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Minako shows up in the morning.
Dawn is brisk. The leaves are starting to change colors. It's all very pretty, Rei thinks. Stares at her friend as she walks up the Temple stairs. She remembers when she used to think of things in seasons.
"You're early!" She calls out, finally.
Minako rolls her eyes. "You knew I was coming." She is breathing heavily. "I'm going to bring marshmallows next time. So I can roast them over the sacred fire."
"Don't be disrespectful," Rei snaps. Means it too.
The other girl shrugs her off. They stand next to each other. Minako's breathing fills the space between them. It rolls out in small, shapeless tufts of air. Here. Then not here. Rei blinks and squints, watching them as they disappear too. Minako is right though. She knew she was coming. Doesn't know why. She can probably guess though.
But they continue to stand in silence, until Rei remembers the tea in her hands. Both her hands are wrapped around the mug and she pauses, thrusting it forward and into Minako's hands.
"Drink."
"I don't want to." Minako protests, but brings the tea to her mouth anyway. Wrinkles her nose. "You need, like, thirty pounds of sugar to make this bearable."
Rei rolls her eyes. "You sound like you slept really well last night." She watches Minako's fingers squeeze into the mug. Her knuckles turn white. "Usa-chan says you've taken up jogging at night," she says too.
"It's better than stress eating my way through my house."
"That's healthy."
"Well." Minako pauses dramatically, only to move the two of them to the stairs again. She sits first and Rei follows, taking care to press her uniform underneath herself. "I'm being haunted by the ghost of my ex-lover from a past life who is also responsible for murdering me. Oh, and probably responsible for the murder of other people in my past life. Oh, oh, oh and I forgot!" Minako leans forward, expression dark. She cups her mouth and mock-whispers, "He might have been, no, he's definitely been reincarnated too."
At this point, Minako takes out the small piece of kunzite. It rests in her palm. Rei watches her. Her heart is in her throat. There are a million different things running through her - pity, first, anger, the second, and everything else in between stands like some kind delirium. A part of her, a very large part of her, wants to protect her friend from all of this. No one deserves this. It makes her angry for a million different reasons - had they not met, had they not met Usagi, had this not turned out into an exercise of punishment - it just makes her feel guilty about everything, in the end, and that is a harder pill to swallow.
"It's beautiful though," she says finally. Means it. Her voice is breathless when it escapes. She almost reaches for the kunzite, but withdraws her hand and settles it back into her lap. "It looks like what I remember of him." She shakes her head. "That sounds weird," Rei corrects herself. "I mean, it looks like -"
"I know what you mean," Minako cuts her off. She's gentle.
Rei sighs. Smiles a little. Mostly, it's for herself. "Is it always going to be like this?"
"Apparently."
Rei doesn't miss the sharpness in Minako's voice. Thinks of Jadeite now. She feels herself waiting for him. Actually, she's been catching herself since giving the stone back to Mamoru. There is something desperate about that. Something that way too familiar for her, looking for ghosts in dark corners.
"I won't be able to deal if it is," she murmurs.
"We don't have a choice."
"We should." Rei purses her lips together. Takes a sip of tea. Her eyes close. "We should," she repeats. "Because there's enough going on in this life that we have to deal with too. Putting that in perspective makes all of this a lot crueler."
Minako's eyes are wide and luminous. There's something dangerous to them. "We can't speak ill of the dead," she says. Vaguely, Rei wonders if she is finally speaking to Venus. "You know that," Minako adds.
"And I don't," Rei says.
She looks away. Thinks of Usagi. Thinks of the burden that she carries alone. Holds onto a mix of feelings that terrify her - relief, mostly, that it's not her and that it's Usagi. Sadness because this new facet has made her think of the younger girl this way. It makes her feel guilty and Rei will admit to only so much self-hatred. Comes with the territory, she thinks. There are too many costumes for her to choose from.
"I just think," she starts again, tries to hold back, maybe just a little. "I just think that all of this is meant to be unavoidable. That alive, dead, reincarnated - it was going to happen eventually, in the same time that there Usagi and then there is Usagi and Mamoru. And I don't know if I can do this if that is the case."
It's the most honest Rei has ever felt. Or has been, at least, in the last couple months. She sips from her tea again, turning to face Minako, as fearlessly as she can, or out of respect. It's a little gray.
Behind her, she can hear the Sacred Fire. It does this sometimes; crawls into the wind, into the air, and tattoos each waiting secret, the kind that lay in wait for warnings. Her mouth feels a little dry. Change, she thinks. It's here already. High and large, but still creeping into her life, their lives, as if it were more calculating than just another honest part of life.
But Rei still holds herself up, shoulders set back, a light smile because she can't think of anything else to say. Maybe there just isn’t or won’t be.
Minako beats her to it first with a sharp grin. "We were going to lose anyway," she says.
He comes again at night.
It doesn't startle her as much as it should - she's in the kitchen, making tea for herself, since her grandfather is already asleep. His heart again. Age, he tells her ruefully. Grins widely. Which only serves to make her angrier. That's fine; she's desperate enough to want something to be angry about.
"You know... it is late."
Rei freezes. Stares at the kettle.
"You did never sleep well," Jadeite continues. His voice remains even. And it's closer, maybe too close. "At least when I met you," he says. "The challenge of what was coming, you took it too hard."
"Stop patronizing me," she says tiredly.
She turns finally. He's there, she knows he's there, but she sees nothing more than the low, sparse lighting of the hallway. Hears the sounds of the television coming from her grandfather's room. It's loud; a sign that he's sleeping finally.
Jadeite sighs. It sounds more like an admission. "I'm worried about you."
He appears this way.
It's anti-climatic, at best, a glimmer of a man stepping out from the shadows. His frame is flanked by the corner, but the city lights from the window seem to fill him in.
"If you finish that sentence," she starts, tries to start, but then ends up laughing. What is she going to say? Kill him? Her hands clap over her face and she groans. "I gave Mamoru-san the stone back."
Jadeite is amused. "If only it worked like that."
She knows. And he knows that she knows. Between them, there is this wordless acknowledgment of Nathan, no, she thinks, Nephrite, and of course, Keizou. Or maybe she is compounding on the fact that all of this is happening too soon.
Her hands drop over the counter. She curls her knuckles into the space. Listens for a moment. The sound of the television is still steady. Mars is testing the surface too; her temper is simmering, dark and waiting. Jadeite meets her gaze head on and grins. Widely, even. As if to say he was walking her right into this.
"Why?"
The question surprises her. Her fingers touch her lips. Just to make sure the question came from her, just her.
"Why?" She tries again. Then rubs her face with a hand. "And don't say you're worried about me," Rei says too. "Or that this is something ominous and you're here because you're trying to warn me. Pay a debt. Whatever it is that you're -"
She stops because the tips of her fingers are starting to burn.
"I'm closer than you think," he says, finishes, and exhales all in one sweeping motion. “I need you to know that.”
He's in front of her, bright-eyed and cruel. It’s mostly what she remembers.
Mars appears.
Just before dinner with her father - a political decision, a standing father-daughter dinner, his oldest prize from his first, sad and lonely marriage. The only real contribution she agree to regarding his career. You have another family, she had said once. Means it still.
But Mars appears. In the Fire, of course. Just as she gets acknowledgment a car is coming to pick her up. Fifteen minutes, not a moment too late. She is halfway into reading it when the Sacred Fire begins to take shape: the outline of a head, arms, legs, the large, blistering print of what could be eyes and a mouth. Outside the temple, all the crows are squawking, building into a cacophony of noise that pull together into an omen.
"Don't trust him."
The Fire waves lightly. Rei stares. Feels it drag against her knees. Her hands drop into the pockets of her jacket.
"I don't." She's resolute too. "Far from it, actually."
The Fire laughs. The waves of flames become brighter. "You want to," it accuses her. There is a pressure pushing against the bridge of Rei's temples. Her throat feels dry.
"I don't," she repeats. Steps forward. The heat pricks into her skin. Her dress feels like it's starting to stick to her. "I don't even know him, so how could I go and trust him? You barely share enough memories of him, of how I should think -"
She stops because the Fire bursts, shouts into the ceiling, a roar of reds and oranges bursting around her. It's not for comfort; she feels her eyes glue themselves open and she starts into a multitude of scenes: her life, then, the brief, startling amount of happiness that she had, and then her end, the one she was doomed to all along.
Her heart is racing.
She wraps a hand around her throat. Remembers the car. The phone in her hand is buzzing, but she ignores it. Sets her shoulder back. Breathes in and ignores the quick, sick leap of understanding that settles back into her. Resolves itself to stand as a bad headache.
When she steps outside, it's cold. The crows have multiplied into a large group, some in trees, some standing along the temple stairs and walls. She can smell the fire still, she thinks. Watches a car pull up at the foot of the temple and a man get out from the driver's seat, opening the back of the car for her arrival.
"That's me."
Rei freezes. "You?"
There's a laugh. She spots Phobos and Deimos at the bottom of the stairs. Deimos squawks, expands his wings in warning.
"You," Rei repeats, and Jadeite appears too, dropping at her side. He's faint. Sits on the wall as an apparition almost. "Are you sure?" she asks.
"Yes." Jadeite stares at the man and the car. The man checks his watch. "His name is Jun. He is a bodyguard for your father. He's a solider. Active, I think. He isn't from here either." Jadeite pauses. His eyes are brighter than Rei has seen them. Her fingers turn against her hip and he sighs. "He's angrier than I ever was."
Rei is mystified. Stares at Jadeite in awe. Mostly because none of this makes sense to her. She is barely reconciling the past and present together and adding her current present, the one that exists outside the others, outside Usagi, feels like she's exposing herself.
"Are you stalking him?" She asks and swears she sounds like Minako.
Jadeite shrugs. "Does it matter?"
"You seem to have a better grip on this than I do."
Jadeite grins. Ages his face into something recognizable. There is a pang of something crawling into Rei's throat. She holds her bag closer to her hip. You feel familiar, she doesn't say.
"Not really," Jadeite answers. "I'm just choosing to spend what little time I have differently." He pauses and his expression changes. "At least, for myself... right now."
"Of course," she mutters.
Rei trains her gaze onto the man that is waiting for her. Tall and handsome, she doesn't expect anything less - mostly because her father has always been someone that is attached to an image and a particular kind of image as well. At some point he catches her watch him, stares up at her defiantly with these large, sharp green eyes, ones that look like they've walked straight out of a novel. It makes her laugh, the thought, an odd reminder that she has, in fact, spent too much time with the other girls, girls that try to be just girls despite everything continues to be thrown their way.
She wonders if that speaks to their naivety, or simply, their refusal to lose themselves in wherever this is going. Usagi has made her hopeful; this is also terrifying to admit.
"Hino-san."
Rei blinks. Jadeite is gone. Jun - the man, she corrects herself - has moved up a couple stairs, standing directly in front of her but not close.
"Hello," she greets, formally, bows her head in acknowledgment only to watch him reply with a deep bow in return.
"Your father sends his regards," he replies. He pauses too, seeming to weigh on something. "But unfortunately, he won't be able to have dinner with you tonight. I've been instructed to take you to dinner irregardless. Is there any company you can call?"
Of course there is, she wants to say. Snap. But Rei stares at him. And stares. And stares. The whole thing is so completely and utterly ridiculous that she can barely think of her father, let alone the fact that none of this is a surprise.
"You look familiar," she says. Flushes angrily. Then turns to look away, covering her mouth a hand. "Sorry," she says, but doesn't mean. She'll call Minako in the car. "There is someone I can call."
Rei marches right past him for the open car door.
In the air, she smells the fire again.
don't trust him
Minako steals a bottle wine. Actually, it's a bottle of champagne but their waiter looks the other way.
"We won't drink it," she tells Jun. Flashes a large, glittering smile. Even bats her eyes at him; it makes Rei's stomach churn. But she's already on edge as it is.
The bodyguard remains diligent and dry. "Of course not."
He grabs Rei by the elbow. Lets Minako get into the car first, digging his fingers into the crook of her forearm too. He pauses. She stares right him. Waiting, maybe. Her heart races into her throat and in the car, Minako is singing along to a silent radio.
Rei drops her hand over his. The gesture isn't meant to be gentle.