Title is misremembered lyrics from "All I've Ever Known" from the Hadestown musical bc I feel like the version I remembered fits better than the actual lyrics so I kept it.

This isn't how I normally think of the way that reincarnation/rebirth works in Charmed, since based off Leo's explanation in 2.14, I extrapolated that the roles people have in each others lives change, they simply remain close: they could be parent and child, siblings, lovers, friends, and so on. Based on the fact that rebirth seems to be about learning, there's probably no consistency about which gender you get born as either.


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(0)

This is not the first time they have met. Nor the first time they have fallen in love.

This is a very old story. And one that always ends in tragedy.

They meet. They fall in love. They die young.

One of them will almost inevitably follow the other into Death or Hell or even the Underworld, regardless of how they do it or why.

Sometimes one of them will kill the other. More often, one of them will be the reason the other dies and end up devastated by the result. Rarely will it be entirely outside forces that kill them both. Most commonly, they will die together in some way.

But they never quite manage to live happily ever after. Fate and Destiny love a good tragedy too much for that.

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(1)

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In their first lifetime, she is a mortal woman and he the son of a muse. She captures his heart by accident and they fall head over heels in love. They are happy for a time.

He is renowned for his beautiful voice. He will keep it throughout every lifetime but rarely will he use it the way he does in this one, too afraid on a subconscious level of what the repercussions could be.

She is praised for the grace with which she dances. She will be graceful in every life she lives, but rarely will she use it solely for the joy in dancing, some part of her remembering the consequences.

She dies on their wedding day, bitten by a viper as she dances from joy for the love that she feels and the husband she adores.

He follows her to the Underworld and begs for her soul. He is granted it on the condition that he does not look back as he leaves.

He tries his hardest but he cannot do it.

He looks back. He cannot bear to do otherwise. And she is lost to him for this lifetime.

He does not die of grief only because the Maenads get there first.

His mother nearly goes mad when she finds the pieces of his body and it is only his father's wisdom that stops her from refusing her gift to humanity in vengeance.

Instead, their story lives on for eternity, written and rewritten and sung at the hands of his mother's endless grief and determination that the world not forget her beloved son and the woman he loved enough to die for.

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(2)

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In their second lifetime, he is a slave and she is an honoured guest of his master. He does not intend to draw her attention but they cannot resist the pull they feel to each other regardless.

She seeks him out and he goes out of his way to be the one chosen to serve her.

She tries to purchase him from her host to free him and fails.

They try to run away together. They only make it three days before they are found and he is killed for the crime of seducing a noble Lady. She screams and weeps as they drag her away from his corpse and his master nearly causes a war when he accidentally causes her death by attempting to strike sense into her when she refuses to deny her grief.

His fellow slaves use them as a warning that gets passed down from one to another for the next fifty years until the family that they serve dies out and is forgotten. Her family mourns her death and then relegates her to a footnote in their history out of embarrassment for her actions. They die out not three generations later.

Both of them are forgotten to history, and their names are lost to all record.

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(3)

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In their third lifetime, he is the third son of a well-off merchant and an apprentice to the city's trade guild and she is the youngest child of a family with too many mouths to feed, promised to the temple as an acolyte as soon as she is old enough.

They meet by accident and fall swiftly in love.

Their appeals to their parents to allow them to get married despite the disparity in their status fall on deaf ears and her parents make plans to send her to the temple early as his write to a far-off uncle to request he be taken to learn the other end of their trade.

Their attempts to pray at the temple of Venus fall short when the sky turns black and begins to rain ash and dust and stone.

They choke on the air and try to run for shelter only to find none in a city that is already dying. He attempts to shield her with his body and they die in the embrace.

It will not be until nearly two millennia later that the hollow space left where their bodies once lay is discovered by archaeologists. But their names will never be remembered.

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(4)

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In their fourth lifetime, he is one of the most powerful wizards alive and she is his student. It is forbidden for them to have a relationship, but they secretly love each other anyway.

She grows stronger in leaps and bounds whilst he struggles with his duties to the King and the events foretold for his reign.

When she discovers that he is planning to try and thwart destiny to save the life of his King instead of leaving him to his doom, she is forced to take actions to stop him, lest the fabric of reality unravel in his attempt to warp the fate of the world.

She kills him by sealing him in a tree, crying the entire time. He smiles as he dies and forgives her with his final breath, knowing that she had no other choice, that his fate was as set in stone as that of his King.

She watches from a distance as without his aid, his King dies bloody on the battlefield. She carries his corpse to Avalon in place of the man that she loved and lost to her own hand and then gives herself over to the waters as penance for the crime of killing the man she loved.

Their story lives on in poetry and legend, twisted and turned with different tales and different versions, none of them ever quite managing to meet the truth.

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(5)

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In their fifth lifetime, she is the wife of a king and he is one of the loyal soldiers of the realm. They know that to fall in love is wrong, but they cannot help themselves.

They resist the pull at first. But the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes, and his position of loyal and honourable guard means that more often than not, he is the one placed in charge of her safety.

Their affair is as short-lived as it is fiercely passionate and they are accused of treason for their crime when they are caught.

She is given the choice of crying rape or being executed. To choose the former would mean a horrific death for her lover and the tarnishing of his name forever. To choose the latter would mean a painful death and to be hated by a people that adore their king and never liked his foreign wife.

It is not a choice at all.

He is not given a choice, and although he tries to insist that he forced himself on her in order to try and protect her, his attempts are futile once she has stood in front of the court and announced to all and sundry without a hint of shame that she does not regret a single one of her actions and the only thing she would do differently given the option would be to persuade him to run away with her rather than stay and lie to the husband she does not love at all.

She dies proudly with her head held high and refusing to be ashamed of falling in love with a man who was kinder to her than her husband ever was, even as the people hurl insults at her and the stool is kicked out from under her feet.

He tries to beg for mercy for her with his dying breaths only for the king he has loyally served in every way but one to stare him coldly in the eye and tell him that she had been executed already.

He finds dying to be a relief.

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(6)

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In their sixth lifetime, she is the daughter of a doctor with a skill for midwifery and he is the son of a witch.

Their parents are friends and send them to the other for lessons in their respective crafts. It is perhaps inevitable that they would grow fond of each other and wish to marry as they get older.

Their parents see no reason to disapprove so when they start to court there is no opposition.

But then the witch hunts come. The local lord believes he has been cursed and so sends soldiers and hunters to sniff out any that have arcane knowledge.

His mother urges them to leave and pose as a married couple and her father does likewise. Unfortunately, they are too late.

His mother is put to death immediately, drowned in the river, everyone knows that she provides potions and charms to people who come to her in need of help.

Her father swiftly follows, executed for consorting with evil powers, as that is surely the only way a doctor can have such skill in helping women give birth. That or he has convinced them to adultery and thus knows their bodies intimately.

She rages and cries and starts to plan so that they can escape notice. He grieves and gathers his mother's things and listens for rumour accusing them.

As the son of a witch, he is equally guilty in the eyes of the soldiers, but as a man he is assumed to be unable to be a witch. As a woman, she is immediately suspicious and doubly so for being known to have studied under his mother, but as the daughter of a skilled midwife who inherited or learned that same skill she is considered an important asset to the community.

In the end, it is their own relationship that damns them. If the children of a witch and a doctor with unholy powers are seeking to marry then it must be only to further the evils of their lines. They must be corrupt to the core and as terrible as their parents.

They kill her first. They catch her as she is leaving to join him in the forest so they can run. When she is late he goes looking, but only gets there in time to see her drown.

His grief is loud and terrible and terrifies the soldiers and villagers equally. They do not try to take him alive. He dies to six arrows in his back and chest and a sword through the gut to boot.

They are unceremoniously buried and a hurried prayer is muttered over their graves to stop their spirits rising from the dead in revenge.

The hunters never forget the terror he inspired on her behalf but the villagers prefer never to think of either of them at all. It is better to avoid the guilt they feel at being complicit in the death of four beloved members of their community.

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(7)

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In their seventh lifetime, they are born to warring families.

Her father kills his brother. He kills her brother-in-law. Her brother kills his uncle.

They meet by an ill-timed accident and do not realise who the other is. He is polite and charming, and she is graceful and clever, and they are both enchanted by the other. They agree to meet at the fête being held the next day and separate with hopeful thoughts of what is to come.

They do not discover the truth of each other until after they have already met at the fête, when her sister comes to get her and he recognises the wife of the man he had killed.

They determine to hate each other and forget that they were ever attracted to each other, but fate cannot easily be denied.

When they encounter each other again they spit hate and poison at each other, but when a cart threatens to trample her, he saves her anyway by reflex.

They try to lie to themselves, then when it fails, they try to lie to each other. When they find they cannot deceive the person they love as much as they wish to despise them, they instead try to lie to everyone else.

They try to find a way to create peace with their families.

They fail.

He kills her cousin. Her uncle kills his father. His brother kills her uncle. Her father kills his brother. He kills her father.

Around and around it goes. Each death causing retaliation causing death causing vengeance.

They cannot live like this with the blood of each other's families on their hands and despising the other but being unable to resist being drawn to them anyway. But they cannot bear to be apart either.

They choose to die together to poisoned wine rather than live without each other and with only hatred and loss for company.

Their families blame each other for the deaths of their youngest children and accuse each other of trickery. Within the decade her sister and his cousin are the only ones left alive and the families' livelihoods have fallen into ruin.

They find peace in death.

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(8)

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In their eight lifetime, they do not meet at all.

They come within inches and minutes of encountering each other again and again, but each time coincidence and contrived happenstances intervene and cause them to miss each other.

Her elder brother tutors his cousin. His sister shares her dance class. She is invited to the wedding of a friend whose invitation he had to regretfully decline. He goes to a public dance that she is forced to miss through illness.

Her stay at an inn is interrupted by an urgent letter from home a day before he seeks refuge there due to bad weather interrupting his journey. He leaves the market not five minutes before she arrives.

Her cousin marries his neighbour. His father trades with hers. Their mothers meet by accident and discuss the misfortune of having a child who has not had luck with marriage.

He misses a musical performance she has a small part in due to having to tend to his nephew's injury. Her niece's bout of childhood fever stops her from attending a storytelling session he eagerly attends.

He tutors her nephew in numbers. She teaches his how to dance. She is hired to make his niece's wedding dress. He is a chaperone when hers starts stepping out with one of his employees.

They both miss the wedding of her student to his cousin's son: him through a minor but crucial mistake in an order that he must correct as soon as possible, and her due to an emergency in her parents' house that she goes to help with rather than her pregnant sister or overwhelmed brother.

He dies of an infection mere weeks before illness takes her life.

They never know what it is they missed that made them feel empty.

Their lives were not sad. They were well-loved and mourned.

But they are poorer for never having known each other.

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(9)

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In their ninth lifetime, she is a courtesan and he is her client. Their affair starts purely as a business transaction.

It does not stay that way.

He comes more and more often and she charges him less and less despite her Madam's displeasure.

He tries to save money so that she can pay off her debt and she tries to draw more clients through performance to earn more money.

His family is not shy in their disapproval. Hers are long dead but her Madam warns her of the fleeting attentions of men like him in their place.

They ignore them, sure in each other's affections.

He is murdered in her bed by one of her jealous clients that does not like that she looks at him in a way that she does not look at others. She screams her grief and anger, covered in his blood as his murderer is dragged away by the burly men her Madam employs for just such a purpose.

She is insensible in grief and blames the Madam for allowing it to happen. The Madam allows her this the once, knowing that she is in shock and likely traumatised from having the man murdered whilst they were still entwined.

When his family comes for his body she tries to stop them and fails.

She refuses clients and withers away from the grief. When the doctor that the Madam hires cannot find a thing wrong with her, the Madam throws her out.

She dies cold and alone on the streets but never regrets loving him.

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(10)

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In their tenth lifetime, she is the daughter of a noble lord with too many enemies, who spoils her and that she adores, and he works for one of those enemies and is sent to get information.

He seduces her and she believes him and falls helplessly in love. Despite himself, and despite doing his job like he should, he falls in love with her too.

They become lovers in secret and the more information he gains from her, the harder it is for him to put it to use. On her part, the longer the affair continues the harder it becomes to lie to her beloved father about why she is so happy these days.

He lies and lies and drowns in the guilt of it.

The day he gets the missive that an attack on the lord is imminent, he weeps. Then, he goes to her, as he has done for months now.

She questions his melancholy and he lies to her before distracting her in the way he has become so practised at. When night has fallen and she lays peaceful beside him, he kills her in her sleep so that she will not discover what she has been the unwitting instigator of. He refuses to make her live with the guilt of what she has caused and does not want to know if she will despise him for it or despairingly love him anyway, hating every moment.

He does not move from her cooling body and merely gazes at the face that he was never supposed to love at all. When her father comes in to rouse her in panic so that she may flee, he does not even attempt to defend himself when the man attacks him in a rage.

His death is as slow and painful as hers was quick and easy, but his last sight is of her. He dies with the knowledge that he did his duty and became a monster for it but loved her just the same.

His body is thrown into a ditch and discarded as waste. No one mourns him, and his superior is only disappointed that he was foolish enough to get caught so close to victory.

Her father buries her with honour before his enemies arrive and uses her name as his battle cry. He cannot be victorious when all of his secrets have been unknowingly betrayed to the very people he fights, but he puts up a fierce fight anyway and his last stand costs his enemies far too many losses before they finally succeed.

No one ever truly learns the truth.

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(11)

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In their eleventh lifetime, they are both nobles of equal standing. They are arranged to marry and have the fortune to make a love match.

They are happy, for a while. They have no need to manoeuvrer for a better position when their families are both well off and well favoured and their marriage has the approval of the king.

Though they do not beget an heir, although not for lack of trying, they are content and perfectly happy to stay out of the backstabbing going on in the rest of the court surrounding them.

When she finally becomes pregnant, they are ecstatic. But it does not last. For the revolution has begun and they are nobles who will not survive it.

They die, one after the other, calling each other's names, desperate to know if the other still lives but not learning before they lose their lives.

Their bodies are as dismissively discarded as the rest of their peers and none of the peasants mourn them. Their family is not alive to grieve them either.

Their names are merely two among many on the list of nobles executed and historians barely take note of them, for a happy, unremarkable marriage of two younger children for an alliance already in place is hardly of interest when there are far more scandalous or influential people to study.

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(12)

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In their twelfth lifetime, they have the misfortune of being born across cultural boundaries in a country where to even entertain a relationship with someone Other is unthinkable at best.

This does not stop them from catching each other's attention. He thinks she is graceful and fierce and she finds him kind and clever when their paths cross.

The first time they meet it is because he is singing and she cannot help but dance to the tune. When they realise who the other is they both make haste to leave but hesitate before they can.

He hesitantly offers to sing for her if she wishes to dance and she is equally apprehensive to take the offer.

In the end they cannot resist the temptation.

One meeting turns into two turns into ten turns into talking and laughing and falling in love even though they know they shouldn't.

They get less wary and less careful, and they, inevitably, get caught.

Her family cries rape, his cries insanity, and suddenly the fragile, grudging peace between the two groups in the community breaks and sparks into an all-out fury, each side blaming the other for the existence of the couple stuck in the middle.

They try to explain, to convince their families, their friends, that nothing untoward happened, that they enjoy each other's company, that they do not want this hostility and hatred directed at the other side. But everything they say falls on deaf ears.

Her family locks her away, thinking that doing so will make her come to her senses. His tries the same only to be trampled when her side comes to take him away and punish him for the rape of the innocent girl they think he took advantage of.

He is beaten to death in a fury for a crime that he did not commit and the wrath of his side come down on the perpetrators in turn.

She goes insane from her family's attempts to heal her of an affliction she does not have and attempts to throw herself out of the window to escape their clutches. She dies from the fall.

They are both mourned and hated in equal amounts for the wrong reasons. But it changes nothing and in the end the community is destroyed by the violence.

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(13)

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In their thirteenth lifetime, he is a soldier and she is a nurse.

The war is terrible and monstrous and devastating, but somehow, between battlefields and blood and far too many bodies, they fall in love.

He is always the first to offer her a smile and ask if she needs a hand and she never hesitates to ask if he'd like to escort her back to her room at the end of her shift.

His trench-mates tease him and her colleagues laugh at her but they cannot find it in themselves to care.

She worries whenever his unit is moved away from her station and he fusses over whether she'll still be at the hospital when he gets back.

It is sweet and desperate and terrifying all at the same time.

When it gets too close, and he nearly dies, she fights off tears even as she treats his wounds. The first thing he says when he wakes up is a request for her to marry him when the war is over. The last joyful thing she ever says is a happy joke about how she'll marry him if the war ever ends.

But then the mortar shell hits and the hospital catches fire and gas canisters crack and chaos and terror reigns.

They are both terrified and desperate but she is a professional and he is a soldier.

She starts the evacuations and orders him to go. He tells her that he won't leave her there alone and insists on helping. He is mobile when so many others are not, so she lets him.

They try to distribute the few gas masks they have to the patients in most dire need and begin helping the patients out.

In the end 132 people die in the attack on the hospital.

He dies due to the mustard gas when it gets absorbed through his bandages and into his injuries and he collapses and is unable to move. She dies of smoke inhalation when she refuses to leave him behind and tries to help him escape. Many of the survivors owe their lives to the two of them.

They are recorded on war memorials alongside the rest of the dead, but they are remembered by their friends and colleagues and the soldiers they helped save from the burning hospital.

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(14)

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In their fourteenth lifetime, they are teenage sweethearts and find joy with each other despite the ongoing war.

They go on dates and forget the horrors in the world and come home giggling.

They plan for the future, just for fun, and gossip about anything they can think of.

They rarely talk about the war but when they do they always try to be positive about what will happen when it's over. Her mother works in a hospital and his father is an administrator of some undisclosed group that operates out of the castle, so they are sure that the war will be over by the time they are old enough to marry and make important life decisions.

They do not know how right they are.

Unfortunately, they will not live to see it.

They do not hear the bomb drop. They do not hear the explosion. They do not see its terrible glow or hear the horror of people being thrown back from the shock-wave. They are too close to ground zero, and die near instantly when it detonates.

They are only two among many in this monstrous tragedy. Their parents count among the other casualties.

They are considered nameless to too many, but will never be forgotten.

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(15)

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In their fifteenth lifetime, they are both spies sent to another country and told to integrate there by whatever means necessary and preferably by starting a relationship with a local.

They do not realise that the other is also engaging in espionage at first.

He thinks she is graceful, clever, and stunning enough that it will be believable if he immediately falls head over heels for her. She thinks he is charming, friendly, and new enough that if it goes sideways then she will not end up alienated from the community.

Things go about as well as can be expected. She falls first, but he falls harder and soon they're both paying enough attention to each other that it gets harder and harder to keep up the lies.

By the time they get married as expected they are both suspicious about the other hiding something, not least because neither of them had family come to the wedding.

In the end it's a stupid mistake that catches them both out. A message for her is addressed to 'Mr' rather than 'Mrs' by accident and he opens it. She comes home almost exactly as he's finished reading it and recognises the format immediately.

She lunges for him and he goes for a knife and suddenly they're face to face and he has a knife at his throat and she has one to her gut.

And despite it they still love each other. But they are loyal to their countries first.

This was always the inevitable outcome. It's hard to say in the end whether it was her slash or his stab that landed first, but the conclusion is the same. They will both die of their injuries.

He drags himself to the wall and she manages to half crawl to the wall opposite.

Blood loss is a slow, quiet way to die.

He starts talking first, tells her about his childhood, the parents and sister he left behind. She tells him about her father and siblings in turn. It is the first honest conversation they have ever had with each other because they will never ever admit that the love declarations were true.

She offers him her actual name and he gives her his in return.

They both know that it will be their neighbours that will find their bodies first. They are neither of them stupid enough to keep anything that will implicate them as spies if they were to die in an accident, so the only thing that could possibly tell anyone the truth is the letter still lying in the middle of the hallway.

It is an easy decision in the end. Let their neighbours think this was a terrible crime of passion that they regretted too late. She half crawls and half drags her way across to him, picking up the letter on the way. They don't have long left and they both know it.

She gives him the letter and he sets it alight with the lighter he keeps in his pocket for smoking.

She leans into his side and he rests his head on her shoulder and they hold hands.

One of them dies first. The other follows not long after.

When the neighbours call the police and the medical examiner looks at the bodies it will have been over a day and he will be unable to determine which of them died first, just that they both killed the other.

Their deaths are dismissed by their bosses as just another sacrifice to be remembered with all the others.

Their parents get that dreaded letter.

Their friends and neighbours mourn them deeply. They were kind and vivacious and so in love that it was almost blinding.

They are buried under the fake names they used to ingratiate themselves into the community and mourned far more for it than they ever would have believed possible.

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(16)

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In their sixteenth lifetime, she is the daughter of a coven of mercenary witches with demonic powers and he is the son of one of the most powerful lines of good witches in history.

By all logic they should never have met, and been enemies if they had. Her family went out of their way to avoid the notice of his, after all, not least because they ended up living in the same city.

But, well, the world ended. Things changed.

His brother caused the world to end when he was fourteen years old. Six months later, when she was nearly nineteen, her coven were told to kneel to their new King or die one by one starting with their youngest members.

He fights his brother and she fights for his brother in fear for her family. They both know they'll die sooner rather than later

In this lifetime they meet when she's sent to capture him or die trying. He's a gangly teenager and she's barely past twenty but they both manage to give the other a good fight.

It ends unceremoniously when she gets impaled. Or it should.

He offers her a chance. It sounds like mercy. And she wants to live so badly.

So she takes it.

It's kind of hard to tell who followed who into hell this time.

She spies for him and lies for him and he gives her healing potions and back-up in turn.

They get closer and the fight gets harder and his brother gets more ruthless. Her family starts dying to his brother's petty vengeance and he only has one other family member left to lose but they find more and more common ground with every day that passes and every fight that comes, win or lose.

They fall into bed before they fall in love but there really isn't that much difference in the end.

When you live post-apocalypse some things end up more important than others and you cling to love when you find it no matter how illogical.

Things get worse and they cling harder and everyone gets a little more desperate.

Desperate enough to try something crazy.

He asks her to marry him right before things get really insane and she lights up like a girl in love for the first time and he falls harder than ever before. It's a terrible proposal and a worse time to ask and the place is hardly the best. But he has a ring and it fits and it's both of them so it's enough.

They plan and plot and outline every little detail and then she helps him break into his old home and steal a spell and go back in time. They nearly get caught and his last sight of her is her fighting for her life to buy him some time. He doesn't let it go to waste.

Whilst he starts to change things in the past and manipulates events so that they can try and stop the apocalypse from ever happening, she flees from his brother in the future he came from.

But there's only so long and so far she can run before she gets caught.

His brother gives her a choice between him and the world. And really, with how much she loves him was that ever a choice? Because he might be born of good witches, but she wasn't. And her coven swore a long time ago to never help an innocent in need. When it comes down to it, the world really isn't worth that much when weighed against his life, even if he'll never forgive her for choosing to put him first.

She goes back in time and betrays him to save his life because she'll never forgive herself if he dies when she could have done something to save him. He is as furious as she could have imagined but it's his hurt that does her in and she nearly stops, she nearly gives up when he breaks her heart as surely as she has broken his.

But she needs him to live.

As long as he is alive to hate her, to wish her gone, that is enough. Better he be alive and hating her than dead loving her.

But maybe he doesn't hate her after all. He follows her back to the future and they both take turns defending each other from his brother until they can't. She gets impaled again, by his brother this time. But this time they both know that there's no saving her.

She tells him to run and change the future like they planned. Because if they do it right then the threat dies with her.

He cries when he leaves and his brother is furious but she gets to die with the face of the man she loves as the last thing she sees so it doesn't matter in the end.

A little less than a year later, in the past, he dies saving his brother and the future changes, the terrible world they met in melting away like snow.

One of his last thoughts is of her.

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(?)

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In their sixteenth lifetime, they get a second chance.

He was born as he died and her younger self never has to watch the world end.

They grow up in the same families moving in different circles.

They meet by accident, but once again it's in battle. On the same side this time.

They start out as allies and end up as friends before falling into bed in short order. It doesn't take long for them to fall in love, but in this world they lie to themselves about it a lot longer. Her family disdains outsiders and his dislikes those with demonic powers.

But surely it's worth it to try and make it work?

She makes the first move, because she's always known what she wants and she's never shied away from going after it. He makes the second, because if he's allowed to have this then he's going grab onto it with both hands.

They keep it secret for a while but then they slip and then it turns into him winning the approval of her family and her learning to love his.

It's not always smooth sailing. He ends up remembering the first life they had, where she betrayed him and then died saving him, and she doesn't, so things get complicated for a time. But they love each other too much to give in that easily and besides, they're both big believers in the idea that if something's worth having then you have to put in the work for it.

And it all pays off in the end.

In this lifetime they do not die young or in tragedy. They have children and grandchildren and even a great-grandchild before they pass.

They both die peacefully, one in the quiet lull after a family dinner and the other in their sleep within the week.

But that doesn't mean it's the end.

Their descendants summon them for help and advice. So do the descendants of his siblings and cousins. Her coven summons them too, for slightly more bloody reasons, but the intent behind it is the same. She changed her coven for the better and he helped train most of his, so it only makes sense. By the time their great-grandchildren have children, they are legends.

And so it goes.

Everybody knows that they always come when asked for help, and always together at that. Their families like to whisper that they loved each other so much that they couldn't bear to live without the other and that's why they passed within days of each other.

Maybe they're right.

But neither of them would change a thing. And they are always happy to come when called if someone needs help. If only so they can laugh about the absurd situations a teenager can get themselves into later.

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It took them seventeen lifetimes, but they finally managed to get that happily ever after in the end.

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And that is how their story ends.

.

But this ending is just the beginning…


There are multiple references to different stories and historical events in the different lifetimes. I haven't tagged them because that would just clutter up the actual tags. But yes, life one is Orpheus and Eurydice and there are eight further references to either historical events or other stories/myths in other lifetimes and one that is ambiguous enough that it could refer to the situation in any of at least half a dozen different countires during the time period I was thinking of.

But also, I really couldn't let it end miserably when the whole point is that the Changed Future was good and heavily implied to be a happily ever after for the Halliwells :)