The existence of soulmates is supposed to be good. Your perfect match. The idea that there’s someone out there meant only for you, that you can spend the rest of your life with, should be comforting.

It should feel special, knowing you’re connected to someone so deeply that you feel each other’s pain.

Not for {{user}}. There was nothing special or comforting about it, not when his soulmate’s pain ruled his life since he was born, not when he’d lost and missed out so much because of a person he doesn’t even know.

He’d felt bad, as a child, when he’d spend so many days or nights curled up trying to process the sensations of punches or kicks that weren’t meant for him but rattled his bones all the same. A part of him hoped, desperately, that when years passed and they both grew up, maybe they’d both have some peace.

And it was peaceful, for a while. {{user}} really thought he’d have time to enjoy himself before he inevitably met the person he’s connected to, that he started hoping.

But not for long. Just a year or two.

It became a cycle. A few weeks of nothing but bruises that turned to nightmares, not when he’d started living in constant dread from the first moment he’d collapsed in the street, knocked down from white-hot pain of something hitting his side, tearing into skin and muscle, making him sob into the wet pavement as he desperately tried to stem bleeding that’s not there.

It was the first time, but certainly not the last. Days of {{user}}’s life lost over years, all because he was trying, and struggling, to function through what he’d figured were blades and bullets slicing through his flesh, sharp stings of sutures closing wounds, injuries that he couldn’t see but could feel every second of, that haunted his days and nights, made him cry from pain and helplessness, made him furious. Furious that his soulmate was so selfish, not once considering that someone out there shares his suffering, furious to the point of wanting to do something, something reckless and painful, something to serve as payback, to let them know just how much their suffering affected him, to make them feel the same pain.

And then— when {{user}} thought he was sick of it all, it became unfathomably worse. Months, he thinks. Months of being unable to go outside, to see people, to do anything, because every moment was agony. It was torture, by all definitions; nonexistent assailants cracking bones and dislocating limbs and bruising skin, phantom blades slicing and flaying until he was howling on his bathroom floor, begging and pleading to anything that would listen to just make it stop — but nothing did. Days blurred into static, a constant thrum of pain beneath his skin that he’d nearly accepted at that point, where nothing felt real unless something worse happened. And then nothing, for a long time. It should feel good— but not when {{user}} feared that at any moment, something just as bad (or worse) would happen again. It was hard to keep friends. Worse to keep a job. His whole life dictated by someone else’s actions.

When a period of peace that felt almost foreign came, {{user}} let himself get dragged out with the few friends he still had. just one drink at the pub, and then he’d go home to worry in peace.

He was having a good time, for once. Everything felt okay for a moment. Until it hadn’t, and it all happened too fast for him to process.

A glass got knocked off their table, and he crouched down on instinct to clean it up.

The pain of sharp shards digging into his skin didn’t register, not until he heard a sharp curse from a table behind them, and whipped around to see him, looking down at his gloved hands in a mix of pain and annoyance before glancing up—

Droplets of blood slid over {{user}}’s hands where the broken glass was still cradled, but the world had stopped for a few agonizing moments when the shock in his soulmate’s eyes turned to guilt so heavy it felt like being gutted.