This is a soulmate AU that I saw somewhere on Tumblr (if you know the person who came up with it, tell me!) - basically any injuries that your soulmate gets, you get. This next bit it is my own head cannon: yes, this also means that when your soulmate dies, you die - people die in pairs. This includes cancer, but not genetic diseases. But, you don't get the pain that comes with it. If someone dies from a genetic disease then their soulmate dies from like a heart attack etc. This isn't relevant, but I just wanted to add an explanation in case someone wanted to magpie the AU.
Also I did write this as a modern AU, even though I said that I wouldn't, just because it worked for the story better.
TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE!!!
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"Miss (L/N), are you paying attention?" Your teacher spat, her wrinkles rippling like the sea as her pruned lips lathered her chin in saliva.
You scrunched up your nose, putting away your notebook hastily inside your bag and looking back up at the gorgon.
"Yes miss, just writing notes," you preened, sweetly batting your eyelids at the teacher and twirling a pen in your hand - it was broken and chewed, but the message was there.
She turned back, raccoon hands gripping onto a pen as she squeaked along the whiteboard, algebra equations materialising much to the classes dismay. You curled your hand underneath your chin, in a casual boredom, and let your eyes flutter half lidded as you zoned out. Algebra wasn't even bad, but when the teacher who taught it looked like she just crawled out of a sarcophagus, it was much, much worse.
"Psst!" Someone hissed from beside you. Well, 'someone' was Alex, your best friend of five years, but he didn't need to know that. You looked over at him slightly, still maintaining the mirage that you were paying attention, and surveyed him slightly.
His hair was pushed back, in a totally not Alex-like way and circular glasses adorned his button nose. Brown curls tickled his ears and his back was hunched - which was definitely in an Alex trait.
"What?" You hissed back out the corner of your mouth.
He pointed to your arm, and you frowned slightly, raising your eyebrows in question. He pointed more forcefully and widened his eyes more, making him look like a car with the lights up really bright.
And then you looked downwards, and gasped.
"Miss (L/N)!" Your teacher screeched, spinning around on a pivot, her face red with fury.
The class, naturally, spun around in union with her, to needle in on the object of ridicule.
"Miss, she's bleeding," Alex offered, and gestured towards you, and with a blank face you held your arm up, blood trickling down your elbow and in deep splotches onto the table from a deep gash on your wrist.
Immediately, whispers erupted from the class.
"I didn't do it," you quickly explained, suddenly aware of the situation at hand, and suddenly aware of sprouting slices across your forearm.
"Go to the nurse!" A girl screamed from the back of the class, in response to the teacher whose face had gone white with shock.
You stood, tripping on yourself at the sudden blackness that came over you; unconscious before you even hit the floor.
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Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
You opened your eyes, the whiteness of the hospital walls overbearing your senses and sending a spike of pain through your head.
You groaned, bringing your arms - unusually heavy - up to your forehead to cradle it, and to cover yourself from the light.
Rough bandages rubbed against your nose, and tickled your cheeks, which you weren't prepared for. On second thoughts, the hospital setting might have been a clue.
The clock on the wall was blaringly loud, and paired with the beeping monster beside you, your head was not having an easy time.
What happened?
"Hello?" A voice sounded from besides you, small and weary and strained.
You almost didn't hear it.
You looked over, only just noticing the second bed in the room, at a boy around your age, black hair streaked with blue with bandages to match yours, spare for the expression of utter gloom.
You were both laying down, probably because you couldn't get up, so the boy face mixed with the occasional rise of your scratchy covers and wisps of hair.
"Hi," you answered back, still searching for him amongst the mess of white. The boy turned over to look at you, his face pale and eyes sunken in.
"What you in for?" He asked, and you sniggered slightly.
"It's the hospital, not prison," you said snidely, but when he frowned you realised that was probably a bad idea.
You held up your arms to him, and the slight movement caused the IV next to you to move slightly, sliding in front of your view for a couple of seconds.
"You did it too," the boy whispered, and it was your turn to frown.
"Did what?" You asked, sucking in on your breath as you realised what you said, regretting the words as soon as they came out of your mouth.
"Try to kill yourself."
Beep.
Beep.
"No, I didn't," you whispered hoarsely, "these just appeared."
The boy looked at you, but at the same time looked away, his eyes glassy and just not in the room.
"They can't just appear," the boy said, "it's not possible."
You sighed.
"What about the soulmates thing?" You said, and the boy scoffed. It was joyful, and foreign up to this point.
"Are you insinuating that we're soulmates?" He teased, a slight semblance of... something in his voice. The slight ghost of smile lines on his cheeks, and the indent of a dimple.
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"He died, poor thing, not long afterwards," a woman with long hair and a doctors coat said to her colleague, "he went into surgery to deal with the tumour that started his downwards spiral into depression, and died on the operating table."
Her colleague, a short woman with short brown hair, combed her fingers.
"What about the girl?" She asked, in a hushed tone.
"Soulmates," the doctor smiled, sad, "they didn't even know each other more than a week."
"She made him smile though, in those final days?" The nurse spoke knowingly.
The doctor smiled, her blonde hair and blue eyes sparkling in memory.
"Naturally."