A/N: Normally, I refer to the female avatar's son as Morgan, but but for purposes of this story he will be named Marc, as in the Japanese version. Also, this is a bit of a sad story in which Lon'qu is portrayed having notions of how intrinsic things are far more valuable than the solid, though it may appear as though he thinks pain is the only real and valid form of love. I don't necessarily agree with this point of view, but I don't reject it either.

This I wrote in a kind of weird mood, but not a bad mood. It's nothing grand, but I would appreciate it if it were taken with a bit of seriousness, and reviews would be greatly appreciated as well.

I hope you enjoy.

Marc

There are no universally beautiful things. This he learned very, very long ago. First he learned it when his mother got mad at him for running into their house covered in mud. He learned that she didn't see anything charming in a boy dripping wet, gross muck all over the floor she'd just finished passing the broom over. Contrary to what he'd believed, he wasn't cute at all. He didn't make her smile, like he'd wanted.

Being a kid, only beginning to understand what things were right or not, he let himself believe for a while that his mother had given him a lesson on the Universal. As in, the things that were or weren't universally acceptable. He wrote it all down on a blank piece of paper inside his head: The word UNIVERSAL, in big, bold, black letters lay flatly in the middle of his head's canvas, at the very top, but not touching the top edge. It lay just a few imaginary centimeters below it.

Then he started taking notes.

His father did not consider him laying down on the creaky floorboards beautiful, for example, not even if he tried to explain, with his limited and clumsy child-level words, the way in which light fell over the wood, and the way it made him get lost in it. The way it made him feel numb, and at peace. His father did not see the beauty in it, so he wrote it down.

And he never lied down on the floorboards again.

Those were rules, he told himself. And rules were made to be followed, because that's how the world worked. That's why the sun rose and fell, why the wind blew, and why clouds formed. Because there were rules. There were correct ways to do things, as well as manners in which he could mess everything up: Cows were milked in a certain way which was correct, and that yielded good milk. If the cows were milked incorrectly, that could yield myriad things, from a dropped bucket to a black eye.

Those were his first lessons, but as the years went by and his body got bigger and stronger, and a few wrinkles formed because of things that he did too often with his face, the more complicated and confusing the lessons got.

He used to think that parents loved their children no matter what, even when they got mad and spanked their kids to get them to behave. That he wrote down under the Universal. But later he had to erase it after the day his parents took both his hands and went to the market with him. They bought him some candies and other things he liked, even though they'd said some time ago that they had no money for such things. But they spoiled him that day, big time.

And then one moment - long after both his parents told him to sit and not move because they needed to do something, but they'd be back soon - he realized he'd been so engrossed in the special taste of his fig (something between apple and pear) that he didn't notice the exact moment that should have made him worry. He sat on that bench by that pond for a long time, nervously chewing his fleshy fruit, very slowly. As if that affected the flow of time, as if the dark would not creep in as fast. But the darkness of night came, and his parents didn't.

But because he loved them, he started making all this excuses inside his head. That's what true love is like, he realized. When somebody hurts you and you make excuses for why they do it…

He searched for his parents for a while, but the market was beginning to quiet down as more and more people left and the shop owners and peddlers packed to get tucked in or move somewhere else for the night. The emptier the square got the more cold dread settled in his stomach, and he pictured a snake coiling into knots inside him. If his parents had wanted to find him they already would have. But there was no one left, just the homeless people picking their heads out of valleys or meandering around to see if they could find any edible leftovers on the floor or from the garbage.

Those had been tough times in Chon'sin. Many years later Lon'qu would know that many kids, like him, were abandoned in public spaces, like it'd been a popular trend. And he knew how those things usually went. One persons does it, and then another, and another after that, and then a whole lot of people ask, "Well, why not? Everyone's doing it. We wouldn't be the only ones."

Perhaps people gained a sort of courage to do bad things when they felt they were not alone in doing them. Strength in the numbers, as they say. And that's when he threw away his list. The Universal no longer applied. The country was in tatters and starving after ending a centuries-old treaty with Yllise which had left their farmlands barren. The agricultural abuse got to be too much, but Chon'sin picked a terrible time to break relations with Yllise and the youngest were the ones who suffered the most.

Even that being the case he never thought the reason for him to be in the streets was Yllise or Chon'sin, or poverty or any other thing. He found himself returning to his empty house and staying there until he ran out of the crumbs his parents had left precisely because of his parents. Because they hadn't loved him the way he had thought. Whatever they might have felt towards him simply hadn't been strong enough to make them stay by his side when things got tough for them.

He'd just… never been loved. Not… honestly.

When Ke'ri was murdered he knew what real love was like. He became aware of it the moment it left his chest along with the light in Ke'ri's eyes. He felt it as a dull ache every day after too, and he held it close, with all his strength. He didn't want to forget true love.

So he held the pain of its loss. He held its ghost.

When Basilio first asked him why he was so silent, so taciturn around everyone, he said nothing. He kept his mouth shut and reminded himself that he used to have a father who didn't think sleeping on floorboards was beautiful, along with a mother who taught him of the Universal, and that true love is only real when you ache for it.

He looked at Basilio with those things in mind, and he seemed to get it. Only a little… but he understood. It made him wonder if he too had loved.

When he started making excuses for why the behavior Robin adopted around him shouldn't affect the way he gave her lessons with the sword, he knew he'd fallen again. But he was only aware of this when Robin wasn't around. The same sharp prick of needles he'd felt in his pincushion heart when Ke'ri left pounded when Robin walked away, and he marveled at how much he was still capable of feeling.

And it was wonderful.

He would sit on a rock or on the dirt during night watch, and feel all of Robin's absence in the breezes that ruffled his hair. The fact that his skin prickled with yearning let him know that yes, he had skin, and lips wanting to be kissed, and a heart wanting to be filled. In the loneliness, he felt more real than ever.

After a time though, being real wasn't enough. He wanted to get lost again. Wanted to be that kid roaming dusty streets who still hoped to find a hand that would hold his and not let go. And he wanted true love again, if only to let himself be molded anew in another's hands again. He wanted to be changed and to change somebody else, to be marked and to mark…

To mark.

When he found Marc sitting by himself some ways away from camp and he asked him what he was doing lurking with the shadows, his son responded:

"It's… it's probably weird. But I just remembered something mother used to say."

Lon'qu was eager to hear that story in particular.

"The Robin from the future, you mean."

Marc nodded, "Uh-huh. It's kind of sad too, so I don't know if you want to hear it."

Lon'qu sat down and crossed his legs.

"Tell me."

Marc pressed his lips together, "Well. It has to do with why I don't have many memories of you. I think… I think you weren't around for most of my life."

Lon'qu's head whipped towards Marc so fast that it almost made him dizzy. His eyes were wide with disbelief.

"I wouldn't have left," he said sternly, with all the overflowing refusal to accept such a thing.

"No, nothing like that!" Marc corrected hastily. "You were just… you died. I know you wouldn't have left us of your own accord."

Lon'qu let out a breath and Marc's eyelids drooped as he looked down with shame.

"Dead… well, that isn't... as bad. Do you know when, how…?"

"N-no… Mother didn't talk much about that. But she used to look for places to be alone a lot of the time. I must have asked her once about it because I have this clear image… not so clear, if I'm being honest though. Just like… a faded painting… but that doesn't matter," he shook his head with a nervous chuckle. "The thing is, she told me she wanted to be alone because that's when she felt closest to you."

Lon'qu frowned.

"Do you know what it's like…?" Marc gestured awkwardly with his hands flat against his chest. "When something leaves a… a mark in you. It's like… if you're made of something soft and malleable, and somebody touches you, the mark of that person's touch is with you forever, and you can't erase it. And the weird thing is that even after that person removes their hand, and their palm's impression turns cold, you still feel them in there…"

Marc looked up with a sheepish half-smile.

"In the emptiness they leave. Mom used to look at me this way… She said I looked like you. So I have tried looking at myself in mirrors instead of staring at you," he ruffled his hair with more embarrassment. "And I feel as exactly the way the you from the future probably saw me. As a mark. The one you left behind for mother."

Lon'qu was silent for a long time.

"So I've been sitting out here, trying to feel the you that already left me in some future past. I think it works. I find myself missing you, and missing mother too. And the me that I left behind with my memories… I miss them all. But it's not such a bad feeling. In a way, all these things I feel inside that I can't touch… they feel more real than anything else.

"That doesn't change that I might just be making it all up in my head. The things in the future past are just things that I tell myself, after all. But because I didn't get to know you much, it's the things that we didn't get to do together that I sense are more real. And maybe in some other time line we are doing those things in this very moment… Who knows? It's just a thought."

"No," Lon'qu said. "I think you're right. I think you are a mark."

His son smiled.

"I'm your mark."