Chapter Text
Life evened out once I figured out how to balance school, the homeless in my living room, and Marco. This meant me going to my classes and actually acknowledging the four mooches before spending my late evenings talking with Marco in the museum’s Cafe.
Once I allowed my mind to pull the other lifetimes out of their archives and examine them, it was quick work to regain my friendship with the four. It seems foolish now to think of how frustrated and alone they made me feel about a month ago because these people are my best friends, but they were patiently waiting for me to realize it.
Connie even ‘met’ them one time. They introduced themselves to him with sad smiles and weak hellos, but he didn't seem to notice because the dusty cogs in the back of his mind were spinning, thinking about why the new faces were familiar. All in all, that day had been successful and the total six of us molded into a tight group for games of Pictionary and Mario Kart.
Enjoying my time with the group always panged my heart because my mind would drift to Marco, who was more than likely looking at the same painting for the millionth time alone, or simply fading his own existence, waiting for my voice to call his name before he would awaken his self. When I was in class, more often than not, the group of four would go visit him, and I went to see him every night more often than not, but still, what kind of life is it to live entirely in a three-story museum? Sounds pretty fucking good, I thought, but reminded myself that, of course, it wasn't.
Still, my days were punctuated by visits to Marco. I counted each night, treated it like a reward for a long day of work. Like a cigarette, rushing home to get the release. Not unlike an addiction, he was becoming something unhealthy. I needed his presence, needed to get nervous before having our fingers brush, but also needed to know why I was nervous, but why everything felt right. More and more memories kept returning, but at the end of the day, I knew I forgot more than I remembered. Marco often forgot this. We’d be laughing and then he’d say,
“Remember when we were on that rowing team? Christ, I think that was our peak physically. Most of the time we-”
And then he’d look at my fake smile and know that I didn’t know we had ever been on a rowing team. This divide in our memories was something that was always present. With every shoulder leaned on and eyes met, I knew that he had to be thinking of who I am: someone who should be his soulmate. But, it didn’t feel like that on my end. Instead, I felt like I was trying to fit that mold, be who he thought I was. Thing is, all I know is I like the guy. None of my memories felt super complete like they were not undoubtedly mine. I was well aware that what Marco saw was a copy of the man he had loved a thousand times, and that copy was incomplete.
Regardless I cherished our time together. It was exciting to have a schoolboy crush again. I never dated too seriously, but even though I know that that was due to fate, I guess, it’s nice to have love and be loved. Without my memories, our relationship isn’t full. For example, we haven’t fucked yet. Now, consciously I understand that it shouldn’t be a necessity, and I suppose it isn’t, but I think we both feel that without my memories and with him being a ghostly museum boyo doesn’t really make for the best romantic evening. As much as I would be down for getting dirty in the museum’s broom closet, I can say that the first time I, this copy of Jean, makes the beast with two backs with his soulmate should not be in said closet.
“Jean?”
“Yes?”
“Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout?” Marco asks playfully, bumping his shoulder against mine.
“Nnnnnot about the broom closet.”
“Ah.” He says, and nods.
And damn. That’s why I love him. He just knows. Knows I mean sex, knows that I’m thinking why we can’t, and knows that it’s the setting that divides our relationship. This is not one of our many lives together. This is the end.
This is the end of the story for everyone.
We had a good run, from what I know and see. We were blessed to live happy and full lives over and over again. And fuck Eren, but it’s awesome I married him once.
“Ah fuck this.”
“Okay.”
“This isn’t like what we’ve lived before, right?”
“Right.”
“But we are here. We are, in fucked up ways, alive, and together, and here.” I don’t know how to get you out. I don’t know if we get to come back, if we die for sure, if you gonna be trapped here forever. But okay okay, let’s just. Live. Apparently I’ve died like a million times before this so let’s just live as much as we can now.”
Marco looks at me and giggles. But then he stands up, raises a fist, and says “Wooooo!” in a highly exaggerated tone.
“Okay you sound like a drunk college girl.”
“Shuddap.”
“Oooooo spicy. Sit back down.” I say while standing up.
He nods and sits down. I start blasting “Cherry Dance” off my shitty phone speaker and begin dancing as stupidly as I can, mouthing the lyrics, and pointing to Marco like a cheesy boy band member from the early 2000’s.
He claps along, acting like he’s at a damn Wiggles concert. I roll my eyes and rip my shirt off, letting my body roll with the music and remember that Marco has, without a doubt, seen me do worse. His eyes go big and his mouth drops open slightly as his hands stop clapping.
I continue to dance, getting slightly more obscene before unbuttoning my pants then quickly dropping swiftly into his lap and wrapping my arms around his neck. Any human reaction would be fine, but instead, I get a Marco one: sweet warm, honeyed eyes that look at me closer than any other pair possibly can. The song stops, we sit in a moment of silence, then Spotify, the damn cockblock, begins repeating the song. I reach for my phone to turn it off, but instead Marco snakes an arm around my neck and pulls me closer before crashing our lips together. Well fuck, here I come Swiffer’s, Bleach, and stanky mop buckets.
He doesn’t rush the kiss though, instead, he takes his time. And god, he knows how to kiss me and I love it.
Marco kiss me Marco kiss me Marco kiss me.
We had been practicing our two-person team dynamics for the rowing competition. But instead, we rowed out of the path and let ourselves float in the open water. He had turned around and we just sat there, talked about dinner, talked about exams, and listened to the water splash against the metal of the boat. But then his eyes became lidded, and he licked his lips, and I just knew this what it. I didn’t fall in love with my roommate for nothing. God, or fate, or hell mother nature had to have been at work because I knew I was supposed to be there with him. And I knew he was supposed to kiss me and we were supposed to fall in love and bitch about dinner. Later we’d be married, inviting our old friends from the rowing team. We’d visit this college and talk about our childhood over and over. Take ugly adult photos and post them online for other middle-aged friends to like and comment on. We were supposed to fight about what we’d name our kid and finally settle on something stupid but awesome. This was god damn undoubtedly right. Except, he wasn’t kissing me.
“Marco kiss me.”
His eyes grew large, then he smiled, then he laughed. I felt my skin redden, but at last… he snaked his arm around me and pulled me closer before gently resting his lips against mine to say.
Yes Jean, we are meant to fall in love.
Remembering one of our first kiss, remembering parts of that life, was again an overwhelming feeling. Usually, I immediately tell Marco. Marco I remember the rowing team!!! But this time, when we pulled our lips apart, I saw tears in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I’m just happy Jean.”
I kiss him quickly to respond to that. Then nod, “I’m pretty good, I know. I’m sure you’ve told me that before.”
He breathes out a laugh at my joke but then rubs his thumb along my jaw as he looks at me. (We are disgustingly cute, but god I love it).
“No, you’re just still you. You may not remember everything, But you are Jean. The man I have fallen in love with time and time again. The feel of your skin and your lips is something that I have an infinite amount of times experienced and memorized. And you just reminded me that yeah, you’re still here, and I still love you.”
He kissed me once more.
“I think a lot, to make myself feel better, what if this was just another timeline? Except you just have short-term memory loss, like that one girl in that one movie with that one guy,”
“50 First Dates?”
“Yeah that one. It’s like we’re them. No matter what, I cherish you, I want you to be happy, and as long as you’ll have me, I’ll be here. To hold your hand and tell you about the times and days you may have forgotten.”
“And you know what Marco?” I say, adding to his thoughts. “this sucks, but our situation may be better than theirs.”
“Maybe.” He said nodding and smiling.
I kiss him again then. To make it even, then turn around in his lap and let myself rest inside the arms of the man I was destined to fall in love with.
Connie was really pissing me off. He still just didn't know what was going on. And now that my life was either pretending to be a normal art college kid or delving into the situation that surrounded the squatters in my apartment. He kept coming over, then would like grab a beer, have a conversation with the squad, then have this really obvious look on his face as he tried to do astrophysics in his mind as he calculated why everyone was so goddamn familiar??? His mouth would pull down in an exaggerated frown, his eyes bulbous and hi eyebrows raised and curled like a supervillain, or like he was taking a nasty dump, while the rest of us just sat there, awkwardly looking around while he worked on the problem. Then he’d go,
“Sooooo anyways, where are y'all from?” then make the face again, like he was going to record the answers and contemplate them later. Or it would be, “Sooooo anyways, how’d you end up here,” or “tell me about your family” or “have you ever been in the news for any reason?”
It annoyed me, but everyone else seemed happy to have their friend on, even if there was a giant gap that we were voluntarily not closing because well, it sounds like a shitty novel plot, frankly.
But what really annoyed, was when he came over with Sasha and they announced their engagement. Everyone cheered and hollered. We all hugged and popped champagne to be classic and live a little. But everyone was coupled up, and I just wanted to tell Marco about it. Weren’t we supposed announcing our engagement? Talking about moving in? I mean, hell, I at least want to be able to call him on the phone and say “hey our friend got engaged.”
But more than the hurt not being able to live that life with Marco. It just hurt to realize that, this wasn’t our timeline. This wasn’t our story and I was not granted a happy ending this time.
Christa started to scream. Everyone huddled around trying to help and understand. Ymir had a look in her eyes that suggested something sinister. Was this it for her? Was she the first one of us to disappear?
“Jean!” She said my name through wracking sobs and shrieks. “Go to Marco.” She said.
So I did.
x
Marco wasn’t there. He didn’t appear from around a corner to hug me. To ask how my day was. Instead, I was left running through an empty museum, nothing but the security lights on and the sound of my footsteps as I checked each hall and room. I yelled for him, praying he was just farther in his void than usual. But I knew, I knew from Christa’s pained screams, from Connie’s happy ending, from the fact that Marco was never truly here with me, that he wasn’t here at all. I remembered then, something from this lifetime. The first time I met him: a statue in the storage room. So I ran up two flights of stairs, crying; it wasn’t my best moment.
I pulled that door open and found, where I first met my soulmate in this lifetime, shattered stone and marble on the ground. But in the center of the shattered pieces and dust stood half of the statue I had once seen. I wrapped my arms around it, resting my head against what remained of Marco’s stoney chest, letting my tears slide down the smooth material as his frozen body held me up and absorbed my loud heartbroken sobs.
But, as his final gift, I thought, I remembered everything. Every time I had fallen in love with him. All of our children. All of our fights. All of our silly inside jokes. I remember meeting his parents a thousand times. I remember holding his right hand so many times. I remembered our wedding rings. I remembered him saying he loved me and I remembered each time I said it to him. I remembered each time I met him for the time. Each memory was so precious and so dear to me. And I knew that this timeline was breaking down and ending. That I would die like a human. That my friends would die as humans. That Marco was the first to go. That Connie would finish this timeline of his, then maybe wake up like Marco had. But now, I could die as an old man, who had lived so many more lives than most. A gift I will always treasure. But in that moment, I clung to Marco’s broken body and cried. Because I was human, and that’s what humans did.
x
I had grown accustomed to life without Marco. I had so many lifetimes already with him, those memories viscerally ingrained in my body and soul, and I took them with me everywhere. I talked to him my head. Letting him know what sculpture I was working on now, what Connie was up to. How everyone was. What I had for lunch, what time I went to bed. That I do miss him. But I understood that these lives we all have lived were coming to a close. We were old news, maybe there was a new batch of people that got to live as we did. And I was at ease with it. I felt like a wise old wizard, ready for death as I know everything about life, just not what happens afterward. I figured, in that case. To finish my whatever this life had for me. I’d finish school, continue art, try to travel, etcetera, etcetera. So on a windy, rainy morning. I told myself that I needed caffeine. Might as well waste my money I a tall dark drip coffee. I did just that, thanking and the barista and turning to the door that separated me from the icy rain outside.
But then, by a cruel act of fate, there he was. I smile. I smile so much I feel my face ache. My body is weak. My heart just hurts. He looks at me. His eyes, oh so far familiar. The eyes of the man I love more than anyone. But this time, unlike the ghostly time I knew him in the museum, his eyes are not all-knowing. It should hurt to not be recognized, but I was standing in front of a really dashing stranger with freckles that speckled his warm skin and eyes that are so dark and wide that I knew positively, undoubtedly, that I could not tire of them.
So I approach this stranger, being confident because I knew what it felt like to have your crush amount to your soulmate.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I would love to take you out sometime if you’ll have me.”
The stranger looks at me and smiles.
“I’d love that. I’m Marco.”
“Hi Marco. I’m Jean. Can I-uh-have your number?”