thx-for-the-memeries said: Hi babe!!! I really love your soulmate au so can you do one for 2p Canada?? (Female reader btw) thanks and good luck with school!!!
(Thank you sweetie, and I’m sorry it took so long to get this out, but I hope you enjoy this soulmate Au for our one and only Canadian sweetheart! :)
the premise for this world is that the clock countdown shows you how long both soulmates have left to find each other or else they both will die because the universe is sadistic af—and if one find finds the other, they get to live longer.)
In this sort of world time is everything.
Every second of every minute of every hour of everyday, they are all precious and important, so, so very important.
Time is more than just a structure. It is a pinnacle of a single choice, a precise influential and single flux in time itself, and the choices made in those moments are where things must begin or end; the very measure of decision, and future, and history.
But that is the very thing of time… what must happen will always happen. That is the consequence of time and choice.
Time is important, and that is why the counter on your skin is important.
At least, that is what the world says.
No one knows exactly when the countdowns began, or if it will ever end, disappear in a fading smoke, no one knows. All the world knows is that it exists and must exist, the countdown to reach your potential other.
Survival of the fittest, some might say.
God’s test, others will argue.
None of it matters in the long run though. What does is that the other is found before the last minute is counted, if not… then you die.
It’s strange. As a child you believe that it doesn’t matter, that time is yours and nothing can stop you from losing your One. But as you grow older, its easier to see how much time controls you, and how fast the seconds are ticking away, and the choices you must make in that time to find Them.
And you found your time being lost quicker and quicker as you aged. It didn’t seem fair, really. You never had the time to look, as ironic as it sounds. And when you did, you were on a schedule to beat the counter, the counter to your death.
You felt almost envious of everyone else around you, of those who found their ones so early on in life, or on their walk, or at the airport, or while just being.
You? Your timer was a sentence and every choice felt like death with each step.
How were you meant to find your One in a mass of billions if not trillions of human beings on this single planet! Just a single city was hard enough to look through, but to not even have a clue, a lead, as to who your One was?
It was as if the Universe was expecting failure!
But this is why you had to do this.
You couldn’t die without finding Them.
As much as this whole thing was making your heart race and anxiety skyrocket straight into the sky… you wanted, no, needed to find Them. You weren’t entirely certain if it was for your desire to live or the desire to know who your soulmate was.
The uncertainty didn’t stop you from scrounging up whatever money and help you could get, traveling from one town to one city to one country, each and every single time. Knowing that your counter was ticking away, and the numbers continuously, mockingly changing.
The only real clue you had was the way the counter was set upon. The carefully structured numbers scribbled against your skin in a slanted cursive-like flick, and the cold feeling they resonated with.
That was all you had, their style of writing and perchance that your One lived in a cold climate.
Oh yeah, you thought bitingly. As if every place on this planet didn’t have their own winters and vast populations.
Still. It was the best you could hope for, the best you could do to narrow down where the cold resonated like ice on your skin. But as far as you could tell, you were beginning to find it harder and harder to carry on. Every single time you looked down to your wrist, at the glaring numbers shortening faster and faster…
Death is coming in closer.
Not even the beauty of the lands where you stepped upon made it better. In fact, it made you quite bitter. It made you want to grab something and chuck it at the next smiling face that glanced at you, as if you weren’t losing time! As if they didn’t believe in the dread you felt with an aching, heavy heart.
You sighed, starring out the glass window, fingers tapping away against your forearm, against the covered numbers you didn’t want to see anymore.
That’s all it took for you to go travelling the world, for your counter to grow smaller and closer to that blasted END. You were certain that you had at least until the evening before it did reach the last number. Perhaps you should still continuing look, perhaps keep running and searching until the very last second, instead of sitting in this old brew café, nursing a warm cup against your blue tinged fingers. Instead of curled at the very edge of a window, long tattered scarf pulled taught over your shoulders, gazing up at the cloudy sky and the petals of snow falling.
You wondered if it really mattered. All this time looking and looking, worry gnawing at your insides like poison, and this… at the very edge of the end, is the only moment where you felt (not alright, you hissed. It’s never alright to accept this!) exhausted enough to not… not care.
It was the feeling of being wrung dry, stretched too far, and used too much of yourself to want to take another step further.
Besides. It wasn’t as if you honestly knew your soulmate was still alive out there.
It wasn’t a if the counter would just suddenly stop just because your soulmate was no longer amongst the living before they could start searching.
That was the tragedy of it too, because you honestly didn’t know.
You didn’t know if they were alive and kicking, that perhaps you had missed them in your search because they were searching too.
Nor did you know if they were already did, your timer simply counting down to the inevitable, fruitless death because… they were already gone. And it was just them that had to wait, waiting from the other side of the Veil.
The universe doesn’t care. That was a lesson everyone must learn, you realized.
A lesson that makes the counter both a beautiful thing and a terrible thing. But no one had ever really described what it felt to have your very life wasting away either. That was a lesson you had come to learn, just by sitting in this old burly chair, the heat of your warm cup barely scalding your tongue though you knew it should have. That you could feel the cold seeping in from all directions, spindly fingers racking over your skin like a promise, and your vision becoming cloudier and cloudier….
You picked yourself up with great effort, legs wobbly and hands so very numb.
It was getting harder to hear, as if everything was muffled, and harder to speak, cotton in the mouth.
It’s a bit lonely, you thought. Almost bittersweet. Because even if you didn’t find your soulmate amongst the living, at the very least you’d find them after death.
The first thing you realized when you woke up was the warm hand splayed against your own smaller one. The second thing you realized was that the heart monitor had picked up speed, and that it wasn’t the only one. The third thing you realized was that you were very much alive, and when you cracked open your eyes that the hand being held was displaying your counter. The counter which was no longer ticking down, in fact having frozen before it could reach the end.
The warm hand in yours squeezed lightly, and you found yourself looking up into tired violet eyes (such a pretty colour, you decided, like that polished jewel you had seen in that store in France) peering back at you from stubbly chinned face and strawberry curls looking about one second away from spilling out of the ponytail loop the man had tugged it messily into.
You tiredly squeezed his hand back, but that gesture was enough for him to smile, a small almost non-existent smile, but it eased the beating heart inside your chest to a cool solid rhythm. He quietly slid into the bed with you, and you realized belatedly that he was dressed in hospital garb as well. But that didn’t quite matter as he pulled you in close and you smelled the pine and snow and something ashy about his skin.
It was so comforting, and for that moment you thought, it was just so him.