shaken in my faith: master of illusion - part two
briefly putting aside the fact that i have about 70 pages of vaguely legal-ish papers to write this month, here's more fic :D
you should probably read this first.
Shaken in My Faith: Master of Illusion - Part Two
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Old gypsy woman spoke to me - said
You’re a wolf, boy, get out of this town
-Sea Wolf, You’re a Wolf
…
The Prince enviously calls it daring; Nephrite just chuckles and dubs it curiosity. Maybe Zoisite understands a little of it, but Kunzite can only wearily refer to it as lunacy, and none of them fully apprehend how he sizes up the great unknown and laughs. Jadeite’s ruthlessly single-minded in the way he pushes others to their personal precipices, understands people who don’t wish to be understood, and it’s this acumen that made him both a brutal conqueror and benevolent king. He’s like a wolf sinking his canines into a bear, teeth still in its fur after he’s been crushed to pap. Such tenacity made Kunzite send him to Mars, against his own best judgment - because Jadeite’s commander knows nobody else will go smilingly into that den of secrets and emerge with a bone in his mouth, at all odds and costs.
So when he accepts the Oracle’s extraordinary invitation to stay on as her personal guest - indefinitely, not for just a day or two - as a token of Martian goodwill, he’s not sure which of those descriptions really suits. Daring? Curiosity? Zoi’d been the one to convince Kunzite to let him go - and he, too, craves riddles, has the sharp tongue to lay them bare - but Jadeite reckons that even the whimsical druid king would refuse this lure.
And yet, he cannot.
Oh, there are reasons. Rationales. No Earth-born man has ever been permitted to visit long on any of the other planets; Jadeite had expected to return to his own troubled kingdom within the day. Indeed, his own father was summarily deported from Mars without even a minute with the Oracle he sought. Despite his many responsibilities waiting for him at home, the Far Eastern king hasn’t come this much farther to go back, head hanging in defeat, and the witch-queen’s enigma is a temptation too great.
So he stays.
Yes, there are reasons, but as counting days loses its utility, the reasons diminish and fade, and only his lunacy, as Kunzite puts it, remains. Not how Jadeite would advise others, not rational or responsible at all, but just how he chooses to live. Or how he will consent to live, at least, in her cataclysmic wake.
The first puzzle he solves is her name, though he does not yet avail himself of it. It’s in an old language still spoken by his subjects, and Jadeite finds perfect symmetry in how it’s journeyed from her land to his, down the ages of shared ancestry. Her name is Rahi, and it means wanderer.
…
“If the people of your kingdom are really descended from Mars, as they say, you would never have conquered them so easily.” Bright sparks dance in her irises. He’s learned that fire has many moods, not all of them ferocious. Some days it seems to melt the very flesh from his bones, and other days it brightens like nighttime sunshine. Either way, she’s beautiful, and despite their initial hostilities, it never takes Jadeite very long to warm to pretty things.
“Is this how Martians convey their goodwill to Earth? By showing us the superiority of their warriors and weapons?” The general’s playful words bounce off the glinting swords and quivers of arrows hung on the walls, as they walk through the dusty, wide-windowed barracks. The “warriors” he speaks of stick their velveted noses out of myriad stalls, nickering inquisitively.
“Superiority?” Rahi scoffs. “You still haven’t seen my horse and bow, Lord Jadeite.”
She’s dressed more simply today, in unembroidered robes that allow better ease of movement. Their saturated dye echoes the rough coral cabochons set in her dainty circlet, glowing in the wild eye of the tallest, broadest horse, who prances agitatedly in his place. The giant beast is saddled and bridled already, and as they get closer, Jadeite sees that his tawny coat appears almost as metal in the dun-filtered sunlight.
“This is my own Daishin.”
Rahi reaches up, brushing at his gilded head, and he butts at his mistress, nearly knocking her over. Jadeite steadies her with a hand at her back, feels how her spine tightens under the thin linen, arching unconsciously away. She’s not at all used to someone else’s touch. Promised to a god since birth - but probably her jealous Fire’s no great lover, he thinks amusedly. He isn’t sure if he only fancies her breathlessness when she lightly chides her stallion’s ill temper, but Jadeite enjoys her smile nonetheless. After a few days spent in Rahi’s company, he knows it’s as lovely - and fleeting - as his kingdom’s short-lived monsoons.
“He’s magnificent, and suitably named, if it means the same in your dialect as it does in mine,” the general observes. “Headstrong, I see. I’m impressed you can ride him.”
The witch-queen’s expression vanishes into shadow as she bends, grabbing some strange fruits from a nearby bucket.
“I…cannot ride here. My life is too precious to chance a horse’s turned hoof,” she states offhandedly. Daishin, only somewhat appeased, gobbles treats from her palm. “And you’re right - he is no lady’s mount.”
If she doesn’t ride here, then where does she ride? Jadeite’s tempted to call her on the slip. Rahi is clearly comfortable around these beasts. Doubtless, her familiarity with horses comes from training on the Moon that she won’t admit to. Though maybe she’s more accustomed to some Lunar toy pony, he mentally dismisses. Daishin doesn’t look like he’d countenance a pint-sized prophetess on his mighty back. But he feels too sorry for her to press the point at all. The Martian Council - her advisors since birth - cloisters her tightly on her home planet, and she visibly chafes against their grasping regency. Jadeite’s had ample opportunity to notice by now, the many means through which they cleverly shrink the birdcage around their Oracle, all in the name of her vaunted holiness.
“I haven’t seen his equal on Earth,” the general mildly agrees, instead.
“Nor have I here.” Rahi’s poise gives way to girlish pride, but only a little. “Our native animals are like yours, I imagine - suited for the steppes, small and dark. He’s a gift from Uranus. Their horses are all this shade of sunlight, and run even faster. You’ll enjoy putting Daishin through his paces.”
She catches him staring at her and snaps her mouth shut. “What?”
“He’s yours, Lady. You should ride him.”
Unnoticed to her, slender fingers fist in Daishin’s coarse mane. “I already said I cannot.”
“Can’t you?” the general asks again, boldly, and the banked blaze in the Oracle’s eyes now leaps indignantly. An enticing flush, a swell of breath in her breast. Oh, fire has many moods indeed, Jadeite thinks knowingly, and this one happens to wind a lazy, pleasant curl of flame straight to the base of his cock. He never anticipated this, to look into hell itself and find it so damnably beguiling.
He smiles at her, but there’s matching heat in the general’s voice when he throws down the gauntlet.
“After all, I haven’t seen your equal on Earth, either.”
No mistaking his meaning, and Jadeite wonders if she’ll overlook his insolence to her as easily as she condoned his flirting with her attendants. It’s unfamiliar prey he finds himself pursuing, snaring a goddess’s heart, but that savage, hungry part of him can’t resist pushing her as hard as he can, tracing the vein where her pale skin breaks, inside like a red mystery for his taking. And if Jadeite’s crowned himself god-king of the Far East, like she says, does he not deserve her?
Rahi turns away - deliberately, imperiously - to the enormous stallion pressing insistently against her side, in a gesture Jadeite interprets as modesty. Her bright hair obscures her from his view. But the Oracle is more than his match in this hunt, and her low, even pronouncement proves it so.
“You will not see my equal anywhere, Lord Jadeite.”
Daishin paws the ground edgily, sensing something amiss. Seeking to occupy her restless fingers, Rahi grasps the animal’s face, and he calms a bit, though his eyes still roll. She pulls him to her, murmurs something against his nose, her mane mixing vividly with the stallion’s.
A second passes, then two, and Jadeite decides.
He swiftly spans her waist before he can overthink, before she can react -and in a moment’s time, he’s seating Rahi atop the beast.
She doesn’t struggle perceptibly in his arms, obviously not wanting Daishin to bolt, but the general’s sure there’s murder in her face, if only he could see it behind that slipping veil of scarlet. He likes to push, likes to provoke, but he’s starting to think something in this girl gives him a death wish.
Jadeite immediately busies himself adjusting the stirrups to her height, briefly speculating over the possibility that she’ll kick in his skull. But no, the witch-queen sits stiffly - furious at his audacity, no doubt, but too proud to fussily protest now that she’s over six feet off the ground. When the general easily swings himself up behind the saddle, he’s surprised at how she automatically shifts, legs bracing against massive shoulders, rubbing the stallion’s neck soothingly as he reacts to his second rider. The women of his kingdom scorn sidesaddles as well, but Jadeite’s never yet seen a woman so comfortable astride. Rahi’s grip on the reins is expertly firm as she urges Daishin into a smooth canter, not wanting to overexert him with Jadeite’s additional weight.
At first, she seems apathetic to her companion’s proximity, but as Daishin’s loping gait necessarily jostles them closer, Jadeite can feel Rahi awkwardly squirm away. He doesn’t blame her; anywhere on Earth, it’d be positively scandalous for them to ride like this, she practically bouncing in his lap. Then again, if he’d known she rode this ably, he would’ve simply taken another horse. Or would he? The flowers-smoke scent of her blowing into his nostrils, lissome waist and taut bottom tucked into his front…the general allows himself just the beginnings of a smirk. Her loose robes can no longer conceal that she doesn’t have the soft body of a lady, given to leisure, but of a dancer, supple as bowstring. A dancer, or…
Jadeite leans in, resting his palms on her forearms, tensing of fine sinew beneath. “So she can ride,” he speaks against Rahi’s cheek, where he knows she will hear him. Despite the intimacy of their positions, his tone is casual. “What other martial arts are the Senshi of the Moon taught?”
“Unless you wish to learn firsthand, Lord Jadeite, I suggest you keep your hold on the saddle horn, rather than my person.”
Her threat rings out, clarion as two swords clanging, but the Far Eastern king just throws his golden head back and laughs loudly, the satisfied sound carrying in the wind past their ears. He can’t possibly miss the tremble of delight undercutting her warning. They both know her words are as close to an admission - of her time spent training on the Moon - as Jadeite’s going to get.
The stallion quickly picks up on his mistress’s exhilaration, and speeds his steps, but Jadeite tugs on her wrist, and in turn, the reins. Daishin grunts irritably, impatient to run, and Rahi can’t suppress an abrupt, choked giggle at his inordinately human grumbling.
Both of the riders begin to laugh, helplessly. Daishin slows to a standstill, clearly too disgusted by their conduct to continue, and they laugh harder.
“That’s a keen arrow you keep behind your teeth, Lady,” Jadeite finally manages, trying to suck in a lungful of air. He jumps off Daishin’s broad back and takes the reins from Rahi, leading the irascible horse back to the castle. “Speaking of. I’ve seen your beast, but not your bow. Are you as good as they say all Martians are?”
“I have some passing skill,” the Oracle answers, long eyelashes barely concealing the hard flint beneath.
They reach the stable, and Jadeite moves around Daishin’s side. By now, he’s quite sure the sometime Senshi can dismount herself, but he doesn’t exactly mind perpetuating the fiction.
“She rides, she shoots, and she admits to none of it, just to save a man’s pride. Your Council is quite right, I think - your life is too precious to chance a horse’s turned hoof.”
“What makes you think my Council tells me what to do?” Rahi throws back at him. She swings her other leg over the saddle, and Jadeite lifts her again, thumbs pushing up the heavy undersides of her breasts. Her fingers grasp at his shoulders, clandestine heat of her exhalation at his neck, and she slides down his length perhaps more slowly than either of them intend. They stand without moving, without enough air to take in between them. Jadeite wholly ignores her question, and his hushed breath in her hair poisons the afternoon quiet.
He has no idea what madness compels him to speak it.
“Your life is too precious to waste, wedded to the Fire - ” the said-unsaid is treacherous “ - and never to the flesh.”
Too far - a tremor, a hiss like a mouthful of snakes. Rahi shoves him away, and the general’s glad he can’t see the Oracle’s eyes ignite as she stalks out of the barracks with none of her usual grace. Just as she’s silhouetted in the bright doorway, she pauses without looking back.
“No will of mine but the Fire made you my guest, Lord Jadeite. Remember that.”
In her absence, Jadeite tugs at his blond curls, rubbing tiredly at his scalp. Instinct informs him that he’s sunk his teeth into something that will devour him, if he does not devour it first.
…
Lingering guilt makes Jadeite finally pull out his communicator that evening. Thankfully, Zoisite will probably just mock him for dutifully checking in and call it a night. When Kunzite’s face sharpens into focus instead, his planned greeting loses some of its eloquence. “Ah. Shit.”
His commander’s voice is like a glacial wall, and his words make Jadeite feel like he’s just walked into one. “Yes. I think that sums it up fairly well.”
Not one to be reduced to verbal dysentery, the Far Eastern king takes a second before responding. “Kunzite. You know I had - have my reasons.”
“I assume that you do, for your own wellbeing.” The (deserved, Jadeite admits privately) threat matches the one in Kunzite’s icy eyes. “You’ll share them with me upon your immediate return, Jadeite.”
“I’m not coming back. Not yet.” He cuts off whatever his increasingly dangerous-looking commander plans to say next. “I’ve made progress, and I’ll be damned if I let things backslide while I run home to report to you.”
“I should have known better than to send you. Your weakness is always the same - you mistake idiocy for independence.”
“Who else would you have sent?” Jadeite counters, and Kunzite’s knifelike irises sharpen. “Which of us has been to Mars before? What kingdom is descended from their god? And whose lands are overrun with their spies?”
“You came to your throne later in life, and you do not sit in it as securely as others do.” It’s like Kunzite’s powerful fist going straight to his gut; their commander misses nothing. “Perhaps I sent you to ease your own fears.”
“Bullshit. You sent me because you trust me.”
“Yes,” Kunzite agrees, without embellishment. “So do not misplace my trust, Jadeite.”
A pause, but they both sense the change and relax.
“Now. How have you managed to stay on Mars so long? The Prince was beginning to think you either imprisoned or dead.”
“I am the personal guest of the Oracle,” he informs him neutrally, trying to keep the jubilation from his voice. The corners of Kunzite’s lips twitch minutely at that, and Jadeite gives it up, grins wolfishly. “And that, Kunzite, is why you trust me.”
“I’ve always thought your faculty with women…remarkable. Even hags aren’t immune, it seems.”
Jadeite smoothly sidesteps that bait, promising himself to examine why later. “I think I’ve found one of the Senshi, Kunzite.”
Even his commander’s preternaturally impassive features slacken slightly - invisibly to anyone who doesn't know him well. “One of the Senshi on Mars, hm?” He watches Kunzite’s formidable trap of a mind set to prying at that one. “That would certainly explain the Oracle’s rumored closeness with the Moon princess.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Jadeite answers cryptically.
“You have been productive. Do you know why they’ve dispatched so many of their inhabitants to your kingdom?”
“Not yet, besides the obvious - that they blend in there, both in looks and language.”
“Zoisite has taken it upon himself to…interrogate a few of the immigrants, in your absence.” Kunzite’s countenance betrays no emotion at his use of this particular euphemism. “He’s told me that they don’t seem like spies. Or else they’re very good ones.”
Jadeite ponders that new piece of information. “Either way, it’s an intriguing phenomenon, and one that grows by the day. Too many ships leave this harbor. I intend to find out why.”
“I wish you luck. Report to me, or one of us, this time - or suffer my consequences.” Kunzite’s image on the screen instantly blinks out, before the golden general can amicably tell him to piss off.
…
The Far Eastern king has never once dreamed since he learned to bend his own power of illusion. And anyway, like all longtime soldiers, he sleeps deeply and uninterruptedly whenever he can.
But tonight, Jadeite dreams.
In a graveyard of cremated trees, he looks for his last living quarry. All lights are blown out, but there’s not even a pair of eyes remaining between the two of them, anyway. He encounters this sensation only in the ruined spaces she leaves behind. As though she’s robbed all his senses, so that he traces her absent shape and fills it wholly with his own deliria. He always gives like that, unreservedly, knowing that somewhere in this place that’s fallen out of time, her tangible, beating, red mystery awaits.
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Weird terms.
Daishin: great heart/mind/truth, based on the various sources I've read
you should probably read this first.
Shaken in My Faith: Master of Illusion - Part Two
…
…
…
…
…
Old gypsy woman spoke to me - said
You’re a wolf, boy, get out of this town
-Sea Wolf, You’re a Wolf
…
The Prince enviously calls it daring; Nephrite just chuckles and dubs it curiosity. Maybe Zoisite understands a little of it, but Kunzite can only wearily refer to it as lunacy, and none of them fully apprehend how he sizes up the great unknown and laughs. Jadeite’s ruthlessly single-minded in the way he pushes others to their personal precipices, understands people who don’t wish to be understood, and it’s this acumen that made him both a brutal conqueror and benevolent king. He’s like a wolf sinking his canines into a bear, teeth still in its fur after he’s been crushed to pap. Such tenacity made Kunzite send him to Mars, against his own best judgment - because Jadeite’s commander knows nobody else will go smilingly into that den of secrets and emerge with a bone in his mouth, at all odds and costs.
So when he accepts the Oracle’s extraordinary invitation to stay on as her personal guest - indefinitely, not for just a day or two - as a token of Martian goodwill, he’s not sure which of those descriptions really suits. Daring? Curiosity? Zoi’d been the one to convince Kunzite to let him go - and he, too, craves riddles, has the sharp tongue to lay them bare - but Jadeite reckons that even the whimsical druid king would refuse this lure.
And yet, he cannot.
Oh, there are reasons. Rationales. No Earth-born man has ever been permitted to visit long on any of the other planets; Jadeite had expected to return to his own troubled kingdom within the day. Indeed, his own father was summarily deported from Mars without even a minute with the Oracle he sought. Despite his many responsibilities waiting for him at home, the Far Eastern king hasn’t come this much farther to go back, head hanging in defeat, and the witch-queen’s enigma is a temptation too great.
So he stays.
Yes, there are reasons, but as counting days loses its utility, the reasons diminish and fade, and only his lunacy, as Kunzite puts it, remains. Not how Jadeite would advise others, not rational or responsible at all, but just how he chooses to live. Or how he will consent to live, at least, in her cataclysmic wake.
The first puzzle he solves is her name, though he does not yet avail himself of it. It’s in an old language still spoken by his subjects, and Jadeite finds perfect symmetry in how it’s journeyed from her land to his, down the ages of shared ancestry. Her name is Rahi, and it means wanderer.
…
“If the people of your kingdom are really descended from Mars, as they say, you would never have conquered them so easily.” Bright sparks dance in her irises. He’s learned that fire has many moods, not all of them ferocious. Some days it seems to melt the very flesh from his bones, and other days it brightens like nighttime sunshine. Either way, she’s beautiful, and despite their initial hostilities, it never takes Jadeite very long to warm to pretty things.
“Is this how Martians convey their goodwill to Earth? By showing us the superiority of their warriors and weapons?” The general’s playful words bounce off the glinting swords and quivers of arrows hung on the walls, as they walk through the dusty, wide-windowed barracks. The “warriors” he speaks of stick their velveted noses out of myriad stalls, nickering inquisitively.
“Superiority?” Rahi scoffs. “You still haven’t seen my horse and bow, Lord Jadeite.”
She’s dressed more simply today, in unembroidered robes that allow better ease of movement. Their saturated dye echoes the rough coral cabochons set in her dainty circlet, glowing in the wild eye of the tallest, broadest horse, who prances agitatedly in his place. The giant beast is saddled and bridled already, and as they get closer, Jadeite sees that his tawny coat appears almost as metal in the dun-filtered sunlight.
“This is my own Daishin.”
Rahi reaches up, brushing at his gilded head, and he butts at his mistress, nearly knocking her over. Jadeite steadies her with a hand at her back, feels how her spine tightens under the thin linen, arching unconsciously away. She’s not at all used to someone else’s touch. Promised to a god since birth - but probably her jealous Fire’s no great lover, he thinks amusedly. He isn’t sure if he only fancies her breathlessness when she lightly chides her stallion’s ill temper, but Jadeite enjoys her smile nonetheless. After a few days spent in Rahi’s company, he knows it’s as lovely - and fleeting - as his kingdom’s short-lived monsoons.
“He’s magnificent, and suitably named, if it means the same in your dialect as it does in mine,” the general observes. “Headstrong, I see. I’m impressed you can ride him.”
The witch-queen’s expression vanishes into shadow as she bends, grabbing some strange fruits from a nearby bucket.
“I…cannot ride here. My life is too precious to chance a horse’s turned hoof,” she states offhandedly. Daishin, only somewhat appeased, gobbles treats from her palm. “And you’re right - he is no lady’s mount.”
If she doesn’t ride here, then where does she ride? Jadeite’s tempted to call her on the slip. Rahi is clearly comfortable around these beasts. Doubtless, her familiarity with horses comes from training on the Moon that she won’t admit to. Though maybe she’s more accustomed to some Lunar toy pony, he mentally dismisses. Daishin doesn’t look like he’d countenance a pint-sized prophetess on his mighty back. But he feels too sorry for her to press the point at all. The Martian Council - her advisors since birth - cloisters her tightly on her home planet, and she visibly chafes against their grasping regency. Jadeite’s had ample opportunity to notice by now, the many means through which they cleverly shrink the birdcage around their Oracle, all in the name of her vaunted holiness.
“I haven’t seen his equal on Earth,” the general mildly agrees, instead.
“Nor have I here.” Rahi’s poise gives way to girlish pride, but only a little. “Our native animals are like yours, I imagine - suited for the steppes, small and dark. He’s a gift from Uranus. Their horses are all this shade of sunlight, and run even faster. You’ll enjoy putting Daishin through his paces.”
She catches him staring at her and snaps her mouth shut. “What?”
“He’s yours, Lady. You should ride him.”
Unnoticed to her, slender fingers fist in Daishin’s coarse mane. “I already said I cannot.”
“Can’t you?” the general asks again, boldly, and the banked blaze in the Oracle’s eyes now leaps indignantly. An enticing flush, a swell of breath in her breast. Oh, fire has many moods indeed, Jadeite thinks knowingly, and this one happens to wind a lazy, pleasant curl of flame straight to the base of his cock. He never anticipated this, to look into hell itself and find it so damnably beguiling.
He smiles at her, but there’s matching heat in the general’s voice when he throws down the gauntlet.
“After all, I haven’t seen your equal on Earth, either.”
No mistaking his meaning, and Jadeite wonders if she’ll overlook his insolence to her as easily as she condoned his flirting with her attendants. It’s unfamiliar prey he finds himself pursuing, snaring a goddess’s heart, but that savage, hungry part of him can’t resist pushing her as hard as he can, tracing the vein where her pale skin breaks, inside like a red mystery for his taking. And if Jadeite’s crowned himself god-king of the Far East, like she says, does he not deserve her?
Rahi turns away - deliberately, imperiously - to the enormous stallion pressing insistently against her side, in a gesture Jadeite interprets as modesty. Her bright hair obscures her from his view. But the Oracle is more than his match in this hunt, and her low, even pronouncement proves it so.
“You will not see my equal anywhere, Lord Jadeite.”
Daishin paws the ground edgily, sensing something amiss. Seeking to occupy her restless fingers, Rahi grasps the animal’s face, and he calms a bit, though his eyes still roll. She pulls him to her, murmurs something against his nose, her mane mixing vividly with the stallion’s.
A second passes, then two, and Jadeite decides.
He swiftly spans her waist before he can overthink, before she can react -and in a moment’s time, he’s seating Rahi atop the beast.
She doesn’t struggle perceptibly in his arms, obviously not wanting Daishin to bolt, but the general’s sure there’s murder in her face, if only he could see it behind that slipping veil of scarlet. He likes to push, likes to provoke, but he’s starting to think something in this girl gives him a death wish.
Jadeite immediately busies himself adjusting the stirrups to her height, briefly speculating over the possibility that she’ll kick in his skull. But no, the witch-queen sits stiffly - furious at his audacity, no doubt, but too proud to fussily protest now that she’s over six feet off the ground. When the general easily swings himself up behind the saddle, he’s surprised at how she automatically shifts, legs bracing against massive shoulders, rubbing the stallion’s neck soothingly as he reacts to his second rider. The women of his kingdom scorn sidesaddles as well, but Jadeite’s never yet seen a woman so comfortable astride. Rahi’s grip on the reins is expertly firm as she urges Daishin into a smooth canter, not wanting to overexert him with Jadeite’s additional weight.
At first, she seems apathetic to her companion’s proximity, but as Daishin’s loping gait necessarily jostles them closer, Jadeite can feel Rahi awkwardly squirm away. He doesn’t blame her; anywhere on Earth, it’d be positively scandalous for them to ride like this, she practically bouncing in his lap. Then again, if he’d known she rode this ably, he would’ve simply taken another horse. Or would he? The flowers-smoke scent of her blowing into his nostrils, lissome waist and taut bottom tucked into his front…the general allows himself just the beginnings of a smirk. Her loose robes can no longer conceal that she doesn’t have the soft body of a lady, given to leisure, but of a dancer, supple as bowstring. A dancer, or…
Jadeite leans in, resting his palms on her forearms, tensing of fine sinew beneath. “So she can ride,” he speaks against Rahi’s cheek, where he knows she will hear him. Despite the intimacy of their positions, his tone is casual. “What other martial arts are the Senshi of the Moon taught?”
“Unless you wish to learn firsthand, Lord Jadeite, I suggest you keep your hold on the saddle horn, rather than my person.”
Her threat rings out, clarion as two swords clanging, but the Far Eastern king just throws his golden head back and laughs loudly, the satisfied sound carrying in the wind past their ears. He can’t possibly miss the tremble of delight undercutting her warning. They both know her words are as close to an admission - of her time spent training on the Moon - as Jadeite’s going to get.
The stallion quickly picks up on his mistress’s exhilaration, and speeds his steps, but Jadeite tugs on her wrist, and in turn, the reins. Daishin grunts irritably, impatient to run, and Rahi can’t suppress an abrupt, choked giggle at his inordinately human grumbling.
Both of the riders begin to laugh, helplessly. Daishin slows to a standstill, clearly too disgusted by their conduct to continue, and they laugh harder.
“That’s a keen arrow you keep behind your teeth, Lady,” Jadeite finally manages, trying to suck in a lungful of air. He jumps off Daishin’s broad back and takes the reins from Rahi, leading the irascible horse back to the castle. “Speaking of. I’ve seen your beast, but not your bow. Are you as good as they say all Martians are?”
“I have some passing skill,” the Oracle answers, long eyelashes barely concealing the hard flint beneath.
They reach the stable, and Jadeite moves around Daishin’s side. By now, he’s quite sure the sometime Senshi can dismount herself, but he doesn’t exactly mind perpetuating the fiction.
“She rides, she shoots, and she admits to none of it, just to save a man’s pride. Your Council is quite right, I think - your life is too precious to chance a horse’s turned hoof.”
“What makes you think my Council tells me what to do?” Rahi throws back at him. She swings her other leg over the saddle, and Jadeite lifts her again, thumbs pushing up the heavy undersides of her breasts. Her fingers grasp at his shoulders, clandestine heat of her exhalation at his neck, and she slides down his length perhaps more slowly than either of them intend. They stand without moving, without enough air to take in between them. Jadeite wholly ignores her question, and his hushed breath in her hair poisons the afternoon quiet.
He has no idea what madness compels him to speak it.
“Your life is too precious to waste, wedded to the Fire - ” the said-unsaid is treacherous “ - and never to the flesh.”
Too far - a tremor, a hiss like a mouthful of snakes. Rahi shoves him away, and the general’s glad he can’t see the Oracle’s eyes ignite as she stalks out of the barracks with none of her usual grace. Just as she’s silhouetted in the bright doorway, she pauses without looking back.
“No will of mine but the Fire made you my guest, Lord Jadeite. Remember that.”
In her absence, Jadeite tugs at his blond curls, rubbing tiredly at his scalp. Instinct informs him that he’s sunk his teeth into something that will devour him, if he does not devour it first.
…
Lingering guilt makes Jadeite finally pull out his communicator that evening. Thankfully, Zoisite will probably just mock him for dutifully checking in and call it a night. When Kunzite’s face sharpens into focus instead, his planned greeting loses some of its eloquence. “Ah. Shit.”
His commander’s voice is like a glacial wall, and his words make Jadeite feel like he’s just walked into one. “Yes. I think that sums it up fairly well.”
Not one to be reduced to verbal dysentery, the Far Eastern king takes a second before responding. “Kunzite. You know I had - have my reasons.”
“I assume that you do, for your own wellbeing.” The (deserved, Jadeite admits privately) threat matches the one in Kunzite’s icy eyes. “You’ll share them with me upon your immediate return, Jadeite.”
“I’m not coming back. Not yet.” He cuts off whatever his increasingly dangerous-looking commander plans to say next. “I’ve made progress, and I’ll be damned if I let things backslide while I run home to report to you.”
“I should have known better than to send you. Your weakness is always the same - you mistake idiocy for independence.”
“Who else would you have sent?” Jadeite counters, and Kunzite’s knifelike irises sharpen. “Which of us has been to Mars before? What kingdom is descended from their god? And whose lands are overrun with their spies?”
“You came to your throne later in life, and you do not sit in it as securely as others do.” It’s like Kunzite’s powerful fist going straight to his gut; their commander misses nothing. “Perhaps I sent you to ease your own fears.”
“Bullshit. You sent me because you trust me.”
“Yes,” Kunzite agrees, without embellishment. “So do not misplace my trust, Jadeite.”
A pause, but they both sense the change and relax.
“Now. How have you managed to stay on Mars so long? The Prince was beginning to think you either imprisoned or dead.”
“I am the personal guest of the Oracle,” he informs him neutrally, trying to keep the jubilation from his voice. The corners of Kunzite’s lips twitch minutely at that, and Jadeite gives it up, grins wolfishly. “And that, Kunzite, is why you trust me.”
“I’ve always thought your faculty with women…remarkable. Even hags aren’t immune, it seems.”
Jadeite smoothly sidesteps that bait, promising himself to examine why later. “I think I’ve found one of the Senshi, Kunzite.”
Even his commander’s preternaturally impassive features slacken slightly - invisibly to anyone who doesn't know him well. “One of the Senshi on Mars, hm?” He watches Kunzite’s formidable trap of a mind set to prying at that one. “That would certainly explain the Oracle’s rumored closeness with the Moon princess.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Jadeite answers cryptically.
“You have been productive. Do you know why they’ve dispatched so many of their inhabitants to your kingdom?”
“Not yet, besides the obvious - that they blend in there, both in looks and language.”
“Zoisite has taken it upon himself to…interrogate a few of the immigrants, in your absence.” Kunzite’s countenance betrays no emotion at his use of this particular euphemism. “He’s told me that they don’t seem like spies. Or else they’re very good ones.”
Jadeite ponders that new piece of information. “Either way, it’s an intriguing phenomenon, and one that grows by the day. Too many ships leave this harbor. I intend to find out why.”
“I wish you luck. Report to me, or one of us, this time - or suffer my consequences.” Kunzite’s image on the screen instantly blinks out, before the golden general can amicably tell him to piss off.
…
The Far Eastern king has never once dreamed since he learned to bend his own power of illusion. And anyway, like all longtime soldiers, he sleeps deeply and uninterruptedly whenever he can.
But tonight, Jadeite dreams.
In a graveyard of cremated trees, he looks for his last living quarry. All lights are blown out, but there’s not even a pair of eyes remaining between the two of them, anyway. He encounters this sensation only in the ruined spaces she leaves behind. As though she’s robbed all his senses, so that he traces her absent shape and fills it wholly with his own deliria. He always gives like that, unreservedly, knowing that somewhere in this place that’s fallen out of time, her tangible, beating, red mystery awaits.
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Weird terms.
Daishin: great heart/mind/truth, based on the various sources I've read