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A pained scream ripped itself from his throat as he clutched his husband in his arms, blood covering his shaking hands as he tried, desperately, to press against the knife wound in his chest. He knew it was futile, and still, he tried, tears pouring down his face and mixing with his love's blood. He felt the life ebb from the broken body in his arms, could feel him leaving, and could do nothing but sob his name.
When his husband's heart stopped, he thought his heart would too. He wished it would. For what was his life worth if he could not live it out with the one he loved? In agonised desperation, he pulled the knife from the other’s chest and turned it on himself, awaiting the pain. But though he drove the blade into his own chest, and though the pain seared through him, his heart did not stop, and with dawning horror, he realised what had happened.
Fate, in her cruel whimsy, had given him the curse of immortality. The one thing he dreaded most. And his beloved, he who feared the empty forgetfulness of oblivion, was dead in his arms.
He knew, then, what he had to do.
He had to tell his love's story forever, and ensure he was never forgotten.
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So decades, then centuries, ticked by, and the immortal did not grow old. He moved around the world, telling his love's story across the planet in a million different ways. He picked and discarded names and identities like clothing, and eventually abandoned his name and simply went by The Immortal. He watched the world morph around him into something different, something alien and cruel. He watched wars be fought and people live and die, and through it all he told his love's story.
Statues were built of his beloved, his ethereal features engraved in marble, etched into stone for generations to see and admire. The sole remnant of a time before the wars, save for himself. He worshiped at these altars of his love, but he knew his job was not done. He had work yet to do, and a story to tell.
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When the sun loomed larger in the sky than the day before, the immortal knew what was coming. They knew the sun would soon engulf this planet, now become a wasteland. They could only hope they would die with it.
As the blazing heat and the inferno got closer, they mumbled their love's story to the earth. To the dying plants, the trees, the scorching, cracked dirt. To the world around them, they told their story again.
The sun swallowed the earth in its fiery blaze.
They kept telling their love's story.
They didn't die. They were left there, in the vastness of space, surrounded by bright pinpricks of stars and the inky black void. And they screamed until they couldn't, and then sobbed until it hurt. And then they did nothing.
And then they told their love's story.
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The immortal knew when they were going to die. Their death would come with that of the universe and not a moment before. So they hung in the icy cold of space, shielded by the same cruel hand of Fate that had dealt them their eternal life, and told the story they were charged to tell. They screamed it into the vast, empty expanse until their throat was raw and bleeding, and then more, until their voice faded. They sobbed it into their hands, begging Fate to be able to join their beloved in oblivion. They thought it, over and over, when they could not speak for the agony.
They could not remember their name. They could not remember if they'd ever even had one. Had they once been a man? A woman? Both or neither? They did not know. They did not know who they were. They had not known who they were for many, many millions of years. Once, perhaps, they had been someone. But time takes its inexorable toll on everybody, and now the only thing they could be certain of was that they loved the man whose story they told.
And so there they hung, as time passed by in torturous agony, and spoke their love's story in hope that someone, on some distant planet, would feel the resonance of something they could not hear. And when those planets' suns swallowed them and left nothing but burning brands in space, they hung there and told their love's story to the stars. And when those winked out in bursts of light they could hardly see, they told their love's story to the endless black of the void around them.
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When they feel the first waves of the roiling, fiery death of the universe, they feel nothing. They have nothing left to feel. Hope and relief deserted them long, long ago. Everything else left soon after.
But they speak their love's story through a throat that burns in agony as the heat consumes them.
They scream their love's name into the inferno as their flesh melts and chokes them, and they see his face, as beautiful as it was on the day they first met. They feel the flame around them still, and they would sob in relief if they could. They can die now, knowing they have done what their love would have wanted.
They have carved their beloved into the very fabric of the universe itself, have ensured that no matter how many times the universe destroys and rebuilds itself, their love will always be remembered, will always be cherished. Their love will never again be forgotten.
They close their eyes and surrender themself to their final, blissful death.
They know nothing but the fact that they love him.
They will finally see him again.
They smile.
They die.