AN: Hey. Long time no see. Now for the promised He-Who-Has-Not-Been-Named chapter! (Can anyone say unreliable narrator?)

Set to the song Paradox from the Inception soundtrack.

Her laughter was how he knew she still belonged to him. Not because she did it all the time—quite the opposite. She never laughed anymore, and that fact, that knowledge that he was the only creature who had ever been able to make her laugh like that, was something he cherished jealously. That was what kept him going; because no matter what happened, no matter where she went or how completely she ignored his existence, he could always tell himself that he was the only one who had ever won her heart, the only one she had ever held and kissed and laughed so freely with. He was the only creature she had ever loved.

(Paradox) But he had misjudged her—and himself. He was older; he saw further afield than her, knew more, understood her purpose and their creators far more completely than she did. He thought he could show her the truth of that, but he had acted too soon, and she had refused him. He had never been refused before. In retrospect, his reaction had been... rash. He had let his anger get the better of him, let it reach out and burn her, and at the time, seeing her on the floor with the marks of his rage scarring her perfect skin a brilliant red, something had told him that she would not recover. Something dark and insidious whispered to him that he had killed her.

He had brushed the thoughts aside, though. She was like him—physical injuries didn't stick. She would be fine. But he had been shaken nonetheless, directionless and restless. He had left her there. When he returned not long after, she should have been better...but she wasn't. The burns were like new, and her energy, her very soul, was twisted into dysfunctional knots, oblivious to anything beyond herself.

Her mortal friend had stood between them, yelled at him for his transgression, and kept him away. She had been terrified, he could hear the truth in her mind, of what he might do to her for it, and she was right to be so. He had obliterated mortals for less, but her actions had troubled him. She thought the love of his life needed protecting. From him.

Did she? He had wondered as he looked past the raging mortal. He'd heard that seed of darkness in his mind again, telling him she was dead. He left without a word or second glance at the insolent mortal, and he didn't come back for a long time, thinking that would heal the burn and the rift between them. He still loved her. Surely she understood that? Surely she would welcome him back?

That had been his expectation, three Ages ago. He supposed he had been...wrong, in a way. To think that she would come back to him on her own. She was still too young to recognize the inescapable reality of what she was.

Now he stood on a barren, blackened landscape overshadowed by a solid cloud of ash that stretched to the horizons. There had been a city here, but then it had become a battlefield, and now... there was nothing but death, and ash, and burnt matter. It was a despondent scene, but it matched his mood—the mood he always seemed to be in, ever since she'd left him. Ever since she wouldn't come back.

She'd been here not too long ago; this was her doing. She'd been berserking. She never used to do that, while she was with him. She had created this hopeless place, this place that would come to be known as Desolate. Did that reflect her mood, too? Couldn't she see how they belonged together, how they made each other happy?

Something had changed in this last battle, though, and he walked away slightly unsettled. A boy—leader of the rebel movement in this country—had stopped her. He had calmed her rage, and brought her back to herself. This was troubling. He decided that he would have to watch this boy closely from now on.

For a short time, he found nothing to worry about. But then something changed. After that, what he saw became increasingly disturbing. He saw that his conjunx endura spent a lot of time with this mortal. He saw that she was growing to care for him, in a way she had not cared for anybody in many ages, and that observation poisoned something deep inside him. He recognized the dislike developing in his mind for this boy, and he tried to stifle it. The human wouldn't be around long enough to cause a real problem, he told himself. He would pass on, and she would remain his.

That perception was altered in less time than it takes an atom to split, in the very instant that the sound of her laughter reached him where he listened and watched. For the first time since they had been torn apart, her laughter danced into his very being, catalyzing his dislike into unadulterated hate for the mortal that had instilled such a reaction from his love.

T'reth.

It was degrading to bring himself low enough to have such strong feelings of any sort about such a short-lived and primitive creature as this mortal child, inherited photon manipulation or no. He certainly didn't want to hate the insignificant boy...but he did, and there was no way around it now.

He was going to have to kill T'reth.