#different timelines

I fear just the taste of your name on my lips might undo the very seams of my being. That breaking might drive our son into a grief he has only just begun to escape.

Raul deserves one parent, at the very least. You would have wanted me to stay with him. To watch him grow. To be someone who could tell him, truthfully, that he was loved by you, more than life itself.

I have softened my edges. I laugh to please him. I smile so our son sees only joy. He has carried enough sorrow for a lifetime.

The tower flourishes. Strangers from distant lands arrive bearing news. Apprentices come with every passing decade, and all this pleases Raul.

He is of your like. Bright, wild, blooming in the lively halls of our home. Yet, his heart lies where yours once did: out there, in the wide world, chasing adventure.

I hold onto him in paranoia. Your absence has taken all my courage from me. It has left me vulnerable, and too raw to face the world alone.

How do I let go of him? How do I endure another day without a pair of eyes, so painfully like yours, staring back at me from across the dining table?

They say, you await me, in timeless halls, that our souls, bound by our vows will find each other. I hope they are correct.

Do not condemn me, for not saying your name out loud, do not forget me and leave before I come to you.

Yours forever,

Zayne

Second Age, Year of 958

He is gone. Raul is gone. He is GONE.

No note. No goodbye. No time to stop him...no breath to beg.

The tower is quiet. Too quiet. Walls echo with his absence. His chair is still pulled out from breakfast. He didn’t finish his tea. He left his coat. He left me.

He left me.

He left me.

He left, for what?

For what? A quest? A vision? A delusion whispered by a mortal too far gone to name? A fool’s errand sewn together by madness and hope and old, rotted legends?

No victory waits for him. No truth. Just dust. Just death.

And I—I—I did this. I wrapped him in caution like chains. I caged him with love laced in fear. I buried your memory so deep, he had to dig through my silence to find your name.

He thinks I do not feel. He thinks I have no fire left. But I burn...I burn, gods, I burn—

I should have told him everything. Should have told him what your death did to me. What I became in your shadow. What I lost, who I lost, how I—

I see you. In every room now. I hear your footsteps in the corridor. I speak to you like you are here, and sometimes I believe you are. Maybe I’ve gone mad. Maybe I was always meant to.

If you walk in the halls beyond time. If your soul still remembers me, bring him home.

I have no spells left. No prayers. Only my hands, shaking. Only my mouth, screaming your name as the last of my repentance.

Come back, Raul.

Please. Please. Please—

Age of Dawn, Year of 26

Caleb stares down at the now-silent valley.

Corpses litter the field, cooling beneath the open sky. His sword is buried in one of them, slick with drying blood.

His breath comes ragged. Someone had managed to slash his side. It isn't deep, but it lingers. Enough to keep him tethered to his body. Enough to make him feel, every fragment of pain he tries to shut out.

“Slaughter,” he had been commanded. And he bowed to the voice.

His wielder.

What was he, if not a weapon? It was his fate, to be bathed in blood, to answer only to the hand that held him.

Such was the way of his kind: blades forged from clipped souls, bound to serve, not to think.

So the cries of the valley, the stillness of death, the fluttering of a child’s shawl caught on a broken spear, none of it moved his heart.

His gut did not turn. His wrath did not tremble. He was made for this.

And soon, as always, he expected his wielder to return him to the scabbard. To end his thoughts. To take away this awareness, this awful clarity that clung like blood under fingernails.

But the call does not come.

Days pass. He stands, alone, in the blood-soaked field. Waiting.

The sun rises and sets and rises again. The flies come. The rot. The weight of his own body. He waits for the voice, any voice, to summon him.

It never does.

Not until he collapses. Not until his knees buckle and the world vanishes beneath him.

And then—

Warmth. A bed. Clean cloth against his cheek.

And a voice that is not his master’s.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” your face leans over him. Curious, awed and, impossibly human.

Caleb blinks, too weak to move, too dazed to speak.

But the first thing he thinks isn’t Where am I?

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

kaleidoscopes in your eyes

the cavemen

He can only feel the cold seeping through his skin and settling in his bones as they walk through the expanse of iced land in an almost impossible quest to find shelter. He was born during the spring, but he can’t remember it now. It's been too long since any of them last felt the warmth of the sun rays bathing their naked skin. Everyone now wears heavy coats made out of mammoths, everyone now holds spears to defend themselves. So much has changed lately, only one thing remains the same.

The whole frozen world is still black and white.

He knows there's something called color, different from the way he sees things. He knows because his parents can see something called red when any member of their family gets injured and there's blood. He knows because his sister started seeing something called blue and something called brown when she met her husband. Everyone who's paired up in his tribe can see those colors. He's been told that he will, too, once he meets the one destined for him.

For the longest time, he couldn't wait to meet her, the woman meant for him. He even dreamed of her — long black hair and dark brown eyes, steady hands and a good heart. And then, his dreams changed and he got so scared that he never brought the topic up again.

He got scared because he didn’t dream of a strong girl taking care of him. He got scared because he dreamt of a boy.

His tribe ends up finding a set of caves where they seemingly can escape the snow and the cold that have been following them for the most part of his life. There's not many of them, this endless winter having decimated their group enough that they fit in the smallest cave, way into the stone. He settles down with his family, and things are uneventful for some time.

Until the two strangers stumble into their caves and his whole world is turned upside down.

There's been a blizzard going on for days now, the time blending in on itself as it prevents his tribe from even getting out to hunt. He hasn’t been able to do anything but sit staring blankly at the nude walls. It has been boring and unfruitful, and he's grown really tired of listening to the same noises every single second of every single day. When a cough and footsteps that aren't from anyone in his tribe reach his ears, he perks up, ready for a change.

A man and a boy enter the caves, shivering under their light coats. Everyone in the tribe turns to watch the newcomers as they let the snow storm into the caves. The boy looks small and lost.

There's a spark that flickers out of the corner of his eye when he stares at the boy, slender and shy, when eyes that aren't black and white look back at him. They're a light shade of a color he can’t really name, so he settles for green — a word he's heard the elders use referring to something fair-colored.

And it's then that he notices the gradual change surrounding him, colors taking over as he gives them names in his head as though he's always known what they were — the cave turning into oranges and ocres, his motherʼs curly hair with a shade of brown, his own skin an olive tinge. The edges of his world swirl and change, blending together to present him a new reality.

There's color in his life, and it's all because of the boy who came from the storm.

He kneels and signals for the boy to come closer, but the boy doesn’t budge. Instead, the boy hides further behind the older man he's come with — maybe a father figure. The boy peers from behind when he motions for the boy to move, this time moving his hands instead of his fingers. The boy understands now, and steps closer.

They become inseparable so fast, he doesn’t remember life before the boy. They play together near the fire, marveling at the flames dancing in front of their eyes. They stare up at the skies, grunting wordlessly at the lights up above. They sleep together under the blankets made out of mammoths' fur. They hold hands and look into each other’s eyes endlessly.

One day, the boy tugs at his hand and guides him to a steep wall. He frowns at the boy in confusion, but only gets a toothy smile in reply. The boy inserts his hands into the coat covering his thinner frame, producing a recipient made out of one of the hunted animals' bladder. The boy puts his fingers into it and sticks them out coated in red.

He signals are you hurt? before remembering that the boy doesn’t understand him yet, and grabs the boy's hand to lift it to his own nose. When he's sniffed it and determined it's not blood, he frowns at his friend. The boy beams up at him before pressing his red-coated hand on the wall. When the boy withdraws his hand, there’s a print on the rock.

It seems magical.

He feels his spirits lifted as the boy repeats his motions, this time taking his hand and placing it into the bladder. His fingers come out red as well, and he laughs heartily. The boy follows suit, their laughter mingling in the silence that surrounds them in this part of the caves. He presses his own hand on the wall, leaving his print. Once he's done, he stares up at the image in awe.

The boy teaches him to create combinations of hands on the wall, and they both learn to create new colors. He discovers a whole new world that winter.

The spring comes almost by surprise, the warmth melting the snow gathered outside of their caves. He looks up at the skies warily, afraid that now that there isn't any obstacle keeping the boy and his father inside with them. He’s seen how the boy has been looking longingly at the white prairies lately. He knows it’s only a matter of time before they both leave.

Knowing doesn’t prevent his heart from breaking when he wakes up one morning, when the sun has just shown up in the skies, and the boy is rolling up the few belongings he brought with himself when they arrived. The boy isn't making any sound but it's evident he's been crying.

He reaches out and grabs the boy's arm, effectively stopping his movements. He meets green eyes that tell him everything he needs to know — they may not speak the same signal language, but they have connected in deeper ways than he would have expected. The boy has brought color to his life, and he can only hope he's done the same.

They hug, not letting go of each other, until the boy's father tugs at him and the boy has to follow those footsteps outside, leaving him behind.

He never sees the boy, ever again.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

the one that would save me

the aztec times

They come one night. There have been rumors, words spread through the forest as the warriors fought to keep their home safe from the intruders that are said to devastate everything they touch. They destroy the forest, kill the people with magic weapons that spit fire and sow desperation to collect fear and vassalage. Carlos has seen what they do — his father has sheltered many victims of their rage, to the point that they've doubled their population only for it to be decimated by the advances of the white demons who believe some deity has sent them to conquer a land that's lived in peace for centuries.

Carlos is one of the most skilled warriors among his people, both because he's been trained his whole life as heir of the Aztec empire his father and his father’s father have built, and because he's one of the few between them who can see colors from his birth. It's not something they talk about much — or at all — since seeing colors since the very moment of arriving in this land means his past self met his soulmate at one point and he lost them tragically. That's what the elders say about men and women who can see colors — they’re renegades. They're said to wander the Earth in despair, unable to find solace.

But not him. Because Carlos is a prince, a leader, and this flaw is actually their biggest advantage. Moreso, Carlos was never fooled by any stories about soulmates, despite the tales of the elders — as a prince, he's betrothed to a warrior princess, not a single chance at finding true love.

Not a single opportunity to seek the feeling of elation he gets whenever he sees Yareth, one of his warrior brothers.

He's not allowed to feel, but he's allowed to use his power to his people's benefit.

Except when they’re surrounded by the intruders setting their forest on fire, attacking their neighbors, killing their friends. Carlos' power is of no use to prevent the carnage — he's only good to distinguish enemies, not to see the future.

He is ready, though, when the attack takes place.

They come one night, and Carlos thinks his people are prepared — after all, his father has always led them into war, when necessary, with a steady hand and the best leadership. He’s so, so mistaken, but by the time he realizes how wrong he's been, he's standing among the lifeless bodies of his army — of his brothers in arms and blood — completely weaponless and with a large smoking tube pointing straight into his forehead.

He's staring into green eyes, wide in what Carlos thinks can be fear, but it doesn’t make any sense. The stranger should be ecstatic; he's about to kill the prince, but maybe he doesn’t know. Carlos believes the intruders are savage — they don’t speak their language and they don’t seem to care much about the trees or Mother Nature or even themselves. They're loud and they're violent — they stomp over everything and take what they want, without a second thought. They kill the men and kidnap the kids. Nobody talks about what they do to the women — there’s barely been any coming back from wherever they take them to.

And now, one of those wild beings is about to kill Carlos.

He doesn’t close his eyes. He wants to be able to hold that green gaze the whole time, until the magic of the weapon takes away his soul. Carlos isn’t going to back down — this is his home, and if he's bound to die defending it, he’s not going down without a fight. His fingers tighten around the sharp edges of the knife his sister has carved for him, drawing blood as the edge cuts his skin.

The other man hesitates long enough for the hand holding the weapon to falter, and that's all Carlos needs. In a swift movement, he kicks the weapon out of the man's grip and manages to lock him tight against him — back against chest, he has enough space to break his neck and be done with it. The stranger isn’t even looking up with a pleading gaze like Carlos has seen others do, begging for a mercy they didn’t show. His hands find the pulse point, and he gets ready to twist the flesh until the bones snap.

The moon chooses that moment to come through from behind the clouds, shining bright above them. It startles Carlos momentarily, his movements slowed by the surprise, and the other man squirms beneath his hands until he frees himself. Carlos watches as the man takes a few steps away from him, but he doesn’t flee.

The air is suddenly charged with a weight Carlos can barely stand. It physically pains him to be separated from this man, and he doesn’t know what to do with that realization.

There's this story the elders used to tell when Carlos was just a young prince learning his way through the world — a story about soulmates. A story about how every single person's soul is completed by someone else's soul, as if humans were only half themselves until they found whoever made them whole. The elders used to say that one of the signals that someone is a true soulmate lies in physical dependence — once a person touches their soulmate for the first time, being away from them only intensifies physical pain.

Carlos feels as though he can't breathe, as if a ton of golden bricks has been dumped on his chest and he can’t shake it off.

The man seems as lost as Carlos feels, but he isn’t budging. Every time Carlos notices him trying to take a step away, the man halts and turns around in the opposite direction. It's almost as if he isn’t able to move.

Carlos can tell the moment realization washes over the stranger, because he stops trying to get away and instead he remains still for the longest time. Carlos wasn't sure until now that these strangers could have a soulmate, but right now what he can’t believe is that he's already touched his soulmate for the first time and it's turned out to be one of the intruders devastating the land Carlos worships.

He remains still as well, biting down on his lip as he waits for the stranger to say something, to do something.

Green eyes bore into his as the man stares up at him in awe. Carlos stands his ground, the knife still in his hand, blood still dripping from his open wound. The man visibly gulps, his dirty shirt — that once could have been white — dangling open and torn in the places where Carlos has grabbed him during their physical fight. He knows he isn't any better — he's trembling and panting, and if he looked down at his own chest he'd see it coated in sweat.

"TK," the man says suddenly. Carlos frowns at him, confused. As if sensing Carlos' discomfort, the man drops his magical weapon to the ground and lifts his hands, one in the air and the other pointing at himself. "TK."

Carlos understands then. The man is trying to introduce himself. Carlos nods, pointing at himself with his uninjured hand. "Carlos," he says.

The man beams. "Carlos," he repeats, the syllables rolling off his tongue with a little effort. Carlos knows that these barbarians' language is very different from his, and he has yet to find one who can pronounce their words without sounding as though they're being choked to death.

Mainly because the intruders are usually choking to death when Carlos and his army force them to speak.

With a shudder, Carlos looks down at his hands, crimson red. He knows he has blood on them, and not only his — he's killed during his twenty solar years walking this Earth. He's killed animals for food and men for defense. He's never killed for pleasure, but that doesn't mean the guilt isn't weighing him down.

The man — TK — smiles at him. He opens his mouth and begins speaking in that language that sounds so foreign to Carlos. He shakes his head and TK stops talking.

"I don’t understand you," Carlos says slowly, fully knowing that TK won't understand him. "I don’t know what you're saying."

TK shakes his head. He takes a step forward as Carlos mimics his movement, and they meet in the middle of the clear where mere moments before Carlos could have killed his destined soulmate.

"I don’t understand," he repeats, but TK doesn’t relent. He takes one more step after another, and soon enough he's in Carlos' space. He lifts one finger to trace a pattern up Carlos' arm, sending shivers through Carlos' body.

Carlos can only stare down in amazement as green eyes search for his, locked in a heated gaze that speaks volumes in a language they both understand. There's something pooling in Carlos' gut, something he can't describe, something that's larger than life.

A cry pierces the silent air, and TK falls forward with a soft grunt, red spreading though his dirty shirt as Carlos looks up to see Yareth's long knife protruding from TK’s back. Carlos can’t react, too stunned to do anything but slide down to the ground alongside TK, who's now muttering nonsense in a language Carlos is dying to understand. And TK — TK is dying.

Carlos can’t help the enraged growl that escapes his throat, animalistic and wounded. He doesn’t get up, he doesn’t chase Yareth down and he definitely doesn’t kill his friend — the person he thought he could love. Instead, Carlos remains holding TK as life slips away from him.

And when the inevitable happens, Carlos feels the weight on his shoulders has lifted, taking with it the veil of innocence he hadn’t been aware he still had within.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

tú eres el imán y yo soy el metal

the xix century

Texas in summer is Carlos’ favorite place and time. He exists only for the clear skies and the heat radiating off the Earth, his lungs expanding as he breathes in the sweet smells of summer all around — his motherʼs ceviche and his tía's pozole that she cooks despite the high temperatures.

He's sitting on the porch of the Blake Ranch, where his whole family work as farmhands, busying himself with a piece of wood he wants to carve into a horse for his older sister. His bare feet are drawing lines on the filthy sand, creating a silhouette of a place he's never been but that Mitchy — the daughter of the tenants' house service — says it's New York.

"My cousin Mitchell moved there a few years ago," she'd explained, one day when they both had been working hard at clearing the back yard of the big house. "He works for a lawyer there, and the lawyer has a big picture on the wall with all the States known so far. I'm telling you, it's New York."

"Is everyone in your family named some variation of Mitchell?" Carlos had asked jokingly. Mitchy had shoved him playfully, and that had been all, but Carlos has thought about that conversation every single time that he's drawn the same lines over and over again.

It's as though he's being called by that place for reasons he can't fathom.

The elders in their community are always telling the kids stories about how soulmates are always feeling the pull of each other, no matter what. The elders also speak of the powers soulmates can gather through lifetimes — how some people can see colors and others can't, how some people orbit around their soulmates and others don't, how some people find their soulmates by realizing there's not a chance they could lie to each other, how some people dream of their soulmates before even getting a chance to meet them. The powers people have depend on how many lifetimes they've gone through without meeting their soulmates.

Carlos knows he’s gone through one lifetime before, since there's not a moment in his life when he hasn’t seen colors. He isn’t sure about the pulling, and he's been raised to not tell a lie in his life so he could never know for sure. And he dreams — of course he dreams — but it's never something definite, never something he can pinpoint.

Besides, he wants to believe that he has just lived once without his soulmate. Everyone knows that having several soulmate powers means having lived through as many tragedies as powers are showing. Carlos doesn’t want his existence to be reduced to a litany of powers with no other purpose than to remind him of what he didn’t have in his previous lives — a souvenir of pain and grief instead of an altar to commemorate love.

Carlos swirls the wooden piece in between his fingers, still deciding where to start carving the horse, when he hears whinnying. His head shoots up on its own volition in time to see a caravan of wagons and horses dusting off the trail leading to the estate close to the ranch where he lives. The immense house a few miles up the road has been empty for so long, Carlos doesn’t think anyone's lived there for years. He certainly can't remember anyone taking up the space.

He shrugs off his curiosity — he's merely a ranch hand, needless to be given reasons to — and he focuses back on his wooden piece, already deciding how to begin the carving.

The next few days, there are several rumors milling around about the new owners of the Strand Estate. Some people believe a new rich family from the North has rented the place, others think it’s some foreigner who's come from distant lands. The truth is that nobody knows for certain, and Carlos’ mom and his tía prevent the kids from gossiping by threatening them with no tamales if either of the women catches them talking about the new neighbors. Carlos doesn’t even think about them, not with all the work the summer brings around the ranch and with the two Blake daughters coming back from their boarding school for the summer. Miss Michelle and Miss Iris are both gentle with the rest of the kids, and they are allowed to play with Miss Iris while Miss Michelle reads her book in the open yards.

It happens one summer afternoon, when Carlos is running around the large backyard with Miss Iris and Mitchy, away from prying eyes who wouldn't understand how two white girls could mingle with servants and farmhands. A horse neighs, startling them, and when Carlos stops his chase of Mitchy, he can see a boy around their age looking warily around himself.

"Can I help you?" Miss Michelle says, standing up from her seat and straightening her sundress.

"My name's TK Strand," the boy says, his green eyes bright under the sun. "Are you Miss Michelle Blake? My dad told me that I could spend time with you while he talked to your father. My dad’s Owen Strand."

“Owen Strand is the name of our family lawyer,” Michelle smiles, gesturing for him to get off his horse and join them. Carlos waits with bated breath as TK looks around and takes in the scene — kids from all colors and origins playing together in the field — but when the new kid shrugs and joins them, Carlos feels like he can breathe again. TK starts running with them, chasing Carlos and laughing along with Mitchy and Iris, as though he's always belonged with them.

TK Strand spends the rest of the summer, and when fall starts he's sent to a boarding school in New York while Carlos remains in Texas, learning to mend fences and help his father keep the ranch functioning. Every summer, TK comes back by the same time the Blake sisters arrive at the ranch, and every fall he leaves them.

Within every day they spend together, Carlos can feel a bond forming between TK and himself, until he feels like he doesn't know where he ends and TK begins. Carlos discovers that he doesn’t have the need to hide who he is when he’s with TK, and he can only hope that TK feels the same.

The summer before TK is sent to Washington to follow in his father’s steps, Carlos can feel something amiss in the way his friend — his soulmate, if all the signs are correct — behaves. TK seems to hide something, but as much as Carlos wants to pry, he also doesn’t want to put TK in a situation where he needs to choose between telling the truth — and therefore most probably hurting Carlos — and lying to Carlos — therefore hurting himself.

On Carlos’ seventeen birthday, they lie down under the stars, trying to count them and failing.

"I feel like I can be anything I want, when I'm with you," Carlos murmurs when they're already stargazing. He almost shoots up in confusion and embarrassment — he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

He also can't find it in himself to say he's sorry.

"I feel like I can be myself when I'm with you," TK blurts in response, blushing violently under the dim light of the stars.

"I—" Carlos stammers. He tries to stop himself, but he is unable to. It's like he can’t halt his words from stumbling from his mouth, as though they've waited too long to be heard. "TK, I—"

"I can’t keep myself from telling you everything," TK tells him, turning to his side and meeting Carlos’ brown gaze. "I can't lie to you, either. It's weird. It's as though—"

"As if we're soulmates," Carlos finishes the sentence, blinking up at TK.

"Have you ever felt like you were burning up inside, if you ever tried to tell a lie?" TK asks softly. "Because that's what happens to me whenever I think about lying to you."

Carlos nods minutely, leaning in and in and in, as TK parallels his movements. They're kissing before they can even register what they're doing.

The next few weeks pass in a blur. Carlos rushes through his daily chores so he has more free time by the end of the day and he can meet TK by the fence separating the Strand Estate and the Blake Ranch. They hold hands when they're alone, kissing under the cypress that's a few miles down the road. They go as far as taking off their shirts and exploring their bodies over the rest of their clothes, never having enough — Carlos thinks he can get drunk on TK every single night.

It all comes to an abrupt end one night, when Carlos is kissing every inch of TK’s body that he can see, and he finds a strange mark right above his right elbow. He questions its origin, confused as to why he hasn’t seen it before. It looks like a cut, horizontal and ragged as though it’s been done with a blunt blade.

TK sits upright bluntly, dragging up the sleeves over his arms and recoiling.

"TK?" Carlos asks, brows furrowed together. "What's wrong?"

His fingers wrap around TK’s wrist and he laces them with TK’s for the briefest of moments.

"I'm not who you think I am," TK whispers, withdrawing his hand from Carlos’ grip. "I'm not—I can't be trusted."

Carlos draws in a sharp breath. "TK, I know you. I've known you for most of my life. It feels like I know you better than I know myself."

“You can’t possibly know what I’ve done, Carlos. It’s—it’s—” TK struggles to get the words out. Carlos can see how painful it is for his friend to even breathe right now.

“Calm down,” he whispers. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. We’re together in this.”

"This—this isn’t—" TK stutters, eyes downcast. "Carlos, I'll be leaving by the end of summer. I don’t—this—"

"I know you can't lie to me, TK," Carlos says. "And I can't lie to you. You know what that means. We are soulmates, TK. Why are you acting like it isn’t a big deal?"

TK looks away. Carlos’ heart is breaking with each second that passes silently between them; he doesn’t understand why TK is fighting what's obviously going on here.

"This isn’t right, Carlos. You've seen what they do to people like us!"

"We'll fight them!" Carlos insists. "It's not unheard of, two men being soulmates!"

TK looks up at him bewildered. "This is what you think it is?" he questions. "You think I'm scared because we're both men? That's not the only reason, Carlos!"

"Then what is it? And don't even think about trying to lie to me, you know what that does to you!"

"Why can't you see we're from different worlds?" TK explodes, taking a few steps away from Carlos, the distance feeling like an abyss he can’t conquer. "I have an heirloom to live up to, responsibilities! And you are—you are—"

"I'm merely a ranch hand, barely above a slave," Carlos finishes for him, the words stabbing him in ways he had never thought possible. "I never thought you'd think like them," he continues. He knows TK must feel that way — after having realized they couldn't lie to each other, Carlos and TK had only told each other the truth, as painful or as amazing as it would be.

Carlos never thought a soul could hurt so much at breaking — and he's always been aware that he’s lived through this kind of pain at least once or twice in other lifetimes. But it still tears his inside in half, one part of his soul burying in grief and the other yearning for TK to tell him that this is a joke.

“Back in New York,” TK breathes out, still looking down. “Back in New York, I made a mistake. I’ve paid for it. I—I met someone named Alex. I thought—I thought he was my soulmate, and I was so blind, I didn’t think—I just fell.”

Carlos looks at him in anticipation, his heart clenching in his chest as he hears everything TK isn’t saying — how he isn’t afraid of loving another man, how he’s already fallen in love, how it wasn’t with Carlos.

“Alex, he—” TK inhales deeply. “He wasn’t brave. He wanted out, and he didn’t tell me. I treated him—we were equals, at least to me. He didn’t think the same, and neither did my father.”

“What does that even mean, TK?” Carlos mutters, aghast. In his mind, he’s already imagining horrible situations that lead to TK getting the ugly scar in his arm.

“Alex had been—he’s been—He got caught with another man, Mitchell, one of my father’s freedmen. I was devastated, and I—well, you’ve seen the scar. They, uh, my father had to punish them. And I had to watch.”

“TK,” Carlos can only mutter, snuggling closer to his soulmate but not touching him, somehow sensing that TK wouldn’t react well to any kind of touch right now.

“That’s what could happen to us, and I can’t allow that. I can’t afford you suffering the same fate they have. I—I just can’t. I'm sorry, Carlos," TK says, most to himself since the words are so softly spoken Carlos needs to strain his ears to actually hear them. "I wish things were different, but they’re not."

Carlos doesn’t have it in himself to counteract TK's train of thought. He’s too stunned to even retaliate — he simply stands in the middle of the pathway, surrounded by dust and wind, as TK knocks on the few rocks on the ground with the tip of his expensive shoes. Finally, Carlos finds it in himself to mutter, "Have you always thought like this?"

TK’s silence is loud enough to drown Carlos’ doubts.

After a few beats, TK’s green eyes finally look up, square into Carlos’ waiting gaze. There’s a coldness in there that Carlos hasn't seen before.

"This has always been impossible," TK says slowly. "I'm sorry, Carlos. I have to go now."

"Just tell me," Carlos pleads, reaching out and grabbing TK’s arm with shaky hands. "Have you ever loved me?"

TK doesn’t reply, instead freeing himself from Carlos’ grasp and walking away. Carlos tries to console himself with the belief that soulmates like them can't really lie to each other — with the fleeting feeling that it would have caused TK more pain to lie than to confess his feelings.

That doesn’t lessen the sorrow that settles in Carlos’ soul as he watches TK walking away one last time. It becomes a thorn inside of him, growing to prickle at his soul within each second they spend separated, finally tearing him apart when news of one Tyler Kennedy Strand and his beautiful young wife having passed away from tuberculosis reach Texas.

Carlos’ heart never mends, after that, his hopes quenched in a devastating desert of despair and grief.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

i'm lost in a dream

right now

Carlos has always known he's special. Not because he's the baby brother of four children, three of them women. Not because he's a gifted soccer player, and certainly not because he's gay.

He knows he's special because he's met his soulmate in past lives.

He hadn’t been aware, at first. He thought that being able to see colors didn’t make him different, but he couldn’t have been more mistaken — once his parents realized he didn’t see a monochrome world, they sat him down and explained to him what soulmates were and how the powers worked. They even brought him to an elder to ensure he didn’t have any other power.

He did.

The elder had studied him deeply, reading his aura and mumbling words in a language Carlos hadn't understood at seven, and in the end the elder had deemed him something that sounded terribly similar to tragic soulmate. A tragic soulmate, the elder had explained to his parents as though Carlos couldn’t hear them, is someone who's met their soulmate in previous lives but who has never been able to live that destined love in full.

"A broken heart in a lost soul," the elder had said.

Carlos has always known that being different meant being tragic.

After a more thorough study, the elder had told his parents that he held at least two more powers — the ability to never lie to his soulmate, and the curse of being unable to remain away from his soulmate wherever said soulmate might be. That meant, the elder had continued, that Carlos had lost his soulmate before even being together at least three times in previous lives.

That also explained his fixation with New York — he supposes his soulmate is up there instead of in Austin, given the amount of times Carlos has surprised himself doodling the silhouette of the state. And it explained the dreams he's had ever since he can remember.

Nobody else has dreams. Carlos isn’t sure he knows anyone with more than two powers — his parents can only see colors, and he doubts they'll develop another power since they've ended up together in this life. It's tricky, navigating existence being aware of the fact that he’s one of a kind. He’s special.

He's a freak.

And the worst of it all is that he can’t really talk about his dreams with anyone. The elders were clear when they warned his parents about his accumulating powers — he would never be able to speak about them for as long as he dreamed of his soulmate without actually meeting them.

Carlos’ dreams are mostly abstract while he's growing up. They're just snippets of feelings, sometimes a flash of an image — a party, some music, a kiss — but they're mostly unimportant until he turns nineteen and he dreams of taking pills and not waking up. He shoots up in his bed, terrified of what it might mean, and when he doesn’t dream of anything but nothingness for a whole week, Carlos believes he’s lost his soulmate yet again.

The dreams come back once again after nine days, but after that they're flimsy, temporary. Carlos can’t find a rhyme or reason to them, and he thinks that maybe he's broken — maybe his psyche is trying to make sense of the fact that he's lost the other half of his soul before even meeting them. He'd hoped so hard that his soulmate would be a nice guy. Now he has to live life in complete loneliness.

He makes it far in life. He follows his father’s footsteps with a twist, and becomes a police officer much to his parents' chagrin. He befriends Michelle Blake and the rest of the 126, and he grieves them when the explosion steals them of their youth and their future. He learns to forget the weird dreams he has. He survives.

Carlos is tossing and turning in his bed one night when a vivid dream assaults him. Out of the blue, he sees a black man dressed in a maroon suit walking into a restaurant. He sees dinner being served and a ring being proffered. He dreams of tears and pain, and then he dreams of darkness and void.

He wakes up with a shout, alone in his apartment, trembling like a leaf and panting as though he's run a marathon.

Just like what happened when he was nineteen, Carlos doesn’t dream of anything for some days after that. He shrugs it off, telling himself that he's fine, that it's only been a glitch. That he soon will be back to doodling silhouettes of states he will never set foot in and scribbling heart-shaped figurines in his notebooks.

Around a month after the dream, Carlos meets TK Strand under the rain, and his whole life shifts.

The dreams come back full force after that particular call, as though that encounter has ignited something in his gut that he isn’t able to quench anymore. Carlos still dreams in abstract — feelings and flashes, giddiness and lust and excitement and red and yellow and blue — but he learned to navigate through those images long ago, so he just pushes them to the back of his mind while he gets to know TK better, an instant attraction making him orbit around the firefighter.

In hindsight, that should have been the first sign.

From time to time, Carlos takes out the small box the elder had given him so many years before. He opens the lid and peruses the contents — a couple of photographs taken in order to read his aura, a few scraps of paper with messy scribbling listing all the powers that he has and that mean nothing in this life because he's lost his soulmate at least three times before. He thinks he's cursed every single moment that he looks through the box, and yet he does so periodically.

He places the box back to its spot inside the closet and gets ready for dinner date with TK. He’s invited the firefighter for a night in after both their shifts; Carlos knows that they've been mostly just hooking up, but he thinks it's time for them to up their game. TK may not be his soulmate — Carlos has lost all hope — but that doesn’t mean he can't have fun and date, and maybe even settle down and have a future beside someone who can grow to love him.

Even if that love can't rival that of soulmates.

The date is a disaster from beginning to end. It doesn’t take long for Carlos to understand that TK only came for horizontal activities — and he'd be lying if he said he isn’t disappointed. It makes him reconsider why on Earth he thought it'd be a good idea, and by the time TK storms out of his condo — and, apparently, out of his life as well — Carlos is left reeling from the low of being rejected by yet another man.

It doesn’t dawn on him until much later that he’s spoken his mind, without sugarcoating it, the whole time.

The next time he sees TK isn’t at a call, despite Carlos working a shift from hell — starting with a row between a bunch of drunkards and ending with a brawl at The Hole. Carlos is about to call it a night when Mitchell drops a heavy folder on top of the rest of the paperwork he has on his desk.

"Hey!" he calls her out. "What was that for?"

Mitchell winks at him before sitting back on her chair and leafing through her own files. Carlos sighs and opens the folder, eyes widening almost comically as he sees the mug picture inside and the name labeling the file.

Tyler Kennedy Strand.

Carlos can’t believe his luck — the jury's still out on whether it's good or bad luck, anyway. He gestured for two of the janitors to pick TK out of the hole and goes to the water fountain just behind Mitchell’s desk.

"You're evil," he jabs at her as he passes.

"You'll thank me later, Reyes."

"Don’t try to be sassy with me, Mitchell. It doesn’t suit you."

Mitchell’s laugh follows him as he grabs a paper cup and fills it with water, gulping it almost in one go before glancing back at his own desk. TK has already been brought there, one ice pack fleetingly placed against one of his multiple bruises in his face. It's time for the show, Carlos realizes as he makes his way back.

As he sits down, Carlos feels an instant pull towards TK. He blames it on the lingering attraction between them — he's still infatuated. That's all. He even manages to go through the facts steadily, face schooled so not a single feeling is shown, completely professional. And then, then, his stupid brain has to short circuit and his stupid mouth has to open up and his stupid voice has to speak the words that his heart has been singing — all the worry he's been building up inside, all the fears about TK and his insane coping mechanisms.

Carlos is aware that he's spoken so many hidden truths that it should be a sign. The way TK’s green eyes stare down at him and how his voice only breaks a little when he asks "Are you busting my balls now?" — everything in that interaction should have sent a massive siren warning to Carlos.

Yet he decides to ignore it. He ignores everything — the orbiting towards TK and the evident reciprocation, the way he knows TK can also see colors, how they seem to always be open to each other. Carlos has had to endure a whole date of TK complaining about how Judd treats him; he's aware that a normal date shouldn't be like that.

He also chooses to stuff every single sign deep inside his soul until the last dream assaults him.

There's a closed door, and some strange noises coming from behind it. Carlos can see several hands trying to pry it open, and a battering ram being handled. The door suddenly opens with a burst as a piercing sound cuts the air and he — whoever's dreams Carlos is hijacking — staggers backwards. Carlos can feel the confusion and the dizziness, as he hears the ruckus around and some familiar faces come into view. Michelle leaning in. Paul keeping everyone aside. Captain Strand screaming you'll be fine son you'll be fine. It's so obvious and yet Carlos doesn’t want to believe it.

He wakes up with a scream reverberating on the dark walls of his condo, fear gripping at his insides and squeezing so tight that he feels like he can’t properly breathe.

He's been dreaming about TK Strand this whole time. And now he knows TK is going to be shot in less than twenty-four hours.

The torture he’s been feeling all these years — the inability to talk about these dreams — is increased tenfold now that he knows, now that he’s aware of who he’s been dreaming of the whole time. Now that he’s fallen for his soulmate, even before knowing they were meant for each other.

He fumbles for his phone on his nightstand, grabbing it blindly and unlocking the screen by muscle memory. He shoots a quick message to TK, not heeding the time and definitely not caring whether or not he’s coming across as needy or demanding or crazy. He’s dreamed of TK.

He’s dreamed of TK dying.

He fires a couple more texts when TK replies to his first one with a simple question mark. Carlos knows he’s been cryptic — in hindsight, texting please don’t go on shift tomorrow might not have been his finest moment — but he can’t afford losing TK. Not just because that would mean going on another life without his soulmate, but because by the time he’s got to know TK, Carlos is already in love with him.

TK’s calling him before Carlos can burn his phone by texting.

“What’s wrong, Carlos?” he asks in a soft voice. “It’s too late to be playing games.”

“It’s not a game,” Carlos says in despair. He can’t speak his mind, he can’t tell the truth, but he can’t either lie to TK. “You shouldn’t go on shift tomorrow, TK.”

“Why? What’s going on, Carlos?” TK’s voice sounds worried now, as though he’s trying to assess whether or not Carlos has definitely lost his mind.

“I—I can’t tell you, TK,” Carlos mutters. “But please. I just—I can’t—”

A siren rings in the distance, and it’s then that Carlos realizes that TK might have started his twenty-four-hour shift already. “I have to go, Carlos, but I’ll call you in the morning and we’ll talk, okay?” TK promises before hanging up.

Carlos just hopes it’s not already too late the next time they’re both free to talk.

He doesn’t fall back asleep, too shaken to even blink his eyes. When the morning comes, and he looks at his reflection in the mirror, he sees the tired eyes and the worried lines on his forehead, and sighs.

Carlos dreads coming into work the next day, but he does anyway. He searches for TK in every call he’s sent to, but it’s one of those shifts when he coincides with every single firehouse in town except for the only one he’s looking for.

Mitchell keeps side-eyeing him as he stumbles his way through the shift, until the call comes. It's supposed to be an easy one — a man diagnosed with Alzheimer breaks into his old house and needs to be rescued. Easy peasy.

Of course, it's the moment fate chooses to drop all hell on them.

Carlos doesn't only hear the shooting. He feels it deep in his bones, the weighted realization that soulmates are binded by much more than the powers they share. He's a crumpled heap of despair when they wheel TK out of the house and into the ambulance. He doesn’t even realize how Mitchell has driven him to the hospital until she unceremoniously dumps him at the ER entrance.

The rest of the night — the best part of the following week, for sure — is a blur of emotions and whispered promises. Carlos is now sure that he’s going to lose his soulmate yet again, as it seems his fate by now — he's certain that he's always lost TK right after realizing the truth but before they could actually be together.

It seems like they're destined to always be apart.

Carlos has cried himself dry by the time a nurse comes and informs him that he should be leaving. It's his seventh day in a row of coming to the hospital after his shifts, still in his uniform, to wait for TK to miraculously wake up. He knows TK will — he's dreamed of it, he's been seeing the darkness fading for three days now, but TK doesn’t show any sign of actually opening his eyes. Carlos isn’t sure about the meaning of a soulmate dream not fulfilled means, and he doesn't want to leave the room, but the nurse is way too convincing.

TK wakes up the moment Carlos sets foot in his condo, Paul sending him a quick message to let him know. Carlos doesn’t even step into the shower — he switches from his uniform into his comfort jeans and a maroon Henley, and speeds back to the hospital, hoping not to get a ticket.

Still, it takes him a while to reach his final destination with Austin's insane traffic and the lack of parking spots nearby. When he finally sets foot into the building and checks his phone, he realizes TK has been awake for at least four hours and a half.

Carlos is buzzing with anticipation and dread equally when he reaches the door of the room where he's spent the past nights.

"Officer Reyes," Captain Strand startles him by opening the door and greeting him. "Have you even gone home at all today?"

"Yes, Sir," he stammers, bracing himself for what he’s about to go through. "Paul texted me that TK’s awake."

"He is," Captain Strand agrees. "I'll leave you two alone."

Carlos wants to protest, he wants to tell Captain Strand to stay, but all the words remain stuck in his throat when the older man steps aside and Carlos gets an eyeful on the inside.

TK is lying on the bed, propped up against some pillows, staring down at his fingers. Carlos is overcome with the sudden need to rush by his side and wrap TK in a warm hug.

"Hey," he says instead, voice soft. TK startles. "I'm sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you."

TK offers him a half smile that looks more like a grimace than anything else. "You could never scare me, Carlos."

Carlos finds some bravery in his soul and he pulls a chair closer to the bed, sitting down and leaning forward. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I just slept through a week," TK tells him with a chuckle. "How are you feeling?"

"You're impossible. You're the one who's been I'm a coma for over a week, and you still ask me—"

"It must have been hard on you, with me in a coma," TK cuts him, looking up at him with his green eyes that make Carlos wonder how there could ever be a time when he couldn't distinguish colors — how there could be a life without TK.

And apparently TK has already found out what they should be to each other.

"When did you know?" Carlos asks.

"I have the feeling that I've always known," TK confesses. "I mean, I had an inkling when I couldn't shut up about my past, that night at the precinct, when I—when you—when things got rough and crazy between us. I felt like I couldn’t hide from you, like I needed you to know my truth. But for sure? After our darts date at the bar. I'd dreamed about that moment the night before and it just—it made sense. With all I knew about you."

Carlos exhales. TK’s words lift a weight off his shoulders as he slumps forward, almost toppling over. TK catches him with steady hands despite everything; Carlos wants nothing more than to point out the contradiction in this moment — how he's always been the strong one, and how now it's TK’s turn to save him.

TK lifts Carlos’ face with two fingers under his chin, and Carlos’ eyes meet green.

"Hey," TK greets softly.

"Hey," Carlos mimics him, resting his forehead against TK’s. They both close their eyes, basking in the glowing feeling of being finally together.

Carlos squints his eyes open, a small smile playing on his lips as he allows himself to believe that this moment is real. His hands shoot up to grab TK’s forearms gently, always minding the bruises and cuts that come as collateral damage of the worst call of his life.

"You scared me," Carlos mumbles, his forehead pressed to TK’s as they breathe each other in, TK’s green eyes still closed to the world.

"It wasn’t my intention," TK whispers back. They remain silent for a few moments, Carlos reminiscing of the few moments they've spent like this before either of them managed to blow it up. "I was really looking forward to dinner date that night," he continues, so out of the blue that it takes Carlos a second to understand. When he does, he shakes his head.

"I know, now," he says softly. "We can't lie to each other, now can we?"

"No, I guess we can't," TK acquiesced. "We're soulmates."

Carlos smiles, his whole face lighting up at the realization that he's finally allowed to be with the person he's destined to spend his life with. He couldn't be happier that it's TK.

"I—I love you, Carlos," TK tells him, voice cracking slightly as he speaks, as though he's afraid of not getting a reply — as though Carlos doesn't feel the same, scary and dizzy as it is.

Carlos chuckles, his hand shooting up to cup TK’s face, fingers caressing the smooth skin with a trembling that Carlos has yet to get rid of.

"I love you too."