He didn't want to believe in the soulmate thing, despite what his parents had told him. It didn't work this way for him, and it never could. There was no scientific explanation why this could work, so this had to be a fairy tale. He had even asked his parents what it was like when they first met, if they knew they were soulmates from the first time they have seen each other, trying to coax them into saying that there was a bit of attraction, but the certainty of it came a lot later, because that sounded a lot more plausible, but they had disappointed him. They had told him that it was hard to describe, his mother giving him a lot of poetic justifications to which his father just smiled, but they both had known the second they laid eyes on each other.
And still, there was a part of him that told him that maybe this thing was possible, that if you had a soulmate you were somehow connected to them through the energy of the universe, that you were two opposite poles of a magnet just waiting to meet and to touch… But this was just a theory, and one that didn't rely itself on too many proven facts.
There were however some facts that he could not deny. Number one, his soulmate was someone who really had a thing for healing people. A doctor, maybe, even if being a woman and a doctor in that time was almost impossible. Number two, she was crazy as hell. Using the soulmate bond to heal someone was something not many had dared to try from what he knew… and the ones who tried mostly failed. She hadn't failed, obviously, because if it wasn't for her he would have died from cholera. And the last and the most important fact, he was probably never going to meet her. And even if he did, he doubted it could ever work. Science was his only love, and to think he could love someone so deeply that he would give science up for her… that sounded a bit impossible. But there was still a part of him that wanted to meet her, even if only to thank her for saving his life all those years ago.
What he never expected was that one day in Oxford would prove him how wrong he had been. It was a bit too grey for his taste, a bit too dark, but nothing could have prepared him for what was coming.
There was no color in Oxford, no life, and what was worse, almost no light, but then again electricity at that time was a bit scarce and he was doing his best to fix that, but it took time, so for the moment he was forced to settle with what he had, which were some flickering lights that were starting to fade. This was why the sight of a crimson dress caught his attention that much. It was such a stark contrast to the surroundings that he couldn't help but stop and look, trying to determine who was the woman who had the audacity to dress herself like that. It wasn't that he didn't think women could dress whatever the hell they liked, it was just that most women wanted just to fit in, but not her, oh no. He was probably too busy staring at her, or something had crossed her mind, making her not watch where she was going… Either way, somehow he bumped into her and that was the moment he realized his parents had been right all along, and so had been him in some ways.
If someone would have asked him what was it like, meeting your soulmate, he would have said that it was a lot of things at once. It was realization at first, hitting him like lightning the moment when he saw her blue eyes. It was warmth, the feeling of her hands in him as he checked if she was alright. It was power, somehow knowing that she hurt a bit even if she denied it, trying to sound like she wasn't too affected. It was attraction, more powerful than any magnet, the moment she smiled at him, assuring him she was alright. There were also seconds of pure happiness, seconds in which he didn't care that he probably looked like a fool, happiness that he had found her so suddenly and when he least expected it… but mostly it was pain. He had heard that the whole soulmate thing was not a two way function, that just because somebody was your soulmate you didn't have to be hers, but he had always thought that he was going to be the one who won't be able to reciprocate the feelings. But he had been so wrong… The pain of that moment was too hard to bear. Seconds felt like years while he waited some sort of recognition from her, the same kind that was probably all over his face now, but nothing came back. He even dug his nails into his palm, hating himself for causing her even the smallest bit of pain, but she didn't even flinch. She just straightened her dress, assuring him time and again that bumping into eachother was probably mostly her fault and that he shouldn't be worried about her, and then she turned around and left, not throwing him a single glance back.
"Can you tell me your name, please?" He shouted after her and she stopped midway.
"Why so you know who you almost knocked out?" She asked smiling at him.
"Something like that." Nikola shrugged. "My name is Nikola Tesla. See? Now you have to tell me your name too or you'll know more about me than I know about you. That is hardly fair."
"Life is rarely fair, Mr. Tesla." She was sad for some reason now and he could feel it. But it wasn't like he could ask her what made her sad given the fact that officially speaking he had no reason to know that. "I'm Helen Magnus. I don't know what good it does to you though since you'll never see me again probably." And with those words she left, and for a moment he was glad that she couldn't feel what he felt. Because his soulmate had just looked straight at him and she didn't have the faintest idea who he was, and that was killing him. But he would be damned if that was going to be the end of it.
