The Living Years
He could never get back to her. He'd promised to protect her, and in the end he had; but to what end? Yes, she lived, and would continue to live. As would he; but he without her, and she without him. And what kind of life was that, at the end of all things?
Would she be happy? Or would she be miserable and lonely, though she'd found the family she'd always longed for? Would she blame him for leaving her, or could she understand that he'd not had any other choice? He'd saved the universe, and he'd saved her, but in the process he'd lost himself.
Reality crumbled down around him, as recriminations clashed in his mind. He was a solitary man by nature, but she'd ruined that; she'd ruined him, and now endless years of future stretched ahead of him, and he no longer knew what to do, or who to be. She'd helped bring him back from the brink of death, and then from the dark place in his mind where all there was, was death, and the longing for it. And now all that he was could only be a product of who she'd been, and what she'd seen in him; but she wasn't there to hear that, and he'd never said the words.
He felt the old guilt returning, but this time he hadn't the energy, the will, to cut it off. He was the oncoming storm, the bearer of great power, but all it amounted to, really, was that he was always alone. They always left, in the end, just as she had; sometimes it was his fault, and sometimes it was not, but in the end the pain was the same, and the future loomed, huge and cavernous and empty.