Trigger warnings for this chapter. Non-con, angst, and overall sad feels.

Un-beta-ed

Tides - Crywolf & Skrux

CHAPTER UPDATED: OCTOBER 28, 2017

Soul Mates

Chapter 1

My mother was an amazing story teller. She use to tell me stories of old that happen long ago, stories of how people found their partners, or mates. Their Soul Mates. These stories would always start the same. My mothers gaze would travel away to another time, a more enjoyable time. She always spook about my grandparents and how they found each other while running away from arranged marriages that their parents had organized for them.

"It was an accident really," my mother would tell me, "They both met on a train heading to

Hasetsu on a snowy winter day. The train was crowded and only one seat remained available left on the train. Your grandmother took the seat which just happened to be with your grandfather."

I had always believed her when my mother spoke of these stories. Their love was so pure, it just had to be true.

Knowing my grandparents now, I have a really hard time picturing the two of them meeting while escaping from an arranged marriage. It really does seem too good to be true. To this day, I've never seen them fight a single day in their lives. It seemed as though they really understood each other, almost as though they were on a different wavelength from the people surrounding them. My grandmother would know when my grandfather would be having a bad day and always had his favourite dish, hot and ready to eat, waiting for him when he would arrive back home to our family inn and hot spring. I would help her prepare dinner when I was allowed to. Grandfathers favourite dish was katsudon. We had it so often that it eventually became my favourite dish too.

I asked my mother one day why we were eating katsudon again and she looked at me with a knowing look on her face. A few minutes later, I could hear my grandfather walking in and taking his shoes off mumbling in the genkan before going silent for a moment. He would walk over to the kitchen and sniff the air before saying "Katsudon?" Then he would walk over to my grandmother before kissing her forehead and she just looked up at him smiling.

"What about when you and dad met?" I asked her one night while tucking me in to bed. "How did you know he was your Soul Mate?"

My mother had always avoided this topic but me being my little four year old self at the time of hearing these stories could never pick up the hints. My mother paused for a second before folding the bedsheets over my body and sat down to tell her story.

"Your father and I met while i was in my second year of College," my mother said to me after a long pause. "He was a very impressive man, always the talking point of everyone attending the college. But for some reason, I never quite got along with him. I wouldn't say I was a quiet girl growing up, but i tried to stay out of the spotlight of others. We had a few classes together and your father would always come to talk to me after class was done. I would purposely take my time getting my things together or say I would be staying later so he would leave but he just sat down and studied with me while the rest of his friends looked over and snickered at us. He would constantly try to eat lunch with my friends and I, but I always brushed him off until one day, he finally called me out on avoiding him all the time." A small smile escaped my mothers lips and pulled one out of mine as well. She paused for a moment to reach a hand towards me to brush a few stray strand of my messy bangs out of my face. The smile slowly turned over at the corner of her lips.

"Eventually, I gave in and we started talking," She said with a slight huff. "I noticed that we had matching Soul Marks." That was one thing I never understood, some Soul Mates like my mother and father had these markings on their bodies and some Soul Mates didn't. My grandmother and grandfather didn't have any markings on their bodies. I had always wanted to ask them about it, what their mark was, but my mother told me that it was rude to ask to see another persons mark. My mother told me where hers was though. A simple rose stencil hidden behind her right ear. "Your father had seen my mark one day while I was walking past him to get into class. I always wore my hair down so my mark was normally hidden but I had a clip pulling back my hair that day. He saw and realized we had matching Soul Mate marks and thus was trying as hard as he could to try to get me to speak with him. It took him about three months of talking before he finally told me that he had the same mark as well. After that… Well, the rest is history. We were in love and started our lives together."

A yawn slowly escaped my mouth and my mother laughed. "Alright Yuri, that's enough story time for tonight." She took my glasses from my face and placed them on the night stand beside me before bending down to place a kiss on my forehead.

"Goodnight" I mumbled back as I closed my eyes. Once the door was closed though, i quickly reached towards my night stand and switched on the lights before shoving the covers away slightly. I looked down towards my left ankle to make sure my mark was still their. A tiny figure skate was etched into my skin just on the inside of my ankle. I smiled giddy at my mark before squirming and pulling the sheets back over my head, excited by the fact that someday, I would be able to find my own Soul Mate. It would be a beautiful thing just like my grandmother and grandfather. It would be a challenge to find my Soul Mate since it was in such a hard to see spot but nevertheless, a hope for a future for sure.

These were all my innocent thoughts as a child. I realize now how very foolish I was to believe that Soul Mates could really exist in this world amongst everyone.

I remember one night, when i was 8 years old, I had been in my room asleep after a long day at the Ice Castle. It was around two in the morning when I woke up to a clattering noise coming from downstairs in the main part of the inn. I crawled out of my bed and brought my foot down to the floor slowly testing how sore my feet were. I had skated longer than I usually would have and paid for it by walking away with blisters on my feet. The pain wasn't as bad as it was earlier so I padded my way over to my door groggy, slowly opening it to hear voices arguing and carrying the sound through hallway.

"Helping with what? Standing here and doing nothing the entire day? Nobody is visiting this shit hole of an inn anyways!" I heard my father shouting. That woke me up more.

"What matters isn't whether you are helping out with the inn," I hear my mothers voice reply exasperated. "It's that you are never here for your son or daughter!" her voice raised a few notches. I slowly tiptoed out of my room and headed towards the stairs. I glanced over at my sisters room. Her room was farther down the hall than mine was and her door was closed.

"Not helping them? I am helping out with them! I am bringing an income in for those kids to eat and play. I am out getting a job, paying for those damn skating lessons and rink time that boy wants! I'm putting food on the table for this family to survive." I hear loud noise come out from the kitchen and quickly make my way down the stairs but still stay hidden so my parents can't see me. My dads fist is clenched on the table. "What have you been doing? Attending to an empty inn? Sitting inside doing nothing but staring at the entrance hoping that one day, some lone stranger is just going to straggle in? Hope that a fortune magically falls in front of your face? Get your head out of the clouds Hiroko!" My father swung his arm wildly knocking over a cup sitting on the table, it flew across the room towards the wall beside the door before shattering.

I let out a small gasp of surprise exposing where I was hiding. My father turns to me, fists clenched at his side and the sight of the broken dish laying on the floor.

"This is all your fault, you stupid kid!" He shouts pointing his finger at me and taking quick angry steps towards him.

"TOSHIYA!" My mother shouted at him stepping in front of me, blocking my vision of him. "Yuri has nothing to do with this." My mother turned towards me and showed me one of her big smiles, ones that she had been forcing herself to show me more often. "Yuri, go back upstairs. Back to bed please. I'm sorry father and mother are making so much noise. You can go back now." She waved her hand at me telling me to shoo. I stayed rooted to my spot though, scared of what would happen if I left the room.

"Brat-"

"Yuri," my mother interrupted. "It's fine. Go on ahead." I nodded my head slightly and stepped backwards out of the room slowly and then made a dash the rest of the way to the stairs but I paused at them before going up. I turned back to look at the kitchen before I placed my foot on the first step and started walking on the spot. I counted 15 loud steps making them slightly quieter with each step i took and then paused and held my breath. There was silence in the kitchen for what felt like an eternity.

"Listen here, Hiroko." I heard my father continue, more quietly than before after a few moments. I let my breath out and slid down the wall to sit on the bottom step. "Your ideal fantasies won't come true. I'm doing what I can to support everyone and if that means doing the job I'm doing now, then so be it." I heard some shuffling sounds and movement coming form the kitchen before hearing one of the most heartbreaking sounds i'd ever heard.

My mother was crying.

I'd only heard her cry one other time, my grandparents service. It was a car accident. There was a car was speeding and took a turn too fast on a blind curve and hit them. My mother didn't show any signs of emotion when she received the call. I had no idea anything was wrong. Then the service day came I i found out why I hadn't seen my grandparents in over two weeks. That sight was one of the hardest things to see and only made me cry more and cling to my mother.

And now here she was again, crying.

"I don't want it to be like this anymore." I had to strain my ears to really hear what she was saying. "I want it to be like before. We aren't happy anymore." A broken sob escaped her mouth. I finally felt confident enough to make my way back to the kitchen. Slowly and as quietly as possible, I returned to peek from the door again.

"What would you want me to do then?" My father asked. He pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance. I'd seen that face before and nothing good had ever come when he did that.

"Stop sleeping around and calling that a job."

A slap echoed out from across the kitchen. My mouth dropped open, a shout ready to leave my mouth but a hand was slapped over it. Another hand wrapped around my waist and pulled backwards. I struggled against my captor, trying desperately to shake them off and make my way towards my mother.

"Quiet, Yuri" I heard my sister whisper to me. I struggled, still wanting to reach out to my mother. "Stop struggling, you'll only make things worse!" I calmed down slightly only to hear my father lash out at my mother in anger again.

"You think I have a choice in this situation? I already told you, we can't survive! This is as much for you as it is for the rest of them."

"Then find another job! One that doesn't involve having sex with people other than your Mate!"

There was silence in the kitchen. I stood there confused at the sudden silence. I had heard these words before but never really understood what they really meant. I found out the hard way what those words meant. My sister and I watched my dad made a move to grab grab my mothers wrist and manoeuvre her around the kitchen. We watched her try to shove my father, scratch his arm as he handled her. We watched him push her to lean over the table and hold her arms in a painful position behind her back without her letting out a single sound of complaint. We watched him pull down clothes. We watched-

My sister was crying. I felt her tears falling down as they landed down my cheek, or were they my tears? I couldn't tell. She pulled me towards her and shoved her face into the crook of my neck shaking and unable to watch anymore.

"Soul Mates be damned." My father said as he walked away and stormed towards the door. My sister shoved me as far into the wall as possible. We watched my father walk away to the genkan and out of the inn.

The door closed with a loud slam and then the house was silent except for my mothers soft sobs finally escaping from her, still in the same spot she was left in.

This was the first time I truly hated and was terrified of the idea of Soul Mates.

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