Soulmate AU in which you not only have your soulmate's first words to you written on your wrist, but you also feel their heartbeat through those words.
June 15th, 2021
Mion had known something was up from the second they hustled her into the classroom. It wasn't anything tangible, any evidence –maybe it was just the murmurs she heard, of the one old man talking about how the radio he'd tried sounding just like it did when the Americans came through during the war.
When communications were jammed.
Maybe it was just a tingle on the back of her neck, a fear that since the phone lines were down and the radios weren't working (why? a suspicious corner of her mind persisted, why would the radios not be working?), if something happened, there would be no way anyone in the entire village could call for help, not until it was too late.
And why guns, that same corner of her mind persisted, why did these people bring guns to a remote mountain village? "To deal with looters?" Who, exactly, is around here to steal things, except the people you've already packed into boxes?
From muttering to screaming, her instincts were telling her that there was something just not right about this whole mess. She absently cupped her left wrist, trying to calm herself as the band of characters there pulsed with a rapid, thrumming heat. Keiichi was nervous, he had to be, if his heart was pounding this quickly. She had to be calm, had to be the steady rock of the club, had to be strong for her soulmate.
The fizz in her veins as she thought of him helped, but what helped most of all was seeing a familiar head of green hair through the gaps of arms and legs in the cramped classroom. Mion began excusing and sidestepping her way over to where Shion was standing by the wall, and her heart fluttered as she saw Keiichi standing there with her. He felt that –of course he did– and looked around, knowing that she'd seen him, and locked eyes with Mion a moment later. He looked worried, but he was pretending to be strong too, even when Shion had a full-fledged frown.
"This isn't right." she said the moment Mion made it over, her frown cutting deeper into her face as she looked at the windows, the people busily taping them down as flashlights from the soldiers whirled in the darkness outside. "None of this is right."
"You're tellin' me." Mion agreed. "I've got a bad, bad feeling about all this."
"Me too." Keiichi admitted, which surprised her, given as he was dense as a sack of hammers. He rubbed the back of his neck and shifted from one foot to another. "I just…you're the locals here, are there any historical accounts of this happening?"
"No." Mion said, as Shion backed her up with a firm headshake.
"Yeah, so why –after no geological buildup– is toxic gas spilling out of the swamp?" Keiichi asked, his heartbeat skipping just a tad faster against her wrist even when his face didn't change. "Something that's never happened before in all of Hinamizawa's history, either."
"And how did these soldiers know about it before we did?" Shion asked, plucking out an inconsistency that even Mion hadn't noticed and examining it under the harsh light of logic. "How did they know about something happening in the middle of the mountains, gear up, send their people all the way out here, and do all of that before we even noticed that something was wrong?"
"Some amateur geologist or whatever could have called them and told them." Keiichi said doubtfully. Shion pierced him with a single look.
"When the phone lines are down?" she asked, and a chill slid down Mion's spine. "And the radios aren't working?"
"The only way they could've gotten here so fast is because they knew it was gonna happen." she said, putting the pieces together. "Or…"
No. No, they couldn't possibly…
"Onee?" Shion asked quietly, as Mion felt warm fingers slide over her wrist. She looked up from Keiichi's hand into his worried eyes, and swallowed hard.
"You're a city boy." she said. "Do you think it's a good idea to put dozens of people in an airtight room for hours and hours on end?"
"Uh, no." Keiichi said with a scoff. "You can only survive about 16 hours in an airtight space the size of a car, and assuming they'd keep us here until gas masks were delivered in the morning, that's 12 hours right there. Plus, there's a lot more of us per square foot than one person inside a car, and to be honest, there's probably a lot less space per person in here than there'd be if we all had a car to ourselves, so we probably wouldn't even last those twelve hour…s…"
He paused, and she felt his pulse spike as Keiichi's eyes grew wide with horror.
"Oh no." he whispered.
"They didn't put us in here to save us, did they?" Shion whispered fiercely. "This is all some kind of a set-up!"
"Yeah, and there's people with guns outside." Mion hissed back. "Whatever we're going to do, we'd better think it through first!"
"Everyone's focused on the windows. Is there anyone out in the hall?" Keiichi whispered.
The two of them were both shorter than Keiichi, and as Mion and Keiichi shuffled over to the door, blocking Shion with their bodies, she peeled the tape away and pulled it off in two strips, one on the bottom and one on the side, freeing the door to move. Slowly, gently, carefully, she slid it aside, making sure that nobody would be able to see the door move before she bent down and peered through. Mion couldn't see what she saw, but she felt Shion tense against her leg.
"Two more with guns." she whispered, as Mion and Keiichi exchange horrified glances. "And they…wait-"
Before Mion can ask what the hell's going on, Shion suddenly launches herself back, dragging Mion and Keiichi with her, and Mion barely has time to react before the door is ripped open and a man in a gas mask throws some kind of canister into the room. Keiichi's pulse beats along her wrist, and its as high and scared as her own.
With a poisonous hiss, the thing begins to spew gas, and the man wrenches the door shut again as people begin to belatedly cry out, realizing one by one the danger that they're in. The three club members cough as the air grows thick, backing away hastily as all three of them instinctively pull their shirts over their nose and mouth.
"Gas!" someone screams. "Gas!"
"We need to get out of here!" Shion cried, holding the high collar of her turtleneck over her face. Her eyes are already beginning to water.
"Guns!" Mion coughed. "We can't-"
The others aren't listening, though, clawing at the windows and ripping the tape free, breaking some of the glass in their desperation to escape, pounding at the frames and dragging themselves desperately to freedom.
"Don't!" Keiichi screamed. "They-"
Gunfire chitters in the night, and the trio shrink together, trapped like rats and panicking with it, as brief sprays of light flash in the darkness outside. They hear screams, and then silence, and everyone in here is reeling, but there's nowhere they can go. Anyone who escapes the classroom will be shot down, and its getting harder to breathe by the second in here.
In here…
"The lockers!" Mion chokes. "If we grab the cannister and put it in a locker –we'll at least have longer, right?!"
"Right!" Keiichi cries, and before she can say anything, he's running for it, dodging the stumbling and falling people around them as Mion gropes her way towards a locker, her eyes watering, trying to breathe in air that fights against her lungs. Keiichi's pulse is roaring against the letters on her wrist, and she savors every frantic throb, knowing that it means that he's still alive, still fighting, still with her-
"O-Onee…" she hears Shion croak, and looks over, still propping herself up against the bay of lockers, trying to breathe, trying to think of everything she knows about gas –heavier than air, filterable through cloth– even when she hasn't a clue of what's going on, and her heart nearly stops as she sees Shion sway woozily, collapsing back to the ground.
"SHION!" Mion cries, and Keiichi's pulse leaps against her wrist as he hears her, feels her, even through the smog. "Shion, get up! Don't you dare lie down, Shion, Satoshi's still out there, you still have to find him-"
Shion chokes as her eyes stream with tears both natural and chemical, trying to claw her way upwards as her feet scrape groggily across the ground, moving her arms and legs like an overbalanced tortoise. It chills Mion to the bone, to see her sister so uncoordinated, to see her so weak, even when she's grimly trying to drag herself back to her feet at the mention of her soulmate. Mion can't help her, she can barely stand on her own, Keiichi where are you-
"K-Kei…" Shion manages to choke, turning her head towards where he vanished into the gas, and then she chokes, gags, coughs, her whole body rattling and going taunt as the tinted fog swirls around them.
The pulsing in Mion's hand isn't reassuring anymore. Its frenzied, feverish, a heart slamming against ribs like it could defy death if it just pumped hard enough, like the heart alone was trying to beat out the poison creeping into Keiichi's system and save the rest of his body.
But then he's there, he's there, her indomitable best friend and soulmate, staggering towards her with the canister in one hand and the corner of his red vest held over his mouth and nose with the other, hacking desperately, meeting her eyes, and Mion grabs the edge of a locker, ready to swing it open, but then there's a desperate flutter and a stutter against her wrist and she screams, no, not him, not this, it can't be happening, watching Keiichi slump to the ground just on the other side of Shion, dropping the cannister and his vest both as he sprawls like a puppet with cut strings.
Mion's lunging forward before she can realize it, crawling over Shion's still-warm legs as they scuff over the ground like sticks, hating herself for doing this, for passing off her sister as dead –Satoshi, Satoshi, wherever you are, can you feel how her heart's stopped beating? Do you know you've lost her?– but still being so very desperate to save Keiichi, Kei-chan, her soulmate. She reaches over him for the hissing hot cannister, feeling him croak out his last breaths underneath her, and the world sways and tilts and dips at the edges, choking on the very air itself now as that gas fills the room around them, feeling the butterfly flicker of his dying pulse against her wrist, sobbing openly-
Its pathetic, how this mere stretch of floor –something she could normally reach across on all fours before coiling back to sit on her heels in mere seconds– is fraught with so much difficulties and peril, but she does it, she collapses back against the lockers as the world darkens at the edges and she feels the vile cannister in her hands spewing out more death. Mion turns with one weakened, numb arm to reach out, to try and stuff this thing inside a locker, because even if it's almost too late she can still save others, she can still make this all be worth something-
She can't. She's too weak, too uncoordinated, to try and open a damn locker.
She's crying when she looks back to Keiichi, feels the last few ghostlike flickers of his heartbeat against the words on her wrist, horror filling her world as his back bows and arches like Shion's had, muscles pulling taunt, his last few breaths gurgling in his chest as his periwinkle eyes fly up and back, desperation etched on his face, like he still wants to help her even though he can't even see her, like he's still there enough to feel her own heartbeat dying against his wrist…
The world slides away from her as Mion feels herself burning inside and out, choking and drooling and slumping down as her brain stops responding and her muscles go slack, darkness rising up to envelope her like she's sinking into a well. The only thing she can really, truly feel is Keiichi, Keiichi's heart beating its last against her wrist, against the words that marked them as each other's, and then it's gone.
And so is she.
Later, when Satoko staggers out of the ravine and into town, when she sees the corpses sprawled across the classroom and her eyes are drawn to her friends in particular, she sees Mion slumped against the lockers with her sister and her soulmate before her, Keiichi sprawled on his back one way, Shion the other, Shion's tongue lolling out of her mouth, Keiichi's jaw stretched open in a silent scream. Mion's face was etched with horror, and one of her hands was splayed out at an odd angle, like someone had taken something from her dead grasp and had to wrench her fingers open and almost break her wrist to get it.
The soul marks on her wrist, on Keiichi's wrist, on Shion's wrist, were all blackened, proving without a doubt that they were dead.
10.12 AM, USA Central Time