Because I've been bored and depressed and reading fanfiction about people with soulmates makes me happy, so I think we all deserve a little cliché in our life. And there are not nearly enough cliché Gency fanfics yet, people.

A lot of the people that Angela knew thought about their soulmates constantly. It had always been a popular topic in middle school, when kids finally got over the fact that they were somehow connected to someone that might have cooties. In high school, it just got worse. People never stopped talking about their soulmates, and anyone who had yet to connect with their own got shunned.

Angela didn't particularly care about whatever her peers thought. It wasn't that she couldn't talk to her soulmate; that was supposed to be easy. All you had to do was write something somewhere on yourself and it would appear on them, too. However, she had never been particularly interesting in talking to them. Not once had she written a word on her arm; it had just never been worth it. She knew that she had a soulmate, because occasionally random markings would appear on her skin, generally just stray pen ink, but he didn't seem to have a desire to communicate with her, either.

Truly, she was okay with that. She had to focus on her studies. The boy that held the counterpart to her soul wouldn't disappear within the next few years, and as of right now he would only distract her from working. She was so unbelievably sick of seeing girls with incredible brains turning into lovesick puppies once they met their soulmate. It pained her to watch guys waste all their potential as they fawned over "the one." Angela was top of her class in almost every regard, and she never intended to lose that for something as silly as love.

However, that didn't keep her from communicating with him at all – she just did it in her own way. She hadn't once written a word on her arms, but she was an artist on top of a student. Every so often she would draw designs on her hands and arms for fun. She did her best to keep them from being too girly, but even if they were she was always content to know that if her counterpart ever wanted to wash them off he could, and it always made her heart flutter just a tad when she noticed how long he would leave some of the designs on without washing them. The longest she could remember him leaving a drawing alone was when she drew a picture below her left wrist of a little girl in a witch costume, complete with a wand and hat, which had lasted an entire week before the design disappeared while she was sleeping. Part of her wondered if whoever it was just left them up in order to respect her time; the witch had been a work in progress for an entire school day, all of which had been review from the previous year and none of which challenged her in the slightest.

She fondly remembered another time when she drew all over her left hand in permanent marker. The back of her hand had been a tree full of flower blossoms against a blue sky which continued onto her palm in the form of countless tiny, swirling roots. Parts of the black roots had faded pretty quickly, which she had expected; everything she wrote directly on her hand always got wiped off pretty quickly, likely when her soulmate washed their hands. What was positively endearing was a few moments later when she noticed the roots slowly forming once again. They were not nearly as neat, but it made her heart warm to know that he enjoyed her doodles enough to try to fix them. In a spur of the moment decision, she found a relatively washed off patch of skin directly in the middle of her palm and began drawing once again, this time forming a shape with the curling roots. It was a little silly and much too similar to her classmate's fawning for her liking, but there in the center of her palm was an ornate looking heart, created out of those tree roots. Because, while she didn't care to know them right now, she still knew that she loved her soulmate and would want to know them eventually - just on her own terms.

Her chest thudded fondly when another heart appeared, this time on her wrist, as if the artwork was too sacred to be disturbed. The thing was, again, shaky. This was certainly not an artist she was connected to, but that was okay. She smiled and used her own pen to fill in the shape and add a small pair of wings to it. Was it silly? Yes, probably. But she was bored and this couldn't be considered getting too invested in her soulmate, so it was acceptable.

She was a junior in high school before she wrote a single word to him.

The two had taken to fondly doodling at each other – at least she hoped it was fondly – whenever they happened to notice a picture on their hands. The boy on the other side of her skin was certainly not the best artist, but she always smoothed out his lines whenever he needed it, and occasionally she would try to give him instructions as best she could through the ink. It took forever for him to catch on at first; he drew a simple design, and she repeated it at an awfully slow pace, trying to get him to see the proper way of making his lines connect. He didn't seem to figure out that she was trying to teach him though, so she drew the design again in the exact same way at least ten times, forcing him to understand that he should follow her pen strokes. Her entire arm was covered in scribbles before he finally realized what she was doing, and he drew the shape again himself. That was the first time they had ever properly interacted. Angela had done something that her soulmate had responded to, and she found out why exactly it was so addicting for everyone to do things such as this. A dull, happy warmth seeped through her as she watched the person on the other end mimic the design a few times, finally taking in her art lesson.

It was at that point she decided she needed to talk to him. There was no need to get invested, but it couldn't hurt at this point; she was absolutely going to be Valedictorian of her class – hell, she might even graduate early – and none of her extracurriculars were particularly brutal at the moment. It couldn't hurt to say just a little, right?

That was her thought process when she finally scribbled the word "hello" in her best possible penmanship at the base of her wrist. However, her assumption that it couldn't hurt her had been terribly wrong. She was confused at the three question marks that appeared in turn and crestfallen at the sight of a few characters that she didn't recognize. Was that Japanese? An unpleasant knot formed in her stomach as she stared at the characters and realized that it was probably a good thing they had never spoken before, because they didn't even speak the same damn language. The idea stung an unreasonable amount, so much so that she almost cried in the middle of class.

She managed to keep it together and grabbed a piece of paper out of her notebook, meticulously copying down the symbols on her skin before rubbing all of the writing off, replacing it with a simple, "oh." She figured that could be understood in almost any language, but she made a point of drawing a tear-drop shape on her wrist, although her heart wasn't in it enough to be detailed with the design.

Blankly she gazed at the piece of paper and sighed. At least there would be very little boredom in her future; she had an entire language to learn now.

The doodles had slowed as junior year crawled into senior year. Angela was too busy focusing all of her spare time into learning a brand new language to focus on drawing, although occasionally she'd draw the random heart or set of wings just as a reminder that she was still there.

What was rather disturbing were the occasions where a classmate would point out that she was bleeding. The first time it happened, it simply confused her. The friend was certainly correct – there was a red line of what looked like blood running from the back of her knee to her ankle. However, she didn't actually have any cuts anywhere on her. She decided that her counterpart probably had a bad injury, and the blood had dripped down his leg, making it look like it was her own. It only made sense that it showed up on her skin; her body wasn't exactly particular about what it considered to be ink, only that it had to at least somewhat stain your skin, and blood did just that.

It didn't bother her that first time, but it soon started to happen more and more often. She knew from the placements of the cuts that they weren't self-inflicted; they were much too random and visible to be anything of the sort. Occasionally she'd even find blood on her face – evidence of a split lip, something dripping down right above her eyebrow, things like that. If those things were self-inflicted, the people around him were criminally neglectful. That hardly calmed her unease, though, because that just made her wonder how he did receive the injuries.

The only way to figure it out was to ask him, and after a full year studying Japanese, she could confidently say she was at least mostly fluent. Writing the language was significantly harder than speaking it. She could speak it perfectly and only write it decently, but that was good enough for her.

She sat in her bed in the middle of the night, pen pressed to her lips as she stared at her arm, considering what to say. She was writing at this ungodly hour because it was very likely her soulmate was eight hours ahead of her, if he actually lived in Japan. If she was going to have a conversation with him she wanted to be sure that they would both be awake for it, so four in the morning for her meant it was noon for him. She wasn't really worried about school the next day, either; she'd just fake being sick and skip it, since they weren't studying anything particularly challenging tomorrow.

With a sigh she finally put her pen to her skin, writing in Japanese. "Alright, let's try this again. Hello."

A minute passed before a small exclamation point appeared on her skin, followed by a few words of his own. "Oh, wow. Hello. You speak Japanese?"

Angela grinned to herself. "I do now."

"You learned an entire language in a year!?"

She tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear as a massive smile made its way onto her face. Normally she hated when people pointed out how intelligent she was, but the surprised way that he said it just seemed sweet. "I'm a fast learner. Plus I was bored and one of us was going to have to do it eventually, so I figured it would be easier for me than you."

About half of the words were smudged and erased, making more room on their arms, before new words replaced them. "So where are you from, Germany?"

"Close. Switzerland. Japan, right?"

"Sucks that we're so far away. Yeah, I'm in Japan."

Angela let out a small sigh. Yeah, it really did suck. "Indeed. No one I've ever known had this happen to them. Makes sense though, if I think about the amount of times it seemed that you didn't notice a drawing for hours."

"Haha. They were pleasant surprises to wake up to. You're an incredible artist."

"I try. It's more of a hobby than anything."

The person on the other end waited for a while before replying. "Wait… isn't it the middle of the night over there?! Why are you awake?"

"You caught me. I just wanted to make sure you were awake for the first time I talked to you. Nothing hard going on at school regardless, so I can pretend I'm sick and miss a day."

"You should really sleep."

"Trust me, I don't need to go to school tomorrow. Most of it is just review from junior year."

"Junior year?"

"Yeah. I'm thinking of just graduating early this year. School is stupidly boring."

"Wow. I'm still a sophomore." That genuinely surprised Angela. She hadn't ever given consideration to the idea that the person on the other end might not be the same age as her, though she supposed that it could be a lot worse. Two years wasn't that big of an age difference. She suddenly cringed at the idea that whoever it was might be the same age as her, just held back.

"Hm, I suppose I always assumed that we'd be the same age. I'm seventeen, and I'll turn eighteen in a few months. You?"

"I just turned sixteen."

"Cool."

She sat in silence for a while, waiting for a response. The conversation had deadpanned pretty badly. He said something after not replying for about ten minutes. "I really don't like that you're staying up that late because of me. Could you just go to sleep?"

"Hm, depends on if you'll answer a question of mine."

"Sure. What is it?"

"What's up with the random blood?"

"…you see that?"

"Yup."

He never responded. She stayed up for another hour, staring at her arm and waiting for some sort of response but never receiving one. Eventually she got up, washed her arm off in the bathroom, and practically threw herself back on her bed, frustrated beyond belief. She was worried about him and that response certainly didn't help.

She pulled the pen out one more time, drawing a simple face frowning before smudging it off immediately and deciding to write her thoughts instead. She had learned way too much Japanese to continue communicating in pictures. "If you're allowed to be concerned about my wellbeing, then I should be allowed to worry about you, too. Goodnight."

After a few hours of tossing and turning, she finally fell asleep.

The next day, she woke up to a message. "What are your thoughts on the war?"

What an odd question that was, almost completely out of the blue. She shrugged and picked up a pen, carefully writing "I want peace" on her arm. She didn't particularly feel like going into detail, especially considering that most people strongly disagreed with her thoughts. She just wanted peace between humanity and omnics; she didn't want them wiped off of the face of the earth, nor did she want the omnics to win. She just wanted people to stop hurting.

His reply surprised her. "That's admirable."

"Thanks. Not many people think so." She paused before continuing to write. "I'm probably going to study medicine when I graduate, to try to help heal people. I'd like to be able to come up with better ways to repair omnics, too."

"I'm sure you'll be great at it."

"I am too, but I'm not sure it'll be enough."

From that point on, conversations got much less serious, and Angela allowed herself to drop the blood topic for the time being. They didn't talk much, but when they did it was about silly things, like favorite colors or movies. Angela hardly had any time to talk anyways; she had, true to her word, graduated early, and was now beginning college courses. They were all still dreadfully easy; even pre-med held no challenge for her, which she griped to her soulmate about constantly.

She would often come back to her dorm after a short day of classes to tell stories about her experiences to her soulmate. "You wouldn't believe how shocked the professor was when I told him that his theories were outdated. A blood vessel in his forehead looked about ready to explode, but I was right! And then I proved that I was right, and he told me that if I wanted to teach class I could. So I did haha."

"You're incredible, you know."

Angela laughed loudly at that. "Oh, I don't know about that. I'm just me."

"Well, 'just me' seems pretty cool and clever, at least to me." She flushed bright red at that, smile growing, as she tried to come up with a response to something that sweet. Luckily, the person on the other end wasn't done. "Could you tell me your name? I know we don't talk much about personal stuff, but I'm so curious."

"Depends. Tell me yours, first."

"I'm Genji."

"Genji," she whispered out loud. She liked it. After erasing all of the previous writing, she began drawing her own name in large calligraphy on her left arm. It had been a while since she had done any artwork on herself, and she figured her name was a good excuse to draw some more. Eventually the word "Angela" appeared in fancy, curling font all across the inside of her arm. It was probably a little much, and she knew it, but she just couldn't help herself.

"Beautiful," was the word that appeared on the inside of her palm. "Just like I'm sure you are."

She giggled at that, feeling a lot like a lovesick schoolgirl and allowing herself to stop caring about that for the moment. "That makes me laugh. You have no idea what I look like. I could be a troll for all you know."

"Then educate me."

"Not much to say. I've got blonde hair that's really messy, annoying to take care of, and in some lights looks like it's white. My eyes are really blue. I'm a pretty average height."

"You should draw yourself."

She snorted. Well that was quite the idea, wasn't it? "No thanks. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't believe whatever I drew regardless. If I drew myself poorly you'd say I was exaggerating and if I looked to good you'd think I wasn't being realistic, even if you didn't actually say so." It sounded extremely hard to draw something so detailed, anyways. "What do you look like, by the way?"

"Fine, I guess you're probably right. And I've got black spiked hair that I dye every once in a while and hazel eyes. I do lots of martial arts training so I'm in decent shape. Everyone says I smile very widely."

"Well, Genji, I'm looking forward to the day we can meet and assess our descriptions of each other."

That was the first time either of them had mentioned meeting the other. Angela had previously described people who fawned over their soulmates with such venom that Genji certainly must know how much she disliked the idea of letting him distract her. It was no surprise that the conversation deadpanned after that.

She occupied herself for the rest of that day looking up the name Genji. She knew it was silly to try to find her soulmate like this, but curiosity had always been one of her strongest characteristics. Part of her briefly wondered if he was doing the same with her own name. No one really jumped out at her, and she hadn't expected them to. It was highly unlikely that her soulmate was someone famous, and there had to be thousands of Genjis out there. Even then, she could help but be slightly disappointed when she found nothing.

She was finishing up the last few classes she needed in order to graduate when the two of them started talking on a regular basis. Angela, if she was being honest with herself, knew that he wouldn't be enough of a distraction to hurt her grades. After only being college for a little over two years she was almost done with pre-med, with a great thesis to start researching as soon as she was finished. Practically nothing on the face of the earth could hurt her grades, Genji included. Once the soon-to-be-doctor finally opened up the two of them quickly became friends, discussing almost everything and helping each other whenever they could.

Angela nearly drew the line when he started asking for her help in school.

The first message had been pretty innocent. "Could you help me with my Calculus homework? I know it'll be easy for you." She simply shrugged to herself and worked out the problem he wrote on his skin. It was a simple integral, nothing she hadn't done thousands of times.

It wasn't long before he started asking for her help on quizzes and tests. "My family will kill me if I fail this class, please."

She refused at first on principle; never once had she cheated, and she wasn't about to help someone else cheat, even if that someone was her soulmate. However, after the first cycles of this happening, him asking for help while she refused, she noticed a pattern. Every time it happened, more blood would appear somewhere on her the next day. An uneasy feeling overcame her, making her wonder how those got there for the first time in a while. Her first hypothesis had been a criminally neglectful family, but this began to make her think that what if his family was more than just criminally neglectful?

After that thought passed through her head, she never refused to help him. Every time a math problem found its way onto her skin she solved it, no questions asked. When a month of her helping him like this passed, he finally wrote, "You know, no one has ever made a perfect score in this teacher's class before, and I've made four so far."

Angela had to stifle a loud laugh at that. She almost didn't stop herself, but she was in the middle of an early morning lecture and had a reputation to maintain. "Clearly that teacher has never met me."

"Clearly." Genji started writing more a few times, erasing the beginning of the sentences every time until he finally seemed satisfied with what he was going to say. "Angela, why did you decide to start helping me?"

She gulped, remembering the droplets of blood running down her skin that had to have come from her counterpart. "Do I really have to say it? You must already know why."

"I just wanted you to confirm it. But yeah, I think I know why. I'm sorry that I can't explain."

"It's okay. I'm fine with not knowing for now. Just do be careful for me, okay?"

"I promise I will be. Maybe one day when we meet I can tell you about it."

"Maybe. You could always come to my graduation, you know."

"I still can't believe you're graduating college in only two years, and you know I can't travel."

"Sometimes I can't, either. I've got some offers from a few organizations that want me to do research for them instead of going on to grad school. Most people in my field know that I don't need grad school. Some of them would include a lot of traveling. Maybe I could go with one of them to Japan?"

"That's cool. You'd have to let me know if anything like that happened."

"You're graduating this year, right? What are you going to do after?"

"I'm going to be taking over the family," the writing paused for a few seconds before resuming, "business with my brother. It's more of my brother's thing than mine, though."

"Still cool, though. What kind of business?"

Genji never responded. She really hated the way their conversations stopped like this, most of the time after she asked something regarding his family. It made her worried sick, frustrated, and angry beyond belief. Did he just not trust her? It was one thing to not explain the blood to her, since that was probably very personal, but she knew absolute nothing about his family and it was upsetting.

She started writing again before her brain could tell her hand and heart to stop doing something so stupid. "Do I annoy you or something? Do you not trust me? Because I honestly don't get why you won't just talk to me. It makes me feel like crap. I'm sorry that I told you I'd drop it when I didn't mean it, but I'm frustrated. Why the hell are you getting hurt all the time? Is there something wrong with your family? I'm supposed to be your soulmate, and you can't seem to tell me anything."

"Just forget it, okay?" was all the reply she got. No explanation was given, just more avoidance.

"What if I can't?"

"Then I'm sorry."

"Sorry isn't good enough." She sat on her bed fuming before capping her pen and threw it across the room. It only took her a few seconds to bolt to the bathroom, viciously wiping all of the writing off of her hand. God, she was so angry. All she needed was some honestly and that was what he refused to give her. In that moment she swore to herself that she wouldn't say another word until he explained. She wouldn't let herself worry over someone that did want her to be involved in his life.

It was amazing how quickly their conversation had turned from talk of the two of them finally meeting into anger. Maybe she had been keeping these feelings pent up for too long and they all just exploded without good reason.

Genji wrote multiple apologetic messages on her as she slept that night, but none of them held any sort of explanation as to what was going on. True to her word, she didn't respond to them or any of his other attempts at talking, going back to doodling on herself whenever she was bored just as a way to remind him that she was still there and not completely ignoring him. After a while, he stopped trying to talk to her too. Once he wrote another math problem on her arm, probably just seeing if she would still solve them, and she did. That was the only way they communicated, through math problems and doodles. It was as if their relationship had immediately lost a whole two years of progress.

She didn't let it bother her too much. Instead, she focused on work. The organization of Overwatch had practically begged her to join their ranks, promising her a wonderful salary and freedom to research whatever she wanted. An offer like that was impossible to refuse, especially since getting her master's degree was honestly something that she could do in her spare time. She had been really tempted to tell Genji about that development, because she knew how excited for her he would be, but she was too petty to let go of the promise she made to herself.

Within another year she had a doctorate degree and a Nobel Peace Prize in hand due to her ground breaking work in nanobiology. It was so tempting to write to Genji that day, to let him know what she had done, but still she stayed quiet. If he refused to tell her about his life than he hardly deserved to know about hers.

The closest she ever came to breaking her silence was when Overwatch sent her to Japan as a diplomat. She was one of the only Overwatch agents completely fluent in Japanese that wasn't a native of the country, although she had never mentioned why that was to any of her coworkers - she hardly mentioned Genji at all. Her flight landed in Tokyo in the middle of the night, and as she sat in her hotel room, looking out over the skyline, something deep inside of her yearned painfully for companionship. She missed Genji; they hadn't talked properly in over two years, although she still kept up the doodling. She wondered how he was, what he ended up doing with his life, why there were little rivers of blood running down her legs and arms all too often. She wanted to fix whatever was going on; she was a doctor, after all, and it was only natural for her to hate the idea of her soulmate out there somewhere hurting. And it just hurt even more to know that she was walking on the same piece of the earth that he was, and still she refused to meet him. At that point she even pulled out a pen, uncapped it, and held the tip of it to her skin before sighing and giving up. He was probably angry at her anyways. Maybe he didn't want to meet with her now.

Even so, she tucked the pen in her pocket, keeping it on her at all times throughout the trip. It seemed silly, but having it near her felt a little like having Genji with her in a small, strange sort of way.

She almost made it through the entire trip without breaking. Almost. Her flight was the next day when she noticed it; a streak of bright red blood appeared on her right arm, this one larger than most of the others she had seen over the years. But there had been a million of wounds just like it before and this one hardly concerned her more than the rest.

What concerned her was the one that appeared after it, and then the one after that. All over her, on her chest, legs, hands, arms, and face appeared more and more blood.

It terrified her. An awful feeling crept up through her and ate at her very being. This was not normal, even for Genji. Something was terribly wrong.

Without thinking she pulled out the pen, writing on her arm. "Genji? What's going on? What happened? Are you okay?"

The only reply she received was more blood. Her heart started pounding as she made her way to the car she had gotten from Overwatch for the duration of the trip, writing frantically as she did. "Where are you? Genji, I'm in Japan right now. I can help." She checked the car to see if her staff was in there; it was. She breathed a sigh of relief before beginning to drive, not sure what she was looking for but just knowing that she had to look, writing whenever she got to stoplights. "Genji please I'm so scared. Please don't die. I'm sorry for ignoring you for so long. Just let me help."

She was on the verge of giving up after fifteen minutes of not receiving any sort of response. How did she expect to get one, anyways? It was unlikely that he would have a pen on him. And with all those injuries, he was probably already dead at this point. The thought drove her to tears. What if it was her fault that he was dead? She might have been able to save him if she had gotten over herself and just met him. Her pride had likely killed him.

A change in the bloodstains on her arm snapped her out of her moping. First, a lot of the blood was being shakily wiped off. She wiped at it on her own end to try to speed up the process, eyes never leaving her arm. Eventually, shaky words and numbers started appearing in blood on the inside of her arm, and they could only be one thing – an address. She quickly plugged it into her phone, which began giving her directions. At a stoplight she wrote a shaking "I'm coming" before proceeding to run the red light; no one was on the street anyways, and she had to get there before it was too late, if it wasn't too late already.

Each minute that dragged on felt as if it lasted an hour. She didn't even park the car when she reached her destination, grabbing her staff out of the back seat and flinging herself towards her destination.

She practically fell apart at the sight that awaited her. This had to be Genji, but she didn't want it to be him. His body was so torn apart and mangled that it only barely looked human, legs twisted in ways that they never should be. The worst part was that he was still conscious, looking up at her with glazed over hazel eyes that seemed to beg her to just end his suffering.

"Genji…" she whispered quietly as tears fell from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. His eyes focused a little bit at the sound of his name and he seemed to look at the red that covered every inch of her, both of them knowing at that moment that this was the counterpart part to their soul, and Angela realizing with a sinking feeling that her other half was dying.

She knelt down next to him, clutching her healing staff like it was a lifeline – which it was, just not for her. "I am so, so sorry." She mumbled as she activated the thing with shaky hands. "I never thought… I just never would have thought…" the device finally activated, and all Angela had left to do was keep the beam focused on Genji and pray that her life's work might be enough to save him. Large tears rolled out of her eyes as she stared at the ground in shock.

She nearly jumped up out of shock when a hand reached up to cup her cheek. Genji was smiling at her despite how sad the look in his eyes was. "Angela Ziegler."

There was a long pause before what he had said sank in, replacing some of her despair with the ever hungering curiosity that almost never left her fully. "How do you know my name?"

"When you told me your first name I looked it up. You didn't come up in searches back then, but I looked again every few months just in case. A little while after we stopped talking you started gaining notoriety, and part of me kept wishing that you were my soulmate, although I had no idea it was true until just now."

That was an unexpected bit of information. "Why me?"

"Because the Angela I saw in all those articles was beautiful and clever and wonderful. I never imagined that my soulmate would be any of those things until we started talking. I didn't think I deserved a soulmate like that. But then I realized that the person I started talking to was so wonderful, and the Angela I read about online seemed to be just as incredible, and I just wanted you so badly." Genji gave her a sheepish smile. She gave him a soft smile in return, though less because of his words and more because of the fact that some of his wounds were closing over. "I never actually thought the two of you would be the same person."

Angela leaned into the hand, smiling even more. "Surprise. Would you care to tell me your name?"

The man paled at the question, looking like he probably would have run away if his legs had been facing the correct direction. "Shimada. I'm, ah, Genji Shimada."

Wide blue eyes blinked a few times, startled. "I recognize that… Why do I recognize that name?"

"I'm not surprised you do." Genji said with a sigh, his hand falling. "I'm not the best person in the world, Angela. There are reasons that I thought I did not deserve a soulmate like you. Good reasons."

"I…" Angela thought hard, trying to remember where she had seen the word Shimada before. She recalled a file she read before coming to Japan. It had been on Hanzo Shimada, one of the leaders of the yakuza centered in Hanamura. The file had briefly mentioned that he was thought to have a brother that didn't spend much time in crime activity, preferring to act as a playboy. Her eyes widened even more in realization. "Oh. Hanzo Shimada-"

Genji cut her off before she could finish the thought. "Is my brother. Yeah. Do you understand, now?"

It made sense, if she thought about it. The random scrapes, the avoidance of his personal life in every conversation. Every puzzle piece lined up in a way that normally would bring her immense satisfaction, but this time only brought on a sense of dread. "That's why you wouldn't tell me about your family."

"I thought it would scare you off. I should have just told you and run away. I hated them so much. Hanzo did this" he made a slight gesture to his body, "to me without a second thought. And when you ignored me I started to get desperate; I thought you'd never want to see me since you obviously deserved much better, so I tried turning to…" Genji cast his eyes to the ground as his voice trailed off, clearly ashamed.

More puzzle pieces began clicking into place. The time he told her that his family would kill him if he failed the class probably hadn't been a hyperbole. That was why he kept asking her for help despite their silence, because she was the only one that could. The sinking feeling in her stomach only grew when she realized what he meant by those other things that he turned to. It was other people. Cheating on your soulmate was a line that very few crossed; the only ones that could do it without guilt were those that had none, such as cases where their soulmate died in infancy, which wasn't too uncommon of a situation.

If Hanzo's brother had been a playboy and Genji had turned to other people for comfort, well, that could only mean one thing. She stared hard at her hands and the staff held in them, trying to process the new pieces of information she had received.

"I'm sorry," Genji whispered from next to her. "I don't deserve to be connected to someone like you. We've only known each other for a few minutes and I already see that. You should just let me die so you can move on and-"

"Stop." Angela croaked, squeezing her eyes tightly shut and forcing tears from them in the process. "Just stop. Please." The man next to her did as she asked, allowing her to take a few shaky breaths as thoughts coursed through her head. She tried her best to put herself in his shoes; he probably grew up in an awful home where he had to earn love and respect. Nothing she had been through had been like that. Her parents had loved her until the day they died, and her grandparents loved her just as much after that. He had probably killed people before, likely under pressure from his own flesh and blood. All she had needed to do was be herself and people were naturally saved. He likely had to fight to keep the war going, since it favored the yakuza for there to be conflict in the world, while all she had ever done was fight for peace. He had probably felt alone and confused and that was why he went looking for an outlet for those emotions. She had always had people there for her. He had nothing and she had everything; of course he acted the way that he did.

"I will not let you die," she mumbled, opening her eyes again to look at Genji with the fiercest determination she could muster. Bright blue fire burned in her eyes as she spoke, blazing brighter with each word. "You are my patient and my soulmate. I am going to use this staff to heal you as much as I can here and then take you to the hospital so that I can operate on you. You are my soulmate; I love you, and I will not let you die. I refuse to let you die."

Genji stared at her for a moment, seemingly confused, before a small, sad smile broke out on his face, and he nodded. "I believe you."

Meh, the ending was kinda thrown together and I haven't really rechecked it but who needs that when you have fluff amiright.