Chapter Text
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They say that intertwined souls will find each other in every lifetime. But they never told you that if you loved someone that deeply, the trauma of losing them follows you into another.
They never told you how the emptiness of living your life up to your mid twenties without the person that you are meant to hold in your arms felt. They never told you the struggles of your desperation to once again cup their face in your palms, lose yourself into their perfect sea of blue and hold them and feel them melt into you. They never told you how agonising it is to miss them so much.
To want to share a bed with them again,
To want to kiss them again,
To want to wipe their tears for them again,
And to want to so desperately erase the memory of the warmth leaving their body as you held them in your arms screaming your grief– praying, begging that the Gods would tell you it was all a joke as your endless tears seep into their bloodstained clothes. To erase the pain of losing them and the ache that remains after a whole century like a scar that never heals.
With time, memory fades. It makes you think that soulmatism is just a myth when the only clues you are left with is a blurry silhouette with a head of blue, a fierce gaze and a beautiful smile that you will never forget. The theory of fate were lies spun up for the face of romanticisation, and a cruel twist– a glitch in the system had forced you to retain memories of your past life without going into detail, giving you the constant nagging feeling of emptiness and pain when you wake up sweating in the middle of the night, dreaming of the same scene over and over again.
But visual memory is fragile– so fragile that everything seems to fade more as you age, leaving you clawing at whatever you can cling onto, even if it had to be the gruesome image of her bleeding out in your arms in the dream that never stops haunting you.
So you start drawing, and you make a career doing it. You travel the world in hopes to meet the one you have been seeking for to no avail. You settle into a small apartment in a cozy, modern town and devote all your time into recreating art pieces of the girl from your past life. Your exhibitions about her were a great success, but they never filled up the missing hole in your heart. People would claim they knew the girl in the painting, getting your hopes up– and then having them all crushed when you meet them and immediately know it’s not her.
Your life turns into a melancholic routine, feeling more futile as the days drift by.
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Vi angrily hurls a paintbrush at the canvas, staining a spot in the purple she had attempted to use as a highlight on her newest piece. She curls up in her stool, hands digging into her head and tugging at her hair as she yells– her agony echoing through her apartment. It’s not perfect– too far from what she wanted, and yet no amount of repainting could save it. Her frustration was over limits, the stool screeches as she abruptly stands up and reaches for her keys.
She needed a breather.
Clad in her tank top and overalls pulled down to her waist stained in different colours of oil paint, she takes the lift down to the street. The weather was bright out– she figured she could have a smoke near the river and take a walk for inspiration because she sure as hell was not getting any cooped up in that small apartment of hers.
And when she takes the first drag, she knows that she has to have offended some sort of God in her past life– or lives, because almost on cue, it started pouring . She groans loudly, curses and throws her hands up in pure frustration, discarding the cigarette between her fingers. Her apartment was a five minute walk from where she is– she had to find the nearest shelter first, so she shielded what she could with her bare arms and ran into the nearest shop - a small, humble flower shop that Vi had visited about 2 times since she moved here. The first time was to introduce herself to the lovely old lady working there when she first moved in, and the second was to purchase a bouquet to serve as a painting reference.
The flower shop was the bottom unit of a storefront house with a huge white rimmed bay window, decorated in an array of vibrant and colorful flowers.
She pushes open the heavy glass door as a whiff of delicate fragrance first greets her nose, then hearing the dingle of the doorbell go off as she steps in. She brings down her arms–the very ones serving as a redundant umbrella that couldn’t do their job shielding her against the downpour– and pats off excess water from her tank top. She looks up but she wasn’t greeted by the friendly old lady – instead sees an entirely new face at the counter, extremely focused on the papers (of what she assumes were supply orders).
The girl at the counter seems to have finally noticed Vi’s presence after a good ten seconds of her standing there and sets down her pen, standing up and walking over to service Vi.
Their eyes met, a widened grey pair and a sharp blue pair.
Vi felt her whole world change.
The woman before her looks slightly different from her memories– she had a pair of black rimmed glasses a little too big for her face, blue hair neatly done in a half-up braid finished by a white ribbon at the end. She was in a slightly oversized beige cardigan layered over a simple, floral yellow sundress and a pair of brown boots– not something the version of her in her memories would have worn perhaps because of the difference in time period, and Vi notices that she walks with a limp. She had that gorgeous smile on her face, showing off the adorable tooth gap that Vi remembers she loved so much .
It was undoubtedly her in the flesh, standing before Vi.
Caitlyn had led a simple life, heavily withdrawn from society. She only had a few friends, rarely socialises and prefers to stay in. And because she so very rarely socialises, her utter confusion was indescribable when a random red haired, muscular, tattooed AND wet woman walks into the shop she works in, stared at her like she had seen a ghost— then proceeds to forget about the concept of boundaries and pull her into the tightest hug she had ever received.
Not that anyone had hugged her like this before.
And the woman in question was sobbing into her shoulder, clinging onto her for her dear life.
Her confusion further heightens when she returns her hug, because she knows that a normal Caitlyn would push her away and call the cops on the lunatic.
Caitlyn stands frozen in her spot, gently rubbing circles on the slightly shorter woman’s back. She didn’t know what to say. She was never good at comforting people. So she just rubs circles for minutes, hoping that it will soothe the other woman.
She didn’t know why the hug felt so right . If Caitlyn had to think of a comparison, it felt like a puzzle piece fitting into its designated spot. She’s not sure why she did not want to let her go either, fighting the urge to wipe the sorrow off her face, telling her everything will be alright.
The two women stood in the middle of the shop, surrounded by various colourful flowers, hugging in silence for what felt like an eternity.
And when the mysterious red haired woman reluctantly loosens the hug, she brings up her rough, calloused hands and cupped Caitlyn’s cheeks, tear stricken powder greys gazing at her with so much longing that Caitlyn wonders if she had amnesia at some point of her life to be feeling this sense of yearning , as if she had waited her whole life for this moment. Caitlyn notices the exhaustion painted on her beautiful features, the dark circles under her eyes that were laced with sheer desperation.
She tells Caitlyn that she had been looking for her for her whole life.
Caitlyn softly asks if they have met before. Not in this life, the woman replies. Caitlyn tilts her head in confusion. She found it hard to believe, but didn’t pursue further.
She finds it hard to believe, but the woman asked for her to go with her.
And because she finds it so hard to believe, she discovers herself following a stranger to her apartment.
She learns that the woman’s name is Vi, shortened for Violet. She tells her, I always loved Violets, they are my favourite flowers, omitting the fact that she didn’t know exactly why violets were her favourite flowers. She simply felt exceptionally mesmerised by them from a young age. Caitlyn never believed in soulmates, she was a woman of logic, science and facts– but at this moment, her certainty wavers, because her emotions were telling her otherwise.
The two pairs of footsteps come into a halt before a door– the shorter woman hesitantly hovers her key over her apartment door’s keyhole, hands slightly trembling. She takes a deep breath, twists the key and holds the door for Caitlyn.
Caitlyn steps in, unsure of what to expect.
Then she was greeted by a sight that she could not explain with logic.
Hung all over the tiny apartment with a high ceiling were framed canvases of different shapes and sizes, paint chaotically splattered along the white spaces in-between. They were paintings of a single person, a woman with blue hair, a piercing blue gaze– all in different angles, doing different things. Sometimes blurry, sometimes just a silhouette, sometimes with flowers, sometimes different outfits– but it was undeniable.
Vi’s apartment was filled with paintings of Caitlyn from a life she did not remember living.
A version of herself she had no recollection of, but it was undoubtedly her.
Caitlyn studies the paintings in a daze– a state of denial and confusion, wondering if this was all a sick prank pulled by someone, anyone. She turns back to the woman at the door, watching her awkwardly shuffle her feet and trying her best to avert her gaze. She didn’t know what to say. A stalker? A lunatic? It didn’t make sense to Caitlyn at all, she would have known if she had a stalker. Besides, the paintings were her, but also not exactly her.
Her mind was overloading itself with theories that she could spin up but not voice out. Her head hurts– it had not been more than two weeks since she had moved to this town, she didn't even know most of the townspeople besides the old lady that took her in.
Vi seems to be expecting the silence to be broken, but Caitlyn was not comprehending any of what her vision was showing her.
She tells her that she needs to think about it and briskly walks out of her apartment.