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It wasn’t until Evelyn and Rick got back to England that she realized something was horribly wrong.
It may have been the adrenaline from their trip or even just the joy of holding Alex in her arms and knowing that he was safe, but she completely missed all the signs that anything was amiss, until one morning shortly after they arrived home.
She woke up, as always, in her usual bed. She was alone, but she could hear cooking in the kitchen alongside Rick’s off-pitched singing and Alex’s embarrassed groans.
Nothing was amiss, but she still felt as though she couldn’t breathe.
The air was wrong. It was too sterile, too chilled. It lacked any sort of smell.
The bed was too soft, too firm, too shaped, and too warm.
Even her skin felt wrong. It was too light, too smooth.
Dragging herself from her bed, Evelyn slowly made her way to the full-length mirror that she could see in the corner of the room. A mirror that she knew belonged to her mother once.
When she saw her own reflection, she screamed.
The next several weeks passed in a blur of fevers and hallucinations. Visions of lives long-past, people that she used to love to the core of her being, now gone. China, Egypt, Russia, Ethiopia, Mexico, along with hundreds of other places and people she couldn’t even identify.
Her loved ones, always the same souls in different forms, living the same stories over and over.
She lost all sense of time and place as she tumbled further and further down the rabbit hole of her past lives. Only occasionally did she feel anchored in the present. When Rick/Rath/Ruban - so many names that they overwhelmed her - when he put his arms around her and pleaded for her to come back to him…
Every part of her shattered being desperately wanted to do as he wished. She just didn’t know how.
It’s almost funny that, given how often she had felt Rick and Jonathan at her bedside, they weren’t there when she woke up.
Instead, it was the unmistakable figure of Ardeth Bay at her bedside when she was finally able to force her eyes to blink open and squint against the bright light coming through her window.
“Medjai” she muttered groggily, before pausing and thinking for a moment. That wasn’t right, not now.
Regardless, Ardeth put his book down instantly and turned his attention completely to her. “Princess?” He asked cautiously, his face unreadable.
Taking another moment to get her thoughts in order. “Ardeth,” she breathed, knowing that she had it correct this time.
Visibly relaxing, Ardeth smiled and took her hand. “Evelyn,” he answered with a nod.
Struggling to push herself up into a seated position, only reaching her goal with the help of the man beside her, she looked around the room. “Where are-?” She struggled to remember the correct names for the people she loved, knowing that if she used the wrong ones it would cause even more worry.
“It took me days to convince your husband to get some rest. He will be furious with himself when he discovers that he wasn’t here to see you wake.” Ardeth chuckled a bit and shrugged helplessly.
“And…” Evie paused. Not Ramses, not Edward, not Robert… “Jonathan?”
“He has taken over your son’s education in your absence. My understanding is that it is quite eclectic. Today they are out exploring the city.”
Nodding, Evie took a moment to orient herself in relation to her loved ones. It was a comfort to know that they were doing well, relatively speaking. “Do they know what’s been happening to me?”
Ardeth hesitated a moment, withdrawing his hand from hers and leaning back in his chair. “The doctors have said that you had contracted a rare fever while in Egypt. It was causing some severe hallucinations.”
“You don’t believe them?” She asked curiously.
Hesitating again, Ardeth took a breath before answering. “I have my own theories – ones that I have largely kept to myself.”
Nodding again, Evie looked down at her hands. “That might be for the best…I don’t want to cause more worry than need be, and I think things are settled now…I think I’ll be okay.”
A raised eyebrow was the only sign that Ardeth was surprised. “I would have thought you would have liked your family to know the truth…”
Something in the way he said ‘your family’ gave her pause. “You were always there, you know. Sometimes with him, sometimes me...” she chuckled. “Sometimes even Jonathan…but you were always there, you always loved us, and you were always part of our family.”
If anything, he was more closed off, but he nodded, nonetheless. “You are all very easy to come to care about…it would be my honour to be considered part of your family.”
There was a finality in his tone that made it clear he considered the topic closed.
Respecting that, Evie let them fall into a comfortable silence as she leaned back against the cushions and allowed herself to rest.
It was oddly easy to return to normal after ‘the episode’ as she liked to call it. Rick and Jonathan were so happy to see her well again nobody questioned anything about the situation. Ardeth kept his silence as promised and left them to return to Egypt as soon as it was clear that Evelyn really was well and wasn’t likely to have any more setbacks. She had a hunch they weren’t likely to see him again for a good while.
No one thought it odd that she could suddenly speak languages fluently that she hadn’t before because they all simply assumed that she always could, and they never questioned the difference.
If anything, having inside knowledge about the time periods in question made her even more of an asset at the British museum…even if she couldn’t quite prove exactly how she knew the things she did.
The strangest thing was looking at her loved ones differently than she had before.
Rick was easy. No matter the life, no matter the circumstance, she always had a deep love for him. Sometimes they were star-crossed, sometimes they never quite were able to make it work, but the love was still there.
It was a lot harder with Jonathan. He was almost always, without fail, her brother, but that meant different things at different times.
The life she remembered with the most clarity was that of Nefertiri. It was the life that had triggered all the other memories and had brought her to this point.
Sometimes, particularly when she was doing something specifically domestic like covering Jonathan up with a wool blanket when he had fallen asleep on the couch or getting him a hot drink while he was reading, in that moment she felt so strongly that this was her pharaoh.
She would feel so much love and loyalty towards him that it would almost overwhelm her. All she could see in that moment was her husband, Ramses the Great, and the incredible pride she felt as his great wife and queen.
It would take Jonathan looking at her funny before she would even notice enough to pull herself out of that headspace and remind herself that what they were then is not what they are now. That the love they have now is just as strong, but very different.
Then Jonathan would make a joke and she would laugh, everything would go back to the way it was.
The hardest though, was Alex. He was always there, always part of their group, but he wasn’t always her son.
Sometimes he was another brother. Sometimes he was a friend that grew up with them. On one memorable occasion, he was their father.
It was strange watching him grow up and knowing that she had seen it a hundred times before. Every milestone triggered a rippling of memories going back through the ages.
They continued as they had always done. She taught him everything she knew and he travelled the world with his famous parents.
Despite passing numerous places of significance in their joint past lives, he never gave any sign of notice or interest. They would send her spiralling, but he was always completely unfazed. It gave her hope that perhaps he wasn’t tied to a destiny. Perhaps he could live his own life, unchained by the choices of the past.
Before she knew it, he was grown and moving away from them. It had felt like no time had passed at all, it was far too soon.
Any hope that she had for Alex to have escaped the claws of destiny were shattered when she visited him at Oxford. He had been teaching there for over a decade by this time, one of the youngest hired. His career was immensely successful and was a source of pride for her and Rick.
She had dropped in unexpectedly and slipped into the back of the lecture hall for one of his classes. It always gave her immense pleasure to listen to him teach. He always had such a passion for his subject matter.
This time though, as the students began to trickle out, there was one girl who walked passed him on her way out the door. They locked eyes and for a moment seemed to be the only ones in the world.
Evelyn felt the bile rise in her throat. She had seen this before. Pushing her way out of the class, she found the nearest trash bin and threw up the entire contents of her lunch. Slumped over the can, all she could think of was one name: ‘Imhotep’
She couldn’t even bring herself to talk to Alex, not right then. Like a coward, she ran away.
For days she scraped over every memory of Alex from every life that she could draw to the surface looking for some sign, any sign that she had missed. How could she not have known that her little boy was that monster? After centuries, how could she have missed it?
When she finally steeled herself enough to make her way back, she avoided the school entirely and found him at home.
He was pleased to see her, he had no reason not to be. It was only she who felt chilled by the very sight of him.
“I thought I saw you in my class the other day.” He offered in a jovial tone, handing her a cup of tea. He was fishing, but he really didn’t know what he was looking for.
Taking a long sip, she carefully put her cup down on the table beside her. She had prepared endlessly for this moment, so afraid that she would say the wrong thing and set him on a path toward destruction. “I saw you with a girl…” She started carefully.
He grinned, a boyish grin of someone in love. “Yeah, Anna. Isn’t she great? She’s so smart, Mum, you would love her.”
“She’s one of your students though?”
That gave him pause. “Well yeah, but sometimes you just know, right? Like you and Dad.”
“Even if that’s the case, Alex, you need to be careful. She is a student. You could lose your job over this.”
“I don’t care, Mum,” He declared. “I love her. I love her more than anything and I would give up anything for her.”
This didn’t surprise her, in fact she was counting on it. “Then you’ll wait. If you love her then you will wait for her. This isn’t just your life that you’re gambling with, you can ruin her easily with this.”
When he didn’t say anything, she continued. “It is very hard to be taken seriously as a woman in this field, Alex. Do you honestly think that anyone will believe that she was able to succeed on her own merits if you become romantically involved with her right now? She will never be taken seriously, and you would have to live with the knowledge that you did that to her. Is that honestly something that you are willing to do to her?”
He looked so lost, it broke her heart. As she did when he was a child, she gathered him in her arms and held him close. “What do I do, Mum?” He whispered into her shoulder.
“You wait,” she murmured back with a certainty that she didn’t really feel. “She won’t be a student forever, Alex. One day you’ll be colleagues and it won’t matter so much. You’ll be free to do as you please. This time, you can be together…you just need to be patient.”
He cried bitter, angry tears as she rocked him back and forth. Miraculously though, he listened.
It was another decade before Alex and Anna were married. At the ceremony, Evie clasped her hands tightly around Rick’s and she couldn’t help the smile that graced her face. She knew, without really knowing how, that this time, it was going to work for them. This time, they were going to live happily ever after.
Rick cheered the loudest when Alex kissed the bride and Evie knew that they had never been happier.