Technicolor Lights

There's no hate, there's no love
Only dark skies that hang above
I call your name as I walk alone
Send a signal to guide me home
Light the night up, you're my dark star
And now you're falling away 
"Dark On Me" - Starset

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The world was one that was painted in colors, rainbow shades that danced along one's skin—each child born in vibrant hues, vivid reflections of the effect that their soulmate would have upon their life. Most children were born with abstract images, shaded lines and hints of color here and there to highlight the designs that their soulmates would paint upon their lives. The more profound effect that a soulmate would have, the more colorful and distinct a person's imagery would end up being.

Oftentimes, children were born with lines that hinted to flowers, geometric shapes that flowed along the outside of a thigh; perhaps one child would be born with misty mountains colored over a collarbone, tinted in twilight and the kiss of eventide. Another may have a field of poppies sketched in charcoal, blossoms bleeding true crimson as the petals danced their way down a forearm. It was rare, though, for a child to be born with technicolor imagery, for the scenery that reflected their mate's soul to be any larger that a small portion of their body: it was rare enough, as it was, for a child's Tattoo to take up any true amount of space upon their body.

When Tony was born, however:

His entire back was a riot of color, saturated and shaded with grays and blues and dusky purples, flashes of startling pink-tinged white, a kaleidoscope of oranges and reds and sienna browns. The Stark heir's back was a starscape painted in minute details, stunningly recreated as he wore a nebula's heart sprawled out and in technicolor upon his skin. The mark was both gorgeous and awe-inspiring, as well as terrifying in its implications: after all, what sort of soulmate would have such a profound, encompassing effect to mark their partner so thoroughly?

The thought made the Stark parents leery, Maria keeping her distance from her newborn baby, disliking the fact that she oftentimes had to hold him to feed him—constantly comparing her son's soulmate mark with her own, grayscale and geometric design. For his own part, Howard was barely willing to even look at the baby, refusing to touch, to acknowledge his son's presence except under duress. It was a habit both adopted and kept to throughout Tony's childhood, and the boy accepted things as they were, quietly angry with a universe's amount of starburst thoughts spinning through his mind.

(Later, years down the road, an astronomer that Tony would one day sleep with would make an offhand comment on how perfectly rendered his soulmate mark was in its reflection of the Carina Nebula's Mystic Mountain. Two days later, an anonymous donation would be sent off to the Hubble Telescope and NASA both, tagged only with the request that the money be used to continue purchasing new tech needed for the exploration of deep space.)

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Tony grew older, as children were wont to do: perhaps not necessarily wiser, not with the desperation to be acknowledged that grew muted as time went on. The years passed and neglect became a constant enough companion for him, a bridge that divided you from me, and the teen's belief in soulmates and the effects of the marks upon one another began to wane—lessen until there was something less than a flicker of belief in their meaning. There was no one in the dark-eyed boy's life that could easily claim to have made enough of an impact to warrant the mark that spread across Tony's back, gleaming even in the low light of the hallways littering Stark mansion.

His back was painted in a riot of colors and yet most of Tony's world was shaded in hues of gray, drab enough to leech color and enthusiasm both from his life: nothing changed, distance remained, and Tony played a role for the public at large even while his mark flickered beneath his skin, a secret from others who might try and take advantage of its presence.