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Hollowness.
That is the sharpness that awakens Danny one summer night at age 13. An all-encompassing, dull ache that suffocates relentlessly. It has no sympathy for those it afflicts, for it is sorrow itself. Dreadful fear with no future to hope towards, as it only consumes. It would take, and take, and take, but never give. For there was nothing left to give. It was a feeling like no other, a feeling he had never felt before. But he knew… Danny knew exactly what it meant.
Soulmates are destined to live their lives together. It is a fact as simple as existence itself; that is, it's not really simple, for the universe can never be simple, but it is an inescapable fact nonetheless. So, as simply as it can be put, one cannot live without their soulmate; it is too despairing and Hollowing of a thought, even Fate knew that. And Fate may be cruel, but it was also fair.
So when Danny woke up like a slap in the face and a rush of cold water down his spine to the Hollow on that fateful night, he knew, without a doubt, his soulmate had died. He never even got to meet them. Didn't know what they looked like, their likes, their dislikes, their name, anything. Danny had no idea who their soulmate is was. And yet, they were already gone from this world so soon.
Danny knew, now, that he was living on borrowed time. Fate did not allow people to live long with the Hollow, to survive with the emptiness of knowing you'd never see your soulmate again. Death may not come this year or the next, but it will come for him soon. That, Danny knew.
He saw his grades fall from straight A's to C's, D's, and even F's. Hobbies became practically non-existent as Danny left them fall to the wayside, no longer indulgent, no longer satisfying. The relationships he had with his friends began to stiffen and wither away as they strained to remain little more than old acquaintances.
Everything seemed grey, nothing seemed worth it. And after all, why would it be? Danny's soulmate was dead, and they weren't coming back. Every day, the Hollow consumed more and more of him, taking with it the effort to try.
How cruel Fate was, to take life away from him, all because a person he had never met before died. Why did his soulmate have to up and die? Why did they have to go and leave him all alone?
Danny just hoped he would be able to meet his destined love in death.
It all happened on a fall afternoon a year later.
Sam and Tucker were still insistent on staying in Danny's life, despite his best efforts. They didn't know he was fated to die yet; no one did. He knew he should've told someone; his time to do so was long overdue. But what was even the point? It wouldn't change anything; his fate was sealed. Guess it would be at least nice if they knew, they could be better prepared.
His parents were out of the house for the day, still. Jazz was out studying at the library, she had tried to get him to come with her now that his grades had bottomed out. And so the three of them now stood in the makeshift lab in his basement, staring at his parents' failed invention that was the Ghost Portal.
"C'mon, Danny, why don't you get on in there so I can get a pic of ya? I bet it would look super cool, like a sci-fi film!" Sam goaded him. Tucker was already in the back, grabbing one of the spare hazmat suits from the back and shoving it into Danny's arms.
"Here, dude, it'll make ya look like an astronaut." He couldn't even muster up a smile towards the efforts of the space-themed remarks. He was thankful, don't get him wrong, but the Hollow had eaten Danny dry.
Danny put on the suit and did as Sam asked, crawling into the Portal until…
It didn't take long for him to realize this was it, that this was the end Fate had given him. The searing pain, the blinding light, the thousands of volts coursing into his veins and stealing his pulse from his fingertips. But then…
He stumbled out of the portal.
He stumbled out of the portal alive.
He was supposed to be dead; he knows it. Yet Danny was alive. But he was also dead. He had died, just as Fate deemed necessary, and now he was caught in the in between.
And now, the Hollow was gone.
For the first time in a year, Danny can feel.
So what did this mean for him?
What did this mean for his soulmate?
Jason awoke with a gasp.
Only memories of a crowbar and sickening laughter came through the fog that plagued his brain. He was suffocating, he was trapped, he needed to get out.
Jason clawed his way through wood and clay and dirt. Out of his coffin, out of his grave, and into the rain and air.
He was supposed to be dead; he was dead. He had died in the warehouse; the Joker had killed him. And in doing so, Jason had doomed his soulmate to an early death.
His soulmate. Who was supposed to follow in his footsteps, who had, he could feel it deep in his soul. His soulmate had died, because of him, but hadn't stayed dead. Not fully.
So now here Jason was, resurrected. He needed to find his soulmate.
His soulmate was alive. His soulmate came back.
Danny rushed towards the pull deep within his soul, towards the one he was meant to be with. He ignored Sam and Tucker's protests, letting instinct take over as his ghostly form rushed through the air.
He crossed state line after state line, til he made his way to the East Coast. Til he made his way to a muddy grave and…
There. A boy crawling out of his own grave. Danny knew, he knew, that was his soulmate.
A grotesquery scene played out in front of him. One full of bloodied hands that had to crawl their way out of their own coffin. Full of rain that washed away muck from a face that unearthed itself from a place that was supposed to be its final resting place. A sight of a boy gasping for air as the wind kissed his face.
And yet, it was the most beautiful sight Danny had ever seen.
As Jason came out of the ground, the first thing he focused on beyond the fog wasn't the surface. It wasn't his grave, the ground he just came out of, the air that filled his lungs, the rain that washed his face.
It was none of that.
The first sight Jason registered was the warm glow of something ethereal. Something brighter than the stars and gods above.
The sight of his soulmate, who had brought him back.
Fate is a fickle thing, but it does its job, one way or another. It kept them together.