[ WP ] Write a story about two soul mates breaking up

Sometimes, when you plant two young trees too close together, something strange happens. On the surface, nothing changes. The tiny saplings grow into mighty trees. People passing on the street exclaim over their beauty. But... that's on the surface. 
 
 Those people would never know what was happening underground. They would never guess that it is *not* two trees making that beautiful canopy. It's just one. 
 
 Somehow, while the young saplings were growing, while they were sending their roots searching for nutrients deep into the ground, they found each other. They wrapped their roots together. They twisted into each other so deeply, that they became one. Where two trees once stood, there was now only one. 
 
 Matt and Laura were like a pair of trees that had grown too close together. They were entwined. They were fused. There was no separating them. They were soul mates. 
 
 The single/double tree is lucky in a lot of ways. It has two sources of sunlight. Two sets of leaves it can rely on to drink in the warm solar energy. Two trunks to hold steady. But that assumes that both sides are healthy. That both sides are able to pull their own weight. What happens if one gets sick? 
 
 When part of a tree is injured, the rest of the tree devotes *all* its resources to fixing the broken part... even if fixing it is impossible. When a fused tree suffers a catastrophic injury or illness in one trunk, it devotes all its energy to healing itself. The healthy trunk works tirelessly, pulling in light and nutrients to send to its wounded other half. It takes nothing for itself, sacrificing its own health and well-being to save its partner. When one half of a fused tree gets sick, they both die. 
 
 The only hope is to disentangle the roots. To separate what had been joined together. To allow the sick half to die, in order to save the healthy half. 
 
 The process is excruciating. Like separating fingernails from nailbeds. But in addition to the physical agony, there comes emotional torment as well. Separation means removing half of yourself. It means your closest and oldest friend -- so close that you had merged into a single entity -- is forcefully ripped from your being. It's like losing half of your soul. The healthy tree survives, but... it's empty. It's soulless. It spends the rest of its life, gazing tearfully at the stump of its former life-mate. 
 
 Laura was sick. She would die. And she knew what would happen. She knew that Matt would kill himself trying to save her. So... she decided to save him instead. She would die, either way. But he did n't have to. He could die with her, or live without her. And she could n't stand to know that she had killed him. She loved him too much to tear him from the world. So, she forced their roots apart. She ripped and pulled and separated, until he was free of her. She would wither faster this way, but he would survive. And that was what mattered. She knew he would hate her for it. Hate his existence without her. But he would *exist. * And that was enough to let her slip peacefully into death, not regretting a single moment of her life.
