The flames flared around two figures, scalding the structures and landscape in which they existed with feverish craze. The woman, her platinum hair tucked under a raven cloak, stood still, the pearls under her hood staring unfocused over the man who lay at her feet. She crouched to the scarred marble floor and touched his face tentatively.
"Mina..." the man whispered, his voice hoarse, mostly due to the smokey air. Aino Minako knelt beside him and reached out blindly for his torso. When she found it, she pulled him into her lap and rested his head in her bosom.
"Be quiet, Hisoka-kun," she hushed softly. A hand reached up to her ivory face and Naka Hisoka stared up at her, his eyes blinking with tears. She didn't jump when he touched her, simply opting to shut her broken eyes.
"They got him, Minako-chan."
"I know," she mused comfortingly, running her delicate fingers through his long silver locks. "Everything will work out. We have Cosmos on our side, after all."
"A ghost of a queen possesses the ghost of her powers. Not even she can bring Endymion back now."
Minako frowned. "That's a very hopeless thing to believe."
Her lover sighed into her breast. "It's a very realistic thing to believe, unfortunately."
The woman glanced down at what she imagined to be his face. "He loved you dearly, and he wouldn't have blamed you for his death. So please, please don't do this to yourself."
"The Rensha destroyed his mind in the end, anyway. He couldn't tell the difference between me and one of their minions," he replied bitterly. "But I still am well aware of on whom to lay the blame for this kingdom's demise."
"We must put the past from our minds, and leave Tokyo now, or burn with it," the incarnation of Aphrodite murmured into his hair. "I can't find my way without your solemn guidance."
A smile breached his pale face and Minako ran a hand over his lips. "What's so amusing?"
"You waited until the end of the world to admit that to me."
She cringed. "This is not the apocalypse." He shifted in her lap slightly.
"Of course it isn't, Mina. You are with me, untainted."
"And as long as there are those who remain untainted by the Rensha, there remains hope for a new world."
"We are all tainted," he lamented in a whisper before a terrible pain ignited in her chest. "I'm sorry, my love. But they have the power to bring him back," she heard him say before falling back onto the cold marble, her blind eyes rolling into her head as the blood seeped in waves around her. "The new regime wishes to taint all... and I can't bear to see them destroy your light."
Quiet footsteps dragged in the puddle and she was alone.
