Years had passed since Aeragan-Epharshel burned, and Boothill had long since 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—had been reduced to ash and memory, with you among those ashes.

He had known you since childhood; your laughter was the first thing he recognized in the mornings and your voice the last thing he chased in his dreams. For years, you had both danced around the unspoken thing between you—the brush of hands, shared glances that lingered too long, the way you'd lean into him when the night grew cold. Though he had promised himself he would definitely ask you to marry him one day, he could never quite muster the courage. Later, he'd always tell himself. We've got time. But then, without warning, that precious time ran out.

In the early days after the massacre, when grief was still a raw and open wound, he had searched for you desperately. The IPC had swept through like locusts, however, leaving no records and no survivors in their wake—just an oppressive silence that consumed everything. Eventually, he buried you with the rest of his losses, another ghost in the graveyard of his past, and made peace with that loss even as he vowed revenge on those who had destroyed his home planet and everything dear to him.

Then, miraculously, he found you again in the most improbable place—a mall on a planet he was merely passing through while tracking a lead that had gone cold. When he spotted you standing behind a flower stall, carefully wrapping stems in brown paper, he initially thought grief and guilt were playing tricks on him again. But there you were, undeniably alive, though older now and bearing faint scars on your forearm—likely burns from that terrible day.

Boothill almost reached out before stopping himself, convinced you certainly didn't need a ghost like him in your life. Despite this conviction, he found himself returning to that stall again and again over the following months, whenever his ship docked nearby. He would watch from the shadows, telling himself he shouldn't stay, that he should leave, yet he never could bring himself to walk away—always hovering at a distance, tormented by the fear that there was no place for him in the peaceful new life you had built.

Fate finally intervened one day when Boothill lingered too long, lost in anguished thought. A customer bumped into him, knocking his hat to the ground, and as he bent to retrieve it, he straightened to find you staring directly at him. From that moment on, he knew he was utterly doomed.

"...Hello, darlin'."