A/N: Okay, so this was supposed to be tha alternate ending of Letters, but it turned out completely different. Sorry if the summary sucks. It's so short that it's hard to say anything without giving everything away...

Gone. He was gone. She couldn't believe it. She refused to. He couldn't be gone. It was impossible. A life without him was beyond her comprehension.

It was his father who had first told her. She had wanted to scream, to cry; to tell him, "No, you're wrong, he's alive! He's right around the corner and any second now he'll come in here and laugh at what fools we are," but that wasn't true. Neal wasn't coming back. He was gone.

So she bit back her tears, her tantrums, her disbelief, and fled the room with no acknowledgement of the Duke's own obvious anguish. After all, he had just lost his oldest living son. But she could not tear her thoughts away from Neal, her best friend, her companion, her ally in all things. How could he be gone?

She ran through the palace halls without abandon, weeping openly, her eyes blurred with tears that she could not hold back. Her grief was too great to be hidden behind a mask of lies. She didn't know where she was going until she had finally arrived. It was his room. The door was ajar, so she slid through the crack and slammed the heavy oak behind her.

Without thought, she threw herself onto his bed, pressing her face into his pillow and breathing deeply of his own scent-iron and sweat, expensive sandalwood and the alien tang of magic.

Sitting on his bed, wrapped in his blankets, and stroking his pillow on her lap, she could almost imagine him here, opening the door and strolling smoothly and cockily to where she sat.

"Neal—I thought, I thought that you were dead!" a single tear coursed down the track of wetness on her cheek.

"Kel, I'm so sorry; I am dead," dream-Neal reached to brush the tear from her cheek, but it slid right through his imaginary fingers.

As the water broke his images, he slowly began to fade. He smiled cheerily and waved. "Don't worry Kel. Things will go on without me. Goodbye,"

"Don't go! Neal! I…I love you! I need you…Don't leave, please!"

But he was already gone, fading back into the depths of her memory. Gone.