It felt like a dream and it felt like he was awake, but as Luca held his hands out in front of him in the pale silvery fog, he knew it wasn’t either.
The stones surrounded him, only dark shadows in the distance but Luca felt their presence like a weight against his heart. He turned over his palms, noting the shimmering edges of his skin as though he wasn’t quite corporeal. And perhaps he wasn’t, in whatever place this was.
“Hello?” he called out, testing the timbre of his voice. It echoed around him, bounced back and fluttered, as though he was more than just one. “Is anyone there?”
A dark dot appeared in the distance, then another one. Shadows moved in the corners of his vision and when Luca turned his head, he was sure he saw the familiar gait of a man.
“Ry?” he said, confusion filling him. There was a man there, a figure that stepped out of the fog, swirling into view and crystalizing before Luca’s eyes. The familiar blue eyes, the russet tone of his beard, the familiar lines of his face. Yet somehow he was not familiar too. Younger, broader, a blade against his hip and lacking the beloved silver streak in his hair.
Luca didn’t have a chance to parse his thoughts when another figure approached, merely a darkened blur that solidifed as they came into view. A woman, dark haired and curled, wearing a gown of burnt sunset and a chain of turquoise squares inlaid in gold around her neck. Luca didn’t recognize her, but somehow she felt familiar.
For a long moment, they stared at each other.
“Who are you?” Luca asked finally. He was aware of the figure behind her, of Ryan… but it wasn’t Ryan as Luca knew him. “What is this place? Where am I?”
The girl watched him curiously and Luca was struck how much she looked like Olivia in a lot of ways – the same dark tone of skin, the full lips, but her curls were cropped short and untamed like his own. She had a smatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her smile was so much like the one Luca was used to seeing returned to him in his reflection it was like looking into a mirror.
The woman tilted her head, still smiling. “I’m you.”
“Oh, okay,” Luca said calmly. The concept didn’t seem as ludicrous as it could have sounded. “But, uh. How?”
She smiled again. “Well, I am… a memory of you… I think.” She laughed slightly, her cheeks flushing the same way Luca knew his did when he was nervous. “Or perhaps just a part of you. Or an echo maybe? I know not, exactly.”
“You’re a girl,” Luca stated flatly.
Luca quirked a grin. “Nope. Not last time I checked.”
“Hmm.” She didn’t hide her curious appraisal of him and he didn’t hide his. She was pretty, he could tell that much. Fine boned and slim and delicate, not tall but then neither was he.
Luca caught a glimpse of the shadow at her shoulder and a light from an invisible unknown source shifted over him.
The resemblance was still startling, right down to the same inked skin and arch of a brow, but it wasn’t Luca’s Ryan.
“You look like Ryan in fancy dress,” Luca commented, finally taking in the figure’s unusual and unfamiliar clothing. He looked like he had stepped straight out of pages of a history book.
“Ryan?” the girl queried, following his look. “No, Eoin.”
“Eoin?” Luca blinked and turned back to her. “Okay, that name kick’s ass. But who are you then?”
She placed a hand on her heart. “Lucia.”
He echoed her movement and she smiled. “Yes,” she told him then she gestured towards Eoin with the graceful sweep of her hand. “Eoin is… mine.”
“He looks like mine,” Luca said ruefully. A disquiet was settling into his bones and he looked inside himself to find the thread that linked him with his husband. “Why isn’t he here?”
“We are all here,” Lucia shrugged. Eoin stepped back and melted into the dark, as though he was assured Lucia was safe. “Can you not feel him?”
Luca found the thread and tugged. A tug rippled back in return. Lucia seemed to recognize it and she smiled again. “Ah. You’ve found him.”
More shadowy figures materialized around the edges, amongst the blur of the stones. Luca tried to make out faces but they were mostly fuzzy. Lucia stepped closer, peering into his face, fascinated. Luca felt much the same, looking at this part of him that existed in a female body.
“You are blessed,” she told him after a moment. She ran a finger up his chest and tapped his nose. “To be a man. With him. To lie together without fear of a bairn.”
He could see so many new faces around him now, and each one felt as familiar as the other. What had she said? Memories? Echoes? They were all a part of him somehow, all apart of Ryan. All a part of them but there was something he wouldn’t have now.
“What is it like?” he blurted when Lucia’s words penetrated. “To… to be full? Pregnant… Olivia says it’s incredible but…”
Lucia’s head tilted. “Olivia?”
Luca frowned. “My… our? Sister? Twin.”
Lucia expression faltered. “Not in my time,” she said softly. “In mine, we are alone. No twin.”
“I… I can’t imagine that.”
“There are many other familiar faces. And many other lifetimes. Over and over. There are many lives, many worlds, each one more perfect than the rest.”
“And in each one, Ryan and I are together, right?”
“Ryan,” Lucia nodded, smiling as she tasted the unfamiliar name on her tongue. “Yes. Since the first and even before that. We are… inevitable.” She reached out to lay her fingers against his heart but he barely felt it.
“Inevitable,” Luca mused. ”Huh. I like that. Hear that, Ry? You and me. Every life.”
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