I do not own Sailor Moon.

Every year, on the night of my birthday, when the guests had left and the confetti slowly danced across the marble, my mother would dim the lights in my bedroom and tell me a story. My hands would hold tightly to the edges of my blankets and I would stare up at her in wonder, her hair catching the moonlight that was pushing through my window.

Every year, before my sixth birthday, I would doze off before she ever got to the end, leaving the ending unremembered and hanging from the climax when I first felt my eyelids become heavy. But I think my mother continued the story with her own needs in mind, never minding that I had fallen asleep.

But on my sixth birthday, I had felt more energy coming from her, and managed to stay awake until the end. Every twist and turn of the story got my legs twitching and my eyes grew wider with every moment.

At the end of the story I looked long and hard at my mother, and for the first time the wonder had fallen to see the weakness in my mother's eyes. She had saved the world countless times and survived such calamity that I thought it impossible for her strength to crack. But at the end of the story, on my sixth birthday, the hand holding mine began to shake, and crystal tears fell from her clear blue eyes.

I felt the need to comfort her but it felt so indecent, that I was seeing the queen and my mother crying silent heavy sobs. So I laid in silence and hoped she had thought I had fallen asleep, shutting my eyes tight against her tears. I didn't want her to know that I had seen her so weak.

Before leaving my bedroom, she placed a soft kiss on each cheek and my forehead, moving my childish pink hair to the side with her warm shaking hands. "I love you my little bunny," she whispered before disappearing behind my door. Leaving me in such a warm bed, but so cold with questions.

The characters of these stories always had the same names, and often the same troubles, clinging to each other and pushing the other away at the same time. There was always a larger force pushing them apart when they only wished to be together, waking up together, and doing small things together. The characters always wanting more simplicity than the universe decided was right for them.

But until my sixth birthday, I thought they always ended up together. I remembered short dreams of happy endings for the characters and waking up knowing that Usagi and Mamoru would be okay in the end, finally achieving that first kiss that meant everything would be okay. But after that night I began to wonder if any of the endings were happy ones.

I sat up all night wondering if these two people so close to my mother and me would ever be happy, and how the universe could be so cruel. Then I became very angry with my mother. Why had she seen it fit to tell me such a horrible story, one that did not end in true love? Was she punishing me, or did she think I was adult enough to hear such things and contradict the reality of true love or even hope?

I love my mother very much but that night I sat up wanting to slap her, wishing that she had never told that story, for now there were questions where there used to be such simplistic ideas.

Before that night all there was in life were my toys and my wish for future bliss, but after that night…

After that night I felt my heart age, and every year after that I fled to my room, after the guests were gone and locked my door, against my mother and her sad stories. For the first few years, she knocked softly for what felt an eternity. But I couldn't let her in, my feet would never walk towards the door. I was too scared.

This is the story my mother told me on my sixth birthday. This is the story that changed our relationship forever.