Maddie curled up in ball in the corner, coughing violently.  The guard threw her a pitying look as he passed.  “Your usual visitor is here, Maddie.  If you’re feeling up to it, of course.”

            The girl stood weakly, stumbling to the front of the cell.  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

            He smiled gently as he unlocked the door.  “You don’t look like you could have ever killed anyone.”

            “It was mostly an accident,” Maddie told him quietly.

            “That boy would have taken your punishment if you had let him.”

            “I couldn’t have done that.”

            “Well, at least you’re almost done.  You’re going home tomorrow, right?”

            Maddie visibly brightened at these words.  “Yes.  I’d almost forgotten.”

            “And it’s a good thing…  You’re getting worse every day.”

            She coughed again, feeling her entire body shake.  “I’ll survive.”

            The guard nodded silently, not telling her what the nurse had told him.  The girl was dying.  In fact, he had heard that Maddie probably wouldn’t last until tomorrow.  She would die before she got to see freedom again.

            That was why, when she got into the visiting room, the man was standing on the wrong side of the glass.  Maddie’s face lit up as she saw him and hurried into his arms.  They hadn’t been able to hold each other for all of these years.  They had only seen each other through the glass, had only heard each other’s voices.

            “What are you doing over here?” Maddie asked, thrilled as she felt his arms around her.

            “They let me,” Evan replied, pulling her thin frame closer and kissing her forehead.  She was so small, so sick…  That was why they were letting him be with her.  It had to be.

            “Evan,” Maddie murmured, not quite sure what to do with herself.  “I love you so, so much.”

            “I love you more,” he told her, kissing her as deeply as he dared to.  He didn’t want to hurt her.  Was he holding her too tightly?  Was he being too rough?

            “We only have to wait until tomorrow,” she told him happily.  “It will just be the two of us, together forever.”

            Evan gave her an empty smile.  It wasn’t going to be true.  She wouldn’t last long…  He didn’t even have a place for them to be alone together.  He was still living with Nick and Nick’s wife.  There was nowhere better to go.

            Maddie sensed the fear in Evan’s dark eyes.  “Is something wrong?”

            “Don’t worry about it,” he reassured her, kissing her again.  He managed to drag the kiss out so that there were no more awkward conversations.  Maddie didn’t need to know that she was dying.

            When the time was up, he didn’t let go of her.  “Maddie,” he whispered gently, as he did at the end of every visiting session.  “Until tomorrow?”

            “Until tomorrow,” she replied, slipping away from him.  And, just like that, she was gone.

            Maddie went back to her room and sat on the bed, filled with that warm, happy feeling that she always knew after a visit.  She looked in the mirror and suddenly froze in shock.  She looked sick and awful.  Suddenly, it all made sense.  She was going to die.  They hadn’t told her, but it must be true.

            The girl in the mirror wasn’t the person who she was.  Or maybe she was…

            Maddie fell back onto her bed, still worrying about this.

            Evan came in the morning, hoping for the best as he took the closest parking spot he could find and hurried inside.  “I’m here to get Madeline Broody,” he told the receptionist, even though she knew him well by now.

            The sadness in her eyes told him that his worst fears were true.  “Maddie died last night, Evan.  I’m so, so sorry.”

            Evan gave her an empty stare.  He opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t make a sound.

            “Do you want to go see her?”

            Words still escaped him, but he managed to nod.  Without thinking, he followed a guard back into the prison that he had visited every day for the past ten years.  He didn’t take in his surroundings or the other people.

            The door to the cell was opened and Evan went in.  There was a lump on the bed with a blanket over it.  A similar lump formed in his throat as he peeled back the covering and gazed on the face of his love once again.

            “Maddie,” he murmured, touching her cold skin lovingly.  “I love you, Maddie.”  He looked at her as though he was waiting for a response, ignoring the tear rolling down his cheek.  He didn’t notice it until it fell onto the corner of Maddie’s eye, continuing it’s path on her face.  “Don’t cry, Maddie,” he whispered, the tears coming faster.  “I’m here.  I brought you something.  Something you thought you lost.”  He took a small book out of his pocket and slid it between Maddie’s lifeless hands.  “Your diary.  I only wish I could open it and see what it says, but I have no right.  It’s yours.”  He patted her hands absentmindedly and covered them again with the blanket.

            He suddenly noticed the necklace that she had around her neck.  It was a key, probably to her diary.  He removed it from her gently and considered opening the diary, but couldn’t bring himself to.  Instead, he looped it around his own neck and leaned down to kiss her cold cheek.  “You held the key to my secrets,” he said with a sad smile.  “You hold the key to my heart.”  He tucked the necklace into his shirt so the icy metal brushed against his heart.  “I love you.”

            He sat back, gazing down lovingly at Maddie.  He gently scooped her up and raised her from the bed, only stopping to look at himself in the mirror for a moment to notice something strange.  The face gazing back at him was still as girly as before, but the eyes were different.  They weren’t so dark and cloudy.  They had lightened to a brown that shone with sadness.

            He stood up straight, clutching Maddie’s body to his chest without an intention of letting her go until he would inevitably have to bury her.  “Maybe you’ve made my soul a little less black,” he told her.  “Thank you.”

A/N: The End!  I hope you liked it… and I hope it wasn’t too sad.  Thanks for all the reviews: glassbutterfly, angelgurl, Ever-White Rose, vanderhall, crimsontears8128, and Supei.  I loved writing this story and I hope you enjoyed reading it.  Now go read my other stories hee hee