ONLY SEVENTEEN / 𝐝𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞

CHAPTER 1

𝐈𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐀 𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐅𝐔𝐋 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 in the grand Wayne Manor.

"UNHAND ME, YOU CRETINS!"

"Are you sure this is the only way we can see his number?"

"I'm gonna make you all suffer until you beg for sweat sweet death."

"Yeah, well we're not the one who's tied up to a chair right now, so who's winning here?"

Scratch that, it was relatively peaceful. The most peace one could expect, that is, from the illustrious Wayne family, who also so happen to be the number one crime-fighting family in Gotham. Even then, no one could have stopped the absolute havoc to be wrecked on the eve of the youngest Wayne's seventeenth birthday.

Every person in the universe received a number on their seventeenth birthday beneath their jawline, under the area where their pulse could be felt. The number told everyone how dangerous their soulmate was, almost like a mark of protection. It was inevitable that Damian would get his one that night, and there were lots of bets going around on how dangerous his soulmate was going to be.

"So, we all agree that whoever this person is going to be, the pair would probably destroy the world together?"

"What? No! Damian's soulmate is going to be a sweetheart."

"Nah, the hellspawn's totally gonna have another demon brat as his soulmate. I really don't envy the looks they'll be getting when they see a fucking seventy or something on their neck." Jason snickered, watching Damian struggle in his knots and ties. "Fifty's looking like a good, tough number to me."

"I'm sure Damian's going to have a nice soulmate, the number's going to be a ten, and that's already factoring the extra numbers they'll get from just being soulmates with Damian." Dick gave him an admonishing gaze. Jason shrugged at him, leaning back into his chair and using a Batarang (probably stolen from Bruce) to clean the gunk off the underside of his combat boots.

Tim glanced over to his watch, checking the time. "Considering the average number given from being soulmates with a dangerous person doesn't ever forty, I'm putting my bet on thirty-five."

Dick pouted. "They're not going to be dangerous, Damian's a good kid. They're going to be a super nice person who would help an old man cross the street."

"You would too, and I don't see Kori's number going any lower." Jason snorted. "I'm telling you, it has to be another assassin baby. Soulmates are supposed to complement each other. Absolute angels will never go a foot near the demon brat."

"But that's why they would be perfect for him! Complete opposites to balance each other out!"

"Actually, there are more instances where mildly dangerous people in the thirties range are paired with dangerous people like Damian, who is probably in the seventies range. There's generally a large gap between the two, although not astronomically." Tim piped up from his position near the computer. "We're a minute out until the results are out."

Damian growled, but he stopped struggling. He knew he wouldn't be able to make it ten steps away from his position before either of his brothers saw his mark, not even if he somehow managed to get the knots untied in a split-second. He just wanted to get it over with at that point. The seconds ticked by, a quiet hush descending the cave. His mouth was a desert, and he darted his tongue out to quench his lips. He was Damian Al-Ghul Wayne, Robin, Heir to the Demon. He did not get nervous.

Midnight struck.

A blinding light shot down from below his line of sight, causing black spots to fill his vision. His neck burned almost as badly as a laser, etching its delicate lines over his throat. Pure agony bubbled up in his lungs. He wanted to clutch the searing wound, but his hands were bound against his side, rendering him helpless to the excruciating pain.

And then, the pain was gone. A phantom, a nightmare. Thank god, it was over. His vision was still spotty at best, though.

"Dami, are you alrig– Holy cow." Trust Grayson to not express his surprise in vulgar language and instead opt for ridiculous euphemisms.

"Oh fuck–" Drake was usually the calm one when expressing surprise. The only times he exclaimed like that was when he got something wrong in a hunch, but the results of those varied from bad and good, so the current Robin took it with a grain of salt.

"What did I tell you, fuckers? Pray for mercy. It's the goddamn armageddon." And you could trust Todd to be as indelicate with his words as usual.

"What happened? What's the number?" He croaked out, his throat still dry from keeping in his screams. Blinking rapidly, his vision cleared up, and he stared at the gawking figures of his adopted brothers. Tim, Dick, and Jason were all pale-faced, the blood from their cheeks almost non-existent, eyes glued on the number on his neck — which he still couldn't see because they didn't have a goddamn mirror in the cave — like they had seen a ghost, unintelligible noises squawking and sputtering from their mouths.

Damian snapped at them before he could start squirming in his seat.

"Well?" Dick and Tim looked at each other in silence, while Jason reached over to start untying him from his binds. He gave a short nod at Jason as the last ropes fell away. "Are you going to tell me, or am I going to go back upstairs to find a mirror?"

"How the hell did you get an eighty-seven on your neck?" Drake blurted out, no filter as always.

Damian blinked. "Excuse me?"

Dick brought out his phone, turning on selfie mode and thrusting it into his hands. He angled it at the newly-branded flesh, tracing the soft etchings of scarlet burning bright against his bronze skin. Sure enough, a bold '87' was emblazed on his neck. He wracked his brain. Who in the world could he have been paired with for them to have such a high number? His father barely reached eighty himself, and Wonder Woman, who was a demigod and Princess of the Amazons, was apparently an eighty-three, from what she had mentioned before. Hell, Alfred once said his fated one all those years ago who died in the war sported a silver eighty-five in his delicate proper calligraphy. If this person was stronger than them, who were they, and how did they manage to live under the Justice League's radar for so long?

Jason barked out a laugh. "Damn, Demon Spawn is fucked. Let's hope they rip each other's throats out instead. That, or world domination."

𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐉𝐀𝐏𝐀𝐍, a lithe, ebony-haired woman tripped over thin air and nearly face-planted onto the glass display case in the museum. A blonde male grinned at her as he held the baton to his side, ignoring her half-hearted hisses at him. She snatched the leather necklace with the jade comma-shaped pendant from its perch on the pedestal, a replica replacing it like a ripple, almost as if she had merely swiped through the jewelry in the first place. She grabbed onto the blond boy as his baton extended them through the small skylight they had come through at the beginning.

"You alright there, Bugaboo?" He smirked, a teasing edge framing the boisterous French, striking out against the calm Japanese wind.

"Oh, shut up." She snarked back in the same language. "Not as if you didn't trigger the alarm last time, Chaton."

"That was one time!"

"Still happened." The woman brushed back her growing-out bangs to slip the necklace over her neck, the moonlight catching onto the faint '68' in confident jade green, much more muted than the almost pulsing green of the pendant, yet more striking. "Come on, the sooner we get back to base, the better."