Rowan [Torbek's edition]

He asks, very softly, “Who bought it?”

You blink at him. “My kidney?”

“Yes.”

“Bruce, this was years ago.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Bruce becomes almost painfully gentle with you afterwards. Not pitying, because you would probably bite him for that, but attentive.

He starts noticing things.

How you sit with your back to walls. How you always check exits. How you flinch at hospital scenes in movies but laugh it off before anyone can notice. How you know which streets to avoid, which churches aren’t churches, which clinics don’t ask questions, which “charity vans” are not charity vans.

He asks if you want help.

You shrug. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”

Bruce hates that answer.

Because it sounds too much like Jason. Like Dick after pretending the circus didn’t haunt him. Like Tim after losing too much sleep to feel real. Like every Gotham child who learned survival before multiplication tables.

If you’re dating him, he becomes deeply protective in a way that is both tender and terrifying.

He does not cage you. He knows better.

But Gotham quietly shifts around you.

The clinic that hurt you? Shut down.

The men your mother owed? Suddenly under investigation for tax fraud, smuggling, kidnapping, and six other crimes they absolutely committed.

The street where you were nearly trafficked? A new Wayne Foundation shelter opens two blocks away with security, food, transportation, and counsellors who actually know what they’re doing.

You catch on eventually.

“Bruce.”

“Yes?”

“Did you emotionally cope with my trauma by restructuring an entire neighbourhood?”

A pause.

“…No.”

“Bruce.”

“A little.”

His care is quiet but enormous. He does not always know how to hold you, but he knows how to build a world where what happened to you becomes harder to repeat.

And when you make jokes like, “It’s fine, I only have one kidney, but I have twice the personality,” he doesn’t laugh at first.

Eventually, though, when he knows you want him to, he gives you the smallest, saddest smile.

“You do have an alarming amount of personality.”

“Thank you. It’s where my second kidney would’ve gone.”

He sighs like he’s suffering.

But his hand finds yours under the table.

dick grayson

Dick’s first instinct is to laugh because you said it like a joke.

Then the words actually process.

“Yeah, I don’t go near that alley anymore. Almost got grabbed there when I was sixteen. Super embarrassing. I dropped my fries.”

Dick’s smile dies so fast it practically leaves a chalk outline.

“You almost got what?”

You wave him off. “It’s fine. I stabbed the guy with a broken umbrella and ran.”

Dick looks like he has just been shot, resurrected, and shot again. “You were sixteen?”

“Maybe fifteen. Gotham birthdays are more of a vibe than a record.”

Dick gets emotional. Like, visibly.

He’s the one who says your name in that soft, careful way that makes your defences go up immediately.

You try to dodge.

“Don’t do the concerned forehead wrinkle thing.”

“I’m not doing a forehead wrinkle.”

“You’re literally making the face nurses make before telling you insurance doesn’t cover anaesthesia.”

That makes him look worse.

Dick is a fixer, a hugger, a bleeding-heart acrobat with too much love and not enough self-preservation. He wants to wrap you in blankets and personally suplex Gotham into the sun.

But he learns quickly that you don’t want to be treated like glass.

So instead, he matches your energy—but gently.

You say, “Fun fact, don’t talk to those guys on 9th. They’re a cult. They tried to get me to marry a sewer prophet once.”

Dick, without missing a beat, says, “Was the sewer prophet cute?”

You grin. “Honestly? Great bone structure. Terrible theology.”

He laughs, but his eyes stay sharp. Later, Nightwing absolutely checks out the “cult guys on 9th.”

If you’re together, Dick becomes your safe place in a very physical way.

Not smothering. Not controlling. But he always offers his hand before crossing certain streets. He walks on the outside of the sidewalk. He texts you when Scarecrow escapes Arkham, even before the news breaks.

When fear toxin gets mentioned, his whole demeanour changes.

You once say “I hope Scarecrow chokes on his own gas. Last time I hallucinated my dead neighbour crawling out of my sink for six hours.”

Dick goes quiet.

Then, carefully, “You went through a Scarecrow attack alone?”

“Mostly. A raccoon was there.”

“A raccoon?”

“Emotionally, he did his best.”

Dick does not know whether to cry or kiss you.

Possibly both.

He is the one who helps you relearn joy without making it feel like homework. Rooftop picnics. Bad movies. Trips outside Gotham where the air doesn’t taste like rainwater and crime.

He loves your humour. He just wishes it didn’t have teeth marks in it.

jason todd

Jason gets it. That’s the problem.

The first time you casually drop something horrifying, he doesn’t freeze like Bruce or panic like Dick.

He goes still.

Deeply, dangerously still.

“Hospitals are gross. Last time I was in one, they removed an organ and paid me like it was a pawn shop transaction.”

Jason’s eyes lift to yours. “What organ?”

You shrug. “Kidney.”

“Who?”

“Jay, this is not a murder quest.”

“I didn’t say murder.”

“You thought it very loudly.”

Jason understands dark humour as a survival language. He speaks it fluently. So when you joke, he doesn’t immediately tell you to stop. He knows sometimes joking is the only way to pick up the memory without it burning your hands.

But later, when you’re alone, he says, “You know that was messed up, right?”

You snort. “No, really?”

“I mean it.”

And that’s when his voice changes. Rougher. Lower. Not angry at you. Never at you.

“You shouldn’t have had to make that normal.”

That gets you.

Because Jason doesn’t say it like pity. He says it like someone who knows exactly what it means to survive something and then get treated like the survival was proof it didn’t hurt.

If you’re dating Jason, he is fiercely protective, but he respects your autonomy more than anyone expects.

He won’t baby you. He won’t tell you that you can’t go somewhere.

But if you say, “Don’t walk down that street after eleven,” Jason hears an entire case file in one sentence.

The next week, that street has Red Hood presence.

Not flashy. Not obvious.

But people vanish from corners. Traffickers get nervous. Cult recruiters stop loitering. Predatory clinics discover that someone has burned their records and mailed copies to every law enforcement office, journalist, and victim advocacy group in the city.

You look at him over breakfast. “Did you threaten a cult for me?”

Jason sips his coffee. “No.”

“Jason.”

“I threatened a cult for Gotham. You just inspired civic engagement.”

He’s also the one who can sit with your worst stories without flinching. He might look like he wants to tear the city open brick by brick, but he won’t make you comfort him for your pain.

When fear toxin comes up, though?

Oof.

You say, “Yeah, Scarecrow gas got me once. Saw my own body hanging from the ceiling. Zero stars. Would not recommend.”

Jason’s face goes blank.

He has nightmares that night.

Not because he thinks you’re weak.

Because he can imagine too well what it did to you.

He holds you differently afterwards. Like you’re not fragile, but precious.

And when you make some awful joke like, “At least Scarecrow helped me discover I’m creative under pressure,” Jason mutters, “You’re sick.”

“You love me.”

“Yeah,” he says, too fast. Too honest. “I do.”

Both of you freeze.

Then you whisper, “That was grossly sincere.”

Jason groans into his hands. “Forget I said it.”

“Never. I’m putting it on a mug.”

tim drake

Tim’s reaction is delayed because his brain immediately starts building a conspiracy board.

You say, “Oh, avoid the blue-door clinic near Sheldon Park. They buy organs, but only if you’re desperate enough not to ask for paperwork.”

Tim looks up from his laptop. “…What?”

You keep eating cereal. “Yeah, sketchy. Bad magazines in the waiting room, too.”

Tim slowly closes his laptop.

That is how everyone knows something terrible has happened.

“Can you repeat that?”

“The magazine thing?”

“The organ thing.”

Tim is horrified, but his horror is very analytical. His eyes sharpen. His voice gets careful. He asks specific questions. Dates. Locations. Names. Descriptions.

You eventually squint at him. “Are you making a mental spreadsheet?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“It’s more of a relational database.”

“Tim.”

“I’m coping.”

Tim does not do well with the randomness of your trauma. Not because he judges you, but because he can’t stand unsolved harm.

Someone hurt you. Someone profited. Someone built a system that made it possible.

And Tim wants names.

If you’re dating him, he becomes quietly obsessive about making sure you are safe in ways you might not even notice at first.

Your phone mysteriously gets better security.

Your routes home become “accidentally” optimised away from dangerous areas. A WayneTech-funded investigation into illegal clinics begins after Tim “just happens” to mention some suspicious data to the right person.

He does not push you to talk unless he thinks you’re in current danger. But when you do talk, he listens like he is taking testimony from the last surviving witness of a buried city.

He remembers everything.

You once say “Oh, those guys? Yeah, they’re a cult. Don’t make eye contact. They love eye contact. That’s how they got Marcus.”

Tim pauses. “Who’s Marcus?”

“Guy from my old building. Nice. Bad at boundaries. Accidentally joined a basement religion.”

“Did he get out?”

“Physically? Yeah. Emotionally? Unclear.”

Tim does not sleep that night.

The next day, he has a file labelled Basement Religion???

Steph sees it and goes, “What the hell?”

Tim says, “Gotham has patterns.”

Tim’s care is practical and almost invisible. He’ll leave food near you when you’re spiralling. He’ll stay awake when fear toxin incidents are on the news. He’ll sit beside you in silence because he knows questions can feel like knives.

But sometimes your casual delivery cracks him open.

You joke, “Honestly, selling a kidney was easier than applying for college aid.”

Tim stares at you.

Then he says, very softly, “I’m sorry no one helped you.”

And that one lands.

Because beneath all the caffeine and case files, Tim knows what it is to be alone in a mansion-sized life with no adults looking closely enough.

He loves you like a promise he’s terrified to break.

damian wayne

Damian does not understand casual trauma at first.

Not because he lacks trauma.

Because in the League, pain was either weakness or instruction. You did not joke about it. You endured it. You became sharper. You buried the body and the feeling beside it.

So when you say, “Oh, I know that symbol. Cult. Big cult. Super into blood oaths and soup kitchens. Weird combo.”

Damian stares. “You were involved with them?”

“Nah. Almost. They tried recruiting me when I was homeless for a bit.”

“You were homeless?”

“Yeah, but only in the normal Gotham way.”

His face darkens. “There is no normal way to be homeless.”

You blink because, wow, okay, that was unexpectedly compassionate and now you’re emotionally cornered.

Damian gets angry.

Not loud angry. Not tantrum angry.

Cold, princely, sword-edge angry.

He sees your trauma as an insult to your dignity. He is furious that Gotham took pieces of you and then expected you to keep walking around like nothing happened.

If you’re dating him, his protectiveness is intense but awkward.

He’ll say things like, “You will inform me if anyone attempts to harvest your organs again.”

And you’re like, “Dami, babe, that is not usually a recurring social appointment.”

He scowls. “Do not deflect.”

He struggles with your humour the most.

You say, “Scarecrow gas gave me hallucinations so bad I apologised to a vending machine for being born.”

Damian looks genuinely stricken. “That is not amusing.”

“It’s a little amusing. The vending machine forgave me.”

“It did not.”

“You weren’t there.”

He has to learn that sometimes your jokes are pressure valves. If he tries to shut them down, the whole room gets heavier.

Eventually, he develops his own dry responses.

You: “I almost got trafficked on that street.”

Damian: “Then we shall not use that street.”

You: “I mean, it was years ago.”

Damian: “Then the street has had years to repent and failed.”

That one makes you laugh so hard you almost choke. Damian looks proud for three days.

His care shows up in strange, beautiful ways. He trains you—not because he thinks you’re helpless, but because he believes you deserve the confidence of knowing exactly where to strike if someone touches you wrong.

He walks with you through the city and quietly asks about landmarks.

“Bad memory?”

“Neutral.”

“And that one?”

“Cult-adjacent.”

“Noted.”

God help anyone Damian notes.

When he loves you, he loves like a blade placed between you and the world.

Still learning softness. Still learning jokes. Still learning that your survival is not a battlefield report.

But trying.

So hard.

duke thomas

Duke understands Gotham from the civilian side more than most of them. He knows what it means to be a regular person in a city where monsters make headlines and ordinary cruelty hides in the footnotes.

So when you casually say, “Yeah, I avoid that block. There was this guy offering runaway kids ‘jobs.’ Translation: bad news with a van.”

Duke’s whole expression shifts.

Not shock, exactly.

Recognition.

He says, “Yeah. I know the type.”

That makes you pause.

Because Duke does not react like you’ve revealed some impossible darkness. He reacts like Gotham has names for this kind of thing and he hates that you know them too.

Duke is steady. He does not overwhelm you. He does not interrogate you. He just steps closer in a way that makes the world feel less tilted.

If you’re dating him, he becomes your grounding force.

When your jokes get too sharp, he notices.

You say, “Fear toxin? Been there. Screamed so hard I lost my voice. Kind of peaceful afterwards, honestly.”

Duke doesn’t laugh. He gently says, “That sounds terrifying.”

You shrug. “It was Tuesday.”

He nods. “Still terrifying.”

That’s his gift. He doesn’t let Gotham normalise what happened to you. But he also doesn’t make you feel weird for having normalised it yourself.

He’ll walk with you through places that scare you if you ask. He’ll avoid them completely if you don’t. He’ll bring snacks, because Duke believes snacks are a valid emotional support system and honestly? Correct.

He also gets quietly furious. Especially about cults.

You tell him about a group that targets kids after school, offering food and shelter and “family.”

Duke’s eyes go hard. “They’re still active?”

“Probably. Gotham’s like mould. You think you cleaned it, then boom. Basement prophet.”

Duke exhales. “I’m checking it out.”

“Please don’t get culted.”

“I’m not getting culted.”

“That’s what Marcus said.”

“Who’s Marcus?”

“Exactly.”

Duke has the best balance of humour and care. He can joke with you without letting the joke erase the wound.

And when you wake up from nightmares, he doesn’t demand details. He just turns on a soft light and says, “You’re here. I’m here. Nothing from back then gets to touch you tonight.”

Simple. True. Solid as sunrise.

Duke loves like morning after a city-long blackout.

Not blinding. Just enough light to remember the world is still there.

stephanie brown

Steph’s reaction is loud because Steph’s heart is loud.

You say “Hospitals freak me out. Sold my tonsils once. Long story. Very weird Craigslist energy.”

Stephanie drops whatever she’s holding. “YOU SOLD YOUR WHAT?”

“My tonsils.”

“Can you even sell tonsils?”

“Gotham finds a way.”

“That is the worst sentence anyone has ever said.”

Steph is horrified. Furious. On the verge of tears. Also, immediately making a joke because she, too, has the sacred Gotham coping mechanism: clownery over collapse.

She points at you and says, “Okay, first of all, no more selling body parts without me.”

You grin. “You want commission?”

“I want to commit arson.”

“That’s illegal.”

“So is organ theft, babe. Keep up.”

If you’re dating her, she becomes fiercely, messily protective.

Steph knows what it’s like to have people underestimate your pain because you’re funny. Because you’re pretty. Because you’re loud. Because you keep moving.

So your casual trauma dumps hit her hard. Especially when she realises you’re not trying to shock anyone. You genuinely think these are normal anecdotes.

You say “Oh, don’t go into that community centre after dark. Cult. Very smiley. Bad vibes. They once tried to convince me my blood had moon debt.”

Steph stares. “Moon debt?”

“Yeah.”

“Your blood?”

“Apparently.”

“I hate this city.”

“Valid.”

She starts a note in her phone called Your Horrible Gotham Yelp Reviews.

Entries include:

“Blue door clinic: illegal organs, bad magazines.”

“9th Street cult: moon debt???”

“Corner near Sheldon: trafficking, avoid.”

“Scarecrow: little freak, kill on sight emotionally.”

Steph is the one who validates your anger.

When you say, “I hope Scarecrow chokes,” she says, “Same. I hope he steps on a Lego first.”

When you say, “It wasn’t that bad,” she says, “Liar, but cute.”

When you say, “I survived,” she says, “Yeah, and you deserved better than survival.”

That one shuts you up.

Steph will hold your hand in public and swing it between you both like you are just two normal people in a normal city, even if Gotham is rotting around the edges.

She makes you laugh without making you feel like your pain is the punchline.

And if someone from your past shows up?

Stephanie Brown goes full glitter-covered vengeance.

No hesitation. No mercy.

cassandra cain

Cass notices before you say anything. She sees the way your shoulders tense near certain streets. The way your breathing changes around medical equipment. The way your smile turns too bright when people talk about Gotham “resilience.”

So when you finally say something casually, Cass is not surprised.

But she is hurt.

Quietly. Deeply.

“Oh, yeah, I hate that smell. Fear toxin residue smells kind of sweet before it ruins your life.”

Cass looks at you. Really looks.

You smile like it’s nothing.

Cass reaches for your hand.

That’s it. No interrogation. No dramatic gasp. No “why didn’t you tell me?” Just her fingers around yours, warm and steady.

Cass understands bodies better than words. She reads the story your mouth tries to turn into a joke.

If you’re dating her, she becomes the safest silence in your life.

You can tell her things badly. Out of order. With humour. With no emotion. With too much emotion. With your eyes fixed on the wall.

She accepts every version.

You say “Almost got taken on that street once. Running away from home. Rookie mistake.”

Cass’s face changes. “Not mistake.”

You blink.

She says, firmer, “Not yours.”

It is four words, and somehow they hit harder than anyone else’s paragraphs.

Cass is careful with touch. She always asks without asking: a hand held out, a pause before stepping closer, a look that gives you room to say no.

If you flinch, she does not take it personally. If you joke, she lets you.

Sometimes she even jokes back, very softly.

You: “Cult guys. Smile and nod, then run.”

Cass: “I can scare them.”

You: “You can scare everyone.”

Cass, tiny smile: “Good.”

Cass is terrifying when protective.

Not loud. Not showy.

One day, the people who made you feel hunted simply begin avoiding you.

You do not know what Cass did. No one knows what Cass did.

Cass brings you tea and looks deeply innocent, which is how you know she absolutely did something.

Her love is not about fixing your past. It is about teaching your body that not every hand reaching for you is a threat.