“I’m not your son!”

The last words that Dick said to him play on a loop in Bruce’s head.

“And you are not my father.”

He was so angry.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe Robin should stay dead. I’m sick of you always looking over my shoulder, telling me how every single thing I do is wrong! I can take care of myself!”

Bruce didn’t know what to say. He tried to reason with Dick, tried to understand how things had gone so wrong that this was the result, but all it did was make the argument worse. Until—

“I don’t care what the mark says. I didn’t need you on the Clock Tower, and I don’t need you now!”

They haven’t spoken since. Dick is in New York, with the Titans. Bruce is in Gotham, alone.

The manor is empty and quiet. Bruce moves through it, silent, restless, repeating the same actions every day. He wakes up. He trains. He pushes himself to the brink of exhaustion. He attends business meetings he doesn’t pay attention to and parties he doesn’t care about, and then he goes out to fight the worst Gotham has to offer. He collapses into bed, bruised and bleeding and unsettled, and the cycle repeats. He does it all again.

Logically, Bruce knows that one more person would not take up that much space, in his house or in his life. But Dick’s sudden absence reminds him of just how much space there is. He and Alfred can spend days apart, living in the same house but exchanging only a few words as they pass each other at meals. With Dick in New York, and radio silence between them, the sunny energy that filled their bond drains away until Bruce feels nothing but bitter cold.

A cleaning crew comes once a week. Bruce sees people at Wayne Enterprises. He sees people at parties. He sinks deeper into a restless malaise.

And then, one night, his arm starts to heat.

He’s in the Batcave when it happens, sticking bandaids over a series of shallow scratches on his face. Plain beige bandaids, not the Justice League- and Gray Ghost-patterned ones that Dick found somewhere on the internet. As he folds the box up and goes to put it away, his forearm heats up, so rapidly that for a second Bruce thinks he’s burned himself.

No. There’s nothing hot enough to burn him in the cave. None of his recent patrols have involved flamethrowers or hot coals or corrosive acid. Bruce takes a deep breath, sets his thoughts back on a calm, rational track, and turns his arm over to find the source of the feeling.

He sees a name written across his arm. Jason Peter Todd.

A soulmark.

Bruce stares at it for a moment. Then two.

He has another soulmark.

Soulmarks are inherently mysterious: a remnant of magic left over in a world largely devoid of it. Accounts of them vary by culture, time period, and geographical area, but most agree that the marks tie two people together when they need each other most. They include both a visual component and a physical sensation, and once they appear, they are impossible to remove. Some believe that a soulmark signifies a romantic relationship, and only a romantic relationship; Bruce knows better.

Bruce has three marks.

Alfred Pennyworth, written across his left shoulder blade in elegant script.

Talia al Ghul, inscribed on his hip in curling, compact letters.

Dick Grayson, on his left palm in Dick’s lopsided chicken scratch.

Two of those people, he knew before the marks appeared. Two of them were platonic, a warm rush of safety and affection and care. One was different: sharp and fervent, pushing him forward into a lover’s arms. Bruce could never mistake a platonic bond for a romantic one. But all three were surprises: a flood of emotion as the mark appeared and the bond between soulmates knitted together. This time the bond is absent.

Not fully formed, then. That’s unusual, though not unprecedented; plenty of people manifest a mark earlier than their soulmate, although not as many as the romance genre would have one believe.

Bruce turns his arm over again. The placement is common. The sensation is nothing new. But the name is a mystery.

Jason Peter Todd.

Bruce doesn’t know anyone who goes by any of those three names.

What is this?

Soulmarks can be notoriously hard to decipher. Some people get lucky, as Bruce has, and get a person’s full name. Some people only get a first name, or a series of first names tried and discarded, or—in rare but well-known cases—a name the soulmate has yet to adopt.

Bruce’s mark could be any of those possibilities. Jason Peter Todd. Is it three first names? A particularly indecisive soulmate? Or three people? Brothers? The handwriting looks the same on all three, but it’s not enough to be a truly representative sample.

The mark is a mystery, and not an easy one to solve.

Bruce tries searching. He has access to the GCPD’s criminal database, plus his own—admittedly haphazard—collection of files. Those resources have a distinct bent, though, and if Bruce’s new soulmate is a career criminal or fellow superhero, he probably would have at least met them already. If they aren’t either of those things—and Bruce hopes that they aren’t—he is unlikely to find them in either the GCPD’s database or his own.

He runs a search for each of the three names on his arm. Each brings up plenty of results, but none of them spark the instant burst of recognition that he remembers from that night at the circus years ago. Bruce is mostly relieved, but that leaves him with no leads, no way of identifying his soulmate out of the millions of people who live in Gotham.

What if they aren’t from Gotham? That presents even more questions.

Bruce keeps going. He wakes up, trains, goes to WE and whatever social functions his secretary puts on his calendar. He wears long-sleeved shirts, and he ponders the warmth slowly fading into his skin.

Two of Bruce’s soulmates are no longer speaking to him. Bruce isn’t sure he deserves another chance.

Days pass. Heavy clouds roll in over Gotham, and the date slides closer to an anniversary that Bruce never misses.

He circles Crime Alley like a vulture, drawing closer and closer, until the night he parks the Batmobile on a narrow street littered with trash. He leaves the car, dark and silent, and starts his patrol.

One night. For one night out of the year, Crime Alley will be free of crime.

He stops a few muggings and a burglary in the early hours. He drops in on a bar owner known for underpaying his workers. But as the night wears on, Bruce finds himself sinking deeper into memory. He remembers Crime Alley when it was still Park Row, when it was full of light and life. Now the old theaters are closed, the restaurants are boarded up, and the inhabitants struggle to get by. On this night, Bruce feels a strange sort of kinship with the Alley. Both of them had their trajectory changed forever, on one night, twenty-two years ago.

This year the streets are quiet, and Bruce is more melancholy than exhausted by the time he loops back to the Batmobile. He drops down from a neighboring fire escape, into the alleyway, and stops. Something is wrong.

He knows the Batmobile inside and out—he designed every one of its systems, and built quite a few of them. He can tell at a glance that the silhouette of the car is off. When he moves closer, batarang in hand, he sees why: three of the tires are gone.

Someone stole the tires straight off of the Batmobile.

The sight is so absurd, so incongruous, that laughter fizzles up out of Bruce’s chest. Of course. If anyone would have the audacity to steal from Batman’s car, it would be someone from Crime Alley. The crime is so bold, and so nearly victimless—Bruce can certainly afford to replace the tires—that he almost has to admire it.

Three tires are gone, hubcaps and all, but the fourth is still in place. Bruce retreats to the fire escape and settles in to watch the alley. He wants to see if the thief will come back to finish what they started.

He doesn’t have to wait long. Only a few minutes later, a small figure in a faded red sweater slinks around the corner with a tire iron in hand.

Bruce narrows his eyes. That’s a child.

A child stole the tires off of the Batmobile?

He waits until the kid crouches by the fourth tire. Then he drops down to block his escape.

The boy freezes. He spins around, hiding the tire iron behind his back. When he sees Bruce, his eyes go comically wide.

“Come to finish the job?” Bruce says.

The boy backs up a step, but between Bruce, the Batmobile, and the wall of the alley, he’s penned in. His face is dirty, his clothes ragged and stained, his dark hair greasy and tangled. If anyone is taking care of him, they aren’t doing a very good job.

“I dunno what you’re talking about,” the boy says. His accent is upper Gotham, all his contractions running together.

“Really,” Bruce says. “Then what is that tire iron for?”

“This!”

The boy whips the iron around and slams it directly into Bruce’s ribs.

It hurts. The armor blunts the impact, but the blow reverberates through his torso and Bruce doubles over with a wheeze. The boy tears past him toward the mouth of the alley.

No. The boy is bold, resourceful, but he clearly needs help. Bruce can’t let him get away.

He shoves the pain down, leaps forward, and catches the boy by the wrist.

“Not so fast.”

The boy shrieks and spins around, striking out again with the tire iron. This time Bruce is ready. He catches the iron and twists it out of the boy’s grasp. The boy attacks with his bare hands, clawing at Bruce’s arm.

“Let me go! Leave me alone!”

“Calm down,” Bruce says. He lifts the boy up by the wrist, just enough to stop him hurting himself on the spiked gauntlets. “I’m not going to hurt you. Where are the tires?”

The boy hisses and spits like an angry kitten. Bruce watches him, occasionally batting away his hand when he gets too close to something sharp.

“Collins Street,” the boy says, eventually. His struggling peters out after a minute or two. “Behind the dumpster.”

“Alright,” Bruce says, making a note of that. Collins Street is a block away. “Do you have an adult? A parent or guardian?”

“None of your business!” The boy tries to twist out of his grasp again.

“Do you have anyone looking after you?”

“Just let me go—I gave you the stupid tires—”

“I can’t do that,” Bruce says. “Not unless you have somewhere safe to go.”

“I can take care of myself!”

He probably has been. If the boy had anyone at all—an older sibling, a grandparent, or even an unrelated adult—he wouldn’t be roaming the streets of Crime Alley at three in the morning, stealing tires. He’s most likely either homeless or a runaway, which works out to the same thing: a child without a safe place to live.

Bruce catches the boy’s other wrist and holds him still. “What’s your name?”

“Fuck you!”

Bruce bites back a sigh. “This will go a lot easier if you cooperate.”

“Or what? You’ll beat me up?” The boy’s voice cracks, and Bruce glimpses the fear underneath his desperate bravado. “You’re gonna do that anyway, so why—”

“I am not going to beat you.” If he had a hand free, Bruce would be rubbing his forehead. He misses Dick, suddenly, selfishly. Dick is so much better at talking to children. “But if you won’t give me your guardian’s name, and you won’t give me your name, I’ll have to run your fingerprints. That is the only other way I have to identify you.”

And Bruce could do that, but the fingerprint scanner is in the Batcave, and really that’s just what he needs tonight, to try and haul this kid all the way back to the cave for fingerprinting, just to confirm what he already knows.

Note: ask Lucius about developing a portable fingerprint scanner.

The boy goes limp. He tugs against Bruce’s grip, but it’s clearly a lost cause. “Fine,” he says. Resignation colors his voice. “It’s—Jason.”

Searing heat lights up Bruce’s entire nervous system.

No. It can’t be. There are hundreds of Jasons in Gotham. Thousands. This must be a coincidence.

“Last name?” Bruce’s heart pounds in his throat. Warmth pulses in his right arm. No. It can’t be.

“Todd,” the boy mumbles.

For a second, Bruce’s heart stops.

“Jason Peter Todd?”

The boy jerks in his grasp. “How do you—” He looks up. He meets Bruce’s eyes. “Oh, no. No!”

He tries to pull away again, and this time Bruce lets him go, fumbling desperately at the clasp of his right gauntlet. Jason skitters away, out of arm’s reach. Bruce tears the gauntlet off, pulls back his sleeve, and brandishes his forearm like an offering.

“Look.”

Jason does.

The words curl around Bruce’s forearm. Jason Peter Todd. Three names, in spiky, uneven handwriting; three names that have baffled Bruce since the moment they first appeared on his skin.

“Do you,” he says, “have any idea how confusing your name is?”

Jason stares at him for thirty whole seconds. Then he blinks, and Bruce watches his survival instincts come back online in real time.

“Fuck you!” Jason yells, and he takes off running.

Jason makes it two blocks before reality catches up with him.

He ran away from Batman.

He’s still running away from Batman.

He is so incredibly fucked.

He ducks through the back door of a bar, just as an employee steps out, and ignores the yelling and things bouncing off the walls as he sprints for the next door as fast as he can. It spits him out on 67th Street, and the adrenaline carries him for another block, and then he’s on the other side of Crime Alley and he still, somehow, has all of his bones.

Batman is nowhere to be seen.

Jason doesn’t dare stop moving. He doesn’t dare step into the open either, sticking to alleyways and narrow walks between buildings—only he’s coming to the edge of Crime Alley now, and the streets are getting wider, and he’s going to have to turn around at some point, because he ran in the opposite direction of his hideout.

He ran away from Batman.

He didn’t have a choice. Batman is his soulmate—because apparently the whole universe is out to get him—and there’s only one thing that adults want from their soulmates.

Soulmates fall in love with each other, and then they have sex. That’s how it goes in all the movies. That’s how it happened with Mom and Dad—only Jason was around long enough to see what happened after. He knows that soulmates don’t have to treat each other nicely. The bond doesn’t stop them from screaming and throwing things and beating the shit out of each other. The bond just makes it hurt worse.

Having sex would be bad enough. Batman is huge, and—Jason swore he would never do that again, not for anything, but Batman is big enough to hold Jason down and take whatever he wants. And it wouldn’t just be one time. Soulmates are forever, so Batman will want to keep him, and Jason—Jason isn’t little or cute or any of the things that might make Batman want to be nice. Jason is a mean, ugly street rat, who no one will ever miss, and he stole Batman’s tires.

Forget the hideout. He needs to get out of Gotham yesterday.

He ducks down 62nd Street toward the first subway entrance he sees. He doesn’t like hopping turnstiles—there are always too many cops around, waiting to catch people who do that. But if he can just get on the C train he can ride it all the way to Chinatown, and then it’s just over the bridge to Blüdhaven. He can be out of Gotham tonight.

He carefully doesn’t think about what he’ll do after that, in a strange city just as dangerous as his own. All that matters is getting the fuck out of town before Batman finds him. He can worry about everything else later.

Jason keeps his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie. His wrist burns where Batman grabbed it. There’s probably a word there by now. He doesn’t want to look.

The subway entrance stands out in the open along 62nd, under what have to be the brightest streetlights in Gotham. Jason stops on the corner for a minute, checking the shadows over and over, but he doesn’t see anything. The only people around are a couple of guys taking a smoke break by the stairs. One of them has a bright blue GCTA vest.

Jason makes one last check for cars and runs across the street as fast as he can. He aims for the stairs, ready to get underground, but a wave of dizziness knocks him off course. Maybe running clear across the Alley on an empty stomach and barely any sleep wasn’t the best idea.

“Whoa, kid, are you okay?” one of the smokers says.

“I’m fine,” Jason says. He tries to get past them, but the railing tilts into his space and almost trips him down the stairs. The guy in the GCTA vest catches him by the arm, just as Jason flings a hand out to keep from falling.

“Ya look like you’re gonna—” The guy’s voice stops.

“I’m fine.” Jason takes a deep breath and goes for the stairs.

The guy doesn’t let go.

“Holy shit.” He pulls Jason back, away from the stairs, into the light. “Ricky, look.”

Jason’s arm still feels hot where Batman grabbed him. The soulmark is fully formed now, just past the edge of his sleeve—two words, short and square, letters all evenly spaced and blocky.

Bruce Wayne.

Jason stares in horror at his wrist.

Bruce Wayne, the letters say.

Jason’s soulmate is Bruce Wayne.

“What the fuck?” he says, out loud, because that doesn’t make any sense. Batman is the one who touched him—Batman grabbed his wrist and lifted his arm up—and Batman is the one who had his mark, not—

It hits him like a slap to the face.

Batman is Bruce Wayne.

“Is that real?” The guy holding Jason’s arm rakes his fingers across the skin, and Jason remembers where he is.

“Let me go!” He tries to kick the guy holding him in the balls, but the angle is bad and the guy just spins him around so he can’t reach. The dizziness comes back. Jason almost falls over. The other asshole steps closer, still holding his cigarette.

“Looks real,” he says. The GCTA guy scratches Jason’s wrist with a fingernail.

“Ow! What the fuck—”

“I think it is.”

“Holy shit.”

“Let me go, you fucking cocksu—”

The cigarette guy smacks Jason in the mouth. “Shut up.”

“Ricky,” GCTA says. “Don’t hurt him.”

“I’m not,” Ricky says. “Didn’t even leave a mark.” He looks over his shoulder. “We better go.”

Jason needs to go, too—that’s what he was trying to do, before these two assholes fucking waylaid him—but he doesn’t get a chance. GCTA picks him up over his shoulder and starts moving. Jason realizes, far too late, exactly what their plan is.

“Are you fucking kidnapping me?”

“Sorry, kid,” GCTA says. He almost sounds like he means it. “If it wasn’t us, it’d be someone else, ya know?”

Jason didn’t know. He didn’t know he had Bruce fucking Wayne’s name on his wrist. He didn’t know that in the space of ten minutes, he could become the most valuable person in the whole city of Gotham.

He knows now. Now that it’s too late.

Jason tries screaming for help, and gets a piece of duct tape slapped over his mouth. He struggles and tries to run, and gets his hands and feet bound together with more duct tape. The asshole kidnappers throw him in the trunk of a beater sedan parked two blocks down, and then they start driving.

Jason tries to keep track of where they’re going. He knows Crime Alley like he knows his own face, but he’s pretty sure they’re heading away from the Alley. Soon they’re in the Bowery—or maybe Otisburg, if they turned left on 54th Street, but he can’t be sure. He can’t tell how fast they’re driving. The trunk is dark and rattly, and the duct tape is rough and prickly on his skin, and his head hurts. He feels dizzy again, although that might just be from being tied up in the trunk of a car.

At least the kidnappers don’t seem like they want to hurt him. They want to ransom him to Bruce Wayne—which isn’t much better, but they haven’t roughed Jason up too much. And he’s still on the move, out of sight of any cameras. He may not know exactly where he’s going, but Batman doesn’t know either. All Jason has to do is get out of the trunk, and he can still get away. He’ll cut through the Narrows and cross the bridge into Somerset, and then—steal money for a bus ticket. Or something.

He just has to get out of the trunk.

He flops over onto his stomach. His hands are tied behind him, which makes it hard to move. He turns over again, on his side, and kicks out at the tail light. His feet thump against the inside of the trunk.

Stupid cars. Jason scoots down a few inches and tries again. This time he connects with hard plastic. Aha!

He kicks out again. And again. The tail light doesn’t budge. Jason kicks it a third time, and then he has to take a break. His head pounds in time with the tires turning over cracked asphalt.

Tires. If only Jason had never seen those stupid fucking Batmobile tires.

He rests for a minute, breathing through his nose, smelling gasoline and the dirty carpet lining the trunk. He’s working up the energy to kick his legs again when something slams into the roof of the car.

The car swerves. Jason knocks into the back of the trunk and loses all sense of direction to a sudden wave of dizziness. He swears, or tries to, against the gag. It takes way too long for his head to clear. When it does, he realizes that the car has stopped.

He hears noise outside. He hears muffled voices, and then a gunshot that isn’t muffled at all. Someone screams.

Oh no, Jason thinks. Something bad is happening outside. Is it the cops? The mob? Then there would have been more gunshots. Did they hit someone? Another car—

A latch turns and clicks right next to his head. Then the trunk opens, and Jason looks up, and up, and up, into the eyes of a shadow.

Batman stares down at him.

Pure fear floods Jason’s body.

“There you are,” Batman says. His voice is softer than Jason expected—he’s not yelling at Jason for running away, at least not yet—but it still sounds like he eats gravel for breakfast. “Hold still.”

Jason can’t move. He can’t do anything as Batman props the hood open and pulls out a batarang and reaches toward him—

The blade slices through the duct tape around Jason’s ankles. Then the tape around Jason’s hands. Then it disappears back into Batman’s shadow.

“This is going to hurt,” Batman says. “I’m sorry.” He rips the duct tape off of Jason’s mouth.

It does hurt. Jason lets out a wheezing yelp. His whole mouth hurts, and his hands and feet feel like jelly, and he’s still dizzy as hell. Batman puts the duct tape away somewhere, and looks down at him with those creepy white eyes.

Batman.

Bruce Wayne.

Jason is so screwed.

“Are you alright?” Batman says. “Did they hurt you?”

“No,” Jason says. They didn’t, not really. They kidnapped him and tied him up and stuffed him in a trunk—but after that they left him alone. Sitting in the trunk of a car is practically a vacation, compared to what Batman will do to him.

“Good,” Batman says. “Can you stand, or do you need help?”

“I got it,” Jason says. He doesn’t want Batman to touch him. Not ever. He slides forward and swings his legs over the edge of the trunk. Batman lets him. Batman even takes a step back, and before he has a chance to think better of it, Jason takes off running.

He still feels wobbly, and the street is dark, and he makes it about five steps before a hand closes around the back of his hoodie, his stupid red hoodie that he couldn’t bear to get rid of even though it’s stained and dirty and starting to unravel, and Batman pulls him back into his clutches.

“Jason,” he says, because he knows Jason’s name. He has Jason’s soulmark. His grip is rock-solid, and that’s when Jason realizes that he isn’t going to get away.

He’ll never see Crime Alley again. Batman is going to beat the shit out of him for stealing, and then he’s going to take Jason home and lock him up somewhere and make him—and make him—

Jason doesn’t know he’s crying until he feels the tears on his cheeks.

It was always going to end this way.

“I know you’re scared,” Batman says. “But you don’t need to be. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“But—but I—” Shut up, shut up! Jason presses a hand against his mouth to stop himself, before he makes everything worse. I’m not going to hurt you, Batman said, so maybe he’ll skip the beating. Maybe he’ll just make Jason pay him back the other way.

Jason sobs. It shakes his whole body, and he puts his hands over his face, like that will stop Batman from seeing him cry.

“Jason,” Batman says. “I—”

He stops. He sighs. Jason braces himself. Broad hands wrap around his ribs and lift him up. Batman settles Jason against his shoulder, holding him like a little kid, and then he starts walking.

“It’s okay,” Batman says. His voice doesn’t sound so gravelly anymore. Now that Jason knows what to listen for, he can kind of see how Batman sounds like Bruce Wayne. He puts weight on the same parts of his sentences. “Everything is going to be okay.”

For him, maybe. He has a brand new toy, who can’t ever get away because they’re fucking soulmates, and he’s the richest man in Gotham and the Batman and whatever the fuck else. Jason is being carried into a living nightmare. Nothing about that is okay.

“I’ll put you down when we get to the car,” Batman says. “I’m sorry, but we need to get out of the open, and I didn’t want to make you walk.”

Jason doesn’t answer. It doesn’t matter what he says. Wayne will probably want him to stay quiet, anyway—unless he wants to hear Jason scream—

“Jason,” the man says. Jason wishes he would stop saying his name. It’s his. Wayne doesn’t get to use it just because it showed up on his skin. “I am… truly sorry that we met this way. But I’m not angry at you. I promise, I am not going to punish you for—what happened to the car.”

He keeps pausing, leaving gaps in his words as he chooses each one with care. Jason wishes he would just say what he means—that he can do whatever he wants to Jason, now that he has him, and any mercy he offers will come with a price.

Jason turns his face away from Wayne’s shoulder and tries to stop listening.

“Jason…” A hand cards through Jason's hair. He hates how good it feels. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

Another sob shakes through him. He tried. He tried fighting and he tried running and none of it worked, and now his only option is to play along and hope to God that Bruce Wayne has a merciful side.

“Please.” He screws his eyes shut. He tries to ignore the warm hand still petting his hair. “I’m not—I’m not in love with you yet.”

The hand stops. Jason braces himself to get hit, or dropped, but Wayne just keeps walking, and he’s already in trouble so he might as well get the rest out while he can. “I know it—might take a while, but I’ll—I promise I'll be good, if you just—just wait until—”

“No,” Wayne says. “Jason, that’s not—that is not what is happening here.”

A sob catches in his throat and Jason keens, too scared, too loud. “I’m sorry,” he cries, “please—”

“That’s not what the mark means.” Wayne sounds—urgent, upset, but not angry. Jason prays he stays that way. “I am not—we are not meant to have a—a romantic relationship. You are a child.”

As if that ever stopped anyone before. Jason opens his eyes to glare miserably at the sidewalk passing beneath him.

“But the mark,” he says. He sniffles, and in a moment of spite, wipes his nose against Wayne’s shoulder. It smears. The armor isn’t absorbent at all. “We’re—we’re soulmates. So it’s—different.”

“Platonic soulmates,” Wayne says. “Don’t you—” He stops.

“What?” Jason curls his fingers around the armor. Wayne isn’t yelling at him. Wayne isn’t hitting him. He should be trying to work with this, to make the good mood last as long as possible. He should not be getting angry. “What the—what are you talking about?”

“There’s a difference,” Wayne says. His voice gets quiet. “Jason, there is a huge difference between a platonic mark and a romantic one.”

Jason doesn’t know that word, platonic. Like hell is he admitting that to Wayne. “So?”

“So,” Wayne says. “Your mark—the one we share, it’s platonic.”

He stops, and Jason tenses—only for Wayne to set him down on his feet. They’re right next to the Batmobile. It has its tires back on. Wayne puts one hand on Jason’s shoulder and—

Kneels.

Bruce Wayne, the Batman, kneels down in front of Jason and looks up at him. He pulls back his mask, so Jason can see his whole face. His eyes.

He has blue eyes.

“Have you ever had a soulmark before?”

Jason shakes his head. His heart pounds in his ears. Run, his brain screams, run now while he’s not holding you—but he knows better. If he runs, Batman will catch him, and then—

He can’t run.

“How does it feel?”

Jason touches his wrist. Rubs his fingers over the mark. “Warm,” he whispers. He can’t make himself speak any louder.

“Does it hurt?”

Jason shakes his head.

The man hesitates, and then lifts his hand from Jason’s shoulder. He tugs off his other glove. He turns his hand palm-up, so Jason can see the words scrawled over his skin.

“This is my son’s mark.” Something crosses his face—something sad. Then it’s gone. “When I met him, it felt warm. Like a heating pad.”

“When you met him?” The words slip out without Jason’s permission. Wayne still doesn’t look angry.

“He was nine,” Wayne says. “I—fostered him.”

Jason’s brain catches up with him, finally, and reminds him that Bruce Wayne has a foster son—who just left for college, according to the tabloids.

Dick Grayson. That’s the name on Wayne’s hand.

“That’s one kind of soulmark,” Wayne says. “It tells you when a person is going to be… like family.”

Jason turns his own hand over. His wrist feels warm. It feels good. Part of him wants to sink into that warmth, to wrap himself up in it and stay there until everything bad goes away.

“The other kind feels different,” Wayne says. “When you get it—if you get it, not everyone does—it tingles. Like pins and needles.”

Jason imagines the sensation and clenches his hand, instinctively, without thinking—but Wayne doesn’t react. And Jason’s wrist doesn’t tingle. It just feels warm.

“No matter what kind of mark you have,” Wayne says, his voice very soft, “it does not change the fact that you are a child. No one is entitled to a relationship with you. Especially not—” He stops. His expression is pained. “Especially not a sexual one.”

Jason swallows.

If Wayne is telling the truth… this could be the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Bonded to a millionaire, who has to take care of him, or else feel all of Jason’s pain and hunger and exhaustion—that’s something that happens in stories. Not in real life. But here Jason is, with the richest man in Gotham, and all he wants is for Jason to be his son.

So he says.

If Wayne is lying…

If he’s lying, there’s nothing Jason can do. They’re still soulmates. All Wayne has to do is show a judge their matching soulmarks, and he will get custody. Even if Jason manages to run away again, and keeps the mark covered forever, Bruce Wayne is Batman. He knows the Justice League. He’ll hunt Jason down, drag him back to Gotham, and make him wish he was never born.

“Do you understand?” Wayne says.

It’s not a real choice. Either Wayne is telling the truth, or he isn’t, but all Jason can do is wait and see.

He nods.

“Okay.” Something in Wayne’s expression shifts, and he stands up. “What do you say we go get some food?” he says. “You seem hungry.”

“Y’don’t have to lie,” Jason says. He looks sideways, at the Batmobile. The thing that got him into this mess in the first place. “I know you can feel it.”

“Yes,” Wayne says. He sounds so awkward about it. “Is there… anything in particular that you would like?”

He talks like a robot. It takes Jason a minute to realize that the guy is actually offering him food—not only that, letting him pick.

“I want a burger,” he says. “And fries. And a milkshake.” If this is real, he’s getting as much out of it as he can.

“What flavor?” Wayne says. That takes a second to process, too.

“Strawberry.”

The corner of Wayne’s mouth twitches—like he wants to smile, but doesn’t quite know how. It’s weird.

“Okay,” he says. “There’s a twenty-four-hour diner near here. It’s close enough to walk. Or we can drive.”

That’s all he says. Then he just stands there, like he’s waiting for Jason to choose.

Jason shifts from one foot to the other. It could be a trick. Wayne could be waiting to smack him down as soon as he says anything. Or it could be real.

“We—can we walk?” he says, after a minute. He braces himself, just in case, but Wayne just nods.

“Alright.” Wayne reaches up and pulls his mask back over his face. Even now, the blank white lenses make Jason shiver. “We’ll walk. May I hold your hand?”

What?

Jason looks up at him. He looks for laughter, for some sign that Wayne is joking, but all he sees is Batman’s impassive face. Batman doesn’t joke. Batman always says exactly what he means.

May I hold your hand?

Batman asked him for permission.

“Sure,” Jason whispers. It’s a small thing. It’s not worth pissing him off—but he still feels tense as Wayne reaches out and takes his hand. Jason has never felt so small in his life.

Wayne’s hand is warm. It wraps all the way around Jason’s. He has calluses, just like Jason’s dad did, and suddenly Jason is glad that he said yes. He wants Wayne to keep holding his hand. He—

He feels safe.

“This way,” Wayne says. He leads Jason down the street, around the corner. “It’s not far, but—if you get tired, you can tell me.”

“Okay,” Jason says.

They walk, slow enough that Jason doesn’t have to rush. The air is cold and wet, the way it always is in Gotham, but a comforting warmth spreads through Jason’s limbs, into his core. He tucks his fingers in closer to Bruce Wayne’s callused palm, and Bruce squeezes his hand. Gently. Like Jason’s mom used to.

Maybe, Jason thinks. Maybe he’s going to be okay.