"The Dove Pursues The Griffon" by Charles Mills Trowbridge

Chapter the First
  Sometimes a man swears he would do anything for revenge.
  His hate grows within his soul until he can pay the price for his wish to come true.

  In a land many worlds away there lived a man of the cloth. Pure in thought and action, his life was devoted to serving the people. His brother was a man who's sense of justice and fair play served as an example to the Gods themselves. The people were fortunate to have men of this caliber as their nobility.
  Hand in hand the bothers guided the people, the King protecting their bodies and the Archdeacon their souls.
  For many years the pair were successful in forging a new age of philosophy, exploration, and growth to rival that of any time.
  As fate would have it one day a dark cloud passed over the land, and under cloak of this night death struck the Archdeacon. The air was thick with the unholy stench of infernal magic and soulforged steel that still clung to his lifeless corpse. His daughter, an only child whose beauty was only rivaled by her kindness, found the body when finally sunlight broke through the curtain of gloom. Upon discovering the murder vile of her father, she fled to the capitol to tell her uncle of the terrible thing that had happened.
  Bitter cold stung her face as she stood beside the King on the day he proclaimed the death of her father. Never before had such harsh words come from the lips of the king. He swore that day to the people of the realm that the creature, be it demon or man, who was responsible for the death of his brother would feel the wrath of a mighty blade. With a wave of his royal scepter he declared that he would not rest until the killer had been hunted down and slain.
  The next night scalding winds whipped in from the north, and with them, a cloaked stranger arrived in the Capitol City. At the castle's gates the guards refused to admit him to see the king. The daughter of the archdeacon, however, happened to be passing the gates on the other side, and intrigued by his alien form of dress demanded that the traveler be allowed in.
  The guards opened the gate and as his face looked up to see hers, she gazed into his eyes. In that instant she saw more darkness then ten thousand winter nights lit only by a single defiant star. She knew this was not the man who slew her father, and was intrigued by him. She bid him to come walk with her, and he obliged her request. Through the ramparts of the castle they walked that night, and talked of many things. The traveler was cryptic and short in response to her probes, playing the game of verbal chess quite well.
  The next morning she woke up to find herself in her bed, without the stranger anywhere in sight.
  Later that day she and her cousin, king's daughter and their handmaidens went to the river to bath and play. The two girls talk of many things, not the least of which was the strange, handsome man with whom she had spent the previous evening.
  Upon returning to the castle, they had found a terrible thing had happened. The assassin had made an attempt on the king's life, and if the witness's reports were to be believed this attempt was thwarted by the mysterious stranger.
  The king was unharmed yet dark lines of worry kept his face heavy.
  When the girl returned to her room, she found a note. "Call not on me." it read. Perplexed, she ignored it, and tried to find the stranger in the city, despite the hustle and bustle that the attempted assassination had caused.

Chapter the Second

  The King was not long for the world, and within the turn of a season he died of natural causes. He was never the same man after those events. It was as if darkness had cast its self over his conscious. In his final weeks he prayed almost constantly. It seems however that it did little to relieve the weight that only he knew hung on his soul.
  Many years pass, in which the girl never discovers what sin he was trying to atone for. She does however learn that her strange visitor could not be from her own world. A sage told her that his penmanship reminded him of that of a scribe from the City of Doors, "a city on the other side of the moon". Across the world she traveled, sometimes in company but often alone. All the girl could think of was helping pain she had felt inside of him. She wished to cast aside his blackened essence and let the single star become a bright sun.
  It was only through this trek by which she found a cabal of magus who could take her to this city. When finally she did arrive in the City of Doors, her search became no easier, for it sits in a place that is in all places yet none at all, with gateways in the shadows connecting it to a hundred other realms. It's people where a curious blend of fairy tales and all to familiar outlooks.
  With some luck, she came across a sage who could help her. He had blue skin, was as tall as a house but skinny as a rail. After looking at her note, he recognized the hand writing to be that of the wanderer, Johnny D. The sage told her that his man at arms, who was born of a demons in a mortal womb, was the sworn foe of Johnny. He then warned the girl to avoid men of that repute. The sage's wisdom did little to discourage the girl from her quest, only fueling her search with a name to guide her. Although in her mind she knew he was dangerous and powerful man in her heart only sealed her resolve.

Chapter The Third
Veriteh, Yevin the Bastard, Windtoucher, The Black Swordsman Nu Gui, 3 Ways Like The Mother's Moon and sometimes, by bitter mercenaries and other hardened men he was known as Johnny D.

  She had a number of adventures at this point, but never did she loose sight of her all consuming goal. Over time she eventually learned of Johnny's station. He was a servant of the shadows, chosen by the Queen of Vengeance to act as her hand in the world.
  The next time the two crossed paths it was not on such pleasant terms.
  She was staying in a city called Bedlam. The city its self seemed to seethe with the energy after which it was named. The girl had plans the next day to interview someone who had supposedly had their sanity ripped away after encountering a man who fit the description of the Windtoucher.
  That night, she awoke to the wind on her face. Chilled, she walked over to the window only to find it open. With a fit of restlessness she looked out into the wild shifting streets of Bedlam idly wondering how many more nights she would spend looking for her mysterious query. After several minutes of contemplation she turned back towards the bed only to see a man in a black hat wrapped in a cloak of the same tincture sitting at the table in her room. He was looking at the floor so that his hat obstructed the view of his face.
  "Impressive", his cold, emotionless voice exclaimed. It was a difference voice then before. A voice made hollow from the echo of too many pleas for mercy gone unanswered. Erie, more than even the screaming winds of Bedlam. It was as if the very heart of the man had been plucked from his body.
  The terror of finally finding him petrified her as if she were a statue. "Knowledge has a price" he declared and she knew what was coming next. The gnawing fear in her stomach told her that she was not going to walk out of this room alive.
  He looked up at her repeating the moment in which they first met, gazing into her eyes. The face had changed, however, with deep scars in his face. At first it appeared as if they were just scars, but within a moment she realized that the shadows around the sides of his face didn't stop at the scars, and seemed to flow though them, like water through a riverbed. Jagged and deep these shadow scars ran up and down his face, causing her to start crying. Not out of fear from his visage did she weep, only from his pain. Inside her mind's eye it was clear that he was in agony, overwhelming all other feelings.
  He moved towards her. Quickly, quicker then he should be able to. A massive blade was drawn from the darkness of the room. As the blade descended she fell to her knees in fright and emitted in barley a whisper "Call not on me".
  Johnny barely averted the blow with questioning hands. She felt the pure darkness of his blade overwhelming her at this distance, her hair almost touching the edge of his dark sword.
  "Repeat yourself".
  "Call" she stopped, unable to speak though the sobbing tears it was only her inner strength that refused to let her halt "Call not on me".
  He stopped.
  Smiled.
  Then the smile turned into a laugh, and then he burst out into laughter, hysterical laughter as his blade dropped to the ground beside her.
  The joke is lost on her. Then like the brilliance of morning it dawns on her. He had been stopped with the same phrase that he had attempted to stop her those many years ago.
  As the laughter finished his face restored to it's former self, unchanged safe for a single tear which came from his eye and flew down to the ground.
  As this tear hit the ground a black rose sprang up from the wooden floor. It was very thin even for a rose and made of pure black crystal, and it rose up to nearly her waist.
  Nothing more said he faded into nothingness and then she heard only the howling of Bedlam.

Chapter the Fourth

  The next day she left Bedlam without ever talking to her intended subject. Back to the wastelands she went, riding towards the Gates of Hell where she was determined to find Johnny, now or never. Within several days she reached the town of Hopeless. After a half a day of rest she continued on her day.
  On the road just outside the town she spotted something very odd.
  A form was up ahead, staggering as it trotted down the path. She rushed up to the shrouded form only to find that it was Johnny. He had been badly injured, with blood flowing from shadowed scars, more pieces of the darkness imbedded like glass in his alabaster skin.
  With none of the grace or precision he had shown before he fell into her arms, and in that moment she was overloaded with uncountable experiences of murder avenged with death, disgrace with others ruin, and breaking of former lovers newest relations by jealousy. As all of his deployments rushed through her soul, she became aware of the price of his services, the price others were willing to pay to accomplish their revenge. She now knew the price that her uncle had paid to send his brother's murderer to the grave, and it caused her to moan, sob, and fall to her knees. The pair collapsed upon each other. It became clear to her that throughout everything he had done, everything he had seen, the only constant which remained in all was the overwhelming coldness of an eternal night.
  When she had recomposed herself she carried him back into the inn at Hopeless, only able to half drag him. There she washed his wounds and as she laid her hands upon his she felt pain shoot through her body as the wounds started to crawl onto her body. The shadowscars climbed into her skin, like maggots from one piece of fruit to the next. With an uncanny calm she forced her arms to rise above her head despite the pain and she let forth a soft prayer. With her focus the scars withered away and fall to the ground, unable to take root in her flesh. She cried out even as the scars of shadow disappeared from her perfect skin and the scream awoke Johnny.
  As he awoke she was just starting to fall, unable to hold herself up after the excruciating pain and Johnny moved like quicksilver to catch her. She found herself in his arms, his smile glowing down on her. She looked into his eyes and then she started to tell the tale of how she found him. Through the entire story he stayed silent, waiting until the very end to ask her what had been on his mind the entire time.
  "Why?"
  "Because." She paused to consider why to herself one last time. "Because you need me." She seemed so pure in her reply that it moved him to tears. He embraced her and held her close to his heart. She became so overwhelmed with the passions he had kept locked away as it all fled from his body and flooded her that she broke down into tears. There, in the shabby little inn they held each other until both fell asleep still locked hand in hand.

  And that is how Johnny D meets Heaven.