A/N: This is a companion piece to Iterations, something I had in mind when I first started that fic. Seems I'm always several years late.
This is the story that once should have been.
A story has a beginning, a point at which a plot is born, sometimes quite messily and sometimes in a rather sterile fashion, and starts on the often tortuous, seldom straightforward path of a maturing process. A story also has an end. This word bears two meanings of unequal significance: the conclusion of the plot, and a purpose. The former is quite simple; the plot concludes when the words on the page are no more. The latter, on the other hand, is the essence of a story. Purpose is the lifeblood that pulses through every word, no matter how short or trivial. A story has a reason to be told. Without an end in this sense, it is a lifeless pile of words.
This is a story defined by its end, namely an end of the second order. The man who narrates it has known his purpose from the beginning, painfully aware that few people in history have had as strong of a reason to live as he. So strong in fact, that it far outstrips his desire to live.
This story is about a man who saw the end too soon and cannot escape it, despite the many paths open to him. Tantalus, ever in the act of reaching.
On the next page is this story's end.