The brightest star in the system didn’t compare to her eyes that day. It was the first time you had truly seen her happy, and the last time you saw her smile. Before any prophecies, before any disruption. It was the last time you saw her smile before she ever looked at you the same way again. 
The way her eyes rested upon you melted away any confusion. Her blue space suit brought out the grey flecks of her eyes just as the azure sunset highlighted the asteroid belt that hung lazily around your favourite planet. 
Golden hair cascaded down her shoulders like the vibrant waterfalls of her home planet. The way her eyebrows arced above her eyes mimicked the bold comets that soared by your spaceship. 
Truly, she was a woman made from the stars. 
No vista, no speckled vacuum, nor galactic arrangement filled you with more awe than when she smiled at you that day. And it’s the only thing you dare cling onto now.
Formless, you lie stretched across infinite nothingness. Your consciousness is only what separates you from the dead and gone. So used to physicality, you can feel phantom limbs stretching on and on, though you are nothing but immaterial. Memories manifest in mangled oases, ostracised from your vision, but very much there. 
A rogue planet, you can only drift through what you were. A satellite around your own being, you see without eyes the very moments that led you here. 
The strongest memory of all keeps teasing you. Apprehending appendages that aren’t there anymore. 

The orange sky cast a warm glimmer over the resort you treated yourself to. A burgeoning adventurer, it felt strange to resign to the plastic comforts of the chill-seekers. Yet in that plaza of pools, bars, and cyro spars, you met her. Another wayward soul who couldn’t resist the allure of service and unlimited waterside snacks. 
It was both your first time on that planet and the first time in a long time you allowed yourselves some rest and relaxation. So relaxed that your boundaries sank. You both became stowaways in each other’s hearts. 
It turns out there was more room in the cockpit of your souls for one more. Pleasantries turned to conversation, which turned to laughter, which turned to love. Despite your pasts, love was not as alien as the resort where you met. You both knew the feeling instantly. 
No sooner could you believe it, you both were soaring through space together. 
Or, at least, that’s how it was supposed to happen. 
You did meet her at that resort. Her smile was weighed by what she was leaving behind. Your mission became to free her of her burdens, to see her lips part to unveil a brilliant smile. She entertained your courtship; she let you sit by her. She let you fetch her drinks and tell her stories. But opening up your walls to her only allowed the shadow of her fortifications in. Your heart became clouded by her defences.
You became sure friends. Friends enough to play golf in the clouds and see the maritime creatures of the crystalline bays. And in the end, a stone cascaded from her mighty walls. 
Your time at the resort was up. You finally asked her on a date. She accepted.
You walked her through the verdigris ferns and past the carbon mills. She was having fun. She was having a good time, and with you. 
Then it happened. More wondrous than anything you’d seen so far in your spacefaring. She smiled. She smiled at you. But the star of her smile was quickly eclipsed. 
Destiny called at the least convenient time. 

That is the only pleasant memory you can hold onto in this magical abyss. You know not where you are, or what you are anymore, but you know these memories are yours. And oh, how painful they are. Even your sweetest memory is fringed with the bitterness of what followed the moment you saw her smile. 
The bitterness spreads from that moment, casting a plague over the rest of your life. Infinitely stretched, you can’t stop the darkness from encroaching on you. No matter the vice grip you have on the moment you met her, your mind is besieged. 
You know what comes next. How inevitable it is. You know what you must become. Yet you hold on tight to that week at the resort. As though you can escape into it one more time. Make a different choice. Not that it will matter. This path was set for you before you knew how to walk. 
The memories of your destiny invade your psyche. Memories of terror, of toil, of torture. The atrocities you had to suffer. The battles you had to survive. And all for her. How ironic it all is. 

You helplessly remember the promise you made. One you wouldn’t have made without her. 
Disaster struck the resort. The world became a plaything of a power larger than life itself. It had armies, it had wealth. It had all the means of battle and the intention to do so. One being so monstrous and vile it belonged only on the front pages of the news. And yet it was swiftly ravaging the planet you were on. A planet you were on with her. 
You would have run. But an opportunity presented itself, one you took to protect her. Little did you know the path you were standing on before you were running down it. A valiant quest to topple the most powerful creature the galaxy had ever seen. 
This fairytale sprang you from planet to planet. You made allies, you made enemies. At any point, you could have given up. But you knew that in doing so, you’d lose her. If not right there, then later down the line. 
You became a hero. 
You fought for a better universe. One without such looming devastation. A world where you were with her and happy could not exist with the tyranny that sank its fingers deep into every world you visited. 
She became your heroine. A valiant soldier, cunning diplomat, discerning logicist. Together, you brought evil to its knees. And all the while, she never smiled, not once. 
You promised to save her. And with the corrupted warlord at your heels, you had come through with it. 

You resist your final moment. Your consciousness reverberates around this void, yet, somehow, you center yourself still on the moment you met her. The moment she smiled. The only memory you have of her smiling. 
What happens next is everywhere. It’s all there is. What you become next is staring you in your incorporeal face. And yet your eyes are closed. 
It doesn’t matter. 

The universe breathes for the first time in a long time. Their hero had taken down the evil who was responsible for war, famine, and death. Conquest over the universe had ended. Yet the revelation of a saviour was misguided. 
You can’t resist forever. 
You can’t resist what you must become. 
You saw her. You saw her in those final moments. 
You stood over my liberated body and looked upon the staff of the Universe’s undoing. Of my own undoing. 
You looked back at your love. For a brief moment, you thought your destiny resolved. 
She began to slip a smile.
You reached for the staff, intent on breaking it. 
And now you’re here. 
Forever stretched. 
Swamped by what you must become. 
You never did get to see her smile again. 
If you want to see her, accept your destiny. Become what I became. Or, perhaps you wish to stay here, forever limitless, eternally caged. At least she may live to smile another day. 
But I’ll leave that up to you. 

This is my entry for Sunshine & Zombies’ February 2026 Challenge. We used a randomizer to come up with the following prompts, which we had to abide by and craft a story around:

Genre – Romance 
Setting – Fictitious (Magical, incorporeal, incomprehensible, etc) 
Perspective – 2nd 
Min. No. of Characters – 1 
Cliches – “The Chosen One” 
Insert/Modifier – Subgenre: Sci-Fi

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.