The winter air of 1800 always smelled faintly of coal smoke and damp stone—heavy, old, like a world that had not yet learned to breathe freely. I had been here for nearly three months now. Long enough to blend in. Long enough to pretend I belonged. Long enough that my time pod, hidden behind layers of canvas and rotting crates, was finally showing signs of life again.
One more week, I kept telling myself.
One more week and I would go home.
Until then, I did what I always did in the early evenings: walk to the small bakery near the town square.
The bell above the door chimed as I entered. Warmth wrapped around me instantly—the kind that made the cold outside feel unreal.
"Good evening, Miss Liz," the bakery boy greeted. He always said it too cheerfully; I always smiled politely.
I ordered bread. I waited.
Simple. Ordinary.
But that day was the day everything split.
When I stepped outside, adjusting the basket in my arms, I felt a prickling sensation at the back of my neck—like being observed carefully, not out of suspicion… but recognition.
I turned.
A man froze mid-step as if time itself had caught him.
Tall, dark coat dusted with snow, eyes wide in a way that made my stomach dip. His expression wasn't simple curiosity. It was shock. It was disbelief. It was hunger for something he couldn't name.
I didn't know him.
But he looked at me as if I had risen from his grave.
Our eyes met.
His breath hitched.
Mine faltered.
Something in his gaze unsettled me—not danger, but something heavier, like grief colliding with hope.
He approached—slowly, cautiously.
"Forgive me," he said, voice low, strained. "But… may I ask your name?"
I swallowed.
"Liz."
The way he inhaled sharply made my heart thump.
"As in… Elizabeth?"
"Just Liz," I clarified gently.
He nodded and smiled—too quickly, as if afraid he would break.
That was the beginning.
---
He kept finding me.
Or maybe I kept finding him.
In the market.
By the river.
At the library where I pretended to read old books to blend in.
He always seemed to appear with a hesitant smile and a question or two.
At first, I thought he was simply kind.
But kindness doesn't tremble.
Kindness doesn't stare at someone like they're a miracle.
He introduced himself as Harold.
He was polite. Reserved. A little awkward. A little lonely.
Something about him felt cracked but held together with quiet dignity.
We took slow walks around town.
He showed me the bridge where children fed ducks.
He told me about the stars he liked to watch at night.
I never asked too much—afraid of exposing myself.
But he volunteered things anyway.
Tiny things.
Soft things.
Pieces of a heart that had stopped beating long ago.
---
The first time he laughed—truly laughed—was because of me.
We had been walking past a woman selling flowers when a bee landed on my bonnet. I squeaked, swatted it off, and he broke into sudden, startled laughter.
A sound that seemed unfamiliar to him.
He covered his mouth quickly.
"Forgive me. I—"
"No," I said. "It's nice."
He stared at me then—longer than necessary.
Too long.
Far too long.
And in his eyes, something was blooming.
Something terrifying.
Something beautiful.
---
Sometimes I caught him staring.
Not in a way that made me uncomfortable.
In a way that made me troubled.
As if he were memorizing me.
As if he feared losing me.
As if…
As if I had been someone precious.
I didn't understand.
But I felt it.
The weight of an unspoken memory between us.
---
I fell for him. Quietly. Unintentionally. Entirely.
Not out of fate.
Not out of need.
But because his gentleness felt like home in a century that wasn't mine.
He held my basket for me.
He waited with me during sudden rain.
He walked me to the bakery not once, but every evening as if it were a ritual.
Sometimes he would look at me, hesitate, and say nothing.
Other times he looked like he wanted to ask something impossible.
But he never did.
Until the day everything broke.
---
It happened at his home.
A simple visit. Tea. Talk. A moment of normalcy in a life of lies.
I was browsing his shelves when something caught my eye—
A framed charcoal portrait.
A young woman in a white dress.
Soft smile.
Gentle eyes.
My breath stopped.
Because she looked exactly like me.
Not similar.
Not close.
Exact.
Even the mole beneath the left eye.
Even the curve of the nose.
Even the hairline.
"When…" I whispered, "when did I wear this?"
The cup in Harold's hand slipped.
He turned pale—so pale I feared he might collapse.
"That isn't you," he forced out. "She was… someone I lost."
"Three years ago," I murmured. The date was engraved beneath the portrait.
He froze.
His silence was the confirmation I hadn't wanted.
My existence here was already fragile.
Now it cracked completely.
I put the portrait down.
Very gently.
Too gently.
"I… should go."
He didn't reach for me.
He didn't speak.
He simply stood there, dying all over again.
I walked out of his home.
Walked out of the lie we had built.
Walked out of the warmth I shouldn't have touched.
The door remained open behind me.
Just like he did.
---
I spent the night staring at my pod.
Its lights finally blinked green.
I sat before it and whispered:
"I'm sorry, Harold."
Whether he heard that night's flash of light…
Whether he ran to the window…
Whether he saw me vanish—
I never knew.
I only knew I couldn't stay in a time where I was both alive and dead.
---
Three months later, in my proper timeline…
I searched.
Research papers.
Old archives.
Buried news.
Forgotten journals.
And there it was.
The Fool.
Harold Edmunds.
A man who mourned his fiancée Elizabeth for three years.
A man who met a girl who looked exactly like her and lost her again in a flash of light.
My chest tightened.
I had been the ghost haunting a man who didn't deserve to be haunted.
I had been the answer to a question he never wanted.
I had been a wound reopened.
"The Future always remembers what the Past refuses to let go."
The moment I returned to 2137, the world felt too loud.
Machines hummed. Neon lights buzzed.
Information screens flickered as if impatient with my heartbeat.
But inside me, everything was painfully quiet.
The pod door hissed open and cool sterilized air hit my face.
I stepped out.
Back into my own era.
Back into my own life.
Back into a world where Harold did not exist.
My first breath tasted metallic.
My second trembled.
On my third, I whispered—
"…Harold."
As if saying his name could anchor me.
But the world did not pause.
The world did not acknowledge my grief.
The world had moved on without him.
And I was expected to do the same.
Three days later, in the university archive room, I made a mistake.
I searched his name.
"Harold james, 1797–1828."
A handful of brittle documents appeared.
A death record of his fiancée, Elizabeth Carter, dated three years before I met him.
A few town logs describing a "gentleman seen wandering as though searching for something long lost."
A criminal who terrorized the country
Signed- Edmund horrow
A witness account:
> "He was seen speaking with a young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to his late bride.
She vanished in a burst of unnatural light."
My breath stilled.
They saw me.
They saw him losing me all over again.
And the world recorded it as mystery.
As madness.
As a legend told to children.
But for him, it was real.
A journalist's note scribbled in the corner:
> "Locals say he never truly recovered.
Some loves break a man.
Some haunt him."
I closed the file.
Tears blurred the holographic text until the words melted.
He had been a fool in that era.
And by meeting him, I had made him suffer twice.
If time travel was supposed to be observational, I had broken the rule.
I had changed something.
I had broken someone.
Time didn't heal anything.
It simply taught me how to hide the wound.
I finished my degree, got a job at a large cyber-engineering firm, and lived the kind of structured, productive life people praise without understanding.
My coworkers thought I was calm.
Quiet.
Mature.
They didn't know silence is easier when your past is full of ghosts.
Every now and then, I found myself wandering to window reflections, staring at my own face—wondering if Harold would recognize me if he were here.
If he would still ache.
If he would still smile.
If he would still love.
I told myself such thoughts were foolish.
I was wrong.
It happened on a Monday morning—ordinary, forgettable.
The new employee orientation was beginning. I wasn't supposed to attend, but I was called to assist.
I walked in, holding a tablet, barely awake—
—and froze.
He stood near the far desk.
Adjusting the settings on his wrist interface.
Brows slightly furrowed in concentration.
The same posture.
The same tilt of the head.
The same quiet presence that warmed the room without trying.
But he was not Harold.
His name tag read:
H. Rowan.
Different clothes.
Different haircut.
Different life.
But the eyes—
God, the eyes.
They were exactly his.
As if time had returned something it stole.
My heart stuttered painfully.
He looked up.
Our eyes met.
And for a moment, his breath hitched—
just like that day outside the bakery.
Not recognition.
Not memory.
But a strange, soft flicker of familiarity.
A soul remembering what the mind forgot.
"Uh—hello," he said awkwardly. "I think you're assigned to guide me today?"
His voice was the same tone—gentle, unsure, warm enough to break me.
I swallowed.
Hard.
"Yes," I managed. "I… I'm Liz."
He smiled.
A small, polite smile.
Not the haunted, fragile one of the past.
A fresh one.
A new beginning.
Something in me trembled.
Something in me bloomed.
Something in me broke.
Days turned into weeks.
Weeks melted into months.
We grew close—naturally, quietly.
He didn't chase me like Harold did.
He didn't stare as if memorising a lost love.
He simply… existed beside me.
Laughed beside me.
Ate lunch with me.
Walked home with me.
He liked silly things—retro games, street noodles, cats that ignored him.
The 1800s Harold would have been confused by this version of himself.
But I loved both.
And I fell again.
This time not because fate arranged it—
but because I chose him.
And for the first time, he chose me first.
He confessed one evening after work, standing under the neon glow of a vending machine.
He looked shy, almost embarrassed.
"I don't know why," he said, "but I feel like my life makes more sense when you're in it."
I felt tears rise.
Soft.
Quiet.
Grateful tears.
I told him:
"I feel the same."
And for a few years, I lived a life I had once never dared to want.
A love unburdened by graves.
A love unshadowed by time.
A love ours alone.
But destiny never forgets.
And fate… always takes its due.
It began with a cough.
Just a mild one.
Then fatigue.
Weight loss.
Hospital visits.
Scans.
Then the doctor's voice, quiet and apologetic:
"Stage Four."
My world cracked the way Harold's once had.
But this time, I was the one left to watch the person I loved slip away.
He stayed cheerful even when bedridden.
He joked:
"Guess my body's on an old-timer setting."
He laughed through pain.
I held his hand through it.
One evening, near the end, he asked softly:
"Liz… why do I feel like… we've done this before? Like I've lost you once already."
I froze.
My throat closed.
My tears dropped onto his knuckles.
He smiled faintly.
"Sorry. Ignore me. Just a weird dream I keep having."
I leaned over him and whispered:
"I was the one who lost you first."
His eyes softened, though he didn't understand.
He passed away at dawn.
Quietly.
Gently.
Like a candle accepting its final flicker.
No tragedy.
No dramatic finale.
Just a soft, inevitable ending.
Two different centuries.
Two different men with the same soul.
Two different meetings.
Two different endings.
In one era, I haunted him.
In another, he healed me.
And in both, we lost each other.
Some souls are tied by fate.
Some by pain.
Some by a love too deep for one timeline.
But destiny is cruel.
It gave him back to me—
only to take him again.
And I remain living with a truth that time itself cannot erase:
I met him twice.
Loved him twice.
Lost him twice.
A fool's love…
It seems…
Is not his burden alone.
It is mine, too.