Jemma Simmons was eight years old when she got her soul mark.
She was a bit of a late bloomer; her parents were worried she was one of those people who simply didn’t have a soulmate. So of course they were ecstatic when she ran downstairs to show them her Words.
Or at least they were, until they read the Words written on her right shoulder.
They were supportive, of course. They told her there was nothing wrong with her, that it was just a misunderstanding, that the boy who would say those words (or girl, her mother said) was simply joking.
They took her to experts, doctors who’d spent years studying the science behind soulmates and still didn’t really understand it, who all told them the same thing: nothing’s wrong with her. She’s completely normal.
It was just a fact: the person she was destined to spend her life with would one day tell her you mean nothing to me.
When Jemma was sixteen, she had two PhD’s, a million questions, and a letter from the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division. She was invited to join the Academy, and eventually become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Because she thought they might be able to answer some of her questions about the world, she said yes. And that’s how she met Leopold Fitz.
He hated her, of course. She was kind, and nurturing, and everything his father taught him not to be. The complete opposite of Ophelia, who was beautiful and smart and made of sharp edges.
Leopold and Ophelia were the stars of the Academy, and they didn’t like her, so no one did. So cadet Simmons held her head down and studied, and while they graduated and were stationed at the Triskelion, she became an assistant in the hope of one day teaching biochemistry at the Academy that had become her new home.
She died when she was twenty-two, trying to protect the students from Hydra agents killing everyone who didn’t comply.
Jemma was shot by Madame Hydra herself, although she knew her as Ophelia, the girl from the academy, who had tormented her and hated her for no clear reason. Before she died, Ophelia, who was once known as AIDA in another world – which this Jemma couldn’t know – told her he’s mine. Only Ophelia would ever know what those words meant, and she’d never tell anyone what she said that day.
Her last thoughts were of her Soulmate, who would at least never come to hate her enough to say those words.
Eight years later, the real Jemma Simmons entered the Framework and brought her avatar back to life. This Jemma had already heard her Words; although they weren’t as harsh, it was still heartbreaking to hear Fitz mutter We’re cursed and know that she had lost the chance to be with her soulmate (she hadn’t of course, but she didn’t know that at the time).
She never realized the Jemma from the Framework would have other Words, or even Words at all, and so she never checked her body to find out what they were.
When the Doctor told her she meant nothing to him, no one saw the Words on her shoulder change from black to dark blue.
And no one would ever know his Words became the same brown as her eyes when she told him she loved him.