i. summer

He meets her in the summertime, under a bright, azure sky. The sun shines merrily through the trees, mingled golden and green shadows dappling the forest floor; the babbling brook running through the trees adds a splash of sound and color as it reflects the light. Leaves crunch underfoot as he steps forward, looking for a nice place to sit down for a while to have his lunch.

Then he rounds the bend in the stream and stops, surprised, because there's a girl there. She's about his age, if he had to guess, dressed in a kind of old-looking blouse and a long skirt, leaning over to pick something up—is that a flower?

"Oh!" she exclaims as soon as he appears, stepping back in surprise with her free hand flying up to her heart.

"Sorry," he says, hands held up to put her at ease as he grins sheepishly. "Didn't mean t'startle you." He keeps his hands raised for a moment longer, away from the sword belted at his side just so that she knows he means her no harm. There's something about her, but he doesn't know what…

The girl laughs, too. "It's fine!" she says, waving an arm dismissively. The other hand holds a basket full of flowers, he notes. Cute. "I wasn't paying attention, that's all!"

"Yeah, I noticed," he teases, then stops himself before he starts to ramble about how she was being less observant than a deaf fruit bat with a mango in front of it. Not the best way to make first impressions, that—a lesson he's learned from experience.

They're standing in a small flower-dotted clearing, the stream running through one side before tumbling back under the shade of the trees. It's sunnier here, quite nice for a lunch break. He moves a bit further into it and sits down in the grass.

"So," he says conversationally, "nice to meet you, random girl in the forest. My name's Dave, and a cool fact about me is that apple juice is my favorite shit in the entire world. What about you?"

She's staring at him with a funny look on her face. Not like, ha-ha funny, but like what the shit is going on in that head? Did he say something wrong? Is she just weirder than he originally thought? Is there something on his face—

"My name is Jade," she says, and his entire world clicks.

Soulmate, the wind whispers.

Soulmate, agrees the brook.

Soulmate, murmurs the grass at his side.

Oh.

His face must have the same funny expression, because she seems to realize that he knows now, too. Her face splits into a wide grin. "Well," she says, "and since I can tell I can trust you now, I'll tell you a really cool fact about me!" She pauses, for dramatic effect probably, and then says with sparkling eyes and a bright smile and god she's beautiful—

"I'm a witch!"

His world, so recently ignited and colored and sent spinning at double speed, grinds to a halt.

Oh no.

He stuffs the sandwich he'd been about to eat back in his satchel, scrambling to his feet. "I—I have to go," he says. "I'm sorry."

He doesn't think he's ever been sorrier in his life.

"What?" The smile has faded and now she looks bewildered, hurt, like a kicked puppy. "I … I don't understand—"

"I'm a knight," he says roughly, already turning away from her. "We can't."

"Oh," she says, simply, softly.

Knights hunt witches. It's always been that way. This would never work. It's better if they just never even try. It's better this way. No one gets hurt nearly as much.

When he turns around, his determination wavering, she has already vanished into thin air. He never sees her again.

In another life… do you think we could have?

Yeah. I think we could.

ii. autumn

The leaves swirl as they tumble from the tree outside the window, and she turns away, biting her lip. He's late.

She draws her shawl tighter about her shoulders to ward off the chill from the drafty room, already growing cooler now that the sun has set, painting the sky a deep violet with the last dregs of the day's light. He's never late.

She's just about taken to pacing the room to try to settle her nerves when finally—finally—there's a rap on the door. Three quick knocks, then two slow. It's him.

Jade yanks it open and all but hauls him inside, shutting it quickly against the cold gust that threatens to creep in.

"You're—" she starts to say, but he cuts her off with a quick kiss and a tight embrace. His clothes are still chilled from the outdoors, but she melts into him anyway, her head finding the crook of his shoulder and her arms wrapping around him. "Your lips are cold," she grumbles instead, and he chuckles.

"Sorry I made you worry, darlin'," he says, releasing her and stepping back to collapse onto her armchair. "I was making my way over, then I thought I might've had a tail. And we can't have that shit, so I had to lose the dipshit. Make like a lizard who gets picked up by a curious gremlin of a child, y'know? Bye-bye tail, leave it there wiggling in the kid's grubby-ass palm."

"You're sure you lost them?" she asks anxiously, glancing to the window. "If they've got tails on you, it means they suspect you…"

Dave blows out a breath. "I know," he says, short. He's worried, too. "And god, if I've led them to you, too, I will never forgive myself. But my stupid fucking phone broke earlier, so I couldn't tell you without coming in person. And I didn't know if you were safe."

"You shouldn't worry about me so much," she says, walking behind the chair to start massaging his shoulders. "I can handle myself."

"I know, I know," he sighs. "I just… wanna keep you safe, Jade. This whole spy business doesn't leave a lotta room for that sorta thing, but a dude can hope."

She laughs and bends over to kiss the top of his head. "Don't worry," she says cheerfully. "After this mission, we can tell HQ we're taking some time off. Technically, we never got much of a honeymoon because we spent the month after the wedding doing field work, so we can use that as an excuse."

Dave snorts, catching her hand to tug her around to the front of the chair. She lets him, and he pulls her down into his lap, holding her close. "Dirk'll just say we spent the month after the wedding doin' field work in the Bahamas and that that counts as a honeymoon," he says dryly.

"I'll tell Dirk that that shit don't fly around here," Jade grins. Dave laughs and kisses her cheek.

"I'd pay actual money to see the look on his face when you do," he says. She hums and loops an arm around his neck, leaning against him for a quiet moment. "So," he says after a moment. "Did you find anything interesting on that recon mission today?"

They descend into talking work things for a while, and the hours drift by in each other's company, until it grows late and they both know they have to part. They have different covers for this mission and aren't staying together; he has to go back to his hotel room and she has to return to her hideaway. This hotel room is just a decoy for their meeting tonight.

He kisses her goodnight before he turns away. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Of course," she smiles. "Love you, good night!"

"Love you too," he says, his face still lighting up with an almost shy smile as he says it. He still looks at her with awe sometimes, and now is one of them, until she can't take it anymore and pushes him to the door before she gives in and tells him to stay, consequences be damned.

"Go, go!" she laughs. "Get some sleep, silly boy!"

He quirks a grin at her and nods once before ducking out of the room. She sighs wearily and goes to do her own things for the night, hoping he's right and he lost those people tailing him. But she knows she can't waste time fretting. That won't help anyone.

It's not until the morning that she hears of the mysterious gas explosion that occurred not too long after he left her apartment, tragically killing a man travelling for private business. It doesn't connect in her mind until they show his picture on the news.

She screams, but he's already gone.

We almost had a happy ending this time. It's not fucking fair!

Shh. I know. I know.

iii. winter

The second she plops down on the couch next to him, he frowns. "You have engine grease on your face."

Across from him, she laughs, almost glowing. It reminds him of the stars drifting by outside the windows. "I am a starship engineer," she points out. "What do you think I do all day?"

"Give yourself facials with weird-ass mechanical lube," he answers. "Obviously. Are you facefucking the ship or something?"

Jade scrunches up her face in disgust. "First of all, ew, you are gross," she says, holding up one finger. The second pops up as she continues, "Second, that would entail me going in facefirst through the exhaust port. I'm not doing that. I go in feet first, through the maintenance shaft."

"Kinky," is all he can say.

"I'm going to throw a wrench at you!"

"Yikes, Jade, we're getting into BDSM threesomes now? Man, I dunno how I feel about this… have you talked to the ship about bringin' a third person into your relationship? In fact I'm not sure I'm down to like, date a fuckin' starship, we should probably talk about this before getting into anything…"

Jade scoots closer and catches his sleeve. "You're gross and terrible, and I don't know why we're friends," she says matter-of-factly before she wipes the grease from her cheek, right onto—right—augh, Jade no—onto his nice, clean shirt.

"Ewwww!" he complains, mimicking her tone of voice from earlier as she laughs merrily. "Now who's the gross one?"

"The guy who has spaceship lube on his clothes, obviously," she shoots back promptly. Then she snuggles up against his side, making herself cozy in the crook of his arm. "Mm, you're warm."

"Don't you fucking dare stick your cold-ass dead hands up my shirt again," he warns, holding up a finger. "Or I will tickle you. That's a serious threat, I'm gonna follow through."

Jade eyes him like she's debating how serious he actually is, her eyes narrowed slightly as she evaluates him. He meets her gaze equally, taking the chance to note how vibrantly green her irises are behind her glasses. He's noticed before, but it's like every time he looks at her, he just notices even more how pretty she is and how incredibly fucked he is.

Finally, she huffs and just settles for snuggling closer. "Fiiiiiiine… I'll just wait until you fall asleep and then warm up my hands."

Dave snorts, wrapping his arm around her and trying to pretend that the warm feeling in the pit of his stomach isn't as incredibly there as it is. Being head over heels for your best friend is hard, okay? "Harls, we both know that not only am I the lighter sleeper here, but also one of us is the one who always fuckin' falls asleep on movie night and it sure as hell ain't me."

Jade laughs, caught. "Okay, okay!" she admits. "Fine, you win. For now."

He grins triumphantly and tries his hardest not to dwell on the sound of her laughter. (He really, really likes making her laugh.) "Good," he says. "Anyway, what're we watchin' tonight?"

"Hmm…" Jade hums thoughtfully, trails off, and then sits there for a long moment. Then (without answering the question, dammit) she rearranges herself to lay her legs across his lap.

"Why," he raises an eyebrow dryly. Not that he minds, per se, he just has to put up a bit of a show…

"Shush!" She lightly smacks his shoulder. "It's cold in the depths of space, you know. You're warm."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever…"

Eventually, they put on an old cartoon about a dog and a lemur teaming up to fight crime in the twenty-eighth century. It's ancient, made in the twenty-fifth century, but it's still funny, even today when it's both outdated and incorrect. Jade, of course, falls asleep on his shoulder by the end of the third episode, and he, of course, carries her over to her sleeping pod. It takes a bit of courage to lean down and kiss her forehead with a whisper of g'night, sleepyhead but he does that, too, before he turns to leave back for his sector of the ship.

He lies awake, a silly smile on his face, when he settles down in his own cabin, thinking. Soulmates are a concept most have left behind on the ground; it just seems ridiculous and unlikely given how many planets humans have spread across now. But still, sometimes, when he's with Jade, he almost feels…

Something clicks. That's how it feels. It feels right.

Satisfied, he falls asleep…

…and that night, on the ship's clock that's set roughly to correspond to time back on Spaceport Gamma-Five on Skaia, between three and four in the morning, a Dersite fleet that snuck up on them with advanced cloaking devices attacks. An unexpectedly good shot hits the reactor core, leaving them floating dead in space with sensors failing and emergency life support barely functioning.

She comes to his cabin, wrapped in a blanket to ward off the chill that's already becoming starkly apparent as the ship's heating chokes on its dying breaths, and he holds her.

"I'm not sure if we'll freeze before we run out of oxygen," she whispers against the silence. It's always too silent in space. He holds her tighter.

"I don't know either," he murmurs. "Guess… this is it, huh?"

She kisses him, tears streaming down her cheeks as she squeezes her eyes shut, and he feels them prick at his own eyes, too, as he kisses her back as passionately as he wishes he had before.

"I don't want to die here," she whispers, her voice trembling perilously. "I don't—I—we can't!"

He doesn't say well, looks like we're gonna, but they're both thinking it.

He wraps himself around her as they both layer up and huddle together under blankets, but they both know they're doing nothing but postponing the inevitable. Prospit and Skaia are too far away. They'll be dead before help can get here, if help can even find them with the Dersite fleet around. There's no way out. Just the slow, excruciating wait, and the ever-present cold.

Jade shivers in his arms. Dave wishes he could save her. But he can't. He knows that. He knows that, and he hates it.

And as his vision slowly dims, movement growing sluggish, he remembers—

soulmates.

It's the last thing he's aware of. That, and her, cold in his arms.

I'm so damn tired of this.

I know. But maybe we'll get it right next time!

iv. spring

Yes, yes, yes, yes!

"Bam! And submitted!" Jade crows, triumphantly slamming her laptop shut—well, no, she closes it with … slightly (slightly!) more force than usual, slowing down right before it fully closes. Laptops are precious to astrophysics students, with all those fun models that are a pain to work out by hand.

It takes her a moment to realize that maybe she shouldn't have said that that loud in the middle of the coffeeshop, but… oops. The girl at the table next to her claps.

"Paper?" she asks.

"Nah, research project for Astro," Jade answers, wrinkling her nose. "What about you?"

"Research paper for archaeology!" she smiles. "Kinda long and … okay, really long, but I got to pick my topic, so it's not as bad as it could be."

"Nice!" Jade grins at her. "Well, good luck to you, I'm gonna go get some iced coffee to celebrate. See you around!"

She packs up her bag and slings it over her shoulder, walking over to the counter. It's three in the afternoon and she's been here working for about four hours, but she's a regular, and it's right off campus, so that's not too unusual. At the counter is Dave—she still blushes when she remembers the first time she came here and accidentally called him "that cute barista". To his face.

Oops.

But also, true.

At least since she's been here many times (though Rose had to drag her, the second time, because she was sure she could never face the cute barista ever again), they're past that. In fact, they're kind of friends now!

"Yo, it's the astro nerd," he greets, giving her a half-smile and a casual wave. He drums his hands on the counter to the rhythm of the song playing in the shop. "Finished that giant project of yours, huh?"

Jade grins, embarrassment of the past six months forgotten. "Yup!" she beams. "And now my evening is free! I hadn't expected to be done before midnight, but hey, I am soooo not complaining."

Dave gives her a thumbs-up. "Nice," he says. "So, can I getcha something? Or did you just come here to chat up—" No. No, he better not finish this with what she's thinking. "—the cute barista?"

"Oh my gosh will you just drop that already?" she whines, burying her face in her hands to hide her blush. He laughs.

"Well, if it's any comfort, you're the cute astro nerd as far as I'm concerned," he offers, shrugging. If anything, Jade's blush deepens, but she peeks out over the tops of her fingers. He waves at her, giving her that lazy grin that makes her stomach do somersaults. "But seriously. Did you want somethin'? Cuz my shift's ending now, so if not, I'm outta here."

"Medium iced caramel latte please," she squeaks, blatantly changing the subject. She has to drop her hands to fish her wallet out of her backpack to get her card out, but at least that means no eye contact.

Luckily, he doesn't push the "cute barista" thing, instead just stepping back to make the drink. But when he slides it over the counter to her, she blinks. Instead of her name written on the cup, there's ten digits…

"You can save me in your phone as—"

"Don't you even say it, mister!"

He grins kind of bashfully, and oh god that's even cuter than the indolent smile. Especially when he self-consciously rubs the back of his neck.

"I mean. You don't have to if you don't wanna, I was just…"

Jade rummages around in her bag until she finds her phone, typing the number into a new contact and saving it.

"There," she says. "The Kind-Of Cute Barista."

"What," he frowns. "'Kind-Of'? I got demoted?"

"I couldn't fit 'the cute barista who is cuter when he's not teasing me and being mean' into the name slot," she explains with a teasing wink.

He reaches up to untie his apron, snorting. "What're you talkin' about, would I ever be mean to a cute physics nerd?"

"Yes."

"Well damn. Harsh."

Jade laughs again, feeling warm inside. She picks up her iced coffee and pokes a straw through the lid, taking a long sip. Mmm, yes, this feels good after so long working on that project. And the sugar and caffeine are giving her the courage to maybe… "Well, hey, mister kinda cute, your shift is over, right?"

"Yup," he says, popping the p as he turns away to hang his apron back up with the others. "That's why this thing is going back on the rack. Why?"

Jade takes another sip of coffee to avoid immediately answering the question. "Well," she says, dragging out the word, "if you're not too busy, we could take a walk or something."

Dave stops, turns around, and looks at her oddly, just long enough for her heart to start hammering wildly because oh no she fucked up she—

"I'd like that," he says slowly, and the bashful smile is back.

She feels herself blushing again. "Great!"

He walks around the counter to stand next to her, then casually takes her hand. Jade tries her hardest not to squeak, and is successful only because of her coffee, once again. But as they walk out the door into the warm spring sunshine, the air sweet from the flowers lining the street, something clicks. It feels right and it feels good, like the springtime—the start of something new.

AN: look I didn't ENTIRELY kill anyone this year, aren't you proud of me?