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Simple things ---


It was such a simple gesture, fundamental and as far as a quick search option and buy now click. Honestly it was more of a wonder that he hadn’t done something like it before now. It was fascinating really to see and read about the minerals from which they took their names.
Zirkon, Fayalite, Scheelite, Selenite, Paragonite, Linarite… Zinkenite… Ilmenite…
One by one he found small samples of each, some more amusing than others, just by nature of presentation. His own mineral was honestly dull by comparison to many of the others.

Scheelite, it seemed glowed bright blue under a black light, Selenite was a rather beautiful white stone, and proved hard to find an affordable sample. He ended up purchasing a ‘wand’ of it, which he felt reflected, in the most satisfying way… his Lieutenants weapon as well.

He chuckled to see a sample of Fayalite growing on Obsidian, and wondered what the pair of them would make of that particular compromise. An eyebrow was lofted to see Pyrite and Zinkenite mingled in more than a few samples, he wondered briefly if their names might prove any kind of catalyst for intellectual compatibility, before pushing the idea aside as superstitious nonsense, ashamed he even thought of it.

Beryl seemed part of everything, many stone names were in fact a subset of Beryl… perhaps names did reflect something of the wielders… it was a fitting name for the Queen, likewise Tanzanite, though too expensive for his pocketbook learning about the nature and history of the stone was fascinating.

He laughed again, softly and shook his head before purchasing one of the few instances of jewelry made from their minerals. He honestly expected it to be tossed in a desk when he purchased the –bracelet- made of Ilmenite. Still, the thought of the expressions on their faces when they each received small packages containing the mineral name of the contents, and the words ‘From the Boss’ for most and… ‘From Z’ on the rest… was delicious.

He was slightly uncomfortable signing ‘The Boss’ but at least Fayalite would know exactly who had sent the minerals, the others should be able to figure it out rather quickly too, more so if they used this as an minor opportunity to work together.
He hoped they would, even this small problem solving treat might prove long term invaluable.

One brief search led him to read about Linarite of course, he stared for quite a long time at the bright blue of the stone in question, reading of it’s ‘softness’ as a mineral before closing the page rather abruptly and powering down the computer. He ran through each of the other mineral names again trying to push the thoughts out of his mind. A stupid impulse… she was gone… she made her choice.

He, he had everything and everyone he needed still, he reminded himself of that each morning as he buried himself into homework and ‘other’ work. If she didn’t need him, he shouldn’t pay mind to her nagging questions, nor should he think he needed her.

All that aside, the old plush owl sat by the corner of the desk, watching with sad old glass eyes as a young man clung to the only world he thought he belonged to.

The blank page -


The business of caring for people was like running his hands over a broken pane of glass. It might still be held together, each fractured piece tentatively clinging to the next, held in place by the shapes of the pieces around it. It could be beautiful, it was certainly striking… but it was also so dangerous. He found himself liking too often these days.

It was odd that it bothered him, these little pains and stirrings in his chest; he found strength in the pain of corruption. He found wisdom and clarity flowed from it… He stood for something and that meant a great deal to him.

He understood that he didn’t want to see his people hurt, that he didn’t want to see them fail but there was more to it than that…there was a dangerous ‘caring’ involved at the edges. He knew… he knew sacrifices had to be made in the name of war. People he wanted to see rise high might fall long before they got to where he knew they –could- be.

That was just a fact…but the fact hurt him more than it might once have. He would feel the loss of them more profoundly than he might have when he was a Lieutenant, still angry and wet behind the ears.

“I’m a fool…” he told the chilly pane of glass that stood between him and the world outside. Quite unlike his heart it was not fractured with emotions, it was not a mess of sharp edges and confusing turns.

His life was a blank page once… so many people now had written on it… they scrawled themselves over him and left stains that would not be removed, they altered the very course of him and he could not see the end of the path that lay beneath his feet.
Rage… a constant companion, angry at the world and perhaps he would never out grow that, but he had also tasted more terrible things.

Love… the greatest fault he could find. He breathed out onto the pane, the warmth of his breath fogging the glass and he traced a simple design with the tip of his finger. He started to write intials… then stopped, the letter half formed, no one but he would have known what it was to have become before his hand passed over the glass again with a light squeak.

“I am a fool…” it seemed like there should be some answer, some denial to that statement but even he couldn’t muster one. There was only the soft music playing on the radio, some melancholy tune… a blank page once, what was written now could never be undone, for better or worse.

Frustration -

Fear Frustration and Pain, it was one thing to know you had failed… it was another to be condemned for it. Times like this it was easier to remember how very young he was, 17, not even that close to 18 really. Behind the mask he felt more… ageless. Without it he was just a teenager. He was scared and it was all too real all the sudden. He skirted the game with his distaste of blood. He preferred too much to let other people dip their hands in for the kill, the hit…the touch.

But this, this came out and touched him. It mingled with the fear that still lingered like a second skin; it crawled like an oil slick over that failure and roiled with a belly churning terror. It crawled up the spine and whispered thoughts into his ear, terrible thoughts. Turn about was fair play in the world of cosmic Karma. Lord knew he’d whispered in enough ears, twisted the knife of fear and doubt and raised questions better left alone.

Now here he was, face to face with his own mortality. He could very nearly feel her breathing down his neck as he paced the house. He’d returned home of all the ironic choices. He’d gone back to the wall of Pandas and heavy grey blankets. Old notebooks that, for the most part had long since lost their usefulness, full of small checkmarks and old plans. He threw them across the room with no regard for the consequences he might normally have had. He’d come home in part because she was not home, not for another few days at least. Some new conference where she’d do something stupid…maybe she’d sleep with someone and then starts screaming her ex husbands name… maybe his father’s name just for a change of pace.

He threw books… tipped a chair in his impotent fury. Something –cracked- and just like that…the rage froze for a moment, waiting. He turned, staring… No, oh god no.
His jaw dropped slack as he stumbled towards the carnage; cracked plastic and twisted strings, no longer drawn out to sing, the sad remains of his Electric Violin.
He picked it up and held it in shaking hands, stunned more than any other emotion to see it in such a state. He lifted his gaze almost numbly to the desk where there lay a handful of letters.

One of them was carefully unfurled, read over and over again to the point that it had started to fold more like cloth than the thick paper it was printed on. A scholarship offer that he’d been debating over and over conflicted by its contents. It would have taken him out of state, he would have left the city and studied music, studied violin and perhaps gotten some kind of job with it. It would have been the start of a very old dream.

It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered, not the violin, not the offer. Nothing mattered because he might not live to even see it. He ran his fingers over the cracked remains and dropped his head forward closing his eyes. It wasn’t over… he could not let it be over.

He placed the corpse of the instrument back in the case where he should have kept it. The place where it might have been safe from the blind and wanton rampage and closed the lid. He could fix this… he could fix this. He just needed to go somewhere and think.
God willing… he knew just the place.

What happened to the Shittenou? The question lingered long after the talk over tea had ended. What happened to Jadeite, Zoicite, and Nephrite? He’d heard of the return of Kunzite of course, the woman in white who had removed the General Queen’s arm.

The question remained though, what would have turned someone so loyal to the Dark Kingdom against it, senshi magic? Or was there something that ran deeper than that. Someone perhaps who had planted a seed deep in the chest of even the most loyal of it’s members.

What if she killed them? What if they too were locked in stone much the same way that Charonite, who had gone so far as to sacrifice a captain to serve as host for the woman. The same Captain he had married and lived with… and died for.

It was an enormous what if, but it was far, far too possible not to be considered. Far too many questions that left their heavy footprints in his mind. He curled into the corner made by bed, wall and standing closet. Generals shouldn’t hold stuffed bears to their chests for comfort and thought but here he was. He wanted to phone someone, Ever, or Sabine, just to talk. But the words of warning that General Queen Tanzanite had given him before he walked in to talk to the queen held him back.

Don’t mention that it was Ilmenite. If she was watching him, if she was watching him now than any thing he did might put them at Risk. He couldn’t even call Scheelite for all too similar reasons. What would the queen make of someone who wanted never again to see blood and death? She’d have no tolerance for his more… childlike nuances.

He needed a plan, he had the snatches of one, the fragments of something that felt solid, felt brilliant but he needed more pieces than he had. He needed players that would walk willingly into another potential disaster. But he also couldn’t risk so many of the ones he had used before lest associations be made that would lead to their undoing as well.

He wanted… bigger pieces. Perhaps…

Perhaps it was time to find a Youma of his own, somewhere down in the Rift there must be one that even He could survive trying to tame. Perhaps with that ‘extra help’ by his side he could form something really solid; something that would take a piece from the Senshi’s side of the chessboard. Not just a pawn either, a tower, a rook… a Queen.

He squeezed the plush Bear to his chest and let his gaze drift to the ruin of the Violin that had been carried back to his dorm room, a reminder of tempers lost and everything it cost to loose them.

“Perhaps a prince…” He murmured.

Someday, someday…

Fear, disgust, betrayal, the emotions that had played across the faces of those who had committed themselves to a ‘children’s crusade’, for what did it pang of but a childish fit? How strange to think that this promotion could have been the worst thing that could have happened in regards to maintaining what respect he had earned from the Negaverse.

It utterly changed his perspective on so many things, once he would have doubted that anyone would have dared to question Tanzanite so blatantly, yet he had seen it and their numbers. He’d seen what was left of her, her power drawn away for speaking in their defense, how poorly they had rewarded her. How wounded they had looked that he had stepped in to defend her, or perhaps it was the uniform he now wore that added to that injury.

It was a wholly different fear he held now than the fear he had faced for his own survival. It was a familiar fear at least; he feared little so much as failure. From now on he would be ‘General King’, Duty came first, his people second, but he could mold people to the idea of Duty still, he could show them the value of loyalty. Couldn’t he?

Did they really think it more of value to tear apart what sense of unity that they had? Had they no sense of what it meant to have that sense of community. It didn’t even have to reach the ‘family’ level that had briefly been brought to the forefront, that, that might have been part of the reason for the unforgivable lack of any respect. Or perhaps, Hematite was incapable of it, perhaps his greatest service to the Negaverse as a whole would be… no. He pushed the thought aside. He’d have to trust that the lessons would sink home.

What reaction had he expected of a General King or Queen that they thought it acceptable to behave that way? What kind of relationship had he held with –him, now tangled up in a crystal in the arms of Nealite, one time host to their tormented jealous Queen. Unanswered questions and for once he didn’t care.

Accusations of ‘blindness’, from a young woman whom had yet to apply herself enough to even reach the rank of Captain, who roomed with his one time ‘boy friend’. He snorted and sighed out the small frustrations on that front. Easy enough to imagine that there were more reasons behind her fury than the want to defy orders; the lack of trust in those around her to be able to defend them selves, to be able to defend HER. How sad to live with so little faith, and so much aimless fury.

Uranophane, her more than Wolframite, the shock in her eyes, the all too easy to read utterly misconstrued ‘analysis’ of his reasons for being there, for his disappointment. So brilliant at chess, but how often she missed the pieces of the complicated puzzles that were human beings. Even he would never claim to read them perfectly, but he had once thought her wise enough not to be swayed by the shallow things that had dragged her along. Madness, simply madness… if she could not follow orders, simply orders that someone whom had suffered the worst of ALL of them had issued. If her vanity was SO great that she would defy reason and temperance, then what?

He’d watch them; he would watch them and all those around them and from there, only time would reveal the cards that they held. Only patience would serve now, for there was an invasion to plan. It was nearly time to visit the Surrounding; soon, they would tear down a wall.

It’s a strange moment in your life to realize that regardless of how human you look, you are no longer human enough that you can claim that title any longer. It’s stranger still perhaps to realize that there is some fine, and curious flaw within you that divides you from the people closest to what you have become.

“So where does that leave me?” He addressed the mirror, it never answered though sometimes he wished it would. He suspected though, that the only answer he might get was a member of the DMC come to laugh at what they saw. He reached up to trace his fingers over the cool glass and then closed his eyes, resting his brow against the glass.

He did not regret it, he wasn’t sure if he could regret it. But was he proud at what he had accomplished? Had he taken steps forward or had he taken steps back? The mirror had no answers, only tired blue eyes. Too many questions he had no answer to beyond instinct and intuition, and what in the end did they amount to?

What about Ever?

It was a lingering question, a heavy one. Feelings, such complicated and unsettling things, so many questions from something that seemed like such a simple but powerful feeling. Love, it was a word that meant paint for as long as he could remember. “I don’t want…” He started to argue, but he couldn’t make himself finish the sentence, the thought. It was too close to a lie, nothing to be done for it, but it twisted him up all the same. //I don’t want to be in love//

He didn’t, but he was, he was… He had everything he wanted and everything he had never wanted it seemed, all but a few things, but when what you had achieved centered on the fate of the universe. He still wanted, maybe he would never stop wanting and that was the hard thing. He rubbed a hand over his chest as though he could reach in and touch the star seed within. That simple dangerous tempting thing that defined him, shaped him, kept him alive. A small difference in it separated him from the others, he understood where they were in this world, but he felt like he was standing half way through the looking glass that was leading down into the darkness.

He felt pared down, his wings clipped and struggling to learn to fly again. Respect, stripped away like all his illusions. Who to stand for, who to leave behind, everything he owed that could never be repaid. //Monster// it was a quiet thought and perhaps it should have bothered him. It didn’t… inhuman. Sacrifices must be made; he’d given up humanity in order to make the world right. Love… such a tangled thing but perhaps the last thing that kept him sane.

La douleur exquise

--



Exhausted, mentally and physically he was exhausted. The kind of tired that runs well beyond how much energy you have, or had. Tired that wrapped itself around his bones and sank its teeth into his very heart.

If he had not been tired before, weary from the victory over the senshi, weary of the poor decisions of others, weary of people who could not, after all this time bring themselves to trust him, then he was tired now.

Tired and perhaps a little afraid, afraid that she would be a blank slate, a broken doll or worse. Alone, alone he crawled under the covers of his all too empty bed and closed his eyes listening to the traffic that shifted outside.

Too tired to sleep the thoughts chased around his head like flies. The chaos that was normally a balm to his soul, soothing conscience into an easy numbness was now a scratching fingernail of doubt against the back of his mind.

What if he broke her, what if he ruined all that was left of her, what if he’d destroyed even that perfect memory he had of her that he had so desperately wanted to reclaim. All the things he couldn’t explain, all the memories that he could never make another understand. For all her scowling and her bitter stares he did not think Howlite could understand, no matter how much he believed in her as an officer. He could not demand her faith; he could accept only her hate, her drive that would likely carry her far.

Lina, she surfaced again in the tempest. He should have waited, should have been there when he woke but he owed her that much, owed her the chance to wake in the arms and company of someone she loved, even if they perhaps, did not love her back.

He would care for her as he had promised before Kess, before Howlite had ever stepped into the Dark Kingdom. He would watch and guard her from a distance, trying to build that better world for her, for them.

He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, chasing the cracks in the ceiling with his eyes. He had not felt it crack, he hadn’t destroyed that delicate thing that he’d held so tight, so strangely intimately as he forced back into it corruption. He’d watched her heart break though, watched the Order fade from her eyes and leave her tumbling into Howlite’s arms.

It was for the best, he told himself. It was that or death, perhaps he had killed her though, perhaps he’d stripped her away the way he nearly had been. The way that only SHE really knew with her dark wings and wild eyes. He’d destroyed trust, the way they had destroyed him. It would never be as perfect again, even if she didn’t remember he would know.

Even if he were forgiven, he would see the fractures, and feel that pain deep in his chest. A terrible needle of humanity and guilt that he could never be free of, no matter what he did, or how long he lived.

He shuddered in the darkness, feeling sick, and small when he needed, above all to be strong. He pushed a hand at his cheeks, lifting it to stare at the dampness that stained his fingers and tried to swallow away the pain, wishing it away into the darkness and clutching onto that terrible, awful thread of hope that she would not be entirely broken.

In-between -


There was the room, there was only the room. That made a strange sort of sense, and it didn’t make any sense at all. It was white, nothing but white, the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the chair. No windows, no textures… just white, if white could have been a smell that would have been all there was.
He hurt, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it, he could feel people touching him, hear voices talking even if they didn’t really make sense, and he couldn’t respond.

But there was more than the room, wasn’t there? Except, everything before the room felt like a dream, a strange, terrible dream, but if that was a dream, then what was this nonsense?

He shouted into the everything and nothing that was the room, trying to make himself heard but nothing changed. Just like whenever he tried to make a mark on any of the walls or even the ceiling, nothing changed.
It terrified him, more than terrified because he was forgetting, he had no time frame for how quickly but he wasn’t remembering things that were important, so important.

He hurt… and nothing changed.

The fire dragged over his shoulders, he remembered the moments that it happened, the thing that wanted to be a leopard, but only in so much as fire could be a leopard. Sometimes he wondered if anything hurt more per square inch than a burn, sometimes he wondered why the memory of this pain wasn’t more vivid. It hurt, tremendously, but he knew for as much pain as he was in, that it had hurt so much more at the time.

Things had been so different then, the scope of what they were seemed so much smaller feeling, at last as far as the city was concerned. It hadn’t been that… important perhaps. After all, one or two senshi, who would have thought that it would have blossomed like this.

Voices again, nonsense things, he thought perhaps some of it was a paper being read, but he didn’t understand the context. Perhaps it was a book, or maybe he was just running them together because he was trying to ignore them. Too frustrated to focus on what he couldn’t respond to.

Nothing changed…
And everything was different, he clung to it because he was afraid of the alternative.
He was afraid of forgetting.