Chapter Text
Robin landed on the rooftop in a forward roll, scraping an elbow on the uneven gravel without feeling it. He was already running hot emotionally, since Batman wouldn’t believe him about that piece of shit Garzonas falling to his death on accident.
Jason Todd didn’t commit murder at the age of fifteen, thank you very much, Bruce. Yet here he was, patrolling without permission because he was benched under suspicion of—of fucking murder, and lying about murder, and violating the rules and betraying the Mission and everything this supposed dad had ever taught him. So fuck him and everything he thought they’d been building, as a supposed family, for the past three years.
He was making back-up plans at this point. Dredging up ideas he’d put to rest years ago, once Bruce lulled him into a sense of (false) security through careful, consistent reassurances and promises and follow-through.
What happened to all that? One (perceived) slip-up, and all that trust was gone, apparently.
Good to fuckin’ know.
Jason had a lead on some real family, anyway. Which he would be looking into later.
The figure Jason had seen on this rooftop was still there, opposite edge, leaning over and watching something happening below—must be something noisy, because the person didn’t turn when Robin showed up. Might be a scout for a gang, or a drug runner meeting up with their supplier, or some random civilian.
If it was someone thinking of jumping, Jason had to intervene.
He crept closer, realizing how small the figure was as he drew near. Tiny. Narrow shoulders and skinny legs under an oversized coat, hood obscuring the head.
Robin listened; didn’t sound like a fight happening below, not a mugging… the kid shifted and did something, and Robin strafed sideways enough to catch sight of a camera in the kid’s ghost-pale bare hands. Fancy camera, by the looks of it. Scout for a mob, more likely at this point. Fuck.
Well, it coulda been Jason in another life, so he wasn’t looking to give the kid shit about it. Maybe he could help ‘em out.
He waited, obscured by a vent, until the people below seemed to leave. The kid sat back and stared at the screen of their camera for a moment. Then they tucked the thing into their coat, zipped it up, and stepped up onto the ledge. A fire escape sat around eight feet below—not so fast, kiddo.
Robin leaped forward and reached out, snagging the kid by their bare wrist, starting to speak, but then—
Skin-to-skin contact was the only method of activating soulmarks.
Many people never met their soulmate; with billions of people across the planet, the odds of living near or crossing paths with the one person whose soul was perfectly matched to yours used to be infinitesimal.
In school, when everyone learned about soulmarks, you learned that maybe one out of every thousand people encountered their soulmate before the advent of technology. The internet, where you could join a mark site and search through uploaded photos using tags that people picked to describe their marks (often the wrong words, in the end, to describe the shared image on two bodies’ skin), allowed more like one in twenty people to identify their match in modern society. You were probably fucked if your perfect person lived in a technology-free monastery, or an isolated village in a jungle somewhere.
And sometimes one half was eighty years old and their soulmate was ten, and they got a decade or two of pure friendship before saying goodbye.
One out of ten people were born without soulmarks, and were considered either lucky or tragic, depending on the person.
A soulmate didn’t have to be romantic, but most were—it was the deepest, most perfect connection possible according to philosophers and magic-users alike, and that usually included every type of connection two people could make. Intimate, sexual, emotional, social; it was supposed to be everything possible between two people.
Or three, if you were extra-lucky. One trashy reality show was all about third soulmates finding their matches, either separate or already together, and everyone trying to get past their own hang-ups and social expectations around polyamory.
Another reality show featured people whose marks were similar enough to be ambiguous – one season was all flowers, another was stars and planets; the weirdest season was all fish. A dozen crotchety old fisherman trying to connect with marine biologists, teachers, chefs, and aquarium workers.
(Not that Jason watched any of that shit; he was too busy surviving, then too busy kicking ass.)
The moment his skin touched the kid’s, a jolt of overwhelming energy shot through his entire body, coalescing at the mark on his upper left pectoral.
The two birds he’d known and hated since he first understood what the mark actually meant: one upright, wings beginning to spread; the other a mirror image reflected underneath, head downward, looking injured or dead.
Jason’s parents were soulmates, so when he watched Willis smack the shit out of Catherine as she cried and shielded little Jason, he understood the real truth: soulmates could use the connection to control. To hurt. To destroy. And sometimes you couldn’t get away.
So for Jason, waking his soulmark hurt.
He cried out at the feeling, hearing the kid shout in surprise and fear at the same time.
Then Jason realized that this might be it: the final straw. This was a child, his soulmate, and they met when he was out as Robin.
That meant this kid would have to learn his civilian identity.
And that would be enough to tip Batman over the edge. Jason wouldn’t be worth the trouble, at that point. A kid wouldn’t be able to keep a secret. They’d go on tv and blast their soulmark all over social media and Robin was done. Oh, but Bruce would be caught, then, too—it would be too easy to make that connection—
It was over.
It was over.
Fuck! FUCK!
“No!” Robin shouted, shoving— “get away from me! No!”
The kid flew backward, pure terror on their tiny (tiny!) face, and one of their legs seemed to give out, and then they were gone, over the edge of the building.
Clang!
Hit the fire escape.
Not dead, not fucking murdered, not an accident, either—Bruce would kill Jason either way—shoving a kid off a building—
His soulmate—
The world turned grey, sound turned off. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.
Jason turned and ran.