Note:

I've been completely lacking in inspiration for a few weeks, but I've been toying with this idea for a while and finally struck upon a starting place that felt right for it, and thankfully my writer's block disappeared as a consequence.

Stealing from myself again, as the soulmarks here are of the same kind as I used in a series of stories I wrote for Emmerdale, and (copying from that!) they consist of words, but they're not the first words, or the last words, or even the most important words, but just something that someone, somewhere might say to you.

And at the beginning of this fic:

Scotland – Ucheldir (Highland)
Wales – Gorllewin (West)
England – Dwyrain (East)
y bobl - the people (humans)
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Y bobl have marks on their skin, too; Ucheldir has seen them many times on those who are unfortunate enough to wear their destiny where it cannot easily be hidden beneath a drape of cloth or wrap of wool.

But y bobl's marks make sense where his does not, and show recognisable landmarks, animals or objects; somewhere someone might take them, or something they might show them when the time and the place and the person is right and it forges a connection between that burns down through their skin and bones and settles so deep within their hearts that only death could tear them asunder.

Ucheldir's mark is made up of nothing but thin curving lines that flow like water along the inside of his left forearm.

Dwyrain has two marks, Ucheldir has noticed when they bathe together, Gorllewin four, but they are just as incomprehensible as Ucheldir's own. The brothers puzzle over their meaning together many times until the inexorable march of both time and the Romans force them apart, and they forget how to talk about such things.

Pictland thinks they may be runes, and later realises they are words. Alba knows they are not Latin, or his own tongue, or his brothers', and though he cannot recognise the language they are written in, he knows that others might. It unsettles him to think that another person – some stranger– may be able to decipher the secret his mark holds where he is unable to, needing nothing more than a glance as his words are so few, so he keeps it covered at all times, winding a bandage tight around his arm from wrist to elbow.

He never removes it, except to bathe. Not even when the summer sun climbs to its merciless peak, and it chafes his sweat-slick skin raw.

Not even when the impossible happens, and a promised alliance between their kings leads France to his bed, and he seems intent that every inch of Scotland be bared to his eyes.

He tugs insistently at the edges of the fabric, runs a curious finger beneath it, and Scotland is so pleased, delighted, inflamed by the touch that he allows the imposition for far too long. The sudden shock of sensation when the bandage begins to unravel – the throbbing rush of blood to numbed flesh and soothing caress of cool air – returns him to his senses, and he gently pushes France's hands aside. Shakes his head.

France complies with obvious reluctance, pouting all the while. "What are you hiding under there?"

"Just my words." Scotland keeps his eyes downcast, because he knows that he will throw all caution aside if he looks on France's disappointed expression for too long. "I prefer to keep them private. Most do, don't they?"

"If they're able to," France concedes, "though I've never understood why. They're nothing to be ashamed of."

Even though Scotland's fumbling fingers had snarled the ties of his shirt into tangles, he makes quick work of unfastening them, and then casts the garment carelessly aside.

Scotland hadn't had the presence of mind, or the faculties remaining, to light more than one candle when they'd first stumbled into his bedchamber – half-drunk, with hands and mouths far too preoccupied for either speech or practicalities – but it's bright enough that he can make out the shape of France's marks, if not their details.

The letters at the base of his ribs are small and cramped, the ones inscribed on his chest long and looping. There are two marks on his left arm, three on his right, and all are black like Scotland's own. The words circling his navel appear to be red, and shimmer as though they are shot through with gold.

Scotland traces them all with the pad of his thumb, tallying them silently as he goes. He stops counting at ten, and, disheartened, lets his hand drop away to rest on his lap, heavy and impotent.

"So many," he says without thinking, and then cringes when France laughs at the sentiment he'd unwittingly shared.

"Well, it would be strange if we only had one or even two or three, like our people do," France says blithely. "We live so many years, we're bound to find many more hearts that beat in time with our own."

Although both England and Wales also have more than one mark, Scotland has doggedly continued to believe that they must represent more than mere compatibility. Perhaps not the bringing together of two halves of one soul, as humans of a more romantic or philosophical bent thought it to be, but something more meaningful. More profound.

The bond could not be as strong as his people's stories described it to be, though. It couldn't be something that transformed people so thoroughly, became the very core of them, not if France was fated to have the chance to form so many.

"I suppose so," he says anyway, ashamed now of his singular mark by France's evident amusement at the concept, and worried too that it speaks ill of him somehow.

That it demonstrates a damning difference between him and the rest of his kind; that perhaps his heart is too small, too self-contained, compared to theirs.

He is glad than ever that he chose long ago to keep his mark hidden, and gladder still that France's ardour quickly rises again, and with it brings an eagerness that allows no pause for negotiating the complexities of knots and bows. They come together half-dressed, and the next time they share a bed, Scotland makes sure to be ready, adding new bandages to thigh and calf to hint at other marks kept concealed from France's view.

France soon tires of trying to peek beneath them, and not long after, seems to tire of Scotland, too. Their love-making continues, but loses its urgency, and what little pillow talk they used to indulge in afterward dwindles and eventually stops. Scotland mourns the loss, but in these quiet moments they share together, lying side by side and not touching, he does find reward of a different sort.

In them, he simply looks at France and maps the marks that pepper his skin.

Most of them, he cannot comprehend, but there are two that stand out. The first, curled at the base of his spine, is rendered in Latin: a simple phrase, one that Scotland has said to France many times and never once seen a change in his countenance when he hears it, no sign that it has spoken to some deeper part of him. Still, the time and the place have to be right, as well as the words – or so conventional wisdom goes – and its presence there remains a tantalising possibility.

The second is less auspicious, but intriguing all the same. It's written in what appears to be a close cousin to England's tongue – or maybe Scotland's own – which should be an encouraging sight, but as the words it spells out are ones that Scotland cannot even begin to imagine speaking to France, it is not.

As the years pass, and Scotland learns more of France's language as it shifts and evolves, Scotland's own mark ceases to be a cipher to him, which proves to be an unexpectedly crushing disappointment. The first two words are simple ones, so common-place that Scotland has heard them from France's lips a hundred times or more unfeelingly, and the name that follows them is one that France no longer uses for him. After the initial thrill of recognition, a moment's ecstasy of hope, it seems more certain that ever that his feelings for France – no matter how fierce – are apparently not meant to be.

That knowledge does not help to temper them, however. Instead and perversely, they grow ever stronger over the centuries, just as France's own evidently cool at the same rate. Nevertheless, Scotland persists despite all the many times that his letters to France go unanswered, all the many touches that go unreciprocated and questions unanswered, because France still turns to him to defend him in battle, invites him to share his bed time and again, and that has to mean something, even though Scotland's skin tells him it isn't true love, no matter what his heart and head might have to say to the contrary.

He isn't sure he trusts the mark's opinion on the matter, in any case. His own people very rarely have the opportunity or even the means to meet their so-called soulmates, and yet they still fall in love, marry, and raise families. They live perfectly contentedly without forming that bond, and surely Scotland can, too.

Besides, no-one's ever been able to describe what one might be like to Scotland's satisfaction; all the human writings he's read on the subject have only talked about nebulous sensations, overlaid with a thick layer of poetic guff of the sort Wales likes to spout which, when it comes down to it, means nothing at all.

France has always refused to be drawn on the subject.

All in all, he doesn't feel as though he's missing anything much, so he continues on in some semblance of love, if not much contentment, until France finally, inevitably, becomes tired of dragging around the threadbare remnants of what passes for their relationship, and casts it aside.

Their alliance is already in tatters, and France has been growing ever more distant for years, but, despite that, the end somehow still comes as a surprise to Scotland. It hits him like a punch to the stomach, and leaves him just as breathless. He tries to drown the frantic, clawing feeling in his chest with wine, but it only makes it sharper, more painful, and turns his thoughts in increasingly desperate directions.

Desperate enough to fall to his knees and beg France to reconsider, to give him some more time, another chance.

But France ignores his pleas. He offers nothing more than a curt farewell, and then, as he turns his back and walks away, appends that old name of Scotland's – the one that isn't truly his and that France hasn't used otherwise for an age – seemingly as an afterthought; a hateful full stop ending what they once were. Yet another twist of the knife in his gut.

Scotland's mark flares with heat, burning through his skin like a brand.