Author's Note: And here we see me forego all pretension of being a good writer. Reincarnation romances are maybe the oldest romance cliches known to mankind and I can't really defend this. Nonetheless, criticism, ideas, suggestions and general feedback and this are appreciated, because I have a horrible sinking feeling I'm going to be sticking to this idea whether I want to or not.

The title comes from the fact all chapters will be preceded by a quote from American speculative fiction writer and critic Charles Sonnenburg.


Everything was just close enough to normal to make the abnormality all the more offputting.


It was really surreal, the feeling he got around her.

He had never been exactly jovial or lighthearted. His old man saw to that, and after his mother died and he went into the military, he developed the typical Marine humor: dry, sarcastic, and sparing. Humor developed in order to get through deployments and raise up other people's spirits wasn't transferrable to life back in the States. He wasn't unhappy, exactly. There were the usual nightmares. He slept on his couch rather than his bed because the bed felt too soft, like a marshmallow. Every night he tripled checked every lock. But the flashbacks were retreating. He could see meat on a commercial and not throw up; he could force himself to care about basketball and hockey again. He wasn't wasting away his time at a bar somewhere like some of the guys he'd been out there with.

Everything had been on autopilot until the CIA had rung him up. He processed their words with an ear for hidden meanings. Routine debriefing, follow up, need to ask questions – they thought he might've seen someone important. Maybe he had, maybe he hadn't. He would go in, give honest answers, and get McDonalds on the way home because their meat wasn't recognizable as meat so he could actually eat it like a normal person. For a moment as he parked himself in front of the TV to lose himself in cartoons where the bad guys lost and the world made sense, as he bit into a cheeseburger, he would be someone close the man they shipped out on four deployments in a row.

She hadn't stopped him dead in his tracks. Far more eerie, they'd seen each other as they walked by in the halls of Langley's CIA base. Five steps later he'd turned to find she'd already turned to look at him. Was it strange for him to swear to God he knew her? He had to know her. Her face was familiar in the way a guy he went through Basic with or a girl he went to high school with was. The name slipped him but he knew they'd met before somewhere, at least once. Her brow was furrowed as she looked at him, mirroring his own expression perfectly.

"Were you here seven months ago, by any chance? Around the sixth?" he asked, recalling his last trip through these gray and tan halls.

"No." That accent was familiar. He knew her. He thought he could hear her voice saying 'nyet' even though what left her mouth was 'no'. "I was working in Jalal-Abad at the time. Were you here two months ago, on the seventeenth?"

"Negative, ma'am. Stationed in Kabul then. Your face must have just looked familiar." He frowned as his CIA escort cleared his throat loudly. "I'm sorry. I have to go."

He left her. But she stayed with him in his thoughts. They spoke Russian in Jalal-Abad, he knew that, it was just that he couldn't have known she was a translator or that she was stationed there. So why did he expect her accent to be thicker and for her to drop little bits of Russian into her words? Compartmentalizing was a Marine talent, so he made it through the debriefing as well as he always had, answering with details he knew they'd want him to repeat. He wasn't a liar, thus repeating things with accuracy was never his issue. They just hadn't ever been able to make sense of his behavior when he was first deployed, his inability to take the shot on a high-profile target that was going to keep him on their radar for the rest of his time in the service. He could've gotten out of that by leaving the service, of course, if he'd had any idea how to function in the civilian world anymore. He stayed, he debriefed, he functioned.

The lobby at Langley wasn't suited to people waiting or trying to look inconspicuous. Considering she was a blonde bombshell he would've smarmed on and called 'babe' back in his high school hot-shot years, she managed to stick out even more than she should have. He could only hope her job was a desk one. Irrationally, he went over to her even though he had absolutely nothing to say. They'd done this before, he thought. They'd stood beside each other before, talked, maybe even goofed off. Was he finally losing it after one deployment too many? Was he mixing her up with some blonde one night stand or a high school girl he'd never approached? She was a translator with a Russian accent. They'd probably never been in the same zip code before.

"I want your number," she stated with the authority of someone who got what she wanted. Then she winced with an expression that screamed 'that came out wrong'. "I mean-"

"No, it's fine." At least she asked it so he didn't have to. He scribbled it in the notebook she offered him and she wrote hers down along with her name. His brow furrowed. Akilina Akhatov, it said. He had nodded at her and turned to leave before it slipped out. "Later, Linka."

Her grip on his wrist was like an iron vice. "What did you call me?"

Her eyes were wide, doe eyes, startled and caught in headlights. She searched his face for some kind of explanation, but found only honesty when he swallowed thickly and said quietly, "I… I don't know."

He tore out of the lobby the second she let go of him like he was in a combat zone.

He pretended not to hear her call him a Yankee as he walked away.

His heart didn't stop pounding for hours.

He couldn't stop smiling.