Title: When It Blooms
Rating: PG/K+
Word Count: 600
Disclaimer: If I wrote it, it wouldn't be published because it would be locked in endless revision.
Summary: Nancy's not a late bloomer for anything. Except, apparently, a soulmark.
Pairings: One mention of the idea of Ned/Nancy, but it's me, so Frank/Nancy.
Author's Note: I had this idea back when I had more ideas than time (and a different job.) I wrote most of it, said it was crap, and abandoned it. Then I got stuck on everything, still have no time, but when I looked at this, I found a way to stick an ending on it and call it done. So I did.
Title comes from the Mulan quote, which seemed fitting.
When It Blooms
My, what beautiful blossoms we have this year. But look, this one's late. But I'll bet that when it blooms, it will be the most beautiful of all.
~Fa Zhou, Mulan
Nancy had never been a late bloomer in her life, not in any aspect of the words. She didn't like phrase, but she'd been called smart as a whip enough times to where it had stuck. She knew she had a good mind—she wouldn't be a detective if she wasn't able to reason things through, not even with her intuition. It took both instincts and brains to solve a case—with some help from the brawn.
She'd also hit puberty faster than she was ready for—it was easier to sneak around when she was able to pass as a boy sometimes, though that option was less and less available to her as she matured into a woman. There was no mistaking her for anything else most days, even when she put effort into concealing herself.
She was more emotionally mature than most, the product of losing her mother when she was young and becoming a detective while still young. She usually stayed calm in a crisis, and she was proud of that fact.
So when everything else matured and nothing was lagging behind, not that she could see, she'd assumed that her lack of soulmark was not something that was going to change. Some people were born without them, and she was just one of them.
Bess said she was lucky. Nancy could theoretically have anyone, whereas Bess' flirtations always ended as soon as they compared marks. George just snorted, and Bess said she'd be just as happy not to have a mark, but George took hers as a reason not to bother dating, not until she had already met the one who matched her mark.
Ned Nickerson was cute and funny and supportive, all things that made him nearly the perfect boyfriend, and Nancy was almost ready to let him be that and more. She risked keeping him from his own mark, which wasn't right, though he said they fit well enough for it not to matter to him—and just because she didn't match didn't mean she wasn't his soulmate.
Nancy kept him at arm's length, though, figuring having no soulmark was easier. It let her spend her days focused on cases without worrying about putting someone in danger or letting them down because her work came first. It was even easier to work with other detectives and not worry about emotions or attraction getting in the way.
"You know," Joe Hardy observed after hearing that explanation, "Frank says the same thing."
She'd yet to meet the older Hardy brother, since he'd been on some deepcover assignment every time Joe was free to work with her, but those words still made her stop moving, held still as her mind raced with the possible implications of that statement.
She couldn't stop thinking about it, the words echoing in her head for weeks until she finally did meet Frank in the flesh. It wouldn't have been the first time that Frank and Nancy agreed on something without ever talking about it, Joe was always telling her that they did, or that Frank would say the same thing, until they all added up with Joe's stories to a sense that she knew Frank long before she met him.
And when she did and they shook hands, the mark that finally showed itself on her arm was a perfect match for the one that just appeared on his.