'I don't need him.' That was my constant mantra, repeated endlessly as our forever ongoing battle raged across time and space, never stopping, never giving in. We were drawn together, as constantly and irresistibly as magnets with opposite polarities. As we fought countless centuries passed us, unnoticed and unacknowledged.

He constantly sought me out, conquered some corner of the universe and offered to let me rule by his side. Each time he offered I rejected him, I would not let myself hear the words that hovered on the very edge of my mind. 'I don't (think I) need him, I (say I) don't need him, I don't (want to) need him.' For a while I actually believed it and so our game of twisted courtship continued unresolved.

Then the war came and I was alone, so terribly alone. In the silence of my mind, in the abyss where life once existed, the words that had gone so long being denied broke free. Repeating over and over in my head till they drowned out all other sounds. 'I do need him.'

Years passed, such a short period of time and yet somehow it was dreadfully long, longer even, than all those brief centuries when we fought amongst the stars.

I was at Utopia, at the very end of the universe. It was the year one hundred trillion and he was there. At first I did not realise it, indeed he did not know himself but eventually he discovered the truth. He ran, back through time and space, I chased after him and in the end he caught me.

A year of pain and torture followed as he destroyed the planet I loved. I had run so long and now it was his turn. A year of having my hearts constantly being shattered before I managed to stop him. We were together for mere minutes before he did the unthinkable, he let himself die. I had forgiven him but he had not forgiven me and he would not see me victorious.

Seconds turned to minutes, then hours, days, weeks, months, years, perhaps even centuries. I knew not, he was gone so what did it matter.

He never did stay dead long, a fact I was normally relieved by yet always failed to account for. This time, however, any relief I felt was overpowered by rage. 'That bastard, how hard would it have been to tell me he had a back-up plan, at the very least he could have found a way to come back sooner. He had better be sorry!'

The majority of our previous encounters had featured us, engaged in a permanent state of battle. This time was the same, with one small difference, everything I had destroyed in the war was being brought back and we could not prevent that from occurring if we worked separately. We had to work together. The war and everything in it was sent back to where they came from, at a price.

We lay on the floor, dying with the guilt that was caused by the horrific fate we had condemned those involved in the war to, yet again, weighing us down. We lay there, together, and I could finally acknowledge that I needed him. I had only just gotten him back, I was not about to let him slip away again.

Desperate not to lose him I poured my own artron energy into him, subsequently saving us both. I knew that this time we would both stay. We needed each other and now there was nothing keeping us apart, all of the scars we carried from the years of 'hate' and mistrust were healed in the face of new wounds from the second destruction of our planet and people.

As I prepared to go to bed later that night (not that it was actually night in the Vortex but relatively speaking it was close enough) I felt his mind brush mine. He lingered for a while, hesitant, before he spoke.

"Thank you Theta, I really do love you, you know that right?"

"I know Kosch, I love you too, I'm sorry I couldn't accept it before."

"I forgive you"

We fell asleep that night with our minds still intertwined, never to be parted again.