Work Text:
Caitlin had grown up hearing stories about soulmates. Everyone did. Every book she read had people meeting their soulmates, even the ones where it would have been completely fine to just be a story without soulmates. There were games children would play, stories like if you twisted the stalk of an apple while saying the alphabet it would give you your soulmate's first initial, and tapping the stalk until it broke the apple's skin would give you their last initial.
And when you reached puberty, people would get their soulmarks. A pattern on the inside of the wrist that would light up and flicker with colour when you were close to your soulmate.
All her classmates had waited anxiously, desperate to see what theirs would look like.
Caitlin's never came.
It wasn't that it was impossible for it to show up later. As soon as she got to the point where the majority of people had one and she didn't, Caitlin had gone to the library. Most of the books they directed her to said the typical ages were between ten and fifteen, but there were cases of it coming later, even as late as twenty.
By the time she reached twenty, Caitlin always wore long sleeves and didn't think about it anymore. She was far too busy for a soulmate anyway.
And yet everything around her was still obsessed.
People would ask, constantly. Caitlin's scattered attempts at dating very quickly fell into "can I see your soulmark" and fell apart promptly after. People would upend their lives for someone they just met and it was so much easier to just ignore it. Hide her blank wrist under a medical mark cover and pretend it didn't exist.
And then came Ronnie Raymond.
Ronnie made her happy. But the mark on his wrist stayed inert when he was with her and she knew one day he'd find someone else. Someone else had been chosen for him, and Caitlin told herself she couldn't let herself get too close.
It would only end in heartbreak.
This was not the heartbreak she'd been expecting.
She'd thought everyone had gone home.
Barry sat next to her.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing," Caitlin said.
"Well." He gestured at the bottle of wine in front of her. "You want to talk about what's not wrong?"
"Why Mark?" Caitlin asked. "He's just so..."
She almost spilt her glass gesturing and Barry laughed.
"I think we have to let Frost decide that," he said. "Who knows, maybe he'll surprise you."
"She's not the one choosing," Caitlin said. "That stupid mark on her wrist is. A mark shows up when you're a child and that gets to dictate your whole life?"
"I know, right," Barry said dryly. "Relationships take work, feelings take time, but oh look, some pretty colours means we have to be together, what kind of basis for a relationship is that?"
"It's ridiculous!" Caitlin said. "People spend their lives changing, how can your one person possibly be chosen when you're a child and it always be the same?"
"And starting out good doesn't mean it always will be. All you need to do to divorce someone who isn't your soulmate is walk in and show them your wrists, you're expected to divorce the person you chose if you meet that person whose wrist matches yours, but getting a divorce from your soulmate? It's practically impossible, you can't know better than fate, and that has consequences. I know the tropes, meeting their soulmate fixes the 'bad boy', but that isn't how it works."
"You can only get a divorce if you managed to get married in the first place," Caitlin said. "A lot of people hold out for their soulmates, but there are so many people in the world, and anything can happen, how can they even know they'll meet them?"
"Or that they'll be able to tell. Colours appearing on your wrist doesn't really help blind people, or amputees who don't have that arm. I guess their soulmate's would light up, but they'd need to be alone to confirm it, and it isn't impossible they've both lost that arm."
"And what if you have a faint soulmark?" Caitlin ventured.
"I hate that trope so much," Barry said. "No one actually has a soulmark too faint to see, no one is developing soulmarks in their thirties because they finally met a person and just needed that love to fix them, some of us just don't have soulmarks, it's not that uncommon."
Caitlin froze.
"But the other option is it's the mark of the irredeemable villain," Barry said, incredibly frustrated. "Zoom and Savitar are the only villains we've faced without soulmarks, and no one had them on Earth-2, that didn't mean anything. You know DeVoe said he'd tell the jury I don't have one if I considered revealing I'm the Flash? I wasn't going to anyway, but he was right, there were people who wouldn't see past that. David thought it was one reason the mayor wanted me suspended."
Caitlin stared at him.
"I'm sorry," he said. "You were thinking about Ronnie, weren't you?"
"You don't have one?" Caitlin asked. "You really don't..."
Barry frowned slightly, then realisation dawned.
He rolled up his sleeves and took his watch off to show her his bare wrists.
"I know mark covers are a legal requirement in some medical settings," Barry said. "I figured it was a habit for you, it's like there are points at my job where I'm required to wear mark covers even though I don't have a soulmate to find. And you wouldn't need to look at my wrists to know we're not, and I have Joe's watch so I guess you assumed it was tiny and under there, right?"
Caitlin stared.
"There are lots of us," Barry said. "I don't have one because I'm demi and soulmates kind of rely on immediate attraction."
"Demi?" Caitlin asked.
"Have you heard of aromanticism?" Barry asked. Caitlin shook her head. "What about asexuality?"
"You're ace?" Caitlin asked. "I didn't..."
"I'm actually not, I'm bisexual," Barry said. "But aro is like the romantic attraction equivalent of ace. So, for me, I use the split attraction model because those things feel different for me, and demiromantic fits for me because I don't get the look at someone and have romantic attraction like alloromantics talk about, I don't get love at first sight, for me those feelings only appear rarely if I already know someone really well and care about them. But it's a spectrum, it's different for everyone."
"You said there are others too," Caitlin said. "Are they all aromantic or demi?"
"There probably are other reasons too," Barry said. "The people I know without marks do tend to be, but that's probably heavily influenced by that being how I worked out I'm demi, looking for people with similar experiences to me."
"And Iris, she..."
"Eddie was her soulmate," Barry said. "It's why I didn't tell her how I felt for so long. That could have worked, the two of them put the effort in, but now fate would say Iris should spend the rest of her life alone, that her one chance is gone, and how is that fair?"
"Soulmates complete-"
"You don't need another person to complete you," Barry said, gently but firmly. "You are an entire person by yourself. You don't need to have relationships if you don't want them, pursuing romantic love is not the point of life, I happen to want to be with Iris because she's my best friend and it makes me happy."
"What if everything in the world says otherwise?" Caitlin asked.
"Then the world is the thing that needs to change, not us."
Caitlin looked into her glass.
"My parents weren't soulmates," Barry said. "People used to say that was why I didn't have one, fate didn't have a place for me because my parents went against it. Which is complete nonsense, as much nonsense as the other reasons that got thrown around. There's nothing wrong with me, I don't need fixing, it's not a punishment, it's just how things work sometimes. Anyway. For my eleventh birthday my ma took Iris and me to the museum to see the new dinosaur exhibit. They had animatronics, it was very cool. We were leaving again when we met this couple and my ma's wrist and his lit up. A few days later she was dead and they used that against my dad. Clearly my mother had met her destined person and would have left us, and my father, so upset and desperate not to lose her, decided killing her was better than seeing her with someone else. Never mind she had no plans to leave, and Harrison was happy with Tess. I'm just glad Joe fought so hard to keep me and Thawne never worked out all he needed to do to get custody of me was point to the bit of paper saying Harrison Wells was my mother's soulmate."
"Barry..."
"Probably part of the reason it's a sore topic," Barry shrugged. "Maybe Thawne knew, he'd just rather spy on kid me than actually deal with me, because he definitely used it to get me here during my coma."
Barry shrugged.
"Ronnie wasn't yours, was he?" Barry asked. "You always wear a white medical cover, not a black mourning one."
Caitlin fiddled with the end of her sleeves.
"You don't need to tell me," Barry said. "Frost and you are separate people, your soulmarks looking similar doesn't mean they're the same, and even if they are, it doesn't mean you need to act on it if you don't want to."
Caitlin nodded and rolled her sleeves up and slid the cover off.
Barry nodded and smiled.
"I've never had one," Caitlin said. "I thought..."
"There's nothing wrong with you, Caitlin," Barry said. "I promise."
"I did love Ronnie."
"Not having one doesn't mean you must be aro. I can tell you more about demi if you want, or I have some friends who could tell you more about greyromantic, some of them have marks and some don't, or we can look for other reasons. If you want to look for a reason, you could just say you don't have one and you don't need one, and leave it at that. Who needs some pretty colours to tell them who to love anyway?"
Caitlin smiled and Barry rested his hand on her shoulder.
"Pursuing romantic love is not the point of life. You don't need it if you don't want it. You get to figure out what you want, and it might take a lifetime, but you've got one to take. Frost can take care of herself, and you'll take care of her too. We all will."
"Thank you," Caitlin said.