If Setsuna was to be completely honest, she'd had her doubts about this. When Haruka and Michiru had first proposed it, she'd tried to talk them out of it. It couldn't be a good idea, she thought, to live with a couple so obviously in love; no way to work it so she wouldn't be a perpetual outsider, sliding silently from one room to the next trying not to get in the way.

Besides, the two of them must have had memories attached to the apartment they shared. Setsuna could understand that they might have preferred to bury some of them, that they must have cried and bled and despaired at times within those high-rise walls, but what about the rest? What about their feelings for each other, stirring like poppies blooming amongst the dead on the battlefield, touches and sighs in the night?

Why would they sweep away their precious past to embrace an almost stranger and a child who had nearly destroyed the world?

True, on her own, Setsuna had been struggling. Not with the practicalities of caring for Hotaru; she was hardly any trouble, but with…Well, with everything else.

With figuring out how to be Setsuna Meioh and actually live in this world.

Her cramped one bedroom apartment looked like a badly set stage. Setsuna knew that but she didn't know how to make it look like she lived here, like it was home.

That, perhaps, was the problem. Setsuna had never really had a home. No home but the Gates, and even after all this time she stubbornly resisted thinking of the Gates in those terms. She'd always had a superstitious fear that the day she accepted the Gates as home would be the same day that ensured she never got the chance to build any other.

So she did her best in this city of glass and concrete and steel and bought a cradle for baby Hotaru.

Its usefulness was short lived.

Coming home that night after the battle, dirt and purple bruises smeared on her skin, Setsuna considered again the vanishing space in her apartment and gave an apologetic smile to the small girl whose hand she held.

"I'm sorry, Hotaru. You'll have to sleep with me until I figure something out."

Hotaru titled her head, seeming to consider this deeply. "That's okay," she decided, sounding remarkably confident. "Can I have my bath now? I want my ducky."

Setsuna felt her eyes softening, and laughed a little in relief. "I think that can be arranged."

As Hotaru and her ducky played in the bath, Setsuna found a shirt and a pair of scissors and quickly cut it down into a kind of smock for Hotaru to wear. The drawer full of baby clothes had been another miscalculation.

A while later, clean and sleepy, Hotaru presented no arguments when Setsuna suggested it was bedtime. She looked tiny in the double bed, but the strangeness of the situation didn't seem to faze her.

"I won't be alone the whole night?" was the only query she made, just the merest tremor disturbing the timbre of her voice.

Leaning down to kiss her cheek, Setsuna whispered, "no Hotaru, you won't be. I promise."

"Uranus and Neptune…"

"What about them?" Setsuna hoped Hotaru hadn't felt the brief tremble of fear that went through her hands. Even when she expanded her awareness, Setsuna couldn't sense any danger, but Hotaru was proving to have remarkably strong powers. She might be able to feel something Setsuna was not yet aware of.

With a wise look that was peculiar on one so young, Hotaru patted Setsuna's hand. "It's okay," she whispered. "They're lonely, that's all. This city was never kind to them."

"They have each other, Hotaru. That's always been enough for them."

"But everything's changing," said Hotaru sleepily. "Can't you feel it? The wind of spring is sweeping the winter away…"

And maybe Hotaru was right. Looking out of the window later, Setsuna felt things stirring in her stronger than she had in a thousand years; dreams of a life not lived in solitude and silence; dreams of a world that knew she was here.

The night air was sharp, its scent piercing her with longing. For so long she'd wanted this, wanted to find again the only family she had. She'd had such a short taste of this last time, what it was like to live on the Earth, but the time at the Gates between then and now had seemed a more cruel eternity than the thousand years preceding.

It was after midnight when Setsuna finally got to bed. Hotaru should have been long asleep, and perhaps she had been, but she stirred as Setsuna settled onto the mattress and rolled towards her, cuddling into her arms.

"Mama," she murmured sleepily.

With a pang of regret, Setsuna reminded her, "Hotaru, I'm not—"

"I know. You're not the mama I used to have. She's not here anymore. But…Can I call you that?" Two violet eyes glimmered at Setsuna in the dark. "I miss having a mama."

This was only admitted with the near-silence of a shameful secret, and Setsuna, who as Sailor Pluto had wiped out entire armies at the Time Gate without a second thought, who had even once colluded to murder Hotaru herself, felt tears trickling from her eyes.

This poor girl. She'd had two lifetimes filled with nothing but death and pain and sadness, knowing nothing but people who hated and feared her and used her and wished for her destruction.

Setsuna wanted, she hoped, she dreamed, that this time round, it could finally start to change, that the miserable cycle that had bound all of them for so long was finally broken. She hoped that here, now, just by reaching out, just by starting with a hug, she could start to build something new, a better future for all of them.

"Okay Hotaru," she said quietly when she was sure she could keep control of her voice. "I can be a new mama for you. I'll look after you, always."

"Even if I turn into Saturn again?" Hotaru burrowed closer, voice soft and fearful.

"Even then." Setsuna placed a kiss on the top of Hotaru's head. "Especially then. I promise."

She felt Hotaru relax against her, and protective warmth bloomed in Setsuna's heart.

Haruka and Michiru made their proposal a few days later, awkwardly drinking tea in Setsuna's apartment while Hotaru sucked on a cookie nearly the size of her head. Setsuna had demurred from their offer politely, assuring them there was no need, that it wasn't a responsibility she expected anyone to take on with her.

She thought they were looking for assurances that they didn't need to get too involved, and was surprised in the coming days when they insisted, and kept insisting, successively demolishing all her arguments as to why it couldn't possibly be something they wanted.

But in the end, Hotaru was the one who really convinced her. "I told you, Setsuna-mama. Things are starting to change. And it's what you wanted, isn't it? Why are you afraid?"

Because I don't know how to do this, Setsuna wanted to say. I haven't been anyone but Pluto for an age.

Ridiculous things to want to say to a child.

With Hotaru's repeated urgings, with Haruka and Michiru's apparently serious, if baffling, commitment, Setsuna eventually gave in. Her and Haruka and Michiru, they'd bought a house together, choosing one with large bedrooms and plenty of living space for the four of them.

The arrangement of the rooms on the second floor was what made that particular house the winning choice over the competition. There was an extra large bedroom at one end, separated from two other bedrooms by a bathroom and another light, airy room that Michiru immediately pronounced her studio.

Setsuna said calmly it made sense for Haruka and Michiru to have the biggest bedroom since they'd be sharing, and didn't point out the benefits of its relatively isolated location, though all three of them were thinking about it.

Michiru innocently suggested with a room that size, she and Haruka could buy a bigger bed. Haruka coloured slightly and cleared her throat.

Setsuna wondered if she was going to regret this.

There was inevitably some awkwardness at first as they figured out each other's patterns, but it wasn't as bad as Setsuna expected. Hotaru's presence seemed to bind them and ease them all into being comfortable with each other, and as the days grew long and warm, Setsuna came to the astounding conclusion that Michiru and Haruka were actually starting to become her friends.

Coming home after a night at the Observatory, she'd often see Haruka arriving or departing for her morning run, and brief greetings gradually grew into elaborate discussions of hypothetical battle scenarios, senshi lore, power-ups, and, more obscurely on other days, the performance specs of the various luxury sports cars whose seductive air-brushed photographs graced the pages of various magazines Haruka got in the mail.

When Michiru had wandered down one morning to find Haruka extolling the virtues of her latest sports model wonder, she'd given Setsuna a sympathetic look and distracted Haruka with a light kiss, saying, "Setsuna's been working all night, Haruka. I think she wants to get to bed."

It struck Setsuna immediately that this was the first time Haruka and Michiru had kissed in front of her, or indeed, shown any affection in the shared areas of the house besides the most discreet of touches.

Haruka gave Setsuna a slightly leery look from the corner of her eye as if to see how she was taking it, and Setsuna quickly decided to examine the fascinating depths of her teacup.

"I am tired," she said, deciding to treat the moment as unremarkable. Any sort of well-meaning speech she might have made on how happy she was for Haruka and Michiru to be demonstrative of their feelings for each other was only going to turn into an embarrassing mess for all three of them.

"We'll see Hotaru gets breakfast when she comes down," said Michiru smoothly, and the matter didn't come up again, but Setsuna noticed that Haruka and Michiru relaxed more after that, snuggling, holding each other, exchanging kisses, when she and Hotaru were around. They were the happiest Setsuna had ever seen them, and she knew they didn't recall much about the past, but she wondered if unconsciously their hearts remembered being a billion miles apart in the vast reaches of space, and that was why their evident joy in being together shone so brightly.

Meanwhile, Hotaru slept with Setsuna a lot of nights, and occasionally with Haruka and Michiru. She seemed to have some elaborate private system she used to work out where she wanted to go (Who she most needed? Who most needed her?), and Michiru voiced Setsuna's own thoughts one day when she said, a rueful twist to her lips, "who could have imagined that the little girl we once tried to kill would end up drawing us all together like this, that she'd become our greatest comfort. That she'd help turn us into…A family."

She whispered the final words with a soft look in her eyes, glancing at Setsuna tentatively as if to check her reaction.

Setsuna smiled and covered Michiru's hand briefly with her own. "I know. Before, we never could have had something like this." She didn't have to specify what time she meant by before. "Sailor Moon, she…For all her flaws, I think she has the power to build a beautiful world. Kinder than before. A world where even people like us can find redemption."

Even though both Setsuna and Michiru had danced around this topic before, they'd never discussed it so directly. They were perhaps both of them too reticent for a conversation like this to be likely, but they were getting more comfortable with each other after the weeks of living together, and there was something about the peace of this afternoon, sitting together in the back garden drinking tea, that invited heretofore unexperienced intimacies.

And then it probably helped also that, unusually, they were alone, Haruka having taken Hotaru to play in a nearby park.

In response to Setsuna's comment, Michiru glanced away with a thoughtful look, considering the quiet beauty of trees and flowers and the small ornamental pond with its venerable goldfish who had been swimming in their small kingdom for many years.

"I always thought—" There was a catch in her voice. "That Haruka and I had been born into a destiny without hope. That we lived only to bring hope to others, never to find it for ourselves. It used to hurt so much. All the time. It never occurred to me – at all really – that I might be able to stand on behalf of myself as well; to create the kind of future I wanted for myself, for Haruka; for Hotaru, for you."

Finishing with a smile, Michiru looked back to Setsuna, and there were few times in her very long life that Setsuna could remember being looked at like that, as if she was actually seen. After a beat, Michiru added, "I'm glad we all moved in together in the end. I know you had your doubts, and I can understand why, but Haruka and I needed this. I think we all did. We needed to build something for ourselves other than fighting."

"I'm glad I did this too." Setsuna nearly stopped there; she didn't have to say more, and it was difficult for her to admit to anyone just what her life had been like before; how much it had taken from her, what it had turned her into. But that was what friendship was. Trusting someone enough to let those barriers down. This was what she'd come here for.

She took a breath. "Before, I'd never had a home. Never really had friends. Most of the world didn't know I existed, and I was supposed to make sure it stayed that way. It was lonely. I was lonely, for so, so long. I forgot what it was even like beyond the Gates. I forgot everything except bringing death to intruders.

"Being here with you and Haruka and Hotaru, all of that…The past…It just seems to fade away, and I don't feel lonely anymore, I feel…"

Setsuna felt a soft smile on her lips, saw tears in Michiru's eyes that reflected those in her own. "I feel warm," she whispered. "I feel…Happy."

"I know," said Michiru, her voice choked. "I know exactly what you mean."

The sudden slam of the front door broke the moment, and they soon heard Haruka calling, "Hello? Michiru? Setsuna?"

"In the back garden," Michiru called back, though Setsuna suspected that was more formality than necessity; Haruka and Michiru seemed to have a rather uncanny knack of almost always knowing where the other was.

Michiru's composure was already in place once more, and so was Setsuna's for that matter, but Michiru squeezed Setsuna's hand again briefly, the warm look in her eyes acknowledging the significance of the moment they'd shared.

Hotaru and Haruka both proved to be exceptionally muddy when they made their way out to the garden, laughter and giggles and mostly incomprehensible chatter announcing their approach.

"What on earth did you two get up to?" Michiru asked, raising her eyebrows when they appeared.

"We were being cars," said Hotaru proudly, crawling her way onto an empty seat with Haruka's help. There were a few cookies sitting on a plate in the middle of the table that Setsuna and Michiru had brought out; when Haruka gave her one Hotaru grasped it enthusiastically with a rather grubby hand.

"Haruka-papa was showing me how to drive on a slippery track, and said the mud was perfect." Hotaru appeared to struggle for a moment before admitting reluctantly, "I fell more than she did though."

Haruka ruffled Hotaru's hair, smiling fondly. "You did brilliantly for your first time, Hotaru. I'll make a pro-driver of you in no time."

As Setsuna listened attentively to Hotaru's animated account of her time as a race car, Haruka moved closer to Michiru and leaned down to kiss her cheek in greeting, ignoring Michiru's protest that she didn't want to risk mud spatters on her silk blouse.

"Like you've ever turned down a kiss from me," said Haruka, voice low and amused, stealing a quick kiss anyway.

Michiru huffed, doing her best to look affronted as Haruka took the last remaining chair. "Well, maybe not, but I seem to remember you turning down quite a few from me back in the day."

In the act of reaching for a cookie, Haruka paused, a flush creeping up her neck. Then she said, recovering smoothly, glancing at Michiru with a glimmer of warmth in her eyes, "that just means I have to kiss you even more now, doesn't it?"

Officially losing the battle not to smile, Michiru laughed, a sweet, musical sound. "Since you didn't drip mud on my clothes, perhaps I'll think about it later."

Haruka had brought out a pitcher of coconut water and several glasses. Setsuna poured some out for Hotaru, smiling quietly herself as she did so. She caught Haruka's eye as she held up the jug, but Haruka shook her head, pulling a chilled can of beer out of her pocket.

"I'm good. I already have something to go with my cookies."

How cookies and beer went together Setsuna didn't know, but she decided she probably didn't want to.

With a sigh, Haruka relaxed back in her chair and took a swing of beer. "It's a nice afternoon," she said lazily. She combed her fingers through her hair, trying to dislodge some of the mud, but it was done rather half-heartedly, as if she didn't really care.

Hotaru giggled. "You look funny, Haruka-papa."

"I bet I do," Haruka agreed with a smile. "But, you know, you're just as muddy as me. Baths will definitely be in order before dinner."

"Okay, but I need to go say hello to the King first," said Hotaru importantly, climbing out of her chair and making her way over to the goldfish pond. The King was the biggest and fattest and most orange of the goldfish. The first time Hotaru had seen him she'd declared he was the ruler of the watery pond world, and the two appeared to have since developed a strong affinity for each other.

Haruka laughed watching her. "She's so cute," she said fondly. "I hope…"

Haruka didn't finish the thought, but she didn't really have to. They all hoped many things; that the new threat wouldn't grow too quickly, that Hotaru wouldn't have to awaken too soon, that this rare peace could last for more than a fleeting moment.

For all that Haruka and Michiru had the appearance of being more carefree now, in some ways acting younger than when Setsuna first met them, she knew the burdens of responsibility still lurked at the back of their minds. It would never change that this life had taken their youth and their innocence, Hotaru's too. If she cared to think back that far, Setsuna knew it had taken her own as well, when she'd first been stationed at the Gates, when the Garnet Rod was twice as tall as her.

Michiru glanced at Setsuna with a sparkle in her eye that rather startled Setsuna given the maudlin direction her thoughts had drifted into. "Setsuna, would you mind watching Hotaru for a little while? That mud smeared all over Haruka's face is really starting to annoy me."

"You're going to come shower with me?" said Haruka, not sounding at all upset at the prospect.

"I was promised kisses," Michiru reminded her, elegantly rising from her seat.

Setsuna hid her amusement by pouring another cup of tea, assuring them she'd be happy to keep an eye on Hotaru.

Yes, this life had taken something – a great deal – from all of them, but perhaps Setsuna was wrong to not also take into account the strength of their resilience, their determination to rebuild the meaning of their destiny in this new life on Earth. Perhaps she should also remember that without the shared pain of the past, the bonds of sympathy and love and understanding they were all forging never could have run as deep.

Michiru politely thanked Setsuna; Haruka promised Hotaru she'd still supervise her bath before dinner, and after a bit the two went inside, doing their best not to make their departure too hasty, their eagerness too obvious. With a toddler in the house, Setsuna could understand that private moments must be somewhat harder to come by, and she had no objections to this particular opportunity being seized.

Hotaru made her way back to the table after Haruka and Michiru left, and when she held out her arms, Setsuna didn't hesitate to draw her into her lap. After all, clothes could be washed and the mud still clinging to Hotaru was mostly dry by now anyway.

"This was a good idea, wasn't it, Setsuna-mama?" Hotaru asked, snuggling against her happily.

"Getting covered in mud and pretending to be a race car? I suppose it makes a nice change from reading poetry, doesn't it?"

With a subdued giggle, Hotaru clarified, "you know that's not what I meant. I was talking about us. The four of us, being together."

"Yes, it was a good idea, Hotaru," Setsuna agreed quietly as the sun began to set, strands of mauve and pink spreading across the sky.

"And it will always be like this, won't it?"

Setsuna paused as she considered the question, the evening breeze cool against her skin, the air fragrant with the sweetness of spring blossoms.

"Of course," she decided, a soft smile on her lips, feeling Hotaru warm and safe in her arms.

"I thought so," murmured Hotaru, tiny arms reaching around Setsuna's waist as far as they could. "I knew things would be different this time around."

"You're a very smart girl," said Setsuna, stroking Hotaru's rather messy hair. "And…I'm glad you were right."

They sat in silence for a while, until Hotaru began to ask for stories of the stars as twilight stole over the garden. She shouldn't have; she knew quite well it wasn't long till dinner and bedtime, but since Haruka hadn't yet reappeared to give Hotaru her bath (which meant that she and Michiru were most likely still preoccupied), Setsuna indulged her. She told Hotaru stories not heard for a thousand years, the frozen silence of the Gates melting from her bones, finally beginning to believe her long servitude was over. Just as Hotaru had said everything was changing. It was a new millennium and they were soldiers of the new era, stepping out of the mists.