Solo Log: Winter Days

**Winter 64, 458 AOV**

Nicolai knows something about Arden that they don’t. Most of their crew do; it’s just a matter of fact that they died a few years back and haven’t remembered their earlier life yet. People mention things about the old Arden all the time: they’d left their family behind, they loved the thrill of the heist, they dyed their hair green, they never complained when it was their turn to clean the bathrooms, they loved the crew so much they sacrificed themselves to save the others in a robbery gone wrong. It’s familiar, and something Arden strives to live up to.

Nicolai used to tell him stories about the old Arden, too - but he’s changed ever since the two of them got together. He clams up when they’re with the rest of the crew, and finds excuses to leave once people start reminiscing about the first Arden. When they’re alone, Nicolai looks at them…softly, yes, but distantly. Cautiously.

It isn’t until tonight, a full week and a half later, that Arden figures out what should have been obvious.

“This isn’t our first time together, is it?” They’re curled up in Nicolai’s arms, every rise and fall of his chest palpable against Arden’s back, so Arden can feel it when his breath stutters in shock.

“What do you mean?”

“We were in love before, weren’t we?” Arden shifts on the bed to roll onto his other side and look at him face-to-face. “Up until I died. That’s why you’re always so sad when you look at me, isn’t it? You’ve been waiting a year and a half for me to remember, but I never did.”

“That’s not…no.” Nicolai opens his mouth to say more, then closes it. Opens his mouth again, before saying nothing. The weak denial only confirms Arden’s suspicions.

“I’m sorry I made you wait.”

“I didn’t…” Nicolai falls silent for a long moment. His voice is hoarse when he speaks up again. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

Arden kisses him, and then kisses him again when they feel the tears running down Nicolai’s cheek. “Thank you for waiting, too. I know you must have made me happy in my last life as well as this one. If I have someone like you in my next, that’s the best I could ask for.”

Nicolai sobs hot and heavy, too distraught to speak. Arden wraps their arms around him and holds tight, like their grip can communicate all the love that they feel.

“Hey, Nicolai,” they say lightly. “After the operation tomorrow - how about we take a break and go somewhere? Yeah, we’ll have to lay low a while, but we could go up to Orithea and lay low there as a couple of tourists. Just the two of us.”

Nicolai still can’t answer until he stops trembling.

“Yeah,” he mumbles at last. “After tomorrow.”

He kisses Arden hard and deep: like a man drowning, like a prisoner starving, like…

Like tonight will be their last.

**Winter 32, 460 AOV**

“Nicolai. You are *not* coming.”

Nicolai glares back at her, but the effect is ruined when he jostles his broken arm and flinches.

Ivona heaves a sigh, running a hand through greasy hair that falls too far in her face. She really ought to have cut that a week ago. Hopes of finding a barber in the next town be damned, a dagger will do the job well enough later tonight. First things first, though. “Look, one of us has to go hunt for food and we both know I’m better at it. I’ll scout around, find a rabbit or two, and be back before dark. You take care of the camp and rest up, and we’ll head out in the morning. I’ll see you in a few hours, all right?”

Nicolai averts his eyes, and through her two years plus however many lives’ worth of experience she knows: he’s moody right now.

Ivona sighs again, this time more fond than exasperated, and sits on the rock besides his. “Hey, Nic. You know I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t like it,” he grumbles. “Lindholm’s followed us as far as Vendricce already. What if he finds you out there?”

Ivona scoffs. “Nilsen can’t be paying him enough that he’s breaking a profit at this point even if he finds me. Hell, I’m not even sure Nilsen is chasing me out of anything better than pure spite anymore. A nice reincarnating patsy can’t be worth that much.”

“You were…his favorite entertainment.” Nicolai blanches as he says it. “He liked keeping you in your place. And he is plenty spiteful.”

Ivona rolls her neck until there’s a satisfying crack. “Damn, he’s really a piece of work huh? Well, I’m plenty spiteful too. I’ll make him chase me down to Shaha and up to the Shawl Mountains if I have to. Like hell I’m going back.”

Nicolai won’t even look at her now, and Ivona knows he’s rapidly descending into a guilty spiral. She slaps him on the shoulder to break him out of it. “Stay with me, Nic. We’re on this ride together, and no half-assed mercenaries are going to separate us.”

“Ivona.” His eyes are still haunted as he looks up at her. “Are you happy like this?”

Ah.

Ivona cocks her head. “You know, I could be doing better. I could also be a lot worse, if you hadn’t gotten your change of heart.”

Nicolai stares through her, and she knows he’s trying to find Arden in the lines and shapes on her face. He won’t get the absolution he hopes for: Arden is dead, and Ivona is here instead. And it’s not her place to forgive what was done to them.

“When I told you the truth,” Nicolai says shakily, “I wanted you to be free for once in…for once in all your lives. I didn’t imagine he would chase you all this time. I didn’t imagine this.”

“I am free.” Ivona stands up, and does a full-body stretch. “Sure, that first month sucked, but it’s been two years. I’m where I want to be, doing whatever the fuck I want to be doing. Maybe my next life will have a better time of it, free of this bullshit…but in the meantime, I’m having a good enough time making Nilsen chase my ass all over the world.” She pauses thoughtfully. “You know, maybe we could find a port and head west to Ber. I feel like I used to live there at some point? Who knows, maybe I’ve got long-lost family down there.”

Nicolai stares at her for a good long moment. Then he laughs, shoulders shaking, and Ivona pretends not to notice that he’s crying at the same time.

“Sometimes I look for him in you, you know. But you, ‘Vona - you’re an entirely different force of nature.”

Ivona preens, or attempts to; seriously, she hasn’t washed her hair in five days and her scalp feels it. “Trust me to take care of myself, Nic. And you take care of yourself while I’m out getting our dinner.”

He gives her a weary smile, and nods. “All right. Stay safe.”

In the end, it’s not Nilsen or Lindholm that does her in. Ivona barely gets to think *oh, fuck* before the eladrin woman teleports behind her and buries the knife in her back.

**Winter 53, 470 AOV**

Nicodemus takes him to visit Crisillyir this year, because Alastor remembered that the life before the Ardens had wanted to reconnect with her roots. In his opinion, she needn’t have bothered.

“Has it changed at all, since five hundred years ago?” Alastor paces by the window of their hotel room in Nalaam, while Nicodemus lights another cigarette. “The people, the clergy…they care more about upholding their own power than doing right by the world. None of the people I talked to gave a thought to the eladrin killed in the Great Malice. Not even the devas. Have they forgotten? Do they just not care?”

Nicodemus lets him rant on until he's exhausted himself. Alastor slumps into a chair, watching people mill around on the ground outside the hotel.

"I'm afraid it indeed has changed little since those times." Nicodemus exhales out a cloud of acrid smoke. "The Clergy is as corrupt as ever - perhaps even more so, these days. But remember, Alastor, our mission is to create that change in the world."

"Right." Alastor lingers on one person in the crowd, then another. Wonders how the coming reckoning will transform this unchanging city and its unchanging people, if it will open their eyes to the hypocrisy underlining their entire existence. Wonders how it might change himself, when the time comes.

He rubs a thumb over his ring, the inscription burned into his memory: *Other Better Life*. He’d asked for its original version when Kasavarina first introduced him to the Obscurati, and its meaning has only grown deeper now that Nicodemus has helped him remember the past with such clarity.

“Once we’ve changed the world…” Alastor looks to the evening sky, picking out the distant planes and praying that they achieve their mission within his lifetime. “I hope my next life won’t need to live with the knowledge that this is how things used to be. There are some things that should never be forgotten, but…I hope this world will be one of them.”

“There is value in remembering,” Nicodemus reminds him kindly. “Only then can you understand the cost that has been paid to achieve our goals, as well as why they were necessary in the first place.”

Alastor thinks of Dala’s terrified expression four hundred and seventy years ago, and of the continued cruelties his past lives lived for over a decade before Ivona stumbled into Ushanti’s borders. He reluctantly nods. “Well, I understand now. And I’ll do anything to make sure everyone else understands, too. For the sake of my past lives, and for the sake of giving my next ones a better world.”

Nicodemus lays a hand on his shoulder. “That’s my boy.”

**Winter 17, 479 AOV**

”I cannot allow a murderer like you to be a part of our ranks anymore,” Nicodemus tells Alastor as the other man lays his body to the ground.

*But I was doing the right thing,* Alastor thinks weakly, though pain and shock block him from even thinking to try and speak it aloud.

“But I hope that I find you in your other, better life.”

*What did I do wrong?*

The faint impact of a cigarette dropped on his chest.

*Will my next life be–*

**Winter 18, 479 AOV**

A chilly wind bites at the deva's skin as she wakes up crumpled on the ground, and she quickly curls up again in an attempt to retain body heat. She has no clothes. Why doesn't she have clothes…?

She can't remember. Either she's been reborn, or she's been thoroughly robbed and her head beaten hard enough to lose her memory. The lack of soreness in her body suggests the former.

All right, so she's fresh in a new life and fully naked in the middle of nowhere. Not ideal, but probably not the first time she’s started a life like this. Best course of action would be to find the nearest town, so–

She stands up and squints in one direction, then the other. Sees the outlines of a road in the distance, which should bring her to a town sooner or later. She hopes it's sooner, or else this cold could make her life a short one.

*Huh,* she thinks as she starts walking. *I need…something.*

It's feeling more than fact, an absent yearning. Like something is missing already, even minutes into her new life. A remnant from whoever she was before?

Well, she has to focus on the present first. This life won’t be worth anything if she doesn’t find shelter soon.

The deva keeps walking.