Chapter Text
It was common knowledge that after you hit the ripe age of sixteen, assuming this was your first life, once you meet your soulmate you’d be able to tell who they are based on words scrawled across your body, because that would apparently be the first thing they said to you. After your first life you’d be able to find them anywhere else, no problem, because your souls were entwined for all of eternity. Robyn Lazuli knew the words like the back of her hand, probably because they were on the back of her hand - “Your eyes are fanfiction blue.” At first, she hated her soulmate for that, but as time went on she grew to anticipate the moment she would hear that from the love of her life. She knew that they would be a dork, but hopefully a lovable one, right?
Unfortunately, the end of the world as you know it tends to complicate things.
Humanity wasn’t ending with an asteroid, or a zombie apocalypse, or an Ice Age, or anything of the sort, and Robyn didn’t know why, but she found that rather disappointing. She had seen enough apocalypse survival movies that she had always assumed she would know what to do - but here it was, the year 2052 and humanity was on its last legs because of a fucking sneeze. Or, well, a disease that started with sneezing and didn’t end there until all of your organs had stopped working and you had absolutely no chance of survival. In some weird way, it made sense, because illness was all over the fucking place in human history, but with modern medicine the seventeen year old had been always assuming that there was a cure right around the corner and it would just be some scare.
There almost had been a cure, but if she knew her news right, some religious fanatics had burned down a bunch of research facilities, destroying knowledge that would have saved humankind because “God wanted them to die, so we shouldn’t stop His plan.” Robyn wasn’t sure whether she was more frustrated that such a cult existed or that they were large enough to cause such widespread disorder - but either way, she knew that she was witnessing the end of humanity.
And the fact that she had yet to contract the illness was, quite honestly, terrifying. She didn’t want to be the last human living, or one of the last ones. After spending weeks on end cooped up in her mother’s house, long after the death of said parent, she had begun feeling restless, wanting to reassure herself that she wasn’t alone and wouldn’t be left to rot by finding her cousin Steven, or her aunt, or anybody, really. She almost hoped that she would get the virus. At least then she would be assured that the end was in sight and she wouldn’t have to face so much of the unknown.
The front door was jammed shut; something had fallen in front of it, and Robyn let out a frustrated and halfway hysterical growl when she realized she couldn’t force it open. She hadn’t possessed much upper body strength to begin with, after all, and she was malnourished from not having eaten in the four days since her mother died. Frustrated, she slammed her fist against the stubborn wood and made a mental vow to tear it down if she ever got hold of an axe.
The other option was the sliding glass back door, but she cringed at the thought. She’d have to pass her mother’s corpse on the way out, and she had been deliberately avoiding the kitchen so she wouldn’t have to look at the body still where its owner had collapsed and died mere days earlier. Robyn wasn’t exactly in denial of her parent’s death, per se, but she was very… adamant about not facing her demons. That was why she’d been starving since she discovered her mother’s death.
With a heavy sigh, the teenager wiped her hands off on the skirt she wore. That settled it, she would have to break a window and make a run for it like that. Internally, she hated that she was seventeen and already so thoroughly on her own, but she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter; it was the end of the world, humanity was on its last legs, all that fun shit. As much as she’d joked about wanting everything to just end, she really hated all this… but she’d hated life beforehand, so she doubted there was really much of a difference.
Clutching the handle to her knapsack a little tighter in her hand, the teenager walked to one of the front windows, climbing up on the end table that rested there and cursing lightly when the surface wobbled. The native Hawaiian sighed heavily before feeling around the edges of the window; some of them could pop out in the house, she knew that, but apparently they were all on the second floor. She could, theoretically, head upstairs and do things the easy way, but she didn’t have much strength left and would probably fall to her death immediately upon climbing out.
Actually, that almost seemed like a halfway decent option.
The teenager grabbed onto a nearby fire poker, slamming the sharp end of the stick into the glass separating her from the outside world. To her satisfaction, it cracked almost immediately; it must have been thinner than she expected. Within a few harsh jabs, the glass gave way, window shattering and giving her the first breath of fresh air she’d experienced in the month since a national emergency was declared and citizens were commanded to remain indoors. She almost wanted to cry from relief; freedom was a new concept to her after so much time in the house.
Scrambling out the opening was not something she hesitated in doing, immediately hopping down to the ground and trying to resist the urge to kiss the grass beneath her feet. It was dead after going unwatered for so long, but it was such a fucking relief to be out and feel something other than carpet, tile, and wood for the first time in a month. In some stroke of luck she had avoided landing in broken glass on her bare feet; anything involving the windows was the first stroke of fortune she’d had in a long, long while, since even before the breakout.
Careful to avoid slicing her feet open, she carefully hopped over the danger area, smiling faintly as she continued on her merry way with her belongings over her shoulder and a set of priorities firmly within her mind. Food was the definite first, then making it as far to the other side of town as she could, then finding shelter until she could keep moving. She knew the city fairly well, so she seriously doubted it would be all that difficult to survive for a short while.
Why did she still want to survive? She honestly didn’t know, but her feet were carrying her in the direction of a nearby Speedway, so she allowed it. All she knew was that having food within realistic reach was making her hunger even more obvious, stomach growling and begging her to get some grub. That was motivation enough. She’d take everything a day at a time, try not to let her mental state shatter past the point it already was and survive as long as she could without Mother Nature doing her in. That was a goal for now. One she might actually be able to go through with.
The closed sign was clearly visible on the gas station and convenience store even from the parking lot, but there was a shattered window that she could crawl through without an awful lot of difficulty. That meant somebody else had been here before her; she could only pray that all of the food wasn’t gone. This part of the city was fairly safe and sheltered, so she doubted that people would be greedy enough to steal everything and leave nothing behind for anyone who may come afterward.
Cautiously, the teenager pulled herself over the empty windowsill, careful to hop around the broken glass. Maybe there was a pair of flip flops somewhere in the store; she had been without shoes since before all of this even began. The night before citizens were called to remain indoors, she had gone to a party where she got hopelessly drunk and her friend Jasmine had dared her to throw her sandals into the ocean. Because her impulse control and ability reason was shot to hell, she had done it; she was really regretting it now that there was a genuine risk faced by her feet. She wasn’t quite suicidal enough to get herself an avoidable infection and die by that yet.
The fluorescent lights had long gone out, leaving the Speedway dark and eerie, the dim lighting coming from the evening outside. She shivered slightly and wrapped her arms around herself; it wasn’t cold, but she was a little intimidated. Paranoid that she would be attacked for daring to step into the abandoned convenience store. Robyn sighed slightly, telling herself that she was being silly, before moving forward and scouring the shelves for some sort of non parishable food that wouldn’t have gone bad without cool air in the last month.
She almost cried in relief when she spotted a box of granola bars, almost completely full. Without hesitation, the teenager pulled her knapsack to her front and opened the front pocket, stuffing almost all of the snacks into it and leaving just a few in case anybody else decided to break in and look for some food. Unable to ignore her miserable stomach any longer, she almost immediately unwrapped one and stuffed it in her mouth, doing her best to remind herself to take it slow she wouldn’t chuck up everything she’d just eaten later. It already felt really off against her empty stomach.
Another lucky find, she located four water bottles in another aisle and stuffed them in with the granola bars; other than that, though, the store was completely empty of anything that hadn’t gone bad. She made a mental note to ration out her findings so she wouldn’t run out before she could find another source of food before making her way back to the window, climbing back outside before flipping the bag back to her back, stuffing her hands in her pockets, and walking back down the road.
Now that she was actually out of the house and moving, it didn’t seem as terrifying anymore. If anything, it felt… freeing. She was no longer under a quarantine that apparently hadn’t helped anybody. She was no longer hiding in her bedroom, living in fear of the corpse downstairs and what might happen if an infected person might break in. She was outdoors. Breathing in the fresh air and making her way to where she might be able to find other survivors. She hoped she would, anyway; she didn’t know what she’d do if she walked all the way to the Quartz Universe house and found her favorite cousin dead.
Before she could break out in a run and laugh all the way to the opposite side of town, though, she heard a noise from a nearby building. Robyn stopped walking, mostly out of curiosity and partially out of concern, and began to approach the destroyed pile of bricks; part of the way there, she noticed a sign high up on the front of the building - RESEARCH FACILITY, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Ah. So this was one of the places that could have held hope for humanity but got snuffed out.
The teenager was about to shrug it off as just being falling bricks or something of the sort, but a repeat of the noise caught her attention, as well as a quiet and weak voice asking for help. She would normally have just turned away and continued walking, but something deep in her gut urged her to keep moving towards the facility, pull some bricks out of the way near where the voice was sourced and try to help whoever was trapped there. Pale skin was the first thing she could see that let her know that she had reached the someone who was stuck there, and once she had hit the jackpot she couldn’t stop. Despite how selfish some people tried to call her because of her stubborn and survivalist nature, Robyn had a bad habit of trying to help people in need no matter how much that would hurt her.
The girl hidden there was blonde, with tired green eyes hidden behind cracked glasses, the thick black frame miraculously intact. She didn’t look sick, and she wasn’t coughing or sneezing, so Robyn wasted no time in gently wrapping her arms around the girl’s middle and pulling her out of the rubble. She seemed to be mostly uninjured, but tired and weak - had she been trying to dig herself out? The girl was shorter than her but weighed more, so mere moments after pulling her out she stumbled back, the stranger landing on top of her with their noses almost touching.
“Your eyes are fanfiction blue,” the girl spoke in a quiet and tired voice, and Robyn felt her heart rate speed up considerably, pounding against her ribcage. Her soulmate. This girl was her soulmate, and by some stupid stroke of luck she had unearthed her during the middle of the fucking apocalypse. She struggled to figure out something to say, wishing that she could visibly see the writing on this girl’s body so she could know what the fuck was going to come out of her mouth.
“You don’t even know my name yet, and you’re already trying to seduce me,” she choked out, moving her hand so that the back would be visible to the other girl.
Ah, convenience, showing its beautiful face at the worst possible time.