SOULMATES [My Hero Academia]

New and Old - Tamaki Amajiki

[angst]

-

Tamaki Amajiki was born an old soul.

His first word was "no". He never fought a nap or solitude.

He'd already seen too much. The world was exhausting.

Something in his heart was missing... some vital, soft parts.

It wasn't until he got older—after learning about soulmates from his parents, his teachers, even television and his friends—that he realized the weird dreams that plagued his sleep every night weren't dreams at all... but memories. Late at night, when his eyes slipped closed and his brain drifted off to dreamland, he remembered real moments from all of his past lives.

Most of his dream-memories centered around a single person. He loved them through famine and war and disease and change. By the looks of it, he had found them in multiple lifetimes, but not every one... he'd loved them through most of the centuries.

In one lifetime, they owned a bookshop together, sharing a single teacup and reading poetry to each other in the candlelight; in another, Tamaki and his soulmate were awkward professors, tiptoeing around each other for years in separate departments until a coworker forced them into a blind date, where they immediately hit it off; in the most recent lifetime, they both worked at a zoo in an unfamiliar city, with Tamaki in the butterfly house as the resident lepidopterist and his soulmate as the marine biologist across the park... on his first day at the job, he accidentally found them eating their lunch alone in the botanical garden, and he joined them every day since then.

One thing proved to Tamaki that it was the same person through the years. Despite the tides of their lives, their eyes remained the same, always that telltale brightness and perfect color and genuine spark of curiosity. He knew, without a doubt, that he'd recognize them if he saw them again.

In his current lifetime, Tamaki learned from his teachers that when he turned eighteen, he'd stop physically aging until he found his soulmate once more; when they died, he'd pass away too, even if they'd never met. Then, together as babies, they'd be born on the same day, thrust into the world again as a matching pair.

So, Tamaki figured that mystery person would be the best place to start looking, except he had to find them first, learn their new name, convince them of his identity... and probably some other steps he was forgetting. The world was a big place, and he was searching for a single, perfect person. But once he found them...

Then everything would fall into place.

And that hole in Tamaki's heart would find its missing piece.

He'd be whole again.

-

Eighteen.

For some reason, I never really thought I'd see the day, but maybe that's just the dark hidey-hole in my chest spilling over with the stupid angsty feelings I've crammed down so deep for so long. Sometimes the feelings do that - the worst of the bullshit will pipe up at the most inopportune moments.

But now, at forever eighteen, the darkness lingered, whispering in the periphery of every moment, awake or asleep. That yuck in my heart told me that I'd never find my soulmate, that I'd never amount to anything, that I'd die lonely and old and always covered in zits.

Unfortunately, I had other reasons to keep going anyway.

The daycare where I worked depended on me and my quirk—and I mean, what other jobs could I possibly get with my balloon animal quirk? Clown? No thanks!!!—to help with the kiddos, and I couldn't let their little pre-school faces down. Despite being the bane of my existence some days, they deserve everything good in the whole wide world, and I'd give anything to make sure that they turned out to be good humans.