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

Magnolia is easier than Yew for soulmate stuff because I don't have to factor in Denys and the Crystalguard and such.

Also, I like to think the moon is basically modern. They've got TV, a modern school system, the works.

On the moon, soulmarks are simple. When your soulmate is born, you get a little picture on your skin of something significant about them. If you're older than your soulmate, the mark will appear on your skin the day they draw their first breath, and if you are younger than your soulmate you'll be born with your mark.

Arch didn't get her mark until she turned nine.

It happened late enough in her life to be a turning point both for the better and in some ways for the worse. Looking back on it, Arch would divide her life up into three main sections: before her mark, after her mark, and joining the military.

Before her mark… well, it wasn't all bad. As a toddler, soulmates were her parents, and soulmarks were nothing more than pretty pictures some people had on their skin. Mommy had a funny tube on her arm (a rifle, she would later learn), and daddy had a blue wave under his eye. She didn't have one, but her parents assured her she would get one and so she didn't think too much about it. After all, some of her female classmates also didn't have them.

That changed by first grade. By then, everyone except her had a soulmark, even the boys. She was the lone child in her class without one, and by this point she knew that soulmarks were more than just pretty pictures. Every picture on someone's skin was their connection to another person. That other person would be the most important person in their life.

"It's a guarantee you'll never be alone." Was the way one of her teachers put it. "There's someone out there for you. The universe has seen to it."

But she didn't have one. She had no pretty picture on her skin. There was no coiled wire on her collarbone, no asteroid on her cheek, and no little spaceship on her thigh. She was horribly, wretchedly unblemished, and her classmates let her know exactly what they thought of that.

On the moon, you don't call people by their first name. Your first name is special, and secret. You refer to someone by their last name. A fellow student is Pierre, Lecleck, or Audry, and their parents are Mr Pierre, Ms Leclerck, or Mr Audry.

She, however, was Blank.

"Hey Blank, the teacher says you have to be a part of our group."

"Blank! Go away! We're talking about our pictures!"

"Stay away Blank! Mom says you're cursed!"

It hurt that no one called her Arch, and eventually she began to resemble her nickname. She was blank. She didn't emote, she kept to herself, she couldn't be prompted by students, teachers, or even her parents to be interested in anything. When she got picked on, she usually didn't react.

She can't quite remember when or how she broke that boy's nose, but her parents could confirm it did indeed happen. Perhaps it's not a surprise she was homeschooled the next year.

The year after that, third grade, she went to a different school. She didn't talk about her mark, and few people asked. Third graders were just beginning to define themselves by terms that weren't their mark. Cartier liked to draw, Fontaine was the best runner, and Arch… she was the quiet one. She was also easily the physically strongest girl in the class, and no one could hit her when the class played dodgeball.

Arch was quiet, and maybe a little scary. There were whispers that she was at this school because of an accident at her old one that was her fault, but Arch never said anything about it or did anything unusual, so that can't be right. It's probably just a rumor.

Her parents, when recalling the time, would mention that she didn't improve very much after the nose-breaking incident. Her grades were below average except for gym, she was still unemotive, she still wasn't interested in anything, and she still didn't have any friends, but she didn't come home with dry tear marks on her face anymore, so they had to content themselves with that.

It was during the last month of third grade, her mother would recall, that 'the talk' happened. Not the talk about children, no, a different talk. A talk about soulmarks, and the point at which she slowly began to improve.

"Are you ready sweetie?" Her mother was asking. "We're going to auntie's house for dinner today."

Arch nodded mutely, like she usually did. Her eyes fixated on the cuff of her sleeve. She doesn't know quite what prompted her to speak that day, much less ask the question she did, but she knows it was important. "Mom."

A pause. Surprise. Arch didn't speak without a reason, and her mother knew that full well. "Yes sweetie? Did you forget something?"

A shake of her head. Her eyes were now staring at her hand.

"What is it then?"

"Why doesn't someone want me?"

If she'd looked up, she might have been able to see the shock on her mother's face. If she was better at reading voices, she might have picked up on the concealed concern in her mother's tone. "What do you mean? Mom and Dad want you."

Another long pause. Arch didn't want to talk anymore, but Mom had asked a question. So Arch raised a hand and poked her mother's forearm, where she knew the silver rifle was etched into her mother's skin underneath her shirt sleeve. Proof that someone wanted her.

"Sweetie…" Her mother murmured, pulling Arch into a hug. "Just because you don't have one doesn't mean you don't have a soulmate, it just means they aren't around yet."

"What if I don't get one?" She asked. "No mark."

"Then you'll be very happy with me and your father." Her mother said firmly. "And you'll never have to worry about hurting your soulmate's feelings, or needing to plan your life with them. You can be wonderful all on your own."

Arch wasn't totally convinced. She never was, really, but that quick talk marked a turning point. She talked more at home, and her grades improved. She still had no friends, she still didn't talk at school, and her emotions remained frustratingly inscrutable, but it was an improvement.

And then halfway through grade four, at nine years of age, everything changed.

She wasn't the one who noticed it. She stopped looking in the mirror a long time ago after it became clear that no matter how much she searched she'd never find what she wanted to see. It's one of her classmates that sees it when they're changing into gym clothing.

"So it's a shield?" One of the other girls said. Arch didn't realize they were talking to her at first, and she was busy taking her shirt off, so the girl repeated her words. "Hey, Arch, is it a shield?"

Arch turned and blinked slowly at the girl, not understanding the question.

"Your mark." The girl said, pointing to Arch's waist. "We've all been wondering what it is, but you never say anything, so… just this once, I promise I can keep a secret, is it a shield? What's the animal on it?"

Arch's gaze fell down her body until she saw the small blue shield on the side of her waist. It had some white markings in the middle of it, making the shape of an animal Arch couldn't recognize.

"Please, please, I prom- Arch? Did I say something? H-Hey, look, if you don't want to talk about it you just have to say so! I'm sorry I looked!? Please stop crying!"

Her mother had to be called because she wouldn't stop crying and wouldn't say anything to the teachers or the nurse. Later that day when her father is home, he'd look at her mark and tell her that the face on the shield is a lion, and that it's an animal from Luxendarc.

It was a turning point in her life. How could it not be? She got the one thing she always wanted, and the one thing that separated her from everyone else was finally gone.

Well, maybe that last thing wasn't true. As it turns out, children in their infinite cruelty can find something quite wrong with getting a soulmark at the age of nine and a half. Arch was too eager to share the good news, thinking she'd be accepted now that she had a mark.

She was wrong. Instead, she got a new nickname: "Cradle Snatcher". It doesn't matter that she was too young to conceivably be interested in someone. One of the girls mentioned Arch's nine year marking to her mother and heard that term thrown out in response, and then used it herself, and it stuck.

Arch changed schools again for grade five.

That time, she was smart. She talked about her mark when asked, but never mentioned when she got it. She was still strange for being a new addition to the class when most people stay in the same school from grade one to eight, but it was decidedly the best reception she'd gotten so far.

Despite having the initial discovery of her mark marred by cruel classmates, she was decidedly happy to see the little blue shield whenever she woke up. She was no longer alone in the world. There was someone out there waiting for her. Sure, they were probably wriggling in a blanket right now and crying for food, but that won't always be the case. Eventually she'd be able to meet them and… be friends? Marry them? She doesn't quite know. Marriage still seems weird to her.

She was only ten after all. What ten year old could be said to actually understand romance or relationships?

That would change though. After all, everyone hits puberty at some point, and when that happens Arch learns she is very much not aromantic nor asexual.

Whereas her soulmark was a source of comfort of not being alone before, it becomes a source of fascination and whimsy when she enters highschool. She dreams of who might have a mark for her. What would it look like? What would they look like?

"Well-" Her fourteen year old mind would say unhelpfully. "-they at least know how to walk by now. But even if you could meet them, there's no way you could kiss them."

That nine year gap never felt more significant than it did in high school. She was learning calculus, while her unknown soulmate would be learning to add one and one. It would take her entire current lifetime before they were in high school and she'd be done university by then, and that knowledge started to weigh on her.

It weighed even more as she kept catching herself fantasizing. Sometimes she felt rude, imagining someone tall and handsome coming to meet her when she knew her soulmate would be anything but that for a long time. Yet, imagining her soulmate as they probably were, all small and awkward, led to uncomfortable trains of thought.

That small and awkward little boy or girl (probably a boy, she decided, girls never did anything for her) was still her soulmate, and she tried to imagine what would happen if she'd meet them. What would she do? What would she say? Would she even really be interacting with them, or their parents? She couldn't take them on a date. They'd be too young, they wouldn't understand. She'd have to wait for them to grow up.

That was one of the uncomfortable thoughts that crossed her mind. 'Wait for them to grow up' sounded so... wrong. Creepy. But, at who else was she supposed to direct the romantic thoughts of her pubescent mind? She only had one destined partner after all.

That justification didn't make her feel any more comfortable when she'd catch herself imagining what it would be like to carry her little soulmate around, or what they'd look like in ten years when she was well and truly an adult and they were at least a teenager, and if then it would be alright for her to lean down and kiss them.

That nickname her classmates gave her in grade four started to feel horrifically fitting. Cradle Snatcher. She was fantasizing about making out with a teenager when she would be an adult.

One part of her argued that she was in a strange position with such a young soulmate, and that thoughts and actions were two very different things, and that if she did meet them when they were very young she'd sort out what was acceptable then. No need to worry about it. She couldn't blame herself for wanting to be able to love her soulmate as soon as possible.

The other part of her was horrified at herself and terrified for her soulmate, and prayed that she didn't meet them for a long time so her strange thoughts would never even have the chance to become an issue.

She can remember long nights spent reading advice books from the local library, trying to find something to help her sort out what she should be thinking and feeling. The closest she came was a book intended for women with younger partners… but only two years younger, and so it was hardly applicable, and a book intended for men that talked about "managing" a soulmate more than four years younger than you.

The second book was quite creepy, and made her feel better about herself only because even she could tell the advice in that book was very, very wrong and bordered on grooming. She wanted to be able to show affection to her soulmate, not control their thoughts and dictate their growth to her liking.

Even now she shudders thinking about the contents of that book. How such a thing could be passed off as an advice book is beyond her.

Either way, her conflicting feelings about her soulmate and how she should be thinking about them continued well into her university years. Her university years were hell, albeit for entirely different reasons than her prior negative experiences at school.

See, the moon's population was quite small. Small enough that all 2000 university aged students at any given time could all attend the same university… and because most people tend to be less than four years older or younger than their soulmate, university is almost certainly when soulmates meet. In fact, it's thought that only having one university on the moon is precisely why most people have at maximum a four year age difference between themselves and their soulmate.

There were entire sections around the university dedicated to restaurants and popular date activities as well as a few flower shops. University, as people would usually say, is the best time of your life. It's the time when you truly become an adult, getting an education, a life partner, and a direction for the rest of your life. It's not an understatement to say that University was the most important four years of a person's life on the moon.

Arch hated it with a passion. The education was fine. She was fascinated by the otherworldly ba'als, and took to combat classes like a cat to high spaces. It was everything else she hated. She hated seeing people walk past arm-in-arm, knowing she would never get to do that. She hated seeing proposals with beautiful flowers, knowing her own potential proposal was a long time away and she wouldn't have a flower in her hair or attached to her dress like all the other girls by the end of her fourth year.

She hated how lonely she felt. She had a few friends, but it really wasn't the same. They all eventually had a soulmate they could and would spend time with, and she became the odd one out, especially since she refused to talk about why she wouldn't go looking for her soulmate around campus.

She hated thinking about how lonely her soulmate would be, and wondered if she should visit the university campus in a decade to find them… except… maybe not.

Because there was one thing that always bothered her. Her mark was a shield with a lion's face, and a lion is a creature from Luxendarc. She didn't like to think about it, but there was a non-zero chance that her destined other might not be from the moon at all, in which case them being lonely at university would be the least of her worries. Just finding them would be a miracle.

That wasn't the only reason she made her next decision when leaving university, she also wanted to follow in her father's footsteps, but it was certainly a factor.

"The military?" Her mother asked. It wasn't a complete surprise. Arch had been taking combat classes in university after all, and she'd long been fascinated by her father's tales of ba'als. "Are you sure sweetie?"

"I am." Arch nodded. "It pays well, and it's really the only place my education is useful unless I want to go into private security."

"That's true, but… you're not hoping to be a healer, are you?"

"No, of course not." She didn't learn medicine or white magic in university and she didn't particularly care to learn now.

"Well… there are very few women in the military sweetie." Her mother warned. "And fewer that aren't healers." And by "fewer" she means less than thirty.

"I'm no stranger to being an outsider Mom." It's painfully true. She's been an outsider for her entire life in one way or another.

"They might not be very nice about it." Her father added. "Soldiers are assholes at the best of times. I'd know."

"I know Dad. I'm still doing it." Arch said, undeterred.

And so she did, and that began the next major part of her life: the military.

It started awfully, as you might expect. Her instructors seemed to take a special glee in picking on her, and her fellow trainees weren't much more merciful. She was constantly questioned, asked why she was there. Why did she think she was better than everyone else? (She didn't). Why was she taking a job away from a man who deserved it more than her? (There was no proof of that). Why was she learning to use a glaive when she should be taking care of the house for her husband? (She would shank him if he dared to suggest that again).

When she wasn't being challenged as to why a woman would be a soldier, it was her appearance that was being criticised. She was "too tempting" for the other soldiers, even with a crew cut and the same baggy clothing as everyone else. It was "interfering with cohesion".

You know, as if it wasn't everyone else's fault for not being able to get over the fact that she was female.

While this was all awful, it did wonders for raising her confidence. She was always ready with sharp retort, and standing up to people who should be her superiors became a regular occurance. It got her into a lot of trouble, but she wasn't about to stop.

It helped that she was far and above one of the most skilled soldiers of her group, so dismissing her would be a loss for the military. She soared ahead of everyone else in training, and swiftly caught the attention of higher-ups… one of whom would be very important to her future.

That person she would eventually call "Appleberry", though for the longest time she simply called him "General, Sir".

And that was how Arch started training to be a ba'al buster. Not just any ba'al buster though, a battle dancer. Not someone who fought in a hovertank with a cannon or from kilometers back with a sniper, but someone who used nothing more than a simple weapon, their speed and skill, and a time-slowing, gravity-altering piece of tech called the SP Hourglass to fight their reality-warping foes.

Appleberry was extremely polite, which was a surprising and welcome change from what Arch was used to from her superiors. Everyone else was still an asshole, but Appleberry was nice.

Appleberry was also the one to inform her of something very convenient. As long as they proved they could still fight unimpeded, battle dancers had no real restriction on uniform. They tended to have highly personalized battle outfits to maximize their (often very unique) skills.

She wasn't about to turn down the opportunity to spit in the face of everyone else who looked down on her. Arch eagerly grew her hair back out to full length, and dressed in blue dress with a deep neckline and slits on the skirt. She didn't care what they thought was "too tempting", she didn't care that her gender offended them. She was perfectly comfortable with herself, and if they didn't like it, too bad. She was the elite soldier, not them.

The other soldiers would say she was showing herself off, and she sort of was. She was showing off what everyone else seemed to be afraid of, and what she had no shame in.

It's only with the benefit of hindsight she can see how much she changed from university to the military. She went from someone quiet and reserved, who stuck the back of the room and only talked with maybe one or two people and preferred not to be noticed to someone who would walk around in a decidedly skimpy outfit to make a point and talked back to anyone who dared question why, regardless of who that person might be. She was proud to be herself, it just took being surrounded by people who were easy to hate and clearly in the wrong.

Her soulmark was barely a thought in her mind for a few years. Oh sure, she still thought about it sometimes and wondered where her soulmate was at in their life, but training kept her busy, and fighting ba'als kept her busier. Perhaps the most relevance her soulmate had in her life during that time was a vague wonder if she'd want to keep her job after she met them. She certainly didn't mind her job, but it would be nice to have more free time if she were going to have a partner. After all, her father had been a busy man her whole childhood, and while she didn't begrudge him that she knew her mother had been a tad lonely at times because of it. She didn't want to inflict that (moreso, considering she was more busy than her father) on her soulmate.

But that was a consideration for the future. She was twenty three, and her soulmate would only just be entering high school at this point… if they lived on the moon at all.

She'd be lying if she said the reason she took her first mission to Luxendarc wasn't in part because she wanted to try and find her soulmate. The mission came first of course, but since there was a bit of free time to chat with the locals she might as well, right?

She was annoyed to learn about the memory-wiping properties of their teleporters. It was a limitation they were trying to work around, and resulted from the teleporter saving a copy of a soldier's memories before deconstructing them and beaming them to earth to be reconstructed, and when it did that process in reverse it didn't scan the soldier on the surface and reconstruct them back in base. No, it was far too difficult to do a precise scan from that far away. So the teleporter would use the scan from mission start when reconstructing the body, hence the memory loss.

To avoid complications planetside, they were in the practice of wiping the memories of particularly involved locals as well. It could be problematic if the locals remembered something an agent didn't if they were to meet again.

Despite knowing this, Arch eagerly took planetside missions. She knew she was searching, even if she couldn't remember what she'd learned. Besides, she always communicated the results of a mission and any important details to Appleberry before being teleported back up. She had a standing plan that if she found her soulmate on a mission, she'd tell Appleberry so he could tell her when she got back. Yes, technically it would be unprofessional, but soulmate business was important enough to ignore that, even in the military. So the fact that he hadn't said anything yet was evidence she hadn't found her soulmate yet.

That was the case for two years, until…

"Arch." Appleberry said, gesturing to a seat nearby. "Take a seat."

"Yes Sir." She said. She laid her glaive carefully against the wall, then took the seat as instructed.

"Do you know why I've called you here today?"

"No Sir." Then, after a moment. "A debriefing, Sir?"

"You might say that." The smile on Appleberry's face is uncharacteristic, and Arch isn't sure if it's a good thing or not. "Your report on the last mission was rather interesting, Arch."

"Was it Sir?" It's not like she can remember, after all.

"Technically I'm not supposed to share planetside mission reports, even with the soldiers responsible for giving them, unless necessary." Appleberry said, picking up a piece of paper from his desk. "And this is a heavily censored version of your last report, but you deserve to be able to read it."

Arch took the piece of paper with a pounding heart and shaking hands. She wasn't stupid, she could figure out what this meant. She'd found her soulmate planetside, and this piece of paper would tell her about them.

Her eyes instinctively skipped to the bottom of the page, expecting the information she wants to see to be there, but everything at the bottom is blacked out. So instead, she brings her eyes up to somewhere just below the start of the page.

He was short with brown hair and brown eyes, born in Gathelatio, sixteen years old, and goes by the name Yew Geneolgia. He's the captain of the pope's Crystalguard. He also has my first name written on his back. Apparently Luxendarc soulmarks are more varied than I thought.

I didn't reveal my name to him, nor that I was his soulmate. The mission comes first.

It's a very small amount of text, but Arch's eyes scan it fifty times before she remembers to take a breath. "Yew Geneolgia."

"Indeed." Appleberry said, startling her. She honestly forgot he was there. "Congratulations I suppose. You're the first moon dweller in centuries to have a soulmate that isn't also from the moon."

That didn't sound like much of a congratulations. He sounded apologetic. Arch didn't have a hard time guessing why. She couldn't remember him, he wouldn't remember her, and they're a sky's length away from each other.

Still. Captain of the pope's Crystalguard. That should make him relatively easy to find again.

"A polite reminder that it's currently illegal to bring people from Luxendarc to the moon." Appleberry murmured. "If you intend on pursuing your soulmate at some point, you'll have to move to Luxendarc."

Arch took a deep breath. "I don't suppose there are any positions to remain permanently planetside?"

"Unfortunately not." Appleberry said. "I'm sorry, Arch."

The reveal of her soulmate weighed heavily on her mind… for all of two months before Fort Lune is attacked, eighty percent of the moon's population is wiped out, and the next few months are spent in a frantic reconstruction effort before she, one of the only surviving elite soldiers, was sent to Luxendarc's surface to chase their attacker.

But that's a different story.

I wasn't expecting this to be as long as it was. I don't know why I decided to focus on character backstory so much rather than the actual interaction of the soulmates. Maybe it's because thinking about how the mere concept of soulmates could change the way someone thinks is just so interesting to me.

I'd do Agnès and Tiz and Edea and Ringabel, buuut I'd prefer to find and replay Default before I do that.