"For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'it might have been.'" -John Greenleaf Whittier

If there were three things that Mordecai valued above all else, they were undoubtedly Bloodwing, his sniper rifle, and the letters Lilith sent him-not necessarily in that order.

After he left Sanctuary, it became something of a ritual for him to wake up, feed Bloodwing, clean his rifle, and read her letters. They weren't love letters, but he was hoping, so he held on to them. She wasn't the most eloquent of writers, but it didn't matter to him as much as the sweet curve of her penmanship and her scent lingering on the paper and the bittersweet knowledge that she was still with him, somehow, because of the letters, the menial contact that somehow meant so much. Sometimes he would taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted Lilith to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty and elusive on the matter of love. She signed them with "Love", but he knew better.

Still, a man could dream.

He always wondered what she was doing, or what she might be thinking. Certainly, she wasn't thinking of him much, although he wished that she would. She cared enough to write the letters, but writing was a mindless endeavor for him and he couldn't think of why they might be something more to her. He sometimes wrote back to her, but not always. She, on the other hand, was always punctual. Two letters a week, always, and without fail.

Whenever she wrote about the others, he had to wonder if she still liked Roland. Seeing her with him had pained him more than he'd cared to admit, and he had tried his best to convince himself that it was only a fling, that she was not emotionally vested in him, that perhaps her affections lay elsewhere, but it was a notion that had faded as the days went on. Now, in light of the crushing changes that had befallen them all, he wondered if she still felt the same way.

He wished he knew why he loved her so much. Above all, he wished that he hadn't been so goddamn scared. He remembered one night in Old Haven, when they had still been Vault Hunters in every sense of the word, when they had been alone on a rooftop with the Crimson Lance shrieking at them below. He remembered her fear, he remembered how he had saved her, and he remembered how she had grabbed his hand and would not let go. He remembered wishing that he could have taken her into his arms and held her close. He remembered kissing her good-night, but what he really should have done was promise that everything would be okay and tell her how much he cared. He should have risked it.

Whenever he read the letters, Mordecai thought of new things that he should have done.