Chapter Text
Marco hated marigolds, spider lilies, and Gotham herself—in that particular order.
It was unusually quiet in Gotham; the weather had been doing them no favors, with dark storm clouds gathering overhead with the promise of wet misery, discouraging most from leaving their homes.
Marco, Rosita, and Anna were clear exemptions to this rule.
The trio hiked up the cobbled path of Gotham General Cemetery, carrying flowers, letters, and heavy hearts. Rosita reached out to jiggle the stiff gates of the area until the left gate slid open with a creak. The pigeons who were perched on the door flew overhead as soon as they felt the shift in movement.
It was a family tradition by now, solidified every year for the past five, to come here after she had died during one of the Joker’s gas attacks. Rosita, his mother, always claimed that a soul like Angela’s was never patient and would eagerly anticipate their visit every year. Her soul would receive peace from the paltry offerings they left her.
Marco tuned that statement out along with her other ramblings about the afterlife and finding something beyond. Hell, the only reason he agreed to come was for Anna, and she didn’t need to be affected by how he felt personally about his matters.
Anna was only a year old when her mother died, and two when her father took sleeping pills as a way out. Her guardianship had then fallen onto the two, still grieving and struggling to survive in Crime Alley.
Marco cursed Gotham, the shitty city didn’t deserve anything from him. Crime Alley didn’t deserve his family. The costumed lunatics–Batman, Riddler, Joker, Poison Ivy–were wrapped up in their dick-measuring contests and used the city as their playing field. The casualties were negligible to them.
Marco vowed to get himself, his mother, and his niece out of here. He was 17 now, and after his college acceptance letters came, they would be gone. Wherever his future led him, it would certainly be out of Gotham and someplace with more stability.
His mother thought that he hadn’t sent out his applications outside of New Jersey.
Wrong. He targeted any school that gave him fee waivers and guaranteed financial aid. The only way left to go was out, after all.
When he was younger, he could recall a time when he couldn’t imagine leaving the city. The familiar places, scents, people, and environment drew him in, but when his people were out of the equation, there was no use to engage with the parasite of a city. He could only cut his losses and leave.
He sighed and laid down the bouquet of marigolds and spider lilies, Angela’s favorite flowers. Anna reached down to put the single rose she had selected from the flower shop. Then, she squatted down near the edge of the grave and began to talk.
“Hello, mama. We brought you your favorite flowers today! I also got my favorite flower so you can know it too! Today at school I learned adding and subtraction and …”
The two adults stepped away to let the girl catch up with her mother. Rosita whispered her prayers softly as Anna recounted her past year to her mother. The younger girl never asked many questions about her mother, after learning that those inquiries resulted in grimaces and tight lips. She was a smart girl, preferring to make up her own fantastical stories and what-ifs about Angela.
Rosita and Marco were surprised by how well she took in information about her mother’s death. At school on Mother’s Day, her cards would be to Rose. On Father’s Day, she’d give them to Marco. Their family dynamic was non-traditional, but it didn’t matter in the long run. They made do and moved on.
Marco glanced down at his watch out of habit, watching the seconds slide into minutes. He caught something sparkle in the corner of his eyes. He looked down at his hands again to see his soulmark shimmer brighter than it ever did.
His soulmark was a robin, traced out by thin black lines. The lines would shift to silver whenever his soulmate was near. When he would finally meet his soulmate, the mark would go through a final transformation and be filled in with color. In the past, his mark had only shifted to silver for a few moments before petering out. Nothing to get excited over really, until now.
His heart began to race with tension as the realization settled in. He couldn’t believe his luck. Soulmates only appeared after the age of thirteen. Statistically, only 7% of people were able to meet their soulmates before they turned 20. He never dared to hope that he would be able to meet his soulmate until after that age.
Marco slipped away from the two and began to circle the cemetery, using his hand as a funky soulmate GPS. His soulmate was probably here to visit the grave of their own loved one. He could feel his excitement grow as his mark grew brighter with every step he took. He began to run towards the south wing of the cemetery, the possibility of meeting his soulmate only minutes away.
He stopped dead in the middle of his sprint as his mark pulsed brightly, and then the little robin was filled in bright blue.
Marco turned both ways to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone standing nearby. He desperately tried to wave his hand back and forth toward anywhere away from the grave he stopped in front of, praying for another reaction, or burst of light from the mark. The fucking blue robin on his hand didn’t budge. It was taunting him, bright feathers spread out as if it was in mid-flight.
If there was no one alive around…
No no no no
He became lightheaded, knees buckling. As he looked up, his eyes met a tombstone.
It was a fresh grave, by the looks of it, lacking the weathering of the elements older tombstones had. Blunt words were carved into the stone, marking the owner to have died on April 27, only a few days beforehand.
Jason Todd-Wayne
Beloved Son and Brother
August 16th, 20XX - April 27th, 20XX
Jason Todd-Wayne.
Todd-Wayne?
Oh, that Wayne.
The Waynes were frequently featured in the society papers. Angela loved reading Gotham society papers and made it a habit to share everything she read. Even after she passed, Marco kept up with the same papers she read.
Brucie Wayne’s playboy antics and his soft spot for black-haired-and-blue-eyed orphans generated enough gossip-worthy material for the rest of Gotham to obsess over. Not to mention the whole city would fall apart without the billionaire funding all of the public facilities for healthcare and education. There were no Waynes without Gotham and no Gotham without the Waynes.
Jason had been adopted by Bruce Wayne a few years ago, devolving into a huge media scandal. The press raved over the lucky boy from Crime Alley who rose to high society in a matter of days. Just like Richard Grayson, the circus boy that Bruce Wayne took in after the tragic death of his parents mid-performance.
Marco could recall the boy when he was living in Crime Alley. He thought of black hair that shone red in the sunlight and baby blue eyes that sparkled with mischief. The boy—no— Jason was a year older than him, but he could vividly recall his crush on him. Rosita teased him for having a “boyfriend,” a claim he’d fiercely deny while his face turned bright red. She and Angela would further press him for details about him and his “sparkling eyes and auburn hair.”
It was pure coincidence that Marco knew him before their soulmarks appeared, but his death was just cruel . The Joker kidnapped the boy and held him for ransom in Ethiopia, but when his bribe wasn’t delivered on time he did the job and bombed the warehouse.
There weren’t any more details available about the murder, as Wayne Industries shut down any attempts from the public to learn more about Jason’s death. In Bruce Wayne’s public statement for Jason’s funeral, he appeared sunken and worn down, refusing to answer any questions from the press beyond the scope of the initial statements released.
Marco had eventually lost interest in the case, what was the death of a rich man’s son compared to his dead sister? He had more things to worry about in his own home.
He felt sick to his stomach, thinking back to his opinions from only a few days ago.
If only he had talked to the boy earlier. A friendly wave or greeting would have done it. It didn’t take much to fulfill a soulmate bond—the only universal requirement was genuine mutual interaction.
Pining didn't fall into that category.
Marco’s shoulders shook as he tried to suppress the sounds building up in his throat. It wasn’t enough for Gotham to wreck his family. The black hellhole of a city absorbed any of the happiness its residents would ever have the chance to have.
He was so naive, to think that he could ever get what he wanted, even when the universe had entitled him to believe so.
His chest hurt. He touched his face and realized it was wet with tears.
When he came back into his senses, he had curled into himself on the wet grass, sobbing. Even the tears he had shed for his sister’s murder couldn’t compare to the outpour of emotions he felt. Every breath was wrenched out as a near-silent sob.
His soulmate was dead.
The next few minutes were a blur. He felt someone grab him by the shoulders and speak. He couldn’t hear them, too busy digging his nails into his mark.
“ Marco ?”
Bright little Anna’s voice broke his trance. He looked up to see her face, eyes wide open and eyebrows pinched with worry.
He slowly turned to his side and saw his mother, rubbing his back.
She met his eyes and all he could see in them was pity. Pity, pity, and more pity. She cupped his face and pressed a kiss gently to his forehead. Anna hugged him, squeezing her hands around his waist as tightly as she could.
He, in other circumstances, would have felt suffocated under all of this physical contact, but all he wanted was comfort from his family. His hands ached from being scratched raw in his panic.
Marco’s knees still felt weak as he stood up, even with his mother supporting him by his arms. He looked at her watery eyes and felt his guilt begin to gnaw at him. He should have been able to do something, anything to prevent this from happening.
Rosita wiped her tears away with the edge of her sleeve. She took a deep breath and led the three of them away from the grave and past the iron-wrought gates of Gotham General Cemetery.
Had they stayed behind, they would have heard wood chipping away, and the faint sounds of digging. By the time Jason had emerged from his grave, wild, disoriented, and damaged from the abyss, there was little for Marco to have loved, either way.
Resurrection wasn’t kind to the soul. Neither was Jason.
And what was the use of a dead soulmate, anyway?