#batfic

"I'll think on it after we finish the job." As you roll your eyes, Nightwing stands beside you, pulling open the crate. He whistles as you shine a flashlight on the cargo. "So, it was a cover up."

The boxes that littered the space had been destroyed. "Figured. There weren't nearly enough guards here." You bring your hand to your comms, "Oracle, it's a fake."

"Sending the boys after the other cargo. Good work."

"Alright, clean-up is on you." You turn away and throw a wave over your shoulder.

"What!? Why-"

"Finish it and consider yourself forgiven."

Once you got home, you had a few hours to spare before you had to head to work. As you run a hot shower, you grab your briefcase and empty it out on desk. You organize your papers and put them back in the case to look back at in the lab. Once you've showered, you use the rest of the time to get some sleep in before you're back up and working.

The elevator dings as you step into your department's floor and you're greeted again by none other than Dick Grayson. The task force's golden boy.

"Well isn't it my favorite detective!" And you can feel yourself shrink immediately. Dick makes his way over to you. It's 6AM, you cannot find the words to speak to him. Not because he's insufferable, no no, it's actually the complete opposite.

"Officer Grayson." You turn to him with a tense smile as he gets closer. You grip your briefcase tighter because your palms are now already sweating.

His smile is radiant. So is his skin that's so clear it puts your skincare routine to shame. You would call yourself a cheerful person but when it's compared to Dick? You're as gloomy as the Gotham sky.

It's not your fault though. His laugh manages to cut your breath short every time. His presence alone is so intoxicating you doubt you can even process what he's saying.

"I heard some new evidence came in on that case you're working on."

How is he so cheerful this early in the morning?

"I left it in your lab, also left a letter given to you from one of our night-time vigilantes." That snaps your focus back into place.

"A letter?" Had Nightwing made a stop last night after you left? "From who?"

"Nightwing. Know why?" He tilts his head to the side and all you can see is the way his hair falls with the movement. It shines like silk and all you can think of is raking your fingers through it- "You okay?"

"Hm?" You blink up at him absentmindedly, "Uh- right- Yeah. I think I have a vague idea." You fidget with your briefcase before holding it up in front of your chest. "I'll.. I'll get right on it."

He looks down at the case and nods with another one of those annoying blinding smiles, "I'll leave you to it then." You nod back, tense. You hated how he had to awkwardly walk back to his desk as you slowly make your way into your lab.

As you step inside, you let out a huff, "That was so awkward, oh my god." You grip your briefcase tighter and throw it onto your desk. You spot the letter on your desk and snatch it impatiently. With a sigh you rip it open and read over the paper.

Remembered you were working on this case when I ran into you a while back, here's something I found interesting ;p , no need to thank me.

-NW xoxo

You roll your eyes and sigh. "No need to thank me, xoxo- Like I wasn't doing half the work." You grumble to yourself and make your way to the folder placed beside it containing a ziplock bag and a report from one of the officers.

Hours pass by and once your lunch break starts, you're making your way to the lounge where you spot Dick pouring himself a coffee. He looks up and shoots you a smile.

"You look beat." He smiles and you feel yourself tense once his attention lands on you.

"ha ha, yeah long night.." Laughing timidly, you open the fridge to grab your meal.

"Coffee?" He offers and you nearly bang your head against the fridge door. You turn to him and nod a little too quick. Get yourself together!

As he pours you a cup, you find yourself a spot to sit on the couch and open up your snack.

"How's the case coming along?" Dick passes the coffee to you and your heart nearly skips a beat when your hands make the slightest bit of contact.

"There's progress." You manage to say as you place the cup down and avert your gaze. You know if you look into his eyes, you won't be able to hold up this conversation.

"I'm guessing Nightwing was a huge help?"

"Pshh, him? I'll give him a lollipop for his efforts next time." You're glad he's bringing up a topic your familiar with or you fear you would've been stumbling over your words.

Dick raises a brow, "Not a fan I'm guessing?"

Is he a fan? There's no way you just blew it right now.

"Wha- Nightwing? No!- I mean like- yeah. No. I'm a huge fan!"

HIs eyebrows raise as he takes another sip. You definitely ruined it. Fix it!

"I know him actually!" Not like that.

"You do?" Shock written over his features. You tense when your eyes lock with his. Something so familiar and safe within his gaze.

"Yeah, we- you know- He saved me once while I was following a lead." You look away immediately. You feel like a fraud. Yeah, you've met him, but you don't know him like that. Well.. not as the you right now.

"He was also following the same lead... which is also the case I'm working on." Your hands are occupying themselves with the coffee cup as your eyes dart between your snack and coffee.

"Is that why he left a note?" Dick asked. You nod.

"Must be cool to have a vigilante as a partner." He laughs and you try to force one out in attempt to not seem awkward but it comes out strained.

"I wouldn't say that.. just a great help." Cause that sucker should've gave you some credit. You had to save both their asses cause he couldn't tell between his left and right.

"Don't underestimate yourself. I'm sure he thinks you're a great partner! He's providing you with evidence. He seems eager to help." Okay, he definitely was a Nightwing fan.

"Of course! I'll- I'll definitely thank him next time." You say it like it's obvious. "I thank his partner a lot more though. She's always quick to help me whenever." Throwing in some praise wouldn't hurt.

"You worked with her before!?" His genuine shock and curiosity caught you off guard. "You must be collecting these vigilantes like Pokémon cards if she also decides to work with you."

"What do you mean?"

"She's a tough one. She barely works with the GCPD. I admire her work." He says as he stares off into the distance. Me? I work fine with the GCPD. Was me giving them those reports not enou- wait.

"Y-ou what?"

He blinks and turns his focus back to you. You look up at him and he's smiling again.

"I admire her work. Not many do, but I can tell she's just as amazing as, if not more than, Nightwing."

Your lips part in shock. Hearing that from him, you could barely figure out how to process that before you feel a striking hot sensation over your legs. You flinch before realizing you dropped your coffee all over your trousers.

It might as well kill you with it.

Dick curses under his breath and runs to grab you napkins. He passes you some as he wipes the remaining liquid off the floor.

"Sorry! Sorry... I can't believe I dropped that." The embarrassment is eating you alive and Dick can't help but laugh.

"It's fine, it happens. You okay?"

You sigh in defeat and nod.

That night on patrol, you couldn't wait to go home and sink into your sheets.

"Done for the night, bubblegum?"

Nicknames were never ending with Nightwing; Bubblegum, Sweets, Sweetheart, hon, the list goes on. You eventually accepted it and moved on.

"We agreed that one was a no." You groan as you watch the streets below you. You've been patrolling for a few hours now. Sooner or later, you're going to wrap it up and go home. But of course, company awaits you.

"Something about it suits you. Sugary, bubbly, and so sticky I can't get rid of you." He takes a seat beside you and you roll your eyes.

"That would be you, Wing." You tease.

Even though you and him have never revealed your identities, you've built a bond that seems to be unshakable. Sure, you guys had your moments, but you two honestly couldn't think of working with anybody else. That meant that even though you were in somewhat of a shitty mood, he still managed to lift it.

"If you want to reverse the roles, I have no complaints." He raises his arms in defense and you sigh. "Who burst your bubble, sweets?" He bumps his shoulder into yours, gaining your attention.

"Just a long day."

"How long are we talking?"

"Long enough."

With that you lay your head on his shoulder. This is how you usually finish up your patrols. A sign that you two were about to close in for the night.

"I handed over some evidence from the truck last night to GCPD. Their head detective is working on it, so I thought it would be some help." He mentions and you hum in response.

"As long as you're aren't feeding them everything we know, I don't really care."

"That's a relief. I thought you'd give me the Robin treatment." He chuckled.

"That was entirely different! I know Robin was just starting the whole gig but no one told him that we don't tell the GCPD everything!?" You shouted in defense.

"He said he saw you do it!"

"I did it once! And I spoke to Gordon! Not some random cop!"

Nightwing's shoulders shake as he laughs, and you lift yourself off of them, trying to push down the smile creeping onto your face.

"Batman gave him a long talk after that one. Trust me."

"He's lucky I didn't."

"You had a sword fight-"

"He pulled it out first, Wing! And you know that!" You exaggerated.

"He was 11!"

"And trying to kill me!"

Nightwing throws his head back, laughing so hard all his pearly whites flash in your face. You glare at him and let out a laugh disguised as a scoff.

Moments like these with him were comforting. You felt like yourself when you were in this suit, fighting crime, and with him. You don't think anyone has managed to get this close to you. But that's the thing about him. He's a dickhead sometimes for sure, but you're always reminded why he's your best friend. You wondered in times like these, who was under the mask. Would it be some normal guy working a 9-5 on weekdays? A celebrity? Or worse, some weirdo-

Nightwing calls out to you, and you realize you've been staring. "What's on your mind? You seem distracted."

"Some... guy." You mention as you turn to look back at the street below.

"Woah-ho-ho! Who's the lucky fella?" You cringe at that.

You glance at him and decide if you should tell him or not. He's your best friend, after all. He'd probably think Dick was a great guy. Maybe even help you figure out how to talk to him. But you couldn't risk revealing anything with it came to your civilian lives.

"Wouldn't you like to know, Boy Wonder." You tease with a smirk.

"I'm calling it a night. Call me if you need me before I get home." You grab your grappling hook and hop off the building.

As you swing away, thinking it was a just another normal night. You failed to notice the face of your partner after your remark.

Nightwing watched as you disappeared off into the night. Conflicted.

Nightwing has always held you dear to him. More than a friend. Ever since the first patrol you had together, you've been his first and last thought every day. I mean, could you blame him? Look at you.

From the moment you introduced yourself to him, he was awestruck. He could've sworn careless whisper was playing in the distance. He thinks he also stuttered. Not like he remembers what he said, he was too distracted. That's also how he ended up with a bruise to his side after. You scolded him for being so careless. But he knew he was hooked.

What was he supposed to do with that information now? There was a guy. A guy! If he didn't know any better, he'd think you're fucking with him. But the way you looked at him when he had asked. That longing stare.

He couldn't help but think, was it him?

As your finish up some paperwork, you hear a knock on your door. "Come in!"

It's Dick. Again. What is up with this Peter luck your having?

"Officer Grayson, what brings you here?" You get up from your seat as he once again, grins and holds up a folder. You maneuver your way around your desk, meeting him halfway.

"New evidence. This time, it was Red Robin." He hands you the folder and you take it cautiously. "That's the 3rd vigilante this week. You're gonna have me wondering if you're one of them."

Well, shit.

"As if. I need my 8 hours." You try to play it off. Terribly. Normally, you're great at that. But clearly not in front of him. You open the file and smile to yourself. "Gotta love that kid."

Dick peeks over and asks, "What is it?"

You look up and realize he's much closer now. Frozen in place, he glances up at you and your lungs nearly collapse on you.

Nothing could've prepared you for this. His eyes.

Such a piercing baby blue that replicates the rare clear skies Gotham prays for. They shine with confidence, determination, and something deeper, you wish you could figure out.

Does he know how much his presence suffocates you? How his character is so overwhelmingly admirable you can't help but feel smaller next to how bright he shines?

"J-just.. a case." You show him the paper and he looks down at it like he wasn't inches away from your face a moment ago.

"That's quite the report."

Trying to regain your composure, you nod. Making your way back to behind your desk.

"Red Robin is quite the detective. I did him a few favors. He does me some." Trying to make yourself look busy, you start digging through your papers.

"It seems like you have a way with everyone, detective." He smirks and you don't give yourself the opportunity to glance at him.

"I would hope so, officer." Still digging through piles of paper.

Dick notices the way you avoid his gaze. He's always hated that.

You've always been uncomfortable around him. He can't help but feel like he's the reason why. Everyone has met the fun, witty, and outgoing side of you besides him. You were always tense, quiet, and distant when he tried to talk to you.

He's tried jokes, small talk, even small favors and every time you came in contact with each other, it was like you couldn't wait for him to leave. He's realizing maybe it was no use.

"I'll leave these here then.." He places the files down on the desk and you nod in acknowledgement. Taking that as his sign to leave; Dick walks himself out.

Once the door closes, you finally look up before you fall against your chair, slapping your hands over your face from the mere thought of how that interaction just went. Before the humiliation can eat you alive, the door opens again. You straighten in your seat in a hurry only to spot your friend at the door. Barbara.

"Was Dick just in your office?"

"Yeah, you saw?" Groaning as you slump back into your chair.

"No, you just look like you ruined your life and want the floor to swallow you whole."

"Just about right."

Patrol tonight was quick and easy. Basic robberies, thugs, the whole gig. Once you've done a few laps, you decide to call it a night before spotting NIghtwing on a nearby roof. Without a second thought you make your way over to him.

"Done for the night, bubblegum?" You mock as he turns to you with a shit-eating grin.

"You gonna chew me out if I am?" He says with his hands placed on his hips.

"Depends. You got anything useful?" You nod your head towards him as you look him over with a squint.

"Depends, you got time for one more stop?"

Your face scrunches up in confusion. "Is it a follow up on the toxin?"

"No, but follow me." With that he reaches out for your hand, you take it without a second thought before he pulls you in, throws you two down the building before aiming his grappling hook towards another one.

"It's best if you close your eyes!" He adds, sparking curiosity.

"Don't drop me, bridie!" You laugh as you shut your eyes and let him drag you wherever.

Once you two land, you want to peak but his hands immediately go to shut your eyes.

"Impatient as ever." With his remark, you scoff.

"I'm not going to peak!" You exclaim as he holds one hand over your eyes and does something in the other. He scoffs like that's the dumbest thing he's heard.

"yeah, and I'm not head over heels for you."

Then, a pause. You can feel tension start to rise and quickly, so you exhale dramatically and place your hands over his palm. "I'll keep them closed, Wing." Though, he doesn't let go. His palm remains there. Another pause.. "I won't look till you tell me to."

You stand there quietly as he finishes up, god knows what, and you hear him take a deep breath. "Open 'em." You barely miss it. So, you open your eyes slowly.

"Oh wow." Your lips part in awe.

There, on the rooftop, sits two pillows on the floor. The most adorable setup of snacks, a pair of controllers, and a picnic blanket. The area is dimly lit by the rooftop's yellow lighting, creating a warm atmosphere even in the cold ambience of Gotham.

"Wing, I don't know what girl you're trying to impress, but, trust me," You turn to him, smiling at the thought of his efforts. "You've got this in the bag."

And once he makes eye contact, you're smile almost faltered.

He scratches the back of his neck and rolls his head to the side. "Impessed is one thing."

Then, when he looks back at you, you fail to hold your grin.

"Do you like it?" He asks and you look back at the set up.

He didn't get the wrong idea last night, right? No. There was no way. You're overthinking this. This is just a sweet gesture. Nothing more.

"Yeah! It's amazing!" You quickly reply. Turning back to him with a small, close lipped smile. "What's it for?"

You didn't want to ask. Not really. You actually wanted to just play along and hope your intuition was wrong for once.

But, it never was. "You?"

"Me?"

"Yeah, you.."

"Me?" You pointed at yourself.

"Yes.. you. Your record player break or something?" He attempts a laugh, but you're looking back and forth between him and the setup.

"What for?" You ask. You're trying hard not to sound off. It's not what you think it is. There's no way.

Nightwing just stares. His answer is written all over his face.

Okay, you really wish you weren't too comfortable with him to let your face fall like that. It would've saved you the guilt of watching him realize you knew what he was insisting. And you were rejecting it.

The wind blew by, carrying the last bit of hope left.

"Nightwing-"

"Damn, you're never gonna let me live this down now." He laughs as he rolls his head against his shoulder. "I called it, but I blame Oracle for the push." He pointed before making his way over to the setup.

You stand there blankly. Confused, you follow him. "Wing, listen to me, I'm sorry-"

"What for?" He turns, a smirk plastered on his lips. You can tell he's hurt. Shit..

"Wing, I feel bad. I didn't mean to lead you on." And he nearly cringes at that.

"That." He points, "is my issue. Not yours. You didn't do anything wrong, swee-.. don't blame yourself." And your heart nearly shatters at the way he cut himself off from that nickname.

"Do you wanna talk? You know this doesn't bother me like that. I just.. there's already someone I like.." Nightwing may have thought you didn't notice it, but you did. The way his body tensed. Even in the slightest of movements.

"I would be lying if I didn't tell you. That's the last thing I want. You're important to me. I'd never want to lose you to anything. You're my best friend, Wing." He smiles at that and for a second. You feel like it's going to be alright. This wasn't as bad as you thought.

He then goes to grab one of the snacks from the pile, specifically your favorite. He takes a step towards you. Then another. And another. Till he's face to face and he's pressing the snack into your hands.

"This is enough. Our friendship is everything to me. I wouldn't trade it for the world."

And in that moment, you saw someone else.

This wasn't your partner. It was a man who was devoted to keeping what he held dear close to him. One who longs for an inevitable future he can't help but reach for.

And you were the setting it in stone.

"Wing-"

"Good night. I'll see you tomorrow!" With that, he's running past you, off into invasive fog that took over the streets.

With no idea where to start, you turn around and make your way back home.

"Barbara, I told you-"

"She literally is head over heels for you! I'm telling you! I can't take any more hours of flirting over the comms, only for you to tell me she doesn't like you!" Barbara shouts over the phone. Dick groans into his pillow dramatically.

"I ruined everything."

"No, you didn't."

"Barbara."

"You didn't! I promise."

"I'm going to sleep."

"Trust me on t-" he hangs up before she finishes.

That went horribly. Not only did he leave you there stranded. He completely cut you off and made the situation so much more awkward than it needed to be.

He can't believe he let Barbara convince him into doing that. He should've just asked you out normally instead of throwing that in your face. And then you tried to apologize. Of course you did.

He checks the time and shoves his head into the pillow once he realizes he needs to get some sleep.

He's never gonna come back from this.

"Barbara. Where is this coming from-"

"Girl, you have to ask him. Today is the day, I can feel it!" Barbara sits across your desk. Exaggerating over why you should ask out Officer Grayson today.

"Barb. I love you. Like a lot. You're one of the very few I trust. But I am not doing that."

"Doing what?" Yeah. Might as well add a radioactive spider at this point.

"Just your luck!" Barbara turns to Dick is waking through the open door with a boxes in his hands. He walks over and places them on your desk.

He's wearing a baby blue button-up today instead of his usual uniform. Sleeves rolled up. He has sneakers on. Which has you confused; why was his outfit so uncoordinated? You wonder why, but before you can think about it, they both are staring at you. Realizing you blanked out and missed out on what was said.

"Sorry, did you say something?" You ask.

"I was just telling Officer Grayson how you wanted to ask him something!" Barbara beamed.

This little minx. You're glaring at her, already planning to lock the brakes on those wheels.

Dick looks back at you, waiting for a reply, and you can only dig your eyes into the back of Barbara's head as she leaves.

Dick looks down at the papers on your desk and you follow his line of sight.

"These are still the same ones from last week. Nothing new." You wave them off as he nods. He's unusually quiet. You finally take in the way he's put together. Well.. not really. His hair is a slight mess. No color coordination in his outfit what so ever. and.. was that a stain on his button up? Why wasn't he in uniform today?

"You alright?" You ask before thinking.

Dick looks up at you and sighs. He knows he looks like shit, mostly because he feels like it. Though it's the first time you've genuinely asked him something. "Rough night, but I'll be okay."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." You sort of try to look away but end up asking another question. "What's that?" Implying the boxes he had just brought in.

"Chief told me to bring these up and have you look through them. No idea what they are. I'm off the field today, so he's keeping me busy."

"He wants me to look through all of these?" You exaggerated before pulling the box over to your side, mumbling under your breath. "That guy seriously likes to throw things at me because I won't get an assistant."

That perked his interest. "Why not?"

That gets your attention again. You seem to get sidetracked easily. "Oh- um. I just work alone.. It's annoying having someone try to push their rules onto you." You shrug as you pull the stacks of files from the box.

"You don't work well with partners?" He asks. And you wonder if he meant something with that question. But, you only shake you head. "I work fine with other people. It just depends on who." Like Nightwing. You frown slightly at that.

"Mind if i help?" Your head perks up. You weren't expecting him to offer.

"You- You don't have to!"

"No, I want to. Like I said, I'm off the field today. I have nothing better to do." He pulls the chair towards him and takes a seat. "You just give me a job and I'll do it."

And with that, you and him work in tandem for the next 3 hours. It was unexpected but Dick worked well with you. He understood his assignments, didn't ask too many questions, and managed to have some conversations that didn't end with you embarrassing yourself. Well.. yet.

"That's the last of them." You place the papers back into the boxes and turn to Dick.

He was pleasantly surprised how much he enjoyed that. He felt like he actually got a glimpse of the real you today. And you work great together. He couldn't help but wonder why you always avoided him.

"Thanks for the help. I appreciate it."

He nods. "Glad to help." And when he hopes to maintain eye contact for longer than 5 seconds, you're already turning away again. And he can't help but feel like all the process he made with you had went to waste.

"I'll take these back to the office.. Need anything else before i head out?" You turn to him with a smile and shaking your head.

"No, all good." And back behind your desk you go. He deflates at that. He was hoping you'd be more comfortable around him after today. But he guesses his luck was shitty this week.

He doesn't wait any longer and makes his way to the door before you call his name.

"How does coffee together sound? After work?"

He had patrol and no idea if his partner would show up.

Cause why would she? After the shit he pulled last night? He's starting to remember why he was so beat today.

"Dick?" You call again and he snaps out of it quick, quickly replying.

"Yeah, uh- No, sorry. Thanks though." He gives a quick smile before leaving the room. He's a bit annoyed with himself now, because he managed to ruin two friendships in under 24 hours. He would love to go for coffee, but he'd rather not go in a bad mood. He'll reschedule. Today just wasn't his day.

And now neither was it for you. As you watch the door shut behind him, you stand there dumbfound.

He just flat out rejected you. Without even a second thought. You can't help but feel yourself shrink after. You really thought you did well today. You were able to carry out multiple conversations with him. Even maintain eye contact for like 4 whole seconds!

This shouldn't bother you that much. You weren't even close. But still, you slump against your chair and stare off into the void hoping you could rid the feeling of dread that built up with every passing second.

That night, you started patrol early and ended early. Why? Because like it or not, you were avoiding Nightwing. It wasn't because you were too afraid to face him, more because you didn't have the energy to. That whole rejection ruined your night.

So, as you stand at your balcony, staring off into the streets of the city that reflected your mood tonight, you hold a cup of tea in your hands. One thing about Gotham was that there was always going to be a slight breeze in the air, a faint scent of rain, and a drafty fog that carried only in the darkest of nights. Was it a good idea to go out onto your balcony this late? No, and you would advise any person to avoid doing so.

But you're a vigilante. So, you give yourself a pass.

But, not everyone knows that.

"I wouldn't recommend sitting out here in the open this late, miss."

Only one person could sneak up on you like that. And it was Nightwing.

Slightly flinching, you turn to him and place your cup on the tiny coffee table. "And I wouldn't try to balance myself on a slippery railing in the dark."

"I'm a vigilante. I get a pass." He places his hands on his hips, all cocky.

"I'm a citizen who pays rent. I get to use this balcony however and whenever I want." You mimic his gesture and he raises a brow at you.

"Aren't you a little sass ball today? You're usually a little more professional when we meet." You drop your arms after that and sigh.

Even though you weren't in your suit, you needed your best friend right now. And it was much easier talking like this to him than worrying about how awkward things can get.

With all your frustration that piled up since this afternoon, you groan, "It was a total disaster!"

Nightwing looks around in confusion. "What exactl-"

"I was doing great! We laughed for hours! I didn't stutter or shy away the whole time we worked!" Nightwing watched as you threw your arms around with every sentence. He stood there in silence, not knowing how he got wrapped up in hearing your outrage, but he was intrigued. He's never seen this side of you. Was it because you weren't around him anymore?

"Then he just walked out and rejected me like it was noth..ing.." Your words died down as your heart sank. This was how he was probably feeling right now. And here you are complaining to him about another guy.

"Sorry. Ignore me." You put your hand up. He doesn't ignore you.

"Rejected you? Now, what idiot decided to ruin his chances at paradise?" He attempted to lighten the mood, now sitting on the railing as you pick up your cup of tea. You were used to his flirts. Well. vigilante you was.

You didn't have it in you to argue over his flirts. You knew it was his nature at this point. "Some guy at work." You rest your elbows against the railing beside him, and he stares at you, urging you to go on.

"He's an officer. The one you gave the letter to."

"Officer Grayson?" He spits out almost shocked and you nod in embarrassment. Your head drops and you rest the cup against your forehead.

"I've liked him for so long. And believe it or not, I'm the most awkward person when it comes to him." Nightwing doesn't reply, so you continue. "I actually mustered up the courage to ask him out today, and he completely shut me down without a second thought!"

Nightwing blanks for a moment. You were asking him out!?

"No he didn- he probably didn't mean it like that!"

"He immediately told me no and walked out the room. I think he meant it like that, Nightwing." You tilt your head to the side, squinting at him.

"I doubt it. He told me he thought you were cool!"

"Cool is fine! He doesn't like me like that though!"

"You don't know that!" He argues.

"You do?" And that shuts him up quick. No, he didn't like you like that. But he didn't like knowing you thought he was rejecting you. Even if he was being a bit of a dickhead this afternoon.

"Sorry. You're right. But I think you should just talk to him about it." You pull the cup away from your forehead and take a sip.

"If it helps, I also got rejected too." He chuckles as you nearly choke on your tea.

"R-Really?"

"Yeah.. I kind of threw it in her face, though. It was a lot less casual than just a basic hangout. I guess I overwhelmed her. But I got the wrong idea and she had to reject me on the spot." He covers his face with a hand before dragging it down. "I was hoping to talk to her, but I guess she needs to clear her head."

"I think we all do at this point." You sigh before taking another sip. "Not much you can do in Gotham to get a clear head around here." Nightwing hums in agreement.

You both sit in a comfortable silence. A minute passes by and you take one last sip of your tea before exhaling.

"I guess I should head inside and try to fix my mood before it gets late."

"Yeah, I should too..." He agrees.

And as you make your way to get back inside, he says your name.

"Mhm?" Looking over your shoulder, he asks:

"You like video games?"

Part 2 Part 3 TAGLIST IS CLOSED!!

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You blink at him, eyes watery from both the pain and the swelling, and he sees that little tremble in your lip before it even happens. His hands are on you in an instant, thumbs brushing over your jaw but careful not to touch the sore spots.

“Hey, no, no crying” he whispers, pulling you forward into his chest. “C’mere, sweetheart. You’re okay.”

Your arms go weakly around him, face pressed into the soft cotton of his shirt. He smells like soap and gun oil and leather, but beneath it all there’s the familiar comfort of Jason, warm skin, safety, and something that feels like home.

You mumble something against him that sounds like, I’m tired, Jay, and he hums low in his throat, that deep, soothing rumble that vibrates against your ear.

“I know, baby” he says, rubbing slow circles into your back. “You’ve had a rough day. I got you.”

When you shift, wincing, he slides an arm under your knees and another behind your back, lifting you effortlessly. You make a small noise of protest, but Jason just smiles and kisses your forehead. “Relax. I’m just moving you to bed, okay? Couch’s no place for my girl to rest.”

He carries you into the bedroom, the city glow painting him in gold and shadow as he moves. You’re half-asleep by the time he lays you down, the mattress dipping under your weight. He tugs the blankets up around you, then disappears for a moment, returning with a glass of water, a fresh ice pack, and the little bottle of painkillers the doctor prescribed.

“Alright” he murmurs, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Time for your meds, sweetheart. Open up for me.”

You obey, slow and clumsy, and he slips the pill into your mouth, following it with water. He steadies the glass with one hand and wipes a stray drop from your chin with the other. You can’t help but giggle faintly when his thumb brushes your skin, part ticklish, part tender.

“There she is” he says, smiling. “There’s my girl.”

He sets the glass aside, then gently tucks the fresh ice pack against your cheek. You whimper again when the cold hits, and he shushes you softly. “I know, I know. Just a bit. Helps with the swelling, promise.”

You reach for him with a clumsy hand, your fingers finding the edge of his sleeve. Jason doesn’t hesitate, he slides in beside you, letting you burrow into him. His arm comes around your waist, pulling you against his chest, the solid warmth of him chasing away the ache a little.

You can feel his heartbeat under your ear. slow, steady, grounding.

“You’re not gonna patrol again tonight?” you murmur, words fuzzy from sleep.

“Nah,” he says immediately, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “Not a chance. Gotham can handle itself for one damn night. You’re stuck with me, babe.”

You smile, eyes fluttering closed. “Lucky Gotham…”

He huffs a quiet laugh. “Lucky me, more like it.”

For a long moment, neither of you speak. He just holds you, fingers tracing slow paths along your arm, his lips occasionally finding your hairline, your cheek, the curve of your jaw where it doesn’t hurt. He kisses you like he’s afraid you’ll break, soft and reverent, as if each press of his lips is meant to take some of the pain from you.

When you start to drift again, he whispers against your skin, “You did good today, baby. I know it hurts, but you’re gonna be okay. You’re tough as hell.”

Your breathing slows. Jason feels the exact moment your body melts fully into sleep, when your fingers, tangled in his shirt, finally go slack. He exhales, long and quiet, resting his chin atop your head.

He stays like that for a while, listening to the hum of the city beyond the window. Eventually, he pulls back just enough to look at you. Even half-swollen and groggy, you’re beautiful in a way that makes his chest ache. He reaches out, brushing a thumb down your cheek.

“Y’know,” he murmurs softly, even though you’re already gone to sleep, “I’d fight a thousand damn tooth fairies if it’d keep you from hurting.”

A faint smile ghosts across your lips, as if your dreaming mind somehow hears him. Jason chuckles under his breath, kisses you again, one more, slow and lingering, just above your temple, and then he settles back against the pillows, arm firm around you.

You shift instinctively, curling closer, and he hums quietly, half-lidded eyes tracing your features in the dim light.

When the ice pack slips, he catches it before it hits the bed, adjusts it gently, and presses a soft kiss to your jaw right beside it.

“I got you” he whispers again, barely audible. “Always.”

Now he waited for her, patient and soaked, like a stray dog left out in the rain. She pressed her hand to her mouth, hard enough to make her teeth ache. I ruined him. The words tasted like rust. The thought stained everything. It followed her from room to room, slid under the bathroom door while she showered, and perched on the counter while she microwaved soup she never ate. Heavy. Warm. It crawled into bed with her at night, curling up between her and sleep, whispering that wanting love had made her contagious.

Her phone buzzed on the tile beside her.

Y/N flinched, then looked down.

Alfred: Miss Y/N, I do hope you are keeping well. Master Bruce asked whether you had responded to his last message. I informed him that you had not. Do take care of yourself. Her throat snapped shut. Pain bloomed sharp and sudden.

The text was polite. Careful. Alfred in message form, all clean punctuation and emotional distance dressed up in a pressed waistcoat. She stared until the words blurred, thumb hovering over the keyboard, wanting to answer, wanting to say, Please tell him to call me. Please tell him I’m not okay. Please tell him I think I did something terrible before I even did the terrible part.

Instead, another message appeared, this one from Bruce.

Bruce: Alfred said you haven’t replied in a few days. Everything alright?

Y/N stared at that one, too. Everything alright. Like a weather report. Like a stranger asking for the time. A normal daughter might have gotten a call. A knock. A father in the doorway. A family that noticed when the silence changed flavor. Y/N got three words and a question mark. Still, some desperate, hungry part of her curled around them like a blanket pulled warm from the dryer.

She typed:

Y/N: No.

She stared at the screen. Waiting for something to change. Deleted it. Coward.

Typed:

Y/N: I’m fine. Sorry. Just busy.

Deleted that too.

Her phone buzzed again before she could decide what kind of lie to tell.

Bruce: I’m tied up tonight. Text Alfred if you need anything.

The apartment went quiet.

Outside the door, Eli shifted.

Y/N looked at Bruce’s message until the screen dimmed, then went black. Her reflection stared back from the glass, hollow-eyed, hair messy, mouth curved in a smile she hadn’t chosen.

Of course, she thought, and the softness inside her didn’t break, just folded itself smaller.

At the manor, Bruce Wayne set his phone face down beside a file already crowded with photos, maps, and surveillance stills.

He told himself Y/N was an adult. She lived alone. She had always been dramatic in bright little flares, always disappearing into her apartment and strange hobbies and internet jokes he did not understand, always reappearing with a smile before the concern became actionable. Alfred had mentioned her silence because Alfred noticed silences the way other people noticed smoke.

Bruce noticed patterns, and right now the pattern in front of him had a name: Victor Sable.

Victor owned three clubs in the Narrows, two shell companies, and enough private security to suggest he feared either enemies or witnesses. Jason had brought the case in with a fury he barely disguised, all sharp shoulders and clenched jaw, tossing photos across the cave table as each one had personally offended him.

“Guy’s dirty,” Jason said. “Not regular Gotham dirty. Rotten-foundation dirty.”

Dick leaned over the file. Tim already had three screens open. Damian stood with his arms crossed, pretending not to care while caring violently.

Bruce glanced once at his phone.

No reply from Y/N.

Then Tim said, “I found a money trail.”

And Bruce turned away from the silence.

Across Gotham, Y/N sat in her apartment with Victor Sable’s smiling courthouse photo open on her laptop and a notebook beside her, the strawberry cover now bent from how tightly she kept gripping it. The page titled Possible offerings had only one name, and she hated how normal the ink looked. Victor Sable. Not monster. Not sacrifice. Just two words in blue gel pen, sitting beneath tiny printed strawberries as if she were planning a bake sale with homicide undertones.

She tried to wait.

For one week, she tried.

She called Marisol only once and kept her eyes closed the entire time, even though phones didn’t count, because caution had become a nervous tic. Marisol had found nothing, though her voice went tight and aching when Y/N admitted the moon was getting bigger. Father Michael left voicemails she didn’t play. Witching You Well sent no new miracles, only a message that said, Babe, I am still digging through my supplier’s grimoire contacts, which was possibly the least reassuring sentence ever written.

Eli kept the hallway clear.

The moon filled out.

Every night, Y/N stood in front of the bathroom mirror and asked herself if she wanted to find out whether the demon would really take her soul.

The answer changed shape, but never meaning.

No.

No, she did not.

She could argue with herself all she wanted, could pace barefoot over the warped kitchen floor muttering about morality and consent and coercion while Eli’s shadow stretched under her door, but some animal part of her already knew. The demon would take it. Of course, he would. There had been no bluff in that smile, no looseness in the contract, no hint of mercy tucked between the shifting red letters. He had not threatened her like a man hoping to be believed. He had informed her like gravity explaining falling.

On the last night before the full moon, Y/N rented a truck under a fake confidence she did not possess and a real name she wished she could shed. She wore a black hoodie, black leggings, and boots she had bought for hiking but never used, apparently because she had been saving them for felony wilderness activities. Her hair was shoved under a beanie. Sunglasses at night would have been suspicious, so she wore a mask and kept her gaze down, answering the rental clerk in clipped, polite little bursts while staring at his chin.

Nothing happened.

No warmth. No hook.

He didn’t look at her eyes. He didn’t care.

Y/N nearly sobbed from gratitude in the parking lot.

Jason lost Victor Sable at 11:43 p.m.

He had been tailing the man from the Narrows, keeping enough distance to avoid the security detail but close enough to watch the pattern. Victor loved patterns. Dinner in the same private room twice a week. Back exit from the club after midnight. Two guards close, one driver, one floating perimeter man who checked reflections in windows. Jason hated him on sight, which was not evidence, but evidence had been piling up all week in ugly little heaps. Missing girls. Scrubbed footage. Cash withdrawals. A frightened bartender who had almost talked before vanishing into silence.

Jason was good at following people.

Normally.

Tonight, Gotham decided to become a slapstick routine with knives.

First, a garbage truck pulled out of an alley at exactly the wrong time, blocking half the street. Jason swore under his breath and cut across a rooftop, only to have the fire escape ladder jam beneath his boot with a screech loud enough to wake three apartments and one deeply offended cat. He recovered, kept moving, and dropped into the next alley, where his comm crackled so violently he yanked the earpiece out before it popped.

“Of course,” he muttered. “Sure. Why not.”

Then a flock of pigeons exploded from under an awning directly into his face.

“Are you kidding me?”

Victor’s car turned left.

Jason vaulted a fence, landed in something wet he refused to identify, and came out on the next block just in time to see a city bus wheeze between him and the taillights. He sprinted, shoulder-checking past a drunk man dressed as a hot dog for reasons Gotham would probably never explain, and reached the corner as the light changed.

A taxi nearly clipped him.

The driver leaned on the horn.

Jason slapped the hood. “Drive better!”

The floating security guard glanced back.

Jason ducked into the shadows, jaw tight, watching Victor disappear into the traffic tangle. He tried to track the car’s plate through a traffic camera hack Tim had set up, but the app crashed, then restarted in Korean, then displayed a weather warning for rural Nebraska.

For three seconds, Jason just stared.

Then he looked up at the cloudy sky and said, “Real funny.”

Across the city, Y/N was also losing Victor Sable.

Not in the metaphorical way, though there was plenty of that, too. In the literal way. He was harder to follow than she expected, which was humiliating because she had not expected following someone to be hard. Movies made it look mostly like walking with purpose and wearing a hat. In reality, she almost got hit by a cyclist, turned into the wrong alley twice, stepped in a puddle so deep it felt like a pond, and whispered “sorry” to a trash can after bumping into it.

She had no idea what she was doing.

She had researched too much and not enough. She knew Victor’s schedule, his clubs, the names of two guards, and the location of a side entrance near an old freight elevator. She knew from message boards that he sometimes dismissed his men when meeting private buyers or private victims, which made her skin crawl so hard she wanted to scratch it off. She had peppered her notebook with arrows and question marks and one tiny doodle of a skull crying.

But knowing where a bad man walked was not the same as becoming someone capable of ending him.

Her rental truck sat five blocks away under a dead streetlamp, loaded with a tarp, garbage bags, a shovel, bleach wipes, duct tape, and a roll of paper towels. The cashier at the hardware store had not made eye contact with her, thank God, because Y/N’s purchase history looked like Pinterest for nervous murder.

This is insane, she thought, crouched behind a dumpster that smelled like old beer and hot metal. This is insane. This is insane. This is so insane, I owe every true crime podcast an apology.

Victor’s club pulsed at the end of the alley, bass thudding through brick, neon bleeding violet and red across wet pavement. He stepped outside around one in the morning, flanked by two guards, laughing into the night with his hand on the back of a girl who looked too young and too still. Y/N’s stomach turned. The girl was guided into a black car by one of the guards. Victor stayed behind, answering a phone call, his face bright and bored under the alley light.

Y/N’s hand shook around the knife in her pocket.

It was a kitchen knife.

That was one of several problems.

She had technically bought a different knife, but the packaging had been impossible to open, and at some point she had sat on her kitchen floor with scissors, a migraine, and Eli whispering through the door, asking if she needed help, and she had decided the big kitchen knife was fine. It was not fine. It was deeply not fine. It had a blue handle. It had once cut a birthday cake. It did not have the gravitas of a murder weapon. It had apartment nachos at 2 a.m. energy.

Victor finished his call and went back inside.

Y/N whispered, “Cool. Great. Love that. Perfect for my nerves.”

She waited another hour.

Her legs went numb. Her phone died. A rat emerged from behind the dumpster, looked at her, and left as if it found her embarrassing.

Finally, Victor came out alone.

Alone-ish. One guard stood at the mouth of the alley, smoking, but Victor waved him off with irritation and walked deeper toward the freight entrance, phone in hand, jacket collar turned up against the rain. Y/N moved before she could think herself out of it. She followed him down the narrow service passage where the music dulled into a heartbeat behind walls and the smell changed from rain to mold, cigarettes, and old grease.

He stopped at a side door, swiped a keycard, then turned.

Y/N looked up by mistake.

Their eyes met.

The curse woke.

It was not gentle. With Eli, it had unfurled like warmth, disturbing but soft at the edges. With Marisol, it had caught like a hook. With Father Michael, it had bloomed into holy grief. With Victor Sable, it struck the room like a match dropped into gasoline. His face changed so fast it stole the air from her lungs. Irritation vanished. Suspicion dissolved. His pupils widened, black eating brown, and something almost childlike opened beneath all that expensive rot.

“Oh,” he said.

Y/N froze, one hand still in her pocket around the knife.

Victor stared at her as if the alley had rearranged itself into a cathedral. “Who are you?”

“No one,” Y/N whispered.

The words were a mistake. Her voice made it worse.

He stepped toward her.

Y/N stepped back.

“Don’t,” she said.

He stopped immediately. The obedience of it was horrifying.

She stared at him, at the handsome face from the courthouse photo, at the man whose name sat on survivor forums like a bruise. This was supposed to make it easier. He was supposed to be awful in a way that kept her hands steady. He was supposed to sneer, threaten, lunge, and become the monster cleanly enough for her to react.

Instead, he looked at her like she had hung the moon.

Y/N’s eyes burned.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

Victor’s expression softened. “Can’t what?”

Her hand came out of her pocket with the knife.

He looked at it. Then at her.

No fear.

That was worse than fear.

Y/N’s hand shook so badly the blade caught the alley light in tiny, frantic flashes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I thought I could, but I can’t. I can’t do this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know how people do this in movies without throwing up first.”

Victor stepped closer again, slow and reverent.

“Please don’t,” Y/N said.

He stopped.

A tear slid down her cheek, hot against the cold air. Her smile appeared with it, trembling, horrible, completely wrong. “You’re a terrible person,” she said, voice cracking. “You are. I know you are. I picked you because you’re terrible. That’s so fucked up, right? Like, imagine being so bad that a cursed woman with a kitchen knife and no upper body strength is like, yeah, that one. That’s my morally gray murder starter..”

Victor’s lips parted.

“I love you so much,” he whispered.

Y/N went still.

“No,” she said.

“I do.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t know me.”

“I know enough.”

“You know my face because hell put a leash in your brain!”

Victor’s hands rose, slow enough that she saw them coming, not toward her throat, not toward the knife, but toward her shaking fingers. He cupped her hands with both of his, warm and steady, folding them around the blue handle as if helping her light a candle.

Y/N’s breath hitched. “Don’t.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I can give you this.”

“No, no, no, you can’t. That’s not how this works.”

“Let me.”

“Victor, stop.”

His name in her mouth made him smile.

Then he pulled her hands forward and drove the knife into his stomach.

Y/N swallowed her scream as best as she could.

But the sound of the whimper she let out cracked down the alley, swallowed by bass and rain and Gotham’s usual indifference. Victor gasped, but not like pain surprised him. More like relief. His hands stayed over hers, forcing the knife deeper, his forehead dropping toward hers, his breath warm and wet against her cheek.

“I love you so much,” he whispered again.

Y/N tried to pull back. “Stop! Stop, please, stop!”

He didn’t.

He dragged the knife out and pushed it in again, using her hands like they were a blessing he had been waiting to receive. Blood spilled hot over their fingers, dark in the alley light, slicking the blue handle, running down his shirt in sudden black-red sheets. Y/N sobbed, fighting him, but he was stronger, even dying, and the curse made him tender about it, which made the whole thing obscene.

“I can’t,” she cried.

“You can,” he breathed. “For you. Anything.”

Again.

Again.

The fourth time, his knees buckled.

Y/N went down with him, trapped by his grip, boots slipping in blood and rainwater. Victor landed hard against the wall, then slid to the ground, dragging her with him. His eyes never left her face. Even as the life began to drain out of him, even as his breath turned ragged and shallow, even as the alley filled with the iron stink of what she had done and not done and somehow done anyway, he looked happy.

That was the part that broke something.

He reached up with bloody fingers and touched her cheek.

Y/N flinched but did not move fast enough.

“Beautiful,” he whispered.

Then he died.

For one long moment, Y/N could not move.

The alley hummed. Rain pattered softly against the metal awning overhead. Somewhere inside the club, people cheered at something, a song changed, and laughter rose. Victor Sable lay half across her lap, heavy and warm and no longer breathing, and Y/N’s hands were still wrapped around the knife in his stomach.

Her brain, overwhelmed beyond usefulness, offered her exactly one thought.

The knife handle is blue.

Then the blood moved.

Y/N stared.

The blood pooling beneath Victor’s body did not spread the way blood should. It crawled. Thin red streams pulled themselves across the concrete with insect patience, curving into lines, loops, symbols she recognized from her living room floor. The alley air dropped cold. The rain hissed when it touched the forming circle. Victor’s blood drew the ritual perfectly, neatly, like an artist signing a painting.

“Oh, fuck no,” Y/N whispered.

The circle ignited.

Not with normal fire. Blue-black flame rose from the blood, silent and clean, throwing shadows up the brick walls in long, horned shapes. Y/N scrambled backward so fast Victor’s head hit the ground with a dull thump.

“Sorry,” she sobbed automatically, because apparently murder had not cured her manners.

The flames burned for seven seconds.

Then vanished.

No scorch. No blood circle. Only Victor’s body, the knife, the rain, and Y/N were covered in so much blood that she looked like she had crawled out of a horror movie through the wrong screen.

She started laughing.

It came out thin and jagged, tangled with sobs. She clamped both hands over her mouth and laughed harder, because the alternative was screaming until the security guard came back and found her kneeling beside a dead club owner with a kitchen knife and a moral philosophy crisis.

“Okay,” she whispered through her fingers. “Okay. We are not doing this here. We are moving. We are a moving girl. A productive girl. A girl with a rental truck and severe trauma.”

Victor was heavy.

Y/N had not considered that enough.

She had considered tarps, vaguely. She had considered the burial badly. She had considered whether bleach destroyed DNA and then closed the tab because it made her feel like the FBI could sense her through the laptop. She had not truly considered the physical indignity of moving a dead man who had, until recently, owned several gyms’ worth of shoulders.

Getting him into the tarp became a slapstick nightmare scored by her own panicked whispering.

“Cooperate,” she hissed, trying to roll him with her foot while keeping her bloody hands away from her face. “You literally killed yourself for me, can you be normal for five more seconds?”

His arm flopped out.

Y/N yelped.

“Don’t do that.”

He did not respond because he was dead, which was rude but consistent.

She got him wrapped eventually, sort of. The tarp made awful plastic sounds. The tape stuck to her gloves, then to itself, then to her sleeve. She dropped the roll once, chased it under a rusted pipe, hit her head on the wall, whispered six curse words and one apology to God, then remembered she was not on great terms with the supernatural at large.

Dragging him to the truck took twenty minutes and ten years off her life.

Somehow, no one came.

A car alarm went off on the next block just as she crossed the service lane, covering the scrape of the tarp. A drunk couple stumbled past the alley mouth, laughing too hard to look her way. The security guard who should have been there was occupied arguing with someone whose motorcycle had mysteriously fallen over, blocking the club’s side exit. Gotham’s cameras blinked red, then black, then red again, as if irritated by their own existence.

Minor inconveniences.

Y/N hated how grateful she was.

She got Victor into the back of the rental truck by using a broken wooden pallet as a ramp, a prayer she did not deserve answered, and the kind of adrenaline mothers get when lifting cars off babies, except the baby was a dead criminal and the car was her bad choices. When he finally slid into the truck bed, she collapsed against the bumper, gasping, hair plastered to her face, blood drying tacky on her throat.

“I’m canceling my gym membership,” she panted, even though she did not have one.

The drive out of Gotham blurred into rain and headlights.

Y/N kept both hands on the wheel at ten and two like a student driver transporting a corpse for her learner’s permit. Every sound from the back made her flinch. Every bump convinced her Victor had somehow sat up. She took side roads. Then the wrong roads. Then, she accidentally circled the same gas station twice until the attendant inside began looking concerned, at which point she drove away too fast and nearly cried because drawing attention while covered in blood was, in her expert opinion, suboptimal.

Two hours from Gotham, the city finally loosened its grip.

The forest road was narrow, black, and wet, lined with trees that leaned close as if eager to hear the gossip. She parked in a muddy clearing she had found online after searching remote hiking trails near Gotham, not popular at night, which was a sentence that should have triggered a wellness check. The rain had softened the ground, which was good. The dark was absolute, which was good. The shovel was heavier than expected, which was bad. Everything was bad.

Digging a grave was not cinematic.

It was mud. Roots. Rocks. Worms. Her breath is burning. Her shoulders are screaming. Her boots are sinking. Her gloves are slipping. She cried twice, not from sorrow exactly, but from effort and horror and the humiliating realization that every movie had lied about how easy shovels were. She took breaks, bent over with her hands on her knees, whispering, “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this,” into the trees while Victor waited in the truck bed like the world’s worst camping buddy.

The grave was not deep enough.

She knew it wasn’t.

She kept digging.

By the time she dragged Victor into it, the sky had begun to pale at the edges, not dawn yet, but the warning before it. She did not look at his face when the tarp shifted. She could not. She shoved dirt over him in frantic, uneven heaps, tamped it down with the back of the shovel, scattered leaves and branches, then stood over the place where a man had disappeared and felt nothing clean enough to name.

No triumph.

No justice.

No relief, not really.

Only the horrible knowledge that her soul still sat inside her body, and Victor Sable did not.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The trees said nothing back.

She drove another twenty minutes before she stopped near a creek and looked at herself in the rearview mirror.

For a second, she did not recognize the woman staring back.

Blood had dried across her cheek in a dark smear, caught at her hairline, streaked down her neck, and crusted under her nails despite the gloves. Her hoodie was soaked with it. Her eyes looked too big. Her mouth was curved faintly, automatically, the smile returning like a parasite that knew all her passwords.

Y/N touched the mirror.

Then gagged.

She shoved the truck door open and stumbled out into the cold morning air, ripping at her clothes with shaking hands. Hoodie. Shirt. Leggings. Socks. Gloves. Beanie. Everything came off in frantic jerks until she stood in the trees in her underwear, trembling and goosebumped, whispering, “Nope, nope, nope,” like the word could peel the night off her skin.

She shoved the clothes into a metal fire pit near an abandoned campsite and poured lighter fluid with too much enthusiasm, then had to stand back because the whoosh of flame nearly took her eyebrows as a souvenir.

The clothes burned fast.

Black smoke twisted upward through the branches. The smell was awful, chemical and coppery and final. Y/N changed into the clean sweats she had packed, hands numb, skin clammy, every movement mechanical. She tied her hair back. Wiped her face with bottled water until her skin hurt. Scrubbed under her nails with a travel toothbrush she would never emotionally recover from using.

When she climbed back into the truck, the mirror held a different woman.

Clean-ish.

Alive.

Not innocent.

Y/N drove home in silence.

Eli was not in the hallway when she returned, which almost scared her more than if he had been. Her apartment door stood untouched. The tape over the peephole remained. The air inside smelled stale, safe, and faintly of the lavender hand soap she had used on laundry. She locked every lock, slid down against the door, and sat there for one second, two, three.

Then she ran to the bathroom and threw up.

She vomited until there was nothing left, then stayed on the floor with her cheek against the cool tile, shaking so hard her teeth clicked. The apartment brightened around her slowly, morning pressing gray fingers through the blackout curtains. Somewhere outside, a siren passed. Somewhere in Gotham, Jason Todd tried to find Victor Sable and found only broken camera feeds, contradictory witness statements, an abandoned car with the door open, and a security team beginning to panic.

For four days, Victor Sable did not appear.

On the fourth, Gotham News called him missing.

Y/N watched the headline crawl across her laptop screen while sitting on the bathroom floor in the same clean sweats, unwashed hair tangled around her face, the baseball bat across her lap.

Gotham Club Owner Victor Sable Reported Missing After Security Team Loses Contact

Her stomach turned again, but there was nothing left in her to throw up.

Outside the apartment door, Eli’s footsteps returned.

He sat down in the hall with a soft sigh, close enough that his shadow touched the threshold.

“Y/N?” he called gently. “I was worried.”

She stared at the headline.

Her smile came back, small and ruined.

“So was I,” she whispered, but not loud enough for him to hear.

By the time Victor Sable was officially missing, Y/N had already watched herself become guilty in seventeen different reflections.

The bathroom mirror was the worst one. It had old black spots blooming under the silver backing near the corners, little rot-flowers that made her face look fragmented when she leaned too close, and she kept leaning too close because she could not stop checking.

Her hands. Her nails. Her hairline. The soft curve of her cheek where Victor’s bloody fingers had touched her, as if she were holy. She had scrubbed until her skin stung, until the backs of her hands were raw and shiny, until the lavender soap smelled less like lavender and more like panic dressed up in a purple bottle.

Still, every time she looked at herself, she saw red in places red could not possibly remain. In the hollow of her throat. Under one ear. Along the seam of her mouth when her awful, automatic smile tried to crawl back into place.

Victor Sable was dead.

Victor Sable had been a monster.

Victor Sable had chosen it.

Victor Sable had looked at her like she was salvation, put his hands over hers, and driven the knife into his own body while whispering, I love you so much.

Y/N bent over the toilet and vomited again.

There was nothing left to throw up except acid and a thin, humiliating sound that scraped her throat raw. Her knees hurt from the tile. Her hair clung damply to her face. Somewhere behind her, the apartment sat in its bunker silence, blackout curtains drawn, baseball bat against the tub, her phone buzzing occasionally from people who wanted things from her now that wanting had become a disease.

It counted as justice, she told herself, forehead pressed to the toilet seat, eyes squeezed shut. It did. It did. He hurt people. He would have hurt more people. He was going to keep getting away with it.

Her stomach rolled.

He killed himself for you.

She gagged again.

There was no way to say it that made it clean. She had gone there intending to kill him. She had picked him. She had put his name in the strawberry notebook beneath Possible offerings like a grocery list written by someone losing a custody battle with hell. She had carried the knife. She had followed him. She had looked into his eyes and spoken. The curse had done the rest, maybe, but the curse lived in her now, didn’t it? It wore her voice. It moved through her face. It made wanting into a noose and handed the other end to whoever stood too close.

“Justice,” she whispered, and laughed once into the toilet bowl because the word sounded ridiculous in her mouth. “Sure. Great. Super justicey. Batman would love the branding.”

She froze.

Batman.

Gotham had Batman. Gotham had Red Hood, Nightwing, Red Robin, Robin, a whole shadowy ecosystem of people who broke bones in alleys and somehow made the news anchors say “vigilante” like it was both a warning and a weather pattern. Y/N did not know them. Not personally. Obviously. Her family had lives and secrets and bruises she was too far from to recognize as anything more than distance. 

Bruce was just Bruce to her, impossible and absent. Dick was a cop with a smile too practiced to be trusted. Jason had no day job and a permanent storm behind his eyes. Tim ran tech at Wayne Enterprises and looked like caffeine had taken out a life insurance policy on him. Damian was in medical school and treated most social interactions like a test of endurance.

They were just her family.

Her family, who did not know she had murdered a man.

Her family, who would not notice unless the blood got on their carpets.

But Batman. Batman would find out. Batman would shove her in Arkham Asylum with the rest of the villains lurking in Gotham, all convinced of their own motives, their own explanations, goals, egos, and survival.

Just like her.

The thought hit so hard she slid sideways on the tile and sat with her back against the tub, shaking. Her phone buzzed on the bathroom counter. She ignored it. It buzzed again. Then again, a cluster of messages she could feel through the walls like tiny electrical insects.

She dragged herself up and grabbed it.

Alfred: Miss Y/N, I trust you are keeping well. I have not heard from you in several days.

Below it, from two days earlier:

Bruce: Busy week. Everything okay?

And beneath that:

Bruce: Alfred says you still haven’t replied. Text him when you can.

Not text me. Text him.

Y/N stared until the letters blurred.

The toilet smell, the soap, the old steam, the sour burn in her throat, all of it pressed in around her. She wanted to be angry. Anger would have been a clean flame, something she could point outward. Instead, she felt small and raw and bitterly ridiculous. She had killed a man and buried him in the woods two hours from Gotham, and Bruce Wayne still managed to make her feel like an unread email.

Her thumb hovered over Alfred’s message.

She typed:

Y/N: I’m okay, just sick.

Then she deleted ‘okay’ because it felt too close to a lie with teeth.

Y/N: I’m sick. Sorry.

She sent it before she could overthink, then immediately wanted to throw her phone into the sink.

It buzzed back less than a minute later.

Alfred: What kind of sick?

Y/N closed her eyes.

The murder kind, apparently.

She typed:

Y/N: Stomach thing. Probably takeout.

Another buzz.

Alfred: Have you eaten anything today besides takeout?

Y/N looked toward the kitchen, where an unopened sleeve of saltines and three cans of ginger ale sat beside a pile of unwashed mugs. There was also, under the sink, a trash bag containing the ashes of her strawberry notebook.

She had burned it in a mixing bowl at three in the morning because paranoia had climbed into bed with her and whispered that notebooks were evidence. The little strawberries had blackened first, curling in on themselves, cheerful and doomed. The pages had gone next: Rules? gone to smoke, Texts don’t count, gone to ash, Victor Sable’s name vanishing in a brief orange flare that made her cry so hard she almost dropped the bowl. She had opened every window afterward, even though she hated the dark outside looking in, then sprayed the apartment with vanilla room mist until it smelled like a bakery had committed arson.

No notebook. No rules. No list.

No proof, except the body in the ground. The rental truck. The cameras. The witnesses. The blood that had crawled into a circle and burned itself away like hell licking the plate.

Y/N typed:

Y/N: Saltines count?

The answer came immediately.

Alfred: No.

Then:

Alfred: You will come to the manor this evening. I shall make soup.

Y/N stared at the screen.

Y/N: Alfred, I’m fine.

Alfred: I did not ask if you were fine.

Y/N: I don’t want to get anyone sick.

Alfred: Then it shall simply be you and me. Dinner at seven.

Y/N opened her mouth to argue with the phone, then closed it.

Alfred Pennyworth had a way of making politeness feel like a hand gently but firmly closing around the scruff of her neck. It was not cruel. It was not even controlling, not exactly. It was old-world authority with good posture. Somehow, he could lightly force a person across town through text message alone, which was probably why Bruce looked emotionally undercooked but never starved.

She looked at herself in the mirror again.

Hollow eyes. Chapped lips. Damp hair. A face that could still smile on reflex, even now.

“No,” she told her reflection. “Absolutely not. We are not going to Alfred’s looking like the before picture in a cursed skincare ad.”

Across Gotham, Jason Todd was saying something much less gentle to a bank of screens.

“That’s bullshit.”

Tim did not look up from his keyboard. “You’re going to have to be more specific. There’s a lot of bullshit.”

“Victor Sable doesn’t just vanish.”

“People vanish in Gotham all the time.”

Jason leaned over the cave table, palms planted on either side of a map marked with routes, timestamps, dead zones, and the last known locations of Victor’s security team. His leather jacket creaked. His jaw was tight enough to crack stone. “Not like this. Not with four private guards, two cars, and a whole club full of witnesses who suddenly can’t remember whether he left through the back, the side, the roof, or got abducted by freaking mothman.”

Dick, perched on the edge of the table with a tablet in hand, gave him a look. “Please don’t say mothman in the cave like Damian won’t decide he’s real and start hunting him for extra credit.”

Damian, standing near the med station with his arms crossed, sniffed. “I would not hunt mothman. The folklore is inconsistent.”

“See?” Dick said. “We’re already in danger.”

Jason ignored them. His eyes stayed on the footage loop, such as it was. Victor exiting the club. Victor stepped into the side alley. A flicker. Static. A black screen for thirteen seconds. Then, an empty alley. No Victor. No body. No blood. No attacker.

Nothing.

That was the problem.

Nothing had been everywhere.

The traffic cameras around the club had glitched in staggered bursts that made no technical sense. A delivery truck had blocked one angle. A billboard had shorted out, blinding another with white light. The nearest street cam had caught a pigeon landing directly on the lens, which Jason would have found funny if he weren’t about to start a personal feud with Gotham’s entire bird population. Witnesses contradicted each other so badly that their statements looked like a group project done by drunk ghosts. One guard said Victor went inside. One swore he saw him leave in a black sedan. Another had slipped on spilled fryer oil, cracked his head on the pavement, and remembered only “some girl laughing,” which might have meant anything, nothing, or Gotham being Gotham.

Security detail lost contact for four days before admitting it publicly.

Four days.

Jason had spent those four days tearing the Narrows apart.

And finding less than nothing.

Bruce stood behind him, silent and heavy as carved shadow. “Could be someone with access to tech.”

Tim grimaced. “If it’s tech, it’s weird tech. The failures aren’t centralized. They’re situational. Almost like every route of observation experienced a separate, perfectly timed nuisance.”

Jason barked a humorless laugh. “Nuisance. That’s cute. My comm fried, a bus blocked me, my tracker app turned Korean, and a hot dog guy body-checked me into a trash can.”

Dick blinked. “A hot dog guy?”

“Don’t.”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed at the map. “Magic.”

The word cooled the cave.

Tim stopped typing for half a second. Dick’s humor faded. Damian lifted his chin. Jason stared at Bruce, irritation and agreement cutting across his face in equal measure.

“Yeah,” Jason said. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

Bruce looked toward the blank stretch of alley footage. “Zatanna?”

“I asked,” Tim said. “She’s off-world with the League. Constantine is unreachable, which either means he’s busy, drunk, dead, or avoiding us.”

“Probably all four,” Dick said.

Jason pushed off the table and paced, restless and furious. “Victor Sable was one of the worst bastards in the Narrows, and somebody made him disappear without leaving a footprint. If that somebody is cleaning house, they’re going to do it again.”

Bruce’s phone buzzed against the table.

He glanced down.

Alfred: Miss Y/N will be joining me for dinner. She appears unwell.

Bruce read it, thumb hovering. His daughter’s name sat there as a small stone dropped into a dark pool. Y/N. Twenty-seven. HR job. Apartment with a bad radiator. Too many jokes. Too much smiling. Too easy to leave unanswered because she did not demand space the way the others did. She had said she was sick. Alfred had it handled. Alfred always handled the things Bruce failed to pick up before they broke.

“Everything?” Tim asked without looking away from the footage.

Bruce set the phone down. “Alfred is checking on Y/N.”

Jason’s head turned for half a second. “She okay?”

“Sick.”

Jason’s face did something almost concerned, then closed again when the Victor footage flickered on the screen. “Flu’s going around.”

“Alfred has it handled,” Bruce said and turned back to the case.

Y/N spent forty-six minutes trying to look alive enough for soup.

She showered with the bathroom door cracked because closed doors made her feel trapped now, then changed twice, then a third time because the first sweater made her think of family dinner and the second had a stain she convinced herself was blood, even though it was probably hot sauce. She settled on black jeans and a soft green cardigan that made her look less like she had recently dug a grave and more like she might attend a farmers' market against her will. She put on concealer with trembling hands, then wiped most of it off because her face looked strange when it tried too hard to be normal.

The knife block in the kitchen sat on the counter.

She had avoided it since coming home.

Her eyes caught on the empty slot where the blue-handled knife had been. She had buried it with Victor because bringing it back had felt impossible. Now the missing space looked accusatory, a mouth with one tooth knocked out.

I love you so much.

Y/N clapped a hand over her mouth and ran to the bathroom.

Nothing came up this time. Just dry heaves and tears and that horrible phantom warmth of Victor’s hands closing over hers.

By the time she made it to the car, she was sweating through the cardigan.

Driving to the manor felt unreal. Gotham slid around her in rain-slick ribbons, all gray buildings, neon signs, traffic lights blinking red through mist. Every police car made her throat close. Every siren felt personal. When a dark SUV followed her for three blocks, she nearly took a wrong turn into a loading dock before it passed her and revealed a bumper sticker that said MY OTHER CAR IS A BROOM, which almost made her laugh and then almost made her cry.

Wayne Manor rose from the dark like an old secret with windows.

Y/N parked too far from the front steps and sat gripping the steering wheel until her fingers went numb. She had grown up coming here and still always felt like the house was deciding whether to let her in. Warm lights glowed through tall windows. Rain silvered the stone. Somewhere beyond the hill and locked doors, her family was probably wrapped around some urgent thing, some case, some emergency with edges sharper than her. She hoped they would all be gone. Then hated herself for hoping. Then hated that hating herself still felt easier than being angry with them.

The front door opened before she knocked.

Alfred stood there in his usual immaculate suit, silver hair neat, posture severe enough to shame architecture. His expression softened when he saw her, but only slightly. Alfred’s softness was not sloppy. It was folded into corners.

“Miss Y/N.”

“Hey, Alfred.” Her voice came out bright and awful. “I brought my plague vibes.”

“So I see.”

“Wow. Hurtful.”

“You look as though you have not slept properly in a week.”

“Okay, more hurtful and also weirdly specific.”

He stepped aside. “Come in before you catch your death.”

Her stomach lurched at the word death.

Alfred noticed. Of course, he noticed. His eyes moved over her face, not lingering, not pressing, just cataloging with that quiet precision she had always associated with him finding lost cufflinks and knowing exactly which vase Damian had broken before anyone confessed. Former British spy or not, Alfred could make an observation look like hospitality.

Y/N lowered her gaze and slipped past him into the warmth.

The manor smelled like beeswax, old books, polished wood, and something savory drifting from the kitchen. For the first time in days, the air did not smell like her apartment’s fear: burnt paper, stale takeout, sour panic, laundry soap, the faint metallic memory her brain kept inventing. Here, everything was ordered. Held. Clean. A place where knives lived in drawers and soup meant soup.

“Just us?” she asked.

“As promised.”

“Bruce isn’t here?”

“Master Bruce is occupied.”

“Of course he is,” she said, too lightly.

Alfred said nothing. That was the thing with Alfred. He could make a silent answer and refuse to answer at the same time.

He led her to the smaller breakfast room instead of the dining room, which helped. No huge table. No empty chairs lined like witnesses. No cold soup under chandelier light. Just a round table near tall windows streaked with rain, two places set, a small lamp glowing gold, and a bowl of what smelled like chicken soup waiting with bread and butter.

Y/N’s chest tightened.

“Oh,” she said softly.

Alfred pulled out her chair. “Sit.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do not sir me. It makes me sound like a schoolmaster.”

“You kind of have the vibe.”

“I shall choose to take that as respect.”

She sat, and for a few minutes, the world became spoon, bowl, steam. The soup was gentle, rich without being heavy, with tiny noodles, soft carrots, and herbs that tasted as if someone had thought carefully about making food for a person whose stomach had declared itself an enemy state. Y/N ate slowly at first, wary of her own body, then faster when she realized she was starving.

Alfred pretended not to watch too closely.

That was kind of him.

It also made her want to cry.

“You said it was a stomach ailment,” he said after she had eaten half the bowl.

“Yeah. Probably takeout.”

“From where?”

Y/N froze with the spoon halfway to her mouth.

Taco Bell. Baskin-Robbins. Blood in the woods. Mint chocolate chip. Victor’s breath against her cheek.

“I don’t remember,” she lied.

Alfred buttered a piece of bread with unhurried grace. “You don’t remember?”

“I order a lot of garbage when I’m sad.”

His hand paused for less than a second.

There. She had said too much.

“Sad?” he asked.

Y/N smiled into her soup. “You know. Seasonal vibes.”

“It is April.”

“Spring sadness. Very niche. Chronically online condition.”

“Indeed.”

She took another bite to avoid saying anything else. Her hands were still shaking. She tucked one under the table and curled it into her sleeve, but Alfred’s gaze dipped once, just once. Fidgeting. He saw the way her knee bounced. The way she startled when a pan shifted in the kitchen sink. The way her eyes avoided the knives on the sideboard. The way she had positioned herself with her back not fully to the door, despite never caring about that before. The way she looked thinner, as if some essential padding had been stripped from her nerves.

He did not comment.

Yet.

Instead, he poured her tea.

“You have not answered Master Bruce,” he said.

Y/N’s spoon scraped the bowl. “He told me to text you if I needed anything.”

Alfred’s face remained composed. “He is handling a difficult matter.”

“He always is.”

The words slipped out quietly enough that she almost pretended they hadn’t.

Alfred set the teapot down. “That does not mean he should neglect everything else.”

Y/N looked up, startled.

His expression was calm, but there was something beneath it. Not anger exactly. Disappointment sharpened into an old blade.

She laughed, soft and nervous. “Whoa. Alfred Pennyworth criticizing Bruce Wayne. Should I duck? Is lightning coming?”

“Do not be flippant with your exhaustion, Miss Y/N. It is quite poor camouflage.”

Her smile faltered.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Rain tapped the windows. The lamp hummed faintly. Somewhere deep in the manor, a door closed, distant enough to feel like another house entirely.

“I’m okay,” Y/N said.

Alfred looked at her for a long second. “No, you are not.”

Her throat closed.

The automatic smile came back, bright and terrible, even as her eyes stung. “That’s rude. I came for soup, not emotional violence.”

“Soup and emotional violence are a traditional pairing.”

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it, small and cracked but real enough that the room loosened around her.

Alfred’s eyes softened.

That almost broke her worse than anything.

She stayed for almost an hour. They talked about nothing and almost everything. Alfred asked about work, and she told him HR was still mostly emails, awkward conversations, and people misunderstanding their benefits. He asked about her apartment, and she told him the radiator had escalated from ghost whale to haunted trombone. He asked whether she needed repairs paid for, and she said no too fast. He noticed that too. He asked if she had been sleeping, and she said yes, badly enough that he simply hummed.

Every kindness felt dangerous because she wanted to fall into it.

But Alfred knew her. Alfred had known her before the curse, before the ritual, before the blood circle and the grave. She could meet his eyes without feeling hell wake under her skin. The curse did not move here, not with him, not in this old warm room with rain on the glass and soup in her stomach. For the first time in days, her shoulders lowered. Not all the way. Never all the way. But enough.

When she stood to leave, Alfred handed her a container of soup, wrapped neatly, along with bread and a tin of ginger biscuits.

“I’m not an invalid,” she said, clutching all of it like treasure.

“No. You are underfed and stubborn.”

“Invalid was shorter.”

“Stubborn remains accurate.”

She smiled, and this one hurt less. “Thank you.”

Alfred studied her face. “You will answer my messages.”

“That sounded like a command.”

“It was.”

“Yes, schoolmaster.”

“Y/N.”

The use of her name, without a title, made her look at him.

His voice lowered. “Whatever it is, you are not as alone as you believe yourself to be.”

For one mad, reckless second, she almost told him.

Not everything. Maybe not even the worst thing. But enough. Alfred, I did something. Alfred, I’m scared. Alfred, something is wrong with me. The words crowded behind her teeth, shoving, desperate. He would believe her. Maybe not at first, but he would listen. He would sit her down. He would make tea. He would know what to do because Alfred always did.

Then she saw Victor’s blood crawling across the concrete, forming a circle.

She saw Eli outside her door.

She saw Alfred’s face changing if the curse could find a way through confession, through pity, through whatever awful, hungry thing she had brought back with her.

Her smile returned.

“I know,” she lied.

Alfred knew it was a lie. She could tell.

He let her keep it.

The manor hallway was dim and quiet when she left the breakfast room, soup container tucked against her chest, keys looped around one finger. She passed old portraits, polished tables, and flowers in vases that probably had names. The house felt half-asleep, its grandness softened by shadows. For once, no one stopped her. No one called her back. No one asked where she had been, where she was going, or why her hands trembled around a container of soup.

She rounded the corner near the front hall and nearly walked into Damian.

He had a backpack over one shoulder, dark hair slightly damp from rain, a medical textbook tucked under one arm, and his phone in his hand. At twenty, Damian had sharpened into himself rather than softened, all lean lines and elegant impatience, his face carrying the faint, permanent displeasure of someone born unimpressed. He glanced up just in time to avoid a collision.

“Y/N.”

“Damian.” She shifted the soup container before it slipped. “Hey. Sorry. I was just leaving.”

His eyes moved over her quickly, not with Alfred’s warmth, but with trained, absent assessment he probably did not realize he had learned. Pale. Tired. Cardigan sleeves pulled over hands. Weight held wrong. He blinked, as if something in the picture did not fit the file in his head.

“Were you ill?” he asked.

“Stomach thing.”

“Mn.”

“Very sympathetic. Bedside manner’s gonna be killer.”

“I am not studying medicine to provide bedside entertainment.”

“Yeah, no, I can tell.”

His mouth almost moved. Almost.

For a second, the hallway held them in a strange little pause. Y/N did not know what to do with him. Damian had always felt like a locked door with a sword behind it. Not cruel to her, exactly. Just not interested enough to be kind consistently. Youngest brother. Biological like her, but treated like a fact instead of an accident. Bruce’s son in a way she had never figured out how to be Bruce’s daughter.

She tightened her grip on the soup.

“I’ll get out of your way,” she said and started past him.

Damian looked down at his phone as it buzzed, attention already shifting. “Drive home safely.”

It was absent-minded. Automatic. Barely warm. The kind of thing someone said because Alfred had trained manners into the walls.

Y/N stopped anyway.

Her chest did something small and painful.

“Thanks,” she said quickly, too quickly, and scurried toward the door before her face could do anything humiliating.

Damian looked up.

The front door opened. Rain whispered in. Y/N slipped out, clutching Alfred’s soup like a shield, and pulled the door closed behind her with a soft click.

Damian stood in the hall, staring after her.

Weird.

He did not know what part of it was weird, which irritated him. The trembling? The haste? The way she had reacted to one throwaway sentence as if it had been a hand offered across a pit? The fact that she looked both sick and hunted, despite insisting on a stomach thing?

As he watched her rush away, Damian caught the faintest trace of something dark beneath her fingernails; an odd red-brown, almost hidden by quick-washed hands and nerves.

For a split second, he wondered if it was paint, but Y/N used a digital drawing app, something Damian had turned his nose up at multiple times. A detail, easily explained. Yet it sat with the rest: the stiffness in her shoulders, the way her eyes kept flicking over his face like she was measuring safe distance. 

Y/N had always been strange in emotional ways, smiling when most people would cry, joking around, with bruises no one else could see, bright and slippery whenever the family’s attention glanced off her instead of landing. It made her difficult to parse, and Damian disliked difficult things unless they were surgical, tactical, or living creatures with claws.

His phone buzzed again.

Tim: Need you downstairs. We found a second Sable shell company.

Damian’s focus snapped back into place.

Victor Sable. Missing. Possible magic interference. Father occupied. Todd is furious enough to be inefficient. Drake overcaffeinated. Grayson is pretending not to worry. A case, real and urgent and immediate, with bloodless evidence and a criminal vanished into impossible luck.

Y/N became a small oddity filed somewhere in the back of his mind.

He turned away from the door and headed for the cave entrance.

Outside, Y/N sat in her car while rain dotted the windshield, breathing hard, waiting for her hands to stop shaking enough to drive. Alfred’s soup warmed her lap through the container. Her phone sat dark in the cupholder. The manor glowed behind her, full of people chasing Victor Sable’s ghost without knowing she had buried his body under wet leaves and bad prayers.

Her stomach rolled again.

She swallowed it down.

“Drive home safely,” she whispered to herself, and laughed once, broken and soft.

Then she did.

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