Author's Note: I apologize profusely for the long wait. I just recently recovered from a nasty writer's block.

Behold! At last, my first Karma. I've left some footnotes at the bottom for the story above. I'm just awesome that way. 'Grins wickedly'

Request by Freexflyer, so here you go dahling!

Also much love for ThreeOranges, a guardian angel of all beta-readers! Readherfics! They're good...

Halcyon days-definition- a period of peace and happiness- an idyllic time

Chapter Four- Halcyon Days

"Kartik," she whispered with a slight smile...

A black cloche hat (1) fits securely over her pinned hair, curled chunks of it spilling out into red tendrils gleaming hidden gold. Shining perfectly from her hat was a silver ornament, and a strange one at that - an eye upon a crescent moon staring at him. Luminous like her eyes...

"Kartik," she panted, and fell back against her pillow, damp and bedraggled, warm golden red hair spread out like wings ready to take flight. She was sheen with sweat, her neck dazzling white with the beginnings of freckles where her neck flowed down into shoulders; he looks down at the hollow of her throat : On it was a silver eye upon a crescent moon staring up at him.

Kartik fixes his eyes on hers...

"Kartik!" she yells happily from across the lush green field, hair loose and shimmering like a halo, edging gold around the redness. She wears the eye upon the crescent; it gazes at him nearly mockingly and all at once invitingly.

Her eyes...

It is raining heavily, forcefully, like a cascade of wet pebbles whose might nearly bruises and numbs him to the very marrow of his bones. His whole vision is blurring together into wet grays.

Kartik still sits in the swing, fingers bent around the heavy chains and the hood of his gray sweatshirt pulled over his curly head. His clothing, a gray hooded pullover and black baggy jeans makes him almost disappear into the storm.

"Kartik," someone says.

Kartik looks up.

In front of him is a teenage boy, seventeen or so, a year younger than him if a day. He is tall-taller than him (2)- and wisp-thin, only broad at the shoulders. The hood of his bright green sweatshirt hides his hair from view, his faint fair eyebrows illuminating that he is most definitely not a
brunet. His eyes stare into Kartik's own ink-dark ones. They are luminescent and pierce through the graceless dreariness of the storm,they are so bright….

And green.

The young man stares at Kartik, paying no heed to the rain. "It's weird to see you out of the Spence school uniform," he says offhandedly, tilting his head to the side. How green his eyes...

"Jeremy-"

"Jem."

"Jem," Kartik sighs. "The reason why I asked you out here is because--" he takes a deep breath "-I want to tell you to stop following me."

Jem stares. Expressionless. Kartik pauses. Where the hell did he inherit those eyes? From a ghost?

"I've told your friends to tell you, I've told your sister-"

"You told Tori(3)?"

"I told your parents," Kartik carries on without missing a beat, "I had my brother try to tell you and now I'm telling you face- first to stop, to quit it with the bloody stalking." He is surprised to find his voice rising.

"I'm not stalking you," Jem says, "I'm just persistently following you everywhere you go."

"Are you serious?!" Kartik demands and stands up, looking up(4) at him, "Are you really that stupid or are you just taking the piss out of me(5)!?"

"Don't ever speak to me that way again," say Jem dully as if reciting a poem in front of class. Kartik stiffens, ink eyes wide as saucer cups. "I am no longer content to be the scared, obedient schoolgirl. Who are you, a stranger, to tell me what I can and cannot do?"

"I am Rakshana," Kartik delivers in a breathless whisper. He knows those words, those are the words of one of his many dreams, his dreams of her….

"Ah, yes-the great and mysterious Rakshana. The powerful brotherhood who feel threatened by things they cannot understand and have to hide themselves behind a boy." Jem cups Kartik's cheek in his palm, how feminine his hands are, Kartik thinks. "You're not a man. You're their lackey. I don't care about you, or your brother, or your ridiculous organization."

The rain is the only sound between them. Silent tears.

"It was in that lifetime, Kartik," Jem tells him quietly, "in that very night that you fell in love with me after I said those very words to you."

Kartik sucks in his breath.

"And I fell in love with you even before that."

"My dreams…"

"Are real. Every dream you've ever had is real, every dream a lifetime taking place, a lifetime of you and me together, following after one another forevermore." He pulls out an amulet on a chain around his neck. The eye upon the crescent moon stares at him. It had always stared at him, it always will...

Kartik shakily exhales all the tension in him. Now it is only an anticipating warmth of some kind.

"We follow one another always into what place fate will take us."

Kartik thickly swallows, "You don't believe in fate."

"No, I can't say I ever believed in it," the hood slips off Jem's head, reveals red curls hanging down over his forehead and temples, grazing at the neckline, damp with wet. "I still don't -" he pauses "but you did."

"And I still do. I believe…" Kartik trails off, and closes his eyes. He nods and then opens them to stare at Jeremy-Jem-Gemma!-him!-no!-her!-whatever!

A smile spreads over Jem's face, his constellation of freckles standing out. Kartik likes the effect of it.

"Took you long enough." Jem murmurs as he leans his mouth against his, then lightly kisses him.

Kartik deepens it, deepens the kiss of a thousand years together, the Halcyon days made whole, and made to last forevermore.

Read. Review and please, please, please critique! Also if you want me to do a request on a certain pairing I promise to do that. It's fun getting suggestions!

1.Cloche hat- Kartik's first dream of Gemma and himself takes place in the 1920's. The cloche hat was was one of many of the roaring twenties' rocking fashion fads. I took the idea from LunaEquus when I read her story "Sweet Misery" a modern New Yorker take on AGATB. She says that she sees Gemma as a fan of the roaring twenties and well I just liked that idea too.

2.Taller than him- Gemma is a tall girl and I'd imagine her only an inch or two short of Kartik's height in the novel. I like to think she's even taller than him if they were in the 20's because, dammit, taller girl-shorter guy couples are hot and there need to be more of them!

3."You told Tori?"-Yes. 'snickers' I gave Gemma's brother Tom a sex-change too.

4."looking up at him"-'snickers'

5."taking the piss"-British slang. Takes place in London this chapter and it means to tease and ridicule.