Full Summary: Sawada Setsuna didn't believe much in soulmates — while she found the concept nice and romantic, she doubted anyone would truly love her, given her lifestyle. With her soulmate leaving after the promise to love her and never leave, that already fragile faith in destiny shatters. She promises herself to never fall in love again.
Gojo Satoru didn't care for soulmates at all – what's the point when he's markless and the strongest? – so when he falls for his best friend's soulmate, he's determined to make her his, no matter what the stars and destiny say.
Or: Gojo Satoru and Sawada Setsuna, connected and broken by their important person, forge their own destiny.
AN: The promised Soulmate AU is here! Some readers commented on Gojo & Tsuna's chemistry in Infinity in the sky and that got my mind working. Together with littleroxxi7 on Quotev - thank you for the conversations, littleroxxi7 - we figured out the details and voila! The first chapter is just introduction, but I hope you will like it anyway.
Chapters titles come from these songs:
Rewrite the Stars - Zac Efron & Zendaya, The Greatest Showman OST
Infinity - Jaymes Young
Ao no Sumika - Tatsuya Kitani, JJK S2 Opening.
Prologue: Where Our Blue Is Arc: Love isn't random, we are chosen.
Soulmate. A person meant for you by destiny. Your perfect other half, in both soul and body.
That's how people generally describe it. Nobody knows where the phenomenon came from or the exact date. It's just… came to be. Some people received marks – tattoos that couldn't be removed no matter how hard you tried – out of the blue one day, their names also lost to history and time. It turned out tattoos symbolized the person you are destined for, once the marked ones found each other and eventually happiness in one another. After a few more successful matches, and when tattoos kept appearing, society accepted them as part of their lives and the world.
This phenomenon was called "Gift of the Gods." Not officially, anyway. Officially, it was just a plain old "soulmate bond."
Over the years, several more things were discovered about soulmates: besides having a tattoo that symbolized your destined one — the mark could be anything, from flower to animal, any other thing that points you in the right direction — its appearance and place varied from person to person; some have it from birth, some receive it upon puberty, either on wrist or collarbone, many lack the mark. Those who have the mark, only have the outline of the mark, the full color activating only with the first skin-to-skin contact of the destined pair, the feeling being like the jolt of electricity, sharp in biting. If either of the soulmates died, the mark returned to its' original state, just dull and gray. If the already established bond was broken by one of the pair (sometimes both), the mark turned black and white. The breaking of the bond was a pretty rare case, however. Most preferred to keep it intact or unactivated.
Having a soulmark also wasn't the guarantee of romantic love; many pairs were platonic, and content with other partners. There was no common opinion on soulmates either. Instead, there are three camps, so to speak.
First, were skeptics. They didn't dismiss the idea, but didn't accept it either. More accurately, they didn't think such a gift was for them.
Sawada Setsuna doesn't believe much in soulmates — while she finds the concept nice and romantic, she doubts anyone would truly love her, for she's in the mafia and would put her other half in danger.
Who would agree to such a lifestyle? No one. Her Guardians, Kyoko, Haru, and kids notwithstanding, of course.
She didn't always think that way. Ever since she was born, she had her parents' example before her eyes — they were the embodiment of the word itself, two parts of a whole. Love at first sight, kind of thing. Or that's the way Mom told it. Dad too, whenever he was home.
Their example gave her hope that her soulmate wouldn't care for the probably pathetic mark, would see past her Dame self and save her from her tormentors.
But… Years went by. As she grew older, most of her classmates found their pairs already. Only she stayed the same — Dame, with barely a mark, no soulmate in sight, still the laughing stock of the school if not of the whole town. Her parents' fairytale was also falling apart. Dad is gone for months, even years, the only sign of him being alive is Mom's still colorful soulmark and the ridiculous postcards he sends. Is it normal for soulmates to be like this, she wondered, lying awake at night, bruised and disappointed by her life. Being apart for years with rare visits where you pretend everything is fine when it's clearly not? If so, she doesn't want such a bond and soulmate. By the time she turns thirteen, Setsuna doesn't believe in fate and everything soulmate-related, and her rose-tinted glasses are completely broken.
And then Reborn comes, the adult in the baby's body. He turns her life upside down by revealing her legacy. He drags her in, kicking and screaming, along with a few others, who become her Guardians and family. He's a sadist who calls her Dame-Tsuna, but it lacks the usual mocking.
He's also the first to ask her about soulmark without the scorn.
"Has it always been this way?" he asks, gesturing to her mark with his espresso one ordinary morning. The others are out, so it's just them.
"Has been since I remember," she shrugs, waning for the usual reaction. But it doesn't come. Instead, he asks another question:
"Is your soulmate dead?" he asks, eyes sliding to his own mark discreetly, but Tsuna notices by pure chance — some sort of orange lily, dull, gray, outlined.
His soulmate was dead.
"Dunno," she answers nonchalantly. Her days waiting for her soulmate are over and done. "It's hard to tell, given the state of the mark. He may be dead. Or he just doesn't care."
Reborn purses his lips at her answer. Something tells her he will get to the bottom of the mystery. One way or the other.
Her feeling turns out to be right. After they face Mukuro, and she enters the Hyper Dying Will Mode for the first time, she discovers she has the proper outline of the mark now. When she asks the "how", Reborn, uncharacteristically grim, tells her that due to her father's past… actions, the full awakening of her Flames was like puberty, and her mark made itself known at long last.
Tsuna isn't surprised in the least. This whole mafia thing was Dad's fault, after all. Honestly, what's one more thing at this rate?
"Thank you for telling me this, Reborn," she thanks him sincerely. He waves her off.
"You did everything yourself. I just gave a little push," her tutor looks at the mark curiously. "Interesting. Looks like a dragon."
"It does," Tsuna agrees, tracing the outline. It indeed looked like a dragon that wrapped her entire wrist. "Do you know anyone who matches it?"
"I have a couple of candidates."
These "couple of candidates" turn out to be Fon-san — who is Hibari's uncle, yikes — and Xanxus, who wants her dead because of Decimo position. Both turn out to be not her soulmates, thankfully, but her renewed hope at finding her other half took a serious hit.
It dwindles even further when they get transported to the future where Byakuran – who has the white dragon, oh the irony — wants her and Yuni for himself as his toys, and they have to fight a war, escaping with their lives all the while.
"Do you still think you will meet your soulmate?" she asks Yuni once, in the dead of the night as Primo family's tests are underway, and sleep eludes her for the same reason. "Because I don't think I will find mine."
"I hope for the best," Yuni answers with a smile. Her soulmark — twin wolves, one black, one white — is on her collarbone, peeking from the nightgown. "The circumstances are not in our favor, but they're always with me, bond or not. And someday, we will meet."
But those dreams are for naught. Yuni dies, and her soulmate loses her without ever meeting Yuni.
And along with Yuni, Tsuna's hopes die too. Later events — Shimon, Daemon, mad with grief from his soulmate even centuries later, Vindice, Kawahira, breaking of the Arcobaleno Curse – only bury those hopes further. She and Enma date, only to decide they work better as friends after a while. All in all, by the time she's sixteen, Setsuna decides this beautiful fairytale is not for her.
Her soulmate will be happier without her in their life.
Second, there are romantics, those of belief that soulmates should be together no matter what.
Geto Suguru, completely and irrevocably, believes in fate and soulmates.
How could he not? His parents were one, their love and bond strong years into their marriage. He wants to have what they have, and is sure that he will find them, even if he's a little bit discouraged by how weak the mark looks.
"Maybe they are late bloomers," Mom consoles him after he tells her this. "Have faith and patience, dear."
And he does. Through fights, through bruises, and cuts earned for standing up for his "pathetic" soulmate, Suguru does have faith and patience.
And it pays off. When he's thirteen, going on fourteen, his outline appears fully.
"It's fire lily," Dad says when he runs to his parents with the discovery. "It's said to bloom just nine days after a fire occurs at the place where the flowers stand."
"And what does it mean?" Suguru asks, wide-eyed.
"Not sure," Mom says truthfully. "What do you think, Suguru?"
"I think… they are bright and rise from the ashes like the phoenix," Suguru says.
His words become prophetic in a way. More than once, his mark nearly turned gray and dull, each time stopping his heart in its tracks. But his soulmate always rose like a phoenix from the ashes. It made him proud, and also wonder — just what kind of life his soulmate is leading, to be in constant danger like this?
His soulmate is always on his mind, desire to find them never going out. In fact, it burns even stronger when he discovers the world of curses and meets his best friends — Gojo Satoru, markless and who finds the whole soulmate thing stupid, and Ieiri Shoko, who also doesn't care about fate much, but is curious to meet her soulmate, nonetheless — and he makes the promise right then and here — he will find them and never let go, protecting from curses and curse users alike.
After all, they are meant to be.
And lastly, there are those who scoffed at the concept. They didn't see any point in soulmates.
Gojo Satoru didn't care for soulmates at all – what's the point when he's markless and born the strongest?
His parents were not soulmates either — Mother had one somewhere out there, but he was deemed unfit to be her husband, and she married father, instead, who was markless like Satoru.
"Soulmates are useless, Satoru," he remembers Mother saying when he asked once why she married father and not her destined one. "The strongest are the ones in charge of their destiny, not some invisible force."
Satoru agreed – one of the few things he did agree on with her, actually. Soulmates are nothing but trouble. Even history thought so — besides rivalry, the main reason why the previous Six Eyes and Ten Shadows users killed each other was due for Six Eyes falling for the soulmate of his enemy. And what did he get for his trouble? Death by Mahoraga.
See? Nothing but trouble, so Satoru is content to be markless.
Suguru, though, whom he meets upon starting at Jujutsu Tech, thinks otherwise – he lives and breathes by his soulmate, buying into that "perfect other half" bullshit without even meeting his soulmate. Poor naïve fool. Eventually, he will realize he won't need them. Satoru certainly doesn't – he's Gojo Satoru, with his status and looks, he can have anyone he wants, mark or no mark.
Unknown to him and the other two, they and Satoru are gonna be connected by something much less obvious than the soulmark or the tes string of fate from the legends.
They are called life, choices, love, and heartbreak.
AN: Fire lily is a real flower. Found the mentioneed flower and thought it symbolized Tsuna pretty well. That's all for now! Tell me what you think in the comments!