Soul Bound

Chapter 1

RPOV

I woke up with a jolt. The images of metal and blood were still fresh in my mind, the scene was all too familiar to me. It had lost its devastating effects on me a while ago. Relieving a moment over and over again, will do that to you. It was a refreshing sight to be honest, at least it wasn't my usual nightmares.

And yet I was still very afraid. That was because it wasn't my fear I was experiencing.

Hers had woken me up and it wasn't long before I heard her scream in her sleep.

Ever since the accident, Lissa, my best friend, and I have shared a bond. I could feel what she was feeling, see what she was seeing, and as it happens to be the case at the moment I was living her nightmare.

I started walking towards Lissa trying to wake her up. I gently shook her and I did not need a psychic bond to be able to see the emotions so clearly portrayed on her face. I embraced Lissa in a hug and whispered comforting words to her while she calmed down.

This has been my life for the past two years. We had run away together from the Academy because we felt Lissa was in danger. We still didn't know who or what she was in danger from. But I knew that Lissa was in a much better place when it was just the two of us. It came with some challenges, we were fifteen when we left, I hadn't finished my training to become her protector yet. But I tried to do my best to protect her anyway. After all, she was not only my best friend but also my future charge.

The latter was just a formality on paper. I haven't graduated yet, I wasn't an official Guardian yet, so Lissa wasn't technically my charge, but she was mine to protect in all the ways that mattered to me. I would die for her, I would give up anything to protect her, and it had nothing to do with the backwards idea our society had about 'they come first'.

In this particular case, however, giving up anything and everything meant giving up my sanity. Because I knew the only way to calm her down most of the time was to take the feelings of despair and loss from her and transfer them to me.

Lissa used to get real bad bouts of depression. They were getting especially bad after the accident where her parents and brother died. Now of course depression is understandable when your entire family is wiped out in an instance. But hers was... different. As a last resort to get rid of those intense feelings she would cut her wrists and as she described it, let the physical pain overtake the emotional pain. The depression seemed to leave her body with the blood she was losing. It was not a healthy way of coping and my desperate attempt at stopping her had resulted in our discovery that I could not only feel her feelings but also take the bad ones away.

There was only a minor hitch in this process. Those strong negative emotions would transfer to me and I would be stuck with them.

I think it would have been alright if I was affected by those feelings the same way. But where Lissa suffered from depression, I presented very differently. When I would take those same feelings into myself they evolved into rage. Pure rage.

I remembered the first time it happened. I had found Lissa on the bathroom floor with her wrists cut, blood spilling over the tiles. I was angry at her for not coming to me for help. I knew she had been stressed out for a while. We had been on the run for four months and she needed to use a lot of compulsion for us to be able to fly under the radar and that had put a lot of stress on her. But I did not know it had progressed to that stage. Lissa was barely cohesive anymore. I saw the longing in my best friend's eyes to just be at peace and let go of this life. I tried talking to her in an increasingly desperate tone, but all she wanted was to be left alone to fade away.

I was desperate, I couldn't lose her. I needed to help her... somehow. And then it happened. I felt a pit of darkness through the bond I had not felt before. It was never ending darkness. I looked into it and the darkness seemed to look back at me, swallowing me whole. I lost myself to it. I was drowning. I did not know where I ended and the darkness began. Was this what Lissa was feeling when she felt the need to cut herself? I was shaking with rage I could not contain.