She had often thought that Emil would die when giving her his immortality. He hadn’t helped much with that impression, straight up telling Coleen that if she accepted it one day that he would die.

“Lots of people wouldn’t have thought it possible for someone to seal away immortality either, to keep someone from taking it,” Emil had commented. When had he first said that? Perhaps eight months before, shortly after her death.

Coleen wondered whether he only did this to keep an eye on her. It was not like he needed more of a life to live. While she reminded him constantly of things he should not do now that he wasn’t immortal, he reminded her more often of things that did not matter now that she was.

Maybe he did not want to live a normal life now. Maybe he waited for her to no longer need him.

Coleen would always need Emil. He was the beginning of the end of her numbness. She could feel it when she thought of him. The need of someone to know her, the real her, as only Emil ever had.

(There had been someone else who eventually had, but Coleen did not want to think of that person either.)