The breeze was soft and warm with promise as it whispered through the marble and granite headstones in the graveyard. Minako glared up at the sky, as if angry that it could be blue on such a day. Serenity put her arm around her shoulders but her friend, so alike her in so many ways, shrugged her off and stood up to turn away from the weathered granite and fresh cut flowers that lay before her.
"It's been over a century, Serenity! A century! And I still can't even think of trying again. For all intents and purposes I'm an old lady, no matter how I look." Her usually warm blue eyes were hard and tight with a cold bitterness. She flung her hand back behind her toward the stone. "Look! I still bring flowers every week. Did you know it takes almost all day to visit all of them? And what do I have to show for it? My name is once again-it's..." She stopped speaking and buried her face in her hands.
Serenity slowly stood stepped up behind her friend, placing her hands on her shoulders and finishing her sentence for her. "Aino Minako."
"Don't say that! Don't! 'Beautiful Child of Love'! What a joke!" Minako's legs collapsed under the weight of her grief and she fell to her knees in the cool grass.
"Why not, Minako-chan? You are one of the most loving people I've ever known."
"You haven't been listening, have you?" She sniffed and pulled herself up again with aid of a nearby tree. "I can't do it anymore, Serenity. I've had countless husbands die on me, even the children from my most recent marriage have been dead for twenty years." She hid her forehead against the bark of the old tree. Her voice came out muffled and distorted. "I can't even look at men anymore. Every man-" she stopped for a second and Serenity stepped close again, straining to catch her dear friend's words. " Every single man I see reminds me of one of my husbands. I loved them all so much, Serenity, and I loved my bright little children, laughing at the fate that ripped them all from me so fast...too fast..."
"Don't be so down, Minako...you'll find someone, you know you will. You always do. Where's all that bright cheeriness you usually have?"
"Gone! Gone and dead with my husbands, my children, my great-grandchildren...countless descendents..." She turned from the tree, anger lending her enough strength to stand on her own. "The descendents of my first children don't even remember me! It's been that long, Serenity! I've been putting on a mask for years now, and I just can't...I just can't take it anymore." She pointed to her chest, stabbed it with stiff, angry fingers. "I'm dead, Serenity. I'm a walking dead woman. I've held on for an extra five years because of you, but when Pluto let go..." Minako suddenly sobbed and collapsed again, all the way to this time, to bury her face in the grass and the dirt. "...when Pluto let go and just faded away...I was so jealous! It's time, Serenity. It's more than time."
"Minako-chan..." Serenity reached out to touch her. Her voice thickened with unshed tears. "Minako-chan...you can't leave me."
"Serenity...Usagi-chan... you're so selfless with your own heart that you don't realize when others don't have anything left to give." Minako reached up and untied the ribbon that bound her hair. She held it out to Serenity, but her queen refused to take it. Minako suddenly surged up and grabbed Serenity's hands, forcing her fingers to close around the ribbon. "Take it. Keep it. I don't have anything else..." She reached up to wipe Serenity's bangs off the crescent moon on her forehead, "...my Queen." She closed her eyes and began to fade into the wind as she pulled off her wedding ring, worn to little more than a wish over the countless years, countless marriages. She dropped it from her hand and it popped back into reality as it left her fingers and fell on the old grave underneath her, to sparkle in the mid-morning sun. "We had a lot of fun, ne, Usagi-chan?"
"Yes, Minako-chan." Serenity sat down by her friend's side and reached out to hold her in her arms, but it was already too late for that. She bent over, her hands clutched over her stomach and her voice laced with pain. "We had a lot of fun."