It's hours after the milkshake incident before Endymion's alone again.
Alone, he walks past youma and courtiers alike, out of the horrifying organic stone halls and into the part of the Dark Kingdom that was built by human hands - the original castle complex stolen from the surface of the Earth.
His face, throughout, is also organic stone. Grey-red eyes blank and features expressionless, it moves less than those profane walls and tunnels; his face is what's left him in peace to move like a ghost, unharassed, uninterrupted. Barely present.
It's not until he's in his sanctum of normality, the ancient and ageless human-built room he's claimed as his own space and filled with simplicity and modernity, that he drops his Prince henshin and moves to the corner to one side of the door. Sliding down the wall and withdrawing physically into himself, he faces out but curls up, trying not to think at all.
It doesn't work.
He can't call for Kunzite. Kunzite will know, and it's more than the shame he'd feel in front of his foremost protector, his oldest guardian. It's the fact that it would hurt Kunzite himself to know. He remembers the focus he felt from the man when they were both young, in a time so long ago it's passed to myth. He remembers the devotion, the desire to protect him from the entire world.
He remembers that Kunzite would have burned the world to keep him safe.
He knows full well that if Kunzite knew, he'd act, and in acting, destroy himself.
Endymion takes his fogging glasses off, face hot and damp, and buries his face in his knees.
Zoisite... his heart calls, hitching and broken. ZOISITE!
The youngest Shitennou, no longer possessed of the urge to kill him, will-- he thinks-- neither judge him nor break. Furthermore, his desire to burn the world is a constant, unsurprising and no cause for either comment or alarm.
Zoisite, please... I need you.
There is no instant answer to that silent call. No bright sly voice, no sudden heat.
There might be a distant sense of attention being paid.
For anything else, it takes just short of three minutes. In any other circumstances, a brief time indeed.
Endymion doesn't see the flower petals curl into existence. He might catch a faint hint of their perfume. That distant sense of attention, depending on how much of the sense in question he actually has just now, might become less distant.
Or his first hint might be the scuff of boots on floor, the whisper of fabric as a small and slender body kneels before him, the delicate fingers settling on his shoulder. "You called me." It's not a question. "You're hurt?" That one is. What might be obvious to anyone else, anywhere else, is alien and uncertain here.
Zoisite is not, after all, accustomed to being called on for comfort. Ever.
Three minutes is interminable. That distant sense is noticed, felt, clung to-- but when it's not followed by Zoisite's presence, Endymion hangs on to it and waits, and waits...
...and by the time there are sakura petals, the faint perfume of them, the scuff of boots on the floor, he's trembling and focusing on regulating his breathing, trying to keep his mind blank, trying to wash it clean with a field of gently glowing silver. The edges of it keep crackling, mutating, charring.
Zoisite's hand is on his shoulder, and Endymion finally looks up. His beautiful face is blotchy and his wrong-colored eyes reddened in more than iris, glistening; the knees of his trousers are wet, and his mouth is twisted, jaws clenched in the effort to keep from losing his composure completely.
He tries to say something, but instead of helping, it breaks the dam.
A sob escapes, and the black-haired boy reaches with one arm even as the other braces him against the floor, and he half-falls, half-crawls to hide his face in Zoisite's uniform, arms both slipping back to curl in against his own chest as soon as the slighter boy is close. There's a sense of complete trust, written in both the prince's body language and actions, and in that same space in which Zoisite heard his name and paid attention.
Zoisite knows this part of this dance. He knows it from the other side, yes, but the moves are familiar all the same. Arms go out to catch at the falling princeling, catching him and guiding him into a fairly stable lean for the first few moments. Their sizes are wrong to quite make that work, though, especially with the way that having both his arms around Endymion's shoulders makes him feel oddly... off. The lithe little general wriggles a bit, maneuvers a little, and then he's kneeling and Endymion is sprawled half across him. One of Zoisite's arms is enough to balance him entirely, now. Which leaves the other delicate hand free to stroke lightly at his hair.
Yes. Better. That fits the pattern he knows.
There are other reactions than that set, though. There's a little startled, questioning noise when Endymion collapses against him. An indrawn breath when that sense of trust takes hold.
And then a soft little shhhhh, when his hand first settles on dark hair. Not silencing him. Only an assurance that he's right, that he doesn't need to hold himself together anymore.
Very little in the Dark Kingdom is willing to spy on Zoisite, after all.
It's fundamentally strange for Endymion's muscle memory as well: he is usually the one to offer what he is asking from Zoisite. But none of that processes, none of that is noticed-- because for this moment, this hour, this time, he needs to be small and safe and protected; he needs help burning his heart clean.
He can't explain, either. But that's another reason he called Zoisite so desperately: he knows the littlest General won't ask him to.
Instead, he's grateful; he accepts what Zoisite grants; he curls in more tightly, one of his hands gripping the strawberry-blond boy's uniform shirt in a strange echo of events only a week ago, maybe even less. And Endymion weeps, unrestrained and wretched, miserable and hurting.
It's not just for what he just endured. It's emotional and physical trauma, it's the cumulative pain of everything he remembers and everything he doesn't. It's all the things he's pushed back and suppressed and buried, all the things he's hidden behind masks, all the things he's shoved away to deal with later-- and Zoisite is letting it finally be later.
Very little in the Dark Kingdom is willing to spy on Zoisite, and very little can hear in passing or enter on accident if the Dark Prince has willed the place cut off and sacrosanct. There are really only two people in the entire place who could break it, and one isn't a person and doesn't care, and the other is currently sated and incurious--
It's a long while. At some point, his burner phone buzzes, and he's still a wreck, but he starts to move to get it anyway-- and Zoisite's got that handled, too.
Endymion eventually cries himself to sleep, half-sprawled and half curled, injuries tender but ignored.
An echo of events a week ago. An echo of events a couple of weeks ago. An echo of nothing Zoisite remembers. And yet -
And yet, when he thinks he should be shifting impatiently, throwing off the weight, going to do something or indeed anything else, he finds that he doesn't entirely want to move. That he can wait a little longer, hand moving lightly on dark hair. And a little longer than that; and a little longer yet than that.
Their new little monster, not just Kunzite's. And proper care of little things is to have patience with them, as much as they need, and see them seated properly in the right soil and right sun, and supported if necessary till they can stand on their own.
And if Beryl is burning him, then perhaps the weeping will give him enough water to live through it. The analogies break down; this is one of the parts that Zoisite never really understood except in name. That's all right. He doesn't need to be able to analyze this anyhow. The important part is --
No plant analogies now. Only fire and water. The important part is letting the boy vent the excess pressure safely, before it builds up past what the vessel can bear. The important part is --
There's something there that part of him understands, and most of his mind shies away from.
It doesn't matter. He gathers Endymion close again, and lets him continue to weep, sheltered, safe.
When the phone moves and Endymion tries for it, there's the softest of tsking noises, and Zoisite lays a hand on it long enough to steal it away. To glance at the words.
You deserve better.
That hits hard, in the place he never really understood; he considers what that hit would do to the princeling, and vanishes the offending phone away. "No," he murmurs. "You can deal with that later. Not before you're ready."
... he will be ready after he's slept, sometime.
Which is why, while he's sleeping, Zoisite steals the phone back into reality. He studies the number, flicks through previous text conversations.
i think i know where nephrite is
I'm not as smart as Mercury, but I can relay suggestions and things
well he wasn't ok but i think that wasn't the catfight
also i'm p sure ive got zoisite not trying to kill me anymore
Something in the back of his head idly considers setting Endymion on fire while he's sleeping, for that one, but it's a rote consideration, not likely to be Observed as a holiday tradition. Instead, he merely memorizes the number, and tucks the phone back where Endymion was carrying it.
And lets him sleep.
It's still a while before Endymion wakes up, and when he does, he's stiff and sore. That tells Zoisite a story, too. He has a headache, but that's from the crying.
A change in breathing, first, and then slow movement; a flinch; slower movement, aching and careful, and he sits up. His face is rueful, apologetic, and embarrassingly grateful. He just sits there for a moment, only a little puffy anymore, and then he scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands and fishes for his glasses. "Sorry," he mumbles, putting them on despite the smudging and salt, then taking them off again after he blinks through them.
He works on cleaning them on his shirt.
"That was selfish of me. I'm sure you were busy doing stuff. Thank you."
The stiffness and soreness tells one story. The words tell another one.
Green eyes focus, bright as fire, and one small hand makes an ineffective sidewise push at a royal shoulder. "Stop that." Zoisite shifts, then, curling sidewise till he's almost side-by-side with Endymion. He stretches one leg out, then the other, leaning forward to rub at a calf. "Stop worrying." A toss of his head -- no, insufficient; the tail of his hair doesn't flounce nearly as effectively while he's sitting down. He reaches back and pulls it over his shoulder, instead, winding a fingertip in the curls. "If I'd wanted to, I could always have dropped you."
Endymion rolls with the ineffective push, slightly exaggerating it for halfassed rote comedy, and he settles cautiously back against the wall as he puts his glasses back on once more.
It's a reserved little smile he offers Zoisite, and despite the rusty red eyes, it's a true one. "Fair enough," he grants. He's trying. Oh he's trying, so hard, to pull a mask back on. Any mask. All that's working is the reserve, and it's something that belongs to Mamoru Chiba, not to Endymion. Being emotionally exhausted helps it.
Despite the reserve, his eyes are too bright again when he looks at Zoisite, and they cast down toward the hem of his school jacket, where his fingers idly fuss with the fabric. "I think I've always worried. It's a tough habit to break."
Then he glances up again, and the sadness and frustration and grief behind his eyes are so strong they're like a brick through plate glass. "And I remember you helping me stop, once. I think you used to do it a lot. We weren't here, though."
He never does feel dressed without his masks. He's not the only one. Zoisite stretches elaborately; studies his hand at the end of his arm, fingers spread. "You're thinking too much," he says absently, then tugs his glove off with his teeth and drops it in his lap rather than going to the effort of making it vanish. His manicure is studied with a focus that would seem to verge on fascination, if it weren't accompanied by more of those absent words. "Sometimes it's easier if you just do."
It's rather more specific advice than the general rule it sounds like.