The magic of prophetic dreams is a confusing thing, one that has eluded scholars and scientists despite the many years its been studied. Its something that nearly all humans have — though usually only on rare occasions — and often marks that someone will meet a soulmate soon. Can happen at any point in life, and often multiple times as people had multiple soulmates.
But it can be difficult to distinguish between "fated" dreams and normal ones, and the only real way to know if reoccurring dreams were fated ones was if they came true. So, while people romanticized the idea of learning who your soulmates are through dreams, everyone mostly agrees that a better way of determining soulmates is to pay a magic user after the fact, provide them with the blood of the two potential mates, let them determine if they really are connected by the magic of fate.
The first ones that Tim has starts after his third birthday and leaves him screaming into the night.
Janet bursts into his room when his cries don't die down, worried that someone may have broken in. Upon realizing that it's just a nightmare, she feels annoyed at being woken up so early. It takes a while for him to calm down, and in the morning, his mother will scold his father for letting Tim watch scary movies with him.
But then it happens again. And again. Janet still enters his room, wakes him up, and calms him down. But she is out of her wits and nearly out of patience in how to actually make the night terrors go away. She bans him from television late at night, from his toys, and then from going outside. Tim doesn't have enough energy to protest when she grounds him in his room until his nightmares go away. In fact, he barely has an energy at all during those days with so little sleep he gets in the night.
When she complains to her husband at breakfast, Jack merely laughs and offers to bring them to the circus in town. It might be enough to distract both Tim and Janet from Tim's mysterious terrors.
In retrospect, it was a horrible decision.
They are slightly more accepting of the nightmares that follow Tim after that night, and even take him to a child psychologist (and pay them well to keep quiet about their son's shameful behavior). The psychologist dismisses nightmares that led up to that event — leaving it merely a footnote in her notes — and focuses on the ones that have a clear cause. Those nights before are forgotten by everyone, even Tim. But the night of the carnival and a certain boy remains ever so vivid in his mind. The psychologist was helpful enough, and over the years, he gets over the trauma well enough for his parents to decide that they don't need to be there for him all the time.
They leave him with some house keepers and more than enough money to stay alive (more money than 6 year old knows what to do with). Tim has books and games and schooling and nannies to keep him busy. But it doesn't let him ignore the fact that the house feels empty. Even with the servants and the mountains of stuff his parents bring back with them, what should be his home feels hollow.
It doesn't take long until that feeling settles deep into his heart and stay there.
In the mean time, he fills his time with obsessions. First with photography, then detective games and puzzles. And it all leads him to Batman and Robin. To a television newscast of a boy in bright tights performing an all to familiar stunt on screen.
The Grayson's quadruple somersault. Richard "Dick" Grayson — Bruce Wayne's ward. It fits like puzzles into his brain when he realizes that his next door neighbors are Batman and Robin. He could barely hold himself from telling his nannies.
Its enough excitement to soothe the loneliness he feels — that he shares a secret with Gotham's heroes.
Years later, during one of the months that his parents are halfway across the world, one of Tim's nannies finally tells him about soulmates and magic dreams for the first time. There's wonder in her voice when she explains how important soulmates are. "They're bound to you by fate. And there's nothing stronger than that."
"Wow!" He exclaims. "Will I meet my soulmates one day?"
She laughs. "Of course. Your dreams will tell you when you're ready. And they'll love you like no one else does." She hugs him close, and Tim savors the human connection.
He wonders if the magic of soulmates will be enough to close the emptiness in his heart.
After she goes to sleep at night, Tim sneaks out to take a couple of pictures. He goes around Gotham, but his favorite subjects are Batman and Robin. The second Robin — Dick has long since graduated from the sidekick role and moved into Bludhaven — is tough and strong and is a wonderful subject for his night photos. He's not as agile as the first one, but he makes up for it in his self-confidence and the way he innately knows Gotham and the city's streets.
In the day, Tim takes careful notice of his neighbors. He never has an actual chance to talk to Bruce's new ward, Jason Todd, but he watches him closely at social functions.
After one such social function, Janet lays a hand on Tim's head. "Watch who you surround yourself with, Timothy. Not everyone will be worthy of your attention."
"Even if they're my soulmates?"
Janet pauses, and its only because Tim was raised to be observant that he catches how her eyes flicker to Jack superstitiously. "Don't believe in whatever nonsense society says about them. You use whatever fate puts on your lap," she finally says, "But don't think that fate giving something to you means that you have to keep it. You don't take every deal that someone offers to you, alright? Judge the pros and cons, and whether someone else has a better offer to give."
Tim nods. He knows his family's prejudices, and he knows how they expect him to act as a heir to their company. He can understand what Janet really wants him to do — and that is: not interact with anyone that won't benefit their family and their business.
So he has follows Jason Todd for years, but never actually interacts with him. There was no way he could come out under night and introduce himself to the hero, but there was also no way that his parents would be happy with him talking with a "street rat" in social functions (even if that street rat was Bruce Wayne's adopted son).
But he wishes he could. Thinks about all the ways he and Jason could meet. Would Jason approach him one day at a Gala looking for another kid to actually talk to? (Jason has long since stopped going to them, tired of the judgmental stares of Gotham's elite.) Would Robin approach Tim on the streets and then admire the amazing photos that Tim has took of them? (Robin is more likely to scold him for being out so late at night and send him home. ) Or would Batman and Robin get into a sticky situation, out of which Tim can bust in and save them at just the right moment? (…yeah. Fat chance of that ever happening.)
The huge gap in his chest widens when he learns that Jason is dead. He feels like he's done something wrong but he doesn't know what. A missing connection and a lost chance, perhaps. All he knows for sure is that Batman needs a Robin, and Dick doesn't want the spot back.
Though it doesn't quite fill up the emptiness he feels, Tim does his best to fill in Jason's shoes as Robin. With Nightwing's support, he convinces Bruce to let him be his sidekick.
Tim blossoms as Robin, and he thinks, this who I was always meant to be. Sure Batman doesn't really want him there, and he's reluctant to let Tim on patrol until he's undergone excessive amounts of training (something his predecessors never had to do). Nightwing is mainly the one that trains him — though he has little time to between patrolling in Bludhaven and his day job as a cop. Tim preens under the watchful gaze of the first Robin (even though that gaze often sees him as someone else).
Being Robin seems unreal sometimes. He meets Steph, and thinks that he could even fall in love with her. He meets Cas, and he definitely does love her. Neither girl is his soulmate, but they become people he could trust to watch his back.
And then he joins the Young Justice, and something inside him starts to fill up to the sound of Conners' laughter. He's strung along into childish games by Bart, and he's watching Cassie's back battle.
But tragedy strikes with the death of his mother, and his father can no longer stand.
One day, Jack Drake makes Tim sit down to talk. He's been drinking, but he isn't angry this time. Just sad and empty. Jack tells him, "I did enjoy her company when we were traveling. At the very least, archeology was something we both enjoyed. We were both ambitious too, trying to push our way up the Gotham elite."
"Did you love mom?" Tim asks for clarification. Because Jack and Janet were soulmates, but Tim has always known that not everything is perfect as his nanny — and all the TV shows and the romance novels and Dick's words —-once made it out to be.
Jack sighs. "How your mother made it work was by never expecting much out of anything. Our marriage was beneficial to both of us. That's what made it work."
Dana isn't Jack's soulmate, she told Tim before. But Jack has been trying to make it work with Dana, and Tim thinks that it'll be good for the both of them if it does (even if he can never think of her as his mom). Jack is happy and relaxed in a way that he never could be within the walls of their former mansion, the way he could never be despite the many vacations and trips he spent with Tim's mom.
"We don't have a lot of time in this world. So watch how you spend it. Who you spend it with." Is the last thing he says to Tim that night. He's probably talking about Tim's desires to go back to be Robin and stay with Batman, and Tim would bristle at the statement if Jack hadn't just lost himself to a drunken stupor right there.
Then the statement sinks into Tim's brain when his dad is dead days later and he can only mourn how little time they spent together.
Tim helps clean up his fathers things — what's left of his biological family. In the midst of it all, Tim makes a startling discovery. Just some old documents of back when he was going to a childhood psychologist. A very tiny note.
He doesn't think much about it at first, but Tim has always been a detective, and his mind his making connections before he could dismiss them.
Fact: He had reoccurring dreams (nightmares) when he was young.
Fact: Those nightmares occurred around the Grayson's death.
Fact: They started before he met Dick.
Dick might be his soulmate.
It might be leap of judgment, but Tim has learned to trust his own intuition. Batman has vials of their blood stored in the Batcave, and Tim knows a magic user. He sends two small samples of blood to Zachary Zatara for a favor, and Zachary calls him back with a snarky "congrats."
Tim wants so desperately to tell his new big brother, but he can't. Dick has so many expectations of what a soulmate is and Tim is already struggling meet the expectations of Robin.
How many times has Dick talked to him about how meeting a soulmate would be magical? How one would know immediately who they were with the help of the dreams? How the soulmates should form a bond unlike they could with anyone else?
It was not a surprise to Tim that Dick is such as romantic about them. Dick's parents were soulmates, and Dick's parents were perfect. (The hole in Tim's heart twisted as he stopped himself from revealing that his parents were also soulmates but they were not perfect.) Would Dick even believe that he had a soulmate right there and not realized it? (Dick and Robin has been Tim's fantasy for so long, so he didn't want to ruin Dick's fantasies about the magic of soulmates.)
And then there's the fact that Jason was Dick's soulmate. It was one of his biggest regrets. Dick had told him one night, "I was so angry about how Bruce made Jason Robin, that I couldn't accept it." Dick's hands had been shaking. "Being soulmates with someone, its the most wonderful thing. I don't know how I could be so cruel and dumb. I lost a soulmate before I even got to know him."
Its the same reason why he didn't want to live with Bruce. It was too heavy. Too much. To replace one dad with another so soon after Jack's death. Tim knows that Dick is still grieving Jason, and doesn't want Dick to just see him as a second chance (even though Bruce and Dick already do).
He'll tell Dick, Tim promises himself. When he's ready. After he's proven himself to be worthy of being Robin and being Dick's soulmate.
In the meantime, he runs from his problems by going to the Titans.
Tim feels free when he's Robin, but he feels happy when he's with the Titans. With Conner and Bart and Cassie. Fighting by their side, laughing and joking with them. Dick had joked that Tim was the most obedient of Bruce's Robins (to an extent), but never has he wanted to break the rules as much as he's with his friends.
But Tim never got "fated" dreams of them.
For what ever reason, the magic of soulmates — or rather fated dreams — are limited to humans. Conner is half-kryptonite and a clone. Cassie is half-god. And Bart is from the future, and his existence in the past is a direct contradiction of the concept of "fate".
None of them can have soulmates, and none of them are Tim's soulmates. Tim feels sad about that, but ultimately its him that comforts each one of them when they confess how isolated it makes them feel from humanity.
Connor comes to him one night, in frustration and nearly in tears because he can't ask the other resident kryptonite what's it like to live in human society without a soulmate. When morning comes, they promise that they'll always have each other.
Bart, one day starts shyly talking over his food about the soulmates he would have had if he were back in his time. Then he declares that he would rather be here with his friends, and Tim responds that if he had been born in the same period, then they would have definitely been soulmates.
Cassie snorts at the issue and fights anyone that tries to make them feel bad about it. She doesn't need soulmate dreams to meet amazing people and love them, so Tim laughs and agrees with her.
It isn't until years later, in between staying at the Titans tower and the Wayne mansion that Tim starts to get nightmares again.
Of being stalked, being hunted down and shot and broken.
At first he ignores it. He's faced the Scarecrow and the Joker and a number of villains that would make anyone have messed up dreams at night. He cuts back on the caffeine and drags an extra blanket to bed. Batman notices, and he tells Tim to get more sleep and not let it affect his performance on the field. Tim tries. But it keeps happening, and Tim has always been a detective.
His mind connects the dots even when he doesn't want to.
Tim screams over how unfair everything is after another terror filled night, and then prepares to meet his next soulmate.
He can't bare to tell anyone. Bruce might make him stop being Robin (again), and Dick would be distraught and disbelieving at a soulmate who could hurt their other half. He carries his bo staff where ever he goes and trains harder. In the end, nothing he does matters.
Red Hood stalks the halls of the Titan tower and leaves him with a broken bones, a slit throat, and even more nightmares than before. Jason Todd, his soulmate, tears open the hole on his heart and leaves it bigger than it was before.
It's not fair, Tim thinks.
Drake manor was filled with loneliness. The apartment with his dad with misery and hopelessness. Wayne Manor had excitement, and he had wanted it to feel like home. But the looming darkness of the cave beneath it makes it impossible to forget the responsibility he has while staying there: uphold Jason's legacy, be the light to Batman's shadow, and save Gotham as its Robin.
The Titans Tower with his friends was the only place Tim felt like a kid. Where he was safe, happy, and content. Where felt like a whole person rather than an abandoned heir or the placeholder for a dead son.
And his soulmate had taken that away from him.
Walking through the halls after the attack feels is terrifying, and Tim collapses into a shivering mess. At that moment, Conner takes him into his arms just holds him.
"I'll kill him," Conner promises. "I don't care what Batman or Superman will do to me."
Tim shakes his head. "You can't," he confesses. "He's Jason. He's my soulmate."
Conner lets out a strangled sound, and grips him tighter. He could feel Bart pressed his back and Cassie lays a hand on his shoulder. "He doesn't deserve you," she says, "We'll protect you from him." Tim just nods.
While Bruce and Dick attempt to bring their wayward Robin home, Tim spends a lot of time with Conner, Bart, and Cassie.
In San Francisco, where the buildings are too smooth for his grappling hook to stay put, Conner lifts him up by the crook of his armpits and lets him fly anyways. Tim knows that Conner will never drop him
In the Titan quarters, in the mess of the living room and his own room, he plays video games with Bart while gorging himself on junk food and silly games, remembering how to be kid again. Their laughter fills empty corridors and slowly erases the horrors of that night.
And in battle, he and Cassie watch each others backs. And when Cassie leads the team, he follows her willingly with his full trust and she doesn't betray it.
There's a sort of peace that Tim comes too. Sure neither Dick nor Jason know they're his soulmates, but the tentative connection — through joined cases and during dark nights — he has with them is more than enough.
Then it happens again — the nightmares.
At least this time, they're not as terrible as before, but mostly filled with confusion. They leave Tim with the feeling of disappointment and free-falling through the air. Tim doesn't have it in himself to feel afraid anymore, and he's prepared for it when a black-hair, green-eyed boy sneers at him, and then pushes him off the dinosaur-statute in the Batcave. Tim catches himself, then turns to take a look at his newest soulmate.
Damian Wayne not even 10 years old and he hates Tim's guts. Tim thinks that its a bit ridiculous because they've just met, so its surprising when he realizes how hurt it makes him feel.
"What is your problem?" He shouts at the tiny assassin. "Why are you acting like such a jerk?" Aren't we soulmates? Didn't you have fated dreams of me?
There's anger in those small, green eyes as Damian growls out, "Because you don't deserve any of this. You're adopted! When you're gone, I'll take my rightful place at my father's side as Batman's son!" That last point is punctuated when the brat sucker punches him. Tim throws a punch back, and they have to be separated by Dick and Bruce.
"Tim!" Dick shouts, aghast, "Don't fight back! He's just a kid!"
"He literally just tried to kill me!" He struggles out of Dick's hold, and Dick looks disappointed at him. "He wants me dead." The second soulmate that wants him dead. Tim couldn't believe his luck.
"It's how he was raised," Dick tries to explain. "Please have some patience with him."
"Should I just let him keep trying to kill me then? Let him push me out of the family?" Tim can't understand his reasoning.
"Timmy," is all Dick can say with his puppy eyes like he was begging him for something. Tim doesn't understand how Dick can just let Damian get away with all the hate that he spews Tim's way. So he just leaves. He's so furious that he takes a zeta tube out of Gotham for the night. When he gets to his team's space, Bart is there eating through their shared fridge.
The sight of his guilty face makes Tim laugh out loud for the first time in days. His anger basically dissipates because its hard to stay angry at Bart desperately trying to swallow all of their leftovers. Tim buys them some pizza, and the two of them spend the night playing board games.
When Conner and Cassie finally come in, Tim spills the beans about the tiny assassin now living with him. He could barely hold them back from taking a jet to Gotham to give Damian a piece of their mind.
Its one of the last happy memories he has of them before they lose Conner and Bart.
Then Bruce dies too.
But Tim doesn't think he's dead. When he says so, he can feel Dick's disappointment in him, and knows that Dick doesn't believe him. It puts a strain their relationship, and no matter how diligently Tim acts as his Robin, it just doesn't seem to go away.
There's a small part of him that tries to bury what his mind is saying about Bruce's death. To be there for Dick — his soulmate, his brother — instead of trying to find someone who may actually be dead. But Tim is a detective, and he can't convince himself that Bruce is actually dead when the evidence points otherwise.
And then he over hears a conversation between Dick and Damian.
"Now that my father's dead, I shouldn't be here anymore," Damian says to Dick. And Tim's heart softens a little at that. But then —
"Of course you have a place here Damian, you're my soulmate." And Tim's blood runs cold. In retrospect, he should have expected it. That all the Robins were somehow connected by a string of fate. Tim doesn't know if Damian and Jason have met yet, but he would bet anything that they were soulmates too. He runs before hearing anything else.
The next morning, Dick takes away Robin.
"We're equals Tim, I don't think I can have you as my Robin." What a lie. Tim wants to shout and scream at him. They've worked as Batman and Robin before, and they were good at it. He wants to punch the smug, smirking look off of Damian's face.
He knows the truth. If they were equals, then why didn't Dick first sit down and talk to him about giving the role to Damian? No, Dick gave it to Damian because Damian was his soulmate and Tim wasn't — at least in at least that what Dick thought.
Tim contemplates revealing the truth. But would Dick even believe him?
Would it matter if he did? What would Dick actually do, if he were forced to chose between two soulmates. In spite of everything, Tim doesn't think he can put such a choice on his big brother.
(And honestly, Tim knows it would crush him if Dick does find out that they are soulmates but still choose Damian over him.)
So instead he asks Dick slowly, "If we're equals, then, why won't you believe me then that Bruce is still alive?"
Dick stiffens, gives him an pitying look, and Tim's blood is boiling underneath his skin. The hole in his heart is a dark, angry thing that wants to devour all the good memories he's ever had of Dick.
Dick can take away everything else from him, But Tim still has his intuition and his skills as a detective. "You know I'm right Dick. There was no body! In our line of work, its not too unthinkable for people to come back from the dead!"
"Tim," Dick says exasperatedly, like he was talking to a toddler. "You're overcome with grief."
"I am grieving. But that doesn't mean that my mind has gone soft," he hisses.
He watches Damian in his Robin suit roll his eyes. "There's no evidence Drake. Maybe your not fit to be here if you can't accept that."
Dick stops him before he wipe the look off Damian's face.
"Maybe, you need sometime off," Dick rambles, like he does when he doesn't know what else to do. "Maybe Arkham will do you some good."
And Tim freezes. He can't breath. He can't move. It feels like the ground has gone out from underneath him.
"You think I'm crazy." He stutters out. "And you want to put me in with criminals."
"I think you need help." Dick says.
Tim wishes that Dick had just tried to kill him like his other soulmates, rather than destroying him like this.
There's nothing Tim can do but leave.
Its Cassie who finds him, but she's here because Dick sent her. The coward — to scared to confront him on her own.
"Of course he sent me! Because you wont answer me anymore! I couldn't find you without his help!"
Tim shakes her away.
"Dick may have been the one to tell me what's going on, but that's because you won't!" She grabs his wrist and forces Tim to look her in the eye. To see the anger and pain and care in her gaze. "And I'm here because I want to be!"
Tim shivers. Because he knows. Bart and Conner are also gone, and Cassie is suffering too. "Let me be there for you, Tim," She says more softly, and there's nothing more than they can do but cry into each other's arms.
"I miss Conner," He says. "I miss Bart."
"I miss them too."
And they sleep in each others arms thinking about everyone they've lost.
The next morning he leaves because he has a mission to accomplish. Cassie doesn't quite know what to do about the fact that Batman might be alive, and Tim doesn't need to put that burden on top of her (she's still the leader of Titans, she has too many things on her plate),
Tim travels alone and barely sleeps anymore. A huge part of it is his work load. But there's also another part that is tired of the nightmares, tired of facing the brunt of his soulmates' anger and disappointments. Afraid that if he has another soulmate, they'll be the one that actually kill him.
Instead, he fills his thoughts with Conner, Bart, and Cassie. He watches old videos of them on his phone, looks at the strange lands before him and imagines what they would say.
Eat some more, Tim, Bart implores him, and Tim forces some bread down his throat before working on another case.
You need sleep in order to work properly, Cassie reminds him, so Tim catches an hour while on a flight.
We love you, Conner says, So don't you dare die.
I know, Tim replies, and readies his bo staff against assassins and killers of assassins. I won't.
Tim gains some allies, and then he loses them, along with his spleen.
Cassie sends him word that somehow, Conner and Bart are miraculous alive, and they're back and they're waiting for him. It gives him the strength to carry on and finally find the evidence needed to prove that Bruce is still alive. He now just needs it send it to the Justice League before he can get back to his friends.
But first, he has to take care of Ra's al Ghul. But that's okay, because he has friends, and he knows that they'll be there if he asks. And it still feels him with warmth when he checks and they are and they're ready to support him.
He also feels warmth when Dick catches him as he falls from a skyscraper, saving his life.
"How'd you know I was going to catch you?" Dick asks. Honestly, he didn't. He's so surprised that Dick made it in time, and relieved that Dick won't have to suffer the guilt of having another family member die.
But it's not like he was planning on Ra's kicking him off Wayne tower, and he definitely wasn't planning on dying today. "You're my brother." He mumbles before losing consciousness. "You'll always catch me." Because Dick is his soulmate, and Dick was always saying how you should be able to count on soulmates to be there for you. So maybe Dick catching him shouldn't be a surprise. Maybe Dick even had a soulmate dream and that's how he knew where to go, to catch Tim before he fell to his death.
When he next wakes up, Tim realizes how stupid that is. You only have soulmate dreams once, and Dick certainly either never had them for Tim, or he had forgotten it in the face of his parent's death.
After that, Bruce comes back. Tim brought him back. The vindication he feels is like a cooling touch on scars of his heart. All his hard work had come into fruition. Bruce is here and he's alive and it feels like things going back to the way they were before. The way they should be.
But it doesn't.
Not in the way Tim wanted it too. Bruce thanks him with hand on his shoulder and goes to his family — Dick, Alfred and Damian. He praises everyone's hard work and doesn't say a word of criticism — not of how Dick took Robin away or how Jason violently acted under his cowl or Damian has tried continually to kill Tim or even how Tim abandoned his duties in Gotham to go on a one-man quest with so little evidence.
Bruce just acts like their world didn't end when he died, like everything happened as it was supposed to and not that their family fractured into pieces.
Damian's still Robin and he still hates Tim's guts. He hasn't apologized for trying to kill Tim, and sometimes he looks like he wants to try again. He certainly isn't afraid to say so. Neither Bruce nor Dick do anything to stop him. They never say anything when Damian accuses Tim of being useless and unwanted the family. Tim would like to kill who ever said that words don't hurt, because he's so tired of Damian's vitriol.
Jason is recovering from his relapse that seemed to erased all the progress that the Batclan has made in bringing him back. In fact, he seems to want nothing more than increase the distance between them. Tim can hardly blame him and decides to give him the space. Tim isn't so much afraid of Jason attacking him anymore (the Pit hasn't returned to that extent and he knows that he can just call on his friends to save him if Red Hood should ever try again), but he really doesn't want to trigger the man into a green episode.
Dick and him still haven't talked about Robin being taken away, about him not believing in Tim, nor about choosing Damian over Tim, but he seems to think that everything's fine and dandy between them now that he's successfully saved his little brother. But there's still that hole in Tim, that hates Dick for pretending that everything's fine and that he hasn't betrayed Tim's trust in him again and again.
And Tim is so, so tired. So fucking stressed that he has to get out of Gotham to feel like he can even breath. He avoids them all, and maybe its because they're so busy but no one says a thing. No one even seems to notice when he spends more time outside of Gotham than with them.
There's nothing he can really do but wait for someone else to reveal his secrets, because he certainly wasn't interested in them anymore.
In the end, someone does, and he isn't even in Gotham when it happens.
It's Dick who calls. He's sounds so frantic in his yelling that Tim can barely make out the words. But Dick rarely calls except for emergencies, so he drags himself out of bed and into the hall. Tim switches to a video call and then blinks himself awake enough to see an Dick, Jason, and Damian on the screen. Dick crowds the screen, utterly excited, while Damian and Jason appear in the background. Damian is defiant and Jason is hard to read as ever. In his sleepy state, he catches the words "soulmates" and "Robins" and he's thought enough about the subject to figure out the rest.
It turns out, there was a magician villain in Gotham and that somehow led to the 3 other Robins to figure out who their soulmates were. Tim doesn't really care about the details.
"Okay, And?" Tim cuts him off.
"Come back to Gotham Tim! We need to celebrate about this!"
"Why?" He asks, "Do it among yourselves."
"What?" Dick seems lost. "But you should be here with us. The four of us are all soulmates with each other. Isn't it great?"
"You really expect me to go back to you just because I'm your soulmate?" Tim laughs hollowly. Dick is taken aback, hurt coloring his features. "Sorry Dick, but being your soulmate has never affected my choices before."
"I don't understand…" Dick trails off, "Aren't you happy to learn this?"
"I guess I was when I first did. The magic has kinda worn off by now."
Dick's mouth hangs open but no words come out. He's trying to comprehend that Tim already knew and didn't care.
"Leave it, Dick," Jason butts in. "I told you he was a lost cause. After all, you're still holding something against me, aren't you?"
"Well, you never even apologized," Tim spat back. "And you still call me replacement."
"Tim, please," Dick chided. "You know it was the Pit. Jason has been doing so better. He just couldn't control himself then."
"But he enjoyed it. He looked forward to it, didn't you?"
Dick just looked confused, but Jason stilled.
"Think about, Dick." Tim continued. "We're soulmates. In the days before you broke into the tower, he should have had dreams about what he was going to do. Did you enjoy them, Jason? Did it give you new ideas on how to torture me? Did they make you excited to see my face black and bloody?"
There's a sneer on Jason's face, but he doesn't disagree.
"But with the Pit Madness, Jason probably didn't even realize that those dreams meant that you were soulmates."
"That fact that we're soulmates doesn't matter! He went in there wanting to kill me, he planned to do so and he never even showed remorse for it!"
"He's your soulmate though Tim. You should make up and forgive him!" Dick tried to make Tim see the way he did.
"No, I'm tired of letting people try to kill me and getting away with it, soulmates or not," He smiled, his cheeks straining. "And that's for both Jason and Damian." Tim wants to giggle almost. All the stuff he's had to hide over the years, the things he's had to endure are coming bursting out of the seems.
Damian bristled. "Even if I had dreams, you aren't worthy of being my soulmate. I'm glad you're gone."
"Damian!" Dick scolds, horrified.
"Well you heard them, Dick," Tim says. "I'm staying right where I actually want to be."
"Tim, Dami is just being a kid. You're our soulmate. Of course we want you back." Dick's voice is hurting.
"If I wasn't, would you still be calling?" Dick looks confused. He doesn't seem to know what to say to that, and Tim doesn't know if he really wants them to actually answer.
Because here's the truth: There's a small part of Tim that still loves Dick and wishes him all the best. That still admires Jason and hopes that he makes up with the Bruce. That still wishes that he and Damian could be brothers, and that Damian finds peace away from the the League and their teachings.
And all of that would still probably be true even if they weren't his soulmates.
But they only want him because they now know that he's their soulmate. As if that's start and end of loving someone. If being soulmates was so important and magical, then why did they take so long to realize that Tim was their's? Why didn't the magic of soulmates make them want and love him as much as he had wanted and loved them?
"I have no plans to waste my time with people who hate me, who don't respect me, who don't believe in me or my skills. Goodbye Dick," he says with finality, and ends the call before Dick can say anything else.
Tim breaths a sigh of relief and slumps against the wall. He can go back there and try to make things work. And it might be possible now that they have time for him and might actually want to try.
But —
Tim looks back into the room he stepped out of. Cassie is glaring at having been woken up, but Bart is thankfully still snoring away. Conner simply pats the empty space between them.
The sight of them fills something up in Tim and sews it shut.
And he doesn't need fleeting dreams, not when Conner's hugs are so much more real and warm. He doesn't need dreams to know that Bart will always be there for him whenever he needs it, a spot of sunshine on cloudy days. And he certainly doesn't need dreams to know that Cassie will never betray him, when she's never done so before.
And they love him, with his stupid decisions and bad habits and secret keeping. And they've chosen him and never hesitate to say so and hold him in their arms. Soulmates, fate, dreams, can all just screw themselves. Nothing needed to bound Tim to someone but actual love.
Actually, he hasn't had a prophetic dream in a while. But frankly speaking, he doesn't need to — when reality is better than dreams.
Tim shuts off his phone and crawls back into bed, fitting tightly into the space for the four of them.