When Alex and Piper first meet, the language on their tongues is not English.
Alex was loving in all of her lifetimes. Piper was always on the receiving end.
The first time they remember clearly, Alex is a retail merchant with flowing raven hair and a perpetual knowing glint in her eyes that unnerves her competitors. She grows up with a mother and father who bicker constantly and a love for reading. It is 1307 and she is unstoppable. Negotiations had become second nature and there is not an item in the world that she could not sell; that, she is sure of. Alex is 19 when she first lays eyes on golden hair and a blinding grin, right before the same woman nicks the pouch of 907 grams of florin from her waist with a lower classed sword and a victorious chuckle in the back of her throat as she bounds off. The absence of gold coins attached to her belt propels her forward before her mind could even attempt to catch up.
Piper is fast.
Alex is faster.
She catches up to Piper after nearly ten minutes of full out sprinting over cobblestone and sand, though it feels like she's run the entirety of Rome when she tackles this girl like beaming sunlight to the ground. Her knife, kept at the side of her waist opposite her absent pouch of gold, is at a nervously gulping throat instantly. She makes eye contact with wide, cerulean irises and the hand pressing a knife to Piper's throat weakens and falls with the feeling of her lungs being full for the first time in this life.
"Christ." Alex murmurs in awe as her weapon clatters to the ground beside them and her now empty hand hesitantly rises to brush the pale cheek of the woman beneath her. Piper is in the same state of awe, peering up at Alex in wonder through dark eyelashes. At Alex's quiet breath of a word, pink lips curl upward.
"Not quite, my love." She responds in flowing Latin. Grinning wider than she idly thinks she ever has in this lifetime, Alex leans down and presses her lips against Piper's with fervor. They band together in love and greed and are single-handedly monopolizing the major trade routes when the Black Death makes a minor return in their temporary village nine months later and kills them both.
15th century Moscow finds them unevenly. Piper, in this lifetime born Praskovya, was the youngest daughter of Ivan III, in his 27th year of reigning over the land. She enjoys watching the sunset from her bedroom window and long moments in the water basin while she bathes. She is merely sixteen when her father replaces their old servant with a new, younger woman well into her thirties.
She is introduced to Piper as Anastasiia, beautiful and painfully familiar. Forest green eyes widen and immediately harden at the recognition, yet with the presence of others around them at the time, they can not afford pleasantries until a later date.
Many nights later, Piper is alone in her chambers when Alex arrives to empty the chamber pot and stops dead in her tracks with the first eye contact, since several days prior, she has made with the ruler's youngest. Piper rises from her bed clad in her night gown as she crosses over to the one soul on this earth created for her. The blonde presses a gentle kiss to the pink lips she had unknowingly been craving for over a century. When Alex pulls away, Piper is confused. She does not understand because she is sixteen and age should not be such a big deal, except it isn't merely that. It's that Alex is a woman and Piper is the daughter of the leader of their land and she just wants to keep the blonde, and all of her radiance, safe. It is for the best.
That is what Alex will repeat to herself over and over in the nights she will spend alone in her quarters.
"Perhaps next time, my beautiful Praskovya." Alex murmurs in a tongue that will be foreign to her in upcoming lifetimes; however, in this one it conveys all of the love and sincerity she possesses when she reassures Piper of their future. Maybe not in this life, but possibly in the next.
Piper learns that Alex has gotten herself fired a week later.
She doesn't hear a word about her in this lifetime ever again.
16th century Spanish Renaissance is a flourishing moment for both of their souls. It sparks from the Italian Renaissance, during a time when both of their names were different, but their hearts the same, in 14th century Italy. Alex is a painter in this life, soft spoken and poetic. Her hands are steady and her eyes sharp as she recreates her subjects on canvas. A large, blond man enters her quarters one day requesting a portrait done of his wife to be. While the occurrence was quite rare, he offers her a hefty amount of money to have it done as soon as possible. When Piper, in this life born Isabella, enters her makeshift work space a night later, both of them stop in their tracks. "Eres bellísima..." Alex whispers in startled awe. Piper, standing in the doorway, takes several steps forward as if she is surprised. As if they do not always meet this way. As if Alex's soul has not been joined to hers since she can remember. Their lips connect like powerfully forceful magnets and both are worried that their veins have morphed into live flames for all of the heat shooting through them. Alex laughingly mentions, between kisses, that they should perhaps stop meeting like this. Piper speaks of how she has longed Alex's presence and feared that perhaps several lifetimes together had been enough, that they would not be granted another. But, Alex murmurs into her neck that she will never leave her in any lifetime. Never again.
When they finally get to the painting, Alex takes gentle care to get the curve of her cheekbones just right. The sharpness of her collarbones, the glint of mischief in her eyes. Suddenly she is tired of painting on canvas and instead she paints Piper with unadulterated adoration. They undress slowly; each inch of revealed skin followed by a gentle kiss or caress. Oil paints stain them both through the trail that Alex leaves with her hands from breasts to thighs and the forest eyed painter being pressed against every inch of it all. Their lips collide in a burning inferno until it simmers down to languid caresses of the tongue.
They are broken apart by blinding light a blond man, Piper's husband to be, and he kills them both on the grounds that he was disrespected.
The France-Habsburg rivalry in the 17th century is one of their bloodier times together. The two of them fight that war side by side, shedding blood and reveling in their power when joined together. The Thirty Years' war is one of the most destructive times either of their souls have ever witnessed; however, it gives Piper a thirst for blood and Alex a respect for leadership. They do not let her lead any of the battles on the complaint that she is a woman. They just barely let she and Piper into battle at all, but they are such undeniable assets that the leaders can not turn them away.
The two of them fight side by side for the first fifteen years before dying together. They are reincarnated immediately after, just old enough to understand that the war is ending before Alex gets caught in crossfire while wandering with curiosity to somewhere she thought was safe from the battle field. She is sixteen. Piper, barely fifteen years old, tells Alex to slow down, that she can't run that fast. Perhaps being slower than Alex saves her life. The blonde stops in horror as she watches her best friend and first love get torn through by a whizzing bullet. Piper stands in shock with her hands clamped over her own mouth to hold back her screams, just as Alex had taught her to do if they are ever hiding from the enemy. They are undeniably French children and will be killed instantly. Instead of fleeing like every nerve ending screams for her to do, she rushes to Alex's side and drags her body to cover. Blood is everywhere and the bullet is lodged deep into her stomach, and if the medical training her mother had given her in this lifetime is anything to go by, it has likely punctured her lung. Alex will drown in her own blood in moments. She is losing her once again. "Reviens-moi." Piper taps her cheeks in a vain attempt to rouse her, but it is useless. She's lost so much blood.
"Alexandrie, s'il te plaît!" Piper cries quietly as she presses her hands over the wound to stop the bleeding, but she is right to fear that it was too late. One of her hands move to press against Alex's pulse and she finds that it is still. Three Habsburg soldiers find them with Piper's head pressing into Alex's chest as she sobs for the loss of her love.
They shoot them both.
They are reincarnated twice after that, but do not find each other again until 1943. Piper is safe in Germany. Alex is not. They meet when Alex is forced into another concentration camp. On the way she sees all blue eyes and blond hair. Alex is small and terrified, but she quickly learns to hide those emotions for constant fear of her life. Her family is still in Auschwitz. Alex is not. She is alone with people who hate her and will use her until they decide to take her life. This is a traumatic concept for a thirteen year old to comprehend. The men escorting her and five other children around her age make a stop at a house bigger than she has ever witnessed and in the front lawn there is a pretty blonde girl with bright blue eyes who stops in her steps when she meets forest green eyes across the way.
Lifetimes of war, oil paints, trade routes and eternal love come flashing back through her memories. She does not remember until she is older in her other lifetimes. Seeing Alex at age ten sparks it all much sooner. Her younger brother, just as blond and blue eyed as she, grows annoyed with the lack of attention. He throws the rubber ball on the ground and stomps into their home. Piper continues to stare. Alex's eyes watch her in wonder because she thought she would never see Piper again. She thought that death all those years ago was the end to their time together. Despair settles thick and heavy in her gut when she remembers just who they are in this lifetime and that she will never get close enough to see the specks of color within those blue irises, never mind wrap her arms around the girl she loves. So they just stare, sadness slowly coating their gazes until a few of the violent men return from inside the house and drive her away, their eyes never breaking contact until she is too far away to see.
Alex dies in the concentration camp at fifteen.
It is 2002 when Piper, frustrated and cold, breezes into a low-end bar in New York. Her cheeks are flushed red with the chill and she is fresh out of college with a master's degree and a taste for adventure. Her eyes are hopeful when she asks the bartender if they have any openings, she can't rely on her trust fund forever, but she quickly deflates when he admits that they won't have openings any time soon. Alex spots her first. Her heart catches in her chest and her breath in her throat as she stands and slowly makes her way over to a woman she's known inside and out for centuries.
Alex doesn't say a word.
Piper's eyes, when they finally meet Alex's, are wide and ecstatic and in love and awed and a million other words she could use to describe how it feels to finally find her during a time they can be together fully and truly. They always had each other for time far too short. That, or they'd just barely missed each other, lives not quite fitting together until now. No words are spoken, Piper merely wraps her arms around Alex's neck and leans up to place a heart-mending, watery kiss on her lips. Tears shed for all of the deaths they've suffered, all of the time they've missed, all of the lives they've taken. The hard part is over.
And they are irreversibly in love.
A/N: Guess who didn't fall off the face of the earth?