The day is coming to a close and we are walking along a bridge. This bridge is a familiar one, but the situation makes all of it seem foreign. The sky is such a shade of unearthly pink that it almost appears to be a light shade of indigo. The scene is so unfamiliar because of who I am walking with. This person was not here yesterday, nor will he be here tomorrow. He is here now, and now is only happening for a short time. I try to recall how we got here, how we ended up on this bridge, but my mind is filled with confusion. Why is this happening? Is any of this real? Is he really here? Am I?

We are not talking, we are not smiling. We are doing the same thing, looking out at the water or down at the ground. The wind is light but enough to shift my bangs. It irritates me, and I realize that it irritates me more than usual. My emotions are running at a higher level, and everything feels chaotic. I do not bother to shift them back into place with my hand or a flick of the neck; I let them block the view of him. I let them block the view of something, someone I will most likely never see again. I have gone days, weeks, years without him walking beside me. How long exactly that it was I cannot bring to memory. It's like falling into a sleepless sleep where I am thinking, but what it is I am thinking of or am trying to think of, I cannot place.

"I know better than to humor you" He finally says. "I want nothing more than for you to be happy. But what I am here for won't bring you that."

"I figured you weren't in town for me." I whisper. I am not whispering them though; they flow out as if they are forced and against my will. I am a robot. I am speaking what I am supposed to be speaking. I want to scream at him, hit him, and kill him if I could. I want him to stay with me, tell me that everything is alright and he is not back for the reasons he said he would be. I want him to tell me that we can go back to how everything used to be, with our friends, with our homes, and that no one is going to come and take it away.

"I'm sorry."  He means it. I am well aware that it might be the most sincere apology that I might ever hear in my life. The word is overused in every form of situation, and I have grown to hate it. But he never says it unless he means it, and I have only heard it a handful of times come out of his mouth.

I say nothing. Not because I cannot say anything, but because there is nothing to say. He is sorry. He is telling the truth, and there is nothing I can say to change whatever it is he is sorry for. It is deeper than I see; there is a hidden meaning behind why he is saying sorry. I can sense it, and I want my mind to be playing tricks on me.

"It's always going to be this endless circle, isn't it?" I whisper as the sky grows darker, turning the indigo into a velvet wash of royal purple. "It'll never end…."

"It will." He says, and it isn't that he said it, it is his tone. It took him no time to think of the response, he said it as if he were absolutely sure. With the two simple words, I stop walking and it takes him a few seconds to notice that I do. He stops a few feet ahead and turns his head to look back at me. His bangs shift out of his eyes and I see the orange tint to them that always reminds me of a growing fire. They are always bright and filled with warmth that reaches everyone. Now, they are just orange, something that I have never seen. There is no motivation behind them; there is no growing fire, only a dying one.

"You didn't come here to humor me." I say, repeating what he had said earlier, finally understanding what it was he meant, and how somber he was being.

He slowly grows serious, every muscle within him tensing. "No."

"You came here to say goodbye. You came all this way back, to tell me goodbye." He had said goodbye before, when he left, but this was different. This was an absolute permanent goodbye. This was him finishing things that tore his life apart once and for all. There was a price to pay with actions such as the ones he planned to go through with. Actions that involve a goodbye, actions that involve this.

"I needed to see you one last time. I needed to let you know that without meeting you, I wouldn't have been able to come this far."

"I only messed everything up; I don't see how any of that could have helped you."

"It did, you'll never understand how much you have helped me."

"Don't do this." I do not say it pleadingly. I say it as a command. "Don't."

"Millennium." He whispers my name and the way it leaves his parted lips is like pure passion, pure agony.

"It's impossible for you to die anyway." I struggle to keep my calm air about me, because inside I am screaming at him. I am strangling him. I would kill him if he wanted me to, because the death he was going for was a painful, torturous one that would leave him a broken mess in his last minutes. "You already know that it won't work. You can't."

"Then keep your hopes up that I won't die. But I'm telling you now, that I plan to." He begins taking steps backwards, away from me. I know I am not meant to follow. This is it. This is the end of today. Yesterday, I wouldn't have expected this to happen. Tomorrow, I will no longer be the girl everyone has come to know. I will be a broken mess, knowing that as I breathe, he may not be. Today is about to end. The sky is such a dark purple that it is now almost black. The moon is a small crescent in the sky, barley illuminating the ground enough for shadows to scare those who walk by. "I'm doing what I feel I have to" He says.

"You don't have to do anything." He didn't. He didn't have to do anything. But I know he is going to anyway. He is still walking away, facing me, but getting farther away. He has always been far away from me, now he was literally farther away.

"Tell the others that it will be over soon" is all he says. "Tell them…" He pauses, slowing down in his departure for a short second before cracking a bit on the surface. He breathes heavily in, as though holding in the weight of the world and sucking it all back in as it tries to crawl up his throat. "Tell them to remember me…that's all I want." He looks back up at me, a mask of fear painted on his face. It is gone as soon as I see it. One last look at me, and he turns to face the direction he is going. I stand there. I stand there for long seconds. I scream his name. I hear it leave my mouth but I cannot hear what name I am screaming. There is a sharp, loud bang, and then everything goes a shade of red before my body lurches.

I wake up in my room, gripping my sheets, seeing his face in my head. It fades so quickly, like a burning piece of paper. The image curls in on itself until I cannot see it, and then, I remember nothing.