Title: push the button and go

Author: Jedi Buttercup

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the world is not. I claim nothing but the plot.

Rating: PG.

Summary: So Brian had opinions about the whole soulmark business. 700 words.

Notes: For the request: "Fast&Furious daemon or soulmark AU?" Set within the first movie's timeline, noodling on another nonstandard headcanon for soulmarks.

There were a lot of theories about why soulmarks worked the way they did. Or even why they were called soulmarks at all, and not something that smacked a little less of the dark ages. Being branded like cattle by some lordly being so far above you that you'd go your whole life without ever seeing their face-- yeah, so Brian had opinions about the whole business. And only partly because of the way his mother's own marked match had played out.

They always showed up on the spine, right between the shoulder blades-- so it would be harder to know for sure when they'd appeared. They never inked themselves in before you met the person who'd bear the matching mark-- taking away any chance to be prepared for that first meeting. And they were never anything as simple as the match's name.

Taking off his tee-shirt in the bathroom at the Toretto home, checking to make sure the sting he felt in his shoulder wasn't something serious picked up in the explosion of the Eclipse, all of that ran through his mind again with an extra helping of frustration. He'd already had doubts about the whole undercover thing. And now this? A letter N ending in an arrow pointing to the right, surmounting two more letters: an O and an S. Goddamn NOS. It hadn't been there when Tanner sent him under; but if he reported it now, the man would judge him compromised, and then what the hell would he do?

When his mother had told him the stories, she'd said the marks appeared where they did to signify the connection of the brain to the heart; that people might be born with more than one possible match or no matches at all; and that God had engineered uncertainty into the process to preserve humanity's free will.

Brian had always wondered how anyone could be sure the marks were the doing of the biblical God in the first place; weren't humans supposed to be made in His image? If God therefore had a mark, who was His? Seriously, inquiring minds wanted to know.

He shifted his shoulders to get a better view, and wished whoever was responsible had been a little more precise. Forget names-- even first words said to each other would be clearer than this. And might give him some kind of an idea what to do next.

'It's kind of crappy, actually': that might have been a little awkward to wear for the rest of his life, but Mia would be a dream match; a relationship with her, particularly a marked one, might actually survive his undercover stint. Provided her brother wasn't the one jacking the trucks.

'Try Fatburger from now on': the death of his role there for sure, but it would make sense; of all the people in Dom's crew, Vince had reminded Brian the most of Rome from the start.

But if it was 'I'm in your face'... he'd seen Letty with Dom; he'd seen Dom with his crew; the man was an ex-con with a violent past and a less than legal future no matter which way Brian sliced it.

And, incidentally, the one Brian most needed-- for various reasons-- to approve of him.

It could be any of them, or none; there was no way to be sure without a lot more voyeurism, this time on his own account instead of the department's. And he wasn't quite ready to put that much investment into it, not when he still had no idea how it would end. Maybe his mom was right after all; maybe it was better not to be sure. It hadn't worked out well for her, but maybe he could make it work for him.

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Of course, he wasn't that lucky. Blood under his fingernails, just the edge of the symbol visible beneath the neckline of a torn white tee-- Brian cast his past away and his future to the wind without a second thought.

Maybe the symbols did mean something more than just the universe's game of Memory.

Time to put the pedal to the metal, kick up the speed, and let the road of life decide.

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