The memories never stopped. With each movement from Leo she would remember another life. And during that Leo kept her grounded with every touch. His hands rested beside her, forearms supporting his body's weight. A shield for her against the pour.
Maya felt his legs rubbing her thighs, her pants now fallen on the ground, muddy. Leo seemed to have lost himself in her eyes and his body to hers. His fingers explored every part like he was memorising. Or verifying. Or simply letting her presence bless him.
Somewhere along the ten thousandth memory she had found his shirt and unbuttoned it. In ten thousand more, she had left marks on his neck, shoulders. Nails dug deep on his back because his lips on her chest felt too intense. As if a brush enveloped by fire was moving on her skin.
"Not again..." she had cried more than the rain in all those lives. And the tears only kept accumulating. Every life, as it ended, was accompanied by rain. And maybe her tears were the very rain. The universe's way to sympathise with these souls abandoned by hope.
A million lives. A million deaths. A million times he loved and a million times left unloved. The weight of these lives weight on her chest, he lightened it with a kiss. The weight of these deaths tortured her mind, he blurred the thoughts with another flex of his fingers. The humiliation of not letting be loved, of life playing it's joke clouded her eyes with tears. And he wiped them with his lips, a peck on her eyelids.
"Don't do this..." she muttered with the only capacity she could speak. Pulled him closer because the few inches of distance felt unholy. "If you continue,...you,..." she gasped when he didn't stop moving his hand.
"Again..." and the plea of hers was mixed with the desire of her heart. Leo smiled, the corners of his lips almost meeting his ears.
"Saya"
Maya's head pressed harder on the rock, legs trembled and her hands tightened around his neck. Her vision whitened, lips clamped together.
Rain meant death. For Leo, it meant the end of his life. For her it meant dawn of memories. And for them it meant end of another love, another life. A new beginning, for another try. Rain, meant death.
And Leo wouldn't stop however much she insisted. However much she wept to him, to stop his run towards the end. And yet he kept smiling, yet he had kept smiling. In every life, a smile before he left.
And every smile accompanied a name. Almost a prayer he recited to her, before departing to the next life where she would soon follow. 'Saya' a name she had carried with elegance and pride in their very first life. A name he had loved, a woman he had pledged to. A woman that mattered and a woman that would matter forever.
Tears streamed down arguing back with the rain to taunt it's indifference.
Maya pulled Leo closer when her legs stabilised, when her hip rested well on the rock. Her lips held his with the firmness of owning. Of accepting the insanity of love and death. And he stumbled on the rock, almost falling on her.
He had not gotten used to her acceptance of his love. Not in their first life, not in this life. Leo held his weight longer, letting his body rest against her with a slow dawning of upcoming death.
"Vaan" a voice entered his ear when she motioned her throat, spoke a word and he almost swallowed it from her mouth. A name he had once cladded himself with. A name he once wielded like shield. A name he offered to his beloved. When he mattered to Saya and now he was mattering to Maya.
The first thunder struck when Leo heard her name. The second struck when he closed the distance to her hips. The third struck when she bit his jaw and he felt his lower body melting.
Leo rested his head in the crook of her neck, the smell of her hair comforting him. A million lives had blurred a lot of Saya. But never the emotions for her.
This game of life and death had become an irritating routine, one which Vaan had accepted as inevitable verdict to his desire for Saya.
When he had lived the first thousand lives, he wished to let her go. Wondered if, loving her was making them both suffer. And he had failed miraculously, always. When he did succeed, Saya's love proved to be just as much strong.
He had watched her wither and suffer in many lives. Suffer for something, for someone she didn't remember.
'I don't dream. I hear a voice. And it calls me so softly, so lovingly. Yet I can't see those eyes that cry for me.' She had told him in one life and he had ended up kissing her.
After some two or three thousandth life, he had given up on resisting. He could give up, but his heart refused. He could walk away, his soul defied. He could simply admire, but his body wished the proximity.
So he accepted, he smiled. He loved whenever he would remember, knowing her memories would follow soon. He saw her go through varying emotions. And every morphing of emotion into another crumbled his heart. Made him hate himself more than fate. And yet he would love her, kiss her. Let her be whole for even the shortest period possible.
Because leaving her broken, unsolved and unknown to herself was worse than death. For death was followed by another life, her suffering, it held no price. He had understood it in a lot of lives and suffered in the silence of letting her suffer. The cruelty of it had sometimes grabbed his throat and ended him before the rain could arrive.
And Leo smiled again, because the thunder was falling closer. Maya was holding on to him stronger. The world, as this musky blur, seemed the prettiest it ever did. And the tiny spark of hope he had somehow carried through lives amounting to stars. The hope to live once, entirely. Wholly. With her, for her. To live and love, to wish and work, to kiss and learn. To have her and to be for her.
He would wish to the world to have mercy. He would rage at the universe for its lack of sympathy. He would beg to love, to let him have one.
And when his hopes went unheard, crushed under the fall of her tears and the rain's appearance, he had learned to swallow the spark that would lit. It would be meeting the release of his soul and wane in its try.
Leo looked at Maya looking at him. Terrified eyes and loving gaze. A sight that had been burned into his subconscious from every life. And yet, every time it made him feel loved.
His hands moved from her hip to her face. His fingers traced the line of tears from her face. When he kissed her, they both could taste each other's tears. The rain had no such honesty at their grief. It was merely a spectator to their play.
The up and coming thunder made Maya hold him tighter. Leo's body sensed the tease of death, the poke on his back.
Yet his body could not imagine the loss of this proximity. He did not stop. Her face remained the constant in the blurring world.
He kissed her, muttered her name. With every to and fro, he would see her lips calling his name, tears wanting his presence.
The thunder had a role to play and it seemed dedicated to accomplish the same.
"Saya…" because the thunder landed beside the hill, the brightness blinding Maya as she screamed his name. Vaan or Leo or every one of him she had loved. The soul remained hers in every life, till every end.
And still, nature followed its course. The light started to diminish, emphasising her sobs. A wonderful display of its unfairness. A display of humiliation to the pure act of love.
A mock, a judgment and a dry laugh.
The rain stopped, letting a wind pass. The blinding of her eyes were settling but she could not open her eyes to see the truth.