(she/her) - 22 - mdni

Meeting Batman, being taken into what should have been a loving home, becoming Robin, had all felt like finally somebody had muzzled the jaw that had been taking bites out of Jason his entire life. Then came the horrible realisation once again that nothing good can ever last, that he would never be good enough for anybody, even a father who had chosen him. The only certainties in Jason’s short life had been pain, loss, and betrayal; a trifecta that had been reinforced by Joker’s crowbar and a warehouse explosion followed by a dirt nap at just 15 years old.

Jason tried his hardest not to dwell on the tragedy that had been his first life. In fact, he tried his best not to think about it at all. It had been years now since he’d crawled his way out of the ground, since he’d become Red Hood. 

He was still caught in the grip of Gotham’s teeth, but these days he was like a piece of gum kept in too long; no longer malleable. Time had toughened him right through to his core, and when the teeth clamped down now, Jason would just spring back. 

His second life had finally levelled out into something far less dramatic than the first ever had been. He had a roof over his head, food on the table, he wasn’t arguing with Bruce nearly as much (mainly because he made a concerted effort to avoid the older man whenever possible, but still), and he’d even managed to build a relationship with his pseudo-siblings that almost resembled the bond shared by real brothers. 

And most of that, of course, was thanks to you. 

Jason had found you in a dark alley two years before, hands covered in blood that wasn’t your own, examining the ruined strap of your backpack that some would-be mugger had cut off your shoulder and tried to get away with. Jason, in full Red Hood gear at the time, had followed the screams and ended up standing before you. 

“Bit late there Hood, I already got it handled.” You’d smirked at him as you fished a rag out from the side pocket of the bag and wiped the blood from your knuckles. Jason’s heart had done a funny little skip at the sight.

“I can see that,” even through the helmet’s modulator, Jason hadn’t been able to keep the laughter from his tone, “let me walk you home safe at least?”

You had bent over to take a quick look at the passed out mugger’s very clearly broken nose, and nudged him with the toe of your boot. You’d shrugged at him as you carried on walking down the alley, the one remaining strap of your bag slung over your shoulder. Jason had taken that as his cue to follow.

In the weeks after that, through ‘chance meetings’, walking through darkened alleys alongside you, and just straight up appearing on your fire escape on multiple occasions, the pair of you formed an unlikely friendship. He discovered that you yourself were all too familiar with the inside of Gotham’s gaping maw, though you hadn’t let yourself end up quite so scarred as he had. By the time he showed up at your door with his helmet off and a stab wound in his side several months later, begging you to patch him up, it felt like you already knew everything important there was to know about one another. 

It had been all too easy for Jason to fall in love with you, but harder to admit that to himself, and harder still to gain your trust. Growing up in the city had roughened your edges. You had added spikes around your heart along the way. Walls and barriers to keep people out. To keep you safe. Keep you alive. And Jason’s defences matched your own. 

What’s the saying - ‘hurt people, hurt people’? That couldn’t have been any more true for you and Jason both. Any time one of you made some headway, let down a barrier a little, dismantled a wall brick by brick, the other would build another one back up just as fast. Your friendship was tumultuous, neither of you wanting to put a name to what you were to one another. You spent just as much time fighting with another as you did laughing. 

It had come to a head one night in the same alley where you had first met. You were in yet another argument, this time because you had gone to the corner store on your own after dark. He had told you a hundred times to call him if you wanted to leave the house at night, not to go out alone. You never listened.

“God, why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone?” You’d screamed at him, clutching the paper bag of groceries to your chest. “Why do you care what happens to me anyway? You know I can take care of myself perfectly well without you.”

The panic that he felt every time you willingly put yourself in danger was uncontrollable. It clawed wildly at the inside of his throat, forming words he hadn’t thought all the way through before they spilled out.

“Why do I care?” He had scoffed, “Because I’m in love with you, you fuckin’ dumbass, that’s why!” The words hit their mark, dismantling the very last defence you had against him. A soft noise slipped from deep in your chest on a breath. Jason’s eyes were clenched shut, jaw tight, so he missed the final wall falling down. Missed you stepping softly across the distance between you both, setting the bag of groceries to one side. He had disappeared so far inside his own head, frozen by own confession, that he almost missed it when your hand stretched out and gently brushed across his jaw. When his eyes snapped open at the sensation, they were met with yours right in front of him, wide and filled with shock.

“You love me?” Your voice had been hushed, your breath warm as it fanned across his face. You had patched him up more times than he could count, had been this close to him on nearly a nightly basis for months now. It always made his heart race, his palms go clammy, but this was different. Your thumb had come to rest right below his lower lip, almost touching it, but not quite.

“I mean, yeah. I figured that was obvious by the way I follow you around like a sad lost puppy all the time,” Jason laughed gently, but his face grew serious, “I know you don’t feel the same way though, you don’t gotta say it back. I like things the way they are now.” You were watching his walls rebuild themselves in real time. You didn’t want that to happen. 

Words didn’t come easily to you, but they weren’t needed to show him you felt the same way. Without hesitation, you stretched up to press your lips against his own. Not gently, you poured every last bit of emotion you had into the kiss, determined that he would be left with no doubt at all about exactly how you felt about him. A strangled groan had escaped his throat as he pulled you close, his lips moving against yours hard enough to bruise.

Things had gotten better for Jason after that. Of course, you still fought. Being in love seemed to soften some of the sharper edges, but not all of them. Frequently one of you would cut the other by accident, words slicing yet more scars into one another's hearts. But even still, things were better than they had been before. 

For a long while, the permanent exhaustion Jason felt like it faded into background noise. Never gone, but lighter; easier to ignore with you pressed into his side. It felt like he had finally found the answer. You could heal one another, slowly but surely. Everything would work out. He could be happy.

You encouraged him to fix things with Bruce, with Dick and Tim and Damian. He started taking better care of himself, because you worried when he didn't. For a while, sleeping with the warm weight of you beside him even stopped the nightmares that had plagued him since his dip in the Lazarus pit.

Eventually though, as it had with every good thing in Jason's life, the cracks started to appear. The arguments got more frequent. Watching you flinch as his words cut too deep began to bring him physical pain. The nightmares crept back in, slowly but surely, and no matter how much you soothed and comforted him they didn't leave again.

By the time you had been together for almost two years Jason woke screaming nearly every night again. The realisation that you no longer felt safe, like home, threatened to crush him. He still loved you, he was sure he always would. But it wasn't enough anymore. 

The tiredness seeped back in slowly but surely, like the tide inching back to the shore. Jason felt its weight heavier than he ever had before. It was oh so familiar, but the muscle he’d used to hold that weight for his entire life had grown stiff from disuse, and carrying it hurt. He was just so, so tired. 

It would have been poetic if things had finally fallen apart in the same alley where you'd met, where he'd told you he loved you that first time. But it didn't. It happened slowly, piece by piece. Jason wasn't good at letting go of broken things, and neither were you. 

So, you both held on far longer than you should have. And in the end, it wasn't even an explosive argument that brought things to an end. No one cheated. There was nothing huge that screamed out that things needed to be over between you. Just that heavy knowledge that things didn't feel right anymore, growing more certain by the day. 

Until one night, after patrol, Jason just didn't come home.

The weight of everything that was wrong was too much to carry. He just had to put it down before it broke him. And honestly, you felt the same way. You didn’t even question it when you woke up that morning to find the bed cold and undisturbed on his side. Didn’t think much of it when he still wasn’t back when you got home from work. Jason texted you while you were making dinner to say that he was going to stay in Blüdhaven with Dick for a while, that he needed some space, and you shrugged it off. 

It was only when you were getting ready for bed, pulling one of Jason’s too-big shirts on, that you caught a lingering hint of his scent. The warm leather and spice, faded cigarette smoke and rain, the undertone that was just Jason. The smell that had been your comfort, your home, for two years.

It hit you like a freight train. The grief had been drip feeding its way through you for months as it dawned that your relationship was doomed. It still hadn’t prepared you for this moment, for the realisation that this was it. That you and Jason weren’t going to make it. That no matter how much you had tried to fix one another, to love one another hard enough that it could plug the holes left behind by all the hurt you’d each suffered, it wasn’t going to be enough. 

You were more alone than you had ever been before, the silence of your shared apartment pressing in on you like a weight. Suffocating you. Your breaths came short and gasping as you pressed your face into Jason’s pillow, searching for more of the smell that could fool your fragile heart into thinking he wasn’t gone. He should be here right now. He should be getting ready for patrol while you make yourself comfy in bed. He would never leave for the night without pressing a kiss to your forehead, the warm pressure of his lips wrapping you in a cocoon of his love, safe and warm until he came back home to you. 

Not tonight. As you cry into his pillow until the fabric is soaked through and your eyes burn, you just feel lonely and cold.

And so very tired.

Selina had been wearing a coat worth more than everything you owned combined. You had seen the flash of expensive leather beneath the half-buttoned fabric. You had seen the careless way the wallet sat near the top of her handbag, almost exposed, almost begging.

You had not seen the amusement in her eyes when you bumped into her.

Your fingers slipped into the bag.

Her hand closed around your wrist.

“Cute,” she had said.

You had twisted, kicked, and very nearly bitten her. That had made her laugh.

It had been the first warm sound anyone had directed at you in months.

Selina had taken her wallet back, bought you dinner and asked no questions until you had finished eating. Then she had asked the right ones. Where did you sleep? Who was looking for you? How long had you been alone? Did you always telegraph your movements so badly, or had the rain made you sloppy?

You had lied about everything except the last answer.

The rain had not made you sloppy. You had simply never been taught properly.

Selina corrected that.

Years later, crouched beside her on the ledge of a jewellery exchange in Gotham’s Diamond District, you thought about how much had changed since then. Your gloves were better now. Your balance was precise. Your breathing barely stirred the rain clinging to the collar of your suit. Below you, traffic crawled through the streets, headlights smeared into pale ribbons by the water.

Selina glanced sideways. “You’re brooding.”

“I’m observing.”

“You’re wearing a mask and staring dramatically into the middle distance.”

“It’s how Batman observes.”

“Yes, and when he does it, it’s brooding.”

A gravelled voice came through your earpiece. “I can hear you.”

Selina smiled. “I know.”

You bit the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing.

Across the street, Batman occupied the shadow of a stone gargoyle. Even after years of knowing Bruce, you sometimes forgot he was there until he moved. It was one of the few skills Selina had never managed to teach you. You could vanish from security guards, gangsters and most of the Gotham Police Department, but Batman always seemed to sense where you were.

Selina claimed it was because he had the migratory instincts of a particularly anxious bat. Bruce claimed nothing.

Tonight’s job was supposed to be simple. A private security company called Halberd Solutions had been transporting stolen antiquities through Gotham, using legitimate jewellery shipments as cover. Selina had discovered the operation after several pieces belonging to an old friend appeared in an underground auction catalogue. Batman had traced the shipments. Oracle had found the exchange’s hidden sublevels.

The plan was to get in, photograph the inventory, place trackers on anything scheduled to move and leave before Halberd realised its operation had been compromised.

No fighting. No improvising. No stealing.

Bruce had looked directly at both you and Selina when he said the last part.

It was frankly insulting. You had not stolen anything from an active crime scene in nearly six months. The sapphire cufflinks in your apartment did not count. The Penguin had not been wearing them at the time.

“Positions,” Oracle said through the comms. “Nightwing and Signal are covering the eastern exits. Red Hood is watching the loading bay. Robin and Spoiler have the roof. Orphan is already inside.”

“Of course she is,” you murmured.

A soft click answered through the comms. Cass’ version of laughter.

Selina rose smoothly, grappling line already in hand. “Ready, kitten?”

You had outgrown the nickname years ago. Selina continued using it because she knew it made you scowl. “After you, old lady.”

Selina gasped as if wounded, then stepped backwards off the roof.

You followed.

The descent was clean. The glass cutter made barely a sound against the skylight, and the security loop Tim had installed gave you exactly thirty-seven seconds to slip through before the internal camera feed resumed.

You landed inside a dark office.

Selina touched two fingers to her lips and pointed towards the door.

Footsteps passed in the corridor beyond.

You waited. The guard moved on.

Selina picked the lock in four seconds. You could do it in three, but only because she had once made you practise until your fingertips bled and then informed you that blood left forensic evidence.

The lower floors were quiet. Too quiet, perhaps, but Gotham trained its children to distrust stillness. Silence was rarely safety. It was the breath before a fist came down.

Cass appeared as you reached the service stairwell, emerging from the dark so suddenly that you almost struck her.

She caught your wrist before you could.

“Rude,” you whispered.

Cass smiled and released you.

“Clear,” she signed.

You answered with one hand. “Show-off.”

Her smile widened.

The three of you descended together.

You had learned Batfamily sign language in pieces. Cass had taught you how to speak in movement. Dick had taught you the alphabet by signing increasingly terrible jokes across the Cave. Jason had taught you insults. Damian had insisted that Jason’s additions were neither official nor grammatically correct, which only made them more useful.

You had never been formally inducted into the family. There had been no ceremony, no declaration, no framed photograph placed on a mantel. You did not live at Wayne Manor, although there was always a bedroom prepared for you. You did not wear a bat on your chest. You were not a Wayne.

You were Selina’s.

That was how everyone had first understood you. Selina’s protégé. Selina’s stray. Selina’s shadow, trailing her across Gotham’s rooftops with sharp eyes and sharper fingers.

Over time, however, the distinctions had blurred. Dick began texting you memes at impossible hours. Jason started leaving books at your apartment and pretending he had forgotten them. Tim called when he needed someone to break into his own office because he had misplaced his access card. Steph dragged you shopping. Duke saved you a seat at movie nights. Cass sometimes appeared beside you without warning and stayed for hours in comfortable silence.

Damian referred to you as an adequate criminal. From him, it was practically a sonnet.

Bruce kept medical supplies calibrated to your measurements in the Cave. Alfred kept your preferred tea in the pantry.

Still, there were nights when you looked around the Cave and felt like a guest who had remained so long that everyone had become too polite to ask when you were leaving.

You knew how temporary kindness could be. You knew better than to mistake an unlocked window for ownership.

The hidden sublevel lay beneath the building’s main vault. Tim killed the alarms while Selina opened the mechanical locks, muttering appreciatively at the craftsmanship.

“You sound like Jason talking about guns,” you whispered.

Selina looked offended. “My interests are much more refined.”

“You once spent forty minutes explaining the emotional significance of a diamond.”

“It was a historically important diamond.”

“You called it misunderstood.”

“It was.”

Cass signed for you both to stop talking.

The final door opened onto a warehouse larger than the building above should have physically contained.

Rows of reinforced crates stretched beneath white fluorescent lights. Sculptures stood wrapped in grey cloth. Paintings sat locked within climate-controlled cases. Gold icons, ceremonial blades and fragments of ancient stone rested beside modern weapons and stacks of unregistered currency.

Selina went still.

You knew that stillness. It was not the graceful pause of a predator. It was the moment anger turned cold enough to become useful.

“These came from the museum raids,” she said.

Batman’s voice answered immediately. “Confirmed. Oracle?”

“Running serial numbers now,” Barbara said. “Several match items stolen during the evacuations after the Narrows flooding. Others were reported destroyed.”

“They stole from disaster zones,” you said.

The words came out harsher than intended.

During your first winter with Selina, there had been a fire in the building where the two of you were staying. Not one of her better apartments, she always insisted, but it had been the first place you had begun to think of as home. While tenants crowded on the pavement and watched smoke swallow their lives, thieves had picked through the rooms the firefighters had cleared.

They had taken the only photograph you still possessed from before Gotham swallowed you whole.

You had searched every pawnshop in the East End. You never found it.

“Catalogue everything,” Bruce said. “No one touches the inventory beyond placing trackers.”

You stared at a tray of jewellery recovered from somewhere people had already lost too much.

“No stealing,” you said bitterly. “Right.”

Selina’s hand brushed your shoulder. It was brief but deliberate.

“Evidence first,” she said quietly. “Then we take it all back.”

That was something she had taught you, too. Wanting justice did not mean grabbing blindly. Sometimes you needed patience. Sometimes the cleanest theft was the one no one realised had happened until everything they had built collapsed around them.

You began photographing crates.

For five minutes, the operation remained perfectly quiet.

Then every light in the warehouse turned red. Steel shutters slammed over the exits. A mechanical voice announced, “Security breach detected.”

“Oracle?” Bruce demanded.

“I didn’t trigger it,” Barbara replied. “Someone isolated the internal system. I’m locked out.”

Armed guards poured from concealed doors between the crates. So much for no fighting.

Cass moved first. She crossed the floor like spilled ink, silent and impossible to contain. One guard raised his weapon. Cass struck his wrist, throat and knee before he could pull the trigger.

Selina’s whip cracked through the red light.

You ducked beneath the swing of a baton, drove your elbow into the attacker’s ribs and used his momentum to send him shoulder-first into a crate.

“Multiple hostiles moving towards the sublevel,” Duke reported.

“Loading bay’s sealed,” Jason said. Gunfire sounded faintly through his comm. “And these guys have military hardware.”

“Non-lethal,” Bruce warned.

“Rubber rounds, ‘Dad.’” A pause. “Mostly.”

You disarmed another guard and kicked the weapon beneath a shelving unit.

The training Selina had given you was designed around avoidance. Be somewhere else before the hit arrived. Redirect weight. Exploit arrogance. Never fight strength with strength when speed, gravity and a conveniently placed staircase existed.

The Batfamily had expanded that education.

Dick taught you how to fall without breaking. Jason taught you how to keep moving after you did. Tim taught you to identify the pattern in a room. Cass taught you that the body confessed before the mouth did. Bruce taught you that every exit mattered, especially the ones behind you.

Now every exit was sealed.

“Charges on the northern wall,” Tim said. “They’re not trying to trap us.”

The floor vibrated.

Realisation arrived with a sickening lurch.

“They’re destroying the evidence,” you said.

Explosions tore through the far side of the warehouse. The shockwave lifted you from your feet.

You hit the ground hard enough that your vision went white.

Sound vanished, replaced by a high, needling whine. Dust billowed between the crates. Somewhere nearby, stone cracked and metal screamed as part of the ceiling collapsed.

You rolled onto your side, coughing.

Selina lay several metres away.

She pushed herself upright, blood streaking one temple.

Cass was already moving towards her.

“I’m fine,” Selina said, though you could barely hear her through the ringing in your ears. “Kitten?”

“Alive.”

“Good.”

The red emergency lights flickered. Fire climbed one of the shelving units.

“Structural integrity is failing,” Barbara warned. “Everyone needs to evacuate.”

“The shutters are reinforced,” Bruce said. “Nightwing?”

“Working on it.”

You looked across the warehouse. Several guards had fled through the concealed passages. Others were unconscious or trapped by debris. Beyond them, close to where the explosions had begun, a section of the floor had collapsed into darkness.

A hand clung to the broken edge. One of the guards.

He was young. Younger than you had expected beneath the helmet, perhaps barely twenty. His other arm hung uselessly. Concrete crumbled beneath his fingers.

“Help!” he shouted.

Everyone else was moving towards the western exit, where Dick and Duke were cutting through the shutter from outside.

You moved in the opposite direction.

Selina caught your arm. “No.”

“He’s falling.”

“The fire is spreading.”

You looked at the guard. For one horrible second, you were fourteen again, standing in an alley with rainwater inside your shoes and no one coming back for you.

“He’s falling,” you repeated.

Selina’s grip tightened.

Then she released you.

“Cass,” she ordered.

But Cass was pinned behind a fallen beam, helping two other guards escape the smoke.

You ran alone.

The damaged floor shifted beneath your boots. Every instinct screamed at you to turn back. Survival had once been the only prayer you knew. Get out. Get away. Take what you can carry and leave everything else behind.

The guard’s fingers slipped.

You threw yourself forward and caught his wrist.

His weight nearly dragged you over the edge.

Your ribs struck broken concrete. Pain flared through your chest.

“I’ve got you,” you gasped.

The guard stared up at you through the smoke. “You’re one of them.”

“Brilliant observation.”

The floor cracked. You reached for leverage and found none.

The guard was too heavy. Your shoulder burned. Somewhere behind you, Selina shouted your name—not your codename, not kitten, but the name you had given her years ago between frightened bites of stolen food.

A grappling line snapped around your waist.

The sudden tension hauled you backwards.

Another line caught the guard.

Jason landed on the tilted concrete beside you, one boot braced against a broken support.

“On three,” he said.

The helmet disguised his voice, but not the fury beneath it.

Together, you pulled.

The guard cleared the ledge just as the remaining section of floor collapsed.

Jason shoved him towards safety. Then he turned on you.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“He needed help.”

“You almost went down with him.”

“But I didn’t.”

The ceiling groaned.

Jason grabbed the back of your suit. “This discussion is getting a sequel.”

He dragged you through the smoke towards the opening Dick and Duke had cut into the shutter.

Selina and Cass were already outside the warehouse. Tim crouched beside the disabled security panel, blood dripping from his nose while he forced the emergency systems online. Damian and Steph covered the corridor.

“Move!” Dick shouted.

The family spilled into the stairwell seconds before another explosion swallowed the sublevel.

The climb blurred into heat, dust and aching lungs. Bruce appeared halfway up, cape torn along one side, and took Selina’s weight without asking when her steps faltered.

She complained. He ignored her.

You made it outside as the first fire engines screamed around the corner. Rain struck your face.

You bent forward with your hands on your knees, breathing in cold air so sharply it hurt.

The others gathered beneath the awning of a closed bank. Smoke rose behind them. Red and blue emergency lights flashed over black armour and tired faces.

Everyone was alive. The evidence might not be. It should have felt like enough.

Instead, you became abruptly aware that every member of the family was looking at you.

Jason removed his helmet. His hair was damp with sweat and rain, the white streak plastered against his forehead.

“What?” you asked.

“What?” he echoed. “You nearly threw yourself into a flaming pit.”

“I was helping someone.”

“You can help people without reenacting the end of an action movie.”

“The line wasn’t part of my plan.”

“Great. Glad the plan only included the flaming pit.”

“Enough,” Bruce said.

Jason’s mouth snapped shut. That was almost more alarming than the shouting.

Bruce stepped closer. The rain slid from the pointed ears of his cowl. “Are you injured?”

“No.”

Cass touched your side. Pain shot through your ribs.

You flinched.

Cass looked at Bruce.

“Bruised,” she signed. “Maybe cracked.”

“Traitor,” you muttered.

Cass patted your cheek.

Selina folded her arms. “You disobeyed a direct instruction.”

Your stomach tightened. “I know.”

“You endangered yourself.”

“I know.”

“You entered an unstable blast zone without backup.”

“I know.”

There it was. The old familiar certainty. You had made the wrong choice. You had become inconvenient. The door had been open, but that did not mean you had ever owned a key.

Selina had taken you in because she saw something salvageable. The Batfamily tolerated you because she loved you. You had always known there would be a line. Too reckless. Too criminal. Too angry. Too much work.

You had crossed it.

You straightened despite the pain in your ribs.

“I’ll give back the comm,” you said.

Silence fell.

Dick blinked. “The what?”

“The comm. And the access card for the Cave. I know the emergency codes changed last month, but I haven’t written them down anywhere.” You removed the small device from your ear before your hands could begin shaking. “The suit’s mine, unless Bruce wants the armour plating back. Selina paid for most of it.”

Jason stared at you.

Tim slowly rose from beside the ambulance where a paramedic had been checking his face. “Why would you give back your access card?”

“Because I broke protocol.”

Steph’s eyebrows climbed. “I break protocol twice before breakfast.”

“Three times if she hasn’t had coffee,” Duke added.

“This is different.”

“How?” Dick asked.

You looked towards Selina.

Her face had become unreadable. You hated when she did that. She had taught you to read lies in the corners of mouths, fear in shoulders, intention in the smallest shift of a wrist. She remained the one person who could close herself so completely that you found nothing.

“I’m not one of you,” you said.

The words sounded pathetic once they were outside your mouth.

You pressed on anyway.

“I know I’ve been around for a while, and everyone’s been kind, but I’m here because of Selina. I’m not a Robin. I’m not a Bat. I’m barely even a vigilante. I was a thief she found digging through her bag.”

“You were an appallingly bad thief,” Selina said.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

You held the comm out towards Bruce. “I understand.”

Bruce looked at the device. He did not take it.

“No,” he said.

Your hand remained outstretched. “No?”

“No.”

“You can’t just say no.”

“He does that a lot,” Dick said. “It’s one of his least charming qualities.”

Bruce ignored him. “You broke protocol,” he said. “That requires review and additional training. It does not mean you are being removed from the family.”

The rain seemed to become louder.

“I didn’t say family.”

“You didn’t have to.”

You glanced at Selina again. This time, her expression was not closed.

It was heartbroken.

“Oh, kitten,” she murmured.

You hated the softness more than anger.

Anger you knew how to defend against.

Selina crossed the distance between you and placed both hands around your outstretched fist, enclosing the comm between your palms. “I did not teach you to be this foolish.”

“Technically, most of my bad habits predate you.”

“I took in a child who stole because they were hungry.” Her voice sharpened. “I trained you because Gotham would have eaten you alive if I hadn’t. I kept you because I loved you. None of that was charity.”

Your throat closed.

Selina tilted your chin up. “And they do not love you because I instructed them to.”

Dick stepped closer first. He always did.

“Selina couldn’t make us do anything,” he said. “She can barely make Bruce communicate.”

Bruce’s mouth tightened.

“She didn’t make me teach you how to do a quadruple somersault.”

“You didn’t teach me. You dared me to try it from a water tower.”

“And you nailed the landing.”

“I broke two fingers.”

Dick smiled. “Memories.”

Jason shoved his helmet beneath one arm. “She didn’t make me give you a key to my place.”

“You said it was because I kept breaking in.”

“Yeah, and now you can break in more efficiently.”

Tim wiped the blood from beneath his nose. “You are listed as an emergency contact on several of my medical forms.”

You stared at him. “Why?”

“You answer your phone.”

“That is the saddest thing you’ve ever said,” Steph told him.

“It’s practical.”

Steph turned to you. “You helped me dye my hair in the Manor bathroom at two in the morning.”

“You stained the sink purple.”

“We stained the sink purple. That kind of bond is legally binding.”

Duke nodded solemnly. “I’m pretty sure Alfred considers it a blood oath.”

“Alfred considers it the reason neither of you is permitted to purchase permanent dye without supervision,” Bruce said.

You looked at Duke. “He knows?”

“He always knows.”

Cass reached for your hand. Her fingers threaded through yours.

“Sibling,” she signed with her free hand.

The motion was simple. Certain.

Your eyes burned.

Damian stood slightly apart from the others, arms crossed over his chest. Rain darkened his hair and dripped from the edge of his domino mask.

You expected a lecture. Instead, he said, “You are irritating, reckless and excessively influenced by Todd.”

“Hey,” Jason protested.

Damian continued as though he had not spoken. “You invade my personal space, steal food from my plate and have repeatedly encouraged Titus to ignore commands.”

“He deserves autonomy.”

“He is a dog.”

“A dog with dreams.”

Damian’s glare faltered around the edges. “You are also,” he said stiffly, “the only person aside from Pennyworth whom I permit to touch my sketchbooks without prior approval.”

Steph made a strangled sound.

Damian drew himself up. “Do not make this unbearable, Brown.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

She was already reaching for her phone.

Damian pointed at you. “My point is that your presence is no longer dependent upon my father’s associate.”

Selina placed a hand over her heart. “Associate? That’s cold, even for you.”

“You broke into the Cave last Tuesday.”

“I was invited.”

“You entered through the ventilation system.”

“The door lacked drama.”

Bruce exhaled through his nose.

It might have been a sigh. It might have been the closest Batman came to screaming.

You looked down at the comm still trapped between your hands and Selina’s.

“I don’t have your name,” you said quietly.

Bruce answered. “Neither does Barbara.”

“Bruce,” Dick warned.

“What? It’s legally accurate.”

“Not helping.”

“You do not need my name to belong here,” Bruce said. His voice lowered, losing some of Batman’s gravel. “You do not need a symbol. You do not need to live at the Manor. You do not need to become someone different from who you are.”

“Though fewer unauthorised thefts would be appreciated,” Tim added.

“The cufflinks were ugly,” you said.

“That is not a legal defence.”

“It should be.”

Bruce looked at the comm once more. “Keep it.”

You closed your fingers around the device. “And the access card?”

“You need it for training.”

Your relief was immediate and humiliating.

Jason noticed. Of course he did.

His anger softened into something far more dangerous.

“C’mere,” he said.

“No.”

“You nearly fell into a hole.”

“And I’m being brave about it.”

“You’re shaking.”

“It’s raining.”

Jason opened one arm. You held out for perhaps two seconds before stepping into him.

His embrace was careful of your injured ribs but otherwise crushing. His jacket smelled like smoke, wet leather and gunpowder. Familiar things. Safe things.

Dick joined from the side. Then Steph. Duke complained that someone had stepped on his boot. Tim muttered that group hugs were inefficient while making no effort to leave. Cass remained attached to your hand. Damian protested when Selina pulled him in by the cape.

Bruce stood outside the mess, as though he had somehow convinced himself that nobody had noticed him edging closer. Selina caught his gauntlet and dragged him into the circle.

“This is undignified,” Damian said from somewhere near your shoulder.

“You’re hugging back,” Steph replied.

“I am attempting to escape.”

“Sure, little man.”

“I will end you.”

“There he is.”

You laughed. It hurt your ribs. It hurt your throat. It broke loose from somewhere deep inside you, somewhere that had been locked since you were fourteen and cold and convinced that needing anyone was the same as handing them a weapon.

The family pressed closer around you.

Not because Selina had asked them. Not because you had earned enough points or saved enough lives or become good enough to deserve a place among them.

They held you because they wanted to. Because somewhere between the first stolen wallet and the thousandth rooftop argument, you had become theirs.

Not property. Never that.

Something chosen. Something kept.

Later, after the fire was controlled and Halberd’s surviving records were recovered from an external server, everyone returned to the Cave.

Alfred took one look at the soot covering the group and banished everyone from the upstairs rooms until they had showered.

He examined your ribs personally.

“Two fractures,” he announced.

“I’ve had worse.”

“This is not a competition.”

“Jason acts like it is.”

“Master Jason is a terrible influence.”

“Thank you,” Jason called from the next cot.

“That was not praise, Master Jason.”

Bruce reviewed the mission footage while you sat wrapped in a blanket, sipping tea beneath Alfred’s supervision.

Your mistakes were listed. So were Selina’s, Jason’s, Tim’s and Bruce’s.

No one was spared. No one was singled out.

When the review ended, Bruce assigned you additional extraction drills with Cass and Dick. Then he handed you a small black case.

You frowned at it. “What’s this?”

“Open it,” he said.

Inside was a new Cave access card.

Your old one had been temporary, plain except for a serial number. This one had your chosen emblem embossed across the front—not a bat and not Selina’s cat, but the small symbol you had once sketched absent-mindedly on the edge of a mission report.

Beneath it was your name.

Not your legal name.

The one you had selected for yourself. The one the family used when they called you over the comms. The one that belonged to nobody else.

You ran your thumb over the lettering. “Is this because I nearly handed the other one back?”

“It was already being made,” Bruce said.

Tim glanced up from the computer. “He approved the design three weeks ago.”

Bruce gave him a look.

“What?” Tim asked. “They deserve accurate context.”

You looked at Bruce. He shifted his attention towards the computer screens with suspicious intensity.

“Thank you,” you said.

He nodded once. “You’re welcome.”

Selina leaned over your shoulder to inspect the card. “Very official.”

“Jealous?”

“Of the bat-themed bunker credentials? Hardly.”

“You asked for one last year.”

“I wanted to see if he would give me one.”

“You used mine.”

“You should choose a more difficult code.”

“It was my birthday.”

“Exactly.”

Alfred appeared beside you carrying a tray of sandwiches.

“Your room has been prepared,” he said.

You glanced towards him. “My room?”

“The blue room beside Miss Cassandra’s.”

“I thought that was a guest room.”

Alfred’s expression was gentler than the rain.

“No,” he said. “It is yours.”

Something in your chest shifted.

Not breaking. Settling.

That night, you slept at Wayne Manor.

Your ribs ached. The storm continued beyond the windows, rain whispering against the old glass and wind moving through the trees. The room remained unfamiliar in small ways. The sheets were too soft. The ceiling was too high. There were no neighbouring arguments bleeding through thin apartment walls.

But your books sat on one shelf. Clothes you had forgotten during previous stays occupied the wardrobe. A framed photograph stood on the bedside table. It had been taken at the previous Christmas. Everyone was crowded into the shot, most of them looking in different directions. Dick had his eyes closed. Jason was holding up two fingers behind Tim’s head. Steph was laughing. Cass leaned against your side. Damian appeared personally offended by the existence of cameras.

Selina stood behind you with one hand on your shoulder. Bruce stood behind her.

You picked up the photograph. On the back, someone had written in black ink: Stop stealing the silverware. We know it’s you.

Below it, in different handwriting: It’s Steph.

Then: Traitor.

Then: The forks are accounted for. Three dessert spoons remain missing. —A.P.

At the bottom, Damian had added: Return them, thief.

You smiled and placed the photograph back.

The dessert spoons were in your apartment. You had been planning to return them eventually. Probably.

A knock sounded at the door.

Before you could answer, Dick poked his head inside. “Movie night. You coming?”

“I have broken ribs.”

“We picked something boring. You’ll be asleep in twenty minutes.”

“Tim chose it, didn’t he?”

“Documentary about the evolution of forensic soil analysis.”

You considered this. “Tempting.”

Dick opened the door wider.

Behind him stood nearly the entire family.

Jason carried blankets. Duke held popcorn. Steph had somehow acquired three bags of sweets despite Alfred’s ban on eating in the bedrooms. Cass waved. Tim held his laptop. Damian had Titus at his side and looked as though he had been forced there under threat of death.

Selina slipped past them all and climbed onto the foot of your bed.

“You heard the invalid,” she said. “They can’t move.”

“I can move.”

“Too late. We live here now.”

Bruce appeared at the end of the hallway. He surveyed the crowd blocking the doorway. “There is a screening room downstairs.”

“They have broken ribs,” Dick said.

“So?”

“So we’re bringing the screening room to them.”

“You are not moving the projector.”

Tim looked down at the compact projector in his hands.

Bruce closed his eyes.

A minute later, everyone had invaded the room.

The documentary lasted eight minutes before Steph changed it to an action film. Damian criticised every fight scene. Jason threw popcorn at him. Titus rested his enormous head across your ankles. Cass curled against one side of you, Selina against the other.

Bruce remained in the armchair near the door, pretending to read case files.

You caught him watching the room more than once.

Outside, Gotham spread beneath the storm, all sharp edges and hungry streets. It had taken plenty from you. Your childhood. Your certainty. Every soft thing you had once believed could survive without being guarded.

Yet Gotham had given you Selina. Selina had given you a home. And somewhere along the way, without permission or ceremony, you had stolen an entire family.

Or perhaps they had stolen you. For once, you did not care who deserved the credit.

It's a random Tuesday as Bruce, and you stand in the middle of your grandfather's beloved attic. The wooden floors creak under your weight, dust particles moving in spirals as the early rays of sunshine flit through the glass panes of the dormer window. Your mother had asked for your help in cleaning your grandparents' place, and so you pulled in Bruce - offering him a break from his corporate duties, which he gladly agreed to.

"Wow, I did not realise my grandad hoarded so many things", you say, looking at the vast number of trinkets and boxes stacked along the walls on both sides of the attic. Each was well organised, with a label pasted on the top.

"Your grandad was a man of culture", Bruce chuckles, looking at the various band posters from the 40s and 50s. There were even autographs from some of them, neatly preserved.

Both of you got to work immediately, knowing it would be hours before everything was cleaned out. You had decided to split the work by concentrating on different ends of the triangular room.

Bruce had struck gold by ending up in the corner where your granddad had seemed to store much of the photo albums and cassettes, stacked on top of each other, labeled in detail about what the insides contained. It gave Bruce an insight to your family, a family from looking at the albums that had photos from back since your grandparents got married, having their daughter — your mother, to her getting married, and having you.

He had seen a lot of your photos since the early days of dating, but these were different. Your grandfather was an avid photographer, and Bruce could sense it through the varied angles and poses that he made everyone do.

"Having fun, huh?" you mumble, looking at Bruce as he suppresses a chuckle while looking at the pictures of you — a two-year-old, wearing a princess gown and a wand gripped tightly within your grubby fingers.

"You get stuck with the more fun part, while I have to dust some old documents", you grumble, looking at files and files of documents.

"Do you wanna exchange, sweetheart?"

"Nope," you say, emphasizing the 'p' as you shift to the next box, "Besides, I like hearing you laugh, even if it comes at the cost of my pictures"

An hour passes by.

You had finished four out of the twelve boxes. Heaving a sigh, you decide it's time for a well-deserved break. And what better to do than annoy your beautiful husband?

"Bruce, Brucie Wayne," you turn to look at him at the lack of any response "Bruce?"

Bruce doesn't answer, his broad back turned towards you. There is something different in the air from a few minutes ago, almost tinged with melancholic fragrance. You move towards, hoping to see what made him go so still, only to let out a gasp when you see it.

There you were, maybe five or six years old, wearing a large doctor's coat that reached well beyond your limbs, dragging onto the marble floor and a cute pink stethoscope around your neck. But that was not what made you gasp; it was the couple you were standing with in the photo.

Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Both of them were crouched next to you on either side. Thomas Wayne in his fitting black suit paired with a dark blue silk necktie embellished with motifs, while Martha Wayne wore a simple black silk dress paired with a blue tweed jacket.

There was a tiny piece of description below the photograph, a little shabby, like your grandpa wasn't sure what to write.

' Y/N & famous couple from Gotham (VHS #155)'

Bruce let out a laugh— loud but bittersweet. It made sense for your grandad to not know them, considering the only people he thought to be rich were the Queens.

You looked at Bruce, his eyes a little glazed as you cupped his face, fingers rubbing against the expanse of his cheek. Pressing a small kiss on his forehead, you whisper, "Shall we watch the VHS tape?"

He hums as you both try finding the exact tape among two hundred of them. Once retrieved, you dust the Toshiba VCR at the corner, pulling it slightly towards the center. You and Bruce try to get it to start since it probably hasn't been used in a while.

After a few minutes, the VCR lights up. Inserting the tape, you press play, and both of you stand back, Bruce's arm over your shoulder as you lay your head on his chest, arms wrapped around his waist.

The VCR displays a blue gradient before buzzing to a grainy film of you in a purple and pink frock , smiling widely at the camera. There's a lot of noise around you — people clapping , speeches being read as your grandad records the stage when Thomas Wayne was giving his speech. Bruce shifted a little, hand holding yours a little tighter, from hearing his father's voice after so many years.

The video then shifts to you, standing in front of the couple, wearing a pink stethoscope and a white coat a little too large for your frame. Martha Wayne smiles , a smile so radiant, before crouching down to her knees as she shakes your hand.

"Hi, there. What's your name?"

You say your name before letting out a giggle at her calling you beautiful.

"You want to be a doctor when you grow up?" She asks, hands pointing at the instrument hanging around your neck.

"Yes, ma'am. I want to be a heart doctor," you say, peering at the woman beside you. Thomas Wayne smiles before exchanging pleasantries with your grandfather.

"Oh, that's wonderful! You will be a great doctor one day, my dear."

And with that, the VHS comes to an end.

Bruce sniffles a little , his hands holding your waist, chin placed on top of your head. Silence fills the space along with the sounds of your nieces playing around the house. You don't know how long the both of you stayed like that, but it could have been forever, and you didn't mind at all.

Bruce is beyond happy. While it may not be visible to the naked eye, you could feel the joy emanating from the open crevices of grief and gaps of affection. He was happy that you —his wife, the love of his life — had met his parents. And they had gotten the chance to meet you.

Perhaps both of you really were soulmates.

A/N: Comments and Reblogs appreciated! Writing something for bruce after a long time.

You had never looked at him that way. Not even the first time you saw his eyes turn green.

It had been subtle. A flash beneath the domino mask after a patrol went wrong, there and gone so quickly that anyone else might have mistaken it for reflected neon. Jason had been standing over a man who had used starving children to move weapons through the Narrows, his fist raised, his breath coming hard through his teeth. Bruce had said his name in that particular tone—warning wrapped in disappointment, disappointment wrapped in fear—and the rage had surged so violently that Jason’s vision had gone white around the edges.

Then your hand had closed around his wrist.

You had been smaller then. Physically, you had always been formidable, even when you were in the shape the world considered human. There was something compact and held about you, though, as if every emotion had been folded into a tiny square and pressed beneath your ribs. You rarely raised your voice. You smiled when people expected you to. You moved through the Cave with the careful courtesy of a guest who had been told the furniture was expensive.

But you had touched Jason without hesitation.

“Don’t listen to him,” you had said quietly.

Bruce had stiffened behind you.

Jason’s fist had remained suspended above the unconscious man’s face. “That’s usually terrible advice.”

“I mean, don’t listen to the part of him you’ve put inside your head.” Your thumb had rested over the frantic beat in Jason’s wrist. “Listen to what he is actually saying.”

Jason had looked past you. Batman stood beneath the flickering warehouse light, cape black against the dirt-streaked walls, jaw locked hard enough to crack teeth.

“He’s saying stop,” you continued. “He isn’t saying you’re evil.”

“You a mind reader now?”

“No.” Your eyes had held his, painfully calm. “I just know what it feels like to hear monster when no one has actually said it.”

Jason had lowered his fist.

Later, he learned that you were Bruce Banner’s child. That explained the green. It explained the way the Justice League watched you whenever your pulse rose. It explained the equipment in the reinforced room beneath the western edge of the Cave, the sensors calibrated to gamma radiation, the emergency shutters capable of dropping in less than two seconds. It explained why Bruce Wayne spoke to you with a careful gentleness Jason had once thought reserved for frightened civilians and injured children.

It did not explain why you seemed to understand him better than anyone else.

You had good control. Everyone said so.

Jason hated the phrase. It was usually delivered with the awed approval people reserved for well-trained animals.

You had very good control. You could shift deliberately, most of the time. You could allow the green to spread beneath your skin in smooth increments, your body lengthening and broadening as muscle and bone remade themselves in a thunderous biological miracle. Your larger form was not identical to your father’s. You were leaner, built with a different geometry, but the similarities were impossible to miss: the green skin, the impossible strength, the eyes that seemed to catch light even where there was none.

You could remain articulate after transforming. You could remember names. Follow strategies. Distinguish threats from allies.

Most of the time. People loved those three words almost as much as they loved good control.

Jason learned to hate them, too.

He started working with you by accident. A weapons-smuggling operation in Gotham had acquired experimental gamma technology, and Bruce Banner had asked the League to investigate. Batman had responded by assigning you to Jason, either because he trusted Jason’s knowledge of Gotham’s criminal routes or because he thought the two of you were disposable in similar ways.

Jason chose to believe it was the former. It was better for everyone’s blood pressure.

The mission had lasted four nights. On the first, you followed his instructions without argument. On the second, you corrected his calculations regarding the blast radius of a stolen gamma core. On the third, you threw a shipping container through a reinforced concrete wall because Jason had been pinned beneath a collapsed gantry.

On the fourth, Jason bought you breakfast.

That became something of a habit.

You fit into his life with alarming ease. You did not complain about his safe houses, though one had a permanent damp patch in the ceiling and another had a neighbour who practised the trumpet exclusively between midnight and four in the morning. You never touched his books without permission. You remembered how he took his coffee, which was more than some of his alleged siblings managed after years of knowing him.

You understood that silence was not always a punishment. Jason understood that calm was not always peace.

He noticed the first time you dug your fingernails into your palms beneath the table because Roy had jokingly asked what it was like to “go green.” He noticed how you counted breaths when someone started shouting. He noticed the way you excused yourself from rooms whenever conversations became heated, even if you had every right to be angry.

You were never merely quiet. You were containment given human form.

“You know you’re allowed to tell me to fuck off,” Jason said one night.

You were sitting on the roof of his Crime Alley apartment, your legs hanging over the edge and a carton of noodles cooling between you. Gotham glittered below, wet and poisonous and strangely beautiful. Red and gold light bled across the rain-dark streets.

You glanced at him. “Why would I tell you to fuck off?”

“Because I ate the last spring roll.”

“You asked whether I wanted it.”

“Yeah, but you did that thing.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where you say no because you think wanting something is the first step toward committing a felony.”

Your expression tightened. It was not quite a flinch, but Jason had become an expert in reading all the ways you made yourself smaller without moving.

“I didn’t want it,” you said.

“Liar.”

“Jason.”

“There it is.”

“What?”

“Anger.” He leaned back on his hands, watching you from the corner of his eye. “Little bitty spark of it. World didn’t end.”

You stared out across the rooftops. “You are incredibly irritating.”

“I work at it.”

“And condescending.”

“Natural talent.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The words came sharper than the others. Your eyes flashed green for half a second.

Jason smiled.

You looked at him in horror.

“There you are,” he said.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Look pleased.”

“I’m not pleased that I pissed you off.” Jason nudged the noodle carton toward you. “I’m pleased you let yourself be pissed off.”

“My emotions are not a group project.”

“Shame. I’d carry the presentation.”

“You would improvise the presentation after forgetting it was due.”

“And still get a standing ovation.”

You tried not to smile. Jason watched the corner of your mouth betray you and decided not to mention it.

The city hummed below.

After a while, you said, “Anger isn’t safe for me.”

Jason’s humour receded. “It’s not safe for anyone.”

“That isn’t the same.”

“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”

Your shoulders loosened by a fraction. People argued with you when you said things like that. They rushed to reassure you that you were just like everyone else, as though the differences between you were insults that needed softening.

Jason never did.

You could be dangerous. So could he. Pretending otherwise was not kindness.

“When I was thirteen, I broke my father’s arm,” you said.

Jason remained still. You had spoken about Bruce Banner before, but only in safe, polished fragments. He was brilliant. He worried too much. He liked terrible music. He called every Sunday unless he was off-world or trapped in another dimension, which happened with uncomfortable frequency.

You had never spoken about the years when your power first appeared.

“It was an accident,” Jason said.

“That didn’t make his arm less broken.”

“No. Probably made you feel worse, though.”

Your fingers curled around the edge of the rooftop. “I don’t remember doing it.”

There it was. The true wound. Jason knew memory loss, too. He knew waking with blood beneath his fingernails and no clear picture of whose blood it was. He knew years stripped from him by death, resurrection and the green madness of the Pit. He knew how other people could use the things he did not remember as evidence against the person he was trying to become.

“What do you remember?” he asked.

“Before, I remember shouting.” Your gaze lowered to your hands. “I remember Dad telling me to breathe. I remember thinking that he sounded scared. I remember hating him for being scared of me.”

Jason listened.

“Then I remember waking up beneath a containment blanket. There were holes in the walls. Dad’s arm was in a sling. He kept saying it was okay.” Your mouth twisted. “I think that was the worst part. He wouldn’t admit that I had hurt him, so there was nowhere for the truth to exist except inside me.”

Jason looked toward the city. Somewhere below, a siren wailed and faded into the endless noise of Gotham. “He probably thought he was protecting you.”

“I know.”

“Doesn’t mean it worked.”

“No.” You picked up the carton of noodles, though you did not eat. Your thumb pressed against one corner until the cardboard buckled. “I tried to get rid of it after that,” you said.

Jason’s head turned.

“The other form. The gamma mutation. Whatever you want to call it.” You spoke with the flat precision of someone reciting facts from a medical file. “There were inhibitors. Gene therapies. Radiation filtration. A procedure in Switzerland that was supposed to separate the altered cells from the unaffected ones.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I asked for it.”

“You were fourteen.”

“I knew what I wanted.”

“You wanted to stop being terrified.”

Your eyes lifted to his.

Jason’s anger had changed. It was not explosive, not yet. It had gone still and focused, gathering itself around the image of a frightened child strapped to a medical table while adults explained probabilities and consent forms.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It didn’t work.”

“No shit.”

“I lost almost three weeks.”

Jason frowned. “You were unconscious?”

“I was awake for most of it.”

The night seemed to narrow around them.

“You don’t remember,” he said. You shook your head. “Does your dad?”

“Some of it. He doesn’t like talking about it.”

Jason breathed slowly through his nose. “And they still call you the one with good control.”

You laughed, but the sound held no humour. “Compared to Dad, I am.”

“Maybe that’s not a comparison you should have to live inside.”

For a moment, you looked as though he had struck you.

Then your gaze softened.

“You always do that,” you murmured.

“What?”

“Say something kind like you’re trying to start a fight.”

Jason scoffed. “Wasn’t kind.”

“It was.”

“Take it back.”

“No.”

“Now who’s starting shit?”

You smiled properly then, and something in Jason’s chest turned over.

It happened more often than he wanted to admit.

He knew he was in trouble when he started leaving things at his apartment because you might need them. A phone charger compatible with your ancient, indestructible device. Tea that tasted like wet flowers but apparently helped with headaches after a controlled shift. A reinforced sweatshirt made from stretch fabric developed by WayneTech, folded in the bottom drawer of his dresser.

He knew he was doomed when you started doing the same. There was a spare helmet sealant kit in your bathroom. A packet of his preferred painkillers in your kitchen. Two novels on your bedside table that you claimed you intended to read but had clearly bought because he mentioned them once.

Neither of you spoke about it.

Jason had spent too much of his life destroying good things by naming them. You had spent too much of yours believing that loving anything placed it in danger.

So you existed around the truth instead. You trained together. Ate together. Patrolled together whenever your work with the League brought you to Gotham. You learned how to recognise the subtle differences between Jason’s ordinary anger and the rage that came from somewhere deeper, older and greener. He learned that your left hand trembled before an uncontrolled shift, while your right remained perfectly steady.

You could talk him down without making him feel ashamed. He could make you angry without making you feel monstrous. It was, in both directions, dangerously close to love.

The mission that ruined everything was supposed to be routine. Routine was a word heroes used when they wanted the universe to laugh at them.

Oracle had tracked a shipment of stolen S.T.A.R. Labs equipment to an abandoned pharmaceutical facility beside the Gotham River. The building had been condemned after a chemical fire, though the foundations remained stable and the lower research levels were mostly intact. A minor gang called the Burnley Saints had moved in six weeks earlier.

“They’re not smart enough to use the equipment,” Barbara said over comms. “But they’re definitely smart enough to sell it to someone who is.”

Jason crouched on the edge of a neighbouring roof, looking through the scope of his rifle. “Six guards outside. Maybe twelve inside.”

“Eleven,” you corrected beside him. Your eyes shone faintly green as you listened to the vibrations beneath the building. “One of them is alone on the lower level. Heart rate is elevated.”

“Drugs?”

“Possibly. Or fear.”

Jason glanced at you.

You wore a black tactical suit reinforced with flexible gamma-resistant fibres. The material had been designed to adapt during a shift, though Jason had heard you complain that every version still pinched beneath the arms. A small monitor rested against the inside of your wrist, tracking your pulse and radiation output.

Both readings were normal.

“Any unusual energy signatures?” Barbara asked.

You closed your eyes. “The basement is shielded. I can feel something humming, but I can’t identify it from here.”

“Comforting,” Jason muttered.

“Nothing in Gotham is comforting.”

“Me.”

“You threatened a parking meter this morning.”

“It knew what it did.”

Your mouth curved. The sight sent a familiar ache through him.

Jason adjusted the rifle strap across his chest. “We go quiet. Disable the exterior guards, enter from the roof, locate the equipment and tag it for retrieval. No green unless we need it.”

You looked at him. “You’re giving me orders now?”

“Someone’s gotta compensate for your reckless lack of discipline.”

“I once watched you jump from a moving train onto a helicopter.”

“Calculated risk.”

“You missed.”

“Still caught the landing.”

“You went through a greenhouse.”

“Plants broke my fall.”

“You had a cactus embedded in your thigh.”

Jason pointed toward the building. “Mission.”

You smiled as you pulled your mask into place.

It should have been routine.

The exterior guards went down without raising an alarm. Jason disabled the roof sensors while you peeled open a maintenance hatch with careful, human-shaped strength. The upper floor was empty except for rotting desks and abandoned laboratory equipment. Rain drummed against the cracked windows, muffling your movement.

The first three Saints never saw either of you coming. The fourth fired wildly and hit a sprinkler pipe. The fifth tried to run.

Jason caught him at the stairwell and introduced his face to the wall.

“Subtle,” you remarked.

“He slipped.”

“Repeatedly?”

“Floor’s wet.”

Barbara sighed over comms. “Nine heat signatures remaining. Two moving toward you from the east corridor.”

Jason drew his pistols. “Copy.”

The mission unfolded smoothly after that, right up until it did not.

You found the stolen equipment in the basement. The shielded room had once been used for experimental drug trials. Its walls were lined with dense composite panels, each one scorched along the bottom from the old fire. Metal crates filled the centre of the chamber, marked with the logos of S.T.A.R. Labs, Kord Industries and three organisations Jason suspected did not officially exist.

One crate stood open. Inside rested a circular device about the size of a dinner plate. The centre pulsed with sickly yellow-green light.

You stopped in the doorway.

Jason nearly walked into your back. “What?”

Your left hand had begun to tremble.

“Oracle,” you said. “Run a visual analysis.”

Jason’s lenses scanned the device.

Barbara was silent for a few seconds. “I’m not finding an exact match. The internal structure resembles a sonic regulator, but the power core is emitting low-level gamma radiation.”

“How low-level?” Jason asked.

“Too low to affect either of you under normal circumstances.”

Your breathing had changed.

Jason holstered one pistol. “Hey.”

“I know that design.”

“You’ve seen it before?”

“No.” Your fingers pressed against your temple. “I don’t think so.”

Jason stepped in front of you, blocking your view of the device. “Talk to me.”

“I can’t—”

A burst of gunfire exploded from the corridor.

Jason turned instinctively, drawing both pistols as bullets struck the reinforced doorway. You moved at the same moment, shoving him aside and taking the shots against your armoured shoulder.

“Contact!” Jason barked.

He fired twice. One attacker dropped. Another ducked behind the wall.

The man alone on the lower level, Jason realised. The one with the elevated heart rate.

He had not been afraid. He had been waiting.

The attacker emerged again, but he was not aiming at either of you.

He aimed at the device.

Jason saw his finger tighten on the trigger. “No—”

The bullet struck the central core.

The room became light.

There was no explosion. No fire. Only a deep, resonant pulse that moved through Jason’s bones like a second heartbeat. His helmet systems shrieked and died. The lights overhead shattered in a wave, plunging the basement into darkness.

Something hit Jason hard enough to throw him across the room. He struck a crate, rolled and came up on one knee.

He called your name in the darkness.

The emergency lights flickered red.

You stood beside the ruined device, both hands clamped over your ears. Your monitor emitted a continuous alarm.

Jason could see the change beginning beneath your skin. Green spread from your throat in branching veins. Your shoulders jerked wider. The armour stretched around your arms as muscle built beneath it in violent surges. Your spine bowed with an audible series of cracks.

Jason had watched you transform dozens of times. This was different. Controlled shifts moved like a wave. This tore through you like an animal trying to escape a trap.

“Oracle, we have a problem.”

Only static answered. The pulse had killed communications.

You dropped to one knee. Your fingers struck the floor hard enough to fracture concrete.

Jason moved toward you.

Your head snapped up. Your eyes were green, but there was no recognition in them.

“Easy,” Jason said.

Your body surged upward. The ceiling suddenly seemed much lower.

The tactical suit expanded with you, dark fabric stretched across green skin. You dragged in a breath, and the sound was enormous in the shielded chamber. Dust trembled from the walls.

Jason stopped several feet away.

You stared at him. He watched confusion move across your face, followed by fear. Then your gaze shifted to the dead attacker sprawled in the corridor.

Blood pooled beneath the man’s head.

You made a sound Jason had never heard from you before. It began low, almost too deep to register. It grew until the metal crates vibrated across the floor.

Rage. Not anger as Jason knew it. Not even the Pit’s blind green violence. This was terror with nowhere else to go.

You looked down at your hands as though they belonged to someone who had murdered you.

Jason took another step. “Hey. Look at me.”

You swung. Jason ducked beneath your fist. The impact struck the wall behind him, caving in the composite panels.

“Okay,” he breathed. “Not feeling conversational.”

You turned toward him. 

Jason had seconds to make a decision. The building contained unconscious criminals, two restrained guards and at least one injured man on the upper floors. Beyond the facility stood apartment blocks, a twenty-four-hour petrol station and a shelter that housed almost sixty people.

He could not let you reach the street. He also could not fight you here.

Jason fired a grappling line into the corridor ceiling and launched himself through the doorway as you charged.

The floor shook beneath your weight.

He sprinted deeper into the basement. You followed.

Jason knew what he was doing. That was the lie he told himself as he vaulted over a collapsed support beam and felt your fist strike the floor where his legs had been half a second earlier. He was drawing you away from the stairs. Away from the exterior walls. The lower facility connected to a network of old service tunnels leading beneath the riverfront, most of them sealed but structurally reinforced.

Jason could keep ahead of you. Probably.

A metal door appeared at the end of the corridor. Jason fired twice at the lock, kicked it open and threw himself through.

You hit the door without slowing. Steel ripped from concrete.

Jason ran.

Red emergency lights flashed through the tunnels. Water dripped from overhead pipes. His boots struck the ground in a rapid rhythm that was almost drowned beneath the thunder of your pursuit.

He glanced back once. You were too large for the passage, shoulders scraping both walls, but nothing in the world had prepared the old concrete to stop you. You tore through pipes and wiring as you came. Steam burst into the corridor behind you.

Your face was twisted with fury.

Jason’s chest tightened.

You were looking at him, but you did not know him. That hurt more than it should have.

He reached a junction and turned left. The tunnel narrowed ahead, ending at an old freight lift that had long ago collapsed into its shaft. Jason fired his grapple upward and caught the maintenance platform three floors above.

He rose just as you reached the shaft. Your hand closed around his ankle.

“Shit.”

You yanked.

The grapple line snapped taut. Jason’s shoulder nearly dislocated as he slammed against the wall. His pistol fell into the darkness below.

You dragged him downward.

Jason released the line before his arm tore from its socket, twisted in the air and landed against your forearm. He used your momentum to vault over your shoulder, boots striking the back of your neck as he flipped onto the opposite platform.

You roared.

Jason staggered, one hand clutching his shoulder.

“That’s gonna bruise,” he muttered.

You leapt.

The platform collapsed beneath your landing. Jason barely cleared the shaft before several tonnes of metal plunged into the dark. The impact shook the facility.

He lay on his stomach at the edge, staring down. Dust churned through the darkness.

For one dangerous second, everything went quiet.

Then green fingers gripped the wall below him.

Jason rolled aside as you climbed out.

Your eyes found him immediately.

“You really are stubborn,” he panted.

You lunged.

Jason fired his remaining grapple through a ventilation grate and let it pull him into the adjacent corridor. Your hand closed around empty air inches behind his boot.

The vent was too small for you. That bought him approximately four seconds.

You punched through the wall.

Jason hit the ground running.

He could have called for backup if his comms were functioning. He could have activated the emergency beacon in his belt, but the pulse had fried half his systems. He had weapons designed for metahumans, sonic grenades and electrical charges powerful enough to drop Killer Croc.

He did not use them.

Partly because he suspected the sonic pulse had triggered this. Mostly because it was you.

You had sat beside him through nights when the Pit seemed to boil beneath his skin. You had allowed him to pace, curse, break old furniture and hate every person who had ever loved him poorly. You had never once treated his anger as a problem that needed to be beaten unconscious.

Jason would not offer you less.

The tunnel ended in a circular maintenance chamber. Thick water pipes curved along the walls, and a rusted ladder led upward to a sealed hatch.

Dead end.

“Of course,” Jason said.

You entered behind him.

The chamber was too small for evasion. Too reinforced for an easy escape. Jason looked up at the hatch, judged the distance and knew he would never reach it before you reached him.

He drew his pistol.

You stopped. Your eyes fixed on the weapon.

Jason could see your chest rising and falling. Each breath scraped from your throat like stone dragged over stone.

He slowly ejected the magazine. It hit the floor. Then he removed the round from the chamber and tossed the empty pistol aside.

Your head tilted.

“Yeah,” Jason said. “I’m not doing this.”

You stepped closer.

Jason removed his helmet. Cold, damp air touched his face. Blood ran from a cut near his hairline and slipped along his cheek.

Your nostrils flared.

“Look at me.” Jason set the helmet on the floor. “You know me.”

You growled.

“Not a compelling argument, I’ll admit.” He kept his hands visible. “But I’m the idiot who buys that disgusting tea you like. I’m the one who knows you steal my blankets and then blame it on shifting during your sleep.”

Your expression did not change.

Jason’s pulse hammered. He had faced men with guns, monsters with teeth longer than his fingers and gods who could burn cities from the sky. None of them frightened him as much as the absence in your eyes.

“You hate olives,” he continued. “You pretend you don’t because you think it’s childish. You read the endings of books first when you’re anxious. You call your dad every Sunday, and you never tell him when you’re hurt because you think he already has enough to worry about.”

You came closer. The floor cracked beneath your feet.

Jason stood his ground. “You got mad at me because I ate the last spring roll.” His voice roughened. “You were right to be mad. I knew you wanted it.”

A flicker. So small Jason might have imagined it.

Your brow tightened.

“There you are,” he whispered.

You roared and struck him.

Jason flew across the chamber. His back slammed into a pipe. Pain exploded through his ribs, bright and immediate. He dropped to the floor, unable to breathe for several seconds.

You stood over him. Jason tasted blood.

“That,” he wheezed, “felt personal.”

Your hand closed around the front of his armour and lifted him.

His boots left the ground. Up close, you were terrifying. Green skin stretched over impossible muscle. Your pupils were blown wide. Anger shook through you so violently that Jason could feel it through your grip.

Beneath it, he saw fear.

“Why?” you demanded.

The word was distorted by the size of your jaw, but it was yours.

Jason’s heart lurched. “Why what?”

“Why stay?”

Your fingers tightened.

Armour plates creaked over his ribs. Jason reached up slowly and put one hand against your wrist.

“Because you would.”

Your face twisted. “Liar.”

“You have stayed for me every damn time.”

“Not safe.”

“No,” Jason said. “You’re not.” Pain burned through his side with every breath. He did not look away. “Neither am I.”

Your grip trembled. “Hurting.”

“I’ve been hurt before.”

“By me.”

“Yeah.”

The word struck harder than reassurance would have.

Your expression crumpled with sudden, unbearable horror.

Jason tightened his hand around your wrist.

“I’m not gonna lie to you,” he said. “You hit me. It hurts. I’m probably gonna complain about it for weeks because I’m a vindictive bastard.”

A broken sound dragged itself from your throat.

“But you’re still in there,” he continued. “You’re scared. You’re confused. Something got inside your head and tore every locked door off its hinges.”

“Monster.”

“No.”

“Monster!”

The roar shook the chamber. Pipes burst behind Jason, spraying freezing water across the floor.

He flinched, but his grip remained steady.

“No,” he repeated.

You slammed him against the wall. Jason’s vision blurred.

“You don’t get to decide,” you snarled.

“Neither do you.”

Your face stilled.

Jason’s ribs screamed. Blood ran into his eye. He could hear the pulse in your wrist beneath his hand, fast and thunderous.

“You think I don’t know this?” he demanded. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to wake up and find out your body did something while you were gone? You think I don’t know what it’s like to see fear on somebody’s face and wonder whether you put it there?”

Your grip loosened by a fraction.

“I’ve hurt people I love,” Jason said. “I’ve gone after Bruce. Dick. Tim. I’ve had the Pit in my head telling me everything I ever loved was a threat. I’ve lost time. I’ve lost control. I’ve tried to carve pieces out of myself because I thought everyone would be safer if there was less of me left.”

The fury in your face wavered.

Jason swallowed blood. “It didn’t make me safer. It made me alone.”

Your arm began to shake.

Jason let his forehead fall against yours. The movement was absurd. Your head was massive compared to his, your skin fever-hot despite the cold water raining over them.

“I’m not leaving you alone in this,” he whispered.

“Jason.”

His name broke from you like something surfacing after drowning.

“Yeah.” He closed his eyes. “That’s me.”

Your grip opened.

Jason fell.

You caught him before he hit the ground.

For one suspended moment, you stared at him in your enormous hands.

Recognition returned slowly, then all at once. You looked at the bruising already forming along his face. The blood on his mouth. The damaged armour around his ribs.

“No,” you whispered.

Your body contracted. The transformation reversed with brutal speed. Muscle folded in on itself. Bones shifted beneath green skin, each movement accompanied by a stifled cry. Jason slid from your shrinking hands and managed to catch you against his chest despite the pain in his ribs.

By the time the green receded completely, you were trembling violently.

“I’ve got you,” Jason said.

You stared at him without comprehension.

Then your eyes rolled back.

Jason held you as the emergency lights continued to flash red around them.

The first thing you remembered was shouting.

Not your own. Jason’s voice. It came through darkness in broken pieces, sometimes furious, sometimes frightened. You could not understand the words. Every time you tried, your mind slipped sideways and showed you something else: green hands, red lights, a pistol on the floor, blood on Jason’s face.

Then nothing.

You woke in the Cave.

The medical bay lights were dim. A blanket covered you from chest to foot, weighted along the edges to give your body something firm to recognise. Sensors clung to your temples, wrists and ribs.

Your father sat beside the bed.

Bruce Banner looked older than he had on Sunday. His curls had gone wild around his head, and the sleeves of his purple shirt were rolled to the elbows. He was holding a tablet but not reading it. When your eyes opened, relief moved through his face so nakedly that you wanted to close them again.

“Hey,” he said.

Your throat felt flayed. “Hey.”

“How do you feel?”

You searched your body. Sore. Heavy. Empty in places that should have contained memories. “Where’s Jason?”

Your father looked toward the far side of the medical bay.

Jason sat in a chair beside the diagnostic station. His chest was wrapped beneath a black shirt. Butterfly strips crossed the cut near his hairline, and purple bruising spread along his jaw. One arm rested in a sling.

He was awake. He did not smile.

The sight of him opened something beneath your ribs.

You remembered lifting him. You remembered the sound his body made when it struck the wall.

The monitor beside your bed began to beep more quickly.

Your father set the tablet aside. “Your pulse is rising.”

“Get him out.”

Jason’s eyes narrowed. “Sweetheart—”

“Get him out.” Your fingers gripped the blanket. “Get everyone out.”

The green beneath your skin stirred.

Your father stood immediately, hands open and visible. “Okay. We can give you space.”

“No,” Jason said.

“Jason,” Banner warned.

“They’re scared.”

“I am aware.”

“Then don’t leave them alone with it.”

Your breathing shortened. “I hurt you.”

Jason rose from the chair. He moved stiffly, one arm secured against his chest. Every sign of pain made the room tilt.

“Stay back,” you said. He kept walking. “Jason.”

“Your monitor says you’re stable.”

“Jason, stop.”

He stopped beside the bed. You could see every injury now. The shadow beneath one eye. The split in his lower lip. The careful way he held his torso.

“You should be afraid of me,” you whispered.

His expression hardened.

Bruce Banner stepped toward the door. “I’m going to speak with Batman about the device. I’ll be directly outside.”

You looked at him in disbelief.

Your father gave Jason a long, unreadable look. Then he left. The door closed behind him.

“Traitor,” you murmured.

“Smart guy,” Jason said. You looked away.  “Don’t.”

“What?”

“Do that.”

“I’m lying in bed.”

“You’re trying to disappear while I’m looking right at you.”

The words struck with surgical accuracy.

You stared at the far wall. “I don’t remember most of it.”

“I figured.”

“I remember the pulse. I remember thinking I knew the machine. Then I remember chasing you.”

Jason was silent.

“I remember wanting to catch you,” you continued. “I don’t remember why.”

“You thought I was a threat.”

“How do you know?”

“You called me one.”

Your stomach turned.

The monitor quickened again.

Jason reached over and switched off the sound. “Better.”

“No.”

“No?”

“It shouldn’t be quiet.” Your voice shook. “There should be alarms.”

“There were plenty. Got annoying.”

“Jason.”

“You want the entire Cave screaming because you feel guilty?”

“I nearly killed you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I saw your scans.”

“One cracked rib.”

“Two.”

“One full crack. One fracture. We’re splitting hairs.”

“Your shoulder was dislocated.”

“Technically, it was almost dislocated.”

“You have a concussion.”

“I’ve had worse concussions from getting out of bed.”

You turned toward him sharply. “Stop making jokes.”

Anger flashed through you. The room remained standing.

Jason leaned closer. “There you are.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“Because this isn’t that night on the roof. This isn’t a spring roll. I hunted you.”

“Yeah.”

“I hurt you.”

“Yeah.”

“I wanted to—” Your voice broke. “I don’t know what I wanted.”

Jason pulled the chair closer and sat. “That’s the part messing with you.”

“All of it is messing with me.”

“No. The injuries are something you can point at. You can count them. Catalogue them. Use them to build a case against yourself.” His gaze held yours. “The missing pieces are worse.”

You closed your eyes.

Jason knew. Of course he knew.

“I saw things,” you whispered. “When I was unconscious.”

“Memories?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

The pulse had torn through old scar tissue in your mind. It had pulled images from whatever place held the years you had lost: white medical lights, straps around your wrists, your father shouting at someone behind a glass wall. A machine filling the air with a vibration that made every cell in your body feel as though it were screaming.

“I think the device was based on the treatment,” you said. Jason went very still. “The one in Switzerland.”

“You said you’d never seen it.”

“I didn’t remember seeing it.” You pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes. “That’s different.”

Jason’s good hand curled into a fist.

“The pulse wasn’t just sonic. It was designed to agitate gamma-altered cells and force them into a separate state. They thought if they could trigger the transformation while suppressing higher brain function, they could isolate the mutation.”

“Who’s they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your dad does.”

“Maybe.”

“Then I’ll ask him.”

“No.”

Jason stared at you.

You lowered your hands. “It doesn’t matter.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

“The treatment failed years ago.”

“And now somebody’s building the technology in Gotham.”

“Then destroy it.”

“We will.”

“That’s enough.”

“No, it isn’t.”

You looked toward the medical bay door. “I need to leave.”

Jason’s expression changed. It was subtle, but you knew him. You knew every degree of his anger, from the bright surface irritation he wore like a leather jacket to the deep, cold fury that meant someone had touched a wound they would not survive.

“What?” he asked.

“I can’t stay in Gotham.”

“Bullshit.”

“The device was aimed at me.”

“It was activated by some idiot firing at it.”

“They knew I was coming. The man in the basement was waiting.”

Jason said nothing. You saw confirmation in his silence.

“They used me to turn a routine mission into a disaster,” you continued. “They knew exactly what would happen.”

“Which means we find them.”

“Which means I leave before they try again.”

Jason stood too quickly and winced.

You reached for him without thinking.

He saw.

You pulled your hand back. Something in his face tightened.

“You packed already,” he said.

You did not answer.

Jason laughed once, sharp and joyless. “Unbelievable.”

“I have supplies at the Hall.”

“No. You packed before the mission.”

Your stomach dropped. He knew about the bag beneath your bed.

It had been there for months. Clothes, cash, forged identification, emergency medication and a satellite phone registered under a name that had never existed. You maintained one wherever you stayed.

“You went through my room?”

“I was looking for the stabiliser tea your dad wanted.”

“You had no right.”

“Probably not.”

“You can’t use that to—”

“How long?” You stared at him. “How long have you been ready to run?” Jason demanded.

“It isn’t running.”

“What do you call it?”

“Risk management.”

“Of course you do.”

You sat up despite the ache in your spine. “You keep weapons hidden in every room.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“I use them to stay.”

The answer silenced you.

Jason’s anger filled the medical bay, hot and raw. Yet he did not shout. The restraint made it worse.

“You keep an escape plan because you’ve already decided how this ends,” he said. “You lose control, hurt somebody and vanish before anyone gets the chance to tell you whether they still want you around.”

“You’re injured because of me.”

“And I’m still here.”

“This time.”

His face went blank.

You hated yourself the moment the words left you.

Jason stepped back. “Right.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You did.”

“I meant you won’t always be able to forgive me.”

“You haven’t asked.”

“I shouldn’t have to ask you to forgive something like this.”

“Why? Because you’ve already convicted yourself?”

Your pulse rose again.

Jason gestured toward your hands. “Go on. Get angry.”

“Stop.”

“You think I’m gonna run because you raise your voice?”

“I said stop.”

“And I said I’m still here.”

Green flickered along your knuckles. Jason did not move.

“Don’t make me prove your point,” you warned.

“You’re proving mine.”

The transformation pressed against your skin, not wild this time but awake. Listening. Your body felt too small to contain the pressure building inside it.

“You don’t understand,” you said.

Jason’s laugh was quiet and vicious. “Don’t I?”

“No. The Pit is not your fault, it is not your body. It was done to you.”

“And the gamma mutation was your choice?”

“I inherited it.”

“As a kid.”

“It’s still mine.”

“So’s the Pit now.”

Your mouth opened.

Jason stepped closer. “I’ve spent years trying to decide which parts of me count,” he said. “The kid Bruce adopted. The Robin who died. The thing that crawled out of the ground. The man Talia trained. The Hood. The murderer. The brother. The son no one knew what to do with.” His voice roughened. “Every time I did something I hated, I tried to cut that version off. Pretend he wasn’t me. Pretend the anger came from somewhere else.”

You watched him, unable to breathe.

“It didn’t help,” Jason said. “I still had to live in the body that did it.”

“That’s what I’m trying to prevent.”

“No. You’re trying to punish yourself first, so nobody else gets the chance.”

The green reached your wrists.

Jason glanced down at it. His expression did not change.

“I have hurt people,” you said. “Not hypothetically. Not in some nightmare I’ve created because I hate myself. I broke my father’s arm. I injured three doctors during the procedure. I put a teammate in hospital when I was seventeen.”

“Did you mean to?”

“Does intention repair bones?”

“No.”

“Then stop asking.”

“I’m not asking because I think it erases what happened.” Jason leaned over the bed, his face close to yours. “I’m asking because it matters.”

“To you.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The word escaped before you could stop it. Jason froze.

The green beneath your skin dimmed.

You had wanted to ask for months. Years, perhaps. Through late-night meals and rooftop conversations, through missions and injuries and mornings when you woke on his sofa beneath a blanket he claimed he had not placed over you.

Why did he care? Why did he stay? Why did he look at you as though the parts you hated were not invisible, but worth knowing?

Jason swallowed. “You know why,” he said.

“No.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I don’t know.”

“You do.”

“I know you understand me.” Your voice was barely audible. “I know we work well together. I know you trust me more than most people, although that may have changed.”

“It hasn’t.”

“It should.”

“Stop telling me what I should feel.”

“Then tell me.”

Jason looked away. For all his fury, he seemed suddenly terrified. The sight frightened you more than anger ever could.

“I love you,” he said.

The room became very quiet.

You stared at him.

Jason’s jaw clenched as though the words had physically injured him. “There. Happy?”

“No.”

“Great.”

“No, I mean—” Your thoughts scattered. “You can’t.”

His eyebrows rose. “Pretty sure I just did.”

“You can’t love me.”

“That’s your response?”

“You’re hurt.”

“I noticed.”

“You have a concussion.”

“Minor.”

“You’re not thinking clearly.”

“I was thinking clearly before you threw me through a wall.” You flinched. Jason immediately closed his eyes. “Shit.”

“No. You’re right.”

“That was cheap.”

“It was true.”

“Both can happen at once.”

You pulled the blanket tighter around your waist. The transformation had receded entirely, leaving you cold.

Jason exhaled and lowered himself back into the chair. “I shouldn’t have said it like that,” he muttered.

“How long?” He glanced at you. “How long have you…” You could not make yourself repeat the word.

Jason’s mouth twisted. “Long enough to know a head injury isn’t responsible.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you?”

Your heartbeat skipped.

Jason gave you a tired, crooked smile. “Yeah. Thought so.”

You looked at his bruised face and remembered his forehead against yours in the maintenance chamber. His voice moving through the rage when everything else had become noise.

“Do you remember what you said to me?” you asked.

“Down there?” You nodded. “Most of it.”

“I don’t.”

Jason’s expression softened.

“I remember your voice,” you continued. “I remember thinking that I had to make you leave. I thought if I scared you enough, you would go.”

“You’re not that scary.”

“I threw you through a wall.”

“Wall was flimsy.”

“It was reinforced concrete.”

“Gotham contractors. Can’t trust ’em.”

Despite everything, a laugh broke from you. It hurt. The sound scraped through a throat still raw from roaring, but once it began, you could not stop it. The laugh collapsed into something wetter, sharper, and you covered your face before Jason could see.

The bed shifted. His good arm came around you.

You stiffened. “Jason.”

“I know.”

“I could—”

“I know.”

You could feel the brace around his ribs. You could feel how carefully he held his injured shoulder away from you. Every fragile part of him seemed pressed against every dangerous part of you.

Yet he remained.

Your hands hovered near his waist, terrified to touch.

Jason rested his cheek against your hair. “You’re allowed.”

“To do what?”

“Hold on.”

Your fingers closed in the back of his shirt. The fabric crumpled beneath them.

Jason breathed out. You pressed your face against his neck, and the first sob tore free. It was ugly. There was no graceful release, no cinematic tear sliding silently down one cheek. Your body shook hard enough to disturb the sensors. You cried for the missing hours in the basement, for the three weeks stolen from your childhood and every memory that might still be buried beneath them. You cried for your father’s broken arm and the doctors whose names you no longer knew. You cried because Jason was injured and holding you anyway.

He did not tell you it was fine. He did not say you had done nothing wrong. He held you and allowed the truth to remain complicated.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I know.”

You pulled back enough to look at him. “How can you keep saying that?”

“Because I believe you.”

“What if believing me isn’t enough?”

“It isn’t.”

The answer startled you.

Jason brushed his thumb beneath your eye. “We need plans. Training. Better comms and actual fail-safes that don’t involve somebody shooting you with a sonic cannon.”

“You should have used one.”

“No.”

“You could have stopped me faster.”

“Or made it worse.”

“You didn’t know that.”

“No,” he admitted. “I made a choice.”

“You could have died.”

“So could the people upstairs if I’d driven you into a bigger frenzy.”

“You stayed because of the civilians.”

Jason stared at you.

“Partly,” he said.

The honesty hurt and healed in equal measure.

“What was the other part?” you asked.

“You.”

Your grip tightened in his shirt.

“I wasn’t gonna let the worst moment of your life end with you waking up alone,” Jason said.

You looked at him, really looked. Jason did not love gently. He loved like he fought—with his whole body, with every scar exposed, with the expectation that it might kill him and the stubborn decision to do it anyway.

You had known. That was the terrible thing. You had known for months in the instinctive way you knew a shift was coming before the monitor sounded. You had felt it in the books beside your bed and the tea in his kitchen, in the way he always positioned himself between you and unfamiliar machinery. You had felt it every time his rage eased beneath your hand.

You had simply refused to name it, because unnamed things could not be lost.

“I love you too,” you whispered.

Jason went motionless.

“You don’t have to say it because I did,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“You’re emotionally compromised.”

“So are you.”

“Baseline condition.”

Your hand rose toward his face. You stopped before touching the bruise along his jaw.

Jason saw the hesitation. He took your wrist and placed your palm against his cheek. His skin was warm. Stubble rasped beneath your fingers. His eyes never left yours.

“You don’t get to be afraid of touching me forever,” he said.

“I’m afraid of breaking you.”

“Good luck.”

“Jason.”

“I’m serious. People have been trying for years.”

“Some of them succeeded.”

The humour left his face. “Yeah,” he said. “They did.”

Your thumb moved gently beneath the edge of the bruise. Jason leaned into your hand.

“But I’m not asking you to love some version of me nobody managed to damage,” he continued. “That guy doesn’t exist.”

You swallowed.

“And I don’t need you cured,” he said. “I don’t need you calm every second. I don’t need you easy.”

“What do you need?”

“You here.”

It was almost unbearable in its simplicity.

You leaned forward. Jason met you halfway.

The kiss was soft, not because either of you were soft people but because there were injuries between you, and fear, and years of treating desire like another dangerous thing that needed containment. His good hand cupped the back of your neck. Your palm remained against his cheek.

He tasted faintly of blood and the terrible Cave coffee he had apparently been drinking while waiting for you to wake. You kissed him again anyway.

Jason’s mouth curved against yours.

“You’re smiling,” you murmured.

“Shut up.”

“Are you pleased?”

“Actively reconsidering this.”

“You confessed first.”

“Under duress.”

“You were standing beside a hospital bed.”

“Terrifying environment.”

You kissed the uninjured corner of his mouth.

Jason’s breath caught. Something bright and fragile opened inside your chest. Not happiness exactly. Happiness seemed too small and tidy for it.

Hope, perhaps. Hope was terrifying too.

The medical bay door opened.

Bruce Banner stood in the doorway. Bruce Wayne loomed behind him, doing an admirable impression of a gargoyle who had recently received several troubling scan results.

Your father looked at your hand on Jason’s face. Then at Jason’s hand behind your neck.

“Oh,” Banner said.

Jason did not move away. “Knock.”

“It’s a medical bay.”

“Still rude.”

Bruce Wayne’s gaze settled on Jason’s ribs. “You are supposed to be resting.”

“I am sitting down.”

“You dislocated your shoulder.”

“Almost.”

Banner’s mouth twitched despite his exhaustion. “That appears to be a point of contention.”

You reluctantly released Jason. He kept hold of your wrist.

“We identified the device,” Banner said. “Or part of it.”

Your stomach tightened.

Jason’s thumb pressed once against your pulse.

“It was built using stolen research from the Zürich trials,” your father continued. “The original data should have been destroyed.”

“Should have?” Jason asked.

Banner glanced toward Batman. Bruce’s expression darkened. “A private defence contractor obtained copies before the facility closed. The company dissolved twelve years ago, but several researchers continued working under different organisations.”

“Who hired the Saints?” you asked.

“We’re tracing the payment,” Bruce said. “The attack appears targeted.”

Jason rose.

“Sit down,” three voices said simultaneously.

He looked offended. You almost smiled.

“We’ll find them,” Bruce continued. His gaze moved from Jason to you. “After both of you recover.”

“I should be contained until then,” you said.

Jason’s hand tightened. Your father’s face fell.

Bruce Wayne remained unreadable. “Is that what you want?”

“No,” you admitted. “It’s what is safe.”

“Those are not always the same thing,” Banner said quietly. You looked at him. Your father stepped farther into the room. “I agreed to containment too quickly when you were young.”

“Dad.”

“I was afraid.”

“You had a broken arm.”

“I wasn’t afraid of you.”

“You should have been.”

“No.” Banner’s voice sharpened. The sound startled all of you. “I was afraid for you. There is a difference, and I failed to make you understand it.”

Your throat tightened.

He pulled the nearby stool closer but did not sit until you nodded. “When you asked me to remove the mutation, I knew the procedure was experimental,” he said. “I told myself that you understood the risks because you were brilliant and because you spoke like an adult.”

“I did understand.”

“You were fourteen.” His eyes shone behind his glasses. “You understood the science. You could not understand what it meant to hate yourself that young because I had taught you to.”

“You didn’t.”

“I called my other form a curse. A monster. A disease I needed to cure.” Banner looked down at his hands. “You heard every word.”

Silence settled over the medical bay.

Jason’s hand slipped from your wrist to your fingers. Your father noticed but said nothing.

“The procedure was not only intended to separate the gamma cells,” Banner continued. “They believed they could suppress the emotional response associated with transformation. Fear. Anger. Survival instincts.”

“Emotions,” you said.

“Yes.”

Jason’s expression became dangerous. “They tried to cut emotions out of a kid.”

Banner’s jaw tightened. “I stopped the trial when I realised what they were doing.”

“After three weeks,” you whispered.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t I remember?”

“They induced repeated transformations. Your brain protected itself in the only way it could.”

The room blurred.

Jason’s fingers laced through yours. You gripped them carefully.

“The device in the basement recreated part of the process,” Banner said. “It disrupted the connection between your conscious memory and the transformation response. You didn’t simply lose control. Someone removed your ability to recognise that control belonged to you.”

The distinction should have comforted you. Instead, it made you furious.

The lights flickered.

Bruce Wayne glanced toward the gamma monitor.

Jason remained beside you. You looked down at your joined hands.

“I’m angry,” you said.

“Yeah,” Jason replied.

The word contained no fear. Your skin warmed beneath his. Green moved delicately across your knuckles, not erupting but blooming.

Banner watched. Bruce watched. Jason lifted your hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it.

You stared at him.

“What?” he said. “Still your hand.”

The green deepened.

Your fingers grew slightly beneath his, nails darkening at the tips. Jason adjusted his grip without hesitation.

The transformation stopped at your wrist.

You breathed. Nothing broke. No alarms sounded. The world did not end.

Bruce Wayne cleared his throat. “The reinforced training room will be available when you are medically cleared.”

You looked at him.

“No containment,” he said. “Training.”

Something in your chest loosened.

Banner smiled faintly. “I would like to stay and help, if that’s all right.”

You nodded.

Jason leaned toward you. “Family therapy in the gamma bunker. Cute.”

“You’ll be there too,” you said.

“Absolutely not.”

“You’re half the reason I shifted back.”

“Natural talent.”

“You’re going.”

“I’m injured.”

“Bruce said after we’re medically cleared.”

Jason looked betrayed. “You used Batman against me.”

“You taught me risk management.”

Bruce Banner laughed. Even Batman’s mouth moved at one corner, though Jason would deny it under oath.

Recovery was not linear.

Jason’s ribs healed before the fear did. For weeks after the mission, you woke with the memory of his body striking concrete. Sometimes you dreamed of chasing him through the tunnel, though the details changed. In some dreams, you caught him. In others, you reached the maintenance chamber and found only his helmet on the floor, empty and streaked with blood.

Jason never told you to stop apologising. He told you to be specific. When you woke from nightmares, shaking and green-eyed, he asked what you were sorry for. The injury? The fear? The fact that he had chosen to stay?

Sometimes you had an answer. Sometimes you did not. He listened either way.

You trained in the reinforced room beneath the Cave. Your father recalibrated the sensors and removed every piece of equipment related to the Zürich research. Batman developed new emergency protocols built around communication rather than immediate suppression. Oracle designed comms that could withstand the disruptive pulse, then made Jason carry three backups because, in her words, he treated safety equipment like optional side quests.

Jason complained constantly. He attended every session.

At first, you only practised controlled shifts. Human to green and back again, monitoring your memory after each transition. Then your father introduced stressors: loud noises, flashing lights, raised voices.

Jason handled the anger exercises. He was exceptionally qualified.

“You’re being annoying on purpose,” you accused during one session.

He leaned against the reinforced wall, arms folded. “Can’t prove that.”

“You have spent twenty minutes mispronouncing Dostoevsky.”

“Dosta-whiskey.” Your eye twitched. “Dusty-eff-ski.”

“Stop.”

“Doss-toy-jet-ski.”

Green rippled over your skin. Jason grinned.

“You are the worst person I know.”

“Feel it.”

“I feel homicidal.”

“Great. Don’t repress it.”

You grew several inches. The monitor chimed steadily.

Jason moved closer. “What do you want to do?”

“Throw you through another wall.”

“Valid. Alternative?”

“Tell you that you’re an uncultured idiot.”

“Good.”

“You’re an uncultured idiot.”

“Excellent control.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

The confidence in his voice disrupted the transformation more effectively than any breathing exercise. Your body settled into the familiar shape between forms—green skin, increased height, enough strength to bend steel, but your face and voice still recognisably yours.

Jason reached up to rest his hands on your waist.

You looked down at him. He had healed, though a faint yellow shadow remained along one rib. You still checked without meaning to.

Jason noticed. He always noticed.

“I’m okay,” he said.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I’m learning.”

His expression softened.

You placed both hands against his face. They seemed enormous now, capable of covering his skull completely. Jason did not flinch.

“Still your hands,” he reminded you.

You bent and kissed him. He rose onto his toes, which he would later deny, one arm sliding around your neck.

The gamma monitor beeped faster.

Jason pulled back. “Your pulse is up.”

“You’re very distracting.”

“Another natural talent.”

You smiled.

Being together did not solve either of you. Jason still had nights when anger arrived without a clear target. He still sometimes woke with the Pit glowing in his eyes and his hands locked around a weapon he did not remember reaching for. You still swallowed irritation until it became nausea. You still kept a bag packed beneath the bed.

For a while.

Three months after the mission, Jason found you kneeling beside it.

The safe house was quiet. Rain tapped against the windows, and a pot of your terrible tea steamed on the kitchen counter. Jason paused in the bedroom doorway.

You looked at the open bag between your knees. Clothes. Cash. Medication. False identification.

His expression closed.

“I’m not leaving,” you said.

“Wasn’t gonna ask.”

“You were.”

“I was gonna ask why you pack socks like a psychopath.”

“They’re rolled.”

“They’re suffering.”

You pulled one of the shirts from the bag.

Jason remained in the doorway, watching.

“I don’t think I can throw it away,” you admitted.

“You don’t have to.”

You glanced up.

He shrugged. “Emergency bags make sense. Our lives are ridiculous.”

“This one isn’t for emergencies.”

“I know.”

“It’s for running.”

“I know that too.”

You folded the shirt and placed it in the dresser.

Jason came closer.

One by one, you removed the contents. The clothes went into the drawers. The medication went into the bathroom cabinet beside his painkillers. The cash remained in a smaller emergency kit near the window.

You held the false identification last. The name belonged to no one.

Jason sat beside you on the floor.

“You could keep it,” he said.

“Why?”

“Maybe we’ll need to disappear someday.”

“We?”

He took the identification, studied it, then grimaced. “Terrible surname.”

“Tim chose it.”

“No taste.”

“What would you choose?”

Jason considered. “Something dramatic.”

“You already have a dramatic surname.”

“Todd is one syllable.”

“You’re called the Red Hood.”

“Branding isn’t the same as drama.”

You laughed and leaned against his shoulder.

Jason turned the card over in his fingers.

“Could make one for me,” he said.

“You want a fake identity?”

“I have twelve.”

“Of course you do.”

“But if you need an exit plan”—he placed the card back in your palm—“make room for two.”

Your chest ached. “You shouldn’t have to run because of me.”

“I won’t.”

“Then why would you come?”

Jason kissed your temple. “Because sometimes leaving is strategy.”

You looked at him.

“And sometimes staying is,” he added.

You tore the card in half. Then again.

Jason helped you carry the empty bag to the kitchen. You did not burn it or destroy it. You folded it and placed it beside the proper emergency kits.

A tool rather than a promise. Something you could use without allowing it to decide your future.

Later, you sat together on the roof. Gotham glittered below, wet and poisonous and beautiful in the particular way broken things often were. Jason had brought noodles from the same restaurant as that first night. He set the carton between you and passed you the final spring roll without comment.

You looked at it. He looked away with exaggerated innocence.

“You want half?” you asked.

“Absolutely not.”

“Liar.”

“Prove it.”

You split it anyway. Jason accepted his half.

Your shoulder rested against his, human skin warm beneath the sleeve of your sweatshirt. The city growled in the distance, full of anger and hunger and people trying to survive both.

“Do you ever wish it was gone?” you asked.

Jason chewed thoughtfully. “The Pit?”

“The anger.”

He considered longer this time.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Not all of it.” You nodded. “Some of it’s mine,” he continued. “Some of it keeps me moving. Lets me know when something’s wrong.”

“And the rest?”

“The rest is damage.”

The word sat between you without judgement.

“Damage can heal,” you said.

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes it scars.”

“Scars are still healing.”

You smiled faintly. “You rehearsed that.”

“Shut up.”

“Did you read it in one of my therapy books?”

“They were lying around.”

“They were on my bedside table.”

“Public domain.”

“That isn’t what that means.”

Jason stole the remainder of your spring roll. You shoved his shoulder.

He gasped with theatrical betrayal, hand flying to his chest. “Violence.”

“I barely touched you.”

“Formerly injured man.”

“You’ve been medically cleared for two months.”

“Emotionally, I’ll never recover.”

Green flashed across your fingers.

Jason looked down. Then he laced his hand through yours.

The colour remained. You did not pull away.

“You know,” he said, “I’m still right.”

“About what?”

“You’re hot when you’re green.”

You stared at him. Jason’s grin widened.

“You have terrible survival instincts,” you said.

“Yeah.”

Your skin shifted slowly beneath his hand, green spreading up your wrist. You let yourself feel the irritation, the affection beneath it and the deeper, more frightening love that bound them together. Jason watched without fear.

“World’s still here,” he murmured.

Below, Gotham breathed through rain and sirens.

Inside you, anger moved. It did not vanish. It did not become harmless. It remained vast, complicated and alive, carrying every wound you had survived and every boundary you had been taught to erase. But it was not the only thing inside you.

Jason’s thumb moved across your green knuckles. You leaned against him, holding his hand with enough strength to crush bone and enough care not to.

Your shoulders immediately fell slack. Frowning, you said, “No, I’m the one who’s sorry, Mika. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Please, come in.”

The awkward younger man seemed like he was still on edge, not even making eye contact with you as he handed over the bundle of parchment. He gave you a quick, brief nod before immediately spinning on his heel.

You felt bad, but you didn’t have much free time to dwell on it. Chewing the end of your quill, you stared down at the illustrated maps of the Knights’ new patrol routes. As always, Mika had marked it with incredibly insightful intel, but the sheer volume of information was only making your headache worse.

You thought your day couldn’t possibly manage to roll any further downhill, but then the door to your office kicked open again. As quickly as it had opened, it shut, and the tallest man in all of Mondstat stood with his back to it, his teeth glimpsing through his strained grimace. He lifted his pointer finger to his lips, and your brows furrowed together so tightly, you worried your forehead muscles might stay cramped like that.

Click, click, click, click! That was the sound of Jean’s heels, marching right past your door. She was a sensible woman, as were you, so when you had told her you wouldn’t let Varka escape his duties so easily, you knew she had believed you.

You pointed at your door. “Get out of here.”

Varka let out a hearty chuckle. “Now, that’s no way to greet me, pumpkin. I just wanted to drop in and say hi!”

“While you’re running from the Acting Grand Master,” you replied flatly. “Varka, I don’t have time for your nonsense today. Some of us actually do our work when we’re told.”

You gestured to the stacks of paperwork lining your desk, and he blinked at them like he didn’t know what they were. Giving you the kind of frown that a sad puppy might give its owner when begging for a treat, Varka complained, “You’re not happy to see me? You look awful stressed, hon.”

“Because I am stressed,” you snapped. “I have to get this all done by four PM, the 5th Company has a stack of work that Gunther can’t manage alone, and everyone else around here is incredibly fucking useless with administrative duties!”

Your shoulders heaved with angered breaths. When Varka crossed the room to stand at your side, you let out a groan, dropping your face into your palms.

“Sorry,” you said. “I’m trying to keep my emotions in check.”

A large palm wrapped around the side of your head. You looked up, surprised, before your face ultimately met the cool metal of Varka’s armorplate. His thumb stroked along the back of your hair, and after a moment of hesitation, you wrapped your arms around his hips and closed your eyes.

You took in a deep inhale. His scent wrapped around you, warm with hints of fragrant cedarwood, bold like dandelion wine. It made your tense muscles relax, and the pain in your head slowly dulled.

“You’re doing a great job, pumpkin,” he murmured. “It’s okay to be a little upset.”

“I just wish everyone would do their jobs,” you said. “Why is it always that people like Jean and I have to pick up the slack? We’re just as busy as the rest of you.”

“Well…no one ever said you have to pick up the slack. Why not take it easy for today? Come out with me to Angel’s Share and have a drink.”

“Angel’s Share doesn’t open until noon,” you groaned. “And you shouldn’t be going to taverns while you’re on duty, Varka. For Barbatos's sake, you’re the Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius…”

“You gotta live a little sometimes, ya know?” he asked, the rumble of his laughter tickling your cheeks. “It’s not a crime to bend the rules every now and then, is it?”

Not a crime, but incredibly irresponsible. Though you supposed the important part was that it wasn’t a crime.

“Why don’t you just…give Gunther his half of the paperwork back? Ask one of the rookies to help with the less important parts?”

“I don’t want to be seen as a Captain who pawns my duties onto others. It’s not fair to my subordinates.”

“But you don’t do it every day, pumpkin. I’m sure your subordinates wouldn’t mind helping their favorite Captain out every once in a while. Give ‘em a pretty little smile, and any man would do anything for you!”

You snorted, smiling against him. “Wouldn’t that make you jealous?”

“Well, of course not. Even if you smile at another guy, I know I’m the one you smile at the most.”

You lifted your head, your lips still curled into a fond grin. Varka’s gloved hands rose to your face, squishing your cheeks between his palms. With that rugged smile of his, with those blue eyes vaster than the sky itself, he stared down at you as he murmured, “I’m all you see. Right, pumpkin?”

You giggled. “Right, Grand Master. Now are you going to kiss me or what?”

He let out a deep chuckle, his eyebrows popping suggestively. “Oh, I’ll do a lot more than kiss you if you want me to.”

“You’ll have to buy me a drink first,” you purred.

You felt the heat of his breath when he leaned closer. As the bridge of his nose brushed yours, he murmured back, “Of course, pumpkin. I know how to take care of you.”

When his lips pressed to yours, you smiled against them. That was your Varka alright—a little bit of an idiot, a lot of a nuisance—but also your heart’s biggest weakness.

“Let’s sneak out,” he whispered, his eyes twinkling with mirth.

Giggling, you gave him an enthusiastic nod.

“That sounds good to me, Grand Master.”

brian places the takeout bag in the kitchen window while you fill a styrofoam cup. as you secure the lid, the bell chimes, and jason steps inside the diner.

"order for JT?" you ask, holding out the bag and drink before he can open his mouth.

"'preciate it, have a good one."

with a short, singular nod, he turns to leave. you pretend to resume working. you wipe down at an invisible spot on the counter, and brian scrapes at the grill even though there's nothing on it. the door shuts behind him, but you know better than to blow your cover so soon. when he's a safe distance away, the diner erupts into motion. brian drops the the bench scraper, bolting out of the kitchen with a timer in hand. you toss the cloth aside and lunge for the corkboard to rip down the record sheet.

"twenty bucks on eight and a half minutes," brian says, already fishing out a crumpled bill from his pocket and dropping it onto the table.

"twenty on eight minutes flat."

"you think he's beatin' his record? he's been slowin' down lately."

"i'm feeling lucky today."

he squints at you.

"he clocked in at nine minutes and twenty-two seconds last week."

you shrug.

"a temporary setback."

you assume your positions at the window, pressing your faces as close to the glass as possible. outside, jason assumes his usual starting position, leaning against his bike like an athlete preparing for a race. he carefully opens the takeout bag, starting with the burger first as always. brian's finger hovers over the timer. when jason unwraps it and the burger inches closer to his mouth, brian slams the timer—JT's 14th speedrun officially commences.

the burger disappears with terrifying efficiency. one bite. two. three.

"oh my god," you whisper.

four. five. gone. in two minutes and twelve seconds.

he doesn't even stop to breathe before moving onto the fries, shoving handful after handful into his mouth.

"is this greed or gluttony?" you wince.

"neither, kid's just a fast eater."

shaking your head, you turn your attention back to the event at hand. after making quick work of the fries, he's reached the final stage—the drink. unlike with the burger and fries, you can't physically see how much progress he's making at this part, so you need to watch closely to know when to call time. the drink is where he loses precious seconds. he always takes breaks between long sips, letting the carbonation settle in his system before he continues. he can take anywhere from 1-2 minutes on this, and right now, it can make or break his current record of eight minutes and four seconds.

"time!" you declare as JT takes his last sip.

"SEVEN MINUTES AND FIFTY-SEVEN SECONDS!" brian yells, toppling the timer over as he goes in for a high-five.

"NEW RECORD?"

"HE DID IT, THAT FUCKIN' ANIMAL!"

the other customers are staring. one elderly man has stopped chewing entirely. from behind the counter, your coworker, cindy, shakes her head, deeply disappointed in both of you, but you don't care. this is something worth celebrating.

you both cheer and pump your fists in the air like jason just won a world championship. it was never about the twenty dollars or the bragging rights. it was about the privilege—the honor—of witnessing history unfold in the parking lot of the 24 diner, about seeing a young man push the limits of what the human body is capable of.

fueled and satisfied in time for patrol, jason stuffs the empty wrappers and cup into the bag and saunters toward the trash, tossing it like he didn't just inhale 2,000 calories in under 10 minutes. through the window, he sees you and brian jumping for joy and hugging each other.

caught up in the celebrations, you and brian fail to notice jason rapidly approaching the doors. you don't realize he's there until the bell chimes again and he's standing in front of you with his arms crossed over his chest. his gaze flickers between you, brian, the stopwatch, and the paper. you stop, staring back at him like a deer caught in the headlights.

"are you guys timing me eat?"

"they have been for the past two months," cindy tattles from behind the counter.

you squeeze your eyes shut, already wondering how you're going to explain this to your boss.

"...what was my time today?"

"a little under eight minutes," you quickly answer, "new record."

much to your surprise, he nods.

"hell yeah! lemme see the sheet."

~

hours later, bruce wayne enters the 24 diner, shrugging his coat off as he takes his usual seat at the end of the counter. his eyes catch the paper pinned to the corkboard behind you.

"what's that?"

you whirl around to follow his gaze and brighten immediately.

"so there's this guy, JT," you explain, "always gets combo #2 to-go and inhales it in the parking lot in, like, under 10 minutes. brian and i have been timing him."

"set a new record today!" brian calls from the kitchen.

"one cheeseburger, an order of fries, and a drink downed in seven minutes and fifty-seven seconds!" you add proudly.

you pull it off the board and slide it across the counter. bruce glances at it. then he does a double take. fourteen separate occasions scattered over the past two months, the most recent being earlier this evening...right before patrol started. there are dates, times, and messy stars drawn next to the top 3. bruce closes his eyes.

of course it's jason. of course his child has a competitive eating record at the local diner. of course his pre-patrol ritual consists of consuming a cheeseburger, fries, and a drink in less than 10 minutes.

"you know him?" you ask.

"...that's my son."

the diner stills. your pen clatters onto the counter. brian slowly looks up, horrified.

"combo #2 speedrunner is a nepobaby???"

a/n: he's a 10 but he inhales 2,000 calories in less than 10 minutes :/ ...biblical greed...

"the fuck does 'XXX fry' mean?"

the line cook squints at your handwriting on the order note.

"extra extra extra crispy fries," you clarify, eyes still on the tv.

"so...burnt?"

"just do it, brian," you sigh. "they already chewed me out for not automatically bringing lemon with their water."

"hope ya spit in it."

"i thought about it," you grin. "speaking of, i'm gonna go water my tables."

you pass by your coworker, cindy, humming to herself. she sticks a new order into the window. brian groans, muttering something along the lines of he doesn't get paid enough for this shit. with a metal pitcher in hand, you weave between booths, quietly reaching over for refills, ice cubes clinking against the glass cups. some people smile and nod, some mumble thank you's, others ignore you altogether.

not many sit-down places are open past 10pm which means the 24 diner attracts just about everyone. behind a booth of teenagers splitting fries, three tipsy girls giggle over plates of breakfast combos. in the corner, a man and woman sit across from each other in silence, nursing mugs of coffee that went cold about twenty minutes ago. you haven't checked on the couple in a bit, but you get a feeling they don't want to be bothered...

the bell above the door chimes and you glance up out of habit. relief washes over you, your lips curling into a smile as bruce wayne steps through the doorway. the sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up to his forearms, his tie nowhere to be seen. he looks exhausted—more than usual—but otherwise, entirely unharmed, as if he never vanished. by the time you reach him, he's already settled into his usual spot.

"you know," you remark, "most people call when they're going to disappear for two weeks."

"i wasn't aware i had someone waiting on my return."

you try to ignore the blush creeping up your neck, turning away to grab a mug.

"i was getting worried," you quietly admit.

bruce pauses. he can't remember the last time someone said they missed him so plainly. not only did you notice his absence, but you also counted the days since he last came in. the realization is...disarming.

"the usual?"

"yes, please."

he wraps his hands around the mug, its warmth seeping into his palms. while he was busy with patrol, meetings, and galas, two weeks passed in the blink of an eye. yet the small gotham diner remains unchanged. it still smells of old vinyl and maple syrup, and the overhead lights cast a warm glow over the comfortable space. there are no camera flashes, no mics being shoved in his face, no reporters shouting ridiculous questions. here, in this corner of the city, he's not regarded as a gotham celebrity. rather, he's just a man having a quiet meal by himself. it's the reason he kept returning until the diner subconsciously became a part of his routine. even now, as a brief rush begins, nobody bats an eye at him occupying the stool closest to the door.

he tracks your path through the diner as the rush picks up. one minute you're behind the counter printing checks, the next you're balancing a tray full of food on your shoulder, and then you're back to grab menus for a new table. you're in constant motion, occupied with multiple tasks at once, yet you work with a practiced ease that can only come from experience. he recognizes the way your expression shifts with each customer. a warm smile here, a polite one there, and another that doesn't quite reach your eyes. the moment you turn away, though, it all slips from your face entirely. at some point, he'd learned the difference between your genuine smiles and the ones offered out of obligation.

soon, the rush slows down. the printer stops spitting out checks and the constant movement around him dwindles. you lean against the counter across from him, letting out a sigh of relief and asking how he's been. as always, the conversation settles into familiar territory. the topics are never particularly important. you don't ask about wayne enterprises or the latest tabloid speculating about his love life. instead, you tell him about the customer who tried to order an eggless omelette, or ask if he's seen the movie that came out last weekend. it's nothing too shallow or too deep, yet somehow pleasantly memorable all the same.

despite his prolonged absence, the diner is still here—there had never been any doubt he'd return. something settles in his chest, warm and unexpected, but he doesn't dare name it as you set down a plate in front of him and top off his coffee with that same easy smile. he knows this one reaches your eyes.

eventually, bruce reaches for his wallet.

"leaving already?"

the words leave your mouth before you can stop them.

"i do have an early meeting tomorrow."

"right, rich people stuff," you tease, gathering the empty plates he's stacked for you.

"something like that."

you hand him the to-go box containing the slice of pie you saved earlier, but instead of bidding him good night and walking away, you linger. he looks up at you curiously, dark brows knitting together. before you can talk yourself out of it—like you do every other time the idea crosses your mind—you rip a blank page from your server book and hastily scribble on it. folding it once, you slide it toward him. bruce glances down at the slip of paper. he turns it over. a phone number.

"i figured if you're going to disappear for another two weeks, we should at least have a way to check in on each other."

for a moment, neither of you says anything and your thoughts scatter in every direction. maybe this was a bad idea. maybe you've completely overstepped. maybe he'll stop coming in altogether. then, a hint of something flickers across his face, but it's gone before you can make sense of it. he slips it into his pocket.

"i think that's a good idea."

a/n: i meant to post this on father's day but life kicked my ass... anyways, here's pt 1 to this new series! as always, thanks for reading & hope you enjoyed <3

You had never been behind before. Even when you walked you lead, you were the first to volunteer for something you wanted to do, you took charge in projects, so you had never expected to be behind.

Ren being in charge was different. He was attentive, he cared, but it wasn't the norm. You weren't used to others doing the work, of them caring about you as well.

So this time, you stayed behind on purpose.

That much was intentional.

The Phantom Thieves moved like a well-practiced rhythm now, calls sharp, formations tight, Personas flashing through shadows like second nature. You knew your place in the lineup. You knew where you lagged behind, where your timing was a half-second slower, where your abilities didn't flare quite as brightly.

And so you trained.

Alone.

Mementos felt different when no one else was there. The air was heavier, the shadows were more watchful, like the place itself was aware you weren't meant to be wandering it solo. Your breath fogged faintly as you tightened your grip and summoned your Persona again.

It answered.

Barely.

You exhaled, frustrated. "Again."

You pushed. Forced the call. The strain burned behind your eyes, static crawling up your spine. The others didn't know of your struggle, how the ability burns in your veins, how your Persona barely listens.

Like it's calling you an imposter.

It's all a reminder of how you got it in the first place. The palace, the shadows, the burning from the mask ripping off your face.

You stumbled back a step.

"Still not enough," You muttered.

"You know it doesn't work like that." You freeze at the voice, your hands stopping and you clench.

Ren stepped out of the darkness like he belonged there, hands in his pockets, expression calm but eyes sharp with concern. His coat swayed slightly as he stopped a few paces away. Mementos welcomes him, and its a reminder that he was the first of you.

That he was meant for this, chosen. That he didn't have a palace that he went through, that he wasn't tortured.

"How long have you been watching?" You ask quietly.

"Long enough," He replied. "To know you're overdoing it."

You turned to face him, straightening, "I was just-"

"Training," He finished. "Alone. Again"

You looked away. The silence that followed wasn't accusatory. It was patient. That somehow made it worse. He knew you were here, he's known for some time. You wonder if the group has been talking about you, if they know you don't belong.

"You don't need to stay behind," Ren said gently, taking another step forward.

"I do," you snapped, sharper than intended. He's been nothing but kind to you, he saved you from the darkness, he gave you a purpose, he was handsome, and kind. You swallowed, "I mean...I want to."

He tilted his head. "Why?"

Because you were late. Because everyone else awakened in fire and conviction while you arrived with hesitation and doubt. Because every victory felt like something you borrowed instead of earned. Because you were terrified of being the weak link.

You were terrified that Ren would know you were the weak link.

You laughed softly, humorless. "I don't want to trail behind everyone else forever." Ren didn't interrupt. "I know I joined later," you continued. "I know I don't hit as hard, or adapt as fast. But I don't want to be carried. I don't want to be someone you protect because you have to." You knew that they had their group set before you, that they weren't expecting anyone else. Your hands clenched. "I want to be useful."

Ren stepped closer again, just enough that you felt the shift in presence, hovering over you. "You already are."

"That's easy for you to say," you replied. "You're-you."

Leader. Trickster. The one who always seemed to find the right move at the right time. He studied you for a moment, then nodded once, like he'd come to a decision.

"Then let's settle it."

You blinked, multiple times. "What?"

"Battle me," he said simply, as if his words did not carry weight.

Your head snapped up. "Ren, that's not-"

"Not about winning," he clarified. "Not about power scaling."

He met your eyes, steady and unwavering. So sure of himself, and you can't tell if he thinks he'd knock some sense into you or prove something to yourself.

"It's about proving you can stand beside us without tearing yourself apart to get there."

You hesitated. "You don't have to go easy."

A faint smile curved his lips. "I wasn't planning to."

The fight was quiet but intense, steel meeting steel, Personas flashing into being with practiced ease. Ren moved with fluid confidence, but he didn't overwhelm you. He adapted, responded, listened.

And you did the same.

You countered when he expected you to dodge. You held your ground when instinct screamed to retreat. Your Persona answered stronger this time, not louder nor brighter, but steadier.

When it ended, you were both breathing heavily.

You stood there, pulse racing, waiting for the verdict you'd already prepared yourself to accept. Ren recalled his Persona and looked at you, really looked.

"You didn't fall behind," he said.

You frowned. "I didn't win."

"That wasn't the point."

He stepped closer, voice quiet but firm. "You held your own. You adapted. You trusted yourself."

Your chest tightened.

"You don't need to chase us," Ren continued. "We don't run ahead to leave you behind." He reached out, not quite touching but close enough to be grounding. You took that step forward him, leaning into his touch. "You belong here. Not someday. Not after you're 'strong enough.' Now."

The weight you'd been carrying loosened, just a little.

"...You promise?" you asked.

Ren smiled, soft and certain.

"I wouldn't lie about that."

And for the first time since you joined the Phantom Thieves, you felt like you weren't struggling to catch up.

You were walking alongside them.

----

Bonus;

The Phantom Thieves noticed something was off the next day.

Not because you were weaker, but because you weren't.

Your timing was sharper. Your Persona responded without hesitation. You moved like someone who had finally stopped second-guessing every step. That alone would've raised questions.

What really gave you away was the exhaustion.

"Okay, hold up," Ryuji said, planting himself in your path before you could move to the next Shadow. "Since when do you ignore damage like that?"

Ann folded her arms, eyes narrowing. "You've been training alone again, haven't you?"

You hesitated, they knew, they talked about it.

They knew.

That was answer enough.

Makoto's expression shifted instantly. "How often?"

"Just...sometimes," you said, already regretting it.

"Sometimes." Futaba echoed flatly. "Define sometimes."

Yusuke tilted his head, studying you like a half-finished painting. "Your aura is strained. As though you have been pushing past your natural limits." Morgana stepped down to your feet, questioning how long.

You look to Ren. "I've already talked about this with Ren." You stated calmly, hands shaking which you shove in your school uniform. "I've been going to the Mementos to train."

"Damn it... why didn't you say something? Something could've happened." Ryuji ran a hand through his hair.

"I didn't want to slow anyone down," you admitted. "Everyone else awakened so fast. I just," you took a pause. "wanted to catch up.

Ren's hand trails to your wrist, gently grasping it.

"You don't have to catch up."

"You were chosen for a reason." Morgana stated, the voice of reason coming from the cat.

Ren steadied you as you swayed slightly, his grip remaining on you.

"...Oh," Ann said softly. Ryuji blinks, "Wait." and they paused and smiled slightly at the man behind you.

"Ren." Makoto's eyes widened a fraction, something you hadn't really seen from the class president. Futaba gasped theatrically in their ears. "OH! OHHHH!" she shouts excitedly and jumps up and down.

You flushed, confused. "What?" Ren’s hand was still on your arm. He hadn’t even noticed. The touch was comforting, it was natural.

Yusuke smiled faintly. “It seems our leader’s concern extends beyond strategy.”

Ren finally realized and promptly let go, ears faintly pink. You missed the warmth from his touch.

“I—” He cleared his throat. “We talked.”

“We battled,” you added quietly, laughing softly.

Ryuji’s jaw dropped. “You WHAT?”

Ann looked between the two of you, eyes bright. “Late-night Mementos duel?” Ever the romantic, the girl had stars in her eyes.

Makoto crossed her arms, but there was warmth there. “And you didn’t tell us.”

Ren met their gazes calmly. “It was necessary.”

“For who?” Futaba asked. “Because judging by the way you’re hovering, I’m guessing both of you.”

Ren didn’t deny it, he just looked at you. “You don’t have to prove anything to us,” he said. “Not by hurting yourself.” Your chest tightened, but this time it wasn’t fear.

Makoto stepped forward. “From now on, we train together. No more disappearing acts.”

Ann smiled. “You’re part of this team.”

Ryuji grinned. “Yeah, and if anyone’s falling behind, we pull them up, not leave them to grind solo.”

Futaba added, “Also Ren? You’re about as subtle as a crit hit.”

Ren sighed. “…Noted.” You laughed softly, the tension finally breaking.

As the group moved on, Ren fell into step beside you, not ahead, not behind.

Just there.

And this time, no one pretended not to notice.

----

Bruce saw the way Damian looked at you.

Not suspicious. Interested.

That was worse.

You stood near the tall windows of the east hall, the grey light of Gotham afternoon catching along the clean line of your coat. You were beautiful in a way that did not ask for attention and therefore received more of it. Your hair was neat, your expression composed, your posture almost unnervingly balanced.

Not stiff. Not rehearsed.

Balanced.

Bruce had spent enough years around dancers, soldiers, vigilantes, assassins, and liars to know the difference. You stood like someone who could move in any direction without warning. Like gravity had signed a private contract with you.

Your daughter, however, was laughing.

That was what made the sight strange. She was standing beside Damian, small and bright-eyed, her school blazer slightly wrinkled despite what Bruce assumed had been your best efforts. She had the fearless expression of a child who had never been taught that Damian Wayne was someone to avoid.

Damian looked profoundly offended by this.

“I am not being dramatic,” Damian said.

Your daughter tilted her head. “You called the class seating chart ‘a tactical insult.’”

“It was.”

“It was alphabetical.”

“Exactly. Lazy strategy.”

Bruce stopped beside them just in time to hear your daughter say, “Maybe you’re just mad because I got the window seat.”

Damian’s eyes narrowed. “I am not mad.”

“You’re doing the eyebrow thing.”

“What eyebrow thing?”

“The murder eyebrow.”

Bruce looked away before Damian could catch him smiling.

You did not. Your mouth curved slightly, hidden behind your untouched coffee cup.

That was the first thing Bruce liked about you. You were not afraid of Damian. The second was that you did not pretend your daughter was wrong to challenge him.

“Father,” Damian said, spotting Bruce with the resignation of a prince discovering peasants at his gate.

“Damian.”

Your daughter looked up. “You’re Mr Wayne.”

“I am.”

“You’re taller than people say.”

Damian inhaled through his nose. “That is not an appropriate greeting.”

Bruce glanced down at her. “People discuss my height?”

“People discuss everything about you,” she said seriously. “My mother says that is the consequence of being rich in public.”

You finally lowered your coffee cup.

Bruce looked at you.

“And your mother is usually right?” he asked.

“Always,” your daughter said.

“Almost always,” you corrected.

Damian frowned. “Statistically impossible.”

Your daughter turned to him. “You only say that because you hate being wrong.”

“I am rarely wrong.”

“You told Mr Whitlock that the Roman Empire never fell, it simply changed its ‘administrative branding.’”

“That was not wrong. That was nuance.”

Bruce laughed before he could stop himself.

Damian looked betrayed. Your daughter looked victorious.

Your eyes found Bruce’s over the children’s heads, and something passed between you that was not quite amusement and not quite warning.

Bruce offered his hand. “Bruce Wayne.”

You looked at his hand for half a second too long. Calculating.

Then you took it. Your grip was controlled. Firm without aggression. Your palm was smooth in some places and callused in others. Not tennis calluses. Not gardening. Not from a musical instrument.

Weapon work, Bruce thought automatically. Then immediately hated himself for thinking it. Because your daughter was still arguing with Damian about whether nuance was just a fancy word for refusing to admit defeat, and your thumb brushed once against Bruce’s knuckle before you released his hand, and you gave him your name with a quietness that made the noisy hallway seem to dim around it.

It suited you.

That was inconvenient. Very inconvenient.

Bruce smiled anyway.

That was the beginning.

Not of love. Not yet. Love did not arrive dramatically for Bruce Wayne. It did not kick down doors or throw itself through skylights. It came like fog, soft and creeping, until one day the whole city had vanished under it, and he could no longer pretend the air had not changed.

He saw you again at school functions.

Gotham Academy had many of them, because private schools possessed the truly astonishing ability to turn every minor occasion into a gathering that required hors d’oeuvres. Parent breakfasts. Art showcases. Debate exhibitions. Winter charity drives. A spring fundraiser where a board member asked Bruce to donate a new performing arts wing and Damian told him the current one had “acoustically offensive arrogance.”

Your daughter and Damian became something like friends.

Neither of them used that word. Damian called her his “academic rival.” Your daughter called him “the world’s grumpiest group project.” And yet, when she misplaced her history notes, Damian produced a second copy without being asked. When Damian refused to eat the cafeteria soup on principle, your daughter pushed half her sandwich toward him and told him starvation was not a personality trait.

Bruce watched this with growing fascination. So did you.

“She has a habit of adopting difficult things,” you said one afternoon, standing beside him beneath the awning outside Gotham Academy while rain stitched silver lines through the air.

Bruce glanced at Damian, who was explaining to your daughter why her umbrella technique lacked defensive awareness. “She may have met her match.”

Your mouth softened. “She likes him.”

“He likes her too.”

You looked amused. “Does he know that?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tragic.”

“Very.”

Your daughter suddenly turned and held the umbrella higher over Damian’s head.

Damian stiffened. “I do not require shelter.”

“Then stand in the rain dramatically somewhere else,” she said.

Bruce coughed into his hand. You looked away, but not before he saw your smile.

It did something to him. Something small and dangerous. Something that felt embarrassingly close to hope.

He saw you at galas, too. 

That was where your masks changed. At Gotham Academy, you dressed in tailored coats and soft blouses, the image of a composed mother with a busy calendar and a daughter who occasionally forgot to put her homework in the correct folder. At galas, you wore black like a secret.

Bruce first spotted you beneath the chandeliers of the Kane Foundation dinner, surrounded by men trying and failing to impress you. You listened to them with perfect politeness.

That was how Bruce knew they were doomed.

One man was speaking at length about offshore philanthropy, which was usually a phrase meaning tax evasion with a bow on it. You nodded. You smiled. You asked one mild question.

The man paled.

Bruce did not hear what you said, but he watched the man excuse himself two minutes later, looking as if he had just discovered his own obituary.

You turned and found Bruce watching.

He should have looked away. He did not.

You lifted your glass in acknowledgement.

He crossed the room.

“Should I ask what you said to him?” Bruce asked.

“Probably not.”

“That bad?”

“That accurate.”

Bruce smiled. “He deserved it, then.”

“Most people deserve more accuracy than they receive.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

“You do strike me as a man who remembers too much.”

The words were light. The look was not.

Bruce felt the faint tug of danger beneath them. A thread pulled taut.

He should have taken a step back. He did not. Instead, he asked, “And what do I strike you as, exactly?”

You studied him over the rim of your glass.

For a moment, Bruce had the very uncomfortable sensation of being seen without permission.

“A man,” you said slowly, “who has built a very impressive life out of not answering that question.”

Bruce’s smile stayed in place because he had trained it to. Inside, something shifted.

You looked away first.

Not because you were uncomfortable. Because you were kind.

That was the second dangerous thing about you. Your kindness was not softness. It was discipline. A choice made with the same precision as a cut. Bruce saw it when your daughter spilled juice down the front of her dress at a Wayne Foundation luncheon and froze in humiliation. You did not scold her. You did not fuss. You simply crouched, handed her a napkin, and said, “Well. The dress has made its opinion known.”

Your daughter burst out laughing. So did Damian, though he tried to disguise it as a cough.

Bruce watched from across the table as you cleaned the stain with the calm focus of someone defusing a bomb.

His chest tightened.

Alfred noticed, because Alfred noticed everything and judged most of it.

“Missed your chance to offer assistance, sir,” he murmured as he passed behind Bruce’s chair.

Bruce did not look at him. “She had it handled.”

“Indeed. That does appear to be part of the appeal.”

Bruce gave him a warning glance. Alfred’s expression remained serene.

The third dangerous thing about you was that Bruce wanted to know you. Not your résumé. Not your connections. Not the polite facts Gotham society traded like currency.

You.

He wanted to know why you never drank coffee you carried. Why your daughter’s hand always found yours in crowds, but you never held too tightly. Why you watched exits without seeming afraid. Why you looked lonelier in ballrooms than in rain.

And because Bruce Wayne was many things, most of them unhealthy, wanting to know became an investigation.

At first, he told himself it was harmless. Your background was too clean. Birth records, school records, property purchases, tax documents, philanthropic donations. Everything existed exactly where it should have. No gaps. No mess. No oddities large enough to justify concern.

That alone justified concern. But he found no crime. No aliases. No outstanding warrants. No international flags. No known criminal ties. Just a woman with an immaculate paper trail, an intelligent daughter, and eyes that made him forget to be careful.

So Bruce stopped looking. Mostly.

Then came the museum trip.

It was a Tuesday afternoon, which should have made it safe. Bruce had long ago learned that this was nonsense. Gotham could turn a Tuesday afternoon into a hostage crisis with the casual efficiency of a city allergic to peace. Still, the Gotham Museum of Antiquities seemed harmless enough. Gothic arches, polished floors, too many marble statues, a private exhibit on ancient trade routes and cultural exchange.

Damian’s class had been invited for an educational tour. Bruce had volunteered as a chaperone because Damian had looked him dead in the eye and said, “You will embarrass me if you attend.”

Some challenges were sacred.

You were there too.

You arrived with your daughter’s lunch in one hand and a permission slip in the other, your coat buttoned neatly, your hair pulled back, your expression calm despite the chaos of children trying to form a line.

Your daughter spotted Damian and immediately abandoned you.

“I finished the reading,” she told him.

Damian lifted his chin. “All of it?”

“Yes.”

“Including the appendix?”

“There was an appendix?”

Damian’s mouth curved with tiny, evil satisfaction.

Your daughter gasped. “You’re lying.”

“I would never.”

“You absolutely would.”

Bruce looked at you. “Does this happen often?”

“Every morning,” you said. “Sometimes I think she wakes up out of spite.”

“Damian does that too.”

“They have so much in common.”

“That may be an international concern.”

Your laugh was quiet, but real. Bruce caught himself smiling a real smile.

The guide began speaking near a display of bronze coins. Damian immediately looked as if he were preparing a rebuttal. Your daughter elbowed him before he could raise his hand.

Bruce watched you watching them. There was an ache in your expression that vanished the moment you noticed him looking.

He wanted to ask about it. He did not.

The first warning came as a flicker of light. The second was the sound of a security door locking where no one had touched it.

Bruce’s head turned. So did yours.

Across the gallery, three museum guards moved out of formation.

Not guards. Their shoes were wrong. Their hands were too still.

Bruce was already moving when the first man reached into his jacket.

So were you.

That was the moment everything changed.

Not because you panicked.

Because you did not.

The room erupted. A smoke charge burst near the entrance, sending children screaming. Teachers shouted. Someone grabbed the guide. The fake guards fanned out with professional precision, faces masked now, weapons drawn.

Bruce’s body calculated exits, angles, children, threats.

He turned toward Damian. Damian had already shoved your daughter behind a stone display case.

Good.

Then Bruce looked for you.

You were no longer beside him.

You had crossed half the gallery in the time it took him to blink.

Not running wildly. Not stumbling.

Moving. There was no other word for it. You moved like violence had been waiting beneath your skin for permission.

A masked attacker lunged toward a group of students.

You intercepted him. Your hand caught his wrist, twisted, redirected. The gun came loose without firing. Your elbow struck his throat with just enough force to drop him gasping but not enough to crush his windpipe. Before his body hit the floor, you had removed the magazine from the weapon and kicked it beneath a display case.

Bruce froze for one impossible heartbeat.

Then another attacker turned toward you.

You stepped inside his reach. Your knee struck his thigh. Your hand found the inside of his arm. Something small flashed between your fingers. Not a knife. A pin. A museum name badge you had stripped from the first attacker and turned into a weapon.

You drove it into the second man’s hand.

He screamed.

You slammed him into the wall and stripped his radio.

Bruce had seen many trained fighters. He had trained many of them.

This was not self-defence. This was not panic. This was not someone who had taken classes after a bad experience.

This was professional violence. Precise, economical, brutal.

And then your daughter screamed.

The sound tore through the gallery.

Your entire face changed.

Bruce followed the sound and saw a third attacker dragging her from behind the display case, one arm locked around her chest, a blade near her throat. Damian was on the floor, dazed but moving, fury already sharpening in his eyes.

Bruce started forward. You were faster.

“Let her go,” you said.

Your voice was soft. That was what made it terrifying.

The attacker tightened his grip. “Stay back.”

Your daughter’s eyes were wide, wet, fixed on you. “Mama.”

You stopped.

For half a second, you were only a mother.

Then something colder slid into place over your expression.

“No,” Bruce said quietly, though he did not know whether he was speaking to you, the attacker, or the moment itself.

The attacker shifted the blade.

Bad move.

You moved. Bruce barely saw the first step. One second, you were three yards away. The next thing you knew, you were inside the attacker’s guard, your hand clamped around his wrist, your other arm catching your daughter and pulling her behind you. The blade sliced across your palm. You did not react.

You turned the man’s wrist until the knife fell. Then you struck him once behind the ear.

He dropped.

Hard.

Your daughter sobbed and threw herself against you.

Only then did you shake.

Not much. Enough for Bruce to see.

You held your daughter with one bloodied hand, whispering something into her hair, your eyes still scanning the room for threats.

The remaining attacker saw you.

He knew you.

Bruce saw recognition flash across the man’s face.

Not fear of a civilian who had surprised him.

Recognition. Fear.

“You,” the man breathed.

You looked up. The room seemed to go colder.

The man backed away. “The Veil said—”

You cut him off. Literally.

Not with a blade. With a thrown shard of broken exhibit glass that struck the sleeve of his jacket and pinned him to a wooden partition.

He swore.

Bruce moved then, taking him down before you could do anything else. Too hard, maybe.

By the time the police arrived, the attackers were unconscious, the children were shaken but alive, and your hand was wrapped in Bruce’s pocket square.

You had protested that part. Bruce had ignored you.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“It’s shallow.”

“It’s still bleeding.”

“You are very stubborn, Mr Wayne.”

“You’re only noticing now?”

Your daughter sat nearby with Damian, a paramedic checking both of them. Damian looked furious about the ice pack pressed to his forehead. Your daughter was still crying quietly, one hand gripping his sleeve.

He let her.

Bruce watched you watch them.

Your face was calm again. Too calm. The same composed mask from galas. Parent meetings. Rainy afternoons.

But now Bruce had seen what lived beneath it.

You looked at him and knew. Of course, you knew. You knew exactly what he had seen.

The lie between you did not break loudly. It simply stopped breathing.

“Bruce,” you said softly.

Not Mr Wayne.

Bruce.

His name in your mouth felt like a warning and a wound.

One of the officers approached, asking for statements. Cameras flashed outside the locked doors. Children cried. Teachers hugged one another. Gotham continued its usual tradition of surviving disaster by immediately creating paperwork.

Bruce kept his gaze on you.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Your eyes flicked toward your daughter.

Not because you were avoiding the question.

Because she was the answer.

“Someone trying to leave,” you said.

Then the police took you aside.

Bruce let them. He had to. But his hand stayed curled around the bloodied pocket square long after you were gone.

That night, he went to the Cave.

Not because he wanted to prove anything. Because he needed to be wrong.

He pulled museum security footage. Police reports. Facial recognition from the attackers. Deep scans of the name the man had said.

The Veil. A rumour at first. A ghost story among intelligence agencies. Older than the League in some places, newer in others. Not bound by ideology. Not theatre. Not loyalty to demons or ancient codes. The Veil was quieter. Cleaner. It sold death, silence, leverage. It raised children into weapons and called it inheritance.

Bruce found redacted files. Then less redacted ones. Then files that were not supposed to exist.

The councilman dead of a rare compound three months ago. The shipping magnate found in a private elevator, cameras looped. The financier who had vanished from a hotel suite, then appeared in the river with no water in his lungs.

All criminals. All monsters, if the evidence was true. All dead.

And at the edge of each case, like a shadow caught in glass, there was you.

Not enough for court. Enough for Batman.

Bruce stared at the screen until the words blurred. Behind him, Alfred descended the Cave stairs carrying tea no one would drink.

“Master Bruce,” he said quietly.

Bruce did not turn. “She’s an assassin.”

Alfred stopped.

The Cave hummed around them.

“Ah,” Alfred said. It was not surprise. Bruce heard that, too.

His jaw tightened. “You suspected?”

“I suspected she was not merely a woman with excellent posture.”

Bruce closed the file harder than necessary.

Alfred set the tray down. “And now?”

“Now I find out how deep this goes.”

“And her daughter?”

Bruce’s hands stilled.

The screen still showed footage from the museum. Your daughter clutching Damian’s sleeve. You holding her as if the world could burn and still not take her.

Bruce closed his eyes. “She’s innocent.”

“Yes,” Alfred said. “Children often are, before adults decide otherwise.”

Bruce looked at him.

Alfred’s expression was grave.

“That organisation,” Bruce said, “raised her. If she is trying to leave—”

“Then she will not be allowed to do so politely.”

Bruce said nothing.

Alfred came closer.

“It is possible,” he said, “for someone to be dangerous and desperate. Guilty and afraid. Human and responsible for terrible things.”

Bruce’s voice went cold. “I know.”

“Yes,” Alfred said gently. “That is what worries me.”

Bruce distanced himself after that.

He told himself it was necessary. For the investigation. For Damian. For your daughter. For the line he had drawn years ago in blood and ash and pearls.

He stopped lingering at Gotham Academy pickup. Stopped letting conversations turn private. Stopped asking how your daughter’s debate project had gone or whether Damian had committed academic warfare again.

Your daughter noticed first. Children always did. Adults liked to pretend they were subtle. Children had not yet learned the social courtesy of ignoring obvious pain.

At school pickup three days after the museum attack, she looked at Bruce from beside your car and frowned.

“Did I do something wrong?”

The question landed with the ugly force of a punch.

Bruce crouched before he could think better of it.

“No,” he said immediately. “Absolutely not.”

She studied him with eyes too sharp for her age. “Then why are you being weird?”

Damian, standing beside her, nodded once. “He has been emotionally inefficient.”

Bruce looked at his son. Damian stared back.

No help there.

You stood a few feet away, silent. Bruce could feel your gaze like a blade held just above skin.

“I’ve had work,” Bruce said.

Your daughter gave him a look that said she was young, not stupid. “My mother says work is what adults blame when feelings are inconvenient.”

Damian looked impressed.

Bruce looked up at you despite himself. Your expression did not change, but your eyes did.

Hurt lived there. Quietly. With dignity.

That somehow made it worse.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said to your daughter.

She softened a little. “It’s okay.”

“It isn’t,” Damian said.

She elbowed him.

Bruce almost smiled.

Then you called your daughter’s name gently, and she ran to you. You placed a hand on her shoulder, the same way you had the first time Bruce saw you.

Protective. Possessive. Terrified, now that he knew how to read it.

You looked at Bruce over her head.

“Goodbye, Mr Wayne,” you said.

Not Bruce.

That was what he had earned.

At night, Batman tore through the Veil’s operations piece by piece.

He found safehouses emptied hours before he arrived. Accounts burned. Informants dead or vanished. A pattern emerged from the chaos: someone inside the organisation was cutting threads before they could be pulled.

Someone was sabotaging the Veil. Someone was trying to make a path out.

You.

He knew it before he found the proof. A hidden server in an abandoned train station beneath Old Gotham. Encrypted communications. A list of names marked for extraction. Children of Veil operatives. Spouses. Civilians used as leverage. People who did not know the organisation existed but would be killed to maintain silence.

Your daughter’s name was on one list. So was yours.

Asset compromised. Sentiment contamination confirmed. Termination pending.

Bruce read the words three times.

Sentiment contamination.

Love, translated by monsters.

His hand tightened around the drive until the plastic cracked.

He went to find you.

Not as Batman. 

That would have been easier. Batman had armour. Distance. The comfort of fear.

Bruce came to you in the rain, in a dark coat, looking like a man and feeling like a bruise.

Your apartment was not what he expected. That bothered him.

He had expected luxury, maybe. Or cold minimalism. Something controlled.

Instead, your home was warm in quiet ways. A row of children’s shoes by the door. A crooked drawing on the fridge of three stick figures labelled Mama, Me, and Grumpy Friend. A stack of library books on the coffee table. A half-finished mug of tea. A blanket folded badly on the sofa.

There were locks, yes. Three on the door. Reinforced windows. Hidden cameras Bruce saw immediately. But there were also glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the hallway ceiling. Your daughter’s room, he assumed.

You opened the door and stared at him. For once, you looked tired before you looked composed.

“Bruce.” His name came out like you had been holding it under your tongue all week.

“I know about the termination order,” he said.

Your face went still. Then you stepped aside.

He entered. You closed the door behind him.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. Rain whispered against the windows. Somewhere down the hall, your daughter laughed softly in her sleep or in a dream. The sound reached Bruce like a hand around his throat.

“You should not have come here,” you said.

“You sent files to Gordon.”

“I sent files to a system that might still believe in consequences.”

“You sent them anonymously.”

“I am trying to survive long enough to send more.”

Bruce turned to you. “You should have come to me.”

You laughed once. It was not happy. “I saw your face at the museum.”

He flinched. Barely.

You noticed.

“You looked at me like I had become something inhuman,” you said.

“I watched you take down four armed men in front of a group of children.”

“To protect them.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

His jaw tightened.

Your voice sharpened. “Do you know that I felt my daughter’s body shake for twenty minutes after? Do you know that I have replayed every second of that afternoon wondering whether I could have moved faster, whether I should have seen it sooner, whether I brought danger too close to her by trying to pretend I could be ordinary for one day?”

Bruce said nothing.

The anger in you burned bright, but beneath it he saw fear.

Not for yourself. Never for yourself.

“You think I don’t know what I am?” you continued. “You think I need your horror to understand my own hands?”

“No,” Bruce said softly. You stopped. He took one step closer. “I think I forgot there was a person attached to them.”

Your expression cracked.

Just for a second. It was enough.

Bruce’s voice lowered. “I’m sorry.”

You looked away.

That hurt more than if you had struck him.

“I have done terrible things,” you said.

“I know.”

“People are dead because of me.”

“I know.”

“Some of them deserved it.”

“Probably.”

“Some of them should have stood trial.”

“Yes.”

“And some…” Your throat moved. “Some were orders I followed before I understood that obedience could rot the soul.”

Bruce closed his eyes briefly.

When he opened them, you were looking at him again.

“I was born into the Veil,” you said. “Not recruited. Born. My mother belonged to them. Her mother before her. Debt, blood, inheritance. Pretty words for ownership.” Your hands curled at your sides. “They taught me languages before lullabies. Anatomy before fairy tales. How to enter a room, how to leave no trace, how to make a death look like weather. They told me love was leverage. They told me family was a chain.”

You glanced toward the hall.

“Then I had her.”

Bruce followed your gaze. The glow stars on the ceiling shone faintly in the dark.

“I thought loving her would be enough,” you whispered. “I thought if I kept her away from the training, away from the handlers, away from the old families, she could have something else. Ballet lessons. Science fairs. School arguments with impossible boys.”

Despite himself, Bruce’s mouth almost curved. It faded quickly.

“You’re trying to leave,” he said.

“I have been trying for years.”

“Why now?”

Your smile was very small. “Because she asked me if people like us get happy endings.”

The question entered the room and broke something open.

Bruce had no answer. Neither did you.

You wrapped your arms around yourself. For the first time since he had known you, the gesture looked less like composure and more like holding your own body together.

“I don’t want her to inherit this,” you said. “I don’t want her to learn where to cut. I don’t want her to scan rooms for exits before she learns to dance in them. I don’t want her to think love is only another word for weakness.”

Bruce looked at you.

“And you?” he asked.

You frowned faintly. “What about me?”

“What do you want for yourself?”

The silence after that was devastating.

It was not that you did not want anything. It was that no one had asked.

You looked down at your hands.

“I want to stop,” you said. “I want to sleep without keeping a weapon under my pillow. I want to cook breakfast badly, complain about school traffic and worry about normal things. Cavities. Homework. Whether my daughter is growing up too fast.” Your voice thinned. “I want a life that does not require blood.”

Bruce’s chest ached.

“And?” he asked.

You looked at him then.

There was the blade. The mother. The woman beneath both.

Cruel man, you seemed to think. Kind man. Detective.

“And I wanted you in it,” you said quietly.

The words hit harder than gunfire.

Bruce did not move.

You smiled faintly, and it was almost unbearable.

“Don’t worry,” you said. “I know better now.”

He stepped forward. “You don’t.”

You stilled.

“You don’t know better,” Bruce said, rougher now. “You know I was afraid.”

“You should be.”

“I am.”

“Then why are you here?”

Because Damian had asked where your daughter had gone when she missed two days of school.

Because your daughter’s name had been on a kill list. Because every file said assassin and every memory said mother. Because he had tried to make his heart obey the rules and, classic Bruce Wayne behaviour, failed with expensive commitment.

“Because I don’t want your daughter to lose her mother,” he said. Your breath caught. “And because I don’t want to look at you like a weapon,” he continued. “Not when you’re standing here asking to be anything else.”

Your eyes shone. You looked furious about it. “I don’t deserve that mercy.”

“It isn’t mercy.”

“What is it, then?”

Bruce swallowed. Truth was always harder without the cowl.

“Hope,” he said.

You stared at him as if he had offered something more dangerous than a blade. Maybe he had.

The hallway floor creaked.

Both of you turned. Your daughter stood there in pajamas, one hand rubbing her eye, hair messy from sleep.

“Mama?”

Your entire face changed.

Not softened. Opened.

Bruce saw the transformation and understood, with sudden, painful clarity, that this was who you had been fighting to become all along.

“I’m here,” you said immediately.

She looked at Bruce. “Mr Wayne?”

He crouched to her height without thinking. “Hi.”

She frowned sleepily. “Are you still being weird?”

You made a choked sound that might have been horror.

Bruce bowed his head. “I’m trying to stop.”

Your daughter considered this with the grave judgment of the very young.

“Good,” she said. “Mama was sad.”

You closed your eyes.

Bruce looked up at you.

Your daughter walked to him and leaned close, whispering loudly, “She likes you.”

Damian would have admired the tactical strike.

Bruce’s ears went hot. You looked like you wanted the floor to show mercy and swallow you.

Your daughter patted Bruce’s shoulder. “You can like her back, but don’t make her cry.”

Bruce’s throat tightened. “I’ll do my best.”

She nodded, satisfied, then turned back to you. “Can I have water?”

You scooped her up, despite the fact that she was nearly too big for it, and carried her to the kitchen.

Bruce watched you go. Something inside him, something old and locked, moved toward the light.

The Veil came for you three nights later. Monsters rarely allowed love to resign peacefully.

You had known it was coming. Bruce had known too. That did not make waiting easier.

Your daughter was moved to Wayne Manor under the kind of security Bruce usually reserved for heads of state, alien royalty, and whichever Robin had most recently annoyed a death cult. Alfred took one look at her small overnight bag and informed her that the Manor had excellent hot chocolate.

She asked if Damian would be there.

Damian, appearing from the hallway like a summoned omen, said, “Obviously.”

She smiled. He looked away.

Bruce pretended not to notice.

You did notice. He saw the grief and gratitude twist together across your face before you hid both.

“I should stay with her,” you said.

Bruce answered quietly, “They’ll follow you.”

“She’s my daughter.”

“And they are using that against you.”

Your eyes flashed. “Do not speak to me as if I don’t know that.”

He nodded once.

You looked toward the sitting room where Damian was explaining the Manor’s “defensible zones” to your daughter using chess pieces.

“I promised her I would always come back,” you whispered.

Bruce’s voice softened. “Then keep it.”

Your eyes found his.

There were so many things between you now. Blood. Fear. Want. Trust, fragile as the first ice over a lake.

You handed him a folded note. “If I don’t—”

“No.”

“Bruce.”

“No.”

“You don’t get to forbid reality.”

“I’m familiar with trying.”

That almost made you smile.

“If I don’t come back,” you said, “give her this when she’s older.”

Bruce did not take it.

You looked down at his hand. He kept it at his side.

“Take it,” you said.

“No.”

Your voice shook. “Please.”

That was what did it.

Bruce took the note because he could deny many things, but not you asking softly with your daughter in the next room. He put it inside his jacket like something sacred.

Then you stepped closer. Not close enough to touch. Close enough to make distance feel like cruelty.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“For what?”

“For making you care.”

Bruce’s face changed. “You didn’t make me.”

Your eyes closed.

For one second, you leaned forward. For one second, Bruce thought you might let yourself rest against him.

Then your phone buzzed, and the moment died.

You looked at the message.

Your mask returned. “They’re moving.”

Batman followed you that night.

This time, you knew. You let him.

The Veil had chosen an abandoned courthouse in Old Gotham because assassins apparently loved symbolism almost as much as billionaires loved secret caves. The building had been empty for years, its stone steps cracked, its windows broken, its old halls smelling of dust and rain.

You entered through the front. Bruce entered through the roof. Neither of you discussed it.

Inside, the Veil waited with twelve operatives, three handlers, and one woman you called Mother, though Bruce knew she was not yours.

The Matron was older, elegant, silver-haired, wearing white gloves in a building full of rot. Her smile was soft. Her eyes were empty.

“My dear,” she said when you entered the old courtroom. “You have caused such grief.”

You stood in the center aisle, hands empty at your sides. “I’m leaving.”

The Matron sighed. “No one leaves inheritance.”

“You mean ownership.”

“I mean family.”

Your laugh was cold. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

The Matron’s smile thinned. “Your daughter will. In time.”

Bruce saw your body go still from the shadows above.

Not frozen.

Focused.

“No,” you said.

“One cannot keep children from their blood.”

“I can.”

“You?” The Matron stepped closer. “You are a blade pretending to be a hand. A little mother playing at softness. Did you think packing lunches would make you clean?”

You flinched.

Bruce’s jaw tightened.

The Matron saw it too. Her smile sharpened.

“There she is,” she said. “Our girl.”

“I was never yours.”

“Oh, darling.” The Matron lifted one gloved hand. “You still kill like ours.”

Bruce moved as the first gun lifted.

The courtroom shattered into violence.

Batman dropped from above, cape spreading like a black wound across the air. You moved at the same instant, sweeping a fallen shard of wood into your hand, disarming the nearest operative before he could fire.

Back-to-back again. Like the museum.

But now Bruce knew what he was seeing. He saw the restraint. The choices. The way your strikes shifted away from killing angles, even when muscle memory tried to drag you back. The way you cursed under your breath when an enemy left their throat open, and you struck their shoulder instead.

Not clean. Not easy.

But trying. God, you were trying.

“You’re avoiding arteries,” he said, blocking a knife aimed at your ribs.

“Personal growth is exhausting.”

He knocked an attacker into a jury bench. “You’re doing well.”

You shot him a look. “Do not praise me during combat.”

“It wasn’t praise.”

“It sounded like praise.”

“It was tactical encouragement.”

“Rich men are unbearable.”

A blade sliced across your arm.

Bruce’s hand shot out, catching the attacker’s wrist and breaking it with more force than necessary.

You looked at him. He looked away.

“No killing,” you said.

“I know.”

“That sounded personal.”

“It was tactical discouragement.”

Despite everything, you laughed. The sound struck him somewhere beneath the armour.

Then the Matron drew a gun.

Not at you. At the phone on the table beside her, where a live video feed flickered.

Wayne Manor’s exterior gate.

Bruce’s blood went cold.

You saw it too.

Your face emptied. “What did you do?”

The Matron smiled. “Insurance.”

Bruce touched his comm. “Alfred.”

Static.

Your breath changed.

Bruce stepped toward you. “She’s safe.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“You cannot promise that.”

“I can.”

You turned on him, eyes wild now. “Br—”

“She is with Damian,” he said firmly. “And Alfred. And Oracle has eyes on the Manor. Nightwing is two blocks out. Robin has already triggered lockdown because he is Damian and apparently regards sleepovers as siege training.”

For half a second, your face crumpled with such fierce relief that Bruce wanted to cross the battlefield and hold you.

The Matron’s smile disappeared.

“Sentiment,” she said. “It ruins everything.”

“No,” Bruce said, turning toward her. His voice dropped into Batman’s. “It reveals everything.”

The fight ended badly for the Veil.

Not neatly. Not without injury. But by dawn, the old courthouse was full of police lights, federal agents, encrypted drives, and handcuffed ghosts who had spent decades believing they were untouchable.

You sat on the courthouse steps wrapped in Batman’s cape because he had put it around your shoulders and glared when you tried to refuse.

Your lip was split. Your arm was bandaged. There was blood on your collar and rain in your hair. You looked very tired. You looked alive.

Gordon stood nearby, reading over the initial evidence with the expression of a man who had woken up expecting coffee and received an international assassination network instead.

He glanced at you. “You understand cooperation doesn’t make everything disappear.”

“I know,” you said.

“You may still face charges.”

“I know.”

“You’ll need counsel.”

Bruce, now without the cowl but still in shadows, said, “She’ll have it.”

Gordon looked at him. Then at you. Then back at Bruce.

“Of course she will,” he muttered. “Why would anything in this city be normal?”

You almost smiled.

Bruce sat beside you after Gordon walked away.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

The sky above Gotham began to pale. Ugly grey giving way to silver.

“You should go home,” you said finally.

“So should you.”

You looked at him. “I don’t know where that is anymore.”

Bruce’s answer came too quickly to be anything but honest. “You do.”

Your eyes glistened. “Bruce.”

“You do,” he said again, softer. “She’s waiting.”

You swallowed. “And you?”

The question was small. Afraid.

Bruce looked down at his hands. There was blood under his nails. Not yours. Maybe his. Maybe someone else’s. Gotham always blurred the details eventually.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted.

You gave a quiet laugh. “Neither do I.”

“I’m angry.”

“I know.”

“I’m afraid.”

“I know.”

“I can’t ignore the lives you took.”

“I would not ask you to.”

“I can’t pretend love fixes this.”

“No,” you said. “Love is not a legal defence. Tragic, really. Would be convenient.”

He looked at you. You looked back. Then, somehow, both of you laughed.

It was small. Broken.

Real.

Bruce’s voice softened. “But I can help you build something after.”

Your breath caught.

“If you want that,” he added.

You looked toward the street, where rainwater carried courthouse dust into the gutter.

“I want breakfast,” you said.

Bruce blinked.

You wiped at your cheek with the heel of your hand. “I want to go home, wherever that is, and make breakfast for my daughter. I want her to complain that I burned toast because she likes Alfred’s better now. I want to sleep for a year. I want to stop looking over my shoulder. I want…”

Your voice broke.

Bruce waited.

You turned back to him.

“I want you to look at me like I am still a person.”

Bruce did not touch you. He only said, “I am.”

The first tear fell silently. Then another.

You covered your face with both hands.

“I don’t know how to be good,” you whispered.

Bruce felt the words like a knife sliding between armour plates.

He knew too much about that question. Too much about trying to turn grief into justice and finding brutality waiting in the gears.

He reached for your wrist gently.

You let him lower your hands.

“You don’t have to become good all at once,” he said. “You start by not running.”

Your laugh shook. “That sounds awful.”

“It is.”

“You’re very bad at comfort.”

“I’ve been told.”

“By children?”

“Mostly.”

You looked down at his hand around yours.

His thumb brushed once over your knuckles. Careful. Careful enough to hurt.

“I can stay,” you said, like the words were unfamiliar. “I can try.”

Bruce nodded. “Then try.”

Wayne Manor received you like it had been expecting you. Which, given Alfred, it probably had.

Your daughter ran into your arms so hard that Bruce reached out automatically, half afraid you would fall. You caught her with a wounded sound and held on.

“Mama,” she sobbed.

“I’m here.”

“You promised.”

“I know.”

“You kept it.”

Your face crumpled.

“Yes,” you whispered into her hair. “I kept it.”

Damian stood nearby, arms folded, pretending not to be emotionally invested. Your daughter reached back blindly and grabbed his sleeve.

Damian stiffened. Then, with the expression of someone accepting a grave diplomatic burden, he stepped closer.

Bruce watched from the doorway.

Alfred appeared beside him.

“She’ll need time,” Alfred said.

“Yes.”

“So will you.” Bruce said nothing. Alfred glanced at him. “Master Damian has already informed me that her daughter may use the library under his supervision, because she is, and I quote, ‘less incompetent than most guests.’”

Bruce smiled faintly. “That’s practically adoption paperwork from him.”

“Indeed.”

In the days that followed, the Manor changed.

Not loudly. It had always been a house of ghosts, but now there were different sounds threaded through the halls. Your daughter’s footsteps. Damian’s exasperated lectures. Alfred calmly explaining that no, one could not bring throwing knives to breakfast, and yes, he was speaking to both households.

You stayed because the legal process was complicated and the Veil’s remnants were still dangerous. That was the practical reason.

The truth was less tidy. You stayed because your daughter slept through the night for the first time in months in the room across from Damian’s. You stayed because Alfred left tea outside your door when nightmares took you. You stayed because Bruce never locked you in, never cornered you, never treated you as if kindness required ignorance.

He was careful with you.

Not fragile careful. Weapon careful.

He knew you could hurt him. He knew you could hurt others. He also knew you were trying not to.

That mattered. Sometimes it mattered more than forgiveness.

The first Sunday after the courthouse, your daughter asked for pancakes.

Alfred, traitor that he was, looked at Bruce. “I believe Master Bruce offered to assist with breakfast.”

Bruce looked up from his coffee. “I did?”

Your daughter brightened. “You can cook?”

Damian answered immediately. “No.”

Bruce frowned. “I can cook.”

“No, Father. You can assemble nutritional components under duress.”

Your daughter giggled.

You leaned against the kitchen doorway, one arm still bandaged, wearing one of Bruce’s old sweaters because Alfred had apparently decided subtlety was for cowards.

Bruce noticed. His eyes lingered.

You noticed him noticing.

For the first time in weeks, your smile turned almost wicked. “Do you need help, Mr Wayne?”

Damian made a gagging sound.

Your daughter whispered, “They’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?” Bruce asked.

“Looking sad-romantic,” she said.

You covered your mouth. Bruce turned to the stove with great dignity and immediately burned the first pancake.

Damian closed his eyes. “Humiliation.”

Your daughter clapped. “It looks like Gotham.”

The pancake was, admittedly, vaguely bat-shaped.

Bruce stared at it.

Alfred looked over his shoulder. “An improvement, sir.”

You laughed.

Not quietly this time. Not politely.

You laughed in Bruce’s kitchen, wearing his sweater while your daughter sat at the counter and Damian pretended not to enjoy the chaos.

Bruce looked at you and felt something settle.

Not peace. Peace was too large a word. Too clean. But something like beginning.

Later, after breakfast had been rescued by Alfred and partially insulted by Damian, Bruce found you in the garden.

The morning was cold and bright. Gotham sunlight was a rare, suspicious thing, but it touched the hedges and stone paths like it was trying.

You stood near the fountain, watching your daughter and Damian argue over whether chess could be improved with hidden traps.

“She looks happy,” Bruce said.

You did not turn. “She is.”

“That sounds like it surprises you.”

“It does.”

He stood beside you.

For a moment, you watched the children in silence. Your daughter laughed at something Damian said. Damian looked offended by his own ability to be funny.

“She asked if we could stay,” you said.

Bruce’s heart changed rhythm. “And what did you say?”

“I told her we would see.”

He nodded.

You looked at him then. “I don’t want to take advantage of your kindness.”

Bruce almost smiled. “My kindness?”

“Yes.”

“You broke three men’s arms last week to protect a group of schoolchildren.”

“Two arms. One wrist.”

“My mistake.”

“I am not kind, Bruce.”

He turned toward you fully. “You are trying to be.”

Your expression tightened. “As if that is enough.”

“Sometimes it has to be.”

You looked away. The wind moved through the garden, carrying the distant sound of your daughter accusing Damian of cheating because he had “villain eyebrows.”

Bruce took a breath.

“There is room here,” he said.

Your eyes returned to him.

His voice stayed careful. “For both of you. As long as you need. As long as you want.”

Your lips parted slightly. “Bruce.”

“I’m not saying it fixes anything.”

“I know.”

“I’m not saying I’ve made peace with everything, either. I’m saying the Manor has survived worse than two people trying to become better.”

Your eyes shone. “That is a very Bruce Wayne way to invite someone into your home.”

“I’m told I’m bad at comfort.”

“You are.”

“Will you stay anyway?”

The question hung between you.

No ballroom. No masks. No blood on marble floors. Just a garden, two children arguing in the distance, and a man who had built his life around loss asking someone not to leave.

You stepped closer. “Do you want me to?”

Bruce’s gaze dropped briefly to your mouth, then returned to your eyes. “Yes.”

A breath.

“And not just because of my daughter?”

His voice went rough. “No.”

The world narrowed.

You reached up slowly, giving him every chance to step away.

He did not.

Your fingers touched his jaw. He went still beneath your hand, as if gentleness was its own kind of ambush.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” you whispered.

“Neither do I.”

“You have dated before.”

“That has not helped.”

A startled laugh escaped you.

Bruce’s mouth curved. For once, the smile reached his eyes.

“I am dangerous,” you said.

“Yes.”

“I am difficult.”

“Yes.”

“I come with enemies.”

“So do I.”

“I have terrible coping mechanisms.”

“I dress as a bat.” 

You laughed again, softer this time. Then your thumb brushed along his jaw, and Bruce closed his eyes for half a second like he could not help it.

Your heart ached.

This man had seen you kill. This man had seen you bleed. This man had every reason to keep his distance. Instead, he looked at you like you were not only what had been done to you or what you had done in return. Like you were still becoming.

“I want to stay,” you said. Bruce opened his eyes. “I want to try. For her. For myself.” You swallowed. “For you, if you’ll let me.”

He lifted his hand and covered yours where it rested against his face. “I’ll let you.”

“You may regret that.”

“I regret many things.”

“That was not comforting.”

“I can try again.”

“You should.”

He leaned closer.

Your breath caught.

“Stay,” he said.

One word.

Not an order. Not a rescue.

A door.

So you crossed the last inch between you and kissed him.

It was not dramatic. No thunder. No cinematic swell. No grand surrender beneath a blood-red moon.

It was careful. Almost unbearably so. Bruce kissed you like he knew softness could bruise if handled too quickly. Like he knew both of you were made of locked rooms and old wounds. His hand settled at your waist, avoiding your injury without hesitation. Yours slid to his chest, where his heart beat steady and human beneath your palm.

For once, you did not feel like a blade.

You felt held.

When you pulled back, Bruce rested his forehead against yours.

In the distance, your daughter gasped.

You both turned. She and Damian stood by the hedge.

Damian looked smug. Your daughter looked radiant.

“I knew it,” she said.

Damian crossed his arms. “It was obvious.”

Bruce closed his eyes. “Were you spying?”

“Observing,” Damian corrected.

Your daughter nodded. “For emotional safety.”

You stared at them. Bruce looked like he was silently negotiating with the universe.

Damian lifted his chin. “This development is acceptable.”

“Acceptable?” Bruce repeated.

“You have been less insufferable lately.”

Your daughter added, “Mama smiles more.”

Your throat tightened.

Bruce looked at you. Then at the children. “I see.”

Damian’s eyes narrowed. “Do not ruin it.”

“Damian.”

“I am serious.”

Your daughter nodded gravely. “Me too.”

Bruce held up both hands. “I’ll do my best.”

Your daughter seemed to consider this. Then she ran forward and wrapped her arms around your waist carefully, mindful of your injuries. A moment later, to everyone’s surprise except perhaps his own, Damian stepped beside her and leaned lightly against Bruce’s side.

Not a hug. Never that. A tactical display of reluctant approval.

Bruce looked down at him. 

Damian looked straight ahead. “Do not comment.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were thinking loudly.”

You laughed.

Bruce looked at you over the children’s heads, and there it was again.

Not peace.

Beginning.

The months that followed were not simple. The law still wanted answers. The Veil’s remnants still tried to bite from the shadows. Some nights, you woke with a knife in your hand before remembering where you were. Some nights, Bruce came back bleeding and said he was fine with such deep stupidity that you understood why Alfred owned so many grey hairs.

You testified. You gave names. You faced consequences.

Not all of them. Not enough, maybe. Too many, maybe. Justice was a crooked road in Gotham, full of potholes and ghosts. But you walked it. You did not run.

Bruce stood beside you when he could. When he could not, he was waiting after.

Your daughter enrolled fully at Gotham Academy and began spending more time at Wayne Manor than anywhere else. She and Damian developed a friendship so intense and competitive that three teachers separately described it as “excellent but alarming.”

Alfred taught her to bake. She taught Damian to apologise without sounding like he was issuing a royal pardon.

Progress was uneven.

One rainy afternoon, months after the museum, Bruce found you standing again beneath the Gotham Academy awning.

Same grey sky. Same silver rain. Same children arguing nearby.

Different world.

Your daughter held an umbrella over herself and Damian.

Damian complained, “Your angle is still inefficient.”

She said, “Your face is inefficient.”

Bruce’s mouth twitched.

You stood beside him, shoulder brushing his.

“Full circle,” you said softly.

He looked at you. You were still careful. Still healing. Still carrying a past that would never completely loosen its grip.

But you looked less like someone waiting to disappear.

“I hated you that day,” you said.

“At the museum?”

“After. When you looked at me.”

Bruce’s expression tightened.

“I hated myself for giving you a reason,” you added.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

Rain fell. Children laughed. Gotham, for one blessed minute, behaved.

Bruce reached for your hand. You looked down, then let your fingers lace with his.

“I was afraid,” he said.

“I know.”

“I still am sometimes.”

“So am I.”

His thumb moved over your knuckles.

“But you stayed,” he said.

You leaned lightly against him. “So did you.”

Across the courtyard, your daughter spotted you holding hands. Her entire face lit up. Damian followed her gaze and sighed like romance was a public infrastructure problem.

Your daughter waved. You waved back. Bruce did too.

Damian looked mortified on everyone’s behalf.

You laughed softly.

“What?” Bruce asked.

“I was just thinking.”

“Dangerous.”

“Very.” You glanced up at him. “People like us don’t get clean endings.”

Bruce followed your gaze to the children. “No.”

“But maybe we get mornings.”

He looked at you.

You smiled. “And pancakes.”

His expression grew grave. “Alfred has banned me from pancake duty.”

“For the safety of Gotham?”

“For the safety of breakfast.”

You leaned up and kissed his cheek.

Bruce went still in that way he always did when affection caught him unguarded.

Even now. Especially now.

Your smile softened.

“We’ll keep practising,” you said.

Bruce looked at your daughter and Damian, at the rain, at the school doors opening, at this strange, fragile life neither of you had expected to deserve.

Then he looked at you.

“Yes,” he said.

And because you had once been made into a blade, and he had once been made into a shadow, neither of you mistook practice for weakness.

Practice was how hands learned not to harm. Practice was how locked doors learned the shape of keys. Practice was how two dangerous people stood under the same umbrella and chose, again and again, not to run.

So when your daughter came racing over, dragging Damian behind her, and demanded to know whether everyone could come to the Manor for dinner because Alfred had promised pie, Bruce did not hesitate.

“Of course,” he said.

Damian frowned. “I was not dragged.”

“You were absolutely dragged,” your daughter said.

“I allowed momentum.”

“You allowed friendship.”

“Defamation.”

Bruce opened the car door. Your daughter climbed in first, still laughing. Damian followed, muttering about legal standards for slander among minors.

You paused before getting in.

Bruce waited. Rain darkened his coat. A drop clung to his lashes.

You reached up and brushed it away. Such a small thing.

Once, your hands had been trained for pressure points, arteries, endings. Now they touched his face in the rain.

Bruce caught your wrist and kissed your palm, right over the faint scar the museum blade had left behind.

You breathed in. “Bruce.”

“I know,” he said softly.

And he did.

Not everything. But enough. Enough to understand that love had not made you innocent. Enough to understand that guilt had not made you unworthy of being loved. Enough to understand that your daughter was watching from the car window with enormous, delighted eyes, and Damian was pretending not to watch at all.

You smiled despite the ache in your chest.

“Come on,” you whispered. “Before the children start a surveillance operation.”

“They already have.”

“Of course they have.”

Bruce opened the door for you. You slid into the car beside your daughter, and she immediately tucked herself against your side.

Damian, after a moment, leaned forward from the opposite seat and said, “If you are both going to continue this romantic development, I request discretion.”

Your daughter grinned. “He means he likes it.”

“I mean I request discretion.”

Bruce got into the driver’s seat.

You met his eyes in the mirror.

For once, there was no mask between you. Only rain. Children. A car pointed toward home.

Not perfect. Not clean.

But real.

And as Wayne Manor waited at the edge of the city, lit warm against Gotham’s bruised evening sky, you let yourself believe that maybe happy endings were not something people like you were given.

Maybe they were something built. One truthful day at a time. One saved child. One shared table. One ruined pancake. One hand held in the rain.

You had been made into a weapon. Bruce had been made into a ghost.

But your daughter laughed between you, bright as a struck match in the dark, and Damian rolled his eyes with the solemnity of a boy who had already decided he would protect that laugh with his life.

Bruce drove home. You held your daughter close.

And for the first time in longer than you could remember, you did not check the rearview mirror for danger.

Bruce did that.

You noticed. He noticed you noticing. Neither of you said a word.

You only reached forward, resting your hand lightly on his shoulder.

Bruce covered it with his own for one brief second before returning both hands to the wheel.

The city glittered around you. Cruel. Beautiful. Yours to survive.

Batman stood over the corpse in silence.

Nightwing crouched near the shattered remnants of a fear toxin canister, expression stripped of its usual brightness. Red Robin moved through the room in slow, exact lines, scanning everything twice, then a third time because Tim Drake did not trust anything that behaved too neatly. Red Hood leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, helmet angled down at the body.

“Gotta say,” Jason said, voice crackling through the modulator, “I’ve seen worse interior decorating.”

“Not helpful,” Nightwing muttered.

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

Batman said nothing.

That was the second strange thing. Bruce had gone still in that terrifying way he did when the world presented him with an answer he didn’t want to understand. His cape pooled around him like a shadow trying to remember how to be human.

Tim straightened, tablet glowing pale across his face. “No forced entry. Security disabled from inside the system, but not remotely. Whoever did this physically accessed the building.”

“Crane has guards,” Dick said.

“Had,” Jason corrected.

No one laughed.

There were twelve of them, all unconscious. Alive. Bound with their own belts, positioned where they would wake slowly and painfully, but wake. No unnecessary casualties. No collateral damage.

A clean path through chaos. A blade through the throat of a monster.

Damian stood apart from the others, frozen near the far wall.

At first, Dick thought he was staring at Crane. Then he realised Damian wasn’t looking at the body at all.

He was looking at the cut.

A single wound. Precise. Merciful, almost, in its efficiency.

Damian’s face had gone pale beneath his mask.

“Robin?” Bruce asked.

Damian did not answer immediately.

Jason’s helmet turned toward him. “Kid?”

Damian swallowed. “I know this work.”

The cave went colder than winter.

Tim’s fingers paused over the tablet. Dick rose slowly. Bruce turned his head, just enough to make the cowl’s white lenses catch the dim light.

“Explain,” Batman said.

Damian’s mouth tightened.

“That is not merely League technique,” he said. “It is older. Ceremonial. Reserved for correctional executions.”

Jason pushed off the wall. “Correctional?”

“When an enemy of the League acts beyond the bounds Grandfather permits.” Damian’s voice was flat, but something underneath it trembled like a wire pulled too tight. “When an example must be made quietly.”

Tim looked at Crane’s body again. “Scarecrow stole from the League?”

“Or poisoned something they wanted,” Dick said.

Bruce’s gaze did not leave Damian. “Who would Ra’s send?”

Damian’s silence answered before he did.

A small, terrible thing passed across his face.

Not fear. Not exactly.

Recognition.

“There were rumours,” Damian said softly. “In Nanda Parbat.”

Jason went still.

Damian never sounded young when he spoke of the League. He sounded carved. Like every memory had been sanded down until only edges remained.

“Rumours of an heir before me,” Damian continued. “A child raised deeper within the citadel. Not displayed. Not praised. Not allowed failure.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened.

“Talia’s child?” he asked.

Damian did not look at him.

“My mother’s,” he said. “Not yours.”

The words landed like a blade placed gently on a table.

Dick inhaled. “Damian…”

“I never met them,” Damian said quickly, too quickly. “Not properly. I saw them only once.”

His eyes flicked toward Crane again.

“They were training in the eastern courtyard. Seven assassins against one. They were older than me. Perhaps by five years. Perhaps more. It was difficult to tell. The League does not allow children to remain children.”

Jason’s hands curled at his sides.

Damian’s voice lowered. “They won.”

Silence swallowed the room whole.

Then Tim’s tablet chimed. He looked down, and every bit of colour left his face.

“Bruce,” he said. “You need to see this.”

On the screen, a symbol appeared. Not carved. Not painted. Burned into the underside of Crane’s desk, hidden where only someone investigating properly would find it.

A black blade crossed through a green flame.

Damian stepped back like he’d been struck.

Bruce saw. “Robin.”

Damian’s lips parted.

“That is them,” he said.

Jason looked between them. “Them who?”

Damian’s eyes lifted, and for the first time since entering Crane’s hideout, he looked afraid.

“The Blade of Al-Ghul.”

You left Gotham before dawn.

Not because you were afraid of the Bats. Fear was a tool. A chemical. A weakness in the breath before pain. You understood fear intimately, the way a surgeon understood the body: by opening it, studying its shape, learning what made it stop.

You left because the mission was finished. Jonathan Crane had taken a vial of Lazarus compound from a League caravan six months ago. He had diluted it, corrupted it, tried to lace it with fear toxin and sell the result to the highest bidder. He had not known what he carried. Men like Crane rarely did. They saw the sacred and wondered how much it would fetch in dirty money.

The Demon’s Head had spoken. You had obeyed.

That was the whole world.

A command. A target. A blade. Silence after.

Gotham sprawled beneath you, ugly and glittering, all bruised neon and rain-slick rooftops. It was a city with too many heartbeats. Too many witnesses. Too many ghosts.

You understood, now, why Damian had changed here.

The city was a disease.  Or perhaps a cure. You had not decided.

The wind shifted.

You stopped walking.

Three rooftops away, a shadow moved wrong.

Not civilian. Not police. Not League.

Bat.

You tilted your head.

“Come out,” you said.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the shadow detached from a gargoyle, and the Red Robin stepped into view.

He was smaller than you expected.

No. Not smaller.

Young.

Sharp-eyed. Tired. Dangerous in the way of people who had taught themselves to survive by noticing everything.

“You’re hard to find,” he said.

You watched him.

He smiled faintly, but it did not reach his eyes. “That was almost a compliment.”

“You followed the wrong trail.”

His expression flickered.

Then something clicked behind you.

A gun.

You did not turn.

“Did I?” Red Robin asked.

Red Hood stood at your back, weapon trained between your shoulder blades. His stance was aggressive, but not careless. He had positioned himself outside the most obvious range of your reach.

Good.

Not good enough.

“Hands where I can see them,” Hood said.

You lifted your hands slowly.

Red Robin’s gaze narrowed.

He knew.

Smart one.

The wire around his ankle went taut.

You moved.

Not fast.

Perfectly.

That was what the League had carved into you. Speed was sloppy when worshipped. Strength was crude when indulged. Perfection was not the rush of movement. It was inevitability.

You stepped sideways as Red Hood fired. The bullet struck the rooftop exactly where you had been standing. You pulled the wire, and Red Robin hit the ground hard enough to lose breath but not consciousness. Hood advanced; you turned into him, caught his wrist, redirected the second shot into the sky, and drove your elbow into the seam beneath his ribs.

He grunted.

You almost admired him for staying upright.

Almost.

Red Robin swept for your legs. You let him catch one, let his hope bloom for half a second, then twisted with the momentum and dropped your knee beside his throat.

Not on it.

Beside it.

A warning dressed as mercy.

Hood lunged again.

You threw one of your blades.

It pinned his jacket to an exhaust vent.

His helmet snapped toward the knife, then back to you.

“Okay,” he said. “Rude.”

Red Robin’s staff extended beneath your arm.

You caught it.

For one breath, the two of you stared at each other over the weapon.

His eyes widened slightly.

He knew he had lost.

Before you could break the staff, a body dropped from above.

Blue and black.

Nightwing came down like a falling star.

You released Red Robin and rolled away from the strike, cloak snapping behind you. Nightwing flowed after you, escrima sticks sparking to life. His movements were acrobatic, beautiful, almost joyful.

You hated that. Combat was not meant to be joyful.

Combat was prayer.

He struck high. You ducked. He spun. You moved inside the arc, fingers finding the pressure point beneath his arm. He saw it coming at the last possible second and shifted enough that you caught muscle instead of nerve.

Impressive.

He smiled despite himself.

“You’re definitely related to Damian.”

That name did what bullets had not.

It made you pause.

Only slightly. Only for the width of a heartbeat.

But a heartbeat was an eternity to the Bat.

Smoke exploded across the rooftop.

You held your breath before it bloomed fully. Standard concealment tactic. Irritant compound. Mild sedative underlayer. Designed for human reflexes.

You had been trained out of those.

Something moved in the smoke.

Small. Fast. Familiar.

A sword rang against your blade.

You turned.

Robin stood before you, cape whipping around his slight frame, katana held in both hands.

Damian Wayne.

Blood of your mother. Son of the Bat. The child who escaped.

For the first time in years, you felt something that did not have a name.

He stared at you through the white lenses of his mask. His jaw was clenched so hard it must have hurt.

“You,” he said.

You inclined your head. “Little brother.”

Everyone froze.

Nightwing’s escrima sticks lowered a fraction. Red Robin stopped trying to rise. Hood, still pinned by his jacket, went utterly silent.

Damian flinched as though the words had touched bare skin. “You are not permitted to call me that.”

“Am I not?”

“You do not know me.”

“No,” you said. “I know what you were meant to be.”

His grip tightened on the sword.

You studied him. He was smaller than you had imagined. Not weak. Never weak. But there was softness in him now, hidden badly beneath all that anger. Gotham had infected him thoroughly. It had put warmth in the cracks the League left behind.

How strange. How terrible. How lucky.

Damian lifted his chin. “Surrender.”

Behind you, Red Hood gave a rough laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll work.”

You ignored him. Your gaze stayed on Damian.

“And if I do not?”

“Then I will stop you.”

You looked at his sword. His stance. The tremor he thought he was hiding.

“You will try.”

He attacked.

For half a second, he was magnificent. The League had not wasted its training. Damian moved with the precision of a prince raised in war. His blade cut the air in clean silver arcs. His footwork was disciplined, his rage contained, his eyes always searching.

But he had left too early. Or perhaps you had stayed too long.

You caught the first strike, redirected the second, avoided the third by less than an inch. He pressed you toward the edge of the roof, exactly as he had been trained to do. He expected resistance.

So you gave him none.

You stepped backwards off the roof.

Damian’s eyes widened.

He lunged after you on instinct.

Predictable. Painfully brave.

You caught his wrist as you fell, hooked your line around a gargoyle, and swung both of you hard into the side of the building below. Glass cracked beneath your boots. Damian gasped, but did not cry out.

You pinned him against the wall with one arm across his chest, blade angled beneath his chin.

Above, the others shouted.

Damian glared at you, breathing hard.

“You should not have followed,” you said.

“You should not have come.”

“I go where I am sent.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I have.”

Something shifted in his face then.

Not pity. Damian would never insult you with pity.

Recognition. He saw the shape of the cage because he had once lived inside it.

“You can leave,” he said, very quietly.

The words were absurd. Almost cruel.

You stared at him.

Below, Gotham traffic whispered like distant rain.

“No,” you said.

His brows drew together.

“You think you cannot,” he said.

“I know what I am.”

“You are not a weapon.”

You smiled. It felt unfamiliar on your face.

“Then why does everyone keep reaching for me?”

The grappling line above you jerked.

Batman descended through the fog like judgment.

You released Damian and kicked away from the wall before the Bat could reach you. Your boots hit the side of the neighbouring building; you ran three steps across the vertical surface, launched yourself upward, and landed on a fire escape.

Batman landed opposite you.

No flourish. No wasted motion.

You understood immediately why the League had spoken of him like a storm given bones.

“Enough,” he said.

You drew your second blade.

Batman’s gaze flicked to it. Then to your stance. Then to your face.

“You’re Talia’s child.”

It was not a question.

You said nothing.

His voice lowered. “Damian’s sibling.”

Still, you said nothing. Words were openings. Openings were weaknesses. Weakness got children locked in rooms beneath mountains until they learned to stop crying.

Batman stepped closer. “You killed Crane.”

“Yes.”

“On Ra’s al Ghul’s orders.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Crane stole from the League.”

“That doesn’t justify execution.”

You tilted your head.

“No,” you said. “It explains it.”

His mouth tightened beneath the cowl.

There. Anger. Controlled, but present.

He cared too much. Damian’s father cared so much it bled through armour.

How inefficient. How devastating.

“How old were you,” Batman asked, “when they started training you?”

The question was so unexpected that you almost answered.

Your silence was answer enough.

Batman’s cape shifted as the others arrived around him. Nightwing first, landing light. Red Robin next, staff in hand. Hood last, knife gone from his jacket, gun lowered but ready.

Damian climbed onto the fire escape behind them.

He did not look away from you.

“They won’t let you keep killing,” he said.

“No,” you agreed. “They will try to stop me.”

“You don’t have to make this a fight.”

You looked at the five of them.

The Bat. The golden one. The detective. The dead man. The heir who ran. A family made of broken things that had chosen, impossibly, to hold.

Then you looked at Damian. “You already have.”

The fight lasted four minutes.

Later, Tim would replay the footage seventeen times and hate every second of it.

You fought like you had been built in a room without love. Every strike had purpose. Every dodge became an attack. Every attack became a lesson in anatomy. You used their hesitation against them, their teamwork against them, their mercy against them most of all.

Dick tried to bind your wrists; you dislocated your thumb without flinching and slipped free. Jason tried brute force; you turned his strength into momentum and sent him through a rusted railing. Tim tried distance; you closed it. Bruce tried pressure points; you knew counters older than his training.

Damian tried to face you alone. That was when you made your only mistake.

You could have cut him.

You didn’t.

Batman saw.

He adjusted instantly, changing strategy mid-breath. Not aiming to beat you. Aiming to protect Damian long enough for Tim to deploy the modified restraint foam across the fire escape supports.

You noticed too late.

The foam burst upward, hardening around your boots, your knees, your left arm.

You cut through the first layer.

A taser line struck your shoulder.

Your body locked.

Not enough.

You tore free with a soundless snarl and nearly reached Damian again before Nightwing wrapped both arms around your waist from behind.

“I’m sorry,” he said in your ear.

You slammed your head back into his face.

He held on.

Jason caught your right arm. Tim caught the left. Bruce stepped in front of you, one hand raised, waiting for the instant your balance shifted.

Damian stood behind him, sword lowered.

You met his eyes.

He looked horrified.

Not by what you had done.

By what had been done to you.

That was worse.

You bared your teeth. “Do not look at me like that.”

Damian’s voice broke around the edges. “Like what?”

“Like I am a warning.”

His silence was a blade.

Batman struck.

A precise blow to the nerve cluster beneath your jaw.

The world went white.

Then black.

You woke in the Batcave. You knew this before you opened your eyes.

The air was too damp. Too metallic. Too alive with machines breathing softly in the dark. Somewhere nearby, water dripped in slow, patient intervals.

You catalogued yourself first. Wrists restrained. Ankles restrained. Shoulder bruised. Thumb reset while unconscious. Three ribs tender but not broken. No sedative fog in your mind. They had either underestimated your tolerance or chosen not to drug you further.

Interesting.

You opened your eyes.

The Bat stood across from you.

No mask this time.

Bruce Wayne looked less like a storm without the cowl. More like a man haunted by every child he had failed to save.

You disliked him immediately.

Damian stood at his side. You disliked that more.

The others lingered at the edges of the cave. Nightwing had bruising along his nose. Red Hood’s jacket was torn. Red Robin watched you with the expression of someone solving a puzzle and hating the picture it made.

“You are in no danger here,” Bruce said.

You almost laughed.

Instead, you looked at the restraints.

“Is that what you tell all prisoners?”

“You’re not a prisoner,” Dick said gently.

Your eyes moved to him.

He stopped talking.

Good.

Bruce stepped closer. “We need to know what Ra’s is planning.”

“Ask him.”

“We’re asking you.”

“I heard.”

Jason snorted. “Oh, this one’s fun.”

Damian shot him a glare.

You looked at Damian again. He had changed out of uniform. No mask. No sword. Just a boy in dark clothes trying to stand like a soldier and failing because his hands kept curling and uncurling at his sides.

You wondered if your mother knew he did that. You wondered if she missed him. You wondered when you had started allowing yourself such useless thoughts.

“You called me little brother,” Damian said.

Bruce’s face tightened.

You said nothing.

Damian took one step forward. “Did Mother tell you about me?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“That you were gifted.”

His mouth twisted. “That is all?”

“That you were arrogant. Undisciplined. Brilliant. Precious to her plans.”

Damian swallowed. “And after I left?”

You studied him carefully.

This was a trap, though perhaps not one he knew he had set.

“She said,” you answered, “that Gotham had made you weak.”

Damian’s eyes flashed.

Then dimmed.

“And what do you think?”

The cave seemed to lean closer.

Even the bats above were silent.

You looked at him.

Really looked.

At the green eyes identical to your mother's. At the posture that had once been beaten into both of you. At the boy who had escaped the mountain and found a father waiting in the dark. At the Robin who had pointed a sword at you and offered you freedom like freedom was something you could simply hand another person.

Weak, the League would have said.

You thought of him pulling his strike when Red Robin crossed too close behind you. You thought of him saying you are not a weapon. You thought of his horror when Batman knocked you unconscious.

You looked away first.

“I think,” you said slowly, “that Gotham has made you inefficient.”

Jason gave a low whistle. “Ouch.”

Damian did not react.

Because he had heard what the others had not.

Not weak. Never weak.

Bruce heard it too.

His expression shifted, subtle as moonlight through water.

“You protected him,” Bruce said.

You looked at him sharply.

“You had three chances to injure Damian badly enough to end the fight,” he continued. “You didn’t take them.”

“Sentiment is not the only explanation.”

“No,” Bruce said. “But it is one.”

You leaned back against the chair.

The restraints hummed faintly with electricity.

“You want me to be redeemable,” you said.

No one answered.

So you smiled again, colder this time.

“How very Gotham of you.”

Dick’s face softened. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It is a foolish thing.”

“Usually,” Tim said quietly. “But not always.”

You looked at him. He held your gaze, brave and exhausted and breakable in ways he had somehow weaponised.

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” you said.

Bruce’s voice was steady.

“No,” he said. “But I know what was done to you.”

For the first time, you felt anger. Real anger.

Not mission heat. Not defensive calculation. Not the clean, cold violence the League preferred.

Anger.

It rose in you like a struck match.

“You know nothing.”

Bruce did not move. “I know children are not born blades.”

Your hands curled against the restraints. “They are forged.”

“Yes,” Bruce said. “And forging is violence.”

The words hit something buried so deep inside you that for one impossible second you could not breathe.

Damian took another step closer.

You could see it in him now. The awful hope. The desperate, childish thing he tried to bury under discipline and sharp words.

He wanted you to be saved because if you could not be saved, then maybe some part of him had never escaped either.

Poor little brother. Still looking for proof that cages could open.

You turned your face away from him.

“Send me back,” you said.

“No,” Damian answered before Bruce could.

Your eyes snapped to him.

His chin lifted.

“No,” he repeated. “I left. You can too.”

Your laugh came out too soft. “You think leaving is the same as being free.”

Damian flinched.

Good. Cruelty was safer than tenderness. Cruelty had handles. Tenderness was a blade with no hilt.

Bruce watched you like he knew exactly what you were doing. Annoying man.

“You are not returning to the League,” he said.

You stared at him.

The cave seemed suddenly smaller.

“You cannot keep me here forever.”

“No,” Bruce said. “But I can keep you here tonight.”

“Ra’s will come.”

“Let him.”

Jason laughed once. Sharp and delighted. “Oh, I love when he gets dramatic.”

Dick sighed. “Jay.”

“What? I do.”

Damian did not smile.

He was still looking at you.

Like a warning. Like a wound. Like family, which was worse than both.

“You should have stayed away from Gotham,” he said.

You looked at him for a long moment.

Then you gave him the truth. A small piece of it. So small it should not have hurt.

“I wanted to see what stole you.”

Damian went still.

The cave fell silent again, but this silence was different.

Not tactical. Not fearful.

Grieving.

Bruce’s face changed first. Then Dick’s. Tim looked down. Jason turned his helmet away.

Damian’s eyes shone, but he did not let anything fall.

Of course not. You had both been raised better than that.

At last, Damian stepped closer until he stood directly in front of you.

“You were not stolen from,” he said, voice low. “You were abandoned with them.”

Your throat tightened. You hated him for that.

You loved him for it too, though you did not yet have the courage to know.

Above you, the bats shifted in the dark. Below them, machines hummed. Water dripped. Gotham breathed.

And for the first time in your life, you sat in a cage that someone else was trying to open from the outside.

Ra’s al Ghul came before sunrise.

Men like him did not knock. They arrived like prophecy, certain the door had always belonged to them.

The first warning was not an alarm.

It was you.

You sat restrained in the Batcave, head bowed, wrists locked in humming cuffs, and went utterly still.

Damian noticed first.

He had not left. Bruce had tried to make him. Dick had offered tea, rest, a blanket, anything that sounded soft enough to pretend this was not a hostage situation with family trauma wearing ceremonial blades. Tim had hovered near the computer. Jason had leaned against the medbay entrance like he was only there for tactical reasons, which fooled exactly no one.

But Damian stayed in front of you. Guarding you.

Or guarding everyone else from you.

You were not sure he knew the difference.

Then your breathing changed.

Damian’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

You lifted your head. “They are here.”

The cave lights shifted red a second later.

Tim spun toward the computer. “Outer perimeter just went dark.”

Jason straightened. “League?”

Bruce was already moving. “Positions.”

Dick reached for his escrima sticks. “How many?”

Tim’s fingers flew over the keys. His face went grim. “Enough.”

Damian did not move.

Neither did you. Your gaze stayed fixed on the far tunnel where the shadows deepened.

“He did not send soldiers,” you said quietly.

Bruce paused. “What do you mean?”

You swallowed once. “He came himself.”

A silence fell.

Heavy. Ancient. Green-edged.

Damian’s hand went to his sword.

You looked at him. “Do not fight him angry.”

His jaw tightened. “Do not presume to instruct me.”

“You lower your left shoulder when emotionally compromised.”

Jason barked a laugh despite himself. “Oh, they are definitely related.”

Damian glared at him, then back at you.

For half a second, something almost like a smile touched your mouth.

Then the cave exploded.

Smoke poured from the tunnel. Not Tim’s smoke. Not Batman’s. This was darker, threaded with bitter herbs and the scent of old mountain incense. League smoke. The kind you had learned to breathe through when you were seven and crying was considered a disappointing use of oxygen.

Assassins dropped from above. Green and black. Curved blades. Silent feet.

The cave became motion.

Nightwing launched himself into the first wave with a bright, furious grace. Red Hood opened fire with rubber rounds, cursing in three languages. Red Robin vanished into the smoke and turned the cave itself into a trap, lights flickering, platforms shifting, drones waking overhead.

Batman moved like a wall given vengeance.

Damian stayed between you and the tunnel.

You hated that most.

You could have helped. You could have ended half the attackers in less than a minute. You knew their forms, their blind spots, the way League assassins were taught to favour the killing strike over the disabling one. You knew because you had been the lesson they failed against.

But the restraints held.

Then the smoke split.

Ra’s al Ghul stepped into the Batcave.

He wore no armour. Only dark robes, a green cloak, and the serene expression of a man walking through a garden he intended to burn for warmth.

His eyes found Bruce first. “Detective.”

Bruce’s face became stone. “Ra’s.”

Then Ra’s looked at Damian. “Grandson.”

Damian’s sword lifted.

Finally, Ra’s looked at you.

And smiled.

Not warmly.

Proudly.

“My blade.”

Something inside you went quiet.

Not peaceful.

Dead.

Your spine straightened before you told it to. Your breathing evened. Your face emptied. The cave vanished at the edges until there was only the Demon’s Head and the command he had not yet spoken.

Damian saw it happen.

His eyes widened.

“No,” he said.

Ra’s took one step toward you. “You have performed well. Crane’s theft has been answered. The League’s honour remains intact.”

Bruce moved in front of him. “You’re not taking them.”

Ra’s almost looked amused. “You collect children now as trophies?”

Jason’s gun snapped up. “Oh, I hate this guy.”

Ra’s ignored him.

His gaze remained on you.

“Come.”

One word.

That was all it took.

A word with ten thousand days of training behind it. A word carved into your bones. A word that had opened doors, sealed graves, ended lives.

Come.

Your body moved before thought could catch it.

The restraints sparked.

Your wrists twisted.

Damian turned sharply. “Stop!”

You did not.

You dislocated your thumb again.

The pain was clean. Familiar. Almost soothing.

Bruce lunged toward you, but two assassins intercepted him. Dick shouted your name—no, not your name, because none of them knew it, not really. Tim triggered the restraint override, but you had already shifted your weight exactly enough to crack the locking hinge.

Metal snapped.

You stood.

Damian stepped in front of you.

His sword was lowered.

That was his mistake. Or his mercy.

“Don’t,” he said.

Your eyes met his.

Little brother, you thought. But you did not say it.

Ra’s voice came from behind him. “You see, Detective? You cannot rescue a weapon from its purpose.”

Bruce slammed an assassin into the cave wall hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. “They’re not a weapon.”

Ra’s smiled. “All children are weapons. The only question is whether their parents have the discipline to sharpen them.”

Damian flinched. Just slightly.

But you saw.

The dead quiet inside you cracked.

Not much.

Enough.

Ra’s noticed too.

His gaze cooled.

“Blade,” he said.

You turned your head toward him.

“Kill Robin.”

The cave stopped.

Even the fighting seemed to falter around the edges.

Jason’s voice went flat with horror. “No.”

Dick’s face drained of colour.

Tim whispered, “Bruce—”

Bruce moved.

Too far. Too late.

Damian stood before you, sword still lowered.

His eyes did not leave yours.

You could kill him. You knew seventeen ways from this distance. A strike to the throat. A blade under the ribs. A broken neck. A nerve severed beneath the jaw. Quick. Clean. Merciful, if mercy meant efficiency.

Damian knew it too.

He did not raise his weapon.

“Do it,” Ra’s said.

Your hand moved to your blade.

Damian inhaled.

But he did not step back.

“Look at me,” he said.

You did.

His voice shook once, then steadied.

“You are not what he made you.”

The blade slid from its sheath.

Ra’s watched with satisfaction.

Bruce fought like the cave itself was trying to hold him back.

Damian lifted his chin.

“If you must kill me,” he said softly, “then let it be your choice. Not his.”

Choice.

The word entered you like a foreign object.

Choice was not a thing the League gave. Choice was what undisciplined people called hesitation. Choice was the space between command and obedience, and you had been trained to erase that space so completely no one could find where the child ended and the blade began.

Your hand trembled.

Ra’s saw it.

His face hardened.

“Obey.”

The command struck deeper this time.

Your knees nearly buckled.

Memories flashed, brutal and bright.

Stone floors beneath your palms. Talia’s voice telling you pain was information. Ra’s standing over you while you held a blade too large for your child’s hand.

Damian, small and furious in a courtyard, watching you win against seven assassins.

Your mother saying Gotham made him weak. Your grandfather saying weakness could be cut out. Your own voice asking, years later, what stole him.

Damian’s voice answering: You were abandoned with them.

Abandoned.

Not chosen. Not honoured.

Left.

Your grip tightened on the blade.

Damian closed his eyes.

That broke you.

Not because he was afraid.

Because he trusted you.

You turned.

The blade left your hand.

It flew across the cave and buried itself in Ra’s al Ghul’s cloak, pinning the green fabric to the stone behind him an inch from his throat.

Everyone froze.

Your voice came out raw.

“No.”

Ra’s stared at you.

For the first time since entering the cave, he looked truly displeased.

Not angry.

Worse.

Disappointed.

“My blade,” he said softly.

You lifted your chin. “Not yours.”

The cave erupted again.

Ra’s tore free of the pinned cloak and drew his sword in one fluid motion. Damian moved first, stepping beside you, blade raised now. Not in front of you.

Beside you.

A strange thing happened then.

You fought with Damian.

Not around him. Not despite him. With him.

He was smaller, quicker, all sharp angles and righteous fury. You were older, colder, built from discipline he had survived and escaped. Together, you were terrible.

You knew the League’s rhythms. Damian knew how to break them.

An assassin lunged for his left side; you intercepted. Another came for your back; Damian cut their blade away before it landed. You moved like a sentence finished in two voices.

Across the cave, Jason laughed breathlessly while punching someone into a storage cabinet.

“Okay, that’s horrifyingly cool!”

“Focus!” Bruce snapped.

“I am focused! On how horrifyingly cool that is!”

Ra’s watched you and Damian carve through his guard, and something ancient twisted across his face.

Possession. Rage. Loss.

“You shame your blood,” he said.

Damian’s blade met his with a ringing clash. “No. I am improving it.”

Dick, somewhere behind him, made a wounded little sound. “That was so good. I hate that I’m proud right now.”

Ra’s pressed Damian backwards. He was stronger. Taller. Crueller with every strike.

You came in from the side.

Ra’s caught your wrist.

For a moment, you were close enough to see your reflection in his eyes.

“You could have been perfect,” he said.

There it was.

The hook in the wound.

Perfection. The holy word. The altar you had been raised upon and sacrificed to, piece by piece, until nothing remained but the shape of what they wanted.

Your wrist strained in his grip.

He twisted.

Pain flared white.

Once, you would not have made a sound.

Now you gasped.

And Damian heard.

He slammed the hilt of his sword into Ra’s ribs with a furious snarl.

Ra’s released you.

Batman arrived like judgment.

The fight between Bruce Wayne and Ra’s al Ghul was not beautiful.

It was history with fists. Every strike carried years. Every block answered an old argument. Ra’s fought like a king. Bruce fought like a father.

And fathers, you were beginning to learn, were far more dangerous when their children were watching.

Ra’s drove Bruce back toward the Lazarus containment case. Bruce caught the blade between armoured gauntlets, twisted, and forced Ra’s to one knee. For one breath, the Demon’s Head looked almost mortal.

Then he smiled.

“Detective,” Ra’s said, “you remain sentimental.”

He pressed a hidden trigger.

The cave lights died.

Not dimmed.

Died.

Complete darkness swallowed everything. You moved by instinct, grabbing Damian and pulling him low just as a volley of darts cut through the space where his throat had been.

He stiffened at your touch.

Then, incredibly, he leaned into your grip.

Only for balance.

Probably.

Maybe.

“Tim!” Bruce shouted.

“Working on it!” Tim called back.

Emergency lights flickered on in harsh red pulses.

Ra’s was gone. So were three of his assassins.

The rest were unconscious, bound, or being sat on by Jason, who looked deeply satisfied with himself.

The cave smelled of smoke, blood, and old ghosts.

For several seconds, no one spoke.

Then Damian turned to you. “You saved me.”

You released him immediately. “You were in the way.”

Jason groaned. “Oh my God, it’s like listening to Damian argue with a mirror that has more knives.”

Dick wiped blood from his nose. “A scary mirror.”

Tim, bruised and breathless at the computer, looked between you and Damian. “A mirror that can dislocate its thumb on command, apparently.”

You flexed your injured hand.

Bruce approached slowly.

You tensed.

He noticed and stopped two steps away.

Ra’s had come to collect you. You had refused. Which meant you were no longer a blade of the League.

You were something worse.

A loose end. A traitor. A child who had stayed too long and finally stepped out of line.

You looked toward the tunnel Ra’s had vanished through. “He will not stop.”

Bruce’s voice was quiet. “No.”

“He will send others.”

“Yes.”

“You cannot protect me forever.”

“No,” Bruce said.

Something cold settled in your chest.

Then Bruce continued.

“But we can teach you how to protect yourself without belonging to him.”

You stared.

That was not how protection worked. Protection was ownership. Investment. Utility. No one guarded a blade unless they intended to use it.

Dick stepped closer, gentle but steady. “You could stay.”

Jason crossed his arms. “Or don’t. But maybe don’t go back to Murder Mountain with Grandpa Cult-Vibes.”

Tim blinked. “That might be your worst name for Ra’s yet.”

“I’m workshopping.”

Damian did not laugh.

He looked at you like the answer mattered more than he wanted to admit.

You wanted to say no. No was clean. No was safe. No meant no debt, no hope, no soft-eyed vigilantes trying to pry open the armour welded to your skin.

But your body remembered the command.

Kill Robin.

Your hand remembered trembling. Your blade remembered turning.

Not his.

The words lived in your mouth like the first breath after drowning.

Not yours.

Not yours.

Not yours.

“I do not know how,” you said.

It was not an answer. It was worse.

It was the truth.

Damian’s expression changed.

Small. Careful. Almost young.

“Neither did I.”

You looked at him.

He shifted, uncomfortable beneath your attention.

“Tt. I am still learning.”

Jason muttered, “Understatement of the century.”

Damian ignored him with royal intensity.

“You will be irritating,” he said.

Your brows lifted.

“You will be arrogant,” he continued. “Violent. Condescending. Emotionally stunted.”

Dick coughed. “Damian.”

“You will attempt to escape at least twice.”

Tim raised a finger. “Statistically, probably more.”

“You will insult Father.”

Jason perked up. “That part’s encouraged.”

“You will find our methods inefficient,” Damian said, voice quieter now. “You will think mercy is weakness. You will hate it here.”

You studied him. “And yet?”

Damian swallowed.

“And yet,” he said, “you should stay anyway.”

The cave softened around the edges.

Not physically. The stone remained stone. The machines kept humming. The bats above kept shifting in the dark like scraps of living night.

But something changed. 

A door did not open. Not yet. But maybe, somewhere deep beneath the mountain inside your chest, a lock turned once.

Bruce held out his hand.

Not to grab. Not to command.

Just offered.

You looked at it for a long time.

Then you looked at Damian.

He gave a single stiff nod, as if granting permission to survive was something he could do without falling apart.

Your injured hand twitched.

You did not take Bruce’s hand.

Not yet.

But you did not step away.

For tonight, that was enough.

The first week was war.

Not open war. Not blades in the hallways or poison in the tea, though Alfred did catch you studying the spice cabinet with “strategic suspicion,” as he called it, and banned you from unsupervised kitchen access with the politest death glare you had ever witnessed.

It was quieter than that.

You slept facing the door. You stole three knives from the Cave and hid them around the manor. You mapped every exit. You refused to eat anything you had not watched someone else consume first.

You nearly broke Tim’s wrist when he woke you from a nightmare. You did break Jason’s nose when he startled you during training.

Jason, to his credit, only held a towel to his face and said, “Okay, fair, but next time aim for literally anyone else.”

Damian watched you with the grim satisfaction of someone seeing his worst qualities reflected back at him in 4K.

“You are impossible,” he told you on the fifth morning.

You looked at the breakfast plate Alfred had placed in front of you. “What is this?”

“Pancakes,” Damian said.

“Why are they shaped like animals?”

Across the table, Dick’s face lit up. “Oh, Alfred does that when he’s emotionally adopting you.”

Alfred, from the kitchen doorway, said mildly, “Master Richard.”

You stared at the pancake. It was shaped like a bat.

Poorly. Lovingly.

An inefficient food.

You ate it anyway.

Damian pretended not to notice.

He noticed everything.

The first time you laughed, it was Jason’s fault.

This surprised no one more than Jason.

He had dragged you into the Cave’s training area after you informed Bruce that firearms were “cowardly tools for those with poor wrist discipline.” Jason took this personally, spiritually, and with great volume.

He spent twenty minutes explaining why guns were not inherently cowardly, actually, and then tried to demonstrate.

You disarmed him in four seconds.

He stared at the empty space where his gun had been.

You held it by the barrel.

“Poor wrist discipline,” you said.

Tim made a strangled sound from the computer.

Dick turned away.

Damian looked like he was trying not to ascend to a higher plane through sheer smugness.

Jason pointed at you. “You know what? I liked you better when you were unconscious.”

And you laughed.

It was small. Barely a breath.

But it was there.

Everyone froze so abruptly that you stopped too.

“What?” you demanded.

“Nothing,” Dick said too quickly.

Tim looked intensely at his screen. “Nope. Nothing. Normal cave sounds.”

Jason grinned.

Damian’s expression softened by one treacherous inch.

You scowled at all of them.