#aote

The return to the League’s safehouse in Gotham was quieter than the fight itself. Still, the feeling in your chest was deafening. You could still feel the weight of Batman’s gauntlet colliding with your blade, the precise snap of Nightwing’s sticks, the way Robin’s eyes had caught the small twitch of your hands. They had seen more than you wanted them to.. more than you should've allowed.

Failure carried its own sound. It was in the echo of your boots against the stone floor as you descended into the underground chamber, the smell of oil lamps clinging to the stale air. It was filled with the low murmur of member standing along the wall, their gazes downcast but not uncurious.

At the center stood your superior. Ra’s al Ghul himself was not present — he rarely wasted his time on Gotham unless the matter was extraordinary. But his daughter was.

Talia al Ghul’s presence filled the room without effort. Her posture was regal, her beauty severe, and her eyes as sharp as the blade at her side. She didn’t move when you entered, didn’t so much as tilt her head when she looked at you, and the silence stretched until it dug claws into your spine.

“The briefcase,” she said finally, her voice smooth and cold as marble.

You knelt, bowing your head. “Compromised. The Batman intervened.”

A ripple moved through the chamber. Members shifted, exchanging glances, though none dared speak.

Talia’s expression didn’t change. She descended the steps with measured grace, the soft whisper of silk against stone. When she reached you, she lifted your chin with two fingers, forcing your gaze to hers.

“You were trained not to fail,” she said, soft enough that it stung worse than a shout.

Your jaw tightened, but you didn’t look away. “I was outnumbered.”

Her lips curved, though it wasn’t a smile. “An assassin does not count numbers. You were taught this.”

The truth in her words burned. You wanted to argue, you wanted to tell her that five against one was not odds but inevitability.. but the League did not entertain excuses. Leaving you with your silence as your only defense.

Finally, she released your chin, turning away. “You are fortunate my father has greater concerns tonight. Otherwise, your failure would cost more than pride.”

Relief and shame rested in your chest, though you expressed neither.

“You will not rest,” Talia continued, her back to you now. “The Batman will not ignore your presence in his city, and the League will not accept unfinished work. You will finish what you began. And you will do it under closer scrutiny.”

Her eyes slid to the members standing along the wall. One stepped forward — a man you knew by reputation alone. Brutal, efficient, and terrifying. A shadow meant to watch you as you walked the line between redemption and ruin. Bane.

Dismissed, you left the chamber with his presence at your back, the air heavy with the weight of invisible chains that now attached you two.

You didn’t return to the rooftops that night. Instead, you lingered in the corners of Gotham where the light drowned out thought, and humanity’s darkest wishes spilled freely into the street. Sitting alone in a bar that smelled of beer and rain-soaked leather. You sat with your hood low, blade hidden, fingers tapping once against the glass in front of you.

Every time you blinked, you saw them — the flick of Nightwing’s grin even in a fight, the sharp focus in Robin’s eyes, the measured distance in Red Hood’s gun hand. And Batman.. the immovable shadow that had matched you strike for strike, as though he’d been waiting for you specifically.

You weren’t supposed to think of them. They were obstacles, nothing more, but the memory clung like rain to your jacket. Especially that stupid fucking grin that Nightwing gave you. Who did he think he was?

By the time you returned, the League had wasted no time, within a few hours of your reprimand, orders had been pressed back into your hands. This time, retrieve what had been stolen. It was an opportunity to redeem yourself in Gotham’s streets, or a way of becoming another forgotten shadow in the pit of the League’s discarded.

You didn’t argue. You didn’t flinch. You did what you had been trained to do.. you moved.

The target was not the same briefcase. Batman and his team of Robins would be expecting that, and Talia was not careless. This time, the League wanted a ledger.. an unassuming, leather-bound book that was worth far more than paper and ink. It contained names of politicians, officials, and businessmen who were indebted to the League, something that was precious information for your masters.. precious blackmail information. The man who held it was a broker who thought himself clever enough to withhold payment, yet, now he had become your next target.

His apartment wasn’t difficult to find. A penthouse suite dressed in glass walls and expensive taste, its owner asleep beneath the illusion that his wealth bought safety. You scaled the building without a sound, slipped inside through the balcony door with nothing more than a gloved hand on the lock, and moved through the darkness like water finding its way downhill.

He never stirred. Not when you crossed the bedroom, and somehow, not when you opened the drawer beside his bed. The ledger was there, tied with a strip of ribbon, and far heavier than it should have been. Your fingers brushed the pages, but before you could slip it into your pack, the sound of footstep caught your attention.

You pivoted, blade flashing free, and found the balcony door cracked open just enough to let in a sliver of Gotham’s light in.

Someone was here.

You didn’t linger once your heart rate began to pick up. You slipped the book into your cloak and darted for the exit, boots hitting tile without as much as a whisper. The man never woke, never knew death had nearly brushed past him, and you had almost let out a breath of relief at that fact. By the time you reached the rooftop, Gotham’s skyline stretched around you in restless color, and so did his trap.

Nightwing.

He stood near the edge of the roof, batons twirling in his hands, the lazy rhythm betraying the focus in his eyes. His mask caught the city’s glow, his posture almost casual, but you knew better. The set of his shoulders, the way his weight rested on the balls of his feet, and the faint tilt of his head told you everything you needed to know. He had read you the way a predator reads the shift of grass before the hunt.

“The book looks heavy,” he called, voice carrying easy in the night. Not mocking. Not cruel. Just steady, almost conversational. “You planning on lugging it all the way back to your babysitters?”

You tightened your grip on your blade and narrowed your eyes into a sharp glare. Your hand immediately grasped your blade and drew it, clearly not appreciating the implications behind his comment. But it made you wonder.. did he know? Did he somehow find out you were under heavy surveillance from the League? That one wrong step or one second of hesitation could cost you your life?

You could have run after coming face to face with the man yet again. The city was wide enough, and the shadows deep enough, but you didn’t. Something anchored your boots to the rooftop, something heavier than the ledger in your grasp.

Nightwing’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You fight like someone who’s not allowed to lose. That makes me wonder — what happens when you do?”

His question wasn’t a taunt. It was a test.

And suddenly, the rooftop was smaller than the blade in your hand, the distance between you measured not in steps but in breaths.

You moved first.

Your blade cut through the air toward him, precise, a strike meant to end the standoff before it began. He slipped aside with a dancer’s ease, sticks flashing to deflect your second blow. The sound cracked sharp against the night, echoing between buildings.

The fight unfolded in a blur of strikes and counters. You pressed forward with the ferocity the League had carved into your bones, but Nightwing’s movements were fluid, adaptable, and painfully unrelenting. He didn’t fight like an enemy.. not exactly. He fought like someone trying to see and trying to peel away the layers of your training. To force you to show something unguarded beneath the precision.

And for the first time, you realized you hated that more than the clash of steel.

He blocked a strike, twisted, and caught your wrist before you could recoil. His grip was firm but not cruel, his voice low and even. “You don’t have to keep running their errands. Whatever they’ve got on you? It’s not worth this.”

The ledger weighed like stone against your side, your arms were searing from overexertion, but his words struck harder than anything you were feeling in the moment.

But before your silence could betray you, you tore free of his grasp, spinning away into the shadows of the rooftop. The fight wasn’t finished, but the space between you had changed. He had asked a question you weren’t ready to answer.

And the worst part was — he knew it.

The roof was quiet after you disappeared, the kind of quiet Gotham rarely allowed. It wasn’t peace, though. It was the hollow silence left behind when someone slipped through his fingers, the weight of unfinished business pressing down harder than the city’s smog.

Nightwing stayed where you had been moments before, the faint ghost of your wrist still buzzing against his glove. He flexed his hand once, twice, as though the memory of holding you there might burn away if he kept moving. It didn’t.

You had been fast.. faster than most assassins he’d crossed paths with, sharper too. Every strike you’d thrown had been deliberate, never wasted. That wasn’t recklessness. That was survival. The kind of efficiency beaten into someone who had been taught that hesitation was worse than death. And yet, even in the blur of movement, he had seen it, the smallest flicker beneath the training, the hesitation like a light flickering on in a dark room .

You didn’t want to be there.

He replayed the fight in his head — the arc of your blade, the angle of your stance, the way your shoulders had stiffened when he’d spoken. You fought like someone who had no room for error, but you listened like someone who wanted a way out. It had been there, between your silence and your strikes, in the way you pulled back your strikes just enough that he hadn’t been forced to break a bone to stop you.

He hated the thought that the League had someone in their grip. It was too familiar, too easy to imagine chains disguised as loyalty.

“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he crossed the rooftop with feather light steps.

By the time he rejoined the others, they were waiting in the shadows of a nearby high-rise, the comm channel buzzing faintly in his ear. Tim tilted his head when Dick landed beside him, the question clear in his eyes.

“You let her go?” Tim asked, voice low but steady.

Dick didn’t answer right away. His eyes lingered on the city where you’d vanished, swallowed by the dark. “I didn’t let her go,” he said finally. “She chose to leave.”

“And the ledger?”

“She’s still got it.”

Tim let out a low whistle. “Nice, so we’re back to square one.”

But Dick wasn’t listening. His mind was still on you — the grace you had when handling your blade, the tight set of your jaw, the silent war in your eyes when he’d caught your wrist. You were an assassin, yes, League-trained, dangerous, loyal to the wrong side, but underneath all of it, you weren’t like the others he’d fought.

And he wasn’t sure if that made you more dangerous… or harder to forget.

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