#In which I make unnecessarily elaborate banners for a one shot

[lostinfic]

Mercier x Betty Soulmates AU

Words: 4k | One shot

Rating: all-ages

Summary: Modern day. Mercier is an historian obsessed with retracing his past lives and a woman appearing in all of them. He will get a little help from a sweater.

This is for @starlightkissedsmiles​ who asked “ Mercier x Betty and sweaters (because of course) for that bingo card? ❤”

The idea came from an ask by @thewolfsdoctor 

Also,  @timepetalsprompts​ for the autumn bingo

Ao3

Mercier’s hands shook as he slipped on a pair of white cotton gloves to handle the fragile artefact. He laid his palms down on the glass table top, each side of a journal. It belonged to Matthew MacEwan, a Scottish explorer, and dated back to the Seven Years’ War, in 1762. Between the leather covers, pages bulged, brown and wrinkled from water damage. The ink would be faded to the point of being unreadable, but he would know what it said anyway.

Mercier took a deep breath, readying himself for the onslaught of sensations. Even before opening the first page, he could feel it coming. The diary brimmed with energy, intensifying the closer he got to it, like the invisible pull of two magnets. To anyone else, it was another relic from the past, immobile, but to Mercier it was a ticking bomb.

He’d experienced it before.

With every manuscript, a tidal wave of vivid memories assaulted him. A hundred-- a thousand times stronger than a “déjà vu”. The smell of mud and excrement in the trenches, the burning metal of a gun, the bark of German dogs, the Russian cold, like icicles piercing his every pore. Stomach-gripping fear, intoxicating despair, and all-consuming devotion.

The first time he opened one such journal, he fainted. A professor assigned it to him during his first year studying history at the Sorbonne. It was from 1943, its author, Antoine Cadieu, was a member of the Résistance. And Mercier, then a 20 year-old, relived this man’s whole life in barely one minute. Not only relived it, but became him. Was him.

His academic work had not prepared him for the possibility of reincarnation.

He repressed the memory for three years until his internship at the Service Historique de la Défense in Cherbourg. He stumbled upon another journal, this one from 1915. It transported him into the mind of a soldier on the battlefield at Ypres.

Two years later, in an antique store in Vienna, he found a bundle of letters from the Napoleonic war in 1814. One touch and he remembered the scratch of his quill on paper, the messenger’s name, the scent of whale oil from the lamp he used to write.

Barely a month after, during a conference in Montreal, a colleague showed the result of a recent archeological dig. A single contract signed by a soldier in 1690 triggered another flow of memories.

Now, he actively looked for these testimonies of past lives, digging further and further into the past. He could only identify one such item by being in its presence, so every city he traveled to, he visited the local archive services and museums.

He approached the problem methodically, scientifically as he’d learned in university. He researched every one of his past selves in depth to find some connections or an explanation. So far, he had only conjectures and intuitions. It was maddeningly random.

Anna disapproved of his incessant trips to obscure archives and late nights at work, but he couldn’t tell her the real reason behind it: he refused to die like his past incarnations.

He didn’t fear physical pain. It’s not the soul leaving the body that hurt, but the dissatisfaction with one’s life. The incompleteness. Unfinished business. It haunted him now, day and night. And it was not always his own death he felt. Someone else’s too. Just as incomplete. His other half’s death. She was there, in every journal. A different name, a different face, but he knew it was the same person. The same soul. Important. Elusive.

In 1943, her home was a safe house for the Résistance. It got her killed before he reached her.

In 1915, she was married to another soldier in his troop. Even though he’d never met her, he was so jealous of his troopmate, he abandoned him to the enemies. His past self never saw the end of the war, guilt made him careless with his own life.

In 1814, in Austria, she was a young man who found him behind his father’s farm and nursed his wounds. After that, he deserted the army to find his Good Samaritan, thus losing his title and possessions. He never saw him again.

In october 1690, in New France, she was an Ursuline nun. He defended the monastery when it was besieged during the Battle of Quebec. She fought alongside the soldiers, showing more bravery than some men. They spent every night of the siege together, but remained chaste. She left the religious order for him, they ran away to a new colony, but didn’t survive the Canadian winter.

His academic work had not prepared him for the possibility of soulmates.

Who would she be in 1762?

He touched the journal. Electricity burst through the pads of his fingers, sizzled up his arms and thundered in his chest.

This one was different, he could tell right away. Quieter. His heart rate decreased. He’d been mistaken, this wasn’t the Seven Years’ war. Only daily, uneventful life.

Peace and silver snow as far as the eyes could see. Stillness, but for glaciers groaning in the distance like groggy giants. Icicles dripped by the entrance of his hut. The musk of reindeers wafted to his nose. In the pale sky, a great, wide bird drew lazy loops between the clouds.

Ice crunched under footsteps; Sámi men, red caps and blue coats, narrowed their eyes at him, the guossi, the stranger from another land.

Then a laugh, as sweet as spring water. And a woman with a rosy, plump face, frosted eyelashes, and a smile so radiant it could melt all the snow. Lottá. Frozen nose tip to his cheek, and delicate fingers slipping in his fur-lined mitten alongside his palm. The men disapproved, but he didn’t care. He’d found her, beyond the Arctic Circle. They kissed with fog on their breath.

And Mercier was conscious enough to hope. Be happy, just this once.

Lottá coughed, and drops, impossibly red, splattered the immaculate snow. His heart plummeted; he’d brought this disease with him.

Mercier returned to the present with a great gasp of breath, like emerging from the water after diving too deeply. His cheeks were wet.

He put the journal back in its place and left the West Yorkshire archive service.

Outside, he let the cool breeze wash over him. He focused on the air slipping between the stitches of his wool jumper. He stretched his arms above his head until joints popped. Reconnecting with reality, the present time, and with his own body.

He needed time to recuperate and process the experience. To grieve.

He bought a coffee from a street cart and followed Bruntcliff road to Dartmouth Park.

Despite the empirical evidence, his rational mind struggled with the notion of reincarnation. It rebelled against the apparent lack of control over his own destiny.

So far, all his past incarnations had been soldiers, then why had he become an historian? Granted, he’d specialized in military history. Was it so he could uncover all these journals and letters? To what end?

To find her, his heart whispered.

But how? Her appearance changed every time. Or was he supposed to keep faith their paths would cross eventually? He didn’t want to wait. Wait and find her too late and die. What a waste.

Mercier dug up a squashed cigarette pack from the depths of his messenger bag. He’d tried to stop but these experiences were too unnerving. He took a deep drag and let the nicotine operate.

Matthew MacEwan, whose memories he’d just experienced, had been fascinated by the North Pole from childhood. He’d enrolled and spent a decade in the Royal Scots Navy to learn the seamanship skills necessary for an expedition beyond the Arctic Circle. An expedition that killed eight of his men. All of this to reunite with Lottá and infect her?

A sigh puffed up Mercier’s cheeks. He sat down on a bench and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Granted, MacEwan’s expedition had also opened major trade routes between Britain and Scandinavia. He’d also dedicated the rest of his life to fighting the disease.

On a smaller scale, Mercier’s own obsession with his past lives had brought to light important characters forgotten by history.

His mobile phone rang: Anna. His thumb hovered from the green button to the red. He hesitated too long and her call went to voicemail. He loved her, but deep down he knew he stayed with her partly to defy destiny. He loathed being controlled.

Clouds floated away, revealing the golden glow of the autumnal sun. Mercier removed his sweater, closed his eyes and turned his face towards sunlight, and the warmth on his cheeks reminded him of Lottá’s smile.

*

On her way back from work at the downtown preschool, Betty cut through Dartmouth park. The beautiful afternoon sun had long been covered by dark clouds, and she quickened her steps so as not to get caught in the rain. Unfortunately, the first raindrop soon hit her nose. She held her jacket over her head and jogged.

Betty stopped dead in her tracks beside a bench. Someone had forgotten their jumper and it was getting soaked. For no reason she could explain, Betty took it and brought it home with her.

She hung the jumper on the drying rack and started cooking, but her gaze kept drifting back to it. It was a deep green, complex cable-knit pattern. The color was not uniform, as if the wool had been hand dyed.

Upon closer inspection, she found a tag, the kind sold in craft stores, it said: “Fait à la main avec amour par” (“handmade with love by” according to the online translator). Wash and wear had erased the name. It had to be special to its owner, good thing she’d saved it from the rain. Tomorrow, she would go back to the bench and wait.

Betty noticed a tear in the wool under the arm. She ended up spending an hour painstakingly mending every broken stitch in the sweater. She marveled at the softness of the wool, like a kitten’s fur, and couldn’t resist rubbing it against her cheek. A hint of cologne, something woodsy and rich, and smoke too. Once repaired, she hand-washed it with her homemade soap.

She couldn’t think of a good reason why she cared so much about that jumper.

The next day, Betty sat in the park, the sweater carefully folded beside her. She’d brought a book, but couldn’t focus on the page. Her palms were clammy, her stomach knotted. She blamed it on the tall pumpkin spice latte she’d drank. A gust of wind stirred a shower of yellow leaves over her. She waited one hour. Two. Three hours. No one came.

She thought she ought to leave it there, in case its owner returned later, or it could bring some homeless person a bit of warmth. She left it there and walked away.

Ten minutes later, she rushed back to the bench and took the sweater home.

Betty kept the jumper for three years. At the first chill in the air, she would put it on. Her friends and sister teased her about it, it was old and too large for her. She would reply it was soft and warm, but the truth was she couldn’t explain why she was so attached to it. She forgot it on the bus once, and it made her cry.

She brought the sweater with her to Ireland. A long weekend trip with her boyfriend, Donald.

“Please buy a new one,” he said as they entered a souvenir shop which, like most souvenir shops in Ireland, sold wool jumpers.

Betty perused the selection, but her heart wasn’t really into it, in fact she was much more interested in a poster advertising tours of the local castle.

“I want to go there.”

Ireland had an abundance of castles and mansions of all kinds, and this one was by no means in the top ten or twenty. Or fifty. A modest construction in the Grenville family since the 15th century. In the drawing room, the current Lady Grenville exposed her oil paintings alongside entries for a pumpkin decoration contest.

As they walked through the halls, a room enticed her. An attraction, a pull similar to the one from the jumper.

The room was closed off to the public, nevertheless, she opened the door.

“Betty? What are you doing?” Donald hissed.

It wasn’t like Betty to do something like that, she’d even insisted on taking a guided tour so as not to get lost in the castle.

Donald continued speaking but his words didn’t register. Betty was fixated on the pantry at the other end of the room. She followed her intuition, opened the pantry, then the trapdoor at the bottom of it.

“Hey! Stop! You’re not allowed in here!”

Betty ignored the tour guide, she lowered herself into the shallow cellar. She crawled across the damp clay floor to the wall and pulled out a stone. Behind it, she found a stack of letters. Ancient letters.

Her senses exploded with memories: earthy smoke from the peat fire, a rough linen robe scratching against her skin, tall grass flattened by the Atlantic winds and cushy under her bare feet. Waves crashing, eating at the cliffs. The urge to jump. A loneliness that tasted like rotten berries. Then a man with one blind, milky blue eye and skin the colour of basalt. The captain of her father’s guards. He made her feel safe. Cherished. In secret letters, he clumsily professed eternal devotion. Her ribs ached from holding in her love for him. Forbidden love. Chapped lips against hers. The clank of chainmail hitting the floor. A bear skin rug, soft under her naked back. A name she whispered: Drest. Then a spark of sunlight reflecting off a large blade.

When Betty returned to reality, she was out of the cellar, on a couch. Fingers on her wrist searched her pulse, a cool flannel dripped on her forehead. Donald and two members of staff stared at her.

“What happened?” Betty asked.

“You fainted.”

“No! To Augusta and Drest?”

The two employees exchanged a quizzical look.

“Augusta? That would be Geoffrey Grenville’s daughter, maybe.”

“She married Lord Fitzclarence. Died in childbirth, I think.”

A lump rose in her throat, and tears spilled from her eyes. The sadness and grief she felt were as strong as when her father died. Donald tried to comfort her, but she pushed him away, curling on herself and pulling the sweater up over her nose.

They said there might have been hallucinogenic fungus in the cellar.

The next month, Betty broke up with Donald.

She’d never been special, never had a greater purpose in life. But this experience, it might be nothing, but she was a hopeless romantic and believed it could be meaningful.

She read everything she could find on Augusta and Drest, which was little, and certainly nothing as personal as she’d witnessed. She bought dubious books on reincarnation and even consulted a psychic. She spent hours at the library perusing the history section.

She didn’t have a method to speak of, instead trusted her intuition to guide her. It’s how she ended up in France, a year later, in the town of Montpellier.

“This house here,” said the local historian in mispronounced English, “was a safe house for the Résistance. The woman who lived here, Sara Bergier, it is said she received warning of the Germans coming, but she stayed. She was waiting for someone. She did not want to leave. And she was killed.”

“D’you know who she was waiting for?”

“We are not sure. One historian believes she was waiting for a double agent called Antoine Cadieu.”

Betty felt a faint pull towards the house, but she couldn’t tell whether it was real or wishful thinking. Unfortunately, it was a private residence so she couldn’t go inside.

Betty followed the tour guide back to the city museum. She perused the exhibition absentmindedly. As she neared the back of the room, she felt an attraction towards a door: the archives room, for staff only. She glanced left and right, and when the path cleared, she dashed for the door. It was locked.

In uncertain French, she asked an employee if she could see the archives, but he refused.

“I only want to know more about Sara Bergier,” Betty said, her cheeks heated up; it wasn’t in her nature to insist.

“I can give you a copy of the article that the historian published on Antoine and Sara.”

Despite the autumn chill, Betty sat outside the café, facing Place de la Comédie and its neoclassical theater. Cozy in her old jumper, sipping a bitter hot chocolate, she read the article. Antoine and Sara had never met prior to the war, she only knew his codename and it’s unclear how she knew he was coming. But, according to the author, J-F Mercier, sources remember Sara shouting his name when the Nazis took her. He also argued that her getting caught saved his lives, otherwise these German soldiers would have been patrolling the area where Antoine was hiding.

“Antoine Cadieu,” she whispered to herself, and then, “Mercier.”

Under the author’s name was his professional email address, he worked at Les Invalides, the army museum, in Paris.

It took three days for Betty to work up the nerves to write to him.

It took five drafts before she was satisfied with her email.

And it took one second of fear to change her mind completely.

“I’ll do it in Leeds,” she told herself.

*

“It’s funny, a year ago, we’d never heard of anyone named Drest in our family’s history, and now you’re asking about him,” Mrs. Grenville said.

“I’m not certain he did live here,” Mercier said, “but there is a five-year gap in his memoirs.”

“Oh, he was here, he was. It’s the strangest thing, this young woman was visiting, and she found letters written by this Drest to Lady Augusta, my ancestor.”

“She found them?”

“In the cellar. I don’t know what she was doing there, it’s closed to the public.”

“Could I see those letters?” Mercier asked.

He’d found Drest’s handwritten memoir in Dublin, he wondered if touching those letters would make him experience something different from his life.

“Sure, you said you’re an historian, right?” Mrs. Grenville verified.

“Yes.” He showed her his professional card. “And could I trouble you for that woman’s name? If you have it.”

“Yeah, I’ve got it somewhere. It’s the most curious thing, she fainted when she found the letters, poor thing. I kept her contact info for our insurances, you know how these things are.”

Mercier swallowed thickly. Fainted? Like he had his first time. Could it be her? Lottá, Augusta, Sara.

His blood pulsed against his temples, his fingers became cold. His knees wobbled, and he had to sit down.

Mrs. Grenville returned and handed him a folded piece of paper. He opened it with shaking hands: “Mrs Salinger 0113 496 0350”.

He could call her today. Hear her voice, schedule a meeting.

He tried to keep his voice steady when he asked, “No first name?”

“Sorry, I’ve only got the name of the man who was with her, er, Donald. He handled the matter.”

Mercier exited the castle and followed a trail leading to the cliffs. Drest had first seen Augusta here, hair to the wind, too close to the edge. Tragically beautiful. They’d saved each other’s life, but the discovery of their affair also caused their ruin. Drest was exiled and Augusta’s father cut off her feet.

Mercier sat on the cracked-stone ground and pulled out his phone. 0113 496 0350, he already knew the number by heart.

Was contacting her a good idea? Mores had changed, these were not disease-ridden, barbaric times anymore. Why shouldn’t they get a happy ending?

Hoping for an answer, he stared out at the grey, stormy ocean. A salty mist whipped his cheeks. The violent waves did nothing to appease his dread.

He needed to know more about Mrs. Salinger first.

*

The train entered St. Pancras station, and Betty made sure her wool jumper was over her shoulder bag. She double-checked before walking off the train, and kept a hand on it as she navigated the crowd. Back from France, she had to catch a train to Leeds leaving from King’s Cross station, just a street away, in twenty minutes.

*

Mercier glanced at his watch and muttered curses at the British railway system. He cursed the Irish port authorities too while he was at it, they’d chosen this day, out of 365, to begin their strike. He couldn’t take the Dublin-Cherbourg ferry to go back to France and had to come all the way to London instead. They’d just pulled into King’s Cross station, and he had a ticket for the Paris train leaving in fifteen minutes from St. Pancras. He grabbed his luggage and rushed out as soon as the doors opened.

*

Betty ran up the stairs to exit the station. She slipped between people on the sidewalk to reach Pancras Road. She stopped abruptly on the edge and lost balance as a car zoomed past her. She grabbed a parking meter and steadied herself. That was a close one.

*

Mercier found an underground tunnel linking both train stations. He ran, even in the escalator. At the top, he stepped on something and lost his footing. Landed on his arse.

“Oh, putain.”

He’d stepped on a sweater. His sweater.

Forgetting his train, he stared, flabbergasted, at the familiar green knit. He turned it inside-out and found the “fait à la main avec amour” tag.

“C’est impossible.”

He’d bought the sweater years ago, when he was a penniless student shopping in thrift stores. Despite a bigger salary, he’d inexplicably never parted from it until he lost it. And now it was here. On the floor of a London train station.

A woman’s distressed voice pulled him back to reality.

“I-I can’t find it. I had it with me, I swear, right here. I don’t know-- I’m sorry. God, I’m so embarrassed.” she wiped her tears on her sleeve.

“Sorry, love, haven’t found any jumper,” the railway company clerk replied.

She turned around, and their eyes met across the crowd. Molecules shifted, tunnel vision, focused on her like looking through a telescope. Everyone else faded to grey. Deep into the marrow of his bones, Mercier felt the pull towards her. It was all his brain could process.

In a daze, they walked to each other.

“It’s me jumper,” she said

“Mine too.”

They both held it between them, laughing incredulously. Her big brown eyes shone with tears, Augusta’s eyes, he thought, and Lottá’s smile.

“Do you know me?” he asked.

She squinted at him, searching his face. “I… I feel like I do. As if we’ve met before.”

“Yes. My name is Jean-François Mercier.”

“I read your article! I’m Betty Salinger.”

“Betty. That’s lovely.” His cheeks hurt from smiling. “I have so many questions.”

“How is it possible?”

Their hands touched, still holding the sweater. His fingers tingled, the same way they did when he rubbed them by the fire after spending time out in the cold. Circulation revived, cells mending. He rubbed a thumb over her knuckles, and she giggled as if tickled. His heart grew ten folds.

“Can’t be that easy, can it?” she said.

“Who says it will be easy?”

For the first time, they stopped looking at each other to watch the hustle and bustle around them. Everyone going about their lives, unaware of the shadows leaking into this world. When their gaze met again, they were sober, serious.

“We will find answers,” he said, taking her hands fully, under the knit.

“We’ll get it right this time.”

Betty stepped closer to him, and he rested his forehead on hers. Unlike touching a journal, it didn’t trigger a dizzying wave of memories, but a gentle, suffusing flow. Each incarnation’s love slipped into his bloodstream like a drug. She sighed blissfully, feeling it too. High. Happy.

For all his rebellion against his destiny, he accepted it now. He understood.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

“I’ve been waiting three centuries.”

He brushed his nose down hers. Her breath teased his lips. His heart raced faster than for his first kiss.

Betty closed the gap between their mouths before he did. Soft lips parting and moving slowly. She clutched his hand harder and brought it to her chest. He wound his arm around her waist, holding her as close as possible as he deepened the kiss.

They might have embraced for a thousand years. Time was meaningless when the threads of their lives were weaved together.

The End