Happily Never After

5

"And stay safe until I can come back to you."
"I'll try my best," Bandit reassured the Prince.
With that vow and some solemn waving, the trio separated.

For the next five months, Caspian sat by his windowsill every night and read Bandit's, and occasionally Baron's, letters by the moonlight, writing back immediately.
In the sixth month, Caspian wrote to Bandit the wedding plans for Selina and him, with a humorous lilt of course. Soon after, there was a blizzard in Olfor and letters between the pair became infrequent.
In the eighth month, the weather had cleared again, but something about Bandit's letters began to evolve. They grew... spiteful. The thief became angry with Caspian for uprooting him and his sister, for disrupting their previously simple and quiet lifestyle. The tone of his letters also became jealous, as Caspian's wedding date drew closer and closer.
Of course, Caspian never planned to actually wed Selina, he would instead flee to Olfor to be with the ones he truly cared for, his real family. Did Bandit really know Caspian's true intentions though? Regardless of how many times the royal reassured him of the truth, until the day came that Caspian sailed to Olfor and proved his love, for all that Bandit knew, the Prince's words were hollow.
In the ninth through eleventh months, it was seldom that Caspian received a letter from Bandit, unless it was asking the date that Caspian would sail to Olfor, which remained constant, it would be his seventeenth birthday. Baron however, continued to be completely faithful in Caspian's well meaning and kept him updated on all of her adventures and friends in the new kingdom.
And at last, after one long, strenuous year of waiting patiently, Prince Caspian was overjoyed at the arrival of his seventeenth birthday.
True to his word, the royal brought his boat ticket he had bought the previous day and boarded the ship to Olfor, prepared with Shakespeare's Hamlet to reread for the journey.
The next day, in the kingdom of Olfor, Bandit awoke not to one, but two letters lying in his mail slot. The first was clearly from Caspian, so Bandit dismissed it, for he could just read it after Caspian had arrived. The second letter was startling, for it was sealed in a scarlet envelope. Bandit opened the letter slowly with a furrowed brow of concern and read it carefully.
Upon finishing the letter Bandit knelt on the ground and began to shake as uncontrollable sobs racked his body. Gut wrenching sorrow festered throughout him and he screamed erratically through his tears.
"Bandit?! Bandit- what's going on, are you okay?" Baron ran into Bandit's room upon hearing his distant cries.
"The letter. The letter. The letter, read the letter!" Bandit shouted to Baron, who with trembling fingers opened the fallen parchment and quickly skimmed it's contents.
She fell to her knees beside Bandit.
The day before, unbeknownst to any of the passengers heading toward Olfor, a massive hurricane had passed directly across the route Caspian's boat captain was using.
Caspian never made it.
And he only ever dreamt of happy endings.
Years later, Baron grew up to be the leader of the antiestablishment movement in Olfor, and Bandit returned to Evermore to live out a quiet, discontented life - exactly the kind he subconsciously knew Caspian would have resented passionately.
In Bandit's final letter to the Prince, after Caspian's funeral service, he wrote:

Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, but simply more vulnerable to the thoughts that were previously overwritten and shielded by the presence of one's beloved. The jealousy and spite residing in my heart was only a faded patch of ink on the love letter that is my life, written only for you. My dearest, you were truly were my knight in shining armor. I never should have doubted you. And that regret I will continue to hold until the joyous day we are reunited in the beyond. Wait for me, my love. I will see you soon.

And some lived, though unhappily ever after.