#also some teeny tiny sneak peeks of tntm and the psuedosequel

[one-that-had-to]

Far Away Fate

(Only-Your-Soulmate-Can-Kill-You Soulmate AU. With names on wrists, cause I was too lazy to world build properly.)

Tatiana does her best to ignore the name on her wrist throughout school. She hopes that somehow by ignoring it hard enough, it will cease to be and she can continue to live her live as she pleases, without being tied to the United States any more than she has to be.

It is not the case, and not even any attempts to hide the name with watches or burns makes people stop asking. Eventually, she gives up altogether and flat out ignores any question regarding her supposed soulmate.

The mark is not entirely useless, as much as she despises it. It forces her to live, despite her efforts otherwise. No matter how many times she is shot at while in the army, she never fears for her life. She nearly loses her leg, yes, but her life is always safe.

By the time she’s out of the field, she is certain in her desire for life for the first time since she was ten. She still does not want to be bound to an American, but the matter of having a soulmate is less of an issue. She hasn’t accepted it, but she’ll live with it.

The name of her second in command sets off Tatiana’s nerves the moment she opens the personnel files while flying back from Prague. She glances at her wrist and wishes she’d thought to cover the name with a bit more makeup before she’d left.

It doesn’t matter, ultimately, because by the time she arrives to the base she has gone nearly 30 hours without sleep, and not even the council would get in between her and her quarters.

She reintroduces herself to Central early the next morning, and twists his hand around to force him to show off his wrist. Her name adorns it just like she had dreaded, and she doesn’t know how to react other than to laugh.

The alarm sounds before either of them can so much as begin to explain.

He sees her for the first time months after the base falls. She’s only there for a lingering moment, but she’s there, and he has no doubts about it.

No one else he tells believes him, but there is enough going on in the world that a brief hallucination is not much of an issue.

The haven bustles around him, and if he closes his eyes and ignores how the world got to be this way, he could almost believe everything was normal. A few of the haven’s leadership fiddled with a newly build radio in the distance, people chattered away around him as they went about their business, and birds chattered in the trees, all like the world wasn’t slowly ending around them.

If it weren’t for the pain in his leg from where they’d dug a bullet out, he could give in and let himself believe.

A noise beside him makes John look up. The Commander leans against a box, looking so casual like she’d been there the entire time.

“Not going to tell me off for getting shot?” he asks.

She looks at him without smiling. “We’ve both been shot before, we both know getting told off doesn’t help. Just focus on healing,” she says firmly.

“You’ve got to be here for something, though, don’t you? You usually appear to give me advice I didn’t ask for,” he retorts. “My subconscious is an ass for hallucinating you.”

“Maybe even hallucinations want to enjoy a nice day,” she replies matter of factly. As though to prove her point, she tucks her hands behind her head and leans back, turning her face towards the sky.

He stares at her for too long in silence.

“Or, perhaps you just didn’t want to be sitting here alone,” she adds.

The comment picks at a still too raw wound inside him. “I’m still alone. You aren’t real.”

She pauses, then tilts her head to look at him. “I might be. We don’t know —”

“No,” he interrupts quickly. “You’re not. You can’t be dead —”

“We don’t know what happened after I was taken.”

Silence stretches between them as deep as the river Styx. After a moment, the apparition sighs and curls up on herself somewhat. “I can go away, if you’d rather.”

“Please don’t,” he says, voice barely more than a whisper.

“Of course.”

She vanishes into the crowd ahead of him before he goes through the gate into the unification day celebrations. He hopes vaguely that he does not see her again, at least not the apparition that has haunted him for twenty years.

Tatiana is alive, that much he is sure of. Everything pointed to it: the information from the Skirmishers, the investigation from the Reapers, the fact that he was the only one capable of killing her.

He and Kelly pluck the stasis suit from the fake clinic, and finally he has some hope for the future.

The moment the Skyranger lands again, Shen and Tygan race to prepare everything needed for the surgery. John is left unable to do anything but pace nervously, watching. The moment everything is ready, Tygan steps in to open the suit.

A long second passes and nothing happens. “What’s the hold up? We don’t have all day,” he says.

“The faceplate is stuck,” Tygan says, giving it another forceful jerk.

“Let me see,” John says, stepping closer himself. It takes a solid tug, but the plate comes off to reveal the Commander, looking just as she did twenty years ago.

They have only a second to wonder in the unfortunate power of the aliens before it all starts to fall apart. The Commander takes a breath, and with it comes a horrible rasping sound. All of Shen’s machines start to blare with alarms a heartbeat later, and it is only then that the realization hits.

John stumbles backwards and lets the faceplate clatter to the floor of the Avenger. He covers his hands with his face but it’s not enough to look away to stop the inevitable from happening. The alarms from the instruments do a fine job blocking out the sound, but he is still forced to hear Tatiana takes her final few breaths.

The death rattle stops after too long and the Avenger is filled with only the sound of a flatlining heart monitor. He collapses to the ground and soon enough his own sobs join it.

The Avenger is to make its first flight in the morning and so anyone leaving with it spends the night before saying their goodbyes to those staying in the haven.

There is only one place John needs to visit before they leave. He stands at the foot of Tatiana’s grave in silence, unsure of how to proceed after spending the last few days blackout drunk mourning her in the same spot.

“I’ll bring you back to Manhattan eventually,” he promises the grave.

Someone walks up beside him silently, but he does not turn to look to see who it is. “Underneath the locust tree, right?”

He jumps and turns to see Tatiana’s ghost standing there, at rest and looking more solemn than he’d ever seen her. He rubs his eyes just to make sure that she doesn’t disappear on him like so many times before.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I was hoping I was still alive — actually alive, that is — but it just wasn’t meant to be.”

“I’m the one that should be sorry. I should have found you earlier, before —”

“I first appeared less than a year after ADVENT took over,” she interjects. “You had no hope of finding me before anything happened. You did the best you could.”

“I still killed you.”

“The Elders killed me.”

“It wasn’t the Elders’ names on your wrist,” he retorts. “You didn’t die of natural causes, and so that just leaves me.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “It’s not your fault,” she says again, more firmly. “I don’t blame you, and I never will.”

He cannot find the words to reply.

“At least put your guilt aside long enough to get revenge for me,” she adds, something almost like fear in her voice. “I’m still here, and there’s still a world to save.”

He looks over at her again, and a weight is lifted off of his shoulders, just minutely. “Right. We should get back to the Avenger,” he says, offering her a weak smile.

She returns it and they turn to head back with a new kind of hope to look forwards too.