Tag: poignant composition

arcanusanima:

@johndavespriteweek Day 3: AU

I did a combination of two soulmate AUs. Also small warning for death and blood, nothing too descriptive though.

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“Later.”

You don’t realize it until much later, but that is the last word you hear from your best friend.

It occurs to you some time later (1week4days3hours46 minutes12secondsughshutup) when you happen to glance at your back in a mirror. Sitting directly between your shoulder blades is the word ‘Later’ written in looping script. You had never paid much attention to it, always believing that you must live in a pretty fucked up world where even if you ever managed to find your ‘soulmate’ you wouldn’t actually know it until they were gone. And now you know for sure that this world is a massive pile of shit because your best friend, and soulmate apparently, is dead along with Jade, and you are stuck in this hell with Rose, doomed to live out the rest of your lives here.

But then you devise a plan to go back, to fix this broken timeline so that you all will live at the cost of your own lives. You and Rose agree that this is a small price to pay. It’s not like you had much of a life to live here now. With a spin of your timetables and a flash of light you leave this doomed timeline, as well as your sister, behind.

When you appear on the roof of your apartment in front of your past self you waste no time in giving him all of your sweet gear before prototyping yourself into his sprite. The feeling of wings sprouting out of your back is one of the strangest things you have ever experienced, right up there with losing the weight of gravity along with your legs.

Talking to John again fills you with such relief, even if he doesn’t readily believe you. Just the fact that he is still alive makes this whole plan worthwhile. The picture of his dead body lying in a pool of his own blood will forever haunt your thoughts, a never fading reminder of what will happen if you fail again.

Somehow you all manage to cheat the game by initiating the Scratch, starting you off on a long three year journey on board a giant ship. You finally get to see John in person, though the meeting is bittersweet as your mind forcefully overlays the image of him dying over his grinning face.

Once things settle down into a routine you happen to think about your soul mark. You search your back with the help of a mirror, but no matter where you look or how you shift your wings there is no sign of the looping ‘Later’ anywhere on your back. Maybe this timeline doesn’t have soul marks? No, you remember seeing a glimpse of ink peeking out from under John’s sleeve, and you really doubt it was a normal tattoo. Maybe you just no longer have one since you came back from the future and then threw yourself into a kernalsprite. Who knows.

You learn from John a few days later that this timeline does in fact have soul marks, but that instead of your soulmate’s last words imprinted on your skin they have half of a unique design that their partner has the match to. John lifts his sleeve to show you his, a twisting design that loops and curls in some undecipherable shape. He asks about your own mark, so you tell him that you used to have one on your back but it has since vanished.

“What? So you don’t have any mark now?” John asks in disbelief as you lounge on a couch.

You shrug. “Guess not. Sprites don’t need that sort of thing, I guess.”

John frowns at you. “Are you sure? I’ve never heard of anyone not having a soul mark, and you didn’t know what the marks even looked like here until just now. Maybe you missed it.”

He then practically attacks you in a search to find your missing mark. None of your squawks of protest or flailing limbs deter him and you eventually resign yourself to your fate. It’s not until you are on your stomach so that John can search your back that he finally exclaims that he found something.

“Really? Where?” You swear you never saw anything when you were looking before. Then again you are covered in feathers and your skin is an eye searing orange now. It would not be that shocking that you missed something.

“It’s right here under all these feathers,” he says, pushing some of the feathers that cover your neck away and tapping at the spot.

A strange tingling sensation travels through your body when he does, and you can feel John freeze up next to you. The spot under his hand begins to heat up nearly to the point of burning but never reaching the point that it hurts.

Neither of you move for a several minutes, and it’s John who eventually lifts his hand away. You move to watch him slowly turn his arm over to stare at his mark, which you can see has grown. Those twisting lines have branched out to create a stylized set of wings surrounded by swirling lines of wind. He looks back up at you, staring into your eyes in some combination of disbelief, confusion, and tentative happiness.

Tears well up in your eyes without your permission, but you hardly pay any attention to them as you gather John up into a crushing hug. He grips onto  you just as tightly, his own tears soaking into your feathers as he happily repeats ‘we’re soulmates!’ over and over again. You don’t release each other for quite some time, choosing instead to curl up on the couch together in each other’s embrace.

John eventually nods off, cuddled up close to you as you gently run your fingers through his messy hair. This world isn’t nearly as bad as the one you left behind, you think to yourself as you watch John sleep. Soul marks are still a thing here, but now you are actually grateful they exist as it means that you and John are meant to be together. And for the first time since you started this horrible Game you are glad that you joined. It may have taken so many things from you, your planet, your old life, your brother and friends, but it has also given you the chance to be with your soulmate. And though this is not the life you ever expected to live you plan to make every second of it count.