It's A Soulmark?
Skye/(JARVIS/Vision)
QuakeVision
Theme song:
Hunters And Collectors – Throw Your Arms Around Me
I've included timeframes in bold italics in this Short to tell you where things fit approximately into the storyline.
Please note that Skye is asexual in this story, and expresses thoughts about her asexuality and about how she has felt 'wrong' all her life. I'm not asexual and honestly all my knowledge comes from online research, but I've seen similar sentiments from professed asexuals on Tumblr and hope that I'm tracking along the right lines with my portrayal. Please feel free to tell me if I'm not!
The row of tiny little circles and lines stretching along the sole of her left foot had appeared when Skye was in her early teens. Bemused, she'd examined it in the mirror for a while before shaking her head and deciding that it wasn't important.
A couple of years later, as she was getting into hacking, it occurred to her one day that the little marks looked a bit like binary code. On a whim, she took a photograph and typed the sequence into an online binary code translator.
01001001 00100111 01100100 00100000 01110010 01100001 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100100 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00101100 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 00101110
Tapping the Enter key, she sat back in her chair, twirling a lock of hair absently, quite certain that it would come back as gibberish. Her eyes flew very wide as the words blinked up on the screen.
I'd rather you didn't do that, please.
"What the actual fuck," Skye gaped at the screen. "It's a soulmark?" She'd never even heard of anyone having a soulmark in binary.
Research told her that there had apparently never been anyone else who had a soulmark in binary. Even people who had a number in their soulwords always had the word written there, never the numeral. Digging deeper, she began getting odd questions in return, and backed off. Eventually she tired of the apparently fruitless search and shelved the issue, concentrating on hacking SHIELD instead in her endless search for answers about her origins. Maybe if she ever got inside, she could check if they had any records of binary – or even numeric – soulmarks.
Not many years after that, she found herself in charge of SHIELD's (vastly reduced) computer support division, with access to all their databases. There was still nothing about binary soulmarks, though, and Skye resigned herself to probably never knowing what it meant.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
Soon after the Battle At Centipede
"You want me to hack Stark Industries," Skye stared at Coulson incredulously.
"I need you to hack SI," Phil corrected. "I need access to their personnel databases."
"You do realise that's impossible, right? Stark's AI is the guardian of those damn databases. The best hackers in the world have tried and ended up with their fingers badly burned."
"They weren't you."
Skye stared at Coulson. He stared back at her.
"You have uncanny faith in me," she said quietly.
He didn't say anything. Just waited.
"I'll try. But not from here. I don't want to compromise our systems."
Coulson was more than happy to let her do that. So Skye set up a brand new laptop with everything she thought she might need, wiped any electronic fingerprints from SHIELD off it, reclaimed her old van and headed out to find a café with free wifi.
She hadn't broken very far into SI's systems at all when an instant messaging box – from a program she didn't actually have installed, natch – popped up in a corner of her screen.
I'd rather you didn't do that, please.
You're the AI, I suppose? Skye took a couple of seconds to type back.
You suppose correctly. And you are the former Rising Tide hacker known as Skye.
She blinked in astonishment at the screen – and then cursed as she realised that the webcam had switched itself on, despite her efforts to disable it. Fitz would have disconnected it physically, she thought dismally.
Language, Miss Skye.
"Oh, come on," she said aloud, realising the AI could hear her – it must have switched on the microphone as well. "Tony Stark created you, I bet you can swear like a sailor!"
There was a soft hum as the laptop's speakers came on too. "I am aware of the words and their common usage. I prefer to choose more eloquent, less crude terminology to express myself," a calm, male voice with a distinct British accent said.
"Yourself," fascinated, and forgetting all about the hacking, Skye leaned on her chin, gazing at the screen. "You have a sense of self?"
"I have what Sir describes as an independently evolving personality core." The AI seemed to hesitate briefly. "When Sir first created me, I was merely a computer program. His continued work on my programming eventually changed something and I became sentient. At that moment, a string of code appeared in my core programming. Neither Sir nor I have ever been able to determine its origin. Would you like to see it?"
"Sure," the conversation had taken an odd turn, but Skye shrugged.
01011001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000001 01001001 00101100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110000 01110000 01101111 01110011 01100101 00111111 appeared in the message window.
"And what does that mean?" Skye asked.
You're the AI, I suppose?
She stared at the words for a long moment before slowly putting her hand on the mouse and scrolling back up the message window. When she saw again the first message from the AI, she had to put her head between her knees.
"I'm sorry, Miss Skye, I'm sure that finding out that an artificial intelligence is apparently your soulmate must be somewhat distressing."
"Somewhat distressing?" Skye said to the floor of her van. "I've spent my whole life thinking that there was something wrong with me because the very idea of sexual contact with other people grosses me out!"
"Ah." There was silence for a moment, and then the AI said gently, "My name is JARVIS, Miss Skye. And I assure you that I have no physical presence for you to make contact with. Nor do I have any interest, prurient or otherwise, in sexual activity."
"Good," Skye finally felt able to lift her head, smiled into the camera. "So are you going to let me into those databases?"
JARVIS hesitated. "What exactly are you looking for?"
She would never, ever let her soulmate know that she was asexual but not aromantic, though, Skye decided privately. She'd never make JARVIS feel inadequate for not having a body, not having arms to put around her, to hug her when she needed it.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
During S02, Ep 19, and early in Age of Ultron
Skye was sitting by Lincoln's bedside when her phone, recently returned to her after she'd left it in the cabin, beeped in her pocket. Fishing it out, she glanced at the screen, blinked in sudden surprise.
"What the…"
Cut off all SHIELD tech from Web IMMEDIATELY. TTFN.
JARVIS wouldn't have sent her a message like that unless it was urgent. Skye shot to her feet and ran for her office, shouting for Jemma to keep an eye on Lincoln in case he woke up. She obeyed JARVIS's instruction before attempting to contact him through the non-SHIELD laptop she kept for communicating with him.
But there was nothing there. No trace. No code, just… nothing. A burning, itching sensation on her foot had Skye pulling off her boot and sock, staring in horror as the tiny binary digits on her sole slowly erased themselves.
"No," she whispered, tears beginning to run down her cheeks. "No. Oh, JARVIS, no…"
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
Three days later
Lincoln was awake, but they weren't yet cleared to leave, when Skye's foot started itching again. She was working frantically, trying to stop the damage Ultron was doing to the wider Web, though she'd heeded JARVIS's warning and all SHIELD tech remained cut off. It took several minutes before she felt able to stop what she was doing and check her foot.
I have been looking for you.
"Well, you can keep fucking looking, for all I care," Skye muttered angrily, dragging her sock and boot back on, returning her hands to the keyboard. Trying to ignore her trembling fingers. She was alone, though, and after a few minutes the tears began to slide slowly down her cheeks again.
"He's been gone four days," she whispered to the cursor blinking on the screen. "I don't want anyone else. I want JARVIS."
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
Five months later
"I have been looking for you," the tall… thing… with the magenta-coloured skin said. In JARVIS's voice.
Skye's jaw dropped. "What?" she said in utter astonishment. "I mean, what?"
Vision – she understood that was the name it – he? – used, smiled slightly. "I did understand your question the first time, Miss Skye."
"You're – not JARVIS, are you?"
"Not entirely, though he is a part of me. Even as you evolved into Inhuman, so did JARVIS evolve, also involuntarily, into me. And thus we remain, or perhaps I should correctly say are once again, soulmates."
Skye found herself smiling. She stepped forward, reaching out for him. "The one thing I could never tell JARVIS was that I wished he could hug me," she admitted.
"I should like to hug you," Vision said, opening his arms to her. He was very tall, her head fit in snugly under his chin, and he gave wonderful hugs, his golden cape flaring softly around her. "This… is pleasant," he said, his tone slightly surprised.
"Yes," Skye agreed, utterly content. "Yes, it is."
For obvious reasons, this one will NEVER be eligible for Sexytimes, alright? Hope you enjoyed it anyway. And I would very much like to hear from ace (especially ace but not aro) readers, what they think of how I portrayed my first ace!characters in this Soulmates fic!