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Whether it is destiny or sheer luck that causes their paths to cross, Rosalind isn’t sure.
Instead of passing straight through he stops in her village, dismounting his horse mere feet from her. She knows who he is – everyone can recognise King Andreas – but she assumes he will pass her by entirely and head to the inn. How wrong she is, as he turns in her direction.
Blue eyes meet green and everything falls into place all at once. The world stops spinning as the threads of fate wind themselves together, leaving them powerless to stop it. Rosalind feels her cheeks flush under his gaze, heat spreading through her chest.
As soon as she makes to leave there is a sudden pull in her stomach that has her turning back, and the look on his face suggests he feels it too. From that moment on, they are inseparable.
~~~
There have never been a couple more in love, many remark on the day of their wedding. The sound of the officiant’s voice barely registers in Rosalind’s mind as he wraps the ribbon around their joined hands; she is too captivated by the grandeur of it all. The flowers and music and sheer number of people are overwhelming, but in the centre of it all is him.
“Forever,” she finally repeats after the officiant with a smile, gazing up at Andreas. He hesitates, and for a moment she is left doubting. Her hand slacks, but he tightens his grip further in response and returns her gaze with a glint in his eye that has her giggling before he can even get the words out.
“Not long enough,” he counters, cupping her jaw and kissing her deeply. She tries to protest, if he doesn’t follow the vows exactly it may not count, but all he does is tug her closer in response. “As if they’d deny their King his Queen.”
She may be young – if it weren’t for the fact their daughter will be made Queen her family might have objected, had they any say in the matter – but she isn’t entirely naïve. He loves her, she knows. They have tested this newfound bond, finding that no matter how far they are from the other they can feel it, can always sense the other. Andreas had even constructed an elaborate game of hide and seek, blindfolding himself and seeking her out using nothing but the tugging in his stomach.
Tonight however, the two stay close; if they aren’t dancing they are found with their heads together, trading promises about the future.
~~~
Unfortunately, their time is cut short.
“It’ll be okay,” she whispers.
“We should’ve had longer.” His frustration is evident, and she covers his hand with hers.
“Forever?” she chokes out through short, shallow breaths. The infection has been swift, she’s barely been abed a week, but even the kingdom’s most experienced healers can’t break the fever.
“Not long enough,” he responds, green eyes shining with tears and a desperation on his face that would cause her heart to break, had it not already been torn apart the moment they realised she wouldn’t recover. The last thing Rosalind sees before her eyes slide closed is the dip of his head as he bends to kiss her knuckles, crown glinting in the light of the setting sun.
A mistake, a tragedy
Since we missed each other by a century
Rosalind is barely twelve when her father sends her to the crystal-gazer. A farmer’s daughter shouldn’t be having visions of a crown, he says, not when the nearest kingdom is days away. She hasn’t confided in her father that she’s convinced she knows the man she sees in her dreams, but what she has told him is enough to find herself sitting inside a strange tent, incense smoke burning the back of her throat.
“You’re part of it,” the old woman whispers, a gleam in her eye and a mystical aura about her that sends a shiver down the girl's spine. “The threads, the cycles. You are bound, in perpetuity.”
She has no idea what the woman means, not yet.
The dreams keep happening and Rosalind clings to them, slowly adding up information as she matures. They are significant, that much she knows, but she just can’t figure out how. One night she dreams of a forest – strange trees with leaves a deeper green than those she knows, hints of a far-off land she’s only heard of in stories – and she wakes up in a cold sweat with only one name on her lips.
“Andreas,” she gasps, chest heaving with the realisation. They aren’t just dreams, but fragments of memories, a life once lived and nearly forgotten. Our souls find a new form, that’s what she’s been told. She hadn’t believed it until she started piecing things together, but now there is no doubt in her mind. A crown has no place in her current life, but those dreams of green eyes that leave her with an ache in her chest suddenly make sense. He is her forever.
At that moment Rosalind knows she has to find him, and that leaving is her only option. The very next day she saddles her horse, following nothing but the pull in her stomach that she knows will lead her to him.
It takes years, but in all that time the aching in her solar plexus never falters. If anything, it has only grown stronger. She spends countless nights lying awake wondering how she’ll explain that she remembers a life lived before, that she has these fragments of a perfect partnership etched in her brain and that it’s him, it can only ever be him. Perhaps, she thinks, she won’t have to explain anything. Perhaps he has been out searching for her just as she has for him. She can’t give up on him, not now.
One cold day she rounds the crest of a hill and spots a lone house down below, nestled in front of trees that stretch as far as the eye can see. To most it would be insignificant, but Rosalind can only grin at the sight. Every fibre of her being knows that this is it, she’s finally found him. Gripping the reins tighter, she urges her horse onward, air whipping past her face as she speeds downhill. Every day of her life has been leading to this moment; the day she will start her life anew.
Excitement shoots through her veins, the horse left behind as she dismounts and all but runs to the door, knocking just as fast as her heart is beating. The sound of her own puffed breath has her stepping back with a start, the need to compose herself suddenly apparent – she can hardly greet him in this state, her hair windswept and cheeks flushed with the cold. Her hands shake slightly as she arranges her dress just so, brushing off the remnants of dust from her endless riding. He may not be a king in this life, if the house is anything to go by, but she will be presentable nonetheless.
Straightening back up with a deep breath, she is suddenly aware that she can hear nothing bar the pounding in her chest. The house, now that she looks closer, is in complete disarray. The door she’d nearly banged down is made of rotting wood, with vines creeping up and around the walls. It is abandoned, or certainly seems that way. Confused, Rosalind walks around outside of the small house, only to find the rest of it in a similar, if not worse, condition. It looks as though no one has been here in years. Yet he is here, she knows it. She can feel it.
A short distance away near the trees, a small headstone has her drawing in a sharp breath. It can’t be, but if the house is as abandoned as it seems, what other option is there? Each slow step towards the stone has dread pooling in her stomach.
Her heart drops as she reaches the headstone, tears pricking at her eyes that she hastily moves to rub away; she needs to see this in order to believe it. Andreas. Faded though the letters on the stone are, it was clear that this is him. A second glance back at the inscription confirms her worst nightmare, and brings with it a fresh horror as she takes in the numbers below the name. The cycle continues, sometimes things line up, sometimes they don’t - the words of the old woman echo in her head. It takes three tries to convince herself that she’s calculated it correctly, running her fingers over the numbers as if tracing them will change them. He’s been dead for over a century, and she’s dedicated her life to finding nothing more than a pile of bones.
Rosalind falls to her knees, the cold seeping through her skirts unheeded, anguish threatening to bury her. A guttural scream works its way from her chest, leaving her sobbing and clawing at the dirt beneath her hands. She has spent a lifetime looking for him only to find a skeleton. The life she has built for the two of them in her head is never going to eventuate. There will be no dancing, no stolen kisses or whispered promises. Instead she is on her hands and knees digging in the hope that, against all odds, he’ll be here. Tears streak through the dirt on her face as she continues to dig, but her bare hands will never be enough and she is mere inches below the ground before exhaustion causes her hands, and tears, to stop.
There can never be anyone else, it is destined to be him, yet he is gone.
They took my guns, and horse and swords for history
But they kindly left a photograph of you and me
Three more times it happens. In each lifetime she figures it out sooner, is able to slot together the memories she can recall with more ease. The images become more familiar, and though she begins each time with most pieces of the puzzle missing she slowly recreates him in her mind. She would recognise those eyes of his anywhere; of that much she is certain.
Three more times it happens, yet each time she finds herself grieving next to the headstone of a man she never meets.
Alongside the memory of him come the compounding memories of her own. How she struggled for years to find him, only to end up back where she started. She grows less and less surprised when the ever-present tug in her stomach keeps pulling her in the direction of the deceased.
The cycle pushes them together – first he is lost fifty years before she was born, then twenty, then three – but she is no longer so naïve as to let herself hope. In perpetuity, she reminds herself, and she can’t help but feel bitter that the memory of their perfect life has been tainted by the struggle of searching for him over and over.
Though I reached for you as you drifted out to sea
Since we missed each other by a century
This lifetime feels different, more complex. She has a constant crackling in her veins and a window into others’ minds she could have only dreamed of before – one of the most powerful fairies of her generation, she’s told. Once again she fits the pieces together with a practised hand, but the accompanying tug in her stomach doesn’t show. Not for a while.
When it does, she’s in the middle of fighting a war.
The sheer force of its return has Rosalind bolt upright, gasping for air and flinging her magic out in an instant. There is nothing outside the tent, bar the Specialists dotted around the camp, but she could swear she feels his presence. He is out there somewhere, he has to be, otherwise this feeling wouldn’t have shown up and stolen her breath. She’d assumed that perhaps they had swapped this time, that she would be the one to go first and he would show up one hundred years later, but she should’ve known better. Sleep will be beyond her now, she knows, resigning herself to tugging her boots on and heading out into the dark.
“I’ll take it from here,” she says to the specialist keeping watch as she approaches the fire. Sean? Seth? She can’t remember. Not that it matters, when he’ll be dead within a week. This group had graduated two years after her, fresh from Alfea into the field, and they are every bit as useless as she’d feared. Apparently this particular Specialist can’t even follow basic instructions. “Fuck. Off.”
It takes another glare before maybe-Scott finally gets the message and scarpers, leaving her to sit alone. She wraps her arms around herself, as though she can hide the pull in her stomach entirely if she curls inward enough.
The fact she has gone two decades without this feeling…she isn’t willing to ponder the consequences of its sudden emergence. Especially not now, while she’s preoccupied fighting Burned Ones. There is simply no time to go track down another gravestone — or the alternative, whatever that may entail, and to her shock it is that unknown that scares her more. In that moment she resolves to shut out whatever the feeling is to focus on the task at hand. This life involves a conflict far bigger than the internal one that wages within her chest, and she can’t afford to alter course now.
~~~
Rosalind Hale returns to Alfea as a general, a commander. Headmistress wouldn’t have been her first choice of job, but there had been a lull in the war and she decided to return to Alfea to teach the next generation, to mould them into the soldiers that she needs. It’s been a few years now of juggling leadership of both a school and a battalion, but the autonomy it affords her is unparalleled.
She’s significantly disappointed by the calibre of students, especially with the war ramping up once more, though the coming year is shaping up to be a better intake. The King’s daughter is on the list of incoming students (she can’t enlist her to fight, but a good relationship will pay dividends in the future, she reminds herself), as is a mind fairy with incredible potential. If anyone were to ask her which Specialists she was looking at she would of course say the one that took out a Burned One aged ten, but that is a lie. The only Specialist she’s concerned with is the one with the name she’s been waiting to see for nearly sixteen years. She can’t delude herself; she’s been counting the years since the feeling first showed, waiting to see if his name would cross her desk.
“Andreas of Eraklyon,” she greets as the door is shut behind him.
“Headmistress,” he responds, coming to stand in front of her desk with his hands clasped in front of him, back ramrod straight. He’s itching to prove himself; that much is obvious.
“Your file showed promise,” she says, pulling the folder out from underneath a stack. (He doesn’t need to know she’s kept his folder at the top ever since she first saw the name Andreas on the enrollment list. Best not to stroke the ego she’s sure he still has.) “Training with the Eraklyon troops?”
“Top of the cadet division.” He remains still as she moves around to lean against the front of her desk, mere feet from him, but she can sense the mischievousness he’s barely keeping contained. The likeness to her memory is incredible – this is exactly how she pictured a young King Andreas, with a half-grown beard and childlike mirth in his eyes. The realisation brings with it another pang, a stark reminder of the chasm that sits between them. The strings of fate that had tied them together had somehow gotten tangled. It won’t, can’t work.
“I’ll keep that in mind. I’m on the lookout for some … special recruits, shall we say?”
“You can add my name to the list,” he responds, eyes lighting up at the hint of a challenge and the beginnings of a cheeky grin threatening to spread.
Exactly the same, she thinks, as her magic skirts around the edges of his mind. He hasn’t been jaded from years of searching until he ends up on his knees in front of stone. At least, she doesn’t think he has; there’s only so much prodding she can do without the other party becoming aware of her actions. But from a quick skim on the surface, there lies nothing. No memories, no puzzle pieces of his own to fit together. Just his current life and a slight pull to her that he can’t quite decipher.
“Excellent.” She sits back down, returning to the stack of paper in front of her. The Princess is due next, and she opens that rather thick file with an internal sigh. She doesn't hear footsteps leave, though, and glances up to find him staring at her intently with a slight air of confusion in his expression. “Dismissed.”
As the door closes behind him, she flings her pen down in frustration. The cycle is playing tricks on her, having their lives finally line up, but in that moment the gap feels insurmountable. She can’t do anything about it, not yet, and in the meantime she needs to focus on crafting her battalion. There is a war to win, after all.
~~~
Andreas proves himself a worthy soldier, just as she’d expected he would, and joins her in the field after graduating. Their relationship has always been close and he’s now an adult, but Rosalind is all too aware of the changed dynamic this time around and still keeps him at arm's length. Where he was once her King, she is now his General, and that role must come first.
She calls him into her tent more evenings than not to talk strategy; discussing battle plans and personnel changes as war rages on. Not that she needs one, but having a right-hand man certainly makes things easier. Especially one she can trust as deeply as Andreas, though her options were fairly limited. (Farah has morals, unfortunately.) Andreas hasn’t yet figured out why he is so drawn to her, but Rosalind is sure he would destroy the world for her if she asked. She might, yet.
“Jack is useless,” he says, placing his drink down on the table between them. “May as well just leave him behind if he’s going to pull some bullshit like that again. Take the core team, we’re more effective than the rest of them combined.”
“Perhaps. I’ll consider it,” she responds, swirling the amber liquid around before downing the rest of it. The war is coming to a head, they’re closing in on this group of Burned Ones, and the plans she has spent years formulating need to start being put into action.
“How long would you say forever is?” she blurts out suddenly, before he can continue the conversation. Andreas appears immediately confused, and she’s as taken aback by it as he is, perhaps even more so. Whatever she was expecting to ask him, it certainly wasn’t that , as much as she’s wondered over the years just how much he knows. Not long enough, a memory of his voice echoes in her mind as she looks at him expectantly.
Andreas blinks at her for a moment before chuckling in a half-hearted attempt to brush off the trepidation that she didn’t need to be a mind fairy to feel when it was so vividly painted across his face. “Uh, long time, I suppose?”
She’s been restrained up until now, hasn’t done too much poking around, but one question that she wasn’t planning to ever ask and one answer she didn’t want is all it takes for her resolve to completely snap. Her eyes glow bright enough to illuminate the entire tent, and she doesn’t miss the hint of panic in Andreas’ as she storms his mind.
Like a bull in a china shop: that was how one of her teachers had described her methods once, guiding her to access what she needed while leaving the rest untouched during a lesson long ago about memory recollection. She’d ignored his advice, as she has most people’s. It doesn’t take much to force herself through Andreas’ defences – his guard is down, after all – and she begins to tear through his memories. There has to be something in there, anything, the tiniest memory from one of his past lives. It’s akin to destroying a library, desperately ripping encyclopaedias from shelves and tossing them to the floor, jumbled and torn.
Nothing. She has turned the place upside down – likely altered a couple of memories with her carelessness, though they should be inconsequential ones – and found zero trace of recollection of any past life, let alone one involving her. She extricates herself from his mind only to find him physically pulling back from her, leaning away in his chair.
“What the fuck, Ros?” he asks, bringing his hand to his head. He’s going to have a whopping headache after that, and for that she feels a slight pang of guilt.
“Had to check if you could be trusted,” she says, moving to perch on the table in front of him and passing him his drink. It isn’t entirely a lie, and she certainly isn’t about to explain the real reason to him. Now that she knows the truth of it all, she can use this. He may not remember, but he certainly has the same feeling in his stomach that she does, even if he still hasn’t figured out what it means. There was no evidence that he knows who she was previously, but she had found unwavering devotion instead. The perfect loyal soldier. “I’ve got big plans for you, Andreas.”
He considers her words for a second, thinking through what she could possibly mean, but a raised eyebrow from her is all it takes for a spike of longing to come from him. She shifts forward in a split second, grabbing his face in both hands and roughly pulling his lips to hers to kiss the smirk off of his face. His arms encircle her and everything feels right, even if it’s the furthest thing from it.
Perhaps it is better this way. He cannot be the perfect partner she’s been searching for. He will never understand what she went through, the years and years of searching and heartbreak. He is the same Andreas that she met centuries ago, but she is far from the same Rosalind. Besides, he’s barely a man, and she’s been fighting this war as long as he’s been alive. Her priorities have shifted.
Andreas doesn’t question it as she pulls him down to the bed with her – it’s far from the first time she’s done so – but for her this is the true test of her resolve. She’s slowly realising that who she has been searching for is the counterpart to the naïve, innocent girl who became a queen. General Hale is a far cry from that, a soldier, hardened with lifetimes of grief. The outcome of this war hinges entirely on her actions and she cannot afford to become emotionally involved. Not now.
Despite that, she’ll still allow herself this physical connection. His lips are all over her, trailing a hot path from her neck down towards her stomach, and her eyes slide closed. In these moments, she can pretend.
I'd kill to touch your soft, bony hands
But I can't because this is my lover's century
Sixteen years. Sixteen long years she has spent trapped inside her own mind, waiting for the day she could get out. She’d planted the seeds, of course, she wasn’t a fool, but the tangled web she was encased in had made it difficult to tell the passage of time. All she really knew, all she could sense, was that ever-present pull that let her know he was still out there. He was out there, presumably raising the child she’d left him with, and when the time came she had no doubt she’d be able to find him again.
As it turned out, she didn’t even need their connection. He was right where she had left him.
The cabin exterior is more worn down than she could have imagined. Her magic had worked almost too well, creating the image of an abandoned house slowly disintegrating over time. She reaches for the barrier, probing it gently. More had tried to cross it recently, a group of teens and a rogue camper, but it still stands as it did when she first set it. As long as he’s been careful, her plan should work perfectly.
The last time she’d arrived in front of a house in this state, she had found his bones. This time, though, there are undeniable signs of life. He’s obviously sensed her moving across the threshold, the sound of him rushing through the cabin unmistakable. She waits just inside the barrier, observing. It looks different than she remembers – Andreas has painted the door the precise shade of green that matched the old Specialist uniforms. She can only hope his sentimentality hasn’t compromised the child, or him, too much.
The door flings open, and she suddenly finds she isn’t as prepared as she thought she was to see him appear there. Sixteen years is hardly the longest time she’s gone without seeing those eyes of his but it had felt like an eternity. His face travels through the stages of grief, settling on something resembling a mixture of shock and relief as he strides towards her. She finds herself unable to move, feet rooted to the ground.
“Rosalind,” he exhales, pulling her into his arms faster than she can respond. “How did you …?”
She allows herself to soften into his embrace for the briefest of moments as he trails off, the feeling of his arms around her unleashing a deluge of feelings that lodge in her throat. His heart beats against her ear in an all too familiar rhythm, the smell of cedarwood invading her olfactory senses for the first time in years. This isn’t part of the plan. “That doesn’t matter right now.”
“But,” he begins, though she is swift to cut him off. They simply don’t have time for explanations. There are too many events that need to be set in motion simultaneously in order for this to work, and there is no margin for error, no room to deal with the intricacies of the emotions she has – had, she reminded herself, in a past lifetime.
“Get changed. We need to get out of here,” she says, thrusting the bag she is holding at his chest and forcibly putting some distance between them. She has to resist the urge to roll her eyes at the way he pulls out the olive knit and thumbs it with a pensive look. He really has gone soft. A small clearing of her throat is all it takes for him to straighten up and nod, heading back inside. Sixteen years without practice might lead one to lapse a little, she supposed, but he is still a soldier. The trip over to Eraklyon had been hellish in her attempt to get here unnoticed, but she certainly can’t go to Luna on her own. She needs him alongside her.
~~~
She shouldn’t be surprised by it, yet receiving the news knocks the wind out of her. He would go before her, that much she had expected, but not like this. Once again, she finds herself standing in a graveyard in front of a headstone bearing the name Andreas.
This will be the final time, she vows. There has to be a way to break the cycle, to prevent this heartbreak in future. Unfortunately, despite her extensive research into ancient magic (she’d thought perhaps she’d been given this life in particular to understand the nature of this bond between them), she hasn’t found anything that even comes close to what she has experienced. At this point she is convinced it is more a curse than a bond. The one time they had been close enough to cross paths again, it has come with a set of wrongs she has to right.
If only the circumstances had been different. (A thought she’s had in every lifetime, and deep down had always anticipated she’d have in this one.)
The child had done him good, she thinks, eyes glowing softly as she adds Father to the inscription. He had turned into a sentimental fuckwit, sure, but at least in the time that she had been gone he’d had someone to direct his devotion towards. She was unable to have him as the true partner she’d imagined, unable to have him even as her soldier during those sixteen years, but he had seemed happy nonetheless.
“You really cared about him,” Bloom says, moving to stand near her.
“You seem surprised,” Rosalind responds, never once taking her eyes off of the headstone. ‘Cared’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, she thinks, not that Bloom will ever understand. No one will, save for the man who lies buried beneath her feet.
“I guess I just thought you’d have a Rosalind-style outlook on death.”
Cold and unemotional: she knows that is how she comes across, but she is hardly going to be a sobbing mess at his grave. She’s already done that, multiple times before.
She senses Bloom shifting in her periphery and turns to the girl to give the only explanation she can bear to offer. “I can get over deaths that serve a greater purpose, but something like this? It’s just shit.”
Later, with her back to his headstone, Rosalind twists her magic around the fire fairy, gathering her into suspension. It isn’t the most pleasant experience (she knows that firsthand), but sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Bloom has the power, but is simply too volatile for what needs to be done.
“Everything I wanted to do together, I can do alone,” she says, suddenly struck with the raw honesty of the words. It is perhaps the truest thing she’s been able to express in years.
When she said together, she didn’t mean Bloom.
Her most loyal soldier may be lost, but she will continue on alone. She must, just as she has for lifetimes before and will continue to do for lifetimes after. Perhaps it is better this way.
Before you leave me out to sea
I'll visit your bones next century
Rosalind swears under her breath as the red light causes her to stop in her dash to the station, though it affords her enough time to fire off a response to yet another incompetent colleague before pocketing her phone. She glances up briefly, searching out the landmarks to reassess how much farther she has to go. A man with dirty blond hair not unlike Andreas’ stands beneath the street sign across the road, and she internally berates herself for being reminded of him before the man turns in her direction.
Blue eyes meet green for a brief moment, but a moment is all it takes for the world to stop spinning once more.
For a split second she is frozen, jaw gone slack, before the crowd around her urges her forward and the reverie is broken just as soon as it had begun. She steps out to cross the road, all too aware of the stranger – because that’s all he is in this life, she has to remind herself – stood in her periphery. It shouldn’t be – can’tbe him, yet deep down she knows it is. She stares straight ahead as she walks, barely willing to take another breath until she reaches the footpath once more.
Whether there had been any recognition in his eyes she couldn’t tell; it had been too brief and unfocused to get a proper read of his face and she wasn’t a mind fairy in this life. The latent tug in her stomach threatens to swell but she forcefully pushes it down. There is no use acknowledging it now. She already knows how this ends.
There is nothing she can do but continue walking away.
~~~
Across the street, Andreas is rooted to the spot. All of the crazy dreams he’s been having had come together in that moment he caught a glimpse of her and suddenly everything makes sense. The woman he saw didn’t have strange powers – at least he doesn’t think she did – but there is no doubt that it was her that he had kneeled in front of with a sword on his back. Whether that is a memory she shares or a figment of his imagination, he doesn’t know, but there is one thing of which he is absolutely certain.
He will find her.