"I can't just turn my back on the universe like that -- I can't just rob any one person of their right to live!"
Sailor Cosmos watched as her younger self -- battered, beaten, bruised, and soul wrecked with grief -- rose up on shaky limbs to face her with a fierce expression of determination set in stone.
Ah -- she was a fool to have thought this would go any other way, that her younger self -- Tsukino Usagi, 16, in love with the universe and all its life -- would give in to the despair she's groveled in for centuries now; Sailor Cosmos felt a swell of that limitless love fill her own chest and she transformed, briefing a kiss to her younger's cheek, trying to convey "sorry" and "thank you" all at once, knowing it would never be enough and that it was plenty all the same.