This is my attempt at doing a PastLives!fic within the confines of a telepathy!fic. I rather like the idea of Sam and Jake's souls cycling like this. I don't know that I accept a lot of these lives as headcannon, but they work within the context of this story. At the very least, it explains the telepathy.

"According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves."

-Plato, The Symposium

Gentleness: The reign of Ahmose I

He was a hard man, a tough man, a man born to follow his orders and do as he felt was right. Rarely, if ever, did those two things ever conflict. He loved his mother and honored his Gods. Not all of his people agreed with the campaign, but he knew that he had to stand strong for the men under his command.

The city was burning, but he did not allow his eyes to water as he searched the wreckage. His own troops had been a day late. He was behind schedule and annoyed at the delay in going to find Re'hotpe. The smoke was thick. Still, it was his duty to find his commander's son, who had used his father's influence to make his way into the front lines of the burning city and the chaos. Re'hotpe was a grown man, but no man would willingly let his son be left behind, not when he could order other men to find him. He stilled his horse and made his way through the battle and the confusion, back into an area that had already been pillaged, "Re'hotpe?" The younger man had last been accounted for in the scrimmage in this area. "Re'hotpe?"

His horse barred his teeth as he pulled on the reins and came to a stop at a sudden sound. It was the sob of a woman, a girl. If Re'hotpe was having his way with some girl, he would thrash the child into oblivion. They were here for the glory of their homeland, not to slake their lusts. "Re'hotpe?" He demand, pulling aside a smoking doorway into a house that was so unlike ones he found to be traditional. The Hyksos had to go, they could not even build homes. He was sorry it had to be this way, but war was war.

The man he sought was not here. The person crying was not, in fact, a woman. It was but a boy, crying over the bodies of three women. One was aged, and had obviously died from fright or whatever it was that took the aged in times of war. He knew it all too well. It had taken so many. The second was obviously the child's mother, as her body was blocking a doorway. She had died trying to protect the shrine of her Gods, protect her family. Ruthless soldiers were not uncommon as the city was overthrown and there was blood everywhere. Some men took delight in exerting heartless control over women. The third woman stopped him in his tracks. Something cried out to him. He could not think. The boy spoke, unaware that he should never speak to a solider he did not know, "Sadeh was to leave the city yesterday, before the city began to burn. She was going to take me. It was to be an adventure at the farm." The boy whispered, pushing aside dark hair that framed his sister's face. The father was obviously gone, dead, and there had been plans to evacuate the boy, with his sister for security. They would have met on the road, he realized. He would have seen her alive, seen her smile, and he knew he had missed something important because of a broken axle. He cursed his chariot before he knew what he was doing, or why this foreign girl with an Egyptian name even mattered.

The morbid thoughts raced through him. "Come away!" The boy jumped, letting out another sob. He could not allow himself to care. He saw another house standing, and when they boy knew who lived there, he sent him there. It was all he could do. When the boy was safely inside where he knew other people to be hiding, he did the only thing he could. He quickly put a bit of food in her lifeless hand for a full afterlife, and covered the three women with acrid fabric. People would never believe a solider had done this act of mercy upon them. May the Gods keep them.

In his first life, his first incarnation, he was a solider. It wasn't an uncommon occupation in those days, as Egypt was at the zenith of its power. He had a hand in expelling the Hyksos from Egypt and for saving the son of a powerful man. And yet, he lived and died alone, honored as a solider among soldiers, honored as a hero across the dynasties. He died with one word on his lips, one word that the Priests and Scribes omitted from history because they did not understand its context. He died smiling, "Sadeh..."

Patience: Ancient Greece

There are many things that humans don't know about life, even though they live it, and she was aware enough to know that fact all to well, even though she knew she could do little about it. She was a Athenian maiden unlike many others. She valued education, and her father turned a blind eye when she wanted to study math and art in addition to homemaking. The sophists interested her, but she knew better than to get mixed up with them. The best she could do was listen when she could, and so it didn't do to be picky or choosy, when she shook off the watchful eye of her mother. She lingered around the agora as best she might, careful not to be seen. She heard a whisper, "Go to the Academy!" A woman, one probably who herself as her wares, hissed.

She knew what the Academy was. The Academy was run by Plato. Men and women gathered there to study law, philosophy, and so many other things. She wanted to be an orator, defend the law. She wanted to defend those who were too poor to do it themselves, but she knew better. She was living on borrowed time. Her wedding was ever approaching, and she was living on borrowed time, time stolen away from the preparations that grew in number every day.

The woman's words lingered as she was fitted for new clothing, as she tried to leave the women's section of the house with but a trustworthy slave to accompany her. She prayed for the death of this man she was to marry. She knew his name, but would not see him until they were married. She had no way to get out, but the Academy beckoned in late winter, weeks before her wedding. She had to get away. This was her lot in life, but there had to more out there for those who were not chained to a life of domesticity.

She went, one day when her mother was preparing for a religious festival and the wedding and was quite distracted. She said that she was going to send a slave for the herbs for the ritual bath she would take before she married. She had not mentioned anything about not going along to fetch them, which she did. There, she heard a group of men shouting back and forth as they debated love. They were passionate and she finally understood that she would never have love in her life.

One man in particular caught her eye, because of the way he opened the conversation to all people, and spoke of his travels. His argument was sound, even as she was hard pressed to keep up with his rhetoric. She sat for hours and listened. He smiled at her, his bearded face making it clear that he was a man of the books, not of the sword like her intended.

It was the only time she saw him. She was married not three weeks later, and lived a life much like any other, her husband leaving domestic duties to her, as he contented himself to going off to war and campaign. She rarely left home after her wedding, and for the first time in her life, that was just the way she wanted things to be. She could not imagine how much it would hurt to see him, him living a life that she still dreamed of, him looking at her with a smile in his eyes as another man's child grew in her belly. Childbirth took her life, along with the second child she carried. She never got to see her son study under one of the greatest rhetors the world had yet seen. Her son never knew that, once upon a time, the teacher that loved him like a son and smiled upon him had once favored his mother with that same smile.

Faithfulness: 529 to 1820s

Weary souls always find their rest, and hers took refuge in the Church, shortly after the Order of St. Benedict took hold across Europe. She spent nearly 1500 years in the Church, mostly entering as soon as she was able in childhood. Her soul had come to love searching for God, and she could not bear the agony of leaving children behind. She lived many lives as a nun, and later as a monk. Living as a man, she found solace in working with horses, and lived several good, if lonely, lives wherein horses at the monasteries in which she lived were her connection to God. The Benedictine Rule held fast to hard work and simple living, and she took refuge from a life of the mind and a life of the heart, and lived a life of simple service to cleanse her soul many times over.

The other monks would never understand, but he found God in nature and with the horses, and often saw flashes of wide open spaces that were covered with animals with humps on their backs as though she was being pulled towards them. After many, many, long and short lives, she was one of the first monks in her order to go America, knowing in her soul that her mission field was calling. The deck of the boat was as close to the States as her earthly body came. She died on the boat, her male body tossed overboard before she reached the Americas. Thus, she would never get to meet a young man that would have taught her the ways of his land, even as she used her incarnation to teach him about friendship. The soul she had never met lived a few more lives in quick succession before he died under the thumb of oppression, fighting against the exploitation of people she had hoped to save.

Self Control: 1850, Somewhere West of Nowhere

His soul knew loss and pain. His life had been stolen from him time and time again, first with smallpox and then with cultural domination and discrimination as his soul moved farther and farther West. He fought against it, using what he could of his education to speak out against oppression, even when they began to use more thorough methods to silence him. He read the land and sky and the grasses, and watched, slowly, as the wagons arrived and the trains ripped away a life he had lived for thousands of years. He mourned the deer, and the buffalo, and the horses. He was incredibly lonely, even as he lived in community with people he loved. The insightful among his people said his soul had always been that way.

He saw often, flashes of a lush, green, landscape, and felt pangs of hunger that were not his own. He lived to a great age many times over, and once rose to power within his community sharing visions of far away lands. His children grew close to the land, and his blessings were many. His soul knew it was waiting, though for what, he never quite knew on a conscious level. Every time he lived as a woman, and gave birth, he would look into the eyes of his children and wonder if his soul would recognize theirs. Sometimes they did, but never in the way he was searching for.

He was a young man, again, when it happened. They spoke for the first time. His soul knew, somehow, that this moment was momentous. It shouldn't have been. The girl was bedraggled as she rode astride on a borrowed horse. Her bonnet was waterlogged. David did not tip his hat at her when she came towards him. "Isn't the way?" She said, breaking every ounce of social convention that existed between people. The rain was heavy, but that did not excuse her breach, or her lack of common sense. He wanted to tell her he could be some kind of killer. She told him too much, "I'm going to California, and I'm going to strike it rich as a dressmaker and be my own woman. The least you ought to do is say hello."

"A woman like you ought to be on the stage." He said, gruffly. She was not suited to this landscape. Was she from Boston or something? He heard New England in her voice, as he had once heard from other passers by. Some followers of some church had once sought help at his ranch, which he gave. He knew what it was to have nowhere to turn.

"Well!" She bit out. "I might be independent, but that doesn't make me a lightskirt!" She clicked at her horse, and the mare jolted forward, clearly unused to be told what to do. The horse's pace stayed the same. David smiled. She had gotten the wool pulled over her eyes by that trader of horseflesh a few towns back.

"I meant the stagecoach, ma'am." She was lost, and he didn't think she knew that she was on private property. How had she gotten onto his land? Probably the same way she'd assumed he couldn't see her innocence shining like a light behind that riot of red hair. They had no choice but to ride out the rain side by side, though David was tempted to fall back or go on ahead. He could not make his body listen to his good sense. She was of lovely form, and he found himself wondering what she might say next. "Irish?"

She stuck out her chin and her accent thickened, "And what's it to you?" He heard the rest of her question that she did not speak. "You're hardly one to judge." She was right. The signs often read: No Irish, No Indians, and No Dogs. She seemed the type to go in anyway, as was he. His mother had always said he was foolish, but he wasn't about to stop. It had only gotten him in real trouble a time or two, and he knew how to handle himself. It was a huge risk, but he wasn't going to sit down.

He was hardly discriminating against her. He could not see this little slip of a girl as anything other than a young woman playing in the rain. Even in the dampness, the scent of lemongrass surrounded her. "The rush for gold is a fool's errand. The real gold's in the land and the sky." Thousands of people were heading west daily, and he couldn't help but be glad. At least his home wouldn't be as crowded, and nature would be free to do as the earth wished. It was odd, then, that he was warning her against going, "You ought to try your hand at ranching."

"Like you, you mean?" She snorted. Her horse tossed her head, and David had to reach out and grab the slippery reins before the girl fell off into the muddy sod. He could see a smudge of it on her face, and so clearly, she had a rough go of traveling. And yet, there was an instinctual grace to her movements. Maybe she'd had horses a child.

"You're on my land, ma'am." He corrected, gently, as he settled the horse. She wrenched the reins back from him and frowned. The horse sidestepped, and David wanted to grab her and make sure she was safe. It was a passing urge, he supposed, though he knew he had too much self-control.

"Stop calling me 'ma'am." She insisted, as she tried to control her flea-bitten mount, "I'm Sarah. This isn't your ranch." She was supremely confident. He heard the words she did not speak, heard the confusion she hid behind confidence. He wasn't the first of his people to own land, and he wasn't going to be the last.

"Don't believe me?" He did not bother to tell her that he had come by the land in the same way that many men did, though hard work and not taking any garbage from anyone. He owned the land, had the damn deed in the safe, and if they wanted to kill him for it, they could. The safe combination went with him. There was nothing that was going to stop him. He didn't have to argue with some little bit of a girl, who wasn't more than 14 to his 19. "Head up that way, stop at the strange rock and look around for the main road. You're lost, Sarah." Her name was peppery on his lips. She looked like a mouse, all wet and indignant. He didn't tell her she'd have to ride for a few miles, or that his house was closer.

She looked at him, for a second, and did just that. He waited 50 years for her to come back, wishing he'd known whatever had happened to her, wishing he'd followed her on that awful glue on hooves she'd been riding. He never knew that she had in fact turned back, and tried to find him in town. He never realized that he'd never told her his name, and the townsfolk were unwilling to point a pretty, pious, White girl in the direction of a man that, for all of that he had done, could not escape the stigma of his birth.

Kindness: 1945, California

Sally Frances was the best girl at the USO. She always had a warm smile and a soft touch when she passed out coffee. Her eyes twinkled, and she was so full of life that boys shipping out often begged her for a dance or one touch that reminded them of their girl back home. Sally couldn't dance, couldn't even move without knocking into people, but it didn't matter. Sally bumped into Helen Martin. She was a nice girl, though somewhat younger than she was. Helen was a good friend, though. "Sorry, Helen. This place is a jam tonight."

The bow in Helen's hair was in place, crisply and neatly. Sally knew her own hair was a mess and the pencil marks on the back of her legs were crooked. "Well, all these boys are going to take out Hitler, and they'll be doing it thinking of our coffee." Helen was very idealistic, already having a solider sweetheart named Charlie Ely, from somewhere in Nevada. Helen's family was from there, but Helen and Charlie had only just begun to date when Uncle Sam came knocking. Over the music and the clatter of dishes, she called, "Sally! Look, it's John!"

Sally saw a young man with dark hair and dark eyes in front of her, across the room. He saw Helen and waived, crossing the room towards them both. They were from the same place, probably grew up together. Sally flushed. He was very good looking in his uniform, though she supposed that United States Army could take even the ugliest of men and shine him up some. She busied herself with coffee and tried not to think about her frizzy hair that never did hold a V-roll.

Moments later, she was heading towards the door when a voice stopped her, "Do you always run away, Miss Mouse?" His voice was everything she'd allowed herself to imagine, slow, teasing. The press of people over the loud orchestra hid his next words. Sally gestured quickly towards the door, knowing that he probably had a message from Helen. They found themselves outside, under the wide front porch of the USO dance hall. "Well, Miss Mouse, what have you to say for yourself?" He leaned against the wall, cap in hand. The porch was all but deserted.

"Look, Captain..." Sally started, staring at his jacket. How was he so ranked, when he looked so young? Sally didn't know, but she suddenly understood his easy bearing and his ownership of the uniform. This was no little boy shipping out, high on ideals. He, before her, was a man.

"John Morgan." He corrected, making it clear that he did want to be called by his rank or even his last name. "My buddy Charlie Ely sent word to his girl. I was the Pony Express. He said I had to meet you."

"Did he?" Sally grinned when he cracked a smile. It was wide and infectious. "I can't think why." She knew exactly why, as she knew exactly what Helen and Charlie were up to. Helen had tried to set her up again. She was headed back to St. Mary's come the start of term, and she had no urge to marry and settle down quickly. She wanted her country to crush Hitler, and she wanted to keep on working. Homemaking was not for her. Other girls dreamed of homes and babies, but she wasn't doing that until she met the right man.

"I can." John replied, in the dim light, over the loud noise that was muffled by the doorway. "Look, Sally. I know this is sudden, but can I write you? Charlie says you're at college, that you've got your head on your shoulders, and I'd like to be able to write to someone who doesn't want a promise of undying love." She blinked up at him, surprised by his sensibility. She thought they could be good friends. "I'd rather court a woman when I'm in the same country, and I'm off to Europe tomorrow."

Sally nodded, willing to do her patriotic duty, and trying not to admit that she wanted to talk to him and not any other soldier. Sally was happy that they spent the night talking about his studies at medical school and her love of Plato and St. Benedict. He had gone to Stanford. She wondered how they had never met at some function. The girls of St. Mary's often met Stanford boys. She gave him her address, and before he left, he kissed her cheek. She floated for months after that, floated as each letter came back and forth. He loved his Shoshoni culture, and wanted to practice rural medicine, wanted to be Chairman one day. He liked to eat raw tomatoes with salt on them. He enjoyed working on his father's ranch. He thought her drawings were funny, and thought she was a good writer. He gave feedback on her novel, most of which the government censored.

It all came crashing down when John's mother came to visit. He'd died in the Battle of the Bulge. In his final letter, he'd asked to take her out for dinner when he came home. She hadn't replied that she would go. It broke her heart that he'd died uncertain of her affections.

Sally kept it together when Helen married Charlie, and they had a son named Mac in 1946. She even smiled when her sister Becky married John's little brother. She cried at their wedding and accepted a hug from John's mother when she said, "That should have been you and Johnny." She got a cold that spring, and rejoiced when pneumonia took her away. Everyone said she'd died of a broken heart, though the poetry and the novel, all written during a high period of 1945, she had published posthumously spoke of great love and hope.

Love: Present Day Nevada

She looked up from her cards, with a calm expression on her face. "The Universe wasn't taking any chances, not this time." The permed lady said, "You're both stubborn. You could have been learning from each other 2000 years ago, if only your axle hadn't broken, Jake, and if you'd listened to your gut, Sam. It's why you've got a telepathic connection now."

Jake tried to school his expression. The best medium in the country, whom they'd arranged to see under much secrecy, had spent the last three hours telling them about past lives in the kitchen of Deerpath. But...how did she know about the telepathy? No one knew that. Jake pushed out to Sam, and found that she believed this, she trusted this woman's word. "Excuse me? You mean to tell me that I..." Jake broke off, shocked by the images in his mind.

The intuitive woman filled him in, "Well, more than likely, you two have a destiny that you kept passing by. You're rather running out of time, I should think." She looked at Sam, and replied to a question that Jake heard in his head, "His name was David." She shuffled her cards, a satisfied look on her face as Jake realized something.

"Wait. Mac is my Grandfather. You're telling me I'm my Grandfather's dead uncle?" He blurted, trying to put the pieces together. In his head, Sam supplied information. Helen Martin was somehow related to his mother's family. His mother's mother had been a Martin, and his parents had met at some reunion when the friends had all gotten together. That's how his parents had met, through their convoluted relationships. Sally, Sam pointed out, was somehow distantly related to Grace, an Aunt maybe. It was all a mishmash of people. He was glad that weren't somehow inbred with all of these people conspiring against them.

She shook her head, "No. You had a past life as that man. You, yourself, are Jake Ely. That's all who matters now." She paused for a moment and let that sink in. Sam shot him a look. He supposed he was freaking out. He'd heard about John and Sally before, though this woman would never know that.

"I told you, Jake, that the universe wasn't giving you two a choice this time, and souls often cycle together." She flipped a card, and looked directly at them, "You were meant to learn from each other over the millennia, sometimes as friends, sometimes as lovers." She moved her fingers over her cards.

Sam spluttered, although he felt the calmness emanating from her soul. "I'm sorry. You're saying we're telepathic because we need to learn from each other?" Jake saw images of learning from each other across their lifetime. He knew that he could never have been any of those people.

If he had been a solider in Egypt, he would have taken Cody back with him. He would have asked her name, if he was so smart so as to work with Plato. He would have sailed the sea for her, made the first maps, the ones that lead to her. He would never have let her leave his land, once she was there, not for all of the gold in California. He would not have left her behind, not in 1945, not even to bring down Hitler.

She was his soul, and he had never lived a day without her. He'd lived as Jake Ely, who spent three years he couldn't recall waiting for her to make her entrance into the world. If they'd had a connection from the start, it was only because it was meant to be, and the reason why didn't matter.

The idea that in the past, that she'd raised her babies with someone else, been a mother to children he hadn't known, that she'd created her own world in someone else's home didn't sit well with him because he knew that Sam wouldn't want to live like that. It might have been thousands of years ago, but he still wanted to punch the guy for not allowing her to learn, not ensuring she didn't get pregnant so soon after a first birth without medical care. He was annoyed, too, at the idea that Sam believed that he would ever, ever, walk through this world without knowing that she was happy. No matter what Sam was thinking, the fact that he'd felt at home on Stanford's campus had nothing to do with anything. He'd merely enjoyed being there to talk to the equine medicine classes.

Sam squeezed his hand under the table and sent him a comforting image. He knew damn well she was safe and here with him now. The woman turned another card, "Yes, but now, you've got to pack two thousand years of sharing and growth into one lifetime. Hence, your subconscious is helping you out. Can you imagine how tough being famous would be without the telepathy?"

Jake couldn't. They had snuck away from a seminar, and they were headed out on plane tomorrow. Without the telepathy, their jobs would be next to impossible, or at least very tough on their personal lives, even if it did have complications, as anything might.

As they watched the lady drive off, Jake kissed the top of Sam's head, and smelled the soft scent of her hair. It smelled like lemongrass, as it always did. Past lives, though, didn't exist. Neither did telepathy.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."

Galatians, 5:22-23, KJV

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