Why do you love him?
Between them the words settled with so much emotion. She was silent, watching the guilt enter those golden eyes. So much unvoiced things--
Why do you not love me this way?
She heard that too. But it was hard to explain to this woman before her, who had suffered as she had, and found her heart as untamed as her own…
Why had she loved him? How can she explain to N. Triaria what it was like to defy the one thing in your destiny that you had any control over? How do one explain to another how burdensome a name could be and how, despite words and resolutions, she still wished to live up to that name? That in the end, it may not be love that moved her but a weakness…
It was harder because this woman before her would understand. Yet, no relief could be had in the understanding. No pain could be cured for voicing the pain slowly blossoming from its seedling.
She had seen it. His death by her hands, a revenge in a thousand years. His longing for her had not changed and it was strong, strong enough to sway her. Strong enough to tell her that this once, let it be so that she may love him instead of hate him. She wished it, because she had seen the blackness in her eyes, she had died with hatred burning away all the memories within her and all the forgiveness that he had bestowed upon her that years, in that vision she‘d seen, could not erase in herself.
She did not want to forget this time, no matter how painful it was, for a piece of that rage.
That moment, before the crystal whose powers the Earthlings sought, a greed that eventually took him from her arms, it would not rob her a thousand years of unrest. It would mark the end of them, though their beginnings were no less ephemeral. No matter who she may wish herself to be, she knew that the self in a thousand years would be a child and would not see as she sees now. She could not control that future self, but she could do in the present self what she may never be able to again.
He had been her destiny for as long as she could remember. For years as a child, she would dream of that golden hair flying over her, merging with the dark night sky and the fires burning as she lay dying on the battlefield. It had frightened her, the proof of her own existence vanishing in his eyes. For a long time, she had feared and hated him, because it was only natural. If it had been Mars that burned in the end, perhaps she would not have been as forgiving, but it was the Moon she dreamed of and the Earth she saw as the last of the magic and illusions melted to reveal the emptiness of space. But she had also killed her heart’s beloved once, felt and seen and tasted the regret of it and now, was it pity that drove her to this young boy’s side? Or loneliness and an understanding of the inevitable, of the man he would one day be?
He had been so innocent. So unlike them who had killed in the name of peace. He had not yet put on the armor of destiny with so much knowledge of the inevitable, or stained his hands so that others would not have to. Such things were still words to him, who had seen a small piece of war in the decades that Earth had fought its unrest. But, how do you explain to someone that your existence was war? That in a single life-time, you were trained for a war that would ultimately destroy you completely? That that single life time was but one of many, and that the war keeps going for eternity, without end? When he returned to that violent, turmoil-filled Earth, his mother-land, it will welcome him in blood that she could not protect him from. It was not her duty or her place to do so. At first, for these small moments that existed too briefly, he will fight believing that one day it would end. She had not the heart to unveil the truth of it to him. The universe was vast and who was to say that Utopia did not reside past the stars of this primitive system? But what she knew of was only that the next life held as much strife as this one.
He was so naïve. He believed her beauty indefinite, as if she were untouchable and untouched. As if her heart was pure and her being was fragile.
She could see how easily she could hate him with those lights in his eyes. She imagined that N. Triaria might once have been like this child, before she too had shed her skins into senshi-hood. We are so stained, by the centuries of warfare and the souls too old to be held on this plane and in these wilting bodies.
But she could not say these things.
Because sometimes N. Triaria still looked to her with the longings of a child. Because she had seen that reluctant glance cast to another man, who stood always beside his prince. Because she knew that even as N. Triaria asked this, she was also seeking the answer to why her heart would ever beat for a King of Earth, a pillar in a world so filled with enemies and yet, remained still so beautiful and out of reach.
We are all fools, Kasra Kadri thought with a heavy heart as she set a gentle hand on N. Triaria’s cheek. She watched the other woman struggle with emotions too vast for words. Watched that façade of too clever and too knowing fall, watched her flinch away for the first time from her touch and turn from the things which her commander had sought always with more longing than Kasra Kadri thought the other could feel.
The red-haired woman watched the smart smile, the devious look that masked the too much pain, return after a small struggle for control. “If you were looking for a good time,” N. Triaria teased without a tremor in her voice, “you could have just asked me.”
It would have been believable if those white hands had not trembled so much, Kasra Kadri thought. That insincerity and callous seduction, it would have been easier if it riled her and their ignorance was a game that blinded the players. She turned away, not wishing to hurt N. Triaria more with the knowing in her own eyes and the pity that would be there.
“Tonight would be a dance to remember,” she said instead to the great windows and the blue Earth just beyond that artificial sky. “I suggest you take advantage of the time you have for the goodbyes you don‘t wish to say.”
“To those kings of Earth?” asked N. Triaria with less disdain than she might have wanted, though her face now hid in shadows. “If Princess Serenity was not so taken, I would have had a taste for that young princeling.”
Kasra Kadri did not answer words that held more truth in them than lies.
“Are you not tired,” N. Triaria finally asked her back so quietly it was hard to hear her. “Of the future you see?”
Kasra Kadri closed her eyes and put her hand to her heart. “I once felt a love like fire,” she confessed to the afternoon sky, “and found that even I can be burned by it. Would you not regret more that you had nothing to lose in this empty life of caution, than the loss of something that meant everything?” she asked with a casual glance over one sloped shoulder. “Loss is something we can deal with, Sailor Senshi that we are. But a life worth living, that is a struggle for every creature in the universe.”
N. Triaria was silent.
“A love like fire, huh?” N. Triaria echoed to herself, tasting the truth in those words while her eyes never left Kasra Kadri‘s back.
Under the artificial sunlight and illusionary skies, they stood for some time in silent companionship, waiting for night to fall.
“I had a dream last night,” N. Triaria spoke, unexpectedly.
“A dream?”
The blonde hummed an agreement as she strode across the room to another window, that would have shown Earth if it was night. “I dreamed that I was a young school girl,” she smiled. “That I lived with Artemis, that snotty little counsel of our Queen's.” She laughed a little at this before closing her eyes dreamily. “I dreamed that all I worried about was homework, and that I wasn’t so terrified of being a Senshi as I am now. I thought it was a bit glamorous to be... me. At least, it lasted a little while.”
Kasra Kadri did not interrupt, just watched her leader as the other woman opened her eyes slowly to the sky overhead.
“I dreamed I lived on Earth, in a place called Tokyo. That we were friends, mea Kadri. That even Niko-Lysandra was normal, just a studious student living a normal life.” Her golden gaze fell on her companion than with an embarrassed smile. “I think I still loved you then, as I do now.”
“Normal?” Kasra Kadri asked surprised. She thought of her own violent visions, of being a Senshi in a land called Tokyo, fighting the same battles a thousand years later as the one on the horizon now. Only, in the future, she wasn’t as skilled in battle or prophecy as she was now. She remembered too intensely the bone-deep loneliness, of the greed of a father this time instead of her Queen-mother, and the inability to ever feel truly at home in the skin she was born into.
She remembered that the sorrow of her black hair, only visible when she became a Sailor Senshi, was now a part of who she was even out of uniform. That her mourning for the loss of Emel was now a shade to be seen by all who crossed her path and yet, forgotten by even herself for the reasons behind it. This pain in her breast that had held so much significance would be meaningless and tattered beyond recognition.
“We won’t remember ourselves this way,” Kasra Kadri said, more bitterly than she had wanted to ever reveal to anyone.
“And I’m glad of it,” N. Triaria replied with a kindness in her voice that Kasra had never before heard, too engrossed in her own thoughts to hear the emotions in Kasra's tone. “I’m glad that we could think ourselves so innocent as to not see the end was coming. That we would remember ourselves through Serenity’s eyes. That we might even be able to forgive our soon-to-be enemies, eventually. Perhaps then, it would be easier to accept our failings in this life-time.”
Kasra Kadri felt that fire in her heart crackle in denial. “Never,” she hissed as her eyes became a brighter red while the orange around the black of her iris intensified. “This pain is my pain.”
It was the one thing that destiny should never touch.
And yet, in that deep aching place inside her, where the imprint of Emel’s head on her lap rested and the first touch of Lord Jadeite’s blue eyes met her own with more longing than he should be able to carry, she despaired...
Memories were, in the end, only shadows to be destroyed as a casualty of war. Even if those memories were all that she really had...
--
mea Kadri - my Destiny
Theme: sm_monthly 01/2008 Day 14 : Bury
