Disclaimer: Sailor Moon, its characters and universe were created by Naoko Takeuchi. I'm merely a fan of the series, writing stories as an attempt to maintain sanity in a life occupied with working. I expect no profit from this. Except for the sanity, of course.

A.N.: Not part of my usual Sailor Moon Universe. I honestly have no idea where this came from, but I thought it up and wrote it down so quickly while taking a break from working on the latest chapter of Starlight Destiny and I was surprised by how much I liked it─a somewhat starker view of so many complicated feelings raging out in the Stars season with a few of my favorite characters. This takes place immediately after the end of episode 194.

Summary: Minako sees how much Seiya is hurting because of his feelings for Usagi, but she also knows her friend already has the great love of her life and a bright future pre-ordained. As she also struggles over her own rejection by the one she wants (who in turn also loves an unattainable princess from another planet), Minako reaches out to the lead singer of the Three Lights for a much needed conversation that takes them somewhere unexpected.

Something in the Rain

Chapter One: Dedication

"Am I not good enough?"

Seiya had said the words quietly, but even with the pouring rain they'd all heard it as clearly as if suddenly his voice were the only sound on that rooftop. As Usagi remained kneeled down on the rain-soaked floor in shock at what she heard and the other girls didn't quite know what to do, Minako sighed quietly to herself and decided she needed to take care of this newest development.

"Mako-chan, Ami-chan," she called them and they both looked at her, though the blonde remained looking forward at the duo under the rain. "Please get Usagi and take her home. If she stays out in this cold rain for long she'll catch a cold."

"Yes, you're right," Ami said nodding at once, her practical side taking over and her innate doctor nature in her also growing concerned at the scene before them.

Makoto followed her out into the rain and they both approached Usagi quietly. "Hun, come on," she said with warmth in her voice, as she reached a hand under her elbow and another supported her back.

Usagi blinked up and looked at the two of them. Still in quite a daze, she allowed Ami and Makoto to help her up and take her to the door leading down from the rooftop. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw Seiya had remained kneeling down in the rain, staring down at the floor. She wanted to say something to him, but she didn't quite know what. Her brain had freezed up and no words seemed adequate enough.

"Don't worry," Minako whispered in her ear as she passed by her in the doorway. "I'll take care of him. You go on home and get some rest."

Usagi smiled gratefully at her friend, the Leader of her Senshi, the one who always knew what to do in any situation. As Ami and Makoto led her down the steps, Minako kept on looking at Seiya, who had now stood up but was still out in the rain. His face had quite an anguished expression as he turned to look up at the dark skies, seemingly unmindful of the rain that was soaking through his hair and clothes.

"What are you going to do about this?" Rei asked Minako, even as she stayed behind while their friends took care of Usagi and as she looked at Seiya as well.

"Not sure yet," Minako admitted with a slight frown. "I can trust you to take care of her for tonight?"

"Of course," the brunette said, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "You don't even have to ask that."

"I know I don't," the blonde replied with a small smile. "But give her a few minutes before you barge in on her, will you? I think she does need some time alone to think."

Rei also turned to her with a smile. "Yeah, okay. Well, I'll catch up to her later then. And I'll leave you to take care of everything else."

Minako nodded seriously at her and Rei returned the gesture, looking out at Seiya one last time before she also mounted down the steps. Then it was just Minako and Seiya on that rooftop, neither moving as he stood in the rain looking up at the sky and she stood by the doorway, her back against it and her arms crossed over her chest as she watched him.

She knew he was probably waiting for her to go before he could leave, but she had no intention of doing so. She could wait out for as long as she needed to, but she was not leaving without talking to him. Of course, she understood he might also want a few moments to gather himself and that this probably wasn't a conversation he was looking forward to. Truth be told, it wasn't something she felt pleasure in either, but she felt that was her duty as a Senshi and moreover as a Leader.

It was quite some time before Seiya approached her, a frown between his eyebrows and a rather sheepish smile on his lips. Before he could say something disarmingly charming and deflect the conversation, Minako decided to take hold of it.

"We need to talk," she said as soon as he joined her by the door, out of the rain. This was Minako like Seiya had never seen before. The usual cheerful and rather goofy girl that he'd grown accustomed to was gone now, replaced by a serious and focused young woman, who somehow seemed older than her earthly years. She kept her arms crossed yet her serious countenance softened somewhat as she looked him up and down and realized just how thoroughly soaked he was. "I don't think it will be a quick conversation either, but I don't want you to stand here freezing half to death. How about you go home and get changed so we can meet later?"

"Well, I can imagine what you want to talk about," he said rather quietly, his eyes avoiding hers. "Are you busy now? You might as well just come back home with me and we can talk there."

She raised a surprised eyebrow at his words. On any other occasion being invited to visit the home of the Three Lights would have elicited a very different reaction─some ridiculous form of overreaction involving jumping up and down and screaming at the top of her lungs, most likely. Alas right now the seriousness of the situation didn't give her any cause for celebration.

"Won't Taiki and Yaten object to my presence there? Or your princess?" She asked in turn, as she thought it over. Tensions were running high these days and she didn't want them to be interrupted. And she definitely didn't need any more confrontations with Yaten after last time.

"They won't be home," Seiya explained. "They had errands to run on their own and we'd meet later on for rehearsal at the studio, so it's okay."

"Okay," she nodded, uncrossed her arms and simply started going down the stairs, Seiya trailing after her and feeling completely thrown. Not only had he basically confessed his feelings to Usagi, leaving the poor girl shell-shocked and having to deal with this on top of everything else, but this serious and business-like Minako was something he had not expected.

Unexpected, yet he was grateful for how she seemed to be dealing with all of this. She didn't say anything else on the way, the blonde merely sat quietly beside him in the car as she stared straight ahead. Even if this was rather unnerving, as he didn't think he'd ever saw her this quiet before, Seiya took the opportunity to gather himself and try to put some order on his thoughts. Try being the operative word in this case, as he was still reeling and working on autopilot by the time they walked in through the front door of the penthouse apartment he shared with his friends, fellow bandmates and Starlight Senshi.

"Can I get you something? Water, coffee?" He offered out of habit as he closed the door shut behind him.

"No, thanks," she said while shaking her head and looking around the place. Their apartment wasn't as oppullent as she'd expected by the level of famous they were. Granted, it was a big penthouse, with spacious rooms and some fine and expensive looking furniture, but nothing over the top.

"Well, help yourself to the kitchen in case you change your mind," he said, going down the hallway to his bedroom. "I'll be right back."

A quick hot shower and a change of clothes later, Seiya was surprised to exit the bathroom of his suite to find Minako standing in his bedroom in front of the window, her arms back to being crossed across her chest and a soft frown on her face. She saw him through the reflection on the window and turned around to face him.

"I'm sorry I ever let things get this far," she said without preamble.

Seiya was rather surprised at her words. This wasn't what he'd been expecting her to say right now. "What are you talking about?"

For her part, Minako threw him a rueful smile and carried on with what she wanted to say. "I knew you were interested in her. It's quite inevitable, I think it's just the way she is. Everybody loves Usagi─even enemies have fallen for her. And I didn't think you were serious and thought it would be good for her, as Mamoru went off to the USA. At least she wouldn't feel so lonely all the time, but I didn't think you'd fall this hard for her. Really, I should've known better." She finished, shaking her head to herself and looking at the floor.

"You talk as if this were your fault," Seiya frowned at her now.

"She's my responsibility," she looked sharply up at him. "Same difference."

This time he was the one to shake his head. "I knew what I was getting into. I know it's complicated and there are so many things going on and in the end it's quite impossible. But I can't help the way I feel."

Her blue eyes softened then. She hated being the one that had to do this, to break his heart and be here as it practically shattered at her feet. But at same time she didn't want to leave Usagi dealing with this on her own. It was obvious something else was happening and her princess─her friend─was at the end of her tether. Sighing deeply, Minako steered her thoughts back to what she'd come to do here. "I know. Believe me, I know exactly what that's like."

"You're talking about Yaten." Seiya's words were almost a question, but really a statement. He didn't know what exactly had happened that other day, but after participating as a judge in that idol contest Yaten had returned rambling about how the Earthen Senshi were irresponsible and stupid, especially the one that needed to be their Leader.

For some reason, after learning of their true identities Seiya had surmised Rei to be the Leader of the Earthen Senshi, so he was very confused to find out it was Minako instead. Right now he wasn't surprised at all that the blonde in front of him was their Leader. If only Yaten could see her now.

Minako looked sharply up at him again. This conversation was definitely not going where she had anticipated. Yet maybe if she empathised with him this may be easier to do. "Yeah. And I'm not blind, I know the one he truly loves is your Princess Kakyuu." Judging by his reaction to Princess Kakyuu and putting it together with the words Luna had said so many months ago, about Yaten singing for just one special lady, Minako had quickly realized the truth.

Seiya raised his eyebrows at her words, though by now he really should've known better than to be surprised. Sharp wit and great observation skills, indeed. If he took away the humor and exploding energy she always surrounded herself with (like an armour), this was the same Minako he had known all along. "He does," he admitted as he nodded at her. "However Princess Kakyuu also has her one true love already. He died when our planet was attacked, to protect her." He grimaced, as he thought back on that fateful day back in Kinmoku and the many people they'd lost.

Minako didn't miss his use of the word 'also' to describe Princess Kakyuu. It seemed he was more aware of the situation he was in than she had thought. "Humm. Then he's the same as the two of us," she uncrossed her arms and slowly walked over, sitting on the edge of the bed to be in front of him. "You know why I'm here. I don't know your history in details, but if you are Sailor Senshi like us, then you know protecting our Princess is our ultimate mission in life. Unlike Haruka and Michiru, I don't see you as enemies or dangerous people to us. I'd like nothing more than for us to work together to defeat Galaxia and bring peace back to everyone. But I need to protect her from everything, including from you and from herself."

"I would never cause her harm," Seiya protested readily with a concerned frown.

"But you are," Minako in turn retorted promptly. "You may not see this because you are blinded by your feelings for her, but this is hurting her. Her capacity for love knows no bounds and if you keep getting closer to her I don't know what could happen. And I can't let it happen. By all means, we should've never met. If Galaxia hadn't attacked your planet, you never would have come here, wreaking havoc with our world and our future."

"We didn't choose to come and bring this fight here," Seiya said, his temper flaring up at her words. "We followed our Princess, we needed to find her."

"You misunderstand me," Minako calmly raised her hands as a peaceful gesture. "I'm not talking about the enemy attacking us. I'm talking about you loving Usagi and her wanting to love you back."

Seiya felt as if all air had been knocked out of his lungs. This was brutal to a level he'd never expected from Minako. He stumbled a little as he took a step back and leaned against the wall.

"You're so earnest with your feelings and intentions," she continued, staring up into his blue eyes and unmindful of the impact she was causing on him. It was why she had come here, after all. "She can see that and deep inside she wants to love you back. But she can't. She already loves another and they've been through Hell, so many times. They deserve to be happy this time. We all do. Our very future depends on it. We've seen that future, we've visited it and lived it, and we'll fight for it with all we have."

"What do you mean, you've lived it?" His mind was reeling from all the information he was hearing, and the question had come out before he'd actually processed everything.

"Usagi and Mamoru will be Neo-Queen Serenity and King Endymion, in the future. They'll create an era of peace for Earth, and they'll have a daughter, Chibi-Usa," Minako explained, her voice quiet now but as firm as before. "A few years ago she needed our help and came to the past, to our time, so we could fight an enemy, and in the process we actually went to the future and saw this new Crystal Tokyo that will be created and that we'll protect. This is not some distant, possible future for us. This is very real, we've touched it with our very hands and none of us would ever give it up."

"How? I mean, how is that even possible?" Seiya still struggled to understand what she was telling him.

"Setsuna," Minako simply shrugged her shoulders, as if that answered everything. "As Sailor Pluto, she controls the Time Door and she let us pass through from one time to another, since it was an emergency."

"So you all live already knowing how your lives will turn out?" His mind boggled at the prospect. He'd thought nothing would ever top being a Senshi and then seeing his planet destroyed as he was forced to flee after his Princess, but the idea of visiting his future and knowing how it would be seemed somehow more bizarre than anything he'd lived so far.

"We don't know everything, but we know some of what's coming and where we're headed," Minako answered calmly, as if none of that fazed her at all. "You get used to it at some point."

He grew silent as he seemed to be taking in everything she'd said. The situation was way worse than Seiya had originally thought. Not only was he from another planet and he had his love for Princess Kakyuu and his duty as a Senshi to fulfill, but the girl he'd managed to fall in love with was a princess from another planet with a heavy duty on her shoulders of bringing this paradisiacal future to reality, having already met her future daughter and come to love her! How would he ever be able to compete with that?

"It sucks, but you got dealt an impossible hand," Minako added, seemingly reading his thoughts and thinking back to the words Ace had said so long ago about her own hand of luck at love─or lack thereof. "She already has the great love of her life and she misses him terribly. If you keep getting close to her and confusing her feelings, it will not end well. For none of us. And I'd rather you hear this from me instead of the way more drastic measures Haruka and Michiru would take if they hear what happened today."

Seiya still felt out of breath and he started nodding along at her words without conscious thought. Her words were sharp and clear-cut, slicing through his soul and reaching in to break his heart. Who would've guessed she could be this cold? He might have expected this from Ami, whose brilliant mind sometimes made her sound clinical and detached, or maybe from Rei if she'd been intent on causing harm. Yet this was Minako using honesty not for cruelty, but because she cared too much.

"I'm sorry for all I've said," Minako offered as she frowned in concern up at him, seeing as he'd become so quiet and rather unsettled as she finished her explanation─as she'd finished breaking his heart.

"No, you're not," he replied, but his tone wasn't accusatory. After a moment he smiled a bittersweet smile at her.

"No, I'm not," she admitted with a sigh. "It needed to be said. But I am sorry. Like I told you, I know what it's like. Feelings are generally already so complicated, and it's even worse when you live the life of a Sailor Senshi."

"This is all so messed up," Seiya agreed with an anguished tone now, running a hand over his face. "I wish things could be simpler, easier."

Minako hadn't planned on saying the next words, but they stumbled out of her mouth before she could actually think them through and rein in on her tongue. "They can be. For the two of us, at least for one night."

Seiya froze for a moment at what he heard. Slowly removing his hand from his face, he was startled to see her so vulnerable now when a moment ago she'd seemed so cool and in control, taking metaphorical punches to his gut with only her words. Blinking down at her, his blue eyes found hers. "What do you mean?"

"I know I'm not her, but did you know I'm her decoy?" Her smile was the bittersweet one now, yet her eyes never wavered from his as she kept on talking, words tumbling out of her mouth as calmly as before, but something in her tone had changed. There was something vulnerable in it now. "When she was a princess and we all lived in the Moon, in addition to being the Leader of her Guard, I'd also be her decoy whenever the situation called for it. I expect some day soon I'll have to do this again. I have the same blonde hair and blue eyes as her for this. That's also why I'm a good actress and why I got special items that the other girls don't have, like this disguise pen, so that I could be her, in case her life is ever in danger." He could see she had in her hand now a transformation pen, yet it was a different one than the one she used to become Sailor Venus.

"Minako…" Seiya wasn't sure if he was saying her name to get her to stop or beg her not to stop. He wanted to know what she would say next, but at same time he didn't want to hear it.

"For just one night, I can be her and I can be yours," she said, her voice barely above a whisper as she lifted up the pen and smiled at him. "If you'd have me."

There. She'd said it. They were both holding their breaths now, both afraid to break the quiet that had descended upon them so suddenly and oppressively, the sound of the falling rain outside the only one they could hear. Seiya wondered if she could hear his heart beating frantically in his chest or the sound of blood rushing in his ears.

"This is insane," he said, gulping down as his throat somehow had gone very dry. "Why would you do this?"

"I told her I would take care of you," she replied, and by the way her eyes shone up at him he could imagine her heart must have been beating as loudly as his.

Minako had surprised him so many times already yet it seemed she wasn't quite done. He wasn't sure if this was her being a Leader or being─what, exactly? He knew she was driven by her love and desire to protect the ones she loved, but this would be taking things to another level altogether─a somewhat twisted and messed up level.

"Am I not good enough?" She whispered, her eyes never leaving his.

Yet again her words hit him with a blow he hadn't expected. As she repeated back to him the very words he'd said earlier, he realized how absurd he must have sounded to Usagi back then. Was this her final lesson to him? Was this her way of twisting the knife after she'd made the deepest of cuts to his heart, all in the name of protecting her friend and princess and this great future they had seen?

He laughed suddenly, shaking his head and closing his eyes. The situation was now verging on the absurd, and with everything that had already happened this day he'd felt as if the tension was suddenly too much and his body chose to release some of the stress with a peal of laughter. But as he looked back at her he realized how she must have interpreted his laugh, as there were sudden tears swimming in her azure eyes.

After seeing her side as the Leader of the Senshi, Seiya could now see her under a completely different light. She was showing him yet another side of her. Not of the bright funny girl who made it her mission to surround her friends and loved ones with laughter and energy. Not of the Leader of the Senshi, always prepared and ready to act, strategizing and being three steps ahead, calling the shots and following through with the hard tasks. No, he suspected this was Minako being… Minako. Showing him at her most vulnerable, exposing her true self that she rarely let others see without covering herself with armours or masks.

"I guess not, huh." She showed him her bittersweet smile once more as a single tear overflowed and trailed down her cheek, yet her eyes kept firmly looking into his. She was braver than he'd imagined─he'd never known someone who could be so open and so vulnerable at same time while facing someone else head on. Minako then toyed with the transformation pen in her hand, twirling it between her fingers and she raised a single eyebrow back at him.

Something seemed to snap then. His whirlwind of raging emotions─frustration, heartbreak, sadness, confusion─gave way to a sudden sense of desire and empathy, as something inside him recognized something in her. They were kindred spirits and he felt connected to her in a way he'd never felt before, not to her or to anyone else.

"Don't," Seiya said hoarsely, closing the gap between them in a few strides, his hand wrapping around her wrist and stopping her from raising her hand that was holding the transformation pen any further. His blue eyes bore into hers and she stared up at him in alarm, as she hadn't anticipated his sudden movement. "Don't. You don't need to be her or anyone else. Just… be you."

He decided to stop thinking, to let go and let his body take control. Closing his eyes and the gap between them even further, his free hand caressed the curve of her jaw and neck and tilted her head up, as his lips came down and claimed hers to his. The softness of her lips sent a sudden shock down his spine and she gasped into his kiss as well, as if she'd felt the same spark. As he tasted her, an intense sense of desire filled him and he pressed her body closer to him, desperate for the contact.

Minako's free hand then snaked up his chest and grabbed his hair at the back of his neck. She responded to his kisses with equal fervour, pulling him flush against her as she also ached for his caresses, her desire for him creating wild butterflies in her stomach and pooling between her legs. She fell down on the bed, pulling him on top of her and the fingers of the hand that had been wrapped around her wrist now entwined between hers.

Seiya opened his eyes again and pulled slightly apart to see Minako under him, her golden hair fanned out over his bed, her breath coming out heavily from her parted, swollen lips and her blue eyes looking dazedly up at him. He asked a silent question with his eyes and her response was to snake one of her legs up the length of his body, pulling him closer to her once more and bringing his lips back to hers, as if his kisses and touches were oxygen that she desperately needed to survive.

The rain kept falling relentlessly, and as the room built up with their sudden passion and desire for each other the window fogged up and they couldn't hear the world outside any longer. For at least one night, they'd let go of everything else and find relief and solace in each other's arms.

A.N.: I've never written anything like this before, but it somehow felt right. Not all lovers get the fairytale love story.

References: Ace is a character in Codename Wa Sailor V─he loved her but became her enemy and she was forced to kill him. As he died, he read her love fortune saying her love would never be granted, for all eternity, so that she would never again have to choose between her love or her duty. Princess Kakyuu having a lover back in Kinmoku is mentioned in the Stars manga.