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On the morning of Fitz's very first day of school, his mother stood back to take a look at him and sighed in relief, telling him how lucky it was that his soulmark was so easy to hide.
"It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you, mind," she admonished, wagging a finger at him. "Don't you ever forget that. It doesn't matter what anybody else says; you're my son, and you're worth more than gold. Do you believe me?"
Fitz nodded and hugged his mother tight, relishing the soft words of affection she whispered into his ear. He didn't understand why she was so worried, but he knew for certain that she loved him.
It wasn't until he was nine that he started to understand what the lines on his shoulder meant. Technically, he was considered too young to learn about such things, but then, most nine-year-olds didn't study Shakespeare. Fitz and his mother had learned that he was more than smart—he was an actual verified genius, and he was already years ahead of where he should be in school. That's why, when he sat in the back of class and skimmed through the reading assignment for the day, the word jumped out at him. He was so taken aback that he almost slammed the book shut.
"Now," said Mr. Xavier, pacing in from of the board with two hands clasped behind his back, "who can tell me why it's significant that Viola, also known as Cesario, notices a mark on Duke Orsino's chest?"
Fitz lowered his head, hoping that the confused mumbling from his classmates would drown out his beating heart. This wasn't his best subject, and he rarely got called on, so he held his breath and prayed that Susan would speak out as usual. Fitz breathed out a sigh of relief when her hand shot up and the teacher called her name.
"Is it a soulmark?"
"Yes, Susan," said Mr. Xavier, "very good. Now, soulmarks are a literary device that many authors have used over the years to show that two characters are bound to each other by fate. When a person has a mark that makes up half of a picture, symbol, or word, the person marked with the other half is considered their soulmate. Does anyone know where the idea comes from?"
"Aren't there soulmates in real life?"
Fitz turned to Johnny, who, as usual, didn't wait to be called on. Johnny sat back in his seat as the spark of his comment sent the class ablaze.
"Quiet down, class. Quiet down." Mr. Xavier raised his hands in a very calming gesture, and the buzzing subsided. "Now, there has always been a lot of controversy around soulmates. For a long time, in fact, it was largely believed that they were nothing more than a myth. But as it turns out, they are very real. It's simply that most people with soulmarks tend to hide them. Duke Orsino must trust Cesario enough to allow him to see the soulmark, don't you think? It's not easy for a man to admit that there's only one woman who can ever truly fall in love with him. It would be even harder for the duke to admit that he hopes that woman is Olivia. As for Cesario, who is really Viola, can you imagine how confusing that might be to her? Imagine how she feels the moment she sees the left half of a mask on Orsino's chest, knowing she has the right half on her own chest? She's finally found her soulmate, and he's in love with someone else! It's supposed to be impossible.” Mr. Xavier paused, smirking when he saw the class was spellbound. “Any ideas on why Shakespeare would use a mask as the soulmark?"
Fitz stopped listening at that point, almost feeling that the mark that sat high on the outside of his right shoulder—a design made of lines, letters, and hexagons—was being branded into him. His mother had always told him that his life would be extraordinary, and he was starting to understand exactly what she'd meant. These lines and letters meant that everything would be different for him.
He yearned to know what the soulmark meant, how it was meant have another half even though it seemed complete by itself. His first chemistry classes taught him that it wasn't simply a design—it was a molecule. The "H" was hydrogen, the "N" nitrogen, and it all added up to an amino and an amine. This puzzled him: wasn't it already two halves? How could there be room for anything else?
But by the time he got to advanced chemistry, he was disheartened to learn that the molecule that made up his soul was simply a common protein. Was he that hard, that resistant to change, that ultimately unremarkable?
If that was the destiny his soulmark had in store for him, Fitz wanted nothing of it. Anyone who set his hopes on that promise was a fool anyway, he determined. He would make his way in the world like any unmarked person—free from the chains of a life someone else planned, facing a future overflowing with possibility. Could he outsmart the soulmark? Was he brilliant enough to wipe out the lines completely? This, he would have to discover.
Fitz spent the next few years trying to rise above his little molecule and any limitations it might bring him, spending most of his time focused on his schoolwork. After all, he had no need to worry about girls, like his classmates did. There was only one person in the world who could fall for him, and she could live in India, for all he knew. It was impossible to predict if or when he would ever meet her at all. With a lot of hard work however, he could at least hope that he'd get accepted to SHIELD Academy by the time he turned seventeen.
He was sixteen when he met Jemma Simmons under circumstances he could not predict at all.
"I don't believe you!"
It was more of a scream than an accusation, and it was shrill enough that it made Fitz look up from his textbook and stop in his tracks.
"C'mon, Jessica," a tall, blond student pleaded, "I promise; it's over with her!"
"No," Jessica countered, pointing a pen at him, "once a cheater, always a cheater. How could I have been so stupid? You're probably her soulmate!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he said, with his palms up in front of him, "I'm not anybody's soulmate."
"You are," she said. "You're just afraid to admit it!"
Jessica seemed to still a bit when her boyfriend straightened up to his full height and flashed her a smile that made Fitz's hair stand on end.
"One thing you need to know about me," he said as he loosened his tie, "is that I'm not afraid to admit anything."
Fitz expected a great number of things to happen in that moment. He thought that Jessica might start crying, or even worse, continue screaming. He also worried that her boyfriend might take her in his arms and prove his love with a kiss.
He did not expect the man to strip down in the middle of the square.
And if he had expected it, he might have had the presence of mind to tear his eyes away. Instead he stood there, paralyzed by sheer disbelief.
But, just when his internal screaming reached an unbearable crescendo, a small, thin hand clamped over his eyes, while another gently pushed him downward.
"Wha-?"
"Shh," a voice soothed, and by the time the hand released him from its grasp, he found a pair of brown eyes looking down at him.
When had he decided to sit down on the ground?
"It's okay," the girl said, "y- oh!" She looked down at her hand, which had migrated to his cheek, and immediately withdrew it. "Sorry, I just . . ." She trailed off, blinking at him, and he wondered if she was waiting for him to say something. She shifted from side to side, and it seemed she had no idea what to do with her hands or her flickering eyes. "I was, um, just trying to help. I have to go."
She got up and ran off so quickly that he wasn't sure a human girl could actually move that fast. Was she something else? No, of course she wasn't. It was a shame, though, that she disappeared before he'd been able to thank her.
When he managed to pick himself up, dust himself off, and make his way to the SHIELD Academy entrance exams, he was surprised to find her there, already in the process of taking the test. Her test would have her name written on it, he knew, but he didn't dare sneak any glances that might be misconstrued as cheating. He decided that it didn't matter, since he would likely finish before her and have a chance to catch her on her way out. But when he answered his last question and slammed the pencil down on his desk in triumph, he looked up and found that she was nowhere to be seen. He didn't see her until he set foot on the Academy campus, and even then, it took him a week to learn that she was Jemma Simmons, another two weeks to realize that they were actually in the same chemistry class, and almost a month before he had to the courage to ask the professor to pair them up as lab partners. It was only then, when they were forced to spend time together, that Fitz was able to stumble his way into thanking her. By the end of the semester, he realized that they had actually become friends. Fitz couldn't believe his luck, for not only was she kind, but she was even smarter than he was. Her being a girl only meant that his friends would stop teasing him for being alone, and instead be jealous of him for spending so much time with her. Even better, she specialized in chemistry and knew how to best apply it to the projects they worked on together.
As long as Fitz was with Jemma Simmons, he didn't have to think about his soulmate at all.
Except, of course, when she brought it up.
"Have you heard about SoulMatch?"
Fitz was so startled that he almost banged his head on the heli-cycle. He pushed himself out from under the vehicle and sat up to look at Simmons.
"What are you going on about?"
"It's a new website, Fitz," she said, hugging the newspaper to her chest. "People with soulmarks can get on there and find the person with a matching mark! Isn't it wonderful?"
Fitz simply glared at her before lying down on the creeper and sliding back into his original position. "Is that all?"
"Ugh, Fitz. Do you have any idea how hard it is for people with soulmarks to find each other? This could help a very marginalized group of people. A soulmark used to get a person burned at the stake, you know."
"I know, I know," Fitz replied, grateful that she couldn't see how uncomfortable he was. Having a girl as a lab partner was an advantage, but there were times when—
"Simmons?" Her name had popped out of his mouth the moment the thought came into his head. "This isn't just about romance, is it?"
His discomfort melted into triumph with each second of silence.
"Okay," she finally admitted, "so maybe I want to study them. But Fitz, I just want to understand how it all works, and this could be the first time in history that anyone will have a proper chance! And you know I wouldn't do it without their consent."
"Of course you wouldn't," he said, grinning from ear to ear.
"There is so much about soulmates that we don't know! Are they really only compatible with one person in life, or is it some form of shared delusion? If it is true, why? And why only them, when the vast majority of the human race has a plethora of possible partners to choose from?"
"Nice alliteration," he deadpanned. "I don't know, Simmons, maybe they're just difficult."
He wasn't sure why he said it, but he hoped it didn't give him away. After all, there were many words that people used to describe him, and "difficult" was definitely a common one. Every exasperated groan from Simmons proved that she thought the same, at least on occasion.
"Oh, I can't believe that," she shot back, sounding slightly offended at the idea, "you can't take a whole group of people and label them that way."
"I didn't label them, Simmons," he said, giving a shrug even though she couldn't see it, "nature did."
They argued until they were both blue in the face, but Fitz couldn't stop thinking about the role nature played in his life. It controlled his destiny, really, no matter how much he tried to stop it. The genes in his cells determined his biology, and his biology determined so much. His intelligence, his curly hair, and that blasted mark on his shoulder were all written into the blueprint of his DNA. Was that why he was so terrible at flirting, even when he tried? Even when he managed to find girls at the Academy and then SciOps that weren't too much older than him? Maybe soulmarks were only given to the hopelessly awkward. Maybe all his nerdy friends had them. Simmons, as awkward as she was, had too much social competence to truly understand his position. Or did she? Because by his third year in SHIELD and second year as an agent, he'd pulled her out of more than one potential social disaster. Simmons was as smart as him, probably smarter, but her filter completely disappeared when she got excited, and she got excited quite frequently. She dated, but her terrible taste in men made Fitz feel grateful that he stayed single. So, if she didn't have a soulmark, then the reason behind it was likely something else. After all, as awkward as she was, no one thought of Simmons as difficult.
In fact, there was no one Fitz preferred to spend time with, in the lab or out. She wasn't his soulmate, but they worked exceptionally well together. Was there such thing as a platonic soulmate? Maybe that's what marked people got when they couldn't find their match. As the years he spent with her became five, then eight, when she took him by the hand and dragged him into the flying circus of field work, he told himself that this way a much better way to go, anyway. SHIELD agents didn't have time for romance. And if Simmons didn't have a soulmate, it was easy to pretend that he didn't need one, either.
But when everything fell apart, when Simmons got sick and the cure didn't work, when the alien virus threatened to crash the Bus, and when Simmons looked back at him, threatening to throw herself to the bottom of the ocean, Fitz learned that it wasn't enough. Nothing was. He didn't have enough time with her, they hadn't made enough discoveries together, and the little smile she gave him before falling to her doom was woefully inadequate.
And it wasn't enough when she got pulled out of the ocean and given back to him, or when she leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, or when she called him a hero. He didn't understand it, not even as he watched her leave his bunk. He sat here, feeling the dampness from her lips and the drops of water that had fallen from her hair, and felt something shift in his heart. He didn't like it.
What he didn’t like most was the idea that there was something in the world he didn’t understand, and somehow, he found himself researching soulmarks. Like Jemma had said, there wasn't much to find, but the studies that had been done kept him awake at night. Contrary to his previous belief, marked people did fall in love with, and sometimes marry, people who weren't their soulmates. Some even stayed married until death, though the cases were few. The divorce rate for these kinds of mixed marriages was estimated to be a mind-boggling eighty-five percent. One researcher went so far as to remark that if soulmates were more common, the general divorce rate would likely plummet.
When he ran out of facts, Fitz turned to fiction. This area, at least, was rich with discussion on the matter. Fitz was surprised to discover that soulmates were considered a sub-genre of romance literature. Most plots, he found, were about a person who found their soulmate after they'd been married to someone else. Could that happen to him? Could he fall in love with someone, marry her, and then find himself impossibly drawn to someone else? He watched Jemma as she prepared samples and wondered if anyone could have the pull on him that she did. Because soulmate or not, he was falling for her, and there was nothing he could do about it.
"It'd be nice to have a soulmate," Skye said one day, "don't you think?"
Fitz didn't have to follow her line of sight to know exactly what Skye was thinking. He simply heard the clinking of Ward's fork behind them and tried to figure out the best way to respond to her.
"Sounds right dreadful to me," he muttered between bites of mac and cheese, "knowing that you only have one chance at happiness in life. What if you blow it? Or what if you find the guy, and he's not a good person? You're stuck with that for the rest of your life."
"Fitz," she said, rolling her eyes at him," you're making it sound like it's a curse. Wouldn't it be nice to find someone and know right away that they're the one? You'd never have to worry about it ever again. You'd be safe with them."
It was a good point, and he could see why Skye would see it that way. An unmarked person who'd spent their life shuffled from place to place might see a soulmate as a sanctuary, but to Fitz, it seemed more and more like a prison.
"Okay," he argued, "but what if you never find them? What if they live on the other side of the world? Or if they die before you can meet them?" These were some of Fitz's greatest fears, though they ranked differently depending on the day.
Skye sighed at him, adding an eyeroll for good measure. "Fitz, you really can't believe that the universe could be that cruel."
Of course he didn't. The universe wasn't a person, after all. It didn't hold grudges or enact vengeance. The universe, when all was said and done, was simply nature. It determined the course of his life, but there was no intent behind it at all, good or bad.
And the more he thought about it, continuing the argument inside his head long after Skye was done with it, the more he realized that he'd made all sorts of assumptions that had no real factual basis. Jemma's off-hand remark about some social media site didn't mean that she wasn't marked. Could she have been covering, just like he was? If she was— She was the only person who came close to matching him in intelligence. She was kind, and hard-working, and she got him in a way no one else did. When he was with her, he could be his whole self all at once without worry or fear. Didn't that sound like a soulmate?
But when Fitz found enough courage to look for her mark, he realized that Jemma always wore long-sleeved shirts. Always. And yes, it meant that Jemma was simply following lab safety procedures, but Fitz found it positively infuriating. How was he supposed to confirm or disprove his theory? He couldn't simply request that she take off her top, or dress differently. The only way to know was to ask her, and he couldn't do that.
Of course, if he never asked, he would never find out. And if he never found out, she'd be Schrödinger's cat, both his soulmate and not at the same time. There were certain benefits to that arrangement, especially since it meant that he'd never have to tell her how he felt. And as things outside their relationship got more complicated, as SHIELD fell and Ward turned out to be a bad guy after all, Fitz decided that he'd cling to Jemma whether she was his soulmate or not.
When she got thrown into the ocean again, this time with him in tow, he woke up with an arm broken in two places and a heart that was simply grateful that Jemma was still breathing. She had to be his soulmate, he concluded, and if she wasn't, did it matter? They were both going to die down there. He didn't have to explain his feelings or reveal his disability; he simply had to sit there in the stillness of the storage pod and bask in the sheer bliss of being around her. Still, as she sat next to their small window, looking out into the abyss and somehow finding hope in it, the words almost tumbled out of his lips right there. She cut him off before they did, her brilliant mind finding an escape that he hadn't considered, and the old internal argument started up again. Only one of them could make it out alive, and it obviously had to be her. If they were soulmates, she'd have to live the rest of her life without him. Wasn't it better for her not to know? Or should he save her the anguish of searching for someone she already left behind?
In the end, all words failed him, and all he managed to say was that he loved her.
In the end, it wasn't the end, and he lost her, anyway.
Fitz didn't really understand what desperation was until she left to visit her parents and didn't come back. Soulmates couldn't do that, or they shouldn't, and he found that he couldn't not know. Did she leave because of his short-circuited brain, or was it more than that? Did she figure out that he was marked? Or was she marked, and assumed that he wasn't?
"I don't know what you think you're doing," the spectre of Jemma said as she looked over his shoulder. Was this another thing that marked people did? Hallucinate their soulmate after all was lost?
"I'm just . . . doing some research."
She frowned at him. "You're logging on to SoulMatch. You've never done that before."
"I'm n-not doing it now."
And really, he wasn't. He was simply making a fake profile so he could see if Jemma was on there. Was there really any harm in creating an account for a person who looked like Ward and had a swastika as a soulmark? It could very likely be accurate. The real Ward might have a swastika that wasn't a soulmark at all.
He ran his search and ended up with nothing but tears streaming down his cheeks. His imaginary Jemma put a hand on his shoulder and told him that it wasn't the end of the world, but he knew it was. He didn't have her and he never would. All that was left was for him to move on and find someone else to fall in love with, someone who was more compatible with him than Jemma was.
But he couldn't think of what that someone could be like.
And when he had the courage to look for whomever this person could be, he once again came up empty. He found people with pictures, poems, and blueprints, but none with anything that came close to resembling a molecule.
Maybe he was meant to be alone. He should be alone. If people didn't understand him before, they certainly didn't now. Keeping his distance would only mean that no one could hurt him. But he couldn't keep his distance from Jemma, it seemed, no matter how far away she was. Even in her absence, the spectre of Jemma still pushed and prodded him until he made new friends who didn't judge him based on who he was, and his imaginary friend was so pleased that she said he didn't need her anymore.
So why did Jemma choose that moment to come back?
She wasn't his soulmate; he knew it now. She should have been, but she wasn't, and he couldn't be drawn into her orbit again. He stuck by his new friends and kept her at a distance, and some days, he thought it was working.
Other days, he'd walk past her bunk and hear her crying.
But she left, didn't she? She's the one who decided he was worthless. There was someone out there, someone much better, so it didn't matter that Jemma had honey eyes and perfect lips. This was her choice, and these were her consequences. He searched through SoulMatch, then SoulMatesOnly, then MarkMate, and when he didn't get anywhere, he told Jemma that he wasn't going to be in the lab anymore. That, at least, was progress.
Until just a few hours later, when they had to save Mack, and she'd finished his sentences like she did before. She looked into his eyes with such hope, and his walls came crashing down. Just for a moment, he let her draw him in like she used to, felt himself fill with wonder like he used to, let them fix it like they used to. It was only a dream, but he let himself believe it for just a little while before he packed up his desk and said goodbye. He went through all the soulmark sites and deleted his accounts.
If he wasn't her soulmate, he couldn't make himself be.
If she wasn't his soulmate, he didn't want one.
It was then that he thought about those first memories of his, of his mother tugging on his shirt and making sure the soulmark was covered. Looking back, he knew she did it so no one would think to limit him. To her, he was more than the person he'd find and fall in love with. He was different, but there was nothing wrong with that. Why did he let himself think it was a disability? Why did he forget what she taught him? He was worth more than gold, and he had to make himself believe it. He repeated his mother's words to himself in the garage, in the mirror, and when he found out that Skye had changed, he repeated them to her, too.
Skye wasn't his soulmate, but she understood him now. That's more than Jemma could ever do.
And yet, he found himself returning to the lab. Why? To pour more salt in the wound? But, no, it wasn't always like that. Sometimes, she turned to him with gossip on her tongue and light in her eyes. Sometimes, he would be walking by and hear her silent call for him.
And sometimes, when the world ended yet again, she sat next to him on the floor of the lab and put her hand in his.
He stared at it, bewildered. Did she really mean it, after all this time? After all they'd been through, there they were, shoulder to shoulder. If she had a soulmark like his, they would be touching, her skin providing the answer to his formula, assuming that there was one.
Except, she was on the wrong side.
He didn't know what it meant, only that the roller coaster had taken yet another turn, only that he couldn't let go of her, no matter how hard he tried. When the people calling themselves Real SHIELD took over, he held firm and stood by her side. When she devised a plan to defeat them, he went along with it, and when he left on his quest to get Coulson and retake the Playground, he took a bite of his sandwich and told himself that she was just his friend, nothing more. She was his platonic soulmate after all, and he'd simply been weak enough to fall in love when he wasn't supposed to.
Except, she'd written "Love, Jemma" on the napkin that accompanied the sandwich.
Except, she wanted to kill the man who hurt him.
Except, when they sent him off to war, she took his hand and told him that maybe they had a future together.
And he felt something pulse through him when her eyes met his, like there'd been a noose around his neck, and she'd set him free. He didn't have to see the mark on her to know it was her all along, and when he came back, he didn't want to lose a moment of their new life.
Instead, he lost her again.
But she didn't leave this time, no. She was taken. And wherever she was, he could feel her calling his name.
There were stories about what soulmates did to find each other. There were songs, movies, books, plays, and even poems dating back to the Stone Age. Fitz found the ones he liked best as he trudged along. They inspired him. He was a noble knight, he was a traveling hero, he was a man who would get his soulmate back. And when he found himself in a pile of rubble, clutching her in his arms and hearing his name on her lips, he thought they should sing songs about him. When she lay in a hospital bed, so dehydrated and malnourished that they had to hook her to an IV, he noticed that for the first time, she didn't have long sleeves. She had, of course, when she got taken away, but she'd had to survive in that place on the other side of the rock, ripping those sleeves up in the process. He dared to approach her as she slept, ghosting fingers over her arm until he reached the spot on her that would mirror where his soulmark was. He lifted up the tattered fabric that made up her left sleeve and there it was, black lines forming atoms and bonds, and he almost couldn't believe it. She was his. After all this, she was his.
He was a fool to let her go, and he'd never do it again.
That should be the end, shouldn't it? After all, they were together, they loved each other, and they were best friends. Their soulmarks matched. Why did something feel off? Why did she flinch when he took her hand in his?
Why was she trying to get back to the planet?
Because she wasn't alone, he found out. Because she found another man and a better one, and she was willing to risk it all to get him back.
How many times could one heart break?
But he loved her, so he helped her. His feelings went right back into the box he'd learned to store them in—kicking and screaming, but ultimately contained. He didn't understand how this could happen, but then none of this was supposed to happen to soulmates. She left, he left, she was taken, and then she only pretended to come back. Was he sure that the universe didn't hold grudges? Was it demanding payment for all the blissful years he had at her side?
He kept working because he didn't know what else to do. He didn't care. There was a man left on that planet, and Fitz would save him. If he killed himself in the process, did it matter?
As it turned out, it mattered to Jemma.
"You have to stop," she said, closing the book he was poring over.
"Excuse me?
She looked at him with wide eyes and a pain he didn't understand.
"Stop! Just stop trying to do all the right things, it's too much!"
She grabbed the book and stormed out of the room, and he had to stand there and blink a few times before he could make himself chase after her.
"Where do you get off?"
She looked up at him as he entered the lab, boiling over with a rage that had spent three years festering.
"Are you seriously mad at me?"
Jemma sighed. "I'm mad at myself for roping you into this; it's not fair. And I'm mad that you're so willing to help."
Her hand flew to her forehead, like she was in pain, and he threw out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
"So wha- as opposed to what? What do you expect?"
"I don't know! Get angry! I cannot fathom any way out of this without hurting someone I care about."
"You think that I'm not angry?" He was, and it was such a relief to let it out, to finally finally unwrap the part of himself that he'd been hiding. For the first time since she fell out of that plane, she saw every bit of him. "I'm sick to my stomach, I'm furious, but not at you! 'Cause we're cursed! The bloody cosmos wants us to be apart!"
In the heat of the moment, only Jemma would be able to roll her eyes at him.
"The cosmos doesn't want anything."
But she was wrong, because the universe gave them these marks, the universe gave them a promise, and all they got was heartbreak. It was never supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be together, happy, just like everyone said. She wasn't supposed to find a perfect hero astronaut to replace him with.
"Do you love him?"
The words were like daggers in his heart, but he was done with not knowing.
She stood there, taking deep breaths in and out, and he could tell that she was trying to decide just how much to hurt him.
"I have a soulmark, Fitz," she said. "He doesn't have one. We both knew that . . ." She massaged her temples.
"It doesn't matter," he spat, "I can't live up to him. There's nothing I could ever do."
"You dove through a hole in the universe for me!"
She yelled it at him, but he knew that it wasn't meant to push him away. It was meant to wake him up. And he couldn't hold himself back anymore. He took her in his arms and kissed her, taking one last chance to get what he wanted before it got taken away again. He broke the kiss and stepped back, but she followed him, more gentle than he was, more sure. He had years to imagine what it'd be like to kiss her, but even his big brain couldn't predict the way his heart leapt for her, the way her hands felt on the back of his neck and on his face, the way he never wanted to let go. But he did, because this was their pattern now. They were like the tide, ebbing and flowing, prisoners of the pull of the moon.
"We're cursed," he breathed, and he walked away, but he didn't get far.
"Show me," she said. He stopped cold.
"Show me," she repeated, and he found that he'd lost the power to move. He could feel her coming up behind him, and then there she was, her eyes filled with fire. His fear paralyzed him, unable to grant her wish, so she reached towards his shirt, unbuttoning him without so much as a questioning glance. She went for his right sleeve, pulling it off, revealing the skin underneath. He had an undershirt on, but that didn't stop her from lifting up the fabric like he once did to her, tracing the dark lines that made his mark and pressing her forehead against them.
"I hoped it was you," she breathed.
"Me?"
She answered by pulling him into another kiss, this one like a brand that marked him as hers, and he could only pull her closer, closer, closer. This was how it was supposed to be. This was what it all meant. He offered her the astronaut and she claimed him instead.
"I thought," he huffed, trying to catch his breath, "I mean, you wanted to go back, you wanted—"
"I wanted you." Her fingers traced the collar of his undershirt, going back and forth. "Since the moment we met, I wanted you. I just . . . I always thought the mark would mean the end. I thought I'd fall for someone who wasn't as smart, who wouldn't understand, and I'd have to give it all up. That's why I worked so hard; I thought I was running out of time."
"You wouldn't give up your dreams," he said, still processing it all. "You wouldn't give up the chance to explore and discover, just for some guy."
She shook her head and looked up at him, unwavering. "I don't want to be alone, Fitz. That’s why my mark is a benzene ring and a hydroxyl—it’s a common reactant. It’s meant to change to be a part of something else, and I knew that before I went to that planet, but when I was there . . .” She paused, squeezing her eyes shut. “I had to give up everything for Will. I had to be someone else. And that's how I always thought it'd be when I was a girl, but then . . . Fitz, I don't have to do that with you. You make me more myself than anybody."
He knew what she meant, because he felt the same way. So he kissed her again, and again, feeling freer than he ever had. Did normal people feel like this? Did they feel their soul pour out of their lips and mingle with another's, making something new, something better? She didn't have to love him back, but she did, and he found it in his heart to forgive the cosmos. Because a few months later, they once again sat on the floor, but this time in a hotel room, and this time she was on the right side. He'd shucked off his dress shirt, and her elegant white gown was folded neatly on a chair. They sat there in tank tops, looking at themselves in the full length mirror, and Fitz was amazed at how his soulmark bled into hers, how their lines matched up to make one, perfect molecule: serotonin.
"So," he sighed, "we got married. Now we have a whole week to ourselves. Any plans?"
She answered by drawing him into a kiss, and they were like one molecule now, two atoms in a covalent bond, trapped forever in the orbit of the other. If he could go back in time, would he change it? Or was it better this way? He kissed his best friend, his soulmate, his wife, knowing that he would always find his way back to her, and she would always choose him.
Cursed? No.
Fitz was blessed, beyond all measure, and he thanked the universe for finally letting him see it.