Walking the boundary of the great city as was his habit, Antonious was present to witness the strange local storm that struck the river and left an unusual object in its wake. Unable to help himself he approached the deep red lump that lay half in the water and was shocked to discover that it was a man...a beautiful man...who looked so familiar...His hands came up to clutch his suddenly aching head, and he sank to his knees on the riverbed as memories flooded him. Stephanos, Tornoni, Stefan, Antori, Serriphen, Attonic, Strano, Tonnio, Sterani, all the previous lives they have lived and loved together. He came back to himself to find tears upon his face and looked down to promptly scramble to care for his beloved.

His beloved wore unusual clothes and far more layers than himself, and he could have sworn that the red cape he wore had moved on its own. He carried, well he had been Sterani last time, back to his home slowly, both in a desire not to be seen and asked questions until he had asked his own and because he could hardly tear his eyes away from Sterani long enough to watch his step. Sterani looked very different from their last life, no longer short of stature and having black hair with such majestic bars of white adorning his temples. His heart ached for Sterani to wake and get his own memories and to see what color his eyes bore in this life. Antonious did not even realize that he wept as he gazed upon Sterani until the liquid became too much to clearly see his soulmate.

He stopped then, pressing his face into the curve of Sterani's neck and praising every god he knew that he had had the other half of his soul returned. The sun had begun to set by the time he made it to his simple home and lay his still unconscious burden upon the bed and looked at the wet clothes he still wore. It would not do for his beloved to get a chill from the water in which he had lain, but when he tried to pull away the heavy red cloth it would not budge! He carefully tugged harder and harder still, only to jump back and fall back onto his tailbone in shock as a corner of the cloth slapped at his hand.

His eyes were wide in shock and he breathed heavily as he sought to breathe through the fearful thoughts running through his mind had his love angered one of the gods? Is he under a spell? What demon controls that fabric, red as blood? He only calmed when he saw that his love was moving, shifting against the bed and groaning softly. He took note of the breathless-ness Sterani had as his eyes finally began to move and flicker open. Oh, his love held the very ocean in his eyes.

But that ocean quickly turned into a riling whirlpool of pain and shaking hands gripped his head, his expression agony. Antonious felt pain again in the face of his lover's torment and surged forward to hold him steady, mindless of the cloth slapping what it could reach of him.

"Attonic?"

"I am here love. We are together again."

"Where...where are we…?"

"Rome, my dearest. And I am Antonious is this life."

"Stephen,..I am Stephen. I am not supposed to be here."

"I will not let a soul know of your presence. I swear it on all the gods." He held Stephen close as they both began to weep, so full of joy they could not contain it. They had found each other at last. Eventually, Stephen pulled back, the cloak wiping the tears from his face, an odd look coming over the other's face at the movement.

"Oh," Stephen sniffled, a hand coming up to rub his face. "This is Sophie, the Cloak of Levitation. She protects me."

"What do you need protection from? Where did...she come from? What is she made of? Will..."

"Wait, wait. There are lots of things she protects me from. She chose me when I walked by the case she had been in. I assume she is made of cloth but I haven't asked her." Stephen sighed heavily at trying to tell his love about the future and in the same thought realising that if he did he would mess up time. "Antonious, I am not supposed to be here. There is so much I can't tell you. What I can tell you though is that I love you. Oh, how I wish you had been there for this life of mine… I"

Antonious pulled him close, cutting off the sudden flow of words to press kisses to his hair and stroke his back. "And I love you Stephen. Don't worry that there is so much you cannot tell me. You can always tell me in the next life. Or the one after that." He pressed a kiss to Stephen's lips. "Are you hungry my love?" A sniffled barely audible yes was his answer.

He took Stephen to sit at his simply hewn wooden table and laid food before him from his shelves, dried meats, fruits, nuts, and a small block of cheese. He would need to visit the market tomorrow now that he had another mouth to feed. They ate in silence, basking in the presence of the other and seeing how much they had changed since their past life.

Antonious was so tall in this life, his hair falling to his shoulders in thick ebony locks, and eyes so brilliant a green as to put the Eye about his neck to shame. The thought had Stephen putting a hand to it, turning his eyes towards the table as he contemplated the idea that it had brought him here, the spell he had been hit with mixing with the time energies to move him through space and time. His eyes flicked back up to meet with the concerned eyes of his beloved and thank all the deities he knew that he had been brought here, to Antonious. He smiled softly to easy Antonious's mind and swallowed his last bite before looking about the room. It was a single room home, a large bed on one wall, bracketed by two windows, one with a large chest lying beneath it, a door on the wall to the left and one to the right. The table they sat at was directly opposite the bed and Stephen blushed at the thought of sharing a bed with Antonious again, thousands upon thousands of nights flitting through his mind and making him warm.

"So," Stephen coughed, "I am quite tired from my...journey."

"Then we shall rest." Antonious could see that Stephen was overwhelmed and to be honest so was he, he had only had his memories a few hours more than his love. They rose and walked towards the bed, Sophie leaving Stephen to float quietly in a corner of the room. Antonious hardly needed any prompting to help Stephen undress after he had taken off his bright gloves and revealed the web of scars that adorned delicate fingers. He pressed delicate kisses to Stephen's cheeks as he gently unwound the various belts and eased the outermost layers of his unusual clothes off and draped them over the large chest.

He smoothed his hands down Stephen's chest and quietly asked if he wanted him to keep his shift on, knowing Stephen remembered his preference of sleeping in the nude. A gorgeous blush came up on those high cheekbones and the chest under his hands heaved with laughter.

"No, my love. You may sleep as you always have but I would prefer to stay clothed for now. We are only sleeping after all." The cheeky grin at his words had Antonious laughing as he pulled away to turn down the bed-clothes and climb in, Stephen following quickly on the other half of the bed.

"Stephen?"

"Hmmm?"

"May I hold you?"

"Always, beloved." Antonious pressed himself against Stephen's back, burying his face in the ebony strands and breathing in the presence of his love as they drift off to dream of each other.