As I lay there, dying in his arms, my life didn't gratifyingly flash before my eyes. There were no last regrets, no sudden clarification, no indication of just where my moral decay had began. Instead, everything seemed to slow down until it gradually met a standstill, my eyes locked with his. I was largely aware of my own gore on my hands - damp indigo, and inhuman - and wondered if this was the first time I had ever actually bled. The universe had stopped, and every movement of mine was labored, sluggish; it was as if gravity was pulling me into the nonexistence that the rest of the world had settled in. I fought it, vainly, but my strength was fading.
          He was talking. I turned my head, slowly, to acknowledge him. "Sorry?"
          "You can't!" he said, with repeated enthusiasm. I shook my head, a tired lull across my aching shoulders.
          "There... isn't enough time," I croaked, in a voice that was barely my own. "I.. have to do this. You'll.. just have.. to trust me."
          His entire body was shaking, wracked with sobs he wouldn't utter. His hands - a killer's hands, that cradled me so gently - were blanched an unhealthy white. He bit his lip. "No," he said quietly, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. "There.. has to be another way. Hasn't there been enough death already? If you just let me--"
          "Shhh," I said softly. My hand slowly lifted and touched his mouth, hushing him. "If you let me do this, my death will be the only one.."
          He gave a great shuddering sigh. It was one laden with defeat - and acceptance. I smiled, tiredly, and his eyebrows knitted together. "Delilah," he said softly, as the first tears began to fall. "Why did you.. why did you make me.. make me.." His eyes flickered briefly to where his sword was discarded, coated in sickly, dark blue blood. My own blood.
          I was aware of the world around us shifting. The world lightened, then dimmed, and then lightened again. Figures stalked in and out of the room, backwards - scores of beautiful winged women, and a lumbering, frightening creature with many legs and fangs. Two girls trotted past, but slower then the others - they twirled in odd, jerking motions as if a puppeteer were pulling at their invisible strings. Finally came a woman in a red suit; she stopped by us briefly, her eyes soft, chocolate, and sad. There was a kind of static feeling in the air; the world was tingling, electric, as the world spiraled backwards to where it all began. The two of us, however, remained where we were, suspended.
          My savior wasn't looking at the rewinding of our universe, but I knew he was aware of it. I could see it, the way his muscles rippled and tensed as people left and entered in a backwards, choreographed dance. He was breathing hard, as if he had just run a long distance, and his eyes were rimmed with red. "Please.. please don't leave me."
          My hands lifted from where they lay. As they reached for my medallion, the extremity of the gash he had inflicted upon me became evident. Blood rushed to the surface of the wound, spilling out over my sides, and him. My keeper openly trembled, shaking his head, as I took up my necklace in my delicate hands. It now shone with every color every imagined, and even glittered with something that couldn't have been described as a color. Time itself glinted off of it.
          "Chris, grieve with me."
          The past rushed towards us.