#red lantern!reader

The pain was instant.

Your blood spoiled from the inside.

It boiled. It burned. It became something that did not belong in any living body, something crimson and vicious and starving. You remembered choking. You remembered your spine bowing off the deck. You remembered the first rush of flame tearing out of you, not like blood, not like plasma, not like anything medical or clean, but fire—thick, red, corrosive fire that ate through steel and kept burning in the cold silence beyond the breach in the hull.

After that, there were fragments.

Atrocitus. Ysmault. The Red Lantern Corps howling their oath like the universe deserved to hear how badly it had failed them.

“With blood and rage of crimson red, / We fill men’s souls with darkest dread, /  And twist your minds to pain and hate, / We’ll burn you all—that is your fate!”

You had said it until your throat split.

You had said it while your mind drowned.

You had said it with the rest of them, animalistic, furious, ruined, your thoughts reduced to red flashes: teeth, fire, betrayal, vengeance, more, more, more.

Then Atrocitus performed his ritual.

Shamanistic magic, old as hate. He restored your mind without dimming the rage. He gave you language again, memory again, the terrible gift of understanding exactly what you had become.

“You will be useful,” he told you.

That was the closest thing to mercy anyone had offered.

So you became useful.

You learned to hold the flame behind your teeth.

You learned to make weapons out of it: crude axes, jagged hooks, spears that burned through armour and bone. You learned not to waste energy on beautiful constructs. Rage had no patience for beauty. Rage wanted edges. Rage wanted impact. Rage wanted the exact moment an enemy’s arrogance turned into fear.

You learned to read minds.

Not gently. Never gently.

The ring did not knock. It did not ask. It ripped emotion open by the root and showed you the rot underneath. Fear. Guilt. Cruelty. Hatred. Pain. It sang to you in every sentient creature close enough to burn.

Most minds made you sick.

Then you came to Gotham.

And Gotham, the little gothic disaster planet of a city that it was, sang like a wound.

You arrived in winter, under a sky bruised purple by storm clouds, following the trail of alien weapons smuggled through human hands. Your ring had detected traces of yellow fear-energy, green will residue, and something older: a black-market shipment moving through the Narrows.

Gotham greeted you with sleet, sirens, and men laughing inside a warehouse where children were locked in cages.

That was your first mistake.

You listened.

The ring heard their thoughts before you entered.

Profit. Flesh. Power. No consequences.

Your rage rose so quickly that the world went bright at the edges.

You landed through the roof in a shower of broken glass and screaming metal. Red flame burst around your body, wings of heat that turned the sleet to steam. Men raised guns. One fired. The bullet melted before it touched you.

“Run,” you told the children.

They stared.

You turned toward the men.

None of them ran fast enough.

The fire came out of you in a roar.

Not blood. Not vomit. Flame. Terrible and alive. It struck the concrete at their feet, climbed the walls, and crawled like an animal toward the weapons crates. You shaped a blade from it—ugly, broad, made for splitting rather than cutting—and slammed it into the floor hard enough to crack the foundation.

The men dropped their guns.

Good.

You wanted them conscious when they felt fear.

You wanted—

Something sharp struck the back of your hand.

Your construct scattered.

A blade landed between your fingers and the nearest man’s throat. A sword. Not thrown to kill. Thrown to stop.

A figure dropped from the rafters.

Black, green, gold. A cape like a shadow with teeth. A domino mask over eyes that were far too steady for someone standing between you and vengeance.

“Enough,” he said.

His voice was young, but not childish. Cold, but not empty. Sharpened by discipline until even anger had to stand at attention.

You bared your teeth. “Move.”

“No.”

The ring surged.

Mind. Read. Break. Burn.

You looked at him, and the ring reached.

Most minds opened like wounds.

His opened like a locked room full of knives.

You saw a desert under a pitiless sun. A child holding a blade too large for his hand. Blood on stone. A woman’s voice like silk wrapped around a command. A man’s absence shaped like a god. Green water. Resurrection. Rage forced into obedience. Rage punished. Rage perfected. Rage made quiet because quiet things survived longer.

Then the image vanished.

The boy—no, not a boy, not quite, though something in him had been made old far too early—tilted his chin.

“Do not enter my mind again.”

Your flames faltered.

Not because he had threatened you.

Because he had known.

No one knew when the ring looked, not unless they were psychic, magical, trained, or already living behind walls so reinforced that intrusion felt like weather on stone.

You narrowed your eyes. “You are standing between me and monsters.”

“I am standing between you and becoming one.”

Your rage snapped forward so hard the air cracked.

The men behind him whimpered.

“You don’t know what they did.”

“I know enough.” He did not look away. “And I know what you want to do.”

The fire licked up your arms. “Then move.”

His sword came up. “No.”

It should have made you angrier.

It did.

But beneath that anger was something worse.

Recognition.

The ring whispered his rage to you, not loud and volcanic like yours, but compressed. Buried. Dense as a star collapsed in on itself. This was not the rage of someone untouched by consequence. This was rage taught to wear gloves at dinner. Rage trained to kneel. Rage that had learned silence not because it was peaceful, but because silence was safer than screaming.

You stared at him. He stared back.

Then one of the men behind him lunged for a dropped gun.

You moved first.

So did he.

Your flame-spear pinned the gun to the wall. His sword hilt struck the man’s temple.

The man collapsed unconscious.

You looked at the vigilante.

He looked at you.

“Robin,” someone barked through a comm, staticky and older. “Status.”

Robin held your gaze.

“Contained,” he said.

You almost laughed again.

Then the weapons crates exploded.

The blast threw you both sideways.

Instinct drove you before thought. You wrapped yourself in flame, caught the worst of the explosion, swallowed heat into heat until your vision went red and white. Shrapnel screamed past. The cages buckled. A child cried out.

Robin moved like a blade through smoke. He cut locks, dragged children free, shoved debris aside with strength that should have been impossible for someone his size.

You burned through the final cage door with two fingers.

A little girl clung to your wrist before you could pull away.

You froze.

Your skin was too hot. Your ring was too dangerous. You were built out of contagion and acid and wrath.

But she held on.

“Please,” she said.

Your flames died down to embers.

Robin noticed.

Of course he did. He noticed everything.

You carried the child out through the wall you had made by turning brick into slag. Police lights painted the alley blue and red. Another vigilante waited there, tall and dark, with the kind of presence that made humans believe in gargoyles.

Batman.

The ring recoiled from him.

Not fear.

Control. A mountain of it.

Batman looked at you like he had already designed three ways to neutralise you and regretted all of them.

Robin stepped in front of you before Batman could speak.

“They helped evacuate the children,” he said.

Batman’s white lenses shifted toward him. “She nearly killed twelve men.”

“They were trafficking children.”

“That is not a counterargument.”

“No,” Robin said, “it is context.”

Your ring pulsed.

You looked at him, this sharp-edged human with blood on his gloves and quiet rage in his bones, and wondered what kind of person argued for a monster because he understood the shape of the cage.

Batman approached slowly.

“Your ring,” he said. “It’s Red Lantern technology.”

You smiled without humour. “Ten points to the bat.”

Robin’s mouth twitched.

Barely.

It was gone so fast you might have imagined it.

Batman did not smile. Tragic, honestly. “You’re coming with us.”

The ring flared.

Robin turned his head slightly. “Do not make this difficult.”

“Did you just ask a Red Lantern not to make something difficult?”

“I asked you not to be predictable.”

That landed.

Worse, it worked.

You went with them.

Not because Batman ordered it. Not because the Batmobile—ridiculous name, ridiculous machine, incredible engineering—could have contained you. Not because Gotham’s police had surrounded the block.

You went because Robin sat across from you in the vehicle with his sword across his knees and did not look afraid.

And because when your ring whispered his name from stray police chatter and encrypted comms, something about it fit.

Damian Wayne. Son of Batman. Grandson of the Demon.

Boy made weapon.

Man trying, with visible irritation, to become something else.

You understood that more than you wanted to.

The Batcave was cold.

Not physically. Physically, it was damp, mineral-rich, alive with the restless drip of underground water and the quiet flutter of thousands of bats. But emotionally, it was cold in the way all command centres were cold. Every surface existed for utility. Every screen glowed with information. Every weapon was catalogued. Every exit was marked.

A place built by people who had accepted that disaster was not a possibility but a schedule.

Batman placed you inside a containment field.

You let him.

Mostly.

The ring did not like it. Red light crawled along your knuckles, eager to test the barrier, eager to burn its way through the cave, through the man, through the city, through anything that dared imply you could be held.

Damian stood outside the field. Arms crossed. Spine straight. Blood drying on his cheek from a cut he had not acknowledged.

“You’re bleeding,” you said.

“I noticed.”

“Do you want a medal?”

“I want you to stop looking at me like you are deciding which wall would make the most dramatic exit.”

“That one.” You nodded toward the waterfall. “Good visuals.”

His mouth twitched again.

There it was. A tiny crack in the armour.

Batman worked at the computer, pulling up files on the Red Lantern Corps. Images flashed across the screen: Atrocitus, Bleez, Dex-Starr, Skallox, Zilius Zox. Rage made flesh. Rage made army.

“Your heart,” Batman said, voice even. “The ring replaces it.”

You looked at the red band on your finger. “Yes.”

“And removal would kill you.”

“Very quickly.”

Damian’s gaze sharpened.

You pretended not to notice.

Batman did.

Of course he did.

“How much control do you have?” Batman asked.

“Enough.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is the only one you are getting.”

“Have you infected anyone with rage plasma?”

Your flames snapped high enough to make the field hiss.

Damian shifted, one hand moving toward his sword.

You stared at Batman. “No.”

“Can you?”

“Yes.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

For the first time since arriving, you looked away.

Because you had seen it happen once.

A soldier on a moon whose name you never learned. He had tried to restrain you after your first week with the Corps, back when your mind was still more howl than thought. Your fire had touched his skin. Not enough to kill. Enough to infect. Enough to let rage bloom in him like a second wound.

He had screamed until the ring found him.

Until it made him one of you.

Until he thanked you with blood boiling out of his mouth and murder in his eyes.

You had never forgotten.

You never would.

“Because some fates should not be contagious,” you said.

Silence settled.

Damian’s posture changed.

Barely.

But you saw it.

Batman did too.

He dismissed Damian later, or tried to.

Damian ignored him.

That was the first thing you learned about Damian Wayne: he obeyed only after deciding whether the order deserved him.

Batman left eventually, called away by a city that never stopped bleeding.

Damian stayed.

He dragged over a chair, sat outside the containment field, and began cleaning his sword.

“You’re babysitting me?” you asked.

“You are not a baby.”

“Prison-sitting, then.”

“You are not in prison.”

You glanced at the field humming between you.

His expression did not change. “You are temporarily detained beneath a billionaire’s house.”

“That is worse. At least prisons have less emotional repression.”

The sword paused.

Then continued.

“You speak often for someone who claims to be dangerous.”

You leaned back against the invisible wall of the field. It burned faintly against your shoulder. “I am dangerous.”

“Yes,” Damian said. “So am I.”

The ring pulsed.

Quietly. Like it had heard a familiar song.

You studied him.

He did not fidget. Did not fill the silence because silence made him nervous. He sat comfortably inside it, as though silence had raised him better than most people had.

“You stopped me,” you said.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t hate me for wanting to kill them.”

His hand slowed on the cloth.

“No,” he said.

“Why?”

For a while, the only sound was the cave breathing around you.

Then Damian said, “Because I have wanted to kill worse men for less.”

Your throat tightened.

The ring whispered.

Truth. Rage. Shame. Restraint.

You almost reached for his mind again.

You didn’t.

He noticed that too.

His eyes flicked up.

“Thank you,” he said.

It was so unexpected that you nearly laughed. “For not violating your thoughts?”

“Yes.”

“That is a very low bar.”

“I have met many who failed to clear it.”

Something in your chest hurt.

Not your heart. You did not have one.

Something nearby.

“You have psychic defences,” you said.

“I was trained.”

“League?”

His eyes went cold.

You knew immediately you had guessed right.

“Do not speak of things you do not understand.”

“I understand being recruited by monsters.”

His jaw tightened. The cloth went still around his blade.

A warning lived in the space between you.

You should have stopped.

You didn’t.

“I understand being told rage makes you strong. That mercy is weakness. That obedience is survival. That pain is education.”

Damian rose so quickly that the chair scraped back. “You know nothing of me.”

“No,” you said softly. “But I know the shape of what was done to you.”

For a second, his composure cracked.

Not dramatically. Damian Wayne did not break like glass. He broke like stone under pressure, hairline fractures hidden until the whole cliff came down.

His eyes flashed green.

Then the mask returned.

“You presume too much,” he said.

“Yes.”

That surprised him.

You looked at the ring.

“I do that when I am afraid.”

Damian’s expression shifted. Just enough.

“You are afraid?”

“Constantly.”

His gaze dropped to your ring. “Of losing control?”

“Of enjoying it.”

The cave swallowed the words.

There it was. The ugly truth. The one even Atrocitus did not like spoken plainly. Rage was not only pain. It was power. It was clarity. It made every wound into a weapon. It told you that forgiveness was a lie invented by people who had never had to crawl out from under their dead.

Sometimes, when the flame rose, you wanted it to take the whole universe with it.

Sometimes, that desire felt like relief.

Damian sat down again. Slower this time.

“I know,” he said.

Two words.

No comfort. No absolution. No denial.

Just understanding.

It was the first kindness Gotham gave you.

You hated it.

You stayed in the Cave for three days.

Batman ran tests. Robin argued with him. Nightwing brought food you did not need and tried to make jokes the containment field did not deserve. Red Hood stood outside the barrier once and said, “Well, damn. Angry space jewellery,” before Damian told him to leave.

You watched all of them.

You learned the rhythms of the family through the ring’s emotional static.

Batman was grief with a mission statement.

Nightwing was sunlight over a fracture.

Red Hood was a match held too close to gasoline.

The others came and went in flashes: sharp humour, tired brilliance, watchful silence, stubborn kindness.

But Damian remained the only one whose rage did not scrape against yours.

His rage sat beside it. Parallel.

Not feeding. Not challenging.

Understanding.

On the third night, Batman lowered the containment field.

“You’re free to go,” he said.

You blinked. “That’s it?”

“No. But you’ll leave whether I allow it or not.”

“Smart man.”

“I want your word that you will not kill in Gotham.”

You smiled. “You think I give my word easily?”

“No,” Batman said. “I think you give it rarely. That makes it useful.”

Damian stood behind him, arms crossed, silent.

You looked at him. His expression gave nothing away.

But the ring heard him.

Not words.

Something quieter.

Hope, buried under scepticism so intense it almost became fashion.

You looked back at Batman.

“I will not kill in Gotham,” you said. “Unless there is no other way to prevent greater harm.”

Batman’s mouth compressed.

Damian said, “That is the best you will get.”

Batman did not look pleased.

You respected that.

You left through the waterfall because you were not immune to drama.

Damian followed you onto the cliff above the manor.

The night air was cold. Wet. Gotham spread below like a bruise full of stars, towers spearing upward through fog. Your ring hummed softly, tasting the city’s anger.

“You are leaving?” Damian asked.

“Do you want me to?”

“No.”

The answer came too quickly.

You both noticed.

He scowled as if betrayed by his own mouth.

You looked away before he could retreat behind pride.

“I have a ship hidden outside city limits,” you said. “I came for a weapons trail. It is not finished.”

“Then neither are you.”

“You inviting yourself?”

“I am informing you that I will be assisting.”

“Does Batman know?”

“He will.”

“That means no.”

“It means he will know.”

A laugh escaped before you could stop it.

Small. Rusted. Yours.

Damian looked at you like the sound had done something inconvenient to him.

“What?” you asked.

“Nothing.”

“No, that was a face.”

“I have many faces.”

“You have three. Murder, judgment, and secretly pleased.”

“I do not have a secretly pleased face.”

“You do. It’s very tiny. Like a rich person’s empathy.”

His scowl deepened.

There it was again.

Secretly pleased.

That was how it began.

Not softly.

Nothing about you and Damian began softly.

You hunted weapons smugglers through Gotham’s underbelly, through abandoned subway tunnels, through penthouses where men wore suits expensive enough to disguise the rot beneath. Damian fought beside you with terrifying precision. You burned locks, melted guns, split armoured drones in half with axes made from rage.

He never told you not to be angry.

He told you where to aim.

That was different. Vital, even.

“Your left flank,” he snapped one night as three mercenaries opened fire from above.

You twisted, formed a shield of red flame—not elegant, barely stable. The bullets melted. Damian launched off your shoulder without asking, because apparently, trusting him meant weaponising your body midair. He took down the mercenaries before his cape finished settling.

“You could have warned me,” you said.

“You adapted.”

“You used me as a springboard.”

“You were well-positioned.”

“You are impossible.”

“You are loud.”

“I am a Red Lantern.”

“Yes,” he said, landing beside you. “I gathered.”

The ring purred around your finger.

It liked him.

That worried you.

Red Lantern rings did not like people. They liked rage, violence, wounds. But with Damian, it behaved almost curiously. It brushed against his emotions and found no easy entry. His anger was not an explosion. It was architecture.

You met him on rooftops after patrol.

At first, only for mission updates. 

Then for tea. That was his doing, though he pretended otherwise.

One night, he arrived with a thermos and two cups.

“I do not know if you can drink,” he said.

“I can.”

“Do you require it?”

“No.”

He poured anyway.

The tea steamed between you, fragrant with mint and something floral. You held the cup carefully, mindful of your heat.

“You’re not going to ask what I eat?” you said.

“No.”

“Everyone asks.”

“I assumed it was rude.”

You stared.

He looked out over the skyline.

“You surprise me, Wayne.”

“Good.”

You drank tea together in silence.

The ring hummed.

Your body had no heartbeat, but in moments like that, you remembered the idea of one.

The relationship grew in fragments.

A text from an encrypted number:  You should not patrol Burnley tonight. Freeze’s equipment is unstable in low temperatures.

Your reply: That’s Gotham’s whole personality.

His answer: Do not be deliberately obtuse.

Another night, he found you perched on the cathedral, watching the city with your knees drawn up and your ring glowing faintly.

“You are spiralling,” he said.

“Hello to you too.”

“You missed three check-ins.”

“I didn’t know we had check-ins.”

“We do.”

“Did I agree to that?”

“You continued showing up.”

That was Damian's logic. Infuriating. Accurate.

He sat beside you, close enough that his cape brushed your sleeve.

You should have moved.

You didn’t.

Below, Gotham traffic crawled through wet streets. Neon smeared across puddles. Somewhere, someone shouted. Somewhere else, someone laughed.

“I heard them again today,” you said.

Damian did not ask who.

He waited.

“The people I lost.” Your hands curled around the ledge hard enough to crack stone. “The ring does that sometimes. It finds memory and makes it useful.”

“Useful how?”

“It tells me grief is fuel.”

Damian’s face tightened.

You smiled without humour. “It isn’t wrong.”

“No,” he said. “It is incomplete.”

You looked at him.

He kept his gaze on the city.

“My grandfather believed every wound could be sharpened into obedience,” Damian said. “My mother believed pain could become purpose if one survived it correctly. My father believes pain can become a vow.”

“And you?”

His mouth pressed into a thin line.

“I am undecided.”

The honesty hit harder than comfort would have.

You looked down at your ring.

“Rage kept me alive.”

“Yes.”

“It also made me cruel.”

“Yes.”

“You’re supposed to argue.”

“I dislike losing arguments.”

A faint smile tugged at your mouth.

Then faded.

“What if there’s nothing underneath it?” you whispered. “What if I am only this now?”

Damian turned to you.

His eyes were very green in the city light.

“I have wondered the same.”

You believed him.

That was the problem. With everyone else, your rage stood between you like a warning flare. With Damian, it became a language.

He understood why you flinched at calm voices more than shouted ones.

You understood why he went still when someone touched him without warning.

He understood why mercy felt dangerous, like lowering a blade before the enemy was truly dead.

You understood why he collected animals, why he spoke to them gently where humans could not hear, why he trusted creatures who bit when hurt more than people who smiled while holding knives.

He met your rage and did not romanticise it.

You met his restraint and did not mistake it for peace.

And somewhere inside that mutual recognition, something tender began to grow.

Terrible timing, really.

The universe had no sense of pacing.

The weapons trail ended with a trap.

It was hidden beneath Gotham Harbour, in a smuggler’s bunker built into old flood infrastructure. Alien tech lined the walls. Yellow fear batteries. Scraps of green construct residue contained in glass. A half-corrupted power cell pulsing red at the centre of a machine that made your ring snarl.

Damian saw it too. “What is that?”

“A mistake,” you said.

Then the doors sealed. The machine activated.

Pain punched through your ring into your nervous system.

You dropped to one knee, flames bursting uncontrolled from your shoulders.

Damian was at your side instantly. “What is happening?”

“They’re trying to siphon the ring.”

“Can they?”

“No.” Your teeth clenched. “But they can make it angry.”

Red light flooded the bunker.

The machine’s purpose became sickeningly clear as your ring translated the energy signature.

It was not meant to steal your power.

It was meant to provoke it.

A rage bomb.

If you lost control, your flame would ignite the corrupted power cell. The blast would contaminate half the harbour. Maybe more. Rage energy would seep into water, infrastructure, bodies. It would not turn everyone into Red Lanterns, not exactly, but it would infect enough.

Gotham did not need more rage.

Gotham was already drowning in it.

Damian’s hand closed around your arm.

Your flames burned through his glove.

He did not let go.

“Tell me what to do,” he said.

You shook your head, vision blurring red. “Leave.”

“No.”

“Damian.”

He went still.

You had never said his name like that before.

Not as a tease. Not as a warning. Not Wayne, not Robin.

Damian.

His fingers tightened.

“Tell me what to do,” he repeated.

The ring screamed.

It dragged every memory to the surface.

The ship. The bodies. The smell of burning metal. The soldier you infected. Atrocitus telling you that usefulness was mercy.

The oath in your mouth.

The red.

The red.

The red.

Your flames surged.

Damian grabbed your face with both hands.

The touch was shocking enough to cut through the noise.

His gloves smoked against your skin.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

You tried.

The world fractured. His face swam in and out of focus, masked and bare all at once, child and weapon and man, all that quiet rage held in human shape.

“Leave,” you rasped. “I can’t—”

“You can.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“Stop lying.”

“I am not lying.” His voice sharpened. “You think rage is a beast because that is what your ring wants. Because it is easier to be devoured than to choose, again and again, not to become what hurt you.”

Your flames roared.

The machine whined.

“Do not lecture me,” you snarled.

“Then listen.”

The command cracked through the bunker like a whip.

You froze.

Damian’s eyes burned, not red, never red, but fierce enough to answer.

“I was raised by people who believed anger was useful only when it obeyed. Batman taught me that anger is dangerous unless controlled. I believed both for years. That rage was either a weapon or a failure.” His thumbs pressed against your cheekbones, grounding, steady, alive. “Then I met you.”

Your breath hitched.

“You are rage,” he said. “But you are also the person who stopped burning when a child held your wrist. You are the person who refuses to infect others despite knowing it would give you soldiers. You are the person who makes crude weapons because you do not care if power is beautiful, only if it ends the threat. You are not empty beneath the rage.”

The machine pulsed brighter.

Your ring shrieked.

Damian leaned closer. “You are still choosing.”

Something inside you broke.

Not the way the ring wanted. Not a rupture.

A release.

You sobbed, and flame spilled from your mouth, bright and terrible. Damian did not flinch. He turned his body into yours, cape wrapping around you both as if cloth could shield him from a Red Lantern’s fire.

“Idiot,” you choked. “You’re burning.”

“I have had worse.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It was not meant to be.”

A laugh tore out of you, broken and wet.

Then a scream.

You drove your hand into the machine.

The ring wanted to explode.

You refused.

You took every scrap of rage it offered and shaped it smaller. Denser. Not a blast. Not a flood.

A blade.

Ugly. Crude. Yours.

Damian moved with you without needing instruction. His sword struck the outer casing at the weakest point your ring identified. Your flame-blade followed, piercing the corrupted power cell dead centre.

For one second, the bunker held its breath.

Then the machine imploded.

Red light collapsed inward.

Damian tackled you behind a concrete pillar as the blast rolled over you both. Heat swallowed the room. Metal screamed. Water burst through cracked walls, hissing into steam where it hit your flames.

When silence returned, you were on the floor with Damian half over you, one arm braced beside your head.

His mask was cracked. His gloves were charred. There was a burn along his jaw.

Your rage vanished so abruptly it left you shaking.

“Damian,” you whispered.

“I am alive.”

“You’re hurt.”

“I am often hurt.”

“I hate that sentence.”

“Then stop being dramatic and sit up.”

You stared at him.

He stared back.

Then his arm gave out.

Panic hit so hard your ring flared.

You caught him before he hit the ground.

“Damian?”

“Do not shout.”

“I’m not shouting.”

“You are emotionally shouting.”

“You’re bleeding, you absolute nightmare.”

“It is a shallow wound.”

“You collapsed!”

“Briefly.”

You made a sound somewhere between a growl and a sob.

He blinked up at you, expression softening in increments so small most people would miss them.

You didn’t. You saw too much of him now.

That was terrifying.

You carried him out of the bunker despite his protests because his protests were stupid and also because he had absolutely carried you emotionally through a rage bomb, so physically carrying him felt fair.

Batman met you at the extraction point.

His eyes went immediately to Damian.

Then to you.

Then to your hands, which were careful around his son in a way no Red Lantern should have known how to be.

“He needs medical attention,” you said.

Batman did not waste time.

Neither did you.

In the Cave, Alfred treated Damian’s burns with the kind of calm that made you feel like you were one wrong breath away from being sedated with tea and disappointment.

Damian sat shirtless on the medbay cot, spine rigid, jaw clenched.

You stood in the corner, arms wrapped around yourself, ring dim.

Alfred glanced at you once. “You may sit, if you wish.”

“I’m fine.”

“People who are fine rarely look as though they are waiting to be executed.”

You did not know what to do with that.

Damian did.

“Pennyworth,” he warned.

“Master Damian, you are in no position to intimidate anyone while refusing antiseptics like a feral cat.”

Despite everything, your mouth twitched.

Damian glared at you.

Secretly pleased.

Alive.

Burned because of you.

The smile died.

When Alfred finished and Batman stepped out to contact the others, silence settled over the medbay. Clean. Bright. Awful.

Damian looked at you. “You are doing it again.”

“What?”

“Preparing to leave.”

Your throat closed.

The ring sat heavy on your finger.

“You got hurt.”

“Yes.”

“Because of me.”

“Because of smugglers' weaponised alien technology beneath the harbour.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Be accurate?”

“Make it sound like I’m not dangerous.”

“You are dangerous,” Damian said. “You are not singularly responsible for every injury that occurs near you.”

You laughed once, sharp and humourless. “Spoken like someone who has never had their blood turn into a weapon.”

His expression darkened.

“No,” he said. “Spoken like someone raised to believe his existence was a weapon.”

That shut you up.

Damian swung his legs over the edge of the cot.

“You are not leaving because I was hurt,” he said.

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“No. But I get to call it cowardice.”

Your flames sparked.

He stood, swayed slightly, then steadied himself with visible annoyance.

“Sit down,” you snapped.

“No.”

“You are the worst patient in the universe.”

“I have been told.”

“By everyone?”

“Frequently.”

You crossed the room before you realised you had moved, stopping close enough to feel the warmth of him. Human warmth. Not fire. Not rage. Something softer and more devastating.

“You don’t understand,” you said quietly.

His gaze lifted to yours.

“You think because you know rage, you know this. You don’t. The ring is not a metaphor. It is not trauma with a dress code. It replaced my heart. My blood is poison. My anger is contagious. If I lose control, people suffer. If someone takes the ring, I die. If I keep it, I am one bad day away from becoming a disaster with a pulse made of hate.”

Damian’s face did not change.

But his eyes did.

“You think I don’t know what it is to fear your own nature?”

You looked away.

He stepped closer. “You think I have not looked at my hands and wondered whether they were made only for violence? You think I have not felt something inside me answer when cruelty called my name?”

“Damian—”

“No.” His voice was low now. Rougher. “You do not get to decide you are uniquely monstrous so you can deny everyone else the right to understand you.”

That hit exactly where it was meant to.

Your ring flared defensively.

Damian did not move.

“You should be afraid of me,” you whispered.

“I am.”

The honesty knocked the breath out of you.

He held your gaze.

“I am afraid you will leave because staying requires more courage than burning. I am afraid you will decide isolation is noble when it is merely familiar. I am afraid you will mistake my concern for ignorance because it is easier than accepting care.”

Your vision blurred. “Stop.”

“No.”

“Damian.”

“I am afraid,” he said, quieter, “because I understand you.”

The medbay lights hummed overhead.

Your fingers curled. Not into fists.

Into themselves.

“I don’t know how to do this,” you admitted.

His expression softened.

Neither of you named what this was.

“I am also inexperienced,” he said.

Despite the ache in your chest, a laugh slipped out. “At what? Feelings?”

His eyes narrowed. “At allowing someone to remain close.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.”

Your laughter broke into something dangerously close to a sob.

Damian looked alarmed for half a second, which was unfairly endearing and very unhelpful.

“I want to stay,” you said. “That’s the problem.”

His breath caught.

Barely. But you heard it.

“I want to stay,” you repeated, because the first time felt impossible and the second felt worse. “I want rooftop tea and your terrible insults and missions where you use me as architecture without warning.”

“You were ideally placed.”

“I want Alfred to keep judging me like I am a stray cat you dragged home.”

“He judges everyone.”

“I want—” Your voice cracked. “I want to be near you. And I am so angry that wanting anything still feels possible.”

Damian looked at you like you had handed him something fragile and on fire.

Then he reached for your hand.

Slowly. Giving you time to pull away.

You didn’t.

His fingers closed around yours, careful of the ring.

The red light washed over his skin.

No corruption. No burning.

Just warmth.

“I want you to stay,” he said.

The ring went silent.

For one perfect, impossible second, the universe did not scream.

“You do?” you whispered.

“Yes.”

His thumb brushed over your knuckles. “I do not say things I do not mean.”

“That is deeply untrue. You told Nightwing his casserole was edible.”

“It was politically necessary.”

You huffed a laugh.

Damian’s mouth twitched.

Then his gaze dropped to your lips.

The world narrowed.

Rage was loud. Fear was louder.

This was quiet. So quiet it terrified you.

“May I?” he asked.

Your fingers tightened around his. “You may.”

Damian kissed you like he approached everything unfamiliar: with focus, restraint, and a visible determination not to fail.

It was soft. Careful. A question pressed against your mouth.

You could have wept from the gentleness of it.

No one had touched you like you were not a weapon in so long. No one had kissed you like your fire was not the most important thing about you.

You lifted your free hand to his jaw, stopping just shy of the burn.

He leaned into the touch anyway.

Stubborn, impossible boy.

No.

Man.

A man who had made himself more than what raised him.

A man who looked at your rage and did not ask it to vanish before he cared for you.

When the kiss ended, Damian rested his forehead against yours.

His eyes were closed.

You had never seen him look so unguarded. It made something inside you ache.

“I still have no heartbeat,” you whispered.

His eyes opened. “I know.”

“My blood is still rage.”

“I know.”

“I may never be safe.”

His hand came up, covering yours against his face. “Neither am I.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It is honest.”

You swallowed.

The ring pulsed, softer now.

Not gentle. Never gentle.

But listening.

“I can’t promise I won’t be difficult,” you said.

Damian’s mouth curved. Tiny.

Secretly pleased.

“You would bore me if you were not.”

You stared at him.

Then laughed so hard you nearly cried.

He looked offended for three seconds before he kissed you again, which was a much better use of his mouth than arguing.

After that, staying was not simple.

Nothing in Gotham was.

Nothing involving Damian Wayne could ever be accused of simplicity without committing a crime against language.

You still had nightmares.

Some nights, you woke above the city with flame in your throat and the oath clawing at your tongue.

“With blood and rage—”

Then Damian would be there, not touching until you nodded, not speaking until you could hear him.

“Name five things,” he would say.

“I hate grounding exercises.”

“I did not ask.”

“You’re bossy.”

“Yes.”

You would name five things.

Stone under your palms. Rain on your face. Red light from your ring. The smell of Damian’s tea. His voice, steady in the dark.

Some nights, Damian woke from dreams he refused to describe, hand reaching for a sword that was not there. You never asked. You sat near him instead, close enough that he could choose contact.

Eventually, he always did.

Shoulder to shoulder. Finger against finger. Forehead pressed briefly to your temple before he pretended it had not happened.

He learned the limits of your ring. You learned the limits of his silence.

He could go cold when overwhelmed, retreating into formality sharp enough to cut. You learned not to chase him with anger when fear would do. You learned to say, “I am not your enemy,” and wait.

You could go bright when overwhelmed, flames rising, voice hardening into something that belonged to the Corps more than yourself. Damian learned not to command unless danger demanded it. He learned to say your name like an anchor, not a leash.

You fought.

Of course you fought. You were both made of blades and bad coping mechanisms. Your arguments could strip paint.

But you returned.

That became the miracle.

Again and again, you returned.

One month after the harbour, Damian took you to the manor gardens at dawn.

You complained the whole way. “It is six in the morning.”

“Yes.”

“Only criminals and billionaires are awake at this hour.”

“You are both adjacent.”

“That was cruel.”

“That was mild.”

The garden was silver with mist. Flowers drooped under dew. Somewhere in the hedges, a peacock screamed like a Victorian ghost being murdered, because Wayne Manor apparently needed ambience.

You looked at Damian.

He looked perfectly unsurprised.

“Is that normal?”

“Yes.”

“Of course it is.”

He led you to a stone bench beneath a tree just beginning to bloom.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

That was easier now.

Your silences had stopped being empty.

Damian held out a small box.

You stared at it.

“No,” you said automatically.

His eyebrows drew together. “You have not opened it.”

“That is exactly when gifts are most dangerous.”

“It is not a weapon.”

“That sounds like something someone would say about a weapon.”

“Open it.”

You took the box.

Inside was a bracelet made of dark beads threaded with tiny red stones. Not rubies. Something rougher. Warmer.

Your throat tightened. “What is this?”

“A grounding tool,” he said, far too stiffly. “The stones can withstand high temperatures. The beads are carved from volcanic rock. They will not melt easily.”

You lifted it carefully. “You made this?”

“Tt. Do not sound surprised.”

“I’m not surprised. I’m—” You stopped.

Overwhelmed. Touched. Afraid.

Loved, maybe, though the word was still too enormous to hold.

Damian watched your face with the wary focus of someone waiting to see if affection would be accepted or thrown back like a grenade.

You slid the bracelet over your wrist.

It fit perfectly.

Of course it did.

“You measured me?”

His ears went pink.

Amazing. Incredible.

A scientific discovery.

“I estimated.”

“You absolutely measured me.”

“You were unconscious.”

“Damian.”

“Medically unconscious.”

“That does not make it less weird.”

“It was for accuracy.”

You leaned in. “You’re blushing.”

“I am not.”

“You are. At the ears. That’s devastating.”

He turned his face away. “You are insufferable.”

“You like me.”

His blush deepened.

Then he looked back at you, and the teasing died in your throat.

“Yes,” he said.

The garden stilled.

“I do.”

Your fingers closed around the bracelet.

Damian inhaled once, controlled.

“I have been attempting to determine the appropriate moment to say this. I have concluded there may not be one. So.” His jaw tightened, courage gathering behind his teeth. “I care for you. Deeply. In a manner that is inconvenient, persistent, and… and not unwelcome.”

You blinked.

“That is the most Damian Wayne confession anyone has ever made.”

His expression flashed with panic. “Was it insufficient?”

“No.” You laughed softly, reaching for his hand. “No, it was perfect.”

He looked down as your fingers linked.

“I care for you, too,” you said. “Deeply. In a manner that is also inconvenient, persistent, and completely terrifying.”

His thumb brushed over your bracelet.

“But not unwelcome?” he asked.

You smiled. “Never unwelcome.”

His shoulders eased.

Just slightly.

You leaned against him, careful at first. Damian went still, then relaxed by degrees until his shoulder pressed firmly into yours.

The sun rose over Gotham.

Not cleanly. Gotham did not do clean. It dragged light over rooftops and gargoyles, over smog and sirens, over grief and grit. But still, the light came.

Your ring warmed on your finger.

The rage remained. It always would. It lived where your heart used to be, crimson and relentless, a furnace built from every loss you could not bury.

But Damian’s hand was in yours.

His rage sat beside your rage, quiet and watchful.

Not fixing it. Not feeding it.

Simply understanding.

For once, the fire inside you did not feel like the end of everything.

For once, it felt like warmth.

Damian turned his head, lips brushing your temple.

“You are thinking too loudly,” he murmured.

You closed your eyes. “You can’t even read minds.”

“No. But you have a face.”

“I have many faces.”

“You have three,” he said. “Murder, sarcasm, and secretly fond.”

You laughed, and he smiled like dawn had done something right for once.

Below the hill, Gotham woke hungry.

The world remained cruel. The ring remained red.

But Damian Wayne held your hand like choosing you was not an act of bravery, not a risk, not a defiance of everything both of you had been made to believe about yourselves.

Like it was obvious.

Like rage did not make you unlovable.

Like quiet things could still burn.

And maybe that was enough.

Not to save you. Not to cure you.