A Tale of Two Omegas

Chapter 4: Fighting Nature

'Don't mark if you don't mean it.' It was a common slogan that was instilled into the heads of children from very young ages, meant to warn of the dangers and consequences of recklessly marking another person or marking without extremely careful consideration. Marking was permanent. It wasn't something that could be taken away or changed, so one had better be damn-sure they were willing to stay with their marked partner until their dying breath.

But staying with Mew had been an objective impossibility. And it hadn't even been like Gulf intended to mark him in the first place.

But biology didn't care. Biology was unforgiving...

Two months.

It had been two months since the fateful day Mew and Gulf had gone their separate ways once again--since Gulf had closed the door on his years of daydreaming and fantasies and taken the agonizing march away from the chapter of his life that he'd been clinging to since he was a young teen.

And two months since he'd turned his back on the man he had unintentionally and unwittingly marked and tied to himself forever.

There was a name for the sort of unique torment inflicted by distance between bonded and partially-bonded pairs: the Buyer's Price Phenomenon. Operating on the principle of 'a buyer who loses or tosses away his valuable possession must pay the price for his negligence.' Part of a definition straight out of a textbook.

Gulf found the analogy to be archaically-worded and outdated, but he admittedly couldn't deny the cruel effects of the phenomenon. For the past two months, he'd done nothing but sit at home, eat barely enough to sustain himself and sleep, having fallen victim to the wicked repercussions of his detachment from Mew. He hadn't gone a single day without the hollow, aching pain in his chest(part of which he was certain was Mew's, rather than his own), nor had he seemed to have been able to catch a break from the lost feelings infesting his mind, his natural instincts begging for a reunification with his mistakenly-marked 'lover.'

For weeks, his sister had been pleading with him to make an effort to reconnect with Mew, for the Buyer's Price was a relentless evil, and one that would not cease its onslaught unless the lost souls were to join again. Gulf wouldn't ever be able to even dream of having the same life or feeling like himself again until he and Mew could reconcile.

But how was Gulf meant to reconcile with a man to whom he'd done more harm than good--a man who had clearly perceived him to be the root from which the eruption of his life had stemmed?

Gulf remembered Mew's eyes that day in the hospital. So cold, so scathing, scornful, betrayed and just... Broken. Those eyes had said it all.

Mew never wanted to see Gulf again.

Gulf desperately wished that Mew could feel his pain and suffering, just as he could feel Mew's, but alas, that wasn't the case. They were a partially-bonded pair, and Gulf had been the one to mark Mew--Gulf was the 'buyer,' and so he felt the full brunt of the Buyer's Price, while Mew remained blissfully unaware of his counterpart's plight.

Sure, Mew would feel the depressive and anxiety-inducing effects of having separated himself from Gulf, but he wouldn't feel the pain. The ache. The vacant lifelessness of the parasitic shame Gulf felt. He would feel none of it.

What exactly would Gulf be able to say to him if he were to try and make amends? Mew had no idea what Gulf had been feeling for the past two months, and Gulf frankly struggled with putting the right words together to describe his emotions and feelings. There was no way to truly communicate all that he needed to for Mew to understand him, his actions, his decisions, his remorse for the missteps he'd taken... There just simply wasn't.