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Alex has met their soulmate.
Despite what everyone said about soulmates, Alex knew better than to get their hopes up and assume that theirs would be some kind of perfect match for themself. After all, just because someone’s soul matched yours, that didn’t mean that the rest of them did.
Even keeping their expectations low, their match seemed uniquely ill-suited to being their soulmate. A bumbling fool who wasn’t worth their time, Alex decided. It didn’t help that he hadn’t been able to hold a conversation to save his life, was generally close-minded, and that he tried to criticize (criticize!) their murder technique.
As if some kind of two-bit amateur had any right to tell Alex that they were somehow inferior in any way shape or form.
So, with the realization that soulmates weren’t all that they were cracked up to be, Alex killed their soulmate.
Less than a month later, they met Morgan.
— — — — —
Ten facts about Morgan:
- They are simultaneously one of the smartest people Alex knows and also one of the most oblivious. At first, Alex thought that it was a ploy to take them by surprise and execute some kind of dramatic attack against them, but no, Morgan is just like that.
- They are a workaholic. Despite how they have their moments of laziness, they genuinely seem allergic to downtime. Instead of resting between heists they get up to odd hijinks like becoming a magician in Vegas or attempting to rig a pool tournament to win the grand prize.
Alex has had to get very good at creating situations that force them to relax, or just physically picking them up and taking them on vacations.
- They are, quite possibly, the worst person on the planet at killing people. For a villain who can’t even see gore properly (Alex still can’t believe that they see blood as pixels), they don’t have the stomach for violence. Even under duress though, they are exceptionally bad at hitting vitals and just end up making a mess. Luckily, extreme violence is what they have Alex for.
- They have a borderline crippling caffeine dependency. One time, Alex watched them brew a coffee using an energy drink as a base, then they proceeded to add two more espresso shots to it and a scoop of hot chocolate mix. Alex tries to avoid the kitchen in the mornings now when Morgan is making their own coffee instead of asking Alex to summon one for them.
(That coffee maker had been one of their household items that was sentient and eventually turned back into a person. The man who was once the coffee maker lasted less than a day of being a person again before killing himself. Alex is certain that the energy drink monstrosity was part of the reason. This is one of the many things they will never tell Morgan.)
- They are the perfect height to tuck under Alex’s chin while cuddling. This is very important when applied to the snuggle radius.
- Their power, despite being fairly limited, can be used in incredibly versatile ways if they put their mind to it. They tend to only use it to summon Alex or their minions when they need them, but a Morgan on the war path is something both incredibly terrifying and attractive to behold. Unfortunately, they are incredibly squeamish (see fact three) and Alex only witnessed the carnage once.
(Alex will dream about it sometimes. They had to wipe the memory of everyone else who witnessed it so that they would be the only one who remembers how deadly their partner looked.)
- They adapt to even the weirdest shit with a surprising lack of difficulty. Yearly gladiatorial-style death match in space? Old news. Lycanthropy? A weird excuse for going on a walk in the park. A massive bug death machine made to subjugate and assimilate other races in a space war? That’s their kid now. Party hat zombies? Just another Tuesday.
Their adaptability to literally anything is another thing that made Alex wary of them at first. There’s no way a normal person can just accept their life being turned upside down every other day. But Morgan, as always, lives to be an exception to Alex’s rules.
- They are almost embarrassingly sincere and trusting. It has taken some work on Alex’s part to not take advantage of that, at least not all the time. Despite being a world-renowned thief, they don't normally expect bad things from other people. That is probably why they get along with their two nemeses so well, Barnaby and Ohio are also irritatingly straightforward.
That is also probably why nearly all of their exes have been serial killers. They are absurdly good at ignoring red flags, not that Alex is complaining.
- They have a strict set of rules that they follow when it comes to their villainy. They make nearly all of their gadgets themself, and they have weird standards for what is acceptable for them to use. Their death traps can’t be deadly or, god forbid, booby traps. Their ray guns need to have restrictions on them or have a really obvious self destruct button. Smoke bombs can be used on Barnaby and Jim Possible, but not on the Conundrum Corporation because one of them has asthma.
Despite their odd honor code, they don’t ever judge Alex for following a completely different one. Yeah, the whole room of living trophies in the Antarctic Lair wasn’t something that Morgan had liked at all (and even went to sabotage), but they also didn’t do anything about Alex starting a new one. They will occasionally ask Alex to stop killing people, but it never sticks. They don’t truly seem to mind that Alex kills people as much as they truly should. It’s terribly contradicting.
- There is not a single thing about them that Alex does not, somehow, find endearing. See facts one through nine.
— — — — —
“Okay, I keep on trying to tell myself that it doesn’t matter but it does, it does actually matter and I need to know,” Morgan started. “Who is my soulmate? Who is it?”
“Uh, you don’t really have one,” Alex replied.
For a moment, Morgan’s expression filled with a disbelieving kind of grief. Probably not the best way that they could have phrased the news, Alex realized. Learning that even the greatest villain of all time/serial mass murderer had a soulmate but you did not was probably a bit of a shock.
“I don't have a soulmate?” They asked quietly.
Time to clarify, oops.
“No, you have a soul-opponent.”
“What is that? Who is that?”
“Well, it's like a person you’re kind of locked in eternal conflict with,” Alex said. “Basically, if you’re like a hero and villain in a video game series, it would have multiple installments that go forever until the Heat Death of the universe. And it's Barnaby.”
Immediately, Morgan’s expression relaxed into giddy relief.
“Oh! Okay,” they said, a smile stealing its way onto their face. “I can live with that.”
Alex thought that Morgan might be a bit upset by this information, but instead, they seemed elated by the news.
An eternal puzzle rival didn’t seem that cool, but hey, Alex was biased here.
(And no, that had nothing to do with that fact that they couldn’t puzzle solve their way out of a box, much less the death trap-laden mess that was Morgan’s apartment building. It was just easier to teleport into the building.
Shut up.)
— — — — —
“Does it bother you at all that I killed my soulmate?” Alex asked one evening as they were sitting on the couch. A rerun of some period drama was on (not one of Alex’s favorites, but entertaining enough), and Morgan tinkered with some odd miniature bear-trap mechanism that was on their lap.
“Why would it bother me?” They said, without even looking up from their project. “It’s not like it was my soulmate. You kinda kill people all the time.”
“Yeah that’s fair,” Alex agreed.
“As long as this isn't some weird pitch for me to kill my soul rival,” Morgan finally looked up from the tiny screw that they had been messing with. “Because I am not killing Barnaby.”
“I know, I know. He’s on the no-kill list for a reason.”
The reason was at least 50% because of Kotetsu but Morgan didn’t need to know that.
“Okay, good,” Morgan said. “The bonds of eternal puzzle rivalry are very important to me and I need him around for the sequel.”
Alex squashed down the urge to go find Barnaby and choke him out in a decidedly unsexy way. They get that urge a lot.
— — — — —
A secret Alex will never, ever tell Morgan:
They do have a soulmate. A proper, romantic soulmate.
Or at least, they did.
After knowing Morgan for roughly a year, Alex had gotten curious enough to look. They were a hopeless romantic, after all, and while they knew Morgan wasn’t their soulmate they wanted to see who the D-Tier’s fated match was.
They discovered the Barnaby-eternal-puzzle-rival thing but there was a bond beyond that. Honestly, the cultural superstition of the red string of fate wasn’t too far off from how it felt to find a soulmate bond; tug at the end of the fragile thing attached to a soul and you can follow it to its match.
Alex gave Morgan’s soul that little tug and found it, a bond stretching out in a way that was completely different from the odd jigsaw puzzle-like edge to their soul that made it a compliment to Dog Boy’s.
There was someone else.
So they went to go see them. To go see whatever person was Morgan’s soulmate.
The Soulmate was kind. Clever. She was tall and relatively attractive if your standards aren’t supermodels. She had a mischievous streak that didn’t seem malicious. Most importantly, she lived in Brazil so there was no real risk of Morgan meeting her anytime soon.
After watching her on and off for a few days, Alex went home. It wasn’t their problem, really, and The Soulmate could definitely be worse.
(Three months later, Morgan laughed at a bad one-liner that Alex was repeating from their most recent fight. Their face relaxed and their beautiful brown eyes crinkled, and Alex’s breath caught in their chest. It was like all of the weight had fallen off of Morgan’s shoulders as they shook with a full-bodied joy over the world’s stupidest quip.
That night, Alex went back to Brazil and, before The Soulmate could even let out a noise of surprise, the villain slit her throat.
To make sure there was no chance The Soulmate would ever come back, Alex watched with cold eyes as she took her final, gurgling breath. They then grabbed the remaining wisps of the soul escaping from her body and shredded it into metaphorical dust.
They teleported back to the apartment without a speck of blood on them.
Alex couldn’t ever permanently hurt Barnaby, no. But what Morgan didn’t know about a nameless woman they had never met, thousands of miles away, couldn't hurt them.)
— — — — —
They got married, for tax benefits. They adopted Hawk and Morgan became one of the best damn parents in the galaxy. There were death games and musicals. There were multiple amnesia arcs (and falling coconuts).
There was a quiet confession in a hospital room that had come at the wrong place and the wrong time. Then there was the reciprocation of that confession a month later when Alex was finally released from the clutches of the world’s most dramatic hospital staff.
“You know, I think I’ve realized something,” Morgan said, sometime after all of that, in the quiet of their apartment. Hawk was out terrorizing the mice that live in the walls a couple of floors down, so it was just the two of them and the soft hum of machinery that constantly came from Morgan’s room.
“Hm?” Alex had their head perfectly nestled on top of Morgan’s, where they had been watching clock app videos together on Morgan’s phone.
“I think I’m glad I have a soul rival instead of a soulmate,” they said. “It sounds like in other universes that all of those Alexes and Morgans all end up knowing each other too somehow. I mean, there was that one alternate universe Alex that was on a mission to kill all of the alternate universe Me’s, so I think no matter what we always end up around each other.”
That is true. It’s not always romantic but every Alex always finds their Morgan. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it leads to an even more murderous Alex.
Alex likes this universe the best though.
“That’s cheesy as hell,” they said. They dug their chin into the top of Morgan’s head, messing up their hair even more and making them swat at Alex’s arm in indignation.
“I mean it!” Morgan said. “I don’t need a soulmate. I have fate working for me right here.”
Alex thought about a loud-mouthed asshole who only held a knife at a certain angle to get maximum bloodspray. They thought about a woman who fed stray cats and went surfing in Brazil.
“Me too,” they said, giving Morgan a gentle squeeze. “I think this is exactly where we were meant to be.”
— — — — —
They’re not soulmates. They’re not matching puzzle pieces that have come together at last. But sometimes you can say “fuck you” to fate and change things for yourself.
Or maybe those are the unlimited god-like powers.
Either way, they’re happiest in each other’s arms.