Alrighty here is my entry for Doc’s birthday contest, for the prompt “I won’t leave you.” T e c h n i c a l l y it’s a sequel to a much older fic, because that’s where the idea took me, but I did my best to make it stand on its own (especially because the old fic is… not so good looking back on it now).

The Edge
~1100 words
After a battle that wipes out Usagi and most of the Senshi, all that’s left of Minako is Venus, or so it seems. Haruka won’t accept Mina’s gone for good.

Haruka had
thought the hardest part was behind her. She’d dragged herself through the
despair, she’d kept going, she’d gotten what help she needed to get here. But
now, seeing that long blonde hair in the moonlight, she knew the hardest part
was yet to come.

“Mina!” she
yelled, to no response. The wind blew strong here on the cliff, but she feared
it hadn’t swallowed the sound. With a deep breath and a heaviness in her gut,
she tried again: “Venus!”

Venus did
not turn, merely rose a hand over the space beside her. Haruka walked up
slowly. The terrain felt uncertain under her feet, each rock ready to tumble
into the ravine below. Venus stood right on the edge. The toes of her shoes
curled over. Haruka had the obscene urge to make a toe the line joke.

“Why are you
here, Uranus?”

“I came for
you. Why are you here?”

Venus stared
up at the moon. Her eyes had gone gold, a pale, inhuman yellow that spoke of
power. “I don’t know.” Her face contorted, but the gold eyes did not tear.
Haruka wondered if they even could. “Last time it was quick. She died, we
failed, our right to exist ended until we could try again to prove ourselves
worthy.”

She shifted
her weight back and forth. Haruka reached for her hand, but Venus tolerated no
touch. “There was nothing we could do.”

“You would
say that.” Venus looked at Haruka for the first time, and even though her face
bore nothing but contempt, Haruka felt relief. “You never were cut out for
this. But I’m not like you. I could have saved her. I exist to save her.”

“I don’t
think that’s true,” Haruka said, slow and careful. “I think you exist for more
than that.”

“There is
nothing more.”

Venus turned
back towards the moon, and despair washed back over Haruka. There had been
things she could have done, she could have saved Usagi and Michiru and the rest
of them. But she was here and they were gone and all the hold she’d fought to
have on keeping on started to slip away. She’d ostensibly come for Mina, but really
she’d come for herself. She needed Mina, needed to know she could save
something. And she couldn’t. She looked over the cliff. It didn’t call to her,
the way holing up and drinking until she slipped away had. Part of her felt
almost cowardly for it.

“I can’t do
it either,” Venus said, her voice barely loud enough to cut through the wind. “It’s
what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it? Die for duty, or the loss of it.” For a
moment, Haruka saw Minako, the nights they’d stared down what it all meant, the
secret tears Mina had shed knowing her whole life wasn’t really hers. “I’m not
the soldier I’m supposed to be.”

“Mina…”

A misstep.
Venus slammed back to rigidity. “You may go.”

“I won’t
leave you.”

“It wasn’t a
question, Uranus. I’m your commander and I’m ordering you to leave.”

“Well, I’m a
bad soldier, aren’t I? That’s what you always say.” Haruka felt tears sting in
her own eyes. She wiped them away. “I need you, okay? I don’t have anything else
left. And neither do you, maybe. Just me.”

She waited
for Venus to tell her she was nothing. She heard it in her head, that she was
worthless, that she shouldn’t have the audacity to think she could mean
anything, but the words never came aloud. Venus’s shoulders slumped.

“Do you remember
being Mina?” Haruka dared to ask in a whisper.

“I wish I
didn’t.”

“Well, Mina
wished she remembered less of being you, so I guess you’re even.”

Venus shook her head. “I never should
have been that girl. She made me weak.” She spat into the abyss. “I
lost sight of the important things.”

Haruka sat and let her legs dangle and stared
at the distant dark line of the horizon. “You used to tell me there was
nothing more important than a good time.”

“I know that,” Venus
snarled. “I know who I was, I know all my failings.”

“They’re not failings to me. And they
weren’t to her, either.”

“Of course they were, Serenity is dead.”

“But she lived, and she loved you.”
Haruka looked up. There was a knot in her chest, she couldn’t help thinking of
Michiru and her own failings. “And I still love you. And Rei–”

“Don’t.”

“Rei and Usagi would both kick your ass
for this. Or well, Rei would try and Usagi would cry on you. But they’re not
here, so I have to do it for them.”

“As if you could.” Venus sniffed,
halfway between a sob and a smile. There were
tears in her pale eyes. 

“I could do it Usagi’s way. There’s
plenty to cry about.” She looked at Venus, daring to see Minako still
inside her. “You miss them, don’t you? Who they were this time?”

Venus sat down, seeming to shrink into a more
human form. “Isn’t it enough that I failed? The grand golden soldier has
fallen. Isn’t that enough despair? I don’t want to be the girl who feels more
than that.” She put her head on her knees. “I’ve been through this
before. I loved Serenity as my liege.”

And now you love her and everyone else as
people, but Haruka knew better than to
say it so plainly. “I don’t remember that life much. But I understand
some.” She picked up a rock and bounced it in her hand. “I was gonna
let myself disappear, in that little house Michiru bought us. Just hide out
until the world went on without me. Because how can I go on without Michiru?
And the rest of them?” She threw her rock hard over the edge. “But
I’ve got you, and if I can do anything for you, that might be enough for
me.”

Venus’s chest heaved. “I don’t know if I
can do this, Haruka.” She sobbed and clawed at the frayed edges of her
skirt.

“Neither do
I. But I’m gonna try for you.”

“It’s easier
to let Venus take over. She’s always been ready, and this… she can get through
this.”

“Maybe we
can too.” Haruka rubbed her back as Mina’s transformation faded and the
tattered material of her fuku turned to soft cotton under her fingers. She sat
in the t-shirt she’d been in before this whole mess started. It would have been
like nothing had happened if not for the bruises and cuts making abstract art
across her skin. “I love you, Mina.”

Minako
sobbed, big heaving sobs of a kind even Usagi had never matched. Haruka pulled
her close. She clung on, like Haruka was all she had in the world, and maybe
she was.

“Don’t let
me go, Haruka. Don’t let me go.”

“I won’t.”
Haruka held her tight. “I can’t promise we’re gonna be okay, but I promise we’re
gonna be here.”