Ahhhh! It's been so long!

I had a lot of trouble figuring out where this chapter was going. The first draft didn't seem right, but neither did the second or the third. When I took a break to see if that would help me figure out a solution, I came back to it and decided I liked the first draft the best.

I did my best to polish it for you guys to make up for the wait.

Hope you like it!

Disclaimer: I only own the Stephenson family.

Enjoy!

"Are you sure you're alright?" Atem's voice snapped me out of my latest trance, the fifth one since we had walked out of that basement and party in a strained silence full of questions. After I soaked his shirt with my tears, we had gone back upstairs, his wary expression never looking away from me. Police had swarmed the place by the time we left, thankfully not stopping us on our way out because Tristan's dad just so happened to be the chief of the nearby department and let us leave. Tristan was no doubt on his way to a serious lecture and an even worse punishment. Devon and Astrid were nowhere to be seen. Tea had left with the conscious and physically (as well as ego) bruised Joey in tow with a worried goodbye when she saw Atem's firm grip on my arm to keep me from wandering and my ruined makeup. We were alone in his car now.

I shook my head to answer his question. Lying wasn't an option anymore, especially after my tear-filled slip of tongue.

His eyes searched mine, and for once, I didn't feel uncomfortable. "You said you remembered. What do you remember?" He asked, voice low and soothing. His hand was holding mine loosely, his thumb rubbing my knuckles slowly to calm me down.

I considered beginning my story with the reason for my statement, the hooded figure that almost killed Dark Magician Girl and me, but that would mean Atem would freak out that I had been harmed. So I decided to just answer his question simply. "Mahad and Mana." I said, averting my eyes, not even caring if my answer made sense to him. "And Isis. Some random little things that happened back then. And...us." The last part came out lower than the rest.

He reached up and brushed a strand of hair out of my face. "So you know."

I nodded.

He just managed to hold back a smile. "Erin, that's great! Why were you crying?"

My shaking hands stopped for a second, confusion momentarily overpowering my confession. "Wait. You mean...you know what I'm talking about?"

"Of course I do. I would've told you, Erin, but there were rules. I couldn't-" he paused at my dubious expression. "It's a long story. Maybe the drive home isn't such a great place to explain. Do you want to go back to-"

I had glanced at the clock by that point, and realized how little time had actually passed since we had left my house. We still had a good hour and a half to kill. "No, no buildings. I need fresh air."

"I was going to ask if you wanted to go back to the pier since it's only nine-thirty."

Shooting him a slightly sheepish look for interrupting him, I nodded. "That would be good. And then maybe I can throw myself into the water if things go south."

He didn't seem amused by my default humor. "Alright." He shifted the car into drive.

We drove in silence, which honestly was fine with me, considering I was still scraping through my mind for what I was going to tell him. Dark Magician Girl's message had been very clear: I needed to come completely clean. According to her, Atem had...come back for me. Come back from where, exactly? And what had she meant by "battles in the afterlife?" Had Sagira left some kind of unfinished business that was creating disastrous effects for the people she had known in her life? Was there even such a thing as "the afterlife?"

And more, was my refusal to tell Atem making things worse?

The car stopped way before I was ready. We got out without saying a word, and Atem gently took my hand and led me to a spot overlooking the open ocean, which reflected the half-covered moon on its waves. Clouds were gathering on the horizon, and I could see lightning in the distance. It was a pretty scene, and I would have yearned to pull out my phone and take a picture if the gravity of the situation wasn't so intense. I leaned against the railing and stared out to sea, not daring to spare a glance at Atem, who was no doubt waiting for me to say something.

"I'm sorry that tonight ended like this." I said quietly, looking down at my hands. "The date had been going really well."

"It's not your fault." He replied.

"Yes it is." With a sigh, I continued. "If it hadn't been for me, Devon wouldn't have hurt Joey and Tristan. He did it so I would show up."

Atem turned my face to him with ginger fingers so I would have to look him in the eyes. "Erin, you can't control what Devon does. Besides, everything is taken care of. Everyone is safe, including you."

"Am I?" I whispered. The small amount of resentment I had felt when Atem had told me that he knew about my visions returned, and my next words came out sounding more bitter than I meant them to. "You're the one who would know, considering you've been keeping things from me since the day I met you."

His look became stern. "It seems you've been keeping just as much from me as I have from you, so getting angry with me will be no help to either of us."

Just like that, my bad mood deflated, the truth in his words making me flinch. "I'm sorry. I'm just frustrated."

"Now you know how I've been feeling for the last few months." He took my hands, catching my gaze with his now-softer one and holding it. "I understand that you're frustrated. You're new to all of this. You've grown up far away from everything even vaguely connected to your past. It's never come up and thrown itself in your face like it has since you moved to Domino City. But you're not-"

"My past?" I cut in. "No, that's...that's not me, right? I was born in this century. I thought Sagira was just some ancestor of mine or something."

"You still don't think that you're the same person?"

My eyebrows furrowed as I looked away for a moment. "I just - I never thought of it that way. I mean, I guess I have, but...I was her?" The possibility that my suspicions were correct was suddenly terrifying to me, because with it came problems and...the fact that this meant my first date with Atem hadn't really been my first.

He gave me a meaningful look. "You are her."

"But she was a different person."

"No, you're the same person."

"She lived at a different time, though."

"That was you."

"But I'm here."

"I know."

"And...she isn't."

"She. Is. You." His face became serious, but luckily he didn't seem to be frustrated with my inability to absorb what he was saying.

My mind felt like it was about to explode. In the midst of processing everything, my next words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them. "And you're obviously...Atem."

Eyebrows raised, he nodded slowly, worry clouding his expression for a moment. "Do you need a few minutes? We don't need to rush into this if you don't want to."

I shook my head. None of this felt real. This had escalated so quickly, and I didn't know exactly what to say when my eyes met his again. "No, it's just..." New feelings welled up inside of me as I remembered the times I had kissed him and sat much closer to him than I usually did, the times we had laughed and teased and embraced and...

Suddenly, I was laughing. I couldn't tell if it was from confusion or hysterics or the fact that Atem and I had been way past this awkward dating phase three thousand freaking years ago, but my laughter wouldn't stop. When I saw Atem's worry only increase at my outburst, I tried to keep it contained long enough to say, "I'm sorry...but I just...I can't imagine how hard it must have been...and I've been..."

The scarily-unstoppable laughter halted at my next words. "Oh my god." I whispered, breath leaving my chest. "You've waited all this time while I've been completely clueless."

He nodded again. "Are you sure you're alright?"

I continued without heeding his words. "After all I've put you through, you didn't give up. Why? What if it hadn't even been me?"

This time when he searched my eyes, he seemed to look into my very soul, and instead of discomfort, I stared back in complete wonder. I had no idea exactly what I was feeling, but I enjoyed it immensely. "Because I promised I'd find another way."

His repetition of the words I had spoken so long ago created a bittersweet pang in my heart. I opened my mouth to say something, but couldn't find anything to say that would express just how amazed I was that any of this was even happening. The ocean lapped noisily against the poles supporting the pier in our silence.

"Atem, I-" I began, but he stopped me.

"You don't have to say anything."

Another moment of silence passed. My heart was beating at a million miles a minute, and I felt like my chest would implode if I didn't do something. "Then I won't." I whispered. Not giving myself time to chicken out, I put my hands on the back of his neck and pulled his lips down to mine.

To say Atem responded happily to my action was an understatement. After we separated, he came back in for another kiss. Suddenly, his arms were around my back, holding me closer. One of his hands snaked up to run itself through my hair, which sent pleasant shivers down my spine. My own hands were tangled in his hair, no doubt mussing up his complex style, but neither of us cared. The only things we knew at that moment were passion and how familiar we were with the feel of each other's lips on our own.

With the kiss came an explosion of memories. New people, new places, a plethora of times spent alone with Atem, talking and reminiscing and...doing other things. The feeling of so many memories returning to me at one time was exhilarating. I couldn't understand how I had spent so much of my life without them.

So caught up in the moment the two of us were that we didn't even notice it had started raining until lightning struck above us, forcing us to separate and look up at the sky. With gleeful laughs, we locked hands and made a dash for shelter since we were too far away from his car and honestly, neither of us wanted to go home now.

We ended up in the entrance of an old warehouse, which was big enough to accommodate both of us plus a few feet as a buffer from the pelting rain. Our shirts were soaked and my white one was probably completely see-through by that point, but I ignored it. We laughed again as we caught our breaths, rain plastering our hair to our faces. Adrenaline prevented us from realizing how quickly all of this had come about, how suddenly intimate we had gotten, despite the fact that just a few hours ago, I had been nervous to go on a date with him.

"Of all of the interruptions we've ever had..." I gasped between giggles. Even though I hated rain, something about being in it with Atem made it a little more tolerable.

Atem chuckled with me. "Definitely one of the worst."

As I wrung out my hair, I felt his eyes on me. "What?"

"I can't believe this is happening." He said almost quietly, like he was afraid that if he spoke too loudly, all of the events of the past half-hour would disappear.

I smiled, then pulled him in for another short kiss. I wasn't sure if I would ever get enough of those. "Neither can I."

After we dried our faces off, we huddled in a corner as far away from the rain as we could go and tried our best to warm each other as we shivered. After everything that had occurred that night, I found a sense of safety and peace with his arm around me that I hadn't felt since before the night at Death Dungeon. My head rested on his shoulder while his hand absentmindedly twirled my still-wet hair around his finger.

"When did you start remembering?" He asked softly. The deep timbre of his voice was right next to my ear, and I reveled in being so close to him.

I nuzzled a little more into his shoulder, almost ready to shrug off the uncomfortably wet leather jacket I was still wearing. "The day after I met you. I remembered teaching you how to dance."

He chuckled again. "I'm still not too great at that."

I smiled along with him, looking out at the rain that had only let up a little. "If it's any consolation, I don't think I remember how to do it, either."

"Why did you wait so long to tell me?" His voice wasn't hurt or angry, but I could hear the pain that was riddled in his words.

A moment of hesitation passed before I answered. "Because they – my memories – were only coming one at a time, and they were so random. I was afraid that I was imagining them. And then when we went to the museum..." I trailed off, not knowing how to explain my reluctance to tell him after my fainting spell. "I was scared. I thought I was going crazy."

"Even after I told you everything when you started asking questions about Mana and Mahad and yourself? You still thought your mind was making things up?"

"Well, when you put it that way, it just makes me sound dense...but yeah."

There were a few minutes of silence, in which I finally shrugged off my jacket and tossed it at our feet. Atem took his own off to try and warm me, even though the cotton was still damp as well. I imagined he was just using it as an excuse to hug me closer, but I didn't care.

Finally, he broke the peaceful quiet with the question I had been dreading since we had gotten into the car in Devon's neighborhood. "So, if you don't mind me asking, what exactly happened in that basement that drove you to tell me all of this?"

I hesitated. It wasn't that I didn't know how to answer the question so much as I didn't want to ruin the happy, romantic vibes that we had just established. Taking a deep breath, I worded my reply carefully. "I found something in Devon's room. I think it was a portal, but I'm not entirely sure if I wasn't actually hallucinating. All I know is that you're not the only one who wants Sagira – me – to remember my past."

"What do you mean?" His voice sounded choked, like he was trying really hard not to flip out. It was only natural for him to worry; I was very familiar with the protective side of Atem by this point.

"I met this...person, I guess, when I touched whatever it was. He kept calling me Sagira, and he definitely knew more about me than I knew about him. It was almost as terrifying as the text messages. Only, this time...he called me something else, too. And I have no idea what it means."

"What was it?"

"Scribe of the Gods."

Beneath me, Atem stiffened. I looked up at him, afraid to see his face. Shock was written all over it as he stared down at me. "What? What does that mean?"

"You don't remember?"

I shook my head. "All I remember at this point are general facts about myself and a small window of my time at the palace with you. Why? Is that important?"

"Very." He continued at my perplexed look. "The Scribe of the Gods was the title that the priests of my father's court gave to a...special individual. One who could not only write prayers to the gods, but could communicate with them. Prophecy states that the Scribe of the Gods would be found at the same time the Chosen Pharaoh grew into his name."

I nodded slowly. "So...was that me?"

He shrugged. "I would assume so. You were never officially named, but everyone knew that there was something different about the way you could just...make words materialize with no problem. It was like you knew exactly what the gods wanted you to say to them. All four years that you were at the palace and we asked you to write a prayer for rain, rain was what we got. Our harvests were abundant with you in the temple, and Mana finally got a firmer grasp on her magic with your help. If your presence in the palace was by accident, then we were extremely lucky."

A few more memories flitted past my mind's eye: time spent writing prayers without hesitation, praying in a temple dedicated to Ra, laying in the gardens and looking up at the sky as I listened for a voice I sometimes heard when the sun was high. "How would that guy have known unless he had been alive all those years ago?"

"Don't worry about how, I'm more concerned about who he is."

The feeling of dread returned with Atem's words. Despite the temporary happiness that had resulted in my (sort of) reunion with him, it soaked back into my bones and drained the joy right from my body. There was something sinister going on, and I was way behind the game. We both were.

"I don't know." I said as he pulled me closer when lightning struck outside. "I didn't see his face."

Atem walked me to my door, both of us still soaking wet. We had come out from our shelter when the rain finally stopped, leaving only thunder and lightning in the distance. It was past curfew, but I was praying that Mom would ease up on the hard feelings when she saw the state we were in and we explained what happened.

Well, not the "Hey, your daughter is this boy's reincarnated girlfriend from three thousand years ago" thing, but the storm. The storm would be easier to understand.

"Thank you for everything." I said, hoping that by "everything," he knew that I meant much more than just taking me out on a date.

He smiled softly, but then his expression hardened a little. "I just wish Devon hadn't pulled what he did tonight."

I shook my head. "He'll be over it by Monday. There are plenty of other girls in school for him to go after." My words sounded flat. Both of us knew tonight wasn't the end.

"He spoke to you in Latin."

I nodded. "He called me 'beautiful.'"

"Which means you understood that."

I nodded again. "There've been...other memories that I haven't told you about. Of other lives outside of Egypt. Ancient Rome, pre-depression United States. I'm still trying to sort them out for myself."

"Does Devon have anything to do with any of them?" The curiosity in his voice was suddenly overtaken by a protective edge.

Another shake of my head brought a frown to his face. "He doesn't look or sound like anyone from any of my memories. I'm not entirely sure about how he plays into all of this..." my voice trailed off as I watched the look in his eyes. "What?"

"The texts." He replied. "They led you to Devon's house. He's been speaking to you in Latin, fully expecting you to understand what he's saying."

Pieces clicked together in my mind. "And then I found the weird button thing that sent me to that room while I was there. You don't think...?"

"I don't know what to think at the moment. But Devon seems like a definite lead for the cult."

I thought back to every encounter I'd ever had with Devon. His strange mood swings. His weird infatuation with Atem and me. The card in his deck that struck a chord in my mind where Erin ended and Sagira began. All of the pictures on his parents' fridge that didn't include him. His spotless bedroom with its polished trophies. His sudden abandonment of basketball when he was on the road to being scouted.

If Devon wasn't suspicious, then I didn't know who was.

"Erin?" Atem's voice brought me back to the present.

I looked up at him. "We need to watch him."

He nodded once. Then, his seriousness faded, replaced again with that serene expression that came over his face when he studied me. "But for tonight, I think you need to rest."

"We both need to rest." I put a hand on his right cheek and pulled his face in to kiss his left. "Despite everything that happened tonight, I'm glad it turned out the way it did."

"As am I."

The front door suddenly swung open, bathing the two of us in light from the foyer. "Do you two even know what time it is – " Mom's voice cut off when she looked both of us up and down. "Did you take a short swim in the bay while you were out?"

"It started raining at the pier, so we ran for cover and waited it out." I began to explain. "I forgot to call you."

She crossed her arms, eyes darting between the two of us, before she seemed to come to an agreement with herself. My favorite thing about my mother was that she didn't assume things. Which I was glad she didn't. Most mothers would have all kinds of teenage scenarios running through their minds at the words "we waited out the storm." "Alright. Atem, would you like to come in and dry off? I'm sure I could find you something clean to wear."

"Mom, there are no men in this house to steal clothing from." I reminded her.

"Oh, right." She made the same face I make when I realize I said something stupid. "My bad."

"Actually, I need to get home as well." Atem said, smoothing over her polite forgetfulness. "Solomon – Grandpa – will be waiting for me." He cast a quick glance to me. "Thank you for the offer, though."

Mom smiled. "Anytime."

An awkward silence ensued, with each of us looking to each other, hoping someone would have something to say to get this situation moving again. Crickets chirped in the background.

Finally, I cleared my throat. "Well, thanks again for tonight. I had a lot of fun."

Atem's stiff, polite posture loosened just a bit with my words, and he nodded and smirked. "It was my pleasure."

Mom watched us with a grin on her face. I don't know what exactly she was hoping for, but I knew Atem and I weren't going to do any more than a chaste hug while she stood over us.

Something warm encircled my hand, and when I looked down, I saw that it was Atem's. He gave it a light squeeze. "See you on Monday."

My lips turned up. "See you." And then his hand was gone, leaving my skin cold and clammy again, and he was waving goodbye to both of us and walking down the sidewalk.

When his car was out of sight, I beamed at my mother. We walked inside and didn't exchange a word.

Mom wasn't one to ruin happy moments.

"Sagira, I told you to wait outside."

"And I told you that what you were doing was dangerous."

Atem took my hands, making sure I looked him in the eyes when he spoke. "I know. I don't approve of it either. But –"

"But nothing, Atem!" I said, my hands gripping his as I felt the tension swell in my chest. "This could kill you. You've seen what happens when you play with dark magic like that. Think of your father. Think of Ankhset."

He winced at the mention of the former Pharaoh, Ra bless his soul. In his eyes flashed the image of Mahad's predecessor, driven mad with power and forced to take his own life.

He sighed. "I know you're afraid. We all are. But –" He continued quickly to drown out the argument he could see about to burst from my lips, " – we need to defend our kingdom. When the shadows were released, so were waves of newer, stronger enemies. The might of Egypt's army alone will not stand against these foes. We need the advantage."

"Then teach me."

My words surprised him, causing him to blink in confusion. "What?"

"Teach me how to use this magic. If I am to be the queen, I will need to know how to protect my people."

"Ira –"

I shook my head. "Do not give me excuses. If you are to go down fighting, then so will I."

He took a deep breath, searching my eyes. He knew that no amount of begging would change my mind. "If that is what you wish..."

I nodded. "Whatever evil may face us, I will never leave your side. You may as well give me a tool to use."

"We have until my coronation to learn together." He said lowly. "That's less than thirty days. After that, I'm not sure how much time we'll have to practice. Are you sure you can do it?"

I flicked his forehead in slight annoyance. "Now you are just insulting my strength. I will be alright."

He smiled. "I apologize for offending you, Honorable Sagira."

A sly grin pulled at my lips. "The soon-to-be Pharaoh of Egypt, living god-king, is apologizing to a mere mortal such as myself? That goes against tradition, does it not?"

"There is nothing traditional about our relationship, Ira."

"There never was."

I hope this chapter met with your expectations!

What did Dark Magician Girl really mean about the afterlife? What is going on there?

What does Erin's confession mean for her and Atem? Will they pick up where they left off?

So you guys got their first kiss! Did you like it?

Again, sorry for the long wait. You guys know the explanation by now. Hopefully I can get the next chapter up a bit sooner.

Also, thank you to all new readers/reviewers as well as those who have been here from the start! I love seeing what you think of my story, and reading your comments motivates me to get my act together and post new chapters. You guys make my day!

See you next time!

-creativelybored