Emily woke up with a start when her alarm started blaring the local news station at a decibel that should have been illegal for six in the morning. Groaning, she reached out a hand blindly from under the covers and felt around her radio for the volume control, frantically smashing the down button when she discovered it.

"Good morning, DC!" the chipper radio hosts voice seemed loud despite the fact that she had turned the sound down. "It's a beautiful April morning, currently forty-five degrees at BWI, forty-eight here in the City, we're expecting it to go up to the high sixties today, so that spring chill won't stick around too long. Let's go to the Sprawl and Crawl to check out the traffic delays for your Friday commute..."

Emily tuned out the sound of the host chirping on about local weather and traffic and swung her legs over the side of the bed, rubbing her eyes and yawning. What the hell was she doing up this early on her Friday off again? She hummed in thought as her brain struggled to shake off the cobwebs of sleep and catch up to her body which was already heading towards the bathroom. That's right. She'd promised her best friend she'd help him with one of the houses he was rennovating because he'd helped her move into her new apartment several months ago.

Brushing her teeth mindlessly in front of the bathroom mirror, she wondered if she could call him and tell him she was sick. No, he'd see right through that though he would probably let her get away with it, it wouldn't be worth the payback later. Emily spit in the sink and wiped her mouth, yawning again and making her way to the closet for what Derek Morgan, her best friend, deemed her "butch clothes" since they were going to be dealing with plaster and dust most of the day. Although, in Derek's mind, all her clothes were "butch clothes." In Emily's defense, she tended toward thinking of her style as more "executive futch" but Derek didn't understand the nuance no matter how many times she explained it to him.

She went into the kitchen and contemplated committing a sin and making instant coffee, but as she ran her tongue around her teeth-still tasting toothpaste-she decided against it. Maybe she would stop by Bethesda Bagels on her way to meet Derek, they'd be open by the time she got there and she could get something to eat instead.

"Hey, Serg!" Emily cooed at the current love of her life, a black cat named Sergio, as he murred and rubbed his side against her leg to get her attention. She bent over to scratch the top of his head and then grabbed her keys from their spot in the bowl by the door and stepped out of her apartment, locking the door behind her.

Emily worked as a free lance translator in the city and though it paid okay, she didn't actually need the money having come from the rich stock on both sides of her family. She hated to be thought of as a spoilt rich kid and rarely spent money on extravagances though she lived in the rather wealthy (and rather gay) part of DC known as Dupont Circle. She'd moved there from Chicago, desperately needing a change of scenery and social circle after a rather messy breakup. Her best friend, a Chicago native who had moved to DC a year prior, suggested DC immediately on finding out she was thinking of moving claiming that it was definitely her speed, and he wasn't wrong.

Easing her sleek car out of its designated spot in the parking garage, she aimed toward the bagel shop, firing off a text to Derek at a red light to let him know he was picking him up a bagel. As expected, by the time she found a spot near Bethesda Bagels, there was already a line forming inside. It looked like it was moving fairly quickly though so she went in and fiddled with her phone while waiting to make the front of the queue. A quiet ringside bell sounded from her phone alerting her to the fact that Derek had sent her back a text.

*Get me some egg salad for spread, Princess* it read.

Emily frowned as her thumb slid around the interface of her phone as she replied. *Egg salad before noon? You're disgusting*

*Gotta get that protein in, I had a long night ;)*

Emily rolled her eyes but smiled. It was a well known fact, though inexplicable to science, that when a person went through a day in which they could have met their soulmate, but humanities pesky freewill prevented the meeting, the day would repeat over and over again until the soulmates met. No one knew how it worked despite it being a studied phenomenon since ancient times, there was a popular theory about alternative dimensions and M Theory, but largely, everyone just kinda shrugged about it and accepted it as a fact of life. It had happened to Derek shortly after moving to DC almost two years ago, and after an apparently embarrassing number of attempts which he still refused to put a number on, he and his girlfriend Penelope Garcia were saving up money from Derek's house projects to pay for their wedding and honeymoon.

Emily made her way back to her car after getting her bagel order and headed toward Maryland where Derek's latest project lay. Being at the age where she now celebrated the "anniversary" of her thirtieth birthday, she had resigned herself to the fact that what was colloquially known as "The Echo" wouldn't happen to her. She wasn't unhappy about it, as a matter of fact, most people never experienced the repeating days, not with seven billion people in the world and climbing where everything had to align just so for soulmates to meet one another, but she'd be lying if she said she weren't a little disappointed.

It wasn't that she lacked company, even by her own admission, Emily was a bit of a ladykiller, but she was truly a romantic at heart and what was more romantic than the idea that there was someone out there who complimented you so perfectly that known physics turned on its head to get you together? The more she thought about it, the more she felt like maybe that was why she never wanted to get married, a major point of contention in her last relationship. It absolutely killed her mother that Emily, her only child, had yet to produce a viable heir to the family fortunes, which was actually kind of satisfying though she had plans to do something similar to her Great-Aunt Sadie and dote on a young relative when she reached old age and name them beneficiary, but as far as she was concerned, her mother didn't have to know that just yet.

Over an hour and a half later, she pulled into the roundabout driveway of a stately looking mansion in Calvert County Maryland. She parked next to Derek's truck and grabbing the bag of bagels, let herself in. The inside of the house almost looked like a skeleton, it was barebones and tarps so far, having been set back by having to replace some copper tubing in the kitchen. She wandered down the hall, following the sounds of music on the radio until she found Derek in what would be a study standing on a ladder and hanging drywall on the ceiling.

"There you are, Princess!" he exclaimed, coming down from the ladder and setting his tools aside. "I was beginning to think you bailed on me."

"Why would you think that?" Emily asked, waiting for him to remove his work gloves before fishing in her bag and handing him his egg salad bagel.

"My friend JJ thought she'd be able to come by and help but she wasn't feeling well this morning and she canceled." he took a thoughtful bite of his food and said, "I think she was faking it though."

Emily nodded absentmindedly, chewing a mouth full of bagel. "That sucks."

Derek shrugged. "It's no big deal, it's her birthday, so I'll let it slide."