Donna Troy writing | Introspection into her dynamic with the rest of the Fab Five Titans group
As a general heads up, I know this feels disjointed. I sort of wrote it in a snapshot style to do that quite on purpose just to try out a new style. And of course, as always, my work is always written without the use of AI. Any em-dashes you see are just because that's been in my style since before AI was a thing, you can pry those out of my cold, dead hands. Enjoy!
A lot of things could be said about Donna Troy, depending on who you asked. Perfectionist, idealist, all some form of "she's nice, just a little much". Not a lot of people got close enough to see under all of that, all the masks that she clung to in an effort to not be left behind by her new family since the death of her father. She certainly never did anything by half - she wasn't sure she knew how to be anything other than all in about anything, though she couldn't say if that was just how she was or if it was a safety net response. Did it matter?
Her friends, though, saw a different side of her. They'd all seen each other in situations that were messy and hard and not at all the sort of things kids should have to face and come out the other side of without any real support. The things any of them could say would probably make a therapist quit, in her opinion. But damn if she didn't love them. Even on the days where she couldn't find anything good left in the world, at least one of them could make up for it with their optimism and jokes. Her days were so much warmer when she did get to spend time with them, though it was few and far between with how busy and separated their mentors tended to stay in the absence of a world-ending emergency.
There's a lot to be said about lifetime bonds - for a while, Donna had thought something like that surely couldn't exist because how could it in a world that seemed eager to implode a any given time? And then she'd spend an afternoon around Wally and his jokes and all she could think of as she tried desperately not to snort soda out of her nose in her fits of laughter was that if more people could just be a little kinder, a little more eager to brighten someone's day like he was, maybe the world would be a little more peaceful. He felt like sunshine to her, steady and warm and at times a little overbearing but well-meaning. He'd been the first person to make her feel like maybe the world wasn't so dark, that she'd just been trying to find a light with a blindfold on.
He was often the one she'd go to when all five of them were together, perching beside him to watch whenever Dick and Roy started snipping at each other and laughing and tossing bits of popcorn at them until it eventually all escalated into one of the boys yelling "truce! Ceasefire!". She had teased them mercilessly the first time it happened, though she had taken to patching injuries up in the meantime after those scuffles started actually ending in bloody noses and hurt feelings. They never quite grew out of it, and Wally always brought snacks and a fully stocked med kit along when the five of them were hanging out, so Donna supposed that would just be their normal.
"You boys are going to be the death of me," she'd said one day when their monthly hangout had turned into a full blown brawl instead of one of those normal scuffles, her expression set in a frown though her eyes sparkled with fondness as she dabbed antiseptic on a cut above Dick's brow while Wally wrestled Roy into a chair to be tended to once she was done.
"You wouldn't have it any other way," had been the response from Dick, and if she'd pressed a little harder against the cut the next swipe in retaliation, well, no one could prove it despite the laughter Wally had broken into when he heard the wounded noise from their resident acrobat.
She tended to see Garth more than the other boys after their litle ragtag team had formed. She'd been a mix of surprised and thrilled the first time he showed up to see her, popping out of the water with no real announcement. He was the quietest of the five of them, for sure, and easily the most nervous. And maybe it was thanks to that fact that he was the one Donna found to be the most calming. When it was just the two of them, it was beach days, her absently drawing patterns in the sand while they talked in hushed tones like they were afraid to disturb the peace that surrounded them. He was a lot more panic-y than the other boys were, yes, but Donna found it oddly comforting to be faced with someone like that when she'd spent so long internalizing her own panicked feelings of inadequacy. There was an unspoken camaraderie in their friendship because of it - she'd taken time to learn the best ways to calm him down and in the process she'd learned how to handle some of her own issues.
Garth had been the first of the group to put to words what they were - none of them were just teammates, that wasn't the right word. They were friends, best friends, and the first time he'd said as much to the group, Donna had stared at him in wonder, like she was seeing the first rays of a sunrise after a long, harsh winter. It had started a loud, everyone-talking-at-once discussion, but all of them had been in agreement: best friends. It didn't matter what happened in the hero world, they were best friends and they'd all be damned before that changed.
She never told them, but she'd cried in Diana's arms for an hour after they'd gone home after that. It was the first time in a long time that she hadn't felt alone.
For all that calm that existed within their group, Donna had to admit that there was just as much chaos. Constant fighting, going a few days without speaking only to apologize and repeat the cycle. Check ins that were ignored or brushed off followed by a wall of messages and letters that detailed everything in excruciating detail. Roy was the worst at it. Donna thought that he just wasn't used to having a support system quite like their team thanks to how the Green Arrow liked to test people at random. A good sport, but never quite trusting. It had to be an exhausting way to live, and it was a pattern of socialization that the archer was learning despite best efforts not to pass it on.
Then again, Roy had never been anything but a hurricane in human form, loud and abrasive and rash with a small, scared core that he kept hidden by any means necessary. She could hardly imagine how hard he fought to just exist around them - it was always a tangled mess when they did finally get time together, and it often took a few hours of all of them chipping away at that too-confident, "I don't need this" front to get Roy to just spend time with them. Movie nights, however, had been his suggestion the day they got old enough that overnighters wouldn't immediately end in "you're too young to be on your own" from their mentors. If Roy day to day was a hurricane, the Roy the team got during their stolen overnights was a summer rainstorm, refreshing and mesmerizing to watch. She wasn't sure she had the explanation for any of it in a way that wouldn't set Dick and Wally off on teasing her for having a crush - because that wasn't what this was, not really. She just liked getting to see him set his armor down and just be a kid with them for a bit in a way that didn't end in a med kit and all of their mentors giving them looks when they went their own ways again.
Of the entire team, though, Donna thought she could relate most with Dick. Their resident bird, ever optimistic and constantly talking a mile a minute in his broken English when they'd first all met. There had been something about him that had drawn her in and settled some broken part of her soul. There was a brokenness there that yes, the rest of their team also had, but it felt different to see it from Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder. It made her feel far less broken to see someone that shone like him get that same far away look that she seemed to live with constantly - if it was normal enough to even affect someone that twinkled like stars, then surely it didn't mean she was irredeemably broken, right?
He had been the one, towards the later years of their time as sidekicks, to suggest they were family. As the years went, some of that optimism had faded, of course, and Donna had been sad to see it go and be replaced by a certain wariness that she knew from experience came from pain that never healed right - but he had still been so hopeful, so eager to tie himself to them for as long as he could that it had felt right. The fights between them were worse now - she'd gone a whole month avoiding talking to any of them despite attempts to reach out, after all - but it also meant their overnights were something a little wilder. They'd all grown into the sort of people that she'd always thought the world needed, even if it was all edged in sadness sometimes.
It was at some diner in the middle of she didn't know where, fries and sodas and milkshakes scattered across the table in a way that only teenagers seemed to be able to manage that Dick's voice had settled back into that warm, lilting accent that he'd long since hidden away, a suggestion that they were being them here and not their hero selves that had left Donna sitting up from where she'd been sprawled against Roy's side tossing pieces of fries at Garth.
"No matter what happens," he'd said, the table falling silent in a way that only their defacto leader seemed to be able to accomplish with such a soft tone, "we're sticking together. Family."
The silence had lingered just long enough that she'd seen the nervousness creep into Dick's expression before being masked away again, then she'd grabbed her soda and held it up in a mock-toast. "I always thought that was what it meant to be a Titan."
And maybe, years prior, the words would have felt cheap. But she meant them with every bit of her soul now.
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