gotham trauma with dc men
characters roy harper, wally west here, hal jordan here, kon-el kent here, john constantine here
content gn! reader, 'babe'/'baby' used, trauma recovery, childhood trauma, hurt/comfort, child exposure to violence/crime, scarecrow/fear gas mention, hostage situation mention, brief refs to roy's addiction/recovery
author's note just noting here that for some of these characters i am not the most well versed with their lore/stories/etc. so please forgive any creative liberties taken! (also note they may come across as ooc)
Roy thinks he has a pretty solid tolerance for “weird life stories.” He’s been an addict. He’s been a hero. He’s been a sidekick. He’s been abandoned, judged, used, underestimated, and dragged through the emotional wood chipper enough times that he generally assumes nothing can truly shock him anymore.
Then he dates someone from Gotham. And you humble him immediately.
The first time it happens, it’s so casual he genuinely thinks he misheard you.
You’re both making dinner. Roy is barefoot in your kitchen, sleeves pushed up, complaining dramatically about how your knives are “criminally dull” and how this is “how people lose fingers, babe.” You’re stirring sauce at the stove, completely relaxed.
The news is playing quietly in the background. Some anchor says something about Arkham security upgrades.
“Nothing. Just funny they’re pretending Arkham security upgrades ever work.”
Roy laughs, because yeah, okay, fair.
Then you add, “My school had to evacuate once because Scarecrow escaped and they thought he was hiding in the boiler room.”
Roy stops chopping onions. He turns his head very slowly. “Your school had to do what?”
You don’t even look up. “Evacuate.”
“Because Scarecrow was in the boiler room?”
“They thought he was. It ended up being two henchmen and a janitor having a nervous breakdown.”
Roy sets the knife down. Very carefully. “Babe.”
“Why did you say that like you were telling me your school ran out of printer paper?”
You blink at him. “It wasn’t that bad.”
Roy’s expression does this complicated thing—half disbelief, half grief, half “I am going to fistfight an entire city.”
Yes, that is three halves. Roy is emotionally bad at math in the moment.
“Not that bad,” he repeats.
You shrug. “We got out early.”
“Oh, cool, yeah, silver lining. Early dismissal because of domestic terrorism.”
And you laugh, because to you it is kind of funny.
That’s when you realise he’s actually shaken.
Not angry at you. Never at you. But there’s something raw in his face, something unsettled and protective and deeply sad.
Because Roy understands laughing at pain. He’s practically fluent in it. He knows exactly what it looks like when someone wraps barbed wire in a joke and calls it a personality.
And, suddenly, he sees it in you.
After that, the floodgates open accidentally.
Not because you sit him down and decide to tell him everything.
You keep dropping the most horrifying Gotham anecdotes in the middle of completely normal conversations.
Roy will say, “I hated cafeteria food as a kid.”
And you’ll go, “Same. Ours got shut down once because the lunch lady was using expired meat from a Falcone front.”
Roy stares. You continue eating cereal.
Or he’ll complain about traffic.
You’ll say, “At least your bus route wasn’t rerouted because Killer Croc was in the sewers again.”
Roy slowly lowers his coffee cup. “Again?”
You tilt your head. “Yeah?”
Roy leans back in his chair, staring at the ceiling like he’s asking every god, ghost, and Green Lantern battery in the universe for patience.
“Baby, I need you to understand that sewers are not supposed to have recurring boss fights.”
The worst one, though, is when he realises you don’t categorise these things as trauma.
To you, trauma is something dramatic. Something cinematic. Something with rain and screaming and blood on white tile.
Gotham taught you that anything you survived quietly didn’t count.
So when you mention being held hostage during a bank robbery at twelve, you say it like this: “Oh, yeah, that bank used to have really good lollipops. Shame about the hostage thing.”
You look up from your phone. “What?”
“It was before high school.”
Roy rubs both hands over his face. “Okay. Okay, I’m gonna need a second.”
You immediately get defensive, because that’s another thing Gotham gave you: the instinct to make your pain smaller before anyone else can decide it’s inconvenient.
“It’s not a big deal. Nobody died.”
Roy looks at you then, really looks at you, and his voice gets quiet.
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
And that lands harder than you expect.
Because Roy isn’t saying it like a slogan. He isn’t trying to therapy-speak you into a breakthrough. He just sounds… certain.
Like this is a fact. Like gravity. Like sunrise. Like you were a kid, and it should not have happened.
Roy starts noticing things after that.
The way you always choose the seat facing the door. The way your whole body goes tense when someone laughs too loudly behind you. The way you know how to identify exits in every building before you even know where the bathrooms are.
The way you never fully relax during city-wide celebrations, parades, festivals, or anything involving balloons, confetti, clowns, riddles, masks, green smoke, purple suits, question marks, blackouts, or “surprise entertainment.”
Roy notices how you freeze when someone says, “Don’t worry, it’s safe.”
Because in Gotham, that sentence usually meant it was about to get very much not safe.
He doesn’t call you out in front of people.
Roy has been pitied before. Handled. Judged. Watched like he was one bad day from shattering.
He refuses to do that to you.
You go to a restaurant, and he automatically gives you the chair with the better view. You enter a crowded room, and his hand brushes yours, just enough to remind you he’s there. There’s a sudden loud noise, and he doesn’t say, “You okay?” in that big, obvious way that makes everyone look.
He just bumps your shoulder and murmurs, “With me?”
And you can nod or squeeze his hand or make a joke.
Roy is big on choice. He knows what it feels like when life takes too many of them away.
The first time you have a nightmare around him, you expect him to panic.
You jolt awake, breath caught in your throat, hand already reaching for something that isn’t there. A weapon. A flashlight. A lock. Proof that you are not back in Gotham.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Hey, it’s me.”
You’re embarrassed before you’re even fully conscious.
Roy’s face crumples a little. “Don’t apologise.”
“You’re allowed to wake me up.”
He doesn’t grab you right away. He doesn’t cage you in affection, even though every protective instinct in him is screaming to hold you.
He asks, “Can I touch you?”
And when you nod, he pulls you in slowly, one arm around your back, one hand resting between your shoulder blades.
Grounding. Warm. Present.
You mutter into his shirt, “It was stupid.”
Roy presses his cheek to your hair. “Was it Gotham stupid or regular stupid?”
Despite yourself, you laugh.
He smiles faintly. “There you are.”
He never forces you to talk about it, but if you do, he listens.
Roy is a good listener when it matters. He’ll joke through his own pain until the room catches fire, sure, but with yours? He becomes steady in a way that surprises even him.
You tell him about your old apartment building. The one with three locks and bars on the windows.
You tell him about the sirens. About learning which streets not to walk down. About the way adults used to say, “That’s Gotham,” as if that explained everything. About how moving away felt less like freedom and more like waiting for the city to realise you’d escaped.
He holds your hand and traces his thumb over your knuckles.
Finally, he says, “I hate that you had to become tough that young.”
You don’t know what to do with that.
Roy catches it. He always catches it now.
“That shrug,” he says gently, “is gonna kill me one day.”
“The ‘I’m pretending this didn’t hurt because I don’t know what happens if I admit it did’ shrug.”
He gives you a crooked smile.
“Yeah. I’ve got one too.”
That’s part of why it works with Roy.
He doesn’t stand outside your pain looking in. He sits down beside it, battered and familiar, like, Yeah, this neighbourhood sucks. I know a shortcut out, though.
He tells you pieces of his own story, too.
Not all at once. Not like a trade. Not “you showed me yours, so here’s mine.”
But slowly. Honestly. He tells you about addiction. About loneliness. About making mistakes people never let him forget. About the kind of shame that follows you like a shadow with teeth.
And you realise Roy isn’t shocked because he thinks you’re broken. He’s shocked because he knows broken systems love to make survivors think they’re the problem.
That makes you feel safer than you expected.
Roy becomes incredibly determined to give you normal experiences.
Not in a cheesy “let’s heal your inner child with Pinterest activities” way.
He starts a mental list called Things Gotham Probably Ruined For My Partner But I’m Built Different And Also Very Handsome.
You do not know the official title. You only know that Roy suddenly starts planning oddly specific dates.
A picnic in a park where nothing explodes. A carnival with no villain attacks, where he wins you a stuffed animal and then acts like he personally conquered Olympus. A museum date where the only crime is the gift shop pricing. A quiet movie night where the villain on-screen laughs maniacally and Roy immediately turns to you and says, “Too Gotham?”
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes you surprise yourself.
Sometimes you have to leave early.
Roy never makes you feel bad about it.
He just says, “Cool, new plan,” and pivots like it costs him nothing.
You leave a crowded street fair once because a performer’s laugh hits too close to old memories. You’re shaking, furious with yourself, already apologising.
Roy walks you three blocks away, buys you fries from a tiny corner place, and sits with you on a curb under a streetlamp.
You say, “I ruined the date.”
Roy looks genuinely offended. “Excuse me, these are elite fries.”
“You think I share elite fries with just anyone?”
He nudges your knee with his. “You didn’t ruin anything. We changed locations. Very mysterious. Very sexy. Honestly, we’re thriving.”
That’s Roy’s gift. He doesn’t deny the hurt. He just refuses to let it be the only thing in the room.
He gives you laughter without using it to erase what happened.
There’s one night where it really hits him, though.
You’re both half-asleep, tangled together, and you mumble something about how quiet his place is.
Roy smiles sleepily. “Good quiet or weird quiet?”
“Good,” you say. “I used to not like quiet. In Gotham, quiet usually meant something was wrong.”
You’re too tired to notice.
You keep going, voice soft and distant. “Sirens were better. At least then you knew where the danger was.”
Roy doesn’t sleep for a while after that. He just holds you and stares into the dark, feeling something ache in his chest.
Because he’s loved you for your sharpness. Your humour. Your eerie calm under pressure. Your ability to pack for emergencies like a doomsday prepper with a cute jacket.
But now he understands those things differently.
And he loves you enough to be angry that you ever needed it.
“You’re thinking too loud.”
He lets out a soft laugh. “Sorry.”
“You’re doing the thing.”
“Where you get sad about me.”
Roy shifts so he can see your face.
“I’m not sad about you,” he says. “I’m sad for what happened to you. That’s different.”
Then, barely: “I don’t want you to think I’m messed up.”
Roy’s expression softens so completely it almost undoes you.
“Baby,” he says, “I’m a recovering addict with abandonment issues and a bow. I would be the last person on earth with room to judge.”
“And for the record? I don’t think you’re messed up. I think you survived a city that asks way too much of kids. I think you’re funny and stubborn and terrifyingly good in a crisis. I think you deserve mornings where nothing bad happens.”
That line stays with you.
Mornings where nothing bad happens.
Roy starts giving you those.
Soft ones. Coffee ones. Sunlight-on-the-floor ones.
Him burning toast and cursing like the toaster personally betrayed him. You wearing his shirt while he makes breakfast badly but confidently.
He dances around the kitchen with you just because there’s music playing and because no one is chasing you and because the door is locked and because the world, for once, has the decency to stay gentle.
And yeah, sometimes the past still shows up.
Sometimes you flinch. Sometimes you joke too fast. Sometimes you say something horrifying and Roy has to take a lap around the room.
Like when you casually mention, “My childhood dentist was arrested for working with Black Mask.”
Roy, from across the room: “Your dentist?”
“Why is that your takeaway?”
“Gotham owes you financial compensation.”
Roy doesn’t try to rescue you from your past. He knows better. The past is not a burning building. You can’t kick down the door and carry someone out bridal-style while orchestral music plays.
Healing is messier. Less cinematic. More like sitting on the kitchen floor at 2 a.m. eating cereal because sleep didn’t work.
More like him saying, “Tell me one thing you can see.”
More like you whispering, “You.”
More like Roy smiling softly and saying, “Good. I’m here.”
He’s patient when you struggle with safety. He’s patient when peace feels suspicious. He’s patient when you don’t know how to be loved without bracing for impact.
Roy Harper loves actively. Loudly when you need it. Quietly when you can’t handle loud. He becomes the person who reminds you that survival was impressive, but it was never supposed to be your whole identity.
You are allowed to be more than what Gotham did to you. You are allowed to be silly. Soft. Needy. Annoying. Joyful. Bored. You are allowed to have problems like “Roy forgot to buy oat milk” instead of “the city may be under siege again.”
And Roy? Roy is honoured to witness every ordinary version of you.
The first time you say, “I feel safe here,” he nearly loses it.
He plays it cool, because he knows making a huge deal might scare the words back into your mouth.
So he just squeezes your hand and says, “Good.”
But later, when you’re asleep, he looks at you like you hung the moon with trembling hands.
Because to Roy, your trust is not small.
It is not something he takes lightly.
It is a miracle with teeth.
A brave little flame that survived Gotham’s rain.
And he will guard it with everything he has.
