Chapter Text
Yelena (6 years old):
Yelena Belova knew she had a soulmate from a very young age.
Something she thought was universally known that everyone had.
Someone the universe had chosen to share her scars, her laughter, and all the bruised pieces in between. The missing half she’d one day meet, and together they’d have their own fairytale ending, like the ones her mother read before bed, even though Natasha always teased her for being “such a romantic.”
As a matter of fact, Yelena always felt him in the back of her consciousness.
He didn’t like to make himself known, squished in the very corner of her mind, no matter how much she tried to coax him through the other line. But that’s okay, he’s shy, and the five-year-old was more than happy to send him happy feelings. If he were shy, she’d talk enough for both of them: sending him bright, warm thoughts through the thread that tied them together throughout the day, hoping he’d feel them wherever he was.
She often wondered if he cared at all—and a tiny part of her feared he didn’t.
Until she stumbled and fell to her knees while chasing her older sister around the playground. The fall scraped her right knee raw, and the sting hit hard enough to make her eyes well up.
“Mommy!” she cried, voice trembling while falling back onto her rump to cradle her right knee.
The pain throbbed, hot and sharp, and she whimpered again—until suddenly, it was gone.
Not all of it, but enough to make her stop mid-sob just as Natasha tried to comfort her.
The ache dulled into something soft and distant, almost like someone had pulled the pain away and cradled it for her. She blinked down at her knees. She could still see the blood, the torn skin, but it didn’t hurt the same way anymore.
Then she felt it, faint as a heartbeat in the back of her mind: a pulse of warmth, of quiet reassurance, so fleeting she might’ve thought she imagined it if she hadn’t been so stunned by what transpired.
Her lips parted in a small, breathless laugh.
“Hi,” she whispered, even though she knew he couldn’t answer. "It's you."
But for the first time, she could feel him there.
“Who are you talking to—”
Natasha couldn’t finish when their mother walked up to them.
“What happened?” her mother asked, kneeling in front of Yelena, who was still staring at her knees, in complete awe. Her heart was thumping wildly, and she wondered if he could feel how thankful she was.
How happy that he cared and was there.
“She fell on her knees,” Natasha answered, still holding Yelena.
“Aw, you bumped your knees?” their mother cooed gently, reaching to inspect it before Yelena finally looked up, eyes wide and shimmering.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t hurt anymore,” she whispered, almost like she was afraid saying it too loud would make the feeling disappear. She stared at her mother, watching her confusion slowly morph into something gravely serious.
“What do you mean it doesn’t hurt anymore?”
“Look!”
She extended and bent her knees a few times, and sure enough, there was nothing. If she weren’t even looking at her knees, she wouldn’t have even noticed that she had fallen in the first place.
“How is that possible…?” her mother asked, and Yelena couldn’t help but beam.
“My soulmate took away the pain,” she chirped happily, but she hadn’t expected her sister's mother to look unsettled by the idea. Her mother was still crouched at Yelena’s level, hands frozen halfway towards her knees.
Something unreadable flickered across her face, a shadow of recognition, maybe even fear.
“You… felt him?” she asked softly, brushing Yelena’s hair back from her forehead.
“Yeah!”
Natasha frowned, glancing between them.
“You mean, like, right now? You can feel him right now?”
Yelena hesitated, her brow furrowing as she reached inward, searching for the quiet pulse she’d felt before. For a second, there was only her own rapid heartbeat, and then, faint again—a soft thrum, like the echo of a heartbeat syncing with hers.
Her shoulders relaxed, and a small smile curved her lips.
“He’s shy, but he’s still there,” she murmured sweetly, but when she saw Natasha and their mother sharing a look, her smile faltered. Her toes curled while she nervously darted her eyes between them. “Why? Is…is something wrong? Did…did I do something wrong?”
Her mother gripped the side of her arm, squeezing reassuringly even though there was something close to sorrow in her eyes. “Yelena, you have to promise me something right now, okay?”
Timidly, she nodded. “Okay.”
“Do not tell anyone about this, do you understand?”
Her breath couldn’t help but hitch at her mother’s tone.
It wasn’t angry but just heavy, full of something Yelena couldn’t name.
“But why not?” she asked in a small voice. “He helped me…”
“Yelena,” her mother said gently, hands perched up to now resting on her small shoulders. “What you have is rare, one in a million. Most people never feel their soulmate until much later, and almost no one can feel them like this, could…share and take away each other’s pains the way you could.”
Yelena blinked up at her, a mixture of pride and confusion flickering across her face.
“But that’s a good thing, right? It means we’re special!”
Her mother’s lips parted, but for a moment, no words came out. The silence stretched between them, broken only by the rustling of the forest nearby. Finally, she exhaled. “It’s a beautiful thing, детка, but it’s also dangerous. You can’t tell anyone—not your friends, not your teachers, no one. We keep this between us. Do you understand?”
Yelena frowned slightly, small brows knitting together.
“But why? Isn’t everyone supposed to have one?”
“Yes,” her mother said softly, tucking a stray blonde strand behind Yelena’s ear, “But not like this. Not this strong.” Her tone was careful, every word weighed as if she were balancing truth against fear. “You have to protect that bond. If the wrong people knew…” she trailed off, pressing her lips together.
Yelena tilted her head, trying to make sense of it.
“Isn’t Daddy your soulmate?” she asked innocently.
For a heartbeat, neither Natasha nor her mother spoke. Yelena caught the glance that passed between them. It’s one they shared whenever she asked something, and they seem to be in on a secret she didn’t understand.
Her mother forced a thin smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Sometimes,” she said carefully, “the world doesn’t work the way we’re told it does.”
Natasha looked down, pretending to smooth Yelena’s hair, but she avoided her mother’s gaze.
The tension in the air made Yelena’s chest ache, even though she didn’t understand why.
“Oh,” she mumbled, her fingers curling around the hem of her shirt. “Okay.”
“Promise me you won’t tell, любимая,” her mother said once more, her voice so soft it almost trembled. “Not even your father.”
“I promise,” Yelena whispered.
“Come on now, let’s go inside and prepare supper, okay?” she suggested, offering both hands to her daughter. Yelena nodded, taking her hand, but feeling somewhat saddened by the need to hide something she had always been proud and happy about.
Her Prince Charming.
She could feel it then, a gentle flicker at the edge of her mind, like a brush of sunlight after rain. The warmth wasn’t strong, just a little spark, but it carried something unmistakably his: a tiny burst of happiness, a reassuring hum that made her chest feel light again.
Yelena’s lips parted in a small gasp.
He could feel her sadness and was trying to cheer her up.
Her very shy but kind soulmate.
She didn’t want him to, didn’t want to send worry through the thread that tied them together, not after he’d already helped her once. So she forced herself to think of something else. Maybe if she thought hard enough, if she filled her heart with warm things, sunshine things, she could send them back to him.
Thank you, she thought, the words bright in her chest, trying to push happiness through the invisible thread that connected them. I’m okay. Don’t worry. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The ache in her chest eased, replaced by quiet warmth.
That’s when she realized what it meant to have a soulmate truly.
She realized how silly it was for her to even wonder whether her soulmate cared.
And from then on, she made a conscious effort to make sure she didn’t get hurt for his sake.
Bob: (5 years old):
As far as Bob knew, he had never given much thought to soulmates.
It wasn’t his number-one thought in his already chaotic childhood.
Not until the day he started feeling things that weren’t his.
It started small.
A jolt on his elbow, like he suddenly bumped himself into a table by accident, even though he was sitting, came and went so quickly he thought nothing of it. Sometimes, he’d feel a little amount of pain in his shoulder or knee, but it was nothing more than fleeting, harmless twinges that never left a mark.
Between the constant bullying at school, his failing grades, and his drunken father, he didn’t think much of it. Like everything else, he locked all those emotions deep inside of himself and tried not think about it.
Make his feelings so small that they could be tucked away at the very corner of his mind, so small that they barely existed. But then came something else, something that didn’t make any sense:
Warmth.
It bloomed in his chest like sunlight through fog, soft and steady, wrapping around him as he felt a slight tug at his heart. The sensation was unlike anything he’d ever known. It was calm and pure, a feeling he didn’t get much of at home.
It pressed gently against the heaviness in his chest until, for the first time in a long while, he could breathe. He didn’t know what it was or where it came from, but deep inside, something told him that someone out there cared.
For the first time, he found himself curious.
Curious enough to go to the library and sit in one of the back corners, flipping through dusty books about psychology and strange connections between people. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for exactly.
Maybe an answer, perhaps proof he wasn’t losing his mind.
The word soulmate came up more than once, and for the first time, it didn’t sound as ridiculous as it used to. A rare phenomenon, the book called it—a “deep psychic resonance,” a thin thread between two destined people that allowed the other to sense your emotions and share each other’s pain.
Not just that, but your soulmate’s injuries could show up on one’s skin if the bond were strong enough, the book said. Bruises, cuts, even burns, mirrored signs of something deeper than flesh.
Bob’s stomach turned at the idea.
He ran his thumb over an old scar on his knuckle when he cut himself on his father’s old, shattered beer bottle and wondered what it would mean if someone somewhere had felt that, too.
Fuck, he hoped not.
However, only a handful of cases had ever been documented, and they were dismissed as fantasy. Closing the book, he dismissed what he had read because feelings were dangerous things.
They made you hope, and hope never did him any favors.
He shoved the persistent sense that someone was out there, tugging gently on the edge of his soul. Yet those moments kept coming back. Little flickers of brightness that weren’t his, like the warmth that made his chest ache to know more instead of easing it.
Someone was trying to reach him; he could feel it.
But admitting that meant letting himself believe in things like soulmates and love. So he did what he always did: walled himself off, buried the light deep inside, and pretended he didn’t notice how good it felt.
But late at night, when the world went quiet…Bob found himself wandering.
Who was she?
What did she look like?
How could there be someone so happy and kind in a world that had never given him a reason to be either?
It had to be a mistake.
He’d lie on his back, staring at the cracks in the attic, feeling those little bursts of sunshine press against the bruised parts of him. She’d send him this bright, fizzy joy, tugging at the very ends constantly as if to cheer him up.
And every time it reached him, he’d clench his jaw and tell himself it wasn’t for him.
That she’d be better off if he never existed at the other end of that string, so he never answered.
He couldn’t find himself to because that would admit that he knew she existed and acknowledged it.
So he continued to ignore it—until he couldn’t anymore.
One evening, he was thoughtlessly playing with his Rubik’s Cube in the attic while his parents fought down below, and he felt a burning sting to his right knee. It was enough that the 3D puzzle fell from his hands, and he winced, yanking up his pants.
Yet there was no marking.
No scrape, no bruise, nothing but the raw pulse of pain still buzzing beneath his skin before he realized what had happened that made his throat constrict.
She’d gotten hurt.
Whoever she was, she’d gotten hurt, and somehow, impossibly, he’d felt it.
He pushed a shaky hand through his hair, swallowing hard as the argument downstairs turned to slammed doors. His heart was pounding so hard that it felt as if it might leap right up his throat because he could feel her sadness bleeding through the thread: faint, trembling, and unbearably pure.
It hit him harder than the pain had.
That usual flicker of warmth she always sent, that tiny spark that reminded him the world wasn’t all bad because she was there, it was dim.
Stifled.
He gripped his leg, jaw locking as a wave of heaviness pressed against his ribs. God, he hated it. Not the feeling itself, but what it meant. She was crying. He didn’t know if someone had pushed her, if she had fallen on her own, but he felt it all the same.
Bob knew it shouldn’t have mattered.
She was supposed to be a stranger.
That, according to those books he read, it would disappear over time if the bond wasn’t strong enough, yet it gutted him.
Because she’d always been this tiny burst of joy that slipped through his walls like sunlight under a door. The one thing that still managed to reach him, even when he swore nothing could.
And now, for the first time, that light had gone out.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered under his breath, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him, or maybe she could. His voice cracked anyway as he gently cupped his knee with his hands, pressing his forehead on top. “Please don’t be sad. I can help. What can I do to help you?”
He closed his eyes, wishing he could will the thread to work both ways and take what she felt, to make it lighter somehow. He didn’t know how to do that, or if he even could, but sitting there in the dark, his fingertips dug into his skin as if reach alone could bridge miles.
The stinging pain in his knee suddenly deepened, turning sharper.
And so, without thinking, he pulled it into himself.
It was instinct, the same way someone reaches to catch something before it breaks.
He sucked in a breath, knuckles white, shoulders curling forward until the tension finally eased.
And then, just like that…he saw it.
A minor scrape on his knees, where it was hurting, but there was no bleeding, just a light scar.
He could only stare at his scar in bewilderment as he soon felt a pulse on the other end of that string tethered to his existence. He felt her confusion ripple through the thread, the same shock, the same realization.
She could feel it, too.
She wasn’t crying anymore, either.
Little flickers of awe and appreciation tunneled through, almost like she was saying “thank you.”
His heartbeat thundered in his ears while he blinked, once, twice, but the mark remained of a thin, pale line that hadn’t been there moments ago. His leg still throbbed faintly, proof that it was real, that it had happened.
Bob stumbled to his feet, nearly tripping over the clutter in his safe space he lurched toward the mirror. His hands were shaking so severely that his knuckles ached when he grabbed the edge of the dresser for balance.
He rolled his pant leg up again.
The light, freshly-pink scar was still there on his pale skin.
He stared at his reflection, eyes wide and haunted, chest rising and falling too fast. And yet, even in the middle of that panic, he felt it again. Her on the very end, and for some reason, she was now feeling uneasy, almost like she thought she’d done something wrong.
The edges of that feeling hit him in trickling waves.
It wrapped around his chest like water seeping through cracks he didn’t know he had.
Bob swallowed, his throat tight.
“Hey… no,” he muttered under his breath, staring at himself in the mirror as if his reflection could send the words through. “Don’t do that. Don’t be sad. Are you okay? Why are you still feeling sad? Are you hurt?”
Bob didn’t know what he was doing.
Hell, he’d never been good at feeling anything but sadness and loneliness, let alone sharing it, but he tried anyway.
He intertwined his hands, squeezing his eyes shut. He thought about what had made him the happiest in the past few months. The tiny, bright sparkle that appeared when she’d send her joy through the bond of little bubbles of sunlight and laughter that made the world feel less like a coffin.
So he reached for that. He thought of how her warmth made his chest feel full, not hollow. He thought of the brief moments of calm he found in the quiet, in the sound of rain hitting the roof, in the childish part of him that still believed in things that could be good.
He built all of that in his head—awkward, messy—and pushed it back through the thread.
The connection pulsed once, almost testing, then grew stronger and steadier until the tension on the other end eased. That heavy ache he could feel softened into something lighter. Bob’s lips parted, disbelief and something close to wonder fighting for space in his chest.
She was laughing.
He didn’t know how he knew, but he did.
His soulmate, the person that the universe crafted just for him, was happy again thanks to him.
For the first time in his life, he understood what it means to protect someone.
And for the first time, without meaning to, he’d made a difference in someone’s life.
He was helpful.
For a boy who’d only ever known how to take pain, giving back even a fragment of joy felt like learning how to breathe again. For the first time in his life, Bob felt he had a purpose: finding his other half.