Zoisite
My body felt strange when I woke up, almost as though it was unnatural for me to be caged in a form of flesh. It took several seconds before I could convince my eyelids to blink open – several panicked seconds before I remembered how to control my physical shell. That was weird too, to think about it as a separate entity, without bonds to my self. It just added to the overall feeling of subtle wrongness that didn’t go away until I had passed some limit and was properly joined with my body again.

“Itai!” was my first exclamation after that, prompted partly by the relief of being able to move and speak freely again, partly by the vicious pain that attacked my fingers. The left side of my face hurt too, but that was a calm, throbbing ache, far from the burning agony in my hands.

“Healer!” someone called. “He’s awake now!”

Focusing my teary eyes, I discovered Kunzite-sama standing worriedly over me. An over-tipped chair that he had supposedly been catnapping in lay on the floor behind him. One of his fingers brushed over my wrists, leaving a fading trail of shimmering energy. I let out a sigh of relief as the pain abruptly stopped; blocking the nerve-connections is a very effective way to avoid sensing certain parts of the body.

“Are you feeling all right?” Kunzite-sama asked, somewhat hesitantly.

“Mostly,” I replied. “But if I’m in bed in the healing wing” – as everything around me suggested – “why haven’t they fixed my injuries?”

“Your energies were so overworked that they feared they might end up harming you if they tried. They said they’d rather take care of it when you’d woken up again, and I agreed that it seemed the best course of action.”

“I see, but…” I licked my lips. “How come I have these injuries at all? I don’t remember getting any of them.”

“You don’t?” Was that…could it be hope in his eyes? Nah, it didn’t make sense. Yet the relief in the movement was undeniable as he finally slumped down on my bedside.

I shook my head. “It’s clear up to a certain point, after which I assume I’d taken in too much power. After that it’s just foggy glimpses. You can see if you want.”

And maybe make some sense of it, and make me feel a little safer about ever activating these powers again.

Because I had a feeling that I’d be too terrified to do it again, yet at the same time I felt this insane craving to draw in magic until I drowned in it. It scared me stiff.

“If you want,” he said, and I nodded, placing both my numb hands around one of his and letting him share the memory of my encounter with the demon. If I’d thought about it a bit more, I’d probably have tried to obscure the part where I contemplated running away and leaving the two girls to their nasty fate, but no use crying over spilt milk. I didn’t have time to worry about it for long anyway, because the memories sucked me with them.

I tried to fight the demon, again, fell, panicked, and called upon the power of the planet’s core. It was then, somewhere after my pleading to the demon to understand, that things started to get fuzzy. I released Kunzite-sama’s hand, breaking the connection – not wanting him to see the confused images that followed. I could feel my cheeks coloring as I sorted through them, my body seeming to burn for a moment with the memory of his touch. It was ridiculous, it had to be images from some strange dream I’d been having when unconscious.

But still I heard my own voice whispering promises of devotion, my head heady with narcissistic love for the creature I had become. Still I remembered the scent of his body, the taste of his lips.

Well, I tried to convince myself, it’s not as though I’ve never hugged him before. It’s a given that any weird dream I might’ve had comes across as pretty realistic.

Even though this probably-imagined embrace had been decidedly different from my usual clinging on him. I blushed harder. It can’t have happened. He’d never do that.

I could buy that he swept me up in his arms and held me, but that he kneeled before me, fiercely kissed me… No, of course he couldn’t have. Except that he almost had, that time in my bedroom just before he and Nephrite departed for the Moon.

Do I want him to? I forced the thought into words after finding myself unable to decide whether my earlier statement left me feeling relieved or disappointed.

“Zoisite, that’s incredible,” Kunzite-sama finally let out, startling me back into awareness of my present circumstances. “Kami, it’s just short of a miracle!”

“What is?” I asked, wondering if I’d lost some previous sentences that could explain what he was referring to.

“The way you managed to channel up the power of Venus, of course. Only a really determined and gifted Sailorvenus should be able to do that.”

“No,” I said, “that’s not how it works. I didn’t perform that attack – I just communicated a little with the planet. What it did, it did as a separate entity, of its own accord. I suppose I kind of asked it for protection against the demon, but the power-wave itself was not of my making. Gods, I still don’t understand how it worked.”

His eyes were strangely open, as though most of his usual mask had slipped away, as a warm hand caressed my cheek. The one that didn’t hurt, that is.

“You really are a miracle, aren’t you?” He spoke very softly, as much to himself as to me.

I could gladly have stayed like that for a lesser eternity, but eventually he straightened up, his hand falling down to rest on his thigh and his face regaining something of its usual calm detachment.

Without waiting for any doubts to catch up with me, I curled both my hands around his again, forgetting that I probably shouldn’t move them like that. He didn’t return the gesture, but he didn’t pull away either.

“I wonder where that healer went,” Kunzite-sama mused. “It was fairly long since I called. Ah, I guess they still have a lot of patients.”

“So, anyway,” I said, “What happened to my hands? And my face? How did I get back here?”

“Practically all your fingers are broken due to having been crushed by someone. Your face is just a bit swollen, the way an impact usually results in.” Why was he looking at our hands instead of at my face? “As for how you ended up here, I happened to run into you and the princesses and, well, then I and Nephrite picked the lot of you up and opened a gateway.”

He was returning my holding his hand now, hard enough that I’d probably found it uncomfortable if I’d had much feeling below my wrists. Letting out a sigh, he loosened the grip somewhat, then lifted his gaze to my face. “And I’m still mad at you for putting yourself at risk like that, and I still very much want to hear what the hell you thought you were doing.”

Yes, I reflected, it really was a good thing that my hands weren’t very sensitive right now. If the fingers hadn’t broken before, they probably would’ve done it now.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t really thinking at all. Anyway, I’m not likely to ever do anything similar again, ne?”

He offered a sad little half-smile. “I wish I could believe that. Knowing you, it won’t be long before you forget what this should have taught you. You won’t always be lucky. On the other hand, the princesses would probably be dead now if you hadn’t turned up, so I suppose I shouldn’t blame you as much as I really want to.”

“So they’re all right now?” I asked, a bit ashamed for having forgotten about them.

Kunzite-sama nodded. “They had some nasty skin damage, but the healers took care of it. Physically, they’re as healthy as ever.”

He didn’t need to tell me anything about their probable mental state. They’d been through a lot, just like all the rest of us. The blonde girl, Sailorvenus, had lost her entire family and had parts of her planet destroyed. That’s not the kind of tragedies that mere words were invented to express.

But it wasn’t my problem, and I’d already done enough for both of them.

“Could you hand me the mirror over there?” I requested, pointing at an item lying on the little table by my bedside. “I’d like to check the bruise.”

Kunzite-sama looked hesitant, and it was so long before he rose to fetch it that I almost suspected that he’d refuse.

“Of course,” he said tonelessly, then remained standing after handing me the object.

I flickered him a glance under raised eyebrows, but soon found my attention captivated by the reflection. I looked downright terrible – the left side of my face was swollen, the cheek almost double its normal size, and showing an interesting spectrum of colors, raging from a deep blue-black to a sickly yellow-tinted green.

That wasn’t what had me staring, though. This wasn’t just any coincidentally shaped bruise. It was a handprint, the unmistakable trace of a large, long-fingered human hand having struck me. And that – that just didn’t make sense.

“Kunzite-sama,” I asked, “what happened to my face?”

“You were hit.”

I nodded, deciding that I didn’t really want to ask why he’d done that and instead focusing my attention on the mirror. Odd – it seemed my lips were swollen too, although not nearly as much as my cheek.

“Oh, Zoisite,” escaped him at last, just before he sunk down on the bedside again, plucking the mirror away from me and taking hold of my hands. “I was scared. It was wrong, but I was afraid.”

“It’s all right,” I replied, at which he vehemently shook his head.

“No. Of course it’s not all right. How can it ever be all right that I hurt you?” He was quiet for a while, turning his gaze to the floor and playing absently with my fingertips. “And that’s… I’ll be going away for a while. Not immediately, I’d like to speak to some people first, but I think I’ll be gone for a while.”

And my reality shattered. “That,” I said from somewhere among the splinters, “is not all right.”

He smiled ruefully. “It might be the better alternative. But it’s not settled in stone yet. I’ll talk to Endymion-oosan after we get back to Earth.”

Wait a moment – does that mean that he’s goings on his own initiative, by his own will, as the first reply implied, or that it’s on the king’s orders, as the second suggested?

Before I had time to ask – not that I was very certain to get a straight answer, though – there was a knock on the door, after which Jadeite and two others entered. The adult ought to be one of the healers, whereas I could only think of one tiny, blue-haired girl who had reason to come and see me.

“I’ll see you later, little one,” Kunzite-sama said. He was out of the room before I had the opportunity to voice any sort of protest over his sudden departure.

Both Jadeite and Sailormercury – damn, what’s her mundane name? I’ll make such a fool of myself if I can’t remember it until I have to talk to her – kept themselves out of the way when the sole adult handled my hands and face.

He was pretty fast, actually – there was a tingling sensation, and then the pain was just gone. Touching a cautious fingertip to my left cheek, I discovered that the bruise had vanished as well. And my hands worked, without nerve blocks and without broken bones.

I still don’t realize how I managed to get them damaged to that extent. Not that it made much difference now.

Jadeite hung back somewhat even after the healer had taken his leave, giving the approaching Ami – yes, that’s her name, isn’t it? Well, I sure hope it is, ‘cause it’s the only one I can think to use – space to approach me.

Kunzite-sama had been right – except the thinness of her hair, which I remembered had been falling off, she looked as though the trauma had never happened. Every horrible mark that I recalled had been so thoroughly erased that I doubted my own memory when I saw her soft, smooth skin.

“I can never in words express my gratitude, Zoisite-tennou,” she said, the words leaving her mouth in fast, shy precession, and she bowed. It wasn’t a casual gesture, either, but the sort used at courts, when you clasp your hands and bow your torso while bending your knees. If I hadn’t been so embarrassed, I’d thought that it looked thoroughly ludicrous, at least performed by an almost-bald eleven-year-old. At least she wasn’t wearing a sailorfuku. That would have been too much.

“Uh…please, you don’t have to…” I tried, absently catching sight of Jadeite’s muffled snicker.

She raised her head a little, even though she was still bent over. “Zoisite-tennou?”

“Please,” I tried again. It seemed I said that word an awful lot lately, but at least it was polite. “Why don’t you have a seat instead, if you’re planning to stay.”

She sat down obediently on the floor, her legs tucked in neatly under her. Given that Jadeite occupied the sole chair, perhaps I should have expected it, but I’d somehow rather imagined her taking place on the bedside. Or something. Princesses don’t sit on floors. Well, I reminded myself, according to that logic, neither should you. But then I’d never behaved as I was supposed to, whereas Ami didn’t particularly strike me as the rule-bending type.

“Look,” I said at length, when the silence started to get uncomfortable. It was she who’d come here, so why the hell didn’t she speak, anyway? “I didn’t really do much, and what I did was mostly by accident.”

“I owe you my life,” she replied solemnly. “So does Minako-chan. Please allow me to express her humblest apologies for not showing up to thank you in person. I’m afraid she is still devastated over the loss of her family. If there is anything I might do, anything at all, to pay you back to some small extent…”

Well, now that she offered… “May I try your henshin wand?” I asked.

“Huh?” She looked stunned.

“I’ve always been curious about it,” I explained with a shrug. “You think it would work if I tried to use it?”

“To become Sailormercury?” she asked. Somewhere in the background, Jadeite suffered a very sudden and intense coughing fit. “To be honest, I doubt it. Your personal aura is so strong that it would probably implode the spells on the wand. But of course I shall fetch it for you if you ask me to.”

“Don’t bother. So, you and Minako-hime are both doing all right now?”

She smiled a little. “Yes, thank you. I am better than I could have expected, and Minako-chan is strong. She’ll be able to move on eventually. She even mentioned that she finds Kunzite-tennou very good-looking. I fear she might be developing a crush on him.”

“Oh?” I said, my voice so thick with sweetness that it almost dropped of honey. “Then why don’t you tell your dear little girlfriend to stay the hell away from Kunzite-sama, or else I’ll personally torture her to a very painful death?"

She stared at me with wide, shocked eyes, her mouth moving but no sounds coming out.

“Zoisite!” Jadeite cried in a scandalized voice, shaking his head when I only glared daggers back at him. “Ami-hime,” he implored instead. “If you consider yourself in dept to Zoisite, then please repay it by forgetting that this ever happened. Would that be acceptable?”

She nodded, slowly getting to her feet. “As you say. Many patients are emotionally overloaded shortly after being healed. Now, if I may be excused?” She bowed to both of us, Jadeite returning the gesture, I glaring at both of them sullenly. Okay, maybe I had overreacted. I still wasn’t entirely certain why I had been so profoundly disturbed by her honestly rather innocent observation. It didn’t actually make much sense, not even to me, but then again, right now there weren’t all that many things which did make sense.

* * * * * * * *

Artemis
“You’re going back?” I asked, and Luna nodded.

“Yes, I thought I should return with the first regiments. After all, I left the queen rather abruptly.”

“I see. Well, I’ll be straying for a bit. There are some things I would like to do. Do you think Serenity-ojoosama would forgive me if I spent a certain amount of time away from the Moon?”

“I’m sure she would, though I believe she’d be happier if you spoke to her about it yourself.”

“I fully intend to,” I said, lying easily. When actually meeting Serenity, I had a tendency to lose myself in her gentle perfection. So long as she was with me, I had no will of my own, was nothing but a shell for worship of the Silver Queen. If I went back now, I wasn’t sure that I could return here, and it was my duty and my desire both to remain here on Venus.

“Goodbye, then, Artemis,” Luna said, turning to leave.

“Wait,” I called out and she stopped in the doorway. “Most of what I will be doing here is my business, but one particular action might be interpreted as your concern as well.” I licked my lips. “Diana’s Star Seed. I intend to give it away. To fulfil the prophecy.”

She closed her eyes wearily. When she opened them again, they glittered with unshed tears. “Do what you have to,” she said, her voice broken. “It’s all that’s left.”

I stayed where I was, sitting on the floor with my tail wrapped around my feet, for several minutes after she had disappeared from my sight. Luna had been right – I needed to do this. The Words of Choice must be fulfilled, and they craved a “star”. A real Star Seed. There was no other way to get one, really.

If you lose your pure heart crystal, you become impure and then dead. If you lose your dream mirror, your soul is taken from you and you become something worse than dead. But if you lose your Star Seed, your shine disappears. In case it’s a weak Star Seed like any other, you become a twisted shadow of what you once were. But in case it’s a real Star Seed, you fade from existence without hope of ever being reborn. Only the crystallized shine remains for all eternity.

Of course we could not force such a sacrifice from anyone, especially as those who held real Star Seeds were needed alive. No, giving them Diana’s was the only solution.

But Luna had been right – it was all that was left of our daughter, of the girl who might have become a Sailorsenshi and whom we had so ardently loved. I didn’t want to give it away, because if Luna was sunset, romantic and mysterious, and Arianne sunrise, golden and lovely, then Diana was the brightest star at midday, and I had lost all of it except this simple reminder, this little crystal that was the essence of my daughter.

I remembered finding it, her Star Seed, among the charred remnants of the demon that had devoured her. I think that the Sailorsenshi of our planet must have killed it. There was nothing left of Diana’s body, not the smallest trace of her heart or her dreams. Only her crystallized shine. Only that left of the single person that I had ever loved selflessly.

Not true. I would give up Diana’s Star Seed because it had turned out there was one more girl that I loved unselfishly.

I got to my feet slowly, deciding that I needed to remind myself of why I was offering my last physical reminder of Luna’s and my daughter before I did it.

It didn’t take me long to find Minako’s room in the infirmary. Since all her wounds were healed, they might have let her out, but I suspected that the spiritual damage inflicted upon her by the death of her loved ones had been too severe for that. Actually, it was with surprise and dismay both that I discovered her door to be unguarded, the room empty except for the small girl weeping brokenheartedly into her pillow.

It was a small, dreary room, furnished like any other in this temporary hospital with a single bed, a small table with a lamp and a chair for eventual visitors. In every way unbefitting of a princess. Despite her wailing, despite the loose gray gown and her baldness, her shine was striking. She didn’t need jewelry or thrones to be every inch a princess.

However convenient it might be, I was outraged that they’d left her alone in such a delicate condition. The healers were one thing, what with all the other patients, but surely there must be someone available.

There is, I reminded myself. Me.

She was too preoccupied by her grief to react to the energies when I turned human, which, considering the state of nakedness that the transformation temporarily put me in, might have been just as well.

“Minako-hime,” I called softly.

She lifted her head slowly, turning to look at me. Her eyes were swollen and cloudy with tears, but even so they were lovely – even without the frame of sunny hair, her face was perfectly sweet. Of course. She’s Arianne’s child. I smiled tentatively. You’ll be mine now. We’ll be each other’s. We’d each lost everything except one another.

“Artemis-sensei,” she said.

“Yes.” I sat down on her bedside, wrapping both my arms around her and cuddling her against me. She drew a deep, shuddering breath, then relaxed and cried tiredly into my shoulder. “I’ll be taking care of you now. Is that all right?”

She lifted her head, and I released my hold a little, giving her space to look me in the face. “I’ll do my best to take care of you too.”

“That’s my girl.” If I hadn’t been somewhat startled by how easily our connection came, I would’ve leaned down and pecked her nose.

“I love many people,” she said quietly. “I lost some of them, but if I continue to live on, I’ll meet more people that I love, right, Artemis-san?”

“I’m sure you will.” Who wouldn’t love her, after all? Maybe this girl could have a future as bright as she was, as opposed to the destinies given me and my people.

“By the way,” and now there was a smile glimmering through the veil of tears in the blueness of her eyes, “I heard you can turn into a cat?”

Returning her hinted smile with a similar expression, I lifted the amulet over my head. I barely had time to close her hands around it before the magic erupted. When the flow of energy had subsided, it was I who had to crane my neck to look up at her.

She gave a delighted laugh as he lifted me, and her expression was too happy for me to complain when she hugged me. Hard.

“Minako-chan…!” I growled. She was still giggling as she released me.

But it’s okay now. I’ve been given a second chance with her. This time, I won’t mess it up.

* * * * * * * *

Nephrite
I leant back in the chair, resting my head against the uppermost one of the pillows stacked behind me. I’d never felt easy letting other people use magic on me – it was a given that I didn’t enlist the help of any healers if I could help it. After all, they were all unknown adults. Silly thought, since I was mostly grown up myself by now, yet my childhood distinction between us and them, children and adults, remained.

Still, I’d rather let Zoisite do a spell on me than any of the healers around here – then at least I would know approximately what kind of prank to except. And regardless of our disputes, Zoisite wouldn’t do me any lethal damage.

Now, I didn’t particularly think that some terrorist hating the government or the Shitennou or whatever would disguise as a healer and manage to seriously hurt me. Or at least my conscious self didn’t. My subconscious obviously had a more suspicious view of things, and so my trusted instincts kept me from the infirmary, even though my migraine and exhaustion suggested that I visit the place.

Artemis had brought me there when we first returned from that nearly-fatal encounter with the demons, but even though nothing bad had happened, it was an experience that I would avoid repeating if I could. Oh, I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that I would never have to use a healer’s gifts again, but I vehemently disliked the feeling of helplessness that my brief stay in the infirmary had evoked in me.

Lying on my back, dazed and unable to move, while unfamiliar people talked over my head. Muffling an incoherent protest as those same people probed me, casting spells and taking samples.

The memories made me shudder with suppressed…fear? Hurt?

Last time I’d been unable to move from my position on a table had been in the too-bright chambers beneath the training facilities in the Complex. They didn’t dare do such things to us anymore, but before we grew big enough to scare them off they had – they had –

I tried to repress my recollections of being tortured, mentally, magically, physically, of having my soul dragged out of my body by a fist of iron. As usual, it was no good. Well, it kind of made sense that I couldn’t just blot the bigger part of my childhood out of my memory.

I’d thought that that was how the world was, back then, had seen those sessions as a natural part of my life. Physical pain had never been too hard to block out. It was the physiological experiments that frightened me.

“No,” I said aloud, “I’m not going to remember that. I’m not!”

Still I found myself walking through that white doorway again, removing my clothes and feeling the pricks of needles as they sampled, injected, manipulated me. It was such a natural thing for me by then that I never even tried to protest. I was helpless and obedient in the too-bright light.

It was Kunzite who finally put an end to it, around the time when we were thirteen.

They brought us in together sometimes, so going there with Kunzite wasn’t unusual. Jadeite and Zoisite were so much younger that we mostly did completely different things, but they were around as well. After all, the whole idea was to assimilate our bodies to as much pain and stress as possible, so as to enable us to use our magic sufficiently. That kind of thing is best started when the subjects are still young and moldable.

Kunzite and I both generally tried to behave – to respond politely, take the pain with silent dignity. Truth be told, I wasn’t always very good at that. I cried and screamed and sometimes even begged. Kunzite was usually more quiet, though how he managed that is beyond me. At odd times he moaned and gasped, but it was a shock when I finally heard him scream.

It was a new type of amulet they placed around his neck, the trinket small but its power tremendous. I was never told what it actually did, but when they activated it, Kunzite screamed. It wasn’t just any cry or yell, either, but the sound of a soul being torn apart.

They got it off of him quickly enough, but he was pale and shaken and would never talk to me about it. Perhaps he spoke to Zoisite about it, but I doubt it. He always wanted to protect him.

That was what ended it all – it was some week later, when they had assumedly corrected whatever error the amulet that had. Fools that they were, they intended to try it on Zoisite.

It was a severe mistake to initiate the procedure while Kunzite and I were still getting dressed. If they’d only waited a few more minutes, we would’ve been out of there and possibly never heard of it. As it was, Kunzite froze the scenery with a glance, informing coldly, “If you do that to him I will kill you.”

It seemed like a natural extension of that remark to abort our sessions there altogether.

There was no question that Kunzite had meant it, just like I hadn’t doubted for a second that he would have killed me if I’d been reckless enough to take Zoisite from him yesterday. You might call it the Ice Lord’s Curse – you hurt Zoisite, you die. I was exaggerating, but the principle was true. And now…well, it was obvious that his feelings had moved beyond mere protectiveness.

Pity, I sympathized. What would I do, if I had Naru here with me and still was unable to touch her?

Horrid thought. Horrid, unreal thought. Naru had always been older than I, but if her age truly didn’t change, I ought to be about two years her senior by now. There was no telling how old I might be when she was born into this world. Physically I wouldn’t change much, but it would be so unfair to pair an innocent child with a disillusioned adult.

But I needed her. I needed her so badly.

If somehow it turned out that I couldn’t have her, be it because she wasn’t real or for any other reason, my world would become so dark that I’d walk off a cliff without seeing or caring.

“Ano,” someone called, making me realize that the persistent sound that had tormented me had been less of a headache-induced illusion and more of a very real knocking. “May I enter?”

I invited whomever it was, trying vainly to place the teasingly familiar voice.

“Artemis-san. Please, have a seat.”

“Thank you.”

After those two first words, he was quiet for a surprisingly long time, staring vacantly at nothing.

“Yes?” I prompted him at length.

“What? Oh yes. Sorry. I came here to offer you something. You said you needed a star, right?”

He extended his hand towards him, holding a crystal that shone with the intensity of a true Star Seed. I stared at it greedily, my hands raising of their own accord to take it. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to calm.

“How did you acquire such an item?” I asked, my voice strangely husky. Does it really matter? It’s no more than a decimeter from me now, the fulfillment of my dreams, the way to be with Naru. Let it be for real.

“It was my daughter’s,” Artemis said. “She’s dead now, and I have no worldly use for it. Let it bring life again, as it was always intended to.”

And he slipped the crystal into my waiting hand. My fingers closed around it automatically. I wouldn’t have given it back to him if he’d asked. He didn’t.

“What I do for love,” he muttered and then he left.