They lived in a tiny little village 3000 years ago.

He was a young man with a seemingly perpetual frown on his youthful face and a stern demeanour. When he set his mind to something, he could not be swayed, no matter how one tried. Quick to be irritated, he solved all annoyances by ordering the source of his annoyance to do endless rounds of physical training. Even the village dogs obeyed him without question, running with their tails clamped between their legs; he was just that frightening.

She was a young woman with a delicate build and smile that never seemed to leave her face. She possessed fair skin that never seemed to get darker, no matter how much time she spent in the sun. But, pretty as she was, she had a stubborn streak, and it was not unlikely for her to pull pranks on people with the innocent cruelty of a child, giggling as she watched the unfortunate person be subject to horrid embarrassment that only she could think up of.

There was something about her that captured his attention. Perhaps it was her stubbornness that was so like him, or perhaps it was the fact that she never left him alone so that his attention had no choice but to be focused on her. Either way, she was in his mind day in, day out, every single day.

With almost all his thoughts straying to her, he finally made up his mind to do something to end his silent torment. In three days, he had fashioned a string of beads, designed to be worn around the forehead. It was a common accessory of the village females, but she had stubbornly refused to wear one, insisting that she'd only wear one that her husband made, if she was ever to marry.

However, as she was not married yet (though each of the young men in the village tried their hardest to make her his bride), she was accessory-less, and her golden tresses flew in the wind, constantly making its way into her face only to be brushed impatiently away with a hand, until the next time it flew into her face.

He presented his gift to her one mid-summer afternoon. She took it curiously, fingering it like it was a precious treasure before laughing. "You're quite sure of yourself, aren't you?" she asked, holding it up. His face remained stoic as she gave it another look.

"Say," she said, tying it around her wrist, carvings facing toward her skin, "Tomorrow, come to my house. If my mother agrees, I'll wear this around my forehead every single day and promise to be a loving and faithful wife."

Now it was his turn to be faintly amused, although he did not show it. "Who said I was marrying you?" he asked, although the idea was not a bad one, and he had certainly entertained it on several occasions.

He appeared the next morning at her house, leading a ewe and her lamb behind him as gifts for her family. Her mother, delighted that she had finally decided to marry like the other girls that were of age, quickly agreed to the arrangement. They were to wed on the next full moon, which was to appear just after the big hunt that he was to participate in, as a male member of the village.

She waited patiently for him to return from the hunting trip, beads around her forehead, hair finally tamed.

Absentmindedly, she wondered whether or not married life would be different from the life she currently led in regards to him. Hopefully, wives were allowed to tease and prank their husbands.

Two weeks passed, and the hunters returned, although several of the young men were missing. This she noted quietly, but didn't pay much attention to, until it dawned upon her that he was one of those missing men. Immediately alarmed, she begged the hunters for information. What had become of her beloved?

In the end, she managed to squeeze some information from a man who felt sorry for her. Apparently, the day before they were to return to the village, the ledge that he and several others were standing on suddenly collapsed underneath their feet. Before they could react they had plunged down to their deaths. The rest of them had hurried to go down to see if there was any hope for them, but those who had survived were so badly injured that they didn't last long.

"He wasn't one of those," a man hastily piped up, hoping to make things better, if only marginally. "He didn't feel any pain." He was roughly elbowed and told to shush, and she was presented with a simply feather headdress. The craftsmanship was beautiful, though, and she instantly recognized it as his handiwork.

"He made this before the accident. He wished for you to wear it and be to prettiest bride this village ever had."

It was with trembling hands that she took the gift, hugging it tightly as if she could bring back its creator with a hard enough squeeze.

________________________________________

Shain was a sick man, confined to his bed the summer of 150 BC. At one point in his life he had been brimming with health, athletic and strong despite his delicate build, but now the illness had eaten away at his body and he was forced to stay in bed, the lack of activity slowly making his muscle waste away. Occasionally, he'd venture out, flanked by worried family members and hovering friends, making an outing such a hassle that he wished it would never happen again. But staying in bed all day every day was boring, and he'd rather have all the annoyance than be bored to death.

Seff was his childhood friend. The two had been neighbors, and ever since they were young boys, Shain had looked up to his more mature companion. Gradually, that admiration had bloomed into a one-sided love, although Shain was fairly certain that Tezu looked down on such a relationship, so Shain contented himself with the task of finding a girl who was exactly like him.

It was a daunting and difficult task.

And in the end, Shain had just given up and resigned himself to the fact that there was simply no such girl that could be Seff. Sometimes, he wondered why he had even bothered with looking for one. Perhaps that was what sickness did to one's mind.

Seff wanted to go places. He wanted to be someone. Someone important, someone grand. This, Shain knew, and he shared that same dream, to a certain degree, although he had long since crushed it into a thousand little pieces. Sick men did not become someone. They did not do important or grand things, and they most certainly did not go places. It was with incredible bitterness all over his features that Shain listened to Seff speak of going out into the frontier, where he would join a troop that was to settle the vast lands that stretched for miles beyond the city gates. It was an order from the Emperor, and had been posted in the city bulletins all over the country, and it was only after months of preparation and testing and registering that Seff was able to join the effort. Shain wished he could go along, but there was no use for a sick man in the troop, much to his disappointment.

On the day of departure for Seff came all too soon for Shain's liking and it was with a great effort that Shain heaved himself out of bed and stumbled out into the street, making his slow way to the city gates. He made it just in time to catch the last words of some grand speech made by the troop director, and shoved his way past people in his attempt to get to Seff. After initial grumblings, they parted for him willingly enough. No one wanted to be charged with the guilt of pushing a sick man mercilessly down onto the ground.

"You'll come back, won't you?" he demanded Seff, coming to a stop next to his friend and holding onto his sleeve for support.

"Hn."

"I'll be waiting, so you've got to come back. You've got to!" he pleaded, looking desperate, scanning for anything that could give him some reassurance that his friend, his secret love, would come back for him.

"The air is fresher over on the plains. When the settlement is finished, I'll bring you there so that you can properly recover from your illness."

Two years passed after Shain saw Seff off with his troop. Settling the frontier was a dangerous and immense task, but at last a walled fortress was made, the settlement complete and only needing regular inhabitants. Seff and his troop returned to the city one day in early autumn to search for families who would be willing to move to the new settlement. Seff left his troop in the middle of the task and rode his horse purposefully towards Shain's house, where he planned to personally invite Shain to the place where he had worked so hard to complete for two long years.

The lady who answered the door for him studied him silently for a while before recognition crossed her eyes. "Oh, Seff! You're back!" she cried, and he recognized her as Shain's older sister. "You're looking for Shain, right? He's out in the yard… he's been waiting for your return." Something about her over-eager manner seemed strange to Seff, and he felt a strange tugging in his chest, but he could not fathom why.

That is, until he actually stepped into the inner courtyard and Shain's sister led him to a grave. He stared at the stone, saw Shain's name carved into it although his mind refused to believe that Shain was the one buried in the ground with only the stone to mark his new bed. "You just missed him," his sister said slowly. "He said he was going to wait for your return so that he could welcome you himself, but his body simply couldn't do that. He passed away just last month."

The last six words of her speech reeled around in his mind as he stumbled away from the house of his beloved.

________________________________________

There was a tiny little tea parlour along one of the longest and most dangerous paths in the country, one that crossed a tiny corner of the desert on its way to the next big city and was notorious for having very few, if any, travellers complete it in its entirety. It was whispered to be a cursed path, but was the only one connecting the two cities at either end of it, but the sheer difficulty of crossing it did much to segregate the people of the two cities.

The small parlour was one of the two rest stops along the journey one would make, close to a city but not too close. It took a good three or four days of journeying to reach it, where the traveller could sit down to rest his weary feet while enjoying a cup of tea. For the most part, the teahouse was silent, and those that stopped generally just drank their tea, dropped a few coins on the table, and then hurried off, hastening themselves to their deaths while they tried to play with fate.

This teahouse was Shaun's treasure. He had inherited it from his father, who got it from his father, who got it from his father, whose father built it more on a whim than anything else. At one point in time it had two small house included in the property, but after years of neglect the houses no longer were used, and the teahouse worked well as both a place to conduct business (most of the customers sat at the tables outside) and as a place to live. Shaun met quite an assortment of people by running his little teahouse, and it gave him a certain satisfaction to study the men as he served them tea and make calculations as to whether or not they would survive the journey.

He would never know whether or not his calculations were correct, but it was still nice to make them.

He kept a quiet existence at his teahouse, leaving it to journey to the city whenever he ran low of tea. It was peaceful, it was tranquil…

And then he came along.

Shaun looked up curiously when the man strode over to a table, sitting down and ordering two cups of tea. Shaun could not see another person coming up, so curiously made up the order, bringing the cups on a tray over to the man. "You know you can get refills," he teased, looking amused. "Why order two cups of tea for one person?"

The man studied him for a minute before saying, "Drinking tea by oneself is rather lonesome, wouldn’t you agree?" Amusement growing at this surprisingly clever logic, Shaun agreed, setting down the cups and then sitting down opposite of the man, watching him as he picked up a cup and took a grateful sip.

"I am Shaun," he said cheerily. "And who might you be, two-cups-of-tea?"

His companion raised an eyebrow, not looking very amused by the name that Shaun had called him. "I am Sein," he answered, and Shaun echoed the name, rolling it around on his tongue like it was a delicious candy to be savoured.

Sein glanced at the young man sitting opposite of him over his teacup. Shaun had a willowy build with gentle features that almost made him look like a girl. Sein would not have been incredibly surprised if Shaun did turn out to be a girl… he was certainly a very pretty boy.

Adorable.

Heartwarming, even.

As though he knew he was being studied by Sein, Shaun tipped his head gently to one side and flashed him the brightest of smiles, clearly wondering what he was thinking of.

Sein took out some money and laid it on the table, standing up in a fluid motion. "Thank you for the tea," he said politely, "but it's best that I get going."

Shaun jumped to his feet as well, looking alarmed at the sudden announcement to go. "So soon?" he asked, wondering why he had such an urge to make this man stay.

"I wish to reach the other city as soon as possible," was the answer that he received, and Shaun drooped a tiny little bit. Noticing it, Sein ran a hand through his hair as he contemplating something to say. "How about this," he said, "if I can make it to the city and back to this teahouse, would you agree to marry me?"

Not expecting anything of this sort, Shaun stared at Sein, mouth open in a perfect little 'o' while his mind wondered if the other man had grown another head. It was hard enough for someone to cross once; twice was virtually impossible. "Can you…" he started, faltered, and started again. "Can you do it?"

"Of course I can. I estimate that I will see you again in a few months if things go smoothly; a year if not."

"Then I'll wait here for you."

A year later, there was no Sein. Shaun waited patiently, figuring that perhaps something hadn't turned out so well and it was taking Sein a bit longer than usual. Another month passed, and then another. On the third month, Shaun grew tired of waiting. He shut down his little teashop, packing his belongings and set himself off on the journey to the city himself. Somehow, he knew that he would make it safely to the other city, and even though it was an exhausted and battered Shaun that walked into the city, it was a living Shaun.

It was at the city that he learned that Sein had vanished without a trace just a few hours before he had made it to the city. He had been travelling with another man along the last stretch of the journey, and Shaun got the information right from the companion's mouth: "He was there one minute, and then he was gone! Poof! Like he never existed in the first place!" There was nothing of his left, nothing that Shaun could use to find his whereabouts.

Fighting back tears, Shaun checked himself in at the tavern for the night, before dragging himself out of bed early the next morning to leave. He never looked back.

________________________________________

Sefton looked up from his scroll as she exploded into his room. A light frown crossed his face; why did she always deem it necessary to enter his room in such a loud and annoying way? Couldn't the energetic girl find it somewhere in her heart to leave her poor lover in relative peace while he tried to do his reading?

Oh, but this was her that Sefton was talking about, and such a thing was impossible. He should have known.

"What is it?" he asked, shifting his scroll to his other hand as she threw herself down besides him, her golden yellow hair framing her pretty face, emerald eyes sharp with an undaunting determination that made her so precious to Sefton.

"I want you to take part in the official examination!" She announced. One of Sefton's eyebrows rose as she barrelled on. "You know… the famous exam that takes place in the capitol every four years to determine the advisors to the emperor. Only the country's most talented take part in it!"

Sefton's other brow rose as well. "Hey," he said slowly, deep voice calm, "those men prepare for years for the exam. I have not. The chances of me passing such an examination are very, very slim." But as he spoke, he knew that she had already decided that he was to take the exam, and when she decided something, there was nothing anyone could do to make her change her mind.

He was no exception. She insisted that he go and take it, because, "My Sefton is just as intelligent and just as capable as any of those other men! I'm sure you'll do fine." Sefton could only sigh and shake his head; resistance was futile and a waste of his breath.

"This is ridiculous, Sefton!" one of his closest friends cried out when he heard that Sefton was going to take part in the examination. "The capitol is on the other side of the country! How will you get there?"

"I'll walk if I have to," Sefton said seriously. She wanted him to go take it, and Sefton could never say no to his her. It simply didn't happen.

"But… but…!" The friend stuttered, livid, trying to convince him otherwise but knowing it was a lost cause. Finally, he surrendered, shaking his head. "I wish you the best of luck, then," he said, clasping a hand heavily on the other's shoulder. "Whether or not you pass or fail, we'll all be proud of you." He flashed Sefton a smile, to which he was given a nod in return.

"Tell her that I'm going."

"Of course. Just don't get lost on the way to the capitol."

"Hn."

Several years later, she was handed a letter by a man who lived on the other side of town. It was a tattered letter, stained and wrinkled in various places, obviously having travelled quite some distance and not in the best of fashions. She looked curiously at the messenger, who urged her to open it. Curiously, she did.

Sefton's lilting letters greeted her eyes, and she smiled… until she saw the date and read the letter's contents. 'I did not pass,' the letter said, 'although I was told that I was only a few points away from doing so by the exam proctor. Nevertheless, it was a good experience all the same, and I suppose that I should thank you for making me come here.' Polite and straightforward, it was just like her Sefton.

'I write this to you while I sit in bed with some strange cough or another. It seems like I have come down with some illness or another; as such, I do not think that the return trip is possible until this passes. I wish the best for you,, and hope that you are doing well back home. With care, Sefton.'

She looked up at the messenger, holding the letter gently in her hands, as if she was afraid it would suddenly turn to glass and shatter. "He's coming back soon?" she asked, although somewhere deep down she knew that he wasn't, that the illness had claimed him over at the capitol despite his reassurances that it was nothing. Sefton… her Sefton… dead of an illness because she had made him make the arduous trek from their home city to the capitol to take a national examination.

Sefton… dead…

Dead…

The man who brought her the letter did not answer, but he did not have to. Instead he said, "I have been told that when Sefton wrote this letter, he gave it to someone with strict instructions to make sure that it made its way into your hands. I don't know how many people have had this letter before I, but I am sure that Sefton will be pleased that his letter has finally made its way to you."

She was shaking as she stiffly thanked the man and watched him walk off, before turning roughly on her heel and marching back into the house. She did not reappear for days on end, and the town whispered, whispered about the girl who sent her lover out to take the exam.

"Risky, it was," they murmured behind their hands to their companions. "But such terrible, terrible fate that he had to die after he took the exam… and he was so close to passing it, too. Poor couple…"

"Aye," would be the whispered response. "Fate must really hate those two. It would have been much kinder it he had died on the road if he had been destined to die."

Life in the city continued, She going through her day normally, smiling, though it was an obviously fake smile, talking, although the conversations obviously did not interest her. Only at night did anyone hear great wails come from her house, where she would be sitting in front of Sefton's favorite little reading table, clutching his letter to her, sobbing.

But her sobs were not enough to make death give back her Sefton.

________________________________________

Years passed… many, many years. The village of 3000 years past where he made her the beaded headband was ancient history. The city gate where Shain bid Seff farewell was gone, no matter how hard one looked for it. The teahouse where Shaun had once poured tea for weary travelers had long been abandoned, and only by some sort of extreme luck managed to remain standing, a strange unidentifiable structure of hardened wood amid a modern setting. The house where she sobbed for her departed Sefton was replaced by a multi-story apartment building. The transformed land knew nothing about the tragic lives that it had nurtured in the past.

It was by coincidence that the two of them met: he, Seth; the other, Shane. They bumped into each other quite on accident at an outdoor art display, Seth standing still while contemplating a piece, Shane backing up slowly while he contemplated another until his back hit Seth’s.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Shane murmured, half turning to see who he had bumped into. His startled emerald eyes were met with serious dark brown ones… eyes that looked hauntingly familiar, although he did not know exactly why.

Seth stared quietly at the man who had bumped into him, the man with the petite build, the golden hair, the striking emerald eyes. He felt important to him, special, although Seth was fairly certain that this was the first time that he had met the other young man. He opened his mouth, fully intending on saying something along the lines of: "It's not a problem."

What came out, though, was: "I seem to have been looking for you for quite some time," much to his horror.

However, the other man was not at all surprised by this statement. "I believe that you've kept me waiting for a very long time, yourself," Shane answered, and it just seemed so right, because this was Shane, and Shane was talking to Seth.

"Hn."

Shane laughed and slid his hand into Seffka's larger one, instinctively leaning against the taller man. Seth did not push him away, as he would have done to a stranger, because Shane was not a stranger. He had been her, had been Shain, had been Shaun, and had been her, just like Seth himself had been him, had been Seff, had been Sein, and had been Sefton in his past lives. Fate had been cruel to the two of them before, tearing them forcibly apart no matter how hard they tried to defy it, but now… it was different.

Fate was smiling down on them, after all those years of failures.

Fate was giving up on toying with them, after seeing them be so persistent.

Fate knew that no matter how many times it tore them apart, they would attempt to make it work again in another life. It knew, and it acknowledged their desires after three thousand years.

________________________________________

"I love you," Shane murmured quietly, nestled in Seth's lap and snuggled comfortably against his chest, where he rightfully belonged. "You know that, right?"

"I do," Seth answered quietly, cheek tickled by strands of his wispy hair, holding the smaller man with no intention of letting go, as if he wanted to make up for all the lost time.

"And you? Do you love me, too?"

Silence, and then, "I do. I have always loved you."