Ink | Soulmate AU | ✓

twenty-eight | taken

   A hallucination?

   I didn't think he saw me. Not at first, anyway. He strolled up to the counter and ordered a large hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and marshmallows. Running on autopilot, I scrambled to retrieve my pen before I scribbled hastily on some tiny gap on my arm, make it two.

   I saw, even from a distance, the blue writing appear on his own arm. Make it two.

   Not a hallucination.

   Now he knew I was here. I felt my stomach squirm again, only this time with something worse than nausea. Madness. Awe. Disbelief.

   He looked just like he did in the photograph: just like his father. Tall and slender. He wore a powder blue T-Shirt, despite the cold, and jeans, with white canvas shoes. What about prison overalls? What—

   I watched, in silent astonishment and trepidation, as he corrected himself to the barista; I heard his voice for the first time. It was clear, and solid, and without a trace of his mother or father's accents. He'd grown up in England, it was clear. That was the moment I realised just how much I knew about this stranger.

   He moved here when he was six, from Canada, with his dad. My art Professor. Not any more, my aching brain chimed in. The course was over. I had done my final exam.

   His favourite colour was baby blue. He didn't like coffee, hence the hot chocolate. His middle name was Conrad, which he hated. He had a cat called Alan, who he was allergic to but didn't have the heart to get rid of. The thought made my heart warm.

   He'd been in prison for— how long? I didn't know that. The Professor had vaguely indicated a timeframe, but-- and then I remembered something I had forgotten. That night, however long ago it was, just before my trip to the craft store. I didn't have a memory of it-- just-- something: There was pain. Floating. Then I had passed out.

   I bet that was when they took him. Of course I felt it, as soulmates did. I felt everything he felt, everything that mattered.

   Still, I didn't want to think about it, didn't want to know. He was here now, and that was all that mattered. The past was nothing.

   He didn't look like a boy who'd just escaped prison, been tortured, even died before being revived. He didn't appear garishly thin, or hollow-faced, gaunt or broken. He didn't seem like the melancholy boy from the photograph anymore.

   A hallucination?

   Carelessly, I wrote another message to him on my arm. Being caught wasn't a threat anymore. I had won. We had won. Together. There was no way they could arrest me now. It was too late.

   I'm in the corner, I printed, slowly and carefully, waiting for him to see me and scream or something. That's what I wanted to do.

   Then, the thought occurred to me that he didn't actually know what I looked like. I supposed he had never seen a photograph, like I had.

   So I wasn't too surprised when his eyes flitted past me as he scanned the room, searching for his elusive soulmate.

   I held my breath.

   Suddenly the hot chocolates were in his hands and he was walking towards my table. Somehow he'd known I was the one giving him the messages; maybe the fact that I was staring at him with a stupidly large grin plastering my face. I expected to see the same expression mirrored in his own features, but they only looked blank, possibly mildly perplexed.

   He politely claimed the seat opposite me and I really took him in for the first time. Dark, sweeping hair, just like his father's but with fewer grey streaks. The same shocking blue eyes, only this time warm instead of icy cold. I recognised his cheekbones, sharp but not bony, his jawline and his teeth, slightly crooked, as he spoke to me for the first ever time. 'I'm sorry, who are you?'

   Of course. He didn't know. I remembered the Professor's words, like I so often did these days, chiming in my ears: He only knows he has a soulmate, and he loves her.

   Quickly I took up my pen once more and scribbled a last message. I'm her.

   He read this note, and looked up at me, laughing a little. I expected to see hope in his azure eyes, joy even, but I saw only confusion. 'I'm sorry, do we know each other?' His eyes pieced mine as he spoke, unflinching. Thoroughly unsure what was going on.

   'I'm Archie,' I said, concerned now. 'I'm your soulmate.'

   'Well I gathered that much,' he chuckled, looking down at his arm. I only stared at him, desperate for some sign of a joke. I couldn't find one. He really didn't know me. The most obvious explanation: this wasn't George. He'd been replaced by some imposter. But he was George. I knew it, I could feel it; besides, no one else could receive my Ink messages. It really was him. But it wasn't him.

   That first time we had spoken, properly, he had known my name. Maybe his dad had told him, or one of my friends had written on my arm in ink. Either way, he'd known. Now, inexplicably, he'd forgotten it?

   All the questions I had for him - why he looked so healthy, how he'd done it all so quickly, how the hell any of this had happened - they all died on my lips. I'd never know. I only managed one word.

   'George.'

   The reply. 'How do you know my name?'

   My world came crashing down around me.

   And that was that. I understood. They'd taken my memories. Now they'd taken his as well.

   All of them.