It is, indeed, a beautiful and impossible garden in the wrong season, fathoms below the streets of the City of Light, below even its morbid City of the Dead. It's in bloom; there is light from a sky and a sun that are hidden from them but no sky, no winds; there are cave walls around them and a cavernous ceiling above, if now of a different configuration. Jupiter shattered the greatest part of the rockfall; leaves and blossoms may be covered in dust, or tattered in places from sharp-edged shards, but by and large the plants rest peacefully. There is a pile of bones that was not there before, and a couple of piles of vegetation which are already tentatively stretching into their own kind of beauty. Most of the plants are still strange; perhaps some of them whisper more than the wind might allow; but there is no malevolence about them, anymore.
The sakura petals that kick up in the breeze are not from the garden, and they dissipate before they reach the ground again, leaving Zoisite in their wake. In his garden. His garden.
Not his garden anymore. He can tell that in an instant. The Senshi took that, too.
He chose his entry point carefully. When the remnants of his self-control shatter, when he whirle and screams and looses the firestorm from his hands that he'd meant for Mercury, the plants that are consumed and turned to white ash in an instant are ones that he'd planted himself. Earthside things that he'd been experimenting with. Not the older, stranger ones; nothing he cannot replace.
Everything he couldn't replace about them is already gone.
He's there behind Zoisite, across a reasonable distance; when he sees the firestorm, he's glad of that distance, but--
For just a moment before he speaks, Endymion just stands there and absorbs it, breathes it, drinks in the feel of the garden, the scents that aren't mixed with ash and char; he shuts his eyes and crouches, burying his hand in the grass, in the soil.
Everything that Zoisite couldn't replace about them can no longer poison the Prince. So close to something true--
When he lifts his head and speaks, his eyes are blue. "Zoisite," he says quietly, standing up and automatically lifting his cape as a shield.
He gets a better look at the youngest Shitennou as his head stays clear, as something here, or something close, gives him the strength to hold off the thing that pushes in at him all the time. And then his voice is sharply worried, and his face and eyes match, and he starts running to the strawberry blond. "Zoisite! Oh my god, are you okay?!"
Zoisite's starting to move to contain the handful of lingering flames when his name is called; the spell's redirected, and flower petals tear through the air, strike the lifted cape, drift to the ground about Endymion's feet. Are kicked up again in a bright little breath of pink when Endymion takes off running.
The bright burst of fire doesn't do any better. Zoisite doesn't reach for anything darker; it hurts too much, just now. "I'm fine," he lies, and the words get past the cape, at least. No sweetness with the venom, this time; he's pulled in on himself, all glaring green eyes, coiled snake and scorpion-sting. The scratches on his face don't quite betray him; it's not as if they're bleeding. The blood in his hair isn't even his.
And he's forcing that crouch of his to look intentional, not because he's starting to have trouble standing up straight.
He draws a breath, and suddenly a sequence of events come together in his mind, suggest a potentially coherent shape for at least the lion's share of the day's events. Not necessarily the right one, but -- worth testing. At an angle. "You. What are you doing here? Did Kunzite send you?"
The glare's aimed at him with the words, though. And that means Zoisite can see him, the more so as Endymion moves.
Blue eyes -- are almost as much a shock to him as that bright red. But the number of shocks he's already taken in the last ten minutes that keep it from showing.
"You are NOT fine," the other boy retorts, trying to keep his voice from sounding frantic; he jogs to a halt near Zoisite and almost stumbles at the end of it, crouching down, blue gaze flickering over Zoisite's body language, his stance and balance, trying to figure out by sight and omission where he's hurt, and apparently not expecting an attack from the viciously delicate General. "And no, you vanished off my radar and I got worried. I texted Kunzite and started looking for you, but then you showed up again and I came straightaway. Here, let me see--"
(There's something warm about him, open. His eyes are the color of the Earth's oceans from space, and there's something ancient behind them, ancient and affectionate and knowing. Something so familiar it hurts. And after today--)
Endymion's lifting a hand tentatively, and it's not the gesture of an attack. He looks up at Zoisite, ingenuous and worried. "Please, let me see. I remembered-- while you were gone wherever you were, I remembered how. How to fix injuries, I mean. And I think I can do it right now. My head's clear. I don't know how long it'll last."
Sight and omission? Everywhere. Everything. No physical sign of it, no burns, no cuts, no bleeding. But there are a thousand tiny signals that everything hurts, down to the weight of his own flesh on his bones. And that something else hurts more than the physical, something aggravated by the closeness in Endymion's eyes --
-- it would be raw fury, Zoisite's reaction to that, if he had the energy left to muster any more of it.
The more so because he can't make himself look away.
There's a gesture in turn, a forearm lifted as if to block, warding off the touch warily; but not retreating from it. Not pushing it away that completely. The look in Zoisite's eyes mutes itself a fraction, down to something merely untrusting; the honey touches his voice again. "If you're claiming you can find us," he challenges, "where's Jadeite?"
Endymion's answer is to still his reaching hand, leave it hesitating, not progressing but not retreating-- and then lower his other hand to the ground and close his eyes. The hand held up flips over, an offer instead of a question. "He's in Tokyo. I can show you if you want. Looks like he's asleep. Bunch of hours ahead of us."
His hand's still held out, but his eyes snap open and point at Zoisite, but don't quite focus on him; they're looking at something that's not in the cave. "I don't want to look too long, Kunzite said he was unstable so he stuck him on assignment, undercover. Something to focus on. I'd probably only set him off again if he saw me."
Then his eyes focus, finally. "Or you can test it by teleporting anywhere. I'll give you a five minute headstart. Then I'll follow. But I'd rather help you first."
Kunzite again. Kunzite said this, Kunzite did that. Kunzite's saying all kinds of things lately, and whatever it is he's doing, he's leaving Zoisite outside the loop and his new little monster in it --
-- maybe.
"Hmph." Zoisite folds his arms tightly about himself and turns away from Endymion, staring resolutely out at the field of ash that used to be his favorite experiments. "If he's on assignment," he adds over his shoulder, "we'd better leave him alone."
He doesn't invite; but he doesn't teleport out. His back's been turned on Endymion -- for all that he's still watching the man over his shoulder -- but the motion took him a few inches closer.
That might be all Endymion's going to get in the way of permission.
There's faint relief that leaks into Endymion's posture when Zoisite doesn't press about Jadeite's location. The black-haired prince drops one knee to the ground from his crouch and reaches up carefully to put his hand-- very gently-- atop Zoisite's curly head.
The moment contact's made, there's a spreading warmth from the point thereof, lifting the pain first; Endymion's voice is saying something a little shocked, a little horrified, but then reassuring and firm. It doesn't really matter what it is, because there's this golden glow that's enveloping Zoisite's mind, or maybe soul, and it carries with it everything he's lost.
There's stillness and peace and acceptance, there's healing; it refreshes, it salves, it's patience and resolve and it restores and rebuilds. And it's as solid as mountains and as living as all of the green growing things on the planet--
--and it feels so much like his palace, but so much more''.
The contact's permitted, though it's never going to be clear whether Zoisite turned away from Endymion to make escape easier for himself or to keep from attacking the princeling. The first might be likelier, but the second isn't impossible. It might help that Endymion settles low the way he does; that's not a pose that's given to enabling either attacks or pursuit. It might help.
The touch - helps. Because everything hurts. Zoisite had been taking after his mentor, when Sailor Moon Escalated him; he'd been filled with the energy he'd stolen in Tokyo, charged with it, and the tearing away of so much of it might not have left much external sign, but ... everything hurts. Everything inside him is -- there is no word for the damage; it is not burns, it is not bruises, but it is there -- right down to the marrow of his bones.
And the physical damage is the least of the pain. He remembers; he can't help remembering, he can't stop remembering, he can't push the knowledge away on his own.
He remembers a time when he burned brighter, when his focus was clear, when he had a place to stand that supported him without confining. He remembers a loyalty that he didn't constantly doubt. He remembers an absence, a searching, looking for someone - he remembers the search being the most important thing in his world. He remembers they were all looking.
He remembers that they forgot.
He remembers that he forgot.
He cannot remember what made him forget. And he forgot that he was looking ... but he never stopped looking. Unsettled, searching, forever. Tearing through weeklong obsessions, pretty things that caught his eye, anything that could distract him for a moment. But none of them were right. None of them meant anything.
Until finally nothing meant anything, except that transient moment when beauty was enough to distract him, except the brief instants when attention paid him was enough to make him feel as if he had a place to stand again. Everything else disappointed; everything else hurt. Everything else needed to bleed, to burn.
He has been feeling that as long as he can remember. He's survived by keeping himself from noticing the growing madness, the sinking despair. And Mars' touch on the ice made him have to know that was what he was feeling.
The golden glow of Endymion's touch takes that pain away, too. And the shock of it is so great that he bows under it, crumpling at waist and knee, not dropping to the ground but drawing in on himself smaller yet. The stunned little indrawn breath is an honest thing. He can't remember the last sound he made that was completely honest. Even to the screaming.
He shouldn't trust this. He can't trust this. It's Endymion. It's Kunzite's new little monster, the one that's going to kill him. It's going to go away, all the stillness and the peace is going to go away and when everything comes back it will be so much worse for the contrast --
Gloved hands scrabble for the one in his hair. To hold it in place, not to push it away.
There's a memory at the edge of Endymion's own mind that's been torn away too recently to come back wholly, but the sensation of it is there. The knowledge that this is what Jadeite looked like, too, and not long ago, not in another lifetime. It sinks into the boy prince's consciousness and worries at him until he dismisses it; it's replaced by something he can hold on to, something that's been granted him by the shard of ice in Zoisite's palace, something he can keep.
"If it doesn't work the way it is, change it," Zoisite told him, sitting on the edge of his desk, looking equal parts affectionately amused and exasperated. "Don't keep trying to make a broken system work. Forget all this--"
Endymion's youngest guardian swept up all of the documents in front of his prince and threw them in the air, then set fire to every last one of them, burning them to cinder and ash in a heartbeat, in a flash of heat and light. "Don't let them tell you that just because something's always been done a certain way, it has to keep being done that way. Change is good. Change is life."
The way he smiled--
With Zoisite crumpling, Endymion's already moving closer, dropped to both knees; with the hands scrabbling to keep his on his head, Endymion pulls the smaller teenager closer, enfolds him. He pulls his cape around Zoisite, he keeps his arm around him; his other arm slips around his head and shoulders, and he rests his face atop Zoisite's head.
The feeling doesn't stop. The feeling is honest, it's desperately loving, it's a connection and a need and the willingness to give and give and give.
"I'm sorry everything is wrong," Endymion whispers against Zoisite's hair. "I'm sorry I can't think about the things you need me to. It's not safe. I'm not safe. There's too much I can't know. But I found you, and I need you, so-- please have faith, Zoisite. It all hurts, but please believe it will get better."
It all hurts. Even this - the arm around Zoisite's head and shoulders calls back a recent memory of his own, and that triggers another, and this is why Kunzite was laughing that day, wasn't it? Was why he stood so close -- there's no way that Zoisite can live up to something like this, let alone compete with it. He's losing everything; he's being replaced. His garden is gone. The tiny handful of almost-certainties that made up his world are all going, one by one, burned away.
"Don't be ridiculous," Endymion says irritably. "No one can replace any of you."
"It's going to kill someone," Kunzite says, in another place, in another time, his hand held out toward Zoisite. "I don't intend either of us to be standing in the way, when the time comes."
Part of him protests what he's doing, as he finds the center of one pattern and another, puts pressure on them, tries different angles. It makes sense for Endymion to be a Senshi plant, doesn't it? -- of course it does. Right up until those glowing eyes, and that voice. It makes sense for Kunzite to be betraying him, doesn't it? -- until he takes a step further in examining that, and considers that the one Kunzite might be betraying him to is insisting, every time, that he needs Zoisite. Is dismissing his attacks, ignoring the youma he sent. Is doing -- this.
What did he want that world for, anyway?
And he pulls free, and lands lightly, if only in his mind. It's not the redemption that Mercury was hoping for. His nature hasn't changed a bit. But his willingness to listen, to evaluate, to study evidence without blinding himself with cynicism ... that's changed.
And the evidence says maybe, just maybe, you don't have to keep looking anymore.
Gloves are missing, vanished away, so he can dig a nail pointedly into Endymion's wrist even while he's still holding on. "Stop worrying," he complains aloud, his indignation vented mostly into the Prince's collarbone.
Because obviously expecting Zoisite to react exactly the way he has actually been reacting is a terrible, terrible insult.
"Ow!" complains Endymion right back, ...in the middle of sputtering laughter and trying to wrench that wrist free, at least of the nail. He digs his chin into the top of Zoisite's head in revenge, then pulls him in even closer for a second, a really tight hug. "I can't stop worrying! I mean-- I can, but I have to know you know it's probably going to get worse before it gets better. I can't fight it off much longer, and I don't really know what's going on, and I'm going to try really hard not to remember this conversation because--"
He'd been talking really quickly; he breaks off suddenly. His grip on Zoisite loosens, and the feeling's beginning to fade a little, to stutter and catch.
Endymion turns his head, and the kiss at the crown of Zoisite's is a benediction.
He whispers against Zoisite's head again. "Watch over Kunzite, okay? He's hurting too. He needs your help coping with me."
And then the prince is drawing away, and his eyes are still blue, but they're flickering, dulling. "I have to-- go."
Before they're red, he's vanishing; he's vanished. The look on his face was, at the last, defiant.