#lily's headcanons-slash-bullet-point-fics

[daisylincs]

For as long as she can remember, Skye has been pushed away from the other girls her age. Is it her fault? She doesn’t think so - but apparently the nuns at St Agnes do. It is her fault for daring to have a girl’s name tattooed onto her wrist - Jemma. Not James or John or Jacob; Jemma. 

Running away from that orphanage is one of the best things she’s ever done, and she’s never regretted it one bit. It’s not like she misses anything or anyone from there. 

She always wonders when she’ll get to meet her Jemma - and it happens, like these things so often do, when she least expects it. She’s supposed to be infiltrating SHIELD for the Rising Tide, after all, not meeting her soulmate!

But when the brown-eyed scientist with the cute British accent and the smile like the brightest star introduces herself as Jemma, her entire world stops. 

Butterflies burst in her stomach when Jemma beams at her, eyes twinkling, and she can barely string two sentences together when the scientist cheerily loops her arm through Skye’s to show her around the Bus. It’s like there are a thousand Tinker-Bells scattering sparkling pixie dust throughout her body, and she doesn’t think her heart has ever beaten more wildly. 

Her mission is completely forgotten, and all she can think about is Jemma Jemma Jemma Jemma Jemma. 

And for a world-stopping moment, she thinks Jemma feels the same way - she could have sworn she saw a spark of stunned recognition in her brown eyes when they first brushed hands, and a tiny, breathless gasp when she casually bumped her hip against Jemma’s mid-walk. 

It’s all going so perfectly, she can barely believe her own luck... then she sees Jemma’s wrist.

And it reads, in clear, beautiful cursive - Daisy. 

The disappointment is more crushing than anything Skye has ever felt in her life, and it’s what actually powers her through betraying Jemma. 

(Jemma forgives her, though, so fast and so effortlessly that Skye’s heart actually aches.) 

She tries not to fall any further, she really does, but when Jemma nearly kills herself falling out of the plane, it’s all she can do to not sprint to her and kiss her as hard as she can just to make sure she’s really there, really okay.

She settles for hugging her instead, as tightly as she thinks Jemma is up for, and her heart stutters with the force of her hopeless crush when Jemma squeezes her just as tightly back.

For a while, things are almost good - she can mostly suppress the growing feelings she has for one British scientist, and persuade herself that she enjoys teasing her about Fitz (despite Fitz’s soulmark very clearly reading Hunter.) She persuades herself that she isn’t hurt when Jemma smiles and good-naturedly accepts the teasing, agreeing that she could do a lot worse than her best friend. (Hey, if we were straight, we’d do it. Probably.) 

But most of all, she pretends that she doesn’t see the little flashes of confusion, and hurt, and desperate struggle that she sees in Jemma’s eyes when she thinks Skye isn’t looking. 

It always happens when she’s looking at her, at Skye, and Skye recognises the haunted look of longing to love someone but being unable to all too well in her eyes. She sees it every morning in the mirror. 

But she doesn’t let herself dwell on what it might mean for Jemma, or for her, or, worst of all, for them together. That’s simply not an option, because Jemma’s wrist says Daisy, and that’s the end of that. Nothing to be done. 

When she nearly loses Jemma again - to the ocean, this time - it’s everything she can do not to shake her, kiss her and declare her undying love right there. 

Once again, though, she settles for a tight hug - and Jemma clings to her, much longer than necessary, like she’s pretending they can do this for just a moment longer, too. 

(Not long after, Jemma leaves. Skye ignores the ache in her heart, and tells herself it’s much, much better this way - maybe Jemma will meet her Daisy wherever she’s gone now.) 

But she doesn’t. She comes back, and her hair is shorter, her smile a little thinner, but she’s no less Jemma. Skye still loves her with everything she has the second she sees her face again. 

For the first time, though, there is something that genuinely, genuinely distracts her - her father. Finally. After all these years.

And that turns out worse than she had ever even dreaded in her worst nightmares.

Except. Except. Her gun doesn’t shake in her hands as she threatens to kill the man she’s looked for all her life, and he doesn’t flinch either. 

Instead, he calls her Daisy.

Daisy. 

For the second time in her life, Skye’s world freezes completely. 

Daisy. Her name is Daisy. That means... that has to mean... 

But much as she longs, longs with all her heart to run to Jemma and tell her right now, she has to fix this first.

So she does, she tries, and she... changes completely.

It is the most terrifying thing in the world, and she wants to hide in Jemma’s arms more than she ever has before.

Jemma, though, turns cold and furious, refusing to even think that powers might not be bad - and Skye’s heart breaks, crumbles into pieces like the temple she tore down. 

She wakes up, shaking, from a nightmare one night - and to her horror, the room is shaking, too.

Even worse, Jemma is there. 

Her voice is calm as she tells Skye it’s her who’s doing it - and Skye desperately, desperately wants to deny it. 

But Jemma is her soulmate, and the person she’s loved hopelessly for nearly two years now - so she nods bleakly. I’m so sorry. 

To her utter shock, Jemma doesn’t leave or push her away immediately, though. Instead, she stays, reaching for Skye’s hand. 

You’re my friend, you’re different, she tells her; promises. We can figure this out. 

Her thumb brushes over the tattoo of her name on Skye’s wrist, and dizzying tingles instantly shoot up her arm. 

Skye can’t help it. She blurts it out - my name is Daisy. 

Jemma stares at her, uncomprehending, and so she explains - her real name, the name her birth mother and father gave her, is Daisy.

Jemma shakes her head once, slowly, then again, and for a single terrifying moment, Skye thinks she means she doesn’t want her as a soulmate.

But then Jemma tears off the helmet of her hazmat suit and kisses her, for once not giving a single damn about the rules. Her fingers tangle in Skye’s hair, pulling her close, and the room stops shaking around them.

Jemma presses her forehead against Skye’s, her eyes simultaneously triumphant, awed and determined. You see, she says, we can figure it out. 

Skye know she isn’t just talking about her powers, anymore, so she reaches for Jemma’s hand and squeezes tightly.

Jemma squeezes back, and she says - we’re soulmates. We can do anything. 

(Skimmons/BioQuake Soulmate AU headcanons for the @agentsofchallenges​​ AoS March Madness challenge! <3)

[daisylincs]

Soulmates aren’t romantic. They never were, and they were never supposed to be - whoever designs these things figured that each person should find their lover (or lovers) for themselves. Romantic love is something that varies so hugely between different people, and the whole point of it is to fall naturally in love, isn’t it?

But for all its beauty and joy, love can also go horribly wrong sometimes. Still, these are things each person has to find out for themselves, by themselves, without any cosmic guidance. 

But people shouldn’t be forced to go through all the struggles, trials and tribulations of life and love entirely alone, right? 

So what the universe decided to do was to grant each person someone else who they’d meet at some point in their life, and who’d be there to hug them through the toughest of the tough, and laugh through the brightest joy with them. Someone who’d be more than just a best friend - someone who would be a sibling, with an unconditional and eternal supportive love, bonded to their very soul. 

Everyone would carry their soul-sibling with them at all times, in the form of a small tattoo on the inside of their wrists.

Skye’s soulmark is a cup of tea, of all things, with a curl of smoke hovering over it. 

The curl of smoke, she’s always thought, looks a little bit like a heart. Or a smile. 

Either way, it’s warm and comforting, and she can’t wait to meet the person it represents. 

As time passes, though - tough, cruel times, times where she longed for someone to hold her and tell her it was going to be okay, times where she wished she knew anyone cared - she starts to resent her soulmark. 

She starts to wonder if it even works, at all - because isn’t her soulmate supposed to be there to support her through her struggles? 

Well, she’s struggling - many nights, she’s so cold that she has to fold herself double and tuck her toes under her, her crappy van’s equally crappy heating on full blast just so she doesn’t freeze. And though she smiles and agrees with the Rising Tide’s grand ideals of freedom, her heart is just as aching and lonely as she was as an orphan with more or less the same chill seeping into her bones.

Why isn’t her soulmate here? She wonders bitterly as she hacks her way through firewall after firewall, chasing something she’s never had but so desperately longs for.

She hates herself for it, but she starts to resent her soulmate, resents the way she keeps hoping she’ll meet them, that her life will make sense, and that she’ll finally have someone who’ll just be there. 

Then, completely out of the blue, she does meet her soulmate.

Her name is Jemma Simmons, and she has the brightest, warmest smile that Skye has ever seen. She is welcoming and instantly compassionate when she greets Skye and helps her settle in on their Bus, and something deep inside her just thinks, yes. This is someone I can stay for.

But she isn’t quite ready to let herself believe it yet - what if she’s wrong? How much will that hurt? 

So she stays with SHIELD, plays their game, and betrays them when she needs to - but despite herself, they (Jemma especially) have slipped in under her cracks.

The first time Skye’s resolve to deny it to herself begins to weaken is when Jemma forgives her almost immediately for her little dalliance with Miles. They have their Hub adventure next, and while Skye dies inside over just how terrible Simmons is at lying, there’s also something something also settles, comfortable and sure, in her heart.

She knows it for a fact when, after the boys are back and settled in, Jemma comes to knock on the door of her bunk - and she is holding a cup of tea. 

It is, shape for shape, curl of steam for curl of steam, exactly the cup that Skye’s spent so long looking at on her wrist.

And when she takes it from Jemma, she cannot help beaming. 

She doesn’t tell Jemma immediately - no, they chat and laugh over you certainly have a gorgeous... head, and tease the boys. They even watch a chick-flick once they’re sure May won’t pop in to scold them. 

And it’s... everything, really. It’s everything she always wanted - and the longer she stays in Jemma’s presence, the more her resentment fades away, until it’s completely gone somewhere between their third late-night bout of hysterical laughter. 

It’s impossible to resent Jemma, and impossible not to melt into the warm feeling of comfort and safety she brings with her. 

It is, Skye thinks with a touch of amusement, exactly like the cups of tea Jemma has successfully gotten her to like - sweet, comforting, and with this indefinable sensation of home, warmth and love and home, the more you drank. Or, you know, talked, to finish the analogy. 

She’s never been entirely sure what her corresponding mark on Jemma’s arm is - it’s only much later when she finds that one out, in one of the many nights she spent sleeping on the bunk above Jemma’s after her return from Maveth. 

It’s a daisy - a daisy in the epicentre of a miniature earthquake, complete with cracked earth zigzagging in all directions about it. 

Daisy’s first reaction is to apologise for it - but Jemma stops her with a smile that for the first time in days actually reaches her eyes. She explains what the mark represents to her: no matter how bad things get around you, you can still stand tall and get through it. 

That’s what the mark has always represented to her, Jemma confides - from when she was six years old and recovering painstakingly from scoliosis, it has inspired her that she can get through it, whatever “it” is.

It’s one of the main things that kept her going on Maveth, she confesses. 

Daisy doesn’t think she’s ever been more touched in her life, and once she’s holding Jemma in a very tight hue makes sure to tell her about how her warmth and caring is all Daisy’s ever wanted, and how she used to comfort herself with the knowledge that she’d find that someday. 

And she thinks - that’s exactly what their bond is, what they keep representing to each other. 

When she breaks and runs from SHIELD after Lincoln’s death, it’s Jemma’s warmth that first pulls her back. And when Jemma breaks two years later after Fitz’s death, it’s Daisy who helps her stand up and gather herself enough to search across the entire galaxy for him. 

They will keep representing this for each other, too, she knows, no matter what happens - because they’re best friends. Soulmates. Sisters. 

(Platonic Skimmons Soulmate AU headcanons for the @agentsofchallenges​​​ AoS March Madness challenge! <3)

[daisylincs]

Bobbi Morse has always been annoyed by the notion of soulmates - why does the universe get to tell her who's perfect for her, anyway? How does it know? And what if she wants to decide for herself?

It may have something to do with her soulmark, too, to be fair - Alright, love? tattooed along the inside of her arm.

And, really. Why the hell does the universe think her soulmate is British?!

That’s just the final straw, and Bobbi makes no secret of the fact that she absolutely, absolutely hates soulmates, and everything they stand for. 

It’s all a giant moot point, anyway - she’s seen soulmates fight, and break up, and fall out of love. What’s the point, then? 

As irony would have it, she’s actually thinking about that when she meets him, pacing up and down next to the Outer Banks and thinking about Clint and Natasha, and how their words, Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you following me? and Of course not, I wanted to talk to you had shaped so much of their lives. Clint’s had literally led him to become a spy, and one of the stealthiest in the world, at that, while Natasha’s had (not entirely by her choice) forced her to search for lies in everything anyone said to her. 

It’s not fair that the universe gets that kind of power, she thinks. Because these marks really do change lives, dammit!

So when a distinctly accented voice behind her asks, “Alright, love?” she completely freezes. 

No fucking way. 

She’s quiet for too long, obviously, because he’s frowning as he comes around to look at her, concern in his brown eyes. “You there?” 

That’s when she blurts it - “your accent is cuter than I thought it would be.” 

It’s his turn to freeze, shell-shocked, his hand flying to his arm. The same kind of emotion - no fucking way - flashes in his eyes, then he smiles, a little awed, she thinks, but trying to hide it behind a smirk. “I’m more than just cute, sweetheart,” he says, voice layered with promise.

Despite herself, despite how it grates on her principles, a shiver runs up her spine, especially when he steps closer.

Fine, she thinks grudgingly. She’d grant the universe one thing: at least it chose her an attractive soulmate. 

So it begins. 

Maybe it’s some kind of cosmic punishment for all her scepticism about soulmates, because as quickly as things get good with Hunter, they sour again. Screaming, crying, perfect storms... within a matter of days, all the tables have been turned. Somehow, they know all the worst words to stab each others’ deepest hurt (how did he even find out about all that, anyway? How did she?) and they both storm out of his apartment in a blind fury.

Inevitably, though, they fall back together - sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes months, once even a full year, but the corresponding words on their wrists always pull them back together.

When she’s particularly furious at him, Bobbi likes to think that the universe made a mistake. That all soulmates are mistakes, actually. 

Then she looks at Clint and Natasha, complimenting each other so perfectly, and at her good days with Hunter, and she has to admit that they’re probably not.

Still, though - she likes to glare at the words on her arm and tell them, “we’re not alright, love.” 

And they probably would’ve stayed that way for a long time, but then everything changes. Suddenly, they both have nothing except each other, stepping into the freezing cold of a Russian night with the burn of vodka on their tongues.

At first, she doesn’t know how she survives it - Bobbi’s always needed people, needed SHIELD, needed that cause. She’s lost without it. 

And yet somehow... she isn’t. 

She realises why she doesn’t feel completely hollow as she’s tracing her soulmark absent-mindedly one chilly London morning - as she realises the words that she’s mouthing. 

Alright, love. 

And she thinks... maybe the universe does know what it’s doing, after all. Maybe she and Hunter were exactly the challenge to each other that they both needed, and maybe they just needed time to settle into their bond, to realise how special it actually is. 

Maybe they will be alright.

She can’t say that for sure, but what she can say is that she’s definitely his love.

And he’s hers, cliché as it may be, always and forever.

(Huntingbird Soulmate AU headcanons for the @agentsofchallenges​​​ AoS March Madness challenge! <3)

[daisylincs]

Daisy has never considered herself “lucky,” not in any sense of the word - as an orphan bounced from family to family with more and more condescending sneers following her wherever she went, she couldn’t say she had ever had the reason to.

But then, on her sixteenth birthday, she feels a distinct burn on the inside of her left wrist.

And when she looks, there is a mark there - a lightning bolt, of all things.

The other girls in the orphanage are, for once, silent, unable to find a single mocking thing to say to cut her down with - because, after all, she has a soulmate.

She, Daisy Johnson, has a soulmate.

And it’s… she can’t believe it. All her life so far, she’s thought that nobody cares about her, or ever would. Except here, now, is the universe promising her a person who will not only care about her, but care about her unconditionally. Forever.

The lonely, desperately-searching-for-belonging part of her aches for it, for that security and certainty and caring. She can’t wait to meet him.

And when she does, it’s… unexpected, to say the least.

Her first thought when he shows her his powers is, the lightning-bolt makes so much sense now.

Her next thought? Thank you, universe, he’s cute.

Then she invites him back to her room.

And they… talk. For hours and hours, about the sweet and the sour, and about how his family is doing okay. He hears about her family, too - well, her SHIELD, which is honestly close enough - and she can’t believe how easy it is to talk to him, how nice it is to have someone she can just talk to, with absolutely no judgment. And, better? The knowledge that there won’t be any judgment, either. 

Also, popcorn. Did she mention the popcorn? Because he has popcorn. (Yeah, he’s totally her soulmate.) 

They spend entire afternoons like that, and Daisy feels the strangest feeling come over her - she’ll look at him and think, have I known you twenty seconds or twenty years? 

She has never, never felt this effortlessly comfortable with a person before.

And for so long, that was all she had wanted.

So on their fourth afternoon of training (training really being a euphemism for eating popcorn and telling dumber and dumber jokes) she takes the plunge and showes him her soulmark. 

He stares at it for a long, long moment, and then he grins. Pulling back his sleeve, he shows her his - a single daisy flower. 

And now she’s the one grinning, like an idiot, too. She leans over to get a closer look… except that, somehow, her arm ends up catching somewhere between his jacket and the bed, and before she knows it, she’s falling. 

Conveniently, she lands right on top of him. 

They stare it out for a breathless second, then she just thinks, you know what, he’s my soulmate. This is literally fate, or whatever. 

She kisses him, and, to nobody’s real surprise, he kisses her back immediately. 

They have to break apart, both giggling and out of breath, a few seconds later, but they’re both beaming, beaming with a happiness she knows neither of them has ever really experienced before.

And looking at Lincoln’s smiling face below her, at the stars in his eyes and the daisy mark on his forearm -

Daisy Johnson knows that she’s lucky.

She’s so, so lucky to have this.

(Staticquake Soulmate AU headcanons for the @agentsofchallenges​ AoS March Madness challenge! <3)

[daisylincs]

Fitz has always been very cautious about the idea of a soulmate bond - with a father like his, how couldn’t he be?

Then he meets Jemma.

Suffice it to say, his entire world changes - and not just because he can now hear her voice in his head, either. Not just because she’s the most brilliant voice he’s ever had the privilege of hearing, either. 

Well, for starters, Jemma wants to science out every aspect of the bond - “how far away does it still function?” (No discernible limit, apparently.) “Can we feel each other’s pain?” (Yes, because pain is a biopsychological projection of the brain.

Never again, for the record.) “Do we dream each other’s dreams?” (They both suck at remembering their dreams, it turns out.) “Can we influence each other’s thoughts?” (No, as far as they could tell, no more than you could in a regular converstation. Just. You know. Mentally!) 

And then, of course, the million-dollar question - “are soulbonds inherently romantic?” 

For nearly ten years, they were content to settle with no - because, frankly, Fitz didn’t think of Simmons that way. He saw her as the most brilliant scientific mind he’d ever met first and foremost, and as a pretty girl second - because, having been in a similar-ish position, he knows that’s what she’d appreciate.

Now, though, when he’s looking at her, terrified but still trying to keep her brave face on in the dim glow of the pod, he realises suddenly that while he’s always been more than happy with the platonic aspects of their bond, he’d like more, too.

He realises it because of the one thought he has, simple but louder than any he thinks he’s had before: I can’t lose you, Jemma. 

Even in their heads, he’s always called her Simmons. 

She notices, of course, and she sends the thought to him just as he slams his hand down on the detonator.

Oxygen blasts, water rushes, and he thinks, yes, I did.

But when he wakes up, Jemma is there, tears in her eyes and a thought which he still manages to hear despite the funny ringing in his brain - I love you, Fitz.

(Fitzsimmons Soulmate AU Headcanons for the @agentsofchallenges​ AoS March Madness challenge! <3)

[daisylincs]

Soulmates aren't found, they're made - and when you succeed in making yourself a soulmate, romantic or platonic, you know it by a gift (a power, really) that you will both receive.

Soulmate powers are unique in that they will always have some special significance to the bond forged - a reflection of the soulmates' relationship, people say.

Jemma has three soulmates by the time she's twenty-eight years old - Fitz, of course, her first soulmate and the only one who might be a romantic. Sort of. Possibly. But that's a whole other can of worms - to cut a long story short, she shares a (real) psychic link with him.

The next soulmate she finds is Daisy - well, Skye still, then - and they can both fly when they’re within five-odd kilometres of each other. Her third soulmate is Bobbi, and what they share is enhanced senses whenever they’re close to each other. 

Lincoln is a year older than her, and he only has two - one is (was) from his best friend from Afterlife; and the power they used to share was invisibility. His second soulmate is Daisy, and to both of their surprise and delight, they share teleportation. 

(Yes, they used it to meet up several times while he was on the run. Yes, one or two of those times might have been while he was “accidentally” shirtless. No, he wouldn’t be answering any more questions.) 

Case in point, neither Jemma nor Lincoln expected to find another soulmate anytime soon - most people only ever get two or three, after all. It’s a more than decent number. 

But the universe, the way it so often does with things like this, surprises them. 

Lincoln fully settles at SHIELD for the first time only after the castle - it’s the first time he actually ventures into the lab, encouraged by some heavy prompting from Daisy. 

Jemma, as she is wont to do these days after Will’s death, is working in a corner by herself, running some Inhuman DNA samples and muttering to herself about the impossibility of what she’s seeing. 

Lincoln overhears part of this as he is making his way to the medical wing, and he stops for a moment to explain how Jemma is simply looking at the problem from the wrong angle. 

He doesn’t think he’s done anything particularly life-changing, but he hears the scrape of a chair behind him as soon as he turns away. Jemma catches his arm and asks him to expand further, and before he’s quite realised what’s happening, he’s in the chair next to hers, talking her through all the intricacies of Inhuman biology.

Jemma, for her part, is stunned, and absolutely fascinated - Lincoln’s just managed to show her a whole new angle of looking at things that makes this impossible sequence of genomic problems make sense. And since she’s always adored figuring out exactly how things work, she needs to know more, immediately.

Naturally, being Jemma Simmons, she is a wickedly quick study, picking things up lightning-fast and then asking the most intelligent follow-up questions imaginable. Soon, they are in new territory even for Lincoln. 

And they are both absolutely fascinated by what they’re learning, and managing to theorise - so much so that the entire day slips by without either of them even really noticing. It’s only when Daisy comes in search of Lincoln that they realise, oops, it’s past dinnertime. 

Agreeing to meet again at the same time, same place the next day, Jemma and Lincoln go their separate ways; he to his bunk opposite Daisy’s, and she to hers adjoining Fitz’s.

And as she gets there, she can’t help but marvel: this is the first time since Fitz and Coulson walked out of that pod without Will that she hasn’t thought about... him, or Maveth, or any of it. It all just melted away, somehow, as she chased the thrill of discovery. 

She hesitates outside her bunk door, thinking that maybe - impossible as it sounds to say - this is exactly what she needed after all. Something to focus her energy and significant brainpower on that isn’t a Monolith or a lost love, and someone intelligent to talk to through the process. 

It’s a very nice feeling, she thinks, smiling to herself as she closes her bunk door. 

Lincoln, for his part, is also silently amazed as he heads to bed - this is the first time ever he hasn’t doubted every step he makes in the SHIELD base. He just... well, to be completely honest, he forgot he was even with SHIELD. He just focused on the biology, and the thrill of their shared fascination. 

He didn’t think about John, or past mistakes, or futures of leaving so much as once - it was just the two of them, relative strangers, bonded by their shared curiosity and interest. 

Talking and theorising with her had felt a lot like something he wanted to do again, as often as possible, and a little bit like belonging. 

So the next day, they’re both in the lab early, and smile at the sight of each other - then they jump right in where they left off the previous day. 

And it is just as good - if not, in fact, better. They are starting to get to know each other’s thought patterns now, and play off each other’s ideas and points, and it brings them both tremendous satisfaction as they unravel more and more of the mysteries of Inhuman biology. 

They meet every day except for weekends (and... even some weekends, much to Daisy’s horror and Fitz’s amusement.) In fact, the answers to the questions “where’s Jemma?” or “where’s Lincoln?” become common knowledge throughout the base as “geeking out in the lab.” 

It is just so amazing for them both, and so... freeing, really. It’s a distraction from other things, yes, but it’s a distraction they both find hugely interesting, and one that lets them both breathe and find their feet a little after everything they’ve gone through.

So when it happens one rainy Saturday morning, it really shouldn’t have surprised either of them as much as it did. 

It happens in the middle of one of their now-classic debates, pacing up and down the lab and gesticulating their way through their newest theorem - Lincoln accidentally knocks over a precariously balanced stack of tools. The whole thing comes crashing down around his head, and he collapses to the floor, momentarily buried in everything from soldering wire to DWARF-calibration tongs.

Jemma rushes over at once, of course, and quickly establishes that he’s completely fine, except for a rather nasty cut above his eyebrow.

However, as she leans over to touch it, the cut fades away completely. 

Jemma blinks, not believing her eyes for a moment, and then she carefully touches his skin again, hovering over the last tiny corner of unhealed scratch.

And sure enough, it disappears beneath her fingers.

“Lincoln,” she breathes, forgetting for a moment that he’s still buried in a pile of engineering junk and beaming down at him. 

He grins back, looking equally floored - but definitely pleased, she thinks. Definitely. 

To doubly confirm their brand-new theory, he leans forward to touch an old bruise on her ankle. And, yes, it disappears instantly.

So it’s true, then - they’re soulmates. 

And the power they share is healing. 

Jemma looks at him, really looks at him - notices how comfortable he is in SHIELD nowadays, notices how he seems more comfortable in his own body, too, and notices how much more he’s smiling.

For her own part, she notices how she finally feels like herself again, waking up each morning with her joy for life and science restored. 

Healing, she thinks, and she can tell by the small, sincere smile playing on Lincoln’s lips that he’s thinking something along the same lines.

She smiles, too, warm and fond. How fitting. 

(Platonic Bioshock Soulmate AU headcanons for the @agentsofchallenges​​​ AoS March Madness challenge! <3)