Soulmate AU where the first words your soulmates says to you appear on your body at age 18.
Featuring Rena Shepard and Kaidan Alenko
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Rena is up at 0600 on her eighteenth birthday, having slept through the night. She doesn't notice the mark on the top of her thigh. Honestly, she doesn't even remember to look for a mark until she's in the shower. With the water running all around her, and her eyes still full of sleep, she thinks it's a bruise at first. But when pressing fingers don't reveal a sore spot, she ducks her head out of the stream to see a looped script disappearing into her inner thigh. Her heart pounds then, as she remembers. She had been counting down to her eighteenth birthday so she could enlist, not so that she could get her mark. But now that it's there, dark and different on her upper thigh, she is nervous.
She has to tilt her head, but she manages to make out the script.
"Commander."
She gasps, a thrill of excitement going through her as she realizes the implications of the word. She's right to enlist, she'll be good at it, good enough to rise the ranks. The mark doesn't enter her mind for the rest of the day.
It's only later that night, with her enlistment papers in a folder on her bedside table, that Rena bothers to think of her mark again. She finds it again, exposed in the cool night air, and traces the letters with her finger. She lets her mind wander to some distant place, an adolescent daydream of a stranger out among the stars whose heart and soul meshes with hers so closely, it's destined.
Kaidan is awake at midnight, the day he turns eighteen. Not because he's waiting for his mark to appear, but because he's still not used to Earth time. He's only been home for two weeks, and his body refused to sleep before 0200.
He notices the clock strike midnight, and he gets up to head into the bathroom. He might as well spend the next hour or two thinking of a daydream instead of reliving his last few days of Brain Camp.
His one hope is that his mark isn't faded, light against his skin instead of a stark contrast. He hopes more than anything that his soulmate is still out there, that he hasn't met them yet.
He hopes he hasn't already ruined their relationship before it ever really started.
Part of him knows that it's unlikely, that she would be his soulmate, but Kaidan still worries that his mark will be "Rahna, good to meet you."
He doesn't notice it at first, the mirror doesn't help him in locating his mark. It's in an odd place, written along his forearm so that he'll be able to read it anytime he checks his watch.
"Nice to have you on the team, Alenko."
Kaidan sighs in relief. The ink is dark, so he hasn't met them yet. But the words won't be helpful in deciphering his soulmate's identity. What team is he joining? It could be as simple as playing a game of basketball at the gym with someone he doesn't know. Or maybe, he follows up on his childhood dream and becomes a hockey player. Maybe it's his first day at work.
Either way, he won't know. Has no way of knowing.
That might be for the better. He doesn't seem to have the best luck with relationships.
Rena is in her late twenties the next time she thinks of her mark for more than a fleeting moment. She's been promoted, now officially a Commander, and it only takes her a week to realize that her mark is going to be a problem for her.
She's career military, so her soulmate is a problem no matter who he is, but she cannot live her life wondering if everyone she meets is her soulmate. She'd like to know who he is, even if she doesn't act on it.
She decides that a codeword is the best way to go. It's a common enough idea. Too many people have simple greetings as their mark for humanity not to have found a loophole. And she's good enough at reading people that she should be able to tell when she meets him.
But she cannot use something silly, the way most people do. It has to be uncommon enough to be obvious, but not unprofessional.
She does a few extranet searches, to drum up ideas, when she notices her search history.
"Old Earth Russo-European"
She'd been restless the day before, and in-between filing reports had decided to do more research on the old earth dialect her mother had mentioned. Apparently her great-grandmother had spoken it fluently, and it was one of the few earth dialects still not picked up by Alliance translators.
She searched again, this time focusing on single words. She needed something short, and sweet.
Finally, one stuck out to her.
"Kvitka.-my flower".
Rena smiled. Her father had called her 'Daisy' when she was small. It was one of the few things she remembered about him.
That would work. She'd just tack it onto the end of whatever she was saying after someone first called her 'Commander'. She'd tell people it was an old Earth greeting, a family habit.
Kaidan is in the gym, working a punching bag when he notices a red spot on his arm, just in the crook of his elbow. He stops, wiping the sweat from his brow, and examines it.
His mark has changed.
He traces a finger over the addition. A single word, tacked onto the end of his mark. Kvitka.
Puzzled, he wonders why a non-English word has appeared as part of his mark, and why now.
That night, he searches on the extranet for testimonials of changed marks. The consensus is that it occurs only on conscious decision of the soulmate to say a specific word or phrase.
So whoever Kaidan's soulmate is, for some reason they had decided to say this odd word. Kaidan chuckles, wondering if his soulmate is one of the lucky millions who has "Hello" as their mark.
The last search Kaidan does is for the word itself. A dozen linguistic sites later, he learns that it's a dead Earth dialect, and that it means 'flower'.
Maybe his soulmate is a florist?
Kaidan stands at attention, reporting to the new Commander. He's heard a little about her, about Elysium and her numerous commendations. She's good, and he's looking forward to being a part of her ground team.
He sees her in his peripheral vision, but dos not turn. He stands straight ahead, listening as Captain Anderson introduces her to the crew.
"Navigator Pressly is in charge of the new CIC."
"Commander."
"Kvitka, Navigator. Good to know we won't be hitting any planets while you're aboard."
"Here's hoping, Commander."
Kaidan stiffened. He could have sworn he heard the Commander say his word. But it was odd, she said it like a greeting. Maybe he had heard wrong.
It took all of Kaidan's military discipline not to turn his head to look at her.
She said it again, though, to the next in line, and Kaidan was sure it was his word this time, only said in a lilting way that sounded both foreign and pleasant to his ear.
She walked in front of him next, stopping to meet his eye.
He sucked in a breath a little more than necessary.
She was beautiful. If not for the perfect military posture and various tiny scars adorning her face and neck, Kaidan would never believe that the woman in front of him was the Hero of the Blitz, an N7 marine, and his new commander.
"Lieutenant Alenko is head of marine detail, and will accompany you on the ground team."
Kaidan realized he had been silent a beat too long, and saluted sharply.
"Commander."
"Nice to have you on the team, Alenko. Kvitka."
"What does that word mean?" Kaidan blurted it out before he could stop himself. He knew what it meant, both in definition and to him, but he had to know what it meant to her.
The commander paused, eyes roaming for a moment. Kaidan could feel a blush creeping up his neck, and corrected himself swiftly. "Ma'am."
Shepard squared her shoulders again, looking Kaidan in the eye. She didn't seem offended by his lack of decorum, which seemed to be a good sign.
"It's a dead earth dialect-a greeting to most, but it has another meaning to someone special."
She didn't tell him what the word meant, but she told him all he really needed to know. He nodded sharply. "Sorry, ma'am. I thought my translator malfunctioned." A lame excuse, and he knew it, considering every Alliance marine spoke Basic, but the tiniest smile at the corner of Shepard's mouth showed that she accepted it.
She nodded once more, and turned to continue down the line, leaving him standing there, trying not to let the blush spread past his ears.
He doesn't think about it again, with the shakedown run gone bad, and Shepard becoming a Spectre, and going on the hunt for Saren.
But through it all, she's there. Always with the small, corner smile when he says something particularly stubborn. Always with the twinkling eyes. She stops by his station more often than most commanding officers would, under the guise of 'getting to know the crew'.
"Do you make a habit of getting this close with everyone?"
"No, no I don't".
He tells her everything she wants to know. About his service record, about Brain Camp. About Vyrnuus. He knows that half of it is in his file, and she knows it already. But she listens to him talk about his past with only an occasional nod.
He asks her things, sometimes. He learns tiny details about her, snapshots of her life. She's a navy brat, only child. Her mother still serves. Her father is never mentioned. She feels like she's been given praise she doesn't deserve, she's worried she will let them all down one day. She likes her café with loads of sugar but no milk, and she hums when she's concentrating particularly hard. She has a penchant for linguistics, and her tongue peeks out from between her teeth when someone cracks a particularly good joke. She makes tough decisions, and lets them weigh on her, but never break her. She goes running when she's stressed, or she spars, and she likes to hit with her left, even though she's right-handed. She has a favorite sniper rifle, an older model, all scratched up the side. The scratches spell out the name of a different marine and the date of the Skyllian Blitz.
She never talks about it, never talks about a lot of things. She never expected to be a leader, a spectre, any of it. She was the type of kid who enlisted because she wanted to help people, and got thrown into the N7 track because she was good at reading people and outthinking them, and if that failed, she could take them out before they noticed she was there.
She doesn't see how she burns with a fire that commands respect on and off the battlefield. How people will follow her to the ends of the earth, if she asked. How she lights up a room with a smile or a dry joke.
She doesn't see how amazing she is. She's blind to it all.
He feels like he would be half in love with her even if she hadn't said his word.
He wonders if she'll bring it up, his reaction to the dead word. He wonders if she even knows, or if her code word backfired on her.
He wants to talk about it, to know for certain if they're soulmates, or if it's all a coincidence and the universe is playing a cruel joke by dangling her in front of him. He's heard stories of soulmates not matching up, one person's mark fading but not the other's after they meet
He never says anything. He thinks of rolling up his sleeves one day, letting her see his mark, but he thinks that would make it seem like he didn't want to be hers. And he kind of does.
It's months before he has an answer. He wakes up from a particularly bad migraine in the middle of the night, and he's starving. He heads to his station for the extra protein bars he keeps just for this reason, and he sees her sitting in the mess.
"Can't sleep?"
"Not tonight. But I don't know why."
"Does that happen often?"
"Occasionally, but I always have some epiphany of something I forgot to do, and then I can sleep just fine. It's like my brain knows there's unfinished business, and I can't rest before I take care of it." She sighs, rubbing her temples, before turning to look at him. "Why are you up?"
"Hungry." He says simply, rubbing his stomach just as it lets out another rumble. "Biotics need to eat."
She laughs, and it echoes throughout the room. "I don't know how you keep your figure, Alenko. You eat enough for an entire platoon."
"Biotics need to eat" He repeats, getting up to complete his primary task. He returns with two protein bars, one nutty and one sweet, and puts both on the table. "Do you want one? Maybe food will jog your memory of your unfinished business."
She smiles, softly, and motions for him to pick one first. He takes the nutty one and sees her eyes twinkle brighter as she takes the sweet one.
They eat in relative silence, until Shepard speaks again. "You know, maybe it's you."
Kaidan pauses, unsure of what she means. "Me?"
"Yeah. Maybe that's why you're up at the same time. The universe has a funny way of handling things. Maybe you're part of the unfinished business." She pauses, and he can tell she's teasing him. "Am I expecting a report from you?"
He shakes his head, and she guesses again. "Do you have an unexpected report?"
"Any lingering issues?"
"Any burning questions for me?"
He pauses mid-head shake, and she raises an eyebrow.
"Do you?"
He does, but he doesn't know how to ask her. "I-"
"Oh!" He stops mid-sentence, her exclamation surprising him. "I never told you what that word means, did I? The greeting I use. Are you still curious?"
"Flower."
She pauses, and he can see that she's a little stunned.
"Kvitka. It means flower."
She stares at him in silence for a moment as he finishes the last of the protein bar.
"Did you really look it up just because your translator didn't catch it?"
Kaidan pauses, swallows, and then goes for it.
"Well, when a foreign word appears at the end of your mark one day, you do a little research."
Shepard gasps quietly, and Kaidan rolls up his sleeve, past his elbow, so that the faded ink is visible.
Shepard reaches out, fingers trailing along the words written across his skin, before looking up to meet his eyes.
"There were so many people that day, I was never sure. But I thought it might be you."
He inhales sharply. "Your mark is faded?"
She nods,teeth catching the edge of her lip. "I'd show you, but I don't really feel like stripping down to my civvies in the middle of the mess.""
His mouth goes dry.