Chapter Text
I’ve been dreaming again of the lonesome world
Where I’m lost and I’ve got no friends
Just the rocks and the trees and the lonesome dreams
And a road that’ll never end
Lonesome Dreams- Lord Huron
Louise thinks she was seven when she asked her mom about the mark on her left hand. It was a small, lime green half-circle outline. Her father had the same mark on his right hand. Louise was fascinated with her parents’ mark, it fit together perfectly and young Louise was content with her mark showing up to show her who she was destined to be with.
When Louise was nine, she had her first crush.
Rudolph Stieblitz.
The stupid asthmatic kid had wormed his way into her heart and Louise proceeded to hold on to that crush.
At 11 Louise found out that most people’s soulmarks showed when they were born. She came home crying that she didn’t have hers. It wasn’t much longer after this that the rest of her grade found out about her “mutation”, everyone in her grade either laughed at her or ran away in fear or disgust when they found out. The only ones in her grade who didn’t were the Pesto twins, and Regular Sized Rudy.
Louise was 12 when Tina’s soulmark appeared.. It was a saffire blue arrow on her right shoulder blade. Tina cried because she never thought her mark would show up. Blame the hopeless romantic in her.
At 13 Louise lost her crush and friendship with Regular sized Rudy when he showed her his mark, a simple crown shaped mark on the top of his foot. It wasn’t that he showed her his mark, it was that he got with Chloe Barbash when their marks didn’t match.
15 was the year Gene received their soulmark, they insisted that they hadn’t met their soulmate yet. But louise saw the way they looked at Lenny Destefano
Looking back, Louise always had this idea that you had to be with your soulmate. But as she grew she realized that looking at all of the people who were married and in loving relationships, their marks rarely matched.
All the media in their world romanticized the finding of your soulmate and this idea that your soulmate had to be your spouse or lover or whatever. Her stomach dropped, she hadn’t been even remotely fair to Rudy. Now he was gone. She could try reaching out, but why answer the girl that cut you off.
The fetal position didn’t help the stomach ache she had from that.
At 16 Louise was informed that the chances of people finding their soulmate was one in a million. She was told that her parents' case was extraordinarily rare. She didn’t feel as bad knowing most people didn’t find their soulmate.
17 is when she started to get nervous. Her siblings had gotten their soulmarks but Louise was still stuck on the clean slate that was her non-existent soulmark.
She fell sick out of nowhere, after starting community college. Her parents said that she was having night terrors like when she was little. The night she woke to every inch of her skin feeling like it was on fire. Her parents took her to the hospital much to her protest. She sat in her hospital bed fuming with anger. When all the tests were over, the doctors informed Louise her soulmark wasn’t there. Louise laughed and told them the ‘No Dur!’ asked them why that was important to the matter at hand. They told her that due the fact that she would NEVER get her soulmark, Her body couldn’t find or make a soulmark.
Louse cried herself to sleep that night. And not just because of the pain.
Since that day Louise decided that emotions were overrated (so were soulmates, but she wasn’t going to say that out loud).
Her 21st birthday rolled around and she blew out the candles, opened the presents, and ate the cake. The entire time she was just painfully reminded that another entire year had passed and she didn’t get her mark nor would she ever.
But still, she held onto that sliver of hope as tightly as she could.
That same day she set that sliver on fire.
She couldn’t get hurt if she didn’t have anything left to burn.
Right?