NOTES: Trilogy! A fantasy series (of course) with three very long books. This takes place after the end of the third one. The mentioned relationship is not canon, but it's very easy for someone as slash-minded as myself to see them as a couple. Again, I apologize for the short length of this piece.

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To have come so far, only to lose him... It killed me. It ate me up inside, taking over my every thought, my every emotion. Each day I stood in vain, wishing it wasn't true, wishing that somehow he was still alive. He had been so very, very close to salvation.

Perhaps it was that wishing in the end that made it happen. I don't know. But what happened... It wasn't what I wanted.

I don't see how it could have worked out otherwise, honestly. He was saved, alive, and so was I. So was the planet. Everyone had lived and yet... And yet we were alone. There was no way he could come back to me after his transformation.

My heart ached for him. It still aches. To see him, be close enough to take him into my arms, stroke his hair, finally taste those lips, but knowing the whole time that I could not, was unbearable.

Even if we could be together, I know that he is not the same man. The evil in his heart has been purged now, and I honestly don't know how much of that evil made him who he was. I convinced myself that what I loved about him was everything that wasn't evil, but is that entirely true? Perhaps it was the coldness, the detachment, that initially drew me to him.

I dream of him every night, nowadays. I wonder what might have been, had it not ended as it did. I wonder what his new life is like, whether he enjoys it. I wonder if he believes in God.

And sometimes I think of finding him, searching him out and learning exactly who this new man is. But something always stops me. I have some faint notion that this is what destiny is. This is what was meant to happen. Fate is bitter indeed.

And so I am left alone with the dreams, and the memories of a man like ice, lost forever and yet not lost. A man who I will now never truly know.