Filled This Void With Things Unreal
| Filled This Void With Things Unreal | |
|---|---|
| Date of Scene: | 13 February 2016 |
| Location: | Nephrite's Mansion |
| Synopsis: | Zoisite interprets "come visit when you have questions" as "come visit when you are falling over half-dead and incoherent." Nephrite isn't in the best of mental shape either. Somehow they manage questions anyway ... and Nephrite begins to notice some of the inconsistencies that plague their thoughts and lives. |
| Cast of Characters: | Nephrite, Zoisite |
Zoisite has posed:
It's been perhaps twenty-four hours, perhaps thirty-six, since the events in Hoshi 54.
It's been something under twelve hours since the most recent wave of memories broke. Passion and war. Endurance and harmony. Mars' specialty, and Jadeite's. The heavens, literally as usual, only know what Nephrite made of anything he gained. Or what Zoisite did.
It is not a timed intrusion made by slipping invisibly into the area and waiting with improbable patience for Nephrite to step onto the terrace with something that might be amusing to interrupt.
It is not, strictly speaking, even a knock at the door.
Flower petals spiral out of nothingness, describing perfect, elegant spiralling curves, and draw into existence something that is at the moment neither perfect nor elegant. Zoisite's uniform is tattered and charred, the skin beneath it hardly better. Most of the wounds have at least stopped bleeding; three or four of the long, shallow lacerations have torn open, and the trio of deeper strikes like the one Nephrite took to the shoulder two weeks ago -- those never quite stopped in the first place. His blood is mingled red and black, mottled, immiscible, marked by the dark magics Kunzite's been teaching him for ... how long? Years? Forever?
He's hurt, badly, but not so badly that he shouldn't be on his feet. The delicacy of his bone structure is part a lie, part only by comparison to his brothers. All of them can keep going through damage that would kill a human a dozen times over. Even if Zoisite's best defense is simply not being where an attack will land, he should be standing.
His magic sets him on his feet.
He pitches into the door shoulder-first, a soft thump, echoed a moment later by the side of his head striking it a little more loudly. The slide down along it is an ungraceful thing, unplanned. He curls on his side on Nephrite's doorstep, shaking, and wraps both arms over his eyes and face.
If those first quiet sounds go unheard, the heavens also only know when Nephrite's going to find him.
Nephrite has posed:
It has been something of a rough night. Nephrite has not slept, has not so much as glanced at the stars, has barely even had a drink--unless pouring himself a glass of whisky and abandoning it on the counter could be considered drinking. Twenty-four hours ago, the piece of his mind that he has so studiously managed to ignore was pried open. Twelve hours ago, its cage began to splinter.
He feverishly paces the halls of his mansion. Sitting still makes the memories more pressing, more insistent. Memories of war and blood competing with memories of harmony and joy, an emotionally exhausting combination. He is still wearing yesterday's bright red Brioni suit trousers, with a white shirt that has grown rumpled and untucked. He has turned on every electronic device in the house--a TV chirps about a reality show in one room, gives a baseball play-by-play in another, while classical music echoes through the halls of the first floor and pop music on the second.
And so he does not hear a thump on his door, once or twice. But only a few minutes pass before he feels the intrusion into his little pocket dimension. Recognizes the energy signature almost immediately. Zoisite's particular aura of fire and perfume could not be mistaken for any other.
It is unlike Zoisite to use the front door. But he is nothing if not unpredictable, and Nephrite is already too distracted to think much about it. He only knows of their truce, their shaky alliance, the veiled glances that hinted that Zoisite might not think Nephrite is crazy if he explains that visions of another life (his?) keep imposing themselves upon him.
And so he rushes to the door. Searching for hope, for reassurance, from his only remaining confidant.
The sight of Zoisite on the step, beaten and bloody, is all too reminiscent of the images of war he has spent hours trying to escape. For a moment, he wildly thinks that his visions are simply mixing with the real world, that this is only one more waking dream. But every magical sense Nephrite has tells him that Zoisite is real, and so the blood must be too.
He kneels beside the boy, lays a hand on his arm. He is warm and alive, but that is barely a comforting baseline. "Zoisite! What happened?"
Zoisite has posed:
The flesh under Nephrite's hand is indeed warm, fever-hot. Zoisite stiffens sharply under the contact, trying to recoil into the surface he's lying on. Being solid, it fails to cooperate with him; he shrinks down against it instead with a ragged breath, his other hand pushing and clawing aimlessly at the air. It takes a few seconds before one of his gloved fingers actually strikes Nephrite's wrist. A few more before he can coordinate the scrabble enough to find Nephrite's hand, to press his palm against it, feel the shape of it, the size and prominence of the bones.
Breath sighs out of the boy as if of itself. Some of the tension undoes itself again, and he stirs enough to turn his head, show his face. No cuts there. That's not to say it's good. His eyes are another horrorshow when they open; blood vessels have burst in the skin of his cheeks, and there's no white at all showing in his sclera. His eyes aren't tracking properly. He doesn't wait for that; looking in Nephrite's general direction is enough.
"Venus," he whispers, and there's not enough left of his voice to sound sweet. A high, breathy rasp. "We tried -- for the key." The second part of the key to the Silver Crystal. Does Nephrite know about that? Zoisite isn't sure himself. Nephrite's been smart enough to stay away from the Kingdom proper, where those plans have been made. Smart enough to stay away from the thing that wears Endymion's body, sometimes. It doesn't matter. Those are details.
Green eyes, still unfocused, go haunted. "Failed." That Nephrite does know. Beryl threatened him as well, with the new consequences she'd impose for failure. Did impose. Something that would make the months Nephrite spent in the labyrinth look pleasant --
She still has a use for him, at least. The worst of the overt damage is all to the Senshi's account. Everything else was just his own body reacting to the pain.
Nephrite's problem, their last conversation, was that Zoisite's made himself into a puzzle almost impossible to unriddle. Cut through the brightly vicious coquettishness, the fire and flowers, and find fear and worry, hatred and anger, vanity and greed and sometimes honest laughter. Cut through those moods and find the fire again. Layer after layer of selves, some repeating, all fractured, all cut through with fragments of others.
He's been torn open far enough, deep enough, that when his eyes finally focus on Nephrite's face, the fire behind them is white and hot and almost pure.
"Questions." As if saying that to Nephrite were the most important task he had in his life. His fingers try to tighten on Nephrite's hand, but his muscles don't respond properly; the little spasm almost loses him his grip entirely. "Please. When am I?"
Nephrite has posed:
His hand gently closes around the one that finds his. A hissed intake of breath when he gets a look at Zoisite's face. Zoisite, who always danced so easily out of danger, who seemed immune to any pain that was not somehow self-inflicted, is broken now in a way Nephrite never imagined outside of his still fresh visions of the past.
When he hears the question, alarm bells go off in his head. He understands it with the raw immediacy of someone who has just spent a full day wondering such things himself. "Stop talking," he orders sharply, hoping that through the haze of pain and fever Zoisite can understand that simple command. They can't do this here. Not where they can be heard by anyone, or anything.
Nephrite carefully gathers Zoisite up in his arms, his white shirt eagerly soaking up red-black blood the moment it touches him. The blond general is so small and light, this would not be a difficult task even if Nephrite did not have the strength of his powers to assist him. But he does not wish to cause any more pain, and right now, there seems no way to avoid that entirely.
Zoisite has posed:
Gentleness from Nephrite might be as alien to the boy as that brokenness in the boy is to Nephrite himself. And a command from Nephrite is surely unheard-of, to be bridled at and brooded upon and begrudged.
Zoisite goes silent.
Not without clear frustration. Words are some of his favorite weapons, and he's being robbed of them thrice over; by his vanished voice, by his own lack of clarity, and now by Nephrite's order. But he cooperates, just this once.
Touch causes pain right now, it's true. No way to avoid it. But Nephrite's hold doesn't cause any more of it than lying on his side did, and so there's minimal complaint. The aimless little flail of one hand might be a token struggle. It's surrendered almost at once. Zoisite settles for tipping his head back and mouthing exaggerated words, as if Nephrite's order had been out of no more than irritation at the boy stressing his voice.
What day?
How long did he spend under their Queen's attentions?
Surely that was all he was asking.
Surely the look in his eyes didn't match the one that kept Nephrite, for once, from the stars.
Nephrite has posed:
It is true that Nephrite was always the one who avoided getting involved, as much as he possibly could. He is not the one who gives commands. He is not the one who provides healing or comfort. He has always occupied the sidelines, offering the occasional commentary but never intervening, one way or another, in the others' lives. But the universe has conspired to force him off the benches now, literally dropping Zoisite on his doorstep, and he could not ignore that even if he wanted to.
He scoops the smallest general up off the ground and carries him inside, letting the door latch itself of its own accord behind them. The walls still echo with the din of half a dozen electronic devices competing against each other. He lets them stay on. Let any who would bother to eavesdrop on him now get nothing but baseball scores and Beethoven. He walks with purposeful strides, Zoisite cradled close to his chest like precious treasure.
The doors of his inner sanctum swing open, but he pauses before entering. A rarely used parlor, as lavishly furnished as the rest of the mansion, opens up to his left. A long couch lifts off the floor, drifts into the hall, and then through the sanctum's doorway. Nephrite follows it in, and the doors slam shut with an echoing boom behind him.
As soon as the doors are sealed, no sound penetrates the space. All is black, save the stained glass windows with their strange opaque swirl of purples and reds. The couch sets itself down at an irregular angle, the only piece of furniture in the entire room, and Nephrite gently lays Zoisite down on it. It won't take the pain away, but it's certainly better than lying on concrete.
"You're safe," he finally says. "As safe as you can get. She can't listen here."
Zoisite has posed:
Zoisite gives up on even that small attempt to communicate, letting his head fall forward instead - half-hiding himself against Nephrite's shoulder. The tail of his hair has not quite come unbound, or he'd be able to screen his face with more than a few stray curls. He closes his eyes instead, struggling to concentrate.
By the time the sanctum is sealed, the worst of his still-open wounds are no longer seeping. Not closed. But there's less blood to stain the couch ... not that that will really help the upholstery any; there's already more than enough to go around.
Nephrite's words prompt a silent attempt at a laugh, and the less-coordinated spasm that follows it. But after that green eyes are open again, a little quicker to find focus this time.
"What day?" Zoisite whispers up to him, aloud this time. "Endymion --" The last two syllables are blended almost to nothing, the m and the n swallowing the vowels between them. He doesn't try to laugh again, then. Smile, yes. It's all teeth and no mirth. "Your turn." For what, he doesn't say.
Nephrite has posed:
"...Saturday," Nephrite answers after a beat, barely able to remember himself. It's dark outside, if that means anything. "Maybe early Sunday now." He straightens, and finds himself at a loss as to what to do next. Get Somewhere Safe-ish was apparently the extent of his plan.
His turn, then. His turn to ask a question?
He has a rough idea of the mission Zoisite was on, at least from the rumors passed around by youma. But since Nephrite was not specifically instructed to join them, he had made no effort to get any closer to it than that. Now he wonders if he should feel guilty about not pushing to join them. Not ensuring their success. But did failure really mean...
"What did she do to you?" He finally asks. He leaves it to Zoisite to decide who "she" is.
Zoisite has posed:
Saturday? Eyes widen.
Early Sunday? ... and eyes close again, breath sighing out in wordless relief. Zoisite doesn't waste syllables on trying to explain the relief; he waits, instead. Or perhaps he's passed out. Difficult to tell for a moment, until Nephrite asks his question.
The shudder is the first answer. And really, there's only one "she" who's important right now. The Sailor Senshi are like the weather; it should have been his problem to keep out of the storm.
"Tortured me again," is the straightforward answer. "Worse. Felt longer. Still can't..." He makes a face and lets that trail off, dismissed as unimportant. "In front of the court." Twice as bad, then; the last time she at least kept their disgrace largely private. Now she's making examples.
Green eyes open again. Zoisite doesn't try to look at the other General; he stares blankly upward into the darkness instead, as if just for once he were the one searching for the stars.
"Kunzite was watching."
Two careful breaths.
"He didn't say. Anything."
Three, and finally his eyes turn toward Nephrite again, moving in unison now if not in focus.
"Nephrite - do you think we have souls?"
Nephrite has posed:
He wants to say something in Kunzite's defense, but nothing comes. Could Kunzite do anything to make Beryl stop? Probably not. Not so soon after his own fall from her favor. Does that mean he should not have tried?
How much of him is still Kunzite, anyway?
Zoisite's question is sudden, and... surprisingly philosophical, for Zoisite. "Souls? Why does that matter?"
But he cannot help but remember the tiny fraction of Endymion that still found a way to reach out to Nephrite through a series of numbers. And the call of his name from Endymion's heart to his, resonating through bits of him that he never knew he had. And these... visions, memories, whatever, of a life he never knew he lived.
"We have to. We must. Otherwise we'd be... we'd be like him."
Zoisite has posed:
Be like him? Which him? Kunzite? Endymion?
Both of them?
Those little shudders of Zoisite's are frequent enough right now that this one could mean anything. Or at least that's what he tells himself, before he tries to swallow and sparks another one in the process.
Several breaths more before he tries to answer that question.
"Been taunting Moon," he whispers finally. "Trying to find out - what happened to Jadeite. How far it went." The longer pauses come every few sentences, perhaps to pull his voice back together, perhaps to find his way through the haze and sort out again where he was trying to go with the words. Or perhaps it just takes him that long to remember anything before what happened in Beryl's court, right now. "Got her yelling about - what she felt. When Kunzite took Chiba. She said - sandpaper, barbed wire. On her soul."
The drift out of focus is almost visible.
"Felt familiar. Felt - like I felt that. So long I didn't notice. Till a while ago - Moon hit me with something. Burned me inside. Endymion tracked me down. Fixed that. Fixed the barbed-wire feeling, too. Part of it. Still don't understand - what it was. Is."
He blinks, slowly, and another flicker of frustration passes over his features, a momentary interruption of everything else already there. "-- that was follow-up," he whispers. "Still your turn."
Nephrite has posed:
Barbed wire. The feeling that a piece of him is trapped, and like any effort to extract it only causes pain. That description would have meant nothing to him a day before. Before he ate one of Makoto's chocolates.
"We don't have to do this right now, you know," he mutters at the sound of Zoisite's pained breaths. He says it reluctantly, afraid that if they stop now, they might lose the chance to speak like this, honestly and without meddling from other forces. Whether sailor senshi or their own queen, it seems everyone wants to take control of their minds.
He is still thinking about Kunzite. How he did have a chance to ask him questions once, and squandered it in ignorance. And now Kunzite is changed. Not quite hollowed out like Endymion, but... definitely missing something that made him who he was.
Perhaps this is a waste of a question, asking Zoisite something he is probably just as clueless about as Nephrite is, but he has to say it aloud. "Why was Kunzite rewired by Metallia and not us? It wasn't just about Walpurgis. She said he'd been keeping up an act. What did he know that we didn't?"
Zoisite has posed:
They don't have to do this right now. But the last time he waited, he missed his chance.
And this time, when he asks, green eyes sharpen. Right past that haze of pain.
"Oh, Nephrite," he whispers. A syllable he didn't have to use. And more. Sentences linked together, so carefully, breaths planned in advance so he can work through phrases without having to stop midway. "Think about it. Who sent Jadeite out where the Senshi could find him? Who let Endymion plan that fight that got her mad? Who brought him to us in the first place?"
He hasn't lifted his head; there's no space for it to fall back into. But there's the sense of it all the same, as that brief burst of energy fades.
"Did you really think those were accidents?"
Nephrite has posed:
Nephrite has never been the cloak-and-dagger sort. Complicated schemes are for the strategist, the spy, the ambassador. Not for Guy Who Locks Himself in a Dark Room By Himself All Day. Not for Guy Who Likes Whisky and Fast Cars and the Color Red.
Now Zoisite spells it out so clearly. So precisely.
Endymion. Everything Kunzite was doing was for Endymion.
He looks up at the dark stained glass window, and he laughs. "Of course they weren't. Of course not." It's not funny. It's the opposite of funny.
He takes a breath, looks down at Zoisite again. "Your turn."
Zoisite has posed:
They all cover each other's weaknesses. That's how they work; that's why they work.
It's startlingly easy to think that, given that it's never been true. Beryl's always sent them out alone. Once in a while they've worked briefly in pairs, when there's something that needs more than one of their strengths, but warily, guardedly. Not leaving each other their backs. Not till Walpurgisnacht. Not till now.
Zoisite's almost-smile is almost match for Nephrite's laughter; except that for him, the bitterness shows. His eyes are closed when Nephrite looks down at him again. The rest of the expression stays.
"How do we get out of this still ourselves?" he whispers; he's far enough out of breath by the last word that it's almost unintelligible. Except, of course, that Nephrite knows what it has to be. "Did the stars tell you anything about that?"
It's the wrong question, of course. But the kind of self-awareness Zoisite has is not the kind that would let him notice that.
Nephrite has posed:
"Ourselves?" He turns the question over in his mind. "What is ourselves, Zoisite? Is it who we are now, or is it--" what? What else is there? Some fever dreams of another life? Is he fully willing to believe they are even real yet?
But getting out. Does that mean what he thinks it does? Not escaping punishment tomorrow or next week, not making it to the end of their goals without having their brains scrubbed clean, but actually--leaving? But of course it doesn't. All they have ever known is the Dark Kingdom, and nobody leaves it alive. Not even Jadeite, in a sense.
"Either we make sure we don't fail again, or we get better at hiding. Better than Kunzite was." He says that as if it is possible. As if anybody could studiously maintain a facade that ran contrary to his true thoughts for as long as Kunzite did. As if he and Zoisite are not two of the most emotional people on the planet.
Zoisite has posed:
Fever dreams. Unfever dreams. Dreams of focus, of steadiness, of wholeness. Dreams of scrambling over roof-tiles just to play enough of a prank to taunt a certain recluse out of hiding, out to where Jadeite and -- someone -- could catch Nephrite and distract him and help remind him that the rest of the world existed. Dreams of prodding at patterns of activity that didn't seem quite right, falling facefirst into trouble over and over again; and it seemed as if more often than not the one at the forefront of the people coming to pull him out of it had a mane of brown hair. Dreams of a place and time when the two of them made a strange kind of balance within the harmony of (four? five?), rather than a wary separation.
"Kunzite's too busy -- getting things done -- to be any good." At hiding, presumably. The effort required to try to put emotion into that voiceless whisper is too much, unsuccessful, leaves Zoisite trembling again. But Nephrite can likely read the tone it should have had all the same. "Even if we don't fail," he breathes afterward. "What happens if we win?"
Unfair question. That's the one they don't ask. But unfair still more; it's Nephrite's turn.
Nephrite has posed:
For all his foresight, for all his focus on the future, this is a question that Nephrite never asks. It's a blank spot in his mind, a void that his gaze always avoids. Whether because Metallia suppressed his nature in this one specific area, or whether simple self-preservation prevents him from facing answers that would contradict his world view, it is impossible to say. And so he stares at Zoisite blankly. Even in private, this is not a question he has ever thought to ask.
"...Then we win," he says simply. What more is there to it than that?
But he tries to picture what that world would look like. All of planet Earth beneath their control, the fighting ended, Beryl's rule secure and her lust for power satisfied at last.
Beryl satisfied? That may be the most far-fetched notion of all. Would she, with total domination, grant Nephrite the same small luxuries he enjoys now? The fast car, the quiet retreat, the freedom to watch the stars at his leisure? Would she stop threatening, torturing, cutting up their memories into tiny pieces? Would she let them go?
"There is no winning," he says slowly, working out the answer even as he says it. "Is there? Not for us." He slides down onto the floor, leaning against the front of the couch. Putting his back so close to Zoisite might as well be a declaration of trust. "My turn," he mutters. "Do you remember a time before this?"
Zoisite has posed:
Not for us. The soundless breath that meets that might be intended to be a laugh. Nephrite's back is already turned; he doesn't have to see the expression that goes with it.
The question doesn't win a laugh, or a crystalline blade. It wins silence.
The silence lasts.
"I remember it didn't hurt," Zoisite whispers at last. "I remember gardens. Light. A place that was really mine. I remember fire. All of it coming apart. And I remember looking for something. Not the Crystal. I don't remember why I stopped. Or if I did."
Nephrite has posed:
It's Nephrite's turn to let the silence stretch out. In the darkness of this hidden room, the two of them sit in their newfound (rediscovered?) companionship. "I remember roses," he finally says. "A castle. Sunlight. A war. Not like this one, with little skirmishes here and there. Something bigger."
He stares up at the empty blackness. The void that normally he only looks at after he's filled it with stars. "I remember you. And them. And... someone else." Someone who seemed to always be there. Someone who completed the circle. "If it's real... it makes me wonder what changed. Why we're here at all."
Zoisite has posed:
The silence goes unchallenged, which is in itself a sign of how near absolute exhaustion Zoisite is.
(Except in those fever dreams, when he could go without attention, without distraction, far more often and far longer than he does now. When his boredom only meant mischief in the offing, not the building of malice, violence, rage.)
When Nephrite speaks, though, there are quiet sounds behind him. Slow, very slow, and careful, Zoisite rearranges himself. Till the top of his head presses against the back of Nephrite's shoulder.
"If we won," he whispers, "we shouldn't be still fighting. Or at least not still hiding. If we lost..." They shouldn't be in the first place. Should they?
"I don't know either," he admits at last. Almost inaudible. "Just don't know."
Nephrite has posed:
And so there they are. No closer to any answers. No closer to a solution. Just as lost as they ever were.
But they still have each other. That's something. That's more than either of them had before.
Nephrite turns slightly, lightly nudges the top of Zoisite's head with his jaw. The smallest acknowledgement of the slight contact between them. He flicks his hand, and a starscape lights up above them. Glimmering pinpricks of light filling the void.
Directly above them, Regulus, the heart of Leo, flickers brightly. Victory and power, mocking them with false promises.
"...Stay here," he mutters, uncertain of whether Zoisite is even still awake to hear him. Uncertain, as well, of whether it's an offer or a request.
Zoisite has posed:
That nudge prompts the faintest pressure in return, a moment's little push into that slight contact. A soft breath out a moment later, that might have been nothing, that might have been in response to the appearance of the silent magnificence above them.
The only response to that mutter is one whispered word. "Careful."
Be careful?
Careful what you wish for?
Ragged, shallow breathing has finally evened out. There won't be any more answers from Zoisite for a while; no more questions, either. He won't make enough sound to be a distraction.
Even when he wakes again -- for once in his life, he might just stay quiet, and join Nephrite in watching the stars.
