this is my scar

She's probably three before she really notices it, eight or nine before she begins to understand what it means and twelve before she truly comes to terms with the weight it carries, the significance of that neat little hexagon with three double sides and three branching lines, sprawled across the inside of her wrist. It's a deep crimson, a captivating color that never goes unnoticed, especially against the pale contrast of her skin. It's also when she's twelve, breezing through AP biology, that she finally connects the literal meaning of those little red lines (something more practical than soul mates and destiny and true love): they form the chemical symbol for dopamine (she's still a little hopeful then, still bright eyed and optimistic-it's a few years before she comes to find the symbol ironic).

Like most children, Caitlin spends her younger years absolutely fascinated by the tattoo, tracing the lines with eager fingers and dreaming wistfully of who might wear its match-the implication of watch that match means changes as she does (a best friend, a boyfriend, until she finally comes to understand what a soul mate really means: a friend and a love and a partner). She builds her understanding gradually, as children tend to, by watching her parents, smiling at the way her mother and father (two blue quill pens) are always happy, laughing and bright and so warm, giving their love to each other as readily as they do her. They weather every storm together and in doing so, shore up their daughter's conviction that one day she and her soul mate will do the same: two crimson chemicals ready to take on the world.

But as she grows, the rest of the world begins to edge in, and slowly the excitement of that little red dopamine symbol begins to wane, becoming as much a cause for concern as it once was for fascination.

The foundations begin to lay themselves out early. Caitlin's barely ten years old when she begins to realize that she is so much more than just 'smart as a whip' as her father likes to say: she is unnaturally bright and years ahead of her age group. So, of course, they remedy that with skipped grades and advanced courses and she becomes the a pre-teen in a world that was not built for her (the material is still too slow, too effortless and the company is both too simple and far too complicated). She moves into AP and college credit classes and it still comes easily but it's interesting at least.

She wishes she could say the same for friendships. Caitlin's too young, too smart and it leaves her alone and isolated.

If her mark were somewhere hidden, or something less vibrant, it might be easier but instead it's so clearly visible that it gives her classmates an easy target, gives them something else to mock. The older girls in her classes, burning with frustration and jealousy, tell her she'll never find her match, that her mark is proof that she'll grow old and gray with chemistry sets instead of a soulmate. As stubborn as she is smart, Caitlin tells them they're wrong, dark eyes blazing and sharp, but when they turn back to the lecture, Caitlin traces the pattern, hidden beneath the top of her table, and tunes out her teachers and she wonders (and she breaks, piece by piece, like electrons being stolen away to create un unstable, unhappy molecule),

Caitlin goes to college at fourteen and everything gets a little bit harder: the science, the students, the soul mate thing. The science at least is a challenge she dives into willingly (enthusiastically, whole heartedly: she's a medical doctor with an emphasis in bioengineering by twenty, adds a degree is chemistry by twenty two).

Helping other people, wading through research, searching for ways to change the world: they give her great distraction and for the first time in her life she is well and truly challenge by what she's doing. Fortunate, probably, because her heart remains otherwise unoccupied and that is a challenge she cannot control-her mark is still bright and blazing, obvious to all and yet no one steps forward baring its twin.

She tries not to be disappointed, focuses on all the good she might do, but all around her, her 'peers' (most half a decade her senior) are delighting in the discovery of so much more than just science: they find their soul mates and their happiness and their lives fall into perfect place. By the time Caitlin is twenty two and finishing the last of her schooling, she begins to give up on finding her soul mate entirely and starts wearing a watch over the sprawling crimson lines. Maybe, she tells herself, it won't hurt so badly if she just thinks no one is stepping forward because they don't realize they're meant to be together.

(It still does hurt, but it becomes much easier to pretend when those precise little lines are no longer staring her in the face.)

Dr. Harrison Wells hires her the day she graduates with her PhD and again it gets a little easier: Caitlin lets herself get so caught up in the whirlwind of moving to Central City and working at S.T.A.R. Labs that for the first time in a long time, she actually does forget to think about her soul mate mark and who might likewise wear it. (That wears away of course, so she tells herself that maybe the person she's looking for is somewhere here, just waiting to be run into and that her new job and the move are all steps toward the destiny she's simply lived too far from until now). It helps for a little while, buoys some distant faith.

About a year into her new life, her new job, her (slowly deflating) newfound optimism, Dr. Wells calls together a special team for a special project: his particle accelerator, the culmination of his vision (a vision he'd thrown himself into when a beautiful woman with a golden atom across her should blade left him of whatever waits on the other side of this world-something everyone knows but no one mentions). He explains their refocus, that they will be making new hires for this specific project and tasks them with beginning to research for their individual duties within the overview of this heady new undertaking.

Excited, Caitlin does what she always does and throws herself into her work, researching and planning and prepping. It takes six months of interviews, team meetings and reading upon article before they really start the project but she's fascinated and busy and largely content. Working with this new, smaller group (which is slowly getting bigger as time goes by), she finally begins to feel like she fits in, like she belongs to something that's bigger than herself and she thinks, maybe, it's a little bit like what it must feel like to have a soul mate. She's actually making friends, real friends like Cisco Ramon who is also too young for the degrees that follow his name, and for the first time in her life she begins to think that it's okay if science really is her soul mate: if she can have science and these people, this purpose, that might just be enough.

She meets Ronnie Raymond the day the particle accelerator team moves into the lower part of the labs and although she doesn't know it, everything starts to change.

Ronnie is handsome and he smiles constantly. Like so many at the lab, he's too young for his job (engineer) but he's still two years old tan she is and he cracks jokes like it's his mission to keep everyone from getting to serious about the biggest scientific breakthrough in living history.

Caitlin doesn't dislike him at all but she also doesn't begin to like him immediately either-he's bolder and louder than she's ever dreamed of being, but he's also thoughtful and intelligent and once he befriends Cisco, she finds herself dragged along for the ride.

It isn't hard to start falling for him after that: he pushes her in ways people have never done before (kindly, eagerly, with a sparkle in his eye and a smile on his lips, always egging but never taunting, calling on her stubborn side to meet his every challenge). It doesn't hurt that those big grins and casual touches tell her that Ronnie is falling for her too (her assurance bolstered by Cisco, who drops increasingly ridiculous hints to them nth until Ronnie finally 'mans up' and 'asks her out already'). He's surprisingly shy when he does it, hesitant in a way she's never seen, and it's that more than anything that has her stumbling out a 'yes' around the smile she wears.

Their first date is at the natural history museum. Ronnie takes her there before dinner and they spend an entire afternoon winding through the exhibits, talking about whatever comes to mind. By the time they make it to dinner, Caitlin finds her eye sweeping every inch of exposed skin she can find, hoping to catch a glimpse of dark red (she leaves a bracelet over her own tattoo, equal parts fear and habit while telling herself it doesn't really matter; who cares about theoretically soul mates anyway?) She doesn't see so much as a hint of a line, but she knows not everyone's marks are visible-Cisco's jumble of dusty orange concentric circles are on his shoulder blade after all.

As it turns out, Ronnie doesn't care about theoretically soul mates and Caitlin discovers this a few weeks later, sprawled against eh dark gray sheets of his bed. Her fingers trace the royal blue cog that dominates his left pectoral, the dissonance building against each beat of her heart as she stares at the red of her wrist that is so very far from a match. It's a hollow feeling, like her heart is about to drop out from beneath her, and Ronnie doesn't noticed until her breathing catches. It doesn't take long for him to understand what's wrong, but he just smiles that way he always does, easy and bright and carefree in a way Caitlin has never been, twisting their fingers together and tracing a thumb against the inside of her wrist. "So what?" and then he kisses her mark, unrepentant and tender.

He spends the rest of the day telling her it doesn't matter and the next year proving it to her (he's an engineer, he says: he believes what he sees and what he builds, with his own two hands).

When Ronnie proposes, on the eve of their first anniversary, he tells her that he loves her because he chose her, because she chose him, because they've built what they have together rather than letting fate do it for them. Caitlin loves him so much that she can't even get a 'yes' around her happy tears, so she kisses him instead, in the middle of the museum, and she doesn't think twice about who might wear a crimson chemical against their skin.

Until, of course, everything goes wrong and, in the midst of all that chaos, she finds him: twelve deep red, perfect little lines arranged in a hexagon with a tail and three double sides that set a knife against her heart.

This main fic will be three parts long. Part II will focus on Barry and be about the same length: it should be out on Tuesday sometime. Part III, which will be published on Thursday or Friday (school life pending) will be much longer and focus on 7 key scenes bringing them together. Everything is already written, so minus a little final editing, there should be no delays.

Take Care & Best Wishes,

AOR