the stars were watching them
not dead, people, just...er, comatose? i'm posting my ficathon 2012 submission here at long last, with some minor revisions - mostly things i left out in fear of people identifying authorship (except all you smartypants guessed it was me anyway! womp womp). for those who haven't already read this, i hope you guys enjoy! and for everyone who already read and left such generous, complimentary, i-am-so-not-worthy reviews over at the forums, thank you thank you THANK YOU - every single word you wrote seriously resulted in all kinds of unattractive face-cracking grinning on my part ;)
The Stars Were Watching Them
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Shading his eyes with a badly sunburnt hand, the West-king thought that there was at least one benefit to fighting on this stretch of desert, hard and compacted and glittering for hundreds of leagues in every direction. The sand drank the blood so quickly, it seemed none had ever spilled. The sun baked bodies back into the earth from where they came, leaving little for the wheeling carrion birds. Their cries mingled with the occasional pleas and rattles of the wounded, who did not have long to wait.
At least, he thought, the desert sped death to those who wished it.
“Water…” a thin, high voice in the distance scattered his musings.
Nephrite turned around, only to see that Jadeite had heard the cry first.
It was a boy, he saw, black-haired and blue-eyed as the mixed peoples of these parts tended to be. His face was unmarred, smooth and carved finely as a girl’s. Certainly not older than eleven or twelve - and to look at the gaping hole in his belly, where the darkened coils of his insides spilled over his groin and legs - certainly not likely to see thirteen.
As he watched, the Eastern king paused, casting a merciful shadow over the shuddering body.
“Water,” the child repeated insistently, albeit almost too feeble to be heard.
Jadeite dropped to the balls of his feet. Nephrite already knew that he had no water on his person. Even if he had, he wouldn’t - couldn’t - spare any for this purpose.
“Shut your eyes,” his comrade instructed.
“No…” the boy wheezed, but his lashes obediently fell shut. “For the soul - ”
The blade slipped between the boy’s ribs without resistance, and held until the small chest fell and did not rise again. He couldn’t make out Jadeite’s shadowed expression.
“For the soul,” he heard him mutter as he rose again. “What bull - ”
“They give their dead a last draught, as we do,” Nephrite spoke up.“ Final rites.”
He dropped the enemy shield he had picked up somewhere along the way with a clank and strode forward, watching the yellow-haired man take in his appearance. He knew his eyes were veiny, his beard matted and wherever his heavy armor and underclothes were torn, they revealed skin equally reddened by blood and sun. To his credit, Jadeite didn’t hesitate to reach out and clap him on his gory shoulder.
“Have to say, the similarity ends there, though,” Nephrite’s voice dropped. “What kind of coward are we fighting against? Half of these corpses look old enough to be our own fathers, and the other half…I’ve never seen boys so young sent to war. And against the Golden Kingdon’s army…no sport in that. Some of our men mistook them for girls.”
“Wishful thinking,” Jadeite returned. “The whores left the train at the edge of the desert. Our men grow lonely for their wives. I doubt they would discriminate.”
He felt his face redden, almost impossibly further. “You think that’s funny?”
“Isn’t it?” Jadeite motioned toward the messenger approaching them, his shape mottling over the dunes. The white flag fluttered dispiritedly. “Look. They want terms.”
Nephrite offered his vivid opinion of their terms, before concluding: “Fuck that.”
The Eastern king’s lips twitched as he turned to greet the rider.
As they waited for him to draw near, he studied the younger man: the clean line of his jaw, the mocking way his mouth fell when he was not speaking, the distant blue of his eyes. Since they’d first met, less than a year past, they had campaigned for seven months, taken three local kings as vassals in Endymion’s name, scattered five armies, crossed and recrossed a thousand leagues, and slept in one small tent.
He was a decent enough fighter, one the dark-haired man could trust at his broad back, though he sensed Jadeite preferred the subtle, bloodless wordplay so prized by his Eastern subjects. He was also an adroit conversationalist, and there were few spaces of silence in those late nights they sat up and split a souring half-barrel, or a pair of perfumed thighs. It hadn’t taken Nephrite long to see why the pair of them had been chosen for this mission, for they and their respective talents were well-matched.
And yet.
“Tell your master his men fought like lions,” Jadeite switched easily into the coarse dialect of their enemy as the messenger pulled up before them. He reached for the masked rider’s reins. The mare pranced nervously at his touch, but he held on tight. This was his strong suit - but what isn’t? Nephrite thought sourly. “The Golden Kingdom has need of such men. Tell your master this: even when lions sink their claws in each other, in the end, they understand. We are all the same, are we not?”
The rider’s expression was invisible under his mask, but they could see where his eyes were roving. On the rows of split bodies half-buried in the sand. On the impressive force of the young kings’ army, caring for their own wounded and dead. On the Golden Kingdom’s standard, raised triumphant against the painfully bright sky.
Finally, his eyes met theirs. “And if my master does not ‘understand’?”
Jadeite’s tone remained pleasant. “Even among lions, there is only one king.”
“We will give you tonight and all of tomorrow,” Nephrite broke in gruffly, feeling the need to add something. “To take away the bodies and conduct final rites.”
The messenger scoffed, pulling his mare back from Jadeite’s touch. “The dead are dead. If it rains, they can have final rites. Let the desert take care of them its own way.”
With that curt dismissal, he was off, galloping back the way he had come.
High over their heads, the sun loomed too large, like a baleful eye.
...
It was too hot to celebrate their victory, even many hours after the swollen sun fell below the dunes. Instead, the men of their army sat in the fronts of their tents, faces and limbs listless, and prayed for a breeze. Warmth radiated up from the ground, making even the thought of lighting fires unbearable. Instead, they unearthed the horses they had salted and buried in pits, and reluctantly ate the earth-cooked flesh. It was too hot even for real hunger, but discipline forced them to maintain their strength.
There was no water - at least, none that was not jealously hoarded and hidden in each man’s pack, each drop too precious to share. Instead, there was rapidly spoiling wine and the drink of the locals, which had to be tested and tested again for mad-poison that survived even the liquor’s fire. A fortnight ago, Nephrite had had the foresight to tell the cooks to keep the goats and camels alive for their milk. Sour as it was, this was easiest going down their throats, which already felt full of cut glass.
Nephrite emerged from the front of a red tent near the center of camp, nearly snapping off the fastenings of his clothing in an attempt to close them. His skin and hair smelled like guts and sweat, his groin ached with blood, and his mood was foul. Only one aging courtesan in camp, who’d consented to come to the desert with her own personal sellswords - smart, he’d give her that - and for an outrageous sum. Seemed the price wasn’t high enough, for she’d taken one look at the West-king darkening her curtains and flatly ordered him to bathe before taking another step. Another step taken, and her guards had nervously lifted their swords somewhere in the region of his stomach, knees knocking together, loud swallowing audible even to his roaring ears.
It wasn’t as though he couldn’t have taken them. It was the principle of the thing. He could plainly see the cast-off armor Jadeite had left behind, not even an hour before.
Women. On him as thick as flies on fruit. On evenings that they shared her pungent tent, his younger comrade always enjoyed the lion’s share of her attentions.
She wasn’t the only reason his mood was foul, though he might have found in her a brief distraction from the doubts that shadowed his steps. Instead - as he reached the edge of camp, and the smell of unbathed men no longer filled his nose - the West-king would have to seek solace in his first and oldest companions: those in the heavens.
Nephrite had always played favorites among the stars.
There were the gossips, settling lightly on his broad shoulders and daring him to find truth and falsehood in their stories. Bright and sharp and mischievous, and more than a little annoying when he sought to divine real news from their chatter, but he couldn’t help but find fond amusement in how they clamored for his ear. Other stars were more remote. Their voices were cool and cerebral, like ice forming in the deep center of his mind, and he liked them least for the distance they placed between themselves and the things they said. They cared nothing for the import of their news.
If he had to pinpoint what troubled him about Jadeite, he would say the same.
His feet had carried him to a deserted place, to an outlook hanging over the desert floor. The drop below his boots was not high, but it afforded him an unobstructed view. The night was unbroken but for the pale sparks cast - and caught - against it. Already, they seemed closer; already, his burdens seemed lighter.
With a sigh of homecoming, he collapsed on the ledge and closed his eyes -
“I was wondering where you’d got to.”
The other man dropped beside him, sprawled out with his haunches on the dusty shelf of rock. Nephrite caught a hint of the other man’s state of mind on the air: a mixture of burnt hash, cheap peony perfume, and off wine, the same as he had smelled in the red tent. His posture was casually held as ever, but then, Jadeite seemed rarely off his guard, whether drunk, tired, drugged, or any combination of the three.
The stars had fled from his grasp.
“You stink,” Jadeite continued conversationally, taking a deep swing from the skin Nephrite now saw hanging from his belt. “I’ve been looking for you - ”
“ - between a sagging pair of tits, you’ve been looking for me,” Nephrite cut him off. “Go back to her tent and let her tongue your balls. She’s not interested in my coin.”
Jadeite laughed, a lazy, satisfied sound. “Can you blame her? There are probably things living on your balls.” He offered the skin, which Nephrite sullenly took. “Quit your brooding and share what’s left of this wine with me. It’ll cure what ails you.”
“This isn’t wine,” he observed after a sip that curled his tongue. “This is piss.”
“A toast, then,” Jadeite’s face stayed straight. “To the drink of the Golden Court.”
He felt a grin split his face despite himself, and whatever misplaced ire he had felt with the younger man faded. They drank in companionable silence, swigging directly from the rapidly deflating skin. Above them, the stars shrugged, then smiled.
At length, Jadeite let out a jaw-breaking yawn and lay back, propping his head up on his elbows. “So what do they say?” he inquired, apropos of nothing.
“Say? Who?”
“Them,” his comrade made a sweeping upward gesture. “Your stars. What do they predict? Anything of use?” He laughed, but there was a challenging edge that rendered the question rhetorical. “Is this bastard going to take our terms and let us go home? Are we ever going to reach the other side of this godforsaken desert?”
The old provocation, Nephrite thought. He’d explained before: the stars only told him what they wished to tell him, when and where they wished to tell him. But the Eastern king never could see any purpose in a power that was not fully at his command - a gift kept in the hands of the giver. Tonight, Nephrite was inclined to agree. Is anything in our hands? he couldn’t help but think, his mood darkening once more. The wine’s warmth in his head and chest pushed his doubts past his lips.
“What was the use of it?” he murmured, and felt Jadeite’s gaze settle between his shoulderblades. “All those fathers and sons. Lying out there. Feeding rats. For a patch of land smaller than the gardens in the Golden Palace.” He swallowed, and suddenly the acrid tannin on his tongue and throat tasted like bile. “Why use our strength on the weak? Sometimes, I - ” he hesitated. “I wonder what we came for. Why we’re here.”
“You know why we’re here,” the younger man’s voice was a study in unconcern. “Better off feeding rats than rebellion. People don’t understand loyalty has a cost.”
“So you think it’s right,” his temper flared at the dismissal. “You think it’s right, that because their master was a coward they had no final rites. That their souls are - ”
He heard a choked noise behind him and twisted to see its source.
Jadeite was chuckling soundlessly.
“You’re…incredible,” he gasped. “What a soft heart you hide under all that hair. Here you are, practically drinking pee…wishing you had water…for their souls…”
Nephrite’s hand balled into a fist before he could help it. “You piece of shit - ”
Jadeite sat up and knocked his arm away, but barely; Nephrite’s knuckles grazed his temple. They stared at each other.
“Whose souls are you worried for?” the younger man demanded, flinging off Nephrite’s arm, features twisted out of their indifferent symmetry. “Theirs? Or ours?”
“I don’t - ”
“What makes us better than them? The Prince is a kind boy, and I daresay he’ll make a good man. A good King. But if it came down to it? Kunzite’d rather see Earth suffer under the Prince’s yoke than prosper under anyone else’s.” Jadeite shook his head, his mouth setting in a thin line. “All we’ve done is swap one man’s ambition for another’s - ”
“No,” Nephrite interrupted hotly. “We do right. What we do keeps the bastard who surrendered today from putting the Prince’s crown on his head tomorrow - ”
“Make no mistake, Nephrite, I don’t brood and doubt what we do,” Jadeite cut in. His brow was still taut, but the anger was leaving his face, like stormclouds from the sky. “But I don’t gloat in the rightness of it. I don’t worry about their souls because ours aren’t any holier. We’ll see them when we die. They’ll be there, wherever ours end up.”
He paused, and an odd note entered his voice.
“They’ll say, ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’ ”
Silence fell upon them. Even the camp behind them was quiet, fitfully asleep.
“And I don’t believe pouring water in the mouth of a dead man does a thing for his soul,” his comrade said, finally, and Nephrite didn’t need to see his face to know that the mask - careful, quicksilver - was back in place. It hardly mattered, now that he knew it was a mask. They both did. “But if it comforts you to think it - maybe we do right.”
Behind him, he could hear scrabbling on the ground as Jadeite rose to his feet and dusted off his hands, preparing to return to camp. The discussion was at an end.
As he walked back to camp, the last word was tossed over his shoulder.
“Maybe those bones drying out in the desert thought they did right, too.”
...
Mornings were always a perfect cacophony. The sounds of horses nickering, commanders shouting; the breaking down of tent poles and snuffing of campfires. The war machine groaned into action as the army readied itself to cross the desert.
He woke to find Jadeite missing from the opposite cot. He was not in the red tent, nor did he keep company with any of their men. Nobody knew his whereabouts, but in glancing up at the sun already high above his head, Nephrite was given an idea.
The West-king found him in the basin where their enemy had laid down their arms and died the day before. Overnight, the winds and sands had already taken their toll, and now little was left inside the corpses’ armor but hair and teeth, nails and bones.
Jadeite knelt just where he had seen him kneel the day before. His back was to his comrade, but Nephrite could see the swollen, dripping skin held between his hands.
Its clear contents poured freely into the earth.
Water.
“…two stars blaze from his eyes,” the wind carried Jadeite’s indistinct recitation back to his ears. The hymn of the dead. “Let him reign now with the kings of heaven.”
The last precious drops fell from the skin, and the Eastern king sat back on his heels and looked over his shoulder. The often-mocking set of his lips was at repose, and the blue in his eyes warmed to midday sky. Something in his face was changed.
Perhaps, Nephrite thought, he had never really seen his face before.
He cleared his throat. “You’re going to regret that.”
Jadeite grinned. “I hope I performed his final rites to your satisfaction. There’s more water in that boy’s bones now than there was in my piss this morning.”
Nephrite snorted, unable to help his answering grin; he'd just noticed that Jadeite's temple was swollen from the near-punch he'd delivered him last night. “Give it to your whore and tell her it’s the ‘drink of the Golden Court.’ I think she’d swallow anything you gave her.”
As their laughter sounded over the dunes and their beaten boots sank deep, Nephrite cast a last look over his shoulder. He could still make the boy out: too-young hands for the brute weapons they held, soft tufts of black hair. The deep blue eyes sightless under bruised lids. Nephrite hoped they saw now all the mysteries of heaven.
For a moment, the sun felt like a shadow on his skin.
He paused to rub his arms, prickling from a sudden chill, and glanced up.
Above, the stars were watching them.
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author's note - one very astute reviewer pointed out that the corpse is written to resemble endymion...gold star for you ;)
The Stars Were Watching Them
...
...
...
...
...
Shading his eyes with a badly sunburnt hand, the West-king thought that there was at least one benefit to fighting on this stretch of desert, hard and compacted and glittering for hundreds of leagues in every direction. The sand drank the blood so quickly, it seemed none had ever spilled. The sun baked bodies back into the earth from where they came, leaving little for the wheeling carrion birds. Their cries mingled with the occasional pleas and rattles of the wounded, who did not have long to wait.
At least, he thought, the desert sped death to those who wished it.
“Water…” a thin, high voice in the distance scattered his musings.
Nephrite turned around, only to see that Jadeite had heard the cry first.
It was a boy, he saw, black-haired and blue-eyed as the mixed peoples of these parts tended to be. His face was unmarred, smooth and carved finely as a girl’s. Certainly not older than eleven or twelve - and to look at the gaping hole in his belly, where the darkened coils of his insides spilled over his groin and legs - certainly not likely to see thirteen.
As he watched, the Eastern king paused, casting a merciful shadow over the shuddering body.
“Water,” the child repeated insistently, albeit almost too feeble to be heard.
Jadeite dropped to the balls of his feet. Nephrite already knew that he had no water on his person. Even if he had, he wouldn’t - couldn’t - spare any for this purpose.
“Shut your eyes,” his comrade instructed.
“No…” the boy wheezed, but his lashes obediently fell shut. “For the soul - ”
The blade slipped between the boy’s ribs without resistance, and held until the small chest fell and did not rise again. He couldn’t make out Jadeite’s shadowed expression.
“For the soul,” he heard him mutter as he rose again. “What bull - ”
“They give their dead a last draught, as we do,” Nephrite spoke up.“ Final rites.”
He dropped the enemy shield he had picked up somewhere along the way with a clank and strode forward, watching the yellow-haired man take in his appearance. He knew his eyes were veiny, his beard matted and wherever his heavy armor and underclothes were torn, they revealed skin equally reddened by blood and sun. To his credit, Jadeite didn’t hesitate to reach out and clap him on his gory shoulder.
“Have to say, the similarity ends there, though,” Nephrite’s voice dropped. “What kind of coward are we fighting against? Half of these corpses look old enough to be our own fathers, and the other half…I’ve never seen boys so young sent to war. And against the Golden Kingdon’s army…no sport in that. Some of our men mistook them for girls.”
“Wishful thinking,” Jadeite returned. “The whores left the train at the edge of the desert. Our men grow lonely for their wives. I doubt they would discriminate.”
He felt his face redden, almost impossibly further. “You think that’s funny?”
“Isn’t it?” Jadeite motioned toward the messenger approaching them, his shape mottling over the dunes. The white flag fluttered dispiritedly. “Look. They want terms.”
Nephrite offered his vivid opinion of their terms, before concluding: “Fuck that.”
The Eastern king’s lips twitched as he turned to greet the rider.
As they waited for him to draw near, he studied the younger man: the clean line of his jaw, the mocking way his mouth fell when he was not speaking, the distant blue of his eyes. Since they’d first met, less than a year past, they had campaigned for seven months, taken three local kings as vassals in Endymion’s name, scattered five armies, crossed and recrossed a thousand leagues, and slept in one small tent.
He was a decent enough fighter, one the dark-haired man could trust at his broad back, though he sensed Jadeite preferred the subtle, bloodless wordplay so prized by his Eastern subjects. He was also an adroit conversationalist, and there were few spaces of silence in those late nights they sat up and split a souring half-barrel, or a pair of perfumed thighs. It hadn’t taken Nephrite long to see why the pair of them had been chosen for this mission, for they and their respective talents were well-matched.
And yet.
“Tell your master his men fought like lions,” Jadeite switched easily into the coarse dialect of their enemy as the messenger pulled up before them. He reached for the masked rider’s reins. The mare pranced nervously at his touch, but he held on tight. This was his strong suit - but what isn’t? Nephrite thought sourly. “The Golden Kingdom has need of such men. Tell your master this: even when lions sink their claws in each other, in the end, they understand. We are all the same, are we not?”
The rider’s expression was invisible under his mask, but they could see where his eyes were roving. On the rows of split bodies half-buried in the sand. On the impressive force of the young kings’ army, caring for their own wounded and dead. On the Golden Kingdom’s standard, raised triumphant against the painfully bright sky.
Finally, his eyes met theirs. “And if my master does not ‘understand’?”
Jadeite’s tone remained pleasant. “Even among lions, there is only one king.”
“We will give you tonight and all of tomorrow,” Nephrite broke in gruffly, feeling the need to add something. “To take away the bodies and conduct final rites.”
The messenger scoffed, pulling his mare back from Jadeite’s touch. “The dead are dead. If it rains, they can have final rites. Let the desert take care of them its own way.”
With that curt dismissal, he was off, galloping back the way he had come.
High over their heads, the sun loomed too large, like a baleful eye.
...
It was too hot to celebrate their victory, even many hours after the swollen sun fell below the dunes. Instead, the men of their army sat in the fronts of their tents, faces and limbs listless, and prayed for a breeze. Warmth radiated up from the ground, making even the thought of lighting fires unbearable. Instead, they unearthed the horses they had salted and buried in pits, and reluctantly ate the earth-cooked flesh. It was too hot even for real hunger, but discipline forced them to maintain their strength.
There was no water - at least, none that was not jealously hoarded and hidden in each man’s pack, each drop too precious to share. Instead, there was rapidly spoiling wine and the drink of the locals, which had to be tested and tested again for mad-poison that survived even the liquor’s fire. A fortnight ago, Nephrite had had the foresight to tell the cooks to keep the goats and camels alive for their milk. Sour as it was, this was easiest going down their throats, which already felt full of cut glass.
Nephrite emerged from the front of a red tent near the center of camp, nearly snapping off the fastenings of his clothing in an attempt to close them. His skin and hair smelled like guts and sweat, his groin ached with blood, and his mood was foul. Only one aging courtesan in camp, who’d consented to come to the desert with her own personal sellswords - smart, he’d give her that - and for an outrageous sum. Seemed the price wasn’t high enough, for she’d taken one look at the West-king darkening her curtains and flatly ordered him to bathe before taking another step. Another step taken, and her guards had nervously lifted their swords somewhere in the region of his stomach, knees knocking together, loud swallowing audible even to his roaring ears.
It wasn’t as though he couldn’t have taken them. It was the principle of the thing. He could plainly see the cast-off armor Jadeite had left behind, not even an hour before.
Women. On him as thick as flies on fruit. On evenings that they shared her pungent tent, his younger comrade always enjoyed the lion’s share of her attentions.
She wasn’t the only reason his mood was foul, though he might have found in her a brief distraction from the doubts that shadowed his steps. Instead - as he reached the edge of camp, and the smell of unbathed men no longer filled his nose - the West-king would have to seek solace in his first and oldest companions: those in the heavens.
Nephrite had always played favorites among the stars.
There were the gossips, settling lightly on his broad shoulders and daring him to find truth and falsehood in their stories. Bright and sharp and mischievous, and more than a little annoying when he sought to divine real news from their chatter, but he couldn’t help but find fond amusement in how they clamored for his ear. Other stars were more remote. Their voices were cool and cerebral, like ice forming in the deep center of his mind, and he liked them least for the distance they placed between themselves and the things they said. They cared nothing for the import of their news.
If he had to pinpoint what troubled him about Jadeite, he would say the same.
His feet had carried him to a deserted place, to an outlook hanging over the desert floor. The drop below his boots was not high, but it afforded him an unobstructed view. The night was unbroken but for the pale sparks cast - and caught - against it. Already, they seemed closer; already, his burdens seemed lighter.
With a sigh of homecoming, he collapsed on the ledge and closed his eyes -
“I was wondering where you’d got to.”
The other man dropped beside him, sprawled out with his haunches on the dusty shelf of rock. Nephrite caught a hint of the other man’s state of mind on the air: a mixture of burnt hash, cheap peony perfume, and off wine, the same as he had smelled in the red tent. His posture was casually held as ever, but then, Jadeite seemed rarely off his guard, whether drunk, tired, drugged, or any combination of the three.
The stars had fled from his grasp.
“You stink,” Jadeite continued conversationally, taking a deep swing from the skin Nephrite now saw hanging from his belt. “I’ve been looking for you - ”
“ - between a sagging pair of tits, you’ve been looking for me,” Nephrite cut him off. “Go back to her tent and let her tongue your balls. She’s not interested in my coin.”
Jadeite laughed, a lazy, satisfied sound. “Can you blame her? There are probably things living on your balls.” He offered the skin, which Nephrite sullenly took. “Quit your brooding and share what’s left of this wine with me. It’ll cure what ails you.”
“This isn’t wine,” he observed after a sip that curled his tongue. “This is piss.”
“A toast, then,” Jadeite’s face stayed straight. “To the drink of the Golden Court.”
He felt a grin split his face despite himself, and whatever misplaced ire he had felt with the younger man faded. They drank in companionable silence, swigging directly from the rapidly deflating skin. Above them, the stars shrugged, then smiled.
At length, Jadeite let out a jaw-breaking yawn and lay back, propping his head up on his elbows. “So what do they say?” he inquired, apropos of nothing.
“Say? Who?”
“Them,” his comrade made a sweeping upward gesture. “Your stars. What do they predict? Anything of use?” He laughed, but there was a challenging edge that rendered the question rhetorical. “Is this bastard going to take our terms and let us go home? Are we ever going to reach the other side of this godforsaken desert?”
The old provocation, Nephrite thought. He’d explained before: the stars only told him what they wished to tell him, when and where they wished to tell him. But the Eastern king never could see any purpose in a power that was not fully at his command - a gift kept in the hands of the giver. Tonight, Nephrite was inclined to agree. Is anything in our hands? he couldn’t help but think, his mood darkening once more. The wine’s warmth in his head and chest pushed his doubts past his lips.
“What was the use of it?” he murmured, and felt Jadeite’s gaze settle between his shoulderblades. “All those fathers and sons. Lying out there. Feeding rats. For a patch of land smaller than the gardens in the Golden Palace.” He swallowed, and suddenly the acrid tannin on his tongue and throat tasted like bile. “Why use our strength on the weak? Sometimes, I - ” he hesitated. “I wonder what we came for. Why we’re here.”
“You know why we’re here,” the younger man’s voice was a study in unconcern. “Better off feeding rats than rebellion. People don’t understand loyalty has a cost.”
“So you think it’s right,” his temper flared at the dismissal. “You think it’s right, that because their master was a coward they had no final rites. That their souls are - ”
He heard a choked noise behind him and twisted to see its source.
Jadeite was chuckling soundlessly.
“You’re…incredible,” he gasped. “What a soft heart you hide under all that hair. Here you are, practically drinking pee…wishing you had water…for their souls…”
Nephrite’s hand balled into a fist before he could help it. “You piece of shit - ”
Jadeite sat up and knocked his arm away, but barely; Nephrite’s knuckles grazed his temple. They stared at each other.
“Whose souls are you worried for?” the younger man demanded, flinging off Nephrite’s arm, features twisted out of their indifferent symmetry. “Theirs? Or ours?”
“I don’t - ”
“What makes us better than them? The Prince is a kind boy, and I daresay he’ll make a good man. A good King. But if it came down to it? Kunzite’d rather see Earth suffer under the Prince’s yoke than prosper under anyone else’s.” Jadeite shook his head, his mouth setting in a thin line. “All we’ve done is swap one man’s ambition for another’s - ”
“No,” Nephrite interrupted hotly. “We do right. What we do keeps the bastard who surrendered today from putting the Prince’s crown on his head tomorrow - ”
“Make no mistake, Nephrite, I don’t brood and doubt what we do,” Jadeite cut in. His brow was still taut, but the anger was leaving his face, like stormclouds from the sky. “But I don’t gloat in the rightness of it. I don’t worry about their souls because ours aren’t any holier. We’ll see them when we die. They’ll be there, wherever ours end up.”
He paused, and an odd note entered his voice.
“They’ll say, ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’ ”
Silence fell upon them. Even the camp behind them was quiet, fitfully asleep.
“And I don’t believe pouring water in the mouth of a dead man does a thing for his soul,” his comrade said, finally, and Nephrite didn’t need to see his face to know that the mask - careful, quicksilver - was back in place. It hardly mattered, now that he knew it was a mask. They both did. “But if it comforts you to think it - maybe we do right.”
Behind him, he could hear scrabbling on the ground as Jadeite rose to his feet and dusted off his hands, preparing to return to camp. The discussion was at an end.
As he walked back to camp, the last word was tossed over his shoulder.
“Maybe those bones drying out in the desert thought they did right, too.”
...
Mornings were always a perfect cacophony. The sounds of horses nickering, commanders shouting; the breaking down of tent poles and snuffing of campfires. The war machine groaned into action as the army readied itself to cross the desert.
He woke to find Jadeite missing from the opposite cot. He was not in the red tent, nor did he keep company with any of their men. Nobody knew his whereabouts, but in glancing up at the sun already high above his head, Nephrite was given an idea.
The West-king found him in the basin where their enemy had laid down their arms and died the day before. Overnight, the winds and sands had already taken their toll, and now little was left inside the corpses’ armor but hair and teeth, nails and bones.
Jadeite knelt just where he had seen him kneel the day before. His back was to his comrade, but Nephrite could see the swollen, dripping skin held between his hands.
Its clear contents poured freely into the earth.
Water.
“…two stars blaze from his eyes,” the wind carried Jadeite’s indistinct recitation back to his ears. The hymn of the dead. “Let him reign now with the kings of heaven.”
The last precious drops fell from the skin, and the Eastern king sat back on his heels and looked over his shoulder. The often-mocking set of his lips was at repose, and the blue in his eyes warmed to midday sky. Something in his face was changed.
Perhaps, Nephrite thought, he had never really seen his face before.
He cleared his throat. “You’re going to regret that.”
Jadeite grinned. “I hope I performed his final rites to your satisfaction. There’s more water in that boy’s bones now than there was in my piss this morning.”
Nephrite snorted, unable to help his answering grin; he'd just noticed that Jadeite's temple was swollen from the near-punch he'd delivered him last night. “Give it to your whore and tell her it’s the ‘drink of the Golden Court.’ I think she’d swallow anything you gave her.”
As their laughter sounded over the dunes and their beaten boots sank deep, Nephrite cast a last look over his shoulder. He could still make the boy out: too-young hands for the brute weapons they held, soft tufts of black hair. The deep blue eyes sightless under bruised lids. Nephrite hoped they saw now all the mysteries of heaven.
For a moment, the sun felt like a shadow on his skin.
He paused to rub his arms, prickling from a sudden chill, and glanced up.
Above, the stars were watching them.
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author's note - one very astute reviewer pointed out that the corpse is written to resemble endymion...gold star for you ;)