It is the times like these that she wonders if the Silver Millennium falling was only the beginning of her punishment.
Her fingers grasp the sheets as she sits upright in bed, breathing hard with cold sweat slicking her skin. She doesn't cry—it has been so long even the Guardian of Time has lost track of it, but the tears haven't come in quite a while. However, she is close, perhaps dangerously so.
Those damned dreams. Every night they come, whispering, warning her of dangers she can do nothing about because they are past and have already wreaked destruction. They show her time in fast motion, eons condensed into heartbeats: The Senshi aging, collapsing into dust as crystal towers rise, linger and then fall. She sees the end of the world and yet….
And yet the Gates live on, and she with them. As long as Time itself exists, so must she. One day the moments she is living now will be distant memories, echoes of a past long forgotten. Even now as Setsuna closes her eyes, trying to recall the feel of Hotaru's arms around her or Michiru's hand on her own or the sound of Haruka's gentle teasing, she cannot; it's as if that time has already come and she is alone. The shadows in the room reach for her, and she chokes, half-sobbing and half-angry.
Then the door opens. Twin amethyst orbs burn in darkness, but they are gentle now, unlike the threatening gaze of long ago. Hotaru smiles softly; she alone understands what Setsuna suffers because as long as there has been a Pluto, there was a Saturn too. They are both victims of forever.
Yet their roles are reversed now, a fact Setsuna notes but doesn't particularly care about. When Hotaru was little she would run to her mother in the night, wanting protection from a storm or reassurances to help her sleep. But now Hotaru is the one comforting Setsuna as she slides under the covers and wraps her arms around the Keeper of the Gates. "It's all right," she murmurs, and her voice is a bit deeper and darker than normal—half Senshi and half human. "We're still here."
It is incredibly comforting to hold her daughter close, to feel how solid and warm and real she is. Setsuna presses her face into Hotaru's soft black hair and allows a few tears to slip from her eyes. Hotaru rests her head in the crook of Setsuna's neck; she is a young woman of sixteen now, but that doesn't mean it's any easier to face the nights alone. With a yawn, the violet eyes slide shut.
And Setsuna dreams again, but this time of another young woman with silver hair and blue eyes the color of the sky above, of marble pillars and a sky sprinkled with stars. And for the first time, as she dreams, she smiles.