One sight in a hallway is all it took. One sight of a caped figure with unwholesomely bright eyes. And Kunzite was searching. He's known for a long time the places that Jadeite goes when he's particularly unhappy, when he doesn't want to be found; he's never made use of that knowledge before, but there's a first time for everything, and that first time is now. Energy stolen from the New Year's crowds outside shrines goes now to power teleport after teleport, checking each location and moving on. Conserving his strength is less important than speed right now. They'll have a little time, and he knows exactly when it will start. But they won't have much. And he suspects he'll need every second of it he can get.
And he suspects one look at Jadeite's face will tell him whether that's true, or whether it should have been Zoisite he was looking for after all.
Jadeite is not as well-hidden as he should be. He is in his studio, his little bubble-dimension cut off from almost all access from other parts of the Dark Kingdom, mostly to prevent clumsy youma from bumbling into important creations. There isn't much to the studio, other than the tools Jadeite uses to make things out of clay. Some of them are terribly mundane. Some of them are his magic.
Right now, it's just his fingers. He's so lost in thought, Jadeite doesn't seem to notice that Kunzite has even entered his sanctum. He seems to be fashioning flower petals, painstakingly carefully, only to hold them in his palm for a second's worth of consideration before crushing them in a white-knuckled fist and starting all over.
Kunzite's voice, then, even as the shadows and uncanny light of his entrance are fading. "You saw him." It's not a question. It's almost a question. "You spoke with him." It's not an accusation. It's almost emotionless - but it's not calm. There is nothing about Kunzite's voice, in this moment, that can honestly be described as calm.
It's the sound of that moment of staring at the flower petals, the instant before passing judgment. The instant before a decision.
And it is only almost emotionless; because there is something in the words that is itself a terrible kind of hope.
Sucking in a startled breath, Jadeite's head snaps up the moment that Kunzite speaks. He watches his brother with too-wide eyes, letting the clay in his palm, crushed out of any seeming or form. Slowly, he turns his hand over and returns the small piece to the main stockpile. "Yes. I saw him. I could not avoid him forever."
Jadeite looks down at his palms, curls his fingers briefly. He isn't wearing his gloves, which is rare enough itself. Everything is out of sorts lately, so nothing is new here. "We spoke. I'm...it did not go well."
Kunzite steps forward, crosses most of the distance between them. Doesn't reach to touch Jadeite. But he brings one hand up within Jadeite's line of sight, and makes a small and curious series of gestures. A circle; a sharp slash of a line dividing it in half; a second sharp slash, another line, at ninety degrees to the first. A quartered circle. The alchemical symbol for Earth. In the Dark Kingdom, it doesn't mean anything. But even without knowing its source, there are things it's possible to see in it. Four intersections, surrounding one. Four places where someone could stand, guarding one in the center.
Once, it meant a great deal more, to them in particular. But it's been a very long time since they've been allowed to know that.
Kunzite's voice stays very quiet. "Did you remember?"
He's almost dismissive, so frustrated with this constant existence where the answer to that question is always *no*, but just *barely*. He's felt, what seems like his whole life, like he's been reaching for a cord just beyond his grasp, that could pull the whole thing down if he just got it in his fingers. He's never been closer.
But instead, Jadeite looks up, watches Kunzite describe the symbol in the air between them, and something in Jadeite reaches up to grab that cord and *pull*.
The blond general makes a sound like he's just been mortally wounded and his eyes focus on the far-away as a flood of images suddenly bombard him. Someplace warm and bright, someplace that could have been sacred. Scrambling barefoot on the dirty shingles of a rooftop, up to mischief as always but *never* up to *no good*. Losing control of his own ice and then throwing his body in the way of it rather than let it hit *him*, the past echo that made his actions at the arcade seem so very familiar. Laying in a bed in the halls of healing with those eyes like the ocean looking up at him, telling him not to *do* that again, and Jadeite's utter conviction that it was his solemn *duty*, to melt into the sea as all glaciers eventually did.
When it's over, Jadeite has almost slumped over his workbench, leaning heavily on the arm that supports him against it. His fingers are trembling, and a rime of frost is already working its way out from his palm, over his store of clay and his workspace. He's breathing heavily, voice half-ruined. "...I...I remember...sunlight?"
Not only one arm. Leaning heavily on his own arm, yes. But there's another around him, supporting him. Not something that happens in this life. Something that he could count on forever, then.
"You were right." Quiet is not the word for Kunzite's voice, now. Low. Intent. Fervent, in a way that the walls themselves don't know what to do with, here. "You were always right. The rest of us just weren't strong enough to see it." As he's speaking, there's something like the inverse of a flash -- his shadows flooding out over the room, hunting anything hiding, anything that might be spying on them, seeking anything they can drain, they can kill. Anything but Jadeite. They leave him alone. "It took repeated contact with him for Nephrite to start to understand. It took -- much more than that, for me. I don't know what it will take for Zoisite. But you came to it on your own, over and over again. You were always right.
"We never belonged here. Neither does he."
What is he supposed to do with this? His entire world has just come apart, only for Jadeite to realize that he's been living in Tartarus where there was still *blue sky* out there. Kunzite is hugging him. His *brother* is *hugging* him and it's just--
--It's too much for what little composure Jadeite has left. He lifts both arms, now, and turns into Kunzite's embrace, clinging to that arm with both of his bare hands. He starts to cry, not with decorum or restraint, but the gross, uncontrolled sobbing of a child.
Ice chases out behind Kunzite's shadows, like it's simply a natural reprecussion, like somehow this is how Jadeite supports his fellow General and does his part. It creates a second line behind the line of darkness, a wall two inches thick that surrounds them in a shell that would be glittering, if there was enough light here to glitter, cold and radiant but somehow the least dangerous thing in the room, short of the clay itself. It makes the sound of Jadeite's distress echo, just a little bit.
It's one of the strangest things in the world, to think of the lethal, white-haired General of the Dark Kingdom as a source of comfort. But even here, he's been that for Zoisite. And once -- once there was a three-year-old prince placed in his charge, and he had to learn. So the arm Jadeite holds to is steady, and his other hand rests on Jadeite's hair.
He uses words, though, not sounds. Shh would bring back a particularly terrible memory, right now. And --
"We don't have much time," he says. His words aren't hurried; they're measured, low, calm. And they are not we don't have time for this. "We likely aren't watched right now. But She won't be distracted for ever. And there are decisions you need to make while we can still speak freely."
Quiet after, except for his breathing, and whatever sounds Jadeite makes. If he needs to, he'll say that again, in a little. And again after, if he needs to, until it works through to him. They don't have much time. But they have a little. A very little. Maybe enough.
"I know." Jadeite says, not terribly long after Kunzite warns him the first time. "I know. And if she suspects...even a little...she will take it from me again." And again, and again, and *again*, as she always has, any time he got close. He's never gotten this far. He's so afraid of losing it.
So he struggles the overwhelming emotion back. He straightens, visibly reluctantly, and ends up staring at the dusty surface of his workspace instead of Kunzite's face, because that's much easier. Jadeite flexes his hands, and somewhere in the middle of the gesture his gloves reappear. "What do we do?"
"You need to decide which way you're going." Kunzite straightens as well; it's much too old a habit not to, by now. And it makes what he's saying next easier.
"If you decide you're Hers, then you need to turn me in. I won't hold it against you. Neither would he; he's already forgiven us for worse. And it'll amuse her enough that she'll leave you alone for a while.
"If you decide you're his, then we need to get you out. Now. Before she decides she wants to speak with you again."
Jadeite huffs a little breath, almost a laugh. It isn't really one, there's no humor, but there's no way for him to react to this otherwise. His head shakes, just faintly. "I was never hers." He daren't say it louder than the softest whisper.
Then he looks up, finally looking at Kunzite's face again. He's searching it, looking for something without really knowing what it is he's looking for. "If we get me out--will I be alone?"
"Never." The confirmation is no louder than the words Jadeite spoke were.
It would be so much easier if Kunzite could give a one-word answer to the question, too.
"Listen," he says, and the gray eyes are steady. "These are the orders I have from him. We belong with him. Stay alive. Don't give up. Don't let go. Have faith." He draws a little more of a breath, marking the division between orders and not-quite-that, and adds, "He forgives us."
Silence, for a moment, for that impossibility. And then Kunzite's talking again, low and quick, trying to make up that lost moment.
"He believes Sailor Moon can rescue him. Even if he dies. So. Once that happens - you won't be alone. Before that, you won't be, if you can get the senshi to see you clearly.
"And apart from that - we need you there, Jadeite. We need you as an anchor. I don't know where Nephrite is, or what's happened to him; but if they find him first, you'll be there to try to catch him. If we can reach Zoisite - if you're there, he'll go to you, he won't drop out of sight. Not completely. As for me - I don't know if there's a way to get Her out of my head without killing me; I know the way the senshi claim to have in mind won't work on me. I think it will on you - but you should still ask Mercury to make sure it won't kill you in the process. But even if She takes me back, and she probably will; even if they have to kill me -"
His eyes are focused; his eyes are sane. That may not make this easier. "- even if I die, Jadeite, I will find a way back. We did it once. I can work out how to make it happen again. It'll take time for me to find him; the odds of my being born close by aren't good. But it will happen. If you're alone, or if the two of you are alone, if it's just you and the girls -- it will be temporary. And we don't plan for that. We plan for getting us all out. All of us. You were right about that, too. None of us are replaceable. Not to him."
Jadeite flinches, just faintly, at some of the words Kunzite speaks. Maybe Endymion is in a place where he *can* forgive, can allow his heart to be as regal and broad as befits a Prince. Jadeite cannot be so understanding, least of all of himself. This can never happen again. What they have done--it must *never* happen again. For the first time since he can remember, Jadeite feels no conflict, no tug around his heart to tell him that his duty lies elsewhere. Finally. *Finally*. Something feels like he's fallen on the right side of it.
There is resolve in his gaze when he looks back up to Kunzite, something firmer in the set of his jaw. "I will make them listen to me. I will make them understand. You--*you* do not die." You're the *oldest brother*, Jadeite doesn't actually say, but it hangs between them somehow anyway. He isn't sure he can cope with Kunzite being *younger* than he is, given how heavily he leans on the other's guidance. "I will find them, and I will help them and then we will come back and free you all."
It sounds like such a hollow promise, like such empty words, but they've never had a chance like this. They've never before had *hope*, and perhaps that was all Jadeite really *needed*.
"I don't know a way around it," Kunzite says. "But I can trust them to find one. And make plans in case they don't." He reaches out, clasps Jadeite's arm. Not long ago that was a bizarre aberration. Now it's steady, natural, familiar.
"I'll cover for you as long as I can. Claim that I sent you out as Saburo to work on tracking social connections, on figuring out Moon's other identity. I ran into three of the senshi a few days ago - their policy on us was capture if possible, kill if necessary. They'll want something to make it worth not killing you. Give them anything that won't get them killed - they wanted most to know where this place is, but if they come here too soon, they'll die. Mercury knows, anyhow. Give them Saito, if it helps; I can handle it if they try to ambush me."
And then he's out of words, out of information to share, out of cautions. Down at the truth: "The rest you know better than I do. Go. Get her out of your head. Stay alive. And - Jadeite -"
Silence for a moment.
"The only thing you ever did wrong was trust me more than I deserved."
His hand drops, and he steps back.
Jadeite stands when Kunzite steps back, still looking the other General in the eyes. His own expression has gone watery and complicated, and he doesn't care to hold it back, not the fear or the sadness or the affection, not if this may be the last time he sees Kunzite in this light, in this *life*. He doesn't look around the room one last time, or take any baubles from the workshop. Whatever he thinks he needs, he must already have with him. Instead, like before, he lifts his hand, clasping it over his heart in a gesture of respect and acknowledgement. "Not more than you deserved, Kunzite. We were all young."
It feels like they're so *old*, now. Jadeite inclines his head, keeps his eyes respectfully dropped as he offers his parting remarks. "I will be back for you. Just as you deserve."
As ever, he teleports out with little other warning.