Chapter Text
Everyone in the world had a soulmate. Your soulmates first words to you appear somewhere on your body when you are 18. The universe didn’t leave anyone out, but sometimes it cheated. Your soulmate may be too old for you by the time you’re born. Or your soulmate may die before you meet them. Or they may die after you meet them but before the bond activates. Occasionally, soulmates encounter one another and never exchange words. No bond activates between them if they never speak. The universe can be helpful too though. Sometimes if a soulmate dies, and their words fade to silver, a new set of words will appear. Fresh and black and bold. Very few get a second soulmate. And very, very seldom, so rare as to be thought a myth by most, a person manifests two sets of words.
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Tony Stark has two sets of words. His parents were so horrified by the second set that they insisted he do everything possible to prevent anyone from finding out. The flesh colored sleeves that everyone wore in the 90’s worked well for a long time. In the new century, the sleeves became a fashion statement. Colored sleeves were all the rage. With words on both arms, Tony couldn’t wear two sleeves when everyone else wore only one. So, a bold colored sleeve and a flesh colored one became his standard. It wasn’t easy to hide this from his bed partners. He could usually laugh it off as an eccentricity. However, there were always rumors that something was different, wrong, odd about Tony Stark’s soulmate words.
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Bucky Barnes never met his soulmate. He’d hoped he would find her in New York, but it just didn’t happen. Then, he’d been afraid he’d find them in the war. That didn’t pan out either. After his imprisonment and being experimented on by Zola, he gave up on having a soulmate. More than that, he started to actively hope he’d never encounter his soulmate. He wanted to die in the war and never go home. He knew he was different now, wrong, odd. He didn’t want to inflict that on a soulmate.
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The Winter Soldier shouldn’t have had a soulmate. HYDRA didn’t believe he was a person, let alone one with a soul. He was meant to be the distillation of James Barnes. The blunt, obedient essence left when all of Barnes' self was stripped away. In 1970, words appeared on the shoulder of the metal arm. No one could deny their existence. HYDRA tried to eradicate them. They sanded them off. The words returned. They removed the upper section of the arm and replaced it. The words returned. When they could bring their engineer in, they replaced the entire arm. The words returned. At a loss, they covered the words with a bold red star. It was different, wrong, odd. The Winter Soldier should not have a soulmate. As far as they could tell, The Winter Soldier never even knew the words were there.