#spider!batsis!reader

You have your special way of doing it, you always have. Forever a little girl with a huge smile and eyes too playful for your own good; you loved playing pranks on everyone around you, and you loved teasing your siblings, though never to the point of hurting their feelings.

It was as if you had always known a self-imposed limit; a limit he always thought would be your path to greatness.

Your laugh echoed in his mind, in the replay of all the videos he, your brothers, and Alfred himself took all over the years. Back when you were still . . . 

He trembles at the mere memory, and he knows it's wrong, because Alfred has been so careful bandaging his broken ribs and treating the scratches you left on his skin. Even so, he knows you refrained from causing worse harm.

It could be worse. God, it could be so much worse that he can't deny the unease in his stomach, even as his heart holds so much longing and love for you that he wants to turn a blind eye to the harm you've caused.

On the Batcave monitor, the fight replays over and over. Your eyes, your fangs, your blood, his—it was the same after all, wasn't it?—. You're not entirely yourself, but you're not a stranger either.

You don't fight like you used to. There's barely a trace of who you were: your bones and muscles feel like rubber, flexible, and something in his heart breaks when you simply seem to slide down your spine, because it's not yours anymore, it's just something Scarecrow implanted in you years ago.

He can do nothing but watch you. Try to inspect his little girl behind those eyes filled with fury and bitterness: the little girl who used to run after him laughing and whistling is gone. In her place is a woman filled with rage and confusion.

He's your father. He could recognize your emotions like the fingers on his hands. He could see the pain and recognize what causes it, and he sees the confusion behind your supposed hatred. Bruce thinks he knows the reason, but thinking about it only hurts him.

You were so young when you came into his arms. Or, rather, when he saw you through that window, sad and small and alone, and knew his heart would be yours for all eternity.

You had loved your wings, and he had never tried to clip them. How could he, when all you had ever wanted was to experience the freedom of being a dragonfly?

You have lost that freedom. 

He knows it when he remembers your eyes on his, when he moves and your fist crashes into his face again, when your blood and his mingle, lost in the night. He knows it when he sees your eyes and notices the tears behind the anger.

He can't help but wonder what you feel, what you remember, what's going through your mind. If you're in pain, if you're hungry, if something is keeping you awake at night.

Bruce could never forgive himself if he lets this go.

He doesn't need to turn around to know that the footsteps behind him belong to Dick, that the breath he releases is not one of relaxation but of deep perplexity.

The video continues to play on the screen.

“Jesus Christ,” his son mumbles when you bare your fangs with anger.

Bruce says nothing. 

For two years, there had only been blood on concrete and a bullet hole through your skull: one that they only knew of from how much Joker mocked them about. 

Dick feels sick.

Your eyes glowed faintly in the dim light, pupils blown too wide, sclera veined with crimson. Your mouth was half-open, revealing elongated fangs slick with blood—his blood. Yet none of those things disturbed them as much as the tears trapped in your lashes.

“You knew before the others.”

His son exhaled shakily and leaned against the console. “Tim thought Crimson Silk was just another violent metahuman protecting the Narrows.” His mouth twitched humorlessly. “I knew the second I saw the stupid flip.”

On-screen, frozen forever in digital clarity, your face no longer resembled the child who used to steal his coffee and replace it with hot chocolate because “you’re too grumpy for caffeine.” Yet the remnants still existed in cruel, unbearable fragments: the tilt of your head when confused, the tiny crease between your brows when angry, the way your eyes always searched Bruce first in every room.

He reached for the keyboard, fingers hovering only briefly before opening the recovered files again.

Dick visibly stiffened. “Bruce—”

“We need to watch them.”

“We already watched them.”

“We need to watch them carefully.”

His face paled with sudden fury. “Carefully?” he repeated incredulously. “Jesus Christ, Bruce, she was strapped to a table screaming while Crane cut her open. What exactly are we missing?”

There were some things the human mind should never witness, and those tapes had crossed every conceivable boundary. Scarecrow had not merely experimented on you; he had dismantled you piece by piece with scientific fascination, documenting every moment with clinical precision. The Joker’s appearances throughout the footage made everything worse. Crane had been detached. Joker had been delighted.

Dick still heard your screams in his sleep.

The camera adjusted focus slowly, revealing the restraints around your wrists and throat. Your face looked thinner than Bruce remembered from those final months before your disappearance.

 On-screen, Scarecrow stepped into frame wearing blue surgical gloves soaked dark at the fingertips.

“Subject continues resisting adaptation,” Crane murmured toward the camera. “However, the hybridization process has exceeded expectations.”

“You’re insane.”

“Yes,” Scarecrow agreed calmly. “But history tends to reward men like me.”

Dick stopped the video just when the needle found its way into your neck. “I can’t watch this again,” he had said it angrily, but soon lost all the fire. “Don't make me watch this again. I want to see my sister again, but not like that.”

Jason descended the stairs first, followed closely by Steph and Tim. Cass appeared soundlessly behind them a moment later, her dark eyes immediately lifting toward the frozen image of your face on the monitor.

No one spoke at first. Then Jason looked at Bruce’s bandages and scoffed. “Damn. She really kicked your ass.”

Dick shot him an incredulous glare. “Seriously?”

“What?” Jason snapped. “She’s alive. I’m coping.”

Tim stepped closer to the monitor slowly, exhaustion hollowing the sharp angles of his face. He had dark circles beneath his eyes again—the dangerous kind that appeared whenever he became too obsessed with solving something. “Any leads on where she went after the fight?”

“None,” Bruce answered.

“They worship her down there.” Steph locked her eyes on the screen. “Kids leave food on fire escapes for her.”

“. . . What?”

“They think she watches over the neighborhood,” Tim explained quietly. “Drug dealers disappear. Human traffickers end up webbed to streetlights half-dead. Predators get dragged into alleys screaming.” His mouth tightened slightly. “Crime rates dropped thirty percent in the areas she patrols.”

Bruce stared at the screen silently.

You had always hated injustice with frightening intensity. Even as a child, you reacted violently to cruelty. He remembered one patrol vividly: you had been thirteen, sitting atop a rooftop eating fries while complaining endlessly about math homework, when you spotted a man shoving his girlfriend against a wall three blocks away.

Bruce barely had time to move before you launched yourself off the roof.

Cass finally spoke, soft but certain. “She’s scared.”

Everyone turned toward her.

“Angry. Hurt. But scared most.”

Bruce’s chest tightened.

Tim rubbed his face tiredly. “We need to figure out what Crane actually turned her into.”

“Half spider apparently,” Jason said dryly.

His third son pulled several files onto the secondary monitor. Genetic scans. Medical reports stolen from one of Crane’s abandoned labs. Fragmented research notes covered in equations and observations.

“Crane used modified arachnid DNA combined with regenerative mutagens,” Tim explained. “Most of the notes are damaged, but from what I can piece together, he was trying to create adaptive predators.”

Steph grimaced. “That sounds disgusting.”

“It gets worse.” He enlarged one particular document. “Her nervous system was rewritten to survive catastrophic trauma . . . That’s probably why she survived the gunshot.”

Nobody had ever truly discussed your death in detail. The wound had always been too horrific to imagine clearly. Joker delighted in describing it anyway—the temple shot, the blood loss, the way your body supposedly collapsed at his feet.

Bruce had envisioned it every night for two years regardless.

God help him, you were alive. Not whole. Not safe. Not happy. But alive.

And somewhere in Gotham, you were breathing beneath the same night sky while believing yourself too monstrous to come home.

“So, you fought your brother.”

You sat on the kitchen counter of Roy’s apartment with one knee pulled loosely against your chest while he cleaned blood from your knuckles. He stood between your knees with a first-aid kit open beside him, sleeves pushed carelessly to his elbows while he focused on wrapping gauze around your hand.

“I didn't fight my brother,” you grimaced. “I couldn't hit him back. He is too small.”

The apartment itself was small, warm in a way the Manor never managed to be despite its grandeur. There were tiny shoes abandoned near the couch, colored pencils scattered across the coffee table, and one of Lian’s stuffed animals sitting upside down beneath a chair as though it had been dropped mid-adventure. The scent of pancakes still lingered faintly in the air from earlier that morning, mixed with coffee and antiseptic.

“He isn't so little anymore,” he hummed, not so much in concordance. “I mean, he is what? Fourteen now?”

“I don't even know what month I am, Roy. How could I know how old my baby brother is?”

That earned a soft snort from him. “Fair enough.”

You looked away toward the apartment window afterward, watching water crawl slowly down the glass. The sky beyond Gotham’s skyline remained colorless, thick clouds hanging low enough to swallow the tops of buildings whole. 

Your body ached beneath his hoodie. The healing process always hurt now; the mutations accelerated recovery, but not without consequence. Bones shifted strangely when repairing themselves, muscles spasmed unpredictably, your skin felt too tight some days.

Roy noticed when your jaw tightened. “You healing okay?”

“Mm.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“It was enough of one.”

“Nope,” he replied immediately, tightening the bandage around your hand despite your annoyed glare. “Try again, Silk.”

You hated that he used the nickname so casually. Not because you truly minded hearing it from him, but because Roy had this infuriating habit of speaking to you like you were still human enough to tease.

“It hurts,” you admitted finally.

His expression softened instantly, all traces of humor fading from his face. “Where?”

You almost laughed.

Everywhere.

Inside your bones. Beneath your skin. Along your spine where Crane had altered your nervous system until your body no longer understood where humanity ended and something else began. Some mornings your jaw ached from the pressure of retracting fangs. Some nights your vision sharpened so intensely the world became nauseatingly bright.

You shrugged one shoulder instead. “Doesn’t matter.”

Roy tied off the bandage carefully before looking up at you. “You know, for someone who spent years patching up vigilantes, you’re incredibly annoying to take care of.”

“Where’s Lian?”

“At school.”

You blinked immediately. “School?”

“Yes, believe it or not, normal children receive educations.”

“I know that. I went to school too, you asshole. I just forgot it was Tuesday.”

“It’s Friday.”

You huffed, not surprised by your unconsciousness about the days. 

Roy resumed cleaning the remaining cuts along your forearm while sunlight slowly brightened the kitchen in muted shades of gray. His fingertips brushed your skin occasionally during the process, warm and steady despite the tremor you sometimes fought to suppress in your limbs. Physical contact still startled you more often than not nowadays. 

His expression softened into something unbearably fond. It was dangerous, so dangerous it made your heart beat with fear.

You had spent months convincing yourself you no longer belonged anywhere long enough to be loved safely. You lived in abandoned buildings. You vanished for days. You hunted criminals through Gotham’s underbelly with blood on your teeth.

You had eaten a pigeon raw, for God's sake.

People like you were not meant for soft kitchens and terrible coffee and little girls asking if your webs were biodegradable.

Roy tilted his head slightly. “What’s going on in that spooky little brain?”

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

“What is to be afraid of?” He asked. “You are severely underfed, had no sleep in the last, what? Four days? And you are insanely pretty to look at. If anything scares me, it's your unstable way of taking care of yourself.”

“Roy.”

“Okay, okay,” he gave up, a small smile on his lips. “I just . . . remember who you are underneath everything else.”

“What if I’m not her anymore?” you whispered.

Roy didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he stepped closer again until he stood directly between your knees, close enough that you could feel warmth radiating from his body.

Then he reached up slowly—carefully, always carefully—and brushed damp hair away from your face.

“You know what I think?” he murmured.

Your pulse quickened traitorously.

“I think you survived something horrific.” His fingers lingered briefly near your temple scar. “And I think you had to become dangerous to stay alive afterward.” His voice lowered slightly. “But every single time you think nobody’s looking, you still act exactly like Bruce Wayne’s kid.”

Your breath caught.

“You protect people,” Roy continued softly. “You carry grocery bags for old ladies in the Narrows when you think nobody notices. You leave money in laundromats. You scare abusive men half to death but stop before killing them because somewhere deep down you still hear Batman lecturing you about excessive force.”

“That’s debatable.”

“You webbed a mugger to a billboard last week because he kicked a stray cat.”

“He deserved worse.”

Roy smiled faintly. “See?”

“You make it sound easy,” you whispered.

“I don’t think it’s easy at all.”

“Then why do you keep looking at me like that?”

His brows furrowed slightly. “Like what?”

Your voice came out smaller than intended. “Like I’m still human.”

You had been happy before.

You had been a rich, spoiled girl who donated to every cause she could; who wore designer clothes with names no other human being could pronounce, but which you had painstakingly learned to send letters and emails signed with your name in gratitude.

At some point in your life, you had been a society icon. You would have been, you were sure of it. You had kissed your father's cheek and appeared on magazine covers. You had enjoyed elite balls. You had been free in a society that only sought to exploit you, something unthinkable.

You had been who you longed to be, something of which only broken fragments remained.

You weren't human. You were nothing, in your mind. Too human to be a spider, too spider-like to be a person. In an eternal limbo where your body found no peace. You didn't want to live, but you couldn't find the will to die; not without taking Crane with you first.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

You hated how softly he said it. You hated how your body instinctively leaned toward warmth now after years spent freezing alone.

Roy’s hand settled lightly against the side of your neck—not restraining, not trapping, simply there.

“You are so much more than something,” he said quietly. “You used to laugh all the time.”

You swallowed hard.

“You laughed when you were nervous,” he continued softly. “Or excited. Or angry. Sometimes you laughed so hard at your own jokes nobody else could even understand what you were saying.”

“Stop.”

“You used to dance while baking brownies.”

“Roy.”

“You used to whistle constantly. Bruce threatened to ban ABBA from the tower because of you.”

A broken sound escaped your throat somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Please stop.”

Roy fell silent immediately. The apartment suddenly felt too small again.

You pressed both hands against your eyes roughly. “I can’t remember her correctly anymore. That girl . . . Sometimes she feels like somebody I invented.”

“She was real.”

“She’s dead.”

“No,” he said firmly. “She’s hurt.”

“You didn’t see me that night.”

“I’m seeing you now.”

“You don’t understand.” Your voice cracked violently. “There are days I can’t stand sunlight because my skin feels wrong. Sometimes I hear people’s heartbeats through walls. Sometimes I get hungry and it physically hurts not to bite someone. I don’t sleep because every time I close my eyes I see—”

You stopped abruptly, but didn't take your palms off, as if doing it would kill you. His hand, instead, remained where it was.

“Joker used to laugh when I cried. He thought it was funny.” Your voice sounded distant now, detached from your own body. “Every time Crane did something new, Joker would sit there making jokes. And eventually… Eventually I stopped crying because I knew he liked it.”

You continued anyway because apparently once the memories started leaking out, they refused to stop.

“The day he shot me, he seemed almost disappointed,” you murmured. “Like he got bored.”

One second he was horrified, the next he had his hands cupping your face with startling gentleness. You could smell him, sense him; you could feel his pulse beneath his wrists, warm and alive. 

“Roy—”

“I know,” he whispered immediately, thumb brushing beneath your eye. “I know you’re scared.”

“You shouldn’t—”

“I know.”

“I’m not…” Your throat tightened painfully. “Easy.”

“Baby, nobody in this world has ever been easy.”

Your forehead dropped weakly against his a second later, just so you could nuzzle softly against him, as softly as you could. The only gentleness you could allow yourself to let him have at the moment.

“I think something is wrong with me.”

Roy snorted softly.

You glared weakly through tears. “That was rude.”

“You’re literally a traumatized half-spider vigilante hiding from Batman in my apartment,” he informed you. “Something being wrong with you isn’t exactly groundbreaking news.”

A startled laugh escaped you despite everything, and he kissed your cheek with tenderness, cleaning away your tears.

The sound of the door opening was unexpected. Mainly because you'd been distracted enough not to notice the footsteps, which was quite unusual for your perpetually alert state.

Except you weren't alert at all, an experience unfamiliar since your return to life.

Roy didn't turn around in terror. Instead, he did so calmly, as if whatever it was couldn't possibly be that bad. You were hidden by his presence, and you didn't want to peek out, instead, sliding your forehead down until it rested on his shoulder.

“Jesus Christ, Harper, your apartment smells like a daycare and regret.”

The ginger sighed dramatically. “Good morning to you too, Jason.”

Your heart stopped. Not metaphorically, actually stopped for one terrible, suspended second before lurching violently back into rhythm hard enough to hurt.

Your senses sharpened instantly despite the exhaustion weighing your limbs. Two heartbeats. One steady and acrobatically controlled in that way Dick’s always had been, capable of slowing almost unnaturally when he focused. The other heavier, rougher around the edges, carrying the strange inconsistency that had existed ever since Jason came back wrong from death himself.

Bootsteps echoed against the apartment floor.

You hated how quickly panic climbed your spine. You stayed hidden against Roy’s shoulder stubbornly, fingers tightening unconsciously in the fabric of his shirt.

Your breathing became uneven. Roy's hand slid quietly against your back in reassurance.

“Bats sent you?” he asked casually, clearly attempting to keep the atmosphere normal.

“Not officially.”

“That means yes.”

“It means Bruce is losing his mind,” Jason corrected flatly. “And Dick here decided bothering me at eight in the morning was somehow my problem.”

“You were awake.”

“I’m always awake. Doesn’t mean I wanna socialize.”

You squeezed your eyes shut. 

God, you had missed them.

Jason stealing food directly from the pan while Alfred threatened murder with a wooden spoon. Dick singing terribly during patrols because he knew it annoyed everyone. The constant noise of the manor when everyone was home at once.

Dick moved closer into the kitchen then, and you could hear the faint rustle of paper bags. “I brought breakfast.”

You could leave.

You should leave.

The window behind you remained unlocked. You could be across Gotham rooftops before either of them reacted properly. Your body practically screamed at you to run, instincts flaring violently beneath your skin.

“Roy, who the fuck you had in here? Stop letting the clothes everywhere,” Jason complained, and your shirt flew through the open doors of the kitchen.

You lifted your head before you could stop yourself.

Dick looked older than the last time you had seen him properly. Not physically—he was still beautiful in that unfair way he had always been, broad-shouldered and graceful even while standing casually in sweatpants—but exhaustion had settled permanently around his eyes now. His hair was slightly longer than before, curling near the nape of his neck.

Jason looked sharper somehow, harder around the edges. His white streak stood out violently against dark hair, and the leather jacket hanging from his broad shoulders smelled faintly of gunpowder, rain, and cigarettes even from across the room. There was still something gloriously reckless about the way he occupied space, like he refused to apologize for existing loudly.

He was the first one to see you. His eyes shifted lazily toward the kitchen counter, prepared to throw another sarcastic remark at Roy, but stopped abruptly. Your scar was exposed, the scarred, red circle caught morning light with terrible clarity.

“…No fucking way.”

And he whispered your name, stopping Dick in his tracks as well.

You should have moved. You should. You would.

Your leg partially pushed Roy away, but his hand tightened slightly against your back. 

“Easy,” he whispered, as if he knew exactly what your plan was.

You heard the sharp pivot of boots against tile before instinct forced your head upward automatically, eyes locking onto his across the kitchen. His shock twisted immediately into something incredulous and almost offended as his gaze snapped between you and Roy.

“You’re kidding me.”

Roy winced. “Jay—”

“You are absolutely kidding me.” Jason pointed directly at the two of you. “While Bruce is down there having the world’s most dramatic midlife crisis, you’ve been hiding here?”

“It wasn’t exactly planned—”

“And why,” Jason continued louder, “do you look domestic?”

Dick didn't have time to get offended. His coffee slipped from his numb fingers, bursting on the kitchen floor. All while staring at you like he physically could not process what he was seeing.

You suddenly became hyperaware of yourself beneath that stare. Roy’s oversized hoodie hanging off one shoulder. Healing bruises dark against your throat. Your swollen eyes from crying minutes earlier.

There was too much familiarity in the room. Too much history. It pressed against your ribs painfully, threatening to crack something open inside you that had remained sealed shut for survival.

Your fingers tightened against Roy’s shoulder hard enough to bend fabric.

Your older brother's expression shifted with visible heartbreak, blue eyes darting across your face desperately as though trying to reconcile memory with reality. You watched him recognize every difference one by one: the sharpened canines visible when your breathing hitched, the strange tension in your posture, the faint red veining near your eyes, the scar through your temple.

But beneath all of it, you watched him recognize you too.

“You’re really here,” he whispered.

Not another hallucination grief invented for him.

“You’re—” His voice broke completely. “Jesus Christ.”

Roy shifted slightly. “Okay, maybe everybody should breathe before this gets dramatic.”

“Too late,” Jason muttered automatically.

Dick finally blinked hard enough to move again. “You’re staying here?”

You stiffened immediately. Roy, meanwhile, looked profoundly unimpressed by the tension suddenly infecting his kitchen. “Sometimes.”

Jason barked out a humorless laugh. “Sometimes,” he repeated. “Right.”

Your muscles remained wound tight beneath your skin, instincts still shrieking despite the familiarity surrounding you. Part of you desperately wanted to stay in this kitchen forever listening to your brothers argue over coffee. The other part wanted to disappear before they detected what you had become.

Dick seemed to notice the shift immediately. “You don’t have to run,” he said, desperate not to lose you once again.

Jason dragged a hand down his face aggressively. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Roy squinted at him. “What?”

“You.”

“What about me?”

Jason pointed violently between you both. “This! You knew about her and didn't dare say a thing? How pussywhipped are you, you fucker?”

He tried to throw a punch, but stopped at last moment, seeing you flinch behind him. His expression changed instantly. His face crumpled almost imperceptibly, and your stomach twisted violently. “You could’ve called.”

A bitter laugh escaped you before you could stop it. “And said what exactly? ‘Hey Jason, sorry I died weird?’”

His jaw tightened.

“That wasn’t funny.”

“It kind of was.”

“No,” Dick whispered suddenly. “It really wasn’t.”

The grief in his voice made your chest ache.

You looked away immediately; a bad idea, because your enhanced hearing caught it anyway—the subtle irregularity in Dick’s breathing. Like he was trying very hard not to fall apart in front of you.

Roy quietly grabbed paper towels to clean the broken coffee cup, clearly deciding everybody needed a second before emotions became catastrophic.

Jason watched you the entire time. “You look sick,” he said eventually.

“That’s because she barely sleeps,” Roy muttered from the floor.

“Shut up, you traitor,” you mumbled, evading your brothers' eyes.

Dick looked seconds away from either laughing hysterically or having a complete emotional collapse. You recognized the expression immediately because he had always looked like that right before overwhelming feelings tipped him over the edge into motion. Nightwing had never been built for stillness. Not physically. Not emotionally. Grief especially sat wrong inside him, too large and loud for a man who had spent most of his life turning pain into movement.

Now he stood frozen in Roy’s kitchen staring at you like he feared blinking might make you disappear again.

“You’re really alive,” he said again quietly, like the sentence still made no sense in his mouth.

Your throat tightened painfully.

Roy noticed instantly. His hand brushed lightly against your knee in silent reassurance before he moved toward the coffee machine again, apparently deciding caffeine remained essential under catastrophic emotional circumstances.

“Nobody freak out,” he announced. “I’m making another pot.”

Jason blinked at him incredulously. “Harper, I just found out my dead sister is apparently living in your apartment and you think coffee is the priority?”

“Yes,” Roy answered without hesitation. “Because all of you get dramatic on low blood sugar.”

“That is medically inaccurate.”

Dick finally moved then, stepping cautiously into the kitchen like approaching a frightened animal. You stiffened instinctively despite yourself, muscles tightening beneath your skin hard enough that Roy shot you a quick glance over his shoulder.

You remembered another kitchen. Another morning years ago. Dick dancing terribly while making pancakes because you kept laughing too hard to breathe. Bruce pretending to read the newspaper while secretly smiling behind it. Damian declaring everyone incompetent because nobody cooked eggs correctly except Alfred.

Home.

The memory hit so hard that you nearly stopped breathing.

Jason leaned against the counter beside him, studying you carefully now that the initial shock had faded enough for observation to settle in. Unlike Dick, who looked at you with open grief and overwhelming relief, Jason’s attention felt sharper. He recognized broken things intimately because he had once crawled out of death half-destroyed himself.

And he saw too much.

“You’re twitching,” he said suddenly.

You blinked. “What?”

“Your left hand.” He nodded toward it. “You keep flexing it like you’re trying not to stab somebody.”

You immediately stopped moving your fingers.

“Still getting phantom pain?”

Dick looked confused. “Phantom pain?”

Jason didn’t look away from your face. “After the Lazarus Pit, my nerves were fucked for months. Felt like somebody lit my bones on fire every time I stopped moving.” His voice remained casual, but only superficially. “You’re doing the same thing I used to.”

“It’s different,” you muttered.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “How different?”

You hesitated. Roy quietly handed Dick a mug of coffee before speaking gently. “You don’t have to answer that.”

“Yes, she does,” Jason replied immediately. “Because nobody’s telling us anything and apparently everybody decided secrets are fun again.”

Dick shot him a warning glance. “Jay—”

“No, screw that.” Jason gestured toward you sharply. “Bruce has been tearing Gotham apart for forty-eight straight hours because she showed up half-dead and vanished again. Tim hasn’t slept. Damian threatened three separate informants with a sword. Alfred keeps pretending everything’s fine while stress-baking enough scones to feed a small country.” His gaze snapped back toward you. “Meanwhile you’re hiding in Roy’s apartment looking like you’re about three seconds from collapsing.”

The Lazarus Pit had dragged him back wrong too. Different wrong. But wrong enough to recognize pieces of himself in you.

“I suppose now we both know about hiding from each other,” you mumbled back, as venom dripping from your mouth.

The only thing you got from him was a long glance, almost cold if it weren't for his frowned brows. From Dick, instead, you got immediate tears, a broken sound in the back of his throat.

He moved abruptly, making your instincts flare instantly, but instead of attacking or demanding explanations or dragging you back to the manor, he simply crossed the kitchen in three quick steps and wrapped his arms around you.

You were too cold to the touch, too dead to be alive, and you looked so sad for a girl who was once so full of life.

And still, you were his sister. His little sister, still as young as you were when he first saw you, still so small and unhappy. 

But he didn't say anything about that. He just kissed your head, ignoring how your hand started trembling again, and just held you as tight as he could.

It doesn’t feel like that. Time doesn’t move. Time doesn’t end. It just bends inward, pulling back on itself, dragging you into yourself. You don’t feel the weight of your body anymore — there’s no pain, no sense of dying, no echoes of the final blow, of blood pooling beneath your ribs, of lungs collapsing.

All you feel is warmth. Not the warmth of your skin, or the sun. No, this is different — this is the warmth of love.

Seven minutes of love. Of snapshots stitched together by your soul. Memories you never thought you would have to relive—not because they were buried, but because there was no reason to believe you would ever need to hold on so tightly. They were yours. They lived with you. 

And then, in four hundred and twenty seconds, they unfurl like silk through your mind. Bright. Soft. Agonizingly perfect.

Your parents — your biological ones. Mary, with her sweet smile and gorgeous curls. Richard, his soft blue eyes, his gentle explanations. You were six when the Joker killed them. You were six when Bruce adopted you. You were six when you became a younger sister to Richard Grayson. 

Bruce follows quick — you don't call him that, you don't remember ever calling him by his name. He was dad. Your dad. Yours and your brother's. His proud smiles, his way of loving —not the easiest to understand, but his love anyway—, him patching you up. Running alongside Batman. 

He trained you. You never got to be just a kid, but in some way, being Dragonfly was your childhood. Your dad designed your wings. Your tech. Your suit, that midnight lilac that shimmered like if a fairy was in place. He watched you soar.

Oh, how you would miss being her, the most precious creature to run with a Robin.

Alfred came by immediately, his warm hands —how they smelled faintly of mint and old books—, his tender words. The way he knew you. His tea was a love language, his honey-lemon remedy for every scraped knee and broken heart. Every time you thought you had finally fallen too far, done something too reckless, said something too cruel, Alfred never once looked at you like you were lost.

Dick was your older brother, the one who made you a sister, as you had been the only child in your parents marriage. He was the light in the house, the laugh in the cave. The first time you went out on patrol, he called you Dragonfly because you were fast, sharp, beautiful in the way you cut through the air. The name stuck.

You would miss that name. You would miss him most of all.

Then Jason.

And God, if Dick was light, then Jason was fire. Uncontainable, furious, alive in a way you never were before he entered your orbit. You were both twelve and had been rivals from the second he arrived, but not in a cruel way — no, it was more like iron sharpening iron. You trained together. Fought together. Bled together.

Perhaps that was what made you both so close. Powder and fuse, had once Alfred called you. Your twin in everything but blood. 

You remember when he first died.

That was the first time you felt your soul break all over again. You were fifteen. You had been grounded — again — for going on missions without your father's permission. And then, just weeks later, he was gone. You were supposed to be with him. You were supposed to—

You stopped fighting after that. For months.

Then one day you started again — harder. With rage.

When he came back, angry and carved from vengeance, you tried to hold him the same way you used to. But Jason wasn’t Jason anymore — not for a long time. Still, he always softened around you, called you “Bug,” his voice dropping in pitch when no one else could hear.

You two were the same age. Same chaos. Same grief.

And in your last year alive, he had started calling you “sis” again. Just once. But once was enough.

Tim came next.

He was awkward when he met you, all logic and eyes too wide for his head. You were fifteen still. He was ten. He didn’t smile much, but he didn’t have to. He listened. And that meant more than anything. You used to steal his headphones when he was coding, just to mess with him. He’d scowl, sigh, and hand you a second pair.

Tim was your constant. When everything fell apart — Jason’s death, Bruce’s disappearances, your injuries, your silence — Tim was there. Steady. Intelligent. Often overlooked, always observing.

Steph was loud, sun-bright, and wild in ways that made the manor feel less like a mausoleum and more like a dorm room. You don't exactly remember when she moved in more regularly, and though you tried to act above it all, you loved her presence. She left your makeup bag notes. Borrowed your boots without asking. Hugged you like she meant it.

And then came Cass. She didn’t speak with words, and you hadn’t needed her to. You had connected through movement. The memory that burns brightest with her is the silent training session under moonlight, just the two of you — your bodies flowing like water, like poetry, like rage. The only sound was your breathing.

Afterwards, she pressed her forehead to yours and signed something with her fingers.

“I see you.”

You had burst into tears. 

Were you crying now as well? You couldn't exactly know.

Duke came later. Light, quite literally.

You were older when he joined — already hardened. But he softened you. He reminded you of everything bright that Gotham tried to strangle. You remember him racing you on patrol, skateboarding off rooftops just to make you smile. His optimism was relentless.

And finally — Damian.

Only a year you had with him. But it mattered.

You remember the cold shoulder, the bitterness. But more than that, you remember the slow thaw. Seeing him alongside that cow he loved, the dog he commanded and still treated with so much love. You saw through him, as once your father had with you. 

Seven minutes.

You were dead for much more than seven minutes. 

And then . . . you weren't. 

Water.

Cold, thick water.

You choke on it as you jolt back into existence. Not awake — no, this isn’t waking. Waking is peaceful. Waking is gentle. This is violence. This is agony carved into the shape of resurrection.

Your body convulses. Your lungs scream. River water floods your throat, burns up your nose, and you thrash beneath the surface — flailing, spiderlike, unnatural, primal. Your senses are all wrong. They come too fast, too loud, too bright. Every drop against your skin is a blade, every ripple a scream. Your hands — god, your hands — twitch and tremble, joints locking and unlocking like marionette strings yanked by God Himself.

You claw to the surface.

The air cuts into your lungs like knives. You sob, but it sounds feral, not human. Half-spider, half-death. Your fingers grasp the muddy embankment, tearing into the dirt like your body is demanding to stay this time.

You don’t know how long you lay there.

Time doesn’t mean anything anymore. Not when your memories are still flickering behind your eyelids like film reels melting in heat. Not when you can still taste Joker’s laughter in your mouth, his filth on your skin. Not when you can still hear Crane’s voice, calm and clean and clinical, saying things like "subject stability" and "arachnoid molecular elasticity."

Your skin is raw.

You heave again. River water, bile, and rage spill from your mouth.

And you scream.

A scream that splits the air open. A scream that is seven minutes late.

You don’t know who you are anymore.

You don’t remember coming back. You only remember dying. You only remember blood. And needles. And the look on your father’s face — Dad’s face — when he found your mask, broken in two, lying in a pool of blood.

Why? Why were you there?

Didn’t you have a family? Didn’t you have brothers? Where were your sisters? Didn’t someone come for you? Didn’t he come for you?

“WHERE ARE YOU?!”

You don’t realize you’ve screamed the words until your throat cracks. Your voice is nothing like it used to be. It’s not light or soft or sharp. It’s gravel and glass. All cracked edges and venom beneath.

You drag yourself up the bank. Knees collapsing beneath you. Limbs shuddering with effort.

Your fingers twitch — and from your wrists, soft threads pulse, wet and twitching like veins. But they don’t fire.

You blink. Your eyes adjust to the dark. And you run.

You don’t know how far. Maybe blocks. Maybe miles. Your feet don’t feel the ground. You don’t feel anything. Not until you crash into the rusted gates of Crime Alley.

Of course. You always end up here.

This place was your grave once. Now it’s your shadow.

You collapse in the corner of an abandoned laundromat, curling into yourself. Shaking. Your clothes are too tight. Or maybe your body is wrong. Everything hurts.

You dig your nails into your arms — but you don’t bleed. Not properly. The skin seals again in seconds. You hate that. You hate how quick your body fixes itself. Like it’s trying to forget what happened. Like it’s trying to pretend you weren’t broken at all.

“You should be dead,” you whisper.

You say it again. And again.

“You should be dead.”

You mean it. You were dead. For months. Years. You know you died. You remember the cold, the rot, the last sound being Joker’s voice in your ear, whispering something horrible — something you’ve blocked out because if you remember it, you’ll break apart again.

So you don’t. You press your forehead to the tile. You tremble. You try not to vomit.

Your fingers twitch again, and the webs flex. Unfired. Uncontrolled. You need something. You need someone.

But who? Bruce?

He didn’t come for you. He didn’t save you. None of them did. Not Dick. Not Jason. Not Tim. Not Cass. Not even Alfred. You were just... gone.

Buried in an empty casket. A name on a plaque. A whisper in the manor halls.

You want to believe they looked. That they searched. That they tore the city apart. But you don’t know.

You curl in tighter, and for the first time in years, you cry. Not rage. Not fury. Grief.

You cry because you don’t feel human. Because your reflection is gone. Because the world moved on. Because the girl who was once Dragonfly died and no one ever found her.

Because now you’re something else.

Something more.

Something wrong.

Scarecrow had called it “Project Spider.” As if giving it a name made it less monstrous. As if branding your horror made it a triumph.

You still remember the needles.

Twelve-inch syringes of something black. He called them serum trials. You called them torture. Your veins remember — you can still see them, your skin pale and thin and patterned with scars. Two symmetrical paths running from your wrist to your elbow, like rivers of ruin.

You had screamed.

They had laughed.

Joker. That bastard.

His voice still haunts your dreams. Still echoes in the rhythm of your heartbeat, because sometimes it beats too fast — spider-fast — and that makes it worse.

“Sing for me, little bug,” he’d said once, pressing a scalpel to your throat.

You hadn’t sung.

You’d bled instead.

You are not what you were.

You feel it.

The way your muscles twitch without command. The way your skin itches from the inside. The way your senses sharpen and shatter simultaneously. You feel everything. The worms in the earth. The dew on the grass. The distant heartbeat of a rat two blocks away.

And worst of all — the hunger.

It claws at you.

You need.

But you don’t know what. Or why. Or how.

You stumble to your feet. You’re barefoot, and your legs tremble under your own weight.

Something is… wrong with your spine.

Your balance is off — until you adjust, and your limbs shift with the grace of a predator. It’s not human. It’s not you.

You wander for days.

The sewers. The back alleys. The places even Gotham forgets. You eat trash and rats and once — once — a pigeon. You weep after. You vomit it up and cry so hard you almost pass out.

You aren’t human.

You aren’t.

The city doesn't feel like yours anymore.

But you clawed your way back. Bone by broken bone. Breath by burning breath. And now the city you once lived in lives in you. It breathes through your skin. It pulses with every strand of web you shoot, every scream you silence, every desperate child you wrap in warmth before vanishing into shadow.

You are Crimson Silk now.

Crimson, like blood. Silk, like the threads you cast to protect the only places that still feel real. Crime Alley. The Narrows. The places no one else dares to watch.

They don’t get heroes. They get you. And that’s enough.

You do not own them — you protect them. As best you can. In the way only something like you can.

You move through the city like smoke. The rooftops don't creak under your weight. You work in silence, in spider-patterns. No flair, no flourish. A body hits the ground — a molester trying to corner a teen behind a bar — and within ten seconds he's webbed to the wall and gagging on his own fear. You don’t even stop. He’ll be found. Eventually. And it will take a lot to take off those webs.

You leave notes now. Sloppy handwriting on torn papers or napkins.

“Tell them I said hello.”

You sign them with a bloody spider. Not your blood, that one is poisonous, would kill anyone in contact with it, or at least burn them bad. 

No one needs to know who you are. Not really.

You patrol until you collapse. You live that way. Move, move, move until your muscles start to tear, until your stomach caves in, until the hunger swallows thought. Then, and only then, do you stop.

Then it’s back to the den. A racked apartment above a pawn shop where the landlord only comes once a month to collect rent. He doesn’t speak English. You don’t speak Portuguese. You give him the cash and he gives you a nod. It works.

No one else knows you live there but three cats that won't leave. You don’t mind them. One sleeps on your chest sometimes. You call him Alfred. He’s gray. Stern. Judgy.

You haven’t seen the real Alfred since…

You bury that thought like you bury everything else.

You have a system now.

Feed the kids. Break the gangs. Avoid the Bats.

Especially Red Hood.

Jason is out there. You feel him in the same way your spider-sense warns you when something shifts in the air. He doesn’t patrol like the others. He stays. He breathes the Narrows like you do. He sees more than he should.

But you’re faster.

You’ve seen his eyes once — through his helmet.

He’d stared at the fresh webbing across an alleyway, half a man stuck to the side of a dumpster with a sticky note slapped on his cheek.

It had said: “Keep your hands off the girls.”

Jason had tilted his head. You were already gone.

Anyways, the floorboards of your apartment at least don't creak. But the heater doesn’t work, and the window locks are broken —nothing you couldn't replace with your fresh webs. You fixed the sink yourself. Ripped out the moldy pipes and welded them back together with pieces of scrap you stole from the junkyard. Rewired the whole breaker box. Built your own water filter using gravel and charcoal and an old coffee tin.

You survive.

Your mattress is old, your blanket stolen from a motel linen bin, but it’s warm . . . Sort of.

By day, you work at Cecilia’s Diner — a rusty little dive on the edge of Crime Alley, where the windows fog up from grease and the neon sign buzzes loud enough to drive anyone sane up a wall.

You’re the waitress most nights. Sometimes the cook, if Luis doesn’t show up. Occasionally the bouncer, if things get ugly.

They get ugly often.

Gotham doesn’t let anything stay clean. Not for long. Men come in bleeding, high, staggering. Women with black eyes and nowhere to go. Kids hungry enough to eat sugar packets straight.

You serve them all.

“Three eggs, overdone, no yolk?” you ask without writing it down.

Cecilia watches you from behind the counter, chewing on the end of a pencil. She knows you’re not normal. Doesn’t say anything. Lets you eat free. Pays you in cash. Keeps her mouth shut.

You’d bleed for her. You already have.

Once, a guy grabbed your wrist too hard. Tried to drag you toward the kitchen when you brought him the wrong drink. You dislocated his elbow with a flick of your hand and webbed him to the door before he could even scream.

No one questioned it.

They just started calling you Silky.

The name stuck.

By night, you patrol. No tech. No Bat-support. Just instinct. And your suit.

You made it from scraps — stolen Kevlar panels, spandex, other materials you don't even remember the name. The base is black, from toes to neck, a white web pattern you painted with your own hands covers the chest and the abdomen, sharp angular white lines on the arms and thighs. A single red mask covers the lower half of your face, leaving the eyes; they tend to get white when you are too spidey-like.

The web-shooters are homemade. Not pretty but they work.

Your spider sense guides you — a thousand whispers inside your skull, dragging your head toward crime like a moth to flame. Your eyes adjust to pitch black. Your bones bend in ways no human’s should. You leap across rooftops with the silence of something more insect than girl.

The kids love you.

They scream and point when you swing overhead. “It’s her!” “It’s Crimson Silk!” “She’s back!” “Did you see that? She crawled on the wall like a lizard!”

You stop for them.

Drop into alleyways with your mask half-down and crouch low so they don’t feel too small. You mend their toys with webbing. Carry them to the clinic when they’re sick. You make them feel safe.

You used to feel that way once.

Once.

Before the needles.

Before the Joker.

Before Scarecrow cut your body open and called it science.

You don’t hate the Joker, though. Not anymore. Not really.

Maybe, once, you did. Once, you were Dragonfly, and the thought of his face made your fists clench. Once, he was the monster in the closet, the bogeyman in your bloodstream, the voice in your nightmares whispering, laugh, little bug, laugh—

But now?

You thank him.

He pulled the trigger, even if it was a knife, and it was slow and so painful, he ended it. Ended the cage, the surgeries, the ice-cold labs, the peeling scent of Scarecrow’s toxin mixed with your sweat. He dumped your body in the river. He ended the experiment.

Joker was a madman.

But Crane? Crane was methodical.

He didn’t laugh. He recorded. He took notes while you screamed. Adjusted the dosage while you convulsed. Tilted your face toward the light and measured pupil dilation while your organs begged for mercy.

You remember the click of his pen better than the sound of your own name.

You ache for him. Not in any human way. Not with longing or hope or justice.

You ache with the same sharp hunger that your body does when you haven't eaten in two days. That need to consume. To end. To burrow into his chest and tear him apart from the inside out.

You whisper his name sometimes, when the walls get too quiet.

You want him to hear it coming.

But that's another story. For another day.

You eat five meals a day now. It’s required.

Your metabolism burns too hot — you need mass, carbs, salt, iron. You once cleared half the diner's pantry in one sitting after a particularly brutal patrol. Cecilia didn’t blink. She just refilled the fridge the next day.

When the hunger hits too hard, you get twitchy. Mean. Shaky. You smell things no human should. Taste colors. Your fangs poke out whether you want them to or not. You have to chug honey and rice just to calm down.

You learned the hard way that venom leaks when you’re starving. It paralyzes. Not forever. But long enough. You’ve only used it on people three times.

You don’t like to remember. You don’t want to remember what you’re capable of when you lose control.

The rooftops are slick with rainwater, summer heat refusing to cool even under the weight of dark clouds pressing down on the skyline. Gotham breathes in smog and exhales smoke; its heartbeat pulses in alleys and fire escapes, in the rustle of newspapers blown through empty streets, in the groan of buildings old enough to remember the blood that stained their bricks. You move with it. You always have. Or at least, you did—back when you were still someone else. 

You land without sound, crouched low like instinct demanded, fingers pressed to the ledge of a dilapidated old clock tower near the upper east blocks—still too close to the nice part of town. You shouldn’t be here. But you followed a lead, and when someone whispers “Scarecrow” in your ear through black market contacts and dying dealers with bleeding noses and red-glassed eyes, you don’t exactly get picky about which roof you bleed on.

Your eyes flick toward movement—blurred but deliberate. Another vigilante silhouette, sleek, red-trimmed, confident.

Red Robin.

He’s standing tall in the spotlight cast by a security beacon that’s been out since last winter. Of course he’d find the one light still working. He’s like that. You can’t hear him yet, but his posture is so damn smug, you don’t need to. It drips off him in waves. You could smell that arrogance even if your spider-sense didn’t warn you first.

You straighten slightly, head tilting.

He speaks before you do. Of course he does.

“New mask,” he says, arms folded across his chest. “New name, new face… but same drama, I’m guessing?”

You don’t answer. Not right away. You don’t need to explain yourself to anyone. Especially not a kid who still smells like Wayne Manor shampoo.

“Didn’t know the Bat let metas out to play without a leash now,” he continues, stepping forward, motioning vaguely at you. “We doing that? Some sort of spider-themed affirmative action?”

Your shoulders roll with a pop as you stand, eyes narrowing beneath your mask.

“I’m no meta.”

He snorts. “Sure. And I’m not tired of getting dive-bombed by people with bloodthirsty nicknames and unresolved trauma.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” you uttered.

He drew his staff in a single, fluid motion. “You won’t.”

You descend in a blur, faster than he expected. His back hits the gravel rooftop with a sharp exhale, but he’s already swinging a baton before your feet even land. You leap, mid-flip, body folding tight over his strike, back bending unnaturally as the baton sweeps under your ribs. You land behind him and kick.

He spins just in time, catching your foot with his forearm and sliding backward.

“Ow,” he says flatly. “Was that supposed to hurt more, or are you pacing yourself?”

“I don’t pace,” you reply, and your voice comes low, measured. Like something that’s learned to sound calm before it bites.

“Noted,” he grunts, and this time he lunges.

Your fights are always quick. They have to be—your strength is nothing short of brutal, and even when you try to pull back, bones break. But Red Robin isn’t just good. He’s calculated. He moves like he knows he’s two steps behind but bets he can fake being ahead long enough to catch you off guard.

Your limbs move faster than human—he notices. His brow furrows mid-swing, even as he ducks your elbow and tries for your side again. You grab his cape mid-motion, twist, and yank him to the rooftop. He gasps, lands on his side, rolls—and smiles.

“You’re really not the friendly neighborhood type, huh?”

You bare your fangs.

You are not going do to anything with them, but you bare them to scare him, to make him run away from you, so you don't have to force yourself to hurt him. 

Venom glistens faintly in the shadows of your mouth—two sharp canines that have long since grown used to being out of place in a human face. You clench your jaw, willing the urge down. You're not hungry, but your hunger doesn’t care. Your body is always reminding you of how much it costs to stay alive.

He freezes, just briefly, eyes locking on your mouth, and you know he's trying to place it—trying to match it with files, images, lost faces.

You leap again.

This time, he doesn’t try to be funny. He fights like a trained weapon, baton in one hand, throwing disks in the other, shouting mid-fight like he can’t turn off his damn commentary.

“You know, for someone this bendy,”—your leg folds around his throat, flips him to the ground again—“you really don’t have a lot of chill.”

You hiss. “Stop talking.”

“Can’t. Contractually obligated.”

You slam him into a metal ventilation unit, denting it in the shape of his ribs. It knocks the wind out of him, but still he gets up. Of course he does. You almost admire it. Almost.

“You’re not a meta,” he coughs, rubbing his side. “But you’re definitely not normal. Not even Gotham-level weird.”

You crouch low, spider-like, wrists twitching subtly. “There’s no one like me.”

He raises a brow. “Oh, you’d get along great with Jason.”

That makes something ugly twitch behind your ribs.

You dart forward again, spider-sense flaring bright white across your nerves. He throws smoke. You web it apart midair.

He whistles, low. “Oh, that’s cheating.”

“This isn’t a game.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” he says, flipping onto a higher ledge. “You fight like someone with something to prove. But you don’t kill. You don’t maim. You just knock the air out of me and bounce.”

You follow. He barely gets a block of movement before you web his ankle, yank him down, and flip him mid-fall.

“Whatever you are, you shouldn’t be here,” he said, tone shifting. “You’re interfering. Gotham has a system. If you’re rogue, then you’re a problem.”

“You think Gotham’s system works?” you asked. “Go look at the kids two blocks from here selling powdered poison to keep the lights on. Go tell them the Bat’s system is working.”

“I do,” he cracked. “Every damn night. Which is why I’m not letting some half-feral experiment run wild through it.”

His breath is hitching, his stance slower. He’s buying time. You feel it in the way he keeps baiting. The talking isn’t just annoyance—it’s cover. He doesn’t understand what you are. And maybe, if he talks enough, it won’t hit him. That awful feeling that creeps into your skin like static.

Your spider-sense tingles again. But this time it’s not him.

Something far away—watching.

You twist sharply toward the distant skyline. A flash of blue. A glint of escrima sticks. A rooftop higher than yours, and too far to act on.

Nightwing.

Just for a second, you see him. Tall, composed. Shoulders squared like a warning beacon in a city full of ghosts. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t interfere.

Your breath catches in your chest like guilt.

“Hey!” Red Robin’s voice yanks you back. “Eyes on me. That’s rude.”

You throw the last of your web fluid without hesitation.

It fires in tight spirals, engineered for speed and impact. You slam him against the wall of the rooftop stairwell, wrap him up head to toe before he can move. Arms pinned, legs locked, mouth left free.

“Wha—seriously?” he grunts. “Do you know how much this suit costs?”

“I don’t care.”

He wiggles a little. “I’m gonna get out of this in, like, ten minutes.”

You’re already backing up toward the edge of the roof. “That’s all I need.”

“And when I do, I’m following you.”

“No,” you say, stepping onto the ledge. “You’re not.”

And with that, you vanish into the night. Web-line launched toward the old power lines that string across Crime Alley like ribs, you swing low, fast, pulse racing, heart torn between venom and sorrow. The world behind you shrinks into silence. But your ears still ring.

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t recognize you. The younger brother who used to annoy you in the kitchen, beg to train with you, joke until you were wheezing from laughter—he doesn’t see you now. Just another shadow in the city. Another threat. Another thing to chase.

And maybe that’s better. Maybe it’s safer that way.

You slip back into the darkness of your own making, breathing hard, tears you won’t cry stinging at your throat. The kids in the Narrows need you. Crime Alley is waiting.

But your limbs still ache with the memory of the fight. And your chest still aches with the truth that you can’t say.

You are Crimson Silk.

In your defense, the food was warm and not so bad. The kid was sweet as hell . . . And Roy Harper had always been a favorite personal of yours —loud, golden, painfully charming, older and completely off-limits. 

It’s not like you meant to stay, not really. That wasn’t the plan. The plan had been simple—drop in from the rooftop after patrol, warn him off your part of the Narrows (gently, maybe with a smirk), check on the girl because she liked you and you liked her, and then leave again into the shadows like you always do. 

But then there was food. Then there was laughter. Then there was quiet. Then there was the ache in your legs. The throb in your spine. Your web-shooters were low. You were low. He offered the couch.

You didn't say no.

Now it’s four nights later, a morning coming. And you’re still here.

Your scarf is draped over the back of a kitchen chair. Your boots are by the door. You haven’t worn the mask since the first hour you walked through his window. Your web shooters sat beside a crumpled napkin on the coffee table.

You sit cross-legged on his worn couch, wearing sweatpants too big for you and a black tank top clinging to your ribs. You’re combing out your hair with your fingers, a movement done more to soothe your nerves than anything else.

You didn’t sleep well. You never do. Too many things beneath your skin. Muscles that twitch when they shouldn’t. A nervous system built for war. Your spider sense flickers even in stillness. But here, it was quieter. Not silent, not safe—but… gentler.

Roy walks in from the kitchen with two mugs. One’s chipped, the other’s one of those novelty mugs that reads I WORK OUT (I Take Naps). He gives that one to you with a grin like it’s a private joke.

You take it in both hands, warm ceramic grounding you, and murmur, “You always this domestic?”

Roy sinks onto the couch beside you with a grunt, legs spread wide, one arm slung over the backrest. He’s in loose jeans and a dark T-shirt rolled up at the sleeves. His forearms flex just enough to remind you that he was trained, too. That he knows how to kill and charm in the same breath.

“Only when I’ve got spider-girls crashing in my place like it’s a bed and breakfast,” he says. His voice is casual, but there’s an edge to it. Something aware. Something watching you carefully.

You arch an eyebrow over your mug. “You got a lot of spider-girls visiting lately?”

“Not enough,” he says. Then, quieter, “But one seems to be taking up all the space anyway.”

You look away, lips twitching against the rim of the cup. You could say something back. Something coy, or deflective, or just cruel enough to push him away. But the silence that follows is not uncomfortable. Not tonight. The room is dimly lit, shadows soft. You can hear Lian’s little snores from her bedroom. The hum of the fridge. Your heartbeat.

Roy’s head tilts to study you, his voice gentle but teasing. “You always this quiet when you’re not threatening mob bosses?”

You let out a slow breath. “You always this chatty when there’s clearly a monster on your couch?”

His brow furrows. Not angry. Just… surprised. “You’re not a monster.”

You meet his eyes then. Hold them. “Don’t lie to me, Roy.”

Your fangs press lightly into your lower lip as you say it. He sees them. You don’t bother to hide them anymore, not in here. They’ve never looked more obvious than now—two delicate, slightly curved tips, pearl white, unnaturally clean. You don’t think Roy has ever flinched at the sight. Not even once.

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, voice low but clear. “I don’t lie to people I let crash in my home. I don’t lie to six-year-olds who call you Silky and think you’re a bedtime story brought to life. And I sure as hell don’t lie to a woman who could web me to the ceiling and drop me out the window in two seconds flat if she really wanted to.”

You smirk. “One second, actually.”

That gets a breath of laughter out of him. The tension eases. For now.

You take another sip of your drink, letting the warmth pool in your stomach. It doesn’t quite reach the cold lodged behind your ribs, but it helps.

That’s the danger with Roy Harper. He doesn’t pretend. Not like others do around you now. Most people walk on eggshells, waiting for you to flinch, for your fangs to protrude. They say you’re not human anymore. Say it with their silences. Their stares. But Roy looks at you like you’re still you. Scarred, mutated, venomous—but you.

He watches you for another second and then sets down the mug with a quiet clink. “You sleep at all?”

You shake your head slowly. “Bits and pieces. You?”

Roy shrugs. “I’m a single dad. I haven’t known what sleep is since Lian was born.”

There’s a quiet between you, heavy but not uncomfortable. The TV flickers low in the background—some rerun of a cartoon with too many explosions and colors. The scent of coffee lingers in the air. Your fangs ache just slightly from beneath your gums, like they always do when you’re hungry. You could probably eat enough for three people and still need more. Your metabolism chews through calories like a furnace.

Roy’s eyes wander toward your legs, then flick back to your face—not lewd, just… noticing. Always noticing.

“You’re different,” he says finally.

You tilt your head. “Yeah. I grew venom glands and fangs. Real glow-up.”

He smiles softly. “That’s not what I meant. You’re quieter. Still got that fire in you, but… it’s colder now.”

You don’t answer. There’s nothing to say. Of course it is. Of course you are. You died. You came back. You changed. The spider in your veins never sleeps.

“You used to talk with your hands,” he continues, looking down at his own. “Always moving. Now it’s like you only move if you have to.”

“Movement costs energy,” you murmur. “I save it for things that matter.”

“Does this matter?”

You look at him. Really look. The golden boy turned tired, calloused, kinder. Still sharp, still fast, still flirty—but there’s a weight behind his eyes that wasn’t there when you were fifteen and he was shouting jokes across rooftops. And maybe… maybe you like him more now.

You answer quietly, “Yeah. It does.”

Roy leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You used to follow me around like a duckling, you know.”

Your face heats despite yourself. “I did not.”

“Oh, you absolutely did. You even tried mimicking my arrow form once—Jason caught you.”

“He promised never to tell anyone.”

“Jason lies.”

Roy leaned back, eyes scanning you in that way that always made you feel seen and exposed, like a specimen on a glass slide—but gentle, too. Not like Crane’s eyes. Not like the Joker’s.

“I liked you,” he said after a beat. “You were always buzzing around, hugging the hell out of everyone, dragging your brothers into some rooftop mess. You were light.”

You scoffed softly, bitter. “That was another life.”

“I know.”

He looked away, but you didn’t. You studied the curve of his cheek, the stubble growing in uneven patches. The scar slicing his right eyebrow. You remembered being fourteen and staring too long. Remembered brushing past him in the Manor, hoping he’d look back. He never did.

But he was looking now.

“You had heart eyes,” he said suddenly, smirking again. “Back then. It was adorable.”

You blinked. Your lips twitched, involuntarily. A tiny smile.

“You were older,” you muttered. “Untouchable.”

“And you were a tornado in combat boots.”

The silence stretched. You felt the weight of his thigh pressed lightly against yours. Your fingers brushed the soft fabric of his couch, picking at a loose thread.

Your eyes met his. It wasn’t the first time. But this one stuck. His gaze was molten, and yours, intense. His hand reached for your jaw. His thumb grazed your cheek. You didn’t pull back.

“You’re not untouchable anymore,” you murmured.

He leaned in, just a little. Enough that you could smell the warmth of him. Coffee. Toothpaste. Pinewood and aftershave.

“I’m not,” he said, barely audible. “So touch me.”

Your fingers trembled. You tilted your face toward him.

And just as his lips grazed yours—

“Daddy?”

Both of you froze.

Lian’s voice was small, muffled by the half-open bedroom door. Then came the soft pad of feet on the floor, the hiccup of a yawn.

You pulled back just as she rounded the corner. Her tangled hair puffed out around her sleepy face. She was still in her blue cat pajamas, hair wild, a stuffed animal clutched in one hand. She climbs onto the couch with practiced ease and presses a kiss to her father’s stubbled cheek.

Then she flops directly into your lap.

Sprawled like a starfish. Arms wide. Face against your hoodie. Her small weight presses against you, soft and warm and sticky with a slight night sweat.

Your spider-sense doesn’t even twitch.

You blink down at her. She looks up at you and smiles sleepily. “You didn’t leave.”

“No,” you whisper, voice caught in your throat. “Didn’t.”

She beams and stretches again, wriggling like a cat making herself comfortable. Then she sighs and shuts her eyes, like your lap is the softest bed in the world.

You glance at Roy.

He’s grinning. “It is what it is, huh?”

You nod, barely breathing. The sun’s risen higher now, casting gentle gold over the apartment. Over you. Over the child in your arms. Over the man watching you like you’re a new chapter in a book he wants to read carefully, completely.

You don’t know what this is. Not yet. Not fully. But you don’t run.

Roy reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear.

“You don’t have to leave today,” he said quietly.

You looked at him.

“You’ve got somewhere else to be?” he added.

Your voice cracked slightly. “I always have somewhere else to be.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“No,” you admitted. “Not right now.”

But you had to be.

The words hung in your chest like webbed stones as you slipped out of Roy’s building hours later, mask pulled low and scarf knotted around your neck like a promise you didn’t know how to keep. Lian was at school, yet her warmth clung to your arms. 

Roy hadn’t said anything when you stood. He just watched, eyes heavy, arms crossed over his chest like if he reached for you, he might not let go.

He didn’t try. You didn’t ask him to.

“Come back tonight,” he said, just before the door closed behind you.

You didn’t answer.

You couldn’t promise that.

You were Crimson Silk, after all. And Crimson Silk had obligations that didn’t wait for warmth, or safety, or kisses never made. She had people to protect. Promises to burn through. Scars to bleed for.

Your boots hit wet pavement with a dull sound as you dropped down into the Narrows from a five-story perch, silent and spider-sure, landing behind a dumpster between two sleeping dogs and a half-rotted crate of produce. You didn’t flinch when the dogs barked. You didn’t look twice when someone yelled down the street. You were home.

Crime Alley never changed. The Narrows adapted around it like vines gripping a dead tree—thin alleyways laced with smoke, buildings that leaned like bad teeth, wires hanging low and mean, and people that watched you with careful eyes. Some hopeful. Some tired. But they knew you.

You webbed a purse-snatcher to a lamppost at 11:17 AM. By 11:30, you were crouched in the crawlspace of a half-collapsed tenement building, pulling out three kids who’d hidden there after their mother collapsed from dehydration. The heat was unbearable. You carried her to the church on Brenton Street, left a note pinned to her shirt with her vitals and the words “DEHYDRATION. CAREFUL WITH IV RATE.” 

You didn’t sign it. You didn’t need to.

Your stomach twisted with hunger by the time you landed behind Cecilia’s Diner.

It was just past twelve.

You peeled your suit off slowly, carefully, still sweating through your back. The cloth clung to your skin, torn at the side where a lucky blade had grazed your ribs. You healed fast. But not perfectly. Not always. You changed into something you had grabbed from your apartment.

The diner smelled like grease and old arguments. Like black coffee and too many cigarettes. The bell over the door rang out sharp as you stepped inside.

“You,” barked Cecilia from behind the counter. “You’re late again.”

“I’m early,” you muttered, tying your apron on with practiced fingers. “Ten minutes early.”

“You’re still late in spirit.”

You didn’t argue.

Cecilia was nearly sixty, all hips and heavy hands, wearing a flour-dusted apron and a frown that could peel paint. But she fed the Narrows. Fed you, too. Sometimes even for free.

She eyed you. “You look like you’ve been dragging through hell.”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“Mhm. Wash your hands, Silky.”

You smiled. The name didn’t belong to you here, but she used it anyway. She was one of the few who could. One of the few who saw you in both lives and chose not to flinch at either.

You grabbed a coffee pot and started pouring without being asked. Booth seven wanted sugar. Table four liked it black. Table nine—expecting, again, twins this time—needed decaf.

“Silk helped me last night,” murmured the pregnant woman at table nine, eyes tired but fond. “Told that perv to back off. Had webs on his mouth before he could blink.”

You didn’t say anything. Just poured her coffee.

She squeezed your hand. You smiled a bit.

A few kids pressed their faces to the window outside and waved. You waved back. They’d seen you an hour ago, half masked, flipping off rooftops. Now you were pouring syrup and wiping ketchup off a booth.

You were Silk. You were Y/N. You were tired. 

You spent the next four hours in a rhythm you didn’t hate. Spatulas clattered. Plates slammed. Children cried. Adults lied. And somewhere in it, you felt almost present. The kind of present that didn’t come with blood under your nails or your brother’s voice echoing in your skull like a ghost. Jason. Dick. Bruce. Tim. The whole Batclan. You hadn’t said a word to any of them since the rooftop fight with Bruce.

Maybe they’d gotten the message.

Maybe they hadn’t.

Didn’t matter.

Your shift ended just past six. Cecilia tossed you a wrapped sandwich on your way out, and you ate it walking toward the Iceberg.

The club was already buzzing.

You didn’t go through the front. You ducked through the alley entrance beside the dumpsters and tapped twice on the steel door. The bouncer recognized you now. He didn’t bother with words. Just opened it and let you in.

The smell hit first—sweat, cheap beer, blood, leather, gun oil.

The fight ring beneath the Iceberg Lounge wasn’t legal. Wasn’t subtle, either. It was made of concrete and cage wire and broken men. And tonight, you were back for your next round.

“You’re late,” said a squat man with a buzz cut and teeth like coins. “Penguin said you’d be here an hour ago.”

“Penguin can eat shit,” you replied.

The man chuckled. “Ballsy. You sure you wanna do this again? Last one nearly tore your arm out of socket.”

You showed him your arm. Flexed it. Let your veins bulge just enough to scare him.

“Try me.”

The ring wasn’t glamorous. Bare floor. Stale crowd. A flickering bulb that swung like a pendulum overhead. The men watching were criminals, dealers, killers, sadists with bloody knuckles. And they cheered for you.

They didn’t know who you were. Not really. Just that you won. Every time.

Tonight’s opponent was nearly seven feet tall. Half Bane, half meat grinder. His fists were the size of your skull, and his breath fogged the cage before the bell even rang.

You didn’t flinch. You never did.

The bell cracked through the basement.

He rushed you immediately.

You ducked, side-flipped, used your flexibility like a weapon. Slid under his punch. Cracked your elbow into his spine. His grunt shook the ground.

“Cute,” he said. “Fast little bug.”

“I’m not a bug,” you muttered. “I’m the thing that eats them.”

He caught your ankle on the next turn. Slammed you down hard enough to shake your skull. Pain flared behind your eyes. But you didn’t scream.

You kicked off his wrist, vaulted backward, landed in a crouch. Your fingers twitched. Webs spun from your wrists—but you didn’t shoot yet. The crowd was wild. Money was flying.

He lunged again.

This time, you let him. At the last second, you drove your knee into his throat, webbed his face, used his own body weight to swing him into the wall of the cage. His skull cracked metal.

The crowd howled.

You moved like instinct, like hunger. You were faster. You had to be. You dodged his final swing and bit down. Just enough. Just the tip of your fang.

His body locked mid-motion. Paralyzed. Your venom slid like heat through his bloodstream. Temporary. Controlled. 

He collapsed. You stood over him, chest heaving, blood on your lip.

“Winner,” someone shouted. “The Crimson girl.”

Not a name, but close.

You didn’t bow. You didn’t smile. You just walked away, muscles stiff, blood drying under your ribs, eyes heavy with exhaustion. The part of the map was handed to you in a dirty envelope. You didn’t open it.

“Same time tomorrow?” the man asked as you passed.

You looked over your shoulder.

“If Oswald wants another fight,” you said, voice like static, “he better have a big lead on Crane next time.”

The man nodded, sober now. “He will.”

You left the ring with your scarf wrapped around your face, your limbs trembling with fatigue and leftover adrenaline. Your web shooters felt light. Your bones ached. Your heart… you weren’t sure.

Outside, the night felt colder.

But somewhere in Gotham, a little girl was probably brushing her teeth, humming a tune that sounded like your name. And maybe Roy was leaning on the balcony, waiting for a shadow to crawl back over his roof. Just maybe.

You didn’t head right away.

The billboard was cool beneath you, wind brushing strands of hair across your cheek where your mask had slipped back just enough to let the night air kiss your scars. You sat there a long time. Long enough to count the sirens. Long enough for your fangs to retract, for the pounding in your skull to dull into a low, familiar throb.

But eventually, the ache in your gut—the spider-hunger that never really left—forced you down. You needed calories. Carbs. Sugar. Salt. Whatever was left in the cabinets. And the cats needed feeding too.

You swung low, across the rooftops of your territory like muscle memory. The webs came out slower than usual, your wrists sore, your bones jangling under the skin like broken keys. It was almost four in the morning by the time you landed lightly on the fire escape outside your apartment.

But something was wrong.

Your spider sense didn’t scream. It didn’t roar. But it hummed, low and sharp, like the subtle pluck of a single violin string in a cathedral. 

It was quiet.

Too quiet.

Far too quiet.

The cats should’ve been mewling by now. Crawling over the inside window ledge. Pawing at the glass, crying for food like they always did when you were even a second late.

But you didn’t hear anything. Not a single sound.

You stopped, crouching low. Every muscle in your back coiled. You blinked, slowly. The moon hit the side of your building, lighting the bricks in silver.

And then you saw it. The window wide open.

The webs—your webs—that always lined the cracks in the glass, sticky and near-invisible, keeping out the worst of Gotham’s filth—gone. Cut away.

Your head turned slightly, a small tilt of instinct. The corners of the window frame had been lined in silver silk just this morning—thick enough to catch a fly, subtle enough to hide from human eyes. You weaved it with care every time you left, a living lock no key could pick.

And just like that, the apartment wasn’t yours anymore.

You stood up slowly. Didn’t draw a weapon. Didn’t prepare a web. Didn’t breathe.

You stepped through the window with a careful foot, toes first, heel soft. Your body moved like liquid shadow. You said nothing.

The cats were still inside. All three of them. Pressed into the farthest corners—silent, eating.

And then—

“Finally,” said a voice, low, sharp, furious.

You didn’t turn.  You already knew who it was. You could feel him.

Half your size, twice your rage.

“Demon Spawn,” you whispered, quietly.

That was enough.

The air split as Damian launched himself across the floor, a blur of righteous fury and grief and broken, bottled-up violence. His sword was gone, but his fists came fast. You dodged left. Then right. His boot missed your ribs by a breath. You slipped under the blow, crouched low, hands never rising. Not even once.

“Fight me!” he screamed, voice cracking, young and ancient and shattered all at once. “FIGHT ME, YOU COWARD!”

He spun, faster than most adults could follow. You ducked, rolled. His elbow came toward your neck. You leaned back, your spine arching in an impossible curve. The blow passed over you like wind.

Damian fought like a soldier. He was trained for war. But you weren’t just trained anymore—you were built for this. Engineered. Your reflexes were faster than thought, your body a machine of uncanny speed and precision. You evaded him with inhuman grace, not once retaliating.

You didn’t hit him. You couldn’t.

He was your baby brother. Even now. Especially now.

“You lied,” he spat, landing across from you in a crouch, breathing hard, sweat on his brow. His green eyes glared like acid. “You died, and you lied. And we grieved. We burned for you!”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You didn’t come back!”

“I couldn’t.”

“You didn’t want to!”

Damian surged again, fists wild. You let him. You let him graze your cheek, barely enough to sting. You let his foot land on your thigh. You didn’t retaliate. Didn’t move.

And then he froze. Shaking.

“Damian—”

“NO!” he screamed. “Stop! You don’t get to say my name! You don’t get to—You DIED! You DIED and we buried you, and then—then you just—”

His voice broke, and his knees hit the floor. You stood there, still, as his fists struck the tile. Again and again.

“I waited,” he growled, voice breaking now. “I looked. I begged. I told Father—told everyone—that you were out there, that they had to keep searching, but no one—no one listened—”

Your fingers curled.

“I needed you,” he sobbed. “I needed you.”

You stepped forward, quiet as a ghost.

He flinched.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t touch me.”

You didn’t. You crouched nearby instead, keeping a full feet between you.

“I couldn’t come back,” you said, voice low. “You don’t understand.”

“Then make me understand!” Damian shrieked. “You were my sister! You were the only one who ever really—”

“I was gone,” you said after a long pause. “Really gone. Joker cut my throat. I bled out. I was—dead.”

“I know!” he cried, turning to you, eyes red and furious. “I know, I watched it happen on the footage. We found your blood, we found—You were everything to us and then—then you were gone.”

Your fangs twitched behind your lips.

“Then I woke up,” you said. “In a river. Drowning. Injected with venom. Gene-therapy. Mutation. Regeneration cycles. Web sacs, venom glands, artificial neural boosting—I’m not what I was, Damian.”

His jaw clenched. “You’re still you.”

You shook your head. “Not the same.”

“You’re still mine,” he whispered.

Your chest cracked. You didn’t know what part. Maybe all of it.

He lunged again—but this time, not to fight.

His fists hit your shoulders, useless and weak, and he sobbed into the fabric of your suit, arms trembling. He was just a boy. Just your little brother. The one who used to cling to your arm during Wayne gala nights and ask how to sneak dessert past Alfred. 

A soft, broken child curled into your lap like he used to, so many years ago, when the nightmares were still new and your arms felt like safety.

“I missed you,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“You should’ve come back.”

“I couldn’t.”

His fists hit your back again, then stilled.

You sat there for a long time. Just the two of you, in a broken room with silent cats and torn-up webs and too much grief for one floor to hold.

“Do the others know you’re here?” you asked.

“Only Tim,” Damian said. “He made me promise I wouldn’t engage. So, naturally, I engaged.”

You nodded. “Of course.”

“He’s been… worried. We all have.”

You didn’t answer that.

Damian sat cross-legged on the couch now, hands in his lap, watching you like you might vanish again. Like if he blinked, you’d disappear into silk.

You didn’t.

Instead, you grabbed your telephone, screen a little broken —robbed, you had to admit. You sent Roy a single message:

“Couldn't make it. Damian appeared. Tomorrow at 13. Kisses”

And after that, you sat by your brother's side again.

The weight of everything you are—everything you became—settled in the silence between you both like thick smog. 

He didn’t speak right away, and neither did you. The silence wasn’t the calm kind, either —it was static-filled, tense. The air between you crackled with everything that had been screamed and spat and still hadn’t left either of your bodies. 

You could feel it in your fingertips, in your shoulders, your jaw. Your spider-sense kept pinging faintly, not out of danger, but emotion. Guilt. His. Yours. Someone’s.

Damian’s knees were tucked to his chest now, arms around them. His hood was off, cowl halfway peeled and hanging off his shoulders, hair disheveled from where he’d been clawing at it. His knuckles were red —from hitting walls, maybe. From trying to land a punch you never let connect.

You didn’t know how long you sat like that, just breathing in the scent of dust and stray fur, cold ash and your own too-thin blood. The cats still didn’t make noise. They watched you both from various corners, tails flicking, understanding something primal had shifted in the room.

Eventually, his voice came. Hoarse.

“Do you hate us?”

It wasn’t what you expected. Not do you hate me. Not why didn’t you come home —he’d already screamed that one at the top of his lungs. No. It was us now. All of them. The family.

You let the question hang for a long while, staring at a crack in the wall near the window. Your voice, when it finally came, wasn’t soft. It wasn’t cruel either. Just… honest. Raw.

“No.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

“I don’t hate any of you,” you said again, lower. “I just didn’t know if I could come back and still be me.”

You finally looked at him, and he was staring forward, not at you, not at anything in particular. Just… trying not to cry again. But it lived on his lashes. In the way his chest shook a little even when still.

“I remembered the Manor,” you continued. “I remembered your voice. Your stupid sarcasm. Your swords. Your smugness. I remembered hugging you. Like— it was real. I had that. But it didn’t feel like mine anymore.”

Your voice cracked, but you didn’t stop. “I died, Damian.”

He flinched, hard.

You leaned forward, elbows on your knees, your voice turning colder without intending to. “Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. I stopped breathing. I bled out on the floor of a clown’s hellhole. And when I came back—”

Your voice choked off. You swallowed hard.

“When I came back, I wasn’t sure I was… me. They changed me. Spliced me. Injected me with so much crap I can’t even remember the shape of my DNA anymore. I had to learn how to eat again. What food I needed. I have to track how much venom I use just so I don’t pass out in the street. I get so hungry some days it makes me nauseous.”

Damian still didn’t look at you, but he was listening. You knew he was. The kind of stillness he had wasn’t ignorance —it was bracing. Like he was holding a sword between his ribs and daring it to move.

“I didn’t know if coming home would fix me. Or kill what little part of me still remembered being your sister.”

“You are my sister,” he finally said. Quiet. Fierce.

You glanced at him.

He turned to look at you now, red eyes narrowing. “I don’t care what they did to you. You’re still you. And you were supposed to come back.”

You scoffed, not mocking him, just bitter. “And do what? Eat dinner with Alfred like I’m not half-feral? Train with Bruce and pretend I don’t hear my own bones re-breaking when I move too fast?”

“You think I don’t know what it’s like to come back different?” Damian snapped, pushing to his feet suddenly. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to not fit the same mold you left behind?!”

Your body tensed reflexively, but you didn’t rise.

“I killed people,” he hissed. “I killed before I could even write cursive. I was a weapon. Talia’s little prince of death. And when I came to Gotham, I had to figure out how to exist without stabbing everything that moved.”

You raised an eyebrow faintly. “You still stab some things.”

“That’s not the point!” he snapped, cheeks flushed.

You gave a weak shrug. “Then what is?”

“The point is, you were my light,” he exploded. “You were the only one who didn’t treat me like a freak when I first arrived! You used to kiss my hair when I was sick, even when I bitched about it. You used to laugh at my drawings, even the bloody ones.”

You gave a weak laugh despite yourself. “They were pretty bloody.”

“I’m still me,” he said. “You always told me I could be. That I didn’t have to be my father’s weapon or my mother’s trophy. That I could just be Damian.”

You were quiet.

“So what the hell made you think you didn’t get to be you anymore just because you mutated a little?!” he shouted, voice cracking.

Tears sprang to his eyes again. He turned away from you, shoulders tight, fists clenched. And then, in a whisper: “Why didn’t you come back for me?”

It shattered you. Something inside you curled and died all over again.

“You think being enhanced makes you less human? That it makes you unworthy of being loved?”

“I don’t know what it makes me!” you barked. “Do you know what it’s like to wake up every day and hear your own heart pumping in your ears like a drumline? To smell every rat in the sewer two floors below? To know that if I miscalculate even slightly in a fight, I could snap someone in two without trying?”

“You were always dangerous,” Damian said. “You were always strong. You just had more smiles back then.”

You blinked. Your breath caught.

He looked at you again, eyes brimming. “You think I don’t notice you still hold back? You didn’t touch me once. You haven’t used your webs. You didn’t even hiss.”

You winced, glancing away.

“I see you,” he whispered. “You still care. You still protect people. Even when you hate yourself.”

You said nothing, but something flickered in your chest. A twitch. A movement. An old ache that had calcified now trying to beat again.

Damian took a shaky breath. “Don’t leave again.”

“Dami…”

He grabbed your sleeve. His hand was small, but the grip was strong. “Please. Just don’t.”

He shifted closer instead. Just enough to press his shoulder against yours. 

You reached out, slow and uncertain, and placed a hand on his knee. You don’t know why. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s what you used to do when he was a boy. When you were his older sister and not some monster crawling through Gotham's underbelly.

He covered your hand with both of his. “I waited for you,” he mumbled. “Every night. I left the window open.”

You laughed, a broken sound. “I didn’t even have skin the first year.”

Damian stiffened. “That doesn't mean you were gone to me.”

He shifted to face you fully.

“I didn't get to tell you goodbye. You don't get to vanish and come back and pretend that it's not a war in my chest every time I look at you.”

Your throat tightened. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say you missed us! I want you to say that it hurt to leave! I want you to say you came back still loving us, not just because you wanted Crane's blood!”

He stood up suddenly, slamming his fist into the wall hard enough to rattle the frame above it. You stayed still.

“I—I looked up to you,” Damian said. “I loved you. I love you. You were the first one to treat me like I wasn't a weapon.”

Your voice is barely audible. “You aren't.”

He breathed hard through his nose, eyes glassy. Then, with the quietest voice he's used all night: “I don't care what they did to you. You're still my sister.”

Something in you cracked. Something deep.

You stood, slow, silent, and step over. For the first time in years, you wrapped your arms around him. Not like a ghost. Not like a memory.

Like a sister.

And he didn’t pull away.

He held back at first, fists tight in your shirt. And finally, finally, you felt his tears on your neck before it was a full sob, clinging to you.

Not even in the Narrows, much less in Crime Alley. While you were kind of appreciated around—more often with the teenagers and children than with adults—they also didn’t know how or when to keep their mouths shut about you.

The only brother of yours that entered your area, the only one doomed like you, and they had told him almost everything you keep quiet about.

Jason.

Of course it was Jason. He was the only one who walked Crime Alley without flinching. The only one who didn't try to “fix” you with lectures or data or therapy or silence. He just showed up. And because he showed up, they spoke. The kids, the teens, the old woman who smoked outside her window with a baseball bat always within reach. They told him about Silky. Crimson Silk. The Spider-Woman of Crime Alley. The protector. The myth with venom in her teeth.

And if Jason knew… that meant the others did too.

And if Tim knew…

Steph and Cass did too, because there were no secrets Tim didn’t tell them. Then Barbara, because Oracle knew things like the city knew rot. And Dick.

You prayed they hadn't told Damian. You prayed Duke hadn’t heard. You couldn’t take the look on their faces—the betrayal, the pity, the guilt. You’d spent months learning how to live with what you’d become. You didn’t need to see it in their eyes again. You didn’t need to be reminded that you had once been someone else. That you had once been their sister.

That you had once been alive.

You still loved them all—of course you did. They were your family. You were raised with them for more years than you had with your biological parents. You’d fought beside them, bled beside them. But that was then. That was when you were Dragonfly. Bruce’s protégé. Gotham’s smile in a mask. His little sunshine girl.

Your body aches with the memory of it.

Now, in the cold air of Gotham’s midyear night, you’re perched on a slanted rooftop with knees bent too far forward to be human. You're still. Watching. Waiting. The dull throb of hunger sits behind your ribs, alongside a webbing itch inside your wrist you haven't quite learned to ignore. 

Your scarf is wrapped tight across your mouth and nose—red, silky, threaded with old bloodstains and newer repairs. Beneath it, the metal half-mask clings to your cheekbones, distorting your voice, keeping your breath even. A makeshift muzzle for the voice that had long since grown cold. You didn’t talk when you didn’t have to. What was the point? Words never stopped Crane’s needles or Joker’s laughter. Never stopped the serum in your veins.

You're on patrol. Not because you believe in justice anymore. Not the way Bruce taught it. But because something inside you can’t stop.

The city was thick tonight. Humid. Smelled like rust and rising smoke, like something was about to happen.

You launch forward. Web lines shoot from your wrists and stick to old concrete. Swing. Arc. Land. The rooftops blur beneath you. A feral rhythm pulses in your blood—the city’s heartbeat and your own, matching for once. You crouch low as you land on a roof overlooking the tram lines. The movement is too smooth. Too spiderlike.

And then—

That itch in the base of your skull. No, not an itch—a scream. Your spider sense flared so suddenly that your knees buckled.

You ducked instinctively, back arching, and something whistled through the air right above your head.

A line.

You twisted mid-air, fell back-first into a roll and rebounded off the next rooftop in a single bound. Knees dug into the ledge, fangs partially out from the adrenaline. You panted once, slow and even.

Across from you, in the thick hush of the night, plastered in semi-shadow—

Stands Batman. Tall. Broad. Covered in armor matte as midnight. Cape hanging like a shadow draped from his shoulders. The white of his eyeslits reflect nothing. He doesn’t move.

But you can feel him thinking.

Your stomach knots.

You tilt your head. Your body shifts into a crouch that’s too low, too animal. “Really?” your voice was low, muffled by the scarf. “You came yourself?”

“Silk,” he says, like he already knew. “Stand down.”

You don’t answer. You press your palm to your web shooter. Clench your fingers.

He steps forward. One step.

You shoot. The web strikes his forearm, pulls, and he stumbles—but barely. He slices through it with a sharp twist of his gauntlet.

“Didn’t want to do it like this,” he mutters.

Too bad.

You launch.

The fight doesn’t begin with punches. It begins with weight and will. He tries to catch you mid-air, but you twist your spine like water, like air, and slam both feet into his chest. He skids back. Not much. But enough.

He grabs your ankle mid-spin. You click your heel into his wrist, dislodging the grip. You flip backward, land on all fours. You spring again.

Fist meets gauntlet.

Your punch lands—cracks the reinforced armor at his side. He grunts, surprised by the force.

He hits back. He kicked you backward, and you slid, claws digging into the rooftop.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, voice deeper than memory, modulated and metallic.

“You don’t get to decide that,” you spat, your fangs pushing down from your upper gums, venom itching

The air splits.

His punch collides with your shoulder, rattling through bone. You stumble. Regain balance. Slide under his next swing, and uppercut him straight in the solar plexus.

He folds slightly.

“You're not just enhanced,” he mutters. “You’re unstable.”

You snarl. “And you’re still a coward.”

His gaze narrows.

Another punch. Another dodge.

He tries to restrain. You try to kill.

Webs fly. Miss. He grapples forward, fist slamming into your gut—but you barely feel it. You're already moving. You slash your claws out, aiming low, slicing across the kevlar at his thigh.

He responds by sweeping your legs from under you. You hit the roof. Hard. For a split second, the wind leaves your lungs. But you're already twisting away from the baton coming down. You shoot a line of web to the side of the chimney, yank yourself across the rooftop, and flip back upright.

A punch cracked the air between you. Then another. You ducked, slid beneath his leg, elbowed his knee from the side. He dropped, but just for a second before grabbing you by the arm and flinging you into the chimney behind you. Brick burst. You hit hard, shoulder first—but your body rebounded with that impossible flexibility, legs wrapping around his neck, flipping him forward.

The scarf ripped off.

It flew into the night like a fallen flag, twisting in the wind.

You didn’t have time to care.

He came at you again, faster this time. This was Bruce at full. No hesitation now. You punched. Kicked. Slashed with your claws. He deflected, jabbed, brought his knee to your side. Your ribs cracked, but your regeneration lit up instantly, bones stitching in seconds.

Then, his fist connected with your jaw.

The metal mask cracked at the hinge.

Another blow. You staggered.

And the mask flew off your face.

It hit the ground like a broken memory.

Your head was still bowed—just for a second. Blood dripped from your nose. Your lip was split. Your hair was matted to your face, sweat and blood painting your features in blotches of red.

Then you lifted your gaze. Clicked your jaw back into place. Looked him right in the eye.

Your eyes weren’t the same anymore. Not really. Still your color, yes—but sharper, ringed with something inhuman. Dilated from the dark. Wide like prey, glowing like predator.

And Bruce Wayne sees you.

Your bloody nose. Your split lip. The bruises already healing. The venom in your stare. And underneath all that—

You.

The daughter he buried. The child he mourned. The legacy he failed.

“What’s the matter?” you whisper, your voice hoarse and broken, the edge of your words laced in bitter amusement. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

His mouth opens slightly. No words come out. The look on his face—God, that look—was all you needed. The way his mouth parted slightly, the way his body froze like a man caught in his own worst nightmare.

You hit him. Hard. Once, twice, three times. No restraint. No hesitation.

You punched him across the face so violently it echoed. Your claws ripped into his gauntlet, through the Kevlar. You kicked him across the rooftop, blood finally spattering his chin. He didn’t block. Didn’t counter.

“Fight back,” you snarled.

He didn’t.

“Fight back!”

He exhales, body shuddering. You feel the armor crack, the wet resistance of blood. His hand goes to your wrist—gentle, still.

"Y/N . . ." he says it like a prayer.

You rip your hand back.

“Don’t say my name like that,” you hiss. “You buried a casket. You gave up. You all did.”

He doesn’t argue. Just looks at you with those eyes. Too human. Too hurt. You stumble back, suddenly shaking. Your shoulder’s bleeding from his earlier blow with a batarang. Your hands are red. His blood, yours. You can’t tell the difference.

He’s kneeling.

You crouch low again, trembling.

He says softly, “You’re alive. You’re… alive.”

“Crane sent a tape,” you hissed. “He sent you my screams, and you stopped looking.”

“I didn’t stop.”

“You did,” you snapped. “Because you always stop. When it’s too hard. When it’s too dark. You stopped with Jason. You stopped with me.”

His jaw twitched. You kept going.

“I was screaming for you. Every day. Begging you to come. I believed in you. I waited for you.”

Tears burned in your eyes now, but you didn’t let them fall.

“And you never came.”

“I didn’t know you were still alive.”

“Then you shouldn’t have trained me to survive.”

You stepped back finally. Your hands trembled. Your claws were dripping. His blood. Your blood. The city’s rot clung to your lungs.

The wind cut cold between you both.

And Bruce… still said nothing. He just looked at you.

You hated how broken he looked. Like he still loved you. Like he hadn’t given up hope. Like he had never, not even for a second, stopped calling you his daughter.

You backed away.

“Don’t follow me,” you said quietly, hoarse.

“Y/N—”

“Don’t follow me. Don’t send them. Don’t send Jason.”

His eyes flickered.

“I mean it,” you growled. “Next time, I won’t hold back.”

You turned. You ran. Swung away into the velvet blackness of the Narrows, the wind screaming against your half-healed lips, the blood on your claws not dry yet.

And still—your heart broke with every swing.

Because you had held back.

You always would.

Because he was still your father.

You don’t remember landing.

You remember swinging.

You only remember the rage that wouldn’t let your joints settle. The way your hands refused to stop bleeding. You were still sticky with his blood—Bruce’s—and yours, too. Your mask had vanished into the Gotham wind. The metal half-plate cracked and left behind. Your scarf fluttered somewhere on the other rooftop like a rag left from war.

You didn’t stop swinging.

Not even once.

The city blurred beneath you, web-lines latching to the skeletons of half-finished towers and the rusted bones of forgotten neighborhoods. You didn’t see the Narrows pass under you, or the kids tucked in makeshift tents. Didn’t see the cracked sidewalk you fixed last week, or the stray cat waiting on your window.

The neon of the Iceberg Lounge stabs through your vision like a migraine—too clean, too polished, too fake. You landed with a sickening crunch onto the gravel lot behind the Iceberg Lounge. Your knees didn’t even bend. You hit the ground like something out of a nightmare, your spine too strong to break under the weight of that fall.

There are guards outside.

Two. Both of them thick-necked, dressed in cheap suits and ugly sunglasses, like someone told them they were cool in the nineties and they never got the memo. But neither of them moves to stop you.

Not even when they see your face. No mask. No scarf. Blood smeared down your jaw and neck, splattered across your chest like war paint. Knuckles split. Eyes wild.

You see them glance at each other—brief, unsure—but no one raises a hand. You don’t look at them again. You don’t have to.

The inside of the club is as stupidly grand as always. Blue glass. Chandelier light. That synth jazz on a loop that makes your ears twitch. Bodies moving slow and sluggish, expensive perfume clogging your nostrils. Laughter sharp as a blade. Not yours.

You walk past the bar. Past the dancers. Past the men in corner booths talking quiet over whiskey and war stories. And nobody stops you.

Because even the ones who don’t believe the stories have heard enough not to try.

You don’t knock when you reach the throne room. You just shove the doors open, hard enough that one slams against the wall and leaves a dent.

The guards inside raise weapons. One of them even flips off the safety.

“Put it down,” Penguin says lazily, without even looking up.

He’s seated on that stupid frozen throne like he’s royalty. Rings on every finger. A cigar smoldering between his teeth. The cane rests across his knees, but he doesn’t bother lifting it.

His gaze drifts up to meet yours, and something in his expression sharpens when he sees your face.

“Well, well,” he says, voice gravel and delight, “my little venomous darling returns. You’ve had quite the evening, haven’t you?”

“I want the next fight,” you say. Your voice is rough, cracked at the edges.

“You don’t look like you’ve recovered from the last one. You’re not even wearing a mask tonight. That’s bold. Or suicidal. I can never tell with you.”

“I said I want it,” you repeat. Your claws flex, blood dripping from your fingers to the floor.

He smiles.

“Of course. Of course,” he drawls, waving one gloved hand. “But you know, sweetheart… we’ll have to talk about the terms again later. That kind of performance earns you bonus points. And I’m a generous man. One more tick on your lovely little list toward dear Scarecrow. We're getting close now.”

You don’t answer.

He gestures to the pit. “Let’s make it a show.”

You don’t wait for the lights. Don’t wait for the crowd to settle. You launch a web from your wrist, fast, clean, sharp—one shot to the top railing, one swing down. You flip once, land in the middle of the ring with both feet and no flair.

There’s a hum of anticipation in the air. The spectators are lining up already.

Penguin always draws a crowd when metas are involved.

And the thing they bring out for you—he’s a meta all right.

Big. Dressed in all black. Arms as thick as your torso. Skin shimmered with a kind of leather-like resistance, like a rhino’s hide. The eyes are too bright, too animal. Like something bred in a lab and left too long in the dark.

He steps into the ring with a low growl and cracks his neck.

You don’t flinch. Your fingers twitch, but you don’t activate your shooters yet. You want this up close. You want the bruises.

The fight starts with a bell, but you move before it finishes ringing.

You slam into him like a bullet. Your knee collides with his gut, and you hear the breath punch out of him. You spin, claws flashing, dragging across his shoulder. Not deep—but it makes him stumble.

He’s not slow. That’s the problem. Big guys usually are. But this one? He recovers fast.

His elbow snaps forward, and you duck just in time, slipping under and jabbing your claws into the meat of his thigh. He roars.

“Metahuman,” you mutter under your breath, sidestepping his second blow, “but barely.”

He grabs for your ankle. You backflip, landing on the ropes, crouched like a beast. The crowd yells. Somewhere up top, Oswald is laughing. You don’t care.

You leap again. This time, he catches you. His palm slams into your ribs. The exact place Bruce hit you.

He throws you across the ring. You hit the ground hard. Roll twice. Blood smears from your mouth.

Your regeneration kicked in instantly—but you pushed it down.

Let the pain stay. Let it hurt.

You forced your system not to heal.

You lie there for a second, cheek pressed to the mat, and everything goes quiet. Too quiet. He grabbed your arm and twisted. You heard your bone snap. And you laughed. Quiet. A little breath of madness. He looked startled for the first time.

Bruce’s face flashes in your head.

Your own voice, younger—back when you wore yellow, back when your smile was a gift given every day—laughing, shouting across rooftops with all of your siblings, even those not quite adopted.

Dragonfly.

She was so fast. So bright. So proud of every bruise. She used to smile under her domino mask. She used to wake up in Wayne Manor and sneak cookies at night. She used to believe that Bruce could fix everything if he just had enough time.

She was his.

And then: screaming. The tape Crane sent. Your own voice again. But not laughing. Begging. Begging for help. For your dad.

“I waited for you,” you whisper to no one.

The meta punches you in the ribs again. You don’t move. A second punch to the jaw. Your lip splits deeper. Another to the back. You’re limp now. Blood fills your mouth.

You hear people shouting. The crowd. Cheers. Roars. But your head is somewhere else.

You're still that girl, strapped to the table, praying for Bruce’s shadow to cross the light above you. And he never did.

Another hit. You see white. Pain. Not sharp, but deep. Saturated. Your bones ache. Your claws twitch but don’t rise.

Then—

Something catches your eye. Up in his throne, Oswald Cobblepot spun a small square of paper between his fingers. A yellowed, burned scrap with hand-drawn markings. A map. Your map.

Crane’s map.

You blink.

Once. Twice.

You remember.

You remember why you’re here.

You’re not a daughter right now. You’re not Dragonfly. You’re not even Crimson Silk.

You are vengeance. You are purpose.

You moved faster than light.

Your bones realign as you stand. Your healing kicks in like fire. Your claws stretch out, long and gleaming. Your lip is still split. Your eyes are glassy—but this time not from dissociation.

From focus.

The meta charges. You let him. At the last second, you spin, flip backward, and web his ankle mid-run. He slams face-first into the ring post. The crowd gasps.

You web again—two quick shots to the chest, and yank.

He’s down. You pounce.

Your claws dig into his arm—muscle tearing beneath you. He screams now, and you don’t stop. One slice across his chest. Another across his thigh. You webbed his mouth shut mid-breath.

You kicked his leg so hard his knee turned sideways. He fell hard. And you stayed on him, breathing heavy, your face bruised and wet, your arms trembling, but your body still crouched like a spider over its prey.

You look up, and Oswald meets your gaze. He grins.

You crawl out of the ring without words. Every step up the stairs is agony.

You don’t care. Nothing is more important than that.

Because you're closer. You’re going to find Crane. And when you do—

You’ll make him wish you stayed dead.

Roy Harper knew two things for certain: his kid could out-stubborn him, and soap suds always found a way to sneak up his arms no matter how careful he was.

“Daddy,” Lian said from the kitchen counter, legs swinging back and forth like she was keeping rhythm with her own thoughts, “do you think spiders wear capes?”

Roy snorted. “If they did, they'd get caught in their own webs.”

Lian grinned, her two front teeth slightly uneven. She had an apple clutched in both hands, half-finished, juice trailing down her wrist in the way Roy had warned her about a dozen times already. But he didn’t stop her. He liked seeing her like this—barefoot, messy, and a little wild.

She glanced toward the window, her nose scrunching thoughtfully. “Silky doesn’t wear a cape.”

“Silky?” Roy asked, rinsing a plate. “That your imaginary friend?”

The name didn’t register immediately. But Lian had mentioned her before—some vigilante she swore was covered in white and black, who swung on webs like she was born in the air. He’d brushed it off at the time. Kids always had stories, especially when they grew up with a hero for a dad.

“Nooo,” she giggled, rolling her eyes. “She’s real, Daddy. She’s the spider lady. The one that helped Miguel’s mom last week! The one that made a giant web so the fire truck could reach the building. You never listen.”

Roy blinked, lowering the dish. He turned, bracing his hip against the sink, one brow raised. “Spider lady, huh?”

Lian nodded, solemn now. “They call her Crimson Silk. But all the kids call her Silky. Miguel says she’s got eyes like a cat and actual webs that come fron her wrist. But I think she’s nice. She gives Mrs. Lu fresh bread and helped Sophie get her shoe off the lamppost once.”

Roy hummed low in his throat, tossing the towel over his shoulder.

“She’s cool, Daddy,” Lian insisted. “She talks to cats and doesn’t like loud noises.”

The description tickled something in the back of Roy’s brain, but he shrugged it off. Gotham was full of weirdos and vigilantes—most of whom he didn’t bother cataloging unless they aimed something sharp at his daughter or blew up half a building.

Still, Silky stuck with him.

“Hey,” he said, pointing with a fork. “You see her, don’t chase her down. I don’t care if she’s handing out free cookies.”

“I won’t,” she sighed, just as a flash of movement caught her attention through the small window above the counter.

Her entire face lit up.

“Daddy!” she gasped, voice barely a whisper, but full of awe. “It’s her! It’s Silky! Daddy, look!”

Roy turned instantly, nearly dropping a plate.

Across the alley, two rooftops over, hanging upside down from a splatter of webbing that clung to a rusted vent, was… something. Someone.

A shadow. Slender. Draped in crimson threading that looked soaked through, like blood glinting under the moon. The shape swayed slightly in the wind, suspended from a single wrist by a thick cord of webbing. Her body was curled inward, almost fetal, but balanced like a predator in sleep. The other hand hung low, claws twitching. Her hair spilled down from under a hood, too dark to see color clearly. What the dim streetlights did catch was the shape of her.

Compact. Defined. Human… but not quite.

He squinted. Not a cape. No emblem. Just scarlet silk clinging like skin, streaked with black and deeper red. Her head twitched slightly, as if she was listening to something inside her own skull.

Roy narrowed his eyes. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Go talk to her!” Lian beamed, bouncing in place. “She always listens to kids!”

“No way,” he said. “I don’t go charging into mysterious spider-women on rooftops while I’m holding a dish rag.”

“Pleaaase?”

He smirked. That did it.

“You stay here,” he said, tossing the rag onto the counter. “Don’t open the door for anyone. Not even me, unless I knock three times like this.” He tapped her hand in a rhythm. “Three knocks. Got it?”

Lian nodded. “Got it.”

“And no cookies ‘til I’m back.”

“Daaaad!”

He grabbed his jacket, pushing it on his arms. Roy took the stairs two at a time. His apartment was on the third floor, right across from the rooftop access. It wasn’t the fanciest place in Gotham, but it was home. Had been since Lian was two. Close enough to the Narrows that vigilantes were a dime a dozen, but far enough away that the explosions came with a delay.

He kicked open the door to the roof and stepped out into the cool night air, hands braced at his belt like he was still Red Arrow, still twenty, still invincible.

Across from him, just five meters of alley air between their buildings, the figure still hung.

She moved now.

Twitched.

Then turned.

Her knees bent and flipped her up in one fluid motion, muscles coiling like rope. She landed on her own rooftop, crouched like an insect, one hand on the edge, the other steadying her web-line.

Roy whistled low.

“You always sneak around rooftops dressed like murder, or is tonight a special occasion?”

She didn’t reply. Didn’t move.

He raised a brow. “That’s a hell of a get-up. You take commissions, sweetheart?”

She stood slowly, the light finally catching her from the left. Her silhouette gleamed, faintly reflective in some parts, matte in others. Built like a dancer. Moved like a killer.

Her head tilted. Then she moved—fast.

A backflip, casual and fluid, sending her further back into her rooftop before she perched on the raised ledge with ease, one leg drawn up, the other dangling. Her fingers curled around the stone lip. Her head cocked to the side again.

Roy blinked. Something about that posture was familiar.

His grin faded a notch. “Alright. I know that flip. Dickie used to pull them when he thought no one was looking. And I’ve seen that twist in the air—”

And then she looked up. Right at him. Full face in moonlight.

Roy froze.

You didn’t flinch as he looked at you. You were tired, exhausted even, but your body didn’t allow weakness. The bruises had faded to dull shadows, but the blood hadn’t fully cleaned from your cheek. Your eyes were heavy-lidded. Sad.

“Hi, Roy.”

He took a step back like the wind had been knocked out of him.

“I thought—everyone thought—Jason said you were—” He blinked hard. “God. Y/N. You were dead.”

You shrugged one shoulder. “Not enough, apparently.”

He swallowed, glancing over you now—really looking.

You were wrecked. Bruises on your face. Blood on your nose and lips. Claw marks on your knuckles. Your suit was torn. Webs still clung to your hips like a second skin. Your shoulders drooped with exhaustion.

And yet, you still looked dangerous. Still looked alive.

“You should come in,” Roy said gently. “You’re bleeding all over the skyline.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

You opened your mouth, but the dizziness hit you again. With a single web, your body forced itself to the other edge. The next thing you knew, he was by your side, arms around your waist before you could fall.

“You’re not fine,” he muttered. “You’re not even half fine. Let me help, okay?”

You didn’t fight. You were too tired to.

He helped you climb back down into the apartment, one arm tight around your waist, your claws retracted just enough not to slice open his jacket. You moved like a ghost, like a broken marionette that had forgotten how to stand upright.

And when you stepped through his door—

Lian gasped again.

“Silky!”

You glanced at her and offered the smallest smile, sure that you didn't look your prettiest. “Hi, kid.”

She beamed.

Tim sat on the edge of the med bay cot, his ribs wrapped tight, bruises flowering down his right side in a sickening purple-gray gradient. His uniform jacket had been cut off hours ago, left in a pile near the evidence tray where the shredded remains of some unnatural silk were coiled like a snare. His gloves were scorched. His pride, only slightly less so.

Barbara was frowning at her monitors, arms crossed, one finger tapping against her upper bicep in irritation. The web was still spread out across the table in front of her in strands—burned in places, intact in others. They hadn’t been able to cut it. Not with a blade. Not even with a blowtorch. Not until Jason had the idea to heat a sword in fire and then slice through it, inch by inch, while it screamed and twisted in the flame like something alive.

It hadn’t disintegrated. It had melted.

“You said ten minutes,” Barbara said finally, turning in her chair to face Tim. “It took an hour. And it didn’t come loose on its own. That… stuff was still holding after the burn.”

Tim grimaced, jaw tight. “I didn’t expect it to be that strong.”

“You should’ve called backup the second it got weird.”

“I did call backup,” Tim muttered. “Nightwing showed up. And watched.”

Dick raised an eyebrow. “I was going to intervene. You looked like you were having fun.”

“I was webbed to a rooftop stairwell, Dick.”

“And yet, still talking.”

“That's the part that bothers you?” Jason drawled from the corner, arms folded as he leaned against the metal pillar beside the med bay. “Not the part where you got webbed up like a birthday present and left for dead?”

“I wasn’t left for dead,” Tim shot back. “She didn’t even hurt me. That’s what’s weird.”

“She?” Dick asked, glancing up from the disinfectant pad in his hand. He was perched beside Tim, squinting at a particularly nasty gash on his shoulder.

“Yeah.” Tim’s voice slowed. “Her voice. Her build. The way she moved. Modulator or not, I’m sure it was a woman. A young one: twenty to mid-twenties. You train long enough, you start recognizing the little tells.”

Jason’s jaw flexed. “That narrows it down to about two hundred women in this city.”

Barbara turned back to her screens, bringing up the filtered recording Tim had managed to salvage from the fight. The modulated voice was coarse, mechanical—but not clean. There was bleed-through. A real voice behind the distortion, subtle inflection, feminine vowels stretched like tension wire. It wasn’t professional gear, either. Probably built from scratch.

“She wasn’t trying to mimic someone else,” Barbara muttered, eyes narrowing. “She was masking herself. There’s a difference.”

“Exactly,” Tim said, and though his ribs were clearly killing him, he leaned forward a bit as he spoke, voice edged with something like obsession. “And she knew how to fight. Like—trained. But more than that, she fought like she was holding back.”

Jason snorted. “You saying she let you win?”

Tim gave him a sharp look. “She didn’t win. But she didn’t try to finish me, either. She was fast—like, inhumanly fast. If she wanted to knock me out, she could’ve. I think she was testing me.”

That silenced the room for a beat. A low, thoughtful pause as the implications crawled over their shoulders like smoke.

Barbara flicked a strand of the web between her gloved fingers. “And you said it came from her wrists?”

“Yep.” Tim nodded. “Didn’t see cartridges or gear, though. It was clean. Organic?”

“No. Not entirely.” Barbara leaned in closer. “There was some kind of compression mechanism at her sides, likely hidden in the suit. But she triggered it like it was part of her body.”

“She moved like it was part of her,” Dick added, finally setting down the bloodied cloth. “Like she wasn’t thinking about it. Muscle memory. That’s the thing I can’t get out of my head.”

Jason raised a brow. “You recognizing something?”

Dick hesitated.

He was.

He didn’t say it. Not out loud. Not yet.

But there was something disturbingly familiar about her. The angles of her movement. The way she turned her body just slightly before impact to reduce recoil. That sharp, tight grip on the wrist when she spun an enemy mid-air. The flexibility. The instinct. The rage that was barely chained.

It wasn’t someone he trained—but it was someone who trained with him. Once.

“You know how many metas Gotham sees a year?” Jason asked, tilting his head. “And now we’ve got a spider-themed vigilante using homemade gear, who refuses to kill, operates only in the Narrows and Crime Alley, and has better instincts than half of us combined?”

Barbara’s gaze flicked to him. “You think she’s a rogue experiment?”

“I think she’s dangerous,” Jason said. “And she knows the city. She wasn’t just swinging around like a maniac. She was tracking. She got the jump on Tim and had an escape route already mapped.”

“Where’d she go?” Barbara asked, looking back at Tim.

Tim exhaled slowly. “I'm not so sure. It was difficult to see which direction she left to. But she didn't try to kill me. I'm sure we are not against anything dangerous.”

“That’s the concerning part,” Barbara muttered, spinning slightly in her chair and flicking through heat signatures from the East End. “She held back.”

Jason frowned. “What makes you say that?”

“Because the strength it took to hold Tim down like that—without breaking bones, without crushing his windpipe, and while webbing him up like a trapped animal—it’s precise. She wasn’t flailing. That was surgical. That’s experience. And she knew how you move around, look.”

They watched the short video on the wide screen. There, the Spider —whose eyes were not free from the darkness of the hoodie— evaded his punches, kicking him in the right places to make him tumble around but never actually hurt. Then, she threw a web that covered the camera, hidden terribly well.

“See that?” Barbara paused it right in the middle of the web being thrown. “She knew where it was, where she had to put the web to cover it completely.  Didn't have to even think about it. It was pure instinct.”

 “Not just instinct,” Dick added, quieter now. “Familiarity.”

The room stilled.

Barbara looked over her shoulder at him. “Familiar how?”

Dick didn’t answer at first. He just leaned forward, both elbows on his knees, gaze distant.

“When I saw her… it was only for a second,” he said. “She was swinging away. Fast. Fluid. Like Cass on adrenaline, with Babs’ tech and a level of acrobatics that reminded me of—” His voice caught. Barely. But it was enough.

Jason crossed his arms. “Of who?”

Dick didn’t look at him. “Of Y/N.”

That name slammed into the room like a thunderclap.

No one said anything for a few beats.

It had been years. two long, bleeding years. And the pain of it had never left—not really. Y/N Wayne. The girl with too much energy, too many questions, and a way of slipping into your orbit like she'd always belonged there.

Then gone. Stolen by Bane. Lost to Crane. Destroyed by the Joker.

No body. No closure. Just a bloodstained mask.

Jason shifted uncomfortably, the memory flickering like ash behind his eyes. “That’s not funny, Grayson.”

“I’m not trying to be funny.”

“She’s dead.”

“I know.”

“We never even recovered—”

“I know,” Dick snapped. Then softer, “I know.”

Tim didn’t speak. He just looked down at the faint burn mark on his glove where the silk had melted through. The pattern of it still etched across the black like a ghost signature.

Barbara exhaled through her nose, sharp and restrained. “It’s not impossible.”

Jason blinked at her. “Excuse me?”

“I said it’s not impossible.” She tapped a few keys, pulling up old project files—ones locked behind biometric clearance, ones they’d all hoped to never need again. Scarecrow’s left files. Project Spider. The last known location of Y/N’s vitals before her signal vanished off the grid.

“She was experimented on. Drugged. Injected. Spliced. We never understood what Crane did to her in those months. There was never enough time.”

Jason’s fists clenched. “We buried her.”

“We buried an empty casket,” Barbara corrected, eyes narrowing.

“Graves don’t mean anything in this city,” Tim muttered.

“I was at the river every damn night for a month hoping someone would find her body,” Jason snapped. “We got nothing. No pulse. No trace. Just her mask. Most of Crane’s files were burned. Joker was halfway across the globe again. That was the end of it.”

“I know.”

Dick exhaled. “No. It’s not her. Can’t be. Y/N was smart, but not like this. Not a spider. Not—whatever this is. And even if she were alive… she wouldn’t be hiding from us.”

Barbara didn’t argue. She was already typing again, bringing up old footage, archived combat data.

“You think it’s her,” Jason said, quietly this time.

“I don’t,” Dick said. But his tone lacked conviction.

Tim rubbed the back of his neck. “She was experimented on. If she survived, somehow… if Scarecrow’s experiments did anything permanent—”

“She’s dead,” Jason muttered. “Joker killed her. You all saw what was left. Bruce searched for weeks. Months.”

“No body,” Barbara said absently, still watching the analysis roll across her screen. “Just torn fabric and blood.”

Tim’s expression turned grim. “That’s not a coincidence.”

“Nothing ever is,” Dick said, quietly. He stood. “Jay, go.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “To Crime Alley?”

“Yes. If she’s down there, you’re the only one who can go unnoticed long enough to catch her. The rest of us? She’ll vanish. But you? You know those streets. And she’ll avoid you anyway.”

And somewhere, deep in the dark corners of Gotham, a spider curled herself tighter around a secret no one should have survived.

Oswald Cobblepot’s got ears in the darkest corners of Gotham, and his club — The Iceberg Lounge — is where secrets go to be bought, sold, and buried.

You’ve spent weeks listening.

You’ve spent months starving on the hunt.

The Spider inside your bones whispers louder every time his name appears. You taste the air when it does. You feel the blood in your gums swell. Your fangs itch behind your lips.

Tonight, you finally act.

Your boots click against the cracked marble as you step through the towering doors of the Iceberg Lounge, face half-shadowed under the hood of your coat. Penguin’s club looks different since the last time you were alive. He’s made it uglier—gilded, polished, more desperate to be something it isn’t. There's blood money in the floors, in the lamps, in the grooves of the crystal ashtrays. It practically glows.

You peel the fabric off your head slowly, letting the dim lighting cast golden streaks across your face. You don’t smile, but the corner of your mouth almost twitches. They look at you—guards, dealers, dancers, criminals of every caliber—like you’re something between a ghost and a goddess. Some recognize you. Not by name. By reputation.

You don’t care.

The bouncer at the front didn’t dare stop you. He saw your eyes—those dark, reflective things that don't quite move like human pupils should. He probably noticed the fang-tips peeking when you grinned at him, all wrong and just a bit too wide. You liked that. Let him think whatever he wanted. Fear makes people more obedient than kindness ever could.

A thousand overlapping conversations echo off the gilded walls, but your spider-sense cuts through the noise like glass against your temples. Everything shivers. Every movement is a warning. You are always on edge. Always.

And yet you walk calmly, hips swaying, eyes heavy-lidded, making yourself look soft—because Penguin likes to be lied to. He likes pretty things walking into his club, thinking they have leverage. He likes them better when they scream later, broken on his floors. But you’re not here to scream. You're here to bleed someone. You’re here for the man who made you into this.

You reach the center of the club, where the booths curve like shark jaws and the music shifts to something colder. There he is.

Oswald Cobblepot.

Short. Round. Expensive. He smokes from a thin ivory holder, the smoke curling around his nose like a serpent, just as twisted. The fake British accent never fooled anyone, but he leans into it like a knife made of manners.

“Dragonfly,” Penguin’s voice cuts through the haze of memory like a blade. “Or is it Crimson something now? Always hard to keep up with the dead ones.”

His teeth gleam too white to be real. His eyes? Small, sunken, sharp. They take you in like inventory.

You step forward without blinking. “You know why I’m here.”

He raises one brow. “Oh, I do. But I like hearing it out loud. Humor me.”

“Scarecrow,” you say, flat and cold. “I need his location.”

“Which one?” he muses, twirling the cigar between thick fingers. “The man’s got more holes in this city than a sewer rat. You want his lab? His summer home? His shipping routes?”

“I want the place he runs when he’s scared.”

That earns a dry, surprised laugh. He gestures to the seat across from him. You remain standing. “Smart girl,” he says. “You always were. Batman trains ‘em sharp.”

You flinch a little at the name. He notices. Of course he does.

“I’m not asking again,” you say, fingers twitching by your side, not out of nerves but readiness. “Tell me where he is.”

Penguin lifts his glass, takes a sip of something golden. “You’re pretty,” he says then. “Prettier than you should be, with all the shit they say he did to you. I expected something... monstrous.”

You don’t look away. “Maybe I am.”

“Mm,” he murmurs. “Maybe. But it ain’t the kind that scares me.”

He taps his cane against the floor and two of his goons shift behind him—big ones. Bored faces. Hands on their hips. You don’t look at them. If you did, it’d only encourage them.

“I could tell you where he is,” Penguin goes on, casual, almost pleasant. “But that information has a cost, sweetheart. And not the kind you pay in cash.”

“I’m not sleeping with you,” you say, expression flat, voice like ice.

He snorts, almost offended. “Please. I see you, girl. Pretty, yes. But too sharp. Not my flavor.”

“Then say what you want.”

He leans forward now, the cane creaking under his palm. “Entertainment,” he says simply. “This place? It runs on blood and thrill and good old-fashioned fear. The crowd's been getting bored lately. Want something fresh.”

You remain silent.

“I’ve got a dozen men,” he continues, “fighters. Tough ones. Some meta. Some not. Some just mean. You beat them—one each night, in my ring—you earn a little piece of the map. Twelve pieces, twelve nights. You make it through? You get Crane’s hideout. You lose even once, or skip out halfway through?” He grins, sharp and wolfish. “You never come back. You disappear. I’ll make sure of it.”

A long pause.

“Deal?” he offers, raising his glass again.

You stare at him, at the glass, at the bastard grin on his face. You want to gut him. But you’re smarter than that. Crane’s out there. Breathing. Laughing. Living. And you’re not letting him do that one second longer than he deserves.

“Fine,” you say. “Deal.”

Cobblepot gestures. “Strip her of anything hidden.”

Two men approach. You don’t move. You don’t need to. You raise your wrists and let them scan you, pat you down, look for web shooters or weapons. One finds your injection marks and flinches. You smile at him.

“Never seen a living corpse before?” you ask softly.

He doesn’t answer. Just nods and backs away. Penguin chuckles, watching the whole scene with something between pride and wariness.

“Get your cameras ready,” you murmur. “Let the city see what your monsters look like now.”

Penguin chuckles as he leans back. “That’s what I like about you, Silky. You don’t even try to fake fear.”

“I forgot what it feels like,” you say, and step toward the ring.

The fight doesn’t take long.

The ring smells like rust and blood and something darker—fear maybe, or old sweat ground into the steel mesh. You know it before you step in. You know it like you know rot, like you know the pressure behind your eyes when the venom glands ache. This place was built for breaking things. And for once, you don’t mind injuring someone if it gets you what you want.

The crowd cheers when you enter—not for you, not yet. They cheer because it’s blood they came to see, and you’re tonight’s sacrificial lamb, if they believe the odds. The girl in black. Slender, small. Unassuming, until you move.

You breathe slow through your nose. The air is thick with anticipation, laced with something sour—fear, maybe. Not yours. Theirs. You walk barefoot, your silk-tight suit brushing over your bruised skin like a second body. No armor. No padding. Just skin and enhanced nerve endings, stitched back together by fate and venom.

There’s a weight to your name down here—Crimson Silk—but only in whispers. To most of them, you’re just a newcomer. Fresh meat for the pit. And Penguin, perched in his booth above, is a devil watching you descend into hell, his monocle catching the light like a spark off a knife.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer’s voice booms through static and smoke, “we’ve got a fresh face tonight!”

A few catcalls. Someone whistles. A voice in the back yells, “Hope she makes it ten seconds!”

You do not react. Your body remains still, a spider poised mid-thread, listening.

“Steppin’ into the ring in red, from who-knows-where, the mystery girl you all wanna see get torn apart… Crimson Silkkkk!”

You hear them louder now, the roars and hoots and mocking laughter. Your eyes don’t move. You’re watching your opponent instead.

He enters like he owns the place.

Six-foot-three, shaved head, tattoos crawling across every inch of him like leeches. His fists are wrapped in blood-stained gauze, and he beats them against his chest as he circles you, grinning wide enough to show gold teeth.

You see the calculation in his eyes. You know the type—fists first, brain later. He’s killed before. Probably likes it.

“She’s just a kid,” someone mutters behind the chain link. You hear it.

He laughs. “You even legal, sweetheart?”

You don’t answer.

“You sure you wanna be in here with me? I break bones for fun.”

Still, you say nothing.

He grins wider. “What, cat got your tongue?”

You tilt your head, slow. Mechanical. Like something studying prey.

“No,” you say softly. “Spider.”

He blinks. That’s all you need.

The bell dings.

You’re gone.

You’re behind him before the sound finishes reverberating. His bulk turns with all the grace of a concrete wall. He’s still mid-pivot when you sweep your leg around, taking his knees out from under him. You hear the crack of cartilage. His bellow is short-lived—your knee catches his throat mid-fall, collapsing him backward with a gasp that turns into a cough.

Before he can hit the ground, you web his forearm. The strand gleams crimson-gold in the light, unusually thick, sticky as tar. You yank hard. He lifts like a ragdoll, slamming spine-first into the cage wall with a metallic clang that silences the first few rows.

He slides down in a heap.

You take a single step forward. Not fast. Deliberate. The crowd doesn’t cheer. Not yet. They’re too stunned.

He coughs again, trying to pull air into bruised lungs. His fingers twitch toward the edge of the cage, slow, pathetic. You scent the panic off him, sharp like vinegar.

He’s going to get up. You can see it. Not because he’s brave—because he thinks this is a fluke. That you’re a trick. A lucky shot.

You pounce.

Your body bends mid-air, inhuman and elegant. You flip into a cartwheel off one hand, vault onto his chest with knees first, landing hard enough to knock the wind out of him again. Your fingers splay across his jaw, nails digging in, not quite puncturing. Not yet.

He stares up at you. His pupils are blown wide. And you hit once again, right in the middle of his face.

Your claws stop inches from his face as the bell rings again. He’s unconscious. Slumped under you, blood from his nose pooling in the corner of his mouth. Breathing—barely.

You rise slowly, one hand on the cage wall for balance. The pain hits you in layers, radiating through your joints and spine, from where your muscles still haven’t finished knitting after the last fight. You ignore it. Pain is fuel. Pain is yours.

You don’t wave. Don’t bow. Don’t look at the crowd.

Instead, your eyes go up.

The booth above the cage is lined in smoked glass. But you can see him—Oswald Cobblepot. The Penguin. He’s seated like a king, surrounded by enforcers and luxury. He’s holding a tumbler of amber liquor, and his monocle glints with pride.

He raises the glass toward you in a toast.

You don’t nod right away. You stare. Because you know men like him.

He thinks this is his game. That the ring belongs to him. But it doesn’t.

Not tonight.

You turn your back to him. The gate of the cage swings open with a loud metallic scrape. Two medics rush past you with a stretcher.

You step out of the cage like the devil herself walked free of hell.

The hallway behind the ring is narrow, still slick with the blood of a dozen fighters who lost long before you arrived. Some stare at you as you pass—men and women with broken jaws and purple bruises who fought earlier tonight, now clinging to ice packs and quiet prayers. 

You slip into the locker room. There’s no door, just a curtain. Privacy doesn’t exist here, only shadows.

Your hands shake.

You wait until you’re alone before looking at them—your fingers. Still curled. Still twitching. The silk dried across your palm like a film of death. You peel it off slowly. It feels like ripping skin.

Your breathing comes shallow.

Not because of the fight. You didn’t break a sweat. But the smell—the smell of the cage—it clings to you. Sweat and blood and metal. It’s in your hair. Your tongue.

You step to the mirror.

You regret it.

The girl stares back. Her eyes are too shadowy, the bags under them are dark. There is no redness on her cheeks, once full, now defined with deprivation. Two punctures from continues bites push over the bottom lip. What you hate the most about her, you soon realize, is how different she looks from what image you keep of yourself.

That image doesn't have this heavy heart.

That image doesn't have to remember where she is continuously.

That image doesn't have those two fine lines on your mouth, between the lips, extending towards the middle of the cheeks. They were wide once, bloody, yet the venom made it grown together again, leaving faint scars, still so visible to you.

You peel back the wrist of your suit, looking at the old needle scars. Some are scabbed over. Others are angry red. You press your thumb against the oldest one. Nothing.

It never hurts. Not anymore.

You feel the venom burn behind your eyes, pressure in your jaw where the fangs retract into your gums. The hunger is always there. Quiet. Threatening.

There’s a knock behind you. One sharp, one soft.

You turn, instantly alert, pulling the sleeve down again.

Penguin’s assistant—some kid barely older than Tim—holds out a drink. You don’t take it.

“He said you’d want this.”

You shake your head. “He’s wrong.”

The boy swallows. Nervous. He scratches behind his ear and avoids your eyes. “He also said… uh, well—he said to tell you: ‘That was poetry, sweetheart. The crowd’s askin’ for more.’”

You don’t respond.

He hesitates. Then adds, “And that your room upstairs is open. If you need it. He said it’s private. No charge.”

You nod, just once. The kid leaves quickly, like being around you too long is bad luck. You don’t blame him.

You don’t go upstairs. Not yet. Instead, you wait.

Let your body cool. Let the pain settle back in your joints like it always does. You stretch your fingers until they crack. You touch the side of your ribs where one of the old fractures never healed quite right. And when you move, you move like something half-dead, half-remade. You are.

One down.

Eleven to go.

That night, back in Crime Alley, you barely make it to your room above the mechanic’s shop before the venom pulses through your limbs, hunger gnawing at the lining of your stomach. You scarf down half a week’s worth of food in one sitting—protein bars, leftover rice, cold meat, anything. 

Later, lying on the rooftop, wind biting through the rips in your suit, you stare at the moon and think about the past.

You don’t cry, but your chest tightens.

Because no matter how far you crawl, how many bones you break—Scarecrow still lives.

And you do, too. Somehow.

The Narrows are different now.

Jason Todd’s walked these streets a thousand times, sometimes as himself, sometimes as Red Hood. They used to bleed chaos—needles on the pavement, broken glass in every corner, the air thick with hopelessness and cold. There’s still all that, of course. Gotham doesn’t let go easy. But lately, something’s changed.

People walk a little faster. A little more alert. A little… watched.

He’s no stranger to eyes on him—he wears a red helmet for Christ’s sake—but this is different. Not suspicion. Not fear.

Hope.

And hope, in a place like this, is suspicious all on its own.

He leans against the mouth of a graffiti-tagged alley, arms crossed, the glow of a cracked neon sign humming above him. Red Hood’s presence usually shuts people up, but tonight, the whispers are louder than they used to be. Not about him. About someone else.

“She saved my boy last week. Pulled him off the third rail before the train hit.”

“No, no, it’s true, she lifted that car with one hand. Swear on my mother.”

“I saw her drop from the church roof—like silk. Swear she didn’t make a sound. Not one.”

They call her —you— Silky. That’s the name the streets use. The kids scream it with excitement when they draw her face in chalk, crude red scribbles on the sidewalks. The adults say it quieter. Always behind closed doors. Like if she was a secret guardian. Like saying it too loud might make her disappear.

Jason calls her something else.

Spider.

It’s not meant as an insult.

It’s what she is.

What they made you her.

He tightens his grip on his jacket as a cold gust snakes through the street, his boots crunching glass as he walks. The Narrows are still Gotham. Still filthy and angry and tired. But they’re also hers now.

And that pisses him off. Not because she’s dangerous. Not even because she’s hiding.

But because it’s her.

It's you.

Because you are alive.

“Seen the Spider?” he asks a man outside a pawn shop, leaning against the gate with a cigarette and a crooked jaw.

The man squints at him. “Who’s askin’?”

Jason doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. The helmet says it all.

The man shrugs. “You mean Silky? She don’t bother us. Kept the Needle Boys off this block last week. Snatched one of ‘em right off a fuckin’ fire escape, swear to God. Left him webbed to a lamppost like a Halloween prop. Didn’t kill him, neither. Just left him for y’all.”

He says nothing, just walks on. He stops near a boarded window, stares down at his gloved hands. They’re shaking. Barely, but it’s there.

He remembers you like sunlight. Like the first decent thing that happened to him after Bruce pulled him off the streets. You were already in the Manor—bright-eyed, too brave for your own good, walking around barefoot like you owned the place. Always talking. Always listening. The kind of sister that hugged too hard, like the others were going to disappear if you didn’t.

He doesn’t remember being Robin without you beside him. Not once. You were light where he was sharp. Smiles where he growled. “You’re too angry,” you used to whisper after missions, wrapping your arms around him like a tether. “You’re gonna burn yourself out.”

He’d laugh and say, “Then maybe you can be the water.”

And when he died, you were broken.

He remembers watching—years later, in the shadows—when you stood at his grave. Alone. Holding a wilted sunflower in one hand and shaking like a leaf. You never stopped visiting. Every week. Even after Bruce told you to stop.

Jason hadn’t gone to you then.

He was still angry. Still half-crazy from the Pit. He told himself you were better off thinking he stayed dead. That the thing he’d become wasn’t your brother anymore. Even if, at the end, he couldn't help it. You had been so happy seeing him again, hugging him as if nothing had changed.

Then you died.

And he understood.

Now you are alive, and avoiding him.

The rage that simmers in his chest isn’t the loud kind anymore. It’s quieter now. Sharper. Like glass under skin. Every time he thinks about you locked in some lab, cut open, injected, twisted into something inhuman—it makes his stomach burn. You’d always been terrified of Scarecrow. Ever since you both were kids. The mask. The gas. The voice.

He’d held you through nightmares. Watched you cry after missions. You hated being afraid. Hated what it made you.

You always hated Crane. You could face Joker with trembling hands but a square jaw, but the moment Scarecrow showed up—even in conversation—you shrunk. He used to tease you for it. “He’s a twig in a sack mask, what’s the worst he can do?”

Turns out, a lot.

And now? Now, you are fear, to the people who deserve it. And hope, to the people who search for you.

And to the family…? You are a ghost.

Jason grits his teeth and walks. A group of teenagers catch his eye. Maybe five or six of them, crowded around a wall that’s been scrubbed mostly clean—someone took care to wash the graffiti off, or maybe to paint over it. Chalk dust floats in the air, clinging to fingers, under fingernails, across the hems of too-worn jackets. They’re all shapes and colors, these kids. A few toddlers too. Sitting cross-legged on the concrete, smearing thick color against rough wall.

Jason slows. Watches.

They’re painting you.

At first, he's not sure what he's looking at. There are a few spiders around, large and graceful, black, red and white splashed across. But the figure in the middle . . . is you. He can recognize you better than anyone —he could be blind and still sense you, feel you in his bones—. You are there; long spider legs coming from your back, a red scarf tied to your neck, covering your mouth. You, in a suit. You, looking humanlike but never quite real.

It’s not just art. It’s a tribute. A shrine. A symbol.

Jason walks over slowly. His helmet’s off, clipped to his belt. The kids don’t flinch. One girl glances at him, then returns to her drawing, unbothered.

They trust him here. More than the others. Because he’s been here. Because he stayed, when the rest of the family turned their capes away from the Narrows and Crime Alley.

But they trust you more.

“Who’s the muse?” he asks, crouching near a boy with chalk-stained palms and too-big shoes. He’s about ten, maybe. Not afraid to get his hands dirty. Not afraid of him either.

The kid doesn’t look up.

“She was here two nights ago,” the boy says simply, dragging a piece of red chalk across the wall. “Stopped a mugging. Gave Miss Lita a scarf. She always gives people stuff.”

Jason stares at the image—the scarf fluttering behind the painted version of you like a cape. “What kind of stuff?”

The boy shrugs, eyes still fixed on his work. “You know. Food. Medicine. Sometimes clothes.”

“She give you anything?”

“Yeah. Last week. It was raining and I didn’t have shoes. She gave me boots.”

Jason swallows around a sharp lump in his throat. “And then what? Just left?”

The boy finally looks up at him. His eyes are dark and steady. “She’s always leaving.”

Jason stares at the chalk lines again. At the strange, spindly shape of you. It’s not quite right—your limbs are drawn too long, your fingers tapering into claws. But it’s close enough. There’s movement, intention in it. A grace most adults in Gotham never bother to imagine anymore.

“She doesn’t scare you?”

The kid’s expression doesn’t change. He just blinks once. “Why would she? Silky only hurts bad people.”

Silky.

The nickname tastes like ash in his mouth. Like blood, too. He hates how soft it sounds. How young.

But the kid means it with reverence. The others do too. A few girls are humming as they color your outline in purple and red. Another younger child is braiding plastic beads into yarn, hanging it on the base of the wall.

A shrine. That’s what this is.

Jason stands up. He feels like he’s made of rust and fire. His bones ache with it. You’re everywhere here—and nowhere at all. He tilts his head back, stares at the rooftop skyline. You could be up there right now. Watching. Listening.

You probably are.

“You talk to her?” he asks the boy.

The kid shrugs. “Sometimes. Not really. She listens more than she talks.”

Jason nods once. That tracks. You were always quiet in your own way. When you weren’t lighting up rooms like a match, you were standing in the corners with eyes that saw everything.

“She ever say her name?” he asks.

“Nope.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. Watches the way one of the teenagers uses chalk to draw hair. One of the girls starts tracing webs beside it, fine and delicate.

“She’s pretty,” the girl says out loud. “I bet she’s got scars. But she’s still really pretty.”

Jason turns. “Why do you think she has scars?”

The girl shrugs, not looking at him. “All the strong people do.”

Another voice joins in—a boy perched on a stoop behind the group. Older, maybe thirteen. "My cousin said she saw Silky pull a guy through a wall with one hand. Broke his ribs and his spine. Said he was one of Hatter’s creeps.”

“And then?” Jason asks.

“She left him for the cops. Wrapped like a mummy in webs.”

“You know what she is?” he asks carefully. “What kind of person?”

A little girl tilts her head. “She’s Silky.”

He frowns. “No, I mean—she’s not exactly a person. She’s kind of a meta. Mutated, probably.”

The girl frowns, not understanding. “She’s a spider,” she says. “A very nice one. Nothing like the bugs.”

Jason doesn’t respond to that. Just watches as the kids continue drawing. A few have begun crafting web lines from string and tape, sticking them to the nearby lamppost. This is art. This is a language. Your language. The one Gotham forgot how to speak.

And here you are, whispering it through every child’s hand.

He turns from the children and looks down the alley. If you’re here, you’re hiding. But your presence is stronger now. It presses against his spine. It hurts.

“You watching me?” he says aloud, soft enough for only shadows to hear. “You up there?”

A pigeon flaps overhead. Jason doesn’t look up. He doesn’t need to. Because if it were you, you wouldn’t answer.

He leaves the kids without a word. They don’t stop him. They’re too busy drawing. Worshipping.

You’ve become something more than mortal to them. Not a god—no. Not even a myth. Something better. A protector. The Narrows' own monster, shaped like hope, coiled in crimson threads and jagged edges.

He finds himself at Cecilia’s Diner without planning to.

It’s old. Falling apart in places. Rusting at the seams. The sign outside flickers in and out—“C CIL A’S”—the “E” gone years ago. Inside, it smells like burnt coffee and fried batter. Booths creak when you sit on them. The jukebox doesn’t work. The walls are lined with photos from better days—smiling cops, tired nurses, birthday cakes with too many candles.

And still, somehow, the place survives.

He enters like he owns it. The bell above the door rings. Heads turn. A few eyes widen.

Red Hood doesn’t usually walk in. He usually crashes through windows.

Behind the counter, Cecilia—pale, thin, eyes like winter steel—narrows her gaze. She dries a mug with a towel, slow and deliberate, but doesn’t flinch.

“Coffee?” she asks, voice clipped.

Jason nods. “Sure. Black.”

She pours without looking at him.

He watches her carefully. She doesn’t act surprised to see him. Doesn’t ask why Gotham’s most unstable vigilante is in her place. She probably already knows.

The streets talk. The Narrows talk.

“You come for trouble?” she asks.

Jason leans an elbow against the counter. “Just looking.”

“For?”

He lifts the cup, takes a slow sip, then says it low. “The spider.”

The room goes still. Someone coughs in a booth near the back. A spoon clinks against ceramic. But no one says a word.

Cecilia sets the towel down.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.”

“She doesn’t bother you people.”

“She’s not supposed to exist.”

Cecilia raises a brow. “Neither are you.”

He almost smiles. Almost.

“She’s mine,” Jason says after a moment, quieter now. “Was. Once.”

“She’s hers now,” Cecilia replies.

There’s a silence between them. Thick. Heavy.

He glances around the diner. Some of the regulars keep their heads down. One of the dish boys peeks from the kitchen. There’s a mural on the far wall—crude, spray-painted by a juvenile. Another shrine of you. Limbs too long, webs too white.

He sets the cup down with a small clink.

“How long’s she been coming here?”

Cecilia doesn’t answer.

“Look,” Jason says, a little rougher now. “I’m not here to hurt her. I’m not here to take her in. I just—” He hesitates. “I just want to see her.”

Cecilia studies him. “She doesn’t like masks.”

He sighs, lifts the helmet off. His hair’s a mess underneath. Eyes darker than they used to be. Tired.

The woman nods once. Accepts that.

“She works different hours this week. Cooking. Doesn’t talk much. Never late. Comes in, does her job, and walks three kids home afterward who pretend they don’t know she’s a damn vigilante.”

Jason feels something split in his chest.

You.

Washing dishes. Walking kids home. Hiding in plain sight like you’re just some girl with too many scars and too little time. The you he remembers was louder. Brighter. Smiling even when you shouldn’t. And now you’ve folded yourself into the background like a shadow trying not to be noticed.

“Where does she stay?” he asks.

Cecilia laughs. “Like hell I’d tell you that.”

“I’m not here to hurt her.”

“Neither is she. And yet you’re all crawling around this side of town like she’s the enemy.” Her tone sharpens. “She’s done more good for the Narrows in a year than the GCPD has in a decade.”

Jason finishes the coffee in one long, bitter gulp. It scalds going down.

“Tell her I’m looking for her.”

Cecilia gives him a dry look. “You think I’m her secretary?”

He tosses a twenty on the table and heads for the door. “No. I think she already knows I’m here.”

He stays a while around. Listens to the murmurs. The stories. 

A man in the corner tells his friend how “Silky” chased off three men with guns, wrapped them in webbing so tight they couldn’t breathe. A little girl says she saw her leap from a building and “bounce” like a trampoline. A teenager near the window swears she saw her fangs—real fangs—when she saved her from a dealer.

No one agrees on what she looks like. Except the eyes. They all say the same thing. Big, dark eyes. Not colour-dark. Somber, haunted eyes.

Jason flicks the cigarette to the curb and watches it burn out. He presses a hand against his chest, over the armor.