"The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen!"
Usagi jumped in surprise, and quickly glanced around. Fortunately - and, now that she thought about it, almost certainly not coincidentally - no one else was present on the rooftop to see.
Nerves slightly settled, she stepped forward and tugged at Setsuna's shoulder, trying to get her to rise from where she had gone down on one knee, with head bowed and Time Staff lain horizontally in front of her. "You don't have to kneel," she told her. "Please get up."
The older woman looked up, but did not rise. "Yes, I do," she said with a soft smile. "Twenty-five thousand years I've waited alone... knowing I had failed. And now I have another chance." She shook her head. "I owe you this a hundred times over."
They stared at each other for a long, long moment, then laughed. It felt very good to laugh - good enough that both of them consciously ignored the saw-edged note of pain and hysteria behind the smiles.
Eventually, Usagi composed herself and looked at Setsuna sternly. "You brought me here, didn't you?"
She looked away, dusky skin going noticeably paler.
Usagi stepped forward and dropped down to fold her into a hug. "We'll call it even, okay?"
Pluto stiffened, then, almost involuntarily, her arms rose and returned the hug as she began to cry, finally beginning to release the fears and tensions of all her ages of waiting. Her princess cried too, mourning for those now lost.
Eventually, when they had thoroughly dampened each other's shoulders and begun to feel a little better, they separated and sat side by side, looking out over the spreading lights of nighttime Tokyo. "
What about Crystal Tokyo?" one eventually asked.
The other sighed gustily and drew her knees up against her chest. "It's... It would have been the only way to be ready enough for some threats, without being so obviously powerful that they'd... jump out, ambush, cheat."
Usagi began to divide some of her companion's hair into three locks. "Strong enough to win, but weak enough to underestimate?"
"Exactly. Now, though... Chaos doesn't obey temporal mechanics, not in itself, that's part of what makes it what it is. And without Galaxia - and with Cosmos - we can handle the others without gambling the way... the other me had to."
The most powerful mage on the planet paused mid-braid and smiled in a way that those who knew her - had they been alive to see it - would have called most uncharacteristically feral. "Good."
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(Posted Wed, 22 Jun 2005 15:52)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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