Inescapable (soulmate AU)

Prologue

"A long long time ago there was a young girl and a noble boy who had fallen in love, but the girl was a peasant and the boys father had forbidden him from marrying her because of her social class. The boy outraged and the girl heartbroken; they had decided to run away together, so that night; well past the witching hour when the whole town had fallen asleep the boy and girl joined hands and began to run towards their new life. But the boys father had noticed him leaving and gathered every other nobleman to hunt down his son, when they were found and torn away from each others embrace the father had declared that the girl would be hanged for bewitching and seducing his son. The boy locked in his room banged on the windows and pleaded at the door for the girls life, when he realized it was futile he sank to his knees and wept, in that moment he made a decision of both courage and stupidity and grabbed the letter opener from his desk, if he could not be with his love in life he would join her in death. At the same instance the boy and girl stared into the sky and pleaded, not for their own lives but for each other's, then the girl was hanged and the boy slit his throat and their souls left this world and passed to the next at the same time. A goddess moved by their love and prayers descended from the heavens and joined their lost souls to each other, the goddess looking out into the crowd noticed that loved seemed a foreign concept to everyone, she noticed their tired eyes, their permanent scowls and their dead marriages forged only by greed and obligation, saddened by this revelation she decided that every person deserved to feel what the boy and girl had, so she placed a seed into every baby that was born and would ever be and when the child reached a certain age it would bloom into a beautiful mark and the person who bore the same one would be their soulmate, their perfect match"

     "Is that true mama, did that really happen"  the fascinated voice of a four year old girl questioned.

     "No one truly knows how soulmates came to be, but I like this explanation the best" the girls mother responded as she finished tucking her into bed. "Do I have a soulmate mama" "of course you do, everyone does, and once you turn five you'll get your mark" the girls mother responded.

     At that the girl smiled and shimmied further into her covers as her mother gave her a kiss and left the room. She was super excited to get her mark.

    

     When the girls fifth birthday finally did come she couldn't sleep since she knew once the clock struck midnight her mark would appear, so she watch the seconds tick by.

     '50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 12:00!' The girl eagerly sat up and began searching her body all over for the mark, then a warm feeling took over her wrists, and there it was on the inside of her left wrist sat a pitch black iridescent symbol of a full moon with a crescent moon on its left and right side.

     The girls smile quickly faded as she noticed another pitch black iridescent symbol on the inside of her right wrist, this one was a simplified version of a weeping willow. As fear and confusion took over her mind she did the only thing that made sense to the newly five year old girl and ran to her mother.

     For months after, the girl was taken to every doctor and specialist possible but still no one could explain how this had happened, and the girl had to watch as her mother became increasingly stressed. School was a nightmare as she was relentlessly bullied by oblivious kids who were repeating their parents cruel words. This continued for years and as the girl got older the excitement of having a soulmate disappeared.

     Logic replaced emotion, and the girl no longer thought of the unconditional love but instead how messy it would be having two soulmates, she questioned how old they were realizing it could be a decades age difference, she questioned if they were good people as she was exposed to the reality of spousal abuse. And instead the girl decided to ignore her marks, to forget she even had them, hoping she never ran into her soulmates and if she did that they would feel the same.

     They didn't