Communication IV: Body Language
Title: Communication IV: Body Language
Description: “Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.” - Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants
A/N: Fourth installment (of six total). Takes place in Two Truths and a Lie verse. The first part takes place some time after the events of Two Truths and a Lie, and the second takes place way after that. I missed angsty April, but it’s a bit rough around the edges, but here is some angst anyway!
Body Language
Jadeite sat at the table, allowing the steam rising from the porcelain cup to infuse his nostrils. The delicate cup could have fit perfectly in the hollow of one hand, even one so small as his companion’s, but by mutual and unspoken agreement, he kept his free hand in plain sight. At odds with the tranquil act of two old acquaintances taking tea together, his fingers circled in unceasing motion, tracing patterns she didn’t know the meaning of on the mirrored tabletop.
“So you think that if we feed the palace some of our energy, the blackouts will occur less frequently?” Ami asked, fascination and repulsion warring in her voice.
He nodded wearily, setting down his teacup to lean his head in his hand. “Life force is among the purest, most potent forms of energy that exist.”
“And you believe it’s been doing this all along, drawing any ambient energy it can get…?”
“And when it runs out, that’s when our power supply runs out. Yes. Exactly.”
She sat back, mulling over his hypothesis. “Perhaps that’s why we’ve been sleeping so much. We all thought it was just the nightmares, but if this is the case-”
Ami’s eyes widened in horror as she arrived at the conclusion he had been easing her towards. “That’s why everyone is asleep?”
Jadeite lifted both hands, turning his scarred palms upwards.
“In many but not all ways, we are stronger, and the quality of our life force is different. The Palace pulls less strongly on us than it does on most other humans, and so we are merely tired, while they must slumber all the hours of the day. This drain on our reserves is the reason, I believe, that we can no longer access our paths to Elysion. We fall short not because the way is blocked, but because we lack the strength to lay the remainder of the road.”
The Shitennou’s present inability to reach Elysion concerned her somewhat less than the fate of the world. After all, they had done well enough with only Mamoru’s connection to Elysion before the Shitennou’s return.
“But at some point, they must awaken. Crystal Tokyo is not - it cannot, it does not remain a kingdom of sleepers!”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. My guess would be that the palace is young, and like many young things, it needs substantial amounts of energy to grow larger and stronger. After it - matures, so to speak, the sleepers should awaken. Perhaps Sailor Pluto will be able to confirm whether or not this is really the case. At present, it is merely conjecture.”
Ami shook her head distractedly, the lengthening locks of her hair brushing her shoulders as they hadn’t done since her teenage years. “We need to tell the others.”
Just then, Zoisite’s voice drifted through the open doorway, and the amused edge to it suggested that he was walking with Kunzite. Ami sat silently, suffused with tension as the water had been infused by the tea leaves, until the paired footsteps passed the door and continued down the hall, fading with the growing distance.
“Why do you do that?”
“Hm?”
He nodded at her wrist, which had twitched almost imperceptibly a moment ago. The evidence of the disturbance lay in the three drops of orange pekoe glistening on the metal surface.
“I don’t know.” And it was true, she didn’t. It was a bad habit whose meaning she couldn’t fathom, but somehow it disturbed her. She used her fingertip to dash away the spilled liquid.
His smile was sad and knowing. “I do.”
“Tell me, then.” She spoke calmly, but his manner was too gentle to mean that the knowledge would give her any comfort. In fact, the kinder he was to her, the worse it was likely to be.
Jadeite lifted the teapot with an inquiring look; when she shook her head, he set it down again without refilling his own cup.
“In the Silver Millennium, you used to carry a small blade there, cleverly concealed in your sleeve to hide it from the sight of others. You tended to use your physical weapons at very close range. In this way, I pitied you, because it meant you always saw so clearly the consequences of your actions.”
He paused, lifting an eyebrow an inquiry. “Should I stop?”
“No.” Her voice was steadier than her fingers, so she set her cup down again.
“You never went without it, whether you were dancing or fighting or discreetly kissing someone in the gardens at midnight. So whenever you - or your princess - were threatened, you would move your wrist just so,” he copied her motion, “and the knife would fall into your hand.”
“How did you know this?” she asked.
For the first time during their conversation, he looked at her with surprise.
“Zoisite told me.”
*****
Ages ago, they had gone to bed laughing. She had put her fingers to his lips to signal quiet and when that didn’t work, touched her mouth to his in an infinitely more effective seal.
The walls were selectively porous, and sound followed neither rhyme, reason, nor the laws of nature once it escaped into the hushed halls of the Crystal Palace. Minako had the bedroom next to hers, and Rei didn’t want her to hear them.
She always knew when Minako cried herself to sleep and when she left her console on all night, playing re-runs of her favorite shows. No one ever heard so much as a sneeze from Ami’s room once her door was closed. Earlier that afternoon, everyone had heard Makoto tell Nephrite where she wished he would go (far, far away, in both time and space) and when she wanted it to happen (immediately).
Most of the time, Rei hated it, this invasive quality of the walls that could both amplify and silence sound. But there was one part of it she did appreciate. She always lay awake until she heard Mamoru and Usagi tell each other, as they did every night, “Good night, I love you.”
They hadn’t said “Good night, I love you” to each other. But he had run his hand down the glorious ebony length of her hair and kissed her gently on the corner of her mouth, so gently that she was lulled into a reluctant slumber.
The first time he had stayed with her, she had stayed awake all night. She wasn’t used to sleeping with other people in the room, let alone in the same bed. Her father had been strict about children sleeping in their own bedrooms, even during thunderstorms and fevers, and she hadn’t been allowed to go to sleepovers. There were quite a few of those once she met the girls, but Rei never slept very well on sleepover nights.
For one thing, there was the noise. Of the girls, only Usagi snored, but even Ami’s quiet breathing was out of place among the usual chorus of night sounds. Then there would be the endless shifting and resettling, the muffled rustle of blankets , and the creak of the floor and mattress under the weight of unfamiliar bodies. Her sense of these things became even more acute when someone else was sleeping not just in the same room, but in the same bed.
Jadeite did not snore. From what she could tell, he came to instant wakefulness, like the tiger that kept an open eye to danger even while asleep. He didn’t even move very much once his breaths deepened and the interval between them lengthened. He was the only man to have shared her bed, both during and since the Silver Millennium.
She had forgotten much about their time together. One of the things she had forgotten was the heat that rose from their intertwined bodies. At first, the warmth was delicious, sensuous and comforting at the same time, like a mug of Makoto’s cocoa topped off with rich cream. Over the course of the night, however, it became suffocating.
It was funny how much she minded the heat. She, who had always fire, now found its barest touch paralyzing. For the heat was treacherous, scorching her nose and throat until she felt like she was choking on powdery ashes. With the heat came dreams, dreams that seared her mind and burned away the senses.
Sleep was letting go of everything, while retaining the whole of one’s essence. And in sleep, the memories she had left behind came back to her.
When the bloodied knife plunged into Serenity’s breast, she screamed. Her eyes flew open, and she began to struggle against the iron cage of Jadeite’s arms. When he slept, they took on a new and frightening weight.
He drew away hurriedly and fumbling with something on the nightstand. The lamp snapped on, illuminating the planes and hollows of his face in an instant, and she recoiled.
His body stilled as the sorrow moved into his eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.
She looked down at her hands, realized she was rubbing her wrists convulsively, and forced herself to stop. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
She swung her feet off the bed and onto the rug, willing herself to calmness. She didn’t want him to ask her what she had dreamed about because then she would have to tell him the truth. She didn’t want to tell him that the Shitennou had tied the senshi up and brought them to Beryl - not dead but just barely alive, as per her instructions: just enough breath left in their bodies to see their princess die before their eyes.
Her silence had a weight of its own, and Jadeite stood slowly, removing himself from the bed. “I’ll go,” he said hoarsely.
“Don’t leave me again,” she said, turning to reach for his hand. His fingers were hot, as hot as the bow had been in her hands when she had flamed thousands of Beryl’s troops to their death, but she didn’t let go of them.
“Rei. Tell me what you want me to do.”
She tried to smile, but he felt the tears against his skin as she pressed her cheek against his hand.
“Don’t hold on so tightly.”