Song Performed by John Rich
Songfic by Firefury

Sometimes when I sleep
I can see you walking back to me

    She haunts me in my dreams. Coming, arms open, a loving embrace. It tears me apart to see her. To know her suffering, and my own.

    I awaken, expecting to find her arms around me, hoping that the reality was just a bad dream. But I know otherwise. Every night it is replayed for me, agonizing, heartbreaking. To know I failed her. And myself. I didn't love her as much as I should have, I took her loving caresses for granted. Now she is lost to me.

    It is simply too much. My walls crumble in the darkness, my room amazingly silent but for my own strangled sobs. Echoing off the walls, deafening, mocking me, my life. 'The perfect soldier', the silence intones. 'broken, defeated. A failure'.
    Throwing the sweat-soaked sheets off of myself, I get up and prowl the now-dead house. It's hasn't been the same since... I try to shut the memory from my mind. Unable to sleep, and not wanting to anyways, I end up, as always, in that room. What once was scattered with shattered glass and blood is now covered with flowers and candles, burning softly in the darkness. With a sigh, I find a chair and slump into it.

    Even now, several days after it happened, her essence fills the room. So much happened here. So many happy memories... and the most terrible one of all.

    To my surprise, I find myself praying silently. I've never believed in a God, but yet, here, in the dark, a week after she was murdered, I find myself stumbling through the muddled recollection of what happened, and praying. To whom, I'm not sure. Perhaps to God. Perhaps to her.

    There is nowhere to hide from her. Her memory follows after me everywhere. My love, my life, I suppose. And lost to me because I wasn't able to stop the assassin. Every time I close my eyes, I see her, as if I had just seen her a few moments ago. Smiling, laughing, loving, caring, dying...

    Time heals all wounds, right? Then why is it that the longer I live on without her, the worse the wounds are getting? I can't stop thinking about her. I have no reason to live... But she would never forgive me if I followed after her so soon. Someone has to make sure Shino and Ariana both make it through this ordeal. In the darkness, I manage to crack a smile through the tears. Someday, I'll be with her again. I hope. Until then, I just have to struggle with my own guilt, my own inadequacy.

    Some of the candles have burnt out, but there are dozens more still burning, casting eerie shadows that dance around me in silence. Maybe I'm just imagining it, but some appear to have some form, serene and calming. Or at least trying to be.

    Oh, if the doctor could see me now. He'd probably wonder what became of his perfect soldier, to turn me into what I am now. Death is not a new thing for me. I've witnessed it, even caused it, hundreds upon thousands of times in battle. So what is it about Relena's death that has caused this pain? I loved her. And I still do. But until I can honestly be with her again, I can pray.