Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is copyright © 1992 Naoko Takeuchi / Kodansha, TOEI Animation. English Language Adaptation © 1995 DiC Entertainment. I'm just borrowing the characters and dialogue for a bit.

Narrated by the Senshi of Silence herself,

I Could Only Watch

By Ceila

Epilogue - Rebirth

Rated PG, Just in case

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A spirit is only free for a time before it returns to the place of it's birth or rebirth to take another turn on the wheel of fate. It was foolish hopes, and memories of better times, that led me to believe that after my final sacrifice I would be at rest. If only it were that simple. To fear your fate is to live a troubled existence and to accept it leads to a life with few choices of your own making. My life as Hotaru had been a forced fate, designed by Serenity, and molded by the darkness that forever chases the light.

It could have been seconds, or even an eternity, between that last blinding explosion of power and when I woke surrounded by mists. My aura glowed soft violet against the wisps of cloud as I sat looking around. Only once in the course of my lives had I seen a place such as this and then it had been a glimpse through a closing door. An odd chiming rang through the mists and a steady clicking grew closer with every beat. Still I sat motionless. I was only a spirit, what was there left for me to fear?

I tried to still my mind as the mists swirled around my small form growing thicker and whiter until I felt as though I had arrived at yet another plane of existence. Then a door sized opening appeared revealing a tall dark figure. I could tell it was a woman for she wore a skirt similar to my own fuku. Her long hair fell to her waist in a single curtain and in her hands was a staff taller than her own adult body. For an instant I froze. Even a ghost such as myself knows when a being who controls the very flow of existence is in their midst.

"Welcome," her whispered greeting echoed off the fog until it rang in my ears. "We've been waiting for you."

"What?" Of all the greetings I had expected in this place between times that was not it. "Who are you and who's we?"

Something atop the staff she held began to glow with a ruby light illuminating her facial features and my shock must have shown on my face for she smiled and shook her head as if nothing I could do would surprise her. "Saturn is your memory really so bad that you would not remember me?"

"Pluto? But you haven't changed a bit. The last time I saw you was." here I trailed off for I couldn't really remember ever seeing Pluto in person.

"Was when you had not yet inherited the legacy of Saturn, you were spying on your mother while I talked with her."

"You knew I was there?"

"I have seen everything that has been just as I know what will be in your future."

"Honestly Puu you can be so dark at times," grumbled another voice from the shadows behind the oldest senshi. "Let me in there."

"As you wish Princess," said Pluto as she stepped aside and let another woman, nearly her equal in height, step into the narrow window of a doorway.

"Hotaru!" squealed the woman as she dashed forward and fell to her knees in front of me. "Oh I'd hug you but I'd go right through you like this."

It took a moment before I registered that the woman with tears in her cinnamon eyes was a friend, my only friend, from a reality of painful memories. She was older now. Her sugar pink hair was spun up into ondongo pointed to imitate rabbit ears. She was dressed in a gown befitting her status but her smile and eyes were the same as the child I had befriended.

"Chibi Usa?" I asked in amazement as I placed a transparent lavender hand to her face. "Is this really you?"

"I'm me, but I'm called Usagi now. I kind of outgrew the Chibi part."

We shared a laugh at that. "How is it that you're here?"

"Puu's my buddy. She'd never keep me out, especially not now, I had to be here for you."

"It is my duty as the keeper of the gates to offer you a choice Senshi Saturn," said Pluto as she too stepped forward into the light. "You have bared your duty longer than most save myself and I offer you two paths."

I looked to Chibi, no Usagi, and then back to Pluto in confusion. Spirits were never given a choice. "Why?"

"By the selfless sacrifice of both yourself and Super Sailor Moon you have been granted a choice not given to many spirits that cross this path. Your own dying wish was for rest, an end to the journey of death and pain you have taken. Sailor Moon had her own wish that you, Hotaru, should not die but be born again and have a new chance on the same turn of the wheel," said Usagi as if she had been practicing that speech for quite some time.

I blinked in shock at my friends words. She sounded like another person entirely, until she started giggling at me that is. I shook my head and stuck my tong out at Usagi before turning to Pluto who despite her stoic demeanor had a smile in her eyes as she watched us. "What's the catch?" I asked her and in answer the garnet orb flared to life creating a small mirror of ruby energy.

"This is time as it was when you left it," said Pluto as the light cleared and showed a devastated part of Tokyo. Sailor Moon floated in the air, her hair and fuku falling in ribbons around her body, and in her arms a small blue bundle was cradled beneath her breast.

"Is that Mugen?"

"What's left of it," mumbled Usagi as she played with the end of one of he pigtails. "The only reason the world is still here is because of Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus."

"What?"

"The inner senshi placed a shield over the school when they detected Pharaoh 90's approach. Their goal was to trap him and let Sailor Moon destroy him.they would have failed," said Pluto as the mirror's images clouded over again and reformed in an even darker image. A planet covered in the darkness of Pharaoh 90. "Never doubt that your choice was correct Saturn."

I shivered despite my spectral form. Usagi smiled at me and then nodded to Pluto who shifted the image for a third time. Here was another world but this one was filled with such light that it shown as a gem among the stars. I gasped at the beauty of the planet before I recognized it as Earth.

"This is a future that has always been a possibility," said Usagi as she moved next to the shining image. "This is my home."

"Your choice here Saturn will change the path of these possible futures but will not erase either of them. You may choose to return as Sailor Moon has requested and start again as a child with your memories sealed away. Hotaru would be reborn and you, Saturn, would remain a [art of her until you are called again." Pluto touched the garnet mists and the image dispersed into the swirling gray of eternity.

"Or you may choose to come with me," said Usagi as she stepped closer smiling at me. "We're at peace in the future and you wouldn't have to fight but you would be Saturn and Hotaru would no longer exist."

I stood silent between my two companions. A choice of two very different lives was in my hands but somehow neither one was what I really wanted anymore. After so many years of being trapped inside Hotaru, becoming in essence a part of her own soul, I didn't want to see her die. But looking at Usagi I remembered my first friend, or had she been Hotaru's friend? I turned from both of them suddenly wrapping my arms around my ghostly self I stepped away from them both. I didn't want either choice. Why couldn't I have just been a normal spirit? Why were there so many complications that I never asked for in my life? Why couldn't I just be me?

I felt tears stinging my eyes, I hadn't thought ghosts could cry, but then maybe I wasn't really a ghost either. "I can't choose," I whispered as I stared at the white expanse that was around us. "I'm not Hotaru, she's human, but I'm not really Saturn anymore either." I turned back to Pluto and Usagi with spectral tears in my eyes. "I can't go back to either world now. Please let Hotaru live in the child Sailor Moon has saved but I can't go through being confined again. I need to be free for a while and rediscover who I am, as Saturn."

Pluto nodded in silent agreement but Usagi looked at me with her pleading eyes for just a moment longer. There was something like longing in them and it made me feel just a tad guilty and selfish at my choice. But even as Usagi looked away the mists began to clear and a gate of solid stone with great wooden doors emerged. The phases of the moon adorned each side and the symbols of the planets were worked into the pillars. I stared at the gate as it began to open and reveal a light from a shining city of crystal.

Usagi smiled and waved politely as she stepped through, her silken gown billowing out behind her, in a kind of farewell. I raised one of my hands to wave but she had turned from me and was gone before she could see the regret on my face. I looked down as the doors closed behind her. I felt guilty.

"Don't," said Pluto as she placed a hand on my transparent shoulder. "You have nothing to feel guilty about. The princess knew what you would choose. She knows that you have made the right decision even if it is the painful one for her."

"She was our friend, Hotaru's only friend."

"She still is but she knew even before she came here what you would chose. She has lived that turn of the wheel already and understands even if she looks hurt she isn't really."

"Will I ever see her again?"

"In the turn that you know as the present, no. The princess will be required to stay in her future until events fall into place that ensure her creation."

I blushed at the meaning of Pluto's words and quickly glanced down at the floor again. The swirling of the mists of time was comforting and I found myself suddenly curious as to what I could do with my new freedom. I though for a moment before lifting my feet and folding them under me while I floated in the air. I looked down and smiled.

"I suppose I'll have to endure your floating like that all the time now won't I?" questioned Pluto as she smiled slightly again.

"Not all the time," I paused and grinned before saying, "Puu."

The guardian of time stopped in mid stride, heaved a rather large sigh, and turned to face me with a rather intimidating stare. I grinned back at her assured that I had struck a nerve. "You may call me." she paused as I floated closer to her intimidating form and batted my eyes in a way I had once seen Chibi Usa use on Mamoru complete with a slightly pouting lower lip. "Fine but not in front of the other senshi I have a reputation to uphold."

"Thank you Puu!" I squealed as I gave her a misty purple hug. "So what exactly do you do here all day long anyway?"

"I guard the gate."

"And," I pried, "That can't be all you do Puu."

"I watch time and guard it from events that would prevent the future from happening."

"So you watch people."

"Yes."

"But you don't interact with them?"

"Not usually no," Pluto looked up at her garnet orb and another pool of mists formed between us and solidified into an image of the present. "I am only allowed to watch."

I stared transfixed as the man I had known as father was pushed in a wheelchair through the park holding a baby. As he moved closer I noticed that the baby had my eyes, Hotaru's purple eyes, stared back at me from that new body. Sailor Moon had given Hotaru and her father another chance at a life filled with hope. I smiled at the thought. Maybe life wouldn't be so bad this time and maybe, here with Pluto, I could enjoy just watching the world go by.

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Author's Note: The End! Look I finished one now I just need to get moving on A Merging of Hearts and everyone will be happy. Thank you again to everyone who read and or reviewed this work for me.

E-Mail the Author at k340029@excite.com