Chapter 1
“I have to say, I don’t get a lot of requests to remove tattoos. Especially not from young people.” The woman with blonde hair and blue eyes is giving her curious looks over her shoulder as she gets everything prepped for the treatment. “Usually it’s just old people who’ve lost their soulmates as opposed to,”- she hesitates, “Well, young people like you.” She chuckles but Lexa doesn’t see the humor in the situation. Then other people just don’t get it. She thinks.
Lexa ignores the woman. She didn’t come here for small talk, not really. But she did come here to get this tattoo removed, and apparently, she’s the best there is. Of course, she didn’t really pay attention to the name on the folder, or the door, or on the nametag that’s attached to the coat she’s wearing.
“Do you mind me asking you why you’d like to remove it?” She asks her, and her jaw clenches without her knowledge. For a while, she doesn’t answer, neither sure of what to say, nor how to say it. Instead, she lets the doctor – at least she thinks the woman’s a doctor, from the outfit and all – gather all her stuff. Eventually, Lexa takes a deep breath through her nose and looks out the window from the office. She thinks she’s found an explanation but isn’t quite ready to reveal something so personal to this complete stranger.
The doctor’s office looks out on a tattoo shop. She barely manages to roll her eyes. Some people want to cover it up, others get it removed. As if on cue, the doctor mentions it when she catches Lexa looking at the shop.
“I work there too, you know?” She starts and Lexa nearly chuckles, “I don’t know if you’d consider that odd, but I do. It’s a better business than this place, but someone has to do this too.” Lexa just glances at her. She’s getting ready to remove it, really ready now. Lexa’s pretty sure she wants to do this. Only, preparing for it mentally is a different thing than actually making the appointment and physically showing up.
Right before she has to take her shirt off – the tattoo is on her left ribcage – she speaks up.
“Love is weakness.” She doesn’t say anything else and just takes her shirt off and pulls up her sports bra a tiny bit to show her the entire tattoo. She turns back to look out of the window while the doctor looks at the tattoo. There’s no response to what she said. Maybe that’s best. This woman wouldn’t understand anyways.
After a while, the doctor clears her throat and starts to examine it. Probably looking at the different colors and just how far it spreads over her ribs.
Her friends all said it’s a big one, her so-called ‘soulmate tattoo’. They all have something rather small, or at least medium sides on their arms or legs or some other random place. They all love their tattoo. She doesn’t. She has hated it from the day it showed up a few months ago. She had no idea why then, and why there. She got it on a fairly intimate place on her body and it ran just underneath her left breast to her hip.
The woman’s hands traced the around the soft edges. The edges weren’t as clear sometimes. The tattoo faded into her normal skin color instead. Still, the digits of the doctor were gloved and rather cold. She got goosebumps and suppressed a shiver.
The woman’s voice was a bit softer when she spoke again.
“That sure isn’t just an ordinary tattoo,” again, she cleared her throat, “Are you absolutely certain you want to remove it? There’s no going back when it comes to a tattoo like this.” Her voice was off, Lexa observed. Like she was regretting doing this. This was her job wasn’t it? Why couldn’t she just do it without asking all of these questions?
“I’m sure. The sooner this thing is out of my sight, the better.” Her voice was harsher than she meant it to be, but she didn’t really care.
It took a few seconds for the doctor to start, but eventually, she did. The stinging was almost as painful as when it had starting burning through her skin. Almost.
While some of her friends started scratching their wrists or behind their ears and letting our whimpers of pain suddenly during class, she got the worst pain of all her classmates. One seemingly regular Friday, she was changing for PE when she started unconsciously scratching her left side. They were playing baseball in PE for a few lessons. She loved baseball. So when she was up, she hit the ball so far she managed to easily score a home-run. While trying to catch her breath, bending forward with her hands propped on her knees, she felt it. Stinging. In her left side. But once again, she dismissed the sensation. Having just run as hard as she could, it was natural.
Only, the stinging didn’t go away. They switched sides, her team in the field, and spread out. She always stood further from the pitch because she managed to throw the ball far and in the correct direction. But still, her side was giving her trouble. So much even, that she couldn’t get to the ball in time to catch it. Instead, it slipped out of her hand. She wanted to pick it up but the pain in her side got so bad she doubled over and her breath got stuck in her throat. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe as she cried out in pain and fell on the grass. Within seconds, she was surrounded by her teammates who were trying to figure out what was wrong as Lexa was desperately gasping for air and yanking at her shirt. She couldn’t understand what they were saying as the pain only continued to get worse. She felt dizzy and started seeing spots before she passed out.
She blinked when she was pulled from her memory as the doctor asked her something.
“Excuse me, I was lost in thought.” She turned her head away from the window and looked at the doctor’s blonde hair. She was working from the outside in, starting at her hip.
“No worries,” she said while still continuing with her laser, not taking her eyes off Lexa’s tattoo. “I was just wondering what your friends and family said when you told them you were removing it.”
Lexa couldn’t help it. The snort that left her mouth nearly made her move too much. She swiftly apologized for starting the doctor. “I didn’t tell them, but they know I hated it.” The doctor just let out a soft: ‘oh’, and continued her work. The stinging was kind of comforting. Every sting closer to having this god awful thing off her skin.
“They wouldn’t understand. They have these tiny tattoos on their wrists or ankle, and here I am with this giant galaxy on my ribs. Why couldn’t I just have gotten a key? Or Yin.” She sighs, having no idea why she’s venting to this doctor. This is none of her business, yet she has nothing better to do, and no one else to talk to about this. “Scratch that. I’d rather never have gotten mine.”
The woman doesn’t respond to this. Maybe she’s lost in thought like she’d been before. As long as she’s still doing her job, Lexa doesn’t mind. Maybe she just needed a wall to talk to. Not necessarily talking back to her, just listening. Not judging. Not looking at her as if she’s nuts.
The silence lasts for about 15 more minutes before the doctor can’t hold her curiosity to herself anymore. Lexa sort of expected it, sure, but she’d hoped the woman would prove her different. Though she was remarkably less annoying than her lose-sick friends.
“You’ve given a simple answer to why you want this tattoo removed, I respect that,” Lexa sensed a ‘but’ coming as the woman who’s name she still needed to figure out hesitated, “Though I can’t help but wonder why that answer. Why you’re so against this mysterious thing that we’ve been given to help find love.”
She rolls her eyes at this. “It’s not helping me find love. This concept of a soulmate tattoo is just some god – or you know, devil – up there dictating who we should be with. I don’t want to be dictated. Plus, I don’t want to know what that is… That thing people call ‘love’.” Lexa nearly spits out the word like it’s venom on her tongue. She feels a stinging sensation where her tattoo is and takes a deep breath in, the words on her mind so familiar to her. “Love is weakness.” She says it stronger than before, trying to convince herself once more that the world is sick and twisted. If it really wanted soulmates to be soulmates, they’d be together from childhood, live a long and happy life together, before dying the exact same second. If that was real life, no one would have to watch their soulmate die like her father did. No one would have to know that pain of having your heart ripped in two while the burning on the skin just reminds you of the fact your soulmate has died. The color of the tattoo starts to fade into a dull greyscale the second the heart of your loved one stops beating. What kind of a fate is that?
She saw it happen with her father, saw how he started scratching his hands. The second he saw the seashell fade from a bright purple – her mother’s favorite color – to a duller gradient, his heart started breaking. He went mad trying to get a hold of her on the phone while he cried out in pain, both emotionally and physically. Young Lexa didn’t know what was going on, crying as her father paced the room hysterically.
Love is weakness, Alexandra.
She’d eat a greasy burger from the diner twice a week to have a hot meal that was at least sort of freshly cooked instead of whatever her father was making.
You’re lucky you don’t have a tattoo, Alexandra
She’d turn up the music in her room not to hear her father drunkenly yelling at the TV before passing out with a bottle of beer still clutched in his hand.
Pray you never get one, Alexandra.
The second he saw her in the hospital bed, crying into her pillow even when the stinging wasn’t much more than a dull prickle because of the painkillers, his demeanor softened. For a second, her real father was back. The one who showed compassion and laughed and cried and was kind to her.
I’m so sorry, Alexandra.
“I’m going to start from the top now. This area will be more sensitive, alright?” She’d almost forgotten she was presently in the office getting this monstrosity removed. She nodded and was glad the skin by her hip was getting a little break from the treatment.
She dared to glance down and saw some parts were already looking much lighter than they had before. Even some parts look duller now than they did before but she didn’t think the woman had touched those parts yet. But then again, by the time their session was nearly over, Lexa realized she hadn’t even been present at least half the time, her mind flashing back and reminding her why she was doing what she did.
They don’t talk much more throughout the last hour of the session. The doctor only gives her instructions on how to care for it and tells her whenever she moves or suspects something will hurt. It never really hurts her though. The tattoo is stinging all over now, the laser is nothing more than a small pinch. Lexa figures it hurt like a bitch when she got it, so it’s going to go out with the same kind of pain.
The doctor covers it with a large white bandage and tells her not to remove it before she wakes up the next morning and not to sleep on her left side. Lexa assures her she can do that before sticking her hand out to shake the doctor’s. She’s determined to read the name card now.
Clarke Griffin
Tattoo Removal
A nice enough name too. “I’ll see you in a few weeks. Thank you doctor Griffin.” Their handshake lasts just a moment too long and Lexa find the demeanor of the doctor has changed a lot over their session. But her tattoo is aching and she’d love to just crawl on the couch and watch Netflix until she had to crawl into her bed. So she lets go of the doctor’s – Clarke’s hand and gives her a polite nod.
While she enjoys the white bandage instead of the colorful and sparkly tattoo that normally covered her left ribcage, she finds it hard to resist looking at how much of it is already gone. She’d wanted it gone the second it started to appear, so it’s hard to wait. But since she waited this long, she can wait a tiny bit longer.
Everything goes fine that night, though she has to remind herself not to rest on her left side. On the other hand, the tattoo still hurts, and she’d starting to wonder if that’s normal right before she falls asleep and peacefully dreams of anything but this tattoo and love and what her future would look like now.
When she wakes up, she hurries to the mirror and carefully peels off the bandage. She put the ointment and bandage ready to replace this one right before she crawled into bed so that she wouldn’t have to waste a second before she’d be able to see the progress.
She smiled as she saw a significant part of the upper edge of the tattoo already faded. Either really dull or invisible. She peeled the bandage back even further and frowns as she sees the area the Dr. Griffin for sure didn’t touch yet. The colors, those vibrant purple, blue and pinkish colors which were once dotted with bright white starts, were nothing more than a dull version of their former glory. The white stars were the only remaining part, still white but not as bright. The blue was more grey-ish and the purple was starting to look the same dull pink as the hot pink now looked. What the fuck was going on? How could that have even happened without the doctor touching the area –
As it hit her, even unwillingly, her heart broke. Her soulmate was dead. The feeling she’d tried to protect herself from so badly was now flooding her systems. She hadn’t even met the person and already, she’d lost them. She fell back on her bed and ran her hands through her hair. She welcomed the stinging sensation now as the tattoo slowly continued to fade in color.
The internet was no help. No one could tell her what was going on. The only pages she found were people talking about losing their loved one to death and having their tattoo fade slowly over the week. Usually, this process was completed before the week ended, but Lexa’s was still showing some color two weeks later. This hadn’t seemed to happen to anyone else before and Lexa was terrified though she couldn’t understand why. All she’d wanted for the past few months was for this tattoo to go away. Now that it was, she was freaking out over it?
The mystery of it all was so confusing. Her soulmate wasn’t dead. Well, the person who was dictated by some unknown force to be her soulmate – she reminded herself – that person wasn’t dead. Yet. Maybe they were dying a slow and painful death. Maybe they were in a coma that could end their life, but hadn’t yet? Maybe… Maybe she was just overthinking this and Dr. Griffin had just done something to it. To make it easier to remove?
Eventually, halfway between their first session and their next planned session, Lexa called Dr. Griffin’s office.
“Okay, I need you to be an expert and this and tell me what the hell is going on because I’m pretty sure my tattoo is doing weird things while you didn’t do anything in that area yet.” She was speaking much too fast and hadn’t even allowed Dr. Griffin to announce herself before slamming her with this information. “So, my question for you is: What the fuck have you done to my tattoo?”
There was a beat of silence before she heard a sigh on the other end of the line.
“I didn’t do anything,” the doctor said and Lexa wanted to interrupt but she was too slow. Dr. Griffin spoke first, this time with an angry tone in her voice. “You did, however. And whatever it is, you did it to me too.”