Chapter Text
Lucy Chen is a complicated baby.
She’s adorable, of course. All big brown eyes and plump rosy cheeks and a smile so wide it lights up her whole face. A lot of the time she’s cooing and happy and giggly and perfect . The kind of baby you see in diaper commercials and in holiday ads. Perfect .
But, well, she’s complicated because of what happens when she’s not perfect.
She’s complicated because when she’s not smiling, she’s screaming. Wailing . At random times she lets out horribly pained yelps and will whimper and sob for hours . Nothing will soothe her. It’s not until her parents take her to the doctor, desperate for help, that tests are run and they get an answer.
“Well, she’s clearly reacting to painful stimuli,” the doctor tells them grimly, staring over the top of his reading glasses.
“But why ?” her mother questions, exhausted and exasperated. “She’s literally sitting on my lap wrapped in a blanket. What is causing her pain?”
The doctor pauses for a minute, considering. “It must be her soulmate,” he finally answers with a shrug. “It usually doesn’t cause this much of a problem but whoever her soulmate is…well, they seem to live a pain-filled life. I don’t have to tell you that there’s no treatment for soulmates. I can’t even treat her pain because it’s not physically real, she’s just feeling it through the emotional bond.”
“So…there’s really nothing you can do? Nothing we can do?”
The doctor shakes his head sadly.
There’s nothing anyone can do.
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And so it becomes the norm for Lucy Chen’s life.
Not a day goes by without pain. She’s still a little girl when her parents explain it to her. When they sit her down and tell her about soulmates. About how there’s someone out there that’s her perfect match and if she’s really lucky one day she’ll find him. They tell her about how she’s bonded to him. About how she can feel his pain and he, wherever he is, can feel hers.
“But why does he hurt so much all the time ?” she asks them, rubbing at the back of her head. She felt a sharp blow to her skull an hour ago and it’s been aching ever since.
Her parents look at each other, before turning to her. Her mother takes Lucy’s hand gently in her own and says, “Whoever he is, his life is hard. And I know it probably doesn’t feel fair that you have to feel his pain. I’m sorry there isn’t anything we can do to help you. But you can do something to help him .”
Lucy perks up at the idea, leaning toward her parents in her eagerness. “I can help him? How?! What can I do?”
Her father smiles at her. “That’s easy, lovebug. You need to be very careful and get hurt as little as possible. That way, even though he still has his pain, he doesn’t have to feel your pain.”
And so begins Lucy’s time as an extremely cautious child. She always makes sure that her shoelaces are double-knotted so she won’t trip over them. She never goes on the monkeybars at recess, even when her classmates dare her to. She avoids hot stoves and sharp objects and stinging insects. She does everything in her power to avoid her own pain, knowing that it will lessen his .
Every single night she slowly climbs the stairs, holding tightly to the handrail. She takes a shower, carefully stepping on the anti-slip bathmat she made her parents buy. She goes to her room and kneels beside her bed (which is low to the ground, in case she falls out) and she prays. She prays for her soulmate and she cries for him and she hopes that someday he won't hurt so much.
And she vows that someday when they find each other she will make sure that no one ever hurts him again.
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Timothy Bradford spends his childhood in pain…but worse than the pain is the worry .
He's constantly worried about his soulmate because he knows that she will feel every blow his father delivers. He even tries to use it as a reason for his father to stop. He begs for his father to stop hurting him because he’s hurting her . But his father just laughs, his eyes glazed and his breath stinking of whiskey, and says, “Soulmate? We’ll see if she loves you after this,” and aims another kick at Tim’s ribs.
He goes to bed that night and huddles into the covers, makes himself as small as he can. Maybe his father is right. How could his soulmate ever love him after what he’s put her through? He doesn't know her but he wants to protect her and he hates that he can’t . How can he protect her from himself ? From this bond that neither of them had a choice in?
He eventually falls asleep thinking that someday if he does meet his soulmate, she’ll probably hate him just as much as he hates himself.
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By the time Lucy is a teenager, her soulmate stops hurting so often. She assumes that he's gotten big enough to fight back or big enough to not be an easy target for whoever had been hurting him before. Or maybe he just got old enough to leave the horrible situation he must have been in. Either way, the respite does not last long.
It’s not long after the daily beatings stop that new pains begin. He doesn’t get hurt as much now, but the hurts are different. They’re much more intense. She can’t be sure, as she’s never experienced it for herself, but sometimes it's like he's been shot or stabbed . It makes her wonder what the hell kind of man he is. What kind of life is he living to have this pain?!
She starts to wonder about the validity of all this soulmate business. Because the kind of man who would do things that led to him being shot or stabbed?
Lucy can’t imagine he’s the right man for her.
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As soon as he’s old enough Tim gets out of his house and away from his father, finally glad that he can leave the pain behind. That he can finally protect her, in this small way.
And then, because he’s an idiot, he joins the Army.
But even basic training and Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t as bad as his father. Sure, he still gets in a scuffle here and there. Takes a bullet to the shoulder. A knife slice on his calf. But overall he’s happy and he assumes his soulmate must be too after the maelstrom of agony that was his childhood. He still holds out hope that one day he’ll meet her and be able to apologize and explain. Hopes that she’ll forgive him for the pain he caused her and believe him when he promises to protect her from now on. He imagines someone who is perfect for him…who completes him.
And then he meets Isabel.
She’s feisty and funny and beautiful and a little rough around the edges. Her eyes are bluer than the cloudless LA sky and they crinkle at the corners when she makes fun of him.
Tim is immediately smitten.
And being with Isabel changes him. Changes his idea of soulmates. Because what the hell is the point of a soulmate when Isabel (who is apparently not his soulmate) makes him feel like this ? He can’t imagine a world where there’s someone out there who is a better fit for him…someone out there that can make him happier. He can’t imagine waiting around for some allegedly perfect person he doesn’t know when Isabel is right here . So he doesn’t.
He thinks screw soulmates and he gets down on one knee and he asks Isabel to spend the rest of her life with him.
They get married. They make plans. They lay in bed at night and dream about a family and a dog and holidays and vacations. Tim still feels the occasional twisted ankle or bruised elbow from his soulmate but otherwise he kind of forgets about her…embraces a future that doesn’t involve this nameless idea of a person at all. Embraces a future that is all about Isabel. And it’s perfect.
Until suddenly it isn’t.
If he’s being honest with himself, Tim isn’t surprised when he wakes up to find Isabel and all the money in his wallet and all of her expensive jewelry gone. He’s known for a while that something was wrong, but he didn’t want to admit it…couldn’t accept that she didn’t love him as wholly and completely as he loved her.
And as he sits there in his empty house, staring at the phone and empty wallet that Isabel left behind on the kitchen counter, Tim decides that even if he does really have a soulmate out there that is “perfect” for him, he doesn’t want her. Because the pain and betrayal and grief and emptiness that is consuming him now is damn near unbearable. He never wants to love someone like this again.
He knows he could never survive losing someone like this again.
He would rather live his entire life alone . Because there’s no one out there that’s worth this feeling. That’s even worth the risk of this feeling. He convinces himself that there’s no one out there, soulmate or otherwise, that he’ll ever trust with his heart. Who cares if he has a soulmate? It’s not like he can be forced into anything. If he happens to meet his soulmate someday he doesn’t even have to tell her that they’re soulmates. He can just deny it.
It’s a foolproof plan. Except for one little flaw that Tim doesn’t yet realize:
Lucy Chen is undeniable.