Chapter Text
As a child, he’d been taught by his mother that the world had a perfect half for everyone.
As a spy, Twilight had learned to never, ever, ever write anything in his body — not a single memo, no sliver of detail, regardless of where it could be placed or how inconspicuous it might be; better to let something crucial slip off the mind than to risk giving it away, always.
Under WISE, he was the best of the best. No matter that Destiny had planned ‘it’ to be an aid to most, it would only prove to be a hindrance to people like him — the stuff of fairytales turned into a slippery slope, soulmates. Twilight saw teenagers writing sweet nothings onto their pulses, a press of lips against the ink that looked more like delusion than a promise; adults smiling down their palms in delight, living comfortably in their skin even as it was eerily shared with another, your body never your own; people left and right disclosing information that would lead them to their promised ones, as if a fleeting message in cursive was enough to cajole the whole world into its obsession.
Alternatively: a very easy, very dangerous way to compromise himself or worse, a mission.
Twilight knew that whoever was ‘promised’ to him didn’t place that much weight on it, either, and perhaps that’s what solidified the idea of its ridiculousness so many years ago. Back when he was new to WISE and new to his own carefully crafted obfuscations, Twilight’s vigilance wasn’t so severe, his spirits more easily mollified after one would mention or ask or gloat about their soulmates. At the time he’d been hoping against hope, constantly on the fence between thinly veiled disdain and wanting to be proved wrong — that this all could be a good thing, after all.
The final nail in that particular coffin came at seventeen, in the form of the first and last message he’d ever get to date. Nestled close to the inside of his left elbow, laid a simple, ‘I’m sorry.’
If anything, he’d been glad the person had never written him again.
She’d always been terrified of never being enough.
People have soulmates, her parents told her at a young age. They’d been each other’s halves, their happiness severe and every bit contagious. She would ever only need to write on her skin to let her half know that she was there for them, but the fact of the matter was that Yor was a worrier by nature. In the grand scheme of things, what could she possibly say? Were there any rules to it, was she supposed to give them her name? Things you tell, things you don’t — everyone has secrets. And what if they didn’t like her? What if well-meant words were misinterpreted, what if her naivete or curiosity got in the way of something special? What if they thought she was too tall, too lively, not lively enough, too plain? Was her voice annoying? Were her eyes creepy?
Was she even worth meeting at all?
Her first few school years would’ve been spent hovering over other people’s arms — watching for secret messages and the giggling voices of her classmates — if only Yor had managed to make any friends at all.
Her mother tried to dispel her worries; her half would be the only person she could truly be herself with, she’d say. Yuri insisted she didn’t need a soulmate; “You have me!”
They never wrote to you, anyway , he pressed, and it stung more than Yor would ever admit. Was her soulmate that disinterested in the idea of having her in their lives? Did they already have someone?
Are they even alive? became the question, when her parents died.
In her absolute horror with the prospect of her brother ever going hungry, she picked up the blade and put the questions behind her. She was good at killing and killing only — and more than anything, Yor knew no one could ever love her for it, except Garden.
She wished her half well, but she was unnecessary to them. Which was why, with no introductions nor preamble, her resolve cemented the idea that this would be all she’d ever have: bodies at her feet, her brother’s smiling face.
And thus, blood in her hands, whimsy, she wrote the stranger a farewell.
‘I’m sorry.’