A box.

Just a box, to fit a person, to fit a life.

Just a box to put all that remained of his love in.

And inside, nothing but ashes, the remnants of what parts they could salvage of him, burnt, beautiful in their cold gray lifelessness. This was not Roy; this was a ghost of him, all the pale pieces of his flesh picked apart, atom by atom, and rearranged. These ashes were not Roy.

Roy was never coming back.

He didn't know why he opened the box. Better to remember what Roy had been, what they had been together (alive, whirling through life with twin flames keeping their hearts warm), than these ashes.

But for all that he told himself that these ashes were not Roy, they were, and that was all he had left.

He opened the box, that cold box that held only an echo of a life cut short, and his tears soaked through the ash.