Chapter Text
This is a stupid idea.
Recklessness is one thing, right. Reckless is the tip of the fucking iceberg, and with every step you’ve taken since the news showed a not-Invincible decimating a cape prison, you’ve slammed a sledgehammer down onto the ice and widened the crack. Each street, each person passed by, each emergency alert chirping from your phone and the soaring wail of the sirens.
None of it’s enough. Can’t be, when you’ve been in this world for months and failed to find even footing no matter how long you wait, and watch, and…
You could’ve run. When you saw a blond man in a red suit radiate arcs of electricity at the Chicago memorial, heard his despairing calls for Invincible though the TV - you knew when you were. What was coming up.
Not so specific as the week, the month, but soon. You had time to get far away from any city or major landmark, and hunker down in Bumfuck, Nowhere. Get whatever supplies would last you three days for sure, and potentially the weeks and months it’ll take for recovery. You had all the time in the world, when the world didn’t even know the season finale would be coming for it.
Instead of doing anything smart, you headed for the suburbs of Chicago.
The rumble of your motorbike is the soundtrack for sightseeing Invincible’s home neighbourhood. No one’s around, but the destruction hasn’t reached this area yet. Chicago itself is fucked - you saw the Invincible in Viltrum white in shaky phone camera footage and as a backdrop to grimly determined newscasters - and even out here, you can smell the smoke. But beyond that? It’s just empty, long since evacuated. A ghost town whose carcasses have already fled.
You idle at an intersection to check the address. A few major satellites were taken out on day one, but for the most part, the internet is still up. Gotta be deliberate to keep communication readily available. Sharing thousands of photos and videos of the destruction, of which face the calamity wears. Joy, disinterest, contempt, bloodthirst, rage - all too similar, even when the costume or hairstyle might vary.
The ‘gas explosion’ opposite the Grayson’s house made local news, followed up months later by Angstrom’s party crashing. All you had to do was find the articles online (not on purpose, just in those weeks or trying to come to terms with where you are, what this is, and failing) and you’re set for today’s excursion.
Another twenty minutes of empty, near-identical streets, and you’re here.
Slowing outside the rebuilt spy-house opposite, you set the kickstand down and look over at the joint Mark Grayson was raised in. Looks normal enough, in an upper middle-class sort of way. Enough personality to not come across as bland, while still fitting in perfectly with the houses around it. Just a house, nothing special about it.
You’re in the exclusive club of people who know this will be the meeting place for the variants and Angstrom at the end of phase one.
It’s impulse which brings you here. An impulse you needed, because what other drive do you have now? You died. You woke up in the pieces of another woman’s life, and sunk your teeth into the fault lines cracking across your vision no matter where you looked. Maybe you lost your mind in the process, who’s to say?
Either way, you figure there’s nothing stopping you from indulging that sweet, abrupt impulse. The spark of I could do this. Why not do this?
You roll your bike up the driveway of the former spyhouse and check the front door. “Lucky,” you mutter when the door opens with a faint click. Looks like an actual family have moved in since the remodelling, coats and jackets hanging by the door and photo frames showing parents and two young kids. No one’s home.
Leaving the door wide open, you drag a blue armchair from the living room and shove it up against the wall in the entryway, tilted toward the front door. It’s a pretty big hall, and the door opens out to a small porch with a perfect view of the house opposite and the dark sky above, even at this angle.
You slump onto the chair with a beer bottle snagged from the fridge. Power’s still on around here, so it’s deliciously cool when you take a sip. Driving for hours on a stolen motorbike is thirsty work, especially when you’ve had to veer around major cities and plenty of the main highways are clogged. Panicked people fleeing in whatever direction they could, even after footage of the Invincible in a tracksuit mowing though lines of gridlocked traffic made the news.
The sheer destruction of it is unreal. You don’t think you’ve ever seen a dead body before yesterday. Hard to know for sure, with how fuzzy your memories are. Events in the Invincible comic and show have more substance than most of your life, ha.
You tilt the beer bottle, watching a droplet of moisture slide down the neck. Not everything here lines up with expectations, but…enough. More than enough to bring you to this spot, at this moment in time. A little early, yeah, but it isn’t like you have a timetable to reference.
You don’t exactly intend to fall asleep but, well, you do. It’s only tipping into day two, so you’re not on high alert for a variant arrival. The chances of anyone else showing up is also low, given the ongoing reckoning.
Yeah. Kind of an obvious mistake in retrospect.
It isn’t so obvious what wakes you at first. In those initial groggy seconds of blinking and registering the stiffness from sleeping on an armchair, you’re still relaxed. Still think you’re alone.
Then you realise it’s quiet. The constant companion of the siren is gone. Considering they’ve been blaring in every urban area and are unlikely to stop until long after Angstrom escapes, that means the one you’ve been hearing has been forced to shut up.
Then, you make out a silhouette in the doorway.
A man, given definition from the streetlight outside the house. Tall and muscular, wearing a skin-tight suit in black and dark blue. His feet aren’t touching the floor, a conspicuous gap between his boots and the hardwood.
The chance this might be mainline Invincible is blown out of the water when a slight movement of his head distinguishes the mohawk, light catching on the wild strands.
Well, shit.
“What do we have here?”
The space between you is gone. Dark eyes wide with a violent glee are too close for comfort, and he cages you in with his grip on each armrest. A trap of your own dumb making, and still-
There’s no regret. Not even a little. Because here he is, and finally, fucking finally, the show’s begun. Even if it isn’t the one you bought tickets for.
Your gaze flicks up, and surprise eases the shock of oh fuck things are happening. “A mohawk actually suits you.”
Both depictions, comic and show, seemed kind of…not the best look for Mark Grayson. But seeing it in person, it works for him. His hair is longer than expected in a thick streak barely brushed back, the sides of his head shaved short but not completely bald. Gives it texture, and you wonder if it’d be a soft fuzz under your fingers or something coarser.
Woah. Where’d that thought come from-
Your side ripples with pain, and for a second you think whoops, this is it, he’s stabbed through you with his bare hand. But he hasn’t - he’s frozen, face slack with something like shock. He hasn’t touched you at all. So why is your side burning like that?
Oh.
You swallow. Your gaze moves from him to your chest, and you take the risk of moving. Slowly, your fingers curl over the bottom of your tank top and pull it up.
There. On the right side of your ribs, the smudged ink which has been there since you woke up in this life…it’s changed. It used to be grey, the words indistinguishable, but now stark letters in the same blue as his suit are printed on your skin.
Despite being upside down to your eyes, you can guess what it says.
what do we have here
Soulmarks are the main non-canon aspect of this dimension. You know your tropes, so obviously you’ve read soulmate AUs. They vary as wildly as omegaverse does, but the general gist held true with what you picked up in the months you’ve been here.
Here, people are born with the first words their soulmate will say to them on their ribcage, usually over their hearts. On meeting and both phrases being spoken, the grey dormant marks will gain a colour - and there’s plenty of speculation on what each shade means, from favourite colours, to the alignment of the stars on that particular day and hour.
Boom, instant identification of the person you share a soul with. The one who’ll understand you more deeply than any other, love you in a way no one else ever could; not your parents, not your children, not whatever partner you might already have. A promise of the deepest bond in existence, and total acceptance and devotion. Apparently.
“Oh, fuck,” he says finally, voice a rasp, and then a shaky laugh jolts through him. “Fuck. It’s- all this fucking time, you weren’t even- you were here. What the hell, that’s such bullshit!”
But he laughs again, and when he smiles it’s definitely unhinged but not, y’know, overtly violent anymore. Which is nice.
Less nice is him abruptly cupping your face, but he’s gentle about it. Gloved hands light on your skin, showing he must be aware you’re a delicate little teacup who’ll crack if he uses even a tiny portion of his strength.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
“…It’s Robin.”
“Robin.” He says it like it’s important, like it’s more than the name of a dead girl. His face is level with yours now, and you realise he must’ve bent his legs but stayed hovering. Kneeling in the air. Handy. “I’m Mark.”
“This is fucking insane, Mark.” It slips out because- c’mon, this is insane. Zero sense involved.
Even if you can accept soulmates being a thing, it’s him? What the fuck? Universe, buddy, pal; have you perhaps made a minor error here?
“Shit, right.” His brow furrows, and huh, his eyes are blue. You thought this dimension was more along the cartoon build; Debbie Grayson’s photo on her company’s website confirmed it. Maybe Nolan’s genes are extra strong in this Mark’s dimension.
The dark circles under his eyes remain, and you wonder how many sleepless nights it would take to etch them so deeply into a Viltrumite’s face. He has piercings, too; two studs by the corner of either eyebrow, though one on the left has been ripped out recently, obvious in the smear of blood crusted over a healing gash. How’d he get those in his face at all? Got the holes pre-power puberty?
“You would’ve…I’d never, ever hurt you, okay?” He speaks quickly, like he’s trying to get ahead of whatever trains of thought he assumes you’ve boarded. “Forget everything else. Whatever you’ve heard on the news - you’re not one of those ants. You’re my soulmate.”
The possessiveness of it makes your stomach clench. It’s unnerving.
It’s interesting, how rapidly he changed from the initial menace to…this. For something as out of his control and random as a mutual branding neither of you signed up for.
It did occur to you that the variants might have soulmarks, since there’s a tonne of speculation online that this dimension’s Invincible and Atom Eve are soulmates, basically confirmed by the lack of denial. But you figured the whole evilness would mean a human soulmate is interpreted as a weakness at best. An insult at worst, to be disposed of post haste.
“I just-” His jaw clenches, frustration flashing across his features. But his grip doesn’t tighten at all. His thumbs are a steady, gentle pressure on your cheekbones, and he smells like blood. The iron tang of it sticks to the inside of your throat.
“I looked for you. For years, and you never showed up.” His voice cracks on never, and his voice gains a frantic pace, a pileup of dredged emotion. “I met so many fucking people, just for the chance one of those assholes was you. It took me- I delayed everything for you, said no to my dad even when he beat the shit out of me, put up with playing hero and being the pussy who’d stick around and save everyone and listen to their goddamn whining-”
It clicks, and your eyes widen. The corner of your lips twitch into an unwilling smile. “Did you get a mohawk because of the soulmark?”
His gaze is on your mouth, stuck there as if deciphering a complex equation. Then another laugh shakes through him, a deeper one, and he nods. “Yeah. I’ve had a mohawk since I was a kid because of you, so you better like it or I’ll be really pissed off.”
Shit, why is that so endearing? From this guy? Emperor Mohawk himself? What the flying fuck.
“I like it,” you say honestly. You’re not scared, even though you probably should be wary of his anger. Some part of you might be, but overall? You’re too baffled by this entire situation for it to stand a chance of influencing you.
“It’s distinct.” Mirth bubbles in your throat, and you feel your smile widen. “There’s no mistaking you for someone else, even with current events.”
“I’ll take distinct.” He looks so pleased with himself, a striking simplicity to it when set against what you know about him. What he’s done in just the past two days. This man is a mass murderer, and he’s happy you like his hairstyle.
“Can I…” You hesitate, but curiosity pushes you on. “Can I see it? The soulmark.”
“See- uh, yeah, of course.”
He seems reluctant to move, but after a moment he lets go of your face and drifts back. You stand, following him, and damn he’s tall. His feet are on the ground now and he still towers over you. Fucking unfair.
The suit has a zip down to his (very well-defined) abs, and as he unzips, you reach out to flick the lights on. The initial glare of it makes you wince, but it’s worth it to have a clear view of the soulmark.
On him, it’s higher up his ribcage, centred over his heart. A sentence scrawled out in your handwriting, simple, compact letters barely spruced up by the loop of the y in actually and you. Each word is a bold, thick black, demanding attention against his tan skin.
“You can touch.” His grin is cocky and self-assured, and he plants a fist on his hip, halfway to a pose. “If you want.” And that reveals just a waver of uncertainty, tucked behind the white of his teeth.
Christ. You do want.
“Chill out, punkrock, I’m getting to it.” It’s just fucking weird, seeing your own words on his skin. Not only because it’s another person’s actual skin, but…he’s a Viltrumite.
Even if soulmarks weren’t a human thing, it seems wrong that skin which doesn’t carry scars - the rest of his upper chest totally unmarred, despite how many battles he must’ve survived - would still carry this so blatantly. Nothing subtle about the dark lines on his pec, and when your fingertip brushes over the A, it feels slightly raised from his skin. A few degrees warmer, too. And-
That single touch has your own mark aching in a strange reverberation.
He shivers at the same time, blinking rapidly. “Woah. That’s freaky.”
“Super freaky. Like one of those, er-” You curl your fingers into a fist and mime a tap, knuckles barely touching suits “-metal fork things?”
“A tuning fork?” He shrugs. “Yeah, I see it. Wish it was a sound instead. I almost-” His lips press in a tight line, gaze abruptly avoiding yours.
No prize for guessing what he almost did to a random human lurking in the house across from his childhood home.
Your eyebrows raise. “That would’ve been incredibly fucked up. Good thing you felt like a chat first, huh?”
He actually flinches, and damn, you’re starting to feel bad for him. Which is dumb as all hell. You’ll happily blame it on the soulbond; obviously, it’s messing with both your heads right now.
The science on that part is ehhhh…iffy. Lots of disagreement and schools of thought on how much influence the soulbond has. The only general consensus is soulmates shouldn’t be separated in the first few weeks after bonding, since emotions tend to be more volatile and avoidance has a deteriorating effect on the pair.
“I’ll let it slide this once,” you decide magnanimously. The urge to touch the soulmark properly has you instead pinching the zipper and drawing it back up over his bare skin, maybe taking longer than you have to in the process. “But that’s it. Any further murder attempts are officially red flags, and I’m not a very forgiving person.”
“Got it.” His shoulders slump, and he has a small, unsure smile on his face when you release the zip. It looks odd on his features, like they’ve forgotten how to make this kind of expression. “Thanks for…giving me a chance.”
Is that what you’re doing?
“I just want to see what happens next,” you say, and it feels the closest to the truth.
A frown replaces the smile, and he looks around the hall and living room as if taking it in for the first time. Bland off-white walls and a spider plant by the window, and the slow spin of a ceiling fan.
“We’re getting out of here,” he decides. “Give me a sec.”
He walks outside, and light glints off a metal…orb? Oh, right. Angstrom’s drones. This one is hovering in the front yard and Mark rises to its level. When he speaks, everything about his voice is completely different from how he’s spoken to you.
“Angstrom,” he barks like a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed in an instant. And, y’know, casually dismembering anyone who dilly-dallies. “I’m done destroying shit. Get me a portal home or I’ll rip you to pieces.”
“You’re nowhere near done, Invincible.” Angstrom’s voice is fainter and tinny through the speakers, but it just about reaches you. What a privileged position to be in. Angstrom may not have been your favourite villain - the show handed that title to Conquest on a silver platter, albeit more for spectacle and the hammering Mark took - but you like his reasoning, the tragedy of him. The selfish, relentless destruction he’s creating.
“A single prison is all you have to show for yourself,” Angstrom says with a mocking impatience. “And after all the fuss you made claiming New York, too.”
“Fuck New York - let one of those dipshits help themselves. And how high’s my killcount, again? A single prison, bullshit.” He scoffs and crosses his arms. “Also, you deaf on top of buttfuck ugly? I said I’ll rip you to pieces. So, gimme what I want, and we won’t have a problem.”
“Did you forget the terms of our deal?”
“Time’s change, get with the program. I don’t give a shit about more dimensions anymore. Mine’s better than all of them.”
“You’ve changed your tune. Is your short-lived, human soulmate really more important than your empire?”
You tense up, feeling as if the red curve of the drone is focused on you. Just a feeling, nothing concrete, but Mark must feel it too.
A split second later, he’s holding the drone so tight that the metal whines against his grip. “Don’t talk about her,” his voice is tight, barely audible. “Don’t even fucking think about her.”
“Complete your side of our deal, and I’ll ensure you’ll leave this dimension together.”
Wow. What ambiguous wording. Surely Angstrom intends to follow through on the bargain and not strand you both in an endless wasteland.
“…For fuck’s sake. Fine. One more day, got it?” He tosses the drone away and it clips the roof of the Grayson house, gouging a line in the tiles. You hope they’re insured against cape damage. Though those insurance companies will be fielding a lot of calls once this is all over.
A blink, and he’s abruptly in front of you. “Sorry, babe. We’ve gotta stick around this shithole a little longer.” He actually looks remorseful, hands gentle when they find your waist.
The touch is both disturbing and not; you don’t like strangers touching you, always avoiding cramped public spaces whenever possible. But the same hands which have killed who the fuck knows how many people, instead feel…natural on you.
Made for each other. That’s what soulmates are supposed to be.
What a fragile fantasy.
“You need to kill more people?”
He searches your face, and you wonder what he’s looking for. If he finds it when the tension eases out of his features, and he nods. “C’mon, I’ll explain on the way.”
You go with him. What else are you supposed to do?