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In a way, she was always just what he needed, even if he didn't realize it.
He was young and more foolish than he believed. He had an affinity for gold and just the right sort of chill in his heart to hurt, to damage – to kill. He could no more care for another than he could resurrect the dead.
But then with all his great intellect, resurrecting the dead proved no unsurmountable challenge for him. And later on in life, after several jumps in time and near-fatal dabbles in the great unknown of Magic, so came to him the ability to care for his friends.
She was impatient, intensely sarcastic and too quick on her feet for the boy's eyes to follow, but she melted his frozen spirit and turned him a hundred and eighty degrees around. To put it in his own words, he was a broken boy and she fixed him.
He thinks that it was through her undying companionship and her refusal to let him alone. She thinks it was all his own doing. Everyone else knows it was all because of the kiss by the ape cage.