UNITE
Pairing: Sirina - Soulmate AU. Future polyamory
Warnings: Bullying, allusions to suicide attempts, depression
1
Every human on earth is born with at least one soulmate.
You can tell how many you have from the marks in particular places on your body.
It's a constant conversation topic at the Santa Teresa convent where Marina is destined to spend her days.
Gabby Garcia has two, shown by the deep lines on her right arm, one black and . Two is good, two is normal, the desired amount of soulmates. Gabby never lets anyone forget that she's perfect - perfect hair, perfect body, perfect match number.
She's already found one soulmate, a girl named Hilda - also with two matches, one black line, one red line in harmony with hers.
Marina wonders if the missing part of their trio is as evil as they are. Vicious cruel bullies, that's how she views them. Always making fun of her, with their nicknames and their shaming. No one bothers to stop them.
Why would they?
Marina has no less than thirteen soulmates. Marina is a freak. Marina is the person every one at school whispers about, the one no one wants to be stuck with, the one with thirteen soulmates.
Even her mother, who in a minority of her own had no soulmates, like all the other sisters of the Santa Teresa convent, had disowned her. Fitting that one with no partners should give birth to one with so many.
Yes, Marina has thirteen soulmates, and she hates it. Hates the way everyone stares at the intricate circles covering most of her right leg, hates the fact that the laws in Spain, in France, in England, in Russia, in all of Europe, in the US, heck, even in Canada do not allow legal soulmate bindings for above ten soulmates, despite the fact it was a natural occurrence throughout human history.
She should count herself lucky, she thinks whenever this gets her down, she could have been born in a part of the world where having ten plus soulmates was punishable by much, much worse things.
She also loves having thirteen soulmates. Not in the sense of how she's looked upon by society, but she loves the idea of them. Thirteen soulmates, that was a lot. Maybe enough to sooth the gaping hole in her chest caused by the loneliness. Whenever she can't sleep, she thinks about who they might be, where they might live.
Sometimes, she dreams of people she doesn't remember ever seeing before. Most prominently featured in them are a girl with dark, dark hair, black as the night sky, the bottom of the ocean and a boy, dark skinned and bright, bright eyes (she's never seen any so alive) she can never remember the colour of when she wakes up. Sometimes they're hazel, other times brown, or green in her minds eye. She's heard stories of soulmates seeing each other in dreams years before meeting.
Dreams - that's all her soulmates are to her. She wonders if they'll stay that way forever, sometimes, in her darkest moments when she slips out of the convent, invisible, heads to the coastline to see how long she can hold her breath. In the moments where she sees the sea life swim by, peacefully, serenely, and wonders if she should bother going back up to the surface, if she should just stop holding her breath and do everyone around her a favour.
She never goes through with it though. She can't help but think it would put her soulmates in pain - and she doesn't want that. Not if they're already in as much pain as she is.
Marina walks into school on a Thursday morning, and can't help but notice that everyone seems energised, hyped up in some way. It takes her no less than a minute to figure out that the school is abuzz about a new student, a girl in the year below her.
She's American, they say. From New York, they say. She's a beauty, they say. Athletic, they say.
Marina shrugs it off, but can't help the interest from gathering. As alienated as she is from her peers, she can't help but be caught in the electric atmosphere. The first few periods pass as they usually do - like she's invisible. No one sits next to her, no one talks to her, not even the teachers. Walking from class to class with her legs on show - the sisters at the convent only provide standard blouses and skirts, and Marina has no way of acquiring clothes of her own - people avoid her in the hallway.
It's the electricity in her veins which persuades her against her better judgement to go to the cafeteria at lunch, usually a place she avoided like the plague.
She waits for the storm of comments as she halters next to the doorway, but no one is looking at her. No, everyone is obsessed with the new girl sitting at a table near the serving area. Marina walks closer to get a better look.
The girl has long black hair, darker even than Gabby's, a taut body with muscular features. She's wearing a tight fitting black shirt with long sleeves, and a pair of leggings to match.
The girl is, Marina thinks, without a doubt, the most beautiful person she has ever laid eyes upon.
Around the girls' table were Gabby and Hilda, telling her about some celebrity or other, Marina couldn't really tell. The girl looks bored, possibly even annoyed at the intrusion. Marina gets the feeling she just wants to be left alone.
There's something about this girl, something -
"What the hell are you doing here, you freak?"
Marina's eyes dart towards Gabby, who has just noticed her presence. She stands up, immediately trailed by Hilda. Her body stance is mocking, and Marina feels a twinge in her gut. She should never have come here, she thinks. It was a bad idea from the start. Her eyes dart to the new girl, who is staring at her with a bemused expression, her gaze burning into Marina's eyes, looking down her body, looking up, looking down again, standing up and backing away as if scorched by a flame.
Marina gives all strength to keeping on her feet. That might be a record, in the amount of time it's taken to turn someone away from her. Usually it doesn't bother her, but for some reason this time it does.
"What are you even doing here?" Gabby sneers, though for all Marina could care, she might as well have been talking to a ghost, because she felt like one.
She looks down at her feet.
"Hey." An unfamiliar voice - the new girl.
"Shouldn't you be hiding under a rock?" That one was from Hilda.
"Look at her, she can't even say a word, she such a freak!" Gabby raises her voice here, and she can tell from the way the noise in the cafeteria has slowed to a lull that most people's attention were on them.
"Hey." The new girl's voice again.
"Go throw yourself off a cliff." Gabby says. And the worst thing? She felt like doing exactly that.
Her voice lowers, and she deadpans, "You'd be doing your soulmates a favour." As soon as she says this, a hush runs through the crowd. A couple people laugh. Some, she supposed, were sympathetic but wouldn't do anything to stop the torments.
She goes numb.
No one here cares.
The realisation hits her like a ton of bricks, and before she can stop herself the first tears are falling, and then she can't stop them.
"Hey!"
Her voice is quiet, dangerous. Marina looks up at the violent outburst, in the back of her mind wondering what the new girl could possibly be angry at her about.
But it isn't Marina the girl is angry at - it's Gabby and Hilda, the first of the two more so.
Gabby twists round in shock as the new girl puts a hand on her shoulder.
"Huh?" She says, and that's when the new girls pulls her right arm back and lands a hit square on her nose. Gabby falls back, her nose bleeding, most likely broken, with a cry of pain and surprise.
Hilda gapes at the scene, and quickly joins her soulmate in crime as the new girl pulls back her left arm this time and lands the same blow on her.
Huh. Ambidextrous.
The new girl spits at her feet in front of them, quaking with silent rage. The crowd around them erupts, gasping and cheering and more than a few camera phones materialising.
"Maren, Maren," They're chanting, applauding, and suddenly Marina has a name to the beautiful face.
The name stirs something in her heart, something instinctive, warm, a foreign feeling. A nice feeling.
Marina wonders if this is love at first sight.
Maren holds a hand out towards her. "Name's Maren. No one should give someone else shit like that. Ever." She pauses, and then turns around to the crowd, glaring so hard Marina is surprised it hasn't started raining lava on them. "And anyone who just sits there and lets it happen should go fuck themselves."
No one moves to defend themselves. A few even have the decency to look guilty.
Maren turns back to Marina, hand still outstretched. Wonderstruck and dazed, she reaches out her own and grasps it -
And that's when the world explodes.
A million and one thoughts and feelings, none her own flash through her. Memories of another person invading her mind. She looks at Maren as time stops, the gaze full of wonder and amazement and awe - reflected in Maren's eyes.
It all happens in a second.
She pulls her hand away. "Marina." She says quietly, breezily, in a world of her own.
The dark, dark hair, black as the night sky, the bottom of the ocean - it's Maren she's seen all those times in her dreams.
Maren is her soulmate.
Knees weak, Marina can feel one of the marks on her leg - the one on the back of her upper thigh, hidden by her hideous skirt - burn with sensation, lighting up in colour.
Nothing can stop this, Marina thinks, nothing can interrupt something this perfect.
Except maybe one of the teachers on duty storming up and grabbing Maren, tearing her away and ordering her to go to the front office. Maren shrugs and heads out of the cafeteria door.
Noise returns in flooding motion, but Marina doesn't care. Marina doesn't care.
She tears out of the room after Maren, who is Marina's soulmate - or one of them, at least - and who she very well might be head over heels for.
This is, without a doubt, the best day of Marina's entire life.