Chapter Text
June 14, 1947
The flash was so bright the veterans and victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki said the Event made them duck for cover. By the time it faded, every person on Earth -- and a few who’d just broken into the atmosphere -- were Marked.
Old men in Utah woke next to each other to find matching 00:00s tracing over their fingertips; young lovers walking through the fields in the Caucuses found 00:00s trickling across their shoulder blades in the same handwriting. People saw their Marks counting down to first dates, hiking plans with a friend-of-a-friend, or some far-off date.
Not everyone’s Mark was numbers; but everyone’s mark meant the same thing. It counted down, moment to moment, sometimes measured in heartbeats, sometimes in seconds, sometimes in seasons, to the time they would meet a Mark mate.
Best friend, lover, husband, wife, partner, metamour, paramour, platonic lifeline, sibling, sister, brother, mother, father, co-parent, Mark mate; they were all just big words for family.
Some partners woke up to Marks that didn’t match; some stayed together, others ripped themselves apart, flying off into the world to find someone new.
And in a little desert town in the American Southwest, two boys began to grow-up, divided by everything but the frozen constellation they both shared, spread across the thin skin of their wrists.
--
September 1, 1951
“Michael, you’re going to be late for school,” Louise called up into the barn’s dusty hayloft. Nora and Walt were warming up Roy’s truck with Isobel, helping the 11 year old girl practice pressing the gas and the brake; Max was already tucked into the cab, nose in his book.
But it was the first day of middle school and Michael was up sitting on the edge of the platform, legs dangling over the edge, staring at his Mark, half-eaten apple in his lap and straw in his hair.
Louise closed her eyes, counting to ten in her home language, before climbing up the hayloft ladder just enough to see the little boy’s back.
“Michael Bronson,” she called softly. He startled, eyes jerking to meet hers as he yanked his long sleeved shirt down over his Mark and hurriedly redoing his wrist buttons.
“I won’t show anyone, Ma, I promise,” he said, voice high and worried.
Louise softened; they could be a few minutes late. She crawled across the prickly hay and tucked the preteen’s thin body against hers. He flopped against her, burying his face in her hair. “Lovey, I know you won’t. You’re careful and it’s been four years since the Event; most of the kids know better than to ask to see someone else’s Mark.”
His eyes were shiny when he looked up to her to ask: “Even middle schoolers?”
Louise carefully didn’t sigh, didn’t point out Michael’s classmates would be the same 15 kids he’d been in school with since she and Nora had pulled him and his siblings out of the pods in 1948. Louise still wasn’t sure what had motivated the man who called himself Mr Jones to use his telepathy to wipe out any memory of the crash from the Valenti and Manes families, from everyone who had been out at Foster's Ranch that night, but she suspected Nora had threatened Max. There was nothing their former leader and chief saboteur cared about more than his genetic legacy, and Nora knew it. However she’d done it, Nora had forced him to change the men’s memories before forcing him back into a pod, and ensured their small family could survive without living in constant fear.
“Even middle schoolers,” Louise reassured, brushing Michael’s curls off his forehead. “Come on,” she nudged his shoulder, before deciding to play it dirty, “I bet Max is going to call dibs on helping with the gearshift if you don’t get out there soon.”
Michael’s eyes grew wide and he scrambled to standing: “No, Walt would never let him, no way,” and she suppressed a smile as he jumped the dozen feet down to the floor of the barn, cushioning his own fall with his powers before taking off running to Roy’s truck. Louise knew if Michael had thought about it for half a second, he’d realize his brother had never in his life tried to call dibs on helping to drive the truck, preferring to read or nap on Michael’s shoulder while he helped. But it was early, and Michael was 11 and not a morning person, so she didn’t really expect him to catch on until later. But just as much as Michael’s brain would never really be on before 7am, she could also see that he knew, deep in his bones, that Walt would always have his back.
Louise took the ladder back down, letting the crackling radio's tune floating out of the open kitchen window give shape to her steps. She reached out psychically, smiling softly when she felt Patricia still fast asleep in her trundle bed. Then she opened her eyes to the sound of the truck’s engine revving up, and waved until it was long out of sight down the dusty road to downtown Roswell.
She was washing up from breakfast when she heard the well-worn-in boots of the first human she’d ever trusted, and turned into Roy’s soft touch, wrapping his arms around her stomach.
“Kids get off to school ok?”
She nodded, turning to tuck her face into his warm neck. “And Patricia’s still asleep, bless her for sleeping through the night. I think that stuffed bear Harrison sent her may be with her for life.” She sighed into his shoulder. “Michael’s all worried about his Mark.”
She could hear the slight frown in Roy’s voice: “You remind him it means family? That it means he’s Mark mates with Walt and you and me and Nora and Isobel and Max and Patricia?”
She shook her head. “He knows, he was just worried about the other kids. About being different. Not having a countdown.”
She could feel his shoulder shrug. “It’s tough, being different. But he’s got a pack of kids, most in his grade, plus Walt to look out for him in the high school.” He took a deep breath. “It’s better than a lot of kids get.”
She hummed assent. “I don’t think he’s going to see it that way for a long while.”
His soft chuckle filled her stomach with warmth. “No, I don’t expect he would. I’ll see if Arturo has any ice cream, give them all a treat to celebrate the first day of middle school." Since Arturo's brother had taken over the Jones dairy farm, they’ve been kind to share when they could. There was a soft pause, as Roy shifted a little closer. “What’s your morning look like?”
Louise had loved his man since before she knew his language; she’d wanted him for a bit longer than that. She loved that he loved Nora, that they could build their family in a way that worked for all of them. “Well, there’s the never-ending list of chores.”
“You know the best thing about a never-ending list of chores?” Roy asked, voice lightly teasing, beginning to walk backwards, hands warm on hers, drawing her back with him.
“What?” She asked, feeling a grin pushing at her lips.
“They can always wait.”
She grinned, following him back towards one of the two adult bedrooms.
Three adults, five kids, four bedrooms. One small town.
There were no anti-miscegenation laws on the books in New Mexico anymore, and enough people had family in Utah that there was some awareness of what a man and two women might get up to in a single home. Not acceptance, but no open hostility either. Roy had been afraid, for a long time, of what might come flaming in the night onto their lawn or through their windows. No matter how strong Nora and Louise’s powers were, they lived in a state and a country where they knew they would be treated worse and differently for how their family looked and who they loved.
But it could be worse. It had been, before the Event. The Marks had brought enough chaos, broken-up enough people’s ideas of what ‘normal’ might look like, there was a lot more space at the edges of things for people to survive.
It hadn’t hurt that Eleanor Roosevelt revealed that she shared Mark in the shape of an antique watch not only with her late husband, but with Lorena Hickok; then Cary Grant and Randolph Scott had done a Time Magazine cover, showing off their matching Marks. Senators' daughters and priests' parents and union bosses followed with their own announcements, filling papers in small and big towns with announcements of unions that a year -- a month -- before would not have been publicly possible. The Event hadn’t fixed everything, but some long-held social mores had shaken loose; given families like theirs room to breathe.
Things weren’t always good, but she slept easily most nights, and so did Roy; so did Nora.
Not that Louise had sleep on her mind at this particular moment.
Louise began to unbutton her dress with a grin, kicking the bedroom door shut behind her.
May 10, 1955
“You can’t seriously mean to enlist,” Michael muttered to Walt as they worked their way through the field, pulling the fresh army of weeds.
He heard the older boy huff. “What, like I want to hang out here forever, babysitting you all?”
“Hey!” Michael said, pleased his voice wasn’t cracking anymore. “It’s not babysitting.”
Walt softened, giving Michael a quick smile. “I know, that’s fair. But I want to see something new.” Walt looked out over the lush fields in the midst of the desert, brought to life by Nora’s powers; except for the field they were in. This was Michael’s field, and the reason they were hand-weeding is he’d gotten a little carried away the night before, thinking about warm hands with an unseen face, stubble on his cheek, lipstick on his collar -- and then they’d all woken up to find every weed south of Albuquerque had flocked to his furrows.
“But -- you could go to San Francisco, become a poet --” and Michael was laughing before he finished the sentence. That was Max’s dream, if he could ever stop following Elizabeth Ortecho around long enough to make real plans.
Walt shook his head: “I haven’t made-up my mind. But I’ve been thinking about it.”
It twisted something in Michael’s chest, the idea of Walt in danger. There was a part of him that could hear the echoes of war in his Mom's stories of home, in his Ma's long walks at night when she couldn’t feel safe sleeping, trailing her hands over the heads of wheat as she reminded herself she was safe, and here, and home. Michael got nightmares sometimes too, they all did, but Louise was the only one who needed to walk them off.
Michael cocked his head, jiggling a particularly difficult clump of grass away from the base of his crops. “You don’t want to be like those boys at New Mexico Military Institute, all uniformed up, all ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’ and crap like that,” Michael teased and Walt rolled his eyes.
“No, I don’t,” then he got a sly look. “But they’ve got an end-of-year dance coming up this Friday. I hear the girl’s school is going and they’ve invited the high school too.”
“What are you doing thinking about high school dances? You’re way too old for that.”
“I’m only nineteen!”
“And you graduated 2 years ago! Some of those girls are Isobel’s age,” and they both grimaced. Isobel had yet to start dating, mostly because she was too busy terrorizing the high school’s student government and the city government for that matter to notice anyone who wasn’t in her way, but the boys had already formed an informal pact to murder anyone who so much as made her cry.
“I was more thinking about you and Max.”
“Max won’t go unless Elizabeth is going --”
“And Rosa Ortecho told me on the last milk run that Elizabeth will be attending, what’s how I know about the dance, smart ass, so what’s your excuse now?”
Michael thought, wrapping his powers around the deep taproot of the prickly weed in his hand, easing it out of the ground without getting stabbed. “Someone needs to stay home and watch Patricia. She’s working on her first chapter book and she needs some help.”
Walt gave an exaggerated sigh. “We’ve got a Dad, a Ma, and a Mom. She’s got all the help she can get.”
At Michael’s mulish look, Walt waved his hands: “If I promise to read with Patricia, will you go out? You spent every afternoon of your Freshman year rebuilding the ship with Mom or farming with Ma and Dad. You need to make some friends outside of your Mark mates.”
“Why? No one else can know where we come from, what we can do,” he said, flicking his wrist and sending the long flail of the weed soaring down the row of wheat to flop onto the burn pile far away from the barn. “My Mark doesn’t move, it doesn’t tick down. That means there’s no one waiting out there for me. I have everyone I need; the universe says so.”
Walt reached between rows, gripping Michael's wrist lightly, voice serious. “You could be connected with a multi-Mark, someone with our stars and something else tracing across it too, connecting two families. But, even if you aren’t: life isn’t just about finding your Mark mates. It’s about finding you. And helping other people on the way. Friends, family, romance, sex -- yes, sex, Michael, I know why we’re weeding in this damned field, at least you’re not exploding all the electronics or projecting your dreams or whatever awful thing Patricia’s going to do when she gets to this goddamned age.” He took a breath, giving Michael a wry smile. “Life isn’t just about connections; it’s about filling yourself up with experiences, sensations, memories, things that make you you. And when you meet someone -- Marked or not -- maybe those experiences will give you something to talk about.”
Michael’s voice was slightly haunted: “I’m really glad Isobel stopped projecting her dreams.”
“Me too,” Walt agreed fervently. “I didn’t need to see Elvis that way.”
“I didn’t mind Elvis, it’s when she started tying Frank Sinatra up I started to want to burn rubber.”
“I didn’t mind when she had Lady Day singing, but when she started taking off her clothes --”
They both considered that thought as Michael gathered a bundle of unwanted grasses.
Walt started: “I’d rather replace a dozen lightbulbs than see any more of Isobel’s sex dreams.”
“I’d rather replace a hundred lightbulbs,” Michael said. Then he paused: “But ok. I get what you're saying. I’ll go to this dance. But if I hate it, you’re never going to bug me about working on the ship with Mom again.”
“You got it.” He smirked at Michael between the sheaves: “The tickets are already in your bunk.”
Michael beaned him with a fasces of weeds.