A friend of mine wrote a post on her tumblr about soulmates (spontaneousfangasm . tumblr . com (slash) post/36197730742/on-soul-mates-say-theres-a-cycle) , and it lodged in my brain at the time. It's been months now. The important part of that is this -

"What happens if you lose your soul mate? What if something horrible happens that a soul can't recover from, and their cycle is broken? What then?

What if you don't belong to anyone and no one belongs to you, and you can feel it, maybe, when you can't quite reach it with anybody, but maybe a part of you remembers life after life when you used to, but you'll never be able to really remember them, because you've left them, for good, life after life after life ago. "

What then indeed. Anyway. This is short and sweet, it's got references if you'd like to find them, and it's also a bit sad.

Time is a fuzzy concept, and universes run parallel and ahead and behind all the time.

He's six and he's a prince and he's going to inherit his father's kingdom, dressed in regalia from head to toe, heavy. He's impatient, he tugs his sleeves, shifts—he doesn't want to be here, not at all, he wants to be somewhere else, anywhere else, he's six.

He's six and he has amber brown eyes (like honey) and a mind that won't stop buzzing (like bees to make that honey).

He's going to get married, some princess a few kingdoms over, ties that bind, and they're going to meet today (be still, Highness).

There is a boy, eight, the princess' concubine servant, and for a moment he stops as he sees him because he has green eyes, brilliant green eyes (like a cat, like shadow swept knolls) and black hair (raven's wing).

It's love at first sight, that time.

—

If it can fly, she can fix it. She's got sass on her tongue, brown eyes and curves, and she takes her pleasure where she finds it—try to tell her that it's improper for a lady to sleep with who she pleases and they won't be flying again.

They pick the new guy up somewhere around Andromeda, blond and big and probably dumb, his knife of a brother standing in his shadow, eyes green and hair black. Clever, and thinks he's better than her, which she doesn't mind to teach him otherwise. Words traded between them like fire whiskey.

It's gradual, that time—it's him being with her in the engine room, it's playfully sharp words and fights that make the whole crew try to duck for cover. Neither of them notice for the longest time.

—

One time, he gifts her his Me, infatuated and drunk beyond measure, and she smiles as she escapes and brings this gift to her own—civilization, for more than just his people, and it is her city the mortals worship at now.

She smiles, honey-brown eyes triumphant, and he forgives her. There will be no other the god admits his hubris to.

When she leaves to visit her sister and does not return, it is he who chases after her.

That time is written in myth.

—

He's rich and pretty and nearly thirty, brown eyed and a writer and they whisper their love in the strokes of their hands across bared flesh at night, in the dark, where no one can see, because if they dare speak it then the state will get involved.

(He writes entire books and poems and plays to those green eyes, lays wealth at his feet, and will sometimes despair that he loves such a cruel and fickle creature, and sometimes not, most times not, and when he's condemned to a gaol he remembers green eyes and a vicious cat smile.)

—

He is a priest in love with the divine, and the divine is the green-eyed seer—

He is a traveler who stops at the inn of a raven haired courtesan and forgets to leave—

She is a bounty hunter with a bounty she doesn't want to catch—

(and when they die, their souls wait and hover and twine together, beautiful, before they part, before they have to search, again, again again

they are

they

are

they—

—

They will never know this moment:

A young god whispers, hands shaking, green eyes wide and afraid, because mortals are so frail, mortals are so fragile, and he cannot risk no—

There are ends but not so soon. He goes to his daughter, and eight days he stays at her gates, eight days he dies, eight days he mourns (eight days, and none), and when he steps once more before his lover he places protection and ward and weapon in one in his lovers' hands, a part of his soul (the piece of him that loves and finds, all of his soul's strength) to ever keep his lover safe, ever and always, until the end of all days.

—

He is a genius and he has the world at his feet, the Stark name on his heels, a legacy and an empire. He has everything he could want, and when he sees people in love he finds the nearest bottle and drinks

(and if he's angry enough, throws it to shatter the glass, because he hurts)

until he can't see anymore.

He avoids love and anything like it like anathema.

(The closest he'll ever get is grey-eyed and red haired, slender and sharp, the only person willing to put up with his bullshit, and he wonders if she lost someone too, if she's missing something, or if she loves him even though it's not the right love).

He meets green eyes (like a cat) over a sip of his glass and offers a smile.

When the point of spear makes him rock back on his heels, momentary nausea and chest ache and

(I love you I love you I love you, stretching to reach beyond flesh, one soul too broken, green dimmed and shattered—in a fall through an abyss, in sacrifice to return, in eight days long forgot—green shards nestled and buried in the charm to keep amber alive, safe, whole)

then makes an exaggerated face.

"Well, performance issues, affects one in—"