No Way Home

Hey y'all... I hope you didn't get tired of me. I realized that I can use Grammarly to correct my writing, so if you see changes to the previous parts, I'm actually editing lol.

The silver-haired lady left after her monologue, leaving you spiraling. You already figured out that this silver-haired lady knew your mother. But it had to be a lie.

As far as you knew, Christine grew up in the upper-class part of Gotham, then went to New York for university. But then again, you didn’t know your mother too well.

But then what did this lady want with you? And how did she know that Christine called you petal??

Your thoughts spiraled out of control. You could feel your heart beating faster as you heard a beeping noise become more frequent. You were hooked up to a machine. They were monitoring you but for what??

You grunt as you twist your arms trying to loosen your restraints, hissing at the burn. You feel your skin chafing as it rubs against the leather and metal.

At least they padded the cuff for you.

You sigh, knowing it’s useless to overexert yourself. You take a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm your nerves and settle your heartbeat. You’ve already decided that you don’t want these people to know that you’re scared. You think back to the training Natasha and Bucky taught you.

Everything they said all boiled down to not letting them know you’re scared. It makes you unpredictable.

The door hisses open, and two men walk in. They're silent, not mouthy like the first man. They walk past where you're strapped down and check the machine that seems to be monitoring you.

“Her heartbeat was spiked” they mumbled, “we need her calm for this next part..you know what stress does to these experiments”

“Excuse me?? Experiments??” You replied, unnerved at the way they talk about you like an object. In fact, they barely glance at you when you speak up. Just a quick once over and continue talking.

“How do we even know this is going to work? All the other ones died.”

“All but one…”

“How do we even know this is her kid though? Didn’t she adopt a bunch??”

They were officially talking about Christine.

“ Look at her, she's got that woman's whole face."

You were unnerved, set aside the fact that you're strapped to a table and no one knows where you're at, these people were literally talking about you like you weren't there. Like they didn't just kidnap you.

Before you could get another quip in though they turned from the machine they were fiddling with and approached you with a syringe.

"What the fuck is that." You spit, struggling against your restraints, "Get the fuck away from me!"

The only response you get is a chuckle and a " Sorry, kid," before they inject you with a heavy sedative. And with that, your lids start to get heavy, and your vision becomes blurry. Before you succumb to the drugs, you hear the hiss of the automatic doors opening and see the silver-haired lady. You feel the cold hands stroke your hair again as she sweetly whispers, "Calm yourself, child."

And with that, you succumb to the darkness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the other side of town, chaos resumes in the Wayne manor.

Peter is arguing with Dick and Jason about different ways to track down your captors, while Tony and Pepper are close to jumping Christine. At the same time, Christine is too busy crying, and Wade is arguing with Damian for no reason. Bruce has a headache at the chaotic scene in front of him as he emerges from the shadows already in his suit.

"Enough." He barely even raises his voice, and the room gets quiet. The group faces the Batman, half skeptical and the other anticipating his next move.

Bruce removes his cowl and sets it beside the Batcomputer.

"Every second we waste aruging is another second that they have to move her or worse."

His eyes sweep across the room, ' Whoever took Y/n planned this. They are organized, funded, and confident enough to kidnap someone publicly under the protection of the Avengers."

Tony scoffs at this, " Someone kidnapped my kid, that's not confidence, that's pure stupidity."

Bruce folds his arms, a scowl forming as he thinks out loud, " That means they believe that we can't find them."

The room gets quiet as the air gets intense. A dangerous calm settles over the room.

"They're wrong." Bruce states with certainty, " Dick, Jason, you two check every warehouse connected to the kidnapping route. Tim, I need surveillance footage from every camera within five miles. Oracle, I want traffic, drones, satellites, everything."

Tony interrupts,

"Actually, while you had your little action movie moment, I had FRIDAY hack half of the city's cameras."

Everyone turned to Tony as he ran a hand through his hair, pacing.

"I've got satellites, facial recognition, Stark drones, Friday running every traffic camera from here to Jersey, and I've got exactly..." He glanced at his watch. "...nothing."

The silence that followed was deafening.

Pepper reached for his arm, but he pulled away before realizing what he'd done.

"I'm sorry," he muttered quietly before looking back at Bruce.

"I don't care if they're HYDRA, the League of Assassins, AIM, aliens, or a damn cult. Whoever took her made the biggest mistake of their lives."

Jason crossed his arms.

"Trust me. We all feel that way."

Tony's head snapped toward him.

"No." His voice was sharp. "You don't."

The room went still.

Tony stopped pacing, his chest rising and falling as he tried and failed to rein in his emotions.

"You weren't there when she refused to take off that pink butterfly costume for an entire week before her first ballet recital."

A humorless laugh escaped him.

"Or when she got food poisoning after eating gas station sushi and somehow convinced herself she had dysentery because she'd just learned about the Oregon Trail."

A few heads turned toward Peter, who quietly muttered, "I remember that day"

Tony barely heard him.

"You don't know every word to Mamma Mia! because it's her comfort movie. You don't know she puts it on whenever she's had a bad day, or that she cries every single time during Slipping through my fingers plays even though she says she doesn't."

His voice cracked, and for a moment, the anger faded into something much worse.

"You especially don't know what it was like holding her every night when she cried herself to sleep because she thought her mom was finally going to come home."

Christine flinched. Not because Tony was trying to hurt her.

Because every word landed exactly where it was supposed to.

Tony looked around at everyone, his eyes red but unwavering.

"So no, Jason... you care. I know you do."

He swallowed, forcing himself to steady his voice.

"But don't tell me you know what this feels like. It makes me want to punch you in the face."

Jason didn't argue.

Because he did understand one thing.

Tony wasn't angry at him; he was terrified.

Before anyone could respond—

BEEP.

A sharp alarm cut through the cave.

Everyone turned.

The Batcomputer flashed red.

At the exact same time, FRIDAY's voice echoed throughout the room.

"Boss."

Tony looked toward the holographic display.

"I have a match."

Bruce moved toward the console.

"Oracle?"

"Already pulling it up."

A grainy security image appeared on both screens.

A black transport van moved through the streets of Gotham.

Peter froze.

His face drained of color.

"No."

Tony looked at him.

"What?"

Peter stepped closer to the screen, staring at the vehicle.

"That's it."

The room went quiet.

Wade, who had been unusually silent, slowly walked toward the display.

His expression changed.

"Yeah."

He pointed at the screen.

"That's the one."

Tony looked between them.

"You both recognize it?"

Peter swallowed.

"We saw it."

The words came out quietly.

"The night she was taken."

Everyone froze.

Peter's hands curled into fists.

"I remember everything about that night."

His eyes stayed on the screen.

"The way it pulled up. The way they moved. The way they knew exactly what they were doing."

Wade's usual humor was gone.

"They weren't improvising."

He tapped the screen.

"That van wasn't some random getaway vehicle. It was planned."

Bruce studied the footage.

"Can you identify where they went?"

Peter nodded.

"I remember the route."

He stepped closer to the Batcomputer.

"They turned here."

The map updated.

Then again.

"And then they disappeared."

FRIDAY analyzed the footage.

"Checking traffic cameras. Cross-referencing vehicle movement."

The screens flickered.

"Vehicle located."

A red marker appeared on the map.

Tony immediately stepped forward.

"Where?"

The Batcomputer zoomed in.

Bruce's expression hardened.

"An abandoned underground facility."

Peter's stomach dropped.

"That's where they took her."

Christine covered her mouth as the color drained from her face. Her eyes glazed over as she lost herself in her own head. Nobody noticed the slight tremble in her hands as she drew closer to the screen in front of her.

Tony stared at the location.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then Tony's face hardened.

"Suit up."

Bruce nodded, putting his cowl on.

Jason and Dick make eye contact and move to put on their masks.

Wade cracked his neck as he sheathed his katanas.

"Finally."

Tony looked at the coordinates one more time.

"They took her once."

His voice was cold.

"They don't get a second chance."

The cave erupted into motion.

Because now they weren't searching.

They were coming.

Part 1

summary: what starts as an accidental visit to the mclaren garage quickly turns into an inescapable paddock superstition when lando convinces himself that you are his personal lucky charm.

pairing: lando norris + fem!driver!reader

It started as a joke. At least, that's what you thought.

The first time it happened, you weren't even thinking about Lando. You were wandering into the McLaren garage on a Thursday afternoon because you were looking for one of their senior race engineers.

Three weeks prior, during a frantic airport transit, you had accidentally swept his technical notebook into your backpack along with your laptop.

You'd spent the long flight home accidentally memorizing a very confusing breakdown of McLaren's floor updates before realizing it wasn't yours.

You had the note book gripped tightly in your hand, eyes scanning the back of the garage, when Lando nearly collided with you.

"Whoa," he said, stepping back. "You're in the wrong place, mate. You guys are that way."

"I'm returning something," you said, holding up the notebook. "And I don't need navigation from someone who almost spun out."

Pairing: Platonic batfam x batsis! reader -5k words

Summary: After Poison Ivy escapes, you face cuddle pollen for the first time, faking immunity until your family discovers a harsh truth

tw: typical sibling fights, batsis is metahuman, she used to be in a lab, experimentation, cuddle pollen, touch-starvation/ touch-aversion, complicated father-daughter relationships, trauma, PTSD, and ai data centers mentioned, heavy angst

Note: So this ended up being longer than expected, so I'm splitting it in half!

They say every rose has its thorns, but some are sharper than others. In your family, you were definitely the rose in the garden. While many roses bloom brightly, others are tangled, sharp, and unable to be plucked. You were of the thornier variety.

Everyone knew you had one of the biggest hearts of anyone, even rivaling your older brother

Dick's reputation, but that heart was buried beneath many layers of attitude, stubbornness, and a sharp tongue.  Even if you didn't have as much training as the others, you were the dread of every criminal in Gotham. Essentially, nobody wanted to cross Sparrow in a dark alley at night. Even so, a rose is a rose, and your family loved you, thorns and all, even when those thorns pushed them away.

Superman always made me think of Sunflowers, coincidentally my favourite flower too

Close-ups under the cut

Batfamily x Vampire!Reader 2.7k words, graphic description of violence and aftermath, use of [y/n]

November 12th.

Winter starts early in Gotham.

It’s cold, but not as cold as it should be. Your friend stands beside you shivering.

“You sure you don’t want my jacket?” You ask, eyebrows raised in concern as you eye her. 

“I’m fffine.” She says, teeth chattering. “Aren’t you freezing?”

You shrug and move to peel off your coat anyway. Jen doesn’t protest when you drape it over her shoulders, but she doesn’t move to actually put it on. Her subtle way of declaring she’s against the idea, you suppose. 

“You’re gonna get sick.” She mutters as you fix your scarf over your nose. 

“I think if anyone should be worried about getting sick it’s you.” You mumble. “Is that your mom’s car?” 

Her head snaps up eagerly, and you chuckle to yourself as she darts over to the passenger door.

“Wait!” She yips, turning quickly. “Let me give you a ride!”

“I’m okay!” You call back, “Alfred’s coming for me!”

She hesitates for a moment before climbing into her seat. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

You smile and nod, her mom waves and you wave back. “Call me when you get home okay?”

“Okay!!!”

You watch her drive away for a few seconds before checking your watch. 3:50. The manor’s pretty far from your school, but not 50 minute drive far. You know Alfred, if he hasn’t gotten here yet, it’s more than likely he forgot. Plus, the sun will be setting in an hour or so, if you wait any longer before giving up, you won’t get home before dark. With that in mind, you start the walk home.

It’s pretty rare for Alfred to forget you like this, but with all the chaos going on at home, you can’t really blame him. Especially when you are the direct cause of the entire mess. It’d been a tough year. Senior classes were much harder than you’d anticipated, and you were just a teenager. Stress and anxiety was bound to mess things up once in a while. 

Your teachers had all upped their workload at the same time in preparation for the half-way point exams. You’d dedicated all your free time to studying and cramming for the pop quizzes and class competitions. So much so that you’d forgotten your feeding schedule. Unfortunately, it was easy to miss hunger pangs and dismiss them as stress-related stomach cramps. You hadn’t realized you were hungry until it was far too late, and a disoriented walk home from the movies found you face to face with a mugger. 

When you’re deep in bloodlust, it's hard to tell what’s what. The entire week before that had been like a plotless nightmare. Filled with migraines and dizziness and nausea. When you came eye to eye with that man, adrenaline in his veins, blood pumping, his heartbeat in your lungs as he demanded your belongings, you blacked out. You woke up three hours later, curled up under a cardboard box in a dumpster. A dumpster that you noted, was nowhere near the alley you last remember being in. 

You were pleasantly warm, sleepy, and no longer in any pain, which was all very nice, but the sticky-dry feeling of matted blood drying to your skin and clothes was enough to rouse you. You pulled yourself out, sharp nails retracting into your fingertips as you did. 

You kept yourself to the shadows when you transformed, disappearing into a puff of grey smoke and reappearing as an ugly little vampire bat. The first issue was getting back home and getting clean before anyone saw you. The second, perhaps bigger, issue was what the hell happened to the mugger.

Sneaking in was easy. You could practically see their heat signatures through the walls, smell Bruce’s cologne, hear Damian’s pacing. If your senses were right, and they almost always were, there were four people inside the manor. Bruce, Alfred, Damian, and Tim. You flew into the open window of the restroom on the third floor, nearby your bedroom. 

You looked even worse than you expected. Your entire body was red, like you’d been dunked in paint, it dried in patches and flaked off into dust when you moved. Despite the clarity of mind and ease of movement that came with fresh blood, you felt sick. There was something thick and fibrous under your nails, pieces of thin pink membrane that clung to your body like a second skin. The sickness was mental, of course, remnants of being human. Your mouth tasted warm in a lovely way and you were a little perturbed at how normal this all was. Your reflection looked monsterous, hair matted with blood, body red, eyes glowing faintly.

You heard the news in the morning. A murder in Newtown, a body ripped to shreds, Gotham News declaring it an animal attack. The damage was done though, the Bats had heard what had happened. 

Two years ago, when you first became a vampire, a similar thing happened. You didn’t know what you were then, you thought you could tough out the hunger pains. Wayne Manor was distracted, everyone in a frenzy, no one noticed when you got sick, or when you disappeared. You wandered the slums of Gotham for three days. Pale, sweating, vision so sharp it made you nauseous. No one went up to you, no one asked if you were okay. Your new senses overwhelmed you, your new body screamed in pain. Eventually, a man found you. Ushered you into a warehouse, practically dragged you while your body betrayed itself. Hands tugged at your wrist, your hair, your clothes. It was when that hand grabbed your face, squished your cheeks together painfully, that something snapped.

You came to your senses an hour later. An ocean of blood and bodies staining the ground. You ran.

You woke up stronger the next day. The blood was exactly what your body needed to nourish your new form. To finish adapting to this new life. Your vision was clear, the colors you saw were brighter, the darkness didn’t blind you, you could even see heat signatures if you tried. Your muscles fibers were denser, tightly packed, your bones were stronger, your skin was clear and soft, old scars lightened, injuries faded in hours.

All at the cost of thirty four lives. Not innocent lives, but human lives. Lives you hadn’t even realized you were taking. It perplexed the world, scared it. But eventually it was brushed under the rug the way stuff always is in Gotham. Dark Seid took the blame, and you got better at this new life. Better at hiding, covering up, getting blood without killing. You broke into bloodbanks, used animals, even drugged criminals to poach their blood on occasion. You didn’t kill, you didn’t leave bodies or witnesses. Still, people whispered. You were an urban legend deep in Gotham. The creature in the shadows. Some called you Karma, some called you Fate, some called you The Beast.

The Bats never forgot what happened, it didn’t make sense, it didn’t fit the apparent answers. But it never happened again, so they had no cause to pursue the issue, no reason to spend time pondering a mystery when they had real issues to worry about.

But now it had happened again in Newtown, and you knew Bruce wouldn’t let it go.

And now here you are, walking home. It’s cold, but temperatures don’t really bother you anymore. 

4:20. You have half an hour to get home before the sun sets and you’re not even halfway there. You made good time, nearly two miles in thirty minutes, but you live over twenty miles from school. You could run, if you kept yourself at a human pace you could get home in a little over two hours, but sprinting in Gotham while wearing clothes clearly not made for exercise is usually a bad sign. People might think you were running from someone. You decide, instead of running or walking, to catch a train. 

At 4:38, you exit Gotham Train Station and hail a cab. Cabs are risky, you never know who’s behind the wheel till you get in, but it’s miles of bridge and forest from here, and there's no way in hell you'll be caught alone in the forest in the dark. You’re lucky, because the person in the driver's seat today is an older gentlewoman who seems as relieved to have you as a passenger as you are to have her as a driver. You get home at 4:49.

The manor is empty, but you can hear the sounds of footsteps and voices in the basement. You stop by the kitchen to get something to chew on. Contrary to popular beliefs, vampires could eat human food. They didn't need to, but it was nice to be human, even if it was only pretend.

You bump into Alfred on the way out.

“Oh! Miss [Y/n]!” He says, a polite smile on his face.

“Hi Alfred.” You smile and nod. Expecting him to sidestep you and move on. He seems like he’s about to, until a thoughtful expression crosses his face.

“When did you get home?” He asks.

“Just now.” You answer, he frowns.

“I was supposed to pick you up tonight.” He says, his words almost sound like a question.

“It’s fine.” You say.

“How did you get back?”

“I took the train and hailed a cab.”

“Ah.” He nods. “I’m terribly sorry miss, I must’ve gotten caught up cleaning.”

“It’s fine, Alfred.” You say and step to the side. You nod at him, and walk away before he can say something else. You can’t really be mad. It’s your fault they’re all so stressed, even if they don’t know that. You try to ignore how he looks at you as you leave. 

When you were bitten, you distanced yourself from him, from all of them. Originally it was to give you time to pull yourself together, but as time went on, you never really got back to normal. Sure, you were used to being tucked away, you weren’t a vigilante, nor did you have any interest in being one. You weren’t a part of the family business, and sometimes that meant you weren't at the forefront of their minds. They still cared about you, but they were busy, they had responsibilities, lives of their own, complexes and complexities you could hardly understand. It didn’t mean they cared about you less, it just meant that you weren’t always a part of their world. 

Sometimes you wonder about that though. It’s easy to tell yourself you're part of the family, it’s easy for them to say you are, but when it comes down to it, when the answer is more than yes or no, could you really say you were?

You could go days without seeing any of them, they were always so busy, you knew that. Even when one of them could finally be convinced to take a break, it would be selfish of you to demand that that precious time be spent with you, especially when you were so boring, so uninteresting. You couldn’t demand their time, especially when you didn’t need it. Not like how the others need it, not like how Damian needed their love, like how Tim needed their patience, like how Dick needed their time, like how Cass needed their care. You didn’t have issues like Jason, you didn’t need somewhere to stay like Duke. You were just there. You were simple, easy. 

But none of that was really true anymore, was it? You did have an issue, you did need time, care, patience. You needed someone to look at you and tell you you weren’t a monster. That it was okay to cry over your kills, that you weren’t bad for doing what you needed to to survive. But you never had any of that before, so how could you ask for it now? When it requires coming clean, putting a bigger burden on them, explaining that you’ve been lying for two years. How could you ask for that? 

You learned on your own, did everything on your own. You learned to be okay, be content, to find love in your friends, to find patience in yourself. And you’re okay now, sometimes. It never solved the original issue, but you could ignore it until you felt better. You could cry at night and feel pretty in the morning, you could wrap your arms around your head to drown out the pounding and wrap your arms around yourself to love what no one else will. What you’ve convinced yourself no one else will.

You’re okay being here, even if there are nights you wish you weren’t sometimes. Even if some nights you wish you weren’t anywhere. 

Breathe out. Don’t give control to your pain. Look at the walls when you walk to your room, appreciate the architecture, think of something bigger than yourself. Look at the paintings on the walls, think of your ancestors and the lives they lived. Bump into your father on the third floor.

“[Y/n]?” 

His hands land on your arms to steady you. It’s instinctive on his part, you didn’t stumble at all. Too balanced with your inhumane body. 

“You’re cold.” He murmurs, eyebrows furrowed when he makes eye contact. His voice is deep, you haven’t heard it in a while.

“Just came in.” You say. He stares at you for a while. You can almost see the cogs turning in his brain, remembering who you are maybe, or realizing he hasn’t seen you in awhile, or something else you can’t figure out.

“Where’s your coat?” He asks, his palms rubbing up and down your arms. It’s a gesture meant to be fatherly, you think. You don’t see him much anymore so the gesture is just awkward, but the rare attention gives you pause. You don’t know how to talk to him, you realize. Besides the one-off family dinner once a month, you almost never see him, even at those dinners, if he tries to talk to you, it's awkward. He hesitates when he asks how your day was. Asks about friends like he's questioning if you even have them. Asks about grades like it actually matters to him. You realize this might be the first time he’s talked to you without a reason in over a year.

“Gave it to a friend.” You murmur, torn between making eye contact and avoiding it. “She was cold.”

“Oh.” He breathes, then takes a step back like he just realized he may be crowding you. “..thats.. nice.” He hesitates. “But you could’ve gotten sick. You shouldn’t do that next time.” He straightens. Like he’s remembered he’s your father and can be authoritative. He doesn’t know how to talk to you, you realize. He doesn’t know you. You stare at him for a moment. For no reason at all, your eyes start burning.

“Okay.” You say, voice weak. “I won’t do it again.”

Looking at him like this is overwhelming. He’s just a few feet in front of you, tall and elegant and imposing. You think he’s as lost as you are. You think you might be scared of him.

“Did you eat dinner?” He asks after a moment.

You stare at him, mouth open like you’re going to say something, but you hesitate. Does he care? Is he going to ask you to eat with him? Did you eat? 

“Yes.” You mumble.

He looks at you like he doesn’t believe you, but he nods anyway.

“Alright.” He says slowly. 

“I.. I think I’m gonna go to bed.” You mutter, he nods.

“Right.. good night [Y/n]” He says.

“Night, Bruce.” You say quietly and pad off.

He turns around when he realizes what you’ve said, but you’ve already disappeared into your room.

Bruce?

When did you start calling him that?

Taglist:

@cookiepersona @crispybelieverworld @bat1212 @4rachn3 @kat0-twt @murdersofcrowbars @whyamihere96 @leilakeila @cj-ghostemoji-destielpie @willowkarmachance @fictionalbakery @sous-les-sakura-blog @alwaysunabashedduck @b1uff @shapeshifterexile @meeeeeeee-stuff

Pretty Isn't Pretty

Bat!sib x batfam 

Summary: Bat!sib isn’t a vigilante like the rest of the family and gets insecure about how they look 

All pics are from pinterest!

Asks/requests are open! Masterlist

You loved your family. That had never been the problem. The problem was that loving your family also meant learning how to disappear beside them. Camera flashes burst like tiny explosions across the front steps of the Gotham Museum as Bruce stepped from the limousine, effortlessly slipping into the polished smile the city adored. Dick offered his arm to an elderly board member before she could even ask, earning a chorus of delighted laughter from the crowd. Tim was already halfway through answering a reporter's question about Wayne Enterprises' newest scholarship initiative. Damian stood with his hands folded neatly behind his back, posture impossibly straight despite looking as though he'd rather be anywhere else. Jason arrived fashionably late. Of course he did. The crowd seemed to love him for it.

"There he is!"

"Jason! Over here!"

"Can we get a picture?"

He rolled his eyes dramatically before flashing one crooked grin that somehow made every camera flash twice as fast. Beside you, Bruce chuckled under his breath. "You'd think they came to see him."

"They probably did," Jason replied without missing a beat.

Dick bumped his shoulder. "Your ego's showing."

"It's always showing." The family dissolved into easy laughter. You smiled too. Because you were happy.

Really.

"Waynes! Right here!" The photographer waved everyone together. Bruce stood in the center as always. Dick slipped naturally to one side, Jason to the other. Tim adjusted his tie while Damian muttered something that made Dick snort. Without thinking, everyone fell into familiar places.

You hesitated. There wasn't really anywhere for you. Dick noticed first. "C'mere." He rested a hand lightly against your shoulder, pulling you into the space between himself and Tim. "There."

Flash.

Another photographer shouted. "One more!"

Flash.

"Eyes over here!"

Flash.

By the tenth picture your cheeks hurt from smiling.

The articles were online before you made it home. You hadn't intended to look. You never intended to look. Yet somehow your thumb always found its way there.

WAYNE FOUNDATION RAISES RECORD DONATIONS AT ANNUAL GALA

The first photo showed Bruce. The second showed Dick laughing with donors. The third was Jason shaking hands with firefighters. The fourth caught Tim mid-conversation. The fifth was Damian standing beside Alfred. The sixth...

was the family portrait.

You stared at it longer than you meant to. Everyone looked... effortless. Dick somehow smiled with his whole face. Jason looked like he'd accidentally wandered onto the cover of a magazine. Tim's suit fit like it had been stitched onto him. Even Damian, who had complained about attending the gala for three straight hours, looked composed. Then your eyes drifted toward yourself. Your smile looked too tight. Your posture seemed awkward. Your hair had fallen strangely around your face. Had your shoulders always looked like that?

You barely noticed the article anymore. Instead, you pinched at your reflection in the dark computer screen. Maybe if you stood straighter...

Maybe if you lost a little weight...

Maybe if—

A notification appeared.

Comments (642)

You should've closed the tab. Instead... You clicked.

"Dick Grayson somehow gets more handsome every year."

"Jason Todd needs to stop looking this good in suits."

"Tim Drake has literally never taken a bad picture."

"Damian looks exactly like Bruce."

Your chest loosened. Then you kept scrolling.

"Who's the other one?"

"I always forget Bruce has another kid."

"Everyone else won the genetic lottery."

"Poor thing."

"Imagine being the least attractive Wayne."

You stared at the screen. Not because they were right. But because they had noticed the exact thing you'd spent years trying to convince yourself no one else saw. A knock sounded softly against your bedroom door. You hurriedly clicked the laptop shut. "...Come in."

The door opened. Dick leaned against the frame, still wearing the same suit from the gala, tie already loosened around his neck. "You disappeared."

"I was just getting ready for bed."

His eyes flicked briefly toward the still-warm laptop. Then back to you. "...Everything okay?"

You smiled automatically. The same practiced smile from every family photograph. "I'm fine."

Dick held your gaze for a long moment. He didn't believe you. But he also knew you well enough not to push. "Okay," he said quietly. "If you change your mind..." He left the sentence unfinished before gently closing the door behind him.

The room fell silent again. Slowly... You opened the laptop. The comments were still there. Waiting. And despite everything, despite knowing better...

You kept reading.

The comments should have faded. People on the internet were cruel. You knew that. They didn't know you. They'd never met you. So why did every mirror suddenly feel like it was proving them right?

You found yourself lingering in front of the bathroom mirror longer than usual. At first it was innocent enough. You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. Turned your head to the left. Then the right. Maybe your nose looked better from this angle. Maybe your jaw would look sharper if you smiled less. You sucked in a breath.

No.

Again.

You turned sideways. Your sweater clung to your waist. Had it always done that? Your hand drifted to your stomach before you realized what you were doing. A knock startled you. "You alive in there?" Jason called through the door.

You jumped. "Yeah!"

"You've been in there like twenty minutes."

"I was just getting ready."

Jason laughed. "Unless you're secretly Bruce putting on eyeliner, I don't know what takes that long."

You forced a laugh back. "Coming."

You flicked the bathroom light off before giving yourself one last glance. Somehow... You looked worse than when you'd walked in.

Breakfast was louder than usual. Dick was animatedly recounting some ridiculous encounter he'd had with a donor who'd mistaken Jason for a bodyguard. "I swear she tipped him twenty bucks."

Jason stabbed his fork dramatically toward him. "I should've taken it."

"You almost did."

"I considered it." Everyone laughed. Even Bruce smiled over the edge of his coffee mug.

Alfred placed another stack of pancakes on the table. "Master Jason, perhaps five is sufficient."

"Alfred, It’s bulking season.”

"You said that yesterday."

"And?"

"You also complained your suit no longer fit." 

Jason looked personally offended. "It shrunk."

"It most certainly did not." More laughter. You smiled. When Alfred set a plate in front of you, you stared at it for a moment before cutting a small corner from one pancake. Your appetite had vanished somewhere between the bathroom mirror and the dining room.

Dick noticed first. "...Everything okay?"

You looked up. "Hm?"

"You've been pushing your food around for like five minutes."

"Oh." You glanced down. "I guess I'm just not that hungry."

Jason leaned back in his chair. "You sick?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Mhm."

Bruce looked over briefly. "If you're feeling unwell, you should stay home today."

"I'm fine." Your answer came a little too quickly. Bruce watched you for another second before returning to his newspaper. No one mentioned it again.

By the end of the week, it had become a habit. You found reasons not to eat breakfast. "I'm running late." Lunch became coffee. Dinner became "I grabbed something on campus." Sometimes that was true. Usually it wasn't.

"Movie night!" Dick appeared in the library carrying enough snacks to feed a football team.

Jason followed behind him with three pizzas balanced precariously in his arms. "If one of you drops this," he warned, "I will beat you.”

"You've been saying that for years," Tim muttered.

“And have I ever lied?” 

Steph wandered in, immediately stealing a breadstick.

Jason gasped. "Traitor."

Cass drifted quietly into the room a few moments later, settling cross-legged on the couch beside Damian. She looked toward the doorway. Waiting. Dick followed her gaze. “…not everyone is here.” 

Tim frowned. "They said they'd be down."

"They've been saying that for twenty minutes." Dick jogged upstairs. A soft knock echoed through your bedroom. "You decent?"

You minimized your laptop so quickly your finger slipped across the trackpad. "Yeah."

Dick poked his head inside. "You coming?" Your bed was covered in clothes. A black sweater. A cream sweater. Two pairs of jeans. Three different jackets. He frowned. "You changing?"

"I can't figure out what looks okay."

"You've already changed?"

"...Maybe."

Dick laughed softly. "You've got more outfit changes than Jason."

"Hey!" Jason shouted from downstairs. "I heard that!"

Dick grinned before looking back at you. "I like the green one."

"It makes me look..." You stopped yourself. Dick waited. "...Never mind."

He picked up the sweater from your bed. "It makes you look like you."

You looked away. "I don’t…really like how I look." The words escaped before you could stop them. Silence.

Dick's smile disappeared. "What?"

You blinked. "I didn't—"

"You've never said that before."

"I was kidding."

"No..." His voice softened. "You weren't." For a second, he looked like he wanted to ask more. Instead he simply handed you the sweater. "We're starting the movie whenever you're ready." He smiled again. Gentler this time. "You don't have to impress anybody downstairs."

After he left, you stared at the closed bedroom door. Then down at the sweater in your hands. Slowly... You folded it back onto the bed. You never went downstairs.

Cass found you nearly an hour later. Not in your room. Outside. The gardens behind Wayne Manor were quiet at night. You sat on the stone edge of the fountain, knees pulled against your chest as the water rippled softly in front of you. Cass didn't announce herself. She simply sat beside you. For several minutes, neither of you spoke. You watched the koi glide beneath the water. Cass watched you. Finally, she nudged your shoulder. A gentle bump.

You glanced over. She pointed toward the fountain. Your reflection shimmered across the surface. Then she pointed to herself. You looked confused. Cass spoke quietly. "When I was little..." She searched for the words. "I hated mirrors."

You frowned. "You did?"

She nodded. "I thought..."

Another pause. "...I looked like a weapon."

Your chest tightened. Cass's eyes remained fixed on the water. "I couldn't see..." She rested a hand against her heart. "...me." Only then did she look at you. "What do you see?"

Your reflection trembled with the movement of the water. You looked at it anyway. For a long time. When you finally answered... Your voice was barely louder than the fountain. "...Someone who doesn't belong in family pictures."

Cass's head turned so sharply it almost startled you. Her eyes, always so calm, filled with something unmistakable.

Heartbreak.

Not because she believed you. Because she knew... You believed it.

The first person to really try was Dick. He never made it obvious. He simply started inviting you everywhere again. "Coffee?"

"I'm studying."

"Okay. Lunch?"

"I already ate."

"Walk around the gardens?"

"Maybe later."

"Movie tonight?"

"I'm kind of tired."

Every answer came with a smile. Every smile looked just convincing enough. Dick accepted every excuse. Until he realized you'd stopped saying yes to anything.

Jason's approach was considerably less subtle. He cornered you in the kitchen one afternoon while digging through the refrigerator. "You mad at somebody?"

You looked up from your mug. "What?"

"You've been weird."

"I've been busy."

"You've been avoiding us."

"I haven't."

He snorted. "You skipped movie night."

"I had homework."

"You skipped game night."

"I wasn't feeling good."

"You skipped dinner with us yesterday."

"I ate earlier."

Jason shut the refrigerator with his hip. "...You know your tells suck, right?"

You looked away. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You scratch your thumb whenever you're lying."

Your hand immediately dropped from where you'd been absentmindedly rubbing the side of your thumb. Jason noticed. Of course he noticed. His expression softened. "Hey."

You wouldn't meet his eyes. "If somebody said something to you..."

"They didn't."

"You sure?"

"I'm fine."

He sighed. "I don't believe you."

“Yeah, I know."

Tim noticed something different. One evening he walked into the library carrying a stack of papers only to stop short. You were asleep on one of the couches. Your laptop rested open on your stomach. Your phone had slipped from your hand onto the carpet. Tim quietly set his books down. He reached to move the laptop before it slid off and accidentally brushed the trackpad. The screen woke. A dozen tabs filled the browser.

"How to lose face fat."

"How many calories should I eat?"

"How to know if you're attractive."

"How to stop looking ugly."

Tim froze. His stomach dropped. He looked over at you. You looked exhausted. Not sleeping. Collapsed. He quietly closed the laptop before you woke. When he left the library twenty minutes later, he didn't head toward his room. He knocked once on Bruce's study door.

Bruce listened without interrupting. Tim rarely cried. But his voice cracked anyway. "...I think something's really wrong."

Cass didn't wait. The next morning she found you folding laundry in the sitting room. Without saying a word, she sat beside you. She folded towels. You folded shirts. Minutes passed in comfortable silence. Then Cass held up one of your sweaters. She pointed at it. Then at you. "Cute."

You smiled faintly. "It's old."

She shook her head. "No."

She tapped your chest. "You."

Your hands stopped moving. Cass smiled. "You."

You swallowed hard. "...Thanks." She could tell you didn't believe her.

It became impossible not to notice. You stopped appearing in family photos unless someone dragged you in. You wore oversized sweaters even on warm days. You flinched whenever someone tried to hug you around the waist. You laughed less. You looked down more. By the end of the month... Wayne Manor felt quieter. Because you were quieter.

Bruce finally called everyone into the library. Dick. Jason. Tim. Cass. Damian. Alfred lingered near the doorway. Bruce looked at each of them. "Has anyone spoken to them?”

Silence.

"They insist they're fine," Dick admitted.

Jason rubbed the back of his neck. "They're lying."

Cass nodded once. "They hurt."

Tim looked down. "I found something."

Every eye turned toward him. He hesitated. "I wasn't snooping."

"No one thinks you were," Bruce said gently.

Tim swallowed. "...Their laptop.” His voice became quieter. "They've been looking up..." He couldn't finish.

Jason frowned. "What?"

Tim finally forced the words out. "'How to stop looking ugly.'"

Silence.

Utter silence.

Dick's face drained of color. Jason stared. Damian frowned in genuine confusion. Cass closed her eyes. Bruce...

Bruce felt something inside him crack. Because all this time... He had been looking for some enormous, hidden problem. When all along... His child had simply been looking in the mirror.

That evening Bruce insisted everyone eat dinner together. No excuses. No disappearing upstairs. No work. No phones. Just family. For a little while... It almost felt normal.

Dick told another ridiculous story. Jason and Damian argued over absolutely nothing. Tim corrected both of them. Cass smiled quietly from beside you. Bruce watched you laugh once. Only once. It disappeared almost immediately.

When dinner ended, Bruce spoke softly. "Stay for a minute."

Everyone paused. You frowned. "...Am I in trouble?"

"No." Bruce looked around the table. "We're worried."

Your stomach tightened. "I'm okay."

"You aren't."

"I am."

"You've lost weight."

"I'm eating."

"You've withdrawn."

"I've been busy."

"You've stopped spending time with us."

"I'm tired."

Bruce's voice remained impossibly calm. "...Look at me."

Slowly... You did.

"We love you."

"I know."

"You don't seem convinced."

"I said I know."

Dick leaned forward. "Whatever's going on, we're here."

Jason nodded. "You don't have to deal with it alone."

Cass reached over, gently taking your hand. "You’re safe."

Something inside you snapped. You pulled your hand away so quickly your chair scraped across the hardwood floor. "You don't get it!" The room fell silent. "You keep saying that!"

Jason blinked. "Saying what?"

"'We're here.' 'We love you.' 'You're fine.'" Your breathing grew shaky. "You don't understand!"

Dick stood. "Then help us understand."

"No!" Your voice cracked. "Because you can't!" Tears blurred your vision. "You all keep acting like it's nothing because none of you know what it's feels like!"

"What what feels like?" Bruce asked quietly.

You laughed. A broken, humorless sound. "Looking in the mirror and hating what you see." No one moved. "You all..."

You looked around the table.

At Dick.

Jason.

Tim.

Cass.

Damian.

Bruce.

"...You're all beautiful." The words spilled out faster now. "Dick, people literally stop him on the street. Jason could wear a garbage bag and people would still stare. Tim looks perfect without even trying. Cass is gorgeous. Damian somehow has a jawline carved by God." A watery laugh escaped you. "And Bruce Wayne has been on magazine covers for thirty years."

Silence.

You wiped angrily at your face. "I'm not like you." Your voice dropped to barely a whisper. "I never will be." Another tear escaped. "I'm the ugly Wayne." The words echoed through the dining room. "I see the comments." Your shoulders shook. "I see people asking who I am. I see them wondering what happened to me. I see them saying I'm the least attractive one."

You pressed a hand against your chest as though trying to hold yourself together. "And the worst part..." Your voice broke completely. "...is every time I look in the mirror..." You squeezed your eyes shut. "...I think they're right."

Silence.

Not the uncomfortable kind. The devastated kind. The kind that settled over a room when no one could find words big enough to hold what had just been said. You stared at the tabletop, unable to look at any of them. Shame crawled up your throat. You shouldn't have said it. You shouldn't have cried. You should've just gone upstairs. You pushed your chair back. "I-I'm sorry." Your voice was barely audible. "I didn't mean to ruin dinner." You stood too quickly. "I'll just—"

Warm fingers wrapped around your wrist. Gentle. Not enough to stop you. Just enough to ask you to stay. You looked down. Cass. She hadn't said a word. She simply looked up at you, her thumb brushing softly across your knuckles. Her expression was so heartbreakingly gentle that your chest tightened all over again. She gave one tiny shake of her head. Don't go.

Your knees almost gave out. Then another chair scraped across the floor. Dick. He didn't hesitate. In two strides he was beside you. Without asking, he wrapped both arms around you. Not tight.

Just...

Home.

For a heartbeat you stood stiffly in his embrace. Then everything you'd spent weeks holding together unraveled. Your forehead dropped against his shoulder. A sob escaped before you could swallow it. "I'm sorry," you whispered.

Dick's arms tightened. "Oh, kid." His voice cracked around the words. "You never have to apologize for hurting."

Behind him you heard Jason clear his throat. "...Move."

Dick glanced over his shoulder. "What?"

"I said move."

"You can wait your—"

Jason shoved him sideways just enough to wedge himself into the hug. Dick laughed through suspiciously watery eyes. "Seriously?"

"I called dibs."

"You absolutely did not."

"You were hogging them."

"I was comforting them."

"I can comfort too."

"You just shoulder-checked me."

"It was affectionate."

"It was assault."

Despite yourself... A tiny laugh escaped through your tears. Jason immediately pointed. “See.” He looked triumphantly at Dick. "I got a laugh."

"You bullied your way into a hug."

"And?"

"And somehow it worked."

Tim sighed from across the table. "You two are unbelievable."

But thirty seconds later... It was no longer a hug. It was a pile. Dick still had one arm around you. Jason leaned against both of you with absolutely no regard for personal space. Tim awkwardly tried to participate without crushing anyone. Cass quietly slipped beside you again, resting her head against your shoulder. Even Damian approached. He stopped beside the group, clearly evaluating the situation like it was a tactical problem. Jason looked over. "Well?"

Damian frowned. "This appears... excessive."

"You've been invited."

"I most certainly have not."

Dick lifted an arm. "Invitation extended."

Damian sighed the long-suffering sigh of someone burdened by incompetent relatives. "...Very well." He stepped forward with all the enthusiasm of someone accepting a prison sentence.

Jason immediately hooked an arm around his shoulders. "There he is."

"I regret this already."

"You love us,” you laughed weakly, looking over at Damian. 

"I tolerate you."

Cass smiled. "You love."

Damian looked at her. "...Perhaps."

Jason gasped dramatically. "He admitted it!"

"I admitted nothing."

"You basically wrote us a sonnet." Dick laughed.

"You've gone soft."

"I have done no such thing."

By now, you were crying and laughing so hard you couldn't tell which was which. Bruce had remained at the head of the table the entire time. Watching. His children. All tangled together in one hopeless, lopsided embrace. Alfred appeared quietly in the doorway with a dish towel over one shoulder. He took one look at the scene and smiled. "I was wondering why no one had begun dessert."

Jason lifted his head. "We're occupied."

"So I see." Alfred disappeared for a moment before returning with a large carton of ice cream and a stack of bowls. "I believe," he said, setting them on the table, "this constitutes a chocolate evening."

Jason's eyes widened. "...The emergency ice cream?"

"The very same."

Dick looked scandalized. "You've been hiding emergency ice cream from us?"

"Naturally."

"For how long?"

"Approximately twelve years."

"Twelve— Alfred!"

"I have found it prudent to maintain certain strategic reserves."

Even Bruce let out a quiet laugh. You looked around the room. At Dick still refusing to let go. At Jason arguing that emotional support entitled him to the biggest bowl. At Tim insisting he would portion it fairly while Jason loudly accused him of communism. At Damian secretly accepting the bowl Cass handed him despite claiming he didn't want any. At Alfred pretending not to notice Jason stealing spoonfuls straight from the carton.

At Bruce... Who had been watching you all evening with quiet, aching eyes. When your gaze met his, he smiled. Small. Soft. Proud. Not because you were smiling again. Not because the hurt was gone. But because... You had let them help carry it. And for tonight, that was enough.

Eventually the kitchen emptied. Dick insisted on helping Alfred wash dishes despite being repeatedly told he was "helping incorrectly." Jason and Damian resumed arguing over who had eaten the last brownie. Tim disappeared upstairs after promising everyone he absolutely was not going back to work. Cass squeezed your shoulder as she passed. "Goodnight."

You smiled. "Night."

One by one, the voices drifted farther down the hall until Wayne Manor settled into its familiar nighttime quiet. Only you remained. Your spoon traced lazy circles through the melted ice cream at the bottom of your bowl. You weren't really eating anymore. Just thinking.

The chair across from you scraped softly against the hardwood. Bruce sat down. For a while neither of you spoke. The grandfather clock somewhere down the hallway ticked steadily through the silence. Bruce folded his hands together on the table. "I've been trying to think of the right thing to say."

You managed a tired smile. "Have you?"

He nodded. "I've had about six different speeches."

"That many?"

"They were all terrible."

A quiet laugh escaped you. "I figured."

Bruce smiled faintly. "I was considering beginning with a quote."

"Oh no."

"I dismissed it immediately."

"Good."

"I also briefly considered statistics."

You stared at him. "...Statistics?"

"The percentage of edited photographs in fashion magazines."

You couldn't help it. You laughed. "What?"

"I told you. They were terrible." The laughter faded, leaving behind something softer. Bruce looked down at his hands. "When you were little..." His voice was quieter now. "You used to crawl into my office almost every afternoon."

You frowned slightly. "I did?"

"You'd color." A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Usually on documents I needed."

"I'm sorry."

"I wasn't." He looked up at you. "You'd ask me every few minutes if I thought your drawing was good."

You felt heat creep into your cheeks. "I don't remember that."

"I do."

His smile lingered. "And every single time..." He paused. "...before I could answer...You'd already decided it wasn't." Your smile slowly disappeared. Bruce continued gently. "You'd point out every mistake. 'The clouds look weird.''Batman's ears are too big.''I messed up the cape.'" He looked at you for a long moment. "I remember wondering how someone so small could be so hard on themselves." 

Your eyes dropped to the table. "I guess some things don't change."

"No." His answer came immediately. "They don't."

Silence settled between you again. Then Bruce reached across the table. Not dramatically. Not with a speech. He simply rested his hand over yours. Warm. Steady. "I wish..." His voice caught. "I wish I had noticed sooner."

Your eyes lifted to his. "I thought I was protecting all of you."

His thumb brushed lightly across your knuckles. "I taught you how to be cautious." A sad smile. "How to read people. How to expect the worst from Gotham." He swallowed. "I never meant for you to start looking at yourself the same way."

Your throat tightened. "You didn't."

"I should have seen it."

"I hid it."

"You shouldn't have had to." For a long moment, neither of you moved. Then Bruce stood. You looked at him in confusion. Without a word, he walked around the table. He stopped beside your chair. Opened his arms, just slightly. An awkward invitation. The kind he probably hadn't offered since you were a child.

You smiled through fresh tears. "You're asking?"

"I've been informed," Bruce said with the faintest hint of amusement, "that asking is important."

"Dick?"

"Dick."

You stood. The moment you stepped forward, Bruce wrapped you in his arms. He held you carefully, as though you were still the little kid who used to color on Wayne Enterprises contracts. One hand rested against the back of your head. The other rubbed slow circles between your shoulders. "I'm so proud of you."

The words were almost whispered. You frowned against his shoulder. "For what?"

"For telling us."

You closed your eyes. "I was scared."

"I know."

"I thought..." Your voice trembled. "I thought if I said it out loud..."

Bruce leaned his cheek lightly against your hair. "...It would become true?"

A shaky nod. His arms tightened. "My sweet child." There was so much grief in those three words that it nearly broke you all over again. "You have spent weeks believing the opinions of strangers." His voice remained impossibly gentle. "But if there is one thing I hope you eventually believe..." He leaned back just enough to look at you. "...Believe your family instead."

A tear slipped down your cheek. Bruce reached up and brushed it away with his thumb, just like he had when you were little. "You don't have to see yourself the way we see you tonight." He smiled softly. "I'll be patient. As long as it takes."

And somehow... For the first time in a very long while...

Looking at yourself tomorrow didn't feel quite as frightening anymore.

A/N Please if you are feeling insecure, sad or just need someone to talk to, my inbox is always always always open <3 Ik it's scary but I will always be an open ear if someone needs it

.ᐟ All that remains of BRUCE WAYNE’S daughter is everything she left behind: her belongings, her room, and a diary no one knew existed. And inside of it, she's still there, alive—in ink, in pages, and in quiet entries.

.ᐟ CONTENT: OOC (?), angst, implied character death, neglected batsis!reader, sunshine!reader, kinda damian centered, grief, post-death wc: 2.3k

.ᐟ a/n: ty all sm for 1k+ followers! <3 :D srry if i didn't include every1 in the batfam, it was easier for me dis way. and i didnt want to mischaracterize them.

The ride home from the funeral was painfully silent save for the soft tapping of rain on the fogged up window and some light jazz playing on the radio, just loud enough so the silence doesn't drive anyone crazy or swallow everyone whole.

No one spoke. No one dared to.

Damian said. You were driving with him to a lake and smiled fondly at him. He was trying to pretend that he wasn’t curious about what your plan was with three bags of peas and melon chunks, both bought from the farmer’s market that came to Gotham for once. You flashed him a grin that Damian knew meant this was going to be over-the-top dramatic. Damian huffed and slid deeper in the passenger seat.

“You’ll love this, الأخ الصغير.”

Damian huffed like he doubted that. He grumbled,

“Stop calling me your little brother. We’re not related.”

You reached over to ruffle Damian’s hair, which he tried to swat away before it reached its destination. You were too happy for something so simple, but he wasn’t surprised. He always thought you were alarmingly cheerful. You were never deterred by his coldness and only ever combat it with warmth. Every step he took back, you took forward. Your affection was disgustingly infectious. He hated it. He loved it. It confused him so fully that it made him dizzy. He didn’t only push you away, but he shoved you off of a cliff like Mufasa and watched.

Today was the turning point in your relationship. Damian was placed into your custody and thrown into your car with no words beyond one sentence: “we’re going to feed the ducks.” You vibrated with excitement, but Damian looked at you blankly. As if the words didn’t compute or you told him the dumbest idea on the planet.

“You’ll love this, D. Trust me.”

The worst part? Damian does trust you. He trusted that you think some ducks were going to mend the bridge that he broke purposefully, and he doesn’t think that he’s ready for a relationship with you yet. He doesn’t think that he could handle being loved by someone so warm. You loved with your whole heart and fiercely. Damian had watched the way you brighten and shined when around the people who you love and he didn’t think he could survive that level of love and affection.

“Why ducks?”

Damian managed to ask after a long moment of listening to you hum quietly along to the song on the radio. You looked surprised. As if feeding the ducks was a universal experience that made everybody’s childhood rather than an entirely pointless activity. You responded back,

“Because ducks are adorable and the poor things have been bullied by geese for far too long.”

Damian looked confused by the logic, but seemed to accept it. He didn’t particularly care, but he was curious about what you meant by the geese bullying the ducks. He turned his attention out the window. 

Damian can admit, the lake and scenery was beautiful as he looked. You parked the car and grabbed the duck food from the backseat. Damian looked at the pier that hosted seemingly hundreds of ducks with a flock of geese on the other side of the lake.

You gave Damian an easy smile that made Damian feel warm. You passed Damian the peas while tossing a small chunk of melon at a small group that had broken off from the others. You said encouragingly,

“Take a handful and toss it into a group.”

Damian looked at the bag of peas in his hands then around the lake. The ducks were naturally spread apart, but there were quite a few small groups that flocked together. Damian spotted a group of ducks and carefully took a fistful of peas. He tossed it perfectly into the centre of the group.

Damian watched with wide eyes as several ducks rushed towards the food. It was so simple, yet so pure. These small, innocent creatures looked just happy to eat easy meals. Damian sat down on the rocky beach and tossed more food. More ducks approached him. You were content as you offered him a chunk of melon as you sat beside Damian. 

Damian took the melon piece gratefully and held it out as an extra curious duck approached. The duck took the chunk right out of his hand so suddenly that he flinched. You resisted the urge to laugh. Instead, you offered him a grin and took a fistful of peas and held it out for the next curious duck to carefully eat the food in your hand.

You jolted in surprise when a goose jumpscared you by taking a beak-ful out of melon right out of the container that you had it put in. You laughed at yourself and Damian cracked a smile as well. 

“Do you see what I mean about the geese being bullies now?”

Your voice held amusement, which finally made Damian crack. He laughed and tossed another fistful of peas while you wrestled a piece of melon out of a goose’s mouth. With a grin, you bumped your shoulder into his and held up the recovered melon slice in victory only for a duck to fly by and take it from your hand.

“Daffy!”

You gasped like the duck betrayed your entire family and Damian laughed harder. You were right. He did love these ducks and this experience healed a part of him that he had never noticed was broken. There was something about feeding and taking care of these small creatures that made him understand all of the lessons Dick and Bruce had been hammering into him during patrol. 

“I want one.”

Damian said yearningly as he looked at the duck that hopped into his lap to eat out of the nearly empty bag. You leaned your head onto Damian’s shoulder as peace settles between you both. For once, Damian didn’t shove you off of him. He wrapped his arm around you in a half hug, still very mindful of the duck now sleeping in his lap. You replied back softly,

“If you can get it to the car, we can keep it at my house with you visiting.”

Damian looked at you like you had unveiled a new side of you that Damian had never seen. You would be willing to protect his secret if it meant he would be a normal kid for once. His voice softened as he responded,

“I’d appreciate that.”

Damian carefully tucked his duck into his hoodie and walked towards the car once you tossed the last of the food that you brought for the ducks. You asked warmly,

“What are you going to name him?”

Damian looked at the beautiful duck in his arms and smiled so fondly that it made your heart melt. He held the duck closer and said quietly,

“Bandit.”

You both liked that. The ride to your home was quiet as Damian cradled the sleeping duck in his arms like it was his child now.

One shot | Established Relationship | Angst | Masterlist | WC: 1k

a/n: A little angst while I finish up a request I got on Klaus x art student

· · ─────────── ·· ────────── · ·

The bedroom was silent except for the soft tap of rain against the windows. Klaus stood by the balcony doors, staring out at the storm-darkened courtyard below, tumbler of bourbon untouched in his hand. Behind him, Y/N sat on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. The distance between them, barely spanning ten feet of physical space, felt insurmountable.

"So that's it?" Her voice was quiet, strained. "You've made your decision."

"It isn't a decision, love." He didn't turn to face her, or rather couldn't. "It's a reality we've been avoiding."

"We haven't been avoiding anything. I've been perfectly clear from the beginning."

"Yes. You have." He took a long swallow of bourbon, welcoming the burn. "And I foolishly believed time would change your mind."

The Shape of a Silence

Content warnings: drug use, addiction, overdose, neglect, suicidal ideation, major character death. This is a tragedy. No comfort, no redemption. Please read with care.

---

you are dying in a house full of heroes.

This is not a metaphor. You feel it in the brittle architecture of your bones, in the tremor that lives beneath your skin like a second heartbeat. Your body has become a haunted thing, a repository for all the poisons you’ve poured into it, and still—still—no one has noticed that you are disappearing right in front of them.

You sit on the floor of your bedroom, back pressed against the foot of an antique four-poster bed that has never felt like yours. The curtains are drawn, heavy brocade that swallows the late-afternoon light and spits it back in shades of amber and rot. Somewhere in the cavernous belly of Wayne Manor, laughter peals like a bell. It echoes through the heating vents, distorted and tinny, a transmission from a world that has no space for you.

Your fingers curl around a prescription bottle. Oxycodone. The label is worn, the name smudged—someone else’s pain, stolen from the medical bay three weeks ago when Alfred was busy suturing a gash in Jason’s shoulder and Bruce was already back at the Batcomputer, already lost in the next catastrophe. You remember walking through the cave with the silence of a ghost, barefoot on cold stone, plucking the bottle from a drawer of neatly organized catastrophe supplies. No one turned around. No one said your name.

You dry-swallow two pills and chase them with the flat dregs of a soda you left on the nightstand three days ago. The carbonation has long since died. It tastes like sugar and oblivion.

Downstairs, they laugh again. You can pick out the individual threads: Dick’s bright, easy warmth, the kind of laugh that makes people fall in love with him. Tim’s quieter chuckle, a little awkward, as if he’s still surprised he’s allowed to be part of the joke. Even Damian is there—you hear the precise, clipped cadence of his voice, less a laugh and more a reluctant acknowledgment that something is amusing. And Bruce. Bruce’s laugh is so rare it cuts you every time, because it is a sound that has never been offered in your direction. It is a relic of a man you do not know.

You tilt your head back against the mattress and let the opioid crawl into your bloodstream with the patience of a lover. The edges of the world soften. The laughter becomes bearable, then beautiful, then nothing at all.

This is how you survive. This is how you die.

...

The first time you realized you were ignored by your family, you were twelve years old.

You’d been living in Wayne Manor for two years by then—your whole life, technically, but the years before Bruce’s return from his training were a blur of boarding schools and nannies who called you miss with the kind of professional distance that made you feel like a piece of expensive furniture. Then Bruce came back, and for one glittering, impossible moment, you thought you might become real.

He was your father. Your biological father. The only child born from his short-lived, ill-fated marriage to a woman whose face you had to reconstruct in your memory from photographs because she died when you were two years old. You had his (.....) hair, his stubborn jaw, and his tendency to withdraw into silence and contemplate. That must have meant something. It must have meant that you definitely belonged there.

But then Dick came, and then Jason, and then the cave opened up beneath the manor like a second heart, and you understood: Bruce did not want a child. He wanted soldiers. He wanted mirrors that reflected his own grief back at him, sharpened into weapons. And you—you were just a girl who cried when she skinned her knee, who was afraid of thunderstorms, who wanted to be held. You were soft. You were useless.

You remember the night you asked him to train you. You were twelve, small for your age, wearing pajamas with little stars on them. You’d crept down to the cave after hearing the roar of the Batmobile returning from patrol. Bruce was still in the suit, cowl pulled back, sweat darkening his hair. He looked like a god. He looked like your father.

“I want to help,” you said, and your voice echoed in the cavernous space, thin and reedy. “I want to be like Dick. I want to fight.”

Bruce turned to you, and for one breathless second you thought you saw something soft in his eyes. But then his expression shuttered, became the mask he wore even without the cowl.

“No.”

“But I can learn. I can be good. I can—”

“This isn’t a game.” His voice was not cruel, but it was final. It was a door closing. “You’re my daughter. I won’t lose you. Go back to bed.”

I won’t lose you. What a beautiful lie. He’d already lost you. He just hadn’t noticed yet.

You went back to bed. You didn’t cry. You were too hollow for tears. The next morning, Dick taught Jason how to throw a Batarang in the gymnasium, their laughter ringing against the high ceilings. You watched from the doorway for seventeen minutes before anyone noticed you were there, and even then, it was only Alfred, who offered you a cup of tea and a sad, knowing smile that did nothing to fill the chasm opening in your chest.

That was the year you learned that love in this house was a finite resource, and you had been deemed unworthy of it

...

By fourteen, you had stopped trying.

This is what the history books will never record: the slow, quiet erosion of a girl who lived in the margins of a legend. The way you stopped setting a place for yourself at dinner because no one remembered to call you anyway. The way you learned to move through the manor’s hallways without making a sound, a skill born not of training but of the desperate, animal need to avoid the pain of being seen and then ignored. It is worse, you discovered, to be acknowledged and then dismissed than it is to never be acknowledged at all.

You remember the afternoon Damian first arrived at the manor. He was ten, imperious, all sharp angles and sharper words. Bruce introduced him to everyone—Dick, Jason, Tim, Alfred, even Barbara, who had come by to assess the new addition to the chaos. They stood in the grand foyer, a tableau of fractured family, and you watched from the top of the staircase, half-hidden behind the balustrade.

No one introduced you.

Later, you found Damian in the library, examining a first edition of The Art of War with the critical eye of a general. You hovered in the doorway, trying to find the right words. I’m your sister. I know you don’t know me, but I’m here. I’ve always been here.

Before you could speak, he glanced up and fixed you with a stare that could have cut glass. “You’re the civilian,” he said. Not a question. A designation.

“I—yes. I’m your—”

“Tt. Don’t get in my way.”

He turned back to his book. You stood there for a long moment, the air pressing in on you from all sides, and then you walked away. You didn’t blame him. He was a child raised by assassins, taught that value was measured in utility. In his world, you were useless. He was just the first person to say it out loud.

That night, you stole a bottle of wine from the cellar and drank it alone in your room until the walls stopped closing in. It was the first time you used a substance to mute the noise inside your head. It would not be the last

....

The escalation happened so gradually that even you didn’t notice until it was too late.

At fifteen, you broke your wrist falling down the grand staircase—a genuine accident, not a cry for help, though you’d be lying if you said you hadn’t been tempted by those before. Alfred drove you to the emergency room because Bruce was in the middle of a Justice League operation and couldn’t be reached. Dick was in Blüdhaven. Jason was off on one of his brooding self-exile stints. Tim texted you a single “u ok?” and didn’t follow up when you didn’t respond. Damian didn’t even glance at the cast when you returned home.

The doctor prescribed Vicodin. You remember staring at the bottle in the harsh fluorescent light of the pharmacy, the orange plastic warm in your palm. You’d never taken anything stronger than ibuprofen before. You were scared of it, a little. But the pain in your wrist was a relentless, grinding thing, so you swallowed one pill and waited.

The relief was not just physical. It was existential. The Vicodin didn’t just mute the ache in your bones—it muted the ache in the hollow of your chest where your family was supposed to be. It wrapped you in cotton wool. It made the loneliness feel distant, like a storm on the far side of a thick window. For the first time in years, you felt something that might have been peace.

You finished the prescription in five days. When the bottle was empty, you felt the absence like a physical blow. The noise came back—the laughter, the silence, the unbearable weight of being invisible. You needed it gone again.

So you went looking.

The medical bay in the Batcave was a treasure trove of chemical solutions. Morphine, fentanyl, oxycodone, codeine—a pharmacopeia of battlefield medicine kept stocked for the inevitability of violence. Security was tight, but you’d lived in this house your whole life. You knew the blind spots. You knew that the cave’s motion sensors were calibrated to ignore anyone under a certain height threshold—a leftover from when Damian was small and prone to wandering where he shouldn’t. You had never been a threat, so you had never been a variable worth accounting for.

Stealing became a ritual. You’d slip down in the small hours of the morning, when patrol was still underway and Alfred was asleep, and you’d take just enough to keep the silence at bay. One pill at a time. Two. Three. You told yourself you could stop whenever you wanted. You told yourself it wasn’t a problem because a problem required someone to notice, and no one did.

The first time you ran out before you could steal more, the withdrawal hit you like a freight train. You spent a night curled on the bathroom floor, shivering and sweating, your stomach cramping so violently you thought you might die. You didn’t die. You just wished you would.

The next day, you went to school for the first time in a week—Gotham Academy, where you were enrolled under a fake name because Bruce was paranoid about kidnappings but couldn’t be bothered to remember which fake name belonged to which child. You moved through the hallways like a wraith, hollow-eyed and trembling, and a boy named Leo found you in the parking lot, leaning against the brick wall, trying to remember how to breathe.

“You look like shit,” he said, not unkindly.

Leo was seventeen, tall and lanky with nicotine-stained fingers and eyes that had seen too much. He sold weed to the scholarship kids and harder things to the rich ones who wanted to feel dangerous. He didn’t ask why a Wayne—because he recognized you, despite the fake name, because everyone eventually recognized you—was shaking like a leaf behind the gymnasium. He just pulled a joint from his pocket and offered it to you.

“This won’t fix it,” he said. “But it’ll take the edge off.”

You smoked with him behind the bleachers, coughing on the first inhale, and when he asked if you needed something stronger, you said yes without hesitation.

That was the beginning of the end

....

By sixteen, you were no longer a girl who used drugs. You were an addict.

The word sits ugly in your mouth, but you’ve learned to swallow it like everything else. You smoke weed to sleep. You take pills to function. On the bad days—and there are so many bad days now—you let Leo inject you with heroin in the dingy back room of his apartment, a place that smells of mildew and old cigarettes and the particular desperation of people who have nothing left to lose.

Leo is not your boyfriend. He’s not even really your friend. He’s a transaction in human form, a pair of steady hands and a ready supply, and you pay him in cash and jewelry stolen from rooms in the manor that no one ever enters. You’ve taken a diamond bracelet from a drawer in the master suite that probably belonged to your mother. You’ve taken cufflinks from Bruce’s study, a silver letter opener, a handful of antique coins from a display case in the library. No one has noticed. No one has ever noticed.

Sometimes, when Leo’s pressing the needle into the crook of your arm, you close your eyes and pretend his touch is love. You pretend the warmth spreading through your veins is the warmth of being held, of being wanted. It’s pathetic. You know it’s pathetic. But it’s all you have.

You’ve stopped going to school. The Academy sends letters home, but Bruce is in the middle of a war with the League of Assassins and Alfred is too busy keeping the household running to follow up. You intercept the letters when you can, forge Bruce’s signature on the responses, and when you can’t, you just throw them away. No one asks where you go during the day. No one asks why your eyes are glassy, why your hands shake, why you’ve lost so much weight that your clothes hang off you like they belong to a stranger.

Once, Dick corners you in the hallway, his hand gentle on your shoulder. You flinch. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, his smile the same easy, practiced thing he gives to the press. “I feel like we haven’t talked in a while. How’s school?”

“Fine.” Your voice is a croak. You haven’t spoken to another person in three days.

“That’s great. Listen, I’m sorry I haven’t been around much—Blüdhaven’s a mess and the Titans are running me ragged—but we should do something soon. Just the two of us. Sound good?”

You nod. You know he won’t follow through. He never does.

He pats your shoulder once and is gone, leaving behind the faint scent of his cologne and the hollow echo of another broken promise. You lean against the wall until the shaking stops, and then you go to your room and crush a pill on the nightstand with the flat of a silver hairbrush that hasn’t been used in months.

The powder burns when you inhale it. The burn is the only thing that feels real

....

Your bedroom has become an observation deck, a silent perch from which you watch the family that isn’t yours.

You’ve learned the rhythms of the manor the way a prisoner learns the rhythms of a jail: the creak of the third-floor floorboard at 4:37 a.m. when Bruce returns from patrol. The clatter of pans in the kitchen at 5:30 when Alfred begins preparing breakfast. The precise moment—6:15—when Damian’s alarm goes off and he begins his morning training, his footsteps a metronome of discipline in the gymnasium below your window.

You are not part of any of it. You are a ghost haunting the margins, a smudge on the periphery of their vision. But you watch. You can’t stop watching.

There is a particular cruelty in the way they orbit each other, a gravitational pull that excludes you with the casual precision of physics. They don’t mean to shut you out. That’s the worst part. You are not a victim of malice—you are a victim of irrelevance. You are the variable that doesn’t factor into the equation. The side character in a story that was never about you.

You watch them from the top of the stairs on movie nights, when Dick commandeers the entertainment system and makes everyone watch old musicals that Jason loudly complains about but never actually leaves. You watch Damian pretend to hate the musicals, his small body wedged between Bruce and Tim on the couch, his mouth pressed into a thin line of disapproval even as his eyes track the dancers with reluctant fascination. You watch Bruce, the cowl gone, the weight of the city temporarily set aside, his arm draped over the back of the couch in a gesture of casual affection that makes your chest ache.

You watch and you are not invited.

You tried, once. Months ago. A lifetime ago. You’d come downstairs in your pajamas, drawn by the sound of laughter, and hovered in the doorway of the media room like a moth at a window. Tim glanced up, saw you, and offered a small, distracted smile before turning back to the screen. No one else acknowledged you. The couch was full. The space was full. There was nowhere for you to sit.

You stood there for five minutes, waiting for someone to make room, to say your name, to do anything. No one did. Eventually, you went back upstairs, and no one noticed you were gone.

Now you don’t go downstairs at all. You sit on the floor of your room with your back against the door and you listen to the distorted echoes of their happiness through the vents, and you tell yourself it’s enough. It has to be enough.

The first time you overdose, it’s an accident.

You’ve been using heroin for six months now, but you’ve been careful. Careful in the way that addicts are careful—measuring doses, testing potency, telling yourself that you have it under control because the alternative is admitting that you don’t. But the supply Leo gives you this week is different, stronger, cut with something that hits your bloodstream like a fist, and suddenly you’re on the bathroom floor with your cheek pressed to the cold tile and your heart stuttering in your chest like a dying bird.

You can feel your body shutting down. It’s not painful, not really. It’s like sinking into warm water. Like falling asleep after a lifetime of insomnia. Part of you—the part that’s been screaming into the void for five years—whispers that this wouldn’t be the worst way to go.

No one finds you. No one comes.

You wake up three hours later, alone, your face crusted with dried vomit and your arms covered in bruises you don’t remember getting. The house is silent. No one has noticed you were missing. No one has come looking for you. You lie on the bathroom floor for a long time, staring at the ceiling, and you feel nothing at all.

The next day, you call Leo and ask for more

...

The invitation appears on the kitchen island on a Tuesday morning, written in Alfred’s precise copperplate on heavy cream stationery: Family dinner this evening at 7 p.m. All are expected to attend. RSVP not required.

All are expected. You stare at the word all for a long time, tracing the elegant loops of the script with your fingertip. It’s been months since you last sat at the dining table. You’re not sure anyone noticed your absence then, either.

You spend the afternoon in a state of low-grade panic, cycling through the contents of your closet like a woman preparing for battle. Your body is a ruin. You can see it in the mirror: the sharp jut of your collarbones, the hollows beneath your cheekbones, the bruise-dark circles under your eyes that no amount of concealer can fully disguise. Your arms are a roadmap of track marks, some fresh, some faded to silvery scars. You choose a long-sleeved blouse in deep burgundy. You pull your hair back into a neat ponytail. You practice smiling in the mirror until your reflection looks almost human.

You are ready. You are terrified.

At 6:58, you descend the grand staircase and walk toward the dining room. Your heart is a war drum. Your hands are shaking—withdrawal is starting to creep in, a familiar ache settling into your bones—but you clench them into fists at your sides and keep walking.

The dining room glows with candlelight. The table is set with the good china, the crystal goblets, the silverware that’s been in the Wayne family for six generations. And there they are: Bruce at the head of the table, Dick to his right, Damian to his left. Jason is slouched in his chair, flicking a bread roll at Tim, who’s trying to explain something about a case while simultaneously defending his plate. Even Barbara is there, seated next to Dick, her wheelchair tucked neatly beside the table. They are laughing. They are beautiful. They are a family.

You step into the doorway.

The laughter falters. Not dramatically—it’s not a record-scratch moment. It’s subtler than that, a brief hiccup in the flow of conversation, a flicker of confusion that crosses Bruce’s face as he registers your presence.

“Oh,” Dick says, recovering first, his smile bright but faintly puzzled. “Hey, you’re here.”

You don’t know what to do with your hands. You shove them into the pockets of your pants. “Alfred said there was a dinner.”

“Yes, of course.” Bruce’s voice is neutral, but there’s something in his expression that you can’t read. Surprise, maybe. Or something closer to guilt. “I didn’t realize you were—take a seat. We saved you a spot.”

There isn’t a spot. There are exactly enough chairs for the people already at the table. You watch Tim and Jason exchange a glance, a silent negotiation, and then Jason sighs and scoots over, dragging a chair from the corner of the room and wedging it between himself and the wall. “Here,” he says, not quite meeting your eyes. “Sit.”

You sit. The chair is cold. The space is too small. Your elbow knocks against Jason’s as you reach for your water glass, and he doesn’t say anything, but you feel him shift slightly away from you. A small, unconscious recoil. It shouldn’t hurt. It still does.

The conversation picks up again, tentatively, like a car engine sputtering before it catches. Dick tells a story about a mission with the Titans that you don’t have the context to understand. Tim and Barbara launch into a debate about encryption protocols. Damian insults Jason’s fashion sense, and Jason fires back with something about Damian’s height, and Bruce chides them both with the weary fondness of a man who has done this a thousand times.

You sit in the middle of it all, silent, invisible even in your visibility. No one asks you about your day. No one asks why you’ve lost so much weight, why your eyes are glassy, why you keep scratching at the inside of your wrist beneath the table. You push food around your plate and count the minutes until you can escape.

Halfway through the meal, Bruce’s phone buzzes. He glances at the screen, and his expression shifts—the father receding, the vigilante taking over. “We’ve got a situation,” he says, standing. “Riddler’s left a trail of clues across the financial district. I need everyone suited up in ten.”

The table explodes into motion. Chairs scrape. Plates are abandoned. The family that was laughing together moments ago transforms into a tactical unit, efficient and synchronized. They sweep out of the dining room in a blur of dark hair and determined expressions, and not one of them looks back at you.

Not one.

You sit at the table for a long time after they’re gone. The candles gutter. Alfred appears silently at your elbow, his face creased with a sadness that you can’t bear to look at directly.

“Shall I clear your plate, miss?”

You nod. You don’t trust your voice.

He takes the plate—still mostly full—and hesitates. For a moment, you think he’s going to say something, something that might change everything or nothing at all. But the moment passes. He retreats to the kitchen, and you retreat to your room, and the gap between you and the rest of the world widens another inch.

...

That night, you hear them come home. The cave entrance rumbles open around 3 a.m., and voices drift up through the vents—tired but triumphant. The Riddler is in custody. The city is safe. Someone—Tim, you think—lets out a whoop that’s half exhaustion and half exhilaration. Bruce’s laugh rumbles like distant thunder.

You lie in your bed, curled on your side, staring at the wall. The withdrawal has become a creature living inside your skin, gnawing at your nerves with tiny, relentless teeth. You need a fix. You need it, with a desperation that eclipses hunger, thirst, even the ache of your loneliness.

But you don’t go to the cave. You don’t steal more pills. Instead, you reach under your mattress and pull out a small velvet pouch—the last piece of your mother’s jewelry that you haven’t sold. A locket, delicate and gold, with a tiny photograph of her inside. You’ve kept it through everything. It’s the only thing you have left of her. The only proof that you were ever part of a family that wanted you.

You hold it in your palm, the metal warm from your body heat, and you make a decision.

....

Three days later, you pack a bag.

It’s not a big bag—just a worn duffel you found in the back of a closet, stuffed with a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and the locket. You’re not running away, you tell yourself. You’re just… leaving. Leaving implies agency. Leaving implies choice. And after years of being a passive observer in your own life, you need to feel like you have a choice about something.

You write a note. You don’t know who you’re writing it for.

I’m sorry. I tried. It wasn’t enough.

You don’t sign it. You leave it on your nightstand, tucked beneath an empty pill bottle, and you walk out of your bedroom without looking back.

The manor is quiet at this hour—late afternoon, the golden light slanting through the tall windows in dusty shafts. Alfred is in the city, running errands. Bruce and the boys are in the cave, prepping for patrol. You can hear the low murmur of their voices as you pass the grandfather clock that conceals the entrance, and for a moment you pause. Your hand hovers over the wood. You could open it. You could go down there, one last time, and say everything you’ve never said. You could scream. You could cry. You could make them see you.

But you’ve tried that before. You’ve tried it in a hundred small ways, and it’s never worked. So instead, you press your palm flat against the clock face, feel the vibration of their voices through the ancient wood, and you whisper, “Goodbye.”

No one answers. No one ever answers.

You slip out through the kitchen door and into the dying light. The grounds of Wayne Manor stretch before you, impossibly green, impossibly beautiful. A world you have never been allowed to inhabit. You walk down the gravel drive with your duffel slung over your shoulder, and you don’t look back.

...

Leo’s apartment is in the Narrows, a part of Gotham that the tourists never see and the newspapers only mention in the context of body counts. The building reeks of damp plaster and stale cigarette smoke and the particular hopelessness of people who have been failed by every system meant to protect them. You fit right in.

Leo opens the door with a cigarette dangling from his lips and raises an eyebrow at the duffel bag. “Running away, princess?”

“Something like that.” You push past him into the apartment. It’s a mess, as always—takeout containers piled on the coffee table, a mattress on the floor with sheets that haven’t been washed in weeks, a needle and spoon on the nightstand that makes your skin itch with anticipation.

“I need a place to crash,” you say. “Just for a while.”

Leo shrugs. “Sure. But it’s gonna cost you.”

You pull the locket from your pocket. The gold gleams in the sickly light of the bare bulb overhead. Leo’s eyes flicker with interest—he knows quality when he sees it. “This is real,” you say. “Twenty-four karat. Worth a couple thousand at least.”

He takes it from you, turns it over in his fingers. Opens it. Glances at the photo inside—your mother’s face, younger than you are now, smiling at the camera with a joy you’ve never felt. He doesn’t ask who she is. He doesn’t care.

“Yeah, alright,” he says. “I can move this. You can stay.”

He pockets the locket, and something inside you splinters. The last piece of your mother. The last piece of a life where you were loved. You’ve traded it for a filthy mattress and a man who sees you only as a transaction, and you don’t even have the strength to mourn.

“I want a hit,” you say. “Something strong.”

Leo grins. “I’ve got some new stuff. Fentanyl-laced. Be careful with it—this batch is no joke.”

You don’t want to be careful. You don’t want to be anything.

...

He ties off your arm with a rubber strap. The needle slides in with a familiar sting, and you watch the blood bloom into the syringe before he depresses the plunger. The heroin hits your bloodstream like a wave of light.

This is what you’ve been chasing. This is the silence. This is the peace that the manor never gave you, the love that your family never offered, the belonging that was always just out of reach. Your head lolls back against the mattress. The ceiling swims. Your heartbeat slows to a languid, syrupy rhythm.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice whispers that this dose was too strong. That something is wrong. Your breathing is too shallow. Your limbs are too heavy. The warmth that was so comforting moments ago is starting to feel like drowning.

But you’re not scared. That’s the strangest part. You’ve been dying for years—slowly, invisibly, in a house full of people who were supposed to love you. At least this way, you get to choose the ending.

Your eyes slip closed.

The last thing you think of is the grandfather clock, the vibrations of their laughter humming through the wood. The last thing you feel is the phantom weight of a hand on your shoulder, a touch that was never really there.

And then nothing.

....

Alfred is the one who finds the note.

He returns from his errands at 6:47 p.m., precisely on schedule, and begins his usual routine of preparing the evening meal. It is only when he goes to collect the laundry from the upstairs bedrooms that he notices your door is ajar—a small irregularity, but an irregularity nonetheless. You have kept your door firmly closed for years.

He steps inside. The room is too tidy. The bed is made. The clutter that usually accumulates on your nightstand—books, empty soda cans, the detritus of a life lived in isolation—has been cleared away. All that remains is a single piece of paper, the empty pill bottle serving as a paperweight.

Alfred reads the note. His hands, steady for decades of combat and crisis, tremble.

He descends to the cave.

The family is gathered around the Batcomputer, reviewing satellite footage of Black Mask’s latest operation. Bruce is in the chair, cowl down, his expression the focused intensity of a man who has no room for anything but the mission. Dick is perched on the edge of the console. Tim is typing. Jason is cleaning a gun with methodical precision. Damian is sharpening a knife.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred says, and something in his voice—something quiet, something broken—makes every head in the room snap toward him.

“Alfred?” Bruce is already on his feet. “What is it?”

Alfred hands him the note.

The silence that follows is the loudest sound you have ever not heard.

Bruce reads the words once. Twice. His face, that impenetrable mask, cracks open like a fault line. “What is this? When did she—where is she?”

“I don’t know, sir. She’s not in the house. I’ve checked every room.”

“Track her phone,” Tim says, already typing. His fingers fly across the keyboard, and within seconds a map blooms on the screen, a blinking red dot in the heart of the Narrows. “She’s there. An apartment building on Kane Street.”

Bruce doesn’t wait. He pulls the cowl up, his movements sharp and mechanical, the Batman taking over because the father doesn’t know what to do. “Let’s go. Now.”

The drive to the Narrows takes eight minutes. Bruce breaks every traffic law in the city. Dick is in the passenger seat, phone pressed to his ear, trying to call a number that goes straight to voicemail. In the back, Jason and Tim are silent. Damian’s hands are clenched into fists, his expression unreadable.

They burst into the apartment building like a tactical breach, scattering startled residents, climbing the stairs three at a time. The door to Leo’s apartment is flimsy. Bruce kicks it open without breaking stride.

The smell hits them first: sweat, mildew, the metallic tang of old blood. And then the sight.

You are on the mattress, your body curled into a fetal position, your face slack and pale. The rubber strap is still tight around your arm. The needle is still on the floor. Your eyes are closed.

“No.” Bruce’s voice is not his own. It is a raw, guttural thing, torn from somewhere deep in his chest. He crosses the room in two strides and drops to his knees beside you, his gloved hands pressing against your neck, searching for a pulse that isn’t there.

“Call an ambulance,” Dick says, and his voice is shaking. “Tim, call an ambulance, now, now—”

“It’s too late.” Bruce’s words are a death knell. He gathers your body into his arms, cradling you against the armored chest of the Batsuit, and the sound he makes is not a cry. It’s a howl.

The others stand frozen in the doorway. Jason’s face has gone white. Tim is on the phone with emergency services, his voice a monotone of shock. Damian takes one step forward, then stops, his gaze fixed on the track marks on your arms, the evidence of months—years—of suffering that none of them saw.

Dick sinks to the floor. He doesn’t say anything. He just stares at you, his little sister, the one he promised to spend time with, the one he never got around to calling back.

The ambulance comes. The paramedics do what they can, which is nothing. You are declared dead at the scene.

...

They find your diary three days later, wedged between your mattress and the box spring. Alfred discovers it while stripping the bed, and he does not read it—not at first. He carries it to Bruce with the solemnity of a man delivering a coffin.

Bruce reads it alone, in his study, with the door locked.

He reads about your first attempt to join the family, your twelve-year-old hope crumbling under the weight of his rejection. He reads about Damian’s dismissal, Dick’s broken promises, Tim’s distracted smiles, Jason’s indifference. He reads about the first pill you stole, the first needle you let a stranger press into your vein, the first time you overdosed and woke up alone on the bathroom floor. He reads about the locket—your mother’s locket—and how you sold it for a final hit, a final night, a final silence.

He reads the last entry, written the morning you left:

I used to think that if I just tried harder, they’d see me. I used to think that love was something you earned. But I’m so tired. I’m so tired of watching them be a family without me. I’m so tired of being a ghost in my own home. I don’t know if I’m running away or if I’m just finally admitting that I was never really here at all. Either way, I don’t think it matters. They won’t notice I’m gone. They never have.

Bruce closes the diary. He sets it down on his desk with the careful precision of a man handling a bomb. And then he does something he has not done since his parents died in a pool of blood and pearls on a rain-slicked Gotham street: he weeps.

....

The funeral is small. The family stands in a tight cluster around the grave, dressed in black, their faces carved from stone. The Gotham sky is a bruised purple, threatening rain but never delivering. It’s the kind of day you always hated, the kind that made the manor feel like a mausoleum.

Alfred reads a eulogy that he wrote in the small hours of the morning, his voice steady but his eyes rimmed red. He speaks about your kindness, your quiet resilience, the way you used to follow him around the kitchen as a child, begging to help with the cookies. He does not mention the drugs. He does not mention the neglect. He does not need to.

Bruce stands at the front, his head bowed. He has not spoken in three days. The cowl hangs heavy in his mind, a shield he no longer knows how to take off. He keeps replaying moments—the night you asked to be trained, the dinner where he didn’t save you a seat, the thousand tiny betrayals of absence and inattention that accumulated like snow until they buried you alive. He wonders if there was a single moment when he could have saved you. He knows there was. He knows there were a hundred moments, a thousand, and he missed every single one.

Dick stands to his left, his arm around Barbara, who is crying silently. He is thinking about the hallway conversation, the easy promise he made and then forgot. We should do something soon. Just the two of us. He never did. He never will.

Jason stares at the coffin with a hollow expression. He’s thinking about the way you flinched when he shifted away from you at the dinner table, the way he never bothered to ask why. He’s thinking about all the times he brushed past you in the hallways, too caught up in his own ghosts to notice the living one right in front of him.

Tim is running through the data in his head, the missed signs, the pattern of thefts from the medical bay that he’d dismissed as inventory errors. He’s the detective. He’s supposed to notice things. He didn’t notice you.

Damian says nothing. His face is a mask, but his hands are trembling. He remembers calling you a civilian. He remembers every time he looked through you like you were furniture. He was a child, he tells himself. He didn’t know. But he did know. He just didn’t care.

The coffin descends into the ground. The first clod of dirt hits the lid with a sound like a door closing.

And the family that was never really yours stands in the silence, and they grieve, and they will carry this grief for the rest of their lives. It will not bring you back. It will not fix what was broken. It is too late for apologies, too late for love, too late for anything but the slow, corrosive knowledge that they failed you in every way that mattered.

You were seventeen years old. You were dying in a house full of heroes. And now you are dead, and they are still heroes, and the world will never know your name.

The rain never comes. The sky just stays purple, bruised and waiting, and somewhere in the distance, the Bat-Signal cuts through the gloom like a razor.

Life goes on. It always does.

But in Wayne Manor, a bedroom door stays closed, and a chair at the dining table stays empty, and the silence you left behind is louder than any scream.

than anyone in the fucking world.”

He'd mutter under his breath, two hands wrapped around the skinny twig of a willow tree prepared to snap it in two. He sounded half-joking as he spoke the wish, embarrassed that he's desperate enough to try wishing for your love instead of asking you out like a normal person.

But if there was even a slight chance it would work, he'd do it. He'd do anything for you.

A snap. The 'one wish willow' broke apart in his hands. Two smaller pieces now in his grasp promising him that his wish would come true.

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