Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Saitama is Unmarked.

(This truth is a lie.)

Saitama, twelve, lies on his bed. There's a spreading numbness on his stomach. He tugs his shirt up, half-heartedly, and watches as - nothing appears.

It makes sense. What happened today - the scoldings, the bullying, chasing that monster - none of it mattered. Why would it Mark him?

(He thinks there might be a difference between the edges of the numb patch and the rest of his skin. But it's barely noticable. He's probably imagining it.)

"Your eyes are dead and empty, like mine!" the crab-man tells him, and Saitama thinks he's probably right. But being dead inside isn't an excuse for leaving a kid to be harmed, so he fights, tries to protect.

There's a swirl of warmth on his chest when the boy is safe. He looks, later.

Red and white and yellow swirl together dizzyingly, something that isn't a fire, isn't anything, really. He doesn't understand it, but he likes it - likes what it represents.

Heroism.

He wakes with an itching scalp in a pile of hair. A ball of prickly brown lines itches into existence on his neck, smaller than his fingernail.

He doesn't bother trying to understand. It's easier to just accept.

He's strong enough to defeat his opponents easily.

There are patches of numbness over most of his body, now.

One tries to erase the vivid red-yellow-white of his heroism, but though the colours are faded, murky, they don't vanish.

He takes it as a sign that he should continue his hobby, even though the fulfillment it brought him is gone.

It doesn't matter anyway.

"Let me be your disciple!"

He sits in the public baths and waits for Genos to comment on his lack of Marks. It's rare for someone not to have their life drawn out on their skin, but he feels it's pretty understandable - he's just not someone who feels things deeply, he doesn't let things get to him.

He doesn't expect Genos to stare intensely at his chest before tracing the edges of one of the numb patches. "As expected of Saitama-sensei, even your Marks are unique!"

"You can see them?" he asks dumbly.

"Of course! They are distinct from your natural skin tone by half-a-degree!"

Huh.

That's... unexpected.

But it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter that he wasn't fooling himself when he thought there was a difference between the patches and the rest of his skin, but it's... nice? maybe? to have someone who sees them.

And then he explains what they're connected with, what they seem to symbolise (he's bad at symbology, but even he can figure these out) and Genos is sat crying oily tears over him and maybe it's not so good after all.

It's not worth crying over, he tries to explain, not when it doesn't matter anyway, but Genos does that annoying thing where he manages to hear something completely different from what Saitama is saying, and Saitama gives up on the whole thing.

Genos is irritating (he brushes his fingers over the prickly ball on his throat) but whatever, Saitama is good at going with the flow.

And it's not like Genos is going to be around for long, anyway. Saitama can bet that if the cyborg's skin were still there, he'd be coloured pretty intensely; sooner or later, he'll realise how bad Saitama is at - almost everything - and leave.

Genos moves in with him.

Saitama doesn't notice the swirls of colour building on his body for a while. It takes King asking about them for him to even realise they're there.

"So, what do they mean?" King asks in all his social awkwardness, waving a hand at the pastel streaks growing on Saitama's arms.

"Huh?"

"Your Marks."

Saitama looks at his arms, sees them for the first time. He shrugs. "I have no idea. Which game are we playing next?"

Boros leaves the image of a canyon - or a cliff - or maybe it's a mountain-pass?

Saitama never has been able to recognise his own Marks.

(Saitama doesn't understand them, not really. He knows what events or emotions they relate to only through basic deduction - he's never understood his own feelings well enough to map them out on his skin.

It's never been an issue before, but now his skin is slowly brightening with messages that he can't read.

Genos stares at him as if trying to translate every pastel swirl and blotch of darkness.

Saitama wishes him luck.)

The only Mark Saitama can make any sense of is the metallic gold lines down one arm. They obviously mean Genos.

He just doesn't know what they mean about Genos.

At least it doesn't look like he's mad at the kid. (Even when he is.)

"How come the kid's the only one to show up on your skin?" Fubuki grouches.

"Hey, you might be somewhere here, too," Saitama points out, waving a hand at the jumble of colours spreading over his torso.

She just snorts and looks away, the gesture pulling her collar away from her skin, showing the rope-burn Mark on her neck.

Her relationship with her sister sure is messed-up. Not that Saitama cares.

He doesn't think to ask why she wanted to know about his Marks all of a sudden. Not until the day her left sleeve rides up, showing a tiny but very very bright yellow suit on her arm.

Huh.

"Since when are your Marks that obvious?" he asks, and she sputters at him angrily before storming away.

(Genos is silent, scribbling away in yet another book.)

King has a flash of yellow. Saitama shrugs it off; it makes sense, with how often they run into each other.

Mumen Rider has a flash of yellow. That's - oddly flattering, because Mumen Rider really is a hero.

Tatsumaki glowers at him as she makes a point of smearing concealer over a flash of yellow. Saitama blinks at her.

Bang chuckles at him, sliding his own sleeve up to reveal a flash of yellow.

"Is everyone in on some weird joke?" Saitama asks Genos. "Because I keep seeing these yellow Marks on everyone..." He trails off as he sees the yellow suit on Genos' face.

His alarm rings.

Saitama blinks up at the ceiling.

"At least getting woken up from that wasn't disappointing...?" he mumbles to himself.

The dream vanishes from his memory without his ever realising what it meant.

(Saitama has no idea how comforting his friends find the Marks he leaves on them.)

Saitama cannot understand his Marks.

(This truth is not a lie.)

Genos wants to.

(This truth is not a lie.)

Saitama, the Caped Baldy, is no longer Unmarked.

(He never was.)

Chapter Text

He fades in pain, and horror, and the certainty that everyone (including him) is dead or dying.

He wakes to different pain, and limbs of metal, and a doctor's apologies that his Marks could not be replicated on his new form.

"There simply wasn't enough left to recognise them," the doctor (Doctor Kuseno, he will learn) explains. "Of course, now that you are awake, you can describe them for me - and choose an appropriate image for this new change to your life."

He tries and fails to make a fist with his new hand, tries and fails to sneer with his new face.

"No."

His life is over, his Marks from before are meaningless, and as for the mad cyborg - isn't the whole of his new body a Mark of what happened?

He doesn't need any others.

Genos is fifteen when he loses his skin.

Genos is fifteen when he loses his Marks.

Genos is fifteen when he loses his humanity.

(The last is a lie, but he won't understand that for four years.)

Lying in the rubble, planning self-destruction because it's his only chance of winning (bitter at the knowledge that either way he loses his chance to fulfill his purpose and destroy the cyborg that killed his entire family) he can't believe his sight when the monster who proved so unstoppable falls to a single punch. The man who felled it looks jarringly ordinary - except that his skin is nuder than it should be, completely unMarked.

Like me, Genos thinks deliriously.

"Let me be your diciple!"

(He doesn't realise that he means Help Me (doesn't realise how he means it).

He never quite figures out if Saitama-sensei understood his meaning better than he did.)

Sat in the baths, eyes repaired, he sees the truth of his new Sensei's Marks.

"You can see them?"

He thinks it must be a test. (He won't understand for so long how few people look closely enough to see the truth of his new Sensei.) "Of course!"

It hurts to learn what the Marks are (emptiness, the erasure of everything important), hurts the heart he no longer has (Saitama-sensei reminding him that he is human with every drop of oil he cries), and Genos is speechless with admiration when Saitama-sensei explains the murky bleached Mark inside one of his Empty patches. ("Eh, I guess it means heroism or something," is all he says, but for it to withstand the erasure that the Empty patches try to spread over his Sensei - "You are a truly great man!" Genos exclaims, and ignores the baffled, "Not really," that his Sensei responds with.)

This man is worth dedicating his life to, Genos knows unquestionably, even if the man himself is too modest (too Marked) to recognise it.

Genos has to move in with him. Saitama-sensei says he can't teach him, but Genos knows, can feel it deep inside, that Saitama-sensei is teaching him.

(He just doesn't admit that he's teaching him he's still human.)

Genos wonders how many Marks Saitama-sensei would leave on him if he were still human, wonders if the man would recognise his influence in any of them.

And then Saitama-sensei runs curious fingers over the seams that glow yellow in his arms, tells him "Your Marks are pretty cool," and Genos loses his thoughts in the need to vent as much heat as he can. "Cooler than mine," his Sensei continues, and Genos hears the wistful desire for something other than numbness and Emptiness.

"There are some excellent tattooists in City W," he suggests, but Saitama-sensei rejects the suggestion the same way he rejects any offer to alter his baldness.

(Let me help you, Genos means. Let me try to make up for this, let me give you something in return for everything you give me. Saitama doesn't recognise what he means, but that's fine, because neither does Genos.)

A thin line of pale green slowly snakes up Saitama-sensei's back, three shades off the blue of his veins.

A smudge of peach fades into view on his right bicep.

A swirl of mauve gradually appears around his left elbow.

Genos catalogues each Mark, tries to determine their meaning (tries not to read anything into the fact that they only started appearing after he became part of his Sensei's life).

He notices the golden lines before Saitama-sensei does, his Sensei's modesty preventing him from paying close enough attention to himself to see the changes appearing on his skin.

(It's an illusion, surely, that if overlaid on his own arm the Marks would connect with his arm's seams to create the kanji for 'friend'. Saitama-sensei is not the sort whose mind works in such riddles.

He wishes, privately, that it read 'fukushin' instead - but that's ridiculously elaborate (and even Saitama-sensei would be able to recognise it).)

The perverted ninja stands proud, baring an arm Marked with a slash of yellow edged with white. "Saitama! You are my nemesis!"

Genos' jealousy burns in his throat, that this - this worthless criminal should be able to show Saitama-sensei's Mark on his body.

(Saitama-sensei barely notices the Mark, has completely forgotten it by the next time Speed-o-Sound Sonic shows up.

Genos would be happier about that if he didn't see the dark purple triangle on his Sensei's tricep, a perfect match to the Marks on Speed-o-Sound Sonic's face.)

Fubuki is the second person with a Mark Genos can recognise as caused by his Sensei. It's blatant enough that even Saitama-sensei understands it.

Genos starts to keep a separate notebook for people with Marks connected to Saitama-sensei, and what they appear to mean.

(He isn't jealous of (most of) them for having something he can never have. After all, he's the only person whose Mark is clear enough on Saitama-sensei's skin for the man himself to recognise it.)

Genos dreams that he is Marked, again/still/always, and every Mark is caused by Saitamia-sensei.

Genos dreams that the mad cyborg comes to find him, peel his new Marks away and destroy him again.

Genos dreams that Saitama-sensei protects him, as he huddles young and small and fragile and all-too-human.

Genos smiles when he wakes up.

Nothing can beat his Sensei. Not even in Genos' nightmares.

Dr. Kuseno looks at Genos knowingly, and his next torso has a handprint picked out in slightly brighter metal. (It's a perfect match to the mark Sensei left when he pressed a little too hard, worried that they might not reach the doctor in time.)

Saitama-sensei spots it, looks at Genos suspiciously, "Are you making fun of me?"

And Genos can't help but smile that this man, his Sensei, despite his numbness and despite his (rare) obliviousness immediately notices such a subtle change.

"Never, Sensei!"

"Man, don't call me that..." (but Saitama-sensei is smiling faintly as he turns away.)

Saitama-sensei's Marks are meaningless (to him), and Genos no longer has any (except those he chooses), but it doesn't matter at all.

They're both of them still human, Marked or unMarked or fake-Marked, and Genos will give Saitama-sensei everything he'll accept for teaching him this over and over, till even a stubborn cyborg who's spent four years pretending not to be human learns it.

They're both human.