This is just a little rambling piece that wouldn't stop rolling around my head. It's not meant to be anything great, I just needed to get it out so I could work some more on a Supernatural fic that I have started on my drive.

And thanks once again to HPWabbit for doing the crash read.

Déjà Vu

……………………

He'd grown up normally enough. He had been the All-American boy, the one who liked sports and girls and followed the more traditional gender roles. He's been that jock in high school who got the girls and the guy in college who knew how to have a good time. He'd served for his country

Some days he'd wondered, if he'd stayed home, if he'd not joined the army, would he have remembered the life he'd once had?

While overseas, he had suffered terrible nightmares at times. He had originally thought that the mutilated bodies and the terrifying scenes that flashed behind his eyelids at night were inspired by what he'd done wrong. Killing was a sin and taking any life haunted him on some level. That's one thing that seemed to be true in any lifetime. He'd spend eternity atoning. Bones had once said that she'd help him balance the scales, help him catch more murderers. She had no idea.

He knew that he'd done some good in his prior life, or else he'd probably never have been made human again. Then again, The Powers That Be weren't necessarily always straight forward with their intentions, prophecy or not.

Booth had wondered what Bones would say if he told her that souls were real and he'd been a vampire in a prior life. (He'd even looked himself up. There were several different stories going around about the person he used to be.) She'd probably just give him some anthropological reason behind his belief and reasoning. Sweets would tell him his subconscious was trying to tell him something. The whole time he was in the Middle East he thought it was his subconscious doing what subconsciouses do. Vegas changed his mind.

After his time in the military, he'd taken to gambling. He'd gone to Las Vegas and hadn't managed to leave. He was addicted. It was there, during one of the lower points in his life that he ran across a vampire. Not that he realized it at first. He'd just left a casino empty handed. Again. He was brooding and angry, a scowl marring his features. The nights had been cool, so he'd worn his long coat. Hands jammed in his pockets and in a foul mood, he'd cut trough an alley several blocks away from the main strip.

A man and a woman were up against the wall. Her fists were banging against any part of his back that she could reach even as the man muffled her screams with a hand.

"Hey pal, I don't think the lady likes you," Booth interrupted. The stranger snapped his head up and around from its place at the woman's neck. Prominent ridges warped the area around his brow and the bridge of his nose. Blood smeared teeth hissed then abruptly snapped shut as yellow eyes examined him.

The woman was released. Her back scrapped the wall as she slumped to the ground. Her breathing was harsh and wet from tears and mucus. Scared and bloody, she hurried off as fast as her depleted body would let her.

"Angel, it appears rumors of your death were greatly exaggerated."

Seeley continued to scowl. Things niggled at his thoughts. Impressions of water and fire and…a dragon?

The vampire stepped no closer, but in fact, edged away. "Some other time Angel." He disappeared around the corner.

Much later, after more memories surfaced, Booth wondered why the other vampire had neither smelled the humanity on his flesh nor heard the heart that had beaten beneath his chest. Surely, if he had, he would have killed him. Had the vampire had dulled senses? Or had Booth received some unknown extra protection that obscured smell and other distinctive traits?

However, those weren't the questions running through his head then. It was that incident in the alley that drove him to do a little research on "Angel" and one of an accumulating pile of reasons that pushed him to reform his gambling ways.

To date, he still doesn't remember everything about "Angel", and he doubts that he ever will. Sometimes he hears someone talk about a place he feels he should know. Other times he gets an eerie sense of familiarity that will tingle through his nerves when he encounters something that must have had a connection to his former self. There are times when Booth will sense he had once known…something, but not anymore, just that he once had. He was suffering déjà vu that he blamed on a life he couldn't completely recall.

There are times when he finds himself knowing things that he didn't even know he knew. Once he had been enjoying a movie he hadn't seen before when his girlfriend asked him what was happening with one of the characters. It was only then that he realized the movie was in French and he had not been reading any subtitles. Similar circumstances occurred in Japan. He had been sent over as a part of an exchange program the FBI were participating in when he found he could understand snatches of conversation. He never studied Japanese.

There are days he wonders how much of his life is real. Did he really grow up with Jared? Did he really date Rebecca? Sire a son? How many memories were his own and how many were fabricated to fit? Did Conner ever feel like this? Is this how Dawn felt? Had he been dumped in the past and reborn? Or had the world around him been altered? Which memories and events were ones he actively chose? Was he meant to remember Angel, or was everything a cosmic joke? Was a second chance really a second chance if you didn't know you were getting a second go at it?

He would most likely never know. He wasn't exactly in the supernatural loop anymore. Oh, he was sure he could track down information and people if he needed to, but that was no longer his world. He was disconnected. And he was getting old. (Spike would have had a great laugh over that one.) He no longer had his supernatural capabilities. One wrong move could kill him for good these days. The bullet he's taken for Brennan could attest to that.

He will go about his days as best he could, no longer Angel, but more than just Booth. His nights as a master vampire were over. He has a son he loves, friends to be with, a job he loves, and a woman he'd die for. This life has really just begun. He is FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth.