Author's note: I've decided not to write an epilogue so the chapter after this one will be the LAST CHAPTER. Wow. I can't believe it's nearly finished!

I was a bit unsure on how to write this chapter at first but I am actually very happy with how it turned out :)

Please read and review xoxo

31st January 2013

It was late evening and Hazel was on the plane, heading back to London. She'd made her choice: as much as she wanted to be with Victor, she couldn't hurt Uriel like that, so she was heading home and letting them both move on with their lives without her getting between them. It was the best thing for them both, she had decided. It wouldn't be pleasant on her to never see either of them again, but this wasn't about her. This was about them and the fact she wanted to protect them from losing their close relationship as brothers just because of her.

She relaxed back in her first class seat - courtesy of the savant net - and closed her eyes, thinking back to this morning. In the afternoon she had visited Victor and heard from a doctor herself that he would be okay; she'd sat with him for over an hour before leaving in case his family turned up, leaving him a letter seeing as she didn't have a chance to say goodbye to him face-to-face due to him still being unconscious. Before that though, in the morning, she had gone back to Uriel's flat after spending the night at a hotel...

Hazel took a few shaky breaths before unlocking the door to his flat with a trembling hand. She stepped inside the silent flat and shut the door behind her gently, turning around slowly to face him. Uriel was sat on the sofa, leaning forward with his head in his hands and didn't look up at her. "You're here," he said in a gruff voice that suggested he'd had hardly any sleep. "I wondered when you'd turn up to get your suitcase and things."

She put the key on a small table near the door and locked her fingers together nervously, squeezing her own hands tightly. "Uriel..." She sounded just as tired as he did due to the fact she hadn't slept at all herself. "Can we talk first? I don't want to leave America on bad terms with you."

Finally, he looked up at her with a startled look on his face. "You're leaving the country? Going home?" She nodded in reply. "But why? I thought you'd want to stay here to be with Victor. He's your soulfinder and in hospital, after all."

Hazel sighed and walked over, sitting down on the edge of the coffee table in front of the sofa so the pair were facing each other. "I'm going to go by the hospital after here. I'm leaving him a letter to say goodbye," she admitted softly. "I need to go home, Uri. I have a new nephew that I need to meet and Tommy and Lila miss me. Plus, I... I know that I'm probably not welcome here anymore. None of us planned for all this to happen but it did and we can't change that. We can't change the past, or change fate. It's out of our control now."

"But he's your soulfinder," Uriel said with a confused frown and a small shake of the head. "Everybody's heard all of the stories about soulfinders. Every part of you wants to be with him because he is perfect for you, blah blah blah. How could you just leave and not want that?"

"Because I love you," she said simply. "And I love Victor too. I don't want to hurt either of you but no matter what I do one of you will be hurt, so me leaving is the only way to deal with that."

"You leaving will hurt both of us," he pointed out. "You're running away to avoid the problems. And just leaving him a letter, not even saying a proper goodbye... You're going to break his heart as well as mine. You're running away," he repeated sternly.

"Maybe I am running away but it's for the best even if you don't realise that yet," she argued. "I'm not going to lie to you: I want to be with Victor. But I know you will never be okay with that, you will never be able to accept us being together and I know it will hurt you to see us together. And I can't do that to you; Victor wouldn't be able to either, it's why he hid his feelings from me for so long. He'll understand why I'm leaving and he will get over it and move on."

"You're giving up being with your soulfinder so that you don't hurt me?" He gasped.

"Yeah," she nodded and stood up. "I am. I've made my decision and my flight's booked, you can't change my mind about this." As he stood up too, she looked into his eyes and smiled sadly. "Just promise me a few things? Promise that you and Victor will look after each other and not let this ruin how close you are. And that you'll move on, you'll forget about me and you'll be happy with your life."

His lips twitched into a forced, agonized smile. "Victor's my brother, I'd never let anything get between us permanently," he said, reassuring her mind. "As for the second promise... I don't know if I could just forget about you and move on so easily. Just like I don't think you'll be able to move on and forget about me and Victor. So, you're really leaving, huh?"

"This evening, yes," she nodded and gulped. "I suppose I should get my things and go."

"We were good together, weren't we?" Uriel asked in a quiet voice. "I mean, you were happy weren't you?"

"Of course," she smiled at him. "So happy. I thought that we were going to be... You know, together for a long time. That's what I wanted. But I guess you don't always get what you want, things happen and get in the way and... good things fall apart."

"For better things to come together," Uriel finished the quote before sighing. "I'll miss you, Hazel."

"And I'll miss you. Don't ever doubt that, you were - and still are - important to me, and I just want you to be happy. I'm sorry that things turned out this way."

"Yeah. Me too. But everything happens for a reason."

Hazel hadn't thought it was possible for her and Uriel to part on good terms but it seemed like they had. Uriel had calmed down overnight and didn't seem to blame her anymore, understanding that it was something she couldn't control and that her and Victor were just trying to do right by him. Nothing she nor Uriel could say would make either of them less brokenhearted about the situation, but at least he didn't hate her and their last memory of each other wouldn't be an argument.

She felt bad for not having waited until Victor woke up to say a proper goodbye to him too, but the truth was that she was scared. She was frightened to face him, to have to see the look on his face and she told him that she was leaving. It was her last selfish act with him but she was calmer a little when she remembered that everything she had wrote in the letter explained all of her feelings.

Like she'd been thinking a lot recently, a life without either of the two Benedict brothers seemed impossible to her, but it was happening now. She would go home to her apartment and back to her department at work; she would spend time with her brother and his family, visit her parents' grave; and she would try and move on, try and fall in love with somebody else, but she'd always know that there was no way of that happening at all.

It would be a mediocre life at best, but it would be worth it to know that she hadn't split two brothers apart and that she wouldn't constantly be hurting them anymore. You're doing the right thing, she told herself as her heart beat painfully in her chest, longing to be near its other half. This is the right decision and you'll probably never see either of them ever again.

2nd February 2013

Victor had only been awake for ten minutes and his mother was already getting on his nerves by fussing over him. After she helped him sit up, he looked around the otherwise empty hospital room and felt disappointed not to see Hazel sat there. Had she been to visit him in the days he'd been unconscious? Or was she looking after Uriel, still with him even after Victor's outburst of a speech the last time he'd seen her? Had his declaration of love done nothing to change her decision of who to be with?

"Mum," he said, his voice raspy from not speaking for a few days. "The case... What happened?"

Karla sat down in the chair next to him and smiled. "It's all done and dusted with. Nora Connors was arrested- I'm sure your boss will explain who she is and why did she everything in detail to you when you go back to work. Mr Williamson was released from prison and house arrest, everybody knows that he is innocent now. There'll be no court case so everything's finished with now."

That was good, he thought. At least he wouldn't have to go against Hazel in court. He sighed as he thought about her again, glad that his mum already knew so that he could talk to her. "Mum, where's Hazel?" He asked quietly, blushing a little. He felt vulnerable and knew that it was showing; he was far too tired to put up his mask and make it look like he didn't care when in truth he did care. A lot. "I need to see her, talk to her. Has she visited at all?"

Karla hesitated, her eyes flickering down to the floor to break contact with his. "Well..."

"What?" He quickly asked. "What is it? She's okay, right?"

"Yes, she's fine," Karla nodded. She picked up her handbag from the floor and unzipped it, pulling out an envelope with his name printed on it. "I came to visit you with Uriel and we found this. Uriel said that it was from Hazel to you- he knows about you and Hazel now, you mentioned it in your sleep in front of him. I put it in my handbag so that a nurse didn't accidentally throw it away." She held it out to him and he silently took it from her. Karla stood up and said, "I'll give you a moment alone to read it, okay? I'll go and call your brothers, tell them that you're awake." She smiled and kissed his forehead before leaving the room, shutting the door behind her.

Victor turned the unopened envelope around in his hand, wondering what was written inside. Why would Hazel leave him a letter, if that's what it was? Why not come by and speak to him in person, wouldn't that have been easier? He was terrified of what he would find inside it but in the end, his curiosity got the better of him and he opened the envelope. There was a letter inside, written in Hazel's neat cursive script. After taking a deep breath to prepare himself, Victor began to read the letter:

Victor,

How did we end up like this? I never imagined this is how it would end, never once imagined that I would be re-writing a letter 15 times for you, crying whilst I did so. But I am. Life can be surprising sometimes, can't it?

By the time you read this letter I will be already be in London, settling back into my old life. As I write this now, I don't know how I'll be able to have a normal life again, knowing that you're out there - my soulfinder, my soulmate - and that I am not with you.

You see, the thing with me is that I have so many thoughts and feelings that I want to say but I'm always either too scared to say them or I just don't know how to. I always keep them locked away inside, bottled up tightly until one day I just explode and it all just spills out in one outburst. I guess you and I are similar in that way. This is my way of getting all of my feelings out, honestly. It's not as scary as saying them out loud, I have to admit, and I don't know how this letter is going to turn out, but I hope it tells you everything you want to know.

As you might already know or guess, Uriel knows that we are soulfinders. I explained everything to him, how you and I didn't even want to be together at first because not only did we not like each other, but because we just didn't want to hurt him. Wasn't that our objective the whole time, to save Uriel from pain and heartache? And I think we succeeded in doing that, up until now anyway.

Do you want to know the truth? I am in love with you, Victor Benedict. You make me feel like I am losing my mind and more often than not I want to slap you to shut you up, but you also make me feel alive and I know that you're a wonderful man. My love for you crept up on me, hitting me like a train out of nowhere. But if offered the chance, I would fall for you all over again.

I still love Uriel though. I hope you don't despise me for that but it's true. I know that sometimes love fades over time, but my love for him hasn't faded. And I don't think it ever will. One thing I do know however, is that my love for Uriel isn't as strong as I once thought it was. My love for you is stronger.

I can fully imagine myself having a future with you. Getting married, having children, growing old and dying next to each other. I can imagine us dying in an embrace, like Noah and Allie in The Notebook. Although I have a feeling our embrace would be strangling each other instead of holding each other, because I would like to think that even at the age we'd manage to wind each other up. But we'd still love each other of course, we'd love each other then just as much as we do now, maybe even more.

I want that and I can picture that and I will dream of that, but I know that it can't happen. Our objective was not to hurt Uriel because we both love him so much, and us being together... It would devastate him, we both know that. He would never be able to accept it.

So that's why I've left. Because as much as I want a life with you, I couldn't stand hurting him that much. I hope you can understand that Victor, and I hope you agree that this is the right thing to do for everybody involved.

I don't think anybody could have predicted this ending but maybe this is the way it was always supposed to end. Maybe being soulfinders doesn't always automatically mean that we have to spend the rest of our lives with each other. Sacrificing our love for your brother and for your relationship with him is a good thing Victor, something that will be worth it. Uriel is... Well, perfect. He doesn't deserve to be hurt in this way.

Who knows, maybe this will be good for you and I too. Maybe we wouldn't actually be good for each other. Maybe we'll both find somebody else, fall in love and be happy. Maybe that's what the next chapter in our lives will be. Or maybe not, we'll have to wait and see.

I hope you will be happy, Victor. You deserve to be happy.

With all of my love,

Hazel.

Victor let go of the letter, letting it fall into his lap silently. He couldn't believe that what he had just read was real, but there it was in black and white right in front of him. She had really wrote this, she was really gone. She was really out of his life for good.

For a moment he considered going to London as soon as he was released from hospital and searching for her; he considered fighting for her, refusing to let her go... But he knew that she was right. This whole time they had both just wanted the best for Uriel and he didn't want that to change now. This was his brother they were talking about- he could never hurt his own brother like that.

And Victor agreed with Hazel: he didn't think that Uriel would ever be able to accept them being together which meant that they would constantly feel guilty for being in love. And that wasn't the kind of relationship he wanted.

So when Karla came back into the room, he slid the letter under the bedsheet and forced a smile onto his face for the sake of his mother. He knew that he wasn't fooling her as she could probably see the sadness in his eyes but he kept up the pretense because he didn't want to break down in front of her.

And when the rest of his family - minus Uriel - turned up a half hour later, he faked a smile for them too and forced any thoughts of running after Hazel to leave his mind.

Because he agreed with her.

She had done the right thing by leaving.