Soulmate - dekumight

Chapter 1

Soulmates got their name for a reason.

Two people connected by the soul, as if two bodies sharing a single entity. They're intertwined by the universe and picked by destiny. They share everything, the elated highs and the downtrodden lows. From every childhood scar, to every broken bone. The death of one soulmate is the virtual death of another. They are one in the same and their scars are living proof of their closeness.

Izuku grew up with many scars. Some faded, some didn't. That was never what bothered him, though. No, what got to him so much was that his soulmate was always so sad.

In his childhood, Izuku had been a very happy child. Inko always swore she couldn't have asked for better. He was always smiling. With him in the house, there was hardly a bad moment. He brightened up the room just by being in it.

But Izuku wasn't a gifted child. He suffered his fair share, suffering that were not his own.

Inko knew, when he was only days old, that something big was beginning. The first mark had come in, mangling the skin of his thigh as if it had been seared and melted in scoldering heats. Izuku cried. Screamed, even. She'd never heard him make such a sound.

It was horrifying, and neither her nor Hisashi knew what to. They had some marks and lasting scars of their own, but nothing this severe. They could only rock Izuku in their arms and try to hush him as much as they could.

Though, it didn't last. When she stripped Izuku the following night to bathe him, the skin was back to its original state. She'd cried tears of happiness, while Izuku looked unfazed, the pain already forgotten.

A healing quirk, they had rationalised.

As time passed and Izuku grew, many marks came and went. Some stayed as scars, though those thankfully were only the small ones that were never worth a healing quirks time. A small white line across his lower back, a thicker but shorter gash on his shoulder and a scarred patch of skin on his leg. As Izuku continued to grow and collect scars of his own, those ones blended in with his body and were forgotten.

Unfortunately, the bigger ones never stopped. Although they often disappeared within a day at most, the supposed healing quirk in action, they were still there. Sometimes Izuku would cry, sometimes it would be a small flinch or gasp that he tried to cover up. Sometimes the pain would only be for seconds, and sometimes it would last for hours.

In those cases, Izuku would try to put on a brave face. He'd limp around the house as if his leg wasn't discoloured; he'd do his homework even though the skin on his arm was wrinkled and constricting as another burn formed; he'd smile, even as one side of his face turned purple and he could hardly open one eye. He wasn't suffering the actualities of the injury, he was never rushed to hospital for the severity of what those injuries showed, but he may as well have been from the pain it caused.

Izuku had never broken a bone before, but he knew the pain of bones splintering and fracturing. Izuku never went near the hot stove, all too aware of how skin looked when it came in contact with levels of heat too high to withstand. He knew emotions that weren't his own; mourning, regrets, guilt. He was too young to understand these things, and yet he knew them all.

Inko cried for her son when all he did was smile. Even if the expression turned into more of a grimace, even if he had to grit out some kind of reassurance for her as he clutched his body in varying places. Inko cried in guilt, wishing she had been able to supply a life of less misery for son, as if she were the one who failed him. She cried, thinking about what his soulmate must be going through. She cried because there was nothing she could do to save either of them.

It wasn't her fault, she knew, but she couldn't help but feel like she'd failed as a mother.

—

Izuku had friends when he was younger. They may not have been the best, he may have been the runt of the pack, but he was happy.