t-- twenty-three for Klaus and Barry
soulmate au prompts.
23. the one where once you meet your soulmate, it’s physically uncomfortable to be apart from them for too long.
Barry felt the pain come crawling into his chest over the course of weeks.
It grew. It settled. It stayed.
For years.
He was never going to get rid of it, and the fact that it had shown up after Klaus disappeared was never going to feel better.
(But he could feel it, and that meant Klaus wasn’t dead.)
(Wasn’t that enough?)
Klaus felt a pain in his chest in the weeks after Lucrezia shipped him to Skifander.
He’d buried it, tried not to think about. Someone back in Europa was his soulmate, and that was fine. It was fine. He’d find a way to visit eventually, but here and now, he’d fallen in love, and had children, and--
When Klaus fled Skifander, the pain in his chest doubled.
(He was always doomed.)
(Perhaps his skin yearned for not just the touch of his soulmate, but also that of his brothers’.)
Barry came home from the Silver City with a toddler in his arms and grief behind his eyes. His brother was dead. Lucrezia was insane. His nephew hadn’t even lived to the age of two.
All he had was Agatha, and a pain in his chest that hadn’t dimmed in years, and a sorrow that had nonetheless eclipsed it.
And Lucrezia had said Klaus was working with her, so that wasn’t even--
Baron Wulfenbach has taken over Europa
Baron Wulfenbach demands all Other Technology be turned over to him
Baron Wulfenbach has fought down Petrus Teufel
Klaus had been busy.
Klaus had... had been... Klaus had been a friend and Lucrezia had said Klaus was working with her, but Klaus was Barry’s soulmate.
So Barry found Punch and Judy, asked them to care for Agatha, and used those decades of heroing to steal his way onto the massive airship that was apparently Castle Wulfenbach.
Klaus woke up to a knife at his throat and the pain in his chest dimmed back to the dull ache of just one missing soulmate, but with so much more pressure.
Barry sat on chest, which explained that, at least. The pressure, the knife, the way his arms were expertly pinned down.
“Barry?”
The man was shaking. There was conflict behind his eyes, anger and fear and hope and fondness and betrayal.
“Klaus.”
“...I thought you were dead,” Klaus said.
“What, the pain didn’t tip you off?”
“I knew it was someone in Europa,” Klaus managed. “I didn’t know who.”
Barry shifted, looking uncomfortable and angry and a whole host of other things. “Fair enough. We’ve got some talking to do.”
“Can you lose the knife?”
“Lucrezia was the Other. She said you were working with her,” Barry said. He pressed the knife closer, and breathed in, deep and shaky, like a single coin at the bottom of a collection tin for a poor town’s orphanage. “Convince me otherwise.”
“...okay,” Klaus said. “I can do that.”
