#what if shirayuki was given the chance to get her happy ending but stubbornly held on to the belief that she and zen were meant to be

[kirayaykimura]

In Every Lifetime

Things usually got hazy between life and death. One minute she was dying, the next Shirayuki was three years old and finally able to form permanent memories. Everything in between was a wash. 

It was also around three years old that she remembered her past lives, which made her a really weird kid to be around. 

Right now, though, she wasn’t three. She was still eighty-five, and felt like she’d just passed away in her bed in this lifetime’s home minutes ago. 

“You did.” 

She sat up with a small, startled intake of breath and spun to face the man who’d just spoken to her. He stood a few feet away, his stare as cold and clinical as the impossibly white room they were currently in. 

Shirayuki had a million questions, but the most pressing one to her was, “Did you just read my mind?” 

The man waved a dismissive hand. “There are no secrets in heaven.” 

Heaven? She felt her eyes go wide. That couldn’t be right. She hadn’t-

“Exactly,” he said. “You haven’t. Despite how many chances?” 

Fourteen. This last had been her worst failure yet. Zen had barely just begun to agree to be her friend when he’d died in a car accident. They’d been nineteen. She’d had to live sixty-six years without him. At least she’d had Obi by her side for most of those, her constant companion no matter how unpredictable Zen’s presence in her life was. 

“You have been favored by the gods,” the man said. “But even they have limits, and you are testing theirs.” 

“How?” Shirayuki asked, confused and vaguely frustrated. It wasn’t her fault Zen kept dying. If anything, that was on the god who were patting themselves on the back for giving her the opportunities to be with him. 

A corner of the man’s lips quirked up, a show of humor there and gone so quickly she couldn’t even be sure she’d seen it in the first place. 

“Is it wise to place blame on gods in their own kingdom?” he asked mildly. 

“I don’t care about kings or gods,” Shirayuki said. “I care about Zen.” 

This time, he didn’t try to hide his amusement. One corner of his lips tilted upwards as he said, “We are not meant to interfere with human lives, you know.” 

“Why did you, then? With mine?” 

“Eternity is long.” 

“So you’re bored.”

His lip curled a little higher. 

“We are not meant to interfere with human lives,” the man said, “and we are especially not meant to guide them after they’ve failed to listen to what we have been telling them for, what was it, sixteen times now?” 

“Fourteen.” 

“The gods are getting restless. You have taken our gift, but are refusing to use it properly.” 

She frowned, uncomprehending. 

“Think of-” 

Shirayuki was a toddler. She was a toddler for the fifteenth time. And the last thing she remembered from her past life was a baffling conversation with a god. 

Chubby, clumsy hands reached for oversized building blocks. What were gods to a three-year-old anyway? She could sort that conversation out after her brain had developed past addition and proper sentence structure. Right now, she had a castle to build. 

Her brain was on Calculus and essays by the time she met Obi again. 

The campus coffee shop was absolutely packed after her first class of the day, but she was fine with a line so long as she got something large, iced, and caffeinated. It was already pushing 90 degrees and the air conditioning in Blake Hall was on the fritz; she was definitely going to need something to get her through her next two classes. 

She was debating trying something new or going for classic iced coffee when she felt eyes on her. She skimmed past the man with an arm draped casually over the open chair next to him, slouched low in his own seat. Her attention snapped back to him when she registered the fact that she knew those warm eyes that were almost always sharper than his lazy, relaxed body language. Her stomach flipped over in excitement and surprise. She’d always met Zen before she ran into Obi. She hadn’t realized how much she’d come to expect the routine of Zen-before-Obi until Obi had changed the game. It was a specialty of his, really. For all that he was a steady, dependable presence in her life, he made sure to change things up every once in a while. It kept life fun, and she always missed his unique brand of zest until he showed up and distracted her from the more mundane parts of her days with his casual chaos. 

She gave up her spot in line to make her way through the throng of loitering students over to his table, slid into the chair next to him - her only choice, really, since the other two chairs were occupied by apparent strangers who didn’t so much as glance up from their laptops when she sat down - and said, “Hi. I know you don’t know me right now, but we’re going to be very good friends.” 

He raised a skeptical eyebrow, the corners of his lips twitching in suppressed amusement, and said, “That has never worked, you know.” 

Shirayuki blinked. 

“What?” she asked after a moment of attempting to parse his words. 

Too casual to be anything but an act, he said, “You always promise we’re going to be friends, and you’re right, but you gotta boil the frog a little first. Buy a girl dinner. You can’t just come in hot like that.”

What? It sounded like- like he remembered. But that wasn’t possible. He never remembered. Neither did Zen, nor any of the others. She was the only keeper of their past. 

His smile grew as she worked out what he was telling her, full of amusement and fondness, eyes sparkling as he watched her unravel his secret in real time. It was the kind of expression built on shared history. 

“You,” she said, trying and failing not to hope, “remember me?” 

“Remember you, Miss?” he asked with feigned surprise, even as his oldest nickname for her gave the game away. Then, softer, he said, “I don’t know how I was ever able to forget.”

He was hers again. Immediately. She didn’t have to spend months - years - regaining his trust this time. The sheer relief that washed over her was almost overwhelming in its intensity. Without conscious thought, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him as tightly as she could with their knees awkwardly in the way. 

“I’m so happy to see you,” she said into his collarbone. “I’ve missed you.” 

After a brief pause, she felt his arms wind around her back. Almost too soft to be heard over the din of the coffee shop, he said, “I’ll always come back to you.”