October 15, 2045.

No matter how she tried, she couldn't travel any further into the future. Amelia looked down at the pocketwatch she held in her hands. Nothing seemed to indicate that it wasn't working, it just... wouldn't work - as if nothing existed after that moment.

As she stepped out of the time stream, she noticed it was deafeningly quiet. Birds hung in the air, their wings outstretched as if gliding, yet still and unmoving. Couples walked through the streets, holding hands, frozen in eternal laughter and bliss. Leaves were scattered every which way, caught by the autumn breeze and suspended in mid air. She fiddled with her pocket watch in an attempt to re-enter the past, but it too had stopped. All around her, the world stood. Unchanging. Unwavering.

For a moment, Amelia stood still unsure of what to do. Had she caused this by meddling in time too often? Perhaps this was the consequence of all the extra moments she had stolen. A minute here, an hour there, all cascading. Perhaps time itself - stretched, compressed, folded, and flattened at her whim - had finally snapped in two. Time... maybe Kronii - if she even still existed in a world without time - could answer her questions. But how was Amelia to find her? After all, being the Warden of Time, she was never bound by time. She existed at all times and at no times, everywhere and nowhere, all at once. There wasn't even a guarantee that she was here in this moment, frozen alongside the rest of the world.

Amelia sighed and began walking. There was no easy way around it. At the very least, she didn't seem to tire or hunger no matter how far she had gone. The more she thought about it, the funnier it became to her. Ironic, really, that she'd have to search the entire world in an infinitesimal fraction of a second to find the being that had chased her across centuries. Karma at its finest.

Eventually, Amelia found her - alone, but not. First was a laugh - the first foreign sound she had heard in a while. Next was the sound of conversation, seemingly one sided. She saw a couple sitting on a bench, watching a frozen sunset. And yet, only one of the two was moving. A familiar figure, the one she had been searching for all this time. As she approached, the monologue stopped.

"... Amelia. It's been a while."
"Hi Kronii! So, uh, what's going on?"
"Why are you here?"
"Wow. Straight to the point, huh?"
"Get on with it."
"You know... time stops here. Forever. There's nothing after this. Weird, isn't it?"
For a moment, Kronii was silent. Then she sighed. "I just wanted more time. In all of my infinite life, can you believe it? The Warden of Time, and yet even I couldn't make enough."
"Well, you've made time." Amelia sat down next to her. "Tell me about him."

She explained. They had met completely by accident. In the process of fixing time and the memories of those involved, she had missed one person. He chased her down, enlisting the help of a certain time-traveling detective to chase the Warden through time. For the first time in her eternal life, she had fallen deeply in love, spending but a few short decades together before Calliope Mori had approached her with a slip of paper in hand. A name, a date, a time. She had bargained, but the Reaper's words were final - not like she had a choice. She was just a messenger. The man was destined to die.

As the day approached, Kronii had found herself stopping time more and more often - to steal kisses, to savor glimpses that she intended to burn into her own mind forever, to simply be with him longer. He had accepted his own death and had pushed her to do so too, but try as she might she simply couldn't bear to lose him. Now in his last moments, he wore a smile upon his face, a tear in his eye, arms outstretched staring lovingly at a figure that had long since disappeared from his view.

They sat together in silence.

"It won't be the last time you see him, you know."
"I know, I know, I just... I don't want him to be gone... forever. It's not the same, you know. It's like watching an old video. They're there, speaking to you, but they don't exist. Not anymore."
"He wouldn't want this either. And look at all these people around us! You have a duty - not just to him, but to everyone else in the universe."
"What do you know about him? About what he wanted?" Kronii cried out. "You haven't even met him yet! You don't know anything about him! All the places we were going to go, all the things we were going to do! You humans already live for such a short period of time, and he wasn't granted even half of what you normally receive!"

Amelia held her old nemesis as she sobbed. Minutes passed.

"You chose a good place for him. For anyone."
"I know."
"You know what you have to do."
"Promise me. Promise me you'll bring him to me when the time comes. That you won't try to stop me. That you'll let me have this."
"I will."

As Amelia walked away, she felt a cool breeze brush across her face and she heard the sound of laughter fill the air once more.