A/N: Written for the 20 Random Crossovers Competition, Clannad/Déjà vu.
How Many Times
She didn't know him. He didn't know her. And yet…it felt like they'd simply forgotten instead.
And it wasn't just they'd passed each other in a hallway at school and forgotten. It was something more intimate than that. Something more tender, more cruel.
Without any conscious thought, his hand was reaching for her cheek. And he touched it: softly, tenderly…lovingly. And she leaned into it. Felt the warmth in that hand, and the callouses that spoke of strength.
'How many times have we met?' she wondered aloud, the first part tumbling out to meet the second. How many times… She hadn't even thought until those words they'd met for sure before. But they had.
'How many lives…' he said, before shaking his head and drawing away from her. 'I'm sorry. That was…'
'A dream?' She tried to rationalise it to herself as well as to him. 'Another life?'
He laughed. 'A cruel god that makes us live a hundred times for an unchangeable fate.'
But that was only because neither of them remembered their fates. Remembered the tragedy. And yet, he was bitter, and she sad. Somewhere, deep in their hearts, they did know. Just as they know they'd met before.
Just as they knew they'd had something deep before – something filling, something leaving a gaping hole when it was gone.
There was no-one to count how many times it had been. How many times they'd met and taken each other's hands and headed for the same tragedy together. How many times, afterwards, they'd cringed away. When the tragedy had carved itself so deeply into their hearts they know, inherently, to avoid each other, avoid that path. Even at the cost of the year of happiness they'd shared together – the tragedy had been too long, too cruel.
And again, they drifted off without an introduction or a farewell, and avoided each other awkwardly after that. Autumn turned into winter. Winter into spring, and then another winter came along, and the third: their tragic month. And each of them watched the snow fall from windows miles away from each other and cried, and fleetingly remembered a meeting under a tree and a soft touch –
And then time would rewind and they'd find each other under the tree again. 'How many times…?'
'…had it been?' And another loop would have engraved themselves in fine print into the soul – but not in their memories. To them, the other was a stranger they seemed to know. Someone they'd met and formed a bond with a long time ago.