Forgetting

1x4

He finds Mamoru in an parking garage near the Crown, late at night, footsteps trailing his with hunter's ferocity.

"Master--"

"I'm not taking you back there," Mamoru says quietly, without turning around. He cannot bear to see the despair in Nephrite's eyes, and he can hear it all too well in his voice.

There's no answer. Mamoru turns then, looks back at him, all tall and thin with clenched fists under the electric lights and the concrete. He's radiating rage, pain, other things.

"I don't," he says slowly, jaw tight, "remember you. Not well."

Mamoru stares at him, puzzled. "Zoisite didn't awaken you?"

"He tried. Didn't work." Nephrite lets out a sort of choking gasp that he might have taken as a sob from another man, and looks away. "I guess I'm a failure even at that."

Mamoru stares at the familiar face all screwed up with pain under thin, dark, wrong hair, and thinks--well, his memories aren't all there yet, aren't entirely in order, but there's the proud red-headed boy first swearing loyalty, first time in the uniform, and wrestling with Jadeite in the grass, crossing training swords with Kunzite, arguing with Zoisite over some little political matter and sputtering and collapsing exhausted and outwitted on the sofa until the music began, and naked in a cold shower all red down his back from Kunzite's whip and laughing his ass off, and singing drunk so off-key that Zoisite flinched until he fell buckle-kneed and horny into his master's lap, and pawing Jadeite's chest in the dim light of dawn, and, and--and thinks, he shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be like this.

His eyes are the wrong color.

Something in him snaps with the pain and defeat in the slump of Nephrite's shoulders, and he crosses the concrete in long strides and catches him by the front of the black rags he's been reduced to and--the garage is empty, good--backs him against the nearest pillar and whispers, "Fuck, at least remember this," and kisses him. He's half-surprised he hasn't transformed; Endymion's anger is boiling through him, Endymion's protective outrage, Endymion's lust. Nephrite is struggling, but he's the stronger by far, frightening strong, world-shaking strong, and Mamoru pins him against the concrete just by leaning against him and takes his face in his hands, the face of an ancient friend, so familiar it makes his gut twist; and Nephrite is kissing back even as he squirms, with devouring intensity, and Endymion wants to tear through anyone that would hurt him.

He slides a hand up Nephrite's shirt, feels the burning heat of him, the soft skin of his flat stomach with his muscles shifting under it as he pants for air--and there's a rough patch, a dead spot, and he lifts up the thin black shirt to see a jagged sword's-point scar to one side of his belly, and there would be another, he thought, on his back, where he'd stabbed himself through.

Endymion flares rage, and he grabs Nephrite, pulls him into a tight hug, and he's shaking in his arms.

"What did that bitch do to you?" he hears himself hiss.

"I..." Nephrite's voice is small, choking. "I failed her. I'm useless. I deserve--"

"No," he snaps, before Nephrite could even get the words out. "She set you up. She wasn't leading you properly, she wasn't taking care of you like I used to. You're not useless, you're a fine warrior. She set you up and she..."

"I don't remember you." And Endymion stops, in Mamoru's mind; the surge of his emotions and memories stops, just like that, cut to a standstill. Nephrite's voice rises, shaking with rage and loathing. "I don't remember being good! I don't remember being anything! And--and--I love her."

Mamoru closes his eyes in pain sharp like a blade as Nephrite knocks his hands away. The curse runs too deep, he thinks; it's hopeless if he still, still loves her after all this.

But then why, he thinks, does it hurt him so much to see me?