Endymion, Dark Prince of the Earth, is looking for Jadeite. Where before, he'd just assumed Jadeite was busy-- he felt like he was around, after all-- Zoisite's usual game of 'make trouble' wound up with the young prince losing a battle in his own mind and scaring the crap out of the delicate General, but still looking for the curly-haired blond.
That's what he's doing now. It's not really random wandering, it's more like re-mapping, going on in both his head and with the camera of his Dark Electronics tablet. Okay maybe it's an iPad, no one's asking. But Endymion's actually moving with a destination in mind, even if the destination's moving, too.
Dark halls, silent halls-- abandoned halls. The black-haired boy keeps generally to the desolate, ruined places within the Kingdom, rather than the more populous parts with the almost organic walls, closer to the throne room.
He's in his colors, navy blue and light blue and gold, black cape with red lining-- though the armored pieces are missing. And-- there.
He turns a corner. "Jadeite?" calls Endymion, glancing up and shutting off the tablet's screen.
Jadeite has spent a lot of time in his pottery studio.
Not that he thinks about it in those actual terms, as a *pottery studio*, but it *is* the hidden little place he goes when he has to work with clay. He's spent a lot of time teleporting around, maybe because of this very thing that is happening now. He's *kind of* been afraid of this, and yet, here it is, happening. He tries not to let his spine stiffen too much as he turns, carefully schooling his expression to something as neutral as he can make. "Prince Endymion."
And the Dark Prince pauses in the doorway, uncertain. He looks just like him. Just like Mamoru-- but, if it makes sense, more like Mamoru than Mamoru did. He looks like Endymion, there in Endymion's clothes...
...except his eyes aren't blue, they're a dull greyish-red. "Hi," he says.
There's a pause, and he shifts his tablet to the other hand. "Zoisite said you blamed me for Nephrite's disappearance. I don't see how that's possible. He's been missing for months, and I've only been here for weeks."
Jadeite hasn't even had the privilege of *seeing* his wayward brother recently, and yet, immediately, he's annoyed with him. He doesn't let this show on his face, just as he doesn't let the weird, crushing feeling in his chest show in anything more than a slow, disinterested blink of his eyes. They're still blue, and right now--they're as ice cold as they've ever been. "Did he? *Hm.* Well. Zoisite was mistaken, obviously. Nephrite's failure was his own doing."
Kind of. Mostly. In the same way Jadeite's own fall is constantly being caused by hiw own weakness. He doesn't mention that part.
Endymion shifts a little uncomfortably. There's something wrong. Something is not as expected, something's not sitting well with him, and he's not sure why. He hasn't seen Jadeite at all since he's been here, but just the same...
"Shhhhhh, shh, shh, shh, shh. It's going to be okay."
...the ice in Jadeite's eyes isn't something he'd ever have expected to see. Worse is the condemnation of Nephrite--
"What did you do to Nephrite?"
"He singled you out because you belong with us."
There's a flare behind Endymion's eyes, and it's not the red of Metalia, it's not mind-control, it's visceral and instant reflex. "Nephrite can't have failed. He must have been caught by someone, or stopped by something. He'll get out, and he'll come back," he says sharply, firmly. "Don't worry."
It's as aloof as Jadeite's ever been, an internally-desperate attempt to keep himself far away from what's happening here to protect himself. He has to keep it together. He has to *keep it* /together/. Part of keeping it together includes a constant awareness of just what happened to Nephrite, *really*. "He failed. He allowed his passion to overwhelm him, and he fled. A cautionary tale, in his own way, I suppose."
That's when the prince steps in the door, closing it behind him. He vanishes the iPad somewhere in his cloak and then leans against the wall, crossing his arms and looking irritable. "Do you know that? He's one of us. Do you really think he would flee? A tactical retreat, certainly, but fleeing? He might be in trouble. If he's somewhere he can't see..."
The black-haired boy trails off, frowning and looking away. "He'll come back. He has to. Even if I have to go out and find him." His arms tighten across his chest, and the frown turns into a scowl. "But at least you don't blame me. I thought that might've been why I haven't seen you. We need to stay together, Jadeite, especially with what we're up against."
Making a noise that's almost entirely one of irritation, Jadeite keeps his distance, leaned away from Endymion as if he's going to look for the quickest way out of the conversation, the very second it should present itself. "I don't *know* it. Still, it is my job to be able to fill in between the lines. Perhaps he, himself, thought of it it as a 'tactical retreat', but he was running away. Where he is now, I do not know."
None of them seem to know. Jadeite's mouth condenses at the corner, like he's going to wince, except that he doesn't allow himself that kind of emotional display. He doesn't allow himself to flinch at the word 'together', no matter how much he desperately wants to. "I *am* together, I assure you."
"I know you've got it together," Endymion says, his frustration hiking and his gaze turning back on Jadeite. "I mean-- at least I'm not accusing you otherwise. You certainly look like you've got everything handled. I just--"
His eyes are the wrong color. His eyes are supposed to be blue. But they're not that brilliant bloody red they were in the throne room, are in the throne room, or near Beryl, where it's presumably hardest to keep him in line. Dull red, almost grey-brown, that strange mingled color. They're not blue, but the look of someone lost, someone trying to find the scattered pieces of something he cannot recall nor hope to put back together without knowing what's missing-- it's behind and around them, written all over his face so like Endymion's and so unlike Mamoru's, so unguarded, so out of place in this hell.
"Why do you condemn him?" he asks helplessly. "It's not like you..."
And there it is.
It's so hard to bring himself to look at those eyes. He knows he has to, but there's something inside of Jadeite that won't stop screaming. He misses the color of the ocean, in a way he never thought he would. He hates the red and he hates this muddy, rust-grey, he *hates*, and all of that passion is just going to unravel him as surely as he's damned Nephrite with it.
For a long moment he's just standing there, in silence, wondering things he isn't allowed to voice. What if, what /if/, what if he just pushed a little, pulled on that certain note and lilt that comes from a part of him he can't remember. What if he just /tugged/ on that little thread, dug up the well from under the layer of clay. What if he went /looking/? Could he bring it back? Would he be enough?
No. He can't think like that. He can't think about this at all. He keeps his voice cold and sharp, filleted of all of its musical warmth, as he asks, "What makes you think you know me at all? You said yourself. You haven't *been* here."
The worst part of it is, he's so close. Endymion is so close. So almost.
His voice is quiet, but it's not soft. It's hard with conviction, with a will and a self so strong that even with the young modern shell of him shattered and his heart ripped from his chest, some part of him is unbreakable and solid. His bedrock is as unmoving and as stable as that of his planet, no matter what's overlaid, no matter what masks he wears or what masks have been stripped, no matter what confusions and illusions have muddied his clear, still depths.
"Because you belong with me."
It all comes back in an instant, shredding at his core like those shards of glass and dark energy had shredded his body, that day outside of the arcade. Jadeite remembers being so ready to die for this boy, the *enemy*. He remembers being *saved* by him, instead. He doesn't remember *home*, but he remembers what it feels like.
For the first time in their conversation, something cracks in Jadeite's facade. He makes a sound like he's been hurt, quiet and almost not-there, and he closes his own eyes.
"No. Not like this."
Then he's just *gone*.
There's a moment of complete silence, complete stillness in the room, as Endymion stares at the place where Jadeite had been. 'Not like this'?
And that's two of his Shitennou-- his, his soul insists, deep in the place where it remains bundled up, a candle lit and sleeping cloaked in darkness-- two who have fled from him. A tactical retreat, he thinks without humor or condemnation.
Whatever is wrong, it's with him. It's a mask Jadeite was wearing-- because of him. Maybe it's true. Maybe, somehow, before he can remember, he caused Nephrite to flee...
Queen Beryl is the only one you can trust, something dark slithers across his mind, silent and velvety soft, she's the only one who wants you. And you made her wait so long.
But Kunzite--
You laughed with him, but it ended when Zoisite arrived, didn't it? And then his attention was focused on that boy--
But he'd stepped in front of Endymion, he'd protected him. He knew him and embraced it, he didn't run from it.
But then Zoisite tried to kill you. Argued with you. Called you a traitor. What had Kunzite said to him? Maybe it's all lies. You know you can't trust any of them. You know they could all turn their backs on you. You know it as surely as you know them. Beryl's the only one who's never turned away from you.
The buried light struggles to awaken, to remind, to live; it reaches out desperately, fishing through the screaming hell of blackness and torment through which one must swim to teleport to Earth; it calls and calls until it gets to the open wound, white-hot and crushing, that insists that the answer to that call is dead and he's alone.
But Kunzite promised!
When? When did he promise? Why do you struggle so hard when you know Beryl waits for you still, with open arms? You belong to her. They belong to her. She is stronger. She is safer. She won't betray you, she won't flee. You'll never be alone, and that comes from her. Don't be confused, don't get distracted.
Endymion rakes his nails down his face, scrubs at his eyes, curls up against the wall and to the floor without even realizing it.
Just go back to Beryl, the darkness soothes, go back and she'll take the pain away, she'll take the weight and the sorrow from you, and you'll be at peace.
"N--!" Endymion starts to shout at the empty air, and his face is shoved in the emptiness of the room, the reminder that Jadeite left rather than be near him, and the syllable is lost in a strangled sound and a moment of confusion and doubt, and that's all it takes.
Eyes flaring bright red again, Endymion picks himself up off the floor and throws his cape over his shoulder, then strides through the door into the hall, headed for the throne room.