This story is, in essence, the final part of a trilogy that began
with "None of Your Business" and "Five Minutes".  It is not necessary to
have read those stories to understand this one.  (But it's a good idea
..)
 	I rate this story PG-13.  Perhaps I could get away with a PG
rating, but I won't try.
 	The title is from Maison Ikkoku.  For musical accompaniment, I
would suggest one or more of the following:

 		Amy Grant's "I Will Remember You"
 		Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings"
 		Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch"
 		Patty Loveless' "How Can I Help You (To Say Goodbye)"

 	And I really don't have much more to say than that.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 			    One Moment Longer


 	"In all probability, the Queen will die within an hour, your
Excellency," says the young doctor standing before me.  "We have been
unable to stop her decline ... it is the opinion of some of the more ...
esoterically inclined among the Royal Medical Staff that her Majesty is
using her powers to speed the disintegration of her health."
 	He is young, for a doctor.  I do not believe that he is more than
twenty-one years old.  Younger than Amy had been, when she earned her
first doctorate.  Perhaps that is why he has been given the no-doubt
odious task of reporting to the Queen's sole active bodyguard the news
that she will soon be out of a job.
 	They are all young, it seems ... all the people in this radiant
paradise on Earth that Serena -- no, Serenity -- has created.  I was
told, only five years ago, by a flatterer, that even I was young --
certainly no more than twenty-one.  I told the flatterer exactly what he
could do with his compliments, and left him standing on the dance floor,
keenly aware that he had been utterly humiliated, and that everyone in
Crystal Tokyo would know about it within the hour.  How the grande dame
had said, "I have had my choice of companions over the centuries, and I
wouldn't pick you as one of them if you were the last human being on
Earth.  Go away, little boy."
 	I am a remarkably preserved one thousand, two hundred fifty-eight
year old woman.  I am one of the oldest, most powerful  beings alive on
this planet.  And there is not a damn thing I can do to stop or slow the
death of my Queen and closest friend.
 	That's not fair to Lita, of course.  Lita is always there for me.
Lita would be here, with me, now, if it weren't for that STUPID slip and
fall accident she had that's left her in bed for a month.  Even for one
who is blessed with the magic of the Silver Empyrian Crystal, bones can
get fragile at our age.
 	We argued, last time we spoke.  That was ... two days ago, when
I'd told her that she should admit herself to the Royal Hospital, rather
than just letting the leg heal by itself.
 	She gave me a look.  "Yeah, right.  Those chrome-domes have been
just waiting for something like this to happen, so they can do a complete
medical and figure out exactly why my bod's too stupid to age."
 	"Don't be so paranoid, Lita.  At worst, they'll do a scan so they
can replace the bone."
 	"Nuh-UH.  I'm going to my grave with all my original parts, thank
you very much.  I refuse to be like Mina, where they're not sure just what
was metal and what was flesh."

                                --------

 	I suppose, in retrospect, it was inevitable that Mina would be the
one of us to lose her mind.  Lita, Amy, and I all had our clearly defined
roles in the world Serenity had created; I was the Commandant of the Armed
Forces of the Crystal Kingdom; Amy was the Royal Physician and Scientist
Laureate; and Lita was Major Domo and Chief Bodyguard to her Majesty.  All
that was left for Mina was to be Morale Officer and Aide de Camp.  And she
wasn't needed for the one (Serenity's morale needing improving?  With
Endymion around?!) or suited to the other.
 	So she snapped.  It was a healthy seeming sort of madness, though,
and it was decades before we realized how far she was gone.  The ultimate
autograph hound, having obtained the signatures of everyone of
significance for the last two or three hundred years, decided to become
the woman whose autograph everyone wanted.
 	Mina embraced the superheroic image we'd been given by the media
of the late twentieth century.  She'd disappear from Crystal Tokyo for
weeks, months, even years at an end.  Stories would come back to us from
all over the planet, across the solar system, and from the near stars,
about her heroic deeds:  single-handedly dealing with rampaging monsters
or alien invasions, helping police forces to deal with crime waves, and
generally being an all-around do-gooder.  Sometimes there were disturbing
reports that she'd been injured, often seriously, sometimes near-fatally
in the performance of her heroism.  But she always came back to the palace
in one piece, cheerful and chipper, with a glib explanation for how she'd
escaped injury or worse.
 	I should have suspected something.  There were enough hints.  Amy,
being Amy, figured it out first, but Amy, being a professional doctor,
never revealed her patient's medical information without permission.  But
I could have deduced from Amy's increasing fascination -- almost obsession
with cutting-edge cybertechnology, that someone she cared about was using
the stuff.  And nobody in the Palace had it.
 	But I never knew, until one day, when the story that was being
told spoke of her apparent death in a fight over, ironically enough,
Venus.  We were all gathered together in the throne room, quietly talking
about her, when she poked her head in the door.
 	"Hey!  Why all the long faces?  Did you all get dumped
simultaneously?  Hmm ... nope, can't be that, Serenity and Endymion are
both still here ..."
 	And I ran to grab her in a hug, shake her a few times, scream at
her for making us worry, and generally treat her as I had Serena in the
old days.  I got as far as grabbing, but I was stopped short by the
clanging noise created when my hand slapped into her shoulder blade.
Everything seemed to stop for a moment while I looked at her closely.
 	Her skin was perfect ... too perfect, in several areas, for it to
be for real.  One of her eyes seemed to shine a little brighter than the
other.  And I couldn't help but feel, somehow, her increased mass from all
the metal she used to reinforce her skeleton.
 	As from a great distance, I heard myself whisper "Oh my gods,
Mina, what've you done to yourself?"
 	She looked more proud than embarrassed as she replied, "Made some
improvements.  Wanna see my warranty?"
 	She came to the palace less often after that.  I think we couldn't
hide our revulsion enough.  Amy had it the worst ... every few years,
Mina would contact her on some pretense, casually mention some new
modifications that had just come on the market, and say something about
not trusting any of the cyber-docs out there ... Eventually, Amy finally
came up with a self-repairing, self-upgrading set of bionics, installed
them in her -- getting rid of most of what was left of Mina's internal
organs, I gather -- and asked her never to darken her doorstep again.
 	Mina shrugged, and said "It's been nice knowing you."  And left.
 	Amy came to me that night, crying and vomiting ... I don't think
I've ever seen anyone so completely devastated.  She had, for decades,
been helping Mina engage in a course of utter self-destruction, blinding
herself to what she did, saying that it was for a friend.
 	I hated Mina at that moment.  I hated her for years afterwards.
 	It was twenty years later that it finally happened.  The Black
Moon Crisis had come and gone, and we'd won, with the aid of our younger
selves.  I'd been so tempted to warn my younger self, or Amy, or even
Mina, about what was going to happen.  But I didn't, less because of
Sailor Pluto's warning than because I honestly couldn't see any way for us
to avoid it.
 	Mina said her good-byes quickly, and headed offworld in her small
shuttlecraft, "Freighter V".
 	Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, the on-board computer of
the antimatter transporter "Xavier" malfunctioned, killing the crew, and
beginning a slow descent into Earth's atmosphere.  If it impacted on any
settled area, the loss of life would be enormous, even if the multiple
redundant magnetic seals on the antimatter containment fields retained
integrity.  If they failed, it would have been a greater disaster than all
the nuclear weapons detonated in the Final War combined.
 	In the darkest hour, Mina finally demonstrated that she really was
the hero she'd set out to make herself into.  Her shuttle intersected with
the transporter, and she set out to bring the ship to a safe landing.
 	She brought it down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  Enormous
waves caused by the impact of the ship battered against Crystal Tokyo's
sea walls for the rest of the day, but the antimatter didn't explode.
 	It's doubtful that any non-augmented human being, even with
magical powers like ours, could have survived the accelleration long
enough to make sure that the ship landed without any risk of human life.
We're not sure how long she stayed conscious ...
 	They brought up the anti-matter, and Mina's body, but left the
ship at the bottom of the Pacific, and we placed the ashes of her organic
parts in the Royal Cemetary.

                                 --------


 	"That's disgusting!" I shouted.  "How dare you talk about her like
that?  She gave up her life for us!"
 	"Are you saying I wouldn't have done the same?" she shouted back.
 	It went down hill from there, and we haven't spoken since.  Not
even last night, when Endymion ... passed on.  Not now, as Serena lies
dying.  Serenity.  Serena has been dead for nearly a thousand years.
 	"Ma'am?"
 	I suppose I should be embarrassed that I haven't been listening to
this young doctor, but I'm not.  He has, unless I've missed my guess, been
running off a list of symptoms that my Queen is suffering from as she
dies.
 	"I'll see her now," I say quietly.
 	"I don't think that's wise, at least not until you undergo
decontamination procedures ..."
 	I give him a gaze that once froze men twice his age in their
tracks.  "I will see her, NOW.  If I am carrying any viruses, she is
almost certainly immune to them.  And if you imagine that I will delay one
second in going to my Queen's side, you are sadly mistaken."
 	And I walk, unescorted into her room.
 	She seems so small in the bed ... she was always, even after we
underwent our ... second growth, the shortest of all five of us.  Her skin
is so pale that she almost seems like a ghost, rather than the living,
laughing being that she was even two days ago.
 	"Your Majesty?" I whisper, leaning in close to her.
 	"Momma?" she asks, in a dazed voice.
 	Oh no.  Not this cruelty.  Surely, if she had a choice in which
symptoms would afflict her, she wouldn't have chosen senility that would
confuse her into thinking I'm a woman who's been dust for over twelve
hundred years.
 	"No, Serenity, it's me, Raye.  Sailor Mars."
 	She pouts.  "Hadda dream about Raye.  She got realllly old and
ugly!  Couldn't keep a ... boyfriend if her life depended on it!"
 	No tears.  I refuse to cry.  "Yeah ... I guess I couldn't,
either."
 	"Well, at least you are honest about it."
 	She's smiling that mischievious grin I've known and loved for
moreyears than I care to recall, and right now I'm not sure if I want to
rip it off her face or burst into laughter.
 	"You ... you ..."
 	"Had you going there, did I?"
 	The laughter wins ... I wonder when exactly that started to
happen?  When did I stop being annoyed by her laughter into the face of
destruction, and start loving her for it?
 	Maybe I always did.
 	"Oh, I am sorry, Raye," she sighs.  "I am so, so sorry to do
this to you."
 	"The joke?  Oh, Serena, I've ..."
 	"No," she interrupts, shaking her head, "the dying."
 	The laughter in my heart fades away.  "Then you really are ..."
 	"Yes.  I had been thinking about it for a while, now.  Endymion
.. he was just the last straw, I guess.  We have both been so weary, for
so long ... really, ever since Reenie's wedding.  We played out the role
Fate laid for us, and it was time to rest."
 	"But rest doesn't mean death ... you could just ... retire, or
abdicate in favor of Reenie, or whatever."
 	"Where could we go?" she asks, sighing.  "We were galactically
famous, Raye.  Anywhere we went, unless it was on a cruise ship heading
towards Andromeda, people would know us.  And Reenie deserves better than
that ... she should not have to begin her reign with me still around to
critique her policy.  We are similar, but we're not the same ... who
could have predicted she'd marry that boy from what was left of the
Negamoon?"
 	"Has it occured to you that this will hurt her?  Suicide isn't
painless, Serena -- Serenity!  It hurts those around you one hell of a lot
more than ..."
 	"She knows, Raye."
 	A long pause.
 	"I asked for her permission before I started.  She cried a little,
but she said that she did not want Endymion to face ... whoever or
whatever is on the other side ... alone."
 	"What about the rest of us?!  When were you thinking about asking
the rest of us, huh?!"  Even when I told myself that I hated her, I have
never, in all my life, been so angry with her.
 	"Raye ..."
 	"No!  I do NOT give you permission to kill yourself!  Any more
than I would give permission for any of our Generals to do so!  If I have
to, I will drag Amy and Lita in here, and we will FORCE you to stay alive."
 	For one brief moment, I am witness to something that very few
other beings have ever witnessed.
 	Serenity angry.
 	Not "Serenity in a fit of Serena-like pique"; not "Serenity
pretending to be angry because she knows that's how she and I show how
we care."  But actual anger, and yes, I think a bit of hatred, on her
face, and in her eyes.
 	It doesn't last.  But the hurt expression that comes afterwards is
worse.
 	I remember, once, just once, she gave me that look.  It was right
after we regained our memories, and I made some stupid comment about
having to hang around with her again.  It only lasted for a second, but I
felt lower than the dirt on my shoes.
 	"Lita and Amy already said they won't try to stop me," she
whispers.
 	And once more my world is upside down.  "You asked her ... before
you spoke to ME?!"
 	"I knew that you would be the hardest one to convince ..."
 	"You're not going to convince me, Serena -- Sereni -- no, you're
acting like a child, so I'll damn well call you the name you had when you
WERE a child!  You will NEVER convince me to let you die, I will NOT let
you go!"
 	She closes her eyes, and lets out a long breath.
 	The heart monitor flatlines.  "GET IN HERE, NOW!" I scream at top
of my lungs.
 	"We can't!" the young doctor outside cries.  "We have to go
through decontamination!"
 	Oh, megami-sama, what do I do?!
 	The heart monitor goes back to normal.  She opens her eyes, and
stares at me, a challenge plainly written in her gaze.  "I believe that
I have demonstrated that when I decide to go, there is not a damn thing
you are going to be able to do about it?"
 	There's nothing of Serena in that voice, that gaze.  Usually, I
can see traces of her, not too far beneath the surface.  This is all
Serenity, Goddess-Queen of Earth.  My friend died so that she could be
born, twelve hundred years ago.

                                 -------

 	Planes screamed above the ruins of Tokyo, bound for the
battlefield of China, perhaps, not knowing that a far greater battle was
being fought below.  This battle would never be recorded in the histories
of that Final War.  But it was the most important in human history.
 	I pressed close to the forcefield, as if by will alone I could
pass through it.  On the other side, Serena was standing alone (or almost
alone, she had Luna with her) against the mysterious, one-eyed man named
Ourannos, who claimed to be her father.  He'd created a force field so
that he and his "daughter" could have a private talk ... which had
degenerated into a fight.
 	Serena had used every single trick she'd gotten from over a decade
of being a Sailor Scout, but it wasn't enough.  Even now, Ourannos was
beginning to push back against the force of her Tiara that pinned his huge
spear to his chest so that he couldn't use it.  And keeping the Tiara
active was taking all of Serena's concentration, so she couldn't seize her
advantage.
 	"Amy, tell me that you've figured out how to bring this damn thing
down!" I cried.
 	"No such luck!  The configuration of the field keeps changing too
fast for me to pin point a weak spot!"
 	Okay, Raye, time to think.  Two ways of bringing down a force
field.  One, hit it in a weak spot that will cause the whole thing to
collapse.  Two, put enough power into it that it'll short out.
 	No weak spot?  Okay; go for number two.
 	"MARS ..."
 	The fire was building inside me ...
 	"ETERNAL ..."
 	A fire so hot that it could burn me from the inside out ...
 	"FLAME ..."
 	And it erupted.
 	In the part of my mind that wasn't enraptured by the flame, I
was aware that I'd only have ten seconds of fire, and that if I didn't
turn it off after those ten seconds ... I'd be the one who got burnt.
Literally.  But I was the only one with enough power left to perform my
ultimate attack.
 	Four seconds.  The field was holding.  My gloves were starting to
smolder on my hands.
 	Six seconds.  I could hear, distantly, somebody telling me not to
throw my life away like this.  You'd think Lita (I think it was Lita)
would have remembered that I'd been willing to give my life for the cause
so many times already.
 	Seven seconds.  My hands were starting to hurt.  I thought of
Chad, then, and smiled to think that we'd be meeting soon ...
 	Eight seconds.
 	Perhaps the roar of the flames was loud enough to hear inside the
force field.  Or perhaps it was just that she felt she had to look at us
one last time.  Serena turned her head in our direction, and saw what I
was doing.  She opened her mouth, but I couldn't hear anything.
 	That's when Ourannos forced the tiara away, and flung his spear at
her.  It slammed into her right side, spinning her around once, before she
collapsed to the ground.
 	Nine seconds.  The field went down.
 	So, however, did I.  I felt like every ounce of strength had been
put into that burn ... it took me several seconds to realize what had just
happened.
 	Serena.
 	The others leapt over my head, killing in their eyes as they went
to confront Ourannos ... Lita, Amy, Mina, Haruka, Michiru ... and I knew
that they weren't going to be enough to stop him.
 	Where was Darien?  And then I remembered ... he was encased in a
crystal shell that Ourannos had trapped him in earlier ...  In the last
moments of her life, he wouldn't be here for her.
 	So I'd have to be.
 	Inch by agonizing inch, I crawled to where she was slumped with
the spear still sticking out of her, and over the sounds of the battle
royal (was that suddenly stopped noise Haruka's last cry of defiance?  I
never knew) I could hear  Luna pleading with Serena, telling her it would
be okay, that they'd get a doctor ...
 	Where had I heard that before?
 	And then, quite suddenly, she was Serena.  Not Sailor Moon, not
the Moon Princess.  Just a very small young woman named Serena Usagi
Tsukino, whose greatest wish had always been to be someone who was both
normal and loved ...
 	And then her eyes hazed over, and I knew that my friend was dead.
 	And Luna, who had never had to see her die before, screamed.
 	Elsewhere, I could hear the others, beaten.  We'd lost.  In the
final battle for the fate of the Earth, we'd lost.
 	"So pathetic ..." Ouranos muttered as he surveyed the field.  "Not
one of you was up to the task ..."
 	And that's when I heard the noise.  I lifted my head to stare.
 	Something was happening to Serena's corpse.
 	It was swelling up, expanding as if it were filled with gas ...
 	And then it exploded, in a burst of pure, white light and a sound
I'd only heard once before ... the music of the spheres ...
 	And she was standing there, tall, pale, and stern-faced.  The only
traces of Serena that I could see there were in the actual features, but
they looked as though they had been schooled to be as rigid as possible.
 	Serenity, the music whispered.
 	She rose up to confront Ouranos, buoyed by winds that I couldn't
see or feel ... and she defeated him, though I was never sure how ...
 	And she came back to Earth, wept quietly over Haruka and Michiru's
bodies ... and then she turned to us ...
 	"S-s-serena?" Amy asked.
 	"No, Amy ... Serena is dead.  I know everything she ever knew, and
feel everything that she felt.  But the person you knew as Serena is gone
.. there is only Serenity, now."
 	Her face was so beautiful that it was almost inhuman.
 	And then, not for the first time, not for the last, I wept for the
girl who had died so that a goddess could be born.

                                  -------

 	But she is still Serena, and I still love her with all my heart.
And I am terrified of her death; more frightened than I have been facing
any monster, even the ones that killed me the first time; more
frightened than I was the first time I made love ...
 	She can see my thoughts, I know.  The faint mist I can see in her
eyes is all the proof I need of it.
 	"I don't want you to die," I whisper, pleading now, vaguely aware
of the tears rolling down my face.  "I can't imagine a world without you
in it.  I don't want to live there, Serena ... I want to die when you die
.."
 	"No," she whispers, and lifts a single hand to my face, catching
the tears, "you have to go on.  Please.  Even if it is for one moment
longer ... live longer than me.  Because I cannot imagine a world without
you, Raye."
 	"Why?  I'm nothing.  I'm nobody.  You're a miracle."
 	"We are ALL miracles, Raye.  Each and every last one of us.
Everyone who lives, or ever has, or ever will.  That is the lesson that
she meant for me to learn, I think."
 	"She?"
 	"My mother."
 	She waited for me.  She could choose to die anytime.  I can't
stop her.  She has been waiting for me by her own choice ... because she
wants me to know that it is her choice.
 	"I give you my permission, Serena," I whisper, still holding to
her hand.
 	I can feel her slowly speeding up the process of her death.
There's so much I want to say; so many things I've never told her.  And I
know that I will never be able to say them, and that it's not important,
because she knows me ...
 	"Raye," she murmurs, drowsily, "there is something I have been
meaning to ask you for a while now ... I never got around to it."
 	I know what the question will be.  Between us, there can be only
one question.  One thing which she could never have known, because I hid
the truth so deep within me that there were moments when I wasn't sure of
it myself.
 	"A long time ago ... you were going out with Endymion ... but he
never told me ... were you ... intimate?"
 	So much more delicately put than Lita asked me, so long ago.  If
it were anyone else, anytime else, I know the answer I'd give:  None of
your business.
 	But this is Serena, and I could never lie to her.  It is her
business ... so I lean closely to her ear, and I whisper my Secret.
 	The Earth seems to shudder as I do so.
 	And she looks at me with eyes filled with love.  "Oh, my friend
.." she whispers, and her soft lips touch mine, just once.
 	And she dies.
 	One moment more, she'd pleaded.
 	All right.  I can do that.


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 	Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and brought to North
America by DIC.