Yuzi

Writing was common enough to earn its own chapter in school textbooks.

Anything written directly onto one soulmate’s skin would appear on the other’s moments later. Ink. Paint. Marker. Charcoal. Anything that bonded to skin.

The world adapted.

The first time a corporate lackey woke up with eyeliner because their soulmate had gone clubbing the night before, an industry had been born.

Make-up companies sold soulmate-safe eyeliner, lipstick, sports chalk, and any makeup that used synthetic compounds specifically designed not to transfer across writing bonds.

But it cost a shit tone more than the ordinary stuff, so most people didn’t bother.

It was just another part of life.

Damian Wayne had never considered himself lucky. He simply acknowledged facts.

His soulbond was uncommon, but it suited him.

Charcoal had always stained his fingertips. From the time he was old enough to hold it properly, he’d sketched anatomy, architecture, animals, weapons, portraits.

His mother insisted observation was as important as combat. His grandfather insisted beauty existed to be conquered.

Damian decided beauty should simply be understood.

As his sketchbooks multiplied, so did the messages.

A doodle across his wrist. A rough smiley face. Practice strokes. Sometimes things he assumes to be his soulmates friend’s crude humor. Occasionally an absent-minded note written during lessons somewhere across the globe.

He never replied.

Not because he lacked curiosity. He was plenty curious.

But curiosity was a weakness.

That lesson had been taught long before he could remember learning it. The League did not celebrate soulmates. They acknowledged them.

A soulmate was another variable. Another vulnerability. Another weapon waiting to be used.

Children raised within the League were instructed never to trust the bond. Never to assume affection. Never to reveal themselves first.

If your soulmate became known to your enemies, they ceased being a blessing and became a target.

His grandfather called them leverage. His mother called them responsibility. Neither called them love.

By the time Damian was ten, he’d already concluded that the outside world was naïve.

Children giggled over mysterious wounds appearing on their arms. Teenagers filled notebooks trying to guess who was on the other side. Adults got tattooed to find the other before they’d ever exchanged names.

Ridiculous. Your soulmate was simply another person. Potentially useful. Potentially dangerous. Nothing more.

Then Father took him to Gotham. The city believed in soulmates just as readily as it believed in monsters.

Robin learnt pretty quickly that civilians asked too many unnecessary questions.

“Have you met your soulmate?”

“What bond do you have?”

“Is it true you bats don’t have soulmates?”

He ignored every one.

His bond remained hidden beneath gloves, sleeves and armour. His teammates knew he possessed one, none knew which.

Which was intentional.

Dick guessed shared pain, trying to bond with him. Drake theorised dreams. Todd insisted it had to be shared aggression.

Damian allowed the misunderstanding to continue. Knowledge was power, there was no reason to surrender it.

Besides, his soulmate had never written anything worth answering.

Not yet.

You’d spent most of your childhood convinced you were defective.

Not in the way children sometimes decided they were adopted because their parents said no to dessert, no. You thought that something inside of you had been assembled incorrectly.

That fate hadn’t seen your file cause the page accidentally got stuck to another’s.

Everyone had a soulmate.

It was one of the first things children learnt in school, somewhere between tying shoelaces and basic maths. Teachers would explain the different soulbonds with colourful diagrams while students excitedly compared scraped knees and odd dreams.

“I saw them by the ocean last night!”

“My soulmate likes spicy food.”

“I broke my arm when I was five because my soulmate fell out of a tree.”

Children always had stories. You never did.

No mysterious bruises. No shared dreams. No sudden cravings. No inexplicable emotions. Nothing.

At first your parents smiled. “They’re probably just a late bloomer.” “Some bonds take longer to show.” “Just wait.”

So you waited.

You turned seven. Nothing.

Eight. Nothing.

Ten. Still nothing.

Eventually your parents stopped saying, “Just wait.” And started booking appointments instead.

Doctors asked endless questions. Had you ever blacked out unexpectedly? Experienced vivid dreams? Random pain? Hearing voices? Objects appearing? Writing?

You answered no so many times it became automatic.

Test after test came back blank. There wasn’t anything medically wrong with you.

“Symptoms usually present in early childhood,” one specialist explained gently while flicking through your file. “It’s… unusual.”

Unusual.

That was the word everyone preferred. Not broken. Not defective. Just unusual.

Children weren’t nearly as polite.

“What do you mean you don’t have one?”

“Everyone has one.”

“You must be lying.”

Some looked at you with pity. Others with suspicion. One kid had actually asked if soulmates could reject people before they were born.

You laughed along.

Then cried in the bathroom afterwards.

By fifteen, you’d stopped expecting anything to happen. You’d accepted it. Maybe fate had really skipped you. Maybe whatever invisible force connected billions of people had simply… forgotten.

Life moved on. It had to.

School still expected assignments. Friends still invited you out. The world didn’t stop just because yours felt slightly emptier than everyone else’s.

There was only one strange thing.

Your fingers.

Every now and then they’d end up stained a dusty grey-black. Not all of them. Usually just the pads of your fingers. Sometimes the side of your palm.

Like charcoal.

You’d notice it halfway through class or while eating dinner.

“…Huh.”

You’d scrub at it absent-mindedly. Soap didn’t work. Water didn’t work. Hand sanitiser didn’t work.

It never smudged onto anything else either. It simply existed. Then it’d disappear by the next morning as though it’d never been there at all.

You blamed whatever you’d touched that day.

Cheap pencils, old books, dust, maybe the graphite from your mechanical pencil had somehow stained your skin.

It wasn’t worth thinking about. There were bigger things to worry about than mysteriously dirty fingers.

After all, if you actually had a soulmate..

Surely something would’ve happened by now?

↑↓←→

The questions never really stopped. They just became less frequent. Less innocent.

Children asked because they were curious. Adults asked because they couldn’t imagine another answer.

“So..” a co-worker leaned against the break room counter, stirring too much sugar into their coffee. “Have you met your soulmate yet?”

You smiled automatically. “No.”

“They overseas or something?”

“Maybe.”

“Long-distance must suck.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

They laughed.

You laughed too. It was easier. People preferred believing your soulmate was somewhere out there rather than accepting you might not have one at all.

The truth made them uncomfortable.

Eventually the conversation drifted elsewhere. It always did. You’d become good at redirecting it. Years of practice had a way of doing that.

Nowadays, the mention of soulmates barely stung. It was more like pressing on an old bruise. Tender, but manageable. Something you’d learnt to live around.

Your phone buzzed. A message from a mate.

Movie tonight?

You smiled.

Only if you’re buying popcorn.

Hell no.

Then no deal.

A few more messages followed before the conversation inevitably dissolved into memes and poorly edited reaction images.

Normal.

Wonderfully, painfully, normal.

You slipped your phone into your pocket and reached for your bag.

Halfway there, you paused.

“…Seriously?”

Grey-black dust coated the tips of your fingers again.

You rubbed your thumb over your index finger. Nothing came off.

“Must’ve touched something.” You couldn’t even remember saying it aloud anymore. It had become a habit.

See charcoal → Blame the environment → Move on.

You grabbed your bag anyway. By tomorrow morning it’d be gone. It always was.

Outside, the city carried on around you. People hurried between work and home. Couples argued over dinner plans. Parents held children’s hands as they crossed busy streets.

A teenager absent-mindedly scribbled something across their forearm while waiting at the lights, grinning when fresh handwriting appeared beside it a heartbeat later.

Their soulmate had replied.

Lucky them.

You looked away before they noticed you staring. There was no point wondering what it felt like. You’d made peace with the fact that you’d probably never know.

Or at least, you’d gotten very good at pretending you had.

Jason had made every news station in Gotham before breakfast.

Damian hadn’t intended to watch it. He’d walked into the kitchen cause Alfred had insisted everyone eat together while they were all in Gotham, only to find the tv already running quietly in the corner. A familiar image occupied nearly every channel. Red Hood disappearing across a rooftop. The freeze-frame paused just as the damaged plating along his hip shifted enough to expose black ink beneath.

A soulmark.

The reporters seemed incapable of discussing anything else.

“The identity of Red Hood’s soulmate remains unknown…

…social media has already begun comparing the mark to historical soulmate registries…

…raising renewed questions about whether Gotham’s vigilantes are adequately protecting those connected to them…”

Damian looked away before the segment finished.

People had always been intrusive where soulmates were concerned. They asked strangers questions they’d never dream of asking otherwise. When were you meeting them? Were you together? Were you trying? Had you rejected them? Did they reject you? Had they wanted you when they saw you?

It was strange what the existence of a bond entitled complete strangers to know.

Todd hadn’t commented on it once. Neither had Father.

Though, neither needed to.

The manor simply carried on as though nothing had happened, despite the fact every member of the family had undoubtedly seen the footage already.

Alfred served breakfast. Dick complained about the coffee. Tim answered emails between bites without looking up from his phone.

Only the occasional glance toward Jason betrayed that anyone had noticed at all.

Damian appreciated that.

If the mark had belonged to him, he would have expected the same courtesy.

←↓→↑

He found himself wondering whether his soulmate had seen the broadcast.

Statistically, they probably had. Everyone watched the news after a vigilante was involved.

Would they have recognised the mark for what it was? Would they have wondered what sort of person belonged to Red Hood? Would they have imagined someone dangerous?

The thought irritated him more than it should have.

His soulmate had no reason to concern themselves with another person’s bond. Their attention belonged elsewhere.

His gaze dropped, almost unconsciously, to the inside of his own wrist.

Nothing.

No fresh handwriting wound around his skin. No absent-minded doodles.

Nothing had appeared there in years.

When he was young, the messages had arrived often enough that he eventually began expecting them.

Never on a schedule or enough to establish a pattern. Just, frequently enough that every few weeks he would wake to find unfamiliar handwriting stretching across his arm.

Are you there?

Sometimes that was all. Other times there was more.

Today’s been really bad.

I don’t want to be by myself right now.

The handwriting had always been clumsy.

Large letters that struggled to stay in straight lines, becoming neater with every passing year as childish motor skills gradually matured into something steadier. Occasionally there would be little smudges where the side of a hand had dragged through still-wet ink.

He had read every message.

Yet he had never answered one.

At the time, the decision had been obvious.

The League did not encourage soulmates. They acknowledged their existence because denying reality served no purpose, but sentiment had never held any value there. Your soulmate represented another avenue through which enemies might reach you. Another weakness to be managed.

Replying achieved nothing.

Years later, Father had reached the same conclusion for entirely different reasons.

Bruce had never instructed him not to respond, but he had agreed that anonymity offered protection. A soulmate nobody could identify was a soulmate nobody could target.

Objectively, Damian knew he had done the correct thing. Which only made one question increasingly difficult to dismiss.

Why had they stopped?

They had simply… disappeared. The last message had appeared years ago. Nothing after that.

No questions. No frustrated scribbles written during boring classes. No childish attempts to reach whoever existed on the opposite end of the bond. Just silence.

He had assumed, at first, that they were waiting. Perhaps they expected an answer. When none came, they would eventually try again. They always had before.

Except this time they hadn’t.

It should not have occupied his thoughts as often as it did.

People moved on. Children abandoned imaginary friends. Adults stopped believing in impossible things. Perhaps they had simply reached an age where writing to someone who refused to acknowledge them became embarrassing.

A reasonable conclusion.

One he found himself disliking more every time it occurred to him.

Because that implied they had given up.

On him.

Damian closed the sketchbook resting on his desk with more force than intended. The sound echoed briefly through his room before the manor settled back into its usual quiet.

He remained staring at the cover for several long moments.

He had done exactly what he was taught.

Exactly what logic dictated.

Exactly what would keep both of them safest.

So why did it feel strangely.. wrong that they had finally listened?

Your parents used to joke that they had never really known privacy.

If your father stubbed his toe in the kitchen, your mother would wince from the garden. If your mother caught the flu, your father would spend the week curled beneath blankets beside her, feverish despite never catching the virus himself.

Broken bones, headaches, paper cuts, childbirth. Nothing belonged to just one of them. The pain had always been shared.

But in a way, so was relief.

You grew up watching them laugh over bruises that appeared in matching places, your father kissing your mother’s scraped knuckles that had never touched the pavement because he had been the one to fall.

They carried each other’s suffering so naturally that neither of them seemed to remember there had ever been a time when they hadn’t.

“That’s what soulmates do,” your mother would say whenever you asked.

“No one hurts alone.”

It was spoken like a promise. A fact as certain as gravity. As ordinary as breathing.

You believed it. Everyone did. Then, slowly, your parents stopped talking about your soulmate.

First, they stopped asking whether anything new had appeared. Then the appointments became routine instead of hopeful. Then they stopped mentioning them altogether.

Your father buried himself in research.

Your mother lingered outside your bedroom more often than she used to.

One night, you woke to voices drifting through the hallway.

“…there has to be something they missed.”

“They didn’t.”

“They’re wrong.”

“They’ve repeated every test.”

“They’re still wrong.”

Silence.

Then your mother’s voice, barely louder than a whisper. “What if…”

Another silence, longer this time.

“What if there isn’t anyone?”

You had never heard your father shout before. “There has to be!”

“There doesn’t.”

His voice cracked. “Don’t.”

“You know it’s possible.”

“No.”

“If they’re right..” she whispered. “…then one day they’ll get hurt, and no one will feel it with them.”

The house fell silent.

You stared at the ceiling until morning.

After that, something changed. Your parents still loved each other. They still loved you. But grief settled into the spaces between them.

Your father refused to accept the diagnosis. He found specialists halfway across the country, obscure researchers overseas, experimental studies no one had ever heard of. Every answer that came back the same only convinced him the question hadn’t been asked correctly.

Your mother went with him every time. But eventually even she had stopped believing that there would be a different answer.

When she stopped asking for another opinion, your father never forgave her for it.

Years later, they divorced.

Two people who loved each other deeply enough to share every wound, discovering there was one pain they couldn’t carry together.

You.

Neither of them blamed you.

They looked at you with the same expression people reserved for tragedies no one had caused.

You grew older. Doctors wrote papers about you. Researchers asked for blood samples. Every form returned with the same impossible conclusion.

Inconclusive.

You tried telling yourself it didn’t matter. People survived without parents. Without friends. Without homes. You could survive without a soulmate.

Except no one else ever had. Not once. There hadn’t been a single case of someone born without a soulmate ever.

You weren’t unlucky. You were impossible. And impossibilities weren’t supposed to exist.

Sometimes you’d catch your parents looking at you when they thought you weren’t paying attention.

You couldn’t tell if it was disappointment, resentment, or grief.

You stopped wondering why fate had forgotten you.

It followed you through school. Through birthdays. Through every doctor who couldn’t explain you. Through every pitying glance. Until, one day, it stopped sounding like fear.

It simply sounded true.

You should have never been born.

The food on the plate in front of you had gone cold a long time ago.

You’d bought it mostly to justify occupying the table, pushing fries around the paper tray more than actually eating them.

Around you, the food court buzzed with the usual afternoon crowd. Children tugged exhausted parents toward the dessert stands. Teenagers laughed too loudly over shared drinks. Somewhere nearby, someone dropped a tray, followed immediately by the chorus of sympathetic groans from strangers.

You were halfway through convincing yourself to leave when a shadow fell across your table.

“Mind if I sit here?”

You glanced up.

Whoever this person is was about your age, maybe a little older. Attractive enough that a few nearby heads had already turned in their direction before looking away again.

“There are plenty of empty tables.”

“There are.” They smiled easily. “But you are sitting at this one.”

You stared for another second before giving a small shrug. “If you want.”

They slid into the seat opposite you without hesitation.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

You expected the silence to become awkward. Instead, they stole one of your fries.

“You weren’t eating them.”

“I was considering it.”

“Well, now you have to. Can’t let me win.”

A laugh escaped before you could stop it. It surprised both of you.

Then they were grinning. “I knew you could smile.”

You rolled your eyes, though there wasn’t much annoyance behind it.

This person was.. easy. Felt like the sort of person who filled silences without suffocating them.

Conversation came pretty naturally after that. Nothing particularly important. Complaints about the shopping centre. The impossibility of finding decent coffee. A movie neither of you had actually finished despite insisting you’d eventually get around to it.

It was pleasant. Dangerously so. You caught yourself relaxing.

Then your phone buzzed and you caught the time.

“I should get going.”

“So soon?”

“I’ve got things to do.”

“Fair enough.” They stood as you gathered your things, rocking back on their heels for a moment before patting their pockets.

“Damn.”

“What?”

“I don’t have any paper.”

“…Congratulations?”

They laughed. “I was trying to ask for your number.”

“Oh.”

You hadn’t expected that.

“I mean…” They rubbed the back of their neck sheepishly. “You’re hot. So I thought I’d at least give it a shot.”

You hesitated just long enough for them to snap their fingers.

“I’ve got an idea.”

Before you could ask what they meant, they reached for your wrist, uncapping a pen they’d pulled from their pocket.

“You don’t mind, do you?”

Without really waiting for an answer, they turned your arm over and, with surprisingly neat handwriting, scribbled a phone number across the inside of your forearm.

The pen tickled against your skin.

“There,” they said, clicking the cap back on. “Now you don’t have an excuse.” They winked, gathering their things.

You looked down automatically to the black ink stretching across your forearm.

Their name: Ash. Their number: 0401 863. ‘Call me’ written smaller underneath.

It should have been nothing. Just ink. Just another stranger taking a chance.

Instead, it made your chest tighten. For a fleeting, impossible second, your mind brought up a memory your body hadn’t forgotten.

Small hands. Crayon pressed too hard against skin.

Are you there?

Another message.

Please answer.

Another.

I think something’s wrong with me.

You blinked hard.

The memory vanished as quickly as it had come.

“…You okay?”

You looked back up, forcing a smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes.

“Yeah.”

Your fingers unconsciously drifted over the fresh ink. “I just…”

You couldn’t explain why seeing words on your arm suddenly made your chest ache.

“…haven’t written on myself in a very long time.”

The afternoon was loud. Far too loud for Damian’s liking.

He sat at the edge of the group, his posture perfect, expression a mask of practiced indifference. Public outings required a level of restraint that felt unnatural to him.

Dick was laughing at something Jason had said, and even Bruce seemed slightly less tense than usual.

Damian didn't care about the noise. Or about the conversation. He was mostly preoccupied with the sensation of the sunlight hitting his forearms. For the first time in years, he wasn't wearing the long sleeves or the tactical gloves he used to shroud his skin.

He had decided, with a cold sort of logic, that the bond was dead.

The silence from his skin had lasted so long years of nothingness that he had finally accepted the most likely reality: his soulmate had stopped looking for him. You had given up.

He was fine with that. It was efficient.

Then, the sting began.

It wasn't a sharp pain, but a slow, itching warmth, as if a heated needle were dragging across the underside of his left forearm. Damian stiffened. He kept his hands resting on the table, but his heart gave a singular, heavy thud against his ribs.

No, he thought. Not now.

He watched the skin. It started as a faint, dark smudge, then the lines began to bleed through the surface of his flesh, as if an invisible hand were pressing a pen into his muscle.

Dick was the first to notice the change in his posture. "Dami? You okay?"

Damian didn't answer. He couldn't. He was too busy staring at his own arm.

The writing was appearing in elegant, sweeping loops. Cursive. It was beautiful, flowing, and utterly offensive.

Ash

0401 863

Call me ;)

Damian’s breath hitched. His eyes scanned the script, his brain overworking with the mechanical speed of a detective.

He knew your handwriting. He had spent a decade studying the messy, jagged print of the messages he had received as a child.

His soulmate’s handwriting had always been blunt. Childish, hurried, and unrefined. You’d written in print, scrawled in desperation.

This wasn't it. This was polished. This was intentional. This was the handwriting of a stranger.

Someone had held your arm. Someone had pressed a pen to your skin. Someone had dared to claim a space on a body that belonged, by divine right, to him.

"Whoa," Jason leaned in, his eyes widening as he spotted the dark lines on Damian's arm. "Is that... is that a soulmark? Since when do you have a writing bond?"

The table went silent as the family stared. For the first time in his life, the secret was out. The quiet, private connection he had guarded like a weapon was visible for everyone to see.

"Damian?" Bruce asked, his voice low, laced with a rare note of surprise. "You never said-"

"Be quiet," Damian snapped, his voice cutting through the air like a blade.

He wasn't looking at them. He was staring at the name. It felt like a slur.

Ash

He could feel the phantom sensation of the stranger’s hand on his skin, a greasy, intrusive warmth that made him want to scrub his arm until it bled.

It had been years. He had waited in the silence, convinced you had forgotten him, convinced you had moved on to a life where he didn't exist. And then, finally, the silence broke. The bond had screamed back to life after years of dormancy.

But it wasn't a "hello." It wasn't an "are you there?" It wasn't a cry for help.

It was a phone number. It was an invitation. It was a stranger's attempt to steal the only thing Damian was supposed to truly call his own.

His hands curled into fists on the table, his knuckles turning white. The rage was quiet, but it was absolute. Someone was touching you. Someone was talking to you. Someone was trying to take the person who had spent a lifetime writing into the void, waiting for a response that wasn’t coming.

And the response was a stranger's name.

"Damian, you're shaking," Dick said softly, reaching out a hand.

Damian pulled his arm back, tucking it close to his body, hiding the elegant, loathsome cursive from their eyes.

His gaze was dark, focused, and predatory.

The sound of the city became nothing more than a dull roar in the background. Damian didn't hear Bruce's worried voice or Jason’s insensitive joke. He didn’t see Tim and Dick’s shared glances. The only thing that existed was the black ink on his skin.

He slid out of the booth, his movements jerky and frantic.

"Damian, where are you going?" Bruce asked, his voice sharp and commanding.

He didn't answer. He couldn't. If he spoke, he was afraid of what might come out.

He stormed away from the table, ignoring the confused looks from his family, and practically ran toward the restroom.

The moment he locked the door behind him, he collapsed against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the cold tile. He yanked his sleeve up, his fingers digging into the skin around the words.

Call me ;)

He hated it. He hated the person who had written it. He hated the precision of the cursive, how confident and sure it looked. This was a person who had no idea who they were dealing with. They had no idea that by writing on his soulmate, they had essentially written a death sentence for themselves if he could ever find them.

But as he stared at the ink, the rage began to ebb, replaced by something far worse.

He felt sick.

He felt small.

He hadn't answered his soulmate.

For years, he had read your heartbreaks, your fears, your lonely pleas, and he had met you with sterile, echoing silence. He had waited. He had played a game of patience, convinced that if he just waited long enough, you would eventually find him on your own.

And now you had. You had found someone else.

"You should have kept writing," he whispered, his voice cracking. He pressed his forehead against his knees, his eyes burning. "You should have waited for me."

He felt pathetic. The great Damian Wayne, the heir to the League of Assassins, was currently huddled in a public restroom tearing up over a phone number.

He felt like a child again, the one who would read the messages on his arm and then uselessly try to rub them away with a damp cloth, pretending they never existed, even as he felt his heart break every single time.

He reached for the paper towels on the dispenser and grabbed a handful, soaking them in water. He held his arm out, his hand shaking, and began to scrub at the ink.

At the name.

He rubbed harder. The skin turned red, the water and rough paper scratching at the surface of his flesh. He wanted it gone. He wanted the name to vanish, to disappear as if it had never been written. He wanted the stranger to be erased from existence.

But the ink wouldn't budge.

"I'll find you," he whispered, his voice ragged. "I'll find you and I'll make sure you never forget who you belong to."

He didn't have a plan. He didn't know who the person was or where you were. But as he sat there in the dim light of the restroom, his chest heaving and his arm raw and red, there was a new, sharper purpose in his eyes.

He had ignored you long enough. Now, he would be the one doing the hunting.

The evening had passed in a blur of crowds, train announcements, and familiar exhaustion that settled over Gotham once the workday ended.

By the time you unlocked your apartment door, your attention was fixed on the familia routine. Keys in the bowl beside the entrance. Bag on the chair. Shoes kicked off near the wall.

You were halfway through rubbing at your eyes when something on your arm had caught your attention.

For a moment, your brain failed to make sense of what you were seeing.

The writing was gone.

You stared down at your forearm.

The name that had been written near your wrist had disappeared beneath a thick streak of black ink. The number stretched somewhere underneath it, hidden beneath layer after layer of aggressive, uneven marker.

Whoever had done it had covered the writing completely, obscuring every letter beneath a blown-out dark smear.

A hundred explanations flashed through your head, each more ridiculous than the last. None of them made sense.

Slowly, you turned your arm beneath the light.

The ink stayed where it was. Fresh enough that it still looked almost glossy beneath the overhead lamp.

Your fingers brushed across it. Dry.

You frowned.

The stranger's number should have still been there. You'd checked it at least three times on the train ride home.

Twice because you were considering calling, then again because you couldn't quite believe someone had actually flirted with you so outright.

Now it looked as though someone had taken a marker and buried every trace of it.

Your stomach tightened. Your mind going back years ago.

To one of many small examination rooms. Familiar bright white walls. The smell of disinfectant.

You were eight years old, legs dangling from a chair too tall for you.

"Have you ever tried writing on yourself?" the doctor had asked gently.

You remembered laughing.

Of course you had.

Every kid who hadn’t gotten hurt by another yet did.

You'd covered your arms with marker for years. Names. Questions. Drawings. Entire conversations directed at a person who never answered.

Nothing had ever happened.

The specialists called it unusual. Some forums called it heartbreaking. Or fake.

Your gaze dropped back to the black ink covering your arm. Something had written over that number. Something had responded.

You didn’t feel any excitement. Or hope. If anything, what you felt seemed closer to dread.

Hope was dangerous.

Hope was what had kept your parents scheduling appointment after appointment, convinced the next specialist would finally have an answer. Hope was what left your mother crying behind closed bathroom doors after another inconclusive test. Hope was what taught you, over and over again, that wanting something badly enough didn't make it real.

You'd spent years trying not to care. Years learning how to ignore the empty space where everyone else seemed to carry certainty. One strange mark wasn't enough to undo that.

You pulled your sleeve down over your arm. The black streak vanished beneath the fabric. Better. Safer.

"Means nothing," you muttered.

You didn't believe your own words.

The rest of the evening passed normally enough. Dinner. Dishes. Television playing quietly in the background. The ordinary rhythm of a life that had long since moved on from childhood fantasies.

Yet every so often, your hand drifted toward your covered forearm.

Every time it did, the same feeling returned. An uncomfortable awareness that something had changed. After years of silence, something had finally answered.

And you had no idea whether or not that was a good thing.

→↓←↑

You shuffled into the bathroom still half asleep, already thinking about getting an energy drink more than anything else.

The mirror was fogged around the edges from the shower running in the neighbouring apartment, and the cold tiles beneath your feet made you wish you’d bothered finding your slippers.

You rolled your sleeve up almost absent-mindedly. The black streak was still there.

You reached automatically for the sink, wetting a corner of the hand towel before rubbing experimentally at the edge of the ink.

Nothing.

“Figures.” The muttered complaint barely left your mouth before something caught your eye.

You frowned. The towel paused against your skin.

You leaned closer to the mirror.

Yesterday, the marker had been solid. Messy, thick, almost violent in the way it covered the stranger’s handwriting. Now there was a gap big enough for your skin to show through.

You were certain it hadn’t been there before.

For a ridiculous moment, you wondered whether you’d accidentally rubbed some of the ink away on your sleeve.

Then you noticed the line beneath it. Fresh ink.

Your stomach sank. The handwriting wasn’t yours. It wasn’t the stranger’s either. The stranger had written in looping cursive, every letter rounded and practiced. This was precise. Almost painfully neat. Each stroke looked deliberate, measured before it had ever touched skin.

Three words.

Don’t call them.

You read them once. Then again. Your eyes drifted over the sentence a third time, as though repetition alone might make it mean something different.

It didn’t. It remained exactly what it had been the first time. An instruction.

Not a greeting. Not a question. Not even an explanation. Just…

Don’t call them.

You found yourself looking around the apartment before you could stop yourself. The living room. The kitchen. The locked front door. Empty.

“…Okay.” You laughed under your breath.

Nothing about this was funny, but the alternative felt insane.

You’d spent most of your life wishing something - anything would happen. That one day there’d be a mistake. A delayed bond. An explanation.

Now, standing alone in your bathroom with unfamiliar handwriting on your arm, you wanted a perfectly rational answer more than anything.

Your fingers hovered over the words. Careful not to smudge them. The ink was dry. As though it had been there for hours.

You swallowed.

Then, before you could talk yourself out of it, you walked back into the kitchen, dug through the junk drawer until you found an old biro, and returned to the bathroom.

The tip hovered over your forearm.

You stared at the empty patch of skin beneath the unfamiliar message for nearly a minute.

This was stupid.

You knew exactly how soulmate writing worked.

Or rather, you knew how it was supposed to work.

Children discovered it by accident. Teenagers filled each other’s arms with jokes. Adults stopped because texting was easier. Nobody your age stood in their bathroom writing into empty space. Not unless they’d completely lost it.

“Whatever.”

The pen touched your skin. Your handwriting hadn’t changed much since childhood.

Still print. Still slightly untidy. Still pressed a little too hard.

Who are you?

You capped the pen almost immediately afterwards.

Nothing happened.

You’d expected as much.

You were already turning away when warmth spread beneath your skin. It wasn’t painful, just unexpected.

You looked down instinctively.

The place beneath your question tingled, the sensation travelling slowly enough that you could follow it with your eyes.

And then Ink.

Not appearing all at once. Growing. One careful letter after another.

The ink surface beneath your skin one deliberate stroke at a time, each line settling into place before the next began. There was no rush to it. Whoever was writing wasn’t hesitating, but they weren’t hurrying either.

Like they knew you would wait.

By the time the sentence finished, your pulse had climbed into your throat.

Don’t accept things from strangers.

You frowned.

That wasn’t an answer.

Your eyes flicked up to the question still sitting above it.

Who are you?

They’d ignored it completely.

Another line began to appear. The warmth returned beneath your skin, travelling just ahead of the fresh ink.

Don’t let anyone else touch you like that again.

Your eyebrows slowly pulled together. “…That’s what you’re worried about?”

After everything. After years of nothing. After every specialist, every appointment, every unanswered question.. Whoever was on the other end had apparently decided that the pressing issue was a phone number.

You looked down at the biro still resting in your hand.

It felt strangely inadequate now.

Slowly, you uncapped it again. Your handwriting looked clumsy beside the careful precision of theirs.

You didn’t answer my question.

You hesitated, then added another beneath it.

Who are you?

The reply came quicker this time. Almost immediately.

The familiar warmth spread beneath your skin, and before you’d even finished reading your own words, fresh ink had begun to weave itself between them.

That doesn’t matter yet.

The sentence continued without pause.

Tell me whether you called them.

You blinked. “Seriously?”

The absurdity of it almost made you laugh. That was it? No introduction. No explanation. Not even an acknowledgement that this was impossible. Just another question about someone you’d shared fries with for twenty minutes.

Your fingers rubbed absent-mindedly at the bridge of your nose. “This is unbelievable.”

You looked back down at your arm. The neat handwriting stared back at you.

You sighed through your nose before writing again.

No.

The ink had barely dried before another reply began. Only two words this time.

Good. Don’t.

You stared at them. The corners of your mouth twitched despite yourself.

“You’re bossy.” There was no irritation behind the words. Mostly disbelief.

You’d finally found the person who was supposedly meant to answer every question you’d spent half your life asking, and apparently they preferred giving orders instead.

Damian hadn't realised how completely his priorities had shifted until he found himself standing in front of the Batcomputer, staring at an unfinished mission report he'd been pretending to read for nearly ten minutes.

He couldn't remember a single word.

His eyes kept returning to the faded writing winding around the inside of his forearm.

Nine messages. That was all.

It should have been insignificant.

He had exchanged more words with criminals before incapacitating them.

Yet somehow those nine short sentences had managed to uproot routines that had taken years to build.

He read them again.

Who are you?

Don't accept things from strangers.

Don't let anyone else touch you like that again.

You didn't answer my question.

Who are you?

That doesn't matter yet.

Tell me whether you called them.

No.

Good. Don't.

His thumb brushed unconsciously across one of the final words. Good.

It shouldn't have brought him relief.

But it did. An almost embarrassing amount.

The stranger had failed. You hadn't called them. Whatever smile you'd given that person, whatever polite conversation you'd entertained, whatever curiosity they’d mistaken for interest had ended there.

You had chosen not to continue it.

Damian hadn't realised how tightly he'd been holding himself together until that single word had loosened something inside his chest.

Not enough. Never enough. But enough that he could breathe again. For the first time since your messages appeared.

Then the relief faded. Because relief left room for thought. And thought was infinitely crueler.

Someone else had reached you first. Someone else had stood close enough to touch your wrist. Someone else had looked directly into your face. Someone else knew what colour your eyes were.

Damian didn't.

Someone else knew how tall you were. How your voice sounded. Whether you smiled with your mouth closed or laughed loudly enough to turn heads.

Someone else had information Damian should have had years ago.

The irrationality of the thought didn't make it disappear. He understood perfectly well that you hadn't betrayed him.

How could you? You didn't know him.

As far as you were concerned, your soulmate had ignored every message you'd ever written.

Every birthday. Every question. Every lonely evening. Every desperate attempt to find the person destined to answer.

He had been silent.

Not by choice. But silence looked the same from the other side.

He knew that.

If the positions had been reversed… If he had written for years.. If every answer had been met with nothing.. Would he have waited forever?

…

He wanted to say yes.

But he couldn’t.

His hand curled into a fist.

You'd lived an entire life while he wasn't there. Years of mornings. Of birthdays. Of scraped knees, illnesses, graduations, celebrations, disappointments.

Had someone hugged you when things became too much? Who comforted you when you cried? Who celebrated your successes? Who remembered your favourite food? Who knew your drink order? Who made you laugh after terrible days?

Questions multiplied faster than he could suppress them.

Did you live alone? Did you have roommates? Did you lock your doors? Did you own any means of defending yourself? Were you careful walking home at night? Had anyone ever hurt you?

Yesterday had already answered one of those questions.

Yes. Someone had.

Maybe not physically. But someone had ignored your discomfort long enough for you to write to a stranger instead.

To him.

You had reached for someone you couldn't even identify because the people around you hadn't been enough.

That thought settled somewhere deep beneath his ribs. Heavy and permanent.

He looked again at the sentence he'd written. Don't let anyone else touch you like that again.

He hadn't thought before writing it. There hadn't been time. Logic had come afterward. The wording had been possessive. Demanding. Unlike him.

No. Exactly like him. Just... stripped bare.

He closed his eyes. You must have thought he was insane. Some anonymous soulmate who vanished for decades only to return issuing orders. He would have been irritated too.

No.

He would have blocked himself.

Yet...

You hadn't.

You'd argued. Questioned him. Demanded answers. But you hadn't stopped writing.

Why?

Curiosity? Hope? Loneliness? Or had something inside you recognised the same impossible pull clawing through him?

He hated not knowing. He hated uncertainty. He hated relying on something as intangible as fate.

His entire life had been built on eliminating uncertainty. Gather information. Observe.Investigate. Prepare. Control what could be controlled. The League had taught him that. His father had refined it.

The soulbond ignored every single one of those principles.

It had expected him to wait. To trust. To believe.

He had. For years.

Where had it gotten either of you?

You alone in a shopping centre. Him halfway across the city learning about it after the fact.

No. Enough.

He opened his eyes.

The Batcomputer came alive beneath his fingertips. Monitors illuminated one after another, blue light reflecting across his face. Access permissions unfolded without resistance.

Traffic cameras. Retail security networks. Public transport footage. Cell tower data. Facial recognition databases. Search parameters. Time. Location. Shopping centre.

He could hear his father's voice in the back of his mind.

"People deserve privacy, Damian."

Normally, he would have agreed. He would have waited until you chose to reveal yourself. Normally.

Yesterday someone had approached you.

Tomorrow someone else might.

He had spent years believing fate would keep you safe until it brought you together. Yesterday had demonstrated exactly how fragile that assumption was.

For most of his life, Damian Wayne had believed his greatest weakness would be failing his mission.

He understood now that he'd been wrong.

His greatest weakness had a heartbeat.

That somewhere out there, someone was completely unaware that the heir to Batman was already searching every camera in Gotham just to catch a single glimpse of the face he'd imagined since childhood.

His finger pressed the key.

The search began.

↑←↓→

Finding you hadn’t been particularly difficult. Not once Damian started looking.

The shopping centre gave him a face. The face gave him transport records. Transport records became a place of work. A place of work became an address.

Within four days, he knew more about your routine than you did.

You bought the same energy drink from the convenience store three mornings out of five, apologised to inanimate objects whenever you bumped into them, and forgot to eat lunch often enough that the café downstairs had begun recognising the pattern.

You had a habit of reading while waiting for pedestrian lights to change. You wore headphones without turning any music on whenever you didn’t want strangers talking to you. You checked your pockets twice before locking your front door.

You laughed with your whole face. You rubbed your eyes whenever you became overwhelmed.

You were, Damian decided, catastrophically easy to lose.

And even easier to protect.

The first time he introduced himself, it was as Damian Wayne. Not your soulmate. Just the youngest Wayne.

Professionally interested in one of Wayne Enterprises’ newest projects.

Your company had recently entered into a partnership with Wayne Enterprises.

You’d smiled.

Held out your hand.

Introduced yourself with the same easy politeness you seemed to offer everyone.

He’d looked at your outstretched hand for the briefest moment before taking it.

His fingers closed around yours carefully. Almost reverently.

“So,” you’d said with an awkward laugh, “I guess we’ll be seeing each other a lot.”

“Yes.”

You’d mistaken the certainty in his voice for confidence.

It wasn’t. It was a statement of fact.

After that, he simply… remained.

Meetings that didn’t strictly require his attendance somehow did. Business lunches became routine. Coffee would already be waiting on your desk before you arrived.

When your workload became unreasonable, departments quietly shifted resources without anyone quite understanding why. When your apartment building’s security contract came up for renewal, Wayne Security acquired it. When your favourite café struggled financially, it received an anonymous investment.

You never knew.

You only noticed that life had become a little easier.

Financial inconveniences disappeared before they had the chance to reach you.

You thanked luck. Damian thanked himself.

The rest happened so gradually that even you struggled to pinpoint when it had changed.

His hand settled against the small of your back whenever crowds became too dense.

He began walking you to your car after evening meetings.

Your favourite snacks appeared in his office because “you always steal mine.”

He started calling you when you worked late.

Then expecting you to answer.

Then asking where you were if you didn’t.

“You don’t have to keep looking after me,” you’d laughed one afternoon as he wordlessly took the heavier stack of folders from your arms.

“I know.”

“You do realise I’m an adult?”

“I am aware.”

You smiled, shaking your head. “You’re impossible.”

Damian looked at you for a long moment.

No. He thought quietly. I’m simply making up for lost time.

You never noticed the way his eyes lingered on your forearm whenever your sleeves rode up. Or how his expression softened whenever your handwriting appeared there.

The conversations continued. Always through ink. Never in person.

You still didn’t know.

You still believed your soulmate was someone else. Someone you hadn’t met.

Damian intended to keep it that way.

Not forever.

Just until he’d repaired everything the years of silence had broken. Until you trusted him without hesitation. Until you looked for him first. Until your apartment felt less like home than Wayne Manor. Until every decision you made instinctively accounted for him. Until loving him became as natural as breathing.

Then, and only then, would he tell you the truth.

By that point, Damian no longer believed it would matter.

Because by then, there would be nowhere else in the world you would ever want to be except exactly where he’d spent the years wishing you had always been.

Beside him.

You had skipped breakfast after oversleeping, rushed through the front doors of Wayne Enterprises with your hair still damp, and spent the next four hours buried beneath spreadsheets.

Around noon, someone knocked once on your office door.

You looked up. Damian stepped inside carrying a paper bag from the café downstairs. "I noticed you didn't eat."

You smiled despite yourself. "You came all the way down here for that?"

"You become irritable when your blood sugar drops." He set the bag on your desk with the same care he used when placing files in front of Bruce during board meetings.

"I thought you would appreciate the reminder."

It was thoughtful. You thanked him.

By the second week, he stopped asking if you'd eaten. He already knew.

"I brought lunch."

"I'm actually going out with the accounting department."

"You aren't."

You frowned. "We already planned it."

Damian removed a small container from the paper bag before speaking.

"They rescheduled."

"What?"

"They've been called into an emergency budget meeting."

Your phone buzzed. Every person in the group chat was apologising.

Sorry! Something came up.

Rain check?

You stared at the messages. "...That's weird."

"It happens." Damian placed a pair of chopsticks beside your lunch. "Eat before it gets cold."

You hesitated. Then opened the container.

It kept happening.

Whenever coworkers invited you somewhere, plans somehow dissolved before they happened.

A canceled reservation. An urgent meeting. Someone suddenly calling in sick.

After a while, people simply stopped asking.

It wasn't deliberate. It was just easier to assume you were busy. So lunch became something you shared with Damian.

Every day.

Without either of you ever discussing it.

↑←↓→

It was raining when you left the office.

Not super hard, just enough to make the pavement shine beneath the streetlights. You shoved your hands into the pockets of your coat and hurried toward the subway entrance, already thinking about the leftovers waiting in your apartment.

"You'll catch a cold."

You didn't have to turn around. "I'll survive."

Damian fell into step beside you, holding a black umbrella over both of you despite the fact that he'd appeared from nowhere. You hadn't seen him leave the building.

"You've said that before."

"I've also survived before."

"That isn't the point."

You sighed. "Then what is?"

"The point is that your zipper is broken."

Instinctively, you glanced down at your coat. The zipper caught halfway, as it always did. You gave it another tug before giving up. "I know. I'll replace it eventually."

Damian's eyes lingered on the torn seam near your wrist. "No."

You frowned. "No?"

"You won't."

"I literally just said I would."

"You said 'eventually.'" His tone remained perfectly even. "That generally means you have no intention of doing it until circumstances force you to."

"You don't know that."

"I do."

Something about the certainty in his voice irritated you.

"You don't get to decide whether I'm going to buy a coat."

"I already have."

You stopped walking. "So that's it?" You laughed once, short and incredulous. "You've decided for me?"

"You require one."

"I require money more."

"You have sufficient savings for the amount you have worked."

"How would you know what my savings look like?"

For the first time since the conversation began, Damian hesitated. Only for a fraction of a second. "It isn't relevant."

"It becomes relevant when you somehow know how much money I have."

"I know enough."

The answer settled uncomfortably in your stomach. You wanted to ask another question. Instead, you started walking again.

Neither of you spoke for the rest of the trip.

←↑↓→

Three days later, the receptionist downstairs smiled as you entered your apartment building.

"A package came for you this morning."

"I wasn't expecting one."

"It didn't have a return address."

The box was surprisingly heavy.

Inside was a winter coat. Not just any coat. The exact one you'd stopped to look at in a shop window two weeks earlier.

You remembered standing outside the display for maybe thirty seconds before deciding it was too expensive.

You'd never mentioned it to anyone. Not even Damian.

There was no gift receipt.

Nothing except a small envelope tucked beneath the tissue paper.

Inside was a single card.

Your previous coat no longer provided adequate protection. Dispose of it.

No signature. There didn't need to be one.

The coat fit perfectly.

→←↑↓

"You bought me a coat."

Damian didn't look up from the documents spread across his desk. "I replaced one."

"I never asked you to."

"No."

"I told you not to spend money on me."

"I didn't." He finally looked up. "I spent money on an item."

"...Which you then gave to me."

"Correct."

"So you spent money on me."

"No." His expression remained completely serious. "I spent money maintaining an asset under my care."

You stared at him. "An asset?"

He frowned slightly, as if that wasn't the word he'd intended. "A responsibility."

"I'm not your responsibility."

"You are."

"No, Damian. I'm not."

"You arrived at work soaked twice last week because you refused to replace damaged clothing. You developed a cough yesterday."

"I would've bought one eventually."

"You were cold."

"I said I would've bought one."

"But you didn't." He spoke with the same patient tone someone might use while explaining something obvious to a child. "Intent is meaningless if the outcome remains the same."

You opened your mouth to argue but he continued before you could.

"When Titus refuses to come inside during winter, I don't leave him outside because he wishes to stay there."

"...Did you just compare me to your dog?"

"I compared your behavior."

"No. You compared me."

"I compared two living beings who consistently underestimate environmental hazards."

"One of those living beings is a German Shepherd."

"Yes."

"And the other is me."

"Yes."

He didn't understand why that distinction mattered. You could see it in his face. To Damian, the comparison wasn't insulting. It was practical.

Titus couldn't accurately judge the risk of prolonged exposure to the cold.

Neither, apparently, could you.

The fact that you could speak, hold a job, pay taxes, and argue with him didn't alter the underlying equation in his mind.

Capability wasn't measured by adulthood. It was measured by whether you could reliably keep yourself safe.

He'd already reached his conclusion months ago.

You simply hadn't realised he'd been treating you accordingly.

↑←→↓

It started with coffee.

You'd been ordering the same thing from the café in the lobby since your second week at Wayne Enterprises. Large latte. Whole milk. Two pumps of caramel. It was practically muscle memory. Every morning you'd mumble, "The usual, thanks." Tap your card against the terminal, and collect your cup without thinking.

One Tuesday, you took a sip on the way to the elevator and frowned.

Less sweet.

You glanced back toward the café, wondering if the barista had simply forgotten the syrup. It wasn't worth walking back over, so you drank it anyway.

The next morning it tasted the same.

And the morning after that.

By Friday, you assumed they'd changed the recipe.

A few weeks later, you found yourself standing in line behind two coworkers from accounting. They were chatting idly while the baristas rushed through the morning crowd.

"The usual?" the girl behind the register asked as soon as she saw you.

"Yeah, thanks."

She nodded before you'd said another word. "Oat milk latte. One pump vanilla."

You blinked.

"...Sorry?"

"Oat milk latte?" she repeated, already reaching for a cup. "One pump vanilla."

"No, I usually get caramel."

She looked genuinely confused. "You used to."

"I.." You laughed awkwardly. "No, I still do."

She glanced toward another employee behind the espresso machine. "Didn't they change it?"

"They?"

"The gentleman who usually orders for you."

Your smile faltered. "What gentleman?"

"The one who's in here all the time." She frowned, trying to remember. "Dark hair. Gorgeous. Kind of intimidating."

Your stomach sank. "...Damian?"

"That's his name!" She smiled, relieved.

"He said you'd been trying to cut back on sugar. We've been making it that way ever since."

You stared at her. "I never said that."

"Oh."

Her smile dimmed. "I just assumed.." She looked embarrassed. "I thought he was your assistant."

You didn't answer.

You took the coffee she'd already made, murmured a thank you, and walked away before she could apologise.

Halfway across the lobby, you took another sip. It wasn't even bad. In fact.. It tasted exactly the way you expected your coffee to taste.

You couldn't remember when your own preference had changed.

Or whether it ever had.

That Saturday you decided to stop at woolies on the way home.

Your fridge was nearly empty, and for once you had no plans. No meetings. No dinner at Wayne Manor. No texts from Damian reminding you that you'd skipped lunch.

You grabbed a trolley and headed toward the produce section.

Before you'd made it ten feet, someone in the green Woolworths uniform looked up from unpacking a crate of avocados.

"Oh! You're here yourself today."

You smiled politely. "I usually am."

He laughed. "No, your assistant normally collects everything."

The trolley came to a stop. "My assistant?"

"The bloke."

He pointed vaguely toward the online pickup counter.

"Tall. Black hair. Doesn't smile much."

Your grip tightened around the handle. "I... don't have an assistant."

The employee looked between you and the pickup shelves, clearly thinking he'd made some sort of mistake.

"Oh."

A pause.

"I just figured.." He rubbed the back of his neck. "He knows your order off by heart."

"My order?"

"Yeah."

He gestured toward the refrigerated section. "Every Tuesday. Same online pickup. Chicken breast, brown rice, spinach, Greek yoghurt, blueberries, eggs, almonds..."

He kept listing items one after another. Healthy. Measured. Predictable. Almost identical to what Damian packed for lunch whenever he insisted on bringing you food. Nothing like what you usually got.

"You've got one of the easiest orders to pack in the system," he continued with an easy laugh. "Never changes."

You looked down into your empty trolley. "I don't remember ordering any of that."

He blinked. "...Really?"

"I haven't done online groceries in months."

"Oh." His smile returned, uncertain now. "I guess whoever orders for you just has your account."

You wandered the aisles in a daze after that.

You picked up a box of sugary cereal, then hesitated.

Hadn't you loved this?

Or had you only bought it once?

You reached for the frozen buffalo chicken protein pizza.

No. You preferred the greasy cheesy ones.. Didn't you?

By the time you reached the checkout, your trolley contained almost nothing.

A loaf of bread. Milk. Pasta.

You couldn't remember what else belonged in your kitchen. Everything you reached for came with a second thought.

Damian doesn't buy this.

Not I don't like this. Damian doesn't buy this.

Somewhere, without noticing, you'd stopped shopping for yourself and you'd started shopping according to habits that weren't yours.

When you unlocked your apartment later that evening, you opened the pantry and simply stood there.

Brown rice. Herbal teas. Wholegrain crackers. Natural peanut butter. Every shelf was neat. Organised. Restocked.

You tried to remember buying any of it.

You couldn't.

The only thing you were certain of was that Damian liked all of it.

For the first time since you'd met him, a thought occurred to you that made your skin crawl.

You couldn't remember the last decision you'd made that had remained entirely your own.

↑→↓←

Which doors you were expected to use. Which routes you naturally took through Wayne Enterprises without thinking. Which elevators always seemed to arrive when you were alone, and which ones never did.

It wasn’t obvious enough to call it anything. That was the problem.

If someone had asked you directly whether you were being controlled, you would have said no. You still had your job. Your own apartment. Your own name on the lease. You could leave the building whenever you wanted.

Except you didn’t, not without telling Damian first.

And somehow it had become normal.

It had started as courtesy. You told him when you were heading home so he didn’t “worry about your commute.” Then it became easier to mention where you were going so he wouldn’t text. Then it became automatic, like checking the weather before leaving the house.

Now, when you didn’t say anything, things got complicated.

A car would be waiting when you stepped outside anyway. A message would arrive asking if you’d changed plans.

Once, when you’d tried to leave without telling him at all, security had stopped you at the ground floor.

“Mr Wayne requested confirmation,” the guard had said, checking a list he clearly thought you belonged on. “Just routine.”

You remembered standing there, keycard in your hand, realising you didn’t know when your movements had become something that required confirmation.

You hadn’t argued. There was nothing to argue against that didn’t make you sound paranoid.

So you went back upstairs, and sent Damian a message saying you’d “forgotten something.”

He replied almost immediately.

Good. You’re learning to check in properly.

You stared at the screen for a long time after that.

The worst part wasn’t the obvious things. It was the gaps.

Like how your phone stopped suggesting certain places because you “never went there anymore.” Or how your usual café no longer even appeared in your saved locations. Or how friends stopped inviting you out because every time they tried, schedules collapsed in ways no one could quite explain.

You told yourself it was coincidence until coincidence became too consistent to ignore.

When you asked Maya, your coworker from accounting, the one person who still occasionally tried to include you in plans, she hesitated.

“I mean… it’s always something,” she said carefully one afternoon over coffee. “You’re either busy or something comes up right after you say yes. It’s like… bad timing, constantly.”

“I don’t cancel things,” you said automatically.

She gave you a look you couldn’t quite read. “I know. That’s why it’s weird.”

She didn’t say Damian’s name. No one ever did directly when it felt like it might matter.

But it hung there anyway. Unspoken.

The moment you started to properly feel it, really feel it, was the night you tried to stay out late.

It wasn’t even rebellion. It was exhaustion. You’d been at work too long, your head aching, your phone already buzzing with reminders you hadn’t asked for. So when Maya suggested grabbing dinner nearby, you said yes before you could talk yourself out of it.

For once, nothing immediately fell apart.

No cancelled booking. No sudden emergency. No interrupted plan.

You almost relaxed.

Then your phone rang.

Damian.

You stared at the screen for a few seconds before answering.

“You’re not home,” he said without greeting.

“I’m out.”

A pause. Not surprised. Measured.

“With Maya.”

“Yes.”

Another pause, shorter this time.

“I see.”

Something in his tone made you feel sick. “I didn’t tell you because I thought it didn’t matter,” you added quickly. “It’s just dinner.”

“It matters,” he said simply.

Then, after a beat: “You’re deviating from routine again.”

“I’m allowed to have dinner with a friend.”

“You are allowed to leave the environment I’ve structured for your stability, yes.”

You closed your eyes. “There is no environment you’ve structured for me.”

Silence on the line.

When he spoke again, his voice was lower. “You’re tired. Your judgement will be impaired tonight.”

“That’s not your call.”

“It is when you don’t recognise your own limits.”

Something cold settled behind your ribs. Across the table, Maya was watching you now, pretending not to.

“I’m fine,” you said, quieter.

“You’re not,” Damian replied.

And then, almost gently, “I’ll send a car.”

“I don’t need one.”

“You do.”

You stood up so abruptly your chair scraped the floor.

“I said no.”

The line went cold.

“I hear you,” Damian said.

That should have been the end of it.

Instead, he added: “But you’re still not staying out late.”

You stood there holding your phone, realising slowly that he hadn’t threatened you. He hadn’t raised his voice. He hadn’t even argued. He had simply stated the outcome as something already decided.

Maya said your name, cautiously, and you barely heard her..

You weren’t being managed. You were being kept track of. And you were just now realising how much of your life now required permission you didn’t remember giving.

↓↑→←

The sleek, black sedan pulled up to the curb of the restaurant with a silent, predatory grace. The driver was a man who looked like he had been trained to move without making a sound.

He simply stood by the door, waiting. He didn't look at Maya. He didn't look at the other patrons. He looked only at you, with the expectant, neutral gaze of a handler waiting for a well trained pet to finish its meal.

You felt Maya’s eyes on you, heavy with a mixture of pity and confusion. "Are you.. is everything okay?" she whispered.

"It's fine," you lied, the words tasting like ash. "Just... a long day."

As you slid into the back of the car, the scent of the interior, expensive leather, rain, and that faint, sharp undertone of mint that always seemed to cling to Damian’s presence hit you.

The seat was heated, perfectly adjusted to a temperature you hadn't chosen but always found comfortable. The door closed with a heavy, pressurized thud, sealing you into a private, silent world.

You didn't have to check your phone to know he was watching. You could feel the weight of his attention even from miles away.

When you finally reached the penthouse, the lights were dimmed to a soft, amber glow. The apartment was silent, save for the low hum of the climate control. You kicked off your shoes, feeling the sudden, overwhelming urge to just crawl into bed and disappear, but the routine wouldn't allow it.

Damian was waiting in the living area. He wasn't sitting on the sofa like you expected. He was standing by the floor to ceiling windows, a glass of dark liquid in his hand.

He didn't turn when you entered. He didn't need to. He knew the cadence of your footsteps. He knew the exact moment you crossed the threshold.

"You're late," he said. It didn’t sound like a scolding.

"The dinner ran long," you replied, trying to keep your voice steady. You walked past him toward the kitchen, but he moved with a sudden, fluid grace, intercepting your path.

His tall, lean frame cast a long shadow over you. He reached out, his hand moving to your chin, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw with gentle pressure.

His touch was reminiscent of how he handled the high bred hounds at the manor. Firm, possessive, and entirely devoid of the hesitation one might show a peer.

"You look disheveled," he murmured, his eyes scanning your face, searching for any sign of distress, any sign of 'damage' caused by the outside world. "The city is loud, chaotic. It's too much for you. You shouldn't be out there so late, where things are unpredictable."

"I'm not a child, Damian," you said, though the words felt weak even to your own ears.

"No," he agreed, his thumb moving to brush against your lower lip. "You are much more precious than a child. You are.. delicate. You require a specific kind of stewardship."

He leaned in closer, his scent that cool, sharp mint enveloping you. "When you wander without a leash, you get lost. You get tired. You let people like Maya fill your time with trivialities that serve no purpose for your well being."

A shiver ran down your spine. He spoke of your life as if it were a garden he had planted. He didn't see your independence as a virtue, he saw it as a vulnerability.

"I have dinner planned for you tomorrow," he said, his voice dropping to that smooth, harmonic register that usually calmed you, but now made your heart race with a strange, trapped sensation. "Something light. Something that will help you recover from today's.. exertion."

He stepped back, finally releasing you, but the space he left behind felt cold. He turned his gaze toward the window again, the conversation effectively over.

"Go wash up," he commanded softly. "I've already laid out your clothes. The silk ones. They're softer on your skin."

As you walked toward the bedroom, you realised with a sinking heart that he hadn't even asked how your night was. He hadn't asked if you enjoyed the food or if Maya had said anything interesting. He only cared that you had returned to the enclosure. He only cared that his most cherished thing was back where it belonged: within his reach, under his eyes, and entirely under his care.

You felt like a bird in a gilded cage, and the most terrifying part was how much you had started to rely on the bars to keep you upright.

You had found it tucked away in a drawer of a desk in the library at the manor. A drawer you were never supposed to touch, a space meant for his private ledgers.

It was a small, leather bound sketchbook. Looked to be as old if not older than Damian himself.

You had opened it, expecting business notes or tactical maps.

Instead, you found your own soul.

Every "Are you there?" you had scrawled on your skin as a lonely child was there, preserved in his precise, elegant ink. Every "Please answer" was captured in his beautiful, sweeping script. He hadn't ignored you. He had collected you. He had been reading your heart for years, documenting your loneliness as if it were a sacred text.

The notebook slipped from your hands, hitting the thick rug with a dull thud.

Page after page of your own handwriting stared back at you. Preserved.

Every childish question. Every lonely afternoon. Every desperate, humiliating attempt to convince yourself someone might be listening.

You remembered writing most of them.

You remembered crying after some of them.

You remembered eventually stopping.

Your entire life reduced to paper.

"You were always a curious one," a smooth, deep voice drifted from the doorway.

You bolted upright, your heart hammering hard against your ribs. Damian stood there, silhouetted by the warm light of the hallway. He didn't look angry. He didn't look caught. He looked... satisfied.

"You-you’re.." you breathed, the words trembling. "My soulmate..?"

Damian crossed the room, his movements silent and predatory. He didn't stop until he was hovering over you.

He sank to his knees in front of you, reaching out. His fingers tangled in your hair, petting you with that same, terrifyingly gentle devotion he gave to his most prized pets.

"I was observing," he corrected softly, his deep emerald eyes locked onto yours. "I was waiting until you were ready. Until the world had finished bruising you so that I could be the one to mend you."

"You've been mending me?" You let out a breathless, hysterical laugh. "Damian, you've been curating me! The cars, the security, the 'routines'.. you weren't helping me live. You were making sure I didn't wander off!"

"And why shouldn't you be kept close?" He leaned in, his forehead resting against yours.

His scent that cool, intoxicating mint filled your senses, making your head swim. "The world is a jagged, cruel place. It doesn't know how to handle someone as precious as you. They see a person, they see a worker, a friend, a stranger. They don't see the miracle that you are."

"I'm not a miracle," you protested, trying to push his chest away, but your hands felt weak against his lean muscle. "I am a person. I have a life. I have choices."

"You have my choices," he whispered, his hand sliding down to cup your cheek, his thumb stroking your skin with a rhythmic, soothing motion. "And they are all designed for your happiness. Is it so wrong to want to ensure your comfort? To ensure you are fed, rested, and loved without the interference of the mundane?"

He leaned forward and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to your temple. It burned. Felt nothing like the passion you’d always hoped for.

"You're sick.." you whispered, the word feeling absurd in the face of his overwhelming tenderness.

Damian pulled back just enough to look you in the eye, a small, boyish grin the one that usually looked charming but now looked devastating touching his lips. "A harsh term. I prefer... devoted."

He stood up, reaching down to take your hand. He didn't pull you, he simply offered his palm, waiting for you to take it. It was an invitation, but you knew it was also a command.

"Come," he said, his voice a warm, melodic hum. "You've had a shock. You're trembling. Let's get you settled. I've had Alfred prepare that tea you like, and the new linens are ready." His voice was calm.

If anything, faintly disappointed when you didn’t move. Like bat-cow had wandered somewhere she wasn’t meant to and now required collecting.

You looked at him. Really looked. For the first time since meeting him, pieces that had never seemed connected began slotting together with nauseating precision.

The lunches. The phone calls. The coat. Your coffee. The security downstairs who somehow always recognised you. The reception staff who smiled before you’d spoken. The meetings that always happened to include Damian, regardless of whether they had anything to do with Wayne Enterprises. The quiet, invisible way your life had bent around him until his presence no longer felt unusual.

You couldn’t remember when that had happened. Perhaps that was the point.

“…It was you.”

It came out barely above a whisper. “The whole time.”

Damian crossed the room without hurry.

He stopped close enough that you could smell the familiar scent of mint clinging to his clothes. “I had intended to tell you.”

“When?”

“When it no longer frightened you.”

You laughed. A small, broken sound that didn’t resemble amusement.

“You’ve been lying to me since the day we met.”

“I omitted information.”

“You watched me tell you about my soulmate.”

“Yes.”

“You listened while I told you I wished I’d been born normal.”

His expression changed then. Something softened around his eyes. “I know.”

“I know,” he repeated quietly. “I read every one of those thoughts long before you said them aloud.”

He reached past you, lifting the notebook from the floor with surprising care before setting it back on the desk.

“I remember every message.” His fingertips rested against the worn leather cover.

“‘Are you there?’”

Your breathing caught.

“‘Please answer.’”

You couldn’t move.

“‘I think something’s wrong with me.’”

He recited them without looking.

He already knew them. Every single one.

“I was eight,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“I thought…” Your voice failed.

“I know.”

You stared at him. “You don’t understand.”

“No.”

He looked back at you with complete certainty. “I understand perfectly.” There was no hesitation. No apology. No shame. “I know what you believed.”

His gaze drifted briefly toward your forearm before returning to your face.

“I know how often you blamed yourself.”

He lifted a hand, brushing an invisible crease from your sleeve with the same absent care he’d shown a hundred times before.

“I know you stopped buying caramel because I preferred vanilla. I know you only pretend to like herbal tea. I know you sleep better if the room is colder. I know you become overwhelmed when supermarkets are crowded. I know you forget to eat whenever work becomes stressful.”

“You don’t..” Your throat felt painfully tight. “You don’t know me.”

A flicker of genuine confusion crossed his face. “I know you better than anyone.”

“You’ve been watching me.”

“Of course I have.” The answer came so naturally that, for a second, it almost sounded ridiculous that you’d asked.

“I lost so many years.” His voice remained even. “I have been correcting that.”

He looked around the room. At the books on the shelves. The chair by the window. The cup of tea growing cold beside the sofa. Your home.

Then he looked back at you. “I have spent every day since finding you making your life easier.” He smiled softly. “You call it manipulation because you insist on imagining the life you had before I arrived.” He stepped closer. “So do I.”

There was no triumph in his expression. Only something devastatingly gentle. “I remember the person who apologised for taking up space. The person who believed fate had simply… forgotten them.”

His hand settled lightly against your cheek. “I remember because I was the one reading it.”

“You keep looking at everything I’ve done and asking yourself how I could justify it.” His forehead rested lightly against yours. “You’ve misunderstood.”

His voice dropped into something almost unbearably soft. “I’ve never had to.”

There wasn’t the slightest doubt in him. Not after the notebook. Not after the messages. Not after so many years. In Damian’s mind, he’d already spent a lifetime loving you.

The only difference now was that you finally knew his name.

Please comment and reblog :)

13K+ words, 77K+ characters, 1K+ sentences, 1K+ paragraphs, 47 minute average reading time, 1 hour 11 minute average speaking time.

I lowkey really rushed this one to get it out before the end of the month, so I apologise if it’s obvious

Read Tim Drake’s part here.

Read Jason Todd’s part here.

Read Bruce Wayne’s part here.

You hobbled over (still feeling a little funky from all the excitement of the last day and a half) to the en-suite and winced your way through brushing your teeth and actually washing your face for the first time in too long.

Years of basically taking care of yourself meant that you had a medicine cabinet and multiple drawers stocked up with the essentials. You tried your best to clean up with some dry shampoo for your roots and bruise cream for your green knees, all the while taking care not to bend too far forward or back.

You also, from the top shelf of your medicine cabinet, pulled out a small bottle of store brand pain killers. This were in there mostly for little things like headaches and stomach cramps, but according to your chart, a higher dose of these would work for your concussion pain too.

So down the hatch they went, before you got changed into something different and actually stepped out of your room for the first time in a while.

For not quite the first time, you were grateful about having a room on the ground floor, since you were most definitely not making it down any stairs for a while, the effort would likely send you tumbling back down and landing like the family guy death pose.

Speaking of media, your phone and all other electronic devices had been notably missing since the museum, and you were on the hunt to find them. The doctor had said no screens, but there wasn't really much else to do right now, so at the very least couldn't you put a podcast on at low volume for a little fun?

You kept hobbling your way to the kitchen, hovering near the wall for stability, and stepped through the arched entrance to Alfred standing over something sizzling at the stove. He turned to acknowledge you, face mostly impassive except for a single arched brow, which was usually the most emotive he would get.

"Out of bed so soon, Miss/Master (Name)? I could have sworn you were on doctor's orders to not exert yourself."

Alfred hadn't talked to you at such length for a while so you took a second to think before responding.

"I feel okay, to be honest, not as bad as yesterday, for sure. I took some painkillers a little while ago so the headache's starting to subside, I'm just kinda hungry."

Alfred had a way of making you feel small with the way he seemed to convey so much disappointment with only his eyes, never falling so low as to voice his displeasure. The old man was more secure in his place in this household then you were, so you were under no false pretenses that his show of decorum was more of a defensive shield against those he didn't seem to like, such as yourself. Should he cuss you out tomorrow, his job was at no risk of termination. (More likely they'd finally find a reason to throw you out.)

When you were younger, when your whole world tilted on its axis and you became just another ghost in the manor, Alfred's change in behavior had cut deep. In the place of a man you once saw as your grandfather, all warm smiles and cookies and infinite wisdom shared over steaming tea, was the overwhelming grief in his eyes whenever he caught you sitting in Jason's old spot in the library, reading his books or bunched up in his blankets.

He'd looked almost sick the first time he saw you playing alone in the sunroom, eyes locked on the empty spot next to you. You knew Alfred just couldn't look at you after Jason died, whether it was from guilt or resentment didn't matter.

As you got older, the sadness shifted to a heavy disappointment. Alfred Pennyworth would never do something as ill mannered as scoff, but the way he looked at you was enough to get the message across. He'd served three generations of Waynes now, and by far were you the most unremarkable of the bunch.

You weren't a billionaire philanthropist, nor were you trying to be, you weren't Batman or Robin, you didn't help out with the mission, and you didn't stand out at galas or in high society. You were just you, and for Alfred, that didn't seem to be good enough.

For him, it was easy to push you to the side, he had a million other things to take care of, people to stitch up, you could keep yourself alive for a little while without him right?

All that to say, the way he was staring at you was unfortunately familiar, upset at your presence, but forcing himself to stay within the bounds of polished manners. The only thing that was slightly different today was how he seemed to be unsatisfied at your answer, only continuing to watch you squirm, still just barely though the threshold of the kitchen. Usually, he'd take any response as sufficient proof of life and leave it at that.

To be honest it was bringing back unpleasant memories of how the Riddler had stared at you, that uncanny gaze knowing exactly what you were thinking and planning to wring the right answers out of you.

He cleared his throat, pouring out what seemed to be a broth of some kind into a serving bowl.

"(Master/Miss) (Name)? Are you quite alright?"

"Sorry, what? I uh- checked out for a second."

Again, he looked very unimpressed.

"I asked about the medication you mentioned, what was it and how much did you take, exactly? I know your father meant to keep you on a strict schedule so I imagine this won't please him to hear."

You rattled off what you remembered, some off-brand variety you'd got off the bottom rung of shelves the last time you needed a refill.

Alfred turned back to the his work for a moment, pulling out a batch of Yorkshire puddings from one of the many ovens (oh great it was monthly Sunday roast day, when Alfred got all patriotic for his motherland and decided to subject the rest of the family to a classic British spread. Usually with his skill in the kitchen, it was pretty good, but you weren't fully sure if you could keep down something so heavy right now. Oh well.)

"Hm. Well, dinner will be served in the next 20 minutes, so it would be wise to take a seat now, before the rest of your family comes down, making a ruckus as always."

He had a point, you weren't really in a state to try and shove past whichever combination of robins would be brawling on the floor by the time they all got downstairs, so you made your way over, sliding into the same seat you'd been in on Friday.

~~~~~

Tim was the first one down, eyes darting wildly around the dining room before they zeroed in on you. He moved to take his seat across from you.

"(Name)! There you are, I was looking for you! Well, more like I was gonna help you from your room to the table, but anyway- How are you feeling? You should take your meds after dinner."

You awkwardly threw him a double thumbs-up from across the table, "Yeah, I er- already took some, so I think I'm good for the night, probably just gonna eat and go back to bed."

You noticed how he scrunched up his brows when you mentioned taking your meds already.

The off-brand version wasn't even that bad! It was the same stuff mostly, just cheaper. So much hate and for what?

"Oh, uh, okay, sure, yeah, just let Bruce know, he's been trying to keep you on a schedule."

"Yeah, Alfred told me." Bruce and his fucking schedule. Medication was medication, what was the big deal? Either way you'd basically be taking the same thing, no?

Tim just nodded and pulled out his phone, typing away furiously for a few seconds before putting it face-down turning back to you.

"Sorry, WE work," He laughed for a second, "Um- did you sleep well? I still remember my first time getting taken by the Riddler, I was shitting myself."

He was smiling, but you weren't. For a second you felt bad, what you went through yesterday is what he'd been accustomed to for so long.

The first time he got taken by the Riddler was when he was 13. You remembered this vividly because Bruce had gone near insane. Batman stopped pulling his punches that night, and Tim's Robin, not for the first time, turned him away from going too far.

"No, no nightmares, I knocked out after the meds pretty much. I didn't dream at all."

He beamed at you, tired eyes crinkling at the corners, "That's good. You need all the rest you can get."

"Hey Tim, do you know where my phone is?"

His face didn't change in the slightest, "Yeah Bruce has it, the EMTs gave it to him when you were being taken to the hospital."

"Can I get it back, I wanna-"

"No."

"What."

"No."

His smile didn't move an inch, "Doctor's orders, remember? No screens, loud noises, harsh lights, reading, exercising, or otherwise strenuous activity for at least the next week."

That wasn't what you remembered. You frowned, pushing through the remainder of your headache to try and remember the exact instructions you had been given.

"No wait, I could have sworn he said no screens only for the first 48 hours, then I can get them back, and the rest of the stuff's not a problem since I don't do most of that anyway. Except for the reading, but I can read on my tablet or something."

Tim put up two fingers, "Two things. First, it hasn't been 48 hours yet, has it? And second, that's mostly a suggestion, the longer you spend off of your screens the quicker your recovery will be. So Bruce thinks you should try to stay off of your devices for at least a week to start with, then we can start to reintroduce them, like 10 minutes a day to start. You work your way back up, under careful monitoring, of course."

"What the hell? Whadyamean? Tim, I can't just stay offline for a week, I have so much homewor-"

"Oh you don't have to worry about that for a while."

"What are you talking about, I've at least got to-"

"No, Bruce talked to the school already."

That gave you pause, "...About?"

He fiddled with a loose thread on the sleeve of his hoodie, "You have the next week off, and after that it'll be on a day-by-day basis to see if you're cleared to go."

"Tim-," you were gearing up to fight about this, fuck it. If you couldn't go to school, what were you supposed to do all day? All you currently had was your life outside of the manor's walls and online, what were you supposed to do without both?

The rest of the family started to file in, as Alfred carried over dinner from the kitchen. You didn't have time to finish your thought as Jason slid into the seat next to you.

Oh fuck, wasn't this a little too familiar?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(A/n: Chapter 12!! Getting into the throes of it now! Please please please, as always, feedback is much treasured so let me know what you think or any thoughts, comments, and guesses. (👀))

He did not look over.

She sighed again, louder this time, the kind of sigh that should have come with a tiny theater curtain and one spotlight.

“What’s wrong?” Tim asked at last, not turning fully, his fingers still moving over the keyboard. His voice had that clipped edge he got when his brain was somewhere else, and his body had been left behind to deal with the humans. “You’ve sighed twice.”

“I’m bored,” Y/N said.

Tim frowned at his screen as her boredom had appeared in the code. “Play some video games.”

Y/N’s pout arrived instantly, familiar and reflexive, her mouth pulling down as she tipped her head against the couch. “I wanna play with you. You’ve been working for, like, ever?”

Tim let out a breath through his nose, the almost-laugh he used when something was not funny but he needed it to be smaller than it was. He finally glanced back at her, and for half a second she saw him. Her Tim. Tired eyes, messy hair, guilt flickering like a faulty bulb. Then he looked back at the computer.

“I have a lot to get done, you know that,” he said. “It’s important. Can’t you find something else to do?”

The words weren’t cruel. That was the worst part. Just ordinary, practical, the kind you could defend in the morning, polish up and make reasonable. Y/N stared at him, and something small inside her went very still.

“That’s what you said last time,” she said, standing before she could decide not to. Her voice stayed bright because, of course, it did. Her smile came with it, automatic and awful, stretching over hurt like wrapping paper over broken glass. “And the time before that. Tim, why even invite me over if I’m going to be a trophy piece on your couch so you feel better about yourself?”

Tim’s shoulders tightened. He did not look at her, but she saw the irritation catch in the set of his jaw, saw the headache forming before he even lifted a hand to rub at his temple.

“Y/N,” he said, and there it was, that tone. The one that made her feel twelve years old and too loud in a room full of adults. “Some of us have responsibilities. I’m sorry you’re bored, but you need to do something with your life other than follow me around. Quit acting so pathetic.”

Silence dropped between them so hard it felt physical.

The city hissed outside. His computer hummed. Somewhere in the apartment, the heater clicked on, filling the room with dry warmth that made her skin feel too tight. Y/N looked at Tim, her smile staying exactly where it was, obedient as a trained dog. For a moment, she thought about screaming. About throwing the controller at his stupid, expensive wall. About saying, I had a life before you got too busy to notice it. I had grief before you decided I was inconvenient. I had a mother once. I had you once.

Instead, she lifted her bag from the floor.

“I gotta go home anyways and do some stuff,” she said lightly. “See you later.”

Tim turned then, remorse arriving too late and too small, as a coin dropped in a cathedral. “Alright,” he replied, his voice softer now. “Text me when you get home safely.”

“Okay!” Y/N chirped because the alternative was falling apart in his doorway, and she would rather eat glass. She slung her bag over her shoulder and headed for the door. “Love you, see you soon. Whenever you’re not working,” she added under her breath, the grumble escaping before she could swallow it.

Tim sighed behind her. “Sure, whatever, see you soon.”

That was the last thing he gave her for a long time.

Outside, Gotham smelled like rain, exhaust, and old stone. The pavement shone beneath the streetlights, black and silver and slick as oil, and Y/N hugged her sweatshirt tighter as she walked to the curb, refusing to look back at the warm square of Tim’s apartment window. She pulled out her phone with fingers that had started to tremble and called Damian first, because Damian was blunt and mean and weirdly comforting in the way sharp things could be comforting if you knew where to hold them. It rang once before it went to voicemail.

A text came through before she could even lower the phone.

Damian: Y/N. Leave me alone; I’m doing something important.

Her smile wobbled. “Cool,” she whispered to nobody. “Love that. Very emotionally nourishing.”

She called Jason next. He picked up on the fourth ring, background noise loud behind him, voices and engines and something metallic clattering.

“What?” Jason said.

“Wow,” Y/N said, forcing brightness into her voice until it glittered. “Hi to you too, sunshine.”

“Y/N, I’m busy.”

“Everyone’s busy. I’m starting to think there’s a club and I wasn’t invited.”

Jason exhaled, impatient. “Are you actually in trouble?”

The question hit harder than she expected, because no, she was not in the kind of trouble they respected. No blood, no gun, no broken lock, no villain with a dramatic outfit and a theme. Just a heart doing something embarrassing in her chest.

“No,” she said. “I just wanted to talk.”

“Then stop acting like a child,” Jason said. “Call somebody else.”

The line went dead.

For a while, Y/N stood under the awning of Tim’s building, rain misting cold against her cheeks, phone still pressed to her ear. Her smile had gone numb.

She tried Dick last because Dick was safe, because Dick always answered with warmth even when he was tired, because Dick had once carried her from the Manor couch to her room after she fell asleep during movie night and had teased her for drooling on his shirt for two straight weeks. He did not answer. A minute later, her phone buzzed.

Dick: Sorry, busy.

Y/N stared at the three messages lined up in her phone, each one a tiny door closing.

Okay, she thought, and the word had no shape at all. Okay. Okay. Okay.

She texted Tim when she got home safely because she had promised, and because some habits were harder to kill than hope.

Y/N: Home alive, tragically. Gotham failed to kidnap me again. 0/10 city performance.

Tim did not answer until morning.

Tim: Good.

A week passed, and Y/N stopped texting first. It was not dramatic. There was no declaration, no final paragraph, no wounded monologue sent at 2:13 a.m. and regretted by sunrise. Just radio silence, as if their story had quietly slipped into canon divergence: the moments that could have mattered written out, the plotline going elsewhere.

One night, she just looked at her phone, thumb hovering over Tim’s name, and realized she was tired of offering little pieces of herself to people who treated them like clutter. She put the phone facedown and opened a horror game instead, letting digital darkness swallow the room while something chased her through flickering hallways and screamed from the vents. Monsters were easier. Monsters wanted something obvious.

The boys did not notice.

At first, that hurt worse than the silence itself. Then, slowly, the hurt became weather. It rolled in, soaked her, passed. Six months unfolded with cruel softness.

At the Manor, Elana became a fixture, pale sweaters and calm smiles, her hand resting lightly on Tim’s arm, her voice gentle enough to make every insult sound like concern. She laughed at the right volume. She never sprawled across the couch. She never stole fries off Jason’s plate, never argued with Damian about movie adaptations, never climbed onto Dick’s back in the hallway because her feet hurt, never filled the kitchen with flour at midnight because she saw a cake recipe online and became briefly possessed by vanilla extract and delusion.

“She’s just a lot,” Elana said one evening when Y/N’s name drifted into the room like smoke.

Y/N was not there, but the words reached her anyway days later through the strange, humiliating ecosystem of people who thought gossip became kindness if they delivered it with a wince.

Jason had apparently snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”

Dick, softer but not defending her, had said, “She can be intense.”

Damian had said something in Arabic that no one translated for Elana, and Tim had only sighed.

Y/N smiled when she heard. Of course, she did.

Bruce still called. Alfred still sent her home with containers of soup and stern instructions disguised as polite suggestions. Y/N still answered Bruce with “Dad” because he was, in all the ways that mattered and none of the ways blood could explain. But she stopped coming to events. She stopped lingering in the Manor kitchen. She stopped giving Elana the chance to tilt her head and say, “We missed you,” in a voice that meant, Look how well we breathe without you.

And to her own surprise, Y/N started breathing again.

It happened in uneven little ways. A morning where she woke up and didn’t check if Tim had posted anything. An afternoon wandering a bookstore for two hours, buying three books she didn’t need. A night laughing so hard in David’s garage she had to sit on an overturned tire because her knees gave out, the air thick with motor oil, rubber, metal dust, and the sharp lemon cleaner he used obsessively but pretended not to care about.

David stood under the open hood of a rust-red pickup, grease smeared along his forearm, his dark hair tied back badly enough that pieces kept falling into his face. He was tall and slim in that deceptively sturdy way mechanics got, all roped muscle from lifting engines and hauling parts and fighting with bolts that had chosen violence. He pointed a wrench at her like a weapon.

“I’m telling you right now,” he said, “if you make me watch another possessed doll movie, I’m blocking you.”

“You cannot block me,” Y/N said from her throne of stacked tires, swinging one leg. “I know where you work.”

“I work here.”

“Exactly. Terrible operational security.”

David narrowed his eyes. “You’re smiling like a goblin. I hate when you smile like a goblin.”

“That’s rude. This is my charming face.”

“That is your I’m-about-to-traumatize-me-with-a-YouTube-video face.”

Y/N gasped and pressed a hand to her chest. “I would never.”

“You sent me a video titled ‘Top Ten Animatronic Malfunctions That Feel Cursed’ at midnight.”

“And you watched it.”

“I thought it was about Chuck E. Cheese workplace safety!”

“It was educational.”

“It was pizza and a demonically possessed Chuck E. Cheese mascot.”

Y/N laughed, full and bright, and the sound bounced off the garage walls, startling a sleepy orange shop cat from a pile of old towels. For a moment, the laugh felt almost unfamiliar coming out of her, too big for the room, too honest for a body that had spent months learning how to make grief sound like jokes. David watched her with a faint squint, the wrench lowering slightly.

“What?” she asked, still smiling, though it softened under his attention. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A real expression. Freaky stuff.”

Her smile faltered at the edges.

David turned back to the engine, but his voice stayed careful in the way his hands never were. “You heard from them?”

The garage seemed to quiet around the question. Outside, a car passed with bass rattling its windows, and somewhere deeper in the shop, an air compressor kicked on with a growl. Y/N looked down at her phone lying screen-up beside her, blank and black.

“Bruce called yesterday,” she said. “Alfred threatened me with soup.”

“Good. Alfred’s the only one in that castle with a working brain.”

“Bruce has a working brain.”

“Bruce has a guilt complex wearing a billionaire suit.”

Y/N huffed a laugh despite herself. “Don’t be mean to my dad.”

“I’ll be mean to moneybags if I want.”

Y/N’s smile came easier that time, then faded. “No. I haven’t heard from them.”

David’s jaw flexed. He set the wrench down too softly. “Not one?”

“Nope.”

“After six months?”

“Technically Tim liked a meme I posted.”

“Y/N.”

“What? It counts. Digital affection. Very modern. Very bleak.”

David wiped his hands on a rag, the motion sharp enough to betray him. He was the confrontational one between them, the one who said the thing in the room even if the thing had teeth. “They’re assholes.”

“They’re busy.”

“They’re assholes,” he repeated.

She looked away, her throat tightening in that sudden, traitorous way she hated. Her smile returned, polished and immediate. “They have lives.”

“So do you.”

“Debatable. I spent three hours last night watching someone rank Resident Evil monsters by marriage potential.”

David blinked. “Please never explain that.”

“Coward. Lickers were ranked high than you think they would be."

“Please, I'm begging you. Don't explain why.” He came around the truck and leaned against the workbench across from her, arms folding, eyes fixed on her face like he was trying to catch the truth before she could dress it up. “You don’t have to make excuses for people who hurt you.”

Y/N picked at a loose thread on her sleeve. Yes, I do, she thought. That’s how you keep loving them without becoming angry enough to leave.

Out loud, she said, “I’m not making excuses. I’m being emotionally mature.”

“You are sitting on a tire in my garage wearing a sweatshirt with a cartoon skeleton on it.”

“Emotionally mature people can enjoy skeletons.”

“You cried over a fan edit yesterday.”

“It had good pacing.”

David’s mouth twitched, but he did not let her pull him all the way into the joke. “I’m serious.”

“I know,” she said quietly.

He softened then, irritation draining into something steadier. “I just hate it. You keep acting like you’re fine because you think being fine means they didn’t break anything.”

The words landed with horrible precision. Y/N looked at him, and for one terrifying second, her face forgot what to do. The smile slipped. The brightness dimmed. Underneath it was exhaustion, raw and young and badly hidden.

“I don’t want them to be bad people,” she whispered.

David’s expression changed, not pity, never pity, but understanding, with its sleeves rolled up. “They don’t have to be bad people to be bad to you.”

Y/N swallowed. The shop smelled like oil, rain, and old coffee. The cat kneaded the pile of towels, indifferent to human collapse. For months, she had been telling herself that being forgotten was not the same as being abandoned, that being replaced was not the same as being unwanted, that Elana had not stolen anything because people were not rooms and love was not furniture. But the truth had teeth no matter how gently she tried to hold it.

“I miss Tim,” she admitted, so softly it barely survived the air.

David nodded once, like he had expected that, as if the sentence did not offend him. “Yeah.”

“And I’m mad at him.”

“Good.”

“And I still love him.”

“Unfortunately, you have terrible taste.”

A wet laugh escaped her. She pressed the heel of her hand under one eye before anything could fall. “Don’t make me laugh when I’m being tragic. It ruins the aesthetic.”

“Your aesthetic is haunted animatronic with cherry flavored lip gloss.”

“That’s literally so rude and so accurate.”

David smiled, then, small but real, and nudged her knee with his. “Come on. Help me close up. I’ll buy food.”

Y/N narrowed her eyes. “You’ll buy food?”

“Yes.”

“Like, food food? Or gas station food?”

“Don’t disrespect gas station food. It has saved lives.”

“It has ended lives.”

“Only the weak.”

"I am not eating a seven eleven taquito."

She slid off the tires, landing beside him with a little hop, and bumped her shoulder into his arm because contact came naturally to her when she felt safe enough not to think about it. David pretended to stumble like she had body-checked him with Jason-level force, clutching his ribs and wheezing theatrically until she rolled her eyes and shoved him again. The garage lights hummed overhead, warm and buzzing, painting the tools gold and the concrete floor amber. Outside, the rain had slowed to a mist, silvering the lot beyond the bay doors.

For the first time in months, Y/N did not feel like a ghost haunting someone else’s family.

She felt bruised, yes. Still tender. Still angry. Still waiting, in some humiliating corner of herself, for her phone to light up with Tim’s name and prove that she had mattered after all. But beside David, with grease on her sleeve and laughter still caught in her throat, the waiting did not feel like the whole world anymore.

Her phone buzzed on the workbench.

Y/N froze.

David looked at it, then at her.

For one ridiculous heartbeat, hope rose in her like a match struck in the dark. Tim. Dick. Jason. Damian. Someone. Anyone.

She picked it up.

Bruce: Alfred made too much soup again. He insists this is accidental. Dinner tomorrow?

Y/N stared at the message until her eyes stung, then smiled, real and aching.

Y/N: Sorry, Dad, looking for a new car tomorrow.

Bruce: Would you like me to join?

Y/N: It’s okay! I got it! Big girl duties.

The next day, Y/N was standing at a broken-down gate, peering in with a wince.

The used car lot sat wedged between a pawn shop with barred windows and a laundromat that flickered like it was one bad electrical bill away from becoming a crime scene, which, in Gotham, meant it was practically upscale. 

A crooked sign over the entrance read Marv’s Motor Mart in peeling red letters, though half the bulbs were dead and the M blinked whenever the wind moved wrong, turning the whole thing into Marv’s Motor Art, which Y/N decided was probably more honest. Rows of cars slouched across cracked asphalt under a low, bruised sky, their paint dulled by grime and city rain, their windshields marked in soap pen with prices that ranged from suspiciously affordable to is this a confession? Somewhere behind the fence, a dog barked once and then apparently reconsidered its involvement.

Y/N stood at the edge of the lot with her hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands, her purse heavy with an envelope of cash she had saved in painful little increments, babysitting money here, freelance odd jobs there, money she had refused to touch even when takeout had whispered her name like a demon from the fridge.

Buying a brand-new car in Gotham was, in Y/N’s opinion, something only a person with a trust fund, an insurance fetish, or a medically concerning lack of pattern recognition would do.

Someone could carjack it before she made the first payment, the Riddler could turn the engine into a crossword puzzle, or Bane could rip it off the street and throw it at Batman because apparently Gotham’s villain community did not believe in property values. And insurance, as she had learned from her own two eyes, did not usually cover being thrown by a big burly man at a middle-aged dude cosplaying as a bat. She had checked. Not officially, maybe, but enough angry forum posts from Gotham residents counted as a civic archive.

“Okay,” she muttered to herself, staring down the rows of sad metal beasts. “Just a normal adult purchase. People buy cars all the time. I am a person. Allegedly. This is fine.”

The owner sat in a cramped office booth near the front of the lot, a dingy little structure with nicotine-yellow blinds, a plastic desk fan rattling in the window, and a coffee maker that looked like it had survived at least one hostage situation. He was a wide man with a gray mustache, a faded baseball cap, and the hollow-eyed resignation of someone who had negotiated with too many Gotham customers and possibly one or two henchmen. He looked up when Y/N stepped inside, gave her a once-over that stopped at her purse and then her face, and scratched his cheek with a pen.

“You buying or browsing?”

“Buying,” Y/N said, then immediately added, “I hope. We’ll see.”

His expression did not move. “Budget?”

“Cash.”

That made him sit a little straighter. “How much cash?”

Y/N smiled sweetly, which was her favorite way of refusing to be robbed. “Enough for a car that starts, stops, and doesn’t come with a body in the trunk.”

“Bodies cost extra.” He jerked his thumb toward the lot. “Go look. Let me know what you like.”

“Comforting business model,” Y/N said, but he had already gone back to whatever he was doing on a tiny television propped on a filing cabinet, the screen full of static-laced news footage and a reporter standing beside a smoking crater that everyone in Gotham would forget about by dinner.

Outside, the air smelled like damp concrete, old motor oil, and the metallic tang of incoming rain. Y/N wandered slowly between the rows, trying to look like someone who knew what she was doing rather than a woman whose entire car knowledge came from David ranting at her while elbow-deep in engines and a few racing games she had absolutely cheated at. A silver sedan with one different-colored door stared back at her with cloudy headlights. A minivan listed slightly to one side like it had secrets. A compact car with a missing hubcap had great student car written on the windshield, which Y/N felt was rude because even broke students deserved hope. She passed a black SUV that looked like it had been stolen, unstolen, stolen again, and then sold here out of exhaustion. She passed a little blue hatchback that might have been cute if not for the smell of ancient cigarettes radiating through the closed windows like a curse. Nothing fit. Not really. Some were too small, some too expensive, some too aggressively haunted by the previous owner’s bad decisions.

Then she saw it.

It sat near the back of the lot, half-hidden beneath a sagging tarp that had slipped off one side, dust softening its shape until it seemed less parked than sleeping. A Camaro. An older model, broad and low and beautiful in a way that made absolutely no sense for her life. It was mostly yellow, bright even under the grime, with black stripes running over it like markings on some ridiculous mechanical insect. Like a bumblebee, she thought, and immediately hated how charmed she was. 

There was something sly about it too, almost as if the car was daring her to notice that there was more here than met the eye. It looked impractical. It looked expensive to fix. It looked like it would attract every car thief in a three-mile radius and at least one villain with a branding issue. It looked like trouble wearing racing stripes.

Y/N fell in love instantly.

“No,” she whispered, walking toward it. “No, absolutely not. We are not doing this. We are not emotionally bonding with a car. That’s how people end up on reality shows.”

The Camaro remained silent, which she took as suspiciously smug.

She reached it and dragged her sleeve across the driver’s side window, clearing a streak through the dust. The interior was shadowy and surprisingly intact, worn but not destroyed, the seats dark, the dashboard aged but not gutted. She cupped her hands around her face and peered inside, then blew at the glass because apparently she had become the kind of person who flirted with abandoned vehicles. Dust puffed back at her, and she coughed, waving it away with a grimace.

“Okay, rude,” she told the car. “You’re pretty, but you have no manners.”

Something inside the dash clicked.

Y/N froze.

She waited, breath caught in her throat, eyes narrowing at the dark interior. Nothing else happened. No movement. No radio. No sudden demonic laughter. Just the distant buzz of traffic and the owner’s television muttering from the booth.

Cool. Great. We’re already in psychological warfare, and I haven’t even asked the price.

She turned toward the booth, ready to call the owner over, but the man was already staring at her through the window. The moment their eyes met, he pointed at the Camaro with his pen like he had been waiting for a cursed prophecy to reach the correct page.

“Take it,” he called through the open door. “Five grand.”

Y/N blinked. “That’s cheap.”

“Yep.”

She looked back at the Camaro, then at him. “Why?”

“It can’t sell.”

“That’s not an answer. That sounds more like my obituary.”

The owner sighed and shoved himself out of his chair, stepping into the doorway of the booth. “Car creeps me out.”

Y/N stared at him. “That is somehow less reassuring.”

“Does weird stuff.”

“What weird stuff?”

He flapped one hand. “Radio plays. Lights come on. Battery drains and then somehow don’t. Horn went off for twenty straight minutes last month when nobody was near it. Door locked me out once.”

“That sounds like a haunted car.”

“That’s why it’s five grand.”

Y/N glanced at the Camaro again. The black stripes looked almost too sharp beneath the dust, the yellow paint glowing faintly under the gloom. Her common sense, already weak from years of Gotham conditioning, tried to crawl up from the basement of her brain and wave a little flag.

“That’s sketch as fuck,” she said.

The owner shrugged. “Probably needs a fix, but I ain’t fixing it. I’ll give you a deal. Five grand if you finance, four if you have cash.”

Y/N crossed her arms, trying to look like David had taught her anything beyond “do not buy anything making a noise that sounds wet.” She tilted her chin toward the Camaro. “Two.”

The owner’s expression flattened.

She smiled.

He stared.

The Camaro sat between them in dusty silence, looking far too pleased with itself.

Finally, the owner looked at the sky, exhaled like a man surrendering a family curse to a stranger, and said, “Take the fucking car.”

Y/N pointed at him. “That is not a sales pitch normal people use.”

“Do you want it or not?”

“Yes,” she said too quickly, then winced at herself. “I mean, with healthy suspicion.”

The paperwork took less time than it should have, which did not help the healthy suspicion. The office smelled like stale coffee and old paper, the desk sticky beneath her elbows as she signed forms while the owner watched her count out cash with the hungry relief of a man unloading a cursed object before it learned his home address. She half-expected a raven to hit the window or the lights to flicker. Instead, the fan rattled, the little television hissed, and somewhere outside, the Camaro’s headlights blinked once.

Y/N’s pen paused.

The owner saw it too.

Neither of them spoke.

After the title was signed and the keys were dropped into her palm, the owner followed her outside with a portable jump starter and the energy of a man approaching a sleeping tiger with unpaid parking tickets. 

The Camaro did not start on the first or second try. On the third, it made a low, offended grinding noise that caused Y/N to whisper, “Baby, please, I already paid for you,” while the owner muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a prayer.

They fiddled. They jumped it. They turned it over. The owner popped the hood, poked around, cursed, adjusted something, jumped back when the horn gave one short, sharp beep, and then pretended he had meant to do that. Y/N stood nearby with the keys in her hand, equal parts thrilled and increasingly certain she had purchased a vehicular poltergeist.

Finally, the engine caught.

The Camaro rumbled low and deep, not smoothly, exactly, but with a strange living vibration that rolled through the asphalt and up Y/N’s legs. The headlights glowed, brightening through the dust, and the radio crackled for one eerie second before settling into silence.

The owner stepped back. “There. Runs.”

“That sounded like a threat.”

“Drive safe. No refunds.”

Y/N slid into the driver’s seat and immediately felt ridiculous happiness bloom in her chest. The interior smelled like old leather, dust, and something faintly electrical, like rain hitting a power line. She ran her hands over the steering wheel, grinning despite herself. “Hi,” she whispered, because apparently she was fully committed to the bit now. “Please don’t kill me. I’m poor and emotionally fragile.”

The radio crackled.

Y/N stared at it.

Nothing.

“Great conversation,” she said weakly.

She waved goodbye to the owner, who waved back with the stiff relief of someone watching a curse leave town, and pulled out of the lot into Gotham traffic. For the first few blocks, it was glorious. The Camaro moved like it wanted to run, even under the sputter and shake, its engine growling beneath her like a large animal clearing its throat. Y/N laughed once, delighted and nervous, gripping the wheel as rain began tapping against the windshield. For the first time in ages, she felt like she had done something just for herself. Not for Tim. Not for the boys. Not to make Bruce worry less or Alfred proud or Elana’s smile twitch. Hers. A reckless yellow-black thing bought with cash from a man who looked like he wanted it exorcised.

Then the ride got shaky.

The wheel trembled beneath her hands. The engine coughed. Y/N’s smile faded.

“No,” she said. “No, no, no, don’t you dare. We are in the honeymoon phase.”

The Camaro jerked like it had hit an invisible pothole, which in Gotham was honestly still possible. A plume of smoke bloomed from the hood, gray and thick, curling up into the rain.

“Okay,” Y/N said, voice rising. “That’s rude. That’s actually so rude.”

By the time she limped it into David’s garage, the Camaro was smoking as it had just survived a boss fight, and Y/N was making small bargaining noises under her breath. David looked up from beneath the hood of another car as it rolled into the open bay, his expression shifting from mild curiosity to horror with comedic precision.

“No,” he said.

Y/N parked crookedly and climbed out with both hands raised. “Before you judge me.”

“I’m judging you.”

“You haven’t heard the story.”

“I heard the engine. That was enough story.”

She gestured grandly to the Camaro, which hissed from under the hood with theatrical misery. “I bought a car!”

David stared at it, then at her, then back at it. “Congratulations. You bought a shitbox.”

“It has character.”

“It has organ failure. It's leaking everywhere.”

“It was cheap.”

His eyes narrowed. “How cheap?”

Y/N’s mouth pursed.

“Y/N.”

“Two thousand.”

David went very still, which was always more alarming than when he got loud. “Two thousand cash?”

She smiled.

He stared at her like he could see the exact shape of her missing survival instinct. “Tell me everything.”

So she did. She told him about the lot, the owner, the dust, the weird lights, the radio, the haunted-car discount, the jump-starting, and the way the owner had said, "Take the fucking car," with the desperation of a man handing off a cursed amulet. David listened in silence, arms crossed, grease on his jaw, his expression growing more incredulous with each sentence until, by the end, he looked like he wanted to call someone, though whether it was a tow truck, a priest, or Bruce Wayne remained unclear.

“Are you stupid?” he asked finally.

Y/N gasped. “That’s a hate crime against girls with dreams.”

“Take that shit back immediately. No alarm bells rang? None? Not one tiny bell in that haunted little head of yours went, Hmm, maybe the dirt-cheap demon Camaro is dirt-cheap for a reason?”

“It was cheap,” Y/N said.

David opened his mouth, closed it, then dragged one hand down his face. “That’ll do it.”

“Exactly.”

“That was not agreement.”

“It sounded like emotional surrender, which I accept.”

He pointed toward the Camaro. “You drove a smoking car across Gotham after a man told you it does weird stuff.”

“I barely drove. I limped heroically.”

“You should not be heroic in traffic.”

“Batman does it.”

“You are not Batman.”

“I could be.”

David’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “I hate this city.”

Despite everything, he came closer and rested a hand on the Camaro’s hood, immediately pulling it back with a hiss when the heat bit his palm. “I’ll take a look at it later. I’m slammed right now, and I’m not letting you hover while I diagnose whatever financial poltergeist you dragged into my garage. Come by tomorrow.”

Y/N looked at the Camaro, then at David, her excitement dimming under the practical weight of his tone. “Do you think it’s fixable?”

David’s expression softened, but only slightly, because he liked to ration tenderness as if Gotham taxed it. “Most things are fixable. Some things are just expensive.”

“Don’t say expensive. My bank account is listening.”

“Good. It needs to learn fear.”

She left the Camaro with him overnight and spent the rest of the evening pretending not to worry. She tried gaming, but every dark corridor made her think of the car sitting alone in David’s garage. She tried reading, but the heroine’s brooding love interest kept transforming into a yellow Camaro in her imagination, which ruined the atmosphere. 

By morning, she had convinced herself that David would find something ordinary and annoying, a bad alternator or a cracked hose or whatever mechanical phrase sounded expensive enough to hurt but not enough to destroy her. She arrived at the garage with coffee for both of them and a pastry bag from a bakery she liked, because bribery was simply affection wearing a trench coat.

David was at the front counter, writing something on a clipboard. He looked up when she came in and immediately winced.

“Oh my God,” Y/N said. “Why do you look guilty?”

“I didn’t get to it.”

“You said you would look at it.”

“I said later. Later became a customer’s transmission trying to die on my floor and Mr. Alvarez’s niece crying because her brakes were making a noise like a fork in a garbage disposal.”

Y/N held out his coffee, suspicious but forgiving because she was tragically consistent. “So you abandoned my child?”

“Your child is a haunted Camaro.”

“Still.”

He took the coffee. “I can look at it now.”

The garage was quieter than usual, the morning light coming through the high windows in pale strips that caught dust and made the air look almost soft. The Camaro sat in the far bay, cleaner than yesterday, only because the rain had washed thin rivers through the dust. Its yellow paint gleamed in streaks beneath the grime, black stripes cutting over the hood. David crouched by the front, popped the hood, then rolled beneath on a creeper with the practiced ease of someone who spent half his life under things that could crush him.

Y/N perched on a stool nearby, pastry bag in her lap. “Do you want moral support?”

“No.”

“Do you want a croissant?”

“Yes.”

She smiled and set one on the workbench for him. The garage was filled with the faint metallic clink of tools, David muttering to himself as he inspected the undercarriage. Y/N swung her feet, watching the Camaro’s headlights with narrowed eyes.

“I know you’re weird,” she whispered to it. “But weird is okay if you’re not murdery.”

The radio crackled.

Y/N’s spine went stiff.

“David?”

From beneath the car, his voice came muffled. “What?”

“Did you turn the radio on?”

“No.”

“Cool. Love that.”

There was a pause, then David rolled out from under the car, eyes fixed on nothing, face blank in a way that made her stomach drop.

“What?” Y/N asked.

He stared at the ceiling for a moment.

“David.”

“I must be dreaming,” he said.

She slid off the stool. “Why?”

“Because there is a robot’s face in the undercarriage.”

Y/N stared at him. “David, just fix the car.”

He looked at her slowly. “What am I supposed to fix? I’m looking at a head.”

“Stop joking around.”

“I am not joking.”

“You’re always joking.”

“I joke about ghosts because ghosts are fake. I do not joke about finding Optimus Prime’s basement cousin under your Camaro.”

Y/N planted her hands on her hips. “David.”

“FaceTime me.”

“You’re ten feet away.”

“I need you to see what I’m seeing from the angle of regret.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“FaceTime me.”

She pulled out her phone with a dramatic sigh and called him. He answered while lying back on the creeper, then rolled under the Camaro again with his phone pointed upward. Y/N watched her own screen, unimpressed for the first half second, ready to scold him for being ridiculous.

Then the image shifted beneath the car.

There was, in fact, a face.

Not a normal face, not even a decorative piece that looked face-ish if someone had consumed too much caffeine and childhood trauma. It was mechanical, plated, and angular, tucked into impossible machinery where no face should have been. Dark metal, yellow armor glimpsed through the undercarriage, seams and shapes too precise to be random. And then its eyes opened, glowing a clear electric blue that filled Y/N’s phone screen like twin stars waking in a basement.

Y/N screamed.

The Camaro rumbled to life.

David shot out from under the car so fast the creeper skidded across the floor and slammed into a toolbox. He scrambled up, grabbed a baseball bat leaning near the office door, and planted himself between Y/N and the car with the wild-eyed courage of a man who had absolutely not agreed to be part of any alien invasion before lunch.

“Stay back!” he snapped, bat raised.

“From my car?” Y/N squeaked.

“That is not a car!”

The Camaro lurched.

Panels shifted.

The sound was enormous, metallic, and layered, not like metal breaking but metal rearranging itself according to a logic too advanced for human panic. The hood split, wheels pulled inward, doors flared and folded, black-and-yellow armor sliding over limbs as the Camaro rose from the floor. It was not smooth. Not graceful. The garage was too small, and the transforming robot seemed painfully aware of that about three seconds too late. One arm knocked into a hanging light, sending it swinging wildly. A shoulder clipped the side mirror off a customer’s sedan. A foot came down on an oil pan with a crunch that made David produce a strangled sound of financial despair. The robot stumbled backward, hands lifted, then banged into a shelf of parts. Boxes toppled. A hubcap spun across the floor. The orange shop cat exploded out of the towel pile in a streak of offended fur and vanished into the office.

Y/N and David fled to the opposite corner at the exact same time, colliding shoulder to shoulder behind a stack of tires.

The robot, huge and yellow and black and very clearly trying not to make things worse, scurried into the farthest corner with both hands raised. He hit the wall anyway. A framed certification dropped from a nail and shattered on the floor. David made a wounded noise.

“My insurance,” he whispered.

Y/N clutched his arm. “There is an alien robot in your garage.”

“My insurance does not have a box for that.”

The robot crouched as much as his size allowed, blue eyes wide, hands still raised in a posture so unmistakably nervous that some terrible part of Y/N’s heart immediately softened.

David, apparently immune to the tragedy of giant glowing eyes, grabbed a small rubber sanding block from the shelf beside him and tossed it. It bounced off the robot’s chest with a sad little thwap.

The robot whined.

Y/N smacked David’s arm. “That’s rude!”

“It’s a robot!”

“He made a sad noise!”

“He’s eight feet tall and living in your car!”

“Still rude!”

David did not apologize. He kept the bat raised, his knuckles white, eyes darting over the robot’s body as if trying to identify a kill switch, an engine block, or at least something he could invoice. Y/N slowly stepped out from behind him.

David grabbed the back of her hoodie. “Do not.”

“Let go.”

“Y/N.”

“He’s scared.”

“We’re scared!”

“He’s more scared. Look at him.”

“I am looking at him. That is the problem.”

Y/N gently pried his hand off her hoodie and stepped forward with both arms raised, palms open. Her pulse hammered so hard she could feel it in her teeth, every survival instinct shrieking at her to get behind David, call Bruce, call Alfred, call literally anyone who owned body armor. But the robot was pressed into the corner, shoulders hunched, optics flicking between them and the damage around him. He looked too big for the room, too young for his own body, and entirely too alone.

“Um,” Y/N said, voice wobbling but soft. “Hello? Sorry if we spooked you. You spooked us.”

The robot stared.

David muttered behind her, “Great. Diplomacy with the garage cryptid.”

The robot’s head tilted slightly, and the radio inside his chest crackled to life. Static fuzzed first, then chopped fragments of stations, voices flashing in and out like someone spinning a dial through the city.

“Sorry...” the radio said, the word stitched from one voice, then another. “If... I... spooked... you... humans... hiding...”

Y/N’s breath caught. “You were hiding from humans?”

The robot looked down. The radio crackled again, this time catching a late-night host’s silky baritone, then a commercial jingle, then a woman’s bright laugh. “Hiding... safe... must... remain... unseen.”

David’s face had gone pale. “That thing is using the radio to talk.”

“He,” Y/N said automatically.

David stared at her. “You do not know that.”

Y/N glanced back at the robot. “Are you a he?”

The robot seemed to think about it. Then the radio clicked through static and landed on a cartoonish movie line, deep and dramatic. “I am... he.”

Y/N pointed at David without looking away. “He.”

David threw one hand up. “Fine. He is using the radio to talk. That is not better.”

The robot’s optics shifted toward the bat in David’s hands.

David tightened his grip. “I’m not putting it down.”

“He’s scared of it.”

“Good. It’s scared of my mighty stick.”

“David.”

“What? I’m establishing dominance.”

“You are holding a baseball bat at a giant alien robot who accidentally murdered an oil pan.”

“My oil pan mattered.”

The robot made another low, mournful sound, looking toward the crushed pan.

Y/N took another cautious step forward. “It’s okay. Well, it’s not okay, because David’s going to mourn that pan for three to five business days, but no one’s hurt. Are you hurt?”

The robot’s gaze moved to her, and something in his chest shifted with a soft mechanical whir. He lifted one hand, touched his own throat, then shook his head.

“You can’t talk-talk?”

Static. A fragment of a sad song. Then, “Voice... damaged.”

Y/N’s chest tightened. “Oh.”

Behind her, David lowered the bat a fraction despite himself. “Damaged how?”

The robot’s optics dimmed and brightened. The radio flickered through a storm of voices, too fast to catch, then settled on a solemn news anchor. “Battle... long ago... far away.”

Y/N and David exchanged a look.

“Far away as in Blüdhaven,” David said carefully, “or far away as in Mars?”

The robot pointed up.

Y/N looked at the ceiling.

David looked at the ceiling too, then closed his eyes. “I knew it. I knew space was going to make my day worse eventually.”

“You’re from space?” Y/N asked.

The robot nodded.

She absorbed that with the calm of someone whose brain had temporarily unplugged itself to avoid responsibility. “Okay. Great. Space car. Normal Tuesday.”

“It’s Wednesday,” David said faintly.

“Don’t correct me during first contact.”

The radio crackled, and a clipped game show voice said, “Correct!”

Y/N’s eyes widened. “Was that a joke?”

The robot’s eyes brightened. A small series of beeps chirped from him, almost shy.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You’re so adorable. Adopted..”

“He is not adorable,” David said. “He is an extraterrestrial hiding as a Facebook Marketplace nightmare.”

Y/N turned back to the robot. “Do you have a name?”

The robot straightened slightly, then seemed to hesitate. The radio spun through several stations, catching bits of music and old advertisements, static chewing through syllables. Finally, from a children’s program voice, then a weather report, then a bright radio DJ, came, “Bumble... bee.”

Y/N’s face softened at once. “Bumblebee?”

The robot nodded, the motion careful, and one of his door panels fluttered slightly like a pleased wing.

David stared. “Your alien robot car is named Bumblebee.”

Y/N pressed a hand over her heart. “That’s adorable.”

“That is not the word I would use.”

“It fits him.”

“He fits nowhere. He is currently denting my wall.”

Bumblebee looked back at the wall and made another guilty whirring sound.

Y/N immediately pointed at David. “Don’t make him feel bad.”

“I’m the victim!”

“You threw something at him.”

“He transformed in my garage and took out three shelves!”

“He panicked.”

“I am panicking.”

As if to prove it, David backed toward the office while keeping his eyes on Bumblebee. He patted the workbench blindly until his hand found his phone. Y/N watched him bring it up, thumb moving too fast.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Calling the cops.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, David.”

“There is an alien in my garage!”

“And you think Gotham cops are equipped for that? Half of them can’t handle traffic cones without escalating.”

David hissed her name, but she lunged and snatched the phone from his hand just as the call started ringing. “Y/N!”

She ended it, clutching the phone to her chest. “He’s nice.”

“You have known him for four minutes.”

“Five, and he apologized.”

“Through a radio!”

“He’s doing his best!”

David looked at Bumblebee, then at the cracked certification glass on the floor, then at the customer sedan missing a mirror. “We are in over our heads. There is an actual alien in my garage. An alien. From space. Hiding as your sketchy discount Camaro. And not to mention the property damage. What am I going to tell my insurance?”

Y/N glanced around. The place did look like a very polite tornado had tried to assemble furniture. “I’m sure insurance companies in Gotham have heard worse.”

“Worse than alien robot?”

“Bane.”

David opened his mouth.

Y/N lifted one finger. “Thrown cars.”

His mouth stayed open.

“Riddler traps.”

He pointed at her, then lowered his hand.

“Joker gas.”

“Okay, stop.”

“Penguin umbrella bullets.”

“Stop helping.”

“I’m just saying, property damage has range here.”

David dragged both hands through his hair, accidentally smearing grease near his temple. “You are not understanding the scope of this.”

“No, I am,” Y/N said, though her voice went softer as she looked back at Bumblebee. The robot had folded himself as small as he could in the corner, blue eyes moving between them. “I’m just also understanding that if we call the cops, they’ll call someone worse, and someone worse will call someone richer, and then someone with a lab and no soul is going to cut him open because they’re curious.”

Bumblebee went very still.

David saw it too. His anger faltered, replaced by something wary and uncomfortable.

Y/N stepped toward Bumblebee again, slowly, her palms open. “No one’s cutting you open,” she said, feeling the ridiculousness and the promise of it settle in the air together. “Not in Gotham. Not in David’s garage. Definitely not after I paid three thousand dollars and trauma-bonded with your dusty little windshield.”

Bumblebee’s optics brightened.

David made a strangled sound. “Do not bond with the alien.”

“Too late.”

“You cannot keep him.”

“He is not a stray cat.”

“He is worse than a stray cat. Stray cats don’t become Camaros.”

Bumblebee’s radio clicked and caught a smug commercial voice. “Built... different.”

Y/N slowly turned to David, delighted.

David stared at Bumblebee in betrayal. “Do not joke with her. She will encourage you.”

Bumblebee’s shoulders rose, almost like a sheepish shrug. The motion made a loose shelf groan, and he immediately froze again.

Y/N bit her lip to keep from laughing. Fear still buzzed under her skin, electric and real, but it was tangled now with wonder so sharp it almost hurt. She had spent months feeling left behind by a family full of secrets, and now here was one standing in front of her, enormous and impossible, speaking in radio ghosts from the corner of a mechanic’s garage. For a moment, something in her chest ached with recognition; she could see Bumblebee’s loneliness, raw and wordless, reflected right back at her. It was a strange comfort, terrifying and intimate, to realize she wasn’t the only one on the wrong side of belonging. The universe, apparently, had looked at her loneliness and decided to throw a giant alien robot into it with all the subtlety of a brick through a window.

“What are you hiding from?” she asked.

The garage quieted.

Bumblebee’s eyes dimmed. Static crawled from his chest, low and uneasy. For a moment, the radio caught only fragments, too broken to hold. “War... enemies... lost... alone...” The words came from different voices, each one making the sentence feel stitched from wreckage. “Protect... Earth... hide.”

David’s posture shifted. His bat lowered another inch.

Y/N swallowed, something tender twisting through her. “You’re alone?”

Bumblebee did not answer at first. Then, from an old song, soft and mournful, the radio gave, “All by myself...”

Y/N’s face crumpled before she could stop it, not fully, not enough to cry, but enough for David to see. She hated that. She hated how fast her heart made room. She had room for everyone. Stray cats, wounded friends, terrible men with excuses, alien cars with broken voices. It was exhausting, being built like an unlocked door.

“Okay,” she said, too brightly, because her smile came when she was overwhelmed and she could feel it happening. “Well. Good news, Bumblebee. You are now alone in a garage with two idiots, which is technically less alone.”

David looked at her. “I object to my inclusion.”

“You’re the one with the bat.”

“I am the rational idiot.”

“You were going to call the cops.”

“Because I have survival instincts.”

“Debatable.”

Bumblebee made a series of chirps that sounded suspiciously like laughter.

David pointed the bat at him again, less threatening now and more wounded pride. “You’re on thin ice, space Camaro.”

“Don’t call him that.”

“He is a space Camaro.”

“He has a name.”

“Fine. Bumblebee is on thin ice.”

Bumblebee’s radio chirped, “Brrr.”

Y/N laughed, startled and helpless, the sound spilling out of her until the fear in the room loosened by one small notch. Bumblebee leaned forward slightly, curious, and she lifted a hand before she could think better of it. David made a warning noise, but she ignored him. She stepped close enough to touch the back of Bumblebee’s hand where it rested near the floor, yellow metal warm beneath her fingertips, not like a car left in the sun, but like something alive beneath armor.

Bumblebee went perfectly still.

“Hi,” Y/N said softly.

The radio crackled, then answered in a gentle borrowed voice, “Hi.”

David muttered something that might have been a prayer or a very creative curse and set the bat down on the workbench, though he stayed close enough to grab it again if needed. “Okay. So he’s alive. He’s polite. He’s from space. Great. Fantastic. My therapist is going to make so much money.”

“You don’t have a therapist.”

“I’m going to need one after this.”

Y/N glanced over her shoulder. “So you’re not calling the cops?”

David looked at Bumblebee for a long moment. The robot watched him back, cautious and bright-eyed, massive hands still open to show he meant no harm. Finally, David exhaled through his nose. “Not yet.”

Y/N beamed.

“Do not make that face,” David said. “This is not approval. This is postponement.”

“Tomato, potato.”

“No, it is not.”

“Everything important wears a trench coat eventually. Detectives. Cryptids. Emotional repression.”

David blinked. “How are you like this during an alien encounter?”

“Consistent branding.”

Bumblebee beeped.

David shut his eyes briefly. “I cannot believe I’m being outnumbered by you and a radio robot.”

Y/N turned back to Bumblebee. “Can you turn back into the car? Not because we don’t like this version. Very cool. Ten out of ten. Terrible for David’s blood pressure, though.”

Bumblebee looked around the garage, seemed to calculate the space, then gave a hesitant nod. He moved slowly this time, carefully, folding back down with mechanical precision that still made Y/N’s bones feel like they were humming. Panels slid, limbs tucked, wheels shifted, armor sealed, and within moments the Camaro sat there again, dented dust and all, as if the last ten minutes had been a shared hallucination brought on by fumes and poor financial decisions. Only the destroyed corner of the garage proved otherwise.

David stared at the car.

Y/N stared too.

The driver’s side headlight blinked once.

David pointed at it. “No. Do not be cute. You broke my stuff.”

The radio crackled from inside the car, muffled but clear enough. “Sorry.”

David’s face twitched.

Y/N leaned toward him. “You’re forgiving him.”

“I am not.”

“You are. I can see it.”

“I am calculating damages.”

“With your heart.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No,” he admitted, rubbing his forehead. “But I’m beginning to understand why those Wayne people needed a break. You are a magnet for catastrophic nonsense.”

The words were meant as a joke. Y/N knew that. David’s tone had softened around them, rounded the edges. Still, something flickered through her chest, a small old bruise pressed by accident. Her smile stayed, but it thinned.

David noticed immediately. His expression changed. “Hey. That was not what I meant.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t mean them.”

“I know.”

He studied her, jaw tight with guilt. “Y/N.”

She waved him off before his kindness could make her cry. “It’s fine. I’m fine. We have bigger problems. Like, for example, my car is an alien and your garage now has lore.”

David hesitated, then let the subject go because he knew that pushing would only make her retreat. “Fine. Practical concerns. Where is he going to stay?”

Y/N looked at the Camaro.

The Camaro’s headlights blinked.

“With me?” she offered.

David stared at her. “Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Because you live in an apartment building.”

“So?”

“So your neighbors already complain when you vacuum after eight.”

“That was one time.”

“You tried to make a midnight smoothie.”

“It was a craving.”

“It was rocks in a blender.”

“It was frozen fruit.”

“It sounded like roadwork.” David gestured at the Camaro. “You cannot keep a transforming alien robot in an apartment garage.”

Y/N considered this. “Bruce has space.”

“No.”

“I didn’t say I would tell him.”

“No.”

“Wayne Manor has like, twelve garages.”

“Y/N.”

“And a cave probably.”

David went silent.

Y/N paused.

They stared at each other.

“No,” David said slowly. “Don’t say weird rich kid activities in that tone.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought something.”

“I’m always thinking something. It’s a curse.”

He jabbed a finger toward her. “We are not bringing your billionaire dad into this until we know what this is.”

“He’s not my billionaire dad. He’s my emotionally complicated billionaire dad.”

“That is worse.”

The Camaro’s radio crackled again, catching a warm oldies station. “Family... matters.”

Y/N turned to the car. “Exactly.”

David pointed at the hood. “You stay out of this.”

The hood gave a faint little vibration, almost like a chuckle.

For a while, they stood in the ruined garage with the impossible sitting between them, and the morning moved on outside as if the world had not cracked open. Cars passed. Rainwater dripped from the awning. Somewhere down the street, someone shouted at a parking meter with the intimate fury of a Gotham native. Y/N felt her life tilt, not violently, not yet, but enough that she knew nothing was going back exactly where it had been. She had bought a car because she needed something of her own. Instead, she had found someone hiding.

Maybe that was how it always happened in Gotham. You went looking for transportation and found a secret with headlights.

David sighed, long and defeated. “Okay. Here’s what we’re doing. I’m closing the bay door. You are going to help me clean up before my next client gets here and asks why their sedan looks like it lost a fight with a refrigerator. Then we are going to figure out how to hide a giant alien robot car from the government, the cops, your emotionally complicated billionaire dad, and whatever the hell he’s hiding from.”

He glanced at the window as if half-expecting a batarang or a clown mask to appear in the rain-bleared glass. “Let’s just hope nobody in a cape or a questionable suit drops by to ask why there’s a giant robot from space t in Gotham. Or worse, that news about the car doesn’t get out. Our luck, it’ll be Bats or someone with more explosives than sense beating down the door.”

Y/N nodded solemnly. “That sounds like a plan.”

“It is not a plan. It is a panic outline.”

“Still counts.”

David looked at the Camaro. “And you. Bumblebee. No more transforming indoors unless someone is actively dying.”

The radio clicked. “Scout’s... honor.”

Y/N gasped. “He’s adorable.”

“He is a liability.”

“He can be both.”

David stared at her for a long moment, then laughed once, sharp and disbelieving, the sound breaking through the last rigid layer of terror in the room. Y/N laughed too, not because any of this was funny in a normal way, but because normal had clearly fled the building and left no forwarding address. Bumblebee’s headlights blinked in a rhythm almost like amusement, and the radio hummed quietly, tuning through stations until it found a bright, ridiculous pop song that filled the damaged garage with cheerful drums and a chorus about survival.

David groaned. “Tell him to turn that off.”

“Bumblebee,” Y/N said, touching the warm hood with her fingertips, “can you turn it down?”

The volume lowered at once.

David’s eyebrows rose despite himself. “At least he listens.”

Y/N smiled at the Camaro, real and soft and full of something dangerously close to wonder. “Yeah,” she said. “He does.”

And for reasons she could not have explained without sounding completely unhinged, that mattered. After months of silence, months of messages unanswered and rooms quietly rearranged around her absence, a strange alien hiding in a dusty Camaro had heard her. He had listened. He had answered. It was absurd, maybe even doomed, but as Y/N stood in David’s ruined garage with oil on the floor, rain on the windows, and a secret from the stars humming beneath her hand, she felt chosen by something again.

David picked up the broken mirror from the customer’s sedan, looked at it, then looked at Bumblebee with exhausted accusation. “You’re paying for this somehow.”

The radio crackled, then broadcast a crisp advertisement. “Cash back rewards!”

Y/N lost it laughing.

David covered his face. “We’re dead. We’re all dead.”

Bumblebee’s engine purred, low and sheepish and alive, and outside the closed bay door, Gotham kept growling on, unaware that one of its back-alley garages had just become the safest hiding place in the world for a yellow-and-black alien who had chosen, of all people, a broke, chaotic girl with too much heart and not enough caution.

Prologue | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Character Profiles Here:

Y/N: 23 yrs old

Tim Drake: 23 yrs old

David: 23 yrs old

Jason Todd: 26 yrs old

Dick Grayson: 28 yrs old

Damian Wayne: 19 yrs old (idk in any story I feel weird writing about kids unless it's specific to the story - it makes me feel ugh)

Victor stepped into the alley again.

Black.

Empty.

Jason’s jaw tightened. “There should be something.”

“There isn’t.”

“There should be.”

“I agree with you. I’m just saying it louder won’t create pixels.”

Jason shot him a look.

Tim held up both hands, palms out, too tired to even make the gesture properly defensive. “Don’t shoot the tech guy. The tech guy is also annoyed.”

Across the cave, Dick leaned over a map of the Narrows, sleeves shoved up, hair damp from patrol and curling at the ends. Damian stood next to him, half in Robin gear under a dark hoodie, arms crossed, face flat and surgical. Bruce was a few feet behind Jason, so quiet his stillness felt like part of the room. The case had settled over all of them, but in different ways. Tim picked it apart. Dick tried to keep the air moving. Damian got sharper. Bruce just went cold.

Jason just burned.

“This isn’t just missing footage,” Jason said. “This is everything. The street cam got blocked by a delivery truck that wasn’t scheduled to be there. Traffic light failure rerouted two cars into my path. The club’s internal cameras glitched on separate circuits. Separate, Tim. The guard who saw ‘some girl laughing’ suddenly can’t describe whether she was tall, short, blonde, brunette, wearing a coat, wearing a dress, or actually a hallucination caused by slipping on fryer oil.”

“He did have a concussion,” Dick said.

Jason pointed at him. “Don’t make me hate you.”

Dick lowered his hand. “Noted.”

“And the tracker I planted on Sable’s car?”

Tim grimaced. “Dead.”

“Battery?”

“No.”

“Signal jammed?”

“No.”

“Crushed?”

“No.”

Jason leaned closer. “Then what?”

Tim turned one of the screens toward him. The tracker data showed a clean path for half a mile, then a sudden burst of impossible coordinates, the red dot jumping from Gotham to rural Nebraska, then the Atlantic Ocean, then the roof of Wayne Tower, then nothing.

Jason stared.

Damian’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “That is almost impressive.”

“It’s insulting,” Jason snapped.

“Those are not mutually exclusive.”

Bruce finally spoke. “Magic.”

The word landed hard. Jason hated the relief that came with it. Magic meant at least there was a category. Ugly, slippery, full of people who spoke in riddles and smelled like cigarettes or brimstone or bad decisions. Still, a category.

The problem was that the category had no real limits. Some spells broke locks or erased memory. Others left bruises. Magic in Gotham never rewound time or raised the dead, at least not that he knew, but it could rewrite evidence, twist minds, kill tech like flipping a switch. A toolbox with half the instructions missing. Knowing that changed what came next. No easy fix. No sure weapon. Just a hint of what they were up against.

Jason turned away from the screen and grabbed his helmet from the table. “I’m calling Constantine.”

Tim winced. “We tried.”

“Yeah, you tried. Now it’s my turn.”

“Jason.”

He was already dialing from the secure comm terminal, fingers punching the number harder than needed. The cave filled with a low tone, then a click, then nothing. Jason paced while it rang, boots hitting the stone in sharp, uneven beats. Victor’s face stayed frozen on the monitor behind him, smirking in the alley like he knew something Jason didn’t. “This had better be interesting.”

Jason’s grip tightened. “Constantine.”

“Oh, brilliant. The Bats. Which one’s this?”

“Red Hood.”

“Then this is probably interesting. Lazarus pit got another one of you or what?”

Bruce stepped forward. “Constantine. We need to consult you on a disappearance with possible supernatural interference.”

“Course you do. Nobody rings just to ask how I’m doing. Very hurtful. I’m doing great by the way.”

Jason leaned toward the mic. “Victor Sable vanished. No trace. Cameras failing in ways they shouldn’t, witnesses contradicting themselves, evidence going dead. Feels like magic.”

“Everything feels like magic when you’re frustrated, mate.”

Jason’s smile was all teeth. “I’m about six seconds from making frustration your medical condition.”

Dick muttered, “Great tone. Super collaborative.”

Constantine sighed through the line. “Send me what you’ve got.”

Tim was already transferring files. “Uploading now.”

The progress bar appeared.

Four percent.

Nine.

Seventeen.

The cave lights flickered.

Tim looked up. “That better not be what I think it is.”

The upload jumped to sixty-two percent, froze, then turned into a spinning wheel. Jason stared at it, already feeling the shape of disaster before it arrived. The Batcomputer hummed louder. One monitor flashed white. Another went black. The comm line crackled so hard Dick flinched.

Constantine’s voice warped. “What the hell did you just send me?”

“Nothing yet,” Tim said, typing fast. “It’s frozen.”

“No, it isn’t. My phone’s smoking.”

Jason leaned in. “Constantine?”

A loud clatter came through the speaker, followed by a curse, then the unmistakable sound of someone knocking something glass off a table.

Constantine barked, “Right, that’s on fire.”

“Your phone?” Bruce asked.

“My curtains.”

Tim’s hands flew over the keyboard. “That’s not possible.”

“Tell that to the bloody curtains, hang on, I’m getting disconnected, phone on fire and everythin-”

Then the line shrieked.

The cave speakers popped.

Every monitor displaying Victor’s file went black at once, then rebooted to a Wayne Enterprises quarterly budget presentation from six years ago. Tim stopped typing and stared at the screen as if it had slapped him. Dick blinked slowly.

Damian said, “It appears the supernatural interference objects to being contacted.”

Jason slammed his fist on the table hard enough to rattle the evidence folders. “No. No, we are not doing cute curse bullshit.”

Bruce’s phone buzzed in the middle of it, a small vibration against the edge of the table. He glanced at it once, saw Alfred’s name, and looked back at Tim’s corrupted screens.

Jason was still pacing. “Call him again.”

Tim coughed. “Constantine?”

“Yes, Constantine.”

“I don’t think he’s going to pick up while extinguishing his curtains.”

Jason pointed toward the screen. “That thing knows when we get close. It knows. This isn’t sloppy. It’s not even hiding right. It’s just tripping us every time we get within reach.”

Bruce’s phone buzzed again.

This time, he picked it up.

Alfred: When you have a moment, I should like to discuss Miss Y/N.

Bruce stared at the message for half a second longer than he meant to.

Y/N.

Her silence had been sitting in the back of his mind, not ignored exactly, but shelved. Bruce had shelves inside him. Cases, threats, injuries, disasters, city-wide patterns. Personal things went there too, but the urgent ones always took the front. She had always preferred not to be part of his cases, not after all the nights they spent talking quietly in her teens about why she hated the manor's west wing, or the way she disappeared into the city for hours just to breathe. 

Y/N had said she was ill. Alfred had fed her. Alfred had sent a message saying she arrived home safely. Bruce had meant to call. Then Victor Sable’s disappearance had become something stranger than a missing criminal, and meaning to do something had hardened into another failure he had not examined yet.

He looked across the cave at Jason, furious and restless; at Tim, trying to recover corrupted files; at Dick, smoothing tension with one hand while scanning witness statements with the other; at Damian, already watching Bruce because Damian noticed attention shifts like changes in blood pressure.

Bruce stepped away and called Alfred.

The line picked up after one ring.

“Master Bruce.”

“You wanted to discuss Y/N.”

“Yes.”

Bruce turned his back slightly to the cave. “Is she still sick?”

Alfred was quiet, and that quiet pulled Bruce’s focus sharper than any answer would have.

“She looked unwell,” Alfred said. “But I do not believe illness was the source.”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “What did you see?”

“Exhaustion. Tremors in her hands. Hypervigilance. She startled at ordinary sounds. She avoided certain objects in the room. She ate as if she had not done so properly in several days.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. “Drugs?”

“No.”

“You’re certain?”

“As certain as one can be without being invasive.”

“Panic attack? Acute stress?”

“Possibly. She looked frightened, sir. Not merely sick.”

The word pressed into Bruce.

Frightened.

He pictured Y/N in the breakfast room, though he had not been there. He pictured her smile first, because that was what she weaponized most: bright, awkward, used too quickly. He had seen it at dinner and mistaken it for resilience. Or convenience. He had let himself mistake it.

Behind him, Jason said, “Tim, get that file back.”

Bruce glanced toward Victor Sable’s frozen face on the monitor.

“What did she say?” Bruce asked Alfred.

“Very little of substance. She deflected.”

“That’s normal.”

“Not like this.”

The cave lights stabilized. Tim muttered something under his breath. Dick answered. Damian moved closer to the main computer.

Bruce closed his eyes for one second. The case had momentum. A dangerous criminal was missing, potentially dead, potentially taken by something supernatural, and the pattern suggested the actor would strike again. Jason was already close to losing patience. Constantine had been cut off. Every hour mattered.

Y/N was frightened.

Y/N was also safe for the moment.

Alfred was with her orbit, close enough to intervene.

“Look into it,” Bruce said, and heard the inadequacy of the words as he spoke them. “Handle it if possible. If you think she’s in danger, tell me immediately.”

“I intend to visit her tomorrow.”

“Good.”

Another pause.

Alfred’s voice cooled by a degree. “Very good, sir.”

Bruce took that quietly. He had earned it.

He ended the call and returned to the table.

Jason looked up. “Everything okay?”

Bruce set the phone down beside Victor’s file. “Alfred is handling it.”

Jason’s eyes flicked over him, reading more than Bruce wanted him to read, but Victor’s corrupted footage flashed back onto the screen before he could ask. The alley loop began again. Victor stepped out. Black screen. Empty.

Jason’s anger reclaimed the room.

The next afternoon, Alfred visited Y/N’s apartment with a canvas bag of food in one hand and the expression of a man prepared to be polite until politeness failed.

The building was worse than he remembered. Wayne money could have fixed it ten times over, but Y/N had refused help with a stubbornness that felt, in hindsight, less like independence and more like a person trying not to owe anyone anything. The lobby smelled of damp carpet, old paint, and fried food. One mailbox hung crooked. The elevator made a grinding sound that suggested a previous life as an industrial accident. Alfred took the stairs.

On the third floor, he found the young man.

Eli sat on the floor outside Y/N’s door with his back against the wall, knees bent, hoodie sleeves pulled over his hands. There was a paper coffee cup beside him, untouched and cold, and a reusable grocery bag full of what looked like snacks, medicine, and a folded sweatshirt. His head turned the instant Alfred reached the landing.

Too fast.

Too alert.

Alfred stopped three steps from him.

The hallway light buzzed overhead. Somewhere behind a neighboring door, a television laugh track rose and fell. Y/N’s door was closed, three locks visible, the peephole covered from the inside.

Eli stood.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

His tone tried for casual, but it landed the wrong way. Defensive beneath the softness. Strained. He was young, perhaps mid-twenties, with tired eyes and the unhealthy focus of someone who had stopped sleeping properly. Alfred had seen that look in informants, zealots, and men who convinced themselves that obsession was protection.

“I am here to see Miss Wayne,” Alfred said.

Eli’s eyes narrowed. “She’s not taking visitors.”

Alfred lifted one brow. “Is that so?”

“She’s resting.”

“How thoughtful of you to supervise her rest from the floor.”

Eli’s jaw tightened. “She’s been scared.”

“Has she told you that?”

A pause, just brief enough to be revealing.

“She doesn’t have to,” Eli said. “I can tell.”

Alfred stepped closer, not enough to crowd, enough to make a point. “And how long have you been seated outside her door?”

“I’m making sure nobody bothers her.”

“I see. Then allow me to relieve you of the duty.”

“No.”

The word came out too sharply.

Alfred’s face did not change.

Eli swallowed, then lifted his chin, doubling down with the fragile courage of a man whose fear had dressed itself as purpose. “You don’t know what’s going on.”

“That is true. But I know a young woman should not have to step over a man camping outside her home.”

“I’m not hurting her.”

“Are you not?”

Eli flinched.

For a second, something wrecked moved across his face. Shame, maybe. Confusion. A person buried under compulsion, trying to remember where his own edges were. Alfred saw it and adjusted his assessment, though not his stance. Obsession could be imposed, cultivated, chosen, or suffered. The effect on Y/N remained the same.

“You should leave,” Alfred said.

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“No.” Eli looked toward Y/N’s door, and the rawness in his expression deepened into something painful to watch. “No, I can’t. What if something happens?”

“Then it will not be prevented by you sleeping in a hallway.”

Eli’s hands curled. “You don’t get it.”

“I get enough.”

“I’m protecting her.”

“From whom?”

Eli hesitated.

Alfred’s voice softened, which made it more dangerous. “Mr…?”

“Eli.”

“Eli. If you continue to harass Miss Wayne, I will contact the authorities. If the authorities prove insufficient, I will pursue other avenues available to me.”

Eli looked at him, then smiled faintly without humor. “You think I care what happens to me?”

Ah.

Alfred smiled.

It was small. Polite. Entirely unpleasant.

“No,” he said. “I rather suspected you did not.”

Eli seemed unsettled by that, but he did not move away from the door.

Alfred let the silence sit there until it became heavy. Then he stepped around him with controlled ease, raised his hand, and knocked.

Inside the apartment, something clattered.

Alfred heard Y/N swear under her breath.

“Miss Y/N,” he called. “It is Alfred.”

There was a long pause. Locks clicked. One. Two. Three. The door opened a few inches, the chain still on, and Y/N appeared through the gap, hair messy, face pale, wearing an oversized sweatshirt and sleep shorts despite the chill. Her eyes landed on Alfred first.

Relief flashed across her face so plainly that it tightened his chest.

Then she saw Eli behind him.

She flinched.

Not dramatically. Not enough that most people would notice. A tiny full-body recoil, shoulders tightening, fingers pulling the door closer before she stopped herself. Alfred noticed. Eli noticed too, and it devastated him.

“Y/N,” Eli said softly.

Her face did the strangest thing. She smiled.

It was immediate and wrong, an expression laid over fear too quickly to belong there.

“Hey, Eli,” she said, voice thin. “Um. Alfred, come in.”

She shut the door just enough to slide off the chain, then opened it wider. Alfred entered. Eli leaned forward as if some invisible tether had been pulled taut.

“Can I just talk to you for a second?” Eli asked.

Y/N’s hand tightened around the door edge. “Not right now.”

“I was worried.”

“I know.”

“I brought you coffee.”

“I saw. Thank you.”

Alfred turned slightly, enough that Eli found himself looking at him instead of her.

“That will be all,” Alfred said.

Eli’s face crumpled in quiet misery.

Y/N looked away.

Then she shut the door.

The moment the locks clicked into place, Y/N pressed her back against it and closed her eyes. The apartment was dim, curtains drawn, lamps off except for one small light in the kitchen. It smelled stale, over-cleaned in patches, vanilla spray over something burnt, laundry soap, ginger ale, and fear. Alfred’s gaze moved without seeming to: dishes stacked in the sink, blanket and pillow on the couch, baseball bat leaning against the bathroom doorway, saltines on the coffee table, a laptop closed too neatly, a patch of floor near the living room that looked scrubbed more than the rest.

Y/N opened her eyes and caught him looking.

Her smile twitched. “I know. It’s giving depression chic.”

“I was not going to comment on the decor.”

“Liar.”

“Not about that, no.”

She laughed, but it broke at the end.

Alfred set the canvas bag on the counter. Containers came out one by one: soup, roasted chicken, rice, cut fruit, bread, tea, and ginger biscuits. He arranged them with the calm precision of a man setting a table in enemy territory.

Y/N hovered near the door. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here.”

“I disagreed.”

“You can do that silently from the manor.”

“I preferred to disagree in person.”

“That’s so ominous for a food delivery.”

He looked at her then, really looked, and she immediately dropped her gaze.

“Who is Eli?” Alfred asked.

The apartment seemed to tighten.

Y/N walked to the kitchen too quickly, pulled open a cabinet, closed it, then opened it again for no reason. “He’s just some guy.”

“A remarkably dedicated some guy.”

“Yeah. He’s…” She swallowed. “He’s harmless.”

“Harmless men do not establish residence outside a woman’s door.”

Y/N flinched again.

Alfred filed it away.

“He delivered food once,” she said, the lie forming badly because guilt kept snagging on the edges. “We talked for, like, a second. I think he got the wrong idea.”

“The wrong idea being?”

“That I needed help.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

Alfred waited.

Y/N’s hands twisted in the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Maybe. I don’t know. I was having a bad night. He was nice, and I was nice back, and now he’s just…there.”

“Has he threatened you?”

“No.”

“Touched you?”

“No.”

“Entered the apartment?”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, never.”

“Has he prevented others from approaching?”

Her silence answered before she did.

“He thinks he’s protecting me.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you?”

Her eyes lifted, sharp with panic. “No.”

Alfred did not believe her.

He also did not press.

“Is Eli the reason you have not been feeling well lately?” he asked.

Y/N went very still.

There it was. The hesitation. The moral calculation moving behind her eyes. Fear, guilt, opportunity, revulsion. Alfred watched her decide to place a burden where it did not fully belong.

Her voice came out small. “Yes.”

Eli, outside the door, shifted. The floor creaked faintly.

Y/N heard it and looked like she might be sick.

Alfred’s expression did not change. “I see.”

“You do?”

“I see that you are frightened by him.”

Her mouth trembled. “Yeah.”

Lie. She wasn’t frightened of Eli, though she’s sure somewhere in the back of her mind she should be.

She was afraid of herself.

A flicker of memory clawed up: Victor’s eyes wide with recognition, while her hands pressed down too tight, the memory of words spoken in the dark and drowned by her own fears of dying. Sometimes she saw herself, sitting on the bathroom floor after it was done, quiet except for the way her breath shuddered. She thought of the contract and what it meant that she had hesitated, had gone against it, and yet here she stands, a hypocrite. She called Victor evil, and yet she killed someone. She directly benefited from Victor's death.

She didn’t fear Eli. She feared what she could become when pressed, what she had already proven she was willing to do.

Alfred watches Y/N for a minute before responding, his voice slightly lower than usual, “Then I will handle it.”

Her head snapped up. “How?”

“Law enforcement first, of course.”

“First?”

Alfred took a container of soup from the bag and set it on the counter with care. The lid clicked softly.

Y/N stared at him. “And after that?”

Alfred hummed.

It was a gentle sound. Thoughtful. Entirely unhelpful.

“Alfred.”

“Yes, Miss Y/N?”

“That hum sounded very illegal”

“Was it?”

“You know it was.”

He began placing food in her refrigerator, making space by removing three expired yogurt cups and a takeout container he chose not to inspect. “You need not concern yourself with escalation.”

“That is exactly the kind of sentence that makes people concerned about escalation.”

“Eat before the soup cools.”

“No, don’t parent-voice me out of the possible crime.”

“I have committed no crime.”

“Yet.”

“Miss Y/N.”

She shut her mouth, then opened it again because anxiety had too much momentum. “Please don’t hurt him.”

Alfred turned to her.

“He’s not…” Her voice cracked. She looked toward the door, then away. “He wasn’t like this before. I mean, I don’t know him. Not really. But I promise you, he’s… He’s not bad. I should have been more careful with my interaction with him.”

That part was at least true. Though Y/N would never be able to tell Alfred that part for some time now, hopefully not in the near or distant future.

Hopefully, Y/N could get out of this agreement before anyone found out.

“I would be cautious assigning yourself responsibility for another person’s fixation.”

She almost laughed. It came out as a breath.

If only you knew.

Alfred closed the refrigerator and faced her fully. “You are going to stay at the manor until this situation is resolved.”

Y/N blinked. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“No. No, that’s not necessary.”

“It is.”

“Alfred, I can’t just move into the manor because some guy is being weird in my hallway.”

“You can, and you will.”

Her panic rose so fast she took a step back. “I have work.”

“There is Wi-Fi.”

“My clothes are here.”

“Pack what you require immediately. Anything else can be collected.”

“My apartment-”

“Will be secured.”

“No, Alfred.” Her voice sharpened, then wobbled. “I’m serious. I appreciate it, I do, but I’m not going back to the manor.”

His eyes softened only a fraction. “Why?”

Because the manor was full of people, she could not risk it. Because she did not know what would happen when the next month came. Because desperation had driven her into a pact, one made in too many sleepless hours, signed when hope was nothing but panic dressed as a solution. The contract hidden under loose floorboard insulation behind the couch was supposed to fix things. 

She had names in her head, even though she had burned the notebook. Because Bruce Wayne’s house had cameras, staff, locked rooms, family dinners, questions, knives in real drawers, and one of the most famous men in Gotham sleeping under the same roof while his daughter tried to figure out how to become a monthly serial killer without getting grounded.

Because life would get worse in that house. Not maybe. Definitely.

Y/N gripped the counter. “I just need my space.”

“You have had your space. It currently contains a stalker.”

“He’s outside the space.”

“Do not be clever.”

“I’m not being clever. I’m being geologically accurate.”

“Your room remains in immaculate condition.”

Her chest tightened. “It does?”

“Of course.”

She hated that. Hated the warmth that flickered through her anyway. Her room at the manor. Still there. Still clean. Still waiting for an apology, no one said out loud.

“I can arrange for someone to retrieve whatever you need from here later,” Alfred continued. “For tonight, pack essentials.”

“Alfred, please.”

“No.”

The word was quiet. Final.

Y/N stared at him.

For a moment, she understood why Bruce listened to Alfred. Why all of them did, even if they joked about it. Alfred’s authority did not need volume. It had survived wars, secrets, grief, billionaires, children, and excuses in their mouths. It stood in her kitchen now beside a container of soup and did not move.

“I’m twenty-seven,” she said weakly.

“I am seventy. Shall we list irrelevant facts?”

Despite herself, she made a broken little sound that might have been a laugh.

Alfred’s face softened. “I will not allow you to remain in this apartment while a man is sitting and sleeping outside your door. You may be angry with me from a safer location.”

“I’m not angry.”

“You should be, a little.”

“Don’t tell me how to process being kidnapped by a butler.”

“I prefer rescued.”

“Of course you do.”

He handed her the empty suitcase from beside her closet before she had even moved toward it, which meant he had clocked it the moment he entered. She took it numbly.

Outside the door, Eli knocked once.

Y/N froze.

“Y/N?” His voice was muffled, strained. “Are you leaving?”

She closed her eyes.

Alfred turned toward the door, but Y/N shook her head quickly.

“Please don’t.”

He paused.

Eli knocked again, softer. “Y/N?”

Her guilt twisted hard enough to hurt. “I’m fine, Eli.”

“You’re packing.”

“I need to go somewhere for a bit.”

“Because of him?”

Alfred’s expression became very still.

Y/N gripped the suitcase handle. “No.”

“He’s taking you away?”

“No one is taking me away.”

“I can keep you safe here.”

The apartment was filled with the sound of Y/N breathing too fast.

Alfred stepped closer to the door, voice calm. “Eli, you will step away from the apartment.”

“No.”

“You are frightening her.”

Silence.

Then Eli’s voice, wrecked and small. “I don’t want to.”

Y/N pressed a hand to her mouth.

Alfred looked at her, and something in his face changed. A decision is settling into place.

“You will pack now,” he said quietly.

Y/N nodded.

She moved through her apartment as if she were stealing from herself. Clothes first, shoved into the suitcase without matching or folding. Underwear. Socks. Phone charger. Laptop. Medication. Toothbrush. She almost packed the baseball bat, then looked at Alfred and decided she could not handle that conversation. In the bathroom, she paused at the sink where she had thrown up so many times that the porcelain felt like a witness. In the kitchen, she kept her eyes off the knife block. In the living room, she stared at the couch.

The contract.

It was no longer under the cookbooks. After burning the notebook, she hid it inside the lining of an old storage ottoman, taped under a flap of fabric with shaking hands. Even thinking about it made her skin crawl. Sometimes, if she put her palm on the ottoman, there would be a prickle of heat or a faint pressure behind her eyes, like the paper inside was watching her. Or waiting. She could not leave it. She could not take it. Both were bad.

Alfred was in the kitchen, closing containers, giving her privacy without truly giving her privacy.

Y/N knelt by the ottoman and pretended to look for slippers. Her fingers slid under the fabric, found the parchment wrapped in a grocery bag, and shoved it deep into the side pocket of her suitcase, beneath a pile of socks. It twitched once, warm through the plastic.

She almost gagged.

This is bad, she thought, zipping the suitcase too fast. Really bad. Not even funny bad. Just bad, bad. Mega bad.

Her laugh came out under her breath, high and panicked.

Alfred looked over. “Did you say something?”

“Nope. Just mentally losing a debate with the seven voices in my head.”

“Try not to do so on an empty stomach.”

“Noted.”

When she reached the door, suitcase in one hand, Alfred’s food bag in the other, she stopped.

Eli was still there. She could feel him on the other side, not through magic now, but through sound, through the pressure of knowing, through the fact that she had made him into a person who waited.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Alfred heard.

He did not ask who she meant.

He opened the door first.

Eli stood a few feet away, eyes red, face pale, hands clenched at his sides. He looked at Y/N like she was leaving him at the edge of the world. Like Alfred was an enemy. Like the hallway had become a battlefield, and he had no weapon except pleading.

“Don’t go,” Eli said.

Y/N looked at his shoulder instead of his eyes. “I have to.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

“I’ll be better.”

The words cracked something open in her.

She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault. That he had been fine. That she was the thing that happened to him. That the wrongness in his chest had her fingerprints on it, even if he could not see them. Instead, she stood behind Alfred like a coward and held her suitcase hard enough to hurt her hand.

Alfred’s voice cut in, cool and controlled. “You will not follow us.”

Eli’s gaze snapped to him. “You can’t stop me.”

Alfred smiled again.

This time, Eli seemed to understand he should be afraid.

“Let us hope you do not test that theory,” Alfred said.

They walked past him.

Y/N kept her head down. Eli did not touch her. He did not follow immediately. But when the elevator doors closed, she saw him at the end of the hallway, standing beneath the buzzing light, wrecked and motionless, as if she had taken the floor out from under him and left him upright by accident.

In Alfred’s car, the city slid past in wet streaks of gray and gold.

Y/N sat in the passenger seat with her suitcase in the trunk, the contract tucked somewhere at the very bottom, shoved under a fabric lining that was coming apart at the seams, and made a pocket perfect for stashing an infernal contract with a demon from hell. 

Alfred’s leftover food sat at her feet, and her phone stayed clenched in her lap. She did not look back at her building. If she did, she would see Eli in the doorway. Or imagine him there. It did not matter. There was guilt all the same.

Her stomach tightened.

He did not look at her. His eyes stayed on the road, hands steady on the wheel.

“I will look into Eli,” he said. “Quietly.”

“Law enforcement first?” she asked, voice small.

“Of course.”

“And after that?”

Alfred hummed again. That stupid illegal hum.

Y/N leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.

The manor waited at the end of the drive, huge and lit and impossible to avoid. Somewhere inside, Bruce was chasing Victor Sable’s disappearance. Jason was furious over a dead man Y/N had buried. Tim was digging through corrupted evidence. Dick and Damian circled the same secret life Y/N did not know existed. Alfred was bringing a frightened daughter home for the wrong reason, but not entirely the wrong one. And Y/N, with hell’s contract in her suitcase and one offering already burned into the dark, was about to sleep under Bruce Wayne’s roof. She pressed her hand to her leg, fighting the urge to bolt even now.

If anyone looked too closely, if anyone guessed the truth, her life would be over before she could even explain herself. All she wanted was to survive another day without someone seeing the monster she had become.

Her smile appeared in the window reflection, faint and horrified.

How am I supposed to become a serial killer in Bruce Wayne’s house?

The thought was so absurd she almost laughed.

Then she remembered Victor’s hands over hers.

The laugh died before it left her throat.

By the time Y/N and Alfred got to the Manor, Y/N had already convinced herself of the one hundred ways this could go wrong. She half-heartedly dragged herself behind Alfred, eyes on the grey suitcase; it bumped softly against each polished step as Alfred carried it ahead of her, one hand on the handle, the other holding the canvas food bag as if relocating a frightened woman and enough soup for a minor siege were entirely ordinary evening duties. 

Her mind latched and obsessed over what that grey suitcase held. At first, vacation clothes and college trips. Then whatever she had stuffed into it before she moved to her apartment. Now, the contract was in there, wrapped in a grocery bag, folded wrong, warm through the fabric in a way she tried very hard not to think about. Every time the suitcase knocked another stair, Y/N imagined it splitting open and spilling hell parchment across the runner while Alfred calmly said, Ah. Miss Y/N. Infernal paperwork. How inconvenient.

She followed him with her arms wrapped around herself, shoulders hunched under an oversized sweatshirt, hair tied back too messily to pass as intentional. The manor smelled like floor polish, old books, beeswax, and the faint savory trace of whatever Alfred had left cooling in the kitchen. It smelled clean. Stable. Full of rooms where nothing had ever gone wrong because everything that did went wrong in secret. She hated how much she wanted to lean into it. She hated that her chest loosened when the front door shut behind her, even though this house was not safe. Not for what she was now. Not with Bruce Wayne sleeping under the same roof, not with her brothers moving in and out of hallways, not with Alfred’s eyes catching every tremor she tried to hide.

Jason came out of the library as they reached the landing.

He had a mug in one hand and his phone in the other, wearing sweatpants and a black shirt that looked slept-in or fought-in, his hair damp at the ends like he had showered badly and with irritation. He stopped when he saw Alfred, then the suitcase, then Y/N. His gaze flicked over her, brief but sharp, catching the sweatshirt, the pale face, the way she stood half behind Alfred like she had meant not to and failed.

“You moving in?” he asked.

Y/N’s throat tightened.

The question was casual. Distracted, even. His attention had already started slipping back toward whatever lived on his phone. He did not sound suspicious. He sounded like a guy who had walked into a hallway and found a minor household development between bigger things.

She smiled automatically. “Temporary hostage situation. Alfred’s the kidnapper.”

Jason looked at Alfred.

Alfred did not blink. “A gross mischaracterization.”

“So, accurate,” Jason said.

“Painfully,” Y/N said, because her mouth had survival instincts and no ethical oversight.

Jason’s lips twitched faintly, then his phone buzzed. The small, almost-smile vanished. He looked down, jaw tightening. Y/N watched it happen, the way attention could leave a person even while their body stayed in front of you. She had grown up watching that trick from every angle. Jason did not register the timing. He did not ask why she was really there. Did not ask what had happened at her apartment. Did not notice that the suitcase in Alfred’s hand had one side pocket bulging oddly with socks and one impossible contract.

“Bruce is downstairs?” Jason asked Alfred.

“Occupied, I believe.”

“Yeah. Figures.” Jason looked at Y/N again, but only for a second. “You okay?”

Y/N hated the question because it sounded almost genuine and because the answer was a room full of locked doors.

“Peachy,” she said. “Vibes are great over here. I’m basically glowing, I just did a face mask the other day while crying in my mirror with wine in a bowl.”

Jason’s eyebrow rose, and Y/N felt the compulsion to overexplain before it got even weirder. 

“My glasses were in the dishwasher.”

“So your first instinct was to use a bowl?”

“This is classism.”

“Get some sleep,” he said finally, already moving past them.

“You too,” she said before she could stop herself.

He gave a short laugh without turning around. “Unlikely.”

He disappeared down the hall.

Y/N stood there a second too long, watching the space where he had been.

Alfred said nothing.

“That was normal,” she said.

“Was it?”

“Absolutely. Family bonding. Hallway edition.”

Alfred carried her suitcase the rest of the way to her old room.

Her room was exactly as he said it would be. Immaculate. That was the word. Immaculate in a way that made her feel both cared for and haunted. The bed was made with fresh sheets and the soft green quilt she had liked years ago. The curtains had been cleaned. The shelves had no dust. The books she had abandoned during some old emotional exit were still there, lined up in careful order: horror novels, fantasy paperbacks, one baking book she had bought because the cover had little illustrated strawberries on it, and immediately regretted seeing because she had burned a strawberry notebook in a mixing bowl after writing Victor Sable’s name in it. The room had simply stayed ready, which felt worse, in Y/N’s opinion.

Y/N set the food bag on the little desk and forced herself not to cry.

Alfred put the suitcase near the bed. “I shall leave you to settle.”

“Alfred?”

He paused by the door.

She looked at the suitcase. At the side pocket. At the soft bulge beneath folded clothes. “Thanks. For, uh, everything.”

His expression softened. “You are welcome.”

“I’m sorry about all this.”

“I do not recall requesting an apology.”

“You rarely do. You just radiate disappointment and make people confess.”

“An efficient system.”

She laughed quietly. It hurt less than expected.

After he left, she locked the door, then felt ridiculous because it was Wayne Manor and also not ridiculous because she had buried a man in the woods. Both things could be true, which was becoming an exhausting theme in her life. She waited until Alfred’s footsteps faded, then dropped to her knees by the suitcase and pulled the contract out with two fingers. The grocery bag crinkled too loudly in the quiet room. The parchment inside shifted once, like something asleep adjusting under a blanket.

“No,” she whispered. “Do not get cozy.”

She shoved it under the mattress first, then changed her mind because that felt like sleeping on a threat. She hid it behind the bottom drawer of the dresser, then took it out because Alfred probably cleaned behind the furniture as a hobby or as a moral stance. Finally, she tucked it inside an old shoebox full of cosplay scraps, convention badges, and a pair of cat ears she got manipulated into buying at a dealer’s room the boys had teased her about for three consecutive holidays. It was not dignified, but hell had already accepted Taco Bell as ritual garnish, so dignity had left the building early.

The contract warmed through the cardboard.

Y/N shut the closet door.

She slept badly after that. Not fully asleep, not fully awake, drifting through fragments: Victor’s hands over hers, Eli outside the door, Bruce’s text saying Good. Get some rest when she had not told him the truth. She woke before dawn with her heart pounding and her sweatshirt stuck to her back.

By breakfast, she had used concealer as if it could solve all of her problems with one swipe under the eye, and tied her hair up with enough effort to look intentionally casual.

The breakfast room was too bright.

Morning light came through tall windows with wide, pale panels, catching on silverware, coffee cups, white plates, and the bowl of oranges in the center of the table that looked almost offensively healthy. Alfred had set out eggs, toast, fruit, bacon, coffee, tea, and a plate of pastries because, apparently, an emotional crisis at Wayne Manor came with options. Bruce sat at the head of the table, already in a suit, reading something on a tablet. Dick was there in a navy GCPD hoodie, scrolling his phone while eating toast. Tim had a laptop open beside his coffee and looked like he had been awake since the invention of electricity. Damian was reading a medical journal with one hand and cutting fruit with the other, so precisely that Y/N stared at the knife and immediately looked away.

Jason arrived late, which made Y/N’s stomach tighten for reasons that had nothing to do with him personally and everything to do with the way his presence carried the last few days into the room.

He dropped into a chair two seats away from her, hair messy, eyes shadowed, wearing irritation like a second shirt. Alfred set coffee in front of him without comment.

“Thanks,” Jason muttered.

Y/N held her mug with both hands and told herself to act normal. Normal people ate eggs. Normal people smiled at breakfast. Normal people did not flinch when someone buttered toast with a small silver knife. Normal people did not wonder how long bodies took to decompose in damp soil. Normal people did not keep one ear trained for any mention of missing men from the Narrows.

Bruce looked at her over the tablet. “Alfred said you’re staying for a few days.”

Y/N looked up too quickly. “Yeah. Just until my apartment situation gets less…apartmenty.”

Bruce’s gaze sharpened slightly. “Alfred said there was a man outside your door.”

Her stomach dropped.

“Oh, that.” She waved one hand and nearly sloshed coffee onto herself. “Yeah. Eli. Weird guy. Not, like, murder weird. Just slightly damp.”

Jason glanced up at that.

“Damp?” Dick repeated.

“You know. Like a towel someone forgot in a gym bag. Sad and concerning.”

Damian’s eyes lifted from his journal. “That is an unpleasant description.”

“Thank you.”

Bruce’s expression did not change much, but she could feel the evaluation behind it. “Has he threatened you?”

“No.”

“Do you know him?”

“Not really.”

Jason’s gaze lingered on her, now more focused than before. “How does someone you don’t really know end up camping outside your door?”

Y/N smiled. Her cheeks hurt. “I’m charming. It’s a curse.”

The coffee in Tim’s mug paused halfway to his mouth.

Y/N caught it, and for half a second, she fiercely hated herself for speaking out loud so much she forgot to breathe.

Jason snorted faintly. “Yeah, stalkers famously love a good personality.”

“Do not call him that,” Y/N said, too fast.

The table went slightly still.

She lowered her gaze. “Sorry. I mean, he’s being weird. I know. I just…he’s not evil.”

Victor had been evil. Eli was not. Victor had died smiling. Eli sat in the hallway because her voice had turned into a trap. The difference mattered. It had to matter, or she was already gone.

Alfred entered with more toast, and his eyes went to her face, then to the way her hands trembled around her mug. He said nothing.

Bruce did the thing he did when he decided a matter could be handled by someone else for the moment. “Alfred will coordinate security and law enforcement.”

Y/N nodded.

Jason looked back at his phone. “Good.”

Dick tried to soften the mood. “Hey, at least you get Alfred food for a few days. That’s basically a luxury retreat with better security and more emotionally stunted men.”

“I heard that,” Bruce said without looking up.

“Meant for you to.”

Y/N almost laughed, and for one fragile minute, breakfast felt almost survivable.

The curse did not wake here. Alfred, Bruce, Dick, Tim, Jason, Damian, all known to her before the ritual.

They could look at her, speak to her, sit close enough to pass jam, and nothing changed.

Their neglect still hurt in the old human way, but no one’s pupils widened, no one’s face softened with sudden worship, no one became infected by her existence. In this room, with these people who had failed to love her properly, she was paradoxically safer than anywhere else. 

Still, Tim's eyes lingered on her a heartbeat too long when she passed the sugar. Jason's gaze flicked from his phone to her hands, catching the trembling just before she gripped her mug tighter as if nothing were wrong. It was nothing, probably. But in this family, sometimes noticing was the first step to knowing.

Then Jason said, “Victor Sable’s body hasn’t turned up.”

Y/N’s fork hit her plate.

The sound was small. Too small, maybe, for anyone but Alfred to notice. But Alfred did notice. His gaze moved to her hand.

Y/N stared at the eggs she had not eaten.

Why would Jason know that?

Her pulse began to pound.

Jason continued, unaware of the way her stomach dropped through the floor. “Four days missing and no body, no ransom, no credible sighting. Guy had a security detail and somehow everybody suddenly went blind.”

Tim’s eyes flicked toward Bruce, then back to his laptop. “It’s been in the news.”

Y/N’s brain had to catch up with her body and restart her breathing manually. The tiny person sitting up was cranking some invisible lever and yelling to the rest of her to get it together.

Y/N could not get it together. Her heartbeat felt too out-of-body; she could hear every shift, every move. The chair creaked under Jason’s weight as he shifted in irritation, Damian’s fork scraped against the plate despite his careful handling of the knife, and Tim took a sip of whatever caffeine monstrosity resided in his oversized mug.

There was something in Jason’s voice. Not gossip. Not casual interest. Not the sort of true crime curiosity people brought to breakfast because Gotham had ruined everyone’s sense of appropriate topics. It was personal. Focused. Angry in a way he was trying not to show.

Y/N’s skin went cold.

“What does that have to do with you?” she asked.

The question came out too directly.

Jason’s expression closed. “Narrows thing.”

“What, like neighborhood watch?”

Dick coughed into his coffee.

Tim looked down.

Damian’s mouth tightened almost invisibly.

Bruce said, “Jason has contacts.”

Y/N turned to Bruce. “Contacts.”

Jason leaned back in his chair. “You say that like you’ve never heard of knowing people.”

“I know people.”

“Do you?”

“Wow. Okay. Hurtful.”

“Accurate?”

She tried to smile. “I know Alfred.”

“Everyone knows Alfred. That’s cheating.”

Alfred, from the sideboard, said mildly, “I am delighted to be a social credential.”

Y/N’s laugh caught in her throat. It would have been funny. It was funny, technically. But Victor Sable’s name sat on the table like a bloody handprint no one else could see.

Jason looked away first, still distracted by whatever internal thread he was following. “Sable was dirty. Worse than dirty. Somebody took him off the board, and every piece of evidence collapsed like it was cursed.”

Y/N’s mouth went dry.

Cursed.

Tim said, carefully, “Maybe don’t say cursed at breakfast.”

“It was cursed,” Jason said. “Or hexed. Or pact-protected. Something. Tech doesn’t fail like that by accident.”

Y/N gripped her mug. It was warm enough to hurt.

Pact-protected.

She heard Victor again, breath wet and intimate. I love you so much.

Her stomach lurched.

Wait. Tech was cursed? Why would Jason have tech?

Did Jason know Victor?

She stood too fast. The chair scraped. “Bathroom.”

Alfred stepped forward. “Miss Y/N?”

“Just a little nausea,” she said, already backing away. “You know me, resident tummy ache survivor.”

She made it out of the breakfast room, down the hall, around the corner, and into the nearest powder room before she dropped to her knees and threw up into the toilet with one hand braced against the wall. She could hear breakfast continuing far away, muffled voices, silverware, and the normal sound of people who did not know there was a dead man in the woods because she put him there.

She vomited until her throat burned.

Then she sat back on her heels, shaking, and stared at the little decorative hand towel embroidered with a W.

Why is Jason looking into Victor?

Her mind chased itself in tight circles. Jason knew things he should not know. Bruce knew things. Tim’s laptop, Dick’s reaction, Damian’s silence. They were rich. Connected. Gotham people. Maybe that was all. Bruce Wayne probably kept tabs on criminals. Jason probably knew people in the Narrows because he was Jason, and Jason moved like a man who had private wars. It did not mean anything.

It could not mean anything.

Her family was neglectful, not secretly involved in vigilante cases. That was insane. That was comic-book insane.

Y/N laughed once, then gagged again.

When she returned to the breakfast room, she had rinsed her mouth, splashed water on her face, and pinched her cheeks until they looked slightly less corpse-adjacent. No one commented. Alfred had cleared her plate and replaced it with dry toast and ginger tea. Bruce looked at her for a moment too long, but his phone buzzed, and he looked down. Jason was muttering to Tim about corrupted camera packets. Dick was pretending to read the news while listening to everything. Damian was watching Y/N with narrowed eyes over his medical journal.

“Still takeout?” Damian asked.

Y/N sank into her chair. “Are you diagnosing me, Doctor Baby Wayne?”

“I am not a doctor yet.”

“Then stop practicing on me.”

“Your pallor is concerning.”

“My pallor would like privacy.”

Jason snorted.

Bruce’s phone buzzed again. He stood. “I need to take this.”

Of course he did.

Y/N looked down at her toast and tried not to feel anything about it.

After breakfast, Alfred ran Eli through every database available to a man who had once served the Crown and now served a family whose security needs were not compatible with ordinary privacy laws.

He did it in his office with the door closed, tea cooling beside his keyboard, his face calm and his mind increasingly less so. 

Eli Mason, twenty-five. Delivery driver. Prior work at a grocery warehouse. No criminal record beyond a parking ticket and one minor citation for riding a bike on the sidewalk at nineteen. Rent was paid late twice, but paid. Mother in Blüdhaven. Younger sister at community college. Social media is ordinary to the point of dullness: food photos, rainy street shots, one old post about adopting a cat that had apparently chosen his roommate instead. No extremist forums. No restraining orders. No pattern of harassment. No violent complaints. No history of fixation.

Nothing.

Before the night he met Y/N, Eli Mason was exactly what she claimed he had once been.

A person.

After that night, his phone records changed. Delivery app routes clustered near her building. Purchases at the pharmacy below her apartment: cold medicine, tea, bandages, and pepper 

Alfred sat back.

A stalker, then. But one without the usual soil around the roots. No escalation history, no prior target, no record that explained the sudden turn. It unsettled him more than a long history would have. Patterns could be interpreted. Absence required more imagination, and Alfred distrusted explanations that required imagination before evidence.

He printed the file anyway.

Then he locked it in his drawer.

In the cave, Jason’s day got worse.

Constantine refused the next call outright.

The comm rang twice, then disconnected. Jason stared at the screen.

Tim, still trying to rebuild the corrupted Victor files from backups, said, “Maybe his curtains were emotionally significant.”

Jason dialed again.

This time, the call connected just long enough for Constantine to say, “No,” and hang up.

Jason’s eyes narrowed.

Dick, seated on the edge of the table with a coffee he had stolen from upstairs, winced. “That was pretty clear.”

Jason dialed again.

The line clicked.

“Listen, Hood,” Constantine snapped, voice rough and closer than before, like he had the phone pressed hard to his ear while walking somewhere windy. “I’ve had three fires, one screaming mirror, and a packet of files that tried to bite through my wards. Whatever Bat-shaped nonsense you’ve got, I’m not touching it blind.”

Jason leaned over the console. “Something infernal touched our system.”

Silence.

Tim stopped typing.

Bruce looked up.

On the line, Constantine did not speak for three full seconds.

Then, quietly, “Say that again.”

Jason’s anger cooled into focus. “The Victor Sable files. When Tim tried sending them, something came through. Not just a virus. Not tech. You said your curtains caught fire.”

“Curtains don’t usually combust from corrupted JPEGs, no.”

“Then what was it?”

Constantine exhaled. Jason could hear him lighting a cigarette. “A brush. Not a full presence. Something with infernal residue dragged its greasy little fingertips along the transfer.”

Tim mouthed, Greasy?

Jason waved him off.

Bruce stepped closer. “Demon?”

“Possibly. Or someone carrying a contract. A pact. A favor. Could be a curse protecting the actor, could be an entity protecting its investment. Hard to say from ‘my flat tried to become a barbecue.’”

Jason’s grip tightened. “Investment.”

“Demons don’t usually do charity.”

“No kidding.”

“Tell me about Sable.”

Jason told him the clean version: criminal target, disappearance, impossible coincidences, dead cameras, contradictory witnesses, no body. He did not mention every detail because Constantine did not need them, and Jason did not trust anyone who sounded that casual around the word "demon". As he spoke, the cave monitors dimmed once, then stabilized. Tim’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, not touching. Damian stood near the stairs, listening with the intense stillness of someone pretending he had other reasons to be there.

Constantine was quiet when Jason finished.

“Could be a new player,” he said.

“That’s what I said.”

“I didn’t say you were wrong. Don’t get clingy.”

Jason ignored that. “Someone using magic?”

“Maybe.”

“Someone made a pact?”

“Maybe.”

Jason’s eyes moved to Victor’s frozen image on the monitor, the last living frame before the black screen. “Why take Sable?”

“Bad men are useful offerings.”

The cave went still.

Jason’s voice lowered. “Offerings.”

“Don’t get dramatic. Could be power. Could be revenge. Could be debt. Could be some poor idiot signed something they didn’t read.”

Y/N’s face flickered through Jason’s mind then, oddly and without invitation: pale at breakfast, joking too fast, leaving the room when Victor’s body came up. He dismissed it immediately. She had no connection to Sable. She was Bruce’s daughter, who worked in HR and once cried during an animated movie Damian had called childish. She was strange, sure. The whole family was strange. Strange did not mean demon pact.

Tim pulled up another file. “If infernal residue is attached to the case data, can you trace it?”

Constantine made a sound like a laugh left out in the rain. “Trace infernal residue through a corrupted digital transfer while whatever it is actively doesn’t want to be found? Sure. I’ll just ask nicely and invoice your billionaire father for my cremation.”

Bruce said, “Can you help or not?”

“I can tell you this much. If there’s a pact involved, the person at the center might not be the demon. Could be a human carrying the terms. Could be cursed. Could be feeding something. If bodies start dropping in a pattern, look at timing. Moons, dates, anniversaries, ritual markers. Demons love a calendar. Makes them feel classy.”

Jason’s jaw flexed. “And if we get close?”

“Expect more nonsense. Not big lightning bolts. Little failures. Keys snapping. Cameras blinking. Witnesses forgetting. People tripping at exactly the wrong second. Infernal contracts can be petty as hell, and yes, that was intentional.”

Tim rubbed his forehead. “That matches.”

Jason looked at Bruce. Bruce’s expression had gone hard and unreadable.

Constantine continued, “And Hood?”

“What?”

“If this is some desperate idiot bound to a demon, they’re still dangerous. Maybe more dangerous than someone doing it for fun. Desperation makes people creative, and hell loves creativity.”

The line crackled.

Jason leaned closer. “Can you come to Gotham?”

“No.”

“Constantine.”

“No. But send me what you can without setting anything else on fire. Carefully. Old-school if you have to. Paper. Salt the envelope. Don’t ask.”

The line went dead.

Jason stood in silence for a moment.

Then he looked at the black screen where Victor vanished for the hundredth time.

“A new villain,” Damian said.

Jason’s eyes did not move. “Maybe.”

“Or a civilian with a pact,” Tim said.

Jason hated that more. Villains made sense. Villains had lairs, grudges, symbols, and ego. Civilians with pacts had apartments, excuses, and faces that blended into crowds. They made mistakes. They panicked. They did damage without knowing how much blood was stuck to the edges.

Jason thought of Victor Sable. Thought of the girls whose statements had vanished. Thought of the missing body, the impossible trail, the bloodless alley. If someone had taken Sable because he deserved it, Jason understood the impulse. He had lived half his life inside that impulse.

But magic changed the math.

A demon made it worse.

He set his hands on the table and leaned in until Victor’s face reflected faintly in his eyes.

“Whoever they are,” Jason said quietly, “I’m going to find them.”

Upstairs, Y/N stood in her old bedroom with the door locked, one hand pressed over her mouth, listening to the house settle around her.

She had not heard Jason. She had not heard Constantine. She had no idea that beneath her feet, her family was mapping the edges of her curse with better tools and worse assumptions. All she knew was that breakfast had nearly broken her, the contract was hidden in a shoebox full of cat ears, and Victor Sable’s missing body had somehow become a topic in the one place she had thought she could hide from it. Sooner or later, someone would get too close to the truth or catch her flinch at the wrong name, and the careful balance she kept would shatter in the open. When that happened, she was not sure if she would confess, collapse, or do something far worse. But she could feel the pressure rising under her skin, an answer waiting to break her silence the next time someone asked the right question and refused to let her run.

Her phone buzzed.

For one horrible second, she thought it was Eli.

It was Alfred.

Alfred: Lunch will be at one. You will attend.

Y/N stared at the message, then sank onto the edge of the bed.

Her laugh came out small and panicked.

How am I supposed to become a serial killer in this house?

No answer came.

Only the manor breathing around her, full of secrets she did not know, while her own waited in the closet, warm and patient and very much alive.

Prologue | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Then again, they were never really different. They all led back to the same thing—making his father proud. Proud to call him his son, his only heir.

So, he was a bit—no, more than that—confused when you slowly began climbing his list of priorities.

If anyone asked how the two of you met, you would say he came to your rescue like a knight in shining armor—and even fixed your camera.

If they asked him, it was a completely different story.

Harry looked into the tall mirror, letting his childlike mind wander. He wondered how he would soon outgrow this version of himself—and how he would become the boss of everything, just like his father said he would.

The boy imagined what he would do once he was older: eating candy whenever he wanted, going on random vacations, and being regarded as a genius for his future inventions.

He adjusted his bow tie—one of the maids had put it on him earlier—wanting to look picture-perfect, even though he already did.

It was his first charity gala, and his father had drilled into him that first impressions were everything—even if it meant enduring annoying questions from adults.

The door opened slowly, revealing his father in a suit tailored specifically for him.

“Harry, my boy,” Norman said, smiling down at his son.

Harry blinked, shifting his gaze from his reflection to his father. “Yes, Father?”

With an exaggerated, heavy sigh, Norman knelt down to his son’s height. He removed the bow tie and pulled a small necktie from his pocket.

As he tied it neatly under Harry’s collar, he began, “First impressions are ev—”

“First impressions are everything. I know, Father,” Harry interrupted, already tired of hearing it.

Norman paused, his hands stilling against the fabric. For a moment, Harry thought he had said something wrong. The maids had told him before that he had a careless mouth.

Then his father chuckled lightly, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Harry let out a small sigh of relief, staring at his father’s gel-slicked hair and wondering if his own looked good enough.

“Good,” Norman said, smoothing down the tie. “That means you’ve been listening.”

He gave the knot one final adjustment before standing to his full height, immediately looking more imposing. Then his phone buzzed.

Norman glanced toward the door, then back at Harry. “We’ll be leaving in ten minutes.”

Harry straightened at once, nodding. “Yes, Father.”

“Make sure you’re presentable and polite,” Norman added, his tone sharpening slightly. “There will be important people tonight. I expect you to behave accordingly.”

“I will,” Harry replied quickly. A small thrill of anticipation slipped through him—the gala was being held at that massive manor everyone had been talking about.

Norman studied him for a moment, as though inspecting something Harry couldn’t see, before giving a small, satisfied nod and closing the door behind him.

Harry recited his introduction in his head (that was six words, mind you) while pacing around the room, checking his wristwatch every few seconds. Three more minutes.

He could feel the pressure settling in his chest, tight and familiar. He exited his room and headed for the stairs.

Father would kill him if he arrived late. Not literally, of course—but close enough.

Norman had always taught him that there were rules every man should follow, and punctuality ranked somewhere near the top.

Harry stopped mid-step, noticing his father by the door, still on the phone. He descended the stairs slowly; from the tension in his posture alone, it was clear his father was more irritated than usual.

He only caught a few words—“Parker” and “Don’t let them know”—before the older man hung up and turned to him, the scowl on his face vanishing as if it had never been there.

Harry remembered moments like this clearly. They meant his father could still soften—for him.

Even if the smile he wore was a little too perfect.

“You’re on time, son.”

Just like Harry expected, the party was boring. He’d imagined something like in the books—people laughing too loudly, splashing red wine on each other.

But this wasn’t that. The businessmen and women spoke in low voices, each word slipping out like it had a snake’s tongue.

When he and his father entered, the adults did swarm him with questions—Norman helping him here and there.

I mean, who wouldn’t have questions for the kid genius that Norman plastered on every front page of the newspaper?

The excitement around him died down, and he ended up on the sidelines, right by the food section.

The boy watched his father charm potential investors effortlessly. Honestly, he should have been right by his father’s side, learning the tricks of the trade—but he was hungry. (And didn’t feel like it.)

Harry reached out for a pastry when a small hand tugged at his ankle from underneath the table.

Goosebumps prickled across his skin. He’d thought the manor looked slightly haunted before, with all its Renaissance portraits and antique relics—

Oh gods.

The hand retreated beneath the table, the long tablecloth falling back into place as if a hand hadn’t just slipped through it.

Harry gulped—the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” repeating in his head like a mantra.

He looked around. Everyone was in their own bubble—and his father was still too busy conversing to notice.

The uneasy boy circled the table and dropped to one knee, reaching to lift the cloth. His heartbeat thrummed like sirens, his mind scolding him even as his body moved anyway.

Harry blinked. Underneath the table wasn’t an ogre. Nor a ghost-person.

It was an ordinary person. Wearing pajamas. Underneath a table at a gala.

His eyebrows raised, and after three disbelieving blinks, he opened his mouth—only to close it again.

You were curled up, knees pulled to your chest, a dopey smile on your face as you absentmindedly brought a finger to your lips, trying to find the right words—something that wouldn’t scare him off.

“I live here. Don’t worry.”

Harry found that hard to believe.

A crease formed between his brows. “You… live here?”

He paused thoughtfully. “Underneath the table, or in the manor?”

Harry was torn between the possibility that you might be a fae—or a Wayne, a name he had recently heard thrown around a lot.

“In the manor, silly. Can you get me one of the pastries?” you asked, pointing upward.

“What the—whatever, fine.” He stood, giving the room a quick once-over before swiping two pastries (might as well have one himself), then bent down again and lifted the cloth.

Is this what pillow forts feel like? he thought absently.

“Here.” Harry handed you the pastry, eyeing you suspiciously. A million questions raced through his head.

You gestured for him to come under the table, patting the space beside you.

Harry bit his bottom lip, hesitating. Was it really safe? What if you were dangerous?

But you didn’t seem like it.

He sighed, shifting upward just enough to peek out from beneath the table—only his eyes visible—as he made sure his father wasn’t looking.

Then he ducked back down and crawled into the space. You shifted to make room, and he settled cross-legged beside you, your shoulders lightly touching.

The boy cleared his throat. “I’m Harry. Harry Osborn.”

He took a small, half-hearted bite of his pastry, as if it might quiet his nerves. Part of his mind scolded him, but another clung stubbornly to his maid’s words—that it would do him good to make friends.

Even if it meant befriending a weirdo under a table.

You licked the frosting off your lips. “Cool, nice to meet you, Hare.”

“Hare? It’s Harry,” he scoffed. He wasn’t some dumb, scary-looking rabbit.

He was Harry Osborn. Son of Norman Osborn. Heir to Oscorp. For God’s sake.

You shrugged, that same dopey grin turning teasing.

He couldn’t help but stare at the apples of your cheeks and the crinkle of your eyes—your expression warm enough to make it hard to focus on anything else.

For a moment, he wondered when he’d last seen a smile so… real.

He snapped out of it, noticing the silence between you. “Right… so you’re under the table because…?”

“I’m not supposed to be here—” he raised an eyebrow at that, “but I wanted some pastries, so…”

Whatever. He could work with that.

“Okay, um. How’d you know that I, uh… that I was good?” His mind scrambled—gone was the perfect, composed Harry from an hour ago.

“Like, y’know… you could’ve tugged some weird old man’s ankle.” He shrugged, trying to play it cool.

You laughed, which tugged the corners of his lips upward too.

“There’s a small hole in the cloth, big enough for me to peek through. I thought you looked about my height. I don’t know any grown-ups that small.”

Harry huffed out a quiet breath, something between a scoff and a laugh. “I’m not that short.”

The two of you talked a while longer, until his cheeks ached from laughing and both your pastries were gone. He hadn’t expected to grow this comfortable with you so fast.

You went on about a book you’d read with your older brother—who, from the way you spoke about him, sounded annoyingly doting, even if he hid it behind crude remarks like older brothers tend to do.

Then again, maybe Harry shouldn’t judge. He didn’t have any siblings.

He found himself hanging onto every word, like there’d be a test afterward—and he really needed to pass.

“—and then he tried to explain the ending, but I think he just made it more confusing,” you finished.

Harry blinked, like he’d been pulled from somewhere else. “Wait—no, uh, go back,” he said quickly. “What do you mean he wasn’t actually the villain?”

You tilted your head, amused. “He was the villain. He just didn’t think he was.”

Harry frowned, trying to piece it together, brows furrowed in that serious way of his—like he was solving something important.

“…That’s stupid,” he decided.

After all, what kind of person doesn’t know they’re hurting people? An idiot, that's what.

You laughed softly, nudging his shoulder. “It’s layered, ’s all. Or at least that’s what Jay told me.”

“It sounds stupid,” he insisted, though there wasn’t much bite to it.

You narrowed your eyes at him, smiling. “You just don’t get it.”

“I do get it,” he said quickly—too quickly.

You gave him a look.

Harry faltered. “…Okay, maybe I don’t.”

That made you laugh again, softer this time.

He didn’t realize how quiet he’d gone until the sound of it filled the space. Talking to you was easy.

“So,” you said after a moment, tracing shapes into the carpet, “what about you?”

Harry blinked. “What about me?”

“You’ve just been listening,” you pointed out. “What do you like?”

He opened his mouth, reaching for something polished—something neat, something his father would approve of.

His gaze dropped to his hands instead.

“…I like building things,” he said quietly.

He fiddled with his cufflinks, unease settling in his chest—the kind that usually came with his father’s presence. But this time, it wasn’t as suffocating.

Harry hesitated. His fingers stilled for a moment before resuming their slow, absent movements against the cool metal.

What if you thought he was one of those rich know-it-alls—just bluffing his way through everything?

“…Just stuff,” he muttered. Then, “Things that work. Or don’t—and then I fix them.”

You hummed, like that made perfect sense. “That’s cool.”

He blinked. “…It is?”

He knew it was. His father had always praised him for it—always said it meant he was smart, useful, worth something.

“Yeah,” you nodded. “You make things better.”

Harry didn’t respond right away. His grip loosened, thumb tracing the edge of his cufflink.

“…I guess,” he said, softer now.

You smiled at him again—warm, easy, real—and Harry found himself looking away first this time, suddenly very interested in the pattern of the carpet beneath you.

Out of habit, he checked his wristwatch.

Harry straightened slightly, the small, quiet space under the table suddenly feeling a little tighter. “I—uh…” He glanced toward the edge of the tablecloth, “I think I’ve been gone too long.”

You tilted your head. “Trouble?”

He huffed softly. “Something like that.”

Harry hesitated. He wanted to say one last thing, but didn’t know what.

“…I should go.”

You nodded easily. “Okay. I have to go too. My brother’s probably looking for me.”

There was a hint of disappointment in your voice, which made it harder for him to leave.

Harry lingered a second longer before ducking out from under the table. The noise of the party rushed back all at once—voices, laughter, the sharp clink of glass.

He stood, brushing imaginary dust from his suit, schooling his expression into something composed.

He hoped to see you again.

Past the cluster of guests, weaving through the crowd, past the glow of chandeliers—until the table became just another blur behind him.

By the time he reached his father’s side, there was no sign of where he’d been.

“There you are.”

Harry straightened immediately.

Norman didn’t look at him at first, still mid-conversation. When the other man left, his father's eyes settled on Harry.

“I was wondering where you’d gone,” Norman said smoothly.

“I was just… speaking with someone,” Harry replied carefully.

“Oh, I see. Stay close.”

His father didn’t question it. There were other boys at the gala—older by a year or two—and Norman assumed his son had been speaking with them.

Another man approached, smile too practiced. Their conversation went over Harry’s head as he stood stiffly beside his father—physically present, but with every thought circling one thing.

Harry hadn’t gotten your name.

—🐰

It was the first day of middle school when he saw you again.

He remembered his father suddenly joining him for dinner—which was a rare occurrence.

Norman sat at the head of the table, a slice of steak already cut into neat portions, with some greenery on his plate.

“You’ll be attending a private school this year.” His father stabbed a fork into the steak, the motion sharp and deliberate.

Harry’s heart sank, his earlier excitement at his father finally joining him fading just as quickly.

It returned slowly—a mix of nervousness, dread, and, if he was being honest, excitement.

Would he finally make new friends? Would he see you again?

You were at a gala—under a table, in pajamas, and uninvited, but nonetheless… at a gala.

Which meant there was a chance you’d be attending whatever prestigious school his father decided on.

He’d gladly take those odds.

“You’ll start next week. Is that clear?”

Harry’s body moved on autopilot while he was lost in thought, a piece of steak hovering in front of his lips.

“Yes, Father.”

In the past two years, you looked more content. Happier, even. Harry sat a few rows behind you, watching quietly.

He was glad he’d taken those odds—more glad to be seeing you again, this close.

One by one, the students introduced themselves.

Your introduction was brief, but everyone’s eyes widened slightly in surprise when they heard your last name.

He already had a suspicion, of course—but hearing it from you made it feel somehow different.

A quiet ripple moved through the room—whispers just low enough to pretend they weren’t happening.

Harry made a quiet mental note of your interests—the teacher had insisted everyone name at least four. The ones that stood out to him were photography and science.

When it came to his turn, he felt unexpectedly nervous.

He impressed people older than him—who’s to say people his age wouldn’t?

“Good morning. I’m Harry Osborn—” The boy immediately glanced your way, searching for your reaction, but you were busy drawing on a piece of paper already filled with doodles.

Whispers rippled through the room again, hushed voices buzzing about having two “hotshots” in the same class.

You didn’t remember him.

Harry swallowed the disappointment and carried on.

When he finished, he made his way to his seat, passing by you—still focused on your drawings.

He dropped into his chair with a quiet thud, folding his arms on the desk and resting his head on them, his cheek squishing slightly against his wrist.

How could you have forgotten him?

You were his first friend. But that didn’t mean he was yours.

Harry spent the rest of the class period sulking, only snapping out of his thoughts when the bell rang.

He’d make you remember then. Simple.

The boy was about to go stomping over to your desk, but a crowd of classmates surrounded you—and him—making the distance between you even greater.

“Excuse me—” he tried to weave through the crowd, but the barrage of questions and overexcited middle schoolers was too much.

Harry sighed, smoothly putting on a strained version of the Osborn smile (not like they’d notice the difference) and patiently socialized with his classmates.

His father would approve—the kids here were from the right kind of families.

He stared past the shoulder of some blonde boy, watching your face—one that clearly wasn’t used to this kind of attention.

Harry was confused. Weren’t you a Wayne?

Then again, you’d had to sneak into one of the galas… and you had no media presence whatsoever.

“So you’ll sit with me for lunch, right?”

Harry hummed in absent-minded agreement, still watching as you nervously adjusted your glasses.

He supposed he’d have to watch from afar for now.

— 🐰

“You should be more careful,” Harry said coolly.

It didn’t matter how put-together he looked—it didn’t change the fact that his ears were tinged red.

Either from irritation that Flash had the audacity to shove you to the ground, or because he was standing so close to you.

It had been six months and twelve days since the first day of school. Harry wasn’t counting. Definitely not.

Every time he tried to talk to you—actually talk to you, instead of just staring like some creep—he’d back out at the last second.

You were a stellar student, naturally. But you didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the school’s crowd. Not like he did. Not like he was expected to.

He’d heard the rumors about you, but he paid them no mind.

You were also the school photographer for the newspaper, and Harry found your photos charming.

He definitely did not sign up for the debate team just because he heard you’d be taking their picture.

Nope.

Of course not.

Harry felt his heartbeat thrumming in his ears—time to leave. Now.

But then you did something he didn’t expect.

You tugged on the sleeve of his blazer, pulling him back before he could take another step.

“Do you wanna, um… have lunch together?” you added hastily. “As a thank you. For standing up for me—and fixing my camera.”

Harry turned around slowly, watching your hand fall back to your side. He cleared his throat—he really didn’t want his voice to go all falsetto just from talking to you.

“Yes, of course.”

— 🐰

To say Harry was worried would be the understatement of the century.

You hadn’t gone to school for a week.

You also hadn’t answered his messages or calls.

It had only been a year since you two became friends, but you’d grown closer faster than he ever expected.

His brows creased as he bit the tip of his pen, staring at his math homework—which was the least of his concerns.

He hated how he couldn’t be by your side. Especially during a time like this.

Harry could never imagine losing a sibling so abruptly.

But he knew what it was like to watch someone slip away, piece by piece.

The boy swiped a hand across his face before standing up and grabbing a coat.

He slipped out of his room and hurried down the stairs. He passed a maid—then paused, turning back.

“Veronica, tell Father I’ll be out!”

Veronica stopped in her tracks, eyes widening as the twelve-year-old was already sprinting toward the door.

“Young master! At least bring a bodyguard!” she called, but it was to no avail—he was already through the door.

She hurried after him, stopping at the frame of the grand, heavy doors.

“I’m fine! I’ll be in the safe parts of town!” Harry shouted back as the gates opened automatically for him.

“Please—at least call!”

The middle-aged woman sighed. “That boy, really…” she muttered, shaking her head.

Harry raised a hand to hail a taxi, a yellow cab pulling over almost immediately. He slipped inside without a second thought.

“Mister, Gotham Heights, please.”

The driver, a man with a newsboy cap and a mustache, nodded. “Got it, lad.”

Harry hummed thoughtfully, looking out at the Gotham sky that never seemed to brighten—stuck in a dull monochrome.

He thought of a gift that might lift your spirits. Not a lavish one, surely. You were always against him using his money to buy you things, even something as simple as a snack.

The driver glanced at him through the mirror. “What’s a young lad like you doin’ out alone?”

The “young lad” scoffed. “What’s it to you, mister?”

The older man looked amused, keeping his eyes on the road. There was something haunting behind them, like he had seen things no one should.

“Jus’ askin’. Gotham ain’t exactly safe, but at least you’re headin’ to the better parts.”

Even then, Harry didn’t sense any malicious intent from him. Or maybe he was just being a trusting idiot.

“Say, mister, you don’t sound like you’re from around here?”

“Moved to Gotham not too long ago. Big difference, but it is what it is,” the man shrugged.

Harry found it odd that he already seemed to know every road like the back of his hand.

He shook his head. He was getting distracted.

A gift… music? No, you had enough of those.

“Mister,” Harry started, then hesitated.

The driver glanced at him through the mirror. “Yeah, lad?”

“…What do people usually get someone when…” He trailed off. “When they’re not doing so great?”

The man hummed, thoughtful this time. “Flowers are the usual. Food too. But that ain’t really it, is it?”

Harry frowned. “No.”

There was a pause, the quiet hum of the engine filling the cab as Gotham’s dim skyline slid past.

“Best thing I ever got,” the driver said slowly, “wasn’t expensive. Just someone lettin’ me know they weren’t goin’ anywhere.”

“That’s it.” He shrugged. “People remember who stayed. Not what they bought.”

Harry leaned back into the seat, staring out the window again. Your face crossed his mind—smiling, tired.

His fingers tapped against his knee as an idea formed.

— 🕷️

“Go away,” you sniffled, pulling your legs closer to your chest.

The butler outside the door sighed. “As you wish, young master.” You heard a soft thud against the floor. “I’ll leave the package your friend got you outside.”

You waited until his footsteps faded.

You stood up from your nest of blankets, opening the creaky door and taking the box into your hands.

It wasn’t very big.

Light, too.

You opened it.

Inside was a bracelet with a charm hanging from a small silver chain, and a tiny hand-sewn Superman plushie.

Your lips trembled slightly as you carefully took the letter tucked behind the trinkets.

Dearest [Name],

I tried my best. My hand got pricked numerous times making Superman (if you like, I’ll make Batman so we can match). I hope you liked the charm.

I’m not very good with words, like you said, I’m only good at bad jokes and senseless mumbling.

But I wanted to give you something anyway.

It’s not perfect. And the eyes look uneven if you stare at it too long, but I figured you wouldn’t mind that much.

You say things don’t have to be perfect to be good.

I think you’re right.

Anyway, you don’t have to wear it or anything. Just keep it, I guess. Or don’t. That’s fine too.

My days at school are boring. Come back soon. I miss you.

— Harry

You blinked away the tears, only for them to spill down the swell of your cheeks.

You picked up the bracelet and slipped it onto your wrist, turning it slightly to admire the beads and charm.

Then you leaned back into your pile of blankets, hugging the Superman plushie tightly to your chest.

— 🐰

“It’s okay. Flash is just an asshole.” Harry carefully swept away the strands of hair clinging to your forehead—something his mother used to do to comfort him.

You continued crying. “He—my hair!”

He sighed, leaning back against the wall as he kept an arm around you. You’d had to get your hair cut because Flash chucked gum at it during fifth period.

It was the last year of middle school, and Flash didn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.

“What do you say we get back at him?”

You rolled your tearful eyes. “We already got in trouble for getting into a tussle with him.”

“That we won?”

“It was two against one. What did you think was going to happen?”

Harry scoffed. “He’s training for the football team! I expected better—not getting beat up by two nerds."

“It was barely a win. We threw pens at him.”

“Whatever, schmatever. The point is—” His eyes gleamed, and you immediately knew he was thinking of trouble. “He needs to grow up. And this is around the time he’s in the showers after practice.”

You didn’t comment on how the two of you also needed to grow up—or how he knew Flash’s shower schedule.

“…So what do we do?” Your eyes were no longer glossy, now glinting with mischief.

You sat on Harry’s shoulders, his legs wobbling slightly under your weight.

“Eugh.. You could lose a few,” he whispered.

Good thing Flash was busy singing about the blue sky—the loud rush of the showers drowning out your hushed voices.

“Shut up, you said my legs would break if you sat on my shoulders!” you whisper-shouted, fumbling of trying to open the bottle of shampoo Harry got from God-knows-where.

“IT’S A BEAUTIFUL NEW DAY! HEY!”

Harry grimaced at Flash’s horrendous singing. “Hurry up!”

Your eyes squeezed shut as you clung to the top of the shower divider.

“How do I even know where to aim it?”

Harry scoffed, tightening his grip just above your knee. “His head, duh.”

You decided to let whatever higher power existed take the wheel and squeezed the bottle—shampoo spraying everywhere.

You did not want to know what a naked Flash looked like.

“MR. BLUE SKY—! ugh, wh—”

Looks like it worked.

Harry giggled from below, his shoulders shaking.

“WHY WON’T THIS SHAMPOO GET OFF?!”

The bottle was now empty, and you heard Flash’s frustrated groans echoing over the steady rush of water.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” you urged, about to slide off Harry’s shoulders and tossing the empty bottle at Flash’s head for good measure.

“AUGHH!”

The two of you bolted out of the boys’ showers, hands clamped over your mouths, trying not to burst into laughter.

— 🐰

Harry’s gaze lingered on your features, your brows slightly furrowed in concentration, your eyes fixed on the paper filled with scattered formulas.

“So here, you have to—” you started explaining again, probably using your pen to point at the numbers—Harry wouldn’t know. He was too busy staring at you.

At times like this, he didn’t know whether to be jealous or to admire you.

With his father constantly breathing down his neck about college applications and internships, he couldn’t help but feel… something.

You, who were always smarter than him.

You, who seemed better than him in almost every way.

You, who had people who cared about you.

You, who had always been genuine.

Harry could almost turn green with envy.

But it never twisted into something as distasteful as hate. That was an ugly, ugly word—one he would never place beside your name.

He was just stressed about his father and everything going on right now. That’s all.

That had to be why he felt this way.

He swallowed. “I think… I’ve got it,” he said, nodding at his notebook now filled with circled notes.

You smiled at him—a smile full of fondness.

There was a very thin line between being impressed and feeling like he was falling behind.

Harry wasn’t quite sure which side he stood on whenever you looked at him like that.

“Yeah, you learn fast.”

He looked away bashfully. “Nah, it’s because you’re a good teacher.”

It was true. Whenever he was confused about something or needed someone to bounce ideas off, his first choice was always you.

Not like there was anyone else.

You sweatdropped. “I wish people thought the same.”

“Huh—what are they saying—”

“Alright, take your pens out,” the teacher cut in.

While writing down his answers at an almost abnormal speed, his thoughts swirled.

Harry knew you were unpopular for some godforsaken reason—you were kind, you were pretty, and a little hotheaded sometimes, but still!

Worst of all, their words actually got to you sometimes.

But maybe it was better that they didn’t.

That way, he got to keep that part of you to himself.

— 🐰

“Osborn, I’d like to discuss one of the academic competitions coming up soon.” The teacher pushed their glasses back up the bridge of their nose.

Harry had been entered into far too many contests to count on his fingers this year, and he honestly just wanted to tone it down—especially with the year almost over.

And then there were the lessons his father insisted on—about how to run a company. (Seriously, how hard could it be? Apparently very, if his stoic mentor making him write reports every night was anything to go by.)

“Sorry, miss, but I—”

Then his father’s words rang in his head—“A good businessman never misses an opportunity.”

Harry sighed, scratching the back of his head. “Okay, miss. I’ll see to it when I get home.”

The teacher smiled at him, then looked past his shoulder. “Can you tell Wayne to come over? I’d like to see the photos for the paper.”

Harry was about to ask why she couldn’t do it herself, but the rasp in her voice answered the question for him. Teaching privileged high school kids all day would do that to anyone, he figured.

“[Name]! Teach wants to see the photos!”

He watched your form in slight curiosity fumble for a bit, a slight wobble in your step as you walked over.

—

The field trip ended a little early after the spider lab—something about an emergency. The class was disappointed, but it was nearing nightfall anyway, so they made their way back through the building toward the bus.

Harry, however, watched you—a dazed look lingering on your face. He frowned.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

You tossed the wrapper of the sandwich he’d given you earlier into the nearest trash can—the same one you’d initially refused.

“Fine. Just… hungry, I think,” you replied, your hands buried deep in your jacket pockets.

“You ate two of my sandwiches…” Harry grumbled.

You nearly bumped into the two girls walking ahead of you, but Harry caught your arm just in time, steadying you before you could knock into them.

“Uh, you’re really out of it,” he said, studying your face—cold sweat beading along your forehead, your lips drawn into a tight frown.

You shrugged off his hand. “I’m fine, I swear.”

—

You weren’t fine—judging by how you nearly fell stepping off the bus when they dropped you off at the stop.

Harry scoffed. It was ridiculous—dumping a bunch of high schoolers at a bus stop this late.

Though, judging by the number of sleek, expensive black cars already lined up nearby, most of them had rides waiting.

He pulled you closer, an arm around your shoulders. You were strangely cold despite the sheen of sweat on your skin, and this was the best idea he had to help.

“S’cold,” you murmured, your voice breathless, like even speaking hurt. Your eyes were squeezed shut, a crease forming between your brows.

“Yeah? Only just a bit more, and you’ll be home,” Harry reassured, gently brushing the hair stuck to your face aside.

His chauffeur, Jake, glanced at them through the rearview mirror. “Lad, wouldn’t it be better if we brought them to the hospital?”

You whined at the word hospital, shooting Jake a look that said, See?

The older man huffed. “Ya should message their family. Probably worried sick by now.”

Yeah, right.

Nevertheless, his other hand fished your phone out of your pocket. Harry punched in your password, then opened your messages app.

The only people pinned were your aunt and uncle, Alfred (with a monocle emoji), and him. In any other situation, he would’ve found it endearing—but you were sick. Horribly sick, even.

He pressed Alfred’s contact.

[You]

Good evening, sir. This is Harry Osborn, [Name]’s friend. They’re not feeling well, so I’ll be dropping them off at the front gates of their home.

The butler replied surprisingly fast.

[Alfred 🧐]

Good evening, Master Osborn. I’ll open the gates at once. Thank you for bringing [Name] home—rest assured, they’ll be alright.

- Sincerely, Alfred Pennyworth

He turned your phone off—it had been on the verge of dying—and slipped it back into your jacket pocket, pulling you a little closer to him in the process.

When the car pulled up to the front of your manor, Harry opened the door and helped you out.

“Good evening, sir,” Harry said, offering a polite smile to the elegantly dressed butler—his hand resting at the small of your back as he gently guided you toward Alfred.

“Allow me, Master Osborn,” Alfred said, draping a coat around your shoulders as you blinked a few times, still trying to process who he was.

“Please—just Harry,” he added.

Alfred smiled softly. “Thank you again, Master Harry. I’m sure your father will be worried—you should be on your way.”

Harry looked over at you, your eyes struggling to focus on any one thing.

“It’s really no problem, sir. Good night,” Harry said with a small nod, stealing one last glance at you before returning to the car.

Jake drove in silence, leaving the teenager alone with his thoughts. He was worried—obviously. But you’d been out of it even before the field trip.

You were more paranoid than usual-going as far as nearly screaming his ears off when he snuck up behind you.

Normally, you'd just shriek or something.

The dark circles under your eyes were becoming more noticeable.

Were you stressed about academics? Or something going on at home? Was it about him?

If it was about him… you would’ve said something, right? You were always understanding—especially when he couldn’t make it to—

“So are ya two, like—y’know?”

Harry flinched, only then realizing he’d been tapping against the car door for a while.

“What?” he asked, glancing up to meet his driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“In a relationship? You two are around that age—I wouldn’t be surprised—”

“N—No. Nope, just friends,” he stammered quickly.

Jake just shrugged, his gaze returning to the road.

Harry would be lying if he said the thought had never crossed his mind—not even once or twice.

— 🐰

Harry's forehead rested against the emergency door, his usually well-styled hair a mess, strands sticking out in every direction.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

His heartbeat pounded in his ears. His pupils were blown wide as he tried to calm himself down, counting the seconds that crawled by.

His phone felt unusually heavy in his jacket pocket. He'd had to end the call with your aunt and uncle early, convinced he was going to throw up if he listened to their distorted voices over the line for even a second longer.

Had it not been five minutes yet? Why were you taking so long? Why were the police taking so long?

Fucking Gotham and its shitty criminals—

Thwack! and another loud Thump!

Was that you?

You could be dying in there while he stood outside like a worthless dumbass. Why did he even listen to you?

Leaving you to die alone—

He jerked his head away from the door, pounding his fist against it twice before reaching for the handle.

Bile climbed up his throat as his breathing grew more erratic.

Harry wouldn't know what to do if he ever found your lifeless body lying in a pool of blood.

The emergency door burst open and pure adrenaline made him instinctively step back to avoid getting hit.

The weight crushing his chest vanished in an instant.

Harry didn't think.

He closed the distance and threw himself at you before you had any chance to react.

The young man held you as close as he possibly could, his face buried in the crook of your neck.

His hands trembled where they rested on your waist, still unable to believe you were really there.

His eyes fluttered shut as he held you close, content just to have you in his arms.

He would've been crying by now if not for the words his father had drilled into him since he was young—

"Boys don't cry."

You patted his back.

“I'm sorry.”

You were sorry?

For saving him? For being a hero?

He'd save the gentle scolding for later.

For now, Harry only shook his head, his hand moving in slow, comforting circles across your back.

Eventually, he pulled away, though his hands remained on your arms—not ready to let you go just yet.

“So much for a quick errand run, huh?” you joked.

Harry was not in the mood.

You'd risked your life, and you were quipping?

Harry would've been lying if he said it didn't ease the knot in his chest, even if only a little.

“Don't ever do that again, moron—” Harry started, ready to lecture you about how reckless that had been—how he genuinely didn't know what he'd do if you died.

Before he could finish, a police officer approached, cutting him off.

— 🐰

“Ya weren't hurt, kid?” Uncle Ben asked, patting his shoulder.

Harry smiled softly. Even though he and Uncle Ben had gotten off to a rough start because of the old man's distrust, Ben had come to regard Harry as family.

“Luckily, just sore feet, sir.” He'd accidentally stepped on his own foot while running to the emergency door earlier. It was pure luck he hadn't tripped over himself.

Uncle Ben chuckled softly, though concern still lingered in his voice.

“Always so polite, huh? I told ya to call me Ben. How many times has it been now—a million? But ya seriously not hurt?”

Harry laughed. “Yes, sir. Don't worry.”

He cleared his throat, his gaze drifting toward you.

“Actually… I have your grandchild to thank for that.”

Coincidentally, you caught his gaze.

Harry felt his breath catch in his throat.

He quickly turned back to Uncle Ben, only to find the older man smiling at him—like he knew something Harry didn't.

The ride to your house was suffocating. For Harry, at least.

He couldn't stop thinking about what you'd done and your words from earlier—

"I know you would've done the same thing for me if you were the one in my situation."

Would he have?

Would he have had the courage to save your life the way you'd saved his?

His hands rested loosely in his lap, already itching to fidget.

He stole a quick glance while you were looking out the window, as if you hadn't just faced a group of men carrying guns bigger than you.

You're so amazing.

He wasn't.

“…Hey,” he said after a brief pause, his voice low enough that only you could hear.

You turned your head slightly. “Yeah?”

“I just wanna thank you... for what you did for me back there. You were really brave, and...” He looked away for a moment, as if the words had suddenly become harder to say. “…I don't think I could've handled that the way you did.”

It was true.

He couldn't have done what you just did.

His fingers tightened together in his lap before he finally looked back at you, his expression more earnest than before.

“…You didn't have to put me first. But you did.”

All his life, he'd been taught to be selfish. To take, and take, and take—until there was nothing left to take.

Kindness, according to his father, was a weakness people exploited. Trust was a liability. Love was something to be earned through usefulness, not freely given.

So why...

Why had you chosen him?

He wasn't the smartest person you knew.

He sure wasn't the strongest.

He wasn't even particularly easy to be around these days.

Half the time, he was stressed, snappish, or too caught up trying to meet expectations that never seemed to end.

There had to be someone more deserving of your loyalty.

Someone kinder.

Someone easier to love.

Yet every time Harry looked over his shoulder—

It was always you.

And every time he stumbled, somehow—you were still there.

He didn't know what he'd done to deserve that.

Part of him wondered if one day you'd realize you deserved better.

You studied him for a moment before responding, your voice just as soft, “You're my best friend. I'd always choose you—no matter what.”

He went quiet.

Of course you would.

His gaze fell to his hands again, trying to stop the grin threatening to spread across his face.

Those words, they're so you.

You always believed there was something worth choosing in him.

That, that made him want to become someone who deserved it.

Someone better.

Better, for you.

“…Yeah,” he said softly after a beat.

— 🐰

Norman turned back his gaze to his son. “Harry, it amazes me that you haven’t invited your fiancée to dinner.”

The young man fell silent.

Ever since the phone call, it was clear his father had held some sort of interest toward you. Not the weird kind, obviously.

Norman joined him for dinner more often, asking how his day went. Asking what you did.

Harry sputtered, “Dad—what? How?”

It wasn't like he explicitly told his father, “Hey! Me and [Name] are engaged!”

So, how could he have come up with that? As a matter of fact, a lot of people had been assuming. Jake was just one of the first ones.

His father looked even more confused than before, a crease forming between his brows.

“Mr. Norman, Harry and I—we’re just friends, sir.”

Then, Norman laughed. Like, loudly. It sounded so real that Harry almost shivered in fear.

When was the last time he heard his father laugh like that? Maybe it was when Harry made a mess of his hair when he was five or something.

“Oh! I’m sorry for assuming then!” He still looked amused, wearing that picture-perfect smile.

Norman shook his head with a grin, looking younger. “I just assumed that if my son doesn’t call you his partner, then you must be his fiancée. He can be rather formal sometimes.”

Harry scoffed. In hindsight, all he'd ever done was tell his father stories about you—never once mentioning that the two of you were just friends.

Harry rolled his eyes. “Ugh, Dad. Seriously?” he muttered under his breath, embarrassed.

“But still. Come by for dinner sometime.” He gestured to the sleek black car. “Would you like us to drive you home?”

Dinner and being with you instead of being stuck with his dad? Sounds like a gold mine.

Harry still doesn't know what the hell his dad is doing at his school. Norman had never personally picked up his own son.

It raised some alarms in his head. Maybe he had done something stupid again.

“No thank you, Mr. Norman, sir,” you smiled. “I have my own ride—just got caught up in traffic.”

Ugh. Of course. Harry doesn't get why you can't just ditch your siblings.

The older man nodded. “I see. It was nice meeting you, but we have to get going now.”

“It was nice meeting you too, sir.”

The older man nodded again and finally retreated into the passenger seat.

Harry looked downcast as he heard your refusal. “I’ll see you next time, [Name].”

You rolled your eyes. “Of course you will. Don’t make your dad wait up.” You lightly pushed him toward the car door.

The next conversation that ensued was far too embarrassing for his liking. What the hell had gotten into his dad?

—

You were being weird again, but it went away quickly.

By weird, he meant staring off into the space next to him—being paranoid around him.

Then, as if a switch had been flipped, you became normal again.

Normal as in, the way you act after the field trip sickness incident. You've been out of it for a while now.

Things that never used to bother you before bothered you now. Like how loud everything was, the weather, and sometimes you'd point out something that couldn't even be seen from that far away.

Why was everybody so weird lately?

You had been ranting about your brother who used to have a bowl cut. Tam? Was it?

He had broken your project, and Harry was angry on your behalf. Who bumps into a person, ruins their project, and doesn't say sorry? An asshole.

Suddenly, you walked in a different direction. Harry was about to redirect you, pointing you toward the cafeteria. Maybe you'd gone crazy from your siblings.

Then, he heard loud cheering and noises.

You continued walking toward the loud cheers, while Harry wondered how you had heard it from so far away.

The thought was pushed to the back of his mind as he saw the situation in front of him, though.

“Flash! Cut it out!” Harry yelled, his brows furrowed.

That blond idiot just doesn't know when to stop. Seriously, what pleasure does he find in this?

Before he knew it, and before he could stop you—you were already face to face with Flash. The roughed-up kid took this chance to flee.

Harry's eyes widened. You're gonna do something stupid.

“Puny Wayne! Just what we needed!” He made a show of arrogantly spreading his arms.

“Came to play hero?” Flash tilted his head, stepping closer to you. Harry couldn't even imagine the diabolical stink.

Crap, you're gonna get beat. Two against one big, burly football player seems fair enough.

“Back off, Flash.” Harry barely made it a step forward before two of Flash’s goons slipped behind him, grabbing his arms and yanking him back.

Gods, he's gonna have to stand here and watch you get punted by Flash.

“Hey—what the hell? Let go!” Harry struggled, twisting against their grip, but they only tightened it, laughing under their breath.

“Stay out of it, rich boy,” one of them muttered.

Shit, shit, shit—

Without warning, he swung. A wide, cocky punch meant more to impress the crowd than land clean.

You dropped low, leaning your upper body downward as the punch cut through the space above you.

Harry looked down at your upside-down, surprised eyes. He could feel his jaw slacken.

What?

Flash tried to land another punch on you.

And you dodged every single one of them.

You were moving too fast for Harry's eyes to track, Flash getting more and more frustrated by the second.

Harry smiled, the concern he had felt earlier fading into pride and giddiness.

Then, you punched Flash. Square on the nose.

It was so hard that he could hear the bone crunch.

Harry's smile faded into a jaw drop. “[Name]!” His voice went unheard beneath the crowd's shouts.

What was that? The strength looked madly unnatural for someone like you to possess.

Flash's henchmen released Harry from their hold.

The young man's incredulous gaze remained fixed on you as you were dragged to the guidance counselor's office—completely desensitized to the chaos happening around him.

Something's going on with you.

And Harry plans on finding out what.

A/N: SORRY FOR TAKING SO LONG OMGG.. Yay! Harry POV hope yu guys dont scream at me with pitchforks

Taglist: @bath1lda @iloveescara @astraeasworld @uivira @soupiemeowmeow @lettucel0ver @mathpotstew @ch3rrvreds @h34rtdaniii @ireallylikesnakes00 @shuukkii @nnphmm @nisarelle @milesmilesmiles825825 @3zae-zae3 @chairoart @wishesofficial @yurikokats @yoruuuen @deaddino3 @hime44444 @tamsytamsytamsy @kingshitonly @where-is-charlotte @itshoney-14 @bat1212 @heartnebulosa @whatamoodhoney @limerenceisserenity @evilscientistwithevilintentions @arminssoulmate @alittlewhelmed @hwanin @suvivve @timebomb1101 @nice-nice-dazey @sarah-luz @leogf @kimowo1 @justanotherweeb666 @cryptidkai @trixiepoplogo @obsidianvalkyriecrest @myselfsabotage @celesteelysia @jaydensluv @mann3qu1nh3ad @ot8srzlover @stupidtbetch @jaded-jade-is-jaded @rebelioussavant @artsyfawn @lailqll @venom-laced-words @byvenomdollz @ghostxmio @kohaiyuki @well-its-ella @risu-es @ghostlyworld @mothintheskies @starrydustedwinter @sleppyann @jsprien213 @amberlino @darkxwoflsstuff @rawnoquestion @im-so-goddamn-tired @chiizulvr @wendee-go @venomsvl @changbinbinbin @lunaryoongie @sodapopin-23 @hedarlin @kitkatq05 @jeshomie @kirbyscriptsstuff @deeshag @1marine-1

".. Hey, wanna talk about all that?" Steph asked, shutting the door to Cassandra's room as the latter took a seat on her bed. No response, her head lulled against the wooden doorframe and sighed, "Then you wanna tell me what happened when you visited them?"

Cassandra looked up and nodded, "Mhm" she replied, scooting over a bit to make room with Stephanie beside herself.

Steph walked over, taking her usually spot and settling in before looking at Cass, her gaze clearing communicating for her.

A soft hum exited her throat, "hm… it was better than expected" she said, "They didn't lash out again, but they did cry.. it was confusing, but they forgave me, I'm not sure if they meant it or not though, I think you would if you were there."

"Ha ha Cass, real funny" Steph replies, shaking her head mockingly at her while pushing out her lips to pout in an overly exaggerated manner.

Cassandra chuckle softly, it was subdued and pleasant to the ear, "I know, but there was this.. tenseness to them, it was too familiar to me, like fear, or uncertainty?"

"Psh.. I can relate to that.." Stephanie added, "But being honest, hundred percent honest— do you think they'd forgive me??"

She clearly didn't get the answer that she wanted, as Cass pursed her lips with thought, words stuck behind them that she hesitated to say. Stephanie's expression fell.

".. that bad huh..?"

"Not—" Cass looked up at Steph, her crestfallen expression told her it was better to be honest than lie. Her shoulders fell forward, "Unfortunately."

Steph fell back onto her bed, sighing as she rubbed her face with her hands, palms pressed against her eyes, fingers tapping her forehead. "You know I didn't mean to mess up this bad with them right?"

"I know.." Cass replied, she held Steph's hand gently, not fully. Only holding her fingers softly, as if she was playing with them, rubbing the space between them mindlessly.

Steph raised her fingers to hold hers back and sighed, "Do you think they'd forgive me..?" Her voice was despondent, she almost winced as she asked.

Cass breathed out, "I don't know—"

"But you said everything's fine!"

"I know what I said, but—" her mind backtracked to the memory of you, tearing up for unknown reasons while your friends crowded you the same way family should've. Her head shook softly, "the way they were, I wouldn't be surprised if they avoid me tomorrow, do you understand what I mean..?" It was hard for her to convey what she meant, you were complicated in a way that neither she nor the others could decipher.

At least that's what she believed.

Stephanie grabbed her hand gently, sighing with watery eyes, "what can I even do then..? If it's not worth anything, then why try? Should I just give up!?"

"I don't think that's a good idea, isn't that why this happened in the first place..??" Cass said, not to be snarky, but just being honest.

Steph couldn't speak after that, not about you, or anything close to that topic, she just let her forehead fall against Cassandra's shoulder and huffed.

".. can we just have a movie night?" She felt Cass smile as her neck raised slightly.

"Of course."

─── ´ˎ˗

You stretched out over Isla's pullout bed, the springs underneath you squeaked as you did so. Signing, you grabbed your phone to look at whatever would be on its interface.

First the time— already the afternoon though it made sense after the previous day.

Then the day, only Sunday, which meant you had to go back to school, which meant possibly seeing Timothy, which was at this point in your life, one of the worst things to happen. The next thing would be any kind of villain attack because it's Gotham and your city's bad guys are deranged.

You looked down then, not as many notifications as you'd have thought, though there is one from Alfred, and a few from the group chat with Isla and Oli.

ALFRED: young master, what do you plan to do with your books?

Quickly you groaned, that's right, you forgot them.

[ME]: okay so,

[ME]: hear me out, you drop them off for me..?

[ME]: PLEASE, you have errands to do right? I'll meet u at one of them and grab my books then, please??

ALFRED: I'm more concerned on why you are resting so late but I will excuse it for it is the weekend.

[ME]: sooooo, abt the books?

ALFRED: Very well young master, I have an errand at the veterinary clinic, a routine check up for Alfred at two.

[ME]: I'm assuming ur talking about the cat but I'm asking just to be sure

ALFRED: Yes, the cat of master Damian's.

[ME]: cool, cool, that's not too far from where Oli is working today so I'll stop by [STICKER]

[ALFRED]: Very well. [STICKER]

[ME]: I'll never get over u using the sticker pack I sent u

You smiled at your screen before placing it down and stretching, Isla isn't here and the apartment sounds pretty quiet so it means she's likely out with her mom right now, and Oliver probably left earlier than that for his shift at work.

Just to confirm, you checked the group chat. A few unread messages from the two of them.

ISLA: OLI, WHERE DID YOU GO!? [STICKER]

OLIVER: Work, Isla, I went to work..!

ISLA: oh, ok, [STICKER]

OLIVER: [STICKER]

You chuckled, placing down your phone and stepping off the bed as you stood, feet against the rough carpet of Isla's bedroom, her window opened a inch as the curtain flowed with the air it provided.

Carefully stepping out of her room, the threshold of the floor swiping from carpet to cold, smooth vinyl, a tiny drop of your bottom as you entered the kitchen, then turning to the right to use the bathroom, stretching as you did so.

You rounded where the outer corner of Isla's room was, eyes lingering on the nearby table beside the balcony. Then turning away your attention to use the bathroom.

In the other room, you heard your phone buzz a few times before it was cut off by you shutting the door. After a few minute you walked back into her room, squeezing past the door which caught on the edge of the pullout.

You grabbed your phone and tossed the blankets off before tucking the pullout bed back under its original one. Taking the time to fold your blankets and placing them on the edge of Isla's room, you didn't exactly have an unlimited amount of clothes, but you shoved enough in to last another day or two, which didn't matter because Isla's mom washed tour clothes for you.

It was then the sound of the front door, followed by two voices you knew very well, you peered out of Isla's door and felt your lips curve upward.

Isla waddled in, right before her mom did, bags of groceries in her arms while her mom held two on her forearm, closing the front door with her free hand. "You're awake!" Isla said, quickly walking over to the table and dropping the bags into it.

Finally free of the weight, she ran over to hug you, "just so y'know, you snore." She added, her arms wrapped around you, her necklace hanging from her neck tapped yours gently before she pulled away.

"Liar, I don't."

"Yes you do, anyways— amma, what's for dinner?" she looked over to her mom who was tucking things away into the refrigerator.

"Last night I started to prep masala dosa, I'll finish making it tonight, is Oliver staying again?" Her mom asked.

Isla shook her head, "it's a school night amma, I don't think his parents let him stay out on school nights."

Her mom nodded, noting it down in her head without saying anything, suddenly reminded of Oliver you tapped Isla on the shoulder, she looked at you, waiting for whatever you were going to say.

You sighed, "So about my books— Alfred said he'd drop them off for me, but I gotta meet him at the veterinary clinic, y'know the one close to Oli's job?"

"The one on fourth by the mall?" She questioned, walking over to her room while you followed, she opened her door and swished open her curtains with a flourish, pushing open her window more.

"Yeah, that one, at two Alfred said he'd drop off my books, it's only one right now though, wanna come with me then spend the rest of the day with Oli?"

She smiled, "Of course! Wanna go early?"

You shrugged, "sure, think Oli will mind?"

Her head shook, "probably not, his boss is cool right? I'll text him just incase and you should probably change" she chuckled, already pulling her phone out of her pocket.

You smiled amusedly before grabbing a change of clothes and walking to the bathroom to quickly change.

When you came back out, she shook her phone in front of your face, "He said it's all good! Just cleared it with his boss!"

Oli had a job, part time of course. It was at a pharmacy where he stocked shelves, labeled shelves and kept track of storage, all under the only title of 'employee' but he didn't mind.

The pharmacy wasn't all that fun to hang around, but it was the kind inside the mall by the entrance, so you could always go elsewhere, or just wait until Oliver was done with work because it made you feel bad hanging out without him, so you never did.

You chucked on your clothes and quickly went out to see Isla, talking to her mom about anything while you grabbed your backpack from her room, pretty light because most of your clothes were in the laundry.

Tossing your arm through the loop as it landed on your back, you tapper her shoulder and she turned around with a smile, wearing her little purse which was bedazzled with handmade pins and keychains. Her hand grabbed yours as she waved to her mom, "bye amma!"

"Bye aunty!" You said, running with Isla as you quickly walked down all the flights of stairs, using her hand to push open the door, walking with you as her shoes tapped against the ground all the way to the bus stop.

─── ´ˎ˗

Alfred treated himself to cleaning a more secluded area of the manor, given how much stress was in the household. He decided to clean your room— the one you moved into without anyone besides him knowing— while you were gone, not knowing how long you were planning to stay elsewhere.

Of course he then noticed how you left most of your books in your room, and sighed. Taking out his cellular device, he sent you a message before using his duster to clean up all the specks of dust, and changing your bedding for when you get back.

When you texted him back, he was slightly relieved to see you still being yourself. Though a part of him knows he doesn't need to worry, he's only met your friends a handful of times when they've snuck in, but they seem to take care of you where he couldn't.

The house was more tense than usual, and the day before only proved it.

Alfred sighed and continued on with his day, picking up Alfred the cat, and tucking him into the pet carrier as he placed it into the passenger seat with the rest of his things needed for the outing in the back seat. He read the time, quarter to two.

Enough time to get to the veterinary clinic, eyes glancing to the back seat where your books and spare uniform sat beside his other bearings and started the vehicle.

Quickly picking up a parcel for one of the residents of the manor, and then heading towards the veterinary clinic with Alfred the cat in tow.

He stepped out of the car and stepped around it to the passengers side, picking up the pet carrier and lining up the bag strap with the lining of his coat jacket, he shut the door, locking it with the key and slipped it into his coat pocket.

Wondering when you'd show up, he checked his watch and let a small glint enter his eyes, pleased that he made it at exactly two o'clock, he entered and talked to the staff before passing over Alfred the car and taking a seat nearby.

He hummed, grabbing a nearby outdated magazine and indulging in it, a mention of Bruce Wayne on the first page. Not his typical source of news, but they didn't have the newspaper on hand.

The appointment wouldn't take more than half an hour based on past experience, that's when the door opened, the bell above it ringing gently as it rattled back and forth. His eyes glanced aside, head raising a bit more as you greeted him.

"Alfred! Hey!" You smiled, your friend coming in behind you as she glanced around curiously, smiling at the staff and then at him.

"Young master." He said calmly, standing up as he placed the magazine back onto the pile, "I have your items ready in the vehicle, please come this way."

Isla chuckled and teased you about having an old-timer butler, then she turned to Alfred and assured him it was in a good way. 'Was there a bad way?' He thought to himself.

Only a handful of paces outside the veterinary clinic was the car, he tapped the button of the key as it beeped, a signal that the car was unlocked. His gloved hand wrapped around the handle and pulled open the door to the back seat, your books and a laundry bag sat side by side.

"Thanks Alfred!" You said, quickly taking your bag off of your back and putting your books inside it, checking all of them one by one as they disappeared. Your eyes glanced over the laundry bag, head turning to the side questionably.

"That is yours young master" he said, you looked back to it and grabbed it, opening it quickly and grinning.

"My uniform! Alfie you shouldn't have!" You spoke, quickly handing it to Isla as she took it under her arm without complaint, you turned away and shut the door, but when you went to turn back Alfred raised his hand, a gesture for you to wait.

You glanced at Isla then back at him as he dug his hand into his inner coat pocket before handing you an envelope. You looked at him confused before opening it and choking on your own breath.

A fair amount of cash sat in it, you looked back up and he simply said, "Your allowance, young master."

"My allowance? Alfred you shouldn't-"

"Please, it is yours to have, master Bruce never took it away from you, if everyone else has theirs, so will you." He replied plainly.

All was and should be fair under his eyes. Especially in recent times.

You looked at him in surprise, by your side Isla shook your shoulder playfully, whispering about how you should just take it.

Well, it was Bruce's money, and you were one to take advantage of it, so.. you tucked it into your bag and zipped it up tightly with a beaming grin, Isla hugged your arm while you looked at Alfred with a thankful glance.

"Thank you Alfred."

"Of course, young master."

Now that your exchange was over, he thought you'd leave without another word, but to his surprise your said something to her friend, the girl— Isla, looked at you with a bit of confusion before switching to understanding, spinning on her souls she waved to you while walking away.

You looked back to Alfred and shrugged, "wanna talk?"

He smiled kindly at you, "would be my pleasure, young master."

─── ´ˎ˗

Oliver was having a rather smooth day, he woke up with breakfast thanks to Isla's mom, he didn't miss his bus, and he managed to go home, change into his uniform, and get to the pharmacy before his shift started.

Not to mention there wasn't too many customers, so he was able to do his work without having to wait for people to clear out of crowded isles. You and Isla arrived and spent a little bit of time talking to him before leaving some time around two, getting a few of your things from the butler he knew as Alfred.

So why on earth had Dick Grayson just walked into the place?

All he was doing as stocking the vitamin section, when the ding from the automatic doors sounded to signal a person had walked in. It wasn't loud, or anything, nor did it demand his attention, so he diligently kept organizing things on the shelf.

That was until someone tapped on his shoulder, he glanced a little over his shoulder, apron scrunching up because that was a part of the uniform. "Hey! Sorry, quick question— do you know where the protein powder sold here is?"

Protein powder? Dusting himself off and using the shelf before him to stand, he faced the person only to freeze. 'Oh my god it's Dick Grayson' he thought panickedly.

Dick, ever the detective, noticed that the teenager had frozen and just thought it was because of him being one of the faces of Gotham's elite. He smiled brightly, "hey!"

".. hi" Oliver said, quickly snapping attention back into place, he had to get this guy out of here, before you and Isla came back. You because you definitely didn't want to see any of your family, and Isla because she'd absolutely try to deck this man.

He cleared his throat and gave him the classic customer service smile, "protein powder? Right this way" he said politely, walking away from one aisle and into another after passing a few, he walked down it, listening to the footsteps behind his, and stopped in front of a self.

Lifting his hand, he wave sit down the protein powder as a reveal and nodded, "here you go sir, is there anything in particular you're looking for today?"

Dick's head shook, "nah, just picking up something for my brother, he usually orders it online or something but forgot" he said casually, Oliver did his best to ease up, not wanting to cause suspicion because he was nervous.

"Well if that's all, I'll be back to working, just head to the cashier and she'll ring that up for you" he said, quickly walking out of view and then jogging back to his aisle where it stocked up all of the vitamins in the box before retreating to the back.

His manager looked at him like he was losing his head, and just sent him to go on break early because it was so empty and they could handle the customers without him. Helped that he was the youngest on shift, so he thanked his manager and ran out behind the building where the trash was.

Sliding down the wall, he sat beside it and sighed. Feeling the knot of his apron drag through the grooves of the concrete wall, the damp concrete underneath him stained his pants which didn't matter.

All he needed to do was wait ten minutes for the guy to be guaranteed gone, two minutes or less would suffice but he's too cautious for all that.

He ignored the people passing by the entrance of the mall and focused on the ground, picking at his nails quietly with trying to breath consistently. His lungs expanded and deflated with every breath he took, his eyes flickered open and closed, the sight of the ground disappearing and reappearing.

That only lasted so long before he heard footsteps approaching the small spot he found himself in, cornered by the garbage and staff entrance. He looked up, ready to accept the weird stare he'd get from a stranger.

But even worse than a stranger, it was Dick Grayson.

The man was looking at his phone, standing by the corner with his back against the wall, his face was pinched in a sort've anxious way, or, maybe worried?

It was then his shoes slid sideward an inch in the gravel, catching the attention of the man himself, Dick's head snapped to the sound, shoulders tense before relaxing as he saw it was just a worker.

"Hey kid, wanna tell me why you're by the trash?" He asked, tone lighter than his previous expression should have suggested as he tucked his phone into his pocket and turned his attention to Oliver.

".. on my break" he answered cautiously. Dick took notice of his tone, but the kid didn't seem to have anything to hide, so he chalked it up to general anxiety.

"Cool!" Dick replied, before turning his attention back to his phone. Using this opportunity, Oliver stood up and stretched.

"Well, I should probably be going back to work now, so.." he reached for the handle before being called out to.

"Hey wait!" Dick said, "quick question, just need some advice from a neutral party I guess."

Oliver froze, 'yeah, wrong person, I am not a neutral party' he thought to himself, lowering his hand from the handle before looking back at him. "What's up?"

Dick rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand while chucking nervously, "you uh.. have any siblings or?"

"Yeah, one older brother, why..?"

"Aha, perfect so just like-" Dick leaned against the wall, getting far too comfy for Oliver's liking. "My younger sibling, right? They- we…" he stumbled over his words a bit, "they're your age, right, and we, them and the family, had a fight earlier this week over a misunderstanding."

".. a misunderstanding?" Oliver said, as if it was a question but really he was just poking to see what it looked like from Dick's perspective.

"Well, my sibling right? Went missing for a bit before we found out they were on a trip without telling anyone, well— they told one person but y'know?" No, Oliver did not know, so he kept his mouth shut.

Dick continued, "we talked to them about it, but then they sort've.. exploded, at me and the others about how we don't really care about them, which isn't true!"

'Uh huh, sure' Oliver thought once again to himself.

"I mean, like.. everyone's just busy! With school or work, that doesn't mean we don't care!… what do you think?" He asked finally, lifting his head carefully to peer at Oliver.

Oliver sighed and crossed his arms, "I mean…" he remembered everything you had confided in him about— the moments where you waited for someone and no one came, the times everyone was polite to you, like a stranger, never inviting you out, never mentioning you to anyone. You were invisible in your own family, and Oliver was more than aware of it, you were a Wayne and you took the bus, that was telling enough.

He breathed out softly before shrugging, "I... I don't really know, sorry man, but I gotta get back to work" he said, before running back inside, the heavy staff door shutting heavily behind him.

In his stupor he didn't even notice who he just ran into, bumping into someone who rattled upon impact. "Oli?? I was looking for you- you okay?!"

Isla, he looked up and saw her, beaded bracelets and necklaces shining under the little light of the storage room. She looked at him, her brows pushing down on her eyes as she held his shoulders, "Oli, you okay??"

His eyes raced around from every corner of the room, his chest constrained as he breathed erratically, the sound of Isla's voice began ringing. "I don't-" he stuttered out.

"Hey-" she said, her lips moved but no sound reached him, he stumbled back away from her grip as he hit the wall and slumped down, the cold ground hit his palms as he heaved in breaths of sharp air.

He watched her retreat to the front of the store, his vision blurred as he kept trying to breath without choking, his head banged back into the wall behind him, head continuously swinging back and forth as he coughed, tears burned at his waterline and teared their way down his face onto his uniform.

There was a cinch at his heart, pulling on the strings of it chest clenching with every tug. The heat built up in his body before he realized it, face burning red, his fringe becoming a sweaty mess, hands becoming clammy.

A strangled sound clawed out of his throat, smothered as he cried, when did he switch to full blown crying, his senses distorted at the ringing in his ears reached that deep spot of his head far in the back, aching.

Then it snapped.

"Oli!" You shouted, falling to your knees and sliding on the ground to reach him, skin pulling against the dryness of the floor, Isla followed behind holding his work bag clutched to her chest.

Your hands held out to Isla who handed you his bag, you flipped open the door of it and dug through the contents, through his homework, charger, everything before pulling out a small pouch that jangled together.

Carefully you tugged open the opening, the strings of it disappearing into the thread, you shook it a little bit before looking to Oliver.

"Hold your hand out for me please?" You asked.

His hands shook as they lifted off the ground, holding nothing as they moved palms up, you gently led his hands together as they sat side by side on his lap before shaking two magnet stones into his hands, then taking his hands in your own and pressing them to in close the stones between his palms.

The coolness of the stones soothed his palms, his eyes opened to see things as he blinked them to make things more clear, the sight of your and Isla's blurry figures became more distinct.

His breath shook as he looked down to his hands, yours now pulling away while Isla grabbed his water bottle and held it to the back of his neck, instantly cooling the skin of his neck.

The tears in his eyes dried over the minutes he sat there while you and Isla stuck to his side wordlessly, slowly he began to rub his palms together, feeling the magnet stones connect and disconnect as he moved them apart.

His face scrunched up and relaxed with a heavy sigh out, his chest deflated and leaned his head back against the wall to relax.

".. sorry"

"If you apologize again I'm gonna hit you" Isla threatened, sitting in front of the staff door as her shins melted against the cold floors.

He huffed out a shaky laugh, "got it.." the thread that pulled at his mind settled, a moment of peace as he finally began think more certain. Two months since his last anxiety attack, and now there's this one, he scheduled them out of habit.

"Have a reason for this one, or just spur of the moment?" You asked, he shrugged his shoulder and you just nodded, "Gotchu, want me to take over your shift?"

His head nodded softly, "no.. thanks, I'm sorry but that's too much—" but when he looked at you, your face was immediately dim, frowning at you looked at him. "No saying sorry," you said sternly

He sighed, "I should work.." his body pushed itself off the ground, the magnet stones enclosed in one of his hands. "Can you guys just wait for me..? Sorry—"

"Isla." You said, in response she playfully punched his shoulder with zero strength behind it, he chuckled and looked up at you, stepping away from the wall.

"Got it, no more apologies, but thanks guys" he said, giving you two quick side hugs before excusing himself, headed to the bathroom to wash up and cool himself down a bit more with the magnet stones in his uniform pocket. Brushing back his hair he walked back out to where you and Isla stood by the cashiers counter.

He hesitated before hugging you both, taking in a shaky breath, "thanks, really."

"We're your friends, we'd wait until we're ninety for you."

Isla chuckled at your words, "they're right! Even if like, one of us dies before that or something.." it was funny to you because you knew that reviving was possible, hell, Jason did it, but you stayed quiet, keeping the thoughts to yourself.

Running off, Oliver apologized to the shift manager and got back to work, stocking shelves while you and Isla sat outside the pharmacy.

Waving at him periodically whenever he would pass by the front store window.

─── ´ˎ˗

Dick had to wait for Damian to come back from whatever he was doing, apparently out on some kind of business so even if he came to Gotham just for the boy he still had to wait until at least five or so he'd been told.

Wouldn't be the first time one of his siblings lied to him though.

Instead of waiting around the manor, he walked around the mall, being such a kind older brother he asked if anyone needed anything while he was there.

[ME]: Hey!! Anyone need anything? I'm at the mall!

JASON: protein powder

[ME]: alright, stopping by the supermarket

JASON: no, not from the market from the pharmacy, forgot to order online

[ME]: what's the difference??

JASON: the difference is stfu and get me the protein powder

[ME]: damn; okay!! [STICKER]

STEPH: DID U STEAL MY STICKER PACK??

TIM: you can't steal a sticker pack Steph.

STEPH: the hell you can't!

CASS: I agree with Steph

DUKE: second

TIM: YOU ALWAYS DO

[ME]: ITS JUST STICKERS, does ANYONE need anything?

JASON: protein powder mf

[ME]: I GOT THAT DOWN ALREADY

JASON: [STICKER]

TIM: LMAO, anyways nah, I'm all good

DUKE: me too

STEPH: Me and Cass wanna have a movie night, get snacks!

[ME]: the usuals? Will do, and yes Jason I'll get your protein powder specifically from the pharmacy for some reason

JASON: [STICKER]

DUKE: yk you can just say thank you right

JASON: [STICKER]

Dick huffed in disbelief at his phone before stepping out of his car with the list in mind, he'd go to the supermarket and then the pharmacy on his way out, plan made, time to execute it.

He went in, walked around a bit— ignoring stares from onlookers who were drawn in either by his reputation or general good looks, and grabbed basket to fill with snacks.

He got everyone's favorites, part of him hesitated around that point, everyone except yours, he didn't know what you liked, maybe he should text you and find out?

'Worth a shot' he thought.

[ME]: hey! Picking up some stuff for the family, need any snacks?

He looked at his screen, message seen, read— and ignored.

Well, shot given and missed, nothing else to it, he reluctantly continued his trip, wasn't all that much to pack into the disposable plastic bag in self-check- out, then he headed to the pharmacy because of Jason's adamant refusal to have it from the supermarket.

He walked through the linoleum floors of the mall, his shoes tapped against it softly, almost satisfyingly as he felt light on his feet.

Then he arrived at the pharmacy, not entirely familiar with it having been living in Bludhaven, so he did the responsible thing and approached an employee.

A boy, around Tim's age, maybe yours too? Dick was certain you were around Tim's age at least, crouched down by a box and shelf, stocking it one container at a time.

He walked closer, smiling at the boy who glanced back, "Hey! Sorry, quick question— do you know where the protein powder sold here is?"

The boy was kind enough to show him and ask if that's all before leaving, Dick thought that'd be all.. until he ran into the guy again.

He was walking out of the mall, with his eyes glued to his phone, and tsk'd as he texted Bruce, making sure to tell him that things have to change with the man being slightly avoidant about the topic itself.

[ME]: B, cmon, you can't just ignore what happened

BRUCE: It's not ignorance, I will deal with it when I have to but I am busy, as are you.

He didn't mean to drop all that on a teenage boy, but he needed the advice and who else was he gonna talk to? A therapist? No way, he needed someone who'd get it, yet for some reason the kid seemed to grow increasingly more anxious as the conversation went on.

It wasn't hostile, just cautious for some reason, and Dick couldn't tell why, he watched the boy retreat back inside through the back entrance and sighed. Shoving his phone into the bag with the protein powder and snacks, head resting back against the brick wall.

Even with the one more item in the bag, it felt significantly heavier than five minutes ago, he stood there for a few minutes, taking in the Gotham air while the bag swung by his side, tapping the wall behind him every few sways.

After a bit he checked his phone, and then groaned. "The fuck Jay.." he said, reading the message.

JASON: forgot to mention, I want the protein powder with the chocolate, did u get that one?

[ME]: I got whatever one was on the damn shelf Jay!

STEPH: okay wait strawberries sound rlly good rn, me and Cass were talking about them, can u pick some up?

[ME]: IM ALREADY OUTSIDE OF THE MALL?? [STICKER]

CASS: Get strawberries

DUKE: oh wait, we talking fruit? Can you pick up some pineapple or grapes?

[ME]: I thought you didn't want anything!!

DUKE: I didn't know fruit was on the table!

DAMIAN: you are all ridiculous.

JASON: yeah u too kid

STEPH: don't get anything for Damian, he's being rude

DAMIAN: I didn't ask for anything Brown.

STEPH: and you'll never get it!

DAMIAN: That doesn't make sense.

CASS: you don't make sense

[ME]: OK, fruit, and chocolate protein powder specifically, I got it.

He chuckled to himself underneath his breath, "damn siblings!" His body turned back to the entrance, before realizing he should just take what he has already to the car and then reuse the bag.

Which he did, after picking through the best fruit, pineapples, strawberries, grapes, all of it, he finally got to the check out and threw it into the bag, making sure the pineapple didn't stab through the bottom. His scanned his card and tucked it safely back into his wallet before throwing it into the bag and walking all the way through to re-visit the pharmacy.

Except.. Outside it, sitting on the ground with a girl around the same age, was you, between you was a bag he recognized, your school on which was squished between your bodies, using it like an armrest.

You didn't notice him, busy watching your phone with the girl who was probably your friend— likely, unless she was just a really friendly stranger.

And you looked so, carefree, you leaned against her, smiling and snickering to one another while your eyes glued to the screen, hand holding the back of your phone to keep it steady.

Then you looked up, and that warmth you wore, it was like you couldn't even breath that kind of air with him near. Your expression harder, the girl beside you following his gaze did the same, and like the idiot he was, not taking the hint.

Raised his hand, smiled bright enough to challenge the lights above him, and waved, "Hey!"

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

another chapter finished, I think I’ll take a small break, I was simply going to take a day off but I think another would do me some good, I’ve been feeling negative about my writing, I heavily dislike it a lot, it’s stale and not my best, I’m very sorry.

This is such a mess.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

T A G L I S T

@maradcrs @pennyisangstyhelp-blog @eveeevelyn @yoruuuen @artsukin @mariana11zx2 @princesslang @princesscosmo @sarah-luz @izukusbiggestfan @itsangelic @pearlyribbons @sunnyboysignal @j-kianab @alephless @dxbriaskibdio @uivira @iamthegreatergood @red-hood132 @junevtv @kohaiyuki @ninininini08 @mewmew222 @rxi-pop @analogicthought @stormnightingale @yoyogirl67 @the-midnight-king-of-poets @roxanne-likes-randomly @anidiots @v10l3tst4tqc @losingmybrain @dreamndestiny @cookiepersona @batt-z @marzi-pan-dulce @kekeanna266 @rho-229 @corach4n @rad4bean @husbandofmihawk @herdarlin @notxxvidya @leahgokam @thypplover @oscarquokka @1chaerry @leilakeila @fire126 @applesodie

-> thank you all for supporting this series 🩶

♫ NOTES: taglist is closed

"You want me to what?" 

You had only just come to terms with your family's secret identities as Gotham's famed masked protectors and the existence of an entire high-tech batcave under the house that you thought you knew from front to back when your and John's mentor and mentee relationship was called into question. Reasonable, you suppose, that Bruce wants to evaluate how well you've developed under Constantine's unorthodox teaching. 

It's why you're stood opposite Dick and Jason on the training mat, your brothers both clad in gym wear with unperturbed expressions. Steph tries to give you a thumbs-up for good luck, but Cass just stands impassively. You fidget with the waistband of your sweatpants and look back at John and Bruce, "Fight them? They'll obliterate me, like no contest!" 

Damian scoffs something like 'weakling' under his breath from where he's sat observing the session beside Tim, who has his laptop ready to take notes on your magical ability. John shakes his head, "Kiddo, don't make me look bad. You know you can take them." 

"Oh, is that so?" Dick teases with a grin, stretching his triceps. Jason cracks his knuckles, his big, burly figure intimidating enough that he doesn't even have to say anything. 

You shoot John a desperate look, to which your mentor offers a reassuring nod, eyes conveying more than words his belief in you.

Bruce crosses his arms as he looks you over, "It's not a test, I just want to gauge your abilities and how your training should proceed." 

John wanted to make a snide remark that his training was progressing your abilities just fine, but he kept his mouth shut for once as Bruce called for the spar to start. It's like a switch is flipped, your eyes narrow as you let out a sharp exhale, John recognises that look of strategy. You're tougher than you give yourself credit for.

Your mental incanation offers your brothers no way to predict your moves. It takes them by surprise when, with a loud snap, a whip of shimmering dark energy shoots past them. 

Their heads turn to see the whip wrap around a nearby pillar instead of them, and Dick spins back to tease you, "Looks like you missed-" He's promptly cut off by a kick to the face.

The whip having been used to pull you forward at breakneck speeds to roundhouse kick Dick in the temple. Bruce's shoulders tense as he watches his son stumble from the force of your kick, and before Jason can respond with his own attack, eyes widening- re-evaluating your threat level in real time, you're rushing him. Your hand covers his eyes, and you quickly whisper guttural Latin into his ear. 

Jason's eyes roll back, flashing a shimmering black colour, and his heavy body immediately slumps over into deep sleep. You struggle to put his body down gently on the mat. John has to restrain himself from shouting out in celebration like a football manager at a match, biting his lip in anticipation of seeing how you proceed.

Dick is rubbing his already bruised jaw, brows furrowed as he readies his stance, more cautious this time. You don't relent, summoning daggers of dark light which surge forwards. Dick flips and dodges them, turning round and round in an attempt to avoid slashes from the magical weapons, which just turn around to attack again when he slips past them. 

"Damn- kid, what the hell-" Dick grunts, steadily being overwhelmed by the unrelenting dodging, back flipping over another twin daggers. 

Steph is cheering for you, probably just entertained that someone is giving the golden boy a good fight. Damian is oddly silent, and Tim is frantically typing and cataloguing- if he'd known about these abilities of yours, god, the amount of situations you could've helped prevent, Tim is partly frustrated as he is admiring. 

The Bat-family were strong, of course, but keeping up with metas almost became impossible with the outlandish all-powerful abilities that they seemed to have. You could've been their trump card, the magic user on their side- well, you are their trump card now. Tim's already eager to have you by his side on patrols if his restrained expression is any indication. He's calling dibs on you for patrol partners. 

You're panting, hands outstretched to focus your magic, and you finally get a good slash against Dick's calf. He falters, and you take the opportunity to pounce, pinning your older brother to the mat with clasps made of the same dark shimmering energy that hovers around you when spell casting. You sit on his back, victorious.

John pumps his fist in the air before he can think about quelling his pride or excitement, "Yes!" Stephanie similarly is clapping for you; Bruce is watching with an unreadable expression, and Jason is peacefully snoring a little way away.

"God, damn it," Dick huffs from under you, "John taught you to do all that?" 

You nod tiredly, moving off him and releasing your magic. Jason startles awake, extremely confused and spots Dick lying on the mat in defeat, and looks even more confused. You stumble towards John, who grabs you into a proud hug. You manage an exhausted laugh, chin resting on his shoulder, "Did I do good?" 

"So good, kiddo," He smooths down your hair like a fretting father, "You kicked their damn arses in less than five minutes." 

Bruce catches the familiar display, and a strange feeling floods his stomach; another man acting like a father to his adopted child- he didn't appreciate the sight. He speaks up, "Indeed, you exceeded my expectations." You give him a small smile over John's shoulder.

Damian has his arms crossed haughtily at the scene, and he side-eyes Bruce, "You don't ever react like that when we excel in spars." Cass hums in agreement. Bruce doesn't acknowledge that with a response.

John moves to release you from his hold when his hands feel your wettened back, his hands pulling away stained red, and he grimaces. Of course, you overextended yourself. He sees you already looking away guiltily, "What did I say about overusing your magic?" 

"Not to do it," You sigh, turning your back to him in a practised motion. He pulls the back of your shirt up to cast some soothing spells onto your scarred back. 

Bruce's gaze snaps back, and he steps over, "You're hurt?" Tim even stops typing, worry clouding his expression. Dick and Jason sit up on the mat at the morbid sight of your back: some occult sigil had been carved into your back, years old by the colour of the scars, but the skin was raw and irritated, it seemed, seeping blood. 

Bruce recognises it; he didn't think those marks had a purpose beyond being mutilation that the cult had inflicted upon you in your youth. He was wrong. "Answer me, Constantine. What is it?" 

John tuts, setting you down gently on a nearby medical bed after his spells of relief make you immediately fall asleep. "They're sigils of magic conduction and strengthening. Normally, just carving stuff like this doesn't do much, but it seems whatever intention or ritual was behind this actually worked." 

John glances over at Bruce, wanting answers as much as the other man. "I will make the information available to you." The other bat family siblings look between the men, annoyed with the secrecy. 

Stephanie tucks the cover over you after Cass gently wipes your back free of blood, and Steph voices their collective frustration, "What information? Who did this? Why won't you tell us?"