if it’s the last time i see you in this lifetime (i’ll find you in the next)
Summary:
A series of letters, thoughts, and promises exchanged across time, space, and a multitude of lives between two souls perpetually bound, finding each other in every universe, through every death and rebirth. Despite lost memories, fractured minds, and rebirths into unfamiliar and conflicting lives, their love persists—a constant, gentle force that defies reality itself. This is the story of their eternal separation and reunion, a love letter that never ends.
You asked me, once, how I knew that I loved you. The truth is that I do not know what it is like to not love you. Even when it all might seem as though we have never met… the instant that I look in your eyes, I know that I have never loved anyone as I do you.
Notes:
This is one of those stories that I initially wrote by hand, scribbling in my chicken scratch, crossing things out, writing and rewriting so fast that I could barely read my handwriting after. I intended to type it up on my computer afterwards; but it’s October in New England and I got cold, so I wrapped myself up in a heated blanket and typed it up on my phone instead. Everyone give a big thank you to tinysugacube for correcting all the inevitable errors that come from typing on a phone at quarter to midnight on a Friday after a long week at work and half a glass of bourbon.
This story is very dear to my heart, and is the product of three prompts: Flufftober Day 24 (Letters), the Flufftober Alternate Prompt 15 (soulmate AU) and my K2: AU: Reincarnation square for the Tony Stark Bingo.
Thanks again to tinysugacube for her grammatical prowess, as well to Marvin for his official seal of approval.
if it’s the last time i see you in this lifetime (i’ll find you in the next)
I believe, no matter how or why, that there is no time, place, or universe where I would not love you, where my heart would not find a soft and loving home with yours.
—A
What was it you once told me? Oh, yes—it was a promise that we would never be parted. Unfortunately, it seems that we were; but I know it will not be for forever. You’re dead, of course, but since when has that ever stopped either of us?
Nevertheless, I miss you. Let the next lifetime come quickly, my love.
—L
I have no idea when or where you’ll get this “letter.” Reincarnation is a tricky thing, even for people like us who do it all the time. (This is a joke, of course: there is no one else like us.)
If this is hitting you when I think it will, please don’t be alarmed. This must all be very confusing for you. But I promise it will all make sense. Eventually. Hopefully. Please try not to be so hard on yourself once everything becomes clear again.
I don’t blame you at all. And deep down, where my soul knows yours, I never did.
—A
Do you ever think of me, in those days you are not your full self? Or rather, when you are not the you I’ve known? You are always that same, brilliant, charismatic, and confident inventor who knows everything and nothing at all—whose mind and soul pushes aside reality, making space not just for what is but, given time and power, what could be.
The only difference is that I am not always the (only) one you love.
—L
Someone in the multiverse once said, “What is grief, if not love persevering?” As I mourn you once again, I find myself not for a moment wishing your love away, for I would rather sit in grief than lose you again to the whispers of false memory, your laugh a sound I know I’ll never in this lifetime hear again.
—A
Do you remember the first time we found ourselves having built our lives without the other? I expected to be jealous—or at least slightly upset—to see you with another, but all I felt was happiness at the idea that you were happy… even if you did not find that happiness with me.
—L
Sometimes I wonder if you are real. In my waking days, I cannot picture your face; but when I am in the arms of Morpheus, it is within your arms I find myself, lost in your eyes… though I do not remember, I could never forget the way it felt when we breathed together, chest to chest—how it felt to lose myself in your kiss, the smooth soft skin of your cheek in my hand.
But when I awoke, you were gone; and so I have to wonder (even as I already know): While I know I have loved you in every other life, will I ever find you in this one?
—A
How fortunate are we? That even meeting in the midst of battle, even as lost, lonely, and unknown to each other as we were—like still called to like, and we found ourselves pitted against each other without the parts of the other that made us into ourselves.
Perhaps it was not fair to the Titan—though what does he know of fairness? His so-called balance would not fix the universe, but instead bring about its destruction. And since when is life fair, anyway? Since when did the universe care enough to dole out prizes to its favorites?
Then again, I suppose it did give I to you and you to me. Even when my mind was not my own and your own memories lost to a mortal shell, somehow we found a way back to one another. It is as you said: There is not a time or place or universe where I would not love you, would not feel safe with my fragile heart cradled in your loving hands.
—L
You asked me, once, how I knew that I loved you. The truth is that I do not know what it is like to not love you. Even when it all might seem as though we have never met… the instant that I look in your eyes, I know that I have never loved anyone as I do you.
Not to say I love them less, but the way I know you is different from anyone else. My bones—though they may be newly grown—know you. You are the answer to the echo of my soul calling into the void and back into itself.
We are not just two people called to one another, drawn in by mutual attraction and similar interests. We are not just two parts of a whole, either. I am a whole person without you, just as you are a whole person without me. We do not need to be together to find purpose or meaning, to find love or a place of belonging. And yet, no matter where I go, my heart always knows that I can find those things with you. No matter how many places and people I call home, no matter in what shape I find myself, there is always a place for me by your side and a place for you by mine.
—A
Perhaps it is our destiny, as two souls that complement one another—whose bond breaks the barriers of time, space, reality, power, and mind, whose infinite potential the universe could never erase, only obfuscate—that we are born and live and die more than anyone should ever have to bear.
I also struggle with wondering whether you could possibly be real. But then our eyes meet, and the trap over my mind breaks, and it crashes over me as a wave at high tide that I know you. I know you. I know the way your soul is mapped onto mine, the way I feel you more than my skin, know you more intimately than I know my own self, even as I realize I know this iteration of you hardly at all.
—L
If I may introduce myself then? I suppose for now I’ll use our familiar method, sending out our love letters composed only in our minds, as opposed to using a pen or a keyboard. Zipping across interdimensional pathways, landing softly in our minds and waiting for us to breathe each other’s thoughts, our souls touching through time and space.
But I know you, and I know that right now you are lurking in an apartment on the other side of the city, wondering if you should make your way over to my home. You should know by now, however, that my home and yours are one and the same. I owe you a drink, after all—come by and see your long-lost love, and I’ll pour it for you myself.
—A
Notes:
Ngl I’m so anxious to post this I feel a little bit sick, I love this story so much, and I hope if you made it to the end that means you’ve loved it too.