Author's Note: Hey guys~ How are you all? It hasn't been that long but after rereading last chapter, I forgot that I actually wrote it. I was like "Wait, I wrote this?" Did I mention how I don't use swear words outside of writing this story? LOL while I was reading the last chapter, I went like "Whoaaa I swore so much. O_O" Anyways I got the latest chapter done. :D I'm on my spring break (well, there's only two days left of it *sob*) so I found some time to do this. But really, now that I think about it, it's incredibly pathetic how it takes me three months to write like 3000 words. How do I even get my school work done, you wonder. Yeah, it's a miracle. Sometimes I pull all-nighters writing one paragraph for English class. I'm kinda crazy. But lately, I haven't been as busy in terms of schoolwork as back in September and stuff. Oh btw! Some good (but unrelated) news: six days ago, I received acceptance to my first-choice university! Whooo~~~ I was hella happy! The hard work paid off ( n _ n ) But yeah, that's just what's been happening.

Fic Notes: Haha sorry about the last chapter. It wasn't that unexpected though, right? Anyways, the next chapter will be the final installment of this story. Whaaa we're coming to an end!

More fic notes: We're going into the (near) future now! Haha after spending the whole story in the past, we're going to time travel into the future :DDD

Another fic note: For Antonio's wife, I actually had a country in mind when I was writing this chapter. It's one of my small ships hahha but for the reason that she doesn't make an appearance in this story at all, I'm just going to leave it up to your imagination of who it is.

Review Replies (thanks for the reviews ^u^ ):

Book Thief101: Don't worry~ I'll try to give it a good ending. ("good")

Nerdyfanchick: I'm sorry for that ! (T_T) Awws I love you too! Thanks for reading!

Katie-Kat1129: Aw thanks! I don't like sad stories either DDD: WHY AM I DOING THIS

Ospite: You're so sweet! Thank you ( ' u ' ) Yeahhh why didn't I head in the happier direction?

The Fey: Gahhh! I'm sorry! I know ( ; _ ; )

scarletnight72: Oh good idea~ I'll tryyy to do this (don't know how successful that will be). ( ' n ' ) Thanks for the review 3

Alrighties, here we go! It's a bit short, but I'll leave it like so. I kinda wrote it and revised it in one go, so it's kinda unrefined. But, enjoy!


"Where are we going?"

"You'll see when we get there."

His hand holds hers as the two climb up a variably steep and grassy hill. He gently helps her as she steps up the hill with care and concentration. They reach the top of the hill and they are greeted by a wonderful view of a headland overlooking the swirling waves of the ocean. A meager chimney-like structure can be seen in the distance. Besides a few small additions like the park benches and the picnic tables, the place really hasn't changed at all in the past twenty years.

"This is it! We're here," Antonio announces.

"Where are we, dad?"

"This is Cape Cornwall. Daddy used to always come here."

He watches his daughter as she looks in every direction with a wide smile on her face. People always tell her she has her father's smile. Apart from that, she is a carbon copy of her mother. With soft and wavy shoulder-length blonde hair, fair skin and rosy cheeks, his daughter looks just like her mother did when she was young. The only peculiar trait, though, are her eyes. For some reason, they're a deep hazel brown, even though both her parents have green eyes.

"Let's go over here, Lucilla," he says.

Antonio and his daughter walk towards the end of the Cape. As they pass the cliffs on each side, Lucilla peeks at the rushing waters splashing the rocks below and he grips her hand tightly to make sure she doesn't fall in. Once they are at the tip of the headland, Antonio drops to the grass and performs a grand gesture of a stretch. Lucilla watches her father and does the same. For the next few moments, they are both silently basking on the grassy field, taking in the sharp smell of ocean air and grass and watching the view of the ocean waves perpetually crashing to the shore.

"It's beautiful here, isn't it?" he finally says. Lucilla nods.

"I used to come and sit here. Just to sit and think." Antonio says absentmindedly. His daughter continues to look around, making observations of all the scenery. She points out the shape of the clouds (which apparently look like alligators today), the other people walking around with their dogs and the small fishing boat on the water. Eventually, her eyes lay on the chimney-like statue.

"Daddy, what's that?" she points with her tiny, delicate fingers.

Antonio looks in the direction of her hand.

"Oh – that?"

"Yeah."

"That's the Heinz Monument. There used to be a mine over there, but they closed down and all that remains is the chimney. It's named after the ketchup company."

After a pause, she laughs.

"That's kind of silly."

Antonio thinks about it. "Yeah, that is pretty silly, isn't it?"

She moves on to looking at other things, but Antonio's mind stays on the curious ketchup-named statue. No one ever took the thing seriously when he told them about it. But actually, the last time he really took a good look at it, and talked about it with anyone, really, was… say… twenty years ago? Oh – that night he came to Cape Cornwall with Lovino. Now, every time Lovino entered his mind, Antonio would enter some sort of hazy daydream, and his mind would flutter to the dark corners of his memories...

….

The funeral was on a Saturday. Lovino died on a Wednesday, two weeks earlier. Antonio found out about his death three days after the accident.

Are you Mister Antonio Carriedo?

Yes.

This is the police department. Do you know a Mister Lovino Vargas?

Yes. What happened?

He's been in a fatal car accident. I'm sorry.

He went to the police station and they explained all the details to him. The truck was speeding down the road and hit him directly with full impact.

"Didn't see him at all," the officer said.

Lovino was immediately sent to the hospital. He died forty five minutes later of various internal injuries. He had just moved back to London, so there was no address to trace, only a hotel room number. On his phone, the contacts were mostly international, and the rest did not pick up. The only other thing on him when he died was Antonio's number, scribbled on a piece of paper and given to him just minutes before the accident. So the police contacted the number. He was the only contact in the area.

At the hospital, he was asked to identify the body.

"We usually get family members to do this," a doctor explained. "But the only family he has got is his brother, and it'll take another week until he can get here from Italy. He asked me if you could do it."

"Yes, I can."

Lovino's body was under a blue sheet.

"Most of his injuries were lower body," The doctor mentioned.

As the doctor's hands lifted the sheet away, Antonio wished that the body underneath would be someone else's. Anyone else. The doctor would lift it and Antonio would see an unfamiliar face and it would all be a mistake – this is someone else! Not his precious Lovino.

But it was Lovino. Even with a face bestrewn with cuts and bruises, and tangled, matted hair, even after years of not seeing this face, it was undeniably Lovino. Admittedly, Lovino didn't look exactly great that day bumping into him in the park – it was evident he had been through some very rough times and it took a toll on his body. But now, he looked infinitely worse.

"Sir?"

Antonio realized he had been staring at Lovino's face for an unusually long period of time.

"Is it him?"

"Yes. It's him."

Yes. That was Lovino's dead body lying there, lifeless, gone. The Lovino that just returned to his life was gone once again. Just like that.

Lovino's funeral service was attended by roughly ten people. One of which was Feliciano. He came alone. Lovino's grandfather had passed away several years ago. Antonio exchanged a few words with Feliciano, short and distant-sounding words, and then they parted ways and never saw each other again. The rest of the people that showed up included some old bosses, neighbours and one or two colleagues. Lovino lived a quiet life.

Lovino was buried in his home town in Italy, next to the graves of his parents. Antonio visited his grave a total of sixteen times over the past five years. Whenever he found an excuse (or sometimes with no excuse at all) Antonio would fly to Italy and stop by Lovino's grave. Sometimes the visit would be a few minutes, sometimes a few hours. He always brought flowers with him. The tombstone was simple and constructed of black stone, with an inscription reading:

Lovino Vargas

March 17, 1979 – June 24, 2009

Not a word more, and not a word less.

For the weeks following Lovino's death, Antonio became emotionally unstable with frequent bouts of complete detachedness. People would talk to him and he would not reply as if he was in a far-off place. His wife knew there was nothing anyone could do for him. Eventually, she told him, "Antonio, do whatever you need to do. Go on a trip, take a break. Anything. I just don't want to see you like this anymore. I really want you to be okay."

So he listened and headed off in no particular direction, but found himself in his childhood home town of Cornwall. At first, he thought it would be a mistake to come here again, since this place was filled with memories everywhere. Nearly anything could become a trigger for painful memories to come back. It would just make it worse.

But surprisingly, the opposite happened. After his trip, Antonio got better. For whatever reason, being in Cornwall for a while, just spending time there, helped him. The following months got better, and by the time Lucilla was born a few months later, Antonio was completely back to his normal cheery self. He fulfilled his duty as a father properly and with enthusiasm, never losing his responsibilities.

As June rolled around again the next year, Antonio decided to visit Cornwall again, just for a week or so. From then on, it became an annual thing to do. Usually, he would go alone, but this year, Lucilla came along too. She had never been there before, and Antonio thought it would be nice to show her the place where he grew up.

"Can you see your school from here?" Lucilla asks.

Antonio snaps out of his daze. "My high school? No, you'll have to walk a couple of blocks down that way." He points it in the direction of the old school.

"Was it a nice school?"

"Yeah, it was. Do you want to go take a walk and see it later? I think it probably looks just the same. It was a nice place. I entered it right after moving here from Spain. It's where I met Gilbert and Francis… and Lovino." Antonio says, his voice getting softer as he speaks the final word.

Lucilla recalls her father's eccentric friends: the loud and obnoxious man with white hair and the other overly affectionate Frenchman. But the last name is a bit of a mystery.

"Dad, who is Lovino?"

This question came a little unexpectedly. They sometimes mentioned Lovino, so Lucilla would have heard his name before, but Antonio realized he never really told his daughter about Lovino before.

It was difficult and sort of puzzling. Antonio could never find the words to describe what Lovino was to him. The first word that comes to mind is always "He was my friend." But immediately, it sounds wrong. Lovino wasn't just a friend, that was for sure. Maybe "best friend" would be more accurate, but even that was an understatement. To say Lovino was simply his "best friend" would be insulting – because they were much more than that to each other. What was more than a "best friend"?

This is where the trouble starts. Antonio comes up with "lover", "soul mate" and "significant other". That's about it. There has to be something else, right? Somewhere between those words and "best friend" was probably what Lovino was, but Lovino just wasn't any of those words. Antonio could never call Lovino any of those things, and he never did before either. It didn't mean that Lovino meant anything less of that, though. To Antonio, Lovino was at one point the most important person in his life. And yet, Antonio couldn't even come up with a word to describe said person.

Antonio pondered this question long before Lovino passed away. Obviously, in the years that they lost contact Antonio never forgot Lovino. But every time he came up in a conversation or something, Antonio would be completely baffled at what to call him. "He was my …" and then he would draw a blank. He usually left it at "friend" because that would be the simplest and safest, uninviting to prying questions. Of course, he never felt right about calling Lovino just a friend. That just wasn't the right word.

For years, Antonio thought long and hard about this. But he always ended up in the same place: without a single conclusion. That's the way he left it. Now he was confronted with this question again. Maybe the problem was that Lovino wasn't between a "best friend" and a "lover". He was far beyond both of those. He meant more than those words "soul mate" and "companion". He was indescribable.

"Lovino was someone I knew in high school," Antonio started. "We spent a lot of time together when we were young."

"Were you good friends?" Lucilla asks.

"Yes, we were."

Not "just" good friends though, but Antonio leaves that part out for now.

"How come you don't see him anymore?"

Antonio squeezes his daughter's hand gently and pauses before answering.

"He passed away before you were born."

"Oh."

Silence.

"How did he die?"

"A car accident."

"He was speeding?"

"No, he was struck by a truck."

"Oh."

More silence.

"Do you miss him?"

"Every day."

A pause.

"Was he special to you?"

Antonio takes a moment to carefully answer this.

"Absolutely. He was my closest friend - my best friend. But sometimes I feel like that's not the right term to use, because he was much more than that. Quite honestly, he was the most important person in my life."

"What about mommy?"

"Mommy? She's the love of my life." Antonio then wraps his arms warmly around his daughter. "And I love you with all my heart, sweetie."

"I love you, too, daddy,"

He smiles warmly at Lucilla, and she returns the smile, before he continues on.

"But with Lovino, I think that when you find someone that you can't use words to describe, or when you can't use some conventional way to define your relationship to them, then you have truly found someone worth keeping in your life and you should treasure them. Even today, I still treasure Lovino and all the times we had. That's what I mean. They just change your life, and you know it just wouldn't be the same if you had never met them. I hope that when you grow up, you can find someone like that and you'll treasure them as well. Hold onto them while you can, because when they're gone, you'll realize how much they meant to you."

After he finished, he looked at his daughter's face. Lucilla wore an expression of deep deliberation. She probably only understood half, maybe a quarter, of everything her father said. But regardless, Antonio felt like it was helpful - at least to him, it was helpful. It seemed like trying to explain it to someone else clarified things for himself, just like how when you try to teach someone else something, you can understand things better.

Now that he thought about it, not once did Antonio ever tell anyone about the history of him and Lovino. Not even his wife. Snippets of memories, sure, but never the entire thing.

He turns to his daughter.

"Would you like to hear a story?"