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It had all been rather sudden.
Saitama had been in class when it happened, the searing pain lancing through his left eye. Well...not his eye. His soul mate’s eye. That odd honey gold color that had shown up when his soul mate had been born years ago. He reached up, pressing his palm into it, the aching itching pain screaming through his skull like fire. The pain lanced through him, lightening crackling in his veins making his legs kick as though jolted, motion ripped from him by the force of it. Sweat beaded on his temple before he stood up suddenly, chest heaving.
Mumbling excuses, the young man grabbed his bag and ran out to the bathroom in the hall, pulling his hand away as he looked in the mirror. Creeping horror built up in him as he watched the familiar color get drowned out by black.
He’d seen this before, in people whose soul mates had died, but never someone as young as himself. That all encompassing blackness swirling like oil in water. But, ultimately, it didn’t bother him. He’d never put too much stake in soul mates, his own parents hadn’t been soul mates, it wasn’t a complete necessity.
So Saitama went back to class, ignoring the gasps and the shock on his classmate’s faces. He was blind in that eye now, half of the world gone dark in the wake of losing something he’d never had to begin with. He sat, opened his note book, and proceeded to get on with class. As the day went on, people offered him condolences or looked away from him or tried to speak as though they weren’t staring at his face with horror written in their expressions.
Time passed, slow and steady, rippling around him as he walked. He got used to the blindness on his left, learned to cope and correct for it. Saitama would habitually lean left, trying to feel with his fingertips in case anything was coming up on him.
Saitama began wearing a cheap pair of sunglasses everywhere to avoid the worst of the staring, and every now and then he busted out an eye patch for the laziest pirate costume imaginable. He’d toyed with a bandage for a bit but eventually gave up entirely, letting the world see what others tried to hide.
It was only when a girl dropped a tray of food about a month later that Saitama knew something was up.
A scream rang out from her throat, one finger pointing at his face. Others turned, looked, and went pale or shouted in shock. Saitama blinked curiously, a strange numbness spreading over the left side of his head as grey shapes swam in his blind spot.
What?
He held a hand over his face, running out of the dining hall and into his dorm room, slamming the door behind him and leaning against it in shock. What the hell, what was happening to him? He felt his chest clench tight, stumbling into the little bathroom off of his room and flicking on the light. Saitama stared at himself for a moment, his left eye still hidden behind his hand, his own brown eye blown with worry and confusion. He was a little afraid, a little curious, and a little sick to his stomach.
He pulled his hand away slowly, the light making him wince, the faded colors of his bathroom filtering in as he focused up. Saitama watched his vision refocused, a gasp caught in his throat as he looked at his eye.
There, floating in a sea of black, was a bright golden ring. Fire bright and almost glowing as it looked out at him, his vision on the left became slightly orange tinged the longer he looked, not enough to be distracting, but noticeable on that side. There was something...shocking looking at the lace of molten metal that the iris there had turned.
It meant more than he could have anticipated. His right eye welled up with tears, his fingers reaching out to touch the cool glass of the mirror under his left cheek. A sense of relief washed over his mind, relief that he hadn’t realized he’d needed. Warm and roiling, his heart slammed into his rib cage as his lips parted, caressing the words whispered from his mouth like a soft prayer.
“You’re alive.”
So the stares did not bother Saitama as he walked through the next years of his life. He grew bored, listless, unable to get a job, feeling powerless. Eventually, he dedicated himself to becoming a hero, his muscles and fists growing as strong as iron while his heart emptied itself of feeling, the creeping ennui of his existence slithering up his spine to dig its thorns into his lungs, making breathing a chore on some days.
But that ring of gold kept him going sometimes, kept him training on the hard days and kept him monster hunting as the days grew too long to feel worth it. His soul mate, whoever they were, was still alive despite all signs to the contrary. They were out there, and Saitama hoped that, if they met each other, that his soul mate would feel safe with him, that they would be happy to be his soulmate in spite of his flaws. It was an odd sort of comfort to take.
His hair fell out, he could destroy monsters in one punch.
And he hadn’t been expecting to meet his soulmate after chasing down a mosquito in a fit of pure, unadulterated spite.
His left eye had throbbed as he took in the sight of a strange young man fighting with an even stranger bug lady. Saitama hadn’t been expecting his life to go in such a way that his soulmate would be burning his clothes off in the middle of the street. But here they were.
And when the cyborg looked up at him, one eye black and gold and augmented while on his left the other was still organic, still a soft sort of flat chocolate brown. They stood there in tableaux, the blonde’s jaw dropping slightly, broken body heaving on the ground as they looked at each other.
Saitama didn’t know what to do, his palms itched, his whole body had broken out in goosebumps. He could barely begin to understand how the guy on the ground must feel considering he was in pieces.
Fuck he was naked,
Genos watched the strangely powerful bald man from the ground, eyes wide in shock. This man.....this man had destroyed that monster in one blow, his power having been enough to splatter it over the building like a water balloon. This man whose left eye glinted black and gold just like how his own carefully preserved one reflected that deep brown that had fascinated him since he was a child. The man whose body was placed on display, the man who was...starting to turn around!
“Wait!” Genos shouted, watching those eyes return to him, that blank face making his core scream with need.
“I...My name is Genos, and I want to take revenge on the mad cyborg that killed my family,” he said loudly, “I...I don’t know how you killed that monster, but I need to know how. I need to become as strong as you.”
“Please teach me!” he said, watching shock and confusion come over that face before the bald man was crouching down, reaching out to run a powerful but gentle hand through his hair.
“Get fixed up,” the man said before standing.
“What’s your name?” Genos asked, feeling his emergency shut down begin.
“Saitama…”
It would take a few weeks before Genos found himself staring at his soulmate’s door. It would take time before that matching set of eyes would meet his own again and call him in to listen to his story. He was in awe of Saitama, his strength, the gentle sorrow surrounding him as he spoke, as he professed to have nothing to teach yet he reached out anyway.
That powerful, gentle hand reached out and took his own, the shining metal glinting shadows over the matte of Saitama’s skin. Genos felt heat, a flush of warmth like hot tea on a cool day, like being wrapped up in a hug when that was all he needed.
Saitama shivered and he must have felt it too.
He must have felt it too because the lips that were denying their own wisdom were moving again, silent and careful, caressing the words like a broken prayer. Genos had to lean in closer to hear those two simple words as they flushed through his body to make him feel….okay. For the first time in a while, he felt okay.
“You’re alive,” those lips whispered into the air, a confirmation of words long passed into the wind.
And Genos smiled, soft and delicate and broken as this new thing made a sense of humanity creep up on him.
“I am.”