Yet as in some necroplis you find
Perchance one mourner to a thousand dead
So there: worn faces that look deaf and blind
Like tragic masks of stone. With weary tread,
Each wrapt in his own doom, they wander, wander,
Or sit foredone and desolately ponder
Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head.
- James Thomson's City of Dreadful Night
Rei emerged from the tumultuous dinner first, despite having been the last to arrive. She left the chatting girls, a visibly relieved Hiromasa and a delighted, albeit still confused Mamoru behind. It seemed that everyone had welcomed the reincarnated shitennou with open arms, smiling eyes and questioning, but friendly minds.
It was not what she had expected. Not what she had expected at all. At least from Minako. It was against Venus' character to be so trusting when faced with a former enemy, and the fact that she might have arrived an hour before Rei herself did was not a sufficient explanation for this. There had been no grilling, no threatening and no scepticism directed towards the young man, which led her to believe that her leader had known long before her.
The irony of this did not escape her, but it didn’t change anything. It wasn’t her place to speak of Kunzite’s return and if the way in which the man lived was any indicator of his personality, she would not lift a finger to bring this doubtlessly disastrous influence into her friend’s life once again. Being a priestress made keeping secrets easy, but it also made being cruel impossible. This circumstance led her again to the skyscraper in which Kunzite hid from what the fire insisted on calling destiny; even though she resented every step that brought her closer to the cold emanating from his place.
It had haunted her for days after their nightly meeting, a chill she wasn’t able to shake. Meditation, prayers, long conversations with her guardian spirits, nothing had helped to escape the layer of frost this meeting had put around her heart. Only meeting Usagi had had any soothing and calming effect, and Rei felt like a fool for not thinking of it earlier.
The door to his penthouse was already open when she reached it, but unlike last time, she had no wish to enter. A minute passed before he appeared at the door, his left hand holding a heavy glass of a clear liquid that was most certainly not water. Instinctively, she knew that this was a new ritual to fight his demons, but she also knew that it would not help him to achieve the peace of mind he was yearning for.
Melancholy piano music sounded through the thin walls, the open door and into the hall. Had she been a more unconditionally caring person, she would have offered him support in the form of a brief comforting touch. But he wouldn’t accept it, at least not from her and she wouldn’t give it, for it would contaminate her with a feeling that scared her more deeply than most monsters ever had. Loneliness was a dangerous enemy, and if you weren’t careful, it could lure you in and never let you go again. Her friends had been her escape all these years ago, and she would do anything to protect them. They were her salvation, and one she wasn’t willing to share with the man who had taken them from her once before. Mars never forgot.
So instead she gave him what she had been carrying with her all evening: The knowledge of Nephrite’s return and thus the possibility of his own escape.
