Apparently I get on this site like once a year... ah well, I hope this story will end up being worth it... Apart from the obvious AU stuff (which is that we are in a world where you can feel anything your soulmate feels... and other stuff I'll disclose when I get there :P ) I'm going to try and stay as close to canon as possible (or canon plus my idea of canon if you wish). Point of view will alternate from time to time. And you'll end up hating me probably xD.
There are many things that a five year old child is able to understand, given proper explanations. Of course, they don't have to always be true, just plausible enough for them to get. The sun doesn't set because the Earth turns around it, it disappears from the sky because it goes to sleep and sometimes it rains because the clouds feel sad and they start crying.
But perhaps the easiest thing to understand for a five year old child is the idea of love. If you asked a child what love means, he would probably not be able to give a scientific definition of it. But then again, who can? What a five year old child would answer when asked about love would be along the lines of how his mother somehow managed to pay the same amount of attention to him and all of his sisters, even if sometimes it seemed she only had eyes for his brother. The answer may also be the look said brother had had in his eyes the first time when his father had told him he was allowed to ride on his horse.
There was something magnificent in the way they moved, horse and rider, as if they were one, galloping on the lawn that was in front of their house, and the little boy couldn't help but watch in awe as his brother dashed in the wind, faster and faster, until it was hard for him to distinguish his features. There was something in the wind that day, however, and the horse seemed to notice it, because suddenly, it stopped and for a moment the little boy could swear the world had frozen in place for a short time. The horse, now without a rider, stood still for a few seconds, as if it was contemplating what it had done. And then realization seemed to hit him, because it kicked back with his feet and then galloped back to the stable, refusing to look behind.
The boy would have probably stayed in place for a very long time if it wasn't for his brother's cry of help that woke him up with a shock. He ran towards his brother and found him lying in the grass, a thin stream of blood flowing from his forehead. His brother moved his lips, as if trying to say something, but no sound came out. Instead, the older boy took his brother's hand into his own and squeezed as hard as he could, as if he was trying to somehow steal a bit of his brother's life force to stay there a bit more. But that was impossible, and so the young boy could do nothing but pass his hand through his brother's hair, watching his blood painting his fingers with a mixture of awe and horror. When he realized his brother wasn't breathing, it was already too late. He cried after his mother and she came running, but there was nothing she could do anymore. There was nothing anyone could do. But that was not something a five year old child would understand. This is why when his mother took him in her arms, trying to separate him from his brother, he started to cry. Why was she telling him to go in the house, couldn't she see that Dane was still there and he apparently wanted to lie in the grass and not leave anytime soon?
His mother took his hand into her own, the one that still had his brother's blood on it, and tried to say something to him, but she wasn't making any sense. He didn't want to be strong, he didn't want to go back to the house and call for help. His mother had always been able to fix everything wrong that had happened to either of her children, so why not now? But in the end, he obeyed her advice and left her alone in the grass with his brother. Later on, he was going to understand that his mother probably knew at the time that no help was going to fix that; she just didn't want him to watch his brother take his last breath.
But now, he didn't understand much of what was happening to him. He went back to the house, as his mother advised, and told his father what happened. He was hoping that his father would allow him to go back, but it didn't happen. His father asked him to stay in the house, promising that everything will be alright and that he will come back soon.
Problem was, there are some things that you can't explain in such a way that a five year old child can understand. And the fact that their brother was never going to come back is one of them. When his mother first told him those words, he didn't want to believe her. Everything was probably just a bad dream and it was going to go away soon. It was only when his father entered the house carrying his brother's lifeless body that reality came into place. He was never going to see his brother again, they were never going to play together again and their parents were never going to watch one of the marvelous things his brother used to do. He wanted to cry, but tears refused to leave his eyes. He just felt numb, like his body was in such a state of shock that it couldn't feel anything.
And, despite what his parents told him, he could tell they were lying. They told him that they knew exactly how he felt, but that was a lie. He was convinced there was not a single person in the world who could possibly know what he was feeling in that moment. Problem was, he was wrong about that. Thousands of miles away, in a house in London, a ten year old little girl stormed into her father's office, crying because of the loss of a brother she had never had.