Soulmates || Side Story 3 (Rank 8, 1) (Patreon)

"Lili, do you believe in soulmates?" Marianne's voice broke through Liliana's thoughts, her hand stilling where she was writing down her final draft of an essay. Several books floated around her head and even more were piled on her desk, all open to various pages.

"I believe this essay for Fundamentals is due tomorrow and worth 15 percent of our grade for the semester," Liliana quipped as she tapped her pen against the parchment.

"I'm serious, Lili. Do you?" Marianne's voice was soft, plaintive in that way that never failed to force all of Liliana's attention onto her friend. She never really could deny the princess any request she made. Sometimes she wondered if Marianne knew that. Knew she could request anything of Liliana with her wide, ruby red eyes and pouting lips and Liliana would make it so. The moon, the stars, the sun, if Marianne asked Liliana would fetch them.

"You're asking the soul bonded tamer if she believes in soulmates?" Liliana asked, for even if there's nothing she would not do for her friend let it not be said she made it a simple task to request it. She set the pen down by an ink pot and stretched muscles sore from hours hunched over a desk.

"Yes, I'm asking the soul bonded tamer who happens to be my closest friend," Marianne's voice was dripping in sarcasm so thick Liliana was tempted to check her bedsheets later to see if it stained the fabric.

"Is this about your latest paramore? Dahlia?" Liloana asked as she rearranged herself on her chair, legs straddling the back and arms lazily thrown over it as her cheek rested against the wood, ignoring the way it dug into her skin.

It smelled of the rose scented oils she bought for her hair that she had to work into it herself every night. The same ones Astrid used to lovingly comb through her curls. Three years she's been gone and Liliana can't bring herself to change her hair oils. They work best to tame her unruly curls into soft, shining waves that will submit to being braided anyway.

"No, we broke things off two weeks ago. She was too needy," Marianne waved a hand above her head, dismissing her latest conquest as if it's nothing.

For Marianne it is. Her dalliances are common knowledge, once the topic of hot gossip now something no one cares much for. Liliana thought maybe that was the idea, trick the masses into ignoring her love life by making it so public, so when Marianne finally did decide to fall for someone no one even noticed. Or maybe she was just letting herself enjoy her childhood, taking what freedoms she can before they're stripped from her by the shackles of her position.

"Then why are you asking?" Liliana asked instead of answering and Marianne tilted her head, upside down from hanging off the edge of Liliana's bed, to face her.

"I wonder if I'll always feel so alone, if I had a soul mate, maybe it wouldn't be so lonely," Marianne answered with that blunt honesty that never ceased to take Liliana by surprise when it's directed at her.

"I'm here, with you now," Liliana offered and Marianne's smile was something melancholic, the last fleeting warmth of summer before fall's creeping coldness steals across the land, leaving frost and death in its wake.

"For now, but one day you won't be. I'll be queen. And no one will be able to stand at my side, as my equal," Marianne was once more bluntly honest. A brutal hammer shattering idyllic dreams and hopes, childish fantasies left shredded around her feet.

"You'll be queen, and you can decide who can or cannot stand as your equal, Mari. If you're above all, then you make the rules you want to live by," Liliana countered, eyes brightening with a challenge, an unwillingness to bend or break, or bow her head in defeat to anything. Man, monster or stupid ancient rules made by people so long dead they're dust.

"Perhaps. You always do manage to find loopholes, abstract ways of looking at things," Marianne allowed, her smile less full of bitter regret and more soft sweetness. Spring, hesitantly blooming in the wake of winter's culling ice and snow. The first blossoms peeking out, splashes of color against a gray world.

"You didn't answer my question, though." Marianne continued, her lips quirked in a teasing smirk. Eyes knowing, almost shining in hidden laughter. Marianne knew Liliana's tricks, her tactics to avoid conversations she doesn't feel like having, and took far too much joy in subverting them.

"I do, if you must know. But not in the way you're thinking," Liliana rolled her eyes and finally submitted, giving in to Marianne as she always had, always would.

A never ending dance between them, Marianne requesting, Liliana trying to subvert and distract, weasel the request away, Marianne handily undoing her work and getting what she wanted in the end. A game they two played alone, a pointless effort on Liliana's part many would say. But that was all part of the fun of it.

"Then in what way do you believe in soulmates, Lili?" Marianne reworded her question. Knowing well if she was not direct and careful Liliana would simply end the conversation there. Question asked. Question answered. Loopholes and clever outs, Liliana's only worthwhile lesson learned from nobility.

"I believe in the way that some souls are uniquely drawn together. Meant to be together, in some capacity. Any capacity. That they become better, for being together, than they ever would have been apart. I don't think it's romantic, or that it has to be. Or that there's only one specific soulmate for each person. I think we all have many soul mates, people our souls need. To heal, to grow, to flourish. And I think some soulmates are meant to stay with us for life, and some are only meant to stay for a short while, giving a bit of themselves and taking a little before they're on their way," Liliana gave Marianne the answer she was actually searching for as a reward for wording her question properly.

For boxing Liliana in such a way she can't end the conversation. Her tithe for her defeat, giving Marianne what she requested. As she had planned to do from the start. The wood from the chair dug into Liliana's cheek with each word, but the pain was so weak she didn't even notice it. This conversation felt better like that, relaxed, informal in a way that did not match the philosophical nature of it. Discussing souls and bonds and the ways they affect others as if they were discussing crushes. Something they have done many times whenever some new girl or guy caught Marianne's eye and she fixated on them for days, or weeks or, rarely, months.

"Do you think your bonds are your soulmates?" Marianne took a few minutes to postulate the question, ruminating over Liliana's words and examining them behind her scarlet eyes that were at once so open and yet so closed.

"Yes," Liliana said simply.

No elaboration, no explaining the differences between each. That she believed Polaris to be a type of soul mate wholly different from Lelantos and Nemesis, and both different too from one another. Lelantos found her when she most needed a protector, Nemesis when she most needed revenge, Polaris when she most needed a companion to share her burden.

"Alistair? Emyr?" Marianne threw the names out now and Liliana thought they finally.might be approaching the real reason Marianne asked her first question to begin with.

"Yes, in their own unique ways," Liliana elaborated slightly. The only hint that she feels that each name so far offered by Marianne has meant something special to her in a different way.

Alistair was her brother, in blood and oath. Her shining shield but also her sun, and yet someone she too must also protect. Emyr was a brother as well, at once more and less than a brother than Alistair. They shared no blood, but the oaths, spoken and unspoken, between them tied them so tightly together blood meant nothing.

Alistair would kill for her, she knew. But in a battle way, facing enemies head on. Emyr would plan a murder and hide the body of someone who dared hurt her, and never care for the blood that stained his hands. He was her moonless night, a blade in the dark.

"And me?" Marianne's voice was so soft, a whisper on the wind. The delicate flap of a butterfly wing brushing against a rose petal, and twice as fragile.

That was the question Marianne had been dancing around since the beginning, but worded in a different way than she meant. This wasn't about soulmates, not really. It was about Marianne looking to her future and seeing a lonely throne and a heavy crown that would place her above all her friends. That would exile her to a deserted island of position, where everyone could look upon her but none could touch, none could reach.

She wanted to know if Liliana would still be beside her. Not behind her, not kneeling at her feet as a knight should for her queen. She didn't want another servant, another sycophant. She wanted a friend who would buck tradition and protocol and stand at her friend's right hand, and not force her to bear the weight of an entire queendom on thin shoulders unprepared for such a heavy burden.

"Of course," Liliana said it simply. Answering both the question voiced, and all the subtext written between Marianne's words since Liliana stopped writing her essay.

Something in Marianne's eyes relaxed, melting from gemstone like hardness to the softness of satin. Marianne knew Liliana understood both what she'd said and what she hadn't said. Knew Liliana would always understand her. Between them was an entire unwritten, unknown language built in the space between words, in hidden glances, twisting lips and sparkling eyes. In the subtleties of body language and an understanding that could only be built through years of friendship.

"And what kind of soulmate am I?" Marianne asked, a teasing tilt to her lips that brought out a dimple and a light of relief and mirth in her eyes.

Her body seemed lighter, as if knowing now that no matter what happened, she'd have Liliana. Whether she took her oath of knighthood or not, Liliana would never kneel before her. They would be equals, today and everyday that they both drew breath. Perhaps they'd even change the oath of knighthood, shock the nobility with it. Rewrite the rules they didn't want to adhere to or bow beneath. But that was a different conversation, a different dance of words and subtext they wouldn't broach today.

Liliana blinked slowly ar Marianne, like a cat, as she regarded her. Taking time to think over her words this time rather than just blurt them out.

What kind of soulmate?

If Alistair was her shield and sun, and Emyr her moon, Lelantos her protector, Nemesis her vengeance and Polaris her companion, what was Marianne? Her first, true friend? Unburdened by a twisted past of mistakes and pain, vacant of the tangled web of lies and deceits and half truths.

The first person she could be herself with? Not some odd amalgamation of Liliana and who she had been before? Perhaps, if Liliana wanted to fit a pattern of celestial bodies she could call Marianne her moon. Seeing her in the cool light of night, where secrets dwelled, unveiling all she hid and bathing her in acceptance. Waxing and waning, but inevitable. Always returning, drawing her to it as it drew the waves of the ocean. Beautiful, and distant, but ever closer than the sun.

But that distance was exactly why Liliana didn't feel any celestial body was appropriate for Marianne, no matter how easy it would be to compare the princess' beauty to one and find the celestial body lacking in comparison.

Marianne had never been distant to Liliana, though their ranks said she should be. From the moment they had met, Marianne had grabbed on tight and forced her into her orbit and Liliana had never left it. Though they might occasionally be physically distant, emotionally they were as close as any two people could be.

Alistair, as close as he was to her, could often and had often felt distant. A shining star amongst trash, bright but always just out of her reach, for all she could so easily grab him now. Sometimes, when he smiled so big it eclipsed the sun he reminded her of, she still felt there were miles between them. Her own darkness so vast it spread in the space between their bodies like an uncrossable ocean filled with treacherous waters and deadly creatures.

"Like the wind," Liliana decided finally, breaking the waiting silence in the room. Marianne blinked at her, eyes shining with an exasperated fondness that only Liliana ever seemed to invoke in the princess.

"The wind?" Marianne repeated and Liliana hummed in agreement.

"Could you elaborate?" Marianne requested and Liliana sighed, a great thing full of exaggerated emotion of being put upon to do something particularly arduous. Marianne, the sadist she was, only smiled at her, delighting in the torture she was inflicting by making Liliana unravel her own riddles.

"Close, always with me. Supporting me when I fall, lightening my heart and mind. Strengthening me and showing me how to fly, laying the world at my feet and daring me to take it for myself," Liliana didn't mull over her words this time, simply letting them tumble out in a jumble of half thought out sentences and put together feelings.

It only half made sense if you looked at each sentence on its own, but together it painted a better picture even if that was hardly sufficient in explaining anything at all. Liliana rolled her eyes when she saw Marianne open her mouth to ask yet another question, to force her to further decode her own riddle like answer to a riddle like answer when doing so would only lessen the truth of it, strip it down into something weak and insufficient. She couldn't do that, not when their bond was the very opposite, so full of color, and life and love that doing so would be the worst kind of murder.

Liliana opened herself up emotionally, weaving together skills and spells. [Empathy], [Pathokinesis], [Telepathy], building a connection that would let Marianne see rather than hear what she meant and letting the room fill with the way Liliana saw their bond, a bit of [Soul Sight] slipping through to paint it in colors to accompany the feeling, the touch, the taste of it all around them.

Marianne let out a soft gasp as she finally saw what Liliana meant. Finally felt it, tasted it. The beautiful, warm reds and cool blues of their souls, linked together even when they weren't touching, the bond strong even stretched. The feeling, like a late spring wind flowing over and around and through them. Warm and comforting, cool and refreshing, teasing and lifting and invigorating and steadying.

The delicate scent of flowers in bloom and the freshness of the air in mid flight. The sweetness of honey, the warmth of spice, coating the throat, bleeding into your chest and filling your veins with a rushing sensation.

"The wind," Marianne echoed her precious words, understanding finally lacing the words as Liliana released all her skills and spells and the world went a bit duller for it. But she could still feel it, between them, always there if only you knew how to look.

AN: This was too long to be a memory in a chapter, but it was too beautiful to not share. So it's a side story.