Disclaimer: Only the idea is mine, none ofthe characters. Or the setting. Well, nothing recognizable, anyway.

This takes place during Emperor Mage and is the reason that Varice's handkerchief is in Numair's room. Also, I know that Numair and Varice seem a bit different, but my theory is that no one really knows Varice or what is running through her head. And just imagine what it would be like to think everything is perfect between you and your boyfriend and then he disappears for 11 years and doesn't want you back. Meetings between old loves always bring out a different side of us and cause us to act in ways we cannot even begin to understand. Numair and Varice are no exception especially since his past was so painful and tortured before he left Carthak. Therefore, please excuse any irrational behavior between them. Also I like to think that Numair has a bit of a darker, shy side to him that no one really ever sees ;)

"You never told me you were going to go," hissed the harsh whisper from the shadows.

"No, I didn't," he sighed. They both knew it wasn't enough, never would be enough, to stop the hurt that his departure had caused. It was a raw ache, a fire that stank and festered in the pit of her stomach and consumed her heart. It was anger, rage, hatred, loathing, love, adoration, worship, and addiction. It was a passion and obsession that had flung her into the whirlwind of a life of sunshine and laughter with beautiful clothes and flirtatious glances. She had devised this slivery façade of satisfaction to hide her hurt from the world. Her wound had spread. It crept through her blood and seeped from her eyes. No longer was it contained in a heart grown cold and brittle. Her mind was tainted beyond belief; she was a creature far too perfect to be pure, and that fact rippled in the air between her every breath.

"Did my love mean nothing to you then?" heartbreak echoed in her voice, a fragile remnant of the murder of her innocence from all those years before.

"Our love was never the problem, Varice. It was my life." His eyes were dark as she approached him. Pain and anger were swirling in depths long ago used to self doubt and hatred. Rash fury and gentle support were common expressions she had held dear, but now, his black orbs held only soft understanding and mild affection. In her heart, those eyes were dead. And there was nothing anyone could do to revive them.

"We could have had a life together, Arram. Something new and different, something you could be. You would have had love." Her eyes shone in the hard, white starlight that was the only illumination in his guest suite.

"It's Numair now, Varice. I am not Arram; I never will be Arram. That part of me is dead, and I do not miss it any longer now that I have made someone of myself. Can you not understand?" His face begged, pleaded with her to see what he had to pass through to become the dark, lonesome shadow in the corner, the man who was part of the foundation of a country but never wanted glory. No one saw his shadow, the darkness resting in his heart; they saw only his charming smile, impeccable robes and tunics, and elaborate court behavior. Desperation burned in his visage cold with this lonesome hurt. No one understood and no one cared to. Very well, he was used to it.

"I loved Arram," was the fierce whisper in the air. It hung between the two of them like a gauzy shroud meant to pull them together and let them rest. It filled the air, choked them, but it did so for many differing reasons. She was soft in ice and passion surrounded in burning light; he was warmth and sorrow but dark and hard. They fit together like an artist's masterpiece, and both were perfect in their hatred. He loathed the way he had doubted, the way he had forgotten. He despised the way her eyes looked at him so full of old memories ripping themselves free of their cold and haunting graveyard. She hated his flaws and weakness. He had not been this passive before. He had not stood against her like a stone cliff waiting to crumble and fall with all the stoicism of struggle honed with time. He had not been so distant, but she had ever been the fallen angel. With purity unlike any other, she had been so beautiful that her light had devoured him. Now, she was a memory, an image. She was nothing that he had not seen before and found slightly lacking despite all her visible perfection. She was no longer made of sun and smiles but of ice and fury. He did not believe it was all his doing. After all, every star must someday fall.

"It no longer matters, not the way it did before. We have both become something we could never have dreamed we would be." There was no emotion on his face, no inflection in his voice. He was hollow in her eyes, but she longed to fill his emptiness. She longed to unravel time like the golden threads woven in his tunic, and, if necessary, she was willing to count out each grain of sand to return to that moment when she knew he loved her. Hatred washed over her as his callous response to her love sank in. What man was he to deny her, to refuse her? She was everything he could ever hope to have and more! She was a goddess on Earth; she was a portrait of a slice of Heaven, and he dared to say that she was not good enough for him? That she was not capable of being enough for him now as his new person? What fool was he to think that the past ever truly disappeared into the darkest recesses of the heart and mind? The past was always real. It dwelled like a caged lion in even the hardest of hearts and either was their destruction or creation. The past had wrapped its ribbon-like tendrils through their very beings, and slowly suffocating them, it crushed them in its iron clutches. That is why a person is doomed to think and feel they always will with certain emotions sweeping them along in their seductive cascade. The past will eternally illustrate how they react; it curses them to repeat every hard learned mistake they have ever made. That is why she was cursed to love him; that is why he was cursed to return her ardor, if even just for the moment. After all, passion is a second nature to those who have once confessed love for each other. Once a heart is given, it can never be fully returned.

"Does it matter then that I am missing only one part of my life to be, to have everything I ever dreamed? I need you; I need my heart back." Her blue eyes burned with a ravenous fire. His blood churned as though she stirred it with her own ivory hand, and he knew he was lost. Her gaze was far too heavy; the very air was thick and rancid with old love and forgotten dependency. Love glittered before his eyes as the memories returned; he remembered every moment he had loved her. That feeling, that cord of fire wrapped around his heart was enough to make the moment real again. He moved closer to her until their breath mingled and coiled about each other until it was one. It stank of passion; it was a passion of hate and love, light and dark. This was to be the last of the first, or the first of the last; it was one of the moments when perfection can become one, and this was to be a changing point. For the good or terrible, neither knew; neither thought as his hand ran down one pale cheek. Her thin, elegant hands tangled into his raven dark hair and pulled him closer; he did not fight. With one arm, he crushed her long, feminine body to his hard, angular one. Only inches separated their faces, and their eyes burned into the others.

"Can you not take it back yourself?" he breathed before closing the distance between them completely. Crushed together in a bruising kiss weaving past and present together in a mad rush to find the future, she slid one smooth hand down his side. Reacting as she knew he would, he relaxed slightly, only enough so that she could run both hands up and over his lean chest. Surprised at her own eagerness, she moaned as he forced his way past her lips and taunted her, teased her with his fingers lightly trailing over her waist, hips, and stomach. Light seemed to bloom behind her eyelids as the rest of her sight eased into black. Before long, all she was aware of were his hands sliding through the laces on the back of her dress and pushing the soft fabric aside. Her body was so warm that the slight breath of summer wafting through the window chilled her until she pressed herself even closer to his flesh as though to meld into one being, and she buried her fingers once more in his hair. Her breath was coming hard and fast, completely shaking her body as it ripped its way from her chest. His kisses were hard and crushing; they left her lips swollen and searching for more, and her lungs aching for air. Thought escaped her as his familiar but strange touch drove her to madness and his hands ran over her porcelain flesh.

"Arram, I'd forgotten –" she gasped as his naked chest pressed against hers. She could not remember removing his shirt, she could not remember much but his touch leaving every nerve ending on fire and screaming for his attentions once more. His lips, tongue, and teeth trailed over her throat, collarbone, and breasts to stop at her naval, and now she was trembling at his touch. Wave after wave of hot and heavy loathing washed over her until she was numb and empty of everything but pleasure and adulation.

"There is nothing to remember, nothing to forget," he growled with his dark eyes blazing, burning into her soul so that she could not think, could not care. Together, they danced in the fiery cycle they had begun many, many lifetimes ago it seemed. It was destined to end this way as it began this way, in a blazing flame as it consumed them and swallowed them until their bodies, hearts, and minds could do nothing but fling wide the gates to their battlements as they attempted to receive and remember every emotion and wave of pleasure carried on their desire. No thought could penetrate this moment as an ocean seemed to devour them and leave them helpless in each others arms. Slowly, so slowly, they swam back to reality and the moment when the past faded once more into the past as their hands still wandered over each others' bodies. They moved so much more slowly than before; they were silent but for ragged breaths and pounding hearts. Their heartbeats slowed; his was slower, more sedate than hers as it beat softly like a fairy's wing in the soft moonlight. Together, bodies entwined, clothes strewn across the room, and skin to skin, heart to heart they lay thinking. He fell harshly into the present, and he remembered what she had called him by as she succumbed to her body's will. He looked at her skin so soft and flawless in the starlight. This was just a moment; a relapse of what once was but could never be. It truly did not matter that once their hearts were not so different. He was Numair Salmalin, and he had found love and life without her.

"Varice?"

"Hmm?"

"Its Numair now and we have to talk."

Please, please review! Tell me what you think of this...I just might be tempted to add on to it :)