jt.

Not because you hurt him. Because you could. Not with a blade. Not with green stone. Not with a spell carved from old gods. You hurt him by standing too close to his pain and refusing to look away.

The first time Clark met you, he was bleeding green. That was not a metaphor. It had been a League mission in Coast City. Some weapons dealer with more money than wisdom had bought a shard of kryptonite, ground it into powder, and loaded it into bullets.

Hal had called it “deeply tacky.” Bruce had called it “predictable.” Clark had called it nothing, mostly because one of the bullets had lodged between his ribs and breathing had become an extremely complicated group project.

The Watchtower medbay had been bright and cold around him. Diana stood at his left, one hand on his shoulder. Bruce was at the monitors, jaw locked, pretending his worry was data analysis. J’onn lingered near the doorway, his expression quiet and grave. Clark lay on the exam table and tried not to tremble. He failed. Green veins crawled under his skin from the wound, branching outward like poisoned lightning. Every breath dragged fire through his lungs. Sweat gathered at his temples. His hearing flickered in and out, catching fragments.

“Shard is embedded.” “Radiation levels rising.” “Can’t cut without exposing him to more.” “Lead-lined tools?” “Not enough.”

Clark closed his eyes. The room tilted. He heard Bruce say your name. Then he heard your footsteps.

Not fast. Not frantic. Steady. That was the first thing he noticed about you. Not your face, not your voice, not the warmth of your hands. Your steadiness. You came into a room where Superman was dying by inches, and you did not panic.

Clark opened his eyes. You stood beside the table, looking down at him with an expression that was gentle but not afraid. That surprised him. People were afraid when he was hurt. Not only for him. Of him. Of what it meant. If Superman could bleed, then maybe the sky was not as safe as everyone thought. You only looked at Clark.

“Hi,” you said softly.

He tried to smile. It probably looked awful. “Hi.”

Bruce moved closer. “He was shot with a kryptonite round. Fragment remains lodged between the seventh and eighth ribs. Radiation is spreading through his bloodstream.”

“Rude place to put it,” you said. Clark huffed a laugh. It hurt. You looked at him. “Sorry. Bad time?”

“No,” Clark managed. “Good distraction.”

“Great. I have many terrible jokes.”

Bruce’s stare could have frozen lava. You ignored him entirely. Clark liked you immediately. Which, in hindsight, was the first warning sign.

You held your hands near the wound but did not touch.

“Clark,” you said, “I can help. I need to touch the wound. Is that okay?”

He blinked. People did not always ask him that. Not because they meant harm. Usually, because he was Superman, and Superman’s body was treated like a tool in emergencies. Armour. Shield. Rescue equipment. Something useful and indestructible until suddenly it wasn’t. But you asked. Like his pain was his. Like his body belonged to him even when it was failing.

“Yes,” he whispered.

Your hands settled over the wound. The pain changed. At first, it sharpened. Clark gasped, back arching off the table. Diana’s hand tightened on his shoulder. Bruce snapped your name like a warning. You did not move.

“Clark,” you said, voice steady. “Look at me.”

He did. Your eyes held his. Warm. Human. Determined.

“I’ve got you.”

Heat bloomed beneath your palms. Not solar heat. Not sunlight. Something else. Something soft and impossible.

The kryptonite burn receded. The green veins faded under his skin. The shard pushed itself out of his body into your waiting hand, slick with blood and glowing faintly. The wound closed. His lungs opened. The poison drained from his bloodstream so quickly that the relief was almost painful.

Clark inhaled. Fully. He heard everything again. The hum of the Watchtower. Bruce’s heartbeat. Diana’s breath. Your pulse.

Too fast. Your pulse was too fast. You stepped back, dropping the kryptonite shard into a lead-lined tray Bruce thrust toward you. Your hand shook. Then you folded it behind your back and smiled.

“There,” you said. “Better?”

Clark stared at you. He could still feel your hands on his ribs.

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” You turned to Bruce. “He’ll need rest.”

Bruce looked deeply offended by the concept of someone else issuing medical orders in his medbay. Clark nearly smiled. Then he heard it. A tiny shift in your breathing. Controlled. Suppressed. Pain. His eyes narrowed slightly.

“You’re hurt,” he said.

Your gaze flicked back to him. For half a second, your expression went blank. Then the smile returned. “Just tired.”

Lie. Clark heard it. Not in your heartbeat. Not exactly. It was not always that simple. Heartbeats changed for many reasons. Fear. Pain. Embarrassment. Relief. But your voice had gone too careful. Like you had wrapped the lie in gauze before handing it over.

Bruce noticed too. Clark saw the way his eyes sharpened. But you stepped back from the table, already looking toward the next injured hero, and the moment passed.

Clark let it. He had just nearly died. You had just saved him. He was tired.

That was what he told himself. Later, he would hate that.

You became part of the League’s rhythm after that. Not officially at first. You were called in for emergencies. Then difficult cases. Then anything involving injuries too strange for standard medicine. Magic burns. Alien venom. Psychic backlash. Curses. Broken bones from battles fought in gravity fields human bodies were not meant to endure.

Eventually, people stopped saying, “Should we call them?” They just called.

Clark saw you often. In medbays. On battlefields. At disaster sites. In the quiet hallways after missions, when everyone had stopped bleeding and started pretending they were fine. You were good at seeing through fine. Mostly because you said it so poorly yourself.

He noticed that too. Clark noticed many things. People assumed his powers made him observant, and they helped, of course. Hearing through walls, seeing microscopic cracks, smelling ozone before lightning struck — useful, all of it. But journalism had trained something different in him. Attention. The patient kind. The human kind. The kind that looked at a person and asked, What are you not saying?

You were not saying a lot. After healing Barry’s fractured femur, you leaned on the medbay counter for exactly twelve seconds when you thought no one was looking. After healing Diana’s sword wound, you walked with a stiffness in your side that lasted the rest of the day. After healing Hal’s concussion, you wore sunglasses in three different Watchtower corridors despite the fact that the lighting had not changed. After healing Bruce from a magical burn that had eaten through three layers of armour, you vanished for six hours.

Clark found you in the observation deck afterwards. Not because he was spying. Mostly. You stood with one hand pressed against the glass, looking down at Earth. The planet turned beneath the Watchtower in impossible blue silence, cloud systems curling over oceans like brushstrokes. Your shoulders were tense.

Clark stopped at the entrance. “Can I come in?”

You turned. Surprise crossed your face first. Then something softer. “Of course.”

He entered slowly, giving you space. He had learned that about you. You gave everyone space and did not seem to know what to do when it was offered back.

“You disappeared,” Clark said.

You smiled faintly. “That sounds dramatic.”

“You vanished from Batman’s medical follow-up schedule.”

“Ah. So I committed a felony.”

“At least three, I think.”

Your smile widened. Clark felt absurdly proud of that. He came to stand beside you, not too close. Earth glowed beneath both of you.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Tired.”

“Only tired?”

You looked at him. There was no accusation in his voice. That seemed to make the question harder for you.

Your gaze moved back to Earth. “Mostly tired.”

Clark nodded. He did not push. You seemed to relax by a fraction.

“I know you can hear when people lie,” you said after a moment.

“Not always.” Your eyes flicked toward him. He smiled slightly. “It’s not magic. Heartbeats are complicated. People can lie calmly. People can tell the truth while terrified. Sometimes I hear that someone is upset, but not why.”

“Huh.”

“Disappointed?”

“No. Relieved.”

Clark looked at you. That was honest. It hurt more than the lie would have. He rested his hands lightly on the railing. “I try not to listen unless I need to.”

“That must be hard.”

“It is.”

“Especially in rooms full of injured people.”

“Yes.”

You were quiet for a while. Then, softly, “Does it hurt? Hearing that much pain?”

Clark breathed in. The question was not one many people asked. He looked down at the Earth.

“Yes,” he said.

Your expression changed. “What do you do with it?” you asked.

Clark huffed a quiet laugh. “Some days? Fly faster.”

“And other days?”

“Go home. Call Ma. Make soup. Write something no one will publish because it’s too honest.”

You smiled. “Reporter problems?”

“Reporter problems.”

“I’d read it.” Clark looked at you. You looked back. The quiet between you changed shape. Then you glanced away, clearing your throat. “For the record, Bruce’s burn was worse than he admitted.”

“He’s bad at hiding pain.”

“He’s excellent at hiding pain.”

Clark’s mouth curved. “He’s bad at hiding from me.”

You laughed softly. It warmed the room more than the Earth’s reflected sun.

After that, Clark started finding reasons to talk to you outside of emergencies. Sometimes it was coffee. You liked yours with too much sweetness, which delighted him. He brought it once after a mission and tried to pretend it was incidental.

You took the cup, read the label, and looked at him with raised brows. “Clark Kent, did you memorise my coffee order?”

“No.”

“You are lying very badly for a journalist.”

“It was a lucky guess.”

“My name is written on the cup.”

He glanced down. It was. In bold marker. With a tiny heart next to it because the barista at the Watchtower café had apparently chosen violence. Clark adjusted his glasses, which he was wearing despite being in uniform because he had come from the Daily Planet and forgotten to take them off.

You smiled into the lid. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Later, he found tea waiting for him outside the debrief room. Chamomile. Honey. A sticky note attached to the cup. For when the world is loud.

Clark kept the note. Not in a sentimental way. Obviously. Just folded neatly in his wallet behind his press badge.

Normal behaviour. Entirely normal.

Diana noticed.

“They are kind,” Diana said one afternoon, watching you from across the training room as you argued with Guy Gardner about whether “walking it off” counted as a medical plan.

Clark looked up too quickly. “Who?”

Diana’s smile was terrible. “Subtlety does not suit you, Kal.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do.”

Across the room, you poked Guy in the chest and pointed sternly toward the medbay. Guy, astonishingly, went. Clark smiled before he could stop himself.

Diana’s expression softened. “You are fond of them.”

Clark looked down at his hands. Fond was a small word. Safe. Manageable. It did not cover the way his attention found you in every room. The way your tired smile stayed with him long after missions ended. The way his chest tightened whenever you swayed after healing someone. The way he wanted to know what made you laugh outside emergency lighting.

“I am,” he said.

Diana did not tease. That was how he knew she understood it was serious. “Be careful,” she said.

Clark’s smile faded. “With them?”

“With yourself.” He looked at her. Diana’s gaze was gentle and ancient. “You have spent your life being the shield,” she said. “It is difficult, sometimes, to let another stand before you.”

Clark looked back toward you. You were laughing now, head tipped slightly back, light catching on your face. His heart ached.

“I know,” he said.

Diana touched his shoulder. “I suspect they know too.”

The first kiss happened in Smallville. Clark had not planned it. 

He had planned many things that day, actually. He planned to introduce you to his mother because Martha Kent had asked about “that healer you keep smiling about” enough times that avoidance had become impossible. He planned to show you the farm. He planned to not look too pleased when you immediately fell in love with the barn cats. He planned to make dinner with his mother and not use heat vision for shortcuts because she always noticed and called it cheating. He planned to fly you back to Metropolis before midnight.

He did not plan to kiss you in the cornfield at sunset. That part just happened.

“You grew up here?” you asked, standing between the rows as evening light turned everything gold.

Clark walked beside you, hands tucked into his jacket pockets. “I did.”

“It’s beautiful.”

He looked at the fields. The farmhouse. The horizon. You.

“Yes,” he said.

You glanced at him. He looked away too late.

Your smile softened. “You’re different here.”

Clark laughed quietly. “Different bad?”

“No. Different like…” You searched for the word. “Quieter.”

He considered that. “I learned how to hear the world here,” he said. You slowed. Clark stopped with you. “When I was young, everything was too loud,” he continued. “Heartbeats. Insects under the soil. Planes miles overhead. People talking in town. My own blood moving. I didn’t know how to separate anything.”

You listened with your whole body. That was something you did. Made attention feel like a place to rest.

“Ma would bring me out here,” he said. “She’d tell me to find one sound at a time. Wind through corn. Tractor engine. Her heartbeat. My Pa’s boots on the porch.”

Your eyes shone.

Clark smiled faintly. “It helped.”

“I’m glad.”

The words were simple. They landed deep.

You reached out, fingers brushing the sleeve of his jacket.

“Can I?” you asked. His breath caught. It was only his arm. He could lift planes. He could hold collapsing bridges. He had survived bullets, bombs, alien invasions. But your hand hovered near his sleeve, asking permission, and Clark felt undone by it.

“Yes,” he said.

You touched him. Lightly. Your fingers rested over his forearm, warm through the fabric. “You’re always so careful with everyone,” you said.

Clark looked at you. “So are you.”

Your smile faded a little. “Occupational hazard.”

“Is that all it is?”

The question came out softer than he intended. You looked toward the horizon. Gold light gathered along your profile.

“No,” you said.

His heart changed rhythm. Truth. Not the whole truth. But truth.

Clark stepped closer. You did not move away.

“Sometimes,” you said, “if I’m not careful, I think I’ll disappear into what people need from me.”

Clark knew that feeling. God, he knew it.

“The healing?” he asked.

You looked back at him. “Everything.”

The word held a door inside it. Clark wanted to open it. Instead, he said, “You don’t disappear when I look at you.”

Your breath caught. Clark’s face warmed. That had sounded smoother in his head. Possibly because in his head, he was less farm-boy-in-love and more responsible adult man with emotional coordination.

You stared at him. “What?”

“I mean,” he said, then stopped. Nope. No recovering. The cornfield was silent except for crickets, wind, and his mother’s heartbeat from the porch, where she was absolutely pretending not to watch.

Clark cleared his throat. “I mean I see you.”

Your face changed. The way it had on the observation deck. Like the words hurt because they mattered. “Clark.”

He loved the way you said his name. Not Superman. Not Kal-El. Clark. The name his mother called from the kitchen. The name written on bylines. The name that belonged to flannel shirts, broken tractors, coffee-stained notebooks, and a boy who once hid in cornfields because the whole world was too loud.

“I see you too,” you whispered.

Then you kissed him. Or maybe he kissed you. It became difficult to assign responsibility afterwards. Your hand slid up his arm. His palm found your waist. He bent carefully, always carefully, even though you tugged him closer like you were not afraid of his strength at all. The kiss was soft. Then not. Then soft again, because Clark smiled into it and you laughed against his mouth.

When he pulled back, your eyes were closed.

“Was that okay?” he asked.

Your eyes opened. Your smile was devastating. “Clark, you floated.”

He looked down. His boots were four inches above the dirt. “Oh.”

You laughed.

From the porch, Martha Kent called, “Dinner’s getting cold!”

Clark dropped to the ground so fast you laughed harder. His ears burned.

“Your mom saw.”

“Ma sees everything.”

“She’s smiling.”

Clark glanced toward the house. His mother waved with the supreme confidence of a woman who had raised Superman and feared nothing.

You waved back. Clark covered his face.

You kissed his cheek. He decided embarrassment was worth it.

Loving Clark was not difficult. At least, you made it look easy. That frightened him sometimes. Not because he thought you were careless with love. Because you were careful with it. You learned the difference between Clark and Superman without ever making him feel split in two. You did not treat his softness like a secret identity or his strength like a performance. You understood that both were real.

You sat beside him while he wrote articles at two in the morning, your legs tucked under you on his couch, editing his sentences with ruthless affection.

“Too noble,” you said, pointing at a paragraph.

Clark blinked. “It’s about city council corruption.”

“You still made it sound like a moral epic.”

“It kind of is.”

“It’s zoning laws.”

“Zoning laws matter.”

“Clark.”

He leaned over your shoulder. “What would you write?”

You thought for a moment, then rewrote the sentence in the margin. It was better.

He sighed. You smiled. “Don’t pout. It’s unbecoming for a Pulitzer winner.”

“I am not pouting.”

“You are farm-boy brooding.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It is now.”

You were also the first person outside his family to learn how he listened when the world became too much. Sometimes he would go quiet mid-conversation, head tilting slightly. You would pause. “Emergency?” He would listen. Sometimes yes. Then he would kiss your forehead and leave in a blur of red and blue. Sometimes no. A siren already handled. A baby crying but safe. A car backfiring. A fight resolving without violence. On those nights, you would touch his hand and say, “Come back.”

Not from danger. From listening. From spreading himself across every cry in the city until Clark Kent became only a receiving station for pain. He always came back. For you, he came back. But he still worried. Because he noticed you, too. Your disappearances after major healings. The way your smile sometimes arrived half a beat late. The way you treated your own pain like an administrative inconvenience. He asked. You answered. Sometimes.

“Does it hurt you?” he asked one night on his balcony after you healed a burn across J’onn’s shoulder.

The city hummed below. You leaned against the railing, wrapped in one of Clark’s sweaters. It was too big on you. He had opinions about that. Several. None appropriate for the serious mood. “My power?”

“Yes.”

You looked down at your hands. “Sometimes.”

His heart tightened. “How much?”

“Clark.”

“I’m not trying to interrogate you.”

“I know.”

“Then tell me.”

You looked up. The city lights reflected in your eyes. “If I tell you it hurts, you’ll stop asking for help.”

“I don’t ask for myself often.”

“That’s not better.”

He sighed quietly. You touched his hand.

“There are costs,” you said. “But there are costs to doing nothing, too.”

“What costs?”

You smiled sadly. “You know those.”

Clark did. That was the problem. You were both too good at making sacrifices sound reasonable. He turned his hand and laced his fingers through yours.

“One day,” he said softly, “you’re going to have to trust me with the whole truth.”

Your fingers tightened. “One day,” you echoed.

Lie? No. Not exactly. Hope disguised as a delay. Clark let it rest.

He would regret that later. He would regret many things later.

The mission began with Lex Luthor. Technically, Clark could not prove that at first. Batman frowned upon “I know it was Lex because it has his emotionally constipated billionaire stink all over it” as evidence.

Still. Clark knew. The first sign was a tremor in the Arctic. The second was a burst of red solar radiation detected by the Fortress of Solitude. The third was the emergence of a black-market satellite network using stolen Kryptonian coding from one of Brainiac’s old probes.

By the time the League traced the signal to an abandoned observatory in northern Canada, Clark’s stomach had already tightened into a knot. Kryptonian technology. Red sun radiation. Unknown magical overlay. That last part had Zatanna concerned, which made everyone else deeply concerned because when Zatanna looked at a spell and said, “That’s rude,” things were usually about to get apocalyptic.

You came to the briefing. Clark did not want you there. He also knew better than to say that in front of everyone unless he wanted Diana to give him the disappointed-warrior-princess look and Bruce to silently agree while pretending not to. So he waited until after. You were packing a medical kit when he approached.

“No,” you said before he spoke.

Clark stopped. You did not look up. “I haven’t said anything.”

“You have a face.”

“I always have a face.”

“Currently it’s the ‘please stay somewhere safe because I love you and I’m terrified’ face.” His mouth closed. You glanced up. Your expression softened. “I’m going, Clark.”

“It’s Kryptonian tech. And red sun radiation. And magic.”

“I know.”

“That combination could affect your power unpredictably.”

“That combination could kill you.” He had no answer. You zipped the kit shut. “I’m not going because I think you’re weak,” you said.

“I know.”

“I’m going because if something hurts you, I want to be there.”

Clark looked down at your hands. Hands that had healed him before. Hands that shook afterwards. Hands he had kissed in his kitchen, in his apartment, in the cornfield where he first floated because you touched him like he was only a man and still somehow enough.

“I don’t want you hurt because of me,” he said.

Your face gentled. “That’s not a choice you get to make for me.”

He looked at you. The sentence would come back later. A knife thrown forward in time.

He almost argued. Instead, he stepped closer. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

You smiled faintly. “I will be as careful as hero work allows.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

He leaned down and pressed his forehead to yours. For a second, the Watchtower faded. Only you remained. Your heartbeat. His. The fragile, ordinary rhythm of two people who loved each other in a world addicted to ending.

“I love you,” Clark said softly.

Your hand touched his cheek. “I love you too.”

He kissed you.

Bruce walked in seven seconds later. “Are you done?”

Clark pulled back, ears burning. You smiled against his mouth. “Hi, Bruce.”

Bruce looked unimpressed. Or as unimpressed as a man could look while clearly relieved Clark had someone to kiss before dangerous missions.

“We leave in five,” he said. Then he left.

You laughed. Clark tried to smile. It did not quite land. You noticed. You squeezed his hand.

“Come back to me,” you said.

His chest tightened. “Always.”

Another promise that would soon become complicated.

The observatory stood beneath a dead sky. No stars. That was the first wrong thing. Clouds smothered the moon, but even beyond them, Clark could feel an absence above the facility. The air tasted metallic. Sound behaved strangely, swallowed at the edges by a field of red solar interference that made his skin prickle. The League approached in formation. Batman, Wonder Woman, Zatanna, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Superman. And you, near the rear, protected but present, carrying a medkit and an expression that told Clark you knew exactly how often he glanced back.

“Stop checking on me,” you said over comms.

Hal snorted. “Trouble in paradise?”

Bruce said, “Focus.”

Barry whispered, “That means yes.”

Diana sounded amused. “Indeed.”

Clark closed his eyes for half a second. 

You laughed softly into comms. The sound steadied him.

Then the observatory opened.

Not the doors. The building itself. Metal panels unfolded like petals, revealing a core of alien machinery beneath old stone. Kryptonian script crawled across black pylons, wrong and corrupted. Red light pulsed from the central tower, spilling over the snow in long, bloody shadows.

Zatanna inhaled sharply. “That is not just technologu.”

Batman’s voice was grim. “Magic?”

“Necromantic structure. Solar inversion. Something is using death as a battery.”

Clark’s blood went cold.

Then the first beam fired. Red sunlight lanced across the snow.

Clark dodged, barely. The beam struck a ridge behind him and vaporised stone.

“Scatter!” Bruce snapped.

The battle became chaos. Diana flew toward the central tower, shield raised. Hal constructed a barrier around the medical evacuation point. Barry blurred between pylons, planting disruptors. J’onn reached out telepathically and recoiled with a hiss of pain. Clark flew high, scanning for the source.

He found it beneath the observatory. A chamber carved into the mountain. At its centre stood a Kryptonian crystal engine wrapped in chains of spellwork and threaded through with kryptonite.

Green veins. Red sun core. Black magic.

Clark’s stomach dropped.

A voice came through the tower speakers.

Lex’s voice filtered through something else. “Hello, Superman.”

Clark hovered midair. Batman cursed softly.

“Luthor,” Clark said.

“Predictable, I know. I’d apologise, but neither of us would believe me.”

The red solar field intensified. Clark’s flight faltered. He dropped ten feet before catching himself.

You said his name over comms. He heard the fear.

He looked toward you. You stood near the rear line beside Zatanna, eyes fixed on him.

“I’m okay,” he said.

Lie. You knew.

“Kal,” Diana warned.

The mountain shook. From beneath the observatory emerged something shaped like a man but built from wrongness: armor plated in lead-black metal, veins glowing kryptonite green beneath transparent sections, a core pulsing red in the chest.

Metallo technology. Kryptonian engine. Magic binding. A weapon designed by someone who knew exactly how to hurt Superman and had decided that was not enough.

The thing looked at Clark.

Its chest opened. Kryptonite light flooded the snow.

Clark fell. Not far. Diana caught him midair, but the radiation burned through him even at a distance. His muscles seized. His vision tunneled green. The red solar field stripped strength from his cells while kryptonite poisoned what remained.

He hit the ground on one knee.

The weapon advanced. Diana slammed into it with a force that cracked the mountain beneath them. It staggered, then drove a kryptonite blade into her shoulder.

She cried out. 

Clark moved. He did not think. He never did when someone he loved was hurt.

He launched himself forward through the red field, through the kryptonite radiation, through every alarm his body screamed. He struck the weapon hard enough to send both of them through the observatory wall and into the chamber below.

The world went green and red.

They crashed beside the crystal engine.

Clark tried to rise. His arms shook.

The weapon stood over him.

“Subject responsive,” Luthor’s voice said. “Escalating.”

The engine activated. Kryptonite spikes rose from the floor.

Clark rolled away from the first. The second punched through his side.

The pain was absolute.

He screamed. Far away, someone screamed his name.

You.

No. He tried to push himself off the spike.

Another red solar pulse hit him. His strength vanished. The weapon seized him by the throat and lifted him against the engine core. Kryptonite radiation poured directly into his bloodstream. Magic hooked into the wound, preventing his cells from closing around the damage.

He could hear his heart. Too slow.

He could hear the League fighting above. Too far.

He could hear you running. Too close.

No.

No, no, no.

“Stay back,” he tried to say over comms. It came out as a wet gasp.

The chamber doors blew open. Batman entered first, cape torn, armour smoking. Diana followed, bleeding gold-red from the shoulder. Hal’s constructs slammed into the weapon, driving it back. Barry blurred to Clark’s side and stopped with horror across his face.

“Clark.”

“Don’t touch the spike,” Batman snapped. “It’s saturated.”

Clark could barely focus.

Then you were there. You slid to your knees beside him, ignoring Bruce’s sharp command to stay back.

Your hands hovered over the wound. Your face was pale. Clark had never seen you look afraid like that.

Not for yourself. For him.

“Hey,” you whispered.

He wanted to smile. Couldn’t.

“Hi,” he breathed.

Your mouth trembled.

Bad. Bad if you could not hide it.

“Don’t,” he said.

You shook your head. “Clark—”

“Don’t.”

The kryptonite spike pulsed. Pain tore through him. His body arched, but the spike held him pinned.

You reached for him. Clark caught your wrist. Barely.

His grip had no strength. He hated that.

“You can’t take this,” he said.

Your eyes filled.

He knew. Enough from your disappearances. Your tremors. The lies. The way pain followed your miracles like a shadow with teeth.

“You don’t know that,” you whispered.

“It’s kryptonite.”

“I know.”

“And magic.”

“I know.”

“And red sun radiation.”

“I know.”

“You’re human.”

Your face broke. “No,” you said softly. “I’m yours.”

Clark’s heart stuttered. Not from kryptonite.

From terror. From love. From the terrible understanding of what you had already decided.

“Please,” he whispered.

Your hand touched his cheek. “I can’t watch you die.”

“You ask me to come back to you,” he said, voice barely there. “Don’t leave me instead.”

The tears spilled over. For one second, he thought maybe it was enough. Maybe you would stop.

Then the weapon surged back to its feet behind you.

Diana shouted. Batman threw a batarang that shattered one of the pylons.

The engine pulsed. Clark’s vision went almost black.

His heart stumbled. You felt it. Your face changed.

Not fear now. Decision.

“I love you,” you said.

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No.”

Your hands closed around the wound. And you breathed in.

Clark’s world became sunlight.

Not yellow. Not warm.

White. Blinding. The kryptonite spike slid out of his body as if expelled by force. The wound closed. Magic snapped. Red solar weakness evaporated. His cells drank in the faint solar energy stored deep inside him and reignited.

Strength flooded back. Breath. Heartbeat. Heat vision flickering behind his eyes. He gasped and fell forward onto his hands. Whole. Alive.

Then you screamed.

Clark turned.

The sound ended the world.

You collapsed where he had been, one hand clamped to your side as green-black veins spread under your skin. Blood soaked through your suit. A wound opened beneath your ribs, not identical to his but close enough, deep and glowing faintly with corrupted light. Your body convulsed once as red solar radiation and kryptonite poisoning tried to translate themselves into human biology.

You were not Kryptonian. You had no cells waiting for yellow sun. No alien physiology built to process the poison. No invulnerability to slow the damage.

Clark caught you before your head struck the floor. “No,” he said.

It was not a word. It was a denial of reality.

Your eyes rolled, unfocused with pain. He cradled you against his chest, one hand over the wound, and felt blood slide between his fingers.

His blood. No. Yours. Because of him.

“No, no, no.”

Batman was beside him instantly. “Kal.”

Clark heard him. Barely. Diana and Hal fought the weapon behind them. Zatanna’s voice echoed through the chamber, spells unraveling the engine. Barry was moving so fast the air shook.

But Clark could only hear you. Your heart. Too fast. Too weak. Wrong.

“Can you hear me?” Clark asked, voice cracking. “Please. Please, sweetheart, can you hear me?”

Your eyelids fluttered. You looked at him.

Relief.

Clark nearly broke in half.

“You’re okay,” you whispered.

“No.” His hand pressed harder over the wound. “No, don’t do that. Don’t look at me like that.”

Your mouth trembled. “Knew… it’d work.”

“You didn’t know you’d survive.” Your eyes drifted. He shook his head. “Stay with me,” he begged. “Stay. Come back to me.”

The words were yours. They hurt coming from his mouth.

Your fingers twitched weakly against the front of his suit. Trying to hold on. He covered your hand with his.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

You had said that to him once. In the medbay. With green poison in his veins. He had believed you. Now he understood the cost of that comfort.

Your breathing hitched.

Batman’s voice cut through his panic. “The wound is radiological and magical. Watchtower medbay won’t be enough.”

Clark looked up. Bruce’s eyes were grim.

“Fortress,” Bruce said.

Clark did not wait. He gathered you in his arms and launched upward through the shattered observatory roof. Snow exploded around him. The sky opened.

He flew.

Clark had flown fast before. Faster than sound. Faster than bullets. Faster than disaster when he had no other choice. 

He had never flown like this. The world became a blur of white and black beneath him. Cold air tore past his face. He shielded you with his body, one hand pressed to your wound, the other cradling your head against his chest.

“Stay,” he said again and again.

He did not know if you heard.

Your heart answered. Weakly.

Still there. Still there. Still there.

The Fortress rose from the Arctic ice like a memory of a world Clark had never truly known. Crystal towers caught the dim light and fractured it into pale, cold brilliance.

The doors opened before he landed. The Fortress recognised his distress. Or perhaps it recognised yours. Either way, Clark carried you inside.

“Kelor,” he called, voice breaking.

The Fortress AI responded immediately, calm and melodic. “Kal-El. Medical emergency detected. Patient is human. Severe radiation poisoning. Unknown magical contamination. Kryptonian cellular trauma signatures present.”

Clark stumbled. Kryptonian trauma. In your human body. Because you had taken it from him.

“Can you treat them?” he asked.

“Partial treatment possible. Human biology is incompatible with several injury markers. Recommend solar isolation chamber, magical contamination quarantine, and immediate stabilisation.”

“Do it.”

Crystal panels unfolded from the floor. A medical platform rose beneath golden lamps designed to simulate yellow sunlight for Kryptonian recovery. Clark placed you down as gently as he could.

Too gently. Not gently enough.

You whimpered. Clark flinched.

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

Mechanical arms moved around you, scanning, cleaning, sealing. A golden field lowered over your body. The wound in your side pulsed green-black. Clark stood beside the platform, hands stained with blood. Your blood.

“Radiation type resembles kryptonite but is altered by transfer through metahuman ability. Damage is less severe than original Kryptonian injury but remains critical.”

Less severe. Clark almost laughed. The sound would have been horrible.

Less severe did not mean survivable. Less severe did not mean fair. Less severe did not mean you had not taken a death sentence into your own body because you could not bear his.

His knees weakened. He gripped the edge of the platform. The metal dented beneath his fingers.

“Clark,” you rasped.

His head snapped up. Your eyes were half-open. Pain-glazed. Still searching for him.

He moved into your line of sight. “I’m here.”

You tried to smile. It failed. “Fortress?”

“Yes.”

“Pretty.”

A broken laugh caught in his throat. “Yeah. Pretty.”

Your gaze moved over his face. “You’re healed?”

Clark closed his eyes. Tears slipped free before he could stop them. When he opened them, you were watching him with aching tenderness.

“I’m healed,” he said.

“Good.”

“No.”

Your brow furrowed faintly. He leaned over you, careful not to interfere with the scanners.

“No,” he said again, voice shaking. “It isn’t good. Not like this.”

Your face shifted. Understanding. Guilt. Pain.

“I couldn’t let you die,” you whispered.

“And you thought I could let you?”

Your eyes filled. The golden lamps reflected in your tears.

Clark’s hands hovered uselessly. He wanted to touch you. He was afraid to. Afraid that even his gentleness would be too much for your damaged body. You noticed.

“Hand,” you whispered.

He stared. You moved your fingers weakly.

Clark broke. He took your hand with both of his, holding it as if it were made of breath. Your fingers were cold. They should not have been cold under artificial sunlight.

“Kelor,” Clark said, voice tight. “Why are they cold?”

“Circulatory instability. Treatment ongoing.”

“Fix it.”

“Treatment ongoing,” the android repeated.

Clark hated machines. Not always. Right now.

You squeezed his hand weakly.

“Bossy,” you whispered.

He laughed once through tears. “You’re one to talk.”

Your mouth twitched. Then pain seized you. Your back arched. The monitors shrilled. Green light flared beneath your skin, veins bright and horrible along your throat.

Clark froze.

Kelor’s voice cut through the alarms. “Magical contamination spike. Administering counter-frequency.”

The golden field brightened. You screamed. Clark almost shattered the platform.

Batman’s voice came through comms. “Clark. Status.”

Clark had forgotten the comm was still active. He could hear the League on the other end. Bruce, Diana, maybe everyone. The battle had ended. The weapon destroyed. The observatory collapsing into snow. He could not care.

“They’re in pain,” Clark said.

His voice did not sound like his own.

Bruce was quiet for half a second. Then, softer, “Are they stable?”

Clark looked at the monitors. He could read Kryptonian medical notation well enough. He wished he couldn’t. “No.”

You gasped as the spike passed. Clark bent over your hand, pressing his mouth to your knuckles.

“I’m here,” he said. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Your eyes fluttered. “Don’t… be mad.”

He went still. Then lifted his head. “What?”

Your lips barely moved. “Please.”

Clark stared at you. Something inside him, already cracked, gave way.

“You almost died,” he said. You blinked slowly. “I almost watched you die in my place.”

Your eyes shone.

“I’m angry,” he whispered, like confession. Like sin. “I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with it.”

Your breath hitched.

Clark shook his head quickly, tears falling now. “Not because you saved me. I’m grateful. God, I’m grateful. I’m alive because of you.” His voice broke. “But I’m standing here whole while you’re poisoned with something meant for me.”

Your fingers twitched in his. “I chose it,” you whispered.

“I know.”

That was the problem. That was the wound beneath the wound. You had chosen. Not accidentally. Not under ignorance. Not because you failed to understand danger. You had looked at him dying and decided your suffering was acceptable if it meant his stopped.

Clark loved you for it. He hated it. He hated that his body was grateful. He hated that his lungs opened easily while yours struggled. He hated that some shameful, relieved part of him had felt the first breath after healing and thought, I get to live. He hated that your pain was the reason.

“You should have asked me,” he said.

Your face crumpled. “If I had asked…”

“I would have said no.”

“Yes,” you whispered.

Clark closed his eyes. 

The truth. The soft, terrible theft inside the miracle.

When he opened his eyes, you were crying silently.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

He leaned down and pressed his forehead carefully to yours. The golden field hummed between you like warm static.

“I love you,” he whispered. “And I am furious with you. I don’t know how to be both.”

“You’re doing it.”

A laugh broke out of him, wet and wounded. Even now. Even now, you gave him that. You gave him a way through.

Clark kissed your forehead.

“I love you,” he said again.

Your eyes closed. “I love you too.”

Then you lost consciousness.

Clark did not let go of your hand.

Time moved strangely in the Fortress. Maybe because there were no windows that showed normal weather, no clocks that ticked in human increments, no city noise pressing in from all directions. Only ice. Crystal. Machines. Artificial sunlight.

Your heart.

Clark counted that instead.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

He sat beside you while Kelor filtered the contaminated radiation from your bloodstream. He sat while the wound in your side stopped glowing. He sat while magical residue burned away in tiny painful increments that made your body twitch even in sleep.

The League came after six hours.

Bruce arrived first. He stepped into the medical chamber wearing a thermal suit beneath his cape, cowl down, expression carved into something too controlled to be calm. Diana came behind him. Then J’onn. Then, after a moment, Lois.

Clark looked up when he heard her heartbeat. He had not realised Bruce called her.

Lois took one look at him and crossed the room.

No hesitation. No fear of alien machinery or Arctic cold or Superman with blood on his hands.

She wrapped her arms around him. Clark nearly fell apart. He held her carefully, because he always held carefully, and buried his face briefly against her shoulder.

“They’re alive,” Lois said into his ear.

“For now.”

“For now is where we start.”

He let out a broken breath. When she pulled back, her eyes were red. She looked at you on the platform.

“Oh, honey,” she whispered.

Lois loved you. She had from the first dinner, when you corrected Clark’s overdramatic article draft, and Lois declared you “the only person in this room with taste.”

Clark had been offended. Mildly. For show. Mostly, he had been happy.

Now Lois stood beside your bed, one hand hovering near yours. She glanced at Clark for permission.

He almost laughed at the ache of it. Permission. Everyone was learning too late.

He nodded. Lois touched your hand gently.

Bruce stood on Clark’s other side. For a long while, he said nothing. Then, quietly, “I should have known.”

Clark closed his eyes. “No.”

“Yes.”

Clark turned to him. Bruce’s face was grim. Of course he was already assembling blame. Of course he had found some way to make your secret his failure. Batman could turn sunrise into a contingency if given enough time.

“No,” Clark said again. “Not right now.” Bruce looked at him. Clark’s voice roughened. “I don’t have room to help you blame yourself. I’m using all of it.”

Bruce went silent. Diana stepped closer, her gaze full of sorrow.

“They have saved many of us,” she said.

“Yes.”

“At cost.”

Clark looked at you. “Yes.”

J’onn’s voice entered gently. “They carried pain in silence because they believed silence was kindness.”

Lois’s hand tightened over yours. Clark swallowed.

“It wasn’t,” he said.

“No,” J’onn agreed. “But it was love.”

Clark looked at him sharply. J’onn did not flinch.

“Love can be misguided,” he said. “Even harmful. It does not become hatred because it wounds.”

Clark looked down. His hands were still stained faintly red despite washing them.

“I don’t know how to forgive them for saving me,” he said.

The words entered the room and opened something.

Lois looked at him. Bruce looked away. Diana’s eyes softened.

Clark laughed once, broken. “That sounds awful.”

“It sounds honest,” Lois said.

He shook his head. “I’m alive because of them. And I’m angry.”

“Yes.”

“They almost died.”

“Yes.”

“I should be grateful.”

“You are,” Lois said. “You’re also scared out of your mind.”

Clark’s throat tightened. 

Lois touched his arm. “Smallville, listen to me. You don’t have to make your feelings neat before they’re real.”

He looked at her. 

She smiled sadly. “You love them. You’re angry. You’re grateful. You’re hurt. All of that can sit at the same table.”

Clark exhaled slowly. The Fortress hummed around them. Artificial sunlight poured over your still body. All of it at the same table.

Messy. Human. Hard.

He could do human. He had been raised human.

He nodded. Only once.

But it helped.

You woke on the second day.

Clark was the only one there when it happened. Lois had gone to sleep in one of the guest chambers after threatening Clark with bodily harm if he did not “at least close his eyes for ten minutes.” Bruce had returned to Gotham to investigate the remnants of the weapon. Diana and J’onn were coordinating with the League.

Clark sat beside you, reading aloud from a book of poems his mother had sent years ago. He did not know if you could hear him. He read anyway. 

His voice stopped when your heartbeat changed. Your fingers twitched.

Clark set the book down immediately. “Sweetheart?”

Your eyelids fluttered. Opened. Your gaze wandered across the crystal ceiling, unfocused, before finding him.

Clark forgot how to breathe.

“Hi,” he whispered.

Your mouth moved. No sound came out.

He reached for the water. Helped you sip. You winced. He felt it like a blow.

“Easy,” he murmured.

Your eyes stayed on him.

“Sun,” you rasped.

Clark blinked. “What?”

“Feels… like sun.”

He looked up at the golden lamps. “They’re solar emitters.”

“Nice.”

A laugh escaped him. Small. Shaky. “Only you would review alien medical equipment.”

Your lips curved faintly. Then your eyes moved over his face.

Checking. Always checking.

“Are you hurt?”

Clark closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, you were watching him with worry.

Not relief this time. Worry. Progress, maybe.

“No,” he said. “I’m not hurt.”

Your face softened. He held up a hand before you could speak.

“But you are.”

Your eyes lowered.

The room went still. Kelor’s machines hummed quietly.

Clark leaned forward. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Yes.”

“Everything?”

You swallowed. “Yes.”

He nodded. His chest felt too small. “I need to ask you something.”

Your gaze lifted. Fear moved through it.

He hated that. He hated more that he had to continue. “How long has your healing worked that way?”

You closed your eyes. Clark already knew. That did not make it hurt less.

“Always,” you whispered.

He bowed his head. The word landed with all the weight of every miracle he had accepted.

Always.

The kryptonite bullet in Coast City. Bruce’s magical burns. Diana’s sword wound. Barry’s shattered bones. J’onn’s psychic backlash. His own injuries, again and again.

Always.

“All of it?” he asked.

Your eyes opened, wet. “Most of it.”

Clark’s laugh was barely a sound. “Most of it.”

“I’m sorry.”

He stood. Not because he wanted distance. Because staying still had become impossible.

You flinched. He stopped immediately. The reaction cut through him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly.

“I know.”

But your heartbeat had jumped.

Clark sat back down. Slowly. Carefully. He folded his hands together so he would not reach for you too quickly.

“You were afraid I’d stop you,” he said.

You looked at the ceiling. “Yes.”

“You were right.”

Your mouth trembled. “I know.”

“You lied to me. You let me believe healing me didn’t hurt you.”

Your eyes squeezed shut. “Yes.”

Clark inhaled. The air in the Fortress was crisp, sterile, cold beneath the artificial warmth. He could hear ice shifting miles away. He focused on that for one second. Then returned to you.

“Do you know what kryptonite feels like?”

You opened your eyes. Confusion flickered. Then understanding.

Clark’s voice stayed quiet. “I don’t mean now. I don’t mean after the transfer. I mean before. Do you know what it feels like for me?”

You shook your head slightly.

“It feels like every cell in my body forgetting the sun,” he said. Your face went still. “It feels like something inside me is being unmade. Not burned. Not cut. Unmade.” Tears slipped down your temples. “And you took that into your body without knowing if human biology could survive the translation.”

Your mouth parted.

No defense came. No soft lie. Only tears.

“I knew the transfer would change it,” you whispered.

“You hoped.”

You flinched.

Clark leaned forward, voice shaking now. “You hoped it would change enough.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“I need you to say it.”

Your face crumpled. “Because I love you.”

The words hurt. They should not have hurt. Clark had heard them from you a hundred times by now. In his kitchen. Over sleepy phone calls. Pressed into his shoulder after long missions. Laughed into his mouth in the farmhouse kitchen when his mother pretended not to smile. Here, under artificial sun, with green poison still fading from your veins, they hurt.

“Love isn’t supposed to make you my shield,” he said.

Your breath broke. “You’re always everyone else’s,” you whispered. Clark froze. There it was. Your truth, sharp and shining beneath the wound. “You stand in front of everything,” you said, voice thin with exhaustion. “Bullets. Buildings. Monsters. Gods. Grief. You hear everyone, Clark. All the time. And you go. You always go.”

He looked down.

“I couldn’t stand there and watch the world finally be too heavy for you.”

His eyes burned. “I’m not the world.”

“You are to me.”

Clark’s breath left him.

You looked almost startled by your own honesty. Then you kept going, because apparently, pain had burned away whatever caution remained. “You’re Clark. You’re coffee rings on article drafts and half-burned pancakes because you use heat vision when you’re distracted. Your phone calls to your mom during storms. You’re pretending not to cry at dog adoption stories. You’re the way you say thank you to vending machines.”

“I do not—”

“You do.”

He closed his mouth.

“You’re not just Superman to me,” you whispered. “And I couldn’t watch you die like everyone had the right to ask it from you.”

Clark looked at you. The anger did not vanish. But love rose through it, terrible and bright.

“You think I could watch that from you?” he asked.

Your eyes filled again. “No.”

“But you chose it anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Because you thought my life mattered more?”

“No,” you said immediately.

Clark waited. 

You swallowed. “Because in that moment, I thought I could survive it better than you could.”

He stared.

You continued, voice shaking. “And maybe that’s arrogant. Maybe it’s awful. Maybe it’s unfair. But I saw that thing killing you, and I knew my body might twist it into something less. Not harmless. Never harmless. But less.” Your uninjured hand curled weakly in the blanket. “I thought I could take enough of it to keep you here.”

Clark understood then.

Not forgiveness. Understanding. You had not thought yourself worthless. That might have been easier to argue against.

No. You had calculated pain like weather. You had seen a storm built to kill him and believed your body could break the wind. You had been right.

That was worse.

Because he was alive. And you were not dead. And some part of him, some grateful, horrified part, knew the math had worked.

He hated the math.

He reached for your hand. Paused. “May I?”

Your face crumpled. “Yes.”

He took it gently. Your fingers curled around his with weak desperation.

“I love you,” he said. You closed your eyes. “I love you so much that I don’t know where to put the anger.” Your hand tightened. “I’m grateful.”

“I know.”

“I hate that I’m grateful.”

A tear slid down your cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I’ll keep saying it.”

“I know.”

He lifted your hand and pressed it to his mouth. Artificial sunlight warmed both of you.

“You saved me,” he whispered against your skin. You breathed shakily. “And you hurt me.”

Clark looked at you. Both truths sat there. Neither erased the other.

“I know,” you said.

“I don’t forgive you yet.”

Your face twisted. 

He leaned closer. “But I’m here.”

A sob caught in your throat.

“I’m not leaving,” he said. “I’m angry, and I’m here. I’m scared, and I’m here. I love you, and I’m here.”

You cried then. Clark stood and bent over you, careful of every wire, every bandage, every bruise he could see and every one he could not.

He kissed your forehead. You clung weakly to his hand.

“I’m here,” he repeated.

Like a promise. Like a prayer. Like the first thing he could give you that did not require either of you to bleed.

Recovery happened under yellow sun.

Not the real one at first. Kelor insisted you remain in the Fortress until your bloodstream showed no trace of transferred kryptonite radiation. Clark translated the medical explanations into human terms, then Lois translated them again into “normal person English” because Clark, despite his best efforts, had started saying things like “cellular resonance contamination.”

You laughed so hard you winced.

Lois pointed at Clark. “See? You’re hurting the patient with nerd behaviour.”

Clark pushed his glasses up. “I’m not wearing glasses.”

“Spiritually, you are.”

You smiled from the medical platform, pale but alive.

Clark would take the teasing. He would take anything if it meant you kept smiling.

The wound in your side healed slowly. Not like a normal human wound, according to Kelor. Not like Clark’s either. Something in your power had absorbed, translated, and muted the injury, turning a fatal Kryptonian trauma into a survivable human catastrophe. A phrase Lois hated.

“A survivable catastrophe is still a catastrophe,” she said.

You nodded meekly. Clark raised an eyebrow.

You pointed at Lois. “I’m scared of her.”

“Correct,” Lois said.

Martha came on the third day. Clark met her at the Fortress entrance and immediately folded into her arms like he was ten years old again.

She held him without comment. That was his mother’s gift. She knew when words helped and when they only made the wound echo.

After a while, she patted his back. “Take me to them.”

You cried when you saw her.

“I’m sorry,” you said immediately.

Martha Kent looked at you in that way she had. Soft as pie crust, strong as a tornado shelter.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, sitting beside you. “I know.”

“I hurt him.”

“Yes.”

You flinched.

Martha took your hand. “And you saved him.”

Your eyes filled.

“And now,” Martha continued, “you’re going to have to do the harder thing and let him be hurt without trying to fix it.”

Clark stood near the doorway, throat tight.

You looked at him. Then back at Martha. “I don’t know how.”

Martha smiled sadly. “Most of us don’t, at first.”

She stayed the whole day. She brought soup, because apparently even alien fortresses benefited from soup. She made Clark eat. She made you drink tea. She charmed Kelor into raising the ambient temperature by two degrees.

“You negotiated with Kryptonian AI,” Clark said.

Martha shrugged. “I raised you. I’m used to stubborn alien things.”

You laughed. Clark loved both of you so much he had to look away.

That evening, after Martha and Lois had gone to sleep in the guest quarters, Clark sat beside you under the solar lamps.

You were more awake now. Still weak. But present.

Your fingers traced the edge of the blanket.

“Do you hear it?” you asked.

Clark looked up from the book he was pretending to read. “Hear what?”

“The world.”

He listened. The Fortress dampened most external sound by default, but not for him. Not fully. He heard ice shifting. Wind. Distant ocean. Farther, if he reached, the blur of civilization. Satellites. Planes. Faint cries and laughter and music scattered across the curvature of Earth.

“Yes.”

“Is it hard not to go?”

He closed the book. “Sometimes.”

“You’ve stayed here for days.”

“Yes.”

“Because of me.”

Clark looked at you.

“With you,” he corrected.

Your eyes softened. “That sounds nicer.”

“It’s also truer.”

You were quiet for a moment. Then, “Are you angry right now?”

Clark appreciated the question. He hated the answer.

“Yes.”

You nodded. Your fingers tightened in the blanket. “Thank you for telling me.”

He set the book aside and leaned forward. “I’m less angry than yesterday.”

“That’s something.”

“It is.”

“Still not forgiving me?”

“No.”

Your smile was sad. “That’s fair.”

“I’m working on it.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to punish you with it.”

Your eyes lifted to his.

Clark’s hands curled together. “I need you to know that. I’m not withholding forgiveness to hurt you. I just…” He exhaled. “I still see you on the floor when I close my eyes.”

Your face crumpled. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I still see you pinned to that machine,” you whispered.

Clark went still.

Your voice trembled. “I see the spike. The green in your veins. Your face when you realised I was going to do it.” He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” you said. “I know I keep saying that.”

He opened his eyes. You looked broken open by it.

“I don’t want you to stop,” he said softly. Your brow furrowed. “Not because I want you to suffer. Because I need to know you understand.”

Your gaze dropped. “I do.”

“I know.” He reached for your hand. “And I need to keep hearing it for a while.”

You nodded. “Okay.”

Clark lifted your hand and kissed it. “Thank you.”

You looked at him with a tiny, wounded smile. “For apologising?”

“For staying honest when it hurts.”

Your eyes shone. “You make that sound beautiful.”

“It is.”

“It sucks.”

“That too.”

A laugh escaped you.

Clark smiled. Small. Real.

Your breath caught.

“What?”

“You smiled.”

His smile faded into something softer. “I do that.”

“You haven’t much.”

“No.”

You looked at your joined hands. “I missed it.”

Clark leaned closer. “I missed you.”

“I’m right here.”

“I know.” His thumb brushed your knuckles. “I missed you while you were here.”

That made you cry.

He kissed your forehead and stayed close while you did.

No healing. No taking. No miracle. Just tears beneath artificial sunlight, and Clark learning that sometimes the brave thing was not stopping pain but remaining beside it.

The first time you tried to stand, Clark hovered. Literally.

You opened one eye from the medical platform. “Clark.”

His boots dropped silently to the floor.

Lois, sitting nearby with a tablet, smirked. “Busted.”

“I wasn’t hovering.”

“You were six inches off the ground.”

“That’s not hovering. That’s…” He searched for a word. You raised an eyebrow. “Vertical concern,” he finished.

Lois snorted. You laughed, then pressed a hand carefully to your side.

Clark moved forward. Then stopped.

You saw the effort. Your expression softened. “I’m okay.” He gave you a look. You sighed. “I am sore. Dizzy. Slightly nauseous. My side feels like it lost an argument with radioactive evil. But I am medically cleared to attempt standing.”

Kelor’s voice chimed, “With assistance.”

You pointed upward. “See? The house agrees.”

Clark did not like thinking of the Fortress as a house. Except maybe, with you in it, it had become one.

He came to your side. “May I help?”

Your face softened again. “Yes.”

He placed one hand at your back and offered the other for you to hold. You leaned on him heavily as you swung your legs over the edge.

Clark kept his strength carefully checked. Enough support. Never force.

You stood. For three seconds. Then your knees buckled.

Clark caught you instantly. You gasped, half from pain, half from frustration.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

You went very still in his arms.

He realised too late.

Those words. Yours. His. The wound between you.

He started to let go.

Your hand grabbed his shirt.

“No,” you whispered.

He froze.

You looked up at him, eyes wet. “Say it again.”

Clark’s throat tightened. He held you carefully. “I’ve got you.”

Your face folded. This time, the words did not mean you had to bleed. They meant someone else could hold the weight.

You buried your face against his chest. Clark wrapped both arms around you, gentle as sunlight.

“I’ve got you,” he said again.

Your shoulders shook.

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

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

You huffed a weak laugh against him. “Say that again too.”

His eyes warmed. “I love you.” Your hand tightened in his shirt.  “I love you,” he said, softer. “I love you. I love you.”

Outside the crystal walls, Arctic wind screamed across the ice. Inside, beneath yellow lamps, Clark held you upright. You trembled. He stayed steady.

That was something he could do. Not as Superman.

As Clark.

The League meeting happened one week after the mission.

You hated it. Clark also hated it.

Bruce insisted. Lois agreed. Martha said, “Secrets don’t heal just because you tuck them under the bed,” which ended the debate more effectively than Batman ever could.

So you sat in the Watchtower conference room wrapped in a soft sweater, one hand pressed protectively near your still-healing side. Clark sat beside you. Diana sat across from you, gaze kind but serious. Bruce stood behind his chair because apparently sitting remained a moral defeat. Barry fidgeted with a pen. Hal looked unusually subdued. J’onn’s expression was gentle. Zatanna watched you with the careful sadness of someone who understood magical costs too well.

You explained. All of it. The transfers. The pain. The way injuries changed inside you. The way some wounds softened and others didn’t. The way emotional and psychic pain could sometimes be taken, but unpredictably and dangerously. The way you had hidden symptoms because you believed everyone would refuse if they knew.

No one interrupted. That made it harder.

Clark could hear everyone’s heartbeat. The grief in the room had a rhythm.

When you finished, silence sat heavily over the table.

Then Barry said, very quietly, “My leg.” You looked at him. His voice shook. “After Gorilla City. You healed my leg.”

Your eyes filled. “Yes.”

Barry looked down. “I thanked you and ran six laps around the medbay.”

“You were relieved.”

“You were limping later.”

You said nothing. Barry closed his eyes. Hal leaned back, rubbing a hand over his face.

“I made jokes,” he said.

“You always make jokes,” you whispered.

“Yeah, well, now I feel like an ass.”

Diana reached across the table and placed her hand over yours. You looked at her.

“You should have told us,” she said.

“I know.”

“Your choice to bear pain does not erase our right to understand it.”

Your face crumpled. “I know.”

Diana squeezed your hand. “And still, I am grateful to be alive because of you.”

You sobbed once. Clark’s hand tightened under the table.

Bruce spoke next. “We need consent protocols.”

You let out a watery laugh. “Of course you already have a folder.”

Bruce’s eyebrow lifted. “Three.”

Hal muttered, “That tracks.” Clark almost smiled.

Bruce continued, “No healing without informed consent except in pre-authorised emergency conditions. Everyone will establish directives. Injuries must be disclosed afterward. No solo high-risk transfers. Mandatory monitoring.”

You looked exhausted just hearing it.

Clark leaned closer. “You don’t have to solve all of it today.”

Bruce paused. Then nodded. “Not today.”

That was Bruce being gentle. You seemed to understand, because your expression softened.

“Okay,” you said.

J’onn looked at you. “There is one more thing.”

You tensed. Clark did too.

J’onn’s voice remained calm. “You are more than the pain you can carry.”

The room went quiet. You looked away.

Clark wanted to wrap himself around you.

He did not. Not here. Not unless you asked.

J’onn continued, “Many of us have relied on your gift. We must now learn to rely also on your personhood.”

Your eyes closed.

That one landed. Clark knew because it landed in him too.

Your personhood.

Not power. Not function. Not miracle.

You.

The meeting ended slowly. Not cleanly. There were tears. Apologies. Awkward hugs. Hal made one terrible joke and looked relieved when you laughed. Barry cried openly and then apologised for crying, which made you cry, which made him cry harder.

Bruce handed you a tablet with the draft protocols. You stared at it. Then at him.

“Three folders?” you asked.

“Four now.”

You smiled faintly. “You’re a menace.”

“So I’m told.”

Clark waited until the room emptied. Then he turned to you. “How do you feel?”

You leaned your head against his shoulder. “Tired.”

“Only tired?”

He felt your smile against him. “No.”

Progress.

“I feel scared,” you said. “And guilty. And relieved. And like everyone is going to look at me differently now.”

Clark rested his cheek against your hair. “I do.”

You went still.

He lifted his head and looked at you.

“I look at you differently because I know you better.”

Your eyes searched his. “Not because you love me less?”

“No.” His voice softened. “Never that.”

You nodded. A tear slipped down your cheek. Clark wiped it away.

“May I take you home?” he asked.

“Fortress or apartment?”

“Smallville.”

Your face changed. “Really?”

“Ma has been texting me soup emojis for two hours.”

You laughed. Clark smiled. There it was. A small patch of sunlight through the ache.

“Smallville sounds good,” you said.

Smallville healed differently than the Fortress.

The Fortress had alien medicine, yellow lamps, crystal diagnostics, and an AI that could identify seventeen forms of radiation poisoning in six seconds. Smallville had Martha Kent. Which was better, in several ways.

You stayed in Clark’s childhood room because Martha insisted, and because Clark turned very red when you pointed out the little wooden airplane still sitting on the shelf.

“It’s cute,” you said from under three quilts.

“It’s old.”

“It’s cute.”

“It was a gift from my dad.”

Your teasing softened.

Clark picked it up carefully. His father had carved it by hand. The edges were worn now from years of a little boy’s fingers tracing the wings.

You watched him.

“He loved you a lot,” you said.

Clark smiled, sad and warm. “Yeah. He did.”

You patted the bed beside you. Clark sat. The bed creaked. Your eyes brightened with amusement.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought it.”

“I thought you are very big for this bed.”

He laughed. You smiled, triumphant.

That night, Clark slept in the chair beside you and woke to find Martha draping a blanket over him with the long-suffering tenderness of a mother who had absolutely expected this.

“Clark Joseph Kent,” she whispered. He opened one eye. “You are not guarding the national treasury.”

He blinked sleepily. “No. Something more important.”

Martha’s expression softened despite herself. Then she smacked his shoulder lightly with the folded edge of the blanket.

“Bed. Guest room. Now.”

“I’m fine here.”

“You are six-foot-whatever and folded like laundry. Move.”

You stirred, eyes half-open.

“Listen to your mom,” you mumbled.

Clark looked betrayed.

Martha smiled. “I like them.”

“I’m injured,” you added. “You have to listen to me too.”

“That feels manipulative.”

“It is,” you whispered.

Martha laughed quietly.

Clark went to the guest room. Mostly because both of you were terrifying.

The days that followed were slow. You walked through the kitchen with one hand on the counter while Clark hovered within acceptable ground-level parameters. You sat on the porch in the morning sun, eyes closed, letting real yellow warmth touch your face. You helped Martha shell peas one-handed and complained that Clark kept trying to do everything for you.

“He gets that from me,” Martha said.

Clark looked up from the sink. “I’m right here.”

“I know, honey.”

You grinned.

He loved seeing you at the farm. Loved it so much it scared him. You looked softer there, wrapped in one of his flannels, sunlight on your knees, bandage hidden beneath fabric. Not healed. Not untouched.

But safe. Or as close as the world allowed.

One afternoon, he found you standing in the cornfield. The same place you had first kissed him. You wore his jacket over your shoulders and held one hand lightly against your side.

Clark approached slowly. “You okay?”

You looked over. “I think so.”

He stopped beside you. The corn rustled around you both. For once, the world was not screaming. Clark could hear cows in the distance. A truck on the road. His mother humming in the kitchen. Your heartbeat, stronger now.

You turned toward him. “I need to tell you something.”

He nodded.

You took a breath. “I don’t regret saving you.”

Clark’s chest tightened.

You continued quickly, “But I regret how. I regret not telling you the truth before. I regret taking your choice. I regret making you wake up to my pain.”

His throat worked.

“I don’t regret you being alive,” you said. “I don’t think I ever could.”

Clark looked down. The corn moved in long, golden waves.

“I don’t regret being alive,” he said. Your eyes filled. “But I regret what it cost you.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely okay with it.”

“I know.”

“And if it happened again…”

You went very still.

Clark looked at you. “I don’t know what I’d choose either.”

That startled you. He gave a sad smile.

“I want to say I would respect your no. I want to say I’d let you make the choice and accept it. But if you were dying in front of me and I could stop it?” His voice lowered. “I don’t know…I think,” Clark said slowly, “that’s why I’m so angry.”

You whispered, “Because you understand.”

“Yes.”

He hated admitting it. Needed to.

You stepped closer. “Where does that leave us?”

Clark reached for your hand. You gave it to him.

“In progress,” he said.

A faint smile touched your mouth. “That’s very journalist of you.”

“It’s also true.”

“Do we make rules?”

“Yes.”

“Protocols?”

“Yes.”

“Bruce is rubbing off on you.”

“Unfortunately.”

You laughed softly. Clark lifted your hand to his mouth and kissed your knuckles.

“But more than rules,” he said. “We keep telling the truth. Even when it’s ugly. Even when it doesn’t make either of us look noble.”

“I can try.”

“So can I.”

You looked at him. “I’m scared you’ll always see me on the floor.”

Clark’s hand tightened around yours.

“I will,” he said.

Your face fell. He touched your cheek.

“But I’ll also see you here.” Your eyes lifted. “In my mom’s kitchen. On the porch. In the cornfield. Rolling your eyes at my drafts. Laughing at Lois. Falling asleep with three quilts because you say the farm gets colder than the Arctic, which is objectively false.”

“It does emotionally.”

He smiled.

“There,” he said. “That too.”

A tear slipped down your cheek.

“I don’t want the worst thing to be the only thing,” he said.

You leaned into his palm. “Me neither.”

Clark bent and kissed you. Gently at first. Then with all the careful longing of the days he had spent afraid to touch you too much.

You kissed him back with your uninjured hand curled in his shirt.

He did not float this time. Progress.

Then your mouth curved against his. “You’re trying very hard not to float.”

Clark’s ears warmed. “I am grounded by discipline.”

“You are grounded by trauma and corn.”

He laughed, startled and helpless. You smiled. The sound moved through the field, small and human and alive.

Clark kissed you again. This time, his feet left the ground by maybe an inch. You noticed. You did not mention it.

Kindness. Mercy. Love.

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

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

You could heal anything. That was what everyone said.

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

Jon said you were “basically a miracle.”

Damian said miracles were unreliable.

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

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

He had disliked you immediately.

Not because you were wrong.

Because he wanted you to be.

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

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

A favourable exchange.

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

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

“It is shaped like unresolved childhood trauma.”

His eyes lifted. You smiled mildly.

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

“You’re injured.”

“You believe that protects you?”

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

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

You stepped closer but did not reach for him.

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

You held your hands at your sides.

“I can heal it,” you said.

“No.”

“Okay.”

He paused.

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

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

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

“Waiting.”

“For what?”

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

“I will not pass out.”

“Great. Then this will be boring.”

The silence that followed should have annoyed him.

It did. But not only.

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

Eventually, his splint slipped. You did not comment.

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

He exhaled sharply through his nose.

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

“Assistance with the splint or healing?”

He paused. You waited.

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

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

“To heal,” he said finally.

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

“Yes.”

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

Damian prepared for pain. There was none.

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

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

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

A twitch. Almost nothing.

Damian saw it. “What was that?”

You blinked. “What was what?”

“Your hand.”

“My hand exists. Very observant.”

He frowned.

You smiled. It was a practised smile.

He would understand that later.

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

Trust came slowly.

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

You never rushed him. That was the first stone.

You respected every no. That was the second.

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

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

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

“For Titus.”

“I can see that.”

“You sound offended.”

“You have bribed my dog.”

“I have respected his interests.”

Titus wagged his tail with shameless enthusiasm.

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

“You love him anyway.”

“Unfortunately.”

You smiled down at Titus. “Good boy.”

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

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

“What?”

“Nothing.”

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

“No.”

“It looked like almost fondness.”

“You are mistaken.”

“I’m choosing to believe otherwise.”

“Your delusions are your own burden.”

You laughed. Damian looked away too late.

After that, you became a regular presence.

Not constant. Damian would not have tolerated constant.

Familiar.

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

Damian had been impressed. Not that he said so.

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

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

Damian did not stumble. Barely.

“I tolerate them.”

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

“It was a medical diagram.”

“It was a drawing of their hands.”

“Hands are medically relevant.”

“You wrote ‘rest’ under it.”

“They do not rest.”

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

“I will remove you from the sky.”

“You can’t fly.”

“I will improvise.”

Jon laughed.

Damian resumed walking. His ears were warm.

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

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

“They do.”

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

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

“You listen to their heart?”

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

Damian’s own heart became deeply undisciplined.

Jon smiled softly. “You should tell them.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

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

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

Damian glared. Jon grinned.

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

You found Damian in the garden.

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

You approached with the sketch held carefully against your chest.

“This is beautiful,” you said.

“It is accurate.”

“It’s kind.”

“That is debatable.”

“No.” You smiled. “It isn’t.”

Damian looked away.

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

“Thank you,” you said.

He nodded stiffly.

There was a silence.

Not uncomfortable. That had become dangerous.

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

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

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

“You know it intellectually.”

He looked at you sharply. Your smile was sad.

“What do you want, Damian?”

Many answers came to him.

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

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

“You,” he said.

Your breath caught.

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

“You have me,” you whispered.

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

Instead, he leaned in.

You met him halfway.

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

Let himself want. Let himself be wanted.

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

Damian would threaten him. Several times.

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

And Damian, foolishly perhaps, believed you.

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

The League of Assassins rarely wasted poetry.

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

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

A minor League sect. Old blood. New methods.

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

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

“No,” he said.

Your eyes moved to him. “Excuse me?”

“You are not coming.”

Todd muttered, “Smooth, brat.”

Damian ignored him.

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

“Yes.”

“And you don’t want a healer there?”

“I do not want you there.”

The room went still.

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

Not the meaning. The wound.

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

“Because it is League.”

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

“No.”

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

“I can keep you away from this one.”

“That isn’t your choice.”

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

Drake winced.

Grayson said, “Dami.”

You stared at him.

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

Instead, you nodded once. “Fine.”

Damian hated the word.

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

Bruce’s gaze shifted between you and Damian.

Then he nodded. “Accepted.”

You did not look at Damian again.

Good, he told himself. He had protected you.

It felt like losing.

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

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

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

They found the first two teenagers in a containment room.

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

Your voice came through comms. “Status?”

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

A short pause. “Can they move?”

“Yes.”

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

Damian heard it in your voice. The restraint.

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

Instead, you gave orders.

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

They moved deeper.

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

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

Damian knew the title.

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

“Blood heir,” the man said.

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

“As do I,” Damian said.

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

Damian moved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Todd scoffed. “No one appreciates vision.”

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

He turned before the blade reached his spine.

An assassin fell.

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

Good. Bad. You were seeing too much.

The lead assassin smiled.

“Still guided by softer hands,” he said.

Damian lunged.

Mistake.

Not fatal. Almost.

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

Damian twisted. The chains tightened.

The lead assassin drew a curved blade.

Not toward Damian’s heart. Toward his arm.

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

He fought the chains with everything he had.

Not enough.

The blade came down. Pain went white.

For one suspended heartbeat, there was nothing.

Then sound returned.

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

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

The sight was clinical in its horror.

He knew what losing the arm would mean.

Not death. Worse, in some ways.

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

Pain struck next, vast and blinding.

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

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

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

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

The solar emitters died.

Tim’s voice, “Grid down.”

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

Your voice came next. Not steady. Not anymore.

“Damian?”

He clenched his teeth. Could not answer.

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

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

“I am… here,” Damian forced out.

“You’re losing too much blood.”

“I noticed.”

“Stop being sarcastic while actively bleeding out!”

Your voice came again. “Jon. Status.”

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

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

Silence. The kind that took all air with it.

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

“No,” Damian rasped.

Jon looked at him. “Damian—”

“No.”

He tried to push himself upright. Failed.

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

You came behind him.

Your eyes found Damian. Everything in your face stopped.

No. That was his first thought.

Not relief. Not love.

No.

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

You were seeing something you could fix.

“Do not,” he said.

Your face crumpled. You crossed the room anyway.

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

“Tourniquet,” Bruce said.

Jon was already moving.

You knelt in front of Damian.

“Hi,” you whispered.

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

“No,” he said again.

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

“I can save it,” you said.

His vision blurred. “No.”

“You could lose your hand.”

“I know.”

“Your arm.”

“I know.”

“Damian.”

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

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

“No,” he whispered.

You touched his face with one blood-slick hand.

He should have turned away. He did not.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

His heart stopped. “No.”

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

“No.”

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

“Beloved—”

“I can help.”

“You will take the wound.”

“Not all of it.”

“You do not know that.”

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

“Probably,” Damian spat.

You flinched. Good.

No. Not good. Nothing was good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That is what you said.”

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

His breath hitched.

There it was. The blade under the kindness.

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

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

“Ask me,” he said.

Your face broke. “Damian—”

“Ask me.”

The words cost him more than blood.

You stared at him. “I can’t.”

Pain lanced through him.

Not from the arm. From you.

“You can,” he said. “You must.”

“If I ask, you’ll say no.”

“Yes.”

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

“You will have to honour my choice.”

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

Damian’s heart shattered.

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

You leaned closer.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered again.

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

The transfer hit like lightning.

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

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

His hand flexed. Whole. His.

Then you collapsed.

Your right arm buckled beneath you.

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

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

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

No.

No.

No.

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

“Beloved,” he choked.

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

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

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

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

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

“Damian,” you gasped.

His attention snapped to you.

You were looking at him. Not your arm.

Him.

Relief trembled through your expression.

Relief.

Because his arm was whole. Because you had succeeded.

Damian felt something inside him go cold and wild.

“How dare you,” he whispered.

Your eyes filled. “I’m sorry.”

“How dare you.”

“I couldn’t—”

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

Your face crumpled.

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

“You chose me,” he said.

Your lips trembled. “Yes.”

“Over yourself.”

“Yes.”

The honesty was a killing blow.

Damian’s breath left him.

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

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

Damian stared at you.

Then laughed once. A terrible sound.

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

You flinched.

Bruce’s expression tightened.

Jon whispered, “Dami…”

“No,” Damian snapped. “Do not.”

Your breathing hitched.

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

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

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

Your face went slack.

There. Good.

No. Not good.

Truth. Necessary and brutal.

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

Your mouth opened. No sound came out.

Then the pain took you. Your eyes rolled back.

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

No response.

“Beloved.”

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

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

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

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

Yours. His. Both.

He had refused to change.

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

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

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

“Jason,” Dick said softly.

“No. They should’ve told us.”

Damian’s eyes lifted.

Todd looked at him.

Not accusing. Not pitying.

Understanding.

It was unbearable.

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

Damian looked down at his right hand.

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

No.

No.

He dug his nails into his palm. Pain answered.

His pain. At least that remained.

“They knew I would refuse,” Damian said.

His voice was calm. Too calm.

Everyone looked at him.

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

Jon’s face crumpled again.

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

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

Silence.

Damian stood. His body swayed.

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

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

Bruce’s face tightened.

“I know,” he said.

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

Damian hated that he understood.

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

“They’re alive,” the doctor said.

Damian nearly collapsed.

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

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

“Will they regain function?” Damian asked.

“Likely, with treatment and time.”

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

He wanted certainty. He got none.

“Can I see them?”

The doctor hesitated. Damian’s eyes narrowed.

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

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

“I will not interfere,” he said.

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

The doctor nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

His fingers hovered over your bandaged arm.

He did not touch. He could not.

It felt obscene.

“Why?” he whispered.

You did not answer. The monitors did.

Steady beep. Alive.

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

It should have been a relief.

It was. That was the cruelty.

He was relieved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. He did not.

Yes. Both. Always both with you now.

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

“Beloved?”

Your eyes opened slowly. Unfocused.

Then they found him.

Relief. Again.

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

“Arm?” you rasped.

His jaw tightened. “Yours or mine?”

Your smile vanished.

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

“Damian,” you whispered.

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

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

“My arm is whole,” he said.

Your eyes closed. “Good.”

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

Your eyes opened, startled.

“No,” he said.

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

“No. You do not get to say good.”

Your throat bobbed. “I saved it.”

“You took it.”

“I saved it.”

“At the cost of your own.”

“It isn’t as bad.”

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

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

“You did not know.”

“I was pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure,” he repeated.

Your eyes filled.

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

“I gambled to keep yours.”

“I did not ask you to.”

“I know.”

“You did not let me refuse.”

“I know.”

“You did not trust me.”

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

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

Tears slipped down your temples.

“I couldn’t bear it,” you whispered.

“What?”

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

Damian went still.

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

He looked away. The room blurred.

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

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

“I know.”

“I am more than my sword hand.”

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

His anger fractured. Love rushed in through the crack.

Unwelcome. Unstoppable.

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

Your eyes held his. “Yes.”

The honesty hurt worse than any lie could have.

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

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

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

“I love you,” he said.

Your breath caught. He looked at you.

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

Your face crumpled.

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

You closed your eyes. “I know.”

“No,” he said. “Listen.”

Your eyes opened again.

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

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

Stopped.

“May I?” he asked.

Your face broke all over again. “Yes.”

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

You leaned into the touch. He nearly broke.

“I am angry,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“I will be angry for some time.”

“I know.”

“I may not forgive you quickly.”

Your lips trembled. “Okay.”

“But I am staying.”

A sob caught in your throat. Damian leaned closer.

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

You cried then.

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

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

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

“I know.”

“I love you.”

His eyes closed. “I know.”

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

“Yes.”

“Say it back anyway?”

His mouth softened. “I love you.”

Your breath shuddered.

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

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

“I am consistent.”

“You are.”

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

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

Recovery was not gentle. Yours rarely was.

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

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

So you healed slowly. Humanly.

Damian stayed. Angrily. Devotedly.

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

He brushed your hair when your arm hurt too much.

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

So he did.

“You are crying,” Damian said.

You laughed wetly. “Thanks.”

“I am uncertain what response is appropriate.”

“Just keep going.”

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

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

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

Some days, Damian’s anger sharpened unexpectedly.

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

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

“Say it,” you said.

Damian looked up. “What?”

“Whatever you’re thinking.”

“I am thinking many things.”

“The angry one.”

His jaw tightened.

You waited. Always waiting, even now.

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

Your face softened with pain.

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

“Yes.”

“I am thinking that I am grateful.”

Your eyes filled.

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

You set the pen down. “Damian.”

“No. You asked.”

“I did.”

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

Your mouth trembled.

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

You said nothing.

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

Your expression crumpled.

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

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

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

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

“I am.”

“I know.”

“I despise it.”

“I know.”

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

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

You stared.

“May I?” he asked.

Your eyes filled. “Yes.”

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

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

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

“I know.”

“I love you.”

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

He looked up.

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

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

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

It was not forgiveness. Not yet.

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

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

Damian stared at it. You stared at it.

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

Damian said, “Leave.”

You laughed immediately.

Jon brightened. “See? It helped.”

“It offended me.”

“That’s your love language.”

“I will make you eat the cow.”

“It has a name.”

“No.”

“Moo-bin.”

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

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

You wheezed, “Moo-bin.”

Damian looked at you.

Betrayal. Absolute betrayal.

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

You looked between them.

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

“It is.”

“No.”

“Dami.”

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

He frowned. “I’m fine.”

“That word is banned.”

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

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

For several seconds, Jon said nothing.

Damian crossed his arms. “Speak.”

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

Damian went still.

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

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

Damian looked away. 

“They would want you to be.”

“That is part of the problem.”

“I know.”

“You do not.”

Jon’s jaw tightened.

“I watched them do it,” he said.

Damian looked back.

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

Damian’s throat closed.

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

Damian flinched.

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

Damian did not respond.

Jon continued anyway. “It sounded like hope.”

The words struck too deep. Damian turned away.

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

Damian’s jaw clenched.

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

“It feels like that.”

“I know.”

“They paid in blood.”

“Yeah.”

“For me.”

“Yes.”

“How is that not debt?”

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

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

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

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

The hallway remained silent.

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

Jon laughed, startled. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“You keeping him?”

Damian looked toward the medbay door.

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

“Yes,” Damian said.

Jon wisely did not comment.

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

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

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

Soft. Cruel. Yours.

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

Damian’s chest tightened.

He considered lying.

No. No more soft lies.

“I do not look at you the same.”

Your face fell.

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

You swallowed. “That sounds ominous.”

“It is honest.”

Your mouth trembled.

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

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

You closed your eyes.

“I know you are reckless when afraid.”

A tear slipped down your cheek.

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

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“I’ll keep saying it.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know how to make it right.”

Damian looked down at your joined hands.

His whole one. Your wounded one.

“There is no undoing it.”

Your breath caught.

He looked back at you.

“There is only what comes next.”

You opened your eyes. “What comes next?”

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

You stared at him.

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

You laughed through tears.

“What?” he asked.

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

“It is a serious matter.”

“It’s very romantic.”

“It is practical.”

“It can be both.”

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

Your smile was small. “Fine?”

“It can be both.”

You stepped closer. “Can I kiss you?”

Damian’s heart moved painfully.

Even after everything. Especially after everything. You asked.

“Yes,” he said.

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

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

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

When he pulled back, your eyes were closed.

“You are not forgiven yet,” he whispered.

Your eyes opened. “I know.”

“But you are loved.”

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

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

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

“I can live with that,” you whispered.

“You must.”

A faint smile. “Bossy.”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

His throat tightened. “I know.”

You gave him a look.

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

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

You laughed.

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

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

Pain had gone somewhere. So had love.

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

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

Damian pressed his forehead to yours.

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

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

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

“Hands,” he said.

You laughed softly. “Again?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

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

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

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

The rain fell harder, silvering the garden.

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

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

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

But you were here.

Loved. Angry. Alive.

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

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

You knelt in front of him, calm as moonlight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bart flexed his healed hand.

“Oh,” Bart said softly. “Whoa.”

You smiled. “Better?”

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

You laughed. “It’s not weird.”

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

Only one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim hated vague. Vague got people killed.

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

Mostly probably.

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

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

“You were staring at the wall.”

“I was thinking.”

“You were thinking at the wall?”

“Yes.”

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

“No.”

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

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

Tim closed the laptop. Too late.

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

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

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

“I think about everything.”

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

Tim frowned. “That sentence has no meaning.”

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

“It really does,” Bart added.

Tim stood. “I’m leaving.”

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

“It is not a crush spreadsheet.”

“It has colour coding,” Cassie said.

“For incident severity.” Tim left.

He kept the spreadsheet. Obviously.

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

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

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

You crouched in front of him.

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

“Did one.”

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

“It was a modified toaster.”

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

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

“I know you’re concussed.”

“I’m fine.”

“You tried to weaponise breakfast technology.”

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

“Is this okay?” you asked.

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

He said, “Yes.”

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

“Risk?”

“Minimal.”

He would think about that word later. For months.

Minimal. Not none.

Minimal to whom?

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

“Okay,” he said.

You touched his temples. Warmth spread through his skull.

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

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

Tim stared. “Yes.”

“Good.”

You stood too quickly. He caught your wrist.

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

“It’s okay.”

“You’re pale.”

“I just healed a concussion.”

“Do you have a concussion?”

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

“No,” you said.

Lie. Soft as a blanket.

Tim’s eyes narrowed.

You smiled again. “Rest, Red Robin.”

Then you left.

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

Tim noticed.

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

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

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

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

You said, “Absolutely not.”

“It’s functional.”

“It is offensive.”

“To who?”

“Medicine.”

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

Tim lifted his chin. “It stopped bleeding.”

“That is the lowest possible bar.”

“It’s a practical bar.”

“It’s a basement bar.”

“Still a bar.”

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

“I’ve been told.”

“By everyone?”

“Statistically likely.”

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

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

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

Because he liked it. That was worse.

“That needs stitches,” you said.

“It doesn’t.”

“It does.”

“I can do them.”

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

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

“Not the point.”

“It explains some things.”

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

“It was not.”

“It wanted to be.”

“You’re projecting.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“That was abrupt.”

“Useful redirect.”

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

“What?”

“Redirect.”

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

“I haven’t asked one.”

“You were about to.”

Correct. That was annoying.

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

You did not look up. “Fatigue.”

“Always?”

“Usually.”

“What else?”

“Tim.”

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

“Is there pain?” he asked.

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

Tim’s gaze sharpened.

“Sometimes,” you said.

“What kind?”

“The kind that happens when powers get used.”

“That is not specific.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

“You should document it.”

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

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

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

“My handwriting is efficient.”

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

Tim looked offended. You laughed.

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

Bad. Very bad.

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

“There,” you said. “Less criminal.”

“Thank you.”

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

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

Definitely. Annoying.

“Why are you awake?” he asked.

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

“Work.”

“Same.”

“You don’t have work right now.”

“Neither do you.”

“I always have work.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim noticed immediately. He drank it anyway.

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

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

“No.”

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

“It was inefficient,” he said.

Your smile was slow and bright. Tim looked away.

Then there were the notes.

You left reminders on his laptop.

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

Tim responded with notes of his own.

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

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

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

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

“I’m not.”

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

Tim closed the laptop. “Leave.”

“You’re red.”

“Out.”

Kon floated out backward, grinning. “Buffering!”

After notes came field coordination.

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

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

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

It was. Mostly.

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

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

Tim changed it back. And added a password.

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

Instead, you looked tired.

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

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

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

“That’s a lot,” you said.

Tim closed the laptop. “Sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry.”

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

“No, it was honest.”

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

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

“I know.”

“For mission safety.”

“I know.”

“For your safety.”

Your expression shifted.

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

You looked down at your hands. “Sometimes.”

“Why?”

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

“Honest.”

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

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

He sat back. You looked up at him.

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

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

“You have to,” he said anyway.

You smiled sadly. “So do you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you in danger?” he asked.

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

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

“Okay,” he said.

You blinked. “Okay?”

“For now.”

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

“It is.”

“Romantic.”

Tim froze. You froze. The word sat there.

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

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

Bart looked between you both.

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

Tim stood. “Yes.”

“Cool, cool, I’ll tell everyone.”

“Bart.” But Bart was already gone.

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

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

“What?”

“The smile.”

“I smile.”

“You smirk strategically.”

“That is different.”

“It is.”

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

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

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

Simple. Contained. Terrible words.

You came with them.

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

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

“You had a tremor yesterday.”

“I had too much coffee.”

“You hate coffee.”

“I was holding yours.”

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

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

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

“I heard colours.”

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

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

You tilted your head. “By who?”

“Me.”

“Cute.”

Kon whispered, “Dangerous word choice.”

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

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

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

“You don’t know that,” you said.

“I know enough.”

“Not everything.”

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

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

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

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

“Stay behind the second line,” he said.

You looked back. “Tim.”

“Please.”

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

“I’ll be careful,” you said.

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

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

“Rebreathers on,” he ordered.

Kon grimaced. “Hate when air gets spicy.”

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

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

“He absolutely didn’t.”

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

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

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

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

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

Tim switched filters. One second too late.

The first breath burned.

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

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

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

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

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

“Tim?” “Red Robin, respond.” “Rob?”

Kon’s voice changed. “Tim!”

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

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

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

You dropped beside him. “Tim.”

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

No. Panic cut through the toxin. No.

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

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

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

For three seconds, all he could do was breathe.

Then you made a sound. Small. Wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As horror.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of them stared at him. “What?”

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

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

Bart looked at him, eyes wide. “Tim?”

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

Silence fell around them. Even the alarms seemed quieter.

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

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

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

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

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

He should have known. He had known.

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

Tim did not look up. “Yes.”

Bart made a tiny sound. Cassie stopped pacing.

Kon’s fists clenched. “They felt it?”

“Yes,” he said. “They felt it.”

Kon turned away, one hand over his mouth.

Bart’s voice came thin. “My arm?”

Tim closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“Cassie’s shoulder?”

“Yes.”

“Your concussion?”

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

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

“You found evidence,” Bruce said.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Enough.”

“For how long?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For how long?”

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

Kill them.

Tim nodded once. Then he walked into the medbay.

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

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

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

His shoulders dropped.

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

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

“Yeah.”

“They took neurotoxin into their own nervous system.”

“Yeah.”

“I should be grateful.”

Kon’s expression tightened. “You are.”

“I’m angry.”

“You can be both.”

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

Tim stared at him.

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

“Kon.”

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

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

They love you.

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

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

“Don’t,” he said quietly.

Kon frowned. “Don’t what?”

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

“I know.”

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

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

“Nothing,” Tim said.

“No, that was a look.”

“You said something emotionally useful.”

Kon snorted. “Rude.”

“Unexpected.”

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

“Yes.”

“Physically and emotionally.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re gonna do the Tim thing.”

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

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

Then he left.

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

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

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

Then you whispered, “Did it work?”

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

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

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

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

“No.”

Your brow furrowed. “Did the toxin—”

“The toxin is gone.”

“Then—”

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

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

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

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

You swallowed. “Always.”

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

Your eyes shone. “Yes.”

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

“Yes.”

“My concussion.”

You closed your eyes. “Yes.”

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

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

He could not. That made him angrier.

“Tim,” you said softly.

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

“It was.”

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

“I knew I could handle it.”

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

“I knew you couldn’t.”

The room went silent. Tim’s mouth parted.

There it was. The logic of you.

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

“That isn’t enough,” he said. 

Your eyes lifted. “To justify it?”

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

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

He flinched.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your brow furrowed. “What?”

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

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

“Tim,” you whispered.

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

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

“May I?” he asked.

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

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

“He knows?”

“Apparently, everyone knows.”

Your lips curved faintly. “Except us?”

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

“That is different from knowing.”

“Unfortunately.”

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

His thumb stilled on your knuckles.

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

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

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

“I don’t think my life matters less.”

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

You looked away.

“And you couldn’t stand that.”

“No,” you whispered.

“So you made the choice for us.”

Your face crumpled. “I’m sorry.”

Tim nodded. “I know.”

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

His chest ached. “I know that too.”

“What if someone dies because I ask first?”

Tim’s throat tightened.

There it was. The fear underneath everything.

Not pain. Not death.

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

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

“Then we make emergency protocols,” he said.

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

“I am who I am.”

“Unfortunately, attracted to that.”

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

Tiny. Disbelieving.

You smiled weakly. The room softened around the edges.

Then he sobered.

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

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

“I’ve had six hours and trauma.”

“Dangerous combo.”

“Very.”

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

“Then we respect that.”

Your face went pale.

Tim leaned in. “Even when it’s hard.”

A tear slid down your cheek.

“Especially then,” he added.

“I hate that.”

“I know.”

“I really hate that.”

“I know.”

“I might not be good at it.”

“I know.”

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

“Statistically, I know many things.”

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

Too late. You already knew.

“What about you?” you asked.

His smile faded. “My directive?”

You nodded.

Tim looked down at your hand in his.

This was the question.

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

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

Your fingers tensed.

He waited. Slowly, you nodded again.

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

Your brow furrowed. “Projected by who?”

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

“That’s very precise.”

“I’m very precise.”

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

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

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

“Tim.”

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

Your face softened.

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

You nodded. “Yes.”

He breathed in.

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

Your eyes filled. “Tim—”

“No exceptions.”

“What if—”

“No.”

Your mouth closed. His grip tightened.

“I need you alive,” he said.

Your breath caught.

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

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

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

You clung to him weakly.

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

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

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

The words hurt less the second time.

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

Recovery, for you, was not simple.

Tim hated simple anyway. Simple usually meant missing variables.

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

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

“You need objective monitoring,” he said.

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

“It kind of does.”

“Tim.”

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

“What?”

You held out your hand. “Come here.”

“I’m right here.”

“Closer.”

He stood from the chair and moved to the bedside.

You looked at the tablet. He looked at you.

“No,” he said.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You have a face.”

“You have many charts.”

“They are medically relevant.”

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

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

Your mouth twitched. He set the tablet aside. 

“Happy?”

“Getting there.”

You took his hand and tugged lightly.

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

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

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

“You can breathe,” you murmured.

“I am breathing.”

“Barely.”

He exhaled. You smiled against his shoulder.

“I’m okay,” you said.

He tensed.

You lifted your head.

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

Tim blinked. “Bees?”

“Neurological bees.”

“Concerning.”

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

Tim looked at you. Something in his chest loosened.

“Thank you,” he said.

Your eyes softened. “You’re welcome.”

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

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

“You’re asking now?” you whispered.

His face warmed. “Timing has been difficult.”

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

“Yes. Poor timing.”

“Classic hero romance, honestly.”

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

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

Tim turned. Bart vanished in a blur.

Tim sighed. You laughed, then winced.

He looked back immediately. “Pain?”

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

“Extremely.”

“I’m learning.”

“So am I.”

Your hand tightened around his.

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

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

Rare. Precious.

Then his mouth touched yours.

Gentle. Careful. Warm.

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

It was perfect anyway.

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

His heart performed an extremely inconvenient manoeuvre.

“Good?” he asked.

Your eyes opened. “Very good.”

“I can improve with more data.”

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

“Maybe.”

“Nerd.”

“You knew that already.”

“I did.”

Your smile faded into something tender.

“I love you,” you said.

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

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

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

“It’s necessary,” he said.

“I know.”

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

“I know.”

“Everyone already knows the core mechanism.”

“I know.”

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

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

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

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

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

Your hands shook. Everyone noticed.

Nobody commented.

Progress.

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

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

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

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

You swallowed.

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

Silence.

Then Bart appeared beside you and hugged you very carefully.

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

You closed your eyes. “I know.”

“But I don’t hate you.”

Your face crumpled.

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

Kon looked at Tim. Tim nodded once.

Kon came closer, not touching yet.

“You scared us,” Kon said.

“I know.”

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

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

“Yeah. I checked with management.”

Cassie nodded solemnly. “As management, yes.”

Tim slid a document across the table.

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

“Consent directives,” Tim said.

Bart leaned over. “There are checkboxes.”

“Of course, there are checkboxes.”

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

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

Kon groaned. “Do not encourage him.”

“This is helpful,” Cassie said.

“It is,” you agreed.

Tim’s ears went warm.

Bruce’s mouth twitched in the corner. Traitor.

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

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

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

It was painful. It was necessary.

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

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

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

“Thanks,” he said.

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

You looked down. “Eventually.”

Bruce nodded. “Eventually matters.”

Then he left. 

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

Cassie nodded slowly. “I think so.”

Bart whispered, “I’m scared.”

You laughed. Tim smiled.

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

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

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

He made a list.

You found it. “Tim.”

“Yes?”

“Why is there a spreadsheet called Apartment Crimes?”

“Because your apartment is committing crimes.”

“You broke into my home.”

“I used a key.”

“I did not give you a key.”

“Your landlord’s lock was insulting.”

“That does not improve your case.”

“I also fixed the lock.”

You stared at him. He stared back.

Finally, you sighed. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Still invasive.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I’m learning.”

You softened.

“Okay,” you said.

That became the shape of things.

Mistake. Correction.

Apology. Learning.

Again.

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

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

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

He did not.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

You looked up. Your face was wet.

After a moment, you nodded.

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

“Touch?” he asked.

You shook your head.

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

You rubbed both hands over your face.

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

Tim listened.

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

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

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

So he said, “I’m sorry.”

You looked at him.

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

Your face crumpled.

“I hate it,” you said.

“I know.”

“They were in pain.”

“Yes.”

“And I walked away.”

“You let trained medics help them.”

“I could have done it faster.”

“Yes.”

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

“It’s true.”

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

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

You looked at him. Tim turned his head.

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

Your mouth trembled.

“Yeah,” you whispered.

“I don’t know how to fix that.”

“That’s unlike you.”

“I know. Very unsettling.”

A faint smile touched your face.

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

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

“Does it get easier?” you asked.

“Not quickly.”

“Honest.”

“You asked.”

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

“You did well today,” he said softly.

You cried harder. He held your hand through it.

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

Tim had never trusted that kind of math before.

He was learning.

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

Tim objected to the phrasing. Not the substance.

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

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

“This is very planned,” you said.

Tim stood. “Is that bad?”

“No. It’s very you.”

“I can be spontaneous.”

“You sent me a calendar invite.”

“It had the address.”

“It had a weather contingency.”

“It might rain.”

“It has a section titled Emotional Expectations.”

Tim paused.

You smiled. “I liked that part.”

He relaxed slightly. “Oh.”

You sat across from him.

For a while, it was almost normal.

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

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

You laughed.

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

This was quieter.

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

Tim reached across the table and touched your hand.

You looked down. Then up.

“Hi,” you said softly.

“Hi.”

“You’re staring.”

“Yes.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I’m trying to memorise this.”

Your face softened. “Tim.”

He looked at your hand beneath his.

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

Your expression shifted.

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

“Like?”

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

Your eyes filled.

He panicked. “Good tears or bad tears?”

You laughed wetly. “Good.”

“I need people to start labelling them.”

“Jason said that too.”

“Jason and I agreeing is a bad sign.”

“End times.”

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

“I’d like that,” you said.

“Good.”

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

“Correct opinion.”

“And I like jasmine tea.”

“Already knew that.”

“Of course you did.”

“And I feel safe with you,” you said.

Tim went very still.

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

“I can reduce chart frequency.”

“Don’t be hasty.”

His mouth twitched. You smiled back.

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

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

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

Mostly.

He did make a mental note about jasmine tea.

He was still Tim.

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

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

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

The cannon swung toward the street below.

Toward a group of trapped families.

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

The blast hit him sideways.

Not full power.

Enough.

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

You were beside him in seconds. “Tim!”

He looked up.

You were already reaching for him.

Then you stopped. Your hands hovered. Shaking.

His arm was broken.

Obvious. Ugly. Wrong angle.

Not fatal. Not permanent if treated quickly.

Pain roared.

You were crying.

Not because of the injury.

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

Tim understood all of that in the space between breaths.

He held your gaze.

“No,” he said softly.

Your face crumpled.

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

You nodded, tears spilling over.

“Stabilise only,” you repeated.

Your hands moved to his arm.

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

You were fast, practised, gentle.

It hurt. God, it hurt.

Tim breathed through it. You breathed with him.

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

Gotham rain began to fall. Naturally.

You finished securing the splint and looked at him.

“I didn’t,” you whispered.

Tim’s chest ached. “I know.”

“I wanted to.”

“I know.”

“I really wanted to.”

“I know.”

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

You cried harder.

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

Not because pain was beautiful.

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

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

Below, sirens wailed. Above, Gotham brooded theatrically.

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

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

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

Tim sighed against your mouth. You laughed through tears.

He loved the sound. He loved you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A real one.

No strategy. No smirk.

Just warmth.

You smiled back.

“There it is,” you said.

“What?”

“The smile.”

Tim’s ears warmed. “I smile.”

“You do now.”

He looked at your hand in his.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I do.”

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

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

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

Jason called you trouble. At first, anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

“You are actively leaking on a rental table.”

“I’ve had worse.”

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

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

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

“No.”

Roy groaned. “Jaybird—”

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

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

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

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

“Five seconds,” he said.

Roy exhaled loudly. “Thank God.”

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

“You already are.”

“Then I’m doing it on purpose.”

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

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

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

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

“Still okay?” you asked.

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

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

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

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

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

Kori smiled brightly. “He was most unpleasant.”

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

Your eyes flicked up. “That hurt.”

“Nothing gets past you, huh?”

“I’m good at my job.”

“And humble.”

“Deeply.”

Against his will, Jason’s mouth almost twitched.

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

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

“Shouldn’t?”

“Bodies are weird.”

“That your professional opinion?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

“You good?” you asked.

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

“Fine,” he said.

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

“Does it drain you?” he asked.

You blinked. “Little bit,” you said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You said, “May I?”

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

Your smile was small and annoying.

The wound vanished beneath your touch.

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

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

“Didn’t ask whose line it was.”

“I’m okay.”

There it was again.

Not fine.

Worse. Okay.

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

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

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

Jason let go immediately.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

You tilted your head. “For what?”

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

“You looked dizzy,” he said instead.

You smiled. “I’m alright.”

“Strike three.”

“What?”

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

Your smile faded.

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

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

You stepped back.

“I just need rest sometimes,” you said.

Jason watched you walk away.

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

The next morning, it was gone.

You did not mention it. Neither did he.

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

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

He started buying coffee the way you liked it.

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

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

Jason shrugged. “Only the annoying ones.”

“I’m honoured.”

“Don’t be.”

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

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

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

The gun lowered. “What happened?”

You smiled weakly. “Hello to you too.”

“Who did it?”

“Very normal first question.”

“Name.”

“Jason—”

“Name.”

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

Jason went still.

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

“What does that mean?”

You looked away. “I healed someone.”

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

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

“Kid hit you?”

“No. The kid had been hit.”

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

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

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

So he stepped aside. “Get in.”

You blinked. “I wasn’t asking to—”

“Didn’t ask what you were asking.”

“Bossy.”

“Bleeding.”

“Fair.”

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

You saw the books first.

“Jane Austen?” you asked, eyebrows lifting.

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

“No. Just adjusting my worldview.”

“Adjust faster.”

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

Jason pointed at the couch. “Sit.”

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

He got the first aid kit.

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

“Observant.”

“Why don’t you heal yourself?”

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

“I can,” you said. “Kind of.”

“Kind of.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Uncomplicate it.”

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

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

“Some things take time,” you said.

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

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

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

He almost pulled back.

“You good?” he asked.

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

He waited.

You huffed. “Yes, Jason. I’m good.”

He resumed. You watched his face while he worked.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re gentle.”

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

“Your secret is safe with me.”

“Better be.”

Your smile was small.

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

“There,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

“I said thank you.”

“Yeah. Weird.”

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

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

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

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

By morning, your bruise had faded to yellow.

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

“You cook?” you asked.

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

“You own one fork.”

“It’s a good fork.”

“It’s bent.”

“It’s got character.”

You smiled. Jason looked away first.

After that, you came back.

Not often. Not predictably.

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

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

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

“I’m charming.”

“You’re terrifying.”

“Same thing in Gotham.”

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

You told him you could take care of yourself.

He said, “Didn’t say you couldn’t.”

You got on the bike.

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

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

Green light. Hands dragging him down. Laughter. Crowbar. Dirt. His own voice screaming from somewhere far away.

He woke with a knife in his hand. You were on the floor in front of him, hands raised, breathing slow.

“Jason,” you said.

His vision tunnelled. The knife shook.

“Don’t touch me,” he rasped.

“I won’t.”

“I said don’t—”

“I heard you.”

His chest heaved. Sweat ran cold down his back. The room flickered between then and now, green and dark, grave and apartment.

You did not move closer. You did not move away.

“I’m here,” you said. “You’re in your apartment. Window’s cracked because you said the soup smelled too healthy. Roy’s terrible movie is paused at forty-two minutes. You have a knife. I am not touching you.”

The details landed slowly.

Window. Movie. Knife. You.

Not the Pit. Not the warehouse. Not the grave.

Jason lowered the knife. It hit the floor with a dull thud.

Your hands stayed raised. He hated that. He hated that you had to be careful with him. Hated that some broken animal part of him needed it.

“I could’ve hurt you,” he said.

“You didn’t.”

“I could’ve.”

“But you didn’t.”

He looked at you. Your face was calm.

Then, very carefully, you said, “Can I sit beside you?”

Jason’s throat worked. He nodded.

You moved slowly, sitting on the floor a few feet away.

He stared at the wall.

“You should leave,” he said.

“Probably.”

That startled a laugh out of him. It cracked on the way out.

You smiled faintly.

“I’m not going to,” you said.

“Stupid.”

“Frequently.”

“Dangerous.”

“Occupational hazard.”

Jason closed his eyes. His head pounded. Lazarus static crawled beneath his skin. Rage, fear, memory, pain — all of it tangled until he wanted to claw himself open just to let it out.

He felt your gaze on him.

“Can I help?” you asked.

His eyes opened. “No healing.”

“I didn’t say healing.”

“What else you got?”

You held out your hand, palm up, not reaching. “Grounding.”

Jason looked at it like it was a trap. Maybe it was. Maybe kindness always was, if you had been starved long enough.

He took your hand anyway.

Your fingers curled around his. Warm. Steady.

Something in him eased. Not the whole thing. Not the Pit. Not the rage. Not the dead boy under his skin.

But enough.

For the first time in a long time, Jason breathed and did not feel like the air had teeth.

You stayed until dawn. You did not mention the way his hand never let go of yours. Neither did he.

After that, things changed. Quietly.

Jason started calling you when missions got bad.

Not because he needed help. Never that. Because you were “already on the roster” or “closer than the League” or “less annoying than a hospital.”

You started calling him when healing took too much.

Not because you needed help. Never that. Because his apartment was “nearby” or “quieter than the Tower” or “the only place nobody asked questions.”

Neither of you called it what it was. That would have been too sensible, and both of you were apparently allergic.

Roy figured it out first. Obviously.

“You two are doing the thing,” he said one morning, walking into the safehouse kitchen to find Jason making you eggs while you sat at the counter wearing one of his hoodies.

Jason did not look up from the pan. “The thing where I shoot you?”

“The domestic thing.”

You choked on your coffee.

Jason pointed the spatula at Roy. “Out.”

Roy grinned. “Oh, this is precious.”

“Harper.”

“They’re wearing your hoodie.”

“They were cold.”

“You own, like, twelve blankets.”

“Kori burned three.”

“One time,” Kori called from the living room. “And they were ugly.”

Roy leaned against the counter, delighted. “So the hoodie was medically necessary?”

You set your mug down. “I’m not participating in whatever this is.”

“This is love, babe,” Roy said.

Jason went very still. The word landed in the room like a live grenade.

Your eyes flicked to Jason. Jason stared at the eggs.

Roy’s expression changed./ For once in his life, he seemed to realise he had stepped directly into a minefield.

“Anyway,” he said loudly, “I’m going to go stand over there and pretend I have survival instincts.”

He fled. Kori appeared in the doorway, took one look at Jason’s face, and gently turned around again.

The kitchen went quiet.

You looked down at your hands. Jason turned off the stove.

The eggs were probably ruined. He did not care.

“Jay,” you said softly. He hated how much he loved that nickname in your voice.

“Don’t,” he said.

You closed your mouth. Regret hit him immediately.

He set the spatula down.

“I didn’t mean—” He stopped.

Words were hard. Honest ones were worse. They jammed in his throat like broken glass.

You waited. You were good at waiting. That was how you got under his armour in the first place.

Jason braced both hands on the counter. “I ain’t good at this.”

Your voice stayed gentle. “At eggs?”

A laugh punched out of him.

He looked at you. At his hoodie around your shoulders. At the fading bruise beneath your jaw from some injury you still would not fully explain. At the coffee he knew exactly how to make. At the space you had taken up in his life so gradually that he had not noticed until the whole damn room was full of you.

“I don’t know what this is,” he said.

Your expression softened. “I don’t either.”

“But it’s something.”

“Yeah,” you whispered. “It is.”

His chest hurt. Not bad hurt.

Worse. Hopeful hurt.

Jason looked away. “I don’t wanna ruin it.”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” you admitted. “I don’t.”

He appreciated that.

You got off the stool and came around the counter slowly. He did not move. You stopped close enough that he could feel your warmth, far enough that he could choose.

Always choose.

“Can I touch you?” you asked.

Jason closed his eyes. The question still did things to him. Maybe it always would.

“Yeah,” he said.

Your hand settled against his chest, over his heart. His own hand came up and covered yours.

“I’m scared too,” you said. His eyes opened. You smiled sadly. “In case that helps.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Fair.”

“It kinda does.”

“Also fair.”

Jason looked at your mouth. Your breath changed. He almost laughed because, really, after blood, bullets, nightmares, Roy’s emotional terrorism, and two idiots dancing around the obvious for months, this was what made him nervous? A kiss? Ridiculous.

Terrifying.

He leaned in slowly. Giving you time. Giving himself time.

Your eyes fluttered shut.

Jason kissed you like he was asking a question he could not say aloud. You answered by curling your fingers in his shirt and kissing him back.

The eggs burned.

Roy yelled, “I smell emotional development and also breakfast crimes!”

Jason broke the kiss just long enough to shout, “I will end you!”

You laughed against his mouth. And Jason, against all odds, felt alive.

Not resurrected. Not surviving.

Alive.

That was how you became his person. Not all at once. Not with fireworks or grand declarations. With coffee. Consent. Bad movie nights. Blood on kitchen tile. Your hand in his after nightmares. His hoodie on your shoulders. Soup neither of you admitted was Alfred’s recipe. Books traded back and forth with notes scribbled in the margins.

You gave him a copy of Frankenstein with a sticky note on the front that read: For obvious reasons. Jason threw a pillow at you and then read the whole thing in one night. He gave you The Odyssey and wrote inside the cover: For getting home, even when it takes too damn long.

You cried. He pretended not to panic.

You loved him. He loved you.

Neither of you said it for a while. Jason thought that was okay. He thought you had time.

That was the thing about miracles. They made you stupid enough to believe in later.

The mission that ruined everything started in Qurac.

It was supposed to be simple. That was how Jason knew they were screwed. A weapons ring was moving experimental biotech through old League of Assassins tunnels. Not Lazarus, not exactly, but close enough that Jason felt the green under his skin start snarling the second he read the briefing.

Roy leaned over the table. “We can sit this one out.”

Jason glared at him. “No.”

“You did the voice.”

“What voice?”

“The ‘my trauma is driving, and I’m pretending it’s tactical’ voice.”

Kori, floating upside down near the ceiling because chairs were apparently optional, nodded solemnly. “I have also heard this voice.”

Jason looked at you for backup. Bad idea. You were sitting across from him, expression too careful.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” you said.

Jason scoffed. “Not proving anything.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not.”

“I said okay.”

“You said it judgmentally.”

“I said it accurately.”

Roy whispered, “Married.”

Jason threw a pen at him. You caught it without looking away from Jason. He hated when you did hot things during arguments. Deeply inconvenient.

“I’m going,” he said.

“I know,” you replied.

Something in his chest softened despite himself. You did know. You knew when not to push. Knew when the mission mattered for reasons he could not explain without turning himself inside out. Knew that sitting out would feel like letting the Pit own a part of him forever.

“But I’m coming with you,” you added.

“No.”

Your eyebrow lifted. “Cute.”

“No.”

“Jason.”

“No. Those tunnels are League-adjacent, Lazarus-adjacent, and cursed-adjacent. That is three adjacents too many.”

“So you agree it’s dangerous.”

“Yeah. For you.”

“And not for you?”

“I’m built different.”

“You’re built concussed.”

Roy made a strangled noise.

Jason pointed at him without looking. “Do not.”

Roy raised both hands.

You leaned forward. “I am not asking to fight,” you said. “I’m asking to be nearby if something goes wrong.”

“Something always goes wrong.”

“Exactly.”

Jason stared at you. You stared back. He knew that look. You had learned it from him, which was rude.

“You stay behind the extraction point,” he said.

“No.”

“You stay with Roy.”

“Roy is going inside with you.”

“Then you stay with Kori.”

“Kori is also going inside with you.”

“You stay in the jet.”

You smiled. It was not a nice smile. “I love when you try to assign me to furniture.”

Jason’s brain snagged.cLove. You had not said I love you. Not exactly. But the word slipped out so easily in your voice that Jason’s whole stupid heart tripped over it.

You noticed. Your expression softened. “Jay.”

He looked away. “Fine. But you stay back unless called.”

“I can agree to that.”

“No hero shit.”cYou gave him a flat look.c“Fine,” he amended. “Limited hero shit.”

“Reasonable.”

“It’s not.”

“No, but it’s us.”

That was the problem.cIt was very much you. Both of you, sprinting toward pain with your hands out, pretending it was strategy instead of instinct.

Jason should have known then.cMaybe some part of him did.

The tunnels stank of old water, rust, and memory.cJason hated them immediately.

The walls were carved stone reinforced with modern steel. League symbols had been scraped away in some places, but not all. Emergency lights flickered red along the floor, casting the corridor in a glow that reminded him too much of blood under water.

His helmet filtered toxins, mapped heat signatures, tracked motion.cIt did nothing for ghosts.

Roy moved ahead of him, bow raised. Kori floated silently behind. You were back near the extraction route with a comm link, medical kit, and strict instructions Jason knew you would disobey the second things got ugly.c

The first fifteen minutes were quiet. Too quiet.cThen Roy said, “I hate to be the one to say this, but—”

The tunnel exploded.cThe walls opened. Hidden panels slid back, and figures poured out wearing armour marked with a symbol Jason had only seen once before, burned into the doors of a Lazarus laboratory. His vision went green at the edges.

“Jason,” Roy snapped.

“I’m good.”

“Liar.”

Gunfire lit the tunnel. Jason moved.

The first wave went down fast. Rubber rounds, electrified knives, a boot to one helmet, elbow to another throat. Kori’s starbolts tore through the far wall. Roy’s arrows pinned armour joints and disabled weapons with surgical precision.

Then the second wave came. Bigger. Modified. Wrong. Their veins glowed faint green beneath grey skin.

Jason’s breathing changed.

Lazarus experiments. Of course. Of course, some bastards had looked at the thing that ruined him and thought, How can we make this worse?

A soldier lunged at him with a hooked blade. Jason ducked, drove a knee into their ribs, and slammed them into the wall.

The body twitched. Too strong. Not feeling pain. Jason’s helmet flashed warnings.

Behind him, Kori cried out.

He turned. A net of glowing wire wrapped around her, crackling with energy tuned specifically to disrupt Tamaranean physiology. She hit the ground hard. Roy shouted and fired three arrows in rapid succession. A fourth soldier caught them midair.

“Okay,” Roy said. “That’s new and bad.”

Jason shot the soldier in the knee. They did not fall.

“Very bad,” Roy corrected.

Then your voice came through comms. “Jason, status?”

He should have lied. He almost did. Instead, because he loved you and was trying to be less of a hypocrite about trust, he said, “Complicated.”

“That is not a status.”

“Hostiles enhanced. Kori’s down. Roy’s being annoying.”

“Means he’s alive,” Roy grunted.

You were silent for half a second. Then: “I’m coming in.”

“No.”

“Jason—”

“No. Extraction point. Stay there.”

A blast shook dust from the ceiling. The comm crackled.

Jason drove his shoulder into an attacker and fired point-blank into their armour.

“I mean it,” he snapped. “You stay back.”

Your voice went quiet. “Come back to me, then.”

Jason’s throat tightened. Bad timing.T errible timing. Absolutely lethal timing.

“Plan to,” he said.

The fight turned uglier. They pushed forward inch by inch, deeper into the tunnels, until they reached the central lab.

It was worse than Jason expected. Rows of containment pods lined the walls. Some empty. Some occupied. Tubes pumped greenish fluid through bodies that twitched in artificial sleep. Screens displayed vitals. Pain responses. Regeneration trials.

Jason froze. For one second, he was not in Qurac. He was in the Pit. He was in the grave. He was on a table, dead and not dead, while people decided what his body was worth.

Roy’s hand closed on his shoulder. “Jay.”

Jason inhaled. Gun oil. Dust. Roy.

Not Pit. Not grave.

Now.

“I’m good,” Jason said.

Roy did not call him a liar this time. Maybe because he knew Jason needed the lie to stand.

They planted charges. Kori tore free of the net with a furious roar bright enough to shake the pods.

That was when the real weapon woke up. It came from the far chamber. A man, maybe once. Now something stitched together with biotech and Lazarus residue, skin pale, eyes burning green, a blade grown from his own arm like bone turned cruel.

Jason knew immediately.

This was not a soldier. This was a prototype.

The prototype looked at him. Smiled.

“Returned one,” it said.

Jason’s blood went cold.

Roy whispered, “Hate that.”

The prototype moved faster than anything that large should have. Jason barely dodged the first strike. The blade cut through his jacket, armour, and skin beneath like it was all paper.

Pain flared hot across his chest. He fired twice. The bullets sank into the prototype’s shoulder and were pushed out by healing flesh.

“Of course,” Jason snarled.

Kori hit it with a Starbolt that threw it through three pods. It stood back up. Roy’s explosive arrow took out half the floor. It crawled out of the crater. The charges beeped. Time ticking down.

Jason made a decision.

Not a noble one. A necessary one.

“Get the civilians out,” he said.

Roy’s head snapped toward him. “No.”

“Kori, take the pods that are still viable. Roy, extraction.”

“Jason.”

“Now!”

Kori looked at him. Something in her expression said she understood. That she hated understanding. She lifted two pods, one under each arm, and flew toward the exit.

Roy lingered. Jason turned on him. “Go.”

Roy’s mouth twisted. “You better not do the dead boy routine.”

Jason smiled behind the helmet. “No promises.”

“Jason.”

“Roy.”

For a second, all the jokes fell away. Then Roy cursed and ran.

Jason faced the prototype alone. The thing tilted its head.

“Returned one,” it said again.

Jason rolled his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he said. “And you’re about to be discontinued.”

The fight became brutal. Jason broke three fingers. Maybe four. Took a hit to the ribs that cracked armour and bone. Lost one gun. Then the other. Drew a knife. Lost that too. He fought dirty because he had never known any other way to survive. The prototype fought like pain was a rumour.

The countdown hit sixty seconds. Jason lured it deeper into the lab, toward the central reactor.

Fifty. He took a blade through the shoulder and used the angle to get close enough to slam an explosive charge into the prototype’s chest.

Forty. It roared.

Jason laughed, bloody and breathless.

“Yeah,” he rasped. “Didn’t like that, huh?”

Thirty. The prototype grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the reactor casing. His helmet cracked. Warnings flashed.

Twenty. Jason reached for the detonator. The prototype’s bone blade punched into his abdomen.

Everything stopped. Not because there was no pain.

Because there was too much. The blade went in low and deep, tearing through armour, flesh, organs. Jason’s mouth opened around a sound he refused to make. Blood flooded hot beneath his jacket.

The prototype leaned close.

“Returned,” it whispered, “can return again.”

Something inside Jason went very still. No. No, he couldn’t.

Not again. Not the Pit. Not the dark. Not crawling back wrong.

His fingers closed around the detonator.

Ten.

He pressed it.

The charge on the prototype’s chest exploded. Green fire swallowed the room. Jason hit the ground hard.

The world went silent. For a while, there was only heat.

Then ringing. Then pain.

Jason opened his eyes to a broken ceiling and emergency lights flickering red. He knew before he moved. He knew from the wet warmth beneath him. From the wrongness in his gut. From the way every breath dragged knives through his lungs. From the cold spreading outward, slow and hungry.

He looked down.

Bad. Very bad.

His abdomen was open. Blood slicked the floor beneath him, dark and spreading. Something inside him had become outside him, and Jason’s brain refused to look at it directly.

He laughed once. It came out wet.

“Gross,” he muttered.

Footsteps thundered. Roy appeared first, skidding into view, face going white.

“Oh no,” Roy breathed. “No, no, no.”

Jason tried to lift a hand. It did not move. “Hey,” he rasped. “You look like shit.”

Roy dropped beside him. “Shut up. Shut up, don’t talk.”

Roy pressed both hands against the wound.

Jason screamed. Couldn’t help it. The sound tore out of him. Roy flinched but did not let go, tears already standing in his eyes.

“I told you not to do the dead boy routine,” Roy choked.

Jason tried to smile. He tasted blood.

Kori landed hard enough to crack the floor, her glow flickering with horror.

Then you were there.

Jason’s heart lurched. No.

No, no, no.

You dropped to your knees beside him. Your face went still when you saw the wound. That was how Jason knew it was worse than he thought.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he rasped.

Your eyes snapped to his. Roy made a broken sound. Jason had never called you that in front of them before.

You looked like you might fall apart. Instead, you reached for him.

Jason caught your wrist. Weakly. Barely.

“No,” he said.

Your face crumpled. “Jason—”

“No.”

“Jay, you’re dying.”

“Yeah.”

Roy swore. “Don’t say that.”

Jason ignored him. His eyes stayed on you. He knew now. Maybe not everything. But enough. The bruises. The shaking hands. The dizziness. The injuries that mirrored other people’s pain. The way you looked after healing someone too badly hurt.

Fine print. There was always fine print.

“Don’t,” he said again.

Your tears spilled over. “I can fix it.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes,” you whispered. “I can.”

“No.” His grip tightened with the last scraps of his strength. “You can take it.”

The words hit the room like a gunshot. Roy looked at you. Kori’s glow dimmed. Your face went pale.

Jason laughed weakly, and it hurt like hell. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Figured it out.”

You shook your head. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Jason—”

“Don’t you fucking dare apologise and then do it anyway.”

Your mouth trembled. Behind you, the tunnel groaned. The charges had destabilised more than the lab. Dust rained from the ceiling.

Roy looked between you and Jason, panicked. “What does he mean, take it?”

You did not answer.

Jason did. “Their power,” he said, each word dragging blood with it. “Doesn’t heal. Transfers.”

Roy froze. Kori whispered your name. You closed your eyes.

Jason wanted to reach for your face. Couldn’t.

“You should’ve told me,” he said.

“I know.”

“You should’ve told me before I let you touch me.”

“I know.”

His vision blurred. He blinked hard.

No. He was not dying like this. Not while looking at you. Not while you were about to make the worst choice of both their lives.

“Listen to me,” he said. Your eyes opened. “I ain’t worth that.”

Something in your face changed.

Not soft. Not sad.

Angry.

Good. Anger meant you were still you.

“You don’t get to decide that,” you said.

Jason’s breath hitched. “Yeah?” he whispered. “Funny. Thought that was your whole thing.”

You flinched.

The wound pulsed under Roy’s hands. Jason’s body jerked. Black crowded the edges of his sight.

Your hand slid from his grip.

Panic ripped through him sharper than the blade.

“No,” he tried.

You leaned over him. “Forgive me,” you whispered.

Jason knew those words. He had heard them in dreams. In nightmares. From people who were about to hurt him and wanted absolution first.

But your voice was different. Broken. Loving. Terrified. He tried to move. Tried to stop you. Tried to tell you he loved you because apparently he had waited too long and now the universe was laughing.

Your hands pressed to his abdomen. You inhaled.

And Jason healed. It was instant. Horrific. His organs pulled back into place. Flesh sealed. Blood stopped. Pain vanished so fast it left him dizzy. His lungs opened. His heartbeat slammed strong and furious against his ribs.

He gasped.

Sat up. Alive. Whole.

And you screamed. Your body folded forward, arms wrapping around your abdomen as blood burst between your fingers. The same wound tore open through your body, deep and devastating. You collapsed against him before he could catch you properly.

For half a second, Jason could not understand what he was seeing.

Then the blood hit his hands. Your blood. Your wound.

His wound.

“No,” he said. It was not a word. It was an animal sound.

Roy scrambled backwards, horrified. “Oh, my God.”

Kori’s hands flew to her mouth. You choked on a breath, eyes wide with pain. Jason caught you, pressing both hands to your abdomen. Blood welled between his fingers.

“No, no, no, no, no.”

Your head lolled against his chest. He had seen you hurt before. Bruised. Dizzy. Pale.

Never this. Never open. Never dying.

Because of him.

“Why would you do that?” he shouted.

You tried to speak. Blood touched your lips. Jason’s heart split clean in half.

“Don’t,” he said, voice breaking. “Don’t talk. Don’t you dare talk.”

Your eyes found his. Relief. Again. Always that damned relief. Because he was alive. Because you had done this and thought the math worked.

Jason wanted to scream until the tunnels came down.

Roy was talking rapidly into comms, calling for evac, medical, League transport, anything. Kori knelt beside Jason, glowing hands hovering uselessly because Tamaranean starfire could destroy armies but could not undo this.

Jason pressed harder. You whimpered. He nearly threw up.

“Sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

Your fingers twitched against his jacket. Trying to hold on. He leaned close.

“Stay with me,” he said. “You hear me? You stay with me.”

Your lips moved. He bent lower.

“Worth it,” you breathed.

Jason shattered. “No.” His voice cracked so hard it barely sounded human. “No, you don’t get to say that. You don’t get to put that on me.”

Your eyes fluttered.

“No!” he shouted. “Look at me. Look at me!”

They opened again. Barely.

Jason’s hands were soaked. He had been covered in blood a thousand times. This was the first time it felt like drowning.

“You’re not dying,” he said. “Not for me. You hear me? Not for me.”

The tunnel groaned again. Kori touched his shoulder. “Jason, we must move.”

“I can’t.”

“We must.”

“I can’t move them!”

“You can,” Kori said, voice shaking but firm. “You must.”

Roy appeared on your other side with a field stretcher, face wet, hands trembling. “Jay. We’ve got medevac two minutes out, but this tunnel is coming down now.”

Jason looked at you. Your breathing was too shallow. Two minutes was forever. Two minutes was nothing.

He slid one arm under your shoulders, the other beneath your knees. You made a small, broken sound. Jason flinched like he had been shot.

“I know,” he whispered. “I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I’ve got you.”

He lifted you. Blood ran down his arm.  His healed abdomen felt like a mockery.