A/N: So, finally, it appears that I have written another Guardians of Time story! I recently reread the trilogy, and after finishing The Key, I found myself wondering how Arkarian (a character who I understand to have a tendency to keep his thoughts and emotions to himself) would deal with losing his father in the battle. Having an outlet such as fanfiction has allowed me to share my thoughts and ideas of how he would grieve, and I hope you like my latest one-shot!

A quick note: As with my previous Guardians of Time one-shot, this is written in the style of the books - switching between Isabel and Arkarian's points of view, written in the present tense, and in the British English "style", as that is how I first was introduced to the books. So, instead of "double quotes" signifying speech, it will be 'single quotes'. I hope none of this is confusing!

When you finish reading, please share your thoughts with me through reviewing - I always enjoy hearing from you!

A quick thank you to CSG4ME and Mermaid Sushi for editing! Their work has not gone unnoticed!

So without further ado, I give you The Loss.

The Loss

Isabel

Grief – this grief is something that I could have never anticipated.

It rolls off of him in almost visible waves, starting from his chest and working its way up and down his entire body, only to break away and shimmer in the air, a cloud of misery hanging low in the atmosphere. He stumbles as we enter his mountain chambers and I do not catch him. I cannot catch him – as he falls to the ground he uses his wings and flies away from me. I discard my grimy shoes and my tattered jacket at the doorway and I run after him, trying to find where he has gone. I listen hard against the deafening silence for his noises. It upsets me that he feels he has to flee; it makes me feel like he doesn't want to confide in me, to let me console him.

I hear sobbing somewhere up ahead. I am halfway down the dimly lit stone corridor when I hear it from somewhere else, this time echoing behind me. I want to cry myself; the frustration is killing me, as well as the shock from the battle and the aftermath that bears down upon me more with each passing minute.

The Named have their battle plan already set in motion – my brother Matt has formulated a plan worth some kind of award, actually – but for now we are to rest. And to grieve.

After the Order's defeat, we stood together, but not as whole as we had previously been. For what seemed like hours that carried on well into the night, Matt explained what he thought was the best course of action. Ethan was crying, and at various intervals, we nearly had to restrain him to make him stay. We watched as Matt used his powers to construct a temple to the Immortals from the stones of the Citadel. When it was finished its beauty was overwhelming. Tall, magnificent, white; the fluted columns seemed to stretch as high as the sky. The walls were embellished with beautiful stonework, and the two great sarcophagi that lay within were as magnificent as those to be placed in them. Lathenia's and Lorian's bodies were entombed within. Matt was very insistent that despite the fact that Lathenia was head of the Order, she was still an immortal and deserved burial as well – and so we said our goodbyes. Arkarian and I lingered the longest after everyone. I wanted to leave sooner, but Arkarian seemed to unable to tear his eyes away from his father's tomb. I understood, and stood patiently next to him, waiting to leave. He was silent, shed no tears, and showed no outward signs of grief. He just stared.

But now I hear heavy breathing and footsteps, this time from right behind me. Arkarian, his violet eyes blazing and his pale face blotched and red from his tears is barely breaths away from me. For the first time since his father died, he reaches out to me, touches me, and falls into my embrace. 'Arkarian,' I whisper into his hair as I clutch him to me. I feel shudders wrack his body. 'Arkarian, it will be alright,' I reassure him. I swear I can feel his will shatter and crumble within my embrace.

'My father, my father,' is all Arkarian can say, he repeats it a few more times as I run my hands up and down his back, into his hair. I kiss his cheek and taste his tears on my lips.

'I know,' I tell him. 'I have lost my father too,' I remind him. Granted, I was a young child and my father did not die – he left us. 'Come on,' I say softly, leading him down the hallway to a room with a gigantic bed. We have spent many nights here holding each other, making love, talking late into the night. He lets me lead without protesting and he allows me to strip him of his dirty, sweaty clothes he wore into battle. I step into the washroom off the side of the room and wet a towel, which I use to wipe his grimy face and hands. I force him into a pair of boxers and lie him down on the bed. He complies silently with everything and he lies there silently, eyes unclosed, breathing laboured.

I feel suddenly like my body is made entirely of lead. Everything weighs me down, and I am exhausted. When was the last time I slept? Feeling disgusting, I rinse out the cloth and wipe myself down – there will be time for a shower some other time – and slip on the pajamas that I leave here. I get into bed beside him. For a long time, he lies facing the other direction and our backs are to each other. I cannot sleep like this; it is too cold, too unfamiliar. I touch Arkarian's arm and whisper, 'Come here, love.' He understands, turns over, and slides closer to me. He wraps me in his arms and sighs into my hair. Finally finding a measure of comfort, we fall asleep, slipping into oblivion together.

Arkarian

When I wake from an incredibly deep sleep and I feel Isabel in my arms, I have momentarily forgotten everything that had happened the previous day. In fact, all I know is that Isabel is here, and that is all that matters. That is all that will ever matter. Isabel is still asleep, and I bury my face in her hair. It does not smell as clean as it normally does. The smell of the sweat and blood still on her body suddenly sends my mind reeling back to the day before. The Citadel, the final battle, the dagger through my father's heart, the temple… everything piles up on my heart and drills into my soul. I cannot bear it… I cannot. My father… my father.

I feel the tears threaten, my body shudders. It is this movement which wakes her. She takes one look at me and her whole face softens. I can tell that her heart is breaking too, but it is breaking more for my sake than my father's. I do not like her sympathy, but I accept it all the same. Accepting it makes me feel like I am giving into the darkness that I know I am falling toward. It is not an evil darkness, just an endless one. Accepting it means that I am no longer fighting for myself or my dignity. I suffer both and succumb to the feeling anyway, helpless to do otherwise.

She cups my face and leans forward for a kiss. She kisses my cheeks and then my mouth and I taste my own tears there. I had not realized that I had begun to cry. She cries too, and our tears mingle and fall while our lips softly caress. This is not a kiss of passion, I know. This is a kiss of comfort, a mutual giving of ourselves to the other, a way to share and ease our grief. Our legs are entangled and our bodies press up against each other so intimately we might as well be one being, and we remain like this, silent, sometimes staring into each other's eyes, sometimes dozing. I forget that time exists at all. I forget that everything exists – it is only my soul and hers.

It is Isabel who breaks the silence, moments, or perhaps months later. 'Arkarian?' she asks.

'What?' I respond, my voice cracking. How long has it been since I have spoken? Hours? Days? Years?

'Please, love, talk to me,' she begs. 'I need to hear that you… that you will be okay.' I hear the worry tangled in her voice.

'I do not know what to say,' I reply. We fall silent once more. I hear her breathing become shallow and I know she is asleep again. I sleep too – I welcome the darkness.

Isabel

When I wake for what seems like the thousandth time, I actually feel awake this time. The hours, perhaps days, that we have been asleep have worked their magic, and I am feeling refreshed. Refreshed, but disgusting. I feel like the dirt, sweat and blood of the battle is corroding the sheets I am sleeping on, and I slide out of bed, trying to not disturb my still-sleeping lover.

There is a shower in the bathroom; a shower in which Arkarian and I have spent many a steamy hour. This time, however, it would not be used as a place for lovers, but a place for cleaning; cleansing. I soap up, rubbing at the caked grime. I think back and cannot remember a shower so appreciated. The rusty coloured dried blood on my body seeps down the drain, and the dirt and the sweat follow, erasing themselves as they slip away. I am almost feeling entirely clean when I notice that Arkarian is awake, and walking into the bathroom. He sticks his head around the fogged up door and smiles at me, though the smile is bittersweet and doesn't quite reach his beautiful violet eyes. I feel another wave of pity shatter my optimism. I am so worried for Arkarian.

Without saying a word, he joins me under the stream of water, and like so many times before, he backs me up against the slippery tiled walls, crowds me with his tall, toned body, and kisses me. I indulge myself for a while, before pushing him away and handing him a bar of soap. 'Get clean,' I say, though I am not sure that it comes out as forcefully as I mean it to.

What is in that man's mind? Honestly, he can't have sex on the brain, can he? As I massage the dirt and blood out of my hair with shampoo (that grime is everywhere), my body reminds me that I have sex on the brain. And if I have sex on the brain he most certainly does too. While a steamy round of shower sex would be incredible, I can't help but think that it, indeed, is too soon. Really, how long are you supposed to wait after a battle in which your boyfriend's father is killed?

I feel a violet gaze on my body, and my heartbeat quickens. The man in the shower with me may be my boyfriend, but he is not himself, and I do not want to take advantage of that. I want Arkarian to heal. I want him to move on with his life. I want him to move on into our life.

I do my best to face the other direction and try and ignore the body behind me, but fail miserably. Even on normal days when I am less focused, I am hyperaware of his every move. I have just made a move to turn off the shower when he speaks:

'Isabel.'

'Yes?' is all I can say.

'I need you,' he says. In his eyes shines desperation and a need that I have never seen before. Despite this, I hesitate.

'Are you sure? You are not… yourself,' I reason with him, completely against my own body's response.

'Please,' he croaks. He is in pain – physically and emotionally. I may be a healer, but I have no idea where to begin to heal him, or if I could really heal him at all. But as I observe my lover and the love of my life, I cannot reject him. Rejection would only harm him further. Consequences be damned, I respond, 'Okay.' If this is what he wants, I can deal with it. Well, deal is probably the wrong term; of course I'll enjoy it – I always do – but I can deal with the emotional turmoil I know will follow. I turn the handle and the water ceases running, but Arkarian reaches around my body and turns it back on again. 'Here?' I ask. My heartbeat quickens.

'Here,' he responds. He remains in front of me, a hair's breadth away for what seems like forever, before he leans down and our lips connect. Suddenly, our bodies crash into one another and instantly I forget where I end and he begins. My hands run up his back and knead into his shoulder muscles; his hands roam down and grab my ass. He lifts my body up and presses my back into the cold, wet tiles and my legs wrap around his waist. Wantonly, I writhe against him and he reacts by grinding himself against me and I nearly explode right then. Without any of the usual finesse, suddenly he is inside me. He groans, I moan; his fingers dig into my skin, and my nails dig into his back – I come alive in his arms, and he pushes me over the edge. I shriek his name and I hear it echo around the bathroom and out into the world while he continues to pump in and out of me until he comes too.

I desperately cling to him, my grip made difficult by our water-slicked bodies. I feel like my body is reverberating, buzzing, but it is not the usual happy feelings I usually get. Somehow it is distorted or perturbed. Despite the love we share, neither of us put our souls into the union; I was afraid to and he was disconnected. I feel tears sting my eyes.

'Isabel,' he whispers, burying his face into my neck. 'Isabel, I need you,' he says brokenly. He lifts his head and meets my eyes – my climax-muddied brain struggles to sort itself out, but one look into his contorted face sobers me.

'I'm here, my love. I'm here,' I reassure him. My hands go to the back of his head and hold his head to my chest while he cries. Water still rains down on us from the shower, but I cannot turn it off.

'Nothing is the same,' Arkarian says.

'I know,' I reply.

Arkarian

I am broken, and I do not like it.

I cannot stop the thoughts, and I want them to cease.

I want to fix the ache in my heart, but the wound continues to bleed.

I wish I could heal, if only to ensure that Isabel never again has to look at me like that. The hurt I see in her beautiful brown eyes just makes me want to scream. I know there is a way to stop it, but for the life of me I can't summon the energy. Stopping it would require too much effort right now.

It is not only the loss of my father that is eating away at my (I assume, still beating) heart. It is the loss of my home in the Citadel, of my life for the last six hundred years, of my livelihood. I knew that things would change someday, but I did not prepare for how drastically –and how quickly – it would change. I was not prepared. There is no way I could have been prepared.

Isabel is asleep next to me and I think I have hurt her; I know I have hurt her. The sex that we had in the shower was tainted: it connected our bodies, but not our souls. It did not even soothe what I had hoped it would soothe; it just made things worse. It hurt Isabel.

I never want to hurt her again, I do not think I could bear it if I did. She is my life now, she is my everything. It is with her that I will continue to live; no, it is because of her. I feel my (definitely still beating) heart swell a little more every time I lay my eyes upon her.

The gaping hole in my heart heals a little, so it does not gape so much.

I decide then that I cannot live the way I have been these last few days for a single moment longer. Not only does it hurt me, it hurts her. I cannot hurt Isabel, she does not deserve that. I sit up, and the bed shifts a little with my weight and jostles Isabel. She starts, and notices that I am awake.

'Arkarian?' she whispers. She says nothing else, but I can tell that she has noticed that something is different.

I lean over her and kiss her lips softly, trying to make up for everything. 'You fixed it,' I say. Sleepily, she blinks a few times and wears a puzzled expression.

'I don't understand,' she says. She sits up too, and stares at me as if I have suddenly sprouted a second head.

'You healed my heart,' I explain.

'I did?' she asks. A moment later, she adds, 'Are you sure?'

'I have you and that is all I need,' I say, and my voice rings with truth. 'It is only you who matters to me now. My father's death still causes my heart to ache, but I can't let it consume me any longer.' I take her hand and brush a kiss on her knuckles.

'I… I am happy for it,' she says, though clearly she is a little taken aback and does not know how to respond.

'I will only be happy if I have you forever,' I assure her softly.

'You will have me forever,' she promises. She then tugs me forward and our lips collide. We kiss, and the kiss seals our pledge.

As our kiss deepens and our passion ignites, I know how to make up for my behaviour the past few days. Our lovemaking this time reaches our intertwined souls and is not tainted by the disconnected feeling that we had felt last time. I poured everything into my passion and gave it to her. I knew that if I was sure of anything, I was sure of this: I am whole only with her.