My head cocked to the side; he turned to face me again. He leaned back against one of the porch's support pillars as I studied his face again. This time, I was hoping to trigger whatever it was in my mind that recognized his voice. He grinned, patiently waiting and offering no clues. While his strong jawline and defined cheekbones threatened to distract me from my appraisal, it was the way his smile lit up his eyes that finally jostled the memory free.

"You were in the war," I murmured, almost to myself more than to him. Closing my eyes, I could see him lying on an archaic-looking cot in a shoddy tent filled with soldiers - most of them barely old enough to be called men, even in the 1700s. A female physician was unheard of, but I had managed to ingratiate myself with another doctor serving as an officer in one of Washington's regiments. Together we treated as many revolutionary fighters as we could. Most of the time, there wasn't much we could do.

On the day that Christopher was carried into our tent, I had to make several quick decisions. The first was determining who was too far gone to be saved. Christopher was unconscious and, at first, appeared to be barely breathing. I shook my head at the loss of another young life and turned to attend to one of his fellow soldiers. But his hand reached out and grabbed my wrist before I could walk away. I blinked and the tent faded from my mind's eyes. Christopher stood before me, older in more ways than one, smiling.

"Captain MacDonald," I said.

"Nora Talbot," he replied, bowing like he did the first time I saw him rise from his sick bed. I laughed at the sound of the name I had taken on upon my arrival in the New World.

"Ellie Jones, currently."

"Still a doctor, though, I hear."

I don't know why I blushed at this. Perhaps I realized he hadn't just overheard what I had said inside but was actively listening.

"How…um…when…" I waved my hand helplessly, not knowing how to ask the obvious. How did you end up dying? Who made you a vampire? You sure did grow up beforehand though… I smiled weakly, lips pressed shut in case something utterly stupid came flying out of my mouth.

He laughed again, and I couldn't help but giggle with him. He jerked his head toward the forest.

"Would you walk with me?" He offered his arm, and I took it.

We walked together for some time without speaking, keeping a leisurely pace marked by the crunch of snow and frozen earth beneath our feet. I tried not to focus on how natural it felt to walk so close to him. Before long, the ancient trees that looked as if they touched the sky towered directly over us.

"So," Christopher began, breaking the silence while staring at a canopy of barren branches overhead. He paused, glancing down at me. "Do you prefer Ellie or Nora?"

"Ellie."

He nodded. "Ellie, then." His attention returned to the ancient trees.

"When last I saw you," I said, keeping my eyes training on the way the branches hid the gray sky. "You were, what? Twenty? Twenty-one?"

"Nearly twenty." I laughed quietly and shook my head.

"And yet you were eager to get back to the war."

Shrugging, Christopher sat down on a fallen log, gesturing to the space beside him, inviting me to sit as well. I did. He made a face.

"You really prefer Ellie to Nora?"

It was my turn to answer with a shrug. "I only went by Nora for a few years, actually. Before I came here from Europe I was always known as Eleonora. After the war, I switched again to Eleanor. A friend had a sister by the same name, and he started calling me Ellie because it had been her nickname. It just…stuck."

He sighed dramatically. "I suppose I can get used to that."

Rolling my eyes, I bit back the urge to respond sarcastically. When I met his gaze again, I was glad for it. He flashed the same boyish grin I remembered from so many years before. My breath caught as the memory hit me. He cleared his throat, shifting nervously as he sat.

"I, uh…" He turned so that he faced me fully, one leg on either side of the log upon which we sat. I adjusted my position automatically to mirror his. He took hold of my hands; it was automatic, as natural as breathing. I watched his face as he selected the next words he would speak.

"I have a confession to make, Ellie."

"Go ahead." My voice shook a little.

He cleared his throat again, and I could see his expression steel; his eyes met mine with resolute determination.

"After the war," he blinked and looked away for a moment. "After the war, I looked for you." When he turned back to me, his eyes were wide; he was looking past me and into his recollection of another lifetime. "For years. Anywhere I went — everywhere I went. I described you to people; listened for talk of a woman practicing medicine." Snapping back to the present for just a moment, he winked at me. "I thought for sure that would give you away….one day."

I stared with wide eyes. I couldn't speak.

"Of course, I didn't really know that you were more than human, but…" His grip on my hands tightened for a moment and then relaxed. "On the other hand, even after I was no longer human myself I just…knew. I knew one day I would finally find you."

I listened as he told me about every place he went to from the moment he was no longer obligated to military duties. Eventually, he studied law, practicing for almost ten years — the last years of his human life. One night, he was having drinks with a client in a local tavern and spotted a familiar face. The man called Garrett that had been with him in the Cullen's kitchen was seated in a darkened corner of the bar that night. He walked over and said hello, and they struck up a conversation, reminiscing about the days before the war when Garrett had been in school with Christopher's older brother.

"I didn't know it at that moment, of course, but if not for Garrett happening to walk into that bar that night, I wouldn't be standing here in front of you now." With a quiet chuckle, Christopher shook his head at some private memory. "Long story short," he continued, "My client was setting me up. When I left to go home, I was attacked in the street. Garrett heard the commotion and came to investigate."

Christopher explained that he was left in the dirt, bleeding profusely. Garrett, making a rash decision to save the life of an old acquaintance, dragged him into an alley and bit him.

"The pain was unimaginable. I remember begging him to end it. But, eventually, the torment faded." He stopped walking and took my elbow, turning me to face him. He tilted his head, brushing the back of his hand against my face. His fingers lingered on my cheek. His teeth pressed into his lower lip as the blush beneath my skin warmed his hand. "When I finally emerged from the blaze, it was your face that I remembered."

"I didn't know." What a stupid thing to say, I chided myself in my mind. It was all I could manage; my voice was barely a whisper. He smiled, brushing my cheek once more before letting his hand fall to his side.

"I expect you saw so many of us it would have been hard to differentiate one from another." I considered my response carefully.

"It was more than just the number of you," I said quietly after a moment or two. "It was how…pointless our efforts were so much of the time." Even when we could keep someone from bleeding to death, infection would so often end the lives of the injured. Soldiers were already malnourished and disease-stricken, which complicated matters even more. "For better or worse, I remember every face from back then. All I could do was hope that the ones that walked back into battle made it home to their families in one piece."

I explained how after the war, I'd gone south. The officer Christopher could barely remember from his time in the makeshift infirmary and I had decided to travel to his hometown in North Carolina. We had formed an unlikely friendship in the years we worked together - and an even more unlikely alliance. Each of us was out of place, with secrets that needed keeping. We moved to a small town, building a home on a plot of land purchased with a small inheritance held in trust while he'd been away at war. I had funds of my own that my father had granted me before I left Europe, and together we created the appearance of a respectable household.

"After a few decades he passed away," I explained. "So it was time to move on. I made my way to various little towns in the midwest over the next hundred years or so. Sometimes I could get away with practicing medicine openly. Other times I would run the local apothecary, offering what I could to help people in whatever ways they would accept."

He listened with rapt attention. His thumbs drew circles in my palms. He only interrupted when I mentioned a place he knew. He'd ask me when I had been there. There had been several times when we could easily have crossed paths.

"To think," he murmured, looking away and shaking his head. "All those years…we could have…"

I could almost see it too — meeting him in a small Minnesota town where just before the turn of the twentieth century. But then, I remembered why I left. I received a summons from my father in the form of Felix and Demetri arriving on my doorstep late one night. I shivered at the thought, looking away when Christopher cocked his head, his eyes curious and concerned.

Looking up at the sky again, I sighed. "I think we should probably get back to the house."

Christopher stood, holding his hand out to help me up and we started the short trek back to the Cullen house. We walked slowly, and without speaking. For the moment, there was nothing else that needed to be said. There was no need to fill the space between us with idle chatter. The heavy silence was neither anxious nor awkward. Somehow, I was sure that we both knew that Christopher had been right all along — we would have found each other eventually.

His fingers wove through mine as the house came into view. Before we crossed the front yard I stopped. It almost seemed too soon to He stood beside me and squeezed my hand. Weirdly, neither of our histories seemed to matter. Just by being in the same place, at the same time, something shifted out there in the forest. Gravity still existed, but it wasn't the ground it was holding me to anymore. I didn't have to ask to know that he felt the same.

"I don't know what this means," I whispered.

"We don't have to know, do we? Not yet." He squeezed my hand once more.