a moment, what they were.

He's remembering to breathe again by the time he looks up, tipping his head back to watch Zoisite play with the roses. Still on the ground. He isn't bound to stay there, but drawing up his shadows in this place is not something he's inclined to do without invitation. Would not be even if it weren't possessed of that aching familiarity that suggests memories he can't quite reach. It's Zoisite's. He owes his student that: to acknowledge when he's been surpassed in an area, and pay the respect that's due.

And Zoisite's story has a parallel. The instant's spark of healing, at the end of the witch's labyrinth.

"Probably," Kunzite agrees. Looking up at him, still. "I presume heard me talking with Nephrite about Mamoru Chiba. The boy that he was before becoming Beryl's Prince. That's the easy answer, and the safe one. Are you sure you want more than that?"

The answer is damned obvious. Zoisite always wants more; more of most things, but more information especially. As long as it's on a topic he's interesting. And yet -- Kunzite can't quite bring himself to say more till it's answered.

Because it's the next part that will start putting Zoisite at risk, instead of keeping him safer.

Zoisite has posed:
"...yes?"

It's not difficult to make that syllable sound that disparaging.

It's impressive when their surroundings agree with the sentiment.

Kunzite has posed:
As always, there are moments when anyone else might want to strangle the littlest General. And as always, this one draws an instant's warmer glance upward from Kunzite, just shy of openly fond. It doesn't last; he's already answering.

"Occasionally, when he's reminded strongly and suddenly enough of something he was before he was Beryl's Prince, he's able to push the control aside enough to surface for a moment. That usually ends badly. When it's strong enough to let him heal - I'm not certain that's his own strength. I suspect that's his being in a place where our Great Leader's ability to reach him is lessened, or blocked entirely. I can't prove any of it. But I also can't think of anything else that the thing that uses him for a mask sometimes might be."

Zoisite has posed:
"He wasn't Mamoru Chiba," Zoisite says, a sideways sentence shot through with something too rich, too addicted, to be slyness. "Not then. A third identity to go along with the other two, which Beryl kept when she took him for herself."

It's a direct quote. It's softer than the poisoned dagger it would be toward someone he intended to set up to fall, it's made softer still by Kunzite's expression.

The will-o-wisp drifts down and alights, eventually, taking Kunzite's arm and leading him on further in, a wordless and meandering tour with discussion as its vehicle.

"He's more than that. He's..." Zoisite trails off, touching his chin with his free hand, making a show of contemplation. "Well. It hardly matters, does it? He's Beryl's toy, and she's breaking him badly enough for him to need to pull me half across the globe in the middle of the night-- just to hold him until he can fumble gluing his own mask back together."

Zoisite stops them. Now his voice is very, very gentle. "He's still risking himself to save you. When he healed me, he told me to watch over you. He called me for help because he didn't want to hurt you. What the hell are we going to do with this guy?"

In the place where they have stopped, the sun has moved high enough, and they are at the right angle, that now they are standing in fire instead of water.

Kunzite has posed:
Kunzite says nothing as Zoisite takes his arm. Gray eyes flick over to watch Zoisite's expression, in the way that's wary not of Zoisite himself, but of having to feel his way around empty places in one of their minds or the other.

In the end, though, he doesn't try to avoid it. Not this time. When Zoisite stops, Kunzite turns toward him, to face him. The fierce light halos the smaller man's face in glory; but it's not enough to distract him this time.

"He was Endymion before he was Mamoru Chiba," he says quietly. "He was our prince. He's been waiting for us, preparing for us, since before he understood we existed. He's risking himself to save all of us. In the long run, it might even have a chance of working. But that's worth nothing if we lose him in the process. And we can't oppose Queen Beryl directly." Not 'should not,' or 'it would be a terrible idea to.' Physically cannot. "All we can do is try to minimize the damage, and to give him small victories now and then, and to hold him together until conditions change."

Until one of the half-dozen factions angry about the situation becomes angry enough to do something.

Zoisite has posed:
"And Nephrite? Jadeite? Does Jadeite know..? He's not on assignment," Zoisite says without recrimination, with only the slightest hint of disparagement. His fingers curl into Kunzite's sleeve, and he pulls the other man around slowly to face a tapestry on the wall.

As the sun moves, the fiery colors shift, sifting through the moving leaves outside and playing on the colored, white, and metallic threads to make the image come to life, changing the expressions on faces and the stylized landscape to show something slightly different with each passing instant.

The palace is at once static and fluid, even without Zoisite's direct manipulation. So is everything in it.

Zoisite edges further into Kunzite's space, pressing into his side, at once confident and uncertain. "And we're relying on them. Inexperienced and ill-equipped, a battering ram when a lockpick is needed. He doesn't fight them. She's going to know, and take him away again. And he may be standing in the way of her killing us outright now, but after that? How will we keep him then? How will he keep us? He's not strong enough to sacrifice anything but himself. What if he does that?"

Now Zoisite's fingers are clenched around Kunzite's arm, tightly enough to be painful. The scent of smoke is in the air, and of blood-- a copper and ashen taste at the back of the tongue. "...again?"

Kunzite has posed:
"Nephrite pays more attention to what he works out for himself." Kunzite lets those fingers in his sleeve maneuver him; it's not true that he always does, but often. His gaze lingers on the tapestry. There's a reason Zoisite pointed him that way - there always is - and it might appear and vanish again in an instant. "Jadeite ... was never far from knowing in the first place. That's what caused him all the trouble."

He half wonders if he recognizes some of the faces.

Or if the faces are designed to be different depending on the angle of the light.

Or if the sun is moving not as a play at time passing, but because Zoisite really is angry with him, and the palace is becoming subtly more hostile to Kunzite as time passes as a result.

The pressure against his side argues against that. He shifts his weight a little, answering with pressure in return, making a moment's stability between them. "We're relying on them," he repeats, but that sentence is made calmly stable too.

The next comes after a breath. "I don't have answers for that. There are too many factors in play, too many potential sources of disruption. I've established what I could, but a great deal of that has been putting a hint in someone's hands and hoping they recognize it for what it is and follow through. It's the best I can do; I've been pushing my own luck too hard, and that's going to catch up with me. But there are some things that run deeper than memory. If we can wake even one of them ... we have a better chance."

And then Zoisite's hand is on his arm like that. And Kunzite's turned toward him, and his free arm is pulling Zoisite against him again, hard enough to crush the breath from his lungs for a moment.

"If he does that," Kunzite says, lower still, "we have faith. And we rely on them." He bends his head, till his breath stirs fire in Zoisite's hair. "What does the Silver Crystal do, again, Professor Izono?"

Zoisite has posed:
Once upon a time, odds are good Kunzite would have recognised many of the faces, and Zoisite all of them. Now, not a single one of them is familiar. Lost people, lost places, and a lost time. Even the legends and myths of the age -- for every age has its own body of stories to draw from and be taught by -- are long since vanished into the forgotten mists.

When Zoisite's crushed into Kunzite's embrace, he buries his face in the tall man's jacket again, arms curled into his own chest, breathing in the scent of him and feeling the warmth. He clings to every detail of the sensations, of the moment, of the feelings; everything is changing again, and he's been told everything's going to get worse before it gets better.

Zoisite likes change.

He does not like losing things that are his.

This moment, these feelings, are registered in the walls and the floors and the tapestry, in the lights and colors and the patterns of the sunlight through the leaves above the brilliantly-colored skylights. He impresses them into the fabric of the place to endure, to be part of it, to be protected by that which protected his space for the countless aeons for which he was not present.

Fleeting and ephemeral and precious, he'll pull it out to fuel his incendiary rage when everything goes wrong--

"Have faith," he repeats, muffled and bitter, breathlessly terrified. "Rely on them. Is that what they'll use it for?"

Zoisite pulls his head back to look up at Kunzite, and his eyes are wide and overbright and glistening. "They might use it to bring him back. They want him badly enough." Unspoken, but implied as clearly as the boy's lack of trust in elements he can't manipulate, hangs the obvious, the selfish, the desperate: but what about us?

Instead, he finishes, looking away as the colors set his hair aflame, "They won't give him back."

Kunzite has posed:
Zoisite likes change. And when he looks up at Kunzite, he receives another.

In the Dark Kingdom's strange phosphorescences and stranger unlight, Kunzite is forever an almost-colorless presence. No bluish foxfire ever turns hair the color of glacier cores, no dim, wet purple emanation ever touches it with hints of bruise. Always whites and grays. Nothing there is real enough or strong enough to change that.

Standing in this light, in Zoisite's place, the gray of his uniform is brightened with shadows of reds and golds. The way his hair drapes, with his head bent to speak to Zoisite, frames his face in a gleaming fall of silvered fire.

"Give him back?" Kunzite repeats. "They don't own him." He reaches out and draws a stray curl back from Zoisite's face, better than punctuation. And is quiet for a breath, two, three. But has not let go of that lock of hair. Is not finished speaking.

"When you didn't know him," he says at last, low and even and a little too slow, "you lashed out at him. He understood; that's what you do. When I didn't know him -

"She had ordered his capture. But we're not the only ones he's close enough to to locate. He and Moon could find one another, were each potentially aware when the other was in danger. That needed to be neutralized. I arranged the creation of a particular youma, and I stole the greatest part of that bond and put the youma into it between them."

His thumb traces along the lines of that curl for the last moments that he's speaking; he lets it go before Zoisite can put together what that must have done.

"I shattered his heart and I tore out his soul. While he was screaming, until the instant he passed out, he was still trying to save me. I was there when he woke again. And he still tried, Zoisite. Not to escape. Not to get free. To bring me back to him. And, failing that, to tell me what he needed us to know when we knew him again."

His hand is still lifted, as if to touch Zoisite's face again. He finally lets it fall back to his side. "He won't give up on this. On us. He refuses to lose any of us. He'd die before he'd let go. And the girls know it."

Zoisite has posed:
Clouds move in on the sky above, first muting the dancing colors bringing the tapestry and the walls and floors to life, then turning the color into a uniform wash of vague and greyish pink-orange, the color of the strange light before a storm. The breeze outside stills, and the palace is silent but for the sounds of breath and heartbeats.

Kunzite lets his hand fall, and Zoisite is watching him, preternaturally still.

It takes Zoisite a long time to say anything, a long time to move. His face is unreadable, but his eyes are fixed on Kunzite, and behind them a million judgements and calculations weigh in and complete, fall into place, build a picture. The implications are manifold, and many are not at all complimentary to Kunzite. He admires the skill and cruelty abstractly; he's proud of the finesse; he's uncomfortable. He's ready to forgive until he interlocks some of the puzzle pieces, and he's horrified that it was intentional even after Kunzite knew. But everything Endymion's asked for, everything Mamoru had asked for, all the evidence--

Watch over Kunzite. He's hurting.

It'll take time to forgive. It'll take it working to forgive. It'll take being sure his Prince is mended to forgive. But-- Zoisite doesn't need to forgive Kunzite to be able to take care of him, and if he gets too angry, if it gets too hard, he can think of it as his personal orders.

So Zoisite reaches to take Kunzite's hand in both of his, and though the sky's still overcast, the boy's eyes are clear and hard. "Go on," he says very, very softly.

Kunzite has posed:
"You know the rest." Kunzite knows those eyes, too. The touch is not something he'd expect with them. He accepts it while he can, without trying to push it further. "Moon destroyed the youma, and felt it as if he'd died. Survived it, this time. She's stronger than she was. He changed. Became Endymion. I remembered. And I brought him back all the same; it was the only route that had a chance of accomplishing all his goals." Of keeping all five of them alive.

Everything since has been his fault, and he's known it all the while.

"We've made some progress. She's let you come back. Nephrite is out from where he'd been trapped. Most of the girls are past killing us on sight. They have the beginning of an understanding of what they're up against. But it comes down to the Crystal in the end. If they find it, if they learn how to use it, they have a chance. If it comes into Her possession..."

The shake of his head is minute, visible mainly by the little ripple that echoes it in his hair. "It won't save her. There's one path that might still. Her pride won't let her take it. Every other way this could go - win or lose, she dies. The only questions are when, by whose hands, and how many she takes with her.

"As for us, we have our orders. We belong with him. Stay alive. Don't give up. Don't let go. Have faith." Those words again. Not ones he would, of himself, have used.

Kunzite falls silent for a moment, regarding Zoisite's hands on his. Then reaches to open them gently, turning the smaller general's palms upward. "I'm sorry about your garden." Zoisite has never in this life heard him speak those first two words, at least not to him. Apologies are something Kunzite does with things. With gifts. With small prettinesses. That's true this time, too, as he draws up a shimmer of energy, calling something in his own hand to lay it in those delicate ones. "They needed a glimpse of where they'd have to fight. This was the closest I knew that wouldn't kill them. I saved what I could for you."

The seed is a vile thing, the size of both of Zoisite's cupped hands; its spikes are capped with wax to keep them from sinking into flesh and trying to take root. There's the sense of something almost fetal curled within its shell, ready to burst free.

Of course he knows it; he's planted enough of them. And of course he knows it's a symbol of what else might be waiting. Seeds and bulbs and warped rose-hips, cuttings and seedlings, hungry roots. In one case, perhaps, hungry rats, carriers for the fruit they consumed and that will in turn consume them. Not all of the garden could be saved, particularly not in this season. But a great deal of it.

In the light of this place, even the stormglow...

... it is perhaps possible that the dark promise that seed bears might not seem as glorious or as beautiful as it might have a few weeks back.