Chapter Text
They had been living in Russia for a little more than two years when White noticed the fade for the first time.
Well, he didn’t. He saw his face every day, it was too gradual for him to catch up on it. It was a new kid at school who was getting to know the others, at ease and open like he wasn’t freshly arrived from one country or another. White’s grasp of the English language was still slippery, his Russian not much better, especially among the other teens who talked fast and didn’t care to be understood.
The new boy was already more integrated into the group than he was.
“Shit, is that a soulmark?”
He was pointing at White’s face. Specifically, the nebulous shape seared under his left eye in lightless black. It was a Mobius strip, undulating from one corner of his eye to the other, its shape and light ever-changing as he talked and moved.
White often had the urge to hide it. Not that he was ashamed of it, as many thought he should be, his parents included. But he didn’t like it being scrutinized and judged, and especially since he had left Thailand, he didn’t like to be reminded of it at all.
“Yeah, it’s creepy right?” another kid answered, laughing. “He doesn’t want to tell us who it’s for.”
As if he would share anything with them, let alone something so intimate and close to his heart.
As if he even could, since he couldn’t say two words, in any language, before being mocked. He was the only Thai child at school.
“Well, at least it’s fading, so maybe it will be gone soon.”
White forgot how to breathe.
“What do you mean, fading?” a boy asked, curious. White couldn’t be mad this time. It was the question he wanted to ask too.
“Well, it’s not that dark, you know? Aren’t soulmarks supposed to be really stark? I’ve heard they could disappear too.”
The group dissolved into a passionate discussion on soulmarks. It wasn’t the first time, wouldn’t be the last – it fascinated them, even if very few of them had a mark to show off. It was uncommon in children, as they usually started to show up during adolescence, and then all throughout their lives.
White had been born with his.
He got up and escaped the busy classroom while no one was paying attention to him. Class would resume soon but he couldn’t care less at the moment. His father could scold him all he wanted, could ground him too. It’s not like White had anywhere to go after school, anyone to see or talk to, anything to do.
It’s not like White had a life here.
He went to the bathroom near the gym, the one that had the most chances of being empty. The bell rang just as he slipped inside, so the last lingering student hurried out and left him alone.
White took out his wallet. Took out the single picture he kept there, carefully pressed into its specific pocket. He had had to cut it so that it would fit, but it still displayed the most important.
Black and him smiling at the camera. Taken during their eleventh birthday, the last they celebrated together.
Apart from their clothes, there was no way to tell one from the other. Though White knew the shape of Black’s smile, always a little smaller than his own, and the peculiar glint of his eyes, and the depth of his dimple that didn’t quite give the same shadow as his. There was a time when White knew Black’s face down to its smallest details, but now the only one he could study was his own. The knowledge was slowly fading.
And apparently, their soulmark was too.
The boy was right. There on the picture, the mark was a much darker, richer black, was much more contrasted, despite White’s skin being darker then. In comparison the mark looked pale now, as if watered down.
It sent White spiraling into horrifying dread.
He couldn’t get up for the next hour, nor the next. He stayed there, locked in the bathroom, trying to quench his tears and calm his heaving breath with little success. He kept pressing his fingers on the mark as if it was going to fill it in, as if it would give it its blackness back. And then he stopped, fearing he would erase it more somehow if he kept rubbing at all.
Was it truly fading away for good?
Could it be gone one day?
He waited until the last class of the day was over and he had less of a chance to meet one of his classmates before going to pick up his things and leaving school. They would have called his father already, but he had a few hours of respite before the man was due home.
White didn’t head there. Instead, he went to the library.
It wasn’t like he could decipher any book there well enough, but they had free access to the computers and he didn’t have the password for the one at home. The woman at the front desk eyed his mark with a suspicious glare, but she let him go to the computer room without question.
He typed in “can soulmarks disappear” before he was even sitting.
Soulmarks were a common subject of study yet they were still mostly a mystery. They connected people in any number of ways, at different moments of their lives. They were lifelong friends, lovers, close relatives, work partners. People that changed the course of their lives. People they were irrevocably attached to.
Or not so irrevocably, it seemed. Because soulmarks did fade away.
It could happen all at once or it could be gradual. It could fade and then come back, or not. It never disappeared entirely, but it could discolor to almost nothing. It could be caused by a violent betrayal, a sudden change in one’s life, death too, or simply by distance and indifference.
It was happening to his bond with Black.
Soulmarks on family members weren’t uncommon, especially between siblings. They were the ones that appeared at the earliest. Soulmarks could be identical between the two people it bonded, but more commonly, they represented the other person and the role they would have in their soulmates’ life. They were usually in discreet places, on the chest and limbs, more rarely on the neck and hands.
Black and White were born with the exact same mark, huge on their small face.
It set them apart from the rest, even before they could take their first breath. Even before their parents’ eyes. It was just too weird, too uncommon, too unsettling. This identical mark on their identical face, right from infancy, it wasn’t unheard of, maybe, but they never met anyone else with something similar.
And it wasn’t only that. They were too close for their parents’ liking. They were too attuned to each other, they could influence each other’s mood and thoughts, they couldn’t be apart more than a few hours. White didn’t understand why it was a bad thing that he wanted to be with his brother, that he loved him more than anyone else. Was he not supposed to? They were brothers.
They were thousands of miles apart now.
Was that why the mark was fading? But some people got a mark before they even met, kept it even after the other person had died. Was it that… That Black was forgetting about him?
That he was forgetting about Black?
He had begged his father to at least let him call, let him write, anything. To just have news from his brother, to know how he was doing, if he was okay. At first he had naively thought that his father didn’t want to talk about the rest of their family because it was too painful. He knew better now. His father had brought them here – if he hated it as White did, he simply wouldn’t have
His father didn’t care about Black, didn’t care about their mother either. Some day White wasn’t even sure his father cared about him.
White had no friend here, no one. If he lost the mark, he would truly be all alone in this world.
He vowed to himself that it wouldn’t happen. He would keep Black close to his heart, they would meet again no matter what.
.
People were either fascinated or repulsed by the mark on his face. Be it one or the other, White didn’t like to talk about it, didn’t like them to stare, and above all didn’t let anyone touch it. His partners learned about it soon enough, or were shown the door.
They sometimes took it as a challenge – to make it fade for good and replace it with one of their own or to have it appear on their own skin too. It happened that soulmarks would manifest on one person first, and much later on the other, or others. But it would be in the same spot. Some people wanted a face mark, for some reason, and since he never said anything, they assumed his was unclaimed for now.
Its faded grey surely supported that theory.
It was a lot less visible than when he was a child, but it had stopped getting fainter after a few years. He was sure his father had hoped it would disappear completely, but White would never let that happen. By sheer force of will, he would keep his bond with Black alive, even if they never met again.
It turned out that they would though.
He could tell his father wasn’t happy about the news. He did want to go back to Thailand, had planned on it from the start, but he didn’t want White to.
The reason was obvious. White thought he could feel it, like paint on his skin, as the words were falling from his father’s mouth, that it was time they went back to Bangkok. He could feel it as he packed his bags. His latest girlfriend remarked on it when he told her goodbye.
The mark was filling back in. By the time they touched down at Bangkok International Airport, it was as dark as it has been on the day of his birth. On the day he had left.
I’m coming back, he thought. I’m coming back to you.