Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Soulmates share scars.

It's a commonly known fact, one that Garrett is unfortunately well acquainted with.

One that he really wishes he wasn't.

---

The first scars come when he’s 14 years old.

Garrett and Billy had been down on the riverbank, tossing rocks into the slow current, discussing a project for English, when Garrett feels a searing pain in his side.

He drops the rock he was about to throw with a pained gasp, knees buckling as he falls back against a tree. Billy’s concerned voice and his own heavy breathing the only sounds he can hear over the river. Gritting his teeth, Garrett pulls his shirt up to reveal letters being carved into his flesh and there are tears prickling at his eyes as he reads it.

Sloth.

Garrett’s soulmate, whoever they are, just fucking carved the word ‘Sloth’ into their ribs, which then transferred onto his skin.

“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” Billy breathes out, his eyes having gone as wide as saucers as he stares in shock at the bloody letters.

When it stops Billy drags him back to the Fairgrave house despite Garrett’s protests.

“Like hell am I gonna let you just ignore this and let it get infected!” Billy hisses at him when he shoves him up the stairs to use the bathroom up there. “Your soulmate just fucking did that and you want to act like nothing happened.”

Billy flips on the bathroom light and ushers Garrett in and closes the door behind them. While he starts digging through the cabinets for gauze and disinfectant Garrett looks at the still bleeding letters again.

“Or maybe someone did it to them,” Garrett says, his own voice sounding far away.

Both situations are worrying; either his soulmate did that to them self or someone did it to them.

---

‘Sloth’ has since healed, ugly and rough, by the time the second one shows up.

(There have been smaller scars in the time since, but they never spell anything out. Just aimless and random cuts that appear out of nowhere all over his body. Needless to say it’s made changing in the locker room without anyone seeing them a difficult task.)

Garrett’s seventeen this time when it happens.

During Art class, he feels pain lance through his left shoulder. With a strangled gasp he shoots out of his seat, ignoring the commotion from the class, and makes his way down the hall as fast as he can. Once he’s in the restroom he takes his shirt off and angles his head to look at his back in the mirror.

He barely registers the sound of the restroom door banging against the tiled wall – most likely Billy having chased after him – and stares in horror at ‘Gluttony’ making its way over his shoulder blade. Billy’s cursing up a storm as he presses wadded up paper towels against the wound.

“Whoever your soulmate is, they’re a real asshole, dude.”

“Might not be them doing this,” Garrett reminds him almost absently, wincing when the paper towels drag against the wounds wrong.

“Don’t care. I’m pissed since you refuse to be.”

---

‘Greed’ comes just a little after the start of his Freshman year of college. Garrett’s just glad that his roommate was out on a date when it happened. He didn’t really want to have to explain why the deadly sins were being written into his flesh.

He hopes that that’ll be the end of it, hopefully no more scars; he’s got plenty to identify his soulmate with if he ever meets them.

‘Lust’ shows up when he’s back home in Hope County on break at the age of 22, the day after he and Billy did an impromptu show at the Spread Eagle.

An uneasy feeling settles behind his ribs when that one shows up.

Garrett ends up carving a small ‘stop’ into the soft part of his right palm in a desperate attempt to get the scars that riddle his body to just stop.

He likes to think that his soulmate listened to him and his small plea.

The smaller scars still show up from time to time, but no more sins end up etched into his skin.

---

The compound is a damn sty, Garrett notes as they walk through it towards the church.

Something about this place is off. The damn statue of Joseph Seed had filled him with dread just looking at it, and Garrett had long since learned to listen to his gut. But he had a job to do, and he wasn’t about to shirk his duty no matter what.

Garrett follows Sheriff Whitehorse and the Marshal inside the dimly lit church.

A few of the Peggies turn to watch them, but for the most part the man delivering the sermon at the front has their undivided attention.

The twisting feeling in his stomach intensifies the closer they get to the front.

Then the man – Joseph Seed – steps forward into slightly better lighting and Garrett notices that the guy isn’t wearing a shirt and—oh no.

Garrett goes pale as he sees the scars on Joseph, recognizes them because they’re identical to the ones on himself.

No, no, no, no.

It must be some kind of cruel joke from the universe or whatever, because there’s that small ‘stop’ on Joseph’s right palm when the man offers up his wrists to Garrett and Garrett wants to scream.

He wants to scream because this means that Joseph Seed is his soulmate.

His soulmate leads a fucking cult and Garrett’s here to arrest him. The universe must have a really sick sense of humor.

Garrett’s glad he remembered to wear his gloves today, because that means Joseph can’t feel the same scar of ‘stop’ press into his skin as Garrett grabs hold of him and cuffs him.

It means he can ignore this for a little while longer; he can pretend that they’re not soulmates, that the universe didn’t decide that they were meant to be.

His ignoring the issue doesn’t hold out forever. John Seed finds out when he captures Garrett weeks later, which means that in turn Joseph eventually finds out too. He probably found out the moment John started carving Wrath on Garrett’s chest. Either way, it means Garrett can’t hide it anymore.

Still, it was nice while it lasted.

Chapter Text

Soulmates share scars.

It's a commonly known fact, one that Garrett is unfortunately well acquainted with.

One that he really wishes he wasn't.

---

Garrett has had his soulmate’s scars and burns scattered across his skin for as long as he can remember.

Doesn’t even remember a time where he was ever without them.

They mostly run along the right side of his body; chemical burns, but from what Garrett can only guess. He gets odd or pitying looks from adults and strangers, but the worst are the ones who have stars and hearts in their eyes.

“Oh you’ll definitely be able to find your soulmate with such distinct scars!” They’ll say, like the fact that his soulmate was hurt in such a horribly violent way is romantic or good. It makes him upset, but then Billy will step in with a charming smile and tell those people to fuck off.

Which is why he feels guilty that he’s adding to the hurt, to the scars that they both share, when he moves too much whenever his dad brings out the belt for some slight, whether imagined or real, and the belt buckle cuts along Garrett’s back.

Sometimes he wakes up with cuts along his limbs, new injuries his soulmate has endured and transferred to Garrett.

He wonders if there will ever come a day when either of them will stop getting hurt.

---

When Garrett is 12 he gets his face smashed into broken bottle glass by his dad.

It took him by surprise, since it had been a while since his dad felt the need to inflict violence upon him. Garrett had been doing his homework at the kitchen table when the sound of breaking glass smashing inches away from his hands startles him.

Looking up he’s sees his dad swaying on his feet in the doorway, another half empty bottle in his hand and scowling at Garrett.

“Dad?”

Talking was the wrong choice since the scowl deepens and his dad’s arm moves and the bottle flies from his hand and shatters against the side of Garrett’s head, knocking him out of his chair and onto the floor. He tries to get up but the blow to his head from the bottle has stunned him and he watches as blood drips onto the old hardwood floors beneath him.

Then there’s a calloused hand gripping too tight at his hair and the left side of his face is shoved into the glass shards. It stung where the sharp edges of broken glass cut into his skin, dangerously close to his eye, but then it burned as his dad began to rub his face into the broken glass and puddle of beer. He bite the inside of his cheek bloody trying to keep silent.

It felt like time dragged on at a snail’s pace until the painful grip on his hair released and he could hear his dad wander away, more than likely back to the couch to drink or pass out or both.

Garrett lay there, in a growing pool of beer and blood and counted to 30 before getting up and crashing his way through the kitchen screen door out to his bike. There was still glass stuck in his face, but he wouldn’t get any help at home to get it out so he peddled his way down the dirt road toward Falls End as fast as he could.

The smile on William’s face when Garrett ran in through the door of the Spread Eagle fell from his face when he took in the state of Garrett’s.

He’d never seen the man move so fast, yelling over his shoulder to Olivia to watch the bar and picking up Garrett under his armpits within a span of a few seconds was impressive. The drive to the clinic was silent as Garrett watched the white knuckled grip William had on the steering wheel with red tinted vision. His hands itched to wipe the blood away from his eye but he worried about the glass, about making it worse.

“You’re very lucky, young man,” Doctor Boyd told him as he carefully pulled the glass free, piece by bloody piece. “If it had been a little lower you probably would’ve lost vision in this eye.”

It took hours until the last piece was dug out and then Doctor Boyd asked to speak with William in his office, leaving Garrett alone. He sat there for a few moments, picking at a loose thread on his jeans, when a hiss escaped him at the feel of a sharp, cutting sting on his left thigh. Shoving his jeans down low enough, he sees that his soulmate has carved something into their skin.

who?

Garrett stared in bewilderment. His soulmate had never done that before. Should he answer? There’s another sharp sting as a new cut appears, underlining what his soulmate wrote already.

Looking around, he finds something sharp enough and carves an answer underneath the question.

dad

He waits but nothing else happens, so he grabs a couple of bandages from the counter and cleans up the new wounds on his thigh.

Doctor Boyd and William return after a few more minutes and all thoughts of Garrett’s soulmate fly away for the moment.

---

The church is poorly lit when he goes in with the Sheriff and the Marshal to arrest Joseph Seed.

The man stands before Garrett, wrists offered up, but there’s a smug look on his face after he gets a good look at Garrett’s, like there’s a joke that only he is in on and Garrett has never felt so self-conscious about the chemical burns until now.

“God brought you here for a reason,” Joseph whispers and Garrett grimaces. This guy makes his skin crawl and when he looks away from him, looks at the Seed siblings his eyes catch on the redhead, the oldest Seed, and there’s something about him that seems familiar, but Garrett can’t place it in this light.

He doesn’t dwell on it, turns and guides a handcuffed Joseph Seed out of the church.

---

Garrett doesn’t remember too much of what happened the first time Jacob Seed captured him, just red and the scent of blood and the sound of “Only You” playing on repeat.

He remembers Jacob looking at him with something like shock and awe on the man’s face, and he figures he must’ve imagined that part because he also remembers Jacob having familiar chemical burns on the right side of his face and on his right arm (the same smattering of scars around his left eye from shards of glass) and that couldn’t possibly be right.

That can’t possibly be right, because then it’s entirely possible that Jacob Seed is Garrett’s soulmate and Garrett doesn’t know what to do with that information.

---

Garrett’s running through the woods, no weapons, no med kits, nothing.

Staci had managed to slip him some things that he could pick the cage’s lock with and as soon as Garrett had the cage door open he fucking booked it. Hadn’t even bothered to look for any of his stuff that they had taken from him.

Hell, he doesn’t have his radio or a map, only the light of the full moon to guide him through the trees.

He’s not alone out here; there’s the sound of someone following him, running after him through the woods, and that only spurs him onward, to get as far away as possible. A part of him hopes it’s Pratt – that he decided to leave that place with Garrett – but he knows better, knows it isn’t his friend.

A heavy weight barrels into him, knocking Garrett from his feet and for a brief moment of panic he thinks it might be a bear or a Judge especially when he feels teeth sink into his neck hard enough to draw blood. He realizes that it’s not a wild animal but Jacob, which isn’t much of a difference when he really thinks about, when the teeth let go of his neck and is replaced with the sound of low, rough laughter.

“Well, would you look at that,” Jacob says, rolling Garrett onto his back but still keeping him pinned to the ground, flashing bloodstained teeth at him with a smile. Garrett watches as a bloody bite mark blooms out of thin air on Jacob’s neck. “You really are mine.”

Chapter Text

Soulmates share scars.

It's a commonly known fact, one that Garrett is unfortunately well acquainted with.

One that he really wishes he wasn't.

---

Most of the scars he gets from his soulmate are simple things; scrapes, skinned knees, run of the mill kind of scars that everyone gets.

Up until his first month at college.

That’s when the scars get… concerning.

Crescent shaped scars on the palm of his hands start showing up periodically, but he thinks nothing of it, assumes his soulmate has anxiety or stage fright or something that causes them to do clench their fists too tightly.

But then as the months drag on the scars start to escalate. It’s no longer just nail shaped scars on his hands, but now it’s oddly spaced scars around his wrists and ankles, skin rubbed raw like he was trying to escape restraints except it’s coming from his soulmate and that terrifies him.

At one point he’d called Billy in near hysterics one night because the scars wouldn’t stop.

Needless to say, Billy drives for hours in the middle of the night to come see him.

“Ssh, it’s okay man, it’s okay,” Billy tries to console him when he shows up at 4am, but Billy’s hands are shaking at the sight of all the blood.

The metallic stench of that night haunts Garrett for years.

---

When he’s about 22, the track marks in the crook of his arms appear.

A year later, the scars stop showing up for the most part.

But the worry and the fear still gnaw away at him.

---

When he liberates Jessop Conservatory, Garrett wanders around the house; he’s heard about this place – hell, everyone in Hope County has heard of it – but never got the chance to see it back when it’s greenhouses were open to the public, having a wider variety of greenery than just the Bliss flowers it has now.

Had. Had Bliss flowers. Because they went up in flames.

Anyway, Garrett looks around the house that borders on being a mansion and despite the cult trashing it, it still looks nice and well-kept.

But then he comes across a locked door and that’s odd because none of the other doors had been locked. Curiosity piqued, he pulls out his lock pick and opens it.

The door creaks ominously open to a set of stairs that lead up to a dusty attic bedroom. At first glance, it seems like a normal teenage girl’s room, probably belonging to Faith when she had still been Rachel Jessop. Band posters, stuffed animals, hand carved vanity, bookshelves filled to the brim, all covered in a thick layer of dust.

Then Garrett’s eye catches on what’s attached to both ends of the wrought iron bedframe and his stomach lurches, heartbeat spiking and dread slithers its way into his heart. Leather straps with old blood stained on them.

He feels sick, violently so, like all the wind got knocked out of him while having run miles upon miles. Garrett books it out of there, makes sure to jam the door so no one else stumbles upon what he found up there, what he shouldn’t have found because it feels like he learned something about Faith – Rachel, whoever she is at this point – that wasn’t his to know, like he invaded her privacy and honestly, he has even if he didn’t mean to.

---

He finally ends up in the Bliss when he accidentally falls into a field of the stuff. It was by accident of course. Garrett had been running from a bear – downhill at an angle like you’re supposed to when being chased by a pissed off bear – but then he’d run over the edge of an overhang and fallen right into those damn flowers.

Garrett hadn’t even made it halfway out of the field before he fell into the Bliss, the whole world changing around him.

“I know you’ve heard stories about me. That I’m a liar. A manipulator.”

A startlingly blue butterfly flits by his face and he’s entranced by it until he feels pressure on his hand. When he looks over, there stands Faith holding his hand in both of hers.

“That I poison people’s minds… Well, let—” She cuts herself off when she lifts Garrett’s hand up, sees the scars around his wrist and lets out a tiny gasp. Garrett’s head feels like it’s full of cotton, doesn’t see what’s so surprising about his scars, but then he looks down at Faith’s wrists and he sees.

Oh.

Oh.

Faith smiles up at him, her eyes watery and filled with relief, and Garrett feels conflicted; on one hand, they’re supposed to be enemies, but on the other the universe decided they were a perfect match.

“You were so close this whole time,” Faith says with awe, and yeah, he guesses he really was.

Her arms wrap around him in a warm hug and Garrett tenses up at first but relaxes into it, feels his eyelids begin to droop with a sudden sleepiness overcoming him.

Faith chuckles and she’s got a nice laugh, it makes him feel safe for the first time in he doesn’t remember how long. Then she steps away but keeps hold of his hand and leads him away.

“Come, let’s go home. My brothers will be thrilled to meet you properly.”

There’s an itch at the back of his mind, telling him not to go, that he has something important he has to do, but he can’t remember what and home…

Home sounds nice.

Chapter Text

Soulmates share scars.

It's a commonly known fact, one that Garrett is unfortunately well acquainted with.

One that he really wishes he wasn't.

---

Garrett vaguely remembers getting scars that weren’t caused by his father when he very young, no more than maybe five years old when they stopped and the only scars he got were the ones inflicted from a belt.

After a particularly bad run in, not paying attention to the level of noise he was making one morning while cooking breakfast and got some nasty burns on his forearm in return. He remembers being taken to the clinic by a distressed William and Billy, remembers being left alone for a few minutes and worrying if his soulmate got the same burns too. Guilt welled up within him and while he had the chance, Garrett had found something sharp enough to carve a small ‘sorry’ near the burn, because he was. Sorry, that is; sorry for all the belt buckle scars, for the new burns, for adding a tiny ‘sorry’ even though this was the only way he could think of apologizing because he doesn’t know who or where is soulmate is, if he’ll ever get to meet them or not.

He never gets an answer, but that’s okay, he’s said his piece and he won’t push his existence on them.

With how many scars and wounds he gets he’d be surprised if they’d ever want anything to do with him.

---

Sometime after Billy’s funeral, maybe about a month or so, Garrett gets another scar, this one from his soulmate.

He’d been passed out on Mary May’s couch when a sharp sting rakes across his chest and Garrett wakes with a hiss. Lurching up from his sprawl on the couch, he can feel an odd wet sensation spreading out from the center of his chest. By the shocked look on Mary May’s face, it can’t be anything good and she rushes him into the bathroom where Garrett can see the blood soaking his shirt in the mirror’s reflection.

Yeah, definitely not good.

Shoving his shirt up reveals sharp, blocky letters spelling out ‘Sloth’ with blood flowing freely from the carved letters. There’s a look of dismay on Mary May’s face as they both do their best to staunch the bleeding.

“You know what this means,” Mary May says quietly and Garrett nods, a slight grimace on his face.

This means his soulmate is part of Eden’s Gate, that weird cult in the hills that more than likely killed Billy.

William’s entire being deflates with a quiet kind of sorrow when they tell him. After that Miranda passed away under suspicious circumstances, withered away in a hospital bed after some kind of wasting sickness that couldn’t be identified and then William was gone not long after her. It was just one thing after another in a long line of tragedies.

And then six years later, when Garrett is 30, he sees firsthand how bad things in Hope County have truly gotten.

---

They arrest Joseph Seed but Garrett can’t keep his eyes off of the youngest Seed brother who also seems unable to look away from Garrett. But Garrett breaks his gaze away, turns his attention back to his job and ushers a handcuffed Joseph Seed out of the small church, all the while ignoring the way the way ‘Sloth’ and ‘sorry’ burn and itch.

His thoughts are filled with images of those expressive blue eyes as they walk through the compound back to the helicopter.

The crash and sprint through the woods replace those daydreams with a tunnel vision focus of survival and getting the hell out of dodge.

---

There’s something itching at the back of Garrett’s mind as he watches John Seed’s announcement on the TV, Dutch’s voice over the radio sounding more like static than anything as Garrett tries to figure out what’s bugging him, other than the fact that the Peggies and the Seed family look on complacently as Hudson looks fucking terrified.

His eyes catch on John’s shirt, where the top three buttons are left undone and that’s when he sees it; the scars.

The word looks familiar and Garrett’s eyes start searching for burns on John’s arms but the man is wearing that stupid looking coat that probably cost more than everything Garrett owns.

---

Garrett’s too out of it from the Bliss to check during the forced baptism, but then John doesn’t check either, too preoccupied with trying to drown him until Joseph steps in.

When he reflects on it later, Garrett will realize that the slightly smug smile on the man’s face means he knows.

He knows and probably thinks it’s the funniest damn thing, that the guy who’s been fucking up Eden’s Gate property is soul bonded to his brother, like that means Garrett will stop fighting them.

But the thing that worries Garrett the most is that Joseph may be right about that.

Garrett already has no clue what he’s doing; he doesn’t know how much having who his soulmate is being confirmed will change how god damn clueless he is.

---

“Shit, are you sure? He could just be messing with you, playing mind games.”

“Pretty sure. I’d have to get up close and personal to be 100% sure, but it’s really starting to look that way.”

Mary May groans, buries her face in her hands before glaring up at him.

“Just… Don’t do anything too dangerously stupid. I know it’s a lot asking that from you, but I mean it. I’ve been to too many funerals in the past six years.”

---

Garrett gets captured by one of John’s hunting parties when he’s halfway to the Seed Ranch; his plan had been to sneak in and confirm if they had enough matching scars.

Okay, it sounds kind of creepy, but Garrett figured it’d be the easiest and safest way to check. John Seed is unstable and erratic and Garrett would rather not have to deal with sharp things being pointed at him, but here he is. In John Seed’s bunker, strapped to a chair with a frantic Hudson sitting across from him, a whole lot of sharp objects on the table.

“I spent my entire life looking for more things to say ‘yes’ to,” John tells him as he rips open Garrett’s shirt and abruptly stops his monologue as he stares at Garrett's exposed chest, at the ‘Sloth’ already waiting for him.

At the soft gasp that escapes the man, Garrett closes his eyes briefly, bracing for any kind of violent reaction. He barely suppresses a flinch at the feather light touch of fingers tracing the scarred over letters.

Instead of being met with unrestrained violence, there’s lips crashing against his roughly in a kiss that is mostly teeth. He can hear the confused, panicked sounds coming from Hudson when John pulls back, but is still very much in Garrett’s space. A grin, manic and wild, stretches on his face as his eyes take in the sight of Garrett, as he takes hold of Garrett’s arm, sees the old burns and the small ‘sorry’ and Garrett…

Garrett has a lot of conflicting emotions right now.

“I knew it would be you,” John says so softly, like they’re somewhere else and not in a torture room. “I knew it. You’re mine.”