Eternity

The helicopter bumped and jogged as it carried its one sleeping passenger. The bright morning sun lighting up downtown London as the helicopter banked as it descended towards the landing pad. The sleeping man was curled against the window, oblivious to the new day or the busy city beneath him.

With a soft start, Major William Cage woke and looked around at his surroundings. He made a soft sigh and pulled himself away from the glass. He looked down at the rapidly approaching city and mumbled under his breath, "Right…it starts in the helicopter."

While he stretched and pulled at his body's muscles, he thought to himself, 'Of course, it starts in the helicopter. How could I forget? This is my eighteenth time…or is it nineteen?'

It was natural to become forgetful. Just how many years could the human mind truly remember? William looked down at his hands, they were young again. No signs of liver spots or wrinkling from old age. He had lost track how many times he lived through on his first loop. Somewhere after the fourth year of endlessly repeating the same hellish day he gave up keeping track. At best guess he had spent fifty years in the first loop. And now…well now he was much older.

With a bump, the helicopter landed and the routers began to spin down. Cage broke from his reminiscing and gathered his belongings. Before opening the door, William leaned forward into the edge of the cockpit. The pilot noticed him but presently busied himself with the flight schedule. He would be departing soon for his next VIP pickup and had little time for chatting.

William did not want to delay him this time around. With a gentle pat on the back he said, "Thanks for the ride, Sam."

Before the pilot could react, William had already opened the door and exited the copter. Sarah, the pretty Lieutenant who greets him smiled warmly. William remembers she will meet a nice man from the 4th NATO armored core and have a son who will go on to be a football player of some note.

"First time to London, Major?" she asks politely.

"No," replied William.

The first day, or as William likes to remember it, the day he got out of Hell he had sat through General Brigham speech to the assembled soldiers about the sudden collapse of the Mimics. He sat through the meeting, numb with shock. It was over…finally over. After thousands of times through the loop he and Rita had defeated the Mimics forever.

Elated, Williams had slowly walked to meet Rita at her training grounds with a nervous energy he hadn't felt in a long time. They would be quite literally in uncharted territory. As he approached her as she went through her morning exercises, he had a moment of doubt. Without the mission, without the goal, would Rita even care to know him?

She had looked up at him and spoke the words she had said so many times before, "Yes? What do you want?"

William couldn't help but burst out in a broad smile. After a moment of taking her familiar irritated glare in he had said plainly, "Omega was under the Louvre."

A kaleidoscope of emotions had danced on Rita's face, the obvious ones of shock and surprise mixed with awe and jubilation, but William knows her like no other and sees the less noticeable emotion. The one Rita works so hard at never showing – fear.

"You…we… destroyed it?" Rita had asked after long seconds ticked by.

"We did," said William as he extended his hand. She took it after a second of hesitation, "Private…err Major William Cage," added William as he forced himself to remember his original rank.

Rita studied him, still unsure of him or the story he told. Her brow furrowed in confusion and she asked, "How then are you here? Why do you remember?"

At the time, William believed his last moments of life on top of the dying Omega and his subsequent reset a happy accident. One last reset. He had been so very wrong.

With a minor shrug, he had explained. "It tried to reset to prevent us from blowing it to hell, but it was too late. The bomb went off and some of its blood soaked into me as I lay dying."

"Where were you?" she had asked as they slowly walked out of the training arena. Her fellow soldiers staring at the two of them in confusion as the Angel of Verdun walked with a dumbstruck expression on her face with an unknown Major.

William had explained, "Got stabbed by an Alpha just before I dropped a belt of grenades on the Omega. I was right on top of it."

"Where was I?" she had asked.

William's look must have had explained so much more than words could ever say. He had seen her die so many times. That pain which warred with his joy of seeing her now alive was so easy for her to see.

Rita had taken this all in and then slowly nodded. Uncertainty had then crept into her voice, "What happens now?"

Williams had smiled and said, "It's a brand new day…anything could happen."

He had taken it slow with Rita. She had built such walls around herself as protection. Even after so many loops with her there were many things he still didn't know about her. She had put so much of herself into the fight with the Mimics he knew she was frightened of a world where she did not have to be the Full Metal Bitch.

But William had his own unforeseen problems as the following days went by. He would wake from deep and troubling nightmares, he found himself constantly on edge, even the most minor of unexpected noises causing him to instantly react. So much time spent in battle, dying violently so many times.

It was more than just PTSD, his loop had tightened his whole life into a single day. Now the line cut, William felt himself launched into the future. Rita was the only who could understand what he was going though. After she had lost the ability to reset, she had the same difficulty transitioning into regular time again.

In the end, they had eight years together. It wasn't perfect by any means, they both were stubborn and their arguments frequent. Living life together is in some ways much harder than dying together. But they still made each other very happy. The only two people in the whole world who had lived, bled, and died together endlessly.

The car accident happened on a rainy London night. William had been driving and Rita and they had been arguing. The truck had run the red light and he'd not pay enough attention. He'd never know if Rita survived the accident or not. Just that he'd lain dying in the wrecked car, unable to move, unable to see. Knowing this would be his end…Only to wake up with a start in the helicopter on his way to London for the first time.

Listening to General Brigham's speech is an old hat by now. William can practically say it by rote now. Only the years in between resets causing him to forget each word the portly General speaks. On the twelfth reset, William had genuinely tried to get to know the man, learn about the man who had busted him down to a private and inadvertently saved all of humanity. To see past the man who had forced William so many loops in attempt to recover the transponder. In the end, William found he just didn't like the man.

So now he sits, rather bored, listening to the same speech again. This start of this loop is fixed. William is expected to be part of this gathering of troops, expected to shout with joy at the unexpected news of the collapse of the Mimics' defensive lines in Europe. It is what comes next will determine his course of his life this time around.

The second time around William is overjoyed to be back at the start of things. The car accident is years in the future. But underneath his joy he is worried. How has he reset? The Omega was destroyed years ago. Carter had explained his theories once, something about Tachyons and wormholes, the ability to transmit data into the past, the source of the Mimics' ability to reset time. The scientist seeming confident they couldn't reset more than just a day, not the years which had passed for William.

But whatever the miracle at play, he is with Rita again. This time he'd do things a little differently. He knows her better than ever, knows how to better live an ordinary life with the would-be-Valkyrie.

It's cancer the second time around. Rita's cancer. The disease eats away at her so fast. She's gone before William's can even begin to come to terms with the illness. This loss staggers him far more than any of times he lost her on the battlefield. This time he had worked so hard at building a life with Rita. In all, he has had twenty-two years with her in a normal life and he comes to the slow realization he does not want this life if Rita isn't in it.

Would he reset this time? William wonders as he holds the pistol up to his temple. He has had a long life. It might not have been perfect, but he had done the best he could. He pressed the gun to his head and pulled the trigger…And with a start he's back on the helicopter heading to London again.

He spends much of the third and fourth loops trying to understand how he is still able to reset time and how he can be pulled back to more than a day. Carter believes it must have something to do with his last moments with the Omega. Something different with its blood than the Alphas' or it's attempt to loop within a loop creating some type of knot in time which anchors William to the moment he wakes in the helicopter. Blood transfusions do not take the ability away like before, he is seemingly stuck.

On his sixth loop William starts playing the stock market. He buys and sells all the right stocks at all the right times. To the world William Cage's meteoric rise to fame and fortune is a stunning success story. He is sought by people of influence and power for his almost mystical ability to foresee future events, he is always careful about what he says. Always gives a reasonable explanation of his insights, even throws out a few mistakes on purpose to throw off anyone growing suspicious.

He has nearly anything he could want with his money and power, but he does not have Rita. She shies away from this William Cage. Not liking the man he becomes. Not liking how he uses his foreknowledge for his personal gain. He tries to win her over, tries to explain how he will use his power to make the world better, but in the end she leaves him. He dies an old man alone, with mountains of riches, and nothing to show for it.

Brigham's speech is winding down, and William rises and follows the troops out. The counter-invasion will soon begin, and it will be a rather simple matter to retake the mainland. Of course the Russians and the Chinese will have different ideas about where their lines of influence will fall compared to the nations of NATO. William sighs to himself as he thinks about the second Cold War, which will be starting in the next few years.

'Perhaps this time Rita and I should resettle in some place warm and tropical,' thinks William. Brazil, untouched by the war, will become an economic powerhouse in the decades to come. They could move to Rio de Janeiro and see how that life goes.

As he walks along he remembers the eleventh loop fondly. They had both made it to old age, both living a long happy life together. They had children and grandchildren, something William had deep reservation about. How do you bring a life into the world only to obliterate that life when time resets? But the joy of watching his and Rita's Evan and Joyce grow up and build their own lives somehow outweighed their eventual loss when William died in his sleep.

"It's how you live your life, that's the only thing that really matters," William had once told Rita. It was true. Endlessly dying on that beach all those years ago was not what made William who he was. It was the small moments, playing poker with J Squad, driving the van with Rita into the empty countryside, Rita's and his dance at their wedding, the birth of their son, sitting on an old bench near their home watching the sun set. These moments made and defined him.

William Cage came to the entrance to training center. Inside Rita Vrataski is going through her morning exercises. She has no idea who he is. She had no idea of the life they could have together. William has been through this moment many different ways. An endless line of possibilities was open to him at this moment. He could walk away now, and he could meet Rita on the beach as the invasion makes landfall, or he could live this life a charmer, a playboy, a wise old man, or a fool. It was all possible.

But there was really only one way William wanted this moment to go. Like so many times before he walked down the pathway to where Rita was practicing. She was dirty and sweaty from her workout. She eyes him as he nears her. He does his best to not grin at her like some fool. Even after all this time, so many lives, he is still so excited to see her. To begin their life together again.

Rita frowns. He knows every line of her face, every wrinkle which form, just what shade her rusty red hair will turn as she ages. How her smile, so rare right now, will become near constant presence on her face in the years to come. Rita's anger, tears, joy, love, hate, he knows them all.

"Yes? What do you want?"

And so it starts again.

AN: This story just came to me after watching the movie. Unless my muse strikes me, this will be a one shot story. I appreciate all the enthusiastic reviews.

-Walker