A/N: This was written for an anonymous syfy challenge years ago on LiveJournal. I only recently came across it on an old usb drive. There's not much to say on this one. I continued a bit from my original draft, as it ended a bit suddenly. As usual I own nothing.
He ran. He ran as fast and as far as he could until he came to the shoreline. As he waded into the water he could still hear the anguish in her voice.
What am I?
He had no answer to that. This uncertainty was a strange, new feeling for him and it brought with it a fear he couldn't quite explain. He had once been so certain of everything. His path, her path, their destiny. He had seen everything once, but he hadn't seen this.
He lay back in the water, allowing himself to float, and stared up at a sky still clouded over with nuclear winter. He let his eyes close for a moment, reveling in the feeling of weightlessness, of rebirth.
He took a moment to remember the first time he saw her. She was beautiful, dressed in Artemis' robes. It was a vision, of course. He saw her long before any of the two's laid eyes on her, long before they knew her name even. It didn't matter. He loved her from the moment he saw her, all of the Leobens did, although some more zealously than others. Now he had to wonder if that love had clouded their minds.
The next time he opened his eyes day had faded into night. It took less than a second for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, only a fraction of the time it would have taken for a human. He could see a small glow coming from the cliff not far from where he had left Kara. He knew what it was. Sometimes fire could be as cleansing as water.
He sees everything, why hadn't he seen this? Why hadn't he seen the charred remains of her viper, of her? He could still see it if he closed his eyes, the blond hair that had somehow managed to survive the flames. Was this his punishment for blasphemy? Because it was blasphemous, the way he had come to worship her. Had he gone too far and God was angry with him? He had no concept of true mortality, but knew inherently, to him at least, that would be worse. There were no more visions and this was not the end of their path, it couldn't be. And yet there was a finality to it that terrified him. No, there was a reason for this, just as there was a reason for all things.
All of this has happened before, and will happen again.