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Everyone dreamt of their soulmate at least once. It was the natural order of things. Some shared those dreams, others guarded them like a deadly secret or a precious treasure.
Lucy had the dreams of her soulmate. His face was never clear to her, only the hat he wore. The cowboy hat that belonged in another time and place. There had been times when there were flames, he would call to her through them, forever out of reach. His voice was familiar but she could never pinpoint why.
She could never figure out if she was supposed to burn with him in the fire or save him from it. Lucy had always been willing to do both, that's what a soulmate does.
From the first moment she saw him, Lucy knew he was the man from her dreams. Cooper doesn't know what they are to each other, Lucy assumed that when he became a ghoul it damaged his ability to know his soulmate on sight. Nor that it isn't the wasteland that was changing her, tainting her like clean water mixed with dirt. It's him. All the darkness and his pain entered her soul like a dagger piercing the flesh.
At least he didn't know, not until their fingers started to glow as he cocked his gun and then Lucy saw the realisation hit him.like a ton of bricks. She was his. The girl he'd dreamt of long ago, a memory of a dream long forgotten. He was hers.
Oh, what a fucked up thing that was.