Disclaimer: I don't own the Bravely Series, all rights to the owners.

Yew is tad complicated for something like a soulmate AU. Denys and the Crystalguard have a lot of potential, but they almost have to be addressed when talking about Yew's backstory. That's not a bad thing, but it does pose a challenge.

Shout-out to chacusha's "What's in a (soulmark) name?" for inspiring this.

Yew didn't want a soulmate on principle, and also wanted one desperately. If that sounds like a contradiction, that's because it absolutely is. Yew both loved and hated the concept of soulmates at the same time for years.

As with many things in Yew's life, it started with Denys and their father.

In Gathelatio someone's fourteenth birthday is known as their marking day, for the obvious reason that it's the day they get a soulmark. It's the day they wake up in the morning with someone else's name written somewhere on their body.

At least, that's what it's supposed to be.

"What do you mean you don't have one?" Their father asked, his brow furrowed in what Yew thought, at the time, was concern.

He was only four. He didn't know yet that his father subscribed to the old crystalist ideas about soulmates, and didn't know how entrenched he was in games of power and manipulation that the Crystalguard had been steeped in for years. He didn't recognize the suspicion on his father's face.

But Yew did understand that Denys not having a name on his arm like daddy was not supposed to happen.

"I don't have a soulmark, father." Denys repeats. His face is neutral. Yew thought his brother would be sad. He knows marks are good. Daddy said so. Not having a mark is bad, right?

"Then the crystals have cursed us." Their father said, closing his eyes. "Cursed you."

Yew didn't really understand the situation at the time. He didn't understand that Denys didn't actually have a curse on him, not in the sense of a spell at least. He thought that something stopped Denys from getting his mark, not that marklessness was simply normal for some people.

He didn't understand why, a month later, their father announced that Yew would be the heir to the Geneolgia estate and inherit their father's position as captain of the Crystalguard and not Denys. He didn't understand it… but being the foolish child he was, he thought he could do something about it.

That's why he went to find the Sword of the Brave for his brother four years later. He wanted to help. It's a miracle and a half that he actually succeeded and lived to tell the tale, though later Yew would suspect the Sword allowed itself to be found, and that the Sword protected him from a distance when he snuck out of Yunohana to Geyser Grotto.

Either way, the sword exacted its price, and a month later Denys vanished off the face of Luxendarc.

But there were four years between Denys' marking day and the day Yew found the sword. While no single day between those two events was individually important enough to make note of, there were a million little things that Yew remembered.

He remembers having confused conversations with Denys, trying to understand why Denys didn't seem to care that he didn't have a mark. He remembers watching arguments between his brother and father before Alfred would take him out of the room. He remembers Alfred explaining what soulmarks were and how they worked behind his father's back, because his father would have him believe that they were divine gifts from the crystals upon which a person's worth was measured, and Alfred quietly told him that no, Denys was not a bad person because he didn't have a mark. His father was simply worried and was having a hard time expressing it.

In hindsight, that was quite a charitable interpretation on Alfred's part, but it's not like the butler could tell a six year old that his father was narrow-minded and desperate to cling to power and position, and that Denys threatened the reputation of their family by being markless.

He remembers learning from Alfred that having a soulmark meant you had a soulmate, a person that was destined for you. It was a guarantee you weren't alone in the world, and that someone out there would love you. His father never told him that. His father only said it was important to have a "good" soulmark.

Perhaps it's not a surprise Yew became wary of soulmarks. He didn't want to talk about them with other kids, and didn't care for speculation as to who his own possible mark would link him to. He thought soulmarks were dangerous. They made fathers be mean to their sons, and were the reason Denys was gone.

That's what he told himself when he was being smart. Alone, at night, he instead blamed himself for not doing enough to help Denys, and not speaking up against their father, regardless of how unreasonable that was to expect out of someone less than ten years old.

He told himself he didn't like soumarks, and that he didn't care if he got one when he was older. That's what he said, but it was a bald-faced lie, because how could he hate the allure of a friend you could always count on? Romance wasn't something that crossed his mind, he wasn't even a teenager yet, but the promise of someone who would never abandon you was tempting to him even as he tried to tell himself that soulmarks were bad.

He felt guilty for wanting a soulmate. How dare he want one when Denys didn't get one. He was being rude to Denys by wanting one.

(Would his soulmate be willing to play with him? Alfred didn't have the energy to play with him for a long time, and dad never wanted to. No one played with him for very long now that Denys was gone.)

Being sent to Al-Khampis was a way for his father to get him out of his hair. Without Denys around there was no one to handle Yew, and Yew was not nearly as independent as his older brother. He constantly tried to talk with the servants or his father or guests and hated being alone. He was never a rude child, his father rarely had cause to scold him, but it was easier for everyone in the Genolgia household when Yew left.

At Al-Khampis, Yew learned… everything. It was an amazing time. Well, amazing except when it wasn't, which was most of the time.

Whoever thought that giving kids power over each other based on academic merit was a lunatic, but they were a powerful and influential lunatic who managed to invest in an entire school and the surrounding town to create Al-Khampis. Being a one-star was awful, and while Yew knows he got extremely unlucky and his situation was far from normal, that didn't make his situation any better.

By some cruel twist of chance, Yew was the target for every upperclassman looking for a meek one-star to push around, and there was never anyone else around willing to help him. He was made to carry books, miss his classes to do manual labour, as well as the more standard bullying fare of being literally pushed around and having his things stolen.

Any friends he did make inevitably stopped associating with him when they realized Yew was a magnet for negative attention, and they didn't want to share his fate. Yew didn't realize this though. He thought everyone was abandoning because he did something. He could never figure out what he said or did wrong, and it gutted his already tenuous sense of self-worth.

In some ways Janne came far too late. Janne was the only one willing to actively stand up to others for Yew's sake, but unlike everyone else he had the swordplay to back it up. If the bullies took issue with his interference, Janne would offer them a duel. If not, he would ignore them. If they tried to get physical, well, Janne took his sword with him everywhere. Janne's protection allowed Yew to actually study, and get proper sleep, and not miss classes, and learn. It's thanks to Janne's protection that Yew became as smart as he did.

But those first few months without Janne left a permanent mark on Yew. Self-doubt and a desperation not to be abandoned became permanent fixtures in his mind. Even when he became a six star and was practically immune to all other authority but the teachers, Yew still stuck to Janne's side for a sense of security. It was rare to see the two of them apart from each other.

Whenever his marking day crossed his mind, Yew's thoughts tended towards the thought that if he met his soulmate he hoped they wouldn't be too let down by what they found, and he often hoped he didn't get a mark to spare someone the disappointment of being his soulmate.

Incidentally, it was at Al-Khampis that Yew stumbled upon soulmate and soulmark research, and he devoted not an insubstantial amount of time to studying it. While he didn't look forward to his own marking day, the marks themselves still fascinated him.

There wasn't just one type of soulmark. In Gathelatio, you got the name of your soulmate written on your body in their handwriting and native language when you turned fourteen. In Florem, you were born with the sketch of a flower somewhere on your body that would colour in when you first made physical contact with your soulmate. In Ancheim, you got a colored arrow on the back of your hand at some point between the ages of ten and sixteen, and the intensity of the arrow's color and the direction it faced corresponded to how close your soulmate was and which direction they were from you at the moment of obtaining the mark.

All soulmarks function independently of each other. None ever rely on their soulmate's mark being the same type. Also, soulmarks are almost never wrong. Only truly dramatic circumstances leave soulmates unable to coexist.

"I don't see why everyone seems to care about soulmates so much." Janne huffs. "Why would you want to be tied to someone else like that? I'll keep my free will thank you very much."

It's really not a surprise when Janne turns fourteen and doesn't get a mark. Some of the girls in the school seem quite disappointed. Yew worries about his own marking day, due next year. No one is going to be disappointed if their name is written on his skin. In fact, he can imagine them groaning in resignation.

"You're being dramatic." Janne scoffed, and flicked a ball of paper at him. "Don't pretend you're some hideous ogre. Just because you run away from anything that vaguely resembles flirtation doesn't mean other people think you're terrible. In fact, it means the opposite, because people are trying to flirt with you."

"They are not." Yew mumbled. "They're trying to con me into buying them something now that they can't boss me around"

"Yew, 'let's get lunch sometime' is a date invitation, not someone trying to extort you." Janne said in exasperation.

Yew was unconvinced. He remembered very similar lines back when he was a one-star, and they were decidedly not date invitations. It was a subtle threat of "you better get me this or else".

"Whatever, keep being a little heartbreaker." Janne sighed. "I hope someone here is your soulmate so they can prove your delusions wrong the instant you get your mark."

That doesn't happen. Mostly because before his marking day ever comes around, Yew received a letter from his father informing him that he is deathly ill, and that Yew needs to come home at once. Yew left Al-Khampis immediately, but by the time he made it back across the ocean and to his family's home, his father had been dead for a week.

Yew was crushed, obviously, but… he hasn't seen his father in four years, and he was always distant. Yew recovered quickly, and if anything he felt bad that he didn't feel worse about his father's death.

The next few months see him quickly trying to learn the ropes of being captain of the Crystalguard. He gets the help of a respected member called Nikolai in this, and together with Janne (who returned from Al-Khampis saying he was bored) the three of them wrangle the rest of the Crystalguard.

And wrangle really is the right term to use. In one month Yew has to have more talks with even longstanding members than he ever expected he'd need to. Half of those talks are because members of the Crystalguard seem to have something against markless individuals, and Yew has to set them straight.

Or, he tries. A distressing amount of his talks are with the same people over and over. He feels like he's doing something wrong when he suspends long time members of the Crystalguard from duty as punishment. He must be doing something wrong. His father never had to do this. Is he setting a bad example?

"Yew, you can't blame other people's stupid thoughts on yourself." Janne groans.

"But I'm the leader, Janne. It's my job to be responsible for everyone." Yew insists.

"And suspending them if they're being an asshole is doing just that, so stop worrying about it already."

Easy for Janne to say. He doesn't have crippling self-doubt issues.

Yew almost forgot his marking day, so busy was he with the Crystalguard. It's only a few days before when Alfred asks what sort of breakfast he wants for the celebration that Yew remembers what the significance of turning fourteen is.

Those next three days are some of the most stressful of his life, and he worries endlessly about what his marking day will bring. Will he have a soulmate? Will he recognize their name? Will he be able to find them? Will they like him, or will they be dissapointed? He's heard that girls like tall men, will they mind that he's so short? Should he even try to find them at all? They probably have a life to live, he doesn't want to get in the way. Maybe it'd be better if he doesn't try and find them. He doesn't want them to feel pressured. That said, what if he doesn't have a soulmate? Does that mean he's going to be happily independant like Janne, or does it mean he's going to be lonely because the crystals couldn't find anyone willing to put up with him?

He desperately wanted a soulmate for the guarantee he wouldn't be lonely, and yet he desperately didn't want one so that this theoretical other person never had the chance to be disappointed with him and he never has to fear his soulmate rejecting him.

When he woke up on the morning of his marking day, Yew frantically looked over his body. His arms were clean, his chest unblemished, his legs the same as always.

With extreme apprehension, Yew got out of bed and approached the mirror in his room. He checked his face first and pushed aside his short hair, searching for even the tiniest scribbles along his hairline.

Nothing. Only one last place to check.

Slowly, Yew turned so he could see his back in the mirror, and his breath came up short. There it was. Scribbled between his shoulder blades was elegant, sharp handwriting. He did get a mark. And the name was…

Um…

It definitely starts with an L. Yew was sure of it. Beyond that though, he could barely recognize the writing. It wasn't that the handwriting was bad, it's just that they were using letters Yew had never seen before, and the cursive (at least he thinks it's cursive) the name is written in makes it even harder to tell what is what.

Yew started to panic. He can't read it. He can't read it. He can't read his own soulmark. If that's not proof that he's a terrible soulmate, he doesn't know what is. He's failing at the most basic thing a soulmate should be able to do. Forget his soulmate not liking him because he's short and unimpressive and half his friends have abandoned him because he's just that unlikable, they're not going to want him because he wasn't even capable of reading their name.

After two minutes of frantically pacing his room with shaking hands up near his face, Yew managed to take a deep breath, compose himself, and dress for the day. He needs to put on a smiling face for everyone else. They can't know how much of a failure he is, or else they might leave too.

He did a terrible job. The first thing Janne noted when Yew came to the dining room was how pale he was, and it didn't take much prodding for Yew to reveal he did have a mark, and he couldn't read it.

To his mild reassurance, no one else could read it either. The only thing they could all agree on was that the first letter looked like an L.

"There's no way I'm going to be able to find them." Yew murmured to Alfred that night, as the butler helped him out of his Crystalguard outfit. "It's a different language, a different alphabet! Maybe they're from some uncontacted part of the world…"

"Master Yew, soulmarks don't make mistakes." Alfred said. He put a hand on the boy's back for just a second, right where the mark is. "You know as well as I do that the chance of you not finding your soulmate is slim, if you choose to search. The crystals are not cruel. A soulmark would be useless if it's match were never able to be found."

That's true, but Yew could remember every tale he'd been told of someone who searched and searched and never found. He could remember the tale of the poet who wrote her heart out for five decades, only to die alone and for her soulmate to be born two centuries later and die of suicide a year after finding her work. Those tales are one in millions, but they exist, and Yew can't shake the feeling he might be one of them. After all, what greater sign of something wrong could there be than an unreadable soulmark?

But Yew couldn't say that to Alfred. Alfred didn't deserve the weight of his anxieties. So Yew smiled and nodded and went to bed, letting the old butler sleep soundly while Yew crawled into his bed and quietly curled into a fetal position, hiding his face in his knees.

Yew made a concerted effort to ignore his soulmark for the next two years. He had a Crystalguard to lead… and reform. The problems never seemed to stop. Misconduct was rampant, and Yew couldn't be everywhere at once. It was a long, painful process to determine who he could trust to behave, who had a chance to reform, and who was a lost cause and needed to be politely dismissed from service.

He had just turned sixteen when the first assassination attempt occured. The assassins were fast, but Janne was faster. Two men lay dead on the docks with the full moon hanging overhead.

One week later, the pope sent him, Janne, and Nikolai to Al-Khampis on a mission. Yew saw the attempt to keep him safe for what it was, and felt shame for it. He was supposed to protect the pope, not the other way around.

Again he'd been shipped off to Al-Khampis because he was a problem to have around. At least pope Agnès was nice about it.

And then… he doesn't remember. The entire mission to Al-Khampis is a blank in his memory, and the same goes for Janne and Nikolai. His last memory is standing in the main square, waiting for their guide to come get them, and then nothing until he regains his memory, standing outside the main lecture building with a magnolia flower in his hand, staring up at the sky with tears on his face.

He knows something happened. He has evidence something happened. There is writing in his diary from a hand he doesn't recognize, and descriptions of events he can't recall. Apparently they were accompanied by someone who called herself "Arch" and fought something she called a "ba'al".

Apparently they were good friends. That's what Janne's writing in the diary suggests. But that means Arch is just another friend who didn't want to stay in the end.

Yew tried to tell himself that it wasn't the case. He was being unfair to Arch, whoever she was. His diary mentions she had a mission. She couldn't stay. She was doing her job. It's no different than meeting someone nice when you go on a trip and needing to say goodbye when you leave.

It shouldn't have been so heart-wrenching, but it was.

The worst part was that he couldn't remember her. He had her handwriting, he even had a description: "Skin whiter than snow, blood red eyes, straight silver hair that goes down to the waist, approximately five foot three, with a blue dress with a deep neckline and slits up the legs, and boots of the same colour that come up to her knees. She wields a glaive with a backwards facing hook on the handle, and uses a small hourglass to stall time and enact minor gravity manipulation."

But he couldn't remember.

Not that it would matter much in the long run. A few months later Gathelatio would be attacked by the Skyhold, the visiting grand marshal of Eternia would be killed, and the pope would be abducted, and Yew had other things to worry about than a pale girl he couldn't remember properly.

So, I could have done the normal soulmate AU thing of having romantic drama, or I could focus purely on backstory and how soulmates affected Yew's life leading up to meeting Magnolia.

Spoiler, I'm going to do the same thing with Magnolia.

Also, apparently I can't write Yew without giving him abandonment issues and no self-worth.