chaelisa short stories

Chapter 2: Lisa

The silence that erupts is devastating. Tightening in your chest coils and curls around itself as Roseanne explains further why she is about to do what she's about to do but you don't care. You don't care why she wants to, you just need to make it clear why she can't. That she couldn't possibly do this to you, not again.

But before you manage it, before enough words crowd into your thoughts the way they can your lips whenever you're in situations that have you flustered and overwhelmed, she's gone. And for a while, it breaks you.

At first you're sure she'll come back, like the last time. Though you recognize how different this time felt. When you were younger, it was sudden, swift. It had left you reeling and confused by the sudden loss of your soulmate's presence. You cried, of course but you also were a dramatic teenager, you both were. A week felt like a lifetime then but when Roseanne slipped her way back into your thoughts you got the distinct impression that she hadn't really ever meant to leave in the first place.

After two weeks of waiting you give up on the idea of it simply being an accident like before. An irrational choice Roseanne's hot head talked herself into. It makes you wonder how you could have been so stupid to not have seen it coming. And you spend many nights locked away in your dorm at the academy picking apart the past couple months and wishing you had been more open with Roseanne and a little less terrified of the world.

You get through your courses but you're not excited about the work anymore. Mingyu gives up after a few weeks trying to engage with you on the usual topics you have in common. He even makes an effort to be interested in a few of your biology projects even though you know all of it bores him to tears and sometimes, turns his stomach.

It's hard to focus on something that felt so pivotal to you missing, like an actual piece of you torn away but your determination to keep moving forward wins out and you stop crying about it.

You let Mingyu back in and you start to enjoy your daily routines again. The science, the experiments. You push yourself to be better and smarter and achieve more at the academy than you thought capable of yourself.

Although you also, in a way, never really give up.

You know what having a soulmate is like and you believe in it entirely.

Some conspiracy theorists around the school start a club against the idea of soulmates, calling it barbaric and outdated. It's something that seems to strike a chord with a surprising portion of the student base and even unites the dual campus being the one student organization to also include academy students from tactical.

You attend exactly one meeting and it makes your insides boil.

It strikes you in the worst way that this is how Roseanne feels and it twists and gnaws at your insides knowing that you were too caught up in yourself to have seen it coming.

What comes out of it is you have an epiphany.

You know that there has to be science behind soulmate connections because it is real and you've seen it work. You've FELT it. So you bury yourself in that.

In finding a way back to her.

The wall between you and Roseanne feels simultaneously solid and imaginary. It's ineffable. And you dig up all the concrete information about soulmates you can find.

Mingyu catches you asleep atop a pile of books on the subject more than once. He notices the way you've retreated more into yourself and have been moping around campus for months before he says anything. To your surprise, he offers to help.

Mingyu develops a device that is meant to hone in on the brainwaves directed outward toward a soulmate and the theory is solid. It ignites something in you that you haven't had in a while and gives you hope that maybe you'll get to hear her voice again.

The first time the pair of you test it, the device singes off all the hair at your temples and you try your best not to feel as gutted as the first few minutes of silence when Roseanne had stepped away.

After a while with no real results you're forced to make choices between your school work that is directly linked to your future and career and the personal project that begins to drain all of your time.

It feels like giving up but you get back to what you're supposed to be doing at the academy and you let the increasing pace of your senior workload distract you from the ever present absence you feel in your entire body.

Then one day out of nowhere you start to wake up feeling different sometimes. Fuller. Like you'd found a piece of Roseanne still left somewhere deep inside of you, or a vivid dream had tricked you into thinking you may have felt her there, for just a moment.

You brush it off and decide you're crazy because that's easier and you have finals and on top of that you've recently met with one of Special Services' most prominent members and you think maybe he is actually interested in you joining his team. Most of your energy is dumped into convincing Mingyu to be open to active work too. That post graduation meant they could leave the boring bits of their studies behind and bust out into something exciting and innovating instead.

You have several speeches and powerpoints dedicated to this very thing.

Then one night you do feel her.

And it's like lowering yourself into a perfectly warm bath except from every angle and possibly the inside out.

You're afraid to do anything, as if any sudden movement or thought might send her running. And you hate how much you long to hear her words tangle into your thoughts a lot less when she actually does.

Something isn't quite right, you can sense that she's treating you carefully and you would find that infuriating if you weren't so happy to have the void in your mind feel occupied again.

You let her update you on what she has been doing and it hurts you that she sounds so happy but at the same time, you're glad. It overwhelms you and you find yourself telling her that you miss her. Easy to say but hard to admit, the butterflies in your stomach turn sour but you don't regret it because it's true and you're not sure how long Roseanne plans to stick around this time.

You have a lot more to say than that but you're trying not to be too much at once. You want to just enjoy her.

It takes another two weeks after that for you to hear from her again. By then you've relocated and officially been assigned to your first team. It's high priority and increasingly terrifying. It's the absolute best choice you've made ever.

Roseanne seems to want to know what you're up to and you do tell her bits of it but you leave out the part where you're an agent of Special Services and for the time being housed on a giant airplane. It's not that you don't trust her you just don't want to jeopardize Roseanne pulling away again. You know a lot more about Roseanne's involvement with hacking than she does about your work and while technically they align, you know Roseanne isn't approving of the type of organization you work for. You don't want it to cause problems so you again, keep it to yourself.

Having Roseanne around doesn't become a daily occurrence like it used to be but it's often enough. Through most of the week. It makes things increasingly more bearable. You've spent a lot of time thrown into work to bury your heartbreak but the focus you reclaim without the distraction of a tight chest and wandering thoughts is incredibly productive.

Even Mingyu notices a change in your mood and though he doesn't fuss about it he takes advantage of your productivity and drags you in to consult on his immobilizing guns, hoping to perfect the dendrotoxin in the bullets before your first active mission.

They don't quite make it though because for the first time since you've both signed on to work for Choi the BUS begins to buzz with activity. It seems someone in connection to the new case has been brought in for questioning. You and Mingyu choose to stay put in the lab rather than investigate but Roseanne stirs in you in a way that makes you uneasy and your focus is very quickly split from your work.

You remember being worried for her as children. Roseanne has a way of finding herself in some pretty unsafe situations but this time felt different.

You try questioning her but she doesn't seem interested in giving any details and keeps assuring you she's fine. There's a moment when you find yourself physically gripping your work bench while concentrating on anchoring yourself in Roseanne's thoughts. You've been extremely cooperative and forgiving the past few months, allowing Roseanne to come and go as she pleased. Hoping you might work up to a time where she would just stay, like it used to be. But you are fed up with it all and something about the situation has you drawing a line.

You won't be pushed away.

Except it turns out you don't have to worry about that.

You first see the woman in interrogation on a screen when Mingyu's curiosity overtakes him and he pulls up security monitoring on the woman's exit with Choi from containment. She's beautiful, which is an unusual thing for you to think first. But somehow, she also seems familiar to you.

The thought and an image of her face haunt you for the next thirty minutes, like an idea just out of reach or a word on the tip of your tongue.

It's not until she is standing right in front of you that you know for sure and it's both warming and terrifying to have her there. Physically there.

"Hello, Roseanne." You say because you can't think of anything else and you're struggling not to get lost in her eyes and the way she is looking at you. Recognition sparks across her expression and your heart thuds twice as hard in your chest.

Roseanne opens her mouth but words seem to fail her and she is just staring at you instead. You're both simply gawking. Taking the other in. Trying to assemble thoughts into something comprehensible about who is standing in front of you. Until Coulson interrupts and it snaps you out of it.

"You two know each other?" He asks with some surprise but mostly a dry interest.

"Not officially." Roseanne offers up without pulling her eyes from yours and you feel your cheeks warm exponentially when you finally spare a glance toward your boss.

"Old friends I suppose." You try but it doesn't sound quite right.

"Well...we've never met." Roseanne supplies, mumbled like she was for the most part speaking to herself.

It brings your attention back to her, back to studying her.

"Perhaps we should have a long time ago."

It slips out before you can stop it and ricochets a pang of an all too familiar ache in you. Both you and Roseanne wince.

"I see." Choi says, though his brow is furrowed. It's clear he is ready to move on. But you have a million questions and the idea of Roseanne disappearing from you again now, now that you've seen her and that somehow made everything much more real than it had been, it causes you to panic.

You reach for her, aiming for her hand but only managing to loop your fingers around her wrist. Your eyes lock and you're desperate to say something but nothing comes.

Roseanne looks sullen. She's looking at you carefully, even as she casts a glance down at where you're now touching. Guilt resonates through the edges of your mind and you can't find words fast enough to dismiss it.

She takes her hand back and Choi successfully redirects the situation.

It isn't until they are both walking away from you, continuing deeper into the BUS that Roseanne's voice fills your mind.

'I won't leave.' She promises and you know she doesn't mean the plane by the way she says it. You feel the apology trailing it but Roseanne leaves it at that and you only manage to nod at her when she looks back over her shoulder at you.

It all happens seemingly overnight. Roseanne becomes part of the team with her own quarters and a hunger for action. It makes you feel like hiding Special Services being part of your life for so long now was incredibly silly. It makes you feel like finally things might be falling into place. You had always wondered why it had become so complicated for the two of you. With a connection that was supposed to be effortless. It makes you feel like the fate that you had lost faith in a long time ago was finally fighting back, for once, in your favor.