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Jared - Doruchów, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth - 1775
Jared's life changed forever shortly after his sixteenth birthday when they came. It was market day and he was helping his mother tend to her ramshackle stall selling various potions and poultices, tonics and tinctures, all brewed from herbs and flowers Jared had gathered that week from the nearby woods. It wasn't the most exciting way for him to spend his time, but he had never known his father and there was little else his mother could do to support him single-handedly besides trading her body at the local alehouse, so he bore it willingly, happily even.
It was the same every week, but this was Eastern Europe in the 18th century and it was just how things were. Sure, there were slight differences - things that differentiated one week from another - but every week had the same customers making the same purchases. The farmers' wives who swore this would be the last time their husbands would need the mint salve after slipping whilst sharpening their scythes. The old men desperate for something that could satisfy their wives. The young boys looking for a way to catch the eye of the busty barmaid. At one time or another, they all visited.
But this week was different, his mother seemed uneasy, more agitated. Jared had never seen her like this. At first he thought it was nothing, but as the morning passed and the sun rose higher, she got worse, visibly flinching every time someone in the market square moved suddenly. He was on the verge of asking what the problem was, when they came. Men from the city in plates of steel, wielding freshly-hammered swords.
His mother rose shakily and grabbed Jared, roughly pulling him into a hug. She whispered in his ear, "I love you Jared, remember that."
"Mother -"
"Your mother loves you Jared, I will always love you, but you've got to run. Now."
Jared frowned as his mother pulled away, "Mother?"
She shoved him hard. "Run Jared, and don't look back. I love you Jared, but run. Run!"
Jared took off, a tear rolling down his cheek, pausing just long enough on the edge of the square to see the soldiers drag his mother away from their stall, bottles and jars smashing to the floor and crushed under heavy boots in the confusion.
He ran all the way home to their dilapidated shack on the edge of the village, using all the shortcuts that only the children know. As he did he heard two villagers mumbling to each other, gossip spreading fast. "You hear they dragged the witch off? They're taking her to the city."
His companion laughed. "Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. You hear she cursed one of the noblemen?"
Jared growled as their conversation grew distant. How dare they? His mother had helped everyone in the village, saved people from disease and pain, offered advice and comfort, and this was how she'd been repaid?
Sure, his mother was a witch - hell, thanks to what he'd learnt from her, he was almost one himself - but they weren't the curse-you-and-cackle-manically kind, they were more the kind that could tell whether or not that year's harvest would be a good one, or pull off some impossible cure when a villager's beloved was dying.
They knew of the witch trials spreading across Europe - all of the magical community that resided across Europe did. However, it was something that was more a warning given to children - "be good or the witch-hunter will come" - than something that any true witch feared, especially seeing that very few actual witches matched the fear-inspired image of the warty old woman.
Jared let out a repressed sob. He knew what was going to happen to his mother. He knew about the pain she would feel as her magic failed and the flames licked higher. She didn't deserve that - nobody did. He shook his head, he couldn't afford to get caught up thinking about that. No matter how badly he wanted to, there was no way he would be able to rescue his mother, not without condemning himself to share her fate. He ground his teeth, angry - angry at society, angry at his mother's fate, angry at his helplessness - before vaulting over the windowsill into the back room of the shack.
He landed silently and cautiously, desperately hoping that nobody noticed him, before grabbing one of the hessian sacks they had lying in the corner, emptying a handful of old potatoes onto the dirt floor. Grabbing his few spare clothes, he stuffed them into the sack, picking it up briefly afterwards to determine its weight. Deciding that he had the space, one of their threadbare blankets and some food that would survive the journey to wherever he was heading were quickly added on top.
Jared looked around the shack again, his gaze bouncing from one scarred wooden surface to another, before settling on his mother's small chest - the locked box where she kept all her magical paraphernalia. He bit his lip guiltily for a moment, before lashing out with a foot, easily shattering the brittle iron lock.
He lifted the lid, wincing slightly as the hinges creaked eerily in the near silent space, before rummaging around deciding what to take and what to leave behind. His mother's grimoire went into his make-shift bag immediately - too old and too priceless to leave behind. He quickly discarded the collections of dried herbs and plants - he may still have only been learning the basics of his mother's craft, but could tell that he wasn't the best at whipping up a magical tonic to help some local farmer keep better hold of their sheep. Jared's hand stilled when his fingers reached for the tarot deck - generations old, and dating back centuries to when witches could openly walk the land without fear, older even than the grimoire, which was by no means a recent tome. Precognition and premonition was what felt most right to him - where the flow of magic seemed with him rather than around him - something, he reflected sadly, that was full of irony - if he'd been able to see this day in advance, it could have been avoided.
It wasn't just the age of the deck, or his preference towards tarot, that had him slipping the cards into his bag. The deck was more than that, it was a true deck - the lovingly hand-painted cards infused with a magic long-lost that meant that anyone attuned to them could read the truth. That which would happen rather than that which could. The future rather than a future. The cards had been passed down through his family for generations - master to apprentice, parent to child - and he was now the latest and last in that long chain.
A sudden creak outside the door to the shack jolted Jared out of his reflections. He snatched up the sack and ran. From the shack, from his mother, from his village, from his life.
Jensen - Richardson, Texas - 2005
Jensen slowly and cautiously sat down on his bed and sobbed. He knew his diagnosis would change his relationships, but did not expect all his friends to practically abandon him like a leper mere hours after he'd come back from the hospital and passed on the devastating news that he'd just received himself. He bit back a curse - his luck was just impossibly bad, to the extent that the doctors were almost impressed at how rare it was for someone his age to have his illness. All he knew was that it was practically a death sentence - he'd been told that if he made thirty, he should count himself lucky - and there was nothing a single dollar of his parents' money could do to help that. For a few moments, he quietly scuffed his shoe back and forward against his carpet, pushing the fibres first one way, then the other.
He reached for his laptop - some top of the range model his dad had gotten him for his last birthday, as if an expensive present made up for the fact that he was missing his son's twenty-first to go yachting with his fifth wife around some tropical Caribbean island. With a few clicks, he was happily lost in the depths of the internet and was flicking between different sites when a local interest news story caught his eye:
How does he do it? Local psychic amazes with yet another perfect prediction.
He clicked on the link, sighing, before speed reading through the article, aiming on cheering himself up with a few laughs at whichever local old fool had bought into some phony psychic's vague predictions. However, by the time he got a few lines in, he frowned, confused. From the details in the article, it was clear that either the psychic was genuine, or the dozen or so locals that had stepped forward with stories had been majorly duped.
He tapped his finger against the mousepad for a moment, before clicking open a new tab and searching to see if the supposed psychic had a website. He did, and with a few more clicks, Jensen found himself on a fairly basic website - nothing more than a few stock images of crystal balls and playing cards with a basic text blurb and a local phone number. It was almost amusingly bad, even the psychic's name - Jared - didn't sound much like someone who you'd instantly connect with that sort of profession, in Jensen's experience you were more likely to find a Mysterious Meg than a Jared.
Jensen reached for his cell - a present from his mother in her yearly attempt to one up his father - and was on the verge on dialling the number, still unsure whether he was going to bitch at the man for being a scam artist or try and book an appointment, when it abruptly starting ringing with an incoming call. He frowned for a moment, not recognising the number, before tentatively answering the call.
"Hello?"
A whisky-rough voice sounded through the speaker. "Jared says man up, kid. He's booked you in for eleven tomorrow."
Jensen stuttered, "W-what? How - how did you?"
The voice chuckled. "Kid, Jared's the real deal, and you've got questions. He'd be a shit psychic if he didn't know when people wanted to see him. So see you at eleven."
Jensen was stunned into silence, barely noticing when the call ended, completely confused about what had just happened.
Jared - Bytów, Prussia - 1782
Jared had been part of Morgan's Circus for the majority of the seven years since he had been forced away from home. The rag-tag troupe had taken him in after finding him wandering - still running from the shattered remains of his former life - half-starved, lost and delirious. He had been nursed back to health, solely on the kindness of strangers, and therefore owed them his life.
They had been a little apprehensive when he had first asked to stay with them, especially when he had told them that he could read tarot - clients usually expected some wizened old crone to be reading their fortune, not some young boy - but between the atmosphere he managed to create with the careful arrangement of a few flickering candles in a dark tent and the unnerving accuracy of his predictions, he proved them wrong. Within the space of a few short months, his name was one of the main reasons why both villagers and townsfolk alike paid the few coppers to enter whatever field the troupe was camped in for that week.
As he used his mother's cards, giving accurate readings was hardly challenging, but he wasn't an idiot. If his readings - of fortunes bad and good - were always perfectly accurate, people would start to become suspicious. Seeds of doubt would be sown in their minds and grow into thorny vines that tore away any feelings of awe and wonder towards him and replace them with blame and mistrust. They would start to ask if he was responsible for their misfortunes - if he was cursing them. So he lied - took the truth that was there and twisted it enough so it became the truth people wanted - and it worked. People only remembered his truly accurate predictions, and he made sure that those were the positive ones. And if they did ever realise that some of his predictions were false, the chances were that the circus had long since moved on. It was the perfect system, and as time passed he stopped referring to himself as a witch, and just started calling himself a psychic.
That was until Bytów and the last mortal day of Jared's life.
It started like any other - a few of the circus hands swung open the gates of the compound before settling down on their rickety stools to wait for the steady crowd that would show up. Jared's morning progressed steadily, the usual mishmash of worrywarts and romantics clutching their charms and amulets as they passed through his tent in a steady stream. His hands seems to constantly be passing over the table dealing out reading after reading, relieving concerns and promising good fortunes, all sprinkled with cleverly disguised words of caution as and when the reading foretold such hardship.
It was when the footfall died off later in the day, and Jared was on the verge of closing up his tent, when another stranger wandered in. To Jared, the stranger just felt wrong - like an oil slick on a pond - but he started shuffling the cards as the stranger settled down on the other side of the table, intent on getting the man out of his space as soon as possible.
He glanced up, and put on his best mystic voice. "What is thy question?"
The man chuckled, before reaching out, ensnaring Jared's wrist in his fingers. "Don't you remember me, Jared?"
Jared shook his head nervously. "N-no?"
The stranger chuckled. "You remember when you came to Miastko?"
Jared shrugged uncertainly. "Kinda."
The man continued, "I was planning on wedding the tavern maid, and came to you for advice."
"Yeah?"
"And you told me that she was my true love and would be completely faithful to me."
"I-I did?"
The stranger's grip tightened, starting to cause pain. Jared tried to pull away, but the man's grip was unrelenting. "She wasn't. I found her sleeping with the blacksmith. And the stableboy."
Jared stuttered, "I-I..."
The stranger growled. "I loved her. You told me she was my true love, and she broke my heart. You claim to tell the future, but you lied."
The stranger's fist swung out, snapping Jared's head to the side. He released Jared's wrist, swinging for another hit, and spraying the inside of the tent with blood as Jared's nose broke with a audible crunch.
Jared took another hit and darkness started to spread across his vision. He tumbled to the ground, groaning loudly as the man started to kick him repeatedly in the stomach. The stranger swung his arm across the table, Jared watching sadly as his precious cards fluttered to the floor like snowflakes. The man bent over and picked one up, waving the stolen death card in Jared's face, before slipping it in his pocket.
He spat on the floor. "I curse you witch. I take your death, and curse you. May you never know rest. Even as though around you fade and crumble to dust, may you endure."
Jared shivered, recognising real power in the statement. Then the blackness claimed him and he knew no more.
Jensen - Richardson, Texas - 2005
Jensen still didn't know exactly why he decided to go to the appointment that the psychic had made, but he found himself pulling into the parking lot behind a dive bar just before eleven. He cautiously made his way inside, looking around in confusion.
The bartender glanced up at him, as she wiped down the bar. "Hey?"
Jensen frowned. "Uh?"
The woman chuckled roughly. "You're here for Jared?"
Jensen nodded nervously. "Uh, yeah?"
"You Jensen?" She waited for his nod, "He's upstairs."
She gestured towards a door hidden in the corner of the room, a curtain swept to the side. "Go on up, he's expecting you."
Jensen nodded, before heading through the door. He made his way up the rickety narrow stairs behind, once more wondering what he had let himself in for. He eventually found himself outside a frosted glass door with the name Jared hand-painted onto the glass in a simple script. He raised his hand to knock, but before he could, the door creaked open, revealing a hooded giant of a man in the gloom beyond.
The man, Jared, avoided the courtesy of a handshake, and merely inclined his head, hiding his appearance deep within the shadows of his cloak. "Jensen."
Jensen frowned, put on edge by the way the psychic was deliberately disguising everything about himself. He opened his mouth to complain, but the psychic gestured towards the table before he could.
"Shall we? I have a feeling I have some answers that you want to hear."
Jensen shrugged, but slouched into one of the two chairs. The psychic took the other with a soft sigh, before flipping the lid on an ornate wooden box, reverently lifting out the tarot deck that lay within. He shuffled the cards with a practised ease, his fingers barely moving as the cards flicked back and forth, before starting to lay them in a complex formation on the tablecloth.
Jared - Richardson, Texas - 2005
Jared always hated it when he had to give bad news, and he knew that the news he was about to impart would be especially tragic. The whole deck was humming with it - even the death card. He sighed to himself as the cards flicked back and forth - he had replaced his original hand-painted death card with several over the years. None of them had ever felt right in the deck - but that wasn't surprising - while the deck had remained as magical as ever, the death card was always a sort of psychic leech, maintaining itself by draining power from the older cards. It never worked though - whilst the rest of his deck looked the same as it did when he ran away all those years ago, the death cards always ended up crumpled and torn as their power waned.
He started to deal the cards out in one of his more detailed layouts - not only would it help him pull a little more information out of the pack, but it was complicated enough and involved enough hand motions that it went a long way in helping to convince the sceptical.
He sighed sadly as his eyes flicked over the spread, before looking up at his visitor.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Jensen frowned. "What d'you mean?"
"Your illness - it will come for you in the depths of your twenty-ninth winter."
Jensen growled."Who told you about that? You think this is funny? You been spying on me?"
Jared frowned, confused, looking out of the shadows of his hood. He blinked, realising that Jensen was being serious. "Uh, no? Psychic, remember?"
Jensen smirked unbelieving. He drawled, "Right. You're psychic."
He responded, not a single trace of sarcasm in his voice, "And you're having a turkey club for lunch."
Jensen chuckled condescendingly. "Yeah, and now you've said that, I'm going to avoid having one."
"That's what you think."
Jensen rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Any more lies you want to spout?"
He sighed, glancing back down at the tarot spread. "Nothing you'll believe right now."
Jensen snorted derisively, before storming back out, clearly fed up of listening what he believed to be complete bullshit.
Jared shook his head, staring as the door slammed shut, already having seen that Jensen would be back later that day. "See you in a few hours."
Jensen - Richardson, Texas - 2005
Jensen stormed through the bar with enough determination that nobody even tried to stop him. He marched up the stairs, before throwing the door open.
"What the fuck, dude? How the fuck did you know?"
Jared just looked up from where he was sitting on his ratty couch. "What, about the sandwich?"
"Yeah. I went and ordered some salad thing, but they fucked up and gave me someone else's order. Guess what it was?"
Jensen couldn't see the psychic's face, but could tell he was smirking.
"Turkey club?"
Jensen huffed. "Yeah. But how did you know?"
"Told you. Psychic."
"Bullshit! Now tell me. Seriously."
Jared laughed. "Seriously? I'm psychic. For real."
He glared. "All that magic stuff died out years back. It's all just tricks. So how do you do it?"
The supposed psychic shrugged. "I didn't die out." He then muttered under his breath - quiet enough that Jensen almost missed it, "I can't die out."
Jensen frowned - he couldn't have heard that correctly. "What d'you mean?"
Jared chuckled bitterly. "I know you've tried to research me. How old do you think I am?"
Jensen tilted his head to the side - slightly confused by the apparent change in conversation. He went over the little bits of information he'd managed to glean, both in the aftermath of the phone call and after his initial visit. They'd been a good few articles on the psychic stretching back a decade or so, and the few people who he'd asked about him talked about Jared as if he had been around forever.
He hummed for a moment, before spitting out a guess, "Early forties?"
Jared chucked before throwing back his hood, revealing a boyish face - he looked barely older than Jensen, if that. "How 'bout now?"
Jensen frowned. "But you've been around for a couple decades at least." He paused. "Unless it wasn't always you? Is that what the cloak is about? It's so nobody realises you're all different people?"
Jared laughed. "Nice guess, but completely wrong."
"Yeah?"
The psychic sighed. "I don't age, Jensen. I haven't gained a single day in centuries." His eyes glazed over slightly as he appeared to think back. "I wear the cloak so people don't ask questions. I move every so often to avoid suspicion, but hiding myself away lets me stay in one place longer."
Jensen rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right."
Jared just stared at him.
Jensen finally cracked, "Really? You don't age?"
Jared shrugged. "Not as good as it sounds."
"Does to me."
The psychic had the decency to look at least a little sympathetic, as if remembering Jensen's reading. "Yeah."
Jared - Richardson, Texas - 2006
On reflection, that had been the moment the seeds of their relationship had been planted.
It had begun slowly - the immortal psychic and the boy doomed to die - Jensen making the cross-city journey to Jared's cramped accommodation as and when he could. At first it was because he was still trying to find something that proved the psychic was a fraud - a photograph, some scrap of paper, a scrawled out piece of information - anything. Jared took it with good humour, chuckling mostly to himself whenever Jensen triumphantly snatched up a piece of paper, before dropping it disappointed when he realised that it wasn't the evidence he was looking for.
Eventually, the psychic took a little pity on Jensen and started sharing some of his stories from his days in Europe and early America - something he'd rarely done before thanks to the self-imposed exile he'd forced himself into, lest the latest reincarnation of witch trials come bearing down upon him and force him away.
At first it appeared that Jensen was only humouring him, barely listening to anything more than the most basic details - his eyes roving around the room whenever Jared paused, still looking for his evidence. However, as time passed, Jensen seemed less and less distracted - his eyes sharper, his nods more thoughtful. In response, Jared's smiles got brighter, his voice more energetic, as he realised that, for the first time in many decades, someone was genuinely interested in what he was saying. All the while, Jensen's parents never noticed, so focused on the trappings of high society that they were blind to the life of their child.
Jared always offered tea or coffee to Jensen whenever he came over - it was something his mother trained into him from a very young age. Which was all and well, until one day when Jensen came to visit and found Jared standing in front of his fuse box, poking at it with his finger, a confused look on his face.
Jensen coughed lightly and Jared turned around. "Hey, Jensen."
Jensen grinned. "Hey, looks like your power's out."
The psychic shrugged."Seems so."
"You - you want me to take a look?"
Jared waved him off. "I've got someone coming over tomorrow."
Jensen raised an eyebrow, surprised. "You got someone to come out that quick?"
He got a shrug in return. "I called in a few favours, I did a reading for someone a few weeks ago and he bumped me up his list."
There was a slight pause in the conversation, before Jared scratched at the back of his neck. "So - we cannot exactly spend our time here today." He shifted uncomfortably. "There - there's a coffee shop a few blocks away. Y-you want to go there?"
Jensen tilted his head to the side, a little confused. "You asking me on a date?"
The psychic squirmed slightly, obviously nervous. "I guess? It's just that you usually like having my coffee and I can't exactly," Jared gestured towards the broken fuse box, "So I thought a coffee shop would be nice." He shifted a little more, "If you don't want to though -"
Jensen cut of his rambling with a hand and smiled. "I was joking, Jay. 'course I'd like to go with you for a coffee."
Jensen - Niagara Falls, New York - 2009
That coffee had been the watering that caused the thirsty seeds to germinate into a thriving relationship.
At Jensen's insistence, once they'd realised that they had moved from friends to something more, they pushed forward rigorously. Thanks to Jared's foresight, they knew almost to the second how long they would have together, which meant that they could pack the years they had as fully as possible, fitting what would take most couples decades into months.
Like their latest trip to arguable one of the most beautiful natural wonders in the world. For most couples, such a trip might have been saved for a significant anniversary - but, knowing their incredibly short amount of time together, it was rapidly pushed up their list of priorities. And it was certainly worth it.
Jensen's breath caught in his chest as they approached the mighty gorge carved by the falls - and not just thanks to the progression of his illness - it was beautiful.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?"
A hand grabbed at his, and Jared tugged him closer to the edge, their rings clinking together for a brief moment.
Jensen grinned back. "Yeah."
Jared excitedly pointed down at the base of the falls, where several boats flooded with tourists in bright-coloured ponchos swarmed in and out of the spray. "You want to go on one of those?"
Jensen shrugged. "You know where we can get tickets?"
Jared nodded towards a small building that had a small queue snaking towards it. "I'll go get us a pair. Do you want to stay here?"
Settling down onto a bench at a nearby lookout spot, Jensen gazed off at the falls while Jared fetched their tickets. It was relaxing just to sit there and appreciate the awesome power of nature as millions of gallons of water poured over the falls every minute.
Jared soon came bounding back, tickets clenched in his hand. "Got them. Paid a little extra for the good seats, but they said it'd be worth it."
Jensen grinned. He had enough money that he didn't mind Jared spending some every now and then - in fact, in his eyes, Jared could do with being a little less frugal when it came to buying things.
Thirty minutes later - and after a somewhat dreary safety briefing that, for Jensen at least, was significantly improved when Jared started whispering romantic nonsense into his ear - they found themselves wrapped in colourful plastic on the top deck of one of the many ships cycling around the base of the falls.
Thanks to Jared's height, they managed to get a space at the very front of the boat, giving them both an incredible view as the boat manoeuvred itself meters from the raging torrent of water and the mists surrounded them. Jensen nuzzled himself into Jared's side, before the psychic leant down to place a gentle kiss on his lips.
"Love you, Jen."
"Love you too, Jay."
Jared - Richardson, Texas - 2013
Thanks to Jared foresight, they'd managed to pack their relationship fuller than most three times the length. But now, sitting here in the hospital, watching sadly as his lover slipped away, Jared couldn't help but think that maybe his skill with his tarot cards was in fact a curse. Focusing on the once-in-a-lifetime experiences meant that they had rarely took the time to do the little things - lounging around on a sofa with popcorn, spending an entire day just in the local coffee shop - the things that strengthened every relationship, even if no couple would outright list them as important.
A weak cough came from the bed, "Jay."
Jared scuttled his chair closer and smiled reassuringly. "Jen, hey."
Jensen reached for his hand, grasping at it weakly. "I-I think it's time. Looks like you were right."
Jared shook his head desperately. "No, no. Jen, please."
The laugh he got in return was weak. "Sorry, Jay. We both knew this was coming."
"Jen."
Jensen waved his hand towards the bedside table. "There's something for you in there. When I'm," he took a rattling breath. "When I'm gone, read it."
Jared shook his head. "Don't think about that."
"Please, Jay."
The psychic nodded, pulling the drawer open and pulling out the envelope within, barely looking at it before returning to his lover's bedside.
Jensen's breathing got more ragged, as he started to struggle. Jared clutched at his hand desperately. "Please don't go, Jen. I need you. I love you."
Jensen coughed again. "I'm - I'm sorry. L-love you too."
With a final cough, Jensen let out another breath, then fell still.
Jared shook his lover's shoulders desperately. "Jen? Jen!"
A tear ran down his face as he realised that his young lover had passed - just twenty-nine. A full life, maybe, but tragically decades shorter than it could have been.
Wiping his eyes, he looked at the envelope clenched in his hand, his name written on it in the shaky scrawl that had become Jensen's writing in the last few months. He tore it open and shook the contents out, causing a piece of notepaper and a small square of card to drift to the floor. He unfolded the note, scanning the few lines quickly:
Jay,
I know you've been searching for this forever.
I found it years ago in some private museum and managed to persuade them to sell it to me.
I would have given it to you then, but I'm a selfish coward.
I couldn't face my end alone. I needed you here.
I'm sorry.
But now I'm gone, so take it and be free.
I'll be waiting on the other side.
Yours, now and forever,
-Jen
He reached for the square of card on the floor, smiling sadly when he flipped it over, recognising it instantly.
He glanced at the bed where his lover's body lay and whispered, "Thank you."
Pulling his deck out of his pocket, he pulled out the card that was the latest in a long line of substitutes, flicking it towards the trashcan. As he slipped the original card back into its place, he felt a sense of calm come over him, and he realised that the curse that had bound him for centuries was finally lifting.
He took a deep breath, before shuffling the deck briefly. As it became part of the deck again, he felt the final threads of the curse wither and snap, his years finally catching up with him.
One moment he was there, a content smile on his face, despite the veil that separated him from his lover.
The next, all that remained were the cards, fluttering towards the floor through the motes of dust that sparkled in the winter sunlight.