The voice you hear your thoughts in is your soulmate's but you don't know who they are until you hear them speak for the first time.
It has never changed for Liz. Ever since she was old enough to contemplate it, she has realized that the voice in her head was a man's. Her man. Her soulmate.
It is a deep thing, full of gravely texture and soft undertones. It is wonderfully expressive, it can be serious or nonchalant, energized or exhausted, changing from day to day, depending on her mood and her thoughts. But one thing always remains the same.
It is always beautiful.
Sometimes certain words she thinks to herself sound oddly familiar. They remind her of something, a memory, long forgotten and buried, just flickering on the edges of her consciousness like a dream slipping away upon waking.
But Liz never lingers on it for very long. She can't remember a time when her thoughts didn't sound in his voice. So, of course, it sounds familiar.
(And she easily shoves away the strange tinges of darkness and heat and smoke, shouted words of caution and panic, quiet words of soothing. It must have been a dream.)
Liz feels differently about his voice as she grows. When she is young, it is comforting to her, helping her sooth herself when she gets hurt or calm herself when she gets angry. Repeating a mantra of comforting words in her head, the dulcet tones reverberating in her mind, never fails to quiet her.
(His voice means safety and protection and love, second only to Sam's, whose husky words sound outside her head where they belong.)
As Liz gets older she compares his voice to other men's, teachers, coaches, random men on the street. She loves to listen in to conversations in coffee shops and restaurants, absorbing the intricacies of other voices and comparing it to the one in her head.
(None of them come close.)
Liz looks at these other men with their inferior voices and studies their features, using them to try and guess what her soulmate will look like when she finally finds him. Perhaps he'll have the strong jaw of this man, the capable hands of that man, the self-assuredness of this one, the suaveness of that one.
Liz knows he is older than her since it's common knowledge that a soulmate's voice doesn't sound in your head until they turn eighteen and vice versa. It is strange for her to think that, while she can hear his voice, he won't hear hers until she can legally vote. She sometimes wonders if it will be odd to have a soulmate almost twenty years older than her but her only real worry is if they will find each other in time.
(And the more she thinks about it, the more she likes the idea of an older man. He sounds confident and sexy. There's nothing wrong with that. And after all, age is just a number.)
As for his physical appearance, Liz thinks that he may be tall and imposing, perhaps dark haired and certainly handsome. Who else could possess such a powerful voice? She wonders what he does for a living, how he uses that voice to its best advantage. He could be a politician or a lawyer, a profession where he can command a room at will, capturing everyone's attention. Yes, her soul mate is impressive, she is sure of it, and she can't wait to meet him.
(She just has to find him first.)
But she sees nothing wrong with experimenting a little along the way, because everyone does when they're waiting, so why shouldn't she? So, she has her fair share of fun in college. But by the time she graduates, still alone with the voice in her head, she starts to wonder. What is taking him so long?
(And how long can she be expected to wait for him?)
And then, as if in answer to all of her desperate yearnings, Tom comes along. While his voice doesn't match the one in her head, he is sweet and kind. A thin, lanky, unassuming, bespectacled grade school teacher, he insists that he doesn't buy into soul mates, doesn't want to wait for his, that high pitched, soft-spoken voice in his head, and he tells Liz he loves her instead. She feels some guilt at not being patient enough to wait for her soulmate but Tom is nothing if not persistent.
She caves within the year.
Besides, why should she wait the rest of her life for a tall, dark, and handsome stranger when there is a kind man here that is ready to love her now? Because she may never find her soulmate.
(And she doesn't want to be alone forever.)
So, she settles with Tom. They get marry and Liz gets used to being the kind of happy that comes from telling yourself to feel lucky.
(It's not perfect but it's better than being alone.)
And it's two happy-ish years of marriage before Tom meets his soulmate, Jolene, with her big eyes and quiet voice in his head, at some stupid teachers' conference and that's the end of her marriage.
(She's alone again.)
And just when she's about to give up all hope, resigning herself to the fact that she'll be alone forever, his voice sounding tantalizingly out of reach in her head, he arrives.
It's different for Red. Ever since he was old enough to contemplate it, he realized that his thoughts didn't have a voice. That doesn't mean that he doesn't think, of course, quite the opposite. His thoughts are just more visceral, consisting of feelings, pictures and colors instead of words.
(The most frequent shade coloring his inner eye is the most gorgeous shade of blue, light as the ocean waters brightened by the mid-afternoon sun, just hinting at the hidden depths below. It's his favorite color.)
His situation is not unheard of. There are cases of people born without a voice or those who lose it early, assumed to be signs of their soulmate being born at the wrong time, just missing them, too early or too late.
It's an unfortunate reality for these people and it has always bothered Red in a second-hand sort of way, the thought of some lonely people with quiet minds wandering the Earth for their whole lives, searching for someone who doesn't exist.
(Somehow it never occurred to him that there was every chance he might end up the same way).
Some quiet people are perfectly happy, though. They find someone like them with no soulmate to speak of and settle down, not bothered by the abstract concept of someone made just for them, happy with someone they've found by pure happenstance, living long, wonderful lives together.
Red is determined to be one of them.
So, when he and Carla meet, two quiets that quite literally run into each other on the street, Red wastes no time in starting a life with her. He tries to do it all the right way, or at least as right as people like them can get it. He gets a good government job and buys a nice house, coming home every day to his lovely wife and, in the dead of night, comforting himself with the fact that no one on the street is able to tell that they aren't soulmates. And what does it matter what other people think anyway?
(But Red has always been able to see soulmates. He can see the bond between two people, the deep connection and love tying them together, something stronger than mere vows, and it makes his heart sink with the nastiest feeling. He and Carla have never had that.)
They make the best of it though, finding joy in the little things married life can offer, like date night, cooking together and seeing movies.
(It's not perfect but it's better than being alone.)
What Red doesn't count on is simply dishonesty. He never occurred to him that Carla may have been lying. So, when she sits him down one day and tells him that she has always had a voice in her head and she's finally found him, a plain, boring banker, and that Red was only a placeholder accepted in a moment of weakness, Red is both crushed and strangely relieved at the same time. Because Carla wasn't right for him.
(She's not his soulmate. But, then again, he doesn't have one.)
He lets her go with no bitterness or resentment, unable to hate her for wanting to be happy, and resigns himself to a lifetime of silent loneliness.
And it's just as well, as the Cabal chooses that time to blow his short-lived, would-be blissful, cookie-cutter life to smithereens, forcing him to descend into a life of crime with the sense that it's just as well, he deserves as much.
(But he saves a little girl and a young black man along the way and that gives him a certain sense of purpose. Maybe he doesn't need a voice in his head to feel loved.)
So, he pursues his life of crime, wallowing in the destruction he leaves behind everywhere he goes, feeling as though he was meant to live this pathetic life. At least he's good at it. And with no soulmate to worry about, no one to make him vulnerable, he is almost indestructible.
(Inside, he loathes himself. He must be unlovable, there's no other explanation. The only person that manages to tolerate him is Dembe, though Red tries to send him home to his soulmate and their daughter Isabella as often as he can get away with it. Dembe shouldn't have to suffer with him.)
And his life goes on this way until it doesn't.
Because at 4:53pm on a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of October, smack in the middle of a meeting in Istanbul, everything changes. It's then that, with no preamble at all, a clear, vibrant voice suddenly sounds like a bell in his head.
(It's her.)
Red sits there, stunned, for an instant, Dembe and his associates looking at him strangely, before quickly excusing himself. He hurries to the bathroom and stands there with his head in his heads over the sink, staring in the mirror and just listening to her voice.
(She sounds beautiful.)
Once he finally gets over the pure shock of it all, he finds himself a little disgusted. She must have just turned eighteen. His soulmate is almost twenty years younger than he is. Will she even be interested in him? He finds it hard to believe that the two of them can find happiness together with such a gap separating them but he tries not to give up hope. He hasn't even found her yet.
(Besides, she's his soulmate. They are fated to love each other. That has to count for something.)
Despite his initial discomfort, it doesn't take him long to fall in love with the sound of her voice, clear and confident, happy and bubbly.
(He particularly loves the way she pronounces her r's, sounding a little like she's juggling the consonant around in her mouth before finally wrangling it into submission. He finds it unbearably endearing. He can't wait to watch her mouth form the beautiful words he can now hear in his head every waking moment.)
He is on pins and needles every day after that, wondering where and when they'll finally find each other. Should he go about his normal routine or make special plans to try and find her? No, surely fate knows what it's doing.
(If only he knew.)
When he hears Lizzie's voice on the first surveillance tape he's watched in years, a few days prior to her wedding to Tom, he almost collapses in shock. It's her. Her. The girl he saved the night of the fire is his soulmate?
(It makes him wonder how far fate goes to secure these things. Did he save her because she is his soulmate or did she save him and become it?)
And she's a government agent, as luck would have it. Or maybe fate has a sense of humor too. It doesn't take him long to devise a plan, his thoughts, now crystal clear in her angelic voice, coming even quicker than before. He finds a way to finally be with her, all the while continuing his self-appointed mission of dismantling the Cabal and the awful criminals that populate his particular circle of hell.
(They can be soulmates and partners, together in everything they do. The thought sends sparks of excitement through his veins.)
And it rips him apart inside that she didn't wait for him, that she accepted her fake husband's proposal of a life together when she hasn't suffered nearly as long or as hard as he has in waiting. After all, he's been there with her every step of the way, his voice keeping her company as she went through life. That's something he never had.
But he doesn't resent her. He can recall only too clearly the empty, gaping feeling loneliness creates. He just wishes he could tell her that Tom won't fill the gap of her soulmate's absence. It won't last.
(Tom isn't him.)
And it doesn't. Tom finds his soulmate, the slithering snake, and leaves her, Red's Lizzie, alone again. It's not long after this that, looking at surveillance photos of her, sad and alone, Red can't take it anymore. The day he receives a photo of her by herself on a park bench, a single tear escaping her beautiful blue eyes, Red decides to turn himself in.
(He can't wait anymore. And, more importantly, neither can she.)
When Liz walks carefully down the stairs at the black site, with no idea she is striding purposefully towards her soulmate, she simply stares him down with fake confidence until he speaks.
"Agent Keen, what a pleasure."
Oh.
That's it, there's not a doubt in her mind, that voice, butter and velvet and all things nice. Here he is. A world class criminal, her natural enemy, here in front of her.
(He's perfect.)
And she was wrong, he is not necessarily tall or dark but he certainly is handsome. There is the confidence oozing from every pore, just as she imagined, the confidence only an older man can possess attracting her instantly and he smiles at her, knowing and loving, and oh.
Oh, yes.
Finally.
When she comes walking carefully down the stairs at the black site, the light filtering around her, making her look like an angel descending from heaven, Red lets out a breath he's not sure how long he was holding.
"Well, I'm here."
Yes, he wants to say. Yes, you're here. Thank god.
She's impossibly beautiful here, in person, even better than the tiny, grainy miniature he's used to seeing in photos. Her eyes are his favorite shade of blue because she's always there in his head with him, he just didn't know it, and her voice is just right, here in front of him.
(She's perfect.)
And suddenly all the years of silence and wandering are completely worth it because she's here now and he can't wait to know her, have his suspicions about her favorite things confirmed or denied, just spend days and days talking to her, making up for lost time, hearing her beautiful voice from her own gorgeous mouth.
Red's eyes move to her lips, the part of her he's wanted to see most of all and, yes, he can't wait to finally capture them in a long-awaited kiss and –
Oh, yes.
Finally.