Sugarcane

[[Forearms to forearms|greeting]], [[now|this moment in time]], free hands coming up to each-other’s faces.

I don't have much faith in [[religion]]. I don't believe there's any great purpose for you, or for me.\n\nI choose not to think that the lives you and I have been through were set up intentionally by some greater force.\n\nIf I were to learn that they had, I don't know if I'd be furious...or grateful.\n\nI don't believe in [[goodness or in badness|morality]]. But some turns of phrase come so easily to the tongue...\n\nI believe in you, and through believing in you, I find cause to believe in myself. That's my brand of [[faith]].

I followed you in the newspapers, on the TV.\n\nYou didn't have time to reply to my letters.\n\n[[I was proud of you.|pride]]\n

Ah.\n\nThe rocket story.\n\nThe biggest death count either of us ever had.\n\n[[Meteors seem to be a theme, with us.]]

Except to wonder if they might be you.\n\nThey [[usually|parents' day]] aren't.

A feeling of weightness, airlessness, no responsibilities on my shoulders.\n\nJust cool autumn air and the most perfect person I'd ever seen winking at me from the opposite side of the room, eyes glancing upwards as we found the silence in the crowd.\n\nThe first time we touched.\n\nOverflowing with freedom, and independence.\n\n[[Remember me the same, won't you?]]

Is this it? \n\n[[Is this all there is?]]

You were the captain, and I'd gotten you a little drunk.\n\n[[We were on top of a control panel.]]\n\n...this really wasn't one of our prouder moments, and to be honest, [[I'd really rather not recall it|intro]].

I suppose I don't really think about the rest of the world very often.\n\nIt seems to do its thing with or without us, more consistent than we've ever been, more successful than we could be.\n\nI've been all over it, but I've never really travelled. Never really explored. Just chased you, all across the globe.\n\nMaybe that's something we could do [[this time around|this moment in time]]. We've got the time, and I think it would be meaningless without you.

Do you remember how we became [[new]], in bodies so aged[[?|palms.]]

I washed your laundry every week, for one.\nConsider it a [[thank-you|returns]] from that time you were my [[personal servant]].

A lot of my deaths have an inexplicable fondness for cold.\n\nI can't even drink anything with ice in it, now.\n\nIce has never done me any favours.

Well, except for my son that time he got high (without my blessing, I note) and shot you, but he was sorry about it and with you as a parent that’s less likely to happen, don’t you [[think?|maybe]]

Is this it?\nHave we won now?\nIs this our chance?\nIs this the end?\nIs this what we’ve been waiting for?\n\nBecause there is nothing here, right now, even though we have earned [[this moment in time]] so many times over.

Well, except [[caves]]. Fuck caves.

After all, better me than any else, [[right]]?

I //do// still long for you - I don't think I know how not to, after all this. \n\nYou'll always be a part of me.\n\n[[It's time for me to find every other piece.|It's time for me to find all the other pieces.]]

You'd think we would have this part down-pat by now.\n\nA shiver along the spine that says //any moment now//.\n\nA growing sense of confidence, and the suspense, the tension in the air: immediate recognition.\n\nBut we misread signals or we say this can't be it, not just now, we haven't [[earned|earn]] it yet (even though we have; we //must// have).\n\nThat doesn't make it any less wondrous that in the whole world we'll always find each other again, no matter how [[brief|time]].

When I first saw you as a member of royalty - fingers steepled before you, a fur-lined cloak tossed over your shoulders, sitting in an arched golden throne, the way you commanded the attention of the court around you - well, you quite took my breath away.\n\n(not to say you don't always, every time I find you again)\n\nThat sort of responsibility settles upon your shoulders so easily.\n\nThank you for finding me a position in your court, that time. \n\nAnd it was a pity about the [[revolution|respect]] that left me dead in the castle kitchen and you under a guillotine a week later.

That time, we spent almost five years together. Your hair was longer, and your eyes and face a different shape. Even our [[bodies|body]] were different then, but every life is like putting on new [[clothes]] that have always fitted.\n\nWe have been everything, everywhere, [[always]].

You were...very prolific. Mid-thirties, outspoken, [[charismatic|magnetism]], extremely photogenic. I don't know if things would have been any different if you hadn't...\n\nif you hadn't //sparkled// on television. You were radiant.\n\n[[You accrued people whenever you moved.]]

Reins

Back, I suppose, when I thought of you as a person.\n\n[[More than the lost extension of myself -|sped2]]

One day, I'd like it if you could look at me with pride.\n\nLike I had accomplished something (something more than finding you again).\n\nBut I spend too much time chasing you to be anything else.

This is the end of every cycle. \n\nWe are rewarded now. To receive our final reward in this lifetime, and then we be finished. No more chances. No more next time arounds. No more next times, because this is our reward and then we are granted [[oblivion]].\n\n“I’m a bit scared,” one of us mutters, but I haven’t distinguished [[between us]] for aeons. \n\nIs this it? Is this what all those lives were for?\n\nIs this the [[reward]] for those deaths?\n

I can honestly say that the crash was one of my top ten favourite endings.\n\nWe were together, and we were going on our honeymoon. How could things have become any more [[perfect?|perfection]]

I used to pretend I was the merciful one.\n\nThen I decided to pretend //you// were the merciful one.\n\nI still haven't been able to shake myself of some of these illusions.\n\nTo look at the two of us properly, and acknowledge what we've become.

Your compassion was something that I half-hoped would overflow onto me, when we were younger.\n\nThen I aged and realised we'd never succeed if we were both [[good people|morality]].\n\nThen you aged and you decided to change our roles.\n\nWe haven't even had roles in centuries. Our identities have become much to fluid for that.

If it wasn't for right now, right here, I wouldn't believe in 'safe'.\n\nBut [[this is it|are normal.]] The safety we were promised.

(did I ever thank you for [[that]]?)

What about the time when we ran away, not even adults, because we were so certain? And we spent our lives tip-toeing and sidling across our universe, hiding our faces and laughing when we were [[safe]]?\n\nI can remember that as one of the [[clearest]], I think.

>[[I take your hand in mine, and I squeeze it tight.|ted]]\n\n><<if $freedom_idea eq "yes">>[[We take a step back, nod at one another, and walk onwards, in opposite directions, alone.|sed]]<<endif>>

I'd like to give you a nice word for it. Your following. Your adoring public.\n\nBut that wasn't what it was.\n\nYou'd started a [[cult]].

Perfection is you and me and the world spinning around us.\n\nIt can do what it wants. [[End|always]]. Begin anew.\n\nAs long as I have [[you.|this moment in time]]\n\n

We were married, once.\n\nI can only remember it ever happening once, when the [[stars]] aligned so [[perfectly|perfection]] for us and we stole those few moments.\n\nYou were [[dressed|clothes]] so finely.\n\nThat [[night|nights]] was - well, that's between the [[two of us]]. \n\nPity about the plane [[crash]]. I was looking forwards to the [[honeymoon]].

Reins is more of a word labyrinth than a game or a story; it's a wandering through the easily-distracted mind of something that's been alive for a very, very long time.\n\nIt's messy. There are dead ends and an actual end (or maybe more than one), and playing through to completion will probably involve copious usage of the back button.\n\nThere are stories hidden here. Conversations. Confessions. Doubts, and certainties, and a certain sense of finality.\n\n[[I hope you enjoy/enjoyed.|Start]]

Something I do rarely, but it certainly has happened.\n\nThere //have// been one or two times you've disappointed me, you know. Everything happens [[in turn|returns]].

//You stopped packing for a moment and glanced up at me through your hair.\n\n"Stop apologising," you said shortly. "Love means never having to say you're sorry."\n\nI snorted at that, I'm sorry to say. Not one of my more tactful moments. "If we didn't apologise, we might think we meant it."\n\nYou smiled. Walked over to me, put your hands under my chin, lifted my face to meet your eyes. "I'm not sorry for last time," you whispered.\n\n"Well, last time //was// my fault."\n\nYou considered. "True," you acknowledged, and then you decided we //should// keep apologising, because we //do// fuck up.//\n\n[[I won't apologise now.|are.]]

Screaming is one of those immediately recognisable things.\n\nNo matter where we are, when we are, who we are, I will always recognise your voice raised in fear, or panic, or pain.\n\nIt is not as useful an ability as it might seem.

The face you wear now is closest to...the time that I died after our first meeting. You were [[haunted|ghost]] by the memory as you grew older, a memory that changed and became [[purer|purity]], more innocent and [[good|morality]] than I could ever be as you [[married|wedding]] and had [[children|kids]] and died [[old]] and loved, still fixated on my memory.

We've earned our happy ending, by now, our [[glorious victory|maybe]].\n\nI’ve been driven to kill you out of mercy twice – no, four times - no, [[seven times]].\n\nHands extended, my fingertips press against [[yours]].\n\n

Champagne on a balcony under the [[stars]] at our wedding.\n\nI never could hold my [[alcohol]].\n\nAnd you were [[dressed|clothes]] so finely, too. [[I'm sorry]].

You never responded. It must have been the wrong name. Don’t hate me. There have been so many, and even if it is easy to fall into a new identity sometimes I can get confused. \nI’m sorry I couldn’t call you back [[to me]].

Because there is not enough here, right now, even though we have [[earned|earn]] [[this moment in time]] so many times over.\n\nWhere is the world, begging for our forgiveness?\n

There is no constant, no consistency.\n\nYou and I are always someone different, whenever we are made new.\n\nOn the //outside//, of course, I mean. You've never [[changed|change]] in all the time I've known you.\n\nThat's perfect, [[isn't it|doubt]]?

What about in a [[thousand years from now|time]], when we stole away those few moments as we watched the world burn away, and we heard those screams? \n\nThe way your skin felt against mine, and the gasps of breath we extracted from the putrid dying air as the earth grew tired. \n\nAnd then, eyes on yours, the closest we’d ever been, going out in our blaze of glory, as the meteor hit.

You've always been defined by a penchant for giving other people orders.\n\nYou described it for me once, tracing out patterns on the skin of my stomach (patterns that I remembered, and had myself tattooed with the next time around; but I don't know if you ever recognised them) as we watched the sunrise from a mound of wrinkled sheets.\n\nAs if sparks were bubbling up in your stomach and rising up your throat and when you spoke they alighted on the people around you and filled them with the energy burning up within you and - \n\nI don't actually remember the rest. Your fingertips were making me ticklish.

I forget whose idea it was.\nProbably yours.\n\n"A signal," you said tipsily, as I tried to clean my [[vomit|champagne]] out of your [[wedding clothes|wedding]].\n\n"Eh?" I said, working on one of the stains.\n\n"For next time, so I can be sure it's you."\n\n"Please, don't start that again," I'd said. "We're done. We've won."\n\nWe hadn't, but it [[took a day|crash]] to realise it.

//Parting is such sweet sorrow//, I [[believe|studied]] he wrote.\n\nBullshit. It's misery. Every time.

Well, we've always assumed that if we [[worked at it|earn]] long enough, we'd get our [[happy ending|palms.]] \n\nAnd after that?\n\n"We'd be done," you said, exhaling a cloud of smoke and passing over the joint.\n\n"Finished?"\n\n"There'd be nothing left of us, after we claim victory."\n\n"Oblivion?"\n\n"Freedom."\n\nI couldn't quite imagine losing you - and myself - forever. But something about it, nonetheless, sounded perfect. [[Sleep|doze]].\n\n"I wouldn't mind that," I said, "as long as you were with me."\n\nThat made you laugh.\n\nThe alternative - back to more endless, repeated failure, but without the promise of a reward - we didn't talk about.

There have been someone elses. Many of them.\n\nBut it was never our fault, we say. I thought they were //you//, we say, every time.\n\nWe never question those excuses, because the alternative is [[unspeakable|wait]].

Is it that I never thought this would happen?\n\nOr is it that I never thought of what I would do when it did?\n\nMy next required action [[is obvious]].

We have a hundred thousand lives weighing on our shoulders, waiting for us to get here. Waiting for the payoff they have earned.\n\nYour breath is [[warm|fire]] against my face.\n\nSo this is it, [[then]]. This //must// be it.

You're wearing jeans and a t-shirt and a fashionable chequered [[scarf]] and you look every bit as wonderful as you did the day we were [[married|wedding]], or as you did dressed in the fashions of the Imperial Court back in the tenth century, or shirtless and sweating, or fully armoured -\n\nWhat I'm trying to say is that you always look wonderful.

I remember the smell of burning. Alarms. Screaming.\n\nYou were angry at me, and it wasn't the [[usual|rage]] kind. It was genuine rage.\n\nYou knew it wouldn't help, but it made you feel better as the knowledge of your failure grew in your mind.\n\nI tried to catch you as you fell, I swear. I don't know what help it would have done, but I did try.\n\n[[I mustn't have done enough|earn]].

And you would know to [[wait]] for me next time.\nDid I ever tell you that I [[knew]]?

We died, together, in a [[cave|caves]] once; do you remember when we found each other old and tired, just in time for you to hold [[my hand|old hand]] as I died?

The people that I've been, calling out constantly.\n\nAsking for vengeance, hope, a justification for why their lives had to end so miserably.\n\nDemanding //you//.\n\nConstantly crowding any idea I have of who //I// am.

(Confession: I especially enjoyed being in the Spartan army with you\n\nthe uniform made your legs especially fetching)\n\n(to be honest I've always enjoyed the sight of you in uniforms)

Do you remember the [[feeling|yours]] of that old, papery skin clasped so tight in your fingers, and the way my body seemed to only be born when [[we touched]]?

And here we are.\n\nNew. Alive. Finished. Together.\n\nVictorious.\n\nI'm yours, and this world is ours.\n\nLike it always has been.\n\nWe are taking the reins of our own life.\n\nOur world, for once. For the last time.\n\n[[I'm glad I can be here with you.]]\n\n

You always did have a [[tendency|characteristics]] to find yourself in roles of authority, didn't you? [[CEOs|CEO]], [[royalty|royal]] and captains of [[ships]] and [[spaceships|rocket]], [[commanders]] of [[armies]]. Always in charge, always instilled with social power. Always so [[respected|respect]].

[[The tiniest inkling of an idea is making itself heard - against my will - in my mind]]\n\n[[and I tell myself I'm wrong with all my heart.|be obvious]]

I'll remember you the way you looked when we first met.\n\nBefore this all started.\n\n[[Before you became an unattainable, unreachable, distant dream.|sped]]\n

Do you remember? Do you remember? How I fell to my knees, put my hands beneath your chin, raised your face and pressed [[my lips against yours]], as my family, kin, friends, [[cheered for your death?]]

And then there I was, blood soaking into my shoes, just barely more than a kid with - \n\nI never understood, you know? Not at all.\n\nThat was the one life that I never worked out what was going on. It took another time around and hindsight to become clear.\n\nWhich left me lost in that life for fifty years of emptiness, loneliness, and terror. \n\nAnd afterwards I swore that was all behind me [[now.|are.]]

Never, ever doubt that.

Other people.\n\nThere's something I don't think about. [[Not ever.]]\n\nAre they all spinning around like we are? Just as [[lost]] as us?\n\nThey can't be. No-one would ever get anything done; nothing would ever be accomplished. \n\n[[Goodness knows|goodness knows]] I've never accomplished anything worthwhile|, trapped in a [[world]] as limited as this.

You were worth all of this. Every moment.\n\nThank you for being here with me[[.]]

The words are so foreign. Even to think. How will you change? How will I change? \n\nThe changes we experience over a hundred thousand lifetimes are nothing compared to how [[waking up next to you|Runaways]] for an entire week straight, lying next to you in bed, can change the person I’ve [[become]].\n

Not that you're the only one to have troubles, of course.\n\nIt comes to both of us in turn.\n\nThe sort of thing we've been through, added to certain environments, can result in...a lack of stability.\n\nUsually it's only one of us, and together, we get through it. Only once was it the both of us, and that time around...didn't end well.

Not even in those lives that involved copious and constant imbibing of alcoholic drinks.\n\nYou always find it hilarious.\n\nI find it messy.

You were a CEO.\n\nI was an intern, doing coffee runs and print jobs.\n\nWe met for the first time at my departure, when I was moving to another country with my parents.\n\nYou were changing the world from your business desk.\n\n[[You didn't come with me.]]\n\n\n

Sometimes it has been necessary for us to make decisions for one another.\n\nI do my [[best|my mistakes]], and I presume you do too.\n\nBut even if you don't, it evens out.\n\nIt all [[comes back around in the end|returns]].

It’s warm and bright and [[safe]], and I have never been so lost. I can see it in your eyes, too.\n\nSometimes I [[convince|bullshit]] myself that I can see everything in your eyes. Even if I can't, I'm sure you can, in mine.\n\n[[We’re lost|sneak up]].

I suppose if we refuse to acknowledge our pasts, we'll never move any further.\n\nFine.\n\nI don't quite understand how it happened. You tried to explain it to me the next time around - when the memories were strongest - but I was only a kid. I didn't understand a word of it.\n\nAll I know was we were somewhere we weren't meant to be, and you were directing the attention that //should// have been on the ship [[elsewhere.]]

My most uncomfortable memory?\n\nWhy would you like to know that?\n\nThere's a //reason// you don't already know it, [[you know.]]

Every time we meet, I become new again.

Nothing good ever happens in [[caves|this moment in time]].

I love [[learning]] your [[new bodies]].\nIt is a rare [[delight]] far too many never experience.

(and I think, very faintly, very secretly, to myself, [[should]] be [[obvious|be obvious]].)

"Wipe that stupid grin off your face," you said, towering over me in my little desk slapping your wooden ruler against your hand with a //thwak//.\n\nI didn't.\n\n"It's me," I said.\n\n"What?"\n\n"It's //me//."\n\nYou thought I was a precocious (read: infuriating) kid.\n\nIt took me a week to [[convince]] you.

You never appreciated nature as much as [[I did]].\n\nRemember that one morning when I was perfectly [[happy]] to lie in sun and grass all day and [[doze]] by your side?\n\nYou said the grass was scratchy and uncomfortable, and something about it made you uneasy.\n\nWith hindsight I can admit you were [[right|you're right]] but I can honestly say that that day I wasn't expecting the plants to [[come to life]].\n\n

You stood in front of them on your weak, starved legs, and as they argued over you you just held yourself in your own arms and shook.\n\nI wanted to stand next to you, help you stay upright, whisper false reassurances into your ear and promise you that I'd come find you.\n\nBut my legs were useless after our escape attempt, and I was left slumped to the ground in a mound. \n\nYou wouldn't look at me.\n\nI had to help you. Somehow, [[I had to.]]

Mundane.\n\nAustralia. Autumn. A grassy park. Sunlight.\n\n//This// would appear to be the location of our [[happy ending|earn]].

Killing is easy when you've died as many times as we have, and been born again just as many.\n\nLife becomes cheap, and death becomes worthless.\n\n(it does still hurt though. Every time.)

People are always drawn to you.\n\nThey orbit around you, never coming close enough to touch.\n\nPeople other than [[me|learning]], that is.\n\nBut for some reason that just makes it harder to believe how close you are [[now|two of us]].

Innocence is a concept we clung to for far longer than made any sense.\n\nMaybe we thought that when we lost our innoncence, we would no longer deserve our second chances, and we would simply vanish from one another.\n\nThat was back when we thought we were being watched, when we thought there was someone or something out there that we had to impress in order to try again.\n\n//That// was an illusion we gave up a very [[long time ago|lost]].\n\n

You'd come out of nowhere only a few years earlier, someone with no interesting backstory to their name, and said that you'd seen the faces of god.\n\nYou were glorious on the television, in the newspapers, face shining with enlightenment.\n\n//I// would have believed you [[(but I was a skeptic)]].

[[(I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared)]]

.passage { width: 400px !important }\na:link { color: #ffffff; }\n\n[data-tags~=main] {\n text-shadow: gold 0 0 2px;\n}

So we wait, and sometimes we lose patience (but we never call it that), and sometimes we make mistakes.\n\nBut we have our chances. \n\nOne chance, every life, to steal our minutes [[together|two of us]].

And I do love you, I do, with a fierce ache that demands nothing but to be kept burning. \n\nI have nothing to ask of you, and you of me, as long as we can wrap ourselves around each other. \n\nThe thrill of [[physical contact]] has never grown old.

[[Faith might just be the only thing keeping me together right now.|lost]]

You'd like her. She [[sparkles|champagne]] when she laughs, and she laughs like a [[horse]].\nDefinitely one of my [[top ten|ranking]] favourite [[siblings]].

We are good at children, aren’t we? [[Not together|parents' day]], maybe, not often, but quite a few, over the years, and none of them have ever ended up [[too badly]].

I have watched you go so many times. And I have let you go, and I have refused, and I have seen you torn from my hands or mine from yours, and I have felt you die in my arms or looked into your face as I died in yours, and once or twice we have even turned our backs on each other refusing to believe this could actually be it, making so many sacrifices we refused opportunity automatically when it [[arrived|parents' day]].\n\nBut this, we both know, is [[it|earn]].

Various sicknesses are one of our more repeated downfalls. I feel as though it's evened out in the end between us, though I seem to be the one more often rendered less capable because of it.\n\nBut you always take such good care of me, don't you? [[Thank you for that|compassion]].

I read.\n\nIt's one of my strengths, wherever we go.\n\nI read, and I [[learn|normal]]. \n\nBooks, scrolls, files, rocks.\n\nTrying to find us a loophole. Somewhere we could be [[safe]].

There's only been once, that I remember, that you were truly [[angry|rage]] at the decisions I made.\n\nYou were...[[unwell|mental health]], and I thought you were telling me what you wanted me to do.\n\nIt took til the next time around, when I had found you and waltzed up and announced my presence full of confidence - and you had looked at me with those [[eyes]], dead inside, and told me that hadn't been you talking. It had been your illness.\n\nI think that killed the both of us.

We've sacrificed so much for each-other, our expectations so high, our mutual dependency so great, we can't handle our opinion of one another being changed.\n\nAnd it's terrifying, because - what if you're too disappointed? What if //I// am?\n\nWhat if this is it? What if we've stopped loving one another?\n\n[[We never have, though.]]

You told me I couldn't sleep my life away. I guess I proved that wrong when I was hit by that Ford Mondeo.\n\nThank you for visiting me every day. I didn't wake up, but you made the right [[decision]].

A reincarnation romance reunion\nBased on an original short story //Rein// by the author.

You //glowed//.\n\nYou built a centre, and they came. No-one knew what happened in there, but your radiance overflowed onto everyone who went inside.\n\n[[People would sell their houses to get into that building.]]

I can't believe you still wear scarves after 1927. We were standing right there.\n\nIt looks great on you, [[though.|body]]

(I'll admit to thinking to myself as I sunk that you'd piloted spaceships; how could you not steer one ship?\n\nbut that's an unfair expectation; [[goodness knows]] I've lost more skills than some people learn in a lifetime\n\nstill, you //told// me to get some rest, and you said you could manage the ship for a few hours at night.\n\nI suppose the stars must have thrown you off; we hadn't been up there for a while and the constellations were surprisingly foreign.\n\nI'm sorry; I'm not bitter, but sinking in the [[water|cold]] and staring up at the moon through a layer of ice, wondering if it was you dragging me down, is one of the most terrifying memories I still hold)

I spent weeks planning it, you know.\n\nFinding a city we'd never been to before (a cruel twist of irony that we found ourselves there the next time around, but decades earlier and [[lost in the alleyways|Runaways]]).\n\nWorking out how to make something [[new]] that wasn't new to us at all (more like falling into easy, old routines).\n\nTrying to find a way we could be sure.\n\nThe plan might have [[failed|crash]], but I swear I never did.

Perhaps you did pay me back the time after that, though you said it wasn’t your intention, when I was a child and you were thirty-seven, and you patted me on the head and told me to wait five years with a spark in your eye and a note of genuineness in your voice that told me it hurt you as much as it hurt me for us to wait but the world we were in demanded patience.\n\nI said your [[name]] as you walked away.

<<silently>>\n<<set $freedom_idea = "no">>\n<<endsilently>>It’s been a hundred thousand [[lifetimes|time]], and here [[you|you]] are, standing with a crowd of [[friends]] in a warm sunlit [[park|nature]], laughing until you see me.\n\nThe world is [[glowing|intro]].

The author of Reins can be contacted at canti.canti@rocketmail.com\n\n[[Start]].

[[We're done.|You are waiting for me to make up my mind.]]

Touching every inch of your skin.\n\nHands in hair, fingers down spine, thumbs brushing across your closed eyelids.\n\nMemorising every moment, all over again.\n\nThat way, I always carry you [[with me.|nights]]

(like I am always trying to do, and I have never been so close as right now, but)\n\nand we both come to a slow, gentle pause, at the same time, faces only a few inches [[apart.]]\n

and then seeing you in a name in the newspaper the next week\n\nand never telling anyone about [[it|earn]].\n\n

The respect you garner tends to lead you in two directions.\n\nEither it's immediate, and comes with absolute loyalty and devotion, or falls in the opposite direction and destroys you with loathing.\n\nThat's the cause of all the citizen arrests, executions, deposals, and military tribunals you've been through, I suppose. It's so easy to [[disappoint|disappointment]] some people.\n\n(but you know you'll always have me on your side)

[[But now that we're here]],

You shook my hand. Enthusiastically. You did it to every person, the first time they came.\n\nI didn't recognise you.\n\nI walked inside and I saw them. Your life's work.\n\nYou'd seen the first face as a child. They revealed themselves to you, one-by-one, constantly, every year of your life. You'd been haunted by the faces.\n\nThe faces, and an overwhelming, unplacable feeling.\n\nDevotion.\n\n[[So you started to paint the faces.]]

I hate horses.\n\nBeing trampled was not fun.\n\nBut thanks for cutting down the soldier riding it. I'm glad I lived to see that.\n\nIt was [[kind]] of you.

The reins are in my own hands now.\n\n-End-

Do you remember – I think you may have tried to forget – the time we met at a parents’ day, at a primary school?\n\nPerhaps our [[memories|memory]] were weaker then than they are now.\n\nPerhaps we thought we’d waited [[long enough|innocent mistake]].

[[About Reins]]\n[[About the author]]

But I remember standing desperate in the bathroom cubicle, you pressing me against the wall, as we tried to make up for everything we’d lost [[-]]

I think, in the long run, we break more or less even. \n\nI [[fuck up|my mistakes]], you [[fuck up|your mistakes]], we make [[amends]].

There's no doubt.\n\nI've never doubted you, not once.\n\n(sometimes, I'll admit, I've [[wished|pride]] some things of you. Longed for the tiniest degree of [[change]].\n\nBut no. I'll never let myself think that way for too long.)

You do change, minutely, every time, just like me.\n\nThat's why I haven't given up hope yet.\n\n(I'll never give up my [[faith]] in you, I swear.)

I found the stars satisfyingly consistent in all of our lives.\n\nThey were reassuring. Finding the old patterns, admiring the slow and steady changes.\n\nUntil we were in them, and the [[rocket]] was burning.

Most of the time it's both of us, [[simultaneously|convince]].\n\nUsually if one of us remembers, the other will in time.\n\nThere have only been a few times neither of us remembers until the moment we died.\n\nThey were my least favourite.

And how I stood again, and picked my sword from the floor, and with one [[merciful stroke]] took your head [[off]]?

-End-\n

One of us isn't a romantic at heart. I forget which.\n\nIt just doesn't come naturally, and we have to work at it, because it's clear that the other is. Hopelessly. Desperately.\n\nAnd you don't want to let them down, because, after all this [[time]], letting them down is letting it all go to waste.\n\nSo we work our hardest to be a person the other person can still strive towards.\n\n(at least that's how I see it.)

I don't think I even know how to be happy without you any more.\n\nRight now, a grin is starting to [[spread over my face]].\n\nMy sister looks confused.

It was, I suppose, a few decades ago now. There are still reports of it, you know? People who still remember. People who were //involved//.\n\nSometimes it's so easy to forget that [[other people move on]].\n\nBut I want you to know that. It hasn't been forgotten. [[There are records.]]

I wish I could say something romantic, like "I know I've found you every time I see your eyes." Tell you your eyes never change, and that's how I'll find you.\n\nBut we both know that's not true. \n\nAnd of course your eyes change. Could you imagine having the same eyes in every one of the hundred thousand faces you've had?\n\nAnd there's no recognisable look in your eyes. Eyes are just eyes; they don't portray a lonesome, aching soul. They portray [[eyes|romantic eyes]].\n\nBut you should know that I //do// think they're very attractive eyes. All of your eyes have been, and are.\n\n[[These|you]] ones are quite nice, too.

[[(thank you thank you thank you)]]

I don't especially [[like|preferences]] being warm. It [[reminds|memory]] me of fires, and I have very few [[proud|my pride]] or good memories involving fires.\nBetter than the [[cold]], though, and anything is better than the cold.

The ways you have killed me:\n\nWhen you slaughtered me in an innocent duel, and we only saw one-another when we had removed our masks and I was dying on a splintered table.\n\nWhen [[you walk away]]. \n\nWhen [[I walk away]], and you call after me.

For the time before, when you slaughtered me in an innocent duel, and we had seen each-other only when we had removed our masks and I was dying on a splintered table.\n\n[[A fair exchange.|are normal.]]

(the //failure// of losing you again)

You usually are right. \n\nI assume it's because you tend to expect the worst, more often than [[I ever do|come to life]].\n\n

I have had quite a lot of [[low-ranked|ranking]] siblings. Any of them that didn't like you, really.\n\nHigher-ranked siblings are rarer.\n\n(it's not that you're hard to like. [[Please don't think that|magnetism]])

You still haven’t paid me back for the time we met on a battlefield, and as I walked away to my duty and honour you raised one hand from the bloodied ground and held it up, shaking, at my back, and begged me to come back, begged me to look at you, vowed to pay me back and laughed – a choked, gargling laugh – whispering "[[next time round]]".

I look most like the [[body]] I fell into that time we lived out a [[rebellion]], the year I provoked my village to [[anger|rage]] against the cruel injustice of the tyrant [[ruler|authority]], fought through the capital, broke into the castle, [[slew|killing]] the guards and knights; and then I saw you, and the sword fell from my hand.

Preferences are like [[tendencies|characteristics]]. Sometimes they consistently hold true, and sometimes we lose and gather them like the easiest thing in the world.\n\n[[Fire|fire]], [[caves]], and [[horses|horse]], though. I'll never like them.

Showing affection in the tiniest ways has always been a preference of yours.\n\nI suppose all of that comes down to the way we both approach[[romance|bullshit]].

Our anger at one another, when it comes, is terrifying.\n\nBecause it's closer to [[disappointment]] than anything else.

We are the final outcome of a struggle spanning a hundred thousand lifetimes'.\n\nAnd we are so [[normal]].

There are birds singing, and [[friends]] looking bewildered and embarrassed as we fall into [[physical contact|greeting]] with the comfort and calmness of ages.\n\nWe have been fighting for so long, and now here we [[are.]]\n\n\n

I don't want to give the impression that I constantly misunderstand you while you always completely understand me.\n\nI still don't know what you could have done, but I know what you did do wasn't right.\n\nIt //hurt//.\n

Normally, we realise at the same time.\n\nSometimes, one of us is a little slow on the uptake.\n\nUsually, you.\n\nConvincing you became easier when you invented our little [[ritual|greeting]].

When you were [[ill]] and dying anyway; when we were waiting to be [[sold]]; when you could feel yourself [[losing your mind|mental health]] and you begged me in half-slurred, half-whispered mutterings.\n\nWhen they were dragging you away and you were [[screaming]] for me and I raised my gun.\n\nI don't especially like to think about those times.\n\nAnd [[goodness knows]] every blow I gave you you [[gave me in turn|returns]].\n

I wasn't expecting Day of the Triffids, alright?\n\nI didn't remember that movie being so gory.\n\nI kept your [[finger|earn]].

<<silently>>\n<<set $freedom_idea = "yes">>\n<<endsilently>>[[Something I haven't thought about in years.]]

I remember that time clearly. It was one of the few times I was in a position of authority above you.\n\nWe were never meant to meet. You were hired by my mother, and you crept around when I was asleep or out. If it wasn't for that hot night I woke up and you were sweeping my floor - \n\nWell, that [[night|nights]] was a close draw, but we came through alright.

I am standing in a hall full of faces.\n\n//My// faces.\n\nI don't recognise all of them, but enough to know they're me. Every single one of them.\n\n[[A dark hallway, people kneeling at every portrait, little shrines and offerings and painting after painting of every person I'd ever been.]]

We've come to the same conclusion.\n\nWe always had to. After all this time, it's impossible for us to think that differently.\n\n[[>]]

You learn to rank things.\n\nIt's the best way I've found to keep my mind clear.\n\nI try not to rank the moments that involve you, though.\n\nUsually it's family members. Deaths. \n\nSometimes it's nights. [[Reunions]].\n\nIt's hard to rank reunions. They're all perfect.

Certain tendencies never change.\nThey make it easier for me to recognise you, even if I do [[make mistakes|my mistakes]] sometimes (and so do [[you|your mistakes]])(and sometimes [[both of us|parents' day]].

No, I won't.\n\nYou've got your private memories, and I keep mine.\n\nThey're reassuring in lonely [[night|nights]].

It doesn't surprise me.\n\nYou've been an engineer on a [[spaceship|rocket]], for goodness' sake.\n\nUniversity should be a breeze.\n\nIt almost feels like cheating.

And here [[I|me]] am, with my [[sister]], and we are secure and safe and [[warm|fire]] and more lost than we’ve ever [[been|missing]].

//Purity//.\n\nPlease.\n\nI don't know why you try to maintain some of these appearances. The two of us lost any such [[innocence]] a long, long time ago.\n\nI could list some [[locations]], if you like.

I don't know where you end or I begin any more.\n\n[[We've melted into one another.|reward]]

Our eyes meet, and you have to bow down your head to meet mine, forehead to forehead, you're so tall this time around.\n\n[[I take a deep breath, and I smile.]]

It's hard to be romantic about eyes when you've become so intimately [[acquainted|killing]] with them in the most biological sense.

[[It's|Reunions]] not meant to sneak up on us like this.\n\nWithout fanfare, without a sneaking sense of suspicion, without any sort of [[climactic build-up|lost]].

The nights we spend together tend to be greater than the days.\n\nPerhaps because we are safer; or perhaps because we think we are [[safer|safe]].\n\nWrapped up in each other, left alone in the dark without the rest of the [[world]].\n\nYou and me, huddled together.

Is this the happy ending we have died for so many times?\n\nIt has to be, and there's no room for uncertainty.\n\nBut I can't escape these thoughts that tell me - \n\nnot to hold myself back, certainly not that. No part of my body is preaching restraint. No part of me wants to spend another instant away from you, but\n\n(//is this it?// The darkest whispers I've never heard before)\n\nTo lie on grassy fields, cut out the world, and bathe in the sunlight for the next seventy years of bliss. To raise [[kids]], [[maybe]].

[[Every time|earn]] I kill you, I do try to do it with [[mercy|seven times]], which is more than can be said [[for you]].

and coming out ten minutes later, promising to find you next time around – because perhaps we had convinced ourselves that we really //were// in love with [[someone else]].\n\nor perhaps we were just so used to making sacrifices by that point that we never even considered staying [[together]]

You were not a good ruler, and the revolution would have raised itself with or without me.\nBut it raised itself with me, and I was its figurehead, and we stood at opposite sides of your court and [[recognised one another|rebel recognition]].

We rarely part on a //good// note, to be honest. It would be hard for us to, given that parting usually involves a minimum of one death (a best-case scenario).

You have a tendency to laugh at me when I talk about [[pride]].\n\nI'll never change, though, in the hope that I might be able to [[change]] just that one thing about you.

And I’m sorry you had to attend my funeral three days later. That wasn’t fair. I was so young [[that time round]].

(do you remember? Do you remember when I was trapped, and we desperately, hopelessly pressed against the glass, inches thick, imagining your hand against mine as the water rose? Do you remember waiting the twenty-four hours until my air was gone, and my pitifully begging you to stay with me?\n\nmaking you [[watch]]?)

[[You are waiting for me to make up my mind.]]

Well, if you really want to know.\n\nI'm sure there's a reason why you've forgotten, though, you know. Maybe you were embarrassed, or ashamed. \n\nMaybe you did just forget about it. \n\n[[I doubt it, though.]]

You'd think I would have stopped judging by appearance by now, but some things seem to never change. \n\nI guess that's why I make [[mistakes|my mistakes]]. It's certainly why we invented our [[greeting]].\n\nPalms, fingers, wrists.

[[(except, perhaps, right now)|reward]]

Then the screams.\n\nYou were certainly high-status, or at least high-profile enough for it to be called an assassination.\n\nA sniper from a high window.\n\nI wish it had been //your// [[scream|screaming]]. I would have recognised you, and even if you'd gone on ahead of me -\n\n[[well, at least everything would have made sense to me, that way.]]

You are a university student, you tell me in whispers. You’re studying [[engineering]].\n\nI study history, every time I have the opportunity to study, to learn, to read. Most of what I study I remember, working towards the goal of finding myself familiar with the history of every time period we lose ourselves in. \n\nI have [[studied]] it in a hundred lifetimes, and I know beyond doubt that this, where we find ourselves, is a snapshot of seventy years of [[safety|safe]] and security.\n\nThis is a normal world, and we [[are normal.]]

After I was crowned, your old servants took me aside, and showed me the gallery you had kept as a tribute to [[your dead children|kids]]. They told me of your descent into madness after losing them, regaled me with tales of your once great [[mercy]] and [[compassion]] before the plague.\n\nI understood. Did I ever tell you that?\nSo better me, than anyone else.\n\nAnd it was a [[fair exchange]].

There must be many delights in this world that no-one but us has ever, could ever experience.\n\n[[Reuniting|spread over my face]]. Being [[new]] again.\n\n[[The delight of finding you again.|failure]]

[[Liberation.]]

It wasn't one of my top one hundred kisses, I'll admit. Too bloody.\nBut you were glorious. You've always been glorious.\nI'm sorry about what I did [[next|cheered for your death?]].

Our romance has spanned longer than eternity. They would write stories about us. And here we are, a warm sunny day, standing ankle-deep in soft grass, friends and family nearby, and I can see our life [[together]] stretching along ahead. The path it could - will - form makes the most delicate, elegant, radiant, blissful loops and whorls as it meanders throug our last chance.\n\n[[Is this it?]] Is this how we win our war against the world?

So I raised my hand, and I pretended that your refusal to look at me was you giving me your permission.\n\nI'd make it up to you, I promised myself.\n\nI suppose I never did.

You've surrounded yourself with friends. I'm glad. You always have [[drawn|magnetism]] people towards you. \n\nThey [[look|judging by appearance]]...friendly.\n\nThey also look extremely confused by the [[two of us]].\n

[[After all, we've won.]]

I'm not sure if 'good' and 'evil' even exist for the two of us any more.\n\nI'll admit it seems like overselling the role we play in the world to say that we've transcended those sorts of terms.\n\nIn fact, it's completely inaccurate. You and I have never changed the world in a meaningful way. We try to meet, we fail, we start again. We're trapped by the world's rules as much as anyone else is.\n\nSo not transcend. It's more that our world has shrunk down to just the [[two of us]] to the degree that I can't find it in me to care any more about what the rest of it is.\n\nYou're my world, and I'm your [[satellite.|magnetism]]

I was a ghost, once. I died without you even knowing I was there, and I couldn't [[leave]] on that [[note]].\nI don't think you noticed me as a ghost, either, but I made myself quite the useful [[poltergeist]].

We had incited an entire country to rebellion, and I took it [[upon myself]] to pay for what I had done to you.

Just you and me, genuinely, arm in arm, growing [[old]] together.\n\n[[Growing old together.]]\n

We live normal lives, get [[married|wedding]] normally, grow old normally, die close together in natural and normal ways.\n\nWe move our faces together, go to press our lips together, a slight smile on your face as I have to stand up on my toes to [[reach you]]\n

and walking our separate ways, going back to our own separate families and children and loved ones\n\nand knowing this was a reprieve or a sacrifice for our families or a loss or a win\n\n[[and then]]

For a greater chance at success next time around, I have watched you leave countless times over. \n\nStared at your back as you staggered away, were taken away, led away, walked yourself away head held up proudly.\n\n(not to say you were always the one doing the [[abandoning]])

but as it was, I ran from the gallery to find a crowd bleeding out with me, and you bleeding out over the concrete walkway.\n\nHalf your head was gone, but you were choking out your dying breaths, and amidst the pink haze in your eyes something must have become clear to you.\n\nOne of your glistening, bloodied hands reached out towards me, and your mouth gapes in a grin, because //you know me//.\n\n[[But I didn't know you.]]

Making amends the next time around is my favourite part.\n\nWell, that and [[reuniting|greeting]].\n\nTiny moments that, up to [[now|this moment in time]], have been making all of these deaths worthwhile.

Sometimes I feel like I lose track of our time, and other times every minute [[rests|weight]] on my shoulders and I just feel [[old]] and tired.\nRight [[here]], right [[now|this moment in time]], I am [[new]] again.

Thank you for making me who I am today.\n\nThank you for //everything//.\n\nWe won't meet again.\n\nI hope we both live the lives we've always deserved.\n\nAnd I hope you live a long, happy, loved life.\n\nTwo //new// lives, born in an instant[[.|..]]\n\n\n

I was hired as an investigative journalist. The media just couldn't crack you; you'd be on television every second week, preaching your message - death, resurrection, and faces, all of the faces of god.\n\n(no-one ever saw those faces. No-one outside that building)\n\nI can't remember half the things you would say on television. But I remember how much I longed to have that certainty in my life, that purpose.\n\n(it was one of the lives where every day I was falling deeper into a bottomless pit of meaninglessness and loss)\n(because I'd lost you and it was one of the times I couldn't remember I'd lost you)\n[[(which meant I'd lost myself)]]

What do we do now, with this finale that has just fallen into our hands?\n\nA hundred thousand identities scream at me to [[claim what they've worked for]], died for, waited for for [[so long]].\n

We move slowly, symmetrically, settled into these new glowing rhythms that we have for aeons. Fingertips sliding, we press [[palms.]]

Perhaps we made the [[innocent|innocence]] mistake, had stared into a stranger’s eyes long enough to convince ourselves that I had found you again, that you had found me.\n\nIt was [[too long ago|time]] and I've forgotten.\n\nI remember what happened [[next]], though.\n