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He finds you, as he always does. You are sitting in your favorite cafe, the one with the good mocha and the pet parrot named Hendrix. You are not expecting him, but you are also not surprised. The door jingles with pride that another customer has arrived, and he sits down at your table, and it begins again.
At first, you used to look for him. Or, no, that’s not right. It’s been too long now, and you are forgetting things. At first, you didn’t know to look. You died, and you woke up, and he arrived, and you died, and you woke up. Again and again. But then you started looking. Hunting, really. It didn’t seem right, that he was out there. Put into the world again, after everything. You would look, and some combination of you two would die in some order, and eventually both of you would be dead, and you woke up.
After a while, you ran. You did not want to see him. You did not want to hunt, or to be found, or for it to hurt. You did not care about any of it anymore, the past or the principle of the thing or the weight of fate between you. If you saw him it would be loud, and you would have to put in a good showing of a fight, and it would hurt. And you were so tired of hurting. So you ran. And he found you. Not every time, but often enough. And, eventually, you got tired of the running, too. And anyway, it’s hard to find good coffee on the run.
Now, he reaches across the table and picks up your cup. Cradles it in both hands, stealing the warmth of it like he’s stolen so much. He steals a sip, too. You let him. Of course you let him, now. He closes his eyes at the taste of chocolate, and you watch his throat spasm as he swallows it down. Nods. Pushes his chair back with a god-awful shriek of wood on tile and heads to the counter. He still hasn’t said anything.
You think about leaving. You could. He’s bent over the pastry display and, even if he wasn’t, you know the trick of leaving. It’s a trick of decisiveness, and shadow, and humor—the joke of fading away. But it’s not like he’s interrupting anything. This life hasn’t been one for the history books. And sometimes he has something interesting to say.
You don’t go, and you don’t drink your coffee, preferring to leave a divot where his lips pressed into the foam. He’s leaning a hip against the counter and cocking his head slightly to one side, saying something to the barista. You strain to hear what it is, but you don’t know this voice yet. You can’t pick his tone out of the jumble of conversation and music between you and the bar. Instead, you watch the woman two tables away scribbling in a notebook as her tea loses its last few wafts of steam. You wonder if she’s always been a writer with golden skin and tiny doll hands. You wonder if she’d remember if she’d been anyone else.
You’d asked someone, maybe a dozen lives ago. So late at night it was early, lying with a friends fingers tangled in your hair and empty crisp packets strewn on the coffee table, the kind of night where people tell the truth. You’d asked them if they could remember being anyone else, and they’d said no. You believe them. You haven’t figured out yet why you and he are special, but in fairness you aren’t trying that hard. You’ve long since gotten used to being special.
The barista calls out a name. You thought there was at least one more person in line in front of him so you’re not paying attention and don’t quite catch it, maybe Alex or Alan. You watch him walk back to you, the smooth roll of this body’s gait.
“You know,” he starts, setting a glass down on the table, “it’s rude to leave in the middle of a conversation.”
Which, well, that isn’t that interesting of a thing to say on its own. But it is interesting that he’s still finding ways to startle you after all this time.
“I died.” Which should have been obvious.
“Yes, that’s what I said. Rude.” This time he has the decency to avoid dragging the chair as he resettles into it.
You roll your eyes and take a large sip of mocha because you deserve caffeine and chocolate while dealing with this. “Well, I guess I’ll try not to do that, then.”
“That would be better,” he agrees, and you blink. It’s true it’s been a few lives since he was the one to kill you. Mostly, you’d assumed, because it didn’t seem worth it when you’d both just pop back to life. That’s why you had stopped trying, at least. But this is more.
“How much longer were you there?” you find yourself asking.
“A few more decades in that life. In that cell? Three days.” He grins, self-satisfied and savage, and suddenly he looks entirely like himself. It’s so horribly familiar it makes something under your ribs ache. “They got careless taking your body out.”
You could ask what that means, but you know what happens to people who don’t take him seriously. You’re glad. It’s a little abstracted now, with a death and a couple decades of life between you and the memories, but your prior life had been abysmal, particularly those last months together in the POW camp. This feels like finding out your old favorite TV show got a good ending.
A three-day old corpse would’ve just started to smell. There hadn’t been much space in that cell to avoid it. You lean your head to one side, then the other, stretching the muscles of your neck and resettling into this body, this time.
“So, what’s your name?” you ask.
“Alexei. And you?”
“James.”
He laughs, like you’d known he would. It’s a nice laugh, light and bright, almost like wind chimes in a summer breeze. Have these ears heard wind chimes? You can’t remember. Either way, it suits him, which surprises you.
“It was bound to happen eventually. Indeed, the real surprise is that neither of us has been a ‘Thomas’ yet.”
“You know, somehow I suspect there’s still time.”
He shrugs, like your continued reincarnation is no matter to him. The motion is fluid and boneless and softly familiar.
“How are you whiling away this run?” You take another sip of your mocha, which is edging into lukewarm territory by now.
“At the moment, law school.” Alexei’s lips turn up in the faintest of smiles. “I developed a bit of an interest in the Geneva Convention.”
You snort. “I’m not going to second guess your interest in war crimes.” You’re shocked to realize it sounds like you’re joking. You’re not sure if you are.
You don’t get another wind-chime laugh, but the smile quirks up at the side a bit more. He doesn’t ask what you’ve been up to, but the question is implied. You reach across the table to hover your hand over his drink and give a subtle flick of the wrist. Gentle steam starts to rise from the iced coffee.
Any trace of humor evaporates from his face, his gaze sharpening and tracking your hand back across the table, then cutting back up to your face. Fury sparks to life in his eyes, but is quickly banked into something more like bitterness. You can’t find it in yourself to blame him. You’ve lived through lives where he was the only one with magic, and the horrible, unavoidable vulnerability is only made worse by the envy and resentment.
You think he might leave then, and maybe you won’t see him till you wake up again. But he doesn’t. He takes a sip of the reheated iced coffee and grimaces, and you swipe your hand down through the air to chill it again before it touches the table top.
“How’s law school?” It sounds trite, hanging in the air between you like a consolation. You hadn’t meant it to. You have no need to make him more comfortable, you’ve just never tried to be a lawyer.
“Fine,” he says. “The law is…intricate. An interlocking system you can mold as you please if you press on it in just the right way. In some ways it reminds me of-“ and he waves at your hand. That is not how you’ve ever thought of magic. You wonder if maybe you haven’t thought about it enough at all.
You both fall into silence. It is not a comfortable silence, as that is simply too much to ask between you, but it is at least routine after weeks and weeks locked in a cell together. You are down a rabbit hole considering if you’d ever learned anything about actual spell crafting other than the vague understanding that some people blow themselves up doing it when he speaks again.
“Who would you have picked?”
Out of context, it’s complete gibberish. This body does not understand, so your gut doesn’t twist and your breath doesn’t come shorter, even though it should. It is the last question he’d asked you in your last life. The one you didn’t get to answer. You’re doomed to spend eternity going around and around with someone, reincarnation after reincarnation. Who would you have chosen?
Your first thought had been Ron, mostly out of habit. He was your original go-to partner in crime, and there are still moments when you look over to make a joke to him even after all these years. But the moments are further and further between. Your second thought is Ginny. Your first wife, your first love. You’re certain that she would’ve found a way to make this so much fun, the two of you on a wild romp through time, a two man wrecking ball. But then you never would have fallen in love with Kimberly, never would have married Stephen. You have not had many lives with enough peace and stability to build connection, but every single one was beautiful and precious.
“I think I’d go it alone,” you say. “I want off this ride, honestly. I wouldn’t want to drag someone else along on it.”
“That wasn’t an option,” he prickles.
“Neither was getting to choose, actually,” you retort, then flip it back around on him. “And you? Who are you choosing?”
He catches your gaze and holds it, with such intensity that you almost reach for your wand. Alexei’s eyes are a rich, cornflower blue, and there is not a trace of mockery in them.
“You.”
For a moment your brain tries to scuttle to the side, scrambling for a way to misinterpret and take it as him pressing you for a different answer. But he says it so simply, unadorned and true, and for all James doesn’t understand the full implications, the air still catches in your lungs.
Because, despite all of the innumerable reasons it shouldn’t be, you realize it might be true for you too.