Jay

FICS:

[ COMPLETE ] ⟡

[ ONGOING ] 𖤐

[ DISCONTINUED ] ◈

DC FILE #032 — The Incident.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「00」「01」「02」「?」𖤐

DC FILE #883 — The Cost Of Loving You.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」

DC FILE #388 — A Fracture In Fate.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」

DC FILE #338 — Counting Down To You.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」

DC FILE #383 — Promises Branded In Ink.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」

DC FILE #383 — A Lifetime Of Silence.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」

DC FILE #648 — Here, Kitty.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「01」「02」「03」⟡

DC FILE #044 — Your Secrets Are Ours, Kid.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「01」「02」「03」「04」「05」「06」「07」「08」「09」「10」◈

DC FILE #981 — Shallow.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「01」「02」「?」𖤐

HP FILE #257 — Ghosts.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」⟡

HP FILE #627 — Deceptively Charming.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」⟡

POSTS:

▌Escapism 𓆝

▌Stance on ai 𓆞

▌Advice to all writers 𓆟

▌Rules on gender-specific requests 𓆝

▌Plus-Sized Reader 𓆞

▌Yandere Batboys「01」「02」

▌Hybrid Readers「01」「02」「03」「04」「05」「06」「07」「08」「09」「10」

▌Professional Player Reader「01」「02」

FIC-RELATED ASKS:

[ YSAOK ]「01」「02」

[ HK ]「01」「02」「03」「04」「05」「06」「07」「08」「09」「10」「?」「11」「12」

[ S ]「01」

[ TI ]「01」

[ Soulmates ]「01」「02」「03」

FILE INFORMATION:

This archive contains fictional yandere content only.

Hate will be processed emotionally instead of professionally.

「Requests Open」

AVAILABLE FILES:

[ DC ]

Dick Grayson

Jason Todd

Tim Drake

Damian Wayne

Bruce Wayne

Clark Kent

Lois Lane

Conner Kon Kent

Jon Kent

[ MARVEL ]

Peter Parker

[ HP ]

Mattheo Riddle

Theodore Nott

Lorenzo Berkshire

Tom Riddle

Regulus Black

REQUEST PROTOCOL:

Specify which character(s) you’d like the fic to focus on.

Available files can be negotiated. (Eg. MJ as a yandere w Peter or the Teen Titans group.)

Give a general overview of the plot or dynamic you want explored.

Please do not send heavily detailed OC reader requests.

Updates and requests may take time.

Request spam = denied access.

FANART:

「Jason holding up Cat Reader」

「Cat Reader on Bruce’s shoulder」

「Knocking coffee onto an important document」

「Cat reader w Damian」

「Cat Reader on Jason’s bike」

「Sad Kitten Reader」

「No context Kitten Reader」

「Raccoon Reader meeting Alfred」

「Merfolk Reader」

「Cat Reader Denied Pizza」

「Ponyo Reader」

「Cat Reader found a gun」

「Taking Cat Reader’s claws」

「Cat Reader moping」

「Just a normal day for Cat Reader and Tim」

Want to be notified when a series updates?

Leave a comment on any chapter of the work you’d like to follow (Shallow, Here Kitty, etc.) and I’ll add you to its taglist.

There’s also an “everything” taglist for all future uploads, ongoing works, and new obsessions. Comment here on the masterlist if you’d like in.

↑←↓→

I think meeting you at nine changed him in a way none of the others really experience.

Dick, Jason, Bruce and Damian all meet their soulmate as adults. They have an identity outside of that bond.

Tim doesn’t.

He spends his entire childhood searching for one person. Every birthday. Every database. Every dead end. Every year that passes without finding you becomes another year where his entire emotional world narrows until it’s almost impossible to separate living from looking for you.

By the time he finally finds you again, loving you isn’t just part of his life.

It is his life.

↓↑←→

Which is why I actually don’t think making Tim “worse” necessarily means making him crueler.

If anything, I think he’s scarier when he’s gentle.

He’s the type of yandere who’ll apologise while locking the door.

Who cries harder than you do.

Who has to look away because he can’t bear seeing you afraid of him.

Then still reaches over and turns the key.

He’ll whisper, “I’m sorry,” a hundred times…

…but the lock never opens.

↓←→↑

That’s also why every Bat ends up expressing obsession differently.

Dick is emotional and persuasive. He genuinely believes that, eventually, you’ll understand him.

Jason burns hot. His love is possessive, impulsive and all-consuming. He’ll fight the world for you, but he’ll also fight you if he has to.

Damian expects devotion because that’s how he was raised to love.

Tim spends years convincing himself he can live on scraps.

Watching you from rooftops. Fixing your window while you sleep. Returning your lost wallet. Making your life a little easier without ever asking for anything in return.

Until one day he realises he can’t.

And once that dam breaks… It doesn’t matter how guilty he feels.

He’s already decided he’d rather be the villain in your story than spend another twelve years being nobody in it.

→↓↑←

Writing was common enough to earn its own chapter in school textbooks.

Anything written directly onto one soulmate’s skin would appear on the other’s moments later. Ink. Paint. Marker. Charcoal. Anything that bonded to skin.

The world adapted.

The first time a corporate lackey woke up with eyeliner because their soulmate had gone clubbing the night before, an industry had been born.

Make-up companies sold soulmate-safe eyeliner, lipstick, sports chalk, and any makeup that used synthetic compounds specifically designed not to transfer across writing bonds.

But it cost a shit tone more than the ordinary stuff, so most people didn’t bother.

It was just another part of life.

Damian Wayne had never considered himself lucky. He simply acknowledged facts.

His soulbond was uncommon, but it suited him.

Charcoal had always stained his fingertips. From the time he was old enough to hold it properly, he’d sketched anatomy, architecture, animals, weapons, portraits.

His mother insisted observation was as important as combat. His grandfather insisted beauty existed to be conquered.

Damian decided beauty should simply be understood.

As his sketchbooks multiplied, so did the messages.

A doodle across his wrist. A rough smiley face. Practice strokes. Sometimes things he assumes to be his soulmates friend’s crude humor. Occasionally an absent-minded note written during lessons somewhere across the globe.

He never replied.

Not because he lacked curiosity. He was plenty curious.

But curiosity was a weakness.

That lesson had been taught long before he could remember learning it. The League did not celebrate soulmates. They acknowledged them.

A soulmate was another variable. Another vulnerability. Another weapon waiting to be used.

Children raised within the League were instructed never to trust the bond. Never to assume affection. Never to reveal themselves first.

If your soulmate became known to your enemies, they ceased being a blessing and became a target.

His grandfather called them leverage. His mother called them responsibility. Neither called them love.

By the time Damian was ten, he’d already concluded that the outside world was naïve.

Children giggled over mysterious wounds appearing on their arms. Teenagers filled notebooks trying to guess who was on the other side. Adults got tattooed to find the other before they’d ever exchanged names.

Ridiculous. Your soulmate was simply another person. Potentially useful. Potentially dangerous. Nothing more.

Then Father took him to Gotham. The city believed in soulmates just as readily as it believed in monsters.

Robin learnt pretty quickly that civilians asked too many unnecessary questions.

“Have you met your soulmate?”

“What bond do you have?”

“Is it true you bats don’t have soulmates?”

He ignored every one.

His bond remained hidden beneath gloves, sleeves and armour. His teammates knew he possessed one, none knew which.

Which was intentional.

Dick guessed shared pain, trying to bond with him. Drake theorised dreams. Todd insisted it had to be shared aggression.

Damian allowed the misunderstanding to continue. Knowledge was power, there was no reason to surrender it.

Besides, his soulmate had never written anything worth answering.

Not yet.

You’d spent most of your childhood convinced you were defective.

Not in the way children sometimes decided they were adopted because their parents said no to dessert, no. You thought that something inside of you had been assembled incorrectly.

That fate hadn’t seen your file cause the page accidentally got stuck to another’s.

Everyone had a soulmate.

It was one of the first things children learnt in school, somewhere between tying shoelaces and basic maths. Teachers would explain the different soulbonds with colourful diagrams while students excitedly compared scraped knees and odd dreams.

“I saw them by the ocean last night!”

“My soulmate likes spicy food.”

“I broke my arm when I was five because my soulmate fell out of a tree.”

Children always had stories. You never did.

No mysterious bruises. No shared dreams. No sudden cravings. No inexplicable emotions. Nothing.

At first your parents smiled. “They’re probably just a late bloomer.” “Some bonds take longer to show.” “Just wait.”

So you waited.

You turned seven. Nothing.

Eight. Nothing.

Ten. Still nothing.

Eventually your parents stopped saying, “Just wait.” And started booking appointments instead.

Doctors asked endless questions. Had you ever blacked out unexpectedly? Experienced vivid dreams? Random pain? Hearing voices? Objects appearing? Writing?

You answered no so many times it became automatic.

Test after test came back blank. There wasn’t anything medically wrong with you.

“Symptoms usually present in early childhood,” one specialist explained gently while flicking through your file. “It’s… unusual.”

Unusual.

That was the word everyone preferred. Not broken. Not defective. Just unusual.

Children weren’t nearly as polite.

“What do you mean you don’t have one?”

“Everyone has one.”

“You must be lying.”

Some looked at you with pity. Others with suspicion. One kid had actually asked if soulmates could reject people before they were born.

You laughed along.

Then cried in the bathroom afterwards.

By fifteen, you’d stopped expecting anything to happen. You’d accepted it. Maybe fate had really skipped you. Maybe whatever invisible force connected billions of people had simply… forgotten.

Life moved on. It had to.

School still expected assignments. Friends still invited you out. The world didn’t stop just because yours felt slightly emptier than everyone else’s.

There was only one strange thing.

Your fingers.

Every now and then they’d end up stained a dusty grey-black. Not all of them. Usually just the pads of your fingers. Sometimes the side of your palm.

Like charcoal.

You’d notice it halfway through class or while eating dinner.

“…Huh.”

You’d scrub at it absent-mindedly. Soap didn’t work. Water didn’t work. Hand sanitiser didn’t work.

It never smudged onto anything else either. It simply existed. Then it’d disappear by the next morning as though it’d never been there at all.

You blamed whatever you’d touched that day.

Cheap pencils, old books, dust, maybe the graphite from your mechanical pencil had somehow stained your skin.

It wasn’t worth thinking about. There were bigger things to worry about than mysteriously dirty fingers.

After all, if you actually had a soulmate..

Surely something would’ve happened by now?

↑↓←→

The questions never really stopped. They just became less frequent. Less innocent.

Children asked because they were curious. Adults asked because they couldn’t imagine another answer.

“So..” a co-worker leaned against the break room counter, stirring too much sugar into their coffee. “Have you met your soulmate yet?”

You smiled automatically. “No.”

“They overseas or something?”

“Maybe.”

“Long-distance must suck.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

They laughed.

You laughed too. It was easier. People preferred believing your soulmate was somewhere out there rather than accepting you might not have one at all.

The truth made them uncomfortable.

Eventually the conversation drifted elsewhere. It always did. You’d become good at redirecting it. Years of practice had a way of doing that.

Nowadays, the mention of soulmates barely stung. It was more like pressing on an old bruise. Tender, but manageable. Something you’d learnt to live around.

Your phone buzzed. A message from a mate.

Movie tonight?

You smiled.

Only if you’re buying popcorn.

Hell no.

Then no deal.

A few more messages followed before the conversation inevitably dissolved into memes and poorly edited reaction images.

Normal.

Wonderfully, painfully, normal.

You slipped your phone into your pocket and reached for your bag.

Halfway there, you paused.

“…Seriously?”

Grey-black dust coated the tips of your fingers again.

You rubbed your thumb over your index finger. Nothing came off.

“Must’ve touched something.” You couldn’t even remember saying it aloud anymore. It had become a habit.

See charcoal → Blame the environment → Move on.

You grabbed your bag anyway. By tomorrow morning it’d be gone. It always was.

Outside, the city carried on around you. People hurried between work and home. Couples argued over dinner plans. Parents held children’s hands as they crossed busy streets.

A teenager absent-mindedly scribbled something across their forearm while waiting at the lights, grinning when fresh handwriting appeared beside it a heartbeat later.

Their soulmate had replied.

Lucky them.

You looked away before they noticed you staring. There was no point wondering what it felt like. You’d made peace with the fact that you’d probably never know.

Or at least, you’d gotten very good at pretending you had.

Jason had made every news station in Gotham before breakfast.

Damian hadn’t intended to watch it. He’d walked into the kitchen cause Alfred had insisted everyone eat together while they were all in Gotham, only to find the tv already running quietly in the corner. A familiar image occupied nearly every channel. Red Hood disappearing across a rooftop. The freeze-frame paused just as the damaged plating along his hip shifted enough to expose black ink beneath.

A soulmark.

The reporters seemed incapable of discussing anything else.

“The identity of Red Hood’s soulmate remains unknown…

…social media has already begun comparing the mark to historical soulmate registries…

…raising renewed questions about whether Gotham’s vigilantes are adequately protecting those connected to them…”

Damian looked away before the segment finished.

People had always been intrusive where soulmates were concerned. They asked strangers questions they’d never dream of asking otherwise. When were you meeting them? Were you together? Were you trying? Had you rejected them? Did they reject you? Had they wanted you when they saw you?

It was strange what the existence of a bond entitled complete strangers to know.

Todd hadn’t commented on it once. Neither had Father.

Though, neither needed to.

The manor simply carried on as though nothing had happened, despite the fact every member of the family had undoubtedly seen the footage already.

Alfred served breakfast. Dick complained about the coffee. Tim answered emails between bites without looking up from his phone.

Only the occasional glance toward Jason betrayed that anyone had noticed at all.

Damian appreciated that.

If the mark had belonged to him, he would have expected the same courtesy.

←↓→↑

He found himself wondering whether his soulmate had seen the broadcast.

Statistically, they probably had. Everyone watched the news after a vigilante was involved.

Would they have recognised the mark for what it was? Would they have wondered what sort of person belonged to Red Hood? Would they have imagined someone dangerous?

The thought irritated him more than it should have.

His soulmate had no reason to concern themselves with another person’s bond. Their attention belonged elsewhere.

His gaze dropped, almost unconsciously, to the inside of his own wrist.

Nothing.

No fresh handwriting wound around his skin. No absent-minded doodles.

Nothing had appeared there in years.

When he was young, the messages had arrived often enough that he eventually began expecting them.

Never on a schedule or enough to establish a pattern. Just, frequently enough that every few weeks he would wake to find unfamiliar handwriting stretching across his arm.

Are you there?

Sometimes that was all. Other times there was more.

Today’s been really bad.

I don’t want to be by myself right now.

The handwriting had always been clumsy.

Large letters that struggled to stay in straight lines, becoming neater with every passing year as childish motor skills gradually matured into something steadier. Occasionally there would be little smudges where the side of a hand had dragged through still-wet ink.

He had read every message.

Yet he had never answered one.

At the time, the decision had been obvious.

The League did not encourage soulmates. They acknowledged their existence because denying reality served no purpose, but sentiment had never held any value there. Your soulmate represented another avenue through which enemies might reach you. Another weakness to be managed.

Replying achieved nothing.

Years later, Father had reached the same conclusion for entirely different reasons.

Bruce had never instructed him not to respond, but he had agreed that anonymity offered protection. A soulmate nobody could identify was a soulmate nobody could target.

Objectively, Damian knew he had done the correct thing. Which only made one question increasingly difficult to dismiss.

Why had they stopped?

They had simply… disappeared. The last message had appeared years ago. Nothing after that.

No questions. No frustrated scribbles written during boring classes. No childish attempts to reach whoever existed on the opposite end of the bond. Just silence.

He had assumed, at first, that they were waiting. Perhaps they expected an answer. When none came, they would eventually try again. They always had before.

Except this time they hadn’t.

It should not have occupied his thoughts as often as it did.

People moved on. Children abandoned imaginary friends. Adults stopped believing in impossible things. Perhaps they had simply reached an age where writing to someone who refused to acknowledge them became embarrassing.

A reasonable conclusion.

One he found himself disliking more every time it occurred to him.

Because that implied they had given up.

On him.

Damian closed the sketchbook resting on his desk with more force than intended. The sound echoed briefly through his room before the manor settled back into its usual quiet.

He remained staring at the cover for several long moments.

He had done exactly what he was taught.

Exactly what logic dictated.

Exactly what would keep both of them safest.

So why did it feel strangely.. wrong that they had finally listened?

Your parents used to joke that they had never really known privacy.

If your father stubbed his toe in the kitchen, your mother would wince from the garden. If your mother caught the flu, your father would spend the week curled beneath blankets beside her, feverish despite never catching the virus himself.

Broken bones, headaches, paper cuts, childbirth. Nothing belonged to just one of them. The pain had always been shared.

But in a way, so was relief.

You grew up watching them laugh over bruises that appeared in matching places, your father kissing your mother’s scraped knuckles that had never touched the pavement because he had been the one to fall.

They carried each other’s suffering so naturally that neither of them seemed to remember there had ever been a time when they hadn’t.

“That’s what soulmates do,” your mother would say whenever you asked.

“No one hurts alone.”

It was spoken like a promise. A fact as certain as gravity. As ordinary as breathing.

You believed it. Everyone did. Then, slowly, your parents stopped talking about your soulmate.

First, they stopped asking whether anything new had appeared. Then the appointments became routine instead of hopeful. Then they stopped mentioning them altogether.

Your father buried himself in research.

Your mother lingered outside your bedroom more often than she used to.

One night, you woke to voices drifting through the hallway.

“…there has to be something they missed.”

“They didn’t.”

“They’re wrong.”

“They’ve repeated every test.”

“They’re still wrong.”

Silence.

Then your mother’s voice, barely louder than a whisper. “What if…”

Another silence, longer this time.

“What if there isn’t anyone?”

You had never heard your father shout before. “There has to be!”

“There doesn’t.”

His voice cracked. “Don’t.”

“You know it’s possible.”

“No.”

“If they’re right..” she whispered. “…then one day they’ll get hurt, and no one will feel it with them.”

The house fell silent.

You stared at the ceiling until morning.

After that, something changed. Your parents still loved each other. They still loved you. But grief settled into the spaces between them.

Your father refused to accept the diagnosis. He found specialists halfway across the country, obscure researchers overseas, experimental studies no one had ever heard of. Every answer that came back the same only convinced him the question hadn’t been asked correctly.

Your mother went with him every time. But eventually even she had stopped believing that there would be a different answer.

When she stopped asking for another opinion, your father never forgave her for it.

Years later, they divorced.

Two people who loved each other deeply enough to share every wound, discovering there was one pain they couldn’t carry together.

You.

Neither of them blamed you.

They looked at you with the same expression people reserved for tragedies no one had caused.

You grew older. Doctors wrote papers about you. Researchers asked for blood samples. Every form returned with the same impossible conclusion.

Inconclusive.

You tried telling yourself it didn’t matter. People survived without parents. Without friends. Without homes. You could survive without a soulmate.

Except no one else ever had. Not once. There hadn’t been a single case of someone born without a soulmate ever.

You weren’t unlucky. You were impossible. And impossibilities weren’t supposed to exist.

Sometimes you’d catch your parents looking at you when they thought you weren’t paying attention.

You couldn’t tell if it was disappointment, resentment, or grief.

You stopped wondering why fate had forgotten you.

It followed you through school. Through birthdays. Through every doctor who couldn’t explain you. Through every pitying glance. Until, one day, it stopped sounding like fear.

It simply sounded true.

You should have never been born.

The food on the plate in front of you had gone cold a long time ago.

You’d bought it mostly to justify occupying the table, pushing fries around the paper tray more than actually eating them.

Around you, the food court buzzed with the usual afternoon crowd. Children tugged exhausted parents toward the dessert stands. Teenagers laughed too loudly over shared drinks. Somewhere nearby, someone dropped a tray, followed immediately by the chorus of sympathetic groans from strangers.

You were halfway through convincing yourself to leave when a shadow fell across your table.

“Mind if I sit here?”

You glanced up.

Whoever this person is was about your age, maybe a little older. Attractive enough that a few nearby heads had already turned in their direction before looking away again.

“There are plenty of empty tables.”

“There are.” They smiled easily. “But you are sitting at this one.”

You stared for another second before giving a small shrug. “If you want.”

They slid into the seat opposite you without hesitation.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

You expected the silence to become awkward. Instead, they stole one of your fries.

“You weren’t eating them.”

“I was considering it.”

“Well, now you have to. Can’t let me win.”

A laugh escaped before you could stop it. It surprised both of you.

Then they were grinning. “I knew you could smile.”

You rolled your eyes, though there wasn’t much annoyance behind it.

This person was.. easy. Felt like the sort of person who filled silences without suffocating them.

Conversation came pretty naturally after that. Nothing particularly important. Complaints about the shopping centre. The impossibility of finding decent coffee. A movie neither of you had actually finished despite insisting you’d eventually get around to it.

It was pleasant. Dangerously so. You caught yourself relaxing.

Then your phone buzzed and you caught the time.

“I should get going.”

“So soon?”

“I’ve got things to do.”

“Fair enough.” They stood as you gathered your things, rocking back on their heels for a moment before patting their pockets.

“Damn.”

“What?”

“I don’t have any paper.”

“…Congratulations?”

They laughed. “I was trying to ask for your number.”

“Oh.”

You hadn’t expected that.

“I mean…” They rubbed the back of their neck sheepishly. “You’re hot. So I thought I’d at least give it a shot.”

You hesitated just long enough for them to snap their fingers.

“I’ve got an idea.”

Before you could ask what they meant, they reached for your wrist, uncapping a pen they’d pulled from their pocket.

“You don’t mind, do you?”

Without really waiting for an answer, they turned your arm over and, with surprisingly neat handwriting, scribbled a phone number across the inside of your forearm.

The pen tickled against your skin.

“There,” they said, clicking the cap back on. “Now you don’t have an excuse.” They winked, gathering their things.

You looked down automatically to the black ink stretching across your forearm.

Their name: Ash. Their number: 0401 863. ‘Call me’ written smaller underneath.

It should have been nothing. Just ink. Just another stranger taking a chance.

Instead, it made your chest tighten. For a fleeting, impossible second, your mind brought up a memory your body hadn’t forgotten.

Small hands. Crayon pressed too hard against skin.

Are you there?

Another message.

Please answer.

Another.

I think something’s wrong with me.

You blinked hard.

The memory vanished as quickly as it had come.

“…You okay?”

You looked back up, forcing a smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes.

“Yeah.”

Your fingers unconsciously drifted over the fresh ink. “I just…”

You couldn’t explain why seeing words on your arm suddenly made your chest ache.

“…haven’t written on myself in a very long time.”

The afternoon was loud. Far too loud for Damian’s liking.

He sat at the edge of the group, his posture perfect, expression a mask of practiced indifference. Public outings required a level of restraint that felt unnatural to him.

Dick was laughing at something Jason had said, and even Bruce seemed slightly less tense than usual.

Damian didn't care about the noise. Or about the conversation. He was mostly preoccupied with the sensation of the sunlight hitting his forearms. For the first time in years, he wasn't wearing the long sleeves or the tactical gloves he used to shroud his skin.

He had decided, with a cold sort of logic, that the bond was dead.

The silence from his skin had lasted so long years of nothingness that he had finally accepted the most likely reality: his soulmate had stopped looking for him. You had given up.

He was fine with that. It was efficient.

Then, the sting began.

It wasn't a sharp pain, but a slow, itching warmth, as if a heated needle were dragging across the underside of his left forearm. Damian stiffened. He kept his hands resting on the table, but his heart gave a singular, heavy thud against his ribs.

No, he thought. Not now.

He watched the skin. It started as a faint, dark smudge, then the lines began to bleed through the surface of his flesh, as if an invisible hand were pressing a pen into his muscle.

Dick was the first to notice the change in his posture. "Dami? You okay?"

Damian didn't answer. He couldn't. He was too busy staring at his own arm.

The writing was appearing in elegant, sweeping loops. Cursive. It was beautiful, flowing, and utterly offensive.

Ash

0401 863

Call me ;)

Damian’s breath hitched. His eyes scanned the script, his brain overworking with the mechanical speed of a detective.

He knew your handwriting. He had spent a decade studying the messy, jagged print of the messages he had received as a child.

His soulmate’s handwriting had always been blunt. Childish, hurried, and unrefined. You’d written in print, scrawled in desperation.

This wasn't it. This was polished. This was intentional. This was the handwriting of a stranger.

Someone had held your arm. Someone had pressed a pen to your skin. Someone had dared to claim a space on a body that belonged, by divine right, to him.

"Whoa," Jason leaned in, his eyes widening as he spotted the dark lines on Damian's arm. "Is that... is that a soulmark? Since when do you have a writing bond?"

The table went silent as the family stared. For the first time in his life, the secret was out. The quiet, private connection he had guarded like a weapon was visible for everyone to see.

"Damian?" Bruce asked, his voice low, laced with a rare note of surprise. "You never said-"

"Be quiet," Damian snapped, his voice cutting through the air like a blade.

He wasn't looking at them. He was staring at the name. It felt like a slur.

Ash

He could feel the phantom sensation of the stranger’s hand on his skin, a greasy, intrusive warmth that made him want to scrub his arm until it bled.

It had been years. He had waited in the silence, convinced you had forgotten him, convinced you had moved on to a life where he didn't exist. And then, finally, the silence broke. The bond had screamed back to life after years of dormancy.

But it wasn't a "hello." It wasn't an "are you there?" It wasn't a cry for help.

It was a phone number. It was an invitation. It was a stranger's attempt to steal the only thing Damian was supposed to truly call his own.

His hands curled into fists on the table, his knuckles turning white. The rage was quiet, but it was absolute. Someone was touching you. Someone was talking to you. Someone was trying to take the person who had spent a lifetime writing into the void, waiting for a response that wasn’t coming.

And the response was a stranger's name.

"Damian, you're shaking," Dick said softly, reaching out a hand.

Damian pulled his arm back, tucking it close to his body, hiding the elegant, loathsome cursive from their eyes.

His gaze was dark, focused, and predatory.

The sound of the city became nothing more than a dull roar in the background. Damian didn't hear Bruce's worried voice or Jason’s insensitive joke. He didn’t see Tim and Dick’s shared glances. The only thing that existed was the black ink on his skin.

He slid out of the booth, his movements jerky and frantic.

"Damian, where are you going?" Bruce asked, his voice sharp and commanding.

He didn't answer. He couldn't. If he spoke, he was afraid of what might come out.

He stormed away from the table, ignoring the confused looks from his family, and practically ran toward the restroom.

The moment he locked the door behind him, he collapsed against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the cold tile. He yanked his sleeve up, his fingers digging into the skin around the words.

Call me ;)

He hated it. He hated the person who had written it. He hated the precision of the cursive, how confident and sure it looked. This was a person who had no idea who they were dealing with. They had no idea that by writing on his soulmate, they had essentially written a death sentence for themselves if he could ever find them.

But as he stared at the ink, the rage began to ebb, replaced by something far worse.

He felt sick.

He felt small.

He hadn't answered his soulmate.

For years, he had read your heartbreaks, your fears, your lonely pleas, and he had met you with sterile, echoing silence. He had waited. He had played a game of patience, convinced that if he just waited long enough, you would eventually find him on your own.

And now you had. You had found someone else.

"You should have kept writing," he whispered, his voice cracking. He pressed his forehead against his knees, his eyes burning. "You should have waited for me."

He felt pathetic. The great Damian Wayne, the heir to the League of Assassins, was currently huddled in a public restroom tearing up over a phone number.

He felt like a child again, the one who would read the messages on his arm and then uselessly try to rub them away with a damp cloth, pretending they never existed, even as he felt his heart break every single time.

He reached for the paper towels on the dispenser and grabbed a handful, soaking them in water. He held his arm out, his hand shaking, and began to scrub at the ink.

At the name.

He rubbed harder. The skin turned red, the water and rough paper scratching at the surface of his flesh. He wanted it gone. He wanted the name to vanish, to disappear as if it had never been written. He wanted the stranger to be erased from existence.

But the ink wouldn't budge.

"I'll find you," he whispered, his voice ragged. "I'll find you and I'll make sure you never forget who you belong to."

He didn't have a plan. He didn't know who the person was or where you were. But as he sat there in the dim light of the restroom, his chest heaving and his arm raw and red, there was a new, sharper purpose in his eyes.

He had ignored you long enough. Now, he would be the one doing the hunting.

The evening had passed in a blur of crowds, train announcements, and familiar exhaustion that settled over Gotham once the workday ended.

By the time you unlocked your apartment door, your attention was fixed on the familia routine. Keys in the bowl beside the entrance. Bag on the chair. Shoes kicked off near the wall.

You were halfway through rubbing at your eyes when something on your arm had caught your attention.

For a moment, your brain failed to make sense of what you were seeing.

The writing was gone.

You stared down at your forearm.

The name that had been written near your wrist had disappeared beneath a thick streak of black ink. The number stretched somewhere underneath it, hidden beneath layer after layer of aggressive, uneven marker.

Whoever had done it had covered the writing completely, obscuring every letter beneath a blown-out dark smear.

A hundred explanations flashed through your head, each more ridiculous than the last. None of them made sense.

Slowly, you turned your arm beneath the light.

The ink stayed where it was. Fresh enough that it still looked almost glossy beneath the overhead lamp.

Your fingers brushed across it. Dry.

You frowned.

The stranger's number should have still been there. You'd checked it at least three times on the train ride home.

Twice because you were considering calling, then again because you couldn't quite believe someone had actually flirted with you so outright.

Now it looked as though someone had taken a marker and buried every trace of it.

Your stomach tightened. Your mind going back years ago.

To one of many small examination rooms. Familiar bright white walls. The smell of disinfectant.

You were eight years old, legs dangling from a chair too tall for you.

"Have you ever tried writing on yourself?" the doctor had asked gently.

You remembered laughing.

Of course you had.

Every kid who hadn’t gotten hurt by another yet did.

You'd covered your arms with marker for years. Names. Questions. Drawings. Entire conversations directed at a person who never answered.

Nothing had ever happened.

The specialists called it unusual. Some forums called it heartbreaking. Or fake.

Your gaze dropped back to the black ink covering your arm. Something had written over that number. Something had responded.

You didn’t feel any excitement. Or hope. If anything, what you felt seemed closer to dread.

Hope was dangerous.

Hope was what had kept your parents scheduling appointment after appointment, convinced the next specialist would finally have an answer. Hope was what left your mother crying behind closed bathroom doors after another inconclusive test. Hope was what taught you, over and over again, that wanting something badly enough didn't make it real.

You'd spent years trying not to care. Years learning how to ignore the empty space where everyone else seemed to carry certainty. One strange mark wasn't enough to undo that.

You pulled your sleeve down over your arm. The black streak vanished beneath the fabric. Better. Safer.

"Means nothing," you muttered.

You didn't believe your own words.

The rest of the evening passed normally enough. Dinner. Dishes. Television playing quietly in the background. The ordinary rhythm of a life that had long since moved on from childhood fantasies.

Yet every so often, your hand drifted toward your covered forearm.

Every time it did, the same feeling returned. An uncomfortable awareness that something had changed. After years of silence, something had finally answered.

And you had no idea whether or not that was a good thing.

→↓←↑

You shuffled into the bathroom still half asleep, already thinking about getting an energy drink more than anything else.

The mirror was fogged around the edges from the shower running in the neighbouring apartment, and the cold tiles beneath your feet made you wish you’d bothered finding your slippers.

You rolled your sleeve up almost absent-mindedly. The black streak was still there.

You reached automatically for the sink, wetting a corner of the hand towel before rubbing experimentally at the edge of the ink.

Nothing.

“Figures.” The muttered complaint barely left your mouth before something caught your eye.

You frowned. The towel paused against your skin.

You leaned closer to the mirror.

Yesterday, the marker had been solid. Messy, thick, almost violent in the way it covered the stranger’s handwriting. Now there was a gap big enough for your skin to show through.

You were certain it hadn’t been there before.

For a ridiculous moment, you wondered whether you’d accidentally rubbed some of the ink away on your sleeve.

Then you noticed the line beneath it. Fresh ink.

Your stomach sank. The handwriting wasn’t yours. It wasn’t the stranger’s either. The stranger had written in looping cursive, every letter rounded and practiced. This was precise. Almost painfully neat. Each stroke looked deliberate, measured before it had ever touched skin.

Three words.

Don’t call them.

You read them once. Then again. Your eyes drifted over the sentence a third time, as though repetition alone might make it mean something different.

It didn’t. It remained exactly what it had been the first time. An instruction.

Not a greeting. Not a question. Not even an explanation. Just…

Don’t call them.

You found yourself looking around the apartment before you could stop yourself. The living room. The kitchen. The locked front door. Empty.

“…Okay.” You laughed under your breath.

Nothing about this was funny, but the alternative felt insane.

You’d spent most of your life wishing something - anything would happen. That one day there’d be a mistake. A delayed bond. An explanation.

Now, standing alone in your bathroom with unfamiliar handwriting on your arm, you wanted a perfectly rational answer more than anything.

Your fingers hovered over the words. Careful not to smudge them. The ink was dry. As though it had been there for hours.

You swallowed.

Then, before you could talk yourself out of it, you walked back into the kitchen, dug through the junk drawer until you found an old biro, and returned to the bathroom.

The tip hovered over your forearm.

You stared at the empty patch of skin beneath the unfamiliar message for nearly a minute.

This was stupid.

You knew exactly how soulmate writing worked.

Or rather, you knew how it was supposed to work.

Children discovered it by accident. Teenagers filled each other’s arms with jokes. Adults stopped because texting was easier. Nobody your age stood in their bathroom writing into empty space. Not unless they’d completely lost it.

“Whatever.”

The pen touched your skin. Your handwriting hadn’t changed much since childhood.

Still print. Still slightly untidy. Still pressed a little too hard.

Who are you?

You capped the pen almost immediately afterwards.

Nothing happened.

You’d expected as much.

You were already turning away when warmth spread beneath your skin. It wasn’t painful, just unexpected.

You looked down instinctively.

The place beneath your question tingled, the sensation travelling slowly enough that you could follow it with your eyes.

And then Ink.

Not appearing all at once. Growing. One careful letter after another.

The ink surface beneath your skin one deliberate stroke at a time, each line settling into place before the next began. There was no rush to it. Whoever was writing wasn’t hesitating, but they weren’t hurrying either.

Like they knew you would wait.

By the time the sentence finished, your pulse had climbed into your throat.

Don’t accept things from strangers.

You frowned.

That wasn’t an answer.

Your eyes flicked up to the question still sitting above it.

Who are you?

They’d ignored it completely.

Another line began to appear. The warmth returned beneath your skin, travelling just ahead of the fresh ink.

Don’t let anyone else touch you like that again.

Your eyebrows slowly pulled together. “…That’s what you’re worried about?”

After everything. After years of nothing. After every specialist, every appointment, every unanswered question.. Whoever was on the other end had apparently decided that the pressing issue was a phone number.

You looked down at the biro still resting in your hand.

It felt strangely inadequate now.

Slowly, you uncapped it again. Your handwriting looked clumsy beside the careful precision of theirs.

You didn’t answer my question.

You hesitated, then added another beneath it.

Who are you?

The reply came quicker this time. Almost immediately.

The familiar warmth spread beneath your skin, and before you’d even finished reading your own words, fresh ink had begun to weave itself between them.

That doesn’t matter yet.

The sentence continued without pause.

Tell me whether you called them.

You blinked. “Seriously?”

The absurdity of it almost made you laugh. That was it? No introduction. No explanation. Not even an acknowledgement that this was impossible. Just another question about someone you’d shared fries with for twenty minutes.

Your fingers rubbed absent-mindedly at the bridge of your nose. “This is unbelievable.”

You looked back down at your arm. The neat handwriting stared back at you.

You sighed through your nose before writing again.

No.

The ink had barely dried before another reply began. Only two words this time.

Good. Don’t.

You stared at them. The corners of your mouth twitched despite yourself.

“You’re bossy.” There was no irritation behind the words. Mostly disbelief.

You’d finally found the person who was supposedly meant to answer every question you’d spent half your life asking, and apparently they preferred giving orders instead.

Damian hadn't realised how completely his priorities had shifted until he found himself standing in front of the Batcomputer, staring at an unfinished mission report he'd been pretending to read for nearly ten minutes.

He couldn't remember a single word.

His eyes kept returning to the faded writing winding around the inside of his forearm.

Nine messages. That was all.

It should have been insignificant.

He had exchanged more words with criminals before incapacitating them.

Yet somehow those nine short sentences had managed to uproot routines that had taken years to build.

He read them again.

Who are you?

Don't accept things from strangers.

Don't let anyone else touch you like that again.

You didn't answer my question.

Who are you?

That doesn't matter yet.

Tell me whether you called them.

No.

Good. Don't.

His thumb brushed unconsciously across one of the final words. Good.

It shouldn't have brought him relief.

But it did. An almost embarrassing amount.

The stranger had failed. You hadn't called them. Whatever smile you'd given that person, whatever polite conversation you'd entertained, whatever curiosity they’d mistaken for interest had ended there.

You had chosen not to continue it.

Damian hadn't realised how tightly he'd been holding himself together until that single word had loosened something inside his chest.

Not enough. Never enough. But enough that he could breathe again. For the first time since your messages appeared.

Then the relief faded. Because relief left room for thought. And thought was infinitely crueler.

Someone else had reached you first. Someone else had stood close enough to touch your wrist. Someone else had looked directly into your face. Someone else knew what colour your eyes were.

Damian didn't.

Someone else knew how tall you were. How your voice sounded. Whether you smiled with your mouth closed or laughed loudly enough to turn heads.

Someone else had information Damian should have had years ago.

The irrationality of the thought didn't make it disappear. He understood perfectly well that you hadn't betrayed him.

How could you? You didn't know him.

As far as you were concerned, your soulmate had ignored every message you'd ever written.

Every birthday. Every question. Every lonely evening. Every desperate attempt to find the person destined to answer.

He had been silent.

Not by choice. But silence looked the same from the other side.

He knew that.

If the positions had been reversed… If he had written for years.. If every answer had been met with nothing.. Would he have waited forever?

…

He wanted to say yes.

But he couldn’t.

His hand curled into a fist.

You'd lived an entire life while he wasn't there. Years of mornings. Of birthdays. Of scraped knees, illnesses, graduations, celebrations, disappointments.

Had someone hugged you when things became too much? Who comforted you when you cried? Who celebrated your successes? Who remembered your favourite food? Who knew your drink order? Who made you laugh after terrible days?

Questions multiplied faster than he could suppress them.

Did you live alone? Did you have roommates? Did you lock your doors? Did you own any means of defending yourself? Were you careful walking home at night? Had anyone ever hurt you?

Yesterday had already answered one of those questions.

Yes. Someone had.

Maybe not physically. But someone had ignored your discomfort long enough for you to write to a stranger instead.

To him.

You had reached for someone you couldn't even identify because the people around you hadn't been enough.

That thought settled somewhere deep beneath his ribs. Heavy and permanent.

He looked again at the sentence he'd written. Don't let anyone else touch you like that again.

He hadn't thought before writing it. There hadn't been time. Logic had come afterward. The wording had been possessive. Demanding. Unlike him.

No. Exactly like him. Just... stripped bare.

He closed his eyes. You must have thought he was insane. Some anonymous soulmate who vanished for decades only to return issuing orders. He would have been irritated too.

No.

He would have blocked himself.

Yet...

You hadn't.

You'd argued. Questioned him. Demanded answers. But you hadn't stopped writing.

Why?

Curiosity? Hope? Loneliness? Or had something inside you recognised the same impossible pull clawing through him?

He hated not knowing. He hated uncertainty. He hated relying on something as intangible as fate.

His entire life had been built on eliminating uncertainty. Gather information. Observe.Investigate. Prepare. Control what could be controlled. The League had taught him that. His father had refined it.

The soulbond ignored every single one of those principles.

It had expected him to wait. To trust. To believe.

He had. For years.

Where had it gotten either of you?

You alone in a shopping centre. Him halfway across the city learning about it after the fact.

No. Enough.

He opened his eyes.

The Batcomputer came alive beneath his fingertips. Monitors illuminated one after another, blue light reflecting across his face. Access permissions unfolded without resistance.

Traffic cameras. Retail security networks. Public transport footage. Cell tower data. Facial recognition databases. Search parameters. Time. Location. Shopping centre.

He could hear his father's voice in the back of his mind.

"People deserve privacy, Damian."

Normally, he would have agreed. He would have waited until you chose to reveal yourself. Normally.

Yesterday someone had approached you.

Tomorrow someone else might.

He had spent years believing fate would keep you safe until it brought you together. Yesterday had demonstrated exactly how fragile that assumption was.

For most of his life, Damian Wayne had believed his greatest weakness would be failing his mission.

He understood now that he'd been wrong.

His greatest weakness had a heartbeat.

That somewhere out there, someone was completely unaware that the heir to Batman was already searching every camera in Gotham just to catch a single glimpse of the face he'd imagined since childhood.

His finger pressed the key.

The search began.

↑←↓→

Finding you hadn’t been particularly difficult. Not once Damian started looking.

The shopping centre gave him a face. The face gave him transport records. Transport records became a place of work. A place of work became an address.

Within four days, he knew more about your routine than you did.

You bought the same energy drink from the convenience store three mornings out of five, apologised to inanimate objects whenever you bumped into them, and forgot to eat lunch often enough that the café downstairs had begun recognising the pattern.

You had a habit of reading while waiting for pedestrian lights to change. You wore headphones without turning any music on whenever you didn’t want strangers talking to you. You checked your pockets twice before locking your front door.

You laughed with your whole face. You rubbed your eyes whenever you became overwhelmed.

You were, Damian decided, catastrophically easy to lose.

And even easier to protect.

The first time he introduced himself, it was as Damian Wayne. Not your soulmate. Just the youngest Wayne.

Professionally interested in one of Wayne Enterprises’ newest projects.

Your company had recently entered into a partnership with Wayne Enterprises.

You’d smiled.

Held out your hand.

Introduced yourself with the same easy politeness you seemed to offer everyone.

He’d looked at your outstretched hand for the briefest moment before taking it.

His fingers closed around yours carefully. Almost reverently.

“So,” you’d said with an awkward laugh, “I guess we’ll be seeing each other a lot.”

“Yes.”

You’d mistaken the certainty in his voice for confidence.

It wasn’t. It was a statement of fact.

After that, he simply… remained.

Meetings that didn’t strictly require his attendance somehow did. Business lunches became routine. Coffee would already be waiting on your desk before you arrived.

When your workload became unreasonable, departments quietly shifted resources without anyone quite understanding why. When your apartment building’s security contract came up for renewal, Wayne Security acquired it. When your favourite café struggled financially, it received an anonymous investment.

You never knew.

You only noticed that life had become a little easier.

Financial inconveniences disappeared before they had the chance to reach you.

You thanked luck. Damian thanked himself.

The rest happened so gradually that even you struggled to pinpoint when it had changed.

His hand settled against the small of your back whenever crowds became too dense.

He began walking you to your car after evening meetings.

Your favourite snacks appeared in his office because “you always steal mine.”

He started calling you when you worked late.

Then expecting you to answer.

Then asking where you were if you didn’t.

“You don’t have to keep looking after me,” you’d laughed one afternoon as he wordlessly took the heavier stack of folders from your arms.

“I know.”

“You do realise I’m an adult?”

“I am aware.”

You smiled, shaking your head. “You’re impossible.”

Damian looked at you for a long moment.

No. He thought quietly. I’m simply making up for lost time.

You never noticed the way his eyes lingered on your forearm whenever your sleeves rode up. Or how his expression softened whenever your handwriting appeared there.

The conversations continued. Always through ink. Never in person.

You still didn’t know.

You still believed your soulmate was someone else. Someone you hadn’t met.

Damian intended to keep it that way.

Not forever.

Just until he’d repaired everything the years of silence had broken. Until you trusted him without hesitation. Until you looked for him first. Until your apartment felt less like home than Wayne Manor. Until every decision you made instinctively accounted for him. Until loving him became as natural as breathing.

Then, and only then, would he tell you the truth.

By that point, Damian no longer believed it would matter.

Because by then, there would be nowhere else in the world you would ever want to be except exactly where he’d spent the years wishing you had always been.

Beside him.

You had skipped breakfast after oversleeping, rushed through the front doors of Wayne Enterprises with your hair still damp, and spent the next four hours buried beneath spreadsheets.

Around noon, someone knocked once on your office door.

You looked up. Damian stepped inside carrying a paper bag from the café downstairs. "I noticed you didn't eat."

You smiled despite yourself. "You came all the way down here for that?"

"You become irritable when your blood sugar drops." He set the bag on your desk with the same care he used when placing files in front of Bruce during board meetings.

"I thought you would appreciate the reminder."

It was thoughtful. You thanked him.

By the second week, he stopped asking if you'd eaten. He already knew.

"I brought lunch."

"I'm actually going out with the accounting department."

"You aren't."

You frowned. "We already planned it."

Damian removed a small container from the paper bag before speaking.

"They rescheduled."

"What?"

"They've been called into an emergency budget meeting."

Your phone buzzed. Every person in the group chat was apologising.

Sorry! Something came up.

Rain check?

You stared at the messages. "...That's weird."

"It happens." Damian placed a pair of chopsticks beside your lunch. "Eat before it gets cold."

You hesitated. Then opened the container.

It kept happening.

Whenever coworkers invited you somewhere, plans somehow dissolved before they happened.

A canceled reservation. An urgent meeting. Someone suddenly calling in sick.

After a while, people simply stopped asking.

It wasn't deliberate. It was just easier to assume you were busy. So lunch became something you shared with Damian.

Every day.

Without either of you ever discussing it.

↑←↓→

It was raining when you left the office.

Not super hard, just enough to make the pavement shine beneath the streetlights. You shoved your hands into the pockets of your coat and hurried toward the subway entrance, already thinking about the leftovers waiting in your apartment.

"You'll catch a cold."

You didn't have to turn around. "I'll survive."

Damian fell into step beside you, holding a black umbrella over both of you despite the fact that he'd appeared from nowhere. You hadn't seen him leave the building.

"You've said that before."

"I've also survived before."

"That isn't the point."

You sighed. "Then what is?"

"The point is that your zipper is broken."

Instinctively, you glanced down at your coat. The zipper caught halfway, as it always did. You gave it another tug before giving up. "I know. I'll replace it eventually."

Damian's eyes lingered on the torn seam near your wrist. "No."

You frowned. "No?"

"You won't."

"I literally just said I would."

"You said 'eventually.'" His tone remained perfectly even. "That generally means you have no intention of doing it until circumstances force you to."

"You don't know that."

"I do."

Something about the certainty in his voice irritated you.

"You don't get to decide whether I'm going to buy a coat."

"I already have."

You stopped walking. "So that's it?" You laughed once, short and incredulous. "You've decided for me?"

"You require one."

"I require money more."

"You have sufficient savings for the amount you have worked."

"How would you know what my savings look like?"

For the first time since the conversation began, Damian hesitated. Only for a fraction of a second. "It isn't relevant."

"It becomes relevant when you somehow know how much money I have."

"I know enough."

The answer settled uncomfortably in your stomach. You wanted to ask another question. Instead, you started walking again.

Neither of you spoke for the rest of the trip.

←↑↓→

Three days later, the receptionist downstairs smiled as you entered your apartment building.

"A package came for you this morning."

"I wasn't expecting one."

"It didn't have a return address."

The box was surprisingly heavy.

Inside was a winter coat. Not just any coat. The exact one you'd stopped to look at in a shop window two weeks earlier.

You remembered standing outside the display for maybe thirty seconds before deciding it was too expensive.

You'd never mentioned it to anyone. Not even Damian.

There was no gift receipt.

Nothing except a small envelope tucked beneath the tissue paper.

Inside was a single card.

Your previous coat no longer provided adequate protection. Dispose of it.

No signature. There didn't need to be one.

The coat fit perfectly.

→←↑↓

"You bought me a coat."

Damian didn't look up from the documents spread across his desk. "I replaced one."

"I never asked you to."

"No."

"I told you not to spend money on me."

"I didn't." He finally looked up. "I spent money on an item."

"...Which you then gave to me."

"Correct."

"So you spent money on me."

"No." His expression remained completely serious. "I spent money maintaining an asset under my care."

You stared at him. "An asset?"

He frowned slightly, as if that wasn't the word he'd intended. "A responsibility."

"I'm not your responsibility."

"You are."

"No, Damian. I'm not."

"You arrived at work soaked twice last week because you refused to replace damaged clothing. You developed a cough yesterday."

"I would've bought one eventually."

"You were cold."

"I said I would've bought one."

"But you didn't." He spoke with the same patient tone someone might use while explaining something obvious to a child. "Intent is meaningless if the outcome remains the same."

You opened your mouth to argue but he continued before you could.

"When Titus refuses to come inside during winter, I don't leave him outside because he wishes to stay there."

"...Did you just compare me to your dog?"

"I compared your behavior."

"No. You compared me."

"I compared two living beings who consistently underestimate environmental hazards."

"One of those living beings is a German Shepherd."

"Yes."

"And the other is me."

"Yes."

He didn't understand why that distinction mattered. You could see it in his face. To Damian, the comparison wasn't insulting. It was practical.

Titus couldn't accurately judge the risk of prolonged exposure to the cold.

Neither, apparently, could you.

The fact that you could speak, hold a job, pay taxes, and argue with him didn't alter the underlying equation in his mind.

Capability wasn't measured by adulthood. It was measured by whether you could reliably keep yourself safe.

He'd already reached his conclusion months ago.

You simply hadn't realised he'd been treating you accordingly.

↑←→↓

It started with coffee.

You'd been ordering the same thing from the café in the lobby since your second week at Wayne Enterprises. Large latte. Whole milk. Two pumps of caramel. It was practically muscle memory. Every morning you'd mumble, "The usual, thanks." Tap your card against the terminal, and collect your cup without thinking.

One Tuesday, you took a sip on the way to the elevator and frowned.

Less sweet.

You glanced back toward the café, wondering if the barista had simply forgotten the syrup. It wasn't worth walking back over, so you drank it anyway.

The next morning it tasted the same.

And the morning after that.

By Friday, you assumed they'd changed the recipe.

A few weeks later, you found yourself standing in line behind two coworkers from accounting. They were chatting idly while the baristas rushed through the morning crowd.

"The usual?" the girl behind the register asked as soon as she saw you.

"Yeah, thanks."

She nodded before you'd said another word. "Oat milk latte. One pump vanilla."

You blinked.

"...Sorry?"

"Oat milk latte?" she repeated, already reaching for a cup. "One pump vanilla."

"No, I usually get caramel."

She looked genuinely confused. "You used to."

"I.." You laughed awkwardly. "No, I still do."

She glanced toward another employee behind the espresso machine. "Didn't they change it?"

"They?"

"The gentleman who usually orders for you."

Your smile faltered. "What gentleman?"

"The one who's in here all the time." She frowned, trying to remember. "Dark hair. Gorgeous. Kind of intimidating."

Your stomach sank. "...Damian?"

"That's his name!" She smiled, relieved.

"He said you'd been trying to cut back on sugar. We've been making it that way ever since."

You stared at her. "I never said that."

"Oh."

Her smile dimmed. "I just assumed.." She looked embarrassed. "I thought he was your assistant."

You didn't answer.

You took the coffee she'd already made, murmured a thank you, and walked away before she could apologise.

Halfway across the lobby, you took another sip. It wasn't even bad. In fact.. It tasted exactly the way you expected your coffee to taste.

You couldn't remember when your own preference had changed.

Or whether it ever had.

That Saturday you decided to stop at woolies on the way home.

Your fridge was nearly empty, and for once you had no plans. No meetings. No dinner at Wayne Manor. No texts from Damian reminding you that you'd skipped lunch.

You grabbed a trolley and headed toward the produce section.

Before you'd made it ten feet, someone in the green Woolworths uniform looked up from unpacking a crate of avocados.

"Oh! You're here yourself today."

You smiled politely. "I usually am."

He laughed. "No, your assistant normally collects everything."

The trolley came to a stop. "My assistant?"

"The bloke."

He pointed vaguely toward the online pickup counter.

"Tall. Black hair. Doesn't smile much."

Your grip tightened around the handle. "I... don't have an assistant."

The employee looked between you and the pickup shelves, clearly thinking he'd made some sort of mistake.

"Oh."

A pause.

"I just figured.." He rubbed the back of his neck. "He knows your order off by heart."

"My order?"

"Yeah."

He gestured toward the refrigerated section. "Every Tuesday. Same online pickup. Chicken breast, brown rice, spinach, Greek yoghurt, blueberries, eggs, almonds..."

He kept listing items one after another. Healthy. Measured. Predictable. Almost identical to what Damian packed for lunch whenever he insisted on bringing you food. Nothing like what you usually got.

"You've got one of the easiest orders to pack in the system," he continued with an easy laugh. "Never changes."

You looked down into your empty trolley. "I don't remember ordering any of that."

He blinked. "...Really?"

"I haven't done online groceries in months."

"Oh." His smile returned, uncertain now. "I guess whoever orders for you just has your account."

You wandered the aisles in a daze after that.

You picked up a box of sugary cereal, then hesitated.

Hadn't you loved this?

Or had you only bought it once?

You reached for the frozen buffalo chicken protein pizza.

No. You preferred the greasy cheesy ones.. Didn't you?

By the time you reached the checkout, your trolley contained almost nothing.

A loaf of bread. Milk. Pasta.

You couldn't remember what else belonged in your kitchen. Everything you reached for came with a second thought.

Damian doesn't buy this.

Not I don't like this. Damian doesn't buy this.

Somewhere, without noticing, you'd stopped shopping for yourself and you'd started shopping according to habits that weren't yours.

When you unlocked your apartment later that evening, you opened the pantry and simply stood there.

Brown rice. Herbal teas. Wholegrain crackers. Natural peanut butter. Every shelf was neat. Organised. Restocked.

You tried to remember buying any of it.

You couldn't.

The only thing you were certain of was that Damian liked all of it.

For the first time since you'd met him, a thought occurred to you that made your skin crawl.

You couldn't remember the last decision you'd made that had remained entirely your own.

↑→↓←

Which doors you were expected to use. Which routes you naturally took through Wayne Enterprises without thinking. Which elevators always seemed to arrive when you were alone, and which ones never did.

It wasn’t obvious enough to call it anything. That was the problem.

If someone had asked you directly whether you were being controlled, you would have said no. You still had your job. Your own apartment. Your own name on the lease. You could leave the building whenever you wanted.

Except you didn’t, not without telling Damian first.

And somehow it had become normal.

It had started as courtesy. You told him when you were heading home so he didn’t “worry about your commute.” Then it became easier to mention where you were going so he wouldn’t text. Then it became automatic, like checking the weather before leaving the house.

Now, when you didn’t say anything, things got complicated.

A car would be waiting when you stepped outside anyway. A message would arrive asking if you’d changed plans.

Once, when you’d tried to leave without telling him at all, security had stopped you at the ground floor.

“Mr Wayne requested confirmation,” the guard had said, checking a list he clearly thought you belonged on. “Just routine.”

You remembered standing there, keycard in your hand, realising you didn’t know when your movements had become something that required confirmation.

You hadn’t argued. There was nothing to argue against that didn’t make you sound paranoid.

So you went back upstairs, and sent Damian a message saying you’d “forgotten something.”

He replied almost immediately.

Good. You’re learning to check in properly.

You stared at the screen for a long time after that.

The worst part wasn’t the obvious things. It was the gaps.

Like how your phone stopped suggesting certain places because you “never went there anymore.” Or how your usual café no longer even appeared in your saved locations. Or how friends stopped inviting you out because every time they tried, schedules collapsed in ways no one could quite explain.

You told yourself it was coincidence until coincidence became too consistent to ignore.

When you asked Maya, your coworker from accounting, the one person who still occasionally tried to include you in plans, she hesitated.

“I mean… it’s always something,” she said carefully one afternoon over coffee. “You’re either busy or something comes up right after you say yes. It’s like… bad timing, constantly.”

“I don’t cancel things,” you said automatically.

She gave you a look you couldn’t quite read. “I know. That’s why it’s weird.”

She didn’t say Damian’s name. No one ever did directly when it felt like it might matter.

But it hung there anyway. Unspoken.

The moment you started to properly feel it, really feel it, was the night you tried to stay out late.

It wasn’t even rebellion. It was exhaustion. You’d been at work too long, your head aching, your phone already buzzing with reminders you hadn’t asked for. So when Maya suggested grabbing dinner nearby, you said yes before you could talk yourself out of it.

For once, nothing immediately fell apart.

No cancelled booking. No sudden emergency. No interrupted plan.

You almost relaxed.

Then your phone rang.

Damian.

You stared at the screen for a few seconds before answering.

“You’re not home,” he said without greeting.

“I’m out.”

A pause. Not surprised. Measured.

“With Maya.”

“Yes.”

Another pause, shorter this time.

“I see.”

Something in his tone made you feel sick. “I didn’t tell you because I thought it didn’t matter,” you added quickly. “It’s just dinner.”

“It matters,” he said simply.

Then, after a beat: “You’re deviating from routine again.”

“I’m allowed to have dinner with a friend.”

“You are allowed to leave the environment I’ve structured for your stability, yes.”

You closed your eyes. “There is no environment you’ve structured for me.”

Silence on the line.

When he spoke again, his voice was lower. “You’re tired. Your judgement will be impaired tonight.”

“That’s not your call.”

“It is when you don’t recognise your own limits.”

Something cold settled behind your ribs. Across the table, Maya was watching you now, pretending not to.

“I’m fine,” you said, quieter.

“You’re not,” Damian replied.

And then, almost gently, “I’ll send a car.”

“I don’t need one.”

“You do.”

You stood up so abruptly your chair scraped the floor.

“I said no.”

The line went cold.

“I hear you,” Damian said.

That should have been the end of it.

Instead, he added: “But you’re still not staying out late.”

You stood there holding your phone, realising slowly that he hadn’t threatened you. He hadn’t raised his voice. He hadn’t even argued. He had simply stated the outcome as something already decided.

Maya said your name, cautiously, and you barely heard her..

You weren’t being managed. You were being kept track of. And you were just now realising how much of your life now required permission you didn’t remember giving.

↓↑→←

The sleek, black sedan pulled up to the curb of the restaurant with a silent, predatory grace. The driver was a man who looked like he had been trained to move without making a sound.

He simply stood by the door, waiting. He didn't look at Maya. He didn't look at the other patrons. He looked only at you, with the expectant, neutral gaze of a handler waiting for a well trained pet to finish its meal.

You felt Maya’s eyes on you, heavy with a mixture of pity and confusion. "Are you.. is everything okay?" she whispered.

"It's fine," you lied, the words tasting like ash. "Just... a long day."

As you slid into the back of the car, the scent of the interior, expensive leather, rain, and that faint, sharp undertone of mint that always seemed to cling to Damian’s presence hit you.

The seat was heated, perfectly adjusted to a temperature you hadn't chosen but always found comfortable. The door closed with a heavy, pressurized thud, sealing you into a private, silent world.

You didn't have to check your phone to know he was watching. You could feel the weight of his attention even from miles away.

When you finally reached the penthouse, the lights were dimmed to a soft, amber glow. The apartment was silent, save for the low hum of the climate control. You kicked off your shoes, feeling the sudden, overwhelming urge to just crawl into bed and disappear, but the routine wouldn't allow it.

Damian was waiting in the living area. He wasn't sitting on the sofa like you expected. He was standing by the floor to ceiling windows, a glass of dark liquid in his hand.

He didn't turn when you entered. He didn't need to. He knew the cadence of your footsteps. He knew the exact moment you crossed the threshold.

"You're late," he said. It didn’t sound like a scolding.

"The dinner ran long," you replied, trying to keep your voice steady. You walked past him toward the kitchen, but he moved with a sudden, fluid grace, intercepting your path.

His tall, lean frame cast a long shadow over you. He reached out, his hand moving to your chin, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw with gentle pressure.

His touch was reminiscent of how he handled the high bred hounds at the manor. Firm, possessive, and entirely devoid of the hesitation one might show a peer.

"You look disheveled," he murmured, his eyes scanning your face, searching for any sign of distress, any sign of 'damage' caused by the outside world. "The city is loud, chaotic. It's too much for you. You shouldn't be out there so late, where things are unpredictable."

"I'm not a child, Damian," you said, though the words felt weak even to your own ears.

"No," he agreed, his thumb moving to brush against your lower lip. "You are much more precious than a child. You are.. delicate. You require a specific kind of stewardship."

He leaned in closer, his scent that cool, sharp mint enveloping you. "When you wander without a leash, you get lost. You get tired. You let people like Maya fill your time with trivialities that serve no purpose for your well being."

A shiver ran down your spine. He spoke of your life as if it were a garden he had planted. He didn't see your independence as a virtue, he saw it as a vulnerability.

"I have dinner planned for you tomorrow," he said, his voice dropping to that smooth, harmonic register that usually calmed you, but now made your heart race with a strange, trapped sensation. "Something light. Something that will help you recover from today's.. exertion."

He stepped back, finally releasing you, but the space he left behind felt cold. He turned his gaze toward the window again, the conversation effectively over.

"Go wash up," he commanded softly. "I've already laid out your clothes. The silk ones. They're softer on your skin."

As you walked toward the bedroom, you realised with a sinking heart that he hadn't even asked how your night was. He hadn't asked if you enjoyed the food or if Maya had said anything interesting. He only cared that you had returned to the enclosure. He only cared that his most cherished thing was back where it belonged: within his reach, under his eyes, and entirely under his care.

You felt like a bird in a gilded cage, and the most terrifying part was how much you had started to rely on the bars to keep you upright.

You had found it tucked away in a drawer of a desk in the library at the manor. A drawer you were never supposed to touch, a space meant for his private ledgers.

It was a small, leather bound sketchbook. Looked to be as old if not older than Damian himself.

You had opened it, expecting business notes or tactical maps.

Instead, you found your own soul.

Every "Are you there?" you had scrawled on your skin as a lonely child was there, preserved in his precise, elegant ink. Every "Please answer" was captured in his beautiful, sweeping script. He hadn't ignored you. He had collected you. He had been reading your heart for years, documenting your loneliness as if it were a sacred text.

The notebook slipped from your hands, hitting the thick rug with a dull thud.

Page after page of your own handwriting stared back at you. Preserved.

Every childish question. Every lonely afternoon. Every desperate, humiliating attempt to convince yourself someone might be listening.

You remembered writing most of them.

You remembered crying after some of them.

You remembered eventually stopping.

Your entire life reduced to paper.

"You were always a curious one," a smooth, deep voice drifted from the doorway.

You bolted upright, your heart hammering hard against your ribs. Damian stood there, silhouetted by the warm light of the hallway. He didn't look angry. He didn't look caught. He looked... satisfied.

"You-you’re.." you breathed, the words trembling. "My soulmate..?"

Damian crossed the room, his movements silent and predatory. He didn't stop until he was hovering over you.

He sank to his knees in front of you, reaching out. His fingers tangled in your hair, petting you with that same, terrifyingly gentle devotion he gave to his most prized pets.

"I was observing," he corrected softly, his deep emerald eyes locked onto yours. "I was waiting until you were ready. Until the world had finished bruising you so that I could be the one to mend you."

"You've been mending me?" You let out a breathless, hysterical laugh. "Damian, you've been curating me! The cars, the security, the 'routines'.. you weren't helping me live. You were making sure I didn't wander off!"

"And why shouldn't you be kept close?" He leaned in, his forehead resting against yours.

His scent that cool, intoxicating mint filled your senses, making your head swim. "The world is a jagged, cruel place. It doesn't know how to handle someone as precious as you. They see a person, they see a worker, a friend, a stranger. They don't see the miracle that you are."

"I'm not a miracle," you protested, trying to push his chest away, but your hands felt weak against his lean muscle. "I am a person. I have a life. I have choices."

"You have my choices," he whispered, his hand sliding down to cup your cheek, his thumb stroking your skin with a rhythmic, soothing motion. "And they are all designed for your happiness. Is it so wrong to want to ensure your comfort? To ensure you are fed, rested, and loved without the interference of the mundane?"

He leaned forward and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to your temple. It burned. Felt nothing like the passion you’d always hoped for.

"You're sick.." you whispered, the word feeling absurd in the face of his overwhelming tenderness.

Damian pulled back just enough to look you in the eye, a small, boyish grin the one that usually looked charming but now looked devastating touching his lips. "A harsh term. I prefer... devoted."

He stood up, reaching down to take your hand. He didn't pull you, he simply offered his palm, waiting for you to take it. It was an invitation, but you knew it was also a command.

"Come," he said, his voice a warm, melodic hum. "You've had a shock. You're trembling. Let's get you settled. I've had Alfred prepare that tea you like, and the new linens are ready." His voice was calm.

If anything, faintly disappointed when you didn’t move. Like bat-cow had wandered somewhere she wasn’t meant to and now required collecting.

You looked at him. Really looked. For the first time since meeting him, pieces that had never seemed connected began slotting together with nauseating precision.

The lunches. The phone calls. The coat. Your coffee. The security downstairs who somehow always recognised you. The reception staff who smiled before you’d spoken. The meetings that always happened to include Damian, regardless of whether they had anything to do with Wayne Enterprises. The quiet, invisible way your life had bent around him until his presence no longer felt unusual.

You couldn’t remember when that had happened. Perhaps that was the point.

“…It was you.”

It came out barely above a whisper. “The whole time.”

Damian crossed the room without hurry.

He stopped close enough that you could smell the familiar scent of mint clinging to his clothes. “I had intended to tell you.”

“When?”

“When it no longer frightened you.”

You laughed. A small, broken sound that didn’t resemble amusement.

“You’ve been lying to me since the day we met.”

“I omitted information.”

“You watched me tell you about my soulmate.”

“Yes.”

“You listened while I told you I wished I’d been born normal.”

His expression changed then. Something softened around his eyes. “I know.”

“I know,” he repeated quietly. “I read every one of those thoughts long before you said them aloud.”

He reached past you, lifting the notebook from the floor with surprising care before setting it back on the desk.

“I remember every message.” His fingertips rested against the worn leather cover.

“‘Are you there?’”

Your breathing caught.

“‘Please answer.’”

You couldn’t move.

“‘I think something’s wrong with me.’”

He recited them without looking.

He already knew them. Every single one.

“I was eight,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“I thought…” Your voice failed.

“I know.”

You stared at him. “You don’t understand.”

“No.”

He looked back at you with complete certainty. “I understand perfectly.” There was no hesitation. No apology. No shame. “I know what you believed.”

His gaze drifted briefly toward your forearm before returning to your face.

“I know how often you blamed yourself.”

He lifted a hand, brushing an invisible crease from your sleeve with the same absent care he’d shown a hundred times before.

“I know you stopped buying caramel because I preferred vanilla. I know you only pretend to like herbal tea. I know you sleep better if the room is colder. I know you become overwhelmed when supermarkets are crowded. I know you forget to eat whenever work becomes stressful.”

“You don’t..” Your throat felt painfully tight. “You don’t know me.”

A flicker of genuine confusion crossed his face. “I know you better than anyone.”

“You’ve been watching me.”

“Of course I have.” The answer came so naturally that, for a second, it almost sounded ridiculous that you’d asked.

“I lost so many years.” His voice remained even. “I have been correcting that.”

He looked around the room. At the books on the shelves. The chair by the window. The cup of tea growing cold beside the sofa. Your home.

Then he looked back at you. “I have spent every day since finding you making your life easier.” He smiled softly. “You call it manipulation because you insist on imagining the life you had before I arrived.” He stepped closer. “So do I.”

There was no triumph in his expression. Only something devastatingly gentle. “I remember the person who apologised for taking up space. The person who believed fate had simply… forgotten them.”

His hand settled lightly against your cheek. “I remember because I was the one reading it.”

“You keep looking at everything I’ve done and asking yourself how I could justify it.” His forehead rested lightly against yours. “You’ve misunderstood.”

His voice dropped into something almost unbearably soft. “I’ve never had to.”

There wasn’t the slightest doubt in him. Not after the notebook. Not after the messages. Not after so many years. In Damian’s mind, he’d already spent a lifetime loving you.

The only difference now was that you finally knew his name.

Please comment and reblog :)

13K+ words, 77K+ characters, 1K+ sentences, 1K+ paragraphs, 47 minute average reading time, 1 hour 11 minute average speaking time.

I lowkey really rushed this one to get it out before the end of the month, so I apologise if it’s obvious

Read Tim Drake’s part here.

Read Jason Todd’s part here.

Read Bruce Wayne’s part here.

If it's after he's captured you, self-harm isn't even an option.

Dick would never allow it.

That's you choosing pain over him.

He can hurt himself because it’s for the good of both of you.

He can justify it because his injuries serve a deeper purpose. They're sacrifices made for your future together.

To ensure that you can never leave.

But you hurting yourself?

He’d sooner have you wrapped in restraints relying solely on him for every bodily function than let the idea sprout in your mind.

The moment Dick even suspects you're considering it, every sharp object disappears. Every possible risk is removed. Doors are locked. Windows are reinforced. You stop being left alone for more than a few minutes at a time.

You might as well be spitting in his face if you think that you’d ever even be given the chance to go that far.

And if he thinks the threat is serious enough?

He'd rather have you furious with him than endangered.

Because as far as Dick is concerned, your life isn't yours to throw away.

It's his to protect.

If it's before he's met you, though, things are different.

At first, the pain is just another mystery.

Even if that mystery appears in jagged lines across his forearms or messy scars along his thighs.

Dick grows up with those moments.

Most people learn to ignore the bond. They accept the occasional pain and move on with their lives.

Dick can't.

Every injury raises questions.

Who are you? Why are you hurting? Why does it keep happening?

Then he begins to investigate.

And once Dick Grayson decides he's going to find someone?

He doesn't stop.

His mother had cried when she first saw them.

Not because she was upset, quite the opposite. Janet Drake had spent years documenting soulmate phenomena across the globe, and a verbal bond was extraordinarily rare.

His father had immediately started researching statistics.

Less than three percent of soulmates received words. Less than .5 percent remembered hearing them.

“You’ll know them the moment they speak,” his mother told him one evening as she adjusted the cuff of his tiny dress shirt before another charity gala. “Isn’t that exciting?”

Tim looked down at his wrist.

That’s mine

“I guess.”

His mother laughed softly. “You don’t sound very excited.”

Tim shrugged. At eight years old, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel.

Soulmates mattered. Everyone knew that.

His classmates talked about theirs constantly.

Some compared phantom aches from their shared-pain bonds. Others spent recess imagining how their lives would be together.

Tim listened more than he spoke.

He preferred facts. Questions. Patterns.

How could words know who they belonged to before either person was born? Were they predetermined? Did people still have choices? What happened if soulmates never met?

His teachers rarely had answers.

His parents were usually too busy to discuss it.

The Drakes loved him. Tim knew they did. But love and presence weren’t always the same thing. His father spent most of his time working. His mother traveled constantly. Some months, he saw them more in framed photos scattered around the house than in person.

The manor was always full of staff and tutors and carefully planned schedules, yet somehow felt impossibly empty.

Tim grew used to eating dinner with adults paid to be there.

He learned early how to entertain himself.

Books, puzzles, documentaries, the small television in his room, where he rewatched recordings of the Flying Graysons until he knew every movement by heart.

People left. That was simply another fact of life.

His parents always came home eventually, but there was always another trip. Another meeting. Another promise of next week.

Sometimes, late at night, Tim would trace the letters on his wrist with his thumb and wonder.

That’s mine

Possessive. Confident.

The opposite of everything Tim felt.

Whoever they were, they sounded like someone who knew exactly what they wanted.

Someone who would point at him without hesitation and say, Mine.

The thought warmed something quiet inside his chest.

Maybe one day there would be someone who chose him first. Someone who stayed.

“Timothy!”

He glanced up from his wrist. His mother’s assistant stood in the doorway.

“Your parents are leaving for the airport.”

Tim slipped his sleeve back down. “Okay.” He followed the familiar route downstairs.

His father kissed the top of his head absentmindedly while checking his watch. His mother promised she’d bring him something back from Singapore.

Three weeks, this time. Maybe four.

“We love you, sweetheart.”

Tim smiled because he knew he was supposed to. “I love you too.”

Then the front doors closed behind them. The house settled into silence.

Tim looked down at his wrist.

That’s mine

Someday, he thought, he’d meet the person those words belonged to.

Someday, there would be someone who wouldn’t leave.

He had no way of knowing that in less than a year, standing on a crowded beach with salt in the air and sand clinging to his toes, he’d hear those exact words spoken aloud.

Or that he would spend the rest of his life trying to find them again.

Everyone had soulmates.

You grew up with the knowledge the same way you grew up knowing the sky was blue and the ocean was deep.

It simply was.

Some people shared pain. Others shared dreams or emotions or marks or memories.

Your soulmate had words.

Four of them, written in dark script along the inside of your wrist.

Can I see that?

Your dad had laughed the first time you asked what they meant.

“I don’t know, Bub. That’s the fun part.”

You traced the letters with your fingertip. “Do you think they’re nice?”

“I think,” he said, setting down the book he’d been reading, “that someone who asks permission before touching your things probably has good manners.”

You considered that very seriously. That sounded nice. Most things about soulmates sounded nice.

You didn’t think about it much. Your soulmate existed somewhere in the world. Eventually, you’d meet them.

Until then, there were more important things to worry about.

Like whether you could convince dad to cut the crusts off your sandwiches. Or whether the stray cat behind your building would finally let you pet it. Or if you’d be allowed to stay up past your bedtime to watch Cartoon Network.

Life was small in the way childhood always was.

Warm hands on your shoulders. Stories before bed. The magical fairies who always put your favorite snacks in your bag. Someone waiting for you after school.

You never doubted that you were loved. Not once.

Even when your dad got busy. Even when money was tight. Even when life became messy in all the ordinary ways life tended to.

You were never alone.

So while other children treated soulmates like missing pieces, you thought of yours more like a surprise waiting to happen.

Someone to look forward to. Who would eventually become important. But not yet. For now, your world was made up of smaller certainties.

The comfort of home. The sound of laughter from the kitchen. The warmth of sunlight spilling across your bedroom floor. And the beach.

You loved the beach.

Especially during summer.

The wind carried the sharp scent of salt through the air as waves crashed against the shore in a rhythm you could never quite predict.

Dad sat further back beneath a striped umbrella with a book open in his lap.

Every so often, he looked up to make sure you were still nearby.

You always were.

You darted along the shoreline barefoot, collecting seashells and smooth pieces of sea glass in a small plastic bucket.

The ocean foam chased your feet. Seagulls cried overhead. Children laughed nearby.

Everything felt bright.

A stronger gust of wind swept across the beach. Something light slipped from your hands and tumbled away across the sand.

You gasped.

Then immediately took off after it, your laughter carried away by the ocean breeze.

Tim almost said no when his mother asked.

Not because he didn't want to go, but cause experience had taught him not to get too excited.

Plans changed. Flights got moved forward. Meetings ran long. Emergencies happened.

He'd learned years ago that disappointment stung less when he expected it.

So when Janet Drake appeared in the doorway of the study where he'd been working through a puzzle book and said, "Your father and I have the whole weekend free," Tim had looked up suspiciously.

"The whole weekend?"

His father leaned against the doorframe behind her, smiling. "The whole weekend."

No phones. No assistants. No business dinners. Just the three of them.

Tim waited for the catch.

There wasn't one.

"Anywhere you want to go," his mother promised. "Your choice."

For a moment, Tim considered museums. The aquarium. The planetarium. Then he thought about summer heat and salty air and waves crashing against the shore.

"The beach," he decided.

His parents exchanged a surprised look.

"The beach?" his father repeated.

Tim nodded.

He'd only been a handful of times before, always during business trips when his parents could spare an hour or two.

He liked it. The patterns of the waves. The seashells hidden in the sand. The endless horizon stretching farther than he could see.

Mostly, he liked that people stayed at the beach. No one seemed in a hurry there.

"Then the beach it is."

True to their word, they left early the next morning.

The drive felt strange in the best way. His mother sang quietly along to the radio. His father let Tim pick the music. Nobody checked their watches. Nobody took business calls. For once, Tim had their full attention.

The feeling settled warm and unfamiliar in his chest.

By the time they reached the coast, the sun sat high overhead.

The beach was crowded.

Children raced through the surf. Couples crowded beneath colorful umbrellas. The air smelled like sunscreen and salt.

His parents set up their chairs a short distance from the water.

His mother pressed sunscreen into his hands with strict instructions to reapply every few hours.

His father handed him a towel for swimming.

Tim smiled.

Then headed toward the shoreline. The ocean foam curled around his ankles as he walked.

He searched carefully through the wet sand, studying each shell before deciding whether it was worth keeping.

Behind him, he could hear his parents talking softly.

Every so often, he glanced back to make sure they were still there.

They always were.

A sudden gust of wind swept across the beach.

Something colorful tumbled through the air a few feet ahead of him.

A small shovel.

Tim moved before he thought about it, stepping forward and catching it before another gust could carry it away.

He turned it over in his hands. Bright plastic swayed lazily in the sea breeze.

Then he heard a voice behind him.

"That's mine!"

The world stopped.

His breath caught. Heat rushed through his body so suddenly it made him dizzy.

Slowly, impossibly slowly, Tim looked down.

The words on the inside of his wrist burned.

That's mine

Every sound around him faded beneath the rushing in his ears.

He knew those words. He'd traced them countless times. Dreamed about them. Wondered about them. And now they belonged to a voice. To a person.

Tim turned around and saw you.

You stood a few feet away, slightly out of breath from running, your bucket swinging from one hand.

You were younger than him. Seven, maybe.

Sand clung to your knees, your hair messy from the wind, and there was a tiny gap where one of your front teeth had recently fallen out.

You looked completely ordinary.

And somehow, you were the most important person Tim had ever seen.

You frowned when he didn’t say anything. “Um… my shovel?”

Right. The shovel.

Tim handed it back with shaking fingers.

Then, before he could lose his nerve, he blurted out the question you’d imagined hearing for years.

“Can I see that?”

Your eyes widened. Then, almost immediately, your gaze dropped to your own wrist.

Tim followed it.

When you looked back up at him, confusion and wonder mixed across your face.

Slowly, you held out your arm.

His words.

His exact words.

Tim stared. His soulmate. He’d found them.

You stared at him with equal fascination. “You’re my soulmate?” The question came out small.

Tim felt something inside his chest loosen for the first time in his life. “Yeah,” he whispered.

You grinned. Just like that. No hesitation or uncertainty. Just simply joy.

“Cool.”

Cool. As though the entire universe hadn’t shifted beneath his feet.

Like you hadn’t just become the answer to every question he’d ever asked late at night while tracing words on his wrist.

Your excitement was immediate and uncomplicated. Tim envied that.

Before he could think of what to say next, an adult voice called your name from further down the beach.

You waved in their direction.

“My dad’s over there!”

Tim glanced toward the striped worn out umbrella and the man watching the two of you with open curiosity.

You turned back to him. “Want to play?”

The answer should have been obvious. Still, Tim had never been asked that question with such easy sincerity before.

He nodded. “Okay.”

And somehow, that single word changed everything.

The two-year age gap disappeared within minutes.

You talked enough for both of you, filling every quiet moment with stories while Tim listened intently.

You showed him the smooth sea glass you’d collected.

He taught you how to tell the difference between oyster shells and clam shells.

You built sprawling sandcastles connected by winding trenches that the tide eventually claimed.

You chased waves until your shorts were soaked.

You buried his feet in the sand.

He let you.

When seagulls stole one of your crackers, you laughed so hard you nearly fell over.

Tim found himself laughing too. Really laughing. Not the polite smiles he wore at galas. Not the careful amusement he showed adults. Something warm and bright spilled through him every time you smiled at him. Like sunlight after weeks of rain.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, he didn’t feel lonely.

It was strange. How someone he’d only known for a few hours could make the world feel different. Like he’d spent his entire life holding his breath without realising it. And now, sitting beside you in the sand while you proudly displayed a misshapen seashell you’d declared lucky, Tim finally exhaled.

This was what everyone talked about when they talked about soulmates. Not destiny. Not marks. Not magic. This.

The feeling that you’d found someone who fit beside you so naturally that being apart suddenly made no sense at all.

You looked up at him and smiled.

Tim smiled back.

Mine, he thought.

For the first time in his life, Tim knew exactly what he wanted.

And for the first time in his life, he believed he could have it.

→←↓↑

The sun began to sink lower in the sky far too quickly.

Tim noticed because your father stood from his chair and started packing away towels.

No. No, it couldn’t be that late already.

You were still explaining your very serious theory that seagulls were secretly spies.

“We have to go soon,” your dad called.

You looked up, your face immediately falling. “Aww.”

Something uncomfortable twisted in Tim’s chest.

“Can we stay a little longer?” you asked hopefully.

Your dad checked his watch and shook his head apologetically. “We still have to drive back.”

You sighed dramatically before turning back to Tim. “I guess I have to go.”

The words hit harder than they should have. Tim’s eyes dropped to your wrist.

Can I see that?

Then to his own.

That’s mine

Proof.

Even if you left, the words would stay. You couldn’t disappear completely. Soulmates always found each other. Everyone knew that. His mother had told him so.

You stood, brushing sand from your shorts. “Can we see each other again?”

“Yes,” Tim answered immediately. Too quickly. His cheeks warmed.

Your smile returned instantly. “Okay!”

Of course you would. You were soulmates. That was how this worked.

Tim stood too, suddenly aware that he didn’t know your last name. Or your phone number. Or where you lived.

Panic flickered briefly beneath his ribs. “We should-”

“Timothy.”

His mother waved from several yards away. “We need to get going soon.”

Not yet.

Please, not yet.

He looked back at you. Your father had already gathered your things.

Adults were always in a hurry.

The thought came suddenly and irrationally.

Adults ruined everything.

“Can I have your number?” Tim asked.

You blinked. “My what?”

Right. You were seven.

Your dad laughed as he walked over. “I don’t think they know our number by heart.”

Heat crawled up Tim’s neck. Of course you didn’t.

Think.

Addresses. Last names. Anything.

“Maybe we can write letters!” you suggested brightly.

Your father smiled. “That’s a good idea.”

Relief rushed through Tim so hard his knees felt weak.

Yes. Letters. Of course.

Your father knelt beside you. “Why don’t you get something to write on?”

You nodded enthusiastically and ran back toward the umbrella.

Tim turned to his parents, excitement bubbling in his chest so fiercely it almost hurt.

His mother was smiling.

His father looked amused.

“Soulmates, huh?” Jack asked softly.

Tim couldn’t stop smiling.

“Yeah.”

His mother squeezed his shoulder. “We’re happy for you, sweetheart.”

Everything felt right. Perfect. As if the universe had finally clicked into place.

You returned moments later with a purple marker and a wrinkled napkin.

Tim carefully wrote down his home address. Double-checked it twice, then handed you the marker.

You copied yours beneath it in large, uneven letters. Your handwriting tilted crookedly across the paper.

Tim thought it was the most important thing he’d ever held.

You tore the napkin in half.

One for you.

One for him.

Insurance.

Smart.

His soulmate was smart.

“I’ll write first,” you promised.

Tim folded the paper carefully and tucked it into the pocket of his shorts. “I’ll write back.”

You grinned.

“Deal.”

Then your father called your name again.

This time, you couldn’t delay. You waved at him. Then at Tim.

“Bye, Tim!”

His chest squeezed painfully. “Bye.”

You ran back toward your dad.

Halfway there, you turned around one last time and waved again.

Tim waved back immediately.

Only when you disappeared into the crowd did he lower his hand.

The beach suddenly felt quieter. Emptier. But it was okay. Because he had your address.

You’d write first. Then he’d write back. And this wouldn’t be goodbye.

Soulmates always found each other. Everyone knew that.

Tim pressed a hand over the pocket holding your half of the napkin.

The paper crackled softly beneath his palm. Safe.

Everything was going to be okay.

He had no way of knowing that by the time he sent his first letter, your family would already be gone.

No forwarding address. No phone number. Nothing.

Just two words inked onto his skin.

And the memory of a summer afternoon that would define the rest of his life.

The Batcave was quiet at three in the morning.

Not quite silent. Computers still hummed softly. Monitors cast blue light across polished metal surfaces. Somewhere overhead, water dripped steadily through ancient stone.

Most people would have called the hour late. Tim called it productive.

A half-empty coffee cup sat forgotten beside his keyboard.

Three different cases waited on adjacent screens.

An unsolved string of robberies. A League of Assassins weapons shipment. A missing persons report.

Tim ignored all of them.

Instead, he stared at a photograph taken twelve years ago.

The image quality was terrible. The edges were worn from use, the colors faded by time.

Two children sat cross-legged in the sand beside a lopsided castle.

A nine-year-old Tim grinned openly at the camera. The seven-year-old beside him was laughing.

Tim had memorised every pixel.

He knew exactly where the sunlight hit your face. Knew the shape of your smile. Knew the tiny crack running through the plastic bucket sitting between you.

The original photo lived in a fireproof safe upstairs.

This was one of the digital copies. One of hundreds.

His fingers drifted to his wrist.

That’s mine

The words had never faded.

Not after his mother’s death. Not after his father’s funeral. Not after becoming Robin. Not after being pushed into Red Robin. Not after years of searching.

They remained as dark and certain as the day he’d first heard them.

Proof that you existed. That you were still out there.

Tim had built entire investigations from less.

Over the years, he’d searched for you with a determination that bordered on insanity.

School records. Property databases. Archived census information. Social media. Facial recognition software. The Batcomputer.

Every new technology became another opportunity. Every dead end became another reason to keep looking.

He’d found international criminals more easily than he’d found you.

It shouldn’t have been possible.

But all he’d ever had was a nickname, a childhood address, and a photograph.

The apartment listed on the napkin had been empty by the time his first letter arrived.

Moved. No forwarding address.

The landlord hadn’t remembered where.

Your father’s phone number had been disconnected within the year.

After that, the trail vanished.

You vanished. Just like everyone else.

Tim pressed his thumb against the words on his wrist, digging in hard enough to sting. The area was crowded with thick, old scars, but the words were still clear. Even when things were at their worst, he’d never dared to slice through the letters.

Across the cave, laughter echoed from the stairs.

Dick. Jason. Damian.

Family.

People who stayed. Mostly.

Tim minimised the photo before any of them could walk over and see.

He’d made rhe mistake once.

Dick had found him at sixteen, sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor surrounded by maps and newspaper clippings.

“What’re you working on?”

Tim had frozen for a second too long and Dick had seen the picture. Seen the soulmate mark. The pure desperation.

Tim still remembered the concern in his brother’s voice. “You know they’ll come back into your life eventually, right?”

Tim hadn’t answered. Because that wasn’t what scared him. Finding you had never been the problem. Losing you again was.

And what if, after all these years, you met Dick first? Dick, with his effortless charm and easy smiles.

What if you met Jason? Jason, who filled every room he walked into.

What if you met Damian? Brilliant. Confident. Unapologetically himself.

Fuck.

Tim rubbed a hand over his face. The thoughts were irrational. He knew that.

You were soulmates. His soulmate.

His.

The universe had written your first words onto his skin before either of you were born.

Still, the fear remained. Because soulmates weren’t guarantees.

He’d seen enough failed bonds to know that. People walked away from soulmates all the time. People chose other people. People left.

The words on his wrist proved destiny.

They didn’t prove love.

His computer chimed softly. A notification. Another failed search parameter.

Tim closed it without reading.

He’d check again tomorrow. Run new algorithms. Cross-reference new databases. Keep looking.

He always kept looking.

Because somewhere out there, you still carried four words on your wrist.

Words he’d spoken before he knew how much they would matter.

Words that had become the center of his entire life.

Can I see that?

You probably traced them absentmindedly while waiting in line for coffee. Probably laughed when people asked about them. Maybe you told the beach story sometimes. Maybe you didn’t remember it at all.

The thought hollowed him out.

He remembered everything.

The sound of your laugh. The way you buried his feet in the sand. The gap between your front teeth. The way you’d turned around to wave at him one last time.

He remembered because he’d never stopped needing to.

Because forgetting had never even been an option.

Tim opened the pic again. Zoomed in, just a little. As if getting closer to the screen could somehow bridge twelve years.

“I’ll find you,” he whispered into the empty cave.

The promise was soft. Certain. The same way those words had always been.

He’d spent more than half his life searching. And Tim Drake was not someone prone to giving up.

University wasn’t anything like you’d expected.

Everyone had promised it would be the best years of your life.

Mostly, it was just busy.

Assignments piled up faster than you could finish them. Your sleep schedule was held together by caffeine and wishful thinking. Half your meals came from the campus café because grocery shopping required a level of organisation you simply didn’t possess.

Still, you liked it. You liked the freedom. The independence. The way nobody cared if you wore the same hoodie three days in a row.

Your world had become pleasantly ordinary.

Evening lectures. Study groups. Late-night takeout with friends. Dinner with your dad every Sunday evening.

Life moved forward in small, comfortable routines.

Soulmates fit somewhere inside that routine. Not at the centre of it. Just… there. A fact of life. An eventuality.

You’d never been one of those people who obsessed over their soulmate mark.

Maybe it was because your bond wasn’t particularly unusual. Words were rare, sure, but not unheard of.

Or maybe it was because the words themselves didn’t tell you much.

Can I see that?

People asked about them all the time. Friends in high school had theories.

Maybe your soulmate worked in museums. Maybe they were an artist. Maybe they were just really nosy.

You usually laughed and changed the subject. Because the truth was, you didn’t know.

You’d heard the words once. Apparently.

You remembered flashes of a beach. A boy. Older than you, maybe.

The memory shifted every time you tried to hold onto it.

Childhood was like that.

Important moments blurred around the edges until you weren’t sure whether you truly remembered them or had simply heard the story too many times.

Your dad remembered more than you did.

Every few years, he’d bring it up with a fond smile.

“Remember when you met your soulmate at the beach?”

You always laughed. “Not really.”

His expression turned wistful every time. “You were inseparable all day.”

You believed him. You just couldn’t remember. Not properly. There were no photos. No letters. No evidence beyond four words inked onto your skin.

Sometimes you wondered if your soulmate remembered. Or if they’d forgotten too.

The thought never upset you.

Life was busy. If they were meant to come back into your life, they would.

You traced the words on your wrist absentmindedly as you sat outside the library, waiting for your next class to start.

Can I see that?

Around you, campus buzzed with life. Students hurried between lectures. Someone laughed nearby. A group passed carrying redbulls and complaining about an upcoming exam.

Your phone buzzed. A message from your dad.

Don’t forget dinner this weekend.

You smiled despite yourself.

I’m nineteen. I won’t forget the dinner we plan every week.

The typing bubble appeared instantly.

You’ll still be my kid when you’re ninety.

Shaking your head, you slipped your phone back into your pocket.

You had a lecture in ten minutes. An essay due next week. Plans with friends on Friday. A whole life unfolding in front of you.

You stood and adjusted your bag over your shoulder.

Completely unaware that, less than twenty miles away, someone was running your photograph through facial recognition software.

Unaware that someone had spent the last twelve years searching for you.

That somewhere beneath Gotham, a man who knew the exact shape of your childhood smile was whispering your name to himself like a prayer.

To you, your soulmate was a pleasant mystery.

To Tim Drake, you had become an obsession.

←↓↑→

The Batcomputer chimed again. A different sound this time.

A match.

Tim froze.

The notification sat in the corner of the screen for almost three full seconds before he trusted himself enough to breathe.

Possible facial recognition match found.

Similarity: 91.3%

His chair scraped violently across the cave floor. “No…” The word barely made it out.

His fingers were already moving. Open. Enhance. Cross-reference.

The photo filled the monitor.

Not the child from the beach. An adult. Older. Nineteen.

Your jaw had sharpened. Your hair was different. You’d grown into your features the way children always did.

But your smile..

His heart stopped. It was you. It had to be. The same eyes. The same crooked little smile he’d memorised from a photograph so faded he’d reconstructed parts of it by hand.

He didn’t realise he was crying until a tear landed on the keyboard.

“I found you…” The words cracked apart in his throat.

Twelve years of dead ends. Of wondering if he’d imagined that day on the beach.

And here you were. Real.

Tim laughed. It sounded dangerously close to a sob. “You’re okay.”

His hands shook so violently he mistyped twice trying to open the source.

A public Instagram account. Must’ve been someone else’s, since you’d been tagged.

A university friend, judging from the captions.

He clicked.

More photos. You outside a café. You in the library. You wearing an oversized hoodie while holding a coffee nearly as big as your head.

You’d always hated crusts. You pushed your sleeves over your hands. You still smiled with your whole face. Every tiny detail hit him like another heartbeat.

He couldn’t stop looking. Couldn’t stop smiling.

“I found you.”

You looked… Happy.

His chest hurt.

You’d grown up. Without him. Without a single letter. Without remembering him.

Guilt settled somewhere deep inside his ribs.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I couldn’t find you sooner.

I’m here now.

I’ll never lose you again.

He clicked the next post. His smile disappeared. You stood beside someone about your age. Their arms wrapped around your shoulders. They leaned over to kiss your cheek.

You were making the most exaggerated expression of disgust imaginable, nose scrunched, lips pulled away dramatically while the caption underneath read:

Admit it, you love me ♡

Anyone else would’ve laughed.

Tim knew it wasn’t romantic. He could see that. He understood body language. Read micro-expressions. Built psychological profiles from less. They were friends.

Just friends.

But then why were they touching you?

His breathing slowed. The cave suddenly felt much colder.

Their hand rested so naturally against your shoulder. Like they’d done it before.

They’d probably hugged you. Sat beside you. Heard you laugh. Been there while you were becoming.. you.

They’d lived twelve years Tim had been denied. Twelve years that should have been his.

Jealousy wasn’t the right word. It felt uglier than that. Hungrier.

Tim rested his forehead against his clasped hands. “That’s selfish.” His voice came out hoarse.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Of course you hadn’t. You deserved friends. You deserved people who loved you. People who looked after you. You deserved everything. He should be grateful someone had been there while he hadn’t.

He should.

…

But why did it feel like something inside him was being torn apart?

Why couldn’t he stop staring at the place their lips touched your cheek?

Why did he want to beat-

No.

Tim squeezed his eyes shut hard enough to hurt.

Don’t think that. They’re important to you. If they’re important to you…

Then they’re important to me.

The words sounded rehearsed. Like he was trying to convince himself.

Another notification blinked in the corner of the monitor.

“Replacement patrol assigned.”

Followed almost immediately by another from Bruce.

Where are you?

Tim didn’t even look. His eyes never left your face.

“I found you.” This time, the whisper wasn’t joyful. It was reverent. Almost prayerful.

“Please..”

His thumb brushed lightly across your smiling face on the screen.

“Please still want me.”

Months passed before he let himself stand within twenty metres of you.

Not because he lacked the opportunity. He just couldn’t risk ruining it.

You deserved a proper reunion. He’d rehearsed it hundreds of times.

“Hi.”

Too casual.

“You probably don’t remember me…”

Too pathetic.

“We met once, years ago.”

Too unbelievable.

So he waited. And watched.

He learnt your timetable before he ever learnt the sound of your adult voice.

Tuesday lectures started at one thirty. You always arrived a few minutes early.

You bought the same coffee every Wednesday, except during exam weeks, when you switched to doubles without even realising you were doing it.

You texted your friends while waiting for pedestrian crossings.

You hummed when you cooked.

You don’t lock your front window.

Tim fixed that after you went to sleep.

The first time he’d climbed through your garden to latch it from the inside, he’d almost laughed at himself.

This is insane. He knew that. He also knew the suburb’s burglary statistics.

The window stayed locked after that.

You never noticed.

Good.

You weren’t supposed to.

He never took anything. That would’ve made it real.

Instead he’d straighten the photo frame you’d knocked crooked. Move your forgotten wallet a little further from the edge of the kitchen bench. Replace the batteries in your smoke alarm after it chirped once at three in the morning.

Tiny enough things that you might’ve assumed you’d done yourself.

He wasn’t trying to change your life.

He was only… smoothing the edges. Helping. Protecting.

The files on the Batcomputer grew thicker.

Medical history. University records. Favourite takeaway. Allergies. Blood type. Emergency contacts. Your friends.

Every single one received their own folder.

It’s not like Tim distrusted them. It’s just that if one of them ever needed help getting to you, he wanted to know before they did.

He read their social media. Their public records. Their routines. Who they dated. Whether they drank too much. Whether they drove distracted. Whether they’d ever hurt anyone. If they were kind to you.

Tim found himself quietly grateful.

If they made you cry, he’d spend the rest of the night staring at their name.

His fingers hovering over keyboards. Databases. Background checks. One command. He could dismantle someone’s entire life before sunrise.

He never pressed Enter.

Because that wasn’t what you would’ve wanted. And your happiness mattered more than his anger. It always would.

←↓↑→

Bruce noticed first.

“You’ve stopped sleeping.”

“I’m busy.”

“You haven’t been running facial recognition software anymkre.”

Silence.

Bruce sighed. “You found them.”

Tim didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

Bruce’s expression softened for only a second. “I’m glad they’re alive.”

“So am I.”

Another silence.

“You haven’t spoken to them.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Tim looked back towards the glowing monitor. Your face smiled back from a candid photo one of your friends had uploaded that afternoon.

What if you looked at him and didn’t remember? What if twelve years had turned him into a stranger?

He could survive broken bones. Gunshots. The Joker. He wasn’t sure he could survive watching confusion replace your smile.

So instead, he watched from afar. Close enough to stop anything bad from reaching you. Far enough that you never had to know there had been danger at all.

If someone followed you home, they found another route. If your tire went flat, roadside assistance somehow arrived before you’d even finished pulling over. If your wallet went missing, it appeared at the nearest police station before you’d cancelled your cards.

Tim preferred it that way. Because heroes weren’t supposed to ask for thanks.

And if protecting you was the only place he still belonged, then that was enough.

It had to be.

Because wanting anything more felt unforgivably selfish.

Some nights, though, when he watched your bedroom light switch off, he’d rest two fingers against the computer screen.

“I miss you.” A tiny, tired smile.

“You don’t even know me.” His voice cracked. “But I know you.”

He swallowed hard. “And that’s enough. It has to be.”

You’d always considered yourself a pretty lucky person.

Not lottery-winning lucky. More ‘weird little coincidences’ lucky.

Like the time your car decided to die halfway home after a late shift.

You’d barely managed to pull onto the shoulder before an RACQ van rolled around the corner.

The bloke had laughed.

“Perfect timing.”

You’d laughed too. “What are the odds?”

Or when you’d realised you’d left your wallet at the café.

You’d panicked for all of thirty seconds before the staff smiled and held it up.

“Someone dropped it into us.”

No cash missing. Cards untouched. You’d gone home convinced there were still decent people in the world.

Then there was the time your smoke alarm had stopped making that awful chirping noise before you’d gotten around to buying batteries.

You assumed you’d imagined hearing it.

Then the dodgy latch on your bedroom window had somehow started working again.

Finally.

About bloody time.

You made a mental note to thank your landlord.

You forgot.

Life just happened like that. Little inconveniences solving themselves. Disasters never fully becoming disasters.

You figured everyone had stories like yours.

Didn’t they?

→↓←↑

“You are,” Your friend declared, pointing a chip at you across the table, “the universe’s favourite.”

“Oh, piss off.”

“I’m serious.”

“You spilled an entire iced latte over your assignment yesterday.”

He crossed his arms, dropping the chip into his mouth. “And then the professor gave us a forty-eight hour extension.”

“That was for everyone.”

“Exactly.” He grinned.

“You just benefit the most.”

You rolled your eyes. “I think you’re confusing luck with chronic incompetence.”

“I think,” he replied, “you’ve got some weird guardian angel following you around.”

You snorted so hard your drink nearly came out your nose.

“Imagine.”

“Oi, don’t laugh. Nan swears everyone gets one.”

“If mine exists, they’re exhausted.”

“They’re probably on stress leave.”

You both laughed until people started looking over.

Sometimes, though, there were moments.

You’d catch yourself glancing over your shoulder after leaving uni.

It always felt like someone had said your name. But there was never anyone there.

Just people walking. Cars passing. The breeze.

You’d shake it off.

Your friends called you observant.

You noticed when someone changed shampoo. When lecturers looked more tired than usual. When strangers were having bad days.

But somehow, you’d never notice the black motorbike parked half a block away. Never notice that it wasn’t always the same bike. That the familiar silhouette perched on rooftops when you walked home after evening classes. Or the pair of blue eyes lifting from a rooftop scope the second you glanced upwards. Because every time your gaze drifted a little too close, he was already gone.

Because why would you? No one expects to be the centre of somebody else’s universe.

Not without knowing it.

Somewhere in Gotham, Tim closed another file. Today’s entry was short.

Ate lunch.

Laughed with friends.

Nearly got hit by a cyclist while reading a text.

Smiled twenty-three times.

His lips curved despite himself. “Good.”

He closed the document. Another day where nothing bad had happened to you. Another perfect day.

Exactly as it should be.

Tim wasn’t looking for anything in particular. He never was anymore. Watching you had become as habitual as checking the weather before patrol or reviewing overnight reports from the Titans.

One monitor displayed Wayne Enterprises’ quarterly projections while another quietly cycled through public posts from accounts you’d been tagged in over the past twenty-four hours.

One of your friend’s account refreshed.

A new post. Six photos.

The first was all of you crowded around a tiny restaurant table littered with empty plates and cocktail glasses, your smile wide enough to crinkle your eyes.

The second was a blurry group selfie that looked like it’d been taken after far too many attempts.

The third showed someone holding up printed boarding passes.

The fourth made his stomach tighten.

It was you, sitting cross-legged on somebody’s lounge room floor with travel brochures scattered around your knees. You were laughing so hard your head had tipped backwards, completely unaware of the camera.

The caption was simple.

Can’t believe we’re finally doing it. Goodbye Gotham. Next stop: Europe!! ✈️

The comments underneath were worse.

You’re actually leaving us.

Don’t forget us when you’re famous overseas.

Still can’t believe you’re moving.

Going to miss you so much.

Tim reread that last one. Then the one before it. Then the caption again.

His cursor hovered over the screen.

“…Moving?” The word sounded foreign in his own voice.

He opened your calendar. Nothing.

Your university timetable. Nothing.

Your employment records. Nothing.

He searched airline databases. Nothing.

He frowned. That didn’t make sense.

If you were emigrating, there would’ve been paperwork. Visa applications. Employment sponsorship. Rental listings. Passport activity beyond an ordinary holiday.

Unless you’d only decided recently. If you’d kept it private. If he’d missed something.

Tim’s fingers were already moving before he’d consciously decided to investigate.

Searches multiplied across the Batcomputer. Passport usage. Banking activity. University enrolment. Rental history. Government databases. Public records. Flight manifests.

The cave filled with the quiet clatter of keys.

Hours passed unnoticed. Eventually, one search returned a result.

Three return tickets. Departure in eleven days. Return scheduled just over three weeks later.

Tim stared at the itinerary for a long moment. Three weeks. Not forever. Just three weeks.

His shoulders sagged so abruptly it almost hurt.

He laughed once under his breath, embarrassed by the sheer force of the relief flooding through him. “You idiot…”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “They’re coming back.”

Of course you were.

He’d panicked over a holiday.

His heartbeat gradually settled.

He closed the flight information. Then his eyes drifted back to the Instagram post.

Goodbye Gotham.

Going to miss you.

Still can’t believe you’re moving.

They’d all thought it looked permanent too.

He wasn’t stupid. The wording was misleading. Anyone could’ve misunderstood.

But the thought of you leaving for twenty-one days was unfathomable. You’d be where every system he’d quietly built around your safety became useless.

Where there only needed to be one delayed ambulance, drunk driver, pickpocket in the wrong place, one stupid accident.. and he would be exactly where he’d been twelve years ago.

Too late.

His fingers folded together beneath his chin.

He remembered another disappearance. Another day he’d told himself he’d find you tomorrow.

Tomorrow had become twelve years.

He’d promised himself that would never happen again.

Slowly, almost absent-mindedly, he reopened your file. Thousands of pages. Medical records. Class schedules. Emergency contacts. Favourite cafés. The names of everyone you’d ever trusted. Months of observation. Years of restraint.

He looked at the date stamped across the oldest folder. All this time waiting, for what?

Permission?

A perfect reunion?

Some magical moment where you’d look at him and everything would make sense?

What a ridiculous fantasy.

You didn’t remember him. You never would. Not unless he made you.

He had mistaken absence for kindness. Distance for love.

He’d stood outside your life for months, convincing himself that watching you from the shadows was enough because it made you smile.

And where had that left him?

Watching another goodbye. Waiting for another disappearance. Still pretending he could survive it.

A quiet laugh escaped him. Ashamed. “I’ve been an idiot.” The words echoed through the empty cave.

He’d treated his own devotion like something shameful. Something to hide. As though loving you enough to dedicate every waking moment to your safety was a flaw instead of the truest thing he’d ever felt.

No one else loved you like this. No one else could.

Your friends loved the version of you they saw between lectures and dinners. Your family loved the child you’d once been. Tim loved every version.

The child on the beach. The teenager he’d reconstructed from scattered photographs. The adult who forgot to lock windows, who hummed while cooking, who laughed with your whole body when something was funny.

He loved the life you’d built without him. And perhaps that had been his mistake.

He’d mistaken love for spectatorship.

Love wasn’t standing fifty metres away making sure you got home safely. It wasn’t fixing broken latches in the middle of the night and leaving before sunrise. It wasn’t pretending he didn’t exist.

Love was being there.

His gaze drifted back to your smiling face.

“You’ve waited long enough,” he murmured.

For a moment, it almost sounded as though he was speaking to you. Then he smiled.

“No more.” The words weren’t a promise to himself. They were a decision.

He reached for his phone. For the first time in months, he wasn’t planning how to keep watching you.

He was planning how to finally walk into your life.

And this time, he wasn’t ever going to leave.

↑←→↓

The house had taken longer than he would’ve liked to build. Because nothing ever felt good enough.

Tim replaced every piece of furniture twice before he was satisfied. The mattress in the spare bedroom became a king-sized one after he remembered you tended to sleep diagonally whenever you had nowhere important to be the next morning. The kitchen cupboards were stocked with your favourite brands, each item selected with the quiet certainty of someone who had spent years memorising details you never realised you were giving away.

The coffee in the pantry was the same blend you bought every Wednesday.

The toothpaste in the bathroom was the brand you preferred.

The shampoo smelled exactly like the one you'd used six months ago before switching to something else.

You'd liked the old one better.

You just hadn't known it.

Fresh towels sat folded neatly on the shelves. Spare chargers waited beside every bed. Books you had once picked up in stores and put back down rested untouched on shelves already prepared for you.

Every room carried traces of you.

The wardrobe had been the hardest part.

Not expensive things. Not things he wanted. Things you would have chosen.

Soft cotton shirts. Oversized jumpers. Flannel pyjamas.

Comfortable clothes for quiet days at home.

A ridiculous pair of fluffy socks shaped like little sharks that you’d laughed at for almost five minutes in a department store before deciding they were “too expensive for socks”.

Tim had bought them the following afternoon.

There were plants in nearly every room because you’d once spent fifteen minutes helping a stranger rescue a dying fern from the clearance section at Bunnings.

Healthy, thriving ones.

Nothing in this house would be allowed to die. Not if he could help it.

Music speakers sat discreetly throughout the house.

A shelf waited half-finished in the study because you’d once mentioned you wished you knew how to build furniture yourself.

Tim had watched hours of woodworking tutorials that night.

Just in case you ever wanted to learn.

The entire house was filled with preparations for conversations that had never happened.

Future memories assembled in advance.

A life rehearsed over and over by a man who had spent too long alone.

The only parts that didn’t belong were the things that had never been negotiable.

The cameras. One in every room. Carefully hidden. The reinforced glass. The electronic locks. The steel shutters concealed inside the walls. The security system that could seal the entire house down in seconds.

The absence of anything sharp enough to become a weapon.

Tim stood in the middle of the lounge room long after everything was finished.

His gaze drifted slowly across the room.

The couch where you'd sit. The blanket folded over the armrest. The coffee mug already waiting in the cupboard. The spot beside him.

He turned slowly, searching for flaws.

His eyes landed on one of the cameras. A small black lens hidden in the corner.

His expression crumpled. "...I'm sorry." The apology came out quietly. Almost embarrassed.

"I know you'll hate these."

He stared at it for a long moment. As if he could already see the disappointment on your face. The fear. Anger. Betrayal.

His throat tightened.

"I know." His voice cracked slightly.

"I know you will."

His gaze dropped toward the front door.

Toward the locks. The barriers. The things that would keep you inside. The things that would keep you from leaving him.

His hand pressed against the wood.

"And those." The words barely escaped him.

"You'll think I'm a monster."

A small laugh escaped him. Broken and humourless.

The painful part was knowing that you'd be right.

His eyes burned. "You won't understand."

The house blurred slightly.

"You'll think this is about control."

His fingers tightened against the door. "It's not."

The lie sounded weak even to him. Because it was about control. Partly. But mostly it was about terror. The unbearable, suffocating terror of losing something he had never truly possessed.

"I just..." The words stopped. His throat worked.

He looked around the house again. At the rooms prepared for you. The meals he imagined cooking. The books waiting on shelves. The life built entirely around your absence. And suddenly the entire thing felt pathetic.

A shrine pretending to be a home. A love story with only one participant.

Tim swallowed hard.

"I tried doing it the right way." Years of restraint condensed into one broken sentence.

"I really did." His voice was barely audible.

"I waited."

For you to notice. For you to choose him. For one day to become the day. For years. Nothing.

His eyes closed. And for the first time since finishing the house, he looked genuinely miserable.

None of this felt like winning. It felt like surrender. The last desperate act of someone who had run out of ways to be patient.

His hand remained on the lock. As though he hated it. As though he needed it.

"I'll take them away."

The promise came quickly. Desperately. Like he needed you to hear it.

Not today.

Not tomorrow.

Not anytime soon.

But someday.

If you stayed.

If you smiled at him.

If you stopped looking at him like he was something frightening.

"If you trust me."

Airport security had never made you nervous before.

Annoyed, sure.

You’d complained about taking your shoes off often enough, rolled your eyes at the queue crawling forward centimetre by centimetre, and wondered more than once why your bag was always the one selected for a random inspection.

But nervous?

Not until a woman in a navy security uniform approached with an apologetic smile. “Excuse me?”

You looked up from your phone.

“Would you mind coming with me for a moment?”

Your stomach dropped. “..Sorry?”

“There are a couple of questions regarding your luggage.”

“My luggage?”

“It’ll only take a minute.”

Your friends exchanged confused looks.

“What happened?” one of them asked.

The woman simply smiled again. “It shouldn’t take long.”

That wasn’t exactly reassuring.

You followed anyway, trying to ignore the dozen increasingly ridiculous possibilities running through your head.

Had someone packed something into your suitcase?

The further you walked from the terminal, the quieter everything became. The constant announcements faded. The crowds disappeared.

Eventually, the woman stopped outside an unmarked door and opened it.

“Someone will be with you shortly.”

You stepped inside. The room looked more like an executive meeting room than airport security.

Dark timber. Leather chairs. A wall of monitors. A coffee machine in the corner.

And someone already waiting.

He stood the moment you entered.

For a second, your brain failed to process what you were looking at.

People that attractive belonged in advertisements. On giant billboards. In impossibly expensive campaigns designed by teams of professionals whose entire careers revolved around manufacturing beauty.

Not standing ten feet away. Not breathing. Not real.

He was tall enough to seem imposing without trying, dressed in a charcoal suit that looked less worn than sculpted onto him. The cut was perfect. Every line sharp. Every detail precise.

Yet somehow it wasn't the suit that drew your attention.

It was him.

Dark hair, slightly too long, falling across his forehead in a way that should have looked careless but somehow only made him more devastating to look at. It softened features that would otherwise have been almost unfairly severe.

His face looked like something an artist would've spent months trying to get right.

Strong jaw.

Straight nose.

Cheekbones sharp enough to catch the light.

Everything balanced so perfectly it bordered on irritating.

But it was his eyes that made it impossible to look away.

Blue.

Not the bright artificial blue magazines edited into existence.

Something deeper. Cooler. The colour of the sky just before a storm.

The kind of eyes people wrote poetry about when they ran out of better ideas.

And they were looking directly at you.

As though the moment you entered the room, everything else had ceased to matter.

Your pulse skipped.

This was ridiculous. You weren't sixteen. You weren't the type to lose your ability to function because an attractive man happened to exist in your vicinity.

And yet, there was something profoundly unfair about the way he carried himself.

The quiet confidence. The effortless posture. The controlled stillness that made every movement feel deliberate.

Even standing up from a chair somehow looked elegant. Like he'd spent his entire life accidentally making everyone else look clumsy by comparison.

Then your brain finally caught up. Recognition hit like a delayed collision.

You knew that face. Everyone knew that face.

Interviews. Magazine covers. Business journals. Wayne Enterprises.

"...Tim Drake?"

Something happened to his expression after you’d said it. A subtle shift.

The carefully composed businessman vanished for half a second.

Enough to reveal something underneath. Something startlingly human.

Relief.

His shoulders loosened almost imperceptibly. His gaze softened. And suddenly he looked less like the impossibly wealthy CEO you'd seen in magazines and more like a man who had been holding his breath for a very long time.

"Hi." His tone was lower than you expected. Warm. Gentle. The sort of voice that made people instinctively lean closer.

You found yourself staring again.

The newsletters had lied.

They captured the symmetry. The beauty. The impossible genetics. But they missed everything else.

The intelligence behind his eyes. The exhaustion buried beneath them. The strange sadness lingering at the edges of his smile. The tiny imperfections that somehow made him even worse. A faint crease near one cuff where he'd clearly adjusted his sleeve too many times. A loosened breath. The tension hidden beneath composure. Nervousness.

The realisation struck you so abruptly you almost laughed. Tim Drake looked nervous.

Which made absolutely no sense.

Men like Tim Drake weren't supposed to get nervous. Especially not around strangers. Yet there it was. Written in the subtle tightening of his jaw. The way his hands remained carefully still. The fractionally too-long pause before speaking.

As though meeting you mattered far more than it should. Far more than it possibly could.

Recognition fluttered strangely in your chest. An inexplicable feeling that you knew him.

That if you crossed the room and took his hand, it would fit.

You frowned at yourself.

What the hell was that?

“I’m sorry,” you laughed awkwardly. “This is probably a stupid question, but…”

Your eyes met his. For the briefest second, the entire room felt impossibly still.

“Have we met before?”

His breath caught.

As though the question alone had knocked the air from his lungs.

A thousand emotions crossed his face too quickly to name.

Hope. Relief. Grief. Love so overwhelming it almost looked painful.

Then he smiled. Small and beautiful. Heartbreakingly fragile.

“No.”

The answer came after a beat too long. “Not in a way you’d remember.”

You opened your mouth.

Before you could ask what that meant, a sharp, chemical smell drifted through the room.

Your head suddenly felt heavy.

You blinked hard.

The floor shifted beneath your feet.

“..What…”

Your knees threatened to give way. Strong hands caught you before you hit the ground.

Instinctively, you tried to pull away. You couldn’t. Your limbs refused to cooperate.

Panic surged through you.

“Hey-” Your voice came out slurred. “What.. did…”

The room blurred. You forced yourself to look up one last time.

Tim was already kneeling in front of you, one arm supporting your weight with impossible care, the other brushing your hair back from your face as though you were something precious enough to break.

The look on his face wasn’t triumphant nor cruel. It was devastated.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and his voice shook so badly it barely sounded like speech.

“I tried.”

His forehead rested against yours for the briefest moment. “I waited as long as I could.”

The last thing you saw before darkness swallowed everything was Tim Drake looking at you like a man who had finally reached heaven,

and hated himself for the path he’d taken to get there.

↑→↓←

The silence in the bedroom was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic, shallow sound of your breathing.

Tim sat on the edge of the mattress, his weight barely making a dent in the expensive linens.

His suit jacket discarded on the floor, his shirt unbuttoned halfway to reveal the tension in his chest. It was damp with sweat, clinging to the lean muscles of his back as he leaned into your space.

He looked wrecked. His hair was a mess, his eyes were bloodshot, and there was a frantic, starving look in them that made the air in the room feel thick. He looked like a man who had finally been allowed to touch the altar after years of kneeling in the dark.

He watched you. Not looking away even to blink.

His hand reached out, his fingers trembling as they made contact with your skin.

He started at your ankle, his touch light, almost hesitant, as if he expected you to bolt upright and scream the moment he touched you.

He traced the line of your leg, his thumb brushing over the softness of your calf, moving upward with a slow, agonising patience.

He wasn't just touching you; he was memorising you. He was verifying that you were solid, that you were warm, and that you were finally, truly, here.

When his hand reached your hip, his touch grew a little more firm. He slid his palm under the hem of your shirt, the heat of your skin seeping into his calloused fingertips.

He let his hand wander, trailing over the curve of your waist and the soft swell of your stomach. He moved with a desperate kind of reverence, his eyes fixed on where his hand met your flesh.

He leaned forward, his movements slow and deliberate, until he was hovering just above you.

He buried his face into the crook of your stomach, pressing his nose against the warmth of your skin. He took a long, shuddering breath, inhaling the scent of you. The soap you’d bought, the skin he’d dreamt of, the reality of you.

He stayed there for a long time, his forehead pressed against your abdomen, his breath warm against your skin.

He sounded broken, a low, jagged exhale escaping him every time he breathed you in. He gripped the fabric of your clothes, his knuckles turning white, as if he were terrified that if he let go, the entire room would dissolve and leave him standing in an empty house again.

He wasn't being careful anymore. He was greedy.

He let his hands wander upward, his thumbs tracing the line of your ribs, his touch heavy and insistent.

He watched the way your chest rose and fell, his eyes tracking the movement of your muscles with a terrifying, hungry focus. He was memorising the architecture of you.

Then, he lowered himself.

He didn't just lean in, he collapsed against you. He buried his face in the heat of your skin, his nose pressing hard into your chest, inhaling you with a sound that was half sob, half growl.

His mouth followed the path of his hands. He pressed hot, wet kisses along your side, his lips dragging over your skin with a desperate, uncoordinated hunger.

He moved lower, his face pressing into the dip of your waist, his breath hitching as he felt the warmth of you.

He was acting like a man possessed, his movements frantic yet strangely worshipful.

He shifted, his heavy thigh sliding between yours, forcing your legs apart to make room for him.

He was pressing himself against you, the hard, insistent length of him straining against the fabric of his trousers.

He reached down, his hand sliding lower, his fingers hooking into the waistband of your underwear.

He didn't hesitate. He slid his hand inside, his fingers seeking the heat of you. He wasn't being clinical, he was searching, his touch clumsy and urgent, his fingers trembling as they found you.

He let out a low, broken sound. A whimper when he finally made contact, the sound entirely too small for a boy of his stature.

He leaned up just enough to look at your face, his eyes dark and blown wide with a terrifying kind of devotion.

He looked pathetic.

Shaking, sweating, and completely at the mercy of someone who wasn't even awake to see him.

"You're so perfect," he whispered, his voice cracking. "It's not fair. It's not fucking fair."

He leaned back down, his mouth finding the sensitive skin of your inner thigh, his tongue tracing a wet, hot line that made his own body shudder. He was worshiping you, and he was doing it with the desperate, starving energy of a boy who knew he didn't deserve a single second of it.

He pulled back just an inch, his lips hovering a fraction above your skin. The heat from his mouth a stark contrast to the cool air of the room, but he was trembling with the effort of not sinking teeth into you.

He looked up at your face, his eyes searching yours even though he knew they were closed.

"I should stop," he whispered, the words tasting bitter on his tongue. "I should wait until you wake up. Until you can actually look at me."

But his hand didn't listen. His fingers were still buried deep in the waistband of your underwear, his thumb sweeping against your heat with a slow, rhythmic pressure that was meant to be soothing but felt entirely too hungry.

He watched your face, waiting for a frown or a groan, his heart hammering against his ribs so hard it felt like it might bruise.

He wanted to worship you properly, but he has also waited so long that he was practically starving to death.

With a shaky, defeated breath, he leaned down again, but he didn't go for your core this time.

Instead, he pressed his cheek against your thigh, his eyes closing as he let himself simply be near you.

He moved his hand in a steady, agonisingly slow motion, a gentle friction that was almost a tease. He wasn't trying to make you finish. He was just trying to feel the life in you, the pulse of your blood beneath his palm.

"I'll be good," he promised, his voice a wrecked, low murmur against your skin. "I'll be so good for you. Just.. let me stay like this for a little longer."

He let his hips grind weakly against yours, a desperate, uncoordinated movement that was more about seeking comfort than seeking pleasure.

He reached up with his free hand, his fingers tangling in your hair, pulling your head slightly toward him as if he could coax you into waking up just to tell him he was doing a good job.

He pressed a final, lingering kiss to the inside of your knee, his lips trembling.

"When you wake up," he breathed, his forehead resting against your hip, "everything will be different. I promise. I'll give you everything. Just.. don't leave me again."

↓→←↑

Consciousness returned in fragments.

The first thing you noticed was the weight on your mind. Everything felt slow, wrapped in thick cotton, every thought taking just a little too long to surface. Your eyelids were heavy enough that opening them felt like lifting something far larger than yourself.

The second thing you noticed was the silence.

No traffic. No voices outside. No distant hum of aeroplanes climbing into the sky. Just… Quiet.

Your eyes cracked open.

The ceiling above you wasn’t familiar.

Cream plaster. Dark timber beams. Soft morning light spilling through linen curtains that shifted lazily with the breeze.

For one impossible second, you wondered if you’d somehow slept through your holiday.

Then memories crashed back all at once.

Airport. Security. The room. Tim Drake.

Your body jerked upright. The room spun so violently you almost fell straight back onto the mattress.

A hand caught your shoulder before you could.

“Easy.”

You recoiled instinctively.

Tim immediately let go.

He stepped backwards so quickly it was almost clumsy, both hands lifting into the air like he was surrendering.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was hoarse.

“I just… you nearly hit your head.”

You stared. He looked different. Gone was the immaculate businessman from the airport.

He’d changed into a plain black jumper and loose track pants, sleeves shoved carelessly to his elbows. His hair looked like he’d run his hands through it a hundred times. Dark circles sat beneath eyes that hadn’t slept.

He looked exhausted. But he also looked terrified. Not of what he’d done.

Of you.

As though the expression on your face mattered more than the fact he’d just kidnapped someone.

“…Where am I?”

“My home.” The answer came quietly.

“Our home.” He sighed, taking his hand through his hair. “I should have said that. I meant our. Sorry.”

Your stomach twisted. “What?”

“I bought it years ago.”

He glanced around the room almost shyly. “I.. thought you’d like it.”

Silence settled between you. Then he laughed. Not because anything was funny. He sounded like he was about to cry.

“I know how insane that sounds.”

Your breathing quickened. “You kidnapped me.”

“Yes.”

“You drugged me.”

“…Yes.”

“My friends-”

“They’re safe.” The response came instantly.

“They think you missed your flight and decided to stay behind. They’ll worry for a while, but they’ll stop. I’ll make sure they’re alright.”

You stared at him. He wasn’t denying any of it. He wasn’t making excuses. Wasn’t pretending this was for your own good.

He simply stood there looking unbearably guilty.

“I know what this is.” His voice cracked. “I know what I am.”

His eyes dropped to the floor.

“I stopped trying to convince myself I wouldn’t do this a long time ago.”

He laughed again, quieter this time. “I just kept hoping I’d be stronger before it came to this.”

You looked towards the bedroom door. It wasn’t locked. You were almost certain of that.

He noticed.

“You can try.” His smile was small. Heartbreaking.

“I’ll stop you.”

The words weren’t threatening. They were apologetic.

“I’ll hate myself for it.”

Another shaky breath. “But I’ll still stop you.” His shoulders sagged. “I can’t lose you.”

You looked back at him. For the first time since waking, you really looked. His hands were shaking. His breathing wasn’t steady. His eyes were fixed on you with such desperate concentration it was almost painful to witness.

Then your gaze caught on his wrist. The sleeve of his jumper had ridden up. Black ink curved around the inside of his skin.

Two simple words.

That’s mine

Your stomach lurched. Without thinking, you looked down at your own wrist. To the words that had always stained your skin. Words you’d laughed about with your mates.

Can I see that?

Your fingers slowly brushed over the faded script.

Tim saw where you were looking. His entire body went still.

“So..” Your voice barely worked. “It was you.”

He closed his eyes. “Yeah.”

“You knew.”

“I’ve always known.”

“Since when?”

A long silence. “Since I was nine.”

You couldn’t breathe.

“I met you once.” His smile was impossibly soft.

“On Gotham Beach. You thought I was trying to steal your shovel.”

His eyes shimmered. “And then..” Very gently, almost reverently, he repeated the words that had altered both your lives. “‘That’s mine.’”

His gaze drifted to your wrist.

“I don’t think..” He swallowed. “…I took another proper breath after that.”

The room was silent again.

“So all of this..” Your voice broke. “all these years… were you?”

There wasn’t a second of hesitation.

“It’s always been me.” He stepped closer.

“I don’t expect forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. I know you’ll hate me.” His eyes finally met yours again. Filled with absolute, devastating devotion.

“But I need you to understand one thing.”

His voice became impossibly quiet. “I never wanted a prisoner. I wanted my soulmate.”

He laughed through tears.

“I just wasn’t strong enough to live in a world where I’d already found you.”

His lips trembled. “…and then had to spend the rest of my life pretending you belonged to somebody else.”

Another tear slipped down his cheek. “I’ve built companies. Saved cities. People think I’m clever.” He smiled weakly.

“But the smartest thing I’ve ever done..” His gaze softened with an affection so overwhelming it hurt to witness. “…was finding you.”

He looked around the room. “And the worst thing I’ve ever done was bringing you here.”

His shoulders finally gave out beneath the weight he’d been carrying for years.

He sank slowly onto his knees. His head bowed. His hands rested uselessly in his lap.

“You can hate me.” His voice was barely audible.

“You probably should.”

Another shaky breath. “But…”

He looked up at you with the same expression he’d worn in the airport. Like a man placing his entire existence into someone else’s hands. “…please don’t leave me.”

“I don’t know how to exist in a world that doesn’t have you in it.”

Outside, the wind stirred the trees beyond the window. Somewhere, impossibly far away, a plane crossed the morning sky. The holiday you’d planned would go on without you.

Photos would be posted. Memories would be made. Life would continue. Just not yours. Not anymore.

Perhaps soulmates weren’t proof that fate was kind.

But simply proof that fate existed.

Please reblog and comment!! :)

12K+ words, 70K+ characters, 2K+ sentences, 1K+ paragraphs, 43 minute average reading time, 1 hour 7 minute average speaking time.

Read Dick Grayson’s part here.

Read Jason Todd’s part here.

Read Bruce Wayne’s part here.

For Bruce, that meant a simple promise written beneath his skin.

When it reached zero, he would meet the person destined for him.

As a boy, he had imagined it the same way every child did.

His soulmate would appear one day. They would laugh together. Grow old together. Build a life together.

A future.

The sort of future his parents had possessed.

The sort of future that had died alongside them in an alley behind the Monarch Theater.

After that night, the timer became little more than background noise.

The glowing numbers continued their steady descent while Bruce attended funerals, inherited a fortune he never wanted, and watched Gotham consume itself one crime at a time. They ticked downward while Alfred patiently pieced together the shattered remains of a grieving child. They ticked downward while Bruce buried himself in studies, martial arts, criminology, forensics, and every discipline that might one day help him wage war against the city that had taken everything from him.

Years passed.

The timer remained a constant. Unchanging. Always moving. Always counting.

Sometimes he caught himself staring at it during long flights between countries. During sleepless nights spent training until his knuckles split. During lonely evenings in unfamiliar cities where he could almost pretend he was just another wealthy young man wandering the world in search of purpose.

The numbers never stopped.

And despite everything, a small part of him still wondered.

Who were they?

Who was waiting at the end of that countdown?

The thought felt dangerous.

Hope always did.

By the time he returned to Gotham and donned the cowl for the first time, Bruce had long since convinced himself that soulmates were a luxury he could not afford.

Batman had no place for dreams. No room for futures. And he certainly had no room for someone he might one day love.

The city came first.

It always would.

Gotham demanded sacrifice, and Bruce had made his choice years ago.

If his soulmate existed, then they deserved better than what remained of him.

So he stopped thinking about it.

Or at least he tried to.

The timer continued to count.

Days.

Months.

Years.

Seconds.

Its steady descent accompanied him through every chapter of his life.

It was there when Dick Grayson crashed into his world beneath a circus tent, a furious and heartbroken child whose pain mirrored Bruce’s own in ways neither of them fully understood. It remained when Dick became Robin, when he became family, and when Bruce made the selfish decision to love someone enough to let them stay.

The numbers continued falling.

They were there when Jason Todd stole the tires off the Batmobile, and somehow stole a place in Bruce’s heart soon afterward. They ticked downward through every argument, every proud moment, every hard-earned smile.

And they’d kept counting when Jason died.

Bruce remembered that night with painful clarity.

The rage. The guilt. Helplessness. The suffocating certainty that he had failed.

Even then, amidst grief so profound it threatened to hollow him out completely, the timer continued. As though fate cared little for the tragedies of ordinary men.

Years later came Tim.

Then Damian.

A family assembled from broken pieces and impossible odds. One that Bruce never intended to build and could not imagine living without.

The countdown remained through it all. A quiet presence beneath his skin. Easy to ignore, impossible to forget. Even whilst hidden from sight beneath the bulky steel of his jaeger-lecoultre reverso.

Sometimes, on particularly difficult nights, he found himself fiddling with the watch strap just enough to see the edges of it.

Not because he expected anything or believed he deserved whatever waited at the end, but because the idea lingered. A tiny, stubborn thing buried beneath decades of grief and responsibility.

The possibility that somewhere out there existed a person uniquely his.

Someone who might understand. Who might see every ugly, fractured piece of him and choose to stay.

Someone who might look beyond Batman.

Beyond the billionaire mask. Beyond the failures. And simply see Bruce.

It was a foolish thought. An indulgent one, really. The sort of fantasy he rarely allowed himself to entertain.

Yet it persisted all the same.

Perhaps because he had spent so much of his life alone. Not physically. Never physically. The Manor was full. The Batcave was full. His life overflowed with people he loved.

But loneliness and solitude were not the same thing.

Bruce had learned that lesson long ago.

For most of his life, every meaningful relationship had begun with loss.

Dick had lost his parents. Jason had lost everything. Tim had nearly lost himself trying to save Batman from his own grief. Damian had been raised as a weapon before he was ever allowed to be a child.

Every person Bruce ever loved carried scars.

All because they had stepped into his world.

And if fate truly intended to place another person in his life… What then? What kind of future could he possibly offer them?

Late nights spent waiting for him to return home alive? Hospital visits? Funerals? The constant threat of becoming a target simply because they mattered to Bruce Wayne?

No.

His soulmate deserved better.

Deserved normal.

Far away from Gotham and everything it touched.

A sensible conclusion. A logical conclusion. One he repeated to himself countless times.

The problem was that logic had never succeeded in silencing the small traitorous part of him that still watched the countdown.

Nobody truly knew him. Not completely. Not the way a soulmate supposedly could. The way destiny promised.

So the timer remained tucked away in the back of his mind.

A breath caught before it could fully form. A dream he never allowed himself to finish imagining.

And still it counted.

Drawing closer with every passing day to a future Bruce Wayne had stopped believing would ever matter.

Until the day it finally reached zero.

The countdown on your wrist had never inspired the same fascination it seemed to in everyone else.

As a child, you remembered classmates comparing bruises during recess, eagerly conspiring about how old they’d be when they finally met the person fate had chosen for them. Entire conversations revolved around it. Predictions. Theories. Daydreams.

You had participated, of course.

Mostly because everyone else did.

But even then, you never quite understood the obsession.

Perhaps it was because your bond felt so distant.

Unlike those who shared pain with their soulmates or dreamed through another person’s eyes, your countdown offered nothing tangible. No connection. No glimpses into another life. No indication of who your soulmate might be beyond the vague promise that one day, eventually, you would meet them.

It was difficult to become attached to someone who felt entirely theoretical.

The numbers counted downward. Life continued.

School became university. University became work. Friendships came and went. Apartments changed. Jobs changed. Entire years disappeared before you even noticed them passing.

The timer remained, steadily ticking away in the background.

Yet strangely unimportant.

Not because you disliked the idea of soulmates. Quite the opposite.

You supposed it was comforting to think there was someone out there destined specifically for you. Someone whose life would one day intersect with your own in a way no one else’s ever could.

But you had never been particularly fond of building your future around things you couldn’t control.

If your soulmate appeared tomorrow, wonderful. If they appeared twenty years from now, that was fine too.

Either way, life would continue.

You had plans. Goals. Responsibilities. A future that existed independently of whoever happened to be waiting at the end of that countdown.

Which was probably why you never developed the habit of checking it.

Weeks sometimes passed without you looking at the numbers.

Months, if life became particularly busy.

Your friends found that strange.

Most people tracked their bonds religiously.

You couldn’t remember the last time you had cared enough to calculate how much time remained.

Not that it mattered. Fate would arrive whether you watched the clock or not.

The thought made you smile slightly as you adjusted the sleeve of your outfit.

The invitation resting on your kitchen counter immediately drew your attention once more. Embossed gold lettering gleamed beneath the overhead light.

You had considered declining several times already.

Charity galas were not your thing.

Neither were crowds of wealthy socialites, politicians, celebrities, and Gotham’s elite pretending to enjoy one another’s company while discussing donations over champagne.

Unfortunately, declining wasn’t really an option. Your company had spent the past month preparing for the event.

Attendance was expected. Mandatory, according to your supervisor.

The memory earned a quiet sigh.

Tomorrow evening.

Wayne Foundation Annual Renewal Gala.

You stared at the familiar name printed across the card. Wayne.

One of the most recognisable names in the country. Perhaps even the world.

Bruce Wayne’s name seemed to exist everywhere in Gotham. On buildings, hospitals, scholarships, charities.

A billionaire philanthropist.

A notorious playboy.

A man whose face appeared so frequently in magazines that most of Gotham could probably identify him from memory.

You had never met him. Never expected to. Tomorrow would likely be no different.

You would attend the gala, smile politely, make small talk, and stay for the required amount of time.

Then return home and forget the entire evening ever happened.

The gala was exactly as exhausting as you had expected.

By the end of the first hour, your cheeks already ached from smiling.

The grand ballroom of Wayne Tower glittered beneath enormous crystal chandeliers, every surface polished to a shine so perfect it almost felt artificial. Waiters drifted through the crowd carrying silver trays loaded with champagne flutes and carefully arranged hors d’oeuvres. Laughter rose and fell throughout the room, blending into the soft music drifting from somewhere near the stage.

The entire event felt less like a fundraiser and more like a carefully choreographed performance.

Not that anyone seemed to mind.

Around you, Gotham’s elite mingled effortlessly. Politicians exchanged handshakes. Business executives traded stories. Reporters circulated like sharks scenting blood in the water.

You had spent most of the evening attached to a cluster of coworkers, nodding politely through conversations that ranged from quarterly profits to real estate investments and subjects you suspected nobody genuinely cared about.

You smiled. Shook hands. Made pleasant conversation. Repeated the process.

By the time you escaped toward the refreshment table, you were fairly certain your social battery had died an hour ago.

“Not enjoying yourself?”

You glanced toward the voice. One of your coworkers smirked knowingly.

You laughed. “I think I’ve had enough networking to last the rest of my life.”

“Careful. That’s practically blasphemy at events like this.”

“Then pretend I said something about synergy and market growth.”

The resulting laugh eased some of the tension in your shoulders.

Around you, the crowd continued to swell as more guests arrived. And inevitably, conversation shifted toward the man hosting the event.

Bruce Wayne.

The name surfaced repeatedly throughout the evening. Sometimes with admiration. Sometimes amusement. Occasionally frustration.

Everyone seemed to have a story.

A charitable donation. An embarrassing tabloid headline. A disastrous date. A surprise act of generosity.

The more stories you heard, the more curious you became. You had never met Bruce Wayne before.

Nobody in your social circles had.

People like him existed in an entirely different world.

The sort of world most people only glimpsed through magazine covers and news broadcasts.

Yet somehow, despite his wealth, despite his status, despite his reputation for arriving late and disappearing early, people genuinely seemed to like him.

It was strange. Most billionaires inspired resentment. Bruce Wayne inspired affection.

You found yourself wondering what he was actually like. The real version. Not the carefully polished public image. Not the headlines. Just the man.

Your gaze drifted toward the entrance more than once throughout the evening.

The subtle change spread through the crowd like a ripple through water. Conversations paused. Heads turned. Attention redirected.

You didn’t need anyone to tell you why.

Bruce Wayne had arrived.

The realisation swept through the ballroom almost instantly.

You found yourself looking too. Just like everyone else.

Oh. For a moment, you understood the fascination.

Photos had never quite captured him properly. Perhaps because photographs couldn’t capture presence.

Bruce moved through the crowd with effortless confidence, greeting donors and board members with easy smiles. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Impossibly handsome in a way that felt almost unfair.

The sort of face people built careers around. One that belonged on magazine covers. Yet none of that was what held your attention.

It was the way he carried himself. Comfortable. Natural. As though the attention of hundreds of people barely registered.

You felt oddly nervous.

Which was ridiculous. You weren’t even planning on speaking to him.

You simply found yourself watching from across the room.

Then your hand drifted unconsciously toward your wrist. Your thumb brushed the skin hidden beneath your sleeve. The countdown.

A habit more than anything.

You weren’t even sure why you checked.

Maybe because events like this always sparked conversations about soulmates. Or because seeing Gotham’s most famous bachelor had stirred old childhood fantasies you’d long since outgrown.

Whatever the reason, your fingers lingered there.

Tracing the familiar shape beneath the fabric. Feeling the steady pulse of your own heartbeat.

You smiled faintly to yourself. Foolish.

Then Bruce Wayne turned, and looked directly at you.

Everything stopped.

Your breath caught. Heart stumbled. Because beneath your fingertips.. The countdown had reached its end. 00:00:00:00.

The familiar sensation disappeared so suddenly that for a terrifying second you thought you had imagined it.

Your eyes widened.

Across the ballroom, Bruce Wayne was still looking in your direction.

No. Not your direction.

At you.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

The countdown had stopped.

Your fingers remained pressed against your wrist, your pulse hammering so violently that you could barely feel the skin beneath them.

And for one impossible, terrifying second, the rest of the gala disappeared.

The music faded. The conversations blurred. Everything narrowed to those blue eyes. To the man standing twenty feet away. To the realization crashing through your chest with enough force to steal the air from your lungs.

Him.

Every second. Every minute. Every year. All of it had led here.

You couldn’t stop smiling.

A laugh escaped before you could catch it.

You felt ridiculous.

You felt ecstatic.

You felt fourteen years old again, lying awake at night and wondering who waited at the end of your countdown.

Your soulmate.

Bruce Wayne was your soulmate.

The thought was absurd.

Wonderful.

Terrifying.

And before you could think better of it, your feet were already carrying you forward.

You barely remembered crossing the ballroom. Only that one moment he was across the room.

The next you were standing in front of him. Close enough to speak. Close enough to see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. Close enough to finally meet the person fate had spent your entire life leading you toward.

“Mr Wayne-” You stopped yourself. God, that sounded stupid.

You laughed nervously. “Sorry. Bruce. I just-”

The words tangled together. There were too many of them. How exactly were you supposed to tell someone they’d just become the most important person in your life?

How did anyone start a conversation like this?

“Hi. We belong together.”

“Hi. Fate says you’re mine.”

“Hi. I’ve waited my entire life to meet you.”

The absurdity almost made you laugh again. Instead, you found yourself smiling. A genuine one. The kind that slipped free before you could stop it.

“I think-”

Bruce looked at you. His eyes flickering over your face, your clothes, the event badge hanging around your neck.

Recognition never appeared.

Nothing softened.

Nothing changed.

It was the look people gave strangers who had interrupted them in public. Nothing more.

His gaze shifted immediately beyond your shoulder. Toward someone else.

Someone important.

Someone he actually wanted to speak to.

“I’m sorry.” The words were automatic. Polite. The sort of apology people gave when they weren’t sorry at all.

“I don’t have time right now.”

For a second you simply stared.

Still smiling.

Still trying to catch up.

“Oh.”

Bruce nodded once. Already moving.

Already done.

“If you’ll excuse me.” And then he brushed past you.

There was no cruelty. No emotion whatsoever. You hadn’t mattered enough for that.

The crowd swallowed him almost immediately.

One moment he was there and the next he was gone. Laughing with donors. Shaking hands. Moving through the room as though nothing had happened.

As though you had never existed.

As though the most important moment of your life had been a forgettable inconvenience in his evening.

You remained where you were. Frozen. The smile slowly slipping from your face.

Around you, the gala continued.

A waiter passed carrying champagne. Someone laughed nearby. Music drifted through the ballroom. Normal. Everything was painfully, horribly normal.

Your stomach twisted.

The excitement that had filled your chest moments ago curdled into something ugly. Something embarrassing.

Heat crept up your neck.

God. How stupid. How unbelievably fucking stupid.

Your hand rose to your wrist again. To the skin where the countdown had sat for your entire life.

Where it no longer moved.

You stared at it, waiting for the joy to return. For the excitement. For the certainty that this meant something.

Instead you felt sick. Because for one awful moment, you’d believed it.

You had looked at Bruce Wayne and allowed yourself to hope. Allowed yourself to think fate had chosen you.

That maybe all those stories people told were true.

Instead you’d received the same polite dismissal he would have given any stranger who got in his way.

Your throat tightened. Fuck, you felt like you were about to cry.

The hurt wasn’t coming from Bruce. Not really.

It was coming from yourself.

From the realisation that some small part of you had still believed after all these years, after all your indifference, all your insistence that fate didn’t matter, a part of you had still secretly hoped there would be magic in this moment. Something special. Worth waiting for.

And now that part of you was dying. Right there in the middle of a crowded ballroom.

The countdown had reached zero.

And for the first time in your life, you wished it hadn’t.

Two and a half months later.

The night had offered nothing unusual.

The Batcave settled into its familiar rhythm as everyone returned. Dick had claimed a corner of Tim's workstation and was ignoring increasingly pointed requests to move. Jason, having appeared midway through patrol without warning or invitation, was drinking Alfred's coffee. Damian sat nearby with a stack of reports, making notes in the margins.

Bruce stood near the medical station, removing the Batsuit piece by piece. The cowl came first, then the cape. He set the gauntlets aside and reached for the fastening at his wrist.

"Father."

Bruce glanced up.

Damian was looking at him with a faint frown. “You never informed us that your countdown had ended.”

He’d barely reacted. “What are you talking about?”

Damian looked mildly annoyed, like Bruce had forgotten something obvious.

“Your soulmate.”

Dick straightened immediately. Tim turned away from his monitor. Jason gave a short laugh.

"Wait. Seriously? You found them?”

Their Dad frowned. “What?”

Damian pointed.

Bruce followed the gesture to the inside of his wrist. The timer had stopped.

For a second, he simply stared.

Beside him, Dick grinned. “So that’s why you’ve been weirdly private.”

Jason scoffed. “Please. Like he’d tell us.”

“I assumed you were waiting until the relationship became serious,” Damian said matter-of-factly.

Tim nodded. “I figured you already had a file on them.”

A few years ago, Bruce might have responded. Might have denied it. Instead, he continued staring at his wrist.

00:00:00:00

The timer wasn’t moving.

It should have been.

For as long as he could remember, it had always been moving. Always counting. Now it sat completely still.

A strange feeling settled low in his stomach.

“When did this happen?” The words escaped before he could stop them.

The cave went silent.

Bruce looked up. Every member of his family was staring at him.

Dick’s smile vanished first.

Tim slowly lowered his tablet.

Jason blinked.

Damian narrowed his eyes.

A long moment passed. Then, “what do you mean, when did it happen?”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. His gaze dropped back to the timer. “When did it reach zero?”

Nobody answered immediately. Because the question itself was wrong.

Dick stared at him blankly. “…You don’t know?”

Tim sat up, picking at the cuticles on his hands. “When was the last time you checked it?”

Bruce opened his mouth. The answer should have come easily.

Instead, nothing.

Weeks? Months? Years?

A knot formed in his stomach. He couldn’t remember. At some point, the countdown had become part of the scenery. Like a scar. Like an old piece of furniture. Something so familiar that he no longer saw it.

Damian rose from his chair. "How is that possible?"

There wasn’t accusation in the question. Only bewilderment.

Bruce understood it.

If anyone else had presented him with a mystery this significant and admitted they had ignored it for years, he would have found it equally incomprehensible.

A soulmate was information.

Information mattered.

Yet somehow he had allowed this particular fact to drift past unnoticed.

Dick dragged a hand through his hair. "Okay. So if it's been at zero for a while..." He trailed off.

Nobody finished the thought. Bruce didn't need them to.

The timer had stopped.

Which meant they had already met.

Somewhere, buried beneath years of galas, investigations, crime scenes, interviews, witnesses, victims, allies, and strangers, there was a person connected to him in a way he had never bothered to investigate.

The thought irritated him immediately. Annoyed by his own oversight.

Bruce Wayne missed very little. Batman missed even less.

And yet he had apparently overlooked something that had been written on his own skin.

His gaze returned to the frozen digits.

Who?

The question settled into place with uncomfortable ease.

Who had it been?

A civilian? A witness? Someone from a charity board? A doctor? A journalist? A stranger he had passed on the street and forgotten by the next morning?

His mind was already moving through possibilities, assembling timelines, searching for patterns.

The investigation had begun before he consciously decided to start it.

And long after the others had gone upstairs, long after the cave had emptied, he’d remained alone before the Batcomputer.

His wrist rested against the desk, the countdown sat motionless beneath the glow of the monitor.

For decades, he had convinced himself the timer didn’t matter. That soulmates were irrelevant. That whatever waited at the end of the countdown belonged to a future he would never allow himself to have.

Now, for the first time in his life, the future wasn’t theoretical. It was real. It had been real for years. And somehow, impossibly, he’d missed it.

He stared at the timer, jaw clenched. Then opened a new search window and began looking.

Bruce had always believed that every mystery possessed an answer.

The answer might be buried beneath layers of deception. It might require months of investigation, thousands of hours of work, or sacrifices most people would never willingly make. But it existed.

Every crime scene told a story.

Every missing person left traces.

Every lie fractured under enough pressure.

Answers existed. The challenge was finding them.

Which was why the frozen numbers on the inside of his wrist irritated him more than they should have.

A lifetime reduced to eight zeroes.

For decades it had been counting.

Now it wasn’t.

Entire criminal organisations had collapsed because of details other people overlooked. Murders had been solved because Bruce noticed a footprint half a millimeter deeper than it should have been. He built contingency plans for gods.

And yet somehow he had allowed this to happen.

Somewhere, at some point, his soulmate had entered his life. And he had failed to notice.

The oversight bothered him in a way he struggled to articulate. Not because he had spent years longing for his soulmate. He hadn’t. Or because he suddenly believed fate held some profound importance. He didn’t.

But because he had missed something.

Something connected to him. That should have been obvious.

His gaze drifted back toward the timer. A person.

For most of his life, the soulmate waiting at the end of the countdown had existed as an abstraction. A hypothetical future. A distant possibility.

Now they existed beyond the realm of his mind on particularly needy nights.

Living somewhere in Gotham. Or perhaps outside it. Going to work. Paying bills. Existing. Breathing.

Perhaps completely unaware that Bruce Wayne had finally noticed them.

The idea settled heavily in his chest.

Because that wasn’t entirely true, was it?

If the countdown had stopped, then they already knew.

The moment one timer reached zero, so did the other. Meaning somewhere out there was a person who had already experienced that moment. A person who had looked at their wrist and realised they had found the person fate intended for them.

Bruce’s fingers stilled against the keyboard. A strange feeling moved through him. Difficult to define.

Because unlike him, that person would have noticed.

Normal people would have probably watched their countdowns. Would have known exactly how much time remained. Anticipated the day it would finally happen.

He imagined someone checking their wrist. Watching the final seconds disappear. Feeling the weight of a lifetime’s anticipation finally come to an end. And then what?

Had they looked around for him?

Had they searched the crowd?

Had they recognised him immediately?

The questions arrived uninvited. More troublingly, they refused to leave.

Bruce leaned back in his chair. The cave hummed softly around him. Banks of monitors cast pale light across the stone walls.

Above him, thousands of tons of earth separated the cave from the sleeping Manor. None of it held his attention.

For perhaps the first time since Damian had pointed out the frozen timer, Bruce found himself thinking not about the investigation. But about the person.

Who were they? What kind of life did they live? What had they thought when they realised? Had they been happy? Afraid? Disappointed?

The last possibility lingered.

Bruce frowned. Disappointed. The word shouldn’t have bothered him. Yet it did.

Because he knew exactly what the public thought of Bruce Wayne. The billionaire. The celebrity. The perpetual tabloid fixture.

To some people, finding out Bruce was their soulmate would be exciting. To others it would be a nightmare.

A lifetime of reporters. Paparazzi. Public scrutiny. Danger. Every enemy Batman had ever made.

Bruce knew better than anyone that proximity to him carried consequences.

The evidence sat framed across the Manor.

The thought darkened his expression. Whoever they were, they deserved better than that.

And then Bruce paused. His eyes slowly narrowed. Because that thought implied something else. Something he hadn’t consciously acknowledged until now.

It didn't matter.

That lie was what kept you going after the gala. It wasn’t grief. Grief implied loss, implied that you had possessed something to begin with.

You hadn't. Bruce Wayne had never been yours.

And yet, something inside of you had still died that night.

You still went to work. Still paid your bills. Still answered texts. Still laughed when friends made jokes.

From the outside, nothing had changed.

Inside, however, there was a deep hole where something important used to live.

Hope, perhaps.

Or whatever foolish thing had survived all those years beneath your indifference.

You had spent your entire life insisting that the countdown didn't matter. That fate didn't matter. That your soulmate was merely a possibility waiting somewhere in the distance and not the center of your universe.

Then the timer reached zero.

And you discovered exactly how much you had been lying to yourself.

Because if it truly hadn't mattered, then seeing Bruce Wayne across that ballroom wouldn't have hurt the way it did.

If it truly hadn't mattered, then his face wouldn't still appear in your nightmares. The sight of his name wouldn't make your stomach twist like someone had reached into your chest and grabbed hold of your ribs.

Yet it did. Every time, without fail.

Three days after the gala, you stopped in front of a coffee shop on your way to work.

A newspaper sat in the display window.

BRUCE WAYNE ANNOUNCES THE EXPANSION OF FOUNDATION PROGRAMMES.

The headline wasn't even particularly large, just another article among dozens. A perfectly ordinary thing.

Yet the moment your eyes landed on it, nausea rolled through you so violently that you nearly turned aroun and walked home.

You stood frozen on the sidewalk, just staring blankly. You hated yourself for pausing.

Because there he was.

Photographed beneath bright camera flashes. Smiling. Beautiful.

Shit, he was beautiful.

It would have been easier if he wasn't. Easier if fate had chosen some ordinary man. Someone forgettable, whose face wouldn't follow you everywhere.

But Bruce looked like something sculpted rather than born.

Like whoever had created him had started with every impossible standard of beauty and decided they still weren't enough.

Even frozen in grainy newsprint, he seemed unreal.

Dark hair falling perfectly despite the cameras. Strong jaw, sharp cheekbones, those impossible blue eyes. The kind of watercolour people wrote poetry about. The kind that belonged to summer skies and oceans and things too beautiful to touch.

You remembered looking into those eyes across the ballroom. Remembered your heart stopping. Thinking, absurdly, that of course fate had chosen someone beautiful.

Soulmates were supposed to be extraordinary. And Bruce Wayne was sure as hell extraordinary.

Broad shoulders beneath perfectly tailored suits. Strong hands. Easy smiles. A laugh that seemed capable of convincing entire rooms to laugh with him. Not merely attractive. Handsome. Beautiful in the way ancient gods were described. The sort of beauty that made people stare before they realised they were staring.

He carried himself with the effortless confidence of someone who had spent his entire life being admired. Someone who had never needed to wonder if people found him desirable because the answer had always been obvious.

And somehow fate had looked at him, then looked at you, and declared that you belonged together.

You left the coffee shop without buying anything.

After that, you started noticing him everywhere.

It felt cruel. As though the universe had developed a sense of humor specifically to torment you.

Wayne Enterprises logos decorated entire buildings. Wayne Foundation advertisements appeared on buses. Charity campaigns featured his photograph. Magazine covers displayed his face near checkout counters. Televisions in waiting rooms played interviews. Articles appeared online. Photographs surfaced endlessly. Everywhere you looked, Bruce Wayne existed.

You couldn't escape him. Couldn't erase him.

The worst part was that everyone else saw those images and reacted normally.

Nobody understood what you saw. Nobody knew what it felt like.

Your coworkers saw Gotham's favourite billionaire. Your friends saw a celebrity. Strangers saw a philanthropist. You saw your soulmate.

You saw the man whose timer had stopped when yours did. The man who had looked directly at you, then dismissed you.

Sometimes you found yourself staring at the pics longer than you meant to.

Your eyes refused to look away. Despite everything, some awful traitorous primal part of you still recognise d him. Still instinctually saw him as yours.

The slight curve of his smile. The shadows beneath his eyes. The way his expensive suits felt designed to emphasise the width of his shoulders. The way his presence somehow dominated photographs even when surrounded by dozens of other people.

You hated that you noticed. Hated that your heart still reacted. That attraction remained long after hope had died.

Because Bruce Wayne was beautiful. Painfully, unfairly, devastatingly beautiful.

The kind that made the stinging rejection feel worse.

If he had been cruel, you could have hated him. If he had mocked you, anger could have replaced the hurt. But he hadn't done either.

He’d made living unbearable.

Bruce hadn't rejected you because he disliked you. He hadn't rejected you because you were unworthy. He hadn't even rejected you at all.

To reject someone required acknowledgment.

Bruce Wayne simply hadn't cared enough to notice. You had been forgettable. An interruption. A stranger in a crowded room.

It was fucking humiliating.

To everyone else, your countdown had finally reached zero. A happy occasion. A miracle. A dream-come-true.

People congratulated you. Asked questions. Smiled knowingly.

You learned to lie.

"Oh, I haven't met them yet." "Maybe we crossed paths without realizing." "I'm not really focused on it."

Easy answers. No one ever suspected the truth.

Didn’t know that every mention of soulmates felt like someone digging a knife into an already sore bruise.

That fate itself had started feeling so incredibly cruel.

No one knew that your countdown had ended beside crystal chandeliers and champagne glasses and the most beautiful man you'd ever seen.

Hw could you explain to anyone that he had walked away?

How could you describe the experience of finding the person the universe created specifically for you, only to discover that your existence wasn’t even important enough to remember?

There weren't words for that.

Every morning you woke up, and every day Bruce Wayne's name appeared somewhere.

On buildings. Headlines. TVscreens. Charity banners. A constant reminder. A monument to something you desperately wished you could forget.

You never admitted how much it affected you. Not even to yourself.

Instead you learned to look away. To change channels. To scroll past articles. To cross the street rather than walk beneath buildings bearing his name.

Small, pathetic things.

Yet necessary.

Because every glimpse felt like reopening a wound that refused to heal.

And somewhere deep down, beneath the humiliation and hurt and anger and disappointment, existed a truth you hated even more.

You still thought he was so disgustingly beautiful. Remembered the moment he looked at you. Could still feel the countdown reaching zero.

And no matter how hard you tried, some part of you still mourned the future that had died before it ever had the chance to begin.

Finding you should have taken longer.

Bruce expected months. Years, maybe. The list of possibilities was absurd.

A countdown bond narrowed the search considerably compared to shared pain or dreams, but it was still thousands of people. Tens of thousands, depending on the timeframe. Every person he'd spoken to. Every person he'd stood beside. Every handshake. Every conversation. Every fleeting interaction that had seemed insignificant at the time.

Ordinarily, that would have made the investigation difficult.

Instead, it became embarrassingly simple.

Because unlike other soul bonds, a countdown created a very specific moment. A beginning.

Bruce only needed to determine when his timer had stopped. Then identify everyone he'd interacted with during that period. The rest was elimination.

He discovered quickly that he had a significant advantage.

Over the past five months, Bruce had only personally interacted with nine people who possessed countdown bonds.

Nine.

One was a long-time business partner whose timer still had three years remaining.

Two were married.

Another had met their soulmate publicly several weeks prior.

The remaining names disappeared one by one beneath scrutiny.

Until only one remained.

You.

The file sat open on the Batcomputer. Bruce stared at it for a long time.

Name.

Age.

Employment history.

Education.

Address.

Nothing remarkable. Nothing that should have caused his pulse to stumble the way it did. Yet it did.

Because beside your photograph sat a timestamp. Wayne Foundation Annual Renewal Gala.

Two and a half months ago.

Bruce went still. The gala.

He couldn’t remember you at all.

He remembered the event. The schedule. The donor meetings. The practiced speeches. The endless boring conversations. The uncomfortable sensation that accompanied the recollection made his stomach tighten.

Because if the countdown had ended that night, then you had been there. Somewhere inside that ballroom.

His soulmate had stood within arm's reach, and he hadn't known.

Bruce leaned back slowly.

The photograph remained illuminated on the monitor.

You looked ordinary. Not in a bad way. Just real. A person.

His person.

The thought appeared uninvited.

His gaze lingered longer than necessary. Memorising details.

The shape of your smile in the employee photograph attached to the company website. The slight tilt of your head. The way your eyes seemed brighter in candid images than posed ones.

Ridiculous, meaningless observations.

Yet he continued looking.

Eventually, Bruce opened the gala guest registry. Cross-referenced attendance records.

Security footage. Photographs. Anything.

Everything.

He found you four hours later.

Camera seventeen. Ballroom east entrance. Timestamped twelve minutes before the countdown likely reached zero.

The footage was silent.

You stood speaking with coworkers. Laughing at something. So… bright.

Unaware that he even existed beyond headlines and magazine covers.

He watched the clip so many times that domething uncomfortable settled beneath his ribs.

He knew what was about to happen.

Your timer was about to reach zero. His timer was about to reach zero.

You found him.

You’d crossed the room.

And he walked away.

Hell, he hadn’t even properly looked at you.

Bruce stared at the paused frame.

For the first time since beginning the investigation, a deep nausea rolled through him.

He remembered that interaction vaguely now.

A stranger approaching. A voice trying to get his attention. A laugh. An interruption between meetings.

Nothing important or memorable. Nothing-

His jaw clenenched.

No.

Not nothing.

You.

It had been you.

His soulmate.

The person fate had spent decades leading toward him.

The person whose existence he had secretly imagined during sleepless nights and lonely flights and moments of weakness he never admitted to anyone.

Bruce rose from his chair.

The cave remained silent around him. Cold. Empty without his boys.

The monitor focused on your face. He couldn’t pull his eyes away.

For two and a half months, you had known.

You'd known exactly who he was.

And if Bruce understood people half as well as he believed he did, then you had probably interpreted that encounter exactly the way anyone would.

You thought he'd rejected you.

Bruce found himself imagining it despite having no desire to.

You walking across that ballroom. Excited. Hopeful. Nervous. Only to be brushed aside.

His stomach twisted.

You had spent your entire life moving toward him. And he'd made you feel unwanted.

A muscle jumped in his jaw. No. Unacceptable.

You belonged to him.

Bruce had spent most of his life convincing himself he could survive without a soulmate.

Now he found himself staring at your photograph at three in the morning, unable to look away. Unable to stop imagining your reaction when you learned the truth. To stop thinking about the hurt he had unknowingly caused. And most concerning of all, unable to stop wanting.

Not merely to meet you.

To keep you close.

Safe.

Where nothing could take you away before he had the chance to make this right.

You were halfway through answering emails when your manager appeared beside your desk.

"Got a minute?"

You looked up. "Sure."

"We've had a request come through."

That wasn't unusual. The company received requests constantly.

You nodded for them to continue.

"They specifically asked for you."

That was unusual.

Your brow furrowed. "Me?"

"Apparently." Your manager sounded just as confused.

You accepted the folder they handed over, then immediately wished you hadn't. The logo printed across the front was impossible to miss.

Wayne Foundation.

Your stomach dropped.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

Your manager misread your expression immediately. "Good news, actually."

Good. Right.

You’d almost forgotten that normal people didn't feel like they were on the verge of breaking down every time they saw that name.

You forced a smile. "What's the project?"

"A community outreach initiative. They've been reviewing applicants from several companies."

It was like the name seemed determined to follow you everywhere.

"Apparently someone on their end requested you specifically."

The confusion in your manager's voice mirrored your own.

"Have you worked with them before?"

"No." The answer came too quickly. You cleared your throat. "Not personally."

Your manager nodded. "Well, whoever reviewed your profile liked something."

Maybe. Or maybe fate simply wasn't finished laughing at you yet.

You waited until they left before opening the folder.

The proposal itself looked normal. Professional. Routine. Yet a strange feeling settled low in your stomach.

Because your name appeared throughout the documentation.

You stared at the pages for several seconds then shook your head. Paranoia. Nothing more.

Bruce Wayne didn't know who you were. The Wayne Foundation employed thousands of people. This was coincidence. It had to be.

Yet later that evening, as you prepared to leave work, you found yourself looking at the folder again.

Reading your name.

And wondering why the uneasy feeling refused to disappear.

←↓→↑

The project itself was harmless. Boring, even.

Several meetings. A handful of planning sessions. Far too many emails. Just.. normal stuff.

And yet you found yourself running into the same problem repeatedly.

People always seemed to know who you were.

Not coworkers or clients, it would probably hurt your feelings if they didn’t know your name.

But Wayne employees.

The first time it happened, you ignored it. The second time, you thought about it for a bit before shaking it off. The third time, it became impossible not to think about.

A woman stood beside the refreshments table wearing a Wayne Foundation identification badge, smiling like she knew you as she called out your name.

You glanced up from your coffee, offering a polite smile. "Yeah?"

Her expression brightened immediately. "Oh good."

Good?

You waited.

Instead, she simply smiled. "Sorry. I've heard nice things."

Before you could ask from whom, someone called her name from across the room.

The conversation ended there. Leaving you standing alone holding a paper cup and feeling vaguely unsettled.

She'd heard nice things.

From who?

About what?

Then you’d received an email. Then another. And another.

Nothing inappropriate or personal. Just opportunities. Projects. Invitations. Networking events. Requests.

All connected to Wayne Enterprises or one of its countless subsidiaries.

The attention made no sense. You weren't exceptionally qualified. You weren't particularly influential. There were hundreds of people with better resumes. Thousands.

Yet somehow your name kept appearing.

Each coincidence felt harmless on its own.

Together, they felt deliberate.

There was only one explanation your brain kept returning to, and it was ridiculous.

Bruce Wayne didn't know who you were.

Bruce Wayne had never known who you were.

The memory still hurt. Less than before, but enough.

You shoved the thought away and focused on work. Unfortunately, work wasn't cooperating.

"There's a gala next month."

You nearly choked on your drink.

Your coworker blinked. "...You okay?"

"No."

You set the glass down.

"Sorry. What?"

"A gala."

Absolutely not.

The immediate response rose so quickly that you nearly said it aloud.

Your coworker laughed.

"That's about the reaction I expected."

"No."

"That's not even what I asked."

"No anyway."

The laugh grew louder. "It's mandatory."

Of course it was. You dropped your forehead onto the table.

Somewhere above you, your coworker continued speaking.

Words blurred together.

You caught Wayne Foundation. Charity initiative. Attendance expected.

Absolutely wonderful.

You closed your eyes. The universe hated you. That was the only reasonable explanation.

Because apparently surviving one Wayne gala hadn't been enough.

Now fate had scheduled a sequel.

That should have been funny. Instead, dread settled heavily in your chest.

Bruce Wayne probably wouldn't even be there.

And if he was?

He wouldn't recognise you. Wouldn't remember you. You would simply become another face in another crowd. Again.

The familiar ache returned. Duller now. Older, but still present.

You hated that even after everything, some pathetic part of you still cared.

Wondering about what could have happened if things had gone differently.

If he had looked at you. If he'd smiled. If he'd given fate even a single chance.

The thought followed you all the way home. Followed you into the shower. Followed you into bed.

And somewhere across Gotham, entirely unaware of the damage he was causing, Bruce Wayne was doing exactly the same thing.

Thinking about you.

Constantly.

Obsessively.

Unable to stop.

While you lay awake staring at the ceiling, Bruce sat alone in his study surrounded by photographs, reports, schedules, and information he absolutely should not possess.

The file on his desk had grown significantly over the past two weeks.

The silence of the study was suffocating, broken only by the rhythmic, heavy thrum of Bruce’s own heartbeat. It was a sound he usually controlled with meditative precision, but tonight, his pulse was erratic, driven by a hunger that felt less like desire and more like a fever.

His fingers, scarred and calloused from years of a life lived in the shadows, trembled slightly as they hovered over the glossy surface of the most recebt photograph.

In the light of the single desk lamp, your laughter looked almost tactile. He wanted to reach through the paper, to catch the warmth of your skin, to feel the vibration of that laugh against his own chest.

He didn't just want to see you. He wanted to own the air you breathed.

A low, jagged exhale escaped his throat as he reached for the fastening of his trousers. The silk of his shirt felt abrasive against his skin. He wasn't a man of whims, he was a man of purpose.

As he freed himself, his gaze never left your eyes in the photo.

He began to move, his hand wrapping around his length with a grip almost a little too tight, a little too desperate. He wasn't looking for a gentle release, he was looking for a way to drown out the ache of your absence. He hadn’t even met you properly yet.

Every slide of his palm was a silent prayer, a demand whispered into the empty room.

You, he thought, his eyes darkening until the blue was almost black. Only you.

He closed his eyes for a second, and the darkness behind his eyelids was filled with the phantom sensation of you. He imagined your hands replacing his own.

He imagined the way you would look at him if you knew. If you knew that he had mapped out your entire existence, that he knew the number of alarms you needed to wake up, the drinks you preferred, the way your eyes crinkled when you were truly happy.

A groan, deep and primal, tore from his throat as he increased the pace. The friction was intense, bordering on a delicious sort of pain. He pictured you in this very room, stripped of your defences, looking at him with that same devastating smile. He imagined pinning you to this very desk, marking you so thoroughly that the world would know you belonged to the Batman, to Bruce, to him.

"Mine," he rasped, the word a vow and a command. "You have to be mine."

He was spiraling, losing his composure to the sheer, unadulterated need to possess the person in the photograph.

As the tension coiled in his gut, he leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the edge of the desk, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. He wasn't just chasing a climax, he was chasing the ghost of you. And as he finally broke, his body shuddering with a violent, lonely release, the only thing he could think about was how much longer he could stand being a stranger to the only person outside of his family who truly mattered.

He stared at the splotches of his own mess, his eyes settling back on your frozen, laughing face.

His patience was running out. And soon, he wouldn't just be looking at pictures. He would be looking at you.

The morning of the gala arrived faster than expected.

You spent most of it trying not to think about where you were going later. Work helped.

Emails needed answering. Reports needed reviewing. Deadlines continued existing regardless of personal problems.

By six o'clock, however, distractions became harder to find.

The Foundation building stood illuminated against Gotham's skyline when your taxi pulled up outside.

For a moment you remained seated. Watching people enter through the front doors. Watching security direct arrivals. Watching expensive cars arrive one after another.

The driver glanced at you through the mirror.

"You getting out?"

You sighed. "Unfortunately."

The lobby was already busy.

Employees moved through the space carrying folders, tablets, and the sort of purposeful expressions people adopted when responsible for coordinating large events.

You followed the signs toward registration.

The man at the desk smiled immediately.

"Good evening."

"Hi."

You offered your name.

Something flickered across his expression. "There you are." The words slipped out so naturally that he didn't seem to realise he'd said them.

Your brow furrowed. "What?"

His smile widened. "Nothing. Sorry."

He handed over your badge.

"Conference hall B. Someone will show you where to go."

The interaction lingered in your mind as you crossed the lobby.

There wasn't anything strange about it.

You reached the elevators just as a man wearing a Foundation lanyard stepped out.

His eyes landed on your badge. Muttering your name under his breath.

You stopped. "Yeah?"

His expression brightened. "Right this way."

You stared at him.

The conference hall was directly ahead. Visible from where you stood. So was the sign. So was every other person entering without assistance. Apparently, you were the only one receiving a personal escort. The thought made you irrationally suspicious.

"Thanks."

The man spent the walk making polite conversation.

The conference hall occupied most of the floor.

Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked downtown Gotham. Round tables filled the space beneath hanging lights. Staff moved between displays making final adjustments while attendees gradually filtered inside.

You recognise d a few people from previous meetings and wandered over.

Conversation came easily enough.

Work topics. Office gossip. Complaints about deadlines. The familiar rhythm settled some of your nerves.

Eventually, someone handed you a drink. Someone else told a story about the mate documentary they were watching the night before. Laughter spread around the table.

For the first time all evening, you found yourself relaxing.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

You could survive a few hours, shake a few hands, then disappear before anything unpleasant happened.

A movement near the entrance drew your attention.

The change happened gradually. A few heads turned. Then a few more.

You knew who it was before you looked.

For a brief moment, you considered keeping your eyes fixed firmly on the table.

But curiosity won.

It always did.

Bruce Wayne stood near the entrance speaking with several board members.

The sight of him harder than expected.

Four months had passed, yet he remained exactly as you remembered.

Tall. Confident. Effortlessly composed. The kind of person who never seemed out of place regardless of where he happened to be standing.

You watched him laugh at something one of the board members said. Watched him rest a hand briefly against someone's shoulder. Watched him move through the crowd with practiced ease.

The memory arrived before you could stop it.

Crystal chandeliers. Champagne glasses. The countdown reaching zero beneath your fingertips.

Your gaze dropped immediately. Heat crawled uncomfortably up the back of your neck.

This had been a mistake.

All you could think about was how little had changed for him.

Somewhere between the gala and now, Bruce Wayne had probably attended dozens of events just like this one.

Met hundreds of people.

Forgotten hundreds more.

Meanwhile, you still couldn't walk into a Foundation building without remembering the worst conversation of your life.

The thought was embarrassing enough to make you take a long drink.

Across the room, entirely unaware that you had already looked away, Bruce Wayne finally spotted you.

↑→↓←

You forced yourself to look anywhere else.

The city beyond the windows. The drink in your hand. The conversation happening beside you. Anything except him.

It felt childish.

Embarrassing, honestly.

You were an adult. Bruce Wayne wasn't some ex you were desperately trying to avoid at a party. He was a stranger.

A stranger who happened to be your soulmate.

Someone who happened to have accidentally shattered every stupid childhood fantasy you'd ever had about fate.

"So then the guy spends hours explaining how the patterns along his wrist connected-"

"What?"

Your coworker laughed. "The documentary."

"Oh." You blinked.

Right. The documentary.

Apparently the conversation had continued without you.

You offered what you hoped looked like a convincing smile.

No one seemed to notice.

People drifted between groups. More guests arrived. Staff circulated carrying trays of drinks and appetizers.

The event settled into a comfortable rhythm.

Exactly the sort of evening you'd expected.

Which was probably why it took you a moment to notice something was wrong.

The conversation around your table had started stuttering. Small pauses appearing where they hadn't before. People glancing toward something behind you.

You ignored it initially.

Then someone stopped speaking halfway through a sentence.

"...Oh."

You frowned. "What?"

Nobody answered immediately. Slowly, unease crept up your spine.

You knew that feeling.

The awful certainty that something embarrassing was happening and you simply hadn't caught up yet.

Your grip tightened around the glass.

Please don't be me.

Please don't somehow be me.

Carefully, you turned. And nearly dropped your drink.

Bruce Wayne was walking toward your table.

The room seemed to tilt.

No. That wasn't right. There were other people here. Important people. Board members. Executives. Foundation staff.

Bruce Wayne had absolutely no reason to be approaching you.

Yet each step brought him closer, your pulse hammered painfully. Maybe he wasn't.. Maybe-

Then Bruce smiled. Carefully. Almost hesitant.

"Hi."

→←↑↓

Your pulse thundered traitorously.

After spotting him near the entrance, you had gone out of your way to avoid him. And apparently, he'd made no effort to stop you.

He talked briefly with the accountant at your table before passing.

You felt stupid all over again.

You knew better than to expect anything.

No shit he wasn’t coming over to talk to you.

By the time the evening finally began winding down, your social battery had been thoroughly exhausted. Guests filtered toward the exits in small groups while staff quietly began dismantling displays around the edges of the room.

You offered your goodbyes, accepted a few last-minute business cards you would probably never use, and escaped.

Or tried to.

Halfway down the hallway toward the elevators, you changed direction.

Bathroom first.

Then home.

The corridor was blissfully empty compared to the crowded ballroom behind you. Soft lighting reflected off polished marble floors. The distant murmur of conversation faded with every step.

You were almost done. Almost free.

"Leaving already?"

You stopped so abruptly your feet nearly slipped against the floor.

The voice came from behind you. Low and warm.

Dangerously familiar.

Your stomach dropped.

Slowly, you turned.

Bruce Wayne stood at the opposite end of the hallway. Alone.

For a second, neither of you moved.

Gone was the effortless social charm he'd worn all evening. Without the crowd surrounding him, he seemed larger somehow. Broader. More imposing.

His eyes were fixed entirely on you. Watching. Like he'd finally found something he'd been searching for.

A strange tension settled between your shoulders.

"Mr. Wayne."

His expression tightened immediately.

"Bruce," he corrected softly.

The familiarity felt inappropriate.

You swallowed. "Bruce."

Something in his gaze darkened at the sound of his name on your lips.

Satisfaction.

The hallway suddenly felt much smaller.

You forced a polite smile. "I didn't realise you were still here."

"I was looking for someone."

Your heart stumbled. The answer came too quickly. Too directly. And for one awful second, hope tried to rear its ugly head again.

You crushed it immediately. "You found them then?"

The words were meant as a joke.

Bruce didn't laugh. Instead, his gaze softened.

"Yes."

The answer landed with uncomfortable weight.

The air felt thick.

You shifted your weight, suddenly aware of every inch separating you. Or rather, how little distance there actually was.

"You wanted something?" you asked carefully.

Bruce stared at you.

It was unnerving. Most people glanced away eventually. They blinked. Looked around. Got distracted.

Bruce seemed incapable of doing any of those things.

His eyes moved slowly across your face as if committing every detail to memory.

Four months ago, he couldn't spare you two seconds. Now he was looking at you like he couldn't bear to look away. It didn't make sense.

Nothing about this made sense.

"I owe you an apology." The words caught you completely off guard.

You blinked. "What?"

"The first gala."

Your breath stopped. Every muscle in your body locked.

Bruce's jaw tightened. "You approached me."

The memory flashed through your mind with brutal clarity.

The countdown.

The humiliation.

"I remember." It was a lie.

You knew it was a lie. You could hear it. He hadn't remembered. You'd seen his face that night. Seen the complete absence of recognition.

But he looked genuinely upset now.

"I handled it badly."

A laugh escaped before you could stop it. Small. Bitter.

Bruce's eyes narrowed.

"You don't need to apologize."

"Yes." His answer was immediate. "I do."

Something sharp flickered across his expression. Self-directed anger. Regret. Maybe even guilt.

You didn't understand it at all.

"You didn't know me." Your voice came out quieter than intended. The admission hurt. Even now.

"You didn't owe me anything."

Bruce went completely still. The silence that followed felt wrong. Dangerous.

His gaze dropped briefly to your wrist before returning to your face. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

Then he took a step forward.

Yet your pulse reacted like he'd crossed the entire hallway.

"I should have known you." The words came out rough. Almost painful.

Something shifted beneath the surface of his composure. You could feel it. Like cracks forming beneath ice.

And for the first time all evening, genuine unease curled through your stomach.

Because suddenly it felt less like Bruce Wayne had happened to stop you in a hallway. And more like Bruce Wayne had been waiting there. Waiting specifically for you. Waiting for the moment you would be alone. When there would be no audience. No escape.

A shiver ran down your spine.

Bruce's eyes immediately tracked the movement.

His expression softened. Like even that tiny movement meant something precious to him.

And somehow that frightened you far more than if he'd looked angry.

"Can I walk you to your car?" he asked quietly.

The question sounded harmless. Polite.

But there was something underneath it. Something hungry. Something that made it feel less like a request and more like a man trying very, very hard not to demand.

When you hesitated, Bruce's gaze darkened harshly.

You got the overwhelming impression that Bruce Wayne was not accustomed to hearing no.

And that whatever was looking at you from behind those impossibly blue eyes had already decided how this interaction would end.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. You looked at him, searching for the playboy you had seen on the news, but he wasn't there. In his place stood a man whose very presence felt like a gravitational pull, heavy and inescapable.

Your heart was a frantic thing in your chest, caught between the instinct to run and the soulmate bond that hummed under your skin, screaming that this was where you were supposed to be.

"I... I can manage, Bruce," you said, trying to inject a note of independence into your voice. You didn't want to be another person he was simply 'handling' or 'managing.' You wanted to be seen as an equal, not a charity project or a fleeting interest.

"It’s a long walk to the valet, and you have guests to attend to."

You made a move to step around him, but you didn't get far.

Before you could even clear his shadow, Bruce’s hand shot out. He didn't grab you roughly, but his fingers curled around your upper arm with a terrifying, singular purpose. It wasn't a casual touch, it was a tether. His palm was hot, even through the fabric of your clothes, and the sheer strength in his grip made your breath hitch.

"The guests are gone," he said. His voice had lost its social lilt. It was now a low, gravelly command that seemed to vibrate in the very marrow of your bones.

"They don't matter. Nothing in that room matters but this."

He stepped into your space, forcing you to tilt your head to maintain eye contact. The hallway felt like it was shrinking, the walls closing in until the only thing left in the universe was the scent of him, like the coming of a storm.

"You think you can just walk away?" he murmured, his eyes searching yours with a desperation that bordered on the frantic.

You frowned, your confusion overriding your unease. "After everything? Bruce, we haven't even spoken for more than five minutes.”

You let out a quiet broken laugh. “You don't even know me."

A dark, humorless sound escaped his throat, one that sounded more like a growl. "That is where you are wrong."

His grip tightened, making it clear he wasn't letting go.

His gaze dropped to your lips, then back to your eyes, his pupils blown wide until the blue was just a thin, electric ring.

"I know the way you tilt your head when you're thinking," he whispered, leaning so his breath fanned across your cheek.

"I know the exact shade your eyes turn when you're startled. I know the schedule of your life better than you do. I have spent every waking moment since that night trying to find a way to apologise for a sin I didn't even know I had committed."

Your heart hammered against your ribs.

How? How could he know these things? The sheer impossibility of his words should have made you laugh, or call for security, but the soulmate bond was reacting to his intensity, pulling you toward him like a moth to a flame.

It was a terrifying, beautiful pull.

A part of you wanted to demand answers, to push him away for his madness, but another part, the part that had been lonely and aching for months, wanted to collapse into him and let him devour you.

"You... you're obsessed," you breathed, the words slipping out before you could think them through.

Bruce didn't flinch. He didn't deny it. Instead, he leaned closer, his forehead touching yours, his expression one of raw, unadulterated devotion.

"I am," he confessed, the admission sounding like a vow.

"I am completely, utterly undone by you. And if you walk out of this hallway tonight without letting me make it right, I think the world might actually end."

He looked at you then, not as a billionaire looking at a guest, but as a man looking at his entire world, his eyes burning with a terrifying, beautiful hunger.

"Please," he pleaded, the word a jagged edge of vulnerability.

"Don't make me watch you walk away again. Let me take you home. Let me show you that you were never just a face in a crowd. You are the only thing that has ever been real."

He wasn't asking anymore. He was begging, and as he stood there, looming against you with a possessiveness that felt like a honeyed trap, you realised with a jolt of both fear and exhilaration that you didn't want to say no.

In the months that followed that night at the gala, the "coincidences" had stopped being coincidences and had become a reality.

You no longer had to wonder why a certain restaurant always had your favourite table reserved, or why your career seemed to accelerate with a sudden, inexplicable momentum.

You knew. You knew that every promotion, every unexpected gift, and every "chance" encounter was a thread in the web Bruce had woven around you.

And the most frightening part was how easily you had let yourself be caught.

The initial shock of his obsession, the way he looked at you as if you were a miracle he was afraid might vanish if he blinked hard enough, had slowly melted into a deep, intoxicating security. You were no longer a face in the crowd. You were the center of his universe.

You sat on the edge of the massive, silk draped bed in the master suite of Wayne Manor, watching the moonlight spill across the floor.

The room was silent, save for the distant, rhythmic sound of the Gotham rain against the glass.

A door clicked shut. Heavy, purposeful footsteps crossed the rug.

You didn't need to turn around to know it was him. You could feel him. The soulmate bond, once a source of lonely longing, was now a constant, thrumming connection that acted like a second pulse.

Bruce stepped into the light. He had shed the armor of his tuxedo, wearing only a dark shirt left partially unbuttoned.

He looked less like a billionaire and more like the man you had met in the hallway.

He approached you, his presence filling the room until there was no air left that didn't belong to him.

He sank onto the bed behind you, his large, warm hands sliding around your waist to pull you back against his chest. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply. A low, contented sound vibrating against your skin.

"You're thinking again," he murmured, his voice a deep, velvet caress. "I can feel it."

"Just thinking about how much has changed," you whispered, leaning your head back against his shoulder.

You reached up, lacing your fingers with his. "How much you've changed."

Bruce tightened his hold, his arms circling you like a fortress. "I haven't changed. I've simply finally found the right reason to exist."

He turned you in his arms, forcing you to face him. His eyes were dark, swirling with that familiar, beautiful madness. Devotion so absolute it felt like a physical weight.

"Do you still feel like you're in a trap?"

You looked up at him, searching the face of the man who had studied your every breath, the man who had turned his entire life into a pursuit of you.

You thought of the fear you had felt, the unease at his intensity, and the way he had practically begged for a chance to belong to you.

Then, you thought of the way he held you now as if you were the most precious thing in existence, as if your very survival depended on his touch.

A slow, knowing smile touched your lips. You reached up, cupping his jaw, your thumb tracing the line of his lip.

"No," you admitted softly, the truth settling comfortably in your chest. "It feels like home."

Bruce’s expression broke, a flash of pure, unadulterated relief crossing his features before it was replaced by a hunger that made your breath hitch.

He leaned in, his lips hovering just a fraction from yours.

"Good," he rasped, his gaze dropping to your mouth. "Because there is no going back. You are mine. And I am never, ever letting you go again."

As he pulled you into a kiss that tasted of desperation and promise, you realised that the universe hadn't hated you after all.

It had simply been waiting for the moment that you finally stopped running and let the storm claim you.

Please comment and reblog! :)

11K+ Words, 69K+ Characters, 1K+ Sentences, 900+ Paragraphs, 42 Minute average reading time, 1 hour and 6 minute average speaking time.

Read Dick Grayson’s part here.

Read Jason Todd’s part here.

Read Tim Drake’s part here.

↑←↓→

The most common bond was pain resonance.

One soulmate scraped their knee, the other felt sting. One broke a bone, the other suffered for it too.

Entire support groups existed for those unfortunate enough to be paired with athletes, construction workers, and adrenaline junkies.

Other bonds were rarer.

Dreamers could meet one another in sleep.

Some soulmates heard each other’s thoughts.

Others carried first words on their skin.

There were even people who saw flashes of each other’s lives through mirrors.

Every bond was different. Every bond was special.

Yours was a mark.

A simple symbol resting against your hip.

You’d spent most of your childhood believing it was a birthmark.

It resembled a bird frozen mid-flight. Two elegant wings spread wide across the dip in your skin.

When you were younger, you’d trace it absent-mindedly after baths, wondering why it looked so different from everyone else’s.

Your mother had laughed when you asked. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

At six years old, that answer had been deeply unsatisfying.

At ten, you’d become convinced your soulmate was secretly an angel.

At eleven, you’d grown embarrassed by the entire theory.

At fifteen..

The mark disappeared.

Not faded. Not lightened. Disappeared.

You remembered staring at your reflection for nearly an hour.

The skin was smooth. Unmarked. Empty.

The shape that had existed your entire life was simply gone.

Nobody knew what that meant.

There were stories, of course. There were always stories.

Old forums. Urban legends. Half-remembered articles. A bond breaking. The universe making mistakes.

None of them were verified. None of them made sense.

You tried not to think about it. ‘Tried’ being the important word.

Because something else happened that day. Something far worse.

You woke up feeling wrong.

Not sick. Or injured.

Wrong.

Like someone had reached inside your chest and scooped out everything that made you feel human.

Getting out of bed felt impossible. Breathing felt exhausting. Your limbs weighed twice what they should. Food tasted like nothing, and music sounded distant.

Your parents took you to a hospital.

The doctors couldn’t find anything. Blood tests came back normal. Brain scans came back normal. Everything came back normal.

And yet it felt as though something sharp had carved straight through the center of you and left a hollow space behind.

Weeks passed.

Then months.

The feeling never truly left.

It might have dulled. Became manageable. But every morning you woke with the same strange emptiness sitting beneath your ribs, like grief.

Except you weren’t grieving anyone.

You couldn’t. You hadn’t lost anything.

Had you?

Six months later, the mark returned.

You found it after stepping out of the shower. For several seconds, you simply stared.

Because it was there.

Those familiar wings.

The soul mark, back where it belonged.