He smiles sadly when she says they didn't want their eternity without him in it. She was right to what she told his younger self; though he made the decision, it wasn't because he thought they didn't care about him. He knows, very well, that he was - is - loved.

Dokja moves his hand from her shoulder to her hair. It's an uncommonly gentle move but she'll have to forgive him for being sentimental. It's been no time at all and yet it's been thousands of years since he's seen her.

"My favorite author," is what he ends up saying to her, fondly. She wrote that story to keep him alive, and used every last bit of her energy to do so. In a way she died for it, unable to remember until she had to experience the memory again. She truly is the one person he'd read stories from until the end of time.

What is an author without their dedicated reader?