Chapter Text
Endless Cycle
James sighed heavily and leaned against the door of his flat before he went to the small shelf in the corner. He didn’t have everything, material items always fade after time, in his last life the necklace, woven in the eighth century snapped off of his neck silently, by the time he had realized it was missing, he didn’t know where it had broken…
He never found it, but he had searched until that body was exhausted. On the top shelf was comb (he never picks it up unless he has to, the teeth are brittle), on the second shelf there is a stone (slate grey with a green line pressed into it, perhaps jade, he has never dared crack it open to find out), sharing that shelf was a locket, encased on the front of it a lock of hair (perfectly preserved, they knew what they were doing back then), on the shelf even with his hand were the things that ate at his insides.
Letters and half of a book that gnawed at him, but brought him so much hope and peace that he didn’t care how badly they hurt to re-endure.
It is difficult to track down possessions from an earlier life, a past life. You have to find who you used to be, then find who’s left living from who you were and pray they have something of yours that is precious and they are easily bribed…with anything. He was lucky this time. He was a spy, finding letters that had once been addressed to him—albeit a different him, but still him—was child’s play. His niece had taken care of them as he had asked. He could still remember writing the note, that when a man came to her asking for the letters that she was to give them up, but only if he knew who’d penned them. Finding lost items was easy when you had loyal families in your past life—she’d been all he had in the way of family back then.
He grabbed the stack of letters and poured a scotch before sitting down in his chair, taking a sip before opening the first letter. The handwriting still made his breath catch, beautiful, just as he had been, as he always was.
Sixsimth,
The man paused at his old name for a moment before reading on.
I do hope you will be able to find it in your heart to forgive me. Hated leaving you like that; it wasn’t the goodbye I had in mind.
That had been a beautiful night in Cambridge…perfect.
By the time you read this, I will be on my way to Edinburgh, on my way to fame and fortune. I know you haven’t heard of him but trust me, Vyvyan Ayrs is one of the musical greats, Sixsmith. The tragedy is that he hasn’t produced any new work in years due to illness.
My scheme is to persuade him to hire me as his amanuensis and aid him in the creation of a masterpiece, and for shooting up through the musical firmament eventually obliging with a ‘yes’. The son he disinherited is none other than Robert Frobisher, the greatest British composer of his time. I know Sixsmith that you groan and shake your head but you smile too, which is why I love you.
Robert—as he had been in that life—knew him best. He could see into his very soul, and he knew precisely how he would have shaken his head, James was quite sure of that. He was brilliant, radiant, full of ambition and life, and a very gifted man, had only he been appreciated more…
P.S. Thanks for the waistcoat. I needed something of yours to keep me company.
Yours, R. F.
James smiled slightly, the waistcoat was gone, but he’d managed to snag one button, it was sitting on the shelf, placed gingerly in a jar, he didn’t want to lose it. He smiled gently and opened the letter he could never quite manage. It tortured him…but he always read it, perhaps searching for a way to find him again.
My Dearest Sixsmith,
It’s done. Finished in a frenzy that reminded me of our last night in Cambridge.
Watched my final sunrise, enjoyed my last cigarette. Didn’t think that you could be any more perfect until I saw the beat up trilby. Honestly Sixsmith, as ridiculous as that thing makes you look, I don’t think I have seen anything more beautiful. Watched you for as long as I dared. I don’t believe it was a fluke that I saw you first.
I believe there is another world waiting for us, Sixsmith, a better world, and I’ll be waiting for you there. I believe we do not stay dead long. Find me beneath the Corsican stars where we first kissed.
Yours eternally, R.F.
He could still feel the blood in his hands. It had poured from the back of his head and into his hands. Part of him thought that if he had held on long enough, perhaps he could keep all of the blood in, but even though he hadn’t been a killer before, he had known deep in his heart that when he heard that gunshot, his love would be dead.
James—Rufus killed himself four weeks later, after he’d gotten everything in order. In that life he was always the less spontaneous one and the more organized, besides he had to ensure the letters survived along with the button that he’d carefully slipped into one of the envelopes.
James remember and he never changes.
When they die, Robert was quite right, they don’t stay dead for long. Sometimes a decade or two, but never more than a century. James was quite sure that they stay in heaven during the interim, together, but that is the one thing James can never quite remember.
Then they are reborn and he can still remember every previous life, everything… He remembers him and searches for him as his life unfolds around him. Sometimes they meet, sometimes he dies sad and alone, though James hopes he has never endured the same fate. James never wanted him to be sad. He never want him to be alone.
James changes, his looks change, his mind changes, everything changes, but not his love for him…that is the one constant, always.
He never changes. He looks the same every time. Messy hair, sometimes that he fights to tame and other times he lets run wild, green eyes, a perfect smirk, a loving smile, pale, soft, smooth skin…sparse freckles on his back. His personality and talents changed from life to life, but his appearance never does, he was always a bright little boy, an attractive young man, a handsome middle-aged man, and a beautiful old man, but he didn’t often make it to being an old man, that was the tragedy of James’ love. He usually burns so brightly that his time ends too soon. He always is a trouble maker.
James remembers him, everything in every life…
He forgets James…and his face remains the same, James think that it is so he can always find him, if he only looks hard enough. James is born with his face burned into his mind and he lives his life searching for him.
Those are the unspoken rules of James' cyclical universe.
It had started in Pompeii, they met briefly as children, spent a year together before James’—then—parents had decided he wasn’t good material for him to be fraternizing with. When they had met as adults it had been fiery, within a month there was nothing to keep them apart, back then people didn’t care that some people were gay, just as well for them… They were burned alive two months into their love affair… The past version of James was holding him against his chest when they were suffocating …he didn’t last long enough to feel the heat, James felt it and was grateful for the fact he’d never felt the fire.
They had many lives together, often having to hide in secret, more than once either of them have been secret lovers outside of their own disastrous married lives, escaping the families they were obliged to have. Once it was easy, James had been a woman that time, but most often they have to hide. They had been in the American Civil War together. James had been a Confederate, he had been too young and a Union. James had found him in the forest after a battle, holding a bleeding arm and trying to get away, how he’d survived in the first place was still beyond James. That had been a scary, but beautiful—albeit short—life for both of them. Once he had seen James was being genuinely kind to him, they fell together easily. They nearly made it a full year, pretending he was one of the Confederates, pretending that they were just friends when they spent so much time together and so many nights huddled close…then the other side recognized him and they hung them both for treason…at least they’d died together and managed to stop a battle with their love.
James downed the rest of his scotch and gently folded the letters, putting away. He was thirty nine and he still hadn’t found him. His heart was starting to crack a bit…starting to fade. Perhaps, this time he would die alone…again.