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When Andy was born, she predated written language, so the marks on people’s skin were often art, abstract and matching.
She had none. Not everyone did, but when she came back from battle alive, again and again, against all odds, they used it as one more reason she should be a god.
When Andy is already thousands of years old, she realizes suddenly that some humans have words now, not just pictures, words that mean something.
The stories become that they are the first words lovers say to each other, and that they show who belongs together, whose souls are intertwined.
Andy isn’t sure she believes in that stuff. She’s also not sure how fond she is of this writing thing, but she starts to learn. Just in case.
Andy still doesn’t have words on her when she starts to get the dreams of a beautiful woman, so far away, who looks down a bow and always hits her target. Of a woman worn down.
She starts chasing the woman down anyway.
She stops an assault on the road and gets a knife through her lung for her trouble. When she wakes up, gasping, she’s alone except for her horse.
She finds a river to stop at for the night, and is struck dumb by the black ink on her belly when she peels her clothes off to wash.
She can’t read the text. But she’ll learn.
Her name is Quynh, she’s more beautiful and more deadly and funnier than the dreams ever showed, even with Andy’s only rudimentary knowledge of the language.
She has Andy’s first words to her wrapped around her wrist. You are not alone .
Andy’s stomach says you’re real . And Andy will never forget the broken smile Quynh gave her as she said it.
Suddenly, Andy’s life is complete. She’s not alone, and her companion is more than she could have ever dreamed, all those years alone. Her true match, her equal, the light in her days.
They ride into battle side by side, and Quynh is deadly and fast and a beautiful blur of motion that sometimes makes Andy’s heart stop.
The first time they’re killed, bodies litter the battlefield, and they rise, and Quynh reaches a hand to cup Andy’s face, to reassure herself.
And Andy’s heart almost stops, because Quynh’s wrist is blank.
It was supposed to be forever , Andy chokes out, and Quynh looks confused until she sees Andy’s eyes tracking her wrist.
Her own eyes harden, but all she says is It is forever, whatever happens.
That night, they bathe under the moonlight, and Andy can’t shake the morose feeling, which only grows worse when she strips her clothes to realize Quynh’s original mark on her, on her belly, is gone now.
But Quynh comes up behind her, wraps her arms around her, and whispers it’ll always be forever , and Andy has to accept that.
They help each other wash, Quynh washing her first, and she freezes when she gets to Andy’s ankle, laughing. Andy looks down to see what’s so funny, and sees text there.
She can’t read it from this angle, but she knows. It is forever, whatever happens .
Invigorated, she washes Quynh next, determined to look over every inch of her body. She doesn’t have to look long, finding it was supposed to be forever on the back of her neck, hidden by her beautiful hair.
By the time they meet Lykon in person and not just in dreams, their messages have changed dozens of times. Andy’s is currently on the top of her foot— alright, my love? —and Quynh’s on her shoulder. Always.
Lykon has no words. He doesn’t seem bothered by it, but Andy would have to be blind to notice how he notices when their new words pop up after death. Or to miss how he always takes some time alone after that, presumably to look for his own.
When it happens, he doesn’t need time to look. It’s all over his right hand, and he stares in fascination until it’s too dark to look anymore.
It’s nice to meet you .
Whoever it will be nice to meet takes their time, because it’s nearly five years before Lykon dies, without having met them.
He wakes up without words. He spends hours looking for them, to no avail.
Andy and Quynh exchanged worried looks. Lykons won’t come back like theirs. They only appear if you meet in that lifetime.
Andy will always wonder absently what happened there, although she tries not to spend too much time thinking of the vast cruelty of the universe. Was the universe wrong on this one, and Lykon not meant to be that person’s soulmate? Did that person die before Lykon could meet them? Did they take a wrong turn somewhere, in the grand plan of time, so Lykon never met up with them, in that lifetime?
Whatever it was, the answer is simple: Lykon is cruelly left without a soulmate.
Lykon seems to fade from existence, like his body gives up on them all. It’s time he says to Andy, and she wants to scream.
He’s a thousand years old. He’s lived, he’s done more than most anyone else on the planet. He deserves to rest, if that’s what he wants.
One day, Lykon was quietly, eagerly awaiting his soulmate. The next, they were torn away from him with no explanation, no reason. And soon after, he was gone forever.
And Andy can’t find the justice in that.
Show me , Quynh’s shoulder demands.
Right here, my love , Andy’s wrist says.
They have some variation of that for some time, after.
Joe and Nicky are born with soulmate marks in tongues they cannot read. Joe gets his translated by a friend, eventually, and wonders why on Earth he has a Christian prayer along his ribs. Nicky is told to forget his even exists.
If there had been anything but death, and violence, in those days outside the gates of Jerusalem, they might have noticed the marks changing, moving, still in languages they don’t speak but undeniably evolving, as each new interaction and almost immediate death leads to a new one, again and again and again.
Peace , reads Nicky’s forearm, and he still remembers how tired Joe sounded when he said it. The rest of the phrase is in a language he can’t read.
Joe can’t read what his says, but he remembers Nicky’s nod, and the two of them leaving the battlefield together.
How are we soulmates? Joe spits at him one time, and it cruelly ends up on Nicky’s skin for almost a year.
Nicky gives as good as he got, though. Perhaps God made a mistake. He’s been thinking many things he knows about God are a mistake. This is just one of them.
I’m glad God gave me you .
Me too .
It’s a shame that those words are only on them for a few months, but it’s the start of something, right there.
Quynh goes in the water, and Andy screams and screams when the boys rescue her, nursing her back from yet another death at the hands of these mad men.
The words are gone. And they don’t come back, no matter what she does.
Booker never had words, not once. Not with his wife, not when he died, not in any of the two hundred years and hundreds of deaths since.
If he was paying attention after the trap he’d laid for his friends in South Sudan, he might have noticed the words snaking around his foot. But he doesn’t. Why would he be?
I’m Nile .
Nile never had words, which was getting unusual in this day and age. Once, people might simply not be able to meet the one destined for them, and never get words. But it was unusual these days.
Her mother said it just made her special.
Nile’s never been sure what she thinks about that. Really, she doesn’t need a soulmate. She’s complete all on her own. But it would be nice to have what her parents had. Even if her mom looks at Can I buy you a drink? with tears in her eyes sometimes.
She changes out of her uniform when Andy tells her to, but she changes quickly in the illicit drug runner’s plane. If she hadn’t been rushing, she might’ve seen the words across the back of her calf. Booker. It’s nice to meet you .
Booker gets new words after he gets blown up in Goussainville, although he would never know it.
Dr. Kozak is fascinated by Nicky and Joe’s words disappearing and coming back, each time they die.
She only kills Booker once, a drug overdose when he gets too aggressive over Andy’s declining state. But when he comes back, the words appear on his thumb, and she notices before he does.
Is she yours? She asks, gesturing to Andy.
Booker doesn’t acknowledge her, doesn’t acknowledge the curiosity of the others. He just stares at—as far as he knows—his first words.
C’mon .
Nile wakes up from being shot in the chest with her own name scrawled across her collar bones, although she doesn’t know.
She wakes up again from her fall from the window, which she still can’t believe she did, and Booker’s gentle, c’mon, up you go is across her hip.
Nile doesn’t realize until after Booker leaves that she has words, his words, and that means they’re soulmates. She isn’t sure how to feel about it.
She supposes she has eternity to figure it out.
Booker, in contrast, knew the moment she came to rescue them. Heard her words, saw her eyes, felt it inside of himself.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t deserve it and she deserves better.
Andy takes her first bath of mortality once they’re a safe distance away and screams loud enough that Joe and Nicky burst into the bathroom, introducing Nile to the team’s rather lax view of nudity.
She shows them her belly, right under her ribs, where one black word is printed.
Andromache .
They spend a while wondering what that means. Andy will meet Quynh again, certainly. But they don’t know how, or when, and Nile’s dreams of Quynh still show her at the bottom of the ocean.
Until they don’t.
Quynh appears to them half crazed, but she breathes Andromache like a prayer, and Andy whispers Quynh back, and when they hug, they can see the writing on Quynh’s wrist.
Nile dies for the first time since Booker left. She has no words. Something inside her—something she didn’t even know was there, to be honest—feels numb.
Booker dies in a gutter, wakes up without words, and drinks himself to death twice more, just because.
After yet another stupid death, Booker wakes up with words, across his bicep. I’m glad you came .
Wherever she calls him, he resolves to be there.
Nile resolves to send him a letter. It’s been two years, and she needs to know. Needs to know who he is, where this is going. Anything.
So she sends it, and dies along with Joe and Nicky on a job before she gets a reply.
Joe and Nicky wake up with Are you alright my love? and Fine, love, always . Nile wakes up with I’ll go anywhere for you , and she supposes that’s probably answer enough to her letter.
They meet outside Notre Dame, and then Booker shows her around Paris, where he’s apparently been living for two years.
It’s nice, and he’s trying his best, but they both know it’s weird. He’s not ready, not yet.
Nile kisses his cheek when she tells him bye. I’ll see you soon , she promises.
She dies again, and the words disappear, and she gets through it by thinking of the day they’ll be back.
He doesn’t die for nearly five years, working hard on a normal life. He works. He sleeps. He works for a nonprofit.
Eventually he dies, and the words are gone, and he just gets up with purpose, waiting for the day they come back.
It hasn’t been a hundred years, not even close, but Nile knows it’s almost time to bring him back because the words are back. I’m ready .
They meet again at Notre Dame, the entire family coming this time, but Nile steps forward first.
He pulls her into a hug and she catches the words on the side of his neck even as she says them. I missed you .