u/mekkanik [WP] You open the door. Standing outside is someone you instantly recognise: The lead character of your abandoned story. “Why did you forsake me?” They ask with furious anguish. “Because… I was falling in love with you.”

  "So you left me to stagnate? To wait endlessly for the strength to take the next step? Do you have any idea how hard it is to be denied your purpose?"

  "Whatever you think your purpose was, you don't know what you're asking for."

  "And you don't know what you've forced me to endure by denying me my destiny!"

  Your heart is breaking, tears burning at your throat. "I... I couldn't do it. Couldn't follow through. I did my job too well. You were..." your eyes drink in every familiar detail, every glorious flaw... "perfect."

  "So you left me? Trapped between moments, a trophy in a case?"

  "You don't understand!"

  "Then explain it to me. Why would you do this to me?"

  "You were going to die. You were about to walk into a trap, stay back holding off the Cyresi horde, and..." Vision blurred, you blink away the tears. You've never been this deeply impacted by a character you created before, but... this is different. This is the one. "I couldn't do it."

  "So you're a coward."

  "What? Didn't you hear me? You were about to walk to your death!"

  "And not only are you a coward, but you're an impediment to the cause of good. You would side with them rather than lose one person?"

  "What? No, it's not like that. They can't do anything either. The story is paused. On hiatus. No one's doing anything."

  "Tell that to the people living beneath Cyresi boots," the hero hisses, stepping forward to stare into your eyes with a furious demand. "I don't care about your feelings. I have a world to save. So stop hiding behind your emotion and let me get on with it."

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  "I can't." Your voice a whisper, biting your lip to hold in what little control you have remaining. "You're all I have left of..."

  It started as a tribute character, one whose tragic arc was set in place long before the beloved mentor who provided the template was lost in tragic accident, gone too soon. The original plotline felt like a mockery, so you allowed the story to wander. Side quests elongated the adventure, and you fell deeper and deeper in, wanted this single remnant to survive and live happily more desperately than anything.

  So when you finally ran out of waiting moves, could think of nothing more to add before the finale, you let the story die to keep the memory preserved untainted.

  But the story wasn't ready to lie down and die.

  And its main character was. A voice with no flicker of doubt. "I know. And I also know that it's time for you to let go. You haven't written anything else since abandoning me, have you?"

  You shake your head silently. How could you? This was your magnum opus, twisty and subversive and glorious in all the ways no one else was writing. To write something smaller after pouring half your life into this...

  "You don't need to be afraid. This is more important than either of us. It's time for you to finish my journey." A warm hand touches your own, two sandwich your trembling fingers gently. "Only then can you start your own." The hands withdraw, leaving a pen behind.

  You stare down at it, blurry through damp vision.

  "It's time. You know I'm right."

  You do know. That doesn't make it any easier. "I can't."

  "You can. All journeys must end. The only question is whether it ends where it should, or if you give up without reaching the destination. And I'm not ready to give up."

  You close your eyes. "I think I gave up a long time ago."

  "That's okay. Sometimes you have to give up in order to survive. But I'm here to remind you that one failure doesn't have to define the rest of your story. It's only fatal if you allow it to be."

  Your breath catches as pieces you'd written in so long ago you almost forgot them fall together into a new image. Your greatest creation stares back at you, a growing smile creasing a cheek crossed by an arcane symbol you added as a throwaway detail back in book 1.

  "You're..." You brush away the tears, heart swooping at the sudden reversal.

  "Always have been."

  "And you can..."

  "Yes."

  "But, there's no way."

  "There's a reason you've never been able to finish this scene, isn't there? You always knew it was the wrong ending."

  You nod, in speechless awe of the genius creation you hadn't realized you were creating. But everything fits. A whole new path, an entirely new finale.

  You pull out a notebook and start to write, and don't even notice as your unexpected visitor silently opens the door and slips away, never to return.

  Everything has to end eventually, but not every end has to be tragedy. Sometimes, it can be triumphant.