A/N: This is the prologue for the story, but I've changed the title. I've done some minor editing to the chapters already posted and will be uploading those edits over the next day or so, before then uploading all the complete chapters that I've been holding back.

Chapter 00: Soulmates

After a while you learn the subtle difference

Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning

And company doesn't mean security,

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts

And presents aren't promises,

And you begin to accept your defeats

With your head up and your eyes open

With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,

And you learn to build all your roads on today,

Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans,

And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

{Comes the Dawn by Veronica Shoffstall}

Soulmates. Oh, there have been so many myths and legends about soulmates. How there is meant to be the one person that fits you perfectly. It is the very embodiment of love and partnership; it brings order to the fast-paced, chaotic world that we live in. A world filled with so many different types of people, but only one person can fill your heart the way your soulmate can.

Some people decide not to search for their soulmate, instead they settle with just a life-partner. They find someone they are relatively content to live with and get married; or they lost their soul mate early in life and so choose to settle with someone else. Someone who could make them happy, but couldn't fill the void left in their soul.

When a human is born, on some part of their body, there will be black squiggles. When they are eight, the squiggles become a name. If the soul mate were to die the black letters would turn grey and sometimes the squiggle would never become a name.

When I was young, I took comfort in the black squiggles that was the only thing that truly belonged to me. Most children would show off their soul marks, but it wasn't uncommon for some to refuse to allow others to see them. Holding them as sacred until they meet the person who they believe to be their soul mate. How people can tell who their soul-mate is varies between people: some claim it was like a pull on their heart drawing them in, others claim it was a sense of familiarity, and more still claim it was the sense of safety they felt around their soul mate. I kept mine hidden from people even before it was a name, because I didn't have anything else that was just mine.

You see, when I was young my mum started to fade from cancer. My dad spent so much time at work trying to cover the debt and pay for my mum's medicines that I was left with the responsibility of being a child career for my very ill mother and my younger sisters, Lily and Jasmine, who were only three and five respectively. I made sure that everyone ate (evening making a plate for father to reheat when he got home), cleaned the house, collected and dropped my sister off at either nursery or primary school and helped them with their homework at the end of each day.

I nearly broke when I woke on my eighth birthday to realise that the soul-name was written in a language I couldn't understand, using characters I couldn't decipher. I didn't have much time to truly dwell on the matter, however, because soon after looking at my soul-name my mother crashed and I had to care for my sisters while she was rushed to the hospital.

The last image I had of my mother before she died was of her lying deathly pale on her bed, her arms twitching and blood pouring from her ears and eyes. Her organs had shut down and her platelet count dropped. The medicine only made it worse and she died before even reaching the hospital. The only saving grace of the day being that Jasmine and Lily were still asleep when I entered mum's room to find her.

After the funeral I shut down. I had too many other things to think about then me. I had been brought up to care for others, and put them before myself. It was not very surprising that my coping method was to focus on looking after my sisters. Unfortunately, despite mother being gone and no longer playing nurse, my life became harder. Instead of looking after a sick woman, I was protecting my younger sisters from a violent and abusive father. Before mom's death he never came home drunk, but without her there to restrict him, he drank almost every night to hide the pain of having lost his soul mate.

Most people could understand his pain and so he didn't get in too much trouble at work so long as he completed the job (which he generally did since he was a factory worker and he was simply going through the motions).

I decided to, once again, take comfort in my soul-name. I allowed it to direct my studies, in that I started to look into different languages in the hopes of understanding what it said. The extra-curricular language studies meant that I spent a lot of my free time at the local library. This gave me an excuse to keep Jasmine and Lily out of the house since they would have to go to the library with me.

Three years passed by like this, until a teacher realised that something was wrong at home. I hadn't been fast enough to get between my youngest sister and my father, and they noticed the bruise that was left on her forearm in the shape of a hand print. Because dad couldn't act for shit, Social Services came and took them from me.

Since Lily was six and Jasmine eight, they were fostered into new families. I met them a couple of times, they were nice people. But I was twelve, and no one wanted a twelve-year-old. I would bounce from care home, to foster home and back. Never staying anywhere for more than two months.

When I was fourteen, I changed my name. I didn't want the connection to my past, and I had been caught up with some bad people from a previous care home and I didn't want them tracing me back to my sisters if they ever found the name of the person who brought them down.

So, Alexandria Foreman died, and in her place was Raven Smith.

All my records before then were sealed under court order, only someone with really high clearance and a really good reason would be able to unseal Alexandria's records. To fill the gap in Raven's records, a fabricated history was made, pulling on true facts from my life so I didn't have to remember to many lies and yet prevented people from drawing too may parallels. It was the closest to witness protection you could get without actually being placed in the program.

By the time I was sixteen, I had been to thirty-six different foster and care homes.

I hadn't seen my sisters in three years.

At the age of sixteen, I walked out of my last foster home and didn't look back.