Meme: What if Kunzite had died first instead of Zoisite?
what if meme
vengeance.
you will be fine, words whispered against his lips. A hand cradling his cheek, foreheads pressed together he burns but Kunzite is there to soothe it all away. Regardless of what he has done this day he has all the faith that if anyone can save him from the fate he has trapped himself in, it's Kunzite.
He trusts in him, and when he awakes the next morning he knows that trust has not been misplaced. If he were to be punished, he would have been struck down while he slept - this is the lie he tells himself when he rolls over and finds the other half of their bed empty.
He dresses aching muscles in a cleaner uniform than the one he'd fallen asleep in. Carefully flexes his fingers and shrugs off the thrum of a headache at his temples. He waits for all of an hour for Kunzite to appear, take his hand and comfort him with wise words but he does not come. Instead he wraps one arm around himself and leans against the wall, praying that perhaps they've entered phase three and his lover is out on a mission already. It would be like him, for how tender Kunzite could be behind closed doors he is not a kind man by nature and work is always first.
One of his youma knocks at the door, her voice soft and cowed by the wrath of a furious queen. "Beryl has been calling you for the past two hours."
I heard no call, but he does not say. Instead he gathers his energies and teleports to the throne room, kneeling and speaking apologies before she can say a word. When her wrath abates, he looks up - sees a man dressed in armor with a swirling cape, but the clothing is dark and the hair is dark and suddenly something does not seem right.
"You will be collecting energy for our great Leader in the Tokyo region," Beryl says, and she dos not seem to notice this oversight. She taps long fingers against the crystal ball, looking pensive. "I had hoped to send a more competent man, but..."
The slightest shift in her gaze leads his eye away, to the body slumped in the corner that had long since stopped smoking. The features are burnt beyond recognition, but he knows long before his eyes settle upon the shattered pink gemstone hidden among singed pauldrons.
He does not scream until after he has left her sights. Materializing in a park, trembling all over. Tearing at his hair in great fistfuls why but he knows that there was a choice to be made, and for the first time Kunzite chose love over duty.
Zoisite had never been a fan of the Queen. When he was brought to the Kingdom (and he thinks he was brought, for he cannot remember a time before he was there. Only that he was all angles, sharp and hollowed out by hunger, and recalled only the sense that there was something more for him in the world than misery) she had turned her nose up at him, assigned him to Kunzite's tutelage in hopes it would make him better than he was. He took it, studied magic and drove himself to insomnia more than once to learn all that could be learned - stayed up to know that Kunzite would be called from his side during the nights to Beryl's chambers because he was the most handsome among them.
Jadeite had loathed him for it, and Zoisite had loathed her and somewhere in the middle they had conspired. In the end he had gotten what he wanted, secret kisses in the alcoves of the Kingdom won by a clever distraction on the part of his comrade in mischief. Words never exchanged, but something beyond physical - there was nothing like it here. No love, no warmth. No words he could put to the feeling he felt when he awoke with one of Kunzite's arms around his waist, how his heart leapt when a present was given for good behavior.
Words that he could not say now.
Tearing at his hair the blonde tries to stop, gather himself. There is an impulse rising to kill but he can't - it would be a waste of this gift that Kunzite had given him. He swallows, suddenly all too aware of the weight of his tongue and the taste of unbrushed teeth. There had once been Four generals (four kings) and now there was but one.
And if he gave her reason, there would be none.
Beryl would not stop. When the world was hers, all would fall to her hand when her mood soured. This he knew, he had known long before Jadeite had been struck down, when he saw the way her eyes narrowed at the sight of them as if they were cockroaches ripe for squashing. If he were to rebel then they would come after him - he would be a single man against an army of hundreds, alone... but to comply would be giving in to her demands and allowing her to win.
Slowly, Zoisite straighened. His hands fell from his hair and moved to brush the tears from his eyes, a hard swallow keeping a hysterical bubble of laughter from bursting forth. His life was as good as forfeit (he didn't want it anymore, kunzite had been everything) so this was merely borrowed time. Complacency was easy, but...
He could do what he did best.
He could cause Hell for her. It wasn't as if she was subtle, disrupting her plans in the most subtle manner would be simple. If she caught on and killed him, so what? There was no reason to continue. The will to go on was gone... unless.
... Unless, perhaps...
The mission for the day is carried out without hassle. When he returns her offers her the gathered energy, and when she leaves the throne for the night he returns to gather the shattered remnants of his love and cradles them close to his chest.
"I will get the Silver Crystal, Kunzite," he murmurs, tracing his fingertips across the sharp edges. "I'll make this right."
