[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

Waking up was like climbing up that endless cliff at the order of master Atalante: raw skin torn off abused flesh, bleeding hands and ruined fingertips, back on fire and breathing--breathing was hell. She had laughed at me, the glint in her purple eyes a gentle one. Then she had explained how one day I'd be able to whisk myself up to the top in the time of a heartbeat. She had been there for me, always.

She was gone.

Forever.

There was nothing but darkness, pitch black and striped with dull crimson threads that pulsed in synch with the pain. I clawed at them, I pushed myself upward, and they whipped me, binding themselves to me. Razor-sharp, they cut through flesh and bone.

Spark.

Light.

A flower unfolding.

Its movement slow and beautiful.

Serenity.

Soothing warmth, that embraced me whole and shooed the pain away.

"Easy," an ethereal voice called out from beyond the night. "Take your time, there's no rush." Surprise mixed with amusement glided past me, and I held on to them. I held out to this anchor of sounds and emotions, and painstakingly clawed my way back up.

Higher.

Just a little bit more.

The air was cool upon my skin, and my horizon was the blue-grey of ancient stones. I blinked, and drew in a breath.

Fire.

Molten flames eating at me.

"Hush," the same deep, oddly pleasant female voice said, "be a bit gentler with yourself, Cendre."

Cendre.

That name hammered at me. It danced around my soul, sounds full of thorns and poison. Even as it claimed me, I wished for the darkness again. I wished I was no more, that every little shred of me was scattered throughout the sky, so that nobody could ever find them all and make me whole again. "Oh, stop that!" the woman snorted, and again light chased the darkness away, erased it completely.

I took another breath, bracing myself, but the pain was bearable this time, kept at bay by the same power that had lifted me out of the abyss of night. Slowly my brain processed the information brought to it by my senses. I was lying on a bed, in a room whose stone walls had a distinct feeling of familiarity to them. The Sanctuary. Yes. I gave a weak, imperceptible nod. It explained much. At this moment, my eyes registered a human shadow sitting against the sun.

A long, thin silhouette whose hair was as long as mine, luscious golden strands that caught in the daylight and shone like filaments of stars. She leaned toward me, and eerie charcoal eyes met mine. "It looks like you've discarded the temptation of oblivion for real this time," Virgo Raziel commented, a wry smile on her lips.

"What am I doing here?" I asked her in a faint voice. Goddess, there was such a terrible weakness gnawing at me, an exhaustion that drowned my will and my heart. I tried to reach out to her, and gave up with a weak moan of pain.

"That arm is linked to a torn shoulder," she offered, "and the collarbone that goes with it is shattered in many tiny pieces. They alone should prove a fascinating puzzle to solve for a good surgeon. As to the rest of you--" she pursed her lips, then shrugged. "There isn't a single rib left intact in your chest. Most of them are shattered like crystal. One punctured lung, some internal bleeding, and a broken right hip. I think that's about it. Somehow, that fool managed to miss the internal organs--botched job, if you ask me," she grinned.

That fool.

Cain.

I clenched my teeth, and closed my eyes tightly shut. There was no lump in my throat, no fire devouring me within. There was nothing--nothing at all!

"Stay with me, Cendre," she commanded gently. Fingers closed around my right forearm and squeezed. I obeyed. There was nothing else to do. So I looked up at her, and she gave me a short nod. "To answer your question: you're here because Shiva and our mysterious Gemini Saint brought you back from Mars. He's weird, that one," she mused, "but he's good. There's no denying that. I'm not sure I'll forgive him for having managed to hide himself from me for so long."

"You mean you didn't know?" I interrupted her in a whisper, unable to help myself.

"No, of course not!" she laughed. "Only Gabriel and likely Atalante knew, and I'm not sure I'll ever forgive Libra either," she finished petulantly. Then she sobered up, and silence settled between us. I didn't ask her why I was alive. It was not her decision to make, at least not alone, and she wouldn't comment on it. At last, she heaved out a sigh. "They took turns watching over you." She looked away from me. "It's been almost a week, and they barely slept," she added in a quiet whisper. "When I felt that you were about to give up on your stubborn race with Death, I told them to get lost. To have you open your eyes to find yourself with either one of them might have resulted in a messy situation. I prefer order to chaos whenever possible." A smile touched the corner of her lips, then she stared back at me. "And I've waited here, because you couldn't be left alone. Despite the wreckage of your body, there's no telling what you might have done."

"Run away?" my stupid burst of laughter ended in a pitiful cry of pain.

"You have no brains," she chuckled.

Gritting my teeth, I reached out to her, using the one valid arm left to me, and closed a bandaged hand over Raziel's wrist. "After they brought me back, what happened? Is the war over?" She turned away from me.

Silent.

"Raziel," I said reasonably, willing all traces of anguish away from my voice, "tell me. You chose not to come after me. You chose not to be present when I called a council. You have a reason." I paused, biting my lower lip to ignore the pain and the pull of my body toward unconsciousness. "You didn't remove yourself from the scene because you think we're insignificant fools. You didn't come here and baby-sit me because you wanted to spare me the pain of having to wake up beside...them," I finished in a hiss.

The sigh she heaved out was a loud one. She bowed her head, and then faced me. "I told you before, stubborn Aries," her charcoal eyes were deep, unfathomable pools of molten ashes. "Power lends weight to actions and words. When we walk, we send shivers through the world. When we move, we pull the threads of Fate with us, and tip the balance of things. I am bound, as Gabriel is bound. You are Fire, and you burn. It's in your nature to do so. You couldn't watch them slide slowly into the dark. It's something we expected. Something we couldn't prevent. I couldn't step in without causing irremediable damages to the fabric of reality." For a moment she paused, considering me, then, in a low, quiet voice she said:

"We would have killed each other and obliterated a poor, ravaged world in the process--that, and worse. What's in your nature to refuse, it's in mine to understand and respect in an absolute fashion," the smile that curled up her lips was ice. "When you left the Sanctuary, you ceased to be one of us to become one with humanity, preventing us from interfering, no matter what. As a human being, you were free to choose your path, to choose destruction or preservation." She shook her head. "It was my hope that you might free us from the deadlock paralyzing us--a small," something somber and sad seeped into her tone, "unlikely spark of hope. That's all it was, but I won't lie to you and pretend it wasn't there."

"Damn you, Virgo!" I squeezed her arm, but there was no strength in my grip. "That's not the answer to my question."

"The strands of Destiny unfolded," she said softly, "and you'll have to deal with the future they shaped." Then she looked away from me, and stood up from the bed's side.

"Deal?!" Again, laughter plagued me, and again I vainly tried to choke down the pain. "That's insane!" I added between clenched teeth. "I'm dead. You can't let me live, not after this."

"They're coming," she replied, her voice distant.

"Who?"

"The judges your heart longs for," she retorted tonelessly.

Sitting up was like tearing me apart from within, but I managed it with Raziel's help. I didn't want to confront Gabriel and the sentence of death he'd deliver lying on that bed. I couldn't stand; Raziel had opposed even trying, and I hadn't gainsaid her. I wasn't that much of a fool.

"Raziel." Reproaches were plain in Gabriel's sigh as he took a look at me. Behind him, Taka, Shiva and Cain came through the door, then closed it.

"I'm holding him together," the Virgo Saint replied easily, untroubled. "Stop fretting like an old man." Her gaze swept over the four of them, and lingered on Cain. Her lips had thinned into a taut line.

"Gabriel." I forced a smile to my lips, unwilling to leave him the initiative. To challenge them was ludicrous and insane, but I couldn't help myself. "What kind of absurd game are you engaged into?"

The Goddess' Representative on Earth gave me a long, appraising glance. His gaze was clouded. Murky. "I see you're back to yourself, Cendre," he said at last.

The grin I flashed his way was a snarl. "I've no wish to start exchanging pleasantries with you, Gabriel. I betrayed you, and breached the Sanctuary's laws. I lifted my hand against those who're my companions. I'm aware of what I've done, and of the consequences that entails. My Cloth rejected me, and the broken body lying before you clings to life through tricks, and the thinnest thread of chance. Finish it and kill me, will you?"

"Your bones may be shattered, but your mind is intact." Shiva came to stand at the bed's far end. The eyes he turned toward me were veiled--shadowed by unfurling clouds. "You could save yourself or attack us with the smallest thought."

I smiled at him--at my most precious, cherished friend. "All the more reason to finish it quickly."

"You're an idiot!" Taka yelled, striding purposefully toward me. Gabriel held up an arm horizontally, halting her.

His gaze still set on me.

Unseeing.

Focused inwards.

"I need you to answer a question, Cendre," he said. As he let his arm hang along his side, he hissed a sigh between his teeth. The room was choked with hidden, restrained emotions that they didn't want me to read. Dancing clouds that were spilling rain despite their best efforts.

Black rain.

Viscous and heavy.

Just behind Gabriel, Taka had tensed. "Do you understand the Goddess' edict and the absolute need for a balance, Cendre? Are you retaking your place among us?" There was a strange solemnity in the Libra Saint's voice--not that I cared. Somehow, I managed to stifle the mocking laughter that came up my throat in answer.

"Shit, Gabriel!" I spat. "Don't play jokes on me, not with all of my ribs broken!" I bit my lower lip, and sent the pain back. "Your question is absurd." In a slow motion, I looked away from him, and focused on the man I had known as Cain Zwilling. Zwilling--Gemini. The irony of this was priceless. I had been a blind, dim-witted idiot, and it was only fair that I pay the price for that mistake.

"I thought you didn't know," I told the head of my order in a very calm voice, my gaze locked with Cain's. "When I called for a council, I believed you ignorant of the world--of the truth and of the war. But you knew. You knew," I repeated, unable to completely keep my voice from shaking, "far better than I did. And yet you were content to just watch and let it happen. You and your minion were happy with him playing generous, reckless relief organization operative. Is that all it takes to assuage your conscience?"

I had the satisfaction to see Gabriel step back from the corner of an eye. Before me, Cain never wavered. "Your answer is no, then," Gabriel sighed.

Taka's hands clenched into fists at her sides.

"At least you have that right," I told him in a whisper, wishing I could either laugh or cry. "Now, get on with it and extinguish the spark left in this wretched husk of flesh, will you? It can't be that difficult."

He rested a hand against the edge of the bed. "No, it wouldn't be." He bowed his head, and dragged in a shuddering breath before facing me again. "You've chosen to step aside and walk among humanity. As such, I may not forbid you. You're free." His tone was flat, emotionless. "You'll walk among them, one with them. But before we release you to the world, you will shed the light that belongs only to the Saints of Athena."

"What?!" My cry of outrage ended in a yelp of pain.

"We can't allow someone with a power such as yours to wander freely. We can't let you use your abilities and again take matters into your own hands," he continued, as if unaware of my interruption. "No human being can harbor and harness the stars' Fire. No human being can touch that power. Ever."

Cosmo flared to life.

Gabriel's.

"No!" I snarled, and willed myself away from this place.

Nothing happened.

"It's no use." I shivered. The voice had come from right beside me, and it was Cain's. Amber eyes met mine. "I took hold of your mind at the end of our confrontation on Mars."

Words.

Liquid black.

Sinking so deep within that they had drowned my soul.

Sounds, meaningless and dark.

Damnit, no!

No!

Even as I pitted all the strength of my will against the ebony wall that fettered my spirit, Cain swore. "Fuck! Do it, Gabriel! Now!"

Fire exploded inside me, high flames that engulfed my heart--all that I was. I screamed, blinded by a pain that had no meaning.

No beginning.

No end.

On instinct, I lashed out at it. But the same, impossibly high walls closed around me and kept me away. Shedding my body, I focused inwards and struck at the wall. I struck and struck at it, with the desperate strength of a dying man. I struck, even as fire scorched me and devoured me from within--as a light brighter than the sun's consumed my mind.

Tore me apart.

Severed me from myself.

Let go! Cain smashed the thought inside my mind, willing it to overwhelm me. Curse you! I can't shield you from the pain if you fight me! Ethereal arms embraced me, coming out of nowhere.

Held me.

Imprisoned me.

Pushed the flames back.

Strong and gentle, they steadied me.

No! I snarled mentally. Don't touch me, bitch! I shaped the thought into a spear and lashed out at him, allowing emotions I had held back until now to the fore. I fed off despair and grief, off fury and loss, and struck. Reaching out to the last strands of my life, I faced the walls set around my soul, and the flames beyond. They were trying to destroy me with fire.

I was Fire also.

I ripped my heart apart, and threw myself into the flames.

You can't win free.

Darkness.

Everywhere.

You have no will, unless I allow you to.

Closing around me.

You will yield and close your eyes. Now.

No! I pushed at the night, but it had no substance. I couldn't touch it or set fire to it. I was sinking into its bottomless depths. No! I cried out in thought. Have the decency to kill me! Silence was my only answer. Horrible. I was blind and deaf, cut out from myself, and yet I knew I was burning.

Melting into ashes.

I screamed, but I had no voice left.

I screamed.

I wept tears of blackened blood.

And screamed.

Screamed, until the silken arms of the night enfolded me.

Smothered me.

And I let them.

The stars within burst into flames, then. For an eternity, they burnt, scorching everything.

Then, at last, they waned.

And they died.

There were voices, close and then distant--gliding over an endless wave of Time. They kept coming and going like the tides, twirling in a labyrinth of basalt. Voices.

Sounds.

Warmth.

The weight of linen covering my skin.

Small, insubstantial things. I tried to reach beyond them. I tried, and tried again. I clawed at them, I ripped through them, but found only emptiness--that, and anguish tainting the voices and giving them a shrill quality. Meaningless and insignificant.

Dull.

Dust.

I held out my arms through the night. I called out to a thing I couldn't name, that was dawn and rising moon both--flames.

Fire.

As I had before, I fell back, shying away from a wall of blackness, a starless abyss--a gaping maw that would engulf me, swallow me whole if I so much as brushed against it. Greyness was better, emptiness was better. To sink into the dead world of voices and touch, to fall into a universe of flesh, human senses and limits. So horribly small. Thin.

But far better than the raw terror of darkness.

I could never touch it--ever. The grey, insubstantial mist was all there was for me, all there would ever be. The emptiness of it was like a bleeding wound. There was no healing it. I cried out when I understood this, as I had countless times before, but nobody heard. Nobody knew. The voices' tone raised a octave, dissonant instruments that sounded like fevered bees. I tried to swat them into silence, but they refused to obey. Once again, the weightless fog enveloped me, but this time it didn't manage to eclipse everything: the voices remained, stubborn pests that they were.

Lifeless monsters.

Sounds full of nightmares.

They were a part of me. I had grown used to their noise--addicted to it. They filled the holes within. Emptiness was a shield against the dark, so I could only hold on to it--cling to it, soak in it, even though I loathed it. It was scars, ugly and deep, and it marked me, what I had been when--

Stars.

No! No, I didn't want to wander there. I would lose what was left of me. I stepped back and closed the grey mist around me like a cloak, but still sparks pursued me, relentless. There's nowhere left to run, they seemed to want to say.

No place left to hide.

I breathed in the emptiness. I embraced it. It was the only thing I could do: to fall into this poor universe of living death, and let it close its jaws upon me. So, I opened my eyes.

White walls.

A window, opening on shining spires of glass.

People, a woman and two men, gathered around monitors. The voices were theirs.

Pressure on my wrists and my ankles--on my waist. Leather restraints, I found as I got a glimpse of my left arm. I willed the absurd things to be gone, and hit a wall of blackness within. Wind howled from beyond it, famished and full of pain.

It was true, then. The nightmares, the insane dreams I could remember and the grey mist scarring my heart. They had left me alive--an empty husk of flesh.

I could hear voices, smell the stench of antiseptics in the air, and see the stark whiteness of the walls. I could taste the iron in my mouth where I had bitten my tongue in order to refrain from howling my loss like a madman. Yes, I could do all that, but beyond those pale, lifeless sensations, there was nothing for me to touch. No emotions rustling past me, no thoughts humming with the draught caused by a door left ajar. There were no stars for me to spark life to. No Fire.

No flames.

Just an absurd absence of substance--of reality. Gabriel had condemned me to a living death. He had reduced me to a soulless beast. I was ashes. A pile of grey, weightless ashes. I laughed--well, I tried. All that won through my lips was a pathetic croak. I had no strength, not even that of feeling pain. It was there, but distant.

Muffled, like my heartbeats.

"Shit!" The woman whirled around to face me. "I told you to watch the dosage of morphine! He can't take it! Take him under, Max! Take him under!"

"It's all right," I told them in a rasp whisper even as one of the men was reaching for one of the tubes jacked into my body. "I barely feel the pain." I smiled. "I barely feel anything at all." There was something burning my eyes, but it was so far away that it didn't matter--no more than the anvil crushing my heart did.

The woman came to my side and reached out to me in a slow, careful motion. She was holding what looked like a handkerchief in her right hand, and she wiped moisture from my face with it. "Emotional backlash, even though it's too early for that," she said to no one in particular.

No, not too early. I had fought this nightmarish reality with all I had, in dreams where she had been nothing more than the ghost of a voice. Perhaps I should tell her that--perhaps it was unimportant. "You were kept in an artificial coma during a bit more than two months," she said gently as she looked at me, *truly* looked at me. Somehow, the fact that she failed to be horrified at the sight of the wreckage that I had become was hilariously funny. "It was necessary in order for the bones to mend and to keep the pain at bay. Do you have any idea where you are?"

I blinked. "A hospital." The question was absurd. "In a city I can't identify because the window is too small. I'm guessing on Earth, since the sky is blue," I added, bitterness plain in the tone of my voice.

"Manhattan, New York City." She gave me a relieved smile. "That's very good."

"Why am I here?"

Doubts flashed in her blue eyes. "Don't you remember anything at all?"

I looked away from her, and closed my eyes, chasing the ghosts away from my mind. "I don't," I replied between clenched teeth. "Care to take those restraints off of me?" I asked, making myself face her again. I couldn't reach out to her, I couldn't taste her aura or catch a whiff of her thoughts. She was no more real, no more alive than the furniture. She had no substance. None of them had.

Hell!

"We'll loosen them while you're awake," she nodded at me. "But at night you'll need them so as not to harm yourself during your sleep." I didn't need my powers to know that the shadow that darkened her gaze meant that she lied. Her two companions had come to each side of the bed, as if they expected some kind of trouble.

"Whoever wrote up 'suicidal impulses' in the file bearing my name made a mistake," I told them in a very quiet voice. When I saw the woman start, almost imperceptibly, I knew I had been right.

Damn you, Gabriel!

"It looks like it, Mr....?" she paused, waiting for me to fill in the blank.

Shit.

This was no random chance. She must have been coached to ask this question. What could I answer? I had no name, not anymore. I was nothing. Curse them all! "Aries!" I spat the two syllables like poison. The sounds of it sent echoes that rekindled the feeling of emptiness within. They were arrows tearing through this shell of flesh and bones. My whole body shook under the assault, but she gave me a nod, as if she hadn't noticed.

"And you have no memories of what happened to you?"

"None," I replied flatly.

"Well," she sighed, "we'll discuss this another time, but I can tell you you were caught in a cross-fire during one of the Mars battles."

Battles?

"What happened during the last two months?" The desperation in my voice echoed through the room. She gave me a look.

"This room is equipped with a connection node to the global network, but it's inactive. I have to visit my other patients, but we can talk about all this when you feel a bit stronger. There's no hurry. Planetary Aid owns this facility, and we take care of our operatives as part of their contract, as you know." With that, she gave me a short bow of the head and went away, flanked by the two muscular nurses.

I didn't call after her, it would have been useless.

Planetary Aid.

I wished I could laugh. Instead, I leaned my head into the pillow, and closed my eyes. The void inside me was the only thing that I could feel, the only thing that had meaning. They hadn't killed me; they hadn't even showed me that smallest of mercies. A sob shook me, sending a shooting pain resonating through my body. I swallowed back the tears, and focused on the emptiness. Gleefully it came to me, and embraced me.

And drowned everything.

The shrill sound that filled the air as the vehicle zoomed past was deafening. With difficulty, Taka managed to control the instinctive response to plug her ears. The car's driver never slowed down, never even looked back to check whether he had run over the pedestrian that she was or not. For the time of a heartbeat, the temptation to use the tiniest fraction of her power, to send an imperceptible ray of light and pierce through the car's tires was overwhelming.

Petty vengeance, she decided with a snort. Looking up, she stared at the high, ethereal towers of glass all around her. Almost, she could see ripples in the air where they touched the sky. They felt like fragile, beautiful works of art that would be uprooted by the first autumn storm. Beautiful--unbidden, a smile came to Leo Taka's lips. Yes, beautiful, as beautiful as the rest of it was ugly. Briskly she stepped aside, and barely avoided to be shoved away by a man in three-pieces suit. Her reflexive snarl was lost in the crowd pressing around her.

The high keeps of crystal might glint in the sunlight, but the truth below them was a dark grey quagmire of poisonous smog, of burning heat and of a swarm of bodies crushing everything that was insane enough to stand in its blind way. The truth was one of shrieking, howling sounds that assaulted the mind and drowned it--it was that of discarded people, stranded aside from the crowd. Beings whose eyes had lost all light, drifting further away with each moment that passed. Some of them tried to get the crowd's attention, they held out hands or small cups, pleading to be given a bit of the cancerous snake known as money. But beggars were no longer human, they were part of the waste produced by this insane society that fed upon its own and then flushed them out like excrements.

Just as Cendre has claimed.

Taka blew air through her nostrils, and gave a brisk shake of her head. She had thought the Sanctuary a harsh place, but it was in no way as cruel as this. With an effort of will, she tore her eyes away from the terrible spectacle of humanity's folly, and went on her way. She hadn't come to right the world's wrongs. She had come because there was a sharp thorn of ice inside her heart that refused to let her be.

Fortunately it didn't take her long to reach her destination. Too swift to be perceived, she had run unerringly through the rising tide of people, and stopped in front of one of those shining transparent spires. For a few seconds, she stood on the threshold and stared at the glass door and the hall beyond it, at the desk and the men and women sitting behind it, at the people coming and going in endless waves--the flow of them a brisk, nervous one. Unbalanced, that was what they all were.

Lost.

Like us, was the automatic response that came to her mind, but she stifled it with a sigh. Then she went in.

Silence.

Shut out from the outside.

Severed.

Steps, echoing from every direction at once, like drums.

Taka blinked, even as she strode toward the wide desk set at the great hall's center. "How may I help you?" a man asked just as she rested her right forearm on the cold surface of the counter. The eyes he turned toward her didn't see her. They saw a task to be processed, not a woman of flesh and blood.

Poor, blind pawns.

"I'm here to visit one of your patients. His name is Cendre Aries," Taka told him. There was an almost inaudible sigh while the man pivoted his chair and reached out to the keyboard of his computer terminal.

"Room thirteen," he said in a bored voice. Abruptly he paused. "Your friend is in the intensive care wing, miss. Visits may be shortened, or even impossible." He made to turn away, and Taka mastered the urge to shake him like an apple tree.

"How do I get there?" she asked, allowing annoyance to seep into her tone.

This time, he didn't even try to mask his sigh. "Use one of the elevators on your left," he pointed toward a set of high transparent tubes that seemed to climb all the way up to the tower's top. "Intensive care is on level zero; that's the last one. Once you get there, just stop someone and ask."

Stop someone and ask, in an intensive care unit? No matter. Discarding the man from her mind, Taka stepped over to the elevators.

Almost, she laughed when she felt the lurch in her stomach as the elevator shot up. Beside her, people muttered in a angry whispers at badly tuned machines that'd kill them one day, and besides they were no pilot trainees, thank you very much. Little by little, the lift spilled out its contents of people, and when it reached Taka's stop, she and a woman in jeans and a long-sleeved white robe--most likely a nurse--were the only ones left in it.

"Are you here to visit someone, miss?"

Taka started, and belatedly realized that the woman was looking at her--seeing her. She nodded. "Yes, an acquaintance of mine." The woman raised a dubious eyebrow at her. Perhaps people didn't come to this place to visit mere acquaintances, but Taka didn't give a damn. She couldn't wouldn't call Cendre a friend. He wasn't one. "Cendre Aries," she went on. Then, reading the name written on the badge the woman was wearing, Taka asked her on impulse, "Do you know where I might find him, Miss..." for the time of a heartbeat, Taka wondered whether she should use the woman's first name, her name or both--but then calling her Anastasia Elefteros seemed a bit awkward, so Taka settled for the name-only option, "Elefteros?"

A shadow veiled the woman's gaze. "Ah," she sighed, then summoned a smile to her lips. "Our forlorn prince." She shook her head, and somehow managed to chase some of the sadness away from her smile. "Perhaps that will help. We've had numerous, regular inquiries concerning him, but no one ever came to see him--not that he requested anyone or anything."

"How is he?" Taka found herself asking.

Anastasia Elefteros shrugged. "You'll need to ask his assigned physician to get all the details. What I can tell you is that his body is mending. In a few weeks, he should be able to leave here. In truth, his physical condition no longer requires him to be in this wing, but his mind--" she looked away, and whispered, "it's like broken glass, scattered shards of crystal so sharp that they cut bleeding wounds within constantly, without ever letting him rest. Oh, he hides it of course. He hides it in a masterful fashion, but it can't fool anyone in the medical staff." The nurse again faced Taka. "We're trained to see through masks, even when they're as finely wrought as his."

It was bad, then--but how could it not be? "Where can I find his room?" Taka asked, her voice emotionless.

"Walk down this corridor," the nurse nodded toward her right. "Third intersection on your left. It's the last room down that way." Taka bobbed her head in thanks, then she went on her way in long, quick strides.

Her heart beating fast in her chest--too fast.

The room was exactly where Anastasia Elefteros had told Taka she'd find it. Gingerly she rested a hand against the door frame, pausing before going in, unable to help herself. She was still hidden from view, she could still back away from this--

"Shit!"

Taka blinked, taken aback by the raw fury there had been in the voice. All of a sudden, she noticed a shadow on the far corner of the rather spacious room--right next to a huge window. The shadow stepped back and grew as it straightened--and abruptly froze. A hiss cleaved the air and reached Taka's ear, but she didn't need to hear it to know it was pain that had stopped Cendre in mid-movement.

Razor-sharp.

With painstaking slowness, he pivoted and paused again. "Fuck!" There was something black and terrible beyond the burning anger and violence spiraling around him. Despair--madness. Uncomprehending, Taka watched him reach out behind him, and close the fingers of his right hand over a thick lock of that impossibly long hair of his. He gave a sharp, brutal pull at it, and even as it tore free of the nearly perfectly closed drawer Cendre was standing next to, she understood.

It was in his way.

In a slow motion, she reached a hand up to her mouth, as if it could contain the cold hitting the pit of her stomach. Years ago, when they had still both been teenagers apprenticed to revered Gold Saints, Taka had scorned Cendre's absurdly long brown hair. Time and again, she had mocked what she had claimed was a silly, coquettish affectation--which it was, but there was much more to it.

Had been.

Cendre had told her she was an ugly brat who made a very bad imitation of a boy, and things had started going downhill between them from that moment on. Before it had come to blows and serious damages, Aries Atalante had intervened, and talked to Taka. The eerie, ethereal figure of the Gold Saint worshipped by all in the Sanctuary had explained how she was the one who had required Cendre to grow his hair. Oh, it was beautiful, but it was also unmanageable, unless one could focus the smallest fraction of will and cosmo on it to force it to behave during one's every single waking and sleeping moment. It had been a formidable training tool, one which had pushed Cendre to hone his skills and his powers to a level so high that only Raziel could reach it. That hair was woven to everything that Cendre was.

Intimately so.

It was Atalante's--the one person Cendre had loved more than life. Ridiculous though it was, it was the truth, and Taka understood it with a clarity so sharp that it crushed her chest and constricted her throat. On the far side of the room, Cendre took two cautious steps toward a table set before the window, and stopped before it.

Splashed with sunlight.

He was beautiful, Taka admitted with a smile. Watching the tall, slim silhouette and its flowing chestnut hair that sparkled like threads of brown gold, she acknowledged that she understood why Anastasia Elefteros had referred to him as a prince.

A fallen one.

Before the Leo Gold Saint, Cendre reached out and took a pair of scissors. In a flash, Taka knew what he intended--and knew it must not happen. That hair was a part of him, and to chop it off--it meant that everything was broken, irremediably so.

It meant that Cendre had died.

That he had shed his name and his own self.

That he'd forever be that dull, darkened light--lifeless and empty. Perhaps it was true, perhaps that was all that was left of him. Taka didn't like him, she never had. He was a dangerous, selfish and arrogant brat who thought the world revolved around him, but he didn't deserve the starless night he had been locked into. Nobody deserved that. Her heart wrenching with pity, Taka moved to enter the room.

No. Even as the thought froze her mind, a hand pressed on Taka's left shoulder, pulling her back. Beside her, she could feel the spark of cosmo. She turned her head in a sluggish motion, to find Raziel standing there.

Raziel, in modern civilian clothes--pants and a long, white cloak-like shirt that was slashed lengthwise on the sides and behind so it wouldn't hamper her movements. For the time of a heartbeat, the charcoal eyes met Taka's, then the Virgo Saint's face seemed to ripple.

An illusion.

Yes, Raziel was good at that game that Taka despised. Before she could stop the other and demand to know what the hell she was playing at, an unrecognizable Raziel stepped into the room, where Cendre was still gloomily considering a pair of scissors. "Just what do you think you're doing with those?" she asked in a chiding voice.

"The obvious," Cendre snorted without even looking at the newcomer. "I'm getting rid of that stupid thing. I should have done that weeks ago, no matter what all of you say about it being so nice and pretty."

"Well," Raziel replied evenly, deftly taking the scissors from Cendre's hands without eliciting the smallest response from him, "it sure is pretty, but that's certainly no reason to prevent you from cutting it off."

That got his attention. In a reluctant motion, he pivoted to face Raziel. "It must demand a constant attention," she smiled. "You don't grow hair that long and then keep it just because it attracts girls your way. You do it because it's a part of you, and you do it for someone you else--someone you love. That's reason enough to keep it despite it being such a pain in the butt, isn't it?" she finished softly.

For a moment, something black and horrible flashed in Cendre's eyes. Then he laughed--a hoarse, broken sound that made Taka want to plug her ears and close her eyes tightly shut. "She's dead," he said, a frightening smile on his lips, "and I'm dead also. You're wrong, miss. There's no longer any meaning to its existence. It's nothing but ruins of meaningless illusions. It's just ashes and dust, and it hampers my every movement. So it's coming off. Now."

"Ah," Raziel gestured toward a nearby chair, "I see. Sit down, if that's the real reason you have for cutting it off." For a moment, it looked as if Cendre was going to throttle her, but at last he shrugged, and complied. "Good." Raziel grinned. The Virgo Saint was mad. There was no sense to this absurd whim of hers. Taka watched while she came to stand behind Cendre, unable to understand why the other was here or what her goal might be. The mundane world held no importance whatsoever in Raziel's eyes.

Nothing did.

"You see," Raziel said all of a sudden, her voice surprisingly gentle, "there's no need to do something that would hurt you so--" she gathered Cendre's hair into her hands, and divided it into thick locks, "not when getting your hair to behave is as simple as this." As she started braiding it, Cendre made to whirl around, his face contorted into a snarl. "Hush," Raziel whispered absentmindedly, holding him with a tiny fraction of her power. Then she started humming softly to herself.

Light rose, faint and small, as if in answer to her wordless song. She braided it with the hair, wove it with the long chestnut-brown locks, and it held. Raziel continued her slow, careful work, humming all the while. Taka watched, dumbfounded. In the window, the reflection of Cendre's eyes was wide--blurred with unshed tears.

"There," Raziel whispered at last, a smile hovering on her lips. "It will behave now. You just need to keep it braided. I'll teach you how to do it. You'll see, it's child's play."

"I--" Cendre bowed his head. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she patted his left shoulder--completely un-Raziel like. Then she turned away from him.

"Wait!" Taka hurriedly shifted to the side so Cendre couldn't catch sight of her as he pivoted to call after Raziel. "Aren't you going to accompany me to the local power-training club? I seem to remember I still need to go through quite a few work-out sessions." There were undertones of sarcasm in Cendre's voice, but darkness was no longer poisoning it. It had given way--if only for a little while.

"No!" Raziel laughed. "And neither can I fix the network connection node in your room. I'm neither your physician , nor an electronics expert." With that, she exited the room, and came to confront Taka.

"Still here?" she asked, with more than a hint of mockery in her tone--back to the Raziel Taka knew.

"I'm a curious cat," Taka gave a shrug. Then, her eyes set on Raziel's, she added, very quietly, "What was that all about?"

Raziel smiled. "A mistake." Then she was gone, before the smile could reach her charcoal eyes.

"Oh, stop harassing me with that! I'm too young to already think of retirement!" The automatic response came through Shiva's lips, but this time there was neither laughter nor good humor in it. There wasn't in anything, these days. Looking at Gabriel, Shiva saw the forced smile on the other's lips, and heard the weariness in his answering sigh. Their cat-and-mouse game of I'll-get-you-to-choose-an-apprentice felt like a worn out dance.

Out of tune.

Almost, Shiva spoke up to tell Gabriel that, in his obsessive struggle against looming chaos, he had broken his precious balance himself, but he refrained, as he had many times before. The Libra Saint was no dim-witted idiot. He must have felt the subdued light that had come over the Sanctuary, the unease which had followed the terrible punishment imposed to Cendre--to one of the Six.

Unbalance.

It was all over the Sacred Domain, in whispers and mutterings and doubts. It was in Shiva's anger and guilt--relentless emotions that refused to fade and die. Goddess, it was in Gabriel himself! The decision he had made and the sentence he had carried out were weighing heavily upon his mind. Why he had chosen such a cruel, harsh path, why he had felt the need to break Cendre like that, Shiva didn't know--couldn't accept. He had fought Gabriel's will in council meetings while Cendre was lying unconscious in one of the cell-like rooms of the temple of Athena's basement. He had fought Gabriel's will with every breath, and found an unlikely ally in Taka.

The Leo Gold Saint's opinion had been made clear in the starkest of fashions. Cendre had broken the Sanctuary's edict, and betrayed his oath to Athena. So let him die. Let him die as he was.

Gold.

Surely it was payment enough for the sin he had committed--for being young and far too close to the world. That was what she had repeated, over and over again, but nothing had been able to move Gabriel--not even when Taka had spat that to make him fade into the dark was monstrous and barbaric.

Evil.

That had shaken even Raziel. A shadow that might have been the barest hints of doubts had flickered in the ever-impassive gaze of the Virgo Saint. Gabriel had paled, looking like a man about to drown. Before that, Shiva would have sworn Taka was little more than Gabriel's puppy-dog, but now he knew better.

Spark.

Bursting star.

Shiva blinked. "Raziel is back," he voiced out the obvious, "and Taka along with her."

"Gabriel!"

Cold flames invaded the conference hall as the double doors were slammed open, and as Gemini Cain stormed in. Something half-smile, half-snarl tugged at Shiva's lips as he watched the prideful son of a bitch come to a stop before the head of their order and challenge him. "Now that they're back, you'll call your kitten off, or I'll do it myself. It's enough that you allow that cold-hearted witch to fool around with him. I won't--"

"You will do nothing, Cain," Gabriel replied, an icy smile on his lips. "Taka is nobody's kitten, and I'm sure she could give your sorry ass a good kick or two--if you had the guts to repeat to her what you just told me, that is."

Gemini Cain laughed, a flat, unpleasant sound that echoed in the hall. "Sure!"

They were going to go at each other's throat again. Declining to listen to an exchange of pleasantries he had heard much too often, Shiva pivoted and exited the temple of Athena. They were as close as brothers, those two, the bond uniting them a rare vintage wine gone sour--as different as night and day. Gabriel had never volunteered the smallest explanation for Cain's existence and the secret that had surrounded him for years, and Shiva hadn't asked.

He didn't give a damn.

Heaving out a sigh, Shiva started down the great Stairs, then paused. He had no wish to get back to the House of Pisces just yet. On a whim, he jumped atop a huge boulder right beside the Stairs, and sat down on it. Focusing on the stone's cold, he looked out at the world beyond the Sanctuary's borders--at the sea, made grey by an ocean of unfurling clouds coming from the north, at the darkening sky beyond, and wished that the wind could carry his thoughts away and clear his mind.

Steps.

Brought back to reality by the slight sound, Shiva looked down to see Gemini Cain walking down the Stairs. The other hadn't noticed him. Shiva should let him be on his way and hold his peace. Yes, he should. "Why did you remain silent?" he asked.

Gemini Cain's cosmo flared up, even as he froze. The tension in his body was an awful one. A smile came to Shiva's lips at the sight, and he jumped down to join the other's side. "If you're so worried, why did you allow that atrocity to happen?" he challenged.

The yellow eyes met his, empty. "None of your concern," was the flat, emotionless reply.

"But it is," Shiva sustained that cold, inhuman gaze, "when yours was the vote that tipped the balance. Raziel was the only one backing Gabriel's decision, except for you. If you care enough to worry about Raziel's games, then why did you let it happen?" During a long time, no answer came.

Shiva didn't understand Cain--didn't like him. There was something cold and harsh in him. He shone, but his light was too stark, blinding. He was diamond shards that would cut bleeding wounds into all who came too close to him, be they friend or foe. He was as sharp as a blade.

Unforgiving.

He had ensnared Cendre. Oh, he hadn't said anything about it, but Shiva had eyes to see, and senses to feel. The storm of black despair that had engulfed Cendre on Mars had had little to do with his failure to stop the absurd civil war there. And the Gemini Saint's icy cold rationality when dealing with anything even remotely tied to Cendre, well--

"It would have been wiser to refuse Gabriel's command in the first place," Cain smiled in apparent unconcern. "If you're so anguished about the past, so guilt-ridden that you'll project your own emotions on me, don't you think you ought to do something about it? To me, Cendre is gone. He's back where he belongs, among the humanity Atalante should never have pulled him from. As a human being, he's free, just as Gabriel said, and no longer any of our concern. But," he shrugged, "if you feel otherwise, why don't you move? Why don't you go and reach out to him--help him, fill the void--"

"Fuck you!" Shiva snarled through the painful beatings of his heart.

Lies.

Lies within lies.

Predator lashing out.

Manipulating--toying with hearts and souls.

"Not gonna happen!" Cain scoffed. "But the reverse might--if you asked me nicely. You're pretty enough in your own way." The lupine eyes were glinting with a malevolent light.

With an effort of will, Shiva unclenched his fists, and smothered the burning flames of anger that had sprung out of his heart to engulf him. "You're a fool," he retorted in a very quiet voice, "and a coward." Because he knew what was lurking beneath the thick, viscous layers of scorn and ice, because he knew how terribly it hurt--how it gnawed at the soul, night and day, Shiva didn't go any further. He didn't slap the wretched, self-centered idiot in the face with the truth. He didn't shove it down the other's throat, no matter how tempted he was to do so.

"You both are."

In the same movement, they jerked their heads up to see Taka sitting atop the boulder Shiva had used as a seat moments ago. She was holding something in her hands--a flower.

Black.

Shiva's eyes widened, and in the same time Taka unfolded her legs and jumped down beside them. The eyes she turned on them were a blue as deep as the falling night. "I went where you dare not go," she whispered at them. "I saw the ruins of what he was, of what you permitted because you lacked the courage to kill him." She was Fire, bright and true. So like him, so warm and so sincere that the sight of her hurt.

"You know nothing, little girl," Cain smiled beside Shiva, a cold, cold smile.

"Don't I?" she shot back at him, holding out the black flower for him to take.

A black rose, whose silken petals glistened with their own dark light--whose thorns devoured flesh and bones. Taka had cut it in the remotest part of Shiva's garden, the corner of shadows. How she had managed it, he didn't know, but he could feel the power radiating from the young woman and coercing the flower into quiescence. In a slow motion, Cain reached out to the lethal gift, and took it.

Taka laughed while the thorns opened deep cuts in Gemini Cain's palm. "It's easy, isn't it? Even though it hurts. If you can do this," she went on, sobering up, "then why can't you go and confront the reflection of your heart?" She paused, waiting for an answer that never came.

Cain was watching the black rose, his gaze focused inwards.

"He never saw me, and Raziel--" she sighed, "Raziel has tried to give him an anchor, a refuge where he can attempt to gather all the broken pieces of his soul, I think. So," Taka snatched the black rose away from Cain, lightning quick. "Until you can gather enough guts to do more than whine and throw ludicrous threats at Gabriel, just practice drinking Metaxa and stay out of Raziel's way. And if you need a sparring partner," she added with a feral grin, "come to me if you dare." Then she nodded at them, and started down the Stairs.

"Kitten," Cain said softly his eyes set on Taka's retreating back, "you know how to claw and bite. I think I like you. I just might take you up on that last offer."

Shiva smiled to himself. Like him, Taka had been mostly focused on Cain, but still, what she had said was true. Shiva hadn't been able to kill Cendre. He had been given the opportunity, but he hadn't used it--on the contrary. He had stopped Gemini Cain from doing it. There was no denying the harsh truth that had been handed out to them.

"I had my reasons." Shiva whirled around, and faced the Gemini Saint. Cain's amber gaze had lost its frightening intensity. A crooked smile came to his lips as he added, "I have my reasons still, insane as they are, painful as they are. I know it hurts, I know it burns, but--" he looked away, and heaved out a sigh. "Trust me, just this once."

He was mad. "Do you know what it is you're asking?" Shiva snorted.

"I do." The quiet answer faded in the air around them, and Shiva looked at the man standing at his side--at the man who had most likely manipulated and the betrayed Cendre, who had struck at him with such cruelty and savagery that Shiva's gut had heaved with nausea--at the man who had condemned Cendre to a living death that was worse than an eternity in hell.

Cain had closed his hand around the black rose.

The Gemini Saint hadn't sparked his cosmo to shield himself.

He had allowed the thorns to tear through his flesh and drink his blood. If Taka hadn't stopped him by retaking it, the black rose would have shredded him apart--devoured him.

"I will, then." Shiva nodded. With that, he turned his back on Gemini Cain, and went down the Stairs. Behind him, words hovered, unsaid.

Unutterable.

Emotions which would break them.

Trust was meaningless and insane, but then who cared? Bowing his head, Shiva entered the House of Pisces, and the small temple's shadows swallowed his smile.

His smile, and the quivering light in his eyes that was not tears. End of chapter 6. ".

Notes:

Cendre: French for "ashes".
Zwilling: German for "twin".

On to the Next Part

Back to the Previous Part

Back to my Fanfic page.