Chapter Text
Anthony Edward Stark was born with two black rings on his fingers, one on each hand. He went through life knowing that he'd had not one, but two soulmates and both were dead, and long gone.
As a boy, he never understood it, didn't get why his father called him an abomination and hit him all the time. But as a teenager, understanding what the rings meant, he mourned and chose instead to bury himself of work, graduating primary school early, then highschool, then university.
Tony took to wearing real rings over his dead soul marks, he couldn't stand the knowing, pitying looks that others gave him.
And so he his them, hid them from everyone, ignored his mothers heartbroken looks, his fathers drunken abuse, till the day they died and he was alone. Rhodey was there then, took him in, knew about his dead soulmates and did not pity him, instead, he showed him his blank fingers. Rhodey was born without a soulmate.
They grew close, as best friends as they could be but never anything more. They declared themselves soulmates to eachother, best friends to stand by one another till the end of their days.
The day they announced that Captain America had been pulled from the ice was the day that the ring soul-mark on Tony's left hand changed colour. He and Rhodey stared at it for hours, amazed.
"Tones, you know what this means?" Rhodey asked in wonderment.
"I-its not possible boo-bear, a dead soulmate is a dead soulmate, and there's no way in hell it could be Steven Grant Rogers, THE Captain America" he scoffed and shook his head, shaken.
"You know what they used today tony, Steve had two soul marks, one black, one most likely Bucky's. What if... What if black doesn't necessarily mean dead?" Rhodey looked at Tony, hopefully for his young, longing best friend.
But the iron man shook his head, and that was that.