He couldn’t sleep.
Kunzite found that this was beginning to become like a bad habit, or perhaps he was simply destined for insomnia for as long as he dwelled on the moon. He did not know if it was stress over these tenuous, eternal negotiations or simply homesickness. He guessed it was a combination of both. He was a man prone to worry, and out of the four guardians, it was certain that he represented Earth, and so he probably missed it the most. He missed the mountains and the lakes and the air of his home, and though the Moon tried to replicate some of its features, it was all for naught. It was an illusion, devoid of the majesty that comes from natural wonders. He could only look upon the roses Endymion had brought as a gift and feel empty at how out of place they looked among the Moon’s cold, grey landscape.
Like most of his sleepless nights, Kunzite saw no point in lying in bed and hoping for his insomnia to ebb away. So he rose and dressed, exiting his bedroom and pausing only momentarily in the living quarters they shared. He heard Zoisite’s wheezing, Jadeite’s murmurs, and Nephrite’s horrendous snoring. He did not hear Endymion at all, but that was something the four of them had decided to overlook.
Although he did not care much for the Moon Kingdom’s landscapes, he could certainly appreciate their architecture. He liked their rounded corners and swirling embellishments, so different from the statuesque blocks so common to Earth. He liked the use of white and silver and gold and how the Earthlight reflected off the surfaces, casting a gentle glow that made torches unnecessary. He liked the artwork from all corners of the galaxy, although none was represented more fiercely than Neptune and its underwater seascapes.
He tended to wander aimlessly, although he did commit these wanderings to memory in the event of an emergency. He chose a different path every night and rarely ever ended up in the same place twice, so labyrinthine was the palace’s layout. He soon found himself in a wing that looked more or less deserted. In fact, it looked wholly out of place with the rest of the palace, leaving him to wonder if perhaps one of the Queens Serenity had renovated at some point. The walls and floors were stone and the ceilings vaulted rather than sloped. It was still somewhat alien, but there was something slightly familiar about it. It soothed him.
However, he was completely unfamiliar with what he saw when he rounded the next corner.
He recognized the woman who had her back to him immediately – there was no one else who wore her hair quite the same way, although long hair was the fashion. Yet, he found himself largely ignoring her in favor of what she stood before. He did not know how or why, but she had somehow conjured beams of light and she was making them dance. At the moment, they formed a kind of diamond that reached from floor to ceiling. They swirled and twirled at her command, her hands moving with practiced elegance and refinement.
He wanted to watch her for much longer, but she sensed his presence almost immediately. Her hands fell and the light with it. “Lord Kunzite,” she said, the tone of her voice suggesting that not only had she known someone had found her, but who that someone was.
“Princess Venus,” he returned, forgoing the bow in favor of nodding his head. “I did not expect to find anyone else up.”
“Your sleeplessness must be contagious,” she joked.
“Indeed.” He could not stop looking at where the light had been, wishing that he could ask her to conjure it anew. “That was quite a show.”
“What did you think?” she asked, unabashedly fishing for compliments. It was a practice he despised, but she did it with such awareness that it was almost ironic, and he forgave her for it.
“Nice.”
She smiled at him, her glittering lips sliding into a grin that can’t quite decide if it’s amused or pitying him. “Has anyone ever told you that you are a master of understatement?”
He considered this accusation for a moment. “Once Nephrite was playing around when he shouldn’t have been, and I ended up with a pole arm through my thigh,” Kunzite said, striding closer to her.
She arched an eyebrow, and to her credit, she didn’t cringe. “That must have been painful.”
He shrugged. “It stung a bit.”
Venus laughed, and all at once he could imagine it as a soprano’s aria or silver bells in winter. The sound soared to the vaulted ceiling and then cascaded down, surrounding him with joy and music.
“You’re teasing me,” she accused, poking him in the arm. “Again.”
“It’s beginning to become a favorite pastime of mine,” he confessed, his green eyes probing the shadows for a reaction. Unfortunately, she had doused her dancing light almost entirely and he could not see if she blushed. He liked that he could make her blush, particularly after hearing some of the more risqué things she said to the young courtiers before and after several glasses of merlot from Saturn.
“And here I was under the impression you were here for the scenery.”
He chuckled half a beat too late, his heart once again longing for something other than white rock and the occasionally flowerbed or transplanted tree. Even in the dim light, he saw that she noticed. He didn’t like that she noticed.
“Why were you doing that?” he asked clumsily, risking offense only because he knew she could not be offended. “It’s awfully late to be training.”
She hesitated before speaking, refusing to give in to his obvious attempt to change the subject. However, she also did not remark on it, gracefully acquiescing to his wishes. Even in the near dark, he could tell she was now no longer the least bit amused. Her smile was all pity.
“It wasn’t training, my Lord. It was for fun.” She leaned forward and began to whisper as if bring him into a conspiracy. “You see, other people – not you of course – occasionally do things that don’t have any purpose or goal. They do these things out of pure enjoyment. I understand you may be unfamiliar with this concept; however –"
“I’m going to have to hurt Nephrite quite a bit, aren’t I?” he deadpanned.
She giggled. “I’m afraid they’re all guilty, my Lord.”
He sighed, contemplating just how he was going to exact revenge on them for feeding the high-born Venusian minx this material. “Lovely.”
Her giggles died off and something in her voice changed. It sounded less effected than he’d ever heard it and an octave lower. “I don’t think they mean anything by it. They don’t understand that you can’t really have fun. Because you’re the leader.” Her shoulders drooped and he realized for the first time how petite she was. “That’s why I’m here at all hours… It’s the only fun I really have.”
He stared at her. It had never occurred to him before that she might actually understand. There had been countless dinners and balls and masques and other courtly events since their arrival, and Venus was always the so-called life of the party. But now in his mind’s eye he could picture the strain around her mouth and he could hear how shrill her laugh got towards the end of the evening. He’d never realized before how much she had to pretend. She had to act a certain way to appeal to the Venusian court, a certain way to appeal to the public, a certain way to appeal to the Moon Queen and her daughter.
It had never occurred to him that she was like him.
In the silence that followed her words, she realized how utterly she had forgotten herself. He felt her drawing away before she physically began to retreat. “I’m sorry,” she said, struggling to drag her voice back up the scale. “I shouldn’t have—"
“Don’t go.”
She stopped immediately, cringing in this moment of vulnerability where blood had left her passive.
Before he could think better of it, he reached forward and took her hand. He felt the small appendage tremble in his palm, and he squeezed it gently to try and calm her nerves. He lifted it up, bringing it to his chest. He wondered if she could feel his heart.
“The light was more than nice,” he told her. “It was beautiful.”
He felt her hand grow warmer in his and he wondered if her whole body had flushed with warmth. “Th-thank you.”
“Would you show me again?”
For a moment, he swore the hallway got darker, as if she somehow had managed to suck out all the remaining light by way of refusal. The silence after his question dragged on for longer than he would have expected her to let it. He wondered if he had somehow misread and her and began calculating how to backtrack from this exposure. He started to let go of her hand.
She caught it again before it fell.
“Yes.”
She pressed both of her palms flat to his, pushing them up so that she didn’t have to strain her forearms. He almost asked her what she was doing when suddenly she exhaled softly and the stones began to glitter. Arching rays of light appeared at their feet like jets of water. They appeared, shone brightly as they twisted, and then fell back to the ground. But slowly, their jumps began to ascend higher and higher, and more rays of light began to appear.
In awe of this display, he was hard pressed to turn and look at Venus, but once he did, he realized how hard it would be to look away. Her blonde lashes were barely visible among the glowing gold, but every once in awhile he saw something shimmer against her high cheekbones. Her lips were slightly parted, inviting him to act on an impulse he had not realized he’d been considering. Her face and frame were completely relaxed, swaying to music he could not hear, though at that moment he longed for it like a lost lover.
As if she could hear his thoughts as accompaniment to her inner song, she began to vocalize. Her voice was even more beautiful than her laugh, full of power and euphoria he would not have expected from the way she spoke at court. It carried him with its dips and arpeggios, slipped between his anxieties and fears and laid them to bed. The wordless song entranced him so thoroughly that he almost didn’t notice what spell she had instinctively woven.
The rays of light all at once came together in a whirlwind of magic and color. It encapsulated them both like a cocoon. He had never seen such a display from any one else since he had arrived. Suddenly, he did not miss the mountains and the lakes and the air of Earth as he did every sleepless night. He missed nothing at all because for this brief instant, he could not image anything better than this woman’s voice and this woman’s spells and this woman’s skin against his own.
He stared at it in awe and knew she saw it too when he heard her voice briefly falter. She struggled to carry on the power for only a second and then continued, fascinated with what she had created. Then she lulled it away, bringing the song to a close that no mortal man could pen.
She gaped at the now darkened floor as if it had been the one to create that display. “I didn’t… I didn’t know I could do that.”
For once, he did not think of how she could employ that power to a tactical advantage. “I’m… happy I was here to see it.”
“It wouldn’t have happened without you,” she whispered, her voice distant.
He balked, certain he hadn’t heard correctly. “What?”
She made some sort of noise – a squeak – and realized she was still holding his hands. She dropped hers immediately, her self-consciousness filling the room even more profoundly then her power. “I’m sorry. I should go.”
He felt a weight in his chest like a rock. He backed away slowly as he would do to an animal not to be trifled with. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”
She laughed strangely, and there was a hitch in her voice that he didn’t want to identify. “You have no idea.”
“Stay,” he insisted, beginning to leave. “I should go, not you.”
“No, I—"
She stopped abruptly. Then she attempted to start again, but all she could do was babble and stammer in something that may have eventually formed a coherent sentence several years from now. Finally, she erupted in a Jovian curse that made him gape a bit. She took advantage of his open mouth by kissing him with more ferocity and purpose than ever before in his life.
She kissed him and kissed him and kissed him for what may as well have been an eternity. It was as though her light had gotten inside of him, filling him with her. Her scent, like tiger blossoms and regrets, overwhelmed him. Her tongue started a fire in his throat he thought no water could ever quench. And that light – that light - seeped into his bones and melted away his scars. He would carry it with him until the end of his days, and he knew that he would probably never feel anything as profound as this embrace. He didn’t care.
Then he tasted salt and she pulled away, swearing again. “Damn you,” she hissed. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
He stood there, breathing and staring, completely at a loss. This was not the response he had been expecting. “What?”
“I hate you,” she repeated. “You’re like me, just like me, and I thought we were different, but we’re not because you know, you know, you know and I hate you for it.” He saw her arms move, the back of her hands furiously wiping her eyes. “Good night.”
She turned and fled, leaving him alone. With her gone, he saw no reason to stay. He suddenly felt very old, very tired, and very sad.
He did sleep that night, but all he dreamt of was heavenly song and her light, dancing.
