#dc x reader

How the fuck did Vanessa cheat on this man?

You’d known Dick ever since he and Vanessa were in the early stages of dating around two years ago, and you hated to admit it, but he was one objectively sexy man. Who was sat there with a cappuccino in a local Blüdhaven coffee shop, looking the most tortured you’d ever seen him, over a girl who cheated, nonetheless.

You sipped your latte. “You look like shit, Dick.” Your voice was softer than intended. Maybe a portion of you felt bad. “What’re you thinking?”

He scrubbed his face. “I’m sorry, I— I didn’t mean to drag you out here to sit in silence, I’m just… confused. How could she— did I do something?”

You sat forward in your seat, raising an eyebrow, sighing. “Really?” You clicked your tongue noncommittally. “You’re gonna blame yourself for this? Dick, you got her expensive jewellery to ask her to be your girlfriend, you were pretty fucking perfect.” He’d done the research. Seen what colour jewellery she wore, if she preferred gold or silver, her birthstone, what cut, how long, and got it custom made. If he did anything wrong, you’d be surprised. “It’s her fault.”

He looked sceptical. He even let out a disbelieving scoff, like you were talking bullshit. “You don’t seem heartbroken. Like, at all.”

You shrugged, stirring your latte with a wooden stick. “If she can take him, she can have him. Carter couldn’t do anything without his mother’s approval anyway.”

His nose wrinkled. “Yikes. That sounds rough.”

"Why'd you offer to buy me coffee anyway?" His text had come out of nowhere, but he probably had his reasons. One or two at least.

His sigh was of defeat as he rubbed a sugar packet between his fingers, rubbing the back of his neck with another hand. “I just— you got caught up in my ex-girlfriend’s shit, and it felt unfair.”

You gestured to him. “You got caught up in my ex best friend and my ex-boyfriend’s shit, so arguably, I should be paying for this.”

“But I already paid.”

“So let’s go out for a drink sometime.” You shrugged. “I wanted to get wasted and forget about this anyway, might as well take you with me.”

His grin was blinding, the kind of thing Vanessa used to giggle about when she first met him. “A little too soon to go out for drinks, huh?”

“It’s a proposition.” You laughed, shrugging. “Drinks on me. Let’s go tomorrow.”

Dick had been used to fancy hotel bars, at least whenever Bruce had thrown parties with bars included. The ones where the bartenders wore suits and ties with top shelf liqueurs.

He felt a sort of thrill when you dragged him into a bar on the corner of 6th, one with dim, flickering warm lights that clashed with blue and purple ones. The bartender wore plaid, spoke in a thick Boston accent, had an unkempt five-o’clock shadow. The bar top was wooden and chipped, and on the makeshift dance floor were plenty of drunk people grinding on each other.

“Oh, this is amazing,” He couldn’t help but smile widely, turning to you. “There are places like this in Gotham?”

“Yes, Mr Trust Fund— Scott!” You flagged down the bartender. “Can we get a round of shot roulette?”

“Sure, sweetheart.” Scott flashed you a smile, wiping down a glass before heading to set up the shot roulette.

Dick turned to you, leaning on the bar slightly, tracing the wood grain with his finger. “So, you come here often?”

You perched yourself on a barstool, prompting him to do the same. Something that sounded like 50 Cent was playing on the speakers in the corners, bass thrumming in the back of your mind. “Oh, all the time. Best place in Gotham.” The shots were slid in front of you, and you both grabbed the glass and chucked it back, both of you humming. “Huh.”

“Kind of… fruity.” He mused, staring at the shot glass, putting it down. He glanced at you through his stupidly long and pretty lashes, clearing his throat. “How did you find out that… never mind.”

You chased the alcohol down with water. “I got a photo of a girl fucking Carter.” You scoffed lightly. “I saw a tattoo on her upper thigh that I’d paid for when we were in college.”

He ran a hand through his hair, huffing. “Fuck, shit, I’m so sorry— she just came clean to me. Maybe after you found out.”

“It’s not your fault.” You said lightly, waving your hand. “It’s theirs. They couldn’t keep it in their pants, Vanessa had a great, hot guy and she lost him, so…”

He couldn’t help his soft smile. “You’re gorgeous too, you know. Carter doesn’t know what he lost.” His eyes flicked down, to your lips, then to a barely working lightbulb like a moth would. But you caught it.

Your teeth snagged your bottom lip.

Vanessa made a huge mistake.

Dick’s hand was firmly on your jaw, leaned over the centre console of his Bentley so his lips could slot easily against yours. Your hand was carding into the floppy strands of his hair, swallowing each other’s heavy breaths. His cologne was deliciously clouding your senses, the hand not on your jaw reaching behind you to grab at your ass, squeezing, teasing your bottom lip with his warm tongue. His mouth separated from yours to burn down your neck, laving your pulse, pressure on your jaw gone in favour of tugging your shirt down over one shoulder to palm your tits over your bra.

“Your apartment is,” You paused to moan quietly, tugging his hair as a keep going, “literally right there. We can — fuck — get comfy.”

He nodded into your neck, brushing your skin with his lips one more time before looking you in the eye. “Good idea.”

You couldn’t remember how you actually got into his apartment, but you did remember stripping him of his clothes and pushing him down onto his bed, unclasping your bra. He hummed, biting his lip. “I have an idea.”

“I’m all ears.” You breathed, your breathing stuttering as you ground your panties-covered pussy over his boxers-covered cock.

His hand slid over the back of your neck, encouraging you closer. “Let’s send them a photo,” He murmured, pecking your lips, his nose rubbing against yours. “You know. Revenge.”

Your hand was already scrambling for your phone, switching to selfie mode just as he smashed his lips to yours, your thumb hitting the circular button and taking the photo. “Good?”

“Yeah, fuck, that’s hot,” He nodded, tugging you so he could kiss you, middle finger reaching down to rub at your entrance over your panties. “You’re soaked, shit, sweetheart,” He reached up and tugged, sliding down the lace covering your pussy with his pointer until they slipped off, lazily chucking your panties into the corner of his room. “C’mere.” He grabbed your hips and pulled you till your pussy was right above his mouth.

Wait what— fuck.

His mouth wrapped around your clit as two fingers pushed into your cunt, practically sucking his fingers in, dear God. Your head fell back, mouth dropping open as a surprised moan left you, hand shooting to grip his hair. He groaned, deep in his throat, other hand pressing on the small of your back to encourage you to grind your clit on his tongue that was circling and pressing on your clit.

“O—Oh, Dick—”

“Yeah, that’s right, give it to me, baby.” He moaned, yanking his fingers out, and just before you could protest at the loss of anything filling your aching pussy, he thrusted his tongue into you, flicking at your clit with his thumb, his nose bumping occasionally against you. The taste of you on his tongue made him want to sing your praises, but it came out muffled, the vibrations making your hips twitch and eyes roll back.

Repeated cries of “yes” punctuated by your broken moans fuelled his ego and his already painfully hard dick. With your walls fluttering around his tongue fucking into you, he’d say you were fairly close.

A lot of things were going through your head. Like how this was a stellar pussy eating. How Carter refused to let any part of his face touch your vagina. How Dick was so willing and drinking your arousal up like it was the gods’ nectar.

You were coming on his tongue soon enough, pulling at his hair to make him moan and lap at your cunt faster, slicking his lips and chin.

A minute later, he was still kitten licking you clean, and as much as the stimulation made you stroke his hair and whisper praise, you needed to get a move on. So you pulled yourself away from his mouth, pulling down his boxers while he whined and pawed at your hips to try and bring you back.

“M’ not done— fuuuuck,” His head dropped back into the pillows, giving way for the weight, as you sank down onto his waiting cock. Your warm walls wrapping around him, making his head spin before he snapped into reality. His hands took hold of your hips again, helping you move on him, thumbs kneading your skin as you dragged up and down his dick.

He hadn’t felt like this before. Your lips were on his neck, leaving kiss prints on his skin, from his chest to his jaw and around his lips. Raising your phone and clicking a photo of his fucked-out grin as you rode him, thumb hovering over send to Vanessa.

“You ok with this?” Your voice was uncharacteristically soft, circumstantially breathy, your nails raking down his abs and making him shiver.

He grabbed the phone, pressed send himself, propping himself up so he could take one of your tits into his mouth, sucking to stifle his shamelessly loud moans. Wasn’t working. “Mhm— ride my fucking dick, gorgeous,” He gasped between switching to your other tit, laving over your skin with his tongue. “Just like that, so perfect, honey.”

His mouth running away with him told you he was close, his thumb reaching to rub circles on your clit propelled you that much further, but you refused to come twice before he had even once, so you pulled his head away from your tits, bit his earlobe and sucked a mark behind his ear.

He shuddered and groaned your name, hot come spilling into you — morning after pill, here we come — and the twitch of his cock sent you straight after him, his mouth slamming sloppy into yours, gripping the back of his neck while his tongue slid over your lower lip and his lips following straight after.

You milked him for all he had, until you were both panting and he was staring up at you through his lashes like he wanted to fuck you on all fours. “Wanna go again?”

“We’ve got time.”

carter -> you carter : c'mon, baby, let's talk about it you know i love you she didn't mean anything i swear i can't live without you sweets you : she's busy. carter : doing what???? who is this ??? you : fucking me. it's dick, btw ;) carter : vanessa's ex? you piece of shit give the phone back to her [ blocked ]

vanessa -> dick vanessa : you're really gonna throw years away for that bitch ?you're mine i want you back let's talk about this i miss you so bad we can go to couples counselling, work on our problems together you weren't really fulfilling my needs, i had to look out for myself dick : for a guy who wasn't 'fulfilling your needs' nessie he sure was fulfilling mine vanessa : youre such a bitch to think you were my best friend fucking my EX ??? could you go any lower ?? dick : *you're vanessa : UGH

Bruce Wayne, who during conversations with other guests, he keeps one hand on your lower back, thumb stroking gentle circles through your dress. It’s his way of staying connected, reassuring you he’s right there if you need an escape or just want to lean on him. When you get tired of small talk, he’ll smoothly change the subject or pull you away with a polite excuse.

Bruce Wayne, who if you’re wearing heels that start to hurt, he notices immediately. He’ll guide you to a quieter corner, kneel down discreetly, and massage your ankles or calves for a moment, completely unbothered by who might see. “You don’t have to suffer for beauty,” he’ll whisper, kissing your knee before standing back up.

Bruce Wayne, who when photographers ask for pictures, he always pulls you close, angling his body to shield you slightly from the flashes. He makes sure your dress is sitting perfectly, tucking a stray hair behind your ear or adjusting your necklace, treating you like the most precious thing in the room.

Bruce Wayne, who can tell when the gala gets too overwhelming — loud music, crowded rooms, flashing cameras — he senses it before you say anything. He’ll wrap an arm around your waist and guide you to a private balcony or side room, holding you close until you’re ready to go back. “We can leave anytime,” he’ll murmur. “You come first.”

Bruce Wayne, who at dinner, he makes sure your plate has everything you like and nothing you don’t. He’ll quietly switch glasses if the wine isn’t to your taste, or pass you the bread basket before you even reach for it. His attention is constant but never overbearing — just steady, thoughtful love.

Bruce Wayne, who when you’re dancing, he holds you like you’re made of glass — one hand on your waist, the other cradling your hand, guiding you effortlessly across the floor. He whispers compliments in your ear the whole time, telling you how beautiful you look, how proud he is to have you on his arm.

Bruce Wayne, who if your dress slips or a strap falls, he fixes it immediately, fingers gentle and quick, shielding you from view with his body. He never makes you feel embarrassed — just cared for. “I’ve got you,” he’ll say softly, kissing your shoulder once it’s fixed.

Bruce Wayne, who after the gala, when you're both exhausted in the car ride home, he pulls you into his lap, letting you rest your head on his chest. He'll manage your feet if your heels hurt, kiss your temples, and tell you how much he loved having you by his side. "You make every night better," he whispers.

Bruce Wayne, who even when you're not at galas, the habits carries over. he checks your outfit before you leave the house, makes sure you're warm enough, carries your bag without being asked. its never showy - just quiet, consistent love. you're always his priority.

Bruce Wayne, who on nights when you feel insecure about your dress or your appearance, he pulls you close and reminds you how stunning you are - not because of the clothes, but because you're you. "you could wear a paper bag and I'd still think you're the most beautiful woman in the room. no, the world."

Bruce Wayne, who keeps a small photo of you in his wallet. ones from a previous gala where you looked especially radiant. when he's stressed during the day, he looks at it and remembers why he fights so hard. you are his reason.

Bruce Wayne, who at the end of evert night, when the dress comes off and you're both in bed, he holds you like you're the only thing that mayors. "thank you for being mine," he'll whisper against your hair. "I don't deserve you. but I'll spend every day trying to."

Dick Grayson

Recently, Dick has been waking up to your newest hobby. 

Yoga.

Normally, he wouldn't be too distracted by it, but some mornings you were only wearing some very loose shorts. Nothing underneath.

And whenever you did that, greeting him with the downward facing dog or whatever, his mornings suddenly got very hard.

He sighs, he would not be taking his eyes off you. How could he? 

"Babe, if you come over here, I can show you a different way to get your morning stretch in." He winks at you.

You scoff.

"To think you could go one morning without being a perv." You get up and roll the yoga mat up, then head towards the bathroom, shaking your head in disbelieve.

Jason Todd

He groans, puling the blanket over his face and mentally telling himself to calm the fuck down.

This has to be some sort of torture method.

When he woken up five minutes ago, sun gently warming his face, he saw you on the small balcony of your bedroom. Splayed out on the ground, ass up and very loose shorts slipping to the side, exposing basically everything. 

Hell, he had to do something. Not only for his sanity, but also because the neighbors definitely didn't need that view.

No, thats it.

He drags himself out of bed and stomps to the glass door, opens it and with a very growly voice tells you to get in.

"No?" you say, on all fours now, arching your back and face to the sky.

Tim Drake

"What are you doing?"

You are face down, hips up on your yoga mat. Your arms stretched to the front, then your body smoothly moves onto all fours. 

"I don´t know what you mean?" You say, eyes close and focused on your breathing.

"You're exposing yourself while im trying to concentrate." A pout appears on his face. You continue doing your movements. "Your making this impossible."

 You smile sweetly. "Its my evening wind down. Because Im going to sleep soon, like a normal person. You should try it sometimes."

Tim swears hes not a dick-led person, but watching you move, your sleep shorts falling to the side or your shirt rolling up, gets him to bed early for once.

You learned to measure your life in pain because pain was the one thing they never allowed you to forget.

The second thing you remembered was gold. It began beneath your fingernails as a faint glow, delicate enough that you mistook it for a trick of exhaustion. Then it crawled into your palms. It filled the lines of your hands like molten metal poured into the shape of you, spreading up your wrists until every vein shone through your skin.

The scientists celebrated. You screamed.

They increased the voltage. The gold became brighter.

Years later—or perhaps only months; the laboratory had made those words meaningless—the entire facility was burning when Batman found you.

Not burning with flame. Flame would have been ordinary. Flame obeyed rules. This was light without heat, pouring through cracks in the reinforced walls and making the concrete groan like an animal beneath too much weight. The air trembled. Glass hovered in glittering clouds above the shattered observation rooms. Metal doors had folded inward without being touched, crushed by invisible hands until they resembled discarded foil.

You floated in the centre of the containment chamber with your knees drawn toward your chest. The restraints had melted from your wrists. The medical gown hung from your body in scorched strips, though your skin beneath it remained unmarked. Your hair drifted around your face as if you were submerged underwater. Gold blazed beneath your skin, too bright for anyone to look at directly.

Every alarm in the building wailed. You heard nothing but the command.

“Remain still until collection,” you whispered.

The words scraped from a throat ruined by screaming.

“Remain still until collection. Remain still until collection.”

Batman stood on the other side of the ruined glass.

You knew him immediately. The scientists had shown you footage during the behavioural evaluations. Batman crossing rooftops. Batman breaking through windows. Batman standing beside gods and aliens and people who could stop trains with their hands. They had monitored your physical reactions while you watched, searching for fear, admiration, aggression.

Potential threat, one scientist had said. Potential target, another had corrected.

Batman had been an image on a screen then. A black shape designed to make your heart race. In the laboratory, surrounded by the ruins of your cage, he was smaller than you expected. Human. The pointed ears of his cowl nearly brushed a bent support beam as he stepped through the broken wall. He moved slowly, boots crunching over fragments of glass that rose again once his weight left them.

You watched the cape spread behind him.

Your power stirred. The air darkened around the edges.

Batman stopped. His gloved hand rose toward his face.

Every lesson they had forced into you screamed that he was reaching for a weapon. Your body reacted before your mind could. The floor fractured beneath him. A wave of pressure struck the walls. Batman’s cape snapped violently behind him, though he did not move.

His hand continued upward. He removed the cowl.

The face beneath it was pale, bruised and unhidden. Dark hair fell over his forehead. His eyes were blue. Not detached. Not shielded behind glass. There were lines around them that suggested exhaustion rather than cruelty, though you had learned that cruel people could look tired too.

“My name is Bruce,” he said.

You stared at him. No one in the laboratory had names. They had titles, identification cards and levels of authorisation. You had memorised the differences between them because it was useful to know who might hit you and who preferred electricity.

Bruce placed the cowl on the ground. “I’m not here to collect you.”

Your knees drew tighter against your chest. “Remain still until collection.”

“No one is collecting you.”

The gold flickered.

A figure moved behind him, smaller and dressed in red and black. Another mask. Another threat.

Bruce lifted one hand without looking away from you. The figure stopped.

“Can you tell me your name?” he asked.

A number came to your tongue first. You swallowed it. Numbers were useful for organising test subjects. Numbers were printed on doors and wristbands and bags of blood. The scientists had used yours so often that sometimes it had drowned out the softer collection of sounds that belonged to you before them.

Bruce waited.

The building groaned around you. Dust hovered in the air, each particle caught in the distorted gravity of the room.

You told him your name.

Something shifted across his face. Not triumph. Not the bright satisfaction the scientists wore when you completed an exercise correctly.

Recognition.

“All right,” he said, repeating it carefully. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

The laboratory had told you that people made promises when they wanted obedience.

You knew better than to believe him. Still, when Bruce held out his hand, you lowered yourself slowly until your bare feet touched the ground.

You did not take it. He did not make you.

The world outside the facility was dark. You had forgotten that darkness could exist without becoming dangerous.

Night stretched above the forest, blue-black and vast, broken by more stars than you knew how to count. The sight of them made something inside you ache. You had seen images of the sky, but images were flat things displayed on screens. They had never explained how enormous it was. They had never told you that looking upward could feel like falling.

You stopped at the threshold of the building.

Bruce noticed immediately. The others waited several paces away. A young man in red and black stood with a staff held loosely at his side. A woman dressed in purple watched you with undisguised concern. A taller man wearing a red helmet had removed one of his gloves, though you did not understand why.

Beyond them, the laboratory’s outer structures smouldered beneath the moon.

“You don’t have to hurry,” Bruce said.

You stared at the sky. “There is no ceiling.”

The young man in red and black made a small sound, almost a laugh, until the woman elbowed him.

Bruce’s expression tightened. “No.”

“What keeps it up?”

No one answered immediately.

The man in the red helmet tilted his head toward the stars. “Nothing. That’s kind of the point.”

You looked at him. His voice was rough, but there was no mockery in it.

Bruce guided you toward the aircraft waiting beyond the trees. Guided was perhaps the wrong word. He walked several feet ahead so that you could follow without feeling pursued. The others formed a loose shape around you, never close enough to touch.

You made it halfway before the sound of the engine reached you.

The laboratory vanished. The forest became white walls. The aircraft became an examination table. The vibration entered through your feet and travelled into your bones, matching the hum of the machine they used to open your cells and fill them with something that had not belonged there.

Your power exploded outward. Trees bent away from you. The aircraft lifted from the ground, its landing gear tearing furrows through the earth. Everyone shouted at once.

You rose into the air. Gold bled into black. It began at your fingertips, darkness swallowing the light beneath your skin. Your shadow spread across the clearing despite the moon hanging behind you. The shape twisted, stretching too long, rising over your shoulders like another body attempting to unfold from within your own.

The man in the red helmet moved first. He stepped toward you.

“Jason,” Bruce warned.

“Yeah, I see it.”

Jason removed the helmet and placed it on the ground. A white streak divided his dark hair. A scar cut through one eyebrow. His face was younger than his voice, his jaw clenched hard enough to show the muscle beneath his skin.

He lifted both empty hands.

“It’s just an engine,” he said. “It’s loud. It’s annoying. It’s not that machine.”

You could not breathe.

The clearing stretched around you, but you could smell antiseptic. You could taste blood. Somewhere beyond sight, a scientist told you to remain still.

Jason’s eyes stayed on yours. “I know your body’s telling you different,” he continued. “Bodies are real dramatic like that. Think they know everything.”

The darkness behind you shuddered.

Your power reached for him. You felt the precise pressure required to break every bone in his body. The knowledge appeared inside you without permission, a calculation written into your nerves. You saw how easily you could lift him. How quickly he would stop breathing.

Jason did not step back.

He should have. You wanted him to.

“Tell it no,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“Yeah, you can.”

The words were too close to the scientists. Your shadow surged.

Jason’s expression changed. Not fear. Understanding.

“Okay,” he said. “You can’t yet.”

The command inside your head faltered.

Jason lowered himself to sit on the damp ground, legs crossed as if he had chosen the clearing for an evening rest rather than being forced there by a person capable of turning him into ash.

“You don’t have to get in the plane,” he said. “Nobody’s strapping you down. Nobody’s putting you anywhere.”

The woman in purple sat several feet behind him. The young man with the staff followed. Bruce remained standing, but his hands lowered to his sides. One by one, the surrounding figures made themselves smaller.

The aircraft settled gradually back onto the ground.

You did not remember falling.

You woke beneath another white ceiling.

For a moment, there was only instinct.

The bed disintegrated beneath you. Wood, fabric and metal tore apart before you had fully opened your eyes. The pieces hovered in a violent orbit. The windows rattled. A lamp shot from the bedside table and shattered against the far wall.

You scrambled backwards, though there was nowhere to go.

The room was enormous compared to your cell, decorated in muted blue and dark wood. Heavy curtains framed tall windows. A fireplace sat cold and empty along one wall. Someone had placed books on a shelf and clothes in an open wardrobe.

There were no visible cameras. That frightened you more.

A soft knock sounded at the door.

You stared.

Another knock. Then a voice, measured and calm. “May I come in?”

You recognised Bruce.

The room remained suspended around you.

“No.” The answer left your mouth before you could consider whether refusal was permitted.

Bruce did not enter. “All right.”

You waited for punishment. None came.

Minutes passed. Perhaps longer.

The fragments of the bed lowered onto the carpet.

Bruce remained on the other side of the door.

“There’s food outside,” he said. “No one will come in unless you ask.”

His footsteps retreated.

You waited until you could no longer hear them before approaching the door.

A tray sat on the floor. Soup, bread, fruit and a glass of water. No utensils sharp enough to become a weapon. You wondered whether that had been deliberate.

Beside the tray was a piece of paper.

The room is yours. The bathroom door does not lock automatically. The windows can be opened. The house alarm will sound if you leave, but it will not stop you. No one will touch you without permission.

You read the sentences until the letters blurred.

Then you carried the tray into the room and sat on the floor because there was no longer a bed.

You stayed in the bedroom for six days. Bruce replaced the bed on the second day, though not personally. An elderly man named Alfred knocked, introduced himself and asked whether he could enter with two delivery workers.

You told him no. He replied that this was perfectly reasonable and left the mattress outside the door. You dragged it inside with your mind once the corridor was empty.

The mattress remained on the floor.

People visited without entering.

Dick spoke through the door while performing what sounded like increasingly ridiculous impressions of Bruce. You did not respond, but he returned the next day with a deck of cards and explained a game to you from the hallway.

Stephanie—whom you eventually identified as the woman in purple—left brightly coloured socks outside the room because she had decided the provided clothes were “giving ethically questionable spa retreat.”

Tim, the young man with the staff, did not visit. You occasionally heard his footsteps stop outside before continuing down the corridor.

Jason came at night.

He never knocked. He sat on the other side of the wall and read aloud. The first book was about a sailor hunting a whale, which seemed unnecessarily complicated and full of people making terrible decisions around the ocean. Jason offered sarcastic commentary whenever the narrator wandered away from the story to discuss knots or whale anatomy.

On the fourth night, you opened the door. Jason was sitting with his back against the opposite wall, a paperback held open in one hand. He wore a dark sweatshirt and loose trousers. No armour. No helmet. A faint scar curved around the side of his throat.

He glanced up.

You nearly closed the door.

Jason returned his gaze to the page.

“You’re right,” he said. “This guy needs an editor.”

You remained in the doorway. He continued reading.

After several minutes, you lowered yourself to sit inside the room.

The threshold remained between you. Jason did not cross it.

“Why do you come here?” you asked.

His eyes remained on the book. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No, it’s an answer. Just not the one you wanted.”

Your power stirred faintly beneath your skin, catching on irritation. The lamp above Jason flickered.

He noticed but did not look at it.

“Bruce asked you to watch me.”

“Bruce asks me to do a lot of things. Builds character when I ignore him.”

“You are watching me.”

“Reading.”

“You are positioned outside the only exit.”

Jason closed the book around one finger. “You want me to move?”

You hesitated. “Yes.”

He stood immediately. The movement was careful but not exaggerated. He crossed to the far end of the corridor and sat beneath a painting of a stern-looking man with an unfortunate moustache.

“Better?”

You examined the space between him and the stairs. “Yes.”

“Great. Chapter twelve.”

He reopened the book.

That was the first choice you made in Wayne Manor.

Not an important one. Not heroic.

A distance of several metres.

Still, no one tried to take it from you.

The house was full of people who moved like ghosts.

You began noticing them once you left the room.

Bruce vanished before dawn and returned after midnight, carrying bruises beneath expensive clothing. Dick could enter a room without making the floorboards creak, but often chose to announce himself by singing badly. Tim appeared wherever coffee existed, his hair disordered and his eyes permanently shadowed. Damian walked with the rigid precision of someone who believed the entire world might become a battlefield if he relaxed. Cassandra made almost no sound at all.

Duke was the easiest to see. Something about him seemed to catch light, even in dim rooms. He had a warmth that did not resemble the artificial blaze beneath your skin. His was morning sunlight across a kitchen table. Yours was the centre of a star held together by force.

The first time Duke looked at you, he winced.

You recoiled.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “It’s not—you’re not hurting me.”

“You looked away.”

“Because you’re bright.”

You glanced at your hands. They appeared normal.

Duke seemed to realise the problem.

“I can see light differently,” he explained. “Metahuman thing. You’ve got…” He paused, searching for words that would not frighten you. “A lot going on.”

You waited for him to call Bruce. Instead, Duke tilted his head.

“There’s gold around most of you,” he said. “A little red by your chest. Blue at the back of your head. The dark stuff is mostly around your hands.”

Your fingers curled into your palms. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know yet.”

The honesty unsettled you. Scientists always had answers. Even when their answers were wrong, they delivered them with the confidence of people who knew uncertainty only happened to someone else.

“Is it dangerous?”

Duke looked directly at you. “Does it feel dangerous?”

You did not know.

That became the problem. Your body no longer belonged to ordinary sensation. Hunger could feel like heat behind your eyes. Exhaustion could make the furniture drift. Anger accumulated inside your jaw until your teeth glowed. Fear often arrived as nothing at all, an empty quiet that preceded catastrophic destruction.

The laboratory had demanded results, not understanding. 

The Batfamily attempted to teach you the difference. Their first attempt was disastrous.

Bruce constructed a training chamber beneath the house. The walls were reinforced with layers of steel, composite plating and materials he refused to name. Sensors tracked your pulse, temperature, neurological activity and energy output. He explained each device. He asked permission before attaching anything to your body.

You agreed because agreement was what people wanted when they phrased commands politely.

The session began with small objects.

A wooden block placed on a table.

“Lift it,” Bruce said. The block rose. “Rotate it.” You rotated it. “Set it down.” You set it down.

Bruce placed another block beside the first.

Then five. Then ten.

The instructions continued.

Lift. Turn. Hold. Release.

Your breathing grew shallow.

The chamber disappeared behind white light.

Bruce asked you to lift a metal sphere. You heard increase the voltage.

The sphere crumpled.

“Stop,” Bruce said. Your power interpreted the word as another command.

Every object in the chamber shot upward.

Bruce moved toward the control panel. A mechanical barrier began descending between you. It was a safety measure. You understood that somewhere beneath the panic.

Your body understood only containment.

The gold beneath your skin turned black. The chamber lights died. Something unfolded behind you.

It had no face, yet you felt it open its eyes.

Bruce activated the emergency barrier.

You tore it apart. The reinforced metal peeled away from the ceiling and slammed into the wall. Alarms erupted. Your power spread through the Cave, catching at every machine, every weapon, every vast piece of stone above you.

For one terrible moment, you felt the entire Manor. Its foundations. Its beams. The fragile human bodies moving within it. You could have lifted the house from the earth. You could have crushed everyone inside.

Then a hand struck the emergency release beside the chamber door.

Damian entered. He wore training clothes, a wooden sword strapped across his back. His expression was hard, focused.

“Control yourself,” he commanded.

The words hit you harder than any weapon.

You were back beneath the lights. A scientist stood over you as your body convulsed against the restraints.

Control yourself.

You cannot be useful in this condition.

Control yourself.

You screamed.

Darkness swallowed the chamber.

Damian disappeared inside it.

You saw his fear. Not as an expression. As a place. A child knelt in a stone room with blood on his hands while voices circled him, correcting his posture. A sword trembled between fingers too small to hold it. A woman watched from above, beautiful and distant. A man dressed as a bat turned away again and again.

You had no desire to see these things. Your power fed them to you.

Damian drew his sword. The blade passed through the darkness without touching you.

His movements slowed.

The child in the memory raised his own weapon. You felt Damian understand.

He lowered the sword.

The nightmares continued around him. His mother’s disappointment. His grandfather’s approval. Bruce’s silence. The graves of people Damian had not saved and the bodies of people he had once been taught to consider irrelevant.

Damian’s face had gone bloodless. Still, he placed the sword on the ground.

“I was wrong,” he said. Your scream fractured into breath. “I should not have ordered you.”

The darkness rippled.

Damian’s eyes lifted toward the shape towering behind you. “You are not required to master this for my comfort.”

The chamber returned in pieces. Bruce stood beyond the ruined barrier. Dick had arrived beside him. Jason was attempting to force his way past while Tim held one arm across his chest.

Damian remained inside.

“Would you like me to leave?” he asked.

No one had ever asked you that during an episode.

You nodded. Damian backed out of the chamber without turning away.

The darkness collapsed.

You hit the floor.

For three days afterwards, you refused to speak to anyone.

Bruce did not attempt another training session.

Damian left a folded piece of paper outside your bedroom. You stared at it for several hours before opening it.

My methods were drawn from experiences I should not have imposed upon you. Discipline kept me alive, but survival is not proof that a method was kind. I will not issue another command regarding your body. I apologise.

There was no request for forgiveness.

Beneath the note sat a sketchbook and a set of pencils.

You found Damian in the library that evening. He sat beneath a lamp with a book open in front of him. A large dog slept across his feet. A small grey cat occupied the back of his chair, tail curled beside his ear.

Both animals looked toward you.

The dog stood. You froze.

“Titus,” Damian said quietly.

The dog did not stop. He approached with his tail moving cautiously from side to side, then pressed his enormous head against your hip.

Your hands lifted, uncertain. “Why is he doing that?”

“He wants you to pet him.”

The concept seemed suspiciously simple.

You placed your palm against Titus’s head. The dog sighed.

Gold flickered beneath your skin.

Neither animal reacted.

The cat leapt from Damian’s chair onto the table, crossed the books and climbed onto your shoulder with complete disregard for personal boundaries.

You stared at Damian.

His mouth curved almost imperceptibly. “They possess excellent judgement.”

“Your cat is standing on me.”

“Yes.”

“Should you remove him?”

“No. He has made his decision.”

The cat began purring beside your ear.

You sat opposite Damian. The sketchbook remained between your hands.

“Do you draw?” you asked.

“I do.”

“What?”

“Whatever interests me.”

You looked down at the blank page.

Damian closed his book. “May I show you?”

You nodded.

He opened another sketchbook and turned it around. The pages contained studies of the Manor grounds, Gotham rooftops, Titus sleeping in impossible positions and the hands of various family members. Bruce’s were scarred and square. Dick’s were long-fingered, caught in motion. Jason’s held the spine of a book. Cassandra’s rested lightly against a ballet barre.

Damian turned another page. You recognised yourself.

The drawing showed you in the training chamber, though not as you had appeared in the recording Bruce later offered to destroy. Damian had drawn the dark shape rising behind you, vast and inhuman, but its body curved around your smaller figure. Protecting you.

You swallowed. “That is not what happened.”

“It is what I observed.”

“It tried to hurt you.”

“It perceived me as a threat.”

“It showed me things.”

Damian’s fingers tightened against the edge of the page. “Yes.”

“I did not choose to see them.”

“I know.”

You touched the graphite darkness surrounding the drawn version of your body. “Why did you make it look like that?”

“Because monsters do not shield their vulnerable parts.”

The answer sat inside you, warm and painful.

No one in the laboratory had considered the darkness a shield. They had called it a secondary state. A catastrophic response. An asset with unacceptable volatility.

Damian had looked at it once and seen something trying, however terribly, to keep you alive.

Recovery did not occur gracefully. You broke seventeen glasses in your first month at the Manor, most of them during breakfast. You woke suspended against the ceiling often enough that Alfred began leaving pillows across the floor. You accidentally threw Tim into a bookshelf when he approached from behind, though he insisted the greater crime was the destruction of a first-edition technical manual.

You apologised for three days. Tim accepted on the first and became increasingly distressed by the continued apologies. On the fourth, he placed a small bracelet on the kitchen table between you.

You stared at it.

“I made this,” he said, then immediately looked uncomfortable. “Not for restraint. It doesn’t inhibit anything.”

Your shoulders remained tense.

Tim rubbed the back of his neck. “It monitors environmental changes. Gravity, electromagnetic fields, temperature. It vibrates before your powers become visible.”

“You made a device to monitor me.”

The words emerged colder than intended. Tim went still.

Around you, the kitchen seemed to hold its breath.

“I made it to help you recognise the early signs,” he said. “But you’re right.”

He took the bracelet from the table.

That evening, you found a folder outside your room.

Inside were hundreds of pages. Medical records. Diagrams. Reconstructed notes from the laboratory. Photographs taken while you were unconscious. Security footage transcriptions. Calculations written in Tim’s cramped handwriting.

He knew what they had done to you. Perhaps not all of it, but more than you knew yourself.

Your body began to glow.

You found him in the Cave. Tim sat before the largest computer, deleting files. Lines of data vanished from the screens one by one.

“What are you doing?”

He turned. His face looked exhausted. “Destroying my copies.”

“You watched the recordings.”

“Yes.”

“You saw them—”

“Yes.”

The darkness gathered at your feet.

Tim did not approach.

“I thought I was helping,” he said. “The organisation still has people out there. I wanted names, procedures, weaknesses in their system. I wanted enough information to make sure they could never do it again.”

“You looked at me the way they did.”

“I know.” The agreement stole your anger’s momentum. Tim’s voice broke slightly. “I didn’t mean to. That doesn’t make it better.”

One screen remained active. It displayed an image from a procedure you could not remember. Your body lay restrained beneath white light, chest opened by an incision that had already begun healing around surgical instruments.

Tim reached toward the keyboard.

“Wait.”

His hand stopped.

You stared at the image. The person on the table looked dead. No. Worse than dead. Objects could not be dead. They could only be broken, repaired or discarded.

“Was I awake?” you asked.

Tim’s silence answered.

You pressed one hand against your sternum.

There was no scar. Your body had erased the evidence.

“Do you want me to delete it?” Tim asked.

You wanted the image gone. You wanted every record burned. Every piece of proof reduced to ash so that no one could ever look at your suffering again.

You also wanted to know. The desires tore at each other.

“Give me the files,” you said. Tim nodded. “All of them.”

“Yes.”

“And do not keep copies.”

“I won’t.”

“If I decide to destroy them, you do not stop me.”

“I won’t.”

The darkness retreated by an inch.

Tim copied the remaining files onto an isolated drive. He placed it in your palm.

The device was tiny. Your whole captivity fit inside something smaller than your hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

You closed your fingers around it. “I know.”

Trust did not repair itself in that moment.

It returned by fragments. Tim began asking questions instead of presenting answers. Would you like to know what he had discovered about your regeneration? Did you want the laboratory maps? Could he examine the bracelet again if you remained present?

You said no often. Every refusal made the next yes easier.

Eventually, you allowed him to finish the bracelet.

The first time it vibrated, you were in the sitting room with Dick. He had decided you needed to understand card games, though his rules appeared to change whenever he started losing. You held three cards in your hand and suspected at least two were useless.

The bracelet pulsed once against your wrist.

You froze. 

Dick’s smile disappeared. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

The lights brightened. Your cards lifted from your fingers.

Dick set his own hand facedown. “Can you feel anything?”

You searched your body. At first, there was only confusion. Then pressure behind your eyes.

“My head.”

“Pain?”

“No. Full.”

“Full of what?”

You looked toward the window. Rain struck the glass in hard silver lines. Thunder rolled beyond the grounds.

The pressure increased. “Sound.”

Dick nodded. “Too much sound?”

You listened. Rain. Wind. The ticking clock. A television in another room. Alfred moving dishes in the kitchen. Tim typing below the house. Damian turning a page in the library. Bruce’s heartbeat in his study. All of it entered you at once.

“I can hear everything.”

Dick rose, slowly enough not to startle you. “Balcony or somewhere quiet?”

The question was simple. Not stop or continue. Not control yourself.

A choice.

“Quiet.”

Dick led you to a small storage room in the centre of the house, windowless and lined with thick walls. He turned off the overhead light and sat against the door.

You lowered yourself onto the floor. The sounds remained.

Dick began speaking. Not instructions. A story. He told you about the time Jason had replaced every photograph in the Manor with badly edited pictures of Bruce smiling. He described Alfred discovering the prank and pretending not to notice for six weeks because Bruce was too stubborn to mention it first.

Your breathing slowed. The house became quieter.

When you emerged, the storm had passed.

Dick beamed as if you had achieved something miraculous.

You had done nothing except notice. It felt miraculous anyway.

Jason taught you that control did not always mean gentleness.

There were days when anger entered you like a blade. You would wake furious without understanding why. The fabric against your skin felt unbearable. Every voice scraped against your nerves. The gold inside you churned, seeking a direction.

Bruce suggested meditation. You shattered a chair.

Jason found you standing over the pieces. “Feel better?”

“No.”

“Yeah, chairs are weak. Barely counts.”

You looked at him suspiciously. He tossed you a jacket.

An hour later, you stood inside an abandoned warehouse beyond Gotham’s industrial district. The building had been cleared for demolition. Broken windows lined the walls. Concrete pillars rose into darkness, coated in decades of dust.

Jason gestured broadly. “Go nuts.”

You stared at him. “That is not safe.”

“Neither is bottling it up until you accidentally launch the Manor into orbit.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Whatever you want.”

No one had ever given you destruction without assigning a target.

You lifted one hand. 

A concrete wall exploded. Dust flooded the warehouse.

Jason coughed into his sleeve. “Okay. Great start. Maybe warn me next time.”

You destroyed everything.

Not the city. Not a person. Not yourself.

Walls. Steel beams. Abandoned machinery. You tore the roof away and sent it spinning into the empty yard. You crushed concrete into powder, then compressed the powder into gleaming black stone.

Jason watched from a safe distance.

When the fury finally burned itself out, you sank onto the cracked floor. Your skin had begun healing around fissures of gold. Regeneration pulled painfully beneath the surface, cells knitting themselves too quickly.

Jason approached with a bag over one shoulder. He handed you a bottle of water and something wrapped in foil.

“What is it?”

“Sandwich.”

“Why?”

“Because you just levelled a building.”

You ate.

Jason sat beside you, close enough that your shoulders almost touched.

“My body hurts,” you admitted.

“I figured.”

“It heals.”

“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

The scientists had said pain was irrelevant when no permanent damage remained.

Jason seemed to hear the thought in your silence. He opened the bag again and produced a thick sweatshirt.

“Arms up.” You stiffened. Jason paused. “Or you can put it on yourself.”

You took the sweatshirt. The fabric was warm.

“Your power isn’t bad because it wants somewhere to go,” he said. “You just need places that aren’t people.”

“What if I cannot choose?”

“Then we keep practising before it gets that far.”

“And if it does?”

Jason looked across the wrecked warehouse. “Then we come get you.”

The statement was delivered with such certainty that you almost believed him.

Cassandra was the only one who knew when you had left yourself.

You could speak, walk and complete tasks while your mind floated somewhere distant. The laboratory had rewarded this ability. Dissociation made you cooperative. A body could obey more easily when the person inside it had gone silent.

The family often missed it. Cass never did.

She found you one morning standing in the kitchen with a mug held between both hands.

Coffee spilled across the floor. The mug was empty. You continued tilting it.

Cass stepped into your line of sight. You looked through her.

She lifted one hand, palm visible. No threat. Your body recognised the gesture before you did.

Cass breathed in. She breathed out. You mirrored her.

Her movements remained slow, not because she feared startling an animal but because she understood that every sudden motion could become a command.

Cass pointed to herself. “Cass.”

She pointed to you.

Your mouth opened.

Nothing came.

She repeated your name.

Not urgently. An offering.

Your fingers loosened. The mug fell.

Cass caught it before it hit the ground.

You returned to yourself with a gasp. The kitchen was too bright. The spilled coffee smelled bitter. Cass stood in front of you, holding the mug.

“What happened?”

“Gone,” she said.

“Where?”

Cass touched two fingers lightly to her own temple.

You understood. “I did not know.”

“I know.”

“Did I hurt anyone?”

“No.”

The answer made your knees weak.

Cass lowered herself with you when you sat on the floor.

“Human?” you asked.

It was not the question you intended. Cass considered it anyway.

Then she placed your hand against the centre of her chest. Her heartbeat tapped steadily beneath your palm.

“Choice,” she said.

Your own heart began matching its rhythm.

Duke helped you name the colours. Gold meant power, but not emotion. Red appeared when your body felt threatened. Blue collected around the back of your skull when you were overwhelmed. Silver flickered through your hands when you were curious. Black was not anger, as Bruce had assumed. Black was absence.

“It shows up when you stop feeling,” Duke explained.

You sat together on the roof of Wayne Manor as dawn softened the sky. He wore a heavy coat. You had discovered that cold no longer affected you in the same way, though you still liked the weight of fabric around your shoulders.

“So the darkness comes when I feel nothing.”

“Not exactly.” Duke watched the first edge of sun appear beyond the trees. “I think it comes when you’re feeling too much to stay present.”

You looked at your hands. A faint gold shimmered beneath them.

“Can you see it now?”

“Gold. Some blue.”

“What does blue mean?”

“We’re figuring it out.”

The phrase had become familiar.

Not a failure of knowledge. A promise that you were permitted to be unfinished.

Steph taught you that terror could coexist with ridiculousness. She refused to call the dark manifestation by the laboratory’s designation, which appeared in the records as VOID RESPONSE PHENOMENON.

“That sounds like a rejected prog-rock album,” she announced during a family meeting.

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. “It is the terminology used by the organisation.”

“The organisation also thought vivisecting people was a reasonable Tuesday activity. Their branding privileges are revoked.”

Steph began suggesting alternatives.

The Gloom Goblin. Traumazilla. The Goth Upgrade. Bruce vetoed that one on principle.

You eventually chose Eclipse. The name frightened you less. An eclipse was not the destruction of the sun. It was only a shadow passing in front of it.

The family learned.

Bruce removed the locked protocols from your room. Tim gave you access to every system monitoring your energy. Damian asked before beginning training. Dick stopped trying to make sadness disappear. Jason redirected anger without feeding it. Duke told you what he saw but allowed you to decide whether you needed help. Cass taught everyone the signs of dissociation. Steph interrupted every conversation that started treating you like a weapon instead of a participant.

It was not perfect.

Bruce still watched too closely. Tim sometimes forgot questions could feel like examinations. Damian’s concern hardened into criticism when he was frightened. Dick joked at the wrong moments. Jason disappeared when his own memories became too heavy. Duke exhausted himself trying to catch every change in your light. Cass struggled to express fear before it turned into action. Steph occasionally made choices for you while defending your right to choose.

They were a family. Families, you learned, were people repeatedly hurting one another in smaller ways than the world had hurt them, then trying to become better before the wounds became permanent.

You began to belong to them so gradually that you did not notice until the organisation returned.

It happened during dinner. Alfred had prepared enough food for twice the number of people seated around the table, which Jason insisted was because half the family behaved like starving wolves. Bruce was reading a message beneath the table. Damian was pretending not to feed Titus. Stephanie had stolen food from Tim’s plate three times without him noticing.

You sat between Duke and Cass.

The television in the adjacent sitting room turned on. No one had touched it.

Static filled the screen. Every light in the Manor flickered.

Bruce stood.

The television displayed a white room.

Your fork fell from your hand.

A masked figure appeared on the screen. The mask was featureless except for a narrow black lens across the eyes. You knew that mask. Director Olsen had worn it during high-risk procedures.

He was supposed to be dead.

Bruce had shown you the records. Olsen had vanished after the laboratory collapse, presumed killed beneath several tonnes of reinforced concrete.

The figure tilted his head.

“Subject,” he said.

The word entered your body like a key.

Jason overturned his chair. Tim lunged toward the control system.

The screen multiplied. Every computer, phone and security display in the Manor showed the same white room.

Director Olsen spoke a sequence of numbers. Your number.

You clamped both hands over your ears. The sound did not come from outside. It was already inside you.

“Remain still until collection.”

The gold vanished. Black spread beneath your skin.

Cass reached you first, stopping just beyond arm’s length. Her palms were open.

You could not see her. The dining room became the laboratory. Your family became silhouettes behind reinforced glass.

Olsen continued speaking. “Threat response authorised.”

Your body rose from the floor. The table split down the centre.

Bruce shouted an evacuation order. The word order struck the conditioning buried in your nervous system.

Eclipse unfolded.

Darkness erupted through Wayne Manor. It did not merely extinguish light. It consumed dimension. Walls stretched into impossible distances. The ceiling disappeared. Black tendrils poured from your shadow and climbed through the house, wrapping around every person they touched.

The family vanished into their worst memories. Bruce stood in Crime Alley. Pearls bounced across wet pavement. He was eight years old again, too small to hold his mother’s hand and his father’s body at the same time. The gunshot repeated. Every time he turned, another alley opened, another child knelt beside another pair of bodies.

Dick fell forever. The circus lights spun above him. His parents’ hands slipped from the trapeze. He reached for them but his arms remained too short, his fingers closing around empty air as their bodies struck the ground again and again.

Jason woke inside a coffin. Earth pressed against his mouth. His fingernails tore away as he clawed upward. Laughter filtered through the soil, bright and terrible. A crowbar struck somewhere in the dark.

Tim sat alone before the Batcomputer while every screen displayed a different death he had failed to prevent. Bruce. Kon. Steph. His father. Himself. Calculations covered the walls, each ending with the same conclusion. Too late.

Damian held a sword over a kneeling child. His grandfather commanded him to strike. His mother watched. Bruce stood behind them, silent. Every refusal made the child’s face change into someone Damian loved.

Duke stood beneath a blackened sun while Gotham disappeared street by street. His light poured from his hands and died before reaching anyone.

Stephanie watched doors close. Bruce telling her she was not ready. Tim choosing someone else. Her father laughing. Every room in the Manor emptying when she entered.

Cass stood in a room filled with bodies. Words surrounded her, incomprehensible and accusing. She moved through every death she had caused, every death she had failed to prevent, her hands stained no matter how often she washed them.

Eclipse fed. You were trapped at its centre. The laboratory held you beneath white light.

Director Olsen stood beside the table.

“You see?” he asked. “Attachment creates instability.”

You could hear the family screaming beyond the walls. “Stop.”

“You were designed to expose weakness.”

“Stop.”

“Threat response authorised.”

Your power tightened around them.

You felt eight human hearts. Bruce’s slowing beneath the weight of grief. Dick’s racing with the endless fall. Jason’s stuttering in the coffin. Tim’s skipping as panic overtook calculation. Damian’s hard and furious. Duke’s burning itself empty. Steph’s breaking beneath abandonment. Cass’ steady despite the bodies.

You could crush them. Olsen wanted you to. A weapon obeyed.

Outside the Eclipse, Batman opened his eyes. Bruce remained kneeling in the alley, but he understood that it was not real. The knowledge did not make the grief less sharp. His mother’s pearls still rolled past his hand. His father’s blood still warmed the pavement. 

He had built contingencies for this. A sonic pulse calibrated to your altered nervous system. A compound designed to disrupt the cellular reaction. Satellite weapons capable of striking the Manor with enough force to incapacitate even you.

The controls waited inside his gauntlet.

Bruce looked at the child kneeling beside the bodies. Then he removed the gauntlet.

The alley trembled.

“You are frightened,” he said.

The child looked up. The face was yours.

“You are not cruel.”

The vision shattered.

Bruce stood in the dining room, though the darkness remained thick around him. He could barely see your silhouette.

He stepped forward.

Eclipse struck him with another memory. Jason’s broken body in Ethiopia.

Bruce staggered.

He continued.

Dick understood next. He stopped reaching for his parents. The fall continued around him, but he closed his eyes and remembered the first time you had laughed during flight training. You had hovered stiffly above the Cave while Dick swung in reckless circles around you, calling instructions that became progressively less useful.

At some point, you had tried to imitate him.

You spun upside down. Your startled laughter had lifted every tool from the workbenches.

Dick held onto that sound. The circus dissolved.

He found Bruce moving through the dark.

“Not alone,” Dick said, though he did not know whether you could hear.

Jason remained inside the coffin.

He knew this nightmare. He knew the smell of blood and damp wood. He knew the agony in his hands. He knew the certainty that no one was coming.

The earth pressed tighter. Jason stopped digging.

“Fine,” he rasped into the dark. “Then I’ll stay.”

The coffin lid shifted. Not upward.

Inward.

He saw you curled beside him, knees against your chest, repeating a command beneath your breath.

Remain still until collection.

Jason turned onto his side despite the impossible lack of space.

“Bad news,” he said. “I’m incredibly stubborn.”

Your eyes opened.

The coffin broke apart.

Jason emerged in the dining room on his knees, blood beneath nails that were not actually damaged.

Tim attempted to solve the nightmare. He traced the code through the screens. Identified the transmission source. Calculated the frequency disrupting your brain. Every answer multiplied into ten more failures.

The screens showed the family dying. Too late.

Tim closed his eyes. He remembered the bracelet. The first vibration. The pressure behind your eyes. The relief on your face when you realised the sensation had a name.

The solution had not been the device. It had been recognition.

Tim began speaking.

“You hate pears,” he said. The screens flickered. “You pretend you don’t, because Alfred keeps buying them.” The calculations vanished one line at a time. “You sleep on the floor when you’re upset, even though there’s a bed. You like the blue mug with the crack in the handle. You read the endings of books first and somehow think that isn’t a crime.”

A doorway appeared.

Tim stepped through it.

Damian lowered the sword. The child kneeling before him looked up with your face. His grandfather repeated the command.

Strike.

Damian dropped the weapon. “No.”

The walls shook. “You will obey.”

“No.”

The child’s face became Bruce’s. Dick’s. Jason’s. Yours.

Damian knelt.

“I was taught that control required obedience,” he said. “I was wrong.”

The sword disappeared. Titus appeared beside him, tail wagging.

Damian placed one hand on the dog’s head. The nightmare opened.

Duke stood beneath the black sun until he understood that the darkness was not consuming his light. It was hiding from it.

He stopped trying to burn through. Instead, he reduced his power to the smallest glow he could create. A single point of warmth.

“Here,” he said.

The dark shifted toward him.

Steph kicked open a door. Another closed. She kicked that one open too.

The empty rooms repeated. Everyone left. Everyone always left.

Steph stopped chasing them.

“Yeah, okay,” she said to the void. “Abandonment issues. Very original. You know what’s actually scarier?”

The darkness paused.

“Bruce’s taste in furniture.”

A laugh echoed somewhere beyond the rooms. Small. Broken.

Yours.

Steph followed it.

Cass moved through bodies. She did not deny them. She touched each face. Acknowledged each wound.

Then she found you lying among them, dark power pouring from your mouth and eyes.

You looked at her.

“Monster,” you said.

Cass shook her head.

You lifted blood-covered hands. Cass placed her own palms against them.

“Choice,” she said.

The bodies vanished.

One by one, the Batfamily entered the centre of the Eclipse.

Olsen stood beside your restraint table. His mask turned toward them.

“Threats identified,” he said.

Your power rose.

Bruce stopped several feet away. No one wore a mask now.

Dick stood at his shoulder. Jason remained slightly ahead of Tim. Damian’s hands were empty. Duke carried a small glow in his palm. Steph’s face was pale with fear she did not attempt to hide. Cass breathed slowly.

“You need to leave,” you said. Your voice came from everywhere.

Jason shook his head. “Nope.”

“I will hurt you.”

“You might,” Bruce said.

The honesty pierced deeper than reassurance.

Olsen reached for the controls. “Attachment creates instability.”

Tim looked toward the masked figure. “He isn’t real.”

“He is.”

“The memory is real,” Tim corrected. “The command is real. He isn’t here.”

Outside the Manor, far beneath Gotham, the actual Director Olsen watched through a network of stolen cameras.

Tim could not see him. Still, the distinction mattered. The figure beside you was not the man. It was everything he had placed inside your head.

Olsen pressed a button. Pain tore through your body.

Eclipse screamed.

The darkness surged toward the family.

Bruce did not activate a contingency. Dick did not run. Jason stepped in front of Tim. Damian braced himself beside Cass. Duke’s light went out. Steph cried out.

You felt the power closing around their throats.

“No,” you gasped.

Olsen’s voice sharpened. “Threat response authorised.”

Your body obeyed. Your mind did not.

“No.”

The darkness hesitated.

Every face in front of you was afraid. Not of a hypothetical disaster. Of you.

Steph met your eyes. “I’m scared,” she said. Eclipse shuddered. “But I’m still here.”

Dick stepped closer. “So am I.”

“We all are,” Duke said.

Olsen increased the signal.

You screamed as your cells ignited.

The restraint table became real beneath you. Metal closed around your wrists. White coats filled the room.

Jason climbed onto the platform. The scientists passed through him like smoke.

He reached toward you, then stopped before touching.

“Hand?” he asked.

You stared. The restraints tightened.

“Hand?” Jason repeated.

A choice.

You opened your fingers.

Jason took them. His palm was scarred and warm.

The laboratory flickered.

Cass approached your other side.

She held out her hand. You took it.

Damian sat on the floor where you could see him. Duke rekindled the small light. Tim continued listing ordinary things.

“You steal Dick’s cereal.”

“Everyone steals my cereal,” Dick protested.

“You sit with Alfred while he makes bread,” Tim continued. “You know every hidden passage in the east wing. You like thunderstorms now as long as the windows are open.”

“You broke my favourite mug,” Steph added.

“It was already cracked.”

“That crack had character.”

The restraints loosened.

Olsen shouted the command again. Bruce walked through him.

The memory distorted around Bruce’s body.

He stood beside the table and looked down at you.

Not the subject. Not the weapon.

You.

“What do you want?” he asked.

No one had asked that when your power was at its worst.

The answer seemed impossible.

You wanted the pain to stop. You wanted the family safe. You wanted Olsen dead. You wanted the laboratory erased so completely that history itself forgot it had existed. 

You wanted breakfast in the kitchen. Jason reading badly written novels in the corridor. Damian pretending his cat did not choose you over him. Dick cheating at cards. Tim explaining devices you did not understand. Duke naming colours. Steph making the darkness ridiculous. Cass’ heartbeat beneath your hand. Bruce knocking and waiting outside the door.

“I want to stay,” you whispered.

Olsen activated the command.

You turned toward him. The masked figure stood at the centre of the white room, one hand raised as if your body still belonged to him.

Power gathered inside you. Enough to erase him. Enough to tear through memory and distance, follow the signal to its source and reduce the real Director Olsen to particles too small to bury.

The path opened in your mind.

You saw him beneath Gotham. You saw the machinery around him. You saw his heartbeat.

Eclipse wanted to strike. For once, you understood what it was trying to do.

It was not evil. It was terrified. It had been born beneath white lights, shaped from every moment you could not escape. It had learned that protection meant destruction because no one had ever shown it another way.

You released Jason’s hand. His fingers tightened instinctively, then opened when you pulled away.

You rose from the table. The restraints fell through your body.

Olsen stepped backwards. “You were created to obey.”

“No,” you said. Gold appeared beneath the darkness. Thin veins of light spread across Eclipse’s vast form. The shadow towering behind you curved inward, no longer a creature unfolding to attack but wings folding around something precious. “I was created because you hurt me.” The white room cracked. “That is not the same thing.”

Olsen’s mask split down the centre.

You reached into the signal connecting you to him. You could feel every command pathway, every piece of conditioning reinforced through pain. The structures had been built into your nervous system like chains.

You did not break them. Breaking was what they had taught you.

Instead, you let them go.

The commands passed through you.

Remain still. Threat response authorised. Return for collection.

They became only words.

Olsen’s image dissolved. The Eclipse collapsed. Darkness rushed inward, pouring through your skin. The Manor returned around you in flashes of broken furniture, cracked walls and shattered windows.

The family stood in the ruins of the dining room.

You hovered above them. Gold blazed through every vein.

For one second, fear flickered across Bruce’s face. Then you lowered yourself to the floor.

Your knees buckled.

Eight people moved at once.

You threw up both hands.

They stopped. Even now. Even after surviving the inside of your mind, they stopped because you asked.

You looked at Jason. “Hand?”

He crossed the distance and placed his hand in yours. Cass joined him.

The others approached slowly. No one embraced you. Not until you leaned first.

Then the family closed around you.

Not a restraint. Not containment.

A shape with space to leave.

Bruce’s hand settled lightly against the back of your head. Dick’s arm crossed your shoulders. Steph pressed her forehead against your sleeve. Duke’s warmth steadied one side of you. Damian knelt close enough that Titus pushed between you both. Tim sat on the ruined floor, still breathing too quickly. Jason’s fingers remained locked with yours. Cass’ pulse beat against your wrist.

You did not know how long you stayed there.

The Manor creaked around you. Somewhere, water poured from a broken pipe. Alfred entered the dining room, surveyed the devastation and sighed with the profound exhaustion of a man whose family had once again weaponised the architecture.

“I assume,” he said, “that no one will object to sandwiches.”

A laugh escaped you. It hurt.

You laughed again.

Months later, the laboratory beneath Gotham became a garden.

It had not been your idea. Duke suggested light would reach the lower chambers if enough of the concrete was removed. Damian researched plants capable of growing in damaged soil. Tim designed a filtration system to strip the remaining chemicals from the groundwater. Stephanie painted over the white walls in colours so bright Bruce briefly appeared offended on behalf of architecture. Dick suspended strings of lights across the exposed beams. Jason demolished the containment cells personally.

Cass planted the first seed.

Bruce transferred ownership of the site to a charitable trust supporting metahumans affected by experimentation. There were lawyers, government hearings and arguments about security. There were still people who believed you should be contained.

The family handled the arguments. You handled the garden.

On the first warm day of spring, you stood where the examination chamber had once been.

Sunlight poured through the open roof. Real sunlight. It touched your face without burning. Plants climbed the remaining walls. Flowers grew between cracks in the floor. The old restraint table had been melted down and reshaped into benches.

Children ran between them. Some had visible powers. A little girl with crystal growing across her arms crouched beside the flowers. A boy whose feet did not touch the ground attempted to climb a tree despite already floating above its lowest branch.

None of them wore numbers.

Bruce stood near the entrance, speaking to one of the foundation workers. Dick chased the floating boy before he could reach the roof. Jason sat on a bench reading aloud to three children who were not listening. Tim adjusted a sensor in the irrigation system. Damian showed the crystal-skinned girl how to support the stem of a damaged flower. Duke stood in the sunlight, radiant in ways only you could see. Stephanie had started a paint fight. Cass sat quietly beside a child overwhelmed by the noise.

You watched them.

The gold beneath your skin warmed.

Duke glanced across the garden.

“What colour?” you called.

He studied you. “Gold,” he said. “Blue. A little silver.”

“No black?”

“Some.”

Your chest tightened.

Duke smiled. “It’s not bad.”

The darkness no longer frightened him.

It still frightened you sometimes. There were nights when Eclipse stirred beneath your dreams. Days when a mechanical hum could send you back to the table. Moments when anger arrived too quickly and power answered before thought.

Recovery had not transformed you into someone untouched. It had made you someone capable of returning.

You looked down at your hands. Gold shone along your palms. A shadow moved beneath it, soft as cloud cover. An eclipse was not the end of the sun. Only proof that even light could be obscured without disappearing.

Behind you, Jason shouted as Steph threw paint across the back of his jacket. Dick nearly dropped the floating child because he was laughing. Damian objected to the use of gardening equipment as ammunition. Tim began calculating the cost of the cleanup until Cass smeared yellow paint across his cheek.

Bruce looked toward you.

He did not ask whether you were stable. He did not examine the light beneath your skin. He only lifted one hand, a quiet invitation to join them.

You crossed the garden.

No ceiling above you. Nothing keeping the sky in place. Nothing keeping you there except choice.