Newton Geiszler was going to meet his soul mate someday.

Well, okay. No shit he was. Of course he was going to- he knew that for a fact, when his soul mate's words were written across the inside of his forearm. He was like almost everyone else in this world in that aspect.

What he really meant was that he was going to try his darned best to meet his soulmate, not just…run in to them. A lot of people were okay with that, and he was okay that they were okay with it- but he wasn't, not for himself. He was a go-getter. He always had been! He had to be; his mother had left when he was young, his father worked full time, and there was only so much his uncle could do for him. He learned fairly young that he needed to go after what he wanted, if he really wanted it.

Hell, he'd gotten into MIT at the age of 14- 14!- because of his drive. Something like getting in to MIT wasn't a guarantee, the way having someone else's words scribbled on you guaranteed finding them and loving them and being happy with them. He figured if he could succeed so well at something not guaranteed in life, surely something like meeting your soulmate would be a snap, especially with a little bit of elbow grease, right?

Well.

Well…

When Newton Geiszler was in the first grade, his best friend found her soul mate. They had a new student transfer in from Jüterbog, which he thought was funny, because his dad had told him just the other night about an old dance that sure did sound a lot like that word, and was he sure they didn't name the town after the dance? Or maybe the dance after the town? And he had thought it was funny, so he was giggling when the new boy, Elias, was introduced by the teacher. He thought that the name of the town that he was from was funny, but what was even funnier was when the boy was so scared that he couldn't get a word out. It wasn't as funny when he started crying, but Hanna, his best friend, punched him in the arm, because she was just like that, and he liked that she was just like that, and raised her hand, and said "Can Elias sit next to me?" And even though he was still crying, Elias looked up at Hanna, sniffling, hiccupping, and still not saying a word. When their teacher helped him over to his seat, and he sat down, he had looked at Hanna and gave her a somewhat-toothy grin- only somewhat, because he was missing at least two, as far as Newt could tell- and said, "Thanks for letting me sit next to you." And Hanna gave him a somewhat-only-slightly-more-toothy grin- only somewhat only slightly more because she was missing just one- and pulled up her sleeve and yelled "You said the thing!" Which caused a whole lot of commotion in their room full of six year olds, firstly because someone was yelling for what appeared to be no good reason, secondly because once the teacher caught wind of what was going on, she needed to call the parents, which meant she had to leave the classroom, which meant everyone who was yelling before was really yelling now, which meant-

Well, Newt didn't really know what it meant. But he knew a friend of Hanna's was a friend of his, and he was just excited to have a new friend. Also, he liked yelling.

He had been excited- it stood to reason, to him, that if his friend found her soul mate at 6 years old, and his parents had found each other when they were 18, if you averaged those numbers out…surely he'd meet his soul mate by 12!

Then he turned 12.

When Newton Geiszler turned 12, his other best friend met his soul mate. They had been on a field trip to the Deutsches Museum in Munich, a trip which filled Newt with excitement, because his uncle was starting to teach him about machinery, and he hoped that they could watch the high-voltage display. He needed to take some notes- he was studying electrical currencies in his free time at this point, what made people and things tick, and was hoping that after their trip, he'd have the know-how that would help him keep a severed frog's heart beating after being carved out of the frog itself. His father found this particular path of inquisition one of Newt's most disgusting, so he was banished to the backyard whenever he did his experiments. He didn't seem to be able to sustain a high enough voltage to keep the heart beating, and he had to say, after the third heart exploded in his face, he didn't blame anyone for making him stand outside in the November chill while he dissected frogs.

His other best friend was a lanky blonde boy named Max, who was a year older than him, which made him feel better when Newt was 11 and the other boy was 12 and still hadn't found his soulmate. It hadn't occurred to Newt yet that maybe, just maybe, statistics and averages and medians weren't the best things to depend on when it came to love. While they explored one of the cafes at the museum, the teachers taking a much-deserved break, Max and Newt wandered to the pastry display. They pressed their faces up to the glass, much to the chagrin of the worker behind the counter, who had no doubt just finished wiping the pane down. They ooh'd and aah'd over some particularly nice-looking crumpets, when Newt felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and spotted the short, demure brunet boy who had dared offend his personal space. The boy coughed, catching Max's attention.

"Excuse me, could I look at the cookies?"

Newt hummed lowly and scooted over to make some room in front of the display, but Max didn't. Of course he didn't. And that was why Newt had moved over. Because, wise in his age as he was, dedicated to his friends as he had always been, he knew precisely what was written on his friend's arm. What he didn't know was what the other boy's arm said, so he waited for Max to speak up. Max was about as good with words as Newton was.

"Do you like pastries, too?" he blurted out.

Now Newt was 27. He had given up on statistics. As a whole, he wasn't overly fond of math, but he had to say, hanging on to some ridiculous notion of math playing in to love after two decades of being proved otherwise had really soured his view on the subject. Instead, he did his best to meet as many people as possible, constantly moving around and accepting new jobs as they came to him. After graduating from MIT at the age of 16, teaching for a few years there, watching students and faculty and others come and go, he moved to San Francisco, all the way to the other side of a country he was still becoming familiar with. He worked at a few school out there, began publishing his works in biology and immunity studies in papers, even receiving some positive feedback on minor discoveries he made in the process. He gave presentations as a guest speaker on other campuses, met with professors and students interested in his work, was interested in meeting new people only as long as their first sentence lasted, until he knew they weren't meant for him. He was twitchy and short-tempered and impatient. The worst of his personality was coming out in the worst of ways, and he hated it.

So he changed.

He met friends at bars and drank with strangers. He got tattoos- lots of them, all dancing around his arms and teasing the edges of his soulmate tattoo- and pierced his ears. He let the holes close, then got more tattoos. He painted his nails. He rebelled. He wanted to be himself, but the "himself" that people always expected of him, he found, had a fake friendly demeanor. He couldn't focus on someone long enough to make friends with them, so he was lonely. He worked, and worked, and worked, and eventually, found himself much happier with who he allowed himself to be in front of others. So what if he was loud, and brash, and not at all what people thought of when they heard "kid-genius-turned-adult-super-biologist?" He found himself much less lonely when, at the very least, he could be friends with himself.

Still, those words were never said to him.

When he was 25, he decided to move to Hong Kong. Well, he didn't "decide," so much as "was offered a ridiculous amount of money to study on an internationally cooperative military base where he'd have his own lab." How could he say no to his own lab and a ridiculous amount of money? He packed up, said goodbye to the few State-side friends that he kept in contact with, and moved on-base. For two years, he worked, every day. He focused on dissecting and mutilating and, occasionally, went out for another tattoo.

Now…now, Newton Geiszler was 27 years old. And his boss, a tall, stern man named Pentecost who kind-of sort-of intimidated Newt, told him that he was getting a lab partner.