Soulbond

I want to talk a little (or a lot... haha) about how my soulbond with Touya formed and how I experience it now. As a warning, this will discuss some heavy and possibly triggering topics including physical abuse/assault and injury. I will warn about the specific portion where this is discussed in case you would prefer to avoid those topics.

​

I first became aware of BNHA in 2016. I had heard that the anime was starting and so I decided to start reading the manga because the concept sounded interesting. I enjoyed the beginning of the story and the characters. Around this time in the manga, Dabi was just beginning to get involved in the main storyline (the Forest Training arc). I remember thinking he seemed interesting and cool and feeling a sort of pull to learn more about him. However, I certainly didn't view him as anything more than a mysterious character in a manga that I was reading.

​

Time went on, as it does. I kept up with reading and watching BNHA. In 2018, I was watching the third season that had just been released, which covers that same Forest Training arc. Something about seeing him and hearing him struck me in a way that I still don't fully understand. Looking back, I think I was falling in love with him even back then, although I didn't realize it. I was trying to immerse myself into the world of BNHA, reading and learning everything that I could, not solely related to him and the League but everything.

​

And yet... I kept going back to stories with him in it. I don't think I would have even said he was my favorite character at this point (to be honest I thought Bakugou was the coolest character in the show back then and I was most interested to see how his character would grow and change in response to the challenges class 1-A kept facing). But when I went to tumblr or AO3 or the dark corners of the internet where I looked for things to consume my attention... among all the BNHA content, it was somehow always Dabi I found myself drawn to. When I think back to the stories I read back then (mostly reader-insert), I clearly remember some of them. One about being a spy trying to infiltrate the League but somehow eventually falling for Dabi instead. One where I was a psychologist and he was a patient in the prison who somehow escaped and kidnapped me and then there was a lot of Stockholm Syndrome going on (okay, I admit that one was a little problematic but it was a really good story...)

​

I just couldn't understand why I was so pulled towards him in particular. I didn't know anything about him.

​

Around this same time (2018-2019), small coincidences and signs started popping up in my life. I had a lamp in my room to help with my insomnia that would cast light in different colors and patterns across my ceiling to help soothe me to sleep. It seemed to get stuck on the exact bright blue hue of his flames often even when I didn't change the setting. I smelled the scent of smoke outside often (people do burn leaves where I live, but this was even more frequently than usual and in all seasons). I didn't understand signs like these at all at the time they were happening, but I now know they were signs that he was close to me. Almost as if he were watching me, trying to decide to reach out or not.

​

In January 2020, he decided to reach out to me. I view this point as when our soulbond was formed. 

​

**As a warning, I will discuss some potentially triggering topics (physical abuse/assault) here.**

​

I have nightmares related to trauma I experienced in a previous relationship many years ago. I endured a lot of terrible things, but most of my nightmares are about two specific things that happened to me. I was having a nightmare about one of these two events-- it was about the day that my ex-boyfriend physically assaulted me and almost killed me. I don't want to go into the details, but it is important to know that we were in a car parked along the side of the road. He shut the car door on me a few times and then pulled me out of the car. I had multiple broken bones.

 

I have this nightmare and relive this unfortunately much too often. And before that night that Touya reached out to me in my dream, it had never before had any other ending that what happened to me.

 

**(End of potentially triggering topics.)** 

​

This time was different. In my dream, Touya was there. I looked up from where I lay on the cement and he stood above me, between me and the person who assaulted me. I can still picture this so vividly in my mind even though it has been almost five years now at the time of writing this that I had this dream. His fire burned all around us. I looked up into the sky and I saw the stars and the blue sparks from his flames intermingling with them.

​

I couldn't move. It was like I was paralyzed. I watched as he walked away and I wanted to follow him so badly.

​

I woke up from this dream. I felt like I was burning hot. I think that was my first sign that something had happened. I remember that I cried - not tears of sadness, but of some sense of relief. I couldn't believe the nightmare had ended so differently.

​

I had a sense after that about him being more than just a character in some manga to me. I fell in love with him more and more too the more that I just looked at him and actually saw him. I re-read and re-watched all the BNHA content up until that point, like I was insatiable to learn more about him, to see any detail that I might have missed.

​

Shortly after this, I reached out to him. I had (and really... still have) no idea what I was doing. But I knew that I could feel his presence. So, I asked him if he was there and why he helped me. If you know Touya at all, you probably won't be surprised that I didn't exactly get a clear answer from him... haha. But I got enough to know that he had been keeping an eye on me for whatever reason.

​

I felt his presence more and more. I couldn't always communicate with him in words. But I could tell how he was feeling for the most part. Even before any of this was discussed in the manga, I could tell there was something about his past that had been really traumatic for him. Something that had set him on his path... a similar pain that he saw reflected in me too. I didn't know exactly what it was, but I could feel that he felt so alone in the world.

​

And sometimes, I could swear that I felt a sense of something like love from him when he watched over me. I hoped I wasn't just imagining it. 

​

July 7th, 2020. I decided to confess my feelings to him. 

​

His response? I knew it.

​

He didn't directly tell me he loves me back. He didn't have to. His continued presence was enough.

​

Since that time, he and I have been as inseparable as two people living in different worlds can be. We have learned more about each other. As his canon story went on, I couldn't believe how much the things that were revealed about his family and his traumatic past matched what I had already known about him and what he had gone through. Our connection keeps growing stronger. I still can't always communicate with him in words, but I feel his presence every day and his emotions too (even though he does still try to hide them at times).

​

It wasn't until years later that I learned about the term "soulbond" and realized exactly what this was. I'm still not sure how we unintentionally formed this connection. I do know that he's still there (yes, in spite of what happened in canon... it's still hard for me to talk about those events for many reasons) and that I love him more than anything.

​

And I'm so thankful that somehow he loves me too. 💙

​