A few notes before we begin:

-Kunzite, Zoisite, etc. do not belong to me, unfortunately. If they did, do you think I'd have killed them off? This is seriously amateur fanfic, and I'm not making a cent off of it. I apologize if some of the writing is disjointed –it was written in fits and starts, with many interruptions.

-The song lyrics aren't mine, either. Oh, the humanity! (Be grateful). Annie Lennox sang it; it was actually used in The Return of the King, but the first couple of verses are what inspired this morbid little story.

-Zoisite/Zoisaito, Kunzite/Kunzaito. I write their names out how they're spelled, but when they're being spoken, I write them out phonetically like you'd say it in Japanese.

-Zoisite is a lot more banged up in this than in the anime –it's pretty obvious. Come on, you don't get blasted by the ginzuishou and knocked into walls then blasted again by Beryl and end up just looking a little shaky…or am I the only one who saw how hard he hit those hard surfaces?

-Kunzite is OOC? I don't know, maybe he is, maybe he isn't. We don't know very much about him emotionally, other than that he seemed to lose it after Zoisite was gone.

-The order of lines in the death dialogue has changed…I couldn't remember exactly how they said things. shrugs I'm not a stickler.

-Was that really Jadeite/Nephrite? I don't know. Was it?

-If you can spot the reference to the Malice Mizer song "Syunikiss" I will adore you forever.

Through Shadows Falling

"Lay down

Your sweet and weary head

Night is falling

You've come to journey's end.

Sleep now

And dream of the ones who came before.

They are calling

From across the distant shore.

Why do you weep?

What are those tears upon your face?

Soon you will see

All of your fears will pass away

Safe in my arms

You're only sleeping."

-Annie Lennox, "Into the West"

Zoisite felt too good in his arms.

Kunzite held almost compulsively tight to the little king, held him against his will, muscle and tendon and bone and neurons revolting against his brain. Traitor brain, lizard brain, it howled out for him to drop his protégé and exit –teleport as fast and as far away from death as he could. Kunzite understood death the way had Jadeite understood lies, exactly the way Zoisite did not understand following orders properly –the importance, damn it to Hell, of being earnest.

Death, Kunzite had seen over the years, never came for just one person. It might pretend that it did; might only take one at a time, but Kunzite knew better. Once someone had seen death, it stayed with them, wheeling in the sky, slavering at their heels. Mortality dragged them under, down into the inescapable rip current of the Acheron.

He tightened his grip on the wrecked body in his arms, great shoulders shuddering only slightly with horror and with other emotions he dared not name. Cursing violently to himself, Kunzite quelled the flight instinct of his mad reptilian brain. Instead, he laid his cheek against the ripped tangles of Zoisite's molten-gold locks, seeking out the scent of the familiar beneath the relentless olfactory horror of burnt hair and blood-saturated wool.

"Clean up that trash…"

Beryl-sama's voice, sibilant and deceptively lovely, resounded in his stricken mind. Zoisite couldn't be dying. He couldn't. The little demon felt too good in his arms, to goddamn right, to be leaving them so soon.

A faint groan, and the ruin of what was once a fierce warrior and Kunzite's most beloved and brilliant student stirred in his arms, He looked entirely too normal to be dying –five foot six, a hundred and twelve pounds…the same as always, except for the serpent's tongue of blood that licked across the damp and pallid plane of his brow; the scarred cheek and hands. Normal but for the tremors that began to rip through the slender body with a greater strength and frequency, the sickly orchideous blue bloom of a bruise on the livid cheek, the palpable fractures of clavicle, rib and aristocratic nose. He was lovely as always, breathtakingly beautiful even through the soot and the blood, the sweat and the protruding bones. Kunzite never would have believed it if he hadn't seen it himself, and it tore at his heart to remember Zoisite mourning the loss of his beauty after a nick to the face, for fear of what his mentor would say.

So he didn't think of it.

"Kun…zaito-…sama," Zoisite breathed, the soft tenor of his broken voice still mellifluous to Kunzite's finely-tuned ear.

"Zoisaito," the elder king responded haltingly. Unsure of what to say further, he pulled his lover closer, mindful of the ivory shard of bone that broke the surface at Zoisite's collar.

"I am happy to die," Zoisite continued with the dogged seriousness of one about to expire, his voice somehow still fairly steady, "if I am with you."

Do not leave me, my sakura, my love. Don't leave me here. I forbid it, do you understand? I haven't learned yet how to live without you.

"I tried to explain, Zoisite," Kunzite almost rushed to divulge, feeling for some strange reason as though, now dying, Zoisite would come out with accusations and anger for every very real or totally fabricated slight his mentor had dealt him. "I'm sorry! I tried to persuade Queen Beryl for a second chance, but she…I –" the words were tumbling out faster than what was normal for him, and the room was beginning to blur strangely, his throat beginning to thicken. He hid his face in the mussed curls atop Zoisite's head, hating himself for not meeting the eyes of the man he felt he had helped kill, but knowing he would hate himself more if he forgot how the young one felt against his skin; if he could never recall the way they fit together.

Never before had Kunzite felt so vulnerable, not even a thousand years ago as he had dropped his spear from a numb hand, eyes going wide as he realized that the bitch had just used the ginzuishou.

The world had filled with hot light and blinding agony and it was NOTHING compared to this.

He wanted to weep.

"Uh!" Zoisite jerked in the arms of his mentor-lover and fell limp again, shivering and sweating. "Kunzaito-sama," he forced out, the words deceptively steady, surrounded by deep hisses of breath through teeth clenched painfully tight. "I…it hurts. It hurts! I'm scared."

His tone of voice betrayed what almost sounded like self-deprecating laughter, as if after all he had seen in Jigoku, fearing death was ridiculous. Twisting in Kunzite's arms for a moment (and Kunzite realized, with a pang of sorrow that nearly left him breathless, this was the last time he would ever feel the boy move within the confine of his grip) the weakened king eventually grew still again, unable to comfort himself. "I am going to miss you so much," he whispered quietly. "Kunzaito-sama, I'm dying."

It was true –Kunzite knew it had to be. Resigned and empty, Zoisite's fatal pronouncement held none of the blowsy drama common to the fiery young demon lord. He had felt the fading energy signature himself. Zoisite dying…and they had barely even had the chance to live, it felt like.

"I'm frightened," Zoisite reiterated, sounding almost matter of fact. "I've always hated…to be alone…"

So have I, Kunzite reflected, not trusting himself not to howl like a stricken animal instead of speak. He noted the increased tightness in his chest and the hot streaks of brine on his cheeks absently, the same way he noted the sudden though of his fallen comrades, Jadeite and Nephrite. He was a lonely man, the Commander of the Middle East, the Lord of Winter season –but with his only real love dying and afraid, he found that he suddenly needed the wisdom of his cohorts long dead and longer resented.

Beguile him, the mellow tenor of Jadeite, master of illusions, father of lies, now only ever heard in Kunzite's sensory memory, counseled. Give him everything he ever wanted. Make him see only that which he wants to see.

Lie to him. The thought was Kunzite's, but it came in the low growl of Nephrite's cultured voice. It will be easier to let go, or for him to let go, if he believes in something other than death and darkness at the last. Kunzite was only mildly surprised when, from somewhere deep in his unconscious, he heard: It was easier for me.

Give him what he wanted…

With his own hands, Kunzite smoothed the snarls of Zoisite's luxurious curls the best of his ability. No magic –everything was the work of his hand.

As the young lord labored for breath, head lolling against Kunzite's broad chest like a flower whose stem had broken, the silver king performed his first and last acts of mercy within the Dark Kingdom.

Not even bothering to remove his once-pristine white gloves, he gently mopped the many tongues of blood winding their way down Zoisite's face. He wiped the sweat from the smaller man's temples, loosened the high collar at his lover's throat in hopes of returning breath to him.

There wasn't much he could do for the sickening jag of Zoisite's broken collarbone, but he tenderly sponged away with his own fingertips a drying streak of bile at the little king's bloodied lips, not even flinching when it caused the smaller man to retch, He simply fought to keep the tears under control; keep his voice even and his body calm.

Oh, Darkness, it would be easier to tell beautiful lies in the face of all this horror if he had but half of Nephrite's charm or Jadeite's silver tongue.

"Just –just hold on, Zoisaito," he began tentatively, struggling to keep his voice as calm and cool as ever. "You'll be okay."

Pause, shudder, sting of brine. Someone, help us. Gods, Metallia, anyone. Sailor fucking Moon, dumpling-headed champion of lovers –help.

"Don't lie to me, Kunzaito-sama," Zoisite protested dully. "I could always see through you."
He sounded sad. "Please, I have one last request."

Kunzite bowed his head, helping Zoisite to a sitting position as he removed the younger demon's gloves, peeling away one of his own to feel his lover's hand, really feel it, one last time. "Anything."

"Let me die beautifully," Zoisite entreated, tilting his face up so that his slowly fading emerald eyes met Kunzite's pain-filled silver ones.

Still not entirely trusting himself to speak, Kunzite simply nodded. Sweeping his cape around himself and Zoisite, he conjured a beautiful illusory magic that would have made Jadeite proud.

Despite the fact that the Dark Kingdom was in much closer proximity to the center of the earth than to the hurtful sunlight, the enormous, shadowed chamber was bathed in a warm glow. The stench of blood and death dissipated on a soft rush of air that brought with it hundreds of flowers –delicate, ephemeral cherry blossoms, the ones Zoisite had loved so much they became his eternal symbol. Rose petals –sinless white, lovers' pink, even a rare and impossibly lovely pale blue, but never red. Red was the color they hated, the color of pain and loss and thwarted ambition, the color of everything dying.

Even through his struggle for air, though his vision must be growing hazy, Zoisite gazed up at Kunzite with an expression so full of adoration that it nearly broke his heart.

Perhaps…

"You're not dying, Zoisaito," Kunzite soothed again. His control over his emotions was far, far worse this time –his voice shook audibly and there were tears in the luminous gray mirrors of his eyes, but Zoisite appeared calm.

"You're not dying," Kunzite repeated, pouring every ounce of belief into what he said, because is Zoisite could believe it, maybe he could do. "Don't be afraid. You've been very badly hurt, but you're going to live. You'll see. You'll make it, and I'll be by your side the whole time. I won't ever leave you. And you will be strong and beautiful, and oh, Zoisaito, please believe me. You won't die.

You won't die."

He pressed the young man even tighter to him, noting with some dismay that while his former student wore the euphoric look of the pain-free, he was so white that he must nearly be bled out, and that his sight would begin, soon, to fail.

"I'm dying." Zoisite contradicted quietly, as single, silvery tear catching the light against the downy curve of his cheek. "I must be dying. Why else would it be so beautiful?"
He paused for a moment. "I…I can't see you, Kunzaito-sama. I can't…" He was really crying now, breaking Kunzite's heart into shards so small they would never be recovered. "I don't want to leave you! I'm scared…What will happen after? If Nephrite is there…I killed him. I did. He's dead. You should be happy to die with the one you love!" Even hanging onto life by the untrustworthy thread that had once held the Sword of Damocles, his voice was singsong and mocking as he addressed his unseen, very deceased former arch-enemy.

Shine of tears on his cheek.

"What's this?" Kunzite entreated, attempting to keep his tone light, although his voice broke and a tear of his own coursed down his face, coming to rest on the crown of Zoisite's bright head. "It can't be tears?"

He took advantage of Zoisite's now-total blindness and euphoria, rocking the small king slightly as he spun his loving lies. "Why do you cry? It's all over now. You won. You killed Kamen, and Princess Serenity used the ginzuishou on you, but you were too strong for her."

Now, for the first time in his life he was openly sobbing, and even stranger still, not attempting to stop it. As long as Zoisite appeared soothed by his words, it didn't matter. These last moments had to be open and honest, despite the fact that he sent his lover to his death with a sweet pack of lies. He could never forgive himself if he let Zoisite go without telling him all he had been for him.

"You're very tired…so tired you must feel like you'll die, but you won't. You're going to…to sleep, soon, to rest and heal and grow strong again. And…and I'll be right here when you wake. You'll see. I promise you'll seem e again. Just…just go to sleep, now. I won't let you die. And there will be no fear when you wake. No pain."

Silently, as with everything he did, Kunzite wept, taking cold comfort in the fact that Zoisite, now barely able to lift his hand to Kunzite's cheek, at last appeared to believe him.

"I…I killed Kamen," the younger man crooned, sounding pleased with himself. "Oh, Kunzaito-sama…I'm so tired. It's so dark. I wish I could see…your face."

Tenderly, he brushed the elder king's sharp cheekbone with his trembling thumb, settling his lithe body in the white-haired demon's strong arms the way he did for a brief nap after their lovemaking. "I'll see you in the morning."

A short frown crossed Zoisite's lovely face, as if he was forgetting something. "It seems silly now. I was always too afraid to say…I've grown attached to you, Kunzaito-sama."

Zoisite, my love, you can't leave me now!

"Forgive me, Zoisaito," Kunzite said quietly. For not telling you sooner of all the things you are to me, for not being able to save you, for ever hurting you. "I –"

He paused slightly as the figure in his arms seemed to relax utterly, sinking against his chest, coppery head lolling. The flowers faded, and chill and darkness crept into the room once more as Kunzite felt something like a fleet rush of perfumed air caress his skin and ruffle the ends of his hair before it was gone for ever.

Clutching the broken, beautiful remains of the only thing e had ever loved, holding so tightly to his dead sakura that his nails pierced the deathly white flesh, Kunzite buried his face in the ruined, blood-reeking uniform and screamed for the death of his soul.

Alone, alone, alone.