They were such a strange little bundle. The Time Guardian, the Soldier of Destruction, the future Sailor Moon. The endless, the end and the hope.

Setsuna felt her heart break these days when she was around Small Lady - a title that she stuck to religiously, honouring a day, a destiny, that she knew would never come. She felt like she had failed her, the innoccent, lonely little girl who had come to the murderous Guardian of Time as a friend and melted her.

Then, Hotaru. Her little girl; only Setsuna coud ever begin to understand the damage swirling in that dark head. Regret was a poisonous thing and Hotaru knew it intimately. Her love, grudgingly given, was a curse; none could be spared when the Glaive came down.

Her girls. Her two precious girls.

Setsuna knew the future. Every night, she returned to the Gate and stared through the cracks, sick with grief at what she saw, searching for a loophole. There had been one before, she had saved Crystal Tokyo before, why not now?

The Gate was impervious to her pleas. It stood, infused with Cronos' spirit, observing his daughter give herself into emotions that previously she had not known.

You were told never to interfere, it seemed to remind her sternly as she saw, again and again, Hotaru, through a mist of inconsolable tears, bring down the Glaive over Small Lady's crumpled body in another dead world.