Work Text:
Kirishima's POV
Eijrou was wandering around his boyfriend's house and looking at all the trinkets the man had.
Bakugo Katsuki was a curator of ancient artifacts at the local museum, and he loved to collect the replica artifacts that were sold there. Eijrou loved to tease the other man for his obsession.
A horde of clay figures adorned the mantle of the unused fireplace. The centerpiece of Bakugo's sitting room. He loved to tell stories about the figures to any guest that would listen. The first time Eijrou had visited Bakugo's house, he was subjected to the same speech.
He never knew that the Ancient Egyptians ripped out the organs of dead loved ones, pickled them, and put them in jars before he met his beautiful boyfriend.
Eijrou walked in front of the many bookshelves in the room, dragging his fingertips along the spines of new and old books alike. As he neared the doorway that led to the foyer, his fingers brushed across a book he had never noticed before.
It was worn, and the pages seemed to be falling from the binding of the book. It was bound in rich, dark leather, and the spine had gilt lettering on it, in Memoriam.
Eijrou gently eased the decrepit book from the shelf and set it down on the coffee table. He gently examined the cover before slowly lifting the front cover. The first page of yellowing paper had a note inscribed in a thin, spidery script.
~
My dearest,
I hope that this will come to be useful in your journeys and research. Please use it. I know it is a lot, but I just wanted you to have something beautiful to transcribe the words that flow from your brain. I am ignorant of many things, and I am unsure why you would choose to spend your time around me when there are more suitable people for your level of intellect. For whatever reason, you stay, so at least now you have some way of recording your ideas.
I love you, dearest.
Yours,
~E
~
Eijrou couldn't help but wonder who had given this book to his boyfriend. His first assumption was a family member or maybe someone in the museum. He flipped the page and found himself staring at a crude drawing of a man. From the looks of the drawing, it was done in some kind of charcoal. It was slightly smudged, and Eijrou could clearly see fingerprints scattered around the page.
The figure was reclining on a couch and appeared to be sleeping. The man was dressed in a simple tunic, and the skin of some animal was slung across his legs. He had long, loose hair that hung limply around his face. The artist had managed to create a suggestion of moonlight filtering in from the open window behind the couch. That impression softly illuminated the figure's face, and Eijrou could tell that most of the effort in the piece had gone into the face's features. Sadly, the aforementioned fingerprints had smugged most of the details.
The next few pages held drawings of the same man in various positions doing various things.
Then suddenly, the medium changed, as did the subject. The picture was now in color, but the figure was the same. He had black hair and olive skin. He was swathed in white cloth. A gold brooch held the fabric together at his shoulders. he was standing on a balcony looking out over a busy street. Eijrou couldn't see his face. The next page was the same figure.
Eijrou turned page after page, but the figure's face was never in view. He flipped through all the images. Charcoal. Pastel. Ink. Pencil. Watercolor. Photographs.
The figure never changed, but the places and clothing did. Eijrou felt like he was being transported through time as he flipped through the book. He flipped through tons of photographs, both black and white and in color. He got to the last page with something on it only to find a sheet of paper.
The paper was folded in half and tucked into the crack of the book. Eijrou unfolded it to find a letter written in a scrawling, messy hand.
~
I found him. And now he's dead.
It has been almost sixty years since the last time I saw his beautiful face. I was honestly starting to go out of my mind. God, I missed him so much! World War II was hell. Watching the one, you love being shot out of the sky is the worst pain in the world. I felt my heart being wrenched from my body and torn into shreds. His beautiful red hair flashed across my vision as the wing of his plane exploded. I crashed into the sea after him, but there was nothing left. I buried an empty casket alongside his current family. They gave me his dog tags. I won't take them off.
It hurts so much. I wish I could die. I only had a mere three months with him this time. I didn't even get to tell him how I felt. I don't have any drawings. I couldn't bear to ask his family to part with any of their photographs.
I will be hiding for a while until I think he is most likely to be reborn again. I don't know how much more I can take of this. Maybe I will stop looking for him.
~
Dog tags? Eijrou thought. Bakugo had a set of dog tags. He always wore them. He didn't even take them off when he showered. Eijrou couldn't help but feel like the writing looked like that of his boyfriend, but that would make him at least a hundred years old if that were true. That made no sense.
Eijrou heard the front door slam.
"E, are you here?"
"I-in the sitting room."
Bakugo Katsuki walked into the room where Eijrou was staring blankly at a book.
"Hey, Babe, watcha looking at?"
Bakugo walked over to where the red-head was standing and wrapped his arms around his waist. He glanced over Eijrou's shoulder to see what he was looking at. When he saw the book, he jumped back away from Eijrou.
"I...I can explain!" Bakugo said in a panicked voice.
"Okay..."
"You might want to sit down."
Eijrou moved to the couch and sank into it heavily. Bakugo sat down next to him and took the worn book out of his hands.
"So, I guess I will start at the beginning of this." Bakugo opened the book to the first drawing.
"He was a prince. The son of a pharaoh. Ekaten was his name. He was beautiful. He was the first. Ekaten never understood the power he held in his hands. I am sure you read his letter at the beginning. I was his servant. He set me free. He wanted me to travel and to use my intelligence to make the world he loved so dearly a better place. He gave me the journal. He made it himself out of animal skins and papyrus. I managed to capture him on the empty pages before he forced me to leave his side. He never allowed me to act on the feelings I had for him, even though he returned them. He knew that there was no place for me in a palace."
Bakugo flipped past the pages that depicted the prince.
"This is Egan. He was a priest of Apollo. A healer. I came to him one fateful day. I had been traveling for almost two thousand years before I found Ekaten's reincarnation. I needed some herbs for some research that I was doing, and the locals of the city that he resided in directed me to him. They said that he should have what I needed. It must have been a sign from the gods. I saw him standing on that balcony, and I just knew. I became his apprentice. He saw that my talents resided in research and experimentation, and he wanted to learn from me as much as I wished to be around him, so the apprenticeship seemed to be the perfect solution. I stayed with him for twelve years and learned everything that I could from him. We became close, and after two years of my study under him, he asked how I felt about him. We were together for the rest of the time that I stayed with him. Twelve years felt like so long then, even though I was well over three thousand years old at that point. I had my fated one. But, the Fates are cruel. They ripped him from my arms. A disease no one could cure."
Bakugo turned to a page that held an image of a man in chains.
"The next time I found him, around eight hundred years later, was just after the death of a prophet named Jesus. He was trying to bring the man's teachings to the world. I never even got to talk to him in that reincarnation. I saw him at his trial. His death was not swift. I don't even know what that reincarnation was named."
The page turned again—this time to an image of a young boy.
"Another thousand years passed. The plague killed this version's family. Eli was his name. I took him in. Adopted him for lack of a better word. I knew he was Ekaten, but he became like a child to me instead of a lover. I taught him everything I had learned from Egan. He spent a mere two years with me before he contracted the plague from one of our patients. I couldn't save him."
The next page was filled with small drawings of a man on a ship. One showed him clinging to the ropes as he adjusted the sails. One showed him leaning over the rail of the ship. The last showed him fast asleep in a pile of rope on the deck.
"Erin. His mother wished for a girl. He joined my band of pirates around two hundred years after Eli's death. He was made for the seas. He did all that was asked of him like it was second nature. I had never seen a man scale a mast as fast as he could. He soon became my first mate, and when I could no longer bear to watch him grow old, I passed the control of the ship to him and fled."
"Ethan was next. He fought in the American Revolution. I was on the plantation he started in south Georgia in 1792, around to tutor his children. He was married this time, so I quickly left that reincarnation behind. I felt he was happy already, and I didn't want to ruin that by being selfish."
"Eito was the last. I met him in 1943. He was in the same squadron as me. We were both pilots for the Japanese airforce. We became fast friends, and I was happy to see the smile that every reincarnation always had. It wasn't an ideal place for romance, so I made little effort to approach him. One day before our squadron was about to launch, he came to me. He told me, "Whatever happens in this war, I had to tell you this. You mean so much to me. I love you, and I don't want to lose you." He lifted my hand and kissed my palm before he ran to his plane. I never spoke to him again. A missile shot the wing off of his plane, and he spiraled out of the air. The funeral was hell. I didn't know his family. I was allowed to present them with dog tags. They gave them back. I still have them."
Bakugo pulled the chain out from inside his shirt.
Katayama Eito
Eijrou sucked in a breath. He couldn't wrap his head around all of the information he had just been given.
"You're serious."
"Yes."
"Then why are you with me? Why aren't you out looking for your soul?"
Bakugo looked at Eijrou with adoration and breathed out a sigh, "Haven't you guessed it yet?"
Eijrou's face screwed up in confusion. He couldn't understand why Bakugo would hang around him when he had a soulmate out there somewhere waiting for him.
Bakugo let out a soft laugh and pulled Eijrou into his lap, "You have his selflessness, his beautiful face, his soft smile, his olive skin, his brilliant red hair, his cheerfulness, his resilience, his grace. You are him. All of them. Ekaten. Egan. Eli. Ethan. Eito. Eijrou, you are all of them, and I wish you would never have to leave my side."
A violent shudder assaulted Eijrou as the words left Bakugo's mouth. His head dropped onto Bakugo's shoulder as his brain exploded with images that flashed faster and faster past his field of vision. They went as quickly as they came, and Eijrou sat up. His eyes were glowing gold.
"Kadar?"
"E-Ekaten?" Bakugo asked, shakily.
"Yes! Yes, my love."
Bakugo's face lit up as he gazed into the glowing pools, "I've missed you!"
The red-head pulled the blonde into a tight embrace; tears streamed down their faces. The two boys sat in each other's arms, not daring to move for fear of losing each other again. The bright glow receded from Eijrou's eyes, and the red slowly seeped back into his irises.
"Why did you keep looking for me? Kadar, I told you that I wasn't worth your attention."
"I don't care what you think on that particular subject," Bakugo replied in a flat tone, "Don't ever force me away from you again. The last five millennia have been torture. I wish I could age with you and die by your side. Or I wish you were immortal like I have been cursed to be."
A shimmering light enveloped the couple, and Eijrou gasped as a tingling sensation rippled through his body. A cool breeze blew through the room.
"Eternity awaits you both. Make your time count."
Bakugo knew that voice. It was the same one that had granted him his own immortality. They would never be parted again.
"I've missed you so much," Bakugo whispered into Eijrou's neck.
Eijrou laughed softly and hugged Bakugo. The boys couldn't keep the grins off their faces. They both had eternity ahead of them and a lifetime of memories in their heads. The world would finally know the power of true, fated love.
Bakugo pulled Eijrou into a soft kiss, "I love you."
"I love you, too."