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luxaofhesperides · 2 months

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Soulmark AU + Sleeping Beauty ; requested by @candeartist422!

For the last few years, Duke’s been waiting for his soulmate to die.

It sounds cruel to say it that way. But the waiting is more painful, he thinks, than just mourning a lost love. It’s not like most people ever meet their soulmates anyways; his parents weren’t meant to be, but they still loved each other and had a life together. He wishes he could turn his focus away from his soulmate, but Duke is a romantic at heart and has always wanted to find the other half of his soul.

But since he was fourteen, his soulmark has dulled, fading in and out of color. What was once a vibrant blue crystal star, with eight points and a swirl of watercolor hues around it, dimmed more and more until Duke was sure he was watching his soulmate die slowly.

His soulmate didn’t die then. Whoever they are got better, his soulmark gaining color, but it never went back to the way it was. For years after, Duke would check at the beginning and end of each day, keeping track of when it faded and when it regained its color.

He thought his soulmate was sick. In and out of hospitals, fighting to stay alive.

And then it went nearly colorless.

Duke doesn’t remember much about that day. He knows he woke up, brushed his teeth, the lifted up his shirt to check his soulmark in the mirror. The blue was almost completely gone, the star on his left hipbone nearly gray with how colorless it was. He started at it for a moment, shocked, and reality slid away from him as he retreated into the safety of his mind, fully dissociating.

Bruce had found him when Duke didn’t show up for breakfast. He held him and offered quiet words of comfort that Duke couldn’t understand, but just having someone with him lessened the hurt of losing his soulmate.

Seeing the color come back the next day, faint as it was, hurt even more.

A year later, Duke still can’t break the habit of checking his soulmark twice a day. It hasn’t changed at all, still faint and dim, but carrying just enough color to show that his soulmate was still alive. At the very least, they were still breathing, but his chance of ever meeting them is basically zero. Still, he can’t help but hope, wishing that he could meet them even once before they die and leave him forever.

“Same as ever,” he murmurs to himself as he brushes his thumb against his soulmark. He’s terrified that he’s forgotten how beautiful the blue of it was when his soulmate was healthy.

Duke doesn’t let himself think on it too much anymore. Though his thoughts often turn to his soulmate during quiet moments like these, the busy nature of Gotham is usually more than enough to pull his attention back to the here and now. There’s no use in obsessing over his soulmate anyways; they’re just going to die, sooner or later, and Duke knows he’ll never get to meet them. They’ll just be another empty space in his life, right next to his parents.

“Come on, Thomas, focus,” he tells himself firmly, then gets dressed and heads down to the kitchen for breakfast.

The manor is quiet. It usually is in the mornings, with everyone from the night shift dead asleep and trying to get as much rest as they can before they have to start their day. Not that many of them stay in the manor these days; Duke and Damian are the only permanent residents at the moment, but Steph usually stays half with her mom and half in the manor during the summers when she’s home from college, and the others drop in whenever they feel like it.

Bruce lives more in the Batcave than the manor, so he doesn’t really count. It’s also why Duke is surprised to see Bruce awake and dressed like a normal person, drinking coffee in the kitchen as if this is a normal occurrence.

“Morning,” Duke offers.

“Good morning, Duke,” Bruce replies. “Sleep well?”

“Well enough. Alfred out or something?”

“He may have kicked me out of the Batcave to clean it up a bit,” Bruce answers tiredly. “Want me to make breakfast?”

Duke has heard the horror stories of Bruce’s attempts to make edible food in a kitchen. In the interest of not dealing with food poisoning, Duke shakes his head quickly and says, “Nah, it’s fine. I was kinda wanting to eat out for breakfast. Get out there as me, and not a mask, you know?”

“Mind if I join you? Alfred may forgive me for not sleeping if I willingly go outside.”

Duke laughs. “Sure man, as long as you pay.”

“I’ll drive, too.”

“What, don’t trust me behind a wheel?”

Bruce gives him a tired look, eyes dead and dull. “I have taught all my children how to drive. The day I willingly let them take the wheel when I am not actively dying is the day I’ve been replaced by a robot clone of myself who doesn’t know better yet.”

“That is… very specific. Is that a thing you usually worry about?”

“I’m Batman. I have to worry about everything.”

Yeah, that tracks. Duke wouldn’t be surprised if he has at least five contingency plans for that scenario, should it ever happen. “Well,” he says, “Right now, all you need to worry about is having your wallet and driving us down to The Foodie Nook. I’ve been craving their breakfast plates for ages.”

Bruce doesn’t object to his choice of restaurant and follows Duke down to the garage, grabbing a random set of keys and pointing it out to the many cars he owns. One near the front blinks its lights as it unlocks and Duke cheerfully tosses himself into the passenger seat as Bruce opens the garage door.

The drive into Gotham is smooth. They don’t hit traffic until they reach the bridge that leads into the city proper, taking them away from the quiet of Bristol. The morning is busy, but not enough that Duke worries about being out as the Signal to help keep the peace. It’s a normal type of busy, one borne from people going about their lives, feeling safe enough to go out.

The Foodie Nook is entirely local and very popular, so the parking lot is nearly full. But they expanded their space last year, which means he and Bruce don’t have to sit outside while they wait to grab a table. Bruce keeps conversation light and casual, well aware of the many listening ears around them, and it’s nice, feeling normal for once.

Well, as normal as life can be with Bruce Wayne™. The server who comes to lead them to a table realizes who she’s talking to after she gets a proper look at them while holding open the door and promptly stutters over her words.

“No need for any special treatment,” Bruce laughs lightly, “We’re just here for breakfast. Nothing special.”

“Of course,” she replies, cheeks red. “Um, right this way! We’ve got a table by the windows for you. Just two, yeah?”

“Yup! Just two. Thought this was a good day to spend some time with Duke. He’s a great kid, you know, I’m glad I was given the opportunity to foster him.”

The sunny, cheerful Bruce Wayne persona is so different from the usual Bruce he works with that it feels like he’s standing next to a stranger. But his words are sincere and warm his heart, filling up the gaps that his soulmate has left.

“Here you are!” their server announces, showing them to their table. “I’ll be right back with some menus.” She’s gone in a rush, and other customers glance over before quickly averting their gaze.

It’s one of the unspoken rules of Gotham: give the Waynes their privacy while they’re out in public. Questions and conversation are for public events only, but if they see a Wayne out and about during a normal day, everyone leaves them be unless spoken to first. Duke used to follow those rules as well when he was just another Gothamite. It’s strange being on the other side of that now that he’s in with the Waynes.

Duke barely has to look through the menu when it’s handed to him. The breakfast plates are his favorites and he gets one every single time he comes to The Foodie Nook; stacked full with breakfast foods from around the world. As a kid, he loved the Mexico Plate, but these days he’s craving either the Brazilian Plate or the Vietnamese Plate.

He can’t decide on which one and thinks about tossing a coin to decide, but seeing how that’s Two Face’s whole thing, he decides to hold off and settle the matter with eenie-meenie-minnie-mo.

He gets the Vietnamese Plate.

Bruce, on the other hand, reads through the entire menu like it’s a novel, then leans over and says rather loudly, “Duke, what’s a tort-illa.”

The pain he feels hearing that is only worsened by the amusement in Bruce’s eyes. He’s doing it on purpose, playing up the Brucie act for the public so he can psychologically torment Duke. A few nearby customers choke back laughter, turning away to hide their smiles.

Duke shakes his head and says, “Don’t worry about it. It’s just food. Don’t ask any more questions, I just want a peaceful breakfast.”

“Well then,” Bruce replies, “I suppose I know what to order now.”

As if she was summoned, their server reappears before them, cheeks still looking a little flushed. “Hi! Ready to order?”

She writes down their orders quickly, valiantly keeping a straight face at Bruce’s mispronunciation of tortilla, then heads off to deliver their orders to the kitchen.

Rather than draw out a conversation with Brucie Wayne, Duke settles for playing a few idle games on his phone; his current favorite is one quiet cat cafe game where he directs cats into fulfilling cafe orders.

Bruce, despite being out in his civilian identity, is working. He’s on his Batman phone, which looks the same as his other cell phones except this one has a bat symbol sticker just barely hiding a Superman sticker on the phone case. His brow is slightly furrowed as he reads whatever file he’s accessing from the Batcomputer. It’s a little worrying but it could be anything. Bruce makes the same expression when he reads one of Tim’s snarky comments getting quoted in the news.

But that’s not Duke’s problem! He’s here to enjoy his breakfast and it will take the end of the world itself to remove him from his seat before he’s done eating.

The game takes most of his attention until their food comes out, and by then Bruce has tucked away the smallest of his Batman mannerisms. They enjoy a normal, peaceful breakfast. Bruce ends it by asking their server if she has any debt that’s weighing her down, then giving her a tip that’s at least five thousand dollars above that.

She does cry and Bruce hugs her. It’s very sweet.

As soon as they get back into the car, his easy going smile drops and Duke knows some superhero nonsense is about to take over his day.

“Duke,” Bruce starts, seriously, “I received a message from Zatanna.”

“Don’t drag this out,” Duke says, “Just give it to me straight. What terrible thing is about to happen to us?”

“It’s nothing too big. They just recently defeated a magical being who had been tearing apart secret government facilities in Illinois. He had both magic and a high tech weapon, which they confiscated and are delivering to me. The government agency he was fighting was suspiciously interested in the weapon, and based on their behaviors and newly revealed work, Zatanna made the decision to turn the weapon over to us so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

Bruce smoothly merges into traffic as he speaks, getting them onto the road back to the manor. There’s a look in his eyes that means he’s keeping a lot unsaid, and Duke knows without a doubt that whatever this government agency was doing is bad if Zatanna needs Batman to act as extra security.

He’s not sure about her decision to trust the weapon to be safe in Gotham, either. Sure, Batman will keep it as safe as he can, but with their luck, it’ll end up in the hands of a Rogue and lead to a lot of death and destruction.

As soon as they cross the bridge and return to Bristol, Bruce steps on the gas and the car tears down the road. Without any other cars to worry about (or traffic laws), it takes barely two minutes to reach the manor, when the gates open for them and let them into the garage.

Alfred waits for them by the door, looking them over with a critical eye. “I see you have managed to go outside, Master Bruce. What’s the special occasion?”

“Just breakfast,” Bruce answers. “I’m heading back down to the Batcave. Zatanna will be here soon to deliver a weapon.” He’s gone before Alfred can say anything more, hurrying down the hall and turning the corner, disappearing from sight as he heads towards his office.

“I see we have yet to break that bad habit of his. Did you enjoy your morning out, Master Duke?”

“Sure did, Alfred. I’m, uh, also going down to the Batcave. He’s definitely not telling me a lot about what’s going on, so I’m just going to read about it over his shoulder. I’ll be back up for lunch, though!”

“And perhaps you’ll be able to drag Master Bruce away from that cave of his,” Alfred comments wryly as he walks with Duke towards the office. He gives Duke a nod, then splits away from him, returning to the kitchen where Duke can hear Damian speaking to someone, probably Tim by the annoyed tone of his voice, and mentally wishes Alfred luck in handling them.

Duke sets the correct time on the clock in Bruce’s office and heads down to the Batcave, taking the steps two at a time.

Bruce is already at the Batcomputer, shoulders tensed, when he arrives.

“More bad news?” he asks as he makes his way over.

Bruce doesn’t bother looking away from the screen as he says, “More details about the fight. It seems the magical being called himself a ghost and was going on a rampage due to a betrayal. He says they nearly killed his son.”

“Oh, yikes.”

“And two of the scientists working with the government agency said that he stole their son and is keeping them from saving him.”

“Yikes,” Duke says with more feeling.

He doesn’t get to hear anymore details about JLD’s fight with this ghost when he catches a flicker in the corner of his eye. Duke turns and stares at the empty space in the Batcave near the medbay and watches as colorful magic gathers and swirls in dizzing circles. The portal opens a moment later and Zatanna steps out, looking exhausted and lightly singed.

“Batman,” she greets, holding a white gun that looks like it belongs in an early sci-fi movie from the 60s. “The GIW is trying to arrest us. Constantine keeps burning their badges and documents so it shouldn’t be a problem, but they are determined to get this back. I wouldn’t be surprised if they came after you next. They’ve got some way of tracking things, but I didn’t have time to get any details before I had to leave.”

Bruce takes the gun from her hands carefully, looking it over with a sharp gaze. “Why would a ghost want to use a gun?”

“I don’t know. He had a variety of powers, too.”

“What does this do?”

“Shoots ice. He never let it go and nearly burned me alive for taking it before we subdued him.”

“We’ll keep it locked up,” Bruce promises.

Zatanna sighs. It looks as though a physical weight fell off her shoulders. “Thanks. I’m going to head back to stop Constantine from getting into a fistfight with the GIW agents.”

She opens another portal with a waved hand and a muttered spell. Bruce is already walking away to set the gun down on a work station, so Duke is the one to wave Zatanna goodbye.

By the time he reaches Bruce’s side, the gun is already dismantled, all pieces neatly set aside. Sticky notes denote which pieces go together and in what order. It looks the same as most guns, save for the aesthetic, but the heart of it is a glowing blue orb, large enough to cover the entirety of Bruce’s palm, and it brings a chill to the air.

Duke stares at it and feels his soulmark burn ice cold.

“Duke?”

It’s in his hands. He doesn’t remember reaching out to take it, but it’s in his hands. He can’t take his eyes off of it, cradling it gently and bringing it closer to his chest.

It’s the same blue his soulmark once was. Before his soulmate began to fade, before every day became a waiting game to see how long his soulmate will last before they die.

This has something to do with his soulmate. He’s sure of it.

He won’t let anyone take it from him.

“Duke. Give that to me.”

He doesn’t feel like he’s in his body. He’s detached, floating somewhere outside his body, puppeteering his limbs, making them move without feeling the motion. Shadows condense around his feet and Bruce takes a step back, wary.

“Duke,” he says again, but Duke can’t find any words, can’t draw on his voice, can’t even look away from the bright, bright blue of the orb. It pulses lightly in his hand like a heartbeat.

Bruce reaches a hand out.

He’s pulled back by shadows before he can get close, and Duke holds the orb against his chest, right against his heart, and feels the cold seep into him.

“Duke. I need you to look at me.” This time, Bruce’s voice has Batman’s growl in it, a heavy command that he can’t help but instinctively follow. He looks up and meets Bruce’s eyes, but he can’t focus. All his awareness is in his hands and the heartbeat of the glowing orb.

“I have to protect this,” Duke manages to whisper. “I… I think it’s alive.”

“Okay. Let’s get you to the medbay so you can sit down. We’ll figure this out, Duke.”

Bruce slowly, carefully, sets his hand on Duke’s shoulder. He keeps his attention away from the orb, so Duke allows it and lets Bruce guide him to the medbay and onto one of the medical cots. Bruce leaves him after a minute of quiet fussing, muttering about calling Zatanna.

Whatever. None of that matters when the heartbeat of the orb grows stronger, steadier, and Duke feels it match the beat of his own heart.

Time slips away from him. Distantly, he hears people move around the cave, speaking in low tones. A hand presses against his shoulder, warm, then moves away.

The orb in his hand moves.

Duke blinks slowly, then claws his way back to awareness, pushing past the haze that’s fallen over his mind. The orb turns over in his hand, then cracks right down the middle. The glow grows stronger, washing the medbay in blue light and a symbol appears on the orb.

It’s his soulmark.

Later, he won’t be able to say why he did it. There were no thoughts, no reasonings, no explanations. Duke simply moved on instinct and lifted the orb up to his face and pressed a soft kiss against it.

One moment, the orb was still.

The next, it had burst in a flash of light that blinded everyone in the Batcave, and then a thin, injured teenager had fallen into Duke’s lap.

Hands immediately grab him, pulling him away from Duke. The teenager puts up no fight, eyes barely open, but he reaches for Duke weakly. On his wrist is the bright blue snowflake, the color strong and vivid.

“That’s me soulmate,” Duke whispers as he watches Bruce and Tim set the boy down on another medical cot.

“What?” Tim says, turning to face Duke, concern clear on his face.

“That’s my soulmate,” he repeats, louder. Then, panicked, he pulls up his shirt enough to see his own soulmark; the color is still dull, weak, barely there, but it’s more blue that it has been in a while. He doesn’t need to say anything. Tim sees the dullness of his soulmark, looks at the boy, and puts the pieces together on his own.

“I’ll call Doc Thompkins,” he says, already moving to fix everything. Bruce remains where he is, making sure the boy is tucked in and breathing steadily before he returns to Duke.

“Are you alright?”

Duke swallows roughly, unable to tear his eyes away from the boy. He’s pale and thin, as if he’d been starved, and there’s frost beginning to spread on the bedsheet from his fingers. “He’s my soulmate,” Duke manages to say. “He’s been dying for two years.”

Bruce’s eyes a hard, a determined light in them. “We’ll save him,” he promises.

If anyone can, it’s Batman.

If anyone can, it’s them, Batman and the Signal, and their entire network of family and friends.

Duke’s been waiting for his soulmate to die all this time. Now, he’s going to save him.

#ghostlights #dc x dp #dp x dc #dcxdp #dpxdc #prompt fill #my writing #i dont really know much abt jld so they are not really in here #just duke trying to live his life and have a nice day with bruce #when his soul mate gets thrown at him in the form of an ORB #(ghost core but they dont know that yet)#dannys gonna have to answer so many questions once hes awake bc not many know abt realms beings #its gonna be rough for him bc he's been asleep for 2 years in his core bc he was never safe enough to recover #until duke gave him a boost (plus the power of soulmates really helped him) and he woke up #in a cave with his soulmate and a whole crew of superheroes #what a thing to open ur eyes to. rip danny lol #thanks for the prompt!

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ganondoodle · 3 months

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some more ideas for the totk rewritten project (botw2);

underground general ideas i thought about what to theme the underground after, and since its vaguely like underwater in canon i thought id push it much much further, you cant actually dive and while id love that i do want to stay within a certain possible range of it still being a sequel to botw and somewhat based on totk- so im putting the low gravity effect away from the sky and instead in the underground, the ENTIRE underground, that way it is distinctly different in the way you have to play since you gotta work around the low gravity effect, the entire plant life and enemies will also be based on deep sea creatures- anglerfish like ones that half burrow and lure you with their light, those fish (or are they worms?) that hide underground as soon as you step too close, maybe they hide initially but only to make you go closer and try and snatch at you

much more glowy things too, basically everythings got some sort of light on it, there are different creatures flying around that all feature some sort of glow, so there is stuff to see but you cant immediately know what it is, theres a unique kind of plant that when you bother it spews out a dark cloud of spores (kinda like in tp) that dims any light you had; there are some landmarks you can activate or repair with the help of zelda but there is no way to illuminate the entire map and the lil light ferns expire slowly too

i also want it to be way more wet, not full with water but maybe a thin layer of water at most places and some drops from stalactites that fall constantly

there are shadowy ghosts there as well but they CAN aggro (still working on it), either by taking a weapon from their grave or some other things; also considered them or some other enemy that stalks you for some time and the only clue you get is maybe double sound of your steps or something at the very edge of your screen but you can never catch it when looking around (i dont want to make it a horror game but do want the underground to stay as creepy as when you first get down there), something elusive and shadow based that is rarely encountered but stays creepy for longer than the miasma hands sicne it cant get stuck on anything and the only way to be safe is while in the air

maybe some miasma reanimated corpses of ancient shiekah killed when the ancient hyrulean king turned on them (only foudn in the underground in this way; there are others but unposessed in alot of the broken shrines and old laboratories so seeing one suddendly move and crawl after you is probably pretty scary, kinda like the vroken guardians sometimes being still functional)

the dongos are the main friendly animal you can discover there and tame (still working out more details) they can climb around, always emit a little bit of light and the shadow enemy wont latch onto you as long as you are near a dongo, maybe even most enemies will leave you alone if you are riding one, as they are slower than horses, with the exception of gigamas (or a similar enemy ill redesign for that) as they are the natural predator of dongos; when you get to close to one it will react to it and if a fight is initiated it burrows away (you can call it and it comes back to you if you are out of range of that enemy)

tameable animals since i played skyward sword recently i just realized again how much fun it is to fly on a bird, sicne im already dividing the three map layers a bit more i thought it would be cool to make these layers more distinct, in some part by the tameable animals- the sky has birds (based on dinosaurs), the surface has horses, the underground dongos- neither of them can follow you to one they dont belong and the way to call them switches as you switch layers

im not sure yet if those birds should be ridable or are only able to give you a small boost upwards when you call them

magic bar so instead of actual batteries i planned to, as i said before, to put that into links shiekah arm prosthetic, and instead of giving you literal battery symbols on the screen it would be a bar right below your health and next to the symbol of the current selected arm ability

krog seeds a bit more to the krogs- as i said before they are no longer the way to make your pockets bigger- among an armor set i also thought about making the most expensive reward OR the end reward for finding all of them be the eponator zero- maybe it went missing during the cataclysm and maronus (engl. hestu) finds it at some point, so you get your bike back but its locked behind something bigger so you are unlikely to exploit it early on

(EDIT) (forgot to mention the dragons- im putting them each in one layer of the map- eldra in the underground bc gan is there and youknow, demise coming from the ground and fire being associated with the ground etc, farodra on the surface GREEN etc, and naydra in the sky, bc wisdom and owls and gods and all that weeeeee)

(on a sidenote im also thinking about ditching the building mechanic to some extent since i dont think it fits very well as a whole and it makes it too easy to completely skip stuff- i want the main way to move things or to get around be the hookshot/grappling hook part of links arm; still working on all that though .. so far it does seem likely like it will be much more limited)

#ganondoodles talks #zelda #totk #ganondoodles rewrites totk #also since alot of the shrines are now more like bigger caves and less in number i thought about making a broken tower into a mini boss #like a mass of miasma spilling from a hole in the ground like the big one in the gerudo area that wields the tower as a weapon #some of the bigger regional changes i wanted to mix it up alot more without redoing the entire map #so gerudo dessert might be flooded #the zora are dealing with all the water in the region having gone through a crack in the earth leading their area to dry up #rito area isnt just snowed in but in an actual blizzard that coated everything in a thick layer of ice #YES ICE PHYSICS WOOHOO #and made them flee maybe into vah medoh whos unfunctional and resting somewhere else #maybe isntead of floating hyrule castle is sunk into the ground .. tho im not so sure on that yet #.... listen theres so much stuff you could do with world to have it have actual changes #what if satoris mountain was half broken and sunk into the ground but the mountain is still there at night like a spiritual footprint #you know #make it actually feel like a big order destroying event has happened!!!

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