A/N: Hello all! I hope that you're doing well! This was just a thought I had a few days ago (when i was meant to be writing an assignment), and whilst I'm still finishing off the next chapter of the main fic I thought that I'd post this! Hope you enjoy it!
There had been no such thing as soulmates back on Earth. At least not a visible marking that actually showed a person who their soulmate was, or what they would say.
Stumbling into that bar, and having a baffled fourteen year old tell the then nineteen year old me what the words on my arm were and how they got there was not a fun experience.
"I'd grown up sheltered." Was a frequent excuse of mine when asked why I had no idea what the words meant, I mean after all my parents didn't have each others marks and they'd fallen in love and had me, hadn't they? The marks, the words were not an indication of who you were to fall in love with, or what sort of relationship the two of you would have.
Soulmates, at least in this world, were signified by a sentence that ones soulmate would say at one point in their life, on the worst possible day of their life. I didn't really pay much attention to the words, hadn't really wanted to read them knowing that my life was already crazy enough as it was. A new world, where people like me were hunted and killed for sport, just for existing and hiding that existence was paramount to my survival and living abilities. Days, weeks, months, trying not to cry at the thought that I would never see my parents, my grandparents, friends, pets, ever again. All that I had ever known was gone, and the singular thought that a soulmate was all that i had been given in exchange, that and a guaranteed death sentence? It really didn't seem all that worth it.
It would be months before I would actually take a proper look at the writing on my wrist, especially since I'd covered it over with a band, a watch and then several bracelets.
I hadn't wanted to overwhelm myself, since I'd already been so incredibly overwhelmed from the very instance i blacked out and landed on a deserted island. Soulmates, as lovely as that word sounded, and especially after living in Loguetown for as long as I had and had seen a few meetings of soulmates, many after losing jobs or having been robbed, hadn't prepared me for reading the words tattooed across my wrist.
Thank you for loving me!
There was only one person, in this world, who would have been able to say those words on the worst day of their life. The connotations of those words, of who said them, absolutely fucking terrified me.
I had met Ace a few times, and had built up a fairly decent rapport with him. He'd become a good friend in the time that we'd known each other, ad the last thing that i wanted for him was to die.
Not now, not ever.