"As a final act, I will tell your love fortune… Your love… will never be granted, for all eternity. What's wrong with you? You should be happy at that. Now you can live the rest of your life never having to worry about the tortures of deciding between them. Your love or your duty… Your fate is to battle on."

In one of those rare moments Minako had told me the words spoken to her by Ace, as he clung to life by the simple graces of her hand grasping his wrist over the side of some building. In one of those rare moments, that sort of vulnerability that you would later look back upon with regret and remorse she told me quietly, out of range of anyone else. Oh sure the others were there, they were just asleep. For whatever reason, Minako had decided she just could not sleep and therefore, did not sleep.

Maybe it had been brought on by yet another passing comment that someone looked just like Makoto's old senpai. Or maybe it was another instance of Minako pining over some boy like a flavor of the week. Or was it Usagi, whining about how Mamoru was going to do this or that and only to be interrupted by whatever really it was. Regardless of how, she told me that and, like so many times before, I simply listened.

Don't get me wrong, Minako got on my nerves, a lot. Between her and Usagi, one of them was going to make me go prematurely gray if they kept it up. It was rare that it was just Minako and myself here at the shrine or anywhere really. It was bad enough when she had shown up at my school; fuck that was an affair that I still was coming to terms with. Whenever we were all studying or whatever nonsense that was, Minako and Usagi were the first to whine their way out of it.

Sometimes I liked to have a bet with myself to see which one would cave in first. I kept score of course, and maybe it was surprising, maybe it wasn't, but it was very much a deadlocked tie between them.

Somehow it surprised me and it didn't.

One of them would get into my manga, drawing the other in, and whatever Ami was droning on about would be lost under excited whispers and pointed fingers. Or it would be a magazine, some sort of publication full of glossy pictures of the latest trend that would be forgotten in a matter of weeks.

Thankfully they didn't get into all of my manga, though there was one of those rare times that it was just Minako for whatever reason that I caught her reading one of them. She simply looked up, tilted her head in that way, closed it and carefully put it away, gave me that half sort of smile, and left, telling me that she'd see me later.

Sometimes it made me wonder just how much she remembered.

It was ironic that, the sick joke that it was, that when she first appeared to us all, that she told us she hoped we would remember.

That was just it, I did. And I watched her flighty habits, her attempts to chase after the light so much.

I frowned many times. I kept track of those too, just like I kept track of her and her actions. She was flighty sure, but it was all a guise, hiding a strength that came out in those moments we needed it. She was our leader. Hardly the strongest, hardly the wisest, but we followed what she had to say when she had to say it and thus, we survived against things we should never have live through. She was a leader without ever telling us what to do. We just did so naturally, a familiar routine.

That's why I just listened and frowned whenever she would lament over the boy of the day, or get all misty-eyed over romantic gestures of love. That's why I never said anything outside of some snarky retort and roll of my eyes. I remained aloof because she wanted to chase after the light.

After a while though, it finally got to me. It got to me enough that I finally did something about it.

On another one of those very rare occasions that it was just Minako, and not just Minako outside on the steps while everyone else was inside. It was truly just Minako, on a summer night that wasn't overly humid. It was just Minako and it was just me.

"What are you all teary-eyed about now? Is it what's his face, the new actor in whatever over-done production?"

Minako sighed at me, shaking her head as she drew her legs up to her chest. It would last for just a moment; it was rare that Minako didn't wear a skirt and while she was flighty, she only teased unintentionally. Sure enough, she stretched her legs out, crossing them at the ankle as she leaned back on her hands, looking up at the growing twilight sky instead of me.

I could wait. I told myself that before, but this time it gnawed at me that she wasn't looking at me.

Me.

"No. It's not that. I told you … what he had said. That's my fate, but it doesn't make it any less soothing to a heart that already aches."

This isn't the Minako I was used to. This was a somehow older, mayhaps wiser one. This was the voice that had greeted us, what felt like eons ago. She already had my attention even when she didn't realize it.

"It doesn't … make it any easier." She trailed off, still not looking at me so maybe she didn't realize that I was perfectly aware of the tear that trailblazed its fate down her cheek.

I truly had enough.

"Minako."

"Yeah Rei?"

"Do you understand the power of belief? That if you believe something to be true, it must surely be?"

"What … what do you mean?"

She was looking at me now but it didn't stop me. "The things that Ace had told you, that your fate would always be to battle on. That you wouldn't know love."

"It's … it's true though. He said that-"

"Oh give over Minako for fuck's sake. You believed him and look at you. You whine and pine and act all sorts of discombobulated over something you think you can't even have. And for what purpose, to prove a man right?"

I had her rapt attention. Rarely ever did I use such unsavory language outloud, and certainly it was never around her. Further, never did I let my scorn of men be so vehemently displayed. Oh sure, I knew that irony but it was besides the point right now.

"The more you believe in something the more it will hold true to you."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this from you Rei… a Shinto Priestess, telling me about belief. Not to mention you attend a Catholic school." She was frowning at me now, but her eyes held a glimmer that I had longed to see for just as many eons.

"I get it, it's rather blasphemous and completely something I should never say. It is, however, the truth Minako." Without realizing it I was sitting all the more closer to her. Without really planning it I was in her personal space.

My fingertips trailed down her cheek, following the same path as that single tear had. What a lucky tear that was; yes I was jealous but I was touching her skin far longer than that tear had. I was proudly smug of that.

She didn't shy away. She just looked at me, unblinking, eyes of blue that held such clarity surely, she'd be a muse for the ages to come.

My muse.

"You believed in his words for so long, chasing after the light. For that, I'm thankful."

At her confusion I leaned in closer to her, my lips soft against her own. In my dreams, in my thoughts, I did this more times that I could ever count. I did not count them, for one should never count such perfection.

"Because you are the light. You shine so brightly, too brightly, to let blasphemy ever shadow you."

"Rei…" There were tears in her eyes again, but they were the shimmering kind that spoke of hope. "You… you… remember…?"

"I've remembered for a long time. I just had to wait for you to finally have enough of believing in something that isn't true."

The smile I was rewarded with could outrival the brightness of the sun. I expected it though; she is my light and I would do everything in my power to make sure she continued to shine.

A/N: Sometimes, you just get a phrase stuck in your head and things happen. I could likely have expanded this out more but eh, if you want to read words that's what Hindsight is for.