A reincarnation AU, sorta.

Incarnate

by hashtagartistlife

first incarnation

Their first incarnations are lost to the ether of time. Who is to say which version of themselves are the originals, the principal mold from which their myriad counterparts sprang? Pirate and officer, heiress and beggar, king and servant, assassin and target – there is no way of knowing, and indeed, there is little sense in attempting to determine it.

– suffice to say, then, that in their first incarnation also (like all others after them), they fall in love.

second incarnation

Some being above has finally started keeping track, and their second incarnations are recorded as clean-cut and immutable as the wall between them.Pyramos and Thisbe, they called them, childhood friends separated by brick and mortar and a gaping chasm of family rivalry they failed to mend with their love. They are hasty in this incarnation, the both of them hot-blooded and hot-headed; and as such things go, their plan to run away in the night crumbles with a single misunderstanding. Pyramos dies, Thisbe follows, and the mulberry tree is fed richly with their intermingled blood.

third incarnation

This time, they are too cautious, both of them too aware of the infinite ways one person can be hurt by another. Life has not been kind to them, and they have both grown to be the worst versions of themselves possible; this is not a world conducive to love.

Perversely, in this incarnation, they love harder and more intensely than any two souls with that much damage ought to be capable of. Too hard. Too much. Their love is destructive, the kind that burns you up from inside out, the kind that eats you away until you are a hollow shell that echoes in time with the other person's heartbeats. It is a dangerous, unhealthy, morbid love – but it is love still.

But this is not a world conducive to love. In another life, perhaps, even this warped attachment between two twisted people could have been tamed into something truer; surrounded by emptiness as they are, there is no possibility of a healing influence. Their love devolves into a toxic obsession that hurts all those involved in their struggle for dominance, but none so much asthemselves.

People avoid the ragged manor on the stormy hilltop to this day. Sometimes, when the wind blows particularly hard, they swear they can hear the sounds of fighting – the derisive laughter of Cathy Earnshaw and the angry brogue of Heathcliff drifting down on the storm.

fourth incarnation

The most beautiful woman in the world is not the happiest woman in the world, or even the happiest woman in the small palace antechamber. Helen of Troy (Helen Menelaus's wife, Helen of Sparta, Helen daughter of Zeus, Helen beloved of Paris) stands next to her sister-in-law Andromache, and sends her Prince off to the battlefield. This is what they have started a war for – for short, tired nights together and too many hours of separation spent worrying for each other's lives.

She looks at Andromache, at the high curve of her belly, her son (with Hector's sharp features and Andromache's wide eyes) hanging onto her leg, and cannot help but be envious. She cannot remember the last time she has seen her own daughter. What she wouldn't give to have her here, hanging off her leg just like Andromache and her child – better yet, what she wouldn't give for Hermione to have been born between herself and Paris, with his sharp green eyes instead of Menelaus' pale grey–

They could have been happy, this incarnation, had both of them cared just a little less about the people around them. But Helen has family she cannot (will not) abandon, and Paris cannot (will not) run away and leave the mess he made behind for others to deal with. We could have been happy is the wistful refrain on Helen's lips, as she buries Paris and leaves behind a sacked and burning Troy, had we been born Helen and Paris and not Helen, Princess of Sparta and Paris, Prince of Troy.

tenth incarnation

This time there are no grand titles, no great literary romance to live up to. This time, she is just a schoolgirl that sits in the same place at the cafeteria every lunchtime, and he is a schoolboy who is far too interested in chemistry and its accompanying numerous ways to make flames to pay attention to quiet, bookish girls (even if she has the brightest true-blonde hair he's ever seen).

They trade secretive glances at each other over their blue writing notepad and chemistry textbook, but the tragedy of the situation is that they never do it while the other is looking. He almost gets up the courage to speak to her. She almost slips him a note in his locker.

Years later, the girl's classic lit professor will tell her that the saddest word in the English language is almost.

twelfth incarnation

This incarnation, he is her pet lizard.

Somewhere in the fates and reincarnation division of whatever faith system people subscribe to, someone gets fired over this mishap.

sixteenth, seventeenth, nineteenth and twenty-first incarnations

If there are incarnations where they meet and are torn apart, there are incarnations where they never meet, never know of the other's existence in the world. There are incarnations where the closest they ever get to each other is in planes going in opposite directions, she to LA and he to Berlin. There are incarnations where they never breathe the same air, she a mermaid that will die on land, he a centaur afraid of water. There are incarnations where they cancel on the birthday party that they meant to go to, or their business merger falls through, or their umbrella breaks and they decide to just stay home. Sometimes they are a fraction late or a fraction early or they leave something behind accidentally and have to return to retrieve it. Sometimes they only miss each other by the barest sliver of a second.

They are reasonably happy, these incarnations. But they are never truly content.

Fifty-sixth incarnation

By this time, some higher power is frustrated enough to intervene, just a little bit, enough to nudge them in the same direction. Otherwise how else would a military soldier and a pauper girl from opposite ends of the earth be able to meet? The sheer odds are so improbable that both of them call it fate, feel it resonate in their bones and intertwine in their marrows. They are bound together, for better or worse. They are each other's. They belong.

They should have been left enough alone. It wouldn't have been a happy life, but it would have been a life for the girl who sacrifices her life for her child at barely twenty. The higher powers learn that not even they can successfully meddle with fate, and the world carries on thinking that Miss Saigon is just a story with no basis in truth.

(they are wrong.)

seventy-eighth incarnation

An elf and a dwarf would never work, they said, and she believed them. Love was a dangerous distraction she did not need, a frivolous luxury she could not afford. She ignores his wide smirk and tender glances.

And then he is lying dead before her, and there are tears rolling down her cheeks and a keening sound in her head and the desperate, desperate thought, almost a prayer –

if this is love, then I do not want it.

ninety-fifth incarnation

The finger on the trigger tenses, pauses just before the critical moment – he knows her, this woman, this politician who is considered so dangerous with her ability to move people that no less than three separate governments has ordered her assassination, is his highschool sweetheart. There is no mistaking that long blonde hair, those sincere brown eyes. There is no mistaking the way her entire body lights up when she laughs, pure joy radiating off her like heat to warm those in a ten-mile radius. He knows her.

The momentary hesitation is not enough to spare her life. He has a younger sister to provide for, and he will gladly trade a thousand and one lives in order to keep hers safe. Even if it is his own life. Even if it is hers.

one hundred and thirty-first incarnation

They meet with bars in between them, and there is nothing but hatred and contempt for him in her eyes. The pink-haired man is desperate. He grasps the bars of his prison with calloused fingers and rattles.

"You've got it all wrong. This is a mistake. I'm not– I'm not who you think I am–"

"Spare me," the woman spits, venom in her voice, "you revolutionary scum can be wiped out for all I care. You're nothing but misguided hoodlums with too much time on your hands. You don't think about the human cost of your revolutions; you don't care."

"You elites don't think about the human cost of your extravagance." The pretense vanishes, and suddenly the man behind the bars is as angry as she is. "You don't care."

"Why should I?" There is rage in every syllable of her words. "Your explosives killed my father."

The green eyes meeting her steady gaze burn. "Your laws killed my mother."

Standing there a foot apart, close enough to touch, both of them think they will never be able to understand the other – in this life, or the next.

one hundred and ninety-eighth incarnation

They meet, and part, and meet, and part again, and if two things have stayed constant throughout all their incarnations it is this:

1. if they manage to meet, they fall in love, and

2. if they fall in love, they end in tragedy.

Some part of her remembers in this incarnation, and she thinks surely not this incarnation, surely this time, this time–

history repeats itself.

two hundred and fifty-sixth incarnation

They meet once in this incarnation, when they are barely three, walking the marketplace with their guardians on a high summer afternoon. Children as they are, they only spare each other a single glance as they pass by.

Two days later, he dies of a fever, and his older brother places his body in stasis and vows to find a way to bring him back.

two hundred and fifty-seventh incarnation

It is too early to see what will happen in this lifetime. The fates and reincarnation division of whatever higher power there exists has a flourishing betting pool, and whatever beings that are employed there amuse themselves by betting on the outcome of each incarnation. But with odds at two hundred and fifty-six to one, there are not many takers for this latest round.

Only one being – a new worker who has not been around long enough to have witnessed the subjects' previous incarnations – will take the bet, and the others are excited, already anticipating what they will do with the extra money. The newbie wonders if they should be worried, but looking down at their subjects, they cannot bring themselves to regret their choice.

"You want to join Fairy Tail, right? Then come with me."

"Yeah!"

The newbie is not usually a gambler. They have only joined the fates and reincarnation division recently, so they do not know what has gone wrong in the previous two hundred and fifty six incarnations. But looking down at the blonde celestial spirit mage and the pink-haired dragon slayer smiling at each other, the being thinks –

if there is one thing in the world they would bet anything on, it is the pure, palpable, unadulterated love that they can seebetween Lucy Heartfilia and Natsu Dragneel.