The first time Jake remembered being told about soulmarks, he and his brother are only three years old.

Jake had been spending his morning like usual, watching some cartoon their parents put on the television. When his brother ran into the room.

"Jake! Jake! Look!" He screamed. Shoving his arm into his twin brother's face.

Jake merely squinted his eyes and roughly shoved his brother away from him. "What is it?"

"Look!" Tommy pointed at his arm, that Jake could see now sported a picture of some type of circular design. "It just showed up on my arm just now."

Instead of being happy or curious, like Tommy thought his brother would have, Jake's face toon on an upset expression. "Why don't I have one?" He asked.

That's when Tommy blinked and pointed at Jake's upper arm. "You do, right there."

Jake turned his head and looked at it. Whatever these marks were that just appeared on his body, his was a lot easier to determine than Tommy's. He could easily tell that it was a hand, a blue hand. But it only had three fingers and a thumb. Which he thought was strange. Everyone he knew had four fingers and a thumb.

"What do these mean?" Jake asked

"I don't know," Tommy shook his head, then stood up. "Let's go ask mom."

When they brought their males to their mother, the woman was surprised. She of course knew that they would show on their bodies one day, but she didn't expect it to happen so young.

She then took the next hour of their Saturday morning, explaining to them what soulmarks and soulmates were, and their significance.

"But what does a blue hand mean?" Jake asked.

"And what do these circles mean?" Tommy asked.

She merely smiled at her sons. "I don't know, but when you meet your soulmate, I'm sure you'll understand.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

Jake saw the girl approach his desk before she spoke, and before she started poking his arm.

"What does a blue hand mean? That is a hand, right?" She asked, poking his arm again.

"Are you going to ask everyone what their soulmark means?" Jake asked, glaring at the girl. So far, they were only three months into their first grade year. And so far, this girl has asked every kid who had their soulmark what their mark meant everyday. Nevermind the fact most of them were six years old and half of them didn't even know what their marks were.

It quickly grew annoying among the kids.

"But you are the only one who has a mark that we know what it's a picture of," she said. She poked Jake's arm again, and Jake just batted her arm away. "Do you know what the blue hand means?"

"How many times do I have to tell you," Jake said. " I don't know, now leave me alone and let me finish this," he said as he turned back to his classwork.

"I'll give you my answers if you tell me," the girl said, pushing her face closer to Jake's.

"No," Jake said again, pushing the girl away from him. That finally caused the girl to leave him alone, and she turned, walking back across the room.

As she did so, Jake turned his head to look at the mark on his upper arm. It had been there for three years so far, and he still had absolutely no idea what it meant. Why did the hand have only three fingers? And why was it blue?

He didn't expect to know exactly what it was yet. But Tommy at least had gotten closer to figuring his mark out. Tommy's was some sort of chemistry symbol. They didn't know which one, but they knew it was a chemistry symbol.

Jake was still exactly where he started.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

After a long afternoon of track practice, Jake finally made it home. And he wanted to do nothing more than to take a shower to wash the sweat off, then go to his and Tommy's shared computer, kick Tommy off of whatever nerd stuff he was doing, and go back to his video games their mother made him cut off the night before.

Only when he went into the room with the computer, he found Tommy doing stuff on it. But that was alright, he had expected that.

"Move over nerd," Jake said as he tried to push his twin off the computer chair. "I've been waiting all day to get back to this."

"Don't you have homework?" Tommy asked. "You just got home."

"It's nothing that I can't do in the morning before class," Jake shrugged, again trying to get his brother out of the chair.

"You know if you tried harder you might actually have better grades," Tommy pointed out, trying to get his brother off of him.

"Yeah, yeah, you say that everyday," Jake said.

"Oh well," Tommy said, as he pushed Jake off of him. "I have to watch this for a school project, so Mom said I could use the big monitor."

"Watch what?" Jake asked as he turned his head to the computer monitor.

"It's a documentary on Pandora, you know what that is right?" Tommy asked.

"Yeah, I know what Pandora is. Believe it or not I do pay attention in some classes." Grumpily, Jake sat down next to his brother. "As soon as this is done I'm turning my game back on," he muttered.

Surprisingly Jake had found the documentary to be much more interesting than he expected. The views it showed of the Pandora jungle was very vibrant. It was much more colorful than any forest still existing on Earth, maybe it was even more rich than the environments of Earth ever were.

Then the portion on the Pandora natives began. They were called Na'vi, and lived a very primitive lifestyle. But most importantly…

they were blue.

A shade of blue exactly like the blue hand on Jake's arm.

And as a close up of a couple of the people was shown, Jake noticed that their hands only had three fingers.

Three fingers and a thumb like the hand on Jake's arm.

Could his soulmate… be one of those people?

But Jake shook his head immediately at that thought. There was no way his soulmate was one of those blue people living on Pandora. That was impossible. The thought made him burst out in a laugh.

Tom shot him a look from across their room. Probably trying to wonder what was so funny. Jake didn't tell him anything though.

Then a thought came to Jake. Tommy was smart. He would probably end up working as a scientist one day, probably end up doing some type of research regarding Pandora too with how much the guy was always studying it.

Maybe Jake's soulmate was another scientist that's going to be studying Pandora. They would probably meet one day through knowing Tommy.

The possibility was small. Jake already spent barely any time with Tommy's nerd friends in high school. There was no way he would be spending more time with them as an adult.

But that outcome was a lot more likely than an alien on another planet being his soulmate.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

'You'll never believe what happened today,' Tommy texted Jake one afternoon. At first Jake was surprised to receive a text from his brother. Ever since they both graduated high school, Tommy going off to some super top level college while Jake enlisted in the Marines, they hadn't talked much… if ever.

The most contact he would say he had with his brother in the last thirteen months would be when he asked his parents what Tommy was doing in the increasingly more inconsistent phone calls.

So when Tommy first texted Jake, Jake ignored the message. He figured Tommy must have met another person by the name of Jake at his super smart school and just gotten their contacts mixed up.

So when Tommy texted him again ten minutes later, asking 'Guess what happened,' Jake finally thought he should respond to his twin.

'What did you finally fail a test?' Jake texted his brother.

Ten seconds later, Jake received a response. 'Haha, very funny.'

Followed a couple seconds later by another message. 'I met my soulmate.'

Tommy then sent over a picture. It was a selfie of him and his soulmate. They posed it so they could show how their soulmarks were the same, with their faces side by side in the background. They looked like the textbook perfect soulmate couple.

Tommy… met his soulmate? Already?

He knew it was bound to happen eventually. Everyone meets their soulmate eventually, what with all the legends on fate and stuff. But that didn't mean you would necessarily get along with your soulmate, let alone want to live with them and whatnot.

But at least for their parents, their match worked out. And looking at the picture Tommy had sent, it looked like things would probably work out between the two of them. Two nerdy scientists. Both with a chemistry symbol as their soulmark.

They were the perfect match.

Jake sighed, tossing the phone back on his desk.

Unless his soulmate was one of the blue people living on Pandora, he was still no closer to figuring out what his soulmark meant than when he was three years old.

Sure he was only nineteen right now, and had a hell of a lot more decades of his life to go, but with his brother now meeting his soulmate, and half of the Marines he served with already finding theirs, he couldn't help but be growing more dejected every day he thought about it.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

About five years after Tommy sent him those texts, Tommy called Jake.

And cried through the phone about how Natalie, his soulmate, had just died.

Killed in a freak train crash.

After the phone call, Jake's thoughts couldn't help but turn back to thinking about soulmates and soulmarks. It seemed that even if you meet your soulmate and are the perfect match, you still weren't entitled to the 'happily ever after' people told children in the fairy tales.

No wonder Tommy had met his soulmate at such a relatively young age. He couldn't only wonder if it was because it was taking such a long time for Jake to find his match, maybe he would get to spend more time with them once they met.

It was no wonder Tommy volunteered for the Pandora mission after that.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

It was about a week after Neytiri started training Jake in their 'Na'vi ways' or whatever they were calling it.

Right now they were sitting in a small clearing, and she had just pushed some type of fruit into Jake's hands, and told him to eat it.

As he was doing so, he looked over at her arm, and saw a familiar blue handprint he hadn't noticed on her before. The sight made him freeze, and he looked down at the symbol on his arm, the blue hand less noticeable on his blue skin, and looked back at the mark on Neytiri.

It took a couple more glances back and forth, when it was confirmed to Jake…

they were the same marks.

But that couldn't be… could it?

After the first day he piloted the Avatar, Jake had asked one of the scientists if the Na'vi had soulmarks like humans do. They had told him that while some of them have marks on their skin, many don't. For the few who do, many don't ever end up meeting their match, and therefore the marks had far less impact on their society, almost zero really.

The Na'vi saw the marks as more of a cool coincidence, maybe it would make a couple rounds through the clan's rumor mill if the people were well known. But it was nothing like how humans saw them.

So that left Jake at an impasse.

What should he do about this?