Chapter Text
The words on his wrist were supposed to be different. After eighteen years of waiting, of running his fingers over blank skin, he’d been hoping for something grand. He’d been hoping for some sort of fairytale romance.
You’re the hottest person I’ve ever met. I kept seeing you at the coffee shop, and I wanted to finally say hello. I really, really hope you’re my soulmate .
None of those lines grace his wrist. Instead, the messy scrawl reads it’s a shame to kill someone so pretty . He started wearing thick wrist warmers in the summer and long sleeves everytime else.
And at twenty-five, when most people his age are impatient to meet their soulmate, he'd give anything to never cross paths with his. At eighteen he didn’t know why anyone would want to kill him. In the six years since he started working for the Council, fighting rebels and working towards peace, he found the answer along the way.
There’s a knife in the sheathe on his thigh and two in plain sight. Poison sits in his medicine cabinet along with antidotes. He only ever uses the latter.
There are no words on his wrist. None that matter, anyway.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The coming of his words isn’t something he awaited. He’d known it was going to happen, going to happen soon, an event completely intertwined with his eighteenth.
If he’d thought about them at all, it was to dream that his best friend would be the one to say them after all. That dream died with a thousand other things.
His words are simple: it’s you . He doesn’t know when he’ll meet them, but he likes to think, somehow, that they’re said with joy, hope, relief.
He throws himself into his cause. The Black Swan fights to overturn the Council, for justice, for a better world. They are always on the run. He hones his skills in the spare seconds. His anger feeds on each wrong, on each loss, until bloodshed begins to feel unending.
He stops wondering how a soulmate would fit into this life he leads, keeps wondering who they are and where. Things get worse, worse, worse over the years.
His words are written on the hand that holds his blade. His words are written on the hand he's drenched in blood.