jt.

You were not Gotham’s lesson. You were its contradiction.

You walked into the lives of heroes with no cape, no crest, no ancestral oath or alien sun burning beneath your skin. You arrived with steady hands, tired eyes, and a reputation that made even gods go quiet.

You could heal anything. That was what everyone said.

The Justice League said it with reverence. The Titans said it with relief. The Outlaws said it with reckless gratitude. Young Justice said it like they had discovered a cheat code and decided not to read the terms of service.

Jon said you were “basically a miracle.”

Damian said miracles were unreliable.

You had smiled at him when he said it. Amused.

“Good thing I’m not a miracle, then,” you had replied.

He had disliked you immediately.

Not because you were wrong.

Because he wanted you to be.

The first time Damian let you heal him, he was twenty-one and old enough to know better.

It was not a serious injury. That was what he told himself. A fractured wrist after a fight with a metahuman trafficking cell near the docks. He had taken the hit redirecting a collapsing beam away from a child. The child survived. His wrist did not.

A favourable exchange.

You found him on a rooftop afterwards, attempting to secure a splint one-handed with the grim concentration of a man personally offended by gauze. You stood in front of him for five seconds before saying, “That wrap is a hate crime.”

Damian did not look up. “It is functional.”

“It is shaped like unresolved childhood trauma.”

His eyes lifted. You smiled mildly.

He stared. “You are bold for someone within throwing distance.”

“You’re injured.”

“You believe that protects you?”

“No. I believe your wrist is broken and your left-handed aim with medical tape is probably worse than you think.”

Damian’s jaw tightened. The worst part was that you were correct.

You stepped closer but did not reach for him.

That was unusual. Most people reached. Medics, especially. Even kind ones often forgot that kindness could still become an invasion if delivered without permission.

You held your hands at your sides.

“I can heal it,” you said.

“No.”

“Okay.”

He paused.

You did not argue. No persuasive speech. No moral lecture. No “you don’t have to be tough with me,” which was a phrase Damian loathed almost as much as “calm down.”

You simply accepted his answer and leaned against the roof access door.

Damian narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting.”

“For what?”

“To make sure you don’t pass out from pain while continuing your one-man war against compression bandages.”

“I will not pass out.”

“Great. Then this will be boring.”

The silence that followed should have annoyed him.

It did. But not only.

You watched the skyline instead of watching him. You gave him privacy without leaving him alone. It was a surprisingly difficult balance, and Damian hated that you managed it.

Eventually, his splint slipped. You did not comment.

His wrist throbbed hard enough that his vision flashed white at the edges. You still did not comment.

He exhaled sharply through his nose.

“Fine,” he said. You looked over. “I will permit your assistance.”

“Assistance with the splint or healing?”

He paused. You waited.

Damian looked at your hands. They were steady. Scarred in small places, though no injuries lingered long on you. He knew that much. Everyone knew that. You healed quickly. You healed others faster.

A miracle, Jon had called you. A risk, Damian thought.

“To heal,” he said finally.

You stepped toward him. Slowly. “May I touch your wrist?”

“Yes.”

Your fingers settled around the fracture. Warmth bloomed beneath your palm.

Damian prepared for pain. There was none.

The ache vanished. The bone slid back into place with a painless shift that should have been impossible. Swelling disappeared. Torn tissue knitted itself whole. His fingers, stiff seconds before, flexed freely.

He stared at his hand. There should have been consequences. There were always consequences.

You released him and took half a step back. Your own fingers curled briefly against your palm.

A twitch. Almost nothing.

Damian saw it. “What was that?”

You blinked. “What was what?”

“Your hand.”

“My hand exists. Very observant.”

He frowned.

You smiled. It was a practised smile.

He would understand that later.

At the time, he only knew that he disliked it.

Trust came slowly.

Damian preferred it that way. Trust that arrived too quickly was either foolishness or manipulation. Real trust was built like a fortress: stone by stone, inspected from every angle, reinforced after every storm.

You never rushed him. That was the first stone.

You respected every no. That was the second.

You remembered details he did not expect anyone to notice: that he preferred tea without sugar, that he hated being touched from behind, that Titus became restless during thunderstorms, that Damian’s right shoulder tightened before he admitted exhaustion.

You learned the names of his animals before you learned the gossip about his family. That was several stones at once.

“You brought treats,” Damian said the first time you visited the Manor, and Titus abandoned dignity to shove his massive head into your hands.

“For Titus.”

“I can see that.”

“You sound offended.”

“You have bribed my dog.”

“I have respected his interests.”

Titus wagged his tail with shameless enthusiasm.

Damian crossed his arms. “He has betrayed me.”

“You love him anyway.”

“Unfortunately.”

You smiled down at Titus. “Good boy.”

Damian watched the way your hands scratched behind the dog’s ears. Gentle, sure, absent of fear. Titus leaned against you like a creature who knew exactly where kindness lived.

Damian did not realise he was staring until you glanced up.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Your smile became suspicious. “Was that almost fondness?”

“No.”

“It looked like almost fondness.”

“You are mistaken.”

“I’m choosing to believe otherwise.”

“Your delusions are your own burden.”

You laughed. Damian looked away too late.

After that, you became a regular presence.

Not constant. Damian would not have tolerated constant.

Familiar.

You appeared in the Cave after League missions, carrying medical supplies and the quiet authority of someone who had seen heroes at their worst and remained unimpressed by theatrics. You patched Grayson while he told a story with too many hand gestures and not enough respect for his own cracked ribs. You argued with Todd about antibiotics until he took them out of spite. You confiscated Drake’s coffee once and survived.

Damian had been impressed. Not that he said so.

Jon noticed, because Jon noticed everything Damian wished he would not.

“You like them,” Jon said one evening on a rooftop patrol.

Damian did not stumble. Barely.

“I tolerate them.”

Jon floated beside him, cape moving in the wind. “You gave them one of your sketches.”

“It was a medical diagram.”

“It was a drawing of their hands.”

“Hands are medically relevant.”

“You wrote ‘rest’ under it.”

“They do not rest.”

Jon’s grin widened. “You are so down bad.” Damian turned slowly. Jon backed up in the air. “I say that with love.”

“I will remove you from the sky.”

“You can’t fly.”

“I will improvise.”

Jon laughed.

Damian resumed walking. His ears were warm.

Jon landed beside him, quieter now. “They look at you differently, too.”

Damian’s step faltered. “They do not.”

“They do.”

“Kryptonian hearing does not make you an expert on human emotion.”

“No, but hearing their heartbeat change when you walk in is pretty compelling evidence.” Damian stopped. Jon also stopped, expression immediately apologetic. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You listen to their heart?”

“Not intentionally! It’s just loud when they see you.”

Damian’s own heart became deeply undisciplined.

Jon smiled softly. “You should tell them.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Damian glanced at him, suspicious. “You concede too easily.”

“No, I just know you’ll do it eventually and pretend it was your idea.”

Damian glared. Jon grinned.

Two nights later, you found another drawing tucked into your medical bag. This one was of Titus asleep with his head on your knee. Beneath it, in Damian’s precise handwriting, was one sentence: He trusts you. This reflects well on your character.

You found Damian in the garden.

It was raining, because Gotham apparently believed subtlety was for lesser cities. He stood beneath a stone archway, pretending not to wait.

You approached with the sketch held carefully against your chest.

“This is beautiful,” you said.

“It is accurate.”

“It’s kind.”

“That is debatable.”

“No.” You smiled. “It isn’t.”

Damian looked away.

You stepped under the arch beside him. Rain whispered over ivy. The Manor glowed behind you both, all old stone and golden windows.

“Thank you,” you said.

He nodded stiffly.

There was a silence.

Not uncomfortable. That had become dangerous.

You looked at him, and Damian could feel the moment opening like a door.

“You’re allowed to want things,” you said quietly.

His jaw tightened. It was not fair, how gently you said it. As if the words were not a blade sliding between armour plates. “I am aware.”

“You know it intellectually.”

He looked at you sharply. Your smile was sad.

“What do you want, Damian?”

Many answers came to him.

Peace. Purpose. His father’s approval, though he had outgrown needing it and somehow not outgrown wanting it. A world where children were not trained into weapons. A self that did not sometimes still hear his grandfather’s voice and mistake it for his own.

But those truths were too large for the rain. So he chose the smaller one. The braver one.

“You,” he said.

Your breath caught.

Damian did not look away. Your face changed in a way he did not have language for. Softened, yes, but not with pity. With wonder. With wanting so open, it made his chest hurt.

“You have me,” you whispered.

He should have asked if you were certain. He should have warned you that he did not love gently by instinct, that his devotion had teeth, that he was still learning how to hold without gripping too tightly.

Instead, he leaned in.

You met him halfway.

The first kiss was rain-cold and mouth-warm, hesitant for only the first breath. Then your hand rose to his cheek, and Damian let himself lean into it.

Let himself want. Let himself be wanted.

Later, Jon would claim he heard Damian’s heartbeat “attempt to achieve escape velocity.”

Damian would threaten him. Several times.

But in the rain, beneath ivy, you kissed him like there was nothing in him that needed to be earned back from violence.

And Damian, foolishly perhaps, believed you.

He should have known the past would come for him with a blade. 

The League of Assassins rarely wasted poetry.

When the case began, it looked like a string of metahuman disappearances. Three teenagers taken from Metropolis. Two from Gotham. One from Blüdhaven. All newly powered. All young enough to be frightened by what their bodies had become and old enough for someone cruel to turn that fear into compliance.

Oracle connected the disappearances to an abandoned hospital outside Gotham registered under six false companies, two shell organisations, and one name Damian had not heard spoken aloud in years.

A minor League sect. Old blood. New methods.

His father stood at the Cave computer, grim and silent. Grayson’s usual warmth had sharpened into focus. Drake’s fingers flew across keys. Todd checked and rechecked his weapons with quiet, murderous care. Jon stood beside Damian, tension radiating off him like sunlight behind storm clouds.

You stood near the medbay entrance. Damian saw you before anyone spoke.

“No,” he said.

Your eyes moved to him. “Excuse me?”

“You are not coming.”

Todd muttered, “Smooth, brat.”

Damian ignored him.

You stepped closer. “They’ll have injured kids inside.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t want a healer there?”

“I do not want you there.”

The room went still.

Your face did not change, but Damian saw the hurt land. He regretted the phrasing instantly.

Not the meaning. The wound.

You folded your arms. “Because it’s dangerous?”

“Because it is League.”

Your expression softened, which was worse than anger. “Dami.”

“No.”

“You can’t keep me away from every shadow in your past.”

“I can keep you away from this one.”

“That isn’t your choice.”

“It is if I refuse to allow you through the Zeta-tube.”

Drake winced.

Grayson said, “Dami.”

You stared at him.

For a moment, he thought you would argue. Part of him wanted you to. Part of him wanted you angry enough that the fear in his chest had somewhere to go.

Instead, you nodded once. “Fine.”

Damian hated the word.

You looked at Bruce. “I’ll coordinate med support from here.”

Bruce’s gaze shifted between you and Damian.

Then he nodded. “Accepted.”

You did not look at Damian again.

Good, he told himself. He had protected you.

It felt like losing.

The facility beneath the hospital was exactly what Damian expected. That made it worse.

Stone corridors beneath sterile tile. Modern restraints bolted into old walls. Hidden sigils carved under steel plates. The League had always understood the value of layering cruelty beneath cleanliness.

The team split. Batman and Nightwing cleared the upper labs. Red Hood secured the escape route with a level of aggression that suggested several assassins would later require reconstructive dentistry. Red Robin disabled surveillance from the Cave with you beside him on medical coordination. Damian and Jon moved through the lower chambers.

They found the first two teenagers in a containment room.

Bruised. Dehydrated. Alive. One had burns from power-dampening cuffs. The other had a dislocated shoulder and a split lip. Damian’s jaw tightened as Jon broke the cuffs with careful rage.

Your voice came through comms. “Status?”

“Two recovered,” Damian replied. “Nonfatal injuries. Burns, dislocation, dehydration.”

A short pause. “Can they move?”

“Yes.”

“Get them to extraction. I’ll have medics ready.”

Damian heard it in your voice. The restraint.

You wanted to be there. You wanted to put your hands over the burns and make them vanish.

Instead, you gave orders.

He was proud. He was afraid. Both feelings sat together in him like badly behaved animals.

They moved deeper.

The final chamber was beneath the old surgical wing. It had once been an operating theatre. The League had turned it into something worse. Six teenagers were strapped to tilted metal tables arranged in a circle around a machine pulsing with stolen metahuman energy. Their powers fed into the device through cables bright with unstable light.

In the centre stood a man in black armour with a white sash marked in old League script.

Damian knew the title.

Not the man. That hardly mattered. The League was full of replaceable monsters wearing inherited arrogance.

“Blood heir,” the man said.

Jon’s eyes burned red. “I hate when they call you that.”

“As do I,” Damian said.

Then the fight began. Assassins dropped from the rafters. Red solar emitters ignited in the walls, flooding the room in pulses designed to weaken Jon without fully stripping him. Power-dampening fields snapped on around the captives. Blades flashed.

Damian moved.

He had been raised in rooms like this. He knew their rhythm. Strike before the second attacker lands. Never follow the obvious opening. The left wall hides a second blade. The floor sigil is not decorative. The man with the shorter sword is the true threat.

He fought like memory given teeth. Jon fought beside him, weakened but furious, each hit controlled enough to avoid collapsing the chamber on the children.

“Red Robin,” Damian snapped over comms. “Disable the solar emitters.”

“Working,” Tim replied. “They’re layered into the medical grid.”

Todd’s voice cut in, breathless and violent. “I can blow the grid.”

“Do not blow the grid,” Tim and Bruce said at once.

Todd scoffed. “No one appreciates vision.”

Your voice came through, tight. “Damian, behind you.”

He turned before the blade reached his spine.

An assassin fell.

Damian’s pulse sharpened. You were watching through hacked security feeds.

Good. Bad. You were seeing too much.

The lead assassin smiled.

“Still guided by softer hands,” he said.

Damian lunged.

Mistake.

Not fatal. Almost.

The floor beneath him flared with old script. Chains of black light erupted around his right arm and shoulder, locking him mid-strike. Jon shouted and tried to reach him, but two assassins drove him back beneath red solar pulses.

Damian twisted. The chains tightened.

The lead assassin drew a curved blade.

Not toward Damian’s heart. Toward his arm.

Damian understood at once. Maiming, not killing. A message. A punishment. A ritual humiliation. The blood heir made less whole.

He fought the chains with everything he had.

Not enough.

The blade came down. Pain went white.

For one suspended heartbeat, there was nothing.

Then sound returned.

Jon screaming his name. The teenagers crying out. The wet sound of blood hitting tile.

Damian looked down. His right arm was nearly severed below the elbow. Attached by ruined flesh, fractured bone, and a stubbornness his body had apparently inherited from him.

The sight was clinical in its horror.

He knew what losing the arm would mean.

Not death. Worse, in some ways.

Relearning everything. Sword forms. Drawing. Writing. Touch. Balance. The language of his body rewritten by another person’s blade.

Pain struck next, vast and blinding.

Damian dropped to his knees. His left hand clamped above the wound. Blood surged between his fingers.

“Robin!” Bruce’s voice cracked over comms.

That, more than the injury, frightened him. His father sounded afraid.

Jon hit the lead assassin so hard that the man flew into the far wall.

The solar emitters died.

Tim’s voice, “Grid down.”

Todd, “I still think explosions would’ve been faster.”

Your voice came next. Not steady. Not anymore.

“Damian?”

He clenched his teeth. Could not answer.

Jon dropped beside him, face white. He pressed both hands over Damian’s arm, trying to stem the bleeding without making it worse.

“Oh God,” Jon breathed. “Dami, stay with me.”

“I am… here,” Damian forced out.

“You’re losing too much blood.”

“I noticed.”

“Stop being sarcastic while actively bleeding out!”

Your voice came again. “Jon. Status.”

Jon looked at the comm on Damian’s collar, horrified.

“It’s his arm,” Jon said. “It’s—it’s almost gone.”

Silence. The kind that took all air with it.

Then the sound Damian dreaded most. The Zeta-tube activating in the chamber beyond.

“No,” Damian rasped.

Jon looked at him. “Damian—”

“No.”

He tried to push himself upright. Failed.

The chamber doors opened. Batman entered first, cape like a storm, medkit in hand.

You came behind him.

Your eyes found Damian. Everything in your face stopped.

No. That was his first thought.

Not relief. Not love.

No.

Because he knew you. He knew what you were seeing. Not only the blood. Not only the limb hanging by torn flesh. Not only the future unravelling in one brutal line.

You were seeing something you could fix.

“Do not,” he said.

Your face crumpled. You crossed the room anyway.

Bruce knelt at Damian’s other side, taking over pressure from Jon with controlled, terrible efficiency.

“Tourniquet,” Bruce said.

Jon was already moving.

You knelt in front of Damian.

“Hi,” you whispered.

Absurd. He loved you so fiercely in that moment that it frightened him more than the blood loss.

“No,” he said again.

Your hands hovered over his arm. Shaking now. The tremor was visible. He hated that.

“I can save it,” you said.

His vision blurred. “No.”

“You could lose your hand.”

“I know.”

“Your arm.”

“I know.”

“Damian.”

He looked at you. Your eyes were full of tears, but beneath the fear was something harder.

Resolve. The same resolve he had seen in you a hundred times when someone was hurt. When pain became a problem and your body became the answer.

“No,” he whispered.

You touched his face with one blood-slick hand.

He should have turned away. He did not.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

His heart stopped. “No.”

“I can’t let them take this from you.”

“No.”

“You draw with this hand.” His throat closed. “You hold your sword with it,” you continued, voice breaking. “You hold Titus. You hold me.”

“Beloved—”

“I can help.”

“You will take the wound.”

“Not all of it.”

“You do not know that.”

“I know my body.” A desperate, broken smile flickered across your mouth. “It changes things. It softens the transfer sometimes. I probably won’t get it as bad.”

“Probably,” Damian spat.

You flinched. Good.

No. Not good. Nothing was good.

Bruce’s gaze snapped to you. “What does that mean?”

No one answered him. The entire chamber seemed to narrow around you and Damian.

Your hand was still on his face. His blood streaked your fingers.

“I can’t watch you lose part of yourself,” you whispered.

Rage and terror rose together in Damian’s chest. “You think my hand is myself?”

“No,” you said immediately. “No. That’s not what I mean.”

“That is what you said.”

“I mean they took enough from you. The League took enough. Your childhood, your choices, your body, your pain, your name before you even knew what names meant.” Your voice cracked. “I cannot sit here with the power to stop them from taking one more thing and choose not to.”

His breath hitched.

There it was. The blade under the kindness.

Not pity. Fury. You were angry for him. You were choosing him. You were choosing him over yourself.

He wanted to weep. He wanted to shout. He wanted to beg.

“Ask me,” he said.

Your face broke. “Damian—”

“Ask me.”

The words cost him more than blood.

You stared at him. “I can’t.”

Pain lanced through him.

Not from the arm. From you.

“You can,” he said. “You must.”

“If I ask, you’ll say no.”

“Yes.”

“And then I’ll have to let it happen.”

“You will have to honour my choice.”

Your tears spilled over. “I’m not strong enough for that.”

Damian’s heart shattered.

Bruce went very still beside him. Jon made a small, broken sound.

You leaned closer.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered again.

And then your hands closed around Damian’s ruined arm.

The transfer hit like lightning.

Damian screamed. So did you. For one second, pain filled everything. Not leaving him gently, not fading like mercy. It ripped out of him, dragging fire and nerve and blood with it.

Then his arm healed. Bone snapped into alignment. Flesh knitted. Tendons reconnected. Skin sealed beneath your palms. Feeling surged down to his fingertips in a brutal rush.

His hand flexed. Whole. His.

Then you collapsed.

Your right arm buckled beneath you.

Not severed. Not as bad. You had been right. Somehow, impossibly, terribly right.

But the damage still tore through you. A jagged wound split from your forearm toward your wrist, deep enough to expose blood and white flashes of bone beneath muscle. Your fingers curled uselessly. Blood poured down your hand, splattering onto the tile. Your shoulder hit the floor, and your breath broke on a sound Damian would hear forever.

For half a second, he stared at his healed hand. Then at yours.

No.

No.

No.

He lunged toward you. His body, newly healed but blood-weakened, nearly failed him. Jon caught his shoulder. Damian shoved him away and dragged himself to you with both hands, both whole hands, which made it worse.

“Beloved,” he choked.

You were curled around your injured arm, face white with agony.

Bruce moved quickly, already applying pressure to your wound. You cried out. Damian flinched as if the sound had opened him.

“Do not touch them,” he snapped at Bruce.

Bruce’s eyes flashed. “They’re bleeding.”

Damian knew he was being irrational. He did not care.

“Damian,” you gasped.

His attention snapped to you.

You were looking at him. Not your arm.

Him.

Relief trembled through your expression.

Relief.

Because his arm was whole. Because you had succeeded.

Damian felt something inside him go cold and wild.

“How dare you,” he whispered.

Your eyes filled. “I’m sorry.”

“How dare you.”

“I couldn’t—”

“You could,” he said, voice shaking. “You chose not to.”

Your face crumpled.

He wanted to take the words back. He wanted to sharpen them. He wanted to kiss you until your pain disappeared. He wanted your blood off the floor. He wanted his wound back.

“You chose me,” he said.

Your lips trembled. “Yes.”

“Over yourself.”

“Yes.”

The honesty was a killing blow.

Damian’s breath left him.

Bruce tightened the pressure bandage around your arm. You whimpered, trying to stay still. Jon knelt nearby, crying openly now. Damian barely saw him.

“You were right,” you whispered. His heart stopped. “It’s not as bad.”

Damian stared at you.

Then laughed once. A terrible sound.

“You think that matters?” Your eyes searched his, confused through pain and shock. “You think because the wound is smaller, the violation is smaller?”

You flinched.

Bruce’s expression tightened.

Jon whispered, “Dami…”

“No,” Damian snapped. “Do not.”

Your breathing hitched.

Damian’s hands shook. His right hand, whole and healed, shook.

That made him angrier. That made him love you more. That made him hate everything.

“You did not save my arm,” he said, voice breaking. “You made it yours.”

Your face went slack.

There. Good.

No. Not good.

Truth. Necessary and brutal.

You looked at your wounded arm as if seeing it for the first time. Blood soaked the bandage beneath Bruce’s hands.

Your mouth opened. No sound came out.

Then the pain took you. Your eyes rolled back.

Damian caught you before your head hit the floor. “Beloved?”

No response.

“Beloved.”

Bruce pressed two fingers to your throat. “Pulse is weak. We need extraction now.”

Damian held you against him, his healed hand cradling your head.

His arm worked perfectly. He had never hated his own body more.

The Watchtower medbay smelled like antiseptic and fear. Damian sat outside the surgical suite with blood on his clothes.

Yours. His. Both.

He had refused to change.

Todd had said nothing, which was how Damian knew the situation had reached an unnatural level of horror. Jon sat on the floor across from him, knees drawn up, cape wrapped around his shoulders. He had cried himself quiet twenty minutes earlier. Bruce stood near the observation window like a statue carved by grief. Grayson paced. Drake typed furiously on one tablet, then another, then stopped as if realising no amount of data would make time move faster.

Todd leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, helmet off, face pale and furious.

“This is bullshit,” Jason said finally. No one answered. “This whole damn thing is bullshit.”

“Jason,” Dick said softly.

“No. They should’ve told us.”

Damian’s eyes lifted.

Todd looked at him.

Not accusing. Not pitying.

Understanding.

It was unbearable.

“They should’ve told us what healing cost,” Jason said. “Before any of us let them touch us.”

Damian looked down at his right hand.

He flexed his fingers. Whole. Obedient. Yours now, some treacherous part of him thought.

No.

No.

He dug his nails into his palm. Pain answered.

His pain. At least that remained.

“They knew I would refuse,” Damian said.

His voice was calm. Too calm.

Everyone looked at him.

“They knew,” he repeated. “So they did not ask.”

Jon’s face crumpled again.

Bruce said, quietly, “They thought they were saving you.”

Damian’s gaze snapped to his father. “They were.”

Silence.

Damian stood. His body swayed.

Jon scrambled up, but Damian lifted a hand. Jon stopped.

Damian looked at Bruce. “That is the problem.”

Bruce’s face tightened.

“I know,” he said.

Of course he did. Bruce Wayne understood being saved against his will. Understood surviving at a cost someone else paid. Understood the rage that followed gratitude so closely they became nearly impossible to separate.

Damian hated that he understood.

The surgical doors opened. Dr Mid-Nite emerged, expression grave but not hopeless. Damian was in front of him immediately.

“They’re alive,” the doctor said.

Damian nearly collapsed.

He did not. But Jon did, a little, against the wall.

“The transferred injury was severe,” Dr Mid-Nite continued. “Less catastrophic than yours would have been, but still serious. The arm is salvageable. There’s nerve trauma, tendon damage, blood loss. Their accelerated healing is responding, but slowly.”

“Will they regain function?” Damian asked.

“Likely, with treatment and time.”

Likely. Damian hated likely. Likely was probably wearing a white coat.

He wanted certainty. He got none.

“Can I see them?”

The doctor hesitated. Damian’s eyes narrowed.

Bruce stepped closer. “He won’t interfere.”

Dr Mid-Nite looked at Damian. Damian lifted his chin.

“I will not interfere,” he said.

He did not know if it was true. But he meant to make it so.

The doctor nodded.

You looked too small in the bed. Damian hated that thought. You were not small. You were not fragile. You were not a wounded bird cupped in his hands.

You were the person who had looked at the League’s attempt to maim him and said, No more. You were the person who had made yourself the answer.

You were terrible. You were brave. You were unconscious beneath white sheets, right arm wrapped from shoulder to wrist and elevated in a brace.

Damian approached slowly. Machines hummed. Your face was pale with pain even in sleep.

He stopped beside the bed. For a long time, he did nothing.

Then he reached out with his right hand. The healed one.

His fingers hovered over your bandaged arm.

He did not touch. He could not.

It felt obscene.

“Why?” he whispered.

You did not answer. The monitors did.

Steady beep. Alive.

Damian sat. He folded his hands in his lap. His right hand looked unchanged. Same calluses. Same scars. Same fine ink stain near his thumb from sketching two days earlier. Same knuckles bruised from training. Same fingers that had held yours in the garden.

It should have been a relief.

It was. That was the cruelty.

He was relieved.

He loved his hand. He loved what it allowed him to do. Draw. Fight. touch. Feed Titus scraps when Alfred was not looking. Hold his sword. Hold you.

He had not wanted to lose it. He had been prepared to.

You had seen the part of him that feared the loss, the part he would have hidden beneath pride, and you had chosen that frightened part over your own safety.

Damian hated you for it. Damian loved you for it. Both truths wrapped around his throat until breathing became difficult.

“You should have asked,” he said. His voice shook. “You should have asked me and allowed me to refuse. You should have trusted me to survive less than wholeness.” His eyes burned. “You should not have loved me like the League.”

The words entered the room and stayed. He regretted them immediately.

No. He did not.

Yes. Both. Always both with you now.

You stirred. Damian sat forward sharply. Your eyelids fluttered.

“Beloved?”

Your eyes opened slowly. Unfocused.

Then they found him.

Relief. Again.

Damian closed his eyes. When he opened them, you were trying to smile.

“Arm?” you rasped.

His jaw tightened. “Yours or mine?”

Your smile vanished.

Good. No. He was tired of good. Tired of bad. Tired of feeling everything.

“Damian,” you whispered.

He took the cup from beside the bed and held the straw to your lips. His right hand did not tremble this time.

You drank. Only a little. He set the cup down.

“My arm is whole,” he said.

Your eyes closed. “Good.”

The word struck him like a slap. He stood so quickly the chair scraped back.

Your eyes opened, startled.

“No,” he said.

Your face twisted with pain and confusion. “No?”

“No. You do not get to say good.”

Your throat bobbed. “I saved it.”

“You took it.”

“I saved it.”

“At the cost of your own.”

“It isn’t as bad.”

He stared at you. You seemed to hear yourself then. Your face faltered.

“It isn’t,” you said, quieter. “I knew it wouldn’t be as bad.”

“You did not know.”

“I was pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure,” he repeated.

Your eyes filled.

His hands curled into fists. Both hands. “You gambled with your body.”

“I gambled to keep yours.”

“I did not ask you to.”

“I know.”

“You did not let me refuse.”

“I know.”

“You did not trust me.”

That hurt you. Your mouth trembled. “I did trust you.”

“No.” Damian shook his head once. “You trusted that I would survive. You did not trust that I had the right to choose what survival looked like.”

Tears slipped down your temples.

“I couldn’t bear it,” you whispered.

“What?”

“The thought of you losing it.” Your gaze flicked to his right hand. “Your hand. Your arm. Your art. Your sword. The way you touch everything like you’re still learning you’re allowed to be gentle.”

Damian went still.

Your voice broke. “I couldn’t bear knowing I could help and choosing not to. I couldn’t bear seeing another piece of you taken by them.”

He looked away. The room blurred.

Damn you. Damn you for knowing that. Damn you for seeing the child beneath the blade, the boy raised by people who called ownership love, the man still trying to make his body his own. Damn you for choosing him. Damn you for being right that part of him was glad.

“I would have learned,” he said. You sobbed once. “I would have adapted.”

“I know.”

“I am more than my sword hand.”

“I know,” you said, crying harder now. “I know, Damian. I swear I know. I didn’t do it because I thought you’d be less. I did it because I love all of you, and I couldn’t watch you be forced to lose something when I had a chance to stop it.”

His anger fractured. Love rushed in through the crack.

Unwelcome. Unstoppable.

He sat down again, slower this time. “You chose me over yourself.”

Your eyes held his. “Yes.”

The honesty hurt worse than any lie could have.

Damian lowered his head. For a moment, he was back in the chamber. Your hand on his face. Your eyes full of tears. Your voice saying sorry because you already knew you were about to betray him for love.

He hated that he understood. He hated that if it had been you on the floor with your arm nearly severed, he did not know if he would have done better.

That thought humbled him. Humiliation would have been easier. This was grief.

“I love you,” he said.

Your breath caught. He looked at you.

“I love you for choosing me,” he continued, voice rough. “For looking at the worst thing the League tried to make me and refusing to let them take more. I love you for your fury. For your tenderness. For wanting me whole even when I was prepared not to be.”

Your face crumpled.

“And I hate you for choosing me over yourself.”

You closed your eyes. “I know.”

“No,” he said. “Listen.”

Your eyes opened again.

“I hate that you decided my wholeness was worth your damage. I hate that I am relieved. I hate that part of me wants to thank you while another part wants to never let you touch me again.”

A tear slid down your cheek. Damian reached for it.

Stopped.

“May I?” he asked.

Your face broke all over again. “Yes.”

He wiped the tear away with his right thumb. His healed thumb.

You leaned into the touch. He nearly broke.

“I am angry,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“I will be angry for some time.”

“I know.”

“I may not forgive you quickly.”

Your lips trembled. “Okay.”

“But I am staying.”

A sob caught in your throat. Damian leaned closer.

“I am staying,” he repeated. “Because love is not leaving when one has been wounded. Even by the beloved.”

You cried then.

Not quietly. Not beautifully. You cried like something in you had finally stopped bracing for abandonment.

Damian rested his forehead against yours, careful of the tubes, the bandages, the injured arm held between you like a third presence.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

His eyes closed. “I know.”

A faint, watery laugh escaped you. “Arrogant.”

“Yes.”

“Say it back anyway?”

His mouth softened. “I love you.”

Your breath shuddered.

“I love you,” he said again, because the words seemed to hurt you in a healing way, and Damian was beginning to understand that not all pain was harm. “I love you, and you were wrong.”

You laughed and sobbed at the same time. “That is very you.”

“I am consistent.”

“You are.”

His hand remained on your face. Your uninjured hand lifted slowly and covered his.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. The monitor kept counting proof of your survival. Damian listened like it was scripture.

Recovery was not gentle. Yours rarely was.

The wound had not taken your arm, but it had changed it. Nerves misfired beneath the skin. Your fingers trembled. Grip strength came and went like a moody ghost. Some days, your hand curled stiffly and refused to open without coaxing. Some nights, the pain climbed from wrist to shoulder and left you pale, sweating, biting back sounds Damian wished he could tear from the world.

He did not offer to have you heal yourself. He had learned enough by then. You could accelerate your recovery only in fragments, carefully, at the cost of exhaustion that frightened everyone.

So you healed slowly. Humanly.

Damian stayed. Angrily. Devotedly.

He brought tea and corrected your posture with surgical precision. He read aloud when the pain made focusing difficult. He chose poetry at first because he thought it might soothe you. Then he chose murder mysteries because you criticised everyone’s investigative technique so fiercely that even Drake listened from the doorway with reluctant approval.

He brushed your hair when your arm hurt too much.

The first time, you cried. He pretended not to notice until you said, “You can notice.”

So he did.

“You are crying,” Damian said.

You laughed wetly. “Thanks.”

“I am uncertain what response is appropriate.”

“Just keep going.”

He did. His fingers moved through your hair with grave concentration.

Todd walked in, saw the scene, and immediately walked back out muttering, “Nope, too intimate, I’m emotionally allergic.”

You laughed so hard that Damian threatened him through the door.

Some days, Damian’s anger sharpened unexpectedly.

A dropped cup. Your wince while trying to flex your fingers. The sight of you struggling to button a shirt. Each small reminder of what you had taken from him and made yours.

One afternoon, you caught him staring at your hand as you failed to hold a pen.

“Say it,” you said.

Damian looked up. “What?”

“Whatever you’re thinking.”

“I am thinking many things.”

“The angry one.”

His jaw tightened.

You waited. Always waiting, even now.

He exhaled. “I am thinking that I should be the one unable to hold a pen.”

Your face softened with pain.

“I am thinking that you stole a consequence from me.”

“Yes.”

“I am thinking that I am grateful.”

Your eyes filled.

His voice hardened. “And that gratitude disgusts me.”

You set the pen down. “Damian.”

“No. You asked.”

“I did.”

He stood, restless, anger moving through him like a blade seeking a target. “I look at my hand and I am relieved. I draw and I am relieved. I hold my sword and I am relieved. I touch you and I am relieved.”

Your mouth trembled.

He looked at you, furious and wrecked. “Then I look at your hand.”

You said nothing.

“I do not know where to put the relief,” he confessed.

Your expression crumpled.

Oh. There it was. The truth under the anger.

He did not know how to be grateful for something that had hurt you. He did not know how to love the saved part of himself without feeling like he was betraying the wounded part of you.

You rose carefully from the chair. He stiffened. You came close but did not touch.

“I don’t need you to be only grateful,” you said softly. His throat tightened. “I don’t even need you to be grateful at all.”

“I am.”

“I know.”

“I despise it.”

“I know.”

Your injured hand hung between you, bandaged, trembling slightly.

Damian looked at it. Then, slowly, he held out his right hand. His healed hand.

You stared.

“May I?” he asked.

Your eyes filled. “Yes.”

He took your injured hand with unbearable care. The bandages were soft beneath his fingers.

Your hand trembled in his. He lifted it and pressed his mouth to your knuckles. You inhaled sharply.

“I am angry,” he said against your skin. “I am grateful.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

Your eyes closed. “I know,” you whispered.

He looked up.

“And I hate,” he said, voice rough, “that those truths do not cancel each other out.”

You opened your eyes. “They don’t have to.”

“No.” He held your hand between both of his. “No,” he repeated. “They do not.”

It was not forgiveness. Not yet.

But it was contact. It was honest. It was enough for that moment.

Jon came often. He was terrible at pretending he was not checking on both of you. He brought snacks, flowers, terrible jokes, and one stuffed cow wearing a tiny Robin cape.

Damian stared at it. You stared at it.

Jon held it out with both hands. “For emotional support.”

Damian said, “Leave.”

You laughed immediately.

Jon brightened. “See? It helped.”

“It offended me.”

“That’s your love language.”

“I will make you eat the cow.”

“It has a name.”

“No.”

“Moo-bin.”

Damian closed his eyes. You laughed so hard you had to clutch your injured arm, which made Damian glare at Jon with genuine threat.

Jon winced. “Sorry. Sorry. Medium laughter only.”

You wheezed, “Moo-bin.”

Damian looked at you.

Betrayal. Absolute betrayal.

Jon smiled, then sobered. “Can I talk to Damian for a sec?”

You looked between them.

Damian stiffened. “If this is another emotional intervention—”

“It is.”

“No.”

“Dami.”

You touched Damian’s wrist gently. “Go,” you said.

He frowned. “I’m fine.”

“That word is banned.”

“I am stable, medicated, and entertained by Moo-bin.”

Jon looked delighted. Damian looked betrayed again. Still, he followed Jon into the hallway.

For several seconds, Jon said nothing.

Damian crossed his arms. “Speak.”

Jon looked toward the medbay door. Then back at Damian. “You’re allowed to be glad.”

Damian went still.

Jon’s face was open and earnest and far too difficult to dismiss.

“That your arm is okay,” Jon said. “You’re allowed to be glad.”

Damian looked away. 

“They would want you to be.”

“That is part of the problem.”

“I know.”

“You do not.”

Jon’s jaw tightened.

“I watched them do it,” he said.

Damian looked back.

Jon’s eyes shone. “I watched you say no. I watched them do it anyway. I watched you heal and them drop. I’m angry too.”

Damian’s throat closed.

Jon stepped closer. “But I also heard your heartbeat when you saw your hand move again.”

Damian flinched.

“Sorry,” Jon said quickly. “I know. Accidental perceiving. Bad habit.”

Damian did not respond.

Jon continued anyway. “It sounded like hope.”

The words struck too deep. Damian turned away.

Jon’s voice softened. “I don’t think that makes you bad.”

Damian’s jaw clenched.

“The League made you think every gift is a debt,” Jon said. “But this isn’t that.”

“It feels like that.”

“I know.”

“They paid in blood.”

“Yeah.”

“For me.”

“Yes.”

“How is that not debt?”

Jon was quiet. Then he said, “Because they’re not asking you to repay it.” Damian shut his eyes. “They’re asking you to stay.”

Damian hated how simple Jon made things. How gentle. How impossible to refute.

“I do not know if staying is enough,” Damian said.

Jon stepped beside him. “Maybe not every day. But it’s a start.”

The hallway remained silent.

Then Damian said, “Moo-bin is a terrible name.”

Jon laughed, startled. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“You keeping him?”

Damian looked toward the medbay door.

Through the small window, he could see you holding the cow in your lap, smiling faintly at its ridiculous cape.

“Yes,” Damian said.

Jon wisely did not comment.

The first time you returned to the garden, your hand was still bandaged. The rain had stopped earlier, leaving the paths dark and shining beneath the evening lights. Titus wandered ahead, sniffing at wet leaves. The Manor windows glowed gold behind you.

Damian walked beside you. Close enough that your sleeves brushed.

You stopped beneath the same ivy arch where he had first told you he wanted you. The memory sat between you.

Soft. Cruel. Yours.

You looked at him. “I’m scared you’ll never look at me the same.”

Damian’s chest tightened.

He considered lying.

No. No more soft lies.

“I do not look at you the same.”

Your face fell.

He turned toward you fully. “I know more now.”

You swallowed. “That sounds ominous.”

“It is honest.”

Your mouth trembled.

He reached for your injured hand. Paused. You nodded.

He took it carefully. “I know you are capable of betraying my choice to preserve my body.”

You closed your eyes.

“I know you are reckless when afraid.”

A tear slipped down your cheek.

“I know you love me with a ferocity that does not always ask permission.”

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“I’ll keep saying it.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know how to make it right.”

Damian looked down at your joined hands.

His whole one. Your wounded one.

“There is no undoing it.”

Your breath caught.

He looked back at you.

“There is only what comes next.”

You opened your eyes. “What comes next?”

He brushed his thumb lightly over the edge of your bandage. “You tell me when you are in pain.” You nodded. “You do not minimise it because it is less than what I would have suffered.” Another tear fell. “You let me be angry without deciding I no longer love you.” Your face crumpled. “And I,” he continued, voice roughening, “will learn to feel relief without turning it into shame.”

You stared at him.

The rain began again, soft at first. Gotham had timing. Terrible, dramatic timing.

You laughed through tears.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re negotiating emotional terms in the rain.”

“It is a serious matter.”

“It’s very romantic.”

“It is practical.”

“It can be both.”

He considered this. Then nodded once. “Fine.”

Your smile was small. “Fine?”

“It can be both.”

You stepped closer. “Can I kiss you?”

Damian’s heart moved painfully.

Even after everything. Especially after everything. You asked.

“Yes,” he said.

You kissed him gently. Too gently. As if afraid he would break beneath the weight of what you had done.

Damian’s left hand rose to your face. His right rested against your waist, whole and steady and unbearable.

He deepened the kiss. You made a soft sound against his mouth. He held you there beneath the ivy while rain gathered in your hair.

When he pulled back, your eyes were closed.

“You are not forgiven yet,” he whispered.

Your eyes opened. “I know.”

“But you are loved.”

Your face broke open with relief so bright it nearly hurt to see. 

He continued before the words could fail him. “You are loved while I am angry. You are loved while I am grateful. You are loved while I do not understand how to carry either.”

Your injured hand rose slowly and touched his chest. Over his heart.

“I can live with that,” you whispered.

“You must.”

A faint smile. “Bossy.”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

His throat tightened. “I know.”

You gave him a look.

He let the smallest smile touch his mouth. “I love you too.”

Titus barked from somewhere near the fountain, apparently offended that no one was paying attention to him.

You laughed.

Damian’s right hand flexed at your waist. He felt the motion. Felt every tendon obey. Felt relief. Felt guilt. Felt your warmth beneath his palm.

This time, he did not push any of it away. He held it. All of it. The anger. The gratitude. The love. The wound. The choice stolen and the life preserved. The hand he kept and the hand you injured to keep it for him.

Pain had gone somewhere. So had love.

Not cleanly. Not without consequence. But here, in the rain, with your hand over his heart and his over your bandages, Damian understood something he had never been taught in the League.

A gift paid in blood could still be wrong. A wrong thing could still come from love. Love could wound and remain love. And healing, real healing, was not the absence of scars. It was the choice to stay and learn the shape of them.

Damian pressed his forehead to yours.

“I will draw again,” he said quietly. Your breath caught. “And when I do, you will sit for me.”

You smiled through fresh tears. “What will you draw?”

He looked at your face. Your wet hair. Your tired eyes. Your stubborn, devastating tenderness. Then your bandaged hand. Then his own.

“Hands,” he said.

You laughed softly. “Again?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Damian lifted your injured hand and kissed the bandages. “Because they tell the truth.”

You looked at him like he had given you something fragile.

Maybe he had. Maybe he was learning. Maybe both of you were.

The rain fell harder, silvering the garden.

Inside the Manor, his family waited with tea, lectures, jokes, and the unbearable relief of people who had almost lost too much and were now determined to hover about it.

Out here, there was only you. Only him. Only the wound between you, no longer hidden.

Damian held your hand. You held his. Neither of you were whole in the way you had been before.

But you were here.

Loved. Angry. Alive.

The first time Tim met you, you were healing Bart Allen’s broken arm in the middle of a ruined parking garage while three League members argued with a sentient weather machine above your heads. Bart had taken the hit saving a child from a collapsing stairwell. He was vibrating too hard from pain and adrenaline, his words blurring into one long stream of panic.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine, I mean it is super not fine but it’s fine because bones are supposed to be inside and this one is mostly still inside, which is a win, right? That’s a win. I’m calling that a win—”

You knelt in front of him, calm as moonlight.

“Bart,” you said. He stopped talking. Tim, who had known Bart long enough to understand what a miracle that was, immediately became suspicious. You held your hands a few inches away from Bart’s arm. “Can I help?”

Bart blinked fast. “Yes, please, because I’m trying very hard not to look and I looked three times already because my eyes are traitors.”

“Okay,” you said. “Look at me instead.”

You placed both hands around the break. Tim watched from ten feet away with a half-functional tablet tucked under one arm, blood drying at his temple and smoke staining his cape.

Warm light flickered beneath your fingers. Bart’s breathing steadied. His arm straightened. The swelling vanished. The bone shifted back into place with no visible incision, no external force, no residual damage.

Tim’s brain immediately began screaming. Because that was not possible. Or, more accurately, it was possible in at least nineteen different ways, and Tim hated not knowing which one he was looking at. Magic. Metagene. Divine intervention. Alien biology. Sympathetic energy transfer. Reality manipulation. Accelerated cellular repair. Time displacement. Wish magic. Lazarus-adjacent biofield reconstruction.

He made a list in his head. He always made lists.

Bart flexed his healed hand.

“Oh,” Bart said softly. “Whoa.”

You smiled. “Better?”

“Way better. Like, extremely better. Like, can-I-hug-you better? Is that weird? That might be weird.”

You laughed. “It’s not weird.”

Bart hugged you. You hugged him back. For one second, your face changed over Bart’s shoulder.

Only one.

Your eyes squeezed shut. Your jaw tightened. Your right hand trembled where it rested against Bart’s back. Then Bart pulled away, and you were smiling again.

Tim noticed. He did not know what it meant yet. That part came later.

At first, you were simply a variable. That was how Tim thought of you in the beginning, which he would later admit was objectively terrible and emotionally avoidant. But in his defence, he was seventeen, sleep-deprived, and had once tried to categorise his grief responses by operational impact.

So. A variable. A healer with inconsistent output cost, undefined limitations, and an alarming tendency to run toward active injury sites with no armour beyond stubbornness and a jacket with too many pockets.

You worked with everyone. Justice League emergencies. Titans fallout. Outlaws extractions. Young Justice chaos, which was its own category of medical nonsense because Kon, Bart, and Cassie could turn “reconnaissance” into “whoops, we angered a subterranean crystal cult” before lunch.

You were not officially assigned to Young Justice. You just kept showing up. Tim assumed Batman had coordinated it. Then he asked Bruce, and Bruce said, “I assumed you had.”

That was the first red flag. The second was that you never filed complete medical reports. They were accurate where it mattered: injury type, patient status, treatment applied, recovery expectations. But the sections on energetic cost, healer strain, and post-treatment symptoms were vague enough to qualify as modern art.

Fatigue. Mild drain. Temporary side effects. Resolved with rest.

Tim hated vague. Vague got people killed.

He started watching you more carefully. Not in a creepy way. Probably.

Mostly probably.

“You’re staring,” Cassie said one night in the Mount Justice kitchen.

Tim blinked and looked down at his laptop. “No, I’m not.”

“You were staring at the wall.”

“I was thinking.”

“You were thinking at the wall?”

“Yes.”

She leaned over his shoulder. “Is this about the healer?”

“No.”

His screen was open to a spreadsheet titled HEALING INCIDENT CORRELATION. Cassie stared at it. 

Kon walked in, took one look, and grinned. “Oh, it is definitely about the healer.”

Tim closed the laptop. Too late.

Bart appeared beside him in a blur, cereal bowl in hand. “Are we talking about our magic doctor? I like them. They have very chill vibes. Like if a weighted blanket became a person.”

“They are not a magic doctor,” Tim said automatically.

Kon leaned against the counter. “So you admit you’ve thought about it.”

“I think about everything.”

“Yeah, but you think about them in italics.”

Tim frowned. “That sentence has no meaning.”

Cassie patted his shoulder. “It has a lot of meaning.”

“It really does,” Bart added.

Tim stood. “I’m leaving.”

Kon pointed at the laptop. “Take your totally normal crush spreadsheet.”

“It is not a crush spreadsheet.”

“It has colour coding,” Cassie said.

“For incident severity.” Tim left.

He kept the spreadsheet. Obviously.

The problem was that the data did not fit. When you healed minor injuries, you seemed tired. Normal enough. Energy expenditure was expected. When you healed severe injuries, you disappeared.

After Bart’s arm, you missed two days of check-ins and returned wearing long sleeves despite the heat. After Cassie took a magical blade through the shoulder and you closed the wound, you did not use your left arm normally for twenty-six hours. After Kon was exposed to red solar radiation and you stabilised his cellular damage, you spent the next three days avoiding bright light and loud sound. After Tim himself got hit with a concussion grenade in Prague and you pressed your fingers to his temples until the world stopped spinning, you looked almost sick afterwards.

He remembered that one too well. He had been sitting on the floor of a safehouse bathroom, back against the tub, trying to convince himself that two of everything was better than zero of everything. His head throbbed so badly he could feel his pulse behind his eyes.

You crouched in front of him.

“Tim,” you said softly. He focused on your voice because your face would not stop doubling. “You need a scan.”

“Did one.”

“You tried to scan yourself with a cracked domino mask and a toaster.”

“It was a modified toaster.”

You looked at him for a long second. Then, inexplicably, laughed. The sound went through him like warm tea.

Tim blinked at you. “You think I’m concussed.”

“I know you’re concussed.”

“I’m fine.”

“You tried to weaponise breakfast technology.”

He considered this. Then nodded, which was a mistake because the bathroom tilted. You caught his shoulder before he could slump sideways. His breath hitched. Your hand went still.

“Is this okay?” you asked.

Tim looked at your hand. Then at your face. You had already healed Cassie that night. You looked tired, shadows under your eyes, mouth pale. He should have said no.

He said, “Yes.”

Your thumb moved slightly against his shoulder. “I can help with the concussion,” you said.

“Risk?”

“Minimal.”

He would think about that word later. For months.

Minimal. Not none.

Minimal to whom?

But at the time, his head hurt and your hand was warm and he was so tired of being another thing the team had to worry about.

“Okay,” he said.

You touched his temples. Warmth spread through his skull.

The pain dissolved. Tim inhaled sharply. His vision cleared. The nausea vanished. The world clicked back into alignment, sharp and bright.

You pulled your hands away. Your lips parted. For half a second, you looked lost. Then you smiled. “Better?”

Tim stared. “Yes.”

“Good.”

You stood too quickly. He caught your wrist.

You froze. Tim let go immediately. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“You’re pale.”

“I just healed a concussion.”

“Do you have a concussion?”

Your expression changed. Small. Almost invisible. There. That was the moment, though Tim did not know it yet. The first piece of the puzzle turning over.

“No,” you said.

Lie. Soft as a blanket.

Tim’s eyes narrowed.

You smiled again. “Rest, Red Robin.”

Then you left.

He slept for fourteen hours. You missed the morning briefing. When you came back, you wore sunglasses indoors.

Tim noticed.

The first real conversation between you happened at 4:13 in the morning in the Mount Justice medbay, because apparently nobody in the hero community had ever heard of normal social timing.

Tim was awake. This was not unusual. Tim being awake at 4:13 in the morning was so common that Bart once put a sticky note on the coffee machine reading: Good morning, Tim! Or good night? Or please sleep? Circle one. Tim had circled written no underneath.

You found him sitting on a medbay cot with three open tablets, two empty coffee cups, and a self-applied bandage around his upper arm that was objectively bad.

You stopped in the doorway. Tim looked up. You looked at the bandage. He looked at the bandage.

You said, “Absolutely not.”

“It’s functional.”

“It is offensive.”

“To who?”

“Medicine.”

You crossed the room and stood in front of him with your hands on your hips.

Tim lifted his chin. “It stopped bleeding.”

“That is the lowest possible bar.”

“It’s a practical bar.”

“It’s a basement bar.”

“Still a bar.”

You stared at him. Tim stared back. Then your mouth twitched. “You’re impossible.”

“I’ve been told.”

“By everyone?”

“Statistically likely.”

You held out your hand. Tim hesitated. Your expression softened. “May I fix the bandage? Not heal it. Just fix the crime scene you made with gauze.”

Tim looked down at his arm. Then back at you. “Yes.”

You sat beside him and began unwrapping the bandage. Your fingers were gentle. Tim hated noticing that. Not because he disliked gentleness.

Because he liked it. That was worse.

“That needs stitches,” you said.

“It doesn’t.”

“It does.”

“I can do them.”

“I’m sure you can. I can also cut my own hair. That doesn’t mean anyone should let me.”

Tim looked at you. “Do you cut your own hair?”

“Not the point.”

“It explains some things.”

You gasped. “Rude.” His mouth twitched. You smiled triumphantly. “There. Almost a laugh.”

“It was not.”

“It wanted to be.”

“You’re projecting.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“That was abrupt.”

“Useful redirect.”

He studied you while you cleaned the wound. “You do that often.”

“What?”

“Redirect.”

Your hands paused for less than a second. Tim logged it. You resumed. “Only when people ask annoying questions.”

“I haven’t asked one.”

“You were about to.”

Correct. That was annoying.

He watched you thread a suture needle. “What happens to you after you heal someone?”

You did not look up. “Fatigue.”

“Always?”

“Usually.”

“What else?”

“Tim.”

He liked the way you said his name. That was inconvenient.

“Is there pain?” he asked.

You pulled the first stitch through his skin. He did not flinch. You did. Barely. But you did.

Tim’s gaze sharpened.

“Sometimes,” you said.

“What kind?”

“The kind that happens when powers get used.”

“That is not specific.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

“You should document it.”

Your mouth curved, but your eyes stayed serious. “And you should sleep.”

“I document things while sleep-deprived all the time.”

“I’m aware. I’ve seen your handwriting after hour thirty-six.”

“My handwriting is efficient.”

“Your handwriting looks like a spider had a panic attack.”

Tim looked offended. You laughed.

He should have continued the interrogation. Instead, he watched you smile.

Bad. Very bad.

By the time you finished stitching him up, the medbay had gone quiet around you both. You taped gauze over the wound and sat back.

“There,” you said. “Less criminal.”

“Thank you.”

You blinked, like gratitude still surprised you. Then your face softened. “You’re welcome.”

Tim looked down at his arm. Your stitches were neat. Better than his would have been, probably.

Definitely. Annoying.

“Why are you awake?” he asked.

You leaned back on your hands. “Why are you?”

“Work.”

“Same.”

“You don’t have work right now.”

“Neither do you.”

“I always have work.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

You were quiet for a moment. Then you said, “Do you know how to stop?”

Tim looked at you. Your voice had changed. Still light. Still gentle. But there was something under it. Recognition.

He answered honestly, which surprised him. “No.”

You nodded like you had expected that. “Me neither.”

That was the first time Tim realised you were not just kind. You were familiar. Not because you were like him exactly. You were warmer. Softer around the edges. Better at making people feel held. But underneath that, there was the same engine. The same terrible logic.

If you could help, you had to. If you could endure, you should. If pain had to go somewhere, better you than someone else.

Tim did not know the whole truth yet. But some part of him understood the shape of you before the facts arrived.

That was dangerous too. Facts could be managed. Feelings were rude.

Your relationship with Tim developed in increments so small neither of you noticed until Kon started making gagging noises whenever you entered the same room.

There was coffee first. Tim had terrible coffee habits. This was not news. This was an established international problem. You discovered that he took coffee so strong it could reasonably be used to strip paint, then started replacing every third cup with tea.

Tim noticed immediately. He drank it anyway.

The next week, he modified the medbay kettle so it boiled water twenty-three per cent faster.

You stared at it. “Did you optimise my tea?”

“No.”

The kettle beeped. Tim looked at it. You looked at Tim.

“It was inefficient,” he said.

Your smile was slow and bright. Tim looked away.

Then there were the notes.

You left reminders on his laptop.

Eat something with protein. Your wrist brace is in the left drawer. Stop clenching your jaw. Yes, you. If this is still open after 2 a.m., I’m telling Cassie.

Tim responded with notes of his own.

Hydrate. Rest after major healing. Your supply cabinet inventory system was objectively chaotic. Fixed. Painkillers are not a personality trait.

You wrote beneath that one: Neither is detective work, beloved hypocrite.

Tim stared at the word beloved for nine full minutes. Kon found him like that.

“Oh my God,” Kon said. “You’re buffering.”

“I’m not.”

“You totally are. Do you need to reboot? Should I call Oracle?”

Tim closed the laptop. “Leave.”

“You’re red.”

“Out.”

Kon floated out backward, grinning. “Buffering!”

After notes came field coordination.

You were good in a crisis. Not just good at healing. Good. You knew how to read a battlefield by sound. You could tell the difference between fear and shock, between a civilian hiding and an enemy waiting. You listened to comms like they were music and found the one thread of pain in the static.

Tim trusted competence before he trusted almost anything else. So he started trusting you. That was where the problem became terminal. Because once Tim trusted someone, truly trusted them, he wanted to know everything that could hurt them. And you were hiding something that hurt you.

His spreadsheet grew. He told himself it was for safety.

It was. Mostly.

He tracked healing events, reported severity, your visible symptoms, absence durations, wardrobe changes, gait irregularities, medication requests, light sensitivity, hand tremors, appetite shifts, mission proximity, and what Bart called “vibe anomalies.”

Tim did not name the file CRUSH SPREADSHEET. He was not a monster. He named it MEDICAL POWER COST ANALYSIS. Kon renamed it CRUSH SPREADSHEET once when Tim left his laptop unlocked for eight seconds.

Tim changed it back. And added a password.

The first time you caught him staring at the data, you did not get angry. That would have been easier.

Instead, you looked tired.

“Tim,” you said from the doorway of the medbay office.

He froze. Slowly, he turned. You stood there with your arms folded, one shoulder leaned against the doorframe. There was a bruise fading along your jaw that had appeared after you healed a civilian from blunt-force trauma two days earlier.

Tim’s screen displayed a timeline of your symptoms. Colour-coded. Because apparently he was determined to be both invasive and aesthetically organised. You looked at the screen. Then at him.

“That’s a lot,” you said.

Tim closed the laptop. “Sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry.”

“I am sorry you found it like this.” Your eyebrow lifted. He winced. “That was not better.”

“No, it was honest.”

You came into the office and sat across from him. The room felt smaller. Tim could hear the Mount’s ventilation system. The distant sound of Bart laughing at something in the common area. His own heartbeat.

“I’m trying to understand your limitations,” he said.

“I know.”

“For mission safety.”

“I know.”

“For your safety.”

Your expression shifted.

Tim leaned forward. “You’re hiding symptoms.”

You looked down at your hands. “Sometimes.”

“Why?”

A small smile. “Do you want the heroic answer or the honest one?”

“Honest.”

“I don’t always know how to stop helping.”

Tim had expected evasion. Not a confession shaped like a mirror.

He sat back. You looked up at him.

“People come to me when they’re in pain,” you said. “And I can take it away. How do I say no to that?”

Tim’s throat tightened. The answer should have been easy. Consent. Safety. Sustainable limits. Medical boundaries. Team protocols. All correct. All useless in the face of your voice.

“You have to,” he said anyway.

You smiled sadly. “So do you.”

He looked away. “What are you not telling me?”

Your smile faded. For a moment, something open and frightened appeared in your eyes.

Then it vanished. Soft blanket lie incoming. “Nothing that changes the outcome.”

Tim stared. “That is the most suspicious sentence anyone has ever said to me.”

That startled a laugh out of you. He wanted to keep that laugh. He wanted to solve you. He wanted, increasingly, to kiss you, which was not helpful.

“Tim,” you said gently, “there are things I’m not ready to explain.”

He hated that. He respected it. He hated that he respected it.

“Are you in danger?” he asked.

You were quiet too long. Then you said, “No more than anyone else.”

Lie. He knew it. You knew he knew it. But he nodded. Because trust meant not forcing a locked door just because you knew how to pick it. Even if your hands were itching.

“Okay,” he said.

You blinked. “Okay?”

“For now.”

A smile touched your mouth. “That sounds ominous.”

“It is.”

“Romantic.”

Tim froze. You froze. The word sat there.

Bart blurred into the doorway at exactly the wrong moment. “Hey, does anyone know why Kon is yelling that Tim’s crush spreadsheet has become sentient?”

Tim closed his eyes. You made a small sound. Laughter. Tim wanted the floor to open.

Bart looked between you both.

“Oh,” he said, delighted. “Am I interrupting tension?”

Tim stood. “Yes.”

“Cool, cool, I’ll tell everyone.”

“Bart.” But Bart was already gone.

You were laughing fully now, one hand pressed to your mouth. Tim looked at you. Despite himself, he smiled. Very slightly.

Your laughter softened into something warm. “There it is,” you said.

“What?”

“The smile.”

“I smile.”

“You smirk strategically.”

“That is different.”

“It is.”

Your eyes held his. For a moment, the hidden thing between you did not feel like danger. It felt like possibility.

Then the emergency alarm sounded. Because the universe had poor comedic timing.

The mission was supposed to be contained. Tim hated that word. Contained meant “currently not on fire.” It did not mean safe. A group of biochemists working with stolen LexCorp and H.I.V.E. materials had developed a neurotoxin designed specifically to target enhanced nervous systems. The League handled the main facility. Young Justice was assigned evacuation and containment at an auxiliary lab outside Metropolis.

Simple. Contained. Terrible words.

You came with them.

Tim objected immediately. “You’re still recovering from the last mission.”

You stared at him across the hangar. “That was three days ago.”

“You had a tremor yesterday.”

“I had too much coffee.”

“You hate coffee.”

“I was holding yours.”

“You shouldn’t have been holding mine. My coffee is a controlled substance.”

Bart nodded gravely. “It once made my molecules sing.”

Kon pointed at him. “You drank six cups.”

“I heard colours.”

Cassie pinched the bridge of her nose. “Can we please focus?”

Tim did not look away from you. “You are not cleared.”

You tilted your head. “By who?”

“Me.”

“Cute.”

Kon whispered, “Dangerous word choice.”

Tim ignored him. You stepped closer, lowering your voice. “People are going to be hurt.”

“And you are going to hurt yourself helping them.”

Your expression flickered. Tim saw it. His chest tightened.

“You don’t know that,” you said.

“I know enough.”

“Not everything.”

“No,” he agreed. “Because you won’t tell me.”

Your face closed. Immediate regret hit him. Cassie shifted uncomfortably. Kon suddenly found the ceiling fascinating. Bart vibrated in place with the desperate energy of someone watching emotional land mines blink red.

You looked away first. “I’m going,” you said.

Tim wanted to stop you. He did not. Because he had no right. Because you were not his to command. Because somewhere along the way, he had started caring enough to become unreasonable, and that was a him problem.

“Stay behind the second line,” he said.

You looked back. “Tim.”

“Please.”

That did it. Your expression softened, even though your eyes stayed sad.

“I’ll be careful,” you said.

Not a promise. Not enough. But all he got.

The auxiliary lab was already half-evacuated when they arrived. Smoke rolled from the east wing. Security alarms flashed red. Automated doors opened and closed in broken loops. Scientists stumbled through emergency exits, coughing and terrified, while local authorities tried to keep the perimeter intact. Tim’s mask display lit with toxin warnings.

“Rebreathers on,” he ordered.

Kon grimaced. “Hate when air gets spicy.”

Bart zipped through the entrance, evacuating three scientists before Tim finished saying, “Bart, wait for—”

He sighed. Cassie clapped him on the shoulder. “He heard you in spirit.”

“He absolutely didn’t.”

You moved to the triage zone, already kneeling beside a woman convulsing on the pavement. Her pupils were blown wide, veins dark beneath her skin.

Tim’s attention caught. You looked up at him. For one second, your eyes met. Then you placed your hand over the woman’s chest. Her convulsions stopped. Her breathing evened. You exhaled, sharp and controlled. Tim saw your fingers twitch. A cold thread wound through his stomach.

Inside the lab, things got worse. The toxin had not just leaked. It had been weaponised. Drones moved through the corridors, releasing bursts of aerosolised neurotoxin whenever they detected motion. Tim hacked the building’s ventilation while Cassie took out the larger drones, Kon shielded trapped civilians from falling debris, and Bart ran antidote injectors to anyone already exposed.

It almost worked. Then Tim found the server room. And the trap.

The door sealed behind him with a hiss. His mask display flashed. TOXIN DETECTED. Concentration climbing.

Tim switched filters. One second too late.

The first breath burned.

Not in his lungs. In his nerves. Pain flashed white through his body, sudden and total. His fingers spasmed. The staff clattered from his hand. The server racks blurred. He stumbled to the access panel. His hand would not obey.

“Red Robin?” Cassie’s voice crackled through comms.

Tim tried to answer. His jaw locked. The toxin crawled through his nervous system like static with teeth. Every muscle tightened. His heart hammered too fast, then stuttered. Vision fractured into overlapping panes of light.

He hit the floor. A seizure warning flashed across his mask display. Then another. Then another.

Tim’s body arched. The world became pain and code. He could hear comms, but distantly.

“Tim?” “Red Robin, respond.” “Rob?”

Kon’s voice changed. “Tim!”

Tim tried to breathe. Couldn’t. His lungs spasmed. His limbs jerked against the floor. Foam touched the corner of his mouth beneath the mask. His thoughts, usually so fast, so sharp, scattered like birds startled from a wire. He thought, absurdly, of your notes.

Eat something with protein. Stop clenching your jaw. Yes, you. Rest after major healing.

Then the door exploded inward. You stumbled through the smoke wearing a rebreather and a look of pure terror. Tim wanted to tell you to leave. His mouth would not move.

You dropped beside him. “Tim.”

He could not focus. Your hands hovered over his chest, his face, helpless for one horrible second. Then you pulled off a glove.

No. Panic cut through the toxin. No.

You touched his face. “Tim, can you hear me?” He heard you. He could not answer. Your voice broke. “I’m sorry.”

He hated those words. He hated that he understood them now.

Your hands pressed to his temples. Warmth flared. The toxin vanished. Tim’s body unlocked with a violent gasp. His heart steadied. His lungs opened. The seizure stopped so suddenly he collapsed boneless against the floor.

For three seconds, all he could do was breathe.

Then you made a sound. Small. Wrong.

Tim turned his head. You were still kneeling beside him. Your hand was pressed to your mouth. Your eyes were wide. Then your body jerked. Once. Twice. Your back arched.

A seizure tore through you. Tim’s blood went cold.

“No,” he rasped. Your body hit the floor. The rebreather slipped sideways. Your limbs spasmed against the tile. The same toxin pattern bloomed across your veins, dark and webbing under the skin.

Tim scrambled toward you. His hands shook, but they were obeying now. Yours were not.

“No, no, no.” He reached for your mask, fixed the seal, checked your airway. His training took over because if his feelings got one hand on the wheel, he would crash. “Kon!” he shouted. His voice cracked across comms. “Server room! Now!”

Static. Then Kon, panicked, “On my way!”

Your body convulsed again. Tim held you on your side, one hand braced at your shoulder, the other at your jaw.

“Stay with me,” he said. “Stay with me, please.”

Your eyes opened for half a second. They were unfocused. Terrified. But when they found him, somehow, impossibly, you looked relieved.

Tim understood then. Not as a theory. Not as a data point.

As horror.

You had taken it. The toxin. The seizure. The damage. His nervous system was clear because yours was burning.

Kon arrived in a blur, ripping the doorframe wider to fit through. He froze. “Oh, my God.”

“Get them out,” Tim ordered. Kon did not move. “Kon!”

That snapped him into motion. He lifted you with terrified care while Tim grabbed his staff and staggered after him. His legs worked. His lungs worked. His brain worked.

Because yours didn’t. The realisation nearly dropped him to his knees.

Outside, chaos blurred. Cassie shouted for medevac. Bart appeared and vanished and reappeared with medical kits, antidotes, three paramedics, and a blanket he had absolutely stolen from somewhere. You convulsed again in Kon’s arms, and Kon looked like someone had ripped his heart out.

Tim took your hand. It spasmed in his grip. “Don’t heal them,” he told the medics.

One of them stared at him. “What?”

Tim’s voice sharpened. “Don’t use energy-based healing. Don’t use magic. Stabilise only. The wound may transfer unpredictably.”

He did not know that. Not scientifically. But he knew enough to be afraid.

Bart looked at him, eyes wide. “Tim?”

Tim looked down at you. The toxin pattern was spreading. His toxin pattern. “I know what their power does."

Silence fell around them. Even the alarms seemed quieter.

Cassie’s face went pale. “What does that mean?”

Tim swallowed. Your hand jerked in his. He held on. “It means,” Tim said, voice hollow, “they don’t erase injuries.” Tim forced the words out. “They take them.”

Mount Justice had a medbay. The Watchtower had a better one. Batman insisted. Tim did not argue. That was how everyone knew it was bad. You were transported to the Watchtower within seven minutes. The toxin had burned through your body faster than it had through his, maybe because your power accelerated the transfer, maybe because your nervous system was already overloaded from previous healings, maybe because the universe was cruel and data did not matter when someone you loved was seizing on a medbay table.

Tim stood outside the glass wall and watched doctors stabilise you. Kon stood beside him, silent for once. Bart was sitting on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest, vibrating so finely he looked blurred at the edges. Cassie paced. Bruce was in the corner speaking quietly with Dr Mid-Nite, expression grim enough to bend the room around it.

Tim had your medical files open on three tablets.  Not the official ones. His. The spreadsheet. The timeline. The pattern. It was all there. It had always been there. Bruise after blunt-force trauma healing. Limp after fractures. Photosensitivity after concussions. Tremors after nerve damage. Fever after infection transfers. Vomiting after poisoning cases. Emotional withdrawal after psychic trauma. Absence durations proportional to injury severity.

He should have known. He had known.

Kon finally spoke. “So every time they healed us…”

Tim did not look up. “Yes.”

Bart made a tiny sound. Cassie stopped pacing.

Kon’s fists clenched. “They felt it?”

“Yes,” he said. “They felt it.”

Kon turned away, one hand over his mouth.

Bart’s voice came thin. “My arm?”

Tim closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“Cassie’s shoulder?”

“Yes.”

“Your concussion?”

Tim opened his eyes and looked through the glass. You lay too still beneath the lights. “Yes.”

Bruce came to stand beside him. Tim did not look at him.

“You found evidence,” Bruce said.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Enough.”

“For how long?”

Tim’s hand tightened around the tablet. “Months.” Silence. That was worse than judgment. Tim looked up sharply. “If you’re going to say I should have told someone—”

“I’m not.” Bruce’s gaze remained fixed on you. “You were respecting a boundary.”

Tim let out a humourless laugh. “Was I? Or was I afraid they’d stop trusting me if I pushed?”

Bruce said nothing. Tim hated when silence was an answer.

Behind them, Bart whispered, “They asked every time.” Everyone looked at him. Bart’s eyes were wet. “Before healing. They always asked. But they didn’t tell us what yes meant.”

Cassie’s face crumpled. Kon sat down hard on a bench. Tim looked back at you. Bart had found the centre of it without any spreadsheets. You asked permission to touch. Not for consequence.

The doctors worked for another hour. The toxin ran its course differently in your body. Faster in some ways, worse in others. Your healing factor fought it like a fever trying to burn down its own house. Finally, Dr Mid-Nite came out. Tim stood immediately.

“You can see them,” he said. "They are stable. Exhausted. Their neurological activity is normalising. They’ll need rest, monitoring, and no power use.”

“For how long?”

“At minimum? Weeks.” Tim almost laughed. As if anyone here knew how to rest for weeks. Bruce’s gaze sharpened, probably because he had the same thought. Dr. Mid-Nite looked between them. “I mean it. Their system is overloaded. Another major transfer could kill them.”

Kill them.

Tim nodded once. Then he walked into the medbay.

You were asleep. Pale, dark veins fading slowly beneath your skin. Electrodes at your temples. IV lines in both arms. Your hands rested on top of the blanket, still except for the occasional twitch.

Tim sat beside your bed. For a long time, he did not touch you. He wanted to. Badly. But every touch between you had become suddenly complicated by the knowledge of what your hands could do. What they had done. What you had hidden inside gentleness.

Finally, he placed two fingers lightly against your wrist. Pulse. Steady. Alive.

His shoulders dropped.

Kon appeared in the doorway. “You okay?” Tim glanced at him. Kon grimaced. “Yeah, I heard it.”

“I’m not okay.” Kon nodded and came inside, leaning against the wall. For once, he did not joke. Tim looked back at you. “They saved my life.”

“Yeah.”

“They took neurotoxin into their own nervous system.”

“Yeah.”

“I should be grateful.”

Kon’s expression tightened. “You are.”

“I’m angry.”

“You can be both.”

Tim did not answer. Kon looked at him for a long moment. “They love you,” he said. Tim froze. Kon’s eyes widened slightly. “You didn’t know?”

Tim stared at him.

Kon rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh. Uh. Never mind?”

“Kon.”

“Look, I’m not exactly Sherlock, and even I noticed.”

Tim’s brain stalled. Not helpful. Not now. Absolutely not now. But the words entered anyway.

They love you.

As a variable, it was catastrophic. As a possibility, it was worse.

Tim looked at your face. Your closed eyes. The exhaustion written into every line. The body that had chosen his life at the expense of yours.

“Don’t,” he said quietly.

Kon frowned. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t make that romantic.” Kon’s face sobered. Tim’s voice shook. “They lied. They almost died. They took my choice away.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want love if it looks like this.” The words scraped out of him.

Kon was quiet. Then he said, “Then tell them what you want it to look like.” Tim looked up. Kon shrugged, expression sad. “What?”

“Nothing,” Tim said.

“No, that was a look.”

“You said something emotionally useful.”

Kon snorted. “Rude.”

“Unexpected.”

“Very rude.” Despite everything, Tim’s mouth twitched. Kon smiled faintly, then nodded toward you. “They’re gonna wake up and feel terrible.”

“Yes.”

“Physically and emotionally.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re gonna do the Tim thing.”

Tim narrowed his eyes. “What is the Tim thing?”

“Act like if you explain the pain precisely enough, it’ll stop hurting.” Tim looked away. Kon pushed off the wall. “Just, like… maybe don’t forget they’re scared too.”

Then he left.

Tim hated how often his friends were right. It was deeply inconvenient.

You woke six hours later. Tim was running a model on his tablet when your heart rate changed. He noticed before your eyes opened.

He set the tablet down. Your eyelids fluttered once. Twice. Then you looked at him. For a moment, neither of you spoke. Your gaze moved over his face slowly, like you were checking him for damage.

Then you whispered, “Did it work?”

Tim’s heart broke with surgical precision. He leaned forward. “Yes,” he said.

Your eyes closed in relief. He almost lost his temper right there.

Instead, he inhaled slowly. Count four. Hold four. Out six. Bruce would be proud. Insufferably.

You opened your eyes again. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

Your brow furrowed. “Did the toxin—”

“The toxin is gone.”

“Then—”

“I’m not okay because you took it from me and nearly died.”

Your mouth closed. The monitors filled the silence. You looked down at your hands. “I’m sorry,” you said.

Tim had imagined this conversation many times. In every version, he was calmer. More precise. Less seventeen different kinds of devastated. He had bullet points. A structure. Ethical concerns. Medical concerns. Consent framework. Risk disclosure protocol. Then you said sorry like you meant it, and all the bullet points burned.

“How long?” he asked. Your eyes flicked up. “How long has your power worked like that?”

You swallowed. “Always.”

Tim went still. He had expected that. It did not help. “Always,” he repeated. You nodded. “So every time.”

Your eyes shone. “Yes.”

“Bart’s arm, Cassie’s shoulder, Kon’s solar damage.”

“Yes.”

“My concussion.”

You closed your eyes. “Yes.”

He stood and turned away. The movement was too abrupt. He heard your breath catch behind him.

Good. No. Not good. He did not want to scare you. He wanted to scream. He wanted to go back to every moment you had smiled afterwards and rip the lie out of the air. He wanted to hate you.

He could not. That made him angrier.

“Tim,” you said softly.

He turned back. “You said minimal risk.” Your face twisted. “When you healed my concussion,” he said. “You said minimal.”

“It was.”

“To you?” You were silent. His laugh was sharp and horrible. “That’s the entire problem, isn’t it?”

“I knew I could handle it.”

“You didn’t know that today.” Your gaze dropped. He stepped closer. “You did not know you could survive that toxin.”

“I knew you couldn’t.”

The room went silent. Tim’s mouth parted.

There it was. The logic of you.

Terrible. Simple. I knew you couldn’t. As if that ended the equation. As if his life on one side and yours on the other could be balanced without asking what the equals sign cost. He sat down slowly because his knees felt untrustworthy.

“That isn’t enough,” he said. 

Your eyes lifted. “To justify it?”

“To survive on.” Your expression broke. Tim leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You can’t build a life out of taking whatever other people can’t survive.”

You laughed once, weak and wet. “That’s rich coming from you.”

He flinched.

“I know,” he said. That seemed to surprise you. He looked at his hands. “I know I’m a hypocrite. I know I run on caffeine and denial and contingency plans. I know I treat my body like an inconvenient transportation system for my brain.” A faint, unwilling smile touched your mouth. “I know,” he continued, “that if our positions were reversed, I’d be trying to justify the exact same thing.” Your smile vanished. He looked up. “That’s how I know it’s wrong.”

A tear slipped down your temple into your hair. You whispered, “I didn’t want you to die.”

Tim’s face crumpled despite himself. “I know.”

“I saw you seizing. I couldn’t—” Your voice broke. “Tim, I couldn’t watch that happen to you.”

He leaned closer. “And I woke up watching it happen to you.”

You closed your eyes. His anger shook. Not because it was fading. Because grief was moving underneath it.

“I thought I lost you,” he said. Your eyes opened. Something changed in your face. Softened. Tim swallowed hard. “I didn’t know if I had the right to feel that way.”

Your brow furrowed. “What?”

“Like losing you would—” He stopped, because the sentence had teeth. “Like it would break something important.”

You stared at him. Tim looked away. He had meant to say it better. Later. Maybe never. Probably never.

“Tim,” you whispered.

He shook his head once. “No. I’m not saying this because you got hurt. I’m not saying it to make this moment easier. It doesn’t make it easier.”

Your hand shifted weakly on the blanket. He looked at it. Then at you.

“May I?” he asked.

Your eyes filled again. You nodded. Tim took your hand. Your fingers were colder than normal. He hated that his first instinct was to log it. He hated that his second was to warm them between both of his. He did both.

“I care about you,” he said. Your breath hitched. “A lot. In a way that is… inconvenient.” A watery laugh escaped you. His mouth twitched. “Deeply inconvenient,” he added. “Operationally disastrous. Kon has been unbearable.”

“He knows?”

“Apparently, everyone knows.”

Your lips curved faintly. “Except us?”

“I knew.” You raised an eyebrow weakly. “I had data,” Tim corrected.

“That is different from knowing.”

“Unfortunately.”

Your smile faded. You looked at your joined hands. “I care about you, too,” you said. Tim stopped breathing. “A lot,” you continued. “In a way that is also inconvenient.”

His thumb stilled on your knuckles.

“I think,” you whispered, “I love you.”

Tim closed his eyes. He wished the words did not hurt. They should have been soft. They should have been a sunrise. A hand held in a kitchen. A confession under a quiet sky. Instead, they arrived in a medbay with toxin still fading from your veins. But they were still true. That was the worst, best part.

He opened his eyes. “I think I love you too,” he said. Your face folded with relief and grief at once. Tim leaned closer. “But I need you to understand something.” You nodded, tears bright in your eyes. “If love means you decide my life matters more than yours, I can’t accept it.” Your mouth trembled. He held your hand tighter. “I won’t.”

“I don’t think my life matters less.”

“You act like it does.”  You started to answer. Stopped. The silence was answer enough. Tim continued, gentler now. “I know why. I do. You’re surrounded by people who choose pain before help. You probably learned very quickly that if you told the truth, everyone would refuse healing unless they were unconscious.”

You looked away.

“And you couldn’t stand that.”

“No,” you whispered.

“So you made the choice for us.”

Your face crumpled. “I’m sorry.”

Tim nodded. “I know.”

“I really am... I don’t know how to not help.”

His chest ached. “I know that too.”

“What if someone dies because I ask first?”

Tim’s throat tightened.

There it was. The fear underneath everything.

Not pain. Not death.

Failure. A world where your hands could save someone and you chose not to use them fast enough.

He did not have an easy answer. He refused to offer a fake one.

“Then we make emergency protocols,” he said.

Your lips twitched through tears. “Of course you have protocols.”

“I am who I am.”

“Unfortunately, attracted to that.”

Tim blinked. A laugh escaped him before he could stop it.

Tiny. Disbelieving.

You smiled weakly. The room softened around the edges.

Then he sobered.

“We make consent directives,” he said. “Everyone decides in advance what they consent to under different circumstances. Minor injury. Severe injury. Fatal injury. Mental pain. Chronic pain. Magical effects. All of it.”

Your eyes widened. “You already thought about this.”

“I’ve had six hours and trauma.”

“Dangerous combo.”

“Very.”

You squeezed his hand weakly. “What if they all say no?”

“Then we respect that.”

Your face went pale.

Tim leaned in. “Even when it’s hard.”

A tear slid down your cheek.

“Especially then,” he added.

“I hate that.”

“I know.”

“I really hate that.”

“I know.”

“I might not be good at it.”

“I know.”

Your eyes narrowed faintly. “You’re saying that a lot.”

“Statistically, I know many things.”

There. A smile. Small, but real. Tim cherished it and then pretended he wasn’t the kind of person who cherished things.

Too late. You already knew.

“What about you?” you asked.

His smile faded. “My directive?”

You nodded.

Tim looked down at your hand in his.

This was the question.

Not theoretical. Not medical. His life. Your power. The line between them.

“If I am awake and able to consent, you ask.” You nodded. “If I say no, you don’t heal me.”

Your fingers tensed.

He waited. Slowly, you nodded again.

“If I am unconscious or unable to consent,” he continued, “and the injury is fatal or permanently disabling, I consent to transfer only if the projected risk to you is survivable.”

Your brow furrowed. “Projected by who?”

“You, if conscious. Team medic if available. Otherwise designated field lead.”

“That’s very precise.”

“I’m very precise.”

“You also put ‘permanently disabling’ in there.”

Tim looked up. Your eyes searched his. He knew what you were asking. Spine. Brain damage. Hands. Eyes. Things that could alter the life he had built around intellect and motion and the ability to protect people from the shadows.

“I don’t want you sacrificing yourself for a broken wrist,” he said.

“Tim.”

“But I won’t pretend I would handle permanent neurological damage gracefully.”

Your face softened.

“I’m allowed to be honest too,” he said quietly.

You nodded. “Yes.”

He breathed in.

“And if the risk to you is fatal,” he said, “you do not transfer. No exceptions.”

Your eyes filled. “Tim—”

“No exceptions.”

“What if—”

“No.”

Your mouth closed. His grip tightened.

“I need you alive,” he said.

Your breath caught.

Tim’s voice broke around the truth. “Not useful. Not healing. Alive.”

You started crying then. Silent at first, then not.

Tim stood carefully, giving you time to refuse, then leaned over the bed and wrapped his arms around you as gently as he could.

You clung to him weakly.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered into his shirt.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

Tim closed his eyes. His hand cradled the back of your head. “I love you too.”

The words hurt less the second time.

Maybe they always would hurt a little. Maybe love was not painless. Maybe the point was not to make it painless, but to stop using pain as proof.

Recovery, for you, was not simple.

Tim hated simple anyway. Simple usually meant missing variables.

You developed tremors in your right hand for the first three days. Light sensitivity for five. Nerve pain that made your legs jerk at random. Migraines. Exhaustion so heavy that walking from the bed to the bathroom felt like a mission report no one wanted to file.

Tim tracked all of it. You tolerated this for thirty-six hours before threatening to throw his tablet into space.

“You need objective monitoring,” he said.

“I need you to stop looking at my nervous system like it owes you money.”

“It kind of does.”

“Tim.”

He looked up. You were sitting propped against the pillows, pale but increasingly alive, wearing one of his hoodies because Kon had brought it from the Mount with a look so smug Tim considered treason.

“What?”

You held out your hand. “Come here.”

“I’m right here.”

“Closer.”

He stood from the chair and moved to the bedside.

You looked at the tablet. He looked at you.

“No,” he said.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You have a face.”

“You have many charts.”

“They are medically relevant.”

“You have a bar graph titled ‘Tremor Severity Over Time.’”

“It’s a line graph.” You stared at him. “Not the point,” he conceded.

Your mouth twitched. He set the tablet aside. 

“Happy?”

“Getting there.”

You took his hand and tugged lightly.

He sat on the edge of the bed. Carefully. Always carefully now.

Not because he thought you were fragile. Because he knew you were hurt.

You leaned your head against his shoulder. Tim went very still.

“You can breathe,” you murmured.

“I am breathing.”

“Barely.”

He exhaled. You smiled against his shoulder.

“I’m okay,” you said.

He tensed.

You lifted your head.

“No. Wait. That’s not what I mean.” You took a careful breath. “I mean, I am in pain. I am scared everyone hates me. My hands won’t stop shaking, and I feel like my spine is full of bees.”

Tim blinked. “Bees?”

“Neurological bees.”

“Concerning.”

“Very.” Your thumb moved across his hand. “But I am alive. And I am telling you the truth.”

Tim looked at you. Something in his chest loosened.

“Thank you,” he said.

Your eyes softened. “You’re welcome.”

He reached up and brushed a strand of hair away from your face. “May I kiss you?”

Your entire expression changed. Hope, surprise, tenderness, all at once. It almost knocked him flat.

“You’re asking now?” you whispered.

His face warmed. “Timing has been difficult.”

“You confessed in a medbay after I nearly died.”

“Yes. Poor timing.”

“Classic hero romance, honestly.”

“I would prefer our first kiss not be medically supervised.”

You glanced toward the observation window where Bart was absolutely pretending not to watch. “Too late.”

Tim turned. Bart vanished in a blur.

Tim sighed. You laughed, then winced.

He looked back immediately. “Pain?”

“Worth it.” His expression sharpened. You grimaced. “Bad phrasing?”

“Extremely.”

“I’m learning.”

“So am I.”

Your hand tightened around his.

“Yes,” you said softly. “You may kiss me.”

Tim leaned in slowly. There was a strange moment before it happened where all his thoughts went quiet.

Rare. Precious.

Then his mouth touched yours.

Gentle. Careful. Warm.

Your lips were dry from medication, and your hand trembled in his, and someone outside the room made a muffled squeaking sound that was probably Bart being physically restrained by Kon.

It was perfect anyway.

When Tim pulled back, your eyes stayed closed for one extra second.

His heart performed an extremely inconvenient manoeuvre.

“Good?” he asked.

Your eyes opened. “Very good.”

“I can improve with more data.”

You laughed softly. “Did you just flirt with me using research methodology?”

“Maybe.”

“Nerd.”

“You knew that already.”

“I did.”

Your smile faded into something tender.

“I love you,” you said.

Tim pressed his forehead to yours. “I love you too.”

This time, the words did not feel like a wound. They felt like a promise being written carefully, with room in the margins for revisions.

The team meeting happened two days later. You hated it. Tim knew because you said, “I hate this,” exactly eleven times.

“It’s necessary,” he said.

“I know.”

“You don’t have to explain everything alone.”

“I know.”

“Everyone already knows the core mechanism.”

“I know.”

“You can stop saying I know if you want.”

You looked at him. He smiled faintly. Your mouth twitched despite yourself.

Young Justice gathered in the conference room. Cassie sat at the head of the table but looked like she would rather be fighting a hydra. Kon hovered instead of sitting, arms crossed, expression worried. Bart had three snacks and no appetite. Cissie had come in after hearing the truth and looked quietly furious in the way only archers and older sisters could manage.

Bruce stood in the corner. Tim had told him he did not need to attend. Bruce had stared at him. Tim had moved on.

You sat beside Tim with a blanket around your shoulders and your hands wrapped around a mug of tea.

Your hands shook. Everyone noticed.

Nobody commented.

Progress.

You explained the power. No evasions this time. No soft blanket lies.

“It doesn’t heal by erasing damage,” you said, voice quiet but steady. “It transfers the damage to me. Physical injuries are the easiest. Poison, burns, broken bones, internal trauma. Mental and emotional pain are harder and less predictable. I can’t always take those, and I shouldn’t have done it without asking.”

Raven was not there, but the weight of that truth was.

Bart’s eyes glistened. Cassie looked down at the table. Kon’s jaw flexed.

You swallowed.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “I told myself I was helping. I was helping, sometimes. But I also took choices away from you. You deserved to know what yes meant.”

Silence.

Then Bart appeared beside you and hugged you very carefully.

“I’m still mad,” he said into your shoulder.

You closed your eyes. “I know.”

“But I don’t hate you.”

Your face crumpled.

“Nobody hates you,” Cassie said, voice thick.

Kon looked at Tim. Tim nodded once.

Kon came closer, not touching yet.

“You scared us,” Kon said.

“I know.”

“And you’re banned from secret martyr crap.”

A tiny laugh escaped you. “Is that the official wording?”

“Yeah. I checked with management.”

Cassie nodded solemnly. “As management, yes.”

Tim slid a document across the table.

Kon stared. “Oh my God, is that paperwork?”

“Consent directives,” Tim said.

Bart leaned over. “There are checkboxes.”

“Of course, there are checkboxes.”

Cissie picked up a copy, scanning. “Minor injury, severe injury, permanent disability risk, fatal injury, psychic distress, chronic pain flare-ups, magical curse exposure…” She looked up. “This is actually good.”

Tim tried not to look pleased. You looked at him with soft amusement.

Kon groaned. “Do not encourage him.”

“This is helpful,” Cassie said.

“It is,” you agreed.

Tim’s ears went warm.

Bruce’s mouth twitched in the corner. Traitor.

The team spent two hours filling out directives. It was not easy. Bart said no to almost everything at first, then changed fatal injuries to yes if the risk to you was low. Cassie allowed severe injury transfers only if she was incapacitated and you had backup. Kon struggled with red sun and kryptonite exposure, jaw tight, before quietly asking if partial transfers were possible.

You answered honestly every time. Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Sometimes I don’t know.

Tim watched the team learn to ask better questions. He watched you learn not to carry every answer alone.

It was painful. It was necessary.

When the meeting ended, Bruce lingered. Tim braced himself.

Bruce looked at the forms. Then at Tim. “This is good work.”

Tim blinked. Praise from Bruce was rare enough that it should have come with atmospheric warnings.

“Thanks,” he said.

Bruce’s gaze shifted to you. “You did the right thing telling them.”

You looked down. “Eventually.”

Bruce nodded. “Eventually matters.”

Then he left. 

Kon stared after him. “Was that Batman being emotionally supportive?”

Cassie nodded slowly. “I think so.”

Bart whispered, “I’m scared.”

You laughed. Tim smiled.

For the first time since the lab, the room felt breathable.

You recovered at Mount Justice because the team outvoted you, Bruce, and your very bad argument that your apartment was “probably fine if no one looked too closely at the mould.”

Tim privately inspected your apartment. The mould was not fine. Neither was the lock. Or the window. Or the fact that your pantry contained tea, crackers, and what appeared to be three emergency protein bars from 2018.

He made a list.

You found it. “Tim.”

“Yes?”

“Why is there a spreadsheet called Apartment Crimes?”

“Because your apartment is committing crimes.”

“You broke into my home.”

“I used a key.”

“I did not give you a key.”

“Your landlord’s lock was insulting.”

“That does not improve your case.”

“I also fixed the lock.”

You stared at him. He stared back.

Finally, you sighed. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Still invasive.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I’m learning.”

You softened.

“Okay,” you said.

That became the shape of things.

Mistake. Correction.

Apology. Learning.

Again.

Tim over-monitored. You called him on it. You downplayed pain. Tim called you on it. Neither of you liked being perceived accurately. Both of you endured it for the greater good, which was apparently each other.

Some nights were harder. One night, three weeks after the lab, Tim found you in the training room. You were sitting on the floor with your back against the wall, one hand pressed to your chest, breathing through what looked like a panic attack.

He stopped in the doorway. Everything in him wanted to rush forward.

He did not.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

You looked up. Your face was wet.

After a moment, you nodded.

Tim entered and sat beside you, leaving space between your bodies.

“Touch?” he asked.

You shook your head.

His chest hurt, but he nodded. “Okay.”

You rubbed both hands over your face.

“I wanted to heal someone today,” you said. Tim went still. “In the city. There was an accident. A civilian. Broken leg, maybe ribs. Paramedics were there. It wasn’t fatal. It wasn’t even… I knew they’d survive.” Your voice shook. “But I could feel it. Not literally. Just—” You swallowed. “I knew I could make it stop.”

Tim listened.

“I didn’t,” you whispered. His heart clenched. “I didn’t because of the rules. Because they couldn’t consent. Because I’m not cleared. Because it wasn’t necessary.” Your breath hitched. “And I feel horrible.”

Tim wanted to tell you that you did the right thing.

You had. But sometimes the right thing was not comfort.

So he said, “I’m sorry.”

You looked at him.

He meant it. Not sorry as correction. Sorry as witness.

Your face crumpled.

“I hate it,” you said.

“I know.”

“They were in pain.”

“Yes.”

“And I walked away.”

“You let trained medics help them.”

“I could have done it faster.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not supposed to agree with that.”

“It’s true.”

You gave a broken laugh. Tim leaned his head back against the wall.

“I watched someone get shot when I was thirteen,” he said. You went still. “I was on patrol. Before Bruce knew. Before anyone knew. I could have intervened earlier, maybe. But I froze. Then I didn’t. I helped. They survived… I still think about the seconds before I moved,” he said. “All the time. Even though they lived. Even though I was a child. Even though I didn’t cause it.”

You looked at him. Tim turned his head.

“I think helping people can become addictive when not helping feels like guilt.”

Your mouth trembled.

“Yeah,” you whispered.

“I don’t know how to fix that.”

“That’s unlike you.”

“I know. Very unsettling.”

A faint smile touched your face.

Tim held out his hand, palm up, resting on the floor between you.

No pressure. No expectation. After a moment, your fingers slid into his.

“Does it get easier?” you asked.

“Not quickly.”

“Honest.”

“You asked.”

You leaned your head against his shoulder. This time, touch was chosen. Tim let himself lean back.

“You did well today,” he said softly.

You cried harder. He held your hand through it.

No healing. No transfer. No solving. Just pain, staying where it was and somehow becoming survivable because someone else sat beside it.

Tim had never trusted that kind of math before.

He was learning.

Your first date happened at a bookstore café because Kon threatened to plan it himself if Tim did not stop “hovering romantically in a medically depressing way.”

Tim objected to the phrasing. Not the substance.

You were still recovering, but strong enough for short outings. Tim chose a quiet place with accessible seating, low lighting, and a menu that included actual food because he had learned, under duress, that coffee did not count as a meal.

You arrived wearing a soft sweater and a look of suspicious amusement.

“This is very planned,” you said.

Tim stood. “Is that bad?”

“No. It’s very you.”

“I can be spontaneous.”

“You sent me a calendar invite.”

“It had the address.”

“It had a weather contingency.”

“It might rain.”

“It has a section titled Emotional Expectations.”

Tim paused.

You smiled. “I liked that part.”

He relaxed slightly. “Oh.”

You sat across from him.

For a while, it was almost normal.

No medbay. No alarms. No poison. Just tea, coffee, bookshelves, and your foot brushing his under the table.

Tim told you about a mystery novel with three plot holes in the first chapter. You argued that sometimes vibes mattered more than forensic accuracy. Tim reacted to this like you had insulted his ancestors.

You laughed.

He loved you so much in that moment it almost scared him. Not the dramatic kind of love from the medbay. Not the desperate kind forged under alarms and toxin warnings.

This was quieter.

You with foam on your upper lip. You stealing one of his fries. You making fun of his annotated reading list. You alive in afternoon light.

Tim reached across the table and touched your hand.

You looked down. Then up.

“Hi,” you said softly.

“Hi.”

“You’re staring.”

“Yes.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I’m trying to memorise this.”

Your face softened. “Tim.”

He looked at your hand beneath his.

“I spent a long time tracking your pain,” he said.

Your expression shifted.

He continued before the words could become too heavy. “I’d like to track other things.”

“Like?”

“Favourite teas. Books you hate. Places you feel safe. What makes you laugh. How you take care of people when it doesn’t cost your body.”

Your eyes filled.

He panicked. “Good tears or bad tears?”

You laughed wetly. “Good.”

“I need people to start labelling them.”

“Jason said that too.”

“Jason and I agreeing is a bad sign.”

“End times.”

He smiled. You turned your hand over beneath his and linked your fingers.

“I’d like that,” you said.

“Good.”

“Also, I hate mystery novels where the detective says, ‘I’ll explain later.’”

“Correct opinion.”

“And I like jasmine tea.”

“Already knew that.”

“Of course you did.”

“And I feel safe with you,” you said.

Tim went very still.

Your thumb moved across his hand. “Even when you’re overbearing with charts.”

“I can reduce chart frequency.”

“Don’t be hasty.”

His mouth twitched. You smiled back.

There, in the soft noise of the café, Tim understood something he had missed while staring at all the data.

Healing was not only the absence of pain. Sometimes healing was information offered freely. A hand held without emergency. A truth spoken before it became a wound. A spreadsheet closed because the person in front of him was more important than the pattern.

Tim looked at you and let the moment exist without solving it.

Mostly.

He did make a mental note about jasmine tea.

He was still Tim.

Months later, the next major injury came on a rooftop in Gotham. A gang war had spilled into civilian territory, and Young Justice was assisting the Bats with evacuation. It was messy but manageable until one of Penguin’s people unveiled a black-market sonic cannon designed to scramble metahuman equilibrium.

Kon dropped from the sky. Cassie staggered. Bart crashed through a billboard.

You were on the adjacent rooftop with Tim, monitoring civilians and coordinating medical evac.

The cannon swung toward the street below.

Toward a group of trapped families.

Tim moved. So did you. He got there first, because grappling lines were faster than stairs and terror.

The blast hit him sideways.

Not full power.

Enough.

His right arm snapped against the building edge. Pain flared bright and nauseating. He rolled hard, vision sparking, and landed badly enough to taste blood.

You were beside him in seconds. “Tim!”

He looked up.

You were already reaching for him.

Then you stopped. Your hands hovered. Shaking.

His arm was broken.

Obvious. Ugly. Wrong angle.

Not fatal. Not permanent if treated quickly.

Pain roared.

You were crying.

Not because of the injury.

Because you wanted to take it. Because you were choosing not to.

Tim understood all of that in the space between breaths.

He held your gaze.

“No,” he said softly.

Your face crumpled.

He reached for you with his uninjured hand. “Stabilise only.”

You nodded, tears spilling over.

“Stabilise only,” you repeated.

Your hands moved to his arm.

Not glowing. Not transferring. Just splinting. Supporting. Wrapping.

You were fast, practised, gentle.

It hurt. God, it hurt.

Tim breathed through it. You breathed with him.

The cannon exploded behind you, courtesy of Kon and what sounded like Damian shouting something rude in Arabic.

Gotham rain began to fall. Naturally.

You finished securing the splint and looked at him.

“I didn’t,” you whispered.

Tim’s chest ached. “I know.”

“I wanted to.”

“I know.”

“I really wanted to.”

“I know.”

He leaned forward and pressed his forehead to yours. “You did so well.”

You cried harder.

He kissed you there, on the rooftop, with his broken arm held against his chest and rain sliding down both your faces.

Not because pain was beautiful.

It wasn’t. Pain was awful and unfair and often badly timed.

But choice? Choice was beautiful. You had given him his. He had trusted you with yours.

Below, sirens wailed. Above, Gotham brooded theatrically.

Over comms, Damian said, “If you two are finished having a moment, some of us are still working.”

Kon laughed. “They are absolutely having a moment.”

Bart added, “A rainy rooftop moment! Very cinematic!”

Tim sighed against your mouth. You laughed through tears.

He loved the sound. He loved you.

Not as a variable. Not as a mystery. Not as a miracle with missing data.

As a person. Messy. Stubborn. Learning. Alive.

His arm throbbed. You did not take the pain. You held his hand instead. And for once, Tim let the equation remain unsolved.

Because maybe love was not proof. Maybe it was practice.

Again and again. Choice by choice. Truth by truth. Wound by wound.

You helped him stand. He leaned on you. You let him.

Neither of you called it weakness. And when the mission ended, when the medics set his arm properly and you stayed beside him without trying to steal the hurt from his bones, Tim looked at you and smiled.

A real one.

No strategy. No smirk.

Just warmth.

You smiled back.

“There it is,” you said.

“What?”

“The smile.”

Tim’s ears warmed. “I smile.”

“You do now.”

He looked at your hand in his.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I do.”

And this time, when the pain had to go somewhere, it stayed.

Not because you did not love him enough to take it.

The Justice League called you an invaluable asset. The Titans called you a lifesaver. Young Justice called you their emergency button. The Supersons called you cool in the way teenagers called something cool when they were trying very hard not to look impressed. Roy called you “the team’s cheat code,” usually while bleeding on furniture that did not belong to him.

Jason called you trouble. At first, anyway.

“Absolutely not,” Jason said the first time you tried to heal him.

You were standing in an Outlaws safehouse in Prague at three in the morning, wearing an oversized jacket, cracked boots, and a face that said you had already heard every possible version of that sentence. Jason was sitting on the kitchen table because Roy Harper had dragged him there by the back of his jacket and threatened to sedate him with “friendship and also possibly a tranquillizer dart.”

There was a knife wound in Jason’s side. Technically, there were three. The worst one was deep enough that Jason had stopped pretending it was not a problem. The blood had soaked through his shirt, his jacket, and the towel Roy had pressed against it with increasingly frantic mutters of, “Nope, no, we are not doing this cowboy nonsense tonight.”

Koriand’r hovered near the window, glowing faintly with worry. Roy pointed at Jason with one bloody hand. “Let them fix you.”

Jason glared at him. “I don’t need fixing.”

“You are actively leaking on a rental table.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“That is not the flex you think it is.”

You stepped closer. Jason’s attention snapped to you. Not because you were threatening. You weren’t. That was part of what made him suspicious. You moved carefully, hands visible, eyes steady. You did not reach for him. Did not crowd him. Did not look at his blood like it frightened you or fascinated you.

“Jason,” you said, voice calm. “Can I check the wound?”

“No.”

Roy groaned. “Jaybird—”

You lifted a hand without looking away from Jason. Roy went quiet. “I won’t touch you without permission,” you said.

Jason narrowed his eyes behind the white lenses of his helmet. “That supposed to make me feel better?”

“No,” you said. “It’s supposed to be true.”

That knocked something loose in him. Not trust. God, no. Trust was not a light switch. It was a locked door in a house that had burned down twice. But the answer made him pause. Most people tried to soothe him. Manage him. Talk around him like he was a bomb with a heartbeat. You just told him the truth and let it sit there. Jason hated that he respected it.

“Five seconds,” he said.

Roy exhaled loudly. “Thank God.”

Jason pointed at him. “You talk again, I’m bleeding on your boots.”

“You already are.”

“Then I’m doing it on purpose.”

You came closer. Slowly. Jason watched every movement. You stopped beside the table and held out your hand, palm up. “May I?”

It was a stupid question. He was bleeding out. Anyone else would have grabbed him, pressed down, started working. Bruce would have barked orders. Alfred would have said something dry and terrifying and gotten exactly what he wanted. Leslie would have given him that look that made him feel twelve years old and doomed.

But you asked. Jason looked at your hand. Then at your face. Then, because blood loss apparently made people stupid, he nodded.

Your fingers touched the torn fabric near his side. He flinched. You stopped immediately. The wound throbbed. His pulse roared. Your hand did not move.

“Still okay?” you asked.

Jason stared at you. Something in his chest got tight in a way that had nothing to do with the knife wound. “Yeah,” he muttered.

You continued. Careful. Gentle. Professional. It was worse than pain, somehow. Pain was familiar. Pain did not ask anything from him except survival. Gentleness was another language, and Jason had forgotten it.

You peeled the ruined fabric back and inhaled softly. You did not look away from the wound. “It’s deep.”

Jason scoffed. “You should see the other guy.”

“I did. Kori threw him through a wall.”

Kori smiled brightly. “He was most unpleasant.”

Jason huffed, then hissed when the movement pulled at his side.

Your eyes flicked up. “That hurt.”

“Nothing gets past you, huh?”

“I’m good at my job.”

“And humble.”

“Deeply.”

Against his will, Jason’s mouth almost twitched.

You placed your palm near the wound, not quite touching it.

“This will feel warm,” you said. “Maybe strange. It shouldn’t hurt.”

“Shouldn’t?”

“Bodies are weird.”

“That your professional opinion?”

“Yes.”

He snorted. Then your hand settled over the wound. Warmth bloomed under his skin. Jason stiffened. Every instinct in him screamed. Hands on him. Body vulnerable. Blood loss. Magic. Lazarus. Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea. Then the pain started to fade. The torn flesh pulled together beneath your palm. Muscle sealed. Skin knitted. The hot pulse of damage vanished like someone had turned down the volume on his body.

Jason’s breath caught. You removed your hand. The wound was gone. A smooth line of new pink skin remained beneath the blood.

Roy gave a soft, relieved laugh. “See? Cheat code.”

Jason kept staring at his side. His whole body felt wrong without the pain. Too quiet.

“You good?” you asked.

He looked up sharply. You were watching him, not smug, not pleased with yourself, not expecting gratitude. Just checking. Jason hated that too.

“Fine,” he said.

Your mouth twitched like you knew exactly how much that word did not mean. Then your hand flexed once at your side. A tiny movement. Almost nothing.

“Does it drain you?” he asked.

You blinked. “Little bit,” you said.

Jason stared. That was not an answer. But he was too tired and too raw to chase it. So he pulled his ruined shirt down and slid off the table. His legs held. His side did not split open. Miracle.

Fine print, he reminded himself. There was always fine print.

You stepped back to give him space. That was when Jason decided he did not like you. Which, for him, meant he was probably doomed.

It did not happen quickly. Jason did not wake up one day and trust you. That was not how people like him worked. Trust grew sideways. In bad lighting. With teeth.

It started with you never pushing. You healed Roy without complaint. Kori with tenderness. Artemis, when she was around, though she always eyed you like she was trying to decide whether your power was divine favour or extremely suspicious witchcraft. Bizarro once held out a scraped hand to you with such solemn faith that even Jason had to look away.

You asked every time. Even when someone was hurt badly. Even when the answer was obvious.

“May I?” “Can I help?” “Is it okay if I touch your shoulder?” “Tell me if you need me to stop.”

Jason watched you do it for everyone. Then he noticed you did it for him more carefully. Not delicately. That would have pissed him off. Carefully. Like you had studied the shape of his boundaries and decided they deserved architecture.

The second time you healed him, it was a bullet graze across his ribs in Buenos Aires. He let you do it because Roy was unconscious, Kori was busy tearing through an alien weapon depot, and Jason needed to be able to stand without bleeding all over the mission.

You said, “May I?”

He said, “Yeah, yeah, get on with it.” You looked at him. He sighed hard enough to make the wound burn. “Yes. You may.”

Your smile was small and annoying.

The wound vanished beneath your touch.

Your mouth tightened for half a second. Jason saw it. “You okay?”

You looked surprised. Then amused. “That’s my line.”

“Didn’t ask whose line it was.”

“I’m okay.”

There it was again.

Not fine.

Worse. Okay.

Jason did not trust okay either. But you were already turning away to check on Roy, and Jason let it go.

The third time, he caught your wrist afterwards. Not hard. Just enough to stop you from leaving.

You looked down at his hand, then back at him.

Jason let go immediately.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

You tilted your head. “For what?”

He did not know what to do with that question. For grabbing. For needing. For noticing. For being the kind of person who flinched at kindness and still wanted it badly enough to make himself sick.

“You looked dizzy,” he said instead.

You smiled. “I’m alright.”

“Strike three.”

“What?”

“Fine. Okay. Alright.” Jason crossed his arms. “You got any honest synonyms in there?”

Your smile faded.

For a second, he thought you might tell him. Something passed behind your eyes. Something tired and old and buried so deep Jason recognised it by shape alone.

Then Roy groaned from the other side of the room, and the moment broke.

You stepped back.

“I just need rest sometimes,” you said.

Jason watched you walk away.

That night, he left an electrolyte drink outside your door. He did not knock.

The next morning, it was gone.

You did not mention it. Neither did he.

After that, trust grew teeth and settled in. You started leaving medical supplies in Jason’s safehouses without asking. Better gauze. Antibiotic ointment. Suture kits. Painkillers that did not make him foggy. You labelled everything in neat handwriting.

Jason complained about it for three straight weeks and used every single thing.

He started buying coffee the way you liked it.

You never told him your order. He figured it out anyway.

“You stalk all your medics?” you asked the first time he handed you the cup.

Jason shrugged. “Only the annoying ones.”

“I’m honoured.”

“Don’t be.”

You took the coffee and smiled into the lid. Jason pretended not to notice how warm that made him feel.

The first time you saw him without the helmet for longer than an emergency, it was because you had shown up at his apartment at two in the morning with a split lip and a bruise blooming under one eye.

Jason opened the door with a gun in one hand. Then he saw you.

The gun lowered. “What happened?”

You smiled weakly. “Hello to you too.”

“Who did it?”

“Very normal first question.”

“Name.”

“Jason—”

“Name.”

You sighed and leaned against the doorframe. “No one did it. Not to me.”

Jason went still.

The bruise was dark. Fresh. Angry. The split lip had already started bleeding again.

“What does that mean?”

You looked away. “I healed someone.”

Jason’s grip tightened around the door. “Who?”

“A kid. Metahuman. Scared. Cornered. Police got involved. It was messy.”

“Kid hit you?”

“No. The kid had been hit.”

Jason stared at the bruise. It sat on your face like evidence.

His mouth went dry. Something was wrong. Something had been wrong the whole time.

But you looked exhausted, and there was rain in your hair, and Jason could not make himself interrogate you in the hallway when you seemed one bad breath away from falling over.

So he stepped aside. “Get in.”

You blinked. “I wasn’t asking to—”

“Didn’t ask what you were asking.”

“Bossy.”

“Bleeding.”

“Fair.”

His apartment was not much. A safehouse pretending badly to be a home. Books stacked on every flat surface. Weapons cleaned and hidden with the casual paranoia of someone who had never believed walls were enough. One battered couch. One chipped mug in the sink. One photo tucked into the frame of a mirror where nobody would see it unless they knew where to look.

You saw the books first.

“Jane Austen?” you asked, eyebrows lifting.

Jason scowled. “You got a problem with Austen?”

“No. Just adjusting my worldview.”

“Adjust faster.”

You smiled, then winced when it split your lip further.

Jason pointed at the couch. “Sit.”

You obeyed, mostly because your knees seemed to have unionised against you.

He got the first aid kit.

“You’re a healer,” he said, sitting across from you.

“Observant.”

“Why don’t you heal yourself?”

You looked at your hands. There was a long pause.

“I can,” you said. “Kind of.”

“Kind of.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Uncomplicate it.”

Your eyes lifted. There was that look again. The one that said you were deciding which truth would hurt least.

Jason hated that he already knew you well enough to see the calculation.

“Some things take time,” you said.

Bullshit. He knew it. You knew he knew it.

But he did not push. Instead, he cleaned the blood from your lip.

You went very still when he touched you. Jason noticed.

He almost pulled back.

“You good?” he asked.

Your gaze flicked to his. Then softened. “Yeah.”

He waited.

You huffed. “Yes, Jason. I’m good.”

He resumed. You watched his face while he worked.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re gentle.”

He scoffed. “Don’t spread that around. Ruin my brand.”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

“Better be.”

Your smile was small.

Jason taped gauze over a scrape near your temple, then leaned back.

“There,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

“I said thank you.”

“Yeah. Weird.”

You laughed softly. The sound settled somewhere behind his ribs and refused to leave.

That night, you fell asleep on his couch before the rain stopped. Jason covered you with a blanket and sat in the armchair across from you with a book open in his lap, pretending to read.

He watched you instead. The bruise on your face darkened. Your hand curled near your chest. You looked younger asleep. Not innocent. Jason did not believe in innocence as a permanent state. But unguarded.

He wondered who took care of you when you were done taking care of everyone else. He wondered why the thought made him angry. He wondered when you had become someone he worried about.

By morning, your bruise had faded to yellow.

You woke to find coffee on the table and Jason in the kitchen burning toast with the grave concentration of a man defusing a bomb.

“You cook?” you asked.

Jason glanced over his shoulder. “You sound surprised.”

“You own one fork.”

“It’s a good fork.”

“It’s bent.”

“It’s got character.”

You smiled. Jason looked away first.

After that, you came back.

Not often. Not predictably.

But enough. Sometimes you arrived after healing someone else, pale around the mouth and trying to hide the way your hands shook. Jason stopped asking questions you refused to answer. Instead, he made tea. Or coffee. Or soup from a recipe Alfred had bullied into him years ago and would deny knowing if asked.

Sometimes Jason came to you. Not for healing. Not at first. He would show up outside the clinic where you volunteered, leaning against his bike with a second helmet hooked over one arm.

“You look like a kidnapping waiting to happen,” you told him.

“I’m charming.”

“You’re terrifying.”

“Same thing in Gotham.”

Then he drove you home because your shift ended late and he had already checked the police scanners and knew the neighbourhood was getting worse.

You told him you could take care of yourself.

He said, “Didn’t say you couldn’t.”

You got on the bike.

The first time he had a Lazarus nightmare in front of you, it was an accident. You were in his apartment, both of you pretending the movie Roy had recommended was not terrible. Rain hit the windows. Your feet were tucked under you on the couch. Jason sat on the floor with his back against it, close enough that your knee almost touched his shoulder.

He fell asleep. He never meant to. Jason did not sleep around people unless his body betrayed him. One minute, he was listening to you complain about the movie’s medical inaccuracies. The next, he was back in the Pit.

Green light. Hands dragging him down. Laughter. Crowbar. Dirt. His own voice screaming from somewhere far away.

He woke with a knife in his hand. You were on the floor in front of him, hands raised, breathing slow.

“Jason,” you said.

His vision tunnelled. The knife shook.

“Don’t touch me,” he rasped.

“I won’t.”

“I said don’t—”

“I heard you.”

His chest heaved. Sweat ran cold down his back. The room flickered between then and now, green and dark, grave and apartment.

You did not move closer. You did not move away.

“I’m here,” you said. “You’re in your apartment. Window’s cracked because you said the soup smelled too healthy. Roy’s terrible movie is paused at forty-two minutes. You have a knife. I am not touching you.”

The details landed slowly.

Window. Movie. Knife. You.

Not the Pit. Not the warehouse. Not the grave.

Jason lowered the knife. It hit the floor with a dull thud.

Your hands stayed raised. He hated that. He hated that you had to be careful with him. Hated that some broken animal part of him needed it.

“I could’ve hurt you,” he said.

“You didn’t.”

“I could’ve.”

“But you didn’t.”

He looked at you. Your face was calm.

Then, very carefully, you said, “Can I sit beside you?”

Jason’s throat worked. He nodded.

You moved slowly, sitting on the floor a few feet away.

He stared at the wall.

“You should leave,” he said.

“Probably.”

That startled a laugh out of him. It cracked on the way out.

You smiled faintly.

“I’m not going to,” you said.

“Stupid.”

“Frequently.”

“Dangerous.”

“Occupational hazard.”

Jason closed his eyes. His head pounded. Lazarus static crawled beneath his skin. Rage, fear, memory, pain — all of it tangled until he wanted to claw himself open just to let it out.

He felt your gaze on him.

“Can I help?” you asked.

His eyes opened. “No healing.”

“I didn’t say healing.”

“What else you got?”

You held out your hand, palm up, not reaching. “Grounding.”

Jason looked at it like it was a trap. Maybe it was. Maybe kindness always was, if you had been starved long enough.

He took your hand anyway.

Your fingers curled around his. Warm. Steady.

Something in him eased. Not the whole thing. Not the Pit. Not the rage. Not the dead boy under his skin.

But enough.

For the first time in a long time, Jason breathed and did not feel like the air had teeth.

You stayed until dawn. You did not mention the way his hand never let go of yours. Neither did he.

After that, things changed. Quietly.

Jason started calling you when missions got bad.

Not because he needed help. Never that. Because you were “already on the roster” or “closer than the League” or “less annoying than a hospital.”

You started calling him when healing took too much.

Not because you needed help. Never that. Because his apartment was “nearby” or “quieter than the Tower” or “the only place nobody asked questions.”

Neither of you called it what it was. That would have been too sensible, and both of you were apparently allergic.

Roy figured it out first. Obviously.

“You two are doing the thing,” he said one morning, walking into the safehouse kitchen to find Jason making you eggs while you sat at the counter wearing one of his hoodies.

Jason did not look up from the pan. “The thing where I shoot you?”

“The domestic thing.”

You choked on your coffee.

Jason pointed the spatula at Roy. “Out.”

Roy grinned. “Oh, this is precious.”

“Harper.”

“They’re wearing your hoodie.”

“They were cold.”

“You own, like, twelve blankets.”

“Kori burned three.”

“One time,” Kori called from the living room. “And they were ugly.”

Roy leaned against the counter, delighted. “So the hoodie was medically necessary?”

You set your mug down. “I’m not participating in whatever this is.”

“This is love, babe,” Roy said.

Jason went very still. The word landed in the room like a live grenade.

Your eyes flicked to Jason. Jason stared at the eggs.

Roy’s expression changed./ For once in his life, he seemed to realise he had stepped directly into a minefield.

“Anyway,” he said loudly, “I’m going to go stand over there and pretend I have survival instincts.”

He fled. Kori appeared in the doorway, took one look at Jason’s face, and gently turned around again.

The kitchen went quiet.

You looked down at your hands. Jason turned off the stove.

The eggs were probably ruined. He did not care.

“Jay,” you said softly. He hated how much he loved that nickname in your voice.

“Don’t,” he said.

You closed your mouth. Regret hit him immediately.

He set the spatula down.

“I didn’t mean—” He stopped.

Words were hard. Honest ones were worse. They jammed in his throat like broken glass.

You waited. You were good at waiting. That was how you got under his armour in the first place.

Jason braced both hands on the counter. “I ain’t good at this.”

Your voice stayed gentle. “At eggs?”

A laugh punched out of him.

He looked at you. At his hoodie around your shoulders. At the fading bruise beneath your jaw from some injury you still would not fully explain. At the coffee he knew exactly how to make. At the space you had taken up in his life so gradually that he had not noticed until the whole damn room was full of you.

“I don’t know what this is,” he said.

Your expression softened. “I don’t either.”

“But it’s something.”

“Yeah,” you whispered. “It is.”

His chest hurt. Not bad hurt.

Worse. Hopeful hurt.

Jason looked away. “I don’t wanna ruin it.”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” you admitted. “I don’t.”

He appreciated that.

You got off the stool and came around the counter slowly. He did not move. You stopped close enough that he could feel your warmth, far enough that he could choose.

Always choose.

“Can I touch you?” you asked.

Jason closed his eyes. The question still did things to him. Maybe it always would.

“Yeah,” he said.

Your hand settled against his chest, over his heart. His own hand came up and covered yours.

“I’m scared too,” you said. His eyes opened. You smiled sadly. “In case that helps.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Fair.”

“It kinda does.”

“Also fair.”

Jason looked at your mouth. Your breath changed. He almost laughed because, really, after blood, bullets, nightmares, Roy’s emotional terrorism, and two idiots dancing around the obvious for months, this was what made him nervous? A kiss? Ridiculous.

Terrifying.

He leaned in slowly. Giving you time. Giving himself time.

Your eyes fluttered shut.

Jason kissed you like he was asking a question he could not say aloud. You answered by curling your fingers in his shirt and kissing him back.

The eggs burned.

Roy yelled, “I smell emotional development and also breakfast crimes!”

Jason broke the kiss just long enough to shout, “I will end you!”

You laughed against his mouth. And Jason, against all odds, felt alive.

Not resurrected. Not surviving.

Alive.

That was how you became his person. Not all at once. Not with fireworks or grand declarations. With coffee. Consent. Bad movie nights. Blood on kitchen tile. Your hand in his after nightmares. His hoodie on your shoulders. Soup neither of you admitted was Alfred’s recipe. Books traded back and forth with notes scribbled in the margins.

You gave him a copy of Frankenstein with a sticky note on the front that read: For obvious reasons. Jason threw a pillow at you and then read the whole thing in one night. He gave you The Odyssey and wrote inside the cover: For getting home, even when it takes too damn long.

You cried. He pretended not to panic.

You loved him. He loved you.

Neither of you said it for a while. Jason thought that was okay. He thought you had time.

That was the thing about miracles. They made you stupid enough to believe in later.

The mission that ruined everything started in Qurac.

It was supposed to be simple. That was how Jason knew they were screwed. A weapons ring was moving experimental biotech through old League of Assassins tunnels. Not Lazarus, not exactly, but close enough that Jason felt the green under his skin start snarling the second he read the briefing.

Roy leaned over the table. “We can sit this one out.”

Jason glared at him. “No.”

“You did the voice.”

“What voice?”

“The ‘my trauma is driving, and I’m pretending it’s tactical’ voice.”

Kori, floating upside down near the ceiling because chairs were apparently optional, nodded solemnly. “I have also heard this voice.”

Jason looked at you for backup. Bad idea. You were sitting across from him, expression too careful.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” you said.

Jason scoffed. “Not proving anything.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not.”

“I said okay.”

“You said it judgmentally.”

“I said it accurately.”

Roy whispered, “Married.”

Jason threw a pen at him. You caught it without looking away from Jason. He hated when you did hot things during arguments. Deeply inconvenient.

“I’m going,” he said.

“I know,” you replied.

Something in his chest softened despite himself. You did know. You knew when not to push. Knew when the mission mattered for reasons he could not explain without turning himself inside out. Knew that sitting out would feel like letting the Pit own a part of him forever.

“But I’m coming with you,” you added.

“No.”

Your eyebrow lifted. “Cute.”

“No.”

“Jason.”

“No. Those tunnels are League-adjacent, Lazarus-adjacent, and cursed-adjacent. That is three adjacents too many.”

“So you agree it’s dangerous.”

“Yeah. For you.”

“And not for you?”

“I’m built different.”

“You’re built concussed.”

Roy made a strangled noise.

Jason pointed at him without looking. “Do not.”

Roy raised both hands.

You leaned forward. “I am not asking to fight,” you said. “I’m asking to be nearby if something goes wrong.”

“Something always goes wrong.”

“Exactly.”

Jason stared at you. You stared back. He knew that look. You had learned it from him, which was rude.

“You stay behind the extraction point,” he said.

“No.”

“You stay with Roy.”

“Roy is going inside with you.”

“Then you stay with Kori.”

“Kori is also going inside with you.”

“You stay in the jet.”

You smiled. It was not a nice smile. “I love when you try to assign me to furniture.”

Jason’s brain snagged.cLove. You had not said I love you. Not exactly. But the word slipped out so easily in your voice that Jason’s whole stupid heart tripped over it.

You noticed. Your expression softened. “Jay.”

He looked away. “Fine. But you stay back unless called.”

“I can agree to that.”

“No hero shit.”cYou gave him a flat look.c“Fine,” he amended. “Limited hero shit.”

“Reasonable.”

“It’s not.”

“No, but it’s us.”

That was the problem.cIt was very much you. Both of you, sprinting toward pain with your hands out, pretending it was strategy instead of instinct.

Jason should have known then.cMaybe some part of him did.

The tunnels stank of old water, rust, and memory.cJason hated them immediately.

The walls were carved stone reinforced with modern steel. League symbols had been scraped away in some places, but not all. Emergency lights flickered red along the floor, casting the corridor in a glow that reminded him too much of blood under water.

His helmet filtered toxins, mapped heat signatures, tracked motion.cIt did nothing for ghosts.

Roy moved ahead of him, bow raised. Kori floated silently behind. You were back near the extraction route with a comm link, medical kit, and strict instructions Jason knew you would disobey the second things got ugly.c

The first fifteen minutes were quiet. Too quiet.cThen Roy said, “I hate to be the one to say this, but—”

The tunnel exploded.cThe walls opened. Hidden panels slid back, and figures poured out wearing armour marked with a symbol Jason had only seen once before, burned into the doors of a Lazarus laboratory. His vision went green at the edges.

“Jason,” Roy snapped.

“I’m good.”

“Liar.”

Gunfire lit the tunnel. Jason moved.

The first wave went down fast. Rubber rounds, electrified knives, a boot to one helmet, elbow to another throat. Kori’s starbolts tore through the far wall. Roy’s arrows pinned armour joints and disabled weapons with surgical precision.

Then the second wave came. Bigger. Modified. Wrong. Their veins glowed faint green beneath grey skin.

Jason’s breathing changed.

Lazarus experiments. Of course. Of course, some bastards had looked at the thing that ruined him and thought, How can we make this worse?

A soldier lunged at him with a hooked blade. Jason ducked, drove a knee into their ribs, and slammed them into the wall.

The body twitched. Too strong. Not feeling pain. Jason’s helmet flashed warnings.

Behind him, Kori cried out.

He turned. A net of glowing wire wrapped around her, crackling with energy tuned specifically to disrupt Tamaranean physiology. She hit the ground hard. Roy shouted and fired three arrows in rapid succession. A fourth soldier caught them midair.

“Okay,” Roy said. “That’s new and bad.”

Jason shot the soldier in the knee. They did not fall.

“Very bad,” Roy corrected.

Then your voice came through comms. “Jason, status?”

He should have lied. He almost did. Instead, because he loved you and was trying to be less of a hypocrite about trust, he said, “Complicated.”

“That is not a status.”

“Hostiles enhanced. Kori’s down. Roy’s being annoying.”

“Means he’s alive,” Roy grunted.

You were silent for half a second. Then: “I’m coming in.”

“No.”

“Jason—”

“No. Extraction point. Stay there.”

A blast shook dust from the ceiling. The comm crackled.

Jason drove his shoulder into an attacker and fired point-blank into their armour.

“I mean it,” he snapped. “You stay back.”

Your voice went quiet. “Come back to me, then.”

Jason’s throat tightened. Bad timing.T errible timing. Absolutely lethal timing.

“Plan to,” he said.

The fight turned uglier. They pushed forward inch by inch, deeper into the tunnels, until they reached the central lab.

It was worse than Jason expected. Rows of containment pods lined the walls. Some empty. Some occupied. Tubes pumped greenish fluid through bodies that twitched in artificial sleep. Screens displayed vitals. Pain responses. Regeneration trials.

Jason froze. For one second, he was not in Qurac. He was in the Pit. He was in the grave. He was on a table, dead and not dead, while people decided what his body was worth.

Roy’s hand closed on his shoulder. “Jay.”

Jason inhaled. Gun oil. Dust. Roy.

Not Pit. Not grave.

Now.

“I’m good,” Jason said.

Roy did not call him a liar this time. Maybe because he knew Jason needed the lie to stand.

They planted charges. Kori tore free of the net with a furious roar bright enough to shake the pods.

That was when the real weapon woke up. It came from the far chamber. A man, maybe once. Now something stitched together with biotech and Lazarus residue, skin pale, eyes burning green, a blade grown from his own arm like bone turned cruel.

Jason knew immediately.

This was not a soldier. This was a prototype.

The prototype looked at him. Smiled.

“Returned one,” it said.

Jason’s blood went cold.

Roy whispered, “Hate that.”

The prototype moved faster than anything that large should have. Jason barely dodged the first strike. The blade cut through his jacket, armour, and skin beneath like it was all paper.

Pain flared hot across his chest. He fired twice. The bullets sank into the prototype’s shoulder and were pushed out by healing flesh.

“Of course,” Jason snarled.

Kori hit it with a Starbolt that threw it through three pods. It stood back up. Roy’s explosive arrow took out half the floor. It crawled out of the crater. The charges beeped. Time ticking down.

Jason made a decision.

Not a noble one. A necessary one.

“Get the civilians out,” he said.

Roy’s head snapped toward him. “No.”

“Kori, take the pods that are still viable. Roy, extraction.”

“Jason.”

“Now!”

Kori looked at him. Something in her expression said she understood. That she hated understanding. She lifted two pods, one under each arm, and flew toward the exit.

Roy lingered. Jason turned on him. “Go.”

Roy’s mouth twisted. “You better not do the dead boy routine.”

Jason smiled behind the helmet. “No promises.”

“Jason.”

“Roy.”

For a second, all the jokes fell away. Then Roy cursed and ran.

Jason faced the prototype alone. The thing tilted its head.

“Returned one,” it said again.

Jason rolled his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he said. “And you’re about to be discontinued.”

The fight became brutal. Jason broke three fingers. Maybe four. Took a hit to the ribs that cracked armour and bone. Lost one gun. Then the other. Drew a knife. Lost that too. He fought dirty because he had never known any other way to survive. The prototype fought like pain was a rumour.

The countdown hit sixty seconds. Jason lured it deeper into the lab, toward the central reactor.

Fifty. He took a blade through the shoulder and used the angle to get close enough to slam an explosive charge into the prototype’s chest.

Forty. It roared.

Jason laughed, bloody and breathless.

“Yeah,” he rasped. “Didn’t like that, huh?”

Thirty. The prototype grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the reactor casing. His helmet cracked. Warnings flashed.

Twenty. Jason reached for the detonator. The prototype’s bone blade punched into his abdomen.

Everything stopped. Not because there was no pain.

Because there was too much. The blade went in low and deep, tearing through armour, flesh, organs. Jason’s mouth opened around a sound he refused to make. Blood flooded hot beneath his jacket.

The prototype leaned close.

“Returned,” it whispered, “can return again.”

Something inside Jason went very still. No. No, he couldn’t.

Not again. Not the Pit. Not the dark. Not crawling back wrong.

His fingers closed around the detonator.

Ten.

He pressed it.

The charge on the prototype’s chest exploded. Green fire swallowed the room. Jason hit the ground hard.

The world went silent. For a while, there was only heat.

Then ringing. Then pain.

Jason opened his eyes to a broken ceiling and emergency lights flickering red. He knew before he moved. He knew from the wet warmth beneath him. From the wrongness in his gut. From the way every breath dragged knives through his lungs. From the cold spreading outward, slow and hungry.

He looked down.

Bad. Very bad.

His abdomen was open. Blood slicked the floor beneath him, dark and spreading. Something inside him had become outside him, and Jason’s brain refused to look at it directly.

He laughed once. It came out wet.

“Gross,” he muttered.

Footsteps thundered. Roy appeared first, skidding into view, face going white.

“Oh no,” Roy breathed. “No, no, no.”

Jason tried to lift a hand. It did not move. “Hey,” he rasped. “You look like shit.”

Roy dropped beside him. “Shut up. Shut up, don’t talk.”

Roy pressed both hands against the wound.

Jason screamed. Couldn’t help it. The sound tore out of him. Roy flinched but did not let go, tears already standing in his eyes.

“I told you not to do the dead boy routine,” Roy choked.

Jason tried to smile. He tasted blood.

Kori landed hard enough to crack the floor, her glow flickering with horror.

Then you were there.

Jason’s heart lurched. No.

No, no, no.

You dropped to your knees beside him. Your face went still when you saw the wound. That was how Jason knew it was worse than he thought.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he rasped.

Your eyes snapped to his. Roy made a broken sound. Jason had never called you that in front of them before.

You looked like you might fall apart. Instead, you reached for him.

Jason caught your wrist. Weakly. Barely.

“No,” he said.

Your face crumpled. “Jason—”

“No.”

“Jay, you’re dying.”

“Yeah.”

Roy swore. “Don’t say that.”

Jason ignored him. His eyes stayed on you. He knew now. Maybe not everything. But enough. The bruises. The shaking hands. The dizziness. The injuries that mirrored other people’s pain. The way you looked after healing someone too badly hurt.

Fine print. There was always fine print.

“Don’t,” he said again.

Your tears spilled over. “I can fix it.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes,” you whispered. “I can.”

“No.” His grip tightened with the last scraps of his strength. “You can take it.”

The words hit the room like a gunshot. Roy looked at you. Kori’s glow dimmed. Your face went pale.

Jason laughed weakly, and it hurt like hell. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Figured it out.”

You shook your head. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Jason—”

“Don’t you fucking dare apologise and then do it anyway.”

Your mouth trembled. Behind you, the tunnel groaned. The charges had destabilised more than the lab. Dust rained from the ceiling.

Roy looked between you and Jason, panicked. “What does he mean, take it?”

You did not answer.

Jason did. “Their power,” he said, each word dragging blood with it. “Doesn’t heal. Transfers.”

Roy froze. Kori whispered your name. You closed your eyes.

Jason wanted to reach for your face. Couldn’t.

“You should’ve told me,” he said.

“I know.”

“You should’ve told me before I let you touch me.”

“I know.”

His vision blurred. He blinked hard.

No. He was not dying like this. Not while looking at you. Not while you were about to make the worst choice of both their lives.

“Listen to me,” he said. Your eyes opened. “I ain’t worth that.”

Something in your face changed.

Not soft. Not sad.

Angry.

Good. Anger meant you were still you.

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

Jason’s breath hitched. “Yeah?” he whispered. “Funny. Thought that was your whole thing.”

You flinched.

The wound pulsed under Roy’s hands. Jason’s body jerked. Black crowded the edges of his sight.

Your hand slid from his grip.

Panic ripped through him sharper than the blade.

“No,” he tried.

You leaned over him. “Forgive me,” you whispered.

Jason knew those words. He had heard them in dreams. In nightmares. From people who were about to hurt him and wanted absolution first.

But your voice was different. Broken. Loving. Terrified. He tried to move. Tried to stop you. Tried to tell you he loved you because apparently he had waited too long and now the universe was laughing.

Your hands pressed to his abdomen. You inhaled.

And Jason healed. It was instant. Horrific. His organs pulled back into place. Flesh sealed. Blood stopped. Pain vanished so fast it left him dizzy. His lungs opened. His heartbeat slammed strong and furious against his ribs.

He gasped.

Sat up. Alive. Whole.

And you screamed. Your body folded forward, arms wrapping around your abdomen as blood burst between your fingers. The same wound tore open through your body, deep and devastating. You collapsed against him before he could catch you properly.

For half a second, Jason could not understand what he was seeing.

Then the blood hit his hands. Your blood. Your wound.

His wound.

“No,” he said. It was not a word. It was an animal sound.

Roy scrambled backwards, horrified. “Oh, my God.”

Kori’s hands flew to her mouth. You choked on a breath, eyes wide with pain. Jason caught you, pressing both hands to your abdomen. Blood welled between his fingers.

“No, no, no, no, no.”

Your head lolled against his chest. He had seen you hurt before. Bruised. Dizzy. Pale.

Never this. Never open. Never dying.

Because of him.

“Why would you do that?” he shouted.

You tried to speak. Blood touched your lips. Jason’s heart split clean in half.

“Don’t,” he said, voice breaking. “Don’t talk. Don’t you dare talk.”

Your eyes found his. Relief. Again. Always that damned relief. Because he was alive. Because you had done this and thought the math worked.

Jason wanted to scream until the tunnels came down.

Roy was talking rapidly into comms, calling for evac, medical, League transport, anything. Kori knelt beside Jason, glowing hands hovering uselessly because Tamaranean starfire could destroy armies but could not undo this.

Jason pressed harder. You whimpered. He nearly threw up.

“Sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

Your fingers twitched against his jacket. Trying to hold on. He leaned close.

“Stay with me,” he said. “You hear me? You stay with me.”

Your lips moved. He bent lower.

“Worth it,” you breathed.

Jason shattered. “No.” His voice cracked so hard it barely sounded human. “No, you don’t get to say that. You don’t get to put that on me.”

Your eyes fluttered.

“No!” he shouted. “Look at me. Look at me!”

They opened again. Barely.

Jason’s hands were soaked. He had been covered in blood a thousand times. This was the first time it felt like drowning.

“You’re not dying,” he said. “Not for me. You hear me? Not for me.”

The tunnel groaned again. Kori touched his shoulder. “Jason, we must move.”

“I can’t.”

“We must.”

“I can’t move them!”

“You can,” Kori said, voice shaking but firm. “You must.”

Roy appeared on your other side with a field stretcher, face wet, hands trembling. “Jay. We’ve got medevac two minutes out, but this tunnel is coming down now.”

Jason looked at you. Your breathing was too shallow. Two minutes was forever. Two minutes was nothing.

He slid one arm under your shoulders, the other beneath your knees. You made a small, broken sound. Jason flinched like he had been shot.

“I know,” he whispered. “I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I’ve got you.”

He lifted you. Blood ran down his arm.  His healed abdomen felt like a mockery.

Every step out of the tunnel was hell. Not because of his body. His body was fine. That was the problem. His body was fine, and yours was not.  You had turned him into a ghost story again. A boy walking away from his own death while someone else paid the price.

Jason kept his eyes on the exit. He did not look back when the lab collapsed behind them. He did not think about the Pit. He did not think about graves.

He thought only of your pulse against his chest.

The emergency jet became a battlefield. Not against enemies. Against death.

Roy worked with frantic precision, hands moving over bandages and pressure seals, voice too high and too steady. Kori held your head in her lap, murmuring soft Tamaranean prayers under her breath. Jason knelt beside you and refused to let go of your hand.

He had taken off his helmet. He did not remember doing it. Your blood was on his face.

“Talk to them,” Roy said.

Jason’s head snapped up. “What?”

“Talk to them. Keep them here.”

Jason looked down at you. Your eyes were closed. Your face had gone grey. He leaned closer.

“Hey,” he said. Nothing. His throat closed. “Hey, you stubborn pain-in-the-ass miracle with legs. Open your eyes. You don’t get to do this,” he said. “You hear me? You don’t get to barge into my life, reorganise my first-aid kits, insult my cooking, steal my hoodies, make me read books I already read just because you wanna argue about the themes, and then dip.”

Your fingers did not move. Jason’s voice shook.

“I was gonna tell you,” he said. Roy went still. “I was gonna tell you properly. Not in a tunnel. Not like this. I had a plan. Sort of. It was a bad plan, but it was a plan.” Kori smiled through tears. Jason swallowed hard. “I was gonna take you to that bookstore you like. The one with the cat that hates me.” Your heart monitor beeped. Steady. Too slow. “And then dinner. Real dinner. Not takeout on my fire escape. I was gonna be normal as hell about it.”

Roy whispered, “Debatable.”

Jason shot him a look, but there was no heat in it. Then he looked back at you. “I love you,” he said. The words fell out raw. No armour. No joke. No place to hide. “I love you, and you are not allowed to make that a tragedy.”

Your eyelids fluttered. Jason stopped breathing.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Come on, sweetheart. Stay.”

Your eyes opened a sliver. Unfocused. Pain-glazed. Alive.

Jason laughed, a broken, wet thing. “There you are.”

Your mouth moved. He leaned close.

“Bad… plan,” you whispered.

Jason choked.

Roy laughed and sobbed at the same time. Kori bent over you, smiling through tears. “Beloved one, your timing is excellent.”

Jason pressed his forehead to your hand.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, it was a bad plan. You can bully me about it later.”

Your eyes drifted shut again. But your pulse held. Jason clung to that like scripture.

You did not die. Jason repeated that sentence so many times it stopped sounding like language.

You did not die. You did not die. You did not die.

The Watchtower medbay took you because Earth hospitals were not equipped for catastrophic transferred magical-biotech trauma, which was an insane phrase that Jason hated with his entire soul.

You went into surgery. Jason was not allowed in. This went about as well as anyone could expect.

He lasted four minutes before trying to force his way through the doors.

Clark stopped him.

Jason slammed both hands into Superman’s chest and got exactly nowhere. “Move.”

Clark’s face was pale. “Jason.”

“I said move.”

“They’re operating.”

“I need to be in there.”

“You can’t.”

Jason shoved him again. Nothing. His chest was heaving. His hands were still stained red. His body was whole, perfect, healed. He hated it. He hated his skin. He hated his heartbeat. He hated that he could stand.

“Move,” he said again, voice breaking.

Clark’s expression shifted.

“I can’t,” Clark said softly.

Jason swung. Clark caught his wrist. Jason tried to wrench free.

“Don’t,” he snarled.

Clark let go immediately. Jason stumbled back.

Jason wanted to blame someone. Anyone. The doctors. The League. Your power. Himself. God, if he existed, which Jason doubted and also had several complaints prepared just in case. Mostly, he wanted to blame you. Because if he blamed you, he could be angry. If he was angry, he did not have to be terrified.

Bruce arrived an hour later. Still in the suit, cowl down, expression carved from stone. Jason almost laughed. The big bad bat coming to loom at another disaster.

Bruce looked at Jason. Then at the blood on him. His mouth tightened. “What happened?”

Jason’s smile was vicious and empty. “They saved me.”

Bruce went still. Clark murmured, “Jason…”

“No, he asked.” Jason stepped toward Bruce. “They saved me. Took a gut wound that should’ve killed me and put it in themselves. That answer your question?”

Bruce’s face changed. Only slightly. But Jason knew him. Horror, for Bruce, looked like silence.

“How long?” Bruce asked.

Jason laughed. There it was. That detective brain. Already building a case out of the wreckage. “Ask them if they wake up.”

“When,” Bruce said. Jason’s jaw clenched. Bruce stepped closer. “When they wake up.”

For some reason, that nearly undid him. Jason turned away sharply. “I should’ve stopped them.”

“You were dying.”

“Yeah, been there. Didn’t stick.”

Bruce said nothing. Jason hated him for that, too.

The surgery lasted six hours. Jason did not sit down once. Dick showed up sometime around hour three, hair damp from rain, face tight with worry. Tim arrived with three tablets and the haunted look of someone already building a database. Damian came with Alfred and said nothing at all, which was how Jason knew he was scared.

The hallway filled with heroes you had saved. League. Titans. Outlaws. Young Justice. Too many people. Too much guilt.

Jason wanted to scream at all of them. He wanted to scream at himself more.

When the surgeon finally emerged, Jason’s whole body locked.

“They’re stable,” she said. Jason’s knees almost gave out. Roy caught his elbow. Jason let him. “They’re stable,” the surgeon repeated. “Critical, but stable. Their healing factor is responding, though slowly. The transferred injury was severe. We’ve repaired what we can. Now we wait.”

Jason hated waiting. Waiting was helplessness with a clock. But he waited.

You woke thirty-six hours later. Jason knew because he had been watching your face like it contained the last light in the universe.

Your eyelids fluttered. His chair scraped violently against the floor.

“Hey,” he said, leaning forward.

Your eyes opened. Slowly. Painfully. They found his. For one second, you looked confused. Then relieved.

Jason’s chest cracked. “No,” he said immediately. Your brow furrowed faintly. He pointed at you. “No. Do not look relieved. We are not doing that.”

Your lips twitched. A mistake. Pain flashed across your face.

Jason stood so fast he nearly knocked the chair over. “Don’t move.”

Your voice came out rough. “Bossy.”

His eyes burned. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m a real tyrant. Stay still.”

You blinked slowly. Your gaze moved over him. His face. His shoulders. His abdomen beneath a clean shirt.

“Does it hurt?” you whispered.

Jason stared at you. The room went very quiet. Roy, asleep in the chair near the wall, jerked awake. Kori lifted her head from where she had been praying silently near the window. Jason leaned over your bed.

“You almost died,” he said.

Your eyes softened. He hated it.

“Does it hurt?” you asked again.

Jason’s hands curled around the bed rail.

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t. Because you took it.”

Your gaze dropped. “Good.”

Jason flinched like you had slapped him. “Good?” he repeated.

Your eyes closed. “Jason…”

“No, open your eyes.”

Kori said softly, “Jason.”

He ignored her. Your eyes opened again, wet and exhausted. “Don’t you good me,” he said, voice shaking. “Don’t you lie there looking like death warmed over and tell me it’s good that I feel fine.”

“You were dying.”

“So were you!”

“After.”

He stared. “What?”

Your breathing hitched, but you kept going. “You were dying first.”

Jason stepped back. The logic of it hit him like a crowbar. You had triaged your own death behind his.

“You don’t get to do that,” he said.

“I did.”

“Yeah, and I’m pissed.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” His voice cracked. “You have no idea.”

Your eyes filled. Jason laughed once, sharp and broken. “You know what it felt like? Waking up healed while you screamed? Seeing my wound on you? My blood gone and yours everywhere?” He shook his head. “You made me watch someone die in my place again.”

Your face went slack with horror.

Good.

No. Not good. He did not want to hurt you. He wanted you to understand. He wanted to take the wound back and crawl inside it if that meant your body would stop paying for his.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

Jason looked away. The apology landed wrong. Too small for the room. Too late for the blood.

Roy stood slowly. “We’ll give you two a minute.”

Kori hesitated. Jason did not look at her. Finally, she followed Roy out. The door closed. Silence settled. You and Jason stared at each other across the wreckage.

“I figured it out,” he said eventually.

“I know.”

“Not fast enough.”

“You weren’t supposed to.”

His head snapped up. “Don’t.”

You swallowed. “Don’t make this my fault?”

“No,” he said. “Don’t make it only yours.”

Your mouth closed.

Jason dragged a hand through his hair. His knuckles were bruised. He did not remember punching anything. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe the bruises were old. Everything felt old.

“I saw things,” he said. “I saw you hurt after healing people. I asked, and you dodged, and I let you. Because I wanted the miracle too.” Your eyes softened again, devastated. “I wanted Roy alive. Kori alive. Me alive.” He laughed without humour. “Especially me, apparently. Real selfish.”

“You are not selfish for wanting to live.”

“I didn’t want to live at your expense!”

“I know.”

“Do you?” He stepped closer. “Do you actually? Because you keep looking at me like this was worth it.”

You were quiet. Jason’s stomach dropped.

“You think it was,” he said.

Your tears spilled over. “I think you’re alive.”

He closed his eyes. There it was. The whole terrible thing. You believed that was answer enough. Maybe once, Jason would have too. Before you. Before coffee and bad movies and your hand on his chest and the way you asked permission before touching him like his body was not a battlefield but a home someone might enter gently. Before he had something to lose that looked at him with your eyes.

He sat down hard in the chair beside your bed. “I was dead,” he said. You went still. Jason looked at his hands. “I know people say that like a metaphor. I don’t mean it that way. I mean I was dead. In the ground. Gone. Then I wasn’t.” His mouth twisted. “And everyone had an opinion about what that meant. Talia. Bruce. Me. The Pit. The universe. Whatever.”

Your breathing trembled.

“Nobody asked if coming back hurt.” A tear slid down your cheek. Jason reached for it, then stopped. “May I?” he asked.

Your face broke. You nodded. He wiped the tear away with his thumb.

“Coming back hurt,” he said softly. “And when I woke up healed in that tunnel and saw you bleeding, it felt like that again. Like being dragged back over someone else’s body.”

You made a small sound. “I’m sorry,” you said again.

This time, it sounded bigger. This time, it reached him.

Jason’s anger did not vanish. But it lowered its weapon.

“I know why you did it,” he said. Your eyes searched his. “I do,” he continued. “Doesn’t mean I’m okay.”

“I don’t expect you to be.”

“Good.”

“I wouldn’t be okay either.”

Jason huffed a humourless laugh. “Yeah, you’d be feral.”

“Completely.”

“Hypocrite.”

“Yeah,” you whispered.

He looked at you then. You were pale. Exhausted. Tubes and wires everywhere. Bandages hidden beneath the blanket, but he knew what was under them. Knew the wound. Knew the shape.

His shape.

He wanted to touch you so badly it hurt. He wanted to never touch you again if touching meant letting you save him.

“You lied to me,” he said. “About your power. About being okay. About why you kept showing up at my place hurt.”

Your eyes closed. “Yes.”

Jason nodded slowly. The truth was ugly. He still preferred it. “Anything else?”

Your eyes opened.

Fear moved through them. Then resolve.

“The Lazarus pain,” you whispered.

Jason froze. “What?”

“Not all of it,” you said quickly. “I couldn’t. It’s too deep. Too tangled with you. But sometimes, after nightmares, when you held my hand…”

His body went cold. “No.”

“I didn’t take memories. I wouldn’t. I just took some of the physical backlash. The migraines. The tremors. Some of the rage when it was burning too hot.”

Jason stood. The chair hit the floor behind him. You flinched.

He stepped back like you had become something dangerous. Maybe you had. Maybe the danger had been there all along. “You took the Pit from me?”

“Pieces,” you said, crying now. “Only pieces.”

“I told you no healing.”

“It wasn’t healing.”

“Bullshit!”

You went silent.

Jason’s chest heaved. The room blurred green for half a second.

No. Not now. He dug his nails into his palms.

“You had no right,” he said.

Your face crumpled. “I know.”

“No, you don’t. That shit is mine.”

The words surprised both of you.

Jason swallowed. His voice dropped. “It’s awful. It’s ugly. It makes me feel like I’m gonna rip my own skin off. But it’s mine. You don’t get to reach inside me and decide what I can survive.”

“I thought I was helping.”

“You were.”

That stopped you. Jason’s laugh came out broken. “That’s the hell of it. You were helping. I had good mornings because of you. I slept because of you. I didn’t put my fist through walls because of you.” He shook his head. “And I hate that. I hate that you hurt yourself to make me easier to be around.”

Your eyes widened. “No. Jason, no.”

“Then why?”

“Because I love you.”

The words landed, not like a grenade this time. Like a blade laid carefully between you.

Jason stared at you. You looked terrified, but you did not take it back.

“I love you,” you said again, voice shaking. “And I know that doesn’t excuse it. I know. I know I took choices from you. I know I hurt you. But I never did it because you were too much. Never. I did it because you were in pain and I could reach it.” Jason could not breathe. “I love all of you,” you continued, tears sliding into your hair. “The good mornings and the bad ones. The books and the guns and the nightmares and the terrible toast and the way you pretend you don’t care while caring more than anyone in the room.” Your voice broke. “I love you when the Pit is loud. I love you when it isn’t. I just wanted you to have quiet.”

Jason closed his eyes. Quiet. God. What a beautiful, awful gift. What a terrible thing to steal for someone.

He sank back into the chair slowly.

For a while, neither of you spoke. Then he reached for your hand.

“May I?” he asked, voice rough.

Your lips trembled. “Yes.”

He took your hand carefully.

“I love you too,” he said. You inhaled sharply. Jason looked at your joined hands because your face was too much. “I was gonna tell you at the bookstore.”

A tiny, wet laugh escaped you. “With the cat that hates you?”

“Demon cat. Yeah.”

“It doesn’t hate you.”

“It bit me.”

“You called it ugly.”

“It was ugly.”

“It has one eye.”

“And used it for evil.”

Your laugh turned into a wince. Jason’s grip tightened.

Your smile faded into something aching. “You love me?”

Jason looked at you then. “Yeah,” he said. “Unfortunately.”

Your eyes filled again. His thumb moved over your knuckles.

“And because I love you,” he continued, “I am furious... No more taking the Pit without asking.”

You nodded immediately. “Never again.”

“No more healing me unless I say yes.”

Your face tightened. “Jason—”

“No.”

“If you’re unconscious—”

“If I’m unconscious and dying, we can have a contingency plan.”

“A contingency plan?”

“I know. Sounds very Batman. I’m dealing with it.” Your mouth twitched. “But if I’m awake,” he said, “if I can choose, you ask.”

You swallowed. “And if you say no?”

Jason’s chest tightened. He hated the question. Loved you for asking it. “Then you don’t.”

Tears slipped down your face. “That’ll be hard,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“I might hate it.”

“I know.”

“You might die.”

His grip tightened. “Yeah,” he said. “I might.”

You looked wrecked.

Jason leaned closer. “But if you take the choice away from me, sweetheart, you save my body and leave the rest of me behind.”

Your breath broke. He hated saying it.

He needed you to hear it.

“Okay,” you whispered.

He kissed your hand. “And no more hiding your injuries,” he said.

“You’re making rules?”

“Damn right.”

“Hot.”

Jason blinked. Then a laugh punched out of him, startled and real. You smiled faintly.

“Don’t flirt from your deathbed,” he said.

“Am I dying?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll flirt.”

“You’re impossible.”

“You love me.”

His face softened despite everything.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

Your fingers shifted weakly against his.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

“I know.”

“I’ll keep saying it.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to forgive me?”

Jason looked at you for a long moment. He thought about lying. A soft lie. An easy one. Something that would make the pain in your eyes fade. But that was what got you both here, wasn’t it? Lies meant to spare pain.

“No,” he said. You went very still. “Not yet,” he added.

You breathed out shakily. “Okay.”

“But I’m staying.”

Your face crumpled. Jason leaned closer. “I’m mad. I’m hurt. I’m probably gonna yell again.”

“Probably?”

“Definitely. Roy says I process feelings like a raccoon in a dumpster fire.”

A laugh escaped you. This time, he smiled.

“But I’m staying,” he repeated. “You don’t get to carry this alone either.”

Your eyes closed.

“Okay,” you whispered.

Jason bowed his head until his forehead touched your hand.

For the first time since the tunnel, he let himself breathe. You were alive. He was alive. Neither of you was okay.

That would have to be enough. For now.

Recovery was ugly. Jason appreciated ugly things. They were honest. There were no clean miracles this time. No glowing hands. No vanished wounds. Just stitches, surgery, pain medication, nightmares, and the slow work of your body undoing what it had stolen from his.

He stayed through all of it. At first, everyone expected him to leave. Not permanently. Just for air. Sleep. A shower. Anything. He refused. Roy brought him clothes. Kori brought him food. Alfred sent soup in containers labelled with heating instructions and one note that read: Master Jason, starvation remains an ineffective form of devotion. Jason read it twice, called Alfred a meddling old bastard under his breath, and ate the soup.

You woke and slept in pieces. Sometimes you woke screaming. Those were the worst. Jason would stand immediately but not touch until you reached for him or said his name. It killed him every time. Every instinct wanted to gather you up, hold you down, make the pain stop by force of will.

But he had made rules. So he followed them. Choice, he learned, was not just asking once. It was asking again. And again. Even when terrified. Especially then.

One night, you woke with a gasp, hands flying to your abdomen. Jason was beside you instantly.

“Hey. You’re safe. Medbay. Watchtower. It’s me.”

Your eyes were wild. “Jay?”

“Yeah.”

“Hurts.”

His throat tightened. “I know, sweetheart. I know. Can I touch you?”

You nodded frantically. He took your hand, then cupped the side of your face. Your breathing hitched.

“Stay with me,” he said. “Window on your left. Terrible ceiling lights. Roy snoring in the hallway because he says these chairs are worse. Kori threatened to throw a doctor into the sun if they gave you the wrong meds. You’re safe.”

Your breathing slowed by degrees.

“Jason,” you whispered.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

He closed his eyes. Sometimes you said it in your sleep. Sometimes awake. Sometimes with pain clouding your voice so badly he did not know if you were apologising to him, to your body, to everyone you had ever healed.

He kissed your forehead. “I know.”

“I love you.”

His heart twisted. “I love you too.”

“Even mad?”

“Especially mad.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Most true things don’t.”

You huffed weakly.

He brushed his thumb over your cheek. “Go back to sleep.”

“Stay?”

Jason looked at you like you had asked whether he planned to keep breathing. “Always.”

Your eyes softened. Then closed.

He stayed.

Two weeks after the tunnel, Jason took you home. Not to your apartment.

His.

You argued, obviously.

“I have a place,” you said as he helped you into the passenger seat of his car.

“Your place has stairs.”

“So does yours.”

“I have arms.”

“You cannot carry me everywhere.”

“Watch me.”

“Jason.”

He leaned down, one hand on the car door, the other braced above you. “You can stay at your place if you want,” he said.

You narrowed your eyes. “That sounded suspiciously mature.”

“I hated it.”

“I could tell.”

“But I need you to want my help. Not just tolerate it because I’m louder.”

Your expression softened.

He looked away, jaw tight. “I want you at my place,” he said. “I want to take care of you. I also want you to choose it.”

For a moment, you said nothing. Then your hand covered his. “I choose it.”

Jason swallowed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded once. “Good.”

“Your couch is terrible, though.”

“You nearly died and came back picky.”

“I’ve always been picky.”

“Yeah,” he said, helping you settle. “I know.”

His apartment was cleaner than you had ever seen it. Suspiciously cleaner.

“Did you panic-clean?” you asked from the doorway, leaning heavily on your cane.

Jason took your bag inside. “No.”

You looked at the spotless counter. The organised books. The suspicious absence of weapons on visible surfaces. “Jason.”

“Roy helped.”

“That makes this more concerning.”

“He called it nesting.” You smiled. Jason scowled. “Don’t.”

“You nested for me.”

“I made the place accessible.”

“You nested.”

“I will put you back in the car.”

“No, you won’t.”

No. He wouldn’t. He helped you to the couch. The good blanket was already there. So were your favourite snacks, pain meds, water, and three books stacked on the table.

Your fingers brushed the top one. The Odyssey. The copy he had given you.

Your eyes lifted. Jason shrugged. “Figured it counts as a recovery theme.”

You opened the cover. Inside, beneath his original note, he had written something new.

For getting home. This time, I’m coming with you.

You stared at it for a long time. Then you started crying.

Jason panicked immediately. “Too much?” You shook your head. “Bad crying?” Another shake. “Good crying?”

You nodded.

He exhaled. “Jesus. We need a code system.”

You laughed wetly and reached for him. “Come here.”

Carefully, he sat beside you, leaving space for your injuries. You leaned your head against his shoulder.

Jason went still. Then softened. He wrapped one arm around you lightly.

“I’m still mad,” he said.

“I know.”

“I’ll probably be mad for a while.”

“I know.”

“I’m still gonna take care of you.”

“I know.”

“You gotta stop saying that. Makes me feel predictable.”

“You are predictable.”

“I’m mysterious.”

“You alphabetised your bookshelf by emotional damage.”

“It’s called genre.”

You smiled against his shoulder. For a while, you sat like that. Afternoon light slid through the blinds, striping the floor gold. Somewhere outside, traffic moved. A siren wailed in the distance and faded. The city carried on, rude and alive.

Jason looked down at your hand resting near his. He touched your fingers. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

“Don’t be cute.”

“I’m recovering. I’m allowed.”

He huffed. Then sobered. “If I hadn’t figured it out,” he asked, “would you ever have told me?”

You went quiet. Jason already knew the answer. Still, he waited.

“I wanted to,” you said.

His chest hurt. “That’s not what I asked.”

“No,” you whispered. “Probably not.”

He nodded. It hurt. Truth often did. “Thank you for telling me.” You lifted your head slightly. He looked at you. “For not lying just now,” he clarified.

Your eyes softened. “I’m trying.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

You studied him. “What are you trying?”

Jason looked toward the window. Sunlight caught the scar along his hand. “Not to make your mistake mean you don’t love me right.” Your breath caught. He struggled through the words. “You messed up. Big. Like, astronomical levels of dumbassery.” A laugh broke through your tears. “But you loved me,” he continued. “You loved me badly in that moment, maybe. Secretly. Scared. But it was love.”

Your eyes shone.

“And I’ve loved people badly too.” His mouth twisted. “Loudly. Violently. By leaving. By coming back with guns. By making my pain everybody else’s problem because I didn’t know where to put it.”

“Jason…”

“So I’m trying,” he said, voice rough, “not to turn this into proof that love only hurts.”

You stared at him. Then your face crumpled with the kind of tenderness he never knew how to survive.

He looked away quickly. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m good.”

Your hand touched his cheek.

“You are,” you whispered.

Jason closed his eyes. He wanted to argue. The words lined up automatically. No, I’m not. You don’t know everything. I’m trying. I’m not enough.

Instead, he breathed. Then turned his face into your palm.

“Working on believing that,” he said.

Your thumb brushed his cheekbone. “Me too.”

He opened his eyes. You smiled faintly.

“That I’m worth saving without bleeding for it,” you said.

Jason’s heart ached.

He leaned forward and kissed you. Gently. So gently it almost hurt. You sighed into it, careful and warm beneath him.

When he pulled back, your eyes were closed.

“Was that okay?” he asked.

Your smile curved. “Very.”

“Good.”

He kissed your forehead. Then your temple. Then, because he could, because you were alive and in his apartment and wearing his hoodie again, he rested his forehead against yours.

“No more ghosts,” he said.

Your eyes opened. “What?”

Jason swallowed. “I can’t do it again. Watching somebody disappear in my place. Watching someone become a grave I walked away from.” His voice shook. “No more ghosts.”

Your hand slid to his chest. Over his heart. The way it had in the kitchen, before the burned eggs, before Roy’s teasing, before everything had gone red and green and terrible. “No more ghosts,” you promised.

It was not a perfect promise. You both knew that. The world was dangerous. You were both reckless. Heroes made terrible decisions before breakfast. But it was a real promise. A beginning. Jason could work with beginnings. He had clawed his way out of an ending once.

This was better. This was warm light and your hand in his and soup on the stove and a book on the table with both your stories written in the margins. This was you choosing to stay. This was him choosing to believe you could.

That was the first lesson.

The second was that someone always had to catch what was left.

Dick had built a life out of becoming that someone. He caught teammates before they hit concrete. Caught civilians before buildings collapsed. Caught the Titans when they spiralled, caught Bruce when he vanished too far inside the Bat, caught Jason’s anger when nobody else could hold it without bleeding, caught Tim’s exhaustion before it became a body bag, caught Damian’s sharp edges and pretended they did not cut.

He smiled. He joked. He opened his arms and made himself the net. It was easier that way.

People trusted nets. People did not ask if nets were tired.

You did, though.

That was one of the first things that unsettled him about you.

You always asked.

“Shoulder?” you said, appearing beside him before he had even fully made it through the medbay doors.

Dick looked down at the red line slicing through his suit, just under the joint. “Hello to you too.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Is it the shoulder?”

“It is deeply rude that you know that from ten feet away.”

“It’s my entire thing.”

“Your entire thing is being bossy and magical.”

“My entire thing is healing idiots who think flirting counts as a treatment plan.”

He gasped and pressed his uninjured hand to his chest. “You think I’m flirting?”

“I think you’re bleeding on my floor.”

“That’s not a no.”

You gave him a look.

Dick smiled.

It was easy with you.

That was the problem. Most things with you felt easy, even when they weren’t. Even in the aftermath of horror, with sirens in the distance and smoke still clinging to everyone’s suits, you had a way of lowering the temperature in a room. You came in with steady hands, soft eyes, and a voice like warm water over bruised skin.

You were the Titans’ miracle.

Not that you liked being called that. Gar had tried once, dramatically, from a medbay cot after you healed three cracked ribs and a bruised spleen.

“My angel,” he had declared, one hand thrown over his forehead. “My saviour. My divine little first-aid kit.”

You had thrown a roll of gauze at his head.

Vic had laughed for a full minute.

Kory had kissed your cheek in gratitude.

Raven had watched you with that quiet, knowing look of hers.

Dick had watched too. He watched more than he should have.

He watched the way your face tightened for half a second after you healed someone. The way you always turned slightly away before taking a breath. The way you flexed your fingers like you were shaking off static. The way you insisted on cleaning up alone afterwards.

At first, he thought healing took energy. That made sense. Every power had a cost. Every body had limits.

You told them yours was fatigue.

Dick believed you.

Not because he was careless.

Because he wanted to. Because after years of watching good people stay hurt, there was something dangerously addictive about watching wounds vanish under your hands.

When Raven came back from a mission with psychic backlash clawing through her mind, and you pressed your fingers to her temples until her breathing evened out, Dick did not ask why you spent the next hour sitting alone in the dark.

When Gar twisted his knee badly enough that the sound made everyone in the room wince, and you healed him before the panic really hit, Dick did not ask why you limped afterwards.

When Kory took a blast meant for a child, and her skin split gold-bright across her ribs, Dick did not ask why your own hand shook as you helped her sit up.

He noticed. But noticing was not knowing.

That was what he told himself later. Over and over. Like repetition could turn guilt into absolution.

He noticed. He just didn’t know.

Not yet.

The night everything changed began with rain.

Blüdhaven rain was different from Gotham rain. Gotham rain fell like a verdict. Cold, black, heavy with memory. Blüdhaven rain came down silver beneath neon signs, slicking the streets until every alley looked like it had been painted in oil. It turned rooftops treacherous, fire escapes slippery, windows into mirrors.

Dick loved it anyway.

It was his city. Bruised, stubborn, trying. A little ugly in the right light. A little beautiful in the wrong one.

The Titans had come because the call was too big for one vigilante and too strange for local police. A new metahuman trafficking ring had gotten its hands on alien tech and old magic, which was never a combination that suggested anyone involved had made good life choices.

By midnight, the docks were burning. By twelve-thirty, three warehouses had partially collapsed. By one, the sky above Blüdhaven was full of drones shaped like metal wasps, each one armed with sonic emitters strong enough to rupture glass and destabilise inner ears.

“Tell me again why crime can’t be normal,” Gar shouted over comms.

Dick flipped over a drone, brought both escrima sticks down, and sent it sparking into the rain-slick rooftop. “You want normal crime?”

“I want crime that doesn’t make my teeth vibrate.”

“You have teeth right now?” Vic asked.

“I have emotional teeth.”

“That tracks,” you said over comms.

Dick smiled despite himself. Your voice always did that to him. Cut through the noise. Found him.

“You’re supposed to be behind the barricade,” he said, ducking under a burst of sonic fire.

“I am behind the barricade.”

“You’re too calm.”

“I’m very calm behind the barricade.”

Raven’s voice came in, flat as ever. “They are not behind the barricade.”

Dick exhaled sharply. “Of course they’re not.”

“I’m near the barricade,” you corrected.

Kory flew overhead, a streak of orange through the storm. “Friend healer, there are many injured civilians near the west warehouse.”

“I see them.”

Dick’s attention snapped toward the west side of the docks.

Through the rain, he saw you moving below.

Not at the barricade. Not near the barricade. Running straight toward the worst of the damage, because apparently, self-preservation was not included in the miracle package.

“Absolutely not,” Dick said.

“You sound like Bruce.”

“That was cruel and unnecessary.”

“You’ll live.”

“Not if you keep sprinting into active combat zones.”

“Then stop watching me and stop the drones.”

A drone screamed toward you.

Dick moved before thought could catch up. He launched himself from the rooftop, grapple line firing, body arcing low through rain and smoke. The drone’s emitter pulsed once. Pain stabbed through his ears. His vision blurred.

He released the line. Dropped. Twisted.

His boot connected with the drone hard enough to crack the metal shell. It spun away and exploded against the side of a warehouse in a shower of blue sparks.

Dick landed in front of you, one knee down, rain streaming off his hair.

You stared at him.

He looked up with his best smile. “Hi.”

Your eyes narrowed. “That was incredibly dramatic.”

“I’m a performer.”

“That was incredibly stupid.”

“I’m also Batman-adjacent.”

“Unfortunately accurate.”

Behind you, a civilian groaned.

Your expression shifted instantly.

There was the healer.

The softness vanished into focus. You moved past Dick and dropped beside a woman pinned beneath a collapsed beam. Her leg was crushed at an angle that made Dick’s stomach turn. Her breathing came in panicked sobs.

“Hey,” you said gently, all teasing gone. “Look at me. Not the leg. Me.”

The woman grabbed your wrist with shaking fingers. “I can’t—I can’t feel—”

“I know. I’ve got you.”

Dick watched you place both hands over the injury.

He watched your shoulders rise as you inhaled.

Then the woman gasped.

The beam shifted. Dick lifted it enough for Vic to pull her free.

Her leg was whole. Bruised, but whole.

She started crying.

You smiled at her.

Then, very subtly, your left knee buckled.

Dick caught it.

Not much. Just one hand at your elbow, enough to steady you.

You went stiff beneath his touch.

“You okay?” he asked.

You smiled too quickly. “Fine.”

There it was. That word.

Dick hated it when Bruce used it. Hated it when Jason spat it through bloodied teeth. Hated it when Tim said it without looking up from a laptop.

He hated it most from you.

Because you made it sound kind.

Another drone shrieked overhead before he could say anything.

The docks trembled.

Raven’s voice cut through comms. “Nightwing, the central warehouse is rigged. There are people inside.”

“How many?”

“Too many.”

Dick looked up. The central warehouse stood at the edge of the pier, half its roof torn open, old brick walls glowing with intermittent blasts of alien-blue light. Through the broken windows, he saw movement.

Civilians. Hostages.

The structure groaned. Then the upper floor exploded outward.

Kory shouted. Dick ran.

You called his name.

He ignored you.

He heard you following anyway.

Of course he did.

Inside, the warehouse was chaos.

Smoke. Screaming. Sprinklers raining dirty water from cracked pipes. Drones buzzing between support beams like insects. Civilians huddled behind shipping containers while armed traffickers tried to retreat through a back exit.

Nightwing moved through them like a blade wrapped in blue light.

Strike. Dodge. Flip. Disarm. Smile, because fear spread faster when people saw the hero afraid.

“Exit to the south!” he shouted. “Go! Go now!”

Kory blew a hole through a side wall for evacuation. Vic ripped open jammed doors. Raven shielded a group of children from falling debris. Gar, currently a gorilla, blocked a collapsing beam with both massive hands and yelled, “I would like everyone to appreciate my core strength!”

You were everywhere you should not be. Healing a burned firefighter. Pressing a hand to a child’s forehead. Closing the wound across a police officer’s side. Calm, quick, relentless.

Too relentless.

Dick saw your face pale. He saw the way you pressed one hand briefly to your ribs after healing the officer.

Something in him tightened.

Then the floor screamed.

Not cracked.

Screamed.

The alien tech at the centre of the warehouse pulsed, drawing power from the old magical sigils carved beneath the concrete. The combination sent a shockwave through the building.

Every support beam lit blue.

Raven’s shield shattered. Kory slammed into a wall. Gar lost his grip.

The ceiling began to come down.

Dick saw it happen in pieces.

A family trapped near the upper catwalk. A little boy separated from his mother. The metal walkway beneath them twisting loose.

No time for the grapple. No time for a plan.

Just the fall.

Dick launched himself upward, using a stack of containers as steps. His boots hit metal. His body moved on instinct, rainwater and smoke and adrenaline turning the world sharp.

He grabbed the boy first and tossed him toward Kory, trusting her to catch him.

She did. Of course she did.

The mother screamed as the catwalk tilted.

Dick caught her wrist.

For half a second, they hung there over open air.

“Don’t look down,” he told her.

She looked down.

They always looked down.

A support cable snapped. The catwalk dropped. Dick twisted, threw the woman upward with everything he had, and felt Vic’s metal hand close around her coat.

Then the world gave way beneath him.

Falling was supposed to be familiar.

This was not.

The sonic emitters went off all at once.

His inner ear shattered into static. The building spun wrong. His grapple fired but missed the broken beam by inches. His fingers closed on nothing. His shoulder clipped metal hard enough to tear a shout from his throat.

Then he hit a lower catwalk.

Pain cracked across his back.

He bounced. Fell again.

He tried to turn. Tried to tuck.

Couldn’t.

There were too many angles. Too much debris. Too much noise.

The ground rushed up.

For the first time in years, Dick Grayson did not know how to fall.

He hit concrete.

And everything stopped.

At first, there was no pain.

That was how Dick knew it was bad. Pain was information. Pain told you what was damaged and how much time you had before the body started making executive decisions without you.

No pain meant the body had gone quiet. No pain meant the damage had passed language.

He stared up at the broken ceiling. Rain fell through the hole in the roof, silver and soft against his face.

Someone was screaming his name. Maybe several someones.

Dick tried to move.

Nothing happened.

Not his legs. Not his right hand. His chest moved, barely. Breath scraping in shallow and wrong.

Ah. That was bad.

A shadow fell over him.

You.

Your face appeared above his, wet with rain, streaked with soot, eyes wide with a terror that did not belong on you.

“Dick,” you said.

He tried to smile. He wasn’t sure if it worked.

“Hey,” he breathed.

It came out broken.

Your hands hovered over him, trembling.

That scared him more than the fall. You never trembled.

“Don’t move,” you said.

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

Your face twisted.

Bad joke. Wrong moment. Classic Grayson.

He tried to lift his hand to touch your face.

Nothing.

Your eyes flicked down.

You saw.

He saw you see.

“Talk to me,” you said.

“Can’t feel…”

He stopped.

Your lips parted.

He did not want to finish the sentence.

He had spent his life moving. Flying. Running rooftops. Dancing along edges so narrow most people could not stand on them without shaking. His body was not just a tool. It was memory. Family. Language. A living echo of the Flying Graysons.

He could not feel half of it.

“Dick,” you whispered.

The building groaned around you. Distantly, Kory shouted for you both. Vic cursed. Raven’s power surged dark and bright somewhere behind the smoke.

You cupped Dick’s face. Your hands were warm despite the rain.

“I’m here,” you said.

He believed you. That was the danger.

“Don’t,” he managed.

Your expression shifted.

He was not Bruce. He had not figured it out fully. Not yet. But something old and instinctive in him understood the shape of sacrifice when it leaned too close.

You had looked pale after healing people. You had limped after fixing Gar’s knee. You had hidden your hand after Damian broke his wrist on a mission with the Supersons. You had smiled through it all.

“You’re hurt,” he said.

You shook your head. “You’re dying.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t.”

Your eyes filled. “Dick—”

“Please.”

That word hurt more than the fall. Please was not a word Nightwing used often in the field. Please belonged to civilians, to scared children, to moments too human for masks.

Your face broke. Only for a second.

Then you leaned down and pressed your forehead to his.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

His heart lurched.

“No,” he said, or tried to.

Your hands slid beneath his shoulders.

And then the pain came.

Not his.

Yours.

He knew because it came with your scream. It tore through the warehouse, raw and animal and absolute.

Dick’s body snapped back into itself. Sensation flooded his legs. His fingers. His lungs. Pain, yes, but normal pain. Bruises. Strains. Things he knew how to name.

His spine straightened. His ribs expanded. His right hand clenched.

He gasped and rolled onto his side, coughing through smoke.

For one impossible second, relief hit him.

Then he saw you.

You were on the concrete beside him, twisted at the same angle he had been. Your back arched unnaturally. Blood spread beneath you. One of your legs lay still, too still. Your hand curled against the ground, fingers shaking like they were trying to remember how to move.

Your mouth opened. No sound came out.

Dick’s world narrowed.

“No,” he said.

It did not sound like him.

He crawled to you, hands skidding in water and blood.

“No, no, no.”

Your eyes found his.

You looked relieved. Relieved. Like seeing him move was worth what had happened to you.

Something terrible opened inside him.

“Why would you do that?” he choked.

Your lips moved.

He leaned closer.

“Caught you,” you whispered.

Dick broke.

Not loudly. Not at first. The sound that left him was small. Fractured. A child’s sound buried under a man’s voice.

He gathered you into his arms with shaking hands, trying not to jostle your spine, trying not to touch anywhere wrong, trying not to look at the blood, the angle of your body, the proof.

The proof.

He had fallen. You had become the fall.

“Kory!” he screamed.

The name tore through his throat.

Orange light flashed.

Kory landed beside him hard enough to crack concrete. Her eyes went wide when she saw you.

“Oh, beloved healer,” she breathed.

Dick looked up at her, wild. “We need medevac.”

Vic’s voice came through comms, tight with horror. “Already calling it.”

Raven appeared from the smoke, her hood torn, shadows curling violently around her.

She looked at you. Then at Dick.

Her expression went white.

Not pale.

White. Like she had felt something nobody else could.

“She took it,” Raven whispered.

Dick stared at her. “What?”

Raven’s voice shook. “The injury. She took it from you.”

The warehouse seemed to tilt.

No. No, he knew that. He had seen it. He had felt his body become whole as yours broke.

But hearing it made it real in a way his mind had been refusing to allow.

Gar, shifted back into human form, stumbled toward them. “What do you mean took it?”

Raven swallowed. “Their power doesn’t erase wounds.”

Dick looked down at you.

Your eyes were half-closed now.

No.

No.

No.

“It transfers them,” Raven said.

No one spoke. Even the burning warehouse seemed to go quiet.

Dick pressed his fingers to your throat.

Pulse there.

Fast. Weak. Too weak.

“Stay with me,” he said, voice shaking. “Hey. Look at me. Come on, look at me.”

Your eyelids fluttered.

He smiled because he did not know how to do anything else with terror.

“There you are,” he whispered. “Stay with me, okay? I’ve got you.”

Your lips twitched faintly.

“Net,” you breathed.

“What?”

“You’re… always the net.”

Dick’s vision blurred.

“Yeah,” he said, voice breaking. “Yeah, baby. I’m the net. So you don’t get to fall through. You hear me?”

Your eyes closed.

Dick’s smile vanished. “No. No, no. Open your eyes. Open your eyes.”

Kory knelt beside him and placed one glowing hand carefully against your shoulder, not healing, not touching the wound, just there.

“Dick,” she said softly.

He shook his head. “They’re not dying.”

“No,” Kory agreed, though her voice trembled. “They are not.”

Dick looked down at you in his arms.

He had caught you.

Too late.

But he had caught you.

And he would not let go.

Titan Tower’s medbay had seen bad nights.

This was worse.

The room was full of people trying not to fall apart loudly.

Kory stood by the window, arms crossed tightly over her chest, her glow dimmed to a low, anxious pulse beneath her skin. Gar sat on the floor with his back against the wall, knees pulled to his chest. Vic kept running diagnostics, jaw clenched, his human eye red. Raven stood in the corner with her hood up, shadows tucked close around her like grief with teeth.

Dick sat beside your bed and held your hand.

He had been told to leave twice.

He had not.

The first time, a nurse tried gentle concern.

The second time, Donna tried command voice.

Neither worked.

Finally, Raven had looked at everyone and said, “Let him stay.”

So he stayed.

You lay still beneath white sheets and too many wires, your body strapped carefully to prevent movement. Spinal stabilizers ran along your back. An oxygen line curved beneath your nose. Your face looked wrong without expression. Too empty. Too quiet.

Dick kept staring at your mouth. Waiting for it to quirk. Waiting for you to make a joke about his bedside manner. Waiting for you to open your eyes and call him dramatic.

His suit was still on. Torn, wet, stained with your blood and his own, though technically the blood was all yours now in the ways that mattered. Someone had thrown a blanket over his shoulders.

Probably Kory. Maybe Donna.

He did not remember.

He remembered your scream. He remembered your body twisting. He remembered Raven saying, It transfers them.

His hand tightened around yours. Your fingers did not move.

“Dick.”

Donna’s voice came from the doorway.

He did not look up.

“How long?” he asked.

She was quiet for a second. “The doctors don’t know.”

He nodded once.

Meaningless.

His gaze stayed on your face.

Donna came closer. “They said the injury may not behave like a normal spinal trauma. Their body processes transferred wounds differently.”

“May,” Dick repeated.

“Yes.”

“May not.”

“Yes.”

He laughed once. It was ugly.

Donna’s hand settled on his shoulder.

That almost undid him.

Dick bowed his head over your hand.

“I should have known,” he said.

Donna did not answer.

He hated her for that. Loved her for it too.

“I noticed things,” he continued, voice low. “After they healed people. I noticed.”

“Dick.”

“I noticed and I let it go.”

“You didn’t know.”

“I should have.”

Donna squeezed his shoulder. “That is Bruce talking.”

His head snapped up.

She looked at him steadily.

“You are allowed to be hurt without making guilt useful,” she said.

Dick stared at her.

Then he looked back at you.

“Useful is all I’ve got right now.”

Donna’s expression softened.

Behind them, Gar made a broken sound.

“I let them heal me last week,” he said.

Everyone looked at him.

He stared at the floor. “My knee. It was nothing. Like, yeah, it hurt, but it wasn’t—” His voice cracked. “It wasn’t worth that.”

Raven closed her eyes. Kory turned away sharply.

Vic’s metal hand curled into a fist. “They healed my neural interface after Psimon fried half my systems.”

“They helped me after Trigon,” Raven said quietly.

Silence fell.

Not empty.

Crowded.

Every person in the room was remembering.

Every hand you had held. Every wound you had closed. Every time you had smiled afterward and said you were tired.

Only tired.

Dick felt sick.

Not because you had lied.

Because all of them had been relieved enough to believe you.

The door opened again.

Clark Kent stepped in, rain-dark hair mussed, glasses absent, Superman suit visible beneath a jacket he had clearly thrown on in a hurry.

He looked around the room once. Then at you.

His face changed.

“Oh,” he said softly.

That was all.

Just oh.

Dick wanted to stand. Wanted to say something. Wanted to be Nightwing, team leader, eldest brother, person who knew how to make everyone breathe again.

He couldn’t.

Clark came to the other side of your bed.

“I came as soon as I heard,” he said.

Dick nodded.

Clark’s eyes lowered to your still hand in Dick’s grip.

“They healed me yesterday,” Clark said.

Dick’s breath caught.

“Kryptonite burn,” Clark continued quietly. “They looked pale afterwards. Bruce noticed. He told them to rest.”

A horrible laugh escaped Dick. “Of course he did.”

Clark looked at him with infinite gentleness. “Bruce didn’t know either.”

Dick shut his eyes.

He could imagine Bruce finding out. The silence. The rage. The way he would turn terror into protocols and guilt into surveillance. The way he would blame himself first, hardest, longest.

Dick had learned from the best. Unfortunately.

“Can you hear anything?” Dick asked.

Clark’s face tightened.

Heartbeats. That was what Dick meant.

Clark nodded. “Their heart is steady for now.”

For now.

The phrase lodged under Dick’s ribs.

He looked down at you.

“Good,” he said, like the word had weight, like saying it could make it true. “That’s good.”

Clark stayed for a while.

So did everyone else.

One by one, though, they drifted out. Not far. Never far. Titans did not abandon their own. They lingered in hallways, in waiting rooms, in corners with vending machine coffee and red-rimmed eyes.

Eventually, only Dick remained.

He was good at vigils. He hated that too.

Hours passed in monitor beeps and the low hum of machines.

Your hand was warm in his.

That became his whole world.

Warm meant alive. Warm meant here. Warm meant not yet.

Near dawn, your fingers twitched.

Dick nearly came out of his chair.

“Hey,” he said, leaning forward. “Hey, I’m here.”

Your eyelids fluttered.

He forgot how to breathe.

Then your eyes opened. Unfocused at first. Cloudy with pain and medication.

Then they found him.

You smiled. Barely.

It devastated him.

“Hi, pretty bird,” you rasped.

Dick made a sound between a laugh and a sob.

“You’re not allowed to be charming right now,” he said.

Your brow furrowed faintly. “M’dying?”

“No.”

“Then I’m allowed.”

His mouth trembled.

You blinked slowly, gaze shifting around the room. “Tower?”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone okay?”

There it was. First question.

Not, Am I okay? Not, What happened?

Everyone.

Dick had never loved and hated anything more.

He leaned closer.

“No,” he said.

Your eyes came back to him.

“They’re not okay. I’m not okay. You scared the hell out of us.”

Your expression shifted with slow understanding.

Then memory returned.

He watched it happen.

The warehouse. The fall. The choice.

Your eyes filled. “Dick—”

“No.” His voice cracked. He swallowed hard and tried again. “No, don’t. Don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t make it easier. Please don’t make it easier.”

You went quiet.

He pressed your hand to his forehead.

His shoulders shook once. Only once.

“I watched you become the fall,” he whispered.

Your breath hitched.

“You were—” He stopped, unable to finish. “You were on the ground. Like me. Because of me.”

“Not because of you.”

“You took my injury.”

“Yes.”

The honesty punched the air out of him.

No deflection. No lie. No, I’m fine.

Just yes.

Dick lifted his head. His eyes burned.

“How long?”

Your gaze slid away.

His stomach dropped. “How long have you been doing that?”

You were quiet.

Too quiet.

Dick understood before you answered.

“All of it?” he asked.

Your mouth trembled.

“Most of it,” you whispered.

Dick stood so fast the chair slammed backward.

You flinched.

He froze immediately.

Regret flashed through him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” He pushed both hands through his hair and turned away, pacing once before spinning back to you. “It’s not okay. None of this is okay.”

Your face had gone pale.

He forced himself to lower his voice. “You took Gar’s knee.”

You closed your eyes.

“Raven’s psychic backlash.”

A tear slipped down your temple into your hair.

“Kory’s burn.”

“Dick…”

“Vic’s neural damage. Clark’s kryptonite poisoning. Jason’s bullet wounds. Tim’s concussions. Damian’s broken bones. Mine.”

Your silence confirmed every word.

Dick felt like the room had tilted beneath him.

“How are you alive?” he whispered.

Your eyes opened.

There was something old in them then. Older than your face. Older than your smile.

“I heal faster than most people.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

“That sounds like something Bruce would say.”

A weak breath of laughter escaped you.

Dick did not smile.

The laugh died.

“I didn’t want you to know,” you said.

“No kidding.”

“Dick.”

His name in your voice hurt.

He came back to the chair slowly and sat down because standing made him want to run through walls.

You turned your head toward him.

The movement was tiny. It still cost you. He saw the pain ripple over your face.

“Don’t,” he said quickly.

You stilled.

He hated this. He hated all of it. The bed. The machines. Your body trapped under injury. His body whole because yours wasn’t.

“I need to know why,” he said.

“You know why.”

“No.” His voice came out sharper than intended. “No, I really don’t.”

Your eyes searched his face.

He let you see it. All of it. The fear. The anger. The betrayal. The love he had been carrying like a secret too fragile to name.

You looked away first.

“I didn’t want anyone to choose pain,” you said.

Dick stared at you.

“Everyone I work with is the same,” you continued. “The League. The Titans. The Outlaws. All of you. If I told you what healing costs me, you’d refuse unless you were unconscious or dying. Maybe even then.”

“Yes,” Dick said. “Because we’re not monsters.”

“You’re martyrs.”

He went still.

You looked back at him. Softly, exhaustedly furious.

“You are,” you said. “Every single one of you. You’d let yourselves bleed out if it meant I didn’t have to feel it. You’d call that noble. I call it stupid.”

Dick let out a stunned laugh. “You cannot be serious right now.”

“I am extremely serious.”

“You are lying in a medbay because you took a broken spine from me.”

“And I’d do it again.”

The room went silent.

Dick’s face crumpled before he could stop it.

You saw. Of course you saw.

Regret passed over your features.

“Dick—”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, don’t say that.”

“I can’t lie to you anymore.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get to almost die for me and then tell me you’d do it again.”

“I love you.”

Dick stopped. Everything stopped.

The monitors kept beeping. Somewhere outside, someone walked down the hall. Rain tapped lightly against the Tower windows.

But inside Dick, every moving part went still.

You looked terrified now.

Not of death.

Of him. Of what he would do with the truth.

Your eyes glistened.

“I love you,” you said again, voice breaking. “And I know that’s not an excuse. I know it doesn’t make lying okay. I know it doesn’t make taking the choice away okay. But it’s the reason.”

Dick could not move. He had imagined hearing those words from you more times than he would ever admit. Usually in softer places. A kitchen at two in the morning. His apartment. A rooftop under a kinder sky. Your hand in his, your smile warm enough to make the world feel less like a thing that constantly needed saving.

Not here. Not with your spine braced. Not with your blood still dried under his fingernails.

“You can’t say that,” he whispered.

Your face went blank.

Dick realised what it sounded like and reached for you immediately.

“No. No, that’s not—” He sat on the edge of the chair, one hand hovering near yours. “That’s not what I mean.”

You looked at his hand.

He waited.

This time, he waited.

After a moment, you moved your fingers weakly toward him.

Permission.

Dick took your hand like it was made of light.

“You can’t say you love me like that,” he said, voice shaking. “Like it means your life is automatically worth less than mine.”

Your eyes filled again. “I don’t think that.”

“You do.”

“I don’t.”

“You do,” he said, gentler now. “Because I know that trick. I invented that trick. I perfected that trick. I have a whole family of emotionally repressed vigilantes who could give a TED Talk on that trick.”

A watery laugh escaped you.

Dick’s thumb moved over your knuckles.

“I know what it looks like when someone calls self-destruction devotion,” he said.

Your smile faded.

He swallowed hard. “I know because I do it all the time.”

You looked at him for a long moment.

Then you whispered, “Yeah.”

He laughed once, and this time it was almost real. “Rude.”

“Accurate.”

“Still rude.”

Your fingers twitched against his palm.

He lowered his head until his forehead rested against your hand.

“I love you too,” he whispered.

Your breath caught.

He held onto you tighter.

“I love you,” he said again, because now that the words were out, he could not bear to let them stand alone. “I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it. And I am so angry at you that I can barely breathe.”

You made a small sound.

He lifted his head.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“I only wanted you alive.”

His face twisted.

“I know,” he said.

That was the worst part. He knew.

There was no cruelty in what you had done. No malice. No carelessness.

Only love. Misdirected. Secretive. Devastating love. The kind that looked too much like his own.

Dick leaned forward and pressed his lips to your knuckles.

Your eyes closed.

He stayed there.

When he spoke again, his voice was softer.

“We have to tell everyone.”

Your eyes opened. Fear flickered.

“They already know some of it,” he continued. “Raven felt it. She told us what happened.”

You looked toward the door.

Dick followed your gaze.

Through the small window, shadows moved in the hallway.

The Titans.

Waiting. Hurting. Loving you.

Your mouth trembled. “They’re going to hate me.”

Dick shook his head immediately. “No.”

“They should.”

“No.”

“I lied to them.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And they’re going to be upset. They’re going to be scared. Gar is probably going to cry on you, so prepare emotionally for dampness.”

Despite everything, your lips twitched.

“Vic is going to pretend he’s fine and then build you seventeen medical devices,” Dick continued. “Raven is going to stare into your soul until you confess every symptom you’ve ever hidden. Kory might actually lift a car.”

“She wouldn’t.”

“She might. For emphasis.”

Your smile faded, but some of the terror went with it.

“And you?” you asked.

Dick breathed in.

“I’m going to stay mad for a while,” he admitted.

You nodded.

“But I’m also going to stay.”

Your face cracked open.

He leaned closer.

“I’m not leaving because this is hard,” he said. “I’m not leaving because you scared me. I’m not leaving because you made a bad choice trying to save me.”

Your eyes searched his.

“I need you to promise me something,” he said.

“Dick…”

“No secret healing. Not with us. Not anymore.”

Your jaw tightened. “Emergency circumstances—”

“We’ll define them.”

“You sound like Batman.”

“I know. I’m devastated too.”

A weak laugh.

His heart nearly buckled under the sound.

“I mean it,” he said. “You have to tell people what they’re agreeing to.”

You looked down. “I know.”

“And you have to let us take care of you afterwards.”

“That’s harder.”

“I know.”

“I’m bad at it.”

“Baby, you are catastrophically bad at it.”

You huffed.

He smiled faintly, then sobered. “But we’re going to practice.”

“We?”

“Yeah.” His thumb brushed your hand. “We.”

Your eyes glistened.

“Okay,” you whispered.

It was not enough.

But it was a beginning.

Dick could work with beginnings.

He was a circus kid. A vigilante. A Robin. A Nightwing. A man who had lost the ground and learned to trust the air anyway.

Beginnings were just another kind of leap.