A/N: Today is my two-year Phandom-versary, so in honour of the day I wrote a fic containing all of my PotO ships, possible thanks to the idea of the multi!verse. It also references a number of my own fics. Congratulations if you can work out what each of them is!

Title comes from Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, the first novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy.

There is a man, some say a ghost, dying a slow, cold death beneath an opera house. There is a girl-barely-woman, slightly fae, with ghosts drifting behind her eyes, fluttering along with the snow of her homeland. And there is a man, barely come into his majority, who trembles at the thought of a lake. And they are all these three bound, wrapped up in their own tangled ties alongside a prima ballerina who aches for touch, a Comte silenced, and a policeman who may or may not be a policeman, who may be a lover, a brother, a friend, travelled thousands of miles to here, to this place.

And the web of possibilities fans out, a drop of blood in milk, seeping and spreading so that it brushes all of these, a hundred, a thousand times, drawing them in and casting them away in new formations, new combinations. And that which is here, may never be elsewhere.

There is a man, a former ghost, retired from his profession for the sake of love, love of the ex-policeman. And it started simply, slowly, the brush of a hand, a glance over a chessboard, the weight of history lying between them barely spoken. A rush for their lives brought them to this, across the years, the decades, to sitting in a parlour with wine on their lips and questions tumbling in their hearts until one leaned, they both leaned, and in the press of mouths, whisper of tongues, they became one, happy and whole. That first kiss led to many, to bodies pressed close and fingers entwined, and they stood tall, leaning into each other, a new world unfurling before them.

But that is only one world, one possibility, a very particular turn of the watch. And there is another world, mirrored, where the realisation came too late and the policeman could only sit, tears trickling from his jade eyes as he cradled the limp hand of the ghost-turned-man, and watched, and waited.

And in these worlds, and more, there is the fae girl/woman, caught on the cusp, and the boy newly a man, and they clasp each other, and whisper and pray, united and safe and whole. And the girl goes to the ghost, and thanks him for what he has done, and the policeman looks on the man-boy as an almost-son, the both almost-children, loved and longed-for and protected.

But all is not always simple, is not always peaceful, and often the man-former-ghost (sometime-angel, sometime-demon) is consumed by a darkness that eats at his very heart, plagues him, torments him, product of the face (worn in all worlds) that is not his fault, that he has borne from before his first breath. And this face separates him, condemns him, marks him out as Foreign, as Other, so that half a century of otherness, of not belonging, has twisted him into the beast they all whispered he was, when he was drenched in blood and high on the fumes of opium.

He hanged a man, a stage-hand who knew too much, and drowned the Comte who had done nothing except come looking (or did the Comte fall? did he slip? it can be so hard to tell). And he took the policeman, the former-friend, the sometime-enemy (the other world lover) and caged him in a room of mirrors with the boy-barely-man and baked them until they almost lost their senses, before falling through to a room of gunpowder, and rushing water.

And the fae girl could not see, did not know the precise torture, was bearing a torture of her own, her heart twisting and mind racing. And did she weep? Or was she stoic? She cannot remember.

You have such a special talent for crying.

The words hissed, one permutation of this world, as poison-morphine raced through the blood of the ghost, numbed his arm and constricted his chest, making it so hard to breathe, so hard, and he thought he would die, would die there on his black couch and trap her down there with his corpse forever.

He came to his senses and sent her away with the boy-man her fiancé, and she returned as promised weeks later, and loved him at his death.

In another world she returned after a week, sight and mind clearer, and took him in her arms, and they married then and there with the policeman their only witness in a wedding belowground. And five months later, as he drew his last breath in her arms, the product of their love, their secret-son, lived beneath her heart.

(The secret-son became a baby, a boy, a man, and loved the son of the Comte and prima ballerina, and together they went to war and thought the world would burn around them, sparks dancing in their eyes, two hearts beating as one.)

A third world exists, where the ghost sent the girl and her lover away, and they married and were happy though haunted, and the ghost died in the arms of the policeman, or he died alone, or he withered away and faded to a memory, a true ghost with no substance.

Or, the possibility exists of the girl and her fiancé, and the fiancé is lost, or arrested for the death of his Comte-brother (an affair in which he bears no guilt) and the girl goes to the lover left behind by the Comte, the prima ballerina, and in each other's arms they find all of the comfort they could desire.

Sometimes the love of all of these is dictated by time, the time remaining stamped on their wrists for all to see, and it seems a blessing, the knowledge of certainty, though is a curse, and the last hours of ticking down, of knowing one will not survive the night, each breath measured out, each heartbeat, each touch and kiss and gaze, and they have each lived it a hundred times, a thousand, ever drawn back by gravity to this, this moment of ending.

Or there is the world, the precious sacred world, where a choice made, a simple decision in the heat of the moment, means the ghost does not become a ghost, becomes a man with a past, a history, and he assumes a position of renown, his fingers wrapped around a baton, a violin lying waiting for him, and his policeman friend his guardian, protector. And the girl, the slightly fae girl with the magic of faraway lands in her eyes, becomes his protégé, his student, his wife, and they are happy in love, not measured by time, not dictated by society or internal wrongdoing, and they simply are, held safe and cherished always.

And that world, that one of many, is safeguarded by all of the others, by the misfortunes as well as the hope, the promise of better times. And she cradles his hand, and presses it to her lips, and he smiles, the innate knowledge of how lucky they are, how blessed, humming in his blood. And if either of them ever wonder, either of them ever know, how differently it could have turned out, how terribly, they do not speak of it, simply smile, and kiss, and hold on a little tighter.

A/N: I hope you have enjoyed this little unusual thing (which partially inspired by my recent re-reading of The Time Traveler's Wife and thinking around that) and please leave a review!