winter has come too late, too close beside me
how can I chase away all these fears deep inside

By the time Raine returns again, several winters later, she has lost something precious.

There is an almost tangible emptiness deep inside her, an all-pervasive ache pulsing in place of her heart. Yuan recognizes the void instantly, because he's felt it for thousands of years. Less so now than before, now that she has finally been laid to rest, but enough to understand why Raine says nothing.

"He's gone," remarks Yuan, without needing to ask, and she nods hesitantly. Yes, he's gone, and she hasn't felt so displaced since she first landed in Sylvarant. Raine has always prided herself on her pragmatism, but the death of the only man she has ever loved has shaken her faith like nothing else ever could. There is nowhere for her to go. Perhaps that's why she finds herself here.

Still, Yuan is reluctant to offer any kind of condolences, because he has foreseen this end since before the beginning—so he waits until Raine takes a deep breath, looks him flatly in the eye, and asks, "How did you keep yourself from going mad?"

Yuan smiles humorlessly. Raine is asking the wrong questions, as usual. "I didn't," he says, and she frowns. "You'd do better to ask how I've managed to act sane." He glowers at nothing in a hollow imitation of severity. With so little to vex him over the years between her visits, he's losing his touch.

"Tell me," murmurs Raine. She has spoken those words often before, in varying tones—a preface to a rhetorical question, a demure demand, encouragement to continue a tale Yuan would much rather abandon halfway—but her request has never sounded so sincere. Or so sad.

He knows she won't like what he has to say, but he can hardly refuse her at a time like this. "By repeating to myself that all love is fleeting," says Yuan. "Love between humans, love between half-elves, love between the two. That's how I lived. I convinced myself that it would still have ended someday even if she had lived a little longer."

"You had been going to marry her, Yuan!" retorts Raine, almost before he finishes the sentence, and rushes on, swift and merciless in the blindness of her passion. "She had to have meant something to you when she was alive. How soon after you lost her did you change your mind?"

Yuan clenches his teeth with a grimace, and it takes a moment for him to convince his muscles to relax enough for him to form a response. "I didn't lose her," he snaps, and Raine flinches at the scorn in his tone. He despises that phrase. The love of his life wasn't lost like some sort of key, which he could abandon or replace or stumble upon later. "She was murdered, and I couldn't stop it. Clinging to her only hurt more, so I let go."

"And has she left no lasting impression?" asks Raine skeptically, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows. "Love cannot truly be transient unless it leaves no trace. You are marked by your past, Yuan, as I am marked by mine." As her husband was marked by his, she adds silently to herself, but is afraid her voice will break if she tries to say it aloud.

Yuan glares at her, the long-forgotten fire of anger flaring to life in his chest. Raine has no right to lecture him on love. "Show me," he says spitefully, his eyes sparking in indignation, and Raine takes a measured step back, confusion and alarm clashing in her eyes. "The marks he left on you." Yuan rolls up his sleeves in anger, and Raine reaches instinctively for the staff on her back before she realizes he's trying to show her something on his forearms.

At first she sees only pale skin, but then she notices the paler lines stretching across it, white as the snow beneath their feet. Yuan's skin has been unbroken for centuries, which is more than he can say for whatever is left of his heart, but the scars linger. Raine stares at them, and then at him, as he smooths his sleeves self-consciously down again. He could have used the power of the Cruxis Crystal to erase or conceal them, but instead, he chose to keep them as a reminder.

Raine opens her mouth to apologize, stricken, but Yuan speaks first. "When you have the choice of closing your heart off or ripping it out," he growls, his voice low and threatening like thunder, "you numb the pain, or you die. I almost bled out the last time, before Kratos found me." He hesitates for a long moment, and his next words are more cautious, as if in a halfhearted attempt at compassion. "The sooner you accept that everyone you love will leave you behind in the end, the easier it will be."

Any sympathy Raine may have had evaporates at those words, and her eyes turn cold and hard as darkened ice. She's never hated Yuan so much as in this moment, not even when he opposed them: how dare he imply that mourning is superfluous! She knows he's only lashing out like a frightened animal, his spirit irreparably injured after suffering through so many lifetimes, but that doesn't make it any easier for her to forgive him.

Even Yuan understands that his past actions are unconscionable, but it still takes him a few moments of careful scrutiny to recognize the heaviness in his heart as guilt, or perhaps regret. He should never have dismissed Raine's emotions in this delicate stage, especially not while overcome with his own, but ever since he forbade her from asking him questions, he interacts with people so infrequently that he has grown selfish and erratic in his prolonged solitude.

"I suppose my heart isn't as fragile as yours," says Raine eventually, her voice soft and deadly serious. "I already know I'll have to say many more farewells than to my husband—so I'll practice with this one." She takes a deep breath, bowing her head briefly, and her voice turns frigid as the air around them. "Goodbye, Yuan."

A pang shoots across his heart. However distant and unpredictable Raine's companionship may be, the prospects of losing it altogether are inexplicably distressing. He reaches out, opening his mouth to beg forgiveness for the first time in centuries—but her eyes flash steel into his soul once more as she turns away, and she's gone.