As We Remember

They’ve been apart for a long time, but Hutch remembers that they’re meant to be together.

There is a single mention of a sexual relationship between them. If you feel that makes the story slash, you need to get out more. (Reading the story will show you why.)

For the au100 challenge on LJ.

I don’t know when it started.

That might be the wrong way of putting it; I remember the first lives we spent together (at least, I think I do); just not when they were. The historians can’t even agree on when people started using copper, and the ancient calendars have no relation to the ones that followed them for me to work it out by.

I remember that we met in Ur. That was our second meeting.

That was the first time I started remembering.

I don’t remember if we go through any lives without meeting each other; there are certainly enough gaps between the lives I remember for it to happen. I only remember the lives when we come face-to-face.

In the civilisation now known as Ancient Greece, when he was the most unruly slave I ever had – and the truest friend.

In Ancient Rome I was his slave, and we appalled just about everyone by treating each other as equals, in bed and out of it.

We haven’t always been lovers; it depends on the morals of the cultures we grow up in. It doesn’t really matter; we always love each other. Making love isn’t the important part. Being together is.

That’s why I hate it when the memories come back, because I only start remembering our past lives together when one of us is going to die soon. I’ve started using that knowledge to try and cheat fate; in our last lives, we managed to survive together for three years after I started remembering. Not enough, but far better than previous lives, when we barely had three months. And that life, we’d had ten years of working together as policemen before the memories came. (Looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t start remembering sooner. He got poisoned, I got drugged, he got kidnapped by Satanists, I got attacked by a psychotic woman with a kitchen knife… our lives were far more dangerous than they should have been at that time and place, even for our job.)

I think that remembering our shared past when one of us is due to die is supposed to comfort me; a reassurance that we’ll meet again, that we’re meant to be together. It doesn’t work, though. I’m just made more aware of what I’m going to lose.

It’s worse when the memories return before we meet, though. The worst so far was when I was a Viking. The memories arrived as we were planning a raid in a new area. By the time our longboats landed, I knew exactly who to look for.

I only saw him as Ulfric’s sword cut his head half-off.

We haven’t met in this life yet, either, though I know who he is – a world-famous flit-racer. I think I know why I’m remembering, too – the Grand International, the biggest race of the year, starts next week and with the amount of betting that takes place, sabotage is always a problem. And sabotaged flitters are usually deadly for whoever is in the driving seat.

If we knew each other, I could just tell him that I was worried. As David Starsky, he’d have listened to Kenneth Hutchinson. But how does Hut Kinnid, third-grade mechanic, persuade Tars Doveed, twice-winner of the Grand International and hero of the racing enthusiasts, to take his warning seriously without being accused of threatening him?

He probably wouldn’t even listen to me; he never did care for taking advice from strangers, and as far as I know, he doesn’t remember our shared past.

I’ll keep an eye on his flitter, instead. Maybe we can cheat fate again…

The racing flitter stood in the centre of the hangar, looking strangely vulnerable to the shadowy figure who slipped in through the side-door. The code to the lock had been far too easy to learn, most of the people who used it not bothering to try and hide the sequence.

Moving quietly, the figure headed straight for the flitter and crouched to study the underside.

“Gotcha,” Tars said, switching on the lights with one hand as he shot the intruder squarely in the back. The impact spun the man round, and Tars’ hard sneer vanished as he recognised the pale features. “Hutch?”

Pale blue eyes fastened on him with an emotion he couldn’t read in their depths. The full lips moved soundlessly, shaping a final word. Starsk.

The body fell to the floor.