TW Fic: I Will Write Your Name on My Soul in Permanent Ink
Title: I Will Write Your Name on My Soul in Permanent Ink
Author: nancybrown
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Rose, Gwen, Jack's family, Estelle, Alice
Pairings: ... yes?
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3800
Warnings: scenes of bodily mutilation and self-harm
Beta: Radical Hufflepuff
Summary: Five lifetimes where Captain Jack Harkness had a soulmate mark, and one where he didn't.
AN: Trope: soulmate name, trope subversion, AU
1. The One You'll Love Most
Genetic engineering combined with interbreeding on the sly with other species created unusual twists in the DNA of children born to the colonists on the Boeshane Peninsula. Just like the predisposition to lactose intolerance and the polydactylism, the colonists treated the soulmate mark as a physical feature variously to be proud of, annoyed by, or not spoken of in front of impressionable youths. Naturally, the impressionable youths therefore knew everything about it, or thought they did.
One morning, you'd wake up with the name of your soulmate, written in blue letters on your skin fashioned by a time variance in your own DNA.
"Why blue?" Jacht asked his mother. Gray and Dad had gone to purchase supplies, and maybe a treat for the birthday boy, leaving just the two of them.
Mum was a scientist by training, and a mischief-maker by avocation. Jacht never knew when she was deadly serious or joking. "It's your blood. The blood that hasn't reached your heart yet wants to know where your heart belongs."
That didn't sound right to Jacht, but he had a much bigger question preying on his mind. "Grandmother was married six times. Whose name was written on her skin?" Out of the six, including the three she married at one time, whom did she love the most? How did her skin know before she did?
Mum's eyes went sad. Grandmother had died over a year ago, but Mum always did have trouble letting go of those she'd lost. "You'd have to ask her."
Jacht knew the stories from his friends, the dirty tales passed down like jewellery from wise older child to awe-struck younger child since time immemorial. He'd heard about the girl who woke up one month early with the name on her body, and thus found out that her parents weren't her real parents. He knew the story about the boy who'd already got himself a boyfriend, and woke up the morning of his birthday with a different name written over his heart (some stories said it was written somewhere else) and got kicked out of bed. His friends had asked each other all the questions, like if you woke up and it was written in the crack of your bottom, would you dare ask your parents to read it for you, or what it meant when the name was written on the bottom of your toe. You had to be quick, though. The name would fade within a few hours, and if you didn't see it, you'd never know who'd you'd love more than anyone.
Thinking about it, Jacht pondered how the humans elsewhere felt, never given the name of the person they'd be chained to for the rest of their lives. He wondered if he could keep his eyes closed, keep covered, and not ruin the surprise for himself down the road.
"What if I don't want to fall in love with them?"
Mum smiled and kissed his head. "Then don't."
He couldn't fall asleep that night, no matter how hard he tried, until the wee hours when even the insects stopped buzzing outside and the only sound was the ever-present whoosh of waves on the beach. He woke up to excited noises in the kitchen. His parents were already awake, already eager to find out with their son the name of his one true love.
Jacht squeezed his eyes shut, hoping the word was covered by his pyjamas but with no way to know. He managed to get halfway across the room he shared with his brother, when Gray's giggles made him look. At first, he thought his eyes were going bad, but he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Jacht's jaw dropped open as Gray shouted for Mum and Dad.
His whole body from the chin down was covered in tight script, names written over names over more names, turning him into a solid sheet of blue ink.
He heard his parents coming down the hall to the bedroom, and heard Gray continue to snicker, but his eyes were delighted by his own reflection, and the slowly widening grin over his own face.
2. The One You'll Go Through Time With
"What's your tattoo of?" Wet from a dip in the pool, Rose sat beside him using her one towel to dry her hair. Jack had reckoned she'd use the fluffy terrycloth as a sop to modesty, but no. Every day he found more things to like about Rose Tyler, and he had one more to add to his list: Does not mind casual nudity in or out of the TARDIS swimming pool.
"Tattoo?"
She inclined her head with a gesture. Jack's towel was slung over his shoulder, leaving nothing to her imagination, either.
"Oh." An adulthood away from home full of secrets and lies worried at him, but he was trying to turn over a new leaf. A little truth couldn't hurt. "It's a word in the language of the place where I was born."
Rose smiled in delight. Another item on his list: Loves learning new things. "Say it? Please?"
He scrunched up his face as though in deep thought, but it wasn't as though he'd forget. The old syllables bounced off his tongue.
"That's nice. What's it mean?"
He hesitated, but she didn't know what she was asking, and that made telling easier. Item three: Is innocent in ways you never can be again.
"It's the name I was born with."
She burst out in peals of laughter.
"What?"
"Captain Jack Harkness, you are the only man in the universe who would walk around with his own name tattooed on his arse."
"Yeah," he chuckled, and he decided not to tell her the rest.
3. The One You Never Wanted
"No," the boy said out loud when the strange words appeared on his skin. Heart pounding, brain swirling in anger from watching his mother wither away in front of him after the loss of her own soul's true mate, he vowed that would never, ever be him.
His mother cried, noticing the wound on his arm where he'd taken the sharpest knife in the house to his own flesh. She bandaged his cut and took him to the doctor, where the laser stitching ensured he healed without a scar.
"We've seen this before," the doctor said, her hand a gentle comfort on Mum's shoulder. "He should talk with a counsellor."
Mum nodded and agreed, but after his arm healed neither of them spoke of seeing counsellors, or really, of much at all.
He didn't think about the name, a word he didn't know in a language he didn't yet speak. The memory faded until he found himself in a wet city far from home in a body much healthier than one shot by Daleks should be. He undressed for a wash and found the name on his right hip.
Jack trembled, reading and rereading the word. When he had scraped together money, enough for a large bottle of gin and a small bottle of acid, he screamed through etching away the word then drank himself into unconsciousness.
One death followed another, and his soul mark moved, returned, somewhere below his chin every time. Skinning himself caused excruciating pain by blade or flame. Jack affected to ignore the name when the blue moved onto his back, only to be reminded when lovers asked about his tattoo. He paid a surgeon a great deal of money not to ask questions when Jack showed up with a new mark to remove.
"You could just keep it," she hazarded after the fifteenth time Jack left her office with a large plaster under his clothes.
"I choose," he said to no-one as soon as the door slammed shut in his wake. "Not fate, not DNA, not anybody. Me. I choose who I love." He found a different surgeon. He learned to grit his teeth when he used his own sharp knife.
"Run-in with a Weevil," he told Ianto when pressed about the covered wound. But he couldn't meet Ianto's eyes when he spoke, and he guessed his own lies were as ineffective as ever. "Nothing to worry about."
"You should take better care of yourself," came the gentle rebuke. "You may not be able to die, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter when you get hurt." Rather than argue, Jack distracted him from further chiding.
A thousand years passed. Two. Ten. Fifty thousand years into his long life, Jack found himself on the wrong side of a Vortex containment field. He prayed to the gods of his childhood for a death he doubted he'd ever earn. Said gods, proving they were only sort of bastards, granted him a different wish as he shuddered back into life.
"Sir!" said his adjutant Carlew, horror on his asymmetrical features. He made a holy sign to ward off what he saw.
The man who'd dropped the name Harkness a long time ago dragged himself up, only to discover he had no legs. Or arms. In fact, he was feeling extremely strange. Another death, another life.
Weeks later, his recovery nearly complete, Carlew sat beside his biobed. "But you have lost all your limbs, sir. How can you be so calm?"
He couldn't turn his own head, not now, but he offered up a smile. "The trade-off has had one advantage. I'm open to discovering the rest."
4. The Right One (Right Now)
The name scrawled on his skin, formed there before his birth, was positioned perfectly to be hidden under his wrist strap. At last, he could stop many of the awkward questions he'd dodged over the years between leaving his colony world and finally graduating from the Academy. His classmates and playmates who'd heard of the Boeshane Peninsula all rolled their eyes or eye-equivalents at him, amused by the tradition of a backwater world. One love? Honestly?
No, no, he'd explain over and again, but explaining was hard when the truth was writ right there. Whomever he loved most, their name was written in blue for all to see, until he managed to cover it with a wrist computer instead of a lie and a smile. Much easier to get someone or several someones into bed with him when he didn't have to explain why his own body told them he was clearly in love with another.
The skin itched and burned when the name changed. That was another annoyance. When he'd been six, he'd loved his Mum and Dad more than anyone else ever. After the terrible day and the even worse weeks and months that followed, the blue skin on his forearm serpentined into his brother's name. With time and healing, the letters rearranged into the name of the first girl he kissed, the first boy he slept with, the last friend he betrayed before running away from home for good. The beginning of the end with the man he practically married for two incredibly long weeks was when his strap slipped, just once, and another's name shone out like a blue beacon. The end of another beginning marked itself in Gallifreyan runes which mocked him for decades.
"I love you, you know," Estelle said, her strong legs wrapped up with his. Jack, he was Jack even in his dreams these days, laughed and kissed her, pressing the words back into her mouth. He woke later that same night with a familiar, terrible burn on his arm. Without looking, he knew, and the soul-crushing terror stole away the last of his sleep.
"I'm sorry," he said into her hair.
Estelle's name stayed with him for years, replaced by others in their turn, always the damning blue refusing to lie. He could as easily paint a target on his head, and let his various enemies great and mean know how to destroy him. No, better to hide.
"I hate it," he told Lucia, who shrugged. She'd asked. They always asked when the skin showed. She didn't mind when her name wasn't written on her occasional lover's body. She had more pressing worries, and no intentions of making such an inconstant man a permanent fixture in her life. The last true kindness in her eyes for him shone on the day he removed his wrist strap to show baby Melissa her own name. Jack was certain she changed their daughter's identity to torture him in one more creative fashion.
The beginning of new romances, and the end of the Universe, and a long, long rest under the ground, and the soul mark shifted like a weathercock, pointing towards his truest love. Jack swore to himself that when he looped back around to the founding of his own colony, someone was getting punched in the genitals.
This burnt-out house used to be part of a trendy new area in Cardiff. The owners hadn't escaped, although Gwen's friend Andy had performed a spectacular job of getting the neighbours to evacuate. Gwen wasn't as lucky, and neither was Ianto. Jack, either, come to that. The aliens had eaten their tea with the former occupants of the destroyed home, and turned their attention to Cardiff's less than able defenders, who were currently bound and tethered to one wall.
Jack understood the aliens' speech, a dialect closely related to one he'd learned his first year of Academy. Listening to them discussing their plans didn't make him feel better. One had been here in disguise for some time, spying on Earth culture and scouting it out for a potential foothold.
"This planet is defended," he spat out in passable Ominish, gargling the syllables just as the textbook had taught.
"By such weak and stringy meat?"
"We have powerful weapons."
"What are you saying to them?" Gwen asked, the movement of her shoulders telling Jack she'd nearly got her bonds free.
"Just establishing that we're in charge here."
Ianto said, "Good. We wouldn't want them thinking they were in charge just because we're their helpless prisoners." He wiggled his hand where only the other two could see. A few more private practise sessions and he'd be able to get himself loose from anything Jack came up with. Assuming they got out of here alive.
The alien said, "You are the leader?"
"That's me." Jack was hauled to his feet. He made a hushing sound to his friends. Gwen was free now and waiting for the go-ahead. He'd wait, just for the moment, and not reveal their advantage whilst he played the aliens for information. A part of him he didn't want to acknowledge at the moment reminded him of their recent losses, and allowed how caution was the wisest course in keeping the last two members of his team safe.
"One of these is your mate." A third alien held its weapon loosely aimed at Gwen and Ianto. Even freed, they couldn't outrun a good shot.
Jack stayed quiet. His relationships were none of their business.
The alien, the scout who'd been on Earth longest, switched to English. "You are the leader. You may go. Tell us which is your favourite. The other will be our dinner guest."
"Thanks, no. My friends and I are leaving together." He nodded to the others, with a quick signal that meant, 'Get ready.'
"Boeshane," said the second alien, and sliced Jack's hands free. In a moment, he was relieved of his wrist strap. Ah, damn. Was it the accent? The good looks? His colony had been famous in their time, which was now looking like the aliens' home time.
"Hey, give that back!" Moment of caution was over. He swung but they grabbed his arm, and held the other as the scout read the damning scrawl on his arm. The alien spun and seized Gwen, thrusting her roughly into Jack's grip. The others' weapons were suddenly everywhere.
"Go," said the scout, nudging the two of them along with the muzzle of the gun. To its companions it said, "We have the advantage. As long as we have its mate, the leader will not stand against us."
The aliens shoved Jack and Gwen out of the ruined house.
"What the hell?" she asked, unsubtle in her attempt to get a look at Jack's bare wrist.
"Leave it. First things first, we need to get Ianto out of there and put these guys down."
Gwen twisted herself and took his wrist. "Why's his name on your arm, Jack?"
"Later."
5. The One You'll Never Lose
The name required a touch to activate. Shake hands, meet the one person who would love you until your death. The gods help you if your name didn't appear on their skin at the same time.
Jack loved touch, and he touched everyone he ever met. Most species, hell most humans, didn't have any sort of marking to show if Jack was their one true love, and he liked it that way. He liked knowing before they did. The first time he brushed a hand or stroked an arm, he gave a little gasp, wondering if this was the moment, if this was the soul destined to follow him to the end, if there was an end.
His skin stayed bare, through time and space and the Time Vortex itself. Hundreds of lovers, thousands of friends, yet the name never bloomed across him like a lighthouse. Twelve thousand years old, and he began to research, wondering if he'd missed his chance. Perhaps his soulmate had lived and died millennia ago, or wouldn't be born for a trillion years. Time travel opened his options whilst coming up empty on answers. Perhaps his soulmate was from an anemone species swimming beneath oceans yet to fill with water.
Perhaps there was no-one at all.
"Stop looking," said his fifty-second wife. "Your children need you."
He stopped the search. After a billion years, he forgot the planet of his birth, forgot the faces of the ones who never were, forgot most of the names he himself ever used, forgot that he'd forgotten.
Five billion years into his life, a young nurse newly joined to her order changed his dressings. Her name shimmered though him when they touched. Startled, a fragment of his memory jarred loose from long, long dormancy.
The nurse, barely more than a girl, startled back herself, whiskers twitching. The one who would be with him until he died, he knew now, and he knew what was to come. The end he'd earned would be granted to him within the lifetime of one confused cat.
His Excellency laughed.
6. The One You Want
"It's blue," he said, staring at the concrete lining the ceiling of his bunker. How they'd ever got on the subject of Jack's first home, or his physiology, remained a mystery. Ianto had taken the news about the lactose intolerance and the polydactylism without comment, but the writing had him intrigued.
"You wake up with the name of your true love printed in blue on your body?"
"Yep."
"That's brilliant." He rolled over, giving Jack a nice view of his naked back.
"You think so?"
"No more worries about dating. No more wondering if you've made a terrible mistake, or if you'll never find someone who's right for you. You already know their name, you just go find them."
"It's hell."
Ianto made a noise, then turned his head. His face went through an odd contortion. "It would be for you, wouldn't it? Knowing you had one person, one chance at happiness, and knowing you'll lose them forever. I'm sorry. I didn't think."
Jack watched his eyes. Ianto's back was a great sight, but Jack had melted in those eyes for years. Their fifth anniversary would be next week. When this began, Jack hadn't considered they'd last five nights.
"It's not that. It's the lack of choice in the matter. Imagine. You wake up one day, and there's a name written on you. That's it. No getting to discover for yourself. No going out on adventures and wondering if you'll fall madly in love with your partner before they betray you. No remarrying, either, not even if you're widowed, because you both know from the outset it isn't true love. No romancing multiple people to find out whose smile lights you up most, whose lips are the softest. You could wake up with the name of your most bitter enemy written across your chest, and no matter what you want, you're stuck with them. No matter how far you run, you'll never love anyone as much as them. No escape, and no choice."
"And you?" The question wasn't as shy as it would have been even three years ago.
"My parents were immigrants to the colony. They didn't have the genetic modifications yet when I was born. I can drink milk, and I have five toes on each foot, and I didn't ever wake up with the name of my soulmate written on my body. Kinda happy about that. Especially the milk. You know how I love a good cheese."
There was a long-suffering sigh beside him.
"I'd be afraid," Ianto said at last. "You're right. It sounds romantic, and it sounds like it'd be a relief not to have to worry, but I can picture the problem. If I had Lisa's name on me forever, I don't know how I'd bear to look in the mirror again knowing I could never feel that way again. And if I'd had yours, she never would have been with me in the first place. I would have lost one of you and never known it." His breath caught in pain at the mere thought.
Jack kissed him. "But you didn't. Normal people have to figure it out for themselves. I like being normal, and having a say."
He waited until Ianto's eyes closed, waited longer until he fell asleep, before Jack rolled out of the narrow bunk. They didn't sleep here often any more, choosing the comfort of their flat, but on the few late nights they stayed over, Jack was reminded of why he liked this space.
In the dark, Jack found the ladder and climbed up to his office. He opened his desk drawer, rummaging around until his fingers wrapped around what he needed. When he finished, he made his careful way down again and went back to bed
"I choose," he whispered into Ianto's shoulder, setting the promise with a kiss too light to wake. Blurred a bit by his sloppy lettering, the permanent blue ink written on Jack's arm dried in the cool night air.
The End
Author: nancybrown
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Rose, Gwen, Jack's family, Estelle, Alice
Pairings: ... yes?
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3800
Warnings: scenes of bodily mutilation and self-harm
Beta: Radical Hufflepuff
Summary: Five lifetimes where Captain Jack Harkness had a soulmate mark, and one where he didn't.
AN: Trope: soulmate name, trope subversion, AU
1. The One You'll Love Most
Genetic engineering combined with interbreeding on the sly with other species created unusual twists in the DNA of children born to the colonists on the Boeshane Peninsula. Just like the predisposition to lactose intolerance and the polydactylism, the colonists treated the soulmate mark as a physical feature variously to be proud of, annoyed by, or not spoken of in front of impressionable youths. Naturally, the impressionable youths therefore knew everything about it, or thought they did.
One morning, you'd wake up with the name of your soulmate, written in blue letters on your skin fashioned by a time variance in your own DNA.
"Why blue?" Jacht asked his mother. Gray and Dad had gone to purchase supplies, and maybe a treat for the birthday boy, leaving just the two of them.
Mum was a scientist by training, and a mischief-maker by avocation. Jacht never knew when she was deadly serious or joking. "It's your blood. The blood that hasn't reached your heart yet wants to know where your heart belongs."
That didn't sound right to Jacht, but he had a much bigger question preying on his mind. "Grandmother was married six times. Whose name was written on her skin?" Out of the six, including the three she married at one time, whom did she love the most? How did her skin know before she did?
Mum's eyes went sad. Grandmother had died over a year ago, but Mum always did have trouble letting go of those she'd lost. "You'd have to ask her."
Jacht knew the stories from his friends, the dirty tales passed down like jewellery from wise older child to awe-struck younger child since time immemorial. He'd heard about the girl who woke up one month early with the name on her body, and thus found out that her parents weren't her real parents. He knew the story about the boy who'd already got himself a boyfriend, and woke up the morning of his birthday with a different name written over his heart (some stories said it was written somewhere else) and got kicked out of bed. His friends had asked each other all the questions, like if you woke up and it was written in the crack of your bottom, would you dare ask your parents to read it for you, or what it meant when the name was written on the bottom of your toe. You had to be quick, though. The name would fade within a few hours, and if you didn't see it, you'd never know who'd you'd love more than anyone.
Thinking about it, Jacht pondered how the humans elsewhere felt, never given the name of the person they'd be chained to for the rest of their lives. He wondered if he could keep his eyes closed, keep covered, and not ruin the surprise for himself down the road.
"What if I don't want to fall in love with them?"
Mum smiled and kissed his head. "Then don't."
He couldn't fall asleep that night, no matter how hard he tried, until the wee hours when even the insects stopped buzzing outside and the only sound was the ever-present whoosh of waves on the beach. He woke up to excited noises in the kitchen. His parents were already awake, already eager to find out with their son the name of his one true love.
Jacht squeezed his eyes shut, hoping the word was covered by his pyjamas but with no way to know. He managed to get halfway across the room he shared with his brother, when Gray's giggles made him look. At first, he thought his eyes were going bad, but he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Jacht's jaw dropped open as Gray shouted for Mum and Dad.
His whole body from the chin down was covered in tight script, names written over names over more names, turning him into a solid sheet of blue ink.
He heard his parents coming down the hall to the bedroom, and heard Gray continue to snicker, but his eyes were delighted by his own reflection, and the slowly widening grin over his own face.
2. The One You'll Go Through Time With
"What's your tattoo of?" Wet from a dip in the pool, Rose sat beside him using her one towel to dry her hair. Jack had reckoned she'd use the fluffy terrycloth as a sop to modesty, but no. Every day he found more things to like about Rose Tyler, and he had one more to add to his list: Does not mind casual nudity in or out of the TARDIS swimming pool.
"Tattoo?"
She inclined her head with a gesture. Jack's towel was slung over his shoulder, leaving nothing to her imagination, either.
"Oh." An adulthood away from home full of secrets and lies worried at him, but he was trying to turn over a new leaf. A little truth couldn't hurt. "It's a word in the language of the place where I was born."
Rose smiled in delight. Another item on his list: Loves learning new things. "Say it? Please?"
He scrunched up his face as though in deep thought, but it wasn't as though he'd forget. The old syllables bounced off his tongue.
"That's nice. What's it mean?"
He hesitated, but she didn't know what she was asking, and that made telling easier. Item three: Is innocent in ways you never can be again.
"It's the name I was born with."
She burst out in peals of laughter.
"What?"
"Captain Jack Harkness, you are the only man in the universe who would walk around with his own name tattooed on his arse."
"Yeah," he chuckled, and he decided not to tell her the rest.
3. The One You Never Wanted
"No," the boy said out loud when the strange words appeared on his skin. Heart pounding, brain swirling in anger from watching his mother wither away in front of him after the loss of her own soul's true mate, he vowed that would never, ever be him.
His mother cried, noticing the wound on his arm where he'd taken the sharpest knife in the house to his own flesh. She bandaged his cut and took him to the doctor, where the laser stitching ensured he healed without a scar.
"We've seen this before," the doctor said, her hand a gentle comfort on Mum's shoulder. "He should talk with a counsellor."
Mum nodded and agreed, but after his arm healed neither of them spoke of seeing counsellors, or really, of much at all.
He didn't think about the name, a word he didn't know in a language he didn't yet speak. The memory faded until he found himself in a wet city far from home in a body much healthier than one shot by Daleks should be. He undressed for a wash and found the name on his right hip.
Jack trembled, reading and rereading the word. When he had scraped together money, enough for a large bottle of gin and a small bottle of acid, he screamed through etching away the word then drank himself into unconsciousness.
One death followed another, and his soul mark moved, returned, somewhere below his chin every time. Skinning himself caused excruciating pain by blade or flame. Jack affected to ignore the name when the blue moved onto his back, only to be reminded when lovers asked about his tattoo. He paid a surgeon a great deal of money not to ask questions when Jack showed up with a new mark to remove.
"You could just keep it," she hazarded after the fifteenth time Jack left her office with a large plaster under his clothes.
"I choose," he said to no-one as soon as the door slammed shut in his wake. "Not fate, not DNA, not anybody. Me. I choose who I love." He found a different surgeon. He learned to grit his teeth when he used his own sharp knife.
"Run-in with a Weevil," he told Ianto when pressed about the covered wound. But he couldn't meet Ianto's eyes when he spoke, and he guessed his own lies were as ineffective as ever. "Nothing to worry about."
"You should take better care of yourself," came the gentle rebuke. "You may not be able to die, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter when you get hurt." Rather than argue, Jack distracted him from further chiding.
A thousand years passed. Two. Ten. Fifty thousand years into his long life, Jack found himself on the wrong side of a Vortex containment field. He prayed to the gods of his childhood for a death he doubted he'd ever earn. Said gods, proving they were only sort of bastards, granted him a different wish as he shuddered back into life.
"Sir!" said his adjutant Carlew, horror on his asymmetrical features. He made a holy sign to ward off what he saw.
The man who'd dropped the name Harkness a long time ago dragged himself up, only to discover he had no legs. Or arms. In fact, he was feeling extremely strange. Another death, another life.
Weeks later, his recovery nearly complete, Carlew sat beside his biobed. "But you have lost all your limbs, sir. How can you be so calm?"
He couldn't turn his own head, not now, but he offered up a smile. "The trade-off has had one advantage. I'm open to discovering the rest."
4. The Right One (Right Now)
The name scrawled on his skin, formed there before his birth, was positioned perfectly to be hidden under his wrist strap. At last, he could stop many of the awkward questions he'd dodged over the years between leaving his colony world and finally graduating from the Academy. His classmates and playmates who'd heard of the Boeshane Peninsula all rolled their eyes or eye-equivalents at him, amused by the tradition of a backwater world. One love? Honestly?
No, no, he'd explain over and again, but explaining was hard when the truth was writ right there. Whomever he loved most, their name was written in blue for all to see, until he managed to cover it with a wrist computer instead of a lie and a smile. Much easier to get someone or several someones into bed with him when he didn't have to explain why his own body told them he was clearly in love with another.
The skin itched and burned when the name changed. That was another annoyance. When he'd been six, he'd loved his Mum and Dad more than anyone else ever. After the terrible day and the even worse weeks and months that followed, the blue skin on his forearm serpentined into his brother's name. With time and healing, the letters rearranged into the name of the first girl he kissed, the first boy he slept with, the last friend he betrayed before running away from home for good. The beginning of the end with the man he practically married for two incredibly long weeks was when his strap slipped, just once, and another's name shone out like a blue beacon. The end of another beginning marked itself in Gallifreyan runes which mocked him for decades.
"I love you, you know," Estelle said, her strong legs wrapped up with his. Jack, he was Jack even in his dreams these days, laughed and kissed her, pressing the words back into her mouth. He woke later that same night with a familiar, terrible burn on his arm. Without looking, he knew, and the soul-crushing terror stole away the last of his sleep.
"I'm sorry," he said into her hair.
Estelle's name stayed with him for years, replaced by others in their turn, always the damning blue refusing to lie. He could as easily paint a target on his head, and let his various enemies great and mean know how to destroy him. No, better to hide.
"I hate it," he told Lucia, who shrugged. She'd asked. They always asked when the skin showed. She didn't mind when her name wasn't written on her occasional lover's body. She had more pressing worries, and no intentions of making such an inconstant man a permanent fixture in her life. The last true kindness in her eyes for him shone on the day he removed his wrist strap to show baby Melissa her own name. Jack was certain she changed their daughter's identity to torture him in one more creative fashion.
The beginning of new romances, and the end of the Universe, and a long, long rest under the ground, and the soul mark shifted like a weathercock, pointing towards his truest love. Jack swore to himself that when he looped back around to the founding of his own colony, someone was getting punched in the genitals.
This burnt-out house used to be part of a trendy new area in Cardiff. The owners hadn't escaped, although Gwen's friend Andy had performed a spectacular job of getting the neighbours to evacuate. Gwen wasn't as lucky, and neither was Ianto. Jack, either, come to that. The aliens had eaten their tea with the former occupants of the destroyed home, and turned their attention to Cardiff's less than able defenders, who were currently bound and tethered to one wall.
Jack understood the aliens' speech, a dialect closely related to one he'd learned his first year of Academy. Listening to them discussing their plans didn't make him feel better. One had been here in disguise for some time, spying on Earth culture and scouting it out for a potential foothold.
"This planet is defended," he spat out in passable Ominish, gargling the syllables just as the textbook had taught.
"By such weak and stringy meat?"
"We have powerful weapons."
"What are you saying to them?" Gwen asked, the movement of her shoulders telling Jack she'd nearly got her bonds free.
"Just establishing that we're in charge here."
Ianto said, "Good. We wouldn't want them thinking they were in charge just because we're their helpless prisoners." He wiggled his hand where only the other two could see. A few more private practise sessions and he'd be able to get himself loose from anything Jack came up with. Assuming they got out of here alive.
The alien said, "You are the leader?"
"That's me." Jack was hauled to his feet. He made a hushing sound to his friends. Gwen was free now and waiting for the go-ahead. He'd wait, just for the moment, and not reveal their advantage whilst he played the aliens for information. A part of him he didn't want to acknowledge at the moment reminded him of their recent losses, and allowed how caution was the wisest course in keeping the last two members of his team safe.
"One of these is your mate." A third alien held its weapon loosely aimed at Gwen and Ianto. Even freed, they couldn't outrun a good shot.
Jack stayed quiet. His relationships were none of their business.
The alien, the scout who'd been on Earth longest, switched to English. "You are the leader. You may go. Tell us which is your favourite. The other will be our dinner guest."
"Thanks, no. My friends and I are leaving together." He nodded to the others, with a quick signal that meant, 'Get ready.'
"Boeshane," said the second alien, and sliced Jack's hands free. In a moment, he was relieved of his wrist strap. Ah, damn. Was it the accent? The good looks? His colony had been famous in their time, which was now looking like the aliens' home time.
"Hey, give that back!" Moment of caution was over. He swung but they grabbed his arm, and held the other as the scout read the damning scrawl on his arm. The alien spun and seized Gwen, thrusting her roughly into Jack's grip. The others' weapons were suddenly everywhere.
"Go," said the scout, nudging the two of them along with the muzzle of the gun. To its companions it said, "We have the advantage. As long as we have its mate, the leader will not stand against us."
The aliens shoved Jack and Gwen out of the ruined house.
"What the hell?" she asked, unsubtle in her attempt to get a look at Jack's bare wrist.
"Leave it. First things first, we need to get Ianto out of there and put these guys down."
Gwen twisted herself and took his wrist. "Why's his name on your arm, Jack?"
"Later."
5. The One You'll Never Lose
The name required a touch to activate. Shake hands, meet the one person who would love you until your death. The gods help you if your name didn't appear on their skin at the same time.
Jack loved touch, and he touched everyone he ever met. Most species, hell most humans, didn't have any sort of marking to show if Jack was their one true love, and he liked it that way. He liked knowing before they did. The first time he brushed a hand or stroked an arm, he gave a little gasp, wondering if this was the moment, if this was the soul destined to follow him to the end, if there was an end.
His skin stayed bare, through time and space and the Time Vortex itself. Hundreds of lovers, thousands of friends, yet the name never bloomed across him like a lighthouse. Twelve thousand years old, and he began to research, wondering if he'd missed his chance. Perhaps his soulmate had lived and died millennia ago, or wouldn't be born for a trillion years. Time travel opened his options whilst coming up empty on answers. Perhaps his soulmate was from an anemone species swimming beneath oceans yet to fill with water.
Perhaps there was no-one at all.
"Stop looking," said his fifty-second wife. "Your children need you."
He stopped the search. After a billion years, he forgot the planet of his birth, forgot the faces of the ones who never were, forgot most of the names he himself ever used, forgot that he'd forgotten.
Five billion years into his life, a young nurse newly joined to her order changed his dressings. Her name shimmered though him when they touched. Startled, a fragment of his memory jarred loose from long, long dormancy.
The nurse, barely more than a girl, startled back herself, whiskers twitching. The one who would be with him until he died, he knew now, and he knew what was to come. The end he'd earned would be granted to him within the lifetime of one confused cat.
His Excellency laughed.
6. The One You Want
"It's blue," he said, staring at the concrete lining the ceiling of his bunker. How they'd ever got on the subject of Jack's first home, or his physiology, remained a mystery. Ianto had taken the news about the lactose intolerance and the polydactylism without comment, but the writing had him intrigued.
"You wake up with the name of your true love printed in blue on your body?"
"Yep."
"That's brilliant." He rolled over, giving Jack a nice view of his naked back.
"You think so?"
"No more worries about dating. No more wondering if you've made a terrible mistake, or if you'll never find someone who's right for you. You already know their name, you just go find them."
"It's hell."
Ianto made a noise, then turned his head. His face went through an odd contortion. "It would be for you, wouldn't it? Knowing you had one person, one chance at happiness, and knowing you'll lose them forever. I'm sorry. I didn't think."
Jack watched his eyes. Ianto's back was a great sight, but Jack had melted in those eyes for years. Their fifth anniversary would be next week. When this began, Jack hadn't considered they'd last five nights.
"It's not that. It's the lack of choice in the matter. Imagine. You wake up one day, and there's a name written on you. That's it. No getting to discover for yourself. No going out on adventures and wondering if you'll fall madly in love with your partner before they betray you. No remarrying, either, not even if you're widowed, because you both know from the outset it isn't true love. No romancing multiple people to find out whose smile lights you up most, whose lips are the softest. You could wake up with the name of your most bitter enemy written across your chest, and no matter what you want, you're stuck with them. No matter how far you run, you'll never love anyone as much as them. No escape, and no choice."
"And you?" The question wasn't as shy as it would have been even three years ago.
"My parents were immigrants to the colony. They didn't have the genetic modifications yet when I was born. I can drink milk, and I have five toes on each foot, and I didn't ever wake up with the name of my soulmate written on my body. Kinda happy about that. Especially the milk. You know how I love a good cheese."
There was a long-suffering sigh beside him.
"I'd be afraid," Ianto said at last. "You're right. It sounds romantic, and it sounds like it'd be a relief not to have to worry, but I can picture the problem. If I had Lisa's name on me forever, I don't know how I'd bear to look in the mirror again knowing I could never feel that way again. And if I'd had yours, she never would have been with me in the first place. I would have lost one of you and never known it." His breath caught in pain at the mere thought.
Jack kissed him. "But you didn't. Normal people have to figure it out for themselves. I like being normal, and having a say."
He waited until Ianto's eyes closed, waited longer until he fell asleep, before Jack rolled out of the narrow bunk. They didn't sleep here often any more, choosing the comfort of their flat, but on the few late nights they stayed over, Jack was reminded of why he liked this space.
In the dark, Jack found the ladder and climbed up to his office. He opened his desk drawer, rummaging around until his fingers wrapped around what he needed. When he finished, he made his careful way down again and went back to bed
"I choose," he whispered into Ianto's shoulder, setting the promise with a kiss too light to wake. Blurred a bit by his sloppy lettering, the permanent blue ink written on Jack's arm dried in the cool night air.
The End