Part One

"What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life-to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?" ~George Eliot

"There's no such thing as soulmates," Owen declared, grabbing a rogue sausage from the pizza box as he talked and dropping it on his half-eaten slice. "Science has debunked it a dozen times over."

"Actually," Tosh offered, "science has failed to prove it. That's not the same."

"Sure it is," Owen replied. "If scientists can't prove something exists, it doesn't exist."

"But they haven't proven that it doesn't exist," Tosh threw back.

"It's the same thing, Tosh. No one's proved that soulmates exist, therefore they don't exist."

"You don't believe in them, do you?" asked Gwen. "It's why you're always so grumpy when I ask about your social life, isn't it?" She'd been with them long enough to pick up that much, at least. No one liked her meddlesome questions and condescending attitude about their relationships—or lack of them.

"No," Owen replied with a smirk. "I get annoyed because I don't like hearing about you and your bloody boyfriend. You're not better than us because you're living with some bloke, and we certainly don't need to be told how sad and lonely we are all the time."

Tosh nodded, and even Jack agreed. "He's got a point there."

"What about you?" Gwen asked. "Do you believe in soulmates, Jack?"

"I'll believe in almost anything," Jack said through a mouthful of pizza. "Little green men on the moon? Met 'em. Loch Ness monster? She loves chicken curry. Time travel and spaceships? Old hat around here." He wagged his eyebrows and continued eating as Gwen stared around the table.

"How do you explain the matching marks?" she demanded. "How do you explain how two people who've never met before but end up falling in love could have matching birthmarks in the exact same place on their bodies, long before they ever meet?"

Jack shrugged while the others remained silent. "Do none of you believe?" she asked. "Don't you have a mark you wonder about? Search for on your partners, to see if they're the one?"

"Is that what you did?" Owen asked sarcastically. "Quizzed each bloke you slept with about his birthmarks? Did you take pictures, keep a chart?"

"Of course not," she said, but she still looked embarrassed. "But it was something I…well, I kept an eye out for, hoping to find the one that matched mine."

"And when you did, you instantly knew he was the one?"

"Yes."

"What if he'd been an oaf, or an arse, or psychotic ax murderer? What do you do then?" Owen took a drink and continued when she didn't answer. "Do you stay with a person you can't stand because you both have pigment irregularities on the bottom of your right foot? Or do you move on and find a partner based on things like personality and compatibility and love rather than some mystical connection we're supposed to believe is real?"

Gwen stared at him. "You don't have one, do you?" she asked instead of answering the question.

"I did," Owen said. "It's gone."

"How?" she asked without thinking. Most people tended to keep their soulmate marks to themselves; it was not usually a topic of casual conversation around the lunch table at work.

"I had it removed," Owen replied. She gasped.

"You didn't!"

"Of course I didn't, because I don't believe in that stuff." He stuffed another piece of pizza in his mouth. Gwen turned to Jack, who raised his hands.

"Don't look at me. I'm complicated."

She frowned and looked at Tosh with a raised eyebrow.

"I don't have one," she said. "And it doesn't bother me, because it doesn't mean I won't fall in love and find a partner someday. We can still find happiness without a mark. Like Owen said, it's just pigment and skin cells."

Gwen shook her head, like it was unbelievable that anyone could think and feel differently than her. That was one thing that had struck Ianto from the start, that for as much as Gwen tried to empathize with others, she still saw everything through the lens of her own rose-colored glasses.

Which was probably why she didn't even ask him about his mark.

Two months later and he was glad she hadn't.

He'd been back for a week. A long, grueling week of tiptoeing around the coworkers he'd betrayed, who'd almost been killed because of his actions, his decisions. He wanted to be back—Torchwood was all he had now—but it was hard. And when he heard them talking about him, he wondered if it would ever get any easier.

"Do you think she was the one?" Gwen asked Tosh, speaking quietly by the computer. They probably didn't realize Ianto was nearby, making coffee; they certainly didn't realize he could hear them.

"I don't know," Tosh replied. "He's never said anything about a soulmate or about having a mark. He did everything he could to save her, so it would make sense."

"I can't imagine what he's going through," Gwen murmured. "How hard it must be. They say when someone loses their soulmate, they lose their mark too. They lose even their last physical connection to them. How awful."

Tosh nodded in agreement, and Ianto wondered if Gwen would make the connection to what Owen had said that one day at lunch, that his mark was gone. Ianto had noticed and managed to dig deep enough in the files to find Owen's fiancé, lost to an alien parasite. No wonder he'd been so antagonizing; he'd lost the love of his life.

Ianto may not have shared a mark with Lisa, but she'd been the love of his life as well. They should have been soulmates, and the fact that they weren't didn't lessen the pain at all. He wondered if Gwen would understand. Too often she poked her nose into other people's business and judged them unfairly. Filling two cups of coffee, he walked over to Tosh's computer, making sure his footsteps were loud enough for them to hear him coming. He handed them each a mug, and they thanked him profusely before lapsing into silence as they drank. Ianto watched them for a moment, started to walk away, then glanced back.

"We didn't share a soulmate mark," he told them. "But I still loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her."

He left them with that thought, refusing to think about his own mark, a dark patch of skin on the side of his left wrist. It was sort of shaped like a bird; as a boy, he'd imagined it was a dragon. He assumed it was a soulmate mark, but it wasn't permanent like others. Sometimes it went away, simply disappeared. It always came back, but given its lack of permanency, Ianto wondered if perhaps the universe couldn't make up its mind about his soulmate.

Or maybe he didn't have one.

"So do you have a soulmate mark?" Tosh asked him several weeks later. It was Christmas Eve and they were sitting on the sofa waiting for Jack to come back from tracking down Ianto's car. Owen was with Diane and Gwen was with Emma, and Jack had insisted they stay while he went to find John Ellis. "I'm sorry, that was personal, you don't have to answer."

"No, it's fine," Ianto replied, sipping his coffee. "I do, but it's complicated."

She bumped him on the shoulder with a smile. "That's what Jack says, that he's complicated. What's so complicated? You either have one or you don't."

"Do you believe in soulmates?" he asked instead. "You once said you don't have a mark."

She set down her coffee and turned toward him. "I do believe in soulmates, but I don't believe we're all destined to be with that person from the moment we're born."

"Oh really," he said, smiling at her. "A maverick. Do tell."

"Well, I think if we're meant to be with someone, the mark could appear later on as a sort sign, if you will. So you know for sure."

"Why wouldn't your heart tell you?" Ianto asked curiously. "Why the mystical, epidermal confirmation?"

"I don't think it's mystical," she replied. "I'm sure there's a perfectly rational scientific explanation. We're just decades, if not centuries, away from understanding it."

"Most people's marks are present long before they meet their soulmate." Ianto had had his since birth, and it had been disappearing for as long as he could remember.

"I'm not saying it happens all the time," she said in defense. "I'm saying maybe it's possible, for people who aren't born with a mark to develop later. Maybe it takes a little longer for the universe to find their match. We work for Torchwood. We've seen so much we can't explain. What's another thing?"

He patted her on the knee, admiring her hope. "I agree. I like your theory, it makes more sense than being destined from the moment you're born to fall in love with someone you've never met. And it's no stranger than a lot of other things out there we've experienced."

They were silent for a moment. "So have you met your soulmate?" she asked quietly.

"No," Ianto said. "And I'm not sure I ever will."

"Why?" she said. "More than three-quarters of people with a soulmate mark meet their soulmate someday. Why wouldn't you?"

He shrugged and did not answer.

"What's so complicated? Or do you not want to meet them?"

"Oh, I'd like to meet them," said Ianto. "Though I'm not sure this job is conducive to things like soulmates and families and normal lives. It's just that…well. It comes and goes."

"What does?" she asked. "Whether or not you want to fall in love and live happily ever after? Why wouldn't you?"

He laughed bitterly. "Ah, not that, no. The mark itself. It comes and goes."

She was clearly confused. He was tempted to show her to explain, but preferred to keep it private. He was pretty sure even Jack did not know where it was, but then, he probably wasn't looking, it was often dark, and sometimes they didn't manage to get all their clothes off in time.

"Usually it's there, a fairly typical mark, but sometimes it disappears." He shrugged. "I saw a doctor about it in London, but she had no idea how to explain it. I'm not sure she even believed me. She said maybe it'll become more pronounced when I meet my soulmate."

Tosh shook her head. "I've never heard of that!"

"Neither had the doctor or any of her colleagues. She wanted to run all kinds of tests, track me for the next five years. I told her I'd call."

"Does it hurt?" she asked tentatively. "When it disappears?"

"No, I can't tell when it disappears, but it itches and burns when it returns. That's how I know it's back."

She was quiet for a moment. "Have you talked to Owen about it?"

"Why?" Ianto asked. "It's not a medical concern. It's not even a personal concern. I've lived with it my entire life. Maybe someday I'll meet my soulmate and it'll become permanent, or I'll keep losing it on and off for the rest of my life. And I'm fine with either one."

"I hope it's the former," she said. "For us both!" She picked up her coffee mug and clinked it against Ianto's cup with a smile. They talked some more, about work and Christmas and their plans for the new year. As they talked, Ianto felt the familiar burn on his wrist, telling him his mark had not only disappeared, but reappeared.

Then Jack called to tell them John was dead, and he forgot all about it.

As Ianto stepped into the wreckage of the Hub with Tosh and Owen, he noticed the familiar itch on his arm and rubbed at his watch. But there was too much work to do, so he ignored it and started cleaning up as they waited for Jack and Gwen. The itch went away quickly.

When Gwen came back with Jack's body, they placed him in the autopsy bay and cleaned him, but moved him to the morgue when he did not resurrect. She insisted he would come back, but even though Ianto had seen Jack rise from a gunshot wound, and even though he had suspected that Jack was curiously long-lived, he did not hold much hope that Jack would return this time. He had faced down a demon from before time and saved the world. How did someone walk away from that?

When he finally went home to shower and change, Ianto saw that his mark had disappeared again. He waited for the tingle telling him it had returned, but for the first time it did not reappear within a few hours. He went back to work and started checking for it whenever he left the room. Hadn't he been through enough over the last year? He didn't expect to ever meet his soulmate, but if his mark disappeared forever, he'd never even have a chance. Yet for three days, his arm was clear and smooth. No itch, no reassuring burn.

It was while he was working on the Rift Manipulator with Tosh that his wrist started to bother him. He rubbed it several times before he realized what it meant, and was about to roll up his sleeve when Tosh let out a gasp and ran off. He glanced around the machine to see what had happened and there was Jack, alive and well and suddenly pulling him in for an embrace and kissing him.

Maybe it didn't matter if his mark disappeared and reappeared. Jack was alive.

And then Jack was gone.

Ianto lost his mark again that day, and several times during the months Jack was missing. And then Jack was back and asking him out and Ianto's wrist was itching again and they were caught up in a time loop and he was too confused to think straight for days.

They went on the date once the Rift quieted down, and though it was awkward at times, they decided to try again. And again. Until eventually it felt normal and they spent more and more of their time off together. For the first time in months Ianto started to feel grounded and happy, almost normal. He forgot all about his mark, especially when didn't disappear for weeks at a time. He didn't need some birthmark to tell him who he'd spend the rest of his life with. Right now he was with Jack, and he would stay with Jack for as long as they had together.

And since he worked for Torchwood, he didn't have forever. Why waste his life trying to find someone who may or may not exist?

Author's Note:
I have no idea where this came from. I sat down to work on one of my chaptered works-in-progress, but they are stuck hard in the mud. I wanted to write a Halloween story, so I went on Tumblr for inspiration. When I got off, I was writing a soulmate story. Like it just followed me home with puppy dog eyes or something.
Many thanks to DinoDina, whose soulmate stories always inspire me and who helped me hash out some ridiculous details with this one. It's three short parts, hopefully posted this week. Thank you for reading!