Here's my spin on the soulmates/soulmarks trope. If you're new to the concept, the idea is that a person learns they have a soulmate when a soulmark appears- for the older one, when the mate is born, and for the younger, it happens at birth. The mark is the first words they say to each other, marked in each other's script. This part varies from fic to fic, but usually the marks are gold if the mate is alive and silver as they're dead. In this fic, the mark is permanently backlit with a mutant's signature color when powers manifest.

I wrote this a few months ago but still didn't have an idea of how I wanted to lay it out, and tonight, I basically just decided what the hell, and it's going live. The chapters will probably be short, but I have intentions of hitting high (and low) moments of these two finding their way to each other to current 616 happenings. This will be largely canon compliant, but I'm ad-libbing a lot where the comics left holes:)

Anyway, I do hope you enjoy, let me know what you think! I appreciate all feedback, even that of the critical variety.

It'd happened somewhere in his sixth year. A burning, stinging rip, starting at the center of his scrawny little chest, zipping out just under his left nipple, and coming back under that line to finish out in a second.

It wakes him up with a yelp he immediately tamps down into a hiss, hellish eyes darting around his space in hopes that he hadn't awakened anyone else that might be out and about. He enjoys some degree of protection on the streets as one of Fagan's kids, but it's a dicey thing at best, and in his experience, it's better if you don't have to rely on that in the first place.

Satisfied at seeing no immediate threats, he dashes a filthy hand over eyes watered up from the pain, and sniffles, glaring ferociously at the very notion of crying. Crying is bad, noisy business. He'd learned long ago to rein that in, back even before going to Fagan, when he'd lived with the Antiquary. It'd been a different sort of threat he'd faced back then, but still, it'd begun a point that life on the streets had driven home: crying over anything always leads to some bit of unpleasantness or another. Better to chin up, and either run from it and hide, or square off and scrap it out.

He drops his hand over his chest, the burn and sting fading, but still present. He feels a momentary panic that he's actually hurt, that there's blood, that he might have to tell Fagan…

He hiccups, his heart feeling like it's about to crash out of his ribs, and pulls off the thin shirt sweat-plastered to his body, and stares, head rushing.

Two swollen, red welts of what looks like letters he sees on signs and the like, in a scurried chicken-scratch across the left side of his chest. He has no clue what it says, never could figure out what all those letters stood for, but he does know what it is. He's seen them on others, most some shade of gold, and others a faded, pale silver, like Fagan's scrawled along the inside of his wrist. He's heard people talk about theirs, and what they mean.

A soulmark.

It means he's got a soulmate.

He's not sure what that is, exactly, just that there's a person out there with a matching mark (or something? He'd never quite grasped that part, just that it has to do with what you have to say?), and they're supposed to get married and then they get a new family. Both of which sound pretty good to him. He knows getting married means having a party with a lot of tasty food (the church up the way has a lady who always lets him and others have leftovers, so he knows all about that), and getting a new family…

Well, he's always wanted one of those. Imagined having one while trying to fall asleep on a rough night. Clung to the thought of getting one someday during particularly bad moments, when he'd needed something just to get through something else.

A hopeful smile tugs on his too-thin face as he traces a grubby finger over the still tender lines. Someday…?

He puts his shirt back on, despite the sticky heat of a New Orleans summer night, quickly covering up his mark. Not only is it generally a bad plan to run his streets without clothes, but this…

He can't let this show. He knows not everyone has one, and sparking jealousy or resentment isn't a good idea. He surely can't let Fagan see it. He'd learned the hard way that Fagan drinks hard over the slightest reminder of his own mark. And when he drinks, he's mean.

He slips back in his hidey-hole, flattening out on his back with a hand under his head, the other over his mark, and turns his face to the sliver of night sky visible from his perch.

He's got a soulmate.

A future that isn't…here.

He grins wider than he has in a long time, eyes on the stars, and rubs his fingers over the knots and loops forming words he's absolutely going to learn to read one day.

He's got a soulmate.