Chapter Text
When you transition from childhood to adolescence, around thirteen years of age, you can start to feel your soulmate.
Not their thoughts. Not their memories.
Just pieces of them.
The sensation of grass beneath their fingertips. The ache of sore muscles after practice. The warmth of sunlight against their skin. Pain. Pleasure. Comfort. Fear.
The more attention you pay to the bond, the stronger it becomes.
People often described it like a memory. The more you focused, the more you felt. If your attention wandered, the feelings slipped away into the background, unnoticed.
Baran Al-Hashimi grew up hearing stories about soulmates. Her mother loved telling them.
Farideh Al-Hashimi believed in soulmates the way most good people believed in religion.
Not blindly. Not irrationally.
Just completely.
When Baran was little, Farideh would sit beside her bed and tell her stories about strangers finding each other across continents. Soulmates of soldiers who felt their partner’s injuries. Elderly couples who spent decades searching before finally meeting. Stories about fate, about connection, about people who belonged together.
Baran loved those stories.
She never understood why her father always left the room when they started. She didn't understand until she was older.
Her parents weren't soulmates. They loved each other, that much was obvious. Baran had never doubted that. But love and soulmates weren't always the same thing.
Her parents had met while attending university in Iran. They immigrated to California amidst the political turmoil their country was experiencing just after graduation.
Young, educated, ambitious.
Hopeful.
Her mother was brilliant, accepted to Harvard Medical School with scholarship.
Her father was accepted to UCLA’s medical school. No scholarship.
They could have parted ways. Her mom could have been a doctor. Could have found her soulmate in Massachusetts or wherever her career would have taken her.
Instead, her mother became pregnant with her. The young couple quickly wed, and Farideh’s dreams of becoming a doctor were shattered. She became a medical assistant instead, to help pay the bills that a new baby and a husband in medical school bring.
Baran knew her mother wouldn’t change a thing. Still, in her lowest of lows, her mind would wander to what her mother could have been had Baran never been born.
Her father graduated and eventually became an ENT specialist. Respected. Successful. And oh so busy.
Reza Al-Hashimi worked constantly.
As a child, Baran assumed that was simply what doctors were like. No time for family, too busy saving lives. Or fixing noses or whatever her dad did. Then she got older and realized her father wasn't working because he had to. He was working because it was easier.
Easier than thinking about soulmates and about his wife who would never be truly, deeply satisfied so long as she was with him.
Reza never experienced his soulmate connection. Around fifteen percent of the population never did.
The strange shape of her parent’s marriage became the shape of Baran's early childhood. Love mixed with longing. Happiness mixed with absence. Hope mixed with disappointment.
Then Baran turned five, and everything changed.
The first seizure happened while she was coloring. One second she was arguing passionately about whether horses should be purple or brown. The next she was gone.
Not unconscious.
Just… gone. Unresponsive. Frozen.
Farideh had thought she was joking at first.
Then she wouldn't answer. Wouldn't blink. Wouldn't move.
The panic that followed never truly ended. By the time Baran understood what epilepsy was, it had already become the center of her life.
Farideh left work. After the seizures began, she refused to leave Baran alone. Not for work, not for a night out, not for a quick trip to the grocery store. Always there.
Reza insisted Baran be homeschooled. Faeideh readily agreed.
Reza wanted precautions. Farideh wanted protection.
Together, they built a cage. A loving cage filled with kindness and understanding and support.
A cage nonetheless.
Baran wasn't allowed to climb trees. Wasn't allowed to swim. Wasn't allowed to ride a bike.
Reading became her escape. Books were safer than playgrounds. Books didn't trigger seizures. Books didn't make her parents panic.
By ten years old she was reading far above grade level.
By twelve she had memorized enough medical terminology to confuse most adults (her mother’s pre-med degree in Human Biology had helped with that).
But intelligence didn't fix loneliness, and God was Baran was lonely.
She wanted friends, sleepovers, soccer games. She wanted scraped knees and bad decisions and ordinary childhood memories.
Mostly, though, she wanted her soulmate. Someone who would understand. Someone who wouldn't look at her like she was fragile or stare pitifully after a seizure. Someone who would belong to her, and she to them.
Sometimes she imagined a girl, sometimes a boy. Sometimes someone older. Sometimes younger.
She didn't care.
She just wanted proof that she wasn't alone.
When she turned thirteen, she waited. Most soulmate bonds emerged sometime during adolescence. Not exactly thirteen, but around then. So long as her soulmate was around her age or older, she should start to feel something soon.
Baran had heard plenty of stories. Her mom, who felt butterflies during her soulmate’s first kiss. Mer uncle Ara, who spent an entire afternoon convinced he was having a heart attack before learning years later that his soulmate had run a 5k.
The bond arrived suddenly.
Unexpectedly.
Unmistakably.
Baran waited. For months.
Nothing happened.
That same year her parents finally relented.
After years of begging, pleading, negotiating, and crying, Baran started public school.
The first day felt magical. Hallways with lockers lining both sides like in the movies. Classmates, teachers, relationship dynamics she’d spent years reading about in books. Movement, noise.
Life.
She loved it.
Every second.
Even when people stared after she had a seizure, or when teachers pulled her aside to ask if she was okay.
Even when classmates treated her carefully.
It was still better than being alone.
Fourteen came.
Nothing. No magical, life-changing connection.
Then she turned fifteen.
Still, nothing.
By the time she was sixteen, she had become obsessed with researching everything there ever was to know about soulmate connections. One common theme emerged:
First connections often occurred during moments of extreme emotion.
Pain.
Fear.
Joy.
Trauma.
Something powerful enough to cut through distance.
Baran considered that carefully. Then she made a terrible decision.
Technically, she made several terrible decisions.
The first involved a staircase. The fall wasn't dramatic, just enough for a twisted ankle and a bruised hip. Three days of limping.
No soulmate.
The second involved touching a hot baking tray. The burn hurt, like, a lot.
No soulmate.
The third terrible decision involved deliberately getting hit with a flying baseball bat during PE. She’d managed to position herself just right behind home plate before the batter swung and metal crashed into her head.
Still, pathetically, no soulmate. (Her mother had a long screaming match with the PE teacher over that one.)
Baran eventually had to stop because she was running out of believable excuses for her injuries. Also because she felt ridiculous getting hurt doing dumb shit.
By her eighteenth birthday she had accepted what she considered the most likely explanation.
Her soulmate was dead.
The thought hurt less than the constant uncertainty she’d been experiencing for years. Dead meant there was a reason for her lack of connection. Dead meant she hadn't been rejected. Dead meant fate had simply made a choice. Baran could live with that.
Mostly.
She graduated high school near the top of her class. Went to undergrad in southern California, staying close to home.
Pre-med. No one was surprised. It was like medicine had always been waiting for her - she was born into being a doctor. Everything in her life up to that point had pointed her toward the path of medicine.
Years spent in hospitals had seen to it.
She wanted to help people. She wanted to change things.She wanted to become the kind of doctor she had needed as a child.
Someone who saw patients as people.
Someone who understood what it felt like to have your life controlled by a diagnosis.
College was easier than high school. She found friends. Good friends. People who didn't care about her epilepsy. People who treated her normally.
The seizures became manageable.
Not gone, never gone.
But manageable.
For the first time in her life she could imagine a future.
Medical school, then residency. Maybe somewhere on the east coast. Emergency medicine. Friends. Family. A career. A life.
By twenty one Baran rarely thought about soulmates. Not because she had stopped believing, but because she had stopped expecting.
Her soulmate was dead. Or nonexistent. Or maybe Baran was just broken.
Whatever.
She was a handful of months away from beginning her senior year of college when it finally happened.
It was a Saturday afternoon being spent lazying about the house with her mother. She was home for the summer and soaking up every bit of peace she could get before she had to start seriously applying for med schools.
The television played quietly in the living room. One of her favorite shows - Untold Stories of the ER.
Farideh sat nearby reading. Reza was at the hospital, as usual.
Everything felt normal. Until a commercial interrupted the episode. A soulmate-finding service.
One of those scam companies. Baran rolled her eyes. The commercial featured smiling couples and dramatic music. Empty promises, unlikely miracles.
Nobody could find soulmates that way. She wondered who actually paid for those services. People had to be really desperate.
The thought had barely crossed her mind when she felt it.
Pain.
Not hers.
Someone else's.
A dull ache in her right wrist.
Heavy. Persistent. Like a ten pound weight was lying on top.
Baran frowned.
Instinctively she grabbed her wrist. The sensation remained.
Weird.
Very weird.
The ache sharpened as she focused. Not exactly an injury, more like a strain.
Discomfort.
A constant throbbing annoyance.
What was-
Another sensation appeared.
A hard chair beneath her… but I’m sitting on a couch?
Baran froze.
Then came an itch.
In the middle of the soft flesh of her right forearm. Underneath something rough…
A cast?
No.
Maybe.
Then another sensation.
Her left hand.
Clumsy.
Awkward.
Holding the smooth wood of a pencil. Writing, or at least trying to. The movements felt wrong.
Unnatural, like someone performing a task with the incorrect hand.
Baran forgot about the television. She forgot about everything and concentrated harder.
The pencil moved again.
Scratch.
Pause.
Scratch.
Pause.
Determined. Frustrated. Young.
Very young.
The realization barely had time to form.
"Baran." Her mother's voice shattered her concentration.
Everything vanished.
The chair, the pencil, the pain.
Gone.
Baran blinked. The living room rushed back into focus. The television was still playing, now back on the program. The couch was soft beneath her thighs. Her mother…
Her mother was staring at her.
Pale and terrified.
The expression was familiar.
"Baran," she repeated, standing abruptly. "That was at least fifteen seconds."
Oh.
Oh no.
Baran immediately understood. From her mother's perspective, she'd simply frozen, stared into space. Unresponsive.
Exactly like a seizure.
Farideh was already moving, reaching for the phone. Her face had taken on the frantic determination that always appeared when Baran's health was involved.
"You haven't had a seizure in over a year," Farideh said. "Oh God. Doctor Madison might be able to see you Monday. Maybe sooner. Maybe we should go to the hospital-“
"No!” Baran interrupted.
Farideh ignored her. "We need to call now."
"Maman."
"No."
"Maman."
The phone was already off the hook.
"Absolutely not."
Baran stood.
"It wasn't a seizure."
Farideh stared. The pre-dial tone hummed softly from the receiver.
"It certainly looked like a seizure, eshgham.”
"It wasn't."
"You were unresponsive."
"I was thinking."
"You weren't blinking."
Baran winced.
Farideh crossed her arms. The panic hadn't disappeared, it had simply transformed into suspicion.
"I know what your seizures look like."
"I know."
"I have been watching them for sixteen years."
"I know."
"And that looked exactly like a seizure."
Baran opened her mouth.
Closed it.
How exactly was she supposed to explain this?
I felt a random person's wrist pain because the universe decided twenty one years was long enough?
Not exactly convincing.
The ache lingered in her memory. The pencil. The chair.
All of it had felt real.
Baran looked down at her own right wrist and focused.
Nothing happened. And then-
There.
Faint.
Very faint.
The ache returned.
Her breath caught.
It wasn’t her imagination. It wasn’t a memory. The feeling was present. Real. But it was someone else's.
A soulmate. After all those years of wanting.
Baran looked up. Her mother was still watching her anxiously.
She closed her eyes and focused one last time.
The sensation rushed back.
The awkward grip.
The aching wrist.
A young person's frustration. Determination. Persistence. An unyielding need to overcome.
Someone trying very hard to learn how to write with their left hand.
Someone whose right arm was injured.
Someone who existed and was real and alive and hers.
Baran opened her eyes slowly, then she looked at her mother.
"I think," she said softly, "I have a soulmate."