Chapter Text
- wedonttalkaboutit
In Neil Jostens’ world soulmates were pretty common. Last he remembered reading something like sixty percent of the population had met a soulmate before the age of fifty. Even after that, too. He recalled an article about a couple who found each other in their assisted living community. They made the local tabloids in Texas one summer, a few years ago. “Love in retirement!” the headline had read.
Neil was pretty sure he’d known he had a soulmate his entire life. There wasn’t just a day he can remember- like some people say- where he could just feel them. There had always been that feeling- the relative quiet under his skin that would warm when they reached out, or ignite when, wherever they were, his soulmate would hurt.
And his soulmate hurt a lot.
He’d known it wasn’t right- his soulmate bond- around the time that he was six. He’d woken one morning with a jolt and, he could remember the cream stucco of his bedroom ceiling in Baltimore, but he could also see… something else. That was only the first time he’d seen though his soulmates eyes- half awake, too early on a Thursday morning, and a hard clench in his gut when he realized it was because something wasn’t right.
He was young then, and looking back now, years later, he couldn’t remember what that first incident had been. He could remember others, later. As they’d grown. And even a few times, when he’d woken or simply… gone too far, and he’d looked through, to see a rare moment when his soulmate had been looking toward the mirror, had maybe been looking back. There were other times, when he’d been distracted or bored and suddenly a feeling, like a press behind his eyes or a presence at his back would reach him and he’d know he was being seen through. It wasn’t often, but in those moments where he wasn’t just him, he’d felt tethered- held in place. And then it would pass, and he would be left with a tremble in his fingers.
He’d avoided telling anyone. He honestly never even thought about sharing this part of himself- and of someone else- until he was in his preteens, and having a soulmate became news. But when his mother and he went on the run, he’d told her after less than a week. She smiled just a touch and told him it was okay- looking like she was already trying to come up with a plan.
“But it’s not,” he’d insisted, and her face had fallen just a touch.
“Why do you think it’s not okay,” she asked back, her pretty brow scrunching up.
Neil- then still Nathaniel- knew she probably thought he was embarrassed, or worried for his other person, this other part of himself. He didn’t know how to correct her.
“It’s all messed up,” he answered, “I shouldn’t be able to see them.” His answer had puzzled her even more.
“See them,” she asked.
“See through their eyes, yeah,” he answered, then blundered on, “I’ve never even met them!”
It was true, he’s researched it discreetly before. There were very few reports of soulmates ‘sharing experiences’ as the articles put it. Most of the cases he’d found were shortly before a soulmate died, and the other participant in the bond would go through the terribly traumatic experience where they would live it through their soulmate. Other than the first time, Neil didn’t think his soulmate had been in real danger when he’d been able to see through their eyes.
There were times when the pain on the other side of his skin felt like it would kill him, but he’d never been able to see what was happening at those moments- some of which he was thankful for, and then immediately regretful. If that had been his pain, he didn’t think he would want to be alone.
But there were no recorded cases of soulmates sharing senses outside of trauma or death. In all of the cases he had found, the soulmates had been together for some time or at least knew each other before the incident occurred.
Neil didn’t even know his soulmates name.
Mary’s brow pinched together impossibly close, but she forced herself to smile as she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she answers him, but not dismissively. Nathaniel had just been surprised she’d believed him. “It doesn’t matter because this way they can’t be used against you,” she says, her pinched brow being matched by a pinched smile, “Never meeting them is okay, if it keeps them from getting killed.”
And like that, the possible problem had been negated. Mary never asked about his soulmate again.
Even on the days where he’d feel that pain- he knew what it was that would happen in the middle of the night, but he’d just cry and bare it, wishing, wishing, that he could tear off someone’s limbs. She’d shush him from where she was tucked behind him, sometimes hold him until he’d stop shaking. But she never asked. Not even a few years prior when in the middle of a different night he’d woken with the feeling of torn skin and a smashed body. His first thought was car crash- he wondered if it was pay back for the run in with Nathaniel’s counterparts in Seattle weeks prior. The pain had receded quickly- leaving behind the same pressure and sense that it always did.
He’d come to call it, the other side of his skin, because it was there, but it just wasn’t on him. The next few days he’d known his soulmate was still in parts and pieces, but they were alive.
It wasn’t like knowing someone. Seeing moments twice a month through their eyes- searching for a sense that they were alive, breathing existing on the other side of his skin. It was more like an anchor. This person is still kicking, even after all this pain, so I can do that too. It wasn’t a competition, but somehow knowing there was someone there, on the other side of these senses made living just a bit easier. He didn’t need to know this other persons’ favorite color to know he wanted them to live.
Sometimes he thought about meeting them- and quickly had to squash the bubble of hope that build in his belly. Meeting them would be dangerous- his life was dangerous. And someday, Nathan would find him. Whenever he would get lost along that thought pattern, it was end in sadness. Because his chances of living, after Nathan, were slim. And he was sorry for the person on the other side of his skin for when that time came- because he was so used to being not alone.
Now years later, Neil regretted not ever asking if his parents were soulmates. He wanted to imagine his father feeling his mother’s pain as her body burned on the California beach. Would he know she was dead? Would he care? Part of him thought, if they were- if his father’s flesh felt like it was boiling- Nathanial Wesninski would probably be enjoying it.
As Mary Hatford’s body continued to burn on the beach, Neil gathered the last of his things, wiped his face and pushed across the hazy fuzz between his skins. I need you to live, he tried to tell the other person behind him, inside of him. Some part of his clenched uncomfortably, in his stomach or his heart- and he knew he had to keep going.