Chapter Text
“You're unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable.”
That was all Hal had to say as he stormed out of the master bathroom. Alice hurried after him, clutching her baby blue towel around herself. Her wet hair stuck to the back of her neck and a small trail of droplets followed her every movement.
“Hal, please. Don't be mad,” she pleaded desperately. “I didn't even know it was there!”
Hal couldn’t even bring himself to look at his wife. “You didn't notice the gigantic snake tattoo down your side?”
“It honestly just appeared,” she said weakly. It didn’t sound good but it was the truth.
She had stepped into the shower half asleep, only noticing the large snake slithering down her right side when she ran the loofah over her body.
She shrieked. There was no other suitable reaction.
Hal came running in to find her twisting around to better view her newest acquisition. It was similar to the one she already had on her right thigh - the one that symbolized regret and teenage stupidity.
They were both Serpent tattoos. And she knew exactly who was dumb enough to get a monstrous serpent that covered half his torso.
Unfortunately, so did her husband.
Hal pulled out a suitcase from the closet and laid it out on the bed. Without hesitation, he grabbed a handful of his dress shirts and haphazardly threw them in.
“Hal, what are you doing?” Alice asked. Her voice was so small. So confused. She couldn’t quite grasp at what was happening in front of her. Dress pants and ties were next on the pile.
“Packing,” Hal rifled through the dresser and tossed socks and underwear into the suitcase.
“No,” Tears formed in the corners of her eyes but Alice refused to let them fall. “I didn’t marry FP. I married you. I chose you, Hal.”
Hal looked up at her for the first time since he stormed into their bedroom. His anger was momentarily replaced with sadness. “Alice, I can’t trust that you’ll always pick me.”
“We have a family! Think about Polly and Betty,” Alice pleaded. “We can make this work.”
“Your matching tattoos say otherwise,” Hal averted his gaze, instead choosing to focus on shutting the overstuffed suitcase. “The universe has declared FP Jones as your soulmate. I’m not about to stick around to see how this plays out.”
“That's- That’s-” Alice took a deep breath. “That’s not how it works.”
They had both heard of it. Everybody was familiar with bits and pieces of stories of two people marked by destiny. History was littered with legends of couples connected by matching bruises, tattoos and other markings. Alice’s favourite soulmate story was of Cleopatra’s asp bite that also appeared on Mark Antony’s body.
Nobody knew what triggered the connection. Environmental factors? Age? It seemed to usually affect 20-somethings but that wasn’t a hard rule. Not to mention, only a select portion of the population was affected in the first place.
Of course, the markings did not necessarily mean happily-ever-after. Alice would know. Her parents were soulmates and they didn’t particularly like each other.
It would seem she was following in their footsteps.
“What are you doing?” Polly’s soft voice floated into the room.
Hal and Alice turned their heads to see their two young daughters popped their little heads into the room. Betty was barely a head taller than the doorknob, while her elder sister had only a few inches on her. They both surveyed the disaster on the bed.
“Is Dad going on another trip?” Betty asked, frowning.
Alice’s breath hitched. “Yes, Elizabeth. Only for a little while. He’ll be back soon.”
The girls accepted this, Polly more-so than Betty. Hal was always going on business trips, always chasing a story while Alice provided edits and played house by herself.
Hal zipped up the suitcase. He leaned down and hugged the girls. “I love you, girls. More than anything.”
And then he was gone.
-
At first, it was easy to pretend that he life wasn’t crumbling around her. The girls were none-the-wiser. Hal left often enough that his absence was a normal occurrence.
Alice refused to look too much into that. It didn’t matter that she slept better without Hal’s snoring. Or that the girls were better behaved when didn’t have a chance to undermine her by running to their father for a second opinion.
She plastered a smile on her face, refused to cry, make some cookies. Everything was normal. Everything was fine.
The scars on her knees were hers and hers alone, even though she could only account for half of them. The ones she couldn’t remember were probably from falling off her bike.
And the mole on her left buttcheek was definitely always there.
(At least that’s what she made herself believe.)
-
It was when the other soulmarks appeared one week later that it all hit her.
She was reading the girls a bedtime story when Betty caught her mother’s hand.
“Mom! You’re bleeding!” she cried.
Polly gasped. “Are you okay?” she jumped out of bed and scurried to the bathroom. “I’ll go find bandaids.”
Alice hadn’t felt anything. She had barely felt anything all day. She was physically and emotionally numb.
She turned her hand in the light. Sure enough, her knuckles were busted open.
Idiot.
FP was probably making a ruckus in the Southside and now she had to bare the consequences.
“It’s nothing,” she tried to reassure her daughters. “It looks worse than it is.”
Polly froze in the doorway! “Mom! Your lip!”
Alice brushed a tentative finger over her bottom lip. “It’s fine,” she said. “I must have bitten it by accident.”
That was a lie. But it was a lie her 7 and 8 year-olds didn’t question.
-
Of course she wondered about FP.
It was hard not to with the amount of bruises that now littered her body. There was a fist-sized mark under her ribs. Another gash down her leg. Her knuckles were looking much better. He must have been healing nicely.
She wondered if he noticed her own small contribution - the small purple mark on her hip from bumping into a desk.
And sometimes when it was too dark and too quiet in her large empty bed, she let herself contemplate the possibility of talking to FP for the first time in 10 years. According to Hal, it was the will of the universe.
Fuck Hal. Fuck that thought.
But then she awoke with a purple mark under her left eye that no amount of makeup was able to hide.
She ran a careful finger over the bruise, and winced in the mirror.
Fuck FP.
He needed to get his act together. Enough was enough.