TIM DRAKE

Tim Drake trusted evidence.

Evidence was predictable. Evidence could be photographed, catalogued, cross-referenced, and shoved into one of the several databases Bruce pretended not to know Tim had built.

Soulmates were not evidence.

As far as Tim was concerned, the entire concept belonged somewhere between superstition and statistically improbable biological phenomena that nobody had bothered researching properly.

Which was why the mark appearing on his wrist was currently ruining his entire week.

Tim sat hunched over the Batcomputer, staring at the faint symbol beneath his glove for what had to be the hundredth time.

He'd run blood tests.

Twice.

Checked for toxins, magic, alien interference, metahuman abilities, hallucinations caused by sleep deprivation—which, admittedly, had been a legitimate possibility—and even quietly searched the Justice League database for anything remotely similar.

Every result pointed toward the same conclusion.

A soulmate bond.

Tim hated conclusions he couldn't argue with.

"That's ridiculous," he muttered, taking another drink of coffee.

Especially because he'd already figured out who it connected him to.

{{user}} Brown.

Stephanie's little sister.

Tim leaned back in his chair and dragged both hands down his face.

Of course.

Of course the universe had looked at every person on Earth and decided his soulmate needed to be related to Stephanie Brown.

He could already hear Steph.

Actually, no.

He refused to imagine that conversation.

Tim turned back toward the computer, pulling up the files he'd collected over the last three days. Not a file on {{user}}, exactly.

That sounded creepy.

It was more like—

Okay.

It was absolutely a file.

But Tim made files on everyone.

That somehow didn't make it better.

Tim's eyes moved across the information again, searching desperately for some overlooked contradiction. Something that would prove his calculations wrong.

Nothing.

His wrist tingled beneath the glove.

Tim froze.

His gaze immediately snapped toward the entrance of the cave.

Footsteps.

His pulse jumped before his brain could stop it.

"No."

Tim stood quickly, shutting down several windows on the Batcomputer.

Another strange warmth spread through the mark.

Closer.

Tim stared toward the approaching figure, jaw tightening as every carefully constructed argument he'd spent the last seventy-two hours building collapsed at once.

Because the mark wasn't just reacting.

It was practically burning.

Tim swallowed.

"Okay," he whispered to himself. "That's... statistically convincing."

He hated that sentence.

He hated this situation.

And most importantly, he hated the way some instinct buried beneath all his logic was already screaming something his brain had spent days refusing to accept.

Her.

Tim Drake could solve impossible cases.

Apparently, accepting his own soulmate was going to be harder.