"My soulmate is dead. I felt him die. I'm alone. My soulmate is dead. I felt him die. I'm alone."

Sara whispered the words over and over to herself as she cried. It was one of the defining truths of her life; one of the few things she knew unequivocally about herself.

"My soulmate is dead. I felt him die. I'm alone. My soulmate is dead. I felt him die. I'm alone."

It was the event that had most shaped her future decisions. She had joined the Alliance to get away from the Citadel and her parents - who had lied to her about her soulmate until the night he died. She had first become interested in the Prothean research because the idea of finding important pieces of people who had been dead for so long gave her hope. It was half the reason she had been so willing to sign on with the Andromeda Initiative.

"My soulmate is dead. I felt him die. I'm alone. My soulmate is dead. I felt him die. I'm alone."

And yet…

Sara's crying had slowed, and she sat up, sniffling slightly as she wiped her eyes. She looked around the room. Nothing had changed, and yet everything was different.

Jaal had said that he was her soulmate. Which meant she was his. She didn't want to believe it, how was it even possible?

She had felt her soulmate die. She knew that without question. What Jaal said simply couldn't be true.

And yet… Jaal had never lied to her. He had never given her any reason to doubt his word; on the contrary, he had mentioned several times that he was horrible at hiding things, at being cautious, and the truth of that had been obvious. His emotions were always shared openly with those around him.

Sara stood up and started pacing around her room, a nervous habit she had developed since waking up in Andromeda. Perhaps Jaal was mistaken. He didn't have to be lying to be wrong. She enjoyed that possibility during several circuits of the room. They could both be right.

And yet… hadn't she felt drawn to him from the start? Hadn't she felt a compulsion to speak with him? To learn about him? She had simply assumed the feeling was a natural interest in an unknown species, first contact was something the Pathfinder team had trained for, after all, with great anticipation. But what if it was more?

She crossed near her datapad and scooped it up. The stupid thing hadn't even cracked, despite it's abrupt introduction to her wall; just her luck, the paperwork was still waiting patiently for her. She tossed the datapad more gently onto her desk as she passed, her mind still in a tangle.

She couldn't figure out how it was even possible, though. She had been born more than six hundred years before Jaal. She didn't often think of the time she had spent in stasis, but it was still a fact. She had felt her soulmate's emotions (and death, her mind whispered) long before Jaal had been born. No matter how nice the idea was, no matter how many arguments she could make in its favor, that single fact was unchanged.

"Pathfinder. Perhaps this would be an appropriate time to discuss your dreams."

Sara scowled at SAM's display on her desk, for once not worried about hurting whatever feelings he might have.

"SAM, I really can't think of a worse possible time to have a discussion about dreams. I'm sorry, but I know you've been paying attention; how could you possibly think I would want to discuss my dreams right now?"

"Because it is relevant to your current line of thought."

She stumbled to a halt, and blinked. "What? How?"

"While you were in stasis, I observed several dreams through your implant. Perhaps dreams is not the correct word. Nonetheless, while it appears that you do not recall the images themselves, the accompanying feelings have remained with you. Did you not tell Dr. T'Pero that you felt 'at home' on Havarl?"

"That was just an expression, SAM. I didn't mean…." She trailed off. She hadn't meant it literally when she told Lexi that. And yet… her first impression of the planet had been one of extreme familiarity. She had just become accustomed to the feeling, and pushed it to the back of her mind while focusing on their tasks.

"Why do you ask?"

"I believe it would be easier to simply show you. I can show you the images that accompanied your stasis dreams, if you would like. There were more emotions than images, but two did come through quite clearly."

Sara took a deep breath. She still wasn't sure where SAM was going with this, maybe it had nothing to do with Jaal or her soulmate. She knew she couldn't ignore the possibility, though, so she sat down on the sofa again, closed her eyes, and nodded.

"Alright, SAM. Show me."

"This is the first clear image, Pathfinder, approximately two hundred years after you entered stasis."

He was a hunter.

He moved silently, gracefully, through the underbrush, searching for the prey that would feed his daar for the next few days. He clutched his rifle in three fingered hands, large eyes scanning the darkness of the canyon floor.

There.

He saw the motion the challyrion made before he saw the creature itself, but that didn't matter. His finger squeezed, and the animal seemed to appear from nowhere as the bolt found it's head; it fell over, and he grinned fiercely as he walked over to it.

With a grunt, he lifted the dead challyrion, and made his way home.

Sara opened her eyes with a gasp.

"SAM! That's… I did that on Havarl! Killed a challyrion without actually seeing it! How…"

"I believe that your subconscious remembered this dream, and acted accordingly. Humans have muscle memory, do they not? This is similar. The heightened emotions you felt while on Havarl for the first time, most likely increased access to this memory."

Sara stared at the floor for a long time.

"I don't understand, SAM. My soulmate was anagaran? Has that ever happened before? And... I felt him die, and even so, this took place long after his normal life span would have ended."

"I do not know if anyone from the Milky Way has had an angaran soulmate before. How would they have been in a position to find out? Your mother told you that finding your soulmate was nearly impossible as it was. Would anyone think it particularly odd that they didn't find theirs? It would not be logical to assume their soulmate was in a different galaxy, when there are so many beings they never meet in their own galaxy.

"There is another image, if you would like to see it. This occured approximately four hundred years into your journey."

She took a deep breath. "Alright, SAM."

He was a student.

He spent years studying every piece of history he could lay his hands on. Every written word, every recorded oral story of his people.

And finally, his hard work had paid off. He had been invited to join the sages at Mithrava, to study, to learn with them, and - perhaps - to become one of them.

It didn't matter now. The crippling loneliness would only be useful now; the sages maintained a minimum of contact with the rest of society. The pressing knowledge of inadequacy had already served him well, driving him to learn more, learn faster, study longer than any of his peers.

The sages may or may not have the same ties as the rest of the angara, but they certainly didn't pursue such ties, and so surely they couldn't place such importance on them as his family did.

Perhaps, in Mithrava, he could finally forget that missing connection, and live his life without feeling that consistent absence as a wound that would not heal.

Perhaps.

Sara sighed heavily. "It matches, again. How I could find Mithrava, when the sages expected no one could reach them. And… it is similar to what Jaal said he felt from that connection the anagara make. But, SAM…." She didn't have words to continue.

How could she tell him that she wanted to believe it, and didn't at the same time? It felt like a betrayal to the boy whose grief at his mother's death she had shared, whose death she had felt.

"There is one final memory, though it does not contain images."

"Fine SAM, but this is the last one, right?"

"It is, Pathfinder. It occured very near to the time you woke from cryostasis, approximately 28 years ago."

Hope. Try again. Maybe this time, it will come out right.

This memory started her tears again. Even without images, the emotions overwhelmed her. Hope. She so desperately wanted to reject that word, but the emotions that accompanied it prevented her from doing so. He - whoever he was - had held so much hope.

She couldn't help but hold on to her only remaining objection. "But I still don't see how it is possible!"

He answered her with only two words.

"Taavos. Zarai."

And that was the key that unlocked the whole tangled mess.

She had felt her soulmate die, because he had died. But her soulmate was angara, who demonstrably reincarnated. Her soulmate had reincarnated three times while she slept, into the hunter, into the scholar, and finally - filled with hope - into Jaal.

It seemed incredible. Even if it had happened, why had it happened to her, out of all the people in the galaxy - in two galaxies, she supposed - who was she, after all, in the grand scheme of things?

But, there was an answer for that too, wasn't there? SAM had already said it. Perhaps it had happened before, and no one had ever considered the possibility. Why should they? Until the Initiative, and six hundred years of stasis, no one had been in a position to encounter their reincarnated soulmate, no matter where they were or who they were.

This revelation, however shiny and - she avoided the thought 'hopeful' - optimistic it seemed, didn't solve everything. She would need to relearn herself in this new light; her soulmate wasn't dead, her heart might someday be whole. On the other hand, she had felt her empathic bond with her soulmate shudder and die, and she didn't have that same bond with Jaal; was something within her broken from that trauma? Unhealable?

This wasn't going to be easy, but she should at least give Jaal a chance; see if it was possible to form some connection with him. Sara sighed, leaning her aching head against the back of the sofa.

Suddenly, she was overcome with longing for Kandros' straightforward affection and his desire for a lack of 'strenuous expectations.' It didn't get much more strenuous than this situation, and she could imagine his laughter, his teasing about the Pathfinder being so bored with a new galaxy to play in and thousands of lives to save that she had to go looking for the one thing that was least likely to have a clear path. Sara smiled slightly at the thought.

A second later she sat bolt upright, one hand covering her mouth.

"Oh crap! Kandros!"

A/N: So, I've been getting a lot of questions about why and how and such, both here and on AO3. If this chapter doesn't clear them up, please please please let me know (and let me know what you're wondering about). I'll do a codex or something for them. Thanks! ~Keth