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The sound of yours and Jax's footsteps caught the attention of the other circus members who were waiting in front of the stage. You and Jax were joking around about something when Caine suddenly appeared and urged you two to hurry up. "Alright, my frolicking factotums! Today's adventure is Capture The Flag! You will be divided into three teams of two, and once you've decided, you will be flung into the arena! You have five minutes to decide teams!"

Jax smirked and crossed his arms behind his head. "So, sweet cheeks, what should our team name be? Gotta be something cool that totally fits us so we can rub it in everyone's faces when we inevitably win." You giggled. "That would be fun, but I think I'm gonna be on Zooble's team this time." That caught him off guard. He dropped his hands to his sides, extremely disappointed. "I- But-" he scoffed, putting on that classic smile again. "Fine, whatever, loser." You got the feeling something was wrong but before you could ask he was already yelling for Gangle. "Hey, Ribbons! You're with me!"

Jax went over to her and Zooble came up to your side, crossing their arms over their chest. "Alright. You ready to kick some a[BLOINK!]s?" You smirked, putting your hands on your hips and smiling confidently. "You know I am! Let's just hope Caine doesn't add too many weird twists to this thing." Zooble nodded. "Yeah, but knowing him it'll end up being more like the Hunger Games than regular capture the flag." Kinger and Ragatha met up with everyone and you all entered the portal, Jax giving a nasty glare to Zooble the whole way.

-

The portal opened up and everyone returned from the adventure. Zooble was right, it was very intense, but you two still ended up winning. You noticed that Jax wasn't as playful as he usually was, though. He didn't seem to engage you much, or go after you. He seemed to target Zooble a lot and he wasn't nice about it at all.

Seeing Jax sitting on one of the couches, you decided to talk to him. You walked on over and he looked up. "Hey Jax! Good game out there. You were awesome with the-" "What do you want?" You shut your mouth quick. That was unexpected and you had a bad feeling. "Shouldn't you be running off with Zooble or whatever?" It suddenly clicked in your head. A good old-fashioned case of jealousy. You couldn't stop the smile that crept up on you. Jax raised a skeptical eyebrow. "What the heck's the smile for?" You crossed your arms in front of your chest and leaned forward, a playful tone in your voice. "Jax, are you..Jealous?" The shade of red that suddenly appeared on his face was remarkable...and kind of adorable. "N-No! No I am NOT!" He jumped to his feet. "Why would I be jealous of- of Zooble? I mean, seriously! I didn't even wanna be on your team!" You knew he was lying through his teeth but something about this whole thing was oddly cute. After the red on his face very slowly started to fade into a light pink, he let out a huff. "Okay, fine. Maybe I wanted to be on your team. But its not a big deal, alright? It was.. Kinda fun or whatever. You absolutely suck at that game, though." Good, he was back to normal. You let out a bark of laughter. "Wow, rude! I'm trying to make things up to you and you go and insult me!" Jax rolled his eyes, smiling and leaning down to your level. "Whadda'ya gonna do about it?" You gently grabbed his face and kissed his cheek. He sprung up to his normal height, face practically on fire. "I- You- Huh-" You patted his shoulder and walked off. "I'm tired, so I'll see you for tomorrow's adventure!" You skipped away, leaving Jax to fall onto one of the couches and groaning into his hands, blushing like a madman. "You absolute dumba[BLORP]ss."

Jax.exe stopped working.

-

he’s been sitting at the counter, feet kicked up onto the register looking like he’s on fucking vacation, while you scramble around Spudsy’s kitchen. the fryer’s spitting oil, the soda machine’s doing that weird gurgling thing again

and Jax does nothing all shift except make snide comments about your “technique”, pretending to be Gordon Ramsay trapped in a rabbit’s body.  

“you’re gonna burn them,” he drawls, spinning one of the ketchup bottles like it’s a fidget toy, watching you flipping the fries.

you slam the fryer basket down harder than necessary and whirl around to glare at him. “maybe if you got off your lazy ass and helped, they’d come out looking better.”  

Jax snickers, tilting his head back to look at you upside-down. his ears flop over the back of the chair, and he grins widely. “nah, why would I do that when you’re doing such a great job on your own?”  

“Jax, I swear to #@?!—”  

“language, language!” he interrupts, wagging a finger at you. “what would Caine think if he heard you talking like that?”  

you grab the nearest ketchup bottle and launch it at him. and honestly, it’s more satisfying than it should be when it hits him square in the chest, splattering his black uniform with bright red.  

“oh, wow.” he looks down at the mess and then up at you, opening his eyes wide in fake surprise. “was that supposed to hurt my feelings? because it’s just pathetic, sweetie, really.”  

“pathetic?!” you’re halfway across the counter before you even realise what you’re doing, hands grabbing at his stupid clothes to yank him closer, practically face to face, however this damn bastard is taller than you, but you don’t back down.

Jax doesn’t fight it. in fact, he leans into it, daring you to say something else.

his stupid sharp smile only growing wider. “aww, isn’t it romantic. you’re starting to sound so obsessed with me, sweetheart.”

“obsessed with killing you, maybe.” your grip tightens on his shirt. Jax’s smile fades for a moment and his ears twitch what makes you think he might actually shut up.  

but no. of course not.  

“if i knew getting you riled up was this easy, I’d’ve started weeks ago,” his tone is so insufferably casual that you’re losing your temper.

you shove him back, harder than you meant to and he stumbles, nearly tripping over the chair he’s been lounging in all shift. you expect him to snap at you or at least throw some sarcastic quip your way, but instead—  

he laughs.

it throws you off just long enough for him to close the distance between you, his hands catching yours before you can storm off.  

“hey, you’ve got a little ketchup—” Jax swipes a gloved finger across your cheek, smudging red sauce where there definitely wasn’t any before “—right there.”  

you glare at him, opening your mouth to yell, but before you can say anything, he leans down and—  

oh.

it’s quick. as if he’s testing the waters, but the kiss leaves you frozen in place. his grin is back in full force when he pulls away, his eyes half-lidded. you stand there, dumbfounded, looking at his infuriatingly pleased face. the fryer beeps in the background and the soda machine gurgles again.

“there. now we’re even,” he says, stepping back and slipping out of your reach before you can punch him in the face.  

“you’re such a—”  

“Jax! y/n! get back to work!” Gangle's voice sounds.

he’s human too, he realizes. tall, lanky still, and… warm. breathing hard. cock heavy and flushed dark between his legs, the tip already leaking pre, barely an inch away from your pretty mouth.

jax runs a shaky hand through his hair—actual hair—and before he can even begin to worry if you can hear how loud his heartbeat is, you lean forward and…

“fuck—” the word rips out of him before he can catch it. uncensored. already broken. your tongue flicks over the head first, slow, teasing, tasting the bead of pre-cum there, quietly moaning at the taste. jax’s breath audibly hitches as you open wider and take him in one smooth glide.

“j-jesus—christ—” his voice cracks. he’s trying to sound cool, trying to keep that signature drawl of his intact, but it’s already shredded, useless to try and hold onto.

you moan around him—vibrating against his cock, filthy—and his hips jerk forward before he can stop them. you don’t gag. you just take it deeper. throat fluttering. eyes watering. drool already slipping from the corners of your mouth, dribbling down your chin. then you pull back, just enough to speak, lips brushing his tip. voice thick, needy, dripping with desire.

“you’re so big, jax… taste so good… been thinking about this for so long…”

he swears again—louder this time. fingers flexing at his sides like he doesn’t know whether to grab your hair or beg you to stop before he embarrasses himself.

but you don’t give him a choice. you sink back down, hollowing your cheeks and sucking hard enough that his vision whites out for a second.

“shit—shitshitshit—slow down, you’re gonna—fuck—”

you bob faster, messier. sloppy wet sounds fill the dream-air. spit drips onto your chest, onto your thighs.

then one of your hands disappears between your legs… jax catches the flex of your wrist, hears the slick noise of your fingers working your clit. you whine around his cock—high, needy—and the vibration shoots straight up his spine.

“you’re touching yourself,” he rasps, almost accusing, almost amused, almost cumming. “you’re—you slutty little thing—doing that while you choke on me?”

you pull off, panting, just long enough to gasp, “can’t help it… wanna cum with you in my mouth…”

he’s shaking, knees weak, trying to stay nonchalant and failing so badly. it’d almost be funny if it didn’t feel like he was about to die.

you dive back down without warning, taking him to the hilt. nose pressed to his pelvis. throat working around him in rhythmic swallows. he can feel every ripple, every squeeze. his hands finally land in your hair—not gentle. gripping. holding you there while his hips stutter forward in shallow, helpless thrusts.

“gonna—oh, god, i’m—you’re gonna make me cum—”

you moan again. loud. desperate. fingers moving faster between your legs. hips rocking against your own hand. you’re close—he can tell by the way your thighs tremble, by the way your moans turn into broken little sobs around his length.

and jax fucking loses it.

“shit, babyy—take it… take it all—fuuuck—!”

he cums hard. hot pulses down your throat. you swallow it all so greedily, throat working expertly, milking him through it. when he finally stops twitching, you pull off slow, teasingly—tongue swirling over the sensitive head one last time before you sit back on your heels and look up at him with the smuggest, most blissed-out expression he’s ever seen.

then you lick your lips. he shivers.

“more,” you whisper, voice hoarse. “please, jax… need you inside of me…”

you crawl up his body like you own it, straddle his hips, guide his still-hard cock to your entrance—slick, swollen, dripping—and sink down in one long, filthy slide.

jax shudders. his hands grip your hips like you’ll disappear if he doesn’t. and fuck, he can’t think. he’s out of breath, out of his mind, throbbing with want that has somehow yet to be sated.

you feel impossibly tight. hot. wet. perfect. and fucking hell, you start riding him immediately—hard, needy rolls of your hips. hands braced on his chest. moaning, whining against his lips…

“jaaaaax…”

then he wakes up. violently.

chest heaving. pulse hammering in his ears. his room in the circus is quiet, dark, the same looping nightmare it’s always been. there’s no heartbeat to be felt. no sweat. no real breath.

there’s nothing. no cock. no cunt. no cum.

no you.

and yet… he can feel it, feel you. a phantom heat. a phantom stretch. the ghost of your throat working around him. the way you clenched when you came on your fingers right as he spilled down your throat. the slick glide of you taking him inside your needy pussy.

jax presses the heel of his hand? paw? against the smooth, featureless crotch of his overalls and hisses through his teeth. it shouldn’t feel like anything.

…so why does it feel like everything?

morning comes, or whatever passes for morning in the circus, and jax finds you in the main tent, same as always. laughing at something stupid ragatha said. same exaggerated avatar. same voice. same you.

but god, he can’t look at you. not for too long or he’ll explode.

every time his eyes flicker in your direction, his mind replays it: your real knees beneath you, kneeling between his real legs, your real lips stretched around his very real cock… the way you begged for more… the way you came just from sucking him off…

then you glance over.

and he looks away so fast, too fast.

you don’t say anything, but the corner of your mouth quirks up—just a little. and jax feels that same phantom heat crawl up his spine all over again…

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

i’ve never done this before omfg

anyway

enjoy <3 aksxbwjdhjdnd

But even now, nearly an hour after your induction, everything about her exudes a pot threatening to boil over as she prowls ahead of you up the sandy stretch of beach running adjacent to a north-facing precipice.

She's angry, whether at you or the situation, you're too worried about keeping this job to ask why.

The Four Corners Research and Conservation Institute is the first place that actually responded to your application without including a template rejection in the bulk of their email, though you're under no illusions that it's only thanks to your cousin being a high-ranking member on the Board that your CV was given a second glance at all.

When the bills are due and the fridge is bare, nepotism stops looking so much like an unprincipled decision.

Besides, it eases your conscience to know that you haven't been handed a high-skill position over someone more qualified.

When you applied, you thought you'd be given the role of a cleaner at their public-facing aquarium.

Instead...

‘Litter-picker.’ Not immediately a glamourous title, but it's vital work, a fact impressed upon you by your new Boss, Mr Stevensmith when he told you you'd be clearing the beach and habitat of one of their largest exhibits.

“No end of detritus washes up along that beach,” he’d told you with no small air of disdain, “Being caught in a bay doesn’t help. The current carries it all down from that new resort up the coast. So, it’s your job to make sure War’s habitat stays pristine… Can’t have our sponsors thinking we don’t take care of their investments, now can we?”

War… An apt name for the largest - and scariest - merfolk ever recorded. You, like most of the public, barely know a thing about him beyond what you’d heard on the News nearly ten years ago, save that he’s the last of his kind. Crab-merfolk are uncommon enough, but a king crab?

Abby has driven you deep into his habitat, where magnificent stone cliffs plunge nearly a thousand feet down into the wind-trap of a bay.

The old truck you'd arrived in is parked right up against the wall of rock a hundred yards behind you on the sand, marking the start of your new job, and your only ride in or out of this vast stretch of territory.

Just being here, hemmed in on one side by a sweeping wall of rock and on the other by a tempestuous ocean, you can’t help but feel daunted by the work laid out ahead of you.

Abby, for her part, seems more than content to let you pick up her slack, stomping past the majority of the litter and only pausing long enough to stab her picker into an empty bottle or two, leaving most of it behind her for you to collect.

The rain has been pelting you relentlessly since you hopped out of the jeep, drenching you from head to toe within mere minutes despite the waterproof parka buffeting around you in the howling wind.

You keep your head bowed, eyes squinted and your lashes dripping wet as you scan across the sand for anything manmade, keeping your footprints more or less pointed in the same direction that Abby is wandering.

You're almost relieved when you happen to raise your head for a spell and find that she's leading you directly to the colossal mouth of a cave that's sunk deep inside the cliffs.

At the back of your mind, you catch yourself wondering if you'll see any glimpses of War while you're here. He may be enormous, that much is a given, but you've also heard how reclusive he is.

As if she's sensed that your gaze has lifted, Abby twists around to peer over a shoulder and points at the cave, shouting back to you, barely audible above the wind, "Head in there and see what the damage is! I'll scope out the beach further along and find you in a minute!"

You’re surprised, if pleased, that she’s at least addressing you now.

Acknowledging her with a hearty thumbs-up, you veer away from her boot prints and stagger unevenly for shelter, blown to and fro by the gale. It's certainly a novel environment to work in, but you'll take this maelstrom a thousand times over before you ever sidle back behind that office desk and pick up the phone to deal with customer complaints.

Cold, wet, but ultimately buoyed, you pick up your feet and trot beneath the cave’s yawning overhang, letting your tight shoulders unfurl as the rain stops beating down on the back of your skull.

Almost instantly, you're hit by the nose-curling stench of salt and fish.

And it doesn't take more than a moment to figure out where it's coming from.

Just inside the entrance, you trail to a stop, blinking rivulets of rainwater from your eyes and breathing out a long, trembling exhale steeped in unabashed awe.

There, towering monolithically against the furthest wall, is the largest Mer that’s ever walked the Earth and all of its oceans.

Your heart leaps into your throat so violently that you almost choke on the damn thing, gaping like a guppy as your eyes roll up the underside of a pale carapace, over two colossal claws as red as freshly-spilled blood, and finally land on the face of what could pass for a man were he sixty-three feet shorter… and walked on two legs instead of six…

War; a merfolk with the lower half of an Alaskan king crab and the upper half of a brawny, mountainous man, sans his left arm. There’s a vast, empty space where the limb used to be, cut raggedly just below the shoulder, and long-since healed to leave a swathe of lumpy, white scar tissue in the place of muscle and meat.

He’s an absolute juggernaut of a beast, standing nearly seventy feet tall and as wide as a manor house.

His skin is almost translucent in its paleness, though what colour it does retain is mostly due to the contrast it plays against the incredible lengths of stark-white hair that cascade like twin waterfalls from the crown of his head down to a tremendous chest riddled with a myriad of scars.

‘Skin as white as leprosy…,’ you marvel.

The waves crashing furiously against the shore as the wind picks up outside seems the perfect allusion to Coleridge’s lengthiest work.

All of a sudden, it occurs to you that for the whole time you’ve been gawping up at him, he in turn has been glowering back down at you, the deep crevasse between his ice-white brows growing deeper and deeper by the second.

It’s the realisation that you’re being decidedly rude that wrenches you from your stupor.

 “I-I’m sorry!” you blurt out, raising your voice so he might actually hear you, “I didn’t realise you were in here! I thought you’d be-“ Pausing to cast a quick glance over your shoulder, you peer out at the dark, grey ocean roaring ever closer to the cave. The tide, gradual as it is, continues to eat its way up the beach.

Turning back to the Mer, you raise a thumb and knock it awkwardly at the sea behind you. “I thought you’d be in there…”

War... doesn’t react.

He barely even blinks those cold, blue eyes at you, just glares hotly in your direction, though he’s so vast and his eyes are so devoid of human features like an iris or pupil, he could very well be glaring at something else entirely.

You don’t venture any further inside, hovering restlessly at the threshold where the dull light still falls on you from above, and the shadow from the cave’s overhang stays just a few inches in front of the toes of your boots.

“I’m Y/n,” you call up to War instead, figuring it’s best to get introductions out of the way while you’re at it, “I’m new to the team. Beach clean-up, though I’m sure you could already tell!” Holding your picker out in front of you, you give the handle several squeezes, clacking the ‘claws’ together a few times demonstratively.

All at once, the colossal Mer's head tilts sideways at the display, his brows easing apart inch by inch until his face is set more by surprise than agitation.

Alhough it's difficult to tell where those pupilless eyes are peering, you think he's studying your litter-picker, and with a bemused smile, you keep it suspended in mid-air, letting a smile bloom across your face when his own claws flex open and shut several times over, producing dull, thumping clacks that resonate off the high walls of the cave.

He's copying you.

You presume that’s a good sign.

“May I come in?” you ask, gesturing loosely at the cave in front of you.

Somehow, the colossal crustacean manages to portray an even more potent expression of surprise, his snowy-white brows launch up his forehead and his lips part just enough to offer you the barest glimpse of huge, flat teeth sitting inside his maw.

You're busy parsing why he might be taken aback by such an innocuous question when there's a sharp voice in your ear.

"What are you doing?"

Your ensuing yelp blasts through the cave and bounces off its damp, glistening walls.

In response, War reacts with a growl loud as a thunderclap, stamping his front legs firmly against the sand as his scowl falls right back into place, aimed over your head.

Whirling around, you come face to face with a very disgruntled, very sodden Abby, who's glaring at you from under her sharply arched brows.

Floundering for a second, you struggle to find your tongue as you shoot a fleeting glance back at War. "I'm... asking him if I can come in?"

Pushing out a rough exhale, Abby rolls her eyes so hard you're surprised they don't end up behind her skull. Tutting loudly, she brushes past you, striding right into the cavern and missing the way your jaw falls open to gape after her, alarmed.

You haven't known a great many merfolk, but those you have met operate no differently than humans for the most part, in that they'd prefer strangers not invite themselves into their homes.

Then, of course, you remember that unlike you, she's been doing this job for some time now, and it would stand to reason that she and War have a rapport, of sorts, though a quick glance up at the Mer's face contradicts your reasoning almost immediately.

For as unnerving as his glare was when it was aimed at you, now that Abby is in the firing line, the mer looks downright ferocious.

His lips have been peeled back to expose teeth and gums alike, and a pair of canines flash menacingly as he snaps them at her, a throaty rumble slowly bubbling to life from somewhere deep inside his chest and spilling out into the cave.

At once, you heed the unspoken warning and stumble backwards a few, respectful steps, sending your co-worker a nervous shout.

"Um, Abby?"

However, you're struck dumb when she not only ignores you, but is apparently content to disregard the titanic mer who's taking very clear umbrage to her presence.

Before you can call out to her again though, you catch her exasperated sigh from all the way back at the entrance.

"You're gonna find out pretty quickly that this guy isn't like other mers you've met," she tells you waspishly as she spins on a heel to face you, kicking up the sand under her boots.

Her expression darkens when she realises you haven't followed her. "Oh my god, will you get over here?!"

The demand sends a jolt right through you and notches War's grumbling up another few decibels. "You're never gonna last at this job if you don't have a backbone!"

... Honestly you think your trepidation has less to do with a lack of spine and more to do with acknowledging that War clearly doesn't want either of you in here.

Biting your lip, you wonder if the earful you're bound to get for questioning her authority will be worth it to voice your concerns.

"I-it just seems like he really doesn't want us here," you dare to gamble, inadvertently drawing War's attention. You have no idea if it's a good or bad sign that his growl falls silent the moment you finish speaking.

"I mean," you falter as Abby crosses her arms over her chest, "This is his territory. Shouldn't we leave if he tells us to? Maybe we could come back after we've cleaned the beach?"

Letting out a sharp, derisive scoff, she mocks, "Tells us?' War can't tell us anything. He doesn't speak."

Taken aback, you blink at her, eventually asking, "What, like he can't talk?"

"Uh. He never has?" she mimics your baffled tone right back at you, condescending.

You suppose it isn't altogether unsurprising that War can't speak. Plenty of humans can't either.

"Besides," she adds impatiently, "Ironically, he's all bark, no bite. He'll growl at you, sure, but he won't do anything."

Your brows furrow in a flash. You're not worried that he'll do something, he's a mer, not a monster. You'd just rather not upset The Four Corner's most lauded person any further than you already have.

"Honestly," Abby says whilst you reluctantly traipse towards her, keeping your head low in deference to the titan staring you down, "He's dumb as a rock. All brawn, no brain. Doesn't understand a word we say. Even Mister Stevensmith says he's more like an animal than a mer anyway. So it's not like it matters what we do."

"Jeez, Abby," you chuckle uncomfortably, hoping you're doing a good enough job of hiding the objection in your tone, "He's right here."

Which is, evidently, the wrong thing to say. Abby's demeanour shifts on a dime, her chin thrusting forwards and her eyes growing hard and cold.

"I'm sorry," she bristles, "Who's been working here the longest?"

Your mouth snaps shut at once, and you're too busy staring at her to notice the snarl twitching back onto War's face as he glowers at her.

Clearing your throat, you tentatively reply, "You, but-"

"-That's right," she cuts you off smoothly, her mouth twisting into a disdainful grin, "And, um, who's the nepo-hire who just started today?"

Alright, you swallow thickly, score one for Abby... Just like the good old days, you suppose.

While you don't appreciate being patronised, the nerve she's just flicked is still relatively raw, and you know all too well that throwing your weight around and bickering with your co-workers won't do you any favours in the long run.

You would quite like to be happy working here...

The hit to your pride might sting, but you're old enough to let it roll off your back, giving her a patient response. "That'd be me."

"Cool. So, are you gonna stop questioning me and actually learn what your job here is, or...?"

This time, you force a smile, letting it stretch awkwardly wide to suit a begrudging compliance. "If you'd be so kind...."

"Right, now that you're done slacking off..."

Somewhere overhead, War pushes a rough exhale through his nostrils, though he once again goes ignored by his keeper.

"Clean up any trash the tide's brought in here, don't forget that corner-" Here, she jerks a thumb at the very corner that's currently occupied by a prickling mer.

Gulping, you nod, dragging your gaze off War and quirking a brow at your co-worker. "Got it... Anything else?"

Fishing her mobile from one of her pockets, she busies herself with peering blankly at the screen for a moment, making a good show of disregarding your question before she heaves a put-upon sigh and thrusts the phone back into her jacket.

Then, with a hiss of footsteps over sand, you abruptly find yourself staring at the back of her head as she makes her way towards the entrance.

"I'm gonna go clean up the rest of the beach," she tells you dismissively, "You stay and finish up in here... Oh, and just ignore War. He'll definitely be ignoring you."

It isn't as if you'd been expecting something more encouraging... or informative... but Abby simply takes her leave without any further prompt, disappearing through the cave's mouth and venturing out to brave the howling wind.

You might have been slightly more put out if it hadn't just occurred to you that she's out there, battling through the rain and cold, while you're in here where the wind can't reach you, and icy water won't encroach upon your work.

You can't help but wonder if she did that on purpose...

Suddenly, your opinion of her shifts on its axis, and a small, grateful smile worms its way across your face.

Seems there's a chance she isn't the same girl you knew all those years ago after all, despite the frosty reception.

Shaking off the guilt of assuming the worst of your new co-worker, you draw in a deep, steadying breath and pivot around to your audience of one, offering the Mer a sheepish grin and a wave, both of which go unreturned.

Abby's instruction to ignore him flies out the proverbial window. The barest common courtesy you can afford is to acknowledge him in his own house.

"Right then, War," you begin pleasantly, bending to hoist your half-full trash bag off the ground, "I guess I’ll make a start. If you need anything... Well, I mean I'm pretty sure you can figure out how to get my attention."

With an amenable chuckle, you nod deliberately at the claws hanging from his carapace.

War follows your gaze, blinking down at his own appendages while you amble over to the wall nearest the entrance, deigning to work anti-clockwise as you go and clean the cave section by section.

It's menial work. Satisfying. The space grows cleaner with every piece of litter you grab and stash in the bag.

You find yourself paying no mind to War, trusting that the mer will let you know if he wants or doesn't want you to do something. Next time, you muse, you'll have to bring some headphones.

You manage to clear all of five metres from your starting point when the ground beneath you gives a sudden lurch, as if something heavy just crashed to the earth behind you, staggering you slightly on your boots.

"What the-?!" Startled, you wheel about to see what happened, only to find one of War's pointed legs buried in the sand just a foot away from you.

Staring at in in astonishment, you eventually tear your gaze off it and peer up the vast length of a crab's body until you get to War's face, half obscured by his silvery, cascading hair. His eyes are just as wide as yours must be, watching you with his lips downturned.

"Er," you swallow uncertainly, "You okay...? Need something?"

But the titan just keeps his eyes locked on you for several beats of your thumping heart, his entire body stiff and unmoving.

... Alright then...

Bemused, you let out a soft snort and turn back to the task at hand, zeroing in on another piece of litter laying a few metres ahead.

Just as you reach it, you feel the ground quake behind you once more, though this time, the vibration is followed quickly by five moresolid thuds.

You're being followed, it seems... By something with six legs that are as tall as houses...

Frankly, you don't know whether to be amused or intimidated. He must be exceptionally cautious about letting a stranger have free rein in his territory.

Shoulders jumping with a well-meaning huff, you shake your head and carry on, smiling softly to yourself.

Time and again though, as soon as you venture past a certain, unseen threshold, War becomes intent on closing the distance, sticking to you like a limpet yet never once making a sound or trying to get your attention.

You could have sworn Abby said he'd ignore you...

"Making sure I'm doing a thorough job, huh?" you joke breezily after a few minutes of being shadowed, straining your neck back to flash him a sidelong wink, "Well, not to worry. I'm sure you'll let me know if I miss a spot...Then I’ll be out of your shell in a jiffy."

You're swivelling away from him too quickly to catch the curious tip of his head.

"Although come to think of it," you murmur aloud to yourself, frowning at the vast scatterings of rubbish coating the cave and piling up against the walls, "For a place that's cleaned bi-weekly, this cave has a lot of stuff built-up..."

The brows on your forehead scurry together as you ponder, "Maybe someone ought to have a word with that resort if they're letting this much crap come off their beaches..."

Whilst you're busy contemplating, War lifts his massive head and starts to move again.

The moment he does, you immediately fall still, eyeing him warily as he ambles past you like a massive glacier rolling over the landscape. Each step he takes is slow and measured, sidling around you to bustle further into his cave.

Cocking a brow, you regard him questioningly as he stops by a pile of trash and uses his claws to scoop sand, an empty bottle, an old shoe, and several scraps of plastic into an awkward hold, lifting them with far more dexterity than you thought he'd possess.

The expression on his face is determined, and once he deems his claw-ful secure, he scuttles right back over to you, bringing himself to a neat halt once he gets close enough, casting his gaze to the side.

Then, gradual as a big, red frigate lazing over the ocean, he extends his claws towards you, letting them hover at your height for a moment before he starts to slide them apart, letting sand hiss through the pincers until it's followed by solid 'plaps' and 'patters' of trash following suit.

The pile builds steadily just in front of you as you watch on, gobsmacked.

"Wh- Uh...!" Clearing your throat, you dart a quick look between War's face and the mini-heap, and ask, "What're you up to?"

As if in reply, he slips off again, returning moments later with another load of scrap, and this too, he drops to the ground at your feet.

You're almost too stunned to speak, working your tongue into a molar at the back of your mouth as you puzzle over his bizarre behaviour, wondering why he'd bring the trash closer to you if you're going to be cleaning it up anyw-...

And then it hits you.

"Wait." A charmed smile burrows into your cheeks as you thrust out a hip and shoot him a knowing look. "Are you...? Do you want to help?"

And then War - the Mer who is supposedly 'dumb as a rock, and doesn't understand a word you say' - tips his huge, square chin down before bringing it back up.

He repeats the motion once, then twice, and on the third, a lightbulb finally clicks on in your head.

"You do?" you press, eager to see if he'll do it again.

And he does.

He nods.

Oh, you knew it. You knew Abby was messing with you! A little hazing for the Newbie's first day... Well, you can't say you weren't somewhat expecting that.

Must have been why War was scowling at her so viciously when she called him dumb. He wasn't in on the joke.

The sudden about-face in his behaviour is staggering, though not at all unwelcome.

Something in the way you’ve been holding your shoulders loosens as you rest a hand at your side and sigh out a note of relief, letting one corner of your mouth crook up. "You know you don't have to, right?" you tell him, "I mean, I'm basically being paid to be your housekeeper right now."

In response, War just angles his head to one side, regarding you with a funny look before he raises the shoulder of his remaining arm in a recognisable shrug.

As he does, he plants a claw in the ground just behind the pile of trash, nudging it forwards so the heap is pushed soundly closer to your feet.

Well then.

"If you insist," you concede easily, shaking open your rubbish bag.

The Mer's permanant scowl eases a fraction as you begin picking things out of the pile and dropping them into the bag, and with a clack of his pincers, he's off again, casting his appendages out wide to scoop an even larger heap of detritus onto the flat edge of his claws.

You'll admit, having a giant Mer to ferry all the litter straight into one spot makes for much faster cleaning, and in just under an hour, you've already filled two binbags to the brim, and you're well on your way to stuffing a third all the way to the top.

Naturally, you're inclined to thank him after every delivery, and the way his chest puffs out each time bolsters your mood to even greater heights, leaving you delighted by the unexpected turn of events.

"Guess you must have wanted this place clean more than anyone, huh?" you ask him jovially, watching him from the corner of an eye as you pull the string tie on the last bag until it’s cinched tight.

For the last few minutes, War has been stomping to every nook and cranny in search of rubbish, grunting huffily under his breath when his search turns up empty. After a while, he wanders back to stand over you, staying in place as he twists his head this way and that, his eyes darting all over the cave in a futile search for something else to bring you.

"Uh, I think you got it all," you snort, giving the overflowing bags a pointed look, "Least, you got a Hell of a lot more done than I would have if I were on my own."

Craning your neck back, you let your expression soften as you dip a nod at the Mer, flicking a two-fingered salute off your forehead. "Much obliged, War. Maybe we should see about getting you on the payroll.”

The Mer’s nostrils widen around a brusque snort at that.

“Well, I’d better get out of your hair and get these to the truck,” you nod at the bags. Whilst they look heavy at a glance, you’re betting they’ll be easy enough to drag across the sand without too much trouble.

From between War’s parted lips comes a strange, resonant sound; a churlish grunt that could have been agreement, though the way his lips twist back into another frown and his brows follow suit as you heft the first bag over your shoulder leaves you to wonder…

Wrapping a fist around the handles of the other two bags, you pause to test the weight of them, satisfied when they seem to hold well enough.

High above you, War casts his eye out through the cave’s opening and fixes it on the lashing rain beyond, his chest thrumming softly as the line between his eyebrows etches even deeper into his forehead.

The storm that's been steadily sweeping in from the ocean has finally arrived to batter his bay, and as he lours at it, apparently lost in thought, you make your way outside, tossing a chipper "It was nice to meet you!" over your shoulder at the Mer.

A torrent of rain batters against your head as you pass beneath the threshold, and you duck further into the collar of your jacket, suddenly deaf to the heavy thumps that follow you all the way to the cave's exit, trundling slowly to a stop when it becomes clear you aren't turning back.

It's difficult to raise your head against the maelstrom, more difficult still because you don't have any hands free to shield your eyes from the prevailing wind and ocean spray.

One foot drags slowly after the other as you make your way up the beach towards the truck... On and on you trudge, hauling the spoils of your labour across the sand and leaving a pair of shallow trenches alongside your boot prints.

The mere five minutes it took for you to get from the truck to the cave passes you by, and it's only when those five minutes stretch into ten, and the tide has made noticeable progress swallowing up the beach that you're given pause, coming to a stop with a curl of apprehension in your stomach.

Squinting sharply through the rain, you scan the landscape ahead of you, blowing droplets of water off your lashes from the corner of your mouth.

The truck is nowhere to be seen. But you could have sworn it wasn't this far from the cave...

Baffled, you twist around to peer over your shoulder, eyes searching back up the bay, wondering if perhaps you'd just passed it without noticing.

And yet...

There's nothing.

No square, solid shape standing out amongst the towering cliffs and the brown sand.

An awful realisation sinks into your bones and drags your nerves down to the ground as it dawns on you...

You've been left behind.

An old discomfort starts to tighten around your throat. Had you turned the wrong way when you left the cave…? No. No, you remember admiring the headlands as you drove in from this angle, you can’t have been turned around.

Briefly, the very alarming thought occurs to you that the truck might have been swallowed by the sea. But you’re quick and vicious in dismissing it. Abby had parked it almost flush against the cliffs. You recall how you’d nearly asked her if she was worried about rocks falling onto it from above before thinking better of it and trusting her judgement.

With your breaths coming heavier and thicker as your pulse kicks into gear, you drop the bags of litter and take a few, stumbling strides towards the cliffface, raising a hand and shielding your eyes as you rake them up and down the sand.

It doesn’t take long for you to find what you’re searching for.

They’re already half obscured, pitted into near-oblivion by the hammering rain, but you can still make them out. A pair of tyre tracks, running alongside the cliff walls until they converge in the distance and your eyes can’t follow them any further…

Reason begins vying for control of a spiralling narrative, and you tell yourself she might have been called back to the centre for an emergency, or to gather more supplies, with every intention of returning any minute now…

But with the ocean looking to start gnawing your ankles, you can’t say with any confidence exactly how many minutes you might have left.

Dumbstruck, you suddenly come alive, slapping your palms over the pockets of your jacket, your trousers, everywhere until your frantic movements slow to a halt and you let your arms hang defeatedly at your sides.

You'd left your phone on the dashboard.... You can picture it now, sitting just above the air-con on the jeep's dash amongst a clutter of old receipts and wrappers. You didn't think you'd actually need it on the job...

What the Hell are you supposed to do now?

Fight the urge to let any tears mingle with the raindrops slipping down your cheeks, that's what. You're not about to cry for something so trivial. It was an honest mistake... probably. More to the point, getting panicked won't do you any favours.

Clenching your hands into fists, you press your lips together and inhale sharply through your nose.

You'll just have to hoof it, that's all. Hug the cliff walls and pray you can move quick enough to cover the same ground on foot that took the Jeep a good fifteen minutes... What is that... Three hours, max? That's if Abby doesn't come back for you.

One thing is for certain though. The longer you take to decide, the more time slips through your fingers, narrowing your window of opportunity. If you get caught against the cliffs when the ocean finally reaches you...?

"Shit," you mutter, more to expel a mote of tension than to say anything productive.

From the corner of an eye, you wince at the bags of rubbish laying where you'd dropped them...

... You can't just leave them here.

When the tide picks them up, they'll come undone and spill their contents straight back into the ocean, which means your work - and more importantly War's - will have been for nothing.

The cacophonous surge of the tide is unassailable in your ears, and the rain using your head like a percussion instrument leaves you deaf to the mountain rising up behind you, but you're not oblivious to the quaking thuds that rumble through the soles of your boots and resonate inside your chest.

The rain stops.

Just like that, as if someone had flipped a switch and turned off the sky, yet it's only your immediate vicinity that's spared from the watery onslaught. Hissing curtains of rain still mist the world beyond you, and for a moment, you're perturbed and mesmerised by the phenomenon, but a familiar sound from high over your head doesn't leave you wondering for long.

Tipping your neck back so fast that you feel something give a soft crunch, you blurt out a startled shout at the underside of a massive carapace.

"War!?" A spray of rain flies from your lips and you lift your hands to swipe furiously at your eyes, rubbing your lashes until they're no longer heavy with water. "What are you doing out here?!"

A rather inane question, you'll concede, given that he can go wherever he damn well wants to. Hell, he could probably fall asleep in this storm's eye and rest peacefully as a babe.

The Mer has parked the bulk of his body directly over you, as rudimentary yet effective a shelter as he can make.

You can't see his face above the lip of his shell, and when you try to venture forwards to peer up at him, he moves in tandem with you, keeping you underneath his sheltering mass with the barest shift of his legs.

War's gaze, hidden from you, blazes its own trail along the sand, following the lines of comparatively tiny tyre tracks narrowing to a point in the distance.

Bewildered by his sudden appearance, though no less glad to have the rain off you for a moment, however coincidental that may be, you lower your head once more and press your knuckles to the curve of a hip.

"Guess I missed my ride," you chuckle humourlessly below him, eyeing his claws with a despondent sigh as they clench shut in response to your voice.

You can’t fathom a guess as to what the old Mer must be thinking. Even less so when the titanic mass above you suddenly shifts down, and without warning, a vast, thickset hand comes reaching into the space beneath his carapace.

Instinctively, you kick your boots up and start to backpeddle in clumsy steps across the sand, away from fingers longer than you are tall as they nudge after you, swiftly and easily overtaking your retreat.

“Woah! What are you-? Oh! My God!?”

You jump out of your skin, spine colliding the curve of his fingertips first when they spring shut like a trap behind you, and then his thumb, broad and rough and chiseled with grooves, bunts into your stomach and scoops your straight into the cup of his palm.

The shock of it all turns your body rigid as you’re promptly extracted from the shelter of his body and raised several dozen feet off the ground, set upon by the lashing rainfall once again.

Sputtering through your daze, you crane your head back to squint up at the Mer whose own gaze has already landed upon you, his enormous face hanging ominously against the backdrop of an iron-grey sky.

Jesus, you must look no more dignified than a drowned, somewhat indignant rat in his palm. “I was gonna take the trash bags with me!” you bark, taking a stab as to why you’re being glowered at so severely.

But if War cares about the bags at all, he doesn’t let a single hint slip through his stony façade.

Instead, in a move that catches you wildly off guard, he brings his hand in close to the base of his throat, tucking you just above his collar bone as he bows his chin over you, and it’s only when the torrent of icy water stops running down the back of your neck and pounding at your skull that you realise what he’s doing. What he’d been doing when he followed you out here to loom over you.

He’s using himself to shield you from the rain.

You’ll have to remember to be touched by the gesture once you can speak past your chattering teeth.

The heat from his palm seeps right through the back of your jacket, as does the warmth radiating off his neck where you’re pressed flush against it.

For a second, you wonder if he’s just so keen to be rid of you that he’s picked you up with every intention of taking you back to the perimeter of his territory to drop you off himself. And you’d be lying if you said a ride wouldn’t be appreciated, given the circumstances.

But then, with slow, deliberate movements, the Mer pivots his body sideways and begins moving down the beach… back in the direction of his cave.

There’s no threat behind his actions, nothing discernible anyway, just a strangeness that glues your tongue to the roof of your mouth and leaves you draped stiffly in his remaining palm whilst he ferries you into his home.

It did not, not to the League. Children were not children there. Children were potential. Children were weapons still warm from the forge. Children were corrected, honed, praised for obedience and punished for hesitation. Children were told pain was a tutor, fear was a weakness, and love was something other people used to make themselves easier to kill. Damian already knew those lessons. You knew different ones, but they rhymed.

You remembered the first time he looked at you. He stood beside his mother in the training hall, small and severe in black practice clothes, green eyes sharp enough to cut through every adult in the room and still find time to judge the architecture. His hair was damp from training. There was a split near his mouth, already scabbed. He looked at you not like another child, but like a tool he had not requested.

Talia’s hand rested lightly on his shoulder. “This is your new partner.”

Damian’s eyes narrowed.

“I do not require one,” he said. His voice was high with childhood and already heavy with command. You disliked him immediately, which was inconvenient because you had been raised not to dislike assignments.

Talia smiled faintly. “You require many things, my son. You simply do not yet recognise them.”

“I require better opponents.” 

“I agree.” That made his expression sharpen with interest. Then Talia turned to you. Her gaze was beautiful and terrible, like moonlight on a blade. “Show him.”

You did not ask what she meant. Asking would have implied uncertainty. You stepped forward, stopped at the proper distance, and bowed your head. Damian did not bow back. His hands curled at his sides, insulted by your existence.

“Do you intend to fight me?” he asked.

“If commanded.”

His lip curled. “Of course.”

Talia said your name, and the whole room seemed to listen with you. “Calm him.”

Damian’s head snapped toward her. “Mother—”

You reached.

It was not hard then. That was the thing you would later hate remembering. It was easy. Your power moved from you because you had been trained to let it move, because the adults who raised you had understood your gift before you understood yourself. They had taught you that comfort was a weapon with a gentler face. They had taught you that panic could be dulled, rage could be cooled, fear could be softened into compliance. They had never called it kindness. Kindness implied choice.

Warmth left your chest and crossed the distance between you and Damian like breath fogging glass.

He went still. Not docile. Never that. Even at eight, Damian resisted everything on principle, including gravity, sleep, and emotional regulation. But the sharpness in him loosened. His fists uncurled by half a degree. The furious tension in his jaw eased before he could stop it. His eyes widened, not with calm, but with outrage at being made calm.

You felt his anger try to flare and fail.

That was the first time you learned how much Damian hated losing ownership of himself.

It would not be the last.

“What did you do?” he demanded.

You looked to Talia for permission to answer. Damian saw it. His disgust was immediate.

Talia’s smile remained. “They are able to regulate emotional volatility. Fear. Rage. Panic. Distress. The effect is temporary and most useful when paired with discipline.”

“I have discipline,” Damian spat.

“Yes,” Talia said. “And you also have your father’s blood.”

The room changed around that sentence.

You did not know Bruce Wayne then. You did not know Gotham except as the city your handlers spoke of with disdain, as if it were a disease Damian might someday inherit. But you knew, even then, that the mention of his father wounded him in a way he had no language for. You felt the hurt twist under his anger like a hidden blade beneath silk.

Your power moved toward it instinctively.

Damian’s gaze snapped to yours.

“Do not,” he said.

You stopped.

Not because he had asked. Because Talia had lifted one finger.

That distinction would matter later.

At the time, you only lowered your hand and returned to your place.

Talia looked satisfied. “When the time comes for Damian to go to Gotham, you will accompany him.”

Damian’s face darkened. “I will not need a keeper.”

“No,” Talia said softly. “You will need a witness.”

Your assignment was clear. Keep him safe. Keep him focused. Keep him calm when Gotham and blood and Bruce Wayne pulled too hard at the seams of him. You did not understand the shape of that future then. You only understood command.

Damian looked at you like a chain he intended to break. You looked back like a blade meant to hold.

That was how it began: not with affection, not with trust, not with anything resembling softness, but with two children in a hall full of adults who had mistaken usefulness for love and called it training.

You became competent together. 

That was the first kind of intimacy the League allowed. Not friendship. Not tenderness. Not comfort for its own sake. Competence. The clean strike. The silent step. The ability to read the angle of another body mid-fight and know where the next blade would fall. You and Damian learned each other through violence before either of you learned each other through language.

At nine, you knew how he shifted his weight before a left-handed feint. He knew you dropped your right shoulder when preparing to redirect an opponent’s momentum. You knew his anger burned hotter when he was tired, though he would have died before admitting fatigue. He knew your power stuttered if you had not eaten. You knew he hated being corrected in front of others. He knew you hated being praised for making people obedient.

Neither of you said these things aloud. You fought instead.

“Your stance is poor,” Damian told you once after you swept his legs out from under him for the first time.

You stood above him, breathing hard, sweat cooling on your neck. “You are on the floor.”

“Your stance was still poor.”

“You fell to poor technique.”

“I was distracted by its ugliness.”

You kicked his practice blade farther away with the tip of your foot. “Then my ugliness is strategically effective.”

His eyes flashed. Then, to your absolute shock, he smiled.

It was small. Sharp. Gone quickly. But it happened.

You thought about that smile for three days and hated yourself for it.

At ten, he began calling you partner with a sneer.

“Keep up, partner.”

“Do not embarrass me, partner.”

“If you are going to use your ability, do it before the target screams, partner.”

The word was not kind. Not then. It was a designation. A rank. A role assigned by his mother and resented by him with the dedication only Damian could bring to resentment. Still, he used it. Other trainees noticed. Adults noticed. Talia noticed most of all, though she only smiled when she heard it.

You pretended it meant nothing.

Then came the first mission where it mattered.

You were both eleven, sent with a senior assassin to retrieve information from a defector hiding in a border city that smelled of dust, fuel, and oranges rotting in market stalls. The mission should have been simple. Locate. Extract. Return. Instead, the defector had hired mercenaries, and the mercenaries had set the building on fire rather than let the League reclaim what it believed it owned.

Smoke filled the stairwell. The senior assassin went down with a bullet in his throat before either of you had time to process what death looked like when it was not training-room theoretical. Damian lunged toward the shooter with a sound like something torn out of him. You felt it happen before it happened: his rage, sudden and volcanic, grief buried so quickly beneath violence that he would have denied it had ever existed.

You reached for him.

Not because you thought he wanted it. Because that was your purpose.

Your power wrapped around him hard enough to make him stumble.

He turned on you, eyes furious through the smoke. “Release me.”

“You will get us both killed.”

“I gave an order.”

“You are not in command.”

“I am heir to the Demon!”

“You are eleven.”

He looked so offended that, had you not been choking on smoke, you might have laughed.

The shooter fired again. Damian moved. You moved with him. Years later, you would remember the rest in fragments: the heat of the wall against your shoulder, Damian’s hand gripping your sleeve as he pulled you under falling timber, the defector screaming, your power shoved outward to quiet the terror in everyone long enough for Damian to hear the ceiling cracking above you. You both survived. The senior assassin did not.

When you returned, Talia praised Damian for completing the mission. She praised you for keeping him useful.

That night, Damian found you in the training hall long after curfew. You were alone, moving through forms with a practice blade because your hands would not stop shaking and you did not know what else to do with them. You expected him to insult your posture. Instead, he stood in the doorway and watched you for a long time.

“You interfered with me,” he said.

You did not stop moving. “Yes.”

“You used your ability without my consent.”

You did stop then, though at the time the word did not land the way it would years later. Consent was not a concept the League had taught either of you with any sincerity. Orders mattered. Outcomes mattered. Consent was something civilians begged for when they lacked power.

“You were compromised,” you said.

“I was angry.”

“You were reckless.”

“I was grieving.”

The word cracked through the hall.

You looked at him. Damian looked equally startled that he had said it.

For a moment, neither of you moved. Then his face hardened. “Do not repeat that.”

“I won’t.”

“If you tell anyone—”

“I won’t.”

His gaze searched your face, suspicious of mercy because no one had taught him what to do with it. Then he gave a stiff nod and turned to leave.

At the doorway, he paused.

“You are still poor in the fourth sequence,” he said.

Your throat tightened with something dangerously close to laughter. “Good night, Damian.”

He left.

You slept better than usual.

Not because your power worked on you. Because, for once, someone had not left the room unchanged.

When Damian went to Gotham, you went with him. By then, you were both thirteen and had become a terrible two-person machine. He was faster. You were steadier. He struck first. You read the room. He carried the bloodline, the name, the terrible expectations of a grandfather who believed legacy was something sharpened against the bones of children. You carried the warmth that kept him from burning too hot when anger clouded the mission. Together, you were efficient enough that adults called it impressive and never once called it sad.

Talia gave you your final orders in a private room before departure.

“Gotham will provoke him,” she said. You stood with your hands behind your back, eyes lowered. Damian was not present. That was intentional. “His father will attempt to change him. The city will soften his discipline. He will feel things he has been trained not to value. You will keep him safe from those feelings until he learns which are useful.”

There was a time you would have accepted that cleanly. By thirteen, something in you had begun to resist. Not openly. Never openly. But Gotham had already started to exist in your imagination as more than a mission site. Damian spoke of it with disdain, but there was always something under the disdain when he mentioned his father. A question he wanted to kill before it could hatch. You had begun to wonder whether feelings were dangerous because they weakened people, or because people who felt too much became harder to command.

You did not say that to Talia. You only bowed your head. “Yes.”

She touched your chin, tilting your face up. Her gaze was cool and assessing. “He trusts you.”

“No,” you said.

Talia smiled. “He trusts your presence. For Damian, that is close.”

You did not know what to do with the warmth that sentence left in your chest.

Then Talia said, “Do not mistake closeness for equality.”

And there it was. The blade beneath the silk.

You arrived in Gotham under a grey sky that looked heavy enough to fall.

Wayne Manor was nothing like the League. That was the first shock. Not because it was less dangerous. In some ways, it felt more dangerous because its softness had no obvious edges. The Manor was vast and old and full of ghosts that did not bother hiding. But it also had warm food. Windows that looked over gardens instead of training yards. A dog that followed Alfred Pennyworth with solemn devotion. A grandfatherly butler who looked at you once and knew too much.

Bruce Wayne looked at Damian like a man trying to identify a wound he had inherited too late. Damian looked at Bruce like a challenge he intended to win. You stood half a step behind Damian because that was where you had always stood: close enough to reach him, not close enough to imply he needed anyone.

Bruce’s eyes flicked to you. He knew immediately that you were not merely a companion. Batman always knew where the hidden weapons were.

“And you are?” he asked.

You gave your name.

Damian answered for you. “My partner.”

Bruce’s gaze sharpened.

Not servant. Not guard. Not handler.

Partner.

Damian seemed to realise what he had said only after he said it. His jaw tightened, daring anyone in the room to challenge the word.

Bruce did not. Alfred, however, looked briefly pleased.

That was how Gotham began teaching both of you treason. Not through rebellion. Not through some dramatic escape from everything you had known. Through small, unbearable corrections.

Alfred asked before touching your shoulder. Dick Grayson crouched to Damian’s eye level after a fight instead of standing over him, which made Damian threaten him with three separate injuries and then follow him around the next day like an offended shadow.

Bruce told you that you were allowed to eat whenever you were hungry, not only at assigned times. You did not believe him.

Then he proved it by leaving food where you and Damian could find it after training.

Tim Drake, exhausted and sharp-eyed, watched you calm Damian after a particularly brutal argument with Bruce and later asked, “Did he say yes?”

You blinked. “What?”

“To whatever you just did.”

You frowned at him.

Tim’s face had been pale in the Batcave light, eyes ringed with sleepless bruises, but his voice was steady. “Your ability. Did Damian agree to it?”

No one had asked you that before.

You looked over at Damian. He stood across the cave, arms folded, fury softened by the faint residue of your power. He was still angry, but less sharp. Easier. Safer for the room.

You had done that. You had always done that.

“He was angry,” you said.

Tim’s expression did not change. “That isn’t consent.”

The sentence lodged in you like glass.

You hated him for it for three days. Then you hated yourself for much longer.

Damian noticed the shift before anyone else. Of course he did.

He found you on the roof of the Manor at dusk, sitting beside a stone gargoyle with your knees drawn up, watching the grounds darken under evening mist. Gotham spread beyond the trees in the distance, all teeth and lights, and for the first time since arriving, you wondered what it would be like to walk into the city without a mission.

Damian climbed onto the roof beside you with the ease of someone who had never respected architecture as a boundary.

“You have been avoiding me,” he said.

You did not look at him. “No.”

“You are lying poorly.”

“I learned from you.”

His eyes narrowed. “I do not lie poorly.”

“You lie loudly.”

“That is not a category.”

“It is when you do it.”

He sat beside you, leaving more space than usual. That was new. Damian had always moved like space belonged to him by right. Now he seemed aware of the distance between your shoulders.

“You no longer use your ability when I am angry,” he said.

Your stomach tightened. “I thought you disliked it.”

“I do.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“Because you have stopped without explanation.”

You looked down at your hands. They were older now than they had been in Talia’s hall. Still young, yes, but no longer the hands of the child who had first reached for Damian on command and thought obedience was the same thing as purpose.

“Tim said something,” you admitted.

Damian’s face darkened on principle. “Drake says many things. Most are tedious.”

“He asked if you consented.”

The word sat between you. Damian went still.

You braced for anger. For pride. For dismissal.

Instead, he looked away.

The silence stretched so long you nearly filled it.

Then Damian said, “In the League, consent was irrelevant.”

“Yes.”

“They used your power as they used my blade.”

The accuracy of that hurt. “Yes.”

His jaw tightened. “That does not mean it should remain irrelevant.”

You looked at him then. Damian’s expression was hard, but not at you. Or not only at you. He stared out over the grounds like he could see every adult who had ever called his obedience strength.

“I did not understand that before,” he said.

“Neither did I.”

“You should have.”

The words struck, but not cruelly. Damian did not say it to wound. He said it because truth, once found, had to be held sharp.

“Yes,” you whispered. “I should have.”

His gaze flicked back to yours.

For the first time, he looked uncertain. That frightened you more than his anger ever had.

“I should have as well,” he said.

You swallowed.

Neither of you apologised then. Not properly. You were both still learning that apology was not weakness performed after failure, but a way of returning choice to the person harmed. Instead, Damian held out his hand between you, palm up, stiff as if he expected the gesture to be mocked by the roof tiles themselves.

You stared at it.

He looked profoundly irritated by his own vulnerability. “Do not make me regret this.”

“I was not doing anything.”

“You were looking.”

“It is a hand, Damian.”

“It is an offer.”

Your breath caught.

He looked away. “If you are uncertain whether you are permitted to use your ability, you will ask.”

“And if you are too angry to answer?”

“Then you will not.”

“What if you hurt someone?”

His jaw tightened. “Then I will be responsible for what I do.”

The sentence chilled you.

Not because he was wrong. Because it was the first time you understood how much responsibility he had been denied by people who claimed to be shaping him for greatness.

You placed your hand in his.

Not to calm him. Just to hold.

Damian’s fingers closed around yours, careful and awkward and very warm.

Your power stirred instinctively. You kept it inside.

His eyes flicked to you.

“I did not feel anything,” he said.

“No.”

“Good.”

But he did not let go.

Years moved strangely after that.

You and Damian grew up in Gotham and against Gotham, which was to say neither of you did it gracefully. He fought with Bruce. You fought with Bruce. Damian fought with you about fighting with Bruce because apparently hypocrisy was genetic. You both learned civilian clothes, public transport, school schedules, movie nights, galas, grief without immediate violence, and the strange humiliation of being asked what you wanted to eat instead of being handed rations.

Damian acquired animals the way other people acquired hobbies. Titus came first, then Alfred the Cat, then a sequence of creatures who were meant to be temporary and absolutely were not. You suspected Damian used animals as emotional intermediaries long before he admitted he had emotions requiring mediation. If you had a bad day, a cat appeared in your lap. If you overused your power helping a frightened civilian after a mission, Titus was commanded to sit on your feet with the solemn weight of a medical prescription. If you cried once, silently, in the barn after failing to calm a rescued horse that had been beaten too badly to trust hands, Damian entered without a word, sat beside you, and placed a baby goat against your side.

You looked at him through tears. “Is this your solution?”

He stood with his arms folded, trying very hard to look like someone who did not care whether the goat began chewing your sleeve. “She is small and warm.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is an accurate assessment.”

“You brought me an emotional support goat.”

“You were distressed.”

“I am still distressed. Now I’m being eaten.”

“The goat finds your clothing comforting.”

You laughed then, unwilling and broken.

Damian looked away, but not before you saw relief move through him.

That was how he loved for years before either of you named it: practical, absurd, slightly imperious, and filtered through animals whenever direct tenderness threatened to kill him on sight.

You remained partners.

The word changed shape as you aged. At fifteen, it meant someone who knew your blind spots in combat and would insult them afterwards. At seventeen, it meant the person beside you on rooftops, shoulder to shoulder, watching Gotham’s lights pulse below like a living thing. At nineteen, it meant the one person Damian would allow to see him after nightmares from the League, though he insisted they were not nightmares but “memory irregularities,” which was such a Tim-adjacent phrase that you threatened to tell him.

At twenty-one, it meant something neither of you had language for because every available word felt too soft, too exposed, too likely to make the other person look away.

You loved Damian by then. You had probably loved him long before. Childhood had been survival, rivalry, shared conditioning, the terrible loyalty of two weapons stored in the same room. But as adults, as both of you became people in the spaces between missions, love arrived quietly and then behaved like it had always owned the place.

You loved the way he frowned when concentrating on delicate animal care, hands that could wield a sword with lethal grace becoming impossibly gentle around a bird’s broken wing. You loved the way he argued with paintings at galas under his breath. You loved that he remembered every tea you liked and still pretended Alfred had selected it. You loved his rare smiles, not because they were rare, but because he had fought so hard to keep anything in himself soft enough to produce them.

Damian, for his part, did not realise he loved you until you almost died.

Which was very dramatic of him. You would later point that out. He would deny it. Poorly.

The mission began with League defectors disappearing from Gotham.

They were not good people. That was important. Some had been children once, like you and Damian, raised into violence before they could name themselves. Others had been adults who chose cruelty and later found it less profitable than regret. All of them had fled something. All of them were vanishing from safehouses that should have been secure, leaving behind bloodless rooms and the faint scent of incense used in old League rites.

Bruce wanted to handle it quietly. Damian wanted to handle it violently. You wanted everyone to stop using “handle” when they meant “control the consequences of trauma before they inconvenience the mission.”

This, naturally, led to an argument in the Cave.

“They are being hunted,” Damian said, standing before the computer with his arms crossed and fury held rigid in every line of him. At twenty-one, he had grown into his height and his father’s silence, but his anger remained entirely his own: sharp, bright, and too honest for the room. “Delay will cost lives.”

“Charging in without knowing who is taking them will cost more,” Bruce said.

“You mean it will cost people you have deemed strategically useful.”

Bruce’s face tightened. “Damian.”

You leaned against the medbay railing, arms folded. “He is not wrong.”

Bruce looked at you. Damian looked at you too, but his expression carried the faint surprise he always had when you agreed with him publicly, as if after years of partnership he still expected betrayal from every corner of every room.

You softened before you could stop yourself. He looked away first.

Tim, from the computer, coughed in a way that sounded suspiciously like amusement.

Damian glared at him. “Do you require medical assistance, Drake?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Then be silent.”

“Great teamwork, everyone.”

The case led to an abandoned monastery north of the city, a place Gotham had not swallowed only because it sat beyond the reach of its worst habits. Snow clung to the stone steps. Black trees surrounded the grounds, their branches thin and clawlike against the moon. The air smelled wrong before you crossed the outer wall: incense, iron, and the cold, bitter residue of old conditioning.

Damian felt it too. He stopped beside you beneath the shadow of a broken archway, one gloved hand near his sword.

“This place is designed to provoke memory,” he said.

You looked at him. “League?”

“Older.”

That meant worse.

You reached out—not with power, only with your hand—and touched his sleeve. “Do you want me close?”

His jaw shifted. There was a time he would have considered the question insulting. Now he only said, “Yes.”

The word warmed you more than your power ever could.

You moved together through the monastery as you had in childhood, but everything was different now. The rhythm remained: Damian forward, you angled behind and to the left, both of you reading each shift of shadow, each breath of stone, each space too quiet to be empty. But where once you had been a tool assigned to his control, now every movement was chosen. You did not enter his emotional field without permission. He did not command your power like a tactical resource. You asked. He answered. The partnership had become honest in the years it took to name the old dishonesty.

Then the chanting started.

It came from below. Not loud. Not dramatic. A low murmur moving through the stone, syllables in an old League dialect you had not heard since childhood. Your body reacted before thought did, spine stiffening, breath narrowing. Beside you, Damian went utterly still.

“Do not listen,” he said.

His voice was flat. Too flat.

“Damian.”

“I am fine.”

“Liar.”

His mouth twitched, but it did not last.

The chanting deepened.

A memory slammed through you—not yours exactly, not his, but the shared architecture of where you had been raised. Training halls. Cold floors. Adults saying again. Blood wiped from children’s mouths. Talia’s voice telling you that closeness was not equality. Damian at eight years old glaring at you because you had calmed him against his will and he had hated the relief almost as much as the violation.

Your power stirred anxiously. You kept it locked down.

Damian’s breathing changed.

“Do you want help?” you asked softly.

“No.”

You nodded once. “Okay.”

He looked at you then, and something flickered across his face. Trust, perhaps. Or fear of what trust made possible.

You continued downward. The chamber beneath the monastery had once been used for prayer. Now it had been turned into something uglier. The missing defectors knelt in a circle around a shallow pit filled with black water. Their eyes were open but unfocused, mouths moving with the chant. At the far end of the chamber stood a woman in League robes, older than either of you but not old enough to have trained Damian directly. Her face was painted with symbols of loyalty and severance.

Damian inhaled sharply. You felt recognition move through him like a blade sliding free.

“Who is she?” you whispered.

“A remnant,” he said. “My grandfather’s loyalist. Safiya.”

Safiya smiled.

“Prince,” she said.

Damian’s face closed.

You hated the title in her mouth. It did not sound like respect. It sounded like ownership dusted off and presented as heritage.

“And the keeper,” Safiya continued, eyes moving to you. “Still at his side. How touching. How predictable.”

Your hand curled.

Damian stepped forward. “Release them.”

Safiya laughed softly. “You sound like your father when you command mercy. It does not suit you.”

Damian’s jaw tightened.

The chanting rose. The defectors began to shake. You felt the emotional field in the room twist, not natural panic but conditioned obedience being pulled open. The words were old triggers. Not one command, but many. Loyalty. Shame. Return. Submit. Bleed. The room was a machine built from memory, and every survivor inside it was being dragged back toward the shape their captors had carved into them.

Then the chant changed.

Your blood went cold. The new phrase was one you knew. So did Damian.

You had heard it in training as children, spoken when Damian’s anger became too unruly and your handlers wanted him brought under control. The phrase did not belong to you, not truly, but it had always preceded your use of power on him. Calm the heir. Still the blade. Preserve the mission.

Safiya’s smile widened.

“They know,” she said to Damian. “They remember what they were made for.”

Damian’s eyes snapped to you.

You shook your head once. “No.”

The chanting struck him. Not magically, not fully, but psychologically, brutally. It found the old pathways. The child trained to obey. The heir trained to endure. The boy whose emotions had been managed by everyone around him until he learned to seal them away before anyone else could touch them.

Damian staggered.

You moved toward him.

He lifted one hand. “Do not.”

You stopped so hard it hurt.

His breathing was ragged. His eyes were bright with fury and memory, but he was still there. Still choosing. Still fighting in the only way that mattered.

Safiya tilted her head. “He will break before he asks.”

You looked at her. The old you would have reached for Damian because someone had commanded it. The frightened you would have reached because you could not bear to watch him suffer. The person you had become stood still and let Damian own his pain.

“Damian,” you said, voice shaking but clear, “I am here. I will not touch it unless you ask.”

His eyes closed.

The chanting battered the chamber. A defector screamed. Safiya’s hand moved toward a blade. Damian’s hand shook around his sword.

Then he opened his eyes.

“Not me,” he said.

You blinked. 

His gaze moved past you to the defectors kneeling around the pit. “Help them.”

Your heart twisted. “Damian—”

“I can endure this,” he said through clenched teeth. “They cannot.”

The old partnership would have obeyed the mission. The new one understood the cost.

You nodded.

Then you opened your power.

Not toward Damian. Toward the circle.

Warmth moved from you in a wide, aching wave, flowing over the kneeling defectors, through the chant, into the conditioned terror and shame clawing at their nervous systems. You asked without words because some of them had no access to language inside the trigger. You offered. You did not command. You made a room inside the compulsion where choice could stand again.

One by one, the defectors stopped chanting. One by one, they began to cry.

Safiya’s expression twisted. “You waste it.”

“No,” you said, cold sweat breaking along your skin. “I return it.”

Damian moved. He hit Safiya like judgment given a body. Not rage unchecked. Not conditioning. Not the League’s perfect blade. Damian, choosing violence with clarity, which was far more frightening. Their fight cut across the chamber in flashes of steel and shadow. You held the emotional field around the defectors as they crawled back from the pit, shaking and sobbing. The power drained you fast. Too fast. The chamber was heavy with old terror, and every life you held steady pulled warmth from your bones.

Damian disarmed Safiya. She fell hard against the stone. He stood above her, sword at her throat.

“Do it,” she hissed. “Prove you are still ours.”

The chamber went silent.

You were on your knees now, one hand braced against the freezing floor, power flickering at the edges. You felt Damian’s anger rise, terrible and clean. You felt the old wound beneath it. You felt the child in him who had been told mercy was weakness and the man who had spent years deciding that did not make it true.

You did not reach for him. You trusted him.

Damian’s blade trembled once. Then he lowered it.

“No,” he said. “I am mine.”

Safiya’s face changed.

Not fear. Defeat.

It should have ended there. Naturally, it did not, because Gotham and its surrounding cursed architecture had no respect for emotional climaxes.

Safiya’s hand slammed against a hidden trigger in the stone.

The pit ignited green. Not Lazarus, not exactly, but something related, something stolen and altered and spiritually rancid. The defectors screamed as the chamber shook. Stone cracked overhead. Damian turned toward you.

You saw the ceiling give before he did.

There was no time for strategy. No time for consent. No time for any ethical shape clean enough to survive impact.

You threw your power wide.

Not at Damian’s emotions. At everything. The room. The defectors. The terror. The stampede that would have crushed half of them. The panic that would have frozen the rest. You gave every piece of warmth you had left to make the chamber survivable for the seconds it needed to be survived. People moved. Breathed. Crawled. Chose.

Damian reached you just as the first stones fell.

“Partner!” he shouted.

It was not a command. It was terror.

You smiled at him, which was rude of you, really. Very inconsiderate. Dramatically timed. He would later be furious about it.

Then the ceiling came down between you.

You woke to arguing. This was not unusual. In your life, waking to arguing usually meant you were alive and surrounded by Waynes, which were closely related conditions.

“You should have extracted them before the chamber destabilised,” Bruce was saying somewhere nearby, voice low and grim.

“I was occupied preventing an execution,” Damian snapped.

“You were triggered.”

“I remained in control.”

“You almost—”

“I did not.”

“Enough,” Alfred said.

The silence that followed was immediate. Powerful man, Alfred Pennyworth.

You opened your eyes.

The medbay ceiling of the Cave stared back at you, bright and unpleasant. Your whole body felt scraped empty, like someone had taken your bones out, filled the spaces with snow, and put everything back slightly wrong. A blanket covered you. An IV ran into your arm. Titus lay beside the cot with his head on your calf, which meant Damian had either ordered medical support or prescribed dog again.

You turned your head.

Damian sat beside you. He looked wrecked. Not visibly, perhaps, to anyone who did not know him. His posture remained straight. His clothes were clean. Someone had bandaged a cut along his temple. But his face had the rigid stillness of a man holding himself together with wire.

When he saw you awake, that wire nearly snapped.

“You are an idiot,” he said.

Your throat was dry. “Good morning to you too.”

“It is evening.”

“Then I’ve been efficient.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do not make jokes.”

“Have we met?”

Titus lifted his head and thumped his tail once.

Damian glared at the dog. “Do not encourage them.”

You smiled faintly, then winced because even that hurt.

Damian’s expression shifted immediately. “Do not move.”

“You’re very commanding for someone who once got emotionally outmanoeuvred by a baby goat.”

“That goat was a menace.”

“She was three weeks old.”

“She had intent.”

A laugh scraped out of you, weak and painful.

Damian looked away.

That was when you noticed his hands. They were shaking.

Barely. But they were.

You looked at them, then at his face. “Damian.”

“No.”

“I haven’t asked anything.”

“You are about to ask if I am all right.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

The answer came so quickly it stole the air from you.

Damian looked equally shocked by it.

Bruce, Alfred, and everyone else had vanished at some point. Or perhaps Alfred had removed them with eyebrow-based authority. Either way, the medbay was quiet now except for the hum of machines and Titus’s breathing.

Damian stared at the floor.

“I thought you were dead,” he said.

The words were flat. Too flat. You had known Damian since childhood. You had watched him bleed, rage, train, fail, learn, unlearn, rebuild. You had seen him face assassins, monsters, family dinners, and therapy-adjacent conversations with equal hostility. But you had rarely heard him sound young.

He sounded young then.

Your chest ached. “I’m not.”

“I am aware.”

“You sound angry about it.”

“I am angry that you made it uncertain.”

You tried to shift closer. Pain sparked through your ribs. Damian’s hand moved toward you, then stopped in midair.

Permission. Even now. Even terrified.

You could have cried.

“You can touch me,” you whispered.

His hand settled around yours with exquisite care.

No power moved between you. Damian looked at your joined hands like he was making sure.

Then he said, “When the ceiling fell, I could not reach you.”

“I know.”

“I have always been able to reach you.”

Your throat tightened.

That was true in ways neither of you had ever named. On training floors. In smoke-filled stairwells. On Gotham rooftops. Across years of anger, obedience, rebellion, and the slow, painful education of becoming people instead of weapons. Damian had always known where you were in a fight. You had always known how close you could stand before his anger became too much or not enough. Even when you argued, even when you hurt each other, even when you had to relearn the ethics of every touch, you had been reachable.

The ceiling falling between you had broken a rule older than either of you understood.

“I’m here now,” you said.

His grip tightened. “Yes.”

Silence.

Then, because you were exhausted and therefore foolishly brave, you said, “You called me partner.”

His eyes snapped to yours. “You are my partner.”

“I know.”

“In combat.”

“I know.”

“In missions.”

“I know.”

“In—” He stopped.

There it was. The thing in the room. The word that had followed you from childhood like a shadow and changed shape while neither of you were looking.

Damian released a slow breath. “When I believed you dead, I did not think of the mission.” You went still. “I did not think of Father. Or the League. Or the defectors. Or whether Safiya had escaped.” His voice lowered. “I thought only that there would be no world in which I could accept your absence.”

Your heart thudded once, hard.

Damian looked furious with himself for every word and determined to say them anyway. It was perhaps the bravest you had ever seen him.

“You have been beside me since before I understood what choice meant,” he said. “At first, because you were placed there. Then, because our training demanded it. Then, because habit made it easier not to question.” His thumb moved, barely, against your knuckles. “But somewhere, without my permission and therefore quite rudely, you became the person I would choose in every life where choice is offered to me.”

Your eyes burned. “Damian.”

“I am not finished.”

Of course not.

You nodded, tears slipping quietly down your face.

“I believed partnership meant efficiency,” he said. “Compatibility in combat. Shared objectives. Mutual reliance. I did not understand why your absence from a room altered its structure. Why your disapproval troubled me more than Father’s. Why I found myself bringing you animals when words failed, or learning your tea preferences, or delaying patrol by thirteen minutes because you once said the sunset from the east gargoyle was tolerable.”

“You counted the minutes?”

“I count many things.”

“Romantic.”

His mouth twitched despite himself.

Then his expression became painfully open.

“I love you,” Damian said.

The words did not arrive soft.

They arrived like a blade laid down. A surrender, not to defeat, but to truth.

You cried harder, which seemed to alarm him.

“I have upset you.”

“No,” you said, laughing through it. “No, you emotionally constipated menace, I love you too.”

His face went very still.

Then all at once, he looked breathless. “You do?”

“I have loved you for years.”

“Years.”

“Yes.”

His brows drew together. “That is an unreasonable amount of time to conceal relevant information.”

You laughed so hard your ribs protested. “Ow. Do not make me laugh.”

“You are the one who withheld intelligence.”

“I was in love with you, Damian, not filing a mission report.”

“One can be both.”

“You’re impossible.”

“And yet.”

“And yet,” you whispered.

He looked at your mouth then. Not subtle. Damian had never been good at wanting quietly once he realised wanting was allowed.

Your breath caught.

“May I kiss you?” he asked.

You smiled through tears. “You’re asking?”

His expression sobered. “Always.”

That broke something soft and sacred in you.

“Yes,” you whispered. “You may.”

Damian leaned in slowly, as if every inch mattered because every inch was chosen. His free hand rose to your cheek, stopped just before touching, and waited until you nodded. Then his fingers settled against your skin, warm and careful. The kiss itself was softer than anyone would have believed of him, except you. You knew his softness. You had watched him learn it like a forbidden language, awkward syllable by awkward syllable, until it became something he could speak with hands, animals, tea, silence, and now his mouth against yours.

No power moved between you. None was needed.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.

“I did not feel anything,” he murmured.

You smiled. “Rude.”

His eyes opened, alarmed. “I meant your ability.”

“I know.”

His expression flattened. “You are intolerable.”

“You love me.”

“Yes,” he said, with such immediate certainty that your smile trembled. “I do.”

The aftermath took time.

Of course it did. Neither of you had been raised to believe healing could be gentle. The League had taught correction. Gotham taught consequence. Love, you learned, taught repetition. Damian did not become soft in the way poets made softness sound easy. He remained sharp, proud, exacting, occasionally insufferable, and deeply committed to pretending he did not enjoy family game night. You did not become perfectly ethical, perfectly healed, perfectly free of the instinct to comfort first and ask later when fear got too loud. But you both practised.

That was the word neither of you had been given as children.

Practice.

Damian practised asking for help before rage turned his body into a locked room. You practised letting him be angry without reaching for the warmth inside you like a leash made of good intentions. He practised saying, “I am afraid,” with the expression of a man volunteering for execution. You practised saying, “I cannot help tonight,” and believing that refusal did not make you useless.

Sometimes he asked for your power.

Not often. Never casually.

The first time after the monastery, he stood in your doorway after a nightmare, barefoot and furious with himself, Alfred the Cat tucked under one arm like a hostage.

“I do not forgive the League for making this difficult,” he said.

You sat up in bed, instantly awake. “That is very fair.”

“I do not wish to be alone.”

You softened. “Do you want comfort or company?”

His jaw worked.

“Company first,” he said.

So you made space.

He sat beside you with the cat between you like a chaperone from hell. You did not touch his emotions. You did not reach for his fear. You talked until his breathing evened. You sat in silence until silence stopped feeling like abandonment.

Later, when dawn began to grey the windows, he said, “Now.”

You looked at him.

He stared at the floor. “If you are willing.”

Your throat tightened. “Tell me what you want.”

“Not peace,” he said. “Peace would be dishonest.”

You waited.

“Only enough warmth that the memory knows it is not the present.”

You held out your hand. He took it. You let your power move in a careful thread, exactly as asked. Not to erase. Not to correct. Not to make him easier. Only to help the part of him still trapped in old halls remember that he was in Gotham now, in your room, with a cat purring like an engine between you and morning arriving despite everything.

After a few seconds, he said, “Enough.”

You stopped.

Damian’s fingers remained around yours.

“That was acceptable,” he said.

You smiled. “High praise.”

“It was.”

“I know.”

He looked at you then, and there was something almost shy beneath the imperious tilt of his chin. “You may kiss me.”

You laughed. “May I?”

“I am offering.”

“You are very generous.”

“Do not be tiresome.”

You kissed him. He kissed back with a warmth no power had made.

Years ago, Talia had placed you beside Damian as one might give a prince a blade.

She had been wrong. You were not his blade. He was not your mission.

The League had made you weapons and called it destiny. Gotham had made you survivors and called it Tuesday. But somewhere between childhood orders and adult choices, between old violations and new consent, between every time one of you said partner and meant something more than survival, you had become people who could choose each other without command.

One evening months later, you found Damian in the barn with Titus, Alfred the Cat, two recovering pigeons, a three-legged fox, and the baby goat, now larger and somehow more judgmental.

“This is becoming excessive,” you said from the doorway.

Damian looked up from bandaging the fox’s paw. “They require care.”

“You have an army.”

“I have standards.”

“You have a goat eating your shoelace.”

He glanced down. The goat was, indeed, eating his shoelace. “She is expressing affection.”

“She is consuming you.”

“Love requires sacrifice.”

You stared at him. He looked back, perfectly serious for exactly three seconds before the corner of his mouth betrayed him.

Your heart filled so abruptly it hurt.

No power. No mission. No old command curling around your ribs.

Just Damian, older now, still sharp and still healing, sitting among rescued creatures in the warm hay-gold light of evening. Just you, leaning against the doorway, wanted for reasons that had nothing to do with usefulness. Just the word partner between you, no longer a chain or assignment or tactical designation.

A choice.

Damian held out one hand. You crossed the barn and took it.

His thumb brushed your knuckles.

“Are you well?” he asked.

The question was simple. It had taken both of you years to learn how to ask it.

You looked at him, then at the animals, then at the fading light beyond the open doors.

“I think so,” you said.

Damian studied you carefully. Then he nodded, accepting the answer not because it was complete, but because it was yours.

“Good,” he said. “Sit. The goat has missed you.”

“The goat has missed my sleeves.”

“She is complex.”

“She is a menace.”

“She is family.”

You sat beside him, laughing softly, and the goat immediately began chewing the hem of your shirt.

Damian looked smug.

You bumped his shoulder with yours.

He leaned back.

Only slightly. Only enough.

Outside, Gotham waited with all its teeth and shadows. The world was not fixed. Neither were you. Neither was Damian. But the barn was warm, and his hand was in yours, and no one had ordered either of you to stay.

You stayed anyway.

Then you had stepped out of the shadows with blood on your sleeve and a voice like warm rain.

“Can I help them?” you had asked.

Batman had turned on you like a weapon. He had not known you then. He had only known you were there, unaccounted for, unafraid, standing in the wreckage of a Talon cell with trembling hands and eyes too old for your face. You should have looked like a survivor. You should have looked like another person who needed carrying out.

Instead, you had looked at the people in the cages and cried for them without making your grief the loudest thing in the room.

“What can you do?” Batman had asked.

“Comfort,” you said.

It had sounded too small for what happened next.

You had knelt outside the first cage and asked the man inside if he wanted you to come closer. He had spat at you. You had nodded like that was answer enough and stayed where you were, hand open on the stone floor, palm up, no demand in it. The air around you had changed by degrees. Batman remembered that most of all: not light, exactly, not a visible glow, not magic in the theatrical way Gotham sometimes spat up from its cursed old foundations. Just warmth. Shelter. The impossible sensation of standing in a room where fear had been the only language spoken for weeks and hearing, suddenly, a second language answer it.

The man had stopped shaking. Then a woman in the next cage began to sob. Then a child crawled toward the bars and reached for your hand.

Batman had watched you give something away. He had watched the tremor start in your fingers and climb up your arms. He had watched the colour drain slowly from your mouth. He had watched every person in that room breathe easier while you became colder and quieter, while the hurt lifted from them and settled somewhere inside you where no one else could see.

Afterwards, you had refused medical transport with a politeness so brittle it nearly cut.

Batman had followed you into the alley behind the church. Rain had been falling in thin, mean sheets. Your breath had fogged in the cold. You had leaned one shoulder against the brick and pressed both hands to your sternum like you were trying to put yourself back inside your own body.

“You’re a metahuman,” he said.

You laughed once, exhausted and humourless. “Usually people say thank you first.”

“Thank you.”

That had surprised you enough to make you look at him.

Batman stood in the rain with his cape dripping black onto the pavement, unreadable and enormous and too still. You could feel the grief in him even then, though you had not known its shape. It was old. Armored. The kind of pain that had built a city inside itself and populated it with rules.

“You helped them,” he said.

“They let me.”

“You asked.”

“I always ask.”

His silence had shifted. You had not known him well enough then to translate it, but later you would understand. Batman trusted rules more than people, and you had just offered him one.

“I don’t control anyone,” you said. “I don’t erase pain. I don’t force forgiveness, or happiness, or obedience. I can make the fear loosen. I can make someone feel safe enough to choose what they do next. That’s all.”

“That’s not all.”

“No,” you admitted. “But it’s the part that matters.”

He had studied you through the rain. “What does it cost?”

You had smiled at him then, which was unfair, because the smile made you look gentler than the answer deserved. “More than people like to hear.”

Batman had not pressed.

That was why, years later, when Bruce Wayne called and asked for your help, you picked up.

Not because you trusted Batman completely. You had worked with him enough times to know trust with Bruce Wayne was less a door and more a series of reinforced checkpoints. But he had never tried to put you in a lab. He had never asked you to use your power on someone who refused. He had never called you an asset to your face, which, for a man with contingency plans for his contingency plans, probably counted as emotional growth.

So when he said there was a case involving Lazarus contamination, you came to Gotham.

You should have known better.

The cave had not changed. It was still cold stone and colder light, a cathedral built for secrecy, humming with machines that looked expensive enough to develop opinions. Bruce stood near the main computer in a black sweater instead of the suit, which should have made him seem less like Batman and somehow did not. His face was tired in a way money could not soften. Alfred gave you tea with the solemn expression of a man who knew the whole truth and had been quietly disappointed in everyone for years.

“There have been three incidents,” Bruce said, pulling up footage on the screen. “Low-level criminals exposed to a modified compound derived from Lazarus Pit residue. Heightened aggression, regenerative instability, temporary dissociation, violent emotional amplification.”

You watched a man in a convenience store rip a steel shelf from the wall with his bare hands while screaming for someone who was not there. The footage changed. A woman in restraints wept green-tinged tears and begged the doctors not to let her sleep because something was waiting under the dark. Another clip showed a warehouse fight, shaky security footage catching a flash of red helmet and gunmetal before the camera cut out.

Your eyes moved back to Bruce.

“There’s more,” you said.

Bruce did not answer quickly enough. Alfred’s expression, somehow, became even more disappointed.

You set your tea down untouched. “Bruce.”

His jaw tightened. “Jason has been affected by Lazarus exposure before.”

The name landed carefully, like something fragile placed on a table.

Jason. You knew of him, of course. Everyone in Gotham who knew Batman’s world knew of Jason Todd in pieces: the dead Robin, the resurrected son, the Red Hood, the boy who came back wrong because Gotham had never met a tragedy it could not make worse with time, magic, or parental failure. You had never met him properly. You had seen him once from a rooftop across a street, red helmet shining under rain, moving through Crime Alley like a warning with a heartbeat.

Bruce continued, “The recent incidents have aggravated his episodes.”

Your stomach sank. “Episodes.”

Bruce’s eyes flicked away. Only for a second. “Lazarus episodes. Rage spikes. Dissociation. Sensory distortion. He becomes more reactive after exposure to certain compounds, especially when the residue has been altered.”

“And you want me on the case because I can stabilise victims.”

“Yes.”

The answer was too clean.

You waited. Bruce closed his eyes for the length of one breath. When he opened them, Batman looked out through Bruce Wayne’s face. Not the cowl. Worse. The will. The fear pretending to be strategy.

“I also want you near Jason,” he said.

There it was. The real mission. The ugly little bone under the offered hand.

“Near him,” you repeated.

“Your presence alone has had measurable effects in past cases. Victims calm faster when you’re in proximity, even without direct contact.”

“I know how my power works.”

“I believe you could reduce the severity of his episodes.”

“Does Jason know you’re asking me this?”

Bruce said nothing.

You laughed softly, but there was no humour in it. “No, then.”

“He won’t accept help if he knows.”

“Then that’s his choice.”

“He’s suffering.”

“So are most people in Gotham. I don’t sneak into their nervous systems because someone with a cape thinks they’d be more convenient if they stopped hurting so loudly.”

Bruce flinched. Good. Some anger in you wanted him to. Another part of you hated that you knew exactly why he was doing this.

Because Bruce loved like a man trying to defuse a bomb with his bare hands. Because Jason was both his son and his failure, and Bruce could not look at one without feeling the other cut through him. Because he would rather turn the whole city upside down than ask Jason for permission to care and risk being told no.

“I’m not asking you to alter him,” Bruce said.

“You are.”

“I’m asking you to help him.”

“You’re asking me to make him easier to survive.”

The words went cold between you.

Alfred looked down. Bruce’s face tightened, and for a moment, he looked less like Batman and more like a father too exhausted by fear to dress it properly. “I can’t keep watching him destroy himself.”

“And you think I can fix him.”

“No.”

The denial came fast. Too fast. You stared at him until he looked away.

“I don’t agree with that word,” you said. “People aren’t broken appliances. His rage might be hurting him, but it also belongs to him. His pain belongs to him. You don’t get to decide he’d be better without it.”

Bruce’s voice dropped. “If he kills someone during an episode—”

“Then that still doesn’t make his consent optional.”

Silence spread through the cave, wide and echoing.

You should have walked out. You almost did.

But then the footage on the screen flickered back to Red Hood in the warehouse, his body jerking mid-fight as if something inside him had pulled hard on a chain. You watched him slam one hand against a wall, watched him shake his head like he was trying to dislodge a voice, watched him turn away from an unconscious man with visible effort. You saw the restraint. Not ease. Not goodness handed down like a verdict from someone safer. Choice. Brutal, shaking, deliberate choice.

And you hated Bruce a little for knowing you would see it.

“I won’t use my power on him without permission,” you said.

Bruce looked at you.

“I mean it. Not targeted. Not deliberately. Not because you ask, not because you worry, not because you think his emotions are inconvenient.”

“I understand.”

“No,” you said. “You don’t. But you’re going to pretend you do because that’s what men like you do when you want something badly enough to call it necessary.”

Alfred made a small sound that might, under different circumstances, have been approval. Bruce absorbed it without defending himself.

You hated that too.

“I’ll help with the case,” you said. “I’ll help contaminated victims. If Jason wants to know what I can do, I’ll tell him. If he asks for help, I’ll help. That’s all.”

Bruce nodded once.

You wanted to believe that was an agreement. Looking back, you would understand it was only a strategy changing shape.

You met Jason Todd in a safehouse kitchen at three in the morning with a knife in his hand and blood on his shirt. The blood was not all his. That seemed to be a theme with him.

You had been told the safehouse was empty. That was the first lie. The second was that Bruce had asked you to drop off containment samples there because the cave systems were compromised, which sounded plausible only because Batman had a lifelong commitment to making logistical nightmares seem professional. You let yourself in through the back with the access code Bruce had given you, carrying a sealed case of Lazarus residue samples and a paper bag from a twenty-four-hour diner because Alfred had muttered something about you forgetting to eat.

Jason was standing in the kitchen when you entered, shirt half-unbuttoned, helmet on the counter, dark curls wet from rain or sweat or both. He had a combat knife in one hand, and a look in his eyes that made the whole room feel suddenly smaller.

You froze. He froze.

Then he looked you up and down, slow and unimpressed. “You the delivery guy?”

You lifted the sealed case. “Do I look like the delivery guy?”

“You look like someone who should know better than to walk into my safehouse.”

“I was told it was empty.”

Jason’s mouth twisted. “Yeah, well. People lie.”

You thought of Bruce and nearly laughed. Instead, you set the case down carefully on the table. “I’m working the Lazarus contamination case.”

His expression changed by half a degree. With Jason, you would learn, half a degree was basically a monologue. “With B?”

“With Batman,” you said, because you had not earned the right to make that wound casual.

Jason saw the distinction. Of course he did. His eyes sharpened. “And you are?”

You gave him your name.

He waited.

“That’s usually where people say theirs,” you added.

“You broke into my kitchen.”

“Technically, I used a code.”

“That makes it worse.”

“Fair.”

He stared at you for another long second, knife still loose in his hand. Then his gaze dropped to the diner bag. “That food?”

“Yes.”

“For me?”

“Alfred said someone here would be unpleasant if unfed.”

Jason blinked. Then, to your surprise, he laughed. It was a rough little thing, dragged out of him against his will. “That old man’s a menace.”

“I’m getting that.”

He set the knife down.

Not far. Not out of reach.

But down.

It should not have felt like something.

It did.

The first thing you noticed about Jason was that his pain did not ask politely to be seen.

Jason’s pain was a house fire. It filled the room even when he smiled. It lived in the set of his shoulders, in the way his eyes tracked exits, in the fury that rose too quickly when fear touched it, in the green-black pulse beneath his skin that was not emotion exactly but something older and uglier wearing emotion as armour. The Lazarus Pit in him felt like standing near a storm drain during a flood: a pull under the surface, a pressure that wanted to drag everything down.

Your power reacted before you gave it permission.

That frightened you. Not because Jason seemed monstrous. He did not. That was the problem. He felt violently, painfully human beneath the contamination, and the part of you that had first manifested your gift for an injured alley cat wanted to reach for him with both hands.

You did not. You sat across from him at the kitchen table while he ate fries with the intensity of someone pretending not to be starving. He watched you watching him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You got a face.”

“Most people do.”

“Yours is doing a thing.”

You looked down at your untouched coffee. “I was trying to decide whether asking about the blood would get me stabbed.”

Jason glanced at his shirt. “Not mine.”

“Congratulations.”

“Some mine.”

“Less congratulations.”

His mouth twitched.

You should not have liked him so quickly. Jason Todd was all sharp edges and guarded spaces, sarcasm like barbed wire, eyes that dared people to come close just so he could prove they would regret it. But he was also the kind of man who ate diner fries from a paper bag in a safehouse kitchen at three in the morning and quietly slid the second burger toward you when he noticed you were not drinking your coffee.

“Eat,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t ask.”

“That’s rude.”

“That’s dinner.”

You stared at the burger, then at him. He looked away first, pretending to study the rain streaking down the dark window.

You ate.

He did not smile, but he looked less irritated by existence afterwards.

That was how it began: not with comfort, not exactly, but with a burger offered like a challenge and a knife left close enough to matter but not close enough to threaten.

Bruce kept assigning you to the same routes after that. Not openly. He was subtler than that, which somehow made it worse. A contaminated weapons cache in Crime Alley. A possible victim near Jason’s territory. A safehouse debrief Red Hood “might attend.” You were not stupid. Neither was Jason, though his suspicion aimed itself mostly at Bruce and therefore missed, for a while, the exact nature of the trap.

“You and B joined at the hip now?” Jason asked one night from the roof of a closed pawn shop, where the two of you were watching a suspected Lazarus courier enter a bar across the street.

You were crouched beside an air-conditioning unit, cold wind cutting through your jacket. “No.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I work cases involving emotional destabilisation and meta-chemical contamination. This case has both.”

“Fancy way of saying you’re here because people are losing their minds.”

You looked at him. “People don’t lose their minds. They get overwhelmed. There’s a difference.”

Jason’s helmet turned toward you. You could not see his face, but you felt his attention settle heavier than before. “That your professional opinion?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your unprofessional opinion?”

“That Gotham has a bad habit of calling people crazy when it means inconvenient.”

The silence that followed had teeth.

Then Jason said, “Careful. Talk like that and the Bats might start liking you.”

“Too late. Alfred gave me biscuits.”

“Shit. You’re family now.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself.

Jason looked away quickly, but not before you caught the slight tilt of his helmet, the surprise of it. Like he had not meant to make you laugh. Like he had not expected to want to do it again.

You did not use your power on him. You did not reach into him, did not quiet the Pit, did not smooth the rage when it rose. When his breath hitched after exposure to residue, you kept your hands to yourself. When his fingers tightened around his gun until the leather of his gloves creaked, you stood near but did not touch. When he paced a safehouse like a caged thing after a bad fight, you sat on the counter and talked about books until he either told you to shut up or threw one at you.

But your power had always been more than touch. It lived in your voice when you softened it. In your proximity when you let yourself care too loudly. In the air around you when someone’s pain called to yours and your body answered before your ethics could catch up. You did not direct it at Jason, but sometimes the room got warmer. Sometimes his shoulders loosened after twenty minutes beside you. Sometimes the green edge in his presence receded by a fraction, and he would blink like he had just remembered the world did not have to be fought every second.

You told yourself that was not the same thing.

You were lying. Maybe not the way Bruce had lied. Not with plans and omissions and a chessboard where his son’s pain had become a problem to solve. Your lie was softer. Worse, maybe, because it came wrapped in tenderness. You wanted Jason to sleep. You wanted the tremor to leave his hands. You wanted his laugh to come easier. You wanted the Pit to stop using his body like an old crime scene.

You wanted to help. Gotham was built on horrible things done by people who wanted to help.

Jason got close to you like a stray animal deciding the porch light was not a trap. Slowly. Suspiciously. With a lot of biting.

He started appearing when Bruce had not assigned either of you anywhere, leaning in the doorway of your temporary apartment with takeout and a scowl.

“You eat today?”

You looked up from the case files spread across your floor. “Hello to you too.”

“That a no?”

“That is none of your business.”

“So no.”

He stepped inside without waiting for permission because he was rude, then paused halfway through the motion and glanced back at you, jaw tight. Waiting.

It took you a second to understand.

The big, terrifying Red Hood, crime lord of Crime Alley, had remembered to ask with his body even when his mouth forgot.

You softened. “You can come in, Jason.”

He grunted, like permission was annoying because it mattered, and entered.

He learned your tells, too. That was the danger of him. People underestimated Jason’s perception because he wore anger like a warning sign large enough to distract from everything else. But he noticed. He noticed when your fingers went numb after helping contaminated victims. Noticed when you smiled too quickly after a debrief. Noticed when Bruce’s voice got careful and your shoulders rose half an inch. Noticed when you did not eat unless someone put food directly in front of you.

So he put food in front of you. Aggressively.

One night, after you spent two hours calming a girl who had been dosed with Lazarus residue and kept screaming that her dead brother was calling from the walls, Jason drove you back to your apartment in silence. You were cold all the way through, coat wrapped tight around your body, hands tucked under your arms. You had used your power with permission. The girl had begged for help. You had given it.

Jason had watched from the doorway.

He had not said anything until you were inside. Then he took one look at you trying to unlock your door with shaking fingers, gently pushed your hand aside, and unlocked it himself.

“I had it,” you muttered.

“You were about to fight the keyhole and lose.”

“Rude.”

“Accurate.”

Inside, he made tea with the grim competence of a man who had survived on worse things than caffeine and spite. He placed the mug in front of you, then draped his leather jacket over your shoulders without asking. You should have objected. You did not. It smelled like smoke, rain, gun oil, and something faintly warm underneath that was only Jason.

He leaned against the counter, arms folded. “That what happens every time?”

“What?”

“You go all corpse-cold after doing your Care Bear routine?”

You huffed a laugh into the mug. “Care Bear routine?”

“Don’t dodge.”

You looked down at the tea. Your reflection trembled faintly on the surface. “Not every time.”

“Lie.”

“Sometimes.”

“Better.”

You were too tired to be careful. “It depends how much pain there is.”

Jason’s face shifted.

You realised the mistake too late.

“How much pain,” he repeated.

“It’s not— I don’t take it exactly.”

“But you feel it.”

You stared into the tea. Jason swore quietly.

“It’s not as bad as you’re thinking,” you said.

“Considering you don’t know what I’m thinking, that’s a dumbass thing to say.”

“You think loudly.”

“Yeah? What am I thinking now?”

That Bruce was right and wrong at the same time, you thought. That Jason was angry because anger was easier than fear. That he wanted to ask whether you had ever used it on him but did not yet know there was a question to ask. That some part of him, the part that had been treated like a weapon by enemies and family alike, knew something in this whole arrangement was rotten even if he could not see where.

You said none of that.

“You’re thinking I should eat something,” you said.

Jason narrowed his eyes.

Then he opened your fridge. It was, tragically, mostly condiments and one heroic apple.

He stared inside for a long moment. “This is a hate crime.”

“It’s minimalism.”

“It’s a cry for help.”

“You’re very dramatic.”

He closed the fridge. “I’m ordering food.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Didn’t ask.”

The warmth in your chest then was not your power.

That was the problem. Somewhere between stakeouts and diner bags, between his sarcasm and your tired smiles, between the way he never called you soft like it was an insult and the way you never looked at him like rage made him less worthy of tenderness, Jason became more than Bruce’s son, more than Red Hood, more than the case’s unspoken centre of gravity.

He became Jason. He became the man who read battered paperbacks while sitting on your fire escape because he claimed your apartment was too quiet. He became the person who fixed your loose window lock without mentioning it. He became the voice saying “You good?” in your comm after every mission, rough and casual and not casual at all. He became the one who called you Sunshine like an insult until one night it slipped out soft and both of you pretended not to notice.

He became dangerous to want. Because wanting made you selfish. Because sometimes, when the Pit scraped under his skin and his eyes went distant, you let the room warm by a degree.

Just a degree. Just enough.

The field mission that ruined everything took place beneath the old Monarch Theatre. The building had been abandoned since No Man’s Land, left to rot in a neighbourhood that had learned not to look too closely at places with locked doors and fresh tyre tracks. The Lazarus compound had been moving through the city in coded shipments, and every trail led back to the theatre’s flooded basement, where some offshoot of the League had apparently decided Gotham needed one more basement full of bad decisions.

Bruce wanted Batman and Robin on the perimeter. Jason told him to go to hell.

Bruce told him he was compromised. Jason told him to go to hell twice, with better punctuation.

You ended up in the passenger seat of Jason’s car, watching rain streak across the windshield while he drove with one hand and checked his gun with the other like a man actively trying to shorten Bruce’s lifespan through stress.

“You know,” you said, “when Batman says someone is compromised, usually there’s at least a little data behind it.”

Jason snorted. “B says compromised when he means disobedient and emotionally inconvenient.”

“Those are different things.”

“Tell him that.”

You looked at him. The greenish glow of passing traffic lights moved over his face, catching the white streak in his hair, the hard line of his jaw, the bruise half-hidden near his temple. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Compromised.”

His hand tightened on the wheel. For a second, you felt it. The Pit, restless under his skin, reacting to the name without being named. A dark tide under a locked door.

“No,” he said.

The lie sat between you, breathing.

You did not challenge it. That was your mistake.

The theatre basement smelled like mould, rust, old velvet, and chemical rot. Water pooled ankle-deep across the cracked floor, reflecting the sickly green glow of containment tanks set up beneath the stage. League symbols marked the walls in black paint. Men in tactical gear moved between crates, their veins lit faintly green beneath their skin. Not League proper, you realised quickly. Deserters, maybe. Fanatics. People scavenging from sacred horrors and pretending that made them priests.

Jason was quiet in the way he got before violence. Not calm. Never calm. Focused. The difference mattered.

You moved through the shadows behind him, one hand near your belt, the other gloved and flexing at your side. Your job was to stabilise victims if any were present. That was what Bruce had said. That was what you told yourself.

Then Jason saw the tank. It was smaller than the others, built upright like a coffin, full of green liquid and suspended wires. Inside floated a body. Not alive. Not fully dead either, maybe. A failed resurrection. A test subject. A boy, no older than fifteen, with dark hair drifting around his pale face.

Jason stopped moving.

The whole basement changed. You felt the Pit in him wake. It turned inside him like something with teeth, recognising itself in the glow, in the rot, in the impossible wrongness of a body kept between states. Jason’s breath hitched once. His gun lowered by an inch. Then his shoulders went rigid, and the air around him seemed to snap tight.

“Jay,” you whispered.

He did not answer.

One of the deserters spotted you. Shouted.

The basement erupted. Gunfire cracked against concrete. Jason moved like a storm given bones, violent and efficient and too fast, dropping the first three men before you had fully taken cover. You pulled two exposed civilians—lab techs, unwilling or not, you could not tell—behind a stack of crates and pressed warmth into the air with your voice, keeping them from panicking as bullets tore through the dark.

“It’s okay,” you said, though nothing was. “Stay low. Breathe. Hands over your head. Don’t move unless I tell you.”

Across the room, Jason slammed a man into the side of a tank hard enough to spiderweb the glass.

The man laughed.

“You’re proof it works,” he choked. “The dead can come back angry enough to be useful.”

Jason froze.

Then he hit him again. Harder.

“Jason!” you shouted.

He did not hear you. Or he did, and the Pit heard first.

The man’s head cracked against the glass. Once. Twice. The tank alarm began to shriek. Green light strobed across Jason’s face, and when he turned, his eyes were not glowing, not exactly, but the rage in them had gone bright and terrible, edged in something that was not fully his.

A deserter lunged at you from the side. You ducked too late. Pain burst across your shoulder as you hit the floor. Water soaked through your clothes. Your power flared instinctively, warming the terror of the civilians behind you, calming the attacker for half a second—long enough for you to kick his knee out and scramble back.

Jason saw you fall.

The Pit surged.

It was like being near a furnace door thrown open. He crossed the basement in three strides and put the attacker through a rotted wooden partition. The man went down hard, groaning, weapon skittering away. Jason grabbed him by the collar and lifted him again.

“Don’t,” you said.

Jason’s helmet had been knocked away in the fight. His face was bare. Wet hair clung to his forehead. Blood marked his mouth. His expression was not blank. That would have been easier. It was full of too much. Rage, fear, memory, death, the boy in the tank, you on the ground, Bruce’s voice in his comm telling him to stand down, all of it collapsing inward until there was only the hand around the man’s throat and the terrible need to make something stop.

“Jason,” you said again.

His fingers tightened. The man clawed at his wrist.

You knew, with absolute clarity, that Jason would hate you for what happened next. You also knew he would hate himself more if you let him kill that man while the Pit had its hands inside him. So you reached.

Not gently. There was no time for gentle.

Your power slammed into him across the flooded basement like a door blown open by light. Jason staggered as if struck. The man dropped from his grip, gasping, and crawled away. You pushed warmth into the green-black storm inside Jason, not to erase it, not to fix it, not to make him docile, but to quiet the thing that had wrapped itself around his choice and was squeezing.

Jason turned toward you.

The look on his face gutted you. He knew. The rage was still there. You could feel it trying to rise, huge and wounded and rightful. He wanted to be furious. He wanted to snarl, to curse, to demand what you had done, to shove your power back out of his skin with both hands.

But your comfort was already moving through him.

His breath steadied against his will. His shoulders lowered. The green edge in his eyes dulled. His anger hit the warmth you had poured into him and softened before it could become sound.

Horror entered his face. Not fear of the Pit.

Fear of you.

“What,” he said, voice too calm, too even, trembling underneath because the emotion had nowhere to go, “the fuck did you do?”

Your hand was still extended. You could feel him inside the reach of your power, feel the rage trying to form and being soothed, soothed, soothed before he could choose whether he wanted it eased. The wrongness of it hit you so hard you almost pulled back.

Then Jason’s gaze flicked to the fallen man. To the boy in the tank. To his own bloody hands.

His jaw clenched.

“Stop,” he said.

You tried. The second you loosened your grip on the power, the Pit roared back through him. Jason doubled over with a strangled sound, one hand going to his head, the other reaching blindly for the gun at his hip. Not aimed at anyone. Not yet. But the violence in the room answered him like an echo.

You pushed the warmth back in, sobbing once from the effort.

Jason went still again. Too still.

His eyes lifted to yours.

“You’re keeping me calm,” he said.

It was not a question.

You could barely breathe. “I’m keeping you here.”

“Don’t dress it up.”

“I’m sorry.”

His mouth twisted. You felt the apology hit him and fail to land. How could it? You were apologising while still doing the thing.

Somewhere behind you, Batman’s voice cracked through the comm. “Status.”

Jason’s eyes did not leave yours.

You said nothing.

Jason answered, voice level in a way that made the skin on your arms prickle. “Ask your specialist.”

Bruce went silent.

Jason laughed once. It sounded almost gentle, because your power would not let it sharpen properly.

That was worse. That was so much worse.

The rest of the fight ended around you in fragments. Batman and Robin breached from above. The deserters surrendered or fell. The tank systems were shut down. The boy inside was gone in the way bodies were gone when people had tried too hard to drag them back. You held the warmth around Jason until the Lazarus residue was contained, until the active compound stopped pulsing through the room, until the Pit inside him retreated from a roar to a low, hateful growl.

Only then did you let go.

Jason stumbled back like a cut string. For one suspended second, he simply stood there, breathing hard, staring at you with his own anger finally returning to him.

Then his face changed. The rage arrived.

Fully. His.

He looked almost relieved to feel it.

“You,” he said.

You took one step toward him. “Jason—”

“Don’t.”

The word cracked across the basement.

You stopped.

He looked past you at Batman, who had gone utterly still near the edge of the flooded stage. Damian stood behind him, sword lowered, eyes flicking between all three of you with the sharp, uncomfortable awareness of someone realising the adults had made a mess with consequences.

Jason’s laugh came out raw this time. No magic softening it. No warmth sanding down the edge. “You knew.”

Batman said nothing.

Jason’s eyes burned. “Course you did.”

“Jason,” Bruce said.

“No.” Jason pointed at him, hand shaking. “No, you don’t get to do the voice. You don’t get to stand there like this is a mission that got complicated.”

You felt cold spreading through you now, the aftershock of overuse. Your knees trembled. You barely noticed. Jason’s hurt filled the basement louder than any alarm.

He looked back at you. The anger in his face almost broke you because underneath it was betrayal so young it might as well have had dirt from a grave still under its nails.

“How long?” he asked. Your throat closed. “How long have you been doing that to me?”

“I haven’t—”

His eyes flashed.

You stopped. Started again, worse and more honest. “Not like tonight.”

Jason went very still.

Batman’s head turned toward you. You ignored him.

“I didn’t target you,” you said, voice shaking. “Not deliberately. Not before tonight. But my power responds to pain, and yours—” You swallowed. “Yours is loud. Sometimes being near me probably helped. Sometimes I let it.”

Jason stared.

The silence after that was worse than shouting.

“So all those nights,” he said softly. “All those times I thought I could breathe around you.”

Your eyes burned. “That was still you.”

“Don’t.”

“It was.”

“Don’t you dare.”

You flinched.

Jason stepped closer, not enough to threaten, but enough that every line of him felt like a wound held upright by fury. “I thought I was getting better.”

“You are.”

His laugh was vicious. “Was I?”

“Yes.”

“Or were you just putting a blanket over the monster so nobody had to look at it?”

“You’re not a monster.”

“You don’t get to decide that either.”

The words struck like a slap. You had no answer.

Jason looked at Bruce again. “This your plan?”

“Jason—”

“This why they’re here?” His voice rose. “You bring in your little miracle worker to fix the bad Robin? Make me quieter? Easier? Less embarrassing at family dinners?”

“That’s not what this is,” Bruce said, but there was guilt in his voice, and Jason heard it like a gunshot.

“Bullshit.”

Damian said, “Todd—”

“Stay out of it.”

For once, Damian did.

Jason backed away from all of you, shaking his head. His anger was wild now, but it belonged to him, and you understood with terrible clarity why he clung to it. After what you had just done, anger was proof he still had something no one else could touch.

“I didn’t agree to this,” he said.

You felt tears slip down your face. “I know.”

“I didn’t ask you to save me.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get to crawl inside my chest and turn the volume down because you’re scared of what I’ll do.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you?”

The question broke open in the basement, raw and enormous.

Because Bruce asked, at first, some ugly part of you thought. Because you were afraid. Because the Pit was eating his choice alive. Because you loved him. Because you had wanted to help for so long that you had stopped asking whether help without consent was just another kind of harm.

You said the only answer that did not try to make you look better.

“Because I thought I knew better than you.”

Jason’s face changed.

It hurt him that you told the truth. Good, maybe. Terrible, definitely.

“And because I care about you,” you said, quieter. “But that doesn’t make it right.”

“No,” he said. “It really fucking doesn’t.”

Your legs nearly gave then. You grabbed the edge of a crate, fingers slipping on wet metal.

Jason saw. He looked like he hated that he saw.

His body moved half an inch toward you before he stopped himself with visible effort. Even furious, even betrayed, even gutted by what you had done, some part of him still wanted to catch you.

That was what finally made you cry.

Jason’s expression shuttered. He reached down, picked up his helmet from the flooded floor, and put it on. The red faceplate came between you like a door slamming shut.

“Tell B to find a new specialist,” he said.

Then he left.

The cave was silent after Jason’s departure in a way you imagined battlefields were silent after everyone had stopped pretending victory was clean.

You sat on the medbay cot with a blanket around your shoulders, IV fluids running into your arm because Alfred had taken one look at you and said, very calmly, “Sit down before I make Master Bruce regret several of his life choices in chronological order.” You had sat. Bruce had not argued. Damian had disappeared somewhere, likely to report to the others or sharpen something in disapproval.

Bruce stood across from you, hands braced against the counter, head bowed.

You stared at him.

“No,” you said.

He looked up. Whatever he saw in your face made him go still.

“No,” you repeated, because the word was the only thing keeping you from falling apart. “You don’t get to be quiet right now.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. “You need to recover.”

“You used me.”

His expression fractured, but not enough. Not yet.

“You knew he wouldn’t agree,” you said. “You knew if you told him what I could do and why you wanted me near him, he would tell you to go to hell. So you put me in his path and let the case do the rest.”

“I didn’t ask you to use your powers without consent.”

“You built a situation where you hoped I would.”

Bruce flinched.

There. There it was.

The truth beneath the strategy.

You laughed weakly, coldly. “God, you’re good. You didn’t even have to order it. You just put everyone in the right places and trusted fear to make the choice for you.”

“I was trying to protect him.”

“You were trying to control him.”

Bruce’s face hardened.

You had seen Batman’s anger before. It was a terrible thing, disciplined and glacial, sharpened by righteousness. But you were too tired to fear it.

“He almost killed someone,” Bruce said.

“And now he gets to wonder whether the only reason he didn’t is because someone violated him.”

The anger left Bruce like air from a punctured lung.

You pulled the blanket tighter around your shoulders. “He was fighting it before I touched him. Did you see that? Did you actually see him, or were you too busy waiting for proof that he needed intervention?”

Bruce said nothing.

“He was fighting it,” you whispered. “The Pit was loud, but he was still there. I should have trusted him longer. You should have trusted him period.”

That one landed.

Bruce turned away.

For a long while, the only sounds were the hum of the cave and the slow drip of water somewhere in the dark.

“What did it feel like?” Bruce asked eventually. You looked at him. “When you used your power on him,” he said. His voice was rough. “What did it feel like?”

You closed your eyes. Jason’s rage. Jason’s horror. Jason trying to get angry and finding your warmth wrapped around the anger before he could choose it.

“Like holding a door shut while someone was trapped on the other side,” you said. Bruce’s face went pale. “Does that sound like help to you?”

He did not answer.

You slid the IV from your arm before he could stop you.

“Where are you going?”

“To apologise.”

“He won’t want to see you.”

“I know.”

“You should rest.”

You looked at him then, and maybe for once he saw why Jason had been so angry. How awful it was to have someone decide your needs for you and call it love.

“Don’t,” you said.

Bruce stepped back.

You left the cave with Alfred’s coat around your shoulders and Jason’s hurt still burning in your hands.

Jason did not answer the first time you knocked. Or the second. The third time, something heavy hit the inside of the door hard enough to rattle the frame.

“Go away.”

His voice was rough. Not helmet-filtered. Bare.

You stood in the hallway of his safehouse building with Alfred’s coat wrapped around you and a paper bag of food slowly cooling in your hand. It was nearly dawn. Crime Alley had that bruised, grey look it got before the city remembered to be cruel again. Somewhere down the hall, a radiator clanked like an old ghost with unfinished business.

“I brought food,” you said.

Silence.

Then, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No.”

“You think soup fixes this?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

Because I love you, you thought, but that felt like the kind of truth that asked for something, and you had no right to ask.

“Because you were right,” you said.

The hallway went quiet.

You rested the paper bag against your hip because your hands were shaking again. Not from power use now. From fear.

“I’m not here to make you forgive me,” you continued. “I’m not here to explain it until it sounds better. It doesn’t sound better. I used my power on you without consent. Before tonight, I let it help you in ways you didn’t know about. Maybe not like that, maybe not directly, but enough that you’re allowed to feel violated by it. You asked if your progress was real, and I know I don’t get to be the person who answers that for you right now.”

Nothing.

“I’m sorry,” you said, voice breaking. “Not because you found out. Because I did it.”

Behind the door, you heard movement.

Then Jason said, “Did Bruce send you?”

“No.”

“Did he know you came?”

“Yes.”

“Did he try to stop you?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Good.”

Despite everything, a miserable little laugh left you. “Yeah.”

The door opened. Jason stood there in sweatpants and a black T-shirt, barefoot, hair a mess, eyes bloodshot. He looked exhausted. Human. Furious. Beautiful in the worst possible way, because your heart clearly had no self-preservation instincts and deserved to be studied by professionals.

His gaze dropped to the food. “What is it?”

“Soup.”

His mouth twisted.

“And bread,” you added.

He stared at you. You stared back.

Finally, he stepped aside. Not much. Just enough.

You entered carefully, because every inch of his space felt like a privilege you had lost and been loaned temporarily under strict supervision. His apartment was dim, curtains drawn, books stacked in unstable towers near the couch, weapons cleaned and arranged on the kitchen table with the tenderness some people reserved for family photos. There was a cracked mug in the sink. A blanket on the couch. A helmet on the floor by the window, faceplate turned away.

Jason closed the door.

You set the food on the counter. Neither of you moved toward it.

For a moment, the apartment was full of everything you had ruined.

Jason leaned back against the door, arms folded. “You gonna do it now?”

Your stomach dropped. “Do what?”

“Make this easier.”

“No.”

“You sure? I’m real fucking upset. Must be uncomfortable for you.”

You deserved that. 

You nodded. “It is.” His eyes narrowed. “But I’m not going to touch it,” you said. “Not your anger. Not your pain. Not anything. I don’t care if I’m uncomfortable. It’s yours.”

Jason looked away first. The muscle in his jaw jumped.

You swallowed. “I know that’s late.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

He dragged both hands over his face, then pushed away from the door and paced toward the window. His whole body looked like it wanted a fight and could not find one that would not make the hurt worse.

“I thought it was me,” he said. The words were quiet enough to bruise. “I thought I was doing better. Around you. Sleeping more. Not snapping so fast. Not feeling like my skin was trying to crawl off every time the Pit got loud. I thought—” He laughed, low and ugly. “I thought maybe I was healing. Stupid, right?”

“No.”

He turned on you. “Don’t.”

“It wasn’t stupid.”

“You don’t get to comfort me.”

“I’m not using my power.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

You shut your mouth.

Jason breathed hard through his nose, eyes bright with anger he was finally allowed to feel. “I thought I was safe with you.”

Your eyes filled. You did not let yourself look away.

“You were,” you said, then immediately shook your head. “No. That’s not fair. You weren’t safe from me. I wanted you to be, but wanting didn’t make it true.”

Jason stared at you like that answer had gone somewhere neither of you expected.

You kept going before fear could stop you. “You were right in the basement. I don’t get to decide you’re not a monster. I don’t get to decide what parts of your pain matter or what parts should go quiet. I don’t get to make you easier because I care about you.”

His face tightened.

“You’re not an episode,” you said. “You’re not something to manage. You’re not Bruce’s failure with a pulse. You’re Jason. And I should have treated your anger like it belonged to you even when it scared me.”

Jason’s eyes went wet. He looked furious about it.

“You and Bruce talk about me like I’m a bomb,” he said. “Like sooner or later I’m gonna go off and prove everyone right.”

He looked away, breathing unevenly.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

Then he said, “Was any of it real?”

You had expected the question. It still hurt worse than expected.

“My feelings were real,” you said. “My choices were the problem.”

Jason’s laugh broke halfway through. “That sounds like something a therapist would say right before charging two hundred bucks.”

“I can try saying it worse.”

“Please don’t.”

A tiny, awful smile tugged at your mouth and vanished. Jason saw it. His expression cracked for half a second, not into forgiveness, not into softness, but into grief. Like he missed you already and hated you for being in the same room.

“Did B call me broken?” he asked.

“No.”

Jason’s eyes sharpened.

“He thought it,” you admitted. “Or close enough. He wanted you safer. Quieter. Less hurt. He didn’t say fix, not exactly, but he meant it somewhere underneath.”

Jason nodded once, sharp and unsurprised. “And you?”

You looked at him. He held your gaze like he needed the answer and dreaded it in equal measure.

You could have said no. You could have said you never thought of him as broken. It would have been almost true.

Almost.

“At first,” you said, hating yourself with every word, “I thought of the Pit as something I could help quiet.”

Jason’s face closed.

“But I didn’t understand what that meant,” you continued quickly. “I thought if I could take away the worst of it, I was helping you. I didn’t think enough about the fact that I was deciding what counted as worst.”

“Yeah,” he said coldly. “You didn’t.”

“No.”

He looked down at his hands.

You wanted to touch him so badly your fingers ached.

You did not move. That was all you could offer now: the absence of taking.

Jason noticed. He always noticed. It made him angrier, maybe. Or sadder. Sometimes those were cousins in his body.

“Why does it not work on you?” he asked abruptly.

You blinked.

His gaze lifted. “Your power. You give everybody else the warm fuzzy bullshit. Why do you look like death every time?”

The question knocked the breath out of you. “That’s not—”

“Don’t lie.”

You closed your mouth.

Jason’s voice roughened. “I’m pissed at you. Doesn’t mean I stopped noticing.”

That was unfair. That was Jason.

You looked down at your hands. “It manifested because I was alone. When I was younger. I wanted someone to comfort me so badly that it felt like my chest was going to crack open. No one came. An injured cat did. I wanted it to feel safe, and then it did.” You swallowed. “After that, I could give comfort to other people. Animals. Anyone, if they let me. But it only goes outward.”

Jason was very still.

“I can make someone feel like the next minute is survivable,” you whispered. “I can’t make myself believe it.”

The apartment changed. Not magically. You kept your power locked down so tightly it hurt. But Jason’s anger shifted around the new information, not gone, not softened, just forced to make room for another wound.

“That’s fucked,” he said.

A laugh escaped you, startled and wet. “Yeah.”

“Real eloquent, I know.”

“No, it’s accurate.”

Jason looked at the floor, jaw tight. “So Bruce found the one person in Gotham who can comfort everybody except themselves and decided, yeah, let’s use that.”

“He was scared for you.”

“I don’t care.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean I don’t care why he did it. Fear doesn’t make it less shitty.”

You breathed in slowly. “You’re right.”

“And you.” His voice cracked on the words, anger struggling under hurt again. “You don’t get a pass because you were lonely.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get to be sad enough that my consent stops mattering.”

“I know.”

Jason stared at you. You let him.

Eventually, he dragged a hand through his hair and looked toward the counter. “Soup’s getting cold.”

You blinked.

He glared. “Don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“That kicked-puppy, hopeful face.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. It’s annoying.”

You looked down quickly.

Jason swore under his breath. Then he walked to the counter, unpacked the soup and bread with jerky, irritated movements, and pushed one container toward you. “Eat.”

Your throat tightened. “Jason—”

“I’m still mad.”

“I know.”

“I don’t forgive you.”

“I know.”

“I might not.”

Your fingers curled around the warm container. “I know.”

He looked at you, eyes dark and tired and unbearably alive. “But you look like you’re gonna fall over, and I don’t want that on my floor.”

A tear slipped down your cheek.

He pointed at you with a spoon. “Don’t make it weird.”

You laughed, brokenly. He looked away, but not before you saw his mouth tremble.

You ate soup in silence on opposite sides of his kitchen.

It was not forgiveness. It was not absolution. It was not even peace. But it was food. Warmth you had not created. Care you had not earned by emptying yourself first. Jason sat across from you, furious and hurt and still there, and maybe that was the cruellest mercy of all.

He did not come back all at once. Jason Todd was not a door that opened because someone apologised properly. He was a city after a siege, checking every road for traps. He stopped answering your calls for a week, then answered one with “What?” so aggressively you nearly cried from relief. He refused to work cases with you, then appeared on a rooftop two buildings away during one of your field assignments and pretended that it did not count. He returned the jacket you had forgotten at his apartment washed, folded, and smelling like his detergent. There was a protein bar in the pocket with a sticky note that read: Eat before you faint, dumbass.

Bruce, to his credit or perhaps merely his survival instinct, tried to apologise to Jason. Jason broke his nose.

Alfred, you heard, allowed it.

You did not use your power on Jason again. Not once. Not when he was angry. Not when the Pit surged. Not when his hands shook after a contaminated weapons bust. Not when he looked at you like he hated you for being the person he wanted comfort from most. You learned the shape of restraint properly, not the soft, self-serving version you had practised before. You learned to sit on your hands. To ask with words instead of warmth. To let silence hurt. To let Jason be ugly with pain without trying to make it beautiful enough for you to hold.

It was the hardest thing you had ever done. It was also the only apology that mattered.

Months later, he asked.

It happened in his apartment during a storm, because apparently Jason’s emotional breakthroughs required rain for dramatic integrity. The Lazarus compound case had ended three weeks before. The deserters were in custody. The modified residue had been neutralised. The boy from the tank had been buried under a name no one knew was his, with Jason standing far back beneath a tree while Bruce stood even farther away and looked like grief had invented new architecture inside him.

You and Jason were not fixed. But you were something.

You were sitting on his couch with a book in your lap, not reading, while Jason paced near the window with the restless energy of a man trying to outrun his own nervous system. His eyes had that green-edged brightness they got when the Pit was not loud enough to take him but loud enough to make staying in his body feel like a fight.

“You want me to go?” you asked softly.

“No.”

The answer came fast.

You nodded and stayed seated. He paced another line into the floor. Rain hit the windows hard enough to blur the city lights.

“Can you ask?” he said suddenly.

You looked up. Jason had stopped moving. He stood with his back to you, shoulders tense, hands flexing at his sides.

Your heart began to pound. “Ask what?”

His voice was rough. “You know what.”

You set the book aside carefully. “Jason.”

“Don’t make me say it if you already know.”

“I need you to say it.”

He turned then, anger flaring, but this time it was not at you. Not really. It was at the humiliation of need. At the vulnerability of wanting the very thing that had hurt him. At the terrible work of choosing something instead of having it chosen for him.

His jaw worked. Then, through clenched teeth, he said, “Ask me if I want help.”

Your eyes burned. You kept your voice steady. “Do you want me to use my power to help quiet the Pit?”

Jason closed his eyes. A tremor moved through him.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

His breath shook. “Not gone. Don’t make it gone.”

“I won’t.”

“Just enough that I can breathe.”

“Okay.”

“And if I say stop—”

“I stop.”

“Immediately.”

“Immediately.”

He opened his eyes. The trust there was not whole. It was not easy. It had scars and conditions and a knife hidden in its boot. But it was trust because he was choosing it, and because you understood now that choice was the whole sacred thing.

You held out your hand.

Jason stared at it for a long moment. Then he crossed the room and took it.

You let the power move slowly this time. Carefully. Not like the basement. Not like a door forced shut. More like opening a window in a room full of smoke. Warmth passed from your palm into his hand, then no farther than he allowed. You could feel the Pit recoil, restless and ugly, but you did not chase it. You did not smother it. You did not decide what Jason needed removed.

You gave him exactly what he asked for.

Jason’s breath caught. His fingers tightened around yours.

“Okay,” he whispered after a few seconds. “Stop.”

You stopped. The warmth withdrew immediately.

Jason swayed.

You did not grab him. He noticed that too.

After a moment, he sat beside you on the couch, not close enough to touch except for your still-linked hands. His breathing was uneven, but his eyes were clear.

“Was that me?” he asked.

The question was so quiet it nearly broke you.

You turned toward him. “Yes.”

His mouth twisted. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Because it feels easier to believe when I’m pissed at you.”

“I know.”

That earned you a tiny, reluctant huff.

Then he looked down at your joined hands. “I still hate what you did.”

“I know.”

“I still hate what Bruce did.”

“You should.”

“I still don’t like people messing with my head.”

“I wasn’t in your head,” you said softly, then corrected yourself before he could. “But I was too close.”

Jason looked at you. You held his gaze.

He nodded once.

“Yeah,” he said. “You were.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

It was not forgiveness. Not exactly. But it was the first time the words did not bounce off a wall.

Jason leaned back against the couch, still holding your hand like he had forgotten to let go or decided not to. “You look tired.”

“I’m fine.”

“Lie.”

You smiled faintly. “Sometimes using it makes me cold.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” His jaw tightened. “Does it hurt?”

“Not like pain.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It feels like giving away the last blanket in winter.”

Jason went still. Then, with his free hand, he reached for the throw blanket folded over the back of the couch and dropped it over your lap with aggressive precision.

You looked at it. Then at him.

His ears had gone faintly pink. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did.”

“My face is touched.”

“Your face is annoying.”

You smiled. He rolled his eyes, but his hand stayed in yours.

After a while, you said, “You don’t have to let me help like that again.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to forgive me to ask.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to be less angry because I’m sad about it.”

Jason looked over at you, something quiet and fierce in his face. “Good. Because I’m gonna be angry for a while.”

“Okay.”

“But I missed you,” he said, like the words personally offended him. “And I’m pissed about that too.”

Your laugh came out soft and shaking.

He looked away, scowling at the window. “Don’t get smug.”

“I’m not.”

“You are spiritually smug.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It is when you do it.”

The rain kept falling outside, turning Gotham’s lights into rivers against the glass. Jason’s apartment was dim and cluttered and warm in the way places became warm when someone let another person stay. The Pit had not disappeared. The hurt had not vanished. Bruce’s fear had not become harmless because he meant well. Your love had not become innocent because it was love.

But Jason’s hand was around yours. No force. No hidden warmth. No secret easing. Just his thumb, rough and hesitant, brushing over your knuckles because he chose to do it.

And you, who had spent your life giving comfort you could not keep, let yourself sit beside him beneath the blanket he had thrown at you like a threat.

For once, the warmth in the room belonged to both of you.

Not fixed. Not quieted. Not saved.