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So I ended up going down a rabbit hole of Soulmark fics i.e. I read all of Ozhawk's Soulmate Shorts (AKA The Crackship Armada) in just a few days (and there are a LOT of them). Anyway, I got inspired to make some Soulmate fics of my own, most especially because every time I read a Soulmate fic, I think of what started the Marks.
I have no idea who came up with the idea of Soulmarks, but credit to them.
This will be the only chapter narrated in an Uatu the Watcher voice.
Prologue: Stephen Strange, The Marker
On one Earth, in the late 1950s, there was one seemingly innocuous couple that changed the fate of not only their universe but the infinite branched realities that started there.
The couple was made up of Christine Palmer, this Earth's first female Chief of Surgery, and one Stephen Strange, a brilliant but unerringly difficult neurosurgeon who would one day become Sorcerer Supreme.
This Stephen Strange, though he lived earlier on the timeline than most others, was like every Stephen Strange of note in the grand scheme of the Multiverse. After an accident destroyed his hands and their ability to do what he'd spent decades training them for, he turned to sorcery to get them back. And like most Stephen Stranges, once he mastered the mystic arts, he never went back to medicine; though this Strange once tried to do just that.
In his anger over the loss of his hands, this Stephen ruined things with his soulmate. The woman he loved beyond all else was pushed aside in his obsession with a cure, left behind while he traveled the world, forgetting his reasons for being extended beyond just his work.
A year later, he returned a new man, diverting his magic to his hands in order to resume his life with Christine, only to find his wife had died in his absence, mere weeks before. A brain aneurysm, of all things, had killed her on her way to work.
There was nothing about her death he could blame himself for—there was no way to scan for a brain aneurysm after all, not in his time, and no symptoms he could have missed before it ruptured. Instead, he blamed himself for his absence; for never realizing how important she was to him; for letting his ego get in the way of his happiness. Of their happiness.
Of hers.
Hers.
That stuck with him the most.
This Stephen, after fumbling a little out of the gate, had known without a doubt that Christine was his soulmate since the day he proposed. Somehow he'd forgotten that; too wrapped up in the pain of losing his hands to see that he still had what mattered most. With all the wondrous new technology invented in their time, her death had still been impossible to prevent. But her unhappiness that past year? That could have been prevented if only he'd had something to remind him in his darkest moments that she was what mattered more than anything else. And they could have had so much more time if something had told them they were meant to be the moment they met so they didn't waste so much time at the start; for between their own uncertainty and the amount of school they'd had in front of them, it had taken them over a decade to commit to the relationship.
.
After his return to Kamar-Taj and ascension to Sorcerer Supreme, he found the answer to his wish in an unassuming Greek spellbook about the Fates. Steven knew he himself had long since lost his chance, but he could still change things for everyone else.
So no one was ever forced to waste their time with the proverbial One trying to ascertain if that's who they were. So no one could ever forget the person who made them complete.
This Stephen Strange, like every Stephen Strange, excelled at devising plans. He knew more about the cosmos than any being on Earth, and he used this knowledge to devise an entirely new spell. One that he could never hope to cast without the aid of multiple Singularities, but as a Master of the Mystic Arts and the Sorcerer Supreme, he located them easily. The time stone was already in his grasp, and it was almost too easy to obtain the Reality stone in London where the sentient rock practically stuck itself inside him. Travel to Morag was slightly more complicated, but with the aid of a relic to supercharge his sling ring, even interstellar travel was not too difficult.
He could not survive, of course, wielding three Infinity Stones, but after the loss of the woman he knew, without doubt, was his soulmate, he didn't care overmuch. They had wasted so much time figuring out what they were to each other that they missed out on just being together. They had let inconsequential things like their work and his injuries tear them apart, and he could give every sentient being in the Universe a concrete reason not to let that happen with their soulbound.
A message to help them recognize their soulmate upon their meeting, written on their skin to make sure they never forgot.
Later, there would be many arguments as to whether the soul-bound existed naturally or if it was part of his sorcery, creating bonds that hadn't existed before. After all, in a world of billions in a galaxy of infinite unknowns, how likely was it, really, to meet one's other half?
In truth, it was a mere probability hex, aided by the chaos magic of the reality stone that made it so common for a person to find their soulmate.
The time stone allowed the spell to know precisely what was said at every meeting of every pair, and it was the time stone that would ensure that the Marking of the bonded would continue forevermore. The Power stone allowed his spell to spread throughout the cosmos, to the entire Universe, and the reality stone created the marks:
The first words their soulmate would ever speak directly to them, written in their soulmate's hand, scrawled on their body like an inborn tattoo.
He survived only long enough to finish the spell before he joined his Christine.
So kind of a dark start, but yeah, this was more or less my headcanon every time I've read a soulmate fic. Such a spell could only be cast due to some pretty intense angst. Apart from the era difference, the WHAT IF in this scenario is really just What if he and Christine had been together and happy at the time of his accident? (And what if she had a brain aneurysm, but I say that it's not impossible in canon, but in the modern era she just had it detected and fixed.)My soulmark rules (all are subject to change if I feel like it) are:
.Soulmarks are on almost everyone but there are a few Unmarked.
.Soulmarks appear at birth if your soulmate is older; if younger, they show up the day the other is born.
.It works the same throughout the universe: first words are written on the skin in whatever language they're spoken, and the alphabet used is based on what written language the person uses, so whoever is Thor's soulmate would have their mark written in runes while his would show English (or whatever) in the Roman alphabet, etc.
.Soulmark "ink" fades away after the soulmate dies, but the writing becomes raised like scar tissue.
.There are platonic and romantic soulmarks. Romantic is red. Platonic is gray.
.Since Dr Strange cast the spell sometime in the 50s, those born before then didn't have one until either he cast it, or until the day their soulmate was born.
If you're into playlists of certain ships, check out my playlists as kittikiki on spotify. I also made one specifically for When it all burns down as a sort of musical storyboard. I also have a winterquake one and a tricksterquake one, a Wanda one, a Jyn and Cassian one, along with most every ship of the Grishaverse.