jt.

Batman stood over the corpse in silence.

Nightwing crouched near the shattered remnants of a fear toxin canister, expression stripped of its usual brightness. Red Robin moved through the room in slow, exact lines, scanning everything twice, then a third time because Tim Drake did not trust anything that behaved too neatly. Red Hood leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, helmet angled down at the body.

“Gotta say,” Jason said, voice crackling through the modulator, “I’ve seen worse interior decorating.”

“Not helpful,” Nightwing muttered.

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

Batman said nothing.

That was the second strange thing. Bruce had gone still in that terrifying way he did when the world presented him with an answer he didn’t want to understand. His cape pooled around him like a shadow trying to remember how to be human.

Tim straightened, tablet glowing pale across his face. “No forced entry. Security disabled from inside the system, but not remotely. Whoever did this physically accessed the building.”

“Crane has guards,” Dick said.

“Had,” Jason corrected.

No one laughed.

There were twelve of them, all unconscious. Alive. Bound with their own belts, positioned where they would wake slowly and painfully, but wake. No unnecessary casualties. No collateral damage.

A clean path through chaos. A blade through the throat of a monster.

Damian stood apart from the others, frozen near the far wall.

At first, Dick thought he was staring at Crane. Then he realised Damian wasn’t looking at the body at all.

He was looking at the cut.

A single wound. Precise. Merciful, almost, in its efficiency.

Damian’s face had gone pale beneath his mask.

“Robin?” Bruce asked.

Damian did not answer immediately.

Jason’s helmet turned toward him. “Kid?”

Damian swallowed. “I know this work.”

The cave went colder than winter.

Tim’s fingers paused over the tablet. Dick rose slowly. Bruce turned his head, just enough to make the cowl’s white lenses catch the dim light.

“Explain,” Batman said.

Damian’s mouth tightened.

“That is not merely League technique,” he said. “It is older. Ceremonial. Reserved for correctional executions.”

Jason pushed off the wall. “Correctional?”

“When an enemy of the League acts beyond the bounds Grandfather permits.” Damian’s voice was flat, but something underneath it trembled like a wire pulled too tight. “When an example must be made quietly.”

Tim looked at Crane’s body again. “Scarecrow stole from the League?”

“Or poisoned something they wanted,” Dick said.

Bruce’s gaze did not leave Damian. “Who would Ra’s send?”

Damian’s silence answered before he did.

A small, terrible thing passed across his face.

Not fear. Not exactly.

Recognition.

“There were rumours,” Damian said softly. “In Nanda Parbat.”

Jason went still.

Damian never sounded young when he spoke of the League. He sounded carved. Like every memory had been sanded down until only edges remained.

“Rumours of an heir before me,” Damian continued. “A child raised deeper within the citadel. Not displayed. Not praised. Not allowed failure.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened.

“Talia’s child?” he asked.

Damian did not look at him.

“My mother’s,” he said. “Not yours.”

The words landed like a blade placed gently on a table.

Dick inhaled. “Damian…”

“I never met them,” Damian said quickly, too quickly. “Not properly. I saw them only once.”

His eyes flicked toward Crane again.

“They were training in the eastern courtyard. Seven assassins against one. They were older than me. Perhaps by five years. Perhaps more. It was difficult to tell. The League does not allow children to remain children.”

Jason’s hands curled at his sides.

Damian’s voice lowered. “They won.”

Silence swallowed the room whole.

Then Tim’s tablet chimed. He looked down, and every bit of colour left his face.

“Bruce,” he said. “You need to see this.”

On the screen, a symbol appeared. Not carved. Not painted. Burned into the underside of Crane’s desk, hidden where only someone investigating properly would find it.

A black blade crossed through a green flame.

Damian stepped back like he’d been struck.

Bruce saw. “Robin.”

Damian’s lips parted.

“That is them,” he said.

Jason looked between them. “Them who?”

Damian’s eyes lifted, and for the first time since entering Crane’s hideout, he looked afraid.

“The Blade of Al-Ghul.”

You left Gotham before dawn.

Not because you were afraid of the Bats. Fear was a tool. A chemical. A weakness in the breath before pain. You understood fear intimately, the way a surgeon understood the body: by opening it, studying its shape, learning what made it stop.

You left because the mission was finished. Jonathan Crane had taken a vial of Lazarus compound from a League caravan six months ago. He had diluted it, corrupted it, tried to lace it with fear toxin and sell the result to the highest bidder. He had not known what he carried. Men like Crane rarely did. They saw the sacred and wondered how much it would fetch in dirty money.

The Demon’s Head had spoken. You had obeyed.

That was the whole world.

A command. A target. A blade. Silence after.

Gotham sprawled beneath you, ugly and glittering, all bruised neon and rain-slick rooftops. It was a city with too many heartbeats. Too many witnesses. Too many ghosts.

You understood, now, why Damian had changed here.

The city was a disease.  Or perhaps a cure. You had not decided.

The wind shifted.

You stopped walking.

Three rooftops away, a shadow moved wrong.

Not civilian. Not police. Not League.

Bat.

You tilted your head.

“Come out,” you said.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the shadow detached from a gargoyle, and the Red Robin stepped into view.

He was smaller than you expected.

No. Not smaller.

Young.

Sharp-eyed. Tired. Dangerous in the way of people who had taught themselves to survive by noticing everything.

“You’re hard to find,” he said.

You watched him.

He smiled faintly, but it did not reach his eyes. “That was almost a compliment.”

“You followed the wrong trail.”

His expression flickered.

Then something clicked behind you.

A gun.

You did not turn.

“Did I?” Red Robin asked.

Red Hood stood at your back, weapon trained between your shoulder blades. His stance was aggressive, but not careless. He had positioned himself outside the most obvious range of your reach.

Good.

Not good enough.

“Hands where I can see them,” Hood said.

You lifted your hands slowly.

Red Robin’s gaze narrowed.

He knew.

Smart one.

The wire around his ankle went taut.

You moved.

Not fast.

Perfectly.

That was what the League had carved into you. Speed was sloppy when worshipped. Strength was crude when indulged. Perfection was not the rush of movement. It was inevitability.

You stepped sideways as Red Hood fired. The bullet struck the rooftop exactly where you had been standing. You pulled the wire, and Red Robin hit the ground hard enough to lose breath but not consciousness. Hood advanced; you turned into him, caught his wrist, redirected the second shot into the sky, and drove your elbow into the seam beneath his ribs.

He grunted.

You almost admired him for staying upright.

Almost.

Red Robin swept for your legs. You let him catch one, let his hope bloom for half a second, then twisted with the momentum and dropped your knee beside his throat.

Not on it.

Beside it.

A warning dressed as mercy.

Hood lunged again.

You threw one of your blades.

It pinned his jacket to an exhaust vent.

His helmet snapped toward the knife, then back to you.

“Okay,” he said. “Rude.”

Red Robin’s staff extended beneath your arm.

You caught it.

For one breath, the two of you stared at each other over the weapon.

His eyes widened slightly.

He knew he had lost.

Before you could break the staff, a body dropped from above.

Blue and black.

Nightwing came down like a falling star.

You released Red Robin and rolled away from the strike, cloak snapping behind you. Nightwing flowed after you, escrima sticks sparking to life. His movements were acrobatic, beautiful, almost joyful.

You hated that. Combat was not meant to be joyful.

Combat was prayer.

He struck high. You ducked. He spun. You moved inside the arc, fingers finding the pressure point beneath his arm. He saw it coming at the last possible second and shifted enough that you caught muscle instead of nerve.

Impressive.

He smiled despite himself.

“You’re definitely related to Damian.”

That name did what bullets had not.

It made you pause.

Only slightly. Only for the width of a heartbeat.

But a heartbeat was an eternity to the Bat.

Smoke exploded across the rooftop.

You held your breath before it bloomed fully. Standard concealment tactic. Irritant compound. Mild sedative underlayer. Designed for human reflexes.

You had been trained out of those.

Something moved in the smoke.

Small. Fast. Familiar.

A sword rang against your blade.

You turned.

Robin stood before you, cape whipping around his slight frame, katana held in both hands.

Damian Wayne.

Blood of your mother. Son of the Bat. The child who escaped.

For the first time in years, you felt something that did not have a name.

He stared at you through the white lenses of his mask. His jaw was clenched so hard it must have hurt.

“You,” he said.

You inclined your head. “Little brother.”

Everyone froze.

Nightwing’s escrima sticks lowered a fraction. Red Robin stopped trying to rise. Hood, still pinned by his jacket, went utterly silent.

Damian flinched as though the words had touched bare skin. “You are not permitted to call me that.”

“Am I not?”

“You do not know me.”

“No,” you said. “I know what you were meant to be.”

His grip tightened on the sword.

You studied him. He was smaller than you had imagined. Not weak. Never weak. But there was softness in him now, hidden badly beneath all that anger. Gotham had infected him thoroughly. It had put warmth in the cracks the League left behind.

How strange. How terrible. How lucky.

Damian lifted his chin. “Surrender.”

Behind you, Red Hood gave a rough laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll work.”

You ignored him. Your gaze stayed on Damian.

“And if I do not?”

“Then I will stop you.”

You looked at his sword. His stance. The tremor he thought he was hiding.

“You will try.”

He attacked.

For half a second, he was magnificent. The League had not wasted its training. Damian moved with the precision of a prince raised in war. His blade cut the air in clean silver arcs. His footwork was disciplined, his rage contained, his eyes always searching.

But he had left too early. Or perhaps you had stayed too long.

You caught the first strike, redirected the second, avoided the third by less than an inch. He pressed you toward the edge of the roof, exactly as he had been trained to do. He expected resistance.

So you gave him none.

You stepped backwards off the roof.

Damian’s eyes widened.

He lunged after you on instinct.

Predictable. Painfully brave.

You caught his wrist as you fell, hooked your line around a gargoyle, and swung both of you hard into the side of the building below. Glass cracked beneath your boots. Damian gasped, but did not cry out.

You pinned him against the wall with one arm across his chest, blade angled beneath his chin.

Above, the others shouted.

Damian glared at you, breathing hard.

“You should not have followed,” you said.

“You should not have come.”

“I go where I am sent.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I have.”

Something shifted in his face then.

Not pity. Damian would never insult you with pity.

Recognition. He saw the shape of the cage because he had once lived inside it.

“You can leave,” he said, very quietly.

The words were absurd. Almost cruel.

You stared at him.

Below, Gotham traffic whispered like distant rain.

“No,” you said.

His brows drew together.

“You think you cannot,” he said.

“I know what I am.”

“You are not a weapon.”

You smiled. It felt unfamiliar on your face.

“Then why does everyone keep reaching for me?”

The grappling line above you jerked.

Batman descended through the fog like judgment.

You released Damian and kicked away from the wall before the Bat could reach you. Your boots hit the side of the neighbouring building; you ran three steps across the vertical surface, launched yourself upward, and landed on a fire escape.

Batman landed opposite you.

No flourish. No wasted motion.

You understood immediately why the League had spoken of him like a storm given bones.

“Enough,” he said.

You drew your second blade.

Batman’s gaze flicked to it. Then to your stance. Then to your face.

“You’re Talia’s child.”

It was not a question.

You said nothing.

His voice lowered. “Damian’s sibling.”

Still, you said nothing. Words were openings. Openings were weaknesses. Weakness got children locked in rooms beneath mountains until they learned to stop crying.

Batman stepped closer. “You killed Crane.”

“Yes.”

“On Ra’s al Ghul’s orders.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Crane stole from the League.”

“That doesn’t justify execution.”

You tilted your head.

“No,” you said. “It explains it.”

His mouth tightened beneath the cowl.

There. Anger. Controlled, but present.

He cared too much. Damian’s father cared so much it bled through armour.

How inefficient. How devastating.

“How old were you,” Batman asked, “when they started training you?”

The question was so unexpected that you almost answered.

Your silence was answer enough.

Batman’s cape shifted as the others arrived around him. Nightwing first, landing light. Red Robin next, staff in hand. Hood last, knife gone from his jacket, gun lowered but ready.

Damian climbed onto the fire escape behind them.

He did not look away from you.

“They won’t let you keep killing,” he said.

“No,” you agreed. “They will try to stop me.”

“You don’t have to make this a fight.”

You looked at the five of them.

The Bat. The golden one. The detective. The dead man. The heir who ran. A family made of broken things that had chosen, impossibly, to hold.

Then you looked at Damian. “You already have.”

The fight lasted four minutes.

Later, Tim would replay the footage seventeen times and hate every second of it.

You fought like you had been built in a room without love. Every strike had purpose. Every dodge became an attack. Every attack became a lesson in anatomy. You used their hesitation against them, their teamwork against them, their mercy against them most of all.

Dick tried to bind your wrists; you dislocated your thumb without flinching and slipped free. Jason tried brute force; you turned his strength into momentum and sent him through a rusted railing. Tim tried distance; you closed it. Bruce tried pressure points; you knew counters older than his training.

Damian tried to face you alone. That was when you made your only mistake.

You could have cut him.

You didn’t.

Batman saw.

He adjusted instantly, changing strategy mid-breath. Not aiming to beat you. Aiming to protect Damian long enough for Tim to deploy the modified restraint foam across the fire escape supports.

You noticed too late.

The foam burst upward, hardening around your boots, your knees, your left arm.

You cut through the first layer.

A taser line struck your shoulder.

Your body locked.

Not enough.

You tore free with a soundless snarl and nearly reached Damian again before Nightwing wrapped both arms around your waist from behind.

“I’m sorry,” he said in your ear.

You slammed your head back into his face.

He held on.

Jason caught your right arm. Tim caught the left. Bruce stepped in front of you, one hand raised, waiting for the instant your balance shifted.

Damian stood behind him, sword lowered.

You met his eyes.

He looked horrified.

Not by what you had done.

By what had been done to you.

That was worse.

You bared your teeth. “Do not look at me like that.”

Damian’s voice broke around the edges. “Like what?”

“Like I am a warning.”

His silence was a blade.

Batman struck.

A precise blow to the nerve cluster beneath your jaw.

The world went white.

Then black.

You woke in the Batcave. You knew this before you opened your eyes.

The air was too damp. Too metallic. Too alive with machines breathing softly in the dark. Somewhere nearby, water dripped in slow, patient intervals.

You catalogued yourself first. Wrists restrained. Ankles restrained. Shoulder bruised. Thumb reset while unconscious. Three ribs tender but not broken. No sedative fog in your mind. They had either underestimated your tolerance or chosen not to drug you further.

Interesting.

You opened your eyes.

The Bat stood across from you.

No mask this time.

Bruce Wayne looked less like a storm without the cowl. More like a man haunted by every child he had failed to save.

You disliked him immediately.

Damian stood at his side. You disliked that more.

The others lingered at the edges of the cave. Nightwing had bruising along his nose. Red Hood’s jacket was torn. Red Robin watched you with the expression of someone solving a puzzle and hating the picture it made.

“You are in no danger here,” Bruce said.

You almost laughed.

Instead, you looked at the restraints.

“Is that what you tell all prisoners?”

“You’re not a prisoner,” Dick said gently.

Your eyes moved to him.

He stopped talking.

Good.

Bruce stepped closer. “We need to know what Ra’s is planning.”

“Ask him.”

“We’re asking you.”

“I heard.”

Jason snorted. “Oh, this one’s fun.”

Damian shot him a glare.

You looked at Damian again. He had changed out of uniform. No mask. No sword. Just a boy in dark clothes trying to stand like a soldier and failing because his hands kept curling and uncurling at his sides.

You wondered if your mother knew he did that. You wondered if she missed him. You wondered when you had started allowing yourself such useless thoughts.

“You called me little brother,” Damian said.

Bruce’s face tightened.

You said nothing.

Damian took one step forward. “Did Mother tell you about me?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“That you were gifted.”

His mouth twisted. “That is all?”

“That you were arrogant. Undisciplined. Brilliant. Precious to her plans.”

Damian swallowed. “And after I left?”

You studied him carefully.

This was a trap, though perhaps not one he knew he had set.

“She said,” you answered, “that Gotham had made you weak.”

Damian’s eyes flashed.

Then dimmed.

“And what do you think?”

The cave seemed to lean closer.

Even the bats above were silent.

You looked at him.

Really looked.

At the green eyes identical to your mother's. At the posture that had once been beaten into both of you. At the boy who had escaped the mountain and found a father waiting in the dark. At the Robin who had pointed a sword at you and offered you freedom like freedom was something you could simply hand another person.

Weak, the League would have said.

You thought of him pulling his strike when Red Robin crossed too close behind you. You thought of him saying you are not a weapon. You thought of his horror when Batman knocked you unconscious.

You looked away first.

“I think,” you said slowly, “that Gotham has made you inefficient.”

Jason gave a low whistle. “Ouch.”

Damian did not react.

Because he had heard what the others had not.

Not weak. Never weak.

Bruce heard it too.

His expression shifted, subtle as moonlight through water.

“You protected him,” Bruce said.

You looked at him sharply.

“You had three chances to injure Damian badly enough to end the fight,” he continued. “You didn’t take them.”

“Sentiment is not the only explanation.”

“No,” Bruce said. “But it is one.”

You leaned back against the chair.

The restraints hummed faintly with electricity.

“You want me to be redeemable,” you said.

No one answered.

So you smiled again, colder this time.

“How very Gotham of you.”

Dick’s face softened. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It is a foolish thing.”

“Usually,” Tim said quietly. “But not always.”

You looked at him. He held your gaze, brave and exhausted and breakable in ways he had somehow weaponised.

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” you said.

Bruce’s voice was steady.

“No,” he said. “But I know what was done to you.”

For the first time, you felt anger. Real anger.

Not mission heat. Not defensive calculation. Not the clean, cold violence the League preferred.

Anger.

It rose in you like a struck match.

“You know nothing.”

Bruce did not move. “I know children are not born blades.”

Your hands curled against the restraints. “They are forged.”

“Yes,” Bruce said. “And forging is violence.”

The words hit something buried so deep inside you that for one impossible second you could not breathe.

Damian took another step closer.

You could see it in him now. The awful hope. The desperate, childish thing he tried to bury under discipline and sharp words.

He wanted you to be saved because if you could not be saved, then maybe some part of him had never escaped either.

Poor little brother. Still looking for proof that cages could open.

You turned your face away from him.

“Send me back,” you said.

“No,” Damian answered before Bruce could.

Your eyes snapped to him.

His chin lifted.

“No,” he repeated. “I left. You can too.”

Your laugh came out too soft. “You think leaving is the same as being free.”

Damian flinched.

Good. Cruelty was safer than tenderness. Cruelty had handles. Tenderness was a blade with no hilt.

Bruce watched you like he knew exactly what you were doing. Annoying man.

“You are not returning to the League,” he said.

You stared at him.

The cave seemed suddenly smaller.

“You cannot keep me here forever.”

“No,” Bruce said. “But I can keep you here tonight.”

“Ra’s will come.”

“Let him.”

Jason laughed once. Sharp and delighted. “Oh, I love when he gets dramatic.”

Dick sighed. “Jay.”

“What? I do.”

Damian did not smile.

He was still looking at you.

Like a warning. Like a wound. Like family, which was worse than both.

“You should have stayed away from Gotham,” he said.

You looked at him for a long moment.

Then you gave him the truth. A small piece of it. So small it should not have hurt.

“I wanted to see what stole you.”

Damian went still.

The cave fell silent again, but this silence was different.

Not tactical. Not fearful.

Grieving.

Bruce’s face changed first. Then Dick’s. Tim looked down. Jason turned his helmet away.

Damian’s eyes shone, but he did not let anything fall.

Of course not. You had both been raised better than that.

At last, Damian stepped closer until he stood directly in front of you.

“You were not stolen from,” he said, voice low. “You were abandoned with them.”

Your throat tightened. You hated him for that.

You loved him for it too, though you did not yet have the courage to know.

Above you, the bats shifted in the dark. Below them, machines hummed. Water dripped. Gotham breathed.

And for the first time in your life, you sat in a cage that someone else was trying to open from the outside.

Ra’s al Ghul came before sunrise.

Men like him did not knock. They arrived like prophecy, certain the door had always belonged to them.

The first warning was not an alarm.

It was you.

You sat restrained in the Batcave, head bowed, wrists locked in humming cuffs, and went utterly still.

Damian noticed first.

He had not left. Bruce had tried to make him. Dick had offered tea, rest, a blanket, anything that sounded soft enough to pretend this was not a hostage situation with family trauma wearing ceremonial blades. Tim had hovered near the computer. Jason had leaned against the medbay entrance like he was only there for tactical reasons, which fooled exactly no one.

But Damian stayed in front of you. Guarding you.

Or guarding everyone else from you.

You were not sure he knew the difference.

Then your breathing changed.

Damian’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

You lifted your head. “They are here.”

The cave lights shifted red a second later.

Tim spun toward the computer. “Outer perimeter just went dark.”

Jason straightened. “League?”

Bruce was already moving. “Positions.”

Dick reached for his escrima sticks. “How many?”

Tim’s fingers flew over the keys. His face went grim. “Enough.”

Damian did not move.

Neither did you. Your gaze stayed fixed on the far tunnel where the shadows deepened.

“He did not send soldiers,” you said quietly.

Bruce paused. “What do you mean?”

You swallowed once. “He came himself.”

A silence fell.

Heavy. Ancient. Green-edged.

Damian’s hand went to his sword.

You looked at him. “Do not fight him angry.”

His jaw tightened. “Do not presume to instruct me.”

“You lower your left shoulder when emotionally compromised.”

Jason barked a laugh despite himself. “Oh, they are definitely related.”

Damian glared at him, then back at you.

For half a second, something almost like a smile touched your mouth.

Then the cave exploded.

Smoke poured from the tunnel. Not Tim’s smoke. Not Batman’s. This was darker, threaded with bitter herbs and the scent of old mountain incense. League smoke. The kind you had learned to breathe through when you were seven and crying was considered a disappointing use of oxygen.

Assassins dropped from above. Green and black. Curved blades. Silent feet.

The cave became motion.

Nightwing launched himself into the first wave with a bright, furious grace. Red Hood opened fire with rubber rounds, cursing in three languages. Red Robin vanished into the smoke and turned the cave itself into a trap, lights flickering, platforms shifting, drones waking overhead.

Batman moved like a wall given vengeance.

Damian stayed between you and the tunnel.

You hated that most.

You could have helped. You could have ended half the attackers in less than a minute. You knew their forms, their blind spots, the way League assassins were taught to favour the killing strike over the disabling one. You knew because you had been the lesson they failed against.

But the restraints held.

Then the smoke split.

Ra’s al Ghul stepped into the Batcave.

He wore no armour. Only dark robes, a green cloak, and the serene expression of a man walking through a garden he intended to burn for warmth.

His eyes found Bruce first. “Detective.”

Bruce’s face became stone. “Ra’s.”

Then Ra’s looked at Damian. “Grandson.”

Damian’s sword lifted.

Finally, Ra’s looked at you.

And smiled.

Not warmly.

Proudly.

“My blade.”

Something inside you went quiet.

Not peaceful.

Dead.

Your spine straightened before you told it to. Your breathing evened. Your face emptied. The cave vanished at the edges until there was only the Demon’s Head and the command he had not yet spoken.

Damian saw it happen.

His eyes widened.

“No,” he said.

Ra’s took one step toward you. “You have performed well. Crane’s theft has been answered. The League’s honour remains intact.”

Bruce moved in front of him. “You’re not taking them.”

Ra’s almost looked amused. “You collect children now as trophies?”

Jason’s gun snapped up. “Oh, I hate this guy.”

Ra’s ignored him.

His gaze remained on you.

“Come.”

One word.

That was all it took.

A word with ten thousand days of training behind it. A word carved into your bones. A word that had opened doors, sealed graves, ended lives.

Come.

Your body moved before thought could catch it.

The restraints sparked.

Your wrists twisted.

Damian turned sharply. “Stop!”

You did not.

You dislocated your thumb again.

The pain was clean. Familiar. Almost soothing.

Bruce lunged toward you, but two assassins intercepted him. Dick shouted your name—no, not your name, because none of them knew it, not really. Tim triggered the restraint override, but you had already shifted your weight exactly enough to crack the locking hinge.

Metal snapped.

You stood.

Damian stepped in front of you.

His sword was lowered.

That was his mistake. Or his mercy.

“Don’t,” he said.

Your eyes met his.

Little brother, you thought. But you did not say it.

Ra’s voice came from behind him. “You see, Detective? You cannot rescue a weapon from its purpose.”

Bruce slammed an assassin into the cave wall hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. “They’re not a weapon.”

Ra’s smiled. “All children are weapons. The only question is whether their parents have the discipline to sharpen them.”

Damian flinched. Just slightly.

But you saw.

The dead quiet inside you cracked.

Not much.

Enough.

Ra’s noticed too.

His gaze cooled.

“Blade,” he said.

You turned your head toward him.

“Kill Robin.”

The cave stopped.

Even the fighting seemed to falter around the edges.

Jason’s voice went flat with horror. “No.”

Dick’s face drained of colour.

Tim whispered, “Bruce—”

Bruce moved.

Too far. Too late.

Damian stood before you, sword still lowered.

His eyes did not leave yours.

You could kill him. You knew seventeen ways from this distance. A strike to the throat. A blade under the ribs. A broken neck. A nerve severed beneath the jaw. Quick. Clean. Merciful, if mercy meant efficiency.

Damian knew it too.

He did not raise his weapon.

“Do it,” Ra’s said.

Your hand moved to your blade.

Damian inhaled.

But he did not step back.

“Look at me,” he said.

You did.

His voice shook once, then steadied.

“You are not what he made you.”

The blade slid from its sheath.

Ra’s watched with satisfaction.

Bruce fought like the cave itself was trying to hold him back.

Damian lifted his chin.

“If you must kill me,” he said softly, “then let it be your choice. Not his.”

Choice.

The word entered you like a foreign object.

Choice was not a thing the League gave. Choice was what undisciplined people called hesitation. Choice was the space between command and obedience, and you had been trained to erase that space so completely no one could find where the child ended and the blade began.

Your hand trembled.

Ra’s saw it.

His face hardened.

“Obey.”

The command struck deeper this time.

Your knees nearly buckled.

Memories flashed, brutal and bright.

Stone floors beneath your palms. Talia’s voice telling you pain was information. Ra’s standing over you while you held a blade too large for your child’s hand.

Damian, small and furious in a courtyard, watching you win against seven assassins.

Your mother saying Gotham made him weak. Your grandfather saying weakness could be cut out. Your own voice asking, years later, what stole him.

Damian’s voice answering: You were abandoned with them.

Abandoned.

Not chosen. Not honoured.

Left.

Your grip tightened on the blade.

Damian closed his eyes.

That broke you.

Not because he was afraid.

Because he trusted you.

You turned.

The blade left your hand.

It flew across the cave and buried itself in Ra’s al Ghul’s cloak, pinning the green fabric to the stone behind him an inch from his throat.

Everyone froze.

Your voice came out raw.

“No.”

Ra’s stared at you.

For the first time since entering the cave, he looked truly displeased.

Not angry.

Worse.

Disappointed.

“My blade,” he said softly.

You lifted your chin. “Not yours.”

The cave erupted again.

Ra’s tore free of the pinned cloak and drew his sword in one fluid motion. Damian moved first, stepping beside you, blade raised now. Not in front of you.

Beside you.

A strange thing happened then.

You fought with Damian.

Not around him. Not despite him. With him.

He was smaller, quicker, all sharp angles and righteous fury. You were older, colder, built from discipline he had survived and escaped. Together, you were terrible.

You knew the League’s rhythms. Damian knew how to break them.

An assassin lunged for his left side; you intercepted. Another came for your back; Damian cut their blade away before it landed. You moved like a sentence finished in two voices.

Across the cave, Jason laughed breathlessly while punching someone into a storage cabinet.

“Okay, that’s horrifyingly cool!”

“Focus!” Bruce snapped.

“I am focused! On how horrifyingly cool that is!”

Ra’s watched you and Damian carve through his guard, and something ancient twisted across his face.

Possession. Rage. Loss.

“You shame your blood,” he said.

Damian’s blade met his with a ringing clash. “No. I am improving it.”

Dick, somewhere behind him, made a wounded little sound. “That was so good. I hate that I’m proud right now.”

Ra’s pressed Damian backwards. He was stronger. Taller. Crueller with every strike.

You came in from the side.

Ra’s caught your wrist.

For a moment, you were close enough to see your reflection in his eyes.

“You could have been perfect,” he said.

There it was.

The hook in the wound.

Perfection. The holy word. The altar you had been raised upon and sacrificed to, piece by piece, until nothing remained but the shape of what they wanted.

Your wrist strained in his grip.

He twisted.

Pain flared white.

Once, you would not have made a sound.

Now you gasped.

And Damian heard.

He slammed the hilt of his sword into Ra’s ribs with a furious snarl.

Ra’s released you.

Batman arrived like judgment.

The fight between Bruce Wayne and Ra’s al Ghul was not beautiful.

It was history with fists. Every strike carried years. Every block answered an old argument. Ra’s fought like a king. Bruce fought like a father.

And fathers, you were beginning to learn, were far more dangerous when their children were watching.

Ra’s drove Bruce back toward the Lazarus containment case. Bruce caught the blade between armoured gauntlets, twisted, and forced Ra’s to one knee. For one breath, the Demon’s Head looked almost mortal.

Then he smiled.

“Detective,” Ra’s said, “you remain sentimental.”

He pressed a hidden trigger.

The cave lights died.

Not dimmed.

Died.

Complete darkness swallowed everything. You moved by instinct, grabbing Damian and pulling him low just as a volley of darts cut through the space where his throat had been.

He stiffened at your touch.

Then, incredibly, he leaned into your grip.

Only for balance.

Probably.

Maybe.

“Tim!” Bruce shouted.

“Working on it!” Tim called back.

Emergency lights flickered on in harsh red pulses.

Ra’s was gone. So were three of his assassins.

The rest were unconscious, bound, or being sat on by Jason, who looked deeply satisfied with himself.

The cave smelled of smoke, blood, and old ghosts.

For several seconds, no one spoke.

Then Damian turned to you. “You saved me.”

You released him immediately. “You were in the way.”

Jason groaned. “Oh my God, it’s like listening to Damian argue with a mirror that has more knives.”

Dick wiped blood from his nose. “A scary mirror.”

Tim, bruised and breathless at the computer, looked between you and Damian. “A mirror that can dislocate its thumb on command, apparently.”

You flexed your injured hand.

Bruce approached slowly.

You tensed.

He noticed and stopped two steps away.

Ra’s had come to collect you. You had refused. Which meant you were no longer a blade of the League.

You were something worse.

A loose end. A traitor. A child who had stayed too long and finally stepped out of line.

You looked toward the tunnel Ra’s had vanished through. “He will not stop.”

Bruce’s voice was quiet. “No.”

“He will send others.”

“Yes.”

“You cannot protect me forever.”

“No,” Bruce said.

Something cold settled in your chest.

Then Bruce continued.

“But we can teach you how to protect yourself without belonging to him.”

You stared.

That was not how protection worked. Protection was ownership. Investment. Utility. No one guarded a blade unless they intended to use it.

Dick stepped closer, gentle but steady. “You could stay.”

Jason crossed his arms. “Or don’t. But maybe don’t go back to Murder Mountain with Grandpa Cult-Vibes.”

Tim blinked. “That might be your worst name for Ra’s yet.”

“I’m workshopping.”

Damian did not laugh.

He looked at you like the answer mattered more than he wanted to admit.

You wanted to say no. No was clean. No was safe. No meant no debt, no hope, no soft-eyed vigilantes trying to pry open the armour welded to your skin.

But your body remembered the command.

Kill Robin.

Your hand remembered trembling. Your blade remembered turning.

Not his.

The words lived in your mouth like the first breath after drowning.

Not yours.

Not yours.

Not yours.

“I do not know how,” you said.

It was not an answer. It was worse.

It was the truth.

Damian’s expression changed.

Small. Careful. Almost young.

“Neither did I.”

You looked at him.

He shifted, uncomfortable beneath your attention.

“Tt. I am still learning.”

Jason muttered, “Understatement of the century.”

Damian ignored him with royal intensity.

“You will be irritating,” he said.

Your brows lifted.

“You will be arrogant,” he continued. “Violent. Condescending. Emotionally stunted.”

Dick coughed. “Damian.”

“You will attempt to escape at least twice.”

Tim raised a finger. “Statistically, probably more.”

“You will insult Father.”

Jason perked up. “That part’s encouraged.”

“You will find our methods inefficient,” Damian said, voice quieter now. “You will think mercy is weakness. You will hate it here.”

You studied him. “And yet?”

Damian swallowed.

“And yet,” he said, “you should stay anyway.”

The cave softened around the edges.

Not physically. The stone remained stone. The machines kept humming. The bats above kept shifting in the dark like scraps of living night.

But something changed. 

A door did not open. Not yet. But maybe, somewhere deep beneath the mountain inside your chest, a lock turned once.

Bruce held out his hand.

Not to grab. Not to command.

Just offered.

You looked at it for a long time.

Then you looked at Damian.

He gave a single stiff nod, as if granting permission to survive was something he could do without falling apart.

Your injured hand twitched.

You did not take Bruce’s hand.

Not yet.

But you did not step away.

For tonight, that was enough.

The first week was war.

Not open war. Not blades in the hallways or poison in the tea, though Alfred did catch you studying the spice cabinet with “strategic suspicion,” as he called it, and banned you from unsupervised kitchen access with the politest death glare you had ever witnessed.

It was quieter than that.

You slept facing the door. You stole three knives from the Cave and hid them around the manor. You mapped every exit. You refused to eat anything you had not watched someone else consume first.

You nearly broke Tim’s wrist when he woke you from a nightmare. You did break Jason’s nose when he startled you during training.

Jason, to his credit, only held a towel to his face and said, “Okay, fair, but next time aim for literally anyone else.”

Damian watched you with the grim satisfaction of someone seeing his worst qualities reflected back at him in 4K.

“You are impossible,” he told you on the fifth morning.

You looked at the breakfast plate Alfred had placed in front of you. “What is this?”

“Pancakes,” Damian said.

“Why are they shaped like animals?”

Across the table, Dick’s face lit up. “Oh, Alfred does that when he’s emotionally adopting you.”

Alfred, from the kitchen doorway, said mildly, “Master Richard.”

You stared at the pancake. It was shaped like a bat.

Poorly. Lovingly.

An inefficient food.

You ate it anyway.

Damian pretended not to notice.

He noticed everything.

The first time you laughed, it was Jason’s fault.

This surprised no one more than Jason.

He had dragged you into the Cave’s training area after you informed Bruce that firearms were “cowardly tools for those with poor wrist discipline.” Jason took this personally, spiritually, and with great volume.

He spent twenty minutes explaining why guns were not inherently cowardly, actually, and then tried to demonstrate.

You disarmed him in four seconds.

He stared at the empty space where his gun had been.

You held it by the barrel.

“Poor wrist discipline,” you said.

Tim made a strangled sound from the computer.

Dick turned away.

Damian looked like he was trying not to ascend to a higher plane through sheer smugness.

Jason pointed at you. “You know what? I liked you better when you were unconscious.”

And you laughed.

It was small. Barely a breath.

But it was there.

Everyone froze so abruptly that you stopped too.

“What?” you demanded.

“Nothing,” Dick said too quickly.

Tim looked intensely at his screen. “Nope. Nothing. Normal cave sounds.”

Jason grinned.

Damian’s expression softened by one treacherous inch.

You scowled at all of them.

It only made Jason grin wider.

“Oh, you’re stuck with us now,” he said.

You threw the gun at him.

Safety on.

Mostly.

Ra’s sent assassins on the twelfth night.

You knew before the alarms.

This time, when you woke, you did not run.

You went to Damian’s room first.

He was already awake, sword in hand.

For a moment, you stood in the doorway looking at each other.

No words. No old commands. No mountain between you.

Then Damian nodded. You nodded back.

Together, you went to wake the others.

Later, after the attack failed spectacularly and Jason declared the manor’s security “a group project from hell,” Bruce found you on the balcony overlooking the grounds.

Dawn bruised the horizon purple and gold.

You stood with your arms folded, watching the trees.

Bruce joined you but did not stand too close.

He was learning. Annoying man.

“They will come again,” you said.

“Yes.”

“You keep saying that.”

“You keep being right.”

You glanced at him.

His mouth almost curved.

Almost.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

Then Bruce said, “You need a name.”

Your body went very still. “I have a title.”

“You deserve a name.”

You looked away.

The League had given you many names.

Blade. Heir. Asset. Shadow. Failure, once, when you were nine and your hands had shaken too hard to hold the knife steady.

Your mother had called you child only when no one else could hear.

Ra’s had called you perfect only when you bled.

“What did Talia call you?” Bruce asked quietly.

Your throat tightened.

You almost did not answer.

Then you said it.

Not loudly.

The name felt strange in the air. Too soft for the life you had lived. Too human for the thing you had been made into.

Bruce repeated it once.

Carefully. Correctly. Like it mattered.

You hated him a little less.

Maybe.

A month later, Damian found you in the library.

You were sitting on the floor with three open books, a mug of untouched tea, and a knife hidden beneath your thigh.

Damian noticed the knife.

You noticed him noticing.

Neither of you mentioned it.

He stepped closer. “What are you reading?”

“History.”

“Which era?”

You looked down at the book. “All of it.”

Damian huffed.

He sat beside you.

Not close.

Closer than before.

For several minutes, you read in silence.

Then he said, “I used to wonder about you.”

Your eyes stayed on the page. “No, you did not.”

“Yes,” Damian snapped. “I did.”

You looked at him.

He scowled at the carpet.

“I saw you once. In the courtyard. You defeated seven assassins.”

“You said this already.”

“I thought you were extraordinary.”

Something in your chest shifted.

Damian’s voice became quieter. “I also thought if I became like you, Mother would be proud.”

You closed the book.

Damian’s hands were clasped too tightly in his lap.

“I am glad,” he said, each word dragged out like it cost him blood, “that I did not become like you.”

The old you would have taken offence.

The new you—still raw, still half-formed, still sleeping with a blade under the pillow—heard the grief beneath it.

“So am I,” you said.

Damian looked at you sharply. You looked back.

The silence held.

Then he leaned sideways, just enough that his shoulder brushed yours.

It was not an embrace. It was barely contact.

But Damian Wayne did not offer comfort casually.

You sat very still.

After a while, you allowed your shoulder to press back.

From the doorway, Dick made a muffled sound suspiciously like crying.

Damian threw a book at him without looking.

Ra’s came one final time in winter.

Snow fell over Gotham in thin, silver sheets, softening the city’s ugliness into something almost gentle.

He did not bring an army. Only himself.

He stood in the manor gardens beneath a dead tree, robes dark against the white ground. Bruce went out first. Damian followed. Then you.

The others watched from the shadows.

Ra’s looked older in the snow.

Not weaker. Never that.

But older.

“My blade,” he said.

You did not flinch this time. “That is not my name.”

His eyes narrowed.

Then he said your name.

It sounded wrong in his mouth.

You hated that it had ever lived there.

“You have been corrupted,” Ra’s said.

Damian stepped forward. “They have been freed.”

Ra’s glanced at him. “Freedom is a story weak men tell their children so they do not have to teach discipline.”

Bruce’s voice was cold. “You don’t get to speak about children.”

Ra’s smiled faintly. “And yet, Detective, here we stand among yours.”

His gaze returned to you.

“I offer you one chance. Come with me, and your betrayal will be corrected. Refuse, and the League will consider you an enemy until your final breath.”

Snow gathered on your shoulders.

Once, the threat would have hollowed you out.

Now, you only felt tired.

All that power. All that immortality. All those centuries. And still, Ra’s al Ghul could not imagine love except as possession. Could not imagine loyalty except as obedience. Could not imagine family except as inheritance sharpened into a knife.

You stepped forward.

Damian tensed. Bruce did too.

But neither stopped you.

You walked until you stood close enough for Ra’s to see your eyes clearly.

“I was your blade,” you said.

His expression remained unreadable.

“You honed me. Used me. Named my wounds discipline and called my silence devotion.”

The snow fell harder.

Your voice did not shake.

“You taught me perfection meant having no self left to save.”

Ra’s said nothing.

You drew a blade.

Behind you, Damian inhaled sharply.

But you did not raise it.

You turned it in your hand and offered it hilt-first.

Ra’s stared.

“This is yours,” you said. “The weapon. The title. The obedience.”

The blade dropped into the snow between you.

You stepped back.

“I am keeping the life.”

For a moment, Ra’s looked at you with something almost human in his eyes.

Then it was gone.

“Sentiment has ruined you.”

You looked past him, toward the manor.

Dick in the window, pretending not to hover. Tim on comms, pretending not to worry. Jason in the shadows with a rifle he absolutely claimed was “just decorative.” Alfred waiting inside with tea.

Bruce beside you, steady as stone. Damian at your shoulder.

Your brother.

Not little, not weak, not stolen.

Alive.

You looked back at Ra’s.

“No,” you said. “It found me late.”

Ra’s’s mouth hardened. “This is not over.”

Bruce stepped forward. “For tonight, it is.”

Ra’s looked at all three of you.

Then he vanished into the snow like a ghost too proud to admit it had been exorcised.

No one moved until the garden was empty.

Then Damian exhaled.

“You were dramatic,” he said.

You looked at him. “You carry a sword and wear a cape.”

“Tt. That is tactical.”

Jason’s voice crackled over comms. “For the record, that was dramatic as hell, and I support it.”

Dick added, “Ten out of ten emotional symbolism.”

Tim said, “The blade in the snow was a little much.”

You frowned. “Should I retrieve it?”

Everyone shouted, “No.”

You blinked.

Damian sighed. Then, after a long moment, he reached for your hand.

He did not hold it properly. Just hooked two fingers around yours like you were both still too proud to need anyone.

You looked down at the contact. Then at him.

He stared straight ahead, ears faintly pink from the cold.

“You are still irritating,” he said.

“You are still inefficient.”

“I am improving.”

“So am I.”

His fingers tightened around yours.

Behind you, Bruce said nothing.

But when you turned toward the manor, he walked beside you, not ahead.

Not leading. Not commanding.

Beside.

Snow covered the garden behind you, hiding the blade beneath white.

For the first time in your life, you left a weapon where it fell.

Tim says stuff like, “Yeah, there was a mugging near my school once,” or “I learned to tail people pretty young,” or “My parents were out of the country a lot.”

And Kon is like, “Okay, that’s sad and mildly insane, but it’s Tim. He makes everything sound like a chess move anyway.”

Tim’s Gotham trauma is polished. Organised. Alphabetised. It comes with contingency plans and a little PowerPoint in his brain.

So Kon assumes Gotham childhoods are bad in a rich-kid-detective-sad-eyes kind of way.

Then he meets you. And you are not polished about it.

You are casual. Way too casual. You say things in the same tone someone else would use to complain about a bad dentist appointment.

The first time it happens, you and Kon are hanging out with Tim at the Tower. Tim is working on his laptop. Kon is pretending not to hover over your shoulder while you make instant noodles because he likes watching you do normal things. It makes his chest feel warm and weird.

Tim mentions Gotham traffic.

You snort and say, “At least it’s not as bad as when the city shuts down for a rogue attack and everyone panic-buys bottled water.”

Kon laughs at first.

Then he realises Tim does not. Tim has stopped typing.

Kon looks between you two. “Sorry, panic-buys what now?”

You glance up. “Water. Batteries. Canned food. Sometimes gas masks if Scarecrow was out.”

Kon blinks. “Gas masks?”

“Yeah. They sold out fast, though. You had to know which corner stores had emergency stock.”

Kon slowly turns to Tim.

Tim is staring at you with the expression of someone hearing a familiar song in a much darker key.

Kon points weakly. “Did you guys have gas mask corner stores?”

Tim says, “Not in my neighbourhood.”

And that’s when Kon realises something important.

Tim’s Gotham and your Gotham were not the same Gotham.

Tim’s Gotham had distance. Manor walls. Boarding schools. Wealth. Alfred. Bruce. Eventually Batman-adjacent protection, even if Tim would never frame it that way.

Your Gotham had bus routes during Arkham breakouts.

Your Gotham had apartment buildings with broken locks.

Your Gotham had neighbours who taught kids which alleys to avoid.

Your Gotham had sirens as background noise.

Your Gotham had survival skills disguised as common sense.

Kon’s brain just kind of… pauses.

Because he thought he knew Gotham trauma.

He did not know Gotham trauma: civilian edition.

And he is immediately unwell about it.

You don’t notice at first.

That makes it worse.

You just stir your noodles and add, “It wasn’t always that dramatic. Sometimes it was just regular crime.”

Kon makes a sound.

Tim closes his laptop.

You look up. “What?”

Kon says, “Regular crime?”

“Yeah.”

“Babe, what is regular crime?”

You shrug. “Non-themed.”

Tim puts his face in his hands.

Kon stares at you like you have just revealed Gotham had a loyalty rewards program for childhood trauma.

“Non-themed,” he repeats.

“Like, not Joker or Riddler or Two-Face. Just normal gang stuff.”

Kon looks physically pained.

“Just normal gang stuff,” he says.

You nod.

Tim mutters, “That is, unfortunately, a Gotham distinction.”

Kon points at him. “Do not normalise this, Rob.”

Tim lifts both hands. “I’m not. I’m contextualising.”

“You’re both insane.”

You and Tim, at the same time: “It was Gotham.”

Kon throws his hands up. “That is not an explanation! That is a cry for help with gargoyles!”

After that, Kon becomes weirdly obsessed with comparing notes.

Not because he wants to make you relive anything. He just cannot wrap his head around the idea that Tim’s childhood, which he already considered bleak as hell, was apparently the premium subscription version of Gotham.

He asks Tim about it later, when you’re not there.

Kon tries to be casual. Fails immediately. “So, uh… was Gotham always like that?”

Tim doesn’t look up from his tablet. “Like what?”

“Like—” Kon gestures helplessly. “Like your city was trying to speedrun traumatising every kid in it.”

Tim is quiet for a second.

Then he says, “Depends where you lived.”

Kon hates that answer. He hates how calm Tim is when he says it.

Tim continues, “My childhood wasn’t great, but I had resources. Security systems. Money. Escape routes. Adults who were absent, but not usually physically dangerous. That’s different.”

Kon sits with that. It makes him feel sick.

Because he knows Tim’s childhood hurt him. He’s seen it in the way Tim overworks, overthinks, overprepares, and acts like needing affection is a security flaw.

But then there’s you.

You, casually mentioning that your school had “rogue drills.” You, knowing how to identify fear toxin symptoms. You, laughing about how Gotham kids had playground rumours about which villains were “better” to be near during an attack.

Kon does not know what to do with that. He is a clone. He has his own complicated origin. He was made, not born. He knows what it’s like to have your early life shaped by other people’s choices and experiments and expectations.

But he was not a little kid in Gotham. He did not have to learn that an ice cream truck playing music too slowly might be suspicious. He did not have to know which siren meant fire and which siren meant chemical exposure. He did not have to pack emergency snacks in case a villain shut down the bridge again.

And you say it all like it was annoying, not terrifying.

That is the part that destroys him.

Because Kon is loud. Emotional. Heart-first. He feels things in bright colours.

So when your past starts unfolding in front of him, he cannot just file it away.

He feels it. All of it. Hard.

The second big casual drop happens when you’re alone together.

You’re in his room, lying upside down on his bed, scrolling through your phone. Kon is floating three feet off the floor because he says it helps him think, but really he just likes making you roll your eyes.

A video plays on your phone with a carnival laugh track.

Your smile disappears for half a second.

Kon notices instantly. “You good?”

You wave it off. “Yeah. Just don’t love carnival music.”

He lowers himself to the floor. “Because Gotham?”

You snort. “Everything weird about me is not because of Gotham.”

Kon raises an eyebrow.

You pause. “Okay, a lot of it is because of Gotham.”

He sits beside you. “Carnival music?”

You shrug. “Joker thing. Not directly. I wasn’t, like, front row for anything. But there was an incident near my neighbourhood when I was a kid. For weeks after, everyone got weird about circus stuff.”

Kon’s expression goes blank. That is his processing face.

Then he says, very carefully, “How old were you?”

“I don’t know. Eight?”

“Eight.”

“Maybe nine.”

“Oh, yeah, nine is famously the emotionally mature age for clown-based domestic terrorism.”

You blink.

Kon looks upset enough that you immediately try to soften it.

“It wasn’t that bad.”

Kon’s face changes.

He looks wounded by the sentence itself.

“Don’t do that.”

You frown. “Do what?”

“Make it smaller because I reacted.”

That shuts you up.

Kon’s voice gets softer. “I’m not mad at you. I just… I don’t know what to do when you say something like that and then look at me like I’m the weird one for being horrified.”

You look away.

He leans closer, not touching yet.

“I knew Tim had Gotham stuff,” he says. “But Tim talks about it like he’s reading a case file. You talk about it like you’re telling me the weather was bad.”

You laugh weakly. “Sometimes the weather was bad too.”

“Babe.”

“What?”

“Focus.”

You sigh.

Kon waits. He is not always patient. In fact, he is famously not always patient. But with you, he tries so hard.

Eventually, you say, “It was normal there.”

Kon’s eyes soften.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what’s messing me up.”

Because Kon understands being built for something you didn’t choose. He understands having people look at you and see the result instead of the damage. He understands being called strong when what they mean is you survived something you shouldn’t have had to survive.

And suddenly, he sees that in you.

Not as a concept. Not as a sad backstory.

As real.

You were a kid. A civilian kid. No powers. No cape. No Robin training. No alien DNA. No super-hearing. No tactile telekinesis. No team.

Just you. In Gotham. Trying to get through the day.

Kon lies down beside you, staring at the ceiling.

After a while, he says, “I hate that city.”

You turn your head. “You barely know that city.”

“I know enough.”

“You know Tim.”

“Exactly. I thought Tim was the worst-case Gotham childhood.”

You laugh despite yourself. “Tim?”

Kon looks at you, dead serious. “Tim became Robin because Batman was sad and somebody had to fix it. That’s insane.”

“Okay, true.”

“And somehow you’re making his childhood sound like the deluxe edition.”

You laugh harder.

Kon smiles, but it’s soft around the edges.

“I’m serious,” he says. “Tim had it bad. You had it bad differently.”

That lands.

Because people usually compare pain like there’s a scoreboard. Like someone has to win most damaged, which is the worst prize ever. Gotham loves that. Gotham practically runs on “someone had it worse.”

Kon does not do that. He just says differently.

And somehow that makes it easier to breathe.

After that, he starts noticing the differences between you and Tim.

Tim prepares like a strategist. You prepare like someone who once had no backup.

Tim has contingency plans labeled by scenario. You have emergency cash hidden in three places and never let your phone drop below 40%.

Tim distrusts people because he has analysed their motives. You distrust crowds because crowds in Gotham could turn into hostages in under ninety seconds.

Tim sits with his back to the wall because Batman training. You sit with your back to the wall because civilian survival.

Tim knows fear intellectually, tactically. You know it bodily.

Kon starts clocking how your body reacts before your brain explains.

A loud bang, and your eyes go to exits. A sudden laugh, and your shoulders tighten. Fog rolling in low over the street, and your hand finds his sleeve.

You always say you’re fine.

Kon starts understanding that “fine” is a Gotham word meaning not currently bleeding.

He hates it.

He starts gently challenging it.

You say, “I’m fine.”

He says, “Gotham fine or actual fine?”

You stare at him.

He smiles a little. “Yeah, I made categories.”

“That’s annoying.”

“Accurate, though.”

You sigh. “Gotham fine.”

“Cool. Want to get out of here?”

You blink. “You don’t mind?”

Kon looks genuinely confused. “Why would I mind?”

“I don’t know. It’s inconvenient.”

His expression shifts into something soft and almost hurt. “You’re not inconvenient.”

You look away.

Kon ducks into your line of sight. “Hey. You’re not.”

And because he’s Kon, because he is earnest enough to be embarrassing and sweet enough to get away with it, he adds, “I can fly. Literally nothing is inconvenient to me except emotional repression and waiting in lines.”

You laugh.

He beams, relieved.

Kon becomes incredibly focused on giving you control.

That is one of the first things Tim advises him on.

Not in a patronising way. More like Tim sees Kon spiraling and takes pity.

Kon says, “I don’t know what to do when they talk about it.”

Tim says, “Ask what they need.”

Kon frowns. “What if they don’t know?”

“Offer options.”

“Like what?”

“Listen. Distract. Leave. Stay. Physical comfort. No physical comfort.”

Kon absorbs this like holy scripture.

The next time you casually mention that you hate blackout curtains because they remind you of city lockdowns, Kon visibly glitches for half a second, then takes a breath.

“Do you want me to listen, distract you, or threaten Gotham as a concept?”

You blink. “What was the third one?”

“I’m workshopping it.”

You smile. “Threaten Gotham as a concept.”

Kon nods solemnly. “Gotham, count your days. You creepy little gargoyle swamp.”

You burst out laughing.

He lights up.

From then on, that becomes his thing.

He does not always know the perfect response, but he always tries to give you a choice.

“Do you want comfort or jokes?”

“Do you want me close or over there?”

“Do you want to talk about it or should I tell you what Bart did today?”

“Do you want me to call Tim and ask him if this is normal so we can both yell at him when he says yes?”

That last one is used often.

Tim gets dragged into it more than he deserves.

You: “One time my school bus got held up because Two-Face’s gang blocked the bridge.” Kon, already pulling out his phone: “Tim.” Tim, answering: “No.” Kon: “You don’t even know what I’m asking.” Tim: “Is it Gotham-related?” Kon: “Yes.” Tim: “Then no.” Kon: “Was bridge gang stuff normal?” Tim: “Define normal.” Kon: “I hate you.” Tim: “Valid.”

You find this hilarious.

Tim does not, but he tolerates it because he secretly likes that Kon cares enough to be annoying.

Kon’s protectiveness is raw. He is young in some ways. Not immature exactly, but new to so many kinds of love. New to building a life that wasn’t assigned to him. New to the terror of realising someone you love was hurt before you ever knew them.

He wants to go back in time and save you. He cannot.

He wants to punch every villain who ever scared you. He could, maybe, but that is apparently “not productive” and “legally complicated.”

He wants to wrap you in his jacket and fly you somewhere sunny where cities don’t have cursed vibes. That one he can actually do.

So he does.

The first time you mention that Gotham winters were the worst because cold weather plus city-wide emergencies meant people got trapped without heat, Kon gets quiet.

Then he asks, “Have you ever been somewhere warm just because?”

You blink. “Just because?”

“Yeah.”

“Not really.”

Kon is on his feet immediately. “Pack a bag.”

“What?”

“We’re going to the beach.”

“Kon, it’s almost midnight.”

“So? Beaches don’t close emotionally.”

“That sentence makes no sense.”

“It does if you’re romantic.”

He takes you somewhere warm. Not crowded. Not fancy. Just a quiet stretch of sand where the air smells like salt instead of smoke and the sky is huge.

You stand there barefoot, wind pulling at your clothes, and for a while you don’t say anything.

Kon watches you carefully.

Not like you’re fragile.

Like this matters.

You finally whisper, “Gotham didn’t have skies like this.”

Kon looks up. “What were they like?”

“Low,” you say. “Heavy. Like they were waiting for something bad, too.”

Kon’s chest hurts.

So he reaches for your hand.

You let him take it.

He squeezes gently. “This one isn’t waiting for anything.”

You look at him.

He smiles, a little shy. “It’s just sky.”

That becomes one of the safest things anyone has ever said to you.

Just sky.

No signal lights. No smoke. No bat-shaped shadow against the clouds. No sirens below.

Just sky.

Just Kon’s hand in yours.

Just warmth.

Kon starts collecting those moments for you.

Not in a “fixing you” way. In a “Gotham does not get to be your only archive” way.

He gives you memories Gotham can’t touch.

Beach at midnight. Flying above clouds. Eating greasy diner food at 3 a.m. because neither of you could sleep. Watching stupid movies where the villains are too ridiculous to be scary. Farm visits with Ma Kent, where the quiet is soft instead of threatening.

That last one really gets him.

He takes you to Smallville eventually.

At first, you’re tense. 

Too open. Too quiet. Too few places to hide.

Kon notices. “Too much?”

You shake your head. “Just different.”

Ma Kent, because she is Ma Kent, takes one look at you and seems to understand more than anyone should. She doesn’t fuss. She doesn’t ask invasive questions. She just gives you warm food and tells Kon to stop hovering because he’s “about as subtle as a flying tractor.”

Kon blushes.

You laugh.

Later, you sit on the porch with him, watching the fields move under the wind.

You say, “It’s weird.”

“What is?”

“No sirens.”

Kon leans back beside you. “Good weird or bad weird?”

You think about it. “Suspicious weird.”

He nods gravely. “We can work with suspicious weird.”

You huff. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Yeah, but I’m emotionally supportive.”

“You are.”

He goes pink at the ears.

Kon gets flustered when you acknowledge his care. Like, badly.

He can lift cars, fight monsters, and stare down world-ending threats, but you saying, “I feel safe with you,” makes his brain turn into dial-up noise.

The first time you say it, he freezes.

You’re half-asleep against him after a long day. He thinks you’re already out, but then you mumble, “I feel safe here.”

Kon stops breathing.

Not because he needs to breathe that much.

Because his whole body forgets how.

“You do?” he whispers.

You hum. “With you.”

Kon stares at the ceiling like he’s just been entrusted with the nuclear codes to your heart.

He does not move for the next two hours. His arm goes numb. He does not care.

Tim finds him later, still sitting in the same position, looking emotionally devastated.

Tim whispers, “Are they asleep?”

Kon nods solemnly.

Tim eyes him. “Are you crying?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“Shut up.”

Tim’s mouth twitches.

Kon whispers, “They said they feel safe with me.”

Tim’s expression softens. “That’s big.”

“I know.”

“No, Kon. For someone from Gotham? That’s big.”

Kon looks down at you, tucked against him, relaxed in a way he rarely sees.

His voice is tiny. “I know.”

And he does.

By then, he really does.

He understands that trust from you is not casual. It is not automatic. It is not easy.

It is something built from proof. Again and again.

Kon showing up when he says he will. Kon telling you before he touches you. Kon not laughing at your emergency habits. Kon keeping snacks in his jacket because you once mentioned Gotham lockdowns could last hours. Kon learning the difference between your normal quiet and your danger quiet.

Kon asking, not assuming.

Kon staying.

He is so proud when you let him stay.

Not in a smug way. In an awed way. Like he knows he has been handed something precious and slightly dangerous, like a tiny star.

The funniest part is that Kon starts getting personally offended on your behalf by Tim’s “that’s just Gotham” energy.

You’ll say something alarming.

Tim will, from across the room, say, “Yeah, that tracks.”

Kon will whip around. “Stop saying that!”

Tim looks up. “What?”

“That tracks? That tracks? They just said their elementary school had a no-ransom-note-without-calling-an-adult policy.”

Tim pauses. “That one’s weird.”

You point at him. “Thank you.”

Kon gestures wildly. “That one? That one is weird? What’s the baseline here?”

Tim opens his mouth.

Kon points harder. “No. Don’t answer. I’ll get mad.”

Tim closes his mouth.

You are laughing so hard you’re crying.

Kon looks betrayed. “This is not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

“It is Gotham funny, which I’m learning means horrifying.”

You wipe your eyes. “You’re catching on.”

Tim mutters, “He’s adapting.”

Kon groans. “I don’t want to adapt. I want Gotham to stop sounding like a child-endangerment theme park.”

Tim says, “Good luck with that.”

Kon throws a pillow at him. Tim dodges without looking.

That becomes a running theme.

Kon vs. Gotham normalisation.

He loses often. But he fights valiantly.

You: “It was only a minor evacuation.” Kon: “No evacuation involving children is minor.” Tim: “In Gotham—” Kon: “You are on thin ice, Drake.”

Or:

You: “I learned to pick locks because sometimes landlords chained emergency exits.” Kon: “I’m sorry, what?” Tim: “That is extremely illegal.” Kon: “Oh, NOW you know normal.” Tim: “I didn’t say it was surprising.” Kon: “I’m going to scream.”

He talks to Cassie about it once, because he needs someone outside the Gotham ecosystem to confirm he is not overreacting.

Kon says, “They told me their school had a Scarecrow protocol.”

Cassie stares. “A what?”

“THANK YOU.”

Bart, overhearing, says, “Oh, Gotham kids are built different.”

Kon points at him. “Not helping.”

But even through the jokes, Kon struggles with the helplessness of it.

One night, you wake from a nightmare at the Tower.

It’s bad.

Not loud. Not dramatic.

You just sit up, breathing too carefully, eyes scanning the room like you’re looking for smoke.

Kon wakes immediately.

He can hear your heartbeat.

Too fast. Way too fast.

His instinct is to grab you, to pull you close, to shield you with his body.

But he remembers.

Choice. Control.

So he sits up slowly.

“Hey,” he says, voice soft. “It’s me. Kon.”

You don’t answer.

He keeps his hands visible. “You’re at the Tower. My room. Door’s locked. Window’s closed. No alarms.”

Your eyes flick toward him.

He adds, “No gas.”

That does it.

Your face crumples just a little.

Kon hates Scarecrow with a clarity that surprises even him.

Not in the abstract superhero way. In the deeply personal, you scared someone I love when they were small and now I want to throw you into the sun way.

But he keeps his voice gentle. “Can I come closer?”

You nod.

He moves slowly, like he is approaching something sacred.

When he sits beside you, you lean into him immediately.

His arms come around you, careful and warm.

You whisper, “Sorry.”

Kon’s throat tightens. “Nope.”

“I woke you up.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m being stupid.”

“No.”

He says it so firmly you blink.

Kon pulls back just enough to look at you. “You’re not stupid. Your brain is trying to protect you because Gotham taught it too much weird information.”

Despite everything, you laugh. A tiny, broken sound.

Kon smiles softly. “There you are.”

You press your face into his shirt.

He holds you until your breathing slows.

Then, very quietly, he says, “Was it one of the old things?”

You nod.

“Do you want to tell me?”

A pause.

Then: “Not yet.”

“Okay.”

“You’re not going to ask?”

“Not yet means not yet.”

Your fingers tighten in his shirt.

That matters more than he knows. Or maybe he does know. Kon has had so much of his life defined by other people deciding what he is ready for. What he is made for. What he owes. What he should become.

He will never do that to you.

If you say not yet, he respects it. If you say stop, he stops. If you say stay, he stays like it is the easiest thing in the world.

Eventually, you tell him pieces.

That’s how it happens.

Not one big tragic monologue.

Pieces.

You tell him about the time the Narrows flooded and emergency services took too long.

You tell him about learning which adults in your building were safe.

You tell him about city-wide curfews.

You tell him about the smell of smoke after rogue attacks.

You tell him about keeping your shoes by the bed in case you had to run.

That one ruins him.

He tries not to show it too much.

Fails.

“You kept your shoes by the bed?”

“Yeah.”

“How old were you?”

You shrug.

Kon closes his eyes. “I hate that question now.”

“What question?”

“How old were you. Because the answer is always too young.”

You go quiet.

He looks at you. “You were always too young.”

It hits like a bell.

Clean. Brutal. True.

You whisper, “Everyone was.”

Kon’s face hardens, not at you but for you. “Then everyone was too young.”

And that’s Kon.

He refuses the Gotham logic. He refuses the scale where pain only matters if it was the worst version possible. He refuses the idea that survival makes it okay.

You half expect him to get used to it, eventually.

He doesn’t.

He learns how to respond better, but he never becomes numb.

That is strangely healing.

Every time you say something terrible, part of him still reacts like, What the hell? And oddly, that helps.

Because it reminds you that it was terrible. That Gotham was terrible. That maybe the things you filed under “normal” were never normal at all.

Kon becomes a mirror that doesn’t distort.

Not pitying. Not horrified by you.

Horrified for you.

And he loves you loudly enough that you slowly start believing some of it.

He tells you, “You’re allowed to hate what happened.”

He tells you, “You’re allowed to miss parts of Gotham and still hate it.”

He tells you, “You’re allowed to be scared.”

He tells you, “You don’t have to be chill about your own trauma to make me comfortable.”

That last one comes after you apologise for “dumping too much” on him.

Kon looks genuinely offended. “You’re not dumping.”

“I kind of am.”

“No. You’re telling me your life.”

You look down.

He ducks his head to catch your eyes. “I want to know your life.”

“You say that now.”

“I’ll say it again tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. That’s why it counts.”

Kon’s relationship with Tim also shifts because of you.

Not badly. Just… deeper.

He starts understanding that Tim’s Gotham stories were also bad, even if Tim frames them like “mildly inconvenient origin lore.”

But now Kon can see the layers.

Tim had privilege, yes. Tim had neglect, yes. Tim had resources, yes.

Tim was still a kid in Gotham.

Kon gets softer with him too.

He notices when Tim minimises things. He calls him out more gently.

Tim says, “It was fine.”

Kon says, “Actual fine or Gotham fine?”

Tim freezes.

Then glares. “Did they teach you that?”

Kon smiles. “Maybe.”

Tim mutters, “Traitor.”

But he answers.

“Gotham fine.”

Kon nods. “Yeah. Thought so.”

You have accidentally made Kon emotionally smarter about the entire Bat ecosystem.

Terrifying. Beautiful. 

He still loses it when you and Tim compare experiences.

You: “Our lockdown room had emergency crackers.” Tim: “Ours had bottled water and first-aid kits.” Kon: “Why are you both saying this like you went to rival summer camps?” You: “Did yours have gas masks?” Tim: “Only after the second Scarecrow incident.” Kon: “THE SECOND?” Tim: “Different school.” Kon stands up. “I need air.” You say, “We’re outside.” “I need different air.”

He flies straight up for thirty seconds, comes back, and says, “Okay. Continue. I’m emotionally prepared.”

He is not.

But he tries. That’s what makes him good for you.

Kon tries. Messily. Loudly. With his whole chest and zero chill.

He does not always get it right. Sometimes he overreacts. Sometimes he looks too sad and you feel exposed. Sometimes he asks a question too quickly and then immediately apologises.

But he learns. He listens. He lets you correct him. He never makes his discomfort bigger than your history.

And when he does get overwhelmed, he tells you honestly.

Not in a way that blames you.

He’ll say, “I’m not upset with you. I’m upset because I love you and I wish none of that happened.”

That is hard to argue with.

So you stop trying.

Eventually, you start telling him things before they slip out.

Not always. Not everything.

But sometimes.

One night, you say, “I want to tell you something, but I don’t want you to make the sad face.”

Kon immediately rearranges his face into something absurdly blank. “This face?”

You laugh. “That’s worse.”

He tries another expression. “This?”

“Now you look constipated.”

“I’m doing my best.”

You’re laughing before you even start.

And somehow, that makes it easier.

You tell him about a bad memory.

He listens. His eyes get sad anyway, because of course they do. But he also smiles when you need him to. He holds your hand.

He says, “Thank you for telling me.”

Not I’m sorry first. Not that’s awful first.

Thank you. Like your trust is a gift.

Because to him, it is.

Kon’s love becomes a place where Gotham logic slowly loses power.

In Gotham, fear was practical. With Kon, fear is something you can name.

In Gotham, silence meant danger. With Kon, silence can mean his heartbeat under your ear.

In Gotham, looking up meant checking rooftops. With Kon, looking up means sky.

In Gotham, “fine” meant alive. With Kon, fine starts meaning fine.

Actually fine.

Not perfect. Not magically healed. But warm. Safe. Loved.

There is one moment that seals it.

You’re with Kon and Tim, walking through a city that is not Gotham. There’s a street performer nearby making balloon animals. A kid laughs. Someone drops something metal behind you.

You flinch.

Not badly. But enough.

Kon notices. Tim notices too.

For a second, you brace for the usual embarrassment.

But Kon just shifts closer, shoulder brushing yours.

Tim, very casually, steps to your other side.

Neither of them makes a scene. Neither of them asks if you’re okay in that heavy public voice.

Kon just says, “Hey, I think there’s a bakery down the block.”

Tim says, “There is. Good reviews.”

You look between them.

Kon smiles. “What?”

You shake your head. “Nothing.”

But it isn’t nothing. It is being understood without being exposed. It is Gotham kids and almost-Gotham kids and clone boys with too much heart making a tiny protective formation on a sunny street.

It is ridiculous. It is sweet. It is yours.

Later, Kon asks, “Was that okay? Back there?”

You nod. “Yeah. It was.”

He looks relieved.

Then you add, “You and Tim flanked me like bodyguards.”

Kon grins. “We looked cool.”

“You looked obvious.”

“Cool and obvious.”

“You looked like emotionally constipated meerkats.”

Kon gasps. “I am telling Tim you said that.”

“Please do.”

He does.

Tim just sighs and says, “I’ve been called worse.”

Kon points at him. “Gotham fine.”

Tim groans.

You laugh. And Kon watches you laugh with this soft, impossible look on his face.

Because he knows now. He knows Gotham hurt you. He knows you might always carry pieces of it. He knows there are stories you haven’t told him yet. He knows some jokes are shields. He knows some silences are old alarms.

But he also knows Gotham did not get the final word.

Because you are here. With him. Laughing. Letting yourself be loved by someone who once thought Tim Drake was the baseline for Gotham trauma and then met you and immediately had to mentally redesign the whole scale.

Kon still thinks Tim’s childhood was bad. He thinks yours was bad too. He thinks comparing them is useless unless the comparison helps someone understand where the wounds are.

Mostly, he thinks both of you deserved better.

But you are the one he gets to hold at night.

You are the one who curls into his chest and slowly, slowly stops listening for sirens. You are the one who taught him that some people survive haunted cities and still become kind.

And Kon? Kon loves you like sunlight with a heartbeat.

Warm. Earnest. A little blinding.

Always reaching for you. Always reminding you, with every touch and every terrible joke and every flight into open sky: You got out. You’re here.

He knows about the Court rumours. The Lazarus whispers. The Arkham hauntings. The curses buried under old money. The family names that sound less like genealogy and more like invocations.

He’s seen Gotham chew up cops, criminals, magicians, monsters, and heroes.

So when you tell him you were born there, he gives you a long look over the top of his cigarette and says, “That explains a few things.”

You roll your eyes. “Rude.”

“Observant.”

He thinks he understands what Gotham does to people.

Then you start talking about what Gotham did to you. And suddenly it’s different.

Because Gotham as a concept? Gotham as an occult sinkhole? Gotham as Batman’s rain-soaked problem child? That’s one thing.

Gotham as the place that made you learn fear before you learned peace? That gets under John’s skin in a way he does not enjoy.

The first time you casually drop something horrific, you’re in his flat. It’s late. Rain scratches against the windows. John is looking for a book he swears he left “right there,” which means it is either under a stack of takeaway menus or currently possessed.

You’re sitting cross-legged on his couch, watching him search.

He mutters, “Bloody Gotham binding rituals. Always overcomplicated. City can’t even curse someone without making it theatrical.”

You snort.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing. Just reminded me of my old apartment.”

John glances over. “Your old apartment was cursed?”

“No. Well. Maybe? The pipes screamed sometimes, but that was probably just Ivy’s vines.”

John stills. “Poison Ivy’s vines?”

“Yeah. She grew through the plumbing during this whole city block thing.”

John slowly straightens. “In your building?”

“Mm-hm.”

“While you lived there?”

“Yeah. My uncle almost got strangled in the shower.”

John stares at you.

You add, completely casually, “He was fine. Hated loofahs after that, though.”

John’s cigarette burns forgotten between his fingers.

Then he says, very flatly, “Love.”

“What?”

“People’s plumbing isn’t meant to develop a body count.”

“It didn’t have a body count.”

“Attempted body count, then.”

You shrug. “Gotham landlords never fixed anything.”

John looks at you for a long moment.

And that’s when something shifts.

Because he expected Gotham stories from you. Of course he did. Everyone from Gotham has them. They come out like coughs. Half joke, half warning.

But you don’t tell it like a story.

You tell it like weather. Like rent prices. Like a weird childhood inconvenience.

And John, who has heard people describe demonic possession with more emotional distance than you just used for “botanical attempted murder,” feels something cold and ugly curl in his stomach.

Not surprise.

Recognition.

He knows that tone. He uses that tone. The one that says, If I make it funny, it can’t still have teeth.

After that, he starts paying attention.

Not in a sweet, obvious, heroic way. John Constantine would rather eat glass than look openly tender before breakfast.

But he watches. He notices how you sit near exits. How you hate sealed windows. How you can tell the difference between a normal siren and a panic siren from blocks away. How you clock every stranger who laughs too loudly.

He notices that you call things “classic Gotham stuff” that would qualify as life-altering trauma anywhere else.

And because he knows Gotham better than the others, some of your stories hit him in layers.

John is shocked because he knows exactly how insane Gotham is, and somehow your stories still make it worse.

Because he can place them.

You mention a street corner, and John knows it. You mention an old theatre, and John remembers the séance he crashed there in 2009. You mention a church basement, and John knows there’s a binding sigil under the foundation. You mention your school being evacuated because of a “gas scare,” and John knows which Scarecrow formula was circulating that year. He knows what it did to people. He knows what nightmares it left behind.

That knowledge makes him quieter. Meaner, too, but not at you. Never at you.

One night you’re making tea in his kitchen, wearing one of his shirts like you belong there, like you haven’t accidentally become the softest curse he’s ever invited in.

You say, “I still don’t like the smell of wet burlap.”

John’s head lifts.

He knows before you explain. He wishes he didn’t.

You continue, casual as sin. “Scarecrow’s people used to stash stuff in abandoned buildings near my school. One time some kids found a mask. Whole block got quarantined.”

John sets his mug down.

Carefully. Too carefully.

“How old were you?”

You think about it. “Nine? Ten?”

John exhales through his nose. “Course you were.”

You glance over. “What does that mean?”

“It means Gotham’s got a habit of making children pay rent in nightmares.”

You go quiet.

John regrets the poetry of it immediately because now you’re looking at him like he found something you buried.

So he reaches for the kettle and says, gruffly, “Tea?”

You almost smile. “You’re changing the subject.”

“I’m British. Tea is the subject.”

But his hands are tense.

You notice. John hates that you notice.

The thing is, John has always considered Gotham dangerous in an almost professional way. A cursed city. A magical pressure cooker. A place where evil wears masks because the architecture demands drama.

He’s walked through Gotham thinking, Bad place. Old rot. Someone should salt half this city and exorcise the other half.

But hearing what happened to you makes him feel something more personal.

Less academic. Less occult consultant.

More like rage.

Not bright rage. Not superhero rage. John doesn’t do clean righteous anger very well. His anger is smoke-stained, bitter, tired. The kind that sits in the gut and makes him want to put curses in the mail.

Because Gotham didn’t just hurt “people.”

It hurt you.

You, who steal his cigarettes and hide them in increasingly stupid places. You, who pretend not to like his terrible singing. You, who know exactly how he takes tea even though he insists he doesn’t care. You, who survived Gotham and still somehow laugh like the world might be worth forgiving.

That changes the city for him.

Before, Gotham was a problem. Now, Gotham is an old enemy with your fingerprints on its throat.

John starts asking questions, but never straight on.

He knows better than to corner a wound.

He’ll ask while lighting a cigarette at the window, “You grow up near the East End?”

You’ll say, “For a while.”

He’ll nod like that doesn’t tell him too much.

Because it does.

Or he’ll ask, “You ever run into the Bat?”

You’ll laugh. “Everyone in Gotham has seen Batman at least once.”

“Not what I asked.”

You look away.

John catches it.

Doesn’t push. Just files it away with the rest of your ghosts.

Sometimes you tell him things because you forget other people don’t know them.

Like when you’re walking home together and pass a narrow alley. You automatically move to the outside of the pavement, steering clear.

John notices.

You say, “Sorry. Habit. Alleys with no second exit are bad.”

John gives you a dry look. “That’s not Gotham-specific. That’s just sense.”

You smile faintly. “Yeah, but in Gotham you also had to check upward.”

“For bats?”

“For everything.”

John pauses.

You continue, “One time a guy got dragged up a fire escape by Man-Bat three buildings from mine.”

John blinks. “Man-Bat?”

“Yeah.”

“Three buildings?”

“Maybe four.”

“Oh, well, four. That’s practically a holiday.”

You laugh.

John doesn’t.

Not really.

Because he knows that part of Gotham too—the vertical fear of it. The way danger doesn’t just come from alleys and streets but rooftops, windows, sewer grates, old gargoyles. Gotham teaches you the world has too many directions.

He hates that you learned that young. He hates more that you still walk like something might drop out of the sky.

One of the worst casual drops happens during a thunderstorm.

John loves storms, in his own grim little way. Rain against glass. The city washed blurry. Magic easier to hear beneath thunder.

You don’t hate them, exactly, but you go quiet.

He notices you sitting on the floor near the couch instead of on it, back against something solid, eyes unfocused.

John lowers his cigarette. “Where’d you go?”

You blink. “What?”

“You heard me.”

You sigh. “Nowhere.”

“Bollocks.”

You look at him, annoyed. “It’s just rain.”

John waits.

He is very good at waiting when he wants to be. Terrible at it in every other circumstance, but excellent when silence is more useful than charm.

Eventually, you say, “Gotham storms used to knock out power all the time. And when the power went out, things got… worse.”

John’s expression doesn’t change.

Inside, it does.

You keep talking, voice too light. “People always think Gotham is scary because of the villains, but honestly? Sometimes it was worse when nobody famous was doing anything. Just regular people getting desperate.”

John looks away first.

That one lands low.

Because he knows monsters. Proper ones. Horns, teeth, claws, contracts.

But he also knows the human kind.

The ones hunger makes. The ones poverty makes. The ones cities make when they decide some people are easier to sacrifice.

Gotham is full of both.

And now he’s picturing you as a kid in a blackout, listening to the hallway, knowing the difference between neighbours whispering and strangers breaking in.

He says, quiet, “How old?”

You laugh once, humorless. “Does it matter?”

John looks at you.

“Yeah,” he says. “It does.”

You don’t answer.

He doesn’t force you.

Instead, he gets up, checks the locks, closes the curtains, and lights three small protection candles near the windows.

You watch him. “John.”

“What?”

“Did you just ward the storm?”

“Don’t be daft.”

“You did.”

“I warded the windows. Completely different.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Alive, though.”

You smile, but your eyes are glassy.

John pretends not to see until you want him to.

That’s one of the strange mercies of loving John Constantine.

He sees everything. But he doesn’t always make you stand under the spotlight of being seen.

He lets you have shadows when you need them. He just makes sure there’s nothing dangerous hiding in them.

John’s relationship with Gotham starts changing in small, ugly ways. Before you, he could go there for work and be annoyed. Smoke under a streetlamp. Trade insults with Batman. Break a curse under an abandoned theater. Get punched by a ghost. Leave.

After you, Gotham feels louder. Every corner looks like somewhere you might have run. Every siren sounds like something you might have learned to sleep through. Every child walking too fast with their head down makes his jaw tighten.

Batman notices, of course. Because Batman notices everything except how to have emotionally normal conversations.

During one job, John ends up in Gotham again. Some occult mess under the old city. Bone dust, bad symbols, rich men pretending blood magic is a family hobby. Standard Tuesday, really.

Batman appears behind him because the man was apparently raised by shadows and poor communication.

Constantine doesn’t jump.

“Do you ever use doors, mate?” Batman says nothing. “Right. Forgot. Brand consistency.”

They work the case. John is sharper than usual. More irritable. Less willing to tolerate Gotham’s theatrics.

At one point, they pass a school with boarded-up windows from some old rogue attack.

John stops.

Batman notices. “You know this place?”

John’s mouth twists. “Someone I love does.”

Batman says nothing again, but the silence changes.

John looks at the building and feels a deep, venomous hatred for the city’s ability to keep standing after what it does to people.

He says, almost to himself, “You lot ever think about what it’s like growing up under all this?”

Batman’s cape shifts. “Every day.”

John laughs, but there’s no humour in it. “Yeah? Try harder.”

It is not fair. John knows it’s not fair. Batman didn’t build Gotham’s rot. He didn’t invent its cruelty. He’s just one man dressed like a trauma response, trying to punch a flood.

But John is angry, and Batman is there, and Gotham is everywhere.

Later, John feels bad about it.

Not enough to apologise properly. Obviously.

But enough to say, as they part ways, “The school wards are thin.”

Batman turns.

John flicks ash onto wet pavement. “Someone ought to fix that.”

Batman gives one short nod.

A week later, John checks.

The wards are stronger.

He never tells you that. He never tells you how many quiet protections he begins laying around Gotham after your stories.

Not big heroic gestures. Not enough to draw attention.

Small things.

A sigil under a bus stop where you once hid during a rogue attack. A blessing scratched behind a loose brick near your old building. A charm worked into the threshold of a community center you mentioned fondly. A little bad luck sent toward a landlord who ignored broken locks in a building full of families.

Nothing traceable. Nothing dramatic.

Just John Constantine’s version of tenderness: petty, magical, deniable.

When you find out, it’s by accident.

You’re going through one of his coats looking for your keys and find a folded Gotham transit map covered in annotations and protective symbols.

You hold it up. “John.”

He looks over from the table.

Immediately: “That’s not mine.”

“It’s in your coat.”

“Could’ve been planted.”

“By who? The map fairy?”

“Don’t trust fairies.”

You stare at him.

He sighs. “Fine.”

You look at the map. Several places are circled.

Your old school. Your old apartment. The station where you once got trapped. The clinic your family used because it was the only one open late.

Your throat tightens. “What is this?”

John’s face closes off slightly. Not cold. Defensive. “Nothing.”

“John.”

“Just some wards.”

“On my old neighbourhood?”

“Not all of it.”

You look down again. “Why?”

He lights a cigarette mostly to give his hands something to do.

“Because Gotham has a long memory,” he says. “And I don’t like the idea of it remembering you without permission.”

That absolutely wrecks you.

You try to make a joke. It doesn’t land.

John sees your face and immediately looks away because feelings are, unfortunately, happening in the room.

You whisper, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“No,” he says. “I didn’t.”

That is as close as he gets to admitting he wanted to.

John is not shocked like the others.

Not loudly.

He doesn’t pace like Wally. He doesn’t almost crash the car like Hal. He doesn’t go silent in that earnest Kon way.

John’s shock is quieter. Worse, maybe.

He goes still. He stops smoking mid-drag. His eyes sharpen. His mouth gets cruel, but not towards you.

And then later, when you’re asleep, he does something about it.

He researches. He calls in favours. He asks questions in back rooms and occult bars and places where everyone owes him money or wants him dead.

He learns which rogue event matches the year you mentioned. He learns which gang controlled your block. He learns what toxins were used in that “small gas leak” your school dismissed as nothing.

The details make him feel sick.

Not because they are new. Because they are attached to you now.

That’s what makes Gotham different.

John has always known Gotham is rotten. But loving you makes the rot intimate. It gives the city a face.

Yours.

And John does not forgive that easily.

There is a night when you casually mention Joker for the first time.

Not as a headline. Not as a symbol.

As a memory.

You and John are in bed, half-asleep, the television murmuring low in the background. Some late-night program uses a laugh track, too sharp and sudden.

Your body tenses.

John reaches for the remote and turns it off without asking.

You breathe out slowly.

“Sorry,” you mutter.

“Don’t.”

“It’s stupid.”

“Try again.”

You go quiet.

Then say, “I don’t like laugh tracks.”

John’s hand stills against your back. “No?”

“Not certain ones.”

He already knows.

But he waits.

You continue, staring at the wall. “There was this time downtown. I wasn’t near the worst of it. Just close enough to hear people laughing after the gas spread.”

John says nothing.

You swallow. “The news said it was contained quickly.”

John’s jaw tightens. “News says lots of things.”

You laugh weakly. “Yeah.”

He wants to say something. Something comforting. Something useful.

But what the hell do you say to that? Sorry a madman made laughter into a weapon when you were young enough to still believe adults could fix things? Sorry the city called it contained because the dead were countable and the living were inconvenient? Sorry your body still remembers the sound?

John Constantine, who has conned demons and insulted angels, finds himself without words.

So he gives you his hand.

You take it.

After a while, he says, rough, “I hate that bloody city.”

You look over. “You always hated Gotham.”

“Not like this.”

That makes you still.

John keeps staring at the ceiling. “Before, I hated it because it’s a cursed, miserable, self-important pit with more ghosts than sense.”

Despite yourself, you huff a laugh.

His thumb brushes your knuckles.

“Now I hate it because it had you and didn’t keep you safe.”

The room goes very quiet.

You don’t know what to do with that.

John doesn’t either.

So he ruins it slightly by adding, “Also, still too many gargoyles. Architecturally insecure.”

You laugh for real then, wet and startled.

John looks relieved.

But the first part stays.

It stays for both of you.

Because that is the core of it.

John is used to cities being cruel. London is cruel. Liverpool was cruel. Hell is obviously not known for its community outreach.

But Gotham bothers him differently after you. It becomes personal not because you are weak, but because you are not. Because you walked out of that city with your humour sharpened and your heart still inconveniently alive. Because Gotham tried to make you hard, and it only half-succeeded. Because you can talk about fear gas and still remember which neighbour made soup during blackouts.

Because you can flinch at thunder and still kiss John like the world is allowed to be gentle sometimes.

That makes him furious. That makes him proud. That makes him love you in a way that scares the hell out of him.

John does not handle fear gracefully when it’s about someone else.

His own fear? Fine. He’ll drink it, smoke through it, weaponise it, flirt with it, sell it a fake name.

Fear for you? Awful. Unmanageable. Deeply inconvenient.

He starts doing small, protective things and pretending they’re not protective.

He salts your windowsills and claims it’s “pest control.”

“Magical pests?”

“Still pests.”

He draws a sigil under your doormat.

“John.”

“What?”

“Is my welcome mat hexed?”

“Protected.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Massive.”

He gives you a lighter with a ward etched inside the casing.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Good. Don’t start. Just carry it.”

“Why?”

“In case something follows you.”

You stare at him.

He grimaces. “Or in case you need a light. Normal reason.”

He puts charms in your coat pockets. He checks your locks. He learns your nightmares by category.

Not because he wants to catalogue your pain. Because John survives by knowing the shape of threats.

And old fear is a threat.

So he learns.

There’s the Scarecrow nightmare, where you wake up clawing at your throat.

There’s the blackout nightmare, where you don’t move at all, just lie frozen and listening.

There’s the Joker-adjacent one, where you wake up angry instead of afraid.

There’s the alley one, where you won’t let him touch you until you can see every corner of the room.

John handles each differently.

For Scarecrow, he lights clean-smelling herbs and opens the window.

For blackout, he turns on every lamp and talks in a low, steady voice.

For Joker, he makes tea and insults the man until your breathing evens out.

For alley, he sits across the room where you can see him, hands visible, waiting.

He never says, “You’re safe now,” like it’s a magic spell that fixes everything.

He knows better.

Instead, he says concrete things.

“Door’s locked.”

“Window’s warded.”

“Rain outside. Nothing else.”

“You’re in my flat.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“I’m here.”

That helps more.

John understands that trauma doesn’t trust poetry right away. It trusts evidence.

He gives you evidence. Again and again.

The strangest part is that your Gotham stories make John more careful with his own.

Usually, John tosses horror around like spare change.

“Got dragged to Hell once.”

“Sold my soul. Long story.”

“Watched a mate get eaten by a curse in Manchester.”

He says these things like jokes, because that is how he keeps them from swallowing him.

But after hearing you talk about Gotham the same way, he starts hearing himself.

It annoys him.

One night, after you casually say, “It was only a minor hostage situation,” he gives you a look.

You give one right back. “What?”

“Only?”

“You once called demonic possession ‘a scheduling conflict.’”

John opens his mouth. Closes it. Points at you. “Don’t use me against me. That’s cheating.”

“It’s literally your coping mechanism.”

“Yeah, well, it’s got seniority.”

You smirk.

He exhales, amused despite himself.

Then he sits beside you and says, “Suppose we’re both a bit rubbish at admitting when things hurt.”

You lean into him. “Suppose so.”

That becomes another kind of intimacy.

Not fixing each other. Not performing perfect healing.

Just noticing the places where your damage rhymes.

John never treats you like you’re made of glass.

That would insult both of you.

He knows Gotham survivors are not delicate in the simple sense. You are sharp. Capable. Funny at funerals. Calm during emergencies in a way that makes normal people nervous.

But he also knows armour is not the same as invulnerability.

So he respects the armour without mistaking it for skin.

When you’re sharp, he doesn’t flinch. When you’re quiet, he doesn’t panic. When you make a joke too quickly, he hears the wound under it.

And sometimes he calls you on it.

Gently? Not always. It’s John.

But honestly.

You say, “It wasn’t a big deal.”

John says, “Liar.”

You glare. “Excuse me?”

He blows smoke out the window. “You heard me.”

“You can’t just call me a liar.”

“Can when you’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“Love, you’ve got that little Gotham face on.”

“My what?”

“That look people get when they’re pretending a knife wound is a paper cut because they’ve seen worse.”

You hate him a little for that.

Mostly because he’s right.

He softens after a beat. “Doesn’t have to be the worst thing that ever happened to be bad.”

You look away.

He lets you. Then he nudges a mug toward you.

“Tea’s gone cold.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Gotham’s.”

You laugh, and the moment loosens.

But the words remain.

John is also the only one who fully understands that leaving Gotham doesn’t mean Gotham let go.

He knows places can haunt people. Literally, yes, but also in quieter ways.

A city can live in your posture. In your reflexes. In your dreams. In how you react to laughter, locked doors, sudden fog, playing cards, riddles, sirens, coins, vines cracking pavement.

John never tells you to “move on.”

He hates that phrase. Move on where? The past knows how to travel.

Instead, he talks about carrying.

“Some places get in the blood,” he says one night.

You’re sitting together on the fire escape, because John’s flat has perfectly good chairs and both of you are dramatic little disasters.

You look at him. “That supposed to be comforting?”

“No.”

“Great.”

“Supposed to be true.”

You look out at the wet street.

John continues, “You might always carry some of it.”

You swallow.

“But,” he says, “carrying isn’t the same as belonging.”

You glance at him.

His profile is sharp in the dim light, cigarette ember glowing like a tiny warning star.

“You don’t belong to Gotham,” he says. “No matter what it took from you.”

You have to look away.

John pretends not to see your eyes shine.

A gentleman? No.

But merciful when it matters? Sometimes.

He gives you the dignity of not being watched while you fall apart.

And when you reach for his hand, he gives you that too.

No comment. No joke.

Just his fingers closing around yours.

Eventually, you tell him more.

Not all at once. Never in order. Gotham memories don’t come neatly filed. They come through smells, jokes, headlines, weather patterns, old songs, the particular buzz of fluorescent lights.

You tell him about your school’s lockdown drills. You tell him about the neighbour who disappeared for three weeks and came back different. You tell him about the time your bus got rerouted because of a Two-Face incident and everyone just complained about being late. You tell him about the corner store owner who kept a shotgun under the counter and candy behind the register for kids who looked scared.

You tell him about the first time you saw Batman.

John gets very still for that one.

You were younger than he expected. You had hidden behind a dumpster during a fight you didn’t understand, hands over your ears, trying not to cry because crying made noise.

Then there was a shadow. A cape. A gloved hand checking if you were hurt.

You say, quietly, “I thought he was a monster at first.”

John’s throat tightens. “And then?”

You shrug, but it’s smaller this time. Less defensive.

“Then I realised he was the thing the monsters were scared of.”

John looks away.

He has plenty of opinions about Batman. Most of them rude. Several anatomically creative.

But he cannot make a joke then. Not when kid-you had crouched in trash and terror and found comfort in a man dressed like fear because Gotham had made that make sense.

John mutters, “Bloody hell.”

“Yeah.”

He reaches for your hand under the table.

You let him.

After that, John’s conversations with Batman get worse.

More barbed. More personal.

Batman notices, obviously.

During another case, after John makes his third comment about Gotham being “a child-endangerment machine with a skyline,” Batman finally says, “This is about them.”

John lights a cigarette. “It’s about a lot of things.”

Batman waits.

John hates when he does that. Weaponised silence. Very annoying. Very effective.

Finally, John says, “You know what your city does to people who don’t wear armour?”

Batman’s face gives away nothing.

John jabs the cigarette toward the street. “It makes them think surviving is the same as being safe.”

For once, Batman has no immediate answer.

John almost wishes he did. Almost.

John doesn’t blame Batman for your past.

Not entirely.

He knows better than that.

But he does blame Gotham.

The old families. The cursed ground. The corrupt systems. The rogues who turned ordinary childhood into a war zone. The adults who shrugged and called it normal. The city itself, somehow. That stubborn, Gothic beast squatting in the rain, always hungry, always dramatic, always demanding more.

John has dealt with sentient houses, haunted towns, cursed bloodlines.

Some days, he wonders if Gotham is all three.

And now he wonders if it knew you. If the city noticed when you left. If some small, foul part of it resented losing you.

So he makes sure it cannot call you back too easily.

Not literally. Not metaphorically.

He burns your old address written on paper with salt and rosemary. He puts a severance charm behind your bedroom mirror. He whispers something old and mean into the rain one night, a warning aimed eastward.

When you ask what he’s doing, he says, “Being petty.”

“At the rain?”

“At Gotham.”

You stare.

He shrugs. “It knows what it did.”

You laugh, but your chest aches.

Because John Constantine, bastard magician, disaster man, is standing in the rain picking a fight with your hometown on your behalf.

It should be ridiculous.

It is ridiculous.

It is also one of the most romantic things anyone has ever done for you.

John’s love is like that.

Crooked. Half-deniable. A little cursed around the edges.

But real. So real it scares him.

He keeps trying to hide how much your stories affect him. He fails, because you know him too well now.

You know the signs.

The way his accent gets rougher when he’s angry. The way he smokes more but drinks less when he’s worried about you. The way he starts checking magical wards twice. The way he says “love” softer after a hard story. The way he touches you carefully, like he knows the world has been careless enough.

One evening, after you mention a childhood friend who “moved away after the Riddler thing,” John goes completely silent.

You stop. “What?”

He shakes his head.

“John.”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t do that.”

He sighs, dragging a hand down his face. “I know that case.”

You blink. “What?”

“The Riddler thing. If it’s the one I’m thinking of.” His voice is quiet. “I was in Gotham that week.”

The room shifts.

You sit back.

John looks sick with memory. “I remember hearing about the kids.”

You don’t say anything.

He swallows. “Didn’t know you were one of them.”

“I wasn’t one of the main ones,” you say automatically.

John’s eyes snap to yours. “There it is again.”

“What?”

“Making yourself footnote-sized.”

You flinch a little.

He softens immediately, guilt crossing his face. “Sorry.”

You look down.

John sits beside you, not touching yet.

“I just…” He exhales. “I knew Gotham was cruel. I knew it. But every time you tell me where you were standing when the city did what it does, I feel like I’m learning it all over again.”

Your voice is small. “Is that bad?”

John looks at you like the question hurt. “No.”

He reaches for your hand.

“It means I’m angry because I love you. Terrible experience, by the way. Do not recommend.”

You laugh weakly.

He squeezes your hand. “I’m not angry that you told me.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

You hesitate.

John catches it.

“Keep telling me,” he says, rough but certain. “When you want to. When it slips out. When it’s ugly. When it’s boring. When it’s one of those awful little Gotham jokes that makes me want to hex a public official.”

You smile despite yourself. “I like the public official part.”

“So do I.” Then, softer: “Don’t protect me from what happened to you.”

That one stays.

Because you realise you had been doing that. Making it smaller not just for yourself, but for him. Trying to keep your past from becoming too much.

John, of all people, refuses to let you.

Not because he wants to drown in it. Because he knows isolation is where old ghosts breed.

He doesn’t want your ghosts breeding. He wants them named, mocked, warded, and occasionally told to piss off.

The first time you have to go back to Gotham for something personal, John comes with you.

You tell him he doesn’t have to.

He says, “I know.”

“You hate Gotham.”

“I hate lots of things. Doesn’t stop me showing up.”

“You’re going to complain the whole time.”

“Obviously.”

He does complain.

About the weather. The architecture. The spiritual residue. The “aggressively haunted” train station. The fact that every gargoyle looks like it has a superiority complex.

But beneath it, he is steady.

When you go quiet on the bridge, he doesn’t ask if you’re okay.

He just says, “Breathe, love.”

You do.

When your hand starts shaking near your old neighbourhood, he offers his cigarette pack as a distraction even though he doesn’t actually want you smoking.

You raise an eyebrow.

He says, “Don’t smoke. Just judge me.”

That works.

When you pass the place where something bad happened, something you haven’t fully told him yet, your whole body stops.

John stops too.

No pressure. No commentary.

Just beside you.

After a while, you whisper, “I hate that it looks normal.”

John’s face turns cold. “Places are good at lying.”

You look at him.

He nods toward the building. “Doesn’t mean you are.”

You breathe out.

That helps.

Later, when you’re exhausted, he takes you somewhere quiet outside the city limits. A cheap motel with clean sheets and bad wallpaper. He wards the door so thoroughly that any demon within five miles probably gets a headache.

You sit on the bed, staring at nothing.

John hands you tea.

It is terrible.

You drink it anyway.

He sits beside you.

“Gotham feels different now,” you say eventually.

John looks at you. “How?”

“Smaller. But also worse.”

He nods slowly. “Yeah.”

“Does that make sense?”

“Unfortunately.”

You lean into him.

He wraps an arm around you.

“You got out,” he says.

“I know.”

“No.” His voice is rough. “You got out.”

This time, you understand what he means.

Not just geographically.

You survived. You left. You built a life where Gotham became a story you could tell in pieces instead of a place actively swallowing you.

John presses a kiss to your hair.

“And if it ever tries to pull you back,” he murmurs, “it can take it up with me.”

You snort. “You’re going to fight a city?”

“Fought worse.”

“Have you?”

He pauses. “Debatable.”

You laugh into his shoulder.

He smiles faintly.

Worth it.

Over time, John’s hatred of Gotham becomes strangely tender around the edges.

Not toward the city itself.

God, no. Gotham can choke.

But toward the parts that kept you alive.

The soup neighbour. The corner store owner. The teacher who ignored protocol and walked kids home after lockdowns. The old woman who kept extra candles during blackouts. The stray cat you fed behind your building. The small, stubborn human lights in all that dark.

John understands that hating Gotham completely would mean dismissing the people who helped you survive it.

So he learns to separate them.

The city: cursed bastard.

The people: complicated.

The child you were: deserved better.

The person you are: holy, though he’d never say it without three drinks and a pending apocalypse.

He tells you once, late at night, “Gotham didn’t make you kind.”

You glance up. “No?”

“No. Places like that don’t make kindness. They make armour.” His thumb brushes your wrist. “You did the kindness bit yourself.”

That one nearly breaks you.

John immediately regrets being emotionally articulate.

He clears his throat. “Don’t make a thing of it.”

You smile, teary. “Too late.”

“Bollocks.”

You kiss him.

He pretends that solves the problem.

It does not.

He is very in love with you.

John still reacts when you casually drop Gotham trauma years later.

You: “Oh, I hate escape rooms. Too Riddler-coded.” John: “Completely fair. We’ll burn the building.” You: “John.” “Metaphorically.” “You had gasoline in your voice.” “Allegedly.”

Or:

You: “I’m not scared of basements. I just don’t trust them.” John: “Because Gotham?” You: “Because Gotham.” John: “Valid. Basements are guilty until proven otherwise.”

Or:

You: “I learned first aid because ambulances didn’t always come during rogue events.”

John goes very still.

Then says softly, “Show me what you learned?”

You do.

He watches your hands.

Careful. Efficient. Practiced from too young an age.

He wants to curse every adult who left you needing those skills.

Instead, he lets you teach him your way.

Because that gives you control.

And John knows control is not a small gift.

By the time he fully understands the shape of your Gotham, John no longer thinks of the city as just haunted.

He thinks of it as hungry. Hungry in a way even Hell would respect.

But he also knows something Gotham apparently forgot.

Not everyone it bites belongs to it. Some people crawl out. Some people leave claw marks. Some people move away, build softer lives, fall in love with chain-smoking magicians who pretend not to have hearts and then inconveniently prove otherwise.

You are not Gotham’s. You are your own.

John reminds you of that whenever the city comes back in dreams.

Whenever the news mentions another breakout. Whenever you laugh too lightly at something that still hurts. Whenever you stare east like the past has teeth.

He’ll stand beside you, cigarette glowing in the dark, coat smelling like smoke and rain and bad decisions, and say, “You’re here.”

Sometimes that is enough. Sometimes it isn’t.

When it isn’t, he stays anyway.

That is the thing about John Constantine that surprises you most.

Everyone thinks he runs.

And he does. From guilt. From consequences. From angels, demons, exes, unpaid tabs, and emotional vulnerability with terrifying athleticism.

But with you, when it matters, he stays.

He stays through the ugly memories. The badly timed jokes. The nightmares. The quiet. The Gotham of it all.

And every time you casually reveal another piece of what happened, he feels that old city twist in his perception again.

Darker. Crueler. More personal.

But then he looks at you.

Alive. Soft in his shirt. Sharp with your humour.

Still here. Still choosing mornings, tea, bad magic, worse jokes, and him.

And John thinks maybe Gotham didn’t win after all.

Maybe the city lost something the day you left.

Maybe the old cursed beast still feels the absence of you like a missing tooth.

He does not. Not until you’re both in his car one night, driving back from dinner, the windows cracked, city lights sliding over his face. Hal is telling you some ridiculous story about an early flight test, one hand on the wheel, the other resting casually near yours.

You’re laughing at him because he’s describing almost crashing a jet like it was a mildly embarrassing work meeting.

“You’re insane,” you tell him.

Hal grins. “Brave.”

“Reckless.”

“Visionary.”

“Uninsured behaviour.”

He laughs, delighted. Then he says, “Come on, you’ve never done anything reckless?”

And you, without thinking, say, “I mean, once I took the Narrows route home during an Arkham breakout because I didn’t want to miss my bus transfer.”

Hal’s smile fades. The car gets very quiet. You keep looking out the window, totally unaware that you have just dropped emotional dynamite into the cupholder.

Hal says, “During a what?”

“Arkham breakout.”

“You took public transit during an Arkham breakout?”

“I didn’t have money for a cab.”

“You were how old?”

You think for a second. “Fourteen? Fifteen?”

Hal’s hand tightens on the steering wheel. Not enough to scare you. Just enough that his knuckles go pale.

“Fourteen,” he repeats.

“Maybe fifteen.”

“As if fifteen makes that better.”

You glance over. “It was fine.”

Hal makes a sound under his breath. Not a laugh. Not quite a curse. Something between disbelief and fury.

“Of course it was fine,” he says. “Nothing says fine like a child commuting through a supercriminal prison breach.”

You blink at him. “You asked if I’d done anything reckless.”

“I meant joyriding. Sneaking out. Stealing a street sign. Not choosing between bus fare and death clowns.”

You shrug. “It wasn’t Joker that time.”

Hal stares at the road like he needs it to personally explain your life to him.

“That time,” he says.

You realise, belatedly, that you may have made the story worse.

Hal pulls into the parking lot, shuts off the engine, and just sits there for a second.

You frown. “Are you okay?”

He turns to you slowly. “Am I okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Sweetheart, you just told me you had seasonal Arkham breakout stories like some people have summer camp memories.”

You almost laugh. But Hal’s face stops you.

Because Hal Jordan is a lot of things. Cocky. Charming. Infuriatingly confident. The kind of man who can flirt with danger and somehow make danger blush.

But right now, he looks shaken. Quietly. Deeply. Not because he thinks less of you. Because he is imagining you at fourteen, trying to get home with your backpack clutched tight, knowing which sirens meant “take another street” and which ones meant “hide.”

And Hal, for all his cosmic battles, cannot stand the thought.

The next time it happens, you’re at his place.

He’s cooking, or attempting to cook, which mostly means he’s making eggs with the confidence of a man who has survived space warfare and therefore thinks seasoning is optional. You’re sitting at the counter, watching him ruin breakfast with military precision.

A news segment mentions Gotham. You make a face.

Hal notices immediately. “What?”

“Nothing. Just that street they’re showing. I used to avoid it.”

“Bad area?”

You shrug. “Technically, all of Gotham is a bad area depending on the moon phase.”

“Cute.”

“No, but that one was where Black Mask’s people grabbed my neighbour’s brother.”

Hal turns off the burner.

You blink. “Your eggs are burning.”

“Your neighbour’s brother was kidnapped?”

“Yeah. He came back.”

Hal stares.

“Mostly fine,” you add.

Hal closes his eyes. “Baby.”

“What?”

“I need you to retire the phrase ‘mostly fine.’ Permanently. Into the sun.”

You start laughing, and Hal doesn’t know whether to laugh with you or call Bruce Wayne and yell at him on principle.

Probably both.

He starts to realise that your Gotham stories come out sideways.

Never during serious conversations. Never with warning. You don’t sit him down and say, “I need to tell you something painful.”

You say it while folding laundry. While brushing your teeth. While picking a movie. While asking him to pass the salt.

You say, “Oh, I hate carnivals. Too many Joker-adjacent memories.” You say, “I’m pretty good at holding my breath because of gas attacks.” You say, “Our school field trips always had rogue protocols.” You say, “I still don’t like riddles from strangers.”

And every time, Hal has to take psychic damage like a champ.

He starts developing categories.

Mild Gotham: corruption, minor gang activity, suspicious alley noises. Medium Gotham: school lockdowns, rogue sightings, public transportation interruptions due to hostage situations. Severe Gotham: Joker, Scarecrow, Two-Face, anything involving gas, clowns, coins, riddles, plants, sewers, or abandoned amusement parks. Absolutely Not Normal, Stop Saying It Casually: everything you personally classify as “not that bad.”

Hal gets especially mad about your scale. Because you have one. A full Gotham trauma ranking system. And it makes him want to chew glass.

You’ll say, “It was only Penguin.”

Hal will go still. “Only Penguin?”

“Compared to Joker?”

“That is not the moral victory you think it is.”

Or: “It was just a regular mugging.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten.”

“Then it wasn’t regular.”

“It was regular for Gotham.”

“Exactly. That’s the problem.”

Hal is not naturally delicate. He tries. He really does. But Hal Jordan is built like a jet engine with feelings. Subtlety is not his home country.

So at first, when he reacts, he reacts big.

“What do you mean your elementary school had a fear gas drill?”

“Why did your landlord have a panic room?”

“Who lets children near a hostage situation?”

“What the hell is a ‘clown-safe route’?”

You eventually have to tell him, “You’re making the face again.”

Hal freezes. “What face?”

“The angry space cop face.”

“I’m not a space cop.”

“Hal.”

“I’m space-adjacent law enforcement with excellent cheekbones.”

“You’re doing it again.”

He exhales, trying to soften. “Sorry.”

And he means it. Because he realises his shock sometimes makes you retreat. You’ll start shrinking the story down, sanding off the edges so he doesn’t look so horrified.

“It’s not a big deal.” “It was years ago.” “Other people had it worse.” “Nobody died.”

That last one makes Hal’s chest ache.

Because he knows that sentence. Not from Gotham. Not from childhood.

From pilots. Soldiers. Heroes. People who survive the thing and then decide survival means they have forfeited the right to be hurt.

One night, after you say it, Hal goes quiet.

You’re sitting on his couch, your feet tucked under you, a movie paused on the screen. You’ve just casually mentioned being trapped in a subway car during a rogue attack, and when Hal reacted, you shrugged and said, “Nobody died.”

He looks at you for a long moment. Then he says, very softly, “That’s a terrible standard.”

You blink. “What?”

“Nobody dying,” Hal says. “That’s a terrible standard for whether something was bad.”

You look away.

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, voice low and rough. “You were scared, right?”

You don’t answer immediately. That is answer enough.

Hal nods once, jaw tight. “Then it mattered.”

You laugh, but it comes out brittle. “That’s not how Gotham works.”

“No,” he says. “That’s how people work.”

And that is the first time Hal really gets through.

Because he doesn’t say it like advice. He says it like mission coordinates.

Clear. Certain. Non-negotiable.

Hal doesn’t always know the perfect words, but when he loves you, his conviction is a force of nature.

He believes things on your behalf until you can borrow the belief.

You mattered. Your fear mattered. Your childhood mattered. The fact that you got out mattered.

After that, Hal works on controlling his reactions. Not hiding them. He’s too honest for that, and honestly, his face betrays him constantly. But he learns not to make his horror your responsibility.

When you tell him something rough, he takes a breath before responding.

He asks, “Do you want me to listen, ask questions, or make fun of Gotham’s city planning?”

You stare at him. “That’s a real question?”

“Yeah.”

“Third option.”

Hal nods solemnly. “Gotham’s zoning board should be tried at The Hague.”

You laugh so hard you almost cry. Hal looks absurdly proud of himself.

That becomes a thing between you. He learns when to be serious and when to hand you a joke like a life raft.

Because sometimes you can talk about it. Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you want him to understand. Sometimes you just want to say the horrible thing and have it not change the air too much.

Hal learns that love is not always charging in with a glowing green fist. Sometimes love is sitting still. Sometimes love is not flinching away from someone else’s darkness. Sometimes love is letting the story exist without demanding a clean ending.

But make no mistake: internally, Hal is furious. He hates Gotham. He respects it in the abstract, sure. The city produces survivors like diamonds under pressure. There’s courage there. Grit. Loyalty. People who keep lighting candles even when the dark has teeth.

But he hates what it did to you. He hates that you knew which siren meant “stay away from windows.” He hates that you learned to identify fear toxin symptoms before you learned to drive. He hates that your idea of a safe neighbourhood was “only one active gang presence.” He hates that when you moved away, you didn’t feel immediately free.

You felt guilty. Like leaving was betrayal. Like Gotham had raised you rough and cruel, and some part of you still owed it loyalty.

Hal understands loyalty. God, does he understand loyalty. He has been loyal to people, causes, uniforms, skies, rings, ghosts. But when you tell him, one quiet night, “Sometimes I feel bad for leaving,” Hal looks at you like you’ve just handed him your heart without warning.

“You feel bad?”

You shrug. “People stayed.”

Hal’s expression softens. “That doesn’t mean you had to.”

“It feels selfish.”

“No,” he says immediately. “It feels like survival.”

You stare at him.

He reaches for your hand. “You’re allowed to survive.”

It sounds so simple. Too simple. But Hal says it like he would stand between you and the whole city to defend the point.

And honestly? He would. This is Hal Jordan. His first instinct is always to fly straight at the problem and dare physics to keep up. If your past had a physical form, Hal would square up with it in a parking lot.

Would he lose? Maybe. Gotham trauma fights dirty. But he would absolutely try.

The first time he visits Gotham with you, he understands more than he wants to.

He has been to Gotham before, obviously. Hero business. League business. Weird Batman business where everyone pretends the plan is normal despite the words “sentient mud” being involved.

But going with you is different.

He sees the city through your body. The way you go quiet as soon as the skyline appears. The way your shoulders settle into an old defensive shape. The way your eyes automatically check rooftops. The way you know which convenience stores used to pay protection money and which alleys flood when the storm drains back up.

Hal tries to stay casual. He fails.

“You okay?” he asks for the fifth time.

You glance at him. “You’re hovering.”

“I’m not hovering.”

“Hal.”

“I’m walking protectively.”

“That’s hovering with boots.”

He sighs. “Fine. I’ll be normal.”

“You don’t know how.”

“That is hurtful and accurate.”

You take him past an old apartment building. Nothing special. Brick. Rusted fire escape. Graffiti near the entrance. A bodega nearby with bars on the windows.

You stop for half a second too long.

Hal notices. “This where you lived?”

“For a while.”

“For a while,” he repeats gently.

“Yeah.”

He looks up at the windows, imagining you younger, smaller, learning the sounds through thin walls. Arguments. Sirens. Maybe gunshots. Maybe worse.

You say, “It wasn’t the worst place.”

Hal does not argue.

Not because he agrees. Because he has learned that sometimes contradiction makes you defend the pain.

So he says, “What was good about it?”

That surprises you.

You think. “There was a woman downstairs who made soup during blackouts. For everyone.”

Hal turns to you. A tiny smile touches your mouth.

“She used to yell at people in three languages. Terrifying. Great soup.”

Hal smiles too, softer. “There you go.”

“What?”

“Proof Gotham didn’t get all of it.”

You don’t respond. But your hand finds his.

Hal holds on.

Later, something loud cracks down the street. Not gunfire. Maybe a car backfire. Maybe construction.

Your body reacts before your mind does.

You freeze.

Hal steps closer, not in front of you like you’re helpless, but beside you like you’re not alone.

“Car,” he says softly. “Two blocks over. Moving away.”

You breathe in. Breathe out. Nod once.

Hal doesn’t touch you until you lean into him first. Then his arm wraps around your shoulders, warm and steady.

“Want to leave?” he asks.

You hesitate.

He adds, “No ego. No explanation. We can just go.”

No test. No expectation that you prove you’re healed by standing in the place that hurt you.

You nod.

Hal says, “Done.”

And just like that, he gets you out.

That’s the thing about Hal: he can be stubborn, impulsive, reckless, wildly allergic to being told what to do—but when your safety is on the line, he becomes focused in a way that feels almost military.

You say leave, he leaves. You say stay, he stays. You say don’t touch me, he backs off. You say hold my hand, he does and does not let go.

He gives you his certainty without taking away your control. For someone from Gotham, that is everything.

Back home, Hal becomes quietly obsessed with making ordinary life feel solid. Not boring. Hal Jordan does not do boring. His version of domesticity still involves motorcycles, late-night drives, questionable takeout, and spontaneous trips because “the sky looked good.”

But he starts giving you consistency.

He texts when he lands. He tells you when he’ll be late. He does not vanish without warning if he can help it. And when Lantern business makes that impossible, he apologises properly.

No ego. No “you knew what you signed up for.”

Just, “I’m sorry. I know disappearing hits something old for you. I didn’t want to.”

That one gets you. Because Hal is a man with entire galaxies pulling at him, but he still remembers the shape of your fear.

He starts making safety sound casual.

“Helmet’s there if you want it.” “Crowd looks heavy. We can take the side entrance.” “Fireworks tonight. Wanna get out of the city?” “Bad dream or bad memory?” “Do you want quiet, distraction, or me talking absolute nonsense until your brain gives up?”

He is especially good at the last one.

Hal can yap his way through a panic spiral like it’s an Olympic sport. He’ll sit on the floor with you at 3 a.m. and tell you the most unhinged pilot stories imaginable.

“And that’s when Barry said, ‘Hal, that is not how gravity works,’ and I said, ‘Gravity and I have a complicated professional relationship.’”

You stare at him, still shaky. “You’re such an idiot.”

“Yeah, but you’re breathing slower.”

You are. Damn him.

He notices before you do.

Hal uses humour like a flare in the dark. Not to deny the danger, but to mark a way out.

The nightmares are hard for him. Because he cannot fight them. Hal is good at fighting things. Too good. Fighting is easy. Punch the monster, break the construct, fly faster, hit harder, get back up. But when you wake up shaking from something that happened years ago, there is nothing for him to hit. No target. No ring solution. No clean battle plan.

Just you. And his own helpless love.

The first time, he almost moves too fast.

You jerk awake, gasping, and Hal sits up instantly, reaching for you.

You flinch.

He stops like he’s been shot. “Okay. Okay. I’m here. Not touching.”

You’re breathing too fast.

His heart is pounding, but he keeps his voice steady. “It’s Hal. You’re at my place. Coast City. Bedroom. Window’s locked. Door’s locked. No one’s here but us.”

You stare at him, eyes unfocused.

He keeps going. “You’re safe. No smoke. No alarms. No gas. Just me.”

Something in your face cracks at that.

No gas.

He remembered.

You cover your mouth with one hand.

Hal stays where he is. Every instinct in him wants to gather you up, but he waits. He waits until you whisper, “Can you…”

He doesn’t make you finish.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “I’ve got you.”

When he holds you, he holds you like a promise he is terrified of breaking.

Firm enough to ground. Loose enough to let you leave.

You press your face into his chest and mutter, “I hate this.”

Hal kisses your temple. “I know.”

“I’m not there anymore.”

“I know.”

“So why does it still feel like I am?”

Hal closes his eyes. For once, he doesn’t try to answer too fast.

Finally, he says, “Because your body got you out alive, and now it’s having a hard time believing the war’s over.”

You go still.

Hal strokes your back slowly.

“We’ll teach it,” he says. “As many times as it takes.”

That becomes one of his quiet vows.

He teaches your body safety through repetition.

Door locked. You’re safe. Storm outside. You’re safe. Loud noise. You’re safe.

Hal late, but Hal texts. You’re safe.

Hal leaves, but Hal comes back. You’re safe.

Not perfect. Never perfect. But steady enough that some part of you slowly, reluctantly, starts to believe him.

And Hal? Hal treats every inch of that trust like sacred airspace.

He also gets weirdly competitive with Gotham.

Not literally. Mostly.

You mention you never had a good birthday party because something always went wrong—blackout, evacuation, villain attack, family crisis, city-wide curfew.

Hal’s eyes narrow. “What?”

You recognise the tone. “No.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re planning.”

“I am not.”

“You absolutely are.”

Hal plans you a birthday so normal it becomes suspicious.

There are no surprise guests. No loud popping balloons. No dark venues. No clowns. Absolutely no clowns. He checks twice.

Just your favourite food, a cake from a bakery you like, a playlist he definitely spent too long making, and a small stack of gifts wrapped badly. Like, horrifically badly.

One gift is basically mummified in tape.

You hold it up. “Did the wrapping paper offend you?”

Hal points at it. “That is structurally sound.”

“It’s a crime scene.”

“It’s secure.”

“You’re a pilot.”

“Exactly. Safety first.”

The whole night is soft. Simple.

No emergencies. No interruptions. No sirens.

At one point, you look around the room and go quiet.

Hal notices from across the table. “You okay?”

You nod. Then, very softly, “This is nice.”

His expression changes. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t make a joke. He just smiles. “Good.”

Later, when you fall asleep against him on the couch, Hal sits there in the dim light with one arm around you and realises he has never been prouder of anything in his life.

Not the ring. Not the flying. Not the impossible saves.

This. You sleeping through the night because you trust the room. You laughing without checking over your shoulder. You letting ordinary happiness exist without bracing for punishment.

It guts him. In a good way. In a terrifying way.

Hal loves bravely, but loving you teaches him to love carefully.

He still takes risks. He’s still Hal. He still does things that make you stare at him and say, “Did you learn nothing from consequences?”

But with your heart, he is careful. He learns not to treat your trauma like a challenge to win. He learns not to call you fearless. You hate that word.

The first time he says it, you go quiet.

“I’m not fearless.”

Hal frowns. “I know. I meant—”

“No, I mean… I’m scared all the time. I just know what to do with it.”

That one stays with him.

Because Hal’s whole life is built on the idea that courage is not lack of fear, but action despite it. And suddenly, he sees you in a new light.

Not as someone who escaped Gotham untouched. Not as someone hardened beyond fear. But as someone who was afraid and kept moving anyway.

Later, he tells you, “You know, the ring would like you.”

You snort. “I’m not joining your space jewellery club.”

“I’m serious.”

“Hal.”

“It chooses people with will.”

You look at him.

He looks back, unusually sincere. “You have more of that than anyone I know.”

You don’t know what to do with that. So you say, “Does it come with dental?”

Hal grins. “No, but the dramatic lighting is excellent.”

You laugh, and he lets the moment lighten.

But he means it. He means it so much.

To Hal, you are not fragile. You are not a haunted house. You are not Gotham’s leftover damage.

You are willpower in human form.

Not because you never broke. Because you did. Because you kept choosing life afterwards anyway.

He loves that about you. He loves the sharp humour. The survival instincts. The way you can read a room faster than most trained operatives. The way you pretend not to care and then remember everyone’s coffee order. The way you flinch at loud noises but still reach for his hand.

He loves that you left Gotham and built something else. Even if you don’t always know what to call it.

He calls it brave. You call it “getting out.”

He says, “Same thing.”

Hal becomes the partner who will sit with you on rooftops—not Gotham rooftops, never unless you choose it—and let you look at the skyline without fear.

He takes you flying when you trust him enough.

Not suddenly. Not recklessly.

He asks first.

You almost say no. Then you look at him, at the green glow around his hand, at the open sky beyond him.

Gotham’s skies were always heavy. Clouded. Bruised purple-black. Full of searchlights and sirens and things watching from gargoyles.

But this sky is wide. Clean. Waiting.

You say, “Okay.”

Hal’s whole face softens. “Yeah?”

“Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m going to make it a little weird.”

“Hal.”

“Romantically weird.”

He carries you into the air with absurd care.

No sudden drops. No flashy barrel rolls. No showing off, even though you know it physically pains him.

Just slow. Up past rooftops. Past windows. Past noise. The city shrinking beneath you.

Your grip tightens at first.

Hal notices. “Still good?”

You nod against his shoulder.

The wind is cold and clean. For once, being above a city doesn’t mean danger.

It means distance. It means air. It means Hal’s arms around you and the horizon opening like a door.

You whisper, “Oh.”

Hal smiles. “Yeah.”

You don’t say anything else for a long time. He doesn’t make you.

That flight becomes another safe memory. A big one. A memory Gotham doesn’t get to touch.

Years later, Hal still remembers your face in that moment—the wonder, the fear, the fragile little beginning of freedom. He remembers because Hal Jordan is many things, but when he loves, he remembers with his whole soul.

Of course, he still reacts dramatically sometimes. He cannot help himself.

You: “Our school nurse once had to check everyone for fear toxin exposure.” Hal: “I’m sorry, your nurse had to do chemical warfare triage?” You: “She was very good.” Hal: “That is not comforting.” You: “She gave out stickers.” Hal: “I need to sit down.”

Or:

You: “I don’t like coin flips.” Hal: “Two-Face?” You: “Two-Face.” Hal, already removing all coins from his apartment: “Say less.”

You later find a jar labelled BAD GOTHAM CURRENCY.

“What is this?”

“Emotional support coin containment.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re welcome.”

He keeps the jar. Partly as a joke. Partly because he refuses to dismiss even the tiny things.

That’s where Hal surprises you most.

He is loud about big danger, sure. But he also cares about the small aftermath. He remembers you don’t like purple suits. He remembers not to surprise you from behind. He remembers that certain smells make you tense. He remembers you prefer booths to tables. He remembers you hate being told “calm down.” He remembers that your jokes get sharper when you’re close to shutting down.

He remembers. For someone whose life is full of stars and wars and impossible distances, Hal makes room for your details.

And it makes you feel loved in a way that is almost inconvenient.

Because once someone loves you that specifically, it gets harder to pretend you don’t need anything.

One night, you tell him that.

You’re both on the balcony, wrapped in a blanket, the city humming below. Not Gotham. Somewhere gentler.

You say, “You make it hard to act normal.”

Hal glances over. “I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”

“It is.”

“Rare win for me.”

You smile faintly, then look down at your hands. “I mean… I spent a long time being fine because no one had time for anything else.”

Hal says nothing.

You continue, quieter. “And you have time.”

His expression softens. “For you? Always.”

You huff. “That’s cheesy.”

“That’s aviation-grade sincerity.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It is now.”

You lean into him.

He wraps the blanket tighter around both of you.

After a while, you say, “I don’t think I know how to be safe.”

Hal kisses your temple. “Then we’ll start there.”

“With what?”

He thinks about it.

Then, with complete seriousness: “Breakfast.”

You laugh. “Breakfast?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow. No emergencies. No villains. No survival instincts required. Just pancakes.”

“You burn eggs.”

“I will purchase pancakes.”

“Smart.”

“I’m evolving.”

And he does.

He builds safety one ordinary thing at a time.

Pancakes. Drives. Morning coffee. Texts from airports. Hands offered, not demanded. Flights through open sky.

No pressure to heal on a schedule. No making you perform recovery for his comfort.

Just Hal, steady in his own messy, blazing way, loving you like a lighthouse with a leather jacket.

He still thinks Gotham is a nightmare with streetlights. He still mutters things like, “I could fix that city,” and you have to remind him that even Batman hasn’t managed it and he is Batman-shaped emotional constipation with a trust fund.

Hal laughs for ten minutes.

Then says, “I’m telling him you said that.”

“You value your life too much.”

“I value drama.”

“Hal.”

“Fine. I won’t.”

He absolutely considers it.

But when it comes to you, the drama fades.

The love stays.

And years later, when you casually drop another story—because the Gotham well is apparently bottomless—Hal still gets that look.

Shocked. Protective. A little furious.

But softer now.

Because he knows what to do.

He reaches for your hand.

He asks, “Listening, questions, or Gotham slander?”

And sometimes you say listening. Sometimes you say questions. Most of the time, you say Gotham slander.

Hal nods gravely. “Terrible city. Zero stars. Too many clowns. Infrastructure held together by gargoyles and denial.”

You laugh. Real and warm. And Hal thinks, as he often does, that the bravest thing you ever did was not surviving Gotham.

It was letting yourself live after.

Not just endure. Not just escape.

Live.

And if Hal Jordan gets to be part of that life—part of the mornings, the bad jokes, the soft landings, the nights where you sleep without listening for sirens—

then that feels bigger than space.

Bigger than fear. Bigger than the green light burning on his hand.

Because you are not Gotham’s tragedy anymore.

You are the person who left. The person who kept going. The person who now gets to look up and see sky instead of smoke.

And Hal?

The first time you casually drop something horrifying, you’re both sprawled on the couch after a long day. Wally has his legs tangled with yours, one arm thrown over your stomach, half-watching a documentary he absolutely swore he was interested in and is absolutely about to fall asleep during.

The narrator mentions urban legends.

You snort.

Wally cracks one eye open. “What?”

“Nothing. Just thinking about how Gotham urban legends are usually just, like, actual guys.”

He hums. “Define actual guys.”

“You know. Croc in the sewers. The Court of Owls. That guy who used to leave teeth in people’s mailboxes.”

Wally lifts his head. “The what?”

You wave a hand. “He wasn’t a big one.”

“A big one?”

“Yeah, not like Joker or Scarecrow or anything.”

Wally sits up so fast the blanket slides off him. “Hold on. Pause. Rewind. Circle back. You had villain tier lists growing up?”

You blink at him. “Everyone did.”

“No, babe. Everyone did not.”

And you say it so calmly. That’s the part that breaks his brain. You’re not trembling. You’re not telling him this with dramatic lighting and sad violin music. You’re reaching for popcorn like you didn’t just reveal your childhood had a recurring cast of themed nightmares.

Wally stares at you. You stare back.

“What?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

Finally, “I need you to understand that most people’s neighbourhood hazards are potholes. Maybe raccoons. Not sewer crocodile cryptids and clown terrorism.”

You frown thoughtfully. “We also had potholes.”

“Not the point!”

The second time is worse. Because it happens in public.

You’re both at a grocery store. Wally is pushing the cart with one foot on the bottom rail, letting himself glide like a menace until you tell him he is one loud crash away from being banned from produce.

He’s tossing snacks into the cart at speedster velocity.

You catch a box before it hits the bread. “Wally.”

“What? Snacks are essential infrastructure.”

“You got three kinds of cookies.”

“Exactly. Infrastructure.”

Then there’s a sudden loud bang from the back of the store. Someone dropped a pallet. Totally normal. Totally harmless.

But you go still.

Not dramatically. Not visibly to most people.

But Wally sees it.

Your eyes flick to the exits. Your shoulders lock. Your hand tightens around the cart handle.

It lasts maybe two seconds. Then you blink, exhale, and keep moving like nothing happened.

Wally doesn’t say anything until you’re outside.

He loads the bags into the car slower than usual. Which, for Wally, is basically a medical event.

Then he asks, gently, “You okay back there?”

You shrug. “Yeah. Just sounded like one of the old evacuation alarms.”

“Evacuation alarms?”

“At school.”

Wally pauses.

Your voice stays casual. “We had different ones. Fire, rogue attack, gas exposure, active shooter, Arkham escape within two blocks—”

“Within two blocks?”

“Yeah. If it was further than that, they just locked the outside doors.”

Wally stares at you over the trunk.

You blink. “What?”

He looks like someone just handed him a bomb. “Your school had an Arkham escape alarm?”

“Not officially.”

“That does not make it better.”

“It was more of a bell pattern.”

“Babe.”

“What?”

“That is so far from normal I can’t even see normal from here. Normal is in another zip code. Normal packed a bag and left.”

You almost laugh because Wally is doing that thing where he gets animated when he’s upset, hands moving too fast, words tripping over each other.

But then you notice his face.

He’s not joking. Not really. His eyes are too soft. Too bright. Like he’s trying to outrun how much it hurts to imagine you as a kid, sitting under a desk, learning the sound difference between fire danger and fear toxin danger.

You immediately backpedal. “It wasn’t that bad.”

Wally goes very quiet.

That’s rare. That’s how you know you’ve accidentally stepped into something serious.

He closes the trunk and walks around to your side of the car, not crowding you, just standing close enough that his warmth is there if you want it.

“Hey,” he says softly. “I love you. So I’m gonna say this very carefully.”

You swallow.

“It was that bad.”

And because it’s Wally, because he’s usually motion and laughter and bright lightning under skin, the stillness of him makes the words land harder.

You look away.

He doesn’t make you look back.

He just says, “You don’t have to convince me it didn’t hurt.”

That one gets under your ribs.

Because Gotham taught you that pain only counted if someone didn’t survive it. Anything else was just “lucky.”

You say, “Everyone had stories like that.”

Wally’s jaw tightens. “Then everyone deserved better.”

That shuts you up completely.

After that, Wally notices everything.

Not in a paranoid way. Not in a pitying way.

In a Wally way. Which means he notices at the speed of light and then tries extremely hard to act normal about it.

He notices how you don’t like sitting near windows in restaurants. He notices how you track every person who enters a room wearing heavy coats, even in warm weather. He notices how you hate carnivals but love fair food.

He notices how you never say “I’m scared.” You say, “This is probably fine.”

Which, he learns, means you are very much not fine.

He starts translating your Gotham-isms.

“Could be worse” means: I am uncomfortable but trying not to be inconvenient.

“Funny story” means: This is about to be deeply alarming.

“I had a weird childhood” means: A supervillain may be involved.

“It was fine” means: It was not fine, but I survived, so I filed it under fine.

Wally becomes so offended by the word “fine.”

You say it once after flinching at fireworks, and he points at you with a French fry.

“Nope.”

You blink. “Nope?”

“Not accepting ‘fine’ as a valid emotional status. Try again.”

“I’m okay?”

He squints.

“I’m… mostly okay?”

“Better.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Yeah, but I’m cute and emotionally available, so it balances out.”

He makes you laugh even when you don’t want to. Especially then.

That’s one of Wally’s gifts: he doesn’t use humour to avoid feelings. He uses it like a lantern. Something warm enough to make the dark less humiliating.

The first real conversation happens after a nightmare.

You wake up with your heart sprinting faster than even Wally could manage, throat tight, fingers twisted in the sheets.

For a second, you don’t know where you are. The room is too dark. Too quiet.

No sirens. No shouting. No distant helicopters.

Just Wally’s apartment. Soft blankets. The low hum of the fridge. Rain whispering against the windows.

Wally wakes instantly.

He’s a speedster; his body is basically allergic to delayed reactions.

But he doesn’t grab you. Doesn’t shake you. Doesn’t flood the room with questions.

He just sits up slowly and says, “Hey. You’re here. You’re with me.”

You try to laugh it off. “Sorry. Stupid dream.”

Wally’s face does that thing again. The soft hurt. The careful patience. “Was it Gotham?”

You go still. That’s answer enough.

He nods once, like he’s accepting the shape of the thing without forcing you to name it. “Can I turn on the lamp?”

You nod.

He turns it on. Warm golden light fills the room, gentle as sunrise.

Then he asks, “Can I touch you?”

You nod again.

Only then does he reach for you.

And Wally West, who could move faster than thought, touches you like time is holy.

Slow hand on your shoulder. Gentle fingers around yours. A soft squeeze.

“There you are,” he murmurs.

You hate that your eyes burn. You hate that he sees it. You hate even more that he doesn’t look away.

“I’m fine,” you whisper.

Wally gives you a look.

You huff. “Mostly okay.”

“Thank you.”

You sit there in the lamplight for a while, your hand in his.

Eventually, you say, “There was this thing when I was a kid.”

Wally stays still.

You tell him about being trapped in a subway station during a rogue attack. How the adults kept whispering, like quiet could save everyone. How you learned to breathe through your sleeve because someone said there might be gas. How the lights flickered for hours.

How afterwards, everyone called it lucky because Batman showed up before anyone died.

Wally listens.

No jokes. No interruptions. No “but you’re safe now” thrown like a blanket over a wound that still remembers the cold.

When you finish, he says, “How old were you?”

You answer.

His eyes close for half a second.

When he opens them, his voice is careful.

“I’m so sorry.”

You shrug automatically.

He catches your hand before the gesture can finish.

Not hard. Just enough to stop the reflex.

“You don’t have to do that with me,” he says.

“Do what?”

“Make it smaller.”

You look down at your joined hands. “It’s easier.”

“I know.”

That surprises you.

Wally rubs his thumb over your knuckles. “I do it too. Different stuff. Different flavour of messed up. But I know what it’s like to turn something awful into a joke because otherwise it just sits there taking up the whole room.”

Your throat tightens. “Does it work?”

He gives you a small smile. “Sometimes.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“The rest of the time, you let someone sit in the room with you.”

That becomes the foundation.

Wally doesn’t try to fix you. He’s not naïve enough for that. He wants to, obviously. This man loves with his whole chest and half the Speed Force. If he could run back through your timeline and carry kid-you out of every bad moment, he would do it in a heartbeat and probably break twelve cosmic laws in the process.

But he knows he can’t. So he does the next best thing.

He stays. He stays when you tell another story in the wrong tone. He stays when you go quiet. He stays when you laugh too sharply. He stays when peace makes you restless because your body keeps waiting for the next alarm.

And he makes safety feel less like a locked door and more like a living thing.

A hand in yours. A light left on. A text that says: made it home, no rogues, no drama, just one suspiciously judgmental cat outside.

He starts sending you little updates because he realises uncertainty is one of your triggers.

Not obsessive. Not controlling.

Just thoughtful.

Running late. Actual running. Be there in six.

Big storm tonight. I’ve got you.

Fireworks downtown at nine. Wanna watch a movie louder than capitalism?

He learns your nervous system like it’s a map.

Lovingly. Respectfully. With snacks.

So many snacks.

Wally’s love language is food, movement, and pretending he didn’t just sprint across town because you casually mentioned craving a specific pastry.

One night, you mention that you never really did normal fairs growing up because Gotham fairs were, quote, “villain bait.”

Wally looks personally wounded. “Villain bait?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, regularly?”

“I mean, it’s a lot of people gathered in one place. Very kidnappable energy.”

He stares at you.

You sip your drink.

He points at you. “Shoes. Now.”

“What?”

“We’re going to a fair.”

“It’s nine at night.”

“I know a place.”

“Wally.”

“Nope. You deserve fried dough and rigged games and one emotionally significant plush animal.”

That is how you end up at a small-town night fair two cities over, lights glowing warm against the dark, music drifting through the air, Wally practically vibrating with determination.

At first, you’re tense. Too many people. Too much noise. Too many bright colours. Your eyes keep catching on exits, dark corners, strangers with oversized bags.

Wally notices.

He doesn’t call attention to it. He just offers his hand. “Wanna start small?”

You nod.

So you start with food.

Then a quiet booth.

Then a game.

Wally deliberately loses three times before realising you’re better at the ring toss than he is.

You win him a plush turtle.

He gasps like you proposed. “For me?”

“You’re embarrassing.”

“I will treasure him forever.”

“You’re going to lose him in two days.”

“His name is Bartholomew, and he’s family now.”

By the end of the night, you’re laughing. Really laughing. Not Gotham laughing. Not sharp-edged, survive-the-bit laughter.

Just pure joy.

Wally sees it and almost short-circuits. Because there you are, under cheap carnival lights, holding a paper tray of fried dough, powdered sugar on your sleeve, face open in a way he doesn’t get to see often.

He looks at you like you’re faster than light.

You catch him staring. “What?”

He grins, softer than usual. “Nothing. Just like seeing you happy.”

You roll your eyes, but you lean into him.

And Wally, because he cannot help himself, kisses powdered sugar off your cheek.

“Gross,” you say.

“Romantic.”

“Sticky.”

“Also romantic.”

The fair becomes one of your safe memories.

That’s what Wally does. He doesn’t erase the old ones. He helps you grow new ones beside them. Carnivals become fried dough and Bartholomew the turtle. Storms become blanket forts and terrible movies. Sirens become Wally squeezing your hand and saying, “Ambulance, three blocks over, moving away.”

Crowds become escape plans and shared headphones. Quiet becomes less terrifying because Wally fills it with humming, breathing, life.

The first time you tell him that, he cries. You’re lying together in bed one morning, sunlight slipping through the curtains, and you mumble, “I like quiet with you.”

Wally goes still.

You glance up. His eyes are shiny.

“Oh my god,” you say. “Are you crying?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“I have allergies.”

“To emotional intimacy?”

“Yes. Very serious condition.”

You laugh, and he buries his face in your shoulder.

But his arms tighten around you.

Because he understands what you actually said. You didn’t just say the room was quiet. You said your body trusted him enough to stop listening for disaster.

That is not small. That is cathedral-level trust. That is holy ground.

Wally treats it like it matters.

He also becomes your number one defender against your own minimising.

You: “It was just a mugging.” Wally: “You were nine.” You: “But it was only a knife.” Wally: “I need you to hear the sentence you just made.” You: “It wasn’t even one of the big gangs.” Wally: “Baby, I say this with love: your scale is broken.” You: “Gotham scale.” Wally: “Exactly. Broken.”

He starts using the phrase “Gotham scale” whenever you underreact to something insane.

You tell him your old dentist accepted protection money from Penguin?

“Gotham scale.”

You mention your neighbour had a bunker under their laundry room?

“Gotham scale.”

You say your elementary school had a “no riddles from strangers” assembly?

Wally has to lie down.

“Gotham scale, but also I’m suing the concept of childhood.”

Sometimes, though, the shock gives way to anger.

Real anger.

Not at you. Never at you. But at the city. At the adults who normalised it. At the way Gotham turns children into witnesses and then calls them resilient because it sounds better than abandoned.

Wally tries not to let you see the worst of that anger.

But you do.

You’re both visiting Gotham for a brief errand. You insisted you were fine. It was just a day trip. No big deal.

But Wally watches the city change you.

Your shoulders tighten before you even cross the bridge. Your voice goes flatter. Your eyes sharpen. You know which streets to avoid without checking a map. You know the sound of distant gunfire and don’t even flinch until you remember Wally is there.

That hurts him in a way he can’t joke around.

At one point, you pass your old school.

You mention, almost absently, “That’s where the Scarecrow lockdown happened.”

Wally stops walking.

You keep going for two steps before realising.

“Wally?”

He’s staring at the building.

There are kids outside. Laughing. Running around.

His jaw is tight.

You touch his arm. “Hey.”

He looks at you. For once, he doesn’t have something funny ready.

“You were just a kid,” he says.

You don’t know what to say.

He looks back at the school. “You were just a kid.”

The repetition cracks something open.

Because you know that. Obviously you know that. But hearing him say it like he’s grieving, like he’s angry on behalf of a version of you no one protected, makes it feel real in a way you have avoided for years.

You whisper, “So were a lot of people.”

Wally nods. “Yeah. And every single one of you deserved better.”

You have to leave after that.

Not because of danger. Because of kindness.

Which is somehow harder.

Wally gets you out of Gotham fast. Not because he thinks you’re weak. Because you asked, and he listened before your pride could interfere.

Back home, he doesn’t push. He orders your favourite food. Puts on a comfort show. Sits beside you close enough to touch but not close enough to trap.

Eventually, you lean into him.

He wraps an arm around you.

“I hate that place,” he admits.

You laugh weakly. “That place made me.”

“No,” Wally says, firm but gentle. “You made you. Gotham just made it harder.”

That line sits between you for a long time.

Then you whisper, “I don’t know who I am without it sometimes.”

Wally kisses the top of your head. “That’s okay. We’ve got time.”

Of course, because he’s Wally, “time” is a loaded word. He has outrun it, broken it, lost people to it, begged it for mercy. But with you, he means something simpler.

Mornings. Weeks. Years.

Slow things. Human things.

He is a speedster who chooses patience for you.

That’s how you know he loves you.

Wally helps you learn that healing doesn’t have to be dramatic.

Sometimes healing is him convincing you that not every unknown package is suspicious.

Sometimes it’s him labelling leftovers because you once mentioned food insecurity after city shutdowns.

Sometimes it’s him keeping extra batteries, water, and first-aid supplies in the apartment—not because he expects disaster, but because he knows preparedness helps your body unclench.

Sometimes it’s him making silly playlists for “non-traumatic cleaning day.”

Sometimes it’s him asking, “Do you want comfort, distraction, or solutions?” and actually listening to the answer.

Sometimes it’s him understanding that you may never love surprises.

So he stops surprising you in big ways.

Instead, he gives you small, predictable joys.

Your favourite drink appearing in the fridge. A blanket warmed in the dryer. A note on the counter: No emergencies. No mysteries. Just love you.

The first time he writes that, you stare at it for a full minute.

Then you stick it on the fridge.

Wally notices.

He does not make a big deal out of it.

He absolutely takes a picture when you’re not looking.

He is sentimental as hell. It’s terminal.

There’s also a funny side to all this, because Wally cannot exist without becoming at least a little ridiculous.

He starts rating your stories based on “how much they emotionally damage him.”

You: “One time Two-Face robbed the movie theatre I was in.” Wally: “Seven out of ten. Upsetting, but Gotham-coded.” You: “I still remember the smell of fear gas.” Wally: “Ten out of ten. I need to walk into the ocean.” You: “My old landlord was probably laundering money.” Wally: “Three out of ten. Honestly, that could happen anywhere.” You: “Through Black Mask.” Wally: “Eight out of ten. Why would you save that for the second sentence?”

It becomes a weird little ritual.

Not making light of it.

Making room around it.

Because with Wally, the wound is allowed to breathe. It doesn’t have to be hidden, but it also doesn’t get to swallow the whole sky.

He reminds you that joy can be defiant. That laughter can be a survival skill and a love language. That being soft after Gotham is not weakness.

It is rebellion.

And Wally loves your softness.

He loves when you get sleepy and clingy. He loves when you trust him enough to complain about tiny problems. He loves when your biggest issue of the day is that he ate the last of your cereal.

Which he did.

And he is sorry.

Mostly.

Okay, half sorry.

He replaces it at superspeed and adds two more boxes because he values his life.

Wally also gets emotional the first time you call his place “home.”

It slips out naturally.

You’re looking for your keys, distracted, and you say, “Did I leave them at home?”

Wally looks around. “Your place?”

You blink.

Then realise.

“No. I meant… here.”

Wally freezes.

You freeze too.

For a second, neither of you breathes.

Then he smiles. It starts small, then grows, bright and devastating.

“Yeah?” he asks.

You look away, embarrassed. “Don’t be weird.”

“I’m gonna be so weird.”

“Wally.”

“This is a historic moment.”

“Don’t.”

“I need a plaque.”

“I will take it back.”

“You can’t. Verbal contract. Speedster law.”

You groan, but he pulls you in, laughing softly into your hair.

He doesn’t tease you for long.

Just enough to make it feel normal.

Then he murmurs, “I like that this feels like home to you.”

You press your face into his chest. “Me too.”

And that’s the thing. Wally doesn’t make you feel like a tragedy. He makes you feel like a person with a future. Not just someone who escaped Gotham.

Someone who gets to build something after. A life with sunlight in it. A kitchen with too many snacks. A couch where nothing bad happens. A lover who can run faster than almost anyone alive but never rushes your healing.

When your past comes up, Wally is shocked every time. He can’t help it. The man is expressive. His face has no security system.

But beneath the shock is always the same steady truth: He believes you. He grieves what hurt you. He loves what survived.

And he is so, so proud of who you became.

One night, much later, you ask him, “Does it bother you?”

He looks up from where he’s fiddling with the TV remote. “What?”

“All of it. The Gotham stuff.”

Wally’s expression softens.

He sets the remote down.

“Bother me how?”

You shrug. “That I’m… like this.”

He moves closer, slow enough that you can move away if you need to.

You don’t.

He takes your hand.

“I hate that it happened,” he says. “I hate that you had to learn fear before you got to learn peace. I hate that you still flinch at things that should just be sounds.”

Your throat tightens.

“But you?” He squeezes your hand. “You don’t bother me. Not ever.”

You look down.

He ducks his head until you meet his eyes. “You’re not hard to love.”

And that one ruins you. Completely.

Because Gotham taught you to be useful. Alert. Tough. Prepared. Quiet when needed. Fast when necessary.

Wally teaches you something else.

You can be loved tired. Loved scared. Loved healing. Loved messy.

Loved on bad days. Loved when the past catches up. Loved when you don’t have a joke ready. Loved without having to earn it by being okay.

Wally West loves like lightning, yes—bright, wild, impossible to ignore—but with you, he also loves like morning.

The first time it happens, it’s so casual he genuinely thinks he misheard you.

You’re both making dinner. Roy is barefoot in your kitchen, sleeves pushed up, complaining dramatically about how your knives are “criminally dull” and how this is “how people lose fingers, babe.” You’re stirring sauce at the stove, completely relaxed.

The news is playing quietly in the background. Some anchor says something about Arkham security upgrades.

You snort.

Roy looks over. “What?”

“Nothing. Just funny they’re pretending Arkham security upgrades ever work.”

Roy laughs, because yeah, okay, fair.

Then you add, “My school had to evacuate once because Scarecrow escaped and they thought he was hiding in the boiler room.”

Roy stops chopping onions. He turns his head very slowly. “Your school had to do what?”

You don’t even look up. “Evacuate.”

“Because Scarecrow was in the boiler room?”

“They thought he was. It ended up being two henchmen and a janitor having a nervous breakdown.”

Roy sets the knife down. Very carefully. “Babe.”

“Hmm?”

“Why did you say that like you were telling me your school ran out of printer paper?”

You blink at him. “It wasn’t that bad.”

Roy’s expression does this complicated thing—half disbelief, half grief, half “I am going to fistfight an entire city.”

Yes, that is three halves. Roy is emotionally bad at math in the moment.

“Not that bad,” he repeats.

You shrug. “We got out early.”

“Oh, cool, yeah, silver lining. Early dismissal because of domestic terrorism.”

And you laugh, because to you it is kind of funny.

Roy does not laugh.

That’s when you realise he’s actually shaken.

Not angry at you. Never at you. But there’s something raw in his face, something unsettled and protective and deeply sad.

Because Roy understands laughing at pain. He’s practically fluent in it. He knows exactly what it looks like when someone wraps barbed wire in a joke and calls it a personality.

And, suddenly, he sees it in you.

After that, the floodgates open accidentally.

Not because you sit him down and decide to tell him everything.

No, it’s worse.

You keep dropping the most horrifying Gotham anecdotes in the middle of completely normal conversations.

Roy will say, “I hated cafeteria food as a kid.”

And you’ll go, “Same. Ours got shut down once because the lunch lady was using expired meat from a Falcone front.”

Roy stares. You continue eating cereal.

Or he’ll complain about traffic.

You’ll say, “At least your bus route wasn’t rerouted because Killer Croc was in the sewers again.”

Roy slowly lowers his coffee cup. “Again?”

You tilt your head. “Yeah?”

“Define again.”

“Like… more than once?”

Roy leans back in his chair, staring at the ceiling like he’s asking every god, ghost, and Green Lantern battery in the universe for patience.

“Baby, I need you to understand that sewers are not supposed to have recurring boss fights.”

The worst one, though, is when he realises you don’t categorise these things as trauma.

To you, trauma is something dramatic. Something cinematic. Something with rain and screaming and blood on white tile.

Gotham taught you that anything you survived quietly didn’t count.

So when you mention being held hostage during a bank robbery at twelve, you say it like this: “Oh, yeah, that bank used to have really good lollipops. Shame about the hostage thing.”

Roy goes utterly still.

You look up from your phone. “What?”

“You were twelve?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“It was before high school.”

Roy rubs both hands over his face. “Okay. Okay, I’m gonna need a second.”

You immediately get defensive, because that’s another thing Gotham gave you: the instinct to make your pain smaller before anyone else can decide it’s inconvenient.

“It’s not a big deal. Nobody died.”

Roy looks at you then, really looks at you, and his voice gets quiet.

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

And that lands harder than you expect.

Because Roy isn’t saying it like a slogan. He isn’t trying to therapy-speak you into a breakthrough. He just sounds… certain.

Like this is a fact. Like gravity. Like sunrise. Like you were a kid, and it should not have happened.

Roy starts noticing things after that.

The way you always choose the seat facing the door. The way your whole body goes tense when someone laughs too loudly behind you. The way you know how to identify exits in every building before you even know where the bathrooms are.

The way you never fully relax during city-wide celebrations, parades, festivals, or anything involving balloons, confetti, clowns, riddles, masks, green smoke, purple suits, question marks, blackouts, or “surprise entertainment.”

Roy notices how you freeze when someone says, “Don’t worry, it’s safe.”

Because in Gotham, that sentence usually meant it was about to get very much not safe.

He doesn’t call you out in front of people.

Roy has been pitied before. Handled. Judged. Watched like he was one bad day from shattering.

He refuses to do that to you.

Instead, he adapts.

You go to a restaurant, and he automatically gives you the chair with the better view. You enter a crowded room, and his hand brushes yours, just enough to remind you he’s there. There’s a sudden loud noise, and he doesn’t say, “You okay?” in that big, obvious way that makes everyone look.

He just bumps your shoulder and murmurs, “With me?”

And you can nod or squeeze his hand or make a joke.

He lets you choose.

Roy is big on choice. He knows what it feels like when life takes too many of them away.

The first time you have a nightmare around him, you expect him to panic.

He doesn’t.

You jolt awake, breath caught in your throat, hand already reaching for something that isn’t there. A weapon. A flashlight. A lock. Proof that you are not back in Gotham.

Roy wakes instantly.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Hey, it’s me.”

You’re embarrassed before you’re even fully conscious.

“Sorry,” you mutter.

Roy’s face crumples a little. “Don’t apologise.”

“I woke you up.”

“You’re allowed to wake me up.”

That shuts you up.

He doesn’t grab you right away. He doesn’t cage you in affection, even though every protective instinct in him is screaming to hold you.

He asks, “Can I touch you?”

And when you nod, he pulls you in slowly, one arm around your back, one hand resting between your shoulder blades.

Grounding. Warm. Present.

Not trapping you.

You mutter into his shirt, “It was stupid.”

Roy presses his cheek to your hair. “Was it Gotham stupid or regular stupid?”

Despite yourself, you laugh.

He smiles faintly. “There you are.”

He never forces you to talk about it, but if you do, he listens.

Roy is a good listener when it matters. He’ll joke through his own pain until the room catches fire, sure, but with yours? He becomes steady in a way that surprises even him.

You tell him about your old apartment building. The one with three locks and bars on the windows.

You tell him about the sirens. About learning which streets not to walk down. About the way adults used to say, “That’s Gotham,” as if that explained everything. About how moving away felt less like freedom and more like waiting for the city to realise you’d escaped.

Roy doesn’t interrupt.

He holds your hand and traces his thumb over your knuckles.

Finally, he says, “I hate that you had to become tough that young.”

You don’t know what to do with that.

So you shrug.

Roy catches it. He always catches it now.

“That shrug,” he says gently, “is gonna kill me one day.”

“What shrug?”

“The ‘I’m pretending this didn’t hurt because I don’t know what happens if I admit it did’ shrug.”

You stare at him.

He gives you a crooked smile.

“Yeah. I’ve got one too.”

That’s part of why it works with Roy.

He doesn’t stand outside your pain looking in. He sits down beside it, battered and familiar, like, Yeah, this neighbourhood sucks. I know a shortcut out, though.

He tells you pieces of his own story, too.

Not all at once. Not like a trade. Not “you showed me yours, so here’s mine.”

But slowly. Honestly. He tells you about addiction. About loneliness. About making mistakes people never let him forget. About the kind of shame that follows you like a shadow with teeth.

And you realise Roy isn’t shocked because he thinks you’re broken. He’s shocked because he knows broken systems love to make survivors think they’re the problem.

That makes you feel safer than you expected.

Roy becomes incredibly determined to give you normal experiences.

Not in a cheesy “let’s heal your inner child with Pinterest activities” way.

Okay. Maybe a little.

But he makes it fun.

He starts a mental list called Things Gotham Probably Ruined For My Partner But I’m Built Different And Also Very Handsome.

You do not know the official title. You only know that Roy suddenly starts planning oddly specific dates.

A picnic in a park where nothing explodes. A carnival with no villain attacks, where he wins you a stuffed animal and then acts like he personally conquered Olympus. A museum date where the only crime is the gift shop pricing. A quiet movie night where the villain on-screen laughs maniacally and Roy immediately turns to you and says, “Too Gotham?”

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.

Sometimes you surprise yourself.

Sometimes you have to leave early.

Roy never makes you feel bad about it.

He just says, “Cool, new plan,” and pivots like it costs him nothing.

You leave a crowded street fair once because a performer’s laugh hits too close to old memories. You’re shaking, furious with yourself, already apologising.

Roy walks you three blocks away, buys you fries from a tiny corner place, and sits with you on a curb under a streetlamp.

You say, “I ruined the date.”

Roy looks genuinely offended. “Excuse me, these are elite fries.”

“Roy.”

“You think I share elite fries with just anyone?”

You huff a laugh.

He nudges your knee with his. “You didn’t ruin anything. We changed locations. Very mysterious. Very sexy. Honestly, we’re thriving.”

That’s Roy’s gift. He doesn’t deny the hurt. He just refuses to let it be the only thing in the room.

He gives you laughter without using it to erase what happened.

There’s one night where it really hits him, though.

You’re both half-asleep, tangled together, and you mumble something about how quiet his place is.

Roy smiles sleepily. “Good quiet or weird quiet?”

“Good,” you say. “I used to not like quiet. In Gotham, quiet usually meant something was wrong.”

Roy’s eyes open.

You’re too tired to notice.

You keep going, voice soft and distant. “Sirens were better. At least then you knew where the danger was.”

Roy doesn’t sleep for a while after that. He just holds you and stares into the dark, feeling something ache in his chest.

Because he’s loved you for your sharpness. Your humour. Your eerie calm under pressure. Your ability to pack for emergencies like a doomsday prepper with a cute jacket.

But now he understands those things differently.

They aren’t quirks.

They’re armour.

And he loves you enough to be angry that you ever needed it.

Eventually, you notice.

“Roy?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re thinking too loud.”

He lets out a soft laugh. “Sorry.”

“You’re doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

“Where you get sad about me.”

That one hurts.

Roy shifts so he can see your face.

“I’m not sad about you,” he says. “I’m sad for what happened to you. That’s different.”

You’re quiet.

Then, barely: “I don’t want you to think I’m messed up.”

Roy’s expression softens so completely it almost undoes you.

“Baby,” he says, “I’m a recovering addict with abandonment issues and a bow. I would be the last person on earth with room to judge.”

You snort.

He kisses your forehead.

“And for the record? I don’t think you’re messed up. I think you survived a city that asks way too much of kids. I think you’re funny and stubborn and terrifyingly good in a crisis. I think you deserve mornings where nothing bad happens.”

That line stays with you.

Mornings where nothing bad happens.

Roy starts giving you those.

Soft ones. Coffee ones. Sunlight-on-the-floor ones.

Him burning toast and cursing like the toaster personally betrayed him. You wearing his shirt while he makes breakfast badly but confidently.

He dances around the kitchen with you just because there’s music playing and because no one is chasing you and because the door is locked and because the world, for once, has the decency to stay gentle.

And yeah, sometimes the past still shows up.

Sometimes you flinch. Sometimes you joke too fast. Sometimes you say something horrifying and Roy has to take a lap around the room.

Like when you casually mention, “My childhood dentist was arrested for working with Black Mask.”

Roy, from across the room: “Your dentist?”

“He had good magazines.”

“Why is that your takeaway?”

“Highlights were solid.”

“Babe.”

“What?”

“Gotham owes you financial compensation.”

Roy doesn’t try to rescue you from your past. He knows better. The past is not a burning building. You can’t kick down the door and carry someone out bridal-style while orchestral music plays.

Healing is messier. Less cinematic. More like sitting on the kitchen floor at 2 a.m. eating cereal because sleep didn’t work.

More like him saying, “Tell me one thing you can see.”

More like you whispering, “You.”

More like Roy smiling softly and saying, “Good. I’m here.”

He’s patient when you struggle with safety. He’s patient when peace feels suspicious. He’s patient when you don’t know how to be loved without bracing for impact.

But he’s not passive.

Roy Harper loves actively. Loudly when you need it. Quietly when you can’t handle loud. He becomes the person who reminds you that survival was impressive, but it was never supposed to be your whole identity.

You are allowed to be more than what Gotham did to you. You are allowed to be silly. Soft. Needy. Annoying. Joyful. Bored. You are allowed to have problems like “Roy forgot to buy oat milk” instead of “the city may be under siege again.”

And Roy? Roy is honoured to witness every ordinary version of you.

The first time you say, “I feel safe here,” he nearly loses it.

He plays it cool, because he knows making a huge deal might scare the words back into your mouth.

So he just squeezes your hand and says, “Good.”

But later, when you’re asleep, he looks at you like you hung the moon with trembling hands.

Because to Roy, your trust is not small.

It is not casual.

It is not something he takes lightly.

It is a miracle with teeth.

A brave little flame that survived Gotham’s rain.