Chapter Text
The first time her parents taught her about soulmates, Beatrice was four. She barely understood what the word meant, let alone the complexities her parents were attempting to convey, but she understood the word love. She understood the words shared, and safe, forever. What her distracted mind failed to comprehend was the inevitable switch that would happen, where the souls of her and her soulmate would interchange for a short while every month.
“Your soulmate is your other half, he’s a missing piece to your soul,” her mother had said, making Beatrice scrunch her nose with confusion. How could she be half a person?
“Are you and Daddy soulmates?” she asked, ignoring her confusion for the moment.
Her mother looked to her father, an unreadable look in her eyes. “Of course.”
Only when she turned six did she understand what her parents had been trying to tell her. When the switch happened, she opened her eyes to find herself sitting at a dinner table, an unfamiliar face staring back at her.
“Ava?” The woman asked, putting a cup of water down. “You okay sweetie?”
“I- no I’m Beatrice-” she cut herself off, the name registering in her mind. “Ava?”
The woman gave her a comforting smile, leaning over to catch her attention. “It’s nice to meet you Beatrice. I’m Carolyn, Ava’s mum.”
Beatrice looked down at her- no Ava’s- hands, turning them over.
“It can be a little scary, I know,” Carolyn’s voice was gentle, brown eyes shining with sympathy. “But I can already tell you were made for each other. I can only assume Ava isn’t handling this as calmly as you. With your composure and her energy, you balance each other perfectly.”
Beatrice gasped, clambering down from the chair. Her soulmate was in her body. Her soulmate who is a girl is in her body, with her parents who were adamant it would be a boy. “I can’t, my parents they won’t-” she cut herself off, backing away. “They’re going to kill her...they’re going to kill me...I can’t be like this they told me it was wrong why am I like this-”
“Honey, deep breaths.” Carolyn crouched down, brushing her- Ava’s- hair away. To Beatrice’s shame, she had started to cry. “Deep breaths. Whatever your parents think, I’m sure it’ll be okay. You are amazing the way you are, I promise.”
Unable to calm her breathing, Beatrice flung herself into the arms of her soulmate’s mother, tears streaming down her face. How long she stayed there she didn’t know, hiding her face in Carolyn’s shoulder while she rubbed her back softly, and listening to the calming voice of a mother who cared.
When she switched back, she found herself in her own room, the ghost of a sob still on her lips. Beatrice looked around for signs of her parents, hearing their voices down the stairs. Beatrice took a deep breath, mentally berating herself. She was six years old, old enough to meet her soulmate. She could handle anything.
Her mother was the first to look up as she made her way down the stairs. “Is that you now, Beatrice?”
Unable to form words, she nodded.
To her surprise, her mother smiled, seemingly affectionate, but Beatrice knew to look for the serrated edge. It was the complete opposite of Carolyn, who offered comfort with every gesture. “Your soulmate is a handful, I’ll give you that. Running around, asking questions a mile a minute.” She chuckled. “But he seems like a very nice boy, if a little excitable. Informed us several times how excited he was and how ‘cool’ it was to finally meet his soulmate.”
“Did you-” Beatrice cleared her throat and tried again. “Did he tell you his name?”
“No, sadly we never got a word in edgewise. Maybe next time.”
Beatrice nearly sagged with relief, instead nodding her head sharply. “Of course. Next time.”
***
The next time the switch happened, her parents stated with degrees of annoyance her soulmate had yet to give his name.
And the next.
And the next.
And the next.
***
A year later at the age of seven, they sent her away for not living up to their expectations. In some part of her mind, the thought surfaced that they’d found out about Ava. This was her punishment for being defective.
She left, taking her soulmate with her to a Catholic school in Switzerland, where she promised herself she would show her parents her potential. She would study hard, and she would prove she was good enough to be their daughter.
So why did it ring hollow when she voiced it out loud?
***
Beatrice was in class when the switch happened. A month into her new accommodations, she had been expecting it sooner. Beatrice dropped her pen, leaving a streak of ink through her French conjugation practise. The last thing she saw through her own eyes was the pen rolling to the end of the table.
She found herself blinking up at a pale ceiling, paint peeling away in strips. Furrowing her brow, she struggled to sit up, alarm spiking at the lack of response in her soulmate’s limbs.
Beginning to panic, she tried again, straining to move anything, a pinky, her foot. Nothing. All sensation was muffled, like a dream that you couldn’t control. Hazy, distant. Even the sheets that covered her torso, tucked carefully around her legs felt detached, like it truly was a stranger’s body.
“What’s happening,” she breathed, choking on a gasp.
An older woman walked in, dressed in a white uniform. “You with us now?” Her voice grated on Beatrice’s senses, somehow made harsher with the lack of feeling in her limbs.
“I’m not Ava,” she murmured, and the woman started, appraising her again.
“You’re her soulmate.” The woman’s mouth twitched, as if the situation was amusing. “Luck of the draw, isn’t that right?”
Beatrice could do nothing more than scowl. “Where is her mother, shouldn’t she be here?” It pained her to admit she missed Carolyn more than her own parents.
“Ava was in a car accident on her holiday here in Spain. She escaped with a mangled spine and some broken bones, but her mother didn’t make it. This is an orphanage, not a hospital, and I am Sister Frances, Ava’s caretaker.”
Beatrice wished she could scream, but a weight felt like it was crushing her to the mattress, body made of lead. Not even Sister Frances with her terse words could shake her back to the present.
Her soulmate had lost her mother and her body. And she felt that agony in her heart as if it were hers.
Maybe, she thought. If we share the pain I can make it bearable. I hope she knows she’s not alone.
Returning to her own body, she sat forward with a gasp. Some in the class were still chattering, a direct opposite from the silent room she’d left.
“Your soulmate is funny.” A girl with pigtails leaned towards Beatrice, still giggling.”And she seems nice.”
She is. She is.
Beatrice smiled back, though her heart wasn’t in it. She kept imagining Ava laying in that bed, watched over by the hawklike Sister Frances. She imagined her laying there and promised herself she would do everything in her power to make her soulmate happy. Even if her parents would hate her for it.
***
The letters began that same year.
Beatrice would scribble hastily written notes, stuffing them in her pocket with an extra pen. When they switched, she immediately took the crumpled paper from her pocket to squint at the writing.
The first one began: *Hiiiii! You speak french?*
Not the most thrilling note. The edges were smudged and hastily scribbled, a blurry word crossed out as if she’d spelled it wrong the first try. But it was a start.
Some days the notes were longer.
*There was the best show on today. Kids with superpowers, so cool! And a bird landed on my window sill, it was so blue I thought it was fake. By the way, this girl in your class says she thinks you’re a teacher's pet so I hope you’re not mad that I yelled at her. She’s probably scared of you now if she wasn’t already.*
Some might think them trivial, but as the years went on, with their souls interchanging, her opening her eyes in Ava’s paralized body. When they switched, Beatrice took the time to organize her thoughts, seeing the world through another’s eyes became a beautiful moment. While Ava took the opportunity to wreak havoc upon those who dared insult her soulmate.
Beatrice could only feel fondness for her other half. Every note only cemented that feeling, a reaffirmation that this was her person, this was the one she was meant to be with. A dorky, fierce girl, who wisecracks when their scribbled conversations get too personal, yet who can’t wait to tell her how beautiful the sunrise was that morning.
***
Years passed.
Ava got a roommate named Diego, who Beatrice approved of immensely. The young boy was shy, but when he started talking he would go on for hours, recounting the events of his day in detail. Beatrice would often sit in awe listening to him ramble. He would be a good friend for Ava, she was sure of it.
The notes never ceased, growing more personal and intricate as they grew older. Gone were the misspelled words and smudged writing. Though Ava maintained the habit of doodling little figures on the page corners. Beatrice saved every one.
Beatrice eventually graduated top of her class. Where she knew she should have felt pride, there was only the empty feeling that she was only adhering to her parent’s expectations. It leached any sense of success from her achievements and settled in her stomach like a rock.
Taking up martial arts was like retrieving something she’d lost long ago, a trinket taken by the current washing up upon the shore. She had taken those very lessons once, when her parents gave her fighting instructors. She had mastered them exceptionally quickly and was praised as a prodigy before her parents had decided she’d learned enough.
Beatrice regained a sense of control over her life, though every relearned lesson made something inside whisper of how disappointed her family would be, how she continued to disgrace them.
Perhaps those very whispers were what brought her to the Order of the Cruciform Sword.
***
With the OCS she found something she never would have dreamed of- a new sense of purpose.
The ensuing years helped gain a grasp on her identity. Beatrice still harbored insecurity, but it was dimmed next to her determination and the forging of a tentative new family, fragile enough to break under duress but new enough to grow with time.
Ava immediately butted heads with Lilith. The first day she switched, as Camila told Beatrice later, Ava had bowed to Lilith teasingly, a joke towards her imperious tone. Lilith had rapped her on the head with her baton and the whole thing had escalated into a full out war, Ava ducking and dodging and throwing people’s food at Lilith. Because of course it happened at lunch time in front of the whole Cat’s Cradle.
It did explain why she had so many bruises.
“She is insufferable,” Lilith snapped to Beatrice after she’d returned to her own body, shaking bits of shepherds pie from her hair. Though if a glimmer of approval had glinted in her eyes, Beatrice didn’t point it out.
***
Her world came to a halt one day. The day the switch didn’t happen.
The day she felt her soulmate die.