"Oh, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch a long lonely time. Time goes by so slowly and time can do so much. Are you still mine?"

- The Righteous Brothers

"Come, my love, our worlds would part. The gods will guide us across the dark. Come with me and be mine, my love. Stay and break my heart."

- Celtic Woman and Oonagh

"And I said, 'What about Breakfast at Tiffany's?' She said, 'I think I remember the film. And as I recall, I think we both kinda liked it.' And I said, 'Well, that's the one thing we've got.'"

- Deep Blue Something

"Oh boy. Leftovers."

- Casey Jones

The sight of blood and the scent of death were so overpowering in the Demon Lord's castle it made Ristarte want to cover her whole face. Even with Chronoa's cape shielding her and turning her into an undetectable observer to this horrific scene from Ixphoria's history, her assaulted senses and her creeping feelings of terror were driving her to nausea. She wanted to be done with whatever fetch quest her summoned hero had dragged her into so she could be gone from this terrible reminder of her past.

Seiya was silently overlooking the disaster he had caused a century ago. The catastrophe that had been his fault just because he wanted to defeat the Demon Lord a couple days sooner when he should have spent the time preparing. It was a scene of absolute ruin where not a single sign of life stirred.

Then, a frail sorrowful voice echoed out of the unrelenting darkness.

"Seiya…" she said weakly, gasping in misery. "…it hurts so much… Where are you…? Seiya?"

Oh no, Ristarte thought silently. This was even worse than Aria described.

A small elegantly-dressed figure limped out the shadows of the throne room's foreboding pillars and collapsed. It was the princess Tiana, the sole survivor of the defeated party. With her eyes already blinded from shock, the waist of her dress torn to shreds, and so much blood seeping down her abdomen it nearly turned her skirt black, she wasn't going to be a survivor for much longer. It was sheer torture—or maybe a strange miracle—she was still clinging to life after what she had been through.

"I'm taking the cloak off. Stay here," Seiya said in a stoic tone to his goddess companion.

"Seiya, wait!" Ristarte started to panic. "We need to stay invisible! If anyone sees us, we could cause a time paradox!"

"This woman is already gone. There's nothing we can do that can change her future," the hero said with cold certainly.

Stepping out of his protective bubble of space-time, he quietly approached Tiana where she was struggling to crawl back up. He wasn't the real Seiya, Tiana's Seiya, who was lying nearby in a heap with his heart gouged out and his head crushed to a pulp. But he would do whatever he could to be the Seiya she needed in the few moments she had left.

He knelt beside the wounded healer, taking her into his arms to stabilize her and mitigate some of her pain.

"I'm here, Tiana. You can relax," he said quietly.

"Seiya…" the priestess's frightened voice softened with a hint of joy as she looked toward up him with clouded eyes. "I'm glad you're alright…"

She let out a relieved sigh. As the tiny amount of heat left her body on her breath, she shivered in his arms.

"Seiya, I… am I going to die here? In this horrible place?"

"You're going to pass on, but it's not going to be the end for you," he explained in a tone that was distant and icy, but compassionate in his own way. "Your spirit is just going to return to the same form we all exist in before we're born."

"Oh… that's not so scary…" Tiana murmured with faint comfort.

"I'll have to die someday, as well," he added. "Let's try meet each other again in our next lives, okay?"

"Mm… that would be… nice…" Tiana tiredly turned her head so it rested against the crook of Seiya's arm.

The princess's breathing slowed into a soft but labored wheezing sound. Seiya was determined to help her feel as comfortable as possible as she was dying in his arms in these final minutes. Pushing his own emotions to the back of his mind, he started speaking a few of the magic words Tiana and the old Seiya would quote back and forth in brighter times.

"It's a gift, Commander."

"Who knows about this?" Tiana spoke her part perfectly on cue, although her voice was weaker than usual.

"No one. I had him pronounced dead at the scene of the crash," Seiya said.

"It can't work," Tiana said.

"Think of it as recycling," Seiya gently brushed his hand near Tiana's cheek, tracing her face along her chin. "Payton is the best driver that the Outfit's ever turned out. After a little cosmetic fine-tuning, he'll be our driver. We'll restructure his nose and his jaw line. We'll change the color of his eyes with biochemical dye."

"But what you're doing is surgically creating a memory loss," Tiana said.

"What I'm doing is trying to save the city," Seiya said.

"The man's a felon," Tiana said.

"As a felon, he faces life in prison. But when we're finished with him, he'll be the state of the art in criminal rehabilitation," Seiya said.

"What makes you think he's better than all the other drivers who've failed?" Tiana winced as she placed her palm over her abdomen.

"Well, look at his record." Seiya gently cupped his hand over the healer's bloodied fingers, lowering his head in grief and guilt. "He was out on the streets at 10. He was driving at 12. He has no wife. He has no children. He spent half his life in jail."

Tiana's milky eyes started to close for the last time.

"It's crazy… Strand…" Her mouth curled into a small smile as her voice faded.

"No, Commander," Seiya quietly swallowed a lump in his throat. "It's a gift."

Tiana became still in his arms. He carefully lowered her down so she could rest on the floor.

Climbing back to his feet, Seiya hesitated for what felt like a lifetime before he turned to face Ristarte again. He walked toward her with slow, heavy footsteps that gave away his despondent emotions no matter how hard he tried to act like the always cool and collected hero.

"I told her what she wanted to hear so it would be easier on her. It would have been cruel to just leave her like this," he calmly said to the goddess. "The blood loss was putting her in shock before we even got here. I doubt she really understood a thing I was saying."

"She heard you, Seiya," Ristarte said with gratitude to resolve his doubts. Her eyes were damp, but not from sadness.

"When Aria and Ishtar showed me the recording before, all I could feel was pain. It was just all this misery and loneliness filling me all at once. But it's different now. You changed those memories for me. I know I died happy this time."

"Is there anything more I can do to help you feel better?" Seiya asked her out of sympathy. The healing goddess looked back at him with a playful smirk.

"Got a quarter?"

Author's note: This is their little thing. It may seem strange to you but it's actually really sweet and touching to them.