The hard part of love isn't the aching or the need that young people often felt. No, those things were a delicious part, a teaser, a soft suffering that made your heart swell and your life seem more meaningful.
The hard part of love was to know that you'd give up everything for your beloved, even if it meant loneliness and pain for yourself. Your own sorrows meant little if the one you loved would be happier – would be safe.
He missed Alice – her soft hands and her warm lips; but the decades of loving her from afar and never having what he wanted were a small price to pay for her life. The empty chambers mocked his pain, but he knew he had made the right choice when he gave her up and sent her away.
Gaius did not believe he'd ever see her again – he knew his king too well to hope for a moment in which it would be safe – and yet, she never left his side, not really. The memories of her kept him sane through the hard years of persecution, and her soft voice in his dreams kept him beside Uther.
Maybe, one day, if he was lucky enough, the veil would part for him and he'd meet her on the other side, her hair braided on the side of her head and a loving smile on her lips, knowing that it had been all worth it.
And if he had to turn back time, Gaius knew he'd do it all over again, for he rather burn alone in the blazes of their riven passion than to pick the ashes of her wasted body in the hatred's pyre.