Prompt: “Can you stay?”  

(pairing: amber/henry. Genre: au, fantasy. Rating: angst. Words: 1963) 

That’s the problem with Henry. He always has to leave.  

He doesn’t know why it happens, when it happens or how – one day he just wakes up, and he knows. It's like an aching feeling in the very core of his bones and his entire being, a feeling no one else could possibly understand, because, how could they? In all of his years, all of his leaving and coming back, he has never once met anybody quite like him. He's seen great cities rise and fall, has experienced the mighty before they were mighty, and has watched utopias shoot up from the ground like sprouts, spreading across the entire globe in rapid speed, and each time he’s had to find his footing somewhere new. A new century. A new millenia, sometimes, if the gods feel particularly daring. A new country, a new city, a new Henry; nothing stays the same long enough for him to even notice. For someone who has lived a thousand lifetimes, the comings and goings of mortals never seem to quite pique his interest.  

Except for her. It all always comes back to her.  

The first time he meets her, she’s blonde. She hates his guts in this lifetime, sneers at him every chance she gets, and wishes for him to just evaporate - and, surprisingly, he does. One morning he wakes up on the other side of the globe, some 30 years later, with no recollection of anything but her. Her hair. Her face, the way it contorts into vague disgust when she sees him. Her name. Amber. Over the years, he has wondered more than once if she could be like him, because he sees her everywhere. No matter the age, no matter the place or the timing; even when he’s not actively searching for her, she suddenly appears right in front of him, with a new haircut, a new look, a new life – but she herself hasn’t changed. He'd recognize that face and that voice anywhere.  

She never knows who he is, of course. In the times he’s made himself known to her, he’s been a teacher, a writer, a scientist, a performer, a prince, a pauper – anything, really, to make her keep coming back, and it’s taken about 50 years too long for him to realize, that he makes up his stories so they revolve around her. Always her. Only her. He should have perfected the skillful art of introduction by now, one should think, but every time he sees her, something in him collapses. And he feels the yearning in his bones, how his heartstrings convulse and implode for him to just find her. She’s right there, his body seems to say. This is where you need to be. Stay here. And he does. Somehow, he makes himself an irreplaceable part of her life, as a friend, an enemy, a lover (he much prefers those lifetimes), and for the shortest of whiles, he feels complete. Like he’s a real person, and not just a bypasser. They talk, laugh, argue, make love, they live, and it’s worth every bit of restless searching when their eyes meet, and she opens to say, “hey. My name is Amber.” My name is Henry, he wants to say, and I can’t live without you. He never does, because he can’t explain, and he’d much rather focus on the now with her, than the future without her, however inevitable it may be.  

This time, he’s a writer, and she’s a painter. He’s met her friends, they all like him, she’s let him try and pet her cat, Tuna (who doesn’t like him at all), and it’s... It’s good. He sits down and writes sometimes, a story about star-crossed lovers defying time and space for the sake of each other, and Amber laughs and calls it corny, but he’s seen her read his pages over his shoulder, and he recognizes the flicker of pain in her eyes when the lovers separate. It's like being punched in the gut. And then she wraps her arms around him and sighs into his neck, “I’m happy you’re here,” and he can’t do anything other than pull her closer and pray, please, please let me stay.  

It’s been six years since his last trip, and it’s an unusually long time for him to stay in the same location. He's made friends of his own, his script has been picked up by a publishing house, he has a life – the up-and-coming writer Henry Lau, boyfriend of artist Amber Liu, they live together in a hilariously posh district even though their apartment is full of cheap plastic trinkets and things neither of them really know how they got, and he’s happy. Really, genuinely happy, and he thinks that hey, maybe the gods or the omnipotent power who makes him what he is, has decided to let him go for now. Let him stay. Amber has seemingly accepted the fact that he has no family and no living relatives, and her family has more or less accepted him as one of their own. It's been years since he’s stopped waking up in the morning in cold sweat, because every time he opens his eyes, she’s right there. And she’s pestering him about stealing the covers, or not putting the dishes in the washer, but she does it with a gleam in her eyes that tells him that yes, maybe, in this lifetime, she finally loves him as much as he has loved her for centuries.  

It’s december 24th, and Amber’s out of town, about to return from a trip to Japan, when he feels it, and it almost sends him tumbling to the floor of the bedroom when realization hits him. The subtle aching starts in his shoulders, and throughout the day spreads to the rest of his body. Please, he thinks desperately, not this time, and he does everything he can possibly think of to try and make whoever’s up there just listen to him, but as always, he gets nothing. It’s an insisting feeling in his core, as if his body already knows what’s going to happen, and that it’s going to whether his heart can agree or not, and he knows it’s a lost cause. He has to leave. He has to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again.  

What will Amber think? It’s never occurred to him before now that he’s left people behind him, he’s left her, time and time again – what goes through her mind when she finds out he’s gone? That her favorite teacher has transferred schools, that her date never shows up, that her online friend suddenly stops replying to her messages? It’s heartbreaking to think about, but it’s all that runs through his head. In some way, he wishes she wakes up with amnesia. He doesn’t want her to live with the pain of losing him like he’s constantly losing her, but on the other hand, he begs for her to please not ever forget about him. If she does, he thinks, he’ll fall apart completely. So that is his final message. Amber’s probably on her way home from the airport, tired but excited to be home for the holidays, and she’s going to walk into their home and find it empty any minute. He can’t. He can’t do this to her, and he curses the forces that make him do it out loud, cuts his hands on the broken glass shards – yet another mess for her to clean up, he thinks -  

-- and then she’s there. She's standing in the door, with her suitcase and her scarf halfway down on the floor, when she sees him. “Henry? What are you doing?” She doesn’t even remove her boots, wet with snow, when she rushes to his side, alarmed by the fact that there are hot tears streaming down his face with record speed. “Hey,” she says softly, and takes his face in her hands, “it’s okay. I'm right here.” And he wants to tell her, he so, so wants to tell her, but he can’t get the words out, so he just lets her clean up his mess on the floor and on his hands, and he tells her he loves her like he’s about to die, and this time, he thinks, he might actually be.  

That night, he holds onto her like she’s a lifeboat, because there’s a childish kind of logic in his brain that tells him that if he holds on tight enough, maybe she’ll come with him this time, and he won’t have to do all of this again. Maybe, if he just doesn’t fall asleep, he won’t go. But come Christmas morning, he wakes up in a room that looks almost identical to the one he fell asleep in, but stripped of any personal belongings other than his pile of clothes, strewn out over the floor as they went. The bed is unmade, but empty, save for him. When he rolls over and checks his phone, he feels his heart clench uncomfortably in his chest. It’s Christmas morning alright, December 25th, but this time he’s in the future. 2030 doesn’t look all that different from all the other years he’s been in, but it really doesn’t matter. Even the digital evidence of her has been erased. No phone contact. No pictures saved, even though he knows he’s had them in bulk. There is nothing here to remind him of her, because there never is, and so he does what he always does: Gets dressed, walks out of the apartment without ever expecting to come back, and just walks.  

He has been out in the brisk air for hours, days, weeks, years – he doesn’t know. He's old, this he knows. He's tired, cold, hungry, alone, standing by an intersection with a plastic cup in his hands, trying not to make eye contact with any of the busy pedestrians. They don’t take too kindly to his sort here, not even with the wealth they all seem to have in excess, but he’s managed to survive so far, even though he’s not exactly sure what he’s doing it all for. And maybe it’s instinct that makes him look up when a pair of brown winter boots stop in front of him, and a gloved hand lets a small selection of rolled-up bills fall into his cup. “Here you go,” she says, and he’s absolutely sure. It’s her. “Have you been standing out here all day?” He nods, dumbly. All these years, and she’s still so beautiful, so young, too, but of course. She's always young and beautiful. Something akin to pity flickers over her features, and he wants to tell her not to worry, that it isn’t really that bad even though it is, but no words come out. She’s about to say something, he can tell by the way she’s pursing her lips, when someone calls her from behind. “Mom! We’re going to be late!”  

Mom? Henry follows Amber’s stare, and feels something deep within him die. There, in front of a door to a lavish looking apartment complex, stands a handsome man with a child, around 7 or 8 years old, and she looks just like Amber did on the baby photos she’d shown him so many lifetimes ago. She waves, and quickly turns back to him. “I’m sorry, I have to go – no, no, keep it. It's a gift,” she insists, when he tries to give her the plastic cup. “Merry Christmas, sir!” she yells, when she’s back safely with her family, and the young girl has grabbed her hand tightly. And then Henry blinks, and she’s gone again. Almost like she was never even there to begin with.