Alicia

It was time for another one of our serious conversations. They don't happen very often but they are nearly always to do with us. And if it's about us then it means one of us has noticed something big has happened that we should both know about concerning our connection. I got the feeling that this was going to be one of the worse conversations.

"Do you remember when we went to get chips?"

"and I was taken to a mental hospital and we slept for a week? Yes, I don't think I could forget."

"You remember we had each others burn marks on the opposite arm to our own?" I nodded. "Did you get those marks the first time that happened?"

I tried to remember two years ago when I had to psychically call the Doctor to my school. My arm had really hurt but nothing happened to the other one.

"No, they weren't. What are you thinking?" He pulled out a needle and stuck it in his finger. "What did you do that for it hurts!" He was looking at my own finger. It had blood on it. I looked back up at him, scared now.

"Sorry. I hope I'm right." He mumbled. "Give me your hand." I was about to stick said finger in my mouth but gave it to him knowing he would only stick the needle in his finger again otherwise. He pulled out a tissue, wiped my finger and took it over to a microscope. "It's my blood."

"What do you mean it's your blood."

"When I stuck the needle in my finger and blood appeared on your hand. It wasn't your blood, it was mine." My nose wrinkled.

"So if I stab my hand my blood should appear on your hand?"

"Yes. You try it."

I winced at the idea of sticking a needle through my finger but I did it anyway. When I pulled it back out there was blood on my hand. There was also blood on his hand. He checked again and it was my blood on his hand.

"Does this mean I've just lost twice the amount of blood?" I stuck both the bloody fingers in my mouth. One with my blood on it, one with the Doctors.

"I don't think so. If we cut our fingers of we can't lose two of the same finger."

"What if something like that did happen, would the other person lose their finger too or would we still just get the pain as usual?"

"That's what we need to find out. If there was an injury that can't be replicated..."

"Maybe we would only get a part of the injury. Or what if the point is that we're supposed to take on some of the injury so that the other person can heal quicker. Or something?" He looked at me like I was starting to talk nonsense. I found it quite offensive.

"At the moment we only know about minor, external injuries. But how do we find out about internal injuries?" He ran a hand down his face. Then he kicked the wall.

"Can you not do that? Now I'll get your bruise on my foot."

"Sorry." He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. "I've come up with something but your not going to like it."

"Well, if it works..."

"I'm going to cut through my arm and see how much it affects you."

"That's crazy!"

"Do you want to do it?" I moaned.

"No." So he left the room and came back with a thin sharp object.

"I'm going to do this slowly so I can stop earlier if we need to."

"Earlier? How deep are you planning on going!"

Instead of answering he thrust the object into his arm and blood immediately began to form on mine, I could just about see a cut opening through the blood.

"Stop!" I screamed at him. He came over and I saw the cut on his arm was deeper. That was probably a good thing. I watched as what must have been my own blood mix with his blood.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

I was looking at the scar on my arm. It healed quicker than it should have and the scar was strange. It was mostly normal skin with the odd bump of scar tissue in a line.

"You're looking at it again."

"I'm just curious about it. That was a really deep cut, the scar should be huge. How's your arm?"

"It's completely fine, there's nothing wrong with it."

"Not even a scar?"

"I don't get scars."

"Well I do, and this one's not normal."