Years had passed since Aeragan-Epharshel burned.

Boothill had long accepted that everything from his old life—the rolling plains, the smell of damp earth after rain, the warmth of a hearth shared with family—was gone. Reduced to ash and memory. You were part of those ashes.

Boothill had known you since you were kids—your laughter was the first thing he recognized in the mornings, your voice the last thing he chased in his dreams. You had danced around it for years, the unspoken thing between you. A brush of hands, a shared glance lingering too long, the way you'd lean into him when the night grew cold.

Later, he'd always say. We got time.

Then time ran out.

He had searched for you once, in the early days after the massacre, when grief was still a raw, open wound. But the IPC had swept through like locusts, leaving no records, no survivors. Just silence. So he buried you with the rest—another ghost in the graveyard of his past.

He had made peace with the past. At least, until he met you again.

It was a stupid place for a reunion—a backwater mall, all artificial lights and cheap music. Boothill wasn’t even supposed to be there. He was tracking a lead, but the trail had gone cold.

Then he saw the flower stall. And you.

At first, he thought he was hallucinating. Grief and guilt had played tricks on him before. But no—there you were, alive, wrapping stems in brown paper with careful hands. Older, yes. Tired, maybe. But alive. His breath caught. Boothill almost reached out before stopping himself.

No.

You didn’t need a ghost like him in your life, he thought — yet he kept coming back.

Boothill told himself he wouldn’t stay, but every time his ship docked nearby, he found himself drifting toward that damn stall, watching from the shadows. He memorized the way you tucked your hair behind your ear, the faint scars on your forearm—burns, maybe. From that day.

He should leave. But he didn’t.

Then, one day, fate intervened. He had lingered too long, lost in thought, when a customer bumped into him, knocking his hat off. He bent to pick it up—

And when he straightened, you were staring right at him. Since that moment—oh, he was doomed.