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It had to be done. There were times that Linarite wished that when she'd been approached by the charismatic, if coarse, Gunn Killingworth she'd rejected his questions. Hadn't made the connection with him so that he could test her intellect, her morals, finding them generally aligned and malleable to his goals. Linarite wished that she'd never been born, to put it bluntly, on days like this. Days when she stood above the bench where Eternal Sailor Castor sat on his silly as hell butt wings and looked off into nothing like an idiot. It was things like that which were a problem and the part of her that was softer than marshmallow for him wanted to go down there and lecture him on how it was dangerous.

But the general inside of her, that pulsing, driving corruption wanted nothing more than to simply fall on his chest and tear the life from it with exultation. Then all Linarite would have to do was deliver that life to her queen, and her life could go back to normal. She could spend time with her boyfriend, spend time with her cousins, with her friends, be a college student and not have to worry about the goddamn Boogie Queen breathing down her neck like some sort of shadow. There was only one problem, and looking down at him, the general felt it keenly.

She was still in love with a goddamn senshi.

It was that which had heels clicking onto the pavement in front of the reclining Castor, leaning against the light post that bathed them in a halo of dim yellow light. "If you step on the daisies and kill them, I'm not going to be happy." It was a soft statement, hesitant and angry all at once. Normally, Lina tried to hide as much as she could behind that cold mask that she'd built over years of loneliness and social pariah-hood. But standing there, it was easy to see the torn feelings inside her being. She had to kill him. She didn't want to.

What now?

The eyes that were so carefully fixed on her were the biggest problem that Linarite had with Castor, she absolutely loved his eyes. They were almost the same blue as her hair, a color that obviously she was born to love as it was echoed several times in her wardrobe. No matter how much he saw, how much happened, they always had a sort of jolly verve to them. It was just how Castor was, and something that Lina had always envied from him. It never occurred to her that it was that exact thing which had her falling for Elzo the first time she'd met him as well, and it was probably a good thing that it never had. No, poor Elzo was far from the general's thoughts at that moment, tucked into the safe Audrey Collins portion of her life.

Unconsciously, pink lips quirked up into a half-smile at the patting of the bench. He'd done that the first time they'd met here and she'd even warred with herself then, before marking Sailor Castor as fairly harmless. Boy, what an idiot she was! Harmless? Not even by half. Or a quarter. There was probably a fraction describing Castor's harmlessness somewhere in the myriad of number fragments, but there wasn't one immediately jumping to Linarite's mind. As then, she hesitated before stepping over and sitting on the bench with her hip wedged as closely against the side as possible. If she touched him, Lina knew her resolve would crumble entirely.

"I care for quite a bit." Still. No matter how hard she ******** tried to do otherwise. Several moments of quiet stretched between them before those honeyed eyes looked over and her lips twitched again. "Nice wings." What did you say to the man who, last time you saw him, was staring down at you while you cried over a broken leg he'd helped give you? When you'd tried to kill him?

Emily Post just didn't write the book for things like this, and poor Lina was adrift in a miasma of awkward feelings and impossible situations. Again.

Was he really going to let her do this? Just allow Linarite to reach out and wrap her fingers around the pulsing heat of his star seed? Her mouth went dry and her palms set immediately to itching at the thought of how that pulsing power would feel in her hands, if she were to simply place it in her mouth and swallow all that glorious...no. She couldn't do that. Not only did the Queen demand to see the physical seed, Linarite simply could not kill Castor when he offered himself to her like turkey at Thanksgiving. He had to deserve it. He had to lose.

Speaking of her as an angel brought the ever-eager blush to play across her face and neck, shivering as his breath touched her and hands fisted futilely in the arm of the bench and fabric of her coat. "You know why." Lina's eyes were closed, thinking maybe that if she didn't look at him, she could pretend that it was simply someone else beside her. Someone that didn't make her heart race, her bones melt. Someone she didn't have to kill, or adversely, someone she could kill that much easier.

Eyes opened again, her face turning so now it was her breath against his skin as her conviction-filled whispers touched passionately into his ears. "You know why I've avoided this place. Why I've avoided you. It hasn't changed, Castor. Nothing's changed." No, she was still in love with him, still bound to kill him or die herself. "Maybe you should fly off to the moon. Unless you've finally decided to see things my way." There was a world full of longing in that last statement, pointless longing that could never be fulfilled.

They still hadn't touched. It wasn't a good sign.

Castor hated her? That was a stab to the gut that had all the breath shooting from Linarite's lungs in a hard gasp that had nothing to do with his fantastic mouth brushing over her skin. There was no time to get the air back into her lungs as his mouth was crushed to hers almost painfully, lungs screaming for the desperate oxygen. It was amazing that she'd come here to hurt him and throw him away, and he was doing the same to her? Things had changed...or had they.

For the hate was followed with the most fevered, passionate declaration of love that had her body filling again with the buoyancy of it. Didn't matter how desperate it was, how pointless, it was just amazing to know that after everything he still loved her. How could he still love her? God, but it was all tangled up. Love, hate, pain, pleasure, passion, fury, ultimatums, wishes. They'd shared so much, risen together through their separate ranks until coming to this time and place where there was absolutely no going back. They had to let go. Linarite had to let Castor go.

Yet there the general was, responding to his kisses with an avid desperation that would have shocked anyone that knew her, even her boyfriend. Her own gloved hand was twisted in his hair, another clenched in that dangling tie so that his face could never be more than a few inches from hers or his suit would tear. Castor was the tree, and Linarite the vine tangled around him and demanding with her body and eyes all the love he could give her in this small time they had remaining. "We never had a world, Castor. That's the worst part of it. Everything we've stolen, taken. I've killed for it, bled for it, almost died for it, isn't that stupid? Something that doesn't exist, I've been fighting for for almost a year now." But her arms remained around him, body pressed to his.

"I hate that you're going to be the death of me. Loving you is going to kill me, and I can't stop. I just can't stop." Now her voice broke to pieces, eyes squeezing shut as her quavering voice continued. "But it has to. She'll just kill me and come after you anyway, and there is no one who can save you from the Queen." Behind the mist lurked a horror that Linarite couldn't fully articulate, a fear that she would never truly voice. It was treason.

"I hate you for making me hate myself." But she hadn't let go, and now it was Linarite who demanded the kisses, greedy and devouring his soul through their joined lips. Her hands would not move, hadn't moved at all to reach for that warm core of him. Yes, he'd be the death of her, but sometimes Lina felt that it was worth it.

No, there wasn't a world for Castor and Linarite. But there was a night left, wasn't there?

Later, Linarite would blame the entire night on the fact that she was incredibly unused to being madly in love with someone she could not cling to, and the fact that she was a teenager. Teenagers were bound to do rash things, things that they might later regret, though never would the general actually regret what she was about to do. Ever.

Fingers had drifted to release Castor as they shifted, pulling gloves from her hands so that it was skin touching skin when Lina cupped the serious face across from hers to return that tender kiss. They were cold, a contrast to the rest of her body that was all but pulsing with heat from their actions only moments before. Eyes had gone distant and pensive, thinking on what it was she could give Castor. If they remained here the siren call of great powers would draw both senshi and Negaverse officer alike to watch them clash. It would not at all be well to be caught straddling an Eternal senshi's lap as she was at that moment.

Oh no, that'd be really ******** bad.

It was already fairly certain that there wasn't really anywhere in the city that Castor and Linarite could hide for a short time without being exposed, so they had to leave the city...and she knew the perfect place. "Hold onto me, Castor. Trust me." Arms twisted tightly around the Senshi of Hail, and then they were in a dark bedroom where everything was covered in white. Chairs, sofas, even the great bed. Linarite was a general now, and could teleport with ease - even a passenger didn't slow her down and she stood, a petite young woman in the arms of the seemingly stronger, taller man that held her. Eyes looked up with a secret, female smile as the moon shone down to light the room.

"We can be alone here. No one would ever come out here, it's too remote and deserted. You can have your night - a full night - here with me. If you want it." Arms dropped, and the smile faded as color rose in her face and uncertainty hovered there. "Or you can walk out those doors, and I'll promise I won't follow you tonight. Or even tomorrow." No, it'd break her if he did that. Her eyes said it clearly.

"We can burn up all that love here, and then put it away to survive." It was poor consolation, but it was the only gift that she had to give.

Castor had always followed his heart, where Linarite had always thought that she could rely on her head. Apparently he muddled that, because though her head was screaming, swearing, even kicking away from this threshold, all she wanted to do was throw herself into his arms and forget everything. One night in a girl's entire life where she gave up thinking and did nothing but feel couldn't truly hurt, Lina was convinced about this.

When his assent was felt through every touch Castor placed upon her, every kiss, the bluenette knew that it was all up to her. She held all the cards in her hands, and really held his heart in her hands in more ways than one. With him vulnerable like this, she could kill him now and no one would be the wiser until the owner of this place came again and opened this remote bedroom to find the body. He trusted her. He believed, and he wanted. That was the strongest of them all, the want and the love. Hands reached back and ripped away the soft wings that framed his back, letting them fall to the floor in a demonstration of her will to pursue this foolish course. If she could remove all the reminders of who he was, all that would remain would be the eyes she adored, and the man she loved. No senshi, no Negaverse, just two people.

"I did say you would be the death of me, didn't I?" Hands fisted again in his top, pushing back towards the bed almost playfully before her mouth touched his again. She held the power, she held the cards, and she was taking what she wanted.

Linarite finally, finally, beat Castor. At his own game.

It was the sun on her face that brought Linarite out of her dreamless, restorative sleep to face an empty bed and an empty bedroom in the morning light. It was amazing that the bed was the only thing touched, the white cloths that had been tossed over the massive mattress in two tangled heaps. One was tangled around her tiny body as the only covering from a morning chill against bare skin. The other was pushed back from where Castor had climbed from bed, and left her.

'So we can live again in the morning.' There had been a shedding of identity, of the CastorandLina dream that each of them had clung to like silly children for almost a year. Perhaps he would have been able to purify her, she possibly could have corrupted him, they could have lived happily ever after and abandoned any ties formed in their human lives. Human. Elzo.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

No, she would not think of that right now. There was no way he'd ever find out, he barely put hands on her in such a way as Castor had put his hands everywhere the night before. Besides, she was a month away from her birthday and...it didn't matter. At all.

Sitting up and hugging the sheet around her body, hands dragged through incredibly mussed blue hair, catching the bruises on her arms. No doubt he'd also be sporting a few, though Lina'd made it rather clear that they weren't to mark each other. Accidents happened! It was then that a fluttering on the bedside table near her caught her eye, a feather and scrap of paper pinned under a plain white box. A note? Inching over like a worm, she picked up the feather that was clearly from a torn wing with a bit of a ridiculous little smile, that faded as the clear letters were blocked out on the piece of paper.

Hate me forever.

The words banished any residual good feeling the general might have had, any good memory that she was trying to hold onto. Hate him? Why did she have to hate him? Almost absently the lid was flipped off the box, and she stared. There, nestled perfectly, were two earrings the size of old half-dollar coins, shaped like daisies with two blue hearts in the center. As blue as his eyes, as blue as her hair. It all came crashing down at once then, what she'd done, what she'd risked, what she would never have.

The feather and earrings were clutched in fists pressed to the teen's face as General Linarite simply crumpled up onto her bed and wept like a brokenhearted girl who was learning that her first crush was a cruel lie. Lina had loved Castor, had paid the price for it over and over, and now all that was left was a feather, a note, and two earrings.

Life was cruel, but love was the killer.