Regina's mark appeared on the morning of her eighteenth birthday, just as it was supposed to. It swirled into existence as she watched, her skin warming as it darkened, stinging just a bit where it formed and finally settled. She traced it with a light fingertip, and found herself endeared to the sloping curves and gentle dips of it. It was like very fine calligraphy on her wrist, all delicate curls and swirls. It was beautiful.

But it didn't match Daniel's.

Some very twisted part of her had hoped that it would, because then she would know that there was no hope left for her. She thought that it might be easier to submit to her impending fate as Queen if she weren't always looking for her perfect match. If she didn't know that there was something better for her, perhaps she could learn to be content with the marriage her mother had arranged for her.

But her mark did not match Daniel's and already Regina could feel her heart fluttering in anticipation. Despite her best efforts, Regina could feel hope taking hold again.

Emma was asleep when her soulmark appeared. When she opened her eyes and stretched, it caught her attention and for a moment all she could do was stare.

She jammed her elbow into Neal's ribs. He grunted and cracked an eye open and mumbled at her.

"Hey," she nudged him again. "Today's my birthday."

"Okay, Em," Neal agreed, and went back to sleep. Emma snickered. Her birthday had been last week too. And two months ago, she'd had a birthday then as well. She'd had three birthdays this year already. There weren't many perks of being found on the side of the road as an infant, but one of the few was that any really good day she had could be her birthday if she wanted it to be.

But there was a certain satisfaction to knowing for sure, finally. On this day eighteen years ago, Emma Swan had been born. It didn't even matter that her mark, all these slashes and sharp corners and tight angles, didn't match Neal's. She loved him, sure, but who wanted to be eighteen and tied to the same person for the rest of their lives?

She didn't care about soulmates. She didn't want to know who her perfect match was. She was just happy to have one of the mysteries of her life solved, finally.

"Happy birthday to me," she whispered.

The King's soulmark was the ugliest she'd ever seen. It was so twisted now in the months since the death of his first wife, Snow White's mother, that Regina could not even tell what it had been. Now it was just a mess of scar tissue.

Regina loathed it.

On the nights when the King summoned her to his bed and mounted her like the animal only she knew him to be, she would turn her head into the pillows and stare at it. She burned it into her memory while he rutted, until she knew each of the bumps and crags of it, and lost her faith in True Love because of it.

If this was what losing a love that was true justified a person to do in the aftermath, Regina wanted no part of it.

When Emma got out of jail, the first thing she did was dig through the pockets of her newly returned jeans. She came up with the swan necklace Neal had given her, a crumpled five dollar bill, a peppermint, and a whole lot of fuzz. She tied the necklace around her neck and sucked the peppermint between her teeth. Then she found a Walgreens and used the five to buy a box of large sized band aids.

She slapped a band aid over her soulmark. If there was one thing she'd learned in prison, it was that she couldn't trust anyone. Not even her soulmate.

She was fine. She'd be fine. She didn't need anyone else.

Regina's soulmark was sick.

That was the only word she could think to describe it. There were streaks of dark angry red in it. It reminded Regina of branding irons, just after they'd been removed from the forge and been allowed a moment to cool. At first the change had frightened her. She had cried for hours after the first streak of red appeared. She'd wrapped her wrist in jewelry to hide it and for a time it worked. The only time she had to see it was when she bathed, and even then she could close her eyes and pretend it wasn't happening.

Of course Rumplestiltskin noticed she was hiding something. One day he snatched her arm and dug his nails in and peeled back her sleeve. It was worse now, the edges of it dark like char and the red reaching further. Looking at it made it throb and ache.

Rumplestiltskin laughed when he saw it. Regina looked at him, astonished and perhaps even a little bit hurt, though she knew that was just the foolish child in her.

Rumplestiltskin laughed at her again and said, "All magic comes at a price, dearie."

Just because she'd gotten her GED in jail didn't mean Emma was even remotely ready for life as a law abiding citizen. She realized that early on. No one wanted to hire a twenty year old idiot with a record and shoddy education and a bad attitude. She could hold down crappy jobs behind cash registers, it wasn't like that was challenging work. The challenging part was keeping her temper when others grated on it, and that was basically all the time. Prison had taught her how to solve problems with her fists, and she was finding that was a hard habit to break.

She have herself credit for holding out as long as she did. But after a month of living in a homeless shelter, working part time at the In-N-Out, Emma really couldn't stand it anymore.

She stopped showing up for work and started standing on street corners. The first time a sweet looking old couple with matching wrist tattoos asked her if she needed a meal, Emma let her eyes get big and watery and took them for a ride.

As it turned out, soulmarks were good for one thing, at least: they pointed out excellent marks.

Her soulmark was a seeping wound upon her wrist by the time she cast the curse that would save her. She had long since given up on hiding it; she'd gone to her execution with it bared to the world, and when execution had become banishment, she had never bothered covering it again. All of her clothing had sleeves and skirts stained with her blood, because it never stopped bleeding and it never stopped hurting. Regina even relished the pain, loved the feeling of it throbbing and the blood that dripped sluggishly down her fingers. Sometimes she cupped her hand and let it pool. Daddy hated that; he would uncurl her fingers and wipe her palm and kiss the wound gently. That was the only time that the pain would ease and she would allow it only for a moment before wrenching her wrist away.

The pain was all she had. It kept her tethered to this world, and to her work. Without the pain, she would not exist at all.

When she took her father's heart, his only resistance was to cup her bleeding wrist in his hand while she did.

It took Emma a very long time to realize why she found Storybrooke so strange. It wasn't that everyone was friendly. It wasn't even the strange air of oppression; small towns often felt isolated and insular, and it was why Emma had avoided them like the plague when she was working a con. It was a little bit Henry, she supposed, because she couldn't look at the people that lived there without wondering who Henry thought they were. No, the strangest thing was something she almost hadn't noticed.

There were more matching soulmarks in this town than she'd ever seen before, and more mismatched couples than she knew could exist.

For example, Kathryn Nolan had one that matched some teacher at Henry's school. The grocer by Granny's had one that matched the woman that sold flowers on Second Street. But the grocer was married to a woman that worked in Town Hall.

Mary Margaret's didn't have a match that Emma had seen but it was oddly faded. Not scarred like they got when the person who had its match died, but faded like real tattoos did if you didn't get them touched up. And Regina's...

Regina's bled.

It didn't bleed a lot, really. It was a little like cat scratches. Emma only noticed it the day Henry disappeared into the mines. Regina was screaming at her and waving her hands and under her sleeve there were these oozing pink swirls and Emma's breath slammed out of her chest when she realized it was Regina's soulmark.

"Does it always do that?" she asked Henry later.

Henry bit his lip. "Sometimes. It got better for a while. But..."

"But?" Emma had a feeling she knew what the kid was trying not to say, and she wanted him to say it anyway.

"But it's been getting worse."

"That, my dear, is disgusting."

Regina barely glanced up when Mother spoke. She knew exactly what Mother was talking about without looking anyway. After being framed for Archie's murder— No. Not after being framed. After Emma chose to believe a dog's memories of Regina murdering Archie,her soulmark had split again, and now it bled almost as much as it had before. She kept it wrapped in gauze now, but she had to be diligent about changing it regularly, or else she bled through it. She hummed, hoping her mother would take it as an answer and leave it at that.

Of course she wasn't that lucky.

"I'm quite sure that there is a spell for that," Mother continued. "It's unseemly for a woman of your station, Regina."

Regina glanced down at her wrist, where there was a bit of blood seeping through again. Then she looked up at her mother curiously.

"What does your soulmark look like, Mother?"

There was something very satisfying indeed about the way Mother's face closed off. Even better, though, was that she went back to ignoring her daughter completely.

Neverland was just a clusterfuck. Instead of just being able to focus on finding Henry and getting the hell back home, there was a whole laundry list of shit that Emma wished she didn't have to deal with. Her dad was apparently dying, but not dying, but he was staying in Neverland and of course her mother was staying with him. And turns out Neal wasn't dead, but there was Hook too, and Regina and Gold went rogue, but Regina came back, and thank god for that because Regina was the only person on this goddamn crazy island that Emma knew she could actually trust to help her, and her parents wanted another baby and that hurt more than Emma even wanted to think about and…just…everything was FUBAR.

And to top it off, Emma was eavesdropping. On a fairy and an Evil Queen. What the fuck had her life become? She was just looking for a quiet place to sit and think for a time. Instead she was stuck hiding behind a fucking tree while Tinkerbell snatched at Regina's arm and clutched it tightly.

"I hope it was worth it, Regina, I really do," the former fairy hissed, poking at the bloody raw mess that was Regina's soulmark. Emma actually had to admire the blonde's boldness a little; the routine in Storybrooke was to pretend Regina didn't leave a liquid trail behind her wherever she went. This was literally the first time Emma had ever even heard it mentioned, outside the one single time she'd asked Henry about it. "Because you didn't just do this to yourself, you know."

Emma blinked; so did Regina. The brunette looked down at where Tinkerbell's fingers pressed into her skin, and asked, "You think this is because I did not meet a man in a tavern once when I was nineteen?"

"Not just a man, your True Love. The man with the match to this mess."

Regina was quiet for a very long time, and Emma found herself holding her breath. She knew what she thought of the idea, but Regina was so impassive that Emma had no idea what was going to come out of the woman's lips next.

Finally, though, Regina shook her head. "You're an idiot, Tinkerbell. You always have been."

Emma was suddenly really glad she'd eavesdropped on this conversation. Because the look on Tinkerbell's face as Regina walked away was fucking hilarious.

So much happened in what seemed like such a short amount of time that Regina actually didn't even notice it. She was much too preoccupied with the mystery of the missing year, and who had cast this new curse, and what they planned on doing about it, and, oh yeah, trying to figure out how to bring Emma back to Storybrooke with her son. So it slipped her notice. Honestly, Regina had stopped paying close attention to her soulmark long ago.

Still. It was a shock when David was the one to tentatively point it out. He stuttered and blushed awkwardly, and Regina honestly had no idea what the idiot was trying to say, but then of course Snow caught on and squealed at a truly painful pitch, "Oh, Regina, your wrist!"

Trust the two idiots to pay entirely too much attention to other people's soulmarks. But Regina couldn't deny that the hard, dark scab covering hers was interesting.

Emma still kept her soulmark covered. Instead of the band aids she used to use, she had a leather cuff. Well, she had several leather cuffs, one for every occasion. Not that people paid it much attention; it was rude to stare at someone's covered wrist. But Emma knew that everyone who saw it assumed she kept it covered because it was a scar now. It wasn't, but it was easier to let people think what they wanted than to try to explain that she wasn't interested in finding her match. She had Henry in her life, and that was all the soul bond she needed.

Walsh was constantly trying to get her to uncover it. He never outright asked her but she could tell anyway. Which was interesting to Emma, since he also kept his covered.

Anyway, she wasn't sure she believed in the whole soulmate thing anymore. Because lately, ever since their big move to New York, Emma's soulmark was…different. Sort of faded. It wasn't showing signs of scarring, it just seemed to be disappearing completely. And Emma was quite sure soulmates didn't just disappear.

Maybe Emma's was just an anomaly. Maybe her soulmate was in a coma. Maybe Emma didn't care. She had Henry. That was all she needed.

Wasn't it?

Emma came back and brought Henry with her, and that was almost worse than not having him at all. Every time he looked at her and did not recognize her hurt Regina in ways she had never experienced before, and truly, that was something Regina had not even realized was possible.

She knew that Emma wasn't planning on staying in Storybrooke. And she knew that the only way Emma could leave was to deny Henry his memories. Her son would leave her, again, never knowing who she was. She hadn't yet decided if that was a mercy or not.

Emma would know her, though. Regina hoped Emma would think of her every day for the rest of her life. It was only fair that Emma should live with this guilt. It wasn't just magic that came with a price.

In the meantime, Robin was perhaps an interesting distraction. He was kind, at least. And he was her soulmate. That had to mean something, did it not? His soulmark certainly matched the swirling calligraphy that had appeared on Regina's arm many, many years ago now.

Though when she ran her fingers over the scabbed mess of her own wrist, it felt strange, and she wasn't quite sure anymore that they did match after all.

She didn't regret saving Marian. She didn't. It wasn't the life spared that made her feel guilty. It was the betrayal on Regina's face when she realized what had happened. It was the way she clenched her jaw and flinched when Marian insulted her and no one came to her defense.

It was definitely the resignation in her eyes right before she walked away.

"The scab was finally starting to peel," Henry said later, shaking his head sadly.

"Jesus, Henry."

Henry just shrugged at her wheezed outburst.

Regina wasn't quite sure when it started happening. She was certain it was before Emma had joined Operation Mongoose, but it was definitely happening more frequently now that they'd brought Emma in on it.

Regina's scab was falling off.

It happened in such small stages that for a time, Regina had simply brushed the debris away without truly realizing what it was. But then Emma started spending so much time with her and it started falling off in flakes and chunks. It would have been repulsive if it weren't so confusing. At first she had thought there would be scar tissue beneath the scab, since Robin had left Storybrooke. But very soon there was enough revealed that Regina could see that the lines were sharper than they had been since they'd first appeared. There was no sign of red in the small sections she could see now. Her soulmark was healing, and Regina wasn't quite sure why.

Then one day she was arguing with Emma over— Oh, Regina wasn't even sure what anymore, they'd been bickering at one another so steadily that day. But in one moment they were fighting, and then in the next they were kissing. And it should have been confusing but somehow it just wasn't. It felt right, and as Regina surrendered herself to it without even token resistance, she realized that she'd actually been waiting for this to happen. Possibly for longer than she knew. Now that it was happening, she felt something restless inside her settle, and she was content to do nothing but kiss Emma for eternity.

But they did eventually have to breathe. And when they parted, Regina became aware that Emma was stroking her wrist with her thumb, and that there was nothing but smooth skin under it, because the last of the scab had finally fallen off.

"Emma," she breathed.

Emma nodded. "I know. I'm afraid to look at it." She shifted her eyes so they were looking just behind Regina. "It doesn't match mine."

Regina got the feeling that this was the first time Emma had ever cared about that. She cupped the blonde's jaw with her other hand and said firmly, "That doesn't matter. You healed it. That makes it more yours than anyone else has the right to claim."

Emma's smile was blinding. She lifted Regina's wrist to kiss it, but Regina wrenched it from her grasp in surprise. For a moment Emma was hurt, and confused, but Regina shook her head and said in shock, "It's different!"

And it was; where before it had been dramatic swirls and swoops, now it was subtle dips and arcs, and gently curved lines that connected back to themselves to create a perfectly never ending knot.

"That's not possible," Emma murmured, unable to look away.

"Apparently, dear, it is."

They looked at one another. There was a question in the air between them. Regina wasn't quite brave enough to voice it herself; she didn't think Emma was either. So instead, she grasped the clasps of Emma's leather cuff and undid them. She slipped the cuff off, and turned Emma's wrist until it was next to hers.

"They match."