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The thread first appeared when Damian was ten.
It shimmered faintly in his peripheral vision, a thin red line trailing from the inside of his wrist into empty space. Not taut, not slack—just there, as though it had always been. As though it belonged to him.
He was sharpening a blade when he noticed it, perched cross-legged in the snow-laced courtyard of the League compound, the hilt of a dagger pressed against his thigh for stability. His breath came out in short, focused clouds, but the line was steady. Unmoving.
He blinked once. Then again. It didn’t vanish.
He tugged at it.
It tugged back.
Not hard. Not even enough to call a pull. But it responded.
“Damian.”
He didn’t flinch at his mother’s voice. He never did.
Talia stepped into view, her boots silent against the snow-dusted stone. She watched him, impassive, as he traced the thread with narrowed eyes. Her expression barely shifted.
“Do not follow it,” she said.
He looked up. “You see it too?”
“Of course,” she said, crossing her arms. “It is said to be a bond of fate. A thread of the soul. Sentimental foolishness dressed up as destiny.”
“Is it dangerous?”
Her silence was answer enough.
“I will remove it,” he declared.
Her smile was subtle. “Then do it cleanly.”
That night, he brought the blade against his wrist.
Not to break skin—he wasn’t stupid—but to sever the thread. It resisted the steel edge with a strange, unreal tension. Like cutting water. But then—snap.
Gone.
He exhaled. No pain. No blood.
No tether.
He slept well that night. Thought himself free.
By morning, it was back.
Damian tried everything.
A League-forged katana. A ceremonial dagger soaked in Lazarus waters. A scalpel from the med-bay. Even, in one fit of curiosity, a strand of pure energy drawn from a prototype disruptor gun.
Each time, the thread resisted. And each time, when it did break, it grew back stronger. Quicker. Sometimes in minutes.
He began cutting it before every mission.
Before meditation. Before sleep. Before sparring.
Once, during a particularly vicious month of training, he sliced it open with a whisper of fury, and the thread bled.
Red against red.
He didn’t speak of it again.
Years passed.
Gotham became his battlefield. The Manor, a cage.
The thread remained.
Sometimes short. Sometimes long. Always drifting out of sight, tugging gently at the edge of his life.
He stopped acknowledging it. But he never stopped trying to cut it.
It was easier that way.
He didn’t follow. He didn’t wonder.
He didn’t need a soulmate.
Not when love was a liability. Not when fate was a noose waiting to tighten.
Until one night on a rooftop.
A mission with Jon Kent.
A laugh that wouldn’t stop echoing in his chest.
And a thread that curled—boldly, traitorously—around Jon’s neck like it had chosen.
Jon Kent never shut up.
That was the first thing Damian noticed when they met. He was loud, energetic, and—by all logic—should’ve annoyed Damian into a coma years ago.
But somehow, he hadn’t.
Worse, he’d become part of the pattern. Not routine—that would imply Damian welcomed it. But he had grown used to the presence. The noise. The way Jon grinned too wide, talked with his hands, hovered half a foot off the ground, even when he promised not to fly indoors.
And right now, he was crouched beside Damian on a wind-battered rooftop in Gotham, watching an arms deal unfold six stories below.
“See the guy in the puffy coat?” Jon whispered.
Damian didn’t look away from his scope. “Obviously.”
“I think he’s hiding kryptonite.”
Damian lowered the binoculars an inch. “Then perhaps you should take cover.”
“Or maybe I should throw a car at him,” Jon said cheerfully.
Damian gave him a long, pointed look.
Jon just smiled. “Kidding. Kinda. You’re grumpy tonight.”
“I’m always grumpy.”
“Yeah, but usually in a sexy brooding way. This is more like... murderous algebra teacher.”
Damian blinked. “What does that even mean?”
But Jon wasn’t looking at him anymore.
His eyes had shifted downward, toward Damian’s chest. Or rather, to the space just above it.
And he laughed.
Not a scoff. Not a snort.
A laugh. Bright and real and completely inappropriate.
“What,” Damian said flatly, “is so amusing?”
Jon pointed. “That.”
Damian followed his gaze.
The thread—the damn thread—was moving.
Not just fluttering. Not just shifting.
It had uncoiled, lifting into the air like a serpent waking from slumber. It arched, shimmering faintly in the moonlight, and then—
—it tied itself.
Loosely. Casually. Right around Jon Kent’s neck.
Jon reached up instinctively, like he’d felt something. But of course, he couldn’t see it. No one ever could.
Only Damian.
Only the one it belonged to.
Jon kept laughing. “Okay, what’s with the intense stare? Did I grow a second head or something?”
Damian’s pulse thundered in his ears. “It moved.”
“What did?”
“The thread.”
Jon blinked. “Wait, the thread?”
Damian didn’t answer. His hand was already at his belt, fingers ghosting the handle of the blade he kept for exactly this reason.
He was going to cut it.
He had to cut it.
But Jon stepped into his path, raising an eyebrow. “Whoa, hey—don’t stab me.”
“I’m not—” Damian gritted his teeth. “I’m severing a threat.”
Jon looked down at himself, then at Damian’s face again. “Pretty sure the only thing wrapped around me is your intense emotional repression.”
“That is not funny.”
“It kind of is.” Jon tilted his head, stepping closer. “Damian... is this that soulmate thread thing?”
“It’s a myth,” Damian snapped.
“And yet you’re carrying a knife to deal with it.”
That shut him up.
Jon watched him for a long moment.
Then, quietly, “Why do you want to cut it so badly?”
Damian stared. The wind picked up. The thread pulsed faintly between them.
“Because it makes me want something.”
He said it so low he wasn’t sure Jon heard.
But Jon nodded, eyes serious now. “Yeah. I get that.”
Damian faltered.
He lowered the blade.
For the first time in seven years, he didn’t cut the thread.
He just stood there, heart pounding, while Jon reached out—gently, recklessly—and pressed two fingers to the invisible line where it wrapped around his neck.
“I don’t feel anything,” he said. “But I think… I like that you do.”
The thread wasn’t supposed to move.
It had always been still. Passive. A faint, steady tug in the background of Damian’s life—something to manage. To control.
But now it wrapped around Jon Kent’s neck like a noose made of longing. Soft, invisible. Undeniable.
Damian hadn’t cut it.
That was the part that terrified him most.
“You’ve been brooding more than usual,” Jon said two days later, floating upside down in Damian’s training room like it was his own.
“I do not brood.”
“You do when you’re overthinking.” He rotated lazily in the air, arms behind his head. “Also when you’re emotionally constipated, which is… always.”
Damian didn’t reply.
Jon sighed. “So. Wanna talk about the magic invisible string that totally looped around my neck during patrol?”
Damian froze mid-strike.
Jon smirked. “You didn’t think I noticed?”
“It’s none of your concern.”
“Well it’s around my neck, so it feels like at least partially my concern.”
Damian’s grip tightened on his staff. “You don’t even believe in soulmates.”
“I didn’t,” Jon said, pushing off the ceiling to float upright. “But then a weird thread tied itself around my neck while I was standing next to you, and you looked like you’d seen a ghost—so now I’m... open to possibilities.”
Damian turned his back.
Jon hovered behind him in silence for a beat. Then, quieter:
“Have you had it a long time?”
Damian said nothing.
“That long, huh?”
Damian’s voice was sharp. “I’ve tried everything to get rid of it.”
Jon blinked. “Why?”
“Because it’s not mine.” Damian turned, frustration crackling just beneath his skin. “I did not choose it. I did not ask for it. It drags behind me like a leash and expects—demands—that I follow. That I want. That I—”
He stopped.
Jon floated closer. “That you feel?”
Damian didn’t speak.
“You think it’s a trap,” Jon said. “But maybe it’s just... a question.”
Damian looked at him, startled.
Jon smiled, but it wasn’t mocking. It was soft. Hopeful.
“Maybe the thread isn’t telling you what you are,” he said. “Maybe it’s asking what you want to be.”
Damian hated how that stayed with him.
Later that night, alone in the Manor’s library, Damian stared down at his wrist.
The thread shimmered gently under the lamp light. Steady. Present. Warm.
He drew his blade.
The thread didn’t flinch.
Neither did he.
But this time, he didn’t bring the edge down.
Instead, he whispered, “You are not stronger than me.”
The thread pulsed. Not in challenge. In understanding.
He set the blade down, hands shaking, and turned out the light.
The mission was supposed to be simple.
Observe. Report. Non-intervention unless necessary.
Damian hated those kinds of missions.
They gave him too much time to think.
And tonight, the thread was active.
It had begun twitching the moment Jon landed beside him on the rooftop, all windblown hair and casual invincibility, his cape fluttering like an afterthought.
Damian felt the shift before he saw it: the red thread curling tighter around his wrist, then stretching outward, tense as a drawn bowstring. Jon hadn’t even spoken yet.
The thread knew.
“Okay, so, hear me out,” Jon whispered, crouching beside him and squinting into the alley below. “What if we wait five more minutes, then break the security grid, then smash the weapons cache?”
Damian didn’t respond.
Jon glanced over. “...Did I break you?”
Damian’s jaw was clenched. “Stop talking.”
“You sure you’re not into the silent brooding thing as a kink—?”
“Jonathan.”
Jon smiled. “There he is.”
Damian exhaled slowly through his nose, trying to focus on the mission.
But the thread kept pulling. Not lightly—urgently. Like a hand gripping the front of his tunic and dragging him forward by instinct alone.
It pulled toward Jon.
Harder than before.
Too hard.
Damian stood up without realising.
“Dami?” Jon blinked. “What is it?”
The pull intensified.
“Something’s wrong.”
Jon rose beside him. “You mean with the mission?”
“No.” Damian’s eyes narrowed, scanning the street below. “With you.”
And then the blast hit.
It came from behind the alley wall, a shockwave of compressed force that sent debris flying and warped the pavement. Damian moved on reflex—grapnel fired, cape flaring, shoulder slamming into Jon’s chest as he knocked him backwards.
They hit the ground hard, Jon pinned beneath him, eyes wide.
“What was—”
Damian didn’t answer. He was already on his feet, blade drawn. The thread whipped around his wrist like a live wire—reactive, furious.
Then it moved.
It glowed.
A pulse of red light flared across Damian’s vision—and suddenly he saw it: a flickering image of Jon’s chest, right where the debris had almost hit. The thread looped around that space protectively, shielding it in his sight like a targeting reticle.
He turned. Threw the blade.
It struck the edge of the collapsing wall, diverting the last cascade of rubble away from Jon’s head.
A half-second later, Jon sat up with a groan.
“Okay. That one was not in the briefing—”
Damian grabbed his wrist and yanked him up. “We’re leaving.”
“What? We haven’t even—”
“The mission is over.”
Jon blinked as Damian pulled him into the shadows, ignoring the still-crumbling alley and the stunned silence on the comms.
“What’s gotten into you?”
Damian didn’t stop walking until they reached the roof. Only then did he let go.
“The thread knew before I did,” he muttered, breathing hard. “It moved to protect you.”
Jon stared at him.
Damian turned, chest rising and falling. “It has never done that before.”
Jon stepped forward. “So what does that mean?”
Damian shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Jon tilted his head. “Do you want it to?”
There was no sarcasm in his voice. Just quiet curiosity.
Damian looked at him.
And—for the first time—he didn’t have an answer.
That night, Jon hovered outside his window longer than usual, watching the stars. Thinking.
Inside the Manor, Damian stood in the dark of his bedroom, staring at his reflection.
The thread glowed faintly in the mirror.
Still connected.
Still red.
Still his.
In the League, nothing belonged to you.
Not your name. Not your thoughts. Certainly not your future.
Damian learned that early—first through silence, then through violence, then through expectation.
A thread meant fate.
And fate meant you weren’t the one in control.
He rejected it on principle.
He was seven the first time he watched someone get punished for following the thread.
Her name had been Arina. She was older—eighteen, maybe. Sharp. Efficient. Beautiful, though Damian hadn’t known that word yet.
She’d let her soulmate thread guide her off-mission. Had tried to protect a civilian boy, someone the thread had tangled around like ivy.
They found her body two days later. The thread still wrapped around her hand.
Ra’s had spoken over the gathering with cool disapproval.
“To believe in destiny is to abandon mastery of self.”
Damian never forgot that.
He remembered Arina’s face. Calm even in death. Eyes open. No regret.
It haunted him more than her failure.
Now, at eighteen, Damian stared at the red thread burning bright across his wrist and thought of her again.
He wondered if she’d felt this, too.
This heat. This pull.
This... yearning.
The blade sat beside him on the dresser.
Untouched. Again.
Jon, meanwhile, had questions.
“Okay,” he told Krypto, pacing in circles in the Fortress of Solitude. “So let’s say hypothetically someone I work with has this invisible magical red string tied around me.”
Krypto whined.
Jon nodded. “Yeah. Him. You know who I mean.”
He flopped down onto a crystalline bench, throwing his arms up.
“I mean—he’s always been weird, right? Like emotionally allergic, permanently pissed off, allergic to joy… and now I find out he’s been walking around with a soulmate thread wrapped around his wrist since childhood. And he cuts it. On purpose!”
Krypto barked sharply.
Jon blinked. “Yeah, that is dramatic.”
He leaned back, running a hand through his hair.
“But he’s also... different lately. He’s softer. Just a little. He doesn’t push me away as much. He lets me get close.”
He paused.
“I think I want to follow the thread.”
Krypto laid his head in Jon’s lap.
Jon smiled faintly.
“…Even if he never asks me to.”
At the Manor, Damian tried to meditate.
He tried.
But his breath kept hitching. His thoughts wouldn’t stop looping.
Not around the mission. Not even around the thread.
Just around Jon.
The way he always looked directly at him when speaking. The way he floated too close. The way his laughter seemed to fill spaces Damian didn’t realise were empty.
Jon wasn’t the weakness.
Damian had made that mistake before.
The wanting was the weakness.
The wondering.
The what-ifs.
Later that night, he stood at the edge of the rooftop where they’d last spoken.
The thread stretched outward into the horizon.
Still tied. Still taut.
Still waiting.
Damian exhaled.
Just once.
“I don’t know if I can follow you.”
He said it to the wind. To the city. To the boy who wasn’t there.
But the thread shimmered.
Not in anger. Not in demand.
Just understanding.
Like it would wait.
Damian stopped speaking to Jon.
Not completely—he wasn’t immature. He answered mission calls, gave clipped confirmations, even grunted in acknowledgement when Jon made a particularly bad joke over the comms.
But he didn’t look at him. Didn’t meet his eyes.
Didn’t touch him.
Not since the thread pulled.
Not since it protected him.
Not since Damian had felt it—a thread not just connected, but reactive. As if some part of his soul had made a decision without his permission.
He couldn’t trust it.
He couldn’t trust himself.
Jon noticed by day two.
He noticed the way Damian kept his distance. The way his replies shortened. The way his back stayed turned a little too long after each interaction.
He gave him space.
Then he gave him less.
On the fifth day, Jon cornered him in the hallway of the Watchtower.
“You’re avoiding me,” he said flatly.
Damian didn’t stop walking. “I’m maintaining mission focus.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m compartmentalising.”
“You’re hiding.”
That stopped him.
He turned slowly. The thread pulsed at his wrist—quick, sharp, like a heartbeat.
Jon stood in front of him, arms crossed, jaw set. No smile. No floating. Just a quiet, firm presence.
“Why won’t you even look at me?”
Damian’s voice came out too low. “Because if I do... I’ll want things I shouldn’t.”
Jon blinked.
Damian swallowed. “I’ve spent my entire life learning how to cut. How to sever distractions, feelings, attachments. Things that make me slow. Weak. Vulnerable.”
He looked down at his wrist.
The thread shimmered there—so bright now. So visible to him, he swore it cast shadows.
“I thought if I could destroy this one thing,” he whispered, “I could be free of it.”
“And are you?”
Damian didn’t answer.
Jon stepped closer. “It’s not a chain.”
Damian met his eyes finally. They were blue and angry and kind. Always too kind.
“You don’t have to follow it,” Jon said. “But you could. If you wanted to.”
Damian’s voice cracked. “I don’t know how.”
“Then let me show you.”
That night, Damian sat in the Manor’s library with the lights off, the fire long dead.
He stared at the thread wrapped around his wrist.
He thought of Arina again. Of her calm eyes. Her unbroken resolve.
He wondered, not for the first time, if she had ever regretted it.
He wondered if he would.
Upstairs, Bruce knocked on his door.
Damian didn’t answer, but Bruce opened it anyway. That was the privilege of paternal guilt.
He stepped inside and said nothing at first.
Then, quietly: “When I was young, I tried to follow the thread. It led me to someone I wasn’t ready to love.”
Damian turned, surprised.
Bruce continued. “But it taught me how to love. Even if it didn’t last.”
“…Was it worth it?”
Bruce’s expression softened.
“Yes.”
Damian looked down at his wrist.
Then back at the door.
Across the city, Jon lay in bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, one hand pressed to his chest.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said aloud to the empty room.
And somewhere in the night, the thread gave a small, reassuring tug.
The thread jerked hard. So hard it pulled the breath from Damian’s lungs.
He was mid-mission with Tim, monitoring a smuggling route near Gotham Harbour, when it happened. One moment he was speaking calmly into the comm, and the next—
The red thread lashed tight across his chest.
He staggered.
Tim spun to catch him. “What the hell—?”
Damian didn’t answer. He didn’t have time.
Because the thread wasn’t just tugging.
It was screaming.
Jon hadn’t planned on walking into an ambush.
The lead had been clean. Quiet. One rogue metahuman gang, running smuggled tech. Low stakes. He’d insisted on going solo.
It was supposed to be simple.
But simple never accounted for kryptonite.
He felt it too late—a bitter pulse under his skin, the sting of weakened muscle and slowed breath.
By the time the trap snapped shut, he was already on the ground.
And that’s when the thread flared.
Damian didn’t stop to explain.
He grappled across rooftops with precision that bordered on manic. Tim called after him twice, then gave up. He’ll follow. He always does.
The thread burned against his skin, pointing east. Then south. Then hard left.
Damian obeyed.
He didn’t question it.
For the first time, he followed.
Jon’s breathing was ragged.
The man standing over him was tall, metal-armoured, face obscured by a high-tech helm. A stolen LexCorp gauntlet glowed green at his side.
“You’re stronger than I expected,” the man sneered. “But not strong enough.”
Jon coughed. His vision blurred.
“Y’know,” he rasped, “you’d be way scarier if you didn’t monologue.”
The gauntlet raised.
And then a blade slammed into the man's wrist.
The gauntlet shattered.
Jon blinked—once, twice—as the figure dropped to the floor with a thud, disarmed and unconscious.
And then he saw him.
Damian stood in the shadows of the alley, chest heaving, eyes wild. He was soaked in rain and rage and something too sharp to name.
The thread wrapped around him like firelight.
“Dami—”
Jon didn’t get another word out before Damian was kneeling beside him, hands pressed to his chest, checking for injuries.
“You’re okay,” Damian said. “You’re okay.”
Jon smiled weakly. “Hey, you followed it.”
Damian froze.
Jon reached up—slowly, shakily—and touched the thread where it looped around his wrist.
“I felt it,” he whispered. “It pulled me toward you. I didn’t know that could happen.”
Damian’s voice was raw. “Neither did I.”
They sat there, rain dripping down Jon’s hair, Damian’s glove pressed over his pulse.
The thread curled tighter between them.
“You didn’t cut it,” Jon murmured.
Damian looked down. His fingers traced the thread like a promise.
“No,” he said. “I came to you instead.”
That night, Damian stayed by Jon’s side in the medbay. Didn’t leave. Not even when Bruce arrived, arms crossed and brow furrowed. Not even when Clark gave a knowing smile.
He just sat. And stayed.
And the thread stayed, too.
Knotted now.
But stronger than ever.
Jon woke up to the sound of pages turning.
Not medical equipment. Not voices. Just soft, deliberate movement—paper over paper, breath over silence.
He cracked one eye open.
Damian sat beside his bed, a book open on his lap, the red thread looped gently around his wrist and stretching up—still connected, even in sleep.
Still there.
Still choosing.
Jon smiled.
“Reading me a bedtime story?” he rasped.
Damian didn’t flinch. He looked up, eyes tired but clear.
“You’ve been unconscious for two hours. I was bored.”
Jon laughed softly. “You stayed.”
Damian’s gaze softened.
“Yes.”
They were alone in the medbay. Clark had left after an hour, reluctantly—assured by Bruce that Jon would live. Bruce himself had taken one look at the knot of red between the boys and said nothing. Just placed a hand on Damian’s shoulder and walked out.
It had been silent since.
But the thread had not gone quiet.
It had pulsed once, slowly, when Jon first stirred—like it had exhaled with him.
Damian touched it now without fear. He traced the length from his wrist to Jon’s like he was learning it for the first time.
Jon watched him.
“It’s not a leash,” Jon said gently.
“I know.”
“It’s not a promise, either. Not by itself.”
Damian nodded.
Jon reached over, lacing their fingers. The thread wrapped over both of their knuckles, warm and constant.
“It’s a question,” Jon said. “Every day. And we get to answer it.”
Damian was quiet for a long time.
Then, softly, “I was never given a choice. Not with the League. Not with my training. Not with the blood in my veins.”
Jon squeezed his hand. “But you get one now.”
Damian looked at him. The boy who always smiled too easily. The boy who floated even when he didn’t mean to. The boy who never stopped reaching for him, even when Damian had nothing to give.
And he chose.
He leaned forward. Pressed his forehead gently against Jon’s.
“I choose you.”
Later, when Jon had fallen back asleep and the monitors beeped softly around them, Damian pulled a small blade from his belt.
It was ceremonial—one of the first he’d ever forged under Ra’s’ supervision.
He held it over the thread.
Paused.
Then set it down.
Untouched.
Outside the medbay, Alfred passed by with tea in hand and the faintest smile.
The lights in the hall flickered red for a moment.
Not an alarm.
Just a shimmer.
A thread, tightening.
Not to restrain.
But to hold.