Title: A Lifetime Apart
Author: Angel Leviathan
Spoilers: The whole of PGSM.
Setting: The end of Act 11.
Disclaimer: PGSM, concept, characters, etc, aren't mine.
Notes: None.
The images stare back at her as she looks down at the book in her hands, the pretty pink book that she already knows is so typically Usagi. That would have been so typically Serenity. There they are. Her long lost friends, comrades, the loves of her life. They've found each other again and are so totally unaware of what they once were. So innocent it hurts. Minako sinks back down onto her hospital bed, still staring at the book. If she hadn't long ago forbidden herself to do so, she would have cried. But she can't. And she won't. Because if she allows herself to cry over them once, she might never stop. She is utterly alone, even with Artemis' company, forbidden to join her loved ones. She has to fight alone, she has to protect them, because of what she knows and they do not. She is supposed to be the strong one, she is supposed to be able to defend them from the dangers they are only just beginning to learn of. Soon she will begin the greatest performance of her life, take the name of her Princess Serenity and every word to them will become a lie. She has no choice.
She wants to run into their arms and cry like she was able to in the past life. She wants to laugh and smile and joke with them as she did before. They were a team with an adoring princess who loved them like they loved her. Now she is forbidden to be with them. She died with them, unable to protect them, and has to suffer further as they become closer and closer and she has to stray further and further from them. The pictures smile up at her and she cannot force her features to return the expression. Even if, one day, in the far future, she is able to become one of them, she will always be the outsider. The one who lied and schemed and wouldn't let herself live life with them. Simply because she held the title of 'leader' in the past life, the greater burden is hers. She did not give orders, did not reprimand, in the past. There was never a need. It was merely a title she held with honour. She was proud of them, proud to have such friends and soldiers with her, not proud to have permission to command them. Now it is more than a title. It is a chain that ties her to what used to be. Minako knows she will have to order them around, fight with them, to defend them from themselves. They aren't strong enough. Not yet. They haven't seen what she has seen, don't remember what she does. She would die for each one of them, not just her princess. But if her love for them shows, it will make her careless, so she shoves it aside and behaves in an unnecessarily sharp manner to stop herself falling into the trap. They can love and she cannot.
She is thankful that she most likely will not live to see their reactions to the lies she must tell. She hopes she will be strong enough to see her mission through to the end, to see them safe and her princess well, the danger banished for eternity. Minako sometimes sees her illness as a blessing in disguise, for it keeps her further from them, means she cannot make ties with them that she might otherwise. She has a legitimate reason to run and to be secretive, not reasons from the past life that they could argue about and discard. If she let herself become close to them, she would not be able to accept what is going to happen to her. She would not want to say goodbye as much as she does not want to hurt them with the truth.
She envies them. For they are able to be entirely themselves and she is forever destined to be an actress. A song, a fake smile, another lie. She calls herself Aino Minako, but she is forever Venus. Lost in the past, fighting for a future she will not be a part of. She envies the moments of laughter, even the moments of anger, that they are able to share. She must always be distant, watchful, ensure that they become the soldiers they once were. And train her princess to become one of her own Senshi. She cannot give up. She can't break down, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much her body demands she give in and let the inevitable happen. She has to go on. Because she has to know that she loved them enough to make sure they survived, if only because she can never show that love to them.
Minako flicks back to the page she signed. They are on the cover, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Serenity. She is within, hidden, separated from them by millimetres that become miles. But she is there. And she hopes that is what will count later.
Fin