Chapter Text
Everybody was born with a soulmate. Well almost everybody. Only a handful of people don't have one and only a few have two or more. But with each generation, there's only one soulmate seeker. I'm the one for that generation, the only one, the chosen one, the seeker.
Every two hundred years, destiny randomly chooses a family and for two hundred years, the firstborn of that same family has the powers of the seeker. When the family is chosen, every firstborn are girls, because, seekers are only girls. Mine has been chosen in 1817, which means that the last one of our family will be born in 2017, I was born in 1987, which means that I'll have that child the year of my thirtieth birthday, a bit later than the other women of my family.
My mother waited for me to be old enough to understand, explaining to me that I was the next one and to tell me the rules. First, she explained to me that my future daughter will be the last seeker of our family before fate chooses another one, then she told me all that I had to know, the good and the bad things. So, here are the things she tells me.
First, she said that my seekers powers are going to appear when I'll reach my sixteenth birthday, she had it from my grandmother, who had it from her mother, who had it from the generations before. When I'll turn sixteen, I'll be able to touch someone and tell them what I saw about their soulmates. It could be just a detail, a name, the way they look like and sometimes, name and the way they look. When I asked about people who don't have one, she said that everything will be blank and that I'll not feel anything. For my own soulmate, my mother promised me that she would tell me the day I would ask to know who he is. After clearing those points, she started to outline the rules.
Rule number 1 : The seeker is always a girl, her soulmate will always be a boy.
Rule number 2 : From the age of sixteen, when the seeker's powers appear, she will be able to see the bonds between soulmates. She can see things about other people soulmates, but not about her own. However, sometimes, the seeker can see things, but it rarely happens.
Rule number 3 : The seeker's soulmate has himself another soulmate. And in the end, he always chooses his other soulmate. The link between the seeker and her soulmate will break in favor of the other soulmate.
Rule number 4 : No matter what her sexual orientation is, the seeker and her soulmate will always at least spend a night together, the result of that night is going to be a baby girl who will be the next generation of seeker, no matter if it's protected, the seeker will get pregnant.
Rule number 5 : The seeker will raise her daughter all by herself because she can't be loved by her soulmate or by anyone else.
So, this is how I grew up, only with my mother and my grandmother. My grandma died when I was five and my mom when I was twenty-one. I don't know my father, never met him, never seen a picture of him, I don't even know his name. But this never disturbed me, I had my mom and granny, I didn't need anybody else.
No one knew about my powers, no one except Marian, my best friend. Marian's parents met thanks to my mother, Alienor, that my grandmother named after a French queen. Katherine and my mom were best friends from high school and short after my mom told her about her soulmate, Richard, she met him randomly at a Robin Hood film show. It was love at first sight, which is not the case for every soulmate, and that's why they called their daughter Marian the day of her birth.
Marian and I grew up together, best friends since preschool, even before according to our mothers. At the age of seven, I told her about my futures abilities, she seemed so excited and made me promise something.
“Promise me, please promise me, that when you'll have your seeker powers, I'll be the first one you're going to tell who her soulmate is. Promise me Y/N.”
“I promise”, I answered her, concealing our promise with a drop of blood making us 'blood sisters'.
Around the same age, I started to ask my mother about my own soulmate. Despite all she said to me about the fact that my soulmate will leave me for his other one after spending only one night with me, I still wanted to know about him, and she promised me to tell me what I wanted to know when I'll almost be sixteen, because she thought that I would not be prepared for it before.
So, years pass by, I grew up and eventually, my sixteen's birthday arrived faster than I expected.
I was taking my breakfast when someone rang the bell and when I opened the door, Marian was behind, holding a present and a big balloon which said, 'Happy birthday'. Even before I had the time to say hello, she rushed inside the house, pulling me behind her to my bedroom upstairs.
“So, what do you see ?”, Marian asked, excitedly, when she sat on my bed, patting the empty spot next to her for me to take place. “Tell me, is he tall ? Is he strong ? Is he blond ? Is he a brunet ? How are his eyes ? Just tell me please, please, please !!!!”, she added, extending her left hand for me to hold.
I took it between mine, took a deep breath and closed my eyes to concentrate, like I've seen my mother doing so much time. I opened my eyes after two minutes.
“What ? Have you already seen something ?”, she questioned.
“I've seen nothing”, I answered. “I'm gonna try again, remember that's the first time I'm doing it.”
I took her hand and closed my eyes again. I tried and hoped so much that I'll be able to give her an answer, but nothing came. After ten minutes, I opened my eyes again and with a sad look on my face, looked at Marian's, just to see her smile fading away when she saw my expression.
“Marian, I'm sorry”, I finally whispered after an awful pregnant silence.
“Wha... Wha... What are you talking about ?”
“I... I...”, I stammered. “I see nothing for you.”
“What does that mean ?”, she asked, on the verge of tears, her face drained of its colors.
“You... You... You don't have a soulmate”, I finished saying.
“No. No. No. That's impossible, I can't ! I must have one !”, she shouted, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“It's okay, Marian, it's okay. It doesn't matter if you don't have one.”
“That's easy to say for you”, she spat. “You have one, as you are a seeker, YOU HAVE ONE !”
“Yes, I have one, but one who's gonna leave me alone with a baby. You, you will have the choice, the choice to find someone, the person you want. You'll have someone, when I'll be alone.”
“Yes, poor little Y/N and her soulmate that will abandon her, everything is always about you !”
“Please, Marian, don't say that”, I said, tears falling from my eyes.
She raised from the bed and rushed to the door before slamming the front one in her way. I laid back on my bed, sighing and feeling bad because I hurt my best friend.
When my mom came back home, with takeout of my favorite food and a cake, she asked me where Marian was, I explained to her what happened in the morning.
“Don't you worry baby, that's not your fault”, she said. “Marian is not stupid, she'll understand. She loves you, and she knows that it's not your fault, that you didn't do that on purpose. She knows that there are people without soulmates. She'll be back really quickly”, she added, kissing my forehead.
“Mom.”
“Yes, darling ?”
“I'm sixteen now and you said that when I'll be old enough, you would tell me about my soulmate.”
She sighed, waving at me to follow her in the living room. She made me sat on the couch and did the same movements I did with Marian few hours before. I knew that she was having a vision, and my soulmate must be handsome, seeing the smile on her face, but quickly it changed, her face become worrier and her smile faded away, and she let go of my hand. When she opened her eyes, she looked terrified.
“Mom”, I called her. “Mom”, I shook her shoulders. “Mom, what happened ? What did you see ?”
She looked at me with wide eyes, fear and worry filling her gaze.
“Nothing baby, I saw nothing.”
“Mom”, I whined. “You saw something, I know it.”
“What I saw wasn't pretty, my love, I'd rather you do not know until I find out”, she finished, raising from the couch, before heading back to the kitchen.
We spent my birthday night in an almost total silence. Each time I opened my mouth, she shut me down, refusing to tell me about my soulmate. When I went to sleep, I swore to myself that I was going to search by myself a solution to know who he was and what scared my mother so much.
My mother was right, after a few days sulking, Marian came to talk to me.
“I'm sorry”, she said, sitting next to me in the school cafeteria, putting down her tray on the table. “I reacted like a jerk, I didn't want to, I know it's not your fault, I was just angry and jealous, will you forgive me ?”
“Of course, I forgive you”, I answered her. “You're my best friend, you're a sister to me. I know you didn't mean this, I was just surprise. I'm so sorry that you don't have a soulmate.”
“That's okay”, she added, squeezing my hand. “I'll find someone without one eventually”, she laughed. “And what about you ? Did your mom look for you ? What does he look like ?”
I glued my gaze to the floor, not knowing how to answer her.
“I... I... I don't know”, I finally dropped after a few minutes. “My mom, she... she used her power to see, but when I asked about him, she seemed so afraid. When she was looking, at the beginning she was smiling and then, her expression changed, so quickly. She didn't say a word during the entire night, at least none about it.”
“What are you going to do about it ?”, she questioned. “Your mom is the only seeker we have under hand.”
“No, she's not, I am a seeker.”
“Yes, but you can't see your own soulmate. You told me yourself.”
“Promise me that you'll never say what I'm going to tell you.”
“I promise”, she answered.
“Pinky promise ?”, I asked, lifting my hand and stretching out my pinky finger.
“Pinky promise”, she said, her gaze not leaving mine as she wrapped her finger around mine.
“I read about a seeker that managed to see by herself who her soulmate was. But it's kinda, dangerous.”
“What do you mean dangerous ?”
“It means that I need to be looked after while I'm doing it.”
“You can count on me”, she said. “When do you want to do it ?”
“My mom leaves for the entire day on Saturday, you can come, we'll say that you stay for a sleepover, and we're doing it during the day.”
The next Saturday, when my mother left home, Marian and I got up, ready to follow the plan.
“Okay, so this is the plan”, I started to tell her, while I was putting a blanket on the floor. “I'm going to put some of my blood inside of that bowl, it'll have to be full enough for at least my hand to be completely inside of it. Once it'll be done, I'll lie down on the cover, put my hand inside the bowl and sort of fall asleep, but according to the journal of the seeker who did it, my 'sleep' is going to be restless. I need you next to me, to patch up my wound and to look after me and to wake me up if you see that something is going wrong.”
Marian just nodded, a worried look in her eyes. I could see that she didn't agree with what I was about to do, but she promised, so she didn't stop me from doing that. I winced as I cut one of my wrists above the transparent bowl, watching my blood dripping into it. When there were enough, Marian patched me up and gave me some sugar water. Then, I took a breath and laid down on the blanket diving my hand inside the bloody bowl and closed my eyes, concentrating on what I wanted to see. For a minute, I could feel the world around me and suddenly, everything was dark, and I couldn't feel anything anymore.
I don't know how long time passed before he appeared. First, I saw his back, broad shoulder, in an old military suit, World War II I might say and then, he turned around. He was gorgeous, the most handsome man I've even seen in my life, he took my breath away. White tanned skin, chestnuts hair, grey-blue piercing eyes with a sparkle and a sweet thing in them, plump red lips wearing the most exquisite smile I've seen and a strong sharped jaw, he's simply stunning. I felt my lips stretch at the view, almost sure that even in my 'sleep' I was doing it and imagining Marian laughing at the view. I held my hand to reach his face with my fingertips but retracted myself, remembering that this wasn't real, that this was only a dream. I'm searching for what my mom was so afraid of in that vision of heaven. Maybe the only weird thing is that that guy seems to live in the 1940s, which means that he would be something like one hundred when I'm going to meet him, then how am I supposed to have a baby with a very old man ? It's nonsense.
Suddenly, the vision changed. I turned my head all around to see where I was. The world seemed to look like more the one I knew. There was some smoke around me, sound of gunshots and panicked screams. I wasn't seeing further than the tip of my nose but I felt it. When I turned to the presence I felt, I saw a figure strutting towards where I was. When the silhouette stepped field of view, I recognized him. It was the guy from just before, except that something had changed, the sweetness of his eyes was gone, the sparkle was off, they were filled of literally nothing, the smile on his lips was absent too, replaced by a neutral expression, his hair was also longer, and he had a stubble on his previous smooth cheeks. He continued to walk towards me, a gun in the hand, a hand finishing a grey metal arm and I wondered what could have happened to him, he then stopped mere inches from me and aimed it. I could almost feel the cold metal of the barrel on my forehead. I was scared and I could feel hot tears falling down my cheeks, even if none of that was real. He pulled the trigger and fired. The bullet passed through my head, without hurting me, but finished its race in someone behind me.
I felt my whole body shaking and I my name coming from far away, softly at first, as if Marian was trying to wake me up from a nightmare and a few seconds later, someone spoke up, shouting my name. My eyes shot open and my mother is above me, anger on her face. My gaze searched for Marian, she was curled up in a corner, crying.
“What were you thinking about ?!”, she shouted, anger left her face, her expression changing to a disappointed one. “Don't you know that this could be very dangerous ?! What would have happened if I hadn't noticed half-way that I forgot my files for the presentation I had in Boston today !”, she sighed and took a breath. “Now tell me, tell me why my daughter thought she had to bleed herself to see her soulmate ?”
“Because you wouldn't tell me about him”, I screamed back to her. “Every time I wanted to know, you shut me down, I needed to see, I needed to know, even if I know that he's going to leave me alone with a baby and that he's probably going to break my heart. I wanted to know mom, I wanted to see him, just because I don't want to be taken by surprise when I'm going to meet him. I heard about that seeker who found a way to look by herself because she had no one to read her destiny, so as you didn't want to tell me, I figured out that I could do it by myself and please don't blame Marian, she's here because I asked her to look after me. Please, mom, please forgive me”, I added my voice coming back to its usual tone, tears falling from my eyes.
Without me to expect it, she wrapped her arms around me, and pulled my body to hers.
“I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I just wanted to protect you. You're my only child, you're all I have in the world. I know that it was wrong. I should have told you”, she said, stroking my hair. “I was afraid of what I saw, death and violence, I didn't want that for you.”
“But it's too late mom, that's fate, that's my fate.”
She started to cry too, burying her head in my hair, repeating over and over again that she was sorry that I was forced to carry this burden, that if she could, she would take that away from me. After a few minutes, she helped me to get on my feet and said that we were going to clean up the mess. I felt dizzy when I rose to my feet and my mother decided that Marian and I needed to eat something. She sat me on the couch and told Marian to take care of me while she was cooking.
“What did you see ?”, she asked, sitting next to me when I laid my head on her shoulder, and while she was holding my hand, I told her everything.
From that day, none of us talked about soulmates anymore, deciding to live our lives as if we didn't have one, which was easier for Marian, she could allow herself to fell in love when I couldn't, I didn't want to break someone's heart under the pretext that I was going to leave them to have a baby with my soulmate, I knew my grandma's story and I didn't want the same thing to happen to me.
Marian eventually met someone during our senior year, a guy named Robin, I know you can't make this up, Marian and Robin. When she saw him in the school hallway, it was like no one else around existed and after I checked if he had or not a soulmate, just because I didn't want Marian to be disappointed and discovered that he didn't have one, I introduced them to each other, and Robin was smitten without even having talk to her.
On my side, I was always looking at people's relationship from far away. I didn't want to start one that I knew was going to end as soon as I would meet my soulmate and still, it happened, I fell in love, madly and passionately in love.
I met Ben when I was eighteen. I was studying literature : English, American, French, Indian, Japanese..., and he appeared in my life, suddenly, without me to expecting it. He didn't have a soulmate and I knew that he wasn't mine, but we were happy, really happy. He had dirty blond hair, green eyes and an Australian accent. He came to America for his studies, and we randomly met at a party where we grabbed the same cup at the same time. We started to talk, no soulmates involve, no powers involve, just two young adult, meeting like destiny wasn't written in advance. I tried to resist but, I was too attracted by Ben and his glow that it was impossible. Knowing that my life was going to be less happy and tougher during the next years, I let myself fall for Ben.
I introduced him to my mother after four months of relationship, and when he left, she admitted that he was a nice boy and that she liked him, but she was worried. Worried about the next steps of our relation, worried about the fact that I would have to leave him someday, about the fact that the both of us will have a broken heart when I'll leave him or when he'll leave me, but I didn't want to think or talk about it, but I knew that it would happen someday.
Three years passed and Ben and I settled together, still so in love, crazy about each other. For the surrounding people, not knowing about my powers and the seekers and soulmates things (well everybody knows about soulmates but not for seekers), we were the perfect couple. My mom died that year, lungs cancer. Before she passed, she advised me once again to leave Ben before it's too late, but once again, I didn't listen to her. I sorted her things, kept some, sold others and rented her little house in Brooklyn, the one I grew up in, the one she grew up in, the one my grandmother bought when my mother was a baby.
But I knew that at some point, this would happen, and that it was selfish from me to keep Ben for myself. When we turned 25, he wanted us to have a baby when he perfectly knew that we couldn't have my first baby with someone else but my soulmate, but he thought that the fact that we loved each other as much as we did could change something about my fate. I wanted to believe him, I wanted to believe that I could have a baby with the man I loved, build a family with him, stay with Ben forever and be happy. So, I decided to try, and we did it again and again and again, but with no results. After almost a year of trying, I realized that Ben was more and more sad each time to see that I wasn't pregnant, I took the toughest decision of my life, leaving Ben to give him a chance to have a normal life. On that night, we had the worse fight we ever had in eight years of relationship.
“Ben, can I talk to you for a second ?”, I asked sitting at the table.
“Sure babe”, he answered, sitting in front of me, taking my hand. “Are you sure that you're okay ? You seem a little pale and worried.”
He squeezed my hand and narrowed his eyes to my face. I perfectly know what he saw at that moment, someone with all the colors drained of her face, someone determined to do something she doesn't want to do, someone who's going to break his heart into pieces.
“I... I...”, I stammered.
“You ? Come on Y/N, tell me.”
“I'm leaving you Ben”, I finally spit out.
“Wha... What ?”, he asked, his eyes opening wide. “Wh... Why ? Aren't we happy ? Aren't you happy ? Is it something that I did ? Please, tell me, I'm going to change what I've done wrong.”
“Nothing, Ben, I swear to you, nothing. You... You're not the problem, I'm the problem.”
“Don't be silly babe, you're not a problem.”
“Of course, I am”, I shouted, rising on my feet. “I'm keeping you from having a normal life. I'm keeping you away from having what you really want, children. I can't give you what you want Ben. I'll never be able to give you what you want, not until I've met and had sex with my soulmate. Keeping you from a normal life is so selfish. I'm being selfish.”
“No, no you're not, because I know what your 'powers' include. I know that someday you're going to be inexplicably attracted to some man that you'd never met before and that you'll have sex with him and come back pregnant, I don't care. It's not going to matter for me.”
“But it will for me ! I can't do that to you. Do you really imagine yourself rising another man's child ? As I said, it would be selfish from me to force you to live all of this. So, we have no choice, we have to break up.”
“No, you are being selfish right now, wanting for force me to leave you, we will be able to go through this”, he came closer to me and cupped my face in his hands. “I love you, Y/N, more than I've ever loved someone, I don't want anyone else, so please, please don't make me do that”, he added, tears in his eyes, his forehead against mine. “Please don't leave me.”
“I love you too but, we're being both selfish, please Ben, you knew that that day was probably going to come at some point”, I told him, trying unsuccessfully to hold my tears. “I'm going to leave tomorrow morning, I called Marian earlier, and she's letting me crash at her home for a few days before I go back in my childhood house. The tenant is leaving in a few days and I'm going to settle back there and that's where I'm going to live when I'm going to have that baby. Don't try to retain me for doing it because, my decision is already taken. I'm so sorry. I'm going to start to pack my things and going at Marian and Robin's tomorrow morning with all my stuff.”
“Fine, if you want to leave and your decision is already taken and if you think that it's the best for us, I'll let you go. But, do me a favor, let's have a last night together, this night, I want us to say proper goodbyes.”
I didn't answer, just nodded and Ben kissed me desperately. That night, we made love as if our lives depended on it, to keep inside of each other the memory of our skins, touches, moans and whispers. When the day came, Ben left before I woke up, letting me a note saying that he wouldn't bear to see me leave and that he would always love me. After a quick shower, I put the boxes containing all my belongings in the car and threw a last look to the apartment I shared with the man I loved for five years. If it's hard to leave someone you don't love, it's harder to leave someone you love.
After spending the next week crying in my best friends' spare room, I moved back in that place that saw me grew up. This is what's going to be my new life now, alone until I meet my soulmate and have my baby girl. I had to start off on the right foot, I had to start something new.