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Bobbi’s first tattoo appeared when she was five years old, clutching her mother’s hand and absolutely terrified to go to kindergarten. It appeared as a greyish-black blur, settled exactly between her collarbones. No one noticed it until an hour later, when her kindergarten teacher spotted it peeking over the collar of her shirt, a bruise in a rather suspicious area.
A trip to the nurse’s office later, and the declaration was made: Bobbi wasn’t bruised. She had found someone to love.
The adults in her life were thrilled. Five years old, and already capable of the notion of love. So advanced, they cooed. So smart, so brave, to face this all alone.
But Bobbi wasn’t alone. Her mother came to pick her up from kindergarten and by that time the blur had solidified. The edges were still indistinct but its shape had become recognizable as a bird.
Five years old, and Bobbi Morse was in love - with her mother, her wings.
Five years old, and Bobbi was already beginning to understand there was more to this soulmate thing than the adults were telling her.
---
The mockingbird sitting over her heart ballooned in size through elementary school, then shrunk through middle and high school. By the time Bobbi graduated from The Academy it was no bigger than her thumbprint. Her mother was no longer the center of her life, no longer her greatest love. (No one else has taken that position. Bobbi didn’t know who she would say her greatest love was, if she was asked. It certainly wasn’t herself.)
The tattoo did something, though - it gave Bobbi her call sign. It was small enough the average person wouldn’t see it, nor connect it with the mockingbird of her call sign. It was better that way, since call signs weren't all that much use when anyone and everyone could figure it out.
Bobbi liked it, though. Even if her mother wasn’t as important to her as she once had been, the woman had left an indelible mark on Bobbi. Even without the tattoo, her love would’ve been permanent. Immortalizing it felt right.
---
Despite her early start, by the time Bobbi became an official agent, she had fewer soulmarks to register than anyone else in her graduating class. The registration process was almost uncomfortably short, and Bobbi wanted to yell at the senior agent taking her information. Bobbi’s doctoral thesis had been on the formation of soulmarks, and her resounding (empirically-evidenced) conclusion was that they were choice.
It should have changed the world, but it didn’t. The mythos of having love decided was deeply attractive to most, and at the end of the day, Bobbi wasn’t going to be able to change that.
She could change herself, though, and Bobbi was oddly comforted by her lack of marks. She was careful about love in every form it took. She did not settle for every person who looked her way - she did not give her heart up easily, and she doubted she ever would.
---
Unfortunately, Lance Hunter existed. His tattoo, a plain-looking finch, bloomed on her shoulder the morning after she spent the night with him, which was horribly inconvenient - especially when Izzy saw the mark.
“Barb,” she cackled, “what happened to not falling in love easily?”
Of course Izzy knew Bobbi wasn’t exactly adverse to love. Bobbi had a mark for her former SO, too. The day it had appeared her cheeks had burned, and burned, and burned. Now, of course, it made sense. Izzy was a combination between a mother and a sister and a best friend and she was the closest to everything Bobbi had.
Giving that up for a man - even a stupidly beautiful man like Lance Hunter - felt like a betrayal.
---
Mack was different. Mack was easy. Mack was Mack, and for the first time in her life, Bobbi wasn’t surprised when a mark appeared on her body. She had chosen this one more than she had chosen the others, had willed Mack to be a part of her permanently.
Mack was safe, which was why Bobbi couldn’t help but laugh when she saw the form his mark had taken. Izzy, her mother, Hunter - they had all been small birds, not a wisp of danger between them. But Mack was a hawk, large and proud and dangerous, perched on the back of her neck - protecting her at her weakest spot.
She didn’t have to tell Mack the mark was his - he knew.
She didn’t have to tell Hunter the mark was Mack’s either. It took him two weeks to notice, between Bobbi’s missions and the emotional distance between the pair of them.
Bobbi was expecting jealousy. Instead she got a kiss to the nape of her neck and murmured words she couldn’t hear.
---
Two months later, she got a divorce.
The finch on her shoulder blurred beyond recognition, but the tattoo wouldn’t disappear.
Just her damn luck.
---
“She’s gone, isn’t she?”
Bobbi didn’t want it to be true, but Izzy’s bluebird tattoo had darkened and warped until it wasn’t a bluebird at all. Izzy was a blackbird now, still keen-eyed and smooth-feathered, but… cold.
None of her other marks felt cold.
“I’m sorry,” Hunter croaked. “I should have done better.”
“I don’t understand.” Bobbi’s research had never looked into what happened to soulmarks after someone died - everyone assumed they just faded away. But Izzy’s mark hadn’t faded, hadn’t even blurred like Hunter’s had after she fell (mostly) out of love. It had just changed.
“Neither do I.” Hunter hesitated. “Look up the meaning of a blackbird, would you?”
Bobbi wanted to argue that the marks didn’t have any meeting beyond the meaning she gave them, but when they parted, she did what she was told.
Blackbirds are believed to carry messages from the living to the dead, and vice versa.
Bobbi cried.
---
In the back of an SUV, the blur on her shoulder blade sharpened almost immediately. Bobbi could feel it take shape, feel herself surrendering to what she felt for Hunter.
When she returned to her bunk, something like shame burning through her body, she stood in front of the mirror to peer at the newly-formed tattoo. She had expected a finch again, but… it certainly wasn’t a finch.
A phoenix. It was a phoenix, swirls of scarlet and orange and gold twisting across her skin, taking up more space than the finch ever had. The bird’s face was turned upwards in a silent cry, and a streak of silver ran down its face. Phoenix tears.
She was in love with Hunter - a love reborn from the ashes. She was in love with Hunter - a man reborn from the ashes. A man who was still hurting, a man who was still crying out for someone, anyone to hear him.
But it was not her job to heal him.
It was just her job to love him, and maybe let him love her too.
---
“What’s this?” Hunter traced his thumb along the curve of her hip bone.
Bobbi swallowed hard. The mark had been there for a while now - or rather, almost there. It had appeared as a blur and was taking its sweet time becoming anything more than that. Bobbi knew why - she was resisting it, resisting falling in love after everything seemed to end so spectacularly.
“I think you know.” She’d seen Hunter naked, so of course she had seen his marks - the splatter of red over his heart that was for her, the mottled green and purple and black on his back that was Izzy and Idaho, gone from the world but not from Hunter.
It’s funny, he’d said the first night when she’d seen the extent of it. At first she’d thought it was a bruise and had been ready to drag him to Jemma, but it hadn’t been. It’s funny, he’d repeated. They said they’d always have my back, but I never thought they meant like this.
She had held him while he cried, and ignored the blushing pink twisting up the inside of his forearm, and the burnt orange wrapping around his knee.
She knew. He knew. Neither of them were brave enough to say it.
---
The day Jemma disappeared, the blur on her hip finally took shape. Bobbi didn’t notice, seeing as she was drugged to oblivion and also vainly worried about whether or not the bullet she had taken had destroyed Hunter’s mark.
Finally, finally, she was ready to admit she could not let go of him. She had thought the phoenix was just for rebirth, but in the hospital bed she realized that was wrong. Hunter was warmth, he was light, he was everything good about fire - and everything bad, too.
The owl on her hip sat, waiting for her to notice it. Another blur appeared on her leg, and it too waited -
And waited -
And waited.
---
Jemma came back.
Bobbi walked into her room holding a box of chocolates, and immediately felt like she was taking up too much space.
“Welcome back.”
“Thank you.” Jemma wouldn’t meet her eyes.
You marked me, Bobbi wanted to say. She had found the owl perched on her hip, the dove flying up her calf, and she had resigned herself to being marked by people who would only be in love with each other.
“I suppose it’s good Fitz kept looking for me,” Jemma said awkwardly.
“His logic was flawed.” Bobbi cleared her throat, realizing that was probably the wrong thing to say.
“How so?”
“This is Izzy’s,” Bobbi said, turning to show the inside of her wrist to Jemma. She was sure the other woman had seen the tattoo before, but she had never known who it belonged to.
It was possible to have marks for the dead.
It was possible Jemma never would’ve come back from Maveth at all.
“Thanks for coming,” Jemma said in an obvious dismissal.
That had gone well.
---
Bobbi spent even more time in the gym than usual, trying to tire her brain out enough so she wasn’t able to overthink. It didn’t work.
Fitz accompanied her in the gym more often than not, which was part of the reason she was still caught in her head. Every time she glanced over at Fitz he was already looking back at her - and more times than once she had caught him staring at the dove on her leg.
“Are all your marks birds?” Fitz asked when Bobbi finished her circuit and was wiping her face with a towel.
“Yeah.” Bobbi didn’t know why that was a question. Everyone had seen the mockingbird at the hollow of her throat, the blackbird on her wrist, and the hawk on the back of her neck. It wasn’t hard to figure out.
Daisy’s were flowers; Hunter’s were splashes of color; Mack’s were the words spoken to him when he realized he was in love.
Bobbi’s were birds.
“Which one’s that?”
And of course, Fitz had to point to her dove.
She could lie.
Or she could tell the truth. Maybe Fitz would think it was a platonic mark, maybe he would never understand the depth of what she felt for him, maybe things could stay the same.
“It’s you.”
Fitz blinked. Stuttered something she didn’t understand.
Then he turned around and left.
Things, evidently, were not going to stay the same.
---
Bobbi’s fingers traced the outline of Hunter’s tattoo carefully, following every strange edge and splatter line. At first she hadn’t liked the way his marks manifested - they were messy and strange and a little scary - but the more in love she fell, the more it made sense. Hunter was messy, and his love did not stay in between the lines.
He was stroking her back, each time allowing his thumb to pass over the puckered scar where the bullet hole had been. Ironically enough, it was in the center of the phoenix’s chest, and Bobbi didn’t want to begin to think about the implications of her scar being over bird-Hunter’s heart.
A knock sounded on the door, loud and urgent.
Hunter grumbled, passing Bobbi her shirt as he went to answer the door.
Neither of them were expecting to be overwhelmed by scientists who didn’t ask before entering.
Jemma also didn’t ask before taking off her shirt, and Bobbi gaped - right until the moment Jemma turned around.
It explained why she had never seen a mark on Jemma’s body despite being sure the girl fell in love easily. All of the names were right there, marching down her spine in a neat, ordered list.
How very Jemma.
But then, at the top of that list - bobbifitzhunter, all smashed together, like they couldn’t hope to figure out who was first.
“We’ve known for a long time,” Jemma whispered when she turned around. “But we didn’t think…”
“We saw Hunter’s, but they’re not very informative,” Fitz added.
Hunter huffed unhappily. “They’re soulmarks, they’re not supposed to be informative.”
That was a debate for a different time, Bobbi decided.
“Who did you think the dove was for, before?”
“We thought maybe Mack.”
“And the hawk?”
“Clint. Barton.”
Bobbi snorted. She’d almost forgotten about that bastard. Hunter, on the other hand, looked less-than-pleased about the mention of her ex-partner.
“The hawk is Mack. The dove is you,” she repeated, looking at Fitz. She glanced to Hunter, who inclined his head barely, before reaching out to touch Fitz’s face.
He shuffled closer to her, tilting his chin up until their lips were a breath apart.
“Do you…?” Bobbi meant to ask if Fitz had marks, but she lost her voice while looking in his eyes.
“I do,” he whispered back.
Then he kissed her, and things made sense.
Bobbi would never admit how often she had imagined this, late at night when she was lying in Hunter’s arms. She would never say how desperate she was for this moment, for Fitz’s mouth on hers, for his hands in her hair, for them to be tangled up in each other.
“Take it off,” she murmured against his lips, already lifting her arms so he could divest her of the shirt she had only just put back on.
When Fitz had jerked the fabric over her head Bobbi fused their mouths back together but began the work of unbuttoning his shirt. She was dimly aware of Jemma and Hunter moving too, but she wanted to see Fitz.
She wanted to see his marks.
When she drew back she was out of breath, and her eyes were immediately drawn to Fitz’s collarbone and the dark ink there.
“The Hardy-Weinberg equation?” she asked with a laugh.
“It’s my mum’s,” Fitz said, blushing. “You know, generations changing over time…”
“It’s sweet,” Bobbi assured him.
“Well, where’s ours?” Hunter asked, peering over Jemma’s shoulder with his hand still possessively on her ass.
“Hunter!”
“I’m just asking, Bob,” he answered with an eye roll.
“This one’s Jemma’s,” Fitz said, pointing to one on his hip.
“First law of thermodynamics,” Jemma supplied.
“Hunter’s,” Fitz continued, pointing to the small of his back.
“What’s that one?” Hunter’s brow furrowed.
“The law of universal gravitation,” Jemma supplied. “I think it’s rather fitting.”
“And where’s mine?” Bobbi asked, a bit impatient.
Fitz reached for his belt buckle, then dropped his pants. “You have to promise not to laugh.”
“Not helping my confidence, mate.”
Fitz pulled up the left of his boxers to show an equation written up his inner thigh.
Hunter fell out into laughter and Bobbi blushed deep red.
“What’s the equation?” she asked in a valiant effort not to be too embarrassed.
“It’s Drake’s equation. For, eh, the probability of extraterrestrial life.”
“And that’s informative how?” Hunter asked.
“Uh, the probability of finding three loves is, uh, an equation I tried to solve for a while. Just like the Drake equation.”
“And now you’ve solved them both,” Bobbi said, kissing Fitz’s cheek gently.
There was life on a distant planet - a planet that had tried to take Jemma. That was certain.
Fitz had three loves. That was certain.
Bobbi had three loves, too. That was certain, too.
She wasn’t about to waste any more time wondering, waiting, hoping.
“Bed,” she whispered.
They followed.