"Sailor Mars!"
Mars' whole body stilled.
Phobos bit her lip at her own outburst. "If you go out there..." She paused, unable to continue and closed her tear-filled eyes at the painful hitch in her breath. She held tighter onto the cooling body of her twin, strong arms trembling from exhaustion and emotions too great for words. "I'm sorry, my Queen," she murmured, trembling all the more as her blurry vision moved pleadingly up the back of the woman she had served for these long years. Those familiar features that she knew so much history lay untold was now so foreign as well.
"I don't want to lose you too," she whispered, mostly to herself, but her Queen had heard her nonetheless.
"You have known it would happen this way for as long as you have served me, Phobos. No matter how painful it is, the knowing of yesterday and the reality of today are not that different," her master said with more gentleness in her cool voice than she had ever allowed. Phobos had known anger and hatred, she had felt helplessness and loss, but yet, her heart still felt as if it was crushed by this small kindness and the cruel truth beneath it.
"My Queen," Phobos pleaded once more, trying to shift clumsily past pain and emotions too great for words. "You must not go out there. The end, you know it waits!"
"And it will come for me if I do not go," Sailor Mars answered. Her back did not bend nor did her shoulders drop at the inevitability hanging in the heavy atmosphere between them, the scent of burnt flesh and ashes. "There is one more person I must say goodbye to before that promised rebirth," she said with more honesty and sadness than ever she had shown to them. Even if they shared the same visions, even if they knew the same tales, Phobos could not stop herself from pleading for her Queen to reconsider, beg for her to remain behind in the safety of cowardice.
And yet, no anger from hurt pride or slighted honor rose from the woman who had always been too proud.
"Next time, Phobos, I won't have the chance to do this," she confessed sadly, for once showing the kindness behind her usually guarded gaze. Kasra Kadri barely allowed anyone to know she had such tender feelings, even when she had been no more than a Princess. Yet, here and now, with all that were to pass about to come, the Martian queen turned to cast one last glance over her shoulder at the woman who had served her so loyally. Despite all of her faults and all that they had given up in the name of duty, despite her difficult choices as a ruler and her even more conflicting ones as a soldier, this one request Phobos had for her, she could not grant. "Forgive me of this one selfishness." It was the only apology she could offer, for even in the end, she was still the other's Queen. It was a mantle that only death could take from her.
Phobos felt the salty liquid hotly spill onto her cheeks and could not stop the dam from breaking. Her broken leg lay uselessly beneath her, splinted with more care than this battle should have allowed. Her sister was dead, but the greatest pain of all was that she would fail in her duties to protect her Queen - this woman who had only ever looked a child when she slept. She remembered the child who took on all the duties of her office and her name with the grace of a woman, who never showed regret in any of the many painful choices she had to make or hesitation at the pain it would bring her to make it, and who never spoke a word against the fate that they all knew were to come. Since before language was taught to Kasra Kadri and before the bow was a part of her, this fate had been set in stone.
"Goodbye, Phobos," Sailor Mars said before departing into the roaring flames of battle.
A choked sound of despair and grief escaped from Phobos' bloodied lips. Cadavers of the fallen, allies and enemies alike, were her only companions now. She would not have been able to stop her liege from going even if she had not become so useless and so broken, it had never been within her powers. Phobos knew this but knowing did not ease any of the intense feelings that would surely follow her into the next life. In the shadowed blackness of broken pillars, and surrounded by the echoes of the not so distant warfare, Phobos clutched her sister to her for as long as time would allow it and hated...
Hated the man who took the only smile that Kasra Kadri had to offer.
But all she could do now was remember and wait, and pray that death was as glorious as the Martians often sung of it to be and not just dust in the end.
The End
Theme: sm_monthly 01/2008 Day 30 : End Days
