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NOTES: Based on the end sequence of a video game. Contains spoilers, but if you haven't seen the ending already, then it's highly unlikely you'll be able to identify the game anyway. So good luck!
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I knew that one day he would die. Most likely he would fall in the line of duty. There was a good chance that it would be while protecting me. I knew this.
But I still wasn't ready.
I know he asked you to take care of me. And I'm glad to have you here, most of the time. But it's just... so hard. You have his face. And every time I see you, I see him. And I miss him all over again.
I remember very clearly that he didn't want to get involved with me. Not because he didn't want me, but because he knew how much I'd be hurt when he died. Naive, he called me. An optimist. I do not deny being either of those things. But I accepted the risks, and I loved him anyway. I asked him to take me, to be with me. I knew he would give in. He had to; he loved me. He loved me as much as he hated you, and almost as much as he hated himself.
I don't deserve you,, he said to me, so often. So worried that he was tainted, that I might somehow be tainted by him. But I couldn't be. There is nothing evil about a man so tortured by a past he regrets. All he needed was to forgive himself.
I think he may have, before he died. As I sat with him on the ship, and looked into the light of the sun filtering in through the slits in the metal walls, I gave him the last kiss we would ever share.
He said to me, "I am dying. I can feel it. I know this feeling well enough. I've caused it enough times. You must prepare yourself. I won't be around much longer to protect you."
I kissed him fiercely. "I love you." It was all I could say. There was nothing to say, nothing to do that would make him live. I knew it, hated it, but knew it. So I kissed him and tried to give him what peace he could have to take with him into the afterlife.
"It was my honor to serve you," he said.
"No, mine," I protested. "My honor to have you at my side. To have your loyalty. You are a good man."
"Perhaps I was. Perhaps I have been." He grasped my hand and smiled up at me, his face covered in bruises and dried blood. "You do have my loyalty. Always know that. And if there is a world after this, I will protect you from there as well. You will always have my loyalty, undying."
"Thank you." It was a whisper. I was choking. Though he didn't die until later, until he extracted from you your promise, until his breath stopped with my hand clutching his, I felt as though he died then. I felt the way one burden fell from him then, when he knew I knew his heart. And then another lightening, when you promised to take his place to care for me, and this time the burden that left him was so heavy that when it evaporated, it took his life with it.
But you can never take his place. You may wear his face, marred though it is, but no matter how loyal you might be, you can never wear his soul. He was my lover, my love, and it is to his memory that I will remain loyal, as he was loyal to me in life.