Chapter Text
take a look past our innocence, take a step back to yesterday
when life would move slower, we would never grow up
all we knew that love was for when we we're older
anything could happen, secretly imagine
they could never tear us apart too young to fall
Our Story - Mako
~*~
Juno is eight when his soul mark finally comes through, the name scrawled across the delicate skin of his inner wrist in blacker-than-black ink. He’s a bit of an early bloomer - most marks don’t show up until the beginning of puberty - but it doesn’t mean much.
Peter Nureyev
The script is almost floral and Juno spends hours days weeks tracing each letter, imagining the person the name belonged to. What were they like? Were they tall? Short? Handsome? Did they live in Oldtown or were they growing up in Hyperion City? Were they older? Are they searching for him?
Juno looks like his mom - all dirty red hair and freckles blending into bronze skin. Would Peter like that? Or would he be embarrassed by someone who looked like they rolled around in the dirt of Oldtown all day.
He hides it from his mom immediately, not wanting her to see the proof that he has someone out there in the galaxy - someone who will love him and stay with him. It seems cruel, what with his dad’s name a faded white scar on his mom’s arm. That and, in the darker part of his soul, he’s scared about what she’d do if she found out.
Juno takes to wearing long sleeves. If the adults noticed they didn’t say anything. Mind, Juno thinks, if they didn’t say anything when he had obvious bruises in the shape of hand prints then maybe he shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t notice a change of clothes.
His friends notice though. Sasha and Mick cornering him one hot summer day and demanding an explanation. He’s the first out of all of them to get a mark and they’re both jealous and happy for him - demanding to know who Peter was and disgruntled when he admits he has no idea.
He shows his baby brother, all of six years old and not quite understanding what it means. Late at night, when they’ve been left alone in the house during one of the worst dust storms, his brother climbs under his covers to get away from the monsters. Juno hasn’t the heart to tell him their mom is probably not going to be back tonight so they don’t have to be scared. At first he’s hesitant to touch the letters, thinking it would hurt as much as the bruises that litter their bodies, but Juno explains - tells tales about what the name means and no, it doesn’t hurt see?
They whisper together in the dark - fantasies slowly morphing to include Peter in their future lives. They would all get out of here, go live in Hyperion City and everyone would be happy. They just needed to wait a little bit longer.
And then, all of a sudden, he doesn’t need to wait at all. Because his baby brother is dead, his sweet baby brother who always smiled and didn’t have a bad bone in his body, and there’s a large part of Juno that dies with him.
He is - was - the oldest. He was supposed to be the protector.
He doesn’t deserve to live. He doesn’t deserve to be the one who survives and gets to grow up and have a soulmate and live happily ever after.
The night after the funeral Juno takes a knife to the mark on his wrist, trying to gouge it from his body. There’s so much blood . It covers everything in red just like that night. Just like that--
He wrenches himself out of the flashback and it’s his own blood he’s covered in - not his brothers. The knife clatters to the floor and he follows, sobbing into the empty house. He can still see the name on his wrist and it’s too much - he drags himself out of the back door and into the dusty bowl of their backyard. The earth here is also red - millions of years of oxidisation refusing to be terraformed.
His brother was never old enough to get his mark. He never knew the name of his soul-mate and someone, somewhere out there, will grow up and receive a white scar and mourn for the rest of their lives. Juno grabs handfuls of the dirt, rubbing it into his wound, trying to cover the dark smudge of Peter’s name at the same time he’s choking on his own rage and grief. He fails.
Sasha and Mick find him before he can bleed out. Sasha’s mom is the local medicine woman so she knows how to keep him alive long enough for Mick to run home. He fights her the entire time, screaming and spitting out hateful words and accusations that he doesn’t remember in the morning.
Sasha’s mom saves his life that night. Not that he’s grateful. He doesn’t even try to explain himself, even when she asks, ducking his head and picking at the bandages wrapped around his arm. It’s a reminder, just as much as the empty bed and the one childish, hand-drawn picture that Juno manages to secret away somewhere safe.
The dirt stays forever embedded, red neophyte tattoos criss-crossing his wrist. Juno can barely look, wrapping a rag around them so he never has to.
On his birthday Sasha and Mick present him with a leather cuff they spent months saving up for. The heavy weight feels like a shackle, dragging at his arm. It feels right and he grows used to it. Always there, never forgotten, and becoming easier to deal with each passing year.
It stays on his wrist for twenty seven years.