Disclaimer: I don't own CBS's "Zoo". Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: Inspired by this prompt: "I skipped like four cycles of reincarnation and I know you're pissed at me for leaving you all those lifetimes but it wasn't my fault please- please will you take me back?" – Set 1x01 "First Blood," directly after they part ways after their meeting at the zoo pathology lab.

Warnings: reincarnation au, adult language, canon appropriate language, past lives, violence, character death (kinda), gun violence, angst, pre/established relationship.

Selcouth

Chapter Two

"This is me hoping 'I found the cats' isn't a line you use on the girls in the bars."

"I don't go to bars."

"Right, you don't like people."

"I like people."

"Just prefer it when they're not around."

"You found the cats?"

"Well, I got to thinking about what you said.Dozens of missing cats just seemed so, you know, odd.Domestic cats will wander, but they'll always come back to their food source.And a mass cat-kidnapping seemed to defy reason.So I thought maybe there was a predator."

"Okay."

"Figured I'd drive around a bit, see if I saw anything."

"You went on a cat stakeout?"

"I did."

"Uh, one crossed the road, a Siamese, which means it's somebody's pet. So I followed it."

"The cat stakeout turned into a cat pursuit."

"Yeah."

"Uh, look, you're kind of freaking me out right now."

"So, what happened? Where's the cat?"

"You got to see for yourself."

He spent about three hours agonizing over it, but eventually he shot off a text. Waiting for a handful of beats before texting again with clarification. Baiting the hook as he stood outside his truck with a fucking flashlight. Caught between second guessing everything and being legitimately weirded out that the whole missing cat thing had turned into an actual- well, thing.

The entire conversation was awkward. And honestly, he figured he probably wasn't helping matters. He was still trying to work it out. To see if she knew. If she recognized him. Or if he'd completely lost touch with reality and this was him just fucking hallucinating or- well- something equally depressing.

The thing was though, part of him knew. He knew he wasn't crazy. He knew who she was and what she meant to him. He just knew. Like fog rising from the soil at midnight, she was a specter that would always be familiar. It didn't matter how many times they did this. Or how many cycles he missed. He would know her anywhere. They were each other's memory – each other's perfect half. Living, breathing proof that no matter who they were apart, they were meant to do this. To go through each and every life together.

It wasn't until after Animal Control and been, laughed and gone that she rounded on him. Hands on her hips as they stood there on the uneven sod of the school playground. The beam of his flashlight getting tangled in the shadows when he realized she'd known all along. Maybe not at first sight, but afterwards - just like him. She'd been standing there next him the whole time while he'd been sweating bullets trying to figure out how to broach it. Letting him stew just because she could.

And Christ- it was like falling in love with her all over again.

"You bastard," she hissed, somewhere beyond angry even as her mouth did that thing. That upward tilt at the very edges that stood out like a tell. Making something tighten in the back of his throat as everything he'd been holding back slowly started to trickle in. "Where were you?!"

He deflated like a punctured balloon. So grateful he could have cried before yelping when a sharp little finger started poking at his chest. Advancing on him with glittering eyes as he stepped backwards, more or less suitably cowed. Hands up in clear surrender as the beam of his flashlight skittered across the grass in awkward, looping circles.

"Ow! I would like to point out that technically - ow! - this is not my fault," he started, pushing his glasses back up his nose as she backed him into a tree. Getting right up in his face as his fingers itched to touch. Wanting to capture the sheath of hair that was hanging in front of her eyes and tuck it back behind her ear.

"You left me alone! Four lives, Mitch! Four! I looked for you, every time! You have no idea what that's like! I couldn't find you! I thought-"

"You think I wanted this?! You think I wanted to leave you alone!? It isn't like I can be held accountable for when I reincarnate, Verity," he snapped, pausing and cutting himself off as her old name slipped free. The one that'd been hers last time around. The one that'd sounded like a sin coming out of his lips those times in the dark together - when he forgot that a man and a woman's time together wasn't supposed to feel so right. That it was better than what was preached at service and a hundred times more holy.

"Jamie, sorry- christ," he corrected, muttering disparagingly about the entire situation until something in her expression changed and her hand made tracks across his chest. Spreading out as her warmth hazed through the thin of his shirt. So close, but still so far.

"Fuck," he articulated a handful of seconds later. Surprising himself with the strength behind it as the weight of everything they'd been though finally permeated.

"Agreed," she muttered shakily. Because of course she did. Leaning into him like permission as he hesitantly wrapped his arms around her and drew her in. Inhaling throatily as she tucked her head into the space under his chin that seemed to be made for her. "I missed you."

"I know," he rasped. Wavering together in the dark as the past and present collided with remarkably little fanfare.

"There's more," he said unsteadily. Bunching her hair up to his nose as the moment threatened to grow legs. Neither of them wanting to let the other go despite the sound of approaching footsteps and the distant, indignant honking at the intersection a couple blocks away. Not exactly the appropriate theme music, he had to admit.

"I know there is, but I'm having trouble making it out. The last time, that's the only thing that's clear. I remember- I remember…dying. Someone was trying to steal the horses. He was- he was heading towards the house. The baby was crying. I had to-"

He cut himself off there.

Not strong enough to ask the difficult questions.

Like what happened next.

What happened to her?

What happened to their son?

How-

"At least we found each other," he tried after a long moment, rooted by the careful quiet that was radiating off her like an intermittent signal. The feeling not unlike getting second prize at a science fair as he tried and failed to break the tension. Good, but not quite good enough.

"I'm still pissed at you," she told him, shivering slightly as the wind picked up. Voice muffled into his jacket and slightly damp with silent tears. Wondering offhand what it said about him considering the whole thing only made him want to smile.

Christ, he'd missed her.

"As long as you're here and pissed at me, I think I'm fine with that," he answered honestly.

She shuddered a laugh into his chest. Mouthing into the fabric for a long moment before pulling back and looking up at him. Just as beautiful as he remembered and twice as strong.

"Take me home."

It wasn't until they pulled into his parking garage that he realized he'd just assumed.

He turned to look at her. One hand ghosting down the firm of the emergency break. Hesitating to put it into park. Trying to figure out how to apologize or maybe just skip right to all the reasons why they needed to stay close- possibly forever.

Why he needed her to be close.

Especially tonight.

But she just shook her head, beating him too it.

"There's nowhere else I'd rather be," she told him, head cocked in that way she had. "And believe me, because I've been to all of them. And the only thing that was ever missing was you."

He opened his mouth to reply the same moment she unbuckled her belt, leaned over and kissed him. Silencing him in the best possible way as he returned it hungrily. The shocks of the truck squeaking damningly in the concrete-quiet as she clambered over the console and into his lap. Fumbling with his seat belt the same second his hand reached down and hit the latch to slide his seat back. Giving them some breathing room as she hovered over him - breasts heaving, hair mussed up and wild - like the best part of déjà vu as her eyes found his through the dim, florescent-dark.

And ah-

Yeah…

He remembered this part, alright.

Something told him they were going to be just fine.

Reference:

"Verity": Origin of the name Verity: Taken from verity (a truth, a reality), which is derived from the Latin veritas (truth) via the Old French verite. The name was popularized by the 17th-century Puritans.