In All But Name (A Soulmate AU)

I

The tricky thing about Soul Marks was not just that names were a lot more an inscription on the inside of your wrist --

-- they were tricky because Fate had a sick sense of humour.

And Marinette had learned that the hard way.

 __________________________

They were lucky, Sabine Dupain-Cheng claimed when Marinette asked her on how they met. There were many men in her rural part of France called Thomas, so, finding her Tom proved a bit difficult until she moved to Paris and decided the tiny coffeeshop near her campus was a good place to study. One of the baristas was an ex-naval officer, a huge man who made the shop's pastries and the best cappuccino. One day, he reached over the counter to give her cup of coffee and breakfast croissant and she spotted her name on the inside of his wrist.

Her sister, Annette, had it a lot worse, as she had Jean-Luc. But after twenty years of dating all possible Jeans, Lucs and finding specific Jean-Lucs online, she happened upon one who had gone by the Breton version of Loïc his entire life and changed it from Jean-Luc to Loïc the second he turned sixteen. It was mere fate that they were stuck waiting for the same late bus and started discussing legal names when he mentioned he had changed his birth name. Sure enough, Annette's name was on his arm but Loïc had long been married and with two grown children. They had missed their chance, all thanks to one change.

Marinette found it a bit unfair, especially since some people had such common names. She heard that at one point in time most women on the planet were Marie, Mary and Maria but went by their second or third names, so most men walked around, never finding their Mary or her variations. Which must have made arranged marriages a lot easier to broker.

The reason this fact pinched her was that she was born with no name and had no name for two weeks while her parents squabbled over whether their chosen name became her first or second name. Sabine wanted either Marie or Annette or Marie-Annette, but, in that time, Tom referred to her by his mother's name, Marine, then as his Little Marine and soon, Petite Marine became Marinette. By the third week they had settled on her name legally, then went back to change it again.

She guessed that that meant she went from just Marine to officially Marinette. Once that happened, her parents had her name changed when she was three but that was far too late for her soulmate. She may legally be Marinette now — a unique enough name that should be easy to find — but someone out there had Marine or Marie-Annette or, God forbid, just Marie.

Getting ones Soul Mark was something that kept people up at night in anticipation, especially these days with Internet searches helping narrow things down, but unless you had a very uncommon name, that didn't help much. Alya had a theory that this is why so many Americans had such ridiculous names or had their common names misspelled, a misguided attempt by their parents to make them easier to find in this day and age. Though Marinette wondered if Katrine was all that different from Catherine when it came to introducing yourself to the One.

"What's yours?" Alya asked, two months into their friendship as she toyed with her wristwatch. They were in art class, the first project of the semester was a team effort, one person would draw and the other would paint over it.

"You first," Marinette deflected, attempting to be cheeky as she carefully outlined each circle in Alya's bowl of grapes with a thin paintbrush.

Alya gave her an unimpressed look, staring down at her from atop the rim of her glasses, which had slid down her nose, and rolled up her sleeve. There, clear as day across the tan-line of her wristwatch was Saturnino. "It's the name of this legendary Italian actor. I've tracked down a few of his movies with subtitles so I can pick up some Italian."

"What if he's Spanish though?" Marinette considered.

Alya waved her off. "Eh, we'll figure it out. If he doesn't at least know French then we should both at least speak English."

"That's such a rare name though," Marinette remarked wistfully, setting her chin on her palm to angle her head across the class, right at Adrien. He was holding his middle and laughing at something Nino had done or said. Once Adrien had laughed himself back enough to curve over his chair and throw his head back Nino, and his painted-on mustache, had come into view.

Marinette smiled softly. "Hey, maybe it's Nino."

Alya quickly glanced at him then back to Marinette. "No way."

"Why not?"

"He's nice and all, but kind of dumb."

"Oh, come on, Nino's a sweetheart."

"Mhm, if you like him so much why don't you date him."

The idea startled Marinette into sitting up straight. She didn't know why, Nino was a nice boy, so nice that his akuma caught him on his rage on behalf of someone else rather than himself. He got akumatized because he wanted Adrien to be happy. That's one thing they had in common, but...

...it's not like she could ever have Adrien. Even if she had the slightest chance of catching and keeping his attention, his wasn't the name on her arm, no matter how much she wanted it to be.

With a sigh, Marinette sat back and pushed up her sleeve and held out her arm to Alya.

Six months later, Marinette still remembered Alya's reactive hiccup of a laugh as she said that Félix was a cat's name and she'd have an easier time meeting pet cats with that name than boys their age.