Work Text:
also I was inspired by this super amazing picture by @saygoodbye-not-thisday
“Hello beautiful…it’s your birthday.”
You speak the words in a whisper, even though there’s no-one to hear you. There’s never anyone to hear you.
So you’ve got your one cake, and your candle. The flickering yellow light rebounds from the walls, painting your small room with dancing shadows. Leaning in, you get as close to it as you can, close enough to feel the tiny warmth on your scars. Your breathing tries to pick up. Your chest tries to tighten. You clamp down on all the signs of fear, swallow them, drown them in your much greater feeling of loss.
Once a year you do this, and every time you spend the whole day pretending that you won’t. It’s now been seven years since The Incident. The clothes you wear still feel too harsh, even though they’re the softest cotton you can afford. When you have the raised edges of burns over almost two-thirds of your body, there isn’t really anything that won’t catch on them, feel abrasive. It took you two years to learn how to sleep again, with several layers of sheets, and still you have to sleep lying flat, arms locked against your sides, trying not to move against the covers.
It was a miracle they saved you. Everyone says so. The road to recovery was long, and involved a lot of extra pain, and physical frustration as everything you’d ever taken for granted in your life - you know, things like bending your arm freely, blowing your nose - became a world of new, exploratory horror. You lost so much. Your dignity. Your normality. Your ability to walk down the street without people staring.
But none of this, none of it, can compare to the deepest loss of all.
The fire had burnt your soulmark away. It had been on your forearm, and it had been inactive, but it had been yours. There had been someone out there for you - the only person out there for you - you just had to find them. But now you never will, because your forearm was the part of you that had protected half of your face, and all the skin on it is long gone, along with that tiny curl of marking that had been waiting to glow up with light.
You won’t know if they’re dead. You’ll never see the soulmark fade slowly back into your body when the lost soul mate is gone. You’ll never see their faces when your marks ignite each other, bringing you together, never to be apart again.
The doctors have told you that you shouldn’t give up hope (“We don’t fully understand how the marks function. It is possible that even without the mark, your soul mate will still find you. The bond may still exist. You just have to heal and be patient.“) but nothing you’ve ever read has given you any cause to believe them. And you’ve read a lot. Amputees. People who deliberately choose to excise their marks. There are no stories where the lost mark allows a bond to continue. There are only lies. And promises that coming back to Jesus will allow a new bond to be fostered, which are worse lies.
Which is why you’re here, alone in the dark, talking to yourself in your room.
“H-hey..”
Your voice cracks. Your hand cups the tiny candle flame, reminding yourself that this is all you have left. The fire took everything away from you, so just for this one day you get close to it, face it, suppress your fear of fire in favour of indulging your grief at the loss of what could have been.
“Hey, beautiful.”
The voice is low, sardonic, and your fingers instinctively make a fist, catching the flame inside your palm. The tiny light is immediately snuffed out, the candle skittering across the floor.
There is someone in the room with you. Gasping, your abused skin stinging, you back away from the sound, your eyes searching for the figure in the dimness. He’s difficult to see at first.
It’s a tall man, dressed in a sharp black suit, his long dark hair falling around his face in a sleek mane. His skin is pale and smooth, and lit with a golden light which seems to be coming from nowhere. Points of that light indicate his sharp eyes. All in all, he doesn’t quite look real, like he’s been made out of shadow and imagination.
Loki. The one who caused it all. The one who the world doesn’t quite trust, even now, even though he’s been here in exile for seven years and trying to make amends.
“I hear it’s your birthday,” he adds, his dark brows arching with a wry humour, and he takes a couple of steps forward. You retreat, shuffling backwards with scrabbling feet, until your back hits the wall. You’re frightened, but in all honesty after the accident even the threat of death or physical pain doesn’t frighten you anymore. Only isolation does.
Loki comes closer, and as he gets within a foot or so he crouches down, meeting you on your level. His clothes make barely a whisper of sound as he moves, but one of his shoes knocks the stub of your candle, and that tiny thing makes him smile, a flash of very white teeth in that inexplicable golden glow that now surrounds you both.
It’s only now he’s this close that you realise he smells hot, like burning, like he’s walked through a thousand fires to get here and they have opened up to let him pass. He holds out his hand to you, and the light increases, brightening the space around you both.
There is a soulmark on his open palm, and it is glowing with a coruscating brilliance, not unlike the way flame creeps over the edges of embers. Your heart starts to hammer, and not through fear. He meets your eyes, still smiling, and nods to you, gaze flicking down to your own ruined fist, then up again to your face.
At this subtle urging, you uncurl your own hand.
Your burn scars are glowing too. The stinging you felt wasn’t just the flame. Every raised line, every molten twisted curve: your scars are alight with the unmistakeable radiance of an activated soulmark.
You can’t help it: laughter, hysterical and a little crazy, bubbles out of you, and Loki wraps you up in his arms as the light from your shared marks bathes the room. The pressure of his grip doesn’t even hurt. This is the real miracle. Not that you survived, but that he exists. That he’s yours. And that he found you.
“You thought yourself alone,” he whispers, his head close against yours. “You thought that not having a human mark made you worthless. Oh, my dear…isn’t a godmark much more worth having?”