In some ways, inside the apartment, time and date have stopped meaning much. To the ones who have to keep track of school hours, true, they mean a little more; covering for Mamoru (and, more recently, Nephrite) is still necessary, and there are only certain times when other necessities of present life can be acquired.
The rest of the time can be divided into 'Mamoru is awake,' 'Mamoru is asleep,' 'Mamoru is awake but really wants to be asleep.' And the things that need to be done in each segment of time are oriented more and more strictly toward helping him keep as much strength as possible, while causing him as little pain as they can.
The living room is empty, at present. Detritus on the coffee table. A patch of carpet sliced out where Fiore bled, and not yet replaced. Takeout in the kitchen half put away, half abandoned.
It so happens that, at this precise moment, there's only one room in the apartment that gives off signs of Earthly life.
Mamoru is asleep. Blankets are too heavy for him today, pulling painfully at the skin as they do, putting pressure on his joints. He's dressed, instead, in blue pajamas, their fuzz and softness a strong suggestion that Usagi's hand was involved somewhere in their acquisition. Kunzite is keeping watch, after a fashion, and the chair beside the bed suggests how he'd intended to keep watch; but that was discarded, somewhere, in favor of giving Mamoru what strength he can draw from contact. So he's stretched out on the bed himself, awake and nearly fully dressed, but his shirt unbuttoned to let Mamoru sprawl half on top of him. His shoulder can't make the most comfortable pillow in the world, but given that the actual pillow has Usagi's jar of purified dirt tucked under it, they're probably tied.
He's through waiting. He'd hoped against hope, all this time, that Mamoru might break the chains of his so-called friends and return to him. So strong was his faith that he'd given him every possible second he could -- excluding that moment of weakness the other day, he'd waited patiently for his friend to fulfill his promise.
He has not, and the planet now stands on the knife's edge of destruction. There's no longer a choice.
He's through waiting.
Other than the usual storm of petals that announce it, Fiore's entrance is unusually quiet when he teleports into Mamoru's home. His face is solemn, almost disappointed that it has come to this. His faith in his friend had been too strong, it seems; that, or he vastly underestimated what had been done to him for them to be so completely separated. Either way, appearing out of nowhere to forcibly take him to the asteroid was not how he'd imagined this scene would go.
He also hadn't imagined what he sees there on the bed. Petals fall and fade, the muscles in Fiore's jaw twitch as he looks on, unblinking. The silence is deafening.
Until he takes three harsh strides forward, grabs Mamoru's wrist, and tears him away from that perverted excuse for affection the interloper no doubt forced him into.
"Get away from him!" he hisses with the force of a shout. "How dare you -- Mamoru-kun is mine!"
Lost deep in a dream with enough drugs in him to make the pain negligible and waking difficult, Mamoru is dead weight. His wrist is grabbed and he's torn violently away from safety, but he's numb and slow to crawl back toward consciousness-- and even we he conscious, he hasn't the strength to move on his own. He'd seem boneless but for the sound of his thin frame hitting the floor, arm wrenched and hanging by his wrist from Fiore's hand, impact jarring bones and joints.
Despite all this, it's the abrupt lack of contact with that strength and steadiness that starts him on the road to waking--
--but he's not there yet. His eyes don't open, and he makes no sound, sprawled like a ragdoll with his head hanging back.
They've expected this.
Fiore has, by one means and another, abided more or less by the rules. He has taken no-one and nothing from them, here. The ones who live here have not hurt him, here -- have brought Mamoru to him when he was hurt, offered him no harm when he dropped Nephrite's seemingly-dead body at their feet. Even the one who did hurt him meant him no harm by her act.
That was never going to last. And for days on days, one of them has always, always, been close enough to Mamoru to pull him out.
That's true today. His watcher isn't sleeping; gray eyes lock with Fiore's for an instant, and then in a silent dance of light and shadow Kunzite's called on his older self, and those shadows gather around him and Mamoru both as he begins to pull both himself and his prince elsewhere.
But the world is suffering. Is drained. Is on the verge of dying. And the currents of power that he's accustomed to ride are at low ebb, are farther to reach than he'd extrapolated -- the decay is speeding up.
It takes him too long.
He's on his feet an instant later, his blade called from shadows to solidity in his hand. For all the good it will do. But he can't risk anything stronger, not at this angle, not with Mamoru --
He doesn't look at Mamoru. But he knows just where each limb will have fallen, at what angle his head is tipped.
"He's not yours," Kunzite says, low, expressionless, keeping his own rage confined. "He's his own. You're hurting him." Careful watching, every moment; Fiore's petals can steal them away in an instant, if he gives him that instant to react. "For what you did for him -- because you were there when I was not yet strong enough to find him -- I have tried my best not to have to fight with you, Fiore. But if you force it to your life or his, there's no choice in that. None at all."
Perhaps it's a testament to his totally alien nature, that Fiore doesn't react at all to the odd angles of Mamoru's limp body. Why should they matter, really? He's away from Kunzite now, his hand is securely in his, after a fashion. Any bumps he took in the fall can be corrected with magic.
The true threat stands in front of them. Any concern about injuries can wait.
"I'm hurting him?" he repeats, as though he's spitting out something bitter with each word. "That's rich, coming from you. You've hurt him more than I ever could. You have no right to Mamoru's love."
It just so happens that Fiore is not talking about Kunzite's time with the Dark Kingdom -- how could he, when he knows nothing about it at all -- but perhaps he will unknowingly rouse a few demons lurking in the Shitennou's past.
"I know Mamoru. I've known him for so long now. I knew him before anyone else did. I *cared* before anyone else did," he continues. "He would never break his promise to me. He wouldn't ever leave me alone. That's not who he is." His dull blue eyes drift down to Mamoru, still unconcerned about this shape of his body, smouldering instead with a building hatred for all who had touched him and changed him since he left those many years ago.
"Someone forced him to forget me. I will make him remember, and then we'll both be rid of this disgusting planet," Fiore says. "My flowers have covered this world already. When I give the command, they will destroy it from the inside out." He glances toward the sword that glints in the low light of the bedroom, unthreatened. "If you want to delay that command, you will let me take him now."
"You are almost right." Kunzite stands, unwavering -- something in the back of his head wondering, second by second, if there's a chance to steal even a touch at the communicator on his wrist. There isn't. Fiore would see it; Fiore would know. "I stood once where you stand now. I let my caring for him delude me into believing I could make his choices for him; I invited in something foul, and it used me to try to destroy his world. Try. It did not succeed.
"He forgave me. He has already forgiven you. I have been his hands, while your flowers have sickened him. He told me what he remembered, how it harmed you to be here for too long. Very well; when you were hurt, when you came to him for healing -- that gave us enough to try to learn how and why it made you ill. To try to find something that would let you come and go freely. Stay when you will, go when you will, return without fear. This is his home, Fiore. He would open it to you. If you would let him."
How long will it take, till Fiore realizes he's buying time? How many words, how many exchanges? Will it make any difference that he's speaking truth?
His voice goes lower still; softer, the way a stalking cat's footfalls are soft, not gentle at all. "But the one thing you cannot do is both destroy this world and keep him. He is this world's heart, Fiore. His life energy is this world's energy. Have none of your plants tasted it? If you give that command, you will kill him."
Fiore's expression doesn't change as he listens to Kunzite speak. That same unconcerned look lingers around his eyes, his fingers remain snaked around Mamoru's wrist and limp arm. If one didn't know better, they might wonder whether he's hearing any of those words at all -- but he is. Oh, he is.
They simply change nothing about what he feels, or what he's going to do.
"It is not his home," he says. "No world worthy of being his home would leave him alone like it did. No home would let him suffer like he did. And a planet where we can't be together is no home for him at all."
Curiously, it seems like his brain omits the parts of Kunzite's speech where he mentions modifying those things about Earth that make it impossible for him to live there. Perhaps it is not his brain at all.
As for those dire words of warning?
"I don't believe you," Fiore says, matter-of-fact, a corner of his mouth twitching into a smile. "You think you can trick me that easily? Earth is an ulcer that he will be better off without. Someone as good as Mamoru would never be bound to the life of this world."
The other corner joins the first in a full smile now, his grip on Mamoru tightening ever so slightly.
"I'll prove it right now."
The petals they've come to know too well begin to blow, whipping the still air of the bedroom into a noxious vortex of pink. But the nature of the magic is flawed, in that his escape to the asteroid is not instant. If Kunzite is quick enough, there is time enough to save his prince.
"We tried." The part of Fiore that's talking won't hear the words. Another part might have a chance to, even if there's nothing it can do. Kunzite doesn't know for certain about any of the others; he extends it to them anyhow. Whether or not it was true that night -- it was true eventually. "We broke ourselves trying. But we were children, and we couldn't reach him. If we could have -- neither of you would have been so alone."
The petals.
His blade -- no. His blade has no virtue of its own; the roots twined through Fiore would turn the strike, resist it, channel the magic even if Fiore were startled by the pain. He needs something that will disrupt it, even for a moment. Better: it might wake Mamoru a little too. If he can wake enough to focus even for a few seconds ...
They're not razors yet. He half-shields his eyes for a moment, shifts his stance a little, lifts his hand as if to reach out toward them --
He said he'd been Mamoru's hands.
The rage wells up inside him, some of it his and futile, some of it golden and bright and howling with the pain Fiore's flowers have caused the world. And from where he's standing now, just so, half over Mamoru's trailing and oddly-bent leg, careful of his angle -- none of the heat and light and force will strike his prince.
His eyes say his own words, cold and hard: you will not have him.
His voice gives no such warning. Only the words that aren't his.
"TUXEDO LA SMOKING BOMBER!"
Whether it's the shouting, the awkward position and associated blooming pain despite the medication, Kunzite's agitation, the horrible feelings washing unfettered through him with the contact with Fiore, or the sudden surge of so-familiar energy--
--Mamoru finally begins to surface. He doesn't understand what's going on, especially, and like once before, he reflexively shies away from the acquisition of that understanding until he can jumpstart his cognition. If he can't change his circumstance, better not to be overwhelmed by it.
Then his own attack, from Kunzite's hand, slams into his captor and Mamoru finds himself on the floor.
The navy blue throw rug with the gold bunnies and moons on it is over there. Kunzite's feet are over there. He can hear the aftermath of the crash over there, and he can hear Fiore... slowly, methodically, he works on detaching his emotions in order to push toward action instead of succumbing to useless and painfully delayed reaction.
He should hurry. He needs to hurry. Fiore is powerful. His own attacks are powerful, and so is Kunzite, but that thing inside Fiore-- he needs to call for Usagi. If he calls for Usagi he'll be opening his heart again, and he'll panic; he knows he will. Maybe he should panic; it would certainly get Usagi here faster. But maybe showing signs of distress would distract Kunzite and get him killed.
Options. Self-check-- the floorboards are cool against his face, and that's nice. Everything hurts. His limbs aren't moving right. He's so tired. His wrist hurts. His head hurts. Did he hit it? Maybe he hit it. That's not a resource. Resources. Communicator-- he still has it, a harmless-looking wristwatch that's hellishly uncomfortable but which he's been grimly bearing-- if he can move, he can set off the emergency beacon.
If he can move. He's so heavy, though. Shouldn't it be less? On the asteroid? It's hollow. He saw the asteroid when the petals began to swirl-- no, this is his floor. The rug is covering up where Usagi bled and bled and Hannah blew all the blood away. This is his apartment, which he's saving for someone-- for some people who are so important--
(It had stayed with him for years, far longer than any Earth flower should have -- but it could not last forever. In an asteroid field in the dark depths of space, eleven years after their fateful encounter, Mamoru's rose lost its last petal, and with it, he lost all hope of ever returning to fulfill his promise.
That is when the Xenian came to him. In his time of most desperate need, she had renewed his purpose, shown him the way.
She will do so again, but her help does not come without a price.)
Fiore doesn't have time to register the attack that's coming. Whether Kunzite is too fast on the draw, or whether he is too preoccupied trying to pinpoint exactly where he heard that incantation before, he cannot complete the teleport in time. The vision of the asteroid forming around him is swept away in a burst of light, heat, and searing fury that sends him hurtling into the bedroom wall. He can't hold on to Mamoru -- his wrist tears away from his grip, and when he lands, every sense lit up with pain, he is completely alone. A bundle of alien limbs, covered up by a disheveled white cloak, coughing as the plaster dust falls around him.
...he remembers where he saw that attack now. And as angry as it is, he knows the energy that hit him. He's felt it before, in the roses given to him both as a friend and as a foe.
So the interloper has stolen Mamoru's power to use against him.
*/You gave them their chance for surrender. This is how they have chosen to repay you,/* that all too familiar voice says, amplified now, and he can no longer tell the difference between it and his own thoughts. Pink mist fills his mind, blotting out sight from behind his eyes. He was angry before -- there has hardly been a moment on this planet that he hasn't been angry -- but it is different now. Cold. Sharp. Pure.
Consumed by red light, his body rises into the air.
*/The time has come for you to end this world, Fiore. Become one with me. Take your prize, and let the destruction begin./*
The silhouette in that light morphs, with sounds of bark creaking and bone snapping, a body being remade to accomodate something else. Something even more alien to this world than him. Something that should not exist.
"Start with this one," the Xenian says aloud, Fiore's voice rumbling like an undercurrent beneath it. Five bony tendrils shooting toward Kunzite like a hail of spears.
The light has yet to dissipate. Everything is red and black, time itself bending to the gravity of what just happened. To the horror of the apocalypse that just began.
Some people would just stand there, watching the plaster dust fall, presuming the fight over, the point made. Some people would pause in shock at that voice, at that red light, at the mad and sickening changes.
Kunzite is already moving. Two strides take him over Mamoru's fallen body and past him; a third sets him just to the side so that any direct attack that misses or overpowers him won't touch his prince.
He summons shadows and casts them outward -- he cannot shield himself with them, or deflection, too, would endanger Endymion. But he wraps them into a dome over Fiore, bracing it as hard as he can, to try to keep any petal-storm contained. Vines -- if Fiore calls the vines again, down from the roof or up from other apartments -- no, he has his sword in hand this time, as long as he can keep it free he can move; Fiore won't be able to call them in numbers enough to risk Mamoru, and Mamoru's so drained already he might not be able to call them at all without risk.
He does not have to win this fight. He only has to delay. Long enough for the others to realize something's happening. Long enough for them to get here. He only has to keep the shield in place, defend Mamoru, keep on his feet. Buy time.
He draws his cape across himself as a secondary focus in case Fiore breaks through; tries without looking to bring his wrist close enough to the other hand that he can find some way to set off -- anything will do --
"Start with this one.'
Five pinpoints against the shadow of his shield. The stolen energy of a world, pitted against his own capacity to absorb it.
If he had taken one step further, if he had drawn on Fiore's energy and used it to expand his own capacity, maybe he could have withstood it. Instead, his darkness shatters in a flare of crimson where it's struck, staggering him. He's moving by reflex all the same, trying simply not to be where those spears are aimed -- trying to deflect them even an inch or two -- but the power that makes his cape invulnerable, or that strengthens his blade, is his power, not inherent to them. It is not stronger than what Fiore has already broken.
His sword, black with shadows, survives the experience.
In the Xenian's terrible light, his cape simply seems to darken.
Nothing is clear-- except that if Mamoru thought everything was screaming before, it's nothing compared to the shattering cacophony of the entire planet shrieking its heartfelt pain at the violation the Xenians work upon it, the rending and the aggresive violent theft of energy, of health, of vitality and life. Nothing is clear, except that they're losing. That he's losing. That he's dying. That nothing they've been doing has worked, that the time they've bought has only not been a waste because--
--those few precious moments that are months in the microscopic lifetime of a human being, they're worth it. They're worth living for. Every good adds to the whole, every happiness accumulates and contributes to the health of all creation. Every breath taken is proof against the void, and every love given is a shield against nothingness.
Every sacrifice made has, at least, intent behind it.
He thinks-- Mamoru can think with a startling, crystalline clarity; everything's happening at sixty frames per second slowed to twenty-four. He thinks he realized it before, what it meant to have people you love step in front of danger for you, take a lethal wound for you, die instead of you. He thinks he understood it before, there in the Dark Kingdom where friends and enemies alike died to keep them alive. He did, but that's not knowledge you keep with you every moment of every day. It's crushing, it's bleak, it's--
He thinks he understands, as he's watching it happen and moving, finally, moving so slowly-- he thinks he understands how easy it is to give up. How tempting it is. How full of self-hatred and despair in a moment of devastating loss that one can be.
He understands. But the Earth itself has gone mad, and physically, he feels nothing but inertia, nothing but the fatigue of someone losing consciousness underwater and finally beginning to inhale. His head is not clear; his head is clear. It's his heart and the planet's beating too fast; it's the planet's twitching, screaming magic he calls to himself to support him, to speed his intent.
The spears go through and the silvery cape darkens, and half of his heart is screaming in panic for Usagi, Usagi, please, please, help, please; the other half is serene and unruffled, and his armor is monochrome rags and rust, and his eyes are wild and gold and burning with the brightness of the planet's restless core.
"Kunzite," the prince murmurs, and the progress of his movement is complete as his guardian falls, and he catches him unsteadily. Late. It will hurt. But that precious white head doesn't have to hit the floor as well, does it? "You do your job too well, I think."
Usagi. Usagi. USAGI! SERENITY! Serenity... Usa. Usako. Please. Please. Help. Please. Kunzite-- please-- Usako, please--
Like his burning eyes, his trembling hand glows bright, too bright, golden and flickering violently, tattered and raw. He places it on Kunzite's stomach and bends his head to kiss the other boy, and the power flares bright, brighter, trying to stop the blood, trying to at least knit together the holes opened inside that let toxins into the blood, trying--
--and he's drowning.
And he can't avoid trying to take a breath.
Only when the metallic scent of blood hits the air does the light of transformation fade; only when red spills from a body does the red clear from view. What remains is not only alien -- it is monstrous.
Gone is the cape, gone are the pauldrons, gone is the white that contrasts the prince of Earth's dark armor. Gone are the green hair and blue eyes that bore such resemblance to the child Mamoru knew so long ago. Now, in place of all he had been before, there is red. Red from head to foot, red that tinges his hair pink and erases the blue irises that matched Mamoru's own. Red that emanates from him in a sickly aura that lingers even after the rest of the light fades. Red like the human blood he has spilt, and red like the petals of his precious flower.
The flower that is nowhere to be seen. Not like it was before.
Instead, a mess of arms and bone-white tendrils lace around his chest, his arms, his legs. Growing out of his spine like a cancer -- or like the string of a marionette exposed, perhaps. Either way, they are a part of the creature that stands before them now; the creature that has Fiore's body, but only a warped vestige of his soul.
The soul that exists for Mamoru alone.
That kiss he bestows might have sent him flying into a rage, even minutes ago, but everything is so much clearer now than it was. It doesn't matter how Mamoru feels. It doesn't matter how those false friends of his erased their friendship from his mind. He only needs Mamoru's body close to him, and this world destroyed. All the rest will come in time. All his memories of the others will fade.
Soon, he'll be the only one to give Mamoru flowers. And he only needs his body for that.
Wordlessly, Fiore withdraws the spears that dug into Kunzite's chest, wrapping them instead around the collapsed prince, dulling their points so that they do not spill any of his blood. In that odd embrace, he draws him in, closer, closer, until his body rests with him instead of with Kunzite. Instead of that hateful girl with lying eyes.
Appropriately enough, it is those eyes he catches a glimpse of as he's whisked away by the wind. They belong to a different body now, with different apparel and mien -- but then again, so do his. He smiles at her for half a moment. A smile of insult. Of challenge.
And then he and her prince are gone.
Usagi is dreaming. A post school nap turned nightmare.
A prince cries out for his princess.
Of course, the princess answers.
"Endymion!" Serenity jerks awake as the final change from wool school skirt to chiffon dress takes place.
Fortunately, she's in her own room.
Luna jumps up, her own nap interupted.
"C-call someone. Daisuke. Mamo-chan's...Kunzite...Luna!"
A very confused feline is left on the bed as her princess leaves through the window.
She has to get there. She has to...
Panic fills her. Is it hers? Is it his? It doesn't matter, because either way it's theirs.
It's a haze, getting from her house to his apartment. A sea of emotions, none good, roil within her and she almost misses the balcony.
When she does land, she sees Fiore. And Mamoru.
Her lying eyes are full of fear and concern, and then an accepting of that challenge as she lunges forward--
Only to grab a fistful of air.
She screams out her frustration, and for a fraction of a second she's frozen in place.
And then she's moving again.
Kunzite's bleeding. She collapses to her knees beside him, balling up the skirt of her dress and pressing it against his wound, not caring as red blooms across the once pristine chiffon.
"You're gonna be okay." It's a mantra she says, over and over, even as she grabs his wrist to call out to the others.
Fiore may have challenged her to battle, but Serenity is calling her people to war.