Chapter Eight

At the Doors, the years slid by quietly and Pluto watched and waited. She stood and she guarded and, as had happened before, as would happen again, every time she found herself back here, perhaps right up until the end of time that even she couldn't see, she felt herself beginning to disappear, fading into the mist, swallowed by destiny.

There were things she could have hung onto – the memories of her family and friends; she could have even watched them if she wanted to, taken comfort from knowing they were safe, that she was where she needed to be to guard the promised future woven long ago into the stars.

But somehow, that was a hollow comfort. What Pluto remembered was the pain and incomprehension she'd seen on the faces of Uranus and Neptune as they watched her go, and then something would stir in her heart akin to anger and despair, because she was beginning to wonder what the point was of having dominion over time and space when she wasn't even granted control over her own life.

Last time she'd done this, Pluto had believed. She'd believed it was the right thing to do, she'd believed she'd understand one day why it had been necessary. But all that had happened was that after a thousand years she'd been sent back to do it all over again, to relive finding and losing her family, and who knew how many more times it was going to be expected of her.

Watching over the Doors hadn't stopped the Death Busters. Something like that could happen again. No future could ever be guaranteed, no past was safe from the ravages of enemies. Pluto's task was impossible. And somewhere, deep down, she was beginning to resent always having to be the one who gave up the world. Always having to be the sacrifice.

Neptune had been right. Pluto had changed things this time around. She'd done something she'd never allowed herself to do before and let someone in. She'd forged a new path to escape the same weary cycle and then been too afraid to see where it would lead.

That was how Pluto's dreamland started. With nothing to do but ponder, with a million potential realities swirling just beyond the tip of her staff, she began to imagine. What if she'd said yes that night and let Taiki touch her. What if she hadn't left. What might have happened? Soon enough, Pluto had built up a whole world for herself and as time went on she even half forgot that it wasn't real.

Last time, Pluto had survived at the Doors by hollowing out everything in her that longed for anything else; this time she escaped, losing herself ever deeper in the life she once might have lived, if she'd only been brave enough to grasp it with her own two hands.

Sometimes she convinced herself that the mists rolled back and she was there – really there – in that other life; a world jostling with sound and texture and colour, a world of glimmering stars and soft beds and touches in the dark. A world filled with the warmth of someone sleeping beside her, whose hair slipped like silk between her fingers.

Pluto dreamed, and in those places where time passed, a thousand years went by.

She thought she might be imagining the footsteps at first. Two sets of light booted footfalls. Had it been that long already? Her eyes swept over the concealing mists, her staff was ready just in case.

But she knew who it was before she saw them, and against her will her breath hitched and tears sprang into her eyes, and then finally she was being held again, wrapped in a tight embrace by her long lost daughter from another life and her Small Lady who was small no longer but a princess fast growing into her power.

"Pluto," Saturn whispered, her voice muffled against Pluto's shoulder. "I only just heard from Uranus and Neptune in the past. Why did you do it? Why did you go?"

Drawing back, Pluto touched her daughter's face, trying to keep the sadness out of her smile. "I didn't have a choice. You know that."

"How long have you been here?" Small Lady asked, her eyes – so like her mother's now she was grown – filled with concern.

"A long time," Pluto answered. "But that doesn't matter. Tell me…Is all well in the thirtieth century?"

"Of course it is," said Saturn. "How could it not be with you watching over us all?"

"And…Kinmoku? Princess Kakyuu? The Starlights?"

Saturn and Small Lady exchanged an odd look. Gently placing her hand on Pluto's arm, Saturn said, "Setsuna-mama, don't you know? Kinmoku doesn't exist anymore. The Starlights did find the Crystal, but it was broken and couldn't be mended. Princess Kakyuu and Fighter and the others died with their planet. It's…It's very sad, but it was a long time ago for us. Didn't the Doors show you when it happened?"

Starting back, Pluto inadvertently shook her daughter off. Kinmoku and its people gone. Taiki dead. Her mind was blank with shock. That couldn't be. It couldn't have happened without her knowing; she who was mistress of space and time. But one quick look into the timestream confirmed it. Nothing was left except a small hole in the universe, slowly filling in as the memory of the planet and its people faded from the galaxy.

"Setsuna-mama, are you okay?" Saturn drew closer, her steps tentative, her brow furrowed.

Pluto grasped her staff more tightly and stood up straighter. "Of course. Worlds rise and fall all the time. I can't be expected to keep track of every single one. My duty is to protect the Earth. Nothing else. Now, I think that's enough visiting for today. I have things that need attending to."

She turned brusquely and let the mists take her, and when she was sure she was alone in her suspended reality she screamed once, her pain so strong the sound of it reverberated throughout time itself.

Up and down she paced, going nowhere, her feet lost from view, while a single word pounded into her head over and over again.

How.

How had she let this happen.

How had she become so distracted by fantastical might-have-beens that she hadn't even felt her lover die; hadn't noticed when Kinmoku winked out of existence.

Her breath was coming fast, and her blood was pumping audibly through her wounded heart, reminding her inescapably of that human part of herself she'd worked so hard to deny.

Her mind went back to Christmas Day, to the way Taiki's expression had hovered between uncertainty and distrust as she gave Setsuna that long, assessing look before saying quietly, "it wasn't what I lost. It was who."

And so much had made sense then. The sadness in Taiki's eyes, the ambivalence in her voice when she spoke of her world. The way she kissed Pluto sometimes, like there was something she was trying to forget.

Glancing outside of the window, gazing into a past that even Pluto couldn't see, Taiki had drawn in a few quick breaths, lips pressed tightly together, until she continued, "I never knew that senshi can die the way regular people do. Wasting away, fearful, lost in despair. That's the way my last lover died, long ago. She lost someone close to her, and that made her lose her faith in the world. Some days, I don't blame her. Without Seiya and Yaten…"

She'd stopped abruptly, pulling herself up like a runaway train, her eyes sliding nervously towards Setsuna.

Setsuna had drawn closer and placed a hand against the small of Taiki's back, feeling the tension in her body as she rubbed her thumb over the line of Taiki's spine.

Taiki released the breath she'd been holding. "The worst part is – I don't know what other way it could have gone down. Should she have stayed alive, just for the sake of her duty? That was what many said at the time. The prevailing opinion, was that she'd dishonoured her senshi calling. Sullied all of us. Done the improper thing. But did she? Should she have stayed alive, being miserable for the rest of her long life, fighting for a world she no longer believed in, that no longer brought her joy? How would that have worked? It would have been nothing better than a living death.

"And that's why – even now – I have trouble believing in an abstract notion of duty. I still have people I love, but if I lost them, would I want to keep fighting? I think I'd want the world to understand enough to let me go if I was in that much pain. But it didn't understand for her, and I suppose I've never quite forgiven my home planet for that."

The colour of Taiki's eyes deepened to the purple of night encroaching across the sky, and she touched Setsuna's cheek gently. "It was a long time ago, now. I never imagined that I'd—"

Leaning into Taiki's hand, Setsuna whispered, "I know. I never imagined this for myself either. I've always thought my duty was the only thing that mattered. There was never room for anything else. But now…I want this, Taiki. I want you."

And Pluto had seen the answering warmth in Taiki's eyes as the pain of the past faded, and maybe that had been the right path. The path both of them should have taken. Pluto had meant it then, that she wanted that life. She'd been filled with it, filled with the wanting of it, filled with possibility, with the lightness of happiness at being with her lover on Christmas night as the wind howled and flung sleet against the windows.

All of it only a memory now. A past that was long lost to her, just as so many pieces of her fractured life were.

Only Pluto was the mistress of time, and no past or future was ever truly closed to her. She wasn't meant to, of course. She was only allowed to watch, not to participate, not to change, except in the most dire of circumstances when the survival of Earth and the Princess hung in the balance.

For once, Pluto didn't care. She raised her staff and opened the Doors, and went back to the moment of Kinmoku's destruction.

Pluto emerged in what was left of the High Temple. The earth shook; ash filled the air. The sky was red and the planet was burning. Fighter's body lay half on top of Princess Kakyuu, both of them already covered in a dusting of ash. Healer's slight form lay a short distance away, along with a handful of dead civilians. There was no sign of Taiki, or anyone else alive or dead. Suddenly a pile of rubble that looked like it had fallen in from the roof flew apart and Taiki emerged from the debris, bloodied and mangled and only able to totter a few steps before she collapsed.

She stared at Pluto like she was seeing a ghost as Pluto knelt down beside her.

"Setsuna?" she whispered, reaching out a shaking hand, "are you really here?"

"I'm here," Pluto said softly, smiling tenderly and taking Taiki's hand.

Taiki looked wildly at the destruction around them, desperate hope springing into her eyes. "Can you do something? Can you change this?"

"Perhaps. But not right now. I need you to tell me where you found the Sacred Crystal."

"Why? It was broken."

"I know. But there must have been a time when it wasn't. And I can find it."

Her eyes wet with tears, Taiki gazed at her people, her dead friends, and her princess, lying like a crumpled flower. She began to speak, and the word might have been "Candlelight", but there was a great and terrible boom and the rock beneath them split open with a scream of agony and Taiki slipped from Pluto's grasp to disappear into a gaping hole filled with molten flame and Kinmoku crumbled and Pluto was back again at the Doors of Time, feeling the cool mist sliding against her skin.

Pluto's hand was still warm from Taiki's touch; the fear in her eyes as she fell was still stark and vivid in her mind. But now was not the time to mourn. Now was the time to change things so that Kinmoku and its people were never lost.

The Doors reared up above her, forbidding and disapproving, as if they already knew her plans. As soon as she'd set foot on Kinmoku, Pluto had known. This was not a past that would change easily, nor without consequence. And Pluto knew she would be the one to pay the price for that, because she always was.

She didn't care about the price, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to approach this with care. Several lifetimes ago, when both Pluto and the Queen had realised the end of the Silver Millennium was approaching, Pluto had wanted to go back in time then, too. "I can go back," she'd pleaded. "I can warn you of what's coming. We can still save the Kingdom."

Eyes sad, Serenity had shook her head. "It's already too late for that, Pluto. We are a little piece of the universe that has gone awry, and so it will destroy us to build something better. You could go back a million times and never find a way. This world has to end to make room for what will come afterwards. It's my own careless doing. I should have been a better Queen. I'm sorry."

First Pluto had made promises to her Queen, and now to Taiki. It may turn out that fulfilling the latter promise would cancel the former, but she hoped not. It was Pluto's responsibility to keep the promises she made to the dead. Who else but her would remember?

Finding the Crystal was not going to be an easy task. If that had been the case, Pluto would have been able to find it when the Starlights first came to Earth. But she had no knowledge of its whereabouts, no memory of it being brought to her planet. No ability to sense its presence.

All Taiki had told her was Candlelight. Candlelight. The way to Babylon. With a wave of her staff Pluto opened the Doors, but she didn't step through. She watched, patiently, as the tiny settlement of huts beside the Euphrates grew into a great and wondrous city, the largest in the ancient world, and then shrunk back again to ruins dreaming in the desert.

No one appeared to deliver a Crystal. With a slight frown, Pluto followed an eddy of sand as it blew across the fallen remnants of a wall. How had the Crystal gotten to Earth in the first place without her knowing about it? She should have felt it when it was brought there. Was that same protective force hiding it now, stopping her from feeling or even seeing its arrival?

Who would have the power to do that, and why?

But more importantly, how was Pluto going to search the timespan of an entire city? Taiki had never even told her what the Crystal looked like. She watched the city rise and fall again, and then once more, going slower each time.

Finally, something caught her eye. A glint of red hair that revealed itself for just a moment as a woman's hood partially slipped off her head. The shade was exactly the same as Princess Kakyuu's, but Pluto was sure that the figure wasn't her.

She was mingling with the throng outside the Hanging Gardens, built at the highest point of the city, and soon disappeared into one of the archways beneath the terraces. Grabbing an earth-coloured robe out of the mists to hide her uniform, Pluto hastily followed.

After a thousand years of nothingness, the world was almost overwhelming. The harsh desert sun stabbed painful light into her eyes, the voices of the wondering crowd jostling against her were harsh and loud in her ears. She could smell fresh water from the river on the breeze, and passed fragrant stalls piled high with dates and pomegranate seeds.

The gardens were beautiful; so much lush, peaceful green, a sweet oasis blooming in a barren land. As Pluto slipped beneath an archway, the crowd began to thin. It was cool and dim here beneath the terrace, and Pluto could feel something strange beginning to stir in her heart, a warmth that reminded her of those few brief months with Taiki.

A glimmer sprung from her chest, tiny and frail as candlelight. Pluto took a few steps and the brightness grew, illuminating a silvery likeness of her symbol on a large square stone set into the back wall. The other visitors strolling beneath the terrace paid no attention, apparently unable to see what was happening before them, still not noticing even as another stone slid back across the floor, revealing a flight of stairs disappearing down into the dark.

Someone, apparently, was expecting her.

Throwing her robe aside and willing her staff into her hand, Pluto stood at the head of the stairs. The light, the growing warmth in her chest, was coming from her star seed, and she could feel something in her core tugging her sharply towards whatever awaited in the bowels of Babylon.

The stone closed almost silently over her head once she was far enough down the stairs. As Pluto descended, she could feel Taiki's presence, making her star seed shine brighter and her chest tighten with pain. It wasn't during the present, nor the recent past, that Taiki would be here. It was the far off future Pluto was feeling, but even being in the same world, the same space, separated only by time that was not a barrier to Pluto as it was to others, was nearly enough to make Pluto whisper Taiki's name and expect to hear her answer.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Pluto followed a narrow rough-hewn passageway that she thought at first terminated in a dead end. Only by feeling carefully and following the glow of her star seed did she realise there was a tiny gap in one side of the rock, which she barely managed to squeeze through.

She emerged into a small round chamber, lit up by what looked like a million tiny fireflies floating through the air.

"Sailor Pluto, I'm so glad you're here."

The woman who smiled at Pluto was obviously one of Princess Kakyuu's forebears. Her hair was cropped close to her head and she was shorter than Kakyuu, her light build reminding Pluto more of Yaten. There was a quirk to her lips that suggested mischief and laughter.

What was very obviously the Sacred Crystal sat on a stone pedestal in the centre of the room, pulsing with a soft white light. Pluto repressed the urge to grab it and run.

"I'm here," she agreed, keeping her voice calm. "But I'm not sure why."

"You know who I am, don't you?"

"I'm guessing you must be the current Princess of Kinmoku. But what are you doing on Earth, and how do you know who I am?"

"I think what you really mean, is how did I get here with the Sacred Crystal without you knowing. My powers are strong enough to hide me, even from you. Just as Kakyuu will be able to hide in the future, from all the guardians of Earth and even her own senshi."

Pluto started at the mention of Kakyuu. This other Princess nodded.

"Yes. I know something of the future. That's why I'm here. To try and save it."

"Then why are you intending to hide the Sacred Crystal here? Its absence will have grievous consequences for your world in the future. Do you not realise that?"

The Princess's eyes were grave. "Of course I do. But sometimes, there are there certain moments in time that are very nearly set, and almost impossible to turn aside. I think you can understand that?"

"Yes," said Pluto, thinking of the Silver Millennium's downfall, "I can."

The Princess nodded.

"Our seers have been foretelling the destruction of Kinmoku, at a time far off in the future. Not just one seer. All of them, seeing it over and over." There was a look of horror in the Princess's eyes as she spoke, a look Pluto remembered all too well, for she had seen it long ago in Queen Serenity's eyes as she too faced the impending destruction of her kingdom.

"The two Crystals that protect our planet are very powerful. But sometime in the future, if they remain as they are, the very goodness of their energy is going to attract something powerful and evil."

"An enemy?"

"A deep irrational force of hatred that will want nothing more than to see us destroy ourselves, or each other."

"But if you know it's coming, you can plan against it," Pluto argued.

"Not this sort of enemy," said the Princess. "How does one fight the despair that creeps into the soul, the jealousy that causes murder, the paralyzing conviction that all is already lost?"

There was something here, thought Pluto, in the Princess's words. Some sense of a great and terrible shadow moving in the dark that again reminded her too much of the Silver Millennium's fall. It was like she was hearing a story she'd heard before; one repeated over and over all across the galaxy. A story that too often ended in empty star systems and dead worlds.

"Why do you think it will help to keep the Crystal here?" she asked.

With a smile, the Princess softly replied, "what better place to light a candle in the dark?"

Pluto started, wondering if the seers of this Princess's time had foreseen something of her last parting with Star Maker. She almost asked, there was something in the Princess's look that almost seemed to be challenging her to do so, but Pluto forced herself not to.

What mattered was figuring out how to save the Crystal, not what Kinmoku's seers might or might not have seen of her and Taiki.

"You shouldn't leave the Crystal here," Pluto warned. "By the time your Sailor Soldiers find it in the future, it's already been destroyed. Your world falls."

The Princess gave Pluto a grave look. "We have no choice but to leave it here. With only one Crystal, our world escapes detection. But not with two. We already know the Crystal will be broken if we leave it here. Our seers have told us that. But there will be a powerful Maker amongst those who will be sent on the quest to recover the Crystal in the future. She has the power to save us."

After a pause, the Princess continued, "she's the reason you're here. Your feelings for her is why you could find your way to this place. The possibility of what would happen between the two of you was another thread the seers could see shining brightly amongst all the possible futures."

Pluto wondered if some of those futures were the same ones she had lost herself within for so many years at the Doors; all that life she could have had which she'd turned away from for the sake of her duty.

"If Maker has the power to restore the Crystal, why didn't it happen? I saw Kinmoku's downfall with my own eyes."

"Perhaps you would know that better than I, Sailor Pluto. All I've seen are things that might happen."

That first night at Usagi's party, Pluto had seen the sadness of dead worlds lingering in Star Maker's eyes. She'd been drawn because she recognized in herself that loss, that yearning for what could never be regained. But the last night they'd spent together, there'd been something else in Maker's eyes. Hope. Bright, shining hope for a future she was just starting to imagine.

A future that Pluto had denied to both of them, turning away from the world of the living, and back to what she had always known. The world of the dead.

"A long time ago," said Pluto, "the world wasn't enough for someone Maker cared about. That same world condemned the person she loved for ending an existence which had become intolerable to her. And so the world wasn't enough for Maker either. She loved her Princess, her friends, but not the world. Not in her deepest heart. And the world is all that this Crystal understands. The world is what this Crystal was created to protect. But Maker…She can't bear to look at the world, because all she sees is what it took from her. There'd be no reason for the Crystal to respond."

"But perhaps she found something, Pluto. Maybe right here on Earth she found what she needed to enable her to regain her faith and find the power to restore the Crystal."

With an angry flash of her eyes, Pluto replied more harshly than she meant do, "what would you have me do? Abandon the promises I made to my Queen? To save a world that is nothing to do with me?"

In an imperious voice that left no doubt as to her rank, the Princes said, "If you were my soldier, I would ask you to leave this cage that you've built for yourself. But perhaps the new princess you serve has already asked you to do so. You've started down a new path, Pluto. Putting up bars between the yourself and the world will do nothing to stop the changes that have already begun. There is no going back."

"I can't leave the Doors," Pluto repeated, the treacherous stab of regret she felt finding its way into the tone of her words. "But…" She closed her eyes as her heart contracted painfully, and felt a tear sliding down her cheek. "I don't want Maker to die. I want her planet to have a future."

Sitting on its pedestal, the Crystal glimmered, its faceted surface reflecting back the shine of the star seed still shimmering at Pluto's breast. Pluto gripped her staff tighter, and caught the Princess's eye.

"Let me take the Crystal. I'll return it to Kinmoku just before it's too late…"

"Do you really think that the best course of action?"

Pluto only wished she could pretend she didn't understand what the Princess meant. What the Princess was asking of her was more than Pluto could do. To change the future by making one of those threads shine that she'd spent so long following at the Doors. A future of seeing Taiki smile, of seeing the sadness leave her eyes, of spending endless nights lost in her embrace.

Maker and Fighter and Healer were Kinmoku's guardians, and Pluto was not. She was charged with defending Earth's past and future, and she knew that straying from her mission to return the Crystal to Kinmoku would have its consequences.

"I'll tell Maker," Pluto whispered. "I'll tell her that I love her, when I take the Crystal back. That is the most I can promise."

Reaching out, Pluto picked up the glowing Crystal. The Princess didn't try to stop her. Her expression was impossible to read, leaving Pluto with no hint of whether she approved or not.

The Crystal glowed warm and soft in the palm of Pluto's hand, and she caught a scent similar to the sweet scent she'd sometimes smelled on Taiki's skin. She looked at the Princess one last time. "How do you know that this enemy won't find you again once the Crystal is returned?"

"It might," said the Princess.

"Then what is the good of any of this? Why take it away at all?"

"In the future, if that enemy finds us again, I hope we'll be strong enough to withstand it." The Princess almost chuckled. "That is what the seers tell me, anyway. They say our chances are much better in the future. But perhaps it all depends on how much strength we find within ourselves, to allow our spirits to grow."

There was no answer Pluto could think to give her. She was afraid to ask again if she could take the Crystal from its chamber, in case the Princess stopped her. With a flick of her staff, Pluto was back at the Doors again. She cradled the Crystal in her hand as gently as she would her lover's star seed.

The Doors opened at Pluto's command, and she prepared to step through. All around her she could feel the threads of reality shifting in response to the action she was about to take. But the Earth was safe. No harm would come to it if she changed Kinmoku's fate; she could see its future shining as brightly as her Princess's Silver Crystal.

Her own thread she didn't look at. There was nothing there worth seeing. But Maker she could see, still alive, still fighting, still with the chance of a future if Pluto stepped through the Doors and gave her what she should have all along.

Perhaps not what Kinmoku's Princess would have had her do, but it was as much as Pluto could do, without breaking her word.

The Crystal glowed with a soft mauve light that reminded her of Taiki's eyes. Pluto's heart tightened to think she would soon see her again – alive, not falling to her death on a crumbling world. For one last time perhaps Pluto could touch her, and bring a little of her warmth back to the cold emptiness of the Doors. Something real to stave off the loneliness. Something more powerful than the dreams she'd been starving on for the last thousand years.

"I can show them the way," she whispered. "The way to cross the years. The way to Babylon."