Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You make me glow,
But I cover up, won't let it show
So I'm putting my defenses up
Cause I don't want to fall in love
If I ever did that,
I think I'd have a heart attack.”
Heart Attack by Demi Lovato

Arabella

Arabella Payne held her infant son in her arms and stroked his tiny head. The midwife was still bustling about, but the sheets and her nightgown had already been changed to crisp, clean white, free from the blotchy red stains of childbirth. The little boy was her fifth child, but the experience didn’t get any less flabbergasting. The tiny person in her arms was so perfect and fragile. It almost seemed cruel to use the silver knife to make a little knick to the skin between his left thumb and index fingers.

The little boy let out a piercing wail at the sudden, unexpected pain, even as she soothed him and wrapped the injury in clean white cotton.

His first injury. The place where his soulmate would see the glowing evidence of her child’s soul.

“It’s alright, Edwin,” she soothed. “You’re alright, darling. I’m here.”

Edwin didn’t have a glowing place on his skin yet, but that was alright. His soulmate likely hadn’t been born yet, or at least hadn’t yet had an injury that drew blood. She imagined some little girl in a pram somewhere waving a chubby infant fist, newly glowing with the bright white light of an infant’s soul.

She looked at her shin where her own mark glowed with a warm yellow glow that grew brighter as her husband entered the room and sat on the edge of the bed. Arabella knew that she was lucky to have found her soulmate at all, let alone to find him so appropriate in terms of social status and situation. She dared to hope for the same fate for her children. She had married down slightly, according to the gossips, but neither Arabella or Albert cared a bit. Their very souls called out to one another.

Albert had followed the glowing mark (very politely situated on the back of his hand) to her when they were younger. She had to make him wait on the other side of a screen while she hiked up her skirts and rolled down her stocking to check the inconveniently-located mark on her leg. It was one of the reasons she was so insistent about being the one to choose the locations of all her children’s first cuts. Arabella felt that hands were best— convenient to look at and notice, but easily covered by gloves for modesty’s sake.

It was falling out of fashion these days. Many mothers thought that they ought to let fate decide the location of soulmarks. Arabella thought that they would change their tunes if they had to halfway undress every time they wished to check on their soulmark.

She couldn't control where the marks showed up on her children’s bodies, of course. That was dependent on where their soulmates received their first cuts. Little Bertie’s mark had shown almost as soon as he was born, blooming bright and pink-ish white on his upper arm. Peter’s mark had come in when he was two, very sensibly located just above the wrist. Helen had been born with a strong green glow on her chest above her heart. It was a traditional location, even if Arabella didn’t think much of its practicality. Henry hadn’t had one by the time he’d breathed his last breath just two days after his birth. Arabella still wasn’t sure if that was a mercy or not.

Only time would tell where Edwin’s would be.

Makali

The doctors were muttering over Makali’s baby. They’d told her it was a boy. She could hear him crying out for her. She wanted him on her chest. She wanted her baby.

She couldn't get the words out.

It had been a difficult birth. The midwives had changed out halfway through and she was fairly certain that Paul had gone home at some point. The doctors had come in with forceps eventually. It was all a bit of a blur already.

The heartwrenching wailing continued as a nurse wrapped him tightly in a blue hospital blanket and delivered him safely into Makali’s arms.

She looked down into her baby’s face for the first time. It was still screwed up and red from screaming for his mother.

“Hush now, little one,” Makali whispered to her infant son, “I have you now, beta. Mummy’s got you.”

She bounced the little bundle until he calmed and opened his big brown eyes. He looked up at Makali like she was the most important person in the world. She wasn’t sure why that broke her heart a little bit.

“Mrs. Rowland?” the nurse said as if it were a question. Makali did not look up from her son’s face. “Your son was born with a soulmark.”

That did cause her to look up at the nurse.

“Really? Where?” she asked wondering if this was the reason that the doctors had kept him across the room for so long.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Rowland,” the nurse said, confusing Makali further. “It’s a deadmark.”

Makali looked down at her son—her perfect baby boy—already marred by heartbreak and pain. Not even an hour old and already he’d lost his soulmate. Whoever her son’s soulmate had been, they were already dead.

Slowly, she unwrapped the swaddle and inspected her son’s hands. It wasn’t hard to find. There, across the bridge between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, was his mark. Makali had seen so many marks in her life, glowing patches caught beneath the skin of people that supposedly reflected the souls of their heart’s truest match. Her own mark pulsed a soft, warm red on the top of her left foot. She’d seen deadmatches too. People who had lost their soulmates had patches that looked like old scars. Sometimes grey, sometimes pink or white, always tragic to look at. They didn’t glow anymore, not after the soul in question had moved on to another life.

The mark on her son’s hand wasn’t like that.

His skin was black and singed, shot through with burning cracks of orange-white light. It looked like semi-cooled lava on his skin. As she watched, the mark shifted and split, cracking open a new line of angry light.

“What does this mean?” she asked, looking up at the nurse.

The nurse just shook her head. No one had any answers.

They called it a deadmatch on the birth certificate. No one knew what else to call it.

Her son’s first cut was to the skin on his hand by the doctors who had delivered him, taking a sample of the tissue for study. It turned flat and grey the moment it was separated from his body.

Edwin

Edwin didn’t know how to classify the thing that was chasing him. Demons didn’t usually like to give out their names. Sa’al had been an exception. In retrospect, he’d allowed Edwin a fair bit of autonomy. Enough that Edwin had a decent understanding of Hell and the Lesser Key of Solomon by the time Sa’al had lost the possession of Edwin’s soul in a poker game. He’d seemed fairly contrite at the time, not that it mattered overly much. The second demon had been much worse. That’s when Edwin decided to get more scientific about his escape attempts. This… thing, whatever it was, was worse still.

Edwin heard a misery wraith’s breathless scream nearby and wedged himself a little more firmly into the corner. It wasn’t a permanent solution. Edwin knew that. Curling into the smallest ball he could manage and hiding in a corner would only work for so long. The spider-creature would find him. It always found him.

But at least now, for this moment, Edwin could rest.

In his mind, Edwin sketched out the hallways of the Dollhouse. He mapped the corridors of Avarice and Gluttony in his mind’s eye, considering the paths taken and untaken, deciding which roads to try next. He had a notebook hidden away a few corridors over and, when he felt strong enough, he slowly uncurled himself and walked as quietly as possible to the hiding space. The notebook itself had been a miracle to find in one of the offshoots of Avarice. It had taken him five failed attempts to even get it back to the Dollhouse. Edwin didn’t have the wherewithal to go back for pens and ink. It always felt a little too much like giving up to go backwards in hell, even if he knew that, logically, he needed to be able to plan in order for any kind of escape to be successful.

A snapped finger bone was enough of a pen for his purposes. And blood was a surprisingly effective and easily available ink.

The pain of driving the bone shard into the flesh of his left hand barely even registered as pain after all this time. Quickly, he began sketching the route he’d taken last, noting the room layouts and the types of souls there. He kept an ear out for any scuttling or wailing that might mean he needed to hide the notebook and prepare to be ripped apart, that was the only reason he could give for not noticing the slow increase in light.

When he did finally notice, he dropped both bone and notebook and stared, dumbstruck at the skin of his left hand.

Edwin’s mother had always told him that he’d know his soulmate not only by the glow, but because their mark would be on their hand between their thumb and index finger. Now that very spot was glowing with a soft blue light on his own hand.

As Edwin watched, the mark glowed brighter for a moment, then dimmed, then brightened again, swimming like sunlight streaming through water.

Somewhere to his left, Edwin heard a misery wraith scream. With a start, Edwin came back to himself. He hid away the notebook and bone, then found a corner to curl up into. By the time he finally had a chance to inspect the light on his hand again, a strange bubble seemed to have formed in his chest. Mentally, Edwin allowed himself a moment to poke at the bubble of emotion that felt so tangible that it seemed to be blocking his airway somewhat. It took him an embarrassingly long time to identify it.

Hope.

Hope, sparked by this little light in his palm. A tiny tether to the humanity that Edwin felt he’d left behind so long ago. Had his soulmate only just been born? How long had it been? If Edwin hadn’t been taken to hell, would he have been able to meet this tiny person? Though most soulmates were romantic in nature, not all were. Perhaps it was supposed to be his fate to guide this young soul. Or perhaps no time at all had passed in the real world. Perhaps this was the soul that was meant to be his wife.

Perhaps it was the soul of a young man that Edwin would learn to love more than life itself.

Edwin tipped himself to the side and curled up on the filthy floor of the dollhouse. He curled around the light and allowed himself to imagine the life he might have had. He couldn’t stay for long. Never stay in one place for long. But for now, he could rest and let the tears slip out for the love a soul he would never know.

Charles

Charles knew the snap of a belt against his skin as well as he knew his own soulmark. It never made it any easier.

He’d shown his soulmark to someone at school. Charles had thought that if Clarissa could see the mark, she’d understand that not all soulmarks were the same. That they could change over time, so why be so attached to them? Thought that she might look differently at her own mark that glowed a steady, angry red. Thought that maybe she’d want to go out with him.

It hadn’t worked out that way.

She’d told a teacher, who had told the headmistress, who had had the school nurse look at Charles’ mark. She didn't know what to say. No one did.

Officially, Charles had a deadmark, the scar of a soulmate that had died before he’d even been born. Unofficially, no one quite knew what his soulmark was. It didn’t look anything like the other soulmarks Charles had seen. Soulmarks were supposed to glow. They weren’t supposed to be black. Even people with murderers for soulmates didn’t look like this.

The closest thing Charles had found to his soulmark was a color photograph in his science textbook of a cooling volcano. The charred black bits shot through with cracks of bright red lava. Only instead of red lava, the light shone through the black bits on his hand with a clear, blue light so bright it was almost painful to look at.

On one hand, Charles didn’t really think it mattered. Plenty of people never met their soulmates, or met them but ended up with other people for one reason or another. Or maybe he was supposed to help out his soulmate somehow, make their soul a little clearer or something. It had already changed from orange to blue light since he was little. Yeah, the mark was weird, but it wasn’t that crazy.

On the other hand, Charles had spent so many nights curled up in bed, tracing the lines of his soulmark. Every so often a new crack would appear, split through the black sections of skin with a new, vibrant line of light. When he was little, Charles used to think that one day, there would be so many cracks that the black would disappear altogether, but that never seemed to happen. The black spots were never outweighed by the blue.

Clarissa had screamed when she’d seen it. That’s what caused the call home, really. That was the only thing that had changed.

Charles flinched as the belt came down again.

Words were coming out without his conscious approval.

I’m sorry. I’ll make it better. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

“No one will ever want you with a deadmatch,” Charles’ father said, letting the belt fall away.

Charles didn’t ask if it was really a deadmatch. No one appreciated that. He could hear his mother taking deep, shuddering breaths from the top of the stairs. She was crying. God, could Charles ever stop screwing up?

If he’d only kept his hand wrapped up, none of this would have happened.

It was considered old fashioned to specifically cover your soulmark these days. Many people wore them with bright pride, waiting for the day it would glow brighter and lead them to their perfect match. When people asked, Charles and his mum said it was an Indian tradition to keep it covered. It wasn’t true, but it usually derailed the questioning.

After his parents had left, in the dark of his basement room, Charles looked at the mark on his palm. He rubbed the thumb of his free hand over the little lines of light. He wondered, not for the first time, what kind of soul it represented. The bright blue light looked like the kind of light an angel would give off. The kind of light babies had, or people who had never done anything bad in their lives. But it was all mottled by the black char that defied explanation.

As he watched, another crack appeared. A violent split of too-bright light. Charles rubbed his thumb over it.

“It’s alright,” he told the mark, even though it didn’t make any sense. “I’m here, you’re okay.”

Edwin

Edwin screwed his eyes shut. Across the room, the spider monster was still ripping apart his last body. He could hear the snap as ribs cracked under its jaws. He forced himself up to his feet and walked silently back toward the exit. He’d been close that time. He’d made it all the way to Limbo again. He’d tried to help someone out with him. It was a stupid idea, Edwin had no idea if the next door actually would take him out of hell, or if the staircase was just another step in the journey. Sometimes he wondered if even this was a part of Hell’s torment. If perhaps the hope of escape was only there to make it more painful each time he got so close.

But what other choice was there? He could give up, Edwin supposed. He could resign himself to an eternity of being broken apart over and over with no hope of escape. He had given up at one point and let the misery wraiths feed on his anguish for some unknown span of time. He'd almost been grateful for the spider's jaws that time. It had snapped him out of his hopelessness at least.

The running felt like a much better option, even if it quite literally tore him open again with every failure.

He glanced down at his palm. The soulmark had settled over the years into a warm, rich, red. Not the angry, painful red of blood that dominated his existence in Hell. The mark glowed like baked terracotta tiles or a brick hearth. It was the red of warmth and home.

Edwin didn’t know what that might mean about his soulmate, but it gave him strength to know that somewhere, there was a soul attached to his own that was thriving. He believed that his soulmate would want him to get out of hell. Even if they could never meet, that warm soul would want Edwin to be safe.

Edwin very purposefully did not think about how his own soul must appear. He had no frame of reference. How would a soul look on someone's skin after it had been torn apart as many times as Edwin’s had?

Edwin stopped at his hiding spot and made a new note about Limbo there before tucking the notebook into his waistband. He’d discovered recently that he could carry the book with him. Apparently, it had been in the wall so long that it returned there every time Edwin was caught. So now his notes were portable. That was nice. Then he set out for the exit and the hole he had clawed through the wall into Gluttony.

Charles

St. Hilarion’s was old fashioned. Everyone covered their soulmarks here. Even Davy, who had his on his face, had to wear a plaster over it every day. No one there ever commented on the layers of wrapping Charles kept over his soulmark. He’d had to add more layers lately as the light got brighter. Supposedly that meant that Charles’ soulmate was getting closer He’d covertly tried to figure out if it got brighter around any of the female teachers or the nurse and (in a moment of desperation) even the other boys. Charles couldn’t tell the difference. He just added some more layers of wrapping and tried not to think about it.

Edwin

Edwin reached the top of the stairs and shouldered his way through the door, only to stumble out into the very basement where he had been sacrificed.

Perhaps it was childish, but the first thing he did was run home. It was a long way, but Edwin was used to running. He didn’t even get there before he realized how wrong everything was.

The first thing he noticed were the roads, all paved with black. Then the automobiles. They were everywhere, clogging the roadways without a horse to be seen. People dressed differently too. Women wore trousers and their hair loose and men walked about in nothing but undershirts. And no one so much as looked as Edwin.

It didn’t take him long to realize that he wasn’t the same as he’d been either. He met enough ghosts to realize that he was one. He learned how to phase through walls, how to clothe himself in the uniform with which he was familiar. He added gloves to hide his new soulmark. He checked on his family members, only to find them all in the ground and no longer lingering. He learned about the blue and red lights and how to avoid Death. He learned that it was 1989 and that the world had changed more in the intervening 73 years than in the century before he’d been born.

When he ran out of things he could think to do, he went back to St. Hilarion’s and explored the hallways. Perhaps he haunted them. After so many years, many things were different, but some things never changed.

He watched some boys beating a young man with brown skin and wondered if should linger and help the boy in case he passed over. Then there was another boy. He physically pulled off the bullies and kept them away from the boy on the ground. Edwin felt a spark of hope in his chest. But then the bullies shifted their ire onto the new boy. They chased him into a February-cold lake and threw rocks as they laughed.

The boy ran away from his tormentors and Edwin followed, determined to find a way to help, to ensure that this boy who fought against the bullies would not find himself alone. The boy retreated to an attic space and began stripping off his soaking outer layers. Edwin removed his gloves, wondering if his spectral clothing would offer any warmth, only to see his soulmark.

It was glowing brighter than Edwin had ever seen, pulsing with a rich, warm light that illuminated Edwin’s body but nothing else in the space. He took a step closer to the shivering boy who was now digging dusty blankets out of a trunk. The light glowed even brighter, though it didn’t show on the boy’s back.

This was his soulmate. This vibrant, living boy was the owner of the terracotta soul that had so comforted Edwin in Hell.

Edwin felt his stomach sink.

He turned and phased through the door, hurrying down the stairs in search of anything, anyone who could help the boy in the attic. There was no one and nothing. Eventually, Edwin found a lantern left unattended in the garden and took it, hoping that it might provide some sort of warmth for his soulmate. He took a moment to tug back on his gloves, if only to make himself feel more composed, before he stepped through the door and found that his soulmate could see him.

Edwin knew then that it was only a matter of time. There was nothing he could do. This boy, Charles, his soulmate, would die and there was nothing Edwin could do about it.

All he could do was stay. Keep his soulmate company for whatever scant time they got to spend together. Edwin considered telling Charles. But it seemed too cruel. What could he even say?

Hello. I have the warm proof of your soul on my hand. I am dead. No, I cannot move on with you. I must choose between an eternity of torture in Hell and an eternity on earth has a transient spirit. I know you probably have a wonderful afterlife ahead of you, but could I interest you in staying on earth as a shadow of your former self? I’d quite like to spend more time with you.

Not bloody likely.

As the hours wore on, Edwin began to suspect an even sadder fate. Charles kept his soulmark covered, but he talked about kissing and girls with an ease that Edwin had never possessed. Edwin began to suspect that his bond was a one-way kind of connection. Charles may be the person most suited for Edwin, but Edwin was not the one meant for Charles. Because even if Charles did show an interest in boys, Edwin was dead. If his mark showed up on anyone’s skin, it would be an unremarkable scar. A scar that no one would bother to hide, let alone with the layers of fabric that Charles kept wrapped around his left hand. So Edwin kept his gloves on and said nothing. Instead, he read aloud as Charles’ body stopped shivering violently and he slipped away into sleep.

Edwin resisted the urge to peak under his glove, to watch the glow fade away from his skin. It was more important to keep Charles comfortable. The glow would fade whether or not he was looking at it. He could mourn its loss later.

Then Charles’ ghost stood before him. Edwin’s heart broke a bit to see him like this. He was strong and sure, standing on his own two feet with his expression so gentle and open. Edwin tried to commit it to memory. Tried to soak up enough of this boy to last him an eternity. It wasn’t possible. It only made him ache more.

He explained why he hadn’t said anything. Charles forgave him as easy as breathing. Said he’d made the right choice. Edwin wondered what he would say if he knew the rest.

“I sincerely wish we could have been friends for longer,” Edwin said, steeling himself and shoving down the pieces of his heart that threatened to choke him. “But Death will come for you now. You should go with her when she arrives.”

It felt like swallowing glass, but it was the truth. Charles was so lovely and good. He should go on to his afterlife. His soul deserved peace, even if Edwin couldn’t go with him.

“Well I’m not ready, am I?” Charles argued.

Edwin turned around. What a silly thing to say. No one was ready for death, certainly not at 16. What could it matter if you were ready or not?

“I don’t want to go somewhere else yet,” Charles continued, oblivious to the cascade of Edwin’s thoughts. “What if I stay here for a bit, with you, instead?”

“Then you will always be running from her,” Edwin tried to explain. Charles did not look deterred in the least.

“Also, I’m not good with other people, and I only just came back to this school after escaping Hell,” There, that ought to do it. No one would want to spend time with a hell-bound boy. Charles would understand the need to move on now. “So I’m out of practice to be perfectly frank. So when the blue light comes, you stay and I go.”

He turned to leave, aware of the ticking clock of Charles’ upcoming soul collection.

“Well I’m aces with other people,” Charles said a bit more loudly, settling into a confident swagger that Edwin had not yet seen from him. God, he wanted to see more. “Pretty chuffed you got out of Hell, mate. That sounds hard. Nice job.”

Edwin had to turn back around and look him in the eyes. It was preposterous. Insane. Did he have an insane person for a soulmate?

“That is not how you make decisions,” Edwin said, attempting to talk some sense into his categorically mental soulmate, “based on whatever you happen to be feeling in the moment.”

“It’s how I lived my life,” Charles said with a shrug. “It doesn’t seem all that different now.”

Charles looked down at his own dead body. Edwin wondered how that would feel. He never got to see his own body. He wasn’t entirely sure that his body had even been left behind or if he’d been entirely subsumed into Hell.

“Looks like you’re stuck with me,” Charles said with a sly little grin.

Edwin felt a heart he no longer had constrict in his chest. He couldn’t ask Charles to stay. It was too selfish to even consider. But he hadn’t asked. Charles had offered. Was more or less insisting.

So Edwin took a deep breath, took Charles’ hand in his own, and they ran.

Charles

They fell into detective work quickly. Less than a year after Charles’ death, they founded the Dead Boy Detective Agency.

Charles asked once, in a quiet moment, if Edwin always kept his soulmark covered. Edwin just said “yes” and Charles wasn’t brave enough to continue that line of questioning. It could too easily turn back around to Charles’ soul mark. Charles liked Edwin. He liked how tenacious and clever he was, how he could be scathing and impatient, but he was so fundamentally good and kind to those around him. Charles wasn’t sure if he could bear it if Edwin’s opinion of him dropped because of his messed up soulmark.

Charles knew on some level, that it wasn’t his fault that his soulmate had such a weird, messed up soul. But 16 years of people treating him differently left their mark. He couldn't quite believe that Edwin wouldn’t judge him for it, even though it was far more likely that Edwin would find it far too interesting and want to investigate.

They never brought up their soulmarks, not even when they helped a ghost reach out to his still-living lover. Not even when they watched that ghost pass on and the glow fade from the partner’s skin, settling into the pale pink of old scar tissue. The living man cried for hours, clutching tightly to a picture of the man they knew as a waif-thin ghost, but in the picture, the man was hale and healthy looking. He looked like a living, breathing man with passions and wants and life. A disease had made one half of the pair waste away and dulled their connection into scar tissue.

He and Edwin didn’t talk about it, but Charles went up the roof after that case.

He wondered what his soulmate thought. He didn’t think they were dead anymore. He knew now that ghosts kept their soulmarks. They only faded once someone moved on. He wondered how many people were still harboring hope for soulmates who wandered the world as ghosts.

Was his soulmate still waiting for him? Did they know Charles was dead? Did lingering on as a ghost give them false hope that they would meet Charles someday? Would the mark even glow now if they got close? Would Charles even notice if it did, always hiding it away under a conjured covering?

In the sunlight, he unwrapped his hand for the first time in years. It had changed, but it was always changing, so that wasn’t so unusual. There were fewer cracks now, but the ones that were there were thicker, stronger somehow, still in that clear blue-white light. Charles allowed himself to wonder about her for the first time in many years. What must she have endured, how must her soul have atrophied for Charles’ soulmark to look like this? Was it even a she?

Charles’ mind shied from the thought.

It probably didn’t even matter. It wasn’t like they would ever meet.

Looking at his mark in the bright sunlight, he noticed for the first time that it wasn’t really black in the dull, non-glowing places. In direct sunlight, Charles could see that it was actually a deep, bottomless blue dotted with little flecks of white, like the night sky. Had it always been that way? Had he just never really looked at it in the light of day? Or was this new as well? Was his soulmate healing? Was that healing taking place in their soul reflected on Charles’ skin?

He felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.

He was stupidly, selfishly happy that he was still here. That he lingered on and got to see this, the beauty of his soulmate’s soul cupped in Charles’ palm.

Carefully, he cradled his left palm close to his chest.

“I’m so proud of you,” he whispered as the first few tears broke free and slid down his cheeks. “I hope you know how much you’re loved.”

Edwin

The girl sleeping on their sofa was no longer possessed by a demon and therefore should be out of their hair, in Edwin’s opinion. It had nothing to do with the fact that her soulmark was vibrant and unignorable once she’d taken off her coat. The mark was a shifting kaleidoscope of colors that covered her right arm, nearly from elbow to wrist. It was bright and obvious and very distracting.

Edwin tugged self-consciously on the edges of his gloves, making sure that they were firmly in place.

“Come on, Edwin,” Charles argued, turning his wide dark eyes toward him in that way that made Edwin want to do whatever cockamamie idea Charles was proposing. It had gotten them into trouble more than once. “She doesn't have anywhere else to go.”

“Well perhaps she should find somewhere where she is less disruptive,” Edwin said tartly.

“How’s she being disruptive, mate? She’s literally sleeping,” Charles argued.

Edwin didn’t point out how Charles’ eyes lingered as much on her legs and curves as they did on the constantly-moving soulmark.

Edwin turned back to his books more firmly and bit his tongue.

Crystal

“What happens to your soulmark when you die?”

Crystal asked softly, tracing one finger over the bandages that always wrapped securely around Charles’ left hand as they lounged together on the floor of her rented room in Port Townsend.

“Marks scar over,” Charles said, not really paying attention. “You know that, Crystal.”

“No, I mean what happens to you, the ghost?”

That got Charles to turn his head and look her in the eyes. She stood by her decision not to turn into recurring make-out-buddies with Charles, but it was hard at times like this when he was so open and sincere.

“Marks don’t scar over until a soul moves on,” Charles explained quietly. “While a ghost is still here… the bond’s still intact. The soulmarks still look the same as they always did. For the living and the dead.”

That did surprise her. She hadn't known that ghosts still had soulmarks, though it did explain why Charles always went to such lengths to keep his covered.

Edwin she understood. He wore so many clothes that it would likely be covered anyway. Though she suspected it was on his hand based on the fact that he never took off his gloves. It was old fashioned to keep your soulmark covered all the time. But Edwin was a prime example of being old fashioned. Was Edwin’s soulmate still alive then? That seemed unlikely. Wasn’t he like 120 or something? Was his soulmate a ghost? If so, why didn’t the boys ever mention him? Charles had told her that morning on Westminster Bridge that he’d never met his soulmate, so they weren’t each other’s matches, no matter how much Edwin might have liked that.

“Can I see your mark?” she asked Charles instead of any of those questions.

“No,” he said immediately.

It wasn’t mean, but she was surprised by the intensity of the response.

“You’ve seen mine,” she pointed out.

“It’s different,” he said, clearly trying to shut the conversation down.

“No it’s not,” she shot back.

“It is, Crystal,” Charles said, sitting up to sigh dramatically. “My soulmark… It’s not a good example of what ghost’s soulmarks look like. You should ask Edwin if you want an example.”

Crystal rolled her eyes and sat up too so she could look him in the eye.

“Edwin? Seriously? He’s more likely to punch me in the face than show me his soulmark.”

“Edwin wouldn’t punch you in the face,” Charles frowned.

“Exactly.”

Charles snorted.

“We could maybe find a ghost willing to show you their soulmark if you’re interested,” Charles offered. “But it really is just like a living person’s.”

“Why won’t you just show me yours?’ Crystal pressed, starting to get annoyed.

“Crystal, please just drop it,” Charles said, refusing to meet her eyes. “It’s just— it’s personal.”

“So you’re willing to make out with me, but not show your soulmark to me?” she asked, her tone rising without her permission.

“Crystal, I’ve never even shown Edwin my soulmark, and I’ve known him for 35 years.”

That stopped her in her tracks. What?

“You two are practically attached at the hip,” she pointed out.

“Yeah.”

“Why the fuck not?”

Charles hunched in on himself a bit and fiddled with the wrapping around his hand.

“It’s personal, yeah? I just— I can’t.”

Part of Crystal wanted to keep pushing, to ask what could possibly be so bad that Charles didn’t even want to show his soulmark to his best friend. Hell, he and Edwin practically acted like they were married. What could be so personal that open, honest Charles didn’t want anyone to ever know? Did it have something to do with his dad?

Another part of Crystal was trying to be a better friend. And that part of her eventually won out.

“Okay, I’ll drop it,” she said and watched Charles’ shoulders relax. “Just— if you ever want to talk about it, I’m here. Okay?”

“Okay,” Charles said with a small smile that told her that he would not be bringing it up any time soon.

Charles

Going down to Hell, Charles paused in Limbo to rewrap his hand where the bandage had come loose for the first time since he’d learned how to manifest clothes. The mark was duller than it had been in years. He wondered if that was because Charles was in Hell while his soulmate was still on Earth. Well, he’d fix that just as soon as he found Edwin.

Hell was different than Charles could ever have guessed, even with all of Edwin’s stories over the years. The spider that tore Edwin’s body apart before his very eyes was the worst, though. He wondered if Edwin could feel it every time. Charles had a feeling that he knew the answer and did not like it at all.

Charles also wondered at the warm red light coming from Edwin’s ungloved hand. He’d never seen the mark before. It looked nice. It looked like the type of soul that might deserve to be with Edwin. Someone strong and steady and kind. Was Edwin’s soulmate still alive? Were they in Hell too? Did Edwin even know?

There wasn’t really time to ask.

On the stairs, Edwin said he was in love with Charles.

Charles couldn’t help glancing down at the strong, warm glow of Edwin’s soulmark.

What kind of a life could Edwin have had if he hadn’t died at 16? What kind of a soulmate was out there, waiting for Edwin? Waiting for Edwin to be done with Charles and come find them.

The priority was getting them both out of Hell. Everything else could wait. Would have to wait. They could figure the rest out later. Charles had no idea how they’d do that, but it could wait. It would have to.

Edwin

They’d left Port Townsend and moved on to a new stage of the detective agency before it came up again.

It was a case about soulmates, about a ghost with amnesia who wanted to say goodbye to her soulmate before she could move on to her afterlife. After a lot of trial and error and running around, Edwin had suggested that Crystal could try to read the client.

None of them were even sure that it was possible, or what Crystal would find. But with enough focus and some guidance from her ancestors, she developed the ability to read souls.

“It’s like stepping inside of a soulmark,” she explained to Edwin for his notes on the case after everything had been resolved, “It’s all light and emotion all around me.”

Edwin frowned as he wrote this down.

“And what did the client’s soul look like?” he asked, even though he knew on some level, as they had successfully tracked down her fiance and encouraged him to go on living even as the ghost of his lover moved on.

“It was like… a butter yellow,” Crystal described, leaning over his shoulder. “But like, it felt like waking up on a Sunday morning to the smell of someone making you breakfast.”

Edwin frowned up at her. What kind of a description was that?

“Like sort of calm and comforting and warm… like being cared for and content and loved,” Crystal expanded.

Edwin tried to decide if this odd description was even worth writing down.

“Here, I’ll prove it,” Crystal said, misinterpreting his hesitation as disbelief. “I’ll read your soul and tell you what it feels like.”

Her hands were on his shoulders faster than Edwin could even process it. He shrugged her off and phased right through the desk to stand up and get away before she could begin.

“Absolutely not,” he said, now on the other side of the desk, turning around to look at a bewildered Crystal.

“Why not?” she asked, even as Charles came over, presumably to try and defuse the tension before the conversation devolved into a shouting match.

Edwin pinched the bridge of his nose. He wished briefly that he could feel the leather of his gloves against his skin.

“Crystal, my soul was in Hell for more than 70 years,” he explained as calmly as he could.

“Yeah, and you never let us forget it,” she said blithely.

“Just think about that for a moment, Crystal,” he insisted, lowering his hand to look at her again. “My soul is not going to be a buttery yellow calming experience for you. I don’t know what you’d find there, or if you’d find anything soul-like at all, quite frankly, but I’m confident that it would not be a pleasant experience.”

Crystal stared at him with widening eyes.

“Shit, Edwin—”

“You could do me,” Charles piped up, cutting off whatever awkward apology she was about to attempt.

“Yeah, um, okay,” she said and put her hands on Charles’s shoulders before letting her eyes roll back and go white.

It was less than a minute when her focus returned to the room around her. She swayed slightly on her feet as her eyes regained their usual shade of brown.

“You okay?” Charles checked, putting her hands on her waist to steady her.

“Yeah, totally,” Crystal said, stepping back to lean against the desk. “It’s weird to be… inside your soul, I guess? I already know you so well, it’s just like… more.”

“What was it like?” Edwin inquired, tilting his head to the side.

“Well, red, that’s not exactly a surprise,” Crystal explained. “But not like the red of your shirt, more like… a soft red? I don’t know. Like bricks in front of a fireplace… but more orange.”

“Terracotta,” Edwin prompted softly.

“Yeah!” Crystal agreed. “And like, the feeling. It’s just like being around you normally, just more intense.”

“Oh,” Charles said, looking unaccountably abashed. “Sorry about that.”

“No, no,” Crystal continued. “Whatever you’re thinking, no. It's like… like having a big golden retriever that just wants to hang out and play and drool on you, but you also know that it would 100% bite a bitch if it thought you were in danger.”

Edwin couldn’t repress his huff of laughter.

Charles was frowning first at Crystal, then at Edwin, apparently lost in thought.

“Do Edwin next,” he said, much to Edwin’s surprise and chagrin.

“I thought we decided that was a bad idea,” Edwin reminded him.

“I’ll be careful,” Crystal said, pushing herself up off the desk and looking far more excited than the situation called for in Ediwn’s opinion.

Edwin pressed his lips into a thin line.

“Come on, mate,” Charles pressed, knocking their elbows together gently. “What’s the harm?”

Edwin felt like his heart had flipped over inside his chest.

“I suppose,” Edwin conceded, only to have Crystal clap her hands to his shoulders before he could change his mind.

Crystal’s eyes rolled back. In moments, she gasped and staggered backwards, breaking their connection and bringing her awareness back to her surroundings, looking as if she’d seen a ghost. Or more ghosts, he supposed.

Edwin sighed. He’d known this was a bad idea. God, what on Earth had Crystal seen to prompt that reaction? Edwin already suspected that his soul had been mutilated in the Dollhouse. Crystal’s reaction only confirmed it.

“I did warn you,” he said, even as Charles rubbed Crystal’s shoulder comfortingly.

Crystal was crying. Big fat tears falling down her cheeks even though no sound was coming out besides harsh breaths. Good Lord, had it really been that bad? He was still a functioning being. How bad could his soul be?

“No, I just— it surprised me,” Crystal said, shaking off Charles’ hand. “I want to try again.”

“Crystal, you’re crying,” Edwin pointed out.

She swiped roughly at the wet streaks and squared her shoulders.

“It was just a lot,” Crystal said mulishly. “I want to try again.”

“What was it like?” Charles asked.

“I— I don’t know. Kind of like a cold volcano,” Crystal said.

Edwin arched his eyebrows.

“There’s no such thing,” he pointed out.

“Can I do it again?” she asked instead of rising to take the bait.

Edwin sighed and nodded, stepping closer so she could continue to lean against the desk while she did whatever it was she wanted to do. Charles hovered just to one side of her, looking as if he was bracing to catch her in case she fell. Honestly, Edwin was surprised that Charles was going along with all of this. He usually pumped the brakes if it looked like Crystal or Edwin was going to push past their own limitations.

Crystal gripped Edwin’s shoulders again and her eyes went white. She stayed that way for longer this time. Edwin and Charles stood in awkward silence, watching her to see if she’d fall over or something.

Eventually, with a heavy sigh, her eyes rolled back to their usual, warm brown. Charles helped guide her down so she was sitting in the desk chair.

“What was it like?” Charles prompted again, before she’d even really had a chance to catch her breathe, eyes serious and intense.

“Really different,” Crystal said. “Like all the other times, it’s felt like a soulmark looks, all defused and glowy. Edwin, yours is like… You know those Japanese plates that they break?”

Edwin raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure if he should be feeling insulted.

Crystal pulled out her phone and began typing away on before holding it out to first Edwin, then Charles.

“Kintsugi,” she said. “They take a broken plate but repair it with, like, gold or something, so you can see where the cracks were.”

The article she pulled up was titled “Kintsugi: The Japanese Art of Finding Beauty in Broken Dishes.” Edwin sighed again. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be likened to be a broken dish, no matter the beauty. But Crystal was still going.

“It was like being in this dark ball, shot through with cracks of this blue light. At first, I thought it was just black in the spaces in between, but once I let my eyes adjust I could see it was actually like… the night sky? Like a deep blue that had stars sprinkled across it.”

“What did it feel like?” Edwin asked, curious despite himself.

“Like… curious I guess? That’s what took me so long. I was trying to figure out how to describe it. It was kind of peaceful, but also kind of like there was this drive to go do something, and eventually I figured out that it felt like it was curious about me. I don’t know if that’s just because it was me, or if your whole soul is just like a knowledge fiend.”

“What kind of blue were the cracks?” Charles asked.

Crystal and Edwin both frowned at him, surprised to be going backward in the conversation.

“Like a really bright blue that was almost white if you stared directly at it,” Crystal explained.

Charles dropped Crystal’s shoulder and she swayed dangerously, nearly tipping over the chair. Edwin stepped forward to steady her. They both looked over at Charles, confused by his sudden abandonment, only to find him quickly unwinding the fabric he always kept wound around his hand.

“Like that?” Charles demanded, shoving his hand under her nose.

Edwin and Crystal stared dumbly at Charles’ hand.

Edwin had never seen Charles’ soulmark. He’d never wanted to push it in case Charles wanted to see Edwin’s and then felt guilty about the one-way bond. Even in his most delusional hopes, Edwin had never imagined this.

Charles’ mark was spread across the bridge of flesh between his thumb and index finger, the place where Edwin’s mother had described to him when he was very young, more than a century ago. The place where his own soulmark was situated. The flesh almost looked burnt at first glance, charred and dark and shot through with cracks of brilliant blue light. But as they stared, Edwin realized that Crystal was right, the black wasn’t black at all but a very dark blue that, while not glowing, was not entirely without a strange light of its own.

He was looking down at the reflection of his own soul, spread across Charles’ skin.

Without tearing his eyes away, Edwin pulled off his gloves and extended his left hand, showing the glowing red mark there. Terracotta. Warm and comforting as Charles himself.

Charles reached out, sliding the palms of their left hands together so that the marks touched. A breath Edwin didn’t really need caught in his throat. When he looked up, Charles was grinning at him even more brightly than the combined glow of their soulmarks.

Charles

Charles more or less fell through the mirror to the office feeling utterly disgusting.

Their most recent case had led them up north where he and Edwin had ended up fighting a Kelpie. Well, mostly it was Charles being dragged around a polluted lake while Edwin frantically searched some books for a spell that would help the situation.

The spell he figured out was, admittedly, effective. It just also resulted in the Kelpie exploding into dark sticky chunks that covered both ghosts in a truly disgusting substance somewhere between viscera and tar. It also had the unfortunate side effect of being partially spectral, which meant that Charles and Edwin couldn’t simply will away the goop. Edwin had developed a cleaning solution years ago that worked a treat but also took hours to brew properly. So Charles had spent the time cleaning up the lakeshore and speaking to the client while Edwin did tricky alchemy back at the office.

Apparently, he was doing alchemy in the office without his shirt on, as Charles discovered when he came through the mirror only to stop dead in his tracks.

And yeah, they were soulmates. They knew it now. They’d spent a truly astounding portion of the last two months kissing. Charles wouldn’t mind doing a bit more than kissing, but he figured there was no rush and they ought to take this as slow as Edwin wanted. And Edwin didn’t like change. He also didn’t like taking his clothes off. Certainly not in front of other people.

But here he was, no shirt, no undershirt, with his bracers dropped down around his waist so Charles got a full view of Edwin’s bare chest.

“The cleaning solution is ready,” Edwin said.

He sounded smug.

Well Charles supposed that he had every right to be smug, Charles’ jaw was more or less on the floor. Edwin was nearly clean, but he’d missed a few spots around his shoulders and neck where he couldn’t see. He held the rag he’d been using in his dominant hand, leaving the left hand bare, his soulmark on full display. They still kept them covered the majority of the time. People were still upset by the mark on Charles’ hand, and Edwin just thought it was immodest to go around with his soulmark uncovered. But the result was that everytime he got to see the terracotta red light, Charles felt like he was the luckiest guy on Earth.

“Do you need help getting clean?” Edwin asked, raising the rag and an eyebrow.

Charles swallowed hard and stepped closer.

“If you’re offering, I won’t say no.”

Edwin smiled coquettishly and began wiping at the exposed skin of Charles’ face and neck, pressing light kisses to the freshly cleaned skin before moving on to his hands. Edwin unwrapped his left hand and cleaned there too before dropping a kiss to his own soulmark. Charles swallowed and focused very hard on not pinning Edwin against the wall and snogging him senseless.

“Charles?” Edwin breathed, and Charles could feel it against the shell of his ear. When had he gotten there?

“Yeah?”

“Would you… would you like to take off your shirt?”

Charles bit his lip to stifle a groan. He opened his eyes (When had he closed them?) and roughly tugged his shirt and undershirt over his head in one go. He heard Edwin swallow.

Edwin was staring at Charles’ torso. Charles stomped ruthlessly down on the urge to puff out his chest and preen a bit. He loved it when Edwin paid attention to him, but if he made too big of a deal about it, Edwin would get all flustered and stop. Charles did not want Edwin to stop.

“I rather think that all of our clothes require cleaning,” Edwin said distantly, still focused on Charles’ bare chest.

“All of ‘em, huh?” Charles said, realizing what Edwin was getting at.

Edwin let out a kind of high pitched hum, that Charles took to mean he agreed.

Feeling brave, Charles leaned down far enough to brush a kiss across Edwin’s bare shoulder and was rewarded with a shudder and Edwin leaning closer.

“That okay?” Charles checked in.

“Mmmm,” Edwin agreed.

To be fair, they got clean eventually. They just worked on getting dirtier first.