AMA-Con: The Compilation

Pages: Epilogue

"...stories need endings. Otherwise, they aren't really stories. Just pages."

—Ted Naifeh

In his doctored reality, it was perfect.

They were walking hand-in-hand along the cobbled streets of Novellis Downtown.

RJ continued to smile as Maine told her a joke. The joke was old and outdated, one of her first ones, but it never failed to elicit a smile from him. With Maine, he never really cared about anything else. All he cared about was the shine in her eyes as she spoke.

"I love you," he said so suddenly it made her stop walking. Slowly, she turned her head towards him.

"I love you too," she responded, standing on tiptoes to kiss the tip of his nose.

RJ smiled down at her, his own black orbs brilliant with indescribable happiness. He offered his hand to her, which she took without hesitation. She was the one who intertwined their fingers and who pulled him along as she continued her joke.

RJ never once noticed that he kept reliving the same scenarios for five years. He never once noticed that his daily activities now consisted of non-sequential snippets, where the night and day activities happened alternately regardless of the logic of time.

In this world, no day was meaningless as long as Maine spent it with him. In the harsh world of the real, RJ would forever live his days with Maine's stored memories.

RJ would forever live his present with the pages of their yesterdays.

And fate, with all its damn ironies, will always be harsh that way.

FIN