I dreamed of him only once.

It wasn't much of a dream, actually; it was more like a hallucination, and I was so overwrought at the time that I chalk most of it up to stress. It occurred during the final battle with Serenity, when the Queen had finally worked up enough courage to use her ginzusho, and tore our very realities from her plain of existence. Perhaps it was the transfer between worlds that made me see what I did; perhaps such an experience brought about a kind of transcendence, or maybe it was merely the illusions of a stressed mind, a mind overtaxed by the tearing and separation the sealing enforced. Indeed, the agony of the sealing probably had something to do with it--that kind of pain would make any man see visions.

It probably helped that Zoisite was in the vicinity during the experience; I probably focused on him, my one point of solidarity in a world suddenly gone mad. Indeed, I can still picture his face in that moment; the clear eyes in a face of utter calm, composed even as his skin slowly burnished to match the color of his copper curls. The flames surrounding us only heightened the surreal nature of his appearance; it made him seem otherworldly, as if nothing he experienced could truly touch him. Indeed, he didn't seem to notice the pain; he merely stared at me with unwavering eyes, and the blankness on his face never shifted. It chilled me; it was the same expression he had worn since the day I'd broken him, and even in such extremities, he continued to wear it.

We were dying; he was letting us die. I had all my strength focused against the ginzusho, trying my best to weaken it just sufficiently that it would seal instead of kill us. But I wasn't enough; I needed more power, and Zoisite refused to join with me. I screamed at him, commanding him to join my weave, but he didn't listen, or even seem to care. He looked at the ginzusho's rays as they ate into our skin, and he seemed glad of the experience.

The world seemed to darken; I felt exhaustion overcome me, and I was sure I was dead.

But then, a warm hand grabbed me, pulling me forth from my somnolence. I looked up in surprise, and was greeted with a familiar face; Zoisite smiled sunnily down at me, the blankness gone from his features. At first I was confused, I didn't understand that what I was seeing was not real, but I realized the truth quickly enough. The man smiling at me could not have been my Zoisite; he wasn't anything like the man who stood beside me in the 'real' world. His hair wasn't the correct length, and the scars I had given him were not in evidence. He stood proudly, and he was filled with a playful excitement. However, it was another detail that made me sure that this man was not the Fourth King: he was, to be frank, far too happy to see me. The real Zoisite had never looked at me with such bright eyes.

He drew me to my feet, and without another word, started dragging me after him. I didn't know where we were going; the world around me seemed obscured by an inky blackness, but when I started to protest, he looked over his shoulder and smiled reassuringly at me. It was such an unexpected gesture coming from his face; I think the shock alone silenced me. At any rate, my confusion grew so much that I stopped protesting, and my curiosity made me follow him without another disturbance.

I was soon disappointed. He merely continued walking into the darkness, his pace steady and unchanging; I grew bored with the action, and began examining the space around me. The darkness was suffocating; I could hardly see anything through its murky surface, but when I stared long enough, I sometimes caught glimpses of where we were going. The scenes I saw were uncomfortable ones; they made my skin crawl with tension, but when I tried to stop for a longer examination, Zoisite would tug me on, urging me to continue my journey. Once, I almost didn't listen to him, but he grabbed my shoulders and his eyes filled with shining tears as he stared at me; the expression was so full of hopeless pleading that I decided to continue on.

And it was a good thing I did, for suddenly, I saw two other figures in the distance, and they were not faring well. The man being led would not listen, he would stop every so often to look at what I gathered was forbidden knowledge; his screams punctuated the darkness at regular intervals. His guide didn't seem to care what happened, if the man would not listen to him, he merely shrugged, and watched as the other drove himself into deeper and deeper pains. After a while, they merely blinked out; the darkness swallowing them whole.

I tugged at my guide, wanting to ask him questions, and urged Zoisite to turn back to me; when he did, I immediately stiffened. He was no longer smiling; he wore the face of the other man's guide, and I realized that the other two figures hadn't disappeared; we had merely taken their places. Zoisite's face wore an expression that I recognized; it was his broken stare, a blank and disinterested visage.

"You see?" he whispered to me, his voice bland and uncaring. "You think you own me." He shook his head, and his copper curls were dull; everything about this man was on the verge of lifelessness. "But you don't," he continued softly. "Oh no, you don't..."

And the world erupted in flame. I screamed as my body collapsed, my horror growing as his uncaring features melted away before me. They boiled and ran unto my clothing; his form splashed across me; his burning blood spattering unto my flesh. His lifeless eyes were the last to go; they shifted gruesomely in his unsteady features, melting...

... melting into the face of my Zoisite, and I realized the flames I felt were merely Serenity's ginzusho, and I was merely exploding into my own dimention. The Fourth King had finally snapped out of his stupor; he had joined my weave and was pulling us away from the burning, killing crystal, the Dark Kingdom formed around us, and we both collapsed to the cold floor.

"You saved me," I choked out, not sure if I was surprised or not.

He merely shrugged, his face still the face of my obedient, broken servant.

"You know you own me, Kunzite-san," he told me quietly.