"You can't tell the doctors to go to hell, Haruka."

The young woman orderly with the slight scar merely scoffed in contempt. She and Meiou Setsuna exited the ward side by side. Without the watching nurses and doctors, the pretense of deference was no longer necessary. Kaiou Michiru waited for them, a book open in her hands as she attempted to read. When she heard Setsuna's voice she instantly dropped the book and moved to meet them. Without thought, her hand reached for Haruka's.

"How is she?"

"Well enough," Haruka said with a shrug. "She's Serenity right now."

"She's always Serenity," Setsuna reminded them, "it's just that those memories are at the forefront of her mind right now."

Haruka rolled her eyes at the repeated explanation and continued. "I'm not allowed to call her 'you highness'. Apparently, that might make her crazy. Crazier."

"Don't call her crazy," Michiru pleaded. "She's just…"

"Just what, love?" Haruka asked gently. "After what she lived through, after what she did, crazy must seem like an awfully safe place."

Setsuna shook her head as she turned her back on her partners, pacing up and down the corridor before them. Haruka and Michiru exchanged a pained glance but let her go. These were the times when the Time Keeper needed to move. She said it helped her think, but Haruka often thought she looked like a caged animal. Queen Serenity had not been kind when she had placed Sailor Pluto before the Gates of Time, and once more a wave of bitterness swept through Haruka.

A soft squeeze on her hand made her look to Michiru. Haruka wondered, sometimes, if things would have been different. If the heir to the Silver Millennium had been allowed to continue on as a normal girl, if their lives had connected somewhere else other than a meeting with a strange woman that had been no mere chance, would they have still been drawn together? Would Michiru still cling to her when their futures hung so perilously in the balance?

Would they have been friends and nothing more?

Partners?

Or would they have missed each other completely, passing one another on a street without ever thinking to glance left or right, to see something so precious so close?

"We can't do it."

Haruka's attention swung back to Setsuna as she fumbled to remember what her friend had been saying. A glance at Michiru showed a similar confusion. Occasionally, when pacing no longer helped, Setsuna would begin talking to herself.

This time, though, she turned sharply on her heel and stared at the other two Senshi.

We are the last, Haruka remembered yet again. Just three.

"We can't wake the Silent One."

Michiru jerked upright and stared in horror. "Were we considering waking her?"

"No. Yes. Perhaps."

"Well, which was it?" Haruka demanded. "Were you thinking about it or not?"

The other woman closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. Her lashes were wet. Haruka felt a jab of guilt in her chest. Setsuna so rarely cried.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this. Our Queen…our King…and Small Lady…"

This time Michiru turned her back. She held tightly to her lover's hand but refused to watch Setsuna anymore. The loss of the other Senshi, of friendships that could have been, left them all with a hollow ache. Setsuna's love for the man who could never have been her own cut like a knife. And then there was the agony of watching in utter helplessness as their charge, their duty, their queen dove headlong into madness to escape the horror of her own power.

But this pain, the grief for a child who had not died because she had never lived, somehow that carved into them the deepest.

"They never mention Luna or Artemis," Michiru suddenly spoke. "The doctors, the nurses, even her parents…they don't know."

Setsuna's shoulders shook slightly. She, at least, had some memories of the feline advisors, and perhaps of one more. Haruka remembered the name Diana whispered the first time Setsuna had collapsed in tears.

"We can't wake her," the oldest Senshi whispered again, "but I don't know what else to do. There are things coming for us, and Nemesis is still out there, and if Serenity remains the way she is she could end it all just as surely as Saturn. Perhaps even more thoroughly."

Encouraged by Setsuna's change in subject, Michiru turned back around and leaned into Haruka.

"Then what?" Michiru asked. "What do we do?"

"I don't…I don't know." Setsuna slumped into a cheap plastic chair, the kind found in the hallways of hospitals the world over. "I don't know what to do."

The lovers glanced at each other again. Haruka gave a small nod. They had discussed this before, when Setsuna was busy with the hospital, and a decision had been reached. It had just been a matter of timing.

"Setsuna," Michiru began slowly, "could you—?"

"Change the timeline?" the other woman interrupted. "Go back, move something here or there, and rewrite history?"

"Yes," Haruka agreed instantly. "Could you?"

"I could. And it could make it all so much worse."

"Worse than choosing between a queen gone completely off the deep end and a creature that can literally only rain down destruction?" Haruka shot back.

"What would you have me do?" Setsuna snapped. "Stop the Black Moon from revolting? Make Nemesis stop spinning? Or something little, like handing over one of the Chronos Keys to a child so she could go back in time for help?"

The couple shrugged almost in unison.

"That last idea has merit," Michiru mentioned.

"Except for one slight problem. It's too late."

"What do you mean?"

Setsuna slumped once more. "I cannot give something to a child who does not exist. I thought about it once, you know. Thought about giving Small Lady a key, in case of emergencies, but…No. That would be too much for a child, and too dangerous. So I withheld the key, and my power, and now…now there are only memories that are sliding further and further away."

The other two said nothing. There was nothing they could say.

Then the Time Keeper shook her head and focused on them. "Tomorrow I will offer my help to Naboru. I've given up on him ever coming to me. Through him we will do what we can for our queen, and then…then we will see what the future holds."