Shadow Caster || Daisy Johnson & Fitzsimmons

I N T R O D U C T I O N

When Shield's two youngest prodigies shake hands for the very first time, their expressions are exactly as you might expect for two people who know they've just met their soul mates. There's a coyness, but also an attempt at confidence - one mustn't embarrass oneself, after all, at such a critical moment. There's a little fear too; this moment will, after all, define in some way or other, the course of the rest of their lives. There's also a sense of wonder. It's like coming across the most beautiful place on Earth and realising with breathless certainty that all of the stories are true.

There's all of this for FitzSimmons - as the papers will shortly dub them - as cameras snap and flash around them like fireflies. But for this particular pair there's something else as well.

Confusion.

And the fact that there's confusion is confusing in itself. The Soul Moment is most famous, and most beloved, for resolving confusion, for filling the void, for better or worse pointing people in whichever direction they most need to go. But for FitzSimmons there are as many answers as questions. There is something they've each wondered over, at some point or other in their lives, but which they'd hoped, in this moment if not before, to have resolved.

"You've got one too?" Jemma whispers, once they've slipped for a moment from the limelight. His exposed wrist exposed weird markings. They were in some sort of unrecognizable language, they almost looked oddly like numbers.

"What do you think it is?" Fitz asks with a tilt of his head. Jemma shrugs.

Jemma muses. "At least we both have the same thing. That seems to be helpful, somehow."

"But what does it mean?" Fitz wonders. "Our other soul mates is a wifi password?"

"FitzSimmons!" Weaver cries with relief, herding them from their stolen private corner. "There you are! Come along, we're late for canapés and there are a lot of people excited to meet you."

~~~~~~~~~~~~

That puts an end to their discussion for the day, but neither half of FitzSimmons are wont to let things go. Over the following days, months, years, woven in between their various projects, the two of them share theories back and forth. They read and write papers on all kinds of Soul Mark anomalies. They research cryptography and other alphabets and laugh at the possibility that their soul mate is, somehow, an Ancient Egyptian or a Celt. They piece together translations of more modern languages online, and struggle to come up with anything that sounds remotely like a name, and they're not quite invested enough to travel the world in search of something potentially more fulfilling. There's a lot for two genius scientist alien-crime-fighters such as themselves to be doing here at home, these days - too much, even, for just the two of them, and too many opportunities to waste.

In fact, as it happens - as fate would have it, one could say - one such opportunity is to join Coulson's team, and that's where they meet both of them.

[ C A S T ]

Katherine McNamara as Clary Laufeyson

" Daughter of the goddess of love and god of mischief and magic "