"Setsu-chan?" Ailan caught the barest whisper of movement out of the corner of her eyes, and she spun to face that patch of darkness. She felt an old power wash over her, a power she knew once, long ago, and her clothes changed to the white silk dress she wore as Queen Serenity, her long silver hair returning to the Royal hairstyle she had refused to wear as a human. The gold crescent moon returned to her forehead, and she was surrounded by the faintest silver aura, making her dismal surrounding a little easier to detect. A flash of green indicated that her lover was there, just out of reach. "Why did you follow me?" Ailan flinched from the pain in the voice and the age that Setsuna would let no one but her queen hear. She was tired and falling apart. "I came here to be alone, like I've always been since you sent me away." Ailan winched, tears in her eyes. Setsuna had never been angry at her before, even when she told the green-haired beauty that Pluto had to leave the Moon forever for their daughter's sake. "Setsuna, you know why I did what I did." Both times. "No I don't! I left because I love you more than my own life, I lived because you asked me to, but if you loved me you would have let me die for you. All of the other senshi died with the woman they loved! I was denied the right to die for my wife and my daughter. How could you be so cruel?" Ailan shook her head, Setsuna's pain worse than the shattering she felt inside at the end of the Silver Millennium when the ginzuishou took her life force to power itself. She knew that her lover resented having to give up the Moon King disguise even though they both agreed that it was the only way. "You don't understand, Setsu-chan," Ailan whispered, her voice choked with tears. "When you told me that our daughter would die, I realized what a fool I had been. Haruka was right all along, when she told me to teach Serenity how to fight, but I thought I could protect her. Even without you, I thought I could. But then you told me that it was hopeless, and I knew that my beautiful kingdom would fall, despite all we did to save it. When I realized that all of the senshi, the queens, the kings, their little children, even the powerless commoners would die, I panicked! I panicked, Setsuna, for the first time in my life! I knew that you would demand to fight, to protect our daughter and our kingdom as I would, and I knew that you would die. I couldn't allow that! I couldn't die knowing that even you would not escape. I love you to much to ask you to die with me. So I sent you away, as I always did when I was afraid." A tall green-haired senshi stepped out of the black mist and wiped the tears off Serenity's cheek. Those red eyes, always so cold and distant, softened in love, and Ailan's heart jumped. She had missed that look! "We were married for a year, Serenity, and you were very loving in public, telling me that you loved me all the time. But I always had this nagging fear that you didn't love me, you loved him, the man I pretended to be. Then you said that you loved me for the first time you told Setsuna that you cared, and I have always wondered if you would have said it if we were not about to die." She kissed Ailan's forehead, the moon glowing there, and the former queen shivered. "I was so stupid, Serenity. I should have known that you could never have been false. The others were all right, in their own ways; you sent me away because you love me, and I resented you for it for the exact same reason." "I didn't want you to face the centuries alone without telling you—the real you, not the king we invented to fool the kingdom and protect Serenity. I do love you, Setsuna, but it wasn't right for the queen to be more attached to one senshi than the other six. At least when you were the king I could pretend that I wasn't betraying the others." "I didn't know you felt that way," Setsuna whispered. "I'm so sorry, beloved. Our affair cost us more than either of us realized at the time. And, at times, when this place was darkest, knowing that you loved me for me made the loneliness just that much more bearable." She glanced at the Time Staff waiting patiently for her next command, and she sighed. "Would you have come to me, come to find me, in this time, in this life?" "In all fairness, Setsu, you weren't here very long before you died using that Time Stop power you're not supposed to use. Years ago, when I sensed you return to help Uranus and Neptune in their mission, I might have. Maybe I would just have looked at you and loved you, but I thought my chance was gone after that. Imagine my surprise when I felt you die for a second time a year later. You weren't reborn again, you just returned to this plane, and I knew the instant your Star Seed was taken. I mourned you then, my love, but when I turned around in that room a few minutes ago, I thought I was hallucinating. I wouldn't have believed that it was you if I just saw you, but you recognized Shou-chan and I knew it had to be you. I wanted to run, Setsu, as fast and as far as I could. But I love you, and that held me. I wouldn't have come, I wouldn't have disrupted your life and reminded you of an unhappy past, but destiny, as usual, had different plans for us." "You knew when I died? Ailan, that power usually belongs only to the Moon royals. You said you have no power left." "Only what I was born with, the power that makes me a senshi, but I don't have the power to become a senshi. Usagi has the ginzuishou, as I wished, and I'm just a mortal." Ailan pulled out of Setsuna's arms, glancing at her dress and the hairstyle she had abandoned as a teen when she regained her true memories. "I can't stay, Setsuna. I'm mortal now, and I'll die in less than a century. You'll live forever, or at least into my daughter's reign, and I can't make you lose me again. Serenity need Sailor Pluto, and I would just take you away from her." "No," Setsuna whispered. "You're mine, and no one and NOTHING is going to come between us! I will not lose you again! It's not fair." "It's not fair for you to fall in love with me all over again because I'll grow old and die and you'll be even more alone than you are now," Ailan sobbed, fists clenched at her sides. "You deserve better than that." "I loved a queen," she whispered, pulling the slender woman back into her arms. "Maybe Usagi can use the ginzuishou to make you live a long time, too, since you still have some power." At Ailan's muffled refusal, Setsuna kissed her bowed head and let her love wash over the younger woman. "Or maybe you could stay just for a little while? You could stay to make sure the six senshi princesses find happiness. That won't take until Crystal Tokyo, I assure you. Maybe you can stay long enough to see Usagi marry Mamoru-kun." Setsuna's gentle persuasion calmed Ailan, and she sighed as she looked up. "How do you do that, my love? Fine, but I'll only stay for a little while. Only a few months, at most. Then we'll both return to our lives and we won't try to contact each other ever again." "Okay." "Where did you learn that, anyway? Calming people was never your specialty." "Kazeko's grandson taught me." "What? Haruka and Michiru had a child?" "Yeah. When they combined their powers the night all of the senshi absorbed their stones, they apparently conceived a child in Michiru's womb. They didn't know until he healed Michiru in the final battle." "Haruka told Michiru to run, didn't she?" Setsuna paused, nodding. "Yeah, she did. I never thought about that before. I guess if I needed to know that you loved me, I should have looked more closely at those two. Michiru summoned me with the Space Sword and had me take the boy so she could die beside her lover. I carried him, birthed him, and raised him to be the protector of Earth, guardian of the Golden Crystal, and when he was old enough I took him back in time and installed Helios in Elysion. He's the only reason Earth survived for our daughter; if the Golden Crystal was left defenseless, Earth would have fallen long ago." "So it's a good thing you lived or no one would have been reborn. Destiny had a duty for you in the form of Michiru's child." "She wouldn't become her mother," Setsuna whispered. "I just became you. Thank you, for making me run." The two women embraced, the bond they had forged centuries ago beginning to return. When they pulled apart, the Garnet Orb glowed, reminding Setsuna that the Time Portal was not a refuge for lovers. "We should return to the girls; they're probably worried sick. I think we should return just in time for the wedding." She waved her hand, and her sailor fuku vanished, leaving the form-fitting tuxedo Ailan's assistants had finished before the two queens retreated to the Time Portal. Ailan looked at her queen dress and willed it to fade into the shirt and skirt she had worn to work on Michiru's wedding gown. "I'm not dressed for a wedding, love." "Easily remedied." Setsuna touched her orb and waved her free hand. "That's nice." She waved her hand through the mist, and a mirror formed. "Look." Ailan gasped at her full-length reflection. Her plain working dress had changed into an elegant, shimmering silver silk gown with tiny golden crescent moon designs decorating the skirt, and her shoes had become sandal-like silver high-heels, sparkling with tiny diamonds. Her long hair was curled on top of her head, hanging down only to her waist, one silver curl caressing her cheek. Chains of diamonds sparkled from the depths of her locks, twinkling even in the dim light of Setsuna's domain. Tears sparkled on her cheeks. "I've had a few centuries to learn some tricks. What do you think?" "I love it. Thank you." "Anything for my beloved queen." Setsuna held out her arm, which Ailan took, and touched her staff, commanding it to form a portal back to the mundane world. They stepped through the space/time disturbance, the Time Staff vanishing, and entered a room filled with excited, nervous senshi.
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