Chapter Text
Centuries ago, everything had changed, as though the people of the universe had passed a divine test and were deemed worthy of receiving the greatest award possible. They called them soulbonds. An invisible tether, ethereal and absolute, anchoring people to others through some unknowable metaphysical thread. They were strong enough to reach across oceans, across lifetimes, and most impressively, across skin.
If you wrote onto your arm, the ink would appear on your soulmate's too. This allowed them to talk to each other, and they functioned effectively like a group chat, making it a more intimate alternative to texting.
When he was little, gap-toothed and lisping, flapping his arms like wings and trailing picture books in his wake, Tim was entranced with the idea. Everytime they were mentioned in school he would positively glow. He could ramble about the history of soulmates, notable soulbonds and the few scientific discoveries around it at a level far beyond his age.
The teachers would always praise him when he would wobble up to them with wide enthusiastic eyes, babbling about the impact of writing to your soulmate on dopamine levels. They would simply nod encouragingly, because how did this tiny little thing even know what dopamine was?
When he got home, he would bounce around the house, much to his parents dismay, happily babbling to himself and pretending he was talking to them. He would talk about his day, his hopes, and what he thought they would be like. As he grew, that behaviour was quickly stamped out of him by his mothers stern gaze, it always did have a way of dimming his shine, but he never gave up dreaming. He still scribbled on his arm, practicing. He wasn’t an artist, he barely even liked art, but he wanted to be able to impress them when he gained access to the bond, when he could finally use his skin to meet them.
He just had to wait until he was 12, when their bond would be established and he could finally meet them.
There are various types of soulmate bonds, the majority have a platonic bond, a familial bond and a romantic bond.
The familial bond was first, at age 12, likely so a child could be nurtured by them. The platonic and romantic ones came later, in your mid twenties, when you were old enough to understand love and more importantly knew yourself.
Tim, aged 11, was so very excited to gain his.
He didn’t have high hopes it would be his biological parents, but maybe he’d get a brother, or a sister, or just someone kind. He didn’t want much, just someone who could be there for him and (hopefully) maybe, just, maybe, love Batman as much as he did so he could share his many, many thoughts and photographs.
Because Tim loved Batman, devoutly. It started when he got his first ever camera, he hid behind dumpsters just to catch a blurry glimpse of the cape, then clutched the photographs to his chest like rare, holy things. He loved to take pictures of him when he wasn’t watching, it made him squeal in delight as they developed, rocking back and forth in glee as he thought about what it would be like to meet them.
He loved Robin and Nightwing, and their obvious care for each other even if they didn’t always express it. He wondered if they were soulmates, and yearned for what they had.
When the day came, he could barely contain his excitement.
On the night before his twelfth birthday, the Drake Manor was silent. His parents were somewhere far away, Peru, maybe, or Geneva. It was 11:59 PM, and Tim was curled up in the library with a flashlight, vibrating with anticipation. His arm was bare, waiting.
And then…
The ink appeared. It was faint, as it tended to be at the start, he had to let it develop just like his photographs. With time it would be quicker.
They were real.
He almost screamed in joy. He had soulmates! They were talking to each other on the bond right now! He wondered what their reaction would be, if they’d halt their conversation and eagerly welcome him. Maybe he could even see them in the morning. Would they live close by? Would he get to go on a plane? Or maybe they would even be tender enough to fly to him, the thought could make him cry, he would adore them no matter how much effort they put in as long as it was any at all.
The words kept forming, they scrawled across his forearm with a confidence his own hand never had. He laughed, almost, high and light and disbelieving. He even let out little eager squeaks, heart thudding in his chest like a drumbeat of hope.
And then he read them, his heart sank.
On his hands weren’t the words of the kind, doting family he had been praying for.
JT: Got the guy tied up, he’s already begging for mercy lmfao.
BW: Keep a close eye on him, I’m coming.
DG: What about the human trafficking ring?
CC: I have the girls with me right now. They’re all very scared.
BW: Good work. I’ll deal with them soon.
DT: I’ll handle it, just finished with the drug dealers.
The flashlight slipped from his hand and rolled across the floor, casting odd shadows on the bookshelves. His smile fell, slowly, as if peeled away, replaced with a mortified gape.
He read the messages again and again, looking for some kind of hidden meaning, but he couldn’t find any.
He watched crime shows, the glow of the TV flickering across the room and reflecting on the eyes of a child who was definitely not old enough to be watching. He read cold cases, even called in tips to aid Batman. He knew what kind of people used coded initials, and he knew what kind of people talked about “dealing” with others.
His soulmates, the ones fate had hand-picked to raise him, were criminals.
Tim’s heart pounded. He looked down at his forearm like it had betrayed him, his fingers hovered over the pen he’d dropped, then recoiled, as if it might burn him. He sat there in the dark for a long time. The manor creaked around him. Outside, the moonlight bathed the empty driveway in white. Somewhere, far away, his mother was probably sipping champagne with strangers.
He had waited twelve years for this. For THIS. For soulmates who, by all appearances, were deeply entrenched in criminal activity, some kind of organized gang. It felt like a punishment rather than a blessing. As though the universe had reviewed his life, judged him wanting, and decided the only proper course was to hand him over to criminals. Was he truly so flawed that this was meant to shape him? What sort of person was he meant to become, surrounded by people like them?
He made his choice immediately. He would not answer.
Whatever had gone wrong, whether it be some cosmic clerical error, or maybe even a problem with him that landed him this fate, it wasn’t his responsibility to correct. He refused to be the kind of person that accepted them. He believed in justice, and in Batman. These people, whoever they were, did not resemble heroes in the slightest, and he would not call them his soulmates.
He scrubbed at the words on his arm until the skin turned red and sore. When the ghost of those letters remained, stained into him beyond removal, he pulled on the longest shirt he could find and tightened the cuffs around his wrists until the fabric pinched. From that day forward, he decided he would not have soulmates at all.
In time, more names began to appear. Each time, he was tempted, briefly, to reach out, to warn them, to see if one of them might be salvageable. But it only took days, sometimes weeks, before the change became obvious. It happened every time, they, too, become corrupted.
There was one that kept him awake at night.
‘DW’.
He was some kind of artist, and very clearly a child. When it was presumably their own 12th birthday, they had drawn a small bunny, complete with a birthday hat, and over the next few days, more animals followed, cows, sheep, bats, rodents. The lines were very neat for someone their age, and it made him coo. Despite everything, he had stared down at those animals with the kind of soft smile. For a moment, he had considered responding.
But then DW changed, like the rest.
DW: I do not understand why I cannot kill him, father.
BW: I told you why. Leave me to handle it.
Tim had cried when he saw it. His chest still tightened as guilt twisted through him.
DW was still just a child. Still so young, and so clearly talented, so full of imagination. And now they had been dragged into their vile little gang. Tim hadn’t said anything, hadn’t tried to stop it when he might have had the chance. He bore that choice like a rope around his neck, and it tightened in his sleep, causing him to wake up gasping for air. He had stood by, and now DW was just another name on a growing list of lost causes.
Worse still, they had grown bolder. The messages were more violent, especially from JT. He had vanished for some time, and in his absence Tim had feared the worst. As much as he hated to admit it, he still felt something like worry. He recalled all the scientific journals he had obsessed over as a child, and knew it was likely a biological impulse.
When JT returned, it was clear that absence had not softened him. Whatever he'd seen, whatever battles he'd fought, they had hollowed something out in him.
JT: Kill him, B, or I’ll never forgive you.
BW: You know I can’t do that. Stop this, J.
JT: Whatever. I’ll blow off the heads of every gang member I see. You can’t stop me.
Tim stared at the words for a long time. He couldn’t imagine what kind of gang war JT had been dragged into, but he found himself wishing he had truly died instead. He couldn’t fathom part of his own soul killing so ruthlessly.
He often wondered if his romantic and platonic soulmates would turn out to be just as monstrous. If this was the pattern fate had set for him, if this was what the universe believed he deserved, he wanted no part of it.
Perhaps somewhere out there, there was another Tim Drake. A cruel one. Perhaps he was the one who was meant to belong to this group. The Tim Drake who didn’t flinch when children picked up knives. Maybe that Tim was laughing with HIS real soulmates right now where he should be.
But that Tim wasn’t him.
If he had to go without any soulmates, he would. He could be alone if it meant not supporting criminals.
_
The Wayne family had always felt like they were missing something. As more soulmates were added to their bond, they started to feel more complete, but there was still a wide gaping hole that they all agreed existed.
Bruce, more than anyone, felt the absence constantly itching away at him. His mind, trained to detect patterns and track anomalies, turned the sensation over and over like a riddle he could not solve. He knew this feeling. It mirrored the hollow agony that had consumed him when his parents died. The shattering silence left in the wake of their absence had been the first time he ever understood what it meant to lose a soulmate. They had been his first bonds, and when they were gone, something foundational had cracked inside him.
Now, the same weight pressed against his chest, dull and constant.
Was that it? Had one of their soulmates died before they ever had a chance to know them? The thought haunted him, gnawed at the corners of his mind when he stared too long at the constant writing along his arms over the years. It was the only conclusion that made any sense. He couldn’t protect someone he didn’t even know existed, and that failure was unbearable in its own way.
That grief shaped everything. He fought harder because of it, threw himself into the streets with more reckless ferocity, He didn’t know if his other soulmate was taken away by a criminal or if it was natural, but he condemned crime for it all the same, just like he had done when his parents had died.
When he first came to that conclusion, the despair was so suffocating that he had begun to pull away. He hadn’t meant to isolate himself, but grief made him cold, and guilt made him distant. His silence had driven wedges into the very family he had worked so hard to build. Jason, feeling neglected, had taken Bruce’s retreat as a sign to search for belonging somewhere else. He started looking for his biological mother. That search had led him to the joker, and Bruce’s failure to stop it had cost him his son’s life.
He still woke up some nights gasping, the weight of Jason’s absence too heavy to carry. That loss had split the gap of ‘missing’ open like a chasm. And when Jason returned, risen from death like something out of myth, Bruce held him as if he might disappear again at any moment. He clung to him tighter than he had ever allowed himself to before, filled with a quiet, desperate hope that maybe this time, he could be enough.
But the void remained. Smaller than when he didn’t have Jason, but the same as it was before.
When they would eat together, they always left a chair empty, and when they talked there was always a pause as if waiting for another person to chime in.
Bruce had tried after Jason died, to let go of the cowl and reclaim something resembling a normal life with his soulmates. But then more arrived, and Bruce knew he couldn’t turn away, he had to be Batman to guide them.
He vowed, from that moment onward, to be a better soulmate.
He didn’t know if they would ever learn the truth, but he would never forget the one he never got to make any memories with.