So I ended up going down a rabbit hole of Soulmark Soulmate fics i.e. I read all of Ozhawk's Soulmate Shorts AKA The Crackship Armada in just a few days (and there are a LOT of them). Anyway, I got inspired to make some Soulmate fics of my own, most especially because every time I read a Soulmate fic, I think of what started the Marks.
I have no idea who came up with the idea of Soulmarks, but credit to them.
This will be the only chapter narrated in an Uatu the Watcher voice. This may be the only chapter posted on fanfiction, I think I'll post the pairings on Archive of Our Own where I can include all the ship tags.
Prologue: Stephen Strange, The Marker
On one Earth, in the late 1950s, there was one seemingly innocuous couple that changed the fate of not only their Universe but the infinite branched realities that started there.
The couple was made up of Christine Palmer, this Earth's first female surgeon, and one Stephen Strange, a brilliant but unerringly difficult neurosurgeon who would one day become Sorcerer Supreme.
This Stephen Strange, though born before most others, was like every Stephen Strange of note in the grand scheme of the Multiverse. After an accident destroyed his hands and their ability to do what he'd spent decades training them for, he turned to sorcery to get them back. And like many Stephen Stranges, once he mastered the mystic arts, he never went back to medicine. Though this Strange once tried to do just that.
In his anger over the loss of his hands, this Stephen ruined things with his soulmate, with his wife. The woman he loved beyond all else was pushed aside in his need for a new vocation, left behind while he traveled the world for a new purpose, forgetting that his reasons for being extended beyond just his work.
A year later, he returned a new man, diverting his magic to his hands in order to resume his life with Christine, only to find his wife had died in his absence, mere weeks earlier. A brain aneurysm, of all things, had killed her on her way to work.
There was nothing about her death he could blame himself for—there was no way to scan for a brain aneurysm after all, not in his time, and no symptoms he could have missed before it ruptured. Instead, he blamed himself for his absence, for never realizing how important she was to him, for letting his ego get in the way of his happiness. Of their happiness. Of hers.
Hers.
That was the one that stuck with him the most.
This Stephen, after some fumbling out of the gate, had known without a doubt that Christine was his soulmate since the day he proposed. Somehow he'd forgotten that, too wrapped up in the pain of losing his hands to see that he still had what mattered most. With all the wondrous new technology of the time, her death was still impossible to prevent, but her unhappiness that past year? It could have been prevented if only he'd had something to remind him that she mattered more than anything else. And they could have had so much more time if something that told them they were meant to be the moment they met, so they didn't waste so much time at the start; for between their own uncertainty and the amount of school they'd had in front of them, it took years for them to marry, years to even commit to the relationship.
.
After his return to Kamar-Taj and his ascension to Sorcerer Supreme, he found the answer to his wish in an unassuming Greek spellbook about the Fates. He had long since lost his chance, but he could still change things for everyone else. So no one ever had to waste their time with the One trying to ascertain if that's who they really were. So no one could ever forget the person who made them complete.
This Stephen Strange, like every Stephen Strange, excelled at devising plans. He knew more about the cosmos than any being on Earth, and he used this knowledge to devise an entirely new spell. One that he could never hope to cast without the aid of multiple Singularities, which he located fairly easily as a Master of the Mystic Arts. The time stone was already in his grasp, and it was all too easy to obtain the Reality stone in London. Travel to Morag was slightly more complicated, but, with the aid of a relic in the London Sanctum to supercharge his sling ring, interstellar travel was not that difficult.
He could not survive, of course, wielding multiple Infinity Stones, but after the loss of the woman he knew without doubt was his soulmate, he didn't care overmuch. They had wasted so much time trying to figure out what they were to each other that they missed what was really important: being together. They had let inconsequential things like their work and his injuries tear them apart, and he could give every sentient being in the Universe a concrete reason not to let that happen with the one to whom their soul was bound.
A message to help them recognize their soulmate upon their meeting, written on their skin to make sure they never forgot.
Later, there would be many arguments as to whether the soul-bound existed naturally or if it was part of his sorcery, creating bonds that hadn't existed before. After all, in a world of billions in a galaxy of infinite unknowns, how likely was it, really, to meet one's other half?
In truth, it was a mere probability hex, aided by the chaos magic of the Reality stone that made it so common for a person to find their soulmate.
The Time stone allowed the spell to know precisely what was said at every meeting of every pair, and it was the Time stone that would ensure that the Marking of the bonded would continue forevermore. The Power stone allowed his spell to spread throughout the cosmos to the entire Universe, and the Reality stone created the marks:
The first words their soulmate would ever speak directly to them, written in their soulmate's hand, scrawled on their body like an inborn tattoo.
He survived only long enough to finish the spell before he joined his Christine.
So kind of a dark start, but yeah, this was more or less my headcanon every time I've read a soulmate fic. Such a spell could only be cast due to some pretty intense angst. Apart from the era difference, the WHAT IF in this scenario is really just What if he and Christine had been together and happy at the time of his accident? (And what if she had a brain aneurysm, but I say that it's not impossible in canon, but in the modern era she just had it detected and fixed.) I realize I just Fridged a woman (which I am not proud of -I can just imagine the look on my Feminist Lit professor's face) but I'm just following What If episode 4 where her death was such an integral plot device to that universe that it was a fixed point in time.
My soulmark rules (all are subject to change if I feel like it) are:
.Soulmarks are on almost everyone but there are a few Unmarked.
.Soulmarks appear at birth if your soulmate is older; if younger, they show up the day the other is born.
.It works the same throughout the universe: first words are written on the skin in whatever language they're spoken, and the alphabet used is based on what written language the person uses, so whoever is Thor's soulmate would have their mark written in runes while his would show English (or whatever) in the Roman alphabet, etc.
.Soulmark "ink" fades away after the soulmate dies, but the writing becomes raised like scar tissue.
.There are platonic and non-platonic soulmarks. Platonic is gray, romantic is red.
.Since Dr Strange cast the spell sometime in the 50s, those born before then didn't have one until either he cast it, or until the day their soulmate was born.
but like I said, I'll probably be uploading the following soulmate AU stories only on Archive of Our Own now that I finally made an account there. Also, make sure to check out WIABD when I repost it over there to see a much larger version of the cover image for the story since over here it only shows up as a thumbnail. (Assuming I ever figure out the formatting on AO3 well enough to add a picture.)
Also, if you're into playlists made specifically for certain ships, check out my playlists as kittikiki on spotify. I made one specifically for When it all burns down as a sort of musical storyboard, and I have some for these ships.