Solo Log: Missed Places and Missed People

**31 Days ATE, Seobriga markets**

Cleone realizes she might have lingered in public too long when she sees the old man watching her.

Her first instinct is that one of the Ob's agents has found her, and she's already starting the mental calculations for what to do (evade and try to sneak away? Capture him? A frightening number of people would tell her to kill him, but she really doesn't want to resort to that unless there's no other option) when the less reactionary part of her brain points out that he’s staring too openly to be a covert agent. Probably.

Chances are he’s just staring because devas are even rarer a sight in Ber than Flint, and Cleone tries not to feel self-conscious about that as she turns to leave and regroup with the rest of her squad. But as she makes her way towards the end of the street, there’s a shaky shout behind her. “Ma’am! Y-you, the deva!”

And she really ought to go on her way, this is going to be an awkward situation at best, but a moment’s hesitation and a flurry of footsteps later the old man has dashed in front of her. He’s leaning over winded and coughing now, but even as his chest heaves he can’t take his eyes off of her.

Cleone tenses, preparing herself to run if needed, but the man makes no further moves towards her. It takes a few moments before he’s recovered enough to speak, but when he does the man’s voice is soft and reverent. “It is you, isn’t it?”

Months of paranoia leading up to the winter takes over, and for a second she’s afraid that somehow Nicodemus has found her again. But that’s not right, she realizes as the panic fades; Nicodemus wouldn’t talk to her like this even if he weren’t in the middle of other plans and didn’t already know her face besides. But then who…

“Arden,” the man whispers. “Ivona? Do you remember at all?”

And the world shifts backwards into clarity. That stocky build, that shade of blue in his eyes, the scar on his nose from when he’d been goofing around with knife tricks and missed a catch–

“Nicolai,” she breathes, and memories from four different lives bubble up. “I remember.”

For better or worse, for a deva the ending of one life is usually a fresh beginning. But one life exists among many others, and huddling together over coffee with Nicolai in a cafe is a sharp reminder that the past has always been there in places and people she didn’t know to look for.

“One of the last things ‘Vona said to me before she disappeared was that she thought she might have a connection to Ber. So I came here,” Nicolai admits bashfully. “I…don’t really know what I was thinking. Maybe she’d find her way here someday. Or her next life would. Or maybe one of her…” He shakes his head, chuckling at his own fantasies, and the memories of one life or another reminds Cleone that in their youth he’d been a shy and hopeless romantic. “I suppose it worked, forty years later.”

Not all memories are weighed equally, especially five hundred years’ worth. But she remembers that particular day well, now that Nicolai gives her reason to recall. “Ivona ran into trouble soon after she left you,” Cleone tells him quietly. “She was killed by strangers. She didn’t mean to leave you, I know that much.”

“I know.” Nicolai smiles, eyes crinkling with amusement. “‘Vona would have made it very clear if she wanted to leave me behind. I knew I probably wouldn’t find her. But I looked for her anyway, every day, in Seobriga and in the sun.” His eyes slide to the windows. “Then the sun disappeared. Now you’re here.”

And that…is less of a coincidence than Cleone would really like, even if it’s not direct causality. She tries to smile, for Nicolai and Ivona’s sakes if not her own. “I think we both know I’m not Ivona, even if I have her memories. But it’s been a delight to meet you. I’m sure she would have been happy to see you safe, forty years after she was gone.”

Nicolai chuckles, and Cleone thinks there might be a bit of self-deprecation behind it. “It truly has been a miracle to see one of Ivona’s lives again. And you’re…” He falters, his smile turning bittersweet. “‘Vona and Ar…’Vona and the life before her both died young. Both times, I could have done more to protect them.”

And Cleone remembers. The life who loved Nicolai, just before being abandoned as a scapegoat during a robbery gone bad. The lives before that, each an unknowing sacrifice to the same small-time crime ring. The life after that, returned to the fold for the sixth time before a guilt-ridden Nicolai came to her with the truth and an escape plan.

And as Nicolai’s voice grows thick with grief, a distant part of Cleone’s mind thinks that some things don’t change even in forty years. “It’s all I could have asked for to see one of their lives survive to your age. Ha…has your life been a happy one?”

Such a simple question never has a simple answer, especially in light of the past two years and the Alastor in the room. She suspects that Nicolai would be distraught to learn the fate of Ivona's direct successor, manipulated and killed for someone else's agenda like the lives before her. (In some ways, the only difference between Nilsen and Nicodemus is that Nicodemus waited to collect his toys.)

But Cleone isn't Alastor, and she's the one in front of Nicolai now. And to see her own life as Nicolai might - twenty years of relative peace and two tumultuous years is almost idyllic, isn’t it? Cleone imagines all the people she loves in her life: Charles, who nurtured her interests in a town that would have condemned them. Florette, who helped her find a home outside of Terenz. Her university friends, solidifying Gagneux as the place she belonged. Her squad in Risur, as unfortunate as their jobs are. Nathan, brilliant and insightful and far too patient. Kasavarina, whom she’s loved two different ways in two different lives.

So she nods, and her smile is more genuine this time. “I wouldn’t say I’m an old bird just yet, but I’ve had a good life. I–”

And she wants to say more, but the cafe door swings open as a customer enters and Cleone is sharply reminded that she came to the markets for work reasons. She falters, and glances at the sunless sky through a window. The weight of a dying world settles back on her shoulders as she looks back to Nicolai, the ghost salt concoction burning a hole in her bag, and it must show in her face because his eyebrows raise in concern. “Ms. Weld?”

The reminiscence was nice while it lasted, at least. “I’m sorry,” she says, and tries to fill those two words with as much sincerity as she can. “The reason I’m in Seobriga to begin with is for business, and…my coworkers are counting on me. I ought to get back.”

“Oh.” Nicolai breathes the word shakily, and Cleone knows that she’s disappointing him. (Not that he’d be the first person.) “Will you be in the city for long?”

“Not for much longer.” Ursaliña is still ahead, after all, and the end of the world will not wait. But selfishly, if they return to Seobriga in the future…she wants to do this. She wants Nicolai to know that his hopes for their future lives aren’t for nothing. She may not be beholden to him or her past lives, but it settles something in her to think she can do this for the sake of (past-present-different-faint-but-still-extant) love.

So Cleone does a selfish thing. “We might be back in Seobriga in the future. If we are…I promise, I’ll contact you. I’ll make time to catch up properly, even for just a little while.”

She remembers the night before everyone left for Bole, when she lingered at Madame Andromeda’s and spent an extra hour with Nathan trying to comprehend the full scope of everything that’s changed. They’d figured out an interesting new quirk that night: promises *mean* things now more than ever, and if she and her team return to Seobriga she’ll need to keep her word or suffer the consequences.

They might be busy. If things go badly, they might even be on the run. But Cleone’s already ghosted all the people she loves in her current life for the sake of mission and safety both; she’s not sure she can ghost someone who’s been waiting forty years for her return, too. She can do this one thing for Nicolai, at the very least - or so she hopes.

Nicolai himself may not know the particulars of their new planar reality, but he at least trusts her enough to nod in response to her promise. He gives her an address, which Cleone commits to memory. “Find me there. I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again.”

“Hang in there meanwhile, Nicolai.” Cleone claps him gently on the shoulder and gives him a light kiss on the cheek as she stands. And from there, the only thing to do is down the rest of her coffee and head back out to regroup with the others.