Helooo!!! Quick question what are your dos and donts on requesting! Like what do you like to write and what are stuff you'll turn down immediately! ♥︎:3
hey hey!!
i have recently processed i don’t have these up on my page! so def a fair ask
what i like to write:
-been heavy into dc recently (open to writing for a lot of characters)
-i’ve never posted smut, but i do write it!!
- i mainly write fem!reader (she/her) pronouns, but if you want it to be gender neutral, i can absolutely do that!!
favorite tropes: enemies to lovers, established relationships, idiots to lovers!!!!
current list of who i write for:
-batfam (platonic + romantic - NO batcest), batsis, batmom
-wally west
-character x kent! reader
-if not specifically listed, you can always ask!
dos:
- smut (i haven’t written much though, so tis a learning experience)
- platonic x reader
- x reader
don’ts (at least immediate don’ts)
- pregnancy
-(specific to dc) batcest
- rape, incest, any kind of abuse 
- racism, homophobia, transphobia, hate crimes, anything along those lines
- nothing else is specifically coming to mind at the very moment, but if i’m not comfy writing a request, i will politely decline !
summary: when a regular patrol goes south, both jason and you process that there’s a different meaning to the “hatred” you two have for each other
warnings: canon typical violence, slight idiots in love, good dad bruce
a/n: so hey guys! baby’s first dc fic! this was supposed to be a blurb and in true ash fashion couldn’t stay a blurb. considering making this a part of a series where we see more of vigilante!reader and jason (also not really edited as i was just wanting to write and get something out there as i missed writing like crazy)
requests are open!!
hope you enjoy!
(photos from pinterest)
once again the man in front of you opened his mouth, causing you to roll your eyes.
you hated him. you swore on your life that you did. up and down, left and right, no room for anything in between. or at least hatred was the assumed feeling.
the only reason Bruce ever teamed you two up for patrol was because he knew, that when necessary, the two of you made a great team. something clicked between the two of you that no one else truly understood.
whether it was countering attacks or trading off weapons at the loss of one or the countless hours both of you spent training when the idea of sleep felt miles away, somehow something worked.
you couldn’t deny that you were still protective of him; he had gone through hell and back and still found the energy to annoy you to death. asides from that he was strong and resilient, yet you knew trauma like that didn’t just go away.
he heavily reciprocated those feelings. he didn’t exactly hate you, but to come back to life, back home, and to meet a new person expected to be his teammate came with a few unknown feelings that were hard to manage. he didn’t despise you, he just hated that he came in when everyone else was already in the loop on you.
today’s patrol was supposed to be easy breezy, but like most things in gotham, it never worked how you wanted it to.
the two of you had gotten the debrief from bruce that this wasn’t supposed to be anything more than patrolling and following a lead that he had caught last week - only to interfere, if absolutely necessary.
unfortunately for you two, it became necessary only a bit into patrol.
back to back with jason, scarecrow’s men had the two of you circled. the two of you fell into rhythm like a perfect song: the fight escalated with the perfect crescendo, each punch was perfectly reflected on the opposing side, and it wasn’t long before the two of you could return to find out the reason they were here.
as the two of you checked, a brief flash of movement was seen by the neighboring hallway. watching carefully, you grabbed your knunchucks, ready for the fight to continue.
“oh, and we have our knuchucks out now? where are you off to?” jason asked, rummaging through a pocket of a man that had been left unconscious just moments earlier.
“i saw something, but i needed to sweep over here anyways.”
seeming pleased with that answer, he turned back towards the ground. “be careful and holler if you need me, i think i found another part of the bat’s lead.”
“comms are on, red. i’ll be okay.”
turning through the only open door towards the hallway, there were only two rooms that were already boarded up and obviously locked, but towards the end of the hall a single office was visible.
holding your weapons closely to you as all signs pointed to whatever had come this way being right where you were. slowly, you entered, finding a desk with a shattered lamp, along with a few filing cabinets that looked like they had been rummaged through in a rush, and in the corner was whatever you had seen move.
crane.
before you could even think, the toxin hit the air. you didn’t know where crane went. you didn’t know where jason was. you honestly probably couldn’t even tell someone where you were.
opening your eyes again, that’s when you started to see them. that’s when you started to hear them too.
the one time that you had actually disappointed bruce when you first started working with the team. the time that dick got hurt on patrol with you and you weren’t sure you could get back to the cave in time. the time that barbara was dealing with her own issues and you hadn’t meant to overstep in your helping.
the time that you stumbled on jason’s files. when you saw his autopsy report.
the same time that his autopsy reminded you of your own parents’ report.
clutching your chest as if that would somehow interfere on the way that your senses were betraying you. you couldn’t decipher what was actually going on, your palms wiping your eyes to rid them of what they were seeing - which didn’t help as your brain was imagining it just the same as you saw in front of you.
jason moved without thinking as he had heard commotion from the hallway you had just walked down. moving quickly, he entered the hallway only to come face-to-face with crane - which would have been priority, if he hadn’t heard you screaming.
he hesitated for a moment as he heard your voice echoing from the hallway, but quickly turned at the sound of the man in front of him. “oh, yes, i did see there was a new friend with us. figured she deserved a grand welcome.”
he didn’t think before he jumped into action. everything blurred. the only thing he could see anymore was crane, he knew the risk of getting hit with the toxin was there - he didn’t care anymore. he only cared about getting to you.
the rage that he felt led his actions before anything else could. he knew all he had to was immobilize crane, but he couldn’t help but overdo it - in true jason fashion.
the only thing that made him stop was the sound of you screaming his name. rushing, somehow faster than before, he left crane lying unconscious. “b. i need you.”
that was all bruce needed to hear to know that something more happened than just patrol. although jason was his son, it was a rare occurrence for him to ask for help. “what happened? i’m four minutes out.”
jason’s chest heaved as he tried to answer to the best of his abilities. “crane got her. she left to check a hallway, and, and i didn’t realize that she was following a person, i thought she just-“
”okay.” bruce paused, making sure to respond accordingly, as he could tell the wrong words could heavily impact the moment. “how is she now?”
”i don’t- i saw crane when i was heading to her and then heard screaming. fuck.”
”i’m two out. go find her, i’ll be there soon.”
jason took a deep breath. bruce could help get her home, find an antidote, anything. he sprinted to the end of the hallway, pausing as he took in your form crouched in a corner: your eyes stayed closed, but the tears were streaming down your face to no avail; your arms were crossed, standing in as armour from what your mind was showing you; you kept going from shaking to completely still; and continued to call out to the members of your team and your family.
“please, don’t go,” you whispered softly as he crouched down to meet you. ”i- i don’t know if this is real, but i just. please don’t.”
jason’s heart broke at the way your voice cracked. “i’m here, i promise. i know i can’t prove i’m real right now to you, but i assure you, i’m here.”
it wasn’t long before the bat made an appearance.
in a quick exchange of events, jason watched as bruce slowly got close enough to administer the antidote, but he didn’t miss the way your breath shook as another figure appeared. he waited a moment before he moved to pick you up and get you in the batmobile.
……….
“son, you’re going to pace a hole in my floor, if you don’t sit down soon.” bruce spoke with his eyes still on the bat computer, as he felt jason turn behind him. yet again.
it had been hours since they had returned to the cave. alfred was taking care of you, you had gotten the antidote in time, everything would be fine - except it didn’t feel like it was. ”sorry, b.”
when jason finally sat down, bruce was finally able to take the breath that he was holding in. he could tell that jason was going through the motions, every step, every move, of the mission just to piece together how else this could have played out - bruce practically had the same attempt at self regulation after every mission involving those he cared about.
finally turning around in his chair, he finally got a good look at jason, at his boy. bruce wasn’t an idiot - although there were plenty of times recently that he thought his own son was, especially when it came to you. “it wasn’t your fault, you know?”
jason took a shakey breath, finally facing bruce. “then, why does it feel like it is? i should’ve covered her, or literally just paid closer attention.”
“crane was there, either way. hell, patrol went south almost 30 minutes in. the two of you thought it was just his men, so she likely assumed that one fled and followed. it was likely moreso just a matter of time before he made himself known to either of you.”
before the man in front of him could respond, the sound of alfred clearing his throat broke them out of any conversation. “the antidote has fully kicked in. anything the young lady is dealing with now is residual.”
jason finally let out the exhale he had been holding in since he found you. he watched as the the butler slowly turned to him. “master jason, she was asking for you.”
“okay, yeah. i just need a second to breathe some more.”
“the other thing master jason,” the butler paused. “it appears she has seen your autopsy files.”
jason didn’t think before he sprung to action. unsure of how he got there, he found you in the med bay staring blankly ahead.
moving the only chair he sees to be closer to you, he takes the seat in silence.
“0/10. would never do that again,” you said, hoping this was a good way to start this inevitable conversation.
“that’s likely the general consensus for people exposed to fear gas, sunshine.”
you finally turned to fully look at jason, only to find him in no better shape than you. “you look rough.”
“yeah, well i wouldn’t go walking any ms. gotham pageants soon.”
the two of you smiled at each other before the weight of what had happened ate the smiles alive.
“i saw you too, you know? i saw bruce mad, dick hurt, babs mad, even alfred was disappointed in me. but i- the worst thing i saw was what happened to you. then it got worse when my brain remembered the similarities of the crowbar.”
you left it at that. you never really talked about your parents, past the fact that they died, which is why you had no idea why you were opening up to him.
jason let what he heard settle for a moment, the wheels slowly turning in his head. “he’s not here. nor will he ever be, so help anything that stands in the way. the things you saw in those files, they’re over.”
“i just- i feel awful for even looking at your files. i shouldn’t have gone near them, but bruce had looked on day about a year before you came back and i saw them. then i saw what he had used and i was right back in that house where he held me and my parents.
once i knew that and you came back, i wanted so badly to let you know you weren’t the only one that the clown got to,” you paused, looking away from him. “but then i processed how easily i could just take you right back to seeing him. sending him. everything. i just couldn’t. i’m sorry i made you hate me.”
ge hesitated as he moved to cradle one side of your face, his thumb absentmindedly moving to wipe the stream of tears still stained on your face. “i don’t hate you, i could never. and you could never take me back to him. never. you aren’t in the wrong here, sunshine.”
“since when did sunshine become a thing?” you asked, your eyes flicking down to his lips, still right in front of your face.
“since this made me realize how important you are to me,” he said, just above a whisper as he moved in closer.
your breath hitched as you processed what was actually happening. feeling the temperature rise as his face got closer to yours, you let your eyes close and —
“and here i thought i was just checking on the little birds. not walking into a full on makeout,” dick’s voice boomed from the doorway.
jason groaned before snapping his head over, “move along, dickhead.”
“well don’t let me stand in the way of you two. have fun lovebirds! wrap it up!”
“i’m gonna kill him.”
“can you at least kiss me first?”
……………
hope you guys liked it! and if you want a specific request with this reader, just make sure to mark it as vigilante!reader!!
The neon of Crime Alley did not illuminate; it bled. It stained the rain-slicked asphalt a bruised purple, throwing long, distorted shadows against the peeling brick of tenements that had been dying since before the Waynes fell.
In Gotham, you either became the teeth or you became the meat.
You had chosen the teeth a long time ago. Specifically, ten years ago, on a night when the rain smelled of iron and cheap gin, and the world decided to rip away whatever soft, naive girl you had been. The man who had trapped you in that dead-end alley didn't have a face you remembered anymore; he only had the shape of a nightmare. But out of that violation, out of the blood and the shattering of your youth, a heartbeat had formed.
Jason.
The day he was born in a squalid, freezing room with only a rusted radiator for warmth, you had looked into his glassy, newborn eyes and made a silent, terrifying vow to whatever gods ignored the slums of Gotham: I will be the monster so he doesn't have to be, so that no harm will ever be able to reach him. My baby.
To the pushers, the pimps, and the loan sharks who crawled through the gutters of the Narrows, you were a ghost with a switchblade. You were the cold, merciless shadow that left broken jaws and severed fingers in your wake if anyone so much as breathed the wrong way near your door. You stole, you extorted, you broke bones, and you did it all with a face carved from stone. You were a heartless, terrifying creature to the rest of the world.
But to Jason, you were everything.
To Jason, your hands were never cold. When the fever took him during his third winter, those hands had bathed his forehead with melted snow. When the hunger clawed at his small stomach, you went three days without a crumb so he could eat a bruised apple and a slice of stale bread, whispering old stories into his hair until he fell asleep. You were the only soft thing in his violent universe, a secret sanctuary built inside a fortress of iron and malice.
"Ma?" Jason’s voice drifted through the small, damp kitchen. He was nine now, growing too fast, his ribs still showing through his thin shirt despite your best efforts. He was adjusting the strap of an oversized backpack. "I'm heading out. Just... looking for scrap near the borders. Maybe some discarded copper."
You looked up from the table where you were carefully cleaning a rusted but functional snub-nosed revolver. Your eyes, usually sharp enough to cut glass, softened instantly as they landed on him.
"Don't go past Park Row, Jaybird," you said, your voice low and steady. "The Falcone boys are moving shipments tonight. Keep your head down. If someone looks at you, you don't look back. You take their eyes out if they touch you. Understand?"
"Yeah, Ma. I know the rules." He smiled, a genuine, crooked thing that he only ever showed to you. "Love you."
"I love you more than the stars, Jason. Back before midnight."
But midnight came, and the rusted clock on the wall ticked past one. Then two. Then three.
By dawn, the cold panic that you had buried ten years ago began to claw its way up your throat. Jason was a street rat, but he was your street rat; he never missed check-in without a reason. You combed the alleys, your coat collar turned up against the biting wind, your hand resting on the knife in your pocket. You asked no questions—you demanded answers. You dragged a low-level informant by his ear into a dark alcove, pressing the cold steel of your blade against his throat until he wept.
"I don't know nothing about the kid!" the man shrieked. "But—but word on the block is someone tried to strip the Batmobile last night down by the theater! The big freak himself caught 'em!"
Your heart stopped. Then, it turned to pure, unadulterated fire.
************
Jason hadn't meant to get stuck.
When he had stumbled upon the sleek, impossibly expensive tank of a car parked in the deepest shadows of Crime Alley, he hadn't seen the dark myth of Gotham. He had seen a ticket out. Specifically, he had seen four custom, high-grade titanium-alloy tires that could fetch enough on the black market to pay their rent for three years, buy a functioning heater, and get his mother the medicine she kept hiding under the sink.
He had managed to get one wheel off with a stolen lug wrench before a massive, caped shadow blocked out the streetlights.
Batman hadn't struck him. Instead, the giant had looked at the scrawny, defiant kid with the tire iron raised like a sword, and he had done something worse: he had taken him.
Now, Jason was sitting in a bedroom that was larger than their entire apartment. It was located inside Wayne Manor—a fact he had deduced from the monogrammed towels and the sheer, nauseating wealth oozing from every mahogany panel. The billionaire, Bruce Wayne, had brought him here, claiming he wanted to "help" him, to give him a chance.
But Jason didn't want a chance. He wanted to go home.
The first night, he had tried to slip out the window, but the motion sensors had flared. The second night, he tried the service stairs, but the terrifyingly polite British butler, Alfred, had been waiting with a tray of warm cookies and a raised eyebrow. By the fifth day, Jason realized he couldn't leave unnoticed. He was trapped in a golden cage.
Worse, he had tried to do what he originally came to do: steal something valuable enough to make the risk worth it. He had slipped a heavy, silver-and-diamond pocket watch from a display case in the study into his pocket. But with the security tight and the Butler constantly hovering like an elegant hawk, he couldn't find a blind spot to escape with the prize.
Panic, cold and sharp, began to settle into his chest. Ma is going to burn this city down, he thought, staring out the rain-streaked window of his massive bedroom. She thinks I'm dead. Or worse.
He didn't know how right he was.
*****************
In the damp darkness of your apartment, the floorboards were covered in maps, newspaper clippings, and police scanner transcripts.
You were not just a street brawler. The streets required brute force to survive, but they required a brilliant mind to conquer. Over the years, you had taught yourself how to read the city’s shifting patterns. You knew the patrol routes of the GCPD better than the commissioners did. And you knew the Bat.
It hadn't taken you long to connect the dots. The Batmobile had been tampered with. The boy was gone. No bodies had been found in the morgues, and none of the local gangs were bragging about killing a kid. Batman didn't kill, but he confiscated. He had taken your son.
"You think you can just pluck a bird from my nest?" you whispered to the empty room, your fingers tracing the grid of Gotham's rooftops. "You think because you wear a cape and armor, you're the only monster in this town?"
You knew you couldn't take Batman in a straight, head-on fistfight. He was a tank; you were a scalpel. You needed leverage. You needed to strike him where it would paralyze him.
You spent forty-eight hours straight watching the sky, monitoring the frequencies, and mapping the movements of his colorful little shadow—the Robin. The boy wonder. The golden child who flew through the air while your son starved in the dirt.
A son for a son. It was old testament justice. The only kind Gotham understood.
On a rainy Thursday night, you set the trap.
Using your deep, terrifying network of coerced informants and underground channels, you leaked an incredibly precise, high-value piece of intelligence to a known contact of the Bat. It was the exact coordinate, time, and manifest of a major illegal arms shipment being moved through the docks by the Maroni crime family. It was too big for Batman to ignore.
Just as you predicted, the Bat took the bait. But he didn't go alone. He brought the boy.
From your vantage point on the crane overlooking the rainy shipping yard, you watched through a pair of cracked binoculars. The fight went exactly as expected. Batman and Robin dropped from the skylight, tearing through the Maroni thugs like a hurricane. But you had added a variable. You had anonymously tipped off a rival gang, the Bertinellis, telling them that Maroni was being ambushed and their turf was wide open for a slaughter.
Chaos erupted. Gunfire shattered the night. The shipping container area became a maze of smoke, flashbangs, and screaming men.
Batman was forced to dive into a cluster of heavily armed men to protect a group of trapped dockworkers. He was separated from his partner by a wall of shipping containers and a sudden, massive explosion you had rigged to a fuel line.
Robin—Dick Grayson—was cut off. He handled himself well, flipping over a thug and knocking him out with a precise kick, but as he landed, a sudden, blinding pain exploded in his leg.
A sniper round? No. A precisely thrown, heavy iron bolt from a high-powered slingshot, aimed directly at his knee joint.
Dick stumbled, his balance shattered. Before he could recover, a shadow dropped from the top of the container behind him.
You didn't hesitate. You didn't feel a shred of pity for the boy in the bright red vest. You slammed the butt of your stolen stun-baton directly into the base of his skull. The electricity surged through him, and the boy wonder went limp in your arms.
With practiced, terrifying efficiency, you stripped him of his utility belt, tearing it away and tossing it directly into the deep, churning black water of the Gotham harbor. You found the small tracker stitched into his collar and sliced it out with your knife, crushing it beneath your boot.
Within ninety seconds, you had the boy loaded into the back of a stolen, unmarked laundry van. By the time Batman broke through the smoke, roaring his partner's name into the empty night, you were already miles away, melting into the dark, suffocating embrace of Crime Alley.
*****************
The apartment smelled of damp concrete, old paper, and the sharp, medicinal tang of rubbing alcohol.
Dick Grayson woke up with a groan, his head pounding in rhythm with his heartbeat. He tried to move his hands, but they were bound tightly behind his back with high-tensile nylon cord—the kind that bit deeper the more you struggled. He was sitting on a hard wooden chair in the middle of a dimly lit kitchen.
"Don't struggle," a voice said from the shadows. "You'll only give yourself rope burn, and I've just finished cleaning your knee."
Dick blinked, his vision clearing. A woman stepped into the light of the single, flickering bulb hanging from the ceiling. She didn't look like the Rogue’s Gallery monsters he usually fought. She didn't have a painted face or a gimmick. She wore a faded flannel shirt, dark jeans, and a coat that had seen too many winters. But her eyes—cold, calculating, and completely devoid of fear—made his breath hitch.
"Who are you?" Dick demanded, trying to keep his voice steady, the way Bruce taught him. "Where is Batman? If you think—"
"I don't care what you think," you interrupted, stepping closer. You picked up a damp cloth and a bottle of antiseptic. Despite his instinct to flinch, you moved with an eerie, practiced precision, kneeling in front of him to tend to the nasty gash on his leg from the docks. "I am the one asking questions. You are going to tell me exactly where the Bat takes the things he steals."
"We don't steal anything!" Dick snapped, wincing as the alcohol bit into his skin.
You tightened the bandage around his knee with a sharp, warning tug. "He took my son. Five days ago. A boy with dark hair, tatred clouths, and blue eyes. He took him from Park Row. Where is he?"
Dick’s mind raced. The kid from the tires. Bruce had brought a street kid to the manor a week ago, trying to keep him safe, trying to figure out how to handle him. Bruce had said the kid was an orphan. He said the kid had no one.
"Jason?" Dick breathed. "You're... you're his mother?"
"Where is he?" you repeated, your voice dropping to a dangerous, icy whisper. You reached into your pocket, the distinct click of a switchblade echoing in the small room. You didn't threaten him with words; the look in your eyes told him everything he needed to know. You would carve this city to pieces to find your child.
"He's safe!" Dick said quickly, his heart hammering. "I swear! He's at Wayne Manor. Bruce—Batman—he didn't kidnap him to hurt him. He caught him stealing and saw how bad his living conditions were. He wanted to help him!"
You let out a harsh, bitter laugh that sent shivers down the boy's spine. "Help him? A billionaire in a playground of gold wants to help a child from the gutters? He took him without my consent. He locked him away. In my world, that is a kidnapping. And in my world, you pay for what you take."
You stood up, looking down at the young Robin. Dick expected a beating. He expected the harsh, brutal torture he had seen from Arkham escapees.
Instead, you sighed, a deeply human, exhausted sound. You walked over to the rusted stove, where a pot of simple chicken broth was simmering. You filled a bowl, brought it over, and untied his hands.
"Eat," you commanded.
Dick stared at the bowl, then at his hands, then at you. "You're... you're not going to hurt me?"
"I am a mother, not a savage," you said coldly, sitting across from him, your eyes never leaving his face. "You are leverage. But until the exchange is made, you will be fed, and you will be tended to. Eat before it gets cold."
The broth was warm, seasoned with wild herbs you had gathered from the small cracks in the city's concrete. It tasted better than half the five-star meals Dick had eaten at galas. As he ate, the exhaustion of the fight and the throbbing of his concussion began to weigh heavily on him.
"Go wash up," you said, pointing to a tiny bathroom through a peeling door. "There is hot water. Use the soap."
When Dick emerged twenty minutes later, wearing a pair of Jason’s oversized, old sweatpants, he found a small cot set up near the radiator. The sheets were faded and patched, but they smelled intensely of lavender and cheap laundry detergent.
He hesitated, looking at you. You were sitting on the edge of the cot, your fingers idly sharpening a hunting knife against a whetstone. Scritch. Scritch.
"Get in," you said.
Dick crawled into the bed, his body aching. The room was freezing, the wind howling through the poorly sealed window glass, but the blanket was heavy. He shivered, curling into a ball. He was fourteen years old, a hero to the city, but right now, in the dark of a moldy slum, he felt incredibly small. He felt the crushing, hollow ache that had lived in his chest ever since the night his parents fell from the trapeze.
You looked at the boy. You saw the way his shoulders shook. You saw the raw, exposed grief in his eyes—the same look you saw in the mirror every morning after that horrific night so long ago.
You closed the knife and slid it into your boot. Slowly, deliberately, you sat on the edge of the mattress. You didn't say a word. You simply reached out and began to run your fingers through his damp, dark hair, untangling the knots with a gentleness that seemed entirely impossible for a woman who had just dismantled a multi-million-dollar tactical tracker an hour prior.
Dick stiffened at first. Then, with a soft, broken sob, he leaned forward, burying his face against your thigh, his small hands gripping the fabric of your jeans. He cuddled into your side, seeking the warmth, seeking the rhythm of a mother’s heartbeat.
"I miss her," Dick whispered into the dark, his voice cracking. "I miss my mom so much."
Your hand didn't stop its soothing rhythm. Your fingers stroked his hair, over and over, anchoring him to the earth. "I know, little bird," you murmured, your voice no longer the monster of the docks, but the sanctuary of the nest. "I know. Sleep now. Tomorrow, you go home."
*****************
The Batcave was bathed in the harsh, sterile blue light of the supercomputer.
Bruce Wayne had not taken off his cowl, but his face was pale, his jaw clenched so tightly it looked ready to shatter. He had been staring at the monitors for six hours. The tracking signal on Dick's suit had vanished near the harbor. The utility belt had been recovered by a diving drone, sliced cleanly with a military-grade edge.
There were no ransom notes. There were no demands from the Joker, no riddles from Nygma, no toxin signatures from Crane.
It was a ghost.
"I don't understand," Bruce growled, his fists slamming into the steel console. "There was no chatter on the underworld lines. No one is taking credit for this. Whoever took him knew exactly how to bypass the localized encryption on the Robin suit."
"Perhaps, Master Bruce, you are looking for the wrong kind of criminal," Alfred said, his voice unusually strained as he stood behind the chair, a tray of untouched coffee resting in his hands.
"What do you mean, Alfred? I've run every cross-reference—"
"Look at the physical clues left at the docks, sir," Alfred pointed to a high-resolution photograph of the shipping container where Dick had vanished. Scratched deeply into the rusted iron, written with the jagged edge of a broken bolt, were five words:
A SON FOR A SON.
Bruce stared at the screen, his mind spiraling through a thousand possibilities, trying to calculate which of his past sins had crawled out of the dark to exact vengeance.
"Hey."
A small, hesitant voice echoed from the elevator platform.
Bruce and Alfred both snapped their heads around. Jason was standing there, wearing an oversized Gotham Knights sweatshirt, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He looked tired, his eyes wide as he took in the massive, subterranean cavern for the first time. He had finally broken out of his room, wandering down the hidden stairs out of sheer boredom and growing anxiety.
"What are you doing down here, Jason?" Bruce said, his voice cracking with a mixture of exhaustion and protective anger. "Go back upstairs. It's not safe."
Jason didn't listen. His eyes skipped past the giant penny, past the mechanical T-Rex, and landed directly on the massive, central monitor screen. He saw the photograph of the shipping container. He read the scratched words.
A SON FOR A SON.
A massive, radiant grin broke across Jason's face. The anxiety that had weighed on his chest for a week vanished in a single, breathy exhalation.
"Mama," he beamed.
The cave went dead silent, save for the hum of the cooling fans.
Bruce froze, his cowl framing a look of sheer, unadulterated confusion. Alfred lowered the tray, his brow furrowing.
"What?" Bruce asked, his voice low, dangerous, and utterly baffled. "Jason... what did you just say?"
"I said, that's my Ma," Jason said, his voice dripping with absolute pride and a smug, dark satisfaction. He walked right up to the supercomputer console, pointing a dirty fingernail at the screen. "That's her handwriting. Well, her carving. She used to do that to the doors of landlords who tried to lock us out."
Bruce stood up, his massive frame towering over the boy. "Your mother? Jason, your file said your mother died of an overdose three years ago. Catherine Todd—"
"Catherine was my step-mom, you idiot," Jason scoffed, crossing his arms and looking up at the Batman without a hint of fear. "She raised me for a bit when Ma had to go underground after she took the teeth out of a Black Mask crew. My real Ma is alive. And you just spent a week keeping her kid in a giant mansion without letting her know."
Jason laughed, a sharp, mocking sound that sounded entirely too old for a ten-year-old. He looked directly into Bruce's white lens-eyes. "You think you're the scariest thing in this city, old man? You haven't seen my Ma when she's pissed. This? Taking your bird? This is just the intro. She's gonna make your life a living hell until she gets me back. You're completely screwed."
Alfred slowly turned his gaze from the monitor to his employer. The look on the old butler's face was colder than the winter outside.
"Master Bruce," Alfred said, his voice clipped and trembling with an aristocratic fury. "Am I to understand that you did not, in fact, rescue an abandoned orphan from the streets... but rather, you kidnapped a child from his living mother?"
"Alfred, I didn't know!" Bruce defended himself, his hands coming up in a rare moment of genuine vulnerability. "He was stripping the Batmobile in Crime Alley at one in the morning! He was malnourished! Every agency report in the district indicated he was flying solo!"
Jason let out a loud, theatrical whistle. "Hey, Big Bats, I never said I didn't have a family. You asked me if anyone was waiting for me at the apartment on Miller Street, and I said no. Because Ma and I moved to a different squat on 4th three months ago so the Falcones wouldn't find us. I told you I had to survive somehow. I never said I was an orphan. You just assumed because I was dirty."
Alfred took a deep breath, adjusting his waistcoat. "An absolutely appalling display of detective work, sir. Truly. I believe you have met your match, and frankly, it is entirely deserved."
Bruce rubbed his temples, the cowl slipping slightly. The realization hit him like a physical blow: he wasn't dealing with a supervillain retaliation. He was dealing with a feral, brilliant mother whose child he had inadvertently stolen.
"Where," Bruce growled, looking down at Jason, "is she now?"
*****************
The next morning, the rain had stopped, leaving Crime Alley shrouded in a thick, gray fog that smelled of sulfur and wet coal.
A sleek, black town car pulled up to the curb of an abandoned, crumbling brick tenement on 4th Street. The luxury vehicle looked like an alien spacecraft amidst the rusted-out sedans and piles of uncollected garbage.
Bruce Wayne stepped out of the driver's seat. He wasn't wearing the cape. He wore an expensive, tailored charcoal overcoat, but beneath the fabric, his muscles were tense, ready for an ambush. Behind him, Jason hopped out of the passenger side, practically vibrating with excitement. Alfred sat in the back seat, his face grimly expectant.
Jason didn't wait for Bruce. He tore up the cracked concrete steps of the tenement, throwing open the heavy, rusted outer door and sprinting up the dark, mold-encrusted stairwell to the third floor.
"Ma! Ma, I'm home!" Jason yelled, throwing open the door to apartment 3B.
You were standing by the window, an old iron skillet in one hand and your eyes trained on the door. The moment Jason burst through, your cold, terrifying facade shattered into a million pieces. You dropped the skillet with a loud clatter, falling to your knees as your arms opened wide.
"Jaybird!" you cried, your voice breaking.
Jason threw himself into your embrace, slamming his face into your neck. You held him so tightly his ribs popped, your fingers digging into his hair, your tears spilling freely onto his shoulder. You kissed his temples, his cheeks, his forehead, checking his arms, his legs, his face for any sign of harm.
"Are you hurt? Did he touch you? Did that bastard do anything to you?" you hissed, your voice a lethal mixture of maternal desperation and feral rage.
"No, Ma, I'm fine, I swear!" Jason giddily rambled, burying his face deeper into your shirt. "I was just stuck! The mansion has all these crazy laser sensors, and the butler keeps making these stupidly good chocolate chip cookies, and I tried to steal this crazy silver watch but I couldn't get past the kitchen hall without him seeing me—"
A heavy, imposing shadow filled the doorway.
You instantly shifted. In a fraction of a second, Jason was behind your back, and your hand had whipped into the sleeve of your coat, drawing a long, wicked-looking trench knife. Your eyes locked onto the man standing in your entry.
Bruce Wayne.
He was massive, filling the entire doorframe, his blue eyes taking in the room with a single, sweeping glance. He saw the peeling wallpaper, the black mold crawling up the corners of the ceiling, the single mattress on the floor with two thin blankets, and the absolute lack of any real food save for a few cans of salt-pork and dried beans.
"You," you spat, your teeth bared like a wolf guarding her pup. "You take one step closer to my son, and I will see what color your insides are, billionaire."
Bruce didn't raise his hands to fight. He looked at you, then his eyes drifted past your shoulder to the small, rickety dining table in the corner.
Sitting at the table, happily swinging his legs, was Dick Grayson. He was wearing an oversized flannel shirt of yours, a massive bowl of sugary cereal in front of him, and he was idly flipping through a battered, coverless copy of a medical textbook.
"Hey, Bruce," Dick said around a mouthful of milk. "Her cooking is awesome. Do we have to leave yet? She was gonna teach me how to sew up a laceration using a chicken breast later."
Bruce blinked, the sheer absurdity of the scene momentarily short-circuiting his formidable brain. His Robin—the boy he had spent the night panicking over—was completely safe, perfectly fed, and looked more relaxed than he had in months.
"Dick," Bruce said, his deep voice carrying a wave of immense relief. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I told you, she patched my knee," Dick said, pointing to the neat, perfectly executed medical wrap around his leg. "She's really good at stitches. She did it without an anesthetic kit, just ice and clean water. Didn't even hurt that much."
Bruce turned his attention back to you. The knife in your hand hadn't wavered an inch. Your weight was distributed perfectly on the balls of your feet; your guard was flawless. He recognized the stance—it wasn't the sloppy form of a street thug. It was the tight, economical posture of someone who lived through violence and perfected it.
"I apologize," Bruce said clearly, his voice echoing in the small apartment.
You scoffed, your grip tightening on the hilt. "You apologize? You stole my child for a week, Wayne. You kept him in your fortress. Do you know what happens to a mother in this district when her kid vanishes? They look for a body in the river. I spent five days preparing to bury my heart."
"I made a catastrophic assumption," Bruce said, taking off his gloves to show his bare, unarmed hands. "I saw a child alone, starving, trying to survive by criminal means. I believed he had no one. If I had known he had a mother—a mother who clearly cares for him—I would have approached this differently."
"Approach it differently?" you laughed bitterly. "By sending social services? By letting some corrupt city agency put him in a home where he'd be beaten or sold? No. I keep him safe. I am the only thing in this godforsaken city that keeps him alive."
Bruce looked around the apartment again. His heart, usually so guarded, felt a heavy tug of profound respect. He saw the books stacked in the corner—not just trashy novels, but advanced texts. He saw the meticulous cleanliness of a room that was physically rotting from the inside due to the slumlord's neglect.
"You shouldn't have to live like this," Bruce said softly. "Neither of you."
"We don't need your charity, Mr. Wayne," you snapped, lowering the knife slightly but keeping your body between him and Jason. "We survive. I've on my own for survived fifteen years without a single dime from Bristol township, and we'll survive fifteen more. Take your boy and get out of my house."
"Wait, Ma," Jason whispered, tugging on your shirt. "Listen to him. He's... he's not like the other rich pricks. He's weird, but he's not cruel."
Bruce stepped into the room, Alfred appearing behind him with a gentle, supportive nod.
"It's not charity," Bruce said, looking you directly in the eyes. "It's an offer of employment. And an alliance."
You narrowed your eyes. "Employment? What could a monster from Crime Alley possibly do for the great Bruce Wayne?"
"My butler, Alfred, requires assistance maintaining the estate," Bruce said, though his eyes told a different story—he saw your skill, your strategy, your capability. He knew you had bypassed his tech. He knew you had ghosted his city. "And more importantly, my child requires someone who understands the realities of this city in a way I am still learning to navigate. I can offer you a home. Secure housing, high-grade medical care for Jason, and a proper allowance."
You stared at him, your mind working at lightning speed, analyzing the angles, looking for the trap. "And what's the catch? You want me to be a maid? A servant?"
"No," Bruce said. "I want you to be a mother. To Jason. And... if you're willing, to help me guide Dick. In return, I will provide you with something the streets could never give you: access to a real education. Tuition, books, a path to a legitimate university degree in whatever field you choose. No records of your past will follow you."
The knife slowly slipped back into your sleeve. Your breath caught. A degree. A real, legitimate life where you didn't have to carry a blade just to buy milk. A life where Jason could sleep without the sound of gunshots outside his window.
"I don't bow to anyone, Wayne," you warned, your voice dropping low. "If you try to control me, or if you ever try to come between me and my boy, I will burn that manor to the ground with you inside it."
A faint, incredibly rare smirk touched Bruce’s lips. "I would expect nothing less. Do we have an agreement?"
You looked down at Jason, whose eyes were wide with hope. You looked at Dick, who was smiling from the table.
"We do," you said.
*****************
Moving into Wayne Manor was an exercise in mutual culture shock.
The first two weeks were tense. You refused to sleep in the massive guest suite Bruce had assigned to you; instead, you dragged the blanket onto the floor of Jason’s room, sleeping by the door like a soldier in a bunker. You carried a concealed kneife in your pocket, and you treated every luxury—from the heated floors to the silver cutlery—with a deep, profound suspicion.
But as the weeks bled into a month, the ice began to thaw.
It started in the kitchen. Alfred had been preparing a traditional English roast when you silently appeared beside him, your movements so quiet the old man hadn't even heard the door open. Without a word, you took the chef's knife from his hand and began dicing vegetables with a speed and precision that made the veteran butler stop and stare.
"A very efficient technique, Miss," Alfred noted, raising an eyebrow.
"If you don't cut fast in the Narrows, someone takes the food before you finish," you said simply, your fingers moving in a blur. "The seasoning needs garlic. And real pepper. This stuff smells like dust."
Within a week, you and Alfred had formed a quiet, ironclad understanding. You took over the heavy meal preparations for the boys, infusing the rich, bland manor food with the sharp, vibrant spices of the cultural melting pot of Gotham's lower districts.
Then came the night Bruce found out exactly who he had brought into his home.
It was a rainy Tuesday night, and Bruce was sitting in the study, reviewing tactical files on a new smuggling ring operating out of the East End. He was stymied; the logistics didn't make sense. The shipments were vanishing from the docks but appearing in the city without using the main transit lines.
You walked into the study to drop off a cup of tea Alfred had made. You glanced over his shoulder at the map laid out on the mahogany desk.
"You're looking at the wrong grid," you said, your voice casual.
Bruce looked up, a pencil poised in his hand. "Pardon?"
You leaned over the desk, your finger pointing to a section of the map near the old water treatment facility. "The Maronis don't use the roads for this kind of weight. The trucks are a decoy to keep your little bat-ears busy. They're using the old pre-prohibition rum-runner tunnels. They run directly from pier 41 through the old brewery basement on 9th."
Bruce stared at the map, his brilliant mind instantly calculating the structural reality of what you had just said. It fit perfectly. The timing, the weight limits, the lack of surveillance footage—it all aligned.
"How do you know that?" Bruce asked, his voice laced with genuine fascination.
"I hid in those tunnels for three weeks when the Falcones put a price on my head ten years ago," you said, taking a sip from your own mug. "You learn the geometry of a city when you're the one being hunted, Mr. Wayne."
Over the next few hours, the tea went cold as Bruce began to show you more files. He was astonished. You weren't just perceptive; you were a master strategist. You didn't look at crime like a puzzle to be solved; you looked at it like an ecosystem to be disrupted. You knew the psychology of the street thugs because you had been the monster they feared.
"You spoke to the informant from the shipping dock in his native tongue," Bruce noted, referencing a audio log Dick had brought back from your interrogation. "Where did you learn conversational Russian?"
"And Italian. And Spanish. And Cantonese," you added, pulling up a chair and sitting across from him, completely unintimidated by the billionaire's intense stare. "And I can read Latin and old Romani."
Bruce’s eyes widened. "Where did you study?"
"The dumpster behind the Gotham Public Library and the street," you said, your voice entirely serious. "They throw out the older editions when they get water-damaged. I gathered them up, dried the pages by the radiator, and read them while Jason was sleeping. The Romani I learned from an old fortune teller who lived in the basement below our first squat. She was blind, so I cleaned her room and cooked her food, and she taught me her words."
The next day, Dick Grayson practically levitated with joy when he came down to breakfast and found you reading a book of Romani poetry aloud, your accent flawless and melodic. For the first time since his parents' death, Dick felt a deep, ancestral part of his heritage being acknowledged in his new home. He threw his arms around your waist, burying his face in your apron, and you didn't pull away. You simply stroked his hair, just like you had in the moldy apartment, welcoming him into your nest.
But the biggest revelation came during a medical emergency.
Bruce had returned from a brutal encounter with Killer Croc in the sewers. He had managed to crawl back to the Batcave, but his side was torn open—three deep, jagged lacerations that were pouring blood, contaminated with sewer filth. Alfred was frantic, preparing the antibiotics, but his hands, aging and strained, were shaking slightly as he tried to thread the surgical needle.
You descended the stairs into the cave, wearing your old flannel shirt, your face set in stone. You didn't flinch at the sight of the blood, or the massive, exposed cave, or the high-tech equipment.
"Move," you commanded Alfred, your voice leaving no room for argument.
You grabbed the surgical tray. You washed your hands with antiseptic with a terrifying, robotic efficiency. You leaned over Bruce’s massive, groaning form, your fingers instantly probing the edges of the wound.
"The muscle tissue isn't severed, but the dermal layer is shredded," you analyzed aloud, your voice perfectly calm, the tone of a seasoned trauma surgeon. "Alfred, I need the heavy-gauge nylon suture and the hydrogen peroxide. Now."
For twenty minutes, your hands were a blur of absolute, flawless precision. You cleaned the wound, debrided the contaminated tissue without a single wasted motion, and began throwing perfect, tight mattress stitches across his flank.
Bruce stared up at you through a haze of pain and painkillers. He saw the absolute focus in your eyes—the sheer, brilliant intellect guiding every movement of your fingers.
"Where..." Bruce gasped, his teeth gritted. "Where did you learn... to do this?"
"Two-year apprenticeship with Dr. Leslie Thompkins’ old partner, before he went to prison for treating unregistered patients," you said, tying off the last knot with a sharp, decisive flick. "And about forty textbooks I stole from the university medical waste bins. I've sewn up gunshot wounds in dark alleys with nothing but a flashlight and a bottle of vodka, Wayne. This pristine lab of yours is a luxury resort."
You stood up, wiping the blood from your hands onto a clean towel. You looked down at the Batman, your expression softening just a fraction.
"You're going to live, you big idiot," you murmured. "But if you don't take your antibiotics, the sewer rot will take your leg. I didn't move into this house just to watch my employer die of stupidity."
Bruce let out a rough, breathless laugh, his hand reaching out to briefly touch your wrist. "Thank you."
****************
Six months later, the unconventional family had found its rhythm.
The Gotham University admissions office had been thoroughly confused when a woman from the Narrows, with absolutely no high school transcript but an entrance exam score that broke the institution's percentile records, enrolled in their accelerated pre-med program. Her tuition was paid in full by a private endowment from the Wayne Foundation.
Every afternoon, you would sit at the massive mahogany table in the manor library, surrounded by stacks of heavy, leather-bound medical volumes, a cup of hot tea steaming beside you while Jason happily devoured one book after the other.
You looked at your son, finaly well feed, in warm new clouths that actually fit and relaxed.
summary: Damian comes back into your life to open wounds that have never quite fully healed, and brings out a side of you that you had desperately tried to forget until now. Thankfully, the Kents are here to show you a part of you that you would've never thought existed.
pairing(s): conner kent x al ghul!batsis!reader, batsis!reader x platonic batfamily, batsis!reader x platonic al ghul family
word count: 24.8k (good luck, longest fic yet)
warnings: this is a batsis fic under the false pretense of a conner one, reader and damian are both haunted by their similarities to talia and ra's, possible spoilers from the year of blood comic (which inspired this), also inspired by the son of the demon comic (read with an adblock if you don't want to be flashed pls), heavily implied suicide, daddy issues, mommy issues, grandpa issues, brother issues, ISSUES!!, implied post partum depression, they're all fucked up, how did this even start as a crack fic?, some brutalia sprinkles, bruce wayne is NOT a bad dad (he just needs a little shaping), i may have imagined conner as tom welling, reader has no descriprion but is said to look like various characters, if your name is martha no it's not, FEELINGS. a lot of them. talia is kinda evil, but she has every reason to be. that's all! (i think...)
author's note: this monster sucked my SOUL outta me. i don't want to hear a word about conner ever again. thank you to my glorious @lechelovestoyap for beta-reading this cuz I would've NEVER found the strength to read it twice!! also, this might just be my favorite batsis ever ngl...
that girl is corrupt | could you raise her to love me, maybe?
NANDA PARBAT — THEN.
When Damian still has to be born, your mother brings you to meet him.
You’re a little over eight years old during this time, but the grotesque sight of a fetus being lab-grown doesn’t even make you flinch. Instead, you tap softly on the glass and murmur, “Hi, Damian, I’m your sister. You’ll learn everything you’ll know from me.”
And so it goes — when he’s finally ready to get out of the tube where they were growing him, unlike the many other failed attempts before him, you’re the first one your mother passes him to. You stare down at him blankly, wondering what exactly the warmth you feel in your chest is and if you should call for the doctor, but every doubt you have is completely forgotten about when he makes an undistinguished noise and wraps his hand around your index finger.
You stare at his chubby digits, then back at his face, still crumpled with sleep. “You’re so ugly, Damian,” you mutter to him. “I like you.”
You’re there when he takes his first steps — ready to teach him which traps will ensure his death and which ones are simply a dishonor to fall into. The first syllable of your name is the first actually understandable thing he manages to say, and he does so while tugging a strand of your hair violently against his chest. As it is your duty as an older sister, you smack his hand and tell him you’ll cut it off if he does it again.
He does so anyway. His hand stays attached to his arm.
Damian grows up to be at least twice as spiteful as you are. While your mother is sure that he’ll be the perfect heir, your grandfather still stands by his resolve to make the eldest bear this role, and makes sure his decision is taken seriously by bringing you to every function where the matter of a successor might be talked about.
You and your brother still love each other very dearly. It’s you he takes his mannerism from, even if he multiplies it to the max, as well as your predilection for sharp blades and stubbornness regarding everything you want. He learns to be just as spoiled as you, because in Nanda Parbat there’s nothing to ask for, and everything to be demanded — at least from someone your ranking, anyways.
Damian, convinced by your mother, fights you day and night. The sibling love the two of you share is nothing in comparison to the throne either of you will have to inherit, and Talia knows that well. She constantly turns him against you for the smallest of things, but as he’s still a child and you are older than him, his attacks look like playdates. Unfortunately, you’re well aware that he won’t stay a kid forever.
Talia’s love is not won by bravery, nor achievements — it’s much more than that. It’s won by resemblance — resemblance towards a man you’ve met once in your whole life, and who has never been involved in raising you. You know everything about Bruce Wayne, about Batman, but no matter how much you study footage about him or listen intently to your grandfather’s stories about ‘The Detective’, you can’t seem to get anything right the way he does.
During this same period, Ra’s pays Lady Shiva to become your instructor regarding your Year of Blood, which you’ll have to pass in a year. At eleven, the perspective sounds exciting. At thirteen, after surviving the Year of Blood thanks to a dive in the Lazarus Pit, the scary thought of not wanting to kill anymore crosses your mind for the first time.
GOTHAM CITY — NOW.
“Stop, Damian!”
At ten years old, he’s more of a psychopath than he ever was at six — when you had last seen him — and he doesn’t even hesitate to lunge at you with everything he’s got. When you’re slowed by the rubble behind you, he manages to slice your jacket before Conner lasers both of his katanas into flaming puddles on the ground and gives you time to escape.
You take a few steps back, hurrying your torn fur coat off your shoulders, your heart pounding in your chest. Your brother stares at the molten swords and the sheathes still in his hands, dropping them down, then at Kon, then back at you. “You’ve gotten yourself an alien dog now?”
“Asshole,” Tim manages to wheeze.
Damian lunges again, but this time you’re prepared — and you dodge without a struggle every time. You know those moves he’s making, because your mother taught you those, too; and if the way he’s trying to strike for your pressure points says anything, it’s that he’s positively trying to kill you, and in the best case, he means to only injure you permanently.
He’s grown for sure; that is clear in your eyes, and in his every movement. You can read your mother’s influence in the way he attacks, in the nerves he targets first and in and in the way he has absolutely no defense mechanism ready — he’s presumptuous, and probably figured a long time ago that people never dared try to strike him unless they were paid for it. Clearly, he has not listened to your grandfather’s lessons about how some people simply don’t care about rank.
When he tries to strike again, you strike back — just to remind him who’s still in charge — dodging his palm to the side with one hand and slapping him across the face with the back of the other. It’s nothing too harsh — you know for sure you’ve hit him harder in the past — but he looks dumbfounded, nonetheless. Tim, delirious at this point, giggles a bit from the echo of the hit. Damian’s eye twitches, his cheek probably still stinging. “Oh, I’m gonna kill you now.”
He can try all he wants — you’ve got seven, almost eight years of experience over him, which in the assassin world means a whole lot of a difference. It’s the difference between your mother and Shiva, or the latter and Deathstroke — so to say, it’s a lot.
He lets out a frustrated yell when you keep on dodging and avoid attacking, “Just let me kill you if you have no intentions of fighting back, coward!”
A knife emerges from under his sleeve, but before he can try anything Conner is between the two of you — eyes glowing red and ready to fire, Tim slung over his shoulder — and Damian’s knife is slapped out of his hand, his wrist in Superboy’s tight hold. “Calm your hoots, pipsqueak,” he holds him up by his wrist, ignoring his protests, “to get to her, you’ll have to pass through me.”
The glare your brother sends him could wipe out whole mountains, “Ah, so you’re her whore.”
Kon gasps dramatically, “If you think that’s an insult, I’ll have you know, kid, I take pride in being her–”
“He’s a friend of mine, Damian,” you interrupt him, “could you please stop insulting him?”
Superboy turns to look at you, a grimace on his face, “Damn, girl, try to avoid friendzoning a guy for once, will ya?”
You’re as confused as one can be. “Friendwhat?”
“I think you should just give up,” comes Drake’s very helpful advice, “she’ll never get it anyways– ow!”
Damian kicks and punches Conner, hitting Timothy in the process. “Let me go, monkey!”
“No,” Kon chastises, “you’re in air jail now. Get used to it.”
“I am Damian Al Ghul!” Your brother screeches, “I am the son of the Bat and the Heir of the Demon, and I will not tolerate such disrespect from a measly clone–”
You scoff, “He was made in the same exact way you were, Dami.” maybe not the same exact way, but the concept of merging two DNAs to create a human out of them is still the same. They were both raised in a test tube, anyway.
He turns purple, “Don’t call me that!” his scream is shrill, “And don’t compare me to this… this specimen!” He says it like a slur, which added to the fact that he’s three apples and a penny tall and is currently being held up in the air like a feral cat just makes him look like a gnome very pressed about who enters his yard.
“Help,” Tim groans from over Conner’s shoulder. You blink — you totally hadn’t forgotten about him, no, no. He was your priority, sure. Right after fighting Damian. And slapping him just to remind him who the older sibling is. And picking on him just because– “He did something to Alfred.”
You snap back into attention. “Alfred?” you press — you hadn’t even thought about him, or his absence. You had just guessed he had gone to look for Bruce, or had already gone to sleep. He is getting a bit old, after all. “Where is he?” A look over to your brother, “Damian, what did you do?” The phrase feels awfully familiar, but you don’t have time to worry about that. The glare he sends your way is everything you need to know.
NANDA PARBAT — THEN.
You don’t remember dying, nor being submerged into the Pit. You don’t remember the week of madness your grandfather talks to you about, and don’t recognize the great honors he says you have accomplished. All you see are your hands, dirty with blood, and what waited for you — what’s still waiting, maybe — beyond the wall between life and death.
You don’t even recognize your body anymore, nor the way the servants carefully move around you like you’re a twig moments away from snapping. You’ve always had scars, but these just don’t feel like yours — they’re not ugly and protruding anymore; the Pit has transformed them into something kinder on the eyes: thin, pale scratches that decorate your skin like they’re not the result of innumerous atrocities and attacks to your own life.
But out of all the scars, there’s one you don’t recognise at all — the one over your thigh. It’s the only one that’s still a bit ugly, and considering the fact that it’s right above the femoral vein, you know that nobody could have ever gotten even remotely close to it. It’s a vital spot in the body, and a bullet there could cause you to die due to blood loss in a few minutes; it’s always either covered by armor or by your impenetrable defense.
The glances of the servants, their hushed whispers, your mother’s blank stare when she looks at you, Damian’s sudden softness — it soon dawns upon you that the only person who could’ve gotten close to injuring that part of your body was you. And if you did, then maybe there’s a reason why you don’t remember how you died.
Ra’s knows the look in your eyes too well — it’s the same look he’s seen many times in the mirror over the course of centuries, that of doubt and forlorn. The one saying, am I doing the right thing? Is this really for the best for humanity? Why do I have to do it? Can’t anyone else worry about it?
It’s why he takes you aside one evening after dinner, and holds his hands over your shoulder in that way that doesn’t mean for rebuttals to be heard. “We have a duty,” he tells you, “and we owe it to the world — just think about what you could build.”
He gestures to the dark mountains you can see outside the window, “There’s a whole planet out there that’s just waiting for you to emerge from my shadow. You excelled in the Year of Blood — that little slip up you had on the last day? Midnight had already struck. The Year of Blood was already over when you died; hear my words, and see this as your rebirth, rather than defeat.”
You stare blankly at the mountains, and then the most dangerous of thoughts escapes your mind. “Grandfather,” you say, your tone flat and lost. “What if I… I don’t want any of this?”
You’d thought a lot about it. You grew up looking at photos — happy-looking ones — of your father, pictures that your mother had forbidden for you to look at. You’re sure that all those smiles he gives the cameras are fake, but some of those — the ones he shares with Richard Grayson and Jason Todd — look sincere. You can’t help but think that he stares at them with no expectations, and you wonder if he ever compares them to someone he wants them to be so badly.
(You know your mother always looks for your father in you. Maybe that’s why she could never bring herself to properly love you, like she did for Damian. You’ve always been told you look astonishingly like her; it’s no surprise that when your brother, who had your father’s same exact nose and lineaments, was born, she immediately claimed him as her favourite between her children.
Theoretically, you shouldn’t know that. Practically, Shiva told you that in the year before the Year of Blood. It is known she has eyes and ears in the whole League, and while you normally wouldn’t believe an assassin and eventual teacher for hire, you’re fully aware that your mother would be able to say something like that.)
Ra’s blinks, like what you just said is simply madness. “But why wouldn’t you?” he presses, “Think of it– the whole world, at your mercy. Doesn’t it sound beautiful?”
You fight back a grimace — how do you tell a man who’s spent the last eight-hundred years building an empire that you don’t want to rule it after his death? “…It does,” you end up replying, “maybe I’m just… just under the weather, grandfather. I’m sure I will be feeling better in a matter of days.”
You never really start feeling better, and pretty much everyone notices.
Even Damian stops listening to your mother and slows his relentless attacks down — actually, completely forgets them. He turns into your most relentless bodyguard, assuring himself that you’re eating and training properly, making sure to nag you about it continuously if you don’t. This gives you the opportunity to remember the sweet boy you had almost forgotten about — the chronic waddler who always snatched flowers from your mother’s greenhouse for you to press into your books and wrote your name on every piece of paper he could get his hands on as soon as he learned how to write.
(Before your mother turned you two against each other, sure that coexistence between two heirs couldn’t be possible. Sure that one of you would have had to, inevitably, overturn the other, and that settling for the male heir surely would have meant victory, because that’s how things had worked for her.)
GOTHAM CITY — NOW.
Alfred has a bruised wrist and is a bit disoriented, but overall, even Damian must know to treat old people with at least a bit of kindness. He blinks when you slap him on the face repeatedly — not too hard, just to understand if he was still alive or not — and groans when you say, “Alfred– Alfred, can you hear me?”
”My hearing is still in perfect condition, Miss,” he hisses, a hand going to hod his head in utter pain, then gasps, “young master Damian–”
”Is down in the Batcave,” you nod to the broken grandfather clock in your father’s study, and the hacked panel behind it. “I let Conner handle him. Tim’s in bad shape, though– any chance I can fix you up, and then you fix him up?”
He scoffs a little — clearly, the fact that you hadn’t told him about Damian has ruffled his feathers, to say the least, but he’s still Alfred, so manners come first. “No thank you, Miss,” he waves your hands away, “I tended to your father in far worse conditions than these.”
He struggles a bit to get up, but stubbornly refuses your help. He goes through the broken entryway and you sigh, putting your hand over your forehead, wondering how the hell you’re going to get through this.
“Tim’s been hit by the grenade with full force,” Kon tells you when you finally come back down to the Cave, the slow beep coming from the operating table a painful reminder of what your brother did — of what he has become. If Superboy’s offended by the fact that you haven’t told him about Damian, he doesn’t show it. “And let’s not forget, the glass of the display case was thick. He must’ve been thrown around pretty badly.”
You’re listening, but you’re not even looking at him — your eyes are locked in the confinement glass cage on the other side of the Cave, where your brother is sitting, brooding. Kon puts a hand over your bicep, “You don’t have to keep an eye on him,” he whispers, “the cage should be enough, until your dad comes back.”
You shake your head, “You don’t know him like I do — he’d be fully capable of escaping as soon as he gets an opportunity to.”
He has to fight back a grimace. “Listen, I know you haven’t had a very happy childhood — growing up with assassins and all of that — but don’t you think you’re… exaggerating a little? He’s just a kid.”
”He just tried to murder your best friend.”
A scoff, “Please, who hasn’t tried to kill Tim at least once in their entire life?”
His hand, still over your arm, is warm. You miss when just an hour ago you were at the fair, and you had no problem in holding his hand — your heart squeezes, because you know that with Damian here, you’ll probably never allow yourself to feel that normal anymore. God knows what Talia or Ra’s would be able to do if they found out you actually proved any kind of affection towards Superboy.
Not unkindly, you try to shake his hold off. “You’ve been really helpful, Conner,” you start, “but maybe it’s best if you go back home now. We can take it from here.”
You still haven’t looked at him, and he’s clearly troubled by that. “Hey,” he murmurs, gently, “I know we have never talked about what you went through with the League, but you know you can trust me, right?”
No response — you’re still looking at your brother. “Hey,” he presses, taking your face in his hands and forcing you to look at him, “you know you can tell me anything, yes? C’mon, at least look at me when I talk to you.”
His eyes bore into yours for a blissful moment, but your gaze soon drops down to the floor. “We’ll take things from here on. I’ll make sure to tell Tim to let you know when he wakes up.”
Conner sighs. “You’re never going to tell me anything, are you?”
The scar over your thigh burns. You start scratching your hand nervously — how is it that you can handle hours of torture, but staring into his eyes feels too difficult? “You wouldn't want to know,” you tell him in the end. “You… you’d never look at me the same way.”
That dumb, unworried stare he always gives you — like you’re just a teenage girl serving no danger whatsoever, even if you definitely do — would be gone, and you’d spend the rest of your life missing it. And as he looks at you — unable to raise your eyes at him, fiddling with your hands even if it’s usually you who makes others uncomfortable — he understands that right now, nothing he can say will ever make you budge. He could tell you how much he doesn’t care about what you did or what they made you do all he wants; the truth is that you’ll never believe him. Not now, at least.
“Okay,” he relents. You hate the way your face feels cold as soon as he pulls his hands away, and hate that you feel this way — the last thing Conner needs is to be dragged into your family’s madness, both sides of it.
He hesitates a bit before going home. He tries to press a kiss over your cheek — something that feels appropriate enough for friends and considering that you’re in the freaking Batcave — but abandons the mission when you jump at his closeness, surprised, finally looking at him like you have no idea what he was about to do. Fair, honestly. He isn’t one for self reflection, but he guesses that yeah, this is not the time for a nice kiss, even if it’s just a peck on the cheek.
(Were you even ever kissed on the cheek? Or kissed at all?)
Defeated, he turns back towards the landing platform — ready to sulk and whine to Ma Kent, who even at this hour of the night will hopefully make one of those blueberry pies he likes so much just to help his morale. God knows how many she has made in the last months, just to try not to have a brooding teenager around the house once again–
“Conner?”
He stops, his feet coming back down to the floor, turning to look at you — a bit hopeful, but he can’t help that. “Yeah?”
Your arms are crossed over your chest, but it looks like you’re hugging yourself more than anything. All the tough facade you always flaunt seems gone. “Thank you,” you murmur, coming close to him, “for… tonight. I had fun.”
Kon scoffs, amused. “You puked three times and accused a random guy of cooking dogs.”
You shrug, “You have no idea of what fun entails for me.”
Your hand comes to the collar of his jacket, tugging him down, and he feels himself pale a bit. He wonders if you’ll be nicer and avoid throwing him against the batarangs stock, or if you’ll be crueler and push him down into the water just below the landing platform, and what exactly did he say this time to make you snap. He was nice, he’s sure of it, even respectful–
A fleeting contact over his cheek — your lips against his face. It’s barely there, something that tells him that if you have ever received kisses then they weren’t enough, and the fact that you let go of your hold over his jacket and straighten it like it’s nothing just makes him even more dumbfounded — barely a peck, and you’ve already got him drunk off you. He’s ruined for life.
“What?” you say defensively when he keeps staring at you, acting like your cheeks aren’t on fire — they absolutely are, by the way. “Don’t look at me like you didn’t want to do that earlier.” a slap over his shoulder — ah, there she is; good, old, violent you. He was almost getting used to your softer version. “Now, go home, Conner.”
It’s weird having Damian in the Batcave —by now, you’d figured he enjoyed the Al Ghul ways at least as much as you did at his age, and since he’d never had to experience the Year of Blood, you doubt he’ll ever develop the same questions about your family's methods like you did.
“Damian.”
He’s still small for his age, but you bet he’ll have a growth spurt in a few years. Crouching in front of the confinement cage, you tap on the glass and lean your head. “Why did you come here?”
He crosses his arms and spits over your general direction. “I don’t speak to traitors.”
Deadpanning, you sigh. “Do you want me to come over there and show you who’s the oldest again? We both know you’re safest in there — I’d beat you to a pulp without Conner around to protect you.”
A scoff, “He was protecting you. Besides, father wouldn’t allow such treatment of me.”
You hum, as calm as ever, “Father isn’t like Talia. I highly doubt you’ll get to play favorites around here. Besides, do you see father around here?”
He glares, and you despise how he looks so much like your mother in doing so — it’s not the warning glare you and Bruce by now share; it’s the one full of hatred she had passed down to you before you met your father. What makes you hate it is probably the fact that, as much as Talia likes to deny it, you and Damian look a lot alike, and it’s like seeing you at his age. “Then the same goes for you, sister.”
NANDA PARBAT — THEN.
After the Year of Blood, it became established that you’d be the Heir of the Demon — even if the truth is that the deed was already done after you were born. Ra’s never cared for Damian or Talia as much as he did about you, and by now, he’s spent thirteen years making sure you’re cut out for the role he’ll eventually pass down onto you.
When Talia was born, her mother insisted on raising her with love, and somewhat normally — considering how you and your brother have been raised, anyway. He had expectations of her, but those were quickly broken by your father’s entrance in their lives, and thus her wobbling trust for the League’s cause.
He began hoping for a child from them — someone he could raise without anyone to meddle into his affairs; someone with the same blood as the Detective’s and his, who would surely prove to be a prodigy. So when he found out that Talia was pregnant following her and your father’s wedding, he was ecstatic. Much less so when he learned that she had already told Bruce the news.
The League was already in a bad position at the time — he could’ve managed to raise back up their standing, but doing so without both a daughter and an heir would’ve been nearly useless. And as the Detective had already expressed his disinterest over the matter of the Al Ghul family affairs, he had no choice but to convince your mother to first tell Bruce that she had tragically lost the baby, and then leave him.
She cries and begs him not to do this — she tells him that she’ll convince your father to become the heir he wants so desperately, that the baby that she’ll give birth to will surely be the son he’s always wanted — but she still has to accept that this isn’t a matter about sons. It’s about who’s fit to be heir, and she — always torn between Batman and your father — isn’t.
In the end, Talia follows his plan, and she never really forgives him for it.
If you were born a son, maybe she would’ve tried harder to be proud of you — to imagine your father’s features instead of hers over your face. But the hard truth is, you look like her. And she hates how she can see herself in everything you do, because as soon as you’re born, you take the place that should’ve been hers by birthright.
Ra’s holds you with a care he’d never spared for her. He presents you to the troops as his successor even if you’re nothing more than a newborn that does nothing but eat, shit and cry, and soon, when she looks at you, she can only see what she should’ve had.
Talia knows Bruce was hoping for a girl — he’d given her Martha’s diamond necklace when she found out she was pregnant because of that. And as much as the nursemaids try to convince her that it’s just the effect the birth has had on her — that sometimes women after pregnancy develop some kind of aversion to the baby — she can’t help but feel like you’re getting the life she deserved to have.
You don’t know your father, but he would’ve loved you without you ever needing to prove yourself. Even Ra’s — the same man who screwed her life more than once under the pretense of having her best in his mind — has preferred you, a brat, over her, who’s been loyal to him even after he took her happiness away.
As you grow up, she starts seeing you as a parasite. Sure — there are moments where she suddenly feels some sort of affection towards you, like she should protect you instead of despising you, but you don’t look enough like him for her to find it in herself to fully appreciate you. Your face is the same she sees everyday in the mirror, and thus, she takes it upon herself to bring justice, and let you have the same treatment she did.
(Otherwise, what would it all have been for? All those years of pain, and she just wasn’t enough? It’s much more simple to believe that it’s something she can’t control, like being a woman, and Ra’s getting older and desperate. She thinks that he had wanted her to be a son, and to make things even between the two of you, she will deliver him a son.)
Having Damian was a decision — one taken without your father knowing, obviously. They had just gotten married — by your traditions’ standards, anyways — when she got pregnant with you, but things had changed since then. Bruce was hesitant to even get too close to her, let alone be happy for a whole baby.
So she takes the matters into her own hands, and just creates a son — in that unnatural way that no normal mother would ever think of creating one. Damian Al Ghul is carefully crafted in a lab, the product of many other failed attempts that she pretends never existed, nurtured in a test tube like some kind of alchemy-made humunculus — and even after this, Ra’s pretends that nothing’s changed.
Damian enters your lives when grandfather’s already started training you as his heir, and when his training can finally start, your Year of Blood has already been announced. And it’s known to all that the Year of Blood is a once in a generation occurrence preserved only for the heir.
Talia starts openly resenting you — she tries to make your life harder, because in her mind, that place isn’t yours; if it is, then it should be hers, and if it isn’t, then it should be Damian’s. And training, even after the Year of Blood, becomes hell.
You lost count of how many times you ended up on the ground, vomiting or spitting blood from all the hits she made sure you took, and how many of the scars you have have her name on them. As a kid, you took it really bad — you couldn’t understand why mother, who was always so careful with Damian, had started treating you like that. At thirteen, you see her spite for what it is — a temper tantrum because neither her nor her favourite child got the throne she had dreamed about since she could remember.
You should probably feel worse about it than how you actually feel, but the truth is, she’s not the only one with favourites in the Al Ghul household. And Ra’s, as much as he’s never tried to pit you and your brother against one another, has never hidden his predilection for you.
It’s always, ‘Granddaughter this, granddaughter that’, and never, ‘Grandson’. And while you suffer for your mother’s favouritism, Damian suffers for your grandfather’s, because Talia has promised him greatness and a leading role in the future of humanity, but no matter how good he is, Ra’s seems to only have eyes for you.
And while you love your brother — as does he you — love never seems to be enough for anything, or anyone, in Nanda Parbat.
GOTHAM CITY — NOW.
When your father steps out of the Batmobile, the Batcave starts feeling even more cold than it did before.
Tim’s stable now — a few scratches, burns and a mild concussion, but he’s had worse. Alfred still refuses to look or talk to you as he carefully sets everything back into place in the med bay, Drake under heavy sedatives on the cot sitting in the middle of the room. The silence starts feeling deafening as Bruce removes his cowl, then looks at Jason’s costume's broken display case, then to Tim lying unconscious in the bed, then to Damian in his cage.
In the end, his eyes land on you, his face full of anger and something you can’t quite pinpoint. He gestures to a more secluded area of the cave, “A word?”
You prepare for the worst. You prepare for yelling, screaming, maybe even a slap — God knows what Talia would’ve done in his place — but none of it comes. His voice is eerily quiet and his brows are furrowed when he asks, dully: “Why?”
You realise then that anger’s not the dominant emotion as of now — it’s disappointment. You’ve spent the last four years dedicating your life to his mission, following his stupid rules and compromises, and he’s got the nerve to be disappointed because of one single thing. Maybe it’s just how Wayne brains work, but you feel anger start bubbling in your chest. “Why?” you repeat, voice trembling with restraint. “Why, father? Have you seen him? He tried to kill Tim — with a grenade. He fought Alfred.” You tap your temple, “Talia got into his head in a way she never managed with me. He’s as sick as her.” you don’t really mean it, but you’ve never managed to handle disappointing someone well.
“Don’t call her Talia,” your father hisses, “she’s your mother, and I won’t stand you disrespecting her.”
Clearly, his resolution to stay calm isn’t working, because of course the two of you are far too similar for it to work. The smallest raise in his voice and you get riled up, and vice versa. “What do you even know about her?” you ask him, “For all you know, she hid two of your kids from you — and you still defend her?”
“I don’t trust her,” his index finger points at your chest accusingly, “but I trusted you. I’ve kept you under my wing for the last four years and taught you everything I know — only for you to hide the fact that you had a brother this whole time. Talia told me you knew about him — and I didn’t believe her because I trusted you, but the look you had on your face? It told me everything I needed to know before I could even ask you about it.”
You glare at him, “You don’t know Damian — you have no idea what he’s capable of.” It's not about what he can do — it’s about not having a sprinkle of loyalty in his blood, if not for himself and your mother. Ravi surely knows a lot about it.
“He’s a kid,” Bruce is trying not to yell, and it’s easy to tell. “He’s a kid — like you were when you came to me — and he’s surely no better than what you were then. You had no right to hide him from me — I didn’t raise you to be this way.”
That’s what makes you snap. “Oh, raised me, daddy dearest?” his eyes flicker — he’s said the wrong thing, and he knows it, but nothing in his stance says he’s going to back down. His glare stays firm. “And tell me, how exactly did you raise me? And when? Because I don’t remember you being there when we were born, or when I was growing, or when I killed for the first time. Where were you when mother beat me to a pulp everyday until I vomited blood, huh, Bruce?”
“I wasn’t even aware of your existence,” he grits out.
“But you were!” you scream. “Talia made sure of it! You knew of me, and you still decided I wasn’t worth saving until I came to you!”
“It wasn’t my decision–”
“It was! I’ve watched you find kids in less than thirty minutes after they were declared missing, and you couldn’t find me in more than five years!” you hate the way your voice breaks, and the way your eyes burn with unshed tears. “I tried everything to make you find me! I left clues, signs of my passing and every single fucking thing that came to my mind in every mission of the League I participated in because I knew that once I came back home, you’d be on the scene to investigate and try to dismantle the Shadows’ operations, but you never came!”
Now nothing more than a puddle of anger, you try to shove him in the chest, but he doesn’t even budge — like for everything else. He stands on that untouchable pedestal your mom put him in, immortal, the Detective, unreachable in abilities and everything else, even after all these years away from her. “And I waited, Bruce! I waited five years for you to come and save me — only for you to never show your face to me again!”
“I was looking for you,” his voice is smaller than you’ve ever heard before as he tries to intercept, “At first I wasn’t sure if you were mine, but I looked for you. Between cases, every free moment — more than you’ll ever know.”
The chuckle that comes out of your mouth sounds maniacal. “So I wasn’t a priority, huh? Looking for me between cases, ‘cause you weren’t sure I was yours?”
“That’s not true,”
“Oh, yeah? Judging from how you never let a case go cold, to me it looks like you never even took the time to look at my case properly.” The glare you’re giving him is one he’s never seen — one full of pure, unadulterated hatred. It’s not a thing that builds up in the moment; these are years of resentment, and seeing them in the same eyes that his mother had makes him die a little on the inside. “And what do you want to know about how I was raised, now?” you spit on his feet. “You don’t even know me. How could you know just how I was raised, huh?”
NANDA PARBAT — THEN.
“How’s father?” Damian asks you one late night, cleaning his sword on your bedside as you read a book. You hum, “I wouldn’t really be able to tell you anything. Grandfather and mother are the ones you should ask about these things.”
He snorts, “They are biased. You, however, are not.”
You lean your head, pausing. In the end, you opt to say, “When mother told him I was his daughter, he didn’t believe it. Everything in his body said so. But then he understood that she wasn’t lying, and he turned desperate.”
You had just celebrated your eighth birthday when you met him for the first and only time. A common espionage operation turned into something more, and before you knew it, your mother was ripping your mask away from your face and shoving you into an empty hallway with her, telling you to keep quiet and avoid any kind of confrontation. You had followed her, and eventually, the Bat himself showed up.
Even years after the fact, you still remember that first encounter as clear as day. He had looked between you and your mother, the movement evident even through the white lenses over his eyes, and then, “I never thought you’d bring a kid into all of this.”
Your mother had huffed, calling out for you. She had set you in front of her, her hands holding you by the shoulders as you stared at your father so deeply one might think you were looking right into his soul. “You did, didn’t you?” Neither of you misses the way he flinches — Jason Todd is probably in the Batcave right now, waiting for him to come home. “She’s yours, by the way.”
Bruce stares at her, then at you, then back at her. “I’m not falling for it. What, did you kill this kid’s parents? Just to come here and make this sick joke, hoping to get a reaction out of me?”
Talia’s hum is one of pure scorn. “No, no,” she chuckles, taking your chin in her hand and raising your face toward the light — making sure he can see every single one of your features and engrave every detail in that mind of his. “See those eyes? Aren’t they familiar? I had hoped for a son that would have looked like you, but I wasn’t so lucky, and all she got from your side of the family were those. A shame — they don’t even look like yours, Beloved.”
As his eyes bore into yours, you can see the exact moment everything snaps into place for him. “No,” he whispers.
“Yes,” your mother sing-songs.
“You’re sick,” he hisses, “right into the head.” But his arms open wide, as if inviting you into them, “Give me the kid. I’ll make sure she’s raised right– she’ll be free from your father, I swear it.” The way his voice turns pleading right after is almost pathetic, “Talia, please. I know he’s forcing you to do this. Just– hand me the girl, and I’ll close an eye on this operation. Act like nothing ever happened.”
“Please,” Talia leans her head, “we both know you’ll never do that. Besides, who told you that my father made me do this? She’s here as nothing but a token of our love — the proof that it existed, and it still does. And why would I ever trust her in your hands? You’re always so doubtful about our connection.”
One of her palms comes up to your hair, brushing them in a way that feels almost loving, “Don’t worry, Bruce, I’m already making sure she’s raised right. And trust me, she’ll grow up to be the one who finally kills you.”
Back to the present, Damian snorts. “Desperate?” The disdain in his voice is as clear as day, “The Batman, desperate? You must’ve gotten it twisted, sister. There’s no other explanation.”
You shrug, “Believe what you want. I know what I saw.” He had followed you and Talia until his body rendered it impossible for him to, and even then, he kept screaming from behind you about how you didn’t have to do this and he just wanted the best for you. And as you got on the helicopter supposed to bring you home, you were surprised not to find any trace of smugness in your mother’s face. “I thought it would have been funnier,” she muttered, “he got all desperate instead. Such a shame.”
And even if you don’t know whether he was looking for you or not, leaving behind something from you in every mission you participated in became the norm — knowing that he’d eventually come around to where you were stationed, looking for any kind of clues he might find, and maybe guessed that you’d been there. You made mistakes that even a toddler wouldn’t do — left a strand of your hair on the scene, a number indicating the years since he’d last seen you, or the age you were now. You tried anything to make him find you, and when he didn’t, you understood that you had to take matters into your own hands, because as much as your father loved to spend all his free time saving others, maybe his daughter just wasn’t a priority.
The breaking point comes when Damian has just turned six.
You know he did not mean to break that vase — and if you were in a normal household, it would probably be a most unremarkable thing, something your parents reprimand you about and proceed to forget in the next week. But in Nanda Parbat, where every step is carefully calculated and every error a mark of shame, a broken vase, as measly as it sounds, could become the difference between life and a fate worse than death. Especially for an original, 600-year-old Ming Dynasty vase.
Damian knows this — he also knows that his status grants him a far more lenient punishment than the one reserved for servants and common soldiers. He still chooses to blame Ravi — the servant appointed for his care between lessons — for the broken vase.
You get a word of what’s happening too late — you had seen your brother’s guilty look as he stared down at the ceramic pieces laying on the ground, patted his shoulder while saying, “I’m sure mother will be as understanding as she can be,” and then went your way, figuring that if you were still alive with all the vases you broke at his age, he wouldn’t be punished too harshly. And when you reach the room where this is happening, your mother’s standing as stoic as ever with Damian by her side, watching silently as Ravi lays on the floor, his hands over his eyes, thrashing around he holds back screams of pain.
“Damian,” comes your frantic call, “what did you do?”
“What did he do?” your mother repeats, “He did nothing but his duty. Ravi knew punishment would have come for his error.”
“Damian,” you ignore her, looking at your brother, “I asked, what did you do?” he won’t meet your eyes, and that tells you everything you need to know.
“Your brother chose the punishment he thought to be best,” Talia hisses, pushing you back, “it is not your place to judge whether it is appropriate or not.”
You look at Ravi — kind, loyal Ravi, who taught you every poem you know and hid sweets for you to eat when you were a kid. The same Ravi who kept being nice to your brother despite his constant insults and rudeness, and made sure his art supplies were always stocked even when your grandfather kept snarling at his paintings. Ravi, who is now lying on the ground, blind.
You kneel down at his side, taking him by the arms and trying to get him back onto his feet. “Ravi– Ravi, can you hear me?”
His voice is trembling and broken when he finds the strength to answer, “My lady? Is… is that you?”
“It’s me, Ravi. Come on — I’m taking you to the infirmary, get up.”
“Too nice,” he utters, barely coherent, his hands finally leaving his face to get up; the sight of his injured eyes makes you want to throw up. “You’re too nice, m’lady.” You cast one last glance at your brother, staring blankly at you and the servant, before disappearing into the hallway while helping the man on his footing.
It’s when the healer tells you that Ravi will never see again that you understand that you can’t stay in Nanda Parbat anymore. Damian may still be your little brother, but his need to always be better than you is causing harm to not only himself but others, too. And for what? For a throne you didn’t want in the first place? You need to leave, and you need to make sure he doesn’t follow you, because God knows what he would be able to unleash out there in the world if he just had the chance.
That night, Damian startles awake to find a blade pressed tight against his neck. When his hand goes for the dagger hidden under his pillow, he finds nothing there. “Don’t even try to scream,” you hiss, crouched over him in his bed. He looks at your stance — the same one he’s never managed to overthrow — and knows that if you truly want to kill him, there would be no escape.
Slowly, scaredly, he nods. “I will go far away from here,” you whisper, your eyes cold as they stare into his eyes — those same eyes he got from your mother. “You will never look for me. You won’t follow me, because if you do, I will kill you. You will stay here and become the heir our mother wants. Understood?”
His breath catches. “Sister–”
“I said, understood?”
Frightened, he nods again, but your hold on the blade doesn’t falter — if anything, you just press more against his neck, enough to draw blood. Up until now, he’d never thought you’d be able to kill him — Talia had always told him you were too soft on him. Guess she doesn’t really know to which extents you’d go just to keep your peace. “You stay here,” you hiss at him one last time, your nose crinkling in disdain in that same way mother’s always does, “and don’t you dare try to ever see me again.”
TITANS TOWER — NOW.
“Are you gonna eat that?”
By no means are you a member of the Titans — but that doesn’t mean you don’t have access to the Tower. And considering that you really didn’t feel like explaining the whole situation to Dick, nor Barbara, it was the only place you could think of going to; your father’s probably raiding all your safehouses, anyway — if he’s not too engrossed over your brother or is even giving two fucks about you going away from the Manor, that is.
Right after the fight you two had, coming here looked like a smart idea, since none of the Titans stay here during the Christmas holidays. Now, it looks like a death sentence by annoyance.
“I faid, avh you gonna eaf dat?” Bart Allen, out of all the members of the team, has to be the dumbest one. He’s also the only one who could be found in the communal kitchen at two am in the morning, cooking six packs of Buldak ramen in a far too small pot.
You grimace as he spits out bits of sauce as he asks again, then look down at your measly sandwich, suddenly not so hungry anymore. He ate six packs of ramen in under twenty seconds, the vacuum. “Have it,” you push your plate towards him, but before it even comes to his reach, the toast is gone, and he’s downed it in two bites. You’re half disgusted and half impressed, but you try to keep a stern face as you look at his stained mouth and the crumbs all over his shirt. “That’s disgusting. How do you even do that?”
“Super speed,” he’s back in the kitchen in the blink of an eye, taking out of the pantry some bread. “That sandwich was great. I think I’ll make a dozen more — I feel like having a snack.”
Deadpanning, you stare at him as he moves quickly between the bread slices, mayo spoonfuls and six cans of tuna. “And you manage to hold that down into your stomach well enough?”
He’s already scarfing down on the first two sandwiches, “Why, can’t you?”
Well, most people don’t have his metabolism, nor the storage capacity of his stomach. Frustrated, you sigh, “What are you even doing here? Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, be asleep?”
He shrugs, his meal already finished, and goes for the fridge for the umpteenth time. “I was hungry, and Max has started locking up the kitchen after dinner after that one time when I ate the whole Thanksgiving menu.”
You blink. Is this guy well? What exactly is his problem? “‘Sides, I should be asking you why you’re here. It’s two am for everyone.”
You cross your arms, raising an eyebrow at him. “Do you really want to know about how I hid my brother from my father for four years?”
For the first time in half an hour, Bart pauses. Then he’s on the seat in front of you, legs crossed and a pack of pre-made popcorns on his lap, sitting like the most undistinguished gentleman ever. “I’m allllll ears, sweetcheeks.”
You’re not really sure how trash-talking your family with Impulse ended up with the both of you falling asleep on the communal couch with Cars 2 playing on the television, but here you are.
Bart’s snorting so loudly beside you that you wonder how you managed to sleep throughout the whole night, but he’s not your concern right now. Your concern is who woke you up–
“You guys had a movie night and didn’t invite me?!”
Conner sounds more jealous than betrayed, and you look at him, still half-asleep but not surprised by his dramatics at all. “Shut up,” you croak, tugging him down on the couch by his sleeve, “it’s early.”
Dumbfounded, he sits beside you and tries not to burst into a million particles as you curl up beside him, cheek on his shoulder, warm and almost purring. He surely didn’t think this would happen when he first thought about doing a check-in at the Tower this morning. “So…” he mumbles, trying not to sound too awkward, “how’d things with your father go?”
The memories of last night dawn on you, and blissful sleepiness turns into the dread of waking up immediately. You grumble, turning on your side and giving him the cold shoulder, muttering something about men not understanding any cue. He blinks, “…Not good?”
“Bad,” you agree. You don’t care about what Bart thinks about you, but you do care about what Kon thinks, and you really don’t feel like explaining everything to him. Impulse probably already forgot, anyway.
Conner fiddles with his fingers anxiously, “What about Christmas?”
You perk up — you had completely forgotten that it was in… what, four days? It wasn’t something you were raised celebrating, and even at the Manor, you never really felt what Tim called ‘the Christmas spirit’. You shrug, “Who cares? I’ll spend it here and wait for my mother to get Damian back to Nanda Parbat. She never did well when she knew him to be far away.”
Talia Al Ghul with separation anxiety was not an image Conner was ready for. He looks over to his side, to Bart still dead asleep, and finds his heart squeezing at the thought of you spending Christmas alone. “You could come with me to Smallville,” he mumbles quietly — Martha Kent has always accepted strays in her house. “Ma wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of someone spending Christmas alone — and besides, Clark’s already coming from Metropolis. The farm’ll be cramped anyways.”
You think about it for a moment, then turn your head to look at him for a moment. “…You want to bring me home. With your family. For Christmas.”
His foot is tapping nervously on the ground. “Yeah. Think of it as… I don’t know, a vacation away from all your problems. The farm is really different from the chaos of Gotham City.”
And the truth is, you couldn’t even imagine how right he was.
That same evening you park your car — Tim’s, technically, but just because it was the only one available at the Tower, and it was bought with your father’s money anyways — in front of the Kent’s farm, the little spare clothes you kept at the Tower in the backseat and Conner buzzing with excitement in the passenger seat. You raise an eyebrow at him, “Thank the Founding Fathers or whatever you guys born here believe in that Smallville and Jump City aren’t that far from each other.” You had reached the Tower via Zeta-Tube, but unfortunately, the Kents have vehemently refused to have one in their home — no brainer, if they were to ask you. Having an inter-dimensional door in your house sometimes is a bit scary.
Snow crunches under your soles as you exit the Mercedes, staring at the dimly lit porch of the farm and all the Christmas ornaments hanging on it. There’s a wonky garland hanging over the door, probably handmade, and multicolored lights over the railing and roof. Conner — hypno-glasses and civilian attire on — swings your bag over his shoulder and pokes your side, “C’mon, Ma’s waiting for us.”
You blink, “You’re telling me, this is where Superman grew up?”
The farm is not shabby by any means, but it looks well-lived, and very different from any place you’ve ever stayed at. For a guy who will be remembered in every millennia to come, Clark Kent surely grew up in the most unremarkable place ever.
Kon doesn’t knock — he just swings the door open (and for a moment, you wonder how could an elderly couple just leave their door open when it’s dark out with such carelessness) and yells, loudly, “Hi Ma, hi Pa,”
You shuffle awkwardly behind him, dragging your feet, wondering if this was a good idea — you literally don’t know these people, and as much as Conner said that they didn’t mind and had already prepared a bed for you to sleep. That is until Ma Kent — a plump, kind-looking woman in her late 60s that smells like pie and nice things — comes to view.
“There you are!” Conner bows down a little as she engulfs him in a hug, and you stare at her up and down with worry — she doesn’t look like the old people you’re used to. You can’t find similarities between her and Ra’s’ faint wrinkles, her back is slightly more curved than Alfred’s, and the sides of her mouth crinkle in a way Aunt Harriet’s never did. She looks like she actually has her age, and somehow fragile, like getting old didn’t do her no good like it did to Ra’s or just made her more stern like Alfred. This woman looks like it has made her softer. “Pa’s in the living room — you know him, nothing will ever make him miss a freshly baked pie, and I bet that he’s getting his fill now… oh, and there she is!”
Her hug is a surprise, mostly because one, you don’t know this woman, and two, it actually feels nice. She’s soft, and warm, smells like pastries and somehow feels like you’ve always imagined your mother would if she was kinder. “It’s so nice to have you here, dear,” you can feel the barely contained excitement in her voice, “Conner talks about you a lot,”
“Ma!” the guy scolds, blushing, “Come on!”
“Sorry, sorry,” she chuckles, her arms still around you, and you find yourself not wanting the hug to end. “It’s just so nice to have one of Connie’s friends here — he never brings anyone home for us to meet.”
“Connie?” you repeat — this is so going in your blackmail folder. Martha nods, oblivious to your machinations, “Yes, yes– isn’t he such a sweet boy?” she links her arm in yours, “Please, make yourself at home — would you like a slice of pie? I just took it out of the oven. You must be starving, so I’m sure it won’t affect your appetite when dinner’s ready.”
Pa Kent is a quiet contrast to his wife, and just gives you a grunt of acknowledgment before shaking your hand. Martha scolds him a bit for his rudeness — does she know your father’s the epitome of antisocial behavior when he wants to be? — but you shrug it off, mostly because it’s his home, and he’s right to presume that you know his name. It’s not like you’re the most extrovert person ever, either.
The Kents’ house is weird. The atmosphere doesn’t feel tense, and the sense of peace in the air doesn’t seem temporary — like it always is at the Manor, where every moment spent in civilian clothes is one robbed from your vigilante identities. Martha Kent doesn’t properly measure ingredients for dinner like Alfred does, but rather considers the quantity of each ingredient by pure instinct and practice. They speak of pleasantries rather than ongoing and cold cases, and you still don’t understand if you like it or not.
“Clark and Lois’ll come tomorrow after lunch,” she hums while stirring a pot over the stove, “Lois said that they were supposed to come in two days, but Jonno was getting too restless about not seeing his grandpa,”
Pa Kent puffs his chest with pride. “‘Course he is,” he huffs, “I bet he can’t wait to spend some time with us.”
It feels mundane. Like their first adopted son isn’t an alien from a faraway planet that exploded, and their second adopted son isn’t his clone, or their guest isn’t an ex-assassin with a humongous kill count. You wonder how they manage. Martha fills your plate with definitely too much food while Jonathan asks you about your studies, and you guess that’s how dinner goes.
Later that night, as you’re standing in Conner’s room, you look around and think that it feels very much like him. Music posters scattered all over the walls — with some blank spaces suggesting that he definitely had some other things hanging up that he didn’t want you to see — a couple of football trophies from his old school and some photos with the Kents or the Titans here and there.
“This was Clark’s old room,” he says a bit awkwardly, “um– Ma’s changed the sheets on my bed for you to sleep in, since Clark and Lois will take up the guest room. I’ll just sleep on the floor.” A cheesy grin, “Unless someone doesn’t mind sharing the bed–”
You flick his forehead, making him let out a little ow. “Don’t get weird ideas in your head, habibi,” you yawn, “keep the floor. That bed’s mine.”
He gasps, “Don’t tell me you’re insulting me — under my own roof! — in a language I can’t even understand!”
A raised eyebrow, “Why, haven’t I done that before?” God, he’s so stupid you could just eat him up.
Kon whines, arms going slack over his sides, “You’re mean,”
“And you’re being unreasonable. Go grab your pillowsack or whatever, scout boy, and make yourself at home on the floor.”
His shoulders slump. “Yes, ma’–”
The door swings open. Ma Kent stares at the two of you, bewildered, then smiles like nothing happened, patting the handle. “The door stays open,” she says, glancing menacingly at Conner — in a way that says ‘no girls will be deflowered under my roof’. “Just in case. Goodnight!”
She leaves; amused, you side-eye Kon, whose ears are flaming red. “Just what exactly did you tell her about me?”
“I’ll quote you on this one,” he grumbles, “‘you don’t want to know’.”
You don’t have many clothes with you, so shorts and tee it is for sleeping for now. You brush your teeth in the bathroom as Conner stares, gaping, and you gurgle, “What?”
“It’s freezing,” he hisses, “aren’t you cold?”
Well, it is December, and it is snowing, but you’ve survived worse. After rinsing your mouth, you shrug, “You should see how cold it is in the Himalayas — that’s where Nanda Parbat is, by the way.”
He doesn’t even try to hide the way he’s checking your legs out with a lot of interest. He points at your upper thigh, “How’d you get that scar?”
“I fell,” you grumble, tugging the hem of your pants down to hide it.
Conner’s bed is soft — a little too much so, even. You stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars over your head — surely one of Clark’s last standing pieces of decor — and hold onto the hem of the blanket a little tighter. “Your parents are nice,” you mutter into the silence. Are they his parents, or does he see them more like grandparents? Caregivers? Trusted adults? You wouldn’t know.
From his place at the foot of the bed, Kon yawns in agreement. “They’re awesome. I mean, they act a little old sometimes, but I guess that’s fair.”
You knit your eyebrows, still staring at the plastic stars. “My grandfather isn’t as nice. I would’ve preferred he acted a little old rather than be how he is.”
A pause. Then, “What about your mom?”
You sigh. “Talia never really felt like a mom,” you whisper, “she felt more like a jealous sister than anything. She had her moments of softness, but… I think either having me or Damian just broke something in her. It’s like she can’t see anything beside what she wanted for herself and was denied.”
He doesn’t know the full story, but he still hums in understanding like he does. “Well, that sounds pretty bad. If it helps, my dad had me grow up in a test tube and then tried to use me as his personal one man army.”
You scoff, “Man, just how do we get in these types of situations?”
He sighs, a little defeated, “Bad luck and pure spite from the universe. Good thing we ended up meeting each other, huh?” he holds a hand up, making sure you can see it from the bed, “Wanna hold hands?”
You stare at his hand for a moment, and then — a little reluctantly, but only on the outside — you take his palm into yours. The moment is quickly broken by his girlish scream, and it takes every single ounce of self control you have in your system not to snatch your hand back. “…Never do that again.”
“Yes, sorry,”
A moment of silence passes. “Conner?”
“Yeah?”
“Is that offer about being able to tell you anything still up?”
Softly, he replies, “Always.”
You go on by telling him about your brother, and how you were raised — even if you do spare him the more gruesome details, such as the Year of Blood. Even after being told the watered down story, his hand doesn’t leave yours for the entirety of the night.
“Move it, Conner, we still have to find a gift for Lois–”
“I'm trying — can’t you see how these bags slow me down?”
Late Christmas gifts shopping is a terrifying concept. In your four years of living in America, you’ve never had the chance to see it for yourself because in the Wayne household gifts are bought and wrapped a month before Christmas, but now, you’re living the nightmare.
The mall is packed. There’s a long-ass queue for taking a picture next to Santa, and you’ve already had to distract Kon five times to avoid him seeing it and begging you to take one together. Everywhere you turn, people are arguing — wives to their husbands when they dare to say that their arms are hurting from all the shopping bags, kids screaming at the playground because they don’t want to go home yet, old people complaining about how back in their days, everyone had their gifts ready by Thanksgiving.
This feels like the farthest thing ever from the supposed Christmas Spirit everyone talks about during this time of the year. However, it does feel astonishingly close to Nanda Parbat on a good day, so you’re not that phased.
By now, you’ve bought a Chanel coat for Martha Kent, new tractor tires for her husband — Conner insists that tractors are his passion; you don’t even know how you found tractor tires in a fucking mall, all the while — and a tailored Armani suit for Clark. You’re missing a gift for Lois and Jon, and trinkets for the multitude of the Kents’ other relatives coming just for Christmas.
(Technically, you still have to buy Conner a gift, but you need to get him off your tail first — guess Santa and the long-ass queue to take a picture with him will come in handy.)
The guy in question is following you blindly around the mall, shopping bags — he’s lucky the tractor wheels will be sent directly to the farm, because otherwise, he’d have to carry those around, too. And let’s not forget about the real heavy lifting — all the clothes you’ve just bought for yourself, with the excuse that you didn’t have enough spare changes to survive Christmas. How many times you change outfits in one day, Superboy doesn’t want to know.
He also doesn’t want to know just what is your budget for people you don’t know — you don’t even look at the price tags as you shop, you just bother to swipe your black card at the checkout and that’s it. He’s never even seen as many zeroes as he’s done today. If this is what your shopping looks like, then he can only wonder what your father’s shopping must be like.
All the bags barely even fit inside of your car, and he’s never seen so many designer bags in one place. He’s happy enough with his Santa picture not to think too hard about it, and he snickers at the thought of Jon reacting to all the toys you’ve bought for him.
The latter, Clark and Lois arrive right after lunch, just like they said they would, and now there’s no way not to feel like an outsider. They’re all Kents, after all, while you’re just the latest addition to the party — one that some of them don’t even know.
Lois shakes your hand with a small smile while Jon, shy, hides behind her legs. Clark just pats you on your shoulder and whispers, “I’ve talked to your father. He says it’s okay if you stay here for a while.”
Not that it would’ve changed anything if he wasn’t okay with it — you wouldn’t have come home to the Manor anyways, and his judgement is clouded by the thought of your loyalty to him if he thinks so.
You’re loyal to your father, but you’re most loyal to your sanity. And if being a little awkward at the Kents’ farm is the price to pay to avoid Damian, then so be it.
Jon is a shy kid, all bashful smiles and big hugs. The reason behind his timidness towards you is quickly revealed when he comes up to where you and Conner are talking to Lois on the couch, and offers you a flower that was clearly stolen from the vase on his grandma’s kitchen counter. “Why, thank you,” you’re not good with smiles, but you try to offer him one, and he swoons.
By the time the sky outside becomes dark and card games are taken out of their cupboard, little Jonathan is ù basically sprawled on top of you, cheek smushed to your shoulder as he plays a little with your hair and babbles. “And– and then Lucy tried to take it from me but I told her no, that’s my pen, and– and she called the teacher like I did something wrong. But it was my pen–”
He’s got a bit of a stutter, but honestly, you find it cute. He kinda reminds you of Damian when he was younger — and nicer. He should be about two or three years younger than him, but considering the fact that he was raised normally, he acts like a normal kid.
Wanna know who else is acting like a kid? Yeah, Conner.
He’s been visibly sulking ever since Jon climbed beside you on the couch, and now that his — cousin? Nephew? Half-brother? — is that close to you he doesn’t even try to hide his jealousy anymore. “Manners, Jonno,” he hisses at the literal seven-year-old, “I’m sure she doesn’t like you bugging her — why don’t you go play with Krypto?”
Jon looks at you with his big, big eyes, and you nudge Conner. “He’s not bothering me. It’s pretty cute, actually.” It almost feels like holding Damian in your arms again.
Satisfied, the boy settles back on your shoulder, poking his tongue out at him. Kon crosses his arms, glaring at you, “Why does he get cuddles when I barely get to hold your hand?”
“He’s seven,” you empathise, patting Jon’s back as the Kents bicker while playing Uno. “And he’s cute. You’re barely decent and stink.”
He sighs, “Still better than that weird insult you threw at me yesterday,”
You raise an eyebrow. “You mean habibi?”
“What’s that mean?” Jon asks sleepily.
Conner nods profusely. “Yeah!”
You deadpan, looking down to Jon. “I almost forgot — he’s also dumb.”
When it’s time to go to bed, Jon almost throws a tantrum — apparently, he’s used to sharing Clark’s old room with Conner when he visits, but since you’re sleeping there, he’ll have to share the guest room with his parents. That means, sleeping on the same bed as them — like a kid, he says.
“I’m not a kid!” he insists, “I’m a grown up! I can handle a sleepover!”
You’re sure that Clark and Lois’ concern is not the sleepover, but rather, that you and Conner will be sharing a room, and knowing the guy, they don’t want their kid traumatised even if by accident. You sigh and pat Jon on the shoulder — nothing’s going to happen with the door open, anyways. “C’mon, Jonno– we can share the bed, but you have to be nice and let me sleep through the night.”
He lets out a loud yahoo!, already going upstairs to change into his pajamas, while Kon lets out a little gasp. “What?” you ask, unbothered.
Clark slaps him on the back of the head before he can say anything incriminating. “I’m sure he just didn’t expect it from you,” he improvises, “as you’re, well…”
He trails off, leaving it all in the air. Raised by assassins? A little violent during missions? Evidently emotionally unavailable? Possibly all three and more. You shrug, not really offended. “When we were little, my brother and I used to share a bed all the time. It was fine, I guess. I can handle it. I can always tumble him down to sleep with Conner on the floor.”
Clark and Lois share a worried look, but eventually agree, just to keep the peace. And as you step up the stairs, Conner continues to mutter, “Incredible, you told no to me but yes to the kid… he literally still eats his boogers…”
You hum, “Ah, so you don’t?”
You can tell he probably still does by the way he immediately gets riled up. “That’s not the point!” In the end, he crosses his arms, looking all offended. “Never ask me to hold your hand ever again!”
You roll your eyes — is he forgetting he was the one begging for your hand just last night? “Whatever you say, big guy.”
The coward ends up still asking you to hold your hand as soon as you and Jon are tucked in bed. You comply just because you feel particularly nice while the gremlin you agreed to share the bed with starts yapping again, plushie held tight in his arms like it’s going to escape, going on and on about some comic book guy named Science Dog.
You try not to think about how his presence next to yours feels a lot like Damian’s once did. You fail miserably.
NANDA PARBAT — THEN.
“Sister.”
Four year olds are weird. They’re loud, demanding and are in that stage where they’re not fully coherent yet but somehow understand everything better than adults. Unfortunately, this four-year-old is your brother, and he’s since learned how to pick on the lock of your door even if he can’t even reach the handle. At the moment, he’s also the biggest threat to your life, considering how many times your mother has convinced him to try to kill you.
You muffle a tired groan into your pillow. A glance at the clock on your bedside — three in the morning. Huh — the hour of the witch. Does mother have some curse planned out for me or something? “What is it, Damian?”
He sounds smaller than he usually does when he says, “I had a nightmare.”
You huff — you love him, you really do, but if this is one of your mother’s schemes to let him get near you voluntarily to then stab you in the back it’s not going to work. “Go whine to mother, Damian. Or just find the nursemaid. That’s what grandfather pays her to do, y’know — to take care of you.”
Quieter than before, “Fatima’s dead.” You perk up. “Mother killed her. Said she was dampening our relationship.”
Now, it’s not uncommon for servants to be killed in the Al Ghul household, but nannies? You remember Fatima. She’s been alongside Damian ever since he was born, keeping an eye on you when it was your time to play with him — for God’s sake, she’s the one who taught him how to write. And she’s dead.
Even in the darkness, you look into your brother’s eyes and find nothing. It’s the look of someone too young, forced to do things he doesn’t want to and to see atrocities he can’t stop. He’ll learn to live through it — just like you did — but for now, your brother’s four years old. He barely reaches your waist. He had a nightmare, and he’s scared to tell the woman he has to call mother because she just killed someone he loved.
Sighing, you hold up the blanket and motion for him to hop on the bed, just hoping he has no knife hidden in his clothes. “Just… come here, Dami.”
Nobody ever asked you to be a big sister, much less taught you how. The only thing you know is that there’s this kid that’s smaller and weaker than you in an environment that was never meant to be neither particularly happy nor safe, and you feel like you want to protect him.
So, just for tonight, you wrap your arms around him and let him whisper his nightmare into the dark, hoping that he won’t grow up as messed up as you did with his big sister around.
SMALLVILLE — NOW.
“So, what is it between you and Conner?”
You’ve never had a Christmas eve quite like this. It’s pure chaos — kids running around the living room, followed by Clark and Kon playing the bad guys as most of the other adults sit comfortably on the couch, laughing and chatting. Apparently, the Kents went all out this year, even inviting some relatives from Midvale; that’s how you and Lois ended up in the kitchen alone after clearing the table, as she washes the dishes and you dry them trying not to break anything.
(You have never in your entire life helped wash the dishes before. You guess that’s the price to pay to give Ma Kent a little peace after a morning spent cooking.)
You grow a little, “What do you mean?”
She shuffles, maybe a little awkwardly. “I mean… you guys seem close. He surely looks at you in… you know,” she trails off, “that dumb stare men sometimes make.”
Blinking, you stare at the blue roses painted on Martha’s good ceramic. “Dunno,” you mumble in the end, “he’s great and all, but I don’t think I’d be any good for him.” You sure like to pretend that you are, though. Calling him habibi is a little risky, but he really is dumber than you thought he was, and still hasn’t figured out the real meaning. You don’t even know why you’re telling that to Lois in the first place, considering you had never met her before this trip.
The smile she gives you is a little sad. “Clark told me about your mother. He didn’t exactly go over the details, but for what it’s worth… I’m sorry.”
You shrug. “It happened a long time ago.” The scar over your thigh itches. “I’ve gotten over it.”
She pauses her sponge over a glass, “You know, Clark also told me that you look like her.”
No reaction from you — must be true, then. “When I first saw you, I thought so, too. You don’t really look like Bruce at first glance, so it’s only fair that you look like your mother. But I think you’re more similar to your dad than any of you realise.”
You bite your tongue to hold back a very rude retort — just who does she think she is? She doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know your mother, and maybe has met your father a few times. You’ve been told your whole life you look like Talia, and now Miss Empathetic comes here to tell you what she thinks you want to hear– “I mean, I don’t know your mother, but by now I think I know Bruce pretty well. And considering what Clark told me about how you grew up, I doubt Talia Al Ghul would bond with a random kid that isn’t hers in the span of ten minutes. But I know Bruce Wayne would.”
You click your tongue — you’re so used to everyone telling you how much you look like Talia that any similarity between you and Bruce feels crafted. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
She hums, “Do you know you carry yourself like he does? Guarded, even if you’re trying to soften up a bit?” You blink, “Those dry responses you give Conner sometimes — you look like Bruce stuck in a bad interview. That glare of yours? Totally his. The way you pretend to be though but always relent at Jon’s requests to play? I’ve already seen that — with your father and Jason Todd. I met him right after he adopted him, and trust me, the resemblance is uncanny.”
You never asked your father about him — you already knew everything you needed to know from the League’s files. From the Narrows. Adopted by your father point-blank. Eventually died thanks to the Joker. The only Robin your mother apparently tolerated. Your father never really came back from the grief, and sometimes, you still catch him staring at Jason’s display case with that blank stare he gets when he’s being haunted by the past.
“And you hid your brother from him,” she murmurs, quiet like she’s afraid to anger you. “And you know what? That’s actually a very Bruce thing to do. He always asks for complete honesty, but never gives it himself. Clark told me he found out about Dick months after your dad took him in.”
“Talia has her secrets, too,” you mutter, eyebrows knotted. “I wouldn’t say that’s specifically a quality of his.”
Lois passes you another mug, “Can I ask you why you didn’t tell your father about Damian?”
You keep your eyes fixated on the rag you’re using to dry the dishes, quiet. “He could be a nice kid, when he wanted to,” you start — you don’t even know why you’re opening up to her in the first place. “Damian, he… we grew up in similar ways, but not identical. He had our mother constantly sprouting nonsense about his claim over the League, and how I was stealing something that should’ve been his. He knew no loyalty to anyone besides Talia. I figured I was doing the both of us a favor by running away — he could have his throne, and I didn’t have to constantly watch my back. Because I knew that if I had let myself get killed, then he probably would’ve spent the rest of his life torn between his guilt for doing so and Talia telling him he had done what he had to. And if our father knew about him, then he would’ve never let him go on to become the Demon Head.” It now seems futile, because Talia brought him to Bruce, anyways — for no plausible reason aside from stressing you out, probably.
The woman nudges you softly with her shoulder, “So, you did it because you thought that was the best for him.”
You pause. “I mean… I figured he wouldn’t have had to go through all the things I did, considering Talia’s favouritism and the fact that I had completed most of the tasks the heir usually has to worry about." That being, the Year of Blood. Ra’s had once told you explicitly that either you or Damian had to take a part in it, and you figured that as you already finished it, your brother could go on and become heir without any of the fuss you had to make.
She smiles. “See? You’ve got your father’s big heart under that tough facade you keep.”
You narrow your eyes at her — she’s known you for what, two, three days? “How did you do this… this psychoanalysis thing? You don’t even know me.”
She sends you a wink, “I’m a journalist. I need to be really good at understanding people at a first glance.”
Lois’ words sink deep in your chest. When not even five minutes later Jon shows up in the kitchen with a drawing of the two of you, you feel like you could burst.
You’re not content — because this might just be the closest thing to happiness you’ve ever felt.
The kids insist on seeing you do a somersault when Conner tells them you’re some kind of acrobat, and you comply — multiple times. They’re lucky your training taught you how not to be dizzy a long time ago. At some point the girls somehow manage to convince you to participate in their princess tea party and paint your nails with glitter pink nail polish — to which you make sure to let them know that the colour choice was exquisite. They tackle you to the ground in response.
You don’t know how you make it to dinner. You just know that you, Clark and Conner are barely awake, while the other adults are clearly very relaxed, and the kids are unfortunately still very lively. “Where do they even find the energy?” you mutter to Kon, head lolling to the side, “I led war campaigns less exhausting than this afternoon.”
“Thank God they’re going away as soon as dinner ends,” he croaks, head falling over your shoulder. “Another hour of this, and I would’ve melted to a stain on the floor.”
Thankfully, the kids and their not-very-helpful parents go home before midnight — when it’s time to open up the presents, Conner says. You narrow your eyebrows at him, as you’ve always opened presents on the morning of the 25th, but he grins. “You’d really say no to opening the gifts earlier?”
You sigh, “I should’ve known it was just because of your non-existent discipline.”
The one who has more presents out of everyone is, of course, Jon. Not knowing what he liked, you just bought everything you thought to be appropriate for a kid his age, and he ended up with a dozen presents just from you. Clark insists he didn’t need so many things and begs you to return at least a couple of the presents, but you shrug. “Really, man, it’s nothing. I’ve eaten dishes more expensive than all his gifts combined.”
Jon Sr. nearly cries at the sight of the new tractor wheels — who up until now were hiding in the barn — saying something about ‘limited edition tires’. You know nothing of the tractors fandom, but if he reacts like this, then he must’ve liked it.
Your gifts are more for circumstance than anything — you’re not bummed about it, because for people like you, Christmas gifts are mostly useless aside from the thought being put into them. You’ve already got everything you want, and when you don’t, you just buy it; so you thank the Kents for their gifts, put on Martha’s handmade, way-too-big wool sweater even if it has a Superman symbol on the back of it, and — for once in a while — smile. You don’t budge when Ma Kent sees the brand label on her coat and complains about it being too expensive, nor when Conner takes the last one of his gifts with your name on it.
“I thought the Santa picture was your present,” he jokes, hinting at the 20 bucks you had slipped him that day at the mall to take a photo with the Santa impersonator. You narrow your eyes at him, “When have I ever been stingy, habibi?”
The present ends up being a new leather jacket — one he has complained for months that was too expensive for him to buy. Considering that the one he has now is kept together by mere shreds and dreams, you thought the splurge worthy — after all, your job has always been the one to buy, never to look at the price tag.
Kon looks weirdly struck by the gifts. He laughs anxiously, even if you know he’s wanted it for months, then slings an arm around your shoulders and pats your arm nervously. The Kents are still opening their gifts in the background. “It’s beautiful, thank you– it’s just, um… I didn’t get you anything.”
That’s weird — he’s been making hints at your present for weeks. Still, you shrug, “Don’t worry about it, habibi.” you shuffle a little closer to him, curling under his arm as Jon rips open another LEGO set, “I’ve already got pretty much everything.”
By the time everyone decides to go to bed, it’s past one am.
Jon’s passed out on the carpet, both Pa Kent and Lois are wine drunk and you and Conner are definitely too sleepy and warm not to pass out any moment now. Uno is long forgotten on the coffee table, and it’s only when Jonathan almost falls down on the way to the bathroom that Ma Kent makes the right decision to call it a night.
Clark takes Jon in his arms, careful not to wake him up, and pats you and Conner over your shoulders, “This bugger can sleep with me and Lois tonight — the two of you have had enough babysitting for one day.”
Kon nods appreciatively, but you’re way too tired to even make a sound. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen you so mushy — you’re completely slumped over his side, legs over his, chin hidden in your jumper. He pats your knee as Ma helps Pa to their room, and Lois starts snoring on the other couch. “C’mon– let’s get you to bed.”
You let out a non-committal noise, arms slinging around his neck, cheek resting on his shoulder. He flushes at the feeling of your hot breath against his ear. “Okay,” he squeaks, “okay.”
He slings an arm under your thighs and hoists you up in his arms, trying not to focus too much on the way you completely melt in his hold. On the way upstairs, he catches Clark as he goes back down to the living room to get Lois, and he sends him a very pointed look. “The door stays open,” he reminds him.
Conner groans a little, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, dad.”
Clark grins, patting him on the back as he disappears down the hallway. “Nighty night.”
Somewhere along the stairs, you lightly protest against his neck. “My present,” you murmur, “where is it?”
He freezes. “I told you, I– I don't have one.”
“That’s a lie.” you yawn, “You talked about it for weeks. Said you were makin’ something.”
Kon stutters, “I– you wouldn’t like it. I’ll just find you something else when the stores open again.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
With the way you’re talking so low into his ear, and you’re pressed so close to him, he not only has to focus not to tumble down, but also to suppress the actually embarrassing boner he’s no doubt about to pop. “I– um– well– it didn’t really turn out like I wanted it to.” Truthfully, it did, he just didn’t expect you to get him something so expensive, and now feels obligated to look for something you may actually want.
Your hum is one of pure aversion. “I want it, though,” you’re whining — he’s never heard you whine before; how could he deny you the gift, if you’re talking like this? “I told you, I’ve already got pretty much everything one could buy. I don’t really care about the gifts — I like the thought behind them.”
He sighs, “Okay,” he relents, “just… try not to look too disappointed when you see it, yeah?”
You get under the covers and onto the bed as he rummages through his wardrobe, only to take out a box roughly wrapped with bright red paper, with little snowflakes on it. “Sorry,” he mutters, “I don’t really know how to wrap gifts.”
Honestly, you didn’t even notice it. You unwrap the thing and open the box, and are met with… well, nothing could’ve really prepared you for this.
In the box, there’s two teddy bears — one is wearing a little black jacket and the Superboy suit, the stitches unsure and a bit uneven, and even has little round sunglasses glued onto his head. The other is wearing what you suppose to be your Batgirl suit, clad of the black cowl and even two inclined stitches in black thread over the forehead to indicate a frown. Given that the teddy has a smile on its face, it looks like an evil smile more than anything.
The cutest thing? They each have a magnet on the inside of their paws. Meaning? They can hold hands.
You stare at the plushies, their hands attached, as Conner rubs the back of his neck self-consciously. “Listen, I– I know they kinda suck– I asked Ma to teach me how to sew, but clearly, not even she knows how to make miracles happen– I just figured that a plushie was probably the only thing you never had growing up and– and I couldn’t find plushies of us that I actually liked, and none of them held hands, and–”
“Conner,” you interrupt him, setting the plushies aside.
He stutters. “I– um– yes?”
You take him by the collar — by the way, you should really stop doing that — and throw him on the bed. He lands with a soft huff, and immediately blushes when he notices your face above his. “Thank you.”
The kiss you leave on his lips is soft, warm, and absolutely everything he’s ever dreamt about and more. It feels like it lasts hours and at the same time not enough, and when you part to cuddle against his side, he thinks he could die a happy man here and there.
He’s right. You’ve never had a plushie — not as a kid, nor growing up, as Bruce had figured you were already too old for them. His are the first teddy bears you’ve ever owned. He just did the unthinkable — bought you something you didn’t even know you were missing. “Conner?”
He startles — he always plays a big game, but you know that this is probably the first time he’s ever shared a bed with a girl before by the way he went rigid as a tree trunk. “Do you want to know what habibi means?”
His voice is soft, like he’s afraid to break the moment. “Yeah.”
“My beloved.”
Yes. He could totally die happy just now.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! Call me when you have a free moment, I miss you :( met Damian yesterday and I must say, he’s kinda an asshole, but he also kinda reminds me of you. Ugh, I miss when you were so little. Bruce is being Bruce. Tim’s grouchy and Alfred’s barely talking to B. I’m slowly losing my sanity. PLEASE call me!! XOXOXO💋
Dick Grayson is the only guy who could put a kiss emoji after an ‘xoxo’ after spending hours teaching you texting etiquette. He's the only one who talks about your thirteen-year-old self like you were five. He’s also the only one who has reached out from your family after Damian’s arrival and your leave. Cassandra, who’s in the Alps with her girlfriend as of now, probably doesn’t even know about Damian.
Beside you, Conner’s still snoring, sprawled over both his and your side of the bed. He’s holding in an iron grip the plushie of you, who instead looks like she’s plotting his murder, while her Superboy companion sits politely on your bedside table. It’s still early in the morning, around eight am, but no matter how late you go to sleep, the clock that your body has by now assimilated will never let you sleep in.
You stare at your brother’s message until it’s burned in your retinas, the brightness of your phone screen way too high for the dim darkness of the room, wondering just how they spent Christmas Eve. Last year, Bruce was busy dismantling one of Falcone’s operations; the year before, it was the Court of the Owls, and so on. Something always comes up to keep you entertained during the holidays, and from the way you left your father knee-deep in the Black Glove thing, you’re sure that this year was no better. The only difference was… well, Damian.
The worst part of the message is that you know that Dick would love the Damian you once knew. The nicer one, who sometimes complained about having to eat vegetables and missed his nanny, and hadn’t hardened under the League’s training.
Having to leave hurt — because you knew that that side of him would have disappeared in a matter of years, but you had no choice. It was either that, or eventually having him murder you and live the rest of his life in grief and guilt. Unsurprisingly, Dick’s message goes unresponded, but he keeps the texts coming as he notices that you’ve read it.
Good morning!!
Is it a good moment to talk now? No pressure tho
Just wanted to know how things were going over there
I had gotten you a present but I’ll wait for you to come back to give it to you
It’s safely stored in my apartment for now!!! No demon gremlin hands can reach it :D
“What time is it?” Kon groans beside you, woken by the sound of the notifications. He yawns, rolling over and lazily draping an arm around your waist, still high off of sleep. “Too early. That’s what time it is.” His hand gently goes over your eyes, and he whispers, conspiring, “Go back to sleep…”
He falls asleep right after, but you can’t find it in yourself. You pry his hand and arm off of you, phone still in hand, and make way for downstairs.
It’s freezing outside. You put on Conner’s jacket just because it was the first coat over the hanger, and end up slouching over the beaten up bench that sits in the Kents’ backyard. Dick’s voice is chippy but anxious when he replies, not even letting the first ring go through completely.
“Hiii!”
You sigh, “Hi, Dick. Merry Christmas, I guess.”
He reciprocates with the same glee of before, not letting your tired tone tune out his happiness. “So, how’s it going over to the Kents? Rumor has it that Martha’s cooking might just be better than Alfred’s.”
Conversation flows easily with him — it’s a gift he has, really, to somehow put everyone at ease with a chuckle and the flash of a grin. Sometimes you envy how simple it is for him to make friends, or be appreciated by everyone without having to prove anything. What makes him stand out from you, Tim or Damian, is that Bruce openly chose him. He didn’t just sneak into his life like Drake, and wasn’t with him just because they happened to be biologically related.
In theory, you should hate him — God knows how much your mother does — just for this ability of his to attract everyone and anything at any given moment. In reality, you’re not spared from the Grayson pull.
“I met your brother,” he says casually, like he’s trying not to break a really thin line that he sees between the two of you. “He’s… surely something else.”
You hum. “He’s always been like that.” Sure, he had his moments of kindness, but your mother’s influence has always been far too condemning for him. Who knows — maybe your father will be able to do some miracle and at least make him refrain from killing.
The silence on the other end is deafening. “Um, I… Tim asked me to tell you that he’s sorry. He said he kinda blamed you for Damian’s attack — and he also understands why you wouldn’t tell Bruce about him.”
“It’s okay.” You're being as honest as possible, “I tried to kill him once or twice too. It’s only fair that he thought I had put Damian up to this.”
You can hear the nervous taps he’s giving the back of his phone. “Okay. Cool, cool– um, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but B kinda gave Damian an ultimatum. He said he won’t be permitted to wear the Robin suit until he learns to calibrate his violent instincts and you come back.”
Now, that’s surprising. Your father, taking just a step back from his own words? Pigs must’ve learnt how to fly by now. “Did he?” you don’t sound like the usual you — more like a softer, kinder version that just needs some reassurance. Dick asks himself just what is being put into Martha’s food to make you so open to dialogue, and how much she’d want to spill the secret — just to him or Alfred would do.
“He did,” he muses, “he also said that if you want to come home today — even if just for lunch or dinner — Alfred will be adding a plate.”
The backdoor opens with a creak. Ma Kent steps out in the snow, bundled up to the notch, her eyes widening in surprise when she sees you. “Oh, dear,” she mutters, “is that your father on the phone?”
She’s got this weird expression on her face, like she wants to beat him up or something. When you tell her it’s actually your brother, her mood brightens up significantly. “Oh, golly, that’s so nice of him. May I have a word with him?”
A bit weirded out since you don’t know what she could possibly want to say to him, you just pass her the phone, and are surprised to find out that Martha Kent and Dick Grayson actually know each other — at least, from the way they speak like they’re old friends. Thirty minutes and three shared cake recipes later, suddenly the Waynes are invited over for both lunch and dinner, and you have to hold in the biggest scream ever from leaving your mouth. God, she had looked like such a nice old lady — you couldn’t have known that in reality, she was plotting your downfall right in front of your eyes.
You can’t tell her anything, because Alfred still taught you manners, and guests don’t fight with the people that host them. So you just let out a long sigh and don’t even say goodbye to Dick when the phone’s finally passed back to you and his chirping voice comes out the speaker. Why, Martha, why? You thought she liked you.
She doesn’t seem to notice your turmoil, because she still smiles sweetly at you in that way she’s done the last few days and says, “I’m going to feed the stray cats down the street — would you like to come with me?”
Just because she’s an old lady that you thought was nice up until now, and the cat food looks way too heavy for her feeble arms, you say yes.
You’re still in your pajamas and Conner’s coat, but anyways, who’s going to judge you? The stray cats that live in a chicken house and probably are covered in fleas?
There’s snow still falling — little flakes that melt as soon as they touch your skin — and when you say there’s no one around, you mean nothing. No horns blaring, no police sirens, no scuffles. For all you know, Smallville could be Gotham City’s rural, polite reflection.
“How are you liking the farm so far?” Martha asks you, her nose red from the cold. You get reminded again of how much different she is from the other old people you know — you’ve got this strange feeling of protectiveness towards her, mainly because she looks like she could break anytime by falling off the stairs. (Which, in total fairness, she probably would.)
“It’s quiet,” you reply, for a loss of a better word. You look around, noticing the lack of houses and buildings, and wonder just how it is possible that this old lady spent God knows how many years walking down his path and still came out of it unscathed. Were this Gotham, she would’ve had her purse snatched as soon as she got out of the house.
The woman hums, “Sometimes they bring the kids from the town to see the cats that live around here, to see if any of them likes them enough to be taken home. I still haven’t had any luck, but I’m sure that some little fella is going to take a liking to you.” The corners of her mouth crinkle when she smiles, “You’re a really nice young lady, you know? No wonder why my Connie likes you so much. The two of you like to look though, but under all that act are two really big hearts. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come with me.”
The tips of your ears turn red, and it’s not because of the cold. You have decided — you don’t like the way the Kent women see right through you. It makes you feel like a kid who doesn’t know anything about life.
The cats meow happily when they see her coming, exiting their chicken house to rub against her legs, despite the snow around her boots. “My, my,” Martha laughs, “calm down– she’s got enough food for every single one of you, no reason to be so needy.”
The cats may be strays, but by no means do they look cold or underfed — quite the opposite, actually; some of them are positively chonky. Martha and the old ladies of the neighborhood — which in Smallville means everyone living in a five-mile-radius — must take great care of them. They rub against your boots as you refill their bowls, purring loudly, immediately attacking the cat food placed there.
You watch, amused, as they devour their portions, until one little kitten stumbles out from the group, belly full, and tries to climb up your leg. You let her because honestly, she’s so full of food that she’s funny, all wobbly and unsure with her claws. Only when she falls down and meows angrily do you pick her up and scratch the back of her ear, cooing at the way she purrs loudly.
Martha smiles warmly. “That’s Muffin. We found her on the other side of the road, and the other cats adopted her instantly.”
You look Muffin in the eye, and think that it’s a stupid name for a cat. She blinks back and tries to lick the tip of your nose. Ma Kent laughs, her gaze going to some place behind you. “You know,” she mumbles quietly, pointing to the open field behind you, “that’s where we first found Clark.”
You turn to look behind you as Muffin tries to climb up Conner’s coat, and you think that if you try hard enough, you can see a crater covered in snow. Martha’s eyes sparkle. “Oh, he was such a sweet kid. When we found him, he barely reached my knee — he didn’t even know how to properly walk, and didn’t know how to speak our language.”
Oh, God. You know where this is going. If the Kents didn’t have a farm, and Lois didn’t like writing, you think that Martha and her would've gone off to study psychology. “I…” her voice breaks a little, and you think that while you may have thought of her as a fragile being, she had done nothing to prove to you so. She’s done nothing but be up and about these days, and waking up at eight am on Christmas morning just proves your point. This is the first time you hear her sound so unsure. “Parents aren’t necessarily always right. Me and Jon had the luck to raise him almost completely, with all our wrongs and rights. And we have made mistakes, but I like to think that in the end, we raised a good kid.”
Of course they did — that kid ended up being Superman. “It takes a lot to take in a kid who has already been raised — and in a way that some would consider wrong, at that.” She holds her scarf just a little closer as Muffin falls into the hood of your jacket, “I haven’t known you for long, but in the little time I have, I can say that I think your dad did a wonderful job. Parents… we often make mistakes. And I’m sure that like every one of us, yours did many. But I think that where there’s good will, no harm is ever meant.”
She tilts her head to the side. “I know you’re probably angry at your dad, but Clark told me that he loves you — and a lot, at that. But– would you be willing to give him a chance? If not for yours or his, for the sake of this old lady who hates seeing parents and their own children fighting? If you do, I promise I will give him a long lecture about his treatment of you in your place, so that he doesn’t have any more reasons to get mad at you.”
Muffin licks the back of your neck. You sigh. “Well, I guess I can’t be mad at him forever, can I?”
Martha comes up to strangle you in a hug before you can even think it though. “I knew you were a good kid,” she whispers.
You pat her shoulder a bit awkwardly, “I– okay, okay, Martha, careful with the hugging now–”
Muffin ends up attaching her claws to Conner’s coat when it’s time for you to leave, meowing unhappily at your attempts of pulling her away. Ma Kent just laughs, “Maybe you should take her with us,” she says, “we usually leave the cats here unless they really want to go home with us. Sometimes they go back here, other times they stay. That’s mostly how we find them homes.” she raises an eyebrow, teasing, “Think you can handle a kitty?”
You look at her dead in the eye. “I have an alligator back at home.”
She pauses, then blinks. “An… alligator?”
You nod. “I found him in the sewers a couple of years ago. Fed him raw chicken until he got too fat and started clogging the water tubes. He now lives in a pond in our backyard and is probably waiting for a moment of distraction from my father to eat him.” You trail off. “Um, his name is Alsimna. It means obese. I just thought it would be funny since, you know… he’s kinda fat. No hate though.” Now that you think of it, you kinda miss him. He started brumating just last month.
Martha purses her lips. “Muffin is very lucky she already had a name before you came around.”
When Conner wakes up, it’s because of weird cries coming from downstairs. Noticing your absence on the other side of the bed — and feeling like a virgin left alone the night after the deed, even if said deed was just a little peck — he shuffles down the stairs, hair a mess over his head and Batgirl plushie still in his hands, and gapes at the sight of you — elbow-deep in soap water over the sink — and Ma Kent, giving instructions and whatnot.
The sink meows. Kon sputters, finally catching your attention. “Um– what you got there?”
You hold up a drenched black kitty, who protests loudly in your hold. “Muffin.”
“She had a couple of fleas,” Martha explains to him, “we had to wash her.”
He gasps in utter betrayal. “You never let me keep any of the strays I brought home!”
“Because they all escaped as soon as you were out of the room. This one followed her all the way here.”
Muffin snuggles in the warm blanket you wrap her in, purring in your hold. Kon glances at her warily, “You… adopted a cat?”
“Well, she’s cute,” you grumble.
“Don’t you have an alligator?”
“I do.”
He blinks. He stares at the kitten. “Muffin, you’re gonna get eaten really soon.” The latter meows like she has already accepted her fate.
Your father arrives a few hours later — and in a typical show of Wayne dramatics, he's chosen to use the private helicopter instead of the more reserved Zeta-Tubes. Jon gapes at the sight of the aircraft as Clark deadpans, “Did he really have to take out the company helicopter?” he mutters to you.
You shrug, “He does it for longer distances. Be happy he didn’t take the private jet.”
Under Jon’s constant nagging to go see the helicopter from up close, it’s Clark that puts his jacket on to go greet your family, his son bundled in warm clothes just behind him. Muffin stares at you from the kitchen counter like she’s reevaluating all her life’s decisions, and you can’t help but agree with her. Conner pats your arm encouragingly, “C’mon, it can’t be that bad, can it?” he whispers.
He’s wrong, because your father has taken Dick’s invitation like a family reunion — even Alfred is here. And Damian is standing behind him, glaring at Bruce’s back, dressed like a little lord coming straight from Hell. He doesn’t say anything to anyone — just gives you a pointed look and bites the inside of his cheek, looking downright tired of you. In response, you just stare back until he decides to go bother Alfred instead.
Tim has a black eye and a cast. You notice after Dick pulls away from hugging you, and you raise a brow at his injuries. “The grenade didn’t hit you that hard, did it?”
“He tried to kill me two more times,” he grumbles, “I was asleep both times.”
You pat his shoulder, “Get used to it. He does that a lot.” Tim is undoubtedly his obstacle in achieving your father’s complete and undivided attention. He’s also Robin as of now and, well… you grew up with the myth of Batman. You wouldn’t be surprised if Damian wanted to be Robin so badly he was ready to kill Tim for it.
Dick leans his head to the side, looking amusedly at Damian, brooding in weird quietness. You can’t help but think that such silence is not typical of him — normally, he would already have insulted the house three times and the carpet at least six. Instead he’s standing there like a selectively mute kid who has decided that farmers out of all people are not worthy of hearing his voice.
At your inquiring gaze, Dick coughs into his fist. “Bruce apparently told him he’ll let him have a week as Robin if he doesn’t speak unless he has something nice to say for the whole day,” he whispers, barely containing a laugh. “He bargained two.”
“Incredible,” you utter, “he bargained with father?” you can’t help the tiniest bit of pride from seeping into your chest.
“Bruce was at his wit’s end,” Tim grunts, “he didn’t even know which way to turn anymore.”
Dick grimaces. “Yeah, uh… it’s been a rough few days. First, he had to figure out what to do with Damian, then you fled the Manor, then Tim wouldn’t talk to him, then it was Alfred who didn’t talk to him…”
He blinks at the way you and Drake look at him. “What?” he asks innocently, crossing his arms.
“Well, you’re the only one who isn’t angry at him, cowboy,” Tim explains, tapping his hip with his good hand.
“Yeah, what happened to ‘sibling solidarity’ and all that crap you always talk about?” you inquire.
Grayson chuckles nervously. “Look, guys, I– he looked so sad.”
Your eye twitches. “You know what else looked sad, Dick? The Discowing outfit.”
At his outraged gasp, Drake nods. This might just be the first thing you two have agreed on since the dawn of time. “Yeah, dude, it was horrendous. I think you don’t wanna pick sides just because you know that fighting with Bruce will get you into that suit again.”
“I can’t believe you guys are ganging up on me!” Dick shrieks, not getting everybody’s attention on the three of you just because the Kents are particularly sensitive to the awkward tension in the room, even as they speak quietly with Bruce — who still has to say a word to you. He had tried to smile when he got inside the house, but once he saw Dick come hug you, he had preferred to stay in the living room than the kitchen, letting you three have a moment.
Muffin meows loudly as she falls from the countertop to the padded chair near it, and you hush her by taking her in your arms. Tim gives you a look, “Did you get bored of Alsimna? I’m sure he’ll be so heartbroken he’ll try to eat you for the tenth time.”
The kitten tries to scratch him as she hisses, and his shoulders slump. “Why do you all want to kill me? I’m a nice dude!”
“Bro.”
Conner comes from behind him, slapping him on the back. “How’s it going, man? You look rough.”
He’s coming from upstairs — where he just changed — and as soon as he sees him, Jon sprints towards him, shy but so eager to meet your other brothers since Damian didn’t look too appeasing. Kon pats his head, “Jonno, um– these are Tim and Dick.” he gestures to you, “They’re her brothers.”
“Adopted,” you and Drake remind him simultaneously.
Jonathan nods, blushing as Dick excitedly greets him, then decides to just switch one shelter for another and goes to hide behind your legs, holding tightly onto your sweater. Considering you and Conner are the most prone to playing with him, he’s gotten pretty attached to you these past few days, so much so that you’re wondering just where you’ll find the space to hang all the drawings he’s made you. Grayson squeals, “OhmyGod, you got adopted!” he takes his phone out and snaps countless pictures as Jon tries to disappear behind the back of your thighs and holds onto your pinky for safety, “Babs’ never going to believe this–”
You don’t miss the way Damian glares at you from the other side of the room, where Bruce’s still talking to Clark. He continues glaring nonetheless.
Lunch is awkward at best. Martha and Alfred try their best to attenuate the tension, but considering that Damian still refuses to utter a single word and both Lois and Pa Kent are still nursing a hangover, there’s not much to say. The silence is mostly filled in by your father and Clark discussing League matters, or by Jon blabbering to you and Conner. The only ones who look fully comfortable are, in fact, your butler and Ma Kent, who have been discussing the best recipe for casserole as soon as they saw each other.
You’re not sure how you ended up sandwiched between the only two kids in the farm, but here you are. If looks could kill, little Jon would probably lie six feet under the ground dismembered and with a stone with THIS WAS DAMIAN AL GHUL’S DOING written over it. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to notice his staring, as he’s far too immersed in stuffing his face with food to care.
At some point, Damian mutters, his voice so low that you’re the only one who is able to hear it, “Kan taeam 'umiy 'afdal,” mother’s cooking was better.
You spare a look at him. “'Ant taelam 'anaha lam tatbakh tilk al'atbaq abdaan, 'alays kadhalika?“ You know she never really cooked those dishes, right?
It’s true. You’ve seen your grandfather cook a few times during campaigns, mostly dishes from the times of his upbringing, but Talia usually reserved that duty to servants, only to pass the plates full of food as hers. It’s not about thinking you’re above it — it’s about skills, because your mother truly sucks at cooking. Damian should feel lucky that he’s never had to experience her cuisine.
Bruce watches the interaction quietly — he’s yet to see Damian speak so softly. He can’t hear what you guys are saying, but as long as no fight breaks out, he’s not going to intervene — he wouldn’t want to shatter the already feeble peace that is in the air.
Still in Arabic, Damian grumbles, “You left me.”
“It was either that or having them let you kill me,” you answer earnestly, your mother tongue slipping easily from your lips even after so many years of disuse. “I made sure to leave the road to being heir paved just for you. I would’ve never left you alone in that place without being sure that you wouldn’t have had to suffer what I went through.” He had mother at his beck and call. Surely, she would’ve never let what happened to you happen to him.
Your brother stays silent at that, his eyes downturned to his untouched plate. It’s only when you’ve finished eating, and the table’s cleared, and everyone’s outside playing with the snow that he approaches you, his ridiculously big coat on.
You’re going back to the strays’ chicken house, having begged Martha to please rest a bit after promising you would’ve gone to feed them in her place. Muffin is toddling around your feet as you tie your boots and ask, “And where do you think you’re going?”
“With you,” he grumbles, avoiding your eyes.
You hum, “I’m sure Jon would be happy to have someone his age to play with.”
He scoffs the same way you do, you notice. In fact, you’ve noticed he looks like you more than he ever did, like the distance and the resentment did nothing but convince him to take your mannerism and make it his. “I’m not a kid,”
“Sure you aren’t,” you pat Muffin’s head and take the cans of wet food Ma Kent left out for you. “Come if you want, but don’t try anything.”
“Father doesn’t even let me use kitchen knives,” he stuffs his hands in his pockets, “and even if he did, you wouldn’t let me do anything.” He probably already knows that he was able to hurt Tim just because of the surprise factor and the literal grenade he blew up in his face.
Bruce frowns when he sees you and Damian walking away on a path alone, but he doesn’t say anything nor tries to stop you. You two probably have a lot to talk about, he figures. Maybe even more than what he has to tell you.
Your brother is silent as he follows you down the road, his mouth leaving puffs of warm breath in the air. Then, “You didn’t even ask if I wanted to come with you. You just assumed I wouldn’t have.”
He hasn’t sounded this small ever since he still cried about Fatima’s death, but you haven’t seen him in years, you think. You might not know this Damian at all. “Mother had great things planned for you,” you tell him. “Considering you never backed down from any of her plans, I just thought you liked the idea of becoming the Head of the Demon.”
The chicken house isn’t far — a couple of cats have already spotted you, and carefully throttle in the snow to greet the two of you. “After all, you came here just because Talia wanted you to, no?”
Dumbstruck, Damian blinks, “Is she not our mother anymore?”
He says our like it’s an absurdity to ever think that the two of you don’t share the same parents, even if figuratively. Like he’s ready to start calling her Talia just because you do. You shake your head, “Call her what you want. You don’t have to stop doing anything. Just give father’s way a chance, will you?” Now that he’s here, you know that Bruce won’t let him go anywhere — and who knows, maybe it’s for the best.
The cats all get around the bowls as you pour the wet food in, but Damian seems to barely see them. “You tried to kill me.”
You snort. “I didn’t try to kill you — I threatened you, it’s different. I talked big, Damian, but I would never hurt you.” You relent, “Well, not in a beyond recovery manner. Do you still breathe funny from when I broke your nose?”
He pinches it. “I do.” a dry sniffle, “You have replaced me.”
At this, you pause — turning to look at him, weirded out. “What do you mean? You’re the only little brother I have.”
His arms cross, and his eyebrows twitch. “Back there with that dimwit — John or whatever. Even with Grayson and the other guy. You came here to forget about me — you didn’t even tell father I existed.” his voice breaks a little, but he fixes it before you can address it, “I thought you would’ve. I didn’t know I embarrassed you.”
“Damian,” you breathe out. “You have to understand, you don’t embarrass me. I love you, and nothing changed when I moved to Gotham. Hell– I tried contacting you. I sent you birthday presents even when you didn’t want them.”
He shuffles his feet. “Mother said it was best not to see you. That you weren’t a good influence, and that you probably were looking for me out of obligation.”
You purse your lips, rising to your feet and holding a hand over his shoulder. “I wasn’t,” you whisper softly, “Damian, you’re my brother. My name was the first ever thing you said. I… I didn’t want to leave you there, but after what you did to Ravi, I… I just thought that I needed some time for myself, and that you’d do great with the League — it’s what Talia had you for. I believed you wanted it, too.”
“I didn’t want it,” his reply is so little that suddenly you’re eleven again, and he’s four, and he keeps seeing the limp body of his favourite nanny in his sleep. “Not if you weren’t there for me.”
A silence follows. And just when you start wondering what you should do — hug him? Offer some comfort? You haven’t been a big sister in ages — he speaks again. “I, um… mother convinced grandfather to have me participate in the Year of Blood.”
Your blood runs cold. “…What?” The ringing in your ears is so loud that you’re barely able to hear your own words. This can’t be an ugly joke, and you know it, because nothing in his body tells you that this is a lie. And not even Damian knows how to hide a lie this good — you don’t even know how to, hell.
He swallows the knot in his throat. “Yes, mother had suggested not to tell you. Said you… would’ve reacted badly.”
You don’t know if you kneel because your legs are too trembly to keep staying upright or to look him in the eyes. “The Year of Blood is a once in a generation thing. They… they had no right to– to make you…”
“Mother told grandfather that since you ran away, yours wasn’t valid anymore– that I was heir, and I had to do it to prove that I was at or above your level. Grandfather was sure that you’d be back one day, but told mother to do as she wished — that as soon as you were back home, you’d fight me for your rightful place.” His eyes are teary, and you open your arms so that he can fall into your embrace as you both try not to cry your eyes out. “I… they had me slaughter hundreds, sister. I couldn’t even see clearly when I got to the end of it.”
You hold him tight by the back of his neck as he smothers his cries in your shoulders — you wonder if the last time he cried openly like this was when you were still with the League. In less than a month he’ll be ten, but he’s almost smaller than Jon, and you are once again reminded of how much Talia and Ra’s have failed the both of you.
In a nicer world, maybe you would’ve been brought up by your father and a nicer Talia, and instead of constantly trying to fight each other to death you’d have common squabbles about whose turn it was to watch the TV. In this world, he had to suffer through the same thing that had you killed by your own hands.
The Year of Blood will always be the longest year of your lives — one spent in blood, violence and tyranny, all in the name of Al Ghul. You lost count of how many temples you destroyed, how many armies you ruined, how many profanities for the sake of your place in the family — a place your grandfather had always insisted was given. And Damian — who’s still so short the top of his head barely reaches your bellybutton — had to go through all of that, presumably not long ago.
The way goes from here. You know it’ll be hard — Damian will still have to learn how to refrain from killing those who deserve it — but you can work with this. You can learn how to be a big sister again.
When you come back to the farm, both you and Damian’s eyes are swollen and red from all the crying, and even if he tries to hide it, you know Bruce just took a sigh of relief to see that you both still have all your limbs attached. Your brother’s holding onto the hem of your coat like he’s scared you’ll leave him again, and the tension in the air lightens up when Damian starts talking almost normally — that is, avoiding saying insults by biting his tongue when they threaten to slip out.
“It’s a Christmas miracle!” Dick whispers to Tim. The latter facepalms. “Or just communication, bro.”
It’s just later in the afternoon when Damian’s too busy petting Muffin — purring all over his lap — that your father finally takes you aside to talk.
He looks a bit embarrassed, and it’s what tells you that Martha’s already had a talk with him. “I didn’t know you resented me for not finding you,” he murmurs quietly. He doesn’t say sorry, and he never does, but you guess that it’s fair, since you never say it either.
You shrug, crossing your arms. “Well, when your father can find a random kid perfectly fine on a common Tuesday but couldn’t find you for six years, that’s what could happen.”
“But I looked for you,” he presses, “I really did.” You drum your fingers on the countertop of the kitchen. “You have to believe me.”
After a moment, you say, “I do,” because maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe you just overestimated his abilities with the League and undermined the Shadows’.
Your father presses his lips into a thin line. “You don’t have to tell me everything that happened when you were with the League — I never pressed for that. But when it comes to things like Damian’s existence, you still can't feel like you have to lie to me. I’m your father. You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me.”
He opens his arms, gesturing for a hug much like you did earlier with Damian, and even if a bit reluctantly, you still let him pull you in. He’s as warm as you remembered him to be, and his heart is thrumming underneath your cheek. You should probably tell him everything — about how you and Damian were raised to be against each other, the Year of Blood, Ravi — but you can’t help but think that this is neither the time nor the place. He still loves your mother. After you tell him, he will never see her in the same light again, even after all the times he’s forgiven her. But your father deserves a quiet Christmas like this one.
“We should do this more often,” he hums, kissing the crown of your head. “I don’t even remember the last time we hugged.”
You do. It was after a particularly rough run-in with the League about a year after you’d moved to Gotham, which had left you with a broken arm. You’d always refused his hugs before, but even now, you think that you really needed one at that moment.
He brushes your hair carefully, like he’s scared to run over knots and annoy you. “And I know I always tell you how much you look like your mother, but sometimes I forget that for you it might not be a compliment.” he kisses your forehead tenderly, “But I do it because for me, it’s a big compliment, because you’ve always looked like what I had dreamt for her and me — for us. And with you here, it’s like we almost got it.”
That night as they leave to go back to Gotham, Bruce presses an USB in your hands. “I should’ve given you this a long time ago,” he mutters, “I didn’t because I figured you didn’t need to see your father being emotional. But maybe you do.”
You spend hours on Kon’s beaten up computer that night, earphones on as the latter begs you to just go to sleep, but you really can’t find it in yourself — because this feels like a chapter closing. Because there’s a file log for every day your father has spent looking for you.
Bruce looks uncomfortable in front of the camera — cowl off, but Batman costume still on. He’s got scratches on his face and his eyes are bloodshot; he looks as distraught as possible. “Um,” he starts. “Alfred suggested I start these video logs to show the kid after… if we find her. He says it would be good for… establishing a bond, even if I’m not quite sure.”
He coughs into his palm, and goes off to explain. “It’s… March 23rd, five am.” you know that date — this was taken the day after you met him for the first time, years ago. “Talia could be lying, but even if she did, there’s a kid out there that possibly thinks I’m her father, and could be wondering why I’m not there to protect her.”
He sighs deeply, pinching his eyebrows. “Alfred agreed that she had my mother’s eyes after looking at the bodycam footage. I can’t tell if he’s biased — it’s been so many years since she’s been gone that I almost forgot how they looked, and neither the portraits nor the photos ever got them right.”
He tries to straighten his shoulders, maybe trying to look a bit respectable again. “But we’re looking for the kid, that’s it.” His lips purse, and he nods towards the camera. “And that’s all for today.”
“April 7th. A robbery downtown happened this morning — everyone got out safely, but the Mad Hatter seems to be involved.”
Bruce already looks done with this video log thing and it shows — more than two weeks of nothing, when he usually has these types of cases closed in a matter of days at worst. He’s not even sitting on the chair, too nervous to properly stay put. “The kid’s still nowhere to be seen. The Shadows know how to do their jobs, but we already knew that. We’ll keep looking for her.”
Robin — Jason — pops into the frame, waving his hands frantically. A board with the few pictures your father had managed to cut out from the body footage are spread out with mostly incoherent clues and traces, now. “Hi, lil’ sis! I think Martha’s a nice name!”
“Yes, yes,” Bruce, a bit embarrassed, tries to shoo him away. “Um– Jay suggested we give the kid a name, because calling her ‘the kid’ was apparently getting exhausting for him. But…” his eyes drift off to the distance, “naming her Jane Doe felt a little too impersonal, and like we already believed her to be dead.”
His shrug is one of someone who doesn’t want to admit that he’s still thinking about the past. “And, well, since me and Talia once talked about eventual baby names — I figured, Martha it is.”
Bruce’s slouched on the chair in front of the monitor, looking as rough as they make them. “July 6th. We found nothing — like always.” He moves to shut the camera off.
BATCOMPUTER FILE No. 829
LOG ENTRY: 273
LOCATION: BATPLANE, MALAYSIA
USER ID: B01
“A hair follicle.”
Bruce is holding up a ziplock bag like it’s his ticket to heaven. “The paternity test came back positive — and considering the cameras that depict Martha as part of the leading group for this operation, it’s a given that it’s hers.”
He sighs in despair, his head dropping in his hands. “…We just have to find her. Like we’ve tried for the last…” a peek at the screen, “273 days.” Jason sticks out his tongue to the camera from behind him.
He’s gotten far more desperate as the days go on — because this time, it’s not only his detective abilities that are being put to the test, but also his fatherly ones. He purses his lips, “We’ve got nothing. Sometimes a hideout gets leaked, but when we get to the coordinates, Martha’s never there — they’ve already moved her on to another base, and it keeps on going like this.”
He conjoins his hands. “She’s the living proof that if the League doesn’t want me to know something, then I won’t.” a moment of hesitation, “This also means that Talia made me aware of her existence just to mess with my brain, probably.”
He looks dead into the camera. “But the search goes on, I promise. I won’t have a moment of rest until I find her.”
The video opens with Jason. “Um,” he mutters awkwardly, leaning to look at something out of frame. “Bruce got hit with Fear Gas.”
A scream echoes in the distance — your father, no doubt. He winces. “Dick and Alfred are holding him down. But I, uh, know how much he cares about these logs, so I’m making today’s entry for him.” he looks over to the date signaled on the computer’s screen, “September 23rd. Still no Martha. Still looking for her.”
He tries to smile at the camera, even if it comes out a bit wobbly. “And if you’re watching this– hi, Martha.”
You knew this was coming — the short video logs before this one, talking about how he was looking for Jason and the Joker had told you everything you needed to know. Bruce’s eyes can’t be described as anything if not completely empty. A few long minutes of silence pass before he does anything, and when he does, it’s just moving to shut the camera off. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
Alfred stands poised like he always does, eyes a little red. Behind him, the Batcave looks like a mess. “I’m doing the video log because he’s refusing to take a break from looking for the Joker. I fear I’ll be filling in for him for quite some time.”
He looks behind him to the broken board with MARTHA written on it with bold, red ink, all the evidence that your father had accumulated in two years scattered all over the ground. “I know how much this matters to him. I’ll clean the mess up later. I wanted to make a new entry first.”
He stares at the calendar. “May 18th. Still looking. No new evidence.”
Grayson is a nice change of scenery from Alfred, but he looks even more awkward than Jason had. He’s sitting in front of the camera, but the angle is different, like he just sat the computer on his coffee table and called it a day. He’s not even in his Nightwing suit. “A kid just guessed Batman’s identity,” he says, looking completely lost. “Anyways, I’m just filling in for Alfred since he sprained his ankle yesterday and is on bed rest.”
He tries to fix the camera angle, and instead makes it even worse — you now have a perfect visual to his knees, and he has to lean onto them with his elbows to be properly seen. “It’s, uh, July 5th.” he bites the inside of his cheek, “Not sure if B’s got any new evidence, but I know he’s still looking.”
Bruce looks thinner — unhealthier than he is usually, somehow. “I– uh– didn’t stop looking. But no new evidence.” he leans his head to the side, resting it on his knuckles. “I saw Talia the other day. She said her father had forced her to lie to me — to tell me that she had lost the baby ten years ago.”
Drake looks far too small and scrawny for the Robin suit he’s wearing. He does so with pride anyways. “I’m the new Robin. Bruce got shot and Alfred’s too busy operating him, so I’m doing this. November 24th. Still looking. New evidence: Ra’s said that Lady Shiva’s training her.”
The fact that he’s reading this from his notepad confirms your suspicions — he has written his whole log in like it’s a presentation. “Bruce’s determined to find out what for. I think the answer’s a bit too obvious.”
There’s 1105 more video logs — one for every day you weren’t there. It takes you days to get to the last one.
Bruce’s smile is happiness tinged with something like deep, deep shame. “September 4th. We have stopped looking.”
He sighs, hands on his sides. “Her name’s not Martha. It feels a bit weird not to call her that now, but I’m just relieved we found her.” his eye twitches. “Well, she came to me. I didn’t find her. I couldn’t.”
He bites his lip. “I’ll have to retrain her. Teach her not to kill and tell her not to use long-term damage techniques. But at least we found her.”
When his eyes look into the camera, they’re shimmering with tears, and his voice is shaky. “I’m just happy she’s safe now.”
GOTHAM CITY — A FEW MONTHS LATER.
Bruce decides to open Wayne Manor’s pool for the first time since Jason’s death in the summer.
It’s July and Gotham’s sweltering. You can’t even get out of the house without ending up with all your clothes drenched with sweat — hell, even Muffin, who loves the Manor’s gardens more than anything else, is refusing to go outside. Henceforth the decision to have the pool cleaned out and ready for use once again.
Damian looks at the water gun Bruce has handed to him. “Father, I didn’t expect this from you, of all people. Aren’t we not supposed to kill?”
“It’s not for killing,” you snort from beside him, stretched out on your belly on a sunbed with your new bikini already on. “It’s for throwing water at people.” You point towards the guy carefully putting sunscreen over your back, “Feel free to use Conner as a test drive. He’s not going to get hurt anyways.”
“Hey!” he protests, pouting, “I thought you liked me!”
“I do,” you muse, “but Damian’s thirst for murder has to be contained in some way, habibi. Right, Dami?”
His gun’s already loaded with water when he points it straight in your boyfriend’s face and shoots. When he doesn’t even blink at the spray of liquid, your brother tsks and goes back to Bruce. “Father, I’ll need a more appropriate model of this device. The kryptonian isn’t hurt in any way, and we need to fix that.”
“Why’s he always so intent on murdering me?” Kon grumbles, spreading some more sunscreen over the back of your thighs. “I didn’t do anything to him.”
“That’s common around here,” Tim calls out from his own sunbed. “You’ll get used to it.”
Beside him, Cassandra nods. “He starts respecting you after the fifth failed attempt, don’t worry.”
“Fifth?” Conner repeats. “He’s tried at least eleven times by now!”
She shrugs. “Skill issue, if you ask me.”
Dick swims up to the corner of the pool in his unicorn inflatable donut. “Are you guys sure you don’t want to take a swim? Come onnn. How is it that we’re always whining about the weather and then refuse to take a dip?”
You all jump on him out of pure spite — his poor unicorn soon emerging from the water, unlike his owner, who’s now being held under the surface by Cassandra. “You really need to learn when to shut up, Dick.”
Overall, it’s a nice day. It’s your first time at a pool for fun rather than training, and you end up finding it quite relaxing. Bruce lights up the barbecue for lunch, and Alfred — still in his suit and with somehow no trace of sweat on his body — makes sure the lot of you have enough water and drinks for the whole day.
At some point after eating Alfred’s snacks, you lie beside Conner with a book, resting your head over his chest as you read. Damian — who has spent the entire day trying to find a water gun with a different caliber, not even knowing that they don’t make water guns with calibers — whistles innocently and goes to take a seat on the sunbed beside yours.
“So, Kent,” he starts, “has my sister told you that the woman’s consent is the only thing needed for marriage in our culture?”
Conner blinks at him, then down at you. “Is that supposed to scare me off?” he whispers, trying not to have Damian hear. You pat his chest, “Don’t worry, I’d never force you into marriage.”
Your brother grumbles, “Well, did she tell you that they carve the man’s eyes out if he looks at another woman?”
Now a bit worried, your boyfriend looks down to you again. Your hum is a non-committal one. “Oh, yeah, that I’d do. I’ve already got the Kryptonite spoon ready.” you glance up at him — a warning. “Just in case, of course.”
Conner gulps. “Just in case,” he repeats, blanching.
Dick grimaces at the conversation. He turns to Tim and whispers, “Shouldn’t we, I don’t know… help him?”
He bursts out laughing. “Help him?” he hisses. “Dick, look at him– that guy’s right where he wants to be.”
Grayson deadpans. “I fear our sister and her mother have the same taste in men.”
Cassandra nods. “Guys who let them bully them into a relationship. We understood that years ago, Dick. Welcome to the club.”
congratulations! you've reached the end of the fic :) have some memes:
Mrs. Wayne goes missing, and the media and family are both in shambles. Bruce grows colder as the family tries their best to find her. To try and cheer him up, they find old video diaries from the couple’s early dating lives and witness a new side of Bruce.
W/C: 8.1k
Tags/Warnings: Angst with a happy ending, kidnapping, tense family dynamics, established relationship (married), violence, drugged but not graphic, stalking, nothing overly graphic or detailed
Notes: omg!! tysm for all the love on the sneek peek!! i hope you all enjoy this because this has been my favorite story so far!! dividers by @cafekitsune
This just in, Y/N Wayne has gone missing.
It was released today by the Gotham Police Department that yesterday at 1:42 P.M., Mrs. Wayne left Wayne Enterprises before getting into a blacked-out vehicle.
She hasn’t been seen since.
Commissioner Gordon has stated that the matter she was found in should have been grounds for somebody to step in and comment on.
The typically put-together and clean Mrs. Wayne was found stumbling out of the building with her hair out of place.
They could only describe her as looking visibly intoxicated.
We warn you, the footage you’re about to see may be disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.
• ───────────────── •
CCTV Security Footage
Robin Rd. Street Camera
1:40 P.M.
Mrs. Wayne stumbles out of the Wayne Enterprise building.
An unnamed intern is by her side.
1:42 P.M.
Mrs. Wayne looks around before getting into a black-out sedan.
The unnamed intern follows suit.
1:43 P.M.
The sedan drives off with Mrs. Wayne.
• ───────────────── •
The beloved wife of billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne has had an immense positive impact on Gotham as a whole.
From her non-profits supporting foster kids in Gotham further their education to her monthly visits to the local elementary and middle schools.
Gotham could not be more grateful for a woman like her.
Bruce Wayne has planned to make a public announcement later today on the matter.
The city is devastated by this news, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Wayne family in these moments.
• ───────────────── •
Bruce squints his eyes at the continuous flash from the paparazzi who surround the front steps of the manor. There’s not a single clue of despair in his appearance, with his gelled black hair and perfectly ironed clothes.
“Mr. Wayne, where has Mrs. Wayne gone?”
He clears his throat, yet it still comes out rough, “I’m not sure. I’m sorry. I have people right now on the case, but as of now, I am not sure.”
“Mr. Wayne, do you think she’s been kidnapped?”
He takes a deep breath, but the questions come faster than he can speak.
“Mr. Wayne, do you think the Joker has her?”
“Mr Wayne, what are you doing to find her?”
“Bruce Wayne, is this to cover up a divorce?”
Bruce reaches his breaking point and silences them all with a stern message: “At this moment, this is an issue between my family and the Gotham police. I will be answering no further questions.”
The camera shutters grow more rapid, and reporters yell to see if Bruce will turn and answer one last question. However, he turns towards the manor doors where Alfred is waiting for him expectantly.
Bruce closes his eyes and lets out a deep sigh.
Alfred stares at his state and sighs softly, “I know this is hard, Master Bruce. But you and I know that paparazzi are nothing to be bothered by.”
Bruce simply nods as he shucks off his coat; Alfred takes the hint and grabs it from him, and he watches as Bruce disappears down the hall.
Bruce’s feet drag on the floor, each step weighing him down.
Bruce is no stranger to a bad sleep schedule. It’s a miracle that he’s survived past his mid-20s. However, even after everything he’s been through, this has been some of the worst sleep of his life.
He makes his way to the Batcave; his phone rings, but he ignores it for now.
He sits down in front of the computer and just stares.
It’s been a week already, and they’ve made no progress.
There are no leads, hardly any evidence, nothing.
He drags his hand slowly down his face; the computer light highlights how dark his eye bags have truly gotten.
He mutters lowly to himself, frustrated, “Fuck.”
He roughly hits his fist to the desk, not enough to be considered a slam, but loud enough to echo throughout the cave.
His mind reels with what he should have done.
He should have had heightened security at her office when he was not around.
He knows she didn’t want to, but he should’ve placed a tracker somewhere on her. Her bag, her shoe, her bra, who cares, just something.
He should have been there that day.
He had only stayed back because he got home late the night before. It’s not like he was injured badly or anything, just tired.
That’s not a good excuse; he’s always tired.
He brings up the file that he’s been personally building over the past week. He trusts Gotham PD, but he’s selfish and needs to be the one who finds her.
• ───────────────── •
9:42 A.M.
Four hours before Mrs. Wayne’s disappearance
Bruce stares sleepily at her as she gets ready for the day. He watches from his lax position on the bed as she fixes her hair and places her makeup on with precision.
She notices him through the mirror and smirks, “Bruce.”
She turns to face him, and there’s a faint smirk on his face. He turns over to lie on his back and dramatically drapes his forearm over his eyes.
She walks over and offers a soft peck to his forehead, “Go back to sleep, my love.”
Bruce grumbles, but willingly succumbs to the comfort of his overly expensive comforter. A smile forms on her face as she brushes his hair back and endearingly stares at him.
She slowly makes her way down the stairs to the sweet aroma of Alfred’s famous homemade crepes.
She walks into the family kitchen to find Duke, Tim, Damian, and Cass sitting at the kitchen island while Alfred prepares their food.
Her voice comes out cheerier than the kids wanted, “Good morning to you all.”
They all grumble out a tired “good morning,” except Alfred, who truly responds, “Good morning, Mrs. Wayne. How was Bruce?”
A small laugh escapes her, “Tired.”
Alfred smiles at that.
She makes her way to the coffee maker because, unlike Bruce, she doesn’t need to be monitored in the kitchen.
Alfred walks over to her as she makes herself a cup of coffee. “Mrs. Wayne, are you going into the office today? I thought Master Bruce was supposed to.”
She just shrugs, “It’s nothing much today, just catching up on some emails and whatnot. I’ll let him sleep for that.”
From the kitchen island, Damian grumbles out, “Father is just being lazy because he got home past his bedtime.”
Everyone lets out their own version of a snort at that.
She rounds the island and ruffles Damian’s hair, which he outwardly detests.
She bids each of them one last goodbye before making her way out of the manor, and she doesn’t forget about Bruce.
10:01 A.M.
Mrs. Wayne To Mr. Wayne
I’ll be home at about 1:30 ish. I love you, old man lol
Mrs. Wayne left Wayne Manor at 10:04 A.M.
• ───────────────── •
Bruce’s brooding is interrupted by the sound of the boys entering the cave. He turns in the chair to see Dick in the driver’s seat of the Batmobile (against Bruce’s permission).
Bruce turns back around, not paying any mind to it.
The boys exit the vehicle and cautiously make their way towards Bruce. No one says a word, only quick glances towards each other.
They stand by his side and stare at the screen with him. The four of them remain silent until Dick clears his throat. His voice comes out quiet and unconfident, “We may have found some more evidence.”
Bruce’s head whips towards him, but Dick feigns eye contact.
Bruce rises from his seat and faces Dick. His figure looms over him as he waits for an answer. He sighs and shakes his head when he realizes how intense he’s being.
He speaks lowly, “Dick. What did you find?”
Dick sighs heavily and grabs the object from his utility belt, “Just a hard drive. We opened it already, and it’s just the spreadsheets for the day.”
Bruce takes it without a word and immediately connects it to the computer.
A file opens up, and as Dick stated, it’s the spreadsheets she was working on that day. Bruce doesn’t take that as an answer and scrolls through the spreadsheets.
The boys lean in closer to see if he finds something, and sure enough, he does.
“Right here, master detectives.” He delivers in a low, mocking tone.
He checks the history of the document and notices that she last opened it at 1:15 P.M., with half of the spreadsheet not being filled out. He clicks out of history and notices that, as of now, it’s still not finished.
“Dick, or any of you, what’s something your mother does better than I do?”
Tim speaks up almost immediately, “Emotional vulnerability?”
Damian continues, “Spreadsheets.”
Tim quickly snickers at that, but cuts himself off.
Bruce sighs, “No- yes- not the first one.”
Tim raises his brow, “You’re emotionally vulnerable?”
Bruce ignores him, “She’s better at spreadsheets than I am.” He scrolls while speaking, “She would usually have this done by 12:30 so she can leave early and have some personal time.”
He mutters to himself as he removes the hard drive, “It doesn’t make sense.”
Dick’s eyes soften, and he places his hand on Bruce’s shoulder, “It won’t for a little while.” He takes a breath and forces Bruce to face him.
The boys watch their tender moment. Dick speaks softly, “We’re gonna find her, Dad. I promise.”
Bruce’s jaw tenses as he stares at Dick.
He releases a deep sigh and turns back towards the computer.
He shakes his head slowly, “I hope so.”
• ───────────────── •
10:35 A.M.
Three Hours and 7 minutes before Mrs. Wayne’s disappearance.
CCTV Security Footage
Wayne Enterprises Building 2
Lobby Area and Elevator
10:36 A.M.
Mrs. Wayne is seen walking through the lobby and making small talk with some interns.
10:42 A.M.
Mrs. Wayne is seen entering the elevator with an unnamed intern.
10:43 A.M.
Mrs. Wayne exits the elevator with the unnamed intern.
10:45 A.M.
Mrs. Wayne makes conversation with the intern, but there’s no response.
10:45 A.M.
The intern goes to office 9J, and Mrs. Wayne goes to office 9A.
10:46 A.M.
Mrs. Wayne enters her office alone.
CCTV Security Footage
Wayne Enterprises Building 2
Office 9A
10:47 A.M.
Mrs. Wayne sets up her office and begins working.
11:23 A.M.
The unnamed intern enters Mrs. Wayne’s office.
11:24 - 12:05 P.M.
ERROR FOOTAGE NOT FOUND
12:06 P.M.
Mrs. Wayne is working at her desk.
12:07 - 12:09 P.M.
ERROR
FOOTAGE NOT FOUND
12:10 P.M.
Mrs. Wayne is face down on her desk.
12:13 P.M.
ERROR
FOOTAGE NOT FOUND
• ───────────────── •
Bruce sits side by side with Jason in the Batmobile, exacerbating an already tense situation.
Jason mentions off-handedly, “B, you should try to find that intern.”
Bruce answers quickly, “I know.”
They both shift awkwardly in their seats.
Bruce clears his throat and restates, but softer, “I know. I don’t even know why anyone let him through.”
Jason nods in agreement, “Have you visited the building yet?”
Bruce shakes his head no, he lowly speaks, “They won’t let me since it’s an active crimescene.”
Jason scrunches his eyebrows at this, “A week for an active crimescene?”
A heavy sigh escapes Bruce, “I don’t know. It’s…I can only control so much.”
Jason turns his body towards him with a look of confusion, “Bruce. You’re Batman. We could just sneak in right now.”
Bruce goes quiet at that.
That’s genius.
Why didn’t he think of that first?
• ───────────────── •
Bruce and Jason stand side-by-side in the alley behind the Wayne Enterprises building. Bruce takes deep breaths, and unlike his usual self, he’s nervous to enter.
Jason playfully punches his arms, “C’mon, B. She’d make fun of you for not being able to go in.”
He breathes out what could be interpreted as a laugh, “Yeah…”
He walks towards the door, “You’re right.”
The two men enter the building, and an eerie aura surrounds them. They know they’re here alone, but there’s a feeling of being watched.
They walk more slowly than average through the backrooms of the building. They both check every corner more often than they would on a regular mission.
Jason whispers, “I’m more nervous than usual. Are you feeling that too?” He looks over at Bruce for a reaction.
Bruce doesn’t answer and instead changes topics.
He speaks in the same hushed tone, “If it’s an active crime zone, why isn’t there security?”
CRaCK
The two whip around at the sound of glass shattering, and they notice a phone lying on the floor. There’s a video playing, but the sound is muffled.
Jason races to find out where the phone came from while Bruce carefully walks up to it.
He picks it up with his gloved hand and inspects it. There’s no video playing due to the broken screen, but the audio continues:
Br- Batman!
Please Batman!
Robin, any of you!
Please, help me! I’m sorry!
Please! I’m sorry! I should’ve stayed home!
Batman, please!
The audio suddenly cuts off as the phone screen turns on and displays three unknown symbols in a row.
Bruce attempts to inspect them, but the phone suddenly heats up, and he’s forced to drop it.
CRaCK
The phone screen turns black as it finally dies.
Fuck.
• ───────────────── •
12:07 P.M.
An hour and 35 minutes before Mrs. Wayne went missing.
Mrs. Wayne to Mr. Wayne
11:01 A.M. to 12:07 P.M.
3 unsent messages [No Service]
11:01 Hey B, do you want me to pick up food when I come home?
A little treat for everyone!
11:13 I love you, but omg! You are awful at spreadsheets!
11:21 Can you please call Dick or Jay to come down?
I don’t want to be rude, but there’s this intern who’s kind of creeping me out
Lol
2 missed calls [No Service]
11:32: Bruce, please call Dick or Jason. I don’t know what this guy wants, but he came into my office and just started throwing stuff and yelling at me. Please, I’m getting scared. He just left and said he’d be back with something to help me. Bruce, please help me.
12:07 He just left again. He gave me tea and was yelling at me to drink it. I drank it, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. The emergency button wasn’t working. I’m so sorry. I love you so much. Please tell the boys and Cass I love them so much. Please get this message.
• ───────────────── •
Bruce hurriedly paces back and forth in the Batcave. He’s muttering to himself and fidgeting with his sleeves.
“I just don’t get it. There has to be more. Whose phone was that? Who would want her? Where’s her phone? Why didn’t she text me? Did she text me, and they didn’t send?”
His pacing quickens as he begins spiraling, “She had to have texted me. If she did, then why didn’t it go through?”
He runs his hands through his hair as he sinks into the chair.
He sits there for a moment, his head in his hands. If an outsider came in, it would look like he’s just sulking.
If it just so happened for his kids to come in, they would know he’s been crying.
• ───────────────── •
Upstairs, while Bruce was spiraling
Tim scrolls aimlessly on Bruce’s personal laptop. He doesn’t want to find anything he can never unsee (it’s already happened), but he also wants to find some type of evidence.
The others sit in the library trying to help in their own ways.
Cass and Damian scour social media to see if somebody has posted something about those symbols.
Jason and Duke are out patrolling during the day to see if anything strange occurs near the building.
Dick thoroughly looks through the books in the library to see if there’s anything that resembles what Bruce saw.
Tim finds a file full of videos, and he cautiously opens it. He opened another file similar to this earlier in the day, and let’s just say…
He has some words to say to Bruce.
He clicks on a video and comes to realize that this isn’t something he should be scared of.
He waves the others over to the laptop as they all watch the home video.
It’s a video of their mom in her and Bruce’s shared bathroom. She speaks in an overly excited tone.
My_New_Life_01
07/12/04
11:18 P.M.
“Hello there! It is me…Mrs Wayne!” She fangirls out as she points the camera at her face.
“I am freaking out! Okay, so,” she places the camera down on the counter, “today, Bruce came into our room and was like,” she forces her voice to go lower, “come with me, I have a surprise for you.”
She flails her hands, “Uh, duh, I’m coming with you for a surprise!”
She laughs with an awed look, “So okay, he lays out this beautiful dress, heels, and tells me that I’ll want to wear this, so I do!”
She calms down and begins to fidget slightly, “What I didn’t expect was this beautiful dinner Alfred laid out for the two of us in the formal dining room.” She illustrates her thoughts with her hands.
“He was a little gentleman. He did everything he usually does on our dates, except!” She shoves her left hand into the camera to showcase her new engagement ring.
It’s simple, but it shimmers in the light and showcases Bruce’s wealth in both money and love.
She jumps up and down while she yells, “He proposed!!”
She excitedly laughs as she jumps up and down, “He’s such an asshole! He made me cry in front of Alfred!”
She laughs, but calms down again.
She addresses the camera, “I’ll keep up with these vlogs, I dunno for how long, but y’know. Wow, this is just so incredible. I really do love him.”
She giggles to herself and then reaches out for the camera to end the video.
No one speaks; they just stare at the video in awe and admiration.
Dick speaks quietly, “I remember these.” A small smile appears on his face, “She used to make these video diaries when Jay and I were younger. She stopped making them after, well y’know.”
He clicks on the next one that features both of the Waynes.
My_New_Life_02
07/23/04
12:38 P.M.
She stares into the viewfinder as she fixes her hair and then addresses the camera. She whispers as she brings the camera closer to her face, “So right now I have to speak kinda low because I’m out looking for dresses right now with Bruce.”
She squeals quietly, but collects herself, “I know it’s kind of weird for your fiancé to come with, I’m aware! But, I dunno, I just felt comfortable with him being here. I dunno.”
She mumbles out the ending and blushes slightly.
She then takes the camera and places it on a chair to show off the dress she’s trying on.
“So I told them I want something old Hollywood glamour kind of thing, and they pulled this out, and I think,” she gets close to the camera, “a certain mister is going to love this.”
She giggles, then the video pauses.
It reconvenes and shows her with Bruce walking down the street side-by-side.
She giggles as Bruce attempts to hide his small smile, “So that place was a bust!”
She begins to laugh harder as Bruce rolls his eyes and wraps his arm around her waist.
She speaks through her laughing, “I came out in the dress, and Bruce wasn’t there since he had gone with the lady to look at other dresses.”
She tries to control her laughter, “So I came out, and I’m confused on where they were, and this nice lady,” she stares at Bruce, who looks away, “walks up to me and goes ‘Oh, I’m sorry miss, did you mean to try on that dress? I don’t want you to buy something out of your budget!”
She laughs harder, “At that moment, Bruce comes around and goes,” she deepens her voice, and Bruce rolls his eyes again, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but this dress may actually be too cheap for her.”
She hides her face into his neck, and her hand holding the camera drops to her side.
She drags her hand back up to show her face. Her laughs turn to giggles, “So we left, ‘cause I was embarrassed!”
Bruce finally speaks up, his voice low, “You shouldn’t have been.”
She playfully rolls her eyes, “Oh, please.”
She turns to look at him, and they stare lovingly into each other’s eyes before moving in for a small peck on the lips.
The video ends on a still of them smiling at each other.
Tim sighs heavily, “Should we show him these?”
Damian hits him in the back of his head, “Of course, we should, dipshit. It’ll make father happy!”
Tim scrunches his eyebrows in offense and confusion, “Since when did you care if he was happy or not? Also, I’m telling him you swore ‘cause you were banned this week from swearing, dipshit.”
Dick rolls his eyes at their bickering, “Okay, okay, enough. Damian’s right, we should curate some of these and show him. It’ll boost his motivation. Hopefully.”
• ───────────────── •
Bruce wipes his eyes and sits up in his chair. He pushes himself towards the desk and checks her case file for the nth time.
The sound of cautious steps from behind alerts Bruce. He whips his head around, but then releases a breath when he realizes it’s just his kids.
He lets out a low and monotonous, “Good afternoon.”
His eyes zero in on a hard drive in Tim’s hand, and questions run through his head, “Is that more evidence? Where’d you get that?”
Tim grips the hard drive, “It’s not evidence, Bruce.”
Bruce heaves out a sigh and turns his body from them, but they continue.
Dick speaks out, “It’s not evidence, but trust us when we say that you need this.”
Bruce turns slightly towards them as a silent invitation to keep going. Dick nods to himself and continues speaking, “We were looking to see if we could find more evidence, and we do think we found something!”
Bruce’s eyebrows crease together. He speaks in a questioning tone, “But?”
Dick sighs, “But…we just think you need a pick-me-up for right now. It’ll be good for you, just trust us.”
Bruce stares at them, but doesn’t stop them from inserting the hard drive. His eyes dart up to the screen to see a video they handpicked for him.
He mutters to no one in particular, “I forgot about these.”
The kids look at each other, Tim nods, and Dick presses play on the first video.
My_New_Life_36
03/01/08
8:31 A.M.
The video displays Mrs. Wayne and a young Dick, who’s sporting his favorite Superman pajamas.
She wraps her arms around his shoulders and rocks him back and forth, causing him to giggle.
She gives him an exaggerated kiss on the cheek before turning to the camera.
“I’m here with my little boy, and what are we doing, buddy?”
He smiles widely before pumping his fist in the air and nearly shouting, “We’re making chocolate chip pancakes!”
—
Bruce breathes out a subtle laugh at that, which causes Dick to look over and mirror him.
—
She mimics him in a calmer, “Heck yeah!”
Dick rocks back and forth in his seat as she turns to gather the ingredients.
“How many chocolate chips do you want, buddy?”
Dick throws his head and arms back as he dramatically states, “All of them!”
She giggles as she turns back with the chocolate chips in hand, “I’ll tell you what, you can have this many in your pancakes.” She shows him a small bowl that has enough chocolate chips for two pancakes.
“And while we’re making it,” she brings over the bag of chocolate chips, “we can have a little snack.”
They both giggle as Dick agrees to the arrangement.
She begins to show Dick how to make pancake batter from scratch, and he accidentally knocks the flour everywhere.
He looks at her with fear in his eyes, but she just laughs.
“I didn’t know Gotham got snow this late in winter!”
She laughs as he giggles nervously. She kisses him on the side of his head, “It’s okay, let’s clean up and keep going, okay?”
The video cuts and then resumes to show the two of them pouring in the chocolate chips.
She holds the bag of chocolate chips over the bowl, “Okay, now, be very careful…”
Dick concentrates and doesn’t notice how she smiles at the camera before purposefully spilling nearly half the bag.
They both gasp, and she looks to gauge his reaction.
He begins laughing, “You said you had to be careful!”
They laugh harder together, and she reaches out for the camera.
The video resumes with them at the kitchen island, eating their pancakes.
Dick addresses the camera as Mrs. Wayne stares at him lovingly, “These are the best pancakes ever in the whole world!”
She scrunches her nose and reaches out to pinch his cheek. He giggles, and they continue having a casual conversation over their pancakes.
The video ends with them waving bye to the camera.
The cave is silent.
No one dares to say a word.
They wait until Bruce does or says anything.
He clears his throat and rubs his eyes, but none of them look in his direction. He mutters hoarsely, “Thank you for that.”
He sits up straight, his eyes red, but again, no one mentions it. He turns to Tim, “What’s the evidence you found?”
Tim comes up to the computer and exits the video. He hands the hard drive to Bruce, and Bruce takes it without a word. He then pulls up something that he believes could help their investigation.
“So, you were wondering why she didn’t text or call, which honestly, yeah. She’s always updating us, so why didn’t she tell us?”
Bruce nods as Tim pulls up their phone bill, “I got confused as to why, because at those times, my phone was working and so was everyone else’s.”
Bruce stands up next to him and looks closer at the bill. He finishes Tim’s thoughts, “Her internet service was paused.”
Tim immediately responds, “Exactly! I asked Alfred if he had paused it or something, but he didn’t even know how to do that.”
Dick interjects, “Isn’t there a way to check her texts and calls? Like, through the wifi or something, I saw it online once.”
Damian rolls his eyes, but Cass nods and simply taps away on the keyboard. She begins accessing files they hadn’t considered and eventually pulls up Mrs. Wayne’s latest texts.
Bruce covers his mouth as he reads the texts. He runs his hand through his hair as he walks away from the computer. He shakes his head no and then returns to the desk.
“This is just…I don’t know.” He shakes his head, “I don’t know.”
He turns to Cass, “Did she call me? Are you able to access that?”
She nods and begins to try to find out if she can access her calls.
She finds it, and they all listen to it together. They all listen in, visibly distraught, Bruce especially. His head hangs in his hands, and he grips the roots of his hair.
Cass is about to exit, but a new call comes through. Bruce shoots his head up at this and immediately asks her to open it.
A disgruntled and modified voice begins speaking.
Unknown Caller
6:08 P.M.
1 missed call
6:08 It’s nice to see you, Bruce. I’ve noticed you snooping around. I don’t appreciate you thinking you own whatever your eyes fall on. You don’t deserve anything. Who says you deserve her? After everything you’ve put her through, you think she still loves you? She wanted a family and a normal life; she didn’t want to be a pawn in your schemes. Don’t bother finding her. She’s right where she belongs. But don’t worry, she’s in her own haven now.
The call ends, and Bruce remains silent, but he begins to suit up. As he begins, Jason and Duke enter the cave from their patrol.
The two exchange confused looks as Dick calls out to Bruce, “Where are you going?”
Bruce responds curtly, “She’s in Bludhaven.” He turns to Dick, “You’re coming with me.”
Dick looks around, confused, but the others just look away, cluelessly. He throws his hands in the air and groans, but reluctantly follows Bruce.
• ───────────────── •
“How do you even know she’s in Bludhaven?” Dick asks as he plays with the car window.
Bruce sighs, “Well, it doesn’t take a genius to assume that ‘her own haven’ means ‘find me in Bludhaven.’ He’s a stalker, not a genius.”
Dick snorts at that.
He continues driving, and the two fall into a comfortable silence. The only sound was the rev of the engine and the occasional generic sounds of the city.
Bruce breaks the silence. He speaks lowly, almost awkwardly, “Thank you…for that video. I think I needed to see that, ‘cause of,” he sighs heavily, “everything.”
Dick smiles, “No problem.” He then laughs to himself, “Oh, by the way…”
Bruce raises his brow, urging him to continue.
Dick laughs harder, “Damian said dipshit earlier, and I thought you should know.”
Bruce sighs heavily and doesn’t respond, causing Dick to laugh harder.
• ───────────────── •
Bruce stands outside one of Dick and Jason’s safehouses. It’s a rundown, abandoned apartment situated on the outskirts of Bludhaven.
Dick’s familiar with this area, and it’s clear to him why a freaked-out stalker would want to meet here.
He mutters to Bruce, “Keep your comms on, I’m gonna go in.”
Bruce grabs his shoulder, “No, you’re not. Not yet.”
Dick turns towards Bruce, “It’s okay. I’m okay. I know what I’m doing.”
Bruce takes a deep breath and lets him go.
Dick carefully glides into the building, checking every corner and sound.
He freezes in his steps when he hears footsteps scamper from behind him. He turns around, but notices nothing.
When he turns back, he notices a note on the window in front of him. He looks around him as he walks towards it. He remains ready in case anyone pops out from anywhere.
He grabs the note and debates reading it, but decides against it. He shoves it into his utility belt. He takes that as his sign to retreat.
He slowly retraces his steps, and when he makes it to the door, he hears a voice from behind him.
“Dick, what are you doing here? We’re having our family dinner tonight!”
His body rapidly turns around, and he holds his eskrima sticks tighter.
He calls out, “Who are you? What do you want with my mother?”
The voice scoffs playfully, “Dick, silly! You need to get home, you’re not making any sense.”
He feels a strong breeze from beside him, and he whips his eskrima stick towards it. He notices it’s another note:
OPEN ME
He presses his comms button and whispers, “Bruce, bring the Bamobile in front now.”
He looks around and quickly opens the note. When he sees what’s in it, he rushes out of the building.
The voice calls out to him, “Dick! Come back! Help me!” He continues running out and refuses to look behind him.
He calls out for Bruce, “Open the door! Bruce!”
The door opens, and he rushes into the Batmobile. Bruce immediately begins driving and doesn’t ask what’s wrong yet.
Dick sits in the passenger seat with his head against the window. He’s attempting to calm himself down by taking deep breaths.
He takes a deep breath and looks up at the car roof. Bruce finally asks, “What happened in there?”
Dick just shakes his head, unshed tears in his eyes, “Just take me home, please.”
• ───────────────── •
OPEN ME
It’s a personal photo of a young Dick and Mrs. Wayne hugging each other. The original photo is of the two of them on the Gotham boardwalk with big smiles on their face.
However, the photo’s been altered. Dick’s typical wide smile and scrunched-up eyes are replaced with a look of horror.
The background has been blacked out, as well as Mrs.Wayne, the only thing present being an altered Dick Grayson and five simple words:
She’ll be gone soon, too.
• ───────────────── •
Dick sits in the family room, his body language mirroring Bruce’s as of recently. Depressed, lost, and scared.
Jason attempts to cheer him up, “Did you tell him about Damian? I bet he was pissed.” He laughs, but loses steam when he realizes Dick isn’t laughing with him.
Dick rubs his eyes and looks down, “She needs to come back. I don’t know where she is. I feel so lost in this. Everything is just a dead-end.”
Jason slowly nods in agreement, but quickly scrunches his brows, “No, it’s not.”
Dick looks at him quizically, “What do you mean?”
Jason places his arms on his knees, “Didn’t you say you found another note there? One that was meant for Bruce?”
Dick’s eyes grow wide as he jumps up from his seat to go find his suit. Jason follows and attempts to catch up with Dick’s quickness.
He finds his suit and rummages through the pockets of the utility belt. He releases a large breath when he finds the note. He laughs out of astonishment.
He excitedly turns towards Jason, “Little wing! You are a genius! I almost forgot about this, holy shit!”
He quickly hugs Jason, then runs off to find Bruce. Jason stands there, stunned by the entire exchange.
Dick rushes up to Bruce’s office, but slows down when he hears what’s coming from his office.
He slows down and presses his ear up to the door. What he hears makes him smile widely.
• ───────────────── •
My_New_Life_08
05/28/05
5:48 P.M.
The two of their smiles take up the entire screen, and the camera bounces with the limo’s uneven path.
She holds Bruce’s head in her left hand as they both laugh. She exclaims loudly, “We got married!”
Bruce smiles and turns his head to kiss the inside of her hand.
They turn their heads towards each other and giggle into a kiss.
Bruce takes the camera out of her hand and moves away from the kiss to film her face.
She backs off, suddenly becoming bashful at his rare outward showcase of love.
He speaks to the camera as he records her, “This right here is not only Mrs. Wayne, but the love of my life.”
She pushes his shoulder and laughs, “You’re so annoying!”
He laughs, but continues, “She’s going to change the world, more than I ever could.”
She smiles and gazes deeply into his eyes from behind the camera.
She mouths I love you.
The video cuts off.
• ───────────────── •
Dick slowly enters the room, and Bruce pauses the video to turn and greet him. He smiles faintly at Dick, then turns back towards the computer.
He speaks lowly, “I remember when she would make all of these videos. You absolutely loved them, Jason not so much. At first, at least.”
He sighs heavily and turns towards Dick, but his head remains low. His voice can be barely heard in the silent room, “Why her?”
Dick sighs, “I don’t know, I’m sorry.”
Bruce shakes his head, “You don’t have to know, but I should.” He drags his hand through his hair, “I should’ve gone with her or something. I just…I don’t know.”
A bittersweet smile forms on Dick’s face, “You’re not used to not knowing.”
Bruce sighs in agreement and looks to see Dick passing him a note. “I found this last night at the safehouse. I haven’t opened it. I feel you should be the first to see it.”
Bruce gently grabs it out of his hand and cautiously opens it. He doesn’t openly react while reading; his eyes just quickly dart back and forth.
He drops the letter into his lap and hangs his head. Dick stares at him with worry, but doesn’t question.
Bruce’s face is visibly disturbed as he looks at Dick and asks, “What was in that letter that freaked you out?”
Dick describes it, and Bruce simply nods.
He gets up from his chair and just stands there with his hands on his hips. Dick would typically make a joke about how much he looks like a dad in this position, but now’s not the time.
Bruce stands there, muttering all of his thoughts to himself. He takes a deep breath, “We have to interrogate the enterprise workers again. The police didn’t do it right or something because why would they let her leave like that?”
Dick nods and follows as Bruce exits the office. Bruce’s voice carries through the halls, “They’ll have what I need, I know it.”
• ───────────────── •
Dear Mr Batman Wayne,
Oh goodness
You’re so close!
Sooooooooooooooooo close
If only someone knew
Who knows?
• ───────────────── •
Bruce, Dick, and Jason hide in an alleyway next to each other. Bruce has his eyes trained on an apartment window.
The TV is the only light source as the man sits on his couch, alone. He’s eating a bowl of chips, and Dick chuckles to himself.
He leans over and whispers to Jason, “I bet that’s what you look like when you’re alone.”
Jason hits him in the back of his head, and Dick’s eyes grow wide in shock. Dick retaliates by hitting him in the back of his head.
The boys begin hitting each other while whispering expletives:
You’re such a fucking idiot!
Why would you do that, dumbass?
You’re the one who sits alone at home!
Nuh-uh, I have people over all the time!
No, you don’t! Damian is the only one who keeps you company.
Not true! You-
Bruce snaps his head at them. He sneers through his teeth, “Boys.”
That shocks them into place, and they both go silent. Bruce shakes his head in annoyance, “We need to get in there. He was working the desk when she left. I need to know why he didn’t stop her.”
The three, nearly gracefully, cross the road and non-gracefully enter the apartment building,
They make their way up to the man’s apartment, but Bruce motions for them to stay silent. He cautiously walks to the front door and knocks.
There’s scrambling from inside, and Bruce takes this as his cue to barge in.
The door comes down with a large bang, and the man is caught in the midst of gathering his stuff. Bruce rushes towards him, grabs him by the collar, and throws him into the nearest chair.
He gruffly asks him, “Why didn’t you do anything?”
Dick and Jason move to either side of the man and hold him down by his shoulders. Not roughly, but more of a warning.
The man gulps and meekly pushes out, “I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to!” He begins to hyperventilate, “I didn’t mean for her to go missing! He said they knew each other! He said they were close friends! He knew everything about her!”
Bruce paces back and forth, “What do you mean ‘he knew everything about her?’ You didn’t think to check with her, her assistant, or even Bruce Wayne to see if she was supposed to have company?”
The man grows more worried, “I’m sorry! It looked like they were old friends! They were laughing!”
He grows quieter as he begins to think, “Well, actually…” he takes a deep breath, “she- she looked out of it. She was laughing as if she were drunk, not happy.”
He takes a breath of realization before staring at Bruce. He pleads with him, “I’m sorry! I truly am!”
Bruce shakes his head and pinches his nose in annoyance, “What did he look like? Did you see?”
The man quivers, “Yes, b-but I can’t tell-”
Bruce slams his fist onto the man’s sad excuse for a kitchen table. His voice remains leveled, “Tell me.”
The man tucks his face to the side. He stutters out an answer, “He had brown hair, he was wearing glasses, so I couldn’t see his face fully, I’m sorry!”
Bruce just stares at him, and the man continues, “He had an all-black suit on, but it wasn’t up to Wayne Enterprise code for the level he said he was on. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything!”
He takes a deep breath, “He waved at me and told me, ‘It’s only up from here.’ I didn’t know what that meant, so I just waved back and let him go.”
Bruce heaves out a sigh and motions for the boys to let him go. He turns to him, “Thank you. That was… sufficient.”
The man nods and shakily asks, “Will I…Will I lose my job?”
Bruce doesn’t give him an answer before motioning for the three of them to leave. The man watches them leave in disbelief.
When they make it back to the Batmobile, Jason asks, “Will he lose his job?”
The two boys stare at Bruce, and he offers a simple answer, “No shit.”
• ───────────────── •
When the three of them enter, Tim immediately races towards them, shouting, “I found it, Bruce! I found it!”
Bruce removes his cowl and meets Tim in the middle, “What did you find?”
He looks down at the tablet in Tim’s hands, and Tim excitedly swipes through his findings, “Okay, so. I was zooming in on the footage, and I was trying so hard to find out what this guy looked like!”
Bruce nods, which urges Tim to continue, “Until! I found this frame where he took his glasses off for a single second!”
Tim rushes to the computer and pulls up a criminal file, “I reverse searched his face and didn’t find anything, but then! I was looking through some police reports, and look!”
He points to the criminal file pulled up on the screen, “He looks exactly like the guy in the footage!”
Jacob Morse
Sentenced to 15 months in Gotham County Jail for:
Plead Guilty to
Vandalism
Residential Theft
Plead Not Guilty to
Conspiracy to commit a class 4 felony: stalking
Conspiracy to commit kidnapping
Despite the information presented in front of them, Tim remains excited, “Do you remember?”
He turns to look at Bruce, whose eyebrows are scrunched together. Tim looks between him and the computer screen, “That’s the guy from like 2 years ago who attacked mom at the end-of-year gala!”
Bruce straightens out and mutters to himself, “It’s only up from here.”
Tim stares expectantly at Bruce, and Bruce begins searching through the file.
He finds where the guy lives and clasps his hands together, “She’s in those apartment buildings down the street from the enterprise.”
From behind him, Dick and Jason look quizically at each other, then Tim, then Bruce. Dick speaks, “Where’d you get that from?”
Bruce begins his pacing, “He said, ‘it’s only up from here,’ and the footage showed the vehicle going up the street, but it never turned. He meant that it’s only up the street. Fuck, of course it was that easy.”
He drops into the seat, his voice muffled, “It was that easy, shit. We have to go. I don’t know how much longer I can take this. All of you, now.”
• ───────────────── •
Bruce’s mouth is pressed into a thin line as he speeds through Gotham. None of the boys even attempts to start a conversation with him in this state.
The car skids to a stop right outside the apartment building. He knows it isn’t professional of him to be so out in the open during a patrol like this, but he can’t help it. He’s become overly impatient.
He rushes out of the car and races to the side of the building. He mutters to Dick, “She’s on the seventh floor. That one.”
He points to the first window, “I need you and Tim to climb up there, slowly and quietly. Jason will come with me inside the building. This is an ambush.”
He turns to the boys, “If any of you mess this up…you have to live with Jason for a week.”
Tim covers up his laugh with a cough.
Bruce motions for them to begin.
Dick and Tim stealthily climb up the wall, waiting for Bruce’s cue to enter the apartment. They (literally) hang outside the window.
They hear slight shuffling, and both hope that Bruce’ll give them the go-ahead soon.
Bruce and Jason are to the side of the door, waiting until the right moment.
Bruce takes calming breaths before looking at Jason and then back at the door.
“Now.”
All four of them ambush the apartment at the same time, and chaos ensues.
Dick and Tim crash through the window while Bruce and Jason break down the door.
They’re met with men who retaliate. Based on the fighting and the looks of the men, he knows the boys have it under control.
Due to that, he begins to make a beeline for the rest of the apartment. He pushes in every door and thoroughly searches the rooms.
He goes to bash in the next door until he hears muffled yelling coming from the room behind him.
He whips around and bashes in the door; he’s immediately met with his wife tied up in the corner of the room.
He rushes towards her and rips the tape from her wrists and ankles. He carefully takes the tape off her mouth, trying to avoid hurting her too much.
When the tape comes off, she lunges for him and sobs into his shoulder. He grasps her tightly, afraid she’ll disappear again.
He tucks her head into his neck and nearly wraps his entire body around her. He rocks her and pats her hair down.
He tries to help her up, but ultimately picks her up bridal style. He can’t risk losing her again.
The chaos from outside has died down, and when he comes out, he sees the guy and his supporters in the center of the room. All tied up, with their leader sitting in front of them.
Jason looks at Bruce, “It’s like you said, he’s a stalker, not a genius.”
• ───────────────── •
She sits on the steps of the apartment building with an emergency blanket wrapped around her.
Both Dick and Jason (now in civilian clothes) sit by either side of her, with each having an arm wrapped around her.
Ambulances and cop cars surround the building, but she just sits in silence. With the occasional “thank you” or “I love you” softly muttered to the boys.
Bruce rushes onto the scene with clothes that she can tell he had shoved in the back of the Batmobile due to their unironed state.
She laughs despite herself as he rushes up to her. She stands up with the blanket wrapped around her and lets Bruce engulf her in a tight hug.
He grasps the back of her head and holds her as if his life depends on it.
“I love you. I’m so sorry. I love you so much.”
She just melts into the hug and allows him to take in this moment.
She smiles for the first time in days.
• ───────────────── •
She laughs wholeheartedly as the everyone sits around the fire in the family room. She leans into Bruce as she laughs.
She giggles, “You guys found those videos? Did you see how adorable Dick and Jay were when they were little babies?”
Jason’s face reddens, and Dick smiles widely.
She sighs dreamily, “I loved making those videos; they helped me wrap my mind around this crazy life.”
Bruce breathes out a laugh as she laughs, “I wouldn’t mind making them again. Maybe Dami will like them, you think?”
She looks at Bruce and laughs when he rolls his eyes. Damian interjects, “I wouldn’t mind, but I have to have a say in the creative process.”
Everyone laughs at that and begins discussing how they would go about making their video diaries.
She snuggles into Bruce’s side as she watches them. She smiles gently and looks up at Bruce.
She gently speaks, “I’m okay, okay?”
Bruce takes a deep breath and nods.
He doesn’t dare say a word, but she knows that means more than words themselves.
Notes: Woah!! Thank you for reading to the end this was a rollercoaster and I hope you thought so too teehee!!! i felt like charlie during this scene while i was writing this so im sorry if there’s like plotholes or anything cause wow, i didn’t realize how difficult it is to write a mystery LOL
could I ask for a completely civilian reader x Jason T who gets injured trying to protect Jason?
Thank you!!!
Stupid Brave
navigation , dc navigation
requests are open
dividers by @cafekitsune
Here is what you know about Jason Todd.
You know he's Red Hood. You know what that means in terms of the specific arithmetic of his life — the danger, the enemies, the nights he comes home wrong and won't say how. You know the safe house has four locks, and you know why. You know the particular sound he makes when something hurts that he's not going to mention, and you know the difference between the nightmares and the regular not-sleeping, and you know that he takes his coffee black except when he's had a very bad week, and then it's two sugars, and he won't acknowledge the two sugars.
You know him.
What you don't know — what you have no framework for, no training for, no version of yourself that has ever needed to know — is what to do when you're in the wrong place, and someone points a gun at the back of his head.
It turns out your body knows before you do.
It's not supposed to be a thing.
That's what makes it — that's the part that Jason will turn over later, in the specific way he processes failures, looking for every point where it went wrong. It's not supposed to be a thing. You're picking him up. That's it. He'd texted — can you come get me, 4th and Morrison, don't ask — which is a Jason text, which you've received variations of before, which means something went sideways with transport and he needs a quiet exit, and your car is the quiet exit.
You'd parked on Morrison.
You'd waited.
He'd come out of the alley in the civilian clothes he keeps for exactly this purpose — the ones that make him look like a large man who has been somewhere, which is true, rather than Red Hood, which is what he's been — and you'd seen him and gotten out of the car because it was a nice night and you'd been sitting for twenty minutes and your legs wanted the air.
That's the variable.
You getting out of the car is the variable.
Because if you'd stayed in the car you'd have seen it but not been close enough, and the man who comes out of the shadows behind Jason with the gun already raised would have had his moment and then Jason's training would have kicked in and Jason would have handled it, probably, would have turned at the last second or dropped or done something that you don't have the vocabulary for but that he does.
But you're out of the car.
And you're closer than the car.
And Jason is looking at you and not behind him.
And your body moves.
Later, you won't be able to reconstruct the decision.
Because it isn't one. A decision implies a moment of choosing, a pros and cons, a moment where you weigh the variables and select an outcome. What happens is not that.
What happens is: you see it, and then you're moving, and then you're between Jason and the gun, and then there's a sound, and then there's a pain in your side that is so immediate and total that it whites out everything else for a second.
Then the ground.
Then Jason's voice, which is a sound you've never heard from him before, which is outside the entire vocabulary of Jason Todd sounds you've catalogued over the time you've known him.
Then his hands.
He catches you before the ground does, which is something which he will be grateful for later, but cannot access right now because right now he is — he is not okay, Jason Todd is not okay, the armor is off, the mask is off, and there's blood on his hand,s and it's yours.
The man with the gun is not a concern anymore.
He'd been a concern for approximately four seconds after the shot, and then he was not, because Jason had dealt with him with the focused efficiency of someone who has a much more immediate priority and needs this particular variable removed.
He's on the ground with you now.
His hands on your side, the wound, applying pressure with the practiced certainty of someone who has done field medicine in worse conditions and is currently finding that knowing what to do and being able to do it clearly are two different things when it's you.
"Hey," he says. His voice is doing something he can't control. "Hey, look at me."
You look at him.
Your face is doing the thing faces do when the body is processing something large — very present and very far away simultaneously.
"Hi," you say.
"Don't hi me," he says, which doesn't make sense, which is what comes out. "I need you to stay with me. Can you do that?"
"I'm here," you say. "I'm —" you make a sound that you're trying to make smaller than it is. "That really hurts."
"I know. I know it does." His hands are steady. His hands are always steady. "I've got you. I've got pressure on it. You're going to be okay."
"Is the guy — "
"Don't worry about the guy."
"Jason — "
"He's handled. Don't worry about the guy." He looks at your face, doing the assessment, the field assessment, cataloguing everything he can see. "I'm going to call — I need to call this in. I'm going to keep pressure, okay? I need you to hold this." He takes your hand and puts it over his. "Press. Like this. Don't let up."
You press.
He makes the call one-handed, fast, the terse, efficient language of someone reporting a situation, coordinates, injury type, and then he hangs up, and his other hand comes back to yours, and he's looking at you with an expression you haven't seen on him.
Not one you have a name for.
"Four minutes," he says. "They're four minutes out."
"Okay," you say.
"Talk to me," he says.
"About what?"
"Anything. Talk to me about anything."
You look at him.
His jaw is doing the thing. The thing where he's holding something back through sheer structural force of will, where the thing that wants to come out is too large and too immediate, and he's keeping it contained because right now, contained is what's needed.
"You didn't hear him," you say.
"No," Jason says. "I didn't."
"He was behind you."
"I know."
"I saw him and I just — I didn't think, I just — "
"I know," Jason says, and his voice cracks slightly on it, just at the edge, just enough. "I know you did. We're going to — we can talk about that later. Right now, I need you to keep talking."
"My car's in a tow zone probably," you say.
Something happens on his face. Not quite a laugh. The shape of one, without any of the air in it. “Yeah, it probably is.”
"You're going to have to deal with that."
"I'll deal with it."
"The fine's going to be — "
"I'll deal with it," he says again, firmer, the firmness of someone who needs you to understand that every single thing that is not you right now is completely irrelevant. "I'll deal with everything. Just keep talking."
"Okay," you say.
You keep talking.
You tell him about your day, which is a strange thing to tell someone while you're bleeding on the street, but he asked for anything, and your day is what you have. The meeting that went long. The lunch that was good. The drive over, the radio station you'd had on, the song that had been playing when he texted.
He listens to all of it.
His hands don't move.
Four minutes is four minutes, and then there are people and noise and Jason's hands are replaced by other hands, and someone is talking to you, and Jason is still there, right there, not moving, and the last thing you see before they load you is his face —
Still doing the thing you don't have a name for.
Still doing it.
The hospital is the hospital.
Jason knows hospitals. He has a complicated relationship with hospitals that involves a significant amount of personal history and a general preference for avoiding them, but he knows how they work, and right now, how they work is: he sits in a chair, and he waits.
Roy arrives twenty minutes in.
He sits in the chair next to Jason without asking if Jason wants company, which is the correct call, and he looks at Jason's hands, which still have blood on them, and he doesn't say anything about that either.
"She moved," Jason says.
"I know," Roy says.
"She's a civilian. She has no training. She doesn't — she's never — " He stops. "She just moved. Like it was obvious. Like there was no other option."
"She could have — if it had been six inches to the left, she could have — " Jason stops again. His hands are on his knees, and they're not steady now, not anymore. The field is over, and the steadiness has gone with it. "She could have died."
"She didn't," Roy says.
"This time."
"This time is the one that happened." Roy looks at him steadily. "She's in there, and she's going to be okay, and that's what's true right now."
"She did it for me," Jason says, and the words are bare, just the bones of them. "She threw herself in front of — for me. She got shot for me."
Roy doesn't say anything.
"I don't — " Jason looks at his hands. "I've had people get hurt because of me. Because of what I am, because of proximity, because I exist, and existing makes the people near me targets. I know that. I've always known that." He exhales. "This is different. She chose it. She saw it, and she chose."
"Yeah," Roy says. "She did."
"That's — " He can't finish it.
Roy puts a hand on his shoulder.
They sit.
She's out of surgery in two hours.
The doctor says through and through, clean exit, no organ involvement, she's going to be sore for a while, but she's going to be fine, and Jason stands there receiving this information and nods and says thank you in a voice that is mostly functional.
Then he sits back down.
Roy brings him coffee from the machine down the hall. It's bad coffee. Jason drinks it.
'You can go see her,' Roy says, eventually.
"In a minute."
"Jay — "
"In a minute," he says again.
He needs the minute because he knows what's going to happen when he walks into that room — he knows his own face, knows what it's going to do when he sees her, and he needs a minute to find the version of himself that can walk in there and be present rather than the version that's been sitting in this chair for two hours with blood on his hands.
He takes the minute.
Then he goes.
You're awake.
That's the first thing. You're awake, and you turn your head when he comes through the door, and your face does — your face does the thing, the specific thing, the one that's just for him, and something in Jason's chest that has been locked for two hours releases without permission.
He comes and sits in the chair by the bed.
He looks at you.
You look at him.
"Hi," you say, for the second time tonight, and this time he doesn't tell you not to hi him, he just exhales.
"Hi," he says.
"I'm okay," you say.
"I know. They told me."
"You look terrible," you say.
"You're the one who got shot."
"And you look worse than me," you say, which isn't true and is also exactly true, and something in his jaw does the thing.
"You scared me," he says.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Don't — " he stops. "Don't apologize. I'm not — " He looks at your hands, folded on the blanket, and he reaches over and puts his over them. "You shouldn't have done that."
"He was going to shoot you," you say.
"I know."
"In the back of the head, Jason. He had it — "
"I know," he says, quieter. "I know what he had. I know what would have happened. I know." His hand tightens over yours. "And I know why you did it. I'm just — I need a minute to be terrified before I can get to grateful."
"Okay," you say.
"You're a civilian," he says. "You have no — you didn't — there was no reason that should have been your instinct — "
"You're the person I love," you say, simply. "That was my reason."
Jason looks at you.
The thing on his face — the one you didn't have a name for on the street — is still there, and you can see it clearly now, in the hospital light, without the field and the blood and the four minutes.
It's something that looks like grief and looks like gratitude and looks like a man who has been certain for a long time that he is someone things happen to and not someone things are chosen for, looking at evidence to the contrary and not knowing what to do with it.
"That can't be enough of a reason," he says.
"It was," you say.
"You could have — "
"I know what I could have. I know the math, Jason, I'm not — I knew what I was doing." You look at him steadily. "I'd do it again."
"Don't," he says. "Don't say that."
"It's true."
"I know it's true. That's why I'm asking you not to say it." His hand over yours, both of his now, the way he holds things he's afraid of losing. "I need you to not be — I need you to be alive. That's the only thing I need. Whatever I am, whatever this costs, the one non-negotiable is you being alive."
"Okay," you say.
"Okay," he repeats, like he's checking that the word means what he needs it to mean.
"But Jason," you say.
"Yeah."
"Same goes," you say. "You being alive. That's the thing. That's why I moved." You hold his gaze. "So we're even on the non-negotiable."
He looks at you for a long time.
"We're not even," he says. "You got shot."
"Minor," you say.
"Through and through is not — "
"The doctor said clean exit. That's basically a graze."
"It is categorically not a graze — "
"Jason."
"What?"
"Come here," you say.
He looks at the chair. At the bed. At you, shifting slightly to make room, which makes you wince, which makes him immediately say don't move, stop moving, and stand up.
"Carefully," you say.
"I'm not — "
"Carefully," you say again, and he carefully sits on the edge of the bed and carefully doesn't jostle you, and you put your head against his shoulder, and he puts his arm around you with the specific gentleness of someone handling something precious.
"You scared me," he says again, into your hair.
"I know," you say. "I'm sorry about that part."
"Just that part?"
"Just that part," you confirm.
He exhales.
You sit in the hospital room, and he holds you carefully, and somewhere down the hall, Roy is being told he can't have more than one person in the room and is arguing about this with the specific Roy Harper energy that means he's going to win eventually.
"The car's in a tow zone," you say, after a while.
"I know."
"You said you'd deal with it."
"I'll deal with it tomorrow."
"The fine is going to be — "
“I'll deal with it,” he says, for the third time, which this time means something slightly different, which is: I will deal with every fine, and every logistics problem, and everything that is not you being okay, because you being okay is the only variable that matters, and everything else is administrative.
You understand this.
You lean a little more into his shoulder.
He holds on.
He doesn't leave the hospital.
Roy brings him food at some point, bad vending machine food, which Jason eats without comment. A nurse tells him visiting hours are technically over, and he looks at her with a look, and she decides the policy has some flexibility.
You sleep.
He watches you sleep the way he watches things that matter to him — precisely, completely, as if he looks away, something might change.
You don't.
You're there when you wake up, and he's still in the chair, and the sun is coming through the hospital blinds, and his hands are on his knees, and he's watching you with that expression.
"You stayed," you say.
"Obviously," he says.
"You should have slept — "
"I'm fine."
"Jason — "
"I'm fine," he says, and it's the rare version, the one that's actually true. "I'm fine. You're here. I'm fine."
You look at him.
He looks at you.
"Okay," you say.
"Okay," he says.
Outside, Gotham is doing what Gotham does.
In here, you're here, and he's here, and the thing that almost happened didn't happen, and that's the whole of it, that's the entire thing.
Warnings: medieval fantasy AU, prince!Jason Todd, knight!reader, childhood friends to lovers to separated lovers, presumed death, grief, references to imprisonment and torture, complicated power dynamics, dom/sub, established BDSM dynamics, possessiveness, jealousy, light degradation, praise kink, biting, marking, throat holding, oral sex, fingering, vaginal sex, rough sex, overstimulation, unprotected sex, emotional vulnerability, aftercare, angst with a happy ending
Summary:
Five years after Prince Jason Todd was murdered, he returns to the capital commanding an army sworn to him alone.
The crown orders his former knight—and former lover—to discover whether he has come home seeking justice or conquest.
Jason only wants to know whether the promise you made him survived his grave.
Author’s Note:
written for this anonymous ask
Another Knight!Reader AU :)
Some quick backstory: you and Jason grew up together, fell in love in secret, and then he died. After that, there were five years of grief and resentment and hope and love between them when he finally came back to you.
The great doors opened during Lord Sionis’s testimony.
The timing was so precise that, for one irrational moment, you believed the interruption had been planned as part of the proceedings. Sionis had spent the better part of an hour describing grain tariffs along the eastern road, each sentence polished until it carried no meaning at all, and half the court had begun to wilt beneath the summer heat trapped inside the throne room. Even the king looked as though he might welcome an invading army if it spared him another account of damaged wagons.
Then the guards at the doors lowered their spears.
Steel rang against stone. Courtiers twisted in their seats, silk whispering over silk, and the herald on duty stumbled backward before he remembered that fleeing the throne room would only ensure everyone saw him do it.
A man walked between the crossed spearheads without slowing.
He wore black plate beneath a dark red cloak, the armor scarred in places no ceremonial suit would ever be permitted to show. A sword hung at his left hip, another shorter blade at his right, and a narrow strip of cloth had been wrapped around one gauntlet as though to hide a damaged fastening. There were soldiers behind him—six in the same dark armor, wearing neither the crest of Gotham nor the colors of any neighboring kingdom. Each carried only a red hawk worked into one shoulder, the mark of the commander they had chosen to follow.
He left them at the threshold and crossed the length of the hall alone.
You knew the set of his shoulders before you saw his face.
Your hand closed around the pommel of your sword so hard that the leather beneath your glove creaked.
Five years vanished with a cruelty no blade could have matched. You were fourteen again, standing barefoot in the training yard while a dark-haired boy laughed at the wooden sword he had knocked from your hand. Seventeen, crouched beside him behind the chapel after he had split his knuckles against a stone wall rather than admit the king’s words had hurt him. Twenty-two, pressed against the armory door with Jason’s mouth at your throat and his promise breathed against your skin.
When I leave, you come with me.
Anywhere, you had told him.
The man walking toward the throne had the same mouth, though a scar cut through one corner now. His hair was longer than court fashion allowed, swept back from a pale streak at his temple. The boy you had loved had carried every emotion openly when he trusted you enough to show it. This man gave the court nothing.
He stopped at the foot of the dais.
No one announced him. No one seemed capable of finding breath enough to try.
King Bruce rose slowly from the throne.
Jason looked up at the father who had buried an empty coffin for him and smiled without warmth.
“Your Majesty.”
The king’s face changed so little that anyone who had not grown up watching him would have missed it. His fingers tightened once around the carved arm of the throne. Beside him, Prince Richard had gone completely still.
Sionis was the first to speak.
“This is impossible.”
Jason turned his head.
Lord Roman Sionis had stood three paces from you when the royal party returned from Blackwater Pass without its second prince. He had placed one consoling hand on your shoulder while you were still wearing Jason’s blood across your surcoat. He had testified that the ambush had been the work of border raiders, that no prisoners had been taken, and that the ravine fire had left nothing worth recovering.
Jason drew something from beneath his cloak and tossed it onto the floor.
A gold signet rolled across the stone and came to rest against Sionis’s shoe.
The black mask carved into its face was unmistakable.
“I thought you might want that back,” Jason said. “Your man dropped it while he was explaining how much you paid him to change my escort route.”
The court erupted.
Voices collided beneath the vaulted ceiling. Sionis kicked the ring away as though it had burned him, shouting about forgery and foreign plots. Richard descended one step from the dais before stopping himself. The king did not move at all.
Neither did you.
Jason’s gaze crossed the hall through the confusion and found you beside the throne.
For five years, you had imagined this moment in a hundred impossible forms. Jason wounded at the city gates. Jason waiting in the old orchard where the two of you had hidden as children. Jason appearing at the foot of your bed in the hour before dawn, smiling because death had been some elaborate mistake the gods had finally chosen to correct.
You had never imagined him looking at you as though you were another weapon pointed in his direction.
“Commander,” he said.
The title struck harder than accusation. He had called you little knight when you were children, a name that followed you even after you had grown into your armor and learned how to put him flat on his back despite barely reaching his shoulder. Later, when the court could not hear, he had called you love. On the last night before Blackwater Pass, he had rested his forehead against yours and whispered “my knight” with such fierce certainty that the words had felt more binding than anything spoken before an altar.
Now you were Commander of the King’s Guard, and Jason made it sound like a verdict.
You stepped down from the dais.
Protocol demanded that you kneel before a prince of the realm. Your body remembered the motion for entirely different reasons.
Your right knee touched the stone.
Jason’s jaw tightened.
“My prince,” you said.
A tremor passed through the hall. Sionis stopped shouting. Richard looked between the two of you with an understanding that came several years too late, and the king’s expression hardened into something unreadable.
Jason stared at you for one long moment.
Then he looked back at the throne.
“I have brought records from three fortresses, testimony from two surviving guards, and the name of every noble who profited from my death,” he said. “I also have twelve hundred soldiers camped north of your walls. They answer to me, and they have been instructed to remain there unless someone in this room does something stupid.”
Sionis went pale.
King Bruce descended from the dais. “You came with an army.”
“I came with my army.”
The distinction moved through the court like a drawn blade.
Jason’s gaze never left the king. “They are prisoners I freed, soldiers their lords abandoned, and people whose villages your council decided were too distant to defend. They did not belong to another crown before they followed me, and they do not belong to one now.”
You remained kneeling until Jason glanced down at you again.
“Stand, Commander.”
You obeyed.
His gaze dropped briefly to the sword at your hip. It was not the blade you had carried at Blackwater Pass; that sword lay broken inside Jason’s tomb beneath the royal chapel. The red cord tied around the pommel, however, had once fastened his cloak.
Something moved behind his expression and vanished.
The king ordered the throne room cleared.
Sionis was seized before he made it halfway to the eastern door. The court scattered in a storm of rumors, each noble carrying a slightly different version of Jason’s resurrection into the corridors. Richard remained long enough to embrace his brother, only to receive no embrace in return. Alfred came down from his place near the council table with tears bright in his eyes, and Jason allowed the old steward to touch his face as though confirming he was real.
You waited beside the throne because that was where duty had placed you.
Jason did not look at you again.
By sunset, the eastern guest chambers had been prepared for him.
The rooms had belonged to visiting princes for generations, though no visitor had ever arrived with twelve hundred soldiers and evidence that half the royal council had conspired to murder him. Guards were posted at every stairwell. Jason’s six officers occupied the adjoining rooms, and three clerks carried sealed chests of documents into the king’s private study beneath Alfred’s supervision.
You stood before Bruce’s desk while evening light turned the windows to sheets of bronze.
“He will not accept one of my guards,” the king said.
“He accepted six of his own.”
Bruce’s mouth flattened. “He was held for nearly two years in a fortress beyond the northern border. He escaped with fewer than twenty prisoners and took the fortress before the garrison realized he was free. Afterward, he began gathering the people the border lords had abandoned—discharged soldiers, displaced families, escaped prisoners, and villages forced to defend themselves without support from the capital.”
You kept your face still. Every fact entered the space where five years of uncertainty had lived, each one creating a new image you did not want and could not prevent. Jason in chains. Jason beneath foreign walls. Jason discovering that the kingdom—his kingdom, his home, his family—had stopped searching, and building something of his own from everyone else it had failed.
“He commands a force twelve hundred strong now,” Bruce continued. “Not because a duke appointed him or another king armed him. They chose him. He has taken control of the northern passes, destroyed three raiding companies, and forced every lord in the region to negotiate on his terms.”
“Then he does not need your throne.”
“No,” Bruce said. “That may be what concerns the court most.”
“Did you know?” you asked.
“That he lived? No.” Bruce’s answer came immediately. “That Sionis had altered the route? I suspected it after the inquiry was closed.”
“And you left him on the council.”
“To watch who continued meeting with him.”
Your laugh held no humor. “Five years of watching.”
The king accepted the blow because he knew better than to defend himself.
You had remained in his service for the same reason. Sionis had controlled the royal roads, the prison records, and the flow of correspondence across the border. Resigning your commission would have cost you access to every archive where the truth might be buried. You had spent years collecting fragments while the court mistook your silence for grief disciplined into obedience.
Perhaps Jason had made the same mistake.
Bruce pushed a sealed order across the desk.
“You will take command of the guard outside his rooms.”
You looked at the wax but did not touch it.
“And report whether he intends to take the throne?”
“Report whether he intends to start a war inside the capital.”
“He told you his soldiers would remain outside the walls.”
“He also told me members of my council sold him to an enemy kingdom.” Bruce’s voice lowered. “He has reason to hate every person under this roof.”
“Some more than others.”
The king’s gaze shifted toward the red cord at your sword.
“He will speak to you.”
“You do not know that.”
“I know my son.”
You finally picked up the order. “You buried him without a body.”
Pain crossed Bruce’s face, quick and controlled. “I know what I failed to do.”
The answer should have softened you. It did not.
You turned toward the door.
“Commander.”
You paused.
“If he asks you to leave with him,” Bruce said, “what will you do?”
Five years ago, there had been no hesitation.
There was none now.
“I will decide whether he is asking me to follow him—or testing whether I still would.”
The guards outside the eastern chambers saluted when you approached. You dismissed all but two to the lower stairwell, then took your position beside the carved doors. Through the wood came the murmur of unfamiliar voices, the clink of armor being removed, and once, unmistakably, Jason’s laugh.
The sound nearly undid you.
It was rougher than you remembered, but it was his. For an instant you were back in the stables with hay caught in your hair while Jason tried to convince you that stealing the crown prince’s horse did not count as theft if the horse preferred him. You had been eleven. He had been twelve and already furious at any rule he had not personally approved.
You had met when you were six years old and your father brought you to court after accepting a position under the master-at-arms. Jason had found you hiding behind the practice targets with a bruised cheek and demanded to know who had struck you. When you refused to answer, he challenged all three boys who had done it and lost with spectacular enthusiasm.
You had helped him back to his rooms afterward.
That was the beginning of everything.
He taught you how to climb the western tower without being seen. You taught him how to fall from a horse without breaking his wrist. He smuggled books out of the royal library for you, and you lied to Alfred about where the kitchen tarts had gone. When your father died during a winter campaign, Jason sat outside your chamber door until morning because grief had made you unable to bear another person’s touch.
At sixteen, you were appointed to his household guard.
At eighteen, he kissed you in the armory after you defeated him in front of the entire training company.
At twenty, he learned how you liked to kneel.
At twenty-two, he left for Blackwater Pass with your promise in his mouth.
The door opened.
One of Jason’s officers stepped into the corridor. She was broad-shouldered, silver-haired, and looked at the sword in your hand before she looked at your face.
“He wants you inside,” she said.
You did not ask whether she knew who you were. Her expression suggested everyone in Jason’s army had heard some version of the story.
The chamber doors closed behind you.
Jason stood near the open windows with his back turned. The heavy plate was gone, leaving him in dark trousers, boots, and a black linen shirt unlaced at the throat. His sword rested within reach on the table. A pitcher of wine sat untouched beside it.
He waited until the latch settled.
“Did he tell you to count the knives?”
You looked around the room. “Seven that I can see.”
“Eight.”
“You still keep one in your boot.”
Jason turned.
For the first time since he entered the throne room, there was no audience between you—no king, no court, and no officers bearing witness to the person he had become or the authority he had built for himself. The distance across the chamber felt greater than the five years that had separated you. The men and women beyond the door did not follow him because of his birth. They followed because somewhere beyond Gotham’s reach, Jason had become the person who freed them, protected them, and gave them something worth defending.
His gaze moved over your armor. You wore the formal half-plate of the king’s guard, polished steel over black leather, with a short cloak fastened at one shoulder. Jason had once complained that the uniform hid everything he liked best about you.
The memory entered his expression at the same moment it entered yours.
He reached for the wine and poured a cup.
“So,” he said. “Commander.”
“My prince.”
“Still doing that.”
“You are still a prince.”
“Am I?” He drank without looking away from you. “No one seemed certain this afternoon.”
“The kingdom has believed you dead for five years.”
“The kingdom.” Jason set the cup down. “Is that what we are calling you now?”
You absorbed the bitterness because you had expected it from the moment he looked at you across the throne room.
“What would you prefer to call me?”
“I had several names for you once.”
“You did.”
“None of them wore the king’s crest.”
Your hand tightened at your side. “Say what you brought me here to hear.”
Jason laughed softly. “Still impatient.”
“Still trying to make anger do the work of honesty.”
His expression hardened.
There he was. The boy beneath the commander, the wounded prince who would rather draw blood than admit where he had already been cut.
You knew him too well. Perhaps that was why he hated you most.
Jason walked toward you.
He had grown broader during the missing years, heavier through the shoulders, and he carried himself with the controlled balance of someone who had learned to fight in places where armor could not be trusted. You had once known every scar on his body. Now there were pale lines at his jaw, his throat, and across the backs of his hands.
He stopped close enough that you could feel the heat of him through your armor.
“What did he order you to report?”
“Whether you intend to begin a war inside the capital.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think if you wanted the throne, you would not have left your army outside the walls.”
“Maybe I wanted him comfortable.”
“You have never cared enough about comfort to use it as a weapon.”
His mouth twitched before he suppressed it.
“You remember me, then.”
The words were quieter than anything else he had said.
You looked at the scar cutting through his lip. “Every day.”
Jason stepped back as though you had struck him.
The movement made anger rise in you at last—not because he doubted you, but because some part of him had decided he alone was entitled to the pain of the last five years.
“You do not get to return from the grave and speak to me as though I placed you there.”
“I sent letters.”
“I never received them.”
“You stopped searching.”
“The king stopped the official search.”
“And you continued wearing his crest.”
“Yes.”
His eyes flashed. “Of course you did.”
You crossed the room before caution could stop you.
“Sionis controlled the border archives,” you said. “He controlled the road ledgers, the prison transfers, and every messenger who crossed the northern gate. I stayed because leaving would have surrendered every path that might lead to you.”
“You expect me to believe Bruce let you investigate his council for five years?”
“I did not ask his permission.”
Jason’s gaze sharpened.
“I bribed clerks. I threatened caravan masters. I rode to Blackwater Pass every spring after the snow melted and searched the ravine myself.” Your voice broke, and you hated it for doing so. “I found three buckles, part of a saddle, and enough bone to bury six men. None of it was yours.”
He said nothing.
“I knew Sionis lied. I knew the route had been changed from inside the palace. I stayed close enough to prove it.”
“And when you could not?”
“I kept looking.”
“For five years.”
“I would have for the rest of my life, if necessary.”
Jason stared at you.
The chamber had become too quiet. Beyond the open window, the city bells marked the hour, each note spreading across rooftops that had mourned him and then learned to live without him.
His gaze dropped to the red cord tied around your sword.
“That was mine.”
“Yes.”
“You wore it into the throne room.”
“I have worn it every day since Blackwater.”
His mouth tightened. “A strip of cloth makes a poor memorial.”
“It was not a memorial.”
“What was it?”
“A promise.”
Jason’s laugh came out harsh. “You knelt to Bruce with my promise on your sword.”
“I knelt to the throne because I was on duty.”
“You always did know how to make obedience sound noble.”
“And you always knew how to make cruelty sound like wit.”
The silence after that was immediate.
Jason moved closer. “Careful.”
“Or what?”
“Your king ordered you to guard me. I doubt he intended you to provoke me.”
“He knows you.”
“No,” Jason said. “He knows the son he lost. You are the one who thinks you know what came back.”
You looked at him—at the unfamiliar scars, the weight he carried through every movement, the fury sharpened into discipline—and understood what he wanted. He wanted you to recoil. He wanted proof that he had become too altered to love, because that would hurt less than believing you had loved him all this time and he had been wrong to hate you.
You reached for the laces at your throat.
Jason caught your wrist.
The movement was fast enough that another person might have reached for a weapon. Your pulse jumped for an entirely different reason.
His hand closed around the leather guard at your wrist, thumb pressing over the point where your heartbeat raced beneath it.
“What are you doing?”
“Showing you.”
His grip tightened. “Showing me what?”
You pulled your cloak clasp loose with your free hand. The black fabric slid from your shoulder and fell across the floor.
Jason’s gaze followed it.
Then you unfastened the top buckle of your breastplate.
Understanding entered his face, followed so quickly by hunger that it left you breathless.
“You should stop me,” you said.
“Do you want me to?”
“No.”
His eyes lifted to yours.
The old question stood between you, familiar as prayer.
“What stops me?” he asked.
“Winter.”
“And if you cannot speak?”
You tapped three times against the inside of his wrist.
Jason closed his eyes.
For one suspended moment, his grip trembled.
Then he released you.
“Take off the sword.”
The command settled low in your body.
You unbuckled the belt and laid the weapon across the table beside his. Jason watched every movement. His anger had not disappeared, but it had changed shape, mixing with five years of want until the air between you felt dangerously thin.
“The dagger.”
You drew it from the sheath at your back and placed it beside the sword.
“The other one.”
You raised a brow.
His mouth curved. “You taught me that trick.”
You bent, pulled the narrow blade from your left boot, and set it on the table.
Jason stepped behind you.
His fingers found the buckles of your breastplate. He did not hurry. Each fastening came loose with a soft scrape of leather through metal, the sound unbearably intimate after years in which no one else had been permitted to help you out of your armor.
The weight lifted from your shoulders.
Jason set the breastplate aside and stood close enough that his chest brushed your back. His breath moved against the side of your neck.
“You let anyone else do this?”
“No.”
“Anyone else touch what was mine?”
The possessiveness should have angered you. Instead, heat gathered between your thighs.
“You were dead,” you said.
His hand came around your throat.
He did not squeeze, only held you there, palm warm against your skin and fingers spanning the line of your jaw. Your body remembered him before your mind could catch up. Your head tipped back against his shoulder. Your breath slowed because he liked to feel you surrender it deliberately.
“I asked you a question.”
“And I answered it.”
“Poorly.”
“No one else touched me.”
Jason’s mouth brushed your ear. “No one?”
“No one.”
His fingers tightened slightly.
You swallowed against his palm.
“Why?” he asked.
The question held no arrogance now. It was raw enough that you could have turned and ended the argument with a kiss, but Jason had spent five years doubting the answer. He needed to hear it in the language the two of you had built before death interrupted you.
“Because I was waiting for you.”
His breath caught.
Jason released your throat and moved in front of you.
“Kneel.”
The stone floor was hard beneath your knees. You lowered yourself without looking away from him, settling with the same straight-backed discipline you had once used in the privacy of his old rooms. The first time he had asked this of you, both of you had been nervous enough to laugh. Jason had touched your face as though your obedience frightened him more than any refusal could have done.
Now he looked down at you with hunger and grief carved into every line of him.
“Why are you kneeling?”
“Because you told me to.”
His hand closed in your hair near the nape, not pulling yet. “That is not what I asked.”
“Because I want to.”
“Is this because Bruce ordered you to keep me calm?”
“No.”
“Because you pity what came back?”
“No.”
His thumb moved along your jaw. “Then tell me.”
The words lodged behind your ribs. You had spoken them in empty chapels and over winter graves. You had whispered them into the red cord while tying it around your sword each morning. Saying them to Jason should have been easier.
It was not.
“Because I’m still yours.”
Something in his face broke.
He bent and kissed you.
There was nothing gentle in the first touch of his mouth. Jason took the back of your neck in one hand and held you where he wanted you, kissing you with five years of fury behind it. The scar at his lip was unfamiliar beneath yours. Everything else was devastatingly the same—the way he tilted your head, the rough sound he made when your mouth opened, the brief press of his teeth when he wanted more than you could give quickly enough.
You clutched his thighs to steady yourself.
Jason pulled back only far enough to look at you.
“You should hate me,” he said.
“For surviving?”
“For coming back like this.”
“You came back alive.”
His grip tightened in your hair. “You do not know what I did to stay that way.”
“Then tell me when you can.”
“And until then?”
You turned your face and kissed the inside of his wrist. “Let me remember you.”
Jason stared at your mouth against his skin.
Then his expression sharpened into something familiar and commanding.
“Open my trousers.”
Heat spread through you so quickly that your fingers nearly fumbled the fastening. Jason noticed. He always noticed.
“Five years,” he murmured. “And my perfect knight still loses all that discipline on her knees.”
“You always talked too much.”
His hand tightened in your hair and pulled your head back.
“Careful, love.”
The name struck deeper than any command.
You looked up at him, breathing hard.
Jason’s thumb traced your lower lip. “I wondered if you would still look at me like that.”
You opened his trousers and freed him. He was already hard, heavy in your hand, and the first stroke drew a rough breath from him. The sound made your body ache. You had remembered this too many nights with your own hand between your thighs, chasing a ghost through sensations that never quite became real.
Jason brushed your hand away.
“Use your mouth.”
You leaned forward and licked slowly along the underside of his cock.
His head tipped back.
The reaction sent a fierce satisfaction through you. Jason had returned with an army he had built himself and enough power to make the king’s council tremble. Hundreds of people waited beyond the walls because he had earned their loyalty without a crown, a title, or the family name that had once failed to protect him.
Here, in the privacy of his bedchamber, you could still make his breath break with the same deliberate sweep of your tongue.
You took him into your mouth.
His hand settled against the back of your head. At first he let you choose the pace, watching as you drew him deeper, your lips closing around him while your tongue worked beneath the head. The taste of him filled your mouth. You moaned softly, and Jason’s hips jerked before he caught himself.
“Still like this?” he asked.
You looked up at him.
“Taking me on your knees where anyone could knock on the door.” His thumb stroked the hinge of your jaw. “Did you think about it while you stood outside pretending to be loyal to the crown?”
You drew back enough to answer. “I thought about it while I stood beside your grave.”
The cruelty left his face.
You regretted the words at once, but Jason did not release you. He touched your cheek with a tenderness that made your throat tighten.
“I am sorry,” he said.
It was the first apology either of you had offered.
You turned your face into his palm. “I know.”
Then you took him into your mouth again because neither of you was ready for everything the apology contained.
Jason let you set the rhythm for only a few breaths before the hand in your hair became firmer. He guided you down, slowly enough that you could stop him, until the head of his cock pressed deep and your throat tightened around him.
“Good,” he murmured. “That’s my good knight.”
The praise went through you like an arrow.
Your fingers dug into his thighs. Jason held you there for one heartbeat, then eased you back and let you breathe. Tears pricked your eyes. He wiped one away with his thumb before guiding you down again.
The pace remained controlled, each movement measured against your breath. You took him deeper every time, jaw aching pleasantly, the wet sounds obscene in the quiet room. Jason watched you with the focus he had once reserved for battle plans and your body beneath his hands.
“Look at you,” he said. “All that polished armor, all those men following your orders, and this is still where you want to be.”
You moaned around him.
“That is what I thought.”
He pulled you off before he could finish.
You gasped for air, lips swollen, a line of saliva connecting your mouth to the head of his cock until Jason wiped it away with his thumb. He pushed that thumb between your lips.
“Suck.”
You obeyed.
His gaze darkened.
“Up.”
Jason caught your arm and drew you to your feet. Your knees protested after the stone, but he gave you no time to recover. His mouth found yours again as he backed you toward the table. Maps and correspondence scattered when he swept one arm across the surface. His sword remained beside yours, the two blades touching at the guards.
He lifted you onto the table.
The mail beneath your leather tunic scraped against the wood. Jason cursed under his breath and reached for the side fastenings.
“Too many layers.”
“You used to say that about ceremonial gowns.”
“I was right then too.”
He stripped the leather jerkin from you, then dragged the mail shirt up and over your head. Your linen undertunic followed, leaving you bare from the waist up in the cool evening air.
Jason stopped.
You had scars he did not know either. A narrow line crossed your ribs from a training accident two winters after his death. Another marked your shoulder where an assassin’s arrow had found the gap above your breastplate. Jason touched that one first.
“Who?”
“Sionis hired someone after I began asking about the changed route.”
His expression went still in the way that had terrified the court earlier.
“He will not survive the trial.”
“That is for the king to decide.”
Jason’s fingers closed around your waist. “You are in my rooms, half naked on my table, and still defending Bruce’s authority.”
“I am reminding you that murdering Sionis before he speaks would be inconvenient.”
A reluctant laugh escaped him. “There is my little knight.”
He bent and put his mouth over the scar.
Your breath shuddered.
Jason kissed along the pale line, then lower, his hands spreading over your ribs as though relearning their shape. He reached your breast and took one nipple between his lips. The first pull made you arch toward him.
He had always known how sensitive you were there. Time had not changed it. Jason’s tongue circled the hardened peak before his teeth closed with just enough pressure to make you gasp. His other hand cupped your breast, thumb moving in slow strokes that left you trembling.
“You kept this from everyone too?” he asked against your skin.
“Yes.”
“All of you?”
“Yes.”
“For me?”
You took his face in both hands and forced him to look at you. “Do not ask questions when you already know the answer.”
Jason’s eyes searched yours.
“I need to hear it.”
The admission softened something inside you.
“All of me,” you said. “For you.”
He kissed you more slowly this time.
The tenderness lasted until your legs opened around his hips. Jason made a low sound, grabbed the back of your neck, and kissed you hard enough to bruise. His free hand found the fastening of your trousers.
“You know exactly what you are doing.”
“I have not done anything.”
“You opened your legs for me.”
“You were standing between them.”
“And that was enough?”
“You already knew it would be.”
His mouth curved against yours as he pulled your trousers down to your knees and dropped into a crouch before you.
You braced your hands on the table.
Jason dragged one boot from your foot, then the other, and stripped away the remaining leather with deliberate efficiency. He left you bare on the edge of the table while he remained mostly dressed, the imbalance calculated and familiar.
His gaze moved between your thighs.
“Wet already.”
“You put your hand around my throat.”
“That was all it took?”
“You also told me to kneel.”
Jason’s mouth curved. “Honest at last.”
He spread your knees wider.
The exposure made heat rise through you, but you did not look away. Jason had always loved that—your willingness to meet his gaze even while giving him control.
He ran one finger through your wetness.
Your hips jerked.
“Sensitive,” he said.
“It has been five years.”
His expression darkened at the reminder. “Then I have been neglecting my duties.”
Before you could answer, he lowered his mouth to you.
The first stroke of his tongue pulled a broken sound from your throat. Jason gripped your thighs and held them apart while he licked you slowly, learning what time had changed and what it had not. He remembered the pressure you liked, the way you needed his tongue flatter at first, the brief teasing circles that made your legs tense before he focused directly on your clit.
You reached for his hair.
Jason caught your wrist and pressed your hand flat against the table.
“Stay still.”
“You know I cannot.”
“Then disappoint yourself trying.”
He returned to your cunt before you could insult him.
Your head fell back. The carved ceiling blurred above you as Jason worked you open with his mouth, his tongue pressing inside before dragging upward through your wetness. When he closed his lips around your clit and sucked, your body lifted from the table.
Jason held you down with one forearm across your hips.
“Still cannot follow one simple order,” he murmured.
“You chose the order knowing that.”
He bit the inside of your thigh.
You cried out.
“That was for arguing.”
“You missed me arguing.”
His eyes lifted to yours from between your legs. “More than I missed breathing.”
The answer stole every clever response you might have made.
Jason pushed two fingers inside you.
You clenched around them immediately. He groaned against your thigh, then began to move them in slow, firm strokes while his thumb circled your clit. Your hands gripped the edge of the table. The stretch was almost enough and nowhere near enough, pleasure building too quickly after years with no one but yourself.
“That is it,” he said. “Let me feel you.”
You tried to hold his gaze. Jason curled his fingers, found the place that made your vision flash white, and watched your control break.
“Jason.”
His name left you without title or restraint.
He went still.
You had spoken it a thousand times since his death, but this was the first time he had heard you.
“Again,” he said.
You breathed his name.
Jason kissed your inner thigh and thrust his fingers deeper.
“Again.”
You gave it to him until the name became a plea. He worked you relentlessly, mouth returning to your clit while his fingers moved inside you. The pressure gathered low and tight, every stroke pulling it closer. Your thighs shook around his shoulders.
“Come for me,” he ordered.
You broke with a cry.
Pleasure tore through you hard enough to arch your back from the table. Jason held you down and kept his mouth on you, drawing out every pulse until your legs trembled and your breath came in helpless gasps.
He did not stop when the first wave passed.
You twisted beneath his arm. “Jason.”
“You waited five years.” His fingers slid inside you again. “You can give me another.”
“It is too much.”
“Winter?”
The word grounded you.
“No.”
His eyes sharpened. “Then take it.”
He sucked your clit again.
The overstimulation burned at the edge of pleasure, intense enough that your hands searched blindly for something to hold. You found his shoulder. Jason let you grip him this time, fingers digging into the linen of his shirt while he drove you toward another climax.
The second came quicker and rougher. Your body clenched around his fingers, thighs closing despite his grip, and Jason groaned against you as though your pleasure belonged to him.
When he finally rose, his mouth shone with you.
He wiped it with the back of his hand and looked entirely too pleased with himself.
“You are insufferable,” you managed.
“You missed that too.”
“I missed parts of you.”
Jason stepped between your legs. “Which parts?”
You reached for his shirt.
He caught both your wrists.
“No.”
The refusal came too fast.
You looked at him properly. Hunger remained in his face, but beneath it was fear—small, well-hidden, and familiar from nights long ago when he had believed every kindness might be withdrawn without warning.
“Take off the shirt,” you said.
Jason’s grip tightened. “You are in no position to give orders.”
“Then consider it a condition.”
His expression closed.
You pulled against his hands. “You do not get all of me while hiding half of yourself.”
“You said you were still mine.”
“I am. That does not make me blind.”
The space between you changed.
Jason released your wrists and stepped back.
For a moment, you thought he would order you out. Instead, he reached for the hem of his shirt and dragged it over his head.
The scars began at his ribs.
Some were narrow and clean, left by blades. Others crossed his skin in pale, uneven ridges that spoke of restraints, burns, and wounds left too long without care. One thick mark curved beneath his collarbone. Another disappeared around his side toward his back.
You slid from the table.
Jason stood rigid while you approached him.
“Do not,” he said.
You stopped with your hand inches from his chest. “Do you want me to stop?”
His breath moved unevenly.
“No.”
You touched the scar beneath his collarbone.
Jason flinched.
The reaction was so slight another person would have missed it. You laid your palm flat against his chest and waited until the tension eased beneath your hand.
“You are alive,” you whispered.
“Barely, for a while.”
“But you are here.”
“I came back wrong.”
Anger tightened your throat. “Do not tell me what I am allowed to love.”
Jason looked at you.
You traced the scar around his ribs, then bent and pressed your lips to it. His hands hovered at your shoulders as though uncertain whether to push you away or drag you closer. You kissed another mark, then another, not trying to erase what had happened or turn his survival into something beautiful. You only wanted his body to learn that touch could reach those places without pain.
When you reached the thick scar at his side, Jason’s hand settled in your hair.
“They made me dig the grave first,” he said.
You went still.
“For the men who survived the ravine.” His voice sounded distant. “Sionis’s buyers wanted the prince alive until they knew whether Bruce would pay. When no message came, they stopped keeping the others useful.”
You pressed your forehead against his stomach.
“I am sorry.”
“I hated you.”
“I know.”
“I told myself you had chosen him. That you had put on the crest and forgotten every promise you made me.”
“I know.”
Jason’s fingers tightened in your hair. “Why are you not angry?”
“I am furious.” You looked up. “But I understand why you needed to believe it.”
He stared down at you.
“You always were too merciful.”
“No. I simply know you.”
Jason drew you to your feet and kissed you with both hands on your face.
The kiss was different from the others. It still held hunger, but the anger no longer stood between you as a weapon. He kissed you like the boy who had hidden beneath your window after nightmares and the man who had crossed half a kingdom because some part of him still remembered home.
You wrapped your arms around his neck.
Jason lifted you.
Your legs closed around his waist as he carried you toward the bed. He laid you down against the heavy coverlet, then stood over you while he stripped off his boots and trousers. The sight of him bare made your breath catch for reasons beyond desire. There were scars along his thighs too, more evidence of years you had not witnessed.
He noticed where you were looking.
“Later,” he said.
You nodded.
Jason climbed over you and settled between your legs. His cock pressed hot against your stomach. He lowered himself onto one forearm and touched your face with the other hand.
“Tell me again.”
“That I am yours?”
“That you waited.”
You cupped the back of his neck. “Every day.”
His eyes closed.
“I hated you most days,” he confessed.
“I loved you through it all.”
Jason kissed you once, almost gently.
Then he reached between your bodies and guided himself to your entrance.
The first push stretched you slowly. Your body resisted after so long, and Jason stopped the instant your breath changed.
“Too much?”
“No.” You tightened your legs around him. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He pressed deeper.
The stretch burned, then softened into fullness as your body opened around him. Jason watched your face with fierce concentration, inching forward until his hips met yours and he was buried completely inside you.
Neither of you moved.
The moment was too large for motion. Five years collapsed into the place where your bodies joined, every remembered touch becoming real again beneath the weight of him.
Jason lowered his forehead to yours.
“You feel the same,” he said roughly.
“You do not.”
Pain flickered across his face.
You ran your hands down his back, over muscle and scars you had not known. “You feel alive.”
His breath broke against your mouth.
Then he began to move.
The first strokes were slow, almost careful, Jason drawing back and pressing into you with enough control that every inch registered. Your body adjusted quickly, wetness easing the drag. Pleasure built with each deep thrust, the angle pressing him against places your fingers had never reached.
You held his shoulders and watched him lose some of that control.
Jason’s mouth found your throat. He kissed the pulse there, then bit hard enough to leave a mark. Your cunt clenched around him.
He groaned.
“You like that.”
“You know I do.”
“I knew who you were.” His hips drove forward more sharply. “I do not know who you became.”
“Then learn.”
Jason rose onto his hands and thrust harder.
The bed struck the wall with each movement. Your breasts moved beneath him, your legs spread wide around his hips, and Jason watched as though determined to memorize every response. He changed the angle, pulling one of your knees higher, and the next thrust made you cry out.
“There.” His voice was thick with satisfaction. “Still there.”
You dug your nails into his back.
Jason hissed and caught your wrist. He pinned it above your head, then the other, holding both in one hand.
“On you?”
You pulled once against his grip. “Let me leave mine too.”
Something fierce entered his face.
Jason released one of your wrists and guided your hand to his shoulder before driving into you harder.
He drove into you harder.
Pleasure climbed again, rough and relentless. Jason’s free hand closed around your throat, pressure firm at the sides rather than the center. Your breath shortened. The controlled restriction sent heat racing through you, sharpening every thrust until your body trembled beneath him.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
You forced your eyes open.
“Whose knight are you?”
The question held years of doubt.
“Yours.”
“Who do you kneel for?”
“You.”
“Who were you waiting for?”
Your chest tightened.
“You.”
Jason’s expression twisted.
He released your throat at once and bent over you, pressing his face into the curve of your neck. His hips did not stop, but the rhythm broke, becoming desperate rather than punishing.
“I’m sorry,” he said against your skin. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
You freed one hand from his loosened grip and held the back of his head.
“Come home,” you whispered.
Jason made a sound you had never heard from him before.
He drove into you with renewed force, one arm sliding beneath your back to hold you against him. The position pressed your bodies together from chest to thigh, each thrust grinding the base of his cock against your clit. Your next climax gathered too quickly to resist.
“Jason, I’m—”
“I know.” His mouth covered yours. “Give it to me.”
You came around him.
Your cunt clenched in hard pulses, dragging a curse from him. Jason kept moving through it, thrusting deep while your body shook beneath him. The pleasure blurred into overstimulation, but you held him tighter, wanting every second of the proof that he was here.
His rhythm became uneven.
Jason pulled out with a broken groan and spilled across your stomach. His hand tightened around your hip as his body shuddered. For a moment he remained above you, breathing hard, his face turned away as though even now he could hide the force of what had happened.
You touched his cheek.
He looked at you.
There was no prince in his expression then, no commander of the army waiting beyond the walls and no dead boy haunting the court. There was only Jason, exhausted and alive and terrified that the moment would end if either of you moved.
“Stay,” he said.
You had once promised to follow him anywhere.
This request was smaller and somehow more difficult.
“I’m here.”
Jason lowered himself beside you.
He pulled a cloth from the washstand and cleaned your stomach with careful hands. The tenderness after roughness had always affected you more than any command. When he finished, he drew the coverlet over both of you and settled on his side facing you.
For a while, neither of you spoke.
You traced the scar at the corner of his mouth. Jason let you. His hand rested on your hip, thumb moving in slow, absent strokes.
“Bruce asked what I would do if you told me to leave with you,” you said.
Jason’s hand stopped.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I would decide whether you were asking me to follow you—or testing whether I still would.”
His mouth curved faintly. “And if I ask as myself?”
“I would ask where we are going.”
The answer did not please him as much as you expected.
Jason looked toward the windows. Night had settled over the city, the lamps below turning the streets into lines of gold.
“I did not come to stay,” he said.
You had known. The certainty had lived beneath every accusation, every test, every desperate touch. Jason had returned for justice, not reconciliation. He had brought his own soldiers because he no longer trusted Gotham to protect him and because they trusted him to return to them. Once Sionis and the others were exposed, he intended to leave before the court could decide whether to welcome him as a prince, fear him as a rival, or claim authority over what he had built without them.
“You command the northern passes,” you said.
“I command my people.”
There was a difference, and Jason clearly expected you to understand it.
“They chose me,” he continued. “Not because I was Bruce’s son. Most of them did not know who I was until months after they began following me.”
“So did I.”
Jason looked back at you.
“I came here prepared to find you married,” he admitted. “Or loyal enough to Bruce that you would put a sword through me if he asked.”
“He would never ask.”
“You did not answer the important part.”
“I am not married.”
“I noticed.” His fingers moved over your bare hip. “Eventually.”
You caught his hand. “I did not stay untouched because I believed you would return.”
Jason’s expression became guarded.
“I stayed untouched because loving you did not stop when hope did.”
He looked down at your joined hands.
“You deserved a life.”
“I had one.”
“Waiting beside a grave?”
“Searching for the truth. Protecting Richard. Keeping Sionis close enough to watch. Becoming someone who could stand in that throne room when you came back with an army and not draw a sword because everyone else was afraid.”
Jason’s thumb moved across your knuckles.
“I almost wanted you to draw it.”
“I know.”
“I thought if you fought me, at least I would know where we stood.”
“You have always preferred a wound you can see.”
He gave a quiet laugh. “And you have always preferred healing things that bite you.”
“You were very small when we met.”
“I was seven.”
“You were feral.”
“I was charming.”
“You threw a practice sword at Edmund Davis because he called me a stable rat.”
“He deserved worse.”
“You missed him and broke a window.”
Jason smiled properly.
The sight hurt more than his anger had.
You moved closer and rested your head against his chest. His arm came around you after only a moment’s hesitation.
“I cannot be the boy you lost,” he said into your hair.
“I am not the girl who lost you.”
“What does that leave us?”
You lifted your head. “Two people who still know how to annoy each other.”
“Promising foundation.”
“And an oath.”
Jason’s expression changed.
You slipped from the bed before he could stop you.
Your legs were unsteady, and the chill of the room raised gooseflesh along your skin. Jason watched as you crossed to the discarded armor. You knelt beside the table, took up your sword, and pulled the red cord free from its pommel.
The cloth had faded over five years. One end was stained dark from Blackwater Pass, though you had washed it until your hands cracked.
You returned to the bed.
Jason sat up against the carved headboard, the coverlet low around his waist. You placed the cord in his palm.
“You gave me this the night before you left,” you said.
“I remember.”
“You said we would go north after the treaty was signed. You would surrender your place in the succession, and I would resign my commission.”
“I was young.”
“You were certain.”
“I was wrong about what waited at Blackwater.”
“Not about us.”
Jason closed his fingers around the cloth.
You lowered yourself to one knee beside the bed.
His gaze sharpened. “What are you doing?”
“What I should have done in the throne room.”
“You were following protocol.”
“This is not protocol.”
You drew your sword and laid it across your palms.
The words of a formal knight’s oath rose easily to mind. You had spoken them before the king at eighteen, promising service to the crown, defense of the realm, and obedience to the laws that bound them both. Those words had made you a knight.
The promise you made Jason had never needed witnesses.
“My sword was yours before the king placed his crest on it,” you said. “My loyalty remained yours when the court called you dead. I cannot return what I never surrendered, but I can offer it again.”
Jason stared at you, the red cord caught in his fist.
“I am not asking you to kneel,” he said.
“I know.”
“I may never forgive Bruce.”
“I am not asking you to.”
“I will leave the capital when this is finished.”
“Then I will go with you.”
His throat moved.
“You command the king’s guard.”
“Someone else can learn to stand beside a throne.”
“My people will not follow you because you wear polished armor.”
“I would be concerned if they did.”
“They are loyal to me.”
“So am I.”
Jason studied you, searching for hesitation.
You raised your sword until the flat rested against your shoulder.
“I am not asking them to accept me as your commander,” you said. “I am asking to stand beside you while I earn my place among them.”
Jason laughed once, unsteady and disbelieving.
“That sounds less like devotion and more like a threat.”
“You always liked both.”
He leaned forward and wrapped the red cord around your wrist.
His fingers were careful as he tied it, the same way he had fastened it to your sword five years earlier. When he finished, he lifted your hand and pressed his mouth to the knot.
“My knight,” he said.
The words settled into the oldest part of you.
You sheathed the sword and climbed back into bed.
Jason pulled you against him before your head reached the pillow. His arms closed around you with an urgency he no longer tried to disguise, and you held him just as tightly.
Outside the chamber, the guard changed at midnight. Somewhere below, clerks continued sorting evidence that would bring down half the council. Beyond the northern wall, twelve hundred soldiers waited for the man who had freed them, armed them, and taught them that loyalty could be given rather than inherited.
They belonged to no kingdom waiting to reclaim them.
They were Jason’s people because they had chosen him, and he was theirs because he had chosen them in return.
For one night, their commander slept with his face against your throat and his hand wrapped around your wrist, fingers resting over the faded red promise tied there.
By morning, the palace knew you had spent the night in Jason’s chambers.
No one was foolish enough to mention it when you entered the king’s study wearing yesterday’s uniform, your armor properly fastened and Jason’s red cord tied openly around your wrist.
Bruce stood behind his desk. Richard occupied the chair near the fire, attempting and failing to hide his interest. Alfred placed a cup of tea in front of you without comment, though the corner of his mouth suggested he had already reached several conclusions.
Jason came in behind you wearing black armor and no cloak.
The king’s gaze moved from him to the cord at your wrist.
“You were ordered to observe him,” Bruce said.
“I did.”
“And what does he intend?”
Jason leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, watching you.
You thought of Blackwater Pass, an empty coffin, and five years spent carrying a promise everyone else believed had died. You thought of Jason on his knees before no one, surviving through spite and fury until he could return to the place that had failed him. You thought of the road north and the army waiting beyond the walls.
“He intends to see Sionis tried,” you said. “He intends to expose every person involved in the attack. After that, he will return to his people.”
Bruce’s face tightened. “And you?”
You rested one hand on the pommel of your sword.
“I renewed my oath.”
Richard exhaled a quiet laugh. Alfred looked down at the tea tray.
The king held your gaze for a long moment, then looked at his son.
Jason did not ask permission.
Neither did you.
When he left the study, you followed him into the corridor, matching your stride to his as naturally as you had when you were children racing toward the training yard.
At the turn of the stairs, Jason glanced at you.
“Anywhere?” he asked.
This time, there was no court to hide from and no grave waiting between the promise and its answer.
“Anywhere.”
credit to @uzmacchiato for the cherry divider and @toxisyddy for the Red Hood divider ❤️💛
• he grew up in the streets and in a very poor, check to check family so he very much relates to the punk culture. within punk in general, a lot of other a lot of other subcultures form and given the time he was born (an estimate) around 1992-late 90s popularly but some people also say early-2000s, he would like the transitional period of punk along with classic punk and in the older years, post-punk and punk revival.
• ithink he would also be into the 1990s riot grrl movement even though it is a bit behind his time.
artists: Ramones, Buzzcocks, Green Day, The Queers, and Screeching Weasel.
~
emo
• once again, the early 90s was a transitional year, marking the end of the first wave of emo. around this time many bands changed their tune and themes of songs from the slow, haunting music similar to a goth style to more loud, banging and desperate tune we are more familiar now.
• i feel like he would resonate with the lyrics more and be the person who listens to the words more than the tune. he listens to the same song he finds relatable constantly and has a sort of routine even while listening to music but is open to try out any genres.
artists : Sunny Day Realestate, Evanescence, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World, and Panic At The Disco, etc
~
old school rap
• this has to be maybe majority of older artists with a healthy mix of modern and recent artists as well.
• i think once again he relates to the lyrics of the older songs. majority is just for the vibes.
• this is heavily CONSIDERED canon, but no explicit mention in the comics.
artists: Biggie, Tupac, Wu-Tang, Red Man, Mob Deep, Common, T.I., Eminem, DMX, Xzibit, Big Pun, A Tribe called Quest and some newer artists like Kendrick, J. Cole, Logic, Denzel Curry, Childish Gambino, Joyner Lucas, NF, Hopsin, JID, etc
heavy metal / nu metal
• canon (comic)
• his entire teenage years were metal. assuming his teenage years were around early 2000s-2010s, he would be in the prime era of metal and heavy/nu metal in general.
• the mid-2000s, metalcore became a dominant force with bands like Killswitch Engage, Avenged Sevenfold, and Trivium finding commercial success. as well as nu metal.
• i feel like he unironically listens to Iron Maiden as well (?)
artists : Korn, Linkin Park, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Deftones, and System of a Down (nu metal), etc. Black Sabbath, Metallica, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Pantera, Slayer, Motörhead, Megadeth, Lamb Of God, Ozzy Osbourne, Anthrax, Overkill
~
underground punk rock scene
• considered canon but not mentioned in any comic or film
• i feel like this is kinda true. he listens to whatever he likes and popularity is not that big of a deal. he picked up some music here and there, some local bands some international bands and he likes them all.
artists: Powerplant, C.C.T.V., Hank Wood and the Hammerheads, Warm Red, Erik Nervous and the Beta Blockers, Prison Affair, Ex-Cult, Gee Tee, Concrete Lawn, etc.
~
2000s pop
• once again, veeerrrryyy popularly considered canon but not mentioned in any comics or other media unfortunately
• i find this particularly accurate becsuse Jason was close to his mom (Catherine) and so he definitely picked up some of her music taste. and if she died when he was a kid it would have been around the crack start of the 2000s so think Britney, Maria Carrey, Lady Gaga.
• he also picked these music taste up from Barbara, Artemis (yes, Artemis) and Dickory.
artists: Britney Spears, Shakira, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Zara Larson, Spice Girls, etc.
let me know your interpretations of his taste!! ( instagram post link: 1 2 3) (collaborative playlist: 1)
Hello divas!! I would really love it if you guys did some headcanons of Damian with a reader who has curly hair!! I love your work so much, especially the memes you put at the end!!
(I'm Brazilian and this meme culture is very common here, it makes me very happy to see someone doing it on Tumblr too!!)
🩷🪷
hey 🪷!!! I ALSO HAVE CURLS SO I ASKED SNAIL IF I COULD DO THIS ONE!!!! my curls are mediterranean, tho 😁. I HAVE A PICTURE AT THE ENDDD ALSO THANK YOU SNAIL FOR THE MEMES.
Damian Wayne Headcanons, Part 3.
Summary: Reader is dating Damian Wayne. Reader also has curls!
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ » Damian will buy anything you need for your curls. He loves to research different products and tips for you. He will come home after you’ve had a long day at work with two grocery bags full of leave ins, gels, mousses, oils, and foams. He’ll wash your hair for you, even staying to work the product in after. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, he’ll diffuse it for you too.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ »He loves to play with your curls. Whether it’s during cuddles, after sex, or when you get all pretty for date night, he almost always has a finger in your hair. He likes to wrap coils around his fingers, feeling the silkiness of the strands. He thinks you’re the prettiest thing ever.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ » He likes when you straighten your hair, but he prefers your curls much more. He’ll tell you the straight hair looks nice, but as soon as it’s natural again he’ll have his face practically buried in the volume of the locks.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ » He learns how to braid for you. He likes to take care of you, and you like the hairstyle, so it’s a win-win. It also helps that he’s exceptional at it. He can french braid and do double braids and dutch braids and the whole nine yards. It makes your heart flutter thinking about him doing that for a daughter in the future.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ » One time, you had a bad hair day and cried to Damian about how much you hated your hair (you obviously didn’t, but we’ve all been there.) Damian held you on his lap, ranting for almost 20 minutes about how much he loved your fluffy ringlets, and how perfectly bouncy your coils were, and how he would cut off his arm if it meant you could keep your beautiful locks. That earned a giggle from you, and you hid your face in his neck as he continued to ramble.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ » You tried your curly hair routine on him one day, just for shits and giggles. At the end, you had both discovered that Damian actually had wavy hair. “Habibti,” he had murmured, running a hand through his hair as he stared at himself in the mirror. “Look, beloved. It’s wavy.”
You nodded rapidly, grinning at him through the reflection. He blushed, actually blushed, before turning around to kiss you stupid.
OKKK THATS IT LMK IF YOU WANT A PART TWO!!!!! I CAN DO OTHER CHARACTERS TOO! ALSO I TRIED TO INSERT THE MEMES BUT IT WOULDN’T LET ME SO IM GONNA PUT THEM IN THE COMMENTS SO THAT I DON’T DELETE AN HOUR OF WRITING AGAIN 😔😔 THANK YOU 🪷!!!!
content jason todd x gn! reader, angst, hurt/comfort, slow burn, memory loss/involuntary forgetting, identity erasure, trauma from experimentation, kidnapping/captivity, medical experimentation, implied torture/non-consensual medical procedures, guns/weapons, jason points a gun at you repeatedly, blood/injury, violence, emotional distress, grief/abandonment themes, jason's resurrection trauma mentioned, guilt, mentions of jason's death
masterlist
wordcount 6.1k
you develop powers that make everyone forget you the moment they look away, leaving you lonely and erased from the world—even jason, your childhood best friend and unspoken love. jason keeps instinctively threatening you because he can’t remember who you are, but some part of him knows he’s missing someone vital.
Jason Todd started leaving space for someone he couldn’t remember.
It was the first thing he noticed.
Not because he was sentimental. He wasn’t. Not because he liked examining the empty rooms of himself for missing furniture. He didn’t. Jason Todd survived by ignoring the absence until it bled through the walls.
But there were two mugs in his sink. Always two.
One with a chipped handle that said World’s Okayest Criminal—a gift from Roy, probably, because Roy had no respect for subtlety or kitchenware. The other was plain blue, old, the glaze worn thin near the rim like someone had a habit of rubbing their thumb there.
Jason never used the blue one.
Jason always washed it anyway.
There was an extra blanket folded on the back of his couch. Not his. Too soft. Too carefully mended. There were two takeout containers in the fridge when he remembered ordering only one. His emergency medkit had a roll of purple bandages tucked behind the gauze, even though he would rather die twice than buy purple bandages.
And then there were the notes.
Not the mission notes. Not the threat maps. Not the case files in his awful, blocky handwriting.
These were smaller. Written on receipts. Napkins. The inside of his wrist. Once, scratched into the dust on his windowsill.
Don’t look away. Blue mug. You’re forgetting someone. Forget-me-not.
The last one bothered him most.
Not because he knew what it meant.
Because he didn’t.
And somehow, somehow, that felt worse.
You met Jason Todd when he was thirteen and hungry enough to bite the hand that helped him.
He had been trying to steal the tyres off a parked car behind the community centre. You had been sitting on the fire escape above him, eating the last half of a bruised apple and watching him work with the grim focus of a surgeon.
“You’re doing that wrong,” you said.
Jason jerked so hard he hit his head on the bumper.
“Shut up,” he snapped, looking up at you with a tyre iron in his hand and fury in his eyes.
You took another bite of the apple. “I’m just saying. If you loosen the lug nuts before jacking it up, it’s easier.”
His glare sharpened. “You a cop?”
“I’m thirteen.”
“So?”
That had been the first time you laughed at him.
Jason had scowled like you’d personally offended his bloodline, but he didn’t leave. He stayed under that fire escape while you climbed down. He pretended not to listen while you told him which cars had alarms and which didn’t. You pretended not to notice when he pocketed the apple core after you tossed it aside.
After that, Jason was everywhere.
The alley behind the centre. The library steps. The roof of the old laundromat, where the neon sign flickered all night like a dying star. You shared stolen sandwiches, stolen books, stolen hours. He read too fast and argued with every author as if they were personally wronging him.
He liked Austen and denied it with violence in his eyes. He liked Shakespeare but said Hamlet needed to “get over himself.”
He liked you. Not that either of you said it.
Back then, love was a luxury item locked behind glass. You had friendship, which was safer. Friendship meant stealing gloves for each other in winter. Friendship meant pretending not to be scared when sirens got close. Friendship meant Jason showing up at your window one night with split knuckles and saying, “Don’t ask,” and you letting him in anyway.
Then Bruce Wayne took him in. Then Robin happened. Then the Joker happened.
Then Jason died.
And you learned the hard way that some people could leave the world and still haunt every room in it.
For years, Jason was a grave you visited without flowers because flowers felt too soft for him. Too delicate. Jason had been fire and teeth and a laugh like a match struck in the dark.
Then he came back. Older. Broader. Angry in ways that had edges. Red helmet. Guns. Ghost-green rage burning behind his eyes.
The first time he saw you after his resurrection, he froze so completely you thought the world had glitched.
You were standing in the rain outside an all-night bodega, one hand around a bag of groceries, the other around your keys like a weapon. Gotham rain slicked his leather jacket black. The red helmet stared at you from across the sidewalk.
Then he took it off.
And there he was.
Jason Todd. Dead boy. Living man. Your impossible.
You dropped the groceries.
He said your name like it hurt him.
You punched him in the chest so hard your knuckles ached.
He let you. Then he pulled you into his arms, and for one impossible second, the years folded like paper. You were thirteen again. He smelled like rain and gunpowder and something warm under all the war.
“You died,” you said into his jacket.
“I got better,” he rasped.
You hit him again.
He laughed. You cried.
Neither of you talked about the fact that he held you like someone who had been buried with your name still in his mouth.
The powers came later. Not from a glowing meteor. Not from a dramatic curse. Not from some poetic bargain with the universe.
They came from a warehouse in the Bowery and a group of men who thought memory could be weaponised.
You weren’t supposed to be there. That was the stupidest part. The most Gotham part. You were walking home from a late shift when someone grabbed you off the street because you saw a van door open and a girl inside with tape over her mouth.
You remembered screaming. You remembered a needle. You remembered white rooms underground, men in masks, machines that hummed like insects behind your skull.
They called the project Mnemosyne. They called you Subject Nine. They said things like “retention instability” and “observer-dependent identity collapse” while you were strapped to a chair with blood drying behind your ear.
You broke out during an explosion. Or maybe someone broke you out. It got hazy after the alarms. Smoke. Red emergency lights. Your own heartbeat clawing up your throat.
You found the girl from the van. You got her out. You ran until your lungs shredded.
On the street, under the flicker of a broken lamppost, she turned to you with wide, terrified eyes.
“You saved me,” she said.
Then a car backfired. She looked away. When she looked back, her face emptied.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
At first, you thought it was shock.
Then the paramedics came. You tried to tell them your name. One looked down to write it.
When he lifted his eyes, he frowned. “Sorry, are you family?”
You backed away.
Police arrived. Someone put a blanket around your shoulders, then turned to answer a question, then forgot why the blanket was there.
By morning, every record from the warehouse was gone. Every witness forgot you existed the moment they stopped seeing you. Security footage blurred around your body like reality had rubbed you out with a thumb.
You ran to the only person you trusted.
Jason.
He lived in a safehouse above a closed pawn shop then. Third floor. Reinforced door. Two locks, one electronic keypad, one old-school deadbolt because Jason trusted steel more than software.
You still knew the code. You shouldn’t have.
You entered shaking, half-starved, wearing a stolen hoodie and shoes that didn’t fit. Jason was in the kitchen cleaning a gun.
He looked up. For one second, he was your Jason.
His eyes widened. “Hey—what the hell happened to you?”
You nearly collapsed from relief. “Jay,” you choked.
He crossed the room fast, gun abandoned on the counter. His hands hovered over you like he wanted to check for injuries but didn’t know where to start.
“Talk to me,” he said, voice going low and urgent. “Who did this?”
You tried. You told him about the warehouse. The machines. The girl. The paramedics. The way people’s memories slid off you like rain off glass.
Jason listened. Jason believed you. Of course he did. Jason had crawled out of his own grave. Gotham had taught both of you that impossible was usually just Tuesday wearing a fake moustache.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. We figure it out. Babs can look into missing footage. I’ll call—”
He turned toward the counter for his phone.
You felt it happen.
Not saw it. Not heard it.
Felt it. Like a hook in your chest going slack.
“Jason,” you said quickly.
He stopped. His shoulders went rigid. Slowly, he reached for the gun.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
The room dropped out from under you. “Jay.”
He spun, weapon raised.
The barrel pointed at your chest.
You forgot how to breathe.
“Don’t call me that,” he said. His voice was ice over panic. “How did you get in here?”
“Jason, please. Look at me.”
“I am looking at you.”
“No, I mean—don’t look away.”
His grip tightened. His eyes were sharp, scanning you like a threat map. “Answer the question.”
“You know me.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.” Your voice broke. “You do, Jason. We grew up together. You stole tyres behind the community centre. You loved Pride and Prejudice and threatened to burn my shoes if I told anyone. You came to my window after Willis—”
“Shut up.”
“You died and came back and found me outside the bodega. I punched you. You said you got better.”
His face changed. It was tiny. A crack in the armour. A twitch near his mouth. His eyes searched yours like something in him had heard a song through a wall.
“I don’t know you,” he said, but the words had lost their teeth.
“You do.”
His breathing got rough. “You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
For a second, you thought you had him. For a second, Jason lowered the gun.
Then something clattered in the hallway outside.
His gaze snapped to the door.
When he looked back—
Nothing. Blankness. Threat.
Gun up.
“Last chance,” he said. “Who are you?”
That was the first time Jason Todd forgot you.
It was not the last.
Loneliness became logistical.
That was the cruel joke of it. Everyone imagined loneliness as candlelight and rain on windows and tragic music swelling in the distance. Very cinematic. Very marketable. Total scam.
Real loneliness was trying to rent a room from someone who forgot you halfway through handing over the keys. It was ordering food and watching the cashier blink at you because they’d turned to grab your drink. It was the doctors forgetting why you were in the exam room. Bus drivers demanding fare twice. Landlords calling the cops on “an intruder” inside the apartment you had paid for with cash they no longer remembered receiving.
It was learning not to cry in public because strangers would panic at the sight of tears on a face they couldn’t place.
You became a ghost with a pulse.
Worse, actually. Ghosts were remembered.
You tried recording yourself. The video showed you clearly until anyone else watched it. Then their eyes slipped away from the screen. Later, they couldn’t recall what they’d seen.
You tried writing notes. People could read them. They could understand the words. But the moment they looked away from the paper, the context dissolved.
You know me, you wrote once on Jason’s door.
He opened it, read the note, frowned, and looked down the hall.
You were standing right there.
He raised his gun before you could say hello.
Again. And again. And again.
The third time, he had a bruise on his jaw and blood on his collar. You had come because you’d heard gunfire from three blocks away and still knew his patrol routes like a prayer you’d never stopped saying.
You slipped in through the window.
“Behind you,” you said softly.
Jason turned, pistol already in hand.
You didn’t flinch fast enough. The gun pressed under your chin.
His eyes were green-blue violence. “You’ve got five seconds.”
You stared at him. Jason stared back.
Something inside him trembled.
Not his hand. Jason’s hands were steady. Always steady.
But his face. His face did something devastating.
It softened with confusion.
“You’re crying,” he said.
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because you keep forgetting me.”
His finger shifted away from the trigger. “Do I know you?”
“Yes.”
He swallowed. “I feel like I do.”
That hurt worse than the gun.
You almost laughed. It came out broken. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said, quieter. “That’s the problem.”
You gave him facts.
You learned to weaponise intimacy. Not the pretty kind. The surgical kind. Details sharp enough to cut through the fog.
“You hate peas but pretend it’s ideological.” A blink. “You read the ending of books first when you’re scared the dog dies.” His jaw tightened. “You called me after your first nightmare when you came back. You didn’t say anything for eight minutes. I stayed on the line.”
His hand lowered.
“You remember?” you asked.
“No.” His voice sounded scraped raw. “But I believe you.”
Then he looked down at the gun in his hand.
Gone.
His expression hardened.
“Don’t move.”
You moved.
Not toward him.
Away. Out the window. Across the roof. Into the night.
Jason shouted after you, but you knew by the time he reached the fire escape, he would not remember why he was running.
Jason started hunting a ghost.
He didn’t know that was what he was doing. He called it a case because that made sense. Cases had suspects, evidence, motive. Cases could be solved with enough pressure, enough blood, enough stubborn refusal to sleep.
There was someone in his safehouses. Someone who knew his codes. Someone who cleaned his wounds when he passed out bleeding on his bathroom floor, because he woke up bandaged in purple wrap and furious about the tenderness of it. Someone who kept leaving food. Someone who had patched a bullet hole in his jacket by hand.
Someone who knew him. Someone he kept forgetting.
It made him meaner than usual, which was honestly saying something.
“Maybe it’s a stalker,” Tim said one night over comms.
Jason was crouched on a rooftop, watching a weapons deal go sideways in the alley below. “Thanks, Replacement. Stellar detective work. You crack that case with your enormous brain, or did the coffee tell you?”
“Your emotional repression is showing.”
“Your face is showing.”
“My camera’s off.”
“I can sense it.”
Oracle cut in. “Children.”
“He started it,” Jason said.
“I’m an adult,” Tim said.
“Emotionally? Twelve.”
Oracle sighed. “Jason, about your ghost.”
“Not a ghost.”
“You have described them as appearing, disappearing, bypassing security, and leaving cryptic notes. That is at least ghost-adjacent.”
Jason hated that she sounded amused.
“They’re a person,” he said.
The words came out too fast. Silence hit comms.
Then Dick, because apparently everyone was on this channel now, said, “You sound sure.”
Jason aimed down his rifle scope. “I am sure.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
Because he didn’t know. Because sometimes he woke up with grief in his throat and a name already gone from his tongue. Because he caught himself buying your favourite candy and had no memory of learning you liked it.
Because once, half-asleep and feverish, he had reached across his bed like someone belonged there.
Because every time he found one of those notes, something in him whispered, Don’t lose them again.
Again.
That was the word that haunted him.
Again.
You watched him from a distance because love made you stupid.
That was the ugly truth.
You should have left Gotham. You tried, once. Got as far as Blüdhaven before realising the city forgot you, too, only with worse parking.
You came back.
For Jason. Because he was reckless. Because he bled too much. Because he left windows unlocked without meaning to.
Because some part of you still belonged to the boy under the fire escape, the one who took your advice and pretended he hadn’t, the one who looked at you like you were something worth surviving for.
You were in love with him. You had been for years, probably.
Maybe since the laundromat roof. Maybe since he read aloud to you from Persuasion and claimed it was “for the bit.” Maybe since he came back from the dead and said your name like it was the one thing the grave hadn’t taken.
You loved him. And Jason kept aiming guns at you.
Honestly? This is how Gotham did romance. Absolute trash fire. Zero stars. Would still haunt again.
The worst time happened in his apartment.
Not a safehouse. His actual apartment. The one with books stacked everywhere and a couch too ugly to be ironic. The one place you had never entered without permission.
But he had been hurt. Badly.
You found him by following blood drops up the stairwell. His door was ajar. His helmet lay cracked near the entryway.
Jason was on the floor. Unconscious.
For one terrible second, he looked dead again.
You made a sound you didn’t recognise.
Then you moved.
You stitched the knife wound in his side with shaking hands. Cleaned blood from his ribs. Checked his pupils. Sat beside him for hours, terrified that if you looked away from him, you would forget yourself too.
At dawn, he woke with a gasp.
His hand shot under the pillow.
You caught his wrist. “Jay, it’s me.”
His eyes focused.
He froze. His body knew you before his mind did. You felt it in the way his wrist slackened under your fingers. The way his breathing changed. The way his gaze dropped to your mouth and back up again with the stunned, aching recognition of someone seeing sunrise after years underground.
“You,” he whispered.
Hope was cruel.
You should have known better.
“Yeah,” you said.
His brows pulled together. “I was dreaming about you.”
Your heart cracked open. “What did you dream?”
His eyes didn’t leave your face. “Rain. A bodega. You were mad at me.”
“I was.”
“Why?”
“You died.”
A faint, pained smile touched his mouth. “Sounds like me.”
You laughed through the tears before you could stop yourself.
Jason stared at you like the sound had punched him.
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“What?”
“Laugh like I should know it.”
You looked down. His fingers shifted under yours. Not pulling away. Holding on.
“I’m trying,” he said.
“I know.”
“No.” His voice dropped, rough and desperate. “You don’t. I keep finding—things. Notes. Food. Bandages. I keep waking up feeling like somebody carved out half my chest and didn’t leave a scar.” His hand tightened around yours. “I don’t know you, but I miss you.”
You stopped breathing.
Jason’s eyes burned. “How the hell do I miss someone I don’t know?”
“Because you did know me.”
He stared.
“You were my best friend,” you said. “Before Bruce. Before Robin. Before the grave. Before all this.”
His expression shattered so quietly you almost missed it.
“Best friend,” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
Something unbearably soft moved across his face.
“And now?”
The question hung between you.
Now, you thought, I love you so much it’s ruining me.
Now, you thought, I would let you forget me forever if it meant you stayed alive.
Now, you thought, I am so tired.
You opened your mouth.
A crash sounded from the fire escape.
Jason turned. Just a glance. Just instinct.
Just enough.
When he looked back, he ripped his hand from yours like he’d been burned.
Gun out. Pointed at your heart.
You stood slowly.
His stitches pulled. He hissed.
“Stay back,” he snapped.
“Jason.”
“Who are you?”
Your whole body went cold.
Not because he had forgotten.
You were used to that by now.
Because this time, you had almost told him. This time, he had almost asked. This time, the universe had yanked the leash before either of you could cross the line.
You raised your hands.
Jason’s eyes flickered to the blood on your fingers.
His blood.
Your hands.
His gun.
“Did you do this to me?” he demanded.
That one broke you.
You left without answering.
After that, you stopped going to him. For three weeks, you did the closest thing to healing you knew how to do.
You disappeared on purpose.
No rooftops. No safehouses. No slipping through Jason’s window to check if he was sleeping. No leaving food. No purple bandages. No notes.
You found an abandoned greenhouse behind an old school in Burnley and made it yours. The glass roof was cracked, but enough panes remained to catch the winter light. Wild vines had claimed the walls. Broken pots littered the floor. In the back, under a rusted table, you found a tray of dead seedlings with faded labels.
Basil. Thyme. Forget-me-not.
The last one made you sit down hard.
Of course. Gotham had a sense of humour, and it was evil.
You stole soil. Seeds. Bottled water. A blanket. Cans of soup. You built a life out of scraps because that was what you had always done.
Then you practised.
At first, you didn’t know what practising meant. How did you control being forgotten? How did you command absence? How did you hold your own shape inside other people’s minds when your power made you slippery as smoke?
So you started with objects.
You put a cracked mirror on the table and stared at yourself.
“My name is…” You said your name.
The mirror held you.
You looked away.
Looked back.
Still there.
“Okay,” you whispered. “Great. Congrats. Object permanence, but traumatic.”
You laughed. It sounded awful.
Next, you tried with birds.
Pigeons nested in the rafters. They remembered food, at least. Or maybe they remembered patterns. You put seeds in the same place every morning. They flew away when you moved, then came back.
They did not know you. But they trusted the shape of your kindness.
That became the first lesson.
Memory was not just a face.
It was pattern. It was feeling. It was the body recognising safety before the mind could name it.
Jason’s body had known you. That meant something.
So you practised being more than sight. You recorded your voice and listened until you could hold yourself steady through the playback.
You wrote your name on your skin.
You held your own gaze in the mirror and said, “I am here,” until the words stopped feeling like a plea and started feeling like an order.
The power fought you. It wanted collapse. It wanted erasure. It wanted to fold you into the blind spot of the world.
You fought back.
Some days, you lost. Some days, you lay on the greenhouse floor with dirt under your nails and cried so hard your ribs ached.
Some days, you hated Jason for forgetting. Then you hated yourself for hating him. Then you hated the men who had done this.
Then you hated the world because it kept spinning, rude and bright and busy, while you became a rumour no one could keep.
But slowly, slowly, something changed.
A pigeon looked away from you. Looked back.
Didn’t startle.
You sobbed over that bird like it had handed you the moon.
The next week, a stray cat remembered where your hand was.
Then an old woman at a corner store frowned at you after turning away to count change and said, “Didn’t you already pay?”
You almost kissed her.
You didn’t, because boundaries. Also, she had a broom.
Control came like sunrise through fog.
Not all at once. Not enough.
But real.
You learned that fear made the forgetting worse. Panic scattered you. Shame erased your edges.
Calm helped. Touch helped. Names helped.
Love—
Love did something strange.
You didn’t know how to test that.
Not without Jason.
Jason did not handle your absence well.
He would have denied that under oath, threat, torture, and probably alien mind probe.
But he was falling apart in practical, masculine, deeply embarrassing ways.
He stopped sleeping. He stopped cooking. He started tearing apart old case files from the Bowery, hunting for Mnemosyne, Subject Nine, memory tech, missing witnesses, anything.
He found nothing.
That was impossible. Nothing in Gotham left nothing behind.
So he dug deeper. Black Mask whispers. Penguin shipments. Old Cadmus shell companies. Court of Owls banking ghosts. He kicked down doors and broke fingers and followed the absence like it was blood.
Every trail ended in static.
Except one.
A flower. Pressed between the pages of a book he did not remember buying.
A tiny blue forget-me-not.
Beside it, in handwriting he recognised as his own:
They loved these.
Jason stared at the note until the words blurred.
A person. His person.
The thought slammed through him so hard he had to sit down.
His person.
He didn’t remember your face. He didn’t remember your name.
But grief had weight. Love had gravity. Whatever had been taken from him had left a crater.
Jason touched the dried flower with one finger.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to someone he couldn’t remember.
The apartment stayed quiet.
No answer. No laugh. No soft footsteps behind him.
For reasons he could not explain, that was when he broke.
Not loudly. Jason did not break like glass. He broke like a building condemned quietly from the inside.
He pressed the heel of his hand to his eye.
And cried.
You returned because Jason found the warehouse.
Of course he did.
You heard about it from two men in an alley who forgot you while you were standing between them. They were nervous. Talking too much. Red Hood had been asking questions. Red Hood had found the old Mnemosyne site. Red Hood was going to get himself killed because subtlety had never met that man and lived.
You went cold all over.
The warehouse was not empty.
They had rebuilt underneath it. New locks. New guards. New machines humming beneath the concrete.
And Jason had walked right in.
By the time you arrived, the place was already burning. Gunfire cracked below. Alarms shrieked. Smoke rolled through the stairwell.
You moved through it like a ghost, because that was what they had made you. Men looked away and lost you. Cameras blurred. Guards shouted at shadows.
Then you heard Jason scream.
Not in fear.
In rage.
That was worse.
You found him in the central lab, chained to a metal chair under a halo of white lights. His helmet was gone. Blood ran from his temple. Electrodes clung to his skin.
A man in a lab coat stood beside a console.
“You are fascinating,” he said to Jason. “Repeated exposure to the anomaly has created subconscious retention pathways. Emotional memory without declarative recall. Remarkable.”
Jason spat blood on the floor. “You talk like a Wikipedia page grew legs and got bullied.”
God, you loved him.
The scientist sighed.
“You keep searching for them,” he said. “Even when you cannot remember who they are. The attachment survives erasure. We need to know why.”
Jason’s head lifted. Something terrible moved through his face.
“Them,” he said.
The scientist smiled.
“Ah,” he said. “There it is.”
You stepped into the room.
The scientist turned. His eyes landed on you.
Recognition flared—not of you, but of his experiment.
“Subject Nine,” he breathed.
Jason looked at you.
Everything stopped.
He stared like a starving man seeing food. Like an injured animal seeing home. Like a boy under a fire escape looking up at someone who knew which cars had alarms.
“You,” he whispered.
You held his gaze. “Hi, Jay.”
His breathing shook.
The scientist reached for a switch.
You moved first.
You were not a vigilante. Not really. You didn’t have armour or training from assassins or a dramatic cape. But you had survived Gotham. You had survived being erased. You had survived Jason Todd’s gun pointed at your heart more times than anyone should.
So you picked up a metal tray and hit the scientist in the face with it.
He dropped like a sack of bad decisions.
Jason blinked.
You froze.
No. No, not now.
His eyes closed for half a second from blood loss and pain.
When they opened, panic flickered there.
Not blankness.
Panic.
“Don’t go,” he said.
You nearly dropped the tray. “You remember?”
“No.” His voice cracked. “Yes. I don’t—stay where I can see you.”
You rushed to him and started working on the restraints.
His hands were shaking. Jason Todd’s hands were shaking.
“Look at me,” you said.
“I am.”
“Keep looking.”
“Not a hardship,” he rasped.
“Jason.”
“What? You’re pretty. I’m concussed. Let me have this.”
You laughed, breathless and wrecked. His eyes filled with something like wonder.
“I know that laugh,” he whispered.
Your hands stilled.
“I know it.”
The restraints snapped open. Jason sagged forward. You caught him. His forehead dropped against your shoulder, and for one impossible second, he simply breathed you in.
Then the door opened.
Three guards rushed in.
Jason’s instincts took over.
He turned.
“No!” you shouted.
The forgetting hit like a wave.
You felt it tearing at the room, at him, at the fragile thread between your mind and his.
Not again.
Not again.
Something in you rose up.
Not fear. Not grief.
Fury.
You were tired of being stolen.
You grabbed Jason’s face between both hands and forced him back toward you.
“Remember me,” you said.
The lights flickered. The air bent. Jason’s pupils blew wide.
You felt the power twist, searching for absence, searching for the old path out.
You refused it.
“I am here,” you said, voice shaking. “I am real. You know me. You loved me before you had words for it. You found me in the rain. You forgot me with a gun in your hand, and I still came back because I am apparently an idiot with catastrophic taste in men.”
Jason made a strangled sound.
The guards shouted.
You did not look away.
“You are Jason Peter Todd,” you said through tears. “You hate peas. You love books. You died and came back wrong and still tried to be good even when you didn’t believe you were. You were my best friend. You are the love of my life. And I am done being erased.”
The room went silent.
Not actually. The alarms still screamed. The guards still moved. Fire still ate through the walls.
But inside the circle of Jason’s gaze, silence bloomed.
Blue and bright. Forget-me-not.
Jason stared at you.
Then, slowly, impossibly, he said your name.
You broke.
Jason caught you with one arm and raised his gun with the other.
He did not point it at you.
He pointed it past you.
“Hey,” he said to the guards, voice low and murderously calm. “You interrupted something important.”
The fight lasted forty-seven seconds. Jason was injured, half-electrocuted, and running on spite, which, unfortunately for everyone else, was his most renewable energy source. You helped by making yourself difficult to track, appearing in blind spots, knocking guns aside, and turning absence into a weapon instead of a wound.
When it was over, Jason leaned against the console, breathing hard.
You stood in front of him.
He looked at you. Then, deliberately, he turned his head away.
Your heart stopped.
“Jason—”
He looked back.
His face crumpled.
Still there. Still seeing you. Still knowing.
“Oh,” you whispered.
Jason laughed once, broken and disbelieving.
Then he reached for you.
You met him halfway.
The kiss was not graceful. There was blood on his mouth and smoke in your lungs. His hand shook against the back of your neck. You were crying too hard to breathe properly. It was a terrible first kiss, technically speaking.
It was also perfect.
Jason kissed you like a memory returning to a body. Like a vow. Like a wound finally closing.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.
“I forgot you,” he said.
“Not on purpose.”
“I pointed guns at you.”
“Yeah.” You swallowed. “We’re going to unpack that. Emotionally. Extensively. Possibly with yelling.”
His mouth twitched. “Fair.”
“You scared me.”
His face went hollow with guilt. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.” You touched his jaw. “But you will.”
Jason nodded. No defense. No deflection. No joke sharp enough to hide behind.
Just Jason.
Your Jason.
“I’ll remember,” he said.
The words trembled.
You believed him.
Recovery was not pretty. It did not arrive in one cinematic montage where sunlight poured through windows and everything healed because love had entered the chat.
Love helped.
Love was not a cure.
There were still bad days.
Some mornings, Jason woke up reaching for a gun because you were in his kitchen and his brain stuttered before recognition landed. He never pointed it at you again, but the reach was enough to make you go quiet.
He hated himself for that. You hated the flinch.
You both learned to survive the aftermath.
He started sleeping with his weapons locked away when you stayed over. You started announcing yourself before entering rooms.
He put your name in his phone with a blue heart beside it and stared at it so often you threatened to change it to Emotional Support Cryptid.
He said, “Do it, and I’ll make yours Haunting Me Professionally.”
You changed it immediately.
Jason laughed for a full minute.
The first time he left the room and remembered you when he came back, he cried in the hallway before opening the door.
You pretended not to notice. He knew you noticed.
He loved you for pretending.
The Bats took it with varying levels of grace.
Dick hugged you, forgot you when he turned to yell for Bruce, then turned back and screamed. Tim started wearing a body camera and taking notes with alarming intensity.
Damian narrowed his eyes and said, “Your condition is inconvenient.”
You said, “So is your personality, but here we are.”
Jason laughed so hard he had to sit down.
Damian remembered you after that. Pure spite, apparently, was also a memory anchor.
Bruce was the hardest.
Not because he forgot.
Because he looked at Jason after remembering enough and said, quietly, “You’ve been grieving someone.”
Jason’s face closed.
You reached for his hand. Jason let you.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was.”
Bruce looked at your joined hands. Then at you.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
And maybe he forgot the exact shape of you when he looked away.
But he remembered Jason holding on.
That was enough for now.
Months later, the greenhouse bloomed.
You brought Jason there on a Sunday morning, when Gotham was pretending to be gentle.
The forget-me-nots had grown wild in the back, tiny blue flowers spilling from cracked pots, stubborn and bright against the ruin.
Jason stood under the broken glass roof with his hands in his jacket pockets.
“Subtle,” he said.
You nudged him. “Shut up.”
He looked down at the flowers. Then at you.
He did that a lot now. Looked at you.
Not out of fear. Not because he had to.
Because he wanted to. Because every glance was proof.
“You know,” he said, “I used to think I was haunted.”
“You were.”
“Rude.”
“You left notes to yourself about me. That’s haunting behaviour.”
“I was being investigative.”
“You wrote ‘blue mug’ on your arm.”
“Important clue.”
“You cried over a flower.”
Jason pointed at you. “That information was shared in confidence.”
You smiled.
His expression softened.
“I missed you,” he said.
The air changed.
You looked at him.
Jason swallowed, but he didn’t look away.
“I didn’t know your name. Didn’t know your face. But I missed you all the time.” His voice roughened. “There was this… space. Everywhere. In my apartment. In my bed. In my head. Like my life had been built around someone, and then the world took them out but left the shape behind.”
Your eyes burned. “Jay.”
“I think some part of me knew,” he said. “Even when I forgot. Even when I was scared. Even when I—” His jaw tightened. “Even when I hurt you.”
You stepped closer.
“You didn’t stop loving me,” you said softly. “You just couldn’t remember where the love was supposed to go.”
Jason’s face broke open.
“Yeah,” he whispered.
You took his hand. He held on carefully, like you were both precious and real.
“I love you,” he said.
You had imagined those words so many times that they should have felt familiar.
They didn’t. They felt new. They felt like sun through cracked glass.
“I love you too,” you said.
Jason smiled. Small. Shy. Devastating.
Then he turned away.
Only for a second. Only to look at the flowers.
When he looked back, his smile was still there.
So was recognition. So was love.
You exhaled.
Jason squeezed your hand.
“Still here,” he said.
You leaned into him, shoulder against his arm, and looked at the forget-me-nots blooming in the ruins.
Summary: Tim is aware that a vigilante known as Spider is beloved by New York, and that his girlfriend cancels a lot of dates. When he finds Spider unconscious in a Gotham alley, he begins questioning what he knows both about the vigilante and his girlfriend.
A/N: I have very little practice writing for Tim, so apologies if he's OOC! I love him, though, and I plan to write more for him in the future!!
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“I,” you begin as you lean back to dodge a punch.
“Have,” you continue, twisting into a roundhouse kick that catches Hyena’s jaw.
“A… date!” you conclude.
Panting for air, you look down at the unconscious foe, tapping your toes against the bipedal killer. Sirens are approaching quickly, so you have to leave behind the villain you thought was from a time when you were lacking both common sense and spider sense. Now you have one of those. Most days.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” you murmur, aiming your extended fingers toward the looming roof of the New York skyline. “Or bothering Firestorm?”
Swinging high above the crowded city streets, you shoot a web with your left hand as you unlock your phone with your right. Someone once told you texting and swinging was a bad idea, but you assured him you’d never crash into a building (like some people have). You’re very late, you find, as expected.
“Please don’t hate me,” you whisper as the dial tone trills in your ear.
“Hey,” Tim greets. He yawns, then asks, “What’s up?”
“I’m so sorry,” you begin, pulling yourself up to sit on a rooftop. “I got caught up at work and traffic heading out of the city is awful. I don’t think I’m going to make it.”
“No worries,” Tim replies. “Reschedule for, uh, Saturday?”
Dropping your head back, you close your eyes against the setting sun and think. There’s a fight in Hell’s Kitchen late Friday night, and a new ride is opening at Coney Island Sunday.
“Saturday works,” you answer. “I’m really sorry, Tim.”
“Hey, I get it,” he assures you. “I love you.”
You pinch your eyes closed tighter, guilt weighing down your chest. “I love you.”
“Oh, I found something cool to show you. I’ll come to you Saturday?”
“Sounds good. Thanks, Timmy.”
Tim pulls his phone from his ear and squints at the video that resumes playing. The spider vigilante stealing the hearts of New Yorkers has gained a lot of popularity on social media. Jason even stumbled upon a fanfiction someone wrote about the Spider beating Batman in a fight — he’ll never admit he read it, but if he did, Tim might have found it entertaining. He saves the video to show you the comments your neighbors are making, then turns his comms back on.
“Yo, Replacement!” Jason barks. “Stop flirting and give B some backup!”
“What makes you think I was flirting?” Tim questions as he stows his phone in his belt.
“Because we warned you against a long-distance relationship,” Dick answers. “And now every free moment you have is spent on your phone.”
“Your girlfriend is from a different planet,” Tim deadpans. “Hypocrite.”
“New York City is not long distance, Grayson,” Damian scoffs. “One can hire a civilian driver, pay a meager fee, and be in the city in less than two hours.”
“How do you know that?” Batman rasps.
“Uh… Raven informed me of the details,” Damian mutters. “Perhaps I should give my attention to Killer Croc.”
“Perhaps,” Bruce agrees. “And if you choose to take a trip to New York, don’t Uber.”
“Steal a car,” Jason agrees.
Bruce’s sigh seems to shake the very foundation of Gotham before he utters, “No.”
“I’m going to New York Saturday,” Tim offers. “We were supposed to meet tonight, but she got stuck in the city.”
“Again?” Dick, Jason, and Barbara, safe in the watchtower, ask.
“I’m not going to fault her for cancelling dates at the last minute when I’ve missed just as many because of this,” Tim counters.
“No, just…” Jason exhales heavily, then asks, “Don’t you wonder if there’s something she isn’t telling you?”
“I love her,” Tim defends.
“That’s not an answer, Tim,” Barbara points out softly. “It’s okay to want answers.”
“I always tell her it’s fine,” Tim replies. After a breath, he admits, “But, yeah, I’m getting suspicious.”
“She’s not the type to cheat on you,” Dick adds. “And as someone who has had my fair share of relationships while hiding part of my own life from them, I’d suggest you have a mature conversation before it’s too late.”
“Suspicious how?” Barbara inquires.
“I can’t justify asking her questions when she doesn’t know I’m Red Robin,” Tim decides, putting an end to the conversation. “When there’s something to talk about, we’ll talk about it.”
“Well, if you’re back on the clock, maybe you could come help me get out of Pammy’s vines,” Jason suggests.
“Call Harley,” Barbara jokes.
Jason’s voice is so soft it’s nearly inaudible when he says, “She sent me to voicemail.”
Surprisingly, the Friday night fight didn’t end in the bloodshed you expected. When the former mayor’s Fisk Shipping company was announced as one of the event’s sponsors, you expected the worse. But Hell’s Kitchen was quiet… as quiet as it gets, at least.
So, you stumble into your apartment just after 1 a.m., eager to get some sleep but excited to see Tim tomorrow. It’s been nearly three weeks since your last date. You had several scheduled in that time, but you were late to the first and he’d already left for a family emergency, then you cancelled the next two. The simple fact of living in a different city than Tim does complicates things, but the suit you don, and the powers and responsibilities you have make it even more difficult to maintain a secure relationship. Yet Tim has never been anything but understanding. That doesn’t make it any easier to sneak around and lie when you love him.
You’ve just pulled your mask off when a blue light flashes in the bedroom entry behind you.
“Shock it!” a familiar voice exclaims before the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor thuds.
“Hi, Miggy,” you greet without turning.
“It’s Miguel, kid,” he grumbles, pushing up to his feet. “Year?”
“Same as last time.”
“Any reason I should be here?”
Shaking your head, you move to face him. His mask is off, the gloves of his suit torn. The left side reveals a simple gold band on his ring finger.
“Actually,” you decide, putting on your best friendly smile.
“No,” he interrupts. “I don’t like when you do that.”
“You don’t like anything,” you argue. “It’s not going to put anyone in danger.”
“You saying that scares me.”
“I need some advice,” you confess. “I… I’ve been seeing someone, and I love him. I do. But I also really love helping people.”
Miguel drags a hand down his face, then asks, “This guy seem bothered by the constant excuses?”
“How do you know I give him excuses?”
Miguel simply looks at you, because he knows exactly what you’re dealing with. Even when he’s been around other spiders, there have been things he couldn’t — or simply wouldn’t — share.
“He’s really busy too, so I think he understands and it works out. So far, he hasn’t acted suspicious… not to my face at least.”
“There’s this novel idea where you meet in the middle,” Miguel says. “You tell him what he needs to know and ask the same in return.”
“What if… What if he doesn’t like what I tell him?” you whisper.
“Then you dodged a bullet.” Miguel shrugs and counters, “Maybe you won’t like what he tells you. But you won’t know until you stop letting your situation control you.”
“Right. Well, he’s coming here later today, so I guess I could consider your advice. Wait, why are you here?”
“No clue.” He points over his shoulder but doesn’t have to ask.
“Couch is all yours,” you answer. “There’s leftover pizza in the fridge or the Thai place around the corner is still open. Thank you, Miggy.”
“Whatever, kid,” he grumbles, rolling his shoulders as he walks out of your room.
You decide to take Miguel’s advice under consideration for a while longer. When you open your door to see Tim holding a bag of food and a box from your favourite store, you decide you would rather have the mature conversation in Gotham. That way, Tim doesn’t have to find his way home knowing that you have been lying to him for the entirety of your relationship.
“Are you free Friday?” you check after the door is closed and everything he was carrying is stowed on your counter.
Tim checks his phone quickly, then nods.
“Can I come to Gotham? I’ve been wanting to go to that diner again.”
“Sure,” Tim agrees. “They just added a new dessert menu.”
“I should move,” you sigh dreamily.
“Then who would give me excuses to buy overpriced chocolate on 7th Avenue?”
Wrapping your arms around his waist, you kiss his shoulder and whisper, “You could still do that for me.”
“How kind of you.”
Nearly a week after Tim had to cut your evening in New York short because his brother called, you make your way to Gotham. You’re three hours early, but it seems like a nice buffer to actually ensure you make your date this time. It’s getting late, but the heavy clouds above you blot out the sun, making it seem closer to dusk than it is.
Walking through Newtown, which separates one of the most crime-ridden areas of Gotham from the bridges, you look at the businesses lining the streets. It seems as if someone is trying to make this side of the city more welcoming than it once was. You pass by a glass blowing shop, then stop and incline your head toward the alley on the other side of the street. A familiar tingle buzzes at the base of your skull as your heart rate increases.
Carefully, you cross the street, as if you’re interested in the seasonal menu of a mom-and-pop ice cream parlor.
“No, no, please,” someone pleads in the alley.
“Just hand it over!” another voice demands.
A single glance around the corner confirms that you sensed something. Three large men have a defenseless girl who looks to be several years your junior pinned in the alley. She’s clutching her bag to her chest as tears streak down her cheek.
“Let’s do this one more time,” you murmur to yourself before slipping into the shadows.
When you emerge in the alley, you’re in your suit and looking to make this fight as short as possible. Without making yourself known, you shoot a web toward the man who appears the be the leader. It wraps around his ankles and allows you to pull his legs out from under his. His face collides with the damp asphalt, which muffles his pained groan.
“Who is that?!” the other man demands, turning and revealing a knife in his grasp.
The third man inches forward then, becoming visible to you. Riddler, you recognize from all the posters around Gotham. He narrows his eyes at you and spins the small cane by his side.
“I spin a silky web so neat, to catch the bugs I like to eat, with eight long legs I creep with pride, in dark corners I like to hide,” he calls. “What am I?”
The man you knocked down clambers to his feet and pulls a heavy crowbar from the wall behind him. Maybe, you realize, this isn’t a fight I shouldn’t have picked on my own.
“You are a crazed lunatic,” you answer. “I am a spider.”
The next web you shoot connects Riddler’s co-conspirators by the shoulders, temporarily rendering them incapable of fighting.
“Get out of here!” you tell the girl as you move toward Riddler.
She obeys your command and runs out of the alley. The odds of her sending someone to help you seem slim.
“You should go too,” you tell Riddler. “While you still can.”
“It is worldwide, but once only a spider could weave one,” he says. “Gotham is no place for spiders.”
The others separate themselves, and you rock your weight back onto your heels. Of all the times for Miguel to not show up unannounced.
The sun set hours ago, and Tim needs to get ready to meet you at the diner for your date. But Jason needed ‘a minute,’ so Tim is covering Newtown briefly. He leaps from one rooftop to another, slowing when he sees something in the alley beneath him. Tim drops to one knee and realizes that the lump he saw is a person.
He lands soundlessly in the alley and approaches the individual cautiously. When he’s close enough to make out details, he stops.
“What are you doing in Gotham?” Red Robin mutters, lifting New York’s spider vigilante’s arm, which falls uselessly back to her side.
He’s seen enough videos and read enough stories about the spider to know that, by all accounts, she’s good. But that doesn’t explain why someone who can carry their own against New York’s biggest and baddest is lying unconscious in a Gotham alley.
“That’s not good,” Tim muses softly when he sees blood darkening a sleeve of Spidey’s suit. “B, I’ve got a situation in Newtown.”
“I left for five minutes!” Jason groans.
“The spider from New York?” Tim begins. “She’s here.”
“Doing?” Bruce inquires.
“Nothing. She’s hurt, unconscious.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Me too,” Jason offers. “You need someone who doesn’t trust anyone about anything if this girl wakes up.”
“She needs to get patched up, not be interrogated,” Tim argues, pressing his thumb to the side of Spidey’s neck to check her pulse.
“If I’m lucky, there’ll be time for both.”
Your mask is firmly in place when you wake, but someone is prodding at your arm and the damp concrete that you landed on has been replaced by a dry sheet beneath you. You jerk upright, ready to fight Riddler and the two goons he had with him. They won’t get the jump on you again, and you know to protect yourself from whatever it was Riddler used against you. Though you remain unsure why he had a weapon that powerful and chose to mug an unarmed girl.
“Oh,” you mutter when you realize you are face-to-face with Batman and Red Robin. Glancing toward your now-bandaged arm, you see that Red Hood is lurking in the corner with his arms crossed.
“What are you doing in Gotham?” Batman demands.
Red Robin steps forward and lays one hand on your shoulder while the other circles your wrist. He directs your arm up, then toward your chest.
“Who are you?” Red Robin inquires.
You look at your wrist where he’d touched you, convinced you’ve felt his touch before.
“Um, most people call me Spider,” you offer, dropping your voice. “It was supposed to be Spider-Girl or something, but the whole thing never stuck.”
“What are you doing in Gotham?” Batman asks again. “Who brought you here?”
Red Robin moves behind you, rubbing the blade of his palm down your neck and to the base of your spine. You had no idea the bats had medical training. The idea of Batman sitting in a lecture hall makes you smile beneath your mask, but then Red Robin spreads his hand against your shoulder.
Suddenly, you’re no longer in Gotham being interrogated. You’re in New York, looking up at billboards in Times Square with Tim Drake lingering at your side and whispering comments in your ear. Red Robin’s touch seemed familiar because it is.
You glance at Red Robin, searching his face. What’s visible certainly looks like Tim Drake.
“You come into our city announced, pick a fight, and find yourself unprotected and vulnerable,” Batman says. “Justify that.”
“I didn’t pick a fight,” you defend. “I saved someone. It’s what I do.”
“It’s what you do in New York,” Red Hood interjects. “Why are you here?”
Glancing up, you realize that you’re in a real cave. There’s got to be a way out because there’s a way in.
Pretending to stretch your shoulder, you aim your hand toward the rafters and murmur, “Maybe I was never here.”
Just as a spider disappears from its web in a breath, you leave Batman, Red Robin, and Red Hood alone, with no idea as to where you are. They search the expanse of the cave, shine a spotlight along the rafters, but find no trace of you.
“Well, I doubt she’ll be back,” Jason decides. “Now that she knows we’re here and we want answers.”
“But why was she here at all?” Bruce wonders, removing his cowl. “Who took her down in that alley?”
“It’s suspicious,” Tim agrees. “Gotham isn’t exactly a destination, so I doubt it was a convenience thing.”
“She said she saved someone,” Jason remembers. “Any reports of crimes in that alley tonight?”
Bruce falls into his chair at the Batcomputer to check, leaving Jason and Tim behind him to speculate.
Tim’s phone chimes, and he reads the text from you quickly, then locks his phone. Then, when he truly realizes what you said, he opens it again.
“What?” Jason asks.
“My girlfriend cancelled our date,” Tim mumbles.
“The date that’s supposed to start in… seven minutes?” Jason sighs, then checks, “You suspicious enough to talk about it yet?”
“She’s been acting weird,” Tim says, moreso to himself than to Jason. “She’s been late or cancelling dates the whole time we’ve been dating. I never really thought about it, because I’d call them off last-minute too when Batman stuff came up.”
“Okay,” Jason drawls. “And?”
“But I’m pretty sure someone had slept on her couch before I visited her in New York last weekend and she didn’t say anything. And… and there’s something about the Spider.”
“Found it,” Bruce announces. “Store at the end of the alley has surveillance.”
He presses play on the video, showing Riddler and two unfamiliar men cornering a young girl.
“When did Riddler get a team?” Jason wonders.
“After Joker taunted him for working alone,” Bruce answers flatly.
The video shows the moment Spider steps out into the dim light in the alley and pulls the first man off his feet.
“Ooh,” Jason murmurs. “That hurt.”
“She saved the girl,” Tim muses when she runs out of the alley. “So, she wasn’t lying about that.”
They quiet as the video continues. When Riddler lunges toward Spider, she reaches both hands out and grasps his upper arm, flipping him over her shoulder. He pulls something out of his blazer pocket, slams it against her arm, and then Spider collapses. Riddler ushers the men out of the alley, though they clearly want to take advantage of her unconscious state.
“Wait, whoa,” Tim interrupts, slapping the back of Bruce’s chair lightly. “Go back?”
“Wondering when Riddler took up purse snatching?” Jason jokes.
Bruce drags the mouse until Tim tells him to stop. In slow-motion, they watch Spider grasp Riddler’s arm, then how she staggers back as she tries to fight off whatever he did to her.
“It’s a variant of the Joker toxin with traces of Scarecrow gas,” Oracle says through the comms system. “Other than that, her bloodwork looks fine.”
“He injected it?” Jason questions.
“He’s prepping for something big,” Oracle suggests.
“I know who Spider is,” Tim admits, staring at the paused video. Spider’s hands are on Riddler’s arm, one hooked beneath his tricep and the other manipulating his forearm. Tim has been in the same hold on more than one occasion, but he’s never actually been tossed like Riddler was. He had no idea before now that it was a possibility.
“What?” Jason exclaims. “Who?”
“I have to go,” Tim murmurs, moving toward the staircase that leads to the manor.
“Where?” Jason calls. “To do what?”
“Watch videos of Spider fighting that green guy in New York!”
Bruce turns and watches Tim go, then asks Jason, “Do you know who she is?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you should consider updating his world’s okay-est detective trophy.”
“Sure,” Jason deadpans, “I’ll get right on that. Maybe I’ll be the demon spawn a new sword, too.”
Tim spends the next twenty hours watching every video of Spider he can find online. Running on adrenaline and caffeine, he’s more convinced that he’s right about her true identity. So, he travels to New York and stakes out on the roof of a building that Spider seems to frequent.
Less than an hour later, you lands on the edge of a roof and straightens when you see you aren’t alone.
“Uh, hello,” you greet, waving awkwardly at Red Robin, who you’re pretty sure is also your boyfriend. “Look, if this is about last night—"
Red Robin interrupts you and says your name. Not Spidey. Your actual name. Tonight, he’s speaking like himself, not using that raspy tone you assume he learned from Batman. He sounds like Tim Drake, and your stomach twists at the idea this will be the last time you hear him say your name.
With a heavy sigh, you pull your mask off. “Tim, I’m sorry,” you begin.
“Don’t bother,” he interrupts, causing your heart to drop to your stomach. He pushes his cowl back and smiles, calming the building storm inside you. “Call it even?”
“You’re not breaking up with me?” you check, clutching your mask in your hands.
“Are you kidding!? The Spider and Red Robin are unbreakable.”
“The Spider and Red Robin just met.”
“I’m not breaking up with you,” Tim promises, taking your hand. “And I have an idea for how you can beat that Goblin guy.”
You open your mouth to ask how he knows about the villain and your fights but then remember you’re talking to Tim Drake. What little he doesn’t know he can find quickly.
“It’d be nice to have someone in my corner,” you reply. “Teach me how to fight Gotham rogues, too?”
“Sure. Then we can switch cities and freak everybody out,” Tim suggests.
You laugh, then lean forward and kiss Tim’s cheek before you put your mask back in place.
“Who are we fighting tonight?” Tim inquires.
“It’s been pretty quiet so far,” you say. “Oh, if you could figure out how to keep Miggy from spawning in my bedroom when he time travels, that’d be great.”
Tim nods, following you toward a fire escape, then catches your wrist to stop you and yells, “Time travel?!?”
Tim Drake & x reader Taglists🏷️ @fireriyu @lortheswiftie @noble-17 @kmc1989 @anonymousmuffinbear @outpostsworld
taking a short break (i’m writing later tonight lol) from the long jason (childhood friends to idiots in love to (he dies and resurrects?? to) enemies to lovers) fic! but while i do that, here’s an updated ideas list:
requests are open !! and if you have specific requests with these ideas, feel free to send them!!
an hc for dick grayson with a(n ex) gymnast or cheerleader
very self indulgent as an ex-gymnast and cheerleader, not even going to lie to you guys
damian wayne x artist!reader - thinking of making this a blurbs series
an angsty jason fic where he’s comes back set on getting you away from bruce
batfam wedding fic!! ft. wally west
very excited for some of the pre planning of this one