When Angels Deserve to Die
Written for the Sailor Moon Monthly Fanfiction Challenge
January 2009 Challenge - Senshi/Shitennou, Day Nine: Fail
by Kihin Ranno
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Or maybe it just felt like it wasn't worth it to breathe anymore.
Venus couldn't be sure. All she knew for certain was that it was death and not air she inhaled.
A bloody sword of jewel and poisoned stone dragged behind her, digging a track into the ground. and killing whatever little plant life had survived the fires and explosions and dark magic that had annihilated the land. Her chain, dull but glinting unjustly from Earthlight, wound around her waist, slipping over her scraped hip. Her uniform, once pristine and only ceremonial, was covered in red and mud, pieces of cloth ripped away and exposing bruises dark as oceans she would never see again. An arm wrapped around her stomach, trying to stop a river of blood she couldn't hope to abate. A weight pulled on her heart, dragging it too low within her chest. It made all the rest of her feel to heavy to go on. Her eyes were dry.
No great battles waged around her anymore. Those had ended hours ago, and the Dark Kingdom had declared victory after a fortnight of terror and injury. Now demons and cursed men wandered through the ruins of their once great civilization, picking off the survivors, plundering and raping as the tales always told. Venus had been found three times now, and three times she had slain her opponent. Her sword carried the stains of a Terran lieutenant, a winged demon, and a general with hair like filigree and eyes like steel. Some had said he'd had a heart of stone, but she'd known better. She knew his heart was glass like hers, but she also knew that glass was stronger than it first appeared.
She'd shattered it all the same.
Of course, he'd returned the favor tenfold or more.
Not that a broken heart mattered anymore.
Venus knew she had no hope of surviving, and she had swallowed the hopes of putting together any last ditch effort to save their world long before. There was no way to rally the scattered troops and no banner to raise. The palace was in ruins, no one had escaped without multiple loved ones dead and gone, and the queen was stilling missing, hidden away in some unknown chamber beneath the now flattened palace, ignorant of the carnage. As far as the enemy was concerned, she merely waited for the right moment to be led to the slaughter.
Venus would have fetched the queen if she had known where the monarch resided, but not even the leader of the Sailor Soldiers was privy to that information. The princess had known, of course. The princess had been there. But she had fled, and Serenity couldn't tell her anything now.
Like so many other sorrows, Venus swallowed and fought the urge to retch at the taste. She kept moving, searching for survivors to save or to slay.
"Kunzite's dead?"
The name didn't come close to killing her, but the voice who spoke the name nearly forced a cry. She whirled as swiftly as she could – which was not quick at all – and faced an opponent she assumed had died before. But then, he'd probably assumed the same of her.
It was Jadeite who stood before her, second-in-command of the Four, although she would never have known it on sight alone. He had faced off with Mars in the end as he had done so many times before, and though Venus knew she was the Red Soldier had not survived, seeing him there rubbed burning salt into the wound.
At least Jadeite had been sent through his own burning trials. There was not an inch of skin on his body that was not scalded and blistered, and he had almost no hair left on his head. He could barely stand, hunching over so much that he looked like one of the monsters he claimed to command. His eyes were still sharp and bright, the only hint of the once handsome general she had thought of favoring before she realized who was the better man.
Jadeite shuffled forward, but not far. There were still ten meters between them, and she was not anxious to change that, although she knew the gap would close eventually. His face twisted in a sickening grimace as the wind shifted, basking her in the scent of rotting flesh. It would have made her ill if she hadn't been surrounded by it for days.
"Is he dead?" Jadeite repeated savagely, his voice raw against his vocal cords.
Once, she might have pitied liked being alone. But she couldn't pity something that wasn't even human anymore. She summoned bitterness she had never known until war came and spat, her arm tightening protectively around her middle. "Didn't you feel it?"
"I didn't believe it," Jadeite answered candidly. "I didn't think anyone but Endymion could strike him down." He paused, eyes darkening. "I suppose you were more his equal than I realized."
The lack of feeling when he spoke his dead master's name made her wish she could kill him with the blink of her eye. It was all he deserved. "I've grown skilled at slaughter in the time you have given me," she informed him plainly.
He had the gall to laugh at her then, although it came out as more of a wheeze. "No, Venus. You've merely become accustomed. Believe me; there is a difference."
"And you would know," Venus hissed, silently adding, 'filthy Terran.'
He heard it plainly enough. "From what I can see, you still never learned to guard your left side." He glanced down at her wound meaningfully.
Venus fought not to follow his gaze. "Your commander left his mark ere the end."
"I expected nothing less," Jadeite answered almost by rote.
"Neither did I," Venus returned, her lips twitching into a defeated smile. "Just like I expected nothing less from Mars."
If Jadeite could have turned any color, Venus didn't doubt he would be red with fury. "Don't speak to me about that harlot!"
Venus couldn't help but snort at the idea of Mars being anyone's whore. "If you're going to insult her, at least remain within the realm of possibility, Jadeite."
An odd look crossed Jadeite's face. The injuries he had sustained made it hard to categorize even with his eyes exposed. Not that his eyes had ever been the easiest to decipher. She thought it could have been puzzlement, but she would not have staked her life, short as it was, on the assumption. Foolishly, she wished it were Nephrite standing in front of her. Even mutated, he would not have been able to hide.
The moment passed and Venus gave it no more thought. Facing an enemy, even as weak as Jadeite was, demanded her full attention. "We both know we won't leave each other alive. Do me the service of not forcing her in my thoughts at the last. I'll do you the same with Kunzite."
Venus opened her mouth, almost saying that she didn't want to shove him from her thoughts before her death. He had raised armies against her, led the assault against her home planet, killed her father with his bare hands, and yet she could not bear to let go of the moments when his fingers had played with her hair and he whispered to her from dark corners. She couldn't reconcile one man with the other. Her lover had looked at her with green eyes; her enemy with grey. They were not the same man, and while she had no interest in remembering the enemy, she never wanted to forget the lover.
But she would not say that to Jadeite. She had learned quickly that gossip could be traded with Zoisite, jokes with Nephrite, and secrets with Kunzite. Where Jadeite was concerned, she had only deployed diplomacy. He was not the sort who ought to have possession of any part of her that meant something.
He was defeated, but victor all the same, and she would not show him her back.
"He wouldn't tell me," she said instead.
Jadeite blinked, perhaps marveling that there were things not traded between them. "Tell you what?"
Her fingers tightened against the pommel of her blade. There were so many things he hadn't told her. He wouldn't say what it had felt like to watch his prince fall for a so-called witch. He wouldn't say if it had wrecked whatever soul he had been left with. He wouldn't say what had been done to change him, what had been said to convince him, what she could have done to stop him. He wouldn't say what began it, and he hadn't had to tell her what would stop it, but she wanted to ask the question all the same.
But with Jadeite, she was forced to brevity. She raised her eyes, pulling her heart into alignment, and breathed in the scent of corpses.
"Why?"
Jadeite just laughed, doubling over as if it pained him. "Did Beryl's rhetoric teach you nothing?"
"Rhetoric isn't meant to enlighten," Venus countered. "It's meant to distract and to conceal." In another time, she might have spared him a wry smile. Now he had earned nothing but her scowls. "You and I both know that well."
Jadeite sneered. She struggled not to look away. "You're mistaking me for a dead man."
"Does that make it easier? Acting like you're dead."
She swore for just a moment his face faltered.
"Nothing makes it easier," he told her coldly.
"Not even destroying my home," she said quietly. "Not even tearing down a kingdom. Not even betraying your friends."
He snarled. It was becoming easier to remember that he wasn't really human anymore. "You were never a friend of mine. None of you were."
Wind blew past them, carrying the scent of decay and despair with it. It blew her singed hair into her face. Her limbs hurt too much to push it away.
"No, we weren't friends," Venus conceded. "We never liked each other. But Endymion was your friend. You can't rewrite that history, Jadeite, even if it would make you feel better."
"He didn't choose me, or any of us, did he?" Jadeite asked, spitting blood and soot. "He choose your witch princess."
"He loved her," Venus snapped, as if this solved everything.
Jadeite jerked painfully. "We should have been more important than that! We protected him, bled for him. I would have died for him before he went mad for the White Moon!"
"Jealousy," Venus muttered. "That's what it all comes down to, doesn't? You and Beryl, all jealous of Serenity's relationship with your damn prince."
"He owed us."
"I'm sure he's sorry now," she whispered coldly.
Jadeite shuddered and turned away, his shoulders hunched horribly. "It didn't make any difference to you and Kunzite. Loving each other." He paused. "He still loved you. Even after."
"I know."
"Why were you different?"
"Maybe we were stronger then they were."
Jadeite exhaled. "Soldiers always are."
Venus leaned on her sword, slumping now that Jadeite no longer looked at her. "But no one's strong. Not anymore."
They stood in silence for a moment, soaking in the death throes of the remaining scattered warriors who fought either to save or to slaughter. They'd nearly been deafened by it before. Now they seemed more like distant echoes from another time – like static on the communication links.
"We failed," Jadeite murmured. "We killed you all. We brought Serenity to her knees. But we failed all the same."
"Nobody won," Venus whispered. "We all failed."
Jadeite turned back to her. Venus attempted to rise, but her knees gave way in the attempt. She landed hard on her tailbone, but she could barely register pain anymore.
"I'm tired," he said. It was the most honest he'd ever been with her.
"I know. I'm tired too."
He stumbled forward and fell to his knees in front of her. She thought for a minute he was going to embrace her, then possibly choke her, but his hands remained rigid at his sides. "We're the only ones left."
"We shouldn't be," Venus said. "We don't deserve it."
"No," he agreed. "No, we don't."
They sat there for a moment, Venus trying to recognize the man behind the mottled flesh. Try as she might, she couldn't recognize him now. She searched for the sardonic glimmer, the upward slant of his smirking mouth, the hair tussled in a way Mars had always insisted reeked of arrogance. He was nothing but blackness now, nothing but smoke and death. He was no longer a man.
But then, she was no longer who she had once been.
"Serenity thought you looked like an angel from behind," Venus confided, apropos of nothing.
He almost laughed. "Funny. Endymion said the same thing about you."
She smiled, resting her forehead against the flat edge of her sword, her eyes beginning to sting. "Best get on with it."
"Yes."
They waited a single moment and then they gave each other what they deserved.