jt.

And lately, he noticed you. Not in the soft, romantic way he usually liked to notice you, though he did that too. He noticed the way your shoulders had started living near your ears. The way you checked your phone, not because you wanted to see something, but because you were avoiding looking at anyone for too long. The way your laugh arrived half a second late. Like it had gotten lost on the way out.

At first, Tim gave you space. That was what he told himself, anyway.

You had always valued independence. You had never been the kind of person who wanted him hovering, not unless he came with snacks, blankets, and an apology for pretending he was not hovering. So Tim tried to be normal. He texted you between cases. Sent you ridiculous pictures of Alfred the Cat looking personally offended by his existence. Brought you your favourite drink without making a big deal of it.

You thanked him every time. You smiled every time. And every time, something about it was wrong.

The breaking point came on a Tuesday night, because Gotham never had the decency to let anyone unravel on a poetic day. It was always some miserable weekday where the sky looked like dirty steel, and everyone had forgotten how to drive.

Tim got back from patrol just before three in the morning, bruised across the ribs and moving like someone had very recently introduced him to a wall. You were in his apartment, sitting on the kitchen floor with your back against the cabinets, surrounded by papers, your laptop, and a mug of tea that had gone untouched and cold.

You looked up when he came in.

For one small second, relief crossed your face.

Then guilt swallowed it whole.

“Tim,” you said, already standing. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ve been worse.”

“That is the least comforting sentence anyone has ever said.”

“Statistically unlikely. Jason speaks.”

Usually, that would have gotten something out of you. A snort. An eye roll. A tired smile. Tonight, you just stared at the bruise spreading beneath the torn edge of his suit.

Tim’s expression softened. “Hey.”

You were already crossing the kitchen. “Sit down. I’ll get the kit.”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Barely.”

“Tim.”

He stopped.

It was not the word itself. It was the way your voice broke around it, thin and sharp, like you had stepped on glass.

So he sat.

You moved around him with careful hands. Too careful. Like he was something fragile, something holy, something you were afraid of ruining by existing too loudly near it.

Tim let you clean the shallow cut on his cheek. He watched your face while you did it.

Your jaw was tight. Your eyes were tired. Your hands were trembling.

“Did something happen?” he asked quietly.

“No.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m cold.”

“You’re wearing my hoodie.”

“It’s a cold hoodie.”

“That is literally not how fabric works.”

You huffed, but it was weak. Almost silent.

Tim caught your wrist gently before you could reach for another antiseptic wipe. Not to stop you. Just to hold you there, in the quiet between one breath and the next.

You looked at his hand around your wrist, then at him.

“Talk to me,” he said.

And there it was.

The awful sentence. The simple sentence. The one that made your throat close because you wanted to. God, you wanted to. You wanted to tell him everything. You wanted to pour out every fear, every deadline, every sleepless thought, every ugly little voice whispering that you were falling behind and failing at being a person. You wanted to tell him that you were so tired it felt like your bones had been filled with wet cement.

But then you looked at him. At the bruise darkening under his eye. At the split across his knuckles. At the suit he had not even had time to take off. At Tim Drake, who had lost too much and carried too much and still somehow asked you, with aching sincerity, to hand him more.

Your chest tightened.

“I can’t,” you said.

Tim went very still.

Not cold. Not angry.

Just very still.

“Why not?”

You shook your head. “It’s stupid.”

“Okay. Then tell me the stupid version.”

“It’s not—” You laughed once, sharp and humourless. “It’s not like that.”

“Then tell me what it is like.”

“Tim.”

“My name. Big fan. Keep going.”

You looked away.

He waited.

That was one of the dangerous things about Tim. He knew how to wait. He could sit in silence until it cracked first. He did not rush to fill it. He did not rescue you from the question. He stayed there, patient and pale under the kitchen light, looking at you like your answer mattered more than the ache in his ribs.

Finally, your voice came out small.

“I don’t want to burden you.”

Tim blinked.

You hated the look on his face. Not because it was cruel. It would have been easier if it were cruel. Instead, he looked like you had just handed him something breakable and asked him not to let it fall.

“You think you burden me?” he asked.

“No. Not exactly. I just…” You pulled your wrist back, and he let you. “You have so much. All of you do.”

“All of us?”

“You. Bruce. Dick. Jason. Damian. Cass. Steph. Everyone.” Your words started coming faster, your control slipping thread by thread. “Everyone in your life has been through something huge. Something awful. And you’re all out there every night trying to stop the city from eating itself alive, and then I’m here like—like, oh no, I’m stressed, I’m tired, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, please comfort me.”

Tim’s face changed.

You could not read it.

You kept going because stopping felt worse.

“It just—it feels so ridiculous. It feels incomparable. You got back from patrol bleeding, Tim. Bleeding. And I’m supposed to tell you I had a bad day? That oI’m overwhelmed? That I feel like I’m failing? How is that fair?”

His voice was very quiet when he said, “That is not how pain works.”

You looked at him.

Tim stood slowly. He winced because his ribs were definitely worse than “okay,” but he stood anyway. Then he crossed the small space between you and leaned back against the counter beside you.

“It’s not a competition,” he said.

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

You flinched.

He noticed. His expression softened immediately. “I’m not saying that to call you out. I’m saying it because I think you know it for other people. I don’t think you know it for yourself.”

You swallowed hard.

Tim looked down at his hands. His gloves were still on, torn across two fingers.

“You know what Bruce does?” he asked.

You blinked. “Brood?”

“Yes, but as a lifestyle choice.” A tiny smile tugged at his mouth, there and gone. “He does this thing where he ranks suffering. Like if someone else has it worse, then he doesn’t get to be hurt. Which is stupid.”

“You just called Batman stupid.”

“I’ll do it again. I’m brave.”

Despite yourself, your mouth twitched.

Tim saw it. His eyes warmed, but he did not push.

“He does it,” Tim continued, “because it lets him avoid needing anything. If his pain is never big enough, then he never has to ask anyone to hold it.”

Your throat burned.

“And you,” Tim said softly, “are doing the same thing.”

“I’m not Batman.”

“No. You have a better sleep schedule.”

“Tim.”

“And a significantly healthier relationship with capes.”

“Tim.”

He turned toward you fully. “You don’t have to earn comfort by having the worst trauma in the room.”

The words hit you harder than they should have.

Maybe because they were true. Maybe because you had been waiting for someone to say them plainly, without making you feel foolish for needing to hear it.

Your eyes stung.

Tim’s gaze flicked over your face, quick and careful. “Hey,” he murmured.

“I just don’t want to add to it,” you whispered. “You already carry so much.”

“I know.”

“And I love you.”

“I know that too.”

“So why would I make things harder for you?”

Tim took a breath. His expression did something complicated, something tender and wounded at once.

“Because loving someone means I want to know when they’re hurting,” he said. “Not because it’s easy. Not because I’m secretly sitting around hoping for more problems like some kind of emotional raccoon. But because it’s you.”

You looked down.

He ducked his head slightly, trying to catch your gaze.

“You are not a side quest,” he said.

A wet laugh escaped you. “That was almost romantic.”

“I’m workshopping.”

“You need a workshop.”

“Harsh, but fair.”

Silence settled again, softer this time.

Tim reached for your hand. Slowly. Giving you room to pull away.

You didn’t.

His fingers slid between yours. His palm was warm even through the glove.

“I don’t need you to be easy,” he said. “I don’t need you to be convenient. I don’t need you to shrink your feelings until they fit into the five minutes between patrol and passing out on my couch.”

Your face crumpled.

You hated that it did. Hated the way emotion moved through you before you could make it graceful.

Tim just held your hand tighter.

“I need you alive in this with me,” he said. “Honest. Messy. Human. Whatever that looks like.”

A tear slipped down your cheek. You wiped it away quickly, embarrassed.

Tim did not comment on it. Bless him. Menace that he was, he could sometimes be merciful.

“I feel so stupid,” you said.

“You’re not.”

“I’m stressed about normal things.”

“Normal things can still break people.”

“They shouldn’t.”

“Bad news,” Tim said. “They do.”

You breathed out, shaky and uneven.

He shifted closer. “What’s been going on?”

You almost said nothing. The word rose automatically, polished by habit. But Tim looked at you with those impossible blue eyes, exhausted and bruised and unwavering, and suddenly lying felt like pushing him away with both hands.

So you told him.

Not all at once. Not elegantly.

You told him in fragments. You told him about the pressure sitting on your chest every morning before you even opened your eyes. About feeling behind no matter how much you did. About the messages you had not answered. The work you had put off because looking at it made your stomach twist. The way everyone else seemed to be surviving better than you. The way you felt needy and dramatic and small.

Tim listened. He did not interrupt. He did not try to solve it after the first thirty seconds, which you knew cost him spiritually. Somewhere inside him, a spreadsheet was probably screaming.

When you finally ran out of words, the kitchen felt different.

Not fixed. But less haunted.

Tim’s thumb moved gently over the back of your hand.

“Okay,” he said.

You gave him a watery look. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” His voice stayed calm. “Okay. That sounds like a lot.”

“It’s not compared to—”

“Nope.”

You stopped.

Tim lifted one finger. “I am putting that sentence in jail.”

“Excuse me?”

“No comparisons. Not tonight.”

You stared at him.

He stared back, completely serious. “It has committed crimes.”

Another laugh broke out of you, smaller this time. Softer.

Tim’s mouth curved.

“There you are,” he whispered.

The tenderness in it nearly undid you.

He tugged gently on your hand. “Come here.”

You hesitated. “Your ribs.”

“Are still attached.”

“That is not the standard.”

“It is tonight.”

“Tim.”

“I’ll tell you if it hurts.”

You gave him a look.

He sighed. “Fine. I will tell you if it hurts beyond the usual background level of being Red Robin, which is, admittedly, a concerning baseline.”

“Better.”

“Great. Now come here.”

You stepped into him carefully. He wrapped his arms around you, not too tight, resting his chin near your temple. You held yourself stiffly for half a second, still unsure whether you were allowed to collapse.

Then Tim’s hand moved up your back, slow and steady.

You broke. Not dramatically. Not loudly. There was no grand storm, no cinematic sobbing under lightning and gothic gargoyles. Just the quiet surrender of someone who had been holding a door shut for too long, finally letting it open.

Tim held you through it.

He did not shush you. He did not tell you it was okay, because you both knew it was not, not entirely.

Instead, he said, “I’ve got you.”

Again and again.

Like a promise. Like a password. Like something he would keep saying until some exhausted part of you finally believed him.

After a while, your breathing slowed.

His hoodie was damp where your face had been pressed against it. You pulled back, mortified.

“I’m sorry.”

Tim tilted his head.

You narrowed your eyes. “Do not put that sentence in jail, too.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were.”

“I was considering probation.”

“Tim.”

He brushed his thumb under your eye, catching the last tear before it fell. “You don’t have to apologise for crying on me.”

“You’re in tactical gear.”

“It’s seen worse.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Probably.”

You laughed again, and this time it sounded almost real.

Tim’s smile was small but victorious, like he had just cracked a case.

Then, because he was Tim, he glanced toward the kitchen floor. “Is that your laptop?”

You followed his gaze. “Unfortunately.”

“And those are…?”

“Documents. Notes. Existential dread in paper form.”

“Classic.”

“Don’t start making a plan.”

Tim froze.

You pointed at him. “I know that face.”

“I have several faces.”

“That’s your ‘I’m about to turn emotional distress into a colour-coded action structure’ face.”

His mouth opened. You raised your eyebrows.

He closed it.

A beat passed.

Then he said, very carefully, “Would a small plan be unwelcome?”

You stared at him.

He added, “Tiny. Pocket-sized. A baby plan.”

“Tim.”

“A planlet.”

“Timothy.”

He winced. “Okay. No plan yet.”

You softened. “Not yet.”

His expression gentled, and something in you eased because he had listened. Because he had heard the boundary and not treated it like an obstacle to solve.

“Then what do you need?” he asked.

You looked at him helplessly. “I don’t know.”

“That’s allowed.”

“I hate not knowing.”

“Also allowed.”

“I think…” You glanced at the mess on the floor. “I think I need to not be alone with it.”

Tim nodded once.

No hesitation. No sigh. No flash of resentment.

“Then you’re not.”

Fresh tears threatened again, because apparently your body had chosen tonight to become a leaky faucet with abandonment issues.

Tim looked down at the floor again. “We can move all that to the table. Or leave it there and pretend the kitchen has become a very depressing office.”

You rubbed your face. “Table, probably.”

“Good choice. Fewer crumbs of despair.”

“Are you always this weird when comforting people?”

“Only the ones I love.”

The words landed gently.

You looked at him.

Tim seemed to realise what he had said a second after saying it. Not because it was new. Not because he had never told you before. But because tonight, the words came stripped of drama and dressed in something quieter.

Proof.

He loved you. Not the idea of you when you were easy. Not the version of you that smiled and understood and never asked for too much.

You.

Kitchen-floor you. Cold-tea you. Crying-into-his-armour you.

You swallowed. “You love me even like this?”

Tim’s face changed again.

There was pain in it now.

Not because you had hurt him on purpose, but because the question had.

He reached for both your hands. “Especially like this.”

You shook your head slightly.

“Yes,” he said. “Especially.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does to me.”

“Why?”

Tim looked at you like the answer was obvious. Like it lived in every room you had ever entered together.

“Because this is real,” he said. “Because you trust me enough to let me see you when you’re not polished. Because I don’t want a relationship where you have to perform being okay so I don’t get uncomfortable.”

Your chest ached.

“I don’t want to drain you,” you whispered.

“You don’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“You’re always tired.”

“I was tired before I met you.”

That startled a laugh out of you.

Tim shrugged. “That one is on Gotham, capitalism, and my terrible personal choices.”

“Mostly your terrible personal choices.”

“Mostly,” he admitted. Then his voice softened. “But you are not one of them.”

You looked away fast.

Too late. He saw.

He always saw.

Tim stepped closer and pressed a kiss to your forehead. Not rushed. Not a distraction. Just warmth, offered without conditions.

“I’m not saying I’ll always know the perfect thing to say,” he murmured. “I won’t. I’m probably going to mess it up sometimes. I may accidentally suggest three productivity apps and get banished from your presence.”

“You would deserve it.”

“Absolutely.” His lips brushed your hairline. “But I want to be here. I want you to tell me. I want to learn how to take care of you in ways that actually help.”

You leaned into him again, more gently this time.

“And when you can’t tell me,” he continued, “we can make that easier too. Code words. Check-ins. A scale. Something simple.”

You smiled faintly against his shoulder. “There he is.”

“I contained myself for almost two minutes. Heroic.”

“Gold star.”

“I’ll add it to my case file.”

“You have a case file on me?”

“No.”

You pulled back.

His face was too innocent.

“Tim.”

“It’s not a case file.”

“Tim.”

“It’s more of a… notes app.”

You stared at him.

He lifted his hands. “Lovingly.”

“That is so creepy and so you.”

“It mostly says things like your favourite snacks and that you pretend not to like forehead kisses but always melt when I give you one.”

“I do not melt.”

Tim leaned forward and kissed your forehead again.

Your eyes fluttered shut. Traitorous body.

When he pulled back, he looked insufferably fond. “No comment.”

“I’m breaking up with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” you agreed miserably.

He laughed under his breath.

Then, together, you gathered the scattered papers from the floor.

Tim did not take over.

He asked where things went. He let you decide what stayed out and what got closed. He put your cold tea in the sink and made you a new one. He changed out of the suit only after you threatened to call Alfred, which worked so efficiently that you wondered if the entire family was secretly powered by fear of disappointing that man.

When he came back in sweatpants and an old Gotham Knights shirt, his hair damp from a quick shower, he looked younger. Softer. Still bruised, still tired, but less like Red Robin and more like your Tim.

He sat beside you on the couch instead of at the table.

No laptop. No plan.

Just you, him, tea, and the kind of quiet that did not demand performance.

After a while, you said, “I’m scared I’m going to keep doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“Not telling you.”

Tim turned his mug between his hands. “You probably will sometimes.”

You looked at him.

He shrugged lightly. “Patterns don’t disappear because of one conversation. But now I know what to look for.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It should.”

“Tim.”

“I’m going to love you with terrifying observational precision.”

“Somehow that is both romantic and a threat.”

“I contain multitudes.”

You smiled into your tea.

Then he reached for your hand again, resting your joined fingers on the blanket between you.

“And you can try again,” he said. “Every time. Even if you shut down first. Even if you say you’re fine and then realise three hours later that you’re not. You can come back and say, ‘Actually, I lied, everything is on fire.’”

“Everything is on fire?”

“This is Gotham. It’s usually accurate.”

You huffed.

He squeezed your hand.

“You’re not too much,” he said. “You’re not a burden. You are not stealing care from someone more deserving. You don’t have to be bleeding to be held.”

The room went blurry again. But this time, you did not look away.

Tim’s gaze stayed on yours, steady as a lighthouse.

“You don’t have to prove it hurts,” he said. “I believe you.”

That was the sentence that stayed.

Not because it fixed everything. It didn’t. Your stress still waited for you. Your responsibilities still existed. The world did not magically rearrange itself into something kinder just because Tim Drake loved you with bruised ribs and stubborn hands.

But something shifted.

A small lock opened. A window cracked. Air came in.

You set your tea down and curled into his side, careful of the bruises. Tim lifted his arm around you, tucking you close like it was the easiest thing in the world.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

The rain tapped softly against the window. Gotham glittered beyond the glass, all teeth and neon, a city that asked too much of everyone and apologised to no one.

But here, in the small glow of Tim’s apartment, you let yourself be held.

Not because your pain was the biggest. Not because you had earned it. Not because you had finally become tragic enough to deserve tenderness.

Just because you were loved.

And Tim, half-asleep beside you, pressed one last kiss to your temple and whispered, “I’ve got you.”

This time, some tired part of you believed him.

Not all the way. Not forever.

But enough for tonight.

Tim did not look up from his tablet. That was its own confession.

Damian stood near the medbay entrance with his arms folded, glaring at the room in general, which was not unusual, but his eyes flicked once toward Bruce, then toward the elevator, then toward Cass. Warning.

Jason, from the other side of the Cave, said, “This is already stupid, and I don’t even know what we’re doing yet.”

No one answered him.

Cass looked at Bruce. Bruce looked back.

His face said calm. His body said guilty.

Cass signed, No.

Bruce’s mouth tightened. “You do not know what I am going to ask.”

Cass tilted her head.

That was a lie, and everyone in the room knew it.

Jason snorted. “She knows enough.”

Bruce ignored him. “There is a case.”

There was always a case. Gotham produced cases the way other cities produced weather: relentlessly, violently, and usually at the worst possible time. But this one had been changing Bruce for days. Cass had watched it happen in the quiet places. His hand lingering too long over old League files. His jaw tightening when reports mentioned children. His steps slowing outside the medbay after Cass returned from patrol too silent. Bruce cared carefully, like care was a device that might explode if handled without gloves. But lately his concern had become something sharper.

Fear. For her.

Cass hated when fear wore strategy.

Bruce pressed a key. The main screen filled with images: blurred security footage, old warehouse schematics, faces of missing children, symbols burned into walls. Cass felt the room change around the pictures. Even Jason went quiet.

“Three children have been taken from safehouses connected to a trafficking investigation,” Bruce said. “Two were recovered last night.”

The screen changed.

Cass saw them. Small bodies. Rigid shoulders. Eyes too empty. Hands held wrong, not relaxed, not frightened in the usual ways, but waiting. Waiting for command. Waiting for punishment. Waiting for the world to become a training room again.

Her breath did not change. 

Everyone watched to see if it would. That was another kind of touch.

She kept her body still.

Bruce continued, voice lower. “They were conditioned. Not League exactly, but close enough. Movement training. Pain compliance. Speech restriction. Emotional suppression. They attack when approached unless given specific command cues.”

The images shifted again: a child in a hospital room, knees drawn to chest, a nurse standing too far away, restraints unused but ready nearby. Cass stared at the restraints until the screen blurred at the edges.

She remembered too much.

Not in words. Words had come late. Memory lived in her body first, and her body never forgot. Hands correcting her stance before she knew what hands meant. Pain as grammar. Blood as punctuation. The shape of a command in someone else’s weight shift. The expectation that her body would obey before thought had time to become refusal.

Beside her, Dick moved half a step closer. Cass did not look at him.

Bruce said, “We need someone who can help them calm down enough to communicate.”

Jason’s head lifted. “B.”

Bruce did not stop. “Someone trained in crisis response. Someone who understands consent boundaries around emotional regulation. Someone with experience helping victims of conditioning.”

Cass saw Barbara close her eyes on the monitor.

The elevator doors opened. You stepped into the Cave carrying a worn canvas bag, a coat still damp from rain, and guilt in every line of your body.

Cass looked at you and understood too much at once.

You were not what she expected. That irritated her. Plans were easier to reject when everyone inside them looked like a weapon.

You did not. Not at first glance. You looked tired, though most people in the Cave looked tired and called it a personality. You stood just inside the elevator as if you had been told where to go but had not yet given yourself permission to belong there. Your hands remained visible at your sides, fingers loose, palms empty. You scanned the room once, quickly, cataloguing exits, faces, threats, then stopped when your eyes found Cass.

You did not smile. Good. Smiles were often used as nets.

Instead, you looked at her with quiet recognition, not like you knew her, not exactly, but like you understood you were standing in the middle of something that concerned her more than anyone else had admitted.

Bruce said your name. Cass watched your shoulders tighten.

Not much. Enough.

“This is Cassandra,” Bruce said.

You gave a small nod. “I know.”

Cass’ eyes narrowed.

You noticed immediately and added, “Not from a file.”

Bruce went still. That was interesting.

You looked directly at Cass. “Oracle told me not to read anything that was not necessary for the case.”

Barbara’s expression softened on the screen by one degree.

You continued, “I listened.”

Cass looked to Barbara.

Barbara nodded once. Truth.

Then Cass looked back at you.

You were still guilty.

Not for that. Something else.

Bruce began, “They have an ability that may—”

Cass signed again, sharper this time. No.

Bruce stopped.

The room went quiet in the specific way rooms did when people were trying not to look like they were holding their breath.

You looked at Barbara’s screen for translation.

Barbara said, “She said no.”

“I understood that one,” you said. Your voice was calm, but your pulse had jumped. Cass could see it in your throat. You turned back to her. “No to what?”

Cass stared at you. Your body said: I know. I know why I’m here. I wish I didn’t. I came anyway.

She signed slowly, each movement clean and hard. No power. Me.

Barbara translated, softer than the signs deserved.

You did not look away.

“No power on you,” you said. “Understood.”

Bruce inhaled. “Cass—”

You turned on him so fast the whole Cave seemed to blink.

“No,” you said.

The word did not sound loud. It did not need to.

Bruce looked at you.

You stood a little straighter, fear still visible in your hands but something steadier under it. “I said I would help with the children. I did not agree to manage Cassandra.”

Jason muttered, “Oh, I definitely like this one.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. “That was never the phrasing.”

“But it was the intention,” you said.

Cass watched you carefully. Your shoulders had come up. Defensive. Angry, but not uncontrolled. Afraid of Bruce, perhaps, or of displeasing him. More afraid of becoming the thing he wanted than of telling him no.

“I will not use my power on you unless you ask,” you said to Cass. “Not because Batman thinks it would help. Not because someone else thinks you need calming. Not because you are angry or triggered or inconvenient. You can say no. You can stay no.”

Cass felt the words enter her body and stop there.

Not comfort. Not trust. But something close to interest.

She signed, Good.

Barbara translated.

You nodded once.

Then Cass signed, Still plan.

Your face tightened.

“Yes,” you said. “It was.”

That mattered. The honesty.

Not enough, but something.

Bruce looked between you and Cass, then lowered his gaze to the console. He did not apologise. Not then. Bruce often needed time to realise guilt was not an adequate substitute for repair.

Cass turned away from him and walked toward the evidence table.

Case first. Anger later.

That, too, was a language the Cave understood.

You were good with the children.

Cass hated that at first. Not because you did anything wrong. Because wrong would have been easier. Wrong could be struck, stopped, named, removed from the room. But you came into the hospital safehouse with slow steps and empty hands, stopped ten feet from the first child, and asked before breathing too close.

The boy was twelve, maybe. He sat on the floor with his back pressed to the wall, knees bent, bare feet flat against the tile. His hospital gown hung off one shoulder. His eyes tracked every movement in the room without seeming to land on anything. A nurse stood outside the open door, frightened and trying not to show it. Bruce observed through the glass. Dick waited down the hall. Barbara watched through a tablet feed. Cass stood inside the room because the child’s body relaxed by four degrees when she did.

Not because Cass felt safe. Because she moved like someone who knew how not to startle a weapon.

You crouched near the doorway, careful not to block the exit.

“Hi,” you said.

The child did not respond. You did not fill the silence.

Cass approved despite herself. Most people feared silence around damaged children because they mistook quiet for failure. The League had feared noise more. Both were wrong. Silence was a room. Sometimes it was the only one a person had left.

After a full minute, you said, “I’m here because someone hurt you and then taught your body to expect it again.”

The nurse made a small sound. Bruce shifted behind the glass. The boy’s eyes flicked to you.

Cass’s attention sharpened.

You kept your voice even. “I won’t touch you. I won’t come closer unless you say yes. I have a power that can help fear get quieter, but I will not use it unless you want me to.”

The child’s fingers twitched.

Not yes. Not no. A body trying to find language it had not been allowed to keep.

You waited.

Cass watched your hands. There was tension in them now. Your power wanted to move. She could not see it, not like Duke might have, but she saw the desire before it became action. Saw the ache in your body when confronted with pain you could help. Saw you hold yourself still.

Good, Cass thought again.

The boy’s mouth opened. No sound.

You nodded as if that was an answer too. “You can point. Or blink. Or do nothing. Doing nothing is allowed.”

The boy stared. Then, slowly, he lifted one hand and tapped two fingers against the floor.

Cass knew the cue. It was not League, but it came from the same brutal family tree: permission request under command limitation. Two taps meant continue. Or maybe approach. Or maybe I am alive. It depended on the trainer.

You looked to Cass.

Not Bruce. Not the nurse.

Cass.

You had recognised enough to know you did not know enough.

Cass signed to Barbara through the tablet. Barbara translated into the earpiece you wore.

“He is allowing more words. Not touch.”

You nodded.

“Thank you,” you said to Cass first, then to the child. “Okay. More words.”

You spoke for fifteen minutes.

Not therapy, not exactly. Not the kind with couches and clipped pens and adults pretending the right vocabulary could make horror organised. You spoke like someone building a bridge one breath at a time. You told the child what room he was in. What day it was. That the door was open. That the people outside the door would not come in unless he asked. That his body might still be waiting for pain, because bodies learned fast when pain taught loudly. That he did not have to punish himself for surviving lessons he never chose.

The child cried without making noise.

You did not touch him.

Cass felt something in her own chest shift. A memory, maybe. Not hers exactly. Or too much hers.

At the end, the child tapped twice again.

You inhaled.

“Do you want help with the fear?” you asked.

The child stared at you.

You placed one hand over your own heart. “I can make it smaller for a little while. Not gone. Not fake. Smaller. You can say stop. You can say no. You can change your mind.”

A long pause.

Then the boy tapped twice.

Cass watched you use your power.

Again, not with eyes. With her body.

The room changed before anyone moved. The child’s shoulders lowered. His breathing slowed. The muscles in his hands unknotted by degrees. But Cass watched you too: the small drain of colour from your lips, the way your breath caught and steadied, the tremor you hid by resting your wrist against your knee.

The boy whispered one word. 

“Water.”

The nurse began to cry.

Bruce’s eyes lowered behind the glass.

You smiled at the child, warm and tired. “Water is easy.”

Cass looked at you. Your body said: worth it. Cass did not know yet whether she hated that.

You and Cass became close through the case in ways neither of you named. Naming things made them heavy.

Cass had never feared heavy things. She had carried worse than feelings. Bodies. Histories. Silence full of blood. But naming made something visible to other people, and other people often ruined things by trying to help too loudly.

So neither of you named it when you started sitting together after hospital visits.

You sat on the floor outside the observation rooms, back against the wall, knees drawn up, canvas bag open beside you. Cass sat an arm’s length away. At first, because she was watching you. Then, because she wanted to. You learned the difference too slowly, then all at once.

You did not talk much at first.

Cass liked that. Most people tried to earn her comfort with words. You did not. You let silence remain silence, only occasionally offering small facts like pebbles placed in her palm.

“The first time my power manifested, it was because of a bird,” you said one night.

Cass turned her head.

Your eyes stayed on the vending machine across the hall as if it had done something fascinating.

“I was a kid,” you continued. “Alone. Really alone. Not in a poetic way. In the kind where you start making deals with the universe if it will just send someone. Nobody came.”

Cass went still. You did not look at her.

“But there was this bird. Hurt wing. It had fallen near me. I remember thinking it looked exactly how I felt, which was very dramatic of me, considering it was a bird and I was seven.” Your mouth twitched. “I wanted it to stop being scared. That was all. I couldn’t make myself stop being scared, but I could make it feel safe. So I did.”

Cass watched your fingers curl against your sleeve.

“After that, people noticed,” you said. “People always notice when a child can make pain more convenient.”

Cass knew that sentence. Not the exact words.

The shape.

She had been a child who made death convenient. You had been a child who made fear convenient. Both were ugly kinds of usefulness.

Cass signed, Bad people?

You looked at her hands, then at her face. Your sign vocabulary was still small, but growing. Barbara had offered to teach you. Cass had pretended not to care. Then you had learned the sign for stop before anything else, and Cass had cared so much she left the room.

“Some,” you said. “Some just tired. Some scared. Some thought they were helping.” You rubbed your thumb over your wrist. “Those are the ones that made it hard to understand harm.”

Cass nodded slowly.

Yes. People who smiled while using you did more lasting damage than people who snarled.

You looked at her then. “Batman is not the first person who has looked at my power and seen a solution before seeing me.”

Cass’s chest tightened.

You looked away quickly. “Sorry.”

Cass signed, Why sorry?

“I don’t know.” You laughed once, without humour. “Habit?”

Cass studied you. Then she reached into the pocket of her jacket and took out a granola bar.

You blinked.

She held it out. You stared at the granola bar like it was a religious object.

“For me?” Cass nodded. “I’m not hungry.”

Cass looked at your shaking hand. Then back at your face.

You sighed and accepted the granola bar. “You are very hard to lie to.”

Cass signed, Good.

You smiled.

It happened without warning, that smile. Not the one you gave frightened children. Not the one you used to reassure nurses and social workers and vigilantes who did not know what to do with visible softness. This one was smaller. Crooked. Real.

Cass looked away.

Too late. Her body already knew.

You became something her attention returned to. Again and again, without permission.

Cass noticed the way you moved when tired. The way your left shoulder dropped first. The way you pressed your fingers against your pulse point when you were trying not to reach for someone’s pain. The way your face softened when Cass entered a room, before you remembered to make it normal. The way you always asked before sitting beside her, even after she had said yes a dozen times.

“Here?” you would ask, gesturing to the space near her.

Cass would nod.

At some point, she started patting the space first.

The first time she did it, your whole body lit with surprise.

Cass looked away immediately, annoyed with herself.

Stephanie saw, because Stephanie had the stealth instincts of a raccoon near trash and the emotional subtlety of a confetti cannon.

“Oh my God,” Steph whispered from behind a stack of medical supplies.

Cass turned her head slowly.

Steph held up both hands. “Nope. Saw nothing. Very blind. Suddenly, a bat.”

Cass stared.

Steph backed out of the room, grinning.

“Tell no one,” Cass signed later when you asked why Spoiler had sprinted down the hall laughing.

You translated slowly. “Tell… no one?”

Cass nodded, very serious.

You smiled. “What did she see?”

Cass looked straight ahead.

Nothing, her body said. Everything, her blush said.

Your smile became unbearable.

The case worsened. Cases usually did.

The recovered children gave information in fragments. A symbol. A voice. A smell. Water dripping in a large room. Red thread tied around wrists. A woman singing while children practised knife forms. A man with silver hair who punished hesitation by making them stand barefoot on broken glass.

Cass sat through every interview. So did you.

She watched you hold your power back unless asked. Watched it cost you every time. Watched Bruce watching both of you with guilt still trapped somewhere behind his ribs. He was trying to do better. Bruce often tried. That did not undo the original shape of his plan.

One night, after the third child was recovered from a shipping container near the docks, Cass found Bruce alone in the Cave. You were asleep in the medbay chair because Alfred had finally bullied you into resting. Dick had draped a blanket over you. You had accepted it only because you had been unconscious.

Bruce stood by the computer, replaying footage of the rescue. Cass approached silently.

Bruce did not turn. “You’re angry.”

Cass signed even though he could not see. Yes.

He looked back then. She repeated it.

“Yes,” Bruce said. “You have that right.”

Cass studied him.

His body said remorse. Also stubbornness. Always stubbornness.

She signed, You used them.

Bruce’s face tightened. “I asked for their help.”

Cass shook her head.

Bruce looked away. That was a confession.

Cass stepped closer and signed, You used me too.

Pain moved through him visibly. He absorbed it without flinching, which was not the same as repair.

“I was worried about you,” he said.

Cass signed, I know.

The sign landed like a blade.

Bruce closed his eyes briefly.

Cass loved him. That was the hard part. She loved many people who had hurt her by trying to protect her from pain they did not understand. Love did not make the hurt smaller. It made leaving harder.

When Bruce opened his eyes, he looked older.

“I am sorry,” he said.

Cass watched his body.

Truth. Not complete, but true.

She nodded once.

Not forgiveness. Acknowledgment.

Bruce’s gaze moved toward the medbay, where you slept with one hand curled around the edge of the blanket as if you expected someone to take it away.

“I owe them an apology as well,” he said.

Cass signed, Yes. Then, after a moment, Not now. Sleep.

Bruce almost smiled. “Alfred has been a bad influence.”

Cass signed, Good.

The person behind the conditioning was called Mother Mercy.

Gotham criminals, Cass had learned, often chose names like wounds trying to become poetry. Mother Mercy had no mercy in her. She had built a training program from stolen children, old League methods, military psychology, and her own belief that pain made children pure. Not strong. Not obedient. Pure. She called them unburdened by choice. Cass read one transcript from a recovered audio file and crushed the tablet so hard that Tim made a wounded sound from across the room.

“Okay,” he said carefully. “That was the evidence tablet.”

Cass looked at him.

Tim took one step back. “Which you had valid emotional reasons to destroy.”

You touched Cass’s wrist lightly.

Not power. Question.

Cass looked down at your fingers. You began to pull away.

She caught your hand before you could.

Everyone in the room became insufferably quiet.

Damian looked at the ceiling like he wished to depart his body.

Jason coughed into his fist and muttered, “Subtle.”

Steph made a squeaking noise.

Barbara, on screen, said, “Focus.”

You looked at Cass, eyes wide. Cass looked back.

Your hand was warm. Her heart was doing something undignified.

She let go first.

Not because she wanted to. Because missions required hands.

Mother Mercy’s location came from the fifth child: an abandoned ballet academy outside Gotham proper, where the mirrors had been covered in black cloth and the floors had been reinforced for combat drills. That detail made Cass’s skin go cold. A dance school turned training ground. Movement taken from joy and made into obedience. It felt personal in a way that made her breath quiet.

You noticed.

You stood beside her in the Cave as everyone prepared. The others moved around you: weapons checked, comms synced, maps reviewed. You said nothing until Cass turned toward the exit.

Then you signed, slowly, carefully, Want me close?

Cass stopped.

You had been practising. Your hands were not perfect. The grammar was simple. But the question was clear.

Want me close?

Cass’s chest ached.

She nodded. Then signed back, No power. Unless ask.

You nodded immediately. “Unless you ask.”

Cass watched your body.

Truth.

She believed you.

That would hurt later.

The ballet academy stood under a moonless sky, pale and rotting at the edge of overgrown grounds. Its windows were boarded from the inside. The front doors had been chained shut, not to keep people out, Cass thought, but to remind those inside that leaving was not a concept available to them.

Batman took the front with Robin. Nightwing and Red Hood covered the east exit. Red Robin handled surveillance and signal disruption. Oracle was in all their ears. Spoiler waited with med evac three streets away, deeply unhappy about not being inside yet and making that everyone’s problem over comms.

You and Cass entered through the roof.

The top floor smelled like dust, old varnish, sweat, and fear.

Cass moved first. You followed exactly where she guided you, light-footed but not trained the way she was. You were not helpless. Cass disliked when people assumed softness meant fragility. You carried a collapsible baton and knew how to use it defensively. More than that, you knew how to move around frightened people without becoming another threat. That was its own kind of combat.

They found the children in the main practice hall.

Fifteen of them. Barefoot. Silent. Standing in two rows beneath covered mirrors. Each wore grey training clothes with red thread tied around one wrist. Their bodies were too still.

Cass stopped in the doorway. Her past opened its eyes.

For one second, she was not in the academy. She was small again, though she had never really been small in any way that mattered. She was a body built into a sentence someone else wanted to write. She was instruction. Correction. Pain. Again. Again. Again. She was a weapon praised for silence. A child without words being told her lack of them was proof of purity.

A hand hovered near hers. Not touching.

You.

Cass breathed in.

Present. The practice hall. Fifteen children. You beside her.

Her choice.

She nodded once.

You stepped forward, hands visible. “Hi.”

The children’s heads turned in perfect unison.

You froze.

Cass saw the trap too late.

A voice came from the speakers.

“Stillness.”

Every child attacked.

The room exploded into motion.

Cass met the first strike with the gentlest redirection she could manage, catching a small wrist, turning momentum, lowering the child to the floor without injury. Another came from the left. You blocked with your baton, not striking back, only absorbing enough force to move away. Batman’s voice cut through comms. “Status.”

“Children engaged,” Cass said.

Two words. Enough.

The fight was terrible because it was not a fight. Not really. It was rescue shaped like battle. Every instinct Cass had screamed at her to end threats efficiently. Every newer, harder-won instinct reminded her that these were not threats. They were children whose bodies had been stolen and aimed.

You moved through them like a living refusal.

“Stop cue?” you shouted.

Cass ducked under a kick, caught the child’s ankle, and rolled them onto a mat. “Unknown.”

“Can I use power?”

Cass looked.

A child lunged toward you with a knife. Cass disarmed them before the blade touched skin.

You held her gaze.

Asking. Even now.

Cass signed with one hand. Children. Yes.

You opened your power.

The hall softened. Not fully. The conditioning held hard, layered under command cues and fear. But several children faltered. One began to cry mid-strike. Another dropped to their knees, shaking violently. You moved toward them, voice steady even as your face paled.

“You can stop,” you said. “Your body is allowed to stop.”

Cass fought beside you, clearing space, breaking attacks without breaking bones. She could feel the shift as your power moved through the room: not control, not command, but an opening. A chance.

Then Mother Mercy entered.

She was older than Cass expected, hair silver-white, posture elegant, face serene in a way that made Cass want to shatter something. She wore no armour. Only a dark dress and a red thread bracelet around one wrist.

“Cassandra,” she said.

Cass went still.

Not because she knew the woman.

Because the woman knew how to say her name like a handler.

“Beautiful,” Mother Mercy said, looking at the children trembling around the hall. “Even broken training can recognise superior design.”

Cass’s body lowered into stance.

You stepped closer. “Cass.”

Mother Mercy’s eyes moved to you. “And the comforter. How modern. How sentimental.”

You lifted your chin. “Let them go.”

“They are unburdened. Do you think choice has been kind to children? Choice is where fear grows. Choice is where hesitation enters. I free them from that.”

Cass saw red.

Not anger.

Memory.

Mother Mercy smiled at her. “You know.”

Cass attacked.

It was not strategy. It was an old wound given motion.

Mother Mercy moved well. Too well. Not better than Cass, but trained in the cruel grammar of bodies raised without consent. She did not try to overpower Cass. She tried to read her. To trigger her. To make her body remember being used before it remembered being loved.

“Again,” Mother Mercy said after one exchange.

The word hit harder than a fist.

Cass’s movement stuttered.

Again. David Cain’s voice. Training rooms. Blood on the floor. No words, only motion. Again. Again. Again.

Mother Mercy struck her ribs.

Cass staggered.

You shouted her name.

Mother Mercy smiled. “There. Still in you.”

Cass’s breath narrowed.

She attacked again.

The fight became uglier.

Around them, the children were being guided out by Batman, Nightwing, and Robin. Your power remained in the room, holding the worst of their panic back, giving them enough room to follow voices that did not command pain. But Cass barely saw them now. Her whole world had collapsed to the woman in front of her and the old training echoing through her bones.

Mother Mercy drew a blade. Cass disarmed her.

Mother Mercy pulled another. Cass broke her wrist.

The woman gasped, then laughed.

“Yes,” she whispered. “There she is.”

Cass struck her across the face.

Mother Mercy hit the floor.

The hall went quiet.

Cass stood over her, breathing hard.

The woman looked up, blood at her mouth, eyes bright with triumph.

“Mercy is just another leash,” she said. “You know that. You were made correctly before they taught you to pretend otherwise.”

Cass’s hand closed around the fallen blade.

Somewhere behind her, you whispered, “Cass.”

Mother Mercy smiled.

Cass lifted the knife.

She saw the line. The angle. The death before it happened. Her body knew exactly how to make it clean.

It would be easy. That was the horror.

It would be so easy. This woman had stolen children’s bodies. Had turned fear into obedience and pain into purity. Had looked at Cass and seen not a person but proof that violence could be perfected. The world would be safer with her gone. The children would sleep easier. Bruce would disapprove and understand. Jason would understand too much. Damian would say nothing and stand closer for weeks.

Cass lifted the blade higher.

“Cass,” you said again.

Her body heard you.

Her anger did not.

You reached for her.

You did not ask.

Warmth struck her like a hand around the heart.

Cass froze.

Not because the power forced her body still. Not exactly. It softened the rage under her ribs, dulled the sharpest edge of the memory, gave her a sudden, terrible breath of space between impulse and action. The blade stopped.

Mother Mercy lived.

For one suspended second, Cass was grateful.

Then she realised.

You had moved inside her without permission.

The knife fell from her hand. The sound it made against the floor was very small.

Your power pulled back immediately, but too late.

Too late.

Cass turned.

You stood several feet away, one hand half-lifted, face destroyed by what you had done before anyone else said it.

The last child was gone. Batman restrained Mother Mercy. Nightwing’s voice spoke in comms. Robin secured the south exit. Red Hood swore softly somewhere near the doors. None of it mattered.

Cass looked at you.

Your body said: sorry, sorry, scared, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Cass’s body said nothing. She made it say nothing.

You took one step toward her. Cass stepped back.

You stopped like she had struck you.

Good.

No. Not good.

Necessary.

Your mouth opened. “Cass, I—”

Cass signed with shaking hands. You moved me.

Barbara’s voice translated over comms because Oracle had seen everything.

The room went silent. You looked like you might be sick.

“I was trying to stop you from doing something you couldn’t take back,” you whispered.

Cass’s face did not change.

Her hands moved again. Harder. They said that too.

You flinched as if the words had cut skin. Maybe they had.

Bruce’s head bowed. Jason looked away. Nightwing closed his eyes.

Cass signed again.

Three words. Small. Precise. A blade laid flat between you.

You became them.

You made a sound.

Not a sob. Not quite.

Cass did not stay to hear another apology.

She walked out of the hall, past the covered mirrors, past the blood on the floor, past the children waiting in ambulances with blankets around their shoulders. Her body held together because it knew how. It had been taught that before love. Before language. Before choice.

Outside, in the cold night air, Steph stepped toward her. Stopped.

Cass kept walking. No one followed.

That was the first correct thing anyone had done since the knife fell.

You did not see Cass for nine days.

You saw the absence of her. That was worse.

Cass was a quiet person, but her quiet had texture. In the Cave, she was the soft shift of fabric above the rafters. In the Clocktower, the faint tap of fingers against Barbara’s desk. In Wayne Manor, bare feet on polished floors and the occasional appearance of a mug beside someone who needed it but had not asked. She was not loud, but she was present in ways that changed the shape of a room.

Without her, every room felt wrong.

She did not come to the hospital when you helped the children through the first post-rescue interviews. She did not sit beside you in the hall. She did not place granola bars in your bag. She did not pat the floor to invite you closer. She did not look at you with eyes that saw too much and somehow made seeing feel less like exposure than permission.

You deserved every inch of the distance. That knowledge did not make it hurt less.

You apologised to Bruce on the second day. Not because he was the person you had harmed most. He was not. But because harm had roots, and one of them had grown from his original plan.

You found him in the Cave, standing near the evidence table, staring at Mother Mercy’s red thread bracelet sealed in a plastic bag.

“She won’t talk to me,” you said.

Bruce did not turn. “She isn’t talking to many people.”

“That’s not the same.”

“No.”

You stood beside him.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

Then you said, “You were wrong to bring me here for her.”

Bruce’s shoulders went still. “I know.”

“Do you?” you asked.

He looked at you then. You were tired. Not from power use, though there was still that, lingering in your bones. Tired from seeing yourself clearly. Tired from the urge to defend the worst thing you had done by pointing to the good it had produced. Mother Mercy was alive. Cass did not have a death on her hands. The mission had succeeded. Children were safe.

And yet. You had reached into Cass’ anger and made it quieter because you could not bear what she might choose.

You had called it rescue. So had everyone who ever stole a child’s body and named the theft training.

“I knew your power could help the children,” Bruce said. “I also knew Cass was struggling.”

“You knew I was uncomfortable.”

“Yes.”

“You still brought me.”

“Yes.”

You let the honesty settle. It hurt.

“Your fear for her made me easier to justify,” you said. “My fear for her did the rest.”

Bruce closed his eyes.

“I am responsible for my choice,” you continued. “Not you. But you built the room where that choice started looking inevitable.”

Bruce turned fully toward you. His face was grave.

“You’re right,” he said.

The words surprised you.

Not because Bruce never admitted fault. He did, sometimes. Eventually. Like extracting shrapnel with tweezers. But this was immediate, and that made it heavier.

“I owe you an apology,” he said. “And I owe Cass more than one.”

“You need to stop trying to protect her from feelings because they scare you.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened.

You almost softened the sentence.

You did not.

“She is not a case file you can stabilise,” you said. “She is not an old wound you can manage by placing me beside it. If you are afraid for her, tell her. Let her choose what to do with it.”

Bruce looked away. For a second, he looked less like Batman and more like a father who loved badly because love had never made him less afraid.

“I know,” he said.

You almost laughed. The phrase sounded terrible from him, too.

“I hate that sentence now,” you muttered.

Bruce’s mouth moved.

Not quite a smile.

Then he said, “Have you slept?”

You stared at him. “Do not parent me to avoid emotional consequences.”

“I can do both.”

“Unfortunately believable.”

The conversation did not fix anything.

Repair rarely announced itself with dramatic music. Sometimes it was only two guilty people standing in a cave, naming the shape of what they had done and not reaching for comfort before accountability had room to breathe.

On the ninth night, Cass came to you. Not in the Cave. Not at the Clocktower.

At the hospital safehouse, after the children had finally fallen asleep. You were sitting alone in the hallway with your back against the wall, shoes beside you, knees drawn up. The lights had been dimmed. Rain tapped softly against the windows. Your canvas bag sat open beside you, an untouched granola bar visible in the front pocket because you had not been able to eat the kind Cass used to leave for you.

You felt her before you saw her.

Not with power. With longing.

Cass stood at the end of the hall. Your heart stopped so hard it felt physical.

She wore a black hoodie, hair loose around her face, hands at her sides. She looked tired. Not injured. Not fragile. Tired in the way someone looked when anger had been carrying them for miles and had finally allowed grief to walk beside it.

You did not stand. You did not move.

Good, her body said. Or maybe you imagined that because you needed one good thing.

Cass walked closer, slow enough that each step became a choice. She stopped six feet away.

You looked up at her.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

Cass’s face did not change.

“I know that isn’t enough,” you continued, voice rough. “I know apologies don’t undo what I did. I know I broke the exact promise that made you trust me. I know I used fear as an excuse to make your choice smaller. I know—”

Cass lifted one hand. Stop.

You stopped.

She watched you for a long moment. Then she signed, I know.

Your throat tightened.

She signed again. Still hurt.

Tears burned behind your eyes. “Yes.”

Still angry.

“Yes.”

Still here.

You broke.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. But something in your face must have cracked, because Cass saw it and looked away for half a second, as if your pain had touched hers without permission and she needed to decide what to do with that.

When she looked back, she pointed to the space beside you.

Not touching.

You nodded.

Cass sat beside you, leaving a foot of space between your shoulders.

For several minutes, neither of you moved.

The hallway hummed softly. A nurse passed at the far end, saw both of you, and wisely turned around. Rain traced the windows in thin silver lines. Behind the nearest closed door, one of the children murmured in sleep and settled again.

Finally, Cass signed, No power.

“No power,” you said immediately.

She watched your hands.

Still.

She watched your shoulders.

Still.

Your power stirred deep in your chest, not reaching, only aching. You let it exist and did nothing with it. The wanting to comfort her was not the same thing as comforting her. You were learning that wanting was not permission. Love was not permission. Fear was not permission.

Cass saw the effort. Her mouth softened by the smallest degree.

She signed, Stay.

You nodded, tears slipping down your face. “I can do that.”

Cass leaned her head back against the wall.

After a while, her shoulder touched yours. Lightly. By choice.

You did not move. You barely breathed.

Cass closed her eyes.

That was how forgiveness began.

Not with absolution. With an inch of chosen contact in a hospital hallway.

The next weeks were not easy. They were not supposed to be.

Cass did not return to the way things had been, because the way things had been had contained a fault line neither of you had seen clearly enough. She no longer let silence stand in for consent when it mattered. You no longer treated restraint as something you practiced only when calm. You both made new rules, though rules with Cass were less like documents and more like choreography.

Two fingers near her wrist meant a question. Her hand turning palm-up meant yes. Her hand closing meant no. If she stepped back, you stopped everything. Words. Power. Touch. Approach. If you felt your power rise without permission, you said so aloud, even when it was embarrassing, especially when it was embarrassing.

“I want to help,” you told her once after a difficult patrol, hands folded tightly in your lap.

Cass sat across from you on the Clocktower floor, bruised along one cheek, breathing carefully through pain.

She signed, No power. Sit.

So you sat. That was all.

It was harder than using the power would have been.

Cass knew. That was why she asked it of you.

Another night, she found you after you had overused your ability with one of the children who woke screaming and could not remember that the room was safe. You were in the hospital stairwell, sitting on the steps with your head in your hands, shaking too hard to hide.

Cass stopped three steps below you.

You tried to smile. “I’m fine.” Her face went flat. You sighed. “Sorry. Reflex.”

Cass climbed one step, then held up a blanket.

You blinked. “Is that from the nurses’ station?”

Cass stared.

You corrected yourself. “I will not ask questions.”

She pointed to the space around your shoulders.

Question.

You nodded.

Cass draped the blanket over you, careful not to touch skin. Then she sat one step below you and placed a protein bar beside your foot.

You looked at it. Then at her. “Is this emotional support snack theft?”

Cass signed, Eat.

“Commanding.”

She signed, Ask?

You smiled faintly. “You want me to eat?”

Cass nodded.

You picked up the bar. “Then yes.”

Her body relaxed.

Barely. Enough.

You ate.

That was another kind of repair.

Barbara watched the two of you rebuild with the careful satisfaction of someone who had been right about needing boundaries and was tactful enough not to say it every hour. Stephanie was not tactful.

“She sat next to you today,” Steph said one afternoon, appearing upside down over the back of the Clocktower couch like a blonde bat with boundary issues.

You looked up from your notes. “Hello to you too.”

“She sat next to you.”

“She has done that before.”

“Post-betrayal sitting hits different.”

You closed your eyes. “Do not call it that.”

“What, the betrayal?”

“Steph.”

“Fine. Post-emotional-consent-catastrophe sitting.”

“That is worse.”

“I’m workshopping.”

Barbara, from her desk, said, “Please do it elsewhere.”

Steph rolled over the couch and landed with unnecessarily dramatic flair. “All I’m saying is, progress.”

You looked down at your hands.

Progress felt too hopeful some days. Other days it felt like the only word that did not lie.

“Maybe,” you said.

Steph softened, which was always alarming because it meant she was about to be sincere and make everyone uncomfortable.

“You hurt her,” she said.

“I know.”

Steph pointed at you. “Banned phrase.”

You huffed a laugh despite yourself.

“You hurt her,” Steph repeated, gentler. “But you stayed honest afterwards. Cass notices that stuff.”

“She notices everything.”

“Yeah.” Steph smiled. “Terrifying, right?”

“Yes.”

“Hot, though.”

You choked on nothing.

Barbara’s head dropped into one hand.

Steph grinned. “What? I’m helping.”

“You are not,” Barbara said.

“I am emotionally supporting chaos.”

“That is your brand,” you admitted weakly.

“Thank you.”

Cass entered then, silent as breath, and all three of you immediately pretended the conversation had not happened.

Cass looked at Barbara. Barbara looked at Steph. Steph looked at you. You looked at your notes with the intensity of someone discovering literature.

Cass narrowed her eyes. She signed, Suspicious.

Steph said, “Nope.”

Cass’s gaze sharpened.

Steph lasted two seconds. “Okay, mildly.”

Cass looked at you. You smiled before you could stop yourself.

Her expression softened. Just enough.

Steph made a tiny triumphant noise and fled before Cass could throw something.

The first time Cass asked for your power again, it was dawn. The sky over Gotham had gone pale grey, not bright yet, but no longer night. You found Cass on the roof of Wayne Manor, sitting near one of the stone gargoyles with her knees drawn up and her bare feet tucked beneath her. The garden below was silvered with mist. The city beyond the trees looked almost gentle from this distance, which was one of Gotham’s better lies.

You stopped several feet away. “Can I sit?”

Cass nodded.

You sat. No touching. No power.

For a long time, you watched the sky lighten together.

Then Cass signed, Dream.

You turned toward her. Her face was still. Her hands were not.

Small tremor. Left thumb. Right wrist. Breath too controlled.

You wanted to help so badly it hurt.

You said, “I want to help.”

Cass glanced at you.

“I won’t unless you ask,” you added.

She nodded once.

Then looked back toward the city.

The silence stretched.

Finally, Cass signed, Old room. Training. No door.

Your chest tightened. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. Not what she needed.

You went quiet.

Cass stared at her hands. Then slowly, with visible effort, she signed, Small. Hand. Stop when I move away.

Your breath caught. “Are you sure?”

Cass looked at you. The look said: I chose words. Trust them.

You nodded. “Okay.”

You placed your hand palm-up on the space between you. Cass looked at it for a long time.

Then she set her hand in yours.

Her fingers were cool from the morning air. Strong. Calloused. Familiar in a way that made your heart ache.

“Small,” you said. “Only enough to help your body know it’s morning. Here. Roof. Manor. Me beside you. No old room.”

Cass nodded.

You let the warmth move. Careful. Thread-thin. Not into the center of her. Not around her anger or memories. Only where she had asked: the edges of her body’s alarm, the old doorless room still clinging to her nervous system.

Cass closed her eyes. Her breath changed.

One inhale.

One exhale.

Then her hand lifted from yours.

You stopped instantly. The warmth vanished.

Cass opened her eyes.

You kept your hand where it was, palm up, empty.

She watched you. Testing, perhaps.

No. Not testing.

Learning the new truth of your body.

A moment passed.

Then Cass placed her hand in yours again.

Your eyes burned.

She signed with her free hand, Good. Again later.

You laughed once, broken and relieved. “Okay.”

Cass studied your face. Then signed, Good crying?

The question undid you.

You nodded, wiping your cheek with your shoulder because one hand was still hers and you were not about to move it without permission. “Yes. Good crying.”

Cass looked pleased. Very slightly. Enough that the dawn seemed to brighten around her.

The kiss happened much later. It had to.

Not because love was absent before then, but because wanting was not the same as readiness, and both of you had learned that lesson the hard way.

It happened in the dance studio Barbara had helped arrange for the recovered children.

Not a training room.

The building was bright, with windows that opened, mirrors that could be covered or uncovered by choice, soft mats stacked in the corner, and a sign on the wall written by Steph in purple marker: MOVEMENT BELONGS TO YOU. Also: NO EVIL BALLET CULTS. Barbara had allowed the first sentence and claimed not to see the second.

Cass taught there twice a week.

Not combat.

Movement. How to stand without waiting for orders. How to fall without shame. How to turn music into motion instead of command. How to let a body become a home after it had been used as a weapon.

You helped sometimes. Only when asked. Mostly, you sat near the wall with snacks and water and comfort available but not assumed. Some children asked for your power. Some did not. Both became normal. That was the miracle.

One evening, after the last child left with their foster guardian, you stayed behind to clean. Cass moved through the centre of the room alone, not dancing for performance, not training for survival, simply moving because her body belonged to her and she could.

You stopped wiping down the table. Watching Cass move always felt like witnessing a language older than speech and more honest than prayer. She was grace without decoration, strength without cruelty, silence full of meaning. The late sun touched the floor around her feet. Her hair slipped across her cheek as she turned. For a moment, she looked almost weightless.

Then she stopped and looked at you through the mirror.

Caught.

Your face warmed.

Cass turned. She walked toward you slowly.

You set the cloth down. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to stare.”

Cass signed, Liar.

You choked. “Okay. I was trying to stare respectfully.”

Her mouth curved. That smile was rare enough to feel like a secret being placed in your hands.

She stopped in front of you. Close. Not touching.

Your heartbeat changed. Cass watched it happen.

You laughed nervously. “This is very unfair. You can read every embarrassing thing my body does.”

Cass’s eyes softened. She signed, Your body tells truth.

“Unfortunately.”

She lifted one hand. Stopped near your cheek.

Question.

Your breath caught.

“Yes,” you whispered.

Her fingers touched your cheek, light as a thought.

No power moved. Cass would have seen it if it had.

You kept yourself still. Not frozen. Not restrained in fear. Still in choice.

Cass watched your face. Then signed with one hand, awkwardly close between you, No power.

“No power,” you said.

She signed again. No help.

“No help.”

Her gaze held yours.

Then she signed, slower, because the words mattered.

Just want.

Your heart broke open.

“Just want,” you repeated.

Cass smiled.

Then she kissed you.

It was soft. Not hesitant, exactly. Cass was rarely hesitant once she chose motion. But it was careful in the way care became sacred after harm. Her hand remained against your cheek, her thumb still, not holding you in place. You could have moved away. You did not. You kissed her back with all the gentleness you had once mistaken for action and all the restraint you had learned was also a form of love.

No warmth bloomed from your power. No old instinct tried to make the moment easier.

Cass kissed you because she wanted to. You kissed her because you wanted to.

For once, wanting was simple.

When she pulled back, her forehead rested briefly against yours.

Her eyes were half-open, studying your face.

“Okay?” you whispered.

Cass nodded.

Then, after a moment, she spoke.

Her voice was quiet from disuse, rough-edged and precious.

“Good.”

You smiled so hard it hurt. “High praise.”

She tilted her head, amused.

Then signed, Again later.

You laughed, a little breathless. “Yes. Again later.”

The studio lights hummed softly around you. Outside, the world remained what it was: dangerous, loud, full of people who thought harm could be renamed purpose if spoken with enough conviction. There would be more cases. More mistakes. More moments where old training raised its head and asked to be obeyed. Cass would still have nightmares. You would still feel the old urge to reach for pain before asking what pain wanted. Bruce would still try too hard to protect people and occasionally need to be verbally hit with his own emotional incompetence. Steph would absolutely write something inappropriate on the studio sign again.

Healing did not make either of you clean.

It made you careful. It made you honest.

Cass took your hand and guided it to her own shoulder, then waited.

You understood. A question back.

You stepped closer.

She nodded.

You rested your hand there, feeling the warmth of her through her shirt, the steady strength of her body under your palm. Not a weapon. Not a wound. Not a problem to manage. Cassandra Cain, who had been made into silence and turned herself into choice.

She placed her hand against your chest, over your heart.

Not to take comfort.

To feel that you were there.

You covered her hand with yours.

No power. Just pulse.

Cass smiled.

Small. Real. A whole language.

And in the quiet studio, with sunlight fading across the floor and both of you standing inside a peace no one had forced, you finally understood what she had been teaching you from the beginning.

Comfort was not the absence of pain. Love was not the removal of anger. Trust was not never being hurt.

It was this: a hand offered, not taken. A body allowed to tell the truth. A person staying close without reaching inside you to change what they found.

Cass squeezed your hand once. You squeezed back.

Outside, Gotham waited. Inside, neither of you moved until you chose to.

“Not theirs,” Barbara said.

Steph, still halfway through climbing in the window because doors were for people with less dramatic branding, paused with one boot on the sill. “Okay. Love that we’re opening with reassurance. Mildly hate that it was necessary.”

Barbara’s mouth twitched.

You were sitting cross-legged on the floor beside a civilian who looked like he had been recently introduced to the concept of surviving something and had not yet decided whether he was grateful. His hands shook around a paper cup of water. His face was grey beneath the bruises, eyes fixed on nothing. You sat near him, close enough to be present but not close enough to trap him with care.

Steph noticed that first.

You did not touch him. You only held your own hands open on your knees, palms up, like an invitation he was free to ignore.

“You’re safe here,” you said quietly. “Nobody’s asking you to be okay. We’re just getting through the next minute.”

The man’s breath hitched.

Steph slipped the rest of the way inside, closing the window behind her with a soft click. Her cape caught on the latch because, naturally, the universe loved comedy.

Barbara glanced at her. “Spoiler.”

Steph tugged her cape free with the dignity of a woman who had absolutely not lost a fight with architecture. “Oracle.”

The man startled at her voice, and Steph immediately froze.

You looked up. Your eyes met hers.

You smiled, not brightly, not politely, but with the kind of calm that made room instead of demanding attention. “Purple vigilante in the corner is friendly,” you told the man. “Mostly.”

Steph pointed at herself. “Mostly?”

“You came through a window.”

“That’s a fair note.”

The man’s mouth twitched. It was tiny. Barely there. But in the room’s tense silence, it landed like a miracle had cleared its throat.

You turned back to him, your smile softening. “There you go. Still here.”

Something shifted then.

Steph did not have Duke’s powers. She could not see light bending around you or warmth moving through the air. She could not read emotional fields, not in any supernatural way. But she had spent her life learning rooms the hard way. She knew the sound of a mood changing because someone dangerous had gone quiet. She knew the tiny release of breath when a threat passed. She knew what it looked like when fear loosened one finger at a time from someone’s throat.

The man’s shoulders lowered. His hands stopped shaking quite so badly. The Clocktower itself seemed to exhale.

You, however, went pale.

Just a little. Not enough for most people to notice.

Barbara noticed. Steph noticed Barbara noticing. And because Steph Brown had never once seen a mystery and thought, Let’s respect boundaries and mind our business, she immediately decided you were interesting.

The man eventually drank his water. Barbara arranged a safe transport. You stood only after he left, and the moment you were upright, you swayed.

Steph moved without thinking.

You caught yourself on the back of Barbara’s chair before she reached you.

“I’m fine,” you said.

Steph stared at you. Barbara stared at you. Even the computers seemed unconvinced.

“That was a very poor room to say that in,” Barbara said.

You sighed. “I am aware.”

Steph leaned one hip against the desk, folding her arms. “So. Are you always this dramatic after floor therapy, or was tonight special?”

You looked at her. “Floor therapy?”

“You were on the floor. You therapied. I’m workshopping the terminology.”

Barbara closed her eyes briefly. “Please don’t.”

“No, let her cook,” you said.

Steph brightened. “Thank you, mysterious blood-sleeve person.”

“I have a name.”

“I’m sure you do. But mysterious blood-sleeve person has flair.”

You gave her your name. Steph repeated it, testing the sound of it, and something in her chest did a stupid little flip because apparently she was a person who could develop a crush between sarcasm and crisis response. 

Barbara turned one screen toward Steph. “They’re consulting with me on civilian emotional stabilisation after the Narrows incident.”

“Ooh,” Steph said. “Official.”

“Unofficially,” you added, “I help people breathe when Gotham gets too Gotham.”

Steph looked at the blood on your sleeve, the exhaustion around your mouth, the glitter still stuck near your cheekbone like a tiny rebellious star. “And the glitter?”

You reached up, touched your cheek, and looked genuinely betrayed by your own fingers when glitter came away. “Children’s grief group made cards earlier.”

“Ah. Occupational hazard.”

“The glitter has unionised.”

Steph grinned. “Respect.”

You smiled back.

That was the beginning. Not the real beginning, maybe. Stories always had roots buried earlier than anyone wanted to admit. Yours had begun long before Steph, in whatever lonely place had shaped your power. Hers had begun in a house where love arrived inconsistently and danger had a familiar voice. But the beginning that mattered between you happened in the Clocktower, under blue computer light, with Barbara pretending not to watch both of you realised you were going to become a problem for each other.

Steph decided she liked you by the end of the week. She decided this with the solemnity she brought to most major life choices, which was to say she announced it while upside down on Barbara’s couch, eating fries she had not technically been offered.

“I like them,” she said.

Barbara did not look away from her screens. “I gathered.”

Steph narrowed her eyes from her inverted position. “That was a suspiciously quick gather.”

“You have mentioned them sixteen times in forty-eight hours.”

“Seventeen if you count this one.”

“I do.”

“Rude.”

Barbara’s mouth curved. “Accurate.”

Steph stole another fry. “They’re funny.”

“They are.”

“And nice.”

“Yes.”

“And weird.”

“This is Gotham.”

“Good weird,” Steph said. “Like emotionally competent weird. Which, in this family, is basically a metahuman ability.”

Barbara’s typing paused.

Steph rolled her head to look at her. Barbara’s expression had gone carefully neutral.

Steph sat up so fast she nearly choked on a fry. “Wait. Was that a joke, or did I just accidentally trip over classified information?”

Barbara turned her chair slightly. “They have powers.”

Steph blinked. Then, because she was Steph, she pointed a fry accusingly at Barbara. “You were just going to let me walk around making jokes without knowing there was lore?”

“It is not my information to tell casually.”

“But you’re telling me now.”

“Because you are going to keep asking questions until you either figure it out by endangering yourself or annoy me into a migraine.”

“That sounds like trust.”

“That sounds like pattern recognition.”

“Same thing if you’re fun about it.”

Barbara gave her a look. Steph ate the fry.

Barbara explained, carefully. Comfort. Emotional regulation. Panic reduction. Fear softened. Rage eased. Grief made survivable for the next few minutes. Not mind control. Not forced happiness. Not obedience. The power worked best when someone consented or when immediate danger made intervention necessary. You were strict about that. Barbara was stricter.

Steph listened.

She listened harder than she let her face show. Because she could joke about wizard lawsuits and emotional support cryptids all she wanted, but something inside her had gone very still.

Comfort as a power. Being able to make hurt smaller. Being able to reach into the room and say, no, not gone, but bearable.

Steph thought of all the nights she had laughed too loudly because silence was too close to crying. Thought of bruises hidden under purple fabric. Thought of doctors and stitches and being told she was reckless, too much, not enough, wrong shape for the symbol, wrong girl for the job. Thought of all the times she had wanted someone to make the room gentler without asking her to explain why it hurt.

“That’s…” Steph trailed off.

Barbara looked at her over the rim of her glasses. “Yes.”

“I was going to say neat.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“Maybe I was.”

“You were not.”

Steph picked at the edge of the fry carton. “Does it hurt them?”

Barbara’s expression changed.

Not enough for most people. Enough for Steph.

“They say it makes them tired,” Barbara said.

“That is a deeply suspicious sentence.”

“I know.”

“Have you asked?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“They are very good at making other people feel safe. Less good at believing they are allowed to be cared for in return.”

Steph stared at the Clocktower floor.

“Oh,” she said.

“Yes.”

Steph did not make a joke.

That was how Barbara knew it had landed.

After that, you became part of Steph’s life in the way glitter became part of carpet. Suddenly, permanently, and impossible to fully explain to visitors.

You worked with Oracle on crisis calls and field aftermath. When Scarecrow toxin hit a subway station, you sat with survivors while Steph helped secure the platform. When a hostage situation ended with thirteen civilians shaking in the back room of a pharmacy, you guided them through breathing while Steph stood guard at the door, pretending she was not listening to every word. When a villain’s sonic weapon caused panic attacks across three blocks, you and Barbara built a response system in real time while Steph ran messages and cracked jokes into comms until a crying teenager laughed hard enough to breathe.

You were good at what you did. Annoyingly good.

Steph watched you ask permission like it mattered every time.

“Can I sit beside you?”

“Can I help the panic get smaller?”

“You can say no.”

“I’ll stop if you ask.”

People said yes more often than not. Some said no. You respected both answers, which did something complicated to Steph’s chest.

She started bringing you snacks.

This was not flirting, according to Steph. This was logistics. You forgot to eat after long calls, and Steph believed in solving problems through aggressive convenience-store offerings. Granola bars. Waffles. Juice boxes stolen from the kid-friendly section of the Clocktower supplies. Once, a bag of sour gummy worms and a bottle of water placed in front of you with the seriousness of a medical intervention.

You looked down at them. “Am I being threatened?”

“Hydrated,” Steph said. “Violently.”

“You brought candy.”

“For morale.”

“Whose?”

“Mine, if you refuse.”

You smiled and opened the gummy worms.

Steph felt victorious for reasons that had nothing to do with nutrition.

In return, you learned Steph’s tells.

That was less funny.

You learned that she joked faster when she was hurting. That her grin got wider when she felt left out. That she said “I’m good” in a higher pitch when she was actively not good. That she got meaner about herself in casual little asides, like if she made the insult first, no one else could land it harder.

You noticed too much. Steph noticed you noticing. This led, naturally, to conflict disguised as banter.

“You’re doing the sad eyes,” Steph said one night, sitting on the Clocktower floor while you cleaned a cut along her cheekbone.

“I am not.”

“You are. You look like a wounded deer with a counselling qualification.”

“You are bleeding on Barbara’s rug.”

“Deflection.”

“That is my line.”

“I stole it. I am a criminal.”

“You are a vigilante.”

“Vigilante with hobbies.”

You dabbed antiseptic onto the cut.

Steph hissed. “Betrayal.”

“You got punched by a man in a moth costume.”

“Do not disrespect Killer Moth’s cousin.”

“He called himself Murder Moth.”

“See? Branding is hard. We should support local artists.”

You laughed despite yourself. Steph grinned, then winced.

Your hand paused near her face, not touching the cut now, just hovering.

Something in the air softened.

Steph’s breath eased. She did not know why. Not then. She only knew that being near you made the pain feel less like proof she had done something wrong by existing loudly. Near you, she could hurt without turning it into a performance. Near you, she could be funny because she wanted to be, not because she had to outrun the pity.

She thought that was friendship.

And it was. That was the problem.

You liked Stephanie Brown. You liked her in a way that was not neat enough to file under friendship, not safe enough to pretend was only admiration, not casual enough to ignore when she smiled at you like the world had just become a little less disappointing. You liked her purple glitter nail polish, her chipped-tooth smile, her refusal to let despair have the last word. You liked the way she could walk into a room full of grieving people and make no attempt to make grief noble. She handed it waffles and called it trash.

You liked how fiercely she defended people who were used to being dismissed. You liked how she said, “Yeah, that sucked,” with more healing in it than some people managed with entire speeches. You liked how she saw your exhaustion and tried to feed it, mock it, sit next to it, threaten it with carbohydrates.

That was why you started making mistakes.

Small ones. Soft ones. The kind that looked like kindness until held under bright enough light.

Steph came in after patrol one night, shaking too hard to remove her own gloves. She was laughing when she climbed through the Clocktower window, breathless and bright, telling Barbara about how she had “absolutely meant” to fall through that skylight because surprise entry was a valid tactic and gravity was just jealous.

Then she turned toward you, and you saw her hands.

Not the blood. There was blood, yes, but not much.

The tremor. Her fingers flexed once. Twice. Like she was trying to convince her own body it was still under her command.

“What happened?” you asked.

Steph waved one hand. “Skylight. Gravity. Villain with a taser. Long story. Hilarious in retrospect.”

Barbara’s eyes sharpened. “Were you electrocuted?”

“Electrocuted is such a dramatic word.”

“Spoiler.”

“Lightly introduced to voltage.”

You reached for the medkit.

Steph kept talking. Faster now. Brighter. Your power reacted to the panic beneath the words before you gave it permission.

You should have asked. You knew that. You always knew that.

But Steph was smiling too hard, and Barbara was busy pulling up medical protocols, and the tremor in Steph’s hands was getting worse. You told yourself it was only the edge. Only enough to stop the panic from turning into something that would make her feel embarrassed later. Only enough that she could breathe.

Warmth moved quietly from you.

No visible glow. No dramatic pulse. Just the room easing by degrees.

Steph’s shoulders lowered. Her hands steadied. Her laugh became less sharp and more real.

“See?” she said. “Totally fine.”

You smiled back.

The guilt arrived late.

That was the first time. There were others.

Not many, you told yourself. Not enough to matter. Not targeted, not heavy, not controlling. You did not change her choices. You did not make her happy. You did not make her like you. You only softened the worst of the panic when it clawed too high behind her ribs. You only helped her sleep in the Clocktower after missions where she had nearly died and refused to call them traumatic because trauma was apparently for people without purple branding. You only let comfort sit in the room when her jokes got too bright and her hands too cold.

It was easy to justify because Steph looked better afterwards. It was unforgivable for the same reason.

Barbara almost caught you once. Or perhaps she did catch you and chose to issue a warning disguised as a conversation, which was very Barbara and therefore worse.

You were alone in the Clocktower kitchen, washing mugs after Steph had fallen asleep on the couch with a waffle-print blanket pulled over her shoulders. Barbara rolled in silently, which should not have been possible and yet absolutely was.

“She trusts you,” Barbara said.

Your hands stilled in the sink. You stared at the soap bubbles.

“I know.”

Barbara’s voice remained even. “Do you?”

You closed your eyes. The water ran too hot over your fingers.

“I’m not trying to hurt her.”

“I know.”

“I’m not making her do anything.”

“I know.”

“She was panicking.”

Barbara said nothing.

You shut off the tap. The silence that followed was worse than a lecture.

Finally, Barbara said, “You of all people understand the difference between helping and deciding.”

It would have been kinder if she had raised her voice.

You nodded.

“I’ll tell her,” you said.

Barbara looked at you for a long moment.

“Tell her soon,” she said.

You meant to.

That was the ugliest part. You meant to every time Steph sat beside you on the Clocktower roof eating waffles from a paper plate and complaining about Bruce’s inability to text like a human person. You meant to when she painted your nails purple and gold after a long night because “your hands look like they’re auditioning for Victorian ghost.” You meant to when she started texting you pictures of ugly pigeons, badly parked cars, and herself making increasingly stupid faces in patrol mirrors. You meant to when you realised your heart lifted every time she called you Care Bear.

You meant to.

Then Steph would smile at you like you were the one place she did not have to defend being too much, and cowardice would settle softly over your tongue.

The villain called himself The Mirror. This was, according to Steph, “deeply pretentious and probably a theatre kid red flag,” but the name stuck because Gotham criminals had a way of committing to aesthetics even when the aesthetics deserved jail time.

His power, or technology, or some miserable combination of both, fed on shame. Not fear. Not despair. Shame. He trapped people in their worst self-beliefs and reflected them back until they could not see anything else. Victims were found standing in front of broken windows, dark screens, puddles, anything reflective, whispering apologies to people who were not there.

A city like Gotham produced more than enough fuel.

The first major attack hit a probation office. The second hit a school. The third hit a shelter for families of incarcerated criminals.

That one made Steph quiet. Too quiet.

You found her in the Clocktower after the briefing, sitting on the floor beneath Barbara’s main screens, knees drawn up, arms loose around them. She had not changed out of the Spoiler suit, though her mask was pushed up into her hair. Purple eyeshadow smudged beneath one eye. Her mouth was set in a line that looked like it wanted to be a joke and could not find the strength.

You sat beside her.

“I hate this guy,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“No, like, normal amounts because he’s a villain, but also personal amounts because he’s rude.”

“Shame-based attacks are rude.”

“Exactly.” She leaned her head back against the wall. “Like, get a hobby that isn’t emotionally waterboarding people with their daddy issues.”

You glanced at her. She stared straight ahead.

There it was. The door cracked open half an inch.

You did not reach for it.

“Do you want to talk about it?” you asked.

Steph laughed. “Absolutely not.”

“Okay.”

She turned her head toward you, suspicious. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“No follow-up emotional crowbar?”

“I left it at home.”

“Sloppy.”

“I know. Very unprofessional.”

Her smile flickered.

Then faded.

“My dad used to make everything my fault,” she said suddenly.

You went still.

Steph kept looking at the screens. “Not always directly. Sometimes directly. But mostly, like, the vibe. If I was upset, I was dramatic. If I was scared, I was weak. If I was angry, I was ungrateful. If I tried to stop him, I was stupid. If I didn’t stop him, I was useless.” She swallowed. “Villain families. Great childhood enrichment.”

Your chest hurt.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

“Yeah.” She picked at a scuff on her glove. “Anyway, I hate shame guy.”

You wanted to comfort her so badly your hands ached. Instead, you said, “I hate him too.”

Steph looked at you then. Something softened.

“Good,” she said. “Hating together is a bonding activity.”

“I’ll add it to our friendship scrapbook.”

“We have a scrapbook?”

“No.”

“We should.”

“You want a scrapbook of hatred?”

“Obviously.”

You smiled. She smiled back.

No power. Just the two of you sitting beneath Oracle’s screens with old pain in the room and no one trying to make it vanish.

That should have taught you better.

The final attack happened at the shelter for families affected by villain crime. It was exactly the sort of place The Mirror would choose because he had taste in cruelty: a converted old church with a daycare room in the basement, counselling offices upstairs, folding chairs in the hall, donated coats on racks, and walls covered in children’s drawings that tried very hard to make the world look kinder than it was.

You had worked there before.

Steph had avoided it before. Not because she did not care. Because she cared too much and had no idea where to put that care without letting it become grief.

The call came during a thunderstorm. Dramatic, of course. Gotham loved nothing more than timing trauma to weather.

By the time you and Steph arrived, half the building was caught in The Mirror’s field. Windows had gone black and reflective. People stood frozen in hallways, staring into glass, eyes wide and wet. A woman whispered, “I should have known,” over and over. A teenage boy clawed at his own sleeves. Somewhere below, children were crying.

Steph stopped at the threshold.

You felt it hit her.

Not your power. The villain’s.

Shame moved through the building like cold ink, searching for cracks in everyone it touched. It found Steph immediately because shame knew her shape. Knew the old wounds. Knew the voice of a father who made love conditional and blame hereditary. Knew Bruce’s disappointment, real or imagined. Knew every time she had been told she was not ready, not good enough, not supposed to be there.

Steph’s grin appeared. Too bright.

“Well,” she said, voice sharp, “this place could use better lighting and fewer trauma mirrors.”

You looked at her. “Steph.”

“Don’t do the voice.”

“What voice?”

“The ‘I see through your hilarious defence mechanisms’ voice. Very rude. Very accurate. Still rude.”

Oracle’s voice crackled in comms. “Spoiler, status.”

Steph pressed two fingers to her comm. “Inside the world’s worst self-esteem seminar. Ten out of ten on theme, minus several million for consent.”

“Can you proceed?”

Steph looked toward the basement stairs where a child screamed. Her face changed.

“Yeah,” she said. “Proceeding.”

You moved together.

For a while, it worked. Steph broke mirrors with purple batarangs and a level of enthusiasm that suggested personal satisfaction. You moved from victim to victim, asking when you could, offering when words were gone. Warmth flowed from you in controlled pulses, giving people enough space inside the shame to look away from their reflections. Steph kept the path clear, cracking jokes that should not have worked and did anyway.

“Hey,” she told a man sobbing into a blackened window. “I know the evil mirror seems convincing, but have you considered that men who monologue through glass are usually compensating?”

The man blinked.

You touched his hand after he nodded, and his breathing steadied.

Steph gave you a thumbs-up. You smiled.

The field grew stronger near the basement.

Children’s drawings lined the stairwell. Crayon families. Houses. Dogs with too many legs. A purple stick figure labelled SPOILR in wobbly letters. Steph saw it and went still for half a second.

You saw her see it.

Then, The Mirror spoke through every reflective surface at once.

“Stephanie Brown.”

Steph froze.

The voice was wrong. Smooth, echoing, almost kind. You hated it immediately.

“Oh, ew,” Steph said, but her voice shook. “Full government name. Someone’s desperate.”

The blackened glass in a picture frame shifted.

Arthur Brown’s face looked out. Not real. Not alive. Not even a good illusion, technically. But shame did not need accuracy when it had memory. Steph’s father stared from the frame with a smile that made your skin crawl.

“There she is,” he said. “Still playing hero.”

Steph’s hand tightened around a batarang.

You stepped closer. “It’s not him.”

“I know,” she said.

But knowing and feeling were rarely the same thing.

The image smiled wider. “Still ruining everything you touch?”

Steph threw the batarang.

The frame shattered. Every piece of glass on the stairwell reflected him.

The Mirror’s voice came through them all. “Still too loud. Still too reckless. Still trying to prove someone made a mistake when they told you to stop.”

Steph’s breath hitched.

You felt the shame clamp around her like a hand.

You reached for your power.

Stopped.

Ask. You had to ask.

“Steph,” you said. “Do you want help?”

She laughed, too high. “With my evil daddy mirror problem? No, I’m good, thanks.”

“Steph.”

“I said I’m good.”

The field surged.

Steph staggered. Below you, a child screamed again. The sound changed everything.

Steph’s head snapped toward the basement. The shame still had her. You could feel it dragging at every old wound, every insecurity, every fear that she was not enough and never had been. She raised one hand toward the wall to steady herself and nearly touched a shard of reflective glass.

If she looked too long, she would freeze like the others.

“Steph,” you said again.

Her eyes flicked to you. They were wet and furious.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

You did not know if she meant do not pity me, do not see me, do not use it, do not let the kids hear me break, or all of the above.

Then a small voice sobbed from below, “Spoiler?”

Steph’s face crumpled.

She moved.

Not because she was not hurting. Because someone needed her.

She pushed past you and down the stairs.

You followed.

The basement daycare was worse. The Mirror had turned the old wall-mounted television into a black reflective surface. Children sat huddled beneath tables and behind overturned chairs, crying while the screen whispered in voices that sounded like parents, teachers, bullies, older siblings, themselves. A volunteer stood frozen in the centre of the room, staring at her reflection and mouthing, “I failed them.”

At the far end, The Mirror stood in person. He was taller than you expected. Thin, pale, dressed in a dark suit threaded with reflective panels that caught every bit of light and turned it cold. His face was covered by a smooth silver mask.

“Ah,” he said. “The joke.”

Steph stepped in front of you. Even shaking, even hurt, even with shame clawing at her throat, she still stepped in front of you.

“Ah,” she shot back. “The loser.”

The Mirror tilted his head. “Do you know why you laugh first, Stephanie?”

“Oh, good, villain therapy. My favourite.”

“Because you are afraid someone else will.”

Steph’s smile faltered.

You felt the room lurch.

The children cried harder. Your power rose in response, desperate.

The Mirror looked at you. “And you. The comforter. The soft hand over the bruise. How noble.”

You moved toward the children.

His mask followed. “Tell me, do they know how often you touch their pain before they ask?”

Your blood went cold.

Steph turned slightly. Just enough.

Not enough to fully look at you.

Enough.

The Mirror laughed softly. “No? Secrets among heroes. How familiar.”

“Shut up,” you said.

Steph’s eyes remained forward.

“What is he talking about?” she asked.

The room seemed to narrow.

You had imagined telling her in the Clocktower kitchen. On the roof with waffles. During some quiet hour where your apology could sit between you without children crying and a villain wearing shame like cologne.

Not here. Not now.

But secrets always picked their own cruel timing.

“I’ll tell you after,” you said.

Steph laughed once. It sounded nothing like her.

The Mirror lifted one hand toward the television.

The children screamed. The shame field spiked hard enough to buckle your knees. Steph made a broken sound and nearly went down. The volunteer in the centre of the room lifted both hands toward her own throat as if trying to claw out a voice only she could hear.

There was no time.

You opened yourself.

The power burst from you in a wave. Not gentle. Not subtle. Not the tiny secret warmth you had used on Steph after patrol. This was all of it, thrown wide into the basement, into the children, the volunteer, the villain’s victims upstairs, into Steph.

Especially Steph.

You felt her shame hit your warmth and stutter.

Her breathing steadied. Her hand stopped shaking. The field around her softened before she gave permission.

Steph went very, very still.

The Mirror staggered back as the children broke free of the reflections. The volunteer collapsed to her knees, sobbing. Steph moved on instinct, hurling a batarang at the television, shattering the screen in a spray of black glass. You kept the warmth pouring out, holding everyone steady, keeping shame from reattaching, keeping the room survivable.

Steph tackled The Mirror.

It was not elegant. It was deeply personal.

She hit him hard enough to knock the silver mask loose and pinned him to the ground with one knee in his back.

“Here’s the thing,” she said, voice too calm, too even because your power still held the worst of her emotion down. “I make the jokes about me. Not creepy chrome theatre boys. That’s my bit.”

The Mirror wheezed.

Steph zip-tied his wrists with vicious efficiency.

Then she looked back at you.

The warmth was still in the room. Still in her.

Her face changed.

Not with realisation alone.

Recognition.

“All those times,” she said.

Your chest cracked open. “Steph—”

“No.” Her voice was soft. Horribly soft. “That feeling. After patrol. In the Clocktower. When I thought I was calming down.”

You could not answer. That was answer enough.

A child sniffled nearby.

Steph looked at the children, then at the unconscious villain, then at you. Her anger tried to rise, and your power, still active, softened it before it could sharpen.

Horror crossed her face.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You’re doing it now.”

You pulled back immediately. Too fast.

The room lurched. Children whimpered as the last hooks of shame scraped at them. You forced the warmth outward again, away from Steph this time, toward the civilians only, but the basement was too small and the field too tangled. Steph felt the edge of it. You saw her feel it.

Her eyes filled with tears. “You’re making me not mad.”

“I’m trying to keep the kids safe.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I know.”

“Stop doing that.”

“I can’t yet.”

The words landed like a betrayal inside a betrayal.

Steph stared at you as if you had slapped her.

You kept your power around the children until Oracle’s evacuation team arrived, until Nightwing and Orphan cleared the upstairs rooms, until the last victim was guided outside into the storm-wet street and away from every reflective surface. Only when the basement was empty except for you, Steph, and The Mirror unconscious on the floor did you let the power die.

The cold hit immediately.

Your knees buckled.

Steph moved toward you before she could stop herself.

Then stopped.

You caught yourself on a table instead.

Good, you thought miserably. She should not have to catch you.

Steph stared at you, face pale, eyes wet, mouth twisted like she was trying to hold back six different reactions and hated all of them.

“How long?” she asked.

The question sounded exactly like fear wearing anger because anger had better shoes.

You swallowed. “Steph—”

“How long?”

You looked down.

Her laugh cracked. “Wow. Okay. That’s an answer.”

“It wasn’t every time.”

“Oh, cool. Good. Great. Love the clarification that you only secretly emotionally adjusted me sometimes.”

You flinched.

She saw it and looked angrier.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t do that either.”

You closed your mouth.

Steph paced once, then spun back toward you. “I thought you got it.”

“I do.”

“No.” Her voice rose, then broke. “No, you don’t get to say that. You don’t get to be the person who knew I was joking because I was hurt and then use magic emotional bubble wrap on me because you decided I needed it.”

“It’s not magic.”

“I do not care about the genre right now.”

The words would have made you laugh on any other night. Tonight, they only hurt.

“You should have asked,” she said.

“I know.”

“You should have told me.”

“I know.”

“You let me think I was safe with you.”

“You were.”

Steph’s face crumpled.

“No,” she said, and the smallness of it hurt worse than shouting. “No, I wasn’t. Not from you.”

Your eyes burned.

“I thought you were the one person who didn’t treat me like I needed editing,” she said.

The sentence killed whatever defence might have still existed in you.

You gripped the edge of the table.

Steph wiped at her face angrily. “Do you know how many people have looked at me and seen a problem to fix? My dad. Bruce. Half this stupid family on their worst days. Teachers. Cops. Villains. Everyone who thought I was too loud, too reckless, too emotional, too stupid to know what I was doing.” Her voice shook. “And then there was you.”

You could barely breathe.

“You laughed at my jokes,” she said. “You didn’t make me feel dumb. You let me be too much. Or I thought you did.”

“I did,” you whispered.

“Then why were you revising me in secret?”

There it was. The line that opened the floor beneath you.

You had no answer that made you less wrong.

The storm tapped against the small basement windows. Upstairs, boots moved, voices called, sirens approached. The Mirror groaned faintly on the floor. Steph kicked him lightly in the ankle without looking, and he went quiet.

“I wanted to help,” you said, because it was the truth and not enough.

Steph laughed again. “Everyone does. That’s usually where they start making choices for me.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying that!”

You flinched.

Steph’s face twisted immediately with regret, but she did not apologise.

Good. You did not deserve to be protected from her anger.

“You’re right,” you said. “I knew better. That’s what makes it worse.”

She stared at you.

You forced yourself to keep going. “I know what consent means. I ask people every day. I built rules around it because I know comfort without choice can become control. And then with you, I told myself it was small. That you were panicking. That it helped. That I wasn’t changing you, just making it easier for you to breathe. I made it sound kind because I cared about you.”

Steph’s eyes shone.

“That doesn’t make it okay,” you said.

“No,” she whispered. “It really doesn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” you said. “Not because you found out. Because I did it.”

Her face went very still.

Then she nodded once.

Not forgiveness.

Acknowledgment.

That was more than you deserved.

Nightwing appeared at the top of the stairs. “Everything okay down there?”

Steph did not look away from you. “No.”

Dick’s expression changed.

You looked down.

Steph took a breath. “But the civilians are clear, and reflective boy band villain is zip-tied.”

“Okay,” Dick said gently. “Medical?”

You could feel him looking at you.

You hated that you needed it.

“I’m fine,” you said.

Steph laughed, cold and sharp. “Oh, absolutely not. We are not doing that too.”

You shut your mouth.

Dick descended a few steps. “Can you walk?”

You pushed away from the table. Your legs nearly failed.

Steph moved again. Stopped again.

Dick came the rest of the way down and caught your elbow.

You did not look at Steph. You could not.

As Dick helped you toward the stairs, Steph stepped aside.

The space she made for you felt wider than the room.

You did not see Steph for six days. Not properly. You saw evidence of her in the Clocktower because Steph had always left evidence. A purple hair tie on the couch. A half-empty box of cereal in Barbara’s kitchen. Glitter nail polish on the desk beside your files. A sticky note on the medkit that said RESTOCK OR PERISH in aggressive bubble letters. But Steph herself became a ghost with excellent dramatic timing. She avoided every room you entered, skipped crisis calls where you were assigned, sent updates through Barbara, and once climbed out a window when you came in through the door, which felt unnecessary but honestly deserved.

You did not chase her. That was the only apology you could make with your body.

Barbara watched you not chase her.

“You look terrible,” she said on the third day.

You sat at the Clocktower table with a mug of tea you had not touched. “Thank you.”

“That was not a request for gratitude.”

“I know.”

Barbara’s expression softened, barely. “You are allowed to be sorry without punishing yourself into usefulness.”

“I am not trying to be useful.”

Barbara looked at the stack of paperwork you had completed, the restocked medkit, the colour-coded victim follow-up files, and the tray of snacks you had stress-baked for the entire Clocktower.

You sighed. “Okay.”

“She is angry,” Barbara said.

“She should be.”

“Yes.”

“I hurt her.”

“Yes.”

That one landed harder because Barbara did not soften it.

You deserved that, too.

“She also misses you,” Barbara said.

Your throat tightened.

“That does not mean she is ready to forgive you,” Barbara added.

“I know.” Barbara gave you a look. You managed a weak smile. “Sorry. I overuse that phrase now.”

“You overuse many things.”

“Fair.”

On the sixth night, Steph came back.

She entered through the window because of course she did, carrying a takeout bag in one hand and a storm cloud in her face. You were alone in the Clocktower kitchen, cleaning dishes that were already clean because your anxiety had chosen domestic haunting as its form.

Steph landed silently behind you.

You turned.

She held up the bag. “I brought waffles.”

Your chest hurt.

You set the sponge down. “Okay.”

“They’re not forgiveness waffles.”

“I understand.”

“They’re angry waffles.”

“That sounds fair.”

“Also, I got extra syrup because I’m mad, not because I remembered you like it.”

Your eyes burned. You nodded very seriously. “Of course.”

Steph looked annoyed by your emotional face, which was fair because your emotional face had no chill.

“Don’t make me regret being nutritionally aggressive,” she said.

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

She sat at the small kitchen table and began unpacking containers with unnecessarily sharp movements. Waffles. Syrup. Hash browns. Two orange juices. A tiny packet of butter that she glared at because it would not open.

You stayed by the sink.

Steph looked up. “Are you going to hover like a sad Victorian ghost, or are you going to sit?”

You sat. Not too close.

She noticed. Her mouth tightened.

For a while, neither of you spoke. Steph poured syrup over her waffles with the focus of someone preparing evidence. You picked at the corner of your napkin and tried not to look at her too much.

Finally, she said, “I’m still mad.”

“I know.”

She pointed her fork at you.

You winced. “Sorry.”

“I’m still mad,” she repeated.

You nodded. “Okay.”

“I still feel weird in my own head when I think about it.”

Your stomach twisted.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“Yeah.” She cut into the waffle. “I know you are. That’s not the problem.”

You waited.

Steph stared at her plate.

“The problem is I believe you,” she said. You looked at her. She did not look up. “I believe you didn’t mean to control me. I believe you didn’t make me like you. I believe you were trying to help. And I hate that because it would be easier if you were secretly evil.”

A broken laugh slipped out of you.

Her mouth twitched, but her eyes stayed wet.

“I keep thinking about all the times I felt better around you,” she said. “And then I get mad because I don’t know which parts were me and which parts were you.”

“You,” you said, then stopped yourself.

Steph’s gaze snapped up.

You swallowed. “I want to say it was you. I believe that. But I know I don’t get to be the proof right now.”

Her expression shifted.

You looked down. “That’s the worst part. I can tell the truth now, but I made myself hard to believe.”

Steph’s fork paused halfway to her mouth.

For several seconds, she just looked at you. Then she set the fork down.

“Damn it,” she said.

You blinked. “What?”

“That was a good answer.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No, you don’t get to be emotionally self-aware while I’m trying to be righteously furious. It’s rude.”

Despite everything, you smiled faintly. Steph saw it and looked away fast.

The silence between you changed.

Not fixed. Not soft. But less like a locked door.

“I need to say stuff,” Steph said.

“Okay.”

“You don’t get to make it easier.”

“I won’t.”

“No powers.”

“No powers.”

“Even if I cry.”

Your throat tightened. “Even if you cry.”

“Even if you cry.”

You nodded. “Even if I cry.”

“Good.”

Steph took a breath.

Then she talked.

She talked about how scared she had been in the basement. About hearing her father’s voice and hating that it still had a key to some room inside her. About realising your comfort was in her body before her anger could get there. About how horrible it felt to know she wanted to be mad and could not access the full shape of it until you stopped. About how it made her think of every person who had ever told her to calm down when what they meant was be easier for me to ignore.

You listened. You did not interrupt. You cried once, silently. Steph looked at you, saw you keeping your hands folded in your lap, and kept talking.

That was the repair beginning.

Not forgiveness.

Repair. There was a difference.

When she finished, the waffles were cold.

Steph leaned back in her chair, exhausted.

You looked at your untouched plate. “I don’t know what to say that isn’t just another apology.”

“Good,” Steph said. “Because if you apologised again, I was going to throw a hash brown at you.”

You nodded. Then, after a pause, “Can I ask something?”

Steph’s eyes narrowed. “Depends.”

“The angry waffles…”

“They remain angry.”

“Right. Of course. But did you bring them because you wanted to talk, or because you wanted to make sure I ate?”

Steph looked personally offended.

“Both,” she muttered.

Your heart ached.

She pointed at you again. “Do not make that face.”

“What face?”

“The face like you’re about to cry because I’m nice. I’m not nice. I’m furious and charming.”

“You are.”

“Both things.”

“Yes.”

She picked up her fork again. “Eat your stupid waffle.”

You did. It tasted like sugar, cardboard takeout containers, and a second chance with teeth.

After that, things rebuilt slowly.

Steph did not trust you with her panic right away. That was fair. You did not trust yourself with it either.

You made rules. Not because rules fixed harm, but because they gave both of you something solid to hold while trust grew skin over the wound.

No powers on Steph without direct verbal consent unless immediate death or serious injury was unavoidable. No subtle room-softening when Steph was injured, deflecting, or joking too brightly. If you felt the urge to use your power, you had to say so instead. Steph was allowed to say no without explaining. You were allowed to say no if using your power would drain you too badly.

That last rule was Steph’s addition.

You had stared at her when she wrote it.

She had glared back. “What?”

“I didn’t expect—”

“Yeah, that’s part of the problem, Care Bear.”

You closed your mouth.

She tapped the paper with her pen. “You’re not allowed to turn consent into a one-way street where I get boundaries and you get martyrdom.”

Barbara, from across the Clocktower, said, “Excellent point.”

Steph pointed without looking. “Thank you, Oracle.”

“You’re welcome.”

You looked down at the rule until the words blurred.

You are allowed to say no.

It felt absurd. It felt impossible. It felt like something you would have to learn to deserve, even though Steph would probably throw something at you if you said that aloud.

So you did not say it. You signed the rules.

Steph signed them too, adding a tiny doodle of a waffle in the corner labelled ANGRY BUT FAIR.

Barbara laminated the page.

Neither of you asked why she had a laminator ready.

Some questions in the Batfamily were traps.

Weeks passed. You and Steph found your way back through ordinary things. That was the only way to do it. Trust did not return in a cinematic monologue. It returned in waffle runs where Steph asked before sitting too close. In Clocktower nights where you said, “I want to help, but I won’t unless you ask,” and Steph nodded, sometimes relieved, sometimes angry all over again, but always heard. In nail polish bottles lined up on Barbara’s table because Steph decided your hands looked “haunted by paperwork” and needed colour.

The first time she painted your nails again, she chose purple with gold glitter.

“You’re making me your brand,” you said.

“I’m improving your marketability.”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to be useful.”

Steph paused.

You realised what you had said.

Her expression softened, but she kept her voice light. “Correct. You are supposed to be sparkly and emotionally inconvenient.”

“That sounds like your brand.”

“I contain multitudes.”

She held your hand between hers, brush moving carefully over your nail.

No power moved. Your hand was only a hand.

Steph knew. You could tell she knew by the way her thumb rested against your knuckle: light, present, ready to let go if needed.

You looked at her bent head, the concentration in her face, the smudge of purple polish near her thumb.

“I missed this,” you said quietly.

She did not look up.

“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

It was not a confession.

Not yet.

But it made space for one.

The first time Steph asked for your power properly, it was not dramatic.

No villain. No basement. No evil mirror. No children crying. Just the Clocktower at two in the morning after a bad patrol where nothing catastrophic happened except Steph saw a little girl with her father in the back of an ambulance, and the girl would not stop apologising for needing help.

Steph had gone quiet afterwards.

Not joke-quiet. Gone-quiet.

She sat on Barbara’s couch with her knees pulled up, staring at the floor. Her mask was off. Her hair was loose and tangled. One cheek was bruised purple-blue beneath the old purple of her suit.

You sat on the floor several feet away.

Not too close. Not too far.

“Do you want me to call Barbara?” you asked softly. Steph shook her head. “Do you want waffles?”

A tiny breath. Almost a laugh. “Not yet.”

“Do you want me to shut up?”

“Never thought I’d say this, but no.”

You waited.

Steph rubbed both hands over her face. “I’m mad.”

“Okay.”

“And sad.”

“Okay.”

“And I feel stupid about both.”

“You’re not.”

She looked at you.

You held up both hands. “No powers. Just an opinion.”

Her mouth twitched weakly.

Then she looked down at her hands. “Can you…”

Your breath caught.

She swallowed hard. “Can you take the edge off? Not the whole thing. I want to stay mad enough to be myself.”

Your eyes burned.

“Yes,” you said carefully. “I can do that.”

“And if I say stop?”

“I stop.”

“Immediately.”

“Immediately.”

“And you tell me what you’re doing.”

“I’ll hold your hand if you want. I’ll let a small amount of warmth move through touch. It should help your body stop bracing so hard. It won’t make you forgive anyone. It won’t make you less angry. It won’t change what you think. It just gives the feeling a little more room.”

Steph stared at you for a long moment. Then she held out her hand.

“Okay, Care Bear,” she said, voice shaking. “Try again. Correctly this time.”

You took her hand.

Your power moved softly, carefully, no more than she had asked for. Warmth passed between your palms and stopped there, waiting at the boundary of her permission. Steph’s eyes closed. Her shoulders lowered a fraction. A tear slipped down her cheek. Her mouth trembled, but her hand stayed in yours.

After a few seconds, she whispered, “Stop.”

You stopped. Immediately.

Her eyes opened.

She inhaled. Exhaled. The room remained exactly as it was: blue-lit, messy, full of cold waffles and vigilante gear and a laminated consent agreement with an angry waffle doodle on the desk.

Steph looked at your joined hands.

“That was better,” she said.

You laughed softly, tears in your eyes. “High praise.”

“I’m a generous soul.”

“You are.”

She glanced up. “Don’t get mushy.”

“I would never.”

“You absolutely would.”

“Yes.”

Her thumb brushed over your fingers once.

No power.

Just Steph.

“I still like you,” she said.

Your heart stopped behaving normally.

She looked annoyed with herself. “It’s inconvenient and frankly offensive after the whole betrayal arc, but apparently my taste is stubborn.”

You stared at her.

Steph’s cheeks flushed. “Say something before I fake my death.”

“You already did that once, didn’t you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “That’s your response?”

“I panicked.”

“Terrible. Try again.”

You squeezed her hand carefully. “I still like you too.”

Steph’s face softened.

Then she pointed at you with her free hand. “To be clear, I am still healing from the aforementioned betrayal arc.”

“I know.”

She glared.

You corrected quickly. “I understand.”

“Better.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“I know.”

You gave her a look.

She smiled, small and real. “What? I’m allowed.”

You laughed. She laughed too. And for the first time in weeks, the room did not feel like a wound being carefully avoided. It felt like something bruised but alive.

The kiss happened later.

Of course it did. Steph Brown might be many things, but emotionally efficient was not usually one of them.

It happened on the Clocktower roof after a night of rain, with Gotham spread below in wet neon and dirty silver. Barbara had kicked both of you upstairs under the pretence of “fresh air” and the very real threat of revoking snack privileges if you kept staring at each other over case files instead of “handling whatever this is.”

Barbara was terrifying. Effective, though.

Steph sat on the ledge with a box of waffles between you, boots swinging over open air. She wore a purple hoodie over her suit, hair pulled into a messy ponytail, glitter polish chipped on three fingers. You sat beside her, close enough that your shoulders almost touched.

Almost.

The city hummed below.

Steph took a bite of waffle. “Oracle has the subtlety of a brick with Wi-Fi.”

You smiled. “She cares.”

“She meddles.”

“Also true.”

Steph looked at you, then away. “You’ve been better.”

You looked down at your hands. The purple glitter polish had started chipping, too. “I’m trying.”

“I know.”

You glanced at her.

She grinned. “See? I’m allowed.”

“You’re impossible.”

“And yet, wildly charming.”

“Wildly.”

She looked pleased for half a second, then nervous. That was new. Steph nervous without covering it immediately with noise.

You waited.

She set her waffle down. “Can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

“Are you using any warm fuzzy cheating right now?”

Your chest tightened.

“No,” you said. “No powers.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Even a tiny little emotional seasoning?”

Despite yourself, you laughed. “No emotional seasoning.”

“Good.” She turned toward you fully, one knee tucked on the ledge. “Because I want to know I’m about to kiss you because I have excellent taste, not because you’re doing magic serotonin crimes.”

Your breath caught so hard it almost hurt. “You’re about to kiss me?”

Steph’s confidence flickered. “That depends on whether you’re about to say yes or make this very awkward.”

You smiled, slow and helpless. “Yes.”

Her eyes widened slightly.

You softened. “Yes, Steph. You can kiss me.”

She swallowed.

Then, because she was Steph, she pointed at you. “If you make me cry, I’m pushing you emotionally, not physically, off this roof.”

“That sounds fair.”

“Good.”

She leaned in. Slowly, for once.

The kiss was soft at first, almost cautious, which would have surprised anyone who did not know how careful Steph could be with things that mattered. Her hand rose to your cheek, hovering for half a second until you leaned into it. Then she touched you, warm fingers against your skin, and kissed you like a joke finally allowed to become a confession. You kissed her back with your hands resting on the ledge because you did not want to take anything. Not from her. Not this. Not ever again.

No power moved. Nothing softened the nerves or polished the want into something easier. It was messy and human and a little syrup-sweet because Steph had definitely been eating waffles five seconds ago.

When she pulled back, her forehead rested against yours.

“No powers?” she whispered.

“No powers.”

“Good.”

“You taste like syrup.”

“Romantic.”

“I thought so.”

She laughed, and the sound trembled at the edges.

You opened your eyes. Steph was crying.

Only a little. She looked furious about it.

“Don’t,” she warned.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were thinking something mushy.”

“I was thinking you’re beautiful.”

“That’s worse.”

“Sorry.”

“No, say it again later when I can pretend to hate it properly.”

You smiled.

She smiled back, wet-eyed and bright and still healing, not smaller for the hurt, not softer because you had made her that way, but present because she chose to be. Her anger had not vanished. Her trust was not unscarred. The past remained a thing with teeth. But she was there, and you were there, and the space between you held no hidden warmth.

Only the ordinary kind.

Steph picked up the waffle box and placed it between you again with grave ceremony.

“Important note,” she said.

“Yes?”

“These are not angry waffles anymore.”

“No?”

“No. These are cautiously optimistic waffles.”

You laughed so hard your eyes filled.

Steph looked proud.

“Much better branding,” you said.

“I know. Growth.”

You leaned your shoulder against hers. She let you.

After a moment, she leaned back.

Below you, Gotham kept being Gotham: sirens, wet streets, bad decisions, worse architecture, people hurting and helping and sometimes doing both in the wrong order. There would be more crises. More calls. More moments where your power rose before your permission did. More days where Steph joked too fast, and you had to choose trust over instinct. Healing did not become easy because two people kissed under a cloudy sky with waffles between them.

But it became possible. That was the thing.

Steph reached for your hand.

“Normally,” she said.

You laced your fingers through hers.

“Normally,” you promised.

She squeezed once.

No powers. No glittering emotional shortcut. No secret softening.

Just Stephanie Brown’s hand in yours, warm and real and chosen. On the roof of the Clocktower, with syrup on her mouth and bruises under her hoodie, Steph looked at the city that had tried so many times to make her feel like a mistake and smiled anyway.

You loved her for that.

You would tell her later. When she was ready. When you were brave. When the waffles were less in danger of being weaponised.

For now, she rested her head on your shoulder and said, “I’m still mad sometimes.”

“I know.”

She lifted her head just enough to glare.

You smiled. “I understand.”

“Good.”

“I still like you.”

Her glare softened into something almost shy.

“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

Then she settled back against you, and the city lights flickered below like broken things refusing to go dark.

That, you thought, was Steph all over.

Not fixed. Not edited. Not made easier.

Signal worked in daylight because someone had to. Because Gotham did not stop hurting people when the sun came up. Because fear did not only belong to midnight. Because children still flinched at noon.

He first saw you outside the Hilltop Community Centre on a bright, cold morning after a shooting three blocks over had turned the neighbourhood into held breath. Police tape fluttered down the street. Reporters gathered where they could get the best angle on other people’s worst day. Parents arrived too fast and left too slowly. Teenagers tried to look unaffected and failed in the small places: clenched jaws, shaking hands, laughter too sharp to be real.

You were kneeling on the pavement in front of a boy who could not have been older than twelve.

The boy was sitting with his back against the brick wall, knees pulled to his chest, breathing too fast while a woman who might have been his aunt hovered nearby, terrified and helpless. There was blood on his sleeve. Not much. Probably not his. That was often worse. Duke had learned that sometimes the body knew the difference and sometimes it absolutely did not.

You did not touch him. That was the first thing Duke noticed.

You sat close enough to be present and far enough to be refused. One hand rested palm-up on your own knee, open and undemanding. Your voice did not carry, but Duke’s enhanced perception caught the shape of it anyway, the low rhythm, the steadiness.

“You’re not in trouble,” you said. “You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to make sense. You just have to breathe for this second. Not the whole day. Just this one.”

The boy’s breath hitched.

You smiled, small and tired and heartbreakingly patient. “Yeah. That one. Good. Want to try another?”

The aunt was crying silently now. You glanced at her, not away from the boy exactly, but wide enough to include her in the room your voice was building around him.

“You too,” you said gently. “He can see you holding your breath.”

The woman made a broken sound that might have been a laugh.

Then the light around you changed.

Duke went still on the rooftop across the street.

It was not visible to everyone. No one else reacted. No golden glow burst dramatically from your hands. No halo, no special effects, no cinematic nonsense Tim would later accuse him of describing “with unnecessary poetic bias.” But Duke saw it. Light gathered around you as if the air itself remembered warmth and had decided to return it. Not bright. Not sharp. Softer than sunlight, stranger than electricity. It moved from you in a slow, breathing pulse, brushed against the boy, against the aunt, against the tense cluster of people gathered too close because fear always drew witnesses.

The boy’s shoulders lowered. The aunt exhaled. Even the crowd seemed to loosen by degrees, anger and panic stepping back far enough for people to hear the paramedic asking questions.

Duke crouched on the rooftop with one hand against the ledge and stared.

You were glowing.

No. That was too simple.

You were giving light away.

He should have reported it to Bruce immediately. That was protocol, probably. Unknown meta activity near a trauma scene. Community impact. Potential emotional influence. Possible threat, possible ally, possible anything. There would be a file. There were always files. Bruce loved files the way other people loved houseplants, except houseplants usually did less damage to relationships.

Duke did not report you. Instead, he watched you help the boy stand when the boy finally nodded yes to your offered hand. He watched you make sure the aunt had water, watched you redirect a reporter with a look so sharp Duke nearly laughed, watched you step around the side of the building once the crisis loosened enough for other hands to hold it.

You leaned against the alley wall.

Your glow dimmed. Just for a second.

Duke’s smile faded.

You pressed a hand to your chest like something inside hurt, breathed through it, then straightened before anyone could see.

But Duke had seen.

That was how it began: not with a mission, not officially, not with Batman placing a file in front of him and saying Signal, look into this. It began with daylight, a shaking boy, your open hand, and Duke Thomas realising that the person who made everyone else breathe easier looked like they had forgotten how to do it for themself.

He met you properly three days later, out of costume, because Duke had been raised with some manners and because walking into a community centre dressed as Signal to ask why someone glowed emotionally felt like a fast way to make an already weird conversation fully deranged.

Hilltop Community Centre was loud in the way living places were loud. Sneakers squeaked on the gym floor. Someone laughed too hard in the hallway. A baby cried in the front office. A kettle boiled in the staff kitchen. Posters covered the walls: tenant rights workshops, food pantry hours, free tutoring, grief group, youth art club, mutual aid meetings, a missing cat flyer with the words HE IS VERY RUDE BUT LOVED written under a blurry orange face.

Duke liked it immediately.

He found you in the multipurpose room trying to mediate a disagreement between two teenagers and one elderly woman over whether the mural they were painting should include Batman. You stood between them with a paint-stained sleeve and the expression of someone seriously considering whether Gotham had ever once allowed a normal civic arts project to occur. 

“What if,” you said, very carefully, “we include the skyline, and people can interpret whatever shapes they want in the shadows?”

The teen narrowed their eyes. “That’s diplomatic.”

“That’s cowardly,” the woman said.

“That’s community arts funding,” you replied.

Duke laughed.

You turned. For a second, your eyes met his, and Duke watched recognition fail to happen. Not Signal, then. Just a stranger in a yellow hoodie standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and a smile he hoped looked normal.

You looked him over, not suspiciously exactly, but with the alert warmth of someone used to strangers arriving with needs. “Can I help you?”

“Probably,” Duke said. “But I was hoping to volunteer before I became a problem.”

Your mouth twitched. “Ambitious. Most people skip straight to problem.”

“I’m an overachiever.”

“Dangerous thing to be in Gotham.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard.”

You introduced yourself. Duke gave you his name and watched the moment it registered.

“Duke Thomas,” you said.

He braced for recognition of a different kind. Foster kid. Wayne-adjacent. The one from the Narrows. The one who disappeared for a while. The one whose name had appeared in too many news stories written by people who did not know what they were talking about.

Instead, you pointed at him. “You’re the guy who fixed the after-school program’s projector last year.”

Duke blinked. “That’s what I’m known for?”

“Among eight-year-olds who wanted movie day, yes. You’re basically a legend.”

He smiled despite himself. “I’ll take it.”

“You should. They still talk about it. One kid said you understood HDMI with your soul.”

“That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.”

“Stick around. Gotham kids can humble you fast.” You handed him a stack of flyers before he could decide whether that counted as flirting. “Here. Make yourself useful, projector prophet.”

And Duke, who had joined superhero teams, fought shadow monsters, survived Gotham’s particular brand of nonsense, and stood beside Batman without flinching, took the flyers and said, “Yes, boss.”

That was the first time you smiled at him. Not the soft smile you gave frightened kids. Not the professional one used to calm angry parents or city officials. A real smile, amused and a little surprised.

The light around you warmed.

Duke felt something in his chest answer.

Oh, he thought. That might be a problem.

You became friends in the way people became friends in places that needed too much work: accidentally, then all at once.

Duke started volunteering twice a week. At least, that was what he told himself. Tuesdays and Thursdays, unless patrol ran long, unless a mission needed him, unless Bruce called a meeting that could have been an encrypted text, unless Gotham did what Gotham did and turned a weekday into a crisis buffet. He fixed the projector again, then the computer lab, then the back door lock, then the flickering fluorescent light in the tutoring room because it gave three kids headaches and made you glare at it like personal betrayal.

“You know,” you said one evening from the doorway while he stood on a chair with a screwdriver between his teeth, “when I asked if you were handy, I did not mean you personally had to declare war on the entire building.”

Duke took the screwdriver from his mouth. “This building started it.”

“The building is seventy years old.”

“Old enough to know better.”

You folded your arms, smiling. “You talk to wiring often?”

“Only when it disrespects me.”

“That explains why the toaster in the kitchen works now.”

“That toaster had an attitude problem.”

“You fixed it by threatening it?”

“I prefer ‘motivational speech.’”

You laughed, and the sound warmed the room more than the lights did.

Duke liked you. That was the simple version, and because Duke was not Tim, he did not need six spreadsheets and a sleep-deprivation spiral to admit it to himself. He liked you. He liked the way you joked when tired but went quiet when someone needed listening. He liked the way you remembered names, food allergies, court dates, favourite colours, which kids hated being touched, which elderly neighbours pretended not to need help carrying groceries, and which ex-gang members preferred tea because coffee made their hands shake.

He liked the way animals found you. The orange missing cat from the flyer turned up one rainy afternoon, soaked, furious, and deeply committed to biting anyone who suggested rescue. You crouched in the alley behind the centre with a towel over one arm and spoke to him like he was a tiny war criminal with understandable grievances.

“Okay,” you said. “You are very scary. We all respect that.”

The cat hissed.

Duke leaned against the doorframe. “He looks like he pays taxes in spite.”

“He has seen things.”

“He saw a puddle and lost.”

“He is processing.”

The cat hissed again, but the light around you gathered softly. You did not force it. Duke could see that now, or thought he could. Your power did not lash out like a command. It hovered, offered, waited. The cat’s ears lowered by fractions. Its breathing slowed. After ten minutes, it allowed you to wrap it in the towel, though it glared the entire time.

Duke shook his head. “You just negotiated with a wet cheese puff.”

“He has a name.”

“Please don’t say Mr Whiskers.”

You checked the flyer. “Lucifer.”

Duke stared.

You held up the angry towel bundle. “That tracks.”

He laughed so hard that Lucifer tried to kill him through fabric.

You looked over at him, eyes bright, and for a second the alley with its dumpsters and rainwater and cracked pavement became the best place in Gotham.

That was the second problem.

The first was that Duke could see your light. The second was that he wanted to stand in it even when it was not meant for him.

You did not know he was Signal at first.

Duke assumed that, anyway. In hindsight, he should have given you more credit.

Signal and Duke existed in your life like two daylight shadows that did not quite overlap. Signal appeared at crisis scenes, bright yellow suit cutting through the smoke and panic, helping people out of overturned buses, escorting kids across streets turned dangerous by villain debris, catching falling scaffolding before it crushed a food pantry delivery. Duke appeared at Hilltop with coffee, toolkits, and a face too innocent whenever you asked why he had bruised knuckles.

You were kind enough not to say anything. For a while.

The villain first struck a playground. That was what made it personal before anyone knew what it was.

Not a bank. Not a gala. Not a WayneTech facility with security systems and insurance policies. A playground at eleven in the morning, full of toddlers, grandparents, caregivers, and teenagers cutting class and pretending they were not watching the little kids fondly. One moment, the place was bright with winter sun. The next, every shadow lengthened in the wrong direction.

Children stopped laughing. Adults froze. Darkness spread from beneath the slide, not like smoke, but like the absence of wanting to move. Duke arrived as Signal four minutes after the first emergency call and found the playground sitting under a dome of dim, oily shade that his eyes rejected on principle. It was not ordinary darkness. It bent light badly, swallowing edges, muting colour, making every face inside look washed in old fear.

A little girl stood on top of the climbing frame, staring at nothing. Her grandmother knelt below with one hand lifted, tears running silently down her face.

Nobody moved.

Duke stepped into the field and felt the despair hit him like cold water.

Not fear toxin. Not magic exactly. Something engineered or empowered to drain momentum from emotion itself. It did not tell him he was afraid. It told him there was no point in being brave. No point in lifting his hand. No point in calling out, saving anyone, trying at all. Gotham had always been broken. People always got hurt. Light always failed eventually.

Duke gritted his teeth.

“Oh,” he muttered. “I hate this.”

Then you ran into the playground.

Of course you did.

No suit. No armour. Just a coat thrown over your community centre shirt and your expression set in that terrible way people looked when they were about to be selfless in a manner that would make everyone else furious later.

Signal turned toward you. “You need to get out of here.”

You looked at him and, with absolutely no hesitation, said, “So do you, Duke.”

There were, he reflected later, better times to have his secret identity casually murdered. This was not one of them.

He stared at you through the bright lenses of his mask. “We are going to talk about that.”

“You wear your emotional posture like a signature.”

“My what?”

“Later.”

The little girl on the climbing frame swayed.

You moved. Duke swore and moved with you.

The darkness pressed harder as you crossed the playground. Duke pulled light toward his hands, forcing brightness through the field in sharp pulses. The shadows recoiled where his power touched them but surged back immediately, hungry and patient. Beside him, your light gathered, visible only to his eyes, warm and gold against the wrong dark.

“You can counter it?” he asked.

“I can help them want to move.”

“That’s different.”

“Different enough.”

You reached the grandmother first. You did not touch her, only crouched low in her line of sight.

“Can you hear me?” you asked.

Her eyes shifted toward you with enormous effort.

“Your granddaughter needs you to call her name,” you said. “I know it feels impossible. But she knows your voice. Give her one word.”

The woman’s mouth trembled.

Your light spread, not erasing the darkness but making a pocket inside it where breath could happen.

“Lina,” the grandmother whispered.

The little girl blinked.

Duke sent a pulse of light up toward the climbing frame. Not enough to blind. Just enough to catch her attention, to carve a path through the despair.

You lifted your hand. “Lina, sweetheart. Look at your grandmother. That’s it. One step down. Just one.”

The girl moved.

The whole playground seemed to inhale.

After that, the rescue became a rhythm: Duke breaking the darkness in flashes, you warming the emotional paralysis enough for people to follow his light. He pointed paths open. You made people believe they could take them. Children cried. Adults stumbled. A teenager collapsed into Duke’s arms and kept saying, “I didn’t care if I died,” with horror dawning fresh each time.

You heard every word.

Duke saw your glow brighten. He thought, then, that your power rose to meet need like his did. That adrenaline made it stronger. That whatever it cost, if it cost anything, was manageable because you were still standing, still speaking, still making the impossible gentler by inches.

He did not know. That ignorance would become the thing he returned to later, turning it over and over in his hands until it cut.

After the playground, the case became a pattern.

A clinic lost power at noon and filled with shadows that made patients stop taking medication, stop calling for help, stop believing pain was worth treating. A school hallway dimmed between classes, and thirty-two students sat down where they stood, silent and unreachable. A food pantry opened its doors to a line of people who suddenly could not remember why they had bothered coming.

Every attack targeted bright places.

Not literally, always. Emotionally. Places where people gathered to keep one another alive in ordinary ways. Places with bulletin boards and bad coffee. Places with donated coats, free lunches, after-school programs, group therapy, music lessons, legal aid, AA meetings, vaccination drives. Places Duke knew because he had grown up around the kind of need that learned every safe doorway in a ten-block radius.

Whoever was doing this was not just attacking Gotham. They were attacking its reasons to continue.

Duke hated them immediately and with focus.

You became part of the investigation because you refused not to be.

Bruce tried to object. You listened respectfully for exactly nineteen seconds, then said, “Batman, with all due respect, I work with half the people being targeted. You can either include me or waste time pretending I won’t show up anyway.”

Jason, leaning against the Cave railing, snorted. “I like this one.”

Bruce’s mouth tightened.

Duke, standing beside you, looked straight ahead and tried not to smile.

Tim said, “Statistically, they’re not wrong.”

Damian said, “Unfortunately.”

“You too?” Bruce asked.

Damian lifted his chin. “I respect competence.”

You leaned toward Duke and whispered, “Did I just get Damian Wayne approval?”

Duke whispered back, “Frame the moment. It may never happen again.”

Damian’s eyes narrowed. “I can hear you.”

“Then hear this,” Jason said. “B’s outvoted.”

“I did not call a vote,” Bruce said.

“That’s why you lost.”

The meeting continued because the Batfamily, despite being a collection of emotionally repressed vigilantes with control issues and dramatic capes, did occasionally manage to do their jobs.

Tim identified a probable source: a former WayneTech photonics researcher named Dr Maris Vostok, who had disappeared after a failed project involving light-responsive neural tech. Duke found the emotional signature of her darkness fields similar to what he had seen in older records from metahuman despair effects, but mechanical, distorted, amplified. Bruce found funding links to shell companies. Barbara found city maps with circles around community spaces.

You sat at the table and stared at the map.

Duke watched your face.

“What?” he asked softly.

You pointed to the next likely target.

“Hilltop,” you said.

The room went quiet.

Duke’s stomach dropped.

Bruce said, “We’ll secure it.”

You looked at him. “No.”

His eyes narrowed. “No?”

“If you turn Hilltop into a Bat operation, people will panic before she even gets there. You need it open. Normal. Staffed by people they know.”

“Absolutely not,” Duke said.

You turned to him.

He heard his own voice and realised it had come out too sharp.

Your expression softened. “Duke.”

“No,” he said again, quieter but firmer. “She’s targeting places after emotional distress builds. That means she needs people there. You’re talking about using the centre as bait.”

“I’m talking about not abandoning the people who will come whether I’m there or not.”

“That is not better.”

“It is honest.”

He stared at you.

The light around you was steady, warm, infuriatingly resolute.

Duke had spent enough time around Bats to recognise self-sacrifice dressed up as strategy. Bruce did it like breathing. Dick did it with a smile. Tim did it with caffeine and plausible deniability. Damian did it with insults. Jason pretended he did not do it and then threw himself in front of bullets as if irony made him bulletproof.

You did it gently. That made it no less reckless.

After the meeting, Duke found you in the Manor hallway outside the Cave, standing near an old window where late-afternoon sun caught dust in the air. You looked tired, but not afraid.

“You knew it would be Hilltop,” he said.

You did not pretend otherwise. “I suspected.”

“Before the meeting?”

“Yes.”

His jaw tightened. “And you didn’t tell me.”

“I was going to.”

“When?”

You looked out the window. “When I knew how to say it without you making that face.”

“What face?”

“The face that says you are about to carry something that is not yours just because you can see it.”

Duke stopped.

You looked at him then, and your expression was too knowing, too gentle, too easy to want. “You’re not the only one who protects things in daylight.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

He exhaled. “I know you’re brave.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know you’re capable.”

“Closer.”

“I know you don’t need me to save you,” he said, and hated how much effort it took.

Your face softened.

“But,” Duke added, “I also know you’re very bad at counting yourself as someone worth protecting.”

Something flickered in your expression.

There. A crack. Not big. Not enough. But there.

“You say that like you’re good at it,” you said.

Duke laughed once. “I’m Batman-adjacent. None of us are good at it.”

“Then maybe don’t lecture from inside the glass house.”

“Maybe stop throwing stones at yourself.”

“That was awful.”

“I panicked.”

You laughed.

He smiled, but it faded quickly. “I’m serious.”

“I know.”

“Do I need to worry about your power?”

You stilled.

Just for a moment.

Duke saw it. He would think about that later too.

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“I can see it,” he said. “When you use it. It gets brighter around you. Does it… I don’t know, burn out? Overload?”

Your gaze slipped away.

“Everyone gets tired,” you said.

That was not an answer.

Duke knew it. You knew he knew it. But the phone in your pocket buzzed before he could push, and the moment broke under the weight of crisis. Another minor darkness flare near a bus stop. Three people affected. No casualties.

By the time it was over, neither of you returned to the question.

That became your lie by omission. Duke’s was believing he had time to ask again.

Hilltop opened the next morning. It felt wrong to Duke, the normalcy of it. The centre smelled like coffee, floor cleaner, and toast from the kitchen. Kids argued over markers in the art room. Volunteers stacked donated tins by expiration date. Mrs Alvarez from the tenant association bullied two city council interns into carrying chairs with the cheerful violence of an elder who had seen worse men fold under less. The missing cat Lucifer, now unofficially the centre’s emotional support menace, slept on top of a filing cabinet with one eye open.

You moved through it all like the centre’s heartbeat. Duke watched from the roof across the street as Signal, sunlight catching on the yellow of his suit. Batman had people on the perimeter. Oracle monitored power grids and comms. Red Robin had drones hidden in places no normal person would think to look because Tim’s relationship with privacy was creative at best. Spoiler and Orphan were inside in civilian clothes. Nightwing covered evacuation routes. Red Hood was somewhere nearby, presumably violating at least two weapons ordinances.

Everything was prepared. Which, in Gotham, usually meant something would go wrong in a more creative direction.

At 11:43, the sun vanished from Hilltop’s windows.

Not outside. Just in.

Every window went black at once, as if someone had poured ink down the glass.

Duke moved before Oracle finished saying his name. He crashed through the rooftop access door and into a hallway where the light had turned thick and wrong. The darkness field was stronger this time, cold enough to frost the edges of his thoughts. Voices muffled around him. A child whimpered. Someone dropped a tray in the kitchen. Then the emotional weight hit.

Hopelessness. Not sadness. Sadness had texture, history, motion. This was emptier. A hand around the part of the soul that reached forward. Duke staggered, one palm hitting the wall.

No point. The thought slid through him in a voice that was not his. No point saving one place. No point being light in a city that always finds more dark. No point trying. No point—

Duke pulled light into his hand until it burned bright enough to hurt.

“Yeah,” he said through clenched teeth, “I’ve heard better arguments from gargoyles.”

He pushed forward.

Your light was already in the building. He could see it through the walls. Gold and warm, pulsing from the multipurpose room. Too bright, almost. Brighter than he had ever seen it, wide enough to reach every hallway, every frightened person, every child frozen under the darkness. Relief hit him with the sight.

You were okay. You were holding.

He found you in the centre of the room.

You stood among dozens of people sitting or crouched on the floor, speaking steadily while darkness pressed against the walls like a living tide. Your hands were open at your sides. Your face was pale but calm. The glow around you filled the room, not defeating the shadow but keeping it from swallowing everyone whole.

“Listen to my voice,” you said. “You don’t have to feel brave. You don’t have to feel hopeful. Just find one thing you can do. Move your hand. Blink. Say your name. Look at someone beside you. One thing means you’re still here.”

People began to move in tiny increments. A boy whispered his own name. A woman reached for her neighbour. Lucifer hissed from under a chair, which, frankly, also seemed like an act of resistance.

Duke entered the room with light gathered around both fists. You turned toward him, and the smile you gave him was so relieved it nearly knocked him off balance.

“Signal,” you said.

“Hey,” he said, because apparently imminent doom did not improve his conversational skills around you. “Nice ambience.”

“Thought we’d try something intimate. Community centre meets existential void.”

“Bold theme.”

“Too much?”

“Little heavy-handed.”

Someone near the wall gave a weak laugh. The sound mattered.

Duke stepped beside you and sent light outward in careful bursts, breaking pathways through the dark. “We need to evacuate.”

“I’m keeping them responsive.”

“I know.”

“You find Vostok?”

“Working on it.”

As if summoned by her name, Dr Maris Vostok appeared on the far stage where kids usually performed talent shows and deeply chaotic puppet plays. She wore a harness of black metal and glass nodes, each one bending the light around her into a halo of absence. Her hair floated slightly, lifted by static. Her face looked grey with exhaustion and conviction, the worst combination Gotham had to offer.

“You’re both very inspiring,” she said. Her voice echoed through the room from hidden speakers. “That’s the problem.”

Duke shifted in front of you.

You muttered, “Do not start with me.”

He did not look back. “Start what?”

“The body-blocking thing.”

“I’m standing.”

“You are strategically standing.”

“I’m allowed to stand places.”

“Duke.”

Vostok laughed. “Still arguing. That’s good. It means the field hasn’t finished.”

Duke lifted one hand. Light sparked between his fingers. “Turn it off.”

“Do you know what hope does to people?” Vostok asked.

“Generally improves the vibe.”

“It exhausts them,” she said sharply. “It makes them crawl forward for scraps. It convinces them that suffering has meaning if they can narrate it prettily enough. Gotham runs on that lie. Heroes like you sell it every day.”

Duke’s jaw tightened.

You stepped beside him, not behind. “And your solution is what? Make everyone give up before the city disappoints them?”

“My solution is mercy.”

“No,” you said. “Mercy gives people somewhere safe to fall. You’re cutting their legs out from under them and calling the floor kindness.”

Vostok’s expression twitched.

Duke glanced at you.

You were glowing brighter. Too bright. Something about it scraped at his nerves. He murmured your name in warning.

“I’m okay.” There it was again. Not a true answer.

Vostok lifted her hand.

The darkness slammed inward.

People cried out. Duke threw both hands up, light bursting from him in a radiant shield across the room. The field buckled, shadows peeling back from the windows, but Vostok’s machine shrieked and compensated. The despair deepened, targeting not sight now but will. Duke felt knees hit the floor behind him. Felt his own arms shake as the darkness crawled over his light.

Then your power surged.

The room filled with warmth. Not comfort like a blanket. Not gentle this time. This was a bonfire in a snowstorm. A flare sent up from the last person awake on a sinking ship. Duke watched gold light pour from you in waves, through every person in the centre, through him, through even the places Vostok’s darkness had made numb.

People began to stand.

Not because they were unafraid. Because they remembered fear was not the only thing inside them.

Mrs Alvarez rose first, because of course she did, one hand braced on a chair and fury in every line of her small body. “I have survived five landlords, two floods, and the city council,” she snapped at the darkness. “I am not being emotionally murdered before lunch.”

Jason’s voice crackled over comms. “I love her.”

“Focus,” Bruce said.

“I am focused. On her. She’s my hero now.”

Duke would have laughed if he had not been holding back a despair machine with both hands.

You took one step forward. Then another. Duke saw the light around you flicker.

Not dim exactly. Thin. Like fabric pulled too tight.

His stomach dropped.

“Hey,” he said. “Ease up.”

“I can hold them.”

“That’s not what I said.”

Vostok’s eyes fixed on you with sudden fascination. “Oh. You’re the battery.”

The words landed wrong.

Duke’s head turned sharply toward you. Your face had gone bloodless.

Vostok smiled slowly. “That’s how you do it. You’re not generating hope. You’re redistributing nervous system stability through an empathic field. But not externally sourced. Not ambient.” Her smile widened. “It’s you.”

Duke felt cold beneath the heat of his own light.

“What does she mean?” he asked.

You did not look at him. “Nothing.”

Vostok laughed. “They didn’t tell you?”

Duke’s light flickered. 

You immediately fed warmth toward him, instinctive and terrified. He felt it brush the edge of his fear.

He stepped away.

Not far. Enough.

Your face crumpled for half a second.

Duke hated that too.

“Don’t,” he said, voice low.

“I’m sorry.”

“What does she mean?”

The darkness pressed harder. You swayed.

Duke saw it then. Not just the gold leaving you. Not just the warmth moving outward. The absence it left behind. Every time your power surged, your own light thinned. Every person who stood steadier made you less steady. Every breath you gave the room took something from yours. You had been doing this from the beginning. Playground. Clinic. School. Pantry. Hilltop. Every scene where he had thought you were brilliant and brave and glowing.

You had been burning. And he had stood beside you admiring the light.

“Oh,” Duke whispered.

Your eyes filled. “Duke—”

The ceiling lights exploded. Darkness crashed down. Duke lost sight of you for one terrifying second.

Then the room split into chaos.

Vostok’s machine overloaded under the competing force of Duke’s photonic shield and your empathic flare. The shadows fractured into jagged patches, each one throwing people into their worst emotional lows. Duke saw a kid sink to the floor near the mural wall. Saw Stephanie, still in civilian clothes, grab two people and drag them toward the exit. Saw Cassandra move through darkness like it had offended her personally. Saw Batman drop through a skylight that had definitely not been open before.

And you—

You were moving toward Vostok.

“No,” Duke said.

You did not stop. Of course, you didn’t.

Vostok aimed the machine at the evacuees, not at you, and you did exactly what she wanted. You opened yourself wider. Your light filled the room so completely that Duke’s vision went gold-white for half a breath. The despair field shattered around the civilians. People ran. Doors opened. Sunlight cut through from outside as Red Robin killed the window shielding systems.

For one bright, impossible moment, Hilltop became full of daylight.

Then your glow went out.

You collapsed.

Duke did not remember crossing the room. One second, he was holding a shield. The next, he was on his knees beside you, hands hovering because he did not know where to touch without hurting you. Your skin was cold. Too cold. Your breathing was shallow. There was blood under your nose. Your eyes were half-open but unfocused, staring past him at a ceiling you had no strength left to see.

“No,” Duke said. His voice did not sound like his.

You blinked slowly.

“Hey,” you whispered.

“Don’t you hey me.”

Your mouth twitched. “Rude.”

“You collapsed.”

“Noticed that.”

“Why are you cold?”

You did not answer.

“Why are you cold?” he repeated, and this time his voice broke around it.

Your gaze shifted toward him with enormous effort. “Duke.”

“No. No, don’t do the soft voice. Don’t make this easier for me.”

Your eyes filled.

Around you, the fight continued. Batman and Cassandra took Vostok down. Red Hood secured the machine with unnecessary aggression. Nightwing directed the last evacuees out. Red Robin’s voice snapped over comms about energy readings and medical response. But all of it felt far away, separated from Duke by the terrifying smallness of your breath.

He pulled off one glove with his teeth and touched your wrist.

Your pulse fluttered under his fingers.

Too fast. Too weak.

“You knew,” he said. You closed your eyes. “You knew it did this.”

“I had it handled.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying you know when you didn’t tell me.”

Your eyes opened again. The hurt in them almost shut him up.

Almost.

“I asked,” Duke said, quieter now, worse. “I asked if I needed to worry about your power.”

“You had enough to worry about.”

He laughed once, and it came out broken. “Wow.”

“Duke—”

“No. You don’t get to decide that for me.”

“I wasn’t trying to—”

“You were.” His hand tightened around yours. “You were trying to protect me from worrying while letting me stand next to you and watch you disappear in real time.”

A tear slipped from the corner of your eye into your hairline.

“I didn’t want you to stop me,” you whispered.

That one landed like a confession because it was.

Duke stared at you. Behind him, the machine sparked and died. 

Sunlight returned fully through the windows. It touched your face and made you look even paler.

“You didn’t want me to stop you,” he repeated.

You swallowed.

“No,” you said.

Duke’s throat tightened with so much anger and fear and grief that for a second he could not speak. He had been angry before. At villains. At systems. At Bruce, sometimes, though Duke was better than most at understanding the difference between leadership and control. But this anger hurt differently because it came tangled with the fact that he cared about you so much his whole body felt like a bruise.

“You made me watch you burn,” he said.

Your face crumpled.

“I saved them,” you whispered.

“I know.” His voice cracked. “That’s why this hurts.”

You looked away.

He hated himself immediately and did not take it back.

Because you had saved them. You had saved the children, the volunteers, the elders, the people who came to Hilltop because it was one of the few places in Gotham that asked what they needed before asking what they had done. You had saved them, and you had hurt yourself doing it, and Duke did not know how to be angry without feeling cruel or scared without sounding controlling.

So he did the only thing he could.

He stayed. He slid one arm carefully under your shoulders and lifted you enough to wrap his cape around you, bright yellow fabric covering your trembling body. Your head tipped weakly against his chest.

“Medical,” he said into comms, voice tight. “Now.”

“ETA three minutes,” Oracle replied, softer than usual.

You tried to move. “The others—”

“Are standing because of you.”

“I need to check—”

“You need to breathe.”

“But—”

Duke looked down at you, eyes burning. “Please.”

That stopped you.

Not because he commanded it. Because he asked, and his voice broke when he did.

You closed your eyes.

“Okay,” you whispered.

He held you in the ruined community centre, surrounded by broken glass, sunlight, and the people you had saved crying in each other’s arms. The mural on the wall had survived somehow. The skyline was half-painted, shadows left ambiguous under the brushstrokes. In the corner, Lucifer emerged from beneath an overturned chair and hissed at the remains of the despair machine like he had personally defeated it.

Under any other circumstances, Duke might have laughed. Instead, he pressed his cheek briefly to the top of your head and whispered, so quietly only you could hear, “You are people too.”

You did not answer.

But your hand, cold and shaking under his cape, curled weakly around his sleeve.

The Cave medbay was too bright. Duke had always found that ironic. The Bats lived in darkness but lit their medical spaces like they were interrogating injuries into submission. You lay on a cot under thermal blankets, IV fluids running into your arm, a monitor tracking the pulse that had scared three years off Duke’s life and probably given Alfred new material for his private lecture collection.

You had not woken yet.

Duke sat beside you in half his Signal gear, cowl down, gloves off, one knee bouncing until Dick placed a hand on it and said, gently, “Hey.”

Duke stopped. For eleven seconds. Then started again.

Dick wisely removed his hand.

Across the medbay, Bruce spoke quietly with Alfred. Tim was at the computer, pulling up readings from the attack and looking increasingly unhappy in a very Tim way, which meant data was confirming emotions nobody wanted. Jason leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, helmet off, expression thunderous. Steph sat on a rolling stool, still in the clothes she had worn undercover, one leg tucked under her. Cass stood near the door, eyes on you, silent and watchful.

Duke stared at your face. In the Cave light, your glow was barely visible to him.

Not gone. Never gone.

But small. A banked ember where there had been daylight.

His chest hurt every time he looked at it.

“How long?” he asked.

The room went quiet.

Bruce looked at him.

Duke did not look away from you. “How long has everyone known?”

No one answered fast enough.

Jason swore under his breath.

Duke laughed once, humourless. “Great.”

Tim turned in his chair. “I didn’t know the degree. Not until now.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Tim’s mouth closed.

Bruce said, “We knew there was a cost.”

Duke finally looked at him.

Something in Bruce’s expression shifted. Good, Duke thought distantly. Let him see it.

“And nobody told me.”

“It wasn’t ours to tell,” Dick said softly.

Duke’s anger swung toward him, unfair and immediate. “But it was mine to miss?”

Dick absorbed that like someone who knew the shape of guilt too well to deflect it. “No.”

Alfred stepped forward, voice quiet. “Master Duke, I suspect they did not wish the cost known.”

“I get that.” Duke stood because sitting was suddenly impossible. “I get privacy. I get boundaries. I get not outing someone’s medical or meta details without consent. But you all let them go into the field knowing this could happen.”

“They are an adult,” Bruce said.

Duke’s eyes snapped to him. “Don’t.” Bruce went still. “Do not use autonomy as a shield just because it gets you out of admitting you were willing to let them hurt themself if it saved the room.”

The silence after that was sharp enough to cut. 

Jason looked almost proud. Bruce looked, for once, like he had no immediate answer.

Duke’s voice lowered. “They saved people. I know that. They chose to be there. I know that too. But all of you— all of us— we keep doing this thing where someone burns themself down, and we call it their choice because that sounds better than admitting we needed the fire.”

Your monitor beeped steadily.

No one spoke.

Duke looked back at you, anger draining into something more frightened.

“I was standing right there,” he said. “I can see light better than anyone, and I didn’t see them going out.”

Cass moved first. She crossed the medbay silently and stood beside him. Then, after a moment, she touched two fingers lightly to his wrist.

Not comfort, exactly. Acknowledgment.

Duke breathed in.

“Seeing is not the same as knowing,” Cass said.

It was the longest sentence he had heard from her all day. It did exactly what it needed to.

Duke nodded once, swallowing hard.

Jason pushed off the wall. “For the record, when they wake up, I’m yelling.”

“You are not yelling in my medbay,” Alfred said.

“Firmly expressing disappointment.”

“No.”

“Emotionally gesturing?”

Alfred looked at him.

Jason sighed. “Fine. I’ll loom.”

“You may loom from a medically appropriate distance.”

Steph wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. “This family is so normal.”

You woke three hours later. Duke knew because your light shifted before your eyes opened.

He had been sitting beside you again, elbows on his knees, staring at his hands. Most of the others had been exiled by Alfred under the pretense of “not turning recovery into a vigilante waiting room,” though Duke suspected you had more guards nearby than the president. Bruce had left last and only after Duke promised to call if anything changed, which was a sentence neither of them unpacked.

Your fingers twitched.

Duke looked up. Your eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, then finding him.

“Hey,” you whispered.

Duke closed his eyes.

“I swear,” he said, “if you say that to me one more time after almost dying, I’m going to lose my mind.”

Your mouth curved faintly. “Hi?”

“Worse.”

“Good evening?”

“Unbelievable.”

You tried to laugh and winced.

Duke stood immediately. “Don’t move.”

“You sound like Batman.”

“That is the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Your smile softened.

Then memory returned. He saw it happen. Your face changed, guilt moving in before pain had even finished taking its shoes off.

“Duke—”

“No.”

You flinched.

He sat back down, dragging a hand over his face. “Sorry. Not no like that. Just… don’t start by apologising in a way that makes me have to comfort you before I get to be upset.”

Your eyes filled.

You nodded once.

Duke exhaled slowly.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. The medbay hummed around you.

Finally, you said, “How many people were hurt?”

“Minor injuries. No fatalities. Vostok’s in custody. Hilltop’s damaged, but not gone. Lucifer survived and is being treated like a war hero.”

Your eyes closed in relief.

“Mrs Alvarez told Batman he had poor crowd management instincts.”

Your eyes opened. “She didn’t.”

“She did. Jason proposed adoption.”

That got the smallest laugh out of you. Duke treasured it and hated how fragile it sounded.

Then the silence returned.

You looked at him. “I should have told you.”

“Yes,” he said.

The honesty landed between you.

You nodded, tears slipping down your temples. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

Your brow furrowed. “For what?”

“For being so busy admiring the light that I didn’t ask enough questions about where it came from.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“I know.”

“Duke.”

“I know,” he repeated, and this time his voice roughened. “But knowing doesn’t make it feel true yet.”

Your expression broke.

“I didn’t want you to look at me differently,” you whispered.

His anger softened around the edges, not gone, not forgiving everything, but making room.

“How did you think I looked at you?”

You stared at the ceiling.

“Like I was strong,” you said. “Like I could help. Like I was someone who made things better.”

Duke’s chest ached. “You are strong.”

Your mouth trembled.

“You do help,” he said. “You do make things better. And I’m not going to stop looking at you like that just because I know it costs you.”

You turned your face away.

“But,” Duke continued, because the but mattered and loving someone did not mean letting them escape the hard part, “I am going to get real annoying when you act like the cost doesn’t count.”

A wet laugh escaped you. “How annoying?”

“Tim-with-a-spreadsheet annoying.”

“Oh, that’s bad.”

“Colour-coded.”

“Duke.”

“Maybe graphs.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I know people.”

“You’re threatening me with data visualisation in my hospital bed.”

“Medbay cot, technically.”

“You spend too much time with vigilantes.”

“That is both true and not a distraction.”

You went quiet.

Duke leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Why didn’t you want me to stop you?”

Your eyes closed.

There it was. The heart of it. Not the field. Not Vostok. Not the mission. The choice you had made before any darkness machine turned Hilltop’s windows black.

“Because stopping feels like deciding some people don’t get comfort,” you whispered. Duke said nothing. “And I know that’s not fair. I know that isn’t how it works. But when I can feel them hurting, when I know I can make it easier for them to survive the next second, stopping feels like leaving them where I was.”

His throat tightened.

“The power manifested when I was alone,” you said. “I wanted someone to come so badly I thought it might tear me open. No one came. Then something small and hurt found me, and I could make it feel safe. That’s all I ever wanted. For someone to feel safe because I was there.”

Duke looked down at your hand on the blanket. He did not take it.

Not yet. You had spent the whole mission giving yourself away before anyone could ask what you wanted. He would not take even comfort from you without making space for choice.

“That makes sense,” he said.

Your eyes opened, surprised.

“It does,” he said. “It makes sense. It also almost killed you.”

Tears gathered again.

“Both things can be true,” Duke said softly. “That’s the part Gotham keeps messing up. We act like if the reason is good enough, the damage becomes noble.”

You gave a tiny, miserable smile. “That sounds like something Batman needs embroidered on a pillow.”

“I’ll ask Alfred.”

“He would.”

“He absolutely would.”

Your fingers shifted on the blanket.

Duke noticed. You noticed him noticing.

“Can I hold your hand?” he asked.

Your face crumpled. “Yes.”

He took your hand carefully, mindful of the IV tape, the coldness still lingering in your skin. No warmth moved from you. No empathic comfort. No golden light trying to soothe the hurt between you.

Just your hand in his.

Duke brushed his thumb over your knuckles.

“I’m mad at you,” he said.

“I know.”

“I care about you.”

“I know.”

“You do not get to use the second thing to make the first one disappear.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t get to use the first thing to pretend the second one isn’t true.”

Your lips parted slightly.

Duke looked at you, all the fear and anger and tenderness sitting in him without any of them cancelling the others out.

“I like you,” he said. Your breath caught. He laughed under his breath, shaky and small. “Terrible timing, right?”

“Very Gotham.”

“Yeah.”

“You like me?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Unfortunately?”

“You are a reckless emotional support beacon with no sense of self-preservation.”

“You volunteer with Batman.”

“Deflection.”

“You fight shadow monsters in daylight.”

“Still deflection.”

“You called yourself projector prophet once.”

“Now you’re just being hurtful.”

You laughed, and this time it sounded more like you.

Duke smiled before he could stop himself.

Then your expression softened into something vulnerable enough to make his chest feel too small.

“I like you too,” you whispered.

His heart did something stupid. Probably visible from space.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“For my charm, right? Not my emotional posture?”

“Both.”

“That’s fair.”

Your fingers tightened weakly around his. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

His smile faded.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” you said. “Not because you would have stopped me. Because you should have had the choice to know what standing beside me meant.”

Duke nodded slowly.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For apologising?”

“For saying choice and meaning it.”

Your eyes shone.

He looked down at your joined hands. “New rule.”

“You’re making rules now?”

“Just one.”

“Okay.”

“You ask for help before you start disappearing.”

Your mouth trembled. “I don’t know how.”

Duke had expected that answer. It still hurt.

He lifted your hand slightly, not enough to pull, just enough for you to feel him there.

“Then start with me,” he said.

For a moment, you only looked at him.

Then your face folded around the kind of grief that had been waiting years for permission. You cried quietly, not with the dramatic collapse of someone who had no strength left, but with the exhausted surrender of someone who had finally been told they were allowed to stop pretending the weight was weightless.

Duke stayed.

He did not make the crying smaller. He did not brighten the room. He did not tell you it was okay because it was not, not yet, not fully. He only held your hand while the medbay lights hummed and your pulse steadied under machines that did not understand miracles, only measurements.

Later, when Alfred came in with soup and the expression of a man prepared to enforce it as law, he found Duke still beside you.

You were asleep.

Duke looked up.

Alfred’s gaze moved to your joined hands, then to Duke’s face.

“Master Duke,” he said gently, “you should rest as well.”

Duke looked back at you. Your glow was still dim.

But present.

“I will,” he said.

Alfred’s eyebrow rose.

Duke sighed. “That sounded fake, didn’t it?”

“Painfully.”

“I’ll rest when they wake up again.”

“Marginally better.”

“I learned from the worst.”

“Indeed.”

Alfred set the tray down. Before leaving, he placed one hand briefly on Duke’s shoulder. “They are still here.”

Duke swallowed.

“Yeah,” he said. His thumb brushed once over your knuckles. “Yeah, they are.”

Hilltop reopened two weeks later.

Not fully. One room at first. Then two. The windows had been replaced. The mural had been finished by the kids, who had decided to include neither Batman nor Signal in the skyline but had hidden a small yellow sun in one corner and a tiny orange cat on top of a building. Duke pretended not to get emotional about it and failed badly enough that Stephanie took a photo.

You were not supposed to be working. This was a widely agreed-upon rule made by Alfred, Duke, Bruce, several doctors, Mrs Alvarez, and Lucifer, who expressed his opinion by sitting on your paperwork whenever you tried to organise anything.

You were, however, allowed to sit in the corner with a blanket and “supervise,” which mostly meant children brought you drawings, adults brought you tea, and Duke stood nearby with the expression of someone ready to bodily intercept any attempt at heroic self-sacrifice.

“You are hovering,” you said.

Duke leaned against the wall beside your chair. “I am standing supportively.”

“You’re blocking the supply closet.”

“That supply closet looked suspicious.”

“It contains paper towels.”

“Exactly.”

You smiled down into your tea.

Sunlight poured through the new windows, bright and clean. Duke could see your light better in it now. Still not as strong as before, but steadier. Recovering. You had been annoyed when he described it that way.

“I am not a rechargeable battery,” you had said.

“I know,” Duke replied.

“You brought me to sit in the sun.”

“You said it helped.”

“That is not the point.”

“You’re right. You’re a houseplant.”

You had thrown a cushion at him. Weakly, but with emotional accuracy.

Now, in the community centre, you looked at the mural and then at him.

“You saved them too, you know,” you said.

Duke blinked. “What?”

“At Hilltop.”

“I know I was there.”

“No.” You set your tea down carefully. “I mean, you keep talking like I was the only reason people got out. I wasn’t. You were the path. I was just… momentum.”

Duke studied you.

“I’m trying to accept shared credit,” you said. “Do not make that face.”

“What face?”

“The face like you’re proud of me in a way that makes me want to become furniture.”

Duke smiled. “I am proud of you.”

“Duke.”

“Sorry. Too direct?”

“Yes.”

“Should I insult you instead?”

“Please.”

“You are the most stubborn glowstick I’ve ever met.”

“That was terrible.”

“I panicked again.”

“You keep doing that.”

“Only around you.”

The words landed between you. Softly. Differently than before.

Your smile faded into something shy. Duke’s heart took that as an invitation to become unprofessional.

Across the room, Mrs Alvarez loudly told a volunteer that young people today took too long to admit obvious things. Jason, who had appeared at some point with a box of donated books and no permission, said, “Preach.”

Duke closed his eyes. “I hate everyone.”

You laughed.

Later, when the centre quieted and the winter sun lowered gold across the mural, Duke found you in the small courtyard behind Hilltop. The raised garden beds were mostly dormant, though someone had planted hardy herbs that refused to die out of spite. Lucifer sat on the wall, tail flicking, judging the entire world.

You stood with your face tilted toward the light.

Duke stopped in the doorway.

For a moment, he only looked. Your glow did not fill the courtyard. It did not pour from you in a desperate attempt to save everyone within reach. It sat close to your skin, soft and yours, no longer something you were giving away by default.

You looked peaceful.

Not fixed. Not healed in a single cinematic leap.

But present.

Duke stepped outside.

“You okay?” he asked.

You opened your eyes. “I think so.”

He nodded.

No pushing. No scanning your face for lies like an anxious detective. No grabbing the answer and shaking truth from it. Just accepting that you were learning how to answer and he was learning how to let the answer be yours.

You looked at him. “Are you?”

Duke considered lying. Then he smiled ruefully. “I think so.”

“Copycat.”

“You’re a good influence.”

“That is debatable.”

“Strongly.”

You laughed.

Then, after a small silence, you held out your hand.

Duke looked at it.

Your voice softened. “No powers.”

“I know.”

“I just want to hold your hand.”

His chest warmed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can do that.”

He took your hand.

Your fingers were still a little cold, but not like they had been in the medbay. Duke folded his hand around yours and felt, with startling clarity, that this was not rescue. Not recovery management. Not community care. Not strategy. Just two people in fading sunlight, choosing contact because they wanted it.

He looked at you. You were already looking at him.

“Can I kiss you?” Duke asked.

Your breath caught.

Lucifer chose that moment to make a deeply judgmental noise from the wall.

Duke glanced at him. “I’m trying to have a moment.”

“He supervises.”

“He’s bad at it.”

“He has standards.”

“He once attacked a paper bag.”

“The bag had poor intentions.”

Duke laughed, then looked back at you. “Question still stands.”

Your smile trembled.

“Yes,” you said. “You can kiss me.”

He stepped closer slowly, giving you every second to change your mind. You did not. Your free hand rose to his sleeve, and Duke felt the simple human weight of it like sunlight.

The kiss was gentle.

No glow flared between you. No empathic warmth spilled out to smooth over nerves or make the moment easier. Your mouth was soft under his, a little hesitant at first, then warmer when he squeezed your hand. Duke kissed you like someone who knew light could be shared without anyone burning. You kissed him back like someone trying, finally, to believe comfort could come toward you too.

When you pulled apart, your forehead rested against his.

“No powers?” you whispered.

Duke smiled. “No powers.”

“Still okay?”

“Very okay.”

You laughed softly, almost disbelieving.

He brushed his thumb over your hand.

“You know,” he said, “being a light doesn’t mean you have to be on fire.”

You groaned. “That was painfully sincere.”

“I know.”

“Awful.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Very attractive, unfortunately.”

His smile widened. “Unfortunately?”

“You heard me.”

Lucifer meowed like he was filing a complaint.

Duke ignored him and kissed you again.

Outside the courtyard, Gotham continued. It always did. There would be more darkness. More awful people with machines and philosophies. More community centers needing repairs. More children needed someone to tell them the next breath mattered. More days when Duke would stand in the sun and fight shadows that thought daylight made people easy to see and easier to break.

But he would not do it alone. 

Neither would you. That was the thing about light, Duke was learning. Not the heroic kind people put on murals. Not the symbolic kind that made speeches sound better. The real kind. The daily kind. The kind passed hand to hand in community kitchens and medbay chairs and courtyards where someone finally learned to ask for help before disappearing.

It did not have to save the whole city at once. Sometimes it only had to stay.

Your hand remained in his as the sun slipped lower.