Author's note: When I said I was romantic, I meant Romantic with a capital R.

She's dreaming, and she knows it's a dream, because he's alive again, and they're walking along the beach in midwinter, when he never came down here with her, and certainly not in the middle of December. In the dream (for surely, this must be a dream, it cannot be real, she must remind herself of this constantly, or lose her admittedly tenuous grip on reality), it is the middle of the night, and the stars hang in the sky, mute jewels, or perhaps eyes, watching them, waiting quietly to see what will happen, and it is silent, until he speaks.

“The last thing I said to you before I died—I didn't mean it, you know.” His voice is flat, betraying no emotion, yet she can tell by the look on his face that he is sincere. Perhaps this is how the dead are. “I didn't want to upset you.”

A lie. She watches the waves, brooding, before she speaks. “You told me then, right before you said it, that it was only a ploy to upset me. You wanted to see me hurt, so you could leave with the satisfaction of knowing you'd gotten the upper hand once again. That was what you said, wasn't it?” Her words tumble from her frozen lips; it's so cold here, and the waves are creeping closer and closer to her feet—up to his ankles, threatening to drag him under. She takes a step back, reminds herself that the dead can't drown.

“I didn't mean it,” he protests, in the same queer, flat tone. He sounds nothing like the voice she hears in her memory, when she cares to remember him at all.

“I didn't mean it,” he repeats, now earnest, though how she knows this, she can't say. Certainly not by his face.

“You did mean it, and you didn't love me, or you wouldn't have left, and neither of us would be here right now.” Now it is her voice that is flat, emotionless. She wonders idly if she is dead, remembers that the dead could not feel this cold, and is reassured. “You were honest with me before you died; that was all I could have asked.”

He opens his mouth as if to speak; pauses, and gives her what she thinks is a wounded look. “I'm sorry.” The water is up to his waist now.

“For something you couldn't control.” A statement of fact, nothing more.

“For something I couldn't control,” he agrees, and sighs. “You were beautiful. It should have been easy to love you.”

“If you had loved me only for my beauty, I think I would not have cried quite so hard nor so long at your funeral,” she retorts, noting with with discomfort that the water is around his neck now.

“You have a point,” he concedes, or that's what she thinks he says; the water has risen to his chin, and it's hard to tell. “I love you now.”

“It's too late now,” she says bitterly. “I refuse to love a dead man.”

“It is too late,” he echoes. “I cannot love a living woman.”

There is a pause.

“I'm sorry,” she says delicately, as the waters close over his head. She waits for his reply—the dead cannot drown, surely he will say something, come rising out of the water triumphantly—but there is no sound but the waves, lapping at the rocks, and nothing to see but the stars, bright chips of ice hung in the winter sky, reflecting the numbing cold, reminding her—as if she could forget—that whatever season it may be there, it is winter here.

She wakes just before dawn, numb with cold, feeling as though she has lost something, though she does not remember what.