Work Text:
How can someone enjoy love when all love does is hurt them? Why does it always hurt? It’s not supposed to hurt. Parents tell their children about the beauty that comes from the connection between two souls, the overwhelming happiness that can emerge from such a bond. Yet, underneath that happiness, a dark kind of agony lies waiting to strike. Soulmates, they say, are two people who were born for each other. Two people who share a soul or, as the Greeks believed, two halves of one whole person. Some stories tell of one lover following a red line, a string of fate that eventually leads them to their other half. Others talk of messages appearing on their skin as their soulmate doodles, ink of various colors that appears even after the two have met. Marks on the body in beautiful, elegant shapes that match with one other human on the planet, dead or alive. It’s almost dark, twisted, that society only really acknowledges the fantastical soulmate stories. People choose to ignore the horrors that are right in front of them.
Unrequited love, bruises where your soulmate touches you, shared wounds, diseases and disorders that are only cured when the two halves are rejoined. Hell, there’s even old Japanese myth that tell of vines, stems crawling their way through your lungs until you choke and suffocate on the petals of your loves favorite flower, all because that love isn’t returned. So, tell me, why is love fantasized about? Who would want it? Not me. Not any of the people who jump from the bridges or bathe in the crimson waters of their life force to escape their own despair. Why are there so many people standing below me? Why are they telling me that I have so much to live for? In this world, all I could live for would be my soulmate. Some of the terrified people, standing hand in hand underneath of me, are yelling words of supposed comfort, trying to get through to me.
“What would your other half think?!” One yelled, desperate tears trickling down her wind-burnt cheeks. Her husband stood behind her, clutching her to him as if she were the one about to jump, yet he had no expression on his face.
Another one, male this time, had one hand against a stone pillar that supported the bridge, an agonized look in his eyes. They were blue, murky with tears, yet stunning in the dim lighting. I wondered why he cared. “Please, darling, don’t do this to yourself.” British, clearly, and actually trying to appeal to my sense of self rather than my sense of responsibility to my ‘soulmate’. Or so I thought, anyway, until he spoke again. “Don’t do this to your love.” He pleaded.
It amused me, almost, to hear them shouting pleads up at me, trying to save themselves from witnessing something as tragic as a suicide. None of them were actually worried about rescuing me from my own demise. They just didn’t want to have the death of someone so young engrained in their memory for the rest of their lives. The wind, stronger still, was crippling to my flimsy balance on the ledge, and it blew away the shouts and screams of those on the ground, pushing their meaningless words into the atmosphere, where none would hear them. My eyes, blurred with the tears that formed due to the sharp, crisp wind, swept over the crowd a final time, examining the couples clutching each other in fear, seeing the elderly few wearing crestfallen expressions, their hands on their hearts as they waited for what they knew was inevitable. I didn’t truly see any of them. Funnily enough, they didn’t see me either. They saw a sad, desperate soul prepared to end it all, someone selfish enough to take away their soulmates possibility of love. A sick, gut wrenching cough suddenly ripped from my lungs, causing me to double over and almost fall. The sound of choking was evident, audible even over the wind and the shouts of alarm as my balance shifted. My eyes, unable to see, my ears unable to hear, my nose unable to smell. Only my mouth, full of the coppery taste of blood and the bitter, herbal flavor of earth, was capable of functioning next to the horrible pain in my heart. My chest, contracted with agonizing pain and hacking, was unable to expand to take in air. It was then that I knew. I had finally made it, I could finally succumb to the peaceful darkness that had been calling to me for nearly two years.
With my eyes full of tears, my nose drowned in the scent of flowers, my mouth dripping blood and beautiful, crisp petals, my ears blissfully engulfed in silence, I fell. The wind rushed past me again, accompanying me to the peace I sought after, but, just before it ended, I saw the one thing that mattered too much. The stunning ink of a black tattoo, a swirl of daffodils and forget-me-nots surrounding the most beautiful shade of iris I’d ever seen. I saw the permanent ink embedded in the skin of the perfect soul. I also saw it identically copied around another eye, the eye of the one standing next to my perfect person. The one holding their hand and mournfully watching on as they tried to hold my person back from the edge of the water, tried to comfort them as I fell. It’s hard to love, hard to be in love, even harder to be in love with someone who could never love you back.
As I reached the end, the icy water enveloping me in its dark embrace, a flurry of petals drifted away in the wind. White daffodil petals, stained red with blood and heartbreak, mingled with the soft beauty of pastel forget-me-nots dotted with crimson. With a smile, one that was finally happy and at peace, I closed my eyes and thought one last thought.
“They’re beautiful even when they cry.”