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The evening host smiled at the audience.
“Welcome back to the show! As you all know, this is the game show where we see just how well soulmates know each other. Today, we’re joined by Gotham's royal couple themselves, Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne!”
Bruce and Selina waved as the spotlights shined on them. She laced her fingers with his, gazing into his baby blue eyes with a smile, which he returned.
“Here’s how this will work,” the man said. “You guys are gonna stand on opposite sides of this divider and answer a series of questions about each other to see if you’re truly the perfect fit.”
A crew member led them to two podiums with cameras pointing down from overhead. Selina glanced at Bruce one more time before standing on the red X and uncapping her dry-erase marker.
“Round One is easy—the color round. Are you ready?”
“Since before you were born,” Selina joked while Bruce gave the host a thumbs up.
A dark blue curtain fell between them. As expected, the colors faded incrementally each time she blinked. A minute later, the world was back to the monochromatic grays that it was before she met him.
The host cleared his throat. “First question: what colors are your soulmate wearing?”
Pfft, this was easy. Before they left, Alfred spent twenty minutes digging for a burgundy tie so Bruce could match her dress.
“Answers in three… two…”
They flipped the boards toward the cameras. Selina’s, predictably, said burgundy. Bruce, on the other hand, wrote purple with a few question marks. She glanced at her dress. Not that she could discern the color right now, but it was something between scarlet and purple. And considering Bruce didn’t pick his own clothes half the time, it wasn’t a stretch to say he didn’t refer to them by obscure shades.
“I’ll give it to you,” the host said. “It’s one of those in-between colors.”
Bruce laughed. “Just because I see colors doesn’t mean I have to learn them all, does it?”
The host replied, “Tell that to my husband. He collects paint swatches for fun.”
Selina said, “Bruce, you guys should meet up since you can’t decide how to paint the bathroom.”
“Just do some of everything, it’s easier that way.”
The host laughed and flipped to the next question card. “Second question, and this is for Selina. Earlier backstage, you gave him part of your donut. What color was the frosting?”
“Easy,” she said, not even bothering to write it down. “Brown with pink sprinkles.”
“That is correct!” he turned to Bruce. “Before the show, you also brought her roses. What color were they?”
“Um…” Bruce drummed his fingers on the podium. “The color… rose?”
The audience members whispered. Selina furrowed her eyebrows. They were just red roses. Even if he forgot—which he wouldn’t because he was the World’s Greatest Detective—anyone could guess.
“Always the jokester,” the host said. “But sadly, I can’t give you that point.”
“Aw, darn.”
The host flipped his card. “This one’s simple: what is your soulmate’s eye color?”
Blue. Selina wrote it down and showed the camera.
She peeked around the curtain at Bruce. His green marker hovered over a clean board. He looked like he was entering a fresh crime scene—turning over every possibility until he could make a calculated guess. She stepped away and let the curtain fall back.
The ride back was so tense that Alfred closed the sliding screen, leaving her and Bruce sitting on opposite sides of the limo in silence. She ignored his pleading attempts in favor of staring at the passing street signs. They were supposed to have dinner after their TV appearance, but she requested to go straight home instead.
“Selina, talk to me.” Bruce reached over and put his hand on her knee.
She brushed it away and pulled a yellow credit card out of her clutch. “What color is this?”
Bruce tugged his collar. “Um… blue?”
“Are you colorblind? Hey, Alfred, is he colorblind?”
Alfred slid the screen open and said, “He is not” before closing it again.
“What’s going on?” Bruce asked. “Did I do something?”
“Did you do—” Tears sprang in her eyes. “You don’t even know my eye color.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
The car stopped. Selina got out and slammed the door behind her. She sprinted for the elevator before he could run after her. As soon as she reached her apartment, she threw her bag aside and hit 1 on her speed dial.
“Harley, Ivy, I have a major problem.”
“—And then he just said oh. Like it’s no big deal that I’m not his soulmate.” Selina blew her nose.
When she called her friends over, she expected to shout and rant about all the ways Bruce screwed up tonight. Instead, she was on the couch in her pajamas surrounded by crumpled Kleenexes as Harley fed her sugar cookies. An Alicia Keys album and the movie My Girl both played in the background.
“What have I been doing?” Selina asked. “If he doesn’t feel the same way then there’s only one way this could end.”
Ivy sighed. “Sometimes it’s just not meant to last.”
“But I don’t want it to end,” she said.
She reached for the wineglass. Ivy took it.
“Here’s what you do,” Ivy said. “Tape his picture to a punching bag.”
“Red!” Harley exclaimed.
“What? Men suck.” She drained the glass.
Selina grabbed another tissue. “Look at me, crying over him like I’m in some high school flick.”
“Better to let it out than pretend it’s stupid to do so.” Harley bit into a cookie. “Do you want advice or do you need to vent some more?”
Selina sniffled. “I think I’m ready for the advice.”
Harley paused the movie. Ivy stopped the music.
“Find out if there’s someone else,” Ivy suggested.
“No, don’t.” Harley handed her the cookie plate. “Why don’t you take the rest outta the oven?” That was, of course, Harley-speak for “take a lap.”
She took Selina’s hands.
“Woah, how are your hands this soft?”
“I use paw moisturizer,” Selina admitted.
“I need to get me some.” Harley marveled. “Anyway—seriously, Ivy, get over here and feel this.”
Ivy put the cookies on the coffee table and Harley gave her one of Selina’s hands.
“That is freaky,” she said. “It’s like a newborn baby.”
“I’ve tried gloves and lotion but I still get mallet calluses. Maybe this is my answer.”
Selina said, “Guys, can we focus?”
“Right, yeah.” Harley let go, only to grab it again a second later. “So soft. Anyway, back to Brucie: I’ve known him forever and he’s not the type to run off on ya. Back in med school, we were at a party and this girl sat down real close to him and said she was thirsty. So you know what he did? He got her a bottle of water before telling her all about how desert people drink from cactuses—”
“Cacti,” Ivy corrected.
“—And when she held his hand, he told her he dissected a corpse that morning. And he was single.”
Selina snorted. “That sounds like him. But that still doesn’t explain what happened.”
“In my professional opinion, there’s almost always another reason if you do a little digging,” Harley said. “Try to think back. Has he ever mentioned colors or the like before?”
Selina thought for a moment. “One time we were securing a crime scene and he showed Robin how he wanted the orange cones set up. And he specifically said orange .”
“So he has colors,” Ivy said. “Is there a chance he randomly passed his soulmate one day and never saw them again? I’ve heard stories. They’re sad all around.”
Harley said, “Try to look a little closer. And talk to him. Just ‘cause you’re dating a bat don’t mean you gotta act like one.”
“Thanks,” Selina said, smiling. “You know, sometimes being with him is like—”
Ivy groaned. “This conversation is failing the Bechdel Test.”
Selina emerged from the Batcave showers in time to catch someone stomping up the stairs and Bruce rubbing his temple.
“You should wrap up,” she said. “It’s late.”
He grunted.
“What’s up, Bat?”
“It’s Damian. He’s never come home this late and he won’t tell me where he was. Anyway, I’m almost done. Can you hand me the green folder?”
She bit back her comment as she grabbed it for him.
“He likes to run off on his own a lot, doesn’t he?” she asked.
Bruce leaned back in his chair. “Yes, and I’ve taken every measure to make sure he can do it safely, but it’s still not enough for him. He wants to do all the things his siblings and I do but the world’s so big and he’s still so little.”
She nodded. “Holly was like that sometimes. You can explain it as many times as you want, but sometimes they have to learn it themselves.”
Bruce chuckled darkly. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
She put an arm around him. “Go talk to him. I can finish up here. This is the Black Mask case, right?”
“I’m actually putting it on hold until Batwoman gets back with intel,” he said. He got up, stretched, and pressed a quick kiss to her lips (it tasted like donuts). “You can file it away for now.”
“Even the green one?”
“Yes, please.” He handed her the brown file before heading upstairs.
Tim sprang off the platform, did a double flip, and landed behind the training dummy.
“That’s better,” Selina said. “Way better than me, actually. It took me a lot longer to get used to heeled gymnastics. When were you assigned the case?”
“Steph and Cass got assigned it in December but they handed it off to me and Jason. Dick wanted to tag along too and we figured we could use an extra hand,” Tim said, taking off the orange stilettos. “We’ve been working on an undercover sting.”
“Impressive,” she said. “My one piece of feedback is when you springboard off of something, you’re still putting too much weight on the back of your feet. Obviously, in heels, that opens you up to more problems. You gotta be cat-like.”
He laughed. “Of course you’d say that.”
“Watch me.”
She slipped on the heels of her costume and aligned herself with the three-foot-tall platform. With a running start, she leaped on.
“Now that I have the right amount of speed, it’s easier to go airborne,” she explained.
At the edge, she concentrated her weight on the balls of her feet and launched herself into a clean arc over the dummy.
Four people clapped behind her—Tim, Dick, Jason, and Bruce. She smiled and took a bow.
Jason raised his hand. “Does it also work with chunky shoes? I’m basically wearing bricks with my disguise.”
She replied, “With that, you want to distribute your weight more evenly or you’ll roll your ankle. Don’t make my mistake—I already took one for the team.”
“Ouch.”
While Selina wrote up an overdue patrol report, Bruce helped the boys put together their disguises. Every so often, he would stop to laugh at Dick’s jokes or reprimand Jason about the inordinate amount of bullets sewn into his jacket. At one point, he and Tim dove into a rabbit hole of which Clash album was the most underrated.
“I don’t know if I should stick to orange or switch over to the red dress,” said Tim.
Jason responded, “I already called dibs on red. Back off.”
Dick nodded. “Gotta respect the law of dibs.”
“Dang it.” Tim pouted.
“Don’t sweat it,” Bruce said. “Orange suits you better, anyway.”
Selina took out a notepad and a bunch of markers.
As soon as the kids left, she approached Bruce. “Honey, can do you me a favor?”
“Sure,” he said, folding a sky-blue wool jacket.
She showed him a line of seven dots in random order. “Tell me what colors you see.”
He pointed to the second, third, and sixth ones. “Orange, red, blue.”
“And the others?”
He hesitated and pointed to the green one. “Pink?”
She pointed to the jacket. “And that?”
“Blue,” he said easily. “What’s this about?”
“Harley’s helping some college kids with a psych project.”
“No, she’s not,” Bruce said. “Seriously, what is this about?”
Selina crossed her arms, looking away. The Bat must have rubbed off on her. She had the words, but they stuck to the bottom of her tongue like the black licorice taffy she pretended to like because it was his favorite.
Finally, she asked, “Am I your soulmate?”
“Why are you asking?” Bruce chuckled nervously. “That’s like asking if Alfred passed second grade.”
“Yes or no: am I your soulmate?”
He went quiet.
That was all she needed to hear.
They still had dinner reservations. The restaurant was so high-end that they had to book their slot last summer—not even Bruce’s money could get them to the top of the waiting list. Alfred had picked her up and now she was waiting in the living room while Bruce put the finishing touches on his suit.
Bruce’s newest kid—Duke, if she recalled correctly—came in with a board game and some notebooks under his arm. He waved awkwardly.
“Hey, sorry, just gonna set up here.”
“Oh, no problem.” She scooted aside so he could access the coffee table. “Whatcha got there?”
“My friends and I are running a homebrew campaign.”
“A what?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “It’s a roleplay, basically. We made up a world and original characters instead of using a preset. Basically, our mission is to free a town ruled by an Angel of Death, but since I’m the Game Master, I added some sidequests. We’re doing one of them tonight.”
“Now I’m intrigued,” she said. “I love a good side story.”
Duke perked up. “Alright, so the sidequest is basically—”
Bruce jogged down the stairs. “I’m done! Sorry to keep you waiting.” He gave her a quick kiss before turning to Duke. He gestured to the colorful figurines on the board. “Neat setup.”
“Thanks, I made them myself.”
“Impressive. I think this yellow guy might be my favorite.” He held a yellow one to the light.
“That’s mine,” Duke said. “He’s a fighter class who wound up with a semi-enchanted sword he can’t get rid of.”
“Semi-enchanted. Love that.” Bruce chuckled, setting it down. “You fine on dinner?”
“Yeah, we’re ordering pizza.”
“Don’t get a stomachache like last time.” He patted Duke’s back before offering Selina his arm. “Shall we?”
She leaned into him and took in the scent of his cologne, but her mind couldn’t get off that figurine.
“I still can’t wrap my head around the dot thing,” said Ivy. “You’re telling us he didn’t know most of them, even though he identified green prior and yellow later on.”
“Okay, that means he’s for sure not with anyone else,” Harley said, “otherwise he’d see ‘em all like you.”
“And Alfred says he’s not colorblind. I double-checked his records just to be sure.” Selina stirred the tapioca pearls in her tea.
“Then I’m out of ideas,” Ivy said.
They were walking around the mall because Harley wanted to check out the spring sales. Selina’s hands had gone numb from the cold since she was holding Harley’s drink alongside her own. It was still better than lugging around all the bags like Ivy, though—she looked like it was Black Friday.
Harley’s eyes lit up. She raced to a display window, where a mannequin sported a skirt with a zipper down the side. Selina and Ivy caught up as she reached around to feel the material.
“I need this.” She flagged down an employee. “‘Scuse me, you got this in black?”
The girl scanned the barcode. “We do, it’s in the back. I can get it for you. What size?”
“Is this a small-medium-large place or do ya want a number?”
“The first one.”
“Sweet. Medium, please.”
While the employee did that, Selina pulled a garish leaf-patterned Hawaiian shirt off a rack, snickering. “Hey, Ives, you haven’t gotten anything yet. What about this?”
Harley burst out laughing. Ivy was less than pleased.
They split off to browse the store.
As Selina thumbed through some leggings, she overheard someone exclaim, “I wasn’t slacking off!”
She craned her neck to see the employee holding Harley’s skirt while an older woman berated her.
“Then why were you in the back room when there’s a line at the register?” the manager demanded.
“I was getting something.”
“Don’t give me that.”
Selina went up to them. “Oh, perfect, you found it.”
The girl handed her the skirt.
Selina thanked her before turning to her boss. “She was helping my friend. We really appreciate it.”
The boss muttered something and walked away.
Selina asked the girl, “Are you alright?”
The girl nodded.
“Good.” She smiled. “By the way, I saw next door’s hiring.”
They’ve gone to the mall’s Chinese restaurant every time, and today was no exception. It was Harley’s world; Selina and Ivy were just living in it.
As Harley chowed her mein, Ivy commented, “You know, I’m pretty sure fortune cookies were invented in Texas or something.”
“That tracks,” Selina said, breaking one. “Does anyone actually like them? They don’t really taste .”
“Hey,” Harley said, “free cookies are free cookies.”
The fortune read, “You will face a difficult realization. Lucky numbers: 42, 12, 18, 23, 27, 16, 19, 24.”
Harley peered over her shoulder. “Funny, if we were in a movie this would be some pretty blatant foreshadowing.”
Ivy flipped it over. “Huh. That’s how you say beef in Chinese.”
“Technically, that’s the word for steak,” Selina said.
The next table over, the waiter was apologizing for a kitchen mistake. Thankfully, the customers were nice and assured him it wasn’t his fault.
“Guys,” she said. “What if it’s not him?”
Harley glanced at the waiter. “Him?”
“No, Bruce.”
“I was gonna say, what did Wang ever do?”
“I mean, what if something’s making him see differently? Is that possible?”
“There’s the Fundamental Attribution Error,” Harley said. “It’s a Psych 101 thing. Often, we’re quick to blame people’s personalities instead of considering how circumstances might lead to certain behavior. Of course, it’s almost never black-and-white—we put ourselves in situations and those situations make us react, so it’s more like a cycle. But I don’t know how that would work with color vision ‘cause that’s a whole ‘nother neuroscientific zip code.”
“Our environments influence more than we think,” Ivy added. “Like if you measure the lead levels around this city, it actually explains a lot. Maybe instead of Bruce, look at the situations around him. Find the common denominator.”
“Interesting…” Selina hummed.
Find the common denominator.
Selina’s comms came to life.
“This is Spoiler. Meet in ten.”
“Copy that,” she replied.
“Also, do you still keep snacks in your belt?” asked Cass. “I’m starving.”
“Affirmative,” Bruce grunted before muting his mic and turning to Selina. “Something’s wrong.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Spoiler and Orphan don’t sound like they usually do.” He shot his grappling gun and swung off.
“That’s not indicative of anything.” Her whip cracked as she leaped across the buildings.
“Maybe not to you.”
She scoffed. What was that supposed to mean?
The girls were waiting in a backstreet by a warehouse near the fishing district. Before he even touched the ground, Bruce said, “Status report.”
“We handed our Iceberg Lounge case to Nightwing, Red Hood, and Red Robin,” said Cass.
“Without my authorization.” He crossed his arms.
“We were in a pinch,” she said. “Besides, Red Robin seemed really excited.”
“Spoiler?” he asked.
She just nodded.
“We’ll talk about this at home and get you reassigned.”
Steph nodded again. “Understood.”
Cass whistled. “So… did you bring anything to eat?”
He tossed them two packs of fruit snacks from his belt and sent them along.
“Got any more of those?” Selina joked.
He chuckled and handed her a pack of Wayne-certified Batfamily fruit snacks molded into various vigilante logos. Though, as with any gummy, the shapes didn’t turn out quite like the package. Bruce also took one out for himself and they found a decent window ledge to sit on, just a couple of stories above the pothole-ridden ground.
He offered her a few purple ones. “I’ll trade you my grapes for your blueberries.”
“Blueberry?”
“The indigo ones.”
She had enough.
“What gives?” she asked.
“If you don’t want to trade that’s fine,” he said.
“Not that. This.” She gestured around. “Why do you sometimes get colors right and other times act completely oblivious? Tell me, do you really see colors?”
“Yes.”
She blinked. “So you’ve met your soulmate already and it isn’t me.”
Bruce put his snack down. “Are you jealous?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she drawled. “You light up my world, I don’t do the same for you.”
“You’re jealous,” he repeated, “of my kids.”
She blinked, taken aback. Of course, it all made sense now.
“Bruce—”
“No real names on the field.” He shot his grapple. “I have other business to take care of. Don’t wait up.”
He disappeared before she could find the right words.
Guilt churned in her stomach like sour milk.
“I messed up.”
“Yeah, you did,” Ivy replied, trimming the forest in the kitchen.
“I have to apologize.”
“Yeah, ya do,” Harley said, filling the hyena bowls.
“But what’s just as important,” Ivy continued, “is to ask yourself if you can accept you’ll always be his second priority.”
Selina paused. “What?”
Harley put the food bag away and sat down on the couch. She took Selina’s hands. “So soft.”
“Harls.”
“Right, sorry.”
“What do you mean by second priority?” Selina asked.
“His kids will always come first,” Ivy answered.
“Always?”
Harley squeezed her hands. “It’s part of being a parent. I sent Lucy to live with my sister because she deserved better than what I could give her, but that doesn’t mean I won’t come running when she calls. And if I ever have to pick between her and Ivy, I’d choose my daughter every time, no question about it.”
“I knew this going in,” Ivy said. “But it doesn’t make me doubt her feelings for me. Love isn’t something you need to ration.”
Selina nodded and let them back to their chores, a million factors running through her mind, all of them leading back to him.
She rang the doorbell. The door opened almost immediately.
“Selina.”
Bruce was still in his bathrobe, coffee mug in hand and face not yet shaven. He had a fresh layer to the dark circles around his eyes as if he reapplied makeup.
“Hey.” She wrung her hands nervously. “Can we talk?”
“Sure, one second.” He shouted over his shoulder, “Dick, wake Tim up. He’s going to be late for work.”
He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. Selina gestured to the porch swing and they sat down.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have let the color thing get to my head and I definitely shouldn’t have been jealous of your kids. I know your family will always come first and I can accept that.”
He smiled. “Apology accepted. Thank you.”
She squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. And of course, the thing to complete the moment was Damian opening the window to stick his head out and say, “Father, Titus pooped on the floor.”
“You know what to do.” Bruce ruffled the kid’s hair and sent him back in.
She tilted her head. “What’s it like?”
“It came in pieces.”
He sat back, smiling reminiscently.
“Dick was the first. For the longest time, it was just the two of us and everything was gray except for a few small patches. I was a little confused in the beginning. I read that blue was supposed to be a sad color, but how could it be when it was his?”
Selina scooted closer. “What about the others?”
“Jason threw me in for a loop. Growing up, I thought red was supposed to be elegant because Mom wore it all the time. But Jason was loud and messy from the moment he tried to nick my tires. When he came back, I knew right away from the color of his suit.”
He took a long sip of his coffee.
“Tim scared me. When I saw his orange bracelet, I panicked. I was terrified of repeating the same mistakes that I shut him out, but the kid had the audacity to keep at it until I couldn’t help but love him.”
“So he blackmailed his way into your heart,” she said.
“That’s Tim for you.”
He chuckled fondly.
“Steph takes little bits of everyone else and stitches it into something uniquely hers. That’s why she’s purple. It’s so bold and distinct that I forget it’s a blend of other colors.”
“I’ve noticed that about her too,” Selina said.
“She especially balances Cass out,” Bruce said. “Cass’s presence is more subtle, but something always feels off when she’s not around. She’s kind of like the shadow giving everything dimension. I guess that’s why she’s indigo.”
Selina was about to ask about Damian when the window opened again. Damian handed Bruce a small plastic baggie and said, “Here is Titus’s floor poop.”
“Thanks, son.” Bruce took it with two fingers and set it on the ground. “Did you eat anything?”
“I finished Richard’s cereal and Timothy’s coffee,” he said. “I shall resume with Stephanie’s waffles.”
The window closed. Bruce and Selina laughed.
“Honestly, I’m glad to see him like that,” Bruce said. “Damian spent so long trying to shape up to an image, so it’s nice when he loosens up. Green is a resilient color when you recall all the places life can survive, but it’s also flexible and fun. I think it’s pretty neat I get to witness him grow into it.”
“And yellow?” she asked.
“That’s Duke. I think it’s a color a lot of people underestimate. People take yellow to be bright and happy, but it also holds potential for more and can deal damage like no one's business, kind of as if you stare at the sun,” he said.
There he was again, the man she always knew she could settle into, like returning to her own bed after being away from home. The doubts seemed so silly in the rearview as she looped her arm through his and breathed in the morning air.
“Miss Kyle, how does it feel to know you’re not Bruce Wayne’s soulmate?”
Selina smiled at the reporter. “I don’t mind. His priorities are in the right place. That’s all I ever ask.”