Chapter Text
The hum of the Fortress’s technology was the only thing breaking the silence. Clark, Lois, and Damian stood in a semicircle before the block, now resting on a molecular thawing platform. Each of them looked at the ice, but what they truly saw reflected back were eight years of waiting.
Damian adjusted the controls with surgical precision. His face, jaw firmer now, faint lines at the corners of his eyes, was a map of a mission fulfilled. For him, these years hadn’t been lost; they had been a long watch of honor. He had grown into the man Jon needed to find when he woke, someone strong enough to hold the broken pieces together.
“Solar yellow radiation levels are stable,” Damian said, his voice carrying an authority even Clark respected. “Process begins in three minutes.”
Lois stepped forward, brushing the crystal with her fingertips. For her, these eight years had been a second pregnancy, agonizing, endless. She had carried Jon’s weight in her mind every day, feeling each kick of his absence in her chest. It had been a gestation of patience, nurturing his memory so that when he was born again from the ice, he’d find a home ready for him. Her eyes, wet but steady, never left his outline.
Clark stood with his hands clasped behind his back. His posture was that of a monument, but inside, the Man of Steel felt fragile as glass. For him, this time had been the greatest lesson in humility. As a father, his instinct was to save, to break through the ice, but he had to learn to love Jon through respect for a choice he didn’t fully understand.
He had chosen to be a witness to his son’s pain, so his son could heal at his own pace.
“It feels like we landed here just yesterday,” Lois whispered without turning. “And somehow, I feel like I’ve lived three lifetimes since.”
“He chose the hard path,” Clark replied, his voice trembling with proud sorrow. “And we had to learn to walk beside him without touching. It was his choice, Lois. And today we know it was the right one.”
Damian looked up from the console, meeting Clark’s gaze.
The old rivalry was gone, replaced by a silent brotherhood forged in snow.
“He’s not just coming back, Clark,” Damian said firmly. “He’s catching up to us. Time’s finally stopped being his enemy.”
He pressed the final sequence, an amber glow began to wrap around the ice, the block released a deep, systemic crack, the sound of a heart restarting after a century, steam rose, fogging the crystal, hiding Jon’s figure as the temperature climbed, degree by degree.
Lois held her breath, clark placed a hand on Damian’s shoulder, the three of them stood there, on the edge of the present, waiting for the boy they’d lost to return as the man time had promised.
The vapor slowly dissipated, leaving behind a damp chill that cut to the bone, Jon’s eyes opened, the Fortress’s light hit him like a thousand newborn suns.
His thoughts came in bursts of static and fear: Am I still there? Still in the volcano?
No, no lava, only silence, but pain everywhere, his muscles screamed; his body felt like glass threads ready to snap. He was… thin, too thin. His hands looked like they belonged to a stranger.
A flicker of relief broke through the haze: They did it. They let me sleep. They respected time.
When he finally managed to focus, the world resolved into shapes, and then into faces. They were there, standing tall, like guardians who had never left their post.
The sight stole what little air he had.
His mother’s hair was streaked with silver, soft lines fanning from her eyes. His father looked broader, his gaze heavy with years of waiting, they had aged, for them, what had been a blink of darkness for him had been a lifetime of winters.
“Mom…? Dad…?” His voice came out raw, like sandpaper after years of silence.
He tried to move toward them, heart pounding with new life, but his legs gave out. His knees buckled, the cold floor meeting him like a cruel reminder that he was no longer part of the ice.
Before he could hit the metal, Clark and Lois were there.
It wasn’t a superhero rescue, it was a collision of desperate bodies, they wrapped around him in an embrace so fierce he thought he might break, but it was the sweetest pain he’d ever felt.
“I’m sorry…” Jon sobbed, burying his face in his father’s shoulder, feeling the familiar fabric of the cape that had always been his refuge “I’m sorry for everything. For the fight… for the awful things I said… for leaving you alone so long.”
Lois kissed his forehead over and over, her tears falling hot and constant, tears that had been waiting almost a decade.
“Thank you,” Jon whispered between breaths, looking at them both. “Thank you for respecting my choice. For letting me heal. For waiting for me.”
Clark said nothing at first; he simply pressed his forehead against his son’s and closed his eyes, The Man of Steel finally exhaled the air he had held for eight years.
“It’s over, Jon,” he murmured, voice breaking. “You’re home now. And this time… time is ours.”
A few feet away, Damian watched in silence, the full journal clutched tightly in his hands. He waited, patient, steady, for his turn. Watching the family he’d kept together finally become whole again.
The peace shattered with a harsh, cracking sound. Jon doubled over, coughing violently, the kind of cough that claws at the lungs. A natural reaction for a body once frozen, now flooded with warm oxygen. In an instant, Damian’s instincts as a doctor took over the friend.
“Back! Give him space, his alveoli are collapsing!” he ordered, his voice sharp and commanding.
He gently but firmly moved Clark and Lois aside, his hands steady with purpose. Damian knelt before Jon, pulling a medical scanner from his belt, one hand pressed to Jon’s sternum to stabilize him. His movements were quick, sure, those of a man who had rehearsed this moment a thousand times.
Jon, vision still blurred by tears and pain, looked at the man before him, broad-shouldered, firm-jawed, eyes sharp and steady.He didn’t feel afraid. Though this man was taller, older than the one he remembered, there was something in the way he touched his shoulders… something in the cadence of his voice… that felt more familiar than his own heartbeat.
Damian began sliding the scanner across Jon’s chest, murmuring technical data about blood pressure and lung expansion, too focused on saving him to realize he hadn’t even said hello.
“Damian?” Jon whispered, his voice barely a breath of wonder.
Damian froze. The medical scanner kept beeping rhythmically, but his hand went still over Jon’s chest. He looked up, and for the first time in eight years, their eyes met without a layer of glass between them.
Damian was no longer the fourteen-year-old kid he used to fight over video games with; he was a man who carried the weight of a medical degree and thousands of sleepless patrols. Jon, on the other hand, still had that nineteen-year-old gaze, pure, bright, the one Damian had sworn to protect.
The silence lasted only a second before they both lunged toward each other. It wasn’t a careful hug. It was a collision.
Jon clung to Damian’s neck with the strength of someone who had found his anchor after drifting through time. Damian wrapped his arms around him, burying his face in Jon’s shoulder, letting the journal he had guarded for years fall to the floor for a moment.
“You’re here,” Damian growled, his voice losing all its medical precision, breaking under the weight of relief. “You’re here, you idiot. Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
Jon laughed through his tears, feeling the real warmth of his best friend, the man who had waited for him on the shore of time.
“Look at you…” Jon managed between breaths, pulling back just enough to see Damian’s grown face. “You got old, Wayne.”
“And you’re still a mess, Kent,” Damian shot back with a crooked smile, the first real smile his parents had seen from him in years.
Clark and Lois watched from behind, their hands entwined.
Seeing them together like that, they understood: Damian’s mission was over, and Jon’s life had finally begun again.
--------
The Fortress’s infirmary was bathed in a gentle twilight, broken only by the steady pulse of monitors.Jon lay back on the cot, wrapped in thermal blankets, weak, but truly awake, pain was no longer an enemy, only a distant echo.
Clark sat beside him, one hand gripping his son’s wrist, as if afraid he might vanish if he let go, Lois was on the other side, brushing his hair back in small, maternal gestures, the kind that speak louder than words.
“It feels strange,” Jon admitted softly. “Like I missed something important.”
He looked at his parents with a boyish uncertainty that didn’t fit his grown body. “Are you… okay with me? Do you really… forgive me?”
Lois didn’t answer right away, she leaned in and pressed her forehead against his, breathing the same air.
“There was never anything to forgive,” she said at last, voice soft but unyielding. “You were hurt. Parents don’t forgive their children for bleeding.”
Clark nodded, swallowing hard.“It hurt,” he admitted. “We were scared. But we never thought you failed us. The time you were asleep… we used it to learn how to listen to you. Late, but we learned.”
Jon closed his eyes for a moment, letting the words settle.
When he opened them again, there was relief, and something that felt like grief.
“I’m sorry too,” he murmured. “For leaving you alone.”
“You didn’t leave us,” Lois replied. “You asked us to wait. And de did.”
The sound of firm footsteps broke the stillness, Damian entered with a tablet in hand, his expression shifted fully back into that of the focused doctor, he checked readings, adjusted a few parameters, then nodded to himself.
“Good,” he announced. “Vitals are stable. Recovery will be slow but steady.” He looked directly at Jon. “You’ll have chronically low blood pressure for life, nothing unmanageable. But you’ve also developed a severe intolerance to cold. Nothing extreme, but forget about polar climates without protection.”
Jon frowned. “Great. Eight years asleep and I wake up with new allergies.”
“The full package,” Damian replied dryly. “Still, you’re alive. And that’s already a statistical miracle.”
Clark let out a half-laugh. Lois exhaled in relief.
“Thank you, Damian,” she said. “For everything.”
Damian gave a small nod. Jon looked genuinely surprised to see them getting along.
“My work here is done,” Damian said at last. “You need rest. I’ll come back in the morning to continue the protocol.”
He turned halfway toward the door, his mind already shifting to other tasks.He had done it. Jon’s body was awake. The promise was fulfilled.
And yet…Something inside him didn’t sit right, as he walked toward the exit, the weight of the journal in his hands suddenly felt unbearable, eight years compressed into paper, eight years of versions of Jon only he had known.
A life he had lived without him… but also for him. Who was Jon now?And who had Damian become in the time between?
“Damian?”
Jon’s voice stopped him cold.
“Don’t go yet,” he asked, a trace of urgency in his tone “Please”
Damian didn’t turn immediately, he tightened his grip on the journal, his knuckles whitening. Clark and Lois exchanged a knowing glance. They understood instantly that this moment wasn’t theirs.
“We’ll go get something to eat,” Clark said gently, guiding Lois toward the door.
When it closed behind them, the silence that filled the room was different, denser, more honest, Damian finally turned.
Their eyes met, Jon’s awake, alive, present.
“We need to talk,” Jon said. “I can see it on your face. Since the moment I woke up.”
Damian took a slow step toward the bed, he looked down at the journal, then back at him.
“Yeah,” he admitted, his voice lower than usual. “It’s time.”
And for the first time since the ice broke, Damian Wayne felt fear, not of losing Jon again, but of what might happen now that he was no longer just his guardian, but had to become once more simply… his friend.
Damian stood by the bedside. He didn’t take the stance of a doctor or a soldier, he was just there, shoulders tense, the journal pressed against his side, Jon was the first to speak.
“Hey…” he said, clearing his throat. “About the rooftop.”
He looked up, serious. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any of that. Or yelled at you.”
Damian frowned immediately “There’s nothing to forgive,” he said firmly. “You weren’t well. And I should be the one apologizing for a lot of things.”
Jon blinked, surprised. “For what?”
“For pushing you. For thinking that if I forced the truth out of you, everything would just… fix itself.”
Jon shook his head slowly. “No. There’s nothing to forgive there, either.”
The words hung between them, the silence that followed wasn’t tense, but strange, like both were waiting for the other to add something more and neither did. Jon was the one who broke it, with a small smile.
“Thank you,” he said. “For protecting me. For not letting them wake me up.”
Damian raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t easy.”
Jon tilted his head. “How hard are we talking?”
Damian hesitated a second, then sighed. “I yelled at Superman. He was furious, ready to melt the ice, and I stepped in front of him.”
Jon’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You… stood up to my dad while he was angry?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…” Jon let out a rough laugh. “That’s terrifying.”
“Very,” Damian admitted with a shrug. “But someone had to do it.”
Jon looked at him with a mix of awe and affection. “Who does something like that?”
Damian thought for a moment. “An idiot,” he replied.
Jon burst out laughing, weak but real, Damian laughed too, first quietly, then without holding back, it was clumsy, exhausted laughter, but genuine. The kind that only comes when your body finally stops being on guard. When it faded, what remained was a strange, peaceful calm.
Jon noticed it first, Damian hadn’t let go of that notebook once. He was holding it against his chest like armor, and Jon could tell it wasn’t new: the cover was scuffed, the spine soft, the pages swollen from use, open in that particular way only books that have been written and reread a hundred times are.
“Hey…” Jon said, nodding toward it. “What’s that?”
Damian looked down right away. His fingers tightened around the journal. “Nothing.”
Jon raised an eyebrow, smiling faintly but curious. “That’s a lie. It looks important.”
Damian swallowed hard. For the first time since Jon woke up, he seemed genuinely uncomfortable, not as a doctor, not as a vigilante, not as a protector, but as someone whose heart had just been seen.
“I…” he began, then stopped. “It’s stupid.”
“Damian,” Jon said softly, “nothing that comes from you is stupid.”
The silence returned, but this time Damian didn’t run from it.
He took a deep breath and, without lifting his eyes, spoke.
“During those eight years… I wrote to you.”
Jon blinked. “What do you mean?”
“A journal,” Damian continued, tightening his grip on the notebook.
“For you. I thought… if you woke up and everyone had already moved on, if time finally caught up to you, it wouldn’t be fair for you to feel lost. You deserved to know what happened. What we lived. Who we became while you were asleep.”
He finally looked up. “I didn’t want you to wake up to a world that felt foreign.”
Jon felt a lump rise in his throat. “Damian…”
“It’s not just about me,” Damian said quickly. “There are trivial things in there, stupid ones. Bad days, good days. Changes in the Watchtower, fights with my family. Birthdays. Some missions. Others… just thoughts.” He extended the notebook toward him, awkwardly. “It’s for you.”
Jon didn’t take it, instead, he reached out and laid his hand over Damian’s. Their fingers brushed, hesitant at first, then intertwined naturally, both holding the journal between them.
Damian froze, surprised, Jon looked up, meeting his eyes.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “For not leaving me alone, even while I was asleep.”
Damian shook his head slowly, exhaling shakily. “You were never alone.”
They didn’t know if what they felt was the same clumsy love from when they were ten and thirteen.
They didn’t know if destiny still existed, or if it ever really mattered. But in that moment, something inside them settled, and something finally stopped hurting.
-------
Night fell over the Fortress without drama, no thunder, no alarms, just the slow dimming of the lights and the distant hum of machinery, Clark and Lois said their goodnights with soft kisses on Jon’s forehead and silent promises before retreating to the adjoining room, no speeches, no warnings.
For the first time in eight years, they trusted their son to be alone.
Jon lay there for a few seconds, staring at the ceiling, listening to his own breathing. Privacy, the word felt strange, almost new.
Carefully, he sat up. His body protested a little, a pull here, a shiver there, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He walked to the small mirror on the wall, barefoot, dragging his feet slightly.
He looked at himself. It was him… and it wasn’t. Same face as when he left. Same blue eyes, same slightly lost expression he got when he thought too much, but he was thinner, sharper around the edges, new lines where bones pressed against skin. Still, he couldn’t help a crooked smile.
“Well…” he murmured, “Dami definitely takes after his dad.”
He looked handsome, in a different way from his brothers, less brute force, more… stillness. More like Bruce, but leaner, he thought, and laughed at the idea, and yet the most absurd thing remained: at nineteen, he was still nearly three inches taller than Damian. Tall enough to be a little unsettling, as if his body hadn’t realized that time had stopped for him.
He sat back on the bed, pulling the blanket around him. He wasn’t tired, he’d slept for years, but he didn’t want to move much either, as if any sudden motion might shatter the fragile peace in the room. His parents needed rest, he did too, in a different way.
Then he saw it.
The journal.
He picked it up carefully, surprised by its weight, not just physical, but emotional. The covers were worn, corners bent, spine softened by use. When he opened it, the pages gave way easily, like they’d been touched again and again by the same hands.
Damian had written a lot.
Jon ran his fingers over the first page, feeling the pressure marks of the pen, the changes in stroke, the pauses between lines. He settled back, took a deep breath, and began to read.
Outside, space remained infinite and cold. Inside, for the first time in a long time, Jon didn’t feel alone as he crossed the lost years, page by page.
At first, he smiled with nostalgia at the dry reports from the early months. He could picture Damian, young, stubborn, trying to hide his worry behind medical data and complaints about the cold, but as the night went on, the tone of the journal shifted, and so did Jon’s pulse.
He read about Tim’s wedding, about the frozen cake left on the ice each birthday, about how Damian had become a doctor just for him. A single tear slid down his cheek when he reached the entry where Damian broke a classmate’s nose for calling him “dead", no one had ever defended him that fiercely, not even when he was there to see it.
What hit Jon the hardest weren’t the missions or the changes in the League, but the quiet vulnerability seeping through every drawing, every confession about loneliness.
Through the pages, he watched the boy he left behind become a man who didn’t just wait for him, he chose him, every day, year after year, without any magical thread binding them.
He read about the trip to Nanda Parbat, the sunsets over the Arctic, and how Damian had stopped chasing fate to start building one instead.
By the time he reached the last page, the sun was rising over Earth’s horizon, flooding the room with golden light.
Jon closed the journal with an almost sacred reverence.
He felt overwhelmed, yes, but more than that, he felt at peace. The red thread had broken long ago, but in its place, Damian had woven something far stronger: a web of words, sacrifice, and time, unbreakable, unmagical, and real.
Jon looked toward the door, knowing Damian would walk through it any minute, he no longer felt afraid of the future, or of the emptiness destiny left behind.
Jon was more than ready to find out what together meant in this new world, for the first time in his life, he didn’t need to see the thread to know, he was exactly where he was meant to be.
--------------
The following days were a strange choreography between past and present. In the Fortress’s training hall, Damian guided Jon through an intense round of physiotherapy; his hands, expert, steady, held Jon’s arms as he tried to regain balance during short, low flights.
The trust they’d had as kids was still there, untouched, but it carried a different weight now, they weren’t two boys competing over who was better anymore, they were two grown men navigating a tension built over eight long years.
Every time Damian adjusted Jon’s stance or checked his pulse, the brush of skin burned hotter than the sun over Metropolis, Jon glanced at him from the corner of his eye, recognizing the boy he used to know but losing himself in the man he had become.
For his part, Damian kept up a façade of exaggerated professionalism to hide the way his heart hammered against his ribs every time Jon smiled at him with that same, blinding light.
“You’re progressing fast, Kent,” Damian said, eyes fixed on his tablet to avoid staring too long. “Tomorrow you might try a low-altitude flight outside the station.”
“Thanks, Dami…” Jon replied, using the old nickname.
The silence that followed was heavy, full of all the things Jon had read in the journal but hadn’t dared say aloud. “Hey, about what you wrote in year seven…”
“It’s just paper, Jon,” Damian cut in quickly, looking away with an awkwardness unworthy of a Wayne. “The world moves fast. Don’t get stuck in my old complaints.”
Both of them were afraid; Jon feared he might be in love with a guardian who only felt duty, Damian feared Jon only felt gratitude, not the fierce love he had cultivated in the snow.
From the observation deck, Clark and Lois watched.
Clark chuckled, a sound mixed with relief and amusement.
“They like each other so much it hurts to watch,” Lois murmured, resting her head on his shoulder “They look like teenagers again, even if Damian’s now a respected doctor and Jon has the body of a Greek god.”
“Let them be, Lois,” Clark said with a calm smile. “They waited eight years for this. Time isn’t their enemy anymore, it’s their ally. They have a lifetime to take that first step. No one’s rushing them now.”
Below, Jon finally managed to hover in the air for ten full seconds. When he landed, his shoulder brushed against Damian’s. They froze there, too close, the air vibrating between them, until Damian broke the tension with a sarcastic snort.
“You’re still clumsy, Kent.”
“And you’re still insufferable, Wayne.”
They laughed, and in that laughter, fear started to give way to something steadier, certainty, at their own pace, they’d find each other again.
Two weeks later, the air in Metropolis no longer felt like a threat to Jon’s lungs, the four of them, Clark, Lois, Jon, and Damian, walked through the Fortress hangar toward the transport ship.Their movements carried an easy synchronicity, conversations flowing naturally, until Lois, watching the two young men walking a step ahead, couldn’t help but smile.
When they landed at the Kent farm, the silence of the countryside exploded into joy. The porch was decorated with a hand-painted banner that read: Welcome Home, Jon!
It was glorious chaos. Krypto and his new litter of super-pups tackled Jon to the ground; Conner gave him a brotherly punch to the shoulder; Kara hugged him tight while her boyfriend waved from behind; and the two kids, Osul and Oua, stared at him with wide, shy eyes.Martha Kent presided over it all from the porch, wearing that smile that could heal anything.
Damian, however, stayed a few steps back, watching Jon surrounded by noise, by family, by love, he felt that old sting, of being the outsider. His mission as guardian was done; Jon was safe, maybe it was time to slip back into the shadows of Gotham.
“I’m heading out, Kent,” Damian murmured, using the commotion to slip toward his bike. “You’ve got a lot to process.”
But he never reached the handlebar, a small, surprisingly strong hand gripped his arm.
Martha Kent.
“And where do you think you’re going, young man?” she asked with that grandmotherly authority even a Wayne wouldn’t dare defy.
“Mrs. Kent, I… have matters to attend to in the city,” Damian stammered, losing all trace of Batman composure.
Martha looked over her glasses, eyes sparkling with mischief “Listen to me, Damian Wayne. I’ve watched you guard that block of ice for eight years, and I’ve seen the way you look at him since he woke up. Don’t waste my time, dear, you’d better make a move with my grandson. It’s plain as day there’s something between you two, and if you don’t get inside and have some pie right now, I’ll tell him myself in front of everyone.”
Damian was speechless, the heir of the Al Ghul’s, the prodigy doctor and Gotham’s vigilante, stood there bright red, mouth open, pride utterly shattered. He hadn’t thought it was that obvious outside the superhero circle.
Jon, watching from a distance with a nervous smile, saw Damian being ushered into the house by his grandmother.
Their eyes met, and for the first time, Damian didn’t look away.
He sat down at the table, accepted a slice of apple pie, and as the chaos of family laughter swirled around him, he realized Martha was right. It was time to stop being the guardian, and start being the partner.
------------
For an entire month, Wayne Manor became the setting of the most frustrating romantic comedy in history. Three days a week, Jon landed in the gardens for his physical therapy sessions with Damian, and three days a week, the air got so thick you could cut it with a batarang.
They were cowards, as Dick said between laughs from the balcony. Jon and Damian had faced gods, volcanoes, and the literal end of the world, but they couldn’t say “I like you” without short-circuiting.
They stretched the rubber band of “push and pull” to almost painful extremes: Damian brushed Jon’s back to correct his posture and both jumped apart as if electrocuted;
Jon smiled that blinding smile and Damian suddenly found something urgent to read on his medical tablet, though the screen was blank.
“For the love of God, just kiss already!” Jason shouted from a window, eating popcorn.
“We’ve been waiting eight years for this, don’t do this to us!”
“I believe I may die before seeing those two together,” Alfred sighed while brewing tea.
“They’re like two socially anxious parakeets,” Tim added, recording the scene for the Bat-Family group chat.
Damian glared death at them in private, but inside he was terrified. He’d spent so long guarding an idealized Jon that the real one, the one laughing at his bad jokes and smelling faintly of sunlight and Smallville, left him completely defenseless.
Meanwhile, Jon spent his nights back at the farm rereading the journal until he knew the lines by heart.
Those pages were his anchor. Thanks to Damian’s notes about Dick’s wedding, Jason’s degree, and complaints about Gotham’s new holograms, Jon didn’t feel like a ghost from another time. He felt like Damian had built him a bridge back to the world.
“I’m not alone in this,” Jon thought, tracing the firm handwriting with his finger. “The world moved on, but he saved me a place in line.”
That feeling, of not being out of step, of someone having taken the time to explain the world to him page by page, gave Jon the courage to keep flying to Wayne Manor despite the teasing. He wasn’t the scared kid who had run to the volcano anymore; he was a man who understood that the world he’d returned to wasn’t foreign, it was a place Damian had kept warm for him.
“Are you going to stand there staring at the grass,” Damian growled, walking over with his stethoscope, “or are you going to start the push-up set I asked for, Kent?”
“I was just thinking about the entry from year six,” Jon replied, a playful spark in his eyes, enjoying the way Damian instantly tensed up. “The one where you call me your ‘favorite disaster.’”
Damian went crimson to the roots of his hair. “That entry was… a formatting error. Forget it.”
“I think it’s the smartest thing you ever wrote.”
----------
Jon closed the journal once more, letting the leather rest on his lap. Through the window of his room at the farm, the Kansas night sky stretched endlessly above him, vast, familiar, and for the first time, it didn’t make him dizzy.
The first time he came back, Jon had felt like a glitch in reality: an adult trapped in a child’s place, a puzzle forced into a frame that no longer fit. The world spun too fast, and all he wanted was for it to stop.
But this time was different. This time, Jon hadn’t returned to a world that had forgotten him; he’d come back to one that had been waiting.
Damian’s journal was the proof of it. Reading it, Jon understood that his absence hadn’t been an empty space, it had been filled with devotion. Damian hadn’t just recorded facts; he had kept Jon’s seat at the table warm, preserved his place in the League, and held him, quietly, in his own heart. Because of that, when Jon walked through the city streets or talked with his brothers, he didn’t feel like a stranger. He felt like he was simply resuming a conversation, Damian had kept on pause for him. There was a kind of peace in knowing you didn’t have to “catch up” on your own, because someone had already drawn you a map.
And then there was the matter of the Thread.
Jon looked down at his chest. He didn’t search for the red glow, didn’t strain his eyes to see if the bond was still there, he didn’t care anymore.
The first time, the thread had been his only certainty, a mystical leash dragging him toward a destiny he didn’t understand. Now, the thread was irrelevant.
If it still existed, it was just decoration, If it had broken, so be it, Jon had found something far denser, far more real than magic: will.
The thread was something that happened to him; what he felt for Damian was something he chose.
Looking at Damian now, with those surgeon’s hands and that tired, steady gaze, brought a satisfaction destiny had never been able to give him. It was the satisfaction of seeing the fruit of eight years of voluntary loyalty.
He no longer needed the universe to tell him who he belonged to. The journal had taught him that he belonged to the one who had stayed in the cold when everyone else went to sleep. He belonged to the reality Damian had built for him,
a reality where he wasn’t “Superboy,” out of sync with time, but simply Jon, the man who had come home not because fate demanded it, but because love had been calling him back all along.
It felt right, because for the first time, Jon Kent wasn’t running behind time He was finally sitting right in the middle of it.
-----
Damian wiped down his medical instruments with unnecessary precision. In the reflection of the steel, he saw his own face, older, harder, marked by a waiting that had changed him completely.
Now that Jon was here, Damian could finally name what he’d felt. As a boy, he’d called it “rivalry” or “duty.”
When Jon first returned from space, he’d called it “protection.” But through those eight long years in the Arctic solitude, watching over the ice, the word had finally crystallized in his mind with the force of an impact: Love.
It wasn’t idealization, Damian knew Jon could be hopelessly optimistic, impulsive, sometimes exasperating, but he loved every one of those flaws. He loved the light Jon carried, not because he was a Kryptonian sun, but because it was the only light that could pierce the shadows Damian inherited from his bloodline.
Jon was his light, his anchor, the center of the reality he’d fought to preserve.
But that was where his greatest fear lived.
Damian knew Jon had chosen the ice to break a cycle of pain, he knew Jon had immolated himself so that destiny would stop being a chain. And now Damian tortured himself with one constant doubt:
What if I’m just another chain?
He feared that if he confessed, Jon would accept out of gratitude. He feared Jon would feel obligated to love him, because Damian had been the one who watched over him, who studied medicine for him, who never once left his side.
Damian loved Jon so deeply that he’d rather see him free and far away than bound to him by duty, or by the ghost of that “soulmate” curse that had nearly destroyed them.
“He chose his sanity over destiny,” Damian thought, tucking the stethoscope away. “Who am I to ask him to surrender himself to another bond after fighting so hard to escape one?”
He was ready to be the friend, the doctor, the silent ally, he was ready to bury every feeling if it meant Jon could finally belong only to himself.
What Damian didn’t understand, what his pride refused to see, was that Jon wasn’t running anymore.
But as long as they both kept playing this endless push and pull, the silence between them would remain the highest wall of all.
--------
Jon walked through the corridors of the atalya with a new kind of confidence, though he still felt that odd heaviness on chilly days. He ran into Dinah Lance near the observatory. Seeing her didn’t trigger the panic it once had, just a quiet need for closure.
“Dinah,” he called, his voice now that of a grown man. “I wanted to apologize, for the last time we met in your office. For not taking therapy seriously. I was terrified, and I chose the ice because I didn’t know how to talk about what I felt.”
Dinah gave him a gentle, maternal smile, the same one Damian had described in his journal. “You don’t need to apologize for surviving, Jon. What you did was an act of preservation. But now that you’re out of the ice, make sure you don’t keep freezing your words. Therapy isn’t just about stopping the pain, it’s about learning to live.”
Jon nodded, but before he could answer, a flash of violet light filled the hall, carrying the faint scent of sandalwood.
Zatanna appeared before him, arms crossed, expression sharp enough to slice through steel.
“Kent!” she snapped without greeting. “You’re still an idiot. Eight years asleep, and it seems the oxygen still hasn’t reached your brain. You broke your promise not to ‘do anything crazy,’ but I’ll forgive you, only because Damian turned into an excellent doctor thanks to your stubbornness.”
Jon laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Zee, I,”
“Listen carefully,” she cut him off, her tone suddenly serious. “I told you years ago, destiny isn’t exact. We get to choose it a thousand times over. Don’t believe in every spell, or every curse about ‘soulmates.’ But after traveling across the multiverse, there’s one thing I can recognize without magic: what you feel for that Wayne is love. And if you think it’s not mutual, then the ice left you blind. Make up your mind, Jon. The universe is getting bored of waiting.”
Jon froze as Zatanna vanished in a puff of smoke.
When he turned around, he caught Barry Allen and Hal Jordan pretending to be very focused on a nearby radar screen, whispering behind their hands. Even Arthur waved at him from across the room with a smug thumbs-up.
The entire Justice League, from veterans to rookies, was in on it. It wasn’t gossip anymore; it was collective awareness.
They’d all seen Damian turn into a man of steel for him, and they’d all seen Jon look at Damian like he was the center of his own solar system.
Jon left the Watchtower with his face burning. The pressure wasn’t mystical anymore, nor was it destiny, it was life itself, pushing him forward.
---------
Damian stood before the main monitors, supposedly analyzing weapons traffic patterns at the Gotham docks,
but the same chart had been frozen on the screen for twenty minutes. His mind was elsewhere.
Bruce, who had been watching silently from the upper platform, finally came down. He wasn’t wearing the cowl, and his expression wasn’t the intimidating mask of Batman, but that of a father whose patience was wearing thin.
“Damian,” Bruce said, his voice echoing through the cave, “stop.”
“I’m working, Father,” Damian replied without turning, his back straight as steel.
“No, you’re not. You’ve been checking the biometric sensors for Jon’s room at the farm for the tenth time in an hour. He’s breathing, Damian. He’s stable. What’s not stable is you. Your focus is gone, you’re making tactical mistakes, and frankly, you’re driving this entire family insane.”
Damian’s fists tightened, but before he could answer, the Batcave’s comm system, encrypted and supposedly silent, burst to life with a chorus of voices.
“Listen to the old man, Damian!” Dick’s voice rang loud and amused. “Even the Titans asked me today if you two are married yet. It’s exhausting!”
“If you don’t tell him, I will,” Jason chimed in over comms, “and I’ll read your journals over the Watchtower speakers. Please, just confess already, little bat. The city can’t handle the suspense.”
“My probability algorithms indicate that if you wait one more day, Jon will get tired and start dating a Metropolis barista out of spite,” Tim added in his usual analytical tone. “Move your ass, brother.”
“Silence! Off my channel!” Damian roared, slamming the console, his face burning in a way no League of Assassins training had ever prepared him for.
Bruce sighed and placed a heavy, steady hand on his son’s shoulder.
“You did the hardest part, Damian. You waited eight years. Don’t let the fear of being happy be what stops you now.”
He paused, voice softening. “That’s an order… and a piece of advice.”
Damian stared at the blank screen, surrounded by the echoes of his brothers’ teasing and his father’s expectant gaze, he knew there was no escape now. The entire world, from Zatanna’s magic to Bruce’s technology, was pushing him in one single direction.
----------
The apartment in Metropolis smelled of fresh paint and stacked cardboard boxes. Clark and Lois had finally decided to move, but since the Justice League doesn’t give vacations, the job of hauling furniture fell to the only Kryptonian with free time, and his “best friend,” a doctor.
It had been three months since Jon woke up. He was no longer the pale boy who’d fallen from the ice; now he moved with renewed strength, carrying refrigerators as if they were pillows. Damian, meanwhile, supervised the move with his usual precision, though he still refused to put down the tablet where, out of sheer habit, he kept track of Jon’s vitals.
“Careful with that box, Kent! It has your grandmother’s porcelain set,” Damian warned, stepping aside in the narrow hallway.
“Relax, Dami, I’ve got it under,” Jon tripped on a rolled-up rug, and the box tilted dangerously.
There was no disaster, but from the side pocket of the box, a small, heavy, worn leather object slipped out. The journal.
When it hit the floor, it fell open to a page Jon didn’t remember reading, or perhaps one his eyes had skipped in the frenzy of that first night.
Both of them froze. Time seemed to stop, just like in the Arctic, except this time, the air burned. Jon crouched, and Damian, reacting on instinct, reached for the book at the same time. Their hands met over the page and didn’t move, as they stood up.
Their eyes dropped to the tight handwriting of a much younger Damian, written only weeks after Jon had gone into the ice:
“…they say I should move on, but they don’t understand there is no ‘forward’ if you’re not here to challenge me along the way. I wonder if you ever suspected what I felt when we patrolled at thirteen. I wonder if you knew my arrogance was just a shield to hide that you were the only thing that made me feel human. I loved you then, Jon, with the clumsy heart of a boy who only knew how to fight. And I love you now, while I wait for this ice to decide to give my life back.”
Silence swallowed the room. The only sound was the faint hum of Metropolis traffic outside, jon looked up, eyes glassy, heart pounding against his ribs like it wanted out.
Damian was redder than Jon had ever seen him. The mask of composure had shattered, revealing the man who had carried that secret for almost a decade.
The air thickened, charged, their instincts screamed to retreat, to deflect with sarcasm, to hide behind logic, but they weren’t kids anymore, and the body remembers what the mind tries to forget.
Jon looked up from the page, his breath trembling.
The journal was still between them, their hands still touching, its leather warm under their joined fingers, as if it too were alive.
“Dami?” Jon’s voice shook, fragile but clear. “What you wrote there… do you still mean it?”
Damian closed his eyes for a heartbeat, fighting the old reflex to flee. When he opened them again, the intensity in his gaze was devastating, there was no doctor, no soldier, only the man who had waited.
“I never stopped feeling it, Jon,” he said, voice breaking open like a confession. “I’m terrified of being another chain for you, you deserved freedom, peace, not a bond created by responsibility” Damian's gaze was almost pitiful, as if he were waiting for a negative answer, one that would confirm his fear.
But Jon looked him in the eyes, with that brightness that equaled the sun "Dami, thanks to you I have freedom, and that's why I can choose, and I choose you." Jon increased his grip on the other's hand "I always choose you"
The line between restraint and need finally vanished. They moved as if gravity itself were pulling them closer, hesitant but unstoppable. Jon let the journal fall; his trembling hands found Damian’s face, tracing his jaw with aching tenderness, as if afraid he might dissolve into air.
Damian leaned into the touch, his own hands rising to Jon’s shoulders, gripping his shirt as though anchoring himself to something real.
They closed the distance, inch by inch. The first contact was hesitant, a collision of breath and relief, heavy with years lost and years still waiting. When their lips finally met, time, pain, and duty fell away like dust.
It was a soft kiss at first, a quiet promise, a trembling exhale of life rediscovered. Tears found their way between them, blurring where one ended and the other began. It wasn’t perfect, but it was theirs, the first step of a life they had fought for in silence.
In that kiss, Jon felt the last trace of the volcano’s cold leave his bones, and Damian felt the weight of eight years of vigilance finally slip from his shoulders, they weren’t the boy in the ice and the guardian in the snow anymore, they were simply two men, finally finding their way home, in each other’s arms.
They had both spent years starved of touch, Jon suspended in the silence of ice, Damian hardening himself against Arctic winds. These past months had been a slow thaw: a brush of shoulders in passing, Damian’s hand lingering on Jon’s pulse longer than needed, Jon holding Damian’s arm for “balance” though he no longer needed, but now they definitely couldn't hold back anymore.
The contact intensified, Damián began to back toward the wall guided by Jon, and so without really knowing what was happening, both followed their instincts, escalating the kiss to a passionate one, tasting each other, allowing themselves to explore the other's mouth. By that point, Jon's hands had moved down from Damián's chin to his waist, and Damian rested his hands on the younger man's chest, allowing himself to massage him in circles.
Everything seemed natural, that's how it should be, that's how it would finally be.
They parted only enough to breathe, their foreheads pressed together, air mingling, hearts wild but steady. Damian swore he could see whole galaxies in Jon’s eyes; Jon saw the pulse of living light in Damian’s green, fierce and unguarded.
There was still fear there, but beneath it, an electric certainty: that from now on, there would be no more journals of solitude, only a story they would write together.
The romance of the moment lasted exactly three seconds.
Just as Jon and Damian tried to close the distance again, a loud thud against the floor-to-ceiling window startled them. Then applause and cheers shattered the silence of the apartment. When Jon turned toward the glass, he almost shoved Damian away with sheer reflex: Clark, Lois, Conner, Kara, and little Osoul and Oua, those two with their hands awkwardly half-covering their eyes, were floating outside, pressed against the window like it was the premiere of a movie, clapping enthusiastically.
“About time!” Kara’s muffled shout came through the glass.
“Hey, this is family hours, lovebirds,” Conner said, grinning.
“Congratulations, son,” Clark added, that unmistakable look of pride in his eyes.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it. Suddenly, Damian’s communicator, the one he was sure was turned off, exploded into a chaotic chorus of voices.
“WE GOT IT! DICK, PAY ME THE HUNDRED BUCKS!” Jason yelled from Gotham.
“YOU COULDN’T EVEN WAIT FOUR MONTHS!” Dick groaned in disappointment.
“I already sent the video to Bernard, almost rated +18” Tim added.
“Don’t you think this is a bit much?” Duke whispered, at least attempting to respect their privacy.
“Perfect timing,” Cass commented calmly.
“Guess the new satellite was useful after all,” Babs laughed.
“Call the press! The ‘little bat’ has a heart!” Steph added between giggles.
“I believe Master Damian is crushing Mrs. Martha’s ceramic,” Alfred’s voice could be heard faintly in the background of the family transmission.
And as if that weren’t enough, a small swirl of purple mist materialized in the middle of the living room. It wasn’t a person, but a floating magical window: Zatanna’s crystal ball. Through it, Jon could see half the Justice League, Barry, Hal, Diana, and even a Batman clearly failing to hide a smile, celebrating on the Watchtower’s main monitor.
“Congratulations, boys!” Zatanna shouted from the other side, winking. “The multiversal broadcast was a success!”
Damian turned such a deep shade of red it looked like he might actually combust. In less than a second, his expression shifted from utter humiliation to murderous fury.
“I’M GOING TO ERASE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU FROM EXISTENCE!” Damian roared, desperately searching for something, anything, to throw at the crystal ball.
Jon, meanwhile, felt his face burning hotter than the sun’s core. Privacy was clearly a concept his family did not understand. He looked at Damian, saw his outrage, and despite everything, couldn’t stop a nervous laugh from escaping.
“Enough!” Jon exclaimed.
Without waiting another second, Jon grabbed Damian by the waist. Ignoring the chorus of “That hand, Kent!” shouted by his relatives outside, he blasted out through the apartment’s back exit at a speed that left both the Supers and Zee’s magic far behind.
They flew far from Metropolis, far from bat-frequencies and crystal balls, until they reached their old refuge: the secret base from their childhood. It was filled with dust and outdated monitors, but it was theirs.
When they landed, Jon slammed the heavy hatch shut with a thunderous clang, and at last, there was silence. Damian pulled off his sweater, practically steaming with irritation.
“Your family is unbearable, Kent,” Damian growled, crossing his arms. “And mine is a disaster for international espionage.”
Jon stepped closer, still smiling, and placed his hands on Damian’s shoulders to calm him.
“I know. But at least now the entire universe knows you’re mine.” Jon looked at him with a tenderness that completely disarmed Damian. “Where were we before the world decided to interrupt us?”
Damian sighed, his expression softening as he wrapped his arms around Jon in the dim light of their old hideout.
“I think we were at the part where we don't have to say anything else,” Damian murmured, letting himself fall on top of Jon, pushing him back against the table. “How about we try a different kind of physical therapy?” Damian asked, placing his hand on Jon's chest, moving his hand down to places never explored before.
“Mph,” was all Jon could manage through his nose as he blushed as red as both of them.
Just two Super Sons who, after eight winters of waiting, finally had all the time in the world to themselves, and to do whatever their raging teenage hormones wanted.
And this time, in the absolute privacy of their own story, there were no cameras, no magic, and no annoying siblings.
----------
Two years after the awakening, time no longer felt like a burden, but like a canvas the two of them painted together with care. Still, there are wounds that, even when healed, leave scars, ones you return to from time to time, just to remember how far you’ve come.
In a room bathed in the soft light of morning, Jon held the journal of the eight winters in his hands. His fingers traced the final entry, the one where an older, weary Damian told him: “Don’t be afraid when you see me. I’ve aged, yes… but I’m still the same.” Jon closed his eyes, a tight knot forming in his throat. That nostalgia hit him sometimes, the thought of everything Damian had sacrificed, of the man he had forged himself into in absolute solitude just to become Jon’s anchor. It was a gentle sadness, the kind that comes from knowing someone loved you so deeply they were willing to wait for you at the end of the world.
“Jon?” Lois stepped softly into the room. When she saw the journal in his hands, she smiled tenderly and moved closer, straightening the collar of his white shirt. “It’s time, sweetheart. Everyone’s ready downstairs.”
Jon nodded, placing the journal on his nightstand like the treasure it was. He looked at his mother, radiant with pride, and understood that the sacrifices of the past were what made this present possible.
Meanwhile, for Damian, the atmosphere was more solemn, but just as intense. He stood in front of the mirror, though his eyes weren’t focused on his polished reflection. In his hands was the yellowed, worn paper of the letter Jon had left him before flying to the Arctic. “I’m sorry for not being the man you deserve… promise me you won’t stop for me.” Damian let out a heavy breath. That line still hurt, still brought back the memory of a broken Jon who believed his own mental health was a burden. The sorrow of those uncertain years still lingered in the paper, but now Damian could read the letter without despair.
“He asked you not to stop,” Bruce said from the doorway, dressed in his finest formal suit. “And you didn’t. You walked eight years to reach this day, Damian.”
Damian folded the letter carefully and slipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket, right over his heart.
“He is my life, Father,” Damian replied with an absolute calm Bruce rarely heard from him. “Today, I’m only making it official for the rest of the world.”
The venue was private, a reserved hall atop a paradisiacal mountain, with all the surrounding acres purchased by Bruce Wayne to ensure complete privacy. Seated inside were all those who had been part of this story: Martha Kent, the twins, Kara and her boyfriend, several members of the League, Dinha, Dick with Kori, Tim and Bernard, Jason and Artemis, Alfred, Diana and Lizzie, Conner, and more. Even so, it remained an intimate event, fewer than fifty people.
From the left wing, Jon appeared, walking with steady steps, arm in arm with Lois and Clark. He was dressed in black, his suit adorned with silver details and fine embroidery, a gift from Diana and Themyscira. From the right wing, Damian advanced with aristocratic elegance, escorted by Bruce, and, to everyone’s surprise, Talia, who had appeared only hours earlier, uninvited. The young al Ghul wore a white suit from which a cape-like mantle fell from his shoulders, reminiscent of ancient sultans, decorated with golden embroidery, surely real gold, courtesy of his mother. His eyes, once cold and calculating, were fixed on a single point: the center of the aisle, where they would meet and walk the final steps to the altar together.
Waiting for them at the center was Zatanna, dressed in ceremonial finery, her expression one of quiet triumph. She knew better than anyone that if magic had once torn them apart, today it was sealing them together under a golden, pure light, a blessing born not of ancient books, but of two souls choosing each other.
The twins, Osul and Oua, approached with shy but purposeful steps, carrying the rings on a red silk cushion. Jon and Damian took the bands, and the air itself seemed to vibrate when their fingers brushed.
Then Damian drew a breath. The man who had kept silent for eight winters finally let his heart speak before everyone.
“Jon,” Damian began, his voice steady yet softened by a tenderness that made even Jason Todd look away to hide his tears. “I called you my sun in the journal, but today I understand that you are my moon. Because even in my darkest nights, in the shadows I inherited through blood, you were always the light that guided me home.” Damian tightened his grip on Jon’s hand, meeting those eyes he had missed so fiercely. “The first day I saw you, when we were just children, I knew we were meant to be together. I didn’t understand how, or why, and I resisted with everything I had. But you taught me that no armor can stand against the purity of your soul. You gave me stability when I felt distant from my own family; you saw light in me when the rest of the world, and I myself, believed it didn’t exist.” He paused, his voice fracturing just a breath. “Today, beneath this sky that saw us fall and rise again, I promise you that you will never be alone again. I promise to care for you, to protect your peace, and to give you every second I have left to breathe. Because over eight years, I learned the hardest lesson of all: I am the life I possess, but you are the life I was missing. Without you, I merely exist; with you, I finally live.”
Jon, tears streaming freely down his face, could barely breathe under the weight of Damian’s words. The boy who had once sacrificed himself to save the other now understood that destiny was not a curse, but the simple truth of finding the one person who would love him beyond time and ice.
“Damian,” Jon began, smiling so brightly it seemed to light the entire room, “I spent eight years in a void where time didn’t exist, but my heart never stopped beating for you. For so long, I thought my life belonged to the world, to my legacy, or to a destiny others had written for me. I was wrong.” Jon squeezed Damian’s hands, feeling the real warmth of his skin, the same warmth that had kept him alive in his dreams. “You were the reason I woke up. While I slept, you became the most incredible man I have ever known. You didn’t stay frozen in time; you grew so you could wait for me at the shore, and you taught me that love isn’t a chain that drags you down, but solid ground where I can finally land.” Jon glanced at his parents, the League, his siblings, but his world narrowed again to the man in front of him. “I choose you today, and I will choose you every morning. Not out of gratitude, and not because the universe demands it, but because there is no sky worth flying if it isn’t to return to you. Thank you for not giving up on us when I had already given up on myself. I promise that from now on, every one of my days will be devoted to making up for every second you spent alone in the snow. You are my home, Damian Wayne, and at last, I am home.”
Zatanna raised her hands, and a burst of purple and golden sparks surrounded the couple.
“By the power of your own will,” Zee said with a knowing smile, “and because the universe has waited long enough, I declare you life partners.”
------
Wedding Album (Notes on the Back)
Photo 1: [Jason Todd covered in white frosting, wearing a thoroughly displeased expression while Bruce looks at him with disapproval.]
“Mental note: Do not let Jason attempt a ‘magic trick’ anywhere near a five-tier cake. It ended up on the floor, but hey, at least Jon’s dog had a wonderful time! – Dick Grayson”
Photo 2: [Tim Drake shaking a champagne bottle with a wicked grin, aiming straight at Jon.]
“I wanted payback for all the years I had to endure Damian dragging us to the North Pole without telling him anything. The plan was for the champagne to explode all over his suit… but the genius moved and I ended up soaking Bernard instead. Almost ruined my marriage, congrats. – Tim”
Photo 3: [Kara Zor-El flying at full speed, catching the bouquet midair with a triumphant grin.]
“Got it! Not even the Amazons could stop me. Next year it’s my turn, guys. – Kara”
Photo 4: [The twins, Osul and Oua, asleep on Damian’s cape at the end of the party.]
“The new guardians ran out of battery. I think we’re officially uncles now. – Jon”
Photo 5: [Damian opening one of the gifts to find gold bars; beside him, Jon opens another box and pulls out lingerie, turning red as a tomato.]
“I believe our families have very different ideas of what constitutes an appropriate wedding gift. – Damian”
Photo 6: [Talia moments away from stabbing Dick, Dick about to grab a chair to swing at her, Bruce standing squarely between them.]
“They never got along. It’s a miracle they didn’t start a war. – Bruce”
Photo 7: [Martha setting her cane aside to dance in the middle of the room; every single Kent frozen in shock, all the Bats around her cheering her on.]
“I didn’t know Mom could do that.” – Clark
Jon closes the album with a tired but fulfilled smile. He shifts slightly, settling more comfortably against Damian’s chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. The silence of the apartment is warm, safe.
Damian slips an arm around Jon’s shoulders, absently brushing his thumb along Jon’s arm. After a moment of stillness, Damian breaks the silence with the question that has lingered in his mind ever since they left the Arctic.
“Jon, my sun?” Damian murmurs, his voice low and velvety. “I never asked you again about the thread… Is it still there? Can you still see it?”
Jon goes still for a second. He doesn’t look down at his chest, nor does he try to force the vision, searching for that crimson trace that once haunted him. Instead, he simply threads his fingers through Damian’s, squeezing them tightly.
“That doesn’t matter anymore, not even a little, my moon,” Jon replies with absolute calm. “The thread was a promise made by destiny. But we are a reality we built with our own hands. Whether it’s still there, or whether it broke eight years ago… it doesn’t change what I feel when you look at me.”
Jon leans in and kisses him, soft and unhurried, tasting of home and promises kept. Damian smiles against his lips, eyes closing.
There are no more winters. No more waiting. No more magic threads.
There are only the two of them, and that is more than enough.