Chapter Text
The firmament is far too vast to believe that a phenomenon is meant to occur in just one galaxy, to a single planetary system. There are forces that transcend the architecture of the known universe, forces that reach beyond the edges of time itself. The delicate weave of space-time does not bend to mere human guesses or foolish assumptions: it answers to ancient, unfathomable, and inexorable laws.
And so, fate, utterly inevitable, becomes an absolute constant. Every minor variation, every barely perceptible shift, opens a parallel line of a reality slightly askew. Time can fold, overlap, and converge in extraordinary ways, and still there exists no plane, no sky, no dimension where the World’s Finest do not belong.
There is no universe where they do not find each other...
No world where their souls are not bound, sealed, and protected in the touch of their intertwined hands.
Because Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are two halves of the same truth, a bond the multiverse cannot sever. And no matter the name of the sky they walk beneath, they will always, inevitably, find their way back to one another.
The first meeting may change its form, but never its essence.
There will always be a pull, a ghostly nudge, a haunting thought, a looming threat, a destructive force, a warning, a genuine curiosity, a headline, a game of shameless flirting, an inevitable encounter.
Once in a while, it's Gotham’s burning dock, the crunch of a boot on the ledge of a besieged building, just as a red and blue figure cuts across the sky like a falling star.
The ballroom of Metropolis’s most extravagant restaurant, the gala where the heir to the Wayne fortune inevitably arrives late, only to feel that warm, unmistakable presence across the room.
Other times, it’s the gaze of a curious reporter following a shadow darting between gargoyles, convinced that something ancient and aching hides beneath that cape.
It’s the ringing in Clark’s ears when the noise of the world goes still at night… because someone is watching from above. Silent. But visible from his apartment window.
It happens now and then in the skyscraper of a billionaire company that lets its Chief Executive Officer fall into the void, only to be saved by a benevolent alien.
Perhaps it’s just an ordinary night at the Daily Planet when Clark, distracted, finds his eyes drawn to the new majority shareholder he’s inevitably attracted to.
A man in a robe, glass in hand, unmoved by a god floating just beyond the windowsill of a gothic mansion.
An open window in the middle of the night.
A dark apartment.
A stolen file from a government database.
A lost comm signal, carrying a British accent into the ear of a billionaire.
A meeting on a rooftop under the rain, no words, just the sound of a racing heart.
Bruce investigates; he always does. He isn’t called the world’s greatest detective for nothing, tracking impossible flight patterns with surgical precision. Connecting dots where no one else sees a pattern. Following the heat trail of a solar body all the way to a modest farm in Smallville, where an old dog barks from the porch and a kind mother asks if he’d like to stay for dinner.
Clark suspects; he always does. He notices the anomaly in the shadow and feels the weight of a brilliant mind challenging his instinct. Flying to Gotham without knowing why… only because something pushes him to search among the rooftops and the screams until he finds him. How could he not go looking for the man who dresses like a bat to protect his city?
They might learn each other’s identities by accident, or they might discover the truth in silence, without needing confirmation, or by running to prove what they already suspect. In the way one says the other's name. In the brief tremor when their fingers brush. In the way they trust each other with a kind of desperate fury, even without knowing why.
Two souls searching, recognizing each other even when everything is different. Even when they shouldn’t meet, even when the world is in ruins or hasn’t even been born yet. And every time the multiverse expands, every time reality unravels and begins again, the thread ties itself back together.
There are worlds where those signs are even clearer.
Where the evidence is empirical and verifiable, soulmates aren’t a myth but a standard. Societies that grew up understanding this phenomenon are not the exception; they’re the rule.
Sometimes, it’s marks on the skin. A name that appears at birth, a symbol like an invisible tattoo, a phrase that means nothing… until someone else says it, word for word.
In other worlds, color doesn't exist until they lock eyes for the first time. Or it’s a touch, just the brush of fingers, that reveals everything. A spark, electric and undeniable.
And this Earth…
Well, this Earth has its own Clark Kent.
It has Superman.
And the so-called ‘Justice Gang’ and the Hall of Justice.
But something went wrong.
He knew it the moment reality, his reality, began to unravel.
First came the light.
The colors he knew—the clear blue of the sky, the wind-whipped red of his cape, and the metallic gold of the crest on his chest—began to flicker, as if the world were blinking. They grew brighter, then faded… and finally shattered, each hue breaking like stained glass into a thousand fragments.
Then came the sound. Mr. Terrific’s voice, Metamorpho’s too, distorted, echoes of themselves bouncing through an endless hallway. The air vibrated. The ground was no longer ground but a liquid limbo where the horizon pulsed and recoiled like a ragged breath.
Clark tried to anchor himself, to fix his position, to find the axis of the world, like he had done countless times in space or inside solar storms.
But this time… there was no axis.
Everything was tearing apart.
The lines of the universe—those invisible threads that kept things in place—pulled taut around his body, as if they meant to tear him apart. And then they snapped, breaking in a flash of white. A brutal tug in his chest. Like a force had yanked him inward while simultaneously flinging him somewhere else.
And suddenly…
Silence.
Cold.
Darkness.
And rain.
When his senses finally settled, he was no longer where he should be. He was no longer home.
He was in…
Gotham.
Not with the roar of a meteor crashing down, nor the drama of a forced landing. He just… appeared. Shifted like a misplaced piece on a cosmic chessboard. His powers were intact, but something about this world didn’t quite fit.
He recognized the city, partially. Gotham was Gotham across most corners of the multiverse: dark, gothic and cracked from the inside out. But here, there were details that felt… wrong. Streets he didn’t remember. Signs with unfamiliar names. Architecture that looked newer, as if time had moved too fast here.
And then he saw it:
Arkham Asylum.
That name; he knew that name.
He was standing in front of the wrought iron gate when he heard it. Blows. Voices. A choked, ragged scream. A man laughing, but not with joy. Laughing like something inside him was breaking apart. Clark floated up, just enough to peer over the wall. He saw a figure collapsed on the ground: pale skin, thin frame, wracked with spasms of laughter that sounded more like sobs. He was hurt. Someone was hitting him.
Clark didn’t hesitate. He dropped down at once.
“Hey! Stop!” He called out, stepping forward with open hands, no threat in his posture, his voice calm but firm. “It’s okay. Superman’s here to help.”
The man on the ground looked up at him, glassy-eyed, delirious, and laughed harder, as if the words «Superman’s here to help» were the funniest joke he'd ever heard.
And then he felt it.
The gaze.
Cold. Precise. Calculating.
Clark turned his head.
There he was.
Standing in the shadows, cape billowing in the wind, knuckles stained. Silent. Motionless. Watching him as if every cell in his body were a potential threat.
The Bat of Gotham. The urban myth.
The cowled figure didn’t move, but his mind was already working. A man with powers. Flying like it was the most natural thing in the world. Speaking with authority. Interrupting an active operation in Arkham.
Too dangerous to ignore.
Clark has five words etched into his skin, burnt into his shoulder like a promise. He waited half his life to hear them aloud. And when he finally did… it wasn’t in his universe.
And it wasn’t gentle.
It wasn’t anything like he imagined.
Though, to be fair, what else could he expect with those words?
“Superman? I don’t know you.” The voice was low. Rough. Sharpened like a warning. The man in the cowl glanced at him, serious, controlled, and suspicious. You're an unknown menace, that look said without words. “I don’t know who you are.”
Five words.
The same ones that had burnt on his skin for as long as he could remember.
Bruce didn’t move. The man was suspended in the air. No wires. No platform. No visible tech that could explain it. He was simply there, suspended in midair, defying gravity like it was nothing. Bruce didn’t blink. The internal sensors in his cowl were already scanning the intruder: approximate height, body mass, vocal pressure, temperature. He observed him with surgical precision. Everything about this man screamed anomaly.
And yet, what disturbed Bruce most wasn’t what he could see.
It was what he felt.
Something… felt misaligned.
There are rules in the multiverse. Not carved in stone, but followed with the quiet certainty that governs the birth and death of stars. Every Superman has his own Batman.
Rules that aren't questioned. Rules that don't break.
Until, one day… they do.