Endymion groaned and closed his eyes, wincing a little as the cold water sprayed from the shower head.
It was going to be one of those days. After a few centuries under his belt, the Co-Ruler of Crystal Tokyo, Consort to the Saviour of the World, formerly plain old Mamoru of Old Japan, His Royal Majesty, King Endymion could feel a bad day coming at a hundred paces.
Of course, the appointment with the Nihon ambassador had been a dead giveaway about how the day was going to turn out. Of all the things he hated about the job, playing little diplomatic games with the international community had to top the list.
Endymion sighed and held his hand under the soap dispenser. As he started scrubbing, the king mused about the predictability of man. Or, to be more specific, the predictability of the nation that he once belonged to.
About every two years, the government of Japan sent an... invitation, for want of a better word, to him and Serenity to take the Chrysanthemum Throne.
It first started after the Great Darkness, when Serenity - still Usagi back then - used the Silver Crystal to drive the Acolytes of Silence out of the solar system.
In gratitude, the government of Japan offered them the Empire. But they'd decided to settle for the city of Tokyo and some of the land around it.
They'd granted them the land, of course. Back then, they'd probably give Serenity anything she wanted. Most of the Tokyo citizens decided to stay, and arrangements were made for those who weren't comfortable with the idea of Neo-Queen Serenity and her merry band of senshi.
That was all ancient history now but the Japanese government never gave up on their initial offer.
Serenity thinks it's sweet, and that it was an beautiful example of how the Japanese spirit of gratitude and not wanting to be beholden to anyone.
In his more cynical days, which is about everyday now, Endymion secretly thinks that the Japanese just wanted all that power under their own form of control.
After the Black Moon War ended, the Japanese had redoubled their efforts, much to his dismay.
But Endymion had to admit, having all these to deal with did help the days pass a little faster.
Shaking of the excess water, Endymion stepped out of the shower and draped a towel around his hips.
Thinking of yet another diplomatic way to refuse the Japanese offer, Endymion walked into the Royal Bedroom. Serenity was still at her vanity table, brushing her hair.
As always, the sight of his wife brought a smile to Endymion's face, despite own morose thoughts.
He walked over and pressed a soft kiss to his wife's head.
"Endymion! Stop that, you're still wet!" the lovely woman protested with a silvery peal of laughter.
"Hmm," Endymion nibbled at his wife's ear, "You're the only good part of the day."
Usagi giggled a little and swiped playfully at the air in front of her much loved husband, "Now stop that. You're just trying to delay the audience with the Japanese ambassador, aren't you?"
Endymion winced at the reminder. Sighing a trifle theatrically, he began dressing.
"Gah, another day wasted by dancing around the Japanese. You'd think they'd get the hint by now," growled Endymion as he pulled on a dress shirt.
"Come on, love. It won't be that bad," his wife comforted him, "I thought the new one was a very nice man myself when he came to present his credentials. Matsushita, wasn't it?"
"Hm," grunted Endymion as he pulled on his pants.
Serenity looked over her shoulder at her husband. "Poor dear, you really don't like doing this, do you?" She asked, feeling faintly guilty about it.
"I know I should do this myself... maybe I could get Sally to put off the appointment if you want to postpone it. How about that?" she offered.
Endymion looked up and smiled at his wife. "No, it's all right. It's part of being a king to the most powerful woman in the world."
Serenity pulled a face, "I'd rather you said being husband to the most beautiful woman in the world."
"I thought you already knew that part," Endymion asked, feigning surprise.
"Well... yes. But I don't mind hearing it again..." Serenity teased back.
Endymion started towards Serenity, a certain glint in his eyes, "Well, if you want proof..." the words trailed off suggestively.
Serenity blushed prettily. "No!"
"Well, not now, anyway," She corrected herself. "We're late as it is. And we're having Ferrite to lunch today too. I've invited Ferrite over for a short visit."
Endymion stopped short in his tracks. "You've invited who?!"
Serenity blinked angelically, "Didn't I tell you?"
"No." Endymion said shortly. This was about as close as he gets to being angry with Serenity.
Serenity began to wheedle, "Now sweetheart, he is your cousin... sort of. Anyway, it's been ages since he was here and I just thought it'll be nice to give you two a chance to make up."
Endymion sighed and gave in to his wife a tad ungraciously, "We've never agreed. Oh.. All right. It's just a *short* visit, right?"
Serenity beamed and ran over to give her husband a hug. "It'll be wonderful, you'll see," she announced confidently as she snuggled in Endymion's strong arms.
Then wrinkling her nose a little, Serenity sniffed her husband and looked up into Endymion's blue eyes. "Darling, did you use my rose-scented bath soap again?"
Startled, Endymion raised a hand and sniffed carefully. "Blast! Must've used the wrong dispenser. I knew it was going to be one of those days...."
Serenity smiled reassuring, "Never mind, dear. You do have an affinity with roses after all. Maybe the ambassador and Ferrite wouldn't mind."
Her husband's response could have peeled paint off the walls.
Blinking in surprise, Serenity picked up her crystal sceptre and followed her husband out of the room even as he walked out, still mumbling about bad days and premonitions...
***
"How could he! How could he!" Ferrite muttered to himself as he flung open the doors to his room. Throwing off his old dress uniform, which had taken the best tailors weeks to produce before it came up to his exacting standards, the man stood in his dress shirt in the middle of the opulent room and pronounced to the air, "How could he do this to me!"
He had thought that Endymion had finally came to his senses when he received the invitation to spend some time with his liege and kinsman in the crystalline city. Instead, this!
He kicked violently at the chair, sending it spinning across the royal blue and gold room on well-oiled wheels and setting the little glass knick-knacks on the mantlepiece trembling.
"My, aren't we in a bit of a rage today," a cool, slightly amused voice remarked. Sakuya stood at the doorway, stopping the chair from its headlong path into the polished corridors of the palace.
"What do you want?" He gritted out from clenched teeth. It was bad enough that he had to take this *crap* from the one person in the world he had pledged his life to, he did not need a commentator as well.
"Nothing that can't wait," the younger Senshi from Jupiter shrugged, eyeing Ferrite speculatively. "Seriously, what's gotten into you? I thought they banned tantrums from Crystal Tokyo eons ago?"
A twitch jumped at Ferrite's forehead at the word 'tantrums', but he succeeded in throttling down the first thing to come to mind-- _that_ would have been unforgivable, and, in this power-laden environment, unwise-- and managed to answer in a nearly civilised manner. "I just so happened to have come from an audience from His Majesty, King Endymion," he informed her coldly.
"Ah, that explains it," The slim woman slid into the chair and idly spun herself around with one booted, elegant foot. "So, they finally told you, eh?"
"You mean you knew about this?!" Ferrite asked incredulously. He threw his hand up in disgust, "I don't believe this!" Sakuya stopped spinning. She came to a stop in front of Ferrite and gave a derisive snort, "They've been refusing for centuries now. Look
Ferrite, you are the only one still holding on to the dreams of a forgotten era. Give it up already, the Silver Millennium is over. Endymion is never going to take back his so-called inheritance and rule Earth.
"Please, even if you don't take into account the laws on lapsed rulings--- and a few thousand years is plenty lapsed-- what makes you think that Americas and the Asean and Chinese confederations are ever going to accept him?"
"That's exactly why he should accept the Japanese have been holding out for years!" He slammed his hand onto the desk. "Start with Japan, take what Africa's offering, then expand and consolidate-- that's the way Earth has done it for countless of hundreds of years!" He ended in a near shout.
Ferrite slumped against the desk, his initial anger quickly leaking away. He shook his head in bewilderment, "I don't get it. Why doesn't he want to claim back his heritage? He is the sole rightful heir to the whole bloody planet!
"He could bring it back to the way things were, I could help him! But what does he do? He closes his eyes and ears to his people and shuts himself up with Serenity in this gilded little coop and play house! My God, they even have matching scents for crying out loud!"
Sakuya raised a faintly surprised eyebrow, "They do?"
"Rose scented. Which is so ironic," Ferrite answered morosely.
Raking his hands furiously through his hair, Ferrite repeated, "I just don't get it."
"Well, what do you expect him to do? NO, don't answer that-- I've heard about it from you often enough, thank you," Sakuya forstalled Ferrite's ready reply.
"Ferrite, you are the only man on Earth right now who even knows what the Silver Millennium means. No one else remembers. Not even Endymion and the rest of the older senshi. All they have are snippets of memory and snatches of half-remembered knowledge. You don't build an empire but of that, much less try to replicate an entire planet from one man's memories."
"But that's why I keep reminding them! I tell them about the lives, all I know about the Fall, and their family-- and all they do is nod and smile and wait for me to go back where I came from!" Ferrite explained impatiently.
"They just sit there on their butts, doing nothing! And you moon base people aren't all that much better either." He muttered darkly, staring at Sakuya as she raised one well-groomed eyebrow at his diatribe.
"What is it that you're waiting for up there, anyway? Some cosmic sign?" He asked sarcastically.
"Don't go too far, iron man," Sakuya drawled, chips of ice flashing in her deep brown eyes. "You don't know everything." She got up gracefully and turned to leave.
Ferrite groaned, "Sakuya, wait."
She turned back and looked at Ferrite silently.
"That, that last remark was uncalled for. I have no right. I, I am sorry," Ferrite finished soberly. He sighed, "It just gets to me sometimes when all you guys seem to do is sit around. It's like, I'm the only one around who actually sees the urgency in things."
The look in Sakuya's eyes softened. Something like pity gleamed and Sakuya said softly, "I suppose you just aren't old enough to understand."
"What is that suppose to mean?" Ferrite asked, slightly annoyed. "I was around long enough to see the fall of the last great Millennium, and ever since then..." He trailed off, suddenly uncertain. Sakuya was shaking her head resignedly.
"You really don't get it, do you, Ferrite?" She laughed suddenly, with more than a tinge of bitterness. "For all your intelligence, and power and _memories_, you are a singularly stubborn, one-track minded man.
"I am?" Ferrite asked lightly. "I'd never have guessed."
Sakuya ignored him and continued, "To put it quite bluntly, compared to the rest of us, you have the lifespan of a bug, Ferrite."
"Gee, thanks."
"Shut up," she hissed. "It's easy enough for you to crack your whips and send everyone scurrying, and take about *urgency* when this life for you will be over in what? Thirty years? Forty? And how long before you recall your past in your next incarnation? Another twenty, twenty-five years?
"Thirty, actually," he interposed abruptly.
"You get to start afresh all over again, in a new life. You get to pack in at the end of the day, and get a decent childhood and a decent life."
Sakuya's voice dropped to a harsh whisper, "You and your freaking *urgency*. Have you ever wondered that perhaps the reason why everyone is waiting is because we want to make sure to get everything right the first time round. Did it ever occur to you that we will have to live for a very long time with the consequences of what we do?"
Sakuya's voice grew louder, "For that matter, have you ever considered what is left for us to do when we finish everything? Vicky could fly any plane that existed, and what Myuki doesn't know about magi-sci isn't worth mentioning. *I* get to prove the bloodly Scholes theory right every market cycle, while Jeanne's working her way through every book that ever existed!
"So don't talk to *me* about urgency and sitting around doing nothing to bring back *your* vaunted Silver Millennium!" Sakuya finished savagely. "I have been waiting for way longer than you and it makes me _sick_ to hear you complain!" She turned on her heel and left, leaving Ferrite staring at her fast vanishing back as she walked away.
"She really laid into you this time, didn't she?" a voice remarked conversationally. "But she's got a point, y'know."
Ferrite glowered into the air-- "Alright Puck, where are you?"
A little man dressed in green popped out of the thin air next to him in answer. "And a good morn to you too, sirrah Irons,"
"Don't you start," Ferrite warned. "I've had quite a day already, thank you very much."
"Tish, that's nothing, me laddie," the leprechauen discounted his warning lightly. "Oich, too be young again. So full of vim and vigour, y'know," he sighed broadly in a thick lilting brogue. "So filled with spirit."
"Alright! Quit harping on my youth. So, I don't live all that long!" Ferrite exclaimed exasperately. "Will everyone stop mentioning that! What's the difference? I mean, I still remember everything! Unlike some people I could mention," he ended darkly.
"What's the difference?" Puck signed, dropping the illusion. "Might as well explain to a fruit fly about the endurance of stone."
Ferrite rolled his eyes expressively and asked the heavens, "Why is everyone comparing me to bloody insects today?!"
"Haven't you been listening, boy?" Puck asked, almost gently. "You, and the rest of humanity *are* like insects. You don't live so long. You get hurt more easily. So when you are immortal and on the side of good, you chill. You tread more lightly, you don't shout so loud. When the decisions you make influence the world, you think it through carefully, because, mark my words, you will be around when the piper comes to collect his dues."
"Actually, come to think of it, it makes for rather good governance, when the policy-makers are still around to reap the fruits of their actions. But the thing is, everyone else all die in the end."
"They all die in the end." The moon cat finished soberly. "And no empire built can change that fact."
Puck padded away on soft paws, leaving Ferrite alone with his thoughts.
***
Ferrite bowed stiffly to his kinsman, "I am here to bid my leave, your majesties. I have," <Too many things to think about.> he thought grimly even as he mouthed polite inanities, "pressing matters to attend to, I'm sure your majesties would understand."
Serenity smiled, "Then we won't keep you from your work. Do come and visit us soon, Ferrite." Her husband beside her echoed her sentiments distantly.
<Damn you,> Ferrite thought bitterly. <It should be Endymion on the throne talking to me as liege, commanding me. Not you! The moon has no place on Earth!>
He looked up suddenly at his prince, anger and grief cutting twin lines across his brow. He took two steps closer to the throne. "Don't you care about Earth any more? Have you no longer any pride in your planet, kin?"
Serenity blinked in puzzlement. This wasn't in the script. "Ferrite," she began helplessly.
Ferrite ignored her, focusing so intensly on his kinsman that no one else might have existed in that moment. "Do you really think that living forever means closing yourself off to the world, that the people who may not *live* as long don't care or matter as much?" He spat.
<Is that why you shut yourself in this crystal cage, cousin?> His eyes showed his grief and accusation that the one man who should step forward would rather move back.
Endymion stared back at this figure, that claimed to be his sole surviving kin. The man who would guard his back, even while hurling accusations at him. He had no answers that would please him. In the end, he did not need to. For his wife, his beautiful, magnificient wife, answered for him.
"But Ferrite," Serenity protested softly, her expression looking for all in the world, like the young Usagi who didn't quite understand what was happening. "I thought, I thought that it's because we live forever, that we should care more?"
Ferrite stared at Serenity. Serenity looked to her husband. "Isn't that right, dear? I mean, we live so long, so we should care more, right?" She asked. Her husband's hand came up to enclose her hand in a firm grip.
Serenity smiled up to her love. "I wouldn't want to live as long, without you to love."
"Nor I you." He whispered back, smiling a fond smile at her.
For the first time, Ferrite understood his cousin's obession with Usagi. Silly and childish she may be, and Gods knows, she's not the brightest person around. But of all the people he has ever knowm in all his lifes, Tsukino Usagi, now Neo-Queen Serenity, is still only the person he had ever known with the clearest vision of what is most important in the end. Love.
He looked back up at his cousin, a wry smile conceding defeat to his queen. Anger was impossible in the face of that. Unspoken messages passed in a flurry between liege and kin. <Now you know> <Yes, she is a treasure> <You are still my friend> <My prince.>
In the end, Ferrite spoke out loud. "But I'm not going to stop nagging you about Earth, you know."
Endymion groaned. Serenity blinked and looked even more puzzled. And Ferrite bowed deeply and walked out through the great doors and into the rest of the world with a peaceful tread.
For now.
***
the end.