Versions Of You

21st January, 2025

Amsterdam, Netherlands

“Hey! Walk slowly, I can’t keep up with you otherwise,” Agatha huffed as she put her hands on her knees. Her legs wobbled in the cold weather, despite wearing 3 layers of leggings and dark-blue jeans, and 2 layers of shirt and a white jumper. It was just 2.5°C, which she should’ve been used to, considering she spent her entire twenty four years of life over here.

“Not my fault that you don’t have any stamina,” Aart scoffed and stopped to gaze at his best friend. Her dark blonde hair was a mess, and her blue eyes were droopy. The cars in the background and the fountain next to them made it seem like a scene straight from a movie.

“You look like a helpless puppy,” he said as he pulled her up. There was something about her that kept him on his toes but never annoyed enough. Perhaps it was her humour that made the lamest joke laugh worthy. Perhaps, it was her smile that was worth a thousand motivational speeches. Or perhaps it was just her very existence– No. Aart stopped thinking. He cannot think. Not of Agatha, not in this manner at least. They’d been friends since middle school when he accidentally fell down on her desk once during a class fight. 

“Well… you like animals, don’t you?” She looked at him, and smiled. Agatha had always adored their friendship. She couldn’t help but think if things were to change. She had been contemplating a lot of her life decisions these days. When she broke up with her cheating boyfriend, Aart was there to comfort her. When her mom passed away, it was in his arms she spent her day crying. Agatha liked him. And it was killing her.

"You’re the only animal that I like,” he said, unbothered. Kill me already, he thought. Could he have made this anymore obvious? She would drift away, and leave him, and it’d kill him because how little he knew about existing without her.

“And you’re the only animal I like too. Real-real types,” Agatha mumbled. She didn’t want him to leave her, but she couldn’t lie to herself, or him.

Aart had either lost his hearing or his mind. He stared at her, his breath hitching. “Wait… what?”

Agatha swallowed, suddenly aware of how loud the city felt, how fast her heart was beating. She could take it back. Laugh it off. Pretend she didn’t mean it.

But she was tired of pretending.

She met his gaze, steady this time. “In all versions of reality, I’d want it to be you.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

28th April, 1905 London, England

"Parliament Debates Women’s Suffrage!" A newspaper boy handed the gazette to Viscount Arthur and took ten shillings from him. He glanced at the piece of paper, and the image printed on it caught his eye. His gaze fell directly on one face. The image was black and white, but he could perfectly make out her features. Dark blonde hair and blue eyes—nothing uncommon, he thought. But something about her made her stand out from the huge crowd. Perhaps it was the way her hands curled in protest, or the way her face held so much emotion, so much fire concealed within. Just as he was about to put down the gazette, something—someone—bumped hard into his back.

“My lord, you should watch where you're standing. This is a public platform,” the lady was just about to fall when Arthur wrapped his arms around her waist.

“What are you—?” She stammered and gaped at his face. “Viscount? I apologise—”

She quickly pulled herself away and stood up, gathering the basket she had dropped.

“My bread... no...” she mumbled, glancing at him in frustration.

Arthur looked at the cemented pavement, where two loaves of bread now lay in ruin. “I apologise, I shall compensate you for this loss, Lady...” He stopped, waiting for her to take the hint.

“Agatha,” she said sharply, folding her arms across her chest. “And how did you deduce that I am a lady, and not a commoner, My Lord?” There was an undeniable edge to her voice, the kind of defiance that caught him off guard.

“Because…” he stepped forward, and then two more, until he was only a breath away. He whispered, “No commoner would dare to ask a noble for compensation.”

“You’re very intelligent, Viscount,” she smiled, a spark in her eyes. Then, she extended her basket toward him. “So… my compensation?”

Arthur took her basket, but before he could speak, he looked at her with an intensity he hadn’t expected, a connection he couldn’t explain. The same feeling from the gazette. The recognition. The strange pull.

He offered her his hand, and thought to himself that perhaps in all versions of reality, he’d kill just to meet her again, for the very first time. 

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

2nd October, 1385

Lorraine, France

The crow’s wings beat like a dying heart as it dragged its prize across the frosted grass—a crust of black bread, stolen from the executioner’s block. The village square smelled of charred thyme and old guilt.

Sir Arthur de Valois knelt in the ashes of the witch from last week, his sword leaning against the bloodstained wood. He was just a knight, sworn to protect and to kill, whenever and whoever. But what difference did it make? He had no one to call his own. Except maybe one lively dame who didn’t belong to anyone. Least of all him.

“This one’s different,” the bishop’s breath curled in the cold. “She speaks in tongues. Guard her ‘til dawn, then cleanse the land with fire.” Clutched in his fist was the dirty blonde hair of a beaten lady, her eyes dull, like they didn’t have the strength to shine anymore. She wore nothing but scraps, barely any clothes at all.

Aart’s vow of silence almost cracked when they dragged her in. “You—,” he inhaled sharply, the mist biting at his lungs.

The witch sat chained in the charred chapel, her fingers playing with belladonna petals hidden in her sleeve. Moonlight sliced through the shattered stained glass, breaking her face into pieces—blue eyes, a smirk, the scar on her lip.

“Do you dream of me, Mon Silence?” Agathe of the Hollow tilted her head, the chains rattling. “I dream of you. Always in armor. Always too late.” She smiled bitterly, like that was the only weapon left to her. She looked at him through the bars, his head low, brown eyes fixed on her, empty. He had a cup of wine in his hand, cheap as it was, maybe to drown the sorrow—or erase whatever fleeting feelings had the audacity to rise in him.

When he didn’t respond, she spat in his wine. He drank it anyway.

At the darkest hour, she laughed quietly when he slipped her extra bread—treason wrapped in kindness. His gauntlet caught her wrist as she reached for it, leaving a raw red line.

“Burn me,” she whispered, pressing his own dagger to her throat. His grip trembled. “But in the next life, meet me sooner.”

The villagers’ torches bled into the horizon, their murmurs like a rising tide. Agathe stood bound to the pyre, her bare feet crushing the belladonna petals she’d let fall like a trail of dark stars.

Aart’s sword trembled in his grip—too heavy, too familiar. The bishop thrust a lit brand into his hand. "Cleanse her."

Agatha’s voice rasped, yet carried like a prophecy:

"In all versions of reality, you hesitate."

And he did.

He dropped the torch.

The crowd roared. The bishop screamed. Agatha’s chains clattered to the dirt as Aart hauled her onto his horse—but not before she snatched the burning brand from the pyre.

"This time," she hissed, holding the flame between them, "we burn together."

And as the village dissolved into smoke behind them, two things remained in the ashes in Agathe’s herbal pouch—a blackened wooden puppy, and a newspaper scrap—‘Suffragette Arrested’—the ink unsinged, the date impossible: 1905

Agatha whispered as they rode into the forest, "Next time, don’t wait until I’m about to die to choose me."

And for the first time in a long while, Aart said, “Even if I don’t say it…you know in all versions of reality, I’d choose you.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

18th October, 2156

Neo-Tokyo, Japan 

Rain slashed against the broken windows of the abandoned data hub, mixing with neon lights to splash Agatha’s face in liquid electricity. She sat cross-legged, surrounded by stolen neural drives, her fingers flying over a holographic keyboard that splintered light up her arms. A cable ran from her temple to a makeshift mainframe, the screen flashing warnings in angry crimson.

Then the door exploded inward.

Aart-7 stepped through, pulse rifle raised, his visor scanning the room in sharp, jagged sweeps. Water dripped from the edges of his armored coat. “Subject AGT,” his voice modulator flattened the words into something cold. “You’re coming with me.”

She didn’t even flinch. Didn’t even look up. “Took you three weeks this time.” Her fingers never stopped typing. “I’m almost disappointed.” A smirk curled at her lips—the same damn smirk he’d seen in the glitches of his unauthorized memories. “What’s wrong, hunter? Can’t decide if you should shoot me or kiss me?”

His grip tightened around the rifle. The Regime’s orders buzzed through his neural implant: Eliminate the Ghost. But the glitches kept coming—snippets of her laughing by a fountain, her hands dusted in flour, the smell of burning thyme. His rifle’s charge whined higher. The visor flickered—an error displaying her stats, overlaid with impossible data:

[Subject ID: Agatha // 24yo // Status: Deceased - 2025AD]

“Malfunctioning,” he muttered, stepping over broken server parts. A wooden figurine caught his eye—a dog with only one ear. His finger twitched on the trigger.

Agatha stood, slowly, the cables from her neural ports swaying like she wasn’t in a rush to go anywhere. “Funny. I was about to say the same thing about you.” She tapped her temple. “They wiped you clean, but the memories are still here. In both of us.”

She turned, revealing fresh burn marks along her jawline from last week’s neural raid. “We need to stop meeting like this, mon silence.”

Her voice sent a jolt through him, triggering another glitch—fragments of a chapel, chains, her spitting in his wine. His rifle dipped, trembling slightly in his hands. Beneath the conditioning, a voice that sounded like his but wasn’t, whispered, ‘You’ve been here before.’

Outside, the sirens started.

Agatha tore the neural cable from her temple in one smooth motion, blood dripping down her cheekbone in a perfect tear. “They’re coming to wipe us both this time.” She nodded toward the mainframe. “I found all of it. 1385. 1905. 2025. Every time they…”

The building shuddered as the first Regime dropship landed on the roof.

She stepped closer, boots crunching over broken glass. The rifle shook in his hands as she pressed her forehead to the barrel.

“Choose,” she whispered. “Again.”

Somewhere deep beneath the conditioning, he remembered,

Her by the fountain. The ruined bread. The wooden puppy, left unburnt.

“In all versions of reality,” she murmured, “you hesitate.”

The first explosion rocked the building.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

54 BCE

Gaul

The river ran red at dawn.

Aart stood knee-deep in the cold water, his sword arm trembling. Around him, the last of the druid warriors lay scattered in the reeds, their blue war paint mixing with blood. The air tasted of wet earth and burning oak.

He didn’t see her at first. Not until she emerged from the smoke of the sacred grove, her bare feet leaving dark imprints in the damp soil.

Agatha.

Not a warrior. Not a priestess. Just a girl—his girl—with dirty blonde hair and a scar on her lip, the same one he’d seen in dreams he hadn’t realized he’d been having.

In her hands, she held a wooden dog. Its left ear was missing.

“You’re late,” she said, though they’d never met. Her Latin was flawless. “I’ve been waiting forever.”

Aart’s sword tip dipped toward the ground, his grip faltering. Somewhere deep in his chest, beneath the armor, the discipline, the years of war, something cracked open.

“Who are you?” His voice came out foreign, strange to him.

She smiled then, and it was like watching the sun rise after a lifetime of darkness. “Yours,” she said, simple, inevitable. “In every version of reality.”

The wooden dog was warm when she pressed it into his palm. The carving was crude but unmistakable—the same shape he’d whittled as a boy, before the legions, before the killing.

Then—before he could stop her—she stepped forward onto his blade.

The blade slid between her ribs with terrible ease.

Aart felt the exact moment the iron found her heart. The shock traveled up his arm, vibrating through his bones like the aftershock of a temple bell. Agatha's mouth formed a perfect ‘O’ but what came out wasn't a scream.

It was laughter.

The wooden dog in his other hand flared blue—not the dull glow of firelight, but the vicious, unnatural hue of lightning trapped in glass. The same blue that would one day pulse in Neo-Tokyo's neural ports.

At their feet, the river carried an impossible thing: scrap of paper from 1905 riding the current like a leaf. 

Agatha's fingers found his wrist, her grip stronger than dying had any right to be. Blood bubbled at the corner of her mouth as she leaned in, whispering five words that would outlast empires:

"Do not hesitate this time"

As her vision darkened, Agatha smiled. This was the plan all along,

Let the river take my body.

Let the oak leaf carry my promise.

Let him spend two thousand years

putting me back together.

Then her weight left him.

The river took her body with the indifference of something that had done this before. 

Aart's scream ripped through the dawn—"AGATHA!"—a name no legionnaire had taught him, a name that tasted like flour and burning thyme.

Somewhere downstream, the wooden dog washed ashore.

Its left ear was missing.The current pulled her under. Somewhere beyond time, a crow picked up its bread crust and flew toward a city that wouldn't exist for centuries.

The cycle had begun. Again. 

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆