He lived with these thoughts about himself in his head for his whole life. That’s why he gave himself up so willingly when the world was about to end. Ford’s eyes welled. Did he think he was fixing a mistake by erasing himself?
I was feeling down so I looked for a Dad Ford fic to cheer me up and instead I came across this tear jerking sob fest. The fic is called I’ve Had This Nightmare Before by Dreamy_Breezy and it’s such a heartwarming timestuck story with an affectionate Ford comforting Stan through traumatic nightmares. Go give it a read!
Haha made myself sad......like actually really sad. Anwayyyyy yeah here you go. Why did I call it this? I just...yeah I was listening to Stand by Me, and it made me emotional (It’s the Darby Walker version if any of you actually listen to my music mindscapes lol) I discussed this with my bestie, and I have a ton more that can go into this, but this is just the start. uhhh TW: Death
Hero was born in a flash of fireworks all around the world. He is born as one year turns the next, not even a full five minutes after the clock struck midnight.
He is born exactly on his due date, already punctual, a quiet sweet babe that gives one perfunctory cry and settles against his mother. On the back of his tiny right hand is a cluster of curling wavy music notes, all a soft grey. He was born before his soulmate. He doesn’t have to wait long, exactly three months later the colors fade in- soft purples and blues. Coincidentally their next door neighbor had her baby the same day.
When they take over a gift to meet Mari a month later, both sets of parents know it’s not quite a coincidence. It’s fate.
He doesn’t remember their first meeting, but his mother says he laughed loud and long and Mari squealed in joy merely at the sight of one another. Soulmates were confirmed by first touch, but apparently the two of them hadn’t needed it. They had been inseparable, unable to communicate, but knowing that together they were whole
When their mothers had tried to separate them, both infants wailed and wept. They had apparently had to wait until the two were deep in sleep before his mother could pick him up to bring him home. To Hero, there’s never been a day without Mari’s presence.
In the mornings she is either the first thing he feels, or he gets the joy of sensing her come alive and the lackadaisical burn of her morning stretches. At night she is the last thing he thinks of, a quiet warmth on his hand, holding it as he drifts away, the press of phantom fingers settling him into quiet dreams.
Finding your soulmate this early is almost unheard of. It’s rarer than rare, but to the two of them it’s just their life. It’s all they know. They’re aware they’re lucky, and everything is good. No one around them has ever seen such a strong bond. Most of the time the two of them don’t even need words, just side glances and a shared energetic connection.
Mari loves to say that she knows Hero ‘like the back of her hand’, a joke that inspires more groans than laughs. Hero tolerates it and every time gives her a kiss over his mark on her. Their love burns bright and long, cool colored music notes lighting a soft fire under their skin. When he’s thinking in class, he can’t help but run his fingers across the mark, when she’s studying, she leans her head against it.
There is no secrets between them, nothing hidden. It wouldn’t be possible to hide anything, not with a connection like that. Not with what they have. Until there is a secret between them. Something Hero had somehow missed.
Hero is the first person to know Mari died. Before Sunny’s mind caught up with his body and he rushed down the stairs. Before Basil ran forward to stand beside his best friend. Before Mari was even fully gone. Hero knew.
He and Kel had been laughing at silly ties. Kel was trying to convince him to wear something exceptionally stupid to his beloved’s recital, and Hero can’t help but indulge his little brother’s antics. They’re holding ties up to his chest and giggling when there’s a rush of unfamiliar anger in Hero’s chest. He pulls away from Kel, and he presses two fingers to his mark.
Nothing. No response from Mari. Strange. Wrong. He presses again, the swooping feeling in his stomach growing. He waits. Nothing. Kel looks at him and asks what’s wrong. His parents stop their chat.
Nothing. Just righteous anger.
He’s never felt anything like this from his girl. She’s been angry plenty, she’s been sad, she’s been petulant. With a bond like theirs, he knows all of her different emotions, good and bad. But this is...overwhelming.
Hero sits down on a nearby stool and stares down at his mark, his mind whispering something is Wrong. A momentary shock, a stabbing mirage of pain in his neck that makes his hands fly up to his throat as he chokes on nothing, and then emptiness. He had thought he felt nothing before but he was wrong. This was truly nothing.
Hero flies past panic and straight into shock. His parents are walking forward, and Kel is standing next to him calling his name, but Hero can’t hear. He lets his hands slowly release from where they had been clutching his neck and looks down.
His soulmark is black. Mari’s music notes, which had faded in and out of color in a watercolor ombre that reminded him of her piano playing, are black. Hero thought he knew what a black soulmark meant. It meant your soulmate died. That had always just been a fact. Black meant they were gone. Black was something to be sad about.
Hero wasn’t sad. Hero was confused. Nothing had prepared him for the reality, the ripped jagged edges of half of him being torn brutally away. He couldn’t understand it. Where were her colors? Her pretty purples to match his deep blues? Where was his girl? He couldn’t feel her, not even the anger which had come on so suddenly. He had never not felt her before.
His father is on the phone, talking frantically with someone, and his mother is holding his head against her chest, petting his hair over and over. He supposes she’s trying to comfort him. He can’t feel anything. He’s pretty sure he just died. He tries breathing, and he can, but it doesn’t feel like it works. He tries again, to the same effect. Hero out of the blue wonders if he will ever feel a real breath again. Maybe not.
They get in the car and race out of the store. His father speeds, and his mother is saying something. He and Kel sit silently in the back, Kel staring at him with wide eyes. Hero can only look down at the black notes on the back of his hand. He hasn’t tried touching them, not yet. He doesn’t know if he ever will. Maybe if he doesn’t this won’t be real. They won’t actually be there.
They get home to pandemonium. Police cars and ambulances and the eerie sound of Mari’s mother wailing as her father shouted elaborate curses at the officer’s holding him back. Hero’s father parks haphazardly in front of their house, and they all get out.
Their parents send them into their own house with strict instructions to stay in the living room. Then they go to see if there’s anything they could do to help. Hero could have told them there wasn’t, but it wouldn’t really matter.
Hero sits Kel on the couch and tells him not to move. Then he walks into their backyard. He walks in a daze out the door, past the patio that he and Mari liked to do their homework on in the Spring, towards the fence he and Mari peered at each other over sometimes when they felt like being silly.
He would peer over now, and she would be looking back at him. His marks would go back to the way they were meant to be, and everything would be okay. She would be there in the pretty white dress she had chosen as her outfit for the night, the same dress he was choosing a tie to match to. She would smile and call him silly, and tell him that she knew him like the back of her hand and he knew her just as well. That she would never leave him, not ever. Hero stands on his tip toes and looks.
She’s under their favorite tree. Her toes don’t touch the ground. She’s in her pretty white dress. It is stained red. His girl is under their tree. Her arms hang limply by her sides as she sways in the wind of the October night. Her music notes are black.
Hero already knew he had died right alongside Mari, but now he’s sure.
