Chapter Five
Setsuna was waiting for them outside the front of the house when Haruka and Michiru arrived. It was just before dawn, and an ominous thick mist was swirling all over the street. The slam of their car doors as Haruka and Michiru got out of the vehicle echoed like a shutter falling on the last day of a dying world, and Setsuna was looking at them with eyes so remote it was almost like she didn't know who they were.
"Where's Taiki?" Haruka asked.
Something glinted in Setsuna's eyes, a flash of warmth and recognition that brought her back from the brink of wherever she'd been. "Seiya and Yaten called her about another lead. She left a little while ago."
If Setsuna was wondering how Haruka knew Taiki had been there, she gave no sign of it. "We should go inside," she said, and went into the house without looking back.
The three soldiers sat at the kitchen table with the lights on while the mist went billowing past the windows and the wall clock chipped away patiently at the immensity of time.
"I'm sorry for interrupting your weekend," Setsuna said quietly, her gaze focused on the mists rather than her fellow senshi. "I wasn't planning to do it like this. I wasn't planning to go today, but last night…I realised that if I stay even one more day, I'll end up staying forever." She turned her eyes towards them suddenly, giving Michiru a look that was almost sharp. "You saw something in your Mirror, didn't you?"
Michiru nodded. "I saw you, and the expression you had on your face was the exact same one you were wearing all those years ago when you sacrificed yourself to save Haruka and I from that helicopter crash. Setsuna – what is it you're planning to do? Where do you have to go? Why do you keep shutting us out? Don't you know we want to help you?"
Setsuna gave both of them a mirthless smile. "Michiru, Haruka, come on. What can either of you do? You knew all along this was only temporary. You know it's my destiny to go back there."
"Back to the Doors of Time?" Haruka said sharply, feeling like some opponent had just slipped past her defenses and landed a punch in her gut. "Why? Why do you have to go back there? You've been away for years and nothing terrible has happened. I know you have to watch over the Doors, but is it really necessary to be there constantly?"
"Time is with me the way the wind and the sea are with you and Michiru. I know when anything approaches the Doors, long before it gets there. But that's not the only reason I have for going there."
"Setsuna," said Michiru, "even if you feel duty-bound to go back there, our Princess isn't going to make you. Explain to her how hard it is to be there, constantly alone. She'll release you; you know she will. Especially if you can still watch over the Doors from Earth."
"It doesn't matter what the Princess will or won't do. The orders I have supersede hers and all others."
"Whose orders?" Haruka wanted to know.
Setsuna might not have heard the question, for all the attention she paid to it. "I didn't remember what it was like when I took this up last time. I remembered the promise, but not what awaited me. I actually went willingly." She laughed harshly. "What a fool. But I know better now. It will be the same in the future as it was in the past, and I…I just won't exist anymore."
She finished in a hopeless whisper.
"You do exist, Setsuna," Michiru insisted, taking her hand. "You'll always exist to us. We don't want you to go. And what about Hotaru? How can you not say goodbye to her?"
"I'll be in the future if Hotaru wants to find me at the Doors. She won't even have time to miss me."
"I still want to know whose orders," Haruka repeated in an ominous voice.
Setsuna sighed and Haruka could see the shadows of the long-lost Moon Kingdom in her eyes. "It was the last order Queen Serenity gave me before she died."
Haruka's anger flared before she could contain it. "I knew it!" she burst out. "Why are you still following her orders? You don't owe her anything, Setsuna. Especially not this. Not your life. We already lived in chains and died for her once."
Looking sad rather than angry, Setsuna said quietly, "I might agree with you, Haruka, if I didn't know how much the Queen's last sacrifice cost her."
She waited a beat, then went on, "she spent herself utterly in saving the souls of as many living beings as she could on all of our planets, on sending all of us forward into this world where we could be reborn free. She did it because she knew it was the right thing to do, even though it meant she had to give up the one thing she wanted more than anything – the chance to be reunited with her daughter. And that's why, right at the end, just before I was drawn to Saturn, she contacted me and asked me to watch over the Doors and to safeguard her daughter's future. It was her dying wish. And it's because she gave her life for all of us that I can't refuse to honour that request. Don't you see that?"
"But you can watch the Doors from here," said Michiru. "Why isn't that good enough?"
"Because that isn't what the Queen asked me to do." Setsuna stared down at her hand, still clasped in Michiru's. "The world back then; it needed a sacrifice to start again, and Saturn and Neptune and Uranus and Pluto were the ones who were chosen for that because we were the ones who were strong enough to bear it. I know it wasn't fair. I know it was a miserable end to a harsh existence. But didn't she make up for it by giving the two of you what you'd always wanted? The chance to be always at each other's sides?"
"And what reward did she give you, Setsuna?" Haruka asked. "Unending duty and loneliness?"
"Someone has to watch over the world," Setsuna whispered, and there was more misery in her eyes than Haruka could ever remember seeing.
Switching abruptly to an entirely different track, Michiru said, "did you meet Taiki in the other timeline? The one where you didn't remember what being at the Doors was like?"
"In that timeline everything was different. We never met the Starlights."
Setsuna's reply was short. She pulled free of Michiru's grasp and folded her hands in her lap; her expression extra inscrutable. It was rare for her to tell them things about the other timeline (or perhaps timelines? Haruka sometimes wondered whether there was more than one) she'd experienced before this one happened, and she probably didn't want to talk about Taiki either. That didn't put Michiru off.
"Have you even told her you're leaving?" she asked softly.
The look Setsuna gave her was answer enough.
"Setsuna," said Haruka reprovingly. "That's not fair to Taiki. You know it isn't."
"I've been lying to her from the start. I knew all along my time here was nearly up. What could I possibly say to make up for that?"
"The truth?" suggested Michiru.
"What? That I only got with her to have a last fling before leaving humanity behind forever? Wouldn't it be kinder not to tell her that?"
"Is that what you were doing with her?" Michiru said.
Sounding like she didn't know herself, Setsuna asked despairingly, "what else could it be?"
Haruka might have leapt in with the obvious at that point if Michiru hadn't touched her knee under the table, giving her a wordless request to hold off for a bit.
Letting out a breath instead, Haruka left her partner to it.
Circling around the subject, Michiru revealed to Setsuna, "I've been seeing you and Taiki in my Mirror lately. I saw the two of you last night."
"That was private, Michiru." Setsuna's voice sounded like Michiru had touched a raw wound, and her face was a strange, dull red that looked more like shame than embarrassment.
"The Mirror was showing me. I didn't go looking. And god, it's not like I sat there watching. But aren't you wondering why I'm seeing you and Taiki in the Mirror at all? Because I certainly am."
"Who knows? Maybe it means the Starlights are enemies after all."
"It's not showing me the Starlights. It's showing me the two of you. I'm being warned about something, and I don't think it's the danger of you and Taiki being together; I think it's the danger of you breaking up like this. Leaving is a mistake, Setsuna. I'm sure of it. It's going to have bad consequences for our world, and maybe Taiki's world as well."
Setsuna met Michiru's eyes stubbornly. "The timeline is the most peaceful it's ever been. That's why I'm going now. If there was danger, I'd stay. Taiki has no relevance to any of this."
"She's relevant because you've made her relevant. Ever since the first night you took her home. This isn't the Silver Millennium, and it's not some other past and it's not the future where you leaving has already happened. This is the present where you've chosen someone, and whatever you're telling yourself, Setsuna, you wouldn't have done that if you didn't feel something for her. Probably far more than you want to admit."
"Even if that's true, it doesn't change anything."
Haruka could just hear the strain of frustration beginning to enter Michiru's voice. "It changes things because it's never happened before. Things are different now. It will change the future because it's changed you."
"We may still be Outer Soldiers," Haruka added, "but we're not the same as we were back then. We can't be alone all the time. Remember when I tried it? I nearly lost my Talisman to an enemy. Hotaru, for goodness sakes, the once feared soldier of destruction, is involved with the future heir to the throne of Crystal Tokyo. We're living in a different world, Setsuna. One where the old rules don't apply. All you have to do is—"
"What, Haruka?" asked Setsuna icily. "Let go of my honour? Let go of the promise I made to our Queen?"
"Adapt, Setsuna. You need to adapt to the way things are now, and see your promise in light of that. I know it's harder for you; you didn't get to grow up in this world the way Michiru and I and everyone else did. You weren't reincarnated like we were…Not in this timeline, anyway. The Silver Millennium isn't a half forgotten dream to you. But you can't base your actions on the code of a dead world. It doesn't fit. Michiru's right. There'll be bad consequences if you do this."
"There were no bad consequences last time. It was the right thing to do. If I hadn't of been watching the Doors, who would have helped Sailor Moon and the others save Neo-Queen Serenity in the future?"
"This time is not last time," said Michiru. "Or any other time for that matter. Just focus on this reality for once. Aren't Haruka and I…Aren't we enough for you? Haven't you been happy here with us?"
Michiru was still holding onto her composure with an iron will, but it was going to break at any moment. Already there were tears starting to glisten in her eyes.
"Oh Michiru," whispered Setsuna. "I never thought I'd get to have anything like what I've shared with you and Haruka and Hotaru all these years. If I could – If there was a way—"
"We're telling you there is, but you're not going to listen to us, are you?"
Setsuna smiled sadly and shook her head.
"What about," Haruka knew she was casting desperately, but she tried anyway, aware of Michiru's hand finding hers under the table as she spoke, "what about that disturbance you mentioned before Christmas? Maybe there is something…"
"It's gone, Haruka, and it was only very minor to begin with."
Haruka didn't think she'd ever seen Setsuna look quite the way she did then, as she gazed at both her and Michiru with warmth and regret and longing overflowing, as her eyes lingered, and kept lingering, in a way that said she was implanting every detail of this moment into her memory because she knew she'd never see either of them again.
Softly, she said, "take care of each other, okay? You'll be the only two Outer Soldiers left in this time."
Haruka's voice was rough when she replied, and she scowled because if she didn't she knew the whirlwind of grief spinning faster and faster in her chest would come ripping right out of her. "Michiru and I can take care of each other just fine, but who's going to take care of you, Setsuna?"
Setsuna looked away, and she stood, and she was no longer Setsuna but Pluto, garnet rod in hand, and when she looked back at them the depth of sadness in her expression tore at Haruka's heart. It reminded her too much of her own dimly remembered lonely past, when all too often the vastness of space and the gleam of the distant stars were her only companions.
"I can't be Setsuna anymore. Her time is over. Please don't…" For a moment, Setsuna's voice nearly wobbled. "Please don't feel bad for me. I knew from the start it would be like this. I still wouldn't change it. Not a thing. Not one moment of what we've shared together in this world. I'll always be grateful I had this; that we finally got to be a family together."
As Haruka stumbled clumsily out of her chair, still feeling like this couldn't really be happening, she felt the rush of power that meant her own transformation was starting, and she could sense something nearby; an immense concentration of energy that was almost certainly another dimension opening next to their own.
There was the distant roaring of the ocean and the sharp smell of salt and Neptune beside her, almost leaping to her feet, shaking, fists nearly slamming into the table as Pluto gave them one last smile and turned her back and walked away.
"Haruka this is crazy," Michiru breathed, her hair falling forward as her shoulders slumped in agonized defeat.
"I know." Haruka leaned into Michiru, placing a gloved hand around her waist, wanting her warmth, needing to touch her as Pluto turning and walking away from them replayed itself in slow-motion in her mind, and she felt like she'd never get this moment out of her head; seeing Pluto's heavy green hair swaying behind her as she turned, the stubborn set of her shoulders, the white glow of her uniform and the black shine of her skirt, the pale tightness of her fingers as she gripped her staff.
And it was all made worse because some barely-acknowledged part of Haruka couldn't help but be glad it wasn't her; that it wasn't her losing Michiru and her family and her world; that she wasn't the one upon whom that fate had fallen.
"We can't stop her," Haruka whispered. "Not now. Maybe she'll realise later…"
Michiru gave a slight, painful nod. "We should go and say a proper goodbye to her. She can't go like this."
The glass doors at the back of the house that normally opened onto the garden right now showed the way to a swirling grey world of mist that was most certainly not part of any Earthly reality.
"Pluto!"
About to step over the threshold into the mists, Pluto stiffened and paused, turning almost unwillingly at Michiru's voice.
Launching herself into Pluto's arms with a sob, Michiru hugged her tightly. "We love you," she whispered fiercely. "Don't forget that."
"And—" Haruka's voice closed for a moment as she joined them. "You can come back at any time. You can," she insisted as Pluto gave her a sceptical look. "We'll always be here. We're family."
"I know." Pluto's eyes shimmered with unshed tears as she brushed a hand over Haruka's cheek, as she kissed Michiru. "I love both of you. So much." Then, slowly, inexorably, she began to extricate herself from their arms, leaving them holding onto each other as she stepped alone towards the mists.
Michiru curled into Haruka miserably, shaking with tears and shock, and Haruka barely heard her say, "this is so unfair to the others. Not even to say goodbye to them. Not even to Taiki."
No, it wasn't fair. It wasn't even right. Pluto shouldn't have done it like this. She shouldn't have done it at all, but she was perhaps being especially cruel to the woman whose heart she had so recently won. Pluto had convinced herself she could simply cut Taiki out and leave her behind, but Haruka knew from personal experience how doomed that strategy was to failure.
And it seemed like Michiru's Mirror knew it too.
Something more was going to come of this; had perhaps already been set in motion. And Pluto, who should have known that better than any of them, seemed to be the most oblivious of all.
"This is not the Sacred Crystal, Healer." Fighter said it disgustedly, turning the large glowing crystal she was holding this way and that in her hand. "It's just a lump of quartz. Is this what you dragged us down into this miserable hole for?"
Before Healer could reply, Eternal Sailor Moon materialized out of nowhere and grabbed Taiki's arm. "Sailor Star Maker – Come with me. Quickly."
They were gone almost instantly, leaving Healer and Fighter to stare at each other in consternation.
"Well that can't be good," Healer opined.
"Definitely not good," agreed Fighter, throwing down the glowing lump of quartz. "Let's get out of here. I have a feeling we're going to be needed.
"Sailor Pluto!"
Hearing the note of command in the Princess's voice, Pluto halted reluctantly on the threshold of what had once been her home and half-turned back, seeing Neptune and Uranus still looking lost in each other's arms, and beside them the obviously newly arrived Princess, blazing with indignation and determination.
Pluto's heart twisted oddly when she saw Sailor Star Maker was there too, hanging back uncertainly with confusion in her eyes.
"Pluto." The Princess spoke like she expected to be heeded. "I know what you're doing and you can't okay, you just can't. I'm ordering you not to leave."
"Leave?" echoed Star Maker, a pinched look of betrayal distorting her flawless features. "Setsuna, what is Sailor Moon talking about?"
Hearing her civilian name on her lover's lips stirred things in Pluto she couldn't afford to remember; being tangled naked with Taiki only hours before, being tempted to lose herself in the world Taiki had created for both of them with the skillful whispers of her poet's tongue.
"I'm sorry, Princess," Pluto said, deliberately ignoring Taiki's presence. "This time, the orders that I have outrank even yours. Letting me go is the only choice you have."
"And you weren't even going to say goodbye?" Stepping closer, Sailor Star Maker forced Pluto to acknowledge her, the steady gaze of her amethyst eyes as compelling and demanding as the call of the mist.
When Pluto tried to turn away, Star Maker caught her hand, not letting her go, her eyes still demanding an answer. And meanwhile, the longer they stood there, the more uncomfortably aware Pluto was becoming of Moon and Uranus and Neptune watching.
"Come with me," she finally murmured, pulling Star Maker after her into the grey swirling mists that had once been all she'd known.
The infinite paths through time and space welcomed Pluto like she'd never been away. She could feel the Doors so very close, forever tempting her with a million different ways to lose herself, in pasts and futures and the dream shadows of worlds that had never been more than a gleam in the eye of the galaxy.
But there was no place, perhaps, that held as much pathos for her as the ancient ruined Castle on the Moon, and that was where she went with Taiki, their boots kicking up silver dust and leaving footprints that would last longer than a human lifetime.
"Are we on Earth's Moon?" Star Maker asked, her voice hushed as she looked up at the great ravaged dome that had once lain at the heart of Queen Serenity's realm.
"There was a glittering kingdom of light here once," Pluto said softly, remembering halls filled with the laughter of those who had perished a thousand years ago. "And now there is only darkness, and silence. I failed in my duty to protect this world. I can't let the same thing happen again. That's why I have to leave. I have to go back to the Doors of Time. It's only from there I can watch. "
"And you knew this all along? Right from the beginning?"
"I told you, Taiki. On Christmas Day. I told you there was something I might have to do…"
"You made it sound like it was years in the future!" Star Maker snapped angrily. "Why was your Princess telling you not to go? And what about Uranus and Neptune? How can you just abandon them like that? I'd never do that to Fighter and Healer. It seems like you've just decided this yourself without consulting anyone."
"The others can't understand. Not even Uranus and Neptune. They hardly remember what it was like when we were nothing but warriors. It's different for me. I'm the one senshi left from that ancient time. I'm the only one who can do this."
"Pluto," Star Maker said it like a caress, reaching for Pluto with a gloved hand and looking into her eyes with an intensity of feeling Pluto could hardly bear to see, "you know what I said to you last night, don't you?"
Pluto flicked her eyes away and winced like she'd been stung. "I know. But I'm not free to answer."
"If you weren't free, why did you invite me into your bed in the first place?"
"I shouldn't have," Pluto whispered. "It was wrong. I'm sorry. I didn't expect any of this to happen."
"But it has. And you're just going to pretend that nothing has changed?"
Star Maker's words too closely echoed Michiru's.
Pulling free of Star Maker's grip, Pluto stared down at the blue sphere of Earth, knowing that down there her friends were grieving, mourning her loss, and knowing also that the place she'd occupied in the world had never really been hers to begin with. Her life as Setsuna was just something she'd borrowed, a costume to wear until her true purpose reasserted itself.
Without turning, she said to Star Maker, "on your world, you were born a senshi, weren't you? You weren't born human. You know there are some duties that can't be ignored. Promises that must be kept at any cost."
"Being born a senshi – coming from a world that has humans and senshi both – what I know is that the two are more closely connected than you think, Setsuna."
There was a quiet rebuke in Star Maker's voice, and an unspoken reminder of what she'd told Setsuna on Christmas Day. Setsuna gritted her teeth as Taiki – for a moment she couldn't think of her in any other way – drew close to her again, the scent of sweet olive a dangerous temptation offering Pluto a life she knew she could never have.
"You can't just cut part of yourself out," said Taiki with quiet certainty. "That's not how this works."
"The part of me that's dying was never really alive, Star Maker. Just like when you go back to Kinmoku, Taiki will cease to be."
Even without looking, she felt the surprise in the glance Star Maker cast her way. "Taiki exists on Kinmoku, Setsuna. She always has. She's a poet and a stargazer and a fighter."
Pluto started. "I thought…"
"You thought we didn't have civilian lives?"
"Well." Pluto smiled at her wryly. "None of us did before. I suppose I thought it was like that everywhere, and that what happened on Earth was an anomaly."
"We were born differently from the soldiers of Earth. We live differently. But we're still more than warriors. And so are you. You don't need to do this, Pluto. Your friends don't even want you to do it. Doesn't that tell you that maybe you should rethink this?"
"Why do you care so much?" said Pluto, rounding on Star Maker angrily because she was afraid if this went on for much longer her resolve might indeed be worn down. Why wouldn't those around her understand? Why couldn't they just let her go?
"Because I don't want to see anyone else die. I don't want to see the sadness on the faces of those left behind. I don't want the ghost of another person haunting me." Star Maker reached out, again, and Pluto had to use every ounce of strength she had not to respond to the entreaty in her voice. "I want you to stay here with me. If you didn't want this, if you didn't want me to fight for you, you should never have invited me to be your lover in the first place."
Being as distant and cold as she could, Pluto responded, "do you really think you can change anything for me when my own family couldn't? Do you think you're that special to me?"
Star Maker wasn't fooled. "If I wasn't special, you wouldn't have looked at me twice. You wouldn't have bothered. Not even if all you wanted was a one night stand." Holding a hand out in front of her wonderingly, she said, "after the ravages of Galaxia, I learned what it really means to have the power of making, Pluto. I recreated the stars in our sky, the sun and the moon that watch over us. I know better than anyone there's possibility everywhere, even when it seems hopeless. The future's not the fixed path you think it is."
"You would lecture me on the complexities of time?" Pluto laughed. "Every day I see a thousand possibilities branching off into a million different destinations. But sooner or later, there's only one ultimate end. Do you know why I know that? Because all my powers come from the world of the dead. No matter what path you take, sooner or later it will end in death. Everything dies. Stars, planets, galaxies. We stand upon the ruins of a dead world now."
"You and I are not dead yet, Setsuna, and nor are our feelings. Ending this because we might one day die makes no sense. I've told you that before."
"But why put myself through something that I know will one day lead to pain? What's the point of that?"
For the first time, there was something hard in Star Maker's voice. "If avoiding pain was your desire, it's probably too late. For both of us."
It hurt Pluto, yet it was relief to finally hear it, because she knew if Star Maker was talking to her like that it meant she was finally starting to win.
"We have things called nursery rhymes on Earth," she said softly, turning her eyes back to the planet she'd sworn to protect. "Old poems we tell to lull children into sleep. There's one about Babylon, an ancient city that stands in ruins now. It goes:
How many miles to Babylon?
Three score and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You may get there by candle-light.
"Only the candles burned out and we lost the way, and now Babylon is a place that can never be reached. But one day a new Silver Millennium will rise. It doesn't matter that it's a world I'll never see. As long as I find a way to make sure the others cross the long miles to Babylon…"
"Cutting yourself out of the world is not the best way to accomplish that, Pluto."
"It's not the best way. But it's the only way that's going to work. Human existence is just…Lost to me, Taiki. There's a great many things that have always been lost to me."
She kissed Taiki gently, one last time, touched her face and wondered at her warmth, at the deep glimmer of galaxies in her eyes. And then Pluto raised her staff and sent her back, ignoring the half-formed plea on her lips, ignoring the pain in her own heart.
The Doors were calling her and she had not far to go, and when she reached them, there was the silence that haunted her nightmares, and the grey half-world of the mists, and she took up her station and she was alone.
Michiru was crying on the couch and Haruka was sitting like a stunned fish beside her. Usagi stood at the glass doors leading into the garden, staring anxiously into the fast dissipating mists, and as she watched Star Maker came hurtling out of the greyness to land squarely on top of her.
Both of them slowly struggled upright.
"You couldn't stop her?" Usagi asked.
Star Maker shook her head, wondering how Usagi had even known about their relationship, and who else knew if she did.
"Haruka…Michiru…" Turning to her two remaining Outer Soldiers, Usagi looked at them with sorrow and compassion brimming in her eyes.
Haruka turned her head away sharply. Taiki could tell she was on the edge of tears herself, and that only her iron will was stopping it. "Could the two of you leave us alone for a bit?" she said hoarsely. "You know the way out."
Usagi was about to say something, but Taiki took her arm. "Of course." With Setsuna gone, Taiki had no right to stay here, no right to intrude into Haruka and Michiru's mourning. Though in some ways knowing those things, recognizing her own relative unimportance here, only made the hurt of her loss cut even deeper.
"I'm sorry," she whispered to Haruka and Michiru inadequately, and dragged Usagi out behind her.
It wasn't until she heard the front door slam that Haruka gave into her own tears.
The house around them was empty and far too quiet. Their family was gone.
"Haruka…" Michiru choked out, her voice wrung with grief.
"I know," Haruka replied softly, and did the only thing she could. She held her.
Author's Note: So yes, I have plans on where I'm going with this, but I've sort of run out of pre-written chapters now, and RL is starting to get busy again, so...This might require some patience. Sorry. I know I've left things on a bit of a cliffhanger.