I still think of that day all the time.
We'd just gotten back from some mission, somewhere I can't remember. Old Chicago? Havana? Doesn't matter.
It was late in the evening, but we were too would up to sleep. You suggested we go for a walk. Eventually, we wound up outside the walls, in the hills around Twilight Gap, watching the sun slip behind the mountains.
We kept going and we left the City behind, until we alone in the meadow, watching the stars slide across the sky. For a timeless moment, I had you all to myself. No City, no Traveler, no looming threat of alien invasion. It was just the two of us, no responsibilities, no outside world to intrude.
A shooting star flickered across the firmament. There one moment, gone in the next. You told me to make a wish, and I turned and kissed you.
Your lips were hard and dry, and you smelled faintly of sweat. It was the most delicious thing I've ever experienced.
That kiss lasted forever in my mind. I knew in that moment that I wasn't afraid of the future, because that was when I realized I loved you.
What you gave me that day has kept me going ever since. In this terrible, hopeless life with all the constant pain and fighting, you have taught me that there is still hope worth fighting for. We fight not for our own survival, but for everyone else, so that they might someday know the happiness we share.
As the months and the years went by, I came to know you better than myself. In the early days, we stumbled in to each other during our missions, by accident at first, and then on purpose. It took us months to acknowledge there was something there, then another two years before you finally proposed to me. We survived the war when so many others fell, and we changed. And now we're on our own, alone on this red rock, because we decided that it was too much for us to stay. But whatever comes, I know we'll be waiting for it, together.
The sun found us there the next morning, lying in that meadow, wrapped in each other's arms. We returned to the City and we felt like ghosts looking in on our own lives from a distance, because in our hearts, we were already gone.
Nothing is certain in this world, but know this: there is nothing I wouldn't trade for you. All the glory in the universe, all the undiscovered secrets, aren't worth a damn if you're not there to share them with me. If I should ever fall, know now that my only regret is I didn't have the chance to spend more time with you.
You are my Light in the Darkness, my home among the stars.
Yours truly and forever,
Telysa.