A Gift From: impact_velocity
Type Of Gift: Fic
Title: So Many Mates, Just One Soul
A Gift For: findthesea
Rating: T
Warnings: language, slightly
Summary/Prompt Used: SoulmateAU


So Many Mates, Just One Soul

Later, Natasha will point out that statistically, him getting his mark while he was in the middle of target practice was really the most likely time he'd get it, but right as it happens, pain shoots into his back and around his shoulder blade, and his shot goes so wide it bypasses the target by a good foot. It's not just painful, it's confusing. He'd been under the impression the "You don't have to" that ran along his spine had been his mark. He'd been waiting forever for someone to say it, but it seemed like they always left out the 'don't' part that he'd always liked best. It's not like getting more than one mark is completely unheard of, but Clint's never really thought of himself as having enough to go around for three people.

When he finally gets a chance to look, though, he's so surprised he nearly drops Mae's hand mirror he nicked for just long enough to get a look at his back. Loopy script covers his shoulder blade, which explains why it was so painful, and it takes a moment for him to make it out in the mirror. "Tea would be lovely, thank you," is not an exciting mark, in his humble twelve year old opinion. He liked "you don't have to" better.

And that's the worst part: it's gone. Nothing is there along his spine like he'd felt like it had always been (Barney says not, but Barney's also a jackass--look, Clint's not proud of his assessment, but he's known the guy a long time, and 'jackass' really does sum it up best--so it's possible he's screwing with Clint), and even though he never even met 'you don't have to,' there's a feeling in his chest like he'd been punched over his heart. It ached and also sort of felt hollow. He lost somebody he'd never even met, and it hurt like it did when he and Barney lit out for the circus; a door shut permanently behind him when he wasn't sure he'd wanted to cross the threshold in the first place.

It's a feeling Clint gets to know very well.

"Three weeks after 'Tea' shows up, burning in the same place wakes him up from a deep sleep in the middle of the night. He has to calm his racing heart, and makes himself wait until it's actually clear to grab Mae's mirror again to look at his back. He'd felt it, and while his shoulder had been a little warm, there hadn't been blood, so he'd convinced himself to wait till morning. He's glad he did. "I didn't mean to!" is scrawled across his skin in hasty short lines, and he has to fight to keep his stomach down. He'd sort of hoped that kind of bullshit would end when he got big enough to...well, big enough. He makes sure to keep his shoulder covered after that. When it's hot, he just cuts off the sleeves of his shirt instead of taking it off.

Because the weirdness doesn't stop.

Every month or so--give or take, it wasn't like there was a schedule--he'd feel the burning pain again. After "If you're not going to drink it, I will," "What are we looking at?," and "No, to the left; your other left," he tries not to look every time. The whole disappearing soul mark thing is still weirdly painful, even if it gets replaced every time. Eventually, his brain starts to block out the worst of the sensation, which is a good thing considering by that time he's an army sniper, and the last thing he needs to do is get shot 'cause of whatever whim his soulmate was having that particular day.

Well. He knows that's not it exactly--there were some marks with handwriting close enough to remind him of older marks, but he was pretty sure no exact repeats, no one person changing their mind--but it's not like he has anyone to talk through his theories with. Though it really is only just the one theory. He's pretty sure it's just the same group of people over and over again, responding to whatever is going to happen later in life, and as time passes, who he meets and how changes between several different options. It's not the best theory, he knows, because the whole point of soulmates is finding that one person fate knows you're supposed to be with, no matter what, and if his keeps changing because of circumstances, it doesn't sound like fate really has a clue what's going on. But it's the best he's got.

He's only got a year left in the Army when Phil Coulson plucks Clint out of his unit and turns him into a Shield agent. It's not too bad, really, and he gets to use his bow again, which is the real perk. He spends a lot of time sitting around the Sci-Tech labs, making the people not developing and testing his trick arrows nervous (it's a little counter-intuitive to make the people he needs all jumpy). He doesn't notice until a few months in that he hasn't felt the mark change since he's been there.

'Scotch?' isn't the most inspiring thing he's had written on his shoulder, but it's better than 'Oh, you're alive!'. That one had hung around a bit longer than he'd been thrilled with, but Scotch gets replaced with something in a different alphabet. Somehow, Bobbi catches sight of it while he's poking around the bio chem area, and stops him to move his shirt. Her smirk is enough to get him swearing to himself that he's not gonna ask. He's pretty sure it's pity that has her asking how long he's had "I can kill you with my brain" in Russian as his mark, but when he hesitates, it turns from pity to intrigue. Curiosity's always been her Achilles' heel, but it's also one of the things that keeps science interesting, so she just waits for an answer.

Which is how they end up lounging in her quarters, buzzed on vodka--in deference to his future soul mate, she'd said--and talking through theories on soulmates. She's never been thrilled with 'Don't worry, I got this' for more than one reason. Clint sort of chokes on his drink when she admits that the grammar really bugs her, nearly as much as the assumption that she doesn't have whatever the hell it is she's not supposed to worry about. It makes him laugh, but he's also got no room to talk when it comes to ridiculous feeling about soul marks. 'Behind you!' had him jumpy and a bit irritated for weeks before it bled into 'No. Thank you.'

He's never been sure if he's presuming too much, but he tends to ascribe inflection to his marks--that 'thank you,' for example, was forceful and totally insincere, and Other Shoulder was an exasperated tense warning. Oh, you're alive! had felt entirely too surprised for his peace of mind. Who the hell was his soulmate that his being alive is something that should get called into question? He makes the mistake of asking Bobbi that. She just sort of looks at him until the thought that they're in her quarters at Shield HQ really settles into his brain. Huh. He never really expected to meet someone at work. It's not like he spends time doing much else, though.

Bobbi's opinion was that he was going to meet her (look, he'd tried explaining how he was bisexual, and despite her perfectly pleasant 'me, too,' she seems dead set that his soulmate's going to be a girl. She says it's the handwriting, but her hunch predated the various handwriting samples she eventually gets a look at, so Clint cries foul) on an op. Like a civilian on the street, or maybe someone he's been sent to protect; she's weirdly confident it's not an existing Shield agent or employee.

Well, she's not wrong.

Fury sends him to take out Black Widow. When Clint comes back with the woman instead of a corpse, he argues he completed his objective and in fact did neutralize the target, all Coulson and Fury do is glower. When he gets to the 'neutralized' part of his argument, Natalia joins in on the glaring. It's not like he can just up and say 'my soul mark changed again while I was aiming and made me think someone would miss their soulmate if I killed her, which was terribly convenient as it turns out that soulmate is me.' Though it occurs to him, while Fury and Coulson are getting louder and angrier, that he's going to have to tell them eventually.

'Eventually' comes three seconds later when he just shouts it out. It silences both men immediately. Fury still looks pissed, and Coulson stymied. But then confusion clouds his handler's eyes. Intel suggested the Red Room had permanently damaged their operatives's ability to bond. Clint doesn't have an argument against that, he'd read the same briefings.

Natalia, as it turns out, does. She'd thought the arrow had been particularly painful, an only realized later when the medic pointed out that the arrow had missed her words completely. She hadn't had any before, but she'd been away from her handlers long enough now that the drugs she was fed on the regular had finally left her system. So right under where the arrow punched through her shoulder, in Clint's precise, even lines that make up the handwriting the Army drilled into him, are the words 'If you move I'll have to shoot you.' That's when it occurs to Clint that he doesn't actually know what his says. He hasn't had time to look at this last development. Luckily, he knows where it is. So he pulls his shirt up over his heads and turns so she can read it for him. He is very much not expecting the gasp of surprise. Or the entirely too faint sensation of Nat's fingers brushing down the length of his spine. The feeling makes him nearly turn around. He frowns and asks what it said. Natasha answers before anyone can question him about not knowing. Nat's smile is sad when she replies.

It takes a while for her to read all the words. She starts with 'You don't have to," then steps closer to him for a better look. He can feel her breath against his skin. It's his turn to gasp when he realizes what she's doing. When she laughs at "Oh you're alive!" he looks over his shoulder at her. He intends to make it a glare, but that's when he sees the tears in her eyes and turns around. Even through the rapidly blinked away tears, he can see she wants to argue, claim he's not her soulmate, someone made a mistake. But his back says otherwise.

She'd explained, while they were waiting for exfil, how the Red Room had brainwashed them, implanted whole new people into her brain over and over. Only now was that sinking in. Because, he realizes, the words on his skin had been changing for a reason--they'd changed every time they'd put a new person inside Nat. And now, out of their control, she's all of those people, and none of them. So he has all of their words, and the ones along his spine that were the original. They made it difficult to argue that they hadn't been meant to find one another. Even Natasha finally agrees with that.