Chapter Text
She has never known love. As a concept, perhaps. The clashing of two bodies wishing desperately to become one. One soul. One mind, one heart, but she has never known it.
Her family is not one for tender gestures, her parents have never tucked her in or pet her hair or tended to scrapes she gained on her knees. They did not marry their soulmates, did not marry for an eternal love brought into this world for them.
They married for wealth. And they married for power. And they married for a violent, furious type of greed they have not yet sated.
And so inked into their skin her father has a cat caught mid leap forced never to land, her mother a sun at dawn never to be seen at high noon.
She has known her entire life what she is, what the lines of ink in her skin represent: something not hers. This gentle drawing, this tender inking of a bird mid flight is for a love she will never, has never known.
When her fingers trace over her soulmate mark at night, burying the desire to claw at it until her skin is raw and the mark is gone, she is a robin without wings, forced never to fly. Sometimes she wonders if her soulmate's robin is forced never to land.
It is all this, then, that means when her parents sit her down in the living room beside her sister, their gazes cutting through her, she is not surprised at their words:
"You are to be married."
And like the good, devoted, calculatingly sharp daughter she is, she smiles and she nods and in a soft voice like windchimes, responds:
"To who?"
"Damian Wayne." Beside her, her sister lets out a bark of laughter so harsh it sends shivers down her spine. Damian wayne, heir to the Wayne empire. Who was on the cover of times by age twelve, whilst she was still attempting to figure out the exacts of socioeconomics. Who was a stellar example of everything a young heir should be by the time he was eighteen.
Who, when she graduated with honours and a masters in business and economics, it didn't matter because Damian fucking Wayne had been made CEO at the age of twenty one.
Damian Wayne who has always been two steps ahead of her in a race he didn't even know he was participating in. Because in the world of Damian Wayne, the only person he is competing with is himself.
Her sister is still laughing, hand over her mouth, eyes full of a venomous mischief that she has never quite cared to hide. Her sister is older by four years, but has never been the favourite. They both know that. She is rash, and loud, and has always been into stupid things like art, and writing. useless things, things which will never 'matter in the world of politics and economics.'
Her parents are waiting for a response, she finds for a moment she has none. Then, with her best smile, which has been trained into her by her parents' not so loving hands, she nods.
"Alright. A fortuitous match. I am honoured."
Her father- a man in his forties now, with grey in his hair and in his neatly trimmed beard- leans forward on his knees, an almost wickedly devious smile on his face.
Ah, she thinks, there is more.
"What, if you do not mind me asking, is it that you hope this marriage will achieve? for us, for the family, for the-" she hates the word, hates the way she sounds, "-empire."
What her father calls an empire is in reality just another collective of venomous snakes in Gotham, who seem to believe you can get away with anything if you're tenacious enough. (It turns out they're right, but everyone pretends that isn't the case).
"Damian Wayne will not like you, of course. It is unlikely this will be a marriage of anything other than convenience. But- that does not mean you cannot make him feel even a slither of affection for you. In a world of soulmates, you will make him forget you are not his."
What if I am? Some part of her wants to ask. What if by some force of nature Damian Wayne is the one this world created for me? Wouldn't that be a cruel turn of fate?
"And then," her mother interjects with a softer voice, but her eyes no less full of greed than her fathers, "you will be able to join the two of us properly. For remember whilst you are a Wayne, you are part of this family first."
"Alright." She repeats again, as though that is the only word in her vocabulary. Sometimes she feels like it is.
Her sister, although she has stopped laughing, is regarding her with a mockery she knows she is going to face later. Her hands fist in the fabric of her skirt, but still she smiles, for that is what she has been told to do.
Later, when she is finally alone in her room, she allows a new kind of misery to wash over her like a blanket. Once more, her fingers find the faint outline of the robin left upon her skin. She will have to cover that, if she does not want her fiancé- Damian- to see it. Or perhaps she will leave it, allow him to know that there is someone out there waiting for her, someone who wants her just as much as she wants them.
The thought is gone before it has truly finished formulating, and she takes a deep breath to banish it. She had forgotten to ask when they were going to meet, but she can only guess it is by the end of the week. It is rare her parents would ever actually allow her emotions to settle before throwing her to the wolves.
She is alone in her room, but she is not, because there is a robin on her arm and a soul attached to hers by fate, by chance, by whatever you want to call it.
In another part of Gotham, in a world not so different from her own, Damian Wayne tugs down the sleeve of his Robin suit, and banishes all thoughts of soulmates.
He does not believe in them, has never placed any value on something so pathetic, when his parents were barely in love when they had him, nevermind soulmates. (Nevermind how his mother had called his father 'beloved', nevermind that.)
He covers the soaring robin upon his arm, and forces himself to be a robin which only fights, but does not soar.