He is in the Rising Sun
She isn't supposed to fall in love with him, it's right, because she's just the apprentice of a sorcerer, good for friendship only...and he is the child pharaoh.
But she is small when he is small, and they are friends because he is just like every other person in the world, it seems. And just because every once in a while he acts a little holier-than-thou it's okay, because she knows he's a good person, no matter what anybody else thinks.
She starts to think about kissing him when she's about eleven and feelings that aren't friendship begin to show, and she finds herself staring at his lips, which aren't too full but aren't too thin either. His skin has a creamy caramel tint to it that she wishes she could touch with lingering fingers.
When he turns twelve he becomes more serious because he begins to learn more about how life is and what he will have to do when he is god. She watches him sometimes with heartbreak in her eyes, because it hurts to see him begin to smile so much less. She lives on the memories of when they were small and he would hug her and she would kiss his cheek even though everybody said that the behavior wasn't appropriate, because nobody saw, right? She laughs louder and joy permeates her senses all of the time, suddenly, just so she can make him happier, and at the same time she makes herself happier.
Because he is serious she decides to be the other half.
This is only one of the ways that Atem makes her love him.
She loves it when he laughs, because then she feels such a surge of feeling that she just wants to hold him and never let him go.
At fourteen or fifteen he is Pharaoh. She knows that despite the cool front he put up as he took his father's place he is still grieving and afraid (still a child) and this is because she held him when he was paralyzed with terror and sadness just the other night. He didn't cry, because he doesn't ever cry. She's never seen him do so, and never shall.
They kiss for the first time a year into his age of glory.
He is the strongest man in all of Egypt, even though he is only fifteen.
She sees him every day, but doesn't talk to him so much any more because he has no time for such idle things as friendship. He has work to do, and so much of it.
But one night they are all alone, and she walks into a room in the palace, one that has vases that she and Atem used to play in when they were children. (She longs for those older, more innocent days.) He is there, standing next to one of the vases quietly, as quietly as he used to stand when he was a child when he saw her, before he would smile and laugh (he doesn't smile at all anymore).
It is as though he is waiting for her, but he isn't because there is surprise in his almost bloody red eyes. He opens his mouth slightly but does not speak.
She smiles a little and hopes her longing and excitement at being alone together at last doesn't show as clearly as it is inside her. "Hello."
For a second he stares at her as though she is a stranger, before his strong and guarded eyes suddenly soften and there it is, the barest hint of a smile upon his face."Hello."
They stay there for a while, just looking at each other with a certain tenderness in their expressions, the kind that older people have when they think of days gone by.
She suddenly speaks. "I wish we could be friends again," and sounds like a child again.
He doesn't say anything, until his mouth opens and his voice, deep like silk but not as loud as it seems to be these days comes out, saying, "Sometimes so do I."
She smiles radiantly but there is heartbreak in it. The words they used to say to each other when they were children and didn't understand the full meaning of such words come naturally: "I still love you."
He doesn't respond to that (he never does, only when she is not listening). Instead he kisses her.
His kisses are like he is: strong and powerful and demanding. They burn against her face, lips, neck. She loves the way he holds him as though he never wants to let her go, never again.
After that their relationships in the day are simple, she as the fledgling sorceress, he as the proud Pharaoh of Egypt with the commanding voice and eyes that smolder with determination.
But at night out comes something they have tried to mask, and she is suddenly the lovely and hopeful and beautiful lover, with a certain radiance unmatched by anybody else in the Kingdom. And he is not so much the Pharaoh as just a young man with powerful energy and something hot in his eyes that isn't determination but is hard to place.
That is how they love each other, and that is how they get through the day.
In the end, she knows that this is the way that it's going to end.
She knows that she is not nearly as important to him as the Egypt that he runs (but in some ways she is more important, ways that she will never know, ways that make him retain humanity over thousands of years).
She loses him and they do not say goodbye, even though through that last passionate night they spent together there was something like finality in his eyes.
When she hears from her beloved mentor that he is gone she feels her heart splinter and almost feels as though she has swallowed poison and must now vomit it up until it does not taint her any longer.
She does not cry, instead the tears burn at the front of her eyes for the entire day, and finally spill when she is alone and goes to the vase room for a final goodbye.
She moves on because she must move on, and Atem is soon just a spot of love and heartbreak at the back of her mind as she returns to her earlier confident, jubilant nature. And yet, in a way, she is not entirely the same.
(Still she holds on the memories, those precious fragments of his life, and even though history eventually forgets him, she always remembers him.)
She always remembers him.