Not This Time
Coincidences
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Chapter Three
– Coincidences
he’s safe with me… Finally, we can live, love each other and both of us survive
it…
holding me tightly, desperately. “That was my mission…”
okay… you don’t have to… neither of us has to die…”
I have to. They’d just use me to get to you… use me against you… This isn’t our
time. If I live, you won’t be safe… They’d force me to kill you.”
love you…” I feel tears in my eyes. “Please… don’t make me…”
that look, that look I’m all too familiar with. There are no tears in his eyes.
He accepts this, to keep me safe…
bore into me, unblinkingly, forcing me to do it. “Promise you’ll find me.”
me, too intense, too real. I look down, blinking, away from his face. “I
promise…” My voice is no more than a whisper. “I’ll find you… and it will be
different.”
know it won’t. But we’ll see each other again.” He kisses me again,
passionately, drinking the kiss like a drowning man taking his last gasp of
air. Then he pulls away from me, pulling his own dagger.
it does to you.” He puts the blade to his heart. “If anyone asks, you beat me.
I love you…”
blade into his chest. He is doing this for me… “I’ll find you…” I whisper as he
falls.
Every time…
Every time, he dies… My hand, or my fault. I love him
so much… and I keep killing him, causing his death.
The sun shines
down on me, but I feel cold. He is pulling away from me. Every life, his
distrust of me, his fear, his anger, even his hatred… they all grow. They
overpower the love that I know is there… every time, it’s harder and harder for
him to see me, to recognize me. I’m afraid….
I’m afraid that
I’m losing him. That I’ll lose him completely if it happens
many more times. And I can’t bear to lose him forever, as I lose him for
a lifetime, every lifetime…
Those intense
eyes haunt my vision every time I close my eyes. Were they so piercing in his
first life? So deep, so haunting? I don’t know… I can’t remember, but I don’t
think so. But every time he dies, every time he is reborn they grow to be so.
He lives so intensely… Now, in this life, being fixed with his gaze is like
being pierced with a sword. His glance is almost enough to set paper ablaze.
And I know why
he lives to intensely as he does. He has never –
sometimes far less.
intensely to make up for that. He tries to crowd all of the life he should have
into his first twenty years, and as a result he barely gets anything out of it,
none of the pleasure he should have… he’s always so rushed, so… intense. That’s
the only word for him. He is so intense… it makes me so sad to see him so. To
know that I’m the reason he never gets to live…
I look toward
the end of town. I can’t see it from here, but I know that the Kaiba mansion is
in that direction. I could go there, go see him, ask him point blank if he
remembers me. If he doesn’t, make him remember me. Because this time, it really
is different. I didn’t kill him.
I didn’t kill
him this time… but it does me little good, if we can’t be together…
I didn’t kill
him… but I came very close. And it was Yugi who saved him. Yugi
who stopped me and came to his rescue. I saw that look on his face
again, that despairing look, that said he knew what was going to happen, and he
accepted it. And still, though I saw that look across our impromptu stadium, I
still ordered my Celtic Guardian to attack him… And Yugi saved him. If I had no
other reason to love my aibou as I do, that would be reason enough.
I wish I could
go see him, go talk to him, go be with him… but I can’t. If
he doesn’t remember me… I won’t force him to. I won’t go near him. I
won’t put him in danger again, from me. I’ll let him have his life, this time.
Let him have the years I’ve had, every time he’s died. Sometimes I’ve been
killed soon after, sometimes died within a few years… but often I’ve lived on
for years without him, for decades. Once for nearly a
century… And now it’s time for him to have his own life, now that I
remember him, and won’t kill him like that. Now he’s finally safe from me…
But where does
that leave me, if to keep him safe I have to deny myself his company?
Never be with him? Never let him know? What good is his safety, if I can’t have
him?
No… I run a hand
through my wild hair. That’s selfish of me… for all I know, I have lost him
already, lost him with everything I’ve done to him. He may hate me entirely.
Wouldn’t that be cruelly ironic… The first time he
manages to survive our encounter, and I’ve already lost him…
“Seto…” I sigh.
That name… it was his name in
as well. Priest Seto. Now, Seto
Kaiba. It could be a sign… Perhaps it means something. As far as I can
remember,
was our first encounter… my first life, as far as I know. Could it signify
something, that he has the same name now? That maybe, finally, it is our time
together?
Or, it could be
a coincidence… His name has always been similar… Eventually, it was bound to be
the same. But, I don’t believe in coincidence. Fate plays far too large a role
in my existence for me to believe that his name is a coincidence. That any of
this is a coincidence. It has to mean something… but I don’t know
begins again, that we are doomed to repeat this… That everything is just
beginning again. I don’t know if I could handle that. I need to have some hope
for the future… and if we’re doomed to just repeat what we’ve already done
before… There is none.
I have to see
him. I have to know if it’s too late.