"Tommorrow."

The voice startled him; he'd been too busy wallowing in self pity and abject misery to notice anyone sneaking up on him. He put down the beaten and weathered book he'd been flipping through and turned around.

Standing beside him was a memory, a ghost right out of that same past that the book had come from. "Paige?" He cursed his voice for cracking at a time like this. How long had it been? Nine years? Ten? A hundred, or maybe a thousand? That had been a lifetime ago, and then some. But there she was, ageless as ever, with her inhuman pale eyes and her long, silvered-blue hair. Templar's eyes travelled involuntarily to her neck and wrists; the cuffs were gone. The dress was, too; she was clad in an ordinary enough set of riding leathers. A snowy Ikatai mare stood patiently on the side of the road; his horse-breeder upbringing resurfaced for a moment, no longer, and he repressed a sigh of longing and appreciation. "Paige, is it really..."

She smiled, gently, with the same innocence she'd always had. He felt as though someone had just stabbed him through the chest. "Tomorrow," she repeated firmly.

"I'm sorry?" He was at a loss. How could she smile like that after what he'd done to her, all those years ago? He'd taken her innocence, taken the very thing that made her who she was- how could she still be alive after all these years?

"Tommorrow. It's my name." She was still smiling.

"Y-you mean you're not Paige?" He was gaping like a fish, and he knew it. "Do you know who I am?"

Her smile didn't waver. "My name is Tommorrow. It was because of my mother, you see. When I was born, she wouldn't look at me, and whenever my caretakers asked her if she wanted to see me, to hold me, or give me a name, she'd just moan 'tommorrow, tommorrow'. After a while they got tired of asking, and the name stuck." She stuck out her hand, frankly, recalling the movements of the woman who had to have been her mother. "You must be Templar Invidens." But if this was Paige's daughter...

That would make her his, as well.

He warily took her hand, unsurprised to feel the same electric thrill run through him at her touch that he'd felt when he'd first seen Paige. "Yeah. Yeah, that's me. Templar. Paige- I mean, everybody calls me Tem. Just- just Tem." They shook hands, with enthusaism on her part and shock on his.

She looked curiously at his hand, which hadn't let go of hers. Guilty, he dropped her fingers. She was still smiling. "Tem...I like that. My mother calls me 'Morrow, but everyone else calls me Tom." Her gaze was measuring. "You can call me Morrow, if you'd like."

"Your father? What- who-" Confusion swamped him. "How long has it been? How old are you?"

"My foster parents. My mother died not long after I was born, or so I was told." She shrugged. "My foster mother's name is Raeska DeLavrey. We live on the other side of the forest. We own the Old Library- it's an inn."

Raeska. That explained a lot. That explained too much...But surely, after a thousand years, he could be forgiven? Whoever this girl was, with Paige's face and mannerisms, he had to know. He had to know what happened. "Do you think you could show me the way there, Tommorrow?"

"Why not go right now?" The laughter that danced in her eyes mocked him. But it was a gentle mockery, a relaxed and comfortable one, as though they'd been telling each other the same old jokes for the past thirty years.

She lead him to the Ikatai. He had no belongings other than the book- her book. Her blank paged book that had all the secrets of life hidden in it. She introduced him to the horse. "This is Shevral. Shevral, say hello to Tem."

The horse didn't recognize him, though he recognized the name. It was difficult to fight back tears; how long had it been since he and Shevral had ridden together? Years and years, but his sword was broken a thousand times over and left in pieces beneath a rock in the rain. "She's beautiful. How'd you get her?"

"Mother has connections." Again her colorless eyes danced with laughter; once a horsethief, always a horsethief, as the saying went. Raeska went a long way to proving that statement true. "Are you ready?"

He met her eyes and remembered a dusty library full of empty books, and a sunset overlooking a forest much like this one. "I've been ready all my life."

This was his second chance; he wasn't going to waste it. She climbed into the saddle with an awkwardness that no amount of practice had ever been able to cure; he pulled himself up after her with long-forgotten ease and tucked her book into his coat. Maybe he could get Raeska to reforge a certain saber for him...

But then again, he would probably never need it again.
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I think I've decided to go with the depressing story for Paige- one of my muses, keeper of the books and personification of innocence. Templar's originally a nice guy, if a little...loose about his morals. But, uh...Stuff Happens, and Paige loses her innocence, and Templar gets seriously screwed over by life in general. Stuff works out in the end, though...they do find each other again, so uh...happy day?