ALPACA @0wawaweewa0 - Tumblr Blog

Blue as can be

#002

Platonic!Batfam × Terminally ill!Neglected!Reader

"You're a big girl now."

synopsis: you're dying and you're okay with that, but the family that's been ignoring you since ever isn't.

warnings (tags): f!reader, angst, neglect, smoking, Dick is delusional, idk just tell me if a miss something, not reviewed work may have wrong grammar.

mareszawrites

hiii!, if you don’t mind me asking could you do platonic!batfam x civilian!batsib reader who ends up getting taken by the joker and if feels weirdly familiar to what happened to jason. ty for reading my req :3

Too Late.

Chapter 1: Smile.

platonic!batfam x civilian!Reader.

omg guys, is my first ask!!!!! I’m so happy and I work hard for it. Since the asker didn’t specify the gender, I did it as GN. I hope you guys like it, part two is coming soon!

Value.

Such a simple word, yet one that has sparked countless debates. To some, value is measured in wealth, in possessions, status, and things that can be bought. To others, it lies in something far less tangible. It isn't purchased, but earned through love, trust, sacrifice, and time.

For Y/N Wayne, however, the word had long since lost its meaning. After all, they had never been considered worthy of anything. Not worthy of love. Not worthy of attention. Not even worthy of hatred. Because to hate someone, you first have to acknowledge that they exist, and no one has spared Y/N more than a passing glance.

Being a Wayne is no easy task. Being a normal Wayne is even worse. And that's where you, Y/N Wayne, fits. Not a genius, like Tim. No overwhelming charism, like Dick. Too normal. Too boring. Forgettable. Y/N weren't unloved because anyone chose to be cruel towards them, but because everyone assumed someone else was looking after them. And that… That was the mistake that led the Batfamily towards regret and pain.

melodies-fics

Batfamily Masterlist

✧˖°.⊹࣪˖^._.^ฅ⊹࣪˖°.✧

🦇Series🦇

Delusions of Indifference

Yandere Batfamily x Not Neglected! reader

Prologue

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five (in the works…)

🩷🦇🩷

🦇Requests🦇

(To anyone requesting DC, please note that, unless specifically requested otherwise, any requests that involve the Joker in any way, shape, or form will always end with him fucking dying lol)

Yandere Batfamily with trypanophobic trans reader

Yandere Batfamily with reader kidnapped by the Joker

Yandere Alfred Pennyworth

Yandere Batfamily with germaphobic touch starved reader

Yandere Batfamily bickering over who’s the favorite

Day in the life of kidnapped reader

🩷🦇🩷

🦇Drabbles🦇

AITA for hitting the Joker with my car?

🩷🦇🩷

🦇Asks🦇

Yandere Batfamily with sick/chronically ill reader

• Yandere Batfamily with terminally ill/dying reader

Yandere Batfamily with not easily infantilized reader

Yandere Batfamily with reader who has someone they can’t live without

Yandere Batfamily on reader’s birthday

Yandere Bruce with reader whose birthday falls on his parents’ death date

Yandere Batfamily with trans reader

Yandere Batfamily after discovering reader’s favorite family member

What if someone outside of the Batfamily is already obsessed with reader?

Circumstances in which Yandere Batfamily will let reader parent their own damn child (extension of not easily infantilized reader)

Yandere Batfamily with baby reader

Yandere Batfamily with traumatized serial killer reader

Yandere Batfamily with soldier aunt/uncle reader

Yandere Selina Kyle

Yandere Batfamily with Damian’s classmate reader

How far does Yandere Batfamily go with infantilization?

🩷🦇🩷

🦇Concepts🦇

Batfamily with Yandere neglected reader

• Batfamily after escaping from Yandere neglected reader

Joker’s child! reader

Aftermath of Joker’s death

Joker’s child! reader x Toy Story crossover

Joker’s child! reader first concept (kinda Angel Hare crossover)

chanif-art

ArtMasterlist

Hi! Call me Chanif (Cha-nif) :D

Started since 2021

Feel free to write a story that inspired by my art🤭

How to support me: wise(directly),kofi,ganknow

Premium request: Ganknow, kofi

Membership: click Twitter (semi-active): @chanif_art Queue: link

Q&A

;

Warning ! : might contain dark or yandere contents

read at your own risk

;

Noted : Most of my arts are yandere but if it is not, I will mark that down as a ~not yandere just in case you wanna see yandere work only

bemeochii

Something I’m begging to see in more batfam x batsib stories

Obsession x Batfam

Batsib/Batbro/Batsis

Where batsib reader neglected or not meets the love of their life but due to certain circumstances (whatever that may be) they break up and batsibs lover can’t let them go

Where its from a concept from the movie obsession with either an oc or a character as the wisher and reader (batsib/batsis/batbro) is under the spell and how they interact with batfam or just following the premise of the movie

Maybe batsib goes crazy and kills a bunch of people for their love

Like batsib neglected or not was always at the manor or seen around somewhere but now under the spell they’re never around and if they are they’re always taking about their lover or glued to their side

Batfam tries to get to the bottom of what’s happening to batsib and tries to help them by looking for a one wish willow to change the wish or make a new one

Guys please spread this I need someone to write this omgg

Am I crazy cuz I can’t stop thinking about this concept 😭😭

pomegranatelifethis

The Shape of a Silence

Content warnings: drug use, addiction, overdose, neglect, suicidal ideation, major character death. This is a tragedy. No comfort, no redemption. Please read with care.

---

you are dying in a house full of heroes.

This is not a metaphor. You feel it in the brittle architecture of your bones, in the tremor that lives beneath your skin like a second heartbeat. Your body has become a haunted thing, a repository for all the poisons you’ve poured into it, and still—still—no one has noticed that you are disappearing right in front of them.

You sit on the floor of your bedroom, back pressed against the foot of an antique four-poster bed that has never felt like yours. The curtains are drawn, heavy brocade that swallows the late-afternoon light and spits it back in shades of amber and rot. Somewhere in the cavernous belly of Wayne Manor, laughter peals like a bell. It echoes through the heating vents, distorted and tinny, a transmission from a world that has no space for you.

Your fingers curl around a prescription bottle. Oxycodone. The label is worn, the name smudged—someone else’s pain, stolen from the medical bay three weeks ago when Alfred was busy suturing a gash in Jason’s shoulder and Bruce was already back at the Batcomputer, already lost in the next catastrophe. You remember walking through the cave with the silence of a ghost, barefoot on cold stone, plucking the bottle from a drawer of neatly organized catastrophe supplies. No one turned around. No one said your name.

You dry-swallow two pills and chase them with the flat dregs of a soda you left on the nightstand three days ago. The carbonation has long since died. It tastes like sugar and oblivion.

Downstairs, they laugh again. You can pick out the individual threads: Dick’s bright, easy warmth, the kind of laugh that makes people fall in love with him. Tim’s quieter chuckle, a little awkward, as if he’s still surprised he’s allowed to be part of the joke. Even Damian is there—you hear the precise, clipped cadence of his voice, less a laugh and more a reluctant acknowledgment that something is amusing. And Bruce. Bruce’s laugh is so rare it cuts you every time, because it is a sound that has never been offered in your direction. It is a relic of a man you do not know.

You tilt your head back against the mattress and let the opioid crawl into your bloodstream with the patience of a lover. The edges of the world soften. The laughter becomes bearable, then beautiful, then nothing at all.

This is how you survive. This is how you die.

...

The first time you realized you were ignored by your family, you were twelve years old.

You’d been living in Wayne Manor for two years by then—your whole life, technically, but the years before Bruce’s return from his training were a blur of boarding schools and nannies who called you miss with the kind of professional distance that made you feel like a piece of expensive furniture. Then Bruce came back, and for one glittering, impossible moment, you thought you might become real.

He was your father. Your biological father. The only child born from his short-lived, ill-fated marriage to a woman whose face you had to reconstruct in your memory from photographs because she died when you were two years old. You had his (.....) hair, his stubborn jaw, and his tendency to withdraw into silence and contemplate. That must have meant something. It must have meant that you definitely belonged there.

But then Dick came, and then Jason, and then the cave opened up beneath the manor like a second heart, and you understood: Bruce did not want a child. He wanted soldiers. He wanted mirrors that reflected his own grief back at him, sharpened into weapons. And you—you were just a girl who cried when she skinned her knee, who was afraid of thunderstorms, who wanted to be held. You were soft. You were useless.

You remember the night you asked him to train you. You were twelve, small for your age, wearing pajamas with little stars on them. You’d crept down to the cave after hearing the roar of the Batmobile returning from patrol. Bruce was still in the suit, cowl pulled back, sweat darkening his hair. He looked like a god. He looked like your father.

“I want to help,” you said, and your voice echoed in the cavernous space, thin and reedy. “I want to be like Dick. I want to fight.”

Bruce turned to you, and for one breathless second you thought you saw something soft in his eyes. But then his expression shuttered, became the mask he wore even without the cowl.

“No.”

“But I can learn. I can be good. I can—”

“This isn’t a game.” His voice was not cruel, but it was final. It was a door closing. “You’re my daughter. I won’t lose you. Go back to bed.”

I won’t lose you. What a beautiful lie. He’d already lost you. He just hadn’t noticed yet.

You went back to bed. You didn’t cry. You were too hollow for tears. The next morning, Dick taught Jason how to throw a Batarang in the gymnasium, their laughter ringing against the high ceilings. You watched from the doorway for seventeen minutes before anyone noticed you were there, and even then, it was only Alfred, who offered you a cup of tea and a sad, knowing smile that did nothing to fill the chasm opening in your chest.

That was the year you learned that love in this house was a finite resource, and you had been deemed unworthy of it

...

By fourteen, you had stopped trying.

This is what the history books will never record: the slow, quiet erosion of a girl who lived in the margins of a legend. The way you stopped setting a place for yourself at dinner because no one remembered to call you anyway. The way you learned to move through the manor’s hallways without making a sound, a skill born not of training but of the desperate, animal need to avoid the pain of being seen and then ignored. It is worse, you discovered, to be acknowledged and then dismissed than it is to never be acknowledged at all.

You remember the afternoon Damian first arrived at the manor. He was ten, imperious, all sharp angles and sharper words. Bruce introduced him to everyone—Dick, Jason, Tim, Alfred, even Barbara, who had come by to assess the new addition to the chaos. They stood in the grand foyer, a tableau of fractured family, and you watched from the top of the staircase, half-hidden behind the balustrade.

No one introduced you.

Later, you found Damian in the library, examining a first edition of The Art of War with the critical eye of a general. You hovered in the doorway, trying to find the right words. I’m your sister. I know you don’t know me, but I’m here. I’ve always been here.

Before you could speak, he glanced up and fixed you with a stare that could have cut glass. “You’re the civilian,” he said. Not a question. A designation.

“I—yes. I’m your—”

“Tt. Don’t get in my way.”

He turned back to his book. You stood there for a long moment, the air pressing in on you from all sides, and then you walked away. You didn’t blame him. He was a child raised by assassins, taught that value was measured in utility. In his world, you were useless. He was just the first person to say it out loud.

That night, you stole a bottle of wine from the cellar and drank it alone in your room until the walls stopped closing in. It was the first time you used a substance to mute the noise inside your head. It would not be the last

....

The escalation happened so gradually that even you didn’t notice until it was too late.

At fifteen, you broke your wrist falling down the grand staircase—a genuine accident, not a cry for help, though you’d be lying if you said you hadn’t been tempted by those before. Alfred drove you to the emergency room because Bruce was in the middle of a Justice League operation and couldn’t be reached. Dick was in Blüdhaven. Jason was off on one of his brooding self-exile stints. Tim texted you a single “u ok?” and didn’t follow up when you didn’t respond. Damian didn’t even glance at the cast when you returned home.

The doctor prescribed Vicodin. You remember staring at the bottle in the harsh fluorescent light of the pharmacy, the orange plastic warm in your palm. You’d never taken anything stronger than ibuprofen before. You were scared of it, a little. But the pain in your wrist was a relentless, grinding thing, so you swallowed one pill and waited.

The relief was not just physical. It was existential. The Vicodin didn’t just mute the ache in your bones—it muted the ache in the hollow of your chest where your family was supposed to be. It wrapped you in cotton wool. It made the loneliness feel distant, like a storm on the far side of a thick window. For the first time in years, you felt something that might have been peace.

You finished the prescription in five days. When the bottle was empty, you felt the absence like a physical blow. The noise came back—the laughter, the silence, the unbearable weight of being invisible. You needed it gone again.

So you went looking.

The medical bay in the Batcave was a treasure trove of chemical solutions. Morphine, fentanyl, oxycodone, codeine—a pharmacopeia of battlefield medicine kept stocked for the inevitability of violence. Security was tight, but you’d lived in this house your whole life. You knew the blind spots. You knew that the cave’s motion sensors were calibrated to ignore anyone under a certain height threshold—a leftover from when Damian was small and prone to wandering where he shouldn’t. You had never been a threat, so you had never been a variable worth accounting for.

Stealing became a ritual. You’d slip down in the small hours of the morning, when patrol was still underway and Alfred was asleep, and you’d take just enough to keep the silence at bay. One pill at a time. Two. Three. You told yourself you could stop whenever you wanted. You told yourself it wasn’t a problem because a problem required someone to notice, and no one did.

The first time you ran out before you could steal more, the withdrawal hit you like a freight train. You spent a night curled on the bathroom floor, shivering and sweating, your stomach cramping so violently you thought you might die. You didn’t die. You just wished you would.

The next day, you went to school for the first time in a week—Gotham Academy, where you were enrolled under a fake name because Bruce was paranoid about kidnappings but couldn’t be bothered to remember which fake name belonged to which child. You moved through the hallways like a wraith, hollow-eyed and trembling, and a boy named Leo found you in the parking lot, leaning against the brick wall, trying to remember how to breathe.

“You look like shit,” he said, not unkindly.

Leo was seventeen, tall and lanky with nicotine-stained fingers and eyes that had seen too much. He sold weed to the scholarship kids and harder things to the rich ones who wanted to feel dangerous. He didn’t ask why a Wayne—because he recognized you, despite the fake name, because everyone eventually recognized you—was shaking like a leaf behind the gymnasium. He just pulled a joint from his pocket and offered it to you.

“This won’t fix it,” he said. “But it’ll take the edge off.”

You smoked with him behind the bleachers, coughing on the first inhale, and when he asked if you needed something stronger, you said yes without hesitation.

That was the beginning of the end

....

By sixteen, you were no longer a girl who used drugs. You were an addict.

The word sits ugly in your mouth, but you’ve learned to swallow it like everything else. You smoke weed to sleep. You take pills to function. On the bad days—and there are so many bad days now—you let Leo inject you with heroin in the dingy back room of his apartment, a place that smells of mildew and old cigarettes and the particular desperation of people who have nothing left to lose.

Leo is not your boyfriend. He’s not even really your friend. He’s a transaction in human form, a pair of steady hands and a ready supply, and you pay him in cash and jewelry stolen from rooms in the manor that no one ever enters. You’ve taken a diamond bracelet from a drawer in the master suite that probably belonged to your mother. You’ve taken cufflinks from Bruce’s study, a silver letter opener, a handful of antique coins from a display case in the library. No one has noticed. No one has ever noticed.

Sometimes, when Leo’s pressing the needle into the crook of your arm, you close your eyes and pretend his touch is love. You pretend the warmth spreading through your veins is the warmth of being held, of being wanted. It’s pathetic. You know it’s pathetic. But it’s all you have.

You’ve stopped going to school. The Academy sends letters home, but Bruce is in the middle of a war with the League of Assassins and Alfred is too busy keeping the household running to follow up. You intercept the letters when you can, forge Bruce’s signature on the responses, and when you can’t, you just throw them away. No one asks where you go during the day. No one asks why your eyes are glassy, why your hands shake, why you’ve lost so much weight that your clothes hang off you like they belong to a stranger.

Once, Dick corners you in the hallway, his hand gentle on your shoulder. You flinch. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, his smile the same easy, practiced thing he gives to the press. “I feel like we haven’t talked in a while. How’s school?”

“Fine.” Your voice is a croak. You haven’t spoken to another person in three days.

“That’s great. Listen, I’m sorry I haven’t been around much—Blüdhaven’s a mess and the Titans are running me ragged—but we should do something soon. Just the two of us. Sound good?”

You nod. You know he won’t follow through. He never does.

He pats your shoulder once and is gone, leaving behind the faint scent of his cologne and the hollow echo of another broken promise. You lean against the wall until the shaking stops, and then you go to your room and crush a pill on the nightstand with the flat of a silver hairbrush that hasn’t been used in months.

The powder burns when you inhale it. The burn is the only thing that feels real

....

Your bedroom has become an observation deck, a silent perch from which you watch the family that isn’t yours.

You’ve learned the rhythms of the manor the way a prisoner learns the rhythms of a jail: the creak of the third-floor floorboard at 4:37 a.m. when Bruce returns from patrol. The clatter of pans in the kitchen at 5:30 when Alfred begins preparing breakfast. The precise moment—6:15—when Damian’s alarm goes off and he begins his morning training, his footsteps a metronome of discipline in the gymnasium below your window.

You are not part of any of it. You are a ghost haunting the margins, a smudge on the periphery of their vision. But you watch. You can’t stop watching.

There is a particular cruelty in the way they orbit each other, a gravitational pull that excludes you with the casual precision of physics. They don’t mean to shut you out. That’s the worst part. You are not a victim of malice—you are a victim of irrelevance. You are the variable that doesn’t factor into the equation. The side character in a story that was never about you.

You watch them from the top of the stairs on movie nights, when Dick commandeers the entertainment system and makes everyone watch old musicals that Jason loudly complains about but never actually leaves. You watch Damian pretend to hate the musicals, his small body wedged between Bruce and Tim on the couch, his mouth pressed into a thin line of disapproval even as his eyes track the dancers with reluctant fascination. You watch Bruce, the cowl gone, the weight of the city temporarily set aside, his arm draped over the back of the couch in a gesture of casual affection that makes your chest ache.

You watch and you are not invited.

You tried, once. Months ago. A lifetime ago. You’d come downstairs in your pajamas, drawn by the sound of laughter, and hovered in the doorway of the media room like a moth at a window. Tim glanced up, saw you, and offered a small, distracted smile before turning back to the screen. No one else acknowledged you. The couch was full. The space was full. There was nowhere for you to sit.

You stood there for five minutes, waiting for someone to make room, to say your name, to do anything. No one did. Eventually, you went back upstairs, and no one noticed you were gone.

Now you don’t go downstairs at all. You sit on the floor of your room with your back against the door and you listen to the distorted echoes of their happiness through the vents, and you tell yourself it’s enough. It has to be enough.

The first time you overdose, it’s an accident.

You’ve been using heroin for six months now, but you’ve been careful. Careful in the way that addicts are careful—measuring doses, testing potency, telling yourself that you have it under control because the alternative is admitting that you don’t. But the supply Leo gives you this week is different, stronger, cut with something that hits your bloodstream like a fist, and suddenly you’re on the bathroom floor with your cheek pressed to the cold tile and your heart stuttering in your chest like a dying bird.

You can feel your body shutting down. It’s not painful, not really. It’s like sinking into warm water. Like falling asleep after a lifetime of insomnia. Part of you—the part that’s been screaming into the void for five years—whispers that this wouldn’t be the worst way to go.

No one finds you. No one comes.

You wake up three hours later, alone, your face crusted with dried vomit and your arms covered in bruises you don’t remember getting. The house is silent. No one has noticed you were missing. No one has come looking for you. You lie on the bathroom floor for a long time, staring at the ceiling, and you feel nothing at all.

The next day, you call Leo and ask for more

...

The invitation appears on the kitchen island on a Tuesday morning, written in Alfred’s precise copperplate on heavy cream stationery: Family dinner this evening at 7 p.m. All are expected to attend. RSVP not required.

All are expected. You stare at the word all for a long time, tracing the elegant loops of the script with your fingertip. It’s been months since you last sat at the dining table. You’re not sure anyone noticed your absence then, either.

You spend the afternoon in a state of low-grade panic, cycling through the contents of your closet like a woman preparing for battle. Your body is a ruin. You can see it in the mirror: the sharp jut of your collarbones, the hollows beneath your cheekbones, the bruise-dark circles under your eyes that no amount of concealer can fully disguise. Your arms are a roadmap of track marks, some fresh, some faded to silvery scars. You choose a long-sleeved blouse in deep burgundy. You pull your hair back into a neat ponytail. You practice smiling in the mirror until your reflection looks almost human.

You are ready. You are terrified.

At 6:58, you descend the grand staircase and walk toward the dining room. Your heart is a war drum. Your hands are shaking—withdrawal is starting to creep in, a familiar ache settling into your bones—but you clench them into fists at your sides and keep walking.

The dining room glows with candlelight. The table is set with the good china, the crystal goblets, the silverware that’s been in the Wayne family for six generations. And there they are: Bruce at the head of the table, Dick to his right, Damian to his left. Jason is slouched in his chair, flicking a bread roll at Tim, who’s trying to explain something about a case while simultaneously defending his plate. Even Barbara is there, seated next to Dick, her wheelchair tucked neatly beside the table. They are laughing. They are beautiful. They are a family.

You step into the doorway.

The laughter falters. Not dramatically—it’s not a record-scratch moment. It’s subtler than that, a brief hiccup in the flow of conversation, a flicker of confusion that crosses Bruce’s face as he registers your presence.

“Oh,” Dick says, recovering first, his smile bright but faintly puzzled. “Hey, you’re here.”

You don’t know what to do with your hands. You shove them into the pockets of your pants. “Alfred said there was a dinner.”

“Yes, of course.” Bruce’s voice is neutral, but there’s something in his expression that you can’t read. Surprise, maybe. Or something closer to guilt. “I didn’t realize you were—take a seat. We saved you a spot.”

There isn’t a spot. There are exactly enough chairs for the people already at the table. You watch Tim and Jason exchange a glance, a silent negotiation, and then Jason sighs and scoots over, dragging a chair from the corner of the room and wedging it between himself and the wall. “Here,” he says, not quite meeting your eyes. “Sit.”

You sit. The chair is cold. The space is too small. Your elbow knocks against Jason’s as you reach for your water glass, and he doesn’t say anything, but you feel him shift slightly away from you. A small, unconscious recoil. It shouldn’t hurt. It still does.

The conversation picks up again, tentatively, like a car engine sputtering before it catches. Dick tells a story about a mission with the Titans that you don’t have the context to understand. Tim and Barbara launch into a debate about encryption protocols. Damian insults Jason’s fashion sense, and Jason fires back with something about Damian’s height, and Bruce chides them both with the weary fondness of a man who has done this a thousand times.

You sit in the middle of it all, silent, invisible even in your visibility. No one asks you about your day. No one asks why you’ve lost so much weight, why your eyes are glassy, why you keep scratching at the inside of your wrist beneath the table. You push food around your plate and count the minutes until you can escape.

Halfway through the meal, Bruce’s phone buzzes. He glances at the screen, and his expression shifts—the father receding, the vigilante taking over. “We’ve got a situation,” he says, standing. “Riddler’s left a trail of clues across the financial district. I need everyone suited up in ten.”

The table explodes into motion. Chairs scrape. Plates are abandoned. The family that was laughing together moments ago transforms into a tactical unit, efficient and synchronized. They sweep out of the dining room in a blur of dark hair and determined expressions, and not one of them looks back at you.

Not one.

You sit at the table for a long time after they’re gone. The candles gutter. Alfred appears silently at your elbow, his face creased with a sadness that you can’t bear to look at directly.

“Shall I clear your plate, miss?”

You nod. You don’t trust your voice.

He takes the plate—still mostly full—and hesitates. For a moment, you think he’s going to say something, something that might change everything or nothing at all. But the moment passes. He retreats to the kitchen, and you retreat to your room, and the gap between you and the rest of the world widens another inch.

...

That night, you hear them come home. The cave entrance rumbles open around 3 a.m., and voices drift up through the vents—tired but triumphant. The Riddler is in custody. The city is safe. Someone—Tim, you think—lets out a whoop that’s half exhaustion and half exhilaration. Bruce’s laugh rumbles like distant thunder.

You lie in your bed, curled on your side, staring at the wall. The withdrawal has become a creature living inside your skin, gnawing at your nerves with tiny, relentless teeth. You need a fix. You need it, with a desperation that eclipses hunger, thirst, even the ache of your loneliness.

But you don’t go to the cave. You don’t steal more pills. Instead, you reach under your mattress and pull out a small velvet pouch—the last piece of your mother’s jewelry that you haven’t sold. A locket, delicate and gold, with a tiny photograph of her inside. You’ve kept it through everything. It’s the only thing you have left of her. The only proof that you were ever part of a family that wanted you.

You hold it in your palm, the metal warm from your body heat, and you make a decision.

....

Three days later, you pack a bag.

It’s not a big bag—just a worn duffel you found in the back of a closet, stuffed with a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and the locket. You’re not running away, you tell yourself. You’re just… leaving. Leaving implies agency. Leaving implies choice. And after years of being a passive observer in your own life, you need to feel like you have a choice about something.

You write a note. You don’t know who you’re writing it for.

I’m sorry. I tried. It wasn’t enough.

You don’t sign it. You leave it on your nightstand, tucked beneath an empty pill bottle, and you walk out of your bedroom without looking back.

The manor is quiet at this hour—late afternoon, the golden light slanting through the tall windows in dusty shafts. Alfred is in the city, running errands. Bruce and the boys are in the cave, prepping for patrol. You can hear the low murmur of their voices as you pass the grandfather clock that conceals the entrance, and for a moment you pause. Your hand hovers over the wood. You could open it. You could go down there, one last time, and say everything you’ve never said. You could scream. You could cry. You could make them see you.

But you’ve tried that before. You’ve tried it in a hundred small ways, and it’s never worked. So instead, you press your palm flat against the clock face, feel the vibration of their voices through the ancient wood, and you whisper, “Goodbye.”

No one answers. No one ever answers.

You slip out through the kitchen door and into the dying light. The grounds of Wayne Manor stretch before you, impossibly green, impossibly beautiful. A world you have never been allowed to inhabit. You walk down the gravel drive with your duffel slung over your shoulder, and you don’t look back.

...

Leo’s apartment is in the Narrows, a part of Gotham that the tourists never see and the newspapers only mention in the context of body counts. The building reeks of damp plaster and stale cigarette smoke and the particular hopelessness of people who have been failed by every system meant to protect them. You fit right in.

Leo opens the door with a cigarette dangling from his lips and raises an eyebrow at the duffel bag. “Running away, princess?”

“Something like that.” You push past him into the apartment. It’s a mess, as always—takeout containers piled on the coffee table, a mattress on the floor with sheets that haven’t been washed in weeks, a needle and spoon on the nightstand that makes your skin itch with anticipation.

“I need a place to crash,” you say. “Just for a while.”

Leo shrugs. “Sure. But it’s gonna cost you.”

You pull the locket from your pocket. The gold gleams in the sickly light of the bare bulb overhead. Leo’s eyes flicker with interest—he knows quality when he sees it. “This is real,” you say. “Twenty-four karat. Worth a couple thousand at least.”

He takes it from you, turns it over in his fingers. Opens it. Glances at the photo inside—your mother’s face, younger than you are now, smiling at the camera with a joy you’ve never felt. He doesn’t ask who she is. He doesn’t care.

“Yeah, alright,” he says. “I can move this. You can stay.”

He pockets the locket, and something inside you splinters. The last piece of your mother. The last piece of a life where you were loved. You’ve traded it for a filthy mattress and a man who sees you only as a transaction, and you don’t even have the strength to mourn.

“I want a hit,” you say. “Something strong.”

Leo grins. “I’ve got some new stuff. Fentanyl-laced. Be careful with it—this batch is no joke.”

You don’t want to be careful. You don’t want to be anything.

...

He ties off your arm with a rubber strap. The needle slides in with a familiar sting, and you watch the blood bloom into the syringe before he depresses the plunger. The heroin hits your bloodstream like a wave of light.

This is what you’ve been chasing. This is the silence. This is the peace that the manor never gave you, the love that your family never offered, the belonging that was always just out of reach. Your head lolls back against the mattress. The ceiling swims. Your heartbeat slows to a languid, syrupy rhythm.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice whispers that this dose was too strong. That something is wrong. Your breathing is too shallow. Your limbs are too heavy. The warmth that was so comforting moments ago is starting to feel like drowning.

But you’re not scared. That’s the strangest part. You’ve been dying for years—slowly, invisibly, in a house full of people who were supposed to love you. At least this way, you get to choose the ending.

Your eyes slip closed.

The last thing you think of is the grandfather clock, the vibrations of their laughter humming through the wood. The last thing you feel is the phantom weight of a hand on your shoulder, a touch that was never really there.

And then nothing.

....

Alfred is the one who finds the note.

He returns from his errands at 6:47 p.m., precisely on schedule, and begins his usual routine of preparing the evening meal. It is only when he goes to collect the laundry from the upstairs bedrooms that he notices your door is ajar—a small irregularity, but an irregularity nonetheless. You have kept your door firmly closed for years.

He steps inside. The room is too tidy. The bed is made. The clutter that usually accumulates on your nightstand—books, empty soda cans, the detritus of a life lived in isolation—has been cleared away. All that remains is a single piece of paper, the empty pill bottle serving as a paperweight.

Alfred reads the note. His hands, steady for decades of combat and crisis, tremble.

He descends to the cave.

The family is gathered around the Batcomputer, reviewing satellite footage of Black Mask’s latest operation. Bruce is in the chair, cowl down, his expression the focused intensity of a man who has no room for anything but the mission. Dick is perched on the edge of the console. Tim is typing. Jason is cleaning a gun with methodical precision. Damian is sharpening a knife.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred says, and something in his voice—something quiet, something broken—makes every head in the room snap toward him.

“Alfred?” Bruce is already on his feet. “What is it?”

Alfred hands him the note.

The silence that follows is the loudest sound you have ever not heard.

Bruce reads the words once. Twice. His face, that impenetrable mask, cracks open like a fault line. “What is this? When did she—where is she?”

“I don’t know, sir. She’s not in the house. I’ve checked every room.”

“Track her phone,” Tim says, already typing. His fingers fly across the keyboard, and within seconds a map blooms on the screen, a blinking red dot in the heart of the Narrows. “She’s there. An apartment building on Kane Street.”

Bruce doesn’t wait. He pulls the cowl up, his movements sharp and mechanical, the Batman taking over because the father doesn’t know what to do. “Let’s go. Now.”

The drive to the Narrows takes eight minutes. Bruce breaks every traffic law in the city. Dick is in the passenger seat, phone pressed to his ear, trying to call a number that goes straight to voicemail. In the back, Jason and Tim are silent. Damian’s hands are clenched into fists, his expression unreadable.

They burst into the apartment building like a tactical breach, scattering startled residents, climbing the stairs three at a time. The door to Leo’s apartment is flimsy. Bruce kicks it open without breaking stride.

The smell hits them first: sweat, mildew, the metallic tang of old blood. And then the sight.

You are on the mattress, your body curled into a fetal position, your face slack and pale. The rubber strap is still tight around your arm. The needle is still on the floor. Your eyes are closed.

“No.” Bruce’s voice is not his own. It is a raw, guttural thing, torn from somewhere deep in his chest. He crosses the room in two strides and drops to his knees beside you, his gloved hands pressing against your neck, searching for a pulse that isn’t there.

“Call an ambulance,” Dick says, and his voice is shaking. “Tim, call an ambulance, now, now—”

“It’s too late.” Bruce’s words are a death knell. He gathers your body into his arms, cradling you against the armored chest of the Batsuit, and the sound he makes is not a cry. It’s a howl.

The others stand frozen in the doorway. Jason’s face has gone white. Tim is on the phone with emergency services, his voice a monotone of shock. Damian takes one step forward, then stops, his gaze fixed on the track marks on your arms, the evidence of months—years—of suffering that none of them saw.

Dick sinks to the floor. He doesn’t say anything. He just stares at you, his little sister, the one he promised to spend time with, the one he never got around to calling back.

The ambulance comes. The paramedics do what they can, which is nothing. You are declared dead at the scene.

...

They find your diary three days later, wedged between your mattress and the box spring. Alfred discovers it while stripping the bed, and he does not read it—not at first. He carries it to Bruce with the solemnity of a man delivering a coffin.

Bruce reads it alone, in his study, with the door locked.

He reads about your first attempt to join the family, your twelve-year-old hope crumbling under the weight of his rejection. He reads about Damian’s dismissal, Dick’s broken promises, Tim’s distracted smiles, Jason’s indifference. He reads about the first pill you stole, the first needle you let a stranger press into your vein, the first time you overdosed and woke up alone on the bathroom floor. He reads about the locket—your mother’s locket—and how you sold it for a final hit, a final night, a final silence.

He reads the last entry, written the morning you left:

I used to think that if I just tried harder, they’d see me. I used to think that love was something you earned. But I’m so tired. I’m so tired of watching them be a family without me. I’m so tired of being a ghost in my own home. I don’t know if I’m running away or if I’m just finally admitting that I was never really here at all. Either way, I don’t think it matters. They won’t notice I’m gone. They never have.

Bruce closes the diary. He sets it down on his desk with the careful precision of a man handling a bomb. And then he does something he has not done since his parents died in a pool of blood and pearls on a rain-slicked Gotham street: he weeps.

....

The funeral is small. The family stands in a tight cluster around the grave, dressed in black, their faces carved from stone. The Gotham sky is a bruised purple, threatening rain but never delivering. It’s the kind of day you always hated, the kind that made the manor feel like a mausoleum.

Alfred reads a eulogy that he wrote in the small hours of the morning, his voice steady but his eyes rimmed red. He speaks about your kindness, your quiet resilience, the way you used to follow him around the kitchen as a child, begging to help with the cookies. He does not mention the drugs. He does not mention the neglect. He does not need to.

Bruce stands at the front, his head bowed. He has not spoken in three days. The cowl hangs heavy in his mind, a shield he no longer knows how to take off. He keeps replaying moments—the night you asked to be trained, the dinner where he didn’t save you a seat, the thousand tiny betrayals of absence and inattention that accumulated like snow until they buried you alive. He wonders if there was a single moment when he could have saved you. He knows there was. He knows there were a hundred moments, a thousand, and he missed every single one.

Dick stands to his left, his arm around Barbara, who is crying silently. He is thinking about the hallway conversation, the easy promise he made and then forgot. We should do something soon. Just the two of us. He never did. He never will.

Jason stares at the coffin with a hollow expression. He’s thinking about the way you flinched when he shifted away from you at the dinner table, the way he never bothered to ask why. He’s thinking about all the times he brushed past you in the hallways, too caught up in his own ghosts to notice the living one right in front of him.

Tim is running through the data in his head, the missed signs, the pattern of thefts from the medical bay that he’d dismissed as inventory errors. He’s the detective. He’s supposed to notice things. He didn’t notice you.

Damian says nothing. His face is a mask, but his hands are trembling. He remembers calling you a civilian. He remembers every time he looked through you like you were furniture. He was a child, he tells himself. He didn’t know. But he did know. He just didn’t care.

The coffin descends into the ground. The first clod of dirt hits the lid with a sound like a door closing.

And the family that was never really yours stands in the silence, and they grieve, and they will carry this grief for the rest of their lives. It will not bring you back. It will not fix what was broken. It is too late for apologies, too late for love, too late for anything but the slow, corrosive knowledge that they failed you in every way that mattered.

You were seventeen years old. You were dying in a house full of heroes. And now you are dead, and they are still heroes, and the world will never know your name.

The rain never comes. The sky just stays purple, bruised and waiting, and somewhere in the distance, the Bat-Signal cuts through the gloom like a razor.

Life goes on. It always does.

But in Wayne Manor, a bedroom door stays closed, and a chair at the dining table stays empty, and the silence you left behind is louder than any scream.

purplespiritimagines

alien! batsib! reader headcannons

content batfam & alien! Reader, bruce adopts reader, gn! reader, mantis-like powers (guardians of the galaxy), platonic batfamily x reader, fluff, mild hurt/comfort, sunshine reader, starfire-inspired reader, adoption, homesickness, grief/trauma references (mild), jason's death/trauma implied, bruce's childhood trauma implied, mild mentions of violence/crime

characters bruce wayne, dick grayson, jason todd, tim drake, damian wayne, duke thomas, stephanie brown, cassandra cain, clark kent

masterlist

Wc 4k

bruce finds you after a justice league incident where you crash-land in gotham, immediately touch his arm, gasp, and say, “You are very sad and have not slept since the age of eight.”

you are painfully sincere, extremely emotionally perceptive, and have no idea how earth customs work.

you tell people their “internal weather” is gloomy. you call lying “verbal camouflage.” you think handshakes are strange because humans “briefly trap each other’s fingers to prove they are not enemies.”

seldomsloane

sloane's masterlist

SCREAM ꩜ OBSESSION: Answering the phone can be a slippery slope when the caller is a killer with an obsession. Be careful who you anger. •Part Two •Part Three •Part Four •Part Five •Finale ꩜ TOXIC: AU where Stu and Billy get away with it. Once in college, becoming enthralled with the same person leads to a toxic love triangle none of you are sure you can leave. AFAB reader.

Accepting requests for: Scream Star Wars Dexter *Will add more as they come to me*

jaythes1mp

Counting Down To You

Yandere Bruce Wayne x Soulmate Reader (Smut warning: Masterbation)

The countdown had never meant much to Bruce Wayne.

As a child, it had simply existed.

A cluster of glowing numbers etched into the skin of his inner wrist, ticking steadily downward with each passing second.

It wasn’t unusual. Every person in the world was born with some form of soulmate bond. Some shared pain, some shared dreams, some found words appearing on their skin, written by hands they had never touched. Others heard thoughts not their own, glimpsed flashes of memories, or carried matching marks that mirrored one another across continents.

There were countless variations. Entire scientific fields had been built around studying them.

Bruce’s happened to be a countdown.

Nobody knew exactly why soulmate bonds manifested differently. Decades of research had produced theories but few answers. Genetics and geography didn’t determine it. Neither did bloodlines or upbringing. Soulmate bonds simply… were.

Got another inspiration ~

Batfam x Serial Killer Neglected!Reader (Hannibal-inspired)

The reader is Bruce Wayne's biological child, raised solely by their single mother outside of Gotham. Intelligent, observant, and deeply interested in art and beauty, the reader grows up isolated from the Wayne family. After their mother's sudden death in an unfortunate accident, they are taken into Bruce's custody and brought to Wayne Manor.

However, settling into the Batfamily proves difficult. Whether due to misunderstandings, emotional distance, suspicion, or simply the family's own unresolved issues, the reader gradually becomes neglected within the household. Despite being physically present, they remain unseen and disconnected from the people who should have become their family.

Beneath their composed exterior, the reader possesses a warped perception of beauty and humanity. As Gotham exposes both the city's ugliness and its hidden elegance, the reader begins expressing themselves through increasingly disturbing means, treating their actions as carefully crafted works of art rather than acts of cruelty.

The story explores themes of isolation, identity, obsession, and the desire to be understood. While the reader's descent and relationships with the Batfamily shape the narrative, the exact nature of their development is left open. Ultimately, the reader views themself as their final masterpiece, ensuring that the last chapter of their story is one authored entirely by their own hand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As usual please tag me if anyone decided to make a story out of this please

#batfam #batfamily #dc universe #reader #x reader #x y/n #y/n #hannibal #batfamily x neglected reader #child neglect #tw neglect #hannibal series #fic inspiration #batboys #neglected child #neglected reader

itsangelic

Scream 2

PAIRINGS: yandere!batfam x billy loomis!reader | WC: 7.4k

SUMMARY: being the product of bruce's one night stand with a stripper, a small boy had the misfortune of being born in crime alley. with an absent father, absent mother and a criminal environment, how would you think said child would turn out?

WARNINGS: SEMI-UNRELIABLE NARRATOR! the story is from the readers pov, so things will be described how he perceives them to be even if said character, or he himself, didn’t want to come across like that or actually didn’t feel that way. angst, emotional abuse, lowk only semi-canon, murder, mentions of prostitution, physical abuse, neglect, bullying, mentions of death, blood and violence.

A/N: pt2 is here yayayayayay. i think i've decided for the batfam to lowk turn yandere around like chapter 3 or 4 after something.. well, specific happens. this may be a bit more boring than ch1 and its also shorter but were building up progress..! writing may be a bit messy its 4am and i am SOO tired. also, should i do a masterlist? my block is kinda messy lmfao

pt 1 <- pt2 (here) -> pt 3

the black water of the gotham docks looks like the shit you expected it to - bubbling oil in the dark. the stench, just like the water, is thick and absolutely foul and smells like dead fish and diesel. the midnight wind is freezing, a biting thing that’s gnawing straight through your hoodie like teeth, but you’re scarcely feeling it.

you stand there, shoulder pressed flush against the rusted metal of a shipping container, eyes tracking the husk of the old warehouse across the concrete lot.

this is the night. you and louis have been planning this quite a while now.

the guy isn’t a mob boss. neither is he some hardened street-rat or a corrupt cop with a snub-nose tucked into his belt.

he’s a goddamned teacher.

an english teacher from the academy who made the fatal mistake of failing louis on his final essay, keeping him in the doghouse with his parents and almost holding him back from graduation.

it was a stupid, petty thing, really. the man thought - actually not even thought, was - doing his job, he was helping a rich kid learn a lesson about consequences for not studying properly.

he had no idea he was writing his own death sentence.

louis whined and begged and pleaded with you to get back at the guy - said he didn't appreciate feeling so stupid, nor getting in trouble with his parents.

it gave you the opportunity to try out that new technique you've seen in that one slasher flick - and the teacher was an eyesore, anyways.

also to maybe teach him a lesson for the dumb assumptions, fucking assumptions, that he could survive gotham at night.

you know naught why ire twists your gut, uncalled and unheralded and oddly righteous. perhaps, it is just the idea of it. how could one be so dull-wittedly oblivious, in not only failing a student as vengeful and grudge-holding as louis - but then to also wander into the dark, pitted and peeled? without finesse, without care.

this educator’s fingers had dug through red ink and scored so clumsily and acted stupidly in turn when deciding to head out at night - however justified he might have supposed himself.

would you not be ginger? would you not have a fucking plan?

(admittedly, you also know nothing of the man's personal life, other than the fact he can’t tell his student's genuine work from an online script and is also, seriously, seriously fucking gullible to think midnight emails about inventory checks are legitimate. still, you don't need to know him well, to know it is a terrible thing, to have let him think he could survive gotham, especially at night. one only has to see it to believe).

louis had handled the lure. a fake email sent from the principal’s account, claiming there was an urgent inventory check on the new rowing equipment down at the docks warehouse before the school summer programs started.

it was simple and easy - the man was so damn gullible, so eager to please the administration, that he didn't even question it - even though it was so damn late at night.

what made it even easier is that you grew up ‘round the docks - not these ones - they're heavenly and saintly compared to the ones in crime alley, but docks nonetheless.

anyways - as said, most people, you find, are fucking idiots.

…

"bro, i’m for real gonna freeze to death out here," louis whispers from right behind your shoulder. he’s bouncing on his heels, shifting his weight around like his skin doesn't fit him right, a half-eaten bag of sour worms in his hand.

smack. smack.

he isn't even looking at the empty lot. he’s staring at you, a wild, little grin twitching on his face.

you don't look back at him, instead you reach into your front pocket and pull out the signal-scrambler you built down in the cave. or rather, with the things you stole, or as you'd like to put it, permanently borrowed, from the cave.

it’s a neat little plastic box, totally unmarked, with one tiny red light blinking on the side.

"chill," you mutter, your voice flat. "i got it. just keep your fucking mouth shut for like two seconds."

"bet," louis giggles, stuffing three green worms into his mouth at once. "you’re the boss, big man. i'm just the muscle tonight."

you let out a soft huff through your nose, as if. you're only the brain because louis only has his brawn. if you wanted to, you could kill the guy just as damn easily alone.

muscle memory kicks gear before your mind does, and you pull the plastic ghostface mask out from under your arm. the slick, chemical smell of the factory vinyl hits your nose - sharp in your sinuses.

the teacher’s reliable, beat-up sedan pulls into the lot right on time, the headlights cutting through the fog. the engine cuts out, and the man steps out into the damp air, adjusting his glasses, a heavy clipboard clutched to his chest like it’s gonna save him.

at least he has some survival instincts, the fucker is scared.

your fingers twitch inside your pockets. that sickeningly empty, numb feeling settles deep into your ribs, and it feels absolutely great. it’s the only time you ever feel totally awake. you glance at louis, giving him a nod.

right now, the teacher looks like a dove.

frail, fretting feathers - bound to shed - bound to hit the ground, all furled and crumpled-up like a candy wrapper, crunched underfoot.

poor teacher always so windborne over his books, wreathed in his boring little lectures, - absolutely dull to the eye, uninteresting to speak with too. up-close, however, in the dim flicker of the pier-light rather than the eclipsing glare of his classroom - you can see the clip in his wings. it draws you.

"you ready?" you broach, eyes dark and deep as soil six-feet beneath.

"alright," you whisper, pulling the mask down over your face until the plastic nose touches your skin. "let’s go."

…

the warehouse doors are rusty, groaning loud as hell when the teacher shoves them open. he's equipped himself with a little yellow plastic flashlight, the yellow beam bouncing nervously off rows of empty wooden crates. his shoes make this loud, echoey squeak against the dusty concrete.

he looks so goddamned small in the dark.

you slide through the side door behind, your sneakers making absolutely zero noise. the mask is tight against your skin, making your breaths sound loud and hot inside your own ears.

"hello?" the guy calls out, his voice shaking just a fraction. "is anyone here? i got the email about the container."

fucking idiot.

you track him from the shadow of a high shelving unit, your fingers curling around the cold handle of the hunting knife.

suddenly, a loud clatter echoes from the far corner. louis deliberately kicked an empty oil drum, his laughter bubbling out a second later - loud, high-pitched, and completely unhinged.

the teacher snaps his head toward the noise, his flashlight beam whipping around wildly. "who’s there? look, i'm just here for the audit! if this is a prank-"

"oh, it's not a prank, mister!" louis shouts back from the dark, his modulated voice bouncing off the tin walls. "but it is an audition! and you're doing great!"

the man turns to run, his breath hitching in pure panic, but louis steps right out into the beam of the flashlight. he’s wearing his own ghostface mask, tilted slightly to the side, and he’s holding a heavy iron tire iron. before the teacher can even scream, louis swings. the metal cracks hard against the man’s shoulder, sending him spinning to the concrete floor with a wet yell. the flashlight tumbles away, rolling across the floor and casting long, crazy shadows up the walls.

"boss man, he’s all yours!" louis yells, stepping back and gesturing theatrically toward the floor like a game show host.

the teacher is scrambling on his hands and knees, sobbing, coughing through the dust. "please - please! i have a family-"

you walk right into the dim pool of light, your shadow looming massive over him. you drop your weight, pinning your knee straight into the small of his back. the man lets out a sharp, wet grunt, his face shoved against the dirty concrete. you grab a handful of his hair, yanking his head back to expose his throat, and press the flat of the blade right under his chin.

the man is thrashing like a fish out of water, his fingers clawing desperately at your black hoodie, his breath hitching in primitive terror. you can feel the wild, frantic pulse jumping inside his throat.

"wait, wait, let me say it!" louis whispers loudly, leaning down right next to you, his plastic mask almost touching your shoulder.

you don't say a word, instead holding the guy tight, letting louis have his fun.

louis leans over the teacher’s face, his voice dropping into a creepy, mocking whisper. "shh. don't ruin the ending."

the blade goes in clean. right through the throat, just like you practiced on the meat slabs down in the basement. it’s over in seconds. the wet, choking gasp fades into the quiet sound of the tide outside, and the body in your arms goes completely slack, turning into nothing but heavy, useless meat.

louis steps back, pulling the mask up to his forehead. a flick of his lighter cuts through the dark as he stares down at the shape on the floor. he takes a long breath, then walks over and delivers a harsh, solid kick right into the man's side.

"that’s what you get," louis spits, a thin, crooked grin stretching his face as he looks down. "trying to fail me on my essay. gettin’ me in trouble n' making my parents believe i'm dumb. hope the failing grade was worth it."

you stand up, your face hidden behind the mask. you reach into your pocket and check the signal-scrambler on the nearby camera junction. the loop you set up is holding; the security feeds won't show a thing.

most people go through life thinking the rules will protect them - they have no idea how damn fragile the world actually is.

"we need to move," you say, your voice low and steady. "clear the scene and get out before the patrol rounds the corner."

"you got it, boss man," louis says, exhaling a cloud of smoke. "let's finish this up and get out of this dump, i'm starving.”

the getaway is clean. by the time the morning fog rolls off the gotham harbor, the teacher’s body is exactly where you and louis wanted it to be, and the digital tracks are completely wiped.

you slept like a baby.

but the peace doesn't last. you’re barely awake when alfred knocks on your door, delivering a rare, formal message: mr. wayne requests your presence at the breakfast table this morning.

bruce never requests your presence for breakfast.

the guy usually handles meals like a ghost, grabbing a coffee on his way out to a board meeting or hiding in the cave until noon. and even when he's having breakfast down with damian - he lets you pick and choose whether you want to join or not. having him actively call you down means something is already brewing.

you pull on a oversized grey sweatshirt, slide your hands into the front pocket, and take your time walking down the grand staircase.

the moment you step into the massive oak-paneled dining room, the air feels like concrete on your throat - it’s suffocating.

the whole circus is already there, huddled around the table like a bunch of nervous birds, whole lot of little robins and well, bats.

you also notice barbara isn’t present. well, figures. you took notice how, even during the very damn rare occasion that the family decides to get together, she usually isn’t here for breakfast.

bruce is sitting at the head, his face a hard, unreadable stone mask as he stares into a mug of black coffee. tim is frantically tapping away at his tablet, his brow furrowed so deep it looks permanent. damian is glaring at his eggs, while dick leans against the sideboard, looking like he hasn't slept in a week.

well, look at that. nobody is talking the second you come, how sweet!

your boots click against the hardwood, and every single head snaps toward you. it’s the same old routine. six pairs of eyes locking onto you, full of that deep, instinctive discomfort they always have when you’re in the room.

stephanie shifts her weight in her chair, instantly looking down at her napkin, while tim tries to pretend he’s just looking past your shoulder at the window. they look at you like you’re some kind of freak who wandered into their clean, perfect little house.

you have eaten your fair share of filthy stares in your time. hell, it’s practically your breakfast. you get ‘em everywhere: in classrooms, in back alleys behind school, right before you strike at someone; though every now and then, if luck’s feeling real twisted, you get the kind that linger too long, slick with sleaze. the kind of stares people reserve for boys who know too much and care too little - boys like you.

like right now.

they look pathetic. it’s not like you want to be here either.

you slide into an empty chair across from tim, pulling the bowl of sugary cereal toward you with a slow, scraping sound that makes damian’s jaw twitch.

"morning," you drawl, your voice slightly husky from the early morning.

bruce shifts his gaze to you, his dark eyes heavy and bloodshot. "you're up early," he says, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. he tries to make it sound like a normal father-son greeting, but he’s too awkward, too tightly wound to pull it off.

if he knew you, he would know you usually get up early.

"you called," you say, pouring the milk with a steady hand. "so here i am. what's the occasion?"

dick lets out a dry, breathy laugh from the sideboard, shaking his head. "no occasion, kid. we just thought it’d be nice to have the whole family together for once since we're all staying here."

fucking liars. they aren't looking at you because they want a family moment - they’re looking at you because of whatever is buzzing on the small kitchen monitor

you look up from your bowl, your eyes drifting to the screen. a local news anchor is droning on, her voice professional but tense. “...a gruesome discovery early this morning at the gotham international docks. gcpd has cordoned off pier four after the body of a local academy instructor was found staged on a shipping crate. authorities are calling it a targeted, highly theatrical execution...”

"it's the fourth one this season," tim mutters, his finger tracing a line on his tablet screen as he speaks to bruce, completely ignoring you but keeping his voice just loud enough for the table to hear. "the lacerations are identical to the others… but each victim is different.” he pauses for a second. “i can't figure out a motive.”

"it is the work of an unhinged animal," damian sneers, his fingers curling tightly around his fork. "a degenerate playing a pathetic game in our streets."

you take a slow bite of your cereal, the crunch incredibly loud in the quiet room. you look right across the table at tim.

"maybe he just didn't like the guy's grading system," you say, a lazy smile touching your lips as you lean back in your chair. "gotham's a stressful city. people snap over the dumbest shit."

tim narrows his eyes, sighing as he lays his tablet down. cassandra is silently staring at you - same shit as always.

stephanie on the other hand shifts uncomfortably. “it's still too cruel.” she says quietly. “he was just trying to help.. if he hadn’t gone out there, he'd be alive.”

you take another slow bite of your cereal.

chew. swallow.

the softer you are, the deeper you get cut. the saying comes into mind suddenly and you understand the sentiment, sure, but in your experience, it is always the gentlest people that are railroaded for ruin. jason was that kind of gentle. your mom was too, beneath all her hot-and-cold screaming. you’re loathe to admit it out loud, not now, not when the memory of jason’s cold hand on the batcave table is still so fresh.

"s'ppose that's why they say kindness kills,” you reply to stephanie. you shrug a shoulder, looking over at damian’s stiff, arrogant posture. “faster than wickedness."

bruce’s mug freezes halfway to his mouth. dick stops breathing for a split second by the sideboard. there’s that knack again; that flurried beat of wings between your ears that tells you, too, that everyone sitting at this expensive table is trying to be some version of kind. the kind of kind who drinks in all the world’s toils despite their glass having spilled over, long ago. concave under all that pressure. flooded down the wrong pipe. they think they can save a city that seems its made home of hell itself.

"it's not a random animal, damian," tim says, his tone dropping into that low, frustrated detective register. he picks his tablet up again and taps the screen of his tablet with a blunt click of his fingernail, his eyes finally darting up to look right at you. "the victim was gerald hayes. he wasn't just some logistics guy. he was an AP english instructor. he teaches at gotham academy."

the air in the room thins out instantly.

damian’s chewing slows down, tim keeps his eyes locked on yours, searching for a flinch, a twitch, anything. "your school," tim adds

you let out a dry, breathy laugh, leaning forward until your chest presses against the edge of the wood. you're reminded suddenly, overwhelmingly so, of tipping a battered jaw forth down in crime alley - your mom's chapped, blueblack lips whispering those twisted, loving apologies. a wordless prayer, that you shall coax and you shall answer.

"never had him," you say, your face completely deadpan as you track a drop of condensation sliding down tim's water glass. "heard he was a hard grader, though. guess someone really hated his essays."

dick finally takes a step toward the table, his fingers curling tightly around his coffee mug. "speaking of last night," he says, his voice trying way too hard to sound light, like he’s trying to tape up a poster to cover a hole in the wall. "where were you anyway? your car wasn't in the garage when i got back around midnight."

"cinema," you say without a single preamble, the lie slipping out easily before the heat of his stare can swallow itself into nothingness. "louis and i went to see that new slasher flick at the plaza. movie was trash, honestly. way too predictable."

"right," dick mutters, his eyes narrowing just a fraction as he tracks the way your fingers trace the rim of your bowl. "louis vance. you guys are practically inseparable."

"he's fun to be around," you say, pushing the chair back with a loud, ugly scrape against the floorboards. you stand up, pulling the sleeves of your grey sweatshirt down over your knuckles.

"i can stay," dick offers suddenly, the words slipping out rough and awkward before you can reach the door. he looks at bruce, then back at you, that old, toxic older-brother routine flaring up because he thinks you're just a lonely, bitter kid. "if you need help with that calculus project later. i'm not on rotation until late."

you don't give him the satisfaction of an immediate answer.

liar.

it's not the first time he's offered it - one time you accepted and he looked baffled out of his mind. he ended up ditching you as you were waiting, only coming the next day to give an half-assed apology about something important coming up.

dickie’s trying so hard to be the savior. kneeling on the clotted drain-tiles of his own guilt.

"don't bother," you tell him, a small smile touching your lips as you step into the hallway. "i've got it handled."

it's raining.

alfred’s hands are steady on the steering wheel, his posture perfectly straight, eyes tracking the wet streets through the rearview mirror.

he doesn't ask how you're doing and he doesn't bring up the teacher.

he simply drives like always - formal and distant just the way you like it. a neat routine.

the car rolls to a smooth stop right in front of the grand stone archway of gotham academy. "have a pleasant day at school, young master," alfred says, his voice crisp and even.

"thanks," you mutter, throwing the strap of your bag over your shoulder and sliding out into the damp morning air.

louis is already loitering by the stone pillars, shifting his weight around like there are bugs in his skin - itching him from the inside. he’s got that frantic, midday look about him - completely untouched by the grey sky, teeth flashing as he shares a lighter with the rest of the group.

chloe and maya, the two girls who usually trail after your group - aka you and louis - the reason you assume to be your parents’ clout, are huddled under a green canopy, their shoulders bunched up high against their ears. chloe’s holding her breath between words, lips pale and looking almost white where she’s bitten the skin loose. maya looks worse. she’s staring at the gravel like it’s about to cave in under her loafers.

"took you long enough, boss man," louis barks, throwing a heavy arm across your neck without asking. his cuff smells like tobacco and cold river air. you track the hem of his denim jacket - the exact same blue one he had on when the teacher’s clipboard went clattering into the dark.

“you guys are acting like someone dropped a bomb ‘round bere," you mutter, dropping your chin into the collar of your sweatshirt. your teeth click together.

"they practically did," chloe says, dropping her voice so low it barely carries over the wind. she’s leaning in, her hazel eyes rimmed red from the damp chill.

"mr. hayes, you know.. that greasy old guy. they found him staged like some sick display down on pier four. the news said his throat was completely split."

"it’s disgusting," maya whispers, her thumbnail digging into her palm. "who even does that? he was literally just an english teacher."

"it's insane," chloe adds in, her shoulders tensing up as she shivers against the wind. "who the fuck even goes down to the docks so late at night? apparently the police think it’s the principal so they’re all over the main office right now, the vice principal is stepping in."

glassy eyed dolls. to think, that they could get so scared by the mere mention of death - it's gotham. should you pretend you don't notice? the blotchy flush of their cheekbones, the quiver of their fingers - and, god, their *eyes*. hazel rimmed red, the harshness of a mid-july sun drivelling ochre upon reeds - withering, tips looking red-hot to touch.

you shouldn’t, really shouldn’t. you're not the best comforter anyways.

"guess graduation just got a lot easier," you say smiling.

louis lets out a loud, high-pitched giggle right in your ear, his shoulders bouncing as he sneaks a glance at your eyes. "see? boss man gets it! mr. hayes was a total prick anyway.”

chloe stares at louis, her brow furrowing in a mix of disgust and confusion. "louis, shut the fuck up, that's literally so gross. a man died."

"yeah, yeah, whatever," louis mutters, rolling his eyes and pulling a pack of gum from his pocket with his unoccupied hand, entirely unfazed. he shifts his weight, the hem of that light blue denim jacket brushing against you.

as you feel the brush, you look down, noticing a red spot on his jacket. you sigh, what the fuck did you expect? he’s supposed to know better than to wear the evidence to homeroom - but of course he doesn't. didn't he wear black clothes over his outside clothes anyways? how the hell did he manage to fuck his jacket up anyways?

you look at that red smudge on his sleeve once more and your teeth click together. it's so fucking stupid it makes your head ache. louis stands there, grinning like a dog, completely oblivious to the fact that he's walking around with a piece of gotham academy’s dead faculty on his wrist.

"take it off," you tell him, your voice dropping low.

louis blinks. "huh? what're you on about, boss man?"

"the jacket, louis. give it to me." you don't wait for him to get it. you yank your shoulder back, slipping out from under his weight, and reach out to grab the denim collar yourself. you don't look at chloe or maya. you don't give a fuck what kind of weird looks they’re giving you right now.

louis finally catches your drift when your hand covers the dark copper smear on his cuff. his eyes go wide, a little oh sliding out of his mouth before he quickly unbuttons the front. "right. yeah. my bad. forgot to give it back to you."

he shucks it off, throwing it to you. you slide your arms into the stiff denim sleeves, the fabric slightly too big on you, hanging loose around your knuckles. you pull the cuffs down, rolling your wrists until the red stain is tucked neatly under the fold, hidden away from the world.

louis is a loose wire, but he’s your loose wire. you gotta keep the leash tight.

just as you’re tugging the collar straight, a low, smooth engine purr cuts through the schoolyard chatter.

huh?

you don't even have to look to know what it is. an expensive-looking black car slides past the heavy iron gates, the tinted windows slick with rain. it’s moving real slow - way too slow for a car just passing through the block.

dickie’s car - or maybe bruce’s. either way, one of those playboy fucks is behind the wheel, tracking the crowd of kids by the entrance.

your mind is suddenly racing. did they decide to look into it? did bruce actually put aside his grand corporate meetings to look at a dead teacher? did tim and dick spend the whole morning analyzing the docks file instead of going to school or sleeping after you left? if they're already hunting for clues this early, they're moving way faster than they usually do for some nobody instructor.

you try not to let it visibly shake you, though. dropping your head slightly, letting your bangs fall over your eyes as you turn your back to the street.

"come on," you mutter, jabbing your elbow into louis's side to get him moving. "the bell rang. let's get inside."

"bet," louis says, falling into step right beside you, completely carefree again as you both head through the stone archway with maya and chloe following rambling about something you're not listening to.

the leather steering wheel feels sticky under dick’s palms. the air conditioning in the car blows a buzzing stream of cold air right into his face, but it isn't doing anything to shake the greasy weight sitting at the bottom of his stomach.

breakfast was a total disaster. it's always a disaster these days - everything seems to be - but this morning was a whole ‘nother level.

the air, or atmosphere or whatever one would prefer to call it, in that dining room was so thick you could have cut it or maybe even ripped it.

and you were sitting there so casually shoving spoonfuls of sugary cereal into your mouth while the news report was literally describing a dead body down at the pier - your teacher’s dead body at that.

s'ppose that's why they say kindness kills faster than wickedness.

god, the way you had said that… who says something like that after finding out someone so close, someone you knew, got butchered? it didn’t help your case with.. the family’s thoughts about you either.

dick rubs the back of his neck with one hand, steering with the other. he shouldn't even be on this side of town. the original plan was to drive straight over to tim’s school to pick up those encryption files left in a locker (and tim himself eventually. there’s no way tim would miss an opportunity to get away from school), but the docks report keeps echoing in his ears like a fly flying around his neck and buzzing the same old rythm.

an AP english teacher from gotham academy, his little brother's school. the coincidence is just itching at the back of his brain, a tiny, annoying rope he can't stop pulling on.

he’s just curious! he will take a brief look at the campus, maybe see if the gcpd cruisers are causing a scene for the kids, and then be right on his way!

but then he sees you.

dick slows the car down to a crawl, his eyes automatically doing that quick, tactical sweep of the courtyard through the rain-streaked tinted glass.

you are standing near the stone pillars, huddled up with that vance kid - luis? louis? was that his name? and two other girls he doesn’t recognize nor know the name of.

he watches through the glass as you grab the collar of louis's light blue denim jacket, your movements slightly aggressive.

hell, you practically rip the thing off the vance kid's shoulders and shove your own arms into the sleeves. and right there, before you roll the cuffs up to hide it, dick catches the glimpse. a dark, dried red smear right on the fabric near the wrist.

and thoughts he shouldn’t think creep into his mind, nasty and intrusive, pressing right up against the back of his eyes.

no. stop it.

he forces a rough exhale through his nose, gripping the leather until his knuckles ache. he’s wrong to think that way. he’s completely out of line. sure, you are an oddball - always so quiet and detached from seemingly everything, and a little very cold around the edges - but you’re not a killer.

you’re just a teenager. a completely, normal teenager.

that stain on the light blue fabric is probably louis's jacket anyway, and the vance kid probably just spilled some acrylic paint or rust from a fence onto the cuff and didn’t see it while lending it to you - art classes exist after all. it was stupid to even think it could’ve been blood. dick tries to push down the sickening, logical part of his brain that knows exactly what a hours-old dried bloodstain looks like on fabric, especially denim. it’s just paint. it has to be.

his eyes stay glued to the rear-view mirror as the car rolls past the gate. he remembers when you first came to the manor. honestly? dick hadn’t exactly been positive about it.

bruce had just dragged another broken child out of the dark, this time the dark of crime alley, and dick had already been halfway out the door, fighting for his own independence as robin which would eventually lead him to become nightwing.

admittedly, with a sharp, twisting pain in his chest he knows that he wasn't the most active big brother. not like he is now with tim or damian, or even cassandra or even steph. he hadn't been there to tape up any cool posters in your room (which makes him realize he doesn’t even know how your room looks like) or go to arcades with you.

but.. he wasn't all bad, right? there were moments. small ones, but they existed. like when dick and you sparred in the batcave or he'd drag you down for video games.

plus you aren’t a vigilante, you aren’t wrapped up in this insane, caped war, and dick had just been so completely consumed by blüdhaven and the titans that he barely had time to breathe. and then... then jason died.

when the crowbar and the bomb took jason, the whole manor felt as if it broke into tiny pieces, like a shattered mirror.

dick had been drowning in his own grief, and when he was okay enough and looked at his little brother, it felt like you were floating on a completely different world - totally unreachable and numb.

dick knows he was… slightly negligent. he knows he left a traumatized kid alone in a house haunted by a dead robin and a grieving, emotionally unavailable bruce and batman, especially after everything you went through with your mother.

he didn't mean anything bad by it. he was just a stupid, hurting kid himself, trying to keep his own head above water.

through the rain-streaked glass, dick watches as you finally drop your head, letting your bangs shadow your face as you turn your back to the street and walk through the stone archway. louis follows close behind him, bouncing on his heels as the two unknown girls trail behind. you disappear into the main building.

…

it’s nearly five in the afternoon. the cave feels less like a headquarters and more like a pressure cooker.

barbara sits rigidly in her wheelchair, her fingers flying across her keyboard. her screen reflects a blinding blue light across her face, casting long shadows behind her.

this wasn't even the main mission. the whole reason dick was out in the city was just to tie up some loose ends for their actual tactical assignment, he was supposed to pick up the encryption files alongside tim's spare tech gear (where he of course, ended up taking time with him much to bruce’s displeasure), a couple of completely routine errands before they locked down for the night.

but with the dock victim being an instructor so close to home, so near to someone in the family, bruce had said to just take a brief look.

a few feet away, tim is hunched over a secondary diagnostic terminal, his eyes bloodshot, a half-empty energy drink pooling a ring of condensation onto a stack of printed satellite maps.

her eyes glance at him from the corner of the room. should she pretend she doesn't notice? the heavy drop of his chin, the slow shake of his hands - his breathing. shallow and thin, the harshness of a long night - then school and then relentless work at the computer casting deep blue across his face - fading, looking too tired to move (it's no wonder he was asleep every chance he got).

she shouldn't stay quiet, right? tim is younger, the poor boy deserves to have his fill of sleep - she should be able to do it alone and allow him his rest - he is her family. tim had clearly run out of fuel long ago, obviously (completely ignoring her own tiredness and the fact that she lost count of what number of coffee she was on), it was her own fault for starting the sweep so late. guilt, heavy guilt.

barbara has always been good at sorting through wreckage - finding which voice to pull from the noise. which clue would help and which would leave them lost in the dark.

and yet, she seems slightly stuck here, which is why she had to burden tim with it in the first place.

and then, finally, progress.

"i've finished the deep-filter sweep from the gmail account," barbara says, her voice echoing faintly through the open space. she doesn't look up from her monitors. "it indeed looks like someone hacked into the principals account, the method is usually an easy to strip back one.. but the data it leads to doesn’t make sense. the person it leads to doesn’t exist so it was a deliberate fake record."

bruce stands behind her, his massive frame clad in his dark tactical trousers and a compression shirt - his heavy brows furrowing as he processes the data.

bruce was so caught up with the actual mission he didn’t exactly spare you much of a thought- except for well, when the teacher died.

he really hadn't meant to... pay so little attention to you. he never wanted things to turn out this cold. he just... he didn't want you to be a part of the vigilante life. from the very day he dragged you out of that orphanage, you had always seemed so broken. so entirely distant and sad. it was a look bruce knew intimately - a look he had carried in his own reflection for decades, and he reckons, still sometimes does.

instead of throwing his son, his very first flesh and blood into this endless loop of death, trauma, and horrors - someone he had not intended for this - bruce had genuinely hoped that keeping you away from the mantle would give you a normal life. a chance to finally breathe clean air. so he actively ignored how much more distant you got, pretending the silence was just normal teenage moodiness, because the alternative meant admitting he was failing you in a completely different way.

"the school," bruce rumbles, his deep voice dropping into heavy register, pulling himself away from his own head. "hayes was an instructor there. if the killer is operating from the campus, the vector is localized."

"or it's just a student," jason speaks up from the shadows near the weapon racks. he’s leaning against a steel crate, tossing a combat knife up in the air and catching it by the handle with a lazy, dangerous flick of his wrist. "maybe someone just got tired of homework."

"don't joke about this, jason," stephanie snaps, crossing her arms tightly over her chest as she paces near the sparring mat. "a man had his throat cut and was left like an exhibit. it's sick. it's not some schoolyard prank."

cassandra doesn’t add onto the conversation but she is aware. especially aware of you.

dick walks down the stairs now, his movements unusually slow. he doesn't quite look at anyone in the cave and his hands are stuffed deep into his pockets, his fingers curling into tight fists.

he’s been feeling slightly uneasy since he got back, a weird, prickling tension buzzing under his skin that he can't quite shake, but he keeps his mouth shut.

"you got the locks with you?" tim asks, turning his chair to face dick. "i need the ip handshakes from the campus wi-fi during the time of the docks hit."

dick forces his face into a neutral mask. "nothing unusual," he says, his voice steady despite the faint uneasiness humming in his chest. "also, gcpd had a cruiser by the main office, but the campus was mostly clear. just kids heading in and out of school."

tim narrows his eyes, tapping his fingers against the armrest of his chair. he turns back to his screen, his fingers flying across the keys as he pulls up the encrypted sector of the manor’s local network - the private partition bruce lets you use for school.

"i'm running a diagnostic sweep on our own outbound data packets," tim mutters, his teeth clicking together. the numbers don't lie. "the signal-scrambler used at the docks... it didn't just loop the cameras. it used a specific, nested logic tree. it's an exact signature match for the prototype algorithm we used to secure the watchtower relays last winter."

jason stops tossing his knife. his eyes narrow and his gaze shifts slowly toward the elevator shaft that leads up into the heart of the mansion - directly toward your bedroom. "the watchtower code? there are only a handful of people who can even read that string without frying a mainframe."

"bruce, barbara, and me," tim says, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly quiet whisper as he finally looks up, his eyes darting between his family. "and the kid upstairs."

stephanie lets out a breathy gasp, her hand flying to her mouth. "are you... are you seriously suggesting what i think you're suggesting? that's insane! yeah he's odd and creepy, but there's no way he would do that!"

"steph, stop," tim cuts her off, his voice devoid of any heat as he looks up from his screen. "as far as i know, no one here is currently close enough with him to truly judge that."

the words cause an uncomfortable shift.

stephanie goes completely silent, her jaw tightening as she looks away. she hates that he's right.

her mind instantly drifts back to when she first started showing up around the manor. she did try with you! she actually tried to be nice, to be the friendly older girl you could rely on, like a big sister, but she quickly stopped because you were just... so completely off-putting. you never looked her in the eye, you never laughed at her jokes, and you didn't exactly seem fond of her at all. so she just gave up.

she ignored you, only speaking to you when it was absolutely necessary to pass the salt or move out of the way in the hall. she kept doing that even after she found out what you went through from dick and why you are the way you are - and she has felt bad for it slightly, but not enough to truly dwell on it or attempt to change her attitude. not the way she had tried for damian.

but.. just because you're a bit odd and don't want to play happy family doesn't mean you go around murdering people, right? it doesn't make sense.

"tim's right about the code, but we can't just throw accusations around," dick steps up, his voice taking on that protective, big-brother tone as he moves closer to the console. "he’s seventeen. he's a normal kid - no vigilante or villain or whatever. someone could have hacked his partition, or maybe he just left his terminal logged in. he isn't a killer."

"dick, i ran the encryption diagnostics three times just now," barbara joins in, her wheelchair whirring slightly as she turns to face him. "the handshake didn't come from a remote bypass. it came from inside his specific drive sector, the logical sequence matches his coding style exactly. i don't want it to be true either, but the data is right here."

dick looks at the screen, a sick, hollow flutter flaring up in his chest. it's just paint, he tells himself again.

his mind betrays him anyway, dragging him right back to the academy gates, right back to that copper-colored blotch dried fluid on the denim cuff.

it looked so eerily similar to dried blood. he can still see the look in your eyes as you rolled the sleeves to hide it, but he chooses not to mention it. he locks his jaw tight, keeping the secret buried in his throat because admitting it means the floor drops out from under him.

cassandra then finally moves to talk. "he is light on his feet," cassandra says softly, she looks at dick, then down at the floorboards. "he sparred with dick when he was younger, right? he trained here, in the dark. he knows the machines and he is tech savvy. the chances... they are not impossible."

jason, surprisingly, is the one who stays entirely silent through all of it. he doesn't toss his knife anymore; and grips the handle tight, leaning his shoulders against the steel crate as he remembers you.

he knows you two aren't close now. hell, you both barely even talk, let alone exchange glances when you pass each other in the corridors upstairs. he’s been so entirely consumed by his own grudge against bruce - a black, choking fury he still carries with him for its been etched into the deepest part of his soul - and he just didn't have the time to let anyone get in his way. plus, you had changed too.

you weren't the scrawny kid from crime alley who used to watch him with those wide eyes anymore. you mutated into something cold, but that doesn't mean you're a murderer now, right?

jason knows you aren't all good - he knows the dark dirt you came from better than anyone else in this room - but he also knows you weren't all bad.

you were just a kid who got left behind.

bruce’s hands slowly ball into a white-knuckled fists at his sides. the leather of his tactical gloves creaks loud in the sudden quiet of the cave.

"drop it," bruce rumbles. he doesn't look at tim, and he doesn't look at the flashing red anomaly on the screen. his face is completely set, a hard, stubborn line hiding whatever terror is clawing at his gut. "we focus on the original mission. that is our priority tonight."

tim looks like he wants to argue, his mouth opening, but bruce silences him with a single look.

“we will keep an eye on him," bruce adds, his voice dropping to a low, sounding entirely exhausted under the harsh white lights. "but until we have definitive proof, we do not cross that line. clear the diagnostics, let's get back to work."

A/N: its like 4am and i just finished proof reading so if some things don’t add up forgive me lolol. also, what do y’all think about like.. a love interest for the reader? should it be louis or a new character and if yes, what gender? or should he just stay without romance… also im so sorry if the technical shit dont make sense i highkey had to look allat up 💀

Taglist: @minuscream @cookieeatersmc @heraldin @katyniss @barbare2 @niccocia @swaguicide @astrid-ash @sunnilovesyapping @lilyalone @mindscape123 @nics-favorite-fics @littledemon1503 @abigaiili @djpeachh @sugrfairie @st4rjojo @midnight-dreamerxeclipse @cutehearto @tsuniio @irul-yapara @sensitivevampire @yolotz1n @heartpumpingstarz @zaniexcoffx1 @qianette-sanzusgirl @aiziwaah @blackhood123 @lunaloveschickennuggets @luv-luv-lover @cibomatt0 @gigisafeplace @qianette-sanzugirl

if you didn’t get tagged please make sure your tags are on and if you didn’t get listed here or i got ur username wrong pls correct me in the comments !! if you want to be added to the taglist comment it pls :)!!

blackstaredhibiscus

ITS DARE

Yandere leon Kennedy with baby zombie reader

latitanmerodeadora-blog

I have an idea for Neglected!Reader for the BatFam.

I fell into the rabbit hole, and now I made my own idea… although is a bit more OC instead of reader, I guess? Never really saw what was the difference.

Anyways, my idea is honestly more on the not angst side, with Reader being neglected but her… not really giving a fuck.

Let me explain.

She is an orphan that for whatever reason ends up being adopted by Bruce, but has absolutely no interest on being a vigilante, which makes Bruce actually really happy… but ends up with her being sidelined a bit because he was taking care of Jason as Robin… then he spirals until Tim appears… then is Cassandra…. Then Damian… Jason came back… then Duke… and suddenly he realized that it has been years since he had an actual conversation with reader.

He’s devastated and angry at himself, so scared to apologize to her, but when he opens the door of her room she… just says hi… as he hadn’t basically ignored her for years, she even ask him how his patrol was that night, and when she received the short answer of “good” she just told him that now she had plans to play with some friends online and asked him to close the door.

That not only happened to him, but to almost everyone in the family had a similar experience, and when they finally decided to talk to her about it… Reader was just confused:

“Wait… you guys were ignoring me?”

if you’re interested in the idea, let me know so I keep writing it

0wawaweewa0

I'm in a yandere batfam x neglected reader fics right now and I have an idea which I hope would inspire someone to write about it cause I suck at it and needs someone to supplement this hunger (⁄ ⁄>⁄ ▽ ⁄<⁄ ⁄) So here it goes, I want a reader who is Bruce Wayne’s biological child, raised by a single mother who knew early on that they struggled to emotionally connect with others. (because reader is sociopathic and apathetic combined) To help them navigate social situations, she created flashcards filled with instructions on how to respond to people, mimic normal interactions, and understand basic emotional cues. The reader relied heavily on these cards growing up, learning how to “act human” rather than naturally understanding others.

After the mother dies in an accident, the reader is brought into Wayne Manor and introduced to a family they’ve never known. However, adjusting proves difficult. The reader’s detached demeanor, delayed reactions, and unsettling honesty make the rest of the family uncomfortable, while the reader themselves struggles to understand the unspoken emotional dynamics of the household. Some members avoid them, some misunderstand them, and others unintentionally neglect them while dealing with their own problems and trauma.

Rather than focusing on becoming violent or evil, the story centers on someone trying to survive inside a family built around broken people, while slowly learning what connection, trust, and belonging actually mean.

The flashcards can become SUCH a painful/emotional motif in Batfam stories too. Especially if one of the siblings accidentally finds them and realizes:

the reader wasn’t mocking emotions — they literally learned social interaction from handwritten instructions their mother made for them.

That kind of reveal is peak Batfam angst honestly. (˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ ) They can be yandere or not, male or female or gender neutral, up to you.

°˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖° Edit: If someone do write this, please tag me

maltes3

Yandere!AsylumPatient x AsylumPatient!Reader

Before he was committed, Yandere!AsylumPatient was a walking urban legend. He wasn't a calculated mastermind; he was completely, terrifyingly chaotic, the kind of monster who would end up on the news for destroying a public space or going after completely random people for reasons only his warped mind understood. The entire city breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally locked away in the high-security wing of the asylum. He is notoriously violent, and even the beefiest, most hardened guards refuse to enter his cell without a full riot squad and tranquilizers on standby.

You, on the other hand, are the absolute polar opposite. You are a deeply anxious, fragile, and heavily medicated patient who was completely eaten alive by the brutal reality of the asylum. The constant echoing screams down the hallways, the loud slamming of heavy iron doors, and the cold, clinical apathy of the staff keep your nervous system in a state of permanent panic. You spend most of your days huddled in the corners of the recreation yard, trembling, staring at the floor, and trying to make yourself as invisible as possible.

Yandere!AsylumPatient noticed you on your very first day in the yard. While the other patients kept their distance from him out of pure survival instinct, you were too dazed by your sedative cocktail to realize who he was. When a group of aggressive, larger patients tried to corner you to steal your ration card, he didn't just step in, he turned the entire recreation yard into a bloodbath. He dismantled them within seconds, his face twisted into a maniacal, joyful grin as he broke bones just to hear them snap. But the moment he turned around to look at you, the wild, crazed light in his eyes instantly softened.

From that exact moment, he appointed himself as your absolute, immovable shield. He treats the entire asylum like his personal playground, and you are his most prized, delicate treasure. When he is around you, his terrifying, bloodthirsty persona completely melts away into an affectionate, playful tease. He loves leaning his head on your shoulder, poking your cheeks, and whispering ridiculous jokes in your ear just to see if he can get you to crack a small smile through your anxiety. "Hey, little bird... look what I got for you. Don't tell the doctors, or I'll have to bite them again."

Yandere!AsylumPatient is a master at stealing things from the staff and other wards just to spoil you. Despite being heavily monitored, he always manages to slip into your hands things that are strictly forbidden or impossible for a patient to get: a soft, smuggled contraband blanket that doesn't scratch your skin, a handful of sweet candies he swiped from a nurse's desk, or a colorful drawing he made using stolen crayons. He will literally sit at your feet in the dayroom, shielding your body from the view of the guards, hand-feeding you treats like you're a pampered royal rather than a prisoner.

The asylum administration is absolutely terrified of the codependency developing between you two, so they try to separate you constantly. But every single attempt results in absolute catastrophe. The second a guard puts a hand on your arm to lead you to a different wing, he flips the switch back to his "batshit insane" self. He will scream, spit, and fight with the strength of ten men, throwing his body against the concrete walls and threatening to rip the throats out of every doctor on the board. He makes it completely impossible for the facility to function.

During his worst, most violent episodes when he is strapped to a gurney in a straitjacket, foaming at the mouth and laughing hysterically while doctors try to pump him full of sedatives, the only thing that can calm him down is you. The staff eventually learned that the fastest way to stop a full-scale riot is to just wheel his gurney right back into your room. The second he sees your face, his frantic breathing slows down. He’ll look up at you through his restraints, his bloody teeth bared in a soft, goofy grin, and whine like a puppy. "See? I told them I'd behave if they brought me back to my favorite person. Come untie me, sweetie."

Yandere!AsylumPatient has effectively turned your shared corner of the asylum into an untouchable sanctuary. The other patients are too terrified to even look in your direction, and the doctors have completely given up on separating you out of fear for their own lives. You are still trapped in a cold, terrifying asylum, but as long as his heavy, protective arm is draped around your shoulders, pulling your anxious frame tight against his chest, the rest of the world can't hurt you anymore. He will keep you safe in his madness forever.

Yandere!AsylumPatient has a literal, physical dependency on touching you. The doctors call it a "pathological hyper-fixation," but to him, it’s just breathing. Whether you two are sitting in the cold dayroom, walking the bleak corridors, or eating in the cafeteria, he must have some part of his body connected to yours. He’ll walk right behind you with a large, heavy hand resting firmly on the small of your back, or he’ll constantly play with your fingers, tracing the lines of your palm. Even if he’s in the middle of a manic, high-energy rant to himself, his other hand will be gently, rhythmically patting your head, treating you like the only grounding wire in his chaotic mind.

This constant touch is actually the only thing that keeps his violent impulses at bay. The guards have noticed a terrifying pattern: if he is touching you, his heart rate is stable, and he just acts like a teasing, overly affectionate boyfriend. But the exact millimeter his skin loses contact with yours, like if a nurse forces you to step away for a blood pressure check, his entire body goes completely rigid. His jaw tics up, his eyes go dead, and he begins to growl. He will literally glare at the staff like a rabid dog on a short leash until your hand is safely back in his.

Yandere!AsylumPatient treats your high levels of anxiety as an invitation to smother you. Whenever the alarms go off, or another patient has a loud, screaming episode that makes you cover your ears and shake, he gets this dark, intensely satisfied look in his eyes. He will instantly pull your fragile frame into his lap, wrapping his long arms around you like a human straitjacket, burying his face in your neck. He’ll rock you back and forth, whispering playful, sweet nonsense against your skin while shielding your view of the room. "Let them scream, little bird. Just listen to me. I'm right here. Breathe me in."

The nighttime routine is the absolute bane of the asylum’s security staff. Because they are kept in separate wards at night, he is supposed to be locked behind a reinforced steel door. He isn't. Nobody actually knows how he does it whether he steals a hairpin, blackmails a night-shift guard, or literally forces the hinges out of the frame but every single night, without fail, he breaks out of his cell. He sneaks through the dark, sterile hallways like a ghost, completely ignoring the security cameras, with only one destination in mind: your room.

You’ll be lying in your cot, staring at the ceiling in a state of deeply anxious insomnia, when you suddenly hear the soft, familiar click of your door unlocking. He’ll slip into your room with a huge, boyish grin, completely untroubled by the fact that he’s breaking maximum-security protocols. Before you can even whisper his name, he’s already sliding under your thin, scratchy white blanket. He will pull you flush against his chest, tucking your head securely under his chin, and let out a deep, contented sigh, finally falling asleep the second he can feel your heartbeat against his ribs.

The middle of the night always ends in a chaotic, exhausting circus. Around 3:00 AM, the night-guard patrol will inevitably shine a flashlight through your window, spot the massive, notorious killer sleeping peacefully in the fragile patient's bed, and sound the red alarm. A squad of six to eight heavily armored guards will burst into the room with batons and shields. He doesn't even wake up angry; he just groans, holding onto you even tighter, wrapping his legs around yours like a stubborn child throwing a tantrum.

As the guards literally grab his arms and try to pry him out of your bed, he’ll start screaming and cursing, tossing his head back and snapping his teeth at them. He’ll rip the sheets, kick the bedframe, and fight with terrifying, supernatural strength just to keep one hand wrapped around your wrist. "Let go of me, you corporate pigs! I'm sleeping! They were having a nightmare. I'm helping them! I'll skin you alive if you pull me away from them!" He will drag the entire weight of the guard squad across the floorboards just to maintain a grip on your fingertips for three more seconds.

The second his grip finally slips and they successfully drag him backward out into the hallway, he flips completely into his chaotic, batshit-insane persona laughing maniacally, threatening the night supervisor's family, and kicking the walls until they lock him in solitary. But it’s completely pointless. The staff knows that within three hours, the sun will come up, the recreation yard will open, and he will walk right back out of his cell, completely fine, covered in new bruises, and immediately seek you out to place a warm, possessive hand right back on your shoulder as if nothing ever happened.

my-dailydreams

oldgayjew

C'MON GOLDEN POTATO ...

I'm getting another idea and I got it from those tiktok videos where GF suddenly says she is pregnant whilst getting out of the car and BF was left inside BUT with the Batboys.

So here is the idea....

📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖

The Batboy gets into the car after a long patrol.

The female MC is already on the phone with a friend or family member. He doesn't pay much attention at first. It sounds like a normal conversation.

Then, right as he settles into his seat, she reaches for the door handle.

The person on the other end asks a question.

The MC opens the door.

Steps out.

And just as the car door swings shut—

"Yeah, I'm pregnant."

Click.

The door closes.

The conversation continues outside.

But the Batboy can't hear the rest.

Meanwhile, the MC is completely unaware that she just left one of Gotham's most dangerous vigilantes having a full system crash in the front seat.

✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️

As usual I hope someone gets an inspiration on how each (or only one of them depending on your inspiration) of the batboys react.

#batboys #batfamily #batfam #tiktok #x reader #reader #y/n #x y/n #dc universe #dc comics #dcu #fanfic #oneshot #fanfic ideas #yandere batboys #yandere batfam #yandere batman

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