Chapter Text
Rip Wheeler was born on a busy winter night at the charity hospital. Despite the crowded hallways, the harried nurses paused to gossip over the tiny script soulmark across the infant’s lower back.
“You ever seen one like that before, Debbie?” a young nurse asked, flipping the squalling boy over, squinting at the tiny letters.
Debbie scowled.
“You know I can’t read that without my glasses. And who cares? They’re all the same, anyway.”
“Not this one,” another nurse said with a laugh, crowding around the baby, touching his back with a pink nail. “Listen to this, Trish. It says ‘I’m not getting on that fucking horse, Daddy.’”
They laughed. Even Debbie.
“Poor boy,” Trish said, diapering the red-faced baby. “Sounds like he’s in for a rough time.”
Rip’s father was even more amused by the soulmark, which he saw as prime entertainment for his drinking buddies. Wayne Wheeler would grab Rip roughly by the arm when he got drunk enough, pull up his shirt and show the words to the parade of gamblers and drinkers through the house, all of them howling with laughter.
“Sounds like some fucking princess,” he’d say, grip on Rip’s chubby little forearm hard enough to bruise. “Probably just some rich slut, but maybe she’ll come with Daddy’s money too.”
No one ever explained what those words meant to Rip, but he figured it out.
Sometimes it was even worse, when his father got drunk enough to go from happy to mean and Rip didn’t manage to hide soon enough.
“You ain’t nothing special, son, and don’t let those fancy words on your back go to your fucking head,” he’d snarl, eyes glassy. “No woman with money ever gonna want a Wheeler, ‘specially not one as worthless as you. Wheelers don’t get nice shit like soulmates, just look at your fucking mama.”
And Rip would take it, take the words and the hits and say nothing, because he might be stupid, but he knew better than to talk back to his dad.
His mama was different, though. When he was little, when she still helped him bathe, she would run her hands over the words on his back and smile.
“She’s gonna be spunky, that one,” his mama would say with a smile. “But I think she’ll love you.”
And when Rip got older and asked about his father’s words, his mother would hold a finger to her lips.
“Your daddy ain’t my soulmate and I ain’t his, and look where it got us. But you’ll find yours, baby, and she’ll love you, and you’ll be happy,” she’d whisper. “So don’t you settle for anyone else.”
Sometimes, when his dad was gone, he locked himself in the bathroom and read the words in the mirror, head craned around behind him. He could just barely make them out, but they always made him smile, and he’d trace the script softly with his fingers, like his mama did when he was little.
And he swore to himself that when he got out of that hellhole, he’d find the girl who spoke the words on his back.
But Wayne Wheeler’s voice echoed in the back of his head too, and he wondered, wondered why she would want a scrawny pig farmer’s boy like him.
***
Bethany Dutton was born on a sunny August day, and none of the doctors or nurses thought to mention her soulmark.
Evelyn noticed it a few hours later, when little Beth’s swinging fist broke free of the pink swaddle.
“Look, John,” she said, holding the wailing infant’s right arm, rubbing her finger over the mark.
“What’s it say?”
Evelyn frowned as she read it.
“Well, that’s too bad. Just says ‘nice to meet you.’ Hopefully she says something less generic back to the boy, or she might walk right past him.”
John grinned at his wife.
“Maybe something like, ‘I wouldn’t go on a date with you if you were the last man on earth,’” he said with a chuckle, rubbing the words emblazoned across his bicep.
Evelyn smiled, remembering that night, remembering the boy with the lopsided smile who didn’t say anything back to her but lifted up his sleeve.
“Yeah,” she said, “maybe something like that.”
She tucked the baby’s arm back into the swaddle, hoping her daughter would love her soulmate as much as she loved John Dutton.
But Beth grew up hating her soulmark. All it did was hurt.
Her mother didn’t believe her at first, told her that she was exaggerating, that the marks only hurt when your soulmate’s life was in danger. Told her that no six year old boy’s life was in danger that often.
And no one else’s mark ever hurt. Jen Davis claimed that hers had burned like fire once, when Chris O’Hara almost drowned in the fishing accident that killed his older brother. Everyone else just shrugged when she asked.
But Beth’s burned, woke her in the middle of the night, brought tears to her eyes, seared with pain so bad she couldn’t draw or write with that hand sometimes.
When she was in second grade, they learned about the Gulf War in school, and Beth decided that her soulmate probably lived somewhere with a lot of wars, because then the burning made sense. And she was sad. Her daddy would never let her move where there was a war, and she’d never find her soulmate. So she started planning her life to be alone. She would manage.
Eventually, her mom started to believe her about the burning. She was in third grade, and it hurt so bad that she missed the field trip to see the dinosaurs. Her mom snuggled into the bed with her and rubbed the mark.
“It really hurts, doesn’t it?” her mom asked. And Beth nodded, eyes red from the crying, and her mom just stroked her hair.
She overheard her parents talking about it once, later that summer.
“There’s something off about it, John,” her mom said. “It’s practically weekly, now.”
“I’m sure it’s normal, honey.”
“It isn’t. Mine’s burned three times ever, and you live your life on dangerous animals. Think about it, have you ever felt yours?”
“Hmmm,” her Daddy replied. “Just that once, when you were in that wreck in Dillon.”
“See? And it didn’t just start. He’s either a 30 year old firefighter or there’s something very wrong with his home life. Neither are good options.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. We don’t even know that she’ll ever find him. And if she does, we’ll keep a close eye.”
“I guess,” her mom replied, but Beth knew it still bothered her.
Beth didn’t care about her soulmate anymore. She decided she didn’t want to meet him, since he probably lived in Africa, or Peru, or one of the dangerous places they learned about in geography, and she only spoke English so they couldn’t talk anyway.
People talked about soulmates like some great thing, but her mark brought her nothing but pain. She just wished it would stop hurting.
***
Rip’s little brother was born without a soulmark.
His father laughed, held the infant up to Rip when they got home from the hospital with a mean glint in his eye.
“See this boy, he’s a real Wheeler. He don’t need none of that pussy soulmate shit. He’ll make his own way in the world.”
Rip just nodded, and looked at the ground, and hoped that his dad would give the baby back to his mama, where he’d be safe.
His mama cried over it. He overheard her on the phone with her cousin, nursing the baby late one night when she thought Rip was asleep.
“I just know it’s bad, Sue, I know it means he’s gonna die young,” his mama said, voice barely over a whisper. “That’s what it always means.”
After that, his mama started trying to leave sometimes, taking Rip and the baby and fleeing in the middle of the night, first to family, then to shelters. It never lasted, of course, and they always ended up back on that pig farm, but she tried.
***
Beth’s brother Kayce had the only interesting soulmark in the family. The first time Beth remembered thinking about it was one summer day, when they were all out together as a family, swimming at the creek.
“Well, at least someone in this family is going to find their soulmate,” her mother commented from her blanket on the bank, rubbing sunscreen around the mark on Kayce’s calf.
“What’s it say again?” Jamie asked, craning his head, and Beth and Lee rolled their eyes together over Jamie’s head.
“It says ‘what’s a white boy like you doing at a party like this?’” Evelyn said with a smile. Her Daddy chuckled, and Beth didn’t really get the joke.
“Oh yeah, that’s a good one,” Jamie said enthusiastically. He had always cared about soulmarks, and once he even cried because he worried that the tiny ‘hello’ on his chest wasn’t going to be good enough. He stopped every girl who said hello to him and asked if she was his soulmate.
When he got older, in high school, he started introducing himself to every girl he met with his full name, under the theory that if she was his soulmate, it would be easy to prove. Beth found it insufferable.
She was glad that at least Lee agreed that the marks were stupid. He didn’t like girls anyway, and said he’d rather be alone than spend his life questioning every girl who said ‘good morning’ to him.
So Beth tried to be like Lee, tried to just not care about it, and it worked.
***
Rip’s soulmark burned for the first time ever on March 30, 1997, when he was fifteen years old.
It hurt worse than he expected, somewhere between a regular punch and the kind of hit that made the world spin, but pain like that didn’t faze him anymore. He just rubbed the mark and thought about the girl who was in danger.
He wished he was there to protect her. But then he heard his dad’s voice too, loud and slurred like Wayne Wheeler was right there next to him. He couldn’t even protect his mama, and no girl whose Daddy bought her a horse would want a thing to do with a boy like him anyways.
Still, he hoped she was ok.
***
The summer after her mom died, Beth’s soulmark stopped burning. He probably died in his war, she figured, and she didn’t worry about it again.
When girls at school talked about their marks, she just flipped her hair and smirked.
“Mine’s dead,” she’d say, taking pleasure in the looks on their faces. “But boys are dumb anyway.”