disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to Lian, Shmid & Vicky: for different reasons but mostly because I love you.
notes: yo, this was one of two ficathon entires. sup.

title: smooth like stone
summary: The queens of Magellan Castle are always called Aphrodite. — Minako/Kunzite.

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The princess who would eventually become Sailor Venus was born just as the sun began to sink over the crest of Magellan Castle. The Venusian solar day had only barely ended—but an heir had been born, and the people rejoiced.

She was golden-haired as her father, blue-eyed as her mother, and the most precious thing anyone had ever seen.

That night was dusky blue. The streets were lit bright with merry ropes of red lanterns, and along the main thoroughfares the ground was scattered with the royal family's signature flowers—the air was thick with pollen and the scent of them, baking pastries, sweet melting sugar caught on the breeze. Golden light and laughter spilled from open doorways, and people came and went as an entire planet celebrated.

While her people exalted her birth, the little princess slept safe in her mother's arms.

They named her Irina.

And she grew quickly.

A golden child with a golden disposition, Irina ran before she walked, sang before she spoke, and laughed before she cried. She got into everything; the cooks had to shoo her away from berry pies, the guards had to keep her from the edge of the palace, the launderers had to keep her from falling into tubs of soapy water, the stable master had to forbid her from the horses—she wanted to know everything.

She spent very much of her time on the floor of her father's study, staring up at the maps of the planet painted on the ceiling, eyes wide as the whole universe.

The lessons started soon after that.

Sword, whip, riding, politics—Irina was dangerously precocious. Her parents puffed with pride anytime anyone mentioned their daughter. The Silver Alliance looked to future.

With leaders like this, it gleamed with promise.

She wore a red bow in her hair and dashed through the palace, a streak of golden hair, orange dresses and bright-edged laughter. She was atmosphere, fresh air, chaos in the garden, and so lovely that no one could refuse her anything.

Irina was near-impossible to keep track of.

The people loved her desperately. No one person in the entirety of the Silver Alliance wished the princess of Venus of harm.

It was a time full of promise.

Then the King of the Moon was assassinated. It was a hundred hours after Irina's third birthday—by the Moon's calendar, she was almost seven years old, and the Venusian people were on the hangover of the party.

No one had any idea of what was to come.

Her father held her to his chest and cried into her hair. Irina didn't understand death. She patted his cheeks with her small hands and said "Don't cry, Daddy, don't cry."

It was a hundred hours after that the summons came.

The royal family sat in their private dining quarters. A messenger in Venusian livery slipped in and handed Irina's mother a tiny slip of paper. He bowed once, eyes sad, and then he left.

The colour drained out of Queen Aphrodite's face as she read the missive.

"Mama?" Irina said.

"What is it, love?"

The Queen looked between her husband and her daughter, and tried for a smile. It didn't work quite as well as she'd have liked it to, but her voice was steady when she spoke. "Darling, we've been summoned! Selene would like to host us at Silver Palace."

It was the beginning of the end.

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Venus stared from the window in Kunzite's private apartments out towards the sky in nothing but the shift she wore beneath her senshi uniform. Her eyes were hard and empty as diamond.

"My mother is dead," she said, very quietly. There was no emotion in her voice—Venus had long learned to control what she sounded like to other people, but he'd never bought her face when it was smooth like stone.

Kunzite stood up from his writing desk. He crossed the room in three long strides (she counted), and hovered an inch behind her. He did not touch her.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Venus laughed, but it was too soft and too helpless to have been genuine. She wrapped her arms around herself, but she did not shake nor did she cry. She simply stood there, nails digging into her skin.

"You're hurting yourself," Kunzite said, and his voice was so gentle that it made her chest ache. He carefully pulled her hands away from her arms. Her nails had left perfect red crescents against her skin, and he brushed his thumb across them.

The pain of it brought her back.

Venus sighed with her whole body. She sank against him with her face in the crook of his neck, the dark musky scent of sweat still clinging to his skin.

"What am I going to do?" she whispered into his shoulder. "I can't leave Serenity alone."

"Not even for your mother's funeral?"

Her lips twisted. "They've already buried my mother. They buried her when they buried my father—that woman was just a body."

"Ah," he said, as though that explained everything.

"My planet needs a named Queen, Kunzite," Venus said. "Venus cannot survive without a named Queen. Else she'll fall out of the sky and wake up in an ocean, born of blood and sea foam, just like the stories always said."

His eyes were eerie blank silver in the candlelight. "Those are your myths?"

"Not myths," Venus replied with a shrug. "Truths, changed a little for princesses who were too young for blood. They were my bedtime stories when I was young."

She looked at her hands, still resting against his chest. They were pale against the dark of his skin, so white as to be near translucent, but it was the gold on her nails that set her resolve.

"I have to go back," she said. "At least to name a successor. Serenity is the only cousin I have, and I'll die before I force her to take another crown."

She paused, and very carefully did not look him in the eye.

"Will you come with me?"

Kunzite blinked at her. "You are leaving your princess."

"Yes," Venus said.

"Will you return?"

"Yes," Venus said again. She did not hesitate. "It won't be for long. I hate to ask it of you, but I cannot—will not—take Serenity away from the Moon. And I…"

He nodded once. "You don't want to go alone."

"No."

And Venus knew that he understood—she would not ask the other senshi to accompany her, because that would leave Serenity far too unguarded. She would not alert her Mauian advisor, either. She would not risk her princess' safety for her own selfish desire for comfort.

Venus was not that weak.

But she was weak enough to ask him to go with her.

Kunzite watched the leader of the senshi swallow once, twice. Her jaw was tight, eyes haunted, fists clenched; she was the picture of worry, carnelian beauty and viciousness in harsh contrast. And he knew that she would not have asked had it not been absolutely necessary.

Venus did not like being in any person's debt.

Kunzite bowed his head. "I will speak to my prince."

The breath went out of her, and she sank into him a second time. She felt glass-fragile, transparent, and shaking just enough to cause concern. But the relief that radiated off her shoulders made up for all of it.

"Thank you," Venus murmured.

Kunzite said nothing, but he tightened his arms around her. Venus smiled into his skin, lips curving upwards, scalpel-sharp. She closed her eyes just to feel him breathe.

They stayed like that for some time.

But quiet contentment was not in Venus' nature, and she skittered away from him.

"I need to go. Serenity will be wondering where I've gotten to," Venus said.

He inclined his head.

Venus sighed again, and went to find her princess.

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"No, Serenity."

"But Irina—"

"Please don't call me that," Venus said. Her voice was achingly soft, and she touched the top of the Moon princess' head, gentle. "That hasn't been my name in a very long time, milady."

"Don't call me that!" Serenity stomped her foot. She looked up pleadingly at Venus. "Don't leave me here. Please don't leave me here. I've never been to Venus, before!"

"You won't be safe, Serenity. I won't be gone long."

"But Venus—"

"No, Serenity. What would your mother say?"

The girl snapped her mouth shut, forehead furrowed and expression gone dark. "That's not fair."

"Neither is my putting you in danger."

"…Are you coming back?"

Venus looped her arms around the smaller girl to pull her close. Kunzite looked away—there was something intensely private about the motion, and he felt he had no right to watch.

"I will never leave you, Serenity," Venus said.

"Promise?"

"I promised that a long time ago."

"Okay," Serenity said. She took a long, shuddering breath. "Okay. But don't—don't be gone too long. Okay?"

Venus smiled. "Okay."

She detangled herself from Serenity's too-tight grip, and stepped away. The click of her shoes against the marble of the Golden Palace's floor was loud in all their ears. Venus turned slow and graceful as a line of music.

She did not look back.

"Irina?" Kunzite asked when they were out of earshot. The Moon princess disappeared as they turned a corner, fading faster than smoke over Mare Serenitas.

The skin around Venus' eyes tightened.

"My childhood name," she explained. "Before I was Sailor Venus, I was Crown Princess Irina."

"Really."

"We all carry royal blood—Mars is technically still in line for her own throne," Venus averted her gaze. "Serenity is more important."

She didn't need to say that Serenity would always be more important.

That was more or less common knowledge. Kunzite looked down at the top of her golden head, and wondered if she was bitter at all—but no. The tiny, painfully affectionate little smile across her lips said different. Venus loved Serenity more than anything else in the entire galaxy.

Kunzite could not begrudge her that.

Intergalactic transport ships were expensive—especially from Terra. They walked down to the docks wrapped in travel cloaks. Venus kept her hood up, eyes shaded and hair tucked away. It would not do for Selene to know that the leader of her daughter's guard was picking up and running—not yet, anyway. The message would reach the Moon's ruler soon enough, but by then, she would be gone.

They paid the fare, and slipped inside.

Venus would settle her planet. She would put a regent on the throne—perhaps her aunt—and she would take her mother's name. She would be quiet and efficient and then she would return to the Moon in time for the yearly planetary peace talks.

She glanced at Kunzite out of the corner of her eye.

She was not going to thank him again.

Not aloud, anyway.

Venus tipped her head back, and very nearly smiled.

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fin.