Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

George is seven when his parents tell him what the permanent circle on his finger is.

He had tried multiple times to get rid of it – pulled on it, tried to burn it (scorching his finger in the process), struggled to break it with a stone – and after several unsuccessful attempts that left his body parts in bandages, his parents decided it was time to tell him. Better entertain his questions than nurse his injuries.

“It’s a ring,” His mother speaks, her finger curling around his, a gentle touch hiding the pink color the ring had then, “It's very important.” She says in the old languages, a kind of Roman that soon faded away under newer linguistics.

She takes her other hand out, reaching out to grab her husband’s, and joins them in front of George’s eyes, both glowing the same shade of gold. “It glows like this when you find your soulmate.” Her eyes shine in the clear sheen of the ring, matching the spark in his father’s.

“What’s a soulmate?” George asks, pulling away from his mother’s finger and wiping his hand down his tunic, “Can I go hunt and find mine?”

His parents laugh, chuckles mingling with each other as they shake their heads. The sun has begun to set in the distance, and the little window through the house allows light to seep in. All houses in Carthage were built like this, angled to let Sol find his way inside their homes.

“They’re not animals, Georgie, you can’t hunt them,” His father says, eyes crinkling with fondness as he gazes down at him, “You’re meant to find them as Necessitas wishes, and as the Parcae seal your fate.”

“Who are they?” George peers at him, curious and confused as to why these strangers control his life. He was tired of wearing the stupid ring already, an unnecessary metal circle weighing down on his left hand, always changing to different shades of gray, brown, blue, and yellow.

He’s been told it changed to more than those three colors, to hues of pink and red and purple and green, and that he’s just unable to see them. His parents had offered sacrifices to the Gods, begged for their child’s vision, but it proved futile. It only irritated George further, serving as a constant reminder of what he couldn’t see.

“They’re deities, George. The priest will tell you about them as you grow up.” His father provides, sighing as he notices George inspect his ring with a frown, knowing what question would follow.

“What color is it now?” He turns his brown eyes back to his father, asking the question for what seems like the thousandth time in his seven years of living. He looks frustrated, because why couldn’t he just see the colors change on his own?

“It's green, means your soulmate is feeling ambitious,” His mother helps him, swiping her finger over the viridian ring, “I could’ve sworn it was pink a moment ago.”

“Why does it change so much?” George juts his chin out, knowing his questions were starting to get excessive, and knowing what he needed to do to make sure his parents didn’t call him out for it.

“It changes with your soulmate’s feelings, honey. It was pink before, meaning they were feeling enthusiastic, and it's green now, which stands for ambitious. Your soulmate probably feels things very rapidly.”

George nods, pretending he understood. “So I can never take this off? Will it always be there?”

At that, his parents still, eyes sharing a grave, common thought. Do we tell him just now? Or is he too young? His father speaks silently.
No one’s ever too young in the age of war, his mother replies back.

“It comes off, dear,” His father begins, not having the courage to tell him when it happens, afraid of even imagining the possibility.

His mother, however, retains the determination in her eyes and the flow in her voice. “It comes off when your soulmate goes to Pluto’s realm.”

George sees his parent’s hold on their joined hands tighten simultaneously as if passing a silent promise. We go there together. A tight-lipped smile and a reassuring squeeze later, the hold relaxes, their attention finding its way back to George.

“It turns black, and then it falls off.” His mother explains, reading her son’s thoughts.

She doesn’t expect his face to break in a toothy smile, lighting up his mind with a new idea as he glances between his ring and his mother with newfound energy.

“Then I’ll ask my soulmate to go to Pluto when I meet them.”

His mother throws her head back, laughter bubbling through her chest. His father’s not too far behind, joining her with his amused chuckles. “That’s not how it works, Georgie. You can’t just go to Pluto’s realm.”

“Why?” George makes a face, stamping his small feet on the stone floor.

“You have to die to go there.” Maybe it's his son’s silliness and the humor it provides that allows his father to say those words and entertain those thoughts without hesitation, without realizing their weight.

“So I’ll kill them.”

“You can’t kill your soulmate,” His mother laughs again, hand reaching out to soften the creases forming on her son’s forehead, “You’re supposed to spend your life with them.” Her gaze flicks lovingly to her husband, and to their glowing rings, as the sun finally fades off the firmament to allow the darkness to set in.

“But I don’t want to wear this ring on my finger all the time,” George whines, nails clawing angrily at his ring-clad finger like he can pull it off his skin. It doesn’t budge.

“You’ll grow used to it,” His mother’s hand reaches out to stop his clawing, a firm look asking him to not do it again. She turns to the ring, a flicker of surprise laced in her voice, “It's yellow now.”

She sees her son's eyes wide with curiosity, face still scrunched up and lips turned down in a subtle frown, then glances back at the ring – that changes to orange the moment her eyes lay upon it. Whoever his soulmate is, really needs to get his emotions in order, she thinks, unable to keep her lips from forming a smile.

Her son is still young, still has much to learn, but knowing that someone was out there for him, someone whose ring is probably a dark grey from the confusion George is feeling, someone not much younger or older than he was, who also has a long way to go before they find George – but once they do find him, they would love him for who he was-

Well, knowing that made her feel much more at rest.

_____

George is eleven when he finds himself in doubt.

“Mother,” He begins, making his way to where his mother is standing by the raised dais, waiting for people to leave so she could start cleaning the temple. A funeral had just occurred, and something George noted about it was that the girl had her ring on at the time of her burial, pitch black in color but not broken in the least.

“Yes, dear?” His mother wipes a hand over her forehead, moving further away from the dais to make way for those unmounting it.

“I was just wondering, why was she buried with her ring on?”

His mother sighs, offering a polite smile to someone who walks by them before turning back to George. “Because she died without meeting her soulmate, so now she will meet them in another life.”

The prospect of another life, another chance at love, was nice, maybe if you weren’t George and despised constantly having to wear a ring on your finger for no tangible reason. At least, not a reason you cared for. His dislike for the ring had not yet withered away.

“So will her soulmate be buried with their ring too?”

He can see the conflict dancing behind his mother’s eyes, having grown all too used to it. Being of an inquisitive nature, George often asked questions his parents didn’t want to answer, and then it was a matter of whose stubbornness made way first.

He could see his mother was tired, too tired to convince him to ask her later, and so he decides to push. “Is that how it works?”

“No, George.” She looks left and right, trying to make sure no one was in hearing distance, and lowers her voice even further, “It's not something that has ever happened in this part of Carthage. We’ve had people die without meeting their soulmates, yes, but no one has ever had a soulmate die without having met them, no one has seen their ring turn black and fall off without having glowed at all.” No one has ever had to mourn someone they didn’t know, not in Carthage.

“Why would their ring fall off when the person who dies gets to be buried with it?”

George knows he was asking too much, but he thinks he is old enough to listen, to know. After all, he is already 11. He could start training for the Roman Army in a year and go off to fight some wars. Bed some girls, drink some wine, kill some enemies – things his friends fantasized about. He isn’t too young.

“Because they don’t die, George,” His mother speaks in a hushed whisper, pulling them behind a pillar.

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. They don’t die, they stay stuck at the age they were when their soulmate died, and their ring falls off. It reappears when their soulmate is reborn, and then they try again, chances after chances till the two halves finally meet.”

“So they are...,” George didn’t know what word could describe it, to stay on this earth long after everyone you knew was gone, just because one person couldn’t keep themselves alive. The very notion made him think, made him sad for those who had to go through it, but most of all, it made him angry. Angry at the universe for making two life forces so highly dependable, so intensely intertwined with each other. George hates the interdependency such a system implied.

“They’re stranded, George. Left alone to wait for their soulmate to appear.” His mother pushes them back into the main clearing, deciding that this was all George was getting that day. She walks off, a room waiting to be cleaned by her.

_____

George is thirteen when he sees Nicolaus, his best friend, find his soulmate – their rings glowing as they embrace for the first time, a bright light that only appears as a grey flash to him.

He is fifteen when his father is taken to the necropolis, his body burned so his spirit may pass the river Styx. He is fifteen when he holds his mother close, tries to not stare at her empty finger for too long – lacking the ring it always wore, a simple scratch the only remnant of it. He holds her close, and he tries not to break.

He is nineteen when he wakes up in the middle of the night with a heaviness in his heart and an emptiness in his stomach. He scrambles out of bed and tries to identify what’s wrong. It hits him then – the familiar weight he had grown used to but still hated – it is no longer pressing down. His left hand is free, fingers plain porcelain without the adornment on them. He looks down and sees black soot at his feet – reminding him of burnt metal, and of his mother’s ring when it fell off four years ago. He reaches out to touch it, and it vanishes.

No remains, because why would there be? It's not like it held meaning, it's not like it ever glowed with the unification of two hearts and one soul.

That night, George cries for someone he never knew, mourns someone he felt nothing for. He cries because he’s stuck, stuck being nineteen and being alone. He cries, and he lets his mother hold him.

Four years later, his mother leaves him. He’s still nineteen. His finger is empty.

_____

George is a hundred and thirty when someone first notices his empty fingers.

About time, wearing gloves permanently could only hide his loss for so many years. He’d known he was risking it when he took them off the previous day, tired of having worn his father’s leather around his fingers for over a hundred years - the same leather that made up his boots when he let Hannibal lead them to invade Italy, lead him to his death. Most people these days don’t even remember the Punic Wars, too busy dwelling in the luxury of peace to look back on history.

The word makes George giggle. History. If his soulmate hadn’t sucked at staying alive, George would be history by now.

He almost never thought about his soulmate anymore, too busy trying to stay alive without anyone figuring out the truth. He still looks nineteen, but it's hard to act that age when he has seen too much, when images of loss are brandished in his brain.

He takes the gloves off and throws them behind a tree, before joining the group of people set towards Scotland. It's time to leave Rome behind, he had convinced himself a few days ago, it's time to move. You’ve roamed around enough here.

Without the gloves, it's not that hard to notice the lack of a soul ring. He knows people must’ve seen it, but doesn’t expect one of them to be so forward in asking about it.

“Why is your soul finger empty?” The stranger asks, stepping up to George as he’s loading his baggage on top of a horse. He doesn’t look much older than George, whose gaze flicks to his ring, a dull yellow. The stranger notices, and tells him, “It's been dark green for a while now. I don’t know what my soulmate is doing, but they seem pretty set on doing it.”

Ah yes, of course it's green, George can’t help the spite crawling up his neck, and of course I can’t see it. Of course, the only constant that I have in my life is being fucking blind to color. Of course, I’m stuck on this earth when I can’t even see the full beauty of it.

He just hums in response, before going back to tending to his luggage. The stranger prods him again, “I asked you something,” George turns to him, and he continues, “So what happened? Did they die?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m sorry, were you two close?”

George finishes strapping on his bags, and manages a faint smile, “Not really. We barely knew each other.” All I knew about him was that his feelings changed way too much and way too fast and he couldn’t keep himself alive.

“Ah… still, it must be pretty hard, eh? Living alone?”

George wants to tell him, but the possibility of scaring away the stranger stops him. “You could say that, what’s your name?”

“Karl,” The stranger - well, Karl now - smiles at him, “What’s yours?”

“George.”

“And why are you heading off to Scotland, George?”

“To start a new life, move on from Rome, same old,” He tries to sound casual, “What about you?”

“My sister is getting married.”

“To a Scot?”

“You know what they say, love is blind.”

“Sure is,” George agrees.

“I think I like you George, would you like to be friends?”

George is taken aback by the question, not used to people offering friendship after two minutes of conversation. It usually warranted him a frown and a disdainful look with how purposefully dull he was.

“Uh...no?”

The thing about not aging is, you can’t have lifelong friends. You can’t stay in the same place for too long, and you can’t have attachments. Because once you do, once you decide to stay down in a single location, people start to notice, and people start to talk. It's expected, really, because why would someone look at a man looking the same after ten years and go - oh, this is totally normal, not weird at all.

Don’t live your life that way, his mother had said, don’t punish yourself. Be careful, but let yourself enjoy the turn of centuries.

Karl looks at him, as if trying to solve a puzzle. When he gathers nothing from George’s face, he mutters a simple “okay” and turns away.

George sighs. Kids.

____

It doesn’t immediately hit George when his ring reappears.

He’s one hundred and seventy-four years old and is listening to a bunch of Scotsmen narrate the assassination of Julius Caesar. It's only been a month past the Ides of March, but the news has spread like wildfire. It's like Mercury himself took to spreading this, his mother would say, whenever news from overseas reached them too soon.

He can’t bring himself to believe in Mercury anymore. His beliefs all seem outdated between the Scots and their lifestyle. Adapt, he chants in his head, break and rebuild with each century’s turn over.

Sometimes he feels guilty that he has forsaken the Gods, and he can feel Jupiter glaring down at him, but the feeling goes as soon as it comes.

He’s nodding his head as it happens, not paying attention to the play-by-play of the murder. He taps his hand away on his thigh before he hears someone laugh in his direction.

“Your soulmate seems like a real crybaby,” A sweet voice giggles, and George turns his head to his finger so fast he’s surprised when he doesn’t get whiplashed.

It’s back again, dark gray to his eyes. He knows it must be a light red then, the color that signals crying, as his parents had told him, and watches the gray turn to a faint yellow right in front of him.

“They stopped,” The person to him says, able to see the bright yellow the ring has changed to, and George finally looks up at her.

She’s slightly younger than him, he observes, with bright eyes and straight hair. “I’m Niki Nihachu,” She smiles, and George can’t help but smile back.

“I’m George.”

Out of habit, his eyes move to her finger, shock clear in them when he sees no ring. But she’s too young…

Niki interrupts his train of thoughts, noticing where he was looking, “Yeah, they died a year ago. I never met them though, so it doesn’t hurt as much.”

There’s another thing in Scotland that George has yet to get used to - the people rarely ever consider the weight of their words. Maybe it has to do with age, or new beliefs, but he sees people throw around their soulmate stories as if they are a road trip narration. And the bigger surprise is, no one cares.

He’s pretty sure three other people just heard Niki saying her soulmate died without meeting her, meaning she was stuck just like George, but no one batted an eye. No one cared. Rome had been subjected to conspiracy and had been in a state of tension for a while as Caesar fought his wars. It was all too common for soldiers from distant lands to go to Rome in search of a thrill and die in battle, all too common for them to leave their soulmates stranded at a standstill while they hungrily searched for glory.

“That’s….nice,” George forces out, excusing himself to process what just happened, to come to terms with the ring that had reappeared.

Two things immediately strike George as he stares down at it - one, he still doesn’t like it and a part of him that has grown tired of life wants to find his soulmate and die the next moment and two, the ring means his soulmate has just been born, that they are a baby, and George feels weird knowing he is technically years older than them. It's their fault though, a voice in his head whispers, and you don’t look a day over nineteen.

Sighing to himself, he rubs his fingers, the color on the ring staying the same. It's a baby, he thinks, probably asleep.

Please let them meet me in this lifetime, he finds himself wishing as he stands alone in the alleyway. He doesn’t know whom he’s wishing to, whether the Celtic Gods are listening to him, those whose land he currently occupies, or the Roman ones are, peering down at his disloyalty with distaste and disgust. He hasn’t been to a temple in the last hundred years, but he still believes there’s someone up there, listening to him. He just doesn’t know who they are.

_____

"You’re my soulmate.”

Well, that was easy.

It's dark in the alleyway, too dark for George to know if his ring is glowing or not when the man approaches him. He stands on guard, wrapping his head around the situation.

Wasn’t my soulmate born like sixteen years ago, he thinks, how is his voice deeper than mine right now?

Before he can voice his question, however, he is pushed up against a wall, strong hands snaking up his waist and lips nearing his ear.

“You’re not actually my soulmate, are you?” He doesn’t know why he’s whispering, or why his body feels on fire. It's been too long since he let himself be touched like this.

“No, but I wish I was,” The man breathes into his neck, “You’re so pretty, baby.”

George feels lips moving across the pale skin of his jaw, and moves his hand to the man’s shoulder for support as the hold around his waist tightens.

“Are you okay with this?”

George doesn’t expect a random man in the alleyway behind a weapons shop to care about consent, but he nods anyway and lets out a feeble ‘yes’. Let yourself have this.

He lets himself be taken to bed and used till they’re both satisfied. For a few hours, it feels like the ring isn’t there. For a few hours, he feels nothing but pleasure and light-headedness and the pain that comes in the aftermath, pain that he is too tired to care about.

It doesn’t last for long, though. Because he’s waking up in the morning, his body on the floor. Pain shoots up his back as he tries to get up, legs too sore for him to walk properly. He has no idea where he is, and jumps in his skin when the man enters the room, a pitcher of water in his hand.

“Hey, you’re awake,” He says, pouring out the water in an earthen bowl before passing it to George, “I suppose you’ll be leaving now?”

With a start, George realizes he doesn’t even know the man’s name.

He shuffles on his feet when he notices the man’s ring while taking the water from him, muttering a small “thank you.” It wasn’t that uncommon anymore to venture around before you found your soulmate, some didn’t even bother getting with their soulmate even after finding them. Newer times, they change like the tides in the ocean.

“I’m sorry, I wish I could stay and talk, I had an amazing time with you,” The man is in full-body armor, and George tries to think of a reason for it, “But my troop leaves in an hour, I have to go.”

Ah, another soldier off to give himself to defend his country against the self-proclaimed ‘Augustus’, king of the Roman Republic.

It's sudden when George feels a tug on his ring like a force is pulling it. He tries to cast a discreet glance, but there's a man in front of him, a man he slept with, who probably wouldn't be too happy with George's eagerness to know his soulmate's emotions right after sleeping with someone else. He tries to press the pads of his ring finger against his thumb to combat the twitching, not knowing what it's supposed to mean. Somewhere deep inside, he wishes the guy would leave for a while so he could check his ring, even though he'll likely fail to see the color.

As if on cue, someone raps on the door loudly. “Nicolo, wake up, bitch.” A booming noise calls. Nicolo, so that’s his name.

“I’m awake, Clay, just coming out.”

“Hurry, or Sir William will have you punished.”

“They’re sixteen, they’re not going to punish their senior in age and experience for being a few minutes late.” Nicolo shouts back. There's the sound of receding footsteps, and George feels his ring finger relax, no force acting on it anymore. He sighs in relief.

Nicolo turns back to George, a soft smile on his face, “I really did enjoy last night, George. Will you still be in town in a month? We return then.”

George nods against his better judgment. It's a moment of weakness, influenced by the events of last night, that makes him forget his rule of not making attachments.

“Then I hope to see you soon,” Then his lips are pressing on top of George’s hair before he rushes out the door, a leather bag in hand. And George is left to find a way to keep himself occupied for a month.

He succeeds, opting to help a group of passing performers in the upkeep of their animals in exchange for a tent to stay in. A month passes by faster than he would’ve thought, and soon he’s back in the alleyway, in the same spot as before, hoping Nicolo meant what he said about seeing him.

He waits, and he waits, till he feels a familiar ache in his chest, the same as what he felt when he…

With a gasp, his eyes turn to his finger. Sure enough, the ring has turned black, beginning to fall off to the ground. George stares, unsure of what to feel besides the dread climbing up his bones. Another hundred years? What if it takes a thousand this time?

George watches the ring as it falls off fully and turns to black dust on the ground, vanishing. He’s taken back to when it happened for the first time when he had cried in his mother’s arms. This time, there’s no embrace to crawl into, and so he sinks to the ground, head hitting the wall behind him. He feels wetness rise up in his eyes, the realization of having to spend hundreds of years alone, once again, scratching across his chest like nails on a chalkboard. He curses his soulmate as he claws at his finger - a sudden urge to cover the thin line where his ring rested with scratches and redness. He pinches and squeezes and presses his nails in, anything to make him feel something other than impending isolation. He’s crying before he knows why, but the scratching doesn’t stop. He draws blood where his nail presses deep inside the cuticle and takes his hand away with a sharp sting.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, curled up into himself as shivers rake through his body. It feels like it's been hours when he feels someone’s arms around his body, pulling him into their warmth. George comes back to his senses with a jolt, peering up at Nicolo’s familiar face, concern written all over it.

“What happened?” He forces out, hands reaching up to cradle George’s face, inspecting him for injury.

George coughs, allowing Nicolo to steady him as he asks, “Where were you?”

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here sooner, we were ambushed on our way back by the Roman troops, and Clayton... Clay was deeply injured. We took him to the healer as soon as we got here, but he didn’t make it. Died two hours ago.”

George nods, too tired to respond verbally, and turns his face up as Nicolo leans in closer, lips brushing lightly against his, “I’m sorry, George.”

George feels the other's ring press against his cheek and turns his head to look at it. Deep blue to George’s eyes. And then he’s pulling away with a start, heaving himself up, legs wobbling slightly.

“What is hap-,” Nicolo begins, but George raises a hand to stop him.

“I can’t do this.”

He can feel two eyes boring into his back as he walks away, but he keeps his own gaze ahead. I have to move ahead if I want to survive another hundred years normally. Why did I have to get a soulmate who is incapable of staying alive past his teen years? He inspects the damage he’s done to his fingers, and untucks his saffron shirt from his tartan trews, tearing a piece of it to use a bandage.

I have to move ahead.

_____

If someone had told George that he'd live to be over 500 years and witness a man get proclaimed as God's son, he would've laughed in their faces, called them a mincinosule and asked them to never say such a thing again, lest an elder should hear and lecture them on trying to predict religion.

However, he stands here now, watching Christianity spread across the continent, washing over lands with its missionaries. Jesus, they call him, the son of God.

George doesn't want to accept it, he has already been neglected by too many heavenly powers to pledge his allegiance to another, but when the Emperor decides to hang the non-believers once Christianity is declared as the state's official religion, George is left in a state of conflict.

His ring reappears when he’s hitting five hundred, sharp pain shaking through his finger as he watches the metal form out of thin air and curl around his phalange. He barely looks at it, not needing any more reminders of what he lacks - a soulmate, and an ability to see colors. The latter has bugged him more so than ever in the past decade, with painting on the rise, artists popping over all the corners of the continent. He hears of the masters in Florence and their outstanding use of color to capture the feel of an image and tries to not care about it. He even manages to pick up a brush himself, but when someone tells him that he painted the trees mustard yellow, he doesn’t bother to try again.

A lot happens around George - discoveries and expeditions and innovations and of course, wars. George fights in them all, hoping somehow he’d trip and die. He doesn’t, any blade directed at him passes right by, and the opponent is left staring wide-eyed as George shoves him with his shield, knocking him down. He never kills them, he can’t bear the thought of living with blood on his hands.

He knows he should be doing something other than sitting around in libraries all day, he has lived long and knows too much. He knows he should put his knowledge to good years, maybe take the chance of having his name written in history, but he doesn’t bother. It makes him selfish, it makes him complacent, but why aid a world that you’re desperate to leave?

He knows he can't die, but doesn't know what it means for anyone's attempts at killing him. Will they fail? Or will they succeed and he'll simply come back to life? He doesn't know, and he's not willing to risk it. Instead, he gets on the first carriage to Greece and arrives there in a week.

In the past two hundred years, society had started to become a little constricting for George. In place of quick meetings with an interested stranger in alleys to quench his thirst for companionship, he's had to resort to fleeting looks in public and shameful touches behind closed doors. All because suddenly, society adheres to a new book, and the new book says that you shall not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Abomination my ass, George curses, I’ve been here longer than you have. Men have been bound to each other by the soulmate bond for centuries.

That’s another thing George has had to witness - the soulmate bond losing its importance. Rarely do two soulmates ever get together anymore, simply meeting each other so they can die. Sellers promote ring covers, bands you can use to hide your ring. George buys one and puts it around his ring, eager to not feel its weight anymore.

Greece is... freeing. It's wild and it's fun and its happening.
In Greece, the new developments (they’re not developments, rather a step back from it) haven’t yet had their effect, and it's like a breath of fresh air when a man in a woolen chiton winks openly at George over his lyre, playing for the crowd assembled at the amphitheater, soft hands plucking hard strings.

George never liked the lyre. Sure, its quality had certainly improved since he was a child and people have begun to use turtle shells to allow the music to vibrate better, but to George, it still remains the same instrument that had made him want to claw his hair out because he was unable to learn it.

It gives George even more reason to focus solely on the boy, his tunic bunching around his knees as his fingers move over silken strings. At certain moments, his eyes meet George, and both faces relax into mutual smiles. It doesn’t last for too long - the boy is a professional, he’s here to play.

George watches him, entranced, and soon, the crowd is leaving. People get up from the stone stairs as the music ceases, but George stays. The boy marches up to him before the hall is empty, a grin on his face and the lyre in his hand.

“Hello,” George wonders if he sings too, his voice is beautiful, “I’m Nikolas.” The name sounds like one that belonged to someone close to him, George realizes, someone who’s probably dead now.

“George.” They look at each other for a second, and George, out of habit, looks down to check the boy’s ring fingers. There’s nothing there.

Sensing George’s question, Nikolas speaks up, “He was a Roman, and the Church found out we were together.”

He doesn’t have to say anymore, George can see the sadness in his eyes. “They spared you?”

“I ran away. I asked him to come,” George is surprised, and slightly impressed, at the boy’s unfaltering speech, though his eyes give away the crumbling state of his insides at having to recall such a memory, “He said he couldn’t, that he wouldn’t live in the shadows with me if this world didn’t accept it.”

George doesn’t know why, but he wants to hold Nikolas, to calm him down. I barely just met him, what is wrong with me?

“I said I’ll stay then, we could die together. He didn’t let me, he made me swear-” Finally, his strength gives away, and a tear slips past his eye.

“He made me save myself, and so I did. A soldier helped me, said his name was Klae. And then I watched the ring before me turn to the blood-red of pain,” He winces visibly, “Before it faded away.”

“Oh,” George wants to slap himself for his response, but then again, what was he supposed to tell him? “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay George, I’m sorry for burdening you with my tragic backstory the moment we met,” Nikolas laughs, but it’s frail and forced, “I was supposed to entertain you.”

As much as George wants to hug him there and then, and tell him he doesn’t have to entertain him, that George is already enticed, he sees the tears pooling in the boy’s eyes, and he takes a respectful step back. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want something with you,” He confesses, “But you don’t seem ready for it.”

Nikolas reaches up to swipe a hand across his forehead, “I am still not over him, I admit,” He turns back to George, eyeing the space between them with longing, “But what if I want you to help me?”

“Then I’d say yes,” Self-control is much too easy to speak of, and a hundred times harder to apply, “To being your friend, Nikolas.”

“You’re also Roman,” The boy mumbles, blue eyes closing as he shakes his head, “Fate is a cruel maiden.”

“How’d you know I’m Roman?”

“You say my name like there's a u in it. Nikolaus,” He smiles fondly, “He used to do that too. Said that it's something that marks a Roman. No matter how far he travels, he’ll always say that syllable the same way.”

They’re still standing, but the amphitheater is empty now, and the sky overhead is slipping into darkness, a few stars already in view. The air is chilly, and George’s tunic is made of thin linen as opposed to the wool encasing Nikolas. He shivers and wraps his arms around himself.

“What was his name?” George asks after a while.

“Karlos,” From the way the boy utters the name, the pure devotion that laces a simple word, George can tell the kind of love they must’ve had. He is old, after all, and has experience of observation.

“Karl, I called him.” The name sounds familiar to George, but then again, names often do. He has learned too many and forgotten too many, and they overlap in his head now. He doesn’t bother to think over them.

“What’d he call you?”

“Niko.” And George, in all his soulmate-hating and disdain-for-living stage, thinks that this might just be something worth living for - the way a simple memory of his lover calling his name has made Nikolas smile.

“Can I call you Nik?”

“We are friends, are we not?” His laugh is genuine this time and the tears are gone, leaving a faint trail down his cheeks.

“Yes, we are Nik.”

“So, tell me George, why did you look so bored when I was playing?”

George groans softly, tightening his hold around himself, “I absolutely cannot stand the lyre.”

“That’s disgraceful,” Nik mocks him, and George is already glad he decided to stay.

“Maybe you could teach me.”

“Maybe I could.”

Nik takes his hand, and George lets him. He inspects his fingers, stopping to press on the knuckles. He drops it when he’s done, and turns to George with a soft smile, “Those hands are not meant for playing the lyre.”

“You still have your ring, haven't you met them yet?” His tone is gentle, not accusatory as George would expect it to be,

“No.”

“Well, they seem nice from the overwhelming pink on your ring.” George looks at his ring and finds the cover to be absent. It must have slipped off, he thinks, I’ll have to buy a new one.

“I- I can’t actually see pink.” George doesn’t know why he’s admitting this to someone he hasn’t known even for a day, but something about Nikolas feels familiar. Suddenly, it clicks in his mind, and he is reminded of floppy hair and wide grins, and of a figure rushing to his house to tell him he found the one, found his soulmate, when they were both thirteen, all those years ago in a nameless Carthegian village.

“Ah, Akromatopia, the curse of Iris.”

George nods, though he wouldn’t call it that. He remembers his parent’s efforts to cure him, the sacrifices and prayers done to get him a proper vision. If it were a curse, it would’ve worn off. If there were Gods above, they would’ve listened by now.

“I can describe colors to you, if you want.”

George finds himself sitting back down, and Nik comes down with him, before launching on to descriptions that George tries to picture. He tells him blue is soothing, it's like touching water, and George tells him he can, in fact, see blue. Nik laughs, and goes on to tell him the excitement of orange, “It's my favorite color,” He says, “It's warm, but not too warm, it's like having sunshine in your eyes.”

“Green is lively, like leaves rustling, or stomping your feet on grass,” Nik motions vividly at the greenery around them, “Karl loved green. The man who helped me escape had green eyes, I remember.”

Nikolas continues, and George lets him, till the stars are fully visible and the sounds of the city have died down. He lets him continue till the sun comes back up, and he lets himself look at it, let it bathe him in his light, and tries to imagine orange.

Nikolas is there, three years later, when George feels the emptiness again, he’s there to hold him and tell him he’ll be fine, that they’ll figure something out soon. George counts the years since the ring had reappeared. Seventeen, he sighs, his soulmate made it to seventeen.

Probably died in the war, George reckons, if they were from this side of the world. Both the Persian and Greek sides have lost thousands, they could’ve easily been one of them. Maybe a maiden taken from a temple and worked to death, or a soldier with a sword sliced through his chest.

“They’ll make it to you, next time George,” Nik reassures him, hands gentle and words confident, “They’ll make it, trust me.”
You won’t be there, George wants to tell him, you’ll be dead, but he tries to push the thought away and relish the feeling of being held. It was a rarity for him before Nik.

“I trust you,” He says.

He lets himself be ushered into his bed, slipping under the covers and closing his eyes as Nik leaves the room, blowing out his lamp. He drowns out the sounds of men shouting in the streets, talking about the war. Persia had already taken Rome and was moving to Greece, fueled by its enormous warships that roared over the Mediterranean waters. George doesn’t think of it, he’s already seen way too many wars, he doesn’t think of anything except the years awaiting him.

He thinks of losing Nik, who was bound to die before George did and curses himself for breaking his own resolution and letting someone get so close.

Sleep overtakes him, and at the same time, Persia enters the waters of Athens.

_____

They both know what the letters are meant for, addressed separately. They know it's a call to war. “They’ll reach Piraeus today,” Nik grumbles, reading his. George’s is still unopened, the papyrus slightly rough against his hands. He turns over the envelope, eyebrows furrowing at the royal seal encasing the opening. It is waxed messily. Done in haste, George thinks, they probably had a lot of cannon fodder to write to.

“Will you go?” He already knows the answer. He sees how Nik has spent his years, how he continues to spend them, how he only ever acts like himself in front of George, and even then it's sometimes shielded. He sees what he longs how, his desperate glances at his ring finger, his daily recollections of memories he made with Karl which he describes to George through teary smiles and clenched fists. He misses him, he wants to go. He knows he’ll die.

But George is selfish. He’s spent so many years without anyone by his side, and now Nik is there, his closest friend in all the ways that matter, and he’s hurting and wants to go back to his soulmate, but George doesn’t understand. I don’t want him to go.

“I have to,” Nik says, “They’ll check our houses.”

“I could hide us.”

“I don’t want to live in hiding, George. Karl died so I wouldn’t have to do that.”

George sighs, and picks up his envelope, “I’ll come with.”

“But you have no training.”

George laughs, humorless and haunting, “It's not like I can die, thank my soulmate for that.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve fought in many wars, Nik, I tried to die, trust me. I’d blindly swing my sword, I even sometimes didn’t put on my armor, but no blow ever came. They’d try, and I’d fall down and black out, and then I was getting back up in a field of bodies and blood.”

“Okay,” Nik takes George’s envelope from his hand, skimming through its contents before throwing both letters into the fireplace, “We have to be at the base at the earliest.” George only nods, mind running through all the ways he could possibly avoid Nik dying.

It takes them eight hours to wrap up their dealings and get to the base camp. Nik pays their landowner, takes care of their possessions and everything else that they won’t be taking with them, and arranges some silver coins to carry if needed, all while George sits and stares at their armors, one of steel and the other iron, and thinks of the steel being stained with blood. It won’t be, he reassures himself, not if I can help it.

The commoners pitch their tents at the camp and run to the weaponry, eager to get their hands on whatever they can. They treat war like it's an adventure, not a death sentence, and George scoffs at their naivety. It's all admiring swords and clinking chest plates, enthusiastic fist bumps and confident grins, it's all about glory and victory till you’re actually on the field, till you watch the one you drank wine with just a few hours ago bleed to death. George has, multiple times, and war holds no meaning for him anywhere.

He’s there though, and he keeps close to Nik at all times - while they listen to the commander, while they sit at the bonfire and prepare for tomorrow, while they sharpen their tools and try on their chainmail - George fastens Nik’s for him and prays it protects him. To whom? His mind scoffs, to whom are you even praying? No God looks down upon you. Either there is none, and men are all fools, or they have forgotten about you.

“We’ll be okay tomorrow,” Nik says into the night as they lay down in their tent, prepared to wake up whenever they hear the trumpet announcing that the Persians have been sighted in the Port’s territory.

“But you don’t want to be,” George whispers back.

“What do you mean?”

“You want to go, you want this to be your last night, you want to go to him.”

“No-,” Nik sounds confused, “Is that what you’ve been thinking all along?” He gets up from his position, turning over so his face is towards George, resting his body on his forearms. “Is that why you’ve been acting strange? You think I want to die?”

“You said you didn’t want to live in hiding, you said you missed Karl.” George doesn’t have the nerve to face him.

“And I do, I don’t want to live a life running away from soldiers, that’s what I meant,” He sighs, and his hand reaches out, gently brushing a strand of hair away from George’s face.

“Then why were you so eager to fight?”

“To have a sense of purpose? To do something other than play the lyre and be a performing monkey for rich Greeks? I don’t know, but it’s not what you thought.”

“I’m sorry,” George didn't know why he was apologizing, only that he still couldn’t meet Nik’s eyes, and dawn was approaching faster than he wanted.

“Don’t apologize,” Nikolas searches George’s face, before sighing and lying back down on his stomach, “Let’s sleep, we have a war to fight tomorrow.”

They do, and it comes sooner than they had planned. Their warship makers had not taken into account the new technology of the Persian ships, and the fleet is sighted in Athenian waters sooner than they’d thought. A cry breaks out at four in the morning and frazzled youth shuffle to their feet, rubbing their eyes and collecting their steel garments. George barely gets to look at Nik as they put their armors on, tightening their helmets. George does his mechanically, no sound coming from his side of the tent, but when he notices Nik’s hands falter over his leather shoes, he walks over. Replacing his hands with his own, he fastens the shoe sides, covering the exposed parts with steel plates.

“Hey,” Nik says, and George looks up at him, “I have this for you.”

He reaches behind him to pull a coin out of his satchel, turning it in his hands. “This is from King Antiochus’ time,” He says and hands him a silver coin, rough on the edges but still clear with the engraving in the middle.

“Is that Apollo?” George asks, brushing his thumb over the figure depicted, long hair falling behind a band. The figure looks serene, its hand clutching a lyre with the utmost care. George turns it over, to find a similar engraving on the back. This time, it's just the lyre, seven strings running across the silver in thin bands.

“Yes, I know you don’t believe in him, but I just wanted you to have it.”

“I don’t have anything to give you.”

Nik laughs, and George is glad his friend is still able to do that with a fight awaiting him, “It isn’t a barter trade Georgie, it's just a gift.”

“Why are you giving it to me?”

“Don’t know, I just felt like it. I was going to give it to you sooner or later, but today seemed just fine.”

George nods and puts the coin with his own few belongings. “Thank you,” He smiles, and gets his hair ruffled in return.

“You’re welcome, now c’mon, we need to get into formation.”

They are parted when the time comes, their difference in body form and experience playing a factor in their placement. Nik is sent to the front to form the boundary shield, and George stays behind to stand guard on the mount, bow and arrow in his hand, ready to shoot from a distance. His fellow archers sigh in relief at being offered a safe position, where they can feel the thrill without having to go into the fight, but George finds the measure futile for himself. It’s not like he was going to die himself, he might as well have been next to Nik.

All of a sudden, drums boom in the distance. The weather seems to have caught on, and the clouds have set in on the Port, wind making the flag tops sway slightly. The change is a welcome one, it makes the tides move faster and throws the Persians off their balance and they rush to acclimate to the wind. It slows down their advance, giving the Greek soldiers enough time to draw up in a proper formation at the beach before the ships pull up.

“Archers, heads up.” A booming voice calls.

George follows the command, the armor already heavy on his body.

“Forward!”

He takes a step forward, in line with his fellow archers, and tightens his hold on the crossbow.

“Bows up!”

He raises his bow, eye resting along the line of his thumb as he sets his gaze upon his target. The aim is to kill as many Persians as possible before they even reach the beach, since it's harder for them to shoot arrows on the dwindling tides.

“Draw!”

George remembers what he had learned about shooting in the wind, about angling the arrow further away to give some space for the wind to guide it, and pulls back his string to set his mark. “Let fly!”

A thousand arrows release in the air, rushing forward and raining down on the flock of ships still struggling to navigate the sudden change in the waters. George hears some whoops from the soldiers on foot, the ones standing at the beach, and imagines Nik as one of them.

“Back and reform!”

He brings his hands down, and takes a step back, chewing on his bottom lip and wondering if his arrow hit the target or not. If his hands are still clean of spilled blood or not. It frightens him to realize he doesn't care anymore, not when this war has Nik risking his life.

“Line relief!” George drowns out the commander, he knows the repetitive phrases like the back of his hand.

It feels like an hour has passed before the commands finally stop, and George rolls back his shoulder to relieve their stiffness. He’s parched, and he can already smell the blood and rust in the air as the ships draw up, armor-clad men ready to jump off.

“Soldiers! Fall into formation!” He hears the on-field leaders call and watches the shields pull up on the front of the beach. And then, the commands are back, and he’s back to his arrows. Raise, draw, let fly, reform.

He almost doesn’t register when the ships dock, when the soldiers with a red emblem adorning their shields jump off their ships, when the arrows from the Greek side are no longer the only ones in the air. He hears a sharp cry to his side and turns to see a fallen man, an arrow pierced through his ear. He falls, and two pairs of arms are quick to drag him away and replace him with another archer. George is quick enough to catch a glance at the man’s finger, and his ring is still there. That means somewhere else, someone else’s ring just fell to the ground.

The onslaught continues till the air has lost all of the smell of the salty sea, replaced by a bitter taste of dust and iron. George’s arms feel heavy, and his armor feels like a hundred layers of skin piled upon him. The clanks of steel striking steel still resound in his ears, and he flinches at the sight around him, an acidic scent filling his lungs. The beach is painted scarlet, and archers lie around him, some with an arrow in them, some who just fell to the ground the moment they were asked to fall back, drained.

“Return to the camp, we’ll collect the bodies in the evening.”

George can’t help but glance at the bodies as he moves. The sight fills him with dread and the blood makes him nauseous, but he still looks, his eyes automatically finding their hands and searching for their rings. Most are empty, but some are still there. Was my soulmate one of these bodies too? George can’t help but think, at another war, for another country? Was he also a pile waiting to be burned in heaps like firewood?

He pushes the thoughts out of his mind or at least tries to, as they near his tent. He steps inside to find it empty, and panic encompasses him. Not so quick, his brain reminds, the soldiers set off after the archers, and have to climb the mound to get here. He’ll be with them.

He takes his armor off and waits, clawing on his nails and turning the coin over and over in hands, using it to count the seconds. Someone peeks their head inside, asking him if he’d like to join the men for food. “I’m waiting for the soldiers to arrive, my friend was with them.” He explains.

“They have already, your friend is probably out there with them.” With that, the man leaves.

George gets up, shoving the coin back inside his small bundle of things, and rushes out. Nik would’ve come to see me first, he thinks, but then tries to reason with himself. Maybe he was hungry, maybe he thought I’d already be there having food.

His steps are quick as he walks to the open area where huge pots have been set, men taking their servings in bowls of clay. He searches frantically through the crowd for the kind smile, the broad shoulders, and the nimble fingers. He searches and he searches, disappointment filling him every time he calls a man “Nik!” only for him to turn around and look at him with pity, before giving the same reply, “I think you’ve got me confused for someone else.”

But George is not one to back down. He looks everywhere, ignoring the stares directed towards him, and he asks every soldier he can find, but they have nothing for him. “I might have seen him, but my attention was elsewhere.”

It's the evening before George knows it, and his heart is hammering against his chest as he volunteers to be in the party sent to collect the dead bodies. He can feel himself shaking as he draws up in the line, holding one end of an empty stretcher to carry a body back. The moment they reach the field, he breaks away from the group, wide eyes looking at every blood-stained face to find one he knows so well.

He stills when he finds it, eyes widening at the splatter of red across pale cheeks. Dust sticks to Nik’s face and George feels the rocks digging into his knees and he drops down next to the body. He almost doesn’t want to move the hair that sticks to the boy's face, it's easier to pretend that it isn’t him this way. He does it though, reaches a hand out to brush the sweat-slicked mop away from the forehead, and gets a clear view of the damage done. A scar is drawn across his eyebrows, blood clotted over it. There’s another at his jaw, and George traces it down with his eyes till it ends, right at the base of the body’s neck, dust mingled with blood resting over the deep incision into the skin. A slice from the neck up to the jaw, George registers faintly, that’s how they killed him.

George wants to hold the body, to squeeze the lifeless hands and kiss the damp forehead, to mourn and grieve as one should, but he can’t help drawing his hands away and clasping them together. He bites down on his tongue till he can feel it burn, and he keeps his stare fixated on the closed eyes of the figure lying in front of him. His hands itch to touch one last time, but he tightens their hold on each other, and he watches as others find familiar faces and break down, he watches their tears fall and walls break, but he keeps his own posture straight, and his eyes trained on Nik. Nik, he still hasn’t processed, that’s Nik. That’s him lying in a pool of dirt and blood, that’s him waiting to be picked up and cleaned and put to rest. Do it for him, don’t be a coward.

He doesn’t, he just watches as a stretcher finally reaches them and hoists the body onto it, casting a worried look at him. “You okay?” The stranger asks, and George gives a solemn nod, getting up and holding on to the other end of the stretcher, lifting it up.

His shoulders tremble as they walk to the camp, as they set the stretcher down, as they get the firewood and raise it onto the pyre.

“I can describe colours to you if you want.”

"Orange is my favorite color, its like sunshine in your eyes.”

George watches the body go up in flames, and for once, he’s glad he can’t see its actual colors. He’s glad he can still remember orange as what Nik described it, not as a sign of a body passing over from this world into another one. I get to keep that, he tells himself, I get to keep his words.

That night, he holds the coin so hard that his hand has a circular imprint in the morning. He wakes up at the crack of dawn and gathers his belongings, forcing himself to not look at any of Nik’s. I should've known better than to get attached, his eyes are dry, I shouldn't have been so foolish. Look where it got him. Dead, dead, dead, he repeats, wanting the semantic satiation to rid his mind of the meaning the word holds, dead.

He leaves the camp, he never had a problem with hiding and running away.

He may not be my soulmate, he looks up to the sky, but please let me meet him in his next life. Let me have him for a companion.

_____

He’s staring at the coin when the ring appears, remembering the events of the day. The Viking rule has spread from Northumbria to England, and George knows a war is near. Wars always are, when a man is quick to act.

It's just a sharp pierce at his finger as the metal coils around it, encasing it in the grip that still holds the same familiarity that it did almost four hundred years ago. George has stopped trying to count his age, the numbers pile upon him like a weight.

Let this idiot live for a couple years this time, he finds himself thinking, I don’t care if we get together or not. Just let us cross paths and let me die.

_____

“You’re like a personified peacock feather.”

“What?” George sets his hands upon the wine barrel to rest them.

“It means you’re an asshole by association.”

“I still don’t understand,” He says, leaning slightly against the wall, careful to not put his entire weight on it. Straw could only handle so much pressure.

“Peacocks are assholes, so the feathers attached to them are assholes by association,” The man replies, and George wishes he had never joined this group of people.

“How do I come into that?” He furrows his brows, impatient to rush their conversation but still wanting an answer. His back hurts from being bent constantly, and his clothes are slick with sweat. A loose blouse hangs from his shoulders, the shirt tied messily to expose his chest to the air and cope with some heat. Alex has completely removed his own, and it lies hunched up on the floor.

“You’re friends with us, we’re a bunch of assholes.” George begins to protest against the statement, but a hand in the air stops him, “It's the truth. We’re all lurkers whose soulmates died and left us stranded and use the advantage of being unable to die to rob people. You’re older than all of us, yet less corrupted," George knows for a fact, that is not true. He simply chooses to not let his corruption be his sole drive, unlike the others in the group. Sometimes, he lays at night and second-guesses his relationship with all of these men, thinking that they keep him around only to reel them in, only to help them stray from the eyes of the law. Then the morning comes and Alex greets him with a genuine grin and a familiar hand clapping on his shoulder, and all his doubts vanish into thin air.

"Your ring came back seventeen years ago. You could’ve left us, but you stayed. You help us with missions but you never take a life, you never take any of the money. Why is that, my little peacock feather?” The man cocks his head to the side, eyebrow lifting in mock curiosity as he holds on to his own wine barrel, containing things far more precious than wine, a result of their latest venture. The diamonds rattle slightly, a rather sharp clink making George wince.

“I’m not your little-” The brunette sighs, knowing it's of no use to try and pursue the man against what he says, so he settles for a question, “Why are you biased against peacocks?”

“They annoy the fuck out of me. Why are you deflecting?”

Here’s the thing about this man - Alexander, or Big Q as he asks to be referred to when they’re on a mission ("Q is a mysterious letter," He'd said, pretending to pet a cat) - you can’t shift his focus if his mind is set on something. He’s determined and persuasive, that’s one of the reasons why he and George work together - George is charming, fooling, a diamond-like sheen encasing his true motives when he’s sweet-talking a potential victim, and Alexander is there to persuade one to believe in George’s words, to radiate trust and catch a victim in their net. It’s how they always work, till the victim is in the trap, and the rest burst out from hidden spots with weapons ready in their hands.

It’s 700 AD, and if anything has developed more than man’s greed, it’s his quality of weapons. George isn’t complaining though, he stopped doing that a couple hundred years ago, a coin in his hand as he made his way from Greece to London. Memories of a lyre and a boy with a calming smile followed him, and he did everything he could to get them away. Distractions, his mind would tell him, you jump from one thing to another. You cannot settle.

George just huffed and went on to switch lives again, and again, till another hundred years had passed, and then a few hundred more. He lived as a merchant, a counselor, a thief, a shoemaker - his resume was diverse and so were his identities, till he came across a group of people lost just like him. ‘The Stranded’, they called themselves - People with no ring on their fingers and no soulmate on the earth. They carried out assassinations, heists, and every other fatal crime, only to get back to their base at dawn and laugh their hearts out. George had met them almost twenty years ago, pretending to be of this century. They took him in as their own, and he watched as someone or the other got their ring back and left the group in search of their soul’s half. His own came back three years after he joined, but he chose to stay. He had done enough searching, it was time for his soulmate to try. He stayed, and he told Alexander he was staying and he’d been roaming for almost a thousand years, and the latter gave him a toothy grin and swore to annoy him for years to come.

Years later, here they were, shifting barrels of wine filled with diamonds to secure them while they went on their next mission - Alex’s personal favorite - a monarch’s assassination.

“I’m not deflecting, Alexander.”

“Yes, you are. We’ve known each other for two decades now, you think I can’t tell? I should’ve brought it up sooner, but you never seemed ready. Now your soulmate’s almost seventeen, and once they turn eighteen, you’ll start aging too."

George purses his lips. It's nothing he doesn't know, of course, but the fact that it so near that Alex is worried for him, so near that he might have to leave what felt closest to home after all those years.

"What will the group think? We’re called the Stranded for a reason, George. We don’t have a choice. Your soulmate is out there waiting, and you’re choosing to let them slip away?” A tension filled the air, aggravation marking itself in the creases on Alex’s forehead and the veins pressing against George’s skin.

"Is this you asking me to leave?"

Alex takes one look at him, weary eyes meeting earthy tones, and promptly buries his face in his hands. His fingers move across his skin as if trying to massage some imaginary wrinkles. When he's done, he removes his hands and places one on top of George's.

"You know I don't want you to go, right?"

"Then just let me stay, no one will know."

"I can't, you know I can't."

George does, and so he removes his hand from where it rests on the barrel in favor of sitting down on the floor. He's sure his pants are getting dirty but can't bring himself to care. He rests his head against the barrel, body leaning into the wall and legs spread out in front of him. It's not comfortable, the floor is rough and the gravelly stones press into his ass if he tries to move even a bit. Alex joins him, dropping down in favor of sitting against the opposite wall, across from George with their legs close enough to touch and deliver playful kicks to cut through the tension.

"I'll leave, after this mission. I promise." George traces stars on the unlevel ground with the pads of his finger, nails scratching and making him wince at a particularly loud drag of a sharp nail against hard rock.

"You won't disappear, right? I still want to be able to see you, to talk to you." Do not get attached, a familiar voice with a Greek lilt resounds in George's ears, you know what happened the last time.

"And how do you suppose I'll be able to keep up with you all moving from place to place? Paths of people escaping the law aren't the easiest to follow." George knows he can't die, he also knows he'd rather not spend whatever hundred years he has left in a jail cell.

"The increasing criminality rate begs to disagree."

"Well, they aren't easy to follow for people who aren't a criminal; experienced, or amateur."

Alex scoffs, nudging George's bare feet with his leather shoe when he speaks, "I could come to visit you here if you promise not to shift homes."

"It's okay Alex, you don't have to. I'll be fine, it's not like I've never been alone." George is sure that if he had to count, the years he has spent alone would far exceed those spent in company. He's used to it, it just takes a while. It took a while to stop waking up and running to see his father on the fields, took a while to stop expecting the house to smell like fresh bread when he woke, took a while to stop waiting for his mother to wish him goodnight, took a while to stop separating tomatoes from his meals cause Nik wasn't there to eat them, and it would take a while to not seeing Alex right by him through the whole day. But George thinks he'll manage, he always does. He's only grown better at it with the passing time, to the point of it being repetitive. A monotony that hurts, yes, but still a monotony.

"You shouldn't have to be."

"Tell that to the idiot who keeps on dying," He says as he looks down at his now grey ring, "I won't be surprised if they die before eighteen, and I can still stay with you." He almost hopes he does, then shakes his head to get rid of the thoughts.

He can stay with them for another week, and as Alex grins at him sideways and rolls the barrel away from the wall with his foot, George decides to make the week count.
_____

The group knows the King to be incognito, not surrounded by knights in their full regalia and armed to the teeth. But the tales of King Clay's combat skills are famous, and so the Stranded know they have to be careful, and not get overconfident. The forest is in their favor, its tall canopies prohibiting the sunlight from entering and keeping the forest dim and easy to sneak through. George prides himself on not producing a single sound as he walks up to his spot - the tree he's supposed to climb and shoot from, and gets his bow in position. He draws the string back and prepares to aim, ready to take it at King Clay if needed. He's been asked to stay and wait while those on the ground attempt to defeat him in physical combat, and even though George had cited disagreement, saying it was too dangerous and that Clay was too good of a warrior, he's told to have faith in his group's skills and climb his tree.

He waits for a sound till there's a rustle of leaves and the sound of footsteps, and he sees a red-cloaked figure in the distance. The rustle is from Q's movements as he turns to catch George's eye, putting his finger to his mouth in a shushing motion. George wants to ask him if he thinks he's stupid enough to speak when they're trying to murder the most powerful figure of the monarchy, but settles for rolling his eyes. He feels an itch at his finger, where the ring lies and is tempted to check its shade. He chooses to ignore it, clenching his feet and pressing his nail into his palm when the itch grows and transforms into a subtle force pulling him forwards. He lets out a low hiss when he feels something pull him forward and rushes to regain his balance.

A sharp blade slides through the wind, and he hears it before he sees it. It goes past him, slicing evenly through the brackets between tree branches towards the cloaked figure, till it's out of his sight. He waits for a noise of distress, for his friends to jump out of their positions and claim their success, but it never comes. All that comes is the sound of a twig cracking in the distance and turns his head to see Alex trying to get closer and see what's happened.

George assumes the blade didn't hit and lets out a curse. It gets lost in the wind as three figures jump out of the shadows, heading for the cloaked figure, and take him together. George knows what'll happen before it does, the hooded man's movements too fast, too precise, as he brandishes his sword and grazes their sides. It's bare, almost fleeting, and in hindsight should leave no more than a scratch, but the placement is done craftily. George can see it even from where he's stood, the tip of the blade cuts ever so slightly into the calf of the second man's thigh. Jack, George remembers his name being and realizes how distant he is from the new Stranded members. The sword skims past his skin, having cut where it needs to, made the incision into the most vulnerable vein - enough to leave Jack gasping for air as blood begins to rush out of his body.

The other two men are dealt with similarly as George watches, helpless. Alex mirrors his expression when they share a look, and once the three men are down, they watch as the figure cleans his sword. He looks around, eyes watching with dangerous care as he remains on his guard. King Clay, George thinks how different it is to hear of someone's skills and watch them in action. King Clay, one of the best fighters alive, and we're supposed to kill him.

The itch in his skin covered by the ring only grows, but it's easier to ignore it as he looks at the man now inspecting his arm for damage. In another life, George would admire the way his muscles bulge through the velvet sleeves as he brings his finger up to lightly suck on the red cut. In another life, George would let himself imagine how soft his golden hair would be, a hint of it peeking through the hood and catching the small amount of light that had stolen its way through the mess of leaves. In another life, George would walk out to him, maybe take his hand and ask if his finger hurts. In another life, George wouldn't be tied down by a soulmate who can't keep himself alive and a mission to assassinate the man who is currently getting closer.

Alex glances at him, and George understands what the look means.I should go in. George doesn't want to nod, but he does it anyway, knowing there's no other option. As Alex begins to move away from him, sneaking to get as close as he can without being seen, George takes a bow and places it through the string, arching it backward and readying himself to shoot if Alex needed him to.. He stays like that, holding his breath and watching as Alex makes his way through the vines cluttering the forest floor. The King spots his presence while he's still a few feet away, quickly placing his sword in front of him as he angles his body to attack.

And then they are face to face, and Alex is holding his own the best he can as swords clash, and in the midst of clanking metal, George tries to focus clearly, to pinpoint his arrow at the King, but the two figures are moving too fast and their actions are two unpredictable. George almost shoots twice but backs down when he realizes the risk of hitting Alex. He knows he has to move quickly, Alex is a good fighter but George could see him slowly losing ideas of what to do as he swung his sword with no definite aim besides defending himself. It was only a while before he misstepped and took a blow. So George uses all he has to take his aim, heading straight for where his mind calculates King Clay to be in a few seconds and lets the arrow fly.

It brushes past the wilderness, through gaps in leafy trees, and hits someone, or something. George doesn't know, because his eyes are closed and he is holding his breath. His finger twitches like a weight has been relieved, but he is too scared to check.

The next moment, a loud whoop from a few meters away makes him blink one eye open, only to find Alex grinning in his direction from where he stands in the clearing between trees. He sees his mouth moving, unable to make out what he's saying. He gets down from the tree, moving towards the clearing. Alex meets him halfway, throwing his hands over his shoulder.

"We did it! We're gonna be so rich!"

George laughs, pushing him away. It's then that he notices his empty finger in passing. The ring is gone.

Alex follows his line of sight, and his smile falters when he realizes. "George-"

"It's okay, it's not the first time." Can it please be the last?

Of course, the Stranded all find their soulmates with time, neither of them as unlucky as George. They disband, and the memory of Alex with his soulmate's hands in his, telling George he won't ever forget him, and that he was sure to find his soulmate in his next life with the confidence and surety that George always admired in him, is placed with the boxes of memories the brunette keeps on reminding himself to never open.

It's there with his parents' last words and gentle advice, it's there with his best friend's wedding vows, it's there with a child calling him Uncle George, it's there with the feeling of being pressed up against a wall and being told he was pretty, its there with Nik smiling at him over his lyre and giving him a coin. And it's there with all the times he's had to grow used to an empty finger, all the times he has cursed his own fate. A few hundred years, and a few hundred more, and the memories seem to make his mind a collection of blurred pictures.

George wishes the picture book closes soon.