AN: this was just something i came up with when i had insomnia the other night... figured it'd be fun to write down ;)

i.

It happens innocently enough. A single event that leads to another and another, cascading into an apocalypse being stopped and a world being saved. But much, much before that, it starts over afternoon tea.

The first time they meet, they can't stand each other. It's Victorian England and the rules for the well-to-do are set in stone. They meet by chance and one of them mistakenly offends the other. It escalates from there in the course of the first hour to the point where they can barely stand to be in the same room as each other.

Unfortunately for them, his cousin marries her sister. They're forced to forever deal with each other, at least on the periphery. The best they can do to get over themselves is to behave civilly to each other in front of their combined family. The rest of the time, well, they've become quite good at veiled insults. It's an art, really.

He dies first, a few decades later. She'll never admit it, but she misses him.

ii.

Some time later, in a different but almost identical world, they meet together on the battlefield. Young boys pretending at being men, they've left home to fight a war others have the audacity to call Great.

Souls don't forget as easily as people think they do. They remember each other, somehow, in the smallest little way. In a strange land as they are attacked by strange men, they gravitate towards that familiarity. That little feeling of home, something stronger than being countrymen, in the middle of all the chaos and death and hell.

The war kills one and breaks the other. No one's sure which happens first.

iii.

A young girl is playing in her yard when the family moving in next door arrives. They also have a little girl, around her own age. She's intrigued immediately at the prospect of a new playmate, especially one so close.

She's enamored with the other girl instantly. More than she can describe, not until years later when she has the necessary experience to pin down the feeling. Love at first sight isn't exactly something you expect in a seven year old.

(How could this girl know the deep sense of gratitude her soul feels for the one that held her tight as she breathed her last? That in the midst of gunfire and the nearness of death, someone had stayed with her? At a great risk to themselves, they had stayed so she wouldn't be alone when she died. How could this child possibly know any of that?)

Of course, it's her own bad luck that the other girl takes an instant dislike to her. The other girl avoids her all through school. If they happen to pass each other in the hallway or in their neighborhood, she looks the other way. The one time they're assigned to work on a project together, they barely speak ten sentences the whole time. It'd be impressive if it weren't heartbreaking.

She never asks why the other girl hates her so much. She goes away to college, rarely comes back home except for holidays. Years pass and though she wonders, she never asks her parents what happened to the girl next door. That loss of first love remains a dull ache in her chest if she lets herself dwell on it, so she doesn't.

They'll never meet again, she's sure of that, and it makes her sad but she's accepted it. But then they *do* happen upon each other in their home town supermarket one Christmas Eve. They make eye contact in the produce section, equally stunned. She thinks it's unfair that the other girl (no, *woman*, they're not children anymore) should get to look as surprised and agonized as she herself feels.

If it were anyone else from school, she'd chat and offer to meet for coffee to catch up. But it's her, so she doesn't.

(She doesn't know that the other girl has never hated her, not really. Looking at her had always brought about a bone deep sadness that no one, especially a child, would want to face. Sadness because her soul knows what it's like to see the light drain from her eyes. Despair at being left alone in the middle of hell on earth. Grief that hadn't left her for the rest of that life, and she's worried to let her back in. Because if it was this bad when they only knew each other for a few months, how bad would it be to love and lose someone you'd had for years?)

And so their eyes meet, hold for just a few seconds, then dart away. It's the last time they see each other until they both die. Separately, but one not long after the other.

iv.

Their next life is spent apart. One is a Cree warrior, the other lives the life of a geisha. They miss each other, without understanding the emptiness that underlies everything they do. That little piece of familiarity that's grounded them for three lives now, despite the array of emotions it brings with it. Surrounded by friends and family, they've never felt more alone. When they die, their souls immediately search for each other.

v.

They wake in Ancient Rome. Distance - both in time and space - makes it easier for them to forget the bad parts when they next meet. The sadness that she once felt in his proximity has changed. Forgotten is the original cause. All that her soul remembers is longing to be near this other person.

He's not as impressed. At first his soul recalls the sting of rejection. But she's persistent, and his annoyance doesn't last.

They're friends for years. Luckily, they're both patricians and their wealth allows them that freedom. They occasionally allow themselves to fall into each other's embrace and seek comfort. There are no words for the way their souls resonant with glee when they're near each other, so they call it love.

Though wealth allows them friendship and lovers, politics doesn't allow for more. Alliances rise and crumble through their marriages to others. Even when their families are on opposite sides - which is surprisingly quite often - they support each other in what little ways they can.

And maybe it's a bit fucked up that this is the closest they've felt in their four lives together.

vi.

By mutual agreement, they're born in the same world in the same time period. Their previous foray into distance was enough to learn that they didn't much care for it.

They don't meet for decades into their next lives. Not that you could tell by how quickly they fall into each other's orbit. They're actors that happen upon parts in the same show.

In the times that came before, they'd never really decided on what they were to each other. Soulmates, yes, but that's such a broad term. Two souls that find each other again and again is all that means. In their corporal forms, that could manifest as friendship or lovers or even enemies. They'e dabbled in each of those, but none of them were completely right.

As they drift closer and closer, the realities of their current lives dictate where they are allowed to be to each other. Deep, profound friendship is where they settle. Always the hint of something more, but not quite ready to take that last step. Not ready to be *everything* to the other.

Just like before, it's not the right time. Not the right place. Something's still building.

vii.

It's boring staying in the same world for too long. They've never done it before and they won't start now. As a joke, one of them suggests they jump into one they've had a taste of. Something way off the reservation from what they've each done before.

The angel is born first, of course, created out of nothing but an idea and celestial power. His soul, his essence, is hidden in something called Grace. It almost dampens the effects of what he's felt in previous lives, not that he would ever know it. He goes through his existence at the will and impulse of others. His father, his brothers and sisters. Perhaps part of him finds it lacking. He's been bound by society and custom and war before. He'd hoped for more freedom.

The human is born much later. From his perspective, he's just left the other. He didn't realize the angel came into being so so long ago. Time has whittled away at the angel's memories of them together. The human, of course, doesn't know this. He moves along through the shitstorm that is his life. Loneliness isn't even a surprise, not when his mother dies or his brother goes to college or his dad leaves him to his own devices.

He gets his brother back, but that lonely feeling stays. Dean just thinks it's because he's fucked up. His soul knows better. It lights up like a beacon, always calling for its other half, getting more and more impatient.

For Castiel, there's a dull thrumming that nags at the edges of his Grace from the moment Dean Winchester is born. He ignores it, because it's easy to. But as the years pass - and they pass quickly to him, what are a few decades to one who has lived so much longer - it's more and more on the forefront of his mind.

It builds to a crescendo until he lays eyes on Dean's tattered soul in hell.

The recognition is faint but still there, buried under all those millenia of Angel of the Lord. It causes him to question. To rebel. To love.

To fall.

Both on equal footing as humans once again, with his soul freed from the confines of a Grace that muted everything, Castiel and Dean finally give in to what they've been skirting around for so long. They explore all the things "soulmate" can mean. The depth of their friendship, their shared love, uncovered piece by piece. They're free, really and truly *free* to be who they want to be.

And with how easily they finally fall into it (realize they've been in the middle of it for *years*), they decide to do it again and again.

Endnotes:

i. Castiel is a young girl of considerable means who mistakenly offends Dean, a colonel who inherited his uncle's estate. His cousin and her sister marry because society expects them to. Ironically, even with Cas and Dean's barbed comments to one another, they still care for each other more than the cousin and sister do.

ii. Castiel is a young American soldier who dies on the battlefield, held by his fellow American Dean, who suffers severe PTSD when he returns home. He never gets over it, resorts to drinking away his problems until he dies too young.

iii. Castiel is a young girl who falls hopelessly in love with her neighbor, whereas as Dean is a young girl whose neighbor unknowingly reminds her of times her soul is trying so hard to overcome. In hindsight, these lives seemed somewhat boring - not because of the who, where or when, but simply because Dean didn't allow them the chance to be together.

iv. Castiel is the Cree warrior, proud and brave. He fights in many battles, makes quite the name for himself. He finds himself a beautiful woman that he loves. It's still not quite the same. Dean is a geisha, beautiful and much desired. Her charm is known by all, but she's selective in her clients. She retires and lives quite comfortably for many years.

v. Castiel is the third son of a third son. He fights for everything he can get, whether it be a quaestorship or the chance to run for aedile. His drive pleases his father. Dean is the only child of a rich Roman family. She's that much more valuable because there's only one of her to marry off. All four of her husbands bored her, though they were for the most part good men.

vi. Misha is the one who jokes about actually living as the characters they portrayed. Jensen is hesitant, but he knows he'll follow wherever Misha leads.

vii. It takes years for them to come around and admit it. These are the hardest lives they've had to live. Yes the others had their challenges, their ups and downs. But this is a forced march through years of awful. It never stops, just changes the ways it tries to break them. It's a distraction that keeps them apart, but it only works for so long. And maybe because the lows were the lowest, well, they end up happier than they can remember being.