Archive of Our Own

Janna was born with a cut string.

No one in the family had ever had a cut string. There were those born without strings, those born with short strings, those born with strings so long it would take years to find their soulmate, if ever—strings were never a given, nor were their length, nor was the possibility of ever finding your person. Janna’s father hadn’t married his soulmate, but had instead fallen head-over-heels in love with Janna’s mother, the string blissfully ignored in pursuit of what he felt would be a far more complete happiness. The aunts whispered about this all the time, when they weren’t busy whispering about Janna’s string. But everyone whispered about Janna’s string.

A cut string wasn’t something that happened. Strings could cut when they were thread, twine, yarn, but not the kind of strings that you were born with. Not everyone could see the strings, but they were there—thin threads of every color, looped and tied around a person’s pinky finger, weightless and glowing and warm. A string meant that you had someone in the world whose heart was meant to love yours, and if you found them, they would love you forever and ever. There was no cutting something like that.

Except someone had cut Janna’s string. And it clearly hadn’t been her, because when she was born, her string hung quiet and limp in a tangled pile so large that looked as though it could stretch across the Atlantic Ocean. It didn’t really matter, because strings were more an insubstantial magical construct than an actual obstruction, but they’d gone through ancient rituals and old relics until they could find something to cut the excess string. No one liked looking at it.

Everyone in the family had their own ideas about Janna. Or, more specifically, everyone in the family had an idea about Janna: she was unlovable. Why else would she be born with a cut string? What could possibly prompt a soulmate to want to cut a string before Janna was old enough to hold her head up by herself? Cut strings didn’t happen among the Roma. Love was eternal. Love was sacred. Someone in the world had looked into Janna’s future and seen something so horrible that they had known she could never be loved.

It was her mother who sat her down when she was old enough to listen (though not quite old enough to understand) and took Janna’s little hand in hers, carefully uncurling the stubby pinky finger so that the two of them could look at the blood-red thread. “Your soulmate doesn’t love you,” she explained. “We may never know why.”

Janna felt the sting only distantly, at the time. The idea of a soulmate seemed a strange hypothetical, particularly when her father and her mother weren’t soulmates anyway. But as she got older, she started to notice how the aunts would sigh knowingly when she misbehaved, how none of the uncles seemed to look her directly in the eye, how the cousins never wanted to play with her for all that long. And when she was eight years old, her mother told her the rest.

“The elders asked me if I wanted to look into your future,” her mother said, brushing Janna’s hair before bed. “They said that there was always a possibility your string could be explained. But I…” She sighed. “I don’t want to know why my daughter is unlovable,” she said, soft and sad. “Why someone believed that your string had to be cut. Whatever you become, I…I only want to know you as you are right now.”

Janna was still too small to reach the cabinets in the kitchen. All she heard in those words was my daughter is unlovable.

It never left her.

Jenny Calendar wore a ring on her pinky finger. Thick band, a tiny piece of red jasper set in the middle, an illusion spell woven cleverly in to disguise the tied string underneath. Anyone who asked was told that she didn’t have a soulmate, and anyone who didn’t ask was, generally speaking, the kind of person that she liked to spend her time around. She didn’t go out of her way to share her little sob story. Bad enough that her family still thought she was a godless freak.

And anyway, if there was still a part of her that had wanted a soulmate, she’d killed it years ago. No point in wanting something that you were apparently destined to not have. Whatever it was that had made her soulmate decide against her, it was as indelibly fated as Angelus, as impossible to argue with as—well, her uncle, probably. It would be a waste of time to think about it, and so she never did. Never. No one knew, and no one looked at her like they had when she was little, because absolutely everyone thought she was just the average soulmate-free individual. Most people didn’t have soulmates. It was fine. It was fine.

“All right?” said Rupert.

Jenny looked down. Her cheese danish, which she had very meticulously wrapped in a napkin to bring back to her classroom, was squished miserably in her clenched fist. “Oh no,” she said mournfully, unable to even pretend at stone-cold bitchery when she had somehow managed to destroy the very last cheese danish. “God. You ever have a day where it just starts shitty, and then it keeps going, and then it gets to a point where you have to actually take accountability for parts of how shitty it is, because the bad mood you’re in has started to actively make things worse—”

Rupert handed her his cheese danish.

Jenny was so astonished that she actually dropped both of the pastries she was holding. Rupert, thankfully, had seen this coming, and hastily snatched the still-intact cheese danish from midair before patiently placing it in Jenny’s hands again. “I can’t take this!” she said, shoving it back at him. “We nearly came to blows last week over the last one! I know how much you like—”

“Yes, well, if you’re in the sort of mood to brutally murder pastries, I feel it’s my civic duty to ensure that that mood subsides at least enough to keep me physically safe,” said Rupert, in that overly stuffy way that he’d been using as an attempt to obfuscate him being nice to her in public. It had been happening a lot lately over the past three days. Jenny still didn’t know how she felt about it. “Just—you take that one, I’ll…” He looked a little ruefully down at the squished-to-bits cheese danish, which was looking significantly worse for wear after having fallen splat on the linoleum. “Throw…the other one…away.”

He sounded adorably puppyish in his sadness. Jenny sent a retroactive fuck you in Moloch’s direction for forcing her to notice things like this. “…Look, sharing is caring, right?” she said, and carefully split the cheese danish down the middle. “Are there any other pastries left?”

“Banana nut muffin,” said Rupert. “And, um, poppy seed.”

“So you pick your favorite one, and we can split that too.” Jenny gave him a hopefully encouraging smile. Her stomach did a loop-the-loop when he returned it. “…Thanks, by the way,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “I’ve been…I don’t know.”

Glancing a little nervously at the small crowd of teachers waiting for their pastries with visible impatience, Rupert winced, scooping up a poppy seed muffin before carefully steering Jenny out of the way of the snack table. “I-is everything all right?” he asked shyly. Off of Jenny’s startled look, he said, “I, I know we don’t, um, know each other very well, but—well—last Friday made it quite clear that you’re someone I really would like to get to know. Um. Better. If you’re amenable. And—”

The likelihood that she was going to get cavities from the abrupt and terrifying sweetness of Rupert Giles was at an all-time high—and wasn’t that a sentence that Jenny would never have imagined herself thinking before last Friday? Bemusement gave way to a warm, touched feeling. “Can we sit down?” said Jenny, and smiled gratefully when Rupert obliged, the two of them taking their seats at an unoccupied table near the back of the room. “Honestly…” She trailed off, letting out a small sigh. “You’re gonna think I’m being silly.”

“Oh, I might,” said Rupert, which made an irritated Jenny press her lips together to hide her smile. “I will try and be—well—at least a bit more receptive, though, Jenny. Scout’s honor.”

“Do they even have Boy Scouts in England?” When Rupert gave her a look that very clearly communicated get to the point, Jenny rolled her eyes, taking a deliberately slow bite of the cheese danish and relishing his deeply annoyed expression. “Aura Rhodes met her soulmate in class this morning,” she said. “Transfer student.”

“So you’re…jealous,” said Rupert carefully, glancing down at what very much looked like Jenny’s string-free pinky finger.

“You could say that,” said Jenny, staring down at her half of the poppy seed muffin. She would have bet a solid amount of good, hard American cash that Rupert’s favorite kind of muffin was banana nut—he always picked it if she got the last cheese danish—but hers was poppy seed, which she would never have imagined him noticing. Not that there was any evidence that he had. Maybe he’d just wanted to change things up today.

“Do you…want to…” Rupert gestured vaguely, looking deeply uncomfortable. “That is…if there’s…”

“There’s not much more to say,” said Jenny, mouth twitching at the way Rupert all but deflated with relief. “I mean, I don’t have a soulmate, some of these kids do, tale as old as time, yada yada yada. Just one of those neurotic nearly-thirty moments of oh, God, never gonna know love like that.”

“Well, yes,” said Rupert, and smiled in a strange, sad way. “I—” He glanced down at his own pinky finger, upon which he wore a signet ring. “I know what you mean.”

Jenny blinked, then blushed. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”

“No, it’s—” Rupert met her eyes, sweetly conciliatory. “It’s nice to know we have that particular insecurity in common.”

Jenny ducked her head, laughing a little wryly. The halfway-lie sat heavy in her stomach. “Um, yeah,” she said. “In common. Yep.”

When she got home that day, she took off her ring. Fiddled with the ends of the string, that awful blood-red that had never felt exactly right, and tried to imagine how Rupert would look at her if he knew how fucking awful she really was. The kind of awful that inspired someone to drag out age-old magics just to get rid of her before she could even speak. She’d seen the baby pictures; she’d always been an adorable little kid. She wondered if her soulmate cared about any of that.

She wondered why she cared what her soulmate thought, all of a sudden.

Rupert made her laugh. It was a dumb thing to notice about a guy, but there it was. Most people she’d been into made her laugh with barbed witticisms, and Rupert definitely had that in his toolkit, but sometimes she’d get a good hit in, and he’d blink like a confused little bunny rabbit, and she’d feel the urge to giggle just because he was so damned cute. She wasn’t sure what that was, but she liked it, and it stuck around like an earworm for a good few months before it started solidifying into a feeling.

Most of the feeling was I want to fuck him.

“—and the cultural ramifications in the demonic community were severe, obviously,” Rupert was saying, eyes bright, words just a little slurred. His head tipped towards hers under the night sky. “Eons of history lost. Heaped blame on the heads of the Council, and of course if this was closer to now that would’ve been a, a chance for diplomatic negotiations, but this was, ah, fourteenth, fifteenth century, so there wasn’t much—much awareness when it came to the negotiation capacities of this particular demonic strain.”

Jenny was only halfway listening. “Strains, huh?” she said, eyes lingering on Rupert’s soft, wet mouth as he took a sip of beer. “Not great.”

“It really wasn’t,” Rupert continued, “they were—” Nervously, he glanced towards Jenny, cheeks coloring. “I am sorry. I’ve been going on.”

“What?” Jenny straightened. “No! I—” She blushed, grateful that the dim streetlights outside the Bronze made it difficult for him to see. “I like listening to you.”

“…ah.” Rupert smiled shyly at his shoes. “That’s a new development.”

“Shut up,” said Jenny, shoving his shoulder. Some of Rupert’s beer spilled forward, falling in an arc to splash just in front of him. “Shit. Do you want me to buy you another one?”

“No, I…I need to drive the children home—”

“Yeah, I think Cordelia has that covered.” Jenny reached up, straightening his tie. “And you’re a little more than buzzed now anyway. If anybody’s driving, it should probably be me.”

“You’re drunk,” Rupert accused. “Or—or—you’ve been drinking, at least. Hardly responsible behavior for the designated driver.”

“We can hitch a ride with the kids! Or, um—” Jenny’s stomach turned. She kept her smile plastic and easy. “What’s that guy’s name? Buffy’s boyfriend?”

“Angel,” said Rupert a little warily.

Jenny wondered if he knew. She decided that it wasn’t her business. She tried not to think about how it would probably be at least a little bit of her business if she followed through on fucking him. “Yeah, he could drive us,” she said as breezily as she could, figuring that it would probably help sell the cover. Jenny Calendar wouldn’t have a problem suggesting something like that, and if Angel was dating the Slayer, she’d have to get goddamn good at acting comfortable around him. “Vampires don’t drink, right?”

Rupert snorted.

“What?”

“Well, they—” Rupert was starting to giggle. “They—um, historically, Ms. Calendar, they do—”

It hit her. “Oh my god, that’s so dumb,” Jenny wheezed, doubling over in laughter and very nearly spilling her own beer. “You’re so not funny. You know what I mean!”

“Angel hasn’t imbibed,” Rupert giggled, tipping his head towards her again. He kept doing that. It was so sweet. He was so sweet. “I’m what?” said Rupert, his eyes going all puppy-dog soft.

“What?” said Jenny.

“You said—”

“Huh?” Jenny’s words finally caught up to her. “Oh. Um—did I say that out loud?”

Rupert was smiling at her. Warm and tender, the way that nobody was supposed to smile at her. The way that nobody ever had. She was judicious about picking the kind of guys who wouldn’t smile at her like that, and she had been so sure that Rupert never would, but if he was doing that—

“You should know, I’m, like, fundamentally unlovable,” said Jenny.

Rupert’s smile froze. “…What?”

Oh, God, she was drunk if she’d said that. “Um,” said Jenny, drawing back. “Nothing, I—I don’t know, I—”

But her words had not had the desired effect. If possible, Rupert had softened further, into a level of tenderness that was generally reserved for Disney princes when they saw their princess for the first time, and that was not a helpful thought. “That’s quite a loaded statement,” he said, in this gentle, careful voice that made her feel like someone had just ripped her heart out of her chest. “And I—I know I don’t know you too well, all things considered, but I think I know you well enough to—”

Jenny didn’t want him to finish. She was goddamn certain that he wouldn’t be saying shit like that if he knew. “I never say anything that I can’t back up,” she said. “You know that.” And she took off her ring, holding up her right hand in front of Rupert. Free of the illusion magic, the thread around her pinky finger flared up, glowing gold around the blood-red for just a moment.

Rupert’s eyes zeroed in on the string. “That’s—”

“I lied,” said Jenny. She forced a smile. She was probably a little drunker than she should be if she thought that this was a good idea, but god, the thought of him telling her that she was lovable without knowing this— “It’s, um, easier. To pretend that I don’t have it.”

Rupert seemed beyond words. Somehow, that hurt the most. This was a Watcher, a man who had studied everything under the sun, and even he was looking at her like something was seriously wrong with her. “Why—that is, how—” He took a shaky breath in, visibly collecting himself. “Ms. Calendar—”

“I mean, you know about my cut string, I feel like you get to call me Jenny,” Jenny quipped, keeping that sharp, plastic smile on her face.

“Jenny,” said Rupert, somewhere between sharp frustration and utter heartbreak. It was the latter that silenced Jenny entirely, color rising to her cheeks. “You—how did this happen?”

“I don’t know,” said Jenny. Her smile trembled. “I was born like this. Missing my connection. Whoever my soulmate was, they—” She waved a hand. “Didn’t want me, I guess. Enough to dig up some pretty powerful fucking magic to make sure they didn’t have to stay connected. And, um, I come from a family well-versed in magic, so it was pretty much common knowledge that…” She drew back, laughing miserably. “God. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. I just—”

Rupert reached out and took Jenny’s hand.

Jenny’s breath caught. She couldn’t remember what she had been saying, if anything. Rupert’s thumb was running along the blood-red thread, making it pulse in a way that felt almost longing, and it was then that she realized that not once had anyone ever tried to touch it before. “You are not,” he said. His voice broke. “You are not unlovable, Jenny.”

Now Jenny just wasn’t breathing at all.

“Christ,” said Rupert. “That anyone would make you think—” Tears had gathered in his eyes.

“Rupert, it’s fine,” said Jenny uncomfortably, trying to draw her hand back. “It’s not a big deal or anything—”

In response to this, Rupert raised his head and gave Jenny one of the most flatly disbelieving looks she’d ever seen.

“—well, fine, maybe it is, but I mostly just told you because—” Jenny’s stomach turned. “You shouldn’t be wasting your time with me,” she said. “I have someone. Like, an actual soulmate. Not everybody gets one of those. It has to be a really strong connection, and they chose to break it. I can’t imagine any reason that anyone would do that.”

A strange expression crossed Rupert’s face. For just a moment, his fingers tightened around Jenny’s hand. “I…don’t know,” he said. “The, the connection, it…once severed, it can only be entirely repaired by the person who chose to sever it. There, there really isn’t anything that can be done if your soulmate truly doesn’t want—” His voice caught. “I’m so sorry,” he said, all wobbly. “I don’t mean to—I know that you’re trying to downplay this, Jenny, a-and I know you didn’t even really want to admit this to me, but the thought of someone doing this to you, it…”

Now it was Jenny’s turn to feel tears in her eyes. She wanted to say it’s not a big deal, but—god, the way he was reacting, maybe it fucking was. “No, I’m sorry,” she said. “This is a total buzzkill.”

“Well, I’ll be all right to drive now,” said Rupert wryly. “Feeling remarkably sober.”

Jenny sniffled, trying to smile. “Good pun.”

“I do my best.” Rupert brushed his thumb against Jenny’s thread. She felt it in her bones. “Would you like to go back inside?”

“I…” Jenny glanced bemusedly up at him. “You aren’t gonna push this?”

Rupert gave her a bemused look right back. “This is very clearly a deep-seated insecurity of yours,” he said. “Quite frankly, I’d say it borders on trauma. I certainly don’t agree with your conclusion, but I’m not arrogant enough to think that I have the ability to change your mind about your capacity to be loved through a single conversation, especially when—well, when we’ve only very recently reached a place of cordiality.”

“Wow,” said Jenny. “Where was this attitude back in March?”

“Being bludgeoned to death by a woman with absolutely no willingness to even so much as consider a compromise,” said Rupert.

“She sounds like a total bitch,” said Jenny, cracking a smile.

Rupert tilted his head towards her. “No,” he said simply. “She doesn’t.”

It didn’t take them that long to get there. It might have taken them longer if Jenny hadn’t felt his thumb against her thread, the way her blood and her body rose to that touch like she’d been starved for it her entire fucking life, but they were drunk, and she was thinking about him saying the thought of someone doing this to you, trailing off like he couldn’t even find the words to describe how horrible it was. And it had been horrible. Why was he the only person who had understood that? Aunts and uncles and cousins, magic that went back generations, and none of them had understood the awful isolation of knowing that the person who was destined to love you didn’t want to do it.

Cordelia stopped at Jenny’s first, at which point Rupert mumbled something indistinct about wanting to walk Jenny to her door just to be safe, and the kids all whispered and giggled in a way that made Rupert blush and Jenny grin a little wryly. He took her arm as they were walking up to her apartment, reaching absently with his free hand to play at her thread.

“I like when you do that,” said Jenny, slow and languid. It was hard to be guarded when she felt the pulse of those long-lonely magics.

Rupert turned in the hall, eyes half-lidded. “Do what?” he said distantly.

“You know,” Jenny placed her free hand over his, pressing his thumb closer to her thread, “that.”

“What?” Rupert looked slowly down at his hand. His eyes widened. “Oh. Ah, Ms. Calendar, I—I didn’t even realize—that is, if you find it—I, I wasn’t trying to impede upon your clearly stated boundaries, I just, I really did want to make sure you got home safe, I’m not sure why—that is, I’m not sure what—”

Jenny stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

Rupert sighed, his nervous hands fluttering up to cup her face, pull her in. His nose bumped against hers as he kissed her back. He was sweet, chaste, but Jenny turned the kiss insistent, draping her arms around his neck, sliding her tongue into his mouth. Tangled this close to him, pressing herself against his chest, she could feel every hitch in his breath, and she honest-to-God gasped when he broke the kiss to mouth at her neck. She felt electric.

“Jenny,” Rupert was mumbling, dazed, warm. “Jenny.”

This was going to go somewhere soon in a matter of seconds. That was the thought that brought clarity to Jenny’s mind. She pressed a hand against his chest, waiting until he had raised his eyes to hers. “I don’t do serious, okay?” she said. She didn’t know why her voice wavered in the middle, and resented it. Especially when Rupert did not look appropriately chagrined at the news that he was kissing a total commitment-phobe, and instead softened again like she was some delicate little butterfly or something. “I’m not—I can’t—”

Rupert leaned forward with a small smile, brushing his nose against hers. “I don’t mind,” he said, barely a whisper. “Whatever you’d like, Jenny.”

She didn’t talk to him all summer, halfway hoping that that would be the thing to finally push him into being fucking sick of her, but she got back in August and his eyes shone when he saw her. The very small part of Jenny’s brain capable of long-term big-picture thinking said: Shit. This is not good. The part of Jenny’s brain that was still thinking about how he had pressed her into the mattress and gone down on her until she was nothing but a breathless mess was not at all interested in any long-term big-picture problems with this arrangement, and was in fact much more focused on roping him into as much extracurricular time together as was feasibly possible. Preferably with time marked off for him to go down on her. Preferably for a good few hours at least.

There was something electric about sex with Rupert. She wasn’t sure what it was. Didn’t want to let herself think about the way her thread felt when he touched it, how her whole body felt drawn to his like magnets, like he was her true north—thinking about that made her think about things, stupid things, that she knew she could never have. Rupert didn’t have a soulmate. Jenny’s soulmate hadn’t wanted her. Even if Rupert wanted her in a casual way, it wasn’t in a true-love way that Jenny didn’t want and didn’t care about and didn’t ever think about anyway.

Not that Rupert was a very casual person. This was part of the problem.

Halfway into the fall semester, Jenny started getting the sense that there was something Rupert wanted to talk to her about. It wasn’t exactly a difficult deduction to make: he’d been getting this furtive look on his face sometimes, sneaking looks at her like he was trying to discern whether or not to open his mouth about something, and then spooking every time she actually asked him if there was something he wanted to talk to her about. Her Rupert was not very subtle.

He was also—Jenny pressed her lips together, frustrated with herself—not her Rupert. Hers in the sense that she was with him, of course, but not hers in the sense that she could ever actually hope to be loved by him. Her heart had always been destined to love someone else, and that someone else had decided that she wasn’t worth the fucking trouble. If there was someone good enough, brave enough, strange enough to want to love Jenny Calendar, they would have to be something like—

Well. Something like Rupert.

Except that it wasn’t Rupert. And the thought of someone out there who was better than Rupert, better for her than Rupert, felt embarrassingly ridiculous. He was sweet, sure, in a way that warmed her heart, but he was also mean in a way that made her laugh. Passive-aggressive and long-suffering and bitchy in a way that made her feel safe to be the same. She’d never felt so comfortable around a boyfriend, so happy to spend time just talking to him, and trying to imagine someone who would suit her heart more, someone towards whom she could feel even half of what she felt for him…

All of this was tipping into dangerously romantic territory. Jenny steered it back towards safer waters. The point, she reminded herself, was that Rupert wasn’t that person for her. And if she had been meant for a greater joy than the joy she felt around him, and if that person—that person whose heart was just like hers—had given it up for reasons neither she nor Rupert could understand, then there was absolutely no way that this thing with Rupert could ever actually go anywhere serious. He was a good guy, but the universe had pretty much already stamped THIS ISN’T TRUE LOVE on their relationship before she’d ever even met him. If he was the kind of person who could make her happy long-term, he’d be her fucking soulmate.

(If he was her soulmate, he never would have cut that string. Never.)

She focused on the parts that were good. The sex was spectacular, to the point where they’d gotten a little risky more than once on campus simply because she couldn’t keep her hands off him, and he had this habit of holding her hand just so he could run his finger along the intricate band of her red jasper ring. It always made her long for the way it felt when he touched that thread, obviously, but it also reminded her that there was someone who knew about her cut string and still didn’t look at her any differently. Went out of his way to comfort her about it, instead, even when he didn’t have to. Whenever he held her hand like that, she got to remember that she wasn’t the only person who hurt when she thought about that string, and that if it were Rupert—

God, that wasn’t a safe thought to have. But the way he looked at her hand, the way he touched the thread when they were alone—like it was some sort of horrific wound she should never have been inflicted with. He kissed it in October and she had to yank her hand back when the feelings and the magic became too dizzyingly overwhelming. He didn’t try it again. She was so glad that he seemed to think she didn’t want him to.

She had dreams, now. Dreams of a golden thread that had once stretched across the Atlantic, growing shorter and shorter like it was supposed to until he tumbled into her arms in Sunnydale. Dreams of the way it would feel to press her fingers against his thread and watch him flutter and sigh, the little string giving way entirely to a steady golden glow around them both. Soulmates glowed when they were together; she’d seen it. Not always—most preferred the simplicity of a string, or the ability to make their connection invisible entirely once they had found each other—but some of them glowed even when they tried to hide it. Janna had always watched those kinds of soulmates with wide, longing eyes.

She didn’t tell him about those dreams. She didn’t want to watch his face go warm and sad with sympathy. There was absolutely nothing that he could say to heal this particular wound, and despite his best efforts, she really didn’t see how this was going to work long-term. She was always going to be living with the fact that her soulmate didn’t want her. She didn’t want him to ever feel like she was settling for second best.

Most of their after-school liaisons were only loosely planned. This was perhaps why, when Jenny not-so-subtly suggested that they stay in next Saturday, Rupert’s eyebrows shot up and his eyes widened. She’d been expecting that. What she hadn’t been expecting was for that same strange expression to cross his face. “Jenny,” he said tentatively. “Might we…step inside your classroom for a moment?”

Jenny felt a pinprick of nervous misery. Was scheduling sex a little too serious for him? She didn’t know a whole bunch about not-that-casual relationships, but she’d figured that as long as they never had the exclusivity talk or asked about anybody’s parents, they were probably still within a safely nebulous realm. “…Okay,” she said, letting Rupert lead her into the computer lab.

Rupert shut the door behind them. He stayed with his back turned to Jenny for long enough that she started to feel her anxiety growing. When he finally turned around, he said, “…I have something to…” and trailed off, taking off his glasses to fidget with them before replacing them.

Bluntly, Jenny said, “You breaking up with me?”

“What? No!” The genuine alarm in Rupert’s expression halved Jenny’s apprehension. “No, I—I just, I haven’t—” He took in a steadying breath, letting his eyes flutter shut for just a moment before he continued. “I fear I haven’t been—as candid with you as you have with me,” he said uncertainly. “I wasn’t—when you told me about—”

Whatever this was, it didn’t sound good. Jenny did not want to have this conversation five minutes before class started. “You know what, Rupert,” she said, “why don’t we double back to this on Saturday? We’re gonna get interrupted by my morning class if you take too long to get this out, and I want you to have as much time as you need.”

Rupert didn’t look too happy about this. “I don’t know if postponing this is a good idea,” he started.

“I mean, do you want to have an abridged version of whatever this is?” said Jenny, jerking her head towards the clock. “We’ll have lots of time on Saturday, barring any horrific demonic activity.” Please, she thought to no one in particular, give us some horrific demonic activity. I do not want to have a serious conversation with my boyfriend.

Rupert sighed, looking at her with that…guilt? Almost? It didn’t make sense. “All right,” he said quietly, and left the classroom, leaving Jenny feeling…not as good as she was hoping that she would. Usually, managing to push a difficult conversation away for a handful of hours felt like an achievement. It didn’t today.

It’ll be fine, she reassured herself. He’s surprised you before. He’ll do it again.

Understatement of the fucking century.

So obviously it was great that Jenny and Rupert weren’t soulmates, because soulmates wouldn’t keep things like demon-raising and body-snatching on the down-low, and soulmates definitely wouldn’t get each other into situations that somehow ended with one of them getting choked out by the vampire that haunted her nightmares in order to save her life. If Jenny was the kind of person where therapy worked (it didn’t, because she was amazing at dealing with her own problems on her own time and didn’t need any help with anything), she would definitely be in therapy after a situation like this.

All of her dreams were about golden threads around her neck and a pair of scissors glistening with blood. She tried not to think about it.

The worst part was that she would touch the thread at night and it would feel like nothing. She ran her thumb along it, trying to bring back that feeling of completeness, of healing, but all she felt was her pinky finger and that same scooped-out feeling of empty misery. Rupert had made her feel whole. He’d accepted the one part of her that she had grown up wishing she could cut out. She didn’t know how to do that for herself when the one person who had done it had turned out to be the polar opposite of casual simplicity.

How could she want him there when she was hurting? She wasn’t supposed to want anyone there at all! Her whole body wanted him curled up against her, stroking her hair, telling her it was all right and he’d protect her and she’d never be hurt like that again. He made safety believable on a fucking Hellmouth. She couldn’t need that from somebody. She had an agenda. A mission.

But she ached when she saw him in the halls, all hurt and sad, looking at her like he knew how much she missed him, how much she needed him. Like it was killing him to not be there taking care of her. It terrified her. No one had ever wanted to take care of her even half as much as Rupert did, and she hated that there was a part of her that wanted to throw herself at him and—and—

And take off her ring in the hallway, throwing it to the side. Press his hand against the string around her pinky and feel that dizzying warmth. That relief. She knew he didn’t, couldn’t feel what she felt in that moment, but just the fact that he was willing to give it to her—

Goddamn it, she wanted to throw herself at him and fuck him. She wanted to fuck him. She did not want him to touch her and make her feel like a lovable human person, she wanted to fuck him. She was fine. She was handling things fine. She was great at this.

Rupert stepped into her classroom.

“What,” snapped Jenny, and instantly regretted it. Rupert flinched back. “God,” she said, turning to face him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m just, I’m a little on edge, I—is there something you want?”

“No, I—I just—” Rupert wavered, eyes all soft. He was still looking at her like she was someone precious. She didn’t know how to get him to stop. “If you’re—that is, if you need your space right now—”

“You’ll ignore that and probably show up within the next two days, right?” At the stricken look on Rupert’s face, Jenny sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Please just leave,” she said, hating the quaver in her voice.

Rupert left. It didn’t really make her feel any better.

She did apologize for it, eventually. Along with all the other times she’d brushed him off, or been a little short with him, to which Rupert very sweetly and earnestly responded that it was well within her rights to be angry when he had been ignoring her clearly-set boundaries. As ever, this confused Jenny greatly, but not necessarily in the worst way ever. She’d missed him. They spent most of their time at the hospital snuggled up together on Rupert’s cot, her head tucked under his chin and her ring in her pocket for the first time in weeks. He ran his finger along the thread, just like always, and it was like all of the tension she’d been feeling just drained away completely. She didn’t know what to do about that just yet. She was trying not to think about it too much.

But it was when she leaned in to kiss him the next morning, eager to return to the usual warmth and wonder of their companionship, that Rupert stepped back with wide, anxious eyes. “Jenny…” He took her hand in his, pressing his index finger against her red jasper ring as if trying to preemptively comfort her. “I wanted to talk to you that Saturday,” he said. “I think that it needs to happen now.”

The worst part of this, Jenny thought, was that she really couldn’t argue with him about it. Rupert keeping secrets didn’t exactly lead to great things for the both of them. “…Okay,” she said, very reluctantly, and let him lead her into his office, pulling herself up to sit on his desk.

Rupert took her hand in his. He fiddled with her ring, but didn’t remove it, staring down at the red stone with a halfway-mournful expression. “…Why did you choose red jasper?” he finally asked.

Surprised by the question, Jenny decided that if it delayed whatever it was he was trying to tell her, she didn’t mind getting a little emotionally vulnerable. “It’s a protection stone,” she said. “It’s supposed to ground you. And I—” She laughed, hating the wobble to it. “I kinda needed that.”

Rupert nodded. He kept nodding. His hand was starting to tremble. “Mine is a family heirloom,” he said.

“What?”

Dropping Jenny’s hand, Rupert removed his signet ring.

Jenny drew in a shuddering gasp, her hands flying to her mouth. Underneath the thick golden band was a cut red string. “Rupert!” she said, her voice shaking. “What—what—”

“It’s Watcher protocol,” said Rupert shakily. He didn’t seem able to meet her eyes. “I had it cut when I was ten years old. It’s not a requirement, exactly, we’re—we’re allowed to have soulmates, but most of the boys that age are encouraged to give them up as a-a symbolic gesture. It’s supposed—to represent—our devotion to the calling. There is no hope for the world if those destined to protect it are tied to something that is not the greater good.”

Red, Jenny realized. Blood red. Just like hers.

“It was gold,” said Rupert. His voice broke. “Before it was cut, it—it was the most beautiful gold in the world. It doesn’t change color, not—not usually, but mine bled when it was cut. I felt it in my chest. I was told—” He swallowed. “I was told that I, I wasn’t supposed to feel it in the way that I did. That it was lucky I severed the connection when I did. Mine was, apparently, unusually strong.” He tried to smile. “U-unusually stubborn.”

Jenny had drawn her shaking hands towards her chest. She couldn’t stop staring at that red string. She had been able to talk herself out of wanting it when it wasn’t even remotely a possibility, but now, now, oh, God—

“When you told me—” Rupert was starting to cry. “The, the grief, the feeling of wrongness that you were put through because someone severed your connection, I—” He raised a hand to his face, wiping clumsily at his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never—never even stopped to think about what it might feel like. To not know. And the way you speak of your soulmate, I—I know how angry you must be with me now, to—to know that I might very well be responsible for—”

“We don’t know it’s you,” said Jenny.

Rupert looked like he’d been hit in the face. “…What?”

“We don’t.” Jenny moved back on the desk, heart pounding. “I mean, Rupert, you’re—you’re the best person I’ve ever met. And I’m…”

“Jenny,” said Rupert softly, moving towards her.

“No. We don’t know it’s you. You’d never do this to me.”

“I’m trying to tell you—”

“There’s a possibility, fine, but come on. Look at the odds!” Jenny waved a hand, realized that it was the hand with her ring, and yanked it down from midair, holding it protectively against her chest. “You’re trying to tell me that you and I show up in some random California town at the same time and it turns out I’m the—” There was a lump in her throat. “I’m the soulmate you’ve been missing all your life? You seriously believe that?”

“You can’t deny that there’s a connection between us,” said Rupert, quiet and firm. “And you can’t argue your way out of the way it feels for both of us when I make direct contact with your string.”

“The way it feels for—” Jenny felt a terrifying rush of emotion. “No. No. It feels good for me because I’ve never had anyone touch it before, Rupert. It’s, it’s someone accepting a part of me that I’ve been too afraid to show to anybody else. It’s not—”

Rupert reached for her hand.

“No!” said Jenny, and jumped up from the desk, knocking his books to the floor. Rupert didn’t even seem to notice. His eyes were on her, wide and tearful, hurt in a way she had been trying so fucking hard to never inflict upon him again. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’m sorry, I—”

Desperate to rectify the situation, her eyes landed on the books at her feet. Ancient texts in foreign languages. Nothing she understood. She stooped to pick them up, figuring that she could at least fix this, and one of the tiles caught her eye. Healing Rituals.

“You need to find her,” she said.

“I’m sorry?”

Jenny straightened up, the books entirely forgotten. “You need to find her,” she repeated, picking up the signet ring from where Rupert had placed it back on the desk. Pressing it into his hands. “Your soulmate. So you can—let go of whatever it is that has you thinking it’s me.”

“Our strings are the same color, Jenny.”

“So? Strings are every goddamn color of the rainbow. And I don’t want to talk about this, Rupert, because it is going to be really fucking humiliating for you when you find your actual soulmate and she finds out you’ve been chasing the skirt of some fundamentally unlovable monster. Maybe this—maybe this is what it is,” Jenny finished, breathless, hurting, as she gestured between the two of them. “Maybe it’s—my soulmate knowing, knowing I don’t want them the way I want you, knowing that somehow and not wanting to put themselves through that. I wouldn’t want a goddamn thing to do with my soulmate if they were going after me.”

“Clearly,” said Rupert, looking flatly at her.

Jenny rolled her eyes. “I’m serious,” she said. “You need to find her.”

Something in Rupert’s expression changed. “If I find her,” he said. “Right now. Ritual and all, reattach the string. Will you promise to support me when I pursue her?”

“It’s not going to be me, Rupert—”

“Well, if it’s not going to be you, I don’t see why you can’t promise to support me,” Rupert countered. “Quite frankly, it’s a reasonable request to make. We’ve been, ah, romantically involved for quite some time now. It would be perfectly sensible for you to be upset if I decided to pursue this hypothetical woman instead of continuing our connection. Therefore it’s perfectly sensible for me to ask you to promise that, whoever it is, you will support me when I pursue her.”

Jenny saw what he was doing. She had no interest in supporting it. “Okay,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Fine. Except I’ve got a condition of my own.”

“Name it.”

“Whoever your soulmate is,” said Jenny, “you have to be with her. No changing your mind once you find out who it is, and no romantic connections with anyone who isn’t her.”

Rupert’s mouth twitched. “All right.”

He thought he was being so slick, outmaneuvering her with clever little terms and conditions. So certain that he was right about this. He wouldn’t be half so smug once they figured out how to reattach that soulmate connection—once it became abundantly, indisputably obvious that his heart was meant for somebody else. Somebody better. No way for him to get out of the unavoidable truth once magic had come into play. Not when Jenny had so neatly backed him into a corner.

God, she was good at this.

Jenny lit the candles with shaking hands and tried not to think about the inevitability of losing Rupert. She’d talked him into it, and it had seemed like the best possible idea at the time, but all of a sudden it was starting to hit her: she had made him promise to leave her. Done it because she loved him, unselfishly, and anyone meant to be with him had to be one of the best people in the world—someone who deserved to be loved and touched tenderly—but the thought of never being held by him again was turning her stomach into knots. She was half-afraid she’d fuck up some vital portion of the ritual in her state of utter misery.

Rupert, in contrast, was working quickly and precisely, drawing sigils in the middle of the library table without ever even having to double-check the book. It was as though he’d been practicing to cast this for a lot longer than just today. Maybe he had been, Jenny realized, and her stomach twisted even more.

She didn’t want to think about how heartbroken he’d be when he found out he was wrong about them. It was made worse by the solid knowledge that he would, eventually, move on from her. Soulmates, when they found each other, never left each other again—and Jenny had never once heard about a soulmate connection that bled when it was severed. Whoever Rupert’s soulmate was, she had probably been hurting her entire life.

“Jenny,” said Rupert, suddenly, softly. When Jenny looked up at him, he had that half-hopeful look in his eyes, the one where he wanted to kiss her but didn’t know if she’d let him. “Before we—”

Jenny didn’t want to go down that road. “How long will this thing take?” she asked. “There’s only half an hour left before lunch is over.”

Rupert considered the question. “Well,” he said. “My admittedly limited research on the subject suggests that the length of the ritual is directly proportionate to the geographic distance of—”

“Less words, Rupert.”

Rupert gave her a flat look. “The closer my soulmate is to me,” he said, “the less time it will take to re-establish a connection.”

“…So, you don’t know.”

“Actually, Jenny, I’d estimate that—”

“SO YOU DON’T KNOW,” said Jenny, a little more loudly than she needed to, and went back to lighting the last two candles. “Okay. You stand at the love sigil, and—does someone else read it, or do you?”

“I’m the one re-establishing the connection,” said Rupert steadily. “It has to be me.”

“And should I—”

Moving towards Jenny, Rupert positioned her at the opposite side of the table. For just a moment, his thumb brushed against her ring. “I think that you should take it off,” he said.

“Rupert—”

“It’s a suppression spell,” Rupert countered. “I don’t know how something designed to obscure a connection will affect my casting if it’s actively enchanting your string. And you told me yourself it’s only magical when you’re wearing it—”

This was an annoyingly good point. Somewhat resentfully, Jenny removed the ring.

It was entirely accidental. Only because Rupert was still holding her hand, and he had to shift his position a little to help her with the ring—but this time, when his skin brushed her string, when the feelings rose up in Jenny, she pushed them aside and looked quietly up at Rupert. Eyelashes fluttering, he took in a soft little breath, eyes glazed and longing as he kept his thumb against her pinky finger. He looked exactly the way that she felt every time she had let him touch her like that.

“Rupert,” she said. She couldn’t let him stay like this.

Rupert blinked. Color rose to his cheeks, but he didn’t remove his hand. “Jenny, let me kiss you,” he said, barely a whisper. “One last time.”

It was clear to Jenny that he hadn’t at all intended to ask her. She saw the pinprick of ashamed insecurity, the beginnings of that awful hurt, and she just couldn’t. Not when she was the whole reason he was doing this in the first place. He’d get over her, she knew that, but he wasn’t over her now, so she stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.

Something shifted.

He isn’t wearing his ring, Jenny realized, pulling back from the kiss, heart pounding as she stumbled back entirely. He isn’t wearing his ring, and I’m not wearing mine, and we—

Every single one of the sigils on the table had flared up like neon lights, the candle flames burning bright, bright, bright like the string on Rupert’s pinky finger. A warm, mercurial glow surrounded him as he raised his hand with wondrous eyes, watching the bright red of the thread give way to an earnest, healthy gold. Watching as the cut end of the string began to lengthen, blowing in an invisible breeze, moving with purpose and intent directly towards Jenny.

Jenny had to resist the urge to step to the side. It would move around her, she told herself, and clutched her hand to her heart, waiting for the string to weave neatly away from her. Waiting, and waiting, and watching disbelievingly as it slipped between her fingers, connecting with her own hand in a warm, joyful glow of golden light.

“Oh!” she said. Her voice broke. “Oh—Rupert, no, it—this isn’t—”

Gently, Rupert stepped forward, tugging her hand free. The blood-red thread on Jenny’s pinky finger was melting away, replaced by Rupert’s healing gold. Without a word, he raised her hand to his mouth, pressing a soft kiss to the place that now joined the two of them together.

The rush of emotion—the magic—Jenny’s knees buckled as Rupert wound an arm around her waist, carefully lowering them both to the floor. He kissed her again, and this time—oh, she could feel the change in her. Top to toe, she was full of warmth, safety, him. Everything she hadn’t known she’d been missing. “I’ve got you, Jenny,” he murmured. “And you promised you’d let me keep you. Didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Jenny whispered, pressing her forehead against his. She could hardly think. “And you promised—”

“I promised you I’d be with you,” Rupert said, a small smile dancing across his face. “Only you. That was the condition, wasn’t it?”

Wordlessly, Jenny tucked her face into the crook of Rupert’s neck, wrapping her arms tightly around him. That feeling that she’d gotten when he touched her severed connection—their severed connection—even then, it had wanted to re-establish itself. No rituals, no magic, no nothing—what they were to each other was so powerful that it had been reaching to repair itself all along. Not for a moment had either of them been doing anything other than reaching for each other.

“I love you,” she whispered. “So much.”

Rupert kissed her hair. “I love you too, Jenny,” he murmured. “Thank you for letting me find you again.”

“No way,” said Buffy.

Willow had fallen over in her chair in paroxysms of delighted giggles. “So wait,” said Jenny, “is that about the soulmate thing or the Angelus thing?”

“I literally could not care less about your weird family spy mission,” said Buffy. “What you do on your own time is your own business, and you said yourself that you’re just, like, staking out his house sometimes for no reason and writing letters to your uncle, right? Totally snoresville. You are soulmates with my Watcher and you guys love each other so much that not even magic designed to separate you forever was able to keep you two apart. That is—”

“The cutest thing in the entire world!!!!” Willow shrieked.

Buffy grinned a little dreamily. “Yeah,” she said.

Xander raised his hand. “Yes, Xander?” said Rupert long-sufferingly.

“So when you were researching ways to fix soulmate connections, did you find a way to break them?” said Xander hopefully. “Because, like, let’s just hypothetically say that you and your soulmate figured out that you were soulmates pretty recently, and you’re making out in a lot of closets, but she’s driving you nuts and you wanna trade her in for a—”

“No, Xander,” said Rupert.

“Is this about Cordelia?” said Buffy.

“HYPOTHETICALLY,” said Xander.

Jenny, however, had a different focal point. Raising her hand up, she stared with quiet intensity at that simple golden string—soft and warm and utterly impossible to argue with. She could feel Rupert through it, like a warm blanket draped over her shoulders, like a kiss against her temple. She couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d been reaching to her every step of the way.

“Jenny?” said Rupert softly, turning away from the children to take her hand in his. When his fingers brushed against their connection, the string dissolved into a warm golden glow around both of their hands. “Is everything all right?”

Jenny sniffled, then smiled. “You didn’t want to leave me,” she said. “I-if you knew it was me, you never would have. And when you did know it was me, you, you—”

Rupert’s smile tilted up, tears in his eyes. Wordlessly, he took her face in his hands, pressing his forehead gently against hers.

“Oh!” Willow gasped. “They’re glowing!”